The Deathly Portent (46 page)

“With reluctance,” said Doctor Meldreth, “I am forced to condone your decision, Lady Francis.” He looked to the village’s patroness. “My lady?”

Lady Ferrensby heaved a gusty sigh. “It appears I have little choice.”

Cassie clapped her hands. “You will not regret it, ma’am, I promise you. Aidan and I will take care of the poor woman, you will see.”

Ottilia raised her brows, but her question was forestalled by Francis. “Do we take it felicitations are in order, Kinnerton?”

Both parties flushed, and the vicar cleared his throat. “It is scarcely the moment, but yes. Cassie has consented to be my wife.”

The congratulations took a little time, and Ottilia, having said her piece, took the chance to change her seat for one next to Lady Ferrensby. The latter eyed her with suspicion, and Ottilia had to laugh.

“Pray don’t look at me as at a scorpion, ma’am.”

“Your sting is quite as deadly,” retorted her ladyship, but a gleam entered her eye, and she set a hand on one of Ottilia’s. “I am decidedly ungrateful, am I not? Without you, I cannot think how we would have fared.” She sighed again, shaking her head. “Alas for Witherley!”

“Come, ma’am, the village will recover. People are amazingly resilient, don’t you find? They will each find their way to cope. Those with a personal tragedy will have the hardest time of it, but even they will learn to live again.”

Lady Ferrensby gave a wan smile. “You are right, of course. If it were not for the weight of this business with Evelina Radlett—” She broke off, frowning. “And if that was not bad enough, you must needs set us a potential scandal by placing her with Horace Netherburn, of all things!”

Ottilia smiled but hastened to reassure her. “You need have no fear on that score. Alice was fetched early this morning to attend her, and we will say that Evelina sought refuge with Mr. Netherburn in the early hours when she heard of Miss Beeleigh’s demise.”

Lady Ferrensby fairly glared. “If you imagine anyone will believe that for one moment, you must have windmills in your head.”

“Yes, my husband is apt to say the same.”

“I am not in the least surprised.”

A gurgle escaped Ottilia. “But I wish you will not fret,
ma’am. I am persuaded Mr. Netherburn will do the honourable thing and take Evelina off your hands within a sennight.”

A
s Ottilia relayed this passage to her spouse when they were at last at liberty, Francis looked at her with horror.

“Do you tell me this cursed village is about to be engulfed by a spate of weddings?”

“Well, two perhaps.”

“Two too many,” Francis said flatly. “Where the devil is Ryde? I will send him straight off to discover when that wretched carriage is going to be ready.”

Ottilia sipped at her coffee, a fresh pot having been supplied by Hannah Pakefield, once more upon her feet and pathetically grateful.

“I think I will suggest to Mr. Netherburn that he hold his wedding breakfast here,” she said, heedless of the exasperated snort that escaped her spouse. “Poor Hannah is going to be one patron short as of now.”

“Not at all,” said Francis. “Don’t forget that Cassie, shortly to become Mrs. Kinnerton, is pledged to take care of Evelina Radlett. Severally or together, the four of them should amply supply Hannah’s shortage.”

“Yes, and now I think of it,” Ottilia agreed eagerly, “there is no Molly to fret poor Hannah with her jealousies, so I daresay she may open her doors to lesser men. I will suggest to her that she court Mr. Uddington’s custom.”

She took another serene sip of her coffee before she noticed an alarming look of frowning indignation in the features of her husband. Her brows rose as she stared at him.

“What?”

“If you imagine, my Lady Fan, that you are going to remain one moment longer than is necessary in this Godforsaken village, merely so that you may go about rearranging the lives of the inhabitants—”

Ottilia broke in without ceremony. “Nothing of the sort. Merely an idle whim, my dearest love. You may remove me at any time you choose.”

He regarded her with an eye quite as scorpion-like as that of Lady Ferrensby earlier. “You are not, then, planning anything further?”

“Not in the least.”

“Such as helping Bertha Duggleby to search for this fictitious pot of gold?”

“You know, I believe it does exist,” said Ottilia cheerfully. “I daresay she will tear the place down brick by brick, and I hope she finds it.”

“Or ridding Cassie Dale of this tendency to have visions?”

“Kinnerton will do that, though I daresay she will be far too fearful of consequences to divulge a word if she does have them.”

“Nor attending these pestilential weddings,” pursued her spouse doggedly.

The word threw Ottilia’s mind out of kilter. An abrupt desire to weep caught in her throat, and she could not speak. She stared helplessly at Francis and saw his expression alter. Concern leapt in his eyes, and he rose swiftly from his chair and came around the table.

“What is amiss, my darling?”

Ottilia felt the stinging tears and tried to sniff them back, swallowing on her thickened throat. Francis seized her, catching her up from the chair and pulling her into the safe haven of his arms. Ottilia clung, gulping down the rising sobs.

“My love, my dear one, what in the world is the matter?”

The murmur in her ear served only to make things worse. Unable to help herself, she wept briefly into his shoulder, hiccoughing on her breath as she tried desperately to say what was in her heart.

“Oh, Fan, I love you so.”

Finding her voice at last, she drew away a little, gazing
up into his beloved features. His dark eyes were tender, but puzzlement warred a little with dismay.

“Is that why you are weeping?”

Ottilia’s breath shuddered in her chest. “No. It is because I never want to go through that again.”

He drew her head back into his shoulder and held her so. “Nor I,” he said feelingly. “I will never forget the moment when I realised it was you tied to that infernal stake.”

Ottilia jerked her head up. “No! I don’t mean that. I care nothing for that.”

Francis was frowning now. “What then? I don’t understand you.”

She drew an unsteady breath, and her hands came up to rest against his chest. “I never want to doubt again. Not for an instant. I could not bear to think we had made a mistake to marry.”

For a moment he said nothing. Then, to her incredulity, he let out a laugh, and she read relief in it. “Is that all?”

“All?”

Francis shifted back and caught her hands, holding them hard. “My darling Tillie, for all your brilliant mind, you are a hopeless idealist.”

A little of the darkness she had been harbouring these several days began to lift. “How so?”

His smile was tender as he released her hands, instead using his fingers to wipe the straying wetness from her cheeks. “Do you imagine we can possibly get through a marriage without doubting its wisdom? Either of us?”

“I want to, Fan,” she uttered on a desperate note.

Francis kissed her. “Then try. For my part, I am prepared to doubt with all the power at my disposal.” Then he grinned. “Don’t look so crestfallen, my dear one. The joy of it is the repeated realisation that marrying you is the wisest thing I could have done.”

She sighed, a little comforted. “Even if I should involve myself in another such imbroglio?”

Francis’s eyes narrowed. “If you ever dare to so much as whisper any such intention—”

Upon which Ottilia thought it prudent to demonstrate her affection in a fashion that must prevent her darling Fan from completing whatever dire threat he had been about to utter.

An avid reader from an early age, Elizabeth Bailey grew up in colonial Africa under unconventional parentage and with theatre in the blood. Back in England, she trod the boards until discovering her true métier as a writer, when she fulfilled an early addiction to Heyer by launching into historical romance with Harlequin Mills & Boon, and fuelled her writing with a secondary career teaching and directing drama.

Now retired from teaching, and with eighteen romances published, she has switched to crime. Elizabeth still occasionally directs plays for a local group where she lives in West Sussex, England. She also finds time to assess novels and run a blog with tips to help new writers improve. For more information, go to
elizabethbailey.­co.­uk
.