‘My radical Miss Earle, when I said they were no longer used, I meant by either myself or my guests.’
‘You are reputed to be a recluse.’
‘Not I. Merely fastidious.’
Belinda climbed up the next flight of stairs. ‘Now this,’ said the marquess, joining her on the landing, ‘is the haunted chamber.’
He was interested to see Belinda’s reaction. In an age when gothic novels were in vogue, most young ladies, on being shown the tower room, would pretend to have seen the ghost; a few took the opportunity to faint into the marriageable marquess’s arms. The thing about this Miss Earle, thought the marquess, was that although she was by no means beautiful, he found her large eyes and that passionate mouth immensely attractive. And her directness was refreshing. It was not a pity she was Haymarket ware; it was a definite asset as his intentions were rapidly becoming dishonourable.
Belinda stood in the middle of the room and looked slowly around. This room was not even used by the servants. It was bleak and cold, with the wind howling mournfully in the chimney.
‘Was this Miss Dalrymple’s room?’ asked Belinda.
The marquess nodded.
There was a small chamber off the main room, a garderobe, a medieval lavatory with a stone seat over a hole, which gave a clear view downwards of the former moat, now drained. She returned to the main room, which had a scrubbed table and two massive carved chairs.
Perhaps it had not been so grim when the unfortunate governess was in residence, thought Belinda. She would surely have had some of her own possessions about her.
‘I did not think they had governesses in medieval times,’ said Belinda.
The marquess shrugged. He was disappointed in Belinda’s lack of reaction. ‘She was not called a governess. She was merely a female of fairly good birth who was there to educate the very young children. Do you sense her presence?’
Belinda shook her head. ‘I sense desolation, that is all. What a cruel time to live!’
‘I sometimes think no more cruel than our own,’ said the marquess. ‘Look from the window.’
Belinda looked out. The snow had stopped falling. Far down below, beyond the castle walls and the fields and farms and cottages, was a crossroads. And at that crossroads stood a gibbet with three rotting bodies hanging in the wind.
She shivered. ‘But that is the justice of the English courts,’ she said, half to herself.
‘I envy you your belief in the fairness of English justice,’ he said. ‘One of those hanged was a half-starved youth of sixteen. He stole a sheep. The other two are murderers, and yet he met the same fate. But we become too serious. Would you like to climb to the roof of the tower?’
Belinda replied reluctantly that she would. She felt she had been discourteous in not admiring this part of the castle enough and was trying to make up for it.
They climbed higher and higher until they came to a low door that led out on to the roof of the tower.
‘Go to the right,’ said the marquess. ‘You will obtain a good view of the castle buildings and the gardens.’
Belinda did as she was bid. She clutched the parapet and looked down at the jumble of chimneys on the roofs of the castle buildings, at the formal gardens behind them, buried in snow. The wind rose suddenly and she drew back, stepped on a pebble and gave her sprained ankle a savage wrench.
She let out a moan of pain. The marquess caught her round the waist and supported her. ‘Your ankle,’ he exclaimed. ‘I had forgot. I should never have let you walk for so long on it. Allow me to carry you.’
Belinda protested feebly but he lifted her up easily in his arms and made for the staircase. ‘Hold tightly around my neck,’ he commanded. ‘The stairs are narrow.’
Her heart began to thud painfully and she found it hard to breathe. He was holding her so very tightly and the feel of the hardness of his body against hers was doing bewildering things to her senses.
The marquess reached the bottom of the staircase. It was very dark there. Before he opened the door, he looked down at her and met a wide-eyed gaze. On impulse, he bent his head and kissed her on the lips. It was the first kiss Belinda had ever received and she thought dizzily that it was wickedly delicious, rather like one’s first ice cream.
And then it was over. He freed her lips and said in a husky voice in which surprise and passion were mixed, ‘You enchant me.’ Then he opened the door and, still holding her tightly, strode across the courtyard.
From a window overlooking the courtyard, Hannah Pym looked down on the pair in deep satisfaction.
From the window of her bedchamber farther along, Penelope Jordan also saw the marquess and Belinda and bit her lips hard to stop herself from crying out. She had been schooled from birth to learn that only the vulgar showed an excess of emotion. Ladies must never laugh out loud or show anger or passion of any sort. To produce a few affecting tears to demonstrate fashionable sensibility was in order, as was the occasional swoon. Of course, a
As she watched, the marquess set Belinda down and indicated her ankle. Then he put an arm about her waist and helped her into the house.
Penelope let out a slow breath of relief. That clever minx had affected to be suffering badly from that sprain and had cleverly manipulated Frenton into carrying her. But the marquess surely could not favour the few charms Miss Earle had above her own. Miss Earle had unfashionably high cheek-bones as well as an unfashionably large mouth.
She rang for her lady’s maid and put that servant through a gruelling hour and a half – choosing clothes, brushing her hair and trying it in different styles, seeing if rouge would improve her beauty and then deciding it would not, trying on olive-green stockings and then rejecting them in favour of pink, until at long last she was nearly satisfied with her appearance.
Penelope shivered slightly despite the warmth from the bedroom fire. She was wearing a very thin spotted muslin gown under a pelisse of black lace trimmed with narrow bands of sable. On her pomaded curls the maid finally placed one of the latest turbans, decorated with two scarlet plumes to match the scarlet spot in the muslin. Penelope carefully examined her elbows, her beautiful eyes narrowing as she thought she detected a sign of red roughness on them. She carefully applied some white lead, but the two white patches stood out, so she applied more white lead to her upper arms and drew on a thin pair of scarlet gloves that reached to just below the elbow.
Then she made her way to her parents’ rooms. They were in their sitting-room, breakfasting in front of a roaring fire. Her father was dining on shrimp and old ale, his favourite breakfast, while her mother had wafers of toast and tea.
‘You must make ready to accompany me downstairs,’ said Penelope, cross because both were still in their undress. ‘That Earle female is like to snatch the prize from me.’
‘Hardly likely,’ said Sir Henry. ‘She is nothing out of the common way and a man as high in the instep as Frenton would not prefer the charms of some female from the stage-coach to yourself.’
‘I am persuaded she is clever and cunning. I have just seen him carrying her across the courtyard. She must have pretended to have hurt her ankle again. Rally to me! There is no time to be lost.’
Hannah made her way back to the sitting-room she shared with Belinda and found that young lady sitting in an armchair while the doctor examined her ankle. ‘Another bad wrench,’ said the doctor. ‘I shad strap it more tightly, but you must now lie in your bed with the ankle raised on a cushion.’
‘It is much better now,’ pleaded Belinda. ‘I shall be so very bored if I have to stay confined to my bedchamber.’
‘Lord Frenton,’ said the doctor, strapping Belinda’s ankle, ‘must be anxious for you all to recommence your journey. You should oblige your host by recovering as quickly as possible.’
Hannah noticed a shadow of disappointment fall over Belinda’s expressive eyes.
She waited impatiently until the doctor had taken his leave, and then asked eagerly, ‘What happened? Did you really sprain that ankle again?’
‘Of course I did,’ said Belinda. ‘He took me to the top of the tower to look at the view and I trod on a pebble and wrenched it again. He kindly offered to carry me, nay, insisted on it.’ Her eyes began to shine.
‘And …?’ prompted Hannah.
