Lady Silence

by Blair Bancroft

  “Back where?”

  Katy shook her head. “I can’t go back, truly I cannot.”

  “The Hardcastles?”

  “You must believe me! I cannot go back.” Katy drew a shuddering breath. “If your mama could be prevailed upon to write a character . . . If you would but let me stay until I find another position . . .”

  “Recommend a liar? I think not.”

  “Damon?” Katy stretched out a hand, returning it abruptly to her lap as she realized what she had let slip. Dear God, he would know she thought of him by his Christian name.

  Silence stretched, the yawning chasm between them widening with every second. Or so she assumed.

  “I am sending you back to Farr Park,” the earl said at last. “My mother and I will be situated here for some time. When we have time between settling my brother’s affairs and fixing Drucilla in her new home, we will discuss what is to be done with you. Meanwhile, you may return home in disgrace, to make your deception known to your doting admirers among my staff. I fear, however, they may be as displeased by your duplicity as are my mother and myself.”

  Hands behind his back, brows lowered over his piercing dark eyes, the earl scowled at her. And, inwardly, at himself. Whatever her duplicity deserved, it had not been the treatment foisted on her by his own lapse into idiocy. He led, his officers followed.

  Betrayal was a double-edged blade, slicing at them both. With results far worse than intended and repercussions that shamed them all.

  With his luck, the little minx would turn out to be a royal by-blow or, worse yet, the long-lost legitimate daughter of a duke. Certainly, she was arrogant enough.

  Devil a bit! Excuses weren’t necessary. He could not very well cast her out into the street, no matter how appalling her long masquerade. She was, after all, Katy Snow.

  His Katy.

  Though, damn and blast, that could not, of course, be her real name. Miserable chit!

  “That is all, Snow. You may go. Begin packing immediately. I shall order the carriage for an hour hence. You will be back in Farr Park tonight.”

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was gone nine o’clock and long since dark when Katy’s coach pulled up at the service entrance to Farr Park. At the now infamous kitchen door by which she had first arrived. Katy thanked the coachman—an old acquaintance who would spend the night in his own bed above the stables before returning to Castle Moretaine. He had not been as shocked as she’d expected when she spoke to him. In fact, she thought she caught a sly twinkle in his eyes, as if he rather found the trick she had played on the family more amusing than outrageous. Katy could almost hear him thinking, Put one over on ’em, she did. Clever girl.

  It gave her hope. If only the others at Farr Park might feel the same. Katy stared at the solid oak door, flanked by windows glowing softly with light, just as they had so long ago. She had asked the coachman to bring her to the kitchen entrance. Why, she wasn’t certain. Easier on the servants—fewer footsteps than the long trek to the front door?

  Less pretentious? A suitably humble homecoming for a wandering waif?

  Tonight, it was snowing only in her heart.

  The Moretaine footman, who had accompanied them, brought up her portmanteau, rapped sharply on the door. The snick of a bolt . . . memory threatened to overwhelm her. Once again, she had returned a beggar. But this time, she feared, she would not find acceptance. Farr Park, no longer a refuge, was likely to become a house of torture.

  The door swung open, revealing the rotund outline of Betty Huggins, the cook.

  “Katy! Child, it is you, is it not? And pray tell, what have you done with the master and the countess? Never say they sent you round to the kitchen while they’re waiting at the front! Well, don’t just stand there, child, come in, come in. Mrs. Tyner! Mr. Mapes!” Cook bawled at the top of her lungs. “Come see what’s at the kitchen door again.”

  The years flooded back, drowning Katy in memories. Words stuck in her throat. Not tonight. She could not reveal her secret tonight. She needed a few final moments of having them fuss over her, care for her.

  Love her.

  Katy stepped into the flagstone-tiled kitchen, where warmth enveloped her. The scent of ginger and vanilla, fresh bread, mutton, drying herbs, and exotic spices. Home. Her place of safety.

  The footman plunked down her portmanteau. Katy touched his arm, managed a smile of thanks. She did not speak.

  “Dear child!” cried Millicent Tyner, dashing in from her room just down the hall. “Have you come alone then? What is wrong?” The housekeeper glanced at Cook, then turned to Humphrey Mapes, who had entered the kitchen a few steps behind her. “Something has happened, I know it. Else they would not have sent her back all alone. You, boy,” she called to the potboy who slept in an alcove off the kitchen, “fetch paper and pen from my office. We must discover what has happened.”

  “It’s the colonel,” Cook declared stoutly. “Must be. Was he after you, Katy girl?”

  “Earl,” Mapes corrected, but his heart wasn’t in it, for he very much feared Cook might be right.

  “Merciful heavens!” said Mrs. Tyner, “can that be it? Has her ladyship sent you home to keep you out of his clutches? The vile wretch. And such a fine little boy he was. Fair breaks my heart.”

  Vehemently, Katy shook her head. No, no, no, she could not allow them to think—

  “Deny it all you want,” said Cook, “anybody could see you had an eye for him, but protect him you’ll not. The truth will out,” she added with a dramatic flourish.

  The potboy plunked paper, quill and inkpot onto the long kitchen table. Katy found herself hustled across the room and into a chair. A few more hours, a few more minutes—that’s all she asked.

  But it was not to be. The long masquerade was truly over.

  Katy folded her hands on top of the paper, bowed her head.

  “You’ll not remain mum about this, child,” Mapes declared with a hint of sternness. “We must know why you have been sent home.”

  “Katy, dear,” added Mrs. Tyner, “you know we wish only to protect you. We must know the truth.”

  Worse and worse.

  Slowly, Katy removed her bonnet, inched off her gloves. Farr Park’s primary staff, sensing a drama, if not understanding its cause, remained silent. Waiting. Katy shoved paper, inkstand, and quill, to the center of the table. The whoosh of three shocked breaths—Mrs. Tyner, Mapes, and Cook—echoed through the kitchen. She was refusing to answer?

  “I don’t need them, you see,” Katy said quietly and evenly, “for I can talk quite well. That is why I was sent home. I am in disgrace.”

  Chairs scraped on stone as Katy’s three mentors, legs turned to jelly, groped for places to sit.

  “’Tis a miracle, then,” breathed a wide-eyed Betty Huggins.

  “I am afraid not,” Katy told her sadly. “I could always talk, you see, but everywhere I went, I was sent away because I spoke too well. I was desperate . . . and I liked it here. You were all so kind. I never, ever wanted to leave . . . so I lived the lie, knowing so much as a single word would put me back out on the street. I am sorry—truly sorry—for deceiving you . . . but I am not sorry for all the wonderful years I had here. You may think me a liar and a cheat, but knowing you all, being part of this household, was worth whatever I must suffer now. Without Farr Park, I am convinced I should be dead.”

  “Oh, my poor dear child.” Mrs. Tyner heaved a drawn-out sigh.

  Betty Huggins sobbed out loud, her mounded bosom heaving.

  “This is serious, Snow,” Mapes intoned. “Did the earl say what we are to do with you?”

  “No. Merely that I am to stay here until his return.”

  “Are you confined to the house? To your room?”

  “He did not say. I presumed—which I should not have done, of course—that I would be allowed access to the bookroom, the stables, the village. Truly, nothing was said about my being a prisoner. Only that I was to stay here.
”

  “Very well. If the earl has any other instructions, I am sure he will write.” Mapes selected a bell rope, gave it a pull. “You may retire, Snow. I will have Wiggs bring up your baggage.” He paused, unaccustomed uncertainty crossing his angular face. “Are we to be given your true name and background, miss, so we may know how to address you?”

  “I hoped you might still call me Katy.”

  “Inappropriate,” Mapes returned gravely. “But if anyone wishes to address you as ‘Miss Katy’ rather than ‘Miss Snow,’ I shall allow it.”

  “Thank you,” Katy murmured.

  “Surely you do not intend to continue your deception . . . Miss Snow,” said Mrs. Tyner. “We are—have been—your friends. How can you still refuse to tell us who you are?”

  “Please understand that I have very good reasons why I cannot go back to . . . to the place where I was living before I came here. It was not my home.”

  “Poor lamb,” Cook choked out. “You’ve had a bad time of it, have you not?”

  “Enough!” Mapes snapped. “You may leave us, Miss Snow. The kitchen, as you have always known, is not the place for a lady. No matter how devious and conniving she might be.”

  When Katy reached the haven of her bedchamber, she knew she could not bear the sight of one more disapproving face. So she nodded her thanks to Jesse Wiggs and flashed him the smile he had always seemed to like so much. His answering grin and words of welcome were a spark of warmth in Farr Park’s sudden chill. Let him find out from others. She’d suffered enough from convicting herself with every word out of her own mouth.

  And what now?

  Perhaps the vicar would write her a character? He had known her for years. A good man, surely he would not hold her deception against her?

  Yes . . . she very much feared he would.

  The doctor or Mr. Palmer? A character from an unmarried man was out of the question, as good as a recommendation to the life proposed by Major Foxbourne and Captain Thayne.

  Did she really wish to be gone when Damon came home? Was pride that important? Was fear of being sent back where she came from enough to send her running from all she loved?

  But Farr Park was only a minor property now. Castle Moretaine was the primary seat of the earls of Moretaine. Perhaps the Park was to be her prison, after all. She had been exiled, to grow old here, abandoned to her misery.

  She was eighteen! With a whole long life to live. And live it she would. Though the how of it reminded her forcibly of that biblical verse about seeing through a glass darkly.

  What about her mother’s family? She was not destitute now. Other than an occasional ribbon or sweet, she had had no use for the wages earned at Farr Park. So she had the wherewithal to go adventuring. Her mother was an Alburton, and there had once been grandparents who had taken her in, ready to bring her up as their own. No matter the Bishop of Hulme’s opinion of their fitness to do so.

  Yes, perhaps that was what she should do. In all honesty, it was, quite possibly, what she should have done long ago. Except . . . she had not wished to leave Farr Park. Or her glorious imaginings of the master of Farr Park, who, someday, would come home.

  And now, with those dreams scattered by the winds of reality, she must face up to the invidiousness of her position. Yet how did one find a wool merchant, named Alburton, who was likely long dead?

  Katy, resting on her favorite chintz-covered window seat, broke off her musings, her speculations suddenly bowled over by the realities of this long, horrid day. Was it possible she had begun it in eagerness, feeling the wind in her hair as she rode beside the stream at Castle Moretaine? She had been so thrilled to be out of the house at last, leaving behind the oppressiveness of grief, compounded by Drucilla’s dramatic posturings. For a few fleeting moments, she had been free, the whole world laid out before her. Free to dream of ways to conquer an earl, now risen so far above her touch.

  And then . . . her whip struck the major’s face . . . the retaliating sting against her cheek . . . clawing hands at her breasts . . . skirts up over her head.

  The discipline of years broken at last, she had screamed. And ruined her life.

  And now they all hated her. By tomorrow, when word spread, she would not have a friend left. Worse yet was the one thing she had not allowed herself to think about. It was too much, much too much. A problem far too complex to be analyzed in the strained conditions of a house of mourning. A problem that, perhaps, defied analysis at any time or place.

  For who was Lucinda Challenor? And why had the Hardcastles claimed her?

  Talk about deceit! For if there was one thing that bold hussy was not, it was Lucinda Challenor.

  For Katy Snow was Lucinda Challenor.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Clover!” Katy, catching a glimpse of her friend disappearing down a side corridor, threw ladylike behavior to the winds, hiking up her skirts to chase after the Farr Park maid. But when she turned the corner, the hallway was empty, every door shut. “Clover,” she called more softly. “Clover?”

  Not Clover too.

  Already this morning, Katy had encountered no more than a stiff back and poker face from Jesse Wiggs. Dear Jesse, who had offered blind adoration for years, not to mention staunch support whenever her high spirits had forced Lady Moretaine, Mapes, or Mrs. Tyner to scold her. And now . . . Clover. Et tu, Brute?

  Katy opened each door in turn. Clover Stiles was not going to elude her. The fourth door revealed a young woman in a gray gown with crisp white apron and cap. She was busy, suspiciously busy, running a feather duster over the high wooden tester above the bed. She did not look up from her task.

  “Clover . . . please . . . I would like to explain . . .”

  The feather duster paused, descending slowly as the maid stepped away from the bed. Dropped an exaggerated curtsy. “Was there something you needed, miss?” she inquired, her eyes focused somewhere past Katy’s shoulder.

  Katy bit her lip, tears threatening. So far she had managed to endure rejection rather well, she thought, but Clover . . . the girl so determined to better herself. Surely she could understand. She must!

  “Yes, I need something,” Katy told her. “I need someone to listen to why I—”

  “Excuse me, miss, but Mrs. Tyner’ll have my liver and lights if I don’t get this whole corridor done this morning.”

  “Clover . . . you’re my friend . . . for years.”

  “Well, that was before, now wasn’t it, miss? Can’t be friends with a real lady like yourself. Talkin’ so hoity-toity, words just rollin’ off your tongue. Fooled us all, didn’t you? Made game of us. Thought we weren’t good enough for the truth. Friends for years, indeed, miss,” Clover spat. “And not a drop of trust.”

  Katy retreated into the silence that had been her refuge for so long. She had no rebuttal to Clover’s words. Guilty as charged. She wanted to try again, to make her friend listen, but her tongue seemed to swell, choking off any possibility of speech. Katy managed a slight nod. A gesture of apology . . . acceptance of Clover’s rejection. Good-bye.

  Blindly, she stumbled back to her bedchamber and closed the door on the outside world. She had planned to take her hoard of coins and go into the village today, to consult Mr. Trembley, the local solicitor. The one possession remaining from her childhood was her mother’s bible. And above the names of her parents, Harold and Belinda, were the names of her maternal grandparents, Matthias and Emily Alburton. Throwing herself on the mercy of the lofty and distant connections on her father’s side of the family, headed by the mighty Duke of Carewe, seemed quite impossible. But a wool merchant—or son or daughter—might be more willing to take pity on a long-lost relative.

  At this moment, however, her courage failed her. She must give the villagers time to absorb the news, reel with the shock . . . and possibly find a modicum of pity, deep down in their souls, for a poor lost child.

  For now, she would ride out on Mehitabel, dear Mehitabel—very likely her last
true friend in all the world. Katy tore at the buttons of her gown as she rushed to change into her habit. But when she threw open the wardrobe door and saw the cavalry blue jacket and white braid she had once adored, the habit she had worn so proudly into the woods only the morning before, she cringed. Her old one must be here somewhere . . .

  Garbed in the forest green habit that threatened to burst its seams at any moment, Katy guided Mehitabel to all her old haunts, making a valiant effort to recapture the joy she had known here for so long. Inevitably, she and the bay mare found their way to the fateful hill overlooking Farr Park. Where Katy suddenly slumped in the saddle and burst into tears.

  It was lost to her now, her glorious, wonderful Farr Park, its beauty and comfort dust without the love of those within its borders. The only honorable course was to leave, never darken the doors of Farr Park ever again.

  Never see Damon.

  Serena, her dear countess.

  Mrs. Tyner, Mapes, Cook, Clover, Jesse . . . all those who had been so dear.

  She must let her dreams of Damon go. The Earl of Moretaine was not for the likes of Katy Snow. Nor for Lucinda Challenor, overly indulged granddaughter of the Bishop of Hulme. Not even for the great-granddaughter of the Duke of Carewe. Her claim to gentle birth—tainted by trade and a shockingly unconventional upbringing, not to mention deceit—was far too tenuous.

  Two days. She would give the village of High Henton two days before she drove the gig into town and consulted Mr. Trembley. If they mocked her, reviled her, so be it.

  She could not say she had not earned it.

  Katy’s meeting with Mr. Martin Trembley went well, almost as if he were asked to find long-lost relatives on a weekly basis. She could only suppose that solicitors encountered a great many strange things in the course of their profession. Her lingering hopes of sympathy from the villagers did not fare as well. Even the vicar’s wife gave her the cut direct.