Chapter Four
Dawn made her way around the outside of the castle toward the road Lord Braithwaite had told her led to Haven Hall. She did not care if she was seen. Instead, her head was full of the unexpected fun of their clandestine exit, and the glimpse she’d had of the earl’s easy relationship with his servants and his little sister. It contrasted rather endearingly with the cynical, brooding gentleman she had met last night, and the responsible lord who had found her asleep on the floor this morning.
So lost was she in her own pleasant thoughts that she didn’t see her father until he was almost upon her, flanked by her brother Jeremiah and Matthew, whom she had refused to marry.
“Dawn,” her father said, dragging her off the road and into the trees. The others crowded after.
“What do you want?” Dawn demanded, shaking Ezra off.
“What have you got?” Ezra retorted. “You look empty-handed to me.”
Dawn stared at him. Deliberately, she raised her hands, palm upwards.
Ezra scowled.
Jeremiah sneered, “Didn’t you get that you were to make the most of your night of luxury?”
Ignoring him, Dawn said to her father, “You sold me to him so I could steal for you?”
“I didn’t sell you, I lent you,” Ezra disputed. “And there’s no need to get on your high horse. His lordship is an open book. I knew he wouldn’t touch you.”
Deliberately, Dawn smiled at him. “Did you?”
Ezra’s eyes widened momentarily, but it was Matthew who grasped her arm. “Did that—?”
“Let go of me!” Dawn exclaimed, yanking herself free. “None of you has any right to know, let alone complain. And you’d better vanish, for he’s right behind me and he knows I’m not pleased with you.”
“She’s teasing us,” Ezra said in relief. “Provoking us. Don’t rise to it. Very well, my girl, you’ve had your fun and made your point. Have another day of luxury. Bring us something beautiful at sunset and we’ll be off.”
“Someone is coming!” Jeremiah hissed. “On horseback!”
Approaching hooves could be heard quite clearly, cantering along the forest track.
“Told you,” Dawn said serenely and brushed past them on to the track.
In truth, she had no idea whether or not the rider was Lord Braithwaite or not. He had said only that he would catch up with her on the road to Haven Hall. He hadn’t specified his means. But her heart lifted unaccountably as she recognized the straight figure on the big, grey stallion.
Being unaware of her family’s skulking presence in the trees, he grinned spontaneously when he saw her. Slowing only a little, he bent from the waist, stretching down one inviting hand. She grasped it and jumped, and he swung her up in front of him. An instant later, he lifted himself behind the saddle and settled her comfortably between his confining arms.
He kicked the horse to a gallop, and she laughed aloud, clinging to the horse’s mane as they sped toward the road. Such physical closeness to a man she barely knew was an exciting novelty to her. That the man was a “foreign” lord who had kissed her so sweetly last night—even if he couldn’t remember it—added an extra thrill. In truth, she liked Lord Braithwaite, the way he talked to her, the way he smiled, his humor, his looks, his feel…
The visions she had glimpsed so briefly when she touched his bare hand last night rushed into her mind once more. A tangle of naked limbs, an overwhelming sense of closeness and shattering pleasure… The images had flashed by so quickly, yet so intensely, it had crossed her mind that she was his lover. The possibility thrilled her all over again, adding to the peculiar happiness of riding with him like this. The warmth of his strong body seeped into her back. The dreams could come true. This amazing man, this stranger, could be her lover. Lord Braithwaite…Gervaise, his little sister had called him.
But her euphoria did not last long. How could she rob a man who made her so happy? One, moreover, who had shown her nothing but kindness. Now that her anger was spent, and her father had explained his actions to some degree, it didn’t really enter her head to disobey him—although she was content enough to punish him a little.
“You are quiet,” Lord Braithwaite—Gervaise—said at last. “Is something bothering you.”
Dawn pulled herself together. “I was wondering how you plan to introduce me to Mrs.…Benedict, is it? At Haven Hall. I can’t imagine she’ll want me in her drawing room drinking tea.”
He only shrugged. “She is a lady of superior understanding,” he said.
“I’m not certain she’ll understand your bringing your gypsy peculiar to call upon her.”
A breath of laughter escaped him, stirring her hair. “Peculiar? Where did you learn a term like that?”
“Where do you think?” she retorted. “I’m not one of your sheltered little misses, am I?”
“Well, I’m sure Mrs. Benedict will see at once that you are sheltered enough not to be my peculiar!”
“Who is your peculiar, then?” she asked, just because she wanted to know. And then she blushed, for in any company, it was improper not to say scandalous question.
His lordship, however, merely regarded her with amusement. “What makes you think I have a mistress?”
“You’re handsome and rich,” she said cynically. “And so far as I can tell, you are not married. You have no reason not to have one.”
He continued to regard her with tolerant amusement, until she got a crick in her neck.
She faced forward again. “Well, whoever she is, you should give her up.”
Braithwaite blinked. “I should?”
“Definitely.”
“Why?”
“Because she is clearly not satisfactory. If she were, you would not have looked at me as you did last night. Nor kissed me. She is not for you.”
Behind her, he had gone very still, and it struck her with a little frisson of fear that she had gone too far. She felt his burning gaze on the top of her head, but she doubted it was the heat of desire this time.
“You think me disloyal,” he said, surprising her. “But I assure you, the lady and I have a perfect understanding.”
It was the first time he had admitted the lady’s existence, but Dawn spared no time to crow over her victory.
“If you cannot be faithful, you should not be with her.”
“You are very keen on loyalty and faithfulness,” he observed.
“I am,” she agreed. “And that is why I would not marry Matthew.”
“He would not be faithful?” Braithwaite guessed.
“I would not be faithful,” Dawn corrected. “I do not love him enough. Or at all really.”
Something touched the top of her head. She thought it might have been his cheek. “You are delightful,” he said with a slightly shaky voice. He was laughing at her, but she didn’t mind. It was the right kind of laughter.
In the end, the problem of being conducted to Mrs. Benedict’s drawing room was solved by the fact that they met her on the terrace, where she was walking toward the front door with a basket over her arm.
She turned at the sound of the trotting horse, and Dawn saw that she was rather younger than she had expected, in her twenties, perhaps, and beautiful. Dawn hoped uneasily that this was not the lady with whom his lordship had a perfect understanding.
“My lord!” The lady greeted him with a smile, changing directions to come to meet them. “What a pleasant surprise. I hope all is well at the castle?”
“Of course,” Lord Braithwaite replied with a hint of humor. “Do you think we only call on you when we are in trouble?”
“I hope you would all call more often than that!” Mrs. Benedict’s calm eyes focused on Dawn as she spoke. They betrayed no outrage, merely a mild interest. “And whom have you brought with you?”
“This is a new friend of mine, Miss Boswell. Dawn, this is Mrs. Benedict.” He dismounted as he spoke, and Dawn jumped to the ground before he could help her.
“How do you do?” Mrs. Benedict said in friendly enough tones, although there was inevitable curiosity in her expression.
Dawn nodded curtly in reply. She tried to dip a curtsey, but she wasn’t sure it worked.
“Did you come to see Javan?” Mrs. Benedict asked. “I’m afraid he’s taken Rosa into Blackhaven.”
“Not in particular,” Lord Braithwaite said. “To be frank, I wanted you to show us the old Gardyn portraits.”
Although this wasn’t quite what he had agreed to with Dawn, it would at least get them into the house.
“Really?” Walking beside them to the front door, Mrs. Benedict looked intrigued. “What can you want with those?”
Quite casually, Braithwaite tugged the hood of Dawn’s cloak part way down and Mrs. Benedict’s eyes widened.
“What beautiful hair,” she said faintly. She opened the door and went in.
Braithwaite stood back, ushering Dawn before him. Her heart began to beat faster as she reluctantly stepped over the threshold. A shiver shook her whole body. She gazed around her, at the paneled entrance hall and the staircase leading to the upper floors. The house was not massive like Braithwaite Castle, but something about it moved her. And although it was what she had come for, she was afraid to touch the door, the walls.
Instead, she held herself rigid to prevent the visions touching her. “I don’t wish to embarrass you,” she said gruffly to Mrs. Benedict. “I’m a Romany, and I know you don’t want me in your house.”
“I know no such thing,” Mrs. Benedict said at once. “Like everyone else, you are welcome unless you prove otherwise. The Gardyns’ pictures are all up in the attic now. If you like, I’ll take you up? Marion,” she added to the maid who had appeared. “Bring tea and scones up to the attic, if you please.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the maid replied as though there was nothing odd in this request.
Dawn followed the lady of the house up two flights of stairs and then along a winding passage to a door and another, narrower, steeper set of stairs to a crowded attic in the roof space.
“Any further word from Julius Gardyn?” Lord Braithwaite asked.
Mrs. Benedict sighed. “He wrote that he will be in Blackhaven at the end of the month to make arrangements. In other words, to evict us. Javan still hopes to change his mind, for we have come to look on Haven Hall as our home. I shall be sorry to leave.”
“I wish I could help,” Braithwaite said ruefully. “But as things stand between him and me, my interference could only hurt your cause with him.”
“I know. Perhaps Javan can glower at him.”
“He does have a spectacular glower,” Braithwaite allowed.
Mrs. Braithwaite walked into the attic. It wasn’t dark, daylight flooded in through two skylights and a row of tiny windows. “We don’t come up here much,” she apologized, pausing as if to remember something. “These are largely the Gardyns’ things that were either put away before Javan took the house, or by us because we didn’t like them. We did remove an old portrait from the study last week, though—it was covered by a bookcase!—and put it up here with the other paintings, so I should know… Ah, here they are.”
Mrs. Benedict bent and drew a Holland cover off a stack of large, framed pictures. They stood in two rows. A man from one and a woman from the other glared at Dawn as though for her temerity in encroaching on their domain.
With a slightly crooked smile, she knelt to examine them.
“That’s the old fellow we took out of the study,” Mrs. Benedict said.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Lord Braithwaite replied, crouching down beside Dawn. “Guaranteed to make you feel guilty about something. Besides, he’s wearing a wig, so we can’t see his hair.” He reached over and removed the “old fellow” to a third stack, revealing the head and shoulders of a much younger and slightly more modern man. His hair was long and tied behind his head and he wore the distant expression of a dreamer.
Without quite intending to, Dawn reached out and touched the frame, and then the painting itself. A shiver ran up her arm.
“Robert Gardyn,” Lord Braithwaite said. “As a young man. Before his marriage, I would think. Look at his hair.”
The hair was clearly the reason he had noticed Dawn in the first place. More than fair, it shone around his face, a reddish blond of a very similar color to her own. Her heart ached for the tragedy of his life, but his portrait had nothing to do with his lost child or his early death. She felt none of that, just some unworldly, almost fey quality. Which was probably more imagination than anything else.
“Mrs. Barbara Gardyn,” Mrs. Benedict read from the plate beneath the other painting. “Was this his wife?”
“Yes,” Lord Braithwaite replied. He reached across Dawn at the same time as she touched the portrait of the lost child’s mother.
Their hands brushed together and her breath caught. She was not concentrating on him so there were no visions or foreknowledge thrown at her. Only an electric, very physical awareness. Because he had looked at her so last night? Other men had looked at her with desire, inspiring little more than indifference or even disgust in her.
Forcing herself, she concentrated on the lady in the portrait. Gentle, beautiful, her future tragedy already in her eyes. Dawn frowned. “Her eyes should laugh,” she blurted. “She should not be unhappy.”
“Should anyone?” Mrs. Benedict murmured. She lifted Barbara aside, then a haughty, powdered lady in a ridiculously hooped dress. And then she paused.
This one was of a young lady of the last century, little more than a girl, and she, too, had the red-fair hair.
“Theresa Gardyn,” Mrs. Benedict read and turned her gaze on Dawn.
“Robert’s aunt,” Lord Braithwaite clarified. “A famous beauty in her day and made some brilliant marriage, I believe. My mother knew her.”
He spoke oddly, though, as if not paying attention to his words. Dawn glanced at him and found he was staring at her. Both he and Mrs. Benedict looked from her to the portrait and back again.
“What?” she asked uneasily. Nervously, she pushed her hair back from her face.
“Excuse me,” Mrs. Benedict said with a hint of apology. Before Dawn could ask for clarification, the lady gathered up Dawn’s hair, drawing it in a pile to the top of her head. “You could be Theresa Gardyn.”
Alarmed by this attitude, Dawn glanced at Lord Braithwaite for help. But he, too, was still staring at her.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said softly. He blinked. “I beg your pardon, ladies. The likeness is…extraordinary. Dawn, how old are you?”
“Nineteen. Why?”
Again, he exchanged glances with Mrs. Benedict, but at that moment, a maid clattered in with a tea tray.
“Where shall I put it, ma’am?” she called.
“Just set it on the floor,” Mrs. Benedict said, rising in haste. “I’ll fetch it.”
Of course, Lord Braithwaite, being a gentleman, went with her and carried it back to where Dawn still knelt, slightly lost among the portraits.
“Do you know,” Mrs. Benedict said, “you don’t really look like a gypsy?”
Dawn had heard it before. She only shrugged. “Some of us are lighter skinned. My people do intermarry with yours on occasion.”
“Then, Ezra Boswell is your real father?” Lord Braithwaite said.
Dawn stared at him in something very like panic. “Of course he is.”
Mrs. Benedict set a cup of tea in a saucer beside her. “The resemblance is quite startling.”
“You’re clutching at straws,” Dawn said intensely. She glared at the earl. “Look, I’ve already told you, I’ll pretend to be Eleanor Gardyn. Just don’t tell yourself the same lie.”
“It bothers you,” Lord Braithwaite observed. He shrugged and picked up the dainty tea cup in his large hand. Somehow, he managed it with elegance. “Don’t worry.”
“Why should I worry?” she retorted. “I’m not even speaking to my father.”
“Have you always lived with him?” Braithwaite asked.
“I’ve always travelled with him,” she corrected.
“Then you remember no other life?”
“Apart from those whose fortunes I tell? No, why would I?”
“Then you wouldn’t like to be a lady of property and wealth?”
Dawn just wanted to be away from them, from the house. “Who wouldn’t?” she returned, gulping her tea so fast it burned her throat. She snatched up a scone. “But I’d never live in one place. I’m a gypsy.” And yet she’d asked him about living in the cottage. Living in one place had entered her head.
Mrs. Benedict opened her mouth, to say what Dawn didn’t know, for Lord Braithwaite forestalled her, shaking his head infinitesimally. Mrs. Benedict closed her mouth again. Braithwaite searched Dawn’s face, but behind his eyes, his brain seemed to be busy with other things. At last, he set his cup back in its saucer.
“You are a gypsy,” he repeated. “But will you have difficulty in pretending to be someone else? For a little.”
She stared at him with defiance. “Not if you pay me as we agreed.”
“Should I be hearing this?” Mrs. Benedict inquired.
“Actually, yes,” Braithwaite said. “I wonder if you would consider teaching Dawn along with my sisters?”
*
He explained it to her as they rode back to the castle. By then, she had discarded her own clothes for a very dull grey gown of Mrs. Benedict’s. “I wore it when I was a governess,” she had said to Dawn with a hint of apology. “It is appallingly respectable and so will do you no harm until you acquire something prettier.”
She also now had a horse of her own to ride, borrowed from the Benedicts’ stable. And while she rather missed the intimacy of their outward ride together on Lord Braithwaite’s mount, she consoled herself with the knowledge that whatever his bizarre reasoning, she was to stay at the castle for a while as originally planned. And learn to be a lady.
“Wouldn’t Julius Gardyn be more outraged if you thrust a gypsy under her nose?” she asked.
“He might be outraged,” Lord Braithwaite allowed, “but he wouldn’t be afraid. He could claim some relationship between your mother and a Gardyn.”
“It could be true,” Dawn pointed out.
“It could.”
She turned to look at him. “But you prefer to believe I was stolen from the Gardyns?”
“That could be true, too,” he said mildly.
“You do know that gypsies don’t really steal children?” Dawn said patiently. “That’s just a story to spread fear and hatred. Like calling the French monsters.”
“Do you remember your mother?” he asked, apparently ignoring her claim.
She shook her head. “She died giving birth to me. But your family is of greater concern. They’ll know exactly what I am. Lord Tamar already does.”
“Tamar is surprisingly discreet. So, even more surprisingly, are my sisters. The younger ones will think it great fun to know you. Serena…well, we need Serena on our side.”
Serena, she apprehended, was the earl’s married sister, the wife of Lord Tamar. And in truth, Dawn was more nervous of her than anyone else. For one thing, she had found foreign women were more apt than their menfolk to be unkind to her. For another, she was sure Lady Serena would disapprove utterly of Lord Braithwaite’s plan. She would, quite rightly, see Dawn’s invasion of her home as an attempted robbery, and put a stop to the fun of the situation. Which would be a pity, for Dawn had more than one reason for wanting to stay close to the earl, just for a little.
“Lady Serena will not want me there,” Dawn said bluntly. “Why would she agree to teach me to be a lady?”
“We can only ask her,” Lord Braithwaite said lightly. “Mrs. Benedict has agreed to help, and she is a friend of Serena’s.”
Dawn shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. If she did stay at the castle, it would not all be easy.
*
As she stood rigid in the huge, utterly overwhelming drawing room, Dawn felt a very strange familiarity, even though she knew she had never been there before. She blamed the flashing visions from the first time she had touched the earl’s hand. They had come so fast… But this was his world, his castle. It must have been there.
She preferred to think about this than the furious and beautiful young lady haranguing Lord Braithwaite and traducing Dawn’s people only a few feet away from her. They probably imagined she couldn’t make out their words, since they had lowered their voices to little more than furious whispers, but Dawn possessed excellent hearing.
“This is insanity!” Lady Serena exclaimed. “You’re bringing a stranger, a gypsy into the household, to rub shoulders with the girls? I cannot imagine what Mama would have to say about that, but in this case, I’ll save her the trouble. No, Gervaise. Just, no.”
“Well, you are at perfect liberty to refuse to help,” Lord Braithwaite said mildly. “But not to decide who does and does not enter the castle.”
“What is the matter with you?” Serena demanded furiously. “Are you so lost to what is right that you would thrust any mistress, let alone a gypsy, into your sisters’ lives?”
Finally, Braithwaite’s patience snapped. “Oh for God’s sake, Serena, what do you take me for? Of course, she is not my mistress and never has been! As for gypsy—” He broke off and strode to Dawn, anger flaming in his fine eyes. In one quick, almost violent gesture, he yanked down the hood of her cloak. “Does she look like a gypsy to you?”
Serena stared at her. Dawn lifted her chin and stared back.
Serena swallowed. “No. No, I have to say she does not look like a gypsy.”
“I am a gypsy,” Dawn said, “and proud of it. I have done nothing to earn your scorn.”
The fine lady, who couldn’t have been much older than Dawn, actually flushed. “Of course you have not,” she said with unexpectedly humility. “I beg your pardon. I should not have said such things, and certainly not let you hear them. The truth is, I do not know you, and that alone is enough to turn me against Braithwaite’s scheme. And I don’t like the deception, the—”
“Deception?” Lord Braithwaite repeated. “Do you think so? She is Theresa Gardyn’s double. Can you not see her likeness to Julius?”
Serena looked at him. “What I see is your obsession with Julius and your determination to bring him down somehow. It is not a trait in you that I like very much. And it is getting in the way of your life and your work.”
Lord Braithwaite gave a crooked smile. “You have been talking to Tamar, of course. And I’ll not deny that’s pretty exactly how I was last night. I was well into my cups when the idea came to me, and yes, it probably was unreasonable obsession that drove me. Now, I am stone cold sober and my motives are different. I want the truth, and I want to do right by this girl. And if Julius had anything to do with what happened to her, then I will bring him to justice.”
Impetuously, Serena strode to them. “Gervaise, you’re making assumptions, unlikely assumptions, based only on the color of her hair and a likeness you perceive to one of Eleanor Gardyn’s ancestors.”
“Caroline Benedict sees it, too,” Braithwaite said firmly. “Besides, she is the same age as Eleanor would have been. Look at her skin, the fineness of her features, the shape of her hands—”
Dawn had had enough. “Do you want me to show my teeth as well?” she interrupted. “I’m not a horse.”
“Forgive me.” The earl’s quick, devastating smile almost undid her. “I get carried away.”
“Yes, you do,” Dawn agreed. “But you should consider this. If your own sister doesn’t believe I’m Eleanor, why on earth would Julius Gardyn, who won’t even want to believe it?”
“Are you Eleanor Gardyn?” Lady Serena asked bluntly.
“No,” Dawn replied at once. “I’m Dawn Boswell.”
“It’s all she remembers,” Lord Braithwaite said quietly. “All she knows.”
“And if you are wrong,” Serena said slowly, “if you cannot prove this, have you considered what damage you would be doing to Miss Boswell? If she lives with us, will her people want her back? You’d be taking her from everything she knows. If we turn her into a lady, it will be hard for her to go back to her old life. And yet she will never be accepted in our circles, not without proof. You could be ruining her life, not helping her at all.”
The earl glanced from Serena to Dawn and back again. “It crossed my mind,” he admitted. “I suppose I’ve been trying not to think about that side of things. But if she is Eleanor, she needs to come home.”
“Then don’t you think you should find out before you put her through all this?” Serena said gently.
He gazed at her for a long time, and Dawn’s heart began to sink. She was losing. For despite her perverse interventions in the argument against herself, she wanted to stay.
“How long will your people stay here?” Serena asked her.
“They were going to leave after the christening,” Dawn replied, “but I doubt they’ll go far in this weather. Maybe on to Whalen.” Where they would, no doubt, have the baby christened all over again. She shrugged. “I don’t care. I’ve quarreled with my father.”
“Over my brother?” Serena asked.
“In a way. It was more about money.”
Serena frowned, clearly not understanding.
Lord Braithwaite cleared his throat. “I believe I’m right in this,” he said, “but you make a good point, Serena. I always meant to make inquiries, you know, but I’ll set them in motion at once. In the meantime, would you help her?”
Serena glanced uncertainly from her brother to Dawn. “What do you want, Miss Boswell? While Braithwaite tries to discover the truth, would you prefer to stay with your father or live here?”
Dawn smiled. “Here, if you please.”