Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ROWEN
Early the next morning, Arthur and his wife and sister hurriedly left Tidesfar.
Unbothered, Rowen and Cassandra enjoyed their breakfast and boarded the Oakley coach.
As the horses charged down the drive, she turned to take one last look at the great house.
Next time they would be here, she would be the mistress of Tidesfar.
They changed horses at Penrith and headed directly for Gretna Green. She slept most of the way. When she was awake, she eagerly gazed out the window as if she had never chanced to see such a rugged landscape of green hills and valleys and moors as they tore their way toward Scotland.
She probably never had.
That feeling gripped him again, as sharp as a blade to flesh. Protection was not enough. She had been badly treated, so much had been denied her, and now Rowen had to answer for what he did with her future.
His eyebrows drew together. Yet the Duke of Oakley whisking off his ward to Gretna Green was wrong. He didn’t like it.
He didn’t like it for her.
At the posting inn where they stopped to eat and exchange horses, he informed his men of a change of plan. He dispatched three letters and paid the messengers handsomely for it.
Back in the coach, she fell asleep once more, and hours later, her eyes fluttered open. She turned to the window, her hands on the cold pane. “Is this Scotland? Are we here at last?”
“We changed course for Northumberland. We are going to Greywick.”
Her wide gaze met his. “Your estate?”
“I decided you deserved better than Gretna Green and all that it implies.”
Blinking, she sat up straighter but said nothing.
In that silence that stretched between them in the coach, he knew he had set their path on a wholly new road, and she understood the significance.
He averted his gaze to the swiftly passing hills in the distance, his pulse thudding in his neck.
It mattered to him that she understood. “You, Cassandra, are not a dirty secret, nor a secret engagement that must be hidden and then swiftly…
I shall not have you ruined in any way, even though I have already done so in every way.
“I am obtaining a special license, and we shall marry from Greywick at the local church. My aunt and uncle shall be our witnesses, thus making it a family wedding free of any stain or question.” Rowen’s tone was firm and curt, but he’d meant to be softer.
“You honour me, sir,” she replied.
Marrying Cassandra at Greywick with his relatives as witnesses, would preserve their reputations. A proper family wedding, not a sudden and furtive escape from scandal in the dark of the night.
Arthur could shove that up his arse, and Rowen was sure he would once he found out.
Indeed, no one would dare wag a finger at them.
Arthur’s wife, Marjorie, would most certainly not be tempted to speak of it to anyone, for in doing so she would only bring shame on Louise, lessening the girl’s chances for a fine match.
His head relaxed against the cushions once more. After all the madness of the past days, Rowen too needed a clean, strong foundation to their marriage in his first days as Oakley. And he wanted to assure her that her place as his Duchess was secure and protected.
Cassandra’s attention was fixed out the window to the mangled formations of trees, evidence of the fierce high winds. A gasp escaped her throat at the sight of the old house in the distance situated on a high plateau.
Greywick Hall was a long, ash-grey Jacobean house, its stone weathered to the colour of old bone, having withstood the ravages of time and violent weather.
The estate had belonged to the first Oakley’s mother, and over the years, had become the Oakley second estate, perfect for hunting parties and secret escapes with one’s lover. A refuge.
The gables were steep and angular, the upper windows staring blankly out at the stark and sombre landscape like sentinels’ ever watchful eyes.
Rising to the right, a full story above the rest of the house, was the old pele tower built in the Norman period, when defence was everything, with constant border disputes with Scotland.
The battlements of the house told tales of Northumberland’s heady days of rebellion and revolt.
The coach slowed down on the drive at the entrance of the house where tufts of heather clung to the stone.
Dressed in their livery, the servants awaited them on the steps.
The wind hissed through the high grasses as Rowen made introductions, Cassandra remaining quiet but amiable.
Fenwick, the head butler, informed him that tea was ready and would be served in the front parlour.
They passed through the heavy oak double doors with their massive wrought-iron hinges shaped like wings, which had always fascinated him as a child.
The uneven stone threshold was worn down by the generations of boots that had passed through.
He took Cassandra’s elbow and guided her into the cold, dark interior.
Beeswax and faint smoke assaulted his senses in the great hall that still felt too large. The house had been shut up for quite some time, and the servants had done their best on such short notice, Fenwick assured him, to which Rowen gave a slight nod.
The black-paneled walls of the great hall were heavy with tapestries and ancestral portraits. One had always unsettled him: the first Oakley in falconer’s gloves, a hawk perched on his arm, both their gazes bright and hungry.
Rowen stopped in the centre of the hall before the large tapestry which hung over the massive hearth where a fire burned. The image that his grandfather had once explained to him. A great rising hawk, clawing upward from the branch of a gnarled oak tree, its roots exposed.
“How formidable he is,” murmured Cassandra.
“First rendition of the family crest. It’s older than most of this house is.”
“From this angle, the hawk’s eye is glinting at us in the firelight,” she whispered.
“A trick of gold thread and the glass bead,” he said. “Over time, it’s gone dull, yet somehow it always manages to catch what little light there ever is in here. All these tapestries, their colours have faded to moss and ash, edges worn.” He paused. “But they endure.”
She put her fingers in his hand and squeezed, and he offered her a soft smile. “Come.” He led her into the front parlour. Today, the house was not as dark as he’d remembered it. Light from the two narrow windows filled the room, revealing the dramatic wooden beams along the ceiling.
He sat her in one of the two high-backed carved oak chairs by the hearth, and sighing, she stretched out her legs as she took in the view of the moor.
He blinked at the sight of her here in this austere, cold room; this young, lively girl sitting on a faded green damask cushion, her gaze lifting to the collection of antlers displayed on the wall above it.
Her presence seemed to him to be the first note of warmth this house had ever truly experienced.
“It’s a shame the windows are so very small, for the view is quite dramatic.”
“An attribute of the old days of lawlessness when every house needed to be fortified in its defence from fugitive outlaws.”
“Greywick is quite different from the elegance of Tidesfar, isn’t it?” she remarked. “It’s certainly grand, but there is a kind of severity to its grandeur.”
“You are quite generous in your assessment.” Chuckling, he sat down in the other chair, the tea table between them.
“As a boy, I used to enjoy myself here very much, imagining I was a highlander or a Viking invading, a brigand pillaging, whereas Tidesfar felt more like an extension of town to me. Always guests arriving, dinner parties, picnics, the occasional ball, and such. Had to be dressed, had to be well-spoken.”
“And here you were a wild rogue?” Grinning, she poured the tea into their cups.
He laughed. “At least in my mind’s eye, I was.” His gaze shot to the window, to the roll of the endless moor. “Here, we were usually alone.”
“You enjoy that, do you?”
“People tire me.” His fingers went to his signet ring, twisting it.
“I imagine most people have always wanted your attention. Want things from you.”
“They have and they always will.”
“I haven’t had much experience of people to know.”
“As Duchess of Oakley, you will soon find out for yourself. We shall be invited to an endless number of dinner parties, card games, balls, concerts, exhibitions, speeches, charities, and the like. Where all the folk shall hang on your every word, take notice of the way you wear your hair, the colour, fabric, and cut of your hats, your cloaks and dresses. The quality of your conversation and the brilliance of your jewels. I warrant you shall soon find out your tolerance for your fellow man.”
She slumped back against her chair, her eyes widening. “Then I shall very much enjoy this quiet time we have here to ourselves at Greywick.”
A streak of cloud passed over the sky, darkening the room into shadow, making her seem positively pale and small, seated in that heavy, oversized chair from a bygone era.
“It was here that my father began his parties in earnest, and I would be locked away in my rooms in the east wing. After that, I refused to come visit him here again.”
“And your mother? Would she come here as well?”
“I do remember one summer when the three of us came here together. Although my mother found Greywick’s isolation advantageous on certain occasions, her friends, her social circle, were elsewhere.”
“Mmm.”
“When I was fifteen or sixteen, my father invited me to attend a party here.”
“And did you?”
“I did. I felt quite grown up. But it was no dinner party or ball. It was an orgy.”
“With prostitutes?”
“Not all of them, no.”
Her eyes lit up. “Who were they?”
“Mostly husbands and wives who enjoyed exchanging partners, enjoyed having more than one partner at a time, enjoyed looking on. And those who desired their own sex.”