Indiscreet (25 page)

I
T
was a beautiful day for early December: crisply chill, it was true, but bright and sunny, nevertheless. The sun sparkled off the surface of the sea like thousands of diamonds, and the wind that so often whipped across the water to buffet the land and knife through its inhabitants was a mere gentle breeze today.

The lady who sat at the top of the steep cliff, almost at its edge, in a slight grassy hollow of land that hid her from the road behind,
clasped her arms about her knees and drew in deep breaths of the salt air. She felt soothed and invigorated both at the same time.

Everything was about to change, but surely for the better. How could it be otherwise when she had thought herself beyond the age of marriage just two days ago—she was six-and-twenty years old—and was now awaiting the arrival of her future husband? She had told herself for the past several years that she had no wish to marry, that she was happy to live at Penwith Manor with her widowed mother, enjoying a freedom that most women never knew. But the freedom was illusory, and she had always known it. For longer than a year she had lived with insecurity and ignored it because there had been nothing she could do about it. She was a mere woman after all.

Penwith Manor had belonged to her father and to his father before him and so on back through six generations. But on her father's death it—and his baronet's title—had passed to a distant cousin. In the fourteen months since her father's death, she had continued to live there with her mother, but they had both been fully aware that Sir Edwin Baillie might at any moment wish to take up residence there himself or else sell it or lease it. What would become of them then? Where would they go? What would they do? Sir Edwin would probably not turn them out destitute, but they might have to move to a very small home with a correspondingly small income. It had not been a pleasant prospect.

But now Sir Edwin had made his decision and had written a lengthy letter to Lady Hayes to announce his intention of taking a bride so that he might produce sons to secure his inheritance and to care for his own mother and three sisters in the event of his untimely passing. His intention was to solve two problems at once by marrying his third cousin once removed, Miss Moira Hayes. He would come to Penwith Manor within the week to make his offer and to arrange for their wedding in the spring.

Miss Moira Hayes, he had seemed to assume, would be only too happy to accept his offer. And after the initial shock, the initial indignation over his taking her meek compliance for granted, Moira had had to admit that she
was
happy. Or if not exactly happy, then at least content. Accepting would be the sensible thing to do. She was six-and-twenty and living in precarious circumstances. She had met Sir Edwin Baillie once, soon after Papa's death when he had come with his mother to inspect his new property. She had found him dull and somewhat pompous, but he was young—not much older than five-and-thirty at a guess—and respectable and passably good-looking even if not handsome. Besides, Moira told herself, looks were in no way important, especially to an aging spinster who had long outlived any dreams of romance or romantic love.

She rested her chin on her knees and smiled rather ruefully down at the sea below the cliffs. Oh, yes, she had long outlived dreams. But then, so much had changed since her childhood, since her girlhood. So much had changed outside herself, within herself. She was now very ordinary, very dull, very respectable. She laughed softly. Yet she had never outlived the habit of going off by herself, though a respectable female had no business being alone outside her own home. This had always been a favorite spot. But it was a long time since she had last been here. She was not sure what had drawn her here today. Had she come to say good-bye to dreams? It was a somber thought.

But it need not be a depressing one. Marriage with Sir Edwin would doubtless bring no real happiness with it, but then, it probably would bring no great unhappiness, either. Marriage would
be what she made of it. Sir Edwin wanted children—sons. Well, so did she. Just two days ago, she had thought even that dream impossible.

She tensed suddenly as a dog barked somewhere behind her. She tightened her hold on her knees, and her toes clenched inside her half boots. But it was not a stray. Someone gave it a sharp command and it fell silent. She listened attentively for a few moments, but she could hear nothing except the sea and the breeze and the gulls overhead. They had gone, the man and the dog. She relaxed again.

But just as she did so, something caught at the edge of her vision, and she knew that she had been discovered, that someone else had found this spot, that her peace had been shattered. She felt mortified at being caught sitting on the grass like a girl, hugging her knees. She turned her head sharply.

The sun was behind him. She had the impression of a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed fashionably in a many-caped greatcoat with a tall beaver hat and black top boots. He had arrived earlier than expected, she thought. He would certainly not approve of finding his future bride thus, alone and unchaperoned. How had he known she was here? She was more than three miles from home. Perhaps his dog had alerted him. Where was the dog?

Those thoughts flashed through her mind in the mere fraction of a second and were gone. Almost instantly she knew that he was not Sir Edwin Baillie. And in the same instant she knew who he was, even though she could not see his face clearly and had not set eyes on him for longer than eight years.

She was not sure afterward how long they stayed thus, staring at each other, she sitting on the grass with her arms about her knees, he standing above the hollow, against the skyline. It might have been minutes, but was probably only seconds.

“Hello, Moira,” he said at last.

•   •   •

KENNETH
had come to Cornwall alone, apart from his valet and his coachman and his dog. He had been unable to persuade Eden and Nat to come with him. They had been unable to persuade him to change his mind, even though his decision to come had been made when he was deeply inebriated. But then, he often acted on impulse. There was a restlessness in him that had never quite been put to rest since his sudden decision to leave home and buy himself a commission in the cavalry.

He was coming home for Christmas. His mother, Ainsleigh and Helen, numerous other family members, and some friends of his mother's were coming after him. Eden and Nat might come in the spring, they had said, if he was still here in the spring. Perhaps Rex would come, too.

It had been a mad decision. Winter was not the best time to travel into such a remote part of the country. But the weather was kind to him as he journeyed west, and despite himself, he felt his spirits rise as the landscape became more familiar. For the last two days he rode, with only Nelson for company, leaving his carriage and his servants and baggage to follow him at a slower pace. He wondered by how many days his letter to Mrs. Whiteman, the housekeeper at Dunbarton, had preceded him. Not by many,
at a guess. He could imagine the sort of consternation he had caused belowstairs. However, they need not worry. He was used to rough living and no one else would arrive for another two weeks.

He rode frequently in sight of the sea along a road that never took him any great distance from the edge of high cliffs except when it dipped down into river valleys and up the other side after passing through fishing villages and allowing him glimpses of golden beaches and stone quays and bobbing fishing boats.

How could he ever have thought that he would never come back?

The next dip in the road, he knew at last, would give him a view down into the village of Tawmouth. Not that he would go down there on this particular occasion. Dunbarton was on this side of the valley, no more than three or four miles inland. There was sudden elation at the thought. And memories crowded in on him—memories of his boyhood, of people he had known, places he had frequented. One of the latter must be close by.

Nostalgia caught at his stomach and knotted it. He unconsciously slowed his horse's pace. It had been one of his favorite places, that hollow. It had been a quiet, secluded place, where one could sit unobserved on the grass, alone with the elements and with one's dreams. Alone with
her
. Yes, they had met there sometimes. But he would no longer allow memories of her to color all his memories of home. He had had a happy boyhood.

He would have ridden on by if Nelson had not barked, his head toward the hollow. Was someone there? Quite unreasonably, Kenneth felt offended at the thought.

“Sit, Nelson,” he commanded before his dog could dash away to investigate.

Nelson sat and gazed upward with intelligent eyes, waiting for further orders. Without realizing it, Kenneth saw, he had drawn to a complete stop. His horse lowered its head to crop at the grass. How familiar it all looked. As if the eight years and longer had never been.

He dismounted, left his horse to graze unfettered and Nelson to wait for the command to be revoked, and walked silently toward the lip of the hollow. He hoped there was no one there. He did not feel like being sociable—yet.

His first instinct was to duck hastily out of sight. There
was
someone there—a stranger dressed neatly but rather drably in gray cloak and bonnet. She was sitting with knees drawn up, her arms clasped about them. But he did not move, and his gaze sharpened on her. Although she was clearly a woman and he could not see her face around the brim of her bonnet, it was perhaps the girlish posture that alerted him. Suddenly he could hear his heart beating in his ears. She turned her head sharply toward him and the sun shone full on her face.

Her plain clothing and the passage of years made her look noticeably older, as did the way her very dark hair was dressed beneath the bonnet. It was parted in the center and combed smoothly down over her ears. But she still had her long, oval face, like that of a Renaissance madonna, and her large, dark eyes. She was not pretty—she never had been. But hers was the sort of face that one might see in a crowd and look back at for a lengthier gaze.

If for a moment he imagined he was seeing a mirage, it was for a mere moment. If his imagination had conjured up her image here in this place, it would have been the image of a barefoot girl with flimsy, light-colored dress and hair released from its pins and falling wild and tangled down her back. It would not have been this image of neat, almost drab respectability. No, she was real. And eight years older.

They had been staring at each other, he realized finally. He did not know for how long.

“Hello, Moira,” he said.

AND DON'T MISS THE FINAL BOOK IN THE HORSEMEN TRILOGY,

I
RRESISTIBLE

AVAILABLE FROM THE BERKLEY GROUP IN DECEMBER 2016

E
ARLY
the following morning a lady sat alone at the escritoire in the sitting room of her home on Sloan Terrace, brushing the feather of her quill pen across her chin as she studied the figures set out neatly on the paper spread before her. Her slippered foot smoothed lightly over the back of her dog, a collie who was snoozing contentedly beneath the desk.

There was enough money without dipping into her woefully meager savings. The bills for coal and candles had been paid a week ago—they were always a considerable expense. She did not have to worry about the salaries of her three servants—they were taken care of by a government grant. And of course the house was hers—given to her by the same government. The quarterly
pension money that had been paid her last week—the coal and candle bills had been paid out of it—would just stretch to pay off this new debt.

She would not, of course, be able to buy the new evening gown she had been promising herself or the new half boots. Or that bonnet she had seen in a shop window on Oxford Street when out with her friend Gertrude two days ago—the day before she had been presented with this new debt.

Debt
—what a sad euphemism! For a moment there was a sick lurching in her stomach and panic clawed at her. She drew a slow breath and forced her mind to deal with practicalities.

The bonnet was easily expendable. It would have been a mere extravagance anyway. But the gown . . .

Sophia Armitage sighed aloud. It was two years since she had had a new evening gown. And that, even though it had been chosen for her presentation at Carlton House to no less a personage than the Regent, the Prince of Wales, was of the dullest dark blue silk and the most conservative of designs. Although she had been out of mourning, she had felt the occasion called for extreme restraint. She had been wearing that gown ever since.

She had so hoped this year to have a new one. Although she was invited almost everywhere, she did not usually accept invitations to the more glittering
ton
events. This year, though, she felt obliged to put in an appearance at some of them at least. This year Viscount Houghton, her brother-in-law, her late husband's brother, was in town with his family. Sarah, at the age of eighteen, was to make her come-out. Edwin and Beatrice, Sophia knew, hoped desperately that they would find a suitable husband for the girl during the next few months. They were not wealthy and could ill afford a second Season for her next year.

But they were kindness itself to Sophia. Although her father had been
a coal merchant, albeit a wealthy one, and Walter's father had resisted her marriage to his son, Edwin and Beatrice had treated her with unfailing generosity ever since Walter's death. They would have given her a home and an allowance. They wanted her now to attend the grander events of the Season with them.

Of course, it could do them nothing but good to be seen in public with her, though she did not believe they were motivated by that fact alone. The truth was that Walter, Major Walter Armitage, who had fought as a cavalry officer throughout the war years in Portugal and Spain, always doing his duty, never distinguishing himself, had died at Waterloo in the performance of an act of extraordinary bravery. He had saved the lives of several superior officers, the Duke of Wellington's included, and then he had gone dashing off on foot into the thick of dense fighting in order to rescue a lowly lieutenant who had been unhorsed. Neither of them had survived. Walter had been found with his arms still clasped protectively around the younger man. He had been in the act of carrying him to safety.

Walter had been mentioned in dispatches. He had been mentioned personally by the Duke of Wellington. His deed of valor, culminating in his own death while trying to save an inferior, had caught the imagination of that most softhearted of gentlemen, the Prince of Wales, and so, a year after his death, Major Armitage had been honored at Carlton House and decorated posthumously. His widow, who had shown her devotion by following the drum throughout the Peninsular campaigns and Waterloo, must not suffer from the death of so brave a man. She had been gifted with a modest home in a decent neighborhood of London and the services of three servants. She had been granted a pension which, though modest, enabled her to achieve an independence of both her brother-in-law and her own brother, who had recently taken over the business on their father's death.

Walter himself had left her almost nothing. The sizable dowry that had persuaded him to marry her—though she believed he had had an affection for her too—had been spent during the course of their marriage.

Life had been rather pleasant for a year after that appearance at Carlton House. For some reason the event had aroused considerable interest. It had been reported in all the London papers and even in some provincial ones. Sophia had found that in the absence of Walter himself,
she
had become the nation's heroine. Although the daughter of a merchant and the widow of the younger son of a viscount, a lowly person indeed, she was much sought after. Every hostess wished to boast of having the famous Mrs. Sophia Armitage as her guest. Sophia grew accustomed to telling stories about the life of a cavalry officer's wife following the drum.

Even last year, when she might have expected her fame to have waned, it was suddenly revived when Lieutenant Boris Pinter, a younger son of the Earl of Hardcastle, and a fellow officer whom Walter had not even liked, had arrived in London and chosen to regale the
ton
with the story of the time when Walter, at considerable risk to his own life, had saved Pinter's when he had been a mere ensign and had got into danger through his own carelessness and naïveté.

The
ton
had been enchanted. Their love affair with Major Armitage's widow had continued unabated.

And then she had been presented with the first of the great debts, as she had come to think of them. She had been innocent enough to believe it was also the last. But there had been another, slightly larger, one month after that. That time she had
hoped
it was the last. Hope had blossomed over the winter, when nothing else had been forthcoming.

But it had happened again. Just yesterday. A new debt, slightly larger than the second had been. And this time she had understood. She had spent a sleepless night pacing and understanding that her comfortable
world had gone—perhaps forever. This time she was without hope. This would not be the last of such demands. Not by any means.

She knew she would go on trying to pay. She knew she must. Not only for her own sake. But how would she pay the next one? With her savings? What about the next after that?

She set down the pen and bowed her head. She closed her eyes in an attempt to ward off the dizziness that threatened. She must live life one day at a time. If she had learned nothing else during her years with the army, she had learned that. Not even always one day at a time. Sometimes it had been reduced to hours or even minutes. But always one at a time.

A cold nose was nudging at her hand and she lifted it to pat her dog's head and smile rather wanly.

“Very well, then, Lass,” she said just as if the dog had made the suggestion, “one day at a time it is. Though to borrow some of Walter's vocabulary, I find myself in one devil of a pickle.”

Lass lifted her head to invite a scratching beneath the chin.

The door of the sitting room opened and Sophia raised her head, a cheerful smile on her lips.

“Aunt Sophie,” Sarah Armitage said brightly, “I could not sleep for a moment longer. What a relief to find that you are already up. Oh, do get down, Lass, you silly hound. Dog paws and muslin do not make a good combination. Mama is to take me for a final fitting for my new clothes later this morning, and we are to ride in the carriage in the park this afternoon. Papa is to take us. He says that
everyone
rides in the park at the fashionable hour.”

“And you cannot wait to return home so that all the excitement may begin,” Sophia said, getting to her feet after putting the paper with its figurings inside one of the cubbyholes at the back of her desk.

Sarah had been so restless with pent-up excitement the afternoon
before that Sophia had suggested a walk back to Sloan Terrace and an evening and night spent there. Sarah had accepted the treat with alacrity. But now, of course, she was terrified that she would miss something. Soon—two evenings after tomorrow—all the activities she so eagerly anticipated would begin with the first major ball of the Season at Lady Shelby's.

“Shall we have some breakfast and then walk back through the park?” Sophia suggested. “It will be quiet and quite enchanting at this hour of the morning. And it looks to be as lovely a day as yesterday turned out to be. You need not dash about the room with such exuberant glee, Lass. There is to be breakfast first and you are not going to persuade me otherwise.” She led the way to the dining room, her collie prancing after them, since Sophia had been unwise enough to use the word
walk
in her hearing.

How wonderful it would feel to be eighteen again, Sophia thought, looking wistfully at her niece, and to have all of life, all of the world, ahead of one. Not that she was ancient herself. She was only eight-and-twenty. Sometimes she felt closer to a hundred. The ten years since her marriage had not been easy ones, though she must not complain. But now, just when she had achieved some measure of independence and had made a circle of amiable friends and had expected to be able to make a life of quiet contentment for herself . . .

Well, the debts had arrived.

It would have been so very pleasant, she thought with an unaccustomed wave of self-pity, to have been able to afford a new gown, to have been able to afford to have her hair trimmed and styled, to have been able to convince herself that though not beautiful or even pretty, she was at least passably elegant. She had
never
felt passably elegant or frivolous or lovely.
Well, not at least since the days of her youth, when she had deluded herself into believing that she was pretty enough to compare with anyone.

The truth was that she was dumpy and frumpy and unattractive and—and in a sorry state of self-pity indeed. She smiled in self-mockery and set herself to amuse Sarah with her conversation. She ignored Lass, who sat beside her chair breathing loudly and gazing unwaveringly into her face.