The Notorious Lord

by Nicola Cornick

  ‘I have only been to one meeting of her reading group,’ Rachel said, ‘but we are currently discussing The Enchantress by Mrs Martin.’

  She thought that she saw Cory’s shoulders shake slightly. ‘Why, what is the matter?’

  Cory straightened and gave his horse a final pat. ‘Your classical education has no doubt been magnificent, Rachel-I know of no other young lady who can read Hebrew and Chaldean-but your literary one is sadly lacking. I believe The Enchantress to be a Minerva Press publication.’

  Rachel raised her chin. She did not care to have Cory make fun of her reading tastes. ‘So? It is a charming book. I dare say that you have not read any Minervas, Cory, so you do not know what you are talking about.’

  Cory inclined his head. ‘There you have me. I do not. I beg your pardon. They are probably excellent publications.’

  ‘You are suspiciously quick to retract your views. Either you are humouring me or else you are still secretly laughing at me!’

  Cory raised a hand in mock surrender. ‘Acquit me, Rae. I would not laugh at you. What is the plot of The Enchantress?’

  Rachel shot him a mistrustful look, certain that he was still funning her. ‘It is a most edifying tale,’ she said. ‘The hero, Sir Philip Desormeaux, has just put an advertisement in the newspaper in order to find himself a wife.’

  ‘A most practical gentleman.’ Cory quirked his brows. ‘No doubt you approve of such a sensible approach to matrimony?’

  ‘Naturally,’ Rachel said. ‘I have a lowering feeling, however, that he will succumb to romance in the end.’

  Cory grinned. ‘Is that what gentlemen generally do?’

  ‘In fiction, certainly.’ Rachel said. ‘In real life, I doubt it.’

  ‘Yet you advocate sense over sensibility yourself?’

  ‘Of course.’ Rachel said. ‘Romance is like travel.’

  ‘Exciting, daring, and dangerous?’

  ‘Uncomfortable, inconvenient and hopefully of short duration,’ Rachel said. ‘Good day to you, Cory.’

  His laughter followed her as she went out of the stable and into the bright sun of mid-morning. Already the heat was building and the white doves sought the shadow of the clock tower. Rachel, who intended to walk the couple of miles from Midwinter Royal House to Saltires, went to fetch her parasol. In the hallway her mother’s packing boxes were still half-full and Rose, the only housemaid who had agreed to take the job, was laboriously polishing the banisters, wheezing as she worked.

  Rachel went up the wide staircase, turned right where it branched, and entered the second door on her left. Midwinter Royal was only a small house and she had chosen for her own a bedroom on the west side with a view across Midwinter Common to the forest beyond. She had given her parents the biggest bedchamber on the south side of the house, for although Rachel knew that they would not have noticed if they had been sleeping in a trench, she wished them to be comfortable. They had a view across their beloved burial mounds to the river, the Winter Race, beyond.

  Rachel’s room was bright and full of sunshine. The curtains rippled in the breeze from the open window. She went across and extracted her parasol from the white-painted wardrobe in the corner. All of her belongings had been stacked away neatly upon arrival. Nothing spoiled the pristine neatness of her bed, for although she had to share a maid with Lady Odell, she would never have countenanced leaving her clothes draped about the room as her mother did.

  It was as she was closing the wardrobe door that she turned and caught sight of Cory Newlyn strolling down the path that cut through the shrubberies towards the fields at the back. He had his hands in the pockets of his disreputable jacket and he was whistling under his breath. As Rachel watched, he took off his battered old hat and thrust his hand through his fair hair, pushing it back from his forehead. Then he looked up at her window, saw her watching and raised one hand in casual greeting. The sun was on his upturned face as he smiled at her.

  Rachel stepped back from the window suddenly. It was odd but she felt as though she had been caught in the act like a peeping Tom. Yet surely there was nothing wrong in looking out of her own bedroom window…

  When she dared to look again, Cory had disappeared around the corner of the house. With a small sigh, Rachel tied the blue ribbons of her wide-brimmed straw hat under her chin, donned her light spencer and checked in the mirror that she looked neat and tidy. She did. Her russet-brown hair was braided ruthlessly to subdue the curl in it and there was not a thread out of place on her pale blue promenade dress.

  She picked up her parasol and hurried down the stairs. Cory had disturbed her morning in more ways than one. Now she was going to be late, and in a strange way, it felt as though it was all Cory’s fault.

  Chapter Three

  Rachel was halfway along the dusty road that led from Midwinter Royal to Saltires when she was overtaken by a gig containing two ladies. The pony was travelling at a lively trot and stirred up quite a cloud of dust in its wake, and the gig’s passenger, turning and seeing Rachel struggling on the grass verge, put out a hand and urged the driver to stop. When Rachel caught them up, she recognised two of the other members of the Midwinter reading group, the Honourable Mrs Deborah Stratton and her sister, Olivia, Lady Marney. Deborah Stratton leaned over and addressed her in the friendliest of terms.

  ‘Miss Odell! I am so sorry-we did not see you there! May we take you up with us? I assume that you are going to Saltires?’

  Rachel looked at the gig’s narrow seat rather dubiously. Lady Marney, who was driving, had not seconded her younger sister’s invitation and Rachel felt a little awkward. She did not wish to force herself on their company.

  ‘I am not certain that there is room-’ Rachel began, but Deborah Stratton cheerfully overrode her.

  ‘Of course there is! Move up and make room for Miss Odell, Liv,’ she added, turning to her sister and suiting actions to words by huddling up on the gig’s seat. ‘It is only a mile or so further, at any rate. We shall all be as fine as ninepence up here.’

  Rachel found her hand grasped in Mrs Stratton’s own, surprisingly strong one, and without further ado joined her on the cushioned seat.

  ‘Good morning, Lady Marney,’ she said, nodding to Olivia. ‘This is very kind of you.’

  ‘A pleasure, Miss Odell,’ Olivia said, although her voice lacked the warmth of her sister’s. She turned her attention back to the pony and the gig lurched forward again.

  Deborah Stratton gave Rachel an encouraging smile. When Rachel had first been introduced to the sisters at the reading group the previous week, she had been struck as much by the differences as by the similarities between them, and the same feeling was reinforced now. Both girls were slender with corn-coloured hair and blue eyes, but Olivia’s face was grave in repose and held little animation. Deborah, in contrast, seemed almost to burst out of her skin with vitality. Rachel had liked her immediately and the two of them had fallen into conversation very easily and were now in the way to becoming firm friends. With Olivia, though, matters were different. Rachel thought that it might take some time to get to know Lady Marney.

  ‘I hope that you are settled in at Midwinter Royal House, Miss Odell,’ Deborah said now with a friendly smile. ‘It is barely three weeks, is it not? I always find that it takes time to accustom oneself to a new place.’

  Rachel agreed. ‘I hope,’ she added, ‘that my parents will permit me to become settled in the Midwinter villages. We are forever on the move, you know.’

  Deborah’s face lit up. ‘Of course! Your father is the prodigiously famous antiquary Sir Arthur Odell, is he not? We are most impressed to have such eminent neighbours.’

  ‘Impressed and not a little excited to discover what he will dig up,’ Lady Marney added unexpectedly. She gave Rachel a shy, sideways smile, taking her eyes off the road for a second. ‘No doubt it is all old hat for you, Miss Odell, but we have never experienced an excavation in the Midwinter villages before, though everyone has been wondering what is in tho
se mounds for time over mind.’

  Rachel laughed. ‘I cannot promise that it will be vastly exciting, Lady Marney, but I am sure that my parents will turn up something of interest. They usually do.’

  ‘I expect that you have travelled with your parents to the most extraordinary places, Miss Odell,’ Olivia Marney said encouragingly. ‘Egypt, Greece, Italy…’

  Rachel sighed. It was always the same. Everyone found her life tremendously exciting except she herself. ‘Yes, I have been to all of those places and more, Lady Marney, although the recent hostilities have rather put an end to the more exotic assignments.’

  The sisters laughed together. ‘My dear Miss Odell,’ Deborah said, ‘you sound quite jaded by the whole experience!’

  Catching Lady Marney’s smile, Rachel realised that Olivia was not standoffish, but merely shy. She could not wonder at it. Having a sister as ebullient as Deborah Stratton would be enough to cast most siblings into the shade. Yet it was odd, for the widowed Mrs Stratton could only be the same age as Rachel herself, whilst Olivia was a good few years the elder, and married to a viscount into the bargain. Rachel would have expected her to have more address.

  Deborah patted Rachel’s hand consolingly. ‘Never mind, Miss Odell. We are pleased to have you amongst us. I think that you might become quite a curiosity! There is not that much society in the Midwinter villages, you know, and even as far afield as Woodbridge…’ She pulled an expressive face.

  ‘My sister is more accustomed to the sophisticated delights of Bath, Miss Odell,’ Lady Marney said drily. ‘I fear she finds country life very tame.’

  ‘I do not!’ Deborah objected. ‘I have lived in Midwinter Mallow for fully three years without being in the slightest bit bored, Liv.’

  ‘I hear that life in the Midwinter villages is likely to become much more exciting,’ Olivia said. ‘Ross, my husband, said that the Duke of Kestrel is paying one of his rare visits to Midwinter and has brought some of his family and friends with him.’

  ‘Lud, a house full of rakes and adventurers,’ Deborah said. ‘That will cause a flutter in the country dovecotes!’

  Rachel imagined that the lively Mrs Stratton would find a man like Cory Newlyn vastly entertaining. She could picture Cory regaling Deborah with tales of his outrageous expeditions, smiling into her eyes whilst he spun tall stories about buried treasure. She had always viewed Cory’s conquests with an indulgent smile before, but now she felt slightly sick. She wondered whether it was the jolting of the gig that was responsible for her queasiness.

  A moment later the carriage swept through the gates of Saltires and started its journey through the lush parkland that surrounded the house. Rachel looked about her with interest. Although she had visited Lady Sally a couple of times already, she had always walked from Midwinter Royal and the path along the river did not afford the same view of the beamed Jacobean hall as this long approach did. She gave a little sigh.

  ‘Oh, it is pretty, is it not?’

  ‘Vastly pretty,’ Deborah said, smiling, ‘and very old. It is the dower house for Kestrel Court, you know, Miss Odell. Lady Sally and her husband named it Saltires when the Duke leased it to them on their marriage. Justin Kestrel and Stephen Saltire were the greatest of friends, you know.’

  Rachel had wondered how Lady Sally Saltire came to be living so close to Kestrel Court, for the tall, twisted chimneys of the larger house could just be seen beyond the trees of the deer park.

  ‘One would have thought it unconscionably awkward,’ Deborah continued, ‘for the Duke and Lord Stephen were both suitors for Lady Sally’s hand in marriage. When she chose Lord Stephen it was rumoured that there would be a duel for her hand!’ Deborah’s eyes sparkled. ‘How romantic is that?’

  ‘Not very,’ Olivia said crushingly. ‘The whole story was only a hum-Justin Kestrel would scarce have offered his old friend a home afterwards if they had fallen out over a lady, would he?’

  Deborah’s face fell. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘The Duke and Lady Sally have not rekindled their romance since her widowhood?’ Rachel ventured, hoping that Olivia would not think her prying. ‘If not, that might suggest there was no truth in the tale.’

  ‘No, they have not,’ Deborah said. She looked dissatisfied. ‘I do not believe they see each other very often, for Justin Kestrel travels a great deal and Lady Sally is for the main part settled in London. Oh, it was such a romantic story and now the two of you have utterly deflated it-and me into the bargain!’

  Olivia laughed. ‘Romance, my dear Deborah, is a sadly overrated commodity,’ she said, unconsciously echoing Rachel’s comments to Cory earlier. ‘Far better to aim for a comfortable match and a settled life.’

  Rachel smiled. ‘I had heard that Lady Sally was once a prodigiously famous beauty. Has she never wished to remarry?’

  ‘No.’ It was Olivia who answered. ‘With wealth and position and good society, why should she need to marry?’

  ‘Well,’ Deborah began, ‘she might need a man to-’

  ‘Deb!’

  Olivia shot her sister a warning look, which Rachel intercepted. She almost laughed. It seemed that Olivia had been worried that her sister would make some unguarded remark about a woman’s need for male companionship. Such a comment was scarcely proper in front of a young unmarried lady, but Rachel wryly suspected that she would be unlikely to be shocked. It was Lady Marney and Mrs Stratton who would no doubt be horrified if only they knew the education that Rachel had been subject to from an early age. It did not matter that the frescoes and sculptures of bacchanalian pleasures and erotic excess had been unearthed by her parents and were supposedly classical; they were still explicit and shocking and had left the young Rachel Odell in open-mouthed wonder. She could remember clearly the day that Cory Newlyn had come across her almost standing on her head in an attempt to work out whether a certain position indulged in by two figures in a fresco was physically possible…

  Still, it was better to allow Lady Marney her illusions, Rachel thought. She was enough of a curiosity as it was, without shocking the ladies further, and she knew her unorthodox upbringing would give some people a disgust. It was a great pity, when all she had ever wished for was to lead an ordinary life. She smiled gently and said nothing.

  ‘I suppose it is too late for Lady Sally now,’ Deborah said with a sigh, ‘for she must be all of three and thirty if she is a day. Far too old to be contemplating remarriage!’

  The gig drew up outside the main door and a liveried footman immediately appeared to help the ladies descend. Tucking her copy of The Enchantress, which she had borrowed from Lady Sally’s extensive library, under her arm, Rachel followed Olivia and Deborah inside.

  The reading group was a very select affair. Only six of them sat around the polished walnut table in Lady Sally Saltire’s library. In addition to Deborah Stratton and Olivia Marney there was Lady Sally herself, Helena Lang, the vicar’s daughter, and Lily Benedict, a dark beauty married to a gentleman who lived retired.

  ‘Well, my dears,’ Lady Sally said when they had all discussed the first couple of chapters of The Enchantress, ‘we all suspect that Sir Philip Desormeaux will get more than he bargained for from his advertisement, but then any gentleman who advertises for a wife deserves to be put in his place…’

  She smiled at them all conspiratorially and it felt to Rachel as though she was drawing them all into the warmth by the sheer force of her personality. From the top of her elegant head to the tips of her kid slippers, Lady Sally Saltire exuded the sort of style that left Rachel in open-mouthed envy. Lady Sally was sleek, elegant and effortlessly modish. Nor was it simply a matter of dress. Rachel reflected that Olivia Marney, for example, was fashionable but rather lifeless. Sally was vivacious, with all the style conferred through being a rich and supremely elegant society widow.

  ‘I always think that a man who needs to advertise for a wife must have something seriously wrong with him,’ Helena Lang said. Her tone suggested that she would never
give such a poor-spirited fellow the time of day. ‘After all, there are plenty of dreadful men who still manage to attach a wife without having to resort to the newspapers, so how bad would one need to be to advertise? It is quite shocking when one comes to think of it.’

  There was general laughter at this.

  ‘It is true that appalling men can marry quite easily if they are rich and titled,’ Lily Benedict agreed. ‘One sees it all the time.’

  Lady Sally rang the bell for the servant. ‘More refreshments, ladies? I have another project that I wish to discuss with you all before you leave.’

  Two footmen brought in trays laden with cake, tea and lemonade. Rachel accepted a glass of the latter for the day was very warm and it was quite stuffy in Lady Sally’s library. Though the casement windows were open to allow in a thread of breeze, the low, plaster ceilings seemed to trap the heat.

  ‘Lady Sally is well known for her charitable projects,’ Deborah Stratton whispered in Rachel’s ear. ‘Last summer she sponsored a race on the river and all the fashionable crowd came down from London to attend. It was the most exciting occasion! We seldom see such society in Midwinter.’

  ‘So, ladies…’ Lady Sally said, when the footmen had retired, ‘I wished to share the plans for my new project with you-and to ask for your help.’

  Five pairs of eyes rounded with speculation.

  ‘I would like,’ Lady Sally continued, ‘to raise some funds for one of my benevolent societies. I thought that a little project might distract everyone rather pleasantly from rumours of this annoying invasion, so…’ she smiled with a hint of wickedness ‘…I thought that it might be rather fun to produce a watercolour book.’

  A little sigh rippled around the group. A book sounded nowhere near as exciting as last year’s regatta had been.

  ‘Do you mean a book with watercolour drawings, Sally?’ Lily Benedict enquired. ‘That seems a little tame compared with your usual projects.’

  ‘Local views would look attractive in watercolours,’ Olivia Marney suggested. ‘The river, the watermill…’