Suzanne Robinson (23 page)

The reason the Queen’s Gallery had white plaster walls was to keep the room true to its medieval origin. Cheyne hadn’t intended for it to serve as a studio for Sir William Stellaford to photograph Mattie Bright. That was what had happened, however, and Cheyne didn’t like it.

After dinner he and his guests had come to the gallery for coffee, wine, and conversation, but Sir William had produced his box camera and was taking pictures of Mattie. He’d led his subject to one of the arched windows that overlooked the lake. She stood beside it, one arm draped on the sill. His other guests were playing cards or had gathered around the piano to listen to the Countess of Ixworth’s playing. Cheyne prowled the gallery while he strove not to appear to be watching the photography session.

He walked to the fireplace and traced the pattern carved into the mantelpiece. It was a castle, the
heraldic device of Castile. On the other side the spandrels bore the pomegranates of Aragon. Together these belonged to the badge of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first queen. Cheyne stared hard at the castle surmounted by a crown and listened to Sir William.

“Thats lovely, my dear. Just allow your arm to drape naturally along the sill. Turn your head to the side. Excellent. You see, this angle displays your lovely neck to perfection.”

Cheyne’s head whipped around. Sir William was standing much too close to Mattie, and his fingertips touched her chin, showing her the correct angle at which to hold her head. Cheyne took an involuntary step toward the two, but Sir William left Mattie to pick up his box camera and fiddle with it. Swinging away from the fireplace, Cheyne stalked over to the group around the piano.

Mattie remained still, her dark hair a vivid contrast to the white plaster wall. Her gown, a deceptively simple one made costly by the thousands of tiny pearls sewn onto the silk, clung to her figure and swept to the floor. Sir William had swirled the train around her feet.

“Perfection,” the photographer cooed as he took the picture.

“I believe this is your favorite,” Rose Marie said to him. She began Mozart’s
Eine
Kleine
Nachtmusik
.

Cheyne nodded and smiled at her absently. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed Sir William drawing
Mattie’s arm down from the sill and gently placing her hands in front of her. He grasped her shoulders to straighten them, and Cheyne shoved himself away from the piano and strode in their direction. At the last moment he regained sense and changed his course to flop down in a medieval chair carved in the shape of a bowed X. His fingers drummed on the arm while Sir William took another picture. He shifted position in the chair as the photographer again approached his subject.

“Now, Miss Bright, let’s try a classic pose.” Sir William took Mattie’s elbow and turned her to the side. “Place this arm at your back. Good.”

Cheyne leaned forward as Sir William’s voice began to purr.

“Now, my dear, stand very straight. Lift your chin. Imagine a wire is pulling the top of your head to the ceiling. Shoulders back, like this.”

Cheyne watched as Mattie drew herself up. He scowled as her chest was thrust forward. Shooting out of the chair, he was halfway to her when the Marquess of Stainfield passed him and reached her first. Cheyne glanced at Sir William, stepped in front of Mattie before he could take a picture and gave the man a look that would have been found at the sacking of Rome.

Sir William gawked at him, then flushed and turned away to fuss with the box camera. Cheyne dragged his enraged stare away from the man, only to find Stainfield escorting Mattie past him.

“You must see the chapel. It has Flemish tapestries and panels from the early fourteenth century.”

Cheyne watched the two sail out of the gallery, his suspicions alerted. Old Barmy was interested in antiquities, but only his own. As far as Cheyne knew, he’d never set foot in the chapel. Glancing around to make sure his guests were occupied, he slipped out of the room, took the bridge corridor across to the main castle and reached the chapel as the doors shut. He opened them again in time to see Barmy walk down the central aisle with Mattie. He stopped halfway down and turned to her.

“We could be walking down the aisle to our wedding ceremony, my dear. Look at you, so lovely in your virginal white gown.”

Mattie disengaged her arm from Stainfield’s. “You promised you weren’t going to bring up the subject of marriage.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t be angry, my dear. I’ve brought something to show you.”

“Here?”

“I left it here before dinner. It seemed a good place.”

Stainfield led Mattie to the front pew. He produced a locked box, which he handed to her. Opening it with a key from his coat pocket, he took it from Mattie, held it in front of her and lifted the lid. Inside, on black velvet, rested a crown glittering with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds.

“My duchess will have the right to wear this.”

Cheyne winced and released his stranglehold on the door. Ignoring the ache in his fingers, he saw with dismay Mattie’s awed expression. Stainfield took the crown in both hands, raised it high above Mattie’s head and lowered it slowly to rest on her head. He stood back to survey her.

“You’re the image of regal dignity, my dear. Look.” He turned Mattie so that she could see her reflection in the glass of one of the windows.

Dread clamped down on Cheyne as he watched her look at herself with astonishment. The crown might have been made for her, and Cheyne began to hate Stainfield for showing Mattie this lovely image of herself. He had no crown to give her, no peer’s robes with which to drape those lovely shoulders. Light from the wall sconces bathed her in a gentle glow and set the gems dancing. Most women would have been obscured by the grandeur of the crown. With her elegant neck, royal posture and flashing eyes, Mattie Bright matched the richness with her own.

Then she broke the spell by reaching up and grabbing the crown as if it were a straw hat and handing it back to Stainfield. “Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

Stainfield blinked, then cried, “Are you mad?”

“I’m sure most folks would think so.” Mattie patted her hair. “But the truth is, in order to wear that crown I’d have to go to places and spend time doing things I’d sooner avoid.”

“Any woman in England would—”

“Good,” Mattie said. “You’ll have lots of choices.”

Stainfield shook his head in a stunned manner.

Mattie patted him on the arm and spoke gently. “You wouldn’t be happy with me, my lord. I like driving motorcars by myself, and I won’t give up managing my money. I support causes that would make you choke, and I hate frittering my time away at balls and horse races and such.”

“All that would change. When a woman marries—”

“No.” Mattie tapped the crown with her finger. “For me, this is playacting. This crown, titles, divine right of kings, all of it belongs to the old way of doing things.” She walked away from Stainfield and turned in a circle, her arms thrown wide. “We’re on the verge of the twentieth century, my lord. Soon we’ll travel by flying machines. We have Mr. Edison’s moving pictures. We’ve got motorcars and telephones and electric lights. And the people who made them possible don’t have titles and crowns. The future belongs to ordinary people with extraordinary brains in their heads.” Mattie glanced at the chapel’s Gothic windows. “It’s nice to live in a beautiful castle, my lord, as long as you realize it’s just a big stone house.”

Cheyne found himself smiling.

“You can’t mean that,” Stainfield said.

“I do. The future will be made as it always has been, by those with the courage and intelligence to change things.” She glanced around the chapel. “Like Mr. Tennant.”

Cheyne poked his head farther over the threshold to hear better.

“Tennant? Courageous? Ha.”

“Yes,” Mattie replied. “To be born into this mummified aristocracy, to be born to privilege and wealth, and then break out of it, that takes courage. Something inside him is different. He was able to recognize how static Society is, how utterly lacking in creativity and intelligence.” Mattie walked over to Stainfield, put her fingertips on his arm and leaned toward him. “And he did something about it before he was swallowed whole.”

Now Cheyne was grinning.

“It’s Tennant!” Stainfield exclaimed.

Mattie flushed and lowered her hand. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” Stainfield shoved the crown back in its box. “Everyone has remarked upon it. Even Lance has noticed, and I must say you’ve done nothing to discourage him.”

Turning quickly in a whirl of skirts, Mattie marched toward the window. “You’re imagining things.”

Muttering his agreement, Cheyne scowled at Stainfield.

“Not likely,” Stainfield said as he locked the box and slipped the key in his pocket. “As I said, I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Cheyne Tennant has never looked at a woman like that, even when he was at university. He can’t keep himself from staring. It’s
almost as obvious as the fact that you’re afraid to look at him.”

“I am not!”

“Then why are you shouting? If you were indifferent or merely friendly toward him, my remarks wouldn’t fluster you into screeching at me or make you turn the color of a ripe apple.”

Suddenly Cheyne was enchantingly happy. The world seemed a miraculous place. He was so happy he almost forgot to duck when Mattie babbled a denial at Stainfield and turned to leave. He darted away from the chapel and around a corner. Spinning around, he adjusted his evening coat and walked back the way he’d come. Mattie ran into him because she was watching the closed doors of the chapel. He caught her before they collided, and she gave a little cry.

“Steady, Miss Bright.”

Mattie scooted out of his grasp, her face crimson and her hands shaking. “Oh, I didn’t see you there.”

“I was just coming to see where you’d got to. You’ve been gone with old Barmy for quite a while, and your mother is pleased.”

“She won’t be for long.”

“Oh?”

Mattie’s gaze avoided his, and her hands were clasped in a strangling grip. When she didn’t elaborate, he went on.

“Unless you want to set people talking, you’d better come back to the Queen’s Gallery.”

“I don’t feel—”

“But before we return, I’d like to ask you to meet me after everyone has retired. About one o’clock should do. There are one or two matters we haven’t discussed yet.”

“I don’t think—”

“It’s not required.” Cheyne grabbed her arm and guided her back across the bridge corridor before she had a chance to recover her composure. As they entered the Queen’s Gallery he whispered, “In the Banqueting Hall. Everyone’s rooms are in the main castle, so the Gloriette will be deserted.”

He propelled her into the room to meet the excited and questioning looks of her mother. He spent the rest of the evening attending to the needs of his other guests. One part of his mind concentrated on perceiving any hint that could lead him to the identity of the blackmailer. The other part whirled with confused feelings about what he’d just heard from Mattie. The hours before bedtime passed uneventfully. Once everyone had retired, he lay on his bed in his evening clothes and waited for the appointed meeting time.

She had refused a man with a dukedom to offer her. Oh, she’d said she was going home, but he’d seen many young ladies scoff at exalted titles until actually offered one. Not Mattie. Mattie Bright was an original. A woman with a sterling soul and the courage to stand by her beliefs and go against her mother, her promise to her dead father, Society, everyone. He
hadn’t treated her well, but she’d praised him to Stainfield as a man of principle. She admired him for the very qualities most people deplored.

The admiration women accorded him had always been of a different nature. Aristocratic women trapped in loveless marriages seemed to find him the perfect diversion. He remembered the first time a young married lady had chosen him for the purpose. He’d been quite innocent, barely fifteen. Lady Ursula Race had been visiting his mother, and one day she followed him when he went riding. Catching up with him in the wood that surrounded the Bracewell estate, she pretended that her saddle needed adjusting and asked him to help her. What issued from that chivalrous act made him blush for weeks.

Once he had begun attending balls and country house parties, life seemed filled with feminine bounty. Ambassadors’ wives, ladies married to peers and ministers. He sailed from one to the other, liking many, wanting most, loving none of them. But the eligible girls—they weren’t for him, because he was a younger son. No title, no prospects of ever getting one, no estates. But by then he’d been poisoned by the uselessness of existence in Society and knew he had to leave or perish on a diet of sterility and posturing.

He’d made a mistake once. He’d fallen in love with the daughter of an earl. At twenty-three it was easy to do. Her name had been Violet. She had red-gold hair, loved puppies and kittens, and laughed at
him when he became too serious. She brought humor into his life, and he adored her. But her parents whisked her off to the Riviera and arranged a more profitable match with an old buffer who possessed a title and lots of tin.

Cheyne had tried to see her before she married, but she wouldn’t agree. In the end her fear of being expelled from the best parties and drawing rooms outweighed her affection for him. He had stood in the street in the rain watching her bedroom window the night before her wedding, unable to believe she’d go through with the ceremony. Soaked and shivering, he’d watched her get into the family coach wearing her wedding gown and drive out of his life.

The pain of losing Violet remained with him for years, and he’d always wondered if her parents had discovered the secret of his birth. Had Violet abandoned him because he was illegitimate? After that he stayed with married ladies who knew what they wanted. It wasn’t his fault if their husbands left them alone while they pursued other women.

He heard a clock strike the quarter hour and began to feel agitated. He found himself dreading the thought of Mattie knowing about his real father. Would she still admire him? As he left his rooms and slipped down dark corridors, he chided himself. He was only going to talk to Mattie, just talk in a comfortable manner. A chasm had opened between them after the Trillford ball, and he needed to close
it. He’d been thrown off balance by her sudden appearance in those cursed trousers. It wouldn’t happen again. All he wanted to do was talk, restore their relationship. Ask her if what she’d said to Stainfield was the truth. No, he couldn’t do that. What would he say?
I say, Mattie, do you really admire me
? How ridiculous.