Lady Hawk's Folly (3 page)

The sight of the huge gray-stone fortress filling the island in the center of the sparkling blue lake sent a glow of pride racing through Mollie just as it always did. Fascinated from the first moment she had laid eyes upon it, she had come to know the castle’s history as well as anyone.

She knew that as a result of the number of successful French raids across the English Channel in the late fourteenth century and the great fear that the raiders might well begin to plunge farther inland, Sir Ninian Colporter, a well-known knight at court and a veteran of Edward III’s wars abroad, had applied for a license to crenellate Hawkstone House, a mansion he had built on a hillside overlooking the Bourne some years before. Permission was granted on the understanding that the castle would protect the immediate countryside from an invading enemy. Interpreting “crenellation” in a very broad sense, Sir Ninian had abandoned the existing house altogether and chosen a new site on the island in the middle of a small lake, the waters of which drained into the Bourne, thence to the Rother and on to the sea at Rye.

Though externally Hawkstone Towers displayed a symmetry of walls and towers common to the period in which it was built, the inside was much more sophisticated, a properly designed fortified courtyard house with splendid private suites, separate servants’ quarters, chapel, and other amenities remarkable for their number and extent. Therefore, its residents were quite comfortable, and despite the difficulties of those first weeks so long ago, Mollie had come to love this magnificent, ancient home of the Colporters.

The horses’ hooves clattered now on the cobblestones of the causeway, one of two leading to the castle gates from the lakeshore. Only the main causeway was part of the original castle, and it had been designed at a right angle to the entrance, so that an advancing enemy would be exposed on his unshielded right flank all the way to the little island, where he had to turn in order to proceed across the drawbridge to the barbican, a tall central tower that had originally been heavily fortified. From the barbican one still had to pass through a multiplicity of defenses to reach the central courtyard.

The second causeway was of a much later date and led through the postern gate to the stableyard. There were various trails leading away from it on the lakeshore, but there was no proper road such as that which led to the main causeway.

Though the second causeway was less elaborate, there was still plenty of room to ride abreast and they did not slow their pace below a canter, but suddenly Mollie heard an exclamation from her companion that caused her to glance at him sharply.

Lord Ramsay’s attention was riveted upon the entrance to the main causeway some hundred yards or so across the gleaming water to their left. Following his gaze, Mollie caught her breath in dismay. They had beaten the party of riders by only moments, but it was not sight of the horsemen themselves that stopped the breath in her throat. It was the banner flying proudly above them, a hawk displayed, beaked, armed, and crowned. Though the distance was too great to allow her to make out such details as the sword,
argent,
carried in the hawk’s left talons or the lily,
or,
in its right, she had no difficulty recognizing the crest of the most noble Gavin Remington Colporter, Marquess and Earl of Hawkstone, Viscount Corbin, Baron Colporter of Chilham and Bourne, Baron Colporter of Falmouth, and le Baron Faucon de Lys, Corbeil, et Grailion. Hawk had come home.

W
ITH A LITTLE CRY
deep in her throat, Mollie clamped the beaver to her head and dug her spurs into the big bay’s flanks. Lord Ramsay was close behind her as she clattered through the postern gate into the stableyard and slid quickly from the saddle.

“Hand me your reins, Moll,” he ordered crisply as he dismounted. “Hawk will be detained in the main courtyard, but the sooner you play least in sight, the better. He will ask for you at once.”

She glanced quickly around the yard. Teddy, her groom, and Bill, who looked after Lord Ramsay’s mounts, were the only ones paying them any heed. She did not think any of the stable lads would cry rope on her, in any event. She was a prime favorite with most of them. Nevertheless, it would not do to be careless. She handed the reins to Lord Ramsay.

“You’d best hurry, too,” she said over her shoulder. “If they saw us, they can’t have recognized us, but if Hawk comes bang upon you here with a pair of muddy horses, he’ll want to know who your companion was.”

He nodded. “I’ll be along directly. But go, Mollie. I can hear them.”

She could, too. The noise from the main courtyard carried easily through the arched tunnel into the stableyard. She had no time to dally. On the thought, she ran lightly across the cobblestones and into the castle by way of a side door leading first to an anteroom and beyond to a large hall, where a fire roared in a mammoth fireplace. The well-worn furniture and threadbare wall hangings proclaimed it to be a family gathering place rather than a room for more formal entertainment, and despite its size, it was a comfortable room. A small, shaggy dog looked up at her sleepily from the hearth rug.

“All alone, Mandy?” The bitch’s ears twitched and her tail thumped in welcome. Slowing her pace, Mollie pulled the beaver hat from her head, freeing her long blond tresses to fall in a tangle of sun-streaked curls down her back. Just then there was a light clatter of footsteps on the simple, two-run wooden stairway at the left rear of the hall. Mollie waited, recognizing the quick, running steps and knowing who would appear on the landing. Seconds later a nine-year-old boy with light brown hair came into sight, his shirt tucked haphazardly into nankeen breeches, which were in turn tucked into black-topped boots. As he hit the turn of the stair, seeming to bounce off the stone wall in his headlong rush, he caught sight of Mollie and came to a precarious halt on the second step below the landing. Excitement lit his face.

“I say, Mollie, Hawk’s here! I saw him from the schoolroom window and old Bates said I could—By the Lord Harry, what have you been up to?”

Mollie chuckled. “Never mind that, rascal. I believe I’ve mentioned before,” she added more sternly, “that it does not become you to swear that particular oath. It was not, as you seem to think, devised out of respect for yourself.” The boy merely grinned at her and she shook her head fondly. “You run along and welcome Hawk. But mind, Harry, not a word about this. If he asks you, you may tell him I shall be along directly.”

Mischief gleamed in Lord Harry Colporter’s eyes as he let his gaze drift meaningfully from her tousled hair to her mud-spattered breeches and boots. “Where
have
you been, Mollie?” Just then Lord Ramsay entered the hall, and catching sight of him, Harry drew his own rapid conclusions. “You took her with you,” he accused, his gray eyes flashing. “You wouldn’t take me, but you took Mollie! You took a lady to see a mill! Only wait till—”

“Enough, Harry!” Lord Ramsay’s tone was sharp. “Go on, Moll. You’ve no time to waste. I’ll deal with this.”

“I’ll warrant Hawk wouldn’t care to hear about such goings-on,” Harry said musingly, watching his brother with wary eyes. Mollie, hearing Lord Ramsay’s indrawn breath behind her, held up a hand to silence them both.

“Harry,” she said calmly, moving up the steps toward the boy, “you are perfectly right when you say your brother wouldn’t like to hear that his wife has been to watch a mill. That is one reason we took pains to conceal my identity. But I know, if Ramsay does not, that I’ve nothing to fear from you.”

Harry’s eyes were dancing with mischief now. “What’ll you give me to keep mum, Mollie?”

“It’s what I shall give you if you don’t that should concern you,” Lord Ramsay said dangerously.

“Oh, pooh,” retorted Harry, unabashed. “Hawk won’t let you thrash me for such a thing.”

“But Hawk won’t know about it till after the fact, brat, which will do nothing to save your hide.”

Harry, bristling, looked only too ready, as always, to debate the issue, and Mollie, knowing she had delayed too long already, pushed unceremoniously past him. “This is scarcely the moment for you two to engage in one of your tiffs,” she told them roundly. “Ramsay, you must get out of those clothes before Hawk sees you in them. And, Harry, I depend upon you to keep him talking with Lady Bridget so he does not notice how long it takes me to make my appearance. Hurry now, the both of you!”

Harry grinned at her and scooted down the stairs, but Mollie heard him say scornfully as he neatly eluded a smack from his brother, “As if I’d ever split on Mollie!”

Lord Ramsay was shaking his head in exasperation as he followed her up the stairway, but Mollie did not pause to exchange further conversation with him. Instead, she hurried along the stone gallery to another staircase and upward again until she came to her own sitting room and bedchamber.

“Oh, m’lady, I feared ye’d never get here,” exclaimed the buxom young woman awaiting her there. “I’ve a bath ready, but ’tis nearly chilled already! Here now, off wi’ yer coat and them dreadful breeches.”

“Bless you, Cathe,” Mollie said sincerely, “but how were you warned to expect the master?”

“His man come on ahead, m’lady. Lady Bridget sent fer ye straightaway, ’n I just said ye was out riding the day wi’ ’is lordship. She be in a dreadful fret by now, I’m thinkin’.”

“Indeed, she will,” Mollie agreed. “Wondering what the pair of us are up to this time and hoping, whatever it is, it won’t come to Hawk’s ears.” She chuckled, relaxing as she shed her disreputable clothing and sank gratefully into the tub near the crackling fire while Cathe caught her hair up in a knot at the top of her head.

“We’ve no time t’ wash yer hair, m’lady.”

“No matter. ’Tis clean enough, though it most likely smells of beaver hat. Fetch some oatmeal, Cathe. That will turn the trick. And send a housemaid to inform her ladyship that I’ll be down directly. Lord Harry was to tell her, but in the excitement of greeting his brother, he may have forgotten to do so.”

Cathe disappeared to do her bidding, and Mollie sank lower in the big tub. There was no time to luxuriate, however, nor was the temperature of the water likely to remain even lukewarm much longer. So, with a small sigh, she began to lather her body with the delightful jasmine-scented soap smuggled in only the week before from France. The scent was heady, and she remembered that she had also acquired a small bottle of jasmine oil as well. She would use a drop or two to scent the oatmeal before Cathe brushed it through her hair.

Rinsing the soap away, Mollie stood up, letting the water run off her slim, white, delicately shaped body as she reached for the towel Cathe had left draped over the back of a chair, near the fire. She was still drying herself when Cathe returned, carrying a bowl of dry oatmeal flakes. It took very little time to add the oil and rub the oatmeal into Mollie’s hair but longer to brush it out again, and Cathe insisted upon doing the job properly.

“’Twould not do t’ go scattering flakes as ye walk, m’lady.”

“No, but do hurry, Cathe. I don’t wish to greet his lordship in my shift.”

“I doubt ’e’d object, m’lady,” Cathe responded with a grin. “Not after bein’ away four long years, ’e won’t.”

The girl’s words stopped the breath in Mollie’s throat. Until that moment, she had been concerned only with righting her appearance before he saw her. Now she began to consider what, exactly, his homecoming might mean to her.

She gazed at her reflection in the glass above the dressing table, realizing she was not the same naïve young girl he had left behind four years before. Oh, her face was much the same: still the same oval shape, with the same pointed, stubborn little chin, the same wide, generous mouth, the same dusting of freckles across the dainty, tip-tilted nose, and the same arched, expressive brows above the same dark-lashed, crystal-clear green eyes. Her hair was perhaps a few shades lighter, thanks to her habit of letting it flow free and hatless while she rode at breakneck pace over the wealds in any kind of weather. That habit was responsible, too, for the light tanning of her face and hands, for as often as not she forgot her gloves as well. She looked at her hands and shook her head.

“My nails are a disgrace, Cathe.”

“Aye, m’lady, and ’aven’t I told ye time and again ye must ’ave a care. Miss du Bois would ’ave seven kinds of fits an she could see ’em now.”

“Well, she wouldn’t, because she would never have allowed them to come to such a state.” Then, when Cathe’s face fell ludicrously, Mollie added with a laugh, “Don’t fall into the dismals, goose. I’m not blaming you. ’Tis my own fault that I’ve allowed myself to reach such a pass that I’m dependent on my dresser to trim and polish my nails for me. I’m capable enough to run the estates without so much as a word of advice from my—or rather, his lordship’s—bailiff, yet I cannot attend to the simplest matters for myself. ’Tis a ridiculous state. But I do wish Mathilde had not chosen this moment to visit her family in Christchurch.”

“’Twas to give Miss du Bois a well-deserved rest, m’lady, and well ye know it. She returns the end o’ the week to go wi’ ye to London. Let ’er enjoy ’er vacation now.” As she talked, Cathe had swept Mollie’s hair into a pile of curls atop her dainty head. The style gave her slender neck a fragile appearance and emphasized the daintiness of her small, well-shaped ears. It also made her eyes appear larger than ever and gave her an innocent air that Mollie hoped would get her through that first, dreaded interview with her husband. While, behind her, Cathe shook out the folds of a pale-green muslin gown with narrow darker-green ribbons woven through the lace trimming of the bodice and puffed sleeves, Mollie pulled a few tendrils loose from the coif to soften the line around her face and neck. Biting her lips and pinching her cheeks, she wondered if there would be a need to apply a touch of rouge. She often did so in London, but rarely here in Kent, where the practice was more likely to be frowned upon. She decided against it.

As Cathe helped her into the pale-green gown, Mollie was aware of a growing excitement that seemed to begin somewhere deep inside her and spread through her, giving a glow of warmth to her entire body. What would he expect of her? Would he assume that he need only walk through the door to take up all his rights and privileges as master of Hawkstone again? No doubt. Such was the way of men. From Cathe’s words, it was clear that everyone else expected him merely to take up where he had left off. A little shiver raced through her at the thought. What would he do if she defied him? If she told him he did
not
have the right merely to move back to his bed and board when the whim struck him to do so? What, then?