THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER
By Susan Carroll
Text
[email protected] Susan Carroll
All rights reserved
Chapter One
Lord Harcourt Arundel never expected a hero's welcome, even though he had been wounded at Waterloo. As he trudged along the lane, leading his dun-colored gelding by the reins, his portmanteau strapped back of the saddle, he felt neither particularly lordly nor heroic. With his top boots, buckskins, and frock coat caked with dust, his sun-bronzed features streaked with sweat, all Lord Harry felt was tired.
Still, after a year's absence from his Northamptonshire estate, he would have thought there might be at least one face to smile upon him, someone to bob a curtsy by way of greeting to the returning Earl of Lytton. Yet the only soul stirring was a mongrel dog panting in the shade of the hedgerows, too affected by the heat radiating from the August sun to even bark.
Shading eyes the hue of hunter's green, Lord Harry peered across the empty expanse of his fields, the tall waves of rye but half-cut, the grain corded in neat bundles waiting to be loaded upon the wagons. Harry frowned, his thick brows as startlingly black as the lustrous waves of his hair.
"Where the deuce is everyone?" he muttered.
He had never paid half the attention that he should have to the farming operations on his own land, but even he knew how crucial it was to bring in the rye as soon as it had ripened. Yet the fields bore that tranquil Sunday kind of stillness, although it was near noon of a Saturday.
"It would seem they all heard Hellfire Harry was coming back and took to their heels, eh Ramses?" Harry said, reaching up to pat his horse's neck. Though still puzzled, the frown that was so foreign to Harry's countenance faded to his customary easy smile as he reflected that the only one likely to retreat at his approach would be his stepmother.
His unheralded return would undoubtedly give Sybil a megrim. His presence had been doing so ever since he was seven and first introduced to his new mama, and the condition had not abated a jot these past twenty years.
"Oh, Harry," the Dowager Countess of Lytton would be sure to exclaim, reaching for her smelling salts with a shudder. "You—you look so hale. So robust."
How or why his unfailing good health invariably made his stepmother feel ill, Harry had never been able to fathom. He merely accepted the fact with the philosophical cheerfulness he treated all his fellow creatures' foibles.
The same spirit of tolerance caused him to spare only one more glance for his deserted fields, the obvious evidence of his steward's neglect. With a shrug of his broad shoulders, he tugged at Ramses's reins and marched on. The movement, slight as it was, caused a pain to shoot along Harry's left arm.
That shoulder but two months ago had played host to a chunk of shrapnel from a mortar exploding near him in the very thick of battle. The army surgeon had said the wound had healed remarkably well, but he had warned Harry to take the journey home in easy stages.
Harry never did anything in easy stages. Even now he felt more concern for his horse than himself. Ramses had picked up a stone just outside the village of Lytton's Dene. Although Harry had managed to remove it, the soft portion of Ramses's hoof remained bruised and tender.
As he led the halting animal, he murmured words of encouragement, "Not much further now, old fellow. We'll soon have a poultice slapped on that hoof and after a few days' rest, you'll be fit to go."
Harry hoped he would not have to lead the horse the entire way round the park to the drive winding up to Mapleshade Hall, his principal country seat. The stone fence at the back of the park had ever been a crumbling ruin, and Harry trusted that no one would have seen fit to repair it in his absence.
His trust was not misplaced. As the fields sloped away to become woodland, Harry saw that the stone work, far from being repaired, had eroded a little further. There was no difficulty about leading Ramses through the break, thus shortening the journey to the stable by at least half a mile.
It was not as if anyone up at the hall would be looking out eagerly for Harry's return. Not with his own father dead these past six years. There would be no one to reproach him for not making haste to enter the house. It might have been entirely another matter if Miss Kathryn Towers had returned him a different answer to his marriage proposal.
Harry expelled a faint sigh as he led his horse deeper into the shadows of the timberland. He had not meant to think of Kate. The dappled light filtering through the trees' foliage faded as memory misted before his eyes. Two years had passed since that spring, yet he could still envision Kate so clearly, the warm breeze teasing the dusky locks of her hair, the fragile flowers being unconsciously plucked apart by her slender white fingers as she stood with her back to him. She had looked so soft, so vulnerable, all of a woman with none of the primness of the Bishop of Chillingsworth's daughter about her.
"I don't expect you to understand, Harry," she had said in the low musical voice of hers, "any of the reasons why I cannot marry you."
It was then he should have summoned up all the eloquence and persuasiveness at his command. God knows he could be glib enough upon all other occasions. Why, when he wanted to be tender, did the words seem to form a lump at the base of his throat? He had swallowed that lump and said in teasing tones, "It will do you no good, Kate, to stand there, wreaking havoc upon those poor flowers. I shan't take no for an answer. You shall never be rid of me until you can look me in the eye and tell me you don't love me."
Gripping her shoulders, he had forced her to come about and face him, intending to express all that he could not say with the warmth of his kiss. But she had stiffened and he had felt a tremor pass through her. After a heartbeat of hesitation, she had gazed upon him, her eyes so steady, so clear, the same vivid shade as the violets tumbling heedlessly from her hands. His Kate was gone. It was the bishop's daughter who answered him.
"I don't love you, my lord."
Remembrance of those words pierced Harry with a sharp ache, but no bitterness. Never had he ever felt any bitterness toward Kate, only a sense of longing, a melancholy that sometimes he could shrug off with a quick laugh and sometimes he couldn't.
As he tromped through the woods, each step taking him closer to the empty grandeur of Mapleshade, he felt more than usually prey to gloom and was glad when a diversion occurred to banish Kate's image from his mind.
The sharp crackling of a twig alerted Harry that he was no longer alone. He glanced up eagerly. After the unnatural quiet of the fields, he thought that he would be glad of the sight of any familiar face, even if it should prove to be only Jergens, his dour gameskeeper.
But the sprightly little man who came slipping through the bracken was not Jergens. Balancing a wriggling brown sack upon his shoulder, the shrewd-featured fellow paused to glance over his shoulder, the hairs of his thick red beard seeming to bristle like the fur of a fox scenting pursuit.
Harry's mouth widened to a grin as he recognized Tim Keegan. An itinerant Irish laborer hired on for the extra work at the harvest every summer, the rogue had a habit of "borrowing" hares from his lordship's coveys. Judging from the movement of the sack, Keegan must have snared himself a plump one this time.
Intent upon peering behind him for any, sign of the gameskeeper, Keegan took no note of Lord Harry. Regarding the little man's furtive movements with amusement, Harry folded his arms across his chest and waited until Keegan had all but backed into Ramses.
"Halloo, Keegan," Harry said.
The soft greeting nearly caused the Irishman to shoot out of his boots. As his startled gaze fell upon Harry, Keegan's eyes bulged. All color drained from his florid features. He dropped the sack and crossed himself with a loud wail. "Sweet holy Mary, Mother of God defend me."
"Stea
dy on, old man. I never intended to give you that much of a fright." Harry gave Keegan a bracing clap on the shoulder, but far from reassuring the man, it caused Keegan to shrink away, flinging up one hand as though to ward off a blow.
"Saints above! I'll be after putting the rabbit back straightaway, that I will. Just don't be a-haunting me, yer lairdship."
Haunting him? What was the fool talking about? Keegan sidestepped, preparing to bolt. Harry prevented him by catching hold of his coattails.
"What is the matter with you, Keegan?" Securing a firm grip on the man's trembling arm, Harry brought him about, demanding, "Now when have I ever cut up stiff over a plaguey rabbit? I only want to ask you a few questions."
"Questions!" From Keegan's terrified howl, he might have been about to face the Spanish Inquisition.
"Why aren't you at work in the fields? And where is everyone else? I have not seen a soul since passing by the crossroads to the village."
"They—they all be given the afternoon off to have a look at the memorial an' it please yer worship."
"Memorial? What memorial? Who has died?"
“Why, ‘tis yerself, me laird."
Keegan's doleful reply startled Harry so much, he released the Irishman.
"Myself?" Harry repeated. Keegan had either had a spot too much of the sun or had been tippling the usquebaugh again. Harry chuckled. "I suppose I do look like something that has just crept from the grave, and I am nigh dead with fatigue, but—"
"Oh, no. Beggin' yer lairdship's pardon," Keegan interrupted tremulously. "Ye must have forgotten. It wasn't fatigue as took yer lairdship off, but a great nasty cannonball as smashed off yer head."
His words carried such conviction that Harry had to suppress an urge to touch his own head to make certain it was still affixed to his shoulders.
"Where did you come by such a rum tale as that?" he asked.
" 'Twas yer good vicar Thorpe, me laird."
The vicar? Harry grimaced. That, at least, explained Timothy Keegan's belief that he must be seeing a shade from the other world. Any utterance made by Harry's cousin, the most holy Reverend Adolphus Thorpe was regarded in the village as being a pronouncement from God, even by a Catholic like Keegan.
"You can plainly see that I am not dead," Harry said. "You must have misunderstood what Reverend Thorpe told you."
"Did I indeed, me laird?" Keegan asked, keeping a wary distance between himself and Harry. "Then what about the memorial and the deddycashun this afternoon?"
"The deddy-what?"
"Deddycashun. 'Tis my understanding ‘tis to be sort of a wake for yer lairdship, only without the food and drink, which doesn't make it much of a wake a'tall to my way of thinking." Keegan fixed Harry with a pitying gaze. "Shabby, I calls it. Ye might as well not even have died."
"But I didn't—" Harry broke off, torn between amusement and exasperation at the absurdity of the conversation. Exhausted as he was and eager to get Ramses to the stable, he did not know why he was stopping to bandy words with this madman. Perhaps it was because the mystery of his empty fields yet remained, and Keegan was so adamant about the memorial.
Was it possible that some ridiculous mistake had occurred and everyone else at Mapleshade also presumed Harry to be— No, impossible!
True, he had taken no pains to communicate with his family since Waterloo, but plenty of his returning comrades knew he was not dead. And the British Army certainly knew it had been no ghost captain who had recently sold his commission. There was no reason that any false report could have been carried back to his home.
Having convinced himself that this was so, Harry still felt uneasy. Instead of pursuing his course toward the stables, he turned to Keegan and said, "Perhaps you had better be showing me this memorial."
The superstitious Keegan did not evince much enthusiasm for accompanying one he persisted in viewing as a ghost. But after Harry had pressed a guinea into his hand and told him he might keep the rabbit besides, Keegan cheerfully declared he would be willing to guide the devil himself under such terms.
"Yer ever as generous a man dead as ye were alive, me laird." Keegan beamed, retrieving the sack. "The memorial be right this way, atop the Hill."
Biting back a smile, Harry followed him, although with this information, he had no need of Keegan any longer. In this gently rolling section of Northamptonshire, there was only one slope hereabouts that merited the name, the Hill, being a part of Harry's own parklands. It had been Harry's favorite spot those rare times he desired solitude. From the summit, he could gaze down upon his own woods, the lily-bedecked pond, the grassy expanse where deer often grazed, even the distant chimneys of the hall itself. It had been to the Hill that he had retreated as a lad when his favorite pony had broken its leg and had to be destroyed, there, as a man, that he had gone when his father had died, there that he had brought Kate to ask her to be his bride, there that she had refused.
As the tree line thinned and he and Keegan emerged from the shelter of the trees, Harry expected to find his Hill as ever, green, quiet and undisturbed.
He was brought up short by the mass of humanity swarming over it. Only yards ahead of him were his missing farm laborers, mingling with what appeared to be the better part of the villagers from Lytton's Dene. Heavy boots trampled the daisies underfoot, while homespun skirts brushed the grass. This group kept a respectful distance from the denizens of Mapleshade, those servants who staffed Harry's stables and the massive hall itself. At the head of these, Harry could make out the forms of some silk-clad ladies and gentlemen, among them, his nearest neighbors, the portly Squire Gresham and his lady; his own stepmother garbed in deepest mourning; and his cousins, the stately, beautiful Julia Thorpe and her brother, the vicar.
The sunlight gleamed off Adolphus's fair hair as, like an anxious shepherd, that reverend gentleman assembled this rather mixed flock at the Hill's summit where stood some massive, mysterious object draped with canvas.
"Good God!" Harry breathed, no longer able to deny the significance of the scene before him. "It would seem you are right, Mr. Keegan," he said dryly. "I am dead."
"Wasn't I after tellin' yer lairdship so."
Harry could only shake his head, still unable to fathom how such a ridiculous misunderstanding could have happened or how this gathering on the hillside had come about.
"Why didn't they just hold the service down in the church?" he mused aloud. "I know Adolphus always thought I was paving hell with a vengeance. But I can't believe that even he would refuse me the last rites."
"Oh, nay, me laird. They had you a proper church service, so they did. But this memorial, I heerd tell, was your stepmama's notion, herself wanting all to remember what a hero ye were."
Harry felt both surprised and touched by this gesture on Sybil's part until Keegan added, "And it gave her a wonderful chance to throw a dab of work in the way of her friend, Mr. Crosbie."
Harry stiffened at the mention of Lucillus Crosbie, a would-be sculptor. Man-milliner and fortune hunter were two of the kinder epithets Harry had bestowed upon the man. The last time he had been home, a year ago, he had caught Crosbie making sheep's eyes at his stepmother and had introduced the impertinent fellow to the fish at the bottom of Mapleshade's pond. Harry had thought to have seen the last of him. Apparently Lucillus had wasted little time reinstating himself into Sybil's graces when Harry had been reported dead.
Thrusting Ramses's reins at Keegan, Harry bade him look after the horse. "Much as I hate to disappoint everyone," he said. "I am afraid I must announce that I am so inconsiderate as to still be alive."
With that, Harry strode forward from the shelter of the trees and began to mount the Hill. He did not check his step until he reached the fringes of the crowd. It suddenly occurred to him that he might be about to cause consternation to others as he had Keegan by thus announcing his return from the dead. Yet glancing at the rapt expressions about him, Harry believed he could have dressed in a bed sheet and howled like a banshee without attracti
ng attention. All eyes were riveted on Reverend Thorpe.
Harry suspected that most of those about him had attended less to pay final respects than out of curiosity. Harry certainly did not blame them for that. He was curious as hell himself as to what monstrosity of Crosbie's lay concealed beneath that canvas.
As he skirted the crowd, advancing ever higher up the Hill, the sound of the vicar's piercing voice began to carry to him in snatches. His cousin appeared to be delivering some sort of eulogy.
"And I trust that our dear Lord Lytton is at this moment enjoying all the bliss of heaven."
Harry grinned for he knew full well that the righteous Adolphus was mentally consigning his wicked cousin to the hottest of flames. Reverend Thorpe's speech became even more disjointed as he tried to enumerate Harry's many virtues and was apparently having difficulty thinking of any.
At last the Reverend blurted out, "Er—a most godly man, an example to the entire community."
Harry, who by this time had arrived behind the squire, within a stone's throw of the monument, nearly choked. Godly? He, who had scarce seen the inside of a church since his christening day? And even then he had been carried screaming into the vestibule.
Harry saw that he had best step forward at once and save his cousin the embarrassment of coming out with any more such plumpers. But before he could edge past the squire's bulky frame, the vicar turned, stretching up one hand toward the canvas.
The crowd collectively held its breath as the vicar intoned, "This solemn edifice has been erected by a grieving mother to the memory of the most generous and affectionate of sons, a brave and bold hero whose life has been so tragically cut short. But with this likeness mounted upon the Hill, Lord Harcourt Andrew Stephen Arundel, the fifth Earl of Lytton, will dwell among us forever."
As the canvas came away, Harry expected to see some awful representation of himself in stone, garbed in full military dress in one of those stiff unnatural poses. As he gazed upward, he was as confounded as the rest of the assemblage. Mounted upon a plinth, rising to a full seven feet of glory, stood the muscular figure of man carved in Classical fashion, his tightly curling hair in nowise resembling Harry's own straight locks. But no one paid much heed to the head for the statue had been carved stark naked. Only the modest manner in which the figure held a sword before him prevented the full disclosure of his manhood.