Blackhaven Brides (Books 5–8)

by Lancaster, Mary

  *

  Dawn knew Gervaise was discussing her with Mr. Winslow. She wondered what he would learn, and whether what he told Mr. Winslow would change the magistrate’s attitude toward her. Those who did know her history—the Braithwaites and Tamars, the Benedicts and even the Grants—had shown her nothing but kindness and acceptance. But the Winslows were not Gervaise’s particular friends. They would not necessarily believe him, let alone do what he asked.

  Dawn wasn’t sure she believed. Things she knew, things she remembered, could only have come from Eleanor’s memories. But that was almost like hearing about someone else’s life. She did not feel like Eleanor. She felt like Dawn. And she wanted to be whichever of them Gervaise had kissed. Because that kiss was the most soul-shattering, wonderful thing that had ever happened to her.

  Well, she could neither influence nor overhear the conversation in Mr. Winslow’s study, so she decided to make her own inquiries. When Serena and Miss Winslow moved to the table, comparing ribbons of silk with scraps of other fabric, Dawn remarked how much she had enjoyed last night’s ball.

  “So did I,” Mrs. Winslow confided. “I must admit I am glad they have continued the balls throughout the winter, for everyone looks forward to them and they do keep us lively and entertained. You certainly had no shortage of partners, Miss Conway. You are quite the social success in Blackhaven.”

  “Everyone was most kind. Tell me, ma’am, are you acquainted with Mr. Gardyn?”

  Mrs. Winslow’s gaze flickered around Dawn’s hair before coming to rest on her eyes once more. “Julius?” she said mildly. “Of course. He was at Haven Hall a lot when he was young. Before the tragedy. We don’t see him so often now, of course, except when we go to London, and Mr. Winslow is there more often than I. Now there is some rumor of him taking over the hall.”

  “So I heard,” Dawn murmured. “I met him last night. Lord Braithwaite introduced us, but I had the feeling they were not friends.”

  “Sadly not. And to be frank, it all comes from Mr. Gardyn’s side, for Braithwaite is the most good-natured of men.”

  “Then what is Mr. Gardyn’s problem with his lordship?”

  Mrs. Winslow lowered her voice. “Jealousy.”

  A jealousy of her own twisted Dawn’s stomach. “Of a lady?”

  “Possibly, though I never heard such. But no, it is deeper than that. Braithwaite was born to wealth and title, a viscount since birth and an earl from the age of fifteen. Julius is a scion of a younger branch of the Gardyns, always struggling for money. He went into parliament for the sake of position, I’m sure, and very expensive it must have been for him in the beginning. However, he made a success of it, became, I’m told, quite an influence in his party. He probably hoped—hopes—to be an important government minister one day. Prime Minister, even!”

  Mrs. Winslow shrugged. “And then, Braithwaite broke his leg and had nothing better to do than take his seat in the House of Lords. And he was energetic and passionate, held diametrically opposed views on many matters, and everyone liked him. You may have noticed,” Mrs. Winslow added wryly, “that his lordship has an easy and charming address with everyone from servants and farm laborers to fellow aristocrats. Julius does not. And so, I imagine Julius is furious because Braithwaite imposed himself on his territory, took away, as he sees it, everything he had worked years to accomplish. Or at least winning it for himself in a matter of months. It is Braithwaite now who is the rising star of the party, who is expected to go far.” She smiled. “Of course, it does not preclude Julius rising also, but he was always inclined to envy.”

  “You do not like him,” Dawn guessed.

  “No,” Mrs. Winslow admitted. “I was about to say he was a bitter young man and bitterness is a trait I do not admire. But I have to confess my own bitterness is at the root of my opinion, for when we were young, Julius Gardyn looked down his almost-aristocratic nose at the poor curate’s daughter. I was not good enough to be danced with or even noticed. Such things hurt when one is young.”

  “Yes, they do,” Dawn agreed, and tried to smile.

  *

  “Well?” Dawn demanded, on the carriage ride back to the castle. “What did you learn from Mr. Winslow?”

  “That the dress you wore when Ezra took you in fits with the description he has of Eleanor’s dress the day you disappeared. That several people had reported seeing gypsies in the area in the days leading up to the disappearance. One person said they met a tall, scary looking gypsy horse trader called Abraham.”

  Dawn swallowed. “Abe is tall,” she admitted.

  “The authorities found and spoke with an Abraham at Appleby,” Gervaise said. “But he had no child with him and denied all knowledge. Nothing was found among his or his wife’s possessions to connect them to you.”

  “Because he had already passed me on to Ezra?” Dawn suggested.

  “That is my theory. Only I can’t understand why he would have taken you in the first place if only to give you away again.”

  “Money could have changed hands,” Serena pointed out, tactfully.

  “I’m sure it did,” Dawn agreed.

  “But you were a child from a wealthy family,” Gervaise argued. “Couldn’t Abe have got more money out of your parents for your safe return than whatever he managed to squeeze out of Ezra?”

  “That wouldn’t have been an option to them,” Dawn said, “if the authorities were crawling all over Haven Hall. Perhaps it was a plan that went wrong.”

  “Then it was a plan doomed to go wrong before you were taken,” Gervaise declared. “We need Abe.”

  “And the dress,” Serena put in.

  Dawn regarded them both with curiosity. They both seemed more involved, more invested in this investigation than she was. People she hadn’t known more than a fortnight ago were putting themselves out to prove she was a lady of property, just because it was the right thing to do.

  Well, she supposed Serena was pleasing her brother. And Gervaise’s motives were not quite so pure. Revenge for a hundred slights and for the willful wrecking of a plan to make many lives better. And yet she could swear now, they were both supporting her. As if they liked her.

  Warmth spread through her as they drove back to the castle—home, as she had begun to think of it in her head, just as the earl had become Gervaise in her thoughts. And Gervaise did like her. She had always sensed it in him, caught glimpses of the intense desire he controlled so well. But his kiss had told the truth. No one could kiss like that and not feel. And yet he had not kissed her until she had told him she was Eleanor. The knowledge had upset her at first, but now a new suspicion struggled to be born.

  Eleanor was a lady by birth. Not a great match for an earl by worldly standards, perhaps, but it would be a respectable one. Did he…did he like her enough to be considering marriage with her?

  The idea deprived her of breath. With difficulty, she reined in the wild happiness and tried to squash it. He had known her two weeks and she had lived virtually all her life with gypsies. What was respectable about that? And yet, despite wanting her as she knew he did, he had not touched her. He had more or less admitted previous liaisons of the unrespectable variety, so why hadn’t he seduced her? Because he thought she was untouched, innocent?

  In fact, she was. She had lain with no one, not even with Matthew despite his best efforts. She hadn’t been awaiting a prince—or even an earl—to carry her off, but she had wanted to be swept off her feet into love.

  She risked a glance at him in the seat opposite and found him watching her. God help me, I do love you.

  She couldn’t help smiling at him, and his lips twitched in instant response. His eyes gleamed, too, and then darkened with desire. But he would not take her because she was a lady. An innocent young lady, whom he could, conceivably marry.

  If she looked back on all their encounters, as they got to know one another, could they not be viewed as a somewhat unconventional courtship? Not that she had any real idea of what constituted courtsh
ip in the upper classes. She had a vague idea it was all somewhat cold, arranged to their own advantage by the parents who then, perhaps, waited to see if their children could bear each other.

  She could more than bear Gervaise. Suddenly, she wanted to weep because life could hold no greater joy than to be married to him. A joy she had neither sought nor expected until this moment. A few days, a week, or even just one night of pleasure was all she had ever hoped for… She would still take that. But it seemed there were advantages after all in being Eleanor. For Gervaise, she could be a great lady.

  Happiness seemed to be bursting out of her.

  The rest of the day passed in slightly breathless laughter, banter, and fun. She spent no more time alone with him apart from half an hour before dinner when she practiced her reading.

  She knew all the letters now and most of the sounds they made, although a few oddities still baffled her. It meant she could read most words, and he assured her it would take only practice before she could read as fluently as he. Writing was a little harder, but she found that when she looked on it as drawing instead of something alien and learned, she could form the letters more easily with her pen.

  There were a few delicious moments, when she met his gaze across the desk, when he leaned over her to show her where to best place the tail on her “f” and she looked up to find his lips only an inch or two from hers. There was strange delight, too, in not touching him, in simply anticipating the next moment when it could happen.

  For now, she enjoyed every minute of his company and his family’s. After dinner, while Gervaise read long reports from Parliament, and Serena and the girls worked at their embroidery, Lord Tamar brought her the guitar. She played whatever came into her head, love songs and dances, until she lost herself somewhere between complete happiness and a bitter sweet nostalgia from the memories that inevitably flooded her along with the music.

  “Do you miss them?” Serena asked quietly. “Your Romany family?”

  They are the biggest part of my life. I will always miss them. And yet I never want this evening to end. She smiled. “A little,” she said aloud, glancing up. From the sofa, Gervaise searched her face.

  “Bring the picture, Rupert,” Serena commanded her husband, and Tamar obediently left the room.

  “What picture?” Dawn asked.

  “The one he made of your encampment,” Serena replied.

  Dawn vaguely remembered him sketching quietly that evening. She had been too lost in the earl to even glance at what he had done. Since then, she had discovered that Tamar was a somewhat eccentric nobleman and had actually earned money exclusively from painting before he had married Serena. But she didn’t think she’d actually seen any of his work to judge its appeal. While she waited, she schooled herself to show only pleasure in his painting.

  But when he self-consciously propped the unframed canvas against the back of a chair, all that self-control vanished and she simply stared. The scene was lit by lamps, golden light spilling over the scene. She recognized the lamps and the cushions and even the man who looked into the picture from the shadows. You could not make out his face, only his hand which was held in that of a gypsy girl whose hair was veiled. She looked beautiful, alluring, a little tragic, her smile at once mischievous and tempting.

  “That…that is me!” she exclaimed in wonder. “And the tent…did it really look like that to you?”

  “Beautiful, mysterious, and quite charlatanesque,” Tamar assured her.

  “I’m not a charlatan,” she said automatically. “I’m not that beautiful either.”

  “I disagree,” Gervaise said, standing behind his younger sisters who had thrust their way to the front to see. “That is just how I saw you, too. Tamar has a knack of catching the essence of a scene, of a person, and making the whole beautiful from within.”

  “Only if the beauty is there to start with,” Tamar insisted. “I can draw ugliness, too.”

  “I imagine you can draw anything,” Dawn said fervently. “I love your picture.”

  “Then it is yours,” Tamar said at once. “To hang on your wall or face down under the bed, according to your mood.”

  Dawn laughed. “How could anyone put this face-down? You are kind, my lord, but I could not accept—”

  “Of course you can,” Gervaise insisted. “It’s a gift. He’ll paint other versions to sell.”

  “Where your face is veiled,” Tamar said apologetically, “just in case you prefer it that way.”

  She wanted to weep, so she seized the guitar instead and leaning against the arm of a chair began to play a wild dance, thumping the guitar as well as her feet to keep the rhythm. “Dance!” she commanded Tamar, who seized Serena and began to caper in a way that made everyone, including his partner, hold their sides with laughter. The girls soon joined in, Maria with Helen, and Alice tugging Gervaise into the dance.

  Dawn could not be still either, so she danced around them, still playing. And then she walked around Gervaise and he faced her, circling her, advancing on her until her heart turned over and she believed that any dance was possible for them.

  She laughed aloud because life was suddenly so wonderful.

  And then the drawing room door opened and two ladies walked in.

  The elder, who came first, was frowning with ferocious astonishment. A thin, straight-backed, haughty looking lady in a plumed hat of high fashion and a fur-lined traveling cloak.

  “Braithwaite!” she snapped, and everyone halted in their tracks.

  Dawn stopped playing. Alice groaned.

  “Oh, the devil,” Gervaise said ruefully beneath his breath and then, as though unsure whether to laugh or be annoyed, he went forward to embrace the lady. “Mother. Welcome home.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Dowager Countess of Braithwaite was, by all accounts, a formidable woman held in great respect in the environs of Blackhaven. As she suffered her only son to kiss her cheek, Dawn felt the nag of elusive memory, along with the sudden knowledge that her idyll was over. As if she and the younger Braithwaites and Tamars were naughty children about to be brought to heel by an adult.

  “What on earth are you doing here, Mother?” Gervaise demanded, making way for Serena and the clamoring girls behind her. “How is Frances?”

  “She is very well, considering, but crotchety,” the countess replied, accepting the devotion of her family somewhat stiffly. “Since she has an army of servants to take care of her every need, my presence was no longer required. I have come home, where quite clearly I am needed, and have brought Miss Farnborough to stay with us for a little.”

  Only then did Dawn or anyone else notice the young lady who had entered behind the countess. Small and delicate to the point of wispy, she was excessively well dressed in pure white sprig muslin beneath a dark green velvet pelisse and a sable tippet. Over her dark, curling locks, she wore an exquisite hat composed largely of ribbons and feathers.

  How on earth did she travel like that, and arrive with not so much as a speck of mud anywhere on her person?

  “Eliza, allow me to present you to my son, Lord Braithwaite,” the countess said with curious satisfaction. “Miss Farnborough is the daughter of my old friend Lady Farnborough. She has been visiting Frances’s mother-in-law and will stay with us until her mama comes to fetch her.”

  Miss Farnborough stepped forward with pretty hesitancy, smiling shyly as she offered her hand. “My lord. We have met before, though you won’t remember.”

  “Of course, I remember,” Gervaise said—lying, Dawn was sure, through his teeth. “How do you do, Miss Farnborough?”

  He bowed over her hand as was proper and released it. The girl’s eyes lingered on his face, as though she could not look away. Then they seemed to snap back to life as the countess introduced the others.

  “My daughter, Lady Tamar, and her husband the Marquis of Tamar,” the dowager went on and Miss Farnborough curtsied perfectly to each. “And my younger daughters, Lady Maria, Lady Alice, and Lady Hel
en.”

  “Oh, how delightful,” Miss Farnborough exclaimed. “You remind me of my own little brothers and sisters.”

  “How?” Alice asked, clearly baffled, though she did curtsey.

  Miss Farnborough merely laughed, a sweet, musical sound that somehow grated on Dawn’s nerves. But no one was terribly interested in how the Braithwaite children were similar to the Farnborough children, for the countess’s hard gaze had come to rest at last on Dawn.

  “Serena,” the dowager commanded. “You may present your guest to me.”

  Dawn forced her feet to step forward, trying to pretend this was just another introduction, like all those at the ball. Even though it wasn’t, even though this was Gervaise’s mother, who knew she had no right to be there. And Serena was now in the awful position of either lying to her mother or betraying her brother.

  Serena moved to stand beside Dawn as though in support, but before she could speak, Gervaise said, “Why this is our cousin, Mother,” he said easily. “Miss Conway.”

  He actually took her hand, leading her the rest of the way to his mother. Not by the flicker of an eye did the countess reveal skepticism.

  “What a pleasant surprise, my dear. We must talk later. Serena, take Miss Farnborough up to the guest bedchamber and make sure she is comfortable. Maria, ring the bell, then take your sisters and retire to bed.”

  Having thus masterfully cleared the room, Lady Braithwaite sat in the chair closest to the fire, though she looked as though the cold would never dare to touch her.

  “How was your journey?” Braithwaite inquired. “Is the snow not worse in Scotland?”

  “Atrocious,” his mother snapped. “And now perhaps you’d explain exactly how this…person is related to us?”

  “She isn’t,” Gervaise said coolly, “as you very well know. Our name merely provides a veil of respectability until we can prove her own.”