“STRICTLY SPEAKING, MADAM…”

Stacy, lost to everything, resembling, had she but known it, her father in one of his rare and formidable tempers, raged at him. “You can speak strictly, then? I had thought insolence was more your line. But pray, continue,” she added, poisonously sweet, as she saw him open his mouth. To explain, presumably. But what explanation could mend this?

She no longer wanted her bed. She wanted to see m’lord whoever-he-was groveling before her. Nothing less would do.

Paula Marshall began her career in a large library and ended it as a senior academic in charge of history in a polytechnic institute. She has traveled widely, been a swimming coach, and appeared on University Challenge and Mastermind. She has always wanted to write, and likes her novels to be full of adventure and humor. She is married and the mother of three children.

Dear Lady Disdain
Paula Marshall

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

‘What! my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?’

Shakespeare

‘So, Lord Axforde didn’t suit?’

Miss Louisa Landen’s question came out idly as she applied herself diligently to her canvaswork. It seemed almost to be an afterthought.

But was it? Stacy Blanchard, seated at her desk in the main office of Blanchard’s Bank, situated in the heart of London’s financial centre, raised her dark head suspiciously.

‘Was that a question, Louisa—or a statement?’

‘Whichever you please, my dear,’ Louisa returned placidly, without taking her eyes from the peacock she was stitching. ‘I must say that I wasn’t surprised that you refused him—you have refused all offers made to you so far—but…’ And she stopped, apparently lost in confusion over the important question as to whether the wool she now required was light or dark blue.

Stacy wrote down the date, October 24th, 1818, before flinging down her quill pen, fortunately now empty of ink. ‘But what, Louisa? Lately you seem to have developed the most distressing habit of not finishing your sentences.’

Louisa looked over the top of her work at her one-time pupil, now a handsome woman in her late twenties. Not pretty, or even conventionally beautiful perhaps, but something better. She possessed the oval ivory face of the Blanchards, their brilliant green eyes, and their dark, lightly curling hair, even if the curls were severely drawn back into a large knot at the nape of her neck—which merely served to enhance the pure lines of a classic profile.

‘But, my dear, Lord Axforde is, after all, such a tulip of fashion, seems to possess a considerable understanding, and is so rich in his own right that one could hardly claim that he was marrying you merely to get at the wealth of Blanchard’s Bank. All in all you could scarcely do better. A handsome, reasonably clever man, and a marchioness’s coronet—what more could you ask?’

It was no more—and no less—than the answer Stacy had expected. Louisa had, indeed, made something of a litany of lamentation of it, repeating it, with variations, over Stacy’s last six offers—except the one made by Beverley Fancourt, of course. Now he really had been an open fortune-hunter.

Louisa might be her oldest, indeed, if truth were told, her only friend, but that didn’t give her the licence to choose Stacy’s husband for her. She was perfectly capable of doing that for herself—if she wanted a husband, that was. She rose from the desk and crossed the beautiful room, more like a great house’s salon than an office, a room which her late father had created and which she had left unchanged.

She stopped before the window to pull back deep green velvet curtains, the colour of the dress which she wore, and to stare at the dome of St Paul’s, before saying a trifle satirically, ‘Really, Louisa, really? D’you know I gained the distinct impression from the manner of Lord Axforde’s proposal that it was to the Bank he was making it, and not to me as a woman?’ She gave a short laugh, and continued to inspect St Paul’s as though she had never seen it before.

‘Do not exaggerate, my dear.’ Louisa’s reply was coolly judicious. ‘I told you not to do that as long ago as the nursery. I am sure that Lord Axforde said everything that was proper.’

Stacy’s lips thinned, and, unseen by Louisa, her fists clenched. ‘Oh, quite proper, I assure you. A regular commercial transaction was taking place—no doubt about it. Why, I half expected that he would ask me whether the Bank’s interest rate would continue to remain high if we married!’ She shook her head at Louisa’s pained expression. ‘Worse, from his expression—that of a man taking medicine—I thought that he was prepared to pay any price to get at Blanchard’s money to buy himself a dukedom—even if that price included marrying someone as undesirable as myself!’

‘Oh, come!’ Miss Landen at last looked up from her stitchery. ‘You do not do yourself justice, my dear. You misunderstood him, I am sure. Few prospective brides are as handsome and as comme il faut as you are.’

‘And few lack as much pedigree as I do,’ retorted Stacy briskly, returning to her desk and sitting down again. The desk was another of her father’s innovations; previously the office had been furnished with an old-fashioned lectern at which one stood.

She looked across at a row of oil-paintings on the opposite wall. The older ones were hack-work, done by travelling colourmen for a few shillings; the last two were fine things, one by a pupil of Gainsborough and the other by Romney.

‘My great-grandfather began life as a Huguenot pedlar who turned himself into a prosperous back-alley moneylender.’ She waved her hand at the oldest painting. ‘My grandfather built up the business until he was able to found Blanchard’s Bank, and my father transformed it into the richest bank in England.’ Now she waved at the Romney. ‘His father sent him to Harrow, and he had the manners and tastes of a gentleman and married a lady of aristocratic birth, but that does not make us gentry. And they do not really accept us, however much they and the nobility fawn on Blanchard’s—when they need the Bank to lend them money to carry on their gambling and their follies.’

Opening a large red and gold ledger which stood on her desk, she said almost savagely, ‘Would you like me to read to you the loans we have made to the flowers of English society—and tell you how many have reneged on them? No, I am merely the cit’s daughter, who has the bad taste to behave as a young man might, and run Blanchard’s—successfully, too.’

She closed the ledger again. ‘Do you know what he said to me, Louisa, in the middle of his pretence of loving and admiring me? That he expected that once we were married I would give up the foolishness of running the Bank and put in a manager to do it for me, so that I could give my mind to being a wife fit for a person of his station.’

Miss Landen stitched for a moment in silence, before replying, ‘Most husbands would expect you to do that, my dear.’

‘Yes, I know that, Louisa, and that is why I promise never to marry. Father didn’t train me to run Blanchard’s in order to stop doing so once some handsome popinjay decides that he might like my money while consigning me permanently to the nursery or to talk nonsense to fine ladies.’

Louisa sighed, before saying gently, holding up her work to inspect it the better, ‘I thought you told me not long ago that you would like to have children of your own, my dear. You are leaving it rather late to marry—you are already twenty-eight years old—and husbands do not grow on trees.’ And she gave her one-time charge a sideways look.

So even Louisa was full of sententious piff-paff, it seemed, and she, Stacy, was condemned to live in a childless desert because in order to have children one must first have a husband. How much better if one were a plant, fertilised at a distance by a passing bee—with no idea where the pollen came from!

This ridiculous notion was enough to restore her good humour and bring a wry smile to her face. It was the kind of nonsensical idea which she could never share with kind Louisa but which would have amused her father. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. Hardly a day passed but she missed him—her father, her tutor, her mentor, her friend, the parent with whom, improbably, she had shared her jokes.

It occurred to her that it was too long since she had made one, or heard one, and meantime Louisa deserved an answer. But she would not like it.

‘Oh,’ she said, the hint of unexpected laughter in her voice bringing Louisa’s head up, ‘never fear, my love. When one is as rich as the heiress who owns Blanchard’s Bank, husbands forsake the trees and spring out of the ground! There will be no shortage of offers for the richest prize in England! The shortage lies, Louisa, in men whom I might wish to accept. And that is enough of that. I have work to do.’ And she opened another ledger and began to write as briskly as she had spoken.

If Miss Landen was thinking sadly that her one-time charge was such a strong woman, both mentally and morally, that it would need a man of equal strength to contain and perhaps tame her, she did not say so. It was all her stupid father’s fault, she thought ruefully as she watched Stacy’s quill drive across the paper, bringing her up as he had done.

It had been the failure of Louis Blanchard’s wife to give him boy children who could survive birth which had done the damage. He had married Lady Rachel Beauchamp, of a poor and noble family, and he had loved her in his aloof fashion, but constant childbearing and miscarriages had made her sickly and ailing.

It had been a miracle that she had carried her one girl child to term—another miracle that the child had been born large and healthy—but the birth had killed her mother, and left her father, for a time, resentful of the child who had taken his wife from him.

And then, as she grew up, her bright intelligence had begun to impress him. The child was christened Anastasia, but he had early shortened her name to Stacy, not Anna, because Stacy sounded more like the boy he had wanted to continue the Blanchard dynasty. Louisa remembered the first time she had met Louis Blanchard and Stacy.

‘I’m not hiring you as a governess,’ he had told her bluntly in the rich study of his home in Piccadilly. ‘I want her to have the manners and appearance of a fine lady, even if she has the brains and mental accomplishment of a clever man. I have hired male tutors to educate her. Why,’ he boasted proudly, ‘she can calculate a percentage and draw up a bill better than any of my clerks, and she still but a child.’

Louisa had risen from her chair, said severely, ‘I do not wish to undertake this task, Mr Blanchard. You are doing the poor child no favour and I ought not to abet you.’

He had given her the smile which transformed his hard face, and which immediately won him Louisa Landen’s heart.

‘And that is exactly why I am hiring you,’ he had told her warmly, ‘to keep her still a woman, and a modest one, for all her accomplishments.’ He had seen Louisa hesitate. ‘I will send for her,’ he had said, and had rung the bell, ‘and you may see that I am not asking you to care for a hoyden or a female pedant.’

What Louisa had seen when a lady’s maid brought Stacy in was a shy, dark little girl, the image of her handsome father, who, for all her shyness, was thoroughly in command of herself, and who took one look at Louisa Landen and thoroughly approved of what she saw.

‘My dear,’ her father had told her, as coolly as though he were addressing an equal, ‘this is Miss Louisa Landen, who I hope will agree to become your companion and teach you the conduct and etiquette of a lady.’

Stacey had looked at the ladylike figure before her, and had seen through Miss Landen’s modest exterior to the kind heart beneath it. She had made a short bow and said in a pretty voice, quite unlike anything which Miss Landen might have expected of the child prodigy whom her father had described, ‘Oh, I do so hope, Miss Landen, that you will become my companion. I really do need someone to talk to and tell me exactly how a young lady should behave.’

Such composure in a ten-year-old Miss Landen had not met in her long career as a governess. She had bowed in her turn and murmured gently, ‘And I shall be pleased to do just that, my dear,’ and had begun her long association with Stacy and Louis Blanchard.

And if she had fallen a little in love with Louis Blanchard on the way, no one was ever to know. Occasionally she had remonstrated with him over his daughter’s odd education, telling him in no uncertain terms that it was quite improper and that he was doing her no favour by insisting on it.

He had smiled at her and announced, ‘I am not here to do her favours. I am here to secure for Blanchard’s someone of that name who can run it when I am gone, and if that someone is a woman, then I must make do with what the Creator of us all has sent me!’

And that had been that. Louisa had never raised the matter again and here was the end of it, Louis Blanchard having died suddenly at a comparatively early age, leaving Stacy, still unmarried, to run the Bank, and waiting now for her right-hand man Ephraim Blount to come in to discuss the day’s news and doings with her.

It grew increasingly likely, was Louisa’s last sad thought, that Stacy would never marry now, and her unlikely situation was the cause of it!

Stacy didn’t feel sad, however, and the arrival of Ephraim Blount, carrying a pile of papers and demanding some immediate decisions, served to invigorate rather than depress her.

He bowed to her, before he stood and presented each problem to her—he never consented to sit by her while they worked together, for Ephraim, although only in early middle age, was a man of the old school. Everything must be done exactly so, as Louis Blanchard had taught him, which was sometimes a disadvantage rather than an advantage, as Stacy had often found. Imagination was not his strong suit. He was often mournfully depressed, rather than happy, when some of her wilder innovations proved to be fruitful. ‘So daring for a young woman,’ he was given to murmuring to his own assistant, the young Thomas Telfer, who worshipped Stacy from afar, ‘but I have to admit that up to the present Miss Blanchard’s judgement has never let herself, or the Bank, down.’

Prim, starched, his thinning yellow hair brushed stiffly over his forehead, he was the perfect right-hand man. Now he was saying, his voice melancholy, as though announcing a death, ‘Things are not going well at the York house, madam. All seems to be at sixes and sevens since Poxon was appointed. I fear that he is not up to snuff. Something needs to be done, or Blanchard’s reputation will suffer. May I suggest that, given your agreement, of course, I myself go there to try to put matters straight?’

Stacy propped her chin in both hands—a gesture of her father’s which always brought that formidable thruster to Ephraim’s mind. She looked steadily past him at the opposite wall, to where, before the blazing fire, Louisa was now gently sleeping. She no longer took her chaperonage of Stacy, when the latter was entertaining the Bank’s employees—all male—seriously.

‘D’you know, Ephraim, I have my doubts about the wisdom of that? I think that one of the things which may be wrong at York is that no Blanchard has visited there since my father died. I wish to remedy that. My aunt and uncle Beauchamp have asked me to spend Christmas with them at Bramham Castle, which is only a few miles from York. We have not met since Father’s death, and to agree to their wishes would mean that I could combine business with pleasure—and leave you here in sole charge. You would like that, I think.’

If such a dry stick could be said to glow, Ephraim glowed. Stacy noted with amusement that he thought it politic to demur.

‘Are you sure, madam? Think of the time of year. To travel to Yorkshire in mid-winter—is it wise?’

‘Before the snows, I think,’ Stacy murmured gravely. ‘It is what my father would have done, I am sure.’

She had struck exactly the right note. Louis Blanchard had been Ephraim’s god, and he bowed down before his very name. ‘Oh, indeed, madam, yes, madam. Of all things the most suitable. You will take one of our senior clerks with you, I trust, to act as a secretary and aide?’

‘Greaves, I thought,’ murmured Stacy, happy to have got her own way so easily, ‘unless you have any objections?’

‘None at all, madam. The very man.’ He was trying to contain his pleasure at the prospect of taking sole charge of Blanchard’s for at least two months—something which he had longed to do since his late master’s death. ‘I will write at once and set all in train.’ And he bustled importantly out of the room.

Stacy lay back in her chair and contemplated the prospect of a few weeks’ freedom from the daily grind of running Blanchard’s. Lately she had begun to feel strangely restless, rewarding though her work was, and the power that came with it. A change of scene, the challenge of putting York straight would renew her spirits, she was sure. All that remained was to waken Louisa up and shock her with the news.

‘God rest you merry, gentlemen,’ she hummed to herself. Perhaps I may hear the waits singing in the northern snows, she thought, and perhaps…perhaps…I might meet someone more interesting, more to my taste, than Lord Axforde and his not so merry gentlemen-friends!

She walked across the room and bent to kiss Louisa gently on the cheek. She was sure that after her first shock was over Louisa would approve of what she was about to do—and would start to wonder what handsome and eligible young men, of whom her charge might approve, lived in and around York!

‘Damn my father,’ said Matthew Falconer violently to the lawyer who had been speaking of his parent’s wish to be reconciled with his long-estranged son. ‘I haven’t crossed the Atlantic in order to please him—simply to end my associations here by disposing of all that I own, including this estate which my great-aunt has thought fit to leave me.’

‘But, m’lord—’ the lawyer began, in a feeble attempt to pacify the massive man who stood opposite him. Matthew Falconer was over six feet tall, and gave the appearance of being nearly as broad. His harshly handsome face, leonine beneath tawny hair, with matching golden eyes, bore the marks of his having worked in the open. His hands, Lawyer Grimes had already noticed, were those of a man who did much physical work with them. His nails were cut short, and there were calluses on his long fingers and on his palms. He was dressed like a farmer—plainly—with nothing of the man of fashion he had once been remaining to hint of his lineage, or of his newly acquired title.

Which he didn’t want. He hadn’t come to England to be called by his detested brother’s name. He interrupted Grimes to say, ‘I will not be addressed as Lord Radley—nor will you call me m’lord or sir,’ he added as he saw the lawyer’s mouth shaping to say it. ‘You will address me as Matthew, Matt, Mr Falconer, or Falconer, as you please, or earn my instant displeasure.’

He saw Grimes close his eyes before he replied in a long-suffering voice, ‘I will do as you ask, Mr Falconer, but that does not make you less the Viscount Radley, your father, the Earl Falconer’s heir, now that your older brother has died so prematurely.’

The man standing by the window, staring sardonically at both Matt Falconer and the lawyer, gave a rolling chuckle before saying in a thick American accent, ‘Y’all better learn soon, Mr Lawyer, sir, that what Matt Falconer wants Matt Falconer usually gets. That so, Matt?’

Matt noted with grim amusement the lawyer’s wince away from them both, particularly from Jeb Priestly, who, in his determinedly Yankee garb of black and yellow checked trousers, tight at the knee, flaring at the ankle, his black frock-coat extravagantly cut, and his battered black top hat, which he had refused to remove in defiance of all English custom, stood for everything which Benjamin Grimes deplored. A mannerless rebel come to mock his late masters.

Worse, Matthew Falconer was allowing this creature, who was merely his valet-cum-secretary-cum-man-of-all-work, to address him as familiarly as though they were both of the same rank, and made no effort to check his rudeness to Grimes himself.

‘I say again, Mr Falconer, before we even begin to dispose of your late great-aunt, Lady Emily Falconer’s estate in Yorkshire, that you ought to consider the olive-branch which your father is holding out to you. You are, after all, his only remaining son…’

Matt found all this boring beyond belief. ‘Why, sir, do you persist in telling me things I know? I am well aware of my position vis-à-vis both my father and Lady Emily. So far as the Earl is concerned you may tell him, with my compliments, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis. I am sure that he will know what I mean.’ This last came out in a mocking drawl reminiscent of the young rattle-pate about town he had once been, so different from the large and sombre man he now was. He could see the lawyer registering shock again.

Priestley saw fit to put his oar in once more. ‘Well, your pa might know what you mean by that gibberish, Matt, but, sure God, I don’t. Try translating it into good American, would you?’

Matt knew that Priestley was, in his words, twisting the lawyer’s tail. Uncouth he might look and sound, but his knowledge of the Classics equalled Matt’s own, he being an alumnus of Harvard. Nevertheless, Matt decided to join in Jeb’s game.

‘It translates, Jeb, being said by a Trojan with whom the Greeks were fighting, into, “I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts”, or, in other words, It is dangerous to accept presents from an enemy.’

‘Tro-jans,’ drawled Priestley. ‘An’ which are you, Matt?’

‘A Trojan, of course,’ smiled Matt, ‘ever since I was born to be my father’s curse. Isn’t that right, Mr Grimes? How many ultimatums had you the honour to face me with until the final one before I left England? No, don’t answer; it would tax your memory to recall them all.’

Grimes’ face flamed scarlet. He looked away at the shelves of law books on the wall behind his desk, and said in a low voice, ‘I suppose it is useless to tell you how much I regretted m’lord’s treatment of you, Mr Falconer, but I must also tell you that your father is a broken old man…’

‘Only that, I suppose,’ returned Matt, his eyes wicked, ‘could bring him to wish to see me again—and Rollo’s death, of course. That must have been the final facer.’

‘You are pleased to be heartless…’

‘My father cut my heart out long ago,’ returned Matt carelessly. He was suddenly regretful of his baiting of the old man who had been the scourge of his childhood, youth and young manhood, until he had finally left England nearly twelve years ago, and added, a trifle stiffly, ‘I am wrong to allow my dislike of my father to take the form of tormenting you. You were kind to me, I remember, when I was invalided out of the Navy after Trafalgar, and no one else was.’

‘You brought your own doom on you,’ Grimes could not help retorting, ‘when you ran off with your brother’s wife. My sympathy for you died on that day.’ He saw Priestly’s face change, and knew that here was something Matt Falconer’s impertinent shadow had not known.

Matt Falconer was not nonplussed. He was no longer the eager boy who had yearned for his father’s love and whom his father’s lawyer could patronise.

‘Leave that,’ he ordered in his quarterdeck voice. ‘It has nothing to do with you, or with the business I have come to settle.’

But Grimes must have thought he had found a chink in Matt’s armour, although Matt was not conscious of possessing one, for he continued, although in a lower tone, ‘And her death does not lie on your conscience, Mr Falconer?’

Oh, the old man did have weapons to fight with after all! Matt closed his eyes, only for a sad and beautiful long-dead face to swim before them. The memories that face recalled had him swinging away from both men. For the first time in the interview he was struggling for self-control.

‘I lost my conscience with my heart,’ he asserted stiffly. ‘And if you refer to my late sister-in-law again, I shall leave this office and England within the day, and you, my inheritance from Lady Emily and my father may all go to the devil. Is that plain enough for you, sir?’

Matt was himself again—cold, strong and unshakeable, the man whom Jeb Priestley had always known, and whom the lawyer had never met. After that they returned to the business at hand, Grimes recognising that the man before him would never agree to any of his father’s demands, and consequently now wishful to settle the matter of the inheritance as rapidly as possible.

Pontisford Hall, his late great-aunt’s home on the borders of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, was the last reminder of Matt’s childhood, and the only happy one. He had a sudden burning wish to see it. He remembered warmth and love, and a place where he, as well as his older brother, had been welcome. Before he had reached England, on the boat over, re-reading the letter which told him of his great-aunt’s death and his inheritance, he had resolved to sell the Hall and its contents, to raise capital to enlarge his Virginia plantation, and partly rebuild and beautify the stark house which he called home.

But stepping ashore in England, travelling to London, seeing that great city’s sights, smelling its unique smell, had reminded him agonisingly of his past, of his youth, before the world had fallen in on him. He had a sudden yearning to revisit the scenes of his childhood—if only to say goodbye to them before he parted from his homeland for the last time.

He said nothing of this to Grimes, merely, ‘I shall travel to Yorkshire, sir, to pay my respects to Lady Emily’s tomb in Pontisford church, and to visit the Hall for the last time. She was kind to me, and I must not let her go without a proper farewell. You will inform the staff there of my proposed arrival. I shall set out as soon as I have completed other urgent matters here.’

Matt could imagine Jeb’s raised and mocking eyebrows at this rare display of sentiment, and the silent cynicism of the old lawyer, but damn that for a tale. When he had reached his middle thirties a man had the right to say goodbye to his youth.

And so it was settled. Mr Grimes did not pry into his client’s life. He assumed that Matthew Falconer had not married while in the United States, for there was no talk of a wife. He assumed that he had had some success as a plantation owner, but made no move to discover how much of a success. If the grim man before him wished him to know these things he would have told him. Once or twice he sighed for the carefree young man he had once known, who had faced life with a smile despite his father’s displeasure, but it was plain that that man was long gone.

Business was done, and done quickly—after the fashion of Yankees, Grimes presumed. The old Matt Falconer had never been businesslike, or hard. Now he was both. He even kept his insolent man on a tight rein while he and the lawyer went through the necessary business of establishing identity, examining Lady Emily’s will, and signing and witnessing the necessary documentation.

It was soon all over, and Matt and his man were in the street, holding their top hats on, braving the keen wind of early November, before Jeb spoke again.

‘Well, there’s a fine tale, Matt. Did you really run off with your brother’s wife?’

‘Yes, but not for the reason you might think.’ For once he was short with Jeb. Revisiting England must have made his memories keen again. He thought he had been rid of that old pain long ago.

‘Why, what other reason is there?’

Which, of course, was what everyone had said at the time. Matt replied, in what Jeb always thought of as his ‘damn-your-eyes’ aristocrat’s voice, which he had rarely used in the good old United States, ‘Nothing to do with you, Jeb. You may have the rest of the day to yourself. I shall meet you for supper at Brown’s this evening. We shall set out for Yorkshire as soon as I can organise suitable travel arrangements.’

There was no brooking him in this mood. Jeb rearranged his face, pulled a servile forelock, bowed low, mumbled, ‘Yes, massa, certainly, massa,’ a ritual which usually drew an unwilling grin from Matt. But not today. Today he was unmoved, immovable, and his shadow, wondering where his master was going, would have been surprised to learn that he ended the afternoon in a church, before a marble memorial consisting of an urn held by a weeping Niobe whose inscription simply read, ‘To the memory of Camilla Falconer, Lady Radley, 1785-1806, cut down in her youth… “Cometh forth like a flower”.’

Naturally there were no pious words chiselled into the marble about loving wives or grieving husbands, and she was buried far from her home and friends, forgotten, probably, by everyone except the grieving man who had come to pay her his last respects too.

Chapter Two

Everything, but everything, had gone wrong from the moment they had left the confines of the Home Counties. Stacy thought that there must be a curse on the journey, her first of any length since her father had died.

And it had all gone so beautifully right at first—inevitably, with Ephraim and herself arranging things. She was to travel incognito; it would not do to let possible men of the road know that the enormously rich owner of Blanchard’s Bank was travelling nearly the length of England in winter. Safety lay in anonymity. She was to be Miss Anna Berriman, to match the initials stamped on her luggage and entwined on the panels of her elegant travelling coach. Polly Clay, her personal maid, and the other servants had been carefully coached for the last fortnight before they set out to address her as, ‘Yes, Miss Berriman’, ‘Indeed, Miss Berriman’, ‘As you wish, Miss Berriman’, until Stacy had almost come to believe herself Miss Berriman in truth.

They were taking two coaches to accommodate Stacy, Miss Landen, Polly, James the footman, young Mr Greaves and his man, a coachman, and a spare footman, Hal, a big strong man, to act as yet another guardian to the party. It occurred to Stacy, as she watched the two post-chaises being loaded with luggage and impedimenta, that throughout her life she had rarely been alone, and for a moment she wondered what it would have been like truly to be not-so-rich Miss Berriman, who was no more and no less than an ordinary, unconsidered spinster. She decided that the uncomfortable truth was that on the whole she would not have liked it. She had grown used to being in command in exactly the same way as a man would have been.

It was while they were crossing from Lincolnshire into Nottinghamshire through heavy rain, after an unpleasant night in a dirty inn, that Greaves’ cold, which had been merely an inconvenience to him, became much more than that. From her seat opposite him Stacy watched his complexion turn from yellow to grey to ashen, tinged with the scarlet of heavy inflammation round his eyes, nostrils and mouth. Her concern grew with each mile that they jolted forward, until she ordered the coach to stop when they reached Newark.

‘Greaves,’ she said, genuinely troubled, ‘I do not think that we should go further today. You look very ill.’

Louisa nodded her head, agreeing with her, while Greaves muttered in a hoarse voice—his throat was badly affected— ‘I feel very ill, madam, but…’

‘No buts…’ Stacy was both brisk and firm. ‘We shall stop at the first good inn in Newark, put you to bed and send for a physician. I do not think that you are in any condition to continue.’

He didn’t argue with her, nor, a day later when the physician had said that his fever was a severe one and he must not rise from his bed, did he or Stacy argue that anything other was to be done than leave him at the inn, with sufficient funds, one of the coaches, his man and James, the senior of the two footmen, to follow after Stacy’s party as soon as the physician pronounced him well enough to travel. ‘Which will be some days yet, I fear,’ he said.

So now the single coach toiled onwards towards York, through the East Midlands counties and beyond—land which Stacy had not seen since she was a small girl. Alas, the further north they went, the worse the weather grew. The rain turned into an unpleasant sleet, and even the stone hot-water bottles and travelling warming-pans, wrapped in woollen muffs and kept on all the travellers’ knees, were hardly enough to keep them warm as the temperature continued to drop.

Ruefully Stacy privately conceded that Ephraim Blount had been right to worry about her going north in winter, until, at the beginning of the stage where they were due to pass from Nottinghamshire into Yorkshire, her party woke up to find a brilliant sun shining and the sky a cold blue. Everyone, including Stacy, felt happy again.

Everyone, that was, but Louisa Landen, who had endured a bad night and suspected that she had caught Greaves’ cold, but, being stoical by nature and knowing that it was necessary to make up the time lost in caring for Greaves, decided to say nothing of it to Stacy. The cold might not grow worse—and besides, the day was fine.

Except that the landlord of the Gate Hangs Well had shaken his head at them, and before they set out had said gloomily to John Coachman and the postilion they were taking on to the next stage, ‘Fine weather for snow, this, maister.’ John Coachman, however, who wished to press on to make up for lost time, had decided that such country lore was not worth the breath given to offer it, and that he would ignore the warning.

It was a decision that he would come to regret.

Stacy was already regretting her ill-fated winter journey to York. She was to regret it even more as, towards noon, when they were still far from journey’s end, the weather suddenly changed; the sun disappeared, it became cloudy, dark and cold, and the bottles and warming-pans grew cold too. Louisa began to cough, a dry, insistent cough, which had Stacy at last registering her companion’s wan face, with a hectic spot on each cheekbone.

‘Oh, Louisa, my dear!’ she exclaimed, taking her companion’s cold hand in hers. ‘I have been so selfish, wishing to make good time and not thinking of anything but my own convenience. You have caught Greaves’ cold, and we ought not to have journeyed on today. You should have told me.’

Louisa shook her head and croaked, ‘My fault—I said nothing because we are not so far from our journey’s end, and I knew you wished to make good time today since the weather seemed to have taken a turn for the better. I must confess I did not think that I would feel so ill so soon.’ She had begun to shiver violently, and it was plain that she was in a state of extreme distress.

The shivering grew worse, almost in time with the snow which had begun to fall, turning into a regular blizzard. By the early afternoon they were making only slow progress into territory where it was plain that snow had fallen during the night, and only the fact that a few carriages had passed earlier, leaving ruts for them to drive in, kept them going at all.

John Coachman had consulted his roadbook, and had already told Stacy bluntly that they would be unlikely to find a suitable inn to stop at before Bawtry, which they had originally planned to make for. They were now, he said, in an area where hostelries with beds were few and far between. ‘We’d best be on our way, madam, or night will fall or the road become impassable before we reach the inn.’

The prospect of being trapped by the snow and spending the night in the coach was not a pretty one. Polly’s lip trembled, but the sight of Louisa lying silent in Stacy’s arms kept her silent too.

Night fell early, and John Coachman was now gloomily aware that he must, in the dark among the snowdrifts, have taken a wrong turning, for he had no idea where they were, only that they were lost—something he didn’t see fit to tell his mistress. He called for directions to the postilion who was riding the near horse, who shouted back, ‘I’m as lost as you are, maister. Mayhap we’re nigh to Pontisford,’ which was no help at all, as there was no Pontisford in John’s book.

Worse, the road was growing impassable, and only the sight of the lights of a big house, dim among trees, gave him some hope that he might be able to drive them all there safely—perhaps to find shelter for the night.

He had no sooner made this decision, and told the postilion of it, than the horses, tired by their long exertions, slithered into a ditch which had been masked by the drifting snow. The coach tilted and was dragged along for a few feet before toppling slowly on to its side.

Hal, the footman, who was riding outside, was thrown clear. John, less fortunate, was caught up in the reins, and before he could free himself completely one of the falling boxes of luggage which had been stowed on top of the coach struck him a shattering blow on the arm, fortunately not breaking it.

Somehow avoiding the plunging horses, he fell across poor Hal, who was trying to rise, winding him all over again. The postilion had also been thrown clear, only to strike his head on a tree-trunk and fall stunned into the freezing ditch-water. They were later to discover that one of the horses had been killed in the fall, breaking its neck instantly.

The three passengers inside were flung from their seats to land half on the floor, half across the door next to the ground. Stacy, when everything had subsided, found herself with Louisa still in her arms and Polly, on top of both of them, gasping and moaning, her wrist having been injured in the fall.

Stunned and bruised, but happy to be alive, Stacy could only register that their ill-fated odyssey was at an end, and that she was somewhere in North Nottinghamshire, but where she had no idea…

Matt Falconer was wishing himself anywhere but in North Nottinghamshire. He and Jeb had arrived at Pontisford Hall two days earlier, after a hard and uncomfortable journey in a hired post-chaise which had stunk vilely of tobacco and ale.

All the hard and jolting way to North Nottinghamshire he had sustained himself with the thought of the comfortable billet which was waiting for them at journey’s end. The sardonic mode which ruled his life these days had told him later that if it were better to travel than to arrive then he might have guessed what he would find!

He had dismounted from the chaise in the dark of the November afternoon, the first snow of winter beginning to fall, to be greeted by an ill-clad bent old man whom Matt, with difficulty, had identified as Horrocks, the butler, whom he had last seen fifteen years ago as a man still hale and hearty.

‘And who the devil may you be, sirs,’ he had quavered at them, ‘to stop at Pontisford? There are none here to entertain you since my mistress died—only a few of the old retainers who cared for her are still living at the Hall.’

Matt had blinked at him. ‘Don’t you recognise me, Horrocks? It’s Matt Falconer. My aunt left me the Hall and I have come to claim my inheritance.’

The old man lifted the lantern he was carrying to inspect his face. He shook his head. ‘Master Matt, is it? Lord, sir, I would never have known you. You’ve changed.’

‘So have we all,’ Matt told him gently. ‘Are you going to let us in?’ He pointed at Jeb and the shivering driver.

‘Aye, but I warn you there’s little to eat and little to warm yourselves with,’ mourned Horrocks as he led them indoors. ‘No money’s come in since Lady Emily died, and we had little enough before that.’

Grimes had said nothing of this. Matt asked urgently, ‘And Lady Emily’s agent, where is he?’

‘Gone, Mr Matt. With the money. He upped and left two months ago, his pockets well-lined with all he’d stolen from the estate. But Lady Emily wouldn’t hear a word against him. Wandering in her mind, she was. I wrote to Lawyer Grimes, but by chance the letter went astray.’

Matt could only suppose that it had. He didn’t suspect Grimes of wrongdoing, only carelessness about matters taking place so far from London. He heard Jeb giving suppressed snorts of laughter as they entered the derelict house of which Matt had talked with such enthusiasm on the way north. It was plain that Lady Emily must have fallen into her dotage unable to control her life, for Horrocks’ lantern showed the entrance hall to be dank and cold, the statuary and furniture covered in filthy dust-sheets, the chandeliers empty of candles, the smell of must and mould everywhere. And the whole house was the same. There was a scuttle of rats in the wainscoting of an unheated drawing-room which Matt remembered as full of warmth and light and love.

His aunt had died earlier in the year in her late seventies, and, by what Horrocks had said, having been pillaged by her agent. Her mind wandering, she had seen Pontisford as it had been, and not as it was.

‘Turned nearly all the servants away, didn’t he?’ quavered Horrocks. ‘Only left enough to keep m’lady fed and bedded. Short commons, we was on, while he lived in comfort in his cottage with his doxy—you remember miller’s Nell, Master Matt?’

Yes, Master Matt remembered miller’s Nell. She had educated him in the coarser arts of love the year he had reached fifteen, on the edge of the park not far from the ford in the Pont from which the Hall and village took its name. He shook his head, avoided Jeb’s eye, and asked to go to the kitchen. Which was, as he had expected, the only warm room in the house.

The cook, a blowsy fat woman, stared coldly at him, bobbed an unwilling curtsy when told who he was, and grudgingly hung the big cauldron, which he remembered from his childhood visits, above the fire to make them tea. Bread was fetched from a cupboard, and a side of salt beef from which she carved coarse chunks of meat to fling at them on cracked plates. It was all as different from Matt’s memories as anything could be.

A thin-faced serving-girl peered at them before being bade to ‘Take the master’s food into the drawing-room as was proper’.

Jeb finally broke at this point, spluttering with laughter, and said, ‘By God, she’d better not do any such thing. I’ve no mind to freeze to death while sharing my meal with the rats.’

Matt would have joined in his laughter except for the agonised expression on Horrocks’ face—he shamedly remembering other, better days.

‘Right, Jeb, we’ll eat before the fire. At least this room is warm.’

The kitchen door was flung open and a hard-faced woman bounced in. ‘What’s going on in here, Cook? Entertaining chance-met strangers, are we? Not in my house.’

It was Matt’s turn to break. Bereft of his childhood’s dreams, unknown in the house where he had been known and loved, he said as coldly as he could, ‘Your house, madam? You are, then, Lady Emily Falconer?’

The woman drew herself up. ‘I was the late Lady Emily’s housekeeper, I’ll have you know, and as such it is my duty to see that the servants here do their duty. I’ll thank you to leave.’

Matt walked to the window to pull back the ragged curtain and reveal the snow falling relentlessly outside, ‘No, madam. It is you who must leave. Were it not for the weather I should turn you out this instant, for it is all you deserve if you say that you are responsible for the state which the Hall is in. I am Matthew Falconer, Lord Radley, and my aunt has left me this house and her estate.’

He was aware of Jeb staring at him, jaw dropped, aware that he had never sounded more like his stern and detested father, and that, for the first time, he had laid claim to the title which he had vowed he would never assume.

The woman before him clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘M’lord, if I had known who you were…’

‘You had no need to know,’ Matt returned savagely. ‘On such a night as this it was Lady Emily’s habit to care for any lonely travellers who might need shelter. The fact that I am your master is neither here nor there. You will see, at once, that beds are prepared for Mr Priestley and myself, and a fire will be lit in the drawing-room and candles provided, and if there are any able-bodied men about they will begin to clear out the rats which have invaded the house. You will work until the weather allows you to leave, madam, taking your wages for the present quarter with you. See to it.’

He had turned his back on her as she’d run to do his bidding, but as he was saying now to Jeb, two days later, ‘It is of no use. Cut off by the snow as we are, with only one half-witted boy besides Horrocks and the cook, and two young girls as maids, and little in the way of food and means to make fires and warm the place…’ He shrugged. ‘There is little that can be done to improve the condition of Pontisford Hall. It needs time and an army of workers, and I have no mind to organise it. Sell up and go back to Virginia, I say.’

The shivering Jeb nodded agreement. They were huddled over the drawing-room fire, with two small tallow candles to give them light, wax ones being unknown at Pontisford. Matt had insisted on using the room for part of the day, carrying wood and coals through himself to light the fire to ease the burden on Horrocks and the half-witted boy, Jake.

‘We shall leave when the snowstorm stops, and I shall put the Runners on the track of that damned agent, and see him swing before I leave England.’

Jeb said, his teeth chattering, ‘And then you can turn back into cheerful Matt Falconer again. I can’t say I care much for Lord Radley.’

‘Nor do I,’ returned Matt. He walked restlessly to the window to look out at the grim scene. The snowstorm had abated and the moonlight showed a white and icy world. ‘I’m sorry for anyone out on a night like this…’ And then, ‘What the devil’s that?’ For someone was beating a tattoo on the big front door and shouting above the noise of the gale.

He seized the second candle, said, ‘I’ll go. Poor old Horrocks will take an age to answer the door and the poor devils outside will be dead of cold before he gets there. You stay here and try to warm yourself.’ He crossed the dim entrance hall, shouting, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ as the knocking redoubled, and then as those outside found the bell it began pealing vigorously—as Horrocks said in the kitchen,

‘Enough to wake the dead.’

Afterwards Stacy could hardly remember how her small party had made its way from the fallen coach to Pontisford Hall. One horse was dead, and another, which Hal and John released from its traces, escaped from their numbed hands and bolted into the distance.

They were more careful with the other two, and they and the recovered postilion put John and Louisa, now barely conscious, on the third horse, and Hall, with the injured Polly riding precariously sideways behind him, on the fourth. Stacy, oblivious to Polly’s wails that it wasn’t fitting for her to walk, helped the postilion to lead them along the lane and up the winding drive to the Hall, trying to avoid ditches and other obstacles, unseen because of the blanket of snow.

Fortunately the snowstorm was gradually abating and a wintry moon came out, which seemed to make the cold worse. None of the party was dressed to be outdoors in such cruel weather. John had put a horse-blanket around Louisa and had covered Stacy with the blanket from the box, which, even if it smelled dreadfully of horse, gave her a little warmth.

The one thing which kept Stacy on her feet and walking was what awaited her at journey’s end. A warm house, a comfortable bed, food and succour, perhaps even some inspiriting conversation after the trivialities of the past few days. The very notion made her blood course more rapidly, kept her head high and her spirits from flagging.

Hal slid off his horse as they reached the steps leading up to the entrance of the Hall, which the moon had already revealed to be a massive and brilliant structure, built in the Palladian style. It was a smaller version of the Duke of Devonshire’s villa at Chiswick, although by now Stacy was incapable of registering such architectural niceties.

She followed Hal up the steps, leaving John still cradling poor Louisa in his arms and trying to keep her out of the wind. It seemed to take ages for the door to open, and when it did she eagerly walked forward to say to the butler who had answered it, ‘My name is Miss Anna Berriman. The chaise taking us to York has broken down and we are in need of shelter and succour for the night, and men to rescue the chaise tomorrow morning, check the damage and arrange for it to be repaired. Please inform your master of our arrival.’

All this came out in her usual coldly efficient manner, the manner which set everyone at her home and at Blanchard’s Bank scurrying about to do her bidding without argument. For a moment, however, the man before her did and said nothing. By the light of the dim candle he was holding she could merely see that he was very large, and only when the moon came from behind a cloud was she able to see him fully for the first time.

He was not wearing any sort of livery but a rough grey country coat and a pair of black breeches. His cravat was a strange loose thing, black, not white, made of silk, with a silver pin in it. The only immaculate thing about him was his boots. A butler wearing boots! His whole aspect was leonine; tawny hair and eyes, a grim, snapping mouth—she was sure it was a snapping mouth. Who in the world would allow a servant to dress like this?

He seemed about to say something, and his mouth quivered, but he simply waved a hand and enunciated—there was no other word for it—curtly, ‘Enter. We have little enough to help you with, but what we can do we will do.’

Well, on top of everything else he was certainly the most mannerless churl it had ever been her misfortune to meet! His harsh voice was as strange as the rest of him. There was an accent in it which she had never heard before. Now he was turning away, without so much as a by your leave to her, and motioning them in.

For a moment Stacy had a mind to reprimand him, but then she remembered poor Louisa. It was no time to be training servants.

‘My poor companion has a bad fever,’ she told the broad back before her, making her voice as commanding as she could—she was not used to being treated in such a cavalier fashion by anyone, let alone a servant— ‘and I think she ought to be put to bed in a warm room immediately.’

The butler turned around, to show her his leonine mask again. He really was the most extraordinary-looking creature, strangely handsome, almost. ‘That may be a little difficult, madam.’

Was it her imagination, or had there been something unpleasantly sneering in the way in which he had said the last word? Stacy, followed by her small party, who were looking about them in astonishment at the decayed state of the entrance hall, continued to walk on until she said, ‘I find it difficult to believe that your master would refuse warmth and shelter to forlorn travellers…’ She stopped, indicating that she wished to know his name, and as he turned around just as they reached a large baize-covered door he apparently read her mind for he said, head bowed, almost in parody of a servant, ‘Matt, madam. You may call me Matt.’

May I, indeed? was her inward angry thought, but, about to say something really sharp, she was stopped by Matt—could that really be his name?—checking his stride to say to John Coachman, who was carrying Louisa and was staggering with weariness, ‘You’re out on your feet, man; give me the lady,’ and he lifted poor Louisa out of John’s arms to carry her himself.

He waved at Hal to open the door. Hal was nearly as shocked as his mistress by this strange me´nage and even stranger servant—as he was later to say to the assembled staff at Bramham Castle, when Stacy finally reached there, ‘I were fairly gobsmacked by it all, and no mistake.’

At last, Stacy thought, comfort and succour. The whole party felt as though their life had been suddenly renewed—but what was this? They were in the kitchens, where, although they didn’t know it, for the first time in years the great fireplace had been properly cleaned. Jeb had retreated to its comfortable warmth when Matt had left the drawing-room.

Behind her Stacy felt her party shuffle their feet and begin to hem and haw. The butler laid Louisa gently down on a settle in the corner of the huge, high-vaulted room, and, taking a blanket from a cupboard, put it over her. She surfaced for a moment to say blindly, ‘Where are we?’ before lasping back into semi-delirium again.

‘You have brought us to the kitchens,’ announced Stacy dramatically. ‘Kindly inform your master of our arrival. I am sure he will order you to prepare somewhere more suitable for us.’

She was uncomfortably aware that not only were her feet frozen, but that her light boots were soaked as a result of her long trudge through wet snow. Approving of being shown into the kitchens or not, she found herself holding her skirts before the huge fire in an attempt to dry them. She would wait to remove her boots until she finally reached a comfortable bedroom. The rest of her party were clustering round the fire, which was large enough to heat even this most cavernous of kitchens. Steam was beginning to rise from their wet clothes.

Jeb, who was finding life in the frozen wastes of northern England even more amusing than he had anticipated, if not exactly comfortable, gave a snort of laughter on hearing Stacy’s orders. Horrocks, whose wits seemed to decline daily, began to speak, caught Matt’s stern eye, and thought better of it.

Matt Falconer offered the stone-faced termagant who was speaking to him so brusquely his hardest stare. All the pent-up anger created by this wretched visit to England, compounded by what he had found at Pontisford Hall, was making him behave in a manner totally unlike that of his usual good-humoured self.

Oh, yes, he’s Lord Radley to a T, thought Jeb gleefully, guessing what was passing through Matt’s mind as he was addressed so peremptorily, and this icy-faced bitch had better watch her step. He’s had a hard time lately, has our Matt, and someone is going to pay for it.

Matt was thinking the same thing. What a shrew! She hadn’t even the decency to enter the house before she was throwing orders about like confetti. She deserved a few lessons in good manners, if not to say due humility. Never mind if she had had to endure the storm and a wrecked coach—that was no reason for her to carry on like a mixture of the Queen of Sheba and Catherine the bloody Great rolled into one.

‘There are no warm rooms other than this one,’ he announced, his voice as cold as the snow outside. ‘We shall all have to sleep down here tonight. By tomorrow some of the bedrooms may be fit for habitation, and if so I shall arrange for them to be made ready for you. Kate,’ he told the little maid, who was helping Polly into a chair and exclaiming over her damaged wrist which Stacy had bound up with a length torn from the bottom of her petticoat, ‘go and fetch Mrs Green from her room. And Cook, the soup left over from dinner can be heated up to stop these poor folk from dying of the cold.’

He stretched out a booted foot to kick one of the logs on the fire into a more useful position. ‘And you, madam,’ he added, drawing up a tall Windsor chair, ‘may sit here—unless, that is, you care to make yourself useful. You seem to have come out of this accident more fortunately than the rest of your party. Instead of shouting the odds about what we are all to do, you would be better employed doing something yourself.’

Matt watched with a wicked delight as the shrew began to say something, then bit her tongue before the words could fly out. Stacy wanted to scream at him that she and the postilion, who was now on his knees before the fire with his frozen hands held out to it, had trudged more than a mile through the snow while the rest of the party had ridden, but her pride forbade it. She would not bandy words with servants; she would not.

If the half-conscious Louisa Landen had ever wondered how her wilful charge would fare when faced by someone with a will as strong as her own, and who did not give a damn for her name and fame, which he didn’t know in any case, she was soon to find out.

Hal walked up to her, his face worried, to say in a low voice before she sat down, ‘He should not speak to you as he does, mistress. Let me tell him who you are. That should silence his impudent tongue.’

‘No, I forbid it,’ Stacy whispered fiercely at him. ‘On no account—and you may tell John Coachman and Polly the same. We shall not be here long, I trust, and I do not bandy words with servants.’

Hal was doubtful. ‘As you wish, mistress.’

‘I do wish, and now go and sit down. You have had a hard day.’

She sat down herself, in the chair which the butler had earlier offered her, and began to pull off her ruined boots, seeing that she was not going to be offered a decent room of her own in which to do so, only to discover that her stockings were as wet as they were. Which did not improve her temper, for she could see that there was no way which she could pull them off surrounded as she was by staring underlings, some of whom seemed to be taking a delight in her discomfort. She put her boots before the fire to dry after first helping Polly to remove hers; her damaged wrist was making life difficult for her.

The little maid had set out coarse pottery soup bowls and an odd assortment of servants’ hall cutlery on the big scrubbed table, and presently the cook ladled out a thick vegetable soup for them all. Stacy’s party set to work with a will, being hungry as well as tired. Even Stacy swallowed the greasy stuff, although it nearly choked her. Matt had left the kitchen for a short time, to return with blankets and pillows which he put to warm before the fire before making up an impromptu bed for Louisa.

Jeb had accompanied him, saying with a grin as he helped to collect bedlinen, ‘Come on, Matt, put the poor bitch out of her misery and tell her who you are. She’s in an agony about having to argue with a butler.’

‘Not…likely,’ Matt had sworn. ‘She’s just the kind of useless fine lady I thought that I’d left behind for good. Full of her own importance and fit for nothing but embroidery and spiteful gossip!’

He had said this with such venom that, not for the first time since he had heard of the scandal in which his master had been involved, Jeb had been curious about the details of it.

‘You’ll have to tell her some time—and soon,’ he had argued.

‘But not yet. Let the shrew sweat.’

Jeb had shrugged, and later he was a little surprised to discover that it was the fine lady herself who fed Louisa, whom the kitchen’s warmth had restored to consciousness, sitting by her on her impromptu bed and spooning the soup gently into her unwilling mouth. ‘Come on, my love. You won’t help yourself by starving,’ she coaxed, to be rewarded by a watery smile.

After that Stacy insisted on looking after Polly’s wrist, rubbing goose-grease salve on it which the cook had grudgingly fetched from her store-cupboard. Matt watched her with a puzzled expression on his face—he had not expected so much practical compassion from such a proud piece—only for him to lose it when Stacy said curtly to him, ‘I would like to speak to your master now. At once, if you please!’

What on earth was the matter with the man? This perfectly ordinary request produced such an answering spark in his golden eyes, and such a savage twist to his lips, that it almost had Stacy stepping back in fear. She was trying to imagine what kind of master would tolerate such a…wild animal…as a butler. A dilatory one, obviously, who in his idleness let his servants do just as they pleased, for after a second’s hesitation this most unlikely butler came out with, ‘Oh, I daren’t disturb him just now, madam. More than my job’s worth, I should say.’

For some reason, after he had offered her this piece of insolence, the uncouth and strangely dressed Jeb—and what was his position in this zoo, if not to say menagerie, which apparently comprised the Hall’s staff?—saw fit to fall into a fit of the sniggers. He had previously been engaged in flattering Polly, who was simpering and grinning at him in the most unseemly fashion. Were her own servants becoming infected by this disorderly crew?

Not Hal, who said bluntly to the butler, who had turned away to begin placing the used pots on the massive board by the large stone sink preparatory to beginning to wash them, ‘Have a care how you speak to my mistress, man. What your master requires of you is one thing. What she deserves in respect from you is quite another.’

The butler turned to stare at Hal, who was belligerently squaring up to him. Big though he was, he was by no means a match in size for the butler who, now Stacy came to think of it, resembled a prize-fighter rather than an indoors servant.

‘Oh,’ he came out with, a faint smile on his face, ‘but she doesn’t pay my wages, does she?’

Which produced another snigger from Jeb, who, to stir this delightful pot even more, added, ‘I doubt whether she could afford them.’

Hal turned on Jeb, enraged by his attentions to Polly, on whom he was sweet himself. ‘Oh, and who the devil are you to tell me anything? And as for my mistress’s ability to pay this yokel…’

‘Hal!’ Stacy used her very best voice on him, not loud but stern and compelling, the voice with which she had dragooned the employees of Blanchard’s Bank into realising that here was no girlish and innocent chit to be ignored, but Louis Blanchard’s true heir in person. ‘Be quiet. I will not have any brawling here on my account.’

‘What a wise conclusion,’ the yokel—and what a splendid description of him that was—drawled amiably, beginning to wash pots with what even Stacy could see was exemplary speed and precision. ‘Hal shouldn’t begin on an enterprise which he can’t win.’

This had the desired effect on Hal, of starting him off all over again. He had begun by defending his mistress from discourtesy, but he was now defending his own prowess. He advanced on the smiling butler with his fists raised. ‘I’ll have you know I work out at Jackson’s gym. I’ve never seen you there, and that’s a fact. Put up your dukes—or shut up.’

The only things the butler raised were his wet and soapy hands, which didn’t stop Hal. ‘Any excuse to dodge a fight,’ he sneered, and threw a punch in the butler’s direction.

For a moment Stacy was frozen by the unlikely revelation that Hal was not only her loyal servant, but also saw himself as her champion. At all costs she must not allow him to fight with the butler. Desperately she threw herself between the two men to expostulate with them, to do anything which might stop the coming brawl.

All she stopped was Hal’s fist. By good fortune she was struck only a glancing blow, but it was enough for her to see stars before she sat down, ignominiously and humiliatingly, on the kitchen floor. Through her swirling senses she heard Hal’s cry of distress. ‘Oh, mistress, God forgive me.’

She also heard the butler cursing under his breath, ‘Oh, hell and damnation, what next?’ as he put his soapy hands under her armpits and hauled her to her feet again.

Oh, God, what next, indeed? Would this dreadful evening never end? All that Stacy wanted was to be in her own comfortable bed, Polly in attendance, kind Louisa well and on her feet again, somewhere near by in loving attendance.

But what she got was something else entirely. The kitchen door opposite her opened abruptly to reveal to her dazed eyes a tall woman with a thin, hard face, decently dressed in black. The housekeeper presumably.

The woman took one comprehensive look at them all. At Stacy, white-faced and trembling. At Hal, now on his knees, agonised, begging forgiveness of her for his unintended blow. At Jeb, leaning against the wall, convulsed and chortling, ‘Oh, Matt, boy, this is your finest turn ever. Better than a play.’ At the assembled servants, both the Hall’s and Stacy’s, all either shocked or amused according to their preference, and lastly at the butler, a canvas apron round his waist, his soapy hands just releasing the now furious Stacy.

‘And what,’ the woman roared, happy to have a chance at getting back at the uncouth monster who had disrupted her easy life, and knowing that now she was under notice to leave she had nothing to lose by saucing him, ‘is the meaning of this, m’lord? And why are you wearing Cook’s apron and doing the washing-up?’

Chapter Three

Everything, but everything, went into a weird kind of paralysis, as though time itself had stopped. For a long moment no one moved and no one spoke.

M’lord? Thought Stacy and all her party. M’lord? She must mean the butler. She can’t mean the butler, can she? Can she?

But she did.

Stacy turned to face him. M’lord. Of course, she should have known. Everything about him radiated authority—which she had mistaken for insolence. For whatever goddamned reason—and really, her internal language was growing more impossible by the minute—the coarse brute had chosen to lie to her from the first moment that he had spoken to her.

She did something which she had never expected to do, something which no lady should ever have done—but then, she told herself grimly afterwards, I am no lady, and for sure, for all his title, he is no gentleman! She slapped him across the face with all her strength.

Her blow broke the paralysis which had afflicted them all. Hubbub ensued. Hal rose slowly to his feet, staring at this unlikely lordship. Jeb gave a whistling roar into the silence which followed Stacy’s blow, and then began to clap his hands slowly. ‘Well struck, madam,’ he called to her from his post by the wall.

For his part Matt Falconer held his flaming cheek, and slowly admitted to himself that he should never have allowed his hot temper, long reined in during his years in the United States, to take him over now that he was back in England again and incite him to taunt this headstrong shrew—however much she had deserved it. And now least said, soonest mended. He picked up a towel and began to dry his hands.

He didn’t immediately address Stacy but said, almost mildly, to the triumphant woman who was defying him, ‘I told you not to call me m’lord, and I meant it. I am Matt, Mr Matt, or Mr Falconer to you.’

Stacy, overwhelmed by her own unladylike behaviour, conscious only of poor, sick Louisa’s reproachful stare, murmured hollowly to him, ‘She called you m’lord. Was that another lie in this house of liars, which you, the biggest liar of them all, are supremely fit to head?’

Matt held on to his temper. A hard feat, since he could see that the cross-grained bitch in front of him now had the upper hand, the moral hand, and would use it to provoke him further. She had a tongue like a striking adder, and no mistake.

‘Strictly speaking, madam…’

Stacy, lost to everything, resembling, had she but known it, her father in one of his rare and formidable tempers, raged at him. ‘You can speak strictly, then? I had thought insolence was more your line. But pray continue,’ she added, poisonously sweet, as she saw him open his mouth. To explain presumably. But what explanation could mend this?

She no longer wanted her bed. She wanted to see m’lord whoever-he-was grovelling before her. Nothing less would do.

Matt decided not to bandy words with her. They had an audience, fascinated by the sight of their masters engaged in a ding-dong, knock-down quarrel in front of them, instead of it taking place decently in private. What a rare treat! And all the time in the world to enjoy it, since it was plain that they were all, except possibly the housekeeper, trapped in the kitchens for the night.

‘Strictly speaking,’ he said between his splendid teeth, his eyes still defying her whatever his tongue might say, ‘I am Matthew Falconer, Lord Radley—Earl Falconer’s heir. I prefer, however, to be known as Matt Falconer.’

‘Oh, I thought your preference was to be known as the butler,’ returned Stacy nastily, green eyes flashing, while inwardly she said to herself, Matt Falconer—now wasn’t he involved in some massive scandal when I was barely out of childhood? And no wonder, carrying on as he does.

‘Something wrong with butlers, is there?’ gritted Matt, his own eyes shooting fire as he immediately forgot the resolution which he had just made, that he would be unfailingly polite to this icy hellcat—could hellcats be icy?—and giving her what his old nurse had used to call ‘what for’ again. ‘Unconsidered serfs, are they? I had sooner be a good butler than a bad nobleman any day.’

‘And, of course, being who you are,’ Stacy shot back, all discretion, all decency gone, now completely the true descendant of the rampantly outrageous pedlar who had made the Blanchard fortune, ‘you know all about bad noblemen, I’m sure!’

Jeb, who was busy counting the score for each side as though he were the referee at a boxing-match, saw that red rage was overcoming his employer. He had experienced it rarely, but he knew the signs. And for once Mad Matt had met his match in a woman whose icy deadliness equalled his fiery temperament.

How he mastered himself Matt never knew. Each fresh insult she offered him had him wishing that he could teach her a lesson, put her across his knee…Added to his rage was his sudden shocked horror at the knowledge that, of all dreadful things, he was becoming sexually roused.

What he really wanted to do was to take her in his arms, bear her to the floor and show her who was master…

He shook his head to clear it, rebuked his misbehaving body, and ground out, ‘No useful purpose is served by our being at odds in this situation, madam. I apologise to you for my deception.’ Which, had he ended there, might have done the trick, but the sight of her small contemptuous smile had him adding, ‘Although you must admit that you did come on too strong from the beginning.’

Behind them Jeb gave a groan, and Hal, forgetting his mistress’s orders, grew angry with the arrogant swine all over again. Lord he might be, but his mistress was right. He was no gentleman.

Stacy was also ready to restart the battle. Just because he was a man, an aristocrat, was big and strong, and, it must be admitted, in an odd way handsome, that was no reason for him to think that he could speak to her as he pleased, but as she opened her mouth to deliver another broadside she was stopped by her companion.

Louisa Landen had watched the affray with growing horror, and total surprise at seeing Stacy, who was usually so cool and controlled, so completely and utterly lost to all ladylike as well as decent behaviour. At first she had felt too weak to intervene, but was now so shocked by the behaviour of both parties that she cried feebly, ‘Stacy, oh, Stacy. I feel so ill! Do leave off wrangling, my love, I need you.’

This had the effect of Stacy exclaiming remorsefully, ‘Oh, Louisa, forgive me! I had quite forgot how ill you are.’

While Matt Falconer remarked nastily, ‘Stacy? I had thought that you had informed me that your name was Anna!’

Stacy dodged this question, which proved that he was not the only liar in the kitchen, by running over to Louisa, putting a hand on her hot forehead and murmuring, ‘Oh, dear, you have a strong fever.’ She looked across at the housekeeper, who, amused by what she had provoked, was standing there mumchance, being, like the rest of the servants, content to leave her betters to their quarrel. ‘Have you no willow-bark, madam, which we may infuse to break my companion’s fever?’

A learned shrew, was Matt’s grim inward comment as he turned his attention to the cooling water in the stone sink—to have the little maid twitter at him, ‘Oh, you should not be doing that, sir. Allow me,’ and try to push him to one side.

‘Nor he should,’ drawled Jeb. ‘Even if you were the butler, Matt, you wouldn’t be washing up. Most remiss of you. Should have given you away immediately—if everyone was in their right mind, that is.’

Taking this remark as a reflection on herself, Stacy, her language deteriorating further, pronounced in her most deadly manner, calculated to bring idle clerks to heel, ‘And who the devil may you be, to speak to both me and Lord Radley so impudently?’

Before Matt could answer Jeb executed a low bow. ‘Matt’s man, ma’am, right hand and factotum. Adviser, too, as you may have gathered.’

‘Your man, m’lord!’ Stacy was all indignation. ‘And you allow him to speak to you so insolently? Did you learn your manners from him, or he from you? No matter,’ she added hastily, as Matt flung down his washcloth and began to advance on her. ‘Pray do not disturb yourself; you will never finish the washing-up at this rate!’

Only Louisa Landen, throwing a conniption fit—Jeb’s words—at this point, stopped both Matt and Stacy from prolonging their slanging-match into the night’s watches.

As Stacy, remorseful again, bent over Louisa, that good lady hissed at her, ‘For shame, Stacy, and use your common sense if it hasn’t quite flown away. You do no good bandying words with him. He has an answer for everything.’

‘And so do I, madam,’ retorted Stacy between her excellent teeth, ‘so do I.’

‘Quite so, and that is what I complain of. He is a dangerous man, and, for him, you appear to be a dangerous woman. A quiet, ladlylike refusal to join in his games would end all.’

His games! Was he playing with her? Perhaps so. He had returned to his duties, to fling over his shoulder at her, ‘I am late from the United States, Miss Stacy, or whatever your name is, and we have no masters and servants there, only equals working together.’

Forgetting all her resolutions and Louisa’s wise advice, Stacy shot back at him, ‘Which country, sir, since you are no gentleman, must be an eminently suitable place for you to live. I recommend that you return there.’

‘And by the same token, madam, since you are no lady, you should surely accompany me. Except that in the States your haughty manners would soon earn you a reprimand from everyone unfortunate enough to meet you.’

Behind her, Stacy heard Louisa wail her name, and how she refrained from answering him back she never knew. She knew only that her common sense, which seemed to have taken flight from the moment she had set foot in this accursed place, told her that she must consider poor, stricken Louisa, and try not to disgrace herself before her own people, who, apart from Hal, were staring open-mouthed at her. Who would have thought that their cool and haughty, if kind mistress could behave so wildly?

Astonishingly, bending over Louisa again, Stacy found tears pricking at her eyes. No, I will not cry, she told herself. This vile bully, who, as I recall, is no better than he should be, shall not make me cry. I will see him in hell first! And what on earth was happening to her that she should think such dreadful thoughts, use such language?

She straightened up, turned towards her tormentor, and said in a more normal voice, ‘You have said that we must sleep here tonight, sir. Are you sure that you have no rooms in this vast house sufficiently warm for us to sleep in them?’

That’s more like it, madam, thought Matt grimly. A little due humility works wonders. He forgot that he hadn’t been humble either. But he replied more gently, ‘I arrived here only two days ago, and no one has lived in most of the Hall’s rooms for the past fifteen years, nor, I fear, have they been heated during that time. We also face a shortage of fuel, so I am afraid that we are all doomed to spend the night in the kitchen—where it is at least warm—or die of cold in one of the bedrooms. I have already moved the servants from their attic bedrooms—I wouldn’t stable beasts in them.’

Jeb was nodding agreement, as well as old Horrocks, who, by what was being said among the servants, really was a butler. But what a butler! Physically frail and in his dotage, he was nearly as unsuitable in his way as Matt Falconer had been in his.

That gentleman was now asking Hal to accompany him and Jeb into the linen-store, which was kept upstairs, to fetch down sheets, more blankets, pillows and pillow-cases, and air them before the fire, which he kept going by fetching logs from a store in a lean-to against the kitchen’s outer wall. It was plain that ‘m’lord’ he might be, but he was performing menial tasks to the manner born.

It wasn’t only the logs which were almost in the open, but also the very necessaries of life. And, since the earth closet used by the servants had become frozen, Stacy was soon to discover that relief was only to be obtained by using the buckets and pails in a small storeroom with a door which didn’t shut properly and a broken window through which the keen wind whistled.

Trying to keep her voice reasonable, a difficult task, Stacy returned indoors after she had visited it to address Matt Falconer, who was now using blankets to rig up impromptu partitions to separate the women from the men during the hours of sleep. ‘I would like to wash myself, and Louisa would probably benefit from being sponged. Where shall I do so…please?’

To Matt’s grim amusement he saw that it almost choked the haughty bitch to be polite to him. And well might she ask. ‘The kitchen pump,’ he told her agreeably, ‘will supply you with cold water. Use the big iron cauldron which stands by the fire to heat it. Cook will help you.’ And then, seeing that Cook was already engaged in making up beds on the floor, he added, ‘No, allow me to assist you.’

Never in her life had Stacy ever contemplated having to do any such thing as haul buckets and pails about, or to wash herself in the full view of Cook, the little maid and Polly, whose right wrist Jeb had placed in a makeshift sling. It was quite plain that anything she needed she would have to supply herself! And the beast knew that, and was waiting to see her throw a tantrum at the prospect of having to be her own servant, as it were. Well, damn him, and his ready sneer too. If Stacy Blanchard couldn’t learn how to do the simple menial tasks which so far others had performed for her, she wasn’t worth the signature she wrote on the cheques and accounts of Blanchard’s Bank.

‘Very well,’ she replied crisply, avoiding his satiric eye, and walked across to the cauldron, which she lifted with some difficulty before placing it beneath the pump which stood by the sink. Not only was Jeb watching her, but also her servants, their jaws dropped at the sight of madam being so meek and obliging.

But, alas, when she came to try to lift the cauldron with water in it it was too heavy for her, and presently, as she struggled, she found a large hand pushing her own smaller one to one side, and Matt Falconer was lifting it with ease to hang it from the great hook above the fire.

His hands, Stacy noted, were long and shapely, but the strange thing about them was that they were the hands of a workman, not a gentleman. They were brown and scarred, with calluses on them, like Clem’s, her gardener, and his nails were cut short, quite unlike those of the men who had danced attendance on her since her first season, begging her to marry them.

Matt saw her eyes on them, smiled wryly, but said nothing. Later he ladled warm water for her into a bowl, and she retired behind one of the screens to give Louisa and herself what passed for a wash.

‘Oh, my dear, you shouldn’t be having to do all this,’ murmured Louisa ruefully, after Stacy had draped blankets round her and helped her outside to what they all referred to as the conveniences, although John Coachman forgot himself once by asking loudly before all the company, ‘Where are the jakes?’

‘Well,’ replied Stacy incontrovertibly, ‘Cook can’t do everything, the maid is useless, Polly’s wrist prevents her from assisting us, all the able-bodied men have gone outside to shovel the snow away from the fuel-store and the path to the conveniences—such as they are—so who else can help us, I should like to know?’

Louisa patted her hand. ‘You are a brave girl, my dear. Try not to mind too much the pickle we have found ourselves in. After all, we might be freezing to death in a ditch, or killed or maimed for life in the accident. And I am beginning to feel so much better after your ministrations.’

Which was no lie. The willow-bark had broken Louisa’s fever, and presently Stacy tucked her up for the night before going back into the main part of the kitchen to find the men all sitting round the scrubbed table drinking good ale. The other women were already in their beds behind the hanging blanket.

Jeb waved a hand holding a pewter pot at her.

‘Ah, Miss Berriman, what can we do for you?’

There was bread and cheese on the table, she saw longingly, and from somewhere Horrocks had found bottles of port as well as the ale. Matt, who was seated at the head of the table, stared coolly at her and said, ‘There’s food here if you want it.’

Did she want it? Of course she wanted it. She had been too strung up to eat much earlier, but she had done a lot of unaccustomed physical work during the day, and hunger gnawed at her. Pride as well as etiquette said, No, it is not possible for you to sit here, the lone woman among a pack of men, all but one your social inferiors, and tope with him and Hal and the rest; it wouldn’t be proper. They had already unwillingly dragged themselves to their feet on her arrival.

‘Sit, sit,’ she said imperiously, meaning to tell them that no, of course she wanted nothing.

Then he said mockingly, ‘I think that the fare here is too coarse for m’lady, perhaps.’

Was it, indeed? And was she to starve because she was too finicking to sit down with them on the worst night of the year, and please him by starving herself?

‘No, indeed,’ she shot back. ‘I find myself ravenous, and ale and bread and cheese, after a day spent in the snow, seem just the thing!’ She sat down by the amused Jeb and stretched out a hand for the loaf and cheese, to cut herself a good share of them and place them on one of the pewter plates which Matt had set out.

And if that broke up their damned masculine drinking-party, so much the better. They would have clearer heads in the morning, when, with luck, the storm would have abated, the coach and their possessions would be rescued from the ditch, and she could be on her way again.

A pewter pot of ale was pushed in front of her by Jeb, who, she could see, now that she was close to him, was quite a personable man despite his strange accent and even stranger clothes. She took a defiant swig from the pot and said, as though she were conversing at dinner with Lord Melbourne himself, or perhaps the Duke of Wellington, with both of whom she was on terms of friendship, ‘Pray tell me, sir, how do you find England after the United States?’

Jeb nearly choked into his ale at the sound of such ineffable condescension. He surfaced to say, ‘Cold, ma’am, damned cold. Nigh as bad as a Virginia winter, eh, Matt?’

Matt drawled, his lion’s eyes hard on her, ‘Oh, I don’t think that Miss Berriman really wishes to know about the States, Jeb. She is merely making dinner-party small talk, to put you at your ease.’

His man—or whatever he was—considered this unlikely possibility solemnly. Since Jeb was always at ease, whatever the company, high or low, the notion of a spinster lady putting him there seemed rather odd. He was about to reply, but was unable to do so, for Stacy put down her pot of ale with a defiant bang and threw loudly down the table in Matt’s direction, ‘When did you take up mind-reading, sir? Recently, I hope, if your present failure to perform it correctly is any guide. I am most intensely interested in…Jeb’s…impressions of his ancestors’ country.’

‘So there’, would have been a nice ending to that piece of defiance, but Louisa had long cured her of that trick. Now let him trump that ace, if he could!

But of course he could. He threw back his head and laughed, and damn him, why did he have to look exactly as she had imagined the dashing hero of every delightful Minerva Press novel which she had ever read, when she disliked him so? ‘Tell her why your ancestors found themselves in Virginia, Jeb, and then Miss Berriman will understand why your impressions of the old country are hardly likely to be favourable ones!’

Ever willing to oblige, and putting on his best smile, Jeb offered a trifle tentatively—for, while he was not ashamed of his ancestors’ behaviour, he was not exactly proud of it either— ‘Why, Great-granfer Priestley was transported to Virginia as a convict, ma’am, having taken part in the Monmouth Rising, when his sentence of hanging was transmuted to penal service in the colonies.’

Stacy, overcome by what she had provoked, and angry with herself as well as with Matt, said as firmly as she could, ‘Well, Mr Priestley—’ for she now knew his name ‘—a man is not to blame for what his ancestors did. I own that if I had to answer for my own great-grandfather’s actions I should be hard put to it to excuse them. And Mr Falconer should not have compelled you to answer me thus, but that doesn’t surprise me, since he obviously gave up the pretence of being a gentleman long ago.’

Matt, who was a little surprised by this generous offering to Jeb from someone whom he had thought was steeped in pride of birth, still could not prevent himself from asking, ‘And what, pray, Miss Berriman, did your ancestor do which was so scurvy? Entertain us, please.’

She had entertained them enough, Stacy thought. She had behaved like a vicious termagant in the stews or in an alehouse, and in front of her own servants too! What Louisa would have thought of her sitting at a kitchen table with a gang of men swilling drink she couldn’t imagine. At least she had avoided the port, of which Louisa always spoke in shuddering horror as the corrupter of men. But she had drunk heavily from the pot which Jeb had mischievously refilled several times, and the effects of the ale, tiredness, and the increasing warmth of the kitchen were beginning to overcome her.

‘Certainly not,’ she told him firmly. ‘I will now retire.’ And she stood up, to find the room going around her. Her face paled, and Matt Falconer, moved by an impulse he refused to recognise, swore to himself and as swiftly as he could ran round the table to catch her and prevent her from falling. Cold bitch she might be, but she had had a hell of a day, and behind the autocratic and imperious manner was a woman with a lot of guts—he had to grant her that. She had cared for the welfare of all her people before she had so much as sat down herself.

He picked her up, to find her strangely light for such a tall female, said softly, ‘Allow me, madam. I think that you are not accustomed to drinking strong ale,’ and carried her, unprotesting and already half asleep, to her bed, which was made up between those of the sleeping Polly and Louisa.

Stacy, unaware of anything but that she was in someone’s strong arms, was back in her childhood again, being carried to bed by her father. Without thinking, eyes closed, she kissed the man carrying her, on the cheek which she had earlier struck, murmuring drowsily, ‘Goodnight, Papa,’ and by the time the surprised Matt had lowered her to the bed she was soundly and sweetly asleep.

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