Chapter 8
The moment John Coachman had told Arabella the carriage axle had been fixed, Arabella had slipped away.
Now, after travelling four hours over bad roads she was finally at Lushington Hall.
Stepping tentatively across the threshold, her flickering candle illuminating the drawing room with furniture covered in dust sheets like ghostly sentinels, Arabella could barely suppress her horror.
The air was thick and stale, heavy with the scent of abandonment and decay.
Cobwebs draped the corners like mourning veils, and her footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone floor, each sound seeming to mock the grandeur that had once impressed—and intimidated—so many visitors.
The portraits on the walls, including the forbidding likeness of her late husband, seemed to watch her with malevolent eyes through the gloom.
Arabella had only ever known unhappiness here. After Lushington’s death, she’d vowed never to return.
But needs must.
She’d left Sarah at Quamby House to fulfil what business she could to explain Arabella’s departure and to return Lord Pemberton’s hateful gifts with a letter that told him in no uncertain terms that his inducements had fallen on barren ground.
Now, Arabella was back in her own home and trembling so much she had to sit down on what had once been an elegant settee, which caused a cloud of dust to engulf her, making her cough and her eyes water.
Footsteps sounded down the corridor and the door was thrust open, a little housemaid brandishing a letter opener, her expression fierce and fearful before she dropped the knife, collapsing against the wall in clear relief as she said, “Lady Lushington! It is you? I thought never to see you again.”
“Dorcas. You are very brave to be taking on the care of this household... seemingly with little help. I know I have been absent these last eight months since my husband’s death, and I had meant to visit much earlier?—”
“Oh no, I am glad you didn’t do that,” said the little maid, still looking frightened.
“The new master—that is, Lord Lushington’s heir, what was his cousin but him who is now coming to take possession in two days—Mr. Algernon—said he would have…
anyone… arrested for trespassing if he they was caught inside Lushington Hall. ”
Arabella widened her eyes. Arrested ? She had met Algernon on a handful of occasions, but surely Dorcas’s words did not ring true with regard to her ?
For the way Lushington’s cousin’s eyes had lingered on her person, the way he stood just a touch too close when speaking to her, or how his hand would brush against hers when passing her a glass of wine, suggested he’d be the kind of man to welcome her back…
And then be guilty of a myriad of small transgressions and familiarities.
Now he was saying he would deny her entry to her own home? That could not be right. As Lord Lushington’s widow, she had some stake in Lushington Hall. The Dower cottage was hers, as was the rental from three of her late husband’s farms, which she’d continued to receive on a regular basis.
Arabella certainly didn’t want to be on the property at the same time as Algernon, but he was completely overstepping his authority if he thought he had the right to deny Arabella access to Lushington Hall.
She tried to put away her concern. What did it matter when all she needed to do was make her way to the cellars and locate the documents that she had hidden in haste during those desperate final weeks of her marriage?
With her brother returning to England so unexpectedly and declaring he had evidence that would exonerate him, Arabella could not afford to allow the so-called “evidence” that she had fabricated—and the other documents to which she had put her signature—to be discovered.
Lies, of course, but lies to save her brother, though he had not known it at the time.
“You say he’s coming in two days?” Arabella asked. She was exhausted after her journey, and the thought of beginning her search now was too dreadful.
“Yes, Miss. Said he had urgent business to attend to and couldn’t wait for the original date.”
Well, that fitted in with her plans well enough. She only needed a couple of hours in the morning to find what she had hidden beneath the loose stone in the wine cellar wall, and then she could be gone, back to Quamby House.
It was such a short trip that Nicholas might not even have missed her yet.
The thought of him sent a warm rush of memory through her—the weight of his hands on her skin, the way he had whispered her name like a prayer, the promise in his eyes when he had held her afterward.
Her heart fluttered with the same wild joy she had felt in the pavilion, remembering how he had looked at her with such tender hunger, as if he could not quite believe she was real.
A slow smile curved her lips. Of course he would have missed her.
After what they had shared, after the way he had held her as if he would never let her go, he would be counting the hours until her return.
Perhaps he was even now planning how to propose properly, thinking of the life they would build together once all her secrets were finally laid to rest.
Tomorrow morning, she would retrieve those hateful documents and burn them to ash.
Then she could return to Quamby House with a clean conscience and tell Nicholas everything—how she had been trapped by circumstances, how she had never stopped loving him, how every day of her marriage had been a sacrifice made for family honour.
With truth on her side at last, surely he would understand? Surely he would forgive her? The man who had made love to her with such passionate tenderness in the pavilion was not a man who would turn away from her once he knew the whole story.
For the first time in years, Arabella felt the stirring of genuine hope. By tomorrow evening, she would be free—free of lies, free of fear, and free to love Nicholas with nothing held back.
She could hardly wait to see the look in his eyes when she told him that their future together was finally within reach.