The Proud Viscount

by Laura Matthews

  She slid her arms into the cotton robe and drew the sash tightly about her waist. Though she walked determinedly toward the door, she opened it with a good deal of caution. After all, she didn’t wish to alarm anyone who might be out there on some legitimate purpose. In a well-run household, the doors do not squeak, and Willow End was a well-run household. She opened the door silently and stepped out into the black hall.

  Ordinarily the wall sconces remained lit during the night, though it wasn’t unknown for the candles to burn down and extinguish themselves. Jane had given specific instructions to avoid this situation, however, with visitors in the house. Nancy’s nursemaid might have to find her, or the viscount need to make his way to the dining room for a late-night glass of port. For those unfamiliar with the house, the candlelight was a necessary aid. The fact that there was none might explain whatever noises Jane had heard.

  And then again, it might be the other way around. As she slowly made her way to the bend in the corridor, she noticed that there was no light coming from beyond, either. She reached up to the sconce as she passed and felt for the candle. Plenty of it left, and no special breeze here to blow it out. When she turned the corner, she could see that the entire stretch of hallway was black, which meant another two sconces had been tampered with. Obviously some mischief was afoot. She stood still and listened for any sound in the night.

  Along this hall, the outer edge of the east wing, were the best guest rooms. Nancy and Parnham had the room closest to the stairs going to the third floor, where the nursery was located and where the nursemaid shared a room with little William. At the farthest end of the hall was Rossmere’s room, some distance away from the stairs and any possible noise from the nursery. The hall was empty, no light shone under any door, and the door to the third floor was closed. Jane stood for some time trying to decide what to do next.

  “What are you doing up, Lady Jane?” a quiet voice demanded.

  Jane nearly jumped out of her skin. Rossmere stood directly behind her and she hadn’t heard a sound. Where had he come from? Surely if he’d followed her along the corridor, she would have noticed some groaning floorboard or the shush of his feet. She noticed that he wore a nightshirt and his feet were bare.

  “I might ask you the same,” she whispered back. For some reason it seemed unwise to speak in a normal voice. “I heard a noise. Or I thought I did. Was it you who put out the sconces?”

  “Why would I do that? I’m not accustomed to going about the halls in the middle of the night like a phantom footman snuffing the candles.”

  “Then why are they out? Someone has done it.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know how it happened. Perhaps someone opened a combination of doors and windows that created a severe draft. I wouldn’t let it bother me if I were you."

  "Wouldn’t you?” Jane rolled her eyes with disbelief. “If it’s such an unimportant matter, what are you doing wandering around the halls?”

  “Like you, I thought I heard a noise, but I haven’t found anything. I’ll walk you to your room.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “My dear ma’am, it would be positively uncivil of me to leave you here alone,” he assured her, a touch of amusement tugging at his lips. “Just think of the dangers lurking in the corridors. Candle-eating monsters at the very least. To say nothing of thumping, rambunctious ghosts cavorting in the darkness. It would be most unchivalrous of me to leave you to your own resources at such a time."

  “You mock me, Lord Rossmere.” But she allowed him to clasp her elbow and turn her in the direction of her chamber. There was something compelling about his presence, an underlying current that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It might have been that he was trying to cajole her out of any fears she might have. Or it might have been that he was largely undressed.

  One didn’t see a man in his nightshirt every day. It reached to just below his knees. Jane felt rather drawn to him in this unruly state. His hair was disordered by sleep and his chin bristled with beard growth. But his eyes were alert and the hand on her elbow felt warmly protective. Not that Jane needed his protection. She was perfectly capable of fending for herself in her own home. It was just that... Well, never mind, she told herself.

  Rossmere stopped in front of her sitting-room door. Jane realized that he had no way of knowing it was not her bedchamber. If he had seen her enter at any time, it was certainly by this door. She thanked him now and slipped inside. A form rose up in front of her and she let out a startled yelp. When she realized it was Nancy, with her finger to her lips in a gesture begging for quiet, she stifled the sound. Too late, of course. Rossmere had undoubtedly heard it. Instantly she moved to block the door, which was already opening behind her.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded. “What is it?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve just stumbled over my... my books in the dark. At first I thought it was an animal. A candle-eating monster,” she forced herself to say with a laugh.

  “I’ll come in and look around.”

  “Oh, no! Thank you, but I’m perfectly safe in my own room, Lord Rossmere.” She clasped the door handle with one hand and the frame with the other, effectively barring his entry.

  Rossmere studied her with suspicious eyes for a long moment. “Very well. If there’s a problem, just come out in the corridor and yell. I’m a light sleeper.”

  “Certainly. Thank you. Good night.” She shut the door after him with a decided thump. Then she positioned herself against it, waiting to hear his footsteps in the hall. There wasn’t a sound. “If you don’t leave immediately,” she muttered against the heavy panel, “I will think you have some idea of molesting me.”

  A muffled expletive, followed by softly stomping feet, issued from the other side of the door. She grinned at her sister, but Nancy looked so terrible that the smile instantly disappeared. “What is it?” Jane asked in the softest of whispers. “No, wait. Don’t say a word until we’re in my bedchamber.”

  Jane led her trembling sister through the connecting door and over to the enormous bed. Though Nancy already wore a robe, Jane put her own around the younger woman’s shoulders and drew the bedclothes up when she sat down against the pillows. “You’ve had a fright, haven’t you? Shall I bring you a glass of brandy?”

  Nancy clutched at Jane’s nightdress. “Please don’t leave me. I don’t need anything as much as your company.”

  “Very well.” Jane climbed into the bed and sat holding her sister until Nancy grew calmer. The trembling became occasional shudders, and some color finally reappeared in Nancy’s face. Jane waited for her sister to speak, knowing it would be unwise to start asking question before she was ready.

  After what seemed a very long time, Nancy drew a shaky breath and said, “I shall tell you just what happened and you may decide for yourself what it means. I’m sure it won’t be the story John tells. I was sound asleep...“ She paused for a moment, trying to control the wobbling of her voice. “I’m sure it wasn’t William’s cries that woke me. It was John shaking my arm, telling me that William was crying.”

  “And could you hear him once you were awake?”

  “No. He and the nursemaid, Sarah, are on the floor above, and not directly over our room. I suppose in the dead of night one might hear his cries if he was indeed very loud, and he can be. But I couldn’t hear a thing when I tried, and John seemed to be making a lot of noise rustling about in the bed and talking and wondering it Rossmere could hear him and saying he would go up to take care of the matter.”

  “Is that something John does?” Jane asked, surprised.

  “Oh, no. It is merely his way of making me feel bad so that I will do whatever it is.” She sighed. “You have no idea how intricate marriage is, Jane. It’s more complicated to negotiate than a quadrille.”

  “Perhaps it’s just John, my dear.”

  “No, I think it’s this way, more or less, with most married couples. I’m quite serious. I once mentioned it to Margaret and sh
e just smiled and said these were the adaptations men and women made when they married.”

  “Gracious. You are certainly strengthening my resolve not to marry, Nancy. But go on.”

  “Yes. Well, John muddled around for a bit while I assured him that I would go. I still couldn’t hear a sound from the floor above, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to with all the fuss he was making. He sulked a bit, as though he were doing me a favor by letting me be the one to take care of the matter.”

  Jane refused to comment on this.

  “So I left him climbing back into bed as I shut the door. The candle was lit in the sconce beside the door to the third-floor stairs. I expected that, because you remember that sort of thing. When I’d glanced around our room, I hadn’t seen the candle I came to bed with, but I had decided I wouldn’t need it just to reach the baby’s room. Those stairs are very steep, as you know, but there was a light at the top as well.”

  “Did you hear the baby crying by the time you were on the stairs?”

  “No. It was completely silent. But I knew better than to go back to John without at least setting eyes on the sleeping baby, so I climbed the stairs and opened the nursery door very quietly. I had to stand there for a minute to let my eyes adjust to the darkness in the room. The sconce in the hall isn’t located so that much of the candlelight penetrates into the room, and the baby’s crib was all the way on the other side. John had made a great fuss about wanting it near a window where there would be a breeze if the night was hot. He doesn’t seem to concern himself with these things at home.”

  Nancy was silent a moment, and Jane noticed that she shuddered again before drawing a deep breath. “I walked across the floor after a while and stood by the crib. William’s breathing was deep and regular, the way it is when he’s fast asleep. Sarah’s bed was close by, and she, too, was sleeping peacefully. I don’t know why finding them asleep upset me, but it did. Or perhaps it was then that the little light penetrating the room disappeared.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “The room became blacker. It didn’t occur to me at first that it was because the candle in the hall had gone out, but I realized that was the case after a moment. Perhaps the draft from opening the nursery door had extinguished it. In any case, when I came back out into the hall, there was no light at all.”

  “Strange.” Jane felt a bristling at the back of her neck. Like a dog whose hackles have risen, she thought. “What did you do then?”

  “There really wasn’t much I could do. Perhaps I should have hunted around for Sarah’s candle, but I would have been fumbling in the dark. And I was raised in this house. I know the stairs down from the third floor. I’d shut the door at the bottom, or it had blown shut. There was no light from the bottom now, either, and the stairwell was even blacker than the upstairs hall.”

  Nancy shuddered and hugged herself. “I had an awful feeling about it, but I told myself not to be such a pea goose. After all, what could possibly be wrong? So the candle was out; it didn’t mean there was anything to be afraid of. I hesitated at the top of the stairs, then started down. There’s no handrail, so I put my hands on the wall on either side. The steps are much deeper than you expect. You put a foot down and it seems to meet the tred too late and with a thump. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think so.” Jane’s skin had begun to crawl. “Go on.”

  Nancy moistened her lips. “I’d taken two steps down, enough to begin to judge the distance and stop feeling shaky about it. In a second I would have charged on down the rest of the steps, just to prove I wasn’t afraid. But I thought I heard something. Not from the nursery floor, but from down below. As I started to step forward, I paused, just for a second.

  “I was in my bare feet, and my toes felt something soft just as I was lifting them to take another step. Oh, Jane, how can I tell you what instant fear gripped me! There shouldn’t have been anything on the stairs. I was terrified that I would trip over whatever it was, so I threw my balance backward as quickly as I could. That made me fall onto the step behind me. The riser caught me sharply in the back and knocked the breath out of me. But, you see, I still didn’t know what was there in the dark.”

  Jane pressed her lips firmly together. The suspense had made her throat tighten as though the danger still existed.

  “I reached out in the dark and my fingers touched a piece of fabric. I could tell it wasn’t an animal, not one of the dogs sitting there. Where my fingers first encountered it, it was soft and loose, but higher...“ Nancy’s voice faded again and a tear slipped down her pale cheek. She cleared her throat and continued. “Higher it was taut, almost like a rope. If I had taken another step, I would have tripped over it and fallen, head first, down those awful, steep stairs.”

  Her body was shaking again and the tears flowed more freely down her face. Jane hugged her tightly and rubbed her back, trying to comfort and reassure her. “You’re all right now. I won’t let anything hurt you. Go ahead and cry. There’s no shame in being frightened.” Jane felt a fury rising in her, destroying her usual calm and eating away at her steady rationalism.

  Nancy gulped down the worst of her sobs and used the handkerchief Jane handed her to blow her nose. “I made a certain amount of noise falling back against the stair. I don’t know what made me do what I did next. I slid down the stairs on my bottom, thumping the walls from side to side, until I smacked my feet up against the door. The material pulled away from the walls as I carried it with me, and I held it in my hands at the bottom of the stairs. Everything was quiet for a short while and then John opened the door. He didn’t say anything.”

  “You mean he didn’t call your name? Didn’t ask if you were all right?” Jane questioned, the edge to her voice growing with each word.

  Nancy shook her head. “He had a candle and he moved it around, finally bringing it near my face. When he saw that my eyes were open, he nearly dropped it. That was when he finally asked me if I was all right. I told him that I was fine but that the material—it turned out to be my black shawl—had been stretched across the stairs and I’d almost fallen over it.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He told me I must be mistaken. He said that I’d put the shawl around my shoulders before I went upstairs and that it must have fallen off on the steps when I didn’t notice it. He said I should be more careful.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I told him...“ Nancy put her head down on Jane’s shoulder. Her voice came muffled and low. “I said that wasn’t what happened, but that I would certainly be more careful in future. I came to stay in your sitting room because I couldn’t go back to our room with him. But I wasn’t going to waken you.”

  “Oh, my poor dear. I wish I could think of some possible explanation."

  “There is none. And yet I don’t understand why he would want to... injure me. He didn’t say anything except that, as I was all right, he was going back to bed. Why, Jane? What’s happening? We haven’t had any particular disagreements. How could he do something like that?”

  “I don’t know. He must be a very evil man. We should tell Papa right away.”

  “In the morning,” she begged. “I’m exhausted. I just want to go to sleep and forget the whole thing for a little while.”

  “Of course you do.” Jane tucked her in and kissed her forehead. “Go to sleep now. You’ll feel better.”

  She stroked her sister’s brow until Nancy fell into a heavy slumber. Then she returned to the sitting room, where she was sure she’d seen the black shawl draped over a beige armchair. She struck a flint and lit a candle on the mantel, then held the shawl up to the light. There were two rents in it, about five feet apart. Just the width of the third-floor stairwell.

  Chapter 10

  Rossmere was aware of a great deal of coming and going at Willow End the next morning, with the parties involved constantly changing. Most everyone appeared grim-faced and preoccupied. The viscount felt certain
this had something to do with the disruption of the previous night, whatever that had been. For hours no one offered him any explanation.

  When Lady Jane discovered him on his way to the library after lunch, she frowned and asked, “May I have a word in private with you?”

  “If you’re quite sure I won’t molest you.”

  ‘‘That was merely a ruse to make you go away."

  “I know it was. And I’m not at all sure making me go away was a wise thing for you to do.”

  She glanced sharply at him as they entered the dim room that served as Willow End’s library. Shafts of sunlight came through several windows, but the brightness seemed to be absorbed by the hundreds of leather-bound volumes that lined the walls. There was a rich, musty smell to the room that made Rossmere nostalgic for the better days at Longborough Park.

  “Do you have any idea what happened last night?” she asked rather cautiously.

  He was afraid that if he admitted how little he knew, she would try to keep the matter a secret. And he was very curious to find out exactly what was going on. So he decided to make an ambiguous reply, calculated to force her to press for details. “Only a part of it,” he said.

  “Well, what part?”

  “About the stairs,” he said knowledgeably. The noise could have come from no other location.

  “You saw Nancy on the stairs?” she asked with patent eagerness.

  “No, but I heard her on the stairs.” It was obvious, now, that it had been Nancy he’d heard.

  Jane was disappointed. “You didn’t see Nancy at all?”

  “I’m afraid not. But I did notice that all the candles in the sconces were out.”

  “Yes. That’s important, isn’t it? There is no reason at all that Nancy should have put out the candles.”