A Stranger at Castonbury

chapterr Sixteen

‘It is very kind of you to give me a ride into Buxton again, Lady Phaedra,’ Catalina said as the carriage bounced down the road out of Castonbury. She had got up very early that morning, knowing that Phaedra was going on another horse-bound errand. She had to talk to Alicia again, alone this time.

‘Not at all,’ Phaedra answered. ‘I am glad of the company, Mrs Moreno, especially since Lily is taking Miss Westman to visit her grandmother, Mrs Lovell, today. Though I am rather surprised you had an errand into town again so soon.’

‘I have a friend there I must call on,’ Catalina said.

‘Indeed? A friend?’ Phaedra arched her brow, and for an instant she looked so very much like Jamie in his sceptical moments. ‘You know, Mrs Moreno, you are most intriguing.’

Catalina laughed in surprise. ‘Intriguing? Me? No, I assure you, I am very dull.’

‘Just the chaperone who keeps to the background?’ Phaedra shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I think there is much more to you than that.’

‘There is not,’ Catalina said, wishing the Montagues were not so very observant. She wanted to be in the background. She wanted not to leave any mark on Castonbury.

‘Everyone thinks I see only my horses, but that is not true,’ Phaedra said. ‘And I know my brother Jamie finds you intriguing as well.’

‘Now that cannot be true,’ Catalina protested.

‘Why ever not? You are very pretty. Why should he not watch you?’ Phaedra turned her head to stare silently out of the window for a moment. When she spoke again, it was almost wistful. ‘I fear Jamie was a lonely man, even before he left for Spain. Being the heir, having so many expectations on one’s shoulders, will do that, I suppose. But since he came home—I don’t know. He seems in such pain. None of us can really reach him.’

She suddenly turned back to Catalina, her eyes solemn and direct. ‘But when he looks at you, he smiles.’

Catalina closed her eyes against the pierce of hope and fear. She wanted so much to confess everything to Phaedra, but she knew she could not. ‘He seems a very good man, Lady Phaedra. And—and he makes me smile as well. But I know he needs a different sort of wife than I could be. A proper English duchess.’

‘Truly?’ Phaedra cried. ‘Oh, Mrs Moreno, you must know so little of our family. We never do anything in a “proper English” way. My sister Kate had a disastrous Season, and now she is married to a black man, a former American slave, and living in Boston. I had no Season at all, and you see how I live. Giles is marrying Lily, whose grandmother is a Gypsy and is welcome at our house. And Harry’s Elena is Spanish, just as you are. Not to mention my father’s illegitimate daughter.’

Catalina had to laugh at such a litany of scandal. It did make her fears sound small indeed. A product of growing up in a place where she never felt she really belonged. ‘When you put it like that...’

Phaedra nodded. ‘Jamie needs someone who can help him with the huge task of rebuilding and running Castonbury. Who can make him not brood so very much. Who can make him happy, as the rest of us are happy in our marriages. I don’t know at all if that is you, but—well, if you like my brother, I hope you might give him a chance. He is a good man. That is all.’

Catalina nodded as she thought of what Phaedra had said, all the implications of those seemingly simple words that were not really so simple at all. ‘You have given me so much to think about, Lady Phaedra.’

‘Good. Then I can stop being interfering. It doesn’t suit me so well, I fear.’ The carriage slowed as it came into town and Phaedra glanced out of the window again. ‘Shall I drop you outside the Assembly Rooms?’

‘Yes, that would do well, thank you.’ Once Catalina was alone on the walkway, watching the carriage roll away, she knew that what Phaedra had said was true. She had spent too long dwelling on reasons why she and Jamie should not be together. Yet what if there were reasons why they should be?

But first she had to be rid of the pernicious Webster. She looped her reticule closer about her wrist and turned towards Alicia’s house. She glimpsed Alicia’s pale face at one of the upstairs windows, but she quickly vanished when Catalina knocked at the door.

‘Mrs Moreno,’ she said, her voice full of surprise as she opened the door. ‘How nice to see you again so soon.’

‘I hope I am not calling at an inconvenient time,’ Catalina said.

‘Not at all. Please, do come in.’ Alicia led her to the sitting room, where sewing things littered the table. She quickly swept them into their box. ‘I’m afraid the maid is out, but I could probably make some tea.’

‘No, please don’t go to the trouble. I won’t stay long,’ Catalina said. ‘Is your son here?’

‘He is with my neighbour for the afternoon.’

‘Has there been any trouble?’

Alicia shook her head. ‘No, nothing at all. Crispin just likes to visit her, she is so kind to him. I begin to hope Webster has gone from here, after all.’

‘That is not terribly likely, is it?’ Catalina said. ‘He has lost so much. If he is at all the same as he was in Spain, I doubt he would ever go so quietly.’

‘I fear you are right,’ Alicia said with a sigh. ‘I was a fool for ever listening to him for a moment. But I was so desperate....’

‘There was never a chance Jamie was your child’s father, was there?’ Catalina said quietly. She knew there was not, yet somehow she felt compelled to say it aloud. To have everything out in the open.

Alicia squeezed her eyes closed as her cheeks slowly turned red. ‘No, of course not. He never looked at anyone but you in Spain, Mrs Moreno. I—well, I envied that way he would watch you whenever you were nearby. As if there was no one else in the world at all. But he was never anything but kind to me, as were you. You never deserved what we did, Webster and me. Not at all.’

She pushed herself to her feet and went to look out the window at the street below. ‘Crispin’s father was Colonel Chambers.’

‘Chambers?’ Catalina exclaimed. ‘He was your lover?’

‘Yes,’ Alicia said miserably. ‘He was kind to me as well. He liked to talk to me, as his wife had no time to listen to him at all. I was so very lonely, you see.’

Catalina nodded. She did see. She, too, had felt that terrible, cold sense of being alone in the world—when she had lost Jamie. When she thought he was gone for ever and there could never be understanding between them.

‘I did not know I was pregnant until after he died,’ Alicia went on. ‘And of course Mrs Chambers dismissed me. I didn’t know how to take care of myself and my child, or even how to get home.’

‘And that’s when Webster approached you,’ Catalina said.

‘Yes. I was sure I had no choice, I—all I can do now is say I am sorry. I can never make it up to Lord Hatherton and his family. I can only hope to...’

Suddenly there was the sound of glass shattering from somewhere in the house. Alicia’s head whipped around, and Catalina jumped up from her chair.

‘I thought you said your maid was gone?’ she said.

‘She is. Whatever could that be? This is such a quiet neighbourhood.’ Alicia hurried to the door, and before Catalina could shout at her to stop, to lock it, she swung it open.

Everything happened in a swift, violent blur. Alicia had barely opened the door halfway when a large man shouldered it open hard, knocking her to the floor. He grabbed Catalina hard around the waist as she screamed. He clapped his gloved hand hard to her mouth, and she had a quick glimpse of blond hair and even features.

It was the footman from Castonbury, the one who had given her Jamie’s note.

She heard someone else rush into the room, and the footman pressed his hand even harder to her mouth. She could hardly breathe, but the raw fear made her fight like a wild beast. She kicked at him through her skirts, ruing the fact that she wore delicate kid half-boots. She twisted her head to bite his hand.

‘Crazy bitch,’ the man shouted. He lifted her up and forced her down onto the floor on her stomach.

‘There was only supposed to be the one,’ Catalina heard Webster say as she struggled to be free. There was a sickening crack when Webster slapped Alicia and she cried out. ‘But this is even better. Hatherton is sure to come after the Spanish bitch. I knew something was up when I saw her at Castonbury.’

Catalina kicked back again, struggling to break the man’s painful hold. The next thing she felt was a sharp, heavy pain quick against the back of her head. There was a shower of light behind her eyes, a strange stickiness on her skin. She thought she heard a scream coming from a long way away.

Then nothing.