A Priceless Gift: A Regency Romance (8 page)

Amanda smiled to show that there were no hard feelings after her cousin’s lapse. “Let us rather discuss names. I have almost decided upon Marcus if I should have a boy, after Father, but I am less certain about a girl.”

“
Marcus Rackington, Lord Bernay
,” Mattie said. “I like it, except perhaps an additional first name or even two?”

“Bernay is the heir’s courtesy title? I had not known,” Amanda confessed.

Mattie’s eyes opened wide. “You must be the only woman in England who would reach the fifth month of her pregnancy and not know what title her son will bear once he is born! I cannot believe it.” At least Mattie was suitably distracted.

“A girl would be Lady Mary Rackington,” Amanda mused. “With such a long last name, a short given name would be best.”

“Yes, but
Mary
is so pedestrian and unimaginative. What about Doris or Alma? The latter means
soul
.”

“No,” Amanda said, “let’s take the soul as given. I always would have preferred a simpler given name myself, something that does not arouse curiosity or remark.”

“Your daughter may feel differently,” Mattie objected. “At least give her another, more fanciful, middle name. Then she has a choice which to use once she is grown.”

“Does little Sigurd have a middle name?” Amanda asked idly as she studied the deep red of her wine.

“Micah, after my grandfather,” Mattie said. “Sigurd was Luke’s wish, you know. He loved the ancient German sagas; they inspired him to join the army.”

“Hmm.” Amanda refrained from saying what rose to her mind, that the name was entirely unsuitable for the little boy who bore it. Would Luke have been disconcerted to see his child grow up so very different from what he had presumably imagined?

Perhaps her child would also be very different from what she feared, so that, in time, she could simply accept it for his or her own sake.

Mattie’s remarks, even though she had successfully avoided any deeper discussion, stuck in Amanda’s mind. The next afternoon, blessedly free of would-be houseguests, she wandered to the gallery, which ran through the first floor of the south wing, and studied her husband’s portrait by Thomas Lawrence. It showed him at the age of eighteen—
her
current age—slightly larger than life-size. The painted young man was dressed in the fashion of the day with powdered hair and a bicorne hat, holding the reins of a magnificent stallion. The trees in the background resembled the park around Racking, though she did not recognize the exact spot.

Lucian’s younger self stared down at her with an expression of arrogant contempt. Here was an aristocrat certain of himself and his position in life, who would ride roughshod over all opposition. Had the famous painter so mistaken his character?

If he stepped down from the picture that moment, she would not feel at ease with the handsome youth. He would be careless and indifferent. If it was a true picture of Lucian at eighteen, then she definitely preferred the older, more mature version.

Would she really engage with the older Lucian in the kind of bed sport that Mattie missed so much? They had half promised it to each other before his rushed departure. What would it feel like? She wanted to erase the unpleasant memory of that brief encounter in Sussex with more pleasant, more deliberate activities. She was young and healthy, as Mattie had said—provided she survived the impending birth—and she was curious. Mattie’s sentiments on the matter of intimacy were diametrically at odds with what her mother had always taught her. Who was right? Or did it depend on the woman? Or, as Mattie had seemed to imply, on the man?

Her gaze wandered back to the portrait, staring down at her in judgemental silence. What had changed Lucian? Because something had, she was certain. That cold-hearted young buck would not have raised a finger to help her. From the tip of his hat to the glossy riding boots he exuded the shocking philosophy Lady Evencourt had expounded, that the rules binding ordinary mortals did not apply to him, to his caste.

Childish as it might be, Amanda put her tongue out at the portrait and made a rude noise. “You are gone,” she told the young man, “and I’m glad. I don’t think we would have been friends.”

Perhaps it would be possible with his older, more humane version. Something drastic, more than just the passage of time, must have chastened Lucian in those twenty years since he had posed for Lawrence.

It could not have been his sister’s death, after all; by the time he posed for that portrait, Lady Amaryllis had been four years dead and buried. Besides, family members died all the time; it was a reality most people came to terms with out of sheer necessity. Amanda had lost a baby brother to a fever when she was still barely out of leading strings. Her parents had mourned him, though she had been too small to remember, but with five surviving children, they were luckier than most.

She turned her back on Lucian and studied the picture of Lady Amaryllis, in a diaphanous white gown against a rose garden. The girl’s hair was also powdered, but from the smooth features and lack of curves, she probably was no older than twelve or thirteen. Painted by Mr. Gainsborough, Tennant had mentioned, though he had not named the subject. Did he even know? Mattie and she only supposed that she was the earl’s sister; the portrait was not labelled in any way.

The brown eyes of the painted child stared into hers with youthful disdain. No shadow of tragedy troubled that smooth brow when she had posed in the rose garden in front of those white blooms, long faded just like herself. What could cause a pretty girl like that to drown in a horse pond? It made no sense. Had Amaryllis lived, she’d be forty now, likely a mother and society hostess.

Perhaps Amanda could yet discover what had caused Lady Amaryllis’s untimely death.

She rang the bell, and presently, the butler arrived with silent steps. “Rinner, do you know which rooms were occupied by my husband’s late sister?”

“You mean Lady Amaryllis, my lady? The yellow room and the adjoining dressing room were hers.” He did not ask why she cared or betray the slightest surprise at the inquiry.

“What happened to her possessions?”

“Nothing was touched on orders of the old earl.”

That would have been Lucian’s father. Had he been very attached to his only daughter? Amanda looked around questioningly. “I don’t think there is any picture of him.”
That
was rather strange, now she thought about it.

“There was one by Mr. Gainsborough, my lady, that showed him on horseback in heroic posture. Bigger than any of the other portraits in here. The earl—the current earl—ordered it burnt.”

Amanda blinked in shock. “Burned? It must have been worth a great deal.” Apart from the cost, it seemed sinful, almost sacrilegious, to destroy a work of art. But she must not sound as though she were criticizing her husband. Lucian might have his reasons. “When was this?”

“A few months after he inherited the title, my lady. In 1796, if my memory does not fail me. I was only a footman at the time.”

So Lucian had been twenty-three when he succeeded to the title. Destroying the portrait of one’s father was an impious act as well as amazingly spendthrift. She could imagine banishing a hated picture to the attics, but to go so far as to actually destroy it . . . extremely strong feelings must have been involved. She remembered Lucian’s strange resolve to let the family name die out and his indifference at the prospect of her child inheriting it. What could possibly cause such enduring hatred and anger? She would not have guessed that Lucian was prone to strong feelings of any kind.

It might just be a question of aesthetic preferences. “Has the earl ordered any other pictures burned?”

“No, my lady. That was the only time.”

“What of the previous countess?” Amanda was just as glad
she
was long dead. A mother-in-law would surely despise her and strongly disapprove of Lucian’s imprudent match. “Is there a portrait of her?”

“A very good one, my lady, also by Gainsborough. It hangs in the library of the London house.”

Amanda had not noticed it there, nor had Lucian pointed it out. Well, they had both been very busy for those few days in town.

“Show me to the rooms used by Lady Amaryllis,” she ordered.

Rinner conducted her to a spacious and elegant set of adjoining rooms. Though they were not far from her own suite, she had never entered them.

Old-fashioned but pretty and expensive clothes filled the spacious wardrobe. Taking one out and holding it against her body, Amanda concluded that Amaryllis had been slim and rather taller than herself. In a drawer, she found a jewel box with some insignificant pieces. Anything more valuable might well have been locked away to prevent temptation to the servants. The sturdy bed was large enough to sleep three or four and was covered by a faded yellow silk canopy with lace curtains tied back to the posts. It had been the room of a pampered young lady, one who did not have to share with a sister, as she had with Eve. Not that she’d ever minded. In fact, she would not have wanted to change with Amaryllis; to be the only daughter of the house must have been lonely, especially if her parents were off to enjoy London society and various house parties for most of the year.

Would
her
child be lonely at Racking? Nonsense, it was far too early to worry about that. First, it had to arrive in the world. Birth was at least as dangerous for a babe as for the mother, and all too many infants died within days, weeks, or months. Many parents tried not to become attached to them before they learned to speak, as it only added to their disappointment when the babes succumbed to some fever. Of course, it also happened to older children and even adults and, in Amanda’s observation, left the bereaved family more saddened than when it was just an infant.

Life was hard, yet what would drive a healthy and pretty girl of sixteen, with all her life and the myriad diversions and pleasures of society before her, to end her own existence? Or had it been an accident after all? Had she gone swimming after an unseasonably hot day, lost her footing, hit her head on a stone? Amanda had heard of cases where people drowned in quite shallow water. For an adventurous boy, that might be plausible, but a young lady would not risk the servants surprising her swimming so close to the house, presumably in her shift. Amanda could not imagine sneaking out at night for such a purpose, no matter how hot and sultry.

Yet what did she know? Perhaps young Lady Amaryllis had already absorbed the lesson that normal rules of behaviour did not apply to her. If her parents and her Aunt Louisa told her so from earliest childhood, who knew what she might have considered suitable behaviour? How the aristocracy thought was still beyond Amanda’s ability to fathom.

There were no hidden papers in Lady Amaryllis’s rooms, no diary that might give insight into her state of mind. Should there not at least be some letters?

“Rinner,” she asked the butler, “in what year did the previous countess die?”

“In 1787, ma’am, the same year I was first hired as a footman.”

“So long ago,” Amanda murmured. That would have been before the worst excesses of the French revolution, before the war. “Were she and her daughter close?”

“I was not in a position to observe for myself, but I doubt it. Lady Rackington spent little time in the country and left the care and education of her daughter to the governess, Miss Tarkles.”

“What became of Miss Tarkles after the tragedy?” It would have been hard to find a new position after your pupil died like that.

“She was no longer in residence at the time, my lady. The earl had dismissed her several months earlier, and she had already found another post with a family travelling to Italy. She was not young, and I have no idea if she is still alive. Nobody at Racking ever heard from Miss Tarkles again.”

“Wasn’t another governess employed in her stead?”

“No, the earl deemed that girls did not need that much education, that his daughter was finished with studying.”

“At sixteen? Is it known what she, herself, thought?”

“Not to me, ma’am, but in my experience, young ladies of that age are perfectly ready to consider themselves grown up and as wise or wiser than their elders.”

Amanda slowly took a turn around the rooms. If there had been private papers or letters, they must have been removed, probably by the girl’s father right after her death.

“Has my husband never ordered these rooms to be cleared of his sister’s possessions?” Twenty-four years seemed a very long time to delay such a housecleaning.

“There has not been occasion,” the butler explained. “His lordship spends little time here and never entertains when in the country. I am not aware that he has bothered to enter these rooms since they were last used by Lady Amaryllis.”

Amanda shook her head at such waste. The harp in the corner could have been donated to some other musically inclined lady; it was no doubt hopelessly out of tune but that could be dealt with. Her eyes fell on a small heap of books in a bookcase that otherwise held mostly knick-knacks of various kinds, like a porcelain rider statue and a silver writing set. What had been young Amaryllis’s literary tastes? Amanda opened the first volume, bound in leather, and found a collection of traditional fairy tales in French, perfectly unexceptional. The only book that seemed of marginal interest was an unassuming cloth-bound volume with handwritten recipes for home remedies. “Against Pleurisy,” she read the title on a randomly opened page.

“I haven’t seen a stillroom in this house,” she remarked as she read on,
crush two fresh, vigorous ladybugs with a pestle
. How revolting. That was unlike any home remedy against pleurisy she had ever come across before; it sounded almost like a witch’s brew. “Was Lady Amaryllis interested in remedies and potions?”

“Not to my knowledge, my lady. It is scarcely an interest her parents or Miss Tarkles would have encouraged.”

But if the former were never home, and the governess had been dismissed, who knew how a bored young girl might have spent her lonely hours? Amanda would have a more thorough look at the strange little book later. She tucked it under her arm.

“Have these rooms cleared of their contents and thoroughly aired. Give the contents of the jewel box to Mr. Tennant when next he arrives; the clothes can be distributed amongst the staff.” Though the garments were wildly out of fashion, the fabric could be reused. “The books go to the library, the harp to the music room, anything else to the attics.”

“Very well, my lady. Thank you.”

As she left the suite, Amanda decided to let Mattie redecorate it in some different colour scheme and more modern furniture. She wanted no shrines to long-dead in-laws in her home.