The Regency Romances of Mira Stables: Part One

by Mira Stables

  The last words came out with unfeigned sincerity, and did not refer to the gift of the jade ball. For Ann had seen that ball before, and once, on her tenth birthday, had been permitted to handle it. There could be no mistaking it, or its giver. And the gift of so rare and costly a bauble could mean only one thing.

  Bubbling with suppressed excitement, she chattered away almost at random, blandly assuring her friend that she might perfectly properly accept the gift, that its value lay in its beautiful workmanship and that it was no more personal than, say, a pretty fan or a bouquet holder, and longing all the time to get away and find Hugh, to share with him the secret that she had discovered. But when she eventually succeeded in running him to earth in the gun-room his reaction to her disclosures was rather disappointing.

  “Anderley and Elizabeth? Yes. I had a notion there was something like that in the wind. I should think it will do very well. You like it, too, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course I do. Nothing could be better. To have Elizabeth for our close neighbour, and Anderley opened up again as it was used to be. Why on earth didn’t you tell me your suspicions sooner?”

  Hugh looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Nothing really to go on,” he said gruffly. “Just the way he looked at her—sort of proud and anxious, like Starlight with her foal. But I wasn’t sure about her. Dash it, Ann, I’m not a girl, to be noticing sighs and becks and languishings. She seemed to like him well enough, but more than that I wouldn’t care to stake my blunt on. There’s been nothing announced, nor even hinted, and what’s more he’s not been once to visit her this sennight. Something damned odd about that, specially if you’d seen the stew he was in over her accident. Better not refine too much on what may turn out to be nothing but a hum.”

  “But Hugh! The Chinese ball! He would never have sent her that if his intentions had not been serious. You know how the Anderleys venerate the thing. I’m sure I must have heard the story a dozen times—how it is supposed to signify completion and perfection, and, that if one holds the secret of the key piece one holds the world in one’s hand. I do not know how I kept myself from telling her that the thing was as good as a proposal of marriage. But she seemed so cool, so unaware.”

  “Aye—and there’s the rub,” her brother grunted. “Richard’s serious enough. But I told you. I couldn’t be sure about her.”

  Ann’s face grew sober, even troubled. “Oh dear! Surely no girl in her senses could resist Richard if he was in earnest? If I did not adore my own darling Malcolm I vow I could be in love with him myself. He is so perfectly one’s notion of the chivalrous knights of old. But now that you speak of it, I’m not sure of her either. She has never paid the least heed to his gifts. She cannot have sent him a note, or I must have known of it. And Hugh! I greatly fear that when she came by that fall she was running away. Though the matter has not been discussed between us, she was carrying a diamond necklace in a concealed pocket. Ruth and I found it when we undressed her. Why else should she do so, unless to turn it into money?”

  No normal brother could immediately concede that his sister might be right. “Could have had some sentimental association I suppose—didn’t want to be parted from the thing—always carried it with her—gift from some other fellow,” suggested the Marquis helpfully.

  His sister was suitably shocked. “No honourable man would give so costly a gift except to his wife,” she assured him, and, at his sudden grin, “Very well, then, or to his—his fancy piece. And then he wouldn’t be an honourable man to my way of thinking. But in any case it’s no such thing, for the necklace is quite old fashioned—the stones of good quality but the setting antiquated—much more like a family heirloom than a love token.”

  Neither of the serious young creatures wasted a thought on how many love tokens must in time become dull and antiquated family heirlooms, nor dreamed of the tragedy that lay behind this one. They were concerned only with the odd behaviour of their friends.

  “Is there nothing at all that we can do, then?” begged Ann, after further fruitless discussion.

  Hugh shook his head. “Best not to meddle. Leave it to Richard. If anyone can bring the thing off, he can.”

  Ann went slowly back to the Ladies’ Parlour, where Elizabeth, for once forgetting the giver in the gift, was absorbedly endeavouring to fit the pieces of the jade ball together. She looked up, her face bright and amused. “It’s a maddening thing,” she protested. “I’ve been trying and trying and I just can’t get it right.”

  Ann smiled absently and picked up the neglected rose that had, as usual, accompanied the gift. “It’s just a knack,” she said. “One must get the key piece right. Then it’s easy.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “This is a gorgeous rose, Elizabeth. What is it called?”

  The bright animation faded from Elizabeth’s face. “I don’t know if it has a name,” she said quietly. “Be a darling and put this thing together for me, Ann, or I shall fritter away the whole morning over it. Oh! And there’s a letter for you on the secretaire. Ruth brought it in just now. The man had forgotten it.”

  Ann picked up the note and opened it. It was brief and casual. The writer trusted that it would be convenient for her to receive him that afternoon. He understood from his sister that his ward was now sufficiently recovered to return to her home, and would give himself the pleasure of driving over to Greystocks to collect her, and, at the same time, of thanking his friends for their care of her.

  She glanced beneath her lashes at Elizabeth’s head, bent over the pieces of jade in her lap. “Oh dear!” she said, softly, ruefully. “What a shame to snatch you away so soon. Lord Anderley writes that he is coming for you this afternoon. I had hoped that he would have spared you to us for longer.” And then chattered on about the things that she had planned to do, and how they must meet again very soon, whether at Anderley or at Greystocks. For Elizabeth had raised a face so white and shocked at the simple news that Ann realised that here was something far beyond her understanding. She knelt beside Elizabeth and took the pieces of jade from her shaking fingers, fitting them together with the ease of intimate acquaintance.

  “There you are—see? Simple! I told you—it’s just a matter of the key piece being right.”

  Elizabeth looked at the beautiful thing as the vital section slid into place and locked home and Ann laid it on her lap. “Yes,” she said quietly, in a strange, dead sort of voice, as though, Ann reported later to her brother, she was talking in her sleep. “If the key piece is right, then everything else falls into place. But what if it isn’t, Ann? What if it is flawed or broken?” And then, before Ann could puzzle out her meaning, she laughed—a hard, false little laugh—and said, “Pray take no notice of my nonsensical talk. I really begin to wonder if that knock on the head has affected my intellect. If his lordship is indeed coming for me this afternoon I must see to my packing, for it will never do to keep him waiting.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  So long as they were at Greystocks it was all very much easier than had seemed possible. Hugh and Ann vied with one another in greeting the Earl with an affectionate teasing warmth that glossed over Elizabeth’s stiffer reception, and by the time she had received, instead of an anxious enquiry into her health, the Earl’s considered opinion on people who let go the rein for a mere tumble, and had defended herself with spirit by animadverting on people who kept in their stables animals with no more manners than a costermonger’s donkey, the depraved monster of her recent imaginings had vanished. Despite all the weight of evidence against him her loving heart refused to believe that this man had compassed the ruin of one of his own dependents. Reason might insist that this was the truth, but instinct defied evidence. She could not help responding to the laughter in the grey eyes, the affection underlying the teasing, and the protective strength of the hand that was so swift to steady her when she chanced to stumble. It could not last, of course. She could not for ever close her eyes to the truth. But just for a little while she would yield to the temptation to sun he
rself in his presence. So she sustained her part in the gay quartet quite adequately, and neither the Earl, who had preoccupations of his own, nor Ann, who was watching her closely, suspected anything amiss, or guessed that the cheerful veneer was perilously thin.

  Departure from Greystocks was naturally delayed. The Earl must be dragged off to the home pasture to see Starlight’s foal, and then on to the west paddock to give his opinion on Ann’s new hack. Then, amid much laughter, Hugh must show him Elizabeth’s lamentable attempts at paper mosaics which Ann declared to be almost as bad as Hugh’s salmon flies. The Earl, solemnly studying his ward’s creations through his glass, deprecated their flimsy construction but suggested that Hugh might try their lure if all else failed. They would certainly startle the salmon. But he added earnestly that such an unorthodox method of stunning the wily fish was perhaps hardly sporting. That led quite naturally to the rapidly improving water situation and the prospect of better sport. Then Ann insisted that they must all take tea before she could allow the invalid to face the rigours and privations of an hour’s drive, and over tea the men fell into discussion of how far the recent drought was likely to affect the shooting season. By the time that they had agreed that the prospects were better than anyone could reasonably have hoped, the afternoon was gone and the Earl was saying that they must be away before the cool of the evening since he had brought the phaeton rather than a closed carriage, thinking that on so lovely a day Miss Kirkley would enjoy the fresh air.

  The barefaced impudence of this remark caused Ann to bite back a smile. To be sure the day was mild enough, nor was it actually raining. But the impression created of blue skies and smiling sunlight was sheer fantasy. A man who could utter such a prevarication without so much as a blink deserved to win his way, she thought in silent salute, for no one ventured to demur, or to suggest that there were plenty of alternative vehicles available. Ann, at any rate, had a shrewd notion that the phaeton had been deliberately chosen for the drive to ensure that there could be no eavesdroppers.

  Even when Hugh helped her up into the phaeton and the Earl swung himself into the driving seat, Elizabeth was not aware of any undue awkwardness, for Ann was still talking about their next meeting and enquiring whether she would not wear a thicker pelisse, or even a shawl to wrap about the bruised shoulder. It was not until they drew out of the gates of Greystocks and on to the turnpike that the paralysing dumbness descended upon her. In every fibre of her being she was intensely aware of the man beside her, and she could not think of a single thing to say that might dispel the rising tension between them. She sat with down-bent head, fidgeting with a glove which she had pulled off just for the relief of having something to do with her hands and still deeply conscious of the muscular thigh in well-worn buckskin so close to hers, and the gleaming boot that dwarfed her delicate slipper. She tried to fix her attention on the beautifully matched bays, only to focus on capable brown hands managing the reins with careless precision and indicating with the whip the place where she and Jackstraw had parted company.

  “At least you had the good sense to pick the heather,” commented the laconic voice. “Further on it’s mostly limestone paving.”

  She seemed quite unable to make a reply, even to so harmless a remark as this. The Earl glanced down at her and said, with a hint of laughter in his voice, “You are unusually silent, Miss Kirkley. I hope you do not mean to pick a quarrel with me because I teased you about your flower mosaics?”

  She managed to force a stiff little smile and a shake of the head, whereupon the deep gentle voice went on, “Because I have a favour to ask of you, and I thought this might be a propitious moment.”

  Still no reply. She did not even dare to venture an enquiring glance, but waited with wildly beating heart and fingers clenched on the crumpled glove for what he would say.

  “Hearing you on such easy terms with Ann and Hugh, it seems to me that I, too, might now be granted the privilege of calling you by your given name.”

  She breathed a little sigh of relief, though she scarcely knew what she had feared.

  “May I, Elizabeth?” he urged gently, and a husky little voice managed at last to say, “Yes, my lord, if you wish.”

  He thanked her gravely, and for the moment said no more. He had never previously proposed marriage, but of late he had given a good deal of thought to the subject, and had decided that to undertake so delicate a business while his hands were fully occupied in managing his horses would be foolish in the extreme. If literary precedent were to be followed he would be required at the very least to press the lady’s hand adoringly, while if he followed his natural instincts he would catch the girl in his arms and kiss her breathless. Neither operation could be comfortably conducted in a phaeton. A little staff planning was obviously required.

  Once he had remembered the ruined tower, this was simple. It was quite natural that he should wish to show his ward this relic of long dead Anderleys. Only the crumbling tower now remained of the original stronghold, destroyed during the Civil War and never rebuilt, since the reasons for choosing its hill-top site were no longer valid. But from that hill top a splendid view of all his wide domains could be had, and though he had no thought of dazzling his lady love with the magnificence of the offer he was making, he did have some notion of pointing out his great need of feminine support in the heavy task of wise administration. More important was the fact that the horses could be properly secured while the two of them admired the view, and his hands freed for more vital tasks.

  Up to a point his well-laid plans worked admirably. Elizabeth was a little surprised when he turned up the narrow lane which led to the tower, but his explanation of its historic interest and of the extensive view to be obtained was well received. Indeed she was grateful for any impersonal topics and snatched eagerly at these, so that before he knew it he was plunged into a sea of historical narrative from which he had some difficulty in extricating himself. It was fortunate that the steep climb to the summit left her no breath to spare for further questions.

  But having achieved the privacy essential to his plans, it was the Earl’s turn to be tongue-tied. That was a difficulty which he had certainly not anticipated, but having dealt faithfully with the salient features of the landscape he found it impossible to turn the conversation to more personal topics. The reason was plain to see. Elizabeth was treating him as though he was some chance-met stranger, displaying the airy social manner that she had so unwillingly acquired at his own behest, and keeping him at arm’s length with admirable dexterity. The warm intimacy of their shared vigil in Bassett’s cottage, the dawning wonder and expectancy that he had recognised in her face as he had bidden her goodnight after that long ordeal might never have been, so sweetly distant was her manner. Having exhausted the conversational possibilities of the immediate vicinity, she was now enquiring, with every indication of eager interest, the names of the dimly seen Lakeland hills.

  But even Elizabeth’s social invention, when entirely unsupported, failed at last, and uneasy silence descended on the pair. To cover it she stooped and made an elaborate business of plucking a nosegay of the tiny yellow heartsease that starred the turf, and the Earl, in an attempt to bring the conversation back to a more human plane, chose to speak of Lucy.

  “You will be glad to know that life has taken a happier turn for Lucy Bassett. It seemed to me desirable that she should be got away, for a time at least, from scenes that could hold only painful memories. I have found her a post with friends of mine in Knaresborough, and she is to go to them within the next few days. Bassett’s sister is to go and keep house for him, so Lucy may have an easy mind as far as her father is concerned. In fresh surroundings one may hope that she will learn to forget. She is very young. Life could still hold some kind of happiness for her.”

  Before those fatal moments in the chapel when the scales had fallen from her love-blinded eyes, Elizabeth’s heart would have glowed at this speech, so clearly expressing the almost fatherly concern that the Earl felt
for his people. Now she saw in it only the cynicism of the cold-hearted man of the world. Lucy’s day was done and she must be removed from the scene lest she prove an embarrassment.

  Somewhere deep in her heart was a cold misery, a knowledge that she had lost something ineffably dear and precious, but for the moment disgust and rage were paramount and could not be wholly suppressed. Bitterly she said, “So now all is made tidy. A child has died and a girl’s life is broken, but all can be set to rights by wealth and consequence. It is as bad as M. d’Aubiac’s tales of the French court.”

  The Earl was taken aback, even a little hurt by this outburst. He knew that she felt deeply for Lucy, but that seemed no reason to rip up at him, who had honestly done the best that he could for the girl throughout her troubles. But at least she sounded more like his own warm-hearted impulsive Elizabeth rather than some shallow flibbertigibbet of a society damsel. He stooped beside her, where her fingers groped rather blindly for the slender stalks of the wild pansies, and caught her hands in his two strong warm ones.

  “Elizabeth—dear Elizabeth—” Even in his eagerness he could not resist savouring the feel of her name on his lips. “What is it? What have I done? Only tell me what is distressing you so, and I swear I will put it right.” He waited a moment, but she made no answer. “Even to the half of my kingdom,” he went on softly, “all that remains to me. The rest is yours, my little love, if you will deign to accept it—if you will so honour me as to consent to be my wife,” and he raised the unresisting fingers to his lips. “There is nothing I will not do to serve and pleasure you.”