The Truth about Love

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The parlor door flew open. “My heavens!” Barnaby, a tall, elegant, golden-haired figure sporting a dramatically hunted look, swept in. “May the saints preserve me from all doting mamas!” His gaze fell on the coffeepot. “Any left?”

Smiling, Gerrard waved at both pot and platters as Compton hurried in with an additional place setting. “Help yourself.”

“Thank you-you’re a savior.” Barnaby sank into the chair beside Gerrard.

Gerrard eyed him with affectionate amusement. “And good morning to you. What’s put you out? Did Lady Harrington’s ball prove too exercising?”

“Not Harrington.” Barnaby closed his eyes, savoring the coffee. “She’s a decent enough sort.” Opening his eyes, he considered the platters. “It was Lady Oglethorpe and her daughter Melissa.”

“Ah!” Gerrard recalled the connection. “The old friend of your dear mama’s who was hoping you’d oblige and escort her darling about town?”

“The same.” Barnaby took a bite of toast. “You remember the story of the ugly duckling? Well, Melissa is that in reverse.”

Gerrard laughed.

Barnaby and he were much of an age, of similar temperament and background, had similar likes and dislikes, and both favored an eccentric pastime. He couldn’t remember how they’d first come to knock around town together, but over the last five years, they’d seen each other through various adventures, growing ever more comfortable in each other’s company, and now unhesitatingly called on the other for any and all support.

“Nothing for it,” Barnaby declared. “I shall have to flee the capital.”

Gerrard grinned. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Yes it can. I tell you, Lady Oglethorpe isn’t looking to me just for escort duties. She has a gleam in her eye I mistrust, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the dreadful Melissa clasped her hands to her bosom-not a bad bosom, but the rest is hopeless-and fervently stated that yours truly was her ideal, and that no gentleman in the ton could hold a candle to my magnificence.” Barnaby grimaced horrendously. “Coming it a great deal too strong, as the pater would say-made me feel quite ill. And it’s June-don’t they know the hunting season’s over?”

Gerrard regarded his friend thoughtfully. Barnaby was the third son of an earl, and had inherited a substantial estate from a maternal aunt; like Gerrard, he was a prime target for matrons with daughters to establish. While Gerrard could and did use his painting as an excuse to avoid the worst of the invitations, Barnaby’s hobby of studying crime was a far less acceptable diversion.

“I suppose,” Barnaby mused, “I could go to m’sister’s, but I’m no longer sure she’s not dangerous, too.” His eyes narrowed. “If she invited the Oglethorpes to visit over summer…” He shuddered.

Gerrard leaned back and reached for his coffee cup. “If you’re set on escaping the dreadful Melissa, you could come with me to Cornwall.”

“Cornwall?” Barnaby blinked his blue eyes wide. “What’s in Cornwall?”

Gerrard told him.

Barnaby perked up.

“Mind you,” Gerrard warned, “there’ll be at least one unmarried young lady present, and where there’s one-”

“There’s usually a pack.” Barnaby nodded. “Nevertheless, I’ve handled all comers to now-it’s just Melissa, her mother, and the family connection that have so demoralized me.”

Said demoralization had clearly been transient; Barnaby fell to demolishing the last sausage, then he looked at Gerrard. “So, when do we leave?”

Gerrard met his eyes. Patience had been right, not that he’d ever tell her. “I’ll write to Tregonning’s agent today. I’ll need to get in extra supplies, and make sure all else is in order here…shall we say the end of next week?”

“Excellent!” Barnaby raised his cup in a toast, drained it, then reached for the coffeepot. “I’m sure I can lie low until then.”

Twelve days later, Gerrard tooled his curricle between a pair of worn stone gateposts bearing plaques proclaiming them the entrance to Hellebore Hall.

“It’s certainly a long way from London.” Relaxed on the seat beside him, Barnaby looked around, curious and mildly intrigued.

They’d set out from the capital four mornings before, and spelled Gerrard’s matched grays over the distance, stopping at inns that caught their fancy each lunchtime and each evening.

The driveway, a continuation of the lane they’d taken off the road to St. Just and St. Mawes, was lined with old, large-boled, thickly canopied trees. The fields on either side were screened by dense hedgerows. A sense of being enclosed in a living corridor, a shifting collage of browns and greens, was pervasive. Between the tops of the hedges and the overhanging branches, they caught tantalizing glimpses of the sea, sparkling silver under a cerulean sky. Ahead and to the right, the strip of sea was bounded by distant headlands, a medley of olive, purple and smoky gray in the early afternoon light.

Gerrard squinted against the glare. “By my reckoning, that stretch of water must be Carrick Roads. Falmouth ought to lie directly ahead.”

Barnaby looked. “It’s too far to make out the town, but there are certainly plenty of sails out there.”

The land dipped; the lane followed, curving slowly south and west. They lost sight of Carrick Roads as the spur leading to St. Mawes intervened on their right, then the tree sentinels that had lined the lane abruptly ended. The curricle rattled on, into the sunshine.

They both caught their breath.

Before them lay one of the irregular inlets where an ancient valley had been drowned by the sea. To their right lay the St. Mawes arm of the Roseland peninsula, solid protection from any cold north wind; to their left, the rougher heathland of the southern arm rose, cutting off any buffets from the south. The horses trotted on and the view shifted, a new vista opening as they descended yet further.

The lane led them down through sloping fields, then steeply pitched and gabled roofs appeared ahead, between them and the blue-green waters of the inlet. Swinging in a wide, descending arc, the lane went past the house that majestically rose into view, then curved back to end in a wide sweep of gravel before the front door.

Rounding the final curve, Gerrard slowed his horses; neither he nor Barnaby uttered a word as they descended the last stretch. The house was…eccentric, fabulous-wonderful. There were turrets too numerous to count, multiple balconies laced with wrought iron, odd-shaped buttresses aplenty, windows of all descriptions, and segments of rooms forming fanciful angles in the gray stone walls.

“You didn’t say anything about the house,” Barnaby said as the horses neared the forecourt and they were forced to stop staring.

“I didn’t know about the house,” Gerrard replied. “I’d only heard about the gardens.”

Arms of those gardens, the famous gardens of Hellebore Hall, reached out of the valley above which the house sat and embraced the fantastical creation, but the major part of the gardens lay hidden behind. Poised sentrylike at the upper end of the valley that ran down to the inlet’s rocky shore, the house blocked all view of the valley itself and the gardens it contained.

Gerrard let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. “No wonder no one ever succeeded in slipping in to paint undetected.”

Barnaby shot him an amused look, straightening as Gerrard tightened the reins, and they entered the shaded forecourt of Hellebore Hall.

Seated in the drawing room of Hellebore Hall, Jacqueline Tregonning caught the sound she’d been waiting for-the clop of hooves, the soft scrunch of gravel under a carriage’s wheels.

None of the others scattered about the large room heard; they were too busy speculating on aspects of the nature of the visitors who’d just arrived.

Jacqueline preferred not to speculate, not when she could view with her own eyes, and make up her own