Nicola Cornick (13 page)

‘Extortion?’ Annabella asked politely. ‘Blackmail? The possibilities are endless…’

Mr Buckle looked scandalised, as he always did when someone suggested that Broseley’s business methods had been less than scrupulous. ‘Mrs St Auby! No, indeed, nothing of the kind! The house was offered as repayment for some gambling debt—a wager between your father and the owner, which he later regretted. But the deal was sound, if a little…’ he cleared his throat ‘…a little unorthodox, shall we say? Your father,’ Mr Buckle added, nodding sagely, ‘always preferred property to money in these circumstances. It’s value always increased handsomely and made him a splendid profit!’

Annabella sighed. Mr Buckle sighed too, but for a different reason.

‘But now the owner’s son is threatening to take the case to court, claiming that the arrangement was illegal. He evidently feels very strongly about the manner in which his father lost that particular piece of his heritage! He is not a poor man, but I believe he wants the property back for family and sentimental reasons.’ Mr Buckle frowned. ‘I have to say that he has been somewhat intemperate in his demand to settle the issue.’

The faintest scent of roses drifted across the room to Annabella, and at the same moment the faintest shadow touched her heart, the smallest of suspicions…

‘Where is the house?’ she asked, her throat suddenly dry.

Mr Buckle shuffled the papers again. ‘In Berkshire, I believe…’

‘…a house on the Berkshire Downs, just north of the little village of Lambourn…’

‘…the late owner was a Sir Charles Weston…’

‘…my father died a few years ago…But it is a long time since I have been there…’

Annabella could hear the echo of her own voice: ‘For what reason have you sought me out, sir?’

The blinding tears came into her eyes, blurring the outline of the beautiful red roses. Through her numb despair, she remembered that she had suspected that Sir William Weston had had a reason for pursuing their acquaintance. He had soothed her doubts, made her fall in love with him, pretended that he cared for her too. How ironic that Miss Hurst had been correct all the time, that Sir William’s charm was a means to an end, a means of regaining his patrimony one way or the other…Mr Buckle carried on speaking for some time, but Annabella had no idea what he said.

‘I understand how you feel, my dear,’ Caroline Kilgaren said, her piquant face creased with anxiety and distress, ‘but will you not wait a little? This hasty departure surely cannot aid matters. And I am persuaded that Sir William would wish to explain the situation to you himself—’

She broke off. Long experience of Annabella’s sister Alicia had taught her when she was wasting her breath, and in the past few weeks she had realised that Annabella was more like her sister than anyone had ever realised.

Annabella was very pale, sitting tense and upright in the chair opposite Caroline’s. Her eyes burned with
fury and her expression was set. ‘I do not wish to hear any of Sir William’s excuses, ma’am.’

The wind hurled another flurry of rain against the parlour window.

Caroline sighed, abandoning that particular tack. ‘And I was so hoping that Alicia would send a letter soon, and invite you to stay with her! That would have solved all your problems! You did write to her, did you not?’

Annabella nodded slowly, regretting the impulse that had prompted her to set pen to paper and contact her sister. ‘I did, but I do beg you, ma’am, not to tell her of this. Sir William’s friends should not be embarrassed by a division of loyalties! I have no wish to cause trouble for my sister, nor indeed for you, ma’am.’ Her hard tone softened a little. ‘You have shown me nothing but kindness, and I do thank you for it! But my mind is made up. I travel on the morrow.’

Caroline gave a graceful shrug. ‘I can see that there is no dissuading you! The house is fit for habitation, I take it?’

‘Oh, yes!’ Annabella lied brightly, trying to dismiss the memory of Mr Buckle’s horrified face as he had begged her to allow him at least to have the house cleaned for her. He had been deeply disapproving when she had expressed her intention of travelling to Larkswood immediately. Realising that something had upset Annabella, but not understanding the cause, he had entreated her to be reasonable and had evidently thought her a half-wit to go to a place that had not been inhabited for three years. His protestations had fallen on deaf ears, however. In the space of a
few minutes, Annabella had become so determined to claim her inheritance from under Will Weston’s nose that she would stop at nothing.

Will Weston…First, he had made it impossible for her to continue living under the St Aubys’ roof by showing her another, far more desirable existence. She had fallen into the very trap she had wanted to avoid, the trap of thinking that the life led by Will and his friends was for her, that she could become a part of it. Worse, she had allowed herself to fall in love with romance and with him equally, and now the romance had gone but her painful love for him remained, twisted out of all recognition. She could not bear it, but it seemed she must…

‘And you have a companion to accompany you?’ Caroline pursued, recalling Annabella to the present, to the musty room and the claustrophobic life she was trapped in. ‘It would not be the done thing at all for you to live at Larkswood alone!’

‘Have no fear on that score!’ Annabella had already chosen the only maid in the St Auby household who was not slovenly and sullen. Whether she would pass muster as a companion was another matter entirely, but she would have to do, for there was no one else.

Caroline still looked dubious. She got to her feet and picked her reticule up from the table. ‘Then I can only wish you good luck. But, Annabella—’ she gave her an impulsive hug ‘—if you ever need anything at all, please let me know! I do not like matters to end this way!’

Annabella blinked back the tears. ‘It is far better—’

‘Will was only ever interested in you for yourself,’ Caroline said abruptly, to cover her own emotion. She
could not bear the heartbreaking, stricken face of the girl before her. It was so clear that Annabella St Auby was hopelessly in love with Will Weston, and that love made her feelings of anger and betrayal all the more intense. And Caroline was a loyal friend who could not bear to see two people she cared for make such a mull of so promising a situation. ‘Will would never have married you just for Larkswood,’ she said, trying again when Annabella’s stony silence was her only reply.

‘Oh, I am persuaded of that,’ Annabella said, with bitter anguish. ‘He would never wish to tie himself to an unloved wife for the sake of so small a property, not when he is so rich!’

‘Then why cannot you believe that he cares for you?’ Caroline asked, perplexed.

Annabella shrugged angrily. ‘Because he did not tell me about Larkswood in the first place! Because he did not tell me the truth, did not trust me! Perhaps he thought to make me fall in love with him so that he could persuade me to sell Larkswood back to him at less than its value, hoping that I, poor fool, would be so besotted that I only wished to please him! Perhaps he was just trifling with me as a small revenge against the family which cheated his father out of a pretty property! I do not know, since he did not see fit to tell me the truth!’ Her voice fell again. ‘He did not trust me,’ she repeated.

Caroline shook her head, aware that it was pointless to persist. Annabella’s sense of betrayal was too raw, too new, for her to listen to reasoned argument. ‘I shall not say goodbye, for I am sure we shall meet again,’ Caroline said slowly, devoutly hoping it would
be true. ‘Farewell then, Annabella, and good luck!’ And she went out, tripping over Lady St Auby in the doorway and giving her so searing a glare that the older woman positively shrank away.

The carriage took Caroline swiftly back to Mundell Hall, her shopping trip forgotten. She was greeted with the news that the men were out shooting, and she had no taste for the company of Miss Mundell and Miss Hurst. She hurried to the study, paused briefly as she remembered Annabella begging her not to tell anyone about the dispute with Will, then called for pen and ink and settled down at the escritoire to write a hasty note to her oldest and dearest friend, Alicia Mullineaux.

Annabella’s sense of misery and disillusion had grown with the passage of time. Too inexperienced and too in love to be able to achieve even a degree of equanimity over Will Weston’s behaviour, she had dwelt on his betrayal until she was quite sure that she hated him. It angered her that her mind seemed incapable of blocking him out, surprising her at the most inappropriate moments with the image of him, or a memory of some time they had spent together. When she dreamed one night that she was in the rose arbour at Mundell with him again, she awoke confused and tearful, feeling betrayed all over again.

To add to her woes, her impulsive decision to move in to Larkswood had proved to be nothing short of disaster. On the day after Mr Buckle’s visit, she and the maid, Susan, had left Taunton at first light for the long and arduous journey into Oxfordshire. The coach had lurched and jolted its way along the roads until
they both ached in every joint. Annabella had just enough money to pay their fare on the stage as far as Faringdon, and from there a kindly carter had taken them across the wide, flat valley towards Lambourn. The carter had dropped them by the gate of Larkswood just as the sun was sinking behind the hills, those sweeping chalk hills which Sir William Weston had described so memorably that time on the terrace at Mundell. They had been tired and dusty from the journey, the last part of it jarring over rough tracks behind the labouring horse. As the carter set off again up the steep track, a silence descended that seemed as old as time. The evening sky was bright blue, and the setting sun gilded the rosy sarsen stone of the house with a warm glow. A tabby cat was sitting in the deserted courtyard, its golden eyes watching them unblinkingly. And then a rat had dashed across the yard and into an outhouse, the cat had raced after it, and Susan had screamed and flung herself into the arms of a young man who had just come through the field gate to see what was going on.

It had turned out to be a useful introduction. The young man, Owen Linton, was the tenant farmer at Lark Farm, and Susan was a very pretty girl, and soon the besotted young man was at their beck and call for such matters as mending doors and hammering down loose floorboards. But despite that, they were fighting a losing battle.

Annabella sighed to herself, thinking of all that needed to be done. Larkswood was a neat and charming house, standing foursquare a little back from the track which linked Lambourn with the road east to Oxford. It had four bedrooms, a dining-room and a
well-appointed drawing-room which looked out over the gardens and the orchard. Between the house and the farm was the cobbled courtyard, and at one end was all that remained of ‘The Old House’, as Owen Linton put it, a small medieval manor which had once stood on the spot and was now reduced to a couple of rooms and a pile of stones. Not, Annabella thought, that the old house was much less habitable than the new. Three years of neglect had left their mark in damp walls, rotten carpets and curtains, and mildewed furniture. There were mice in the kitchen, despite the presence of the tabby cat, and the only water had to be drawn each day from a well in the courtyard. Paint was peeling, tiles loose, floorboards squeaky. They were five miles from the nearest village, and had no transport…

Annabella sighed again. The spar that turned the well chain was rotten and the chain itself old and rusty from disuse. She could hear the bucket splashing about below but the handle stubbornly refused to turn. She could feel herself perspiring in the morning sun, feel her headscarf slipping back as her face grew redder with her exertions. It was just another of the small irritations which now made up their everyday life.

This is all Sir William Weston’s fault, Annabella thought, turning her anger once more into the iron resolve that she would keep Larkswood as her own and never let it go. She would show him that she was not to be charmed and brushed aside when the fancy took him. Let him challenge her right to the house in a court of law if he wished! She would never yield.

The sound of hoofbeats on the track distracted her and she straightened up. Visitors were rare here, and
except for the odd cart or hay wain, few vehicles used the track over the hills. Annabella pushed her headscarf back from her honey-coloured hair and the cobwebs on it tickled her neck. It had proved unexpectedly useful to have nothing but old clothes, for she had no need for finery here. It could not have been more different from the splendour of Mundell.

The horseman turned the bend in the track, cantered into the yard and slid out of the saddle, hitching his reins over the fence in a gesture which suggested that he had done the same thing a hundred times before.

‘You!’

For a moment, Annabella stared in total disbelief. The ride across the valley had ruffled Will Weston’s tawny hair, but it was the only sign of dishevellment to compare with her own disarray. Those compelling blue eyes were as vital as ever as they rested upon her and he moved towards her across the cobbled yard with the same contained grace that had always drawn her gaze. Annabella found that the passage of four weeks had done nothing to lessen the shock and pain of seeing him again. She could not be indifferent to him. She told herself that she hated him.

‘Good afternoon, Annabella.’ It was almost a physical pain to hear her name spoken again in that well-remembered voice, the resonant tone, cool, considered, authoritative…She had admired him so much, she realised suddenly, and felt all the more disillusioned as a result.