A Lady in Name (16 page)

Even the curate was moved to produce a thin smile.
‘A move typical of the vicar, if I may say so. He was far-sighted as well as the kindest of men.’

A tremulous curve was upon Lucy’s mouth and Stefan shocked himself with an image of kissing the soft lips.

‘I believe I was lucky, more so than if the man who fathered me had chosen to take me in. I was not of his flesh, but no one could have been a kinder or more loving father to me than my own dear papa.’

Stefan was glad of his sister’s rush to embrace Lucy, for he was still in a state of shock at the trend of his earlier thought.
The last thing in the world he needed was to become amorously entangled with Lucy Graydene.

* * *

The prospect of hunting throughout Gloucestershire for all the Oakes and Oades who might live there daunted even Lucy, keen as she was to find her mother’s family.

‘And when we had done so,’ added Dion in accents of frustration, ‘ten to one it would turn out your papa had the name wrong after all and the whole effort will have been for nothing.’

The matter was exhaustively discussed over dinner and beyond, but Lucy was loath to abandon the scheme. She was encouraged by Stefan’s belief that the woman succoured by Mr Graydene could not have come from very far afield.

‘By the vicar’s account,
Alice was afoot, and in the last stages of pregnancy. She cannot have come far in that condition.’

‘True,’ agreed Lucy, ‘although that does not mean she had not travelled some distance at the start of the business.’

Dion was in agreement. ‘Exactly so. If only we knew where my uncle had met her, we might have something to go on.’

‘But it might have been anywhere,’ Lucy said despairingly.
‘Bath or London, for all we know.’

Stefan looked decisive as he shook his head.
‘No, I think we may safely discount the sort of places where the gentry congregate.’ A sliver of dismay entered Lucy’s breast as he gave her an apologetic look. ‘I have no wish to distress you, Lucy, but we must face facts if we are to gain any ground at all. Recollect the whole affair was conducted in secrecy. Had Alice been of gentle birth, there must have been a scandal. I cannot think the vicar’s efforts to uncover the facts would have met with failure. I imagine his enquiries were exhaustive.’

Lucy sighed.
‘I do not know. I keep telling you he had little time to inform me, and he was so weak he could not speak for long without losing breath.’

‘But you do know his efficiency,’ Stefan insisted.
‘You know what sort of a man he was. Does it seem to you likely that he would have adopted you as he did had he any suspicion there was a genteel family in the case? After all, he wrote to my uncle.’

Aware of Dion’s compassionate gaze, Lucy thrust down the rush of dismay attendant upon all discussion of
Papa. She met Stefan’s eye with assumed fortitude.

‘You are saying I must look among country folk and village maidens.
Very well, but how does that help with our immediate enquiries?’

Dion’s mischievous look dawned.
‘Yes, we cannot go knocking upon the door of every farmhouse in the county and demanding if they are missing a daughter.’

‘No, but what we can do,’ said Stefan,
dismissing his sister’s attempt at humour, ‘is to find out the Parish Clerk and ask him if he knows of any persons named Oake or Oade hereabouts.’

* * *

Dion having flatly refused to be left alone at the Half Moon missing all the excitement, upon the following afternoon Lucy found herself uncomfortably squashed between brother and sister in the narrow seat of the curricle. For the first few moments, she viewed with dismay the prospect of careering all over the countryside with her body in such close proximity to Stefan she could feel every motion of muscle in his knee and thigh, and each little movement of his arm where he held the reins.

Lucy had fretted all morning, anxious to be off, all through the delay occasioned by the search for Mr Stagg, the Parish Clerk.
But now she could have wished herself back in the parlour of the inn, so embarrassing was her position. She tried at first to shift so she was tighter with Dion than with Stefan, until the former complained she was being pushed hard up against the rail on the other side.

‘I do wish these carriage seats were made wider.
I can scarcely breathe!’

‘Well, you would come,’ her brother stated coolly.

‘Oh, I am not truly fussing. I would not have missed it for the world. Only if you will just give me an inch or two, I may at least not have to feel this rail sticking into my ribs.’

Lucy had no alternative but to shift as well as she might, which put her into even closer touch with Stefan’s arm and thigh.
At that precise moment, the curricle rounded a bend, and the power of his muscles as he shifted his weight to keep his balance thrust strongly against Lucy’s leg.

A flood of warmth shot down her veins, and she felt the strangest stirring of sensation deep down below her belly.
She froze, tensing every part of her body and pressing her legs tightly together as if she would draw them away from the dangerous thigh at her right side. The effect of this was unfortunate. The sensation intensified, and a slow pulsing started up, just as though she had a heartbeat in that highly secret area. Lucy’s breath became short and she had all to do to conceal her condition from Dion. Worse and more urgent, she had to keep Stefan from realising how his nearness affected her in this appalling fashion.

She dared not look anywhere but straight in front, willing her unruly flesh to subside.

‘Relax, Lucy!’

Unprepared, she turned her head and met Stefan’s grey gaze head on.
His eyes were startlingly close and she could see the lines on his skin delineating the angles and planes of his face.

Horrified to have given herself away, she bit her lip upon the dreadful possibility of blurting out anything that might further compromise her.
As she stared at him a slow smile started in his eyes, spreading downwards until his lip curved in the curl of amusement she had seen now and then.

‘You look as if you were confronted by a snake
.’

She let out a shaky laugh and her tension eased a little.
She cleared her throat, trying for a light note. ‘It is a trifle crowded.’

The grey of his eyes appeared to Lucy’s heightened senses to deepen.
‘Yes, I had noticed.’ Then his gaze went back to the road and Lucy felt oddly released, as if he had been holding her with his eyes. ‘If you will just relax, you will soon find it more comfortable.’

Lucy doubted it, but did her best to allow the tension in her body to slacken.
At the least, there was easement in that untoward area of embarrassment. But the warmth engendered by the feel of Stefan’s knee and thigh against her was intermittently troubling.

To distract herself, Lucy concentrated instead on his arm, the sensation of which was far less disturbing, although she felt every motion.
She noted the way he held the reins looped in and out of his fingers, and saw how his whip hand came in to pull on this rein or that as he worked to let the horses know his wishes. She watched for some time in silence, but at length felt compelled to utterance.

‘You are so skilled
. I had not realised before how difficult a task it must be to control the horses as you do.’

Before Stefan could respond beyond a quick look round, Dion intervened.
‘Oh, Stefan is a particularly good driver. Papa taught him, and he was a nonpareil. Uncle Beves was shockingly bad. He could not stick to his leaders and he was forever tugging on the reins and ruining his horses’ mouths.’

Stefan laughed.
‘You know all about it, of course.’

‘Well, I do.
At least, I know from Papa’s discourse. And he did try to teach me, but I had no aptitude. It is extraordinarily difficult, you know, Lucy, even with one horse, let alone four.’

‘I am ready to believe it.
Papa had a pony and trap, but I never drove it. I cannot even ride, to tell you the truth.’

‘Good gracious, can you not?’
Dion leaned across her. ‘Stefan, you will have to teach her.’

‘Oh, no, I am persuaded there can be no necessity,’ Lucy uttered hastily, petrified by the thought of the inevitable proximity and having Stefan’s hands upon her.
‘I cannot imagine I will ever have occasion to ride.’

She cast a glance at Stefan as she spoke and found him wearing that expression she thought of as his enigmatic face.

‘I will teach you if you wish it, though I cannot imagine it will result in anything but your own discomfiture and the wreck of my temper.’

Lucy could not help laughing.
‘Only too likely. I should probably end by striking at you with the horsewhip.’

‘In which case, you would earn a thoroughly deserved slapping
where it would do most good, so be warned.’

‘Stefan!’

Lucy was aware of a considerable degree of heat sweeping through her, which did not entirely originate with sharing Dion’s outrage. She knew Stefan was jesting, but the intimacy of the idea had a most unwelcome effect, putting that uncomfortable pulse into action again. She would naturally resist to the limit of her power any attempt to lay punishing hands upon her person, but the thought of how Stefan would be obliged to seize her, should he try it, had a searing effect on her unruly veins.

She was inordinately relieved when, a few moments later, Dion pointed out the signpost that should lead them to their first port of enquiry.

‘Look, there is the turn to Chaseley.’

Lucy was of course acquainted with t
he Parish Clerk and had been able to direct Stefan to the fellow’s house. But Mr Stagg had proved elusive at the time and Lucy chafed while her cousin cast around for a couple of hours to discover his whereabouts. Exasperation had brought Stefan back in time for luncheon, but by the greatest good fortune, Mr Stagg happened to walk into the taproom just as his lordship was quenching his thirst with a tankard of ale. Stefan had immediately commandeered the man’s services, bringing him to their private parlour forthwith, and Mr Stagg had proved a fount of information.

It appeared there were but three possibilities in the area, one out of his parish boundary.
Two were Oakes. The farmstead they were heading for happened to be the only Oade or Oades in the area, situated a little outside of Chaseley, some eight miles away from Upledon village, and arrived at by what the Parish Clerk had promised was a readily understood route.

‘Half a mile along this road should bring us to the turning to Cullicudden farm, should it not?’

‘According to Mr Stagg,’ Lucy agreed. ‘I have rarely visited this area. Indeed, until I came to find your uncle, I had hardly been much outside Upledon.’

‘Gracious, Lucy, what a s
heltered existence you have led,’ exclaimed Dion.

‘In the way of travelling, yes.
But I dare say it would surprise you how much of the travails of ordinary people I have witnessed.’

Remembering some of the more distressing events, Lucy thought it prudent to keep her own counsel.
She was ready to swear Dion would be dismayed and astonished to learn of the trials and tribulations of the poor.

Stefan appeared to have some appreciation of what she might have seen.
‘I imagine the vicar’s daughter, if she involved herself in her father’s work, must certainly have seen life lived close to the edge.’

‘Truly, Lucy?
Did you help your papa?’

‘Yes, but I had my own special concerns, you know.
Papa’s duties often took him away from those who needed almost daily care. I was glad to be able to be of service to him in that way, when I could. Of course he would not allow me to enter any cottage where there was contagion, but otherwise he was content for me to do what I might to alleviate such sufferings as fell within my ability.’

Dion was open-mouthed, but Stefan looked her over with a lurking expression in his eyes Lucy could not interpret.

‘I have said it before, Lucy Graydene. You are full of surprises.’

‘There
,’ came suddenly from Dion. ‘That must be the turn to Cullicudden farm.’

* * *

The farmer was a burly fellow, thickset with a head like a bull and a taciturn manner. Stefan hoped he would not turn mulish, and tried what a soft approach might achieve.

‘I beg your pardon for troubling you.
Mr Oade, is it?’

The fellow’s stance and facial expression did not alter.
‘What if it is?’

The slight country burr matched with the homespun, if respectable, look of his working clothes.
Rough leather breeches encased his big legs, with a pair of dusty boots to his feet. An old-fashioned frock-coat of thick serge worn over a corduroy waistcoat and a woollen shirt were loosely complimented by a handkerchief tied about his throat in place of a cravat.

His truculence induced Stefan to pull rank, precisely as he had not intended.
‘My name is Stefan Ankerville. I am the Earl of Pennington. If you are Mr Oade, I have business with you.’