Jo Beverley (12 page)

Damaris bit her lip at the thought of the dowager’s reaction to becoming a sideshow.
Serves her right for traveling in a gilded monstrosity.
Vinegar again. She made herself take another sip of the drink, sickly as it was. She certainly didn’t want to end up as sour as her mother, but a sip was all she could bear. She’d never liked sweets, her temperament aside. She glanced around and surreptitiously poured the rest out on the ground.

More people were pouring past now, and Damaris stepped back to avoid being jostled. She wished she had gone into the inn after all. She came up against a waist-high wall and heard trickling water. She turned to look over the wall and saw a pond below. There was a water mill nearby, she realized, and a stream had been blocked by a weir to provide the power. The weir was half-frozen, and quite beautiful where it caught the lights, while the falling water made a kind of musical accompaniment. Delighted, Damaris looked back, thinking to call Genova over, but she was still with Ashart.

Hammering told her work had started on the carriage, but she thought it would be a while yet before they could leave. The carriages were now surrounded by a crowd so there seemed no point in going back there. Instead, she turned back to the lacy ice of the weir and the music of the water, placing the empty pot on the wall so she could tuck her hands beneath her cloak. The scene soothed her, but it also made her think.

Her mother would have thought it foolish to stand in the cold looking at ice and listening to water. Abigail Myddleton had been ruthlessly practical, and yet she’d succumbed to the charms of a rascal. Even though Damaris’s father had returned home so rarely, she had understood the nature of that charm. He’d been a big, robust man who glowed with life as if he had a lamp inside him, one constantly lit.

She remembered his last visit most clearly. She’d been fifteen, and he hadn’t come to Worksop since she was eight.

She had to admit that she’d been entranced by him herself. She’d even dreamed of his rescuing her from Birch House and carrying her off to the Orient, where she’d see the wonders he told her of and live adventures at his side. She’d hated her mother for carping at him, for always complaining.

For those few, brief days she’d thought her father loved her. Then he’d left, and she’d seen no evidence that he’d given her a thought thereafter. She’d recognized that he’d wooed her simply to hurt her mother. When word of his death had reached them nearly two years later, she’d thought it served him right.

At that intolerant age, she hadn’t thought kindly of her mother either. Why screech at a man who paid no attention and never would? Why endlessly complain about him? Why cling to some promise he’d made to return to her and live in Worksop as her faithful, decent husband?

How common was it to despise both one’s parents? It was a depressing thought, when people generally turned out to be like their parents. Perhaps she was destined to be both sour and selfish.

The hammering stopped. That probably meant they could leave soon. Despite the beauty and the music, this place was doing her no good. Even the chattering crowd sounded threatening, and she eyed the people standing nearby with concern.

It was illogical to be afraid, but she wanted to get back to her party, to Fitzroger. She shifted her position and almost slipped on the ice. She grabbed the wall to steady herself and sent the pot flying to splash down into the water below.

Instinctively she leaned to watch, as if following the pot’s fate could prevent its destruction. Someone bumped up against her, obviously doing the same thing, but threatening to send her in the same direction.

She pushed back frantically, but her feet hit the same patch of ice and went out from under her entirely.

There was a shocking moment of loss of contact with the earth, and then she landed with a crash, flat on her back.

The moon’s up early,
she thought dazedly, staring at the sky. Then the moon disappeared.

“Are you all right, milady?”

“What happened?”

“Likely she’s killed herself.”

“Wicked icy, it is.”

People were all around staring down at her.
Like birds of prey,
Damaris thought, the breath knocked out of her.
Help!
she tried to shout, but nothing came out.

“Damaris! Are you all right?”

Fitzroger. Thank God.
He knelt by her side and took her hand. “Speak to me.”

At last she could suck in a breath. “I slipped.”

“Are you hurt?”

She assessed her body. “No, I don’t think so.”

He gently raised her to a sitting position. “Are you sure? No serious pain?”

She considered that. “No. Just shaken.” She laughed to prove it. “It knocked the wind out of me, that’s all. Help me up, please.”

She hated being the center of a crowd again.

“What’s amiss?” That was Ashart calling, probably coming over.

Oh, no.
She didn’t want a fuss. “I’m fine,” she insisted to Fitzroger. “Truly. Help me up, please.”

“All’s well,” Fitzroger called back. “Damaris fell, but it’s not serious.” To the onlookers he said, “The lady isn’t injured. Thank you for your concern.”

As they took the hint and moved away, he carefully raised her to her feet, keeping an arm around her. “Can you walk, or shall I carry you?”

“I can walk, I’m sure. Just give me a moment.”

“Of course. What happened?”

“I slipped on some ice. Or began to, so I grabbed the wall. There’s a wall there and a stream. A weir. Very pretty.”

His hold tightened. “Calm down. It’s probably better not to talk yet.”

She inhaled and made herself settle down. “It’s all right. But I knocked a pot into the stream. One of the inn’s pots.”

“A few pennies will cover it. I believe you can afford that.”

The joke put everything in proportion. “I looked over to see what had happened to it and someone bumped against me. I panicked, stepped back, and fell.”

“I knew this crowd was dangerous. Are you able to return to the coach now? We’re ready to leave.”

She saw that everyone was aboard and waiting for her. “Oh, I’m sorry. Of course.”

She hurried toward her coach, still grateful for Fitzroger’s arm around her.

“It’s such a strange feeling to suddenly lose contact with the earth,” she said. Then he’d rushed to her rescue and everything had been all right.

As they neared the coaches, she heard, “What’s causing this interminable delay? I want to leave this benighted place!”

Damaris hastily thanked Fitzroger and hurried to where a groom stood ready to open the carriage door for her. As she reached him, the burly maidservant rushed up and put another flagon of spiced cider into her hand. “You’ve had a shock, miss! The gentleman said to take this. The pot’s paid for an’ all.”

Damaris thought of refusing, but everyone was impatient to set off. She climbed in, struggling not to spill the drink. The groom slammed the door as Genova asked, “What happened?”

“I slipped on some ice. Could you hold this a moment?”

Genova took the pot, which was as well, as the coach jerked into motion then, toppling Damaris into her seat.

“Did you not get any earlier?” Genova asked. “It’s good.”

Now that it was over, Damaris was appalled at what might have been. She could have fallen over into the cold water, banged her head, broken a bone. Even in that slip she could have hurt herself badly. She grabbed the flagon and drank, but then winced away.

“Ugh. It’s even sweeter than before.” She tried another sip but couldn’t endure it.

“Do you not like sweet things?” Genova asked, sounding astonished.

Damaris thought about vinegar and sighed. “Not really. Would you like this?”

“If you’re sure.” Genova took it and drank with apparent relish. “I shared Ashart’s, which is very romantic, I’m sure, but he drank most of it.”

“You’re most welcome to it. In fact, I’m going to have some brandy.”

She took a silver flask from one of the concealed cupboards and poured brandy into the cap. She’d only ever had it mixed with hot water and honey for medicinal purposes, but gentlemen seemed to enjoy it.

The first sip made her gasp, but soon she felt wonderfully warm. “Oh, that does make me feel better. Why not have some in the cider?”

“Why not, indeed?” Genova held out the pot. “This has cooled, so it’s not as tasty. You slipped? Are you hurt?”

Damaris took another sip of brandy. “A bruise or two, I suppose. Strange, I still don’t know the name of the place.”

“Pickmanwell.”

Damaris laughed. “Is that a message to me? To pick my man well?”

“A lesson to us all,” Genova agreed, eyes twinkling above the rim of the flagon. She tilted it to drain it, then pulled a face and wiped bits from her lips. “That must have been the dregs of the bowl. Still, it was welcome. And we’re almost there.”

Damaris laughed dryly. “Amazing, to look forward to Cheynings.” Then she realized that wasn’t tactful and settled for silence and sipping brandy.

Perhaps it was the brandy that spun fanciful dreams. She saw herself carried off by a masked highwayman, seized by corsairs on the high seas, or war-painted Indians in the Canadian forests. In each situation Fitzroger swept to her rescue, swift and skilled, until he stood, one foot on a villain’s chest, his blade at the man’s throat, demanding of her what he should do.

Death or mercy…

“I do hope I’ll be accepted by the servants at Cheynings.”

Damaris started out of her fancies to look at Genova. “Of course you will. You’ll soon be mistress there.”

“Old retainers can be vicious and Ashart paints a grim picture of the place. I think the poor man worries that I’ll barely last a day before fleeing. But it can’t be so bad as all that.”

Damaris didn’t know what to say, for it could indeed.

Simply maintaining a house like Cheynings required a fortune, which was doubtless why it was in poor repair and niggardly with comforts. Even candles for light and fuel for fires in such a house could amount to horrendous sums, never mind mending the roof and replacing rotten plaster and timbers.

For decades all the income from the Trayce estates had gone not to their care but for court and show, for gilded carriages, outriders, and diamond buttons. All in the dowager’s determination that the Trayce family be the grandest in the land and most especially that they outshine and eventually crush the Mallorens.

She sought a pleasant truth. “It’s a handsome house with pleasing proportions and details, and the servants seem to have been there forever.”

“Therefore devoted to the dowager, since she’s been there forever, too.”

“As soon as you’re married, you can hire and dismiss whomever you want.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”

Damaris frowned, wondering if Genova, despite her adventures, had steel cold enough to deal with the Dowager Lady Ashart. The woman had, after all, unblinkingly used Lady Thalia’s dead beloved as a missile in a minor spat.

It seemed presumptuous to offer advice when she was younger and had led a more limited life, but she did it anyway. “If you could make the servants aware that soon you will be their mistress, with power over them—if you make it clear you’ll use your authority—they might see the wisdom of switching their allegiance.”

Genova looked startled, and Damaris thought she saw another
I couldn’t do that
hover, but then Genova nodded. “My father’s ships were always in good order because the crew knew he would act if necessary. Occasionally he had to do so, which served as a reminder.”

Since that probably meant flogging, keelhauling, and even hanging, Genova might be a match for the dowager after all. She certainly now wore the fixed, serious look of a captain planning battle strategy.

Damaris let her brandied mind slide back into fantasies. Fitzroger riding to her rescue, hair flying in the wind. Leaping off his horse to fight the Indian, to duel the pirate, to shoot the highwayman.

For, oh, a lady cannot abide without a hero by her side….

Deep in her mind, Genova’s words had set a seed. If a lord could marry to suit his pleasure, why shouldn’t a rich lady buy whatever man suited her?

Now her imagination created pictures of herself and Fitzroger, married. What sort of life would they have? With her money, it could be anything they pleased.

Master and mistress of a house like Rothgar Abbey.

No, too grand.

A country manor like Thornfield Hall?

Too remote.

A house in a town such as she’d grown up in? She shuddered, but told herself that Birch House could have been a comfortable home. She knew for sure that she’d never live there again by choice, but something similar—no, a little grander, in London. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroger, at the heart of the glittering world.

But then, like a worm in an apple, she remembered that Fitzroger was surrounded by scandal. Even Rothgar had warned her of it. Before she even indulged further fantasies, she must find out what Fitzroger’s secret was.