by Sophia James
Her father had not hesitated, even with the red whorls of her new groom’s hurt blooming on her breast. He had left her there with the promise of payment and had expected her to behave.
Her mother had not asked anything the next day either, her watchful eyes tracking her progress down the stairs when she came for breakfast, with Henry Dalrymple at her heels and close.
And when her parents had left the following day her mother had departed with a warning. ‘Do not anger him, Ariana. Do nothing to raise his ire and you will be safe.’
She had not seen them again until two years later, when they had arrived late one autumn with further pleas of financial hardship in their eyes. A week later they had all been dead. Her husband and her father and her mother. And the snows from the north had fallen down on their graves, leaving the newly dug black soil scattered with white in the Dalrymple cemetery.
The star shifted in the wind—a quiet, small movement that caught the candle flame, burning by the bedside, threading the glass with colour.
A comfort. A solace. A tiny prism of faith and belief.
Had Christopher Northwell known it would be so? Had he given it as a guiding light? She could almost believe that he might have, for the smell of the winter bouquet complemented the brittle glass somehow, creating a sensory wholeness.
Tears ran down her cheeks, warm against her skin, trickling onto the pillow, dampening the linen. She had not cried for years. Not when her parents had died. Not when her husband had hurt her. Not even when she had found her small dog Topper, frozen solid in the courtyard, having been locked outside for the night under the orders of the man she had married.
Yet here in her room, in the warmth and the quiet, she did weep—because for the first time in a long while hope had wormed its way up into her world, steadfast and unwavering.
She swallowed and held her hand over her mouth willing away any sound. She must not expect more. She could not allow herself the feelings that she felt crouched there, the possibilities that would never come to pass...
Chapter Five
Stevenage Manor was bigger than she had imagined it. Much bigger.
The country seat of the Horsham Dukedom spread across a great deal of the flat top of the hillock upon which it sat, towering over the landscape, its windows glinting in the midday sun.
The Earl’s carriage had transported them south, with the same comfortable interior she had enjoyed after the Shawler ball swallowing her aunt and herself up as they sped across the countryside. The Earl had accompanied them on his own steed—a magnificent huge grey stallion that she had caught sight of now and again out of the window.
It was a crisp blue day and the sight of Christopher Northwell’s figure on top of his horse had been riveting. Her glance had kept straying to find him, and even her aunt had commented on how well he looked upon a horse.
She remembered seeing similar rolling countryside out of the window on her trip down to London six years prior. She had never left the city since, and the views and the trees in this part of the south of England were far more beautiful than any she recalled in the north.
She felt nervous. Nervous about meeting the Duke. Nervous about the Earl’s expectations and her own limitations. Nervous about not being enough.
She had chosen the least outrageous clothes in her wardrobe to wear, and while they could probably not be called muted they were at least of quiet hues. The Duke of Horsham was, after all, an older man, and she had no wish to offend him.
‘The fire has allowed a phoenix to rise in the place of weariness.’ Her aunt’s words were said with breathless wonder as she observed Stevenage. ‘No wonder Odette loved the place so much.’
‘The Earl, however, has indicated that he will not be staying in England any longer than he needs to. He has work back in America that he enjoys. He builds houses on the east coast, and there are many people there needing shelter.’
‘Well, I hope we can be of help in the repair of relations between father and son, at least.’
‘Thank you for coming, Aunt Sarah.’
‘Wouldn’t have missed this for the world, my love.’
The front door opened as the carriage drew up on the stones of the circular driveway and a succession of servants spilled out of the portal, all dressed in similar clothing of white shirts and navy trousers or skirts. The women wore caps on their heads and the men neckties at their throats. The Earl had dismounted now. A man was taking his horse and he came across to stand beside the carriage, his face flushed from the ride and a look of freedom in his eyes.
‘Welcome to Stevenage Manor.’
‘It is a very lovely house,’ said Ariana.
‘I think the fire improved it.’ There was humour in his face and his smile flashed as he stepped forward to help her aunt from the carriage first and then herself.
Ariana thought that in all her life she had never seen a more beautiful man, so solid and comfortable in his skin.
‘My father is waiting inside, no doubt. Nothing pleases him more than awkwardness.’ His hand cupped her elbow.
‘A daunting thought, for my reputation will surely provide him with enough of that.’
‘And this is why I so enjoy your company, Mrs Dalrymple. You are unnervingly direct.’
‘As opposed to cunningly duplicitous?’
Laughing again, he let her go. ‘My father requires firm management. Without it he is wont to get his own way. I have faith that you will manage him with aplomb.’
Once inside the house, Christopher Northwell led them into a small room to one side of the main hall.
Sitting by the fire with a blanket over his lap was an old man bathed in the sunshine that dappled across him through the windows. He was thin and bent, but his glance was sharp.
‘Papa, I would like to introduce you to Mrs Ariana Dalrymple and her aunt, Lady Sarah Hervey, Viscountess Ludlow.’
After a quick sweeping glance over them both, his father’s eyes came back to Ariana, their colour almost exactly the same hue as his son’s, though much more wary.
‘I have heard of you, Mrs Dalrymple, but I had not imagined you to be so young.’
This was said with a decided stiffness.
‘I am going to be twenty-six on my next birthday, Your Grace, and I have enough years to know that what is said of one is often embellished and overstated.’
This brought a frown to his forehead. ‘You are telling me that the rumours abounding about you are false?’
‘Embroidered, I think. I consider myself a person who has made mistakes and learnt from them.’
He lifted a glass from the table beside him and held it up to her. ‘Join me in a drink and we shall toast the power of truth. North, pour us all a brandy. It will at least warm you after the long ride.’
Her aunt was smiling as she fell into a graceful curtsy. ‘Thank you for the kind invitation to Stevenage, Your Grace.’
The Duke tipped his head in answer. ‘I take it that Mrs Dalrymple is your niece, Lady Ludlow?’
‘She is, Your Grace. We are related through her father, who was my nephew two times removed.’
‘A distant relation?’
‘But a close connection.’
Turning, the old man continued. ‘My son tells me you are a widow, Mrs Dalrymple?’
‘I am, Your Grace. My husband died six years ago.’
‘Then I am sorry for it. My own wife—’ He stopped and caught his breath and did not continue further.
Ariana remained quiet as the Earl stepped into the silence with glasses of brandy and words.
‘Lady Ludlow and Mrs Dalrymple champion the rights of women in need—vulnerable women who might otherwise be lost to proper Society altogether.’
‘An endeavour to be admired...’
There was hesitation in the Duke’s words, and Ariana thought there was a
lso sadness. It seemed, by all accounts, that his wife, the Earl’s mother, had been a vulnerable woman, so perhaps it was of her that he was thinking.
As the Duke asked her aunt a further question Ariana caught the Earl watching her.
‘It is good to have you here.’ His words were quietly said.
‘Your family’s house is very beautiful, inside and out, my lord.’
He smiled, but made no effort to answer, a man caught in a setting he must be well used to. It magnified all the differences that lay between them.
Why had he asked her here?
She almost voiced the thought, but stopped herself, reasoning that with her aunt and his father in the room he would hardly be verbose.
‘I hope your trip down in the carriage was comfortable?’ he asked.
‘It was, thank you.’
They were words that meant nothing, empty fillers in the awkwardness between them, and Ariana was pleased when a maid knocked and entered the room with a tray of tea and biscuits.
With nothing else to do, she sat and watched the girl pour, seeing small plumes of steam disappearing into the air as she did so. The Earl of Norwich did not partake in the refreshments, though his father and her aunt did, and Ariana was grateful to have the cup and saucer in her hands, and the warmth of tea to finish what the glass of brandy had started.
She noticed that although father and son were in the same room they did not communicate at all. Rather they avoided any contact completely, with the presence of her aunt and herself in effect creating a buffer.
This was why the Earl had wanted them here.
That thought was followed quickly by another one.
She was a convenient guest—one with an aunt who could act readily and easily as chaperon.
The hopes she had journeyed down with today withered somewhat, her expectations suddenly seeming childish and silly.
Sipping at her tea, she wished she was anywhere but there.
Aunt Sarah addressed her then, and the quiet puzzlement in her eyes was concerning.
‘The Duke has asked if he can show me his wife’s paintings. Odette was most proficient as an artist and I asked after them.’
The Earl was quick to step in. ‘Then I shall take the opportunity to show Mrs Dalrymple the garden behind the house. Is that something you might be interested to see?’
Ariana nodded, pleased that she would be able to get out of this room and away from her aunt’s notice.
Within a few moments they were in the open air, the crisp blueness of the day making her turn her face to the sky and simply breathe.
‘My mother was a woman who enjoyed beauty. This garden was her idea and it was she who directed the planting.’
The scene before her was one of winter, with brown vines pruned around canes and the soil plied with compost. But the bones of the garden were there for all to see, and Ariana could imagine the greening abundance come spring, the layers and the levels, the crawling lower plants and the taller shrubs behind them.
Like a canvas.
She suddenly had a better idea of this mother who was no longer here, and her vulnerability and her need disappeared into more interesting character traits. Odette Northwell had been stamped with the startling beauty of her Neilson roots, and also with an obvious ability to make a house even as grand as this one a true home.
‘You loved your mother?’ she asked.
‘I did.’
‘Was the garden damaged in the fire? It looks well established.’
‘Not really. The main damage was to the front façade of Stevenage and to the stables.’
‘The horses...?’
‘Were saved.’
It was strange, talking about the event like this, distanced from the fact that all gossip pointed the finger at the Earl as the arsonist. She wanted him to tell her that the grim act of burning his family home almost to the ground had been someone else’s, not his.
But he didn’t.
He merely pushed back one sleeve and picked the dead head off a spiky flower.
As he did so Ariana saw a raised and shiny scar that widened across his wrist then moved up to his forearm and disappeared under the cloth of his jacket.
Burns.
She knew exactly the appearance of such because her mother had been afflicted with a similar scar, received from flaming fat, on the skin above her elbow. It had never faded into oblivion. A constant mark that could not be removed.
If he saw her notice he gave no sign of it as he snapped off a twig bedecked with bright red shiny berries. Holly.
He presented it to her with a smile. ‘Some say holly protects the home from malevolent faeries—gives it shelter against evil intentions, if you like.’
‘And you think Stevenage needs that?’
‘I think it needs some Christmas decoration to ward off sadness, at least.’
‘Did your mother mark the season?’
Ariana imagined a woman of an artistic bent must have enjoyed seeing the symbolism of Yule displayed inside the stately salons of the mansion before her.
‘I think my father enjoyed it more,’ he returned, and broke off more stems of shiny green and red.
She frowned, for it was getting closer to Christmas Day and she had not seen a single sign of that inside the house as they had walked through—which was surprising, given the Earl’s presents to her.
He had quite a handful of greenery now, however, and when he noticed that she was looking at it he smiled. ‘Celebration makes something out of nothing. A redemption, if you like, against all that has been taken away.’
‘And rebuilt?’
‘That too.’
‘But the stories of the fire...’ She could not quite continue.
‘Stories are only that. Supposition. Conjecture. They swirl for a time, as fodder for gossip, and then they fade and other speculation fills in what was there before.’
‘A hard truth for the one who takes the blame if it was not theirs in the first place.’
He laughed then, loud and long, and when he had finished he took her hand in his and raised it to his lips, bestowing a small warm kiss on the skin above.
‘You have shouldered your own burdens by the sound of things, Aria, and yet you have not betrayed those you love. I have never heard your family history whispered of in anything but general tones. Not once.’
‘It is shame that stops me from speaking, but I think in your case it is honour.’
He didn’t answer her right away, but looked at the hills behind them, rising misty in the cold. Finally, he spoke. ‘I was an only child, and I loved both my mother and my father, even with all their faults. They were brittle people, and set in their ways, whereas I could change easily and did.’
‘Your voyage to America?’
He nodded. ‘And the coming back.’
What was it he confessed? Ariana could not quite make sense of his reasoning and she frowned.
‘It isn’t long until Christmas Eve, Ariana, and without decoration Yule will pass unnoticed and unobserved at Stevenage. Will you come with me to the woods to find suitable branches to bring into the house?’
‘I thought you said this should not happen until the night before Christmas? Something to do with luck?’
‘Sometimes you have to make your own good fortune and to hell with superstition.’
His smile was beguiling and his eyes were filled with the sort of humour that she had never been a party to. Not as a child, nor as a young bride. Not as a widow in Society either, with a reputation that slashed at any hope of a normal life.
His hand came out, its long fingers asking her to join him, and when a redwing swooped down from a branch above them she took it as a sign. A travelling bird, here for the moment. Like her.
Reaching out, she felt his warmth come around her glovele
ss hand. ‘How will we cut them?’
‘With force. I’ll hang on the end of some of the lower branches and they will give way.’
He was leading her off to a small copse a hundred yards away from the house. The snow was deeper here, but the wind was held off by the bulk of the trees. It was a silent, beautiful place, smelling of pine.
‘This one is good.’
Letting go of her hand, he swung on the branch. As it cracked he smiled, and then the whole thing fell.
The next branch was more difficult and he asked for her help, signalling her to move to one side of him and then counting. When he reached three she pulled with all her might and the fir branch snapped suddenly, sending them both tumbling on top of each other down into the snow.
Just them, in the greenery, with the rubbery fir underneath them and the pine sap strong and fresh.
He didn’t wait but drew her close, beneath him. The world darkened with his shadow until his lips came down across her own, asking for things she had no notion of, wanting, desperate and warm.
She let his ardour comfort her, felt the slick pressure of his tongue inside her mouth as her head went back. Opening. To him. Writhing under a promise that she had never understood until now. Wanting to be closer, wishing for the things she had only ever imagined in the dark shadows of her bed.
He moved so that he was at a different angle now, no longer gentle, and his aching need was exemplified in the way his hands grasped her hair and bundled it into a knot. Then he was at her neck, demanding, his hands moving lower, his thumb tweaking across one nipple.
No longer tender. Passion ruled him. And the hot need of it dragged her in as he whispered things that she could make no sense of.
His mouth was wide across her own, demanding more and more and more. And she gave it wordlessly, undeniably, moving her own fingers against his nape and in his hair, feeling the darkness of it tangled in her fingers.
‘I want you, Aria.’
His words were hot breath against her cheeks, no guessing in them. She could feel the hardness of his body along her own, virile, young and impatient. An ardent suitor, an experienced lover, a man who was not afraid, nor bound by manners, expectation or even propriety.
