London, England
Autumn, 1861
“Stand up, girl. Let me have a look at you.”
Valentine rose from the tassel-trimmed sofa in Lady Hermione Caddington’s opulent drawing room. She couldn’t have envisioned a more intimidating setting for her first meeting with one of her mother’s relations. The walls were papered in patterned yellow silk, the floors covered in rich Persian carpets. Plush settees and tufted ottomans vied for space with carved mahogany tables and button-back chairs and, from the ceiling, hung a truly magnificent crystal gasolier.
Taken altogether it made her feel the veriest country mouse.
She was still clad in her brown wool travelling gown. There’d been no time to change after arriving in London. Lord Lynden hadn’t even summoned his carriage from the station. Instead, he’d hailed a hansom cab and directed the jarvey to take them to Lady Hermione’s residence in Belgrave Square—a stately townhouse where her ladyship lived alone, save for the presence of her servants and two overfed pug dogs.
An expressionless butler had conducted them to the drawing room in all decorum. But when Lady Hermione had entered moments later, she hadn’t greeted Valentine as a guest. Nor had she acknowledged the presence of the Earl of Lynden. She’d merely strode in, her dogs trotting ahead of her like two medieval pages announcing the arrival of the queen, and lifted a pearl-encrusted lorgnette to her cool gray eyes.
Stand up, girl.
Every fiber of Valentine’s being bristled with indignation, but she submitted to the arrogant inspection without a word. Her hands were clasped in front of her, her spine straight as a ramrod. She could feel the two pugs snorting around the hem of her voluminous skirts. One of the rude little beasts even poked its gargoyle-like face under the edge of her crinoline. She was sorely tempted to nudge it away with the toe of her boot.
“Primrose,” Lady Hermione snapped. “Get out of there, you ridiculous creature.”
Valentine cast a fleeting glance down at the offending pug as it withdrew from her skirts and loped off. The other pug followed.
Lord Lynden strolled up alongside her. “Well?”
After another long moment, Lady Hermione dropped her lorgnette. “It’s exactly as you said.”
“Naturally. If there were any doubt I wouldn’t have wired you.”
Lady Hermione gave an imperious wave in the direction of the sofa and chairs. “Sit, sit. We have much to discuss.”
Valentine resumed her seat on the velvet sofa. Her stomach was trembling. She’d hoped that meeting one of her Caddington relations might be different. That it might make her feel as if she had a family of her own. A family who wanted her or, at least, wanted to know her better. But it didn’t feel like that at the moment. Quite the opposite.
Lady Hermione seemed as if she were made of ice. At first, Valentine had thought it was only her appearance. She was a tall arctic blonde of middle years with sharp, chiseled features and a straight, uncompromising figure. Her eyes, though intelligent, lacked all warmth. And her clothing…
Valentine couldn’t be entirely certain, but it seemed to her that Lady Hermione was wearing neither corset, nor crinoline. Her black silk gown fell about her frame in a wholly unstructured spill of fabric, a wide ribbon belt at her waist the only point of definition.
Such an ensemble might have softened another woman her age. Made her seem charmingly eccentric or even silly. On Lady Hermione Caddington, however, the clothing only served to make her look more formidable.
“I don’t know how you find yourself involved in this, Lynden,” she said.
“Does it matter?”
“It will soon enough. Everyone in London will want to know the story, down to the smallest detail. It will make the broadsheets, I’ll wager. And when they see her…”
“Will they see her?” Lord Lynden asked quietly.
Lady Hermione’s cold expression was almost militant. “If I have anything to say about it they will.” At that, she summoned a footman and ordered tea. “We must make a plan,” she said when the servant had departed.
“It will take some delicacy,” Lord Lynden said.
Lady Hermione scoffed. “It will take boldness,” she retorted. “And plain speaking.” One of her pugs leapt onto the settee beside her. It circled round twice before curling up against an embroidered pillow. She rested a hand on its back. “You realize she will have to stay here?”
Lord Lynden inclined his head.
“And her association with you will have to end. Your own reputation is impeccable, my lord, but your son’s reputation is another matter. We must take care that St. Ashton’s name is not connected to this business. It would be ruinous at this stage and well you know it.”
Valentine looked between the two of them. They were discussing her as if she were not even there. “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” she began.
“Miss March,” Lord Lynden warned.
She didn’t heed him. “Lord St. Ashton is very much connected to this business. The two of us are engaged to be married.”
Lady Hermione’s gray eyes became positively glacial. They shot to Lord Lynden in accusation. “Is this true?”
He sighed. “Nothing has been formalized.”
“In other words, this is another false promise of St. Ashton’s. Made after a seduction, no doubt.” She stood. “Well, my lord, this explains all.”
Valentine opened her mouth to object, but Lord Lynden silenced her with a look.
“Now, Hermione—” he said.
“Don’t dare patronize me, sir.” She strode across the drawing room, her pugs trotting in her wake. Valentine feared she might storm out, never to be seen again, but Lady Hermione merely walked to an inlaid chest in the corner. She opened the topmost drawer and retrieved something from within. She stared down at it a moment.
“I have been accustomed to keeping this in my room,” she said. “I brought it down this morning in anticipation of your arrival.”
Valentine assumed she was speaking to Lord Lynden again, but when Lady Hermione returned to them, she didn’t look at the earl. Instead, she sank down on the velvet-tufted sofa beside her. She smelled of lavender and herbal soap. It was a surprisingly reassuring fragrance.
“It was painted that last summer,” she said. “Before the old marquess threw her to the wolves. I was away on the continent. By the time I returned to England, she was gone. Dead, they told me. Her and her child.”
Valentine’s gaze fell to Lady Hermione’s outstretched hand. In the center of her palm she held a small framed portrait.
“Take it,” Lady Hermione said. “It’s yours now.”
Valentine lifted the miniature from Lady’s Hermione’s hand with trembling fingers. It was a portrait of a young lady, painted in watercolor on ivory. A beautiful young lady with flaxen hair and wide, solemn gray eyes in a heart-shaped face.
“She was nineteen,” Lady Hermione said matter-of-factly.
Valentine’s throat tightened with emotion. “Oh,” she whispered. She could think of nothing else to say. Her brain had transformed into porridge, her heart into a swollen lump in her chest. She swallowed back a swell of tears.
This, then, was the infamous Lady Sara Caddington. The shadowy, unknowable figure she’d dreamed of since she was first old enough to dream. Not a fallen woman or a wanton, but a girl. Just a girl.
“My mother,” she said softly.
“Your mother,” Lady Hermione concurred. “Now tell me—Miss March, is it?—exactly how big is this scandal of yours with St. Ashton? And when may we expect news of it to reach London?”
“Bloody blasted hell.”
“Mind the mud puddle, my lord,” Musgrove said.
Tristan shot his secretary a murderous glare. The puddle was, in fact, a several-foot-deep pit of thick black sludge, which now threatened to suck him under, feet first. He muttered another blistering oath as he attempted to extricate himself. He’d already ruined one pair of boots during the course of this visit. He’d be damned if he ruined another.
“Why the devil is everything so wet?” he demanded. “It hasn’t rained in four days.”
“That would be the poor drainage in the north pasture, sir. I mentioned it in my report.”
“Of course you did,” Tristan said bitterly. They’d been at Blackburn Priory for two weeks and all Musgrove had done was write reports. Reports on the state of the crops. Reports on the state of the furnishings. Reports on the roof. Reports on the plumbing.
Tristan had no doubt that, in the past two years, Musgrove had sent just such reports about him to his father. Reports on how he’d parted from his last mistress and made no effort to obtain another. Reports on the days he’d spent drinking at home. Reports on how he’d fallen into a melancholy as black and bottomless as this cursed mud puddle appeared to be.
“One day, Musgrove,” he said, “I shall quite happily write a report on how I gave you the sack.”
“Yes, my lord,” Musgrove said, unperturbed. He flipped open a page of the infernal little notebook he always carried with him. “As to the drainage…”
Tristan retrieved his handkerchief from the pocket of his greatcoat. “Go on.”
“The former steward, Mr. Pope, recommended something be done last year. Trenches dug, tiled, and so forth. Alas, he was taken away with fever in the spring. I would have seen to the matter myself, but things had by that point reached—”
“Quite.” Tristan gave his muddy boots another wholly inadequate swipe with his handkerchief. Higgins was going to strangle him. Two pairs of boots destroyed in two weeks. Not to mention the countless shirts, waistcoats, and trousers that had been soiled with mud, animal dung, and foul substances of every description.
“I’m treating stains from dawn ’til dusk,” Higgins had complained only that morning. “I accept we are in the country now and a certain amount of filth is to be expected, but a valet can only take so much abuse, my lord.”
At this rate, Tristan reflected, before the month was out, he would be obliged to order a new wardrobe from his tailor. Either that or hire a new valet. Good God, was there nothing about Blackburn Priory that came cheaply?
“You had better add drains to your list.” He balled up his mud-splattered handkerchief and thrust it into the pocket of his greatcoat. “Better yet, add a new steward. You can hire him along with the rest of the servants on market day.”
“A steward is not the sort of fellow one finds at a Mop Fair.” Musgrove turned another page of his notebook. “However, I do have a recommendation from Lord Lynden. It seems his steward at Lyndwood Hall has a younger brother who’s anxious to—”
“Brilliant. Another spy. By all means hire him.”
“Yes, my lord. I’ll send for him without delay.”
Tristan resumed his thankless trudge through the pasture. The old water mill was just over the next rise, or so Musgrove had said. They might have ridden there, but he had no desire to see his riding horses subjected to the elements. One of them was already suffering from thrush and another had lost a shoe in the mud on the day of his arrival. They were town horses. Meant for Rotten Row, not rotten weather.
“What I need,” he muttered, “is a pair of drays.”
“Shall I add them to the list, my lord?”
Tristan supposed he could afford them. He still had what was left of his quarterly allowance. Not to mention those portions of his allowance he’d managed to save over the past two years. It was amazing how little coin a man expended once he grew tired of debauchery. Instead, that coin had sat in the bank, untouched, accumulating a tidy sum of interest.
But it couldn’t last forever. And, though he might still be heir to one of the greatest fortunes in England, he’d be damned if he’d spend another year dependent on an allowance from his father.
“No,” he said. “There are to be no unnecessary expenses.”
“As you say, my lord.”
He stopped at the top of the rise and looked out across the wet rolling hills. Down another slope he could see the stone façade of the dilapidated water mill. Situated on a bend of the River Coquet, it had once been the primary source of wealth and prosperity for the thriving market town of Harbury Morton.
“It’s a shame it’s fallen into such disrepair,” Musgrove remarked. “The monks at the Priory charged a pretty penny for its use in their day.”
“Their day being the year 1379.”
“Somewhere thereabouts. If you’d like an exact date, my lord, I could consult—”
“It’s no longer the fourteenth century, Musgrove. It’s the nineteenth. And, lest you forget, Blackburn Priory is no longer a monastery.” Tristan set off down the slope of the hill, his boots squelching in the mud. “Though, considering the circumstances,” he said under his breath, “you may be forgiven for thinking so.”
It was certainly not for lack of opportunity. Within his first two days in residence, the local squire had come calling with his unmarried daughter in tow. The next day, a neighboring widow had contrived to cross his path when he was driving into town. And then there was the matter of the hastily planned assembly ball to which St. Ashton had not only been invited, but urged to attend by the vicar, the village doctor, and no less than five meddling mamas who had had the temerity to appear on the doorstep of the Priory with baskets of cakes, biscuits, and preserves.
He hadn’t attended the assembly. Nor had he succumbed to the advances of willing widows or marriage-minded squire’s daughters. He’d gone to sleep alone each night in a cold bed, exhausted from the day’s exertions.
His father had written at the end of the first week and informed him that Valentine was settled at Lady Hermione Caddington’s townhouse in London. She was learning about her family, the letter had said. She was becoming better acquainted with her cousin. She was safe and comfortable and showing signs of growing contentment.
It was all so much nonsense.
As if he couldn’t comprehend the real purpose of his father’s letter. The old devil’s true message was implicit in every line: Stay Away. Leave her be. Give her a chance to know her family. To find her footing. Give her a chance to meet someone better.
It was intolerable.
Tristan wasn’t accustomed to waiting for the things he wanted. In the past, he’d always succumbed to his impulses, exercised his masculine urges, and then moved on. Delayed gratification could be diverting on occasion, but this…
This wasn’t a game played with a mistress. It wasn’t flirtation. This was painfully real. And, even as he trudged through his days at Blackburn Priory, reviewing ledgers, talking to neighboring farmers, and planning repairs, he was aware that somewhere, three hundred miles away in London, Valentine March was gradually slipping from his grasp.
“There’s a steam mill in Morpeth,” Musgrove said as they approached the water mill.
“Not an easy distance,” Tristan observed.
“No, my lord.”
“Why doesn’t anyone build one here?”
“Lack of capital, I assume. And with there being no direct railway access to Harbury Morton, the town’s not ideal for industry. It could never compete with Morpeth or Hexham, for example.”
Tristan’s gaze took in the sprawling stone edifice of the water mill. It had a damaged vertical wheel that now stood, unmoving. “I don’t see why not.” he said. “It may do quite well, on a small scale, if everything else weren’t falling to pieces.”
“Perhaps if someone of consequence were to take charge of the matter,” Musgrove allowed. “Alas, everyone with ambition seems to have left the district. For greener pastures, as it were.”
Tristan glanced at his secretary with narrowed eyes. He knew when he was being managed. Even so, it did nothing to dim the spark of interest that had lit within him at the sight of the mill. After two weeks of cold drudgery, a distraction was welcome. And if that distraction could, by any slim chance, lead to his being independent from his father, all the better. “Not everyone, Musgrove.”