A Kiss in the Dark

Cressida Charmsworth, Baroness deCourcy to her many acquaintances, Sid to her intimates (she would not tolerate the nickname Cress; it sounded like an aquatic plant), came dashing through the park of Dauntry Castle in her high-perch phaeton. Lord Dauntry, impatiently awaiting her arrival within, caught a glimpse of her rig as it bolted along, taking the curving sweep of road at a precarious fifteen miles an hour. He watched as, with a practiced pull on the reins of her perfectly matched grays, she slowed their pace, finally calling “Whoa!” as she reached her destination. The team danced to a stop, shook their manes, and uttered a well-bred neigh.

Only then did Lady deCourcy look at the castle before her. The honey-colored brick of its long facade glowed in the sunlight of the June afternoon. From the roofline a dozen statues stared haughtily off into space. At the center was a dome, surmounted by a balustrade. Very impressive, but too French to please her. She preferred the English Gothic style of Tanglewood, her own estate in Kent.

Tanglewood, like the title, was inherited, not acquired through marriage. Her late papa’s title and estate descended by heirs general to his daughter, as he had no son. In the normal way the baroness would have spent summer at Tanglewood, but it had become necessary to relead the roof and do some minor repairs to the inside of the house as well. She preferred to be elsewhere while the racket of crowbars and hammers disturbed the tranquility of home. She had decided to use the occasion to look into the desirability of buying a summer place on the sea.

Brighton had been her first stop. Too crowded! How could one rest and recuperate from the trials of the Season with half of London there, continuing the round of gaieties? Then, too, the duke was there, and he had become very pressing in his advances. The Duke of Sommers had not actually made an offer, so she could not refuse him and be done with it. Eligible though His Grace was, Lady deCourcy was not yet ready to give up her delightful independence.

Since the ripe age of sixteen years, she had been a slave to her invalid papa. She sometimes thought she would die there at Tanglewood, where she had been born and reared. But life had a few surprises in store for her. Upon her papa’s death, she discovered that he had been nothing else but a miser, carefully squirreling away his gold while they lived a life of frugality. After her year of mourning, free of encumbrances and as green as grass, she had gone off to London to taste those pleasures so long denied her.

She insisted that at twenty-three she was too old to be eligible. Society responded that with Tangle-wood, two thousand acres, and ten thousand a year besides, she was too eligible to be called old. Her mirror told her she was by no means hagged. Her raven hair was unstreaked with silver, her green eyes undimmed, and her cheeks as full and soft as rose petals. None of this was in her mind as she accepted her groom’s assistance from the seat of her high-perch phaeton, however. She was merely eager to meet her hostess and landlady, the dowager marchioness of Dauntry, and be shown to her cottage.

As soon as word was out that the baroness wanted to try a summer by the sea, invitations had poured in. She had scanned them all, but in the end had decided to escape the hordes by renting a small house not too far removed from Tanglewood. While returning from an outing on the duke’s yacht one afternoon, she had espied a simple wooden Swiss-style cottage
orné
with painted shutters, which seemed to be growing out of the cliff just west of Beachy Head, and decided that was where she wished to spend her summer. Investigation revealed that it was a part of Lord Dauntry’s estate.

Within the week and without even writing to the marchioness, the baroness had magically received an invitation from the dowager, inviting her to spend the summer at Dauntry Castle. An exchange of letters had settled the misunderstanding. The baroness preferred peace and quiet. She thanked Lady Dauntry for her kind offer, but wished only to rent the cottage on the sea.

After a long look around her, Cressida proceeded up the three broad steps and lifted the lion’s-head knocker. The door was opened at once by a model butler who had obviously been awaiting her arrival.

“Your ladyship,” he said, bowing punctiliously. “Her ladyship is awaiting you in the Green Saloon.”

The baroness was shown into a chamber of impressive dimensions and lavish furnishings. She paid little heed to the Persian carpets, the paintings, and carved furnishings; she was more interested in her hostess. Lady Dauntry, known thus far to Lady deCourcy only through letters, proved to be a plump, matronly lady with gray hair and blue eyes, wearing a plain round gown and a lace cap.

“Do come in, Lady deCourcy,” the dame said. “You must be fagged to death after your trip. So wearing, being jostled along in a coach. You will want to freshen up.”

“How lovely of you to have me, ma’am,” the baroness replied with a
smile and a curtsy. “But I am not in the least fagged. It is such a fine day and the trip so short that I drove my phaeton. My companion, Miss Wantage, and my cousin, Mr. Montgomery, are following with the traveling carriage and our mounts. I made it in just over two hours. My grays are admirably trained. The head groom at Chevely-—the stud farm at Newmarket, you know—trained them as a favor to me. I could not have done better myself,” she said with no notion of puffing herself off. The stables at Tanglewood had been her major entertainment for years.

“You are too modest, ma’am,” Lord Dauntry said with a pinch of his nostrils and a lift of his black brow that belied the compliment.

Her eyes slid to Lord Dauntry, who had arisen upon her entrance. He bowed stiffly. The baroness curtsied again. Lord Dauntry was a part of her reason for not wanting to stay at the castle. She had nothing in particular against him, but she was not in the mood for another courting. She assumed that her invitation to the castle had been preferred with that in mind, which was strange, for Dauntry had never dangled after her in London. In fact, she had a distinct impression that he disliked her, despite their being virtual strangers.

She knew he was an extremely eligible member of the Whig aristocracy. His character was unblemished. He was called handsome. Cressida found him less handsome than distinguished. His tall frame was well formed and his face agreeable, although more swarthy and rugged than she liked. Above a pair of cool gray eyes a black slash of brows rose, lending him an angry look that was seldom softened by a smile.

He showed her to a chair of throne-like grandeur.

“It will be so nice to have a young lady here for the summer,” Lady Dauntry said, and rambled on, leaving little time for replies. “My daughter, Tony—-really Antonia, but we call her Tony—has just married, you must know. How I miss her, and she gone only three days! She and her husband—no doubt you know Lord Harold Quincy, Lord Thorpe’s son, with an excellent estate, and close to home too, but they will be away all summer. The Lake District they have gone to for their honeymoon. Have you ever been there, Lady deCourcy?”

“Yes, last autumn. It is charming.”

“I have never seen it. Algie has been there, have you not, Algie?”

Lord Dauntry nodded, and the deluge of words rolled on. “Yes, of course you have. My wits are gone begging. I believe it was you who put it in their heads, with your talk of fells and turbulent skies and all those lakes and poets. Harold will like that. The lakes, I mean, not the poetry. He is a great fisherman. Tony says she will try it, but I doubt she will enjoy it. Nasty things, fish. Before they are cooked, I mean, for of course one must serve a fish course. A cod is nice. Speaking of Cook, Algie, had you not better call for tea? Lady deCourcy must be ravenous after her journey. We shall take tea a little early today.”

“You must not rush your tea forward on my account. I am not in the least peckish, ma’am,” Cressida said, leaping in while the dowager stopped for breath. “If you will just give me the keys to the little Swiss cottage, I shall go there at once to meet Beau.”

“The Swiss cottage!” Lord Dauntry exclaimed in a startled voice.

His mama turned an appeasing eye on him. “She means the dower house, Algie. It is the dower house that I am renting to the baroness. Naturally I could not rent out the cottage. It is yours. The dower house is mine. I plan to use the rent money to build a dovecote. Now, what do you think of that? If we give the demmed pigeons a place to roost, they may leave the roof. They are making such a mess of the nice statues.”

Lord Dauntry was given no chance to state what he thought of a dovecote. The baroness was on her feet.

“But it was the cottage I particularly wished to rent,” she said. “The little wooden place, done up in the Swiss style. I said so in my letters, ma’am. There must be some misunderstanding. I want to be right on the sea. Mr. Montgomery plans to bring his yacht down.”

“The dower house
is
on the sea,” Lady Dauntry assured her. “It is not five hundred yards west of the cottage. You cannot see it from the water, which is a great blessing since you want peace and quiet, for the people on their yachts always stop and gawk and point at the wooden cottage. It is quite unusual, of course. A sort of folly, really. It would attract even more attention with you there.”

Dauntry, whose manners were excellent whatever his mood, rose when the baroness arose. “The cottage is not for hire,” he said.

His dark eyes met the baroness’s kindling green stare. As Lady Dauntry said to her housekeeper later, “You could have baked an egg in the heat of that look.”

“Is the cottage already leased?” Cressida asked curtly.

“It is not leased, nor is it for lease,” he replied firmly.

“You use it yourself?” she inquired in a softer tone. If this was the case, she would soon be installed therein. With Dauntry Castle less than half a mile away, Dauntry could be using the cottage only for an occasional outing. He could not be so mean as to keep it from her.

“It is not fit for habitation at the moment. The roof leaks. Squirrels and bats have gotten into the attic.”

She knew the cottage roof was done in wooden shingles. It would take but a day to have a few shingles nailed on and the bats and squirrels run off. Cressida had her heart set on living in the cottage. She had never traveled beyond England’s shore, and the cottage had a foreign air to it. It would be like holidaying in Switzerland. It had the sweetest little turrets, like a castle in a fairy tale, and a railed balcony coming off the second story, where she had looked forward to setting up a table for afternoon tea while she scanned the sea. Its cove, too, would be ideal for swimming. The duke had told her it was too shallow to take his yacht in, so the gawking boaters could not come too close to shore. Beau could anchor his yacht at Beachy Head.

“The dower house is much sounder,” Dauntry continued. “And a deal brighter as well. Those leaded windows of the cottage are picturesque, but they are too small for proper illumination. Indeed, all the rooms are small—too small for entertaining. It was built as a retirement home for a widowed aunt in the last century. Her husband had been a sea captain. She wished to be by the sea.”

“I do not plan to entertain,” Cressida replied reasonably. “I have come to the seashore to escape from society. I do not need much space. The cove there is ideal for swimming.”

“The shoreline at the dower house is where we always swam,” Dauntry said. “There is also a channel dredged out to allow docking for your cousin’s yacht. The cottage does not have mooring facilities.”

When reason failed, Cressida changed her tactics. “But the cottage is so very pretty,” she said, adopting a moue that made grown men rush to please her. “I had so looked forward to it. Those turrets reminded me of the books of fairy tales I used to read when I was young, with the heroine locked up in a tower by a wicked guardian.”

Dauntry had been observing the baroness for a few years in society. He knew her reputation of wanting her own way, and usually getting it if a gentleman was involved. But her wheedling tricks would not work with him. She had broken his friend Saintbury’s heart, leading him on and then jilting him. And Saintbury such an innocent fellow, too. Not an atom of vice in him, but this heartless wench had treated him like dirt under her dainty feet, while society watched and tittered. If she thought to make a jape of Lord Dauntry, she had met her match!

“Like a stage set, it is best seen from a little distance. You can admire it from the dower house,” he said politely but firmly.

The baroness surveyed the hand she had been dealt and decided it was time to play her ace. “Well, I thought I was hiring the cottage. If it is not for rent, then I shall just have to go back to Brighton and begin looking again.”

As she spoke, she surveyed Dauntry from under her long lashes. She could hardly believe what she saw. He was smiling! He was happy to be rid of her! Half of society had begged her to spend the summer with them, but Lord Dauntry was eager to be rid of her. His mama’s invitation had nothing to do with arranging a match, then. She was only to be a replacement for Antonia, who had married and left her mama lonesome.