The Bishop's Daughter (2 page)

The sunlight gleamed off Adolphus's fair hair as, like an anxious shepherd, that reverend gentleman assembled this rather mixed flock at the Hill's summit where stood some massive, mysterious object draped with canvas.

"Good God!" Harry breathed, no longer able to deny the significance of the scene before him. "It would seem you are right, Mr. Keegan," he said dryly. "I am dead."

"Wasn't I after tellin' yer lairdship so."

Harry could only shake his head, still unable to fathom how such a ridiculous misunderstanding could have happened or how this gathering on the hillside had come about.

"Why didn't they just hold the service down in the church?" he mused aloud. "I know Adolphus always thought I was paving hell with a vengeance. But I can't believe that even he would refuse me the last rites."

"Oh, nay, me laird. They had you a proper church service, so they did. But this memorial, I heerd tell, was your stepmama's notion, herself wanting all to remember what a hero ye were."

Harry felt both surprised and touched by this gesture on Sybil's part until Keegan added, "And it gave her a wonderful chance to throw a dab of work in the way of her friend, Mr. Crosbie."

Harry stiffened at the mention of Lucillus Crosbie, a would-be sculptor. Man-milliner and fortune hunter were two of the kinder epithets Harry had bestowed upon the man. The last time he had been home, a year ago, he had caught Crosbie making sheep's eyes at his stepmother and had introduced the impertinent fellow to the fish at the bottom of Mapleshade's pond. Harry had thought to have seen the last of him. Apparently Lucillus had wasted little time reinstating himself into Sybil's graces when Harry had been reported dead.

Thrusting Ramses's reins at Keegan, Harry bade him look after the horse. "Much as I hate to disappoint everyone," he said. "I am afraid I must announce that I am so inconsiderate as to still be alive."

With that, Harry strode forward from the shelter of the trees and began to mount the Hill. He did not check his step until he reached the fringes of the crowd. It suddenly occurred to him that he might be about to cause consternation to others as he had Keegan by thus announcing his return from the dead. Yet glancing at the rapt expressions about him, Harry believed he could have dressed in a bed sheet and howled like a banshee without attracting attention. All eyes were riveted on Reverend Thorpe.

Harry suspected that most of those about him had attended less to pay final respects than out of curiosity. Harry certainly did not blame them for that. He was curious as hell himself as to what monstrosity of Crosbie's lay concealed beneath that canvas.

As he skirted the crowd, advancing ever higher up the Hill, the sound of the vicar's piercing voice began to carry to him in snatches. His cousin appeared to be delivering some sort of eulogy.

"And I trust that our dear Lord Lytton is at this moment enjoying all the bliss of heaven."

Harry grinned for he knew full well that the righteous Adolphus was mentally consigning his wicked cousin to the hottest of flames. Reverend Thorpe's speech became even more disjointed as he tried to enumerate Harry's many virtues and was apparently having difficulty thinking of any.

At last the Reverend blurted out, "Er—a most godly man, an example to the entire community."

Harry, who by this time had arrived behind the squire, within a stone's throw of the monument, nearly choked. Godly? He, who had scarce seen the inside of a church since his christening day? And even then he had been carried screaming into the vestibule.

Harry saw that he had best step forward at once and save his cousin the embarrassment of coming out with any more such plumpers. But before he could edge past the squire's bulky frame, the vicar turned, stretching up one hand toward the canvas.

The crowd collectively held its breath as the vicar intoned, "This solemn edifice has been erected by a grieving mother to the memory of the most generous and affectionate of sons, a brave and bold hero whose life has been so tragically cut short. But with this likeness mounted upon the Hill, Lord Harcourt Andrew Stephen Arundel, the fifth Earl of Lytton, will dwell among us forever."

As the canvas came away, Harry expected to see some awful representation of himself in stone, garbed in full military dress in one of those stiff unnatural poses. As he gazed upward, he was as confounded as the rest of the assemblage. Mounted upon a plinth, rising to a full seven feet of glory, stood the muscular figure of man carved in Classical fashion, his tightly curling hair in nowise resembling Harry's own straight locks. But no one paid much heed to the head for the statue had been carved stark naked. Only the modest manner in which the figure held a sword before him prevented the full disclosure of his manhood.

A stunned hush fell over the crowd, then many of the women present let out shocked and delighted shrieks, while the men exclaimed.

"Damnation," the squire roared.

"Abomination!" The outraged vicar staggered back as though he had uncovered the devil himself.

"Exquisite," the Dowager Lady Lytton cooed, dabbing at her plump face with a black-edged handkerchief, taking pains not to mar the layering of paint meant to conceal her fifty-odd years.

"Ridiculous!" said the squire's thin wife. "It looks nothing like Lord Harry. He was never so thick about the waist, and I am sure he had a much finer set of legs—"

"Upon my word, madam." The squire leveled his wife an awful stare. "You seem to have made a thorough study of the matter."

Mrs. Gresham colored. “I am sure that any woman--- er, I mean anyone who knew his lordship would say the same."

By this time, Harry feared the only mourner present with tears glistening in the eyes was himself as he struggled to contain his mirth. But as his gaze chanced upon his cousin Julia, affecting to look so prim, so disapproving, all the while she kept stealing glances upward at the statue's firmly muscled buttocks, it became entirely too much for Harry's self-control. He burst into a roar of laughter that seemed to ring all the more loudly amid the astonished silence of the crowd.

Indignant faces turned toward him only to go pale with recognition. Through his peals of mirth, he heard the gasps, his name rippling through the crowd like a rush of wind through the willows. His stepmother let out a piercing cry and clutched at her heart. The Reverend Thorpe so far forgot himself as to take the name of the Lord in vain.

Harry tried to speak, but couldn't. He could only glance helplessly about him, wishing he could find at least one other kindred spirit to share this moment, someone else who could see the humor of the situation.

Instead he encountered a face that drove the laughter from his lips, the last face in the world he had expected to encounter. Standing close to his shoulder was a solemn-looking lady garbed in pearl gray, so close that he wondered how he could have missed her before.

Harry experienced a shock not unlike the one he had felt when blasted from his saddle at Waterloo. He stared into violet eyes that registered a mingling of disbelief, joy, and reproach.

"Kate!" Harry cried hoarsely.

Kate's lips attempted to form his name as what little color she possessed drained from her cheeks. Harry retained just enough presence of mind to open his arms wide and catch her as she swayed into a dead faint.

Miss Kathryn Towers had nearly decided not to attend the dedication of Lord Lytton's memorial. An hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, she had lingered in the parlor window seat of the cottage she shared with her mother in the village of Lytton's Dene.

It was unusual for Kate to sit idle for so long, staring vacantly out the window, but that is what she had been doing, her gaze fixing upon the elder bushes growing just beneath the latticed panes, their white blossoms thick among the greenery like a scattering of summer snow.

Snow . . . Would she ever be able to think of it again without also thinking of Harry? It had been winter when he had first come crashing, quite literally into her life, that last winter when Papa had still been alive. A sad, half smile tipped Kate's lips.

She had been bundled up in a fur-lined cloak, strolling in the garden of the Episcopal Palace at Chillingsworth, watching the deep blue of twilight fade to darkness. The full moon rose, shining a silvery glow over the snow-shrouded landscape, making the garden sparkle like crystal. The blanket of white had cast a hush over everything, an aura of enchantment, of expectancy as though something was about to happen. Or was that now only her imagination in looking back? For something had happened. . . .

A curricle had come smashing through the low-lying hedge, finishing up by knocking over the statue of John the Apostle. One wheel of the carriage broke, flinging its driver into what remained of the rose bed.

With a cry of alarm, Kate rushed forward, but the man was already climbing from the wreckage quite unperturbed, dusting snow from the torn capes of his garrick. As he went round to quiet his horse, he said, "Sorry, miss, but it was either your statue or a little urchin who slipped into the road."

"It—it was John the Apostle," Kate stammered.

 "Who? The urchin?"

"No, the statue," she said solemnly.

For some reason, that made the stranger laugh. "Rather odd place to keep an apostle."

Secretly Kate agreed with him. She had always said the statue was placed far too close to the hedge, although she would not have expressed her opinion in quite the same manner.

As the moonlight outlined his profile, the thick waves of coal dark hair, the strong, stubborn jaw-line, she recognized who he was. Kate felt a tingling of alarm as she realized it was a most dangerous man who had invaded her garden. Even she had heard of Hellfire Harry, the wild young Earl of Lytton who frequently drove in from his estates to Chillingsworth. Not to attend services in the cathedral either, but to engage in such vulgar pursuits as attending race meets and prize fights or to carouse with his friends in one of the taverns.

But when she noticed his forehead was bleeding, all thoughts of Harry's dubious reputation had been swept from her mind. As the bishop's daughter, she had no choice but to invite him into the palace, even though the bishop was gone to read the services at evensong and her mother was away attending the confinement of one of her dearest friends.

Nor had she any choice but to see to his wound, although he would only permit her to do so after he had made sure that his horse was well cared for. As she had prepared to place sticking plaster on the cut, she found herself studying his lordship's face. He was perhaps more handsome at close range than he had appeared those times she had glimpsed him from a distance, his features, even in the winter, bearing the rugged healthy appearance of a man who spends most of his time out of doors. Kathryn had always supposed that one as reportedly wicked as Lord Lytton would bear some signs of it in his countenance, a hinting of dissipation.

But there was naught of the hardened roué about Harry's face, only a clean strength in the angular line of his jaw, an almost boyishness in the jet black strand of hair that tumbled across his forehead, mischief lurking in the most vivid green eyes Kate had ever seen.

With her parents gone, she should never have encouraged him to stay, but how could she turn an injured man from her doorstep? She asked him to partake of tea. She could still remember how awkward his large hands had looked balancing the dainty Sevres cup, heroically screwing up his face with each sip he took. She sat upon the settee, mending the tear in his garrick, the snow softly falling outside the tall windows, the fire blazing on the hearth, the deep sound of Harry's voice rumbling pleasantly in her ears. She could not remember exactly what outrageous things he had said only that she had never smiled and blushed so much in her life.

From time to time she peeked up from her work to steal glances at him. Her father had raised her to be wary, to place no value on mere handsomeness. It was the beauties of a man's character that mattered. But why had not the bishop seen fit to warn her how dangerous green eyes could be, eyes that crinkled at the corners when a man laughed and a smile that came so warm, so ready, so utterly disarming?

A smile that Kate could not bring herself to believe she would never see again. . . .

"Kate?" Her mother's voice had cut through Kate's haze of memories. Rather reluctantly, she turned to face the tiny wisp of a woman who stood regarding her. Although it had been two years since Papa's death, her mother still wore her simple black gowns, the white lace of her widow's cap most becoming to her silvery blond hair and the soft contours of her face. Maisie Towers's plain countenance bore the lines of her years, but her eyes remained the same deep violet shade as Kate's, although Kate often felt that her mother's held more of a sweetness of expression than her own.

"It is nearly past noon. You have decided not to attend the dedication after all?" Mrs. Towers asked, a hint of relief in her tones.

At that moment with Harry's memory so fresh, so poignant in her mind, Kate wished she could cry out, no, she did not wish to go. Her mourning for Harry had been a private matter. Indeed, she almost felt as though she was not entitled to any grief, having turned Harry away. She didn't want to attend the dedication, be expected to admire some horrid memorial. Harry had not been the kind of man whose image could be captured in cold, unfeeling stone.