Love's Tangle Read online

  She delivered their handiwork on the stroke of ten and stood idling for a while in the kitchen. Her fellow servants were in high spirits and ready to talk, knowing they would be free of ringing bells for at least four hours. Only two ladies were staying behind and they had ordered refreshments to be taken to the small front parlor. They were on their way there now, armed with copies of La Belle Assemblée. Tea and chatter would keep them company. The parlor was situated at the very end of one of the building’s wings and therefore as distant from the study as Elinor could hope.

  ****

  It was well before noon when she heard the crunch of horses on gravel as a large body of riders made its way to the main gate. She had been scrubbing the ironwork tables and chairs on the small terrace outside the dairy and listened intently as the sound of hooves gradually faded. She forced herself to wait for several minutes before stepping inside, her pulse beginning to tumble at the thought of what she was about to do. “Martha, I forgot to mention that while I was at the house, Chef asked me to deliver the rest of the cream earlier today.”

  Martha looked nonplussed. “But ’e don’t like it till near dinner time. Else it goes orf.”

  “He surprised me too,” she lied glibly, “but he was quite adamant. I believe he is trying out a new kind of dessert and the cream has to be mixed in at an early stage.”

  The older woman shrugged her bony shoulders irritably. “If yer must go, but don’t be long.”

  Elinor snatched up the two containers they had recently filled and almost ran out of the dairy. She had no idea what Chef would say when presented with cream far in advance of his needs but hopefully by then she would be out of earshot. She dropped the cream into the kitchen, making sure it was not easily visible, and then found the small passage she had wandered into by mistake on her second evening at Allingham. She was in the stone-flagged Great Hall. A temporary hush had descended on the house as it did every day at this time. Half the servants’ work had been done and there was a brief rest before they began again on the hours of toil that still awaited them. She darted across the hall, deliberately avoiding the beak-like stares of Gabriel’s ancestors, and carefully tried the door to the study. The handle turned easily. Slipping inside, she closed the door very, very quietly. The room faced towards the rear of the house looking out on a vista of rolling lawns, a lake with a fountain at its center and to the right a well-tended rose garden. Beyond the Capability Brown inspired hills and hollows stretched pasture land and grazing cattle. Of human beings there was not a sign.

  She would have to work fast but this time she was unencumbered by candlelight, the sun shining broadly through large casements and illuminating every corner of the room. A couple of mahogany cabinets were positioned against the wall while a modest bookcase took up another and several small tables and a scattering of easy chairs were dotted here and there. She was surprised to think this was Gabriel’s study. It was a room devoid of his presence, a room in fact from which all personality had fled. It was also disconcertingly tidy and if there were papers here, they had been stored well out of sight. The cabinets offered an invitation but there was one other piece of furniture that dominated the room: a large desk sat in the window enclave and looked outwards to the demesne beyond. This was where she would start.

  She was in luck. The drawers were unlocked. She opened them one by one and skimmed their contents: discarded pens, old envelopes, several visiting cards and a few crumpled bills which appeared to have lain there forever. Nothing of any interest. One drawer left, positioned at the side of the desk rather than the front, and it appeared to be locked. She felt a rising excitement. She had seen a key in the first drawer she’d opened and with fumbling hands fitted it to the lock. It turned easily. That cannot be right. And it wasn’t. The drawer was completely empty and why it had been locked was a mystery. A hurried glance around. Should she move on to the mahogany cabinets? But no, this desk held the clues she sought although she could not see how. She tipped out the contents of the pen container but all she found was a collection of battered quills. She turned the blotter upside down but it remained disappointingly intact. She felt beneath the desk rim for a possible secret drawer. Not a creak or a grind of hinges. Disgusted, she was about to give up on the desk and begin on the rest of the room when her foot accidentally caught in one of its carved legs. There was a sharp click and a small compartment shot out from inside of the desk’s writing surface, from what she had taken to be a simple leather inlay.

  Her face grew pink with anticipation. There was a secret drawer! Might there also be secret papers? But when she eagerly pulled out the compartment to its fullest extent, not a scrap was to be seen. She jiggled the drawer urgently and a slight metallic sound answered. A silver object curled into a small heap, slid to the front of the drawer. Carefully she drew it out and laid it on her palm. Her heart almost stopped as she realized what she was staring at—a locket or rather one half of a locket on a broken chain and inside a beautifully executed miniature of a young man, fresh faced and blue eyed. She studied the face intently, looked and looked again as though by sheer looking she could draw out his very spirit and urge him to speak. It was the mirror image of the broken locket she carried on her person. But how could that be? The soft movement of a door sounded behind her but so caught up was she in a confusing whirl of thoughts that she heard nothing.

  Then a voice, slicing through the air. “And what precisely do you think you’re doing?”

  Gabriel stood in the doorway, his riding dress muddied and torn, his whip still in his hand. She whirled around, her back shielding the nakedness of the open drawer and her hand closing over the locket.

  “Mrs. Lucas asked me to deliver a message,” she improvised.

  “And since when has my housekeeper found it necessary to employ a dairymaid as messenger?”

  She was struck dumb. “You are silent. Now why is that?” All trace of geniality had vanished and she felt her soul wither. “But let us presume for one moment that Mrs. Lucas has been so unseemly as to send you here—where is the message?”

  Her mind was ragged. Bewildered by what she had found, she needed time to think. In desperation she cast around for a new pretext but before she could find the words, he had raised his hand to silence her.

  “Spare me the lies, Nell! I have continued to trust you despite your questionable conduct but I can see that I have been mistaken. Today I find you in my private room, your hands in my desk, a blatant trespasser once more.”

  His chill glance swept her figure and unnervingly came to rest on the tell-tale closed hand. “And a thief, it seems.”

  He was standing so close that she could see every fleeting emotion and his expression did not bode well. He wrenched her hand open and the locket fell to the ground. When he bent to pick up the miniature, she thought his brow furrowed as he scooped it from the floor.

  “I trust you have a valid reason for stealing my jewelry.” His voice was the thinnest and sharpest of steel. “You had better explain yourself—and start now!”

  Elinor felt anger flicker within her and slowly gather pace. She had been right to think there was a mystery attached to Allingham—the matching lockets proved that. The truth, whatever it was, must have meaning for her but it had been deliberately hidden. She drew herself up to her full height and when she spoke her voice was as cold as his. “It is you, Your Grace, who needs to explain. How has this miniature come into your possession?”

  “What the devil! Why should it not be in my possession? You found it in my study, in my desk, and it is an image of my uncle.”

  “Your uncle?” she faltered, her certainty deserting her. The miniature bore so little resemblance to the forbidding portrait in the Great Hall that she had felt not a flicker of recognition.

  “What has that to say to anything?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t understand.”

  “You are not alone, Nell Milford. What I do understand is that you are unruly, disobedient and guilty of the
most brazen transgression. If you stay in my employ, which I doubt, you will be punished severely. Now leave.”

  “I cannot, Your Grace. Not until I know. You have been withholding a secret that matters dearly to me. Why have you not been honest?”

  “What the deuce are you talking about?” The arctic glare had been replaced by an irritated frown.

  “I cannot believe you had no knowledge of this locket and no understanding of its meaning. In your own words—tell me the truth and spare me the lies!”

  “Is this to be a Banbury story? Speak plainly and be warned that those who set out to gull me have a habit of coming off very much the worst.” The glare was back but Elinor knew no fear.

  “I am convinced the half locket in your hand holds the clue to my mother’s past and perhaps to my own identity.”

  “What nonsense is this? What connection can there be between an image of my uncle and a dairymaid?”

  “I am no dairymaid.”

  “You’re certainly no dairymaid that I’ve ever come across.”

  His natural good humor was beginning to undermine his wrath. Then he remembered her crime. “If you think to bamboozle me with this silly tale straight out of a romance—oh, but you don’t read them do you? If you think to hoodwink me, you will not succeed. I have never seen this miniature before and even if I had, what has it to do with you?”

  In answer she drew one half of a silver locket and chain from the depths of her pocket and placed it on the desk. “I think it has much to do with me. See, Your Grace, I have the matching portrait.”

  He gazed at the beautiful young woman depicted. The miniature was intricately wrought and faithful in every detail. It was an answering image of the locket Elinor had taken from the desk. He looked up. The cloud of dark hair and the misty green eyes of the painting were right there before him.

  “Who is this and why do you have it?” She knew he must already have the answer.

  “It is a picture of my mother and is the sole remembrance I have of her.” And suddenly the fortune teller’s words came flooding back. This was the woman she had been describing, the woman from over the sea, the woman Elinor was to save. Her own mother!

  “Your mother? What has she to do with this?”

  “She was a painter and specialized in miniatures. I believe she painted this image of herself and the one of your uncle.”

  “Then your mother was commissioned by my Uncle Charles? Is that what you’re saying?”

  She smiled at his simplicity. “Not exactly. The two halves of the locket belong together—see here.” And she slotted the small hinges one into the other without hindrance. “The strands of each chain fit together too.”

  He was frowning hard and she continued. “These are matching portraits. I think they must have been painted by one lover for another.”

  “That is ridiculous. What you’re suggesting is insane. My uncle’s wife was a Louisa Lovejoy and she stills lives—more’s the pity.”

  So there was no death or divorce, Elinor thought, remembering the fiercely scratched out name in the family bible. But a repudiation, a banishment? “I wasn’t talking about marriage,” she managed with difficulty.

  “An affair?” He was nothing if not candid. “Uncle Charles was whiter than white, but even if he had enjoyed a youthful dalliance with a stray artist, what has it to do with you?”

  His description of her mother hurt but she was too flustered to respond. The duke had hit on the very question she was struggling to answer.

  “There was a scandal, I believe,” she said falteringly. “A scandal that involved my mother. My father, too, perhaps.”

  “You divine all this from a broken locket?”

  Elinor refused to be deflected. “On her deathbed my mother urged me to come here. Why would she do so, if she had no connection to this place?”

  “You were to come here?”

  “To Allingham,” she said firmly. “And seek out one who would help me, one who was rich and powerful. That could only be your uncle.”

  He stared blankly at her and she pushed her advantage. “He is the one my mother spoke of. He has to be. Eighteen years ago he was the only young man living here—the family Bible makes that clear.”

  “So that was the reason you were poking and prying in the library,” he said bullishly. “And I was almost taken in by Cicero!”

  “I had to know why my mother was so desperate for me to come to Allingham. I owed it to her.”

  “All you know,” he said flatly, “is that at some time in the past your mother painted my uncle.”

  “You have forgotten the nature of the portraits. They are painted in matching style and form two halves of a complete locket. It is the kind of object lovers exchange with each other. The locket has not been broken but deliberately sundered, so that each lover might keep their sweetheart’s image close to them.”

  A look of derision crossed his face. “Most affecting but highly unlikely. It is pure speculation, in fact wild speculation. Tell me this, if there had been such a love affair, where does your father fit in?”

  “I have no idea,” she said miserably. “I cannot even tell you his name.”

  The duke gaped. “You do not know your father’s name?”

  “My mother would never speak of him. She was adamant I need never know. All I learned was that she arrived in Bath alone and that I was born months later.”

  He was shaking his head in disbelief but Elinor would not let the moment slip. “Please help me, Your Grace, help me uncover the past.”

  “I cannot imagine why you think to do so here.”

  “Somewhere in this great sprawl of a mansion, there must be papers—your uncle’s personal papers—and they might shed light on what happened all those years ago. They might even tell me if I have a father living.”

  She could see her words had hit home. After some minutes he said slowly, “I accept this is a matter of great import to you and because of that, I am willing to forget your trespass. But what you ask is impossible.”

  “Why impossible? Is it that you do not believe my mother and your uncle were lovers?”

  “It matters not what I believe. There may even be some truth in what you say, for as a child I seem to recall some kind of scandal being whispered about. But I never knew the details and we are unlikely to discover them at this remove.”

  “It is surely worth trying. For all my nineteen years I have been left ignorant of my true history.”

  A tear was slowly making its way down one pale cheek and despite his disbelief, Gabriel could not remain indifferent.

  “Do you not think,” he said gently, “that if there were such secrets as you suggest, they would have been well and truly swept beneath the carpet. There will be nothing to find.”

  “I must try.”

  “And if there is nothing?”

  “Then I must accept I will never know the truth.”

  He began to pace up and down the study floor as though continual movement would clear the mists clouding his mind.

  A disapproving tut made him stop and glare at her. “What?”

  “Your feet. You are making the carpet filthy and it will take the housemaid hours to clean it.”

  “Forgive me. For the moment I had forgot you are one of my servants,” he said acidly.

  “Why are you home at this time?”

  He looked at her in astonishment. A moment ago she had been threatened with instant dismissal, yet here she was daring to challenge him. Anger battled with laughter and laughter won. “Nell Milford, you are incorrigible.”

  “And…”

  “And my horse is lame. I should not have taken her out. I thought there was a problem yesterday but I ignored it in my arrogant, aristocratic way. I was forced to turn back at the second field. Unluckily for you.”

  “Luckily for me. You are going to help, aren’t you?”

  He looked at the lovely young face so close to his and capitulated. “Where are we supposed to start this ri
diculous search of yours?”

  “Your Uncle Charles must have kept records that were personal to him.”

  “He might have done, I have no idea.”

  “His death was sudden, I believe,” she said thoughtfully, “so he would not have had the chance to destroy sensitive papers.”

  “If there were any such, Joffey would have seen to them after my uncle’s funeral. I found nothing in this room.”

  “The bailiff would not have destroyed them, not without permission.” Her voice had become certain. “So where could he have stored them?”

  “The cellars most like. There’s a large storeroom next to the winery and Charles had his own key to it. God knows what’s in there, apart from the rats, that is.”

  He saw her shudder. “Not so brave now? Want to give up the whole foolish project?”

  “No.” Her voice was unwavering. “I haven’t traveled this far to be deterred by a few rats.”

  “Not even an army of them? Big, fat, sleek rats running and diving and nipping where they like.”

  She was laughing now but her face was alight with excitement. “Not even an army of them.”

  “If you’re that committed, we had better do it. But I don’t want anyone else to know. I have no intention of creating a fuss for no reason and I certainly don’t wish to be caught in the cellar with my dairymaid! If this is all a hum—and I’m sure it is—the fewer people that know about it the better. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” she agreed meekly.

  “My guests leave in the morning. I was to travel with them but I shall invent some excuse. Once the household is abed tomorrow night, we will make a search. Wrap up warmly, the cellars are cold even in June.”

  “There will be just the two of us?”

  “Who else were you thinking of inviting to this charade?” She had no answer and he repeated with some enjoyment, “Just the two of us.”

  “And is it really necessary that we search at night?”

  “Why, whatever is the matter, Mistress Nell? You can brave the rats, but not me?”