Christmas Betrothals. Sophia James

refreshment table, and because of it, the invite was even the more clandestine. Real. A measure taken to transport her from this place to another one.

      An interruption by the Countess of Horsham meant that she could not answer him, and when he excused himself from their company she let him go, fixing her glance upon the tasteless biscuit on her plate.

      Alice watched him, however, and the smile on her lips was unwelcome. ‘I had heard you witnessed the fellow in a contretemps the other evening? Do you know him, Lillian, know anything of his family and his living?’

      ‘Just a little. He is a good friend of the Earl of St Auburn.’

      ‘Indeed. There are other rumours that I have heard, too. It seems he may have inherited a substantial property on the death of his wife. Some say he is here to collect that inheritance and leave again, more gold for his gambling habit and the fracas with your cousin still unresolved. Less kind folks would say that he killed the woman to get the property and that his many children out of wedlock are installed in the place.’

      ‘Are you warning me, Countess?

      ‘Do I need to, Lillian?’

      ‘No.’ She bit down on the lemon biscuit and washed away the dryness with chilled tea, the taste combined as bitter as the realisation that she was being watched. And watched carefully.

      Of course she could not go to Kent even if she had wanted to. Pretending a headache, she excused herself from the Countess’s company, and went to find her aunt.

      Luc saw her leave, the ball still having at least an hour left and the promised last dance turning to dust. The Countess of Horsham’s husband was a man he had met at the card tables and a gossip of the first order. Lord, the tale of his own poor reputation had probably reached Lillian and he doubted that she would countenance such a lack of morals. Perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps the ‘very good’ had a God-given inbuilt mechanism of protection that fended off people like him, a celestial safeguard that separated the chaff from the wheat.

      When the oldest Parker sister obstructed his passage on the pretext of claiming him in the next dance, he made himself smile as he escorted the girl on to the floor.

      Once home Lillian checked the week’s invitations scattered on the hall table. When she found none from the Earl of St Auburn, she relaxed. No problem to mull over and dither about, no temptation to answer in the affirmative and have her heart broken completely. She remembered her last sight of Lucas Clairmont flirting with the pretty Parker heiress she had seen him with earlier in the evening, the same smile he had bequeathed her wide across his face.

      On gaining her room, she snatched the stupid orange pyracanthus from the vase near her bed and threw it into the fire burning brightly in the grate. A few of the berries fell off in their flight, and she picked them up, squeezing them angrily and liking the way the juice of blushed red stained her hand.

      She would invite Wilcox-Rice to call on her tomorrow and make an effort to show some kindness. Such an act would please her father and allay the fears of her aunt who had regaled her all the way home on the ills of marrying improperly and the ruin that could follow.

      Lillian wondered how much her father had told his only sister about the downfall of his wife and was glad, at least, that Aunt Jean had had the sense not to mention any such knowledge to her. Indeed, she needed to regain her balance, her equanimity and her tranquil demeanour and to do that she needed to stay well away from Lucas Clairmont.

       Chapter Five

      Woodruff Abbey, in Bedfordshire, was old, a house constructed in the days when the classical lines of architecture had been in their heyday, early seventeenth century or late sixteenth. Now it just looked tired, the colonnades in the portico chipped and rough and numerous windows boarded in places, as though the glass had been broken and was not able to be repaired. The thought puzzled him—the income of this place was well able to cover expenses towards the upkeep and day-to-day running, according to Thackeray, his lawyer. Why then had it been left to look so rundown?

      At the front door he stopped and looked at the garden stretching from the house to the parkland below and the polluted business of London seemed far away. Breathing in, he smiled, and the tense anger of the past few years seemed to recede a bit, the faded elegance of the Abbey soothing in its dishevelled beauty.

      The door was suddenly pulled open and a man stood there. An old man, whose hat was placed low upon his head and whose eyes held the rheumy glare of one who could in truth barely see.

      ‘May I be of assistance, sir?’ His cultured voice was surprising.

      ‘I am Lucas Clairmont. I hope that Mr Thackeray has sent you word of my coming.’

      ‘The lawyer? Clairmont? Lord! You are here already?’

      ‘I am.’ Luc waited. The man did not move from his place in the middle of the doorway, his knuckles clutching white at the lintel as though he might fall.

      ‘The Mr Clairmont from America?’

      ‘Indeed.’ He bit back a smile. Was he going to be invited into his own house or not?

      ‘Who is there, Jack? Who is at the door? Tell them that we need nothing.’

      A woman appeared behind him, a woman every bit as old as he was, her shawl wrapped tightly across a thin frame, spectacles balancing on her nose.

      ‘It is Mr Clairmont, Lizzie. Mr Clairmont, this is my wife, Mrs Poole’

      Her eyes widened behind the glasses and the frown that had been there when he first saw her thickened.

      ‘We had word, of course, but we had not thought …’

      Her words petered out as she stood beside her husband, both of them now looking across at his person as if they could not quite believe he was there.

      ‘May I come in?’

      The request sent them into a whirl of activity and as the door was thrown wide open they stepped back.

      The wide central portico was open to the roof, and the oversized windows let in a generous amount of light. He noticed that the floors were well scrubbed and that the banisters and woodwork had been polished until they shone. Not an unloved house, then, but one strapped by the lack of cash.

      ‘We are Jack and Lizzie Poole, sir,’ the woman said once the door was again fastened, ‘and we have served this estate for nigh on a century between us.’

      Luc nodded, easily believing the length of time stated.

      ‘And where are the other servants who help you?’

      ‘Other servants, sir?’ Puzzlement showed on their brows.

      ‘The cook and the governess, the maids and the grooms. Where are they?’

      ‘It’s only us, sir, and it has been for a very long time.’

      ‘But there are children here?’

      Both their eyes lit up. ‘Indeed there are. Miss Charity and Miss Hope and good girls they are at that.’

      ‘Who teaches them, then? Who sees to their lessons?’

      ‘There is nobody else.’

      ‘So I am to understand that it is just you and the two girls who live here and have done so for some months?’

      ‘Almost twelve months, sir, since the money stopped coming and they all up and left! Not us though, we could not stand around and see the wee ones homeless.’

      Luc took in a breath and he swore he would visit Thackeray the instant he returned to town in order to get to the bottom of just where the funds had gone.

      ‘Where are the children? Could they be brought down?’

      ‘Down, sir?’

      ‘From the nursery?’

      ‘Oh, goodness gracious, they are