by Decca Price
“I never would have let you walk out of the oast house alone.” She turned so that he couldn’t see her flaming cheeks.
“If Edward had come back to Oak Grove with your blood on his hands, I wouldn’t have cared what he did with me,” she said so softly he barely caught her words. But he did, and without asking himself if he had misunderstood, he drew her gently into his arms and kissed the top of her head. She leaned forward and rested against him for a dozen heartbeats, neither of them speaking. Then she faced him, her eyes asking for a kiss.
Slowly, he touched his lips to hers. This kiss spoke of weariness and a bottomless yearning for ease. Instead of stirring passion, it offered comfort. She stepped away first, leaving him optimistic for more, on a better day and in a better place.
“You said we needed to talk,” she said, pushing away from him gently. “We’d best do that now. Constable Reid and Dr. Bevans are sure to hurry, if they know it’s Edward who’s dead. We probably don’t have much time.”
“I’d keep you out of this if I could.”
“I’m the one person who must be involved. I don’t want anyone to think Edward killed himself, and if you are the only witness—” She broke off.
“I can say it for you. There is ample reason to assume I murdered the man I quarreled with just hours before. Be thankful now you’re in the wilds of Herefordshire and not in London. As it is, the papers are going to be vicious, especially when this about Lucy becomes public.”
For the first time, Claire felt faint and she knew it wasn’t the cider or the lack of sleep. Montfort snatched the glass before it tumbled from her fingers and half-guided, half-pushed her onto the sofa.
Claire braced herself when Montfort’s butler ushered Dr. Bevans and Constable Reid into the room, but the men all but ignored her.
After conferring in hushed voices in a far corner of the room, Bevans broke from the group and came over to her.
“My deepest condolences, Mrs. Latimer,” he said solicitously. “Lord Montfort explained how he and your husband met to confront some poachers. It was doubly tragic you had to witness the unfortunate accident with the pistol. We have no need to further distress you now, but the coroner will want to meet with you before the inquest, of course, and take your testimony. If you’ll permit me, I can take you back to Oak Grove. You’ll feel better, no doubt, once you are home and among familiar things
Claire thought she must be dreaming after all. The lord of the manor spoke and that was enough?
She looked for Montfort, hoping to catch his eye, but with a curt nod in her direction, he turned his back. Willing for once to play the helpless female, she turned what she hoped was a limpid gaze on the doctor and accepted his help rising from the chair.
“Yes, thank you,” she murmured. “You are too kind.”
Home, Claire brooded as Bevans’s carriage rolled away from the grand entrance of Oakley Court. I have no home. Thurn Hall was barred to her; in fact, her father most likely would strike her name from the family Bible when the scandal broke. She had been a trespasser at Oak Grove from the very beginning and now it belonged to Montfort. Simmie would take her in, but Claire would never ask her to make such a ruinous sacrifice.
She nearly offended Mrs. White when the doughty housekeeper met her in the hall with a warmer-than-usual welcome and expressed her readiness to inundate her with the only remedy for sorrow she knew—hot drinks and comfort foods.
“Thank you,” Claire said curtly to the woman’s greeting. “I want nothing more than my bed at the moment. Annie will see to my needs.
At a word from Carey, the London men hastened back to town without troubling Claire further. In fact, she had forgotten they were in the house. The inquest came and went in a blur. The verdict was a foregone conclusion—death by misadventure.
She spent the intervening days taking stock, both of her goods and her options. The small valise carried away from Oak Grove the night she was widowed was carefully repacked. Items went discreetly into Hereford for sale. Claire was scrupulous about raising cash only from items she had either brought with her from Surrey or that Edward Latimer had given her during their betrothal and brief, miserable marriage, so her takings were small.
She kept apart from Montfort even after the inquest, and she answered the short formal notes he sent inquiring after her health with the simple repeated message, that she was indisposed.
When a thick packet of papers arrived for her from Oakley Court, she set it aside unopened, knowing full well that a simple “yes” would make Oak Grove hers again, with or without the man.
The manuscript Montfort sent her sat on her bedside table night after night, unopened as well.
The night came in late October that Claire took a lingering turn around the stable, savoring the sweet scent of hay and the warm, strong odors of horseflesh and well-oiled leathers. Her eyes were dry as she visited each horse with a word and an apple from the big barrel by the door. Giving the last horse a final pat, she walked briskly to the house, Kip trotting at her heels. She didn’t see the horseman looking down from the ridge into the shadows of Oak Grove’s gardens and lawns, hoping for a glimpse of the woman he loved.
Back in her room, she picked up “Clarissa Barton” at last and read only as far as the dedication page before carefully shelving it with Josiah’s other volumes in the library.
“To CB______,” he had written. “To a woman I could never deserve, I dedicate this poor endeavor and with it renounce my claims forever, knowing brief pain will spare for her a happier life.”
In the dark morning, Claire left the packet of papers for Carey with instructions that they be returned to the master of Oakley Court and, with Annie, she climbed into an Oak Grove carriage for the last time. They arrived in Hereford just as the red sun glinted on the eastern horizon and boarded the train for London, two unremarkable women among the many unremarkable passengers who embarked from the station that day.
Epilogue
Two years later
The early morning sun had burned away the dew already, and thin lines of heat rose in the middle distance, casting a wavering haze over the hills that flowed in soft golden waves to the horizon. Ranks of olive trees followed the contours of the hill up from the valley floor nearly to the place he stood, and the sirocco stirred the leaves so that they darted and shimmered like schools of silvery fish.
Overhead, a swift climbed and plunged soundlessly in the clear sky. He was aware of the earthy bleat of goats nearby. The unseen goatherd’s plaintive song mingled with the trill of warblers and the dull clank of a cowbell as another boy, dallying on the road below, half-heartedly prodded a lanky heifer forward.
All his attention, however, focused on his destination, hidden amid jagged rows of cypress. But for those dark sentries, the low villa’s stone walls and terra cotta roof would blend into the dun and sepia landscape. A thin wisp of smoke rose from one of the chimneys. Someone moved about in the walled garden that encircled the house, glimpsed and lost again among verdant shrubbery. A servant girl drew water from a well in a small courtyard and vanished through a side door.
His horse danced beneath him, but he watched and waited as the sun rose higher. What had she said about destiny? After months of searching and an eternity of longing, his destiny awaited in that modest villa.
Steeling himself for disappointment, Montfort held back a moment longer, then spurred the eager horse onto the narrow path that wound down the steep hillside and through the olive groves. He had been invited, he reminded himself. He just wasn’t sure by whom.
“Ti sei perso, signore?” a small boy asked, running up and stroking Montfort’s horse with a practiced hand as he dismounted near the iron gate in the garden wall. For a moment he thought he was looking at one of Tressel’s whelps, but that was impossible.
“Are you lost, sir?” the boy asked again in the northern Tuscan dialect canonized by the Florentine poets.
“No,” Montfort replied. “Sei di questa casa? Desidero veder
e la padrona di questa casa.”
“Sì, signore,” the boy said, bobbing his head rapidly. He belonged to the house. He widened his eyes and flapped his hands in the direction Montfort had come from. “Oh, scappare, signore! Lei è un drago!”
“Tonio!” an imperious female voice called from the low portico of the villa. “Arrestare il nonsense! Stop your nonsense and bring the gentleman to me!”
Montfort found himself under the cool tiles facing an old woman half his size, swathed in black despite the heat.
“You are Viscount Montfort, I presume?”
“Yes, madam.”
“It took you long enough to get here. Don’t make me linger any longer than I have to in this infernal heat. I suppose you’d like a drink—of water, I mean. I don’t hold with anything stronger in these foreign climes. It’s enervating. Though we can offer you fruit juice if you’d like something with more substance. How far did you ride today?”
“Just from the village.”
“Whom are you speaking to, aunt?” a light voice said from the inside the house. “I thought we’d agreed we’d use only Italian so we could perfect our skills.” And before he had time to prepare himself, the speaker stepped out and joined them.
“You!” they exclaimed together.
Claire’s face flamed as her hand flew to her mouth, that flush and her russet hair the only color amid the uniform black she wore as well. Her attire reflected the conventions of second mourning, from her dull black gown, the black lace mitts on her hands and the heavy jet earrings that swayed at her ears. He had hoped she would have moved on by now to the purples and grays of half mourning—the final six months of the two-year period observed for the death of a husband.
He felt his countenance redden as well. Clearly, she was not expecting him. Now what?
“Who is this dragon?” he demanded, for want of anything better to say. He caught her suppressing a smile.
“Aunt,” she said solemnly. “May I present Lord Montfort?” The old lady nodded in his direction. “And, my lord, may I present Mrs. Manwaring?”
“Your servant, madam.”
“Pfhh!” Claire’s Aunt Maud responded. “Claire, I suggest you see to an extra plate at breakfast. I’ll show his lordship where he may refresh himself. It’s a lovely day for a turn in the garden. Perhaps his lordship would like to see some of the more exotic botanicals we have here.”
The old lady looked up at him with sharp eyes. “You are interested in horticulture, Lord Montfort? I understand you are quite the farmer in Herefordshire.”
“As a matter of fact, I am, Mrs. Manwaring.”
Claire vanished without a word, and he followed her aunt into the house, made his ablutions and waited in the comfortable salone she had indicated. It was plain they had been in residence for some time. The room lacked the impersonal feel of a temporary home, and many items of furniture and ornaments reflected the taste of at least one of the current inhabitants.
A small pianoforte stood in a corner of the room, and a fine equine bronze stood on the mantel amid a pack of china dogs. Thrown over the arm of a chair he found a toy velvet fox, and a small wooden rocking horse occupied the hearthrug
The room took up one long side of the villa, allowing a view of the courtyard he had seen from the hill as well as a portion of the garden that was sheltered from the worst of the sun by shade trees. He peered through the half-open slats of the shutters and watched a girl playing peek-a-boo with a chortling toddler in the garden. Several moments passed before he recognized the girl as Annie Parsons.
He was on his second glass of fruit punch and pondering this discovery when Mrs. Manwaring returned.
“Do you like children, Lord Montfort?” she snapped.
“I’ve never thought about it, ma’am,” he replied. He glanced out toward the garden again. “They seem pleasant enough at this distance.”
“Well, never mind. I need to talk to you before I send you out into the garden with my niece. I suppose you know why I had Miss Simms write to you?”
“You,” he said, failing to conceal the disappointment in his voice.
“You didn’t think it was she, did you? Poor boy.” Claire’s Aunt Maud seemed human all at once. “You’ll have your work cut out for you, but since you’re here, I presume you mean to try?”
Montfort waited for her to continue.
“If this were all left to Claire, she’d live out the rest of her life a guilt-ridden widow, and I have no intention of spending the rest of my days in purdah with her, much as I care for the girl. It won’t be good for the child either. Or you.”
She raised a quizzing glass that she wore on an ornate chain and studied him. “Look at you. You’re in the prime of life and you look like a vagabond. You should have at least two or three children by now—legitimate ones—and have taken up your seat in Parliament. You’re not going to do anything useful until you sort things out with my niece.”
“Un drago,” he muttered under his breath. Then, to her, “How do you presume to know all this?”
“My niece has made a fair mess out her life for one so young,” Mrs. Manwaring said with deliberation. “Between her impulsiveness and her stubbornness, which she gets from her father, more’s the pity, she is about to make the most monstrous mistake of all.”
Still he waited.
“She loves you, and she will never lift a finger to do anything about it.” Mrs. Manwaring’s eyes flashed, full of intelligence and zeal. “I know what you’re thinking. An old woman like me, what do I know? Believe me, she loves you. It’s all in what she avoids saying, day after day, and then gives away the moment she does.”
“What are you trying to tell me, really?” he asked, looking toward the garden rather than his interlocutor.
“Claire is an ardent soul, Lord Montfort, but she doesn’t trust herself anymore. She is so determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past that she would rather ruin her life by denying herself the thing she wants most. You.”
“Mrs. Manwaring,” he said slowly. “I am flattered, but you must be aware of what the world says about me. What it continues to say, since the events of two years ago.”
“Do you love my niece?”
“With all my heart.”
“That is enough for me. You have my blessing—now go out to the garden and persuade her.”
Anger and panic battled with a feeling Claire failed to recognize as the first stirrings of joy as she sat in her room wondering why Rhys had come, how he had found her, what she should do.
Rather than wait for him in the garden, as her aunt bid her, she met him on the veranda when he emerged from the house.
“It is quite a surprise to see you, Lord Montfort,” she said in her best drawing room manner. “How are those I left behind in Abbot Pyon?”
She flinched when he scowled at her. “I didn’t travel more than a thousand miles to engage in pointless chit chat with you. I want you.”
Claire felt the blood rush from her face. “That’s impossible,” she said, looking off into the garden, anywhere but at him.
“Dammit, Claire, why are you being so willful? I understand why you refused the deed to Oak Grove, why you went away, though you could have done me the kindness of a farewell instead of running off without a word.” Like Joss did to you, and like I did, too, he thought without speaking the words.
He stood before her now, blocking her view of the garden, and it took all her will to keep her eyes down. “This is my home now, Lord Montfort,” she said. “Or wherever my aunt chooses, since I am dependent on her generosity. And I cannot ask you to give up yours. We may go back to England some day, but to Herefordshire? Never!”
Her heart sank as he turned abruptly. She gripped her wrists as she listened to footsteps, hard on the tiles of the veranda. Leave, she whispered to herself. Leave, before I change my mind.
The footsteps stopped. “Claire,” he said, “I’d have Oak Grove torn down tomorrow if I thought that would make a differenc
e. But that’s not what this is about. I ask you straight—do you love me?”
Her heart began to beat as though it would burst from her breast. Like a sleepwalker, she came to the edge of the veranda to stand beside to him, still not looking at him.
“Yes,” she said to the air, the trees, the sky.
“Do you believe me when I say I love you.”
The word burst from her lips without hesitation. “Yes.”
“Then it doesn’t matter where we live. Perhaps, someday, when our children are older—”
She blinked awake, the spell of the past broken at last, and faced him, eyes wide.
“Don’t look so startled,” he said, taking her hand. “You’ve given me time to think, to dream, my love. And I see us growing old and fat together, terrorizing our servants, spoiling our children, frowning at our neighbors as we parade our brood into church on Sunday. Don’t you see? I want to marry you, as soon as you put off all that black stuff, and start building a future with you.”
“But I’ve been wrong twice! How can I be sure this time?”
The sound of laughter bubbled up from the garden. Annie and her charge had disappeared into the orchard and their voices drifted back on the warm air as though they had risen into the trees like birds. Claire felt Rhys squeeze her hand gently.
“Your little girl, too, Claire. You needn’t worry about her.”
“You could look at a child of Edward’s and not see his evil in her? Not be reminded of those terrible days?”
“She is your child, Claire. That is enough for me.”
Stepping around to face her, he extended his hand in invitation. “Come, introduce us,” he coaxed.
Hugging herself tightly, she let him lead her with his eyes, matching him step for step as he walked backwards onto the gravel path into the shrubbery. They’d gone only a short distance when the ones they sought emerged, Annie with the child hoisted on her shoulder. Boldly she approached them, laughing, as the wriggling child gently pommeled the young woman’s beaming face and tugged at her apron straps.
