Chapter 6
“The night isn’t over yet,” Lucy said with a wan smile of encouragement. “You could still find true love.”
“Or utter disgrace.”
Lucy turned resolutely. “That’s it. I am going to take you to the tower to ensure that does not occur.”
“I don’t know what I would do without you. You are a true friend.”
“So are you. Let’s make a dash for it, shall we?”
She ran behind Lucy until the bulky tower loomed in view. The ivy that draped its wall shone like dull emeralds in the moonlight.
Emily had always said that her friend Lucy could have made a career in espionage, based on her experience with manipulating love matches between unsuspecting couples with the subterfuge of a master spy. Lucy was the one who had sparked the romance between her father and her stepmother. Lucy had also convinced Cook that the head footman in her father’s house needed her care more than the household needed boiled tongue for breakfast every morning.
And for months Lucy had volunteered her services to make Camden realize that he loved Emily. She had invited Camden to every tea party that her stepmother gave, and Emily had always lurked in the background. Tonight was the culmination of Lucy’s dedicated work on her behalf.
“He appears to have his mind made up,” Emily explained as she and Lucy paused, panting, beneath the shadows of the tower that sat isolated from the rest of the house.
“That’s nonsense.”
“That he has a mind?”
“That it can’t be changed,” Lucy said, looking back at the moonlit walkway. “There are people wandering about again now that it isn’t sprinkling. You’ll have to go up the stairs and through the trapdoor to fetch your clothes. I hope Iris is still waiting.”
Emily stared up at the thick ivy vines that embraced the tower to the arched window aperture. “Oh, no. Please tell me I’m seeing things. I hope that isn’t smoke wafting out the tower window.”
Lucy turned, colliding against Emily in breathless horror. “Is it possible,” she whispered as she looked up to follow Emily’s gaze, “for two people to imagine the same thing at once?”
“Only if they’re a pair of idiots like us. You swore that nobody ever visited the tower. You swore it was safe.”
“Perhaps it’s your maid,” Lucy said. “She might have gotten worried that you’d lost your way and couldn’t find the tower in the dark, where you’d hidden your clothes. She knew it would be late and you’d be anxious that no one recognize you in your gypsy costume.”
The answer made sense, but Emily did not believe it for a moment. “Iris would never light a candle to draw attention to our hiding place. I still say there’s something wrong.”
Lucy’s forehead creased in lines of strain. “What if my father is committing adultery behind Diana’s back? What if he’s hosting a gambling party at which he could lose huge sums?”
Emily reached back to grasp Lucy’s hand. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” Lucy asked, putting her arm protectively around Emily’s waist.
“I counted five tiny red balls of light.”
“Rats?” Lucy guessed, shuddering.
“I was thinking more of cigars.”
“That leaves out Iris,” Lucy whispered. “But you’re right. There does appear to be some sort of meeting taking place. Why on earth would anyone choose such a lonely place?”
“For the same reason I did,” Emily retorted. “So they could plan in private and not be caught.”
“How are you going to fetch your clothes without any of them seeing you? The trapdoor is right under the table. You can’t expect to pop up like a jack-in-the-box, race across the floor without a ‘pardon me,’ and not be seen.”
Emily pondered this problem. “I could climb the ivy at the back where it’s tough and hasn’t been trimmed.”
“Except that there isn’t a window at the back of the tower.”
“Then I’ll have to crawl over the wall and wait until whoever is there leaves. I hope Iris found a safe place to hide. Maybe she’s waiting for me in the woods or in the stairwell.”
“I think I’d be more afraid of your father than I would of a group of strangers,” Lucy said, biting the knuckle of her glove. “After all, my father must have offered to let them meet here.”
“And I’d be willing to wager that one of them sells black sheep,” Emily said, thinking of the Scottish merchant who had flustered her in the tent. Could he be part of this mysterious group of gentlemen? “Aberdeen is a long way to come to meet in a darkened tower. Whatever they’re up to can’t be any good. I wonder if they are spies.”
“But we’re at peace with France.”
“What could a man possibly spy on from a secluded tower this late at night?” Emily murmured.
“Perhaps they’re a bird-watching society,” Lucy said dubiously
“And which birds would they be watching in the dark? Owls? You can’t believe that any sensible gentleman would travel to Hatherwood to catch a glimpse of an ordinary barn owl.”
“Maybe they’re smugglers,” Lucy said. “There are plenty of waterways leading in and out of the village. Do you think they might be smuggling stolen sheep?”
“That would be rather awkward, wouldn’t it? I imagine we’d have heard a bleat or two by now.”
“Well, I don’t see any lurid shadows engaged in decadent acts or hear cries of help from women held there against their will,” Lucy said.
“It’s most likely some manner of business meeting,” Emily said after a moment.
“Which could have been held in any of several rooms inside the manor proper,” Lucy pointed out.
“Unless your stepmama said that this was to be a party for entertainment only, and business must be conducted away from the other guests.”
“That’s probably what it is,” Lucy said in relief. “She and Papa have been quarreling a lot lately over the associates he’s brought home. Diana said they seem rather intense and not always polite.”
Emily frowned. She wished her father would find a business interest to fill his hours instead of drinking himself to death. If he’d had an occupation, their family might have traveled and broadened their circle of friends. “I’m going to take my chances on the trapdoor,” she said decisively. “At least I might find Iris. And who knows? She might already have my clothes and be waiting for us to meet Michael in the woods.”
Lucy looked back at the manor. “I’ll hold your father off as long as I can. You’d best make it home before he does.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be washed and reading a book like a perfectly bored young lady when he sees me again. He’ll never dream I left the house. And tomorrow, well, when I wake up I’ll have a cry, but I won’t mope forever.”
“It was worth a try,” Lucy said, backing away in hesitation. “We could—”
“No. We can’t. But thank you. Camden wasn’t meant to be mine. And maybe that’s for the best. If he knew what I’d done tonight, he would never talk to me again. Deceit is not the best way to spark a love match.”
“Probably not.”
“Go, Lucy. I’ll be fine. Even if I can’t fetch my clothes, I have to get Iris. This was so much easier when it was light. It’s only the dark that gives the tower that haunted look.”
“If the tower is haunted, it would only be my mother,” Lucy said, sighing. “And she would never hurt you.”
? ? ?
The mansion had been built on the grounds of a grand but dilapidated Jacobean estate that the first Lady Fletcher had inherited but despised. When she married Lord Fletcher, he had rebuilt it to please his delicate wife, whose dark moods had seemed to be aggravated by the original architecture.
She had demanded an elegant tower instead of the bulky pepperpots that dominated the back roof of the estate.
Years earlier Lady Fletcher had spent most of her days in the east tower, mourning the loss of Lucy’s younger brother, who had been killed by a constable during a street riot over the rising price of food. The magistrate insisted it had been an accident. Lady Fletcher refused to believe that and sank into a melancholy.
Even during their earliest years of friendship, Lucy had managed to explain it all in a simple, if distressful, way.
“Mama will kill herself if Papa won’t build her a tower of her own.”
“Why?” Emily had asked, wondering if the answer would help her to understand the reason her own mother had died prematurely, certainly not of a suicide, but of a languishing spirit. “Why would a tower make her happy?”
In the end the tower had not made Lord Fletcher’s first wife happy, and as the years passed, Emily grew to realize that grief over losing both his wife and son had turned him bitter inside.
Emily felt a newfound pang of empathy for him. She had lost her belief in true love, too.