The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (25 page)

It
was
a castle. A huge castle made of dark gray granite, with overhanging windows and little turrets and even what appeared to be the remains of a formal moat.

“You—you really live in a castle,” Annabel said quite unnecessarily, turning to Ewan.

They were rounding a bend in the road, and it lay below them, shimmering in a pink mist left from a quick rainstorm. The trees on the surrounding hills looked black against the rain-drenched sky.

“That’s Clashindarroc Forest,” he told her. “The River Bogie runs down that way, behind the castle; my father decided to lay pipes under the gardens. He was by all accounts a great innovator. I put in a plunge-bath off the kitchen because Uncle Pearce said he would have liked it.”

“Is Pearce your father’s brother, then?”

“My grandfather’s brother, actually. He’s a great-uncle.”

“You have a plunge-bath?” she said, a little belatedly. “How wonderful!”

“Better than that. I had a proper heated bath put into the master bedchamber a few years ago. So if you’ll eschew sleeping in the lady’s chambers down the corridor, and take your place next to me in my bed, you’ll have a bath of your own.”

“’Tis tempting,” she said.

But she didn’t want to meet his eyes. Somehow the idea that they would actually marry that day made her feel shy. It might have been better to go into the event blind.
Now she wasn’t at all convinced that the business was physically possible, and at any rate, what about that kiss she promised him? She hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it. Surely there were ways and ways . . .

She looked back out the window.

The outriders to the front let out a piping call on a trumpet.

“’Tis customary,” Ewan told her, leaning forward to look out the window. “I don’t normally announce myself like a king, I promise you that.”

The carriage seemed to pick up speed, rushing down the hill, and now Annabel could see that the great front doors were standing open and people were pouring out and lining themselves up in rows to the left and right. It was a far cry from her father’s rotting beauty of a house, and the four servants he’d managed to keep on reduced wages.

It was almost too much. She had all this, all these things she wanted, and—and Ewan too. She looked at him. He was grinning down at the house, his green eyes sparkling with pleasure, but he turned and met her eyes.

“If you look at me like that,” he said with mock severity, “we’ll not make it out of this carriage, and after all the waiting we’ve done, ’twould be a truly sad occurrence.”

Obediently she turned her head back to the window, and then the coach was drawing up with a great rattle of gravel flying from the carriage wheels. There was a cheer from the assembled servants, and Annabel stepped out into a future so different from that she imagined that she felt as if she’d wandered into a dream.

The family stood in front. She knew who Gregory was at once. He was a skinny little shrimp of a boy, dressed all in black and looking very solemn.

Nana was a bit more of a shock. She was a long way from the sweet, white-haired lady whom Annabel had imagined. Instead, she appeared to be wearing a straw-colored wig from the Elizabethan era. She had a beak of a nose and a slash of red lip rouge under it. All in all, she looked like a cross between a Roman emperor and Queen Elizabeth herself.

Ewan, naturally, was shouting hellos to all and sundry, and dragging her toward the group at a speed that didn’t allow her to walk in a dignified manner. Nor smooth her hair. But Annabel straightened her back and remembered that she was a viscount’s daughter.

“Well!” Nana said, on being presented to her. “You look older than I expected. But then Englishwomen do age at a faster rate.”

Annabel made up her mind on the spot. This old woman would either conquer her or be conquered, and Annabel refused to be bullied in her own house. “Whereas you don’t look a day over eighty,” she said sweetly, curtsying as if she stood before Queen Elizabeth herself.

“Eighty!” Nana roared. “I’ll have you know, girl, that I’m not a day over sixty-two.”

What a fibber. Annabel smiled at her. “It must be those Scottish winds. They fairly howl, don’t they?
Ruinous
for one’s complexion.”

Ewan turned around from giving Gregory a hug. “Nana, my wife is Scottish, so don’t play your tricks on her. She’s got the backbone of a Pict.”

“You found a Scotswoman by going all the way to London?” Nana snapped. “You could have had Miss Mary from next door if that’s what you wanted.”

“I didn’t want Miss Mary, so I found Annabel instead. I’ve always had the luck of the devil,” Ewan said, grinning broadly. “This is Gregory,” he added.

Gregory had white, white skin and hair as black as soot, with eyelashes to match. He would break some woman’s heart one day, unless he disappeared into a monastery, of course. He looked at her with a great deal of curiosity and then bowed as elegantly as if
she
were Queen Elizabeth.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Gregory,” she said, taking his hand. “Ewan has told me quite a lot about you.”

His cheeks turned red so fast that she didn’t have time to blink. “You told her I’m a miserable singer!” he cried, turning to Ewan.

But Ewan just reached out and tousled his black curls. “Yes,” he said cheerfully. “But mayhap Annabel will turn out to have had voice training and she can—”

She shook her head.

“Ach, then, we’re stuck with your miserable voice, lad,” he said, giving Gregory another hug.

And just like that the red spots disappeared from his cheeks and Gregory gave Annabel a sheepish grin from within the circle of Ewan’s arms. She wasn’t the only one who felt safe around the Earl of Ardmore.

Uncle Tobin and Uncle Pearce were like salt and sugar. Uncle Tobin, the hunter, was lean and tall and keen-eyed. He bowed with great flair and twirled his mustache. “I knew Ewan would strike gold in London!” he said, giving her a very appreciative looking-over.

Annabel curtsied and gave him her very best sweetly-flirting-with-old-men smile. He warmed up instantly and told Ewan that he’d made a damn fine choice.

Uncle Pearce was as plump as Tobin was thin, and as irascible as Tobin was gallant. “Play
vingt-et-un
, do you?” he growled at her.

“Not terribly well,” she admitted.

“We’ll try your paces after supper,” he said gloomily. “But I’ll warn you, missy, I play for high stakes.”

“Not tonight,” Ewan said, putting his arm around her waist. “I’ve brought Miss Annabel home to marry me, and I’m hoping Father Armailhac will do just that, and this very evening. Which will make us a little too busy for cards, Uncle.”

A moment later, she was holding the hand of Father Armailhac, and he was smiling at her in such a way that she actually forgot to give him one of her carefully selected smiles, and just grinned back at him.

Because he was the kind of monk who made you smile, no two ways about it. As she had with Nana, she’d built up a picture in her mind that was entirely mistaken. She thought of monks as dressed in black with cords tied around their straining middles. From what she’d heard, they crossed themselves every other moment, carried around any number of necklaces that they counted out prayers on, and wore little black caps on the backs of their heads.

True, Father Armailhac was wearing a black cassock. But he didn’t look serious, nor likely to pull out a string of beads and mumble a prayer over them. She blinked at him and then realized in a moment what he looked like. He looked like a llama Annabel had seen once at a fair. His hair was wooly, and his face narrow, like a llama’s. He had
the same gentle eyes and thick eyelashes of those animals, along with an amiable curiosity that wasn’t in the least cloying.

“My dear,” he said, putting both his hands on hers. He had the rushing syllables of a Frenchman, but his English seemed impeccable. “This is a true pleasure. I had no idea when I sent Ewan to England that there was such a lovely Scotswoman to be found there.”

Annabel felt herself blushing. She never blushed!

He chuckled and turned to his right. “May I introduce my comrades, Miss Annabel? This is Brother Barbet, and Brother Dalmain.” The two monks smiled at her, and one of them was actually wearing a little cap. “Brother Dalmain,” he continued, “is Scots by birth, and so ’tis he who persuaded us to come to this country and take care of Rosy. And here is Rosy. I’m sure that Ewan has told you of her.”

He drew from behind him, rather like a mother cat pushing forward one of her kittens, one of the smallest, prettiest women Annabel had ever seen. She had her son’s creamy skin, and his soft black curls, but without any of the angularity of a young boy. Instead she looked about fifteen, if not younger. And yet—

Obviously she was older. She held Father Armailhac’s hand tightly, and now Annabel could see there were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She smiled obediently, and then curtsied. Her eyes showed no curiosity, and she said nothing. She curtsied again, and Annabel realized with a start that she would have kept curtsying if Father Armailhac had not quietly told her to stop.

The idea of anyone hurting this fairylike child of a woman was agonizing. “Oh, dear,” she breathed, turning to Ewan. He was standing behind her, waiting. Rosy’s
wandering eyes caught at his boots and a frown creased her face. Then slowly her eyes traveled up his trousers, and her fingers grew white on Father’s arm.

“It’s all right, Rosy,” he said to her. “It’s just Ewan, come back from England with his beautiful bride. Of course you know Ewan.”

But she didn’t stop frowning until her eyes reached Ewan’s face, and then slowly the pinched frown smoothed out and she smiled at him, as cheerful as any child on Christmas morn. And only then did he step forward and kiss her cheek.

Annabel swallowed.

But Father Armailhac bent his head to the side, like a curious robin, and said to her, “There’s no need to be sorry for Rosy, my dear.”

“I think there is,” Annabel said. “Why she—she—” She gestured, and she meant it all, all the things that Rosy had lost: Ewan, and Gregory, and the castle . . .

“God’s given her a wonderful gift in return,” he said, and he didn’t even sound preachy. “Joy.”

Annabel looked back at Rosy, and sure enough, her face was lit with laughter. After a moment she went over to take Gregory by the hand and began pulling him away.

“Oh, Rosy,” he groaned. “I don’t want to play now.”

But she reached up and touched his cheek, and smiled at him, and with a sheepish nod of his head, he allowed himself to be pulled away.

“Doesn’t she speak?” Annabel asked.

“Never. But I don’t think she misses it. Now, daughter, we must talk about your marriage.”

Annabel felt herself blushing again. Father Armailhac held out his arm, for all the world as if he were a French courtier, and she allowed herself to be drawn away from Ewan and all the servants whom he was greeting now, one by one, as if he’d been gone for years.

“Do you wish to marry our Ewan?” he asked, when they were walking under the shade of the looming firs that surrounded the castle on three sides.

“I . . . I do,” she said.

“Are you quite certain? May I call you Annabel?”

“Please do.” And then: “I wasn’t certain when I began this trip with Lord Ardmore but—” The blush was coming back again. She stopped, tongue-tied and not certain what she wanted to say.

They were following a small path that wound its way through the trees and suddenly opened up to show a tiny building made of stone, a small chapel set in the firs. Annabel had a pulse of anxiety. Likely he would ask her to say a prayer or something, and she’d say it wrong because she wasn’t a Papist.

“We needn’t go inside,” Father Armailhac said, his great peaceful llama face turned to her. “But if you ever did wish to join me, I would always be happy to see you.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“A letter has arrived from your family,” he said, still clasping her arm. “It was brought by a man who took the mail coach from London to Edinburgh and then rode horseback all the way here. I believe he came the distance in only a week.”

“My sisters!” Annabel said, turning white.

“No, no, I asked him whether it contained unfortunate news,” he said, “and it doesn’t. But perhaps you should read that message, my dear. And if you still wish to marry Ewan, I will perform the ceremony whenever you wish. I think”—and he smiled at her, the gentle grin of a man who knew nothing of those kisses she and Ewan had traded so feverishly—“I think you two will make a remarkably happy couple. I shall probably have to pray for forgiveness tonight, since I am feeling prideful for sending Ewan to London. Wait for me one moment, my dear.”

He turned and hurried into the chapel, his tall, slightly bent figure almost stooping to enter the low door. When he returned, he held a rather battered letter.

“I shall leave you to read it in peace,” he told her. “If you follow that little path, it will take you back to Ewan. The servants are waiting to greet you, and I’m certain they will be furious with me for monopolizing your time.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the letter. And then remembered that there was one thing she did want to say to him: “Ewan has told me how much you mean to him, and how very helpful you were to him in overcoming his grief over the fire that took his parents.”

Father Armailhac was a great one for grinning. “He told you that, did he?”

“It seems to me,” Annabel said, “that he cannot remember his father well because you have become that father to him . . . he’s a rather wonderful person.”

“He is! He is!” Father Armailhac said, practically crowing. “But that’s none of my doing, my dear. ’Tis God’s hand in it, and I merely had the joy of watching him grow. He was nearly seventeen when I arrived here, you know. A grown man, he was, and a good one.”

Annabel’s eyes dropped to the letter she held. It was Tess’s handwriting on the direction.

“Read your letter,” Father Armailhac said to her. “Read your letter, dear, and then no matter what you decide, we’ll have a happy meal tonight. This place is always better when the earl is in residence. It’s an ancient superstition and a true one.”