FOUR
“That cow-handed, beef-witted . . . toad!” Sara said without preamble as she walked through the door into her aunt’s drawing room.
“Sara! Please, watch your language!” Her aunt placed the embroidery she had been stitching on the table next to her. A bright smile lit her face as Lord Alston entered the room behind Sara. “Hello, Justin.”
“Hello, Deanna.” Lord Alston gave a kiss to Lady Darlington’s outstretched hand.
Sara watched the interplay, still seething inside. Her anger at herself for being so weak still rankled. She was also still annoyed with the viscount for reprimanding her for riding in the middle of the road. What was even worse was that he was right.
But what right did he have to chastise her when he himself had been driving entirely too fast?
She did reluctantly admit to herself that he had been quite magnificent in the way he had averted disaster. But she was not about let him know how he had amazed her with his driving prowess, especially not after he had just felt her leg in the most intimate way. No, she had been absolutely right to be rude to him.
And she had been grateful for Lord Alston’s silence all the way home. He had not asked her the most obvious questions, perhaps knowing that he would learn everything once they had reached Darlington.
Now that they had done so, Sara allowed her anger to dominate all her other feelings.
Her aunt could probably sense her anger all the way across the room. “Sara, you are covered with dirt! What happened to you? And why, pray, are you cursing like a sailor?”
“What happened? That idiot viscount just nearly ran me over, that is what happened.” Sara forced herself to keep a calm tone of voice.
“Which idiot—er, which viscount? Justin?” Her aunt looked to Lord Alston for clarification and support.
“Was that the gentleman you met in Portsmouth?” Lord Alston asked Sara.
“Yes. It was the very same man.”
Lord Alston gave her aunt a very disturbed look.
“It wasn’t . . . ” she began.
Lord Alston gave her aunt an almost imperceptible nod.
Her aunt blanched and dropped back down onto her chair. “Can you tell us what happened, Sara?” she said quietly.
Sara looked from Lord Alston to her aunt. She could not help but wonder if her aunt was upset over her accident, or the man who had caused it.
“The man I met in Portsmouth just nearly ran me down with his curricle and pair,” she said, but without the same fire that she had felt when she first entered the room.
“He nearly ran you down? I do not understand,” her aunt said, still looking rather pale.
“Yes. He was driving much too fast around a turn in the road and nearly hit me. My horse threw me and then bolted. I do hope the horse returned here unharmed.”
“I shall check in the stables in a bit,” Alston offered.
“Thank you, Justin. Are you all right, Sara? Were you hurt? Shall I call for the doctor?”
“No. Thank you, Aunt. I am fine. Just tired and a little shaken,” Sara said, actually beginning to feel a bit better. She sat down at the edge of the sofa.
“Well, of course you are. And quite dirty too. You must go directly up to your room. I will send one of the maids up with a nice hot bath for you. It will be make you feel much more the thing.”
Sara nodded, knowing her aunt was right, but the thought of getting up again and climbing the stairs was not very appealing now that she had sat down.
Her aunt had turned to Lord Alston. “We must leave as soon as possible,” she said, her voice sharp with anxiety. “You know that we must leave at once.”
Lady Darlington stood, picked up her embroidery as if to leave with it, and then stopped and put it down again.
“Justin, you will accompany us, will you not? You promised you would escort us to London.” Lady Darlington moved to her friend and laid her hand gently on his arm. She looked up at him with a pleading expression in her eyes that was not difficult for Sara to see, and clearly impossible for Lord Alston to resist.
Alston placed his hand over hers and gave it a reassuring pat. “Yes, of course I will, Deanna. When do you think you could be ready to go?”
Relief showed in the way she stood back from him. “Two—no, three days. There is much to be done, but I think I can manage it in three days.”
“Very well. I will make the arrangements.”
“Thank you.” Lady Darlington held out her hand to her friend and smiled up at him as he took it. He allowed his lips to linger a moment as he kissed the back of her hand.
Sara felt that her presence had been forgotten, and although she found watching this touching scene fascinating, she thought she had best make her exit now before anything else happened. She had never witnessed such intimacy before and it made her a little uncomfortable.
“I . . . I believe I will go up for that bath now, Aunt Deanna. Thank you, sir, for bringing me back home. If you will excuse me?” She gave a quick curtsy and then walked from the room without looking back. She was sure that her aunt had been blushing delicately as she had walked by, but she had deliberately kept her eyes on the floor.
Sara sighed as Annie poured in yet another kettle full of hot water into her bath. The scent of her aunt’s floral soap and the rose water that Annie had added to her bath gave her a feeling of utter contentment. If only she could stay here and not think of anything else. But there were so many things for her to think and worry about. There was the viscount, Aunt Deanna’s reaction to hearing about him, Lord Alston’s meaningful exchange of looks with her aunt, and, most of all, the whole purpose of her being in England.
“Annie, we are going to be in trouble if I don’t act quickly,” Sara said, almost reluctantly.
“Why is that, Miss Sara?” Annie asked, soaping her mistress’s back.
“Aunt Deanna said we were to leave for London in only three days’ time. That means that I no longer have the leisure I had hoped to have to find out more about that rogue who owns Wyncort.” She slid under the water for a moment to rinse off the soap and wet her head so that Annie could wash her hair.
“I did find out today, from my aunt’s groom, that no one has lived there for the past ten years, aside from a caretaker and his wife.” She wiped the water and some soap from her eyes as Annie messaged the lemon hair tonic into her hair.
“So at least I won’t have to worry about running into that rogue. And the groom also told me that the caretakers have been notoriously lax, spending more time at the pub and their daughter’s house in town than they have at the estate.”
“Close your eyes,” Annie said as she dumped another kettle full of warm water on to Sara’s head. “I still don’t like it, Miss Sara. Why can’t you just find a nice man to marry, like your father said?”
“I will not marry for money, Annie. I simply will not do it,” Sara said, after she had wiped the water from her face once again. “Now I just need to get into that house.”
Annie sighed loudly. “You just won’t give up, will you, Miss Sara?”
Sara wrung the excess water from her waist-length hair, then took the towel Annie had had warming in front of the fire.
“No, Annie, I won’t. My entire future and that of my father rests on my getting into that house. How could you possibly expect me to give that up?”
The following morning, before her aunt could enlist her help with the packing, Sara went out riding. She was determined to at least see Wyncort, if not get inside before she left for London.
Following the directions given by her aunt’s groom, Sara rode around the newly planted fields of wheat and barley to reach the far end of the property. There, along the boundary between Darlington and Wyncort, lay the dense wood her father had written about in his darker moments. She had read her father’s stories of
“The deep, dark wood that would
ere swallow a man a night,
before spitting him out again
but only half a man for fear and fright.”
Sara had had nightmares after reading about this forest and now that she faced it, she could barely bring herself to enter it.
She stood in indecision, looking at the dark, forbidding trees that quickly thickened, giving no indication of where they might end. A light breeze ruffed through her hair and the morning sun was just beginning to dispel the cool of the night. She looked back behind her at the green open field of young plants and her aunt’s large yet stately house beyond. The well-manicured lawns that she had scoffed at only two days ago now seemed so warm and friendly in comparison to the ominous forest.
Sara squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and stepped forward into the wood. Following a faint path, she wound her way through the damp trees as quickly as possible. Everything was cool, dark, and still. Sara’s skin prickled at the silence, and yet she feared any sound.
A rustle nearby made Sara jump. Were there animals in the forest? She had not thought of that, but now she supposed that there were.
Sara stopped, now truly frightened. She half turned to go back to the safety of her aunt’s estate. No! She was not a coward. She turned back to the path resolutely and continued on toward Wyncort.
Sara had to concentrate on where she was walking. Bushes and young trees had grown and stretched across the path, making it difficult to keep to it. She could not afford to get lost, for if she did so, she knew that she could be winding her way through the forest for hours, if not the entire day. But if she just stayed on the path it would not be far to the other side.
She felt a sharp tug on her skirt and stopped suddenly, rigid with fear. Keeping her eyes on the ground, she turned around slowly—and saw that her dress had caught on a broken branch her feet had just skirted.
Sara breathed again. After carefully freeing her dress, she held her skirt up to an indelicate height so that she could proceed more easily. She desperately wanted to turn back and escape to the safe familiarity of her aunt’s estate. But, swallowing hard, she forced herself to go forward, deeper into the woods.
The semidarkness made the wood even more cold and menacing, knowing as she did that the sun was shining outside of the forest. Only here and there did rays of sunlight break through the trees, creating shafts of golden light. She moved as quickly as she could from one patch of light to the next.
The trees began to thin, the light grew stronger, and Sara could feel the chill that had seeped into her bones begin to recede. She quickened her step so that she was out of the forest and stepping onto a carpet of soft grass.
She stopped and took a deep breath. The thick sweet smell of roses filled her senses, as did the sense of relief at being finally out of the forest.
Following her nose, she walked through a break in a tall hedge, into an overgrown rose garden where roses of every shade of pink vied with each other for prominence. Despite the fact that they clearly had not been tended for some time, the roses continued to thrive, if a bit wildly.
Sara slowly walked through the garden, enjoying the nearly overwhelming scent of the flowers. Her grandparents had walked these paths, she thought, and her father had played here as a child. She could barely imagine her dearly beloved gray-haired papa as a young boy, and nearly laughed at her fanciful thoughts.
She took herself in hand after that, focusing her mind on the task at hand. She was here for a purpose, not just for a walk through a pretty garden, she reprimanded herself. She turned toward the house.
Wide white marble steps led to a large patio that stretched across the back of the house. At either end of the patio were two sets of double French doors.
Sara stopped and peered inside, cupping her hands around her eyes so that she could see into the darkened rooms. There was a long grand ballroom through one set of doors and what looked like a dining room or breakfast parlor through the other set.
She tried the handles of all the doors, but they were firmly locked. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised, but it was frustrating nonetheless. She was here at Wyncort, a place she had only dreamed of, and yet she could not get inside. She wished she had a more concrete plan or even had more time to make one. She turned to walk toward the side of the house, thinking that perhaps there would be an open window or side door somewhere, but just at that moment, a voice startled her.
“Hey, what are you doing there?” A large, roughly dressed man carrying an ax over his shoulder rounded the corner of the house and started toward her.
Sara turned and ran. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her through the rose garden and back into the wood. She made it through the forest in half the time it had taken her the first time, for she ran as if the devil himself were chasing her.
As she bolted out into the bright sunlight once more, she almost forgot that she had tethered her horse to a nearby tree. She came to a halt, panting and clutching at her side where it ached from running.
She was nearly positive that the man had not followed her into the wood, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She led her horse to a fallen log, mounted and then took off at a good pace for Darlington. She wondered if people could be hung for trespassing.