Chapter Two

 

Cranleigh Manor

Cheltenham, England, a month later…

 

Lady Melissa Tandy paused outside the room that had once been her father’s library and tried her best to ignore the racing of her heart. Above all, she willed herself to stop shaking. A feat not easily accomplished having just escaped certain death, an attempt on her life, she was sure.

Attack by airborne statuary, a flying urn used as a missile meant to strike her head.

Equally alarming…

It was the second such incident in recent days.

Of course, the footbridge she crossed on her morning walks through Cranleigh’s gardens and woodland, was centuries old, its age-warped and creaky planks not in the best repair. Still, for the little bridge to collapse beneath her seemed unlikely.

Yet if she hadn’t been near enough to its far side, she’d have plunged into a deep and rocky gorge.

She’d still had a frightful tumble.

She swallowed, annoyed that her mouth was so dry. That she couldn’t stop the rushing of her pulse. The queasiness made her almost dizzy with lightheadedness. She wasn’t a simpering miss, prone to theatrics.

She just didn’t want to die.

She wasn’t ready to leave this good, green earth.

How terrifying that someone seemed determined to assist her in doing just that.

She glanced at the jagged pottery shard in her hand, her fingers tight around the evidence that someone on the roof above the Cranleigh terrace had sent the decorative urn hurtling down at her.

A bold move, but she could be as brazen.

In truth, she had no choice.

So she swept into the room, not caring if her face soured when she passed beneath the brilliance of the newly-hung crystal chandeliers. She also wouldn’t hide her resentment of the mother-of-pearl-surfaced tables that now stood where comfortably-worn wing chairs and heirloom mahogany desks once offered hours of reading pleasure.

A pastime she and her parents had so enjoyed, but that her stepmother Lady Clarice ridiculed upon marrying Melissa’s widowed father and moving into the manor, along with her three daughters…

April, May, and June, so named because their birthdays fell on the first of those months. The only difference was that the girls came into the world on subsequent years. They’d inherited their mother’s stunning looks, all three being tall, voluptuous, and blond. They were also graced with large cornflower blue eyes. And they shared Lady Clarice’s distaste for anything that didn’t sparkle. In particular, they didn’t care for centuries-old shelves of books that, they all claimed, smelled stale and fusty, and only attracted dust.

Not that it mattered now…

Cranleigh’s library was no more.

With the passing of Melissa’s father, the much-loved haven also met its end. The hallowed space was gutted, and now endured renovations to make it a grand, mirror-and-gilt-lined ballroom.

Only the once-library’s tall and magnificent windows remained. They ran the length of the room and looked out on Cranleigh’s sweeping lawns and the walled rose garden, the low, rolling hills and woodlands beyond the Tandy estate.

At the moment, Lady Clarice and her eldest daughter, April, stood gazing out those windows, but they turned on hearing Melissa’s approach, both of them raising perfectly groomed brows at her.

Melissa knew why.

She looked a fright.

“My dear…” Lady Clarice came toward her, shaking her head. “Even here, so far from London, you must comport yourself like a proper English lady.”

“Mellie, Mellie, what did you do?” April remained at the windows. “Roll in the pig pen?”

Tempted to say she was in the company of trotters now, Melissa bit her tongue and glanced instead at her dirt-smeared day dress. A serviceable garment, especially for her walks, the dark green gown, a favorite, was likely ruined.

That was the least of her cares, so she lifted her gaze and held out the pottery shard.

“It happened again,” she said, grateful her voice didn’t rise. “Someone tried to hit me with a falling urn.”

“An urn?” Lady Clarice rested her hand on the red-and-gold damask of a newly-delivered settee. “I wasn’t aware we kept any at Cranleigh?”

Of course, you weren’t. They don’t gleam and glitter.

Melissa tamped down a sigh. “There are six of them along the edge of the terrace roof. Now there are five.”

“And the dirt?” April came to stand beside her mother. “Did you fall into a flowerbed when you were hit?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I’d been struck.” Melissa frowned at her stepsister. She couldn’t help it. “The dirt is because the urns are decorative planters. They hold ivy.”

Have you never noticed?

Ignoring her explanation, April scrunched her nose. “You will have to bathe before dinner. You smell like roots and damp soil.”

“Scents I favor to the heaviness of your perfume,” Melissa returned, taking some satisfaction in how April and her mother both tightened their lips.

“You will mind your manners, Melissa.” Lady Clarice considered her, her face as chilly as the dark afternoon outside the once-library’s windows.

Thunder was just beginning to rumble in the distance and rain could be heard as it started to strike the windows. Melissa smiled when April shuddered and hurried to claim a spot before the fire. Lady Clarice and her daughters loathed rainy days.

Melissa loved them, as well they knew.

“The weather is not divine justice,” her stepmother said, just as the wind quickened and a whirl of dead autumn leaves spun past the windows. “No one in this house pushed an urn off the roof. Not a soul here wishes to harm you. You suffer the wild imaginings of your mother’s Scottish blood.”

“I do not suffer my Scottish blood.” Melissa raised her chin. “I thrill to it.”

“Exactly what I meant.”

“She is a heathen,” April announced, all but rumpling her nose. “How else can she enjoy such appalling weather?” She shuddered and held her hands to the hearth flames. “She should go there, live among her beloved rocks, mist, and cold. Nothing but rain and sheep and bearded men in garish skirts.”          

“Cranleigh is my home.” This time Melissa’s voice did crack. She truly loved Cranleigh. But her mother’s heart beat inside her. Born here or otherwise, she’d always felt out of place in oh-so-manicured England. More drawn to her mother’s homeland, a place she’d never seen, but knew that she’d love so much.

“Cranleigh is our home,” her stepmother reminded her, remaining silent about whose fortune kept the estate running, and who footed the bills for the extravagances she and her daughters indulged.

“Our home?” Melissa knew she sounded bitter.

Lady Clarice’s chin lifted. “You know that is so.”

“Then we should all care that a madman is running about Cranleigh.” Melissa placed the pottery shard on one of the new mother-of-pearl inlaid tables, not caring if the shard’s jagged edges damaged the table’s gleam. “Someone pushed the urn off the roof. And it was done deliberately.”

“Now, Mellie…” Lady Clarice paused as wind rattled the window panes and a fresh burst of rain pelted the glass. “This storm has been brewing all day. It’s wicked.” She glanced at April who was looking at Melissa as if she were a bug. “A strong gust will have toppled the urn. The dread thing must be ancient. I’m surprised it hadn’t already crumbled, all of them up there.”

“They were made to last.” Melissa spoke to her stepmother, ignoring April’s freeze-her-to-ice gaze.

“You do appreciate old things, don’t you?” Lady Clarice raised a brow.

Melissa folded her arms, aware of what was coming.

“Sir Hartle Hutsby’s home is Tudor.” Lady Clarice drew a breath, warming to a favorite topic. “Rosedale Hall even boasts a delightful fourteenth century thatched farmhouse on its estate. The countryside thereabouts is unspoiled and tranquil. You would be content there.”

“Indeed, I would – without Sir Hartle.”

“He would make a fine husband.”

Melissa lifted her chin. “He is nearly as old as his home.”

Lady Clarice’s lips thinned. “He is respected, wealthier than you, and he’s keen to have you as his wife.”

“What would I be? His fifth?”

“His third.” April looked up from examining her fingernails. “You can be quite pleased by his interest.”

“Why don’t you marry him?” Melissa smiled. “You’d exasperate him so quickly that he’d keel over, leaving you his vast fortune.”

“Melissa!” Lady Clarice’s brows swooped down. “That will be enough.”

“I agree.” Melissa gave her an even frostier smile. “I will not marry Sir Hartle, so there is no reason to waste conversation on him. I will find out who is trying to hurt me.”

To kill me.

And though you surely did not push the urn or tamper with the footbridge, I have no doubt that you are responsible.

“And when I discover the truth,” she said aloud, “the perpetrator will be exposed, ruined, and will no doubt hang.”

“You can’t hang the wind.” Lady Clarice didn’t blink.

“Nor can anyone fault the rotten, centuries-old planks of an ancient footbridge.” April flicked at her sleeve. “You should be glad my mother is seeing to Cranleigh’s restoration.”

Melissa glanced to the once-library’s far wall, the first one to be dressed with a solid row of tall, gold-framed mirrors rather than the well-filled bookshelves it’d held for centuries. Her heart twisted and anger simmered in a deeper place, in the very roots of her soul. The changes being made to her home – in her view, horrible disfigurements – were simply too much to bear.

Thunder boomed so powerfully that the walls almost shook. Even the rain lashed down harder, as if the weather gods understood her fury, and agreed.

Turning back to her stepmother, she met her gaze.

“I care for none of this,” she said. “You are destroying heritage. The Tandy legacy my family worked so many centuries to uphold.”

“Was it not strengthening your family’s legacy to donate so many books to the surrounding villages and towns?” Lady Clarice feigned sincerity. “You should have seen the people clamoring for them, how their faces lit to collect them. A pity you stayed away.”

“I had my reasons.”

“Hah!” April left the hearth to join them. “You were sulking.”

“A bit, I will not deny,” she said, straightening her back and then walking to the windows.

She stepped as close to the glass as she dared, considering the storm, and stared through the pounding rain to the far boundaries of the estate. She couldn’t see the stables from here, but she fixed her gaze on the place where she knew a corner of grazing pasture met the first gently sloping hills. Curtains of drifting mist hid them, but she knew that if she could see better, her heart would lift to catch glimpses of the retired carriage horses who’d found refuge there.

They were the reason she’d been absent when Lady Clarice had the once-library emptied and her family’s precious books loaded on carts and hauled across the countryside, given to anyone wanting them.

The villagers and townsfolk were eager takers, she’d heard. But she suspected many grabbed the books only to use in winter as welcome, additional fuel.

“Many of the villagers cannot read.” She turned from the windows, not wanting to draw her stepmother’s attention to the pasturelands, the horses Melissa loved so much.

“Like as not,” she continued, “the books will light more than faces when the first snow comes.”

April rolled her eyes. “Must you always paint such a dreadful picture of everything?”

“Do I?” Melissa glanced round at the crystal-dripping chandeliers, the damask settees and the dainty mother-of-pearl-inlaid tables. The still-wrapped gilt mirrors waiting to be fastened to the denuded once-library walls. “I would say, Lady April, that things here are dreadful enough.”

“Oh!” April’s face colored. “You ill-mannered git!”

“Leave her be, dear.” Lady Clarice placed a hand on her daughter’s arm. “She will be leaving us soon enough.”

“Not by cracking bridges or hurled urns, I won’t be.” Melissa saw no reason not to speak her mind. “Nor whatever else you might dream up for me.”

This time two spots of crimson appeared on Lady Clarice’s cheeks.

“You do not mean such absurd accusations, Melissa. We all want the very best for you. Why else would I have gone to such extremes to receive invitations to the Merrivales’ upcoming ball in London?”

Melissa looked at her, felt the floor tipping beneath her feet.

“London?” She frowned. “Isn’t it too early for a ball?”

“Must you be so contrary?” Her stepmother dismissed her questions with a wave of her hand. “The Merrivales are merchants, they do as they please.”

“Perhaps I please to stay here?” 

Melissa’s mind raced. She hadn’t been outside Cheltenham in ages, and certainly not to a ball, formal dinner, or whatever. Her stepmother went to great trouble keeping her away from social engagements.

Not that she minded.

She’d rather spend an evening curled up in a wing chair before the fire in Cranleigh’s library, nothing but the crackling of the flames and the turning of pages to keep her company.

Leastways, that would have been her wish when the house still possessed a library.

Now…

She frowned, feeling hollowed.

“I see you are overjoyed.” Lady Clarice advanced on her. “And you should be. Sir Hartle will be in attendance and all eyes will be on the two of you.”

“Sir Hartle…” Melissa’s heart sank.

“The gentleman, indeed.” Her stepmother smiled. “He is coming expressly to pay court to you.”

“Then you had best leave me here,” Melissa returned. “I will shame you otherwise, for I will go nowhere near him.”

“We shall see.” Lady Clarice’s eyes narrowed on her. “You do not want to vex me.”

I do that just breathing.

“And you, Lady Clarice, do not want to anger me,” she said aloud, thanking the old Highland gods for letting her inherit her mother’s courage. “If I go with you, I shall have my own reasons for doing so.”

And she did.

If she could manage it, a stay in London might allow her to meet again with Mr. Alan Steckles, the owner of Crickhollow Farm in Kent. She’d already given him a sizeable sum to provide a temporary home to her rescued carriage horses. Five of the twenty aged steeds had already been secreted at Crickhollow. It was her hope that the rest could be slipped away before her stepmother or her half-sisters noticed.

For a bit more coin, the farm owner might work faster.

“If you’re thinking of having someone sneak off with more of those wretched nags while we’re gone, you will be sorry,” Lady Clarice said, dashing Melissa’s hope.

“The horses are mine, cared for with my money.”

“They will bring more money when I sell them to the German merchant interested in them.” Lady Clarice leaned toward her. ‘He will have them sailed to Hamburg where they’ll fetch a good price at the market.”

“Germans love horsemeat,” April added, smiling.

“They will not dine on mine.” Melissa would not allow it.

But now her hand was played. She’d have to move fast to save her darlings – and herself, it seemed.

How sad that she didn’t know where to begin.