“We will remain here,” she said, stiffening her spine, which was already straight as an arrow, and lowering her needle with a determinedly steady hand to her work. But she felt suddenly breathless, as if she had been running uphill or as if someone had sucked half the air from the room. She could hear the blood pounding like a drumbeat in her ears. He was the Earl of Wanstead, owner of Thornwood and everything and everyone within its gates. And he was no longer safely far away in Canada. He was here—entering Thornwood at this very moment. The feeling of total helplessness that had been assailing her ever since the arrival of his letter washed over her again.
What a dreadful fate it was sometimes to be a woman. To be dependent. To have to sit and wait. To be helpless to order one's own life no matter how carefully and sensibly one tried to plan.
“Quite right, dear,” Lady Hannah said. “I daresay he will wish to change out of his traveling clothes and make himself more presentable before paying his respects to us.”
Margaret sighed audibly and began the finger-drumming again.
She would simply not be able to bear it, Christina thought as she stitched doggedly on, if he chose to change his clothes before waiting on them in the drawing room. She would not be able to bear it if he delayed even one more minute downstairs. She might alarm her companions by starting to scream. She might—
The double doors opened.
Chapter 2
THE Earl of Wanstead set out for Wiltshire on a gray and chilly December day that matched his mood. He was delayed early in the afternoon by the necessity of having a damaged wheel repaired, with the result that darkness had fallen by the time he arrived at Thornwood. His carriage drove along the deserted village street, once and still so familiar to him, turned to pass between the tall stone gateposts into the park—someone had opened the gates in advance— and proceeded up the long, winding driveway, its lamps beaming feebly ahead, and making looming, ominous shadows of the tall, dense trees of the forest to either side.
Gloom descended also on the Earl of Wanstead—or rather a darker gloom. And he realized that the ball of something heavy that had sat low in his stomach all day was not his midday meal—it had preceded that reasonably appetizing repast. It was dread. A dread of going back into that other, long-dead life—or what he had thought was long-dead.
But it was too late to change his mind now, he thought as the deeper rumbling of the wheels and sudden vibrations alerted him to the fact that his carriage was being drawn over the cobbled terrace before the house. The conveyance drew to a halt even as he thought it, and he looked out the window at the curving sweep of the horseshoe steps leading up to the main doors of the house.
The doors opened as he was stepping down from the carriage. Thornwood Hall, he thought as he climbed the steps rather reluctantly and entered the great domed hall, which he had foolishly hoped might be warm. His home—no, merely his house. There were two people waiting to greet him. He had half expected to find all the servants formally lined up for his inspection. And he had more than half expected the ladies to be waiting there. It was a relief to see only the butler and the housekeeper—he remembered both from his uncle’s time.
“My lord,” the butler said with pompous formality. “Welcome home. I trust you had a pleasant journey?”
“A tedious one,” his lordship said, looking about him and shivering. But there was little point in asking why fires had not been lit in the two fireplaces. They would have made little impression on the chill of the great marble hall anyway. They never had.
He nodded affably to the housekeeper and responded to her speech of welcome.
“Where are the ladies?” he asked then.
They were in the drawing room, of course, awaiting his coming. Her ladyship had ordered dinner to be held back until after his arrival, he was informed. They kept country hours at Thornwood. Dinner was already half an hour late. The butler imparted that piece of information with a deferential bow that nevertheless succeeded in putting his master subtly in the wrong.
His lordship raised his eyebrows and regarded his butler in a silence that lasted just a little too long for the servant’s comfort.
“It will be held back only a little longer,” the earl said. “Give me ten minutes in which to present myself to the ladies, Billings, and then have it announced, if you please.” He had been removing his greatcoat as he spoke and handing it with his hat and gloves and cane to a footman who had glided silently from the shadows. He caught the butler’s eyes on his traveling clothes, which were certainly not suitable wear for evening dinner at Thornwood Hall—or at any other gentleman’s establishment for that matter. He raised his eyebrows once more.
“As you wish, my lord,” the butler said and then scurried off toward the grand staircase ahead of his lordship in order that he might be present to turn the handles of the drawing room doors, a feat of strength of which an earl was not expected to be capable. Life as an aristocrat frequently amused, frequently irritated the earl. It was a life not easy to adjust to.
The feeling of dread returned to his lordship as he stepped inside the drawing room, though he despised himself for his cowardice. Actually he was glad the moment had come at last. Soon now it would be in the past and he could forget about it.
There were three ladies in the room, two of whom were getting to their feet even as he entered and curtsying to him. But it was on the third that all his attention, all his strange feeling of dread, was focused, though he did not immediately look directly at her. He was looking at the other two and recognizing his aunt, his father’s sister, one of the few figures from his childhood whom he remembered with affection, though she had rarely visited Thornwood. He would not have recognized Margaret though the slender, pretty young lady curtsying to him must be she. She had been just a young child when he had left. She did have the remembered blond curls, though they had been crimped into a mass of ringlets now.
The other lady remained seated. She was dressed all in black, he saw when he turned his eyes upon her as if with great physical effort, from her slippers to her wrists to her throat. Her dark hair was dressed smoothly over her ears, the rest of it invisible beneath a black lacy cap. Her oval Madonna’s face was pale and expressionless.
A stranger. A woman without color or youth or vitality. Merely his predecessor’s widow, the Countess of Wanstead. And yet not a stranger. Her dark eyes met his for the merest moment before he turned his own away from them, and somehow the girl she had been was there behind the severe facade—the vivid, bright, lovely girl whom he had hated for ten years and more.
And hated still with an unexpected and disturbing vehemence.
He included all three ladies in his bow. “My lady?” he said. “Ma’am—Aunt Hannah, is it not? And Margaret?”
And then the Countess of Wanstead set aside her needlework, got to her feet with smooth grace, and curtsied deeply to him.
“My lord,” she said in her rather low, melodic voice.
She looked quite noticeably older. Thinner, paler—though both impressions might have been attributable to the unrelieved black in which she was clad. She had no welcoming smiles for him as the other two did—had he expected any? There was no sign of recognition, either, and no embarrassment. But why should there be? She looked proud and haughty and had demonstrated her superiority over the other two by remaining longer in her chair.
This, then, was what he had dreaded so much that he had almost not come to Thornwood at all? Meeting her again after so long? Well, the moment was past, and really there had been nothing to it after all. She was essentially a stranger for whom he felt nothing at all.
Except hatred.
