'Nonsense. It is falling apart, obviously, but there are good bones here. Well designed. Late seventeenth century, with later additions.'
As I stood, rather uncomfortably, on the bones of my ancestral home, Donata turned her dark blue gaze on me. 'Now, Gabriel, I know it's bad of me to pounce on you without warning, but I did so want to see the place. Do show me everything.'
I complied.
A marvelous thing happened as I took Lady Breckenridge from room to room, explaining what was what. The past became just that, the past. My father was no longer the ogre who ruled my life. He'd become a distant ghost, gone for eight years now, releasing his stranglehold on me.
'Good bones, as I said,' Donata remarked as she stood in the largest bedroom, empty of all furnishings. 'Well anchored. The wing that has fallen in was an eighteenth-century addition, was it not? A good architect can restore it and fix the flaws that kept it from standing.'
'The Lacey fortune hardly runs to architects,' I said.
'But the Breckenridge one does.' She watched me, waiting for me to object.
'I know you berate me for being too proud, Donata, but the last thing I want is to run through your money to repair my life. Every member of the ton supposes that's what I'm doing, but I want you to believe that I am not.'
She shrugged. 'I like you being proud, and to the devil with what my friends believe. But I am not being charitable, Gabriel. I am being practical. I will have to live here too, and so will my son, and I hardly want to worry about bricks falling on us as we walk about the passages. Besides, I will be inviting Lady Southwick-the friend with whom I am staying-and this house is ever so much better than hers. The Southwick house is gigantic, but modern, gaudy trash. I do so want to best her.'
I was torn between amusement and alarm. 'You say you care nothing for what your friends think.'
'And I do not, but Lady Southwick and I have always been rivals. She even had it off with my husband- briefly-a long time ago. I believe she was as appalled by him as I was, so that did not quite work out as she liked.'
As always, whenever Donata mentioned her brute of a husband, whose face I'd once had the pleasure of bruising, I felt both irritated and protective. 'Why do you stay with her, then?'
'We rather enjoy the game, I think. You'll understand when you arrive. And she will try to lure you from me. It is her way, I must warn you.'
Her words were flat, but her eyes flickered.
'I have no wish to be lured, I assure you,' I said.
I had little wish to stay at the house of Lady Southwick, but I did not have much choice. The nearby inns were hardly fit for a viscountess used to the very best of everything, and I'd been pleased that she had a friend of equal rank and wealth nearby. I'd been included in the invitation to stay at Southwick Hall, and it would have been churlish of me to refuse. Lady Breckenridge would be the one to bear the brunt of disapproval at my rudeness, so I had capitulated.
I did finally persuade Donata that she should leave the cold dankness of my home and return to her rival's house, which would at least be comfortable. Donata kissed me lightly on the lips and let me lead her back to the carriage.
Once she was gone, vanishing into rain and mist, I went back through the house. I knew I was simply delaying my errand for Denis, but the rain was pouring down, and Denis's mission could wait.
I ended up in my mother's sitting room-her sanctuary-once a room of whites and golds and pinks, light and airy. The windows looked past the garden to a rise of ground and a little copse. Beyond it was the gray green that marked the marshes that lined the sea. In the distance, a windmill, with a tall, cylindrical body and a four-bladed fan, turned slowly in the storm.
The windmill had been there, beside a stream, for as long as I could remember, built in the last century. The pumps drew water out of the marshy ground, lifting it to spill into the rivers and streams that carried it out to sea. The drained earth left behind was rich and fertile, allowing men to farm where once had been only grass and water.
I'd sneaked into in the windmill more than once as a child, only to be hauled out by the keeper before I ruined the pumps. The great creaking machinery had always fascinated me.
I turned back, the interior of the room dark after the rain-soaked glare. As I stood waiting for my eyes to adjust, I realized that something incongruous lay across the mice-chewed chaise.
I went to the chaise and leaned down to look. In the dim light I saw a dress-a long, high-waisted pale muslin that a young debutante might wear. The garment was thick with dust, the hem tattered. When I lightly touched the sleeve, the netting that covered the sleeve crumpled to nothing.
I straightened up, puzzled indeed. I had no sisters. My mother had died when I'd been a lad, and she'd not brought out any young women as favors to friends or even had them to visit. My father, as far as I knew, had chosen his mistresses from the glittering demimonde, ladies with much experience who'd never wear a gown so innocent as this.
Why the dress was there and who it had belonged to was a complete mystery. If a couple had broken into the house for a tryst-they'd have found it quite easy to gain entrance-why leave the gown behind?
I did not touch the dress again, fearing it would dissolve further if I handled it. The fabric was so very fine.
I needed to complete my errand before the paper burned my pocket to ash. I left the intriguing puzzle of the dress and closed the door of the room, locking it with the key I'd found in the lock. I put the key into my pocket.
My hired coach had returned to Norwich, and I prepared to walk the two miles to the brigadier's house. Riding and walking much this year had given me back strength, though my left leg still tired easily, and I'd never rid myself of this limp. However, I could face a two-mile walk without much dismay.
I told Bartholomew to meet me at the public house in Cley and indulge himself in a well-earned ale, and I went to the brigadier's alone.
The rain had lightened a little. I could see across the farmland to the marshes that ran along the coast. Grasses bent in the wind, and all was as wet as could be.
I remembered the brigadier, though through the perspective of a boy. Brigadier Easton had been a martinet, like my father, but with a streak of fairness that my father had lacked. He lived in a brick house that was as tall and deep as it was wide, windows in even rows covering all three floors.
The butler who opened the door took my card, gave my damp clothes and muddy boots a disdainful look, but at least he let me wait inside, out of the rain. The brigadier must have recognized the Lacey name, because the butler quickly returned and bade me follow him upstairs.
I was shown into a long, narrow study whose windows looked north to another windmill. This windmill had been shut down and abandoned, its work done, its spindly arms still.
The brigadier was in his sixties, as my father would have been had he been alive. While my father had been a big man-the same six-foot, broad-shouldered build as myself-the brigadier was small and slight. He made up for his stature with a powerful voice, which had, before his retirement, bellowed orders to troops in India.
He came to me, hand extended. 'Gabriel Lacey. The young hothead who eloped and raced away in the middle of the night?' He chuckled as I shook his hand. 'I had wondered when you'd make your move and become a man. Captain now, eh? Commended for bravery at Talavera; you and all the Thirty-Fifth Light. Damned bloody battle, that.'
It had been. I'd begun the morning a lieutenant and had been given captain that evening, both for my actions and because too many other captains had died. My father had died here in Norfolk that night, though I had not known until I'd received the letter weeks later.
Easton released my hand but peered up at me nearsightedly. 'Back home now, are you? What are you going to do with the place?'
'I have some idea of repairing the house and living in it,' I said.
Easton's look told me he doubted my sanity but wouldn't argue. 'And, you are getting married. Do not look so surprised. We read the London newspapers even here. My felicitations.'
I bowed politely in thanks. I put my hand into my pocket and withdrew the message from Denis.
