A Much Compromised Lady (19 page)

St. Albans opened the door, and Glynis
stepped into the church, a little nervous to walk where once her
parents had given their vows. She waited a moment for the vicar to
enter with his lantern, and for some sense of recognition of the
place. But it was simply a church, not unlike others she had
seen.

Stone walls were hung with tapestry, and
wooden pews lined the floor. It seemed quite sparse, but she liked
the sense of peace that lay within the silence.

Leading the way, the vicar took them to a
wooden door that lay to the side. It took him two tries to find the
right key, and a good twist to unlock the door, which squeaked on
its hinges, proclaiming how rarely anyone entered. A twisted stair
of stone steps, worn by footfalls in the middle, led down one
flight. Even Glynis had to hunch under the low ceiling.

The vault seemed more storeroom than anything
else, lined as it was with wine racks and dusty bookshelves, with a
rough hewn wooden table in the center.

“Bless me now, which year would you care to
see?” the Vicar asked, setting down his lantern and turning up the
wick.

Glynis silently counted back her own age,
plus the year in addition that would set the date.
“Seventeen-ninety-two. June, please.”

Mr. Cook began to search the shelves and
Glynis edged closer to St. Albans to whisper, “You heard him—a
convenient fire, the old vicar gone. We always knew there would be
nothing here to find.”

St. Albans lifted a skeptical eyebrow and
gave her a cool stare. “Ah, but the right nothing can be as
revealing as something.”

Glynis frowned at him. She realized he was
referring to the fact that if they did find the parish register,
but did not find her parents signatures in it, it would prove that
no marriage had taken place.

She pulled her shawl a little tighter around
her shoulders.

“Ah, here we have it,” the vicar said,
pulling out a dusty, leather-bound book that was almost too large
for him to manage. He laid the register upon the worktable, opened
it, and stepped back. “What name did you say you were searching
for?”

“Edward Dawes,” Glynis said.

Mr. Cook frowned. “What? Not the late baron’s
eldest? Oh, no. You must be mistaken. He never married. Died young,
bless him. Tragic accident, I heard.”

St. Albans stepped forward. “Quite. But Miss
Dawes is recalling a cousin, I believe. Miss Dawes?”

With a nervous glance at St. Albans, Glynis
came forward, and began to scan the parish register as the vicar
began to chatter about the various members of the Dawes family whom
he personally knew.

She did not listen, but looked at the names,
so carefully inscribed by each couple who had married here.
Christian names, middle names, given names. Men and women who had
pledged their lives to each other. Were some of them now dead? Some
with grown children, and grandchildren even? Some perhaps still
living in this area, and who had known her father.

She turned the page, and the date jumped
suddenly to October. Her hands chilled. She turned the page back,
and then forward and back again, searching for her parents’ names.
Dear God, had St. Albans been right after all? Was the inheritance
she had dreamed of nothing more, really, than her mother’s desire
for revenge against the Dawes?

Ah, but that could not be. It must not
be.

Not knowing what else to do, she glanced
toward St. Albans.

He stepped closer, and put a palm on each
side of the book, pressing it flat.

There, in the center, she saw it. A sharp
edge of vellum that stood up. She ran her fingers down the center
of the book, along the edge. And then she looked at the dates that
jumped so quickly from June to October.

St. Albans closed the book and turned to the
vicar. “It is as we thought—not here.”

“I am sorry. Would you care to look at
another year? No? Well, then, come back to the Rectory and we shall
have some tea before you must leave. And if there is any light, you
must let me walk you through my gardens. They are quite modest, but
I would be interested in your opinion of my
Comte de
Chambord
, which has just begun to bud.”

The vicar spoke as he put away the book and
led them up the curved, stone stairs again. Glynis allowed St.
Albans to walk ahead with Mr. Cook, and she held back from them,
her thoughts dark and her mood even darker.

Someone had cut a page from the register.
Someone who had, no doubt, burned the previous vicar’s papers, just
in case he had a letter or had made a journal entry. But it was
negative proof—and nothing to take before the law.

And she could almost growl from the
frustration of it.

Outside the church, Mr. Cook veered off the
path, leading them to the gardens at the back of the Rectory.
Glynis allowed the gentleman to outpace her. St. Albans glanced
back at her, his eyebrows lifted in a silent question.

She waved him on. She needed a moment to
herself. A moment to mourn the hopes she had not even realized had
risen in her. A moment for a personal visit before they
departed.

The vicar’s droning voice faded, and Glynis
turned her steps toward the quiet of the cemetery.

She walked steadily, peering at the white
granite headstones. The sun had set, but the last twilight lingered
in the sky with the promise that soon the longest day would be
here. The moon had risen full and lush, brighter even than the
vicar’s lantern.

At the far end, near the woods, she glimpsed
what she sought.

Edward Dawes.

Just his name upon a headstone. Nothing more.
Not a mention that he had been only twenty-nine when he had died.
Not a mention that he was a beloved father and husband.

Stooping beside the headstone, she brushed
her fingers across the cold, hard lettering.

A deep voice startled her. “ ‘Some shape of
beauty moves away the pall, from our dark spirits...’ “

Glynis spun on her heel, lost her balance and
sat down in the grass. A shadow loomed over her, dark and broad
shouldered, but the man offered his hand and an easy grin.

“I am terribly sorry. I did not mean to
frighten you. My father swears I have a scholar’s mind and no
manners to my life, but I may at least atone for startling you with
poetry. Though Keats ought to startle.”

He lifted her to her feet. Brushing at her
skirts, she looked up at him. “Keats?”

“A poet. A gifted fellow unlike your humble
servant.” He swept her a bow. “But what is a lady such as you,
‘rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms,’ doing in a
graveyard by moonlight. I am quoting at you, and it is very rude of
me to do that and not introduce myself. Forgive me, I’m Bryn Dawes.
And you are...?”

She stiffened. A Dawes. What did she say to
him? She peered closer at his face, but it was too dark to see more
than that he was tall, and his voice flowed like a songbird that
would not stop singing.

“I am just a visitor,” she said. “Now you
must pardon me. My host will be wondering where I am.”

She started for the Rectory, but he fell into
step with her, matching his longer stride to hers. She saw
moonlight glance off riding boots.

“So you are visiting Mr. Cook. It’s terribly
rude of me to pry, I know, but I must ask. Please tell me that you
did not come with the Earl of St. Albans.”

She stopped and turned towards him. “How did
you know?”

“A coach, a crest, they are easy things to
see. And in a village this small, difficult to overlook.”

“Do you know the Earl?” she asked. His answer
would tell much about him, she decided.

He paused a moment, as if weighing his words.
“By reputation only. And now I shall be an utter knave and ask if
you are safe in his company. Forgive me, if you are. I have this
lamentable tendency to insert myself where I am not wanted, but a
lady met by moonlight must be a forgiving sort.”

She stood there, twisting the ends of her
shawl. Ah, what should she say to him? No, I do not want to be here
with St. Albans. And what would he do? Rescue her? Take her with
him? As if she would be safer with a Dawes than with that devil of
a
gaujo
.

“There is nothing to forgive. But thank you
for your concern.” She started to walk away from him again.

He hurried to keep pace with her. “Please, I
have this sense that I know you from somewhere. Do I? Or is it my
uncle whom you knew? That was his grave, was it not?”

Stopping, she turned towards him. “Your
uncle? Your father is Francis Dawes?”

Even in the moonlight, she saw his mouth
twist. “Yes, I am Lord Nevin’s son, and the way you say his name I
take it that you not among his few admirers. Please tell me you are
not yet another relative he has offended. Or someone he has
wronged. ‘Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, of all the
unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways...’ I am afraid that he does
things from the certainty he knows best for all, and he is too
often right for his own good. And for the rest of our own goods as
well. And here I am babbling and not letting you speak—I do know
you from somewhere.”

Head spinning, she could only frown at him.
He was her cousin.
Jek rat
. Same blood. The tug of kinship
lay between them, and he felt it as well to be so certain he knew
her. Blood called to blood, and she saw in the shape of this man
the shape of her brother.

But she did not want to know him, or like
him. Low, melodic voices, she had learned from St. Albans, could
too easily beguile.

“I must go.”

She started forward, but he called out to her
again, so she paused and turned to face him.

He came toward her, fishing in his pockets
for something. “Here. Take this. No, no, it is nothing. Merely my
card. I cannot rid myself of the feeling that if you travel with
the Earl of St. Albans, you travel with trouble. It is the
moonlight, I think. Or the graveyard. ‘A poor, weak,
palsy-stricken, churchyard thing.’ But if you have my card, I will
know at least that I have offered help.”

“Why should want to befriend me? A
stranger.”

“ ‘Mortality weights heavily on me like
unwilling sleep.’ I have a heavy soul, lady. And I know but one way
to lighten it, and that is by aiding others. But it is easy to
promise a stranger aid. They so rarely take it.”

He took her hand, pressed his card into it,
and bowed low, the courtly gesture oddly touching. “I think you
will remember a madman who quoted poetry at you and asked only your
name. But I vow I do know you from somewhere. Perhaps someday you
will tell me from whence. And I do hope you know St. Albans as well
as you know my father—both men deserve a good deal of cautious
respect.”

“What if we never meet again?”

“Oh, we shall meet. I can feel it. And the
things I feel in my bones come true. My mother was Welsh, you see.
It irritates my father no end that it was so, but she was very
rich, and he could not refuse her family’s money. And here I am
again, talking to you as if you were family.”

His grin flashed in the darkness.

She glanced down at his card, a white
rectangle in the moonlight. Somehow it gave her reassurance to have
it—as if he might be a friend to her. But he might as easily turn
from her once he knew her identity. He might prove his father’s
son.

“Thank you,” she said. She started toward the
Rectory, but stopped, turned back to his dark silhouette, and
called out, “Glynis. My name is Glynis.”

Turning away again, unsettled, she strode
back to the Rectory.

She remained silent on the drive back to
Owlpen Manor. Thankfully, St. Albans did not question her, nor did
he try to flatter or flirt. He simply sat next to her in the
carriage, his shoulder brushing hers as the coach rocked.

At Owlpen, he handed her from the coach. She
felt his stare on her as he escorted her inside.

“I...I am tired. Do excuse me,” she said, and
fled up the stairs.

She did not want to face him tonight. She
could not. Disappointment lay hollow inside her. She wanted to be
alone.

Ah, what she really wanted was this done and
over. If not for Christo, she would flee back to the woods—that was
where she wished to be again. But it was too late for that escape.
She could feel already that her old life had slipped away from her,
and this one was far, far from being manageable.

She thought back to her cousin, Bryn. He had
what Christo wanted—position, wealth, a title that someday would be
his if things were not made right. Yet he seemed no more content
than was her brother. Was no one ever happy with their lives? And
here was St. Albans, who wanted to make her life yet more
complicated by taking her to his bed and tangling her life with
his.

She could almost wish them all gone, and her
life so much simpler.

But what would she do without Christo?
Without her
dej
? She needed friend and family, just as she
needed air and water.

She allowed the maid to take down her hair,
but then dismissed her. When the maid left, Glynis carefully
searched the room for any possible hidden panels. She did not want
another surprise visit from St. Albans. Satisfied at last, she
locked the door. Still in her evening gown, but now barefooted, she
opened the window and curled up on a chair.

The night smelled of summer and the breeze
touched her face with a mix of the day’s last warmth and cool
darkness. Crickets chirped, and an owl called out its warning that
it hunted by moonlight. It would be a good night to lay under the
stars, the earth at her back. Ah, perhaps she felt unsettled
because she had been too long in houses. Perhaps she needed dirt
under her feet and wind in her hair.

With a sigh, she settled deeper in her chair,
too tired to answer the night’s call. Perhaps tomorrow.