Strangers at Dawn (3 page)

London, three years later.

S
OMETIMES, WHEN SHE GAZED OUT OVER HYDE
Park from her upstairs parlor window, Sara could almost believe that she was in the country. She didn’t care for London. It was all paved streets and cobblestones, and great stone houses that stood shoulder-to-shoulder, as though the citizens were determined that no blade of grass or ray of sunlight should penetrate the fortress they had built for themselves. But the view from her window over the park was glorious.

It was June, and at this time of the morning, few people were about. There were nursemaids with infants, and the odd carriage and rider, but the smart set, the hordes of promenaders and fashionables in their open carriages, would not appear until five o’clock.

And that was the time of day she stayed indoors. She could never forget that at her trial three years before, the smart set from London had arrived in Winchester in droves. They’d packed the courtroom, shoulder-to-shoulder, just like their houses in town, and their eyes had fastened on her as though she were a freak in a country fair.

She’d never wanted to live in London for fear she’d be recognized, but circumstances had changed, and she felt
safer here than she did in any of the small country towns where she’d resided since the trial. There were watchmen who patrolled the streets at night, and magistrates and constables close by. A fortress was exactly what she wanted at this point in time.

Her gaze chanced on a small boy who came racing out from under a stand of leafy plane trees. He was no more than four or five years old, and his whoop of delight as he pounced on the ball he was chasing carried to her open window. A gentleman she took to be his father strolled after his son. There was no sign of a nursemaid or a mother, and Sara thought how fortunate that small boy was to have a father who would take the time to play with him.

Her own father had never spent much time with his motley crew of children and stepchildren. He’d been too busy amassing his fortune, then too busy trying to climb the social ladder.

“A title for you, Sara,” he’d told her jubilantly when she was just out of the schoolroom. “And why not? Money can buy anything. And you’ve had the education to make you a lady. Yes, a titled son-in-law would suit me very well.”

He’d found his impoverished aristocrat for her to wed, but he could not buy her compliance. Samuel Carstairs was to discover that his eldest child was as stubborn as himself.

If her father could see her now, if he only knew how far she had fallen, he would turn in his grave.

She shivered, as though someone had just walked over
her
grave, and turned from the window, She began to wander aimlessly around the room, a slender girl of medium height whose calm, unhurried movements gave no hint of the inner turmoil of her thoughts. Her large dark eyes and chestnut tresses, scraped back from her face in a severe knot, added drama to finely sculpted bones and a surprisingly fair complexion. The drama was deliberately tempered, however, by Sara’s mode of dress. In her scrupulously plain, high-waisted gown that buttoned all the way to her throat
and at the wrist, and with a demure lace cap on her head, she could have passed for a governess, which was exactly the effect Sara wanted to create. She had, unjustly, earned a reputation for sexual depravity, and was determined that she would never be mistaken for a woman of easy virtue again.

A mirthless laugh escaped her. She had more to worry about than the false charge of sexual depravity. The charge of murder had made the greatest difference in her life. It had forced her to change her name, separated her from her family, and kept her moving from place to place whenever it seemed that her past was about to catch up to her.

And it had all been for nothing,
nothing,
for her past had caught up to her with a vengeance.

When the faint sound of the door knocker came to her, she turned to face the door. A few moments passed, then her companion-housekeeper, a stately woman in her late forties, entered.

“The boys are here,” she said.

Sara smiled at Miss Beattie’s choice of words. Her younger brothers, stepbrothers, in fact, were university men, but to Miss Beattie, who had been with the family since Sara’s birth, Simon and Martin Streatham would always be “the boys,” just as Sara and her sister, Anne, would always be “the girls,” and Lucy, the youngest Streatham, would always be “the baby” of the family.

In years past, Miss Beattie had been nurse to all the children at Longfield, Samuel Carstairs’s palatial home near the village of Stoneleigh, and when the children no longer needed her, Miss Beattie had retired to a small house in Salisbury. After the trial, when Sara had decided that it would be better for her family if she moved away, Miss Beattie had offered to go with her.

She was so glad now that Bea had overridden all her objections. Sara felt tears of affection stinging behind her eyes. It was a lonely life, much lonelier than she had imagined it would be, but Miss Beattie had never voiced any regrets for
choosing to accompany her. Sara did not know what she had done to deserve such loyalty.

“Then show them in, Bea.”

The two fashionable young gentlemen who entered the parlor practically pounced on Sara. She was hugged and kissed, first by one and then the other, as they exclaimed how well she looked, how tiny her new house was, how time passed, and how glad they were to see her again. Though Sara’s greeting was more restrained, her pleasure was genuine. The Streatham side of the family was much more demonstrative than the Carstairs, but she and Anne were used to it. Their father had remarried when Sara was nine, and their new stepmother had brought into the family two rambunctious boys who were still in leading strings and their baby sister, a perfect child who’d since turned into a difficult adolescent.

“Sit down, both of you.”

The first flush of pleasure dimmed when Sara remembered why she had sent for her brothers. As they were all aware, she had in her possession the numerous bills they’d run up in the last several months, bills they expected her to settle, and this was the day of reckoning. But worse by far in Sara’s eyes was the fact that, because of their wild conduct at Oxford, they had been expelled for the rest of the term. “Rusticated” was the word her attorney in Stoneleigh had used in his letter, but that was just a polite way of saying “expelled.”

Simon Steatham grinned disarmingly as he flopped into an armchair. At eighteen, he was a year older than his brother, Martin.
“I
see by the look on your face,” he said, “that Prissy Primrose has got to you before we’ve had a chance to explain ourselves. Now don’t get your bowels in an uproar, Sis. All the fellows get rusticated at one time or another. It doesn’t mean anything. We’ll be back at Oxford next term.”

Once, Simon’s charm would have softened her, but that
was a long time ago. Her experience of charming men, limited as it was, had taught her a harsh lesson. The devil, she was sure, would appear as Prince Charming himself.

Sara took a straight-backed chair. “Drew Primrose,” she said coolly, “is a very fine advocate, Simon, and deserves your respect.”.

“He’s an old woman! Oh, I know he’s not much older than you, but really, Sara, he’s as sanctimonious as an old maid. I cannot believe he was ever young. Some people are like that. They don’t know how to enjoy themselves. I think he was born old.”

Something in her expression made Simon lapse into silence.

“You could both learn a great deal from Drew,” she said, “if you would only set aside your prejudice. He’s honest, responsible, and has done well for himself given his lack of fortune and connections.” She stopped when Simon smothered a yawn behind his hand. Inhaling a calming breath, she went on, “Do you think Drew enjoys acting as your trustee? He does it to oblige me, because your guardian, the man your own father appointed to handle your affairs, has washed his hands of you. Drew is under no obligation to you, and legally, neither am I. What we do, we do for your own good.”

She didn’t add, as she was tempted to, that their mother had given up her responsibility as well. It was guile with Constance, of course. As Samuel Carstairs’s widow, she had the money to cover her sons’ debts. But Sara was the heiress, and Constance could play the game of bluff much better than Sara could.

Martin spoke up, and voiced some of the thoughts that had frequently occurred to Sara. “It isn’t fair that Father left everything to you to dispose of as you see fit. Actually, it’s mortifying. He should have set up a trust fund for us so that we didn’t have to come to you, begging for every penny. We’re only the stepsons, of course, and you were always the
favorite, but it does seem a shabby trick. After all, he was the only father we ever knew.”

Martin worried her almost as much as Simon did. Like his brother, he was tall, loose-limbed, and darkly handsome, but he had none of his older brother’s charm. When Martin was thwarted, he became as petulant as a child.

It would do no good to point out that her father had set aside money for their very expensive education, and that on Constance’s death, they would inherit a substantial amount. They wanted their money
now
so that they could live like little lords.

But Martin had a point: the bulk of her father’s estate had been left in trust to her until she turned twenty-five, when it became hers outright. Where Martin was wrong was in thinking that she’d been the favorite. She had been singled out because she was the only one her father trusted to do what was right.

Sometimes, she hated her father for putting her in this position. She’d been twenty when he’d died from the stroke that had felled him the year before, only twenty years old when control of the family purse-strings had virtually passed to her. Not only was it a terrible burden, but it had also made her into a tyrant in her family’s eyes.

She wanted to be shot of the lot of them; she wanted to break the trust and give them their heart’s desire, just to be rid of them. They were a passel of whiners and hangers-on. She couldn’t stand it any longer: Constance’s endless bleating in her letters about a Season in London now that Lucy had turned sixteen; her stepbrothers’ assumption that they were fated to take their places among the idle rich and never do an honest day’s work in their lives; and last but not least, Anne’s dreamy references to the new vicar at Stoneleigh, and how kind and understanding he was.

She couldn’t fault her father for worrying about his motley crew of dependents. She, herself, worried endlessly about them. But why had he thought she was strong enough
and wise enough to manage their affairs when she couldn’t manage her own? Of course, her father could not have foreseen the devastation William Neville would wreak on their family … when he was no longer there to protect them.

Simon had risen and was at the sideboard, pouring out a glass of sherry for each of them. “What you have to understand, Sis,” he said reasonably, “is that it’s devilishly expensive to keep up with the other undergraduates. And you wouldn’t want us to be the odd men out, would you? Everyone at Oxford is under the hatches.”

A confusion of thoughts was circling in her brain, and she automatically accepted the glass of sherry he offered her.

“As for being rusticated,” Simon shrugged casually, “it was a matter of honor, a … a lady’s honor. You know what I mean.”

She looked at him sharply. “We’re not talking about duels, I hope?”

“No, no! Fisticuffs is all I meant.”

Martin interjected gleefully, “A
brawl
is what I’d call it, a regular melee. It was just bad luck that Simon’s fist landed on the master’s nose, else no one would have made a fuss, and we would not be rusticated. Tell her, Simon.”

“I didn’t know it was old Lewis behind me.” Simon grinned at the recollection. “I felt this hand on my shoulder and swung at him before …” His voice trailed to a halt when Sara rose to her feet.

She eyed her brothers coldly. “You became involved in a brawl over an insult to a … a common strumpet? Is this what they teach you at Oxford?”

Simon’s face flushed scarlet.

Martin’s bottom lip stuck out. “Now look here, Sara, it wasn’t like that at all. In fact-”

“Shut your mouth, Martin,” Simon gritted through his teeth. He glared balefully at Sara. “There are some things a gentleman doesn’t mention in polite company, especially not to his sister, and strumpets is one of them.”

Bosom heaving, she walked to the table, picked up a large square packet and emptied out the contents. “One can tell a great deal about a man’s character by the bills he runs up. Do you know what these bills tell me about you, Simon?”

“Lord have mercy, another lecture,” he replied indifferently

She ignored the taunt. “Gaming, wenching, drinking-I think that about sums up your character. You’re a drone, Simon. Some might even call you a parasite.” When Martin snickered, Sara rounded on him. “And you’re no better. Wherever Simon leads, you follow; Don’t you realize how lucky you are? You’re the first men in our family ever to go to university, and not just any university, but Oxford. Father tried to give you all the advantages he never had. He wanted you to become gentlemen, real gentlemen, not …” Her eyes made an insulting appraisal of their buff-colored pantaloons and equally tight cut-away jackets, and boots that had ridiculous gold from them. “… not tailors’ dummies. Your tailor’s bills could dress me for the next ten years.”

Martin said, “All Corinthians dress as we do. And at Oxford, if your tailor isn’t Weston, you might as well cut your throat.”

“Corinthians!” said Sara scathingly. “In my day, we called them ‘dandies.’”

Simon interjected, “Now hold on, Sara. There’s a lot more to it than that. Corinthians are athletes. They are the finest sportsmen in England.”

“They’re idlers:’ exclaimed Sara. “Boredaristocrats. Maybe you should remember that we come from humble stock. We’re not blue bloods. Everything we have came to us through someone else’s sacrifice, and hard work.”

“I never wanted to go to Oxford, anyway,” muttered Martin. “The fellows there are all-”