For a second, all Josephine could hear was the sound of her own laboured breath. Then a multitude of feelings crowded her thoughts, making it impossible to articulate just one. She closed her eyes as her sister’s face spun to the foreground, followed by a slow wave of horror.
‘You can’t,’ she whispered. ‘Matilda isn’t ready… She’s too young… ambitious… different from the rest of us… She needs time…’
‘Yes, well, perhaps you should have thought of that before you wasted three perfectly good seasons doing exactly as you pleased.’ Thomas shrugged, pulling his gaze back to the fire. ‘You had your turn, Josephine, and I’m not leaving anything else to chance. Matilda will marry Huntingly this year, and there is nothing more to be said!’
ChapterFour
Huntingly Manor; Cherubs and Ghouls
One week later
Josephine frowned down at Viscount Damerel’s copy ofGray’s New Book of Roads: The tourist and traveller’s guide tothe roads, trying to calculate the time it would take to reach Huntingly Manor.
Thomas mentioned Huntingly owned two hundred acres in Somerset, and it hadn’t taken very long for her to work out his estate lay five miles east of Ebcott Place; the country estate Viscount Damerel had dedicated to educating young ladies, with a doctor in residence. He and Phoebe still withdrew to it through the summer months and, fortunately for Josephine, her older sister had been only too happy to welcome her for a brief stay.
She’d arrived yesterday and enjoyed the happiest evening with her eldest sister, who looked as radiant as any female could in the eighth month of her confinement. Briefly, she recalled Phoebe’s humble delight in her fuller figure and adjusted skirts, while the viscount looked on with clear pride. They still disagreed over everything yet were no less perfect for one another than they always had been. And now, after five long years of hoping and longing, their prayers had been answered.
She glanced out of the Damerel coach window at the dawn hedgerows speeding by, glistening with dew. The viscount certainly didn’t spare any expense when it came to travel and, if his coach driver thought it a little unusual that his sister-in-law wished to take the family coach on such an early outing, he was much too polite to query it. Indeed, she was grateful, for she was certain Sophie’s scowling tiger would have been far less agreeable to the idea. Momentarily, she conjured Horace’s permanently disgruntled expression since Rotherby and Sophie married– an expression that had only worsened since the Rotherby tribe began appearing– and now, with their third child on the way, he really was looking quite thunderous. Her lips twitched as she recalled Thomas’s terse reference to ‘the gloomiest groom he’d ever set eyes upon’ before the coach jolted, forcing her back to the present.
Carefully, she rearranged her skirts and recalled the letter she’d left for Phoebe should she rise before her return. It was as brief as possible, detailing her desire to visit a local acquaintance, and assuring her swift return before the morning was much advanced. She suppressed a frown. It wasn’t exactly a lie for she fully intended to acquaint herself with Lord Alistair Huntingly; it was just that she hadn’t detailed her intention for the visit.
The moment Thomas told her about Matilda echoed through her thoughts.
‘You had your turn, Josephine, and I’m not leaving anything else to chance. Matilda will marry Huntingly this year, and there is nothing more to be said!’
They were just a few words, and yet they’d changed her entire world. She’d tried to dissuade him, but he’d refused to speak further, and she knew her brother far too well to believe anything would alter his mind now. She clenched her fingers in the folds of her sensible jade muslin, the dawn chorus at odds with her churning feelings as she contemplated the real reason for her assignation. It was the most courageous, if not outrageous, thing she’d ever attempted– but if she didn’t act, Matilda’s life would be ruined.
As for her own life?
For a moment, she contemplated her future at Knightswood Manor if she didn’t pursue her current course. She’d have the comfort of her books and family home for as long as Thomas wished it, but how could that count for anything if she could have saved a beloved sister from a fate that would suffocate her? Her thoughts lingered on her younger sister, from parasol-wielding pirate, through fire-breathing acrobat, to the breath of fresh moorland air she’d become now. Matilda was an opinionated whirlwind of a Fairfax, with a heart of pure gold, who deserved everything the world could offer, not a lifetime clouded by her husband’s shame.
She swallowed to steady her thumping chest. Her plan had seemed so rational when she left Knightswood, her consideration only for Matilda, but now the hour was drawing near, every rumour she’d heard about Lord Alistair Huntingly of Huntingly Manor began surfacing with startling clarity.
What would make a gentleman run to the continent for six long years? Why had he duelled in the first place? And what had prompted him to return and take a wife now?
A wife.Josephine swallowed again. There was the no small consideration that she was not a beauty like her sisters, and Thomas had undoubtedly promised a striking bride with spirit to match. Yet she had it on good authority that her figure was neat, and her eyes more than pleasing, once one got past the spectacles– and she was certainly the most well-read and accomplished musician of her sisters.
Josephine blinked and pushed her spectacles back up her snub nose. She had to believe that Lord Alistair Huntingly’s reputed desire for a wife would outweigh such superficial considerations, and to that end one Fairfax would be just as acceptable as another. They might not be rich, but they were an old and respected family, and she was well aware of the worth of her name.
It was with all these thoughts running amok that the driver finally turned through a pair of imposing stone pillars, giving Josephine her first view of Huntingly Manor. And for a moment she could only stare, for it was everything she’d imagined the home of a disgraced, self-exiled Lord of the Manor to be.
The driveway and hedgerows were hideously overgrown, throwing much of the weed-ridden carriageway into shade, while an old oak had split and fallen, forcing the coach driver to draw to a premature halt. Josephine opened her door with a mixture of foreboding and relief. She was more nervous than she’d ever felt in her life, but the thought of Damerel’s coach driver driving her up to the entrance of Lord Huntingly’s derelict residence, was somehow worse.
‘Thank you, Johns, this will do perfectly well. I can take it from here!’ she called with a briskness she was far from feeling.
‘Are you sure, miss?’ Johns replied, climbing down with a concerned look upon his kindly face. ‘This doesn’t look the type of place a young lady should be left alone. Perhaps I should accompany you, miss. Wait in the servant’s hall or the kitchen?’
He glanced around the quiet estate, clearly aware there was very little likelihood of a servant’s hall or kitchen, and even less chance of anyone to populate it.
‘No… thank you, Johns. I know the owner and it’s better I visit alone. They’re a little… shy of company, you see.’
He nodded, his thick grey eyebrows saying everything he wasn’t.
‘Right you are, miss. I’ll wait right here, then… Ready to go the minute you are, miss.’
Josephine smiled brightly, and gathering her skirts, picked her way across the old stone carriageway, towards the gloomy entrance of Huntingly Manor.
She paused just as she reached the wide, crumbling steps and gazed up at an imposing colonnade entrance, presided over by an old copper lantern on a rusted chain. Briefly, she stared at its tarnished casing before glancing back at the once formal rose garden, now running wild around a silent water fountain while open-mouthed cherubs glared through the choking thorns. It was a strange and ominous sight amid the echoes of a grand past life, and she turned back to the house with growing unease.
