Promise Me Tomorrow (16 page)

“I know there is feeling in you,” he said in a husky voice, leaning toward her. “I felt your passion. You cannot deny it, no matter how much you might try. I don’t ask for words of love, only the heat that I touched in you. That is the honesty, the truth, I seek.”

His eyes bored into hers, fiercely gold, holding her gaze, willing her to respond. Instinctively Marianne moved toward him, her blood warming, as it always did, at his nearness. This man made her feel, made her yearn, as no man had. She had never known what it was like to want something this way, to ache with a hunger that was more than physical. Anger burned very near the surface when she was with him, followed by a flame even hotter and more primal.

A peal of feminine laughter floated back from the front riders to them, thrusting reality upon Marianne. She started and pulled back, the warmth in her face replaced by cool suspicion. She was stung by her own stupidity.

“Honesty?” she asked sardonically. “I doubt you know the meaning of the word. What you ‘seek’ is to keep me from Lord Buckminster. You have already informed me that that is the reason you wish to make me your mistress.”

“Buckminster!” In truth, Lambeth had not given a thought to Bucky the past few minutes, he realized a little guiltily. Marianne had a way of driving all rational thought from his brain. “I don’t wish to talk about Buckminster,” he told her impatiently. “I want to talk about us.”

“There is nothing to discuss,” Marianne pointed out coolly. “There is no ‘us.’”

“There could be if you would only—” He stopped abruptly, realizing that he was arguing with her. That was scarcely the way to win a woman’s heart. “I am sorry. I swore I would not press you.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes. Ahead and to her left, Marianne saw an odd structure of wooden timbers, seemingly built into a low hill. “What is that?” she asked curiously, pointing toward the dark opening.

Lambeth looked. “Oh. That is Wheal Sarah. An abandoned mine—I cannot remember whether it was iron or tin. There are quite a few mines here in Dartmoor. Not as many as in Cornwall, of course, but there has been mining in the area since, oh, medieval times. Most of them are still in operation, but that one played out several years ago.”

“Why is it named that?”

“It comes from an old Cornish word,
hweal,
meaning mine. They’re all named after women.”

“Why is that?”

He shrugged and glanced at her with a grin. “Probably because of their allure and their danger.”

“Of course. That
is
what a man would say.”

He chuckled. “This whole area is like that. My home is in Kent, but I can see the lure of the moor. The streams, the high, rolling land, the stunning beauty of the gorges and waterfalls. But it can be an eerie, benighted place, too, especially when the mist rolls over it. Then you cannot see your hand in front of your face, and the tors loom up at you, great broken slabs of rock. And you never know when you might be setting your foot into one of the quaking bogs.”

“Bogs?” Marianne looked at him wide-eyed.

“Oh, yes. The place is rife with them, hidden by grass. It’s the kind of place where you can almost feel the presence of the old gods. That’s why you have all the stone rows and the rings and such. The ancients lived here. It is no wonder that there are so many legends about the moor.”

“Such as?”

“The hellhounds, for one. There was a certain nobleman—an evil fellow, Sir Richard Cabell—and they say that when he died, black hounds from hell raced across the moor to throw themselves at his tomb, snapping and snarling. On beyond Lydford Gorge, where we are going, there is a high point named Gibbet Hill, where they used to hang thieves and other miscreants, in order to set an example to others. It is said their ghosts walk the hill. But most famous of all, of course, is Lady Howard.”

“Who was she?”

“A beauty, I suppose, for she lured four men into marriage, but with a black heart—she murdered each and every one of them. They hanged her for being a witch. It is said that some nights, when there is evil abroad, she rides across the moor in her coach made all out of bones and drawn by headless horses, a black hellhound running beside her carriage.”

“If you are trying to frighten me, you have certainly succeeded,” Marianne snapped, unable to suppress a shiver.

Lambeth laughed. “You’ll be all right—as long as you don’t get caught out on the moor at night.”

“I shall make a point of it.”

They continued to ride along, chatting, with Lambeth pointing out the various sights, until they reached Lydford Gorge. The gorge was deep and verdant with trees, ferns and meadowsweet. The narrow, rock-strewn River Lyd rushed through the center of it, curling around moss-covered boulders. The walls of the gorge rose steeply around them, pockmarked with dark caves. Finally they arrived at their destination, White Lady Falls, where the river roared down a hundred feet in a shining white spray of waterfall.

Here, beside the Falls, the servants had spread out their picnic. Blankets lay on the ground for the guests to sit upon, and servants had laid out covered dishes of food for them. They sat in something of an oval, the older folks seated at one end, mostly on boulders, and the younger set arranged beside the river in an elongated circle.

Marianne was rather surprised when Sir George Merridale spoke. She had scarcely heard his voice, what with his wife’s nonstop chatter. But Sophronia’s mouth was stopped with food now, and Marianne supposed that Sir George had seized the opportunity to say something.

He gestured toward the high walls of the gorge and said, “You know, a family of outlaws used to live here. Quite feared, they were. Gubbins was their name, and they all had great red beards. Used to pillage the outlying farms and villages, then come back here to hide. They lived up in the caves, you see. It was easy to conceal themselves, and easy to defend, too. Took years to catch them.”

“I suspect that no one was overly keen on riding in here to try to drive them out,” Lambeth commented, glancing at the narrow, rocky path beside the river, with the cliffs looming above it.”

“That was long ago,” Bucky said.

“Oh, but there are outlaws here again,” Lady Buckminster put in. When everyone turned startled faces in her direction, she chuckled and shook her head. “I don’t mean here in Lydford Gorge. Just in the area. No one knows where they hide—or who they are, either. It’s a band of highwaymen. Their leader is a well-spoken man. People call him ‘The Gentleman.’”

“The devil!” Mr. Thurston exclaimed. “The gall of him! A common thief, claiming to be a gentleman.”

“I don’t know that he claims to be anything, Alan. They simply call him that because of his manners, you see. He is supposed to be very polite to ladies. It is said that he told one woman that he would not take her necklace because it adorned such a beautiful throat.”

Verst snorted. “I doubt that. I never heard of a thief who gave up any of his loot for any reason.”

“What do you think, Mrs. Cotterwood?” Lambeth asked Marianne, looking at her with dancing golden eyes.

“About what, Lord Lambeth?” she replied coolly.

“Why, gentlemen thieves—do you think there is such a thing?”

“I am sure there are thieves who act quite as nobly as many gentlemen I know,” Marianne responded tartly, goaded by the laughter in his eyes.

Her statement was met by a joking outcry from the men present. Cecilia Winborne, who had maneuvered things so that she sat on one side of Lambeth, placed a hand on his arm in a gesture betokening familiarity. “Really, Justin, you should not tease Mrs. Cotterwood. She does not know you. She won’t know how to take these things you say.”

The dark-haired woman cast a sidelong look at Marianne, her words and manner emphasizing that Marianne was a stranger to Lambeth and she a dear friend. No matter how much Marianne told herself that it did not matter, that she did not want to be close to Lambeth, she could not help but bridle at Cecilia’s words.

“Oh,” she replied, with a slow smile, looking straight at Lord Lambeth, “I think I know exactly how to take the things Lord Lambeth says.”

Lambeth’s teeth flashed in a grin, his eyes locked on Marianne’s, and for an instant it was the two of them who were paired in an intimate moment, the rest of the party excluded.

Cecilia rose to her feet. Her voice was brittle as she said, “Well, enough of this talk of highwaymen, or you will frighten me. I think a walk would be in order. Justin…”

The men automatically rose to their feet as she stood up. Lambeth turned toward her. “Yes?”

Cecilia’s gray eyes turned even stormier. “I thought you might accompany me.”

“Oh. Of course.”

Marianne bit her lip to hide a smile at his response, so obviously polite and tepid. She did not think that Miss Winborne could know his lordship’s nature very well, despite her implied closeness to him, if she did not realize that the approach she was taking was possibly the one most likely to get the man’s back up. Few men liked to be maneuvered or treated proprietorily, and Marianne suspected that Lord Lambeth took to it even less than most.

He crooked his arm politely to take her hand, but as he did so, he said to the party in general, “That sounds a good idea. We should all go exploring. What do you say?”

Most of the young men were quick to agree with him, and soon all the younger members of the party set off together on a stroll alongside the rushing river. They walked more or less in a group, picking their way along a barely defined path. The ground was uneven, broken by slabs of granite and mossy stones, and the vegetation ran wild, so that one had to pick one’s way around.

Marianne was watching her feet as she traversed a broken shelf of rock right beside the river, swerving to avoid a sapling. Just as she lifted her foot to step forward, she felt a hard shove in the small of her back, and suddenly she was falling toward the swift, rocky water.

M
ARIANNE GASPED AND FLUNG OUT HER
arms as she felt herself falling. One hand met a limb of the sapling, and she grabbed it. For a moment she hung out over the water at an angle, holding on to the sapling for dear life. A woman screamed, and there were several shouts. She could feel her grip slipping; she was at too much of an angle to pull herself upright. Then a hard arm went around her waist and she was jerked back to safety. It had all happened in an instant.

She found herself staring into Lord Lambeth’s eyes, dark with anger and stark in his white face. “What the devil were you doing?” he barked, his mouth a slash in his face. “Watch where you’re going! You might have killed yourself.”

Marianne, who had been afraid for a moment that she was about to disgrace herself by fainting, was revived by an answering anger at his tone. “I
was
watching.”

She started to add that she had been pushed, but she stopped, looking at the groups of people behind Lambeth, all staring at her in varying stages of shock and interest. She realized how ridiculous her accusation would sound.
Who among these people would try to push her into the water? And why?
She wasn’t even sure it would have caused her any great injury. She was a good swimmer, and there were plenty of rocks and vegetation along the bank to grab hold of. Surely she would have been able to pull herself out, and would have suffered nothing worse than the embarrassment of a douse in the river.

Marianne looked into a pair of malicious gray eyes, and she felt reasonably sure who had done it. Cecilia Winborne disliked her, and Marianne had the feeling that the woman did exactly as she pleased. Embarrassing Marianne would have appealed to her very much, especially if it meant getting Marianne away from Lord Lambeth for the rest of the evening. After all, Miss Winborne had no way of knowing that Lord Lambeth’s interest in her was not the sort that would affect his marrying Cecilia.

“I—I slipped,” she said quietly. There would be no point in saying anything. No one would believe her, and she would only make herself look ridiculous. Besides, she knew a better way to get back at Cecilia Winborne.

She let herself slump against Lambeth with a little sigh. His arm tightened around her, and he swung her up into his arms and carried her back to where the older people still sat. Marianne allowed herself to rest her head against his shoulder, drinking in his warmth and scent, pretending for just a moment that he cared for her, that they belonged to one another.

She heard Lady Buckminster cry out in alarm as they approached, and then Lambeth laid Marianne down on one of the blankets. Marianne opened her eyes and looked up at him. His face was taut and harsh, his brows pulled together into a frown.

“Are you all right?”

Marianne nodded and smiled up at him. “Yes. Just a trifle scared.”

His face relaxed a little. Then Lady Buckminster and Nicola and Penelope were crowding around her, bringing out smelling salts and shooing him and the other men away.

Marianne sat up, pushing away the sharp-smelling bottle that Sophronia Merridale produced and thrust under her nose. “I’m all right. Really. I’m fine.”

“What happened?” Lady Buckminster demanded.

“It was silly,” Marianne said. “I slipped on a mossy rock. It was nothing, really.”

“You could have been killed!” Penelope exclaimed worriedly.

“Oh, no. I can swim and—”

“But the current is terribly strong and fast. It would have swept you right down—and over those rocks! At the very least, you could have broken something.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Marianne reminded her with a smile. “So you needn’t look so worried, Penelope.”

Nicola, though silent, looked quite white, and she had her arms crossed over her chest, hugging herself tightly. “She’s right. It’s a dangerous place,” she said tersely. A shudder ran through her.

“We had better go back,” Lady Buckminster said. “I am sure you don’t feel up to continuing.”

“Oh, no,’ Marianne said quickly. “Please, I don’t want to spoil the afternoon. “

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lord Lambeth spoke from behind the women. “You should return to the house.”

Marianne turned and saw him looming a few feet away, scowling. She frowned back at him and sat up.

“I’m fine,” she said staunchly. “Nothing happened. I didn’t even get wet. I just slipped, and Lord Lambeth kept me from falling into the river. It was a perfectly minor accident.”

In truth, her nerves were still jangling, and she did not look forward to an afternoon of socializing and being polite, when all the time she was feeling again that surge of panic as she started falling toward the river. However, she wanted even less to be the cause of the whole party having to return to the house instead of enjoying their afternoon in the cool and lovely gorge. And she certainly did not want to give in to Lord Lambeth’s demands.

Just as he opened his mouth to speak again, Nicola said quietly, “I will be happy to ride back with Mrs. Cotterwood. That way the rest of you can stay here as we had planned.”

“Oh, no,” Sophronia protested. “Two young ladies could not go riding all that way without someone with them.”

Lady Buckminster looked a little abashed, but hastily agreed. “No, I suppose you’re right.”

“I will take them,” Lambeth spoke up.

“No, it is my responsibility,” Lord Buckminster was quick to add.

Nicola sighed. “I am sure we do not need escorts. However, if it is necessary for everyone’s piece of mind, Mrs. Cotterwood and I will ride back with the servants’ wagon. Surely they will be protection enough for us.”

Everyone agreed that they were satisfied with this compromise, though Bucky insisted on accompanying them to the end of the gorge, where the servants were busy packing the remains of the picnic into the wagon. Bucky bid them a protracted farewell and finally left, turning back for a final wave of the hand.

Nicola let out a groan and turned toward Marianne. “Don’t you feel sometimes as if you could just scream, the way everyone tries to keep one wrapped up in cotton wool?”

Marianne nodded. It was not something that had ever happened to her much before, but she was beginning to understand that there were some definite annoyances in being raised a young lady. “It is much easier being a widow than an unmarried woman.”

“I hope you don’t mind traveling with the servants,” Nicola said a little anxiously. “It was the only way I could think of to avoid having the men all arguing endlessly about who should escort us.”

“No, not at all. It seems a sensible plan, and since my mount is about as fast as the wagon, it won’t make much difference to me. You are the one who will suffer, dawdling along. I am sorry to have spoiled your afternoon. It was terribly kind of you to offer to ride home with me.”

Nicola shook her head. “Don’t worry. Frankly, it was a relief. I should not have gone there.”

Marianne glanced at her in surprise and noticed that Nicola’s face was drawn and her fine eyes held an almost haunted look. She remembered how white and shaken she had appeared when Lambeth had set Marianne down on the ground.

“Are you all right?” she asked Nicola now in concern. “Are you feeling ill?”

Nicola shook her head, saying, “Only in spirit. I—Lydford Gorge holds strong memories for me. It has been a long time now, and I had hoped that I would be able to bear it, but I found it very difficult. I should have obeyed my instincts and told Aunt Adelaide that I could not go.”

It was all Marianne could do not to give in to her curiosity and ask the other woman why, but she managed to preserve a polite silence. She hoped that Nicola would volunteer more, but she did not. Instead, with a wan smile, she turned toward the servants, who were now loading the wagon.

One of the footmen nodded toward her, a broad grin splitting his face. “Glad to see you home, Miss Nicola. It’s been too long.”

Around him, the other servants echoed his opinion. Nicola smiled at them. “Why, thank you, Jim. It seems too long to me, too. I miss the moor. How is your sister? Aunt Adelaide tells me she had a bouncing baby boy.”

“Aye, that she did, miss. She and Nat are proud as peacocks about it, I’ll tell you. She’d be that happy if you’d drop in and see the little ‘un while you’re here.”

“I shall. I had planned to ride out with Aunt Adelaide tomorrow to visit some of the farms. I’ll make it a point to see Annie.”

Marianne watched the interaction between Nicola and the servants with some astonishment. There had never been this sort of friendliness between servant and employer in the Quartermaine household—except for the oldest son’s pursuit of her, of course. The two groups had kept their distance, with no affection whatsoever between them. Marianne doubted that Mrs. Quartermaine had even known all the servants’ names, let alone known anything about their sisters, or paid visits to them. Certainly neither Marianne nor any of the other maids or footmen had felt the slightest inclination to welcome Mrs. Quartermaine back from a trip or to tell her of their family’s doings.

Nicola glanced at Marianne and saw her studying her. She smiled as she turned her horse and moved in front of the servants’ wagon. Marianne followed her. “Do you think I am too familiar with the servants?”

“What?” The question surprised Marianne.

“Do you think that I’m not reserved enough with the servants? My mother does. She tells me that I undermine my authority, and that they will lose respect for me.”

“Oh, no,” Marianne hastened to tell her, adding truthfully, “Actually, I am quite good friends with my housekeeper.”

Nicola grinned almost conspiratorially. “Really? The truth is, I have always felt at ease in the servants’ hall. When I was little I used to sneak away from my governess and go down to the kitchen. It seemed much warmer and happier there.” She looked a trifle wistful. “And Cook used to tell me about herbs—not just spices for food, but how you could use them to treat illnesses. Everyone in the house used to come to her when they were sick, and she would dose them. I found it fascinating, and I would pester her to show me how she made them.”

She made a little face. “That is another way that Mama says I act beneath my station. The staff always come to me with their illnesses, as do most of the people around here. Since Granny Rose is gone…”

She paused, sorrow touching her face.

“Granny Rose?”

Nicola nodded. “She was an old woman who lived on the moor, not far from here. She was known as a healer for miles around. When Mama and I moved to Buckminster Hall, I heard about her, and I went to visit her. She was much more skilled than our cook had been, and I learned a great deal from her. She had more success than most doctors, I’ll tell you. And so do I,” she added a trifle defiantly.

“I think that’s wonderful,” Marianne said sincerely. She would never have imagined that a high-born beauty such as Nicola could be so down-to-earth and warm as she was. “I—I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone quite like you.”

Nicola chuckled. “I will take that as a compliment.”

“It is,” Marianne assured her. “I find that most ladies are not interested in such things. Nor are they concerned about people who aren’t—well…”

“Important? No, you’re right.” Nicola’s mouth was set in a hard line. “Most ladies are vapid and self-absorbed.” She looked at Marianne and sighed. “Don’t get me started. Even Aunt Adelaide is shocked by some of my opinions. I am too egalitarian. Penelope is tender-hearted enough that she agrees about my concern for the poor and the down-trodden—if you could see some of the conditions in the slums that I have seen, it would make you weep!—but I’m not sure that even she agrees with some of my radical beliefs.”

“What are they?”

Nicola looked at her. “Are you sure you want to hear? I am afraid it will shock you.”

Marianne smiled. “I am not easily shocked, I assure you.”

Nicola raised her brows. “Not even if I tell you that I see no reason why a man is any better than another because he is a peer? Frankly, I often find him less so. What difference does it make that you can trace your ancestors back to the Conquest? Everyone’s ancestors go back that far and beyond. Why is it so important to know all their names? If you are more honorable or braver or smarter, it is because that is the way you are, the way you have been raised. It is not because your blood is purer. Frankly, I think the Americans have it right—and even the French, though their methods were wicked, God knows.”

She paused and glanced at Marianne. “There. I
have
shocked you.”

“Oh, no. I mean, well, yes, you have shocked me, but not in a bad way, I assure you. I quite agree with you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But it is rather astonishing to find such beliefs among the aristocracy.”

Nicola looked puzzled. “You speak as if you were not an aristocrat.”

Marianne realized that she had slipped. She smiled deprecatingly. “Ah, but surely you realize that my family is not the sort that yours or Penelope’s are. There isn’t a title among my ancestors. Country gentry—that’s the stock I come from.”

Nicola waved her hand dismissively. “Whether your father was a country squire or a curate instead of a baron, you are still of the same class. It is quite different from your family being in trade or, God forbid, the serving class. What if you had been raised not to follow the genteel pursuits of a lady, but to scrub and sweep? What if you had been told that your lot in life was to be hungry and ill-clothed and uneducated, that you were not as good as the people for whom you slaved or—”