Adam’s Promise

Prologue

Madeline Oxley gathered her cloak about her and picked her way over the damp, foggy moor toward home. She peered through the mist shrouding her little stone house, nestled in the valley alongside the stone piggery and the other buildings, then came to a halt.

Oh, she wished she did not see what she thought she saw. She blinked slowly and looked again. Yes, it was still there. Her father’s carriage. He had returned.

A nervous little breath puffed out of her lungs.

She did not like surprises. The past few days, with her father gone, she had tasted freedom.

Not freedom to come and go, mind you—she was always free to do that as she pleased—but freedom in a more mindful sense.

She did not have to look upon that expression of disappointment and disapproval, the look that never failed to sit like a wet stone in her belly at every meal.

With a resigned sigh, she walked down the hill and across the cobbled yard, past the chicken coop and stable and around the empty carriage to the front door. She unhooked the clasp on her cloak and stepped inside. Warmth from a strong fire crackling in the parlor touched her chilly, red cheeks.

The door clicked shut behind her. She removed her cloak and carried it into the room where her father sat in a chair in front of the flames. “Good evening, Papa. How was Thirsk?”

He folded a letter, slipped it into the breast pocket of his waistcoat and gazed up at her over the rims of his gold spectacles. “Thirsk was most pleasant, indeed. More gainful than I expected.”

Madeline tried to keep her tone light and cheerful. “How so?”

“It seems a burden has been lifted. I received a most generous offer from a gentleman I have not seen in a number of years.”

Madeline swallowed uneasily. “What sort of offer?”

Her father raised his chin as if contemplating how best to phrase whatever he was about to tell her. “Sit down, Madeline. We must have a word.”

A word? She experienced a constricting sensation around her ribs—the feeling she always got whenever her father wanted to have “a word” with her.

Still holding her cloak over her arms, Madeline sat down in the chair opposite him.

“It is good news for both of us.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “It seems you will be married after all.”

Madeline’s body went stiff. She wet her lips and tried to speak in a steady voice. “May I ask—to whom?”

Her father cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “Well, he is a bit older than you, and you probably won’t remember him. It has been a number of years since he was last here.”

“I’ve met him?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not Mr. Siddall, is it?” she asked, unable to conceal a fiery sense of panic.

But how could she help it? Mr. Siddall was three times her age, and the last time she’d seen him, his teeth were black and rotting, and it was all she could do now to hope that, for the love of God, they’d fallen out… .

“No, it is not Mr. Siddall,” her father replied. “Mr. Siddall is a local gentleman. He would never offer for you—not after what happened at Stanley Hall, and how you behaved so impertinently afterward.”

The words struck Madeline like a slap, for her father had not defended her in the scandal that had ruined any chance she’d ever had at marriage with a decent man. Her father had even made it worse, by turning against her and blaming her publicly.

Determined not to let her father see that her wounds still burned, she raised her chin to speak with as much dignity as she could muster. “Who, then? If I am not good enough for Mr. Siddall, what manner of man have you agreed to ship me off to?”

He sighed deeply, as if he could not understand why he had been cursed with such a brazen disgrace of a daughter. “As I said, you probably won’t remember him. It’s been almost fifteen years since his last visit. You couldn’t have been more than an infant.”

“Fifteen years ago, I was eleven, Papa.”

He waved a hand at her. “Yes, yes, whatever.” Madeline felt the familiar sting of her father’s antipathy toward her, and squeezed her hands together on her lap to harden herself against it.

Her father tugged at his linen cuffs. “It seems he is not aware of your scandal, which is a miracle in itself, wouldn’t you say?”

Madeline simply gazed indifferently upon her father, who continued his account.

“The gentleman I speak of left Yorkshire four years ago for the British Colony of Nova Scotia. According to his description of things, there are very few women there. He would like to be married again, and it appears that he remembers you fondly. Though why, I cannot imagine. You never sat still long enough for any man to get a look at you.” He turned his gaze toward the fireplace.

“Regardless of that, he has asked for your hand in marriage.”

Madeline steeled herself. “And you said yes?”

“Of course. I already sent my reply. You will be leaving on the next ship out of Scarborough in five days. I have arranged for you to travel with a Mr. and Mrs. Ripley from Helmsley.”

Nausea welled up inside Madeline. Five days? She would be leaving Yorkshire forever and crossing an ocean in five days?

She tried to focus on the shock of that and only that, rather than the fact that her father could be so cavalier about never seeing her again.

She swallowed hard and sat up straighter. “You still haven’t told me his name.”

“His name?” Her father cleared his throat, as if he were nervous about revealing it. She wished he would just spit it out and end this debilitating dread. “His name is Adam Coates.”

Madeline’s heart stumbled and took a high-flying leap. Was this real?

Adam Coates?

“But as I said,” her father continued, “you probably will not remember him.”

Remember him? How could she not? She had been awestruck by the sight of him the first moment he rode into their yard fifteen years ago on his big black horse, to call on her older sister, Diana.

Diana had been eighteen and incredibly beautiful, while Madeline had been a rather willful child of eleven who refused to go to her room when her sister’s suitor came calling.

It was the first time Madeline had ever seen a man so handsome that he’d sent the clouds dashing right out of the sky. He’d hopped down from his horse, made a great sweeping bow in front of her and said, “Who is this beautiful young lass? A princess, surely!”

Years later, when she began to think about men in a romantic way, her dream suitor always seemed to have Adam Coates’s handsome features. For he had been the prince charming of her dreams, the gallant hero who had come to rescue a little princess locked in a tower.

All the sounds in the room retreated into some kind of garbled bubble while Madeline sat there in disbelief, staring blankly at her mumbling father.

She interrupted him. “But what about Diana? Why didn’t Mr. Coates ask for her hand? He loved her once, and she is a widow now.” Good God, her voice was shaking.

Her father removed his spectacles and set them on his lap. “He did not mention Diana. I suspect he doesn’t know of her fate, that she has been widowed. Besides, Diana is better off here with me.”

You mean her inheritance is better off here with you.

Madeline’s foot began to tap beneath her skirts as if it had a will of its own. Adam Coates?

“I thought he was married,” she said as casually as possible. “He had children, if I recall.”

“Ah, so you do remember him.”

Vividly, she thought.

“Only vaguely,” she replied.

Her father put his spectacles back on. “Well, yes, he did marry someone, quite soon after Diana married Lord Thurston. Too soon, I think. A woman from York who already had a son. I do not believe she gave Mr. Coates an easy time, but that is all in the past now. She passed away before Coates left for Nova Scotia.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Madeline replied softly.

Her father stood and gestured for her to stand also.

“I know, my dear, that since what happened at Stanley Hall, you have resigned yourself to spinsterhood, but you cannot afford to pass up on this offer. The man has made a success of himself. He is as wealthy now as any aristocrat and he knows nothing about the scandal. With any luck, he won’t find out until after he has wed you.

Lord knows you will never get such an offer from anyone here in Yorkshire, so mind what I say and go without kicking up a fuss, and try to make the best of it, will you?

From what I hear, it is a different world over there.

Perhaps you can make a fresh start and live a respectable life. ”

She nodded politely. “Yes, Papa.”

He took a step back. “Yes, Papa? That is all you have to say to me? Heavens above, I expected a full-blown battle over this. I do not believe you have ever said yes, Papa to me about anything in your entire life!”

She lowered her gaze, careful not to give away any of what she truly felt. “If I am to leave here in five days, I would very much like our time together to be affable.”

His shoulders slumped visibly. “Well, that is long overdue. Now off you go, and think carefully about what you wish to take with you. I can only spare two trunks.” He sat down again, waving her off.

“And Mr. Coates has requested that you bring a bushel of wheat for seed—yellow Kent and Hampshire brown—and that you lay it under your head like a pillow during the crossing, to prevent it from getting wet.”

That last request sailed over her head, pushed aside by all the other thoughts and dreams that were circling around her like a hurricane.

Adam Coates. He had written to her father from another continent, across the ocean, and he had asked for her hand in marriage.

He had promised to make her his wife. His wife!

It hardly seemed possible. It was beyond all doubt a wonderful dream come true.

* * *

After Madeline left the room, her father rested his head against the high back of the chair and drummed his fingers upon the armrest. What should he do with the letter still in his waistcoat pocket?

Promptly he decided to lock it away in the secret compartment in his desk drawer.

Knowing Madeline’s inquisitive nature, she might wish to read it for herself, and that was out of the question.

She would never agree to leave Yorkshire if she knew the truth—that the woman Coates had requested to marry was not Madeline, but her older and more beautiful sister, Diana.