Chapter Two
P
Hampton House, Nottinghamshire
Arabella Hampton’s heart sank as she watched her aunt paw through her meager assortment of dresses, tossing most of them aside. “You will have no need of so many bright colors. A lady’s companion is meant to be quietly helpful, not the center of attention.”
None of the dresses would truly be considered attention-grabbing, but Arabella had to admit that the robin-egg-blue dress her aunt discarded did not match the image one usually conjured when thinking of a lady’s companion—somber, serene, sedate. Browns and grays and dark colors were likely best.
“Surely this green is subdued enough.” She held up a wool day dress. It would be warm when winter arrived, and the cut was flattering, a vain argument, perhaps, but a strong one. She felt so very unsure of herself in this new position and needed every bit of buoying she could muster.
Her aunt eyed the dress. “The neckline is a touch low.” She tossed the dress on the pile with the others that would not be making the journey with Arabella.
The bodice was so high not even her clavicle showed when she wore it.
Perhaps it was more daring than a companion was permitted.
She had not lived a life of luxury, being naught but a poor relation in her uncle’s house from the time she was seven years old, but being companion to a dowager countess was something different entirely.
Was it wrong of her to hope she would be permitted to wear a cheerful color now and then?
“Lady Lampton has given you an opportunity, Arabella. She could have chosen an experienced companion, one not in need of training or instruction. And though your youth will prove helpful in fetching things, I can only imagine she would have preferred the companionship of someone nearer her in age and, heavens, somewhere near her in birth. But she chose you, and you would do well to focus all your energy on making certain she does not regret that.”
Arabella was not unaware of her good fortune.
Truth be told, she was baffled by it. The position had been offered to her only a few days earlier, without preamble, without forewarning.
Lady Lampton had simply come and made the offer in a tone of unflinching authority.
Arabella’s aunt and uncle had managed little beyond an overawed, halting agreement.
Arabella had begun packing that very night.
Here was an unforeseen way out of the misery that had been life in her uncle’s home. His first wife had passed away many years earlier, bringing a bit of peace to Arabella’s life; however, the second Mrs. Hampton was very much like the first one had been.
Better even than escaping, Arabella would be living at Lampton Park, the nearest thing to heaven one could find on earth. She would spend her days amongst the Jonquil family, just as she used to imagine when she was a little girl.
The late earl had been the kindest man in all the world. He had never failed to greet her with the same deference he offered the daughters of the fine local families, though she could claim no real significance, an unwanted and neglected orphan in the care of an aunt and uncle who resented her.
Her earliest memory of the earl was clear, despite the passage of so many years.
Her parents had died not long before that day.
She had come to the churchyard to place a handful of wildflowers at their graveside but, not knowing how to read, could not find them.
Her grief had spilled over as the realization of how very lost they were to her became too much for her tiny heart to bear.
He had found her, had taken her in his strong and gentle arms, and had carried her to the place where her mother and father lay, holding her as she cried.
She had sought him out again and again after that, not realizing in her innocence how very presumptuous it was for her to monopolize the time and attention of an earl.
At times, she had simply sat beside him and cried; other times, she had told him of her day, of something interesting that had entered her thoughts.
He listened no matter the topic. He had held her, laughed with her, reassured her.
He had cared about her when no one else had, and she loved him for it.
“Are you paying any attention?” her aunt demanded, pulling her back to the present.
“I am sorry.”
With a tsk and a shake of her head, her aunt launched into a scold. “You are meant to be a help to the dowager. If you spend all your time woolgathering, she will quickly grow frustrated with you. You will find yourself without a position. Should that happen, do not think to return here.”
Arabella nodded. She would not prove a disappointment for all the world. “I do wish to do a good job, but I am not entirely certain how.”
“You do as you are told,” was the first instruction. “Do not make trouble. Do not draw attention to yourself nor forget that you are but the smallest step above a servant.”
Arabella nodded. That was not so very different from her place in this house, a role she had learned well over the past sixteen years.
“And do not give them reason to be ashamed of you,” her aunt added. “The Lampton title is old and respected, no matter that the current holder is a little odd. They are as far above you as the sky itself.”
Arabella nodded. How well she knew that truth.
She had once asked the earl if she could live with him and be part of his family.
Though he had not been unkind in his response, he had told her she could not.
“Family stays with family,” he had said gently.
He had not needed to elaborate. She was not his family.
She belonged where she was, and dreams of something better were just that . . . dreams.
“Good.” Her aunt pursed her thin lips. “We had best go through your adornments next.”
Arabella took out her small shell-covered box, a discarded container she had found behind Sarvol House when she’d gone scavenging at eight years old and in which she kept her few baubles.
As quickly and subtly as she could, she pulled from it a slender chain, on which hung a single glass bead.
She clutched it in her fist, hidden from view, and handed the box to her aunt.
Any of the rest of its contents could be denied her without causing pain, but that chain and bead meant the world to her.
Philip Jonquil, the oldest of the earl’s sons, had brought her the simple bit of jewelry shortly after his father’s death, having found it among his father’s things with a note indicating it was meant for her.
She had been but eleven years old. Her dear earl had not forgotten her, even in death.
She’d accepted the offering and wept, her heart breaking.
Philip, far too young to be bearing such a burden, had, like his father before him, put an arm around her and offered her his strength, comforting her in her grief even as he’d battled his own.
If only she had been permitted to be a part of that family.
Among them, she would never have been lonely or broken or forgotten.
But eleven years had passed, eleven years without her Lord Lampton, eleven years of loneliness and struggle.
She was now more than twice the age she had been when she’d received the necklace, the earl’s final act of kindness toward her, yet she felt the loss almost as acutely as she had then.
Her aunt dropped the shell box onto Arabella’s bed. “All of this will have to remain behind.”
Arabella clutched her treasure ever tighter, making absolutely certain it was entirely hidden.
“You will have four dresses and two gowns suitable for dinners or entertainments,” her aunt said. “No one will expect you to have jewels or fine hair combs.”
Leaving behind what few adornments she had and resigning herself to her most dowdy gowns was a small price to pay.
She would be away from her aunt and uncle and the misery they inflicted.
Better still, she would be among the Jonquil family, walking the corridors where her dear Lord Lampton had spent his days.
Being there, even as a companion rather than an honorary daughter as she’d once dreamed of being, would help fill the void she’d felt all her life.
In Lampton Park, she might at last find home.
q
Arabella’s heart sped as the carriage traveled the manicured drive to the front portico of the Lampton Park manor house.
The regal prospect, park land stretching out in all directions, the imposing facade of the grand home, and the stately trees placed at deliberate intervals all declared to new arrivals that this was the seat of an important family.
Only a very naive, very lonely little girl would ever believe such a place could be her home simply by asking for it to be.
But it will be now. In a sense. She would be living there, and that would be enough.
Arabella, along with her uncle and aunt, was ushered inside directly to a sitting room where the dowager countess, the late earl’s widow, clad, as always, in unrelieved black, received them. Bows and curtsies were exchanged.
“What a pleasure—” Aunt Hampton began.
“I will not keep you,” the dowager said. “Your niece and I are perfectly capable of sorting everything on our own.”
Aunt and Uncle Hampton could do nothing but accept their dismissal. To argue would be to imply that the dowager was not, in fact, capable of seeing to the business at hand.
Quick as that, Arabella was free of the two people who had controlled every aspect of her life for years. She stood a moment in shock. No matter that she was a grown woman; she’d never been granted any true freedom. She hardly knew what to think.
“I am so pleased you are here.” The dowager took her hands and squeezed her fingers.
“You are?”