Prelude for a Lord (34 page)

Before the sound of her retreat died to nothingness, he heard a heavier tread, then an astonished, “Lady Alethea.”

Raven, come minutes too late.

His friend approached him, also clad in bed slippers and a dressing gown. “You’re only in your nightshirt, Bay. You must be freezing.”

“I feel nothing and everything,” he murmured.

“I am sorry. I did not know anyone would be awake to hear you.”

Perhaps this was better. She had come too close. She had seeped into him when he had needed to be impenetrable. Now she would avoid him.

Now she would hate him.

It was time to become more tantalizing bait.

Alethea hoisted her violin case in her arms and marched down the main street of Chippenham with Lord Ian beside her and Lucy behind.

“You needn’t look quite as though you were going to execute someone,” Ian murmured to her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped.

In truth, she wanted to finish this business and be gone from Terralton Abbey. The best way she knew how was to lure the villain out with a show of foolish vulnerability, but her present frame of mind was hardly vulnerable. She sighed and tried to relax her expression. “There, do I look approachable?”

He flipped his hair out of his eyes. “As a growling bear.”

She shot him a sour look.

Lucy said loudly, “My lady, the instrument shop is just there.”

Recalled to her purpose in travelling to Chippenham, she headed toward the shop on the outskirts of the marketplace on High Street. She said in a low voice to Lord Ian, “I do not see Ord.”

“You’re not supposed to see him.”

Yes, that would make sense.

Her brain felt as cluttered as a lady’s workbag. She had not slept even before encountering Dommick in the chapel. She had been in the library looking for a book when she heard him scream, and after he shouted at her, she had spent the rest of the night crying.

The sight of his face had frightened her more than his scream,
more than his ghostly appearance in the chapel in his nightclothes, more than the blood on his hands where the stone floor had cut his skin to ribbons. He had looked as if his inner pain had stolen his reason, his strength, his courage, leaving only black terror, red agony.

He had looked mad.

She should not have said that to him. Just as he should not have said his cruel words, which still heaved under her ribcage like a pair of wild dogs, tussling about, clawing and biting.

Strangely, a portion of her mind knew he had said such terrible things to force her away. She still felt the pain and anger, but in the light of day, her soul did not feel so desolate.

They reached the instrument shop. Lord Ian murmured to Alethea, “There’s a man who has been following us. Enter the shop without me.”

Her heartbeat jumped, and it took an effort of will not to turn and look. She nodded and entered the dark, dusty shop with Lucy behind her. Lucy looked back at Lord Ian but said nothing.

The shopkeeper had bulging eyes that appraised Alethea with shrewdness while his loose lips formed into an ingratiating smile. “How may I help you, my lady?”

“I need a string replaced in my violin.” She placed the instrument in its case upon the counter. She had hated removing the string earlier today but had no other excuse to bring the violin into Chippenham.

The shopkeeper’s bushy yellow eyebrows rose as he regarded the violin. Alethea had the suspicion that he recognized it as a Stradivarius. “A string, eh?”

The man took infuriatingly long about the business, and the string he used to replace the missing one was of inferior quality. When he named an exorbitant price, she speared him with a look until he named a lower one.

Her visit today was to taunt the villain, to fan the flames of his covetousness. However, if the villain hired someone to follow them, and if Lord Ian captured him, they may discover his employer.

As Alethea and Lucy left the shop, she hesitated, for Lord Ian was nowhere in sight. Was it wise for them to wander about Chippenham alone? Had something happened to him? “Let us go to a tea shop to wait.” They started down High Street, Alethea looking about her with caution.

They suddenly heard a man’s raised voice. “You’re mistaken. I’m telling you the truth.”

Lucy stiffened. “Richard?”

“Who is Richard?”

“He was head groom in Mrs. Ramsland’s household when I worked for her. But surely he would not be here all the way from Bath.”

The sound came from an alleyway running perpendicular to High Street, whose mouth lay several feet ahead of them. Alethea took the precaution of peeking around the corner into the narrow, dim passage.

She first saw the broad back of a man in a greatcoat with many capes, with Hessian boots below the edge of his cloak. He appeared to be struggling with something. In the shadows beyond she saw Ord’s round, rugged face, his hand rubbing his jaw as if in pain.

“Let me go!” said the man in the greatcoat.

“Richard!” Lucy cried out.

The man turned, and Alethea saw that it was Lord Ian. The man who had spoken had not been him, but the lean, wiry man struggling in his grip.

“Lucy, tell them to let me go. What’s going on?” Richard twisted violently.

“Do you know this man, Miss Purcell?” Lord Ian grunted as he strained against Richard.

“That is Richard Collum, the head groom for Mrs. Ramsland.”

“And why are you in Chippenham?” Ord’s voice was muffled from his hand rubbing his lower face.

“I’ve quit the old harridan, and good riddance to her. Let me go.” Mr. Collum lashed out with his boot.

“That doesn’t explain why you were following Lady Alethea,” Lord Ian said through gritted teeth. He was three or four inches taller than Mr. Collum, but the man was sinewy and strong from his job handling horses.

“I told you already, I wasn’t following her.”

“Please let him go,” Lucy pleaded. “He is no threat to Alethea.”

With obvious reluctance, Lord Ian loosened his hold and Mr. Collum wrenched himself free. He immediately went to Lucy. “What’s to do, my girl? Are you in danger?”

Alethea suddenly felt as though her boat had lost its mooring. It still drifted near the dock, but it was starting to move away.

“I am in no danger, Richard,” Lucy said. “Why are you here?”

“What am I to think when the rumour in Bath is that Miss Terralton’s maid has run off with a highwayman who popped off two footmen?”

“Shot them?” Lucy’s voice rose. “They weren’t shot.”

“Well, you haven’t run off with a highwayman either.”

“Mr. Collum,” Alethea said, “why were you following us?”

“I beg your pardon, milady, but I was hoping for a private word with Lucy.”

“With me?” Lucy’s dark eyes widened in surprise.

“Of course. How could you leave Bath with only a note to me?”

She gave him a look of gentle rebuke. “You gave me no reason for anything else.”

“Well, I’m giving you a reason now.” He grabbed her hands in his. “Lucy, say you’ll marry me.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I
t was apparent Lucy had been influenced by Alethea, for her sister delivered a hard blow to Mr. Collum’s arm for a proposal notably unromantic. “How can you ask me like this?”

“When can I ask you when you have bodyguards jumping me in an alleyway?”

“If you had come to me at Terralton Abbey rather than skulking . . .”

“I arrived the moment you’d left for Chippenham. I couldn’t wait to see you.”

Alethea had to admit this was quite romantic. Lucy pursed her lips as she regarded him, but she seemed a trifle more mollified by his explanation.

“Perhaps it’s best we return?” Lord Ian suggested dryly.

The carriage ride back to the abbey was silent, although Alethea was dying to speak to Lucy about Mr. Collum. Lucy’s countenance was bland and professional despite the recent scene. They let Mr. Collum down at the inn nearest Terralton Abbey, then continued on to the house.

“Miss Terralton desires your services as soon as you returned,” the butler informed Lucy as they entered the house.

Lord Ian said, “I’ll waylay Clare and tell Bayard what happened today, shall I?”

Alethea and Lucy went to the music room where the faux violin had been displayed on a table. Alethea locked the music room door and went to her wooden chest, shoved into the corner behind a harp and a violoncello as if forgotten. “Lucy, you must tell me all.”

“I am as surprised as you. Richard and I became friends at Mrs. Ramsland’s home. He is quite educated. His father was a merchant who lost his fortune, and Richard took a job as a groom since he preferred horses to a job as a clerk. I have known him since I began working for Mrs. Ramsland.”

“You said nothing of this to me.” Alethea pulled from the chest the blankets folded inside.

“There was nothing to tell. We spoke often, for Mrs. Ramsland’s stable and carriage house is behind her home, and she keeps but one horse and her gig. If there was not much to do, he would come to the house to help. I thought perhaps he had a preference for my company, but he was friendly and helpful to everyone.”

“You had no indication he desired to marry you?” After emptying the chest, Alethea pressed the spring-loaded joint that would open the false bottom to reveal the cavity where she had hidden her violin.

“Goodness, is that where it has been hiding all this time?” Lucy asked. “I had no idea.”

“Calandra’s husband made this chest for her as a joke, since she prized the violin so highly,” Alethea said.

“Lady Arkright always had the violin in her music room on the table, as did you.”

“I could not leave the violin on Aunt Ebena’s drawing room
table.” Alethea removed the fake violin from the cavity in the chest and replaced it with hers. “So I stored it in my room in the chest.”

“I had assumed you stored it in a case.”

“No, the cavity in the chest acts as an instrument case.”

“That is why the thief could not find it. A clever storage spot.”

Alethea closed the hidden compartment and replaced the blankets in the chest. “You have conveniently forgotten my question.”

Lucy sighed and walked to the wide windows. Alethea followed her. The view overlooked the courtyard garden and beyond that, the square pool.

“I was not certain his intentions had progressed to such a point,” Lucy said slowly, “but I did wonder . . .”

Alethea swallowed and asked through a dry throat, “Lucy, were you afraid to tell me?”

“No, of course not—”

“Lucy.”

She fussed with the heavy burgundy curtains swept back from the window. “Perhaps I was, a little.”

“I would never begrudge you happiness for the sake of my plans, which are far off and unsettled.”

“There really was nothing definitive. If he had asked me when I was at Mrs. Ramsland’s house, I do not know what I would have answered. I still do not.”

“Do you love him?”

“I like him. I feel I know the essence of his character. Is that love?”

Alethea thought of her feelings for Dommick. She esteemed his character, and she felt as though he understood her in ways no one else had. “When you left Bath, did you miss him? Did you regret the fact that you may never see him again?”

Lucy’s face grew drawn and tired. “Yes.”

“Do you wish to marry?”

“I do not wish to hurt you.” Lucy took Alethea’s hands. “We have had these plans since we were girls together. They have sustained me through my most difficult trials.”

“Would you be happy in Italy? It has been my dream, but is it yours? Or would you be happier in England with Mr. Collum?”

“I do not wish to leave you. I love you.”

“Lucy, I would not force you to choose between Mr. Collum and me. Your happiness means more to me than your company. I love you, and I want your happiness.”

“You cannot afford to hire a paid companion.”

“Then I shall find a travelling companion to share the costs. Lucy . . .” She took her sister’s hand. Although her heart was breaking, Alethea said, “If you love him, then marry him.”