Star-Crossed Summer

by Sarah Stanley

  Star-Crossed Summer

  Sarah Stanley

  DEDICATION

  For my home city of Gloucester and the beautiful nearby village of Frampton-on-Severn, which inspired my fictional Frampney. And also for the picturesque North Devon towns of Lynmouth and Lynton, with which I have taken liberties but which will still recognize themselves as Lannermouth and Haldane. In particular I mention the Rock House Hotel, Lynmouth, upon which I have modelled the Dower House.

  Contents

  Title Page

  DEDICATION

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  ‘You are acquiring a top quality stallion from an excellent stud, Sir Guy.’ The middle-aged widow was ill at ease with her visitor, a gentleman more than ten years her junior.

  ‘Excellent only because of the Valmer bloodline, Mrs Tremoille,’ he replied mischievously, and she looked away as if he hadn’t spoken.

  Their voices were deadened in the shadowy Tudor library, where centuries of candles had yellowed the decorative ceiling and darkened the oak panels. The light was scarcely better out in the park as ominous storm clouds gathered over the stillness of the Cotswold escarpment. It was a late afternoon in June, but seemed more like twilight. ‘It closes in early,’ she observed pointedly.

  He baited her. ‘Should I beg your hospitality for the night, madam?’

  Her glance would have shrivelled a lesser man, but Sir Guy Valmer was indifferent. In her unrelieved black, the former Jane Lindsay might be a lady now, but her present crisp air of propriety was superficial; one small scratch would soon expose the flaunting harlot beneath. Covert enquiries had uncovered her carefully concealed past in a low Worcester bagnio, but now she had another secret, and that was why he was here. The acquisition of the stallion was an excuse; his real purpose was to assess the woman he might one day have to face in court. His dark russet hair was a dash of rich colour in the gloomy chamber as he placed a leather pouch on the desk, between a lighted candelabrum and the latest volume of Lithgow’s Journal. ‘We are still agreed on a thousand guineas?’ he enquired.

  ‘Unless you wish to pay more.’ Jane watched the thin smile that played around his lips as he shook a mixture of gold coins and bank notes over the journal. Jane glanced at the publication. Did he know of the legal notice that appeared within its fashionable pages? She studied his face again. This man was a devil with whom she only dared sup with a very long spoon, and would not sup at all were it not for the need to gauge her enemy. No doubt his purpose was the same, and now that she’d come face to face with her nemesis, she prayed he would never find anything legally binding that would serve his cause. In spite of her deep unease, she had to concede that he was a dangerously attractive man. She’d heard that Maria Carberry, leading actress at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, was wont to warm his nights. Maybe it was true, maybe not, but if so, La Carberry was probably a sleekly satisfied woman, because something about him told Jane he would be a master of seduction.

  He was leanly muscular, tall – over six feet she guessed – and possessed a lazy strength and masculinity that could almost be tasted. She had never been drawn to men with hair of an even remotely reddish hue, but on him it was quite perfect. That dark, deeply polished shade reminded her of chestnuts fresh from the husk, and such loosely tousled curls would be the envy of many a woman. His face was aristocratically handsome, with finely moulded lips, a clear complexion, and arresting grey eyes that seemed to penetrate and unsettle. No doubt those eyes could also flirt and caress to devastating effect. His clothes – a dark brown coat, white shirt, cream-striped Marcella waistcoat and fawn trousers that disappeared into immaculate Hessian boots – were such marvels of the tailor’s art they might have been stitched directly on his body. Ah, that body. So slender, athletic and masculine. Her breath escaped silently as her gaze moved secretly to the trousers that cleaved so close over his buttocks, hips and thighs that his anatomy could be made out in interesting detail. It had to be said that there were aspects of modern male fashion that pleased her immensely; trousers certainly did. On the right man. Embarrassingly small proportions were there for all to see, as were larger counterparts, and Valmer was impressive. Experience told Jane he’d know very well how to put such a fine organ to exquisite good use. He wouldn’t be a selfish lover – not this man – he’d take care to pleasure the woman in his bed. The thought aroused her, causing such an unexpected stab of raw craving to clench between her legs that she had to turn away. Her thighs trembled as a velvet wave of sexual excitement washed vigorously through her, becoming visible in the sudden flush of her face. It was several moments before she recovered enough to turn back again, and to her relief he was still intent upon counting the money, and hadn’t noticed anything.

  The voracious appetites that had served her so well in her licentious youth were still as fierce as ever, but these days she seldom found gratification unless it was self-administered. Her late husband, Esmond Tremoille, had been surprisingly adventurous for one of such frail and nondescript appearance, and in his quest for new excitement had even been known to sample four-legged partners. Ill health had eventually put paid to any sexual relief, save by her right hand or his own, and not even that as consumption began to overwhelm him. Now his frustrated widow yearned for a well-endowed swain possessed of the stamina of an ox, with whom she could copulate until her very teeth rattled.

  He counted the last coin. ‘There, Mrs Tremoille, a small fortune to see you through 1815’s troubled summer. Tell me, what do you expect now that Napoleon has escaped from Elba and is again rousing France to his banner?’

  ‘The vile Corsican seldom enters my mind, Sir Guy. I am confident the Duke of Wellington will soon see him off. What concerns me more is the unreasonable opposition of the masses to the government’s Corn Laws.’

  ‘Hardly unreasonable, Mrs Tremoille,’ he responded, handing her the empty pouch, ‘Corn is bread, and bread is life to the people. Protecting British corn prices means a vastly more expensive loaf.’

  ‘I am aware of that, Sir Guy, but farmers and landowners need protecting too.’

  ‘What you really mean is that farmers and landowners want more profits.’

  ‘You are a landowner,’ she reminded him.

  ‘And I’ve reduced rents to help my tenants and labourers survive. Have you?’ He enjoyed the way her eyes slid away, allowing him the small victory. Like far too many landowners, she lacked the foresight to help with the survival of those who depended upon her. He waited for her riposte, but it didn’t come. ‘Is Lancelot now mine?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Sir Guy. I’ll have him brought around to the front immediately.’ She returned the money to the pouch and sealed it with hot wax into which she pressed her late husband’s signet ring. Then she rang a little silver bell.

  A lanky butler of about fifty, with silky light-brown hair and spaniel eyes, opened the door immediately. ‘Madam?’ His voice was deep and guttural, conflicting with a
n otherwise soft and smooth appearance. Mordecai Bolton was Jane’s creature, and had been with her since before her marriage.

  ‘Ah, yes, Bolton. See that Lancelot is brought around to Sir Guy’s carriage, and then inform Joshua he’s needed to ride urgently to Gloucester.’

  The door closed again, and Guy regarded the woman whose activities encroached so greatly upon his plans. She was still handsome, but as hard as nails. He’d noticed earlier how she’d observed his lower regions. Well, she wouldn’t have found him lacking. Nor would he be lacking when it came to driving a legal wedge between her and the house and fortune she’d acquired through the convenient disappearance of Esmond Tremoille’s final will and all proof of its existence. It was said that the final will excluded Jane and left everything to Tremoille’s only daughter, Beth, whom Jane had cruelly thrown out into penury. ‘Mrs Tremoille,’ he said amiably, ‘I still do not understand why you have sold Lancelot.’

  ‘Sir Guy, bloodstock was entirely my dear late husband’s concern.’

  Dear late husband? He decided to ruffle her hypocritical feathers. ‘Rumour has it you’re considering marrying Lord Welland.’

  ‘Have you been paying attention to local gossip? How very unworthy.’

  ‘Local gossip is often a very fertile meadow.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you need reminding that it is now more than a year since Esmond’s death, and Lady Welland passed on over ten years ago.’

  ‘So the gossip is true?’ he pressed. Welland was the man she’d always wanted, although God alone knew why, for the fellow was an unpleasant bully who’d made it clear that while she was good enough to screw, she wasn’t good enough to marry. Instead he’d chosen a shrinking violet of impeccable breeding. As for Welland’s wisdom in offering for Jane now, it had to be wondered if he’d heard any of the whispers about Esmond Tremoille’s will. Guy would guess not.

  She hesitated, clearly uncertain whether or not to confirm anything, but then arrogance got the better of her. ‘Yes, Sir Guy, I am indeed considering marrying Lord Welland. I have yet to accept.’

  But you will, having waited more than twenty years to win him, Guy thought. ‘Then my puzzlement deepens. Welland’s interest in horses is well known, which makes the sale of a stallion of Lancelot’s quality even more odd.’

  ‘I am still free to dispose of my property as I see fit, and will be until such time as I again become a wife. Besides, Lord Welland already possesses Lancelot’s full brother, Galahad.’

  ‘Whose progeny may run like three-legged donkeys,’ Guy pointed out.

  ‘The same might apply to Lancelot’s offspring.’ She picked up the pouch and went deliberately toward the door, but he remained where he was.

  ‘A union between you and Welland would command much of the county.’

  ‘Our combined estates would hardly stand comparison with your vast tracts of Sussex, Sir Guy,’ she answered.

  ‘I own nothing in Sussex, madam.’

  ‘The point is that the possible size of joint Tremoille and Welland lands in Gloucestershire will have no bearing on you, because you own nothing here.’

  ‘That, madam, is a sorely disputed fact, is it not?’ he said softly.

  At last, he’d come to the heart of the matter. Alarm darted through her, cooling her skin and drying her mouth as she turned at the door to face him again.

  ‘Tell me,’ he continued, ‘does Welland know there is doubt about the will?’

  Somehow she was a picture of composure. ‘There was nothing wrong with my husband’s will, Sir Guy, it was very clear and to the point.’

  ‘Madam, I’m sure the document you produced was all those things when it was drawn up, but it wasn’t the ultimate will.’ Rumours of another will had started from the moment of Esmond’s passing, and had been fanned by a mysterious fire that killed his local lawyer Beswick, and razed his premises to the ground. But lawyers usually provided their clients with personal copies of wills, which in Esmond’s case had probably been carefully concealed from the rapacious Jane. Did the mysterious letter to Beth from her father, announced in Lithgow’s Journal and held by Withers, Withers & Blenkinsop, the lawyers in London, contain directions to this other copy, Esmond having anticipated the destruction of the original?

  ‘You are wrong about the will, Sir Guy, and before you now proceed to repeat the old yarn about my late husband having tricked your late father out of this estate, let me remind you that all the deeds and other papers are in order.’

  ‘How droll, for we both know that there was considerable sleight of hand on the part of Esmond Tremoille.’

  ‘My husband was an honest man!’

  Guy laughed aloud. ‘Madam, your husband was twin to a corkscrew!’

  ‘You came here to purchase a stallion, Sir Guy, and have accomplished that, so there is no need for you to remain a moment more.’

  She opened the door coolly, but couldn’t hide the tremble of her hand on the doorknob. That hand told him so much. ‘This house, estate and stud belongs to my family, Mrs Tremoille, and I mean to take it all back,’ he warned, as he passed her into the panelled hall, where he deliberately rattled her more by pausing to look around, as if he were already master.

  He remembered it all so well from his childhood. With its dark oak panelling and impressive staircase, it was a perfect example of Tudor architecture, built by the Valmers during the reign of Henry VIII. His family’s blue lion badge was everywhere, including the stained-glass oriel window that cast spangled lights over the black-and-white tiled floor. The only sign that it was no longer Valmer House was in the portraits, which were all of Tremoilles, including the late unlamented Esmond. The crafty old fellow wore a powdered wig and dated purple brocade coat, and didn’t look robust enough for his legendary sexual exploits.

  Not all the canvasses portrayed the dead, however, for the young Jane was among them, although the artist had ignored the preening strumpet, playing safe by daubing an angelic golden-haired bride with a vacuously pretty face and equally vacuous china-blue eyes. Her cloven hoofs and pitchfork were also well hidden.

  Below Jane there was a much more modern, exquisitely realized likeness of a young woman aged about twenty. She wore a décolleté leaf-green muslin gown, as fine as cobwebs and gathered high beneath her enticingly full breasts. Beneath a filmy silver gauze scarf, her dark hair was piled up in a knot from which fell a number of shining ringlets twined with soft green ribbons. Here was a nymph of trees and hedgerows, Oberon’s child, a woodland spirit clad in shades of willow, fern and shady pool. Her soft hazel-green eyes gleamed with innocent sensuality, and her slightly parted lips seemed to seek a kiss. Her name appeared on the frame. Elizabeth Tremoille. Sweet Beth, his quarry, was an enigma, strong but fragile, sensuous but pure, a denizen of fairyland trapped in the brittle, godless world of England’s beau monde. How on earth had a debauched old lecher like Esmond Tremoille sired such a captivating creature?

  ‘Where is your stepdaughter?’ he asked suddenly, his voice finding an echo on the tiled floor.

  ‘Beth no longer resides here, Sir Guy, nor has she since her father’s death. I neither know nor care where she is.’ Jane walked past him toward the outer hall. Guy followed, and Bolton supplied him with his hat, gloves and cane before opening the main doors.

  Guy emerged beneath the heavy stone porch with its sentinel Valmer lions. His bottle-green travelling carriage waited, the team of greys stamping impatiently. The lowering sky cast a shadow over the countryside, and everything was so hushed that he heard a vixen barking in the woods along the park’s north boundary. The house sheltered in a valley at the very edge of the Cotswold escarpment, its position affording protection from the south-westerlies that swept up from the Bristol Channel. Rising proud and golden against the menacing sky, above the valley’s southern lip, was a picturesque Tudor gatehouse, from beneath which the drive descended toward the house. Beyond the gatehouse a narrow road crossed common land to a thick hanging wood on the steep western edge of the esc
arpment, and then wound down through the trees to the Gloucester road far below.

  ‘Do you know anything about Miss Tremoille’s movements since she left?’ he asked suddenly, turning to look back at Jane.

  Her eyes flickered. ‘No, Sir Guy. She certainly hasn’t appeared in society, or I would have heard. The creature was a viper in the bosom of Tremoille House, lying, scheming and attempting to forge her father’s signature in order to steal from him. She also consorted with undesirables.’ Guy didn’t believe a word of it, and thought it more likely Jane was drawing upon her own dubious history. She confronted him. ‘I can see that you are determined to think me a liar, but it remains that her father disowned her and so have I. May I ask why you are so interested in her?’

  ‘In spite of your protestations to the contrary, I believe she is Esmond’s real heir. I intend to prove as much, and then make her Lady Valmer. How better to regain what Esmond Tremoille stole from my father?’

  She was plainly shocked, but at that moment an elderly manservant approached the porch, leading a sturdy dun saddle horse. ‘You wish me to go to Gloucester, madam?’ the man asked respectfully, keeping his eyes lowered as he snatched his battered hat from his greying hair.

  ‘Yes, Joshua.’ Jane glanced at her fob watch and then handed him the leather pouch. ‘Take this to Williamson’s Bank before it closes. It stays open longer on Wednesdays, so you should have time.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’ Joshua stuffed the pouch inside his coat. Then he mounted and adjusted the pouch, before urging his horse away.

  Guy eased his long fingers into his kid gloves, an action Jane found so erotic that she experienced another involuntary sexual thrill. ‘Mrs Tremoille,’ he said softly, ‘while I draw breath the past will never be over and done with. I will take back that which is mine, and you would be well advised to remember that.’

  Jane mastered her wayward senses. ‘I won’t be giving you another thought, Sir Guy.’ She nodded at Bolton, who promptly closed the doors.