Lady Silence (22 page)

“
I am, as you must know,” Damon hedged,
“immensely sorry for the incident at Castle Moretaine. In effect, I
precipitated the actions that revealed your perfidy. There are, of
course, many so-called gentlemen who would be willing to cast the
entire burden of guilt on your shoulders, but I am pleased to
discover I am not numbered among them. Therefore . . . for a while
at least, you will remain my mother’s companion, if she agrees . .
. and my secretary.”

Confound it!
She was doing it again. On her knees in front of him. Seizing
his hand. Kissing it. Her lashes brushed his skin. A teardrop
splashed the back of his hand.

Hell and damnation!
He was putty, to be molded at her will. Encroaching little
demon. But he, too, had known desperation. In battle and again now,
when he was powerless to save the title from passing to a bastard.
Desperation was a harsh task master, frequently resulting in words
and actions one could only wish unspoken and undone.

The fingers of his free hand dug into the arm
of his chair, lest he twine them in the shining blond curls bent
over his lap. God forbid his imagination should soar any farther
toward the edge of sanity! “I will speak with my mother,” Damon
rasped. “Do not go to her until the morning. Hopefully, by then I
will have smoothed your path.”

And once again turned his refuge into a
Den of Temptation
. Bloody hell!

Katy dashed back to her room, heart soaring,
head awhirl. A miracle had occurred. It was going to be all right.
She did not have to leave. All thoughts of her grandparents fled
from her head. And Elijah Palmer? She would tell him the dowager
needed her. As surely the poor dear lady must.

But was it right to leave him hanging, just
because her inner self knew it was all too good to be true? That in
seven month’s time Damon Farr could once again be Earl of
Moretaine. Mr. Palmer deserved far better than a heartless chit who
kept a beau in reserve until she had need of him.

So tomorrow she would reject his suit, as
gently as she could. And pray he would find a woman who truly loved
him.

As for herself . . . she would take her
chances. Damon Farr, for all his faults, was worth the risk.

Life was never going to be the same—although
it was more than a month before Katy was willing to admit this
unpleasant reality. The shock of grief, the threat of a possible
bastard earl, compounded by betrayal from the viper in their midst,
had thrown a pall over Farr Park as dark as the black hatchment
over the front door. The dowager—in the past a lady of vivacity and
decided opinions—spent much of her time in her suite of rooms, her
bible, embroidery, or a novel, lying untouched in her lap. Katy
could only hover, grateful for a nod, a faint thank you, a tiny
twisted smile.

Below stairs Katy found even less tolerance,
Farr Park’s staff remaining almost universally unbending. No more
tea in Mrs. Tyner’s cozy room. No more sage advice from Clover
Stiles or flirtatious grins from Jesse Wiggs. Mapes was so formal
she might as well have been a visiting duchess. Yet at times he
seemed not to see her at all, as if she had simply vanished from
his sight. Miss Nobody from Nowhere, unworthy of a proper butler’s
attention.

It was very lowering. A good many salty tears
were washed from Katy’s pillowcase each week.

And Damon—her glowering demon—was the worst.
Each morning in the bookroom, he kept his head down, so studiously
avoiding looking at her that Katy longed to whack him over the head
with one of the library’s larger volumes. And yet, sneak that he
was, there were times when she could feel his gaze boring into her
back. But when she peeked, he was always head down, quill poised,
quill scribbling, or feathers idly tapping against his mouth. Not
looking at Katy Snow. Most carefully not looking at Katy Snow.

It was Miss Snow this and Miss Snow that,
with only a rare absent-minded slip into Katy. In short, Damon,
like Mapes, was so formal his manners practically squeaked. She’d
swear that after the incident with his officers, he had buried lust
so deep it might well be in China. And yet she could feel scorching
heat in the dark eyes fixed on her back. More likely, she told
herself sternly, a manifestation of heat from within herself, a
product of the overactive imagination she was trying so hard to
repress.

The truth was, she had destroyed Damon’s
desire, as well as his trust, in one fell swoop. Or should she say,
scream? He wanted nothing more to do with her except her
convenience as a secretary. His periodic journeys to Castle
Moretaine were almost a relief. Even though he returned each time
surly as a bear, the absence of tension for a few days was more
than welcome.

She was indeed a liar! So addicted to
deception she even lied to herself. For each time Damon was gone,
she missed him most dreadfully. Even when a glower emphasized the
lines at the corners of his eyes, the slashes from nose to
chin—carved by Iberian sun, stinging mountain cold, and watching
good men die—she wanted to be near him. To gaze her fill at his
dark head bent over his desk, researching, writing, puzzling out
what to say next. A man of action struggling to fit himself into
the confines of the world of words.

He might be a stiff-rumped, buffleheaded
idiot where she was concerned, but she loved him anyway. She had
betrayed his trust. He had betrayed hers. Surely that made them
even.

If the granddaughter of a wool merchant and
the potential heir to an earldom could ever be said to be even.

In mid-November Katy turned nineteen. The day
was gray, cold and blustery, presaging a long difficult winter. The
dowager did not forget, although her gift of soft bone-colored kid
gloves was a mere token compared to her customary effusion of
presents. Katy’s eyes filled with tears, however, when Cook made
all her favorite foods for dinner that night. Damon, gruff and
forbidding, evidently disturbed by the sight of Katy, the watering
pot, handed her a guinea, a munificent gift if she had not felt
like a servant being handed a vail at the end of a gentleman’s
weekend in the country.

Conscience money, that’s what it was.

She nearly thrust it back at him, but
remembered in the nick of time that money gave independence. So she
curtsied, even as she hoped he could not mistake the fire in her
eye. Love him she might, but accept his behavior meekly she could
not.

Late that night, just as she was climbing
into bed, there was a faint scratching at her door, and Clover
slipped into her room. Standing proud and straight, she announced,
“I’ve come to offer best wishes for your birthday.” Her lips
quivered. “Katy,” she added softly.

A pause . . . and the two girls fell on each
other, Clover’s stiffness dissolving in a flood of tears to match
Katy’s own.

“
It’s cruel we’ve been,” Clover sobbed.
“Right cruel. You were a child, a babe on your own without kith or
kin. Who was there to tell you how to go on?”

With shuddering breaths and tearful faces,
the two old friends built up Katy’s fire and curled up before it
for a coze that lasted until pre-dawn tinged the sky with
silver.

The only other riffle in the quiet melancholy
days at Farr Park was heralded by a message from Mr. Trembley. Katy
drove the gig into the village on rutted, almost frozen roads that
jarred her teeth and threatened to throw her from her seat until
she slowed the old cob to a walk. Why should she be eager to learn
what Trembley had to say? She no longer needed the grandparents who
had given her up after only a few short weeks. Her situation at
Farr Park might still be a bit awkward, but Damon was there, and
her dear countess needed her. Nothing else mattered. So she would
not leave them. They were, after all, all she had. What could some
ephemeral connection to a wool merchant’s family mean to her
now?

But somehow the old cob kept picking up the
pace, seemingly sensing a barely controlled excitement Katy was
unwilling to admit.

Martin Trembley stared at her from across a
desk piled with leather folders tied with string and stacks of
papers, some high enough to be in imminent danger of tumbling to
the floor. The solicitor appeared to be measuring her in a far more
penetrating manner than he had when she had made her initial
request. “Miss Snow,” he said at last, “in conducting the search
you requested, I have encountered far more than I expected . . .
even a bit of a mystery.”

Ah!
A quiver
shook Katy’s stomach. A village solicitor—she had not expected him
to be quite so astute.

“
I regret to inform you that the person
you wished to find is no longer among the living. Matthias Alburton
passed on almost a year ago.”

A man she had never met, and yet she felt
grief. Now she would never know her maternal grandfather.

“
However . . . his wife, Emily
Alburton, still lives. There is also a son and grandchildren, all
living most comfortably in an area not far from Derby.”

A grandmother?
She had a living grandmother?

“
There was once a daughter,” Mr.
Trembley added. “Belinda Alburton, who married up, as the saying
goes. Harold Challenor, son of the Bishop of Hulme, and grandson of
the old Duke of Carewe. But Challenor and his wife perished in a
sailing accident, leaving a child, a girl barely six months of age.
Lucinda. The Alburtons promptly took over care of the child and
were just as promptly relieved of the baby by the Bishop and his
wife, who declared the child should be raised to a life befitting
her father’s station. The Alburtons were heart-broken, but believed
they were doing the right thing when they let the babe
go.”

“
Mr. Trembley . . . I am astonished you
have learned so much,” Katy murmured. The dratted man had obviously
come to conclusions she had never dreamed of his
discovering.

“
The tale of the Alburtons’s grandchild
is the talk of the entire midlands, and as far south as
Peterborough and the Cotswolds,” said the solicitor, leaning
forward as if to better gauge her reaction. “For it seems the child
went missing shortly after the Bishop died and she was consigned to
the guardianship of a Baron Oxley. Whose wife, I am told, is
connected in some way to the Challenor family.”

“
Surely old news, Mr. Trembley. Of
little interest outside the family.”
Blast
the man!
This was the worst, the very worst that could
have happened. Why had she been so foolish as to open the path to
ancient wounds?

Mr. Trembley could not know she was
Lucinda Challenor, Katy reminded herself
.
She had not asked him to find her
grandparents. She had asked only that he find a Matthias Alburton,
wool merchant.

“
The talk is current,” Mr. Trembley
continued, his gaze never leaving Katy’s face, “because Lucinda
Challenor has made a miraculous reappearance and been reunited with
her family. Lord and Lady Oxley are ecstatic, as are the
Alburtons.” The solicitor paused, dropped his gaze to the topmost
paper on his desk. He pursed his lips, leaned back in his huge
brown leather chair. “The Bishop of Hulme was not a poor man. He
provided quite well for his only grandchild, though what has become
of the money is a bit of a mystery. I have experts looking into
it—”

“
I cannot afford it,” Katy interjected.
“Truly, I shall be hard pressed to pay your fee. You have more than
done as I asked. You are, in fact, most amazing in your
thoroughness. I am infinitely grateful, but—”

Mr. Trembley cut her off with a wave of his
hand. “Hear me out, Miss Snow. There is more . . . and I assure you
I find this matter intriguing enough that I am pursuing it for my
own edification. A village solicitor is not often given a puzzle of
this complexity.”

Inwardly, Katy echoed one of Damon’s more
colorful oaths. Outwardly, calling on the discipline of her years
of silence, she appeared perfectly calm. Clasping her hands in her
lap, she prepared to listen. What else had she been doing since the
age of twelve? She had a talent for listening.

“
Matthias Alburton and his wife never
gave up hope their grandchild was alive,” said Mr. Trembley.
“Alburton was so convinced of it, he left the missing child a sum
of sixty thousand pounds.”

Katy gasped.

“
Well might you be surprised if you
thought Alburton an ordinary tradesman. The bulk of his estate, of
course, went to his son, who is a very wealthy man indeed. And
powerful. The family expanded from wool to weaving to owning mills
throughout the midlands. Sixty thousand pounds was an easily
affordable token thrown out to lure a missing child.”

“
Which it did,” Katy
breathed.

“
Which it did,” Trembley
agreed.

Dear God!
She
was an heiress.

Lucinda Challenor was an heiress. And the
alleged Lucinda Challenor was currently residing at Oxley Hall.
When not ogling Colonel Damon Farr. For he had told his mother that
the Hardcastle family were regular visitors to Castle Moretaine,
supporting the bereaved and increasing widow in her hour of
need.

“
My investigator reports that Miss
Challenor bears a remarkable resemblance to you, Miss
Snow.”

He knew!
Or
suspected. Dear Lord, who could have expected to find a shark
swimming in the shallow stream of the village of High Henton. But
he was
her
solicitor, was he
not? Pledged to silence. Unless Mr. Trembley had considered how
much blunt a few well-chosen words might produce from the baron . .
. or from the Alburtons.