CHAPTER FIVE #2
She had looked frowningly at the empty perch behind.
Stefan had made a deliberate business of throwing up his eyes.
“Pray use a little sense, Lucy, do. It is by far more improper to be leaving Dion alone in a public inn, and as we cannot seat three abreast, I have no choice but to leave Cobbold here.”
“You consider a groom an adequate chaperon?”
“Yes, when the groom in question has known Dion from a child and guided her first lessons in riding.”
Either the words or his tone of faint boredom served to allay whatever suspicions she was harbouring and Lucy at last allowed him to hand her up and tuck the carriage rug about her legs. A sharp frost had left a chill in the February air.
Bent upon lulling her, Stefan confined his remarks to asking for directions to Corse where the vicarage maid was now resident. Once they were well on the road, however, he felt it safe to embark upon his purpose.
“You have said nothing of what passed between you and Mr Waley, Lucy. Are we to wish you happy?” Stefan caught a frowning glance as he turned his head to look at her briefly. For a moment, he thought she would not answer.
“No.” The bald monosyllable hung in the air, its echo filled with the cause of her evident depression.
“I see.”
Stefan waited. He might not have known his cousin long, but he believed he had her measure. There was too much spleen bottled up inside her to be long contained. Sure enough, in a few moments, his patience was rewarded.
“My aunt betrayed me to him. He knew of my background all along.” The gruff tone concealed nothing of her pain. Stefan did not make the mistake of referring to it.
“Yet he still made you an offer?”
She did not answer immediately, and then it came out in a rush.
“I made sure he had been offered some sort of compensation, but he denied it. He would have me believe he would marry me for Papa’s sake and my own.
” She stopped, her emotions apparent from the shortness of her breath.
“I behaved badly. I shocked him. Even so, he says he will marry me.”
Stefan cursed under his breath, and muttered savagely. “Oh, no, he will not!”
Lucy swept him another of her frowning glances. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing,” Stefan said hastily. “What was your answer?”
“I refused him, of course.”
“Why of course?”
“Do you suppose I could marry a man who had been somehow coerced into acceptance?” The passion was ill-concealed now.
“But did you not say you might consider marrying him if he knew the truth?” Stefan ventured.
“Yes, if I had told him myself. I might then be in a position to see just how he took the news, and know that if he overcame whatever shock or horror he felt, it was not through any coercion or bribe. I may not be respectable, but I have my share of pride.”
More than her share, Stefan thought, but he refrained from saying so. It said much for her sense of honour that she would throw away the chance to secure her future for a mere scruple. Stefan did not know many women who would have done as much. And then she ruined all with a thunderbolt.
“But Mr Waley was firm that I must regard his offer as remaining open, so if I cannot settle myself suitably, I may still choose to marry him.”
“You will do no such thing,” uttered Stefan, forgetting his intention to remain upon cordial terms.
Predictably, Lucy took him up on the instant. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said you will do no such thing,” repeated Stefan with emphasis. “I won’t have you marrying that man under any circumstances. In fact, I forbid it.”
“You forbid it?” For a moment Lucy stared at Stefan’s unyielding profile in total disbelief.
Then she let fly. “This is beyond everything! You behave as if I am your chattel! How many times am I to repeat that you have no rights over me? You take too much upon yourself, my lord. For all you know, we may not even be cousins. All you have is the letter from your uncle, and upon that you appear to base a relationship which permits you all sorts of licence. It is absurd. What is more, it is utterly unacceptable.”
She ran out of breath and had to pause to recover. Stefan did not appear at all chastened by her tirade.
“Have you finished?”
Lucy did not think she had, but the discharging of her spleen had done much to lessen the sense of injustice under which she had been labouring. She let her breath go in something between a sigh and a giggle.
“Yes!”
“Capital,” said Stefan in congratulatory accents, and Lucy found herself laughing. She looked at him.
“You are, without exception, the most infuriating man I have ever met.”
“Since you can’t have met many, that is not saying much,” he returned.
Lucy eyed him as he took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her. “I believe you did that on purpose.”
Stefan uttered a short laugh. “I assure you I did not. I meant it. As for my rights, Lucy, I don’t care what they may be or why.
I still would not permit you to throw yourself away on a fellow with whom you have nothing in common and for whom you cannot possibly feel the sort of regard necessary to a marriage.
If that is autocratic and high-handed, as you choose to term my decisions, then so be it. ”
Lucy knew not how to respond. How did Stefan manage to make his interference sound so reasonable?
As if he truly had her interests at heart.
Why should he when he hardly knew her? A tattoo fluttered in her breast. It was curiously endearing to have him so vehement against her possible union with Mr Waley.
Almost as if he were jealous? It had crossed her mind before, but it must be absurd and impossible.
Lucy was nevertheless conscious of a warm feeling inside.
A large cluster of oaks appearing ahead to one side of the road, she recognised abruptly where they were. “There is Corse Copse. We are but a half mile from Jenny’s new abode.”
So it proved. Stefan tooled the curricle into a straggling village, and turned off the main road at Lucy’s direction. Presently, he was able to set her down at a neat cottage standing by itself alongside a row of workers’ dwellings.
Stefan was necessarily obliged to remain with the curricle while Lucy went inside, but he had not walked the horses for more than a couple of turns before she emerged in company with a stout dame in country clothes with an apron over all, whose advanced years were evident in a heavy tread and the slowed pace of Lucy’s normally deft motions.
“Jenny insists upon seeing you for herself,” Lucy explained, with a comical grimace reminiscent of his sister.
“Aye, sir, I do that,” said the elderly woman, fixing him with a penetrating eye. “I’d not have courage to face our sainted vicar, if I’d let our Miss Lucy go off with a wrong ’un, not if he was ever so much a lord.”
Amused and rather touched, Stefan returned her deep look without flinching. “You may be sure of Miss Lucy receiving the best of care and everything which may add to her comfort. It is not dependent upon me, you know. She has my mother and sister to look out for her.”
He had struck the right note. Jenny nodded sagely. “Aye, it’s that way with the gentry. I weren’t taken with her purpose in going to you, sir, but if she’s landed on her feet, I’ll feel my duty done.”
“You have no need to fret over me, Jenny,” Lucy said soothingly. “Besides, you have nearer cares to worry over now.”
“My poor sister, aye. As you’d not come home when you said, Miss Lucy, I reckoned I’d best be off. If I’d known when you was coming, I’d have come back for you.”
“No need. I have his lordship’s sister to help me with the packing, and we will shut up the house and leave the key with Mr Waley. You can fetch your things at any time, for the new vicar will not be there yet awhile.”
Stefan could not forbear a glance at her as she mentioned the curate, but Lucy gave no sign of thinking of the fellow as anything other than a trusted friend.
He was obliged to wait for a further period after Lucy disappeared into the cottage again with the old retainer, but within a short time, the curricle was bowling back in the direction of Upledon.
Lucy was silent for so long, Stefan began to be concerned. At last he felt obliged to break into her ruminations.
“A penny for them?”
She jumped, turning towards him with a look of startled enquiry in her face. Stefan was abruptly struck with a sensation like a barb in his chest. He put his attention back on the road, but the image of Lucy’s face stayed in his mind even as she spoke.
“What did you say?”
With difficulty, Stefan kept the blandness in his tone. “I was wondering what was so absorbing to hold your attention for so long.”
To his surprise, she answered without hesitation. “I have been puzzling and puzzling over the names Papa mentioned.”
The intensity of her utterance caught at him, akin as it was to the occasional whisper of tragedy which characterised her. “Which names?”
“Of the woman’s family. My real mother. I ventured to ask Jenny if she could tell me anything about her, but she was unable to remember. Or perhaps she is too harassed by her sister’s plight.”
“All too likely, I imagine,” Stefan responded. “Can you remember?”
“What papa said? Vaguely. Something like Oak or Oades.”
“I see. Well, I can understand your wishing to know more.” Without will, he gentled his tone. “What troubles you, Lucy?”
“I have found my father’s kin. But what of my mother’s? Who are they? From what manner of people have I sprung?”
He glanced at her again and found her eyes upon him, rich with the curse of her unsubstantiated ancestry.
“Who am I, Stefan? Who am I really?”
Lucy surveyed the closed and banded trunks and the three portmanteaux containing her personal and most needed belongings.
“Is anything forgotten?” asked Dion, poking about behind the chairs in case something should have fallen unnoticed. “Stefan will be here with the carrier soon.”