Nicola Cornick (17 page)

Lady Stansfield eased herself into the other chair and turned her sharp gaze immediately on Alicia.

‘Well, miss! Here’s a fine to-do!’ Her expression was at its most autocratic. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you! I think it’s best for you to tell me the whole—what is the relationship between yourself and James Mullineaux?’

‘Our relationship is mainly categorised by ill-temper and conflict,’ Alicia said, with a touch of bitterness.

She hesitated, but knew better than to try to argue with her grandmother in her current mood. She related the carriage accident and her subsequent rescue by James, how it had come about that she had compromised them both by sending Miss Frensham away, their quarrel, their subsequent meetings, and finally her dance with him that night. She left nothing out of her factual account, but made no reference to her feelings. Let Lady Stansfield make of that what she would.

When she had finished, Lady Stansfield stirred a little in her chair. Throughout Alicia’s account her attention had not wavered.

‘So Mullineaux is not in fact your lover,’ she observed thoughtfully.

‘I fear I cannot claim that privilege,’ Alicia said, very dryly. ‘The terms of our relationship could scarcely be described in such a cordial way!’

‘Humph! A pity!’ Lady Stansfield looked her over comprehensively. ‘Still, I am hardly surprised. I would have expected you to look much more cheerful if he were!’

‘Grandmama!’ Alicia had never grown out of being scandalised by her grandmother’s plain speaking. ‘Do I understand you to be encouraging me to indulge in a love affair?’

‘I should think so!’ Lady Stansfield said energetically. ‘You are too strait-laced, Alicia, and I have given up all hope of you ever losing your puritan streak! Lord, a man wants a cosy armful in bed, not a block of ice! I know that your marriage gave you a disgust of a physical relationship, but that is all in the past now. You should allow yourself a little amusement!’

Despite herself, Alicia’s wayward mind presented her with a series of images which all too graphically suggested what it might be like to take James Mullineaux as a lover. Carberry had been gross and gro
tesque, but James’s lithe body would be quite a different matter. With an effort she tore her mind away and found her grandmother watching her with amused comprehension.

‘Exactly! In my day we were not so shy to follow our inclinations! Why, I remember—’

‘Grandmama!’

Lady Stansfield subsided with a sniff. ‘Oh, very well, very well, I can see that you mean to be odiously strict! But it’s no good you denying that you still care for Mullineaux, for I can see it as plain as a pikestaff!’

Her assertion made Alicia face squarely up to the facts that she had been trying to ignore since meeting James again; not only did she find him intensely attractive but she also still cared deeply for him. It did not seem to matter that he held her in contempt and that they always seemed to end up quarrelling. She had loved him for over seven years and his return had only served to stir up all the old emotions which had never really left her. He is arrogant and high-handed, she told herself severely, but it made no difference to her feelings.

Alicia was aware that her grandmother was still watching her like an inquisitive sparrow with its head on one side. She shrugged uncomfortably.

‘I cannot deny it, Grandmama! Oh, I have tried to tell myself that what is in the past is over, but my feelings are not so easily dismissed. And at least you should now see why I am not able to marry Christopher!’

Her look dared her grandmother to contradict her, but the old lady was silent. She knew that a man like Christopher Westwood was no substitute for James Mullineaux.

‘I thought Mullineaux had never met my father,’ Alicia said suddenly, ‘but at Annabella’s wedding he told me he had been to Bruton Street all those years ago to demand to be told what was happening. I always thought…I never believed…’ Her anguished gaze met that of Lady Stansfield. ‘He had no reason to lie to me, did he?’ she appealed.

Lady Stansfield smoothed the silk of her kimono. ‘None at all,’ she said, a little gruffly. ‘It don’t surprise me—the last time I ever saw James Mullineaux he swore he would visit your father to demand the truth. I always liked Mullineaux,’ she added, with a smile. ‘Oh, he was impetuous, but he was generous with it and he could charm the birds off the trees. And he loved you, Alicia. Really loved you.’

She looked at her granddaughter’s downbent head. ‘You always be
lieved he had deserted you, didn’t you, Alicia? And now you know it is not true you have very little left to reproach him for—’

‘Except pride,’ Alicia snapped. ‘I don’t forgive him for being so quick to condemn! The arrogant conceit of the man! That is one thing about him that has not changed!’

Lady Stansfield hid her smile. ‘Whereas he,’ she continued, ‘has rather more to forgive—or so he thinks.’

‘For Mullineaux it is not a matter of forgiveness,’ Alicia said bleakly. ‘He has made his judgement. Why should he wish to change it?’

Lady Stansfield shifted slightly in her chair. ‘Those encounters you describe hardly suggest a disinterested man…If he holds you in such dislike, surely he would never have offered you his help at Ottery!’

Alicia smiled. ‘I can only assume that, being a gentleman, he came to the rescue of Miss Frensham only to discover that he was faced with the unpleasant task of rescuing me as well!’

‘True.’ Lady Stansfield had her head on one side once more. ‘But he need not have made you a declaration the following morning, particularly as it was all a bumblebath of your own making!’

‘Thank you! I am well aware that I was to blame! But I can offer no explanation, I fear, Grandmama, other than the prosaic one which is that Mullineaux conceived it to be his duty!’

Lady Stansfield looked unconvinced. ‘Stuff!’ she said, with finality. ‘There is more to this than you think, Alicia. And, leaving that aside, why did he seek you out here, let alone go to the wassail and draw such attention to the pair of you by asking you to dance?’

Alicia did not reply. She hardly understood herself the impulse which had prompted James to ask her to dance and her to accept. It had been unreal, a moment out of time. But she was not foolish enough to build any hopes upon it. To do so would only leave her more distressed and disappointed in the end. She made a slight, dispirited gesture.

‘Do not refine upon it too much, Grandmama. I do not! As we are alone, I will admit that it was foolish of me to encourage the gossip by dancing with Mullineaux tonight, but there is no real cause for speculation. The meeting at Ottery was the merest chance, what followed was bad luck, and how I feel is really irrelevant given that Mullineaux will never think of me as anything but a fortune-hunting adventuress who jilted him to marry a richer man!’

Lady Stansfield snorted with disgust. ‘The facts don’t fit the case, my love, but by all means believe them if you must! How did you find
your father after all these years?’ she added, changing the subject as she saw Alicia’s instinctive rejection of her words.

Alicia looked up and met her eyes squarely. ‘Oh, he was just the same! He scares me, Grandmama. I feel as though I can never be free of him.’ A darker shadow touched the shadowed room. Alicia shivered convulsively. ‘All the time his presence is there, even when he is not!’

She did not add that she had already received a letter from Bertram Broseley inviting her to stay at Greyrigg. Annabella was still on her wedding journey in the Lake District and Broseley was claiming to be lonely without the company of either daughter to comfort him. Alicia had crumpled the letter up in disgust, but it had brought back all her feelings of disquiet.

‘Bertram Broseley, faugh!’ Lady Stansfield wrinkled her nose as though there was a vile smell beneath it. ‘The man was always an out-and-out bounder, for all he is your father!’ A faraway look came into her eyes. ‘He was a cit trying to buy his way into good company when he met your mother. We knew Julia was taken with him—looked like a god, did Broseley in those days, with his fair hair and finicky gold waistcoats!’ Lady Stansfield snorted in disgust.

‘I never spoke to him,’ she continued, with the unconscious aristocratic arrogance which had led her son-in-law to detest her, ‘but I could see how he turned heads and Julia always was a silly piece.’

Alicia sighed. She did not remember her mother very well, for Julia Broseley had died at Annabella’s birth, but she did recall a gentle, soft-voiced creature with an anxious face framed by soft brown ringlets. Julia had inherited none of her mother’s acerbic wit or hot temper. Such strength might have protected her from Broseley’s casual cruelty. As it was, the runaway match had been an unmitigated disaster. The Earl of Stansfield had refused to accept Broseley as his son-in-law and since Bertram had only married Julia to increase his social stature he had viewed the alliance as worthless. It was only after the Earl’s death that Lady Stansfield had been able to make contact with her granddaughter, and by then Broseley himself had been deeply embittered and the breach could not be healed.

Lady Stansfield patted Alicia’s hand comfortingly with her own be-ringed one. ‘But your father cannot touch you now, Alicia. You are quite safe.’

Alicia shook her head. She did not believe Bertram Broseley could be dismissed so easily. She got to her feet.

‘If you will excuse me, Grandmama, I am very tired. I must seek my bed now.’

She kissed her grandmother’s cheek and straightened up.

‘Alicia.’ Her grandmother’s voice halted her as she had her hand on the doorknob. ‘Just one small piece of advice. Think twice before you play off any tricks on Mullineaux again. He is hardly the man to tolerate them for long! I predict that you will find it more difficult to avoid him than you think.’

Alicia smiled a little sadly but did not reply and the door closed softly behind her. After a moment Lady Stansfield sighed. The fire had gone out and she was cold. With an old lady’s stiffness she rose and went to bed.

A
licia reined in her horse on the top of the moor, her cheeks becomingly flushed with the sting of the cold afternoon air. The ride up from Chartley Chase had been exhilarating for she had given Savannah her head, the mare’s inclination for a gallop coinciding with Alicia’s own inclination to escape.

The spirits of the Chartley house-party had not managed to reassert themselves in the days following the cider wassail. Christopher Westwood was still nursing a fine sense of grievance and was displaying his disapproval of Alicia by sulking. Georgiana Stapleford was making life a misery with her sharp looks and sharper comments, Lady Stansfield was suffering from rheumatism and was inclined to snap, and Alicia herself was unable to throw off the depression which had possessed her after that evening. Despite the visits, card parties and impromptu theatricals, it had somehow proved impossible to please people and it had been very tiring for Alicia in trying.

One look at the sullen faces around the breakfast table that morning had prompted Marcus Kilgaren to suggest a trip out, in the hope that the fine day might dispel the bad humours. After some discussion it was agreed that the whole party should drive over to Pilton Abbey for the day, both to admire the fine house and to take Countess Pilton up on the hospitable invitation she had issued the week before. There had been general agreement to the plan, but Lady Stansfield had declined to go, saying that Hermione Pilton bored her to death, and Alicia had pleaded a headache in order to be excused. She was desperate for a little solitude.

A false air of calm had settled on Chartley Chase as the carriage and
the riders had clattered away through the village in the early afternoon. In the blue saloon Lady Stansfield had snored over her post-prandial cup of chocolate and, peeping around the door, Alicia had seen that she was dead to the world. She’d needed no further encouragement, for she had never had any real intention of resting that afternoon. In her room she’d hastily donned a riding habit of apple-green, severely styled and most becoming, and braided her hair into one fat plait beneath her round-brimmed hat.

There had been a little more activity in the stableyard where Alicia’s groom, Jem, had willingly led out Savannah for her. The mare’s coat was gleaming with good health and it seemed that she was as keen for exercise as Alicia herself. Jem had smiled as he’d looked up at them. They seemed very well matched.

‘Reckon you shouldn’t be riding out without a groom, ma’am,’ he’d offered thoughtfully, knowing full well his advice would be rejected.

Alicia had laughed, already impatient to be off. ‘In the country! I assure you I am quite safe, Jem!’

She had wheeled the horse round and made for the moor before Jem could reply and he had only smiled and scratched his head as he made his way back into the tackroom. Her ladyship was a law unto herself like the old Countess, and no one could gainsay her, least of all Mr Westwood. In company with the other servants, Jem had heard of the failure of Christopher Westwood’s suit and he’d smiled to himself again. It would take more than that tailor’s dummy to appeal to Alicia Carberry.

From the top of the hill there was a spectacular view across the patchwork countryside to the Bristol Channel, gleaming like a silver ribbon in the sun. Chartley Chase was a tiny dolls’ house below her, with the village scattered beyond it. A light breeze fanned Alicia’s face and stirred the tendrils of hair beneath her hat. Savannah snorted softly and turned away from Chartley, picking her way over the hillside in the direction of Monks Dacorum. Alicia made no effort to change direction.

The mare had picked up one of the old drover’s tracks across the moor and was now trotting briskly along, her chestnut ears pricked. The heather and bracken were springing back after the winter and the peat track was firm beneath the horse’s hooves for there had been no rain for several weeks. The air had a keen, pure feel and there was not a single person in sight. Alicia, feeling her tensions slipping away with
a rush of relief that was almost too euphoric, urged Savannah to a gallop.

They slowed to a reluctant trot when the heathland gave way to cultivated fields again, and took a road that wended between drystone walls and high hedges. Alicia had lost her sense of direction completely but had no worries for she knew that she would eventually find a village where she could take directions back to Chartley. For now, just the sense of escape was enough. She had not realised how oppressed she had become by both the talk of scandal and the pressure of constantly having to put on a public face. But for now she need think of nothing but the sting of the cold wind, the scent of leather and her pleasure in being out of doors.

The road ran on between the fields, then into a small, coppiced woodland through which the distant, rhythmic thud of the forester’s axe could be heard. Savannah splashed through a ford and the narrow track began to climb again. Pallid blue sky stretched overhead and the breeze had a cutting edge to it. Alicia’s spirits lifted with every step away from Chartley Chase.

They had gone perhaps a couple of miles along the track when the trees fell back suddenly to reveal a sinister huddle of cottages. They were all empty, walls crumbling and once neat gardens overrun with weeds. An old estate wall on both sides culminated in a pair of iron gates swinging on rusty hinges. Alicia allowed the mare to walk forward slowly, almost afraid to disturb the stillness. The track was grassed over now and the horse’s hoofbeats were muffled. She picked her way with dainty care between the half-open gates.

So this must be one of the neglected entrances to Monks Dacorum. Alicia had never seen the house, for old Mr Rowley, the previous tenant, had been a recluse who never entertained. Those of her neighbours who could remember the days of the previous Marquis had told her that the house was vastly pretty and charmingly modernised. Caroline, too, had declared it to be a delightful house, if somewhat neglected in recent years.

The obvious course of action now was to turn back. The house would be empty, of course, for James Mullineaux would have left a week ago to visit his sister and the servants would have been laid off until a new tenant could be found. However, that hardly gave Alicia the excuse to indulge her curiosity and go further. But still she hesitated and Savannah, who clearly had different ideas, set off down the drive at a lively pace.

They passed a lodge where a family of blackbirds flew off with shrill cries of alarm at their approach. The house was empty, its windows dark and unfriendly. The track was descending quite steeply now under a thick canopy of trees whose bare branches knitted together overhead. The pale winter sun could not penetrate here. Rhododendrons grew close to the track and weeds smothered it. There was one more sharp bend to the left and the trees ended suddenly, revealing to Alicia’s fascinated gaze the scene which lay before her.

In the distance she could see a village nestling amongst the fields. Curls of smoke plumed into the winter air and a church spire cut the pale sky. In the foreground, cradled in the hollow of the hill, was the most perfect house Alicia had ever seen. It was small, half-timbered, and built around a central courtyard. There was a medley of decorative chimneys and a show of gables, orioles and leaded casement windows.

The whole house and garden were surrounded by a moat of glassily green water on which she could see an assortment of swans and ducks preening and swimming. The moat was fed by a narrow river which wended its way towards the village in a series of lazy curves, and in one of these lay the ruins of the abbey church that had originally given the house its name. The pattern of gardens was fascinating—Alicia recognised an overgrown maze and the outlines of a knot garden, both almost choked with weeds. The blank, mullioned windows of the house stared back at her solemnly.

Alicia dug her heels into Savannah’s sides and the mare trotted obediently down the drive, passing the unkempt lawns carpeted with wild daffodil and narcissus, and over the moat bridge into the stableyard. At close quarters the house was eerily quiet, its windows shuttered with ivy. Alicia, held as she was in the grip of some powerful enchantment, dismounted and tied the mare to the block by the stables. Her footsteps sounded loud on the gravel as she made a circuit of the courtyard and peered beyond the stable doors into the musty and disused interiors. The house and the stables themselves appeared in good condition, unlike the neglected gardens, but there was an air of emptiness about the place.

The house was built in an L-shape around two sides of the courtyard, with the stables in front of Alicia and on her left a high wall dividing the courtyard from the gardens. There was a door in the wall and it was open a few inches. The temptation was too strong. She pushed the door tentatively and it yielded with only a squeak of hinges.

Alicia found herself standing in a walled garden—a mellow, secret
garden set between the moat and the high courtyard wall. She stared about her, entranced, all sorts of ideas coming into her head. In the summer the sun-warmed stone would be covered with sweet-scented honeysuckle and ancient, fragrant roses. The flowerbeds would hold columbine, speedwell and flax, mingling profusely with cornflowers and valerian. She could imagine tall Canterbury bells nodding at the back of the borders and bees lurching intoxicated from flower to flower.

There was an old rustic bench under the gnarled branches of an apple tree and Alicia sat down and let her thoughts drift over the warm, hazy days of summer. If only she were able to buy Monks Dacorum she could re-create the gardens just as they would have been in Elizabethan times. But James Mullineaux would never sell to her…

Alicia sat there until the March chill began to seep into her bones and made her shiver. The colour fading from the sky warned her that evening was already closing in and it was time for her to return home. She got to her feet and shook out the skirts of her riding habit. The feeling of enchantment had begun to fade as she grew colder, and almost immediately the extreme impropriety of her actions became apparent. Though the house was empty, that was no excuse to indulge her curiosity and trespass in this shameless way! The light was fading and there was suddenly something sinister about the neglected gardens and shuttered windows. A feeling akin to panic rose in Alicia and she almost ran down the path to the old door in the wall.

Grasping stems of wild roses caught at the skirts of her riding habit, detaining her. She wrenched the material free of their thorns and fled precipitately to the doorway.

A mere five steps brought her to the door, which still stood open, and to confront the man who stood with his shoulders propped negligently against the frame, blocking her path. And this time there was no moonlight, and no enchantment, and she was looking up into eyes which were as dark and cold as the chill of a winter’s night.

Alicia felt herself to be at a distinct disadvantage. To have been caught trespassing could only be proof of a most vulgar curiosity. Worse, she had now provoked a confrontation with the one man she would have chosen at all costs to avoid. They had not met since the night of the cider wassail, an occasion which brought her to the blush when she remembered the abandonment of her behaviour. She felt paralysed with embarrassment.

No such problem appeared to afflict the Marquis of Mullineaux, how
ever. His dark, direct gaze was unflinching, quizzical and slightly mocking.

‘Good afternoon, Lady Carberry. What a pleasure to see you again!’

‘Whatever are you doing here?’ Alicia could have bitten off her tongue as soon as she had asked such a naive question. Caroline and Marcus had said that he would be away, but they had obviously made a mistake—a mistake which was proving costly to her. Flustered, she could feel herself blushing and was even more annoyed.

James Mullineaux raised an eyebrow and straightened up, driving his hands into his jacket pockets.

‘It
is
my house! Surely it is more appropriate for me to make that enquiry of you? If only I had known that you planned to visit Monks Dacorum, Lady Carberry, I would have been at pains to show you round myself!’

The words were smooth, but Alicia did not miss their sarcastic undertone and it brought more blood up into her face. She gritted her teeth.

Odious, odious man! Still, she was forced to admit that she was firmly in the wrong. What could have possessed her to come here in the first place? She was utterly mortified. Worse, James was still blocking the doorway and seemed completely at ease and in no hurry to move. Alicia was seized with panic. She simply had to get away. With a great effort of will she overcame her embarrassment sufficiently to look at him. She could not quite meet his eyes—almost, but not quite.

‘Lord Mullineaux.’ Alicia’s voice still sounded annoyingly squeaky with emotion. ‘I must apologise for my presence here. You are quite right to view it as an unwarrantable intrusion and I have no wish to prolong a meeting which must be so mutually disagreeable.’ She tried to gather up her skirts into her hand. ‘I shall take my leave.’

It was a creditable speech, only marred by the fact that Alicia could feel her hat slipping backwards and could see that her skirt was already tangled again with the treacherous roses. She was quite prepared to push James Mullineaux aside, so single-minded was her desire to escape the turmoil of her emotions and that unremittingly quizzical gaze.

James allowed her to wrench her skirts free of the thorns again without comment, but when it appeared that Alicia was about to flee past him he laid a restraining hand on her arm.