Plodding along at two or three miles an hour gave Jonathan ample time to think. And his thoughts centred around Louise Vail.
She was an extraordinary woman. He had no idea why she had left home and assumed that foolish disguise. He had expected to have found that out long before now, to have exposed the girl for what she was and marched her back home to be chastised by her papa. Instead all he had learned was that she could use a sword, play whist and had the courage of a lion—and, rather than exposing her, he was going along with the game she was playing.
The trouble was he did not think it was a game; at the back of it all was something deadly serious. Courage she might have in abundance, but she was also afraid. He had seen it in her lovely eyes. He could not wait to get back to her and then, by hook or by crook, he would have it out of her.
Born in Singapore, Mary Nichols came to England when she was three, and has spent most of her life in different parts of East Anglia. She has been a radiographer, school secretary, information officer and industrial editor, as well as a writer. She has three grown-up children, and four grandchildren.
Recent novels by the same author:
RAGS-TO-RICHES BRIDE
THE EARL AND THE HOYDEN
CLAIMING THE ASHBROOKE HEIR
(part of The Secret Baby Bargain)
HONOURABLE DOCTOR,
IMPROPER ARRANGEMENT
THE CAPTAIN’S MYSTERIOUS LADY*
* Part of The Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club mini-series
The Viscount’s Unconventional Bride
Mary Nichols
Chapter One
May 1760
The Vicarage garden, though not large, was a haven of tranquillity. Its flower beds were bright with the colour of hollyhocks, sunflowers, larkspur and feverfew and redolent of the scent of roses, lavender and pinks. Louise had always loved it and, even as a small girl, she had enjoyed helping the gardener with sowing seeds and nurturing the plants. The old gardener was gone now, replaced by young Alfred Rayment, but she still liked to tend the garden and was never happier than when she was on her knees, clad in a plain round gown covered with a sacking apron, weeding or picking off the dead blooms.
Today was warm and sunny after a little rain the day before, and she had decided it was time to tackle the weeds in the narrow bed beneath her father’s study window. She had been working contentedly for some time when she heard voices through the open window.
‘Elizabeth, Louise will have to be told. She is no longer a child, she is a woman grown and old enough to understand.’ Louise clearly heard her father’s words, wondering what it was that occasioned them. He sounded unusually grim. Had she breached his strict code of conduct? Had she whispered to her brother Luke during his sermon on Sunday? Had he seen her riding astride which he did not consider at all ladylike? But if that had been the case, he would have summoned her to the study and rung a peal over her. She had never been in awe of him and could usually wind him round her thumb, so she would have been penitent and he would have smiled and forgiven her before letting her go. On so trivial a matter, he would not have had a discussion with her mother beforehand.
‘No.’ This was her mother’s voice, unusually resolute for her. ‘We left Moresdale to escape the past, to make a new beginning and I do not see why we should rake it up again now.’
‘My dear, I know it is distressing for you and will be for her, but she will soon recover. It is not as if we are rejecting her, or that we have ceased to love her, but she will want to marry soon and the gentleman she chooses will have to be told the truth.’
Louise had ceased to pull up the weeds; she was sitting back on her heels, her weeding fork idle in her gloved hand, trying desperately to understand what was being said, hardly daring to breathe for fear of betraying her presence. That they were speaking of her, she had no doubt, but the words they were uttering were incomprehensible. What truth? What past did they need to escape from? She had a vague recollection of moving to Chipping Barnet when she was very small, but her memory of where they had lived before that was hazy.
‘But why say anything at all?’ her mother asked.
‘Because it would be fraudulent for her to enter into a marriage with such a secret and aside from that, there is always the possibility of someone discovering it and telling her prospective husband. That would not do at all, you must see that. It would be despicable of us to allow him to learn it through a third party.’
‘Who will discover it? No one knows but you and I…’
‘And Catherine,’ he reminded her.
‘Catherine will never breathe a word about it. It is more than she dare do.’
‘Surely you do not think she has managed to keep it a secret from her husband all these years? Augustus Fellowes is no fool; he would likely know if Catherine was hiding something from him. And there may be others. I was not present when Louise was born and neither were you, so how do you know no one else knows?’
Louise put her hand over her mouth to stop her cry of distress becoming audible. How could he say her mother was not present at her birth? It was nonsense. Unless…Unless…Oh, no! She would not, could not, believe that, but her mother’s next words confirmed her worst fear.
‘She has been so happy with us, to learn her parents are not really her parents at all will break her heart,’ she was saying. ‘I may not have given her birth, but I am as real as any mother. My feelings for her are the feelings of a mother. I am happy when she is happy, sad when she is sad, hurt when she is hurt, and this will undoubtedly hurt her. I don’t know how you can even think of doing it to her.’
A cool wind played about Louise’s hair, but it was not cold that made her shiver, but shock. She could hardly take it in. Papa, the man who had nurtured her from babyhood, praised her when she had been good, chided her when naughty, given her an education, clothed and fed her, loved her, was not her papa at all. And Mama, to whom she had turned with all her problems, which had somehow always been miraculously solved, was not her mama. It must also mean Matthew, Mark and Luke were not her brothers. They were older than she was. Did they know the truth, that she was…Who was she?
‘Elizabeth, I am a man of the cloth,’ her father went on. ‘I am supposed to set an example of honesty and rectitude, but, for your sake, I have harboured this secret all these years, but my conscience will not allow me to let her marry in ignorance. She could marry a nobleman…’ He wandered further from the window and Louise did not hear the end of his sentence.
‘Oh, Edward, she was never so puffed up as to hope for that. It was only
