Elizabeth Windham was on trial, and she’d done nothing wrong to merit a place in the dock. She perched on the chair behind her father’s desk, her back not touching the leather.
“This changes everything,” her father said, pacing before her. “Your great-aunt did you no favors by leaving you that money.”
“So let me spend it,” Elizabeth replied, rising and bracing both hands on the blotter. “Anwen’s orphanage, some soldier’s relief fund, a lending library for the—”
“You will be engaged by Michaelmas, Elizabeth. Your mother’s nerves cannot take another attempt to compromise you, nor can mine. If you have no care for your parents, then consider the damage to Charlotte’s reputation when some dashing blade spirits you off to Gretna Green, or worse.”
Charlotte, Elizabeth’s only unmarried sister, was loyally pretending to have no interest in marriage, simply so Elizabeth did not face spinsterhood alone. Charlotte was also contrary, stubborn, and—though she might not admit it herself—lonely.
Elizabeth sank back into the chair behind her father’s desk. “That is not fair. Allermain behaves like an ass, and I’m the one nearly ruined, but it’s my cousins’ safety you claim is at risk. I’m not asking them to call anybody out.”
Papa took the seat opposite. He was lean, fit, the son of a duke, and nobody to trifle with, for all his charm. Had Elizabeth seen a battle light in his eyes she might have steeled herself to meet his display of temper with one of her own.
Instead, Papa’s expression was exasperated, and…weary.
Of her, of her unwillingness to marry some mincing fop with clammy hands, merely for the pleasure of risking her life every two years in childbed, to say nothing of how those clammy hands would feel on her person when taking intimate liberties in the dark.
“Elizabeth, have your mother and I set so awful an example that you dread to marry?”
“The example you set is the problem,” she replied. “You and Mama are allied in all matters, you are…you love each other, and nothing divides you. Even Uncle Percy and Aunt Esther don’t have the same enthralled air.”
Aunt and Uncle were devoted partners, Mama and Papa were besotted.
Papa sat back, crossing one booted foot over the opposite knee. “So your objection is not to the institution of marriage, but to the candidates available to share it with you?”
Elizabeth nodded, though she feared she’d given away a critical inch of ground. “I want somebody who, in thirty years, still looks at me the way you look at Mama.” That devotion was not merely display. Mama and Papa took holidays together, arrived to and departed from social functions together, and were political allies.
“Then you will be pleased to learn that the Duke of Haverford is having a house party, to which he’s invited only gentlemen suitable for consideration by his sister. Haverford is a sober fellow, responsible, and well respected. He will assemble only the best of the best for Lady Glenys, and she will choose no more than one man for herself.”
“A house party?” House parties ran the gamut from near orgies to stupefyingly dull rural purgatories.
“At Haverford Castle, not far from where your mother’s mother grew up. You and Charlotte have been invited. Your mother sent off an acceptance this morning and your aunt Arabella will chaperone.”
Aunt Arabella espoused liberal politics, and had sneaked Elizabeth the occasional sip of Christmas punch before Elizabeth had put up her hair.
“You want me to choose a husband from among a herd of men who’re trying to catch the eye of Haverford’s sister?”
Like Elizabeth, Lady Glenys St. David was fast approaching spinsterhood, and she appeared to relish the prospect. She’d not come to Town much during the past five years, not even when her ducal brother was voting his seat.
“I want you to consider possibilities,” Papa said, “enjoy the Welsh countryside, and avoid the near occasion of kidnapping. If you see a fellow you approve of, then don’t rebuff him until you’ve given the man a chance. Play fair, Elizabeth, for your mother is at the end of her patience.”
No sane Windham tempted Mama past the end of her patience. “If I’m to endure marriage, then I’ll not put up with some strutting nincompoop who lives at his clubs. I want a sensible man, in good health, honorable, solvent, and sober. A man who will support my interest in worthy charities.”
Most importantly, this paragon would have to be the un-bothersome sort, once the obvious duties had been tended to. Elizabeth would not approach the marriage bed in ignorance of those duties, but neither would she approach it with any enthusiasm.
Papa pushed to his feet, his movements uncharacteristically stiff and slow. He’d doubtless been up until all hours last night, praying and hoping for Elizabeth’s safe return.
Abruptly, she felt like a petulant, ungrateful child, one who’d been rescued from considerable peril.
“I want you happy as well as safe, Elizabeth, and the right man will double your joys and halve your sorrows. You must be willing to double his joys as well, though. You’re a fair-minded young lady. Meet the fellows halfway, and see what develops.”
Nothing would develop, because the knight in sober armor Elizabeth sought did not exist. “If I meet a man who conforms to my requirements, I will consider him. When do we leave?” she asked, rising.
Papa came around the desk and kissed her forehead, which gesture, Elizabeth had loathed for as long as she could recall. Why did nobody kiss the foreheads of gentlemen or boys?
“The day after tomorrow.”
“I’d best start packing, then.”
* * *
“You are a horrid brother,” Glenys said. “I sought to while away a few weeks of summer in the company of congenial young ladies, and you’ve turned my gathering into a summons for every solvent bachelor under the age of fifty.”
Julian Andreas Cynan Evan St. David, twelfth Duke of Haverford, gave the reins of his horse over to a groom, propped a boot on a pot of salvia, and slapped at his dusty toe with his riding gloves.
“I will be present in all my ducal splendor for the gathering before dinner, Glenys. This party was not my idea, but you are my sister and I would never bring shame upon you.”
Glenys was tall and handsomely proportioned, if not exactly pretty. She was also worried, and not very good at hiding it. She glanced around at the bustle of porters lugging trunks to the castle’s side entrance, grooms leading teams off to the carriage house, and footmen ordering each other about, then patted Julian’s lapel.
“I wish, just once, you’d do something a bit naughty, Haverford. Arrive tipsy to services, forget the words to a verse of hymnody, trip over the fringe of a carpet.”
Another baggage wagon rolled around to the side of the castle.
“I went to university, Glenys. I wasn’t a saint.”
“You went up to university more than half your lifetime ago. But for Radnor, you’d have taken firsts in every subject. One despairs of you.”
The moment took on an odd quality, such that Julian knew he would recall it decades into the future, should he live so long. He’d gone up to Oxford at sixteen, the normal age, and indeed, that had somehow become more than half his lifetime ago.
Not a few years, not a decade or so, but more than half his lifetime.
Across the crushed shell drive, Haverford Castle sat in its gleaming golden glory, turreted towers swaddled in ivy, massive front door open in welcome. The crunch of carriage wheels, the dust rising behind each conveyance, and the light rose scent of Glenys’s perfume blended into an indelible moment.
In the blink of an eye, Julian would become just one more poorly maintained portrait among the many paintings crowding onto the walls of the second floor gallery. Where were the years going, and what legacy would he leave behind?
“Perhaps you ought to find a bit of mischief to get into yourself,” Julian said.
“Me? Get into mischief? At my own house party?”
“Yes, you,” Julian said, wrapping an arm around Glenys’s shoulders and giving her a squeeze. “Be discreet, though, else I’ll have to shoot somebody, and dueling is a damned waste of a pretty morning.”
An enormous traveling coach went rattling past, making room for yet another arrival to advance up the drive and disgorge its occupants.
“I’d best greet our guests,” Glenys said. “You stink of horse, so away with you. Dust off what meager stores of charm you claim, and display them on the back terrace promptly at seven.”
She was already smiling, moving in the direction of the coach, when Julian caught her by the arm.
“Don’t wait for me to choose a wife before you consider marriage, Glenys. You aren’t responsible for looking after me.”
She shrugged free, her smile faltering. “Somebody has to look after you. The job falls to me because you won’t let anybody else near.”
She strode off, a lady very much on her dignity, and thus she could ignore Julian’s parting shot.
“If I won’t let anybody else near, then why do I have so little solitude, and even less privacy?”
* * *
“Shoot me,” Charlotte moaned. “Please, if you have any love for me at all, take out the coach pistol and end my torment.”
“I never took you for a coward, Charl,” Elizabeth replied from the coach’s backward-facing seat. “Other people are fatigued by long journeys.”
Charlotte sprawled on the forward-facing seat, one foot braced on the floor, one hand on her middle. “I am not fatigued, I am dying. Why did nobody warn me that the roads in Wales are instruments of torture?”
“It’s not the roads serving you ill, it’s probably the ale you had at the last inn.”
Charlotte was pale, dyspeptic, and had stopped to visit the bushes three times in the last five miles. Thank goodness, bushes were in generous supply in this part of Wales. Aunt had chosen to ride in the next coach back with the ladies’ maids, so that “poor Charlotte” had room to stretch out on the bench.
“I stink,” Charlotte said. “I hate to stink. A lady isn’t supposed to perspire, much less cast up her accounts, much less—dear God, have we arrived?”
The coach had turned up a long drive shaded on both sides by towering oaks. In deference to Charlotte’s condition, progress was stately.
The dwelling at the end of the drive was splendidly regal. Crenelated turrets stood at either end of a golden façade five stories tall, and the circular end of the drive curved around a fountain that sprayed water a good twenty feet into the air. Potted flowers adorned a raised front terrace and circled the fountain, creating red, white, and green splashes of color against the stonework.
“Haverford owns all this?” Charlotte asked, sitting up enough to peer out the window. “Moreland isn’t half so grand.”
“Moreland is probably two centuries more modern. You’re at death’s door, though, so what do you care?”
“I feel a miraculous revival coming on,” Charlotte said, straightening her skirts. “Or I might presently. Ye gods, I shall never drink another drop of ale.”
The coach lurched forward, and Charlotte’s pallor became more marked.
“Lie back down,” Elizabeth said. “The bushes are disobligingly sparse along this drive.”
Charlotte subsided to the bench. “I’m to be humiliated before all of society, dragged from the coach in a state of obvious ill health. Perhaps I will die in Mama’s homeland, and out of guilt, Papa will grant you the spinsterdom you long for.”
“Spinsterdom is not a word. If you die, may I have your mare?” Charlotte’s ill health was real, but as long as she responded to sororal teasing, Elizabeth’s worry would remain manageable.
“You may have my jewels.”
“You have the same pearls and pins I do.”
Charlotte put her wrist to her brow. “I yield my entire treasure to you. Elizabeth, can’t you have the coach circle around to the back of the house? I truly do not want to appear before the most eligible bachelors in the realm looking like some cupshot tweenie.”
Vanity was a reassuring sign when a sister professed to be expiring. “I’ll get you up to a bedroom, and nobody will think you’re anything but travel weary.”
“I will write to Mama of the foul brew served to the unsuspecting in her homeland. Rest assured the Welsh bachelors just lost considerable ground in the race to offer for my hand. Such misery would never befall me in England.”
“You speak as an earnest husband-hunter.”
“As a dying husband-hunter. No harm in looking over the eligibles as they pay their final respects to one cut down in the full flower of her youth. How long is this dratted drive?”
“We’re almost there.”
The coach soon swayed to a halt, and Charlotte pressed a wrinkled handkerchief to her lips. The vehicle rocked as a footman climbed down, then the door opened and the steps were unfolded.
“I suppose I must move,” Charlotte muttered.
“I can have the footmen carry you,” Elizabeth said. Charlotte was nearly gray about the mouth.
“Oh, the ignominy. Dragged to the door like some tomcat’s decapitated sparrow—”
“Our hostess approaches,” Elizabeth said, rising to accept a footman’s hand. “I’ll explain, and you’ll produce a ladylike swoon.”
Technically, Lady Glenys was their host’s unmarried sister, though thank a benevolent providence, Elizabeth didn’t have to explain Charlotte’s bilious stomach to the duke himself. In her experience, dukes did not deal well with life’s most unglamorous realities.
A delicate bunch, dukes. Marquesses and earls weren’t much sturdier.
“Miss Windham,” Lady Glenys said, bobbing a curtsy. “I’ve been anticipating the pleasure of your company in particular. Are Lady Pembroke and Miss Charlotte with you?”
Lady Glenys’s graciousness might have convinced a younger woman, but Elizabeth had been to enough house parties to know what a nerve-wracking undertaking they could be for the lady in charge. Her ladyship had probably spent the day welcoming all and sundry on the steps, while a thousand tasks went awry in the house.
“Charlotte is somewhat the worse for the journey,” Elizabeth said. “Her digestion has grown tentative over these last few miles.”
Charlotte peeked her head out of the coach. A decapitated sparrow would have been more attractive than the pale, bedraggled creature blinking in the late afternoon sunshine.
“My heavenly stars,” Lady Glenys said. “You poor dear. I am so sorry you’re feeling poorly, and will have you up to your rooms in no time.”
Charlotte tottered from the coach, a footman assisting on one side, Elizabeth on the other.
“I’d curtsy,” Charlotte said, “but I’ve no desire to end up face down on your cobbles.”
“Hush, dear,” Elizabeth said as Lady Glenys took a step back. “We’ll simply follow her ladyship into the house and find you a nice, soft, private place to settle yourself.”
The footmen stepped away, hands behind their backs. Lady Glenys looked torn between distress and sympathy, and Charlotte hung heavily on Elizabeth’s arm.
“Can you walk to the house?” Elizabeth asked.
Charlotte glanced up at the crenelated façade, her expression grim. “If I must.”
Why would nobody offer aid? Grooms held teams for two coaches and a landau behind the Windham coach, and Lady Glenys wrung her hands.
“Come along,” Elizabeth said, tucking an arm around Charlotte’s waist. “It’s not far, and you’re a Windham.”
Bootsteps crunched to Elizabeth’s left, and then Charlotte’s weight was plucked away.
“Allow me to aid the lady,” said a tall gentleman in riding attire. “I apologize for presuming, but I’m guessing a bad batch of Merlin Jones’s summer ale is to blame. Lady Glenys, which bedroom?”
He smelled of horses and hayfields, his boots were dusty, and his dark hair was less than tidy. Charlotte’s rescuer had the steady gaze of a man used to solving problems with common sense and hard work. He held her as if striding about with a full-grown woman in his arms was part of his daily routine.
Charlotte would be utterly safe with this man.
Every woman was safe around this man. That conviction landed in Elizabeth’s mind with the same certainty she felt when she picked up a new book and grasped in the very first lines that great treasure lay on the subsequent pages.
Clearly travel had taken a toll on her wits.
“Take her to the Dovecote,” Lady Glenys said. “Both Miss Windham and Miss Charlotte are in the Dovecote.”
Charlotte looked to be enjoying her first convincing ladylike swoon.
“Miss Windham,” the man said. “If you’ll come along?”
He had dark auburn hair, green eyes, and his expression held no flirtation, no suggestion of humor at Charlotte’s expense. Sober and steady when sober and steady were desperately needed.
“My thanks,” Elizabeth said, falling in step beside him. “Who is this Merlin Jones?” And who are you?
“He’s the innkeeper at the nearest coaching inn, and known to occasionally mix up a bad batch of ale. Because he serves the suspect brew only to those traveling on, he’s not held accountable for his mistakes.”
Charlotte’s rescuer spoke with the lilting diction of the educated Welshman, and his fitness was such that even carrying Charlotte up a grand curved staircase, his strength was not taxed. Something about the angle of his jaw suggested Mr. Jones would be held accountable this time.
“The Dovecote is one of the tower suites,” he said. “The views are lovely, and you’re close to both the family wing and the guest wing. If the apartment is not to your liking, I’m sure Lady Glenys can see to other arrangements.”
He was local, then, a neighbor, cousin, or close friend of the family. Was he a guest at the house party? For all his athleticism, he might also be a well-read man, which was Elizabeth’s favorite sort of fellow.
“I’m sure the accommodations will be fine. Charlotte, how are you feeling?”
“A little better,” she said, lashes fluttering. “What a magnificent castle.”
“It can be cold as the devil’s root cellar in winter,” the gentleman said. “This is your suite.”
He carried Charlotte straight into a circular chamber graced with three windows. The walls were easily two feet thick, the plaster a mellow cream. A single red rose sat in a crystal vase on the sideboard.
The gentleman set Charlotte on a tufted sofa and regarded her, his hands on his hips. In his dusty boots and with a streak of dirt on one sleeve, he might have been a steward assessing a heifer gone off her feed.
“Fresh air, I think,” he said, wrestling two of the windows open. The latch screeched in protest, but the breeze was heavenly. He then knelt before the sideboard. “At the risk of being indelicate, you might also need this.”
He rose, holding a porcelain basin painted with daffodils.
“At the risk of being pathetic,” Elizabeth replied, taking the basin, “we thank you. You are being very kind, sir.”
Though not exactly proper. Why didn’t the fellow introduce himself?
The gentleman bowed. “I’ll leave you, then, ladies. A footman is on duty at all times at the top of the steps and will alert the kitchen should you need anything. Welcome to Haverford.”
Elizabeth dipped a curtsy, and then took the place beside Charlotte when the gentleman had quietly closed the door on his way out. He was a handsome specimen, in a mature, un-fancy way.
A bit short on charm, though. “Shall you live, Charl?”
“I’ve been carried to my boudoir in the arms of a duke,” Charlotte said, flopping against the back of the sofa. “I’m not sure I can bear the strain such an honor has put on my maidenly nerves.”
“Your color has improved, but do you mean to tell me that was His Grace of Haverford?”