* * *
The last few miles were by far the hardest, Celeste thought, as the horse she had hired passed through the little village by the Manor House of Langley.
The Faulkner family estate, entailed to the son of the house. Her mother’s brother, Alexander, was a simple and socially inept man, kept largely in Sussex and in check by his mother. He’d never married. He rarely spoke. Her grandmother had always been the brains and the drive behind both the properties and the title, her son the only one stopping it all being handed over to a distant male cousin. Alexander’s affliction had possibly even suited her grandmother, for she had always been a woman with a backbone of steel and had not wanted to lose control of the management of the estates.
The Faulkner country seat. She remembered the land all around her like an ache. The betony and the cat’s ear and the red clover. She’d picked bunches of those when she was younger, tying them with twine and presenting them to her mother as a gift when they had come to Sussex on holiday.
The winds were the same, too, gentle and not quite cold, making the leaves twirl and talk. It was so safe here, so very beautiful and predictable. The scudding clouds, the hedgerows, the cottages in rows in the village with their thatched roofs and whitewashed walls. War had not touched this place, had not made the edges harsh and unreliable. A sustainable land of soft promise and quiet sounds. Closing her eyes, she felt her heart beating fast. If her grandmother tossed her out as a harlot...?
But she would not think that. She couldn’t. She was glad for the generous warm woollen cloak that covered her. Covered them.
Tying her steed up at a fence post in the front of the house, she smoothed down her skirts, worn from travel and dust and rain. Her hat she readjusted, too, for her grandmother was a woman who put great stock in appearance.
The door was newly painted and the small box hedging around the pathway was neat and tidy. Tidier than it had been when last she was here, the aura of shabbiness disappeared under a new regime of formality.
Perhaps without the chaos of her daughter, Susan Joyce Faulkner had been able to shape her own life with more precision and control. That thought had Celeste swallowing with all that she was about to admit.
With a heavy hand she knocked, stepping back a little as she waited.
A young servant she did not recognise opened the door.
‘May I help you?’
On his face dwelt the look of a man who was wondering why such a visitor had not gone to the back entrance.
‘I wish to see Lady Faulkner. Could you tell her Celeste Fournier is here? She will know me.’
‘Certainly, miss.’
Her voice had probably confused him, she thought, with its accent of wealth and Frenchness. Yet he did not ask her in.
‘If you will wait here.’
Inclining her head, she placed her bag of belongings beside her. It looked dirty and small in such surroundings. As dirty and insignificant as she herself looked? she wondered. Repositioning her generous cape around herself, she cradled one arm across the front.
When the door opened again a different and older servant stood in place of the other, a certain avarice in his eyes. She vaguely recognised him as a man who had been here all those years before.
‘If you would come this way, I will show you through, Miss Celeste.’
So her name had been recognised and she was not being thrown out on her head?
The inside of the house was just as she remembered it, beautifully appointed and tasteful. In some ways it reminded her of Caroline Debussy’s house, elegant and expensive. A gallery of dark portraits faced each other as they traversed down the long corridor to her grandmother’s suite of rooms. Faulkners through the ages, all stern as they watched the return of a prodigal and ruined daughter. Both her mother and her uncle’s portraits were there, their countenances more regal in paint than they had ever been in life.
A set of French doors opened into the large bedchamber, light filling the space from windows set along one wide wall.
In a bed at one end a figure sat, pillows stacked behind her. Her hair had been newly combed.
‘You have come back, then?’
Not a warm greeting, more of an accusation.
‘For now, if you will have me, Grandmère.’ Celeste did not move forward, but stood there awkwardly, her voice shaking in a way that she hated.
The French word had the older woman frowning.
‘And your father?’
‘Papa is dead.’
