A Lady in Name (20 page)

So much had changed in Lucy’s world overnight that what had seemed of vital significance yesterday had today lost much of its importance.
Today her whole concentration lay in a determination to allow nothing of her state of mind to become apparent. A resolution which was to be tested sooner than she knew.

At the first halt for a change of horses, Stefan appeared at the coach door.
‘Dion, pray take a turn in the curricle for the next stage. Cobbold will drive. I want to talk to Lucy.’

To his surprise, his sister frowned direfully at him.
‘I don’t know that I can allow that.’

Stefan blinked at her as she poked her head through the window.
‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It is highly improper for you to be alone with Lucy in the coach,’ stated Dion, such an expression of piety in her tone Stefan nearly burst into laughter.

‘Believe me, Lucy will be safe enough.’

‘But I don’t know that I do believe it,’ she insisted, ‘after what I have been hearing of your activities last night.’

Stefan froze. Could Lucy have tattled? No, she was far too embarrassed by the episode.

‘I hear you and Lucy were alone together in the parlour in the middle of the night
—and in your night clothes!’

Was that as much as she knew?
Stefan devoutly hoped so. ‘You are remarkably well informed.’

‘Lucy told me.’

‘I did not suppose you had learned it from the town crier. Are you going to get down, or do I have to drag you out of there?’

He opened the door as he spoke, and as might have been expected, Dion flounced up from her seat in a dudgeon.

‘If you will be so kind as to let down the steps, brother dear, I may be able to do as you request.’ In a moment, he had handed her down without ceremony, but when he made to escort her to the waiting curricle, Dion threw up a hand. ‘Thank you, but I prefer to rely on the services of Cobbold. At least he will be civil.’

Stefan watched her stalk off to the carriage,
then shut up the steps of the coach and jumped nimbly up, shutting the door behind him.

He sat in the forward seat opposite Lucy and grinned across at her.
‘I hope you don’t object?’

He thought her smile was perfunctory.
‘Of course I don’t.’

Stefan glanced out of the window to check whether the occupants of the curricle were ready to leave, and then rapped smartly on the roof of the coach.
It started off, rumbling on the cobbled yard of the posting inn.

As he looked round again, Lucy spoke.
‘I am afraid Dion is cross at having missed the meeting in the dead of night.’

Stefan laughed.
‘She will be crosser now, I don’t doubt, at being excluded from this conference.’

A faint frown creased Lucy’s brow.
‘Is it a conference?’

Was she a trifle wary?
He had felt a little distanced this morning, although she had been easy enough in her manner towards him. It was scarcely surprising she should be conscious after his behaviour last night. Let him get that out of the way first.

‘Lucy, I cannot sufficiently apologise for my conduct.
I took an unfair advantage of you.’

He thought a spasm crossed her face, but the light filtering through the trees into the dimness of the coach cast shadows across her so he could not be sure.

‘On the contrary, you specifically did not take advantage of me.’ She spoke lightly, but something in her tone rankled.

‘You may say so if you choose, but we both know I was manifestly in the wrong.’
He leaned a little towards her, but did not make the mistake of attempting to touch her. ‘I have not been able to get it out of my mind that I caused you to make an odious comparison of yourself with your unfortunate mother. You would not have done so had I not given you cause.’

She looked away, and back again, and Stefan cursed the flittering shadows that would not let him properly read her expression.

‘That was silly of me. Perhaps I was thinking of an old saying.’

‘What is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh?’

‘Yes. But in the cool light of day, I see it for the nonsense it is.’

Stefan was not sure he believed her, but he refrained from questioning her words.
‘I am glad of that.’

‘After all,’ she pursued, ‘I was brought up by a vicar, as
Alice was not. I have been taught the refinements of genteel behaviour, though I am of humble stock.’

‘On one side only,’ Stefan put in sharply, unreasonably irritated to hear her speak so of herself.

‘And in my upbringing,’ she said, a note of insistence in her voice. ‘Papa never encouraged me to imagine myself destined for anything but a moderate milieu.’

‘Of course he did not,’ Stefan said acidly.
‘He did not tell you of your origins until he was dying. And then he withheld the truth of your mother’s background.’

She was silent, her lips compressed tightly together.
Too late Stefan recalled her sensitivity to any remark she might consider detrimental to the vicar’s memory. He threw out a hand.

‘Don’t rip up at me.
I beg your pardon. I meant no disrespect to Mr Graydene.’

She bit her lip, appearing to struggle with herself.
Then her eyes lifted to meet his. ‘You blame him for not telling me. You think he would have done better to have told me the truth at the outset.’

Stefan did not hesitate.
‘Yes, I do. I am sorry if it distresses you, Lucy, but I cannot think your papa, as you think of him, did you any favours.’

‘Why not?’
The words jerked from her. ‘He gave me more than twenty happy years of affection and freedom from the stigma that dogs me now. I would not have it otherwise.’

‘Because you honour his memory.
For which you are to be commended.’

To his immediate dismay, Lucy threw her hands over her face.
Acting on instinct, Stefan moved across to seat himself beside her. She felt his movement for her hands came down, and she pushed herself away from him along the cushioned seat.

‘Lucy
—’

She flung up a hand.
‘You do not understand. I loved him! He was all the world to me.’

He tried to capture her hand, but she thrust it behind her.
Stefan felt riven, as if her rejection tore him in half. ‘Lucy, I’m not trying to take that away from you. You are grieving and that is natural.’

‘But?
There is a but, I presume?’

She had thrown the words at him, like a challenge.
Stefan let out a laugh of sheer frustration.

‘Lucy, this is madness
. What are we quarrelling about? If I seem to you to criticise your father, I can only say I did not intend it.’

‘Only you think he acted wrongly by me, and I will not endure to hear that.’

She was shaking, her breath coming short and fast. Stefan felt utterly confused. What had he said? How had a chance remark thrown her into such a distressing condition?

‘Lucy, I don’t know what you want of me.’

She fairly glared at him. ‘I want you to sit on the other side of the coach!’

He was so surprised, he did move back to the other side.
For several moments he did not speak, instead watching her in hopes of some sign her extraordinary mood might be subsiding. Presently her tremors lessened, the hands clutched tightly together in her lap lost some of their tension, and she sagged slightly in her seat, leaning back against the squabs with a little sigh.

‘Better?’

She kept her gaze averted, but Stefan did not really think she was looking at the passing scenery beyond the window.

‘Yes, I thank you.’

Stefan knew not how to proceed. Whatever he said might cause a resurgence of this oddity of temper. At length, Lucy turned her head to look at him, her expression faintly apologetic.

‘I seem to have taken a leaf out of your book, Stefan.’

He was taken aback. ‘How so?’

A tight little smile came his way.
‘I was thoroughly undone by your fury yesterday. Now it is your turn.’

He was so astonished, he let out a bark of laughter.
‘Yes, you have me there, I admit. Was it revenge? No, I will not believe you so petty.’

She shook her head, and the flush at her cheeks died down.
‘I owe you an apology.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘You did as much last night. I can do no less.’

‘Not even when you remember what that apology almost led to?’

Then he wished he had held his tongue, for the colour flooded her face and she cast her eyes away from him again.

‘Consider that unsaid.’

She nodded, but constraint had returned. Stefan was moved to regret having determined on this interview. He had said almost nothing of what he intended. The matters he meant to broach had flown out of his head. It was hardly politic now to begin upon a discussion of how he meant to provide for Lucy’s future.

Being back at Pennington Manor was like entering another world. Lucy’s previous stay had been so short, and fraught with such distress, she’d had no leisure to make much comparison beyond the obvious in size and splendour. Now, with the vicarage left in her past at Upledon and the discovery of the secrets of the Oade farmstead, she could not but notice the contrast in her current situation.

Although both Stefan and Dion treated her as a member of the family, to the servants she was a guest.
She had but to tug on the bell pull to command any conceivable comfort. She had no duties to perform and she was not expected to partake of her share in the work of the house as she had done in Upledon. In a word, she was allowed to be idle.

The thought of what her life might have been had Mr Oade not thrust his sister
Alice from her home was enough to give Lucy nightmares. Nor could she contemplate with equanimity the picture of domestic life alongside Mr Waley. Yet she had given it serious consideration. At the back of her mind, Lucy felt obliged to hold the notion in reserve. She’d had no further speech with Mr Waley, but she’d sent a note from the Half Moon saying she would write to tell him what she had discovered about her mother’s family. Three days into her sojourn at Pennington the letter remained unwritten.

All her instincts urged her to send, along with her news, a final end to his hopes.
Lucy knew it must do the curate a disservice to consent to marry him when her heart was given to another. Yet caution kept her from closing the door upon one of the less arduous avenues open to her. And one of these she must choose, and quickly.

To remain at Pennington, subject to the distress of concealment, was unthinkable.
The moments closeted in the coach alone with Stefan had shown her how ill equipped she was to remain in his vicinity without giving herself away. She yearned for his touch. But the instant his hand was upon her, she was subject to such intensity of heat in her veins that she could not endure it. She was so conscious in Stefan’s very presence that her command of her thoughts and her voice became wildly unpredictable. She knew she was prickly with him, ready to take offence at the least little thing. Yet whenever he was not by, she caught herself listening for his step or his voice, and checking the doorway to find if he might enter.

Five days of this and Lucy knew she could not live in such a fashion.
With Dion too, she had been less than patient. Exhorted to report upon Stefan’s discussion with her in the coach, Lucy had flown at her.

‘He was hateful and I refuse to talk about it!’

‘Don’t say you quarrelled again.’

‘If you must call it so.
In any event, he made me lose my temper.’

‘Yes, I can see that.
You have been sulky as a bear since we got back.’

At which point, Lucy had felt obliged to apologise for her moodiness.
‘Pray don’t pay attention to me, Dion.’

Which had served to turn Dion back into the sunny-tempered creature of her usual habit.
As the days passed, Lucy felt compelled to invent a plausible reason for the continuing unevenness of her temper.

‘I wish I might decide what I should do.’

They were seated in the favoured Red Saloon, the morning sun filtering into the window embrasure and casting brightness across the sofas, in one of which Dion was curled up in her usual fashion while Lucy sat opposite.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I must settle upon a suitable future.’

Dion made a face of disgust.
‘You are not starting on that again? I thought we had it fixed you are to remain here for the present.’

‘Yes, but I always intended to move on as soon as I might.
And with all we have discovered, I am the more determined to fend for myself.’

Dion twinkled.
‘If I were you, Lucy, I would not engage in such a profitless exercise.’