“Can I speak to him again for a moment? I promise I will not be above a minute or two.”
“Very well. I’ll wait here and I will come in and drag you away if you take too long.”
She nodded and ran back into the room before he could change his mind.
“Frank,” she said softly, sitting down on the bed beside him. He had his eyes shut and she noticed with an odd little pang that, although his luxuriant hair was singed, his eyelashes were as long and thick as she remembered. They fluttered upwards and she found herself looking into those extraordinarily deep blue eyes – not, she noted, at all the same shade as hers.
“Darling coz,” he whispered, “your face seems to be almost as bruised as mine. Who hurt you?”
“The same person who hurt you; I won’t ask you any questions because Horatio told me I must not, but I do want to apologise for dragging you halfway across Europe to have your hair burned off.”
“It hasn’t all gone, has it?” he asked, his undamaged brows drawing together.
“No; and I want to thank you for looking for me – and indeed for finding me.”
“Not at all; only sorry I couldn’t save you from whatever happened to you - tried to but he had the advantage – heavier, you see. How, by the way, did you get away from him?”
“A wonderful woman saved me; she saw him leading me to the padre he had engaged to marry us and intervened.”
“Lord! Who is she?”
“I don’t precisely know; her name is Mrs Morley and she is staying in the hotel with her betrothed. It was he who knocked Lord Ninfield down and has had him locked up in a cellar. She has been excessively kind to me. But you did save me, Frank – or you tried to – and almost lost your life in the process. I wanted, too, to tell you that I am convinced I was wrong about your mama and papa; I am so sorry!”
“And me? You weren’t entirely wrong about me, you know, because I do want to marry you. When I found you were missing I thought I would go mad and set off after you at once; I suspected you might have been making for Vienna because I presumed that the only person you still trusted was Horatio; what I didn’t know was that you would fall into that villain’s hands along the way.
“If you could see your way to marrying me, I promise I will be faithful – and we will have a lot of fun, will we not?”
“Yes, of course we will; but you must not talk so much.”
“We will?” he raised his eyebrows.
“Yes.”
“I won’t ask you to kiss me,” he murmured, “but I promise I will do my best to make you happy.”
“You do not need to ask,” she said and kissed him. “I thought you were dead,” she added, laying her head against his shoulder.
“No; surprisingly resilient,” he agreed, turning his head so that his chin rested on her hair.
Chapter 39
The door opened to admit Lord Waldron, who said, “It’s time you left him to sleep, Honoria. Have you made your peace with each other?”
“Yes – and I rather think we have agreed to marry in spite of being first cousins.”
“Good God!” Waldron exclaimed. “Is that what you think?”
“That is what we have agreed,” Honoria said rather shortly because she had thought it was a done deal and had had quite enough of being told what was best for her by other people.
“Not what I think,” Frank said, understanding the question differently. “Her mother and mine are – or were – sisters.”
“Your mother, Frank, is not Aunt Julia. Although I think she has always wished you were her son and has come almost to believe it, she is in fact your mother’s third or fourth cousin so that, while you and Honoria are cousins, you are by no means first cousins; I will draw you a family tree so that you can see how remotely you are related if it will help.”
This revelation having momentarily stunned both his listeners into silence, Waldron continued, “Your mother was my Uncle Charles’s wife when I first came to live with him; I knew her as Aunt Anne. She died when you were born and Uncle Charles married Aunt Julia really quite scandalously soon after when you were still a very small baby. I believe Aunts Julia and Anne had been at school together - which accounts for their closeness in spite of the really quite distant blood connexion. I don’t doubt that Aunt Anne asked her to take care of you in the event of her death – and she did – has – devotedly. I sometimes used to think she married Uncle Charles in order to become your mother, Frank, so I am not surprised that she never told you the truth about your birth. I don’t suppose she thought it mattered.”
“What?” both Honoria and Frank exclaimed as one. “How could it not matter? Why did no one tell us?”
“They didn’t see the need, I suppose,” Horatio said. “And there wasn’t really any when you were children; indeed, I daresay Aunt Julia thought it would make things easier if you believed you were more closely related than you are.”
“But why didn’t she tell me when I said I didn’t want to marry him?” Honoria asked, frowning. “The day before we went shopping we had a long discussion about the difference between cousins and brothers; she must have known what my objection was.”
“The thing is that you are cousins so she may have thought the discussion only confirmed the point. I don’t suppose she thought you meant to make a serious case against marrying Frank – she may even have believed you were funning; in any event, everyone has always known you’d marry him in the end - you’re clearly made for each other.”
“She didn’t tell me either,” Frank pointed out. “And I really do think she should have done. I have always assumed that my parents were Lord and Lady Charles.”
“So they were,” Waldron said coolly, “only it was a different Lady Charles.”
“I don’t consider my parentage a suitable subject for levity,” Frank rebuked him. “I conjecture you are endeavouring to mount some kind of a defence against their really quite shocking silence on the matter. I suppose your Uncle Charles is my father?”
“So far as I know,” the Earl agreed with a small smile. “There has never been any suggestion to the contrary. I should imagine Aunt Julia thought of you as her child; she had been there at your birth and took care of you from that moment; I suspect she convinced herself that you were hers.”
“Perhaps,” Frank conceded, thinking of Lady Charles and her precarious reason.
“I would not have run away if I had known,” Honoria said, still inclined to cavil at her family’s failure to inform her of the true state of affairs.
“Wouldn’t you? I should think you might have,” Frank said. “You’ve never liked people making assumptions so that everyone expecting us to marry would probably have put you off anyway. Papa should have told me,” he went on, doggedly pursuing his own grievance and tacitly absolving Aunt Julia of responsibility. “Why did he say nothing?”
“He rarely speaks to anyone,” Honoria reminded him.
“I daresay it was done for practical reasons in the first place,” Waldron continued. “There was a motherless infant and a doting substitute mother – putting them together and allowing the woman to adopt the infant as her own probably seemed an obvious solution to Uncle Charles, who, as you say, is not a man given to energetic action of any sort. Later, they probably thought – or Aunt Julia did because I suspect Uncle Charles gave over everything to do with the children to her - that if you believed you were closely related you wouldn’t resent each other and, later still, she may have hoped it would stop you realising you’d fallen in love for a bit longer. She wouldn’t have wanted a pair of lovebirds in the house when you were half-grown.”
“But she seemed so keen to bring us to each other’s attention this vac – all that trying on of dresses and telling me how pretty I was. I was convinced she meant me for Frank. And why didn’t she let either Helen or me go anywhere? We’re both quite old now; and then, suddenly, when I am only a few months short of my majority, she starts throwing us together. I thought she wanted t
o stop me meeting anyone who might have turned out to be a rival to Frank.”
“No, I don’t think she was worried about rivals; she simply wanted to prevent you from meeting any men at all because she was so afraid of what might happen but, once again, in failing to explain her reasoning, she succeeded only in fostering your misapprehension. In fact, given her behaviour, I don’t find it at all surprising that you did run away.”
“Did she not want me to marry anybody?” Honoria asked, bewildered.
“No, I don’t think it was that precisely; although her marriage to Uncle Charles is by no means idyllic, it is not so bad that she would strive to prevent you from entering into that estate. I am convinced her reluctance to introduce you to Society is solely on account of the history of her family. She once had another sister who ran away and caused a scandal. Their parents told the other children that she had died, but Aunt Julia, who was about fifteen at the time, guessed something of what had really taken place and was mortally afraid of the same thing happening to her – and later to you and Helen. She refused to be presented and married Uncle Charles in short order after Aunt Anne died.”
“Poor Aunt Julia - she must have been horrified when I ran away – whatever did she think?”
“Incapable of thought,” Frank said. “Fell into hysteria – had to be knocked out with laudanum. I said I’d look for you but she still didn’t tell me how distantly we were related.”
“I shouldn’t think she thought of it at that point,” Waldron said. “She was much too upset – she has always been exceedingly volatile. On the other hand, she may have thought it was safer to have you junketing about Europe together if you thought you were first cousins than if you knew you were not.”
“Oh, Heaven, what have I done?” Honoria exclaimed.
“Been a perfect idiot,” Frank said, “Although I quite understand why you didn’t want to marry the boy you’d been brought up with without having had a chance to see what the rest of the field looked like.”
“I’ve done that now,” Honoria said flatly, “and it wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve met Lord Ninfield and he’s certainly taught me a thing or two about how unpleasant men can be. What happened to her – the sister who ran away?”
“I’m not sure; no one ever spoke of her,” Waldron said, remembering something of the buttoned-up atmosphere which had distinguished the household when he first arrived as an orphaned boy, a tension which had eased as Frank and Honoria grew and filled the house with childish high spirits. Even Helen, in spite of her frequent outbursts, had dissipated some of the lowering silence that had hung over the family.
“Do you think,” Honoria asked, remembering a pair of sympathetic blue eyes that were so startlingly similar to the pair she saw every day in the mirror, “that she could have become a sort of courtesan?”
“It is possible; I believe she was very beautiful. Why?”
“Who is that woman downstairs?”
“Mrs Morley?”
Honoria nodded. “Her fiancé, Count von Krems, remarked on our likeness.”
“Good God!” Horatio exclaimed. “I never thought of that, although I own I took to her at once; no doubt that was because there was something familiar about her. She is living under an assumed name – that is to say she is not a widow and her name is not Morley.”
“What is her real name?”
“I did not ask her. I believe you may be right, although it would be a most extraordinary coincidence. Come along, Honoria, you must and will leave Frank in peace now. Come with me and we will interrogate your saviour and see if we can discover her parentage.”
They found Count von Krems and Cassie drinking tea in the saloon.
Lord Waldron said, “When I first met you, Mrs Morley, you were very frank with me about your past.”
“Yes.”
“May I ask you another question, which may strike you as vulgarly intrusive?” He glanced apologetically at the Count as he spoke.
“Yes, of course. Oh, do not be afraid of speaking in front of Ludwig; he knows everything.”
“Including your maiden name?”
“Yes,” von Krems said. “It was – is – Minton.”
“Good God!” Waldron exclaimed, glancing at Honoria, whose eyes were shining.
“And did you – forgive me – have two younger sisters called Julia and Honoria?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Ford – Honoria – was named after her mother,” Waldron explained. “I do not know if she has told you, but her mother died shortly after she was born and she has lived all her life with her Aunt Julia, who has been excessively over-protective. I never knew Aunt Honoria but I think – I strongly suspect – that you are Miss Ford’s aunt. Certainly, now that I see you in the same room, you have more than a look of each other.”
“And a striking tendency to run away with bad men,” Cassie added, staring in astonishment at the younger woman.
“I did not run away with Lord Ninfield,” Honoria pointed out. “I ran away all by myself. He ran after me because he had formed an attachment to my fortune. Are you really my aunt, Mrs Morley?”
“I am certainly not Mrs Morley,” Cassie admitted. “I am Miss Minton and I was brought up in Derbyshire; to your knowledge, is that whence your mother came?”
“Yes.”
“Then I believe I am indeed your aunt. Dear child, I am sorry you have such a disreputable one.”
“I am very proud to have such a brave one,” Honoria said. “You saved me from a horrid fate for I am sure Lord Ninfield would have killed me as soon as he had got a ring on my finger.”
“So all has turned out well in the end,” said a hoarse voice from the doorway and they all turned to see Frank, now wearing a dressing gown borrowed from the Count, leaning against the door post. “You are not my aunt, Miss Minton, but I hope you will soon be my aunt-in-law and I must thank you for rescuing my fiancée in the nick of time.”
“I hope,” Count von Krems said, “that, when Miss Minton is the Countess von Krems, she will be reunited with her sister.”
“She will certainly always be welcome in my house,” Honoria said, embracing the older woman, “for she is my dearest Aunt Cassandra.”
AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY
Catherine Bowness only began to write novels when she retired. This was partly due to lack of time but mostly due to lack of confidence.
Now, living in the country with several cats and two dogs, she is able to indulge herself. She says she writes escapist novels because that's what she wants to read and there never seem to be enough of them.
Her parents lived abroad and she went to boarding school from an early age. She spent the holidays with her Victorian grandmother and thinks that she would have been a different person – and might write different books – if she had not been alone so much as a child. She passed the time reading 19th century and early 20th century novels and suspects this may be the reason why she writes in the way she does.
She is a counsellor and hypnotherapist. It was when she began writing scripts for her hypnotherapy training that she realised how powerful and soothing escapism can be and how images, led by the hypnotherapist but conjured by the client, can open the mind and soothe the soul. It was this, and the joy she felt when writing them, that inspired her finally to start writing the novels she had wanted to since early childhood. Practising hypnotherapy gave her the courage to share her writing with others.
She is enjoying her new career.
/center>
Honoria Or The Safety 0f The Frying Pan Page 32
