Amanda McCabe (2 page)

Chapter One

Praising what is lost

Makes the remembrance dear.

—
All’s Well That Ends Well

Four Years Later

The village of Little Dipping was quiet on the crisp autumn afternoon when Marcus Hadley, now the Earl of Ellston, returned. Most of the local farmers were busy with bringing in the last of the harvest, leaving only a few elderly gentlemen nodding over pints in the Queen’s Head, and some ladies gossiping over lace and ribbons in the shops.

Marcus was glad of the quiet. Perhaps it meant he could avoid seeing anyone he knew for just a while longer.

He left his horse at the livery stable and strolled slowly along Little Dipping’s main street. So very little had changed in four years. The buildings, half-timbered, close-packed relics of another era, still blocked the sunlight, casting the cobbled walkways into shadow. The faded, painted sign of the Queen’s Head, named when Anne was queen and never changed, still creaked in the breeze. He could even have sworn that the display of hats in the milliner’s window was just the same as it had been when his mother shopped there.

His mother, who had now slept in the churchyard of St. Anne’s for nigh on six years. And who was now joined by his father and his second wife, dead for eight months in a carriage accident.

Marcus had made his first stop at St. Anne’s, where he had spoken with the vicar, Mr. Whitig, and examined the new marble memorial. Even as he had seen the names carved there, Gerald Hadley, Earl of Ellston, and Anna Hadley, Countess of Ellston, it had not seemed real.

It still felt as if his father would be waiting for him at Rosemount. That was what Marcus had been counting on during his years of wandering—that his father waited at Rosemount, and eventually they would be reconciled. All those harsh words, words Marcus now bitterly regretted, would be forgotten.

But instead, his father had died on his way to a holiday in Bath with his wife. And Marcus was left to shoulder the burden of Rosemount and the Ellston title without absolution.

Marcus paused to stare sightlessly at a shop’s rather dusty window display. He knew that there were only two things he could do for his father now. He could be the finest Earl of Ellston Society had ever seen, could bring honor to the name with a good marriage and exemplary political service.

And he could see to the proper schooling and come-out of his stepmother’s little child. He remembered vaguely that she had brought a small daughter to Rosemount, and he knew that the child had not been in the carriage with them on that fatal day.

He was still deep in these thoughts when the door to the shop opened and a tall matron, majestic in a purple plumed bonnet, emerged. She was closely followed by a maid, heavily laden with packages, who very nearly collided with her when she stopped abruptly.

“Marcus!” the matron cried. “Marcus Hadley, is it really you?”

Marcus turned away from the window. “Lady Edgemere! Such a surprise to see you here.”

“I would vow you are not half as surprised as I!” She hurried toward him, her gloved hands outstretched. “I had no idea you were back at Rosemount.”

He took her hands in his and kissed them fondly. Lady Edgemere had been one of his mother’s bosom bows, and had dandled him on her knee when he was an infant. “I am not back there yet. I have only just arrived in the village and have not yet seen Rosemount.”

She arched her brow. “You did not go there the very first thing?”

“No. I wished to stop at St. Anne’s first.”

Lady Edgemere nodded in understanding. “Oh, yes. Such a shock your dear father’s passing was to us all. It was so unexpected; so very near Christmas, and the whole neighborhood thrown into mourning! Heaven only knows why he wanted to go to Bath of all places at such a time.” She tilted back her head, her regard suddenly sharp. “We had expected you back much sooner, Marcus dear.”

He could almost feel himself blushing for the first time in many years. He shifted on his feet. “Yes. Well. I started out from Italy as soon as I heard the news, of course. But I was delayed several times.” That was the truth, but somehow it felt like a flimsy excuse to avoid his duties.

“Hm. Well, you are here now, and that is all that matters. What are your plans, now that you are returned?”

“My plans, Lady Edgemere?”

“Yes, and I do wish you would call me Aunt Fanny, as you did when you were a child.”

“I would be honored—Aunt Fanny.”

“Excellent. I refer, of course, to your plans for the future. Surely you will soon be thinking of marrying.”

Marcus nearly choked on that “m” word. He had so studiously avoided it for so long, but now of course there was no escape. “Of course I will. Whenever the right lady may be found.”

As if summoned by the words, a young woman on horseback, very elegant in a modish green velvet habit and feathered hat, came trotting up the street. Her sleek auburn hair gleamed in the sunlight, and her carriage was erect yet easy in the saddle. She nodded to Lady Edgemere, and her eyes widened when she spied Marcus.

She gave a jaunty little wave with her crop, then turned a corner and was gone.

Lady Edgemere smiled slyly. “I am certain that finding the ‘right lady’ will be no trouble at all, if by right you mean of good family with a substantial dowry. You remember Lady Angela Fleming? The daughter of the Marquess of Belvoir?”

Of course Marcus remembered Lady Angela Fleming. Her father’s estate, Belvoir Abbey, marched with Rosemount, and she had always tagged about after him when they were children. And ran tattling when he and his friends did something naughty.

She looked nothing like that spoiled child now.

“I remember Lady Angela,” he said.

“And I am certain she remembers
you
.”

Marcus laughed. “I am not quite ready for the parson’s mousetrap yet, Aunt Fanny.”

“Then what do you intend to do in the meantime?”

“Well, for one thing I must see to my father’s wife’s little child.”

Lady Edgemere gave him a most odd look indeed. “Her little child?”

“Yes. She had a daughter, did she not? No doubt the tot is running quite wild at Rosemount, with only her nanny or nursemaid or whatever. I was . . . less than kind to my stepmother,” he admitted ruefully. “I want to make some amends now, by sending the child to a proper school. Perhaps giving her a Season one day.”

Lady Edgemere’s faded blue eyes took on a suspicious new sparkle. “Well, I must tell you that Anna and I became great friends; she turned out to be not quite what we all expected. I can only hope that her daughter will do the same for you.”

Before Marcus could question her about this odd statement, she kissed his cheek and said, “I must be running along now, Marcus dear. But I hope that you will come to supper at Edgemere Park very soon.”

Marcus watched her walk away, then turned toward the livery where he had left his horse. It was time for him to return to Rosemount at last. He wondered what he would find when he got there.

***

Julia sat on one of the wide window seats in the morning room at Rosemount, her knees drawn up beneath her chin as she watched the rehearsal taking place before her.

Not long after the death of her mother and stepfather, Anna’s old friends Abelard Douglas and his Troupe of Ambling Players had landed on the doorstep of Rosemount. They had come in search of shelter, a safe haven where they could rest and rehearse for their next tour of Shakespeare’s comedies.

Julia, lonely and deep in misery, had welcomed her “Uncle Abby,” just as her mother had always welcomed any friends. Julia delighted in the company of the merry players, and the morning room had been turned into an impromptu theater, with a roughly built stage at one end. It became the scene of many wild romps and farces, much to the oft-expressed horror of the staid butler and his equally staid wife, the housekeeper.

In only a few months, the actors’ antics had taken over the silent corridors of Rosemount, and Julia had even begun to laugh again, when she had thought the loss of her mother and Gerald had robbed the world of any merriment. They involved her in their rehearsals, their plans, and their quarrels, where before all she could do was brood.

They had saved her life.

And now here they were, only a little more than a month away from beginning their grand tour, rehearsing their latest play,
As You Like It
. It had been Anna’s favorite play, and was Julia’s, too. She watched the rehearsal with delight now, the book open on her lap so she could act as prompter, and also read the lines of Rosalind, in the absence of the actress who was to play her.

Charlie Englehardt, the well-known comedian who was playing Touchstone, the clown, stomped across the stage, crying, “‘If thou beest not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst ‘scape.’”

A young apprentice actor said, “‘Here comes young Master Ganymede.’”

Then—silence.

Everyone turned to look at Julia.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Is it my turn?” As usual, she had been too enthralled by the performance to remember to read along.

“Aye, lassie,” boomed Abelard, who always spoke very loudly. “Just as it was yesterday on ‘Here comes young Master Ganymede.’”

Mary, the pretty blonde actress playing Celia, giggled.

“Oh.” Julia flipped through the pages and located her speech. “‘From the East to Western Ind, no jewel is like Rosalind. Her worth, being . . .’”

She was just beginning to enjoy herself when a disapproving cough in the doorway caught her attention.

She peeked over the top of the book to see Thompson, the butler, surveying her and all the actors down his rather short, rabbitlike nose. She wondered what she had done to upset his notions of order now.

“Yes, Thompson?” she said quietly.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Barclay,” answered Thompson, peering askance at Charlie in his red, green, and yellow motley costume. Despite the fact that the actors had been at Rosemount for months, Thompson always appeared shocked when he encountered them. “It is very nearly time for tea. Cook would like to know how many will be partaking
this
time.”

“Well, I am not certain,” Julia began slowly. “Perhaps . . . ten?”

“John and Ned have gone off to the village,” Mary offered. “But I will be there, and so will Daphne.”

“So will I,” boomed Abelard. “So be certain there are enough of those cream cakes this time. Yesterday, Charlie, here, ate them all, and there were none left for anyone else. We had to make do with bread and butter.”

Charlie shook his circlet of bells indignantly. “Slander! Falsehoods! I did no such thing! ’Twas young Ned, or may I never tread a board again.”

Mary giggled.

Thompson gave one last disapproving sniff and departed, no doubt to tell his wife all about Miss Barclay’s guests’ latest oddities.

“Well, I am off to change my frock,” said Mary, pushing her golden curls back from her pretty face. She linked arms with Charlie and the apprentice, and the three of them ambled amiably from the room.

Julia sighed and tucked the book away in the pocket of her apron.

“Here now, lass,” said Abelard, settling his considerable girth beside her on the window seat. “What was that sigh for? Is old blue-nosed Thompson making you unhappy? Just say the word, and Ned, Charlie, and I will fling him on his skinny arse into the trout stream.”

Julia laughed at the vision of the butler covered in green, dripping water with a flopping trout on his head. “Oh, Uncle Abby! No, of course it is not Thompson. I am used to him by now.”

“Then what is it? You can tell your old Uncle Abby.”

Julia shrugged. “I do not know. It is just that, well, these last few months of having you all here have been so grand. I can’t bear to think how gloomy Rosemount will be when you are gone.” And when Gerald’s son came home and she had to face her future, as she had been dreading for months.

Abelard patted her hand comfortingly. “Ach, now, lass. You needn’t worry about that. You’re stuck with us for another month at least. We don’t open in Brighton until then, y’know, and we have no money for lodgings anywhere else!”

Julia laughed. “True! We do have another month.”

“You know you can always come with us when we leave. Agnes’s broken foot won’t heal for quite a while yet, and we’ll be needing a Rosalind.”

“Abby,” Julia said, responding to this oft-repeated offer, “I am not the actress my mother was. . . .”

“No one is the actress your mother was,” Abelard said solemnly. “Anna Barclay’s Rosalind was a legend, and it was a black day when she left the stage to marry. But you are a fine actress, lass. Much better than you give yourself credit for.”

“And the Barclay name on your playbill would do wonders for your receipts,” she teased.

Abelard tapped his chin consideringly. “There
is
that. But truly, lass, if ever you’re in need, you come to us, and we’ll see you safe. Just as you have for us.”

“Abby, you are a dear.” Julia kissed his ginger-whiskered cheek. “I will remember that.”

“Yes, well, humph. I had best be going in to tea, to get my cream cakes before that Charlie can. Are you coming, Jule? You need to eat, you know; keep your strength up. You have become so thin this last year.”

“You go ahead. I promised one of the tenants, who is ill, that I would bring her some beef tea for her supper. I’ll just take it to her now.”

“You’ll be back before dark, though?”

“Abby! It is hours until dark. I will take the main road, even though it is a bit muddy from yesterday’s rain. What possible harm could befall me there?”

Chapter Two

A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ the forest.

—
As You Like It

Marcus, having exhausted the charms of Little Dipping and being faced with the waning of the sun, was at last forced to turn his steps toward Rosemount. It was a prospect he faced with more than a little trepidation.

He was eager to see his home again. In all his years of wandering, of life in rented lodgings, inns, and hotels, he had thought so often of Rosemount. He had seen the house—gleaming dove-gray stone atop a great grassy knoll—in his mind every night before he went to sleep. It seemed in his memory a haven of peace and tranquillity. A place where everything always remained the same.

But he knew that the Rosemount he was returning to now was quite unlikely to be the serene enclave of his memory. He had been gone for years; Rosemount was no doubt changed beyond recognition. There was no telling what changes his father’s wife, the
actress
, had wrought. Red velvet wallpaper? Gold tassels on all the window draperies? Chairs in the shape of dragons?

Marcus almost laughed at the outlandish visions his mind had conjured, until he remembered how serious this all truly was.

Rosemount had been a bit shabby when Marcus’s mother, Barbara, had married his father and become its mistress, or so he had often heard. His grandmother had been more concerned with gaming and running with the fast Devonshire House crowd than she had been with country houses. This had left Rosemount in a rather sorry state, when it had once been a grand showplace. Barbara had made it grand once more, and her style, light and airy as cream and sunshine, had been imitated far and wide in the
ton
.

As amusing as the thought of tables made from elephants’ feet was to Marcus, he knew that he could not bear to see his mother’s graceful rooms ruined by vulgarity.

At the very least, a grubby child would be toddling about along the Aubusson rugs, leaving sticky handprints on satin upholstery.

Marcus sighed and drew his horse up at a crossroads. In one direction lay Rosemount. In the other was Belvoir Abbey, the home of Lady Angela Fleming.

For one wild moment, even going off to pay a call on Lady Angela and her father seemed preferable to going to Rosemount. Perhaps then he could arrive home long after everyone there was asleep.

But he knew that he could not do that. He had stayed away for far too long already; it was time for him to take up his responsibilities. So Marcus turned down the road toward Rosemount, spurring his horse on to a run. It was best to get the homecoming over quickly.

The lane was deserted at that time of day, the noise of his horse’s hooves on the rather muddy road the only sound. The breeze that rushed past him was cool but not yet cold, carrying the crisp scents of an autumn country day.

Marcus laughed aloud at the exhilaration of it all, his trepidations and gloomy forebodings forgotten. There was truly nothing like a brisk ride in the English autumn countryside, he thought. Nothing he had seen in all his travels, not the canals of Venice, not the Alps, not even the pyramids of Egypt could compare.

God, but he had missed it.

So caught up in the thrill of the wild ride was Marcus that he did not see the figure seated beside the lane on a low, flat boulder.

He did not see her, that is, until he was nearly atop her. Even then, she looked so much like an ethereal vision, a fairy, that he was not sure she was real. Until she leaped up from her seat with a small but piercing shriek.

“Hold, Beelzebub!” Marcus shouted to his horse, pulling back hard on the reins. “Hold!”

The horse, not at all happy with this abrupt end to his merry gallop, reared up on his hind legs, spraying the girl with mud.

And sending Marcus tumbling from the saddle to land on his backside in the very same mud. The oozing brown mess fell in a great shower over his riding coat, his face and hair. Thus relieved of his burden, Beelzebub shook his head, snorted, and trotted off to investigate an interesting clump of grass.

Marcus lay there in the lane, staring up at the sky, utterly stunned. He wasn’t certain he could even breathe. He tried to draw an experimental breath, but his ribs ached too much, so he gave up the effort and just lay there.

Then a face swam into view above him, blocking the sky and the treetops.

An angel’s face. Surely such a piddling fall could not have killed him? And why would heaven look so much like the English countryside? Yet here was an angel, with a wealth of light-brown curls tied back carelessly with a ribbon framing a creamy white face. Her wide hazel eyes were frightened as she looked down at him.

Then his angel shrieked. Directly into his ear.

“Oh, no, I’ve killed him!” she cried.

Marcus winced. “Alas, no, madam,” he managed to take in enough breath to say. “I am sorry to disoblige you, but I fear I am not quite dead yet.”

She startled visibly to hear him speak. “Thank the stars! I was certain you had broken your neck. I am so very sorry!”

“
You
are sorry?” Marcus would have laughed, if he hadn’t been sure it would prove painful. “I nearly ran you down, and
you
are sorry?”

“I should not have been sitting there, too near the road. I was reading, you see, and did not even hear you coming.”

“I should not have been going along at such a pace. I was deep in my own thoughts and not paying proper attention. So
I
am sorry.”

She smiled then, and Marcus saw that she had the most delightful dimple in her right cheek. She also had the faintest smattering of pale gold freckles across her little, upturned nose.

“Well, then,” she said, “since we are both properly sorry, may I help you to stand?”

“Will I not be too heavy for you?” he asked. She did not seem much bigger than a child, with slim shoulders and small hands. But the idea of having an excuse to actually touch his angel was very tempting indeed.

“Oh, no. I am stronger than I look. No doubt between us we shall have you back on your feet in a trice. Unless something is broken. Then I shall have to fetch Dr. Carter.”

Marcus carefully tested his limbs. “Battered, perhaps, but not broken.”

“Excellent! Then, if you can just sit up, thus, and put your arm around my shoulder, I will help you to your feet.”

He did just as she instructed and found himself leaning against her heavily as he hauled himself upright, his face very close to hers. Her hair was soft where a loose strand brushed against his cheek, and she smelled intoxicatingly of French lavender and sunshine. She did feel rather frail to him, but, true to her word, she was stronger than she looked, and he was standing upright in no time at all.

But he was loath to move away from her. He gazed down at her, quite unable to look away.

She was frowning in thought, unaware of his regard. “Do you think you could ride?” she said. “I am not certain I could help you mount.”

“Hm?” Marcus murmured, her words conjuring up images in his mind that were quite different from her true meaning.

Good gad! The fall must have addled his brain. Here he was on the very verge of his homecoming, when all his thoughts should be on the duties of the earldom he was about to take up. And instead he was having erotic daydreams about a strange girl he had nearly run down with his horse!

It was lunacy.

Obviously the girl agreed. She was looking up at him with a distinctly puzzled air.

“Your horse,” she repeated rather loudly, as if she were speaking to a half-wit. “Can you ride your horse?”

“Perhaps I should just sit down on that rock for a bit,” he answered. “Then I am sure I will be able to continue on my way. I can go back to the Queen’s Head to get cleaned up.”

“What a good idea. Here, let me move these so that there is room for you to sit.” She scooped up a shawl, an empty basket, and a slim, leather-bound book, which she had dropped when leaping and shrieking. Then she helped him to sit down and moved away to rearrange the shawl over her shoulders.

“Do you have far to travel?” she asked, leaning back idly against a tree trunk.

“Not very far,” Marcus answered distractedly. She really was quite pretty, this angel of the road. Even her rather ugly dark gray dress, now flecked with mud, could not disguise that. But who was she? Some maidservant or shopkeeper’s daughter? She was not at all familiar to him. “And what about you? Do you live nearby?”

“Not very far,” she imitated. “I had just stopped here for a while on my way home, to read quietly.”

“It isn’t very quiet at your home?”

She gave a small, unladylike snort. “Scarcely! Especially not at the moment. It is quite crowded there, you see.”

Surely, then, she was some shopkeeper’s daughter, living above the shop with her parents and ten brothers and sisters. But she was a shopkeeper’s daughter with a penchant for Shakespeare, he saw, as he tilted his head to read the gold-lettered spine of her book.

Never had much use for the old Bard, himself.

“And here I came bungling along and disturbed your solitude,” he said. “I am sorry.”

She grinned at him. “Oh, I don’t think I mind so very much.”

Julia leaned back against the tree, studying from beneath her lashes the stranger she had just met so dramatically. He was really quite handsome, even covered with mud from his hair to his boots. She was sure his hair must be dark, and very curly, even though he had cropped it short in an obvious effort to subdue it. The eyes that looked out at her from the heavily dirty but fine-boned face were a celestial blue.

She thought that once he was cleaned up he would surely be more handsome even than Ned Dennis, the Ambling Player’s resident Apollo. Maybe even more handsome than Mr. Elliott, the new curate.

She wondered idly who he was. His boots and clothes were obviously expensive, as was his horse, the aptly named Beelzebub. Probably he was a guest at Belvoir Abbey.

Maybe even a suitor of the silly Lady Angela.

Julia frowned at that thought, suddenly sorry she had blurted out that she was
not
sorry he had come along.

But he was smiling at her. He took out a handkerchief and began scrubbing away at some of the thick mud on his face. “Well,” he said, “I am glad you aren’t sorry we met, because I am
certainly
not sorry.”

Julia couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, you aren’t, are you?” Was he
flirting
with her?

“No. You see, I know so few people in the neighborhood anymore. . . .”

He went on speaking, but she no longer heard him. Instead, she stood there frozen, watching in horror as he made progress in cleaning off his face. Slowly, his features were emerging from the mask of mud. Features that were even more handsome than she had speculated.

Features that were familiar.

She had seen that face only once before, four years ago, and only for an instant. It had changed, becoming thinner and sun browned. But she knew who he was.

It was her stepfather’s prodigal son.

Gerald had almost never spoken of his son, except when a rare letter arrived from Marcus and he would read portions of it aloud. Gerald had tried to make their lives as happy and normal as possible, despite the breach with his son. Yet sometimes a shadow would pass over his face when he thought no one was looking, and Julia would know he was thinking of his faraway son.

It was the face she had been expecting to see every day these last eight months, since the carriage accident. The new Earl of Ellston, come to take his place at Rosemount and toss her out of it.

Here he was at last. The future she had not wanted to face was right before her.

Marcus smiled at her now, even flirted with her a bit, while he did not know who she was. What would he say when he learned she was the daughter of the “vulgar opera dancer”?

What would he do when he saw the theater she had made of his morning room, and all the “vulgar” actors staying in his guest rooms and eating his food?

Oh, dear heaven! Abelard and the others. Their tour did not begin for another month yet, and Julia knew they did not have enough money to find lodgings for all of them. What would happen to them when this new earl tossed them out to starve in the hedgerows?

She must have gasped aloud, because he was looking at her rather oddly.

“Are you quite all right?” he asked. “You look pale. Are you certain you were not injured?”

“I—no,” Julia managed to squeak. “I just—that is to say, I have to be going!”

Then she spun about and fled, running off across a field, unmindful of the mud sucking at her half boots and the hem of her skirt. He was calling after her, but she ignored him. She climbed over a low wall and slid down an embankment, out of sight of the road. Soon his voice faded completely behind her.

She ran across fields and meadows, one hand pressed to the stitch in her side.

She
had
to reach Rosemount, and quickly. Before the new earl did.