Secrets Of The Heart

2

Rachel remembered with clarity the evening that she first met Michael. It had been at a rout of Lady Wetherford’s, a boring crush of an affair, attended, it seemed, by half of London Society. She could not remember exactly who had been there; indeed, she only vaguely recalled Lady Wetherford introducing her and her mother to Lord Westhampton. Her first impression of him had been merely that of a tall blond man, several years older than she and good-looking in a rather nondescript way. Knowing Michael as she did now, Rachel felt sure that he had been impeccably but plainly dressed, his clothes dark and formal and nothing that would attract attention. He would have been the perfect picture of an English gentleman, for, indeed, that was what Michael was.

But Rachel had paid little attention to him, smiling—for that evening she had been able to do little else but smile, so radiant was the feeling inside her—and returning the usual polite chitchat about the weather and the crush of the party and the opera, which she had attended the evening before. All the time they had talked, her senses had been tuned to the rest of the room, seeking out the same person whom she sought at every social occasion, the man who had engendered her radiant joy that night. For she remembered the evening, not because of Michael, but because that was the night when Anthony Birkshaw had told her that he loved her.

Even now, a faint smile touched Rachel’s face at the memory.

Rachel was nineteen, and in the midst of her first Season. It was a year late in coming, a result of her family’s usual state of impecunity. Cleybourne, her older sister’s husband, had given her mother the money for Rachel’s debut the next year, and Rachel was well aware that it was up to her to do her best to recoup the family’s fortunes. Few expected her to attain her sister’s success, for Caroline had married a duke, the highest rung on the ladder of nobility. But Rachel had the Aincourt good looks and a pleasing personality, and her family was one of the best in England—albeit one seemingly incapable of holding on to money. It was generally expected that she, too, would make a good marriage.

Rachel did not question her role in such plans. It was, after all, the way people of her class married. There were no longer the arranged marriages of old, of course, where a wedding was primarily an alliance of two families for purposes of wealth, power and political advancement, and the couple might not even have met each other before their wedding day. But, still, the aristocracy did not marry for love, as her mother had drummed into her head from childhood; they married for the good of their family, both present and future.

In the case of the Aincourt family, this dictum nearly always translated into marrying wealth. For generations the earls of Ravenscar had gained and lost money, but more gold, it seemed, left their hands than entered them. The reason for this, Rachel’s narrowly and dogmatically religious father believed, was a Papist curse laid on the head of the first Earl of Ravenscar, who was given Branton Abbey during the Dissolution by his friend King Henry VIII as a reward for his loyalty and friendship. Edward Aincourt, Lord Ravenscar, had torn down the abbey and used its stones to build his family’s home. The Abbot of Branton, legend said, had had to be dragged out bodily from the abbey, and as Ravenscar’s men had done so, the abbot had laid a curse upon the earl and all his descendants, declaring that “none who live within these stones shall ever know happiness.”

Whether it was the result of the curse or simply the nature of a family too given to pride and profligacy, it was true that the Aincourts had rarely been happy in affairs of either the heart or the purse. It was good, everyone agreed, that the Aincourts were also a family tall and graceful in stature and of handsome mien, for they were always able to replenish their fortunes through marriage—though there were those who pointed out that it was perhaps this tendency that doomed them to live out the curse’s prophecy of unhappiness.

In this particular generation of Aincourts, the lack of money had grown acute. The earl, a religious man of stern views, had not extended his religious beliefs to living an ascetic life. He loved to live well and buy beautiful things, as had his father before him, and as a result, the family fortunes had declined at an ever greater rate. It was generally considered up to the daughters of the family to provide for the family, as the earl had parted with his only son, Devin, the heir to the family title and what remained of the family fortune. Devin had, in his teen years, given himself over to a life of what his father deemed pagan excess, for years loving a married woman and refusing to marry as his father wished.

So Rachel dutifully expected to marry as her father determined, but she could not help but dream secretly that her marriage would turn out to be one of love as well as duty, as her sister Caroline’s had been. Everyone knew that the Duke of Cleybourne loved his wife to distraction, and she had seemed to love him in return, though later the truth of her feelings had been proven to be more shallow. At the very least, Rachel intended to enjoy her time on the marriage market, wearing the new dresses and ball gowns bought for her debut, going to parties and balls and fetes, enjoying the plays and operas and other amusements that London had to offer a girl who had spent most of her life on a crumbling estate in Derbyshire.

Rachel was an immediate, dazzling success. Her life was a whirl of social activities that would have left anyone but a vibrant young girl exhausted. She received her invitation to Almack’s. Every dance saw her card filled within minutes after her arrival. She had a choice of corsages sent by hopeful suitors for every ball, and there was never a shortage of young men calling at her house.

But Rachel had eyes for only one man. She met Anthony Birkshaw two weeks into the Season, and as soon as she saw him, she knew that this was the man of her dreams. He was a well set up young gentleman a few years older than she, with a frank and open manner that charmed her instantly. His hair was dark brown, thick and falling carelessly over his forehead, and his eyes, she thought, were those of a poet—large and brown, rimmed with thick, sooty black lashes.

And he was, miraculously, as taken with her as she was with him. He did not, of course, make a cake of himself as Jasper Hopkins was wont to do by dancing the two dances with her that were all that was proper from a young man not a girl’s fiancé, then pointedly standing apart and watching her the rest of the evening, not dancing with any other girl. Anthony was all that was proper and courteous, dancing and chatting with other young women, not devoting himself so exclusively to Rachel that he caused gossip.

That night, after their waltz together, as they had taken a long promenade around the ballroom, Anthony had told Rachel that he loved her. Her feet had scarcely touched the floor the rest of the evening.

She spent the rest of the summer in a giddy state of love. Given the assiduous way young unmarried girls were chaperoned, she was almost never alone with Anthony. Their love subsisted on looks, daydreams and waltzes. She “ran into” him now and then as she walked with her maid to or from the lending library, fueling a renewed love of reading. When he sent her a posy, she slept with it by her bed, and when it began to wither, she carefully pressed the flowers between heavy books and saved them. Every now and then, at some huge rout or ball, they were able to sneak away together for a few moments, get lost in the crowd after a dance or during a midnight supper, and find a spot in the gardens or some dim alcove in the house. There, briefly, they could whisper of their feelings, pour out the excitement that thrummed in them whenever they were together, even exchange a chaste kiss or two. Rachel lived for those moments.

Lost in her haze of love, Rachel was scarcely aware of how often Lord Westhampton came to call or led her onto the dance floor. She was too wrapped up in Anthony to take much notice of any of her other suitors, but she had not even put Michael among that group. He was almost ten years older than she, as well as a friend of Caroline’s husband, and she merely assumed that he was part of the circle of friends around the duke and duchess. As she and her family were living for the Season at the enormous Cleybourne House, their own house in London having been sold some years before, it did not seem untoward to her that one of the duke’s friends often came to call or was frequently included on their various outings. He did not form part of the circle of young men around her at parties, maneuvering to be the one to bring her a glass of punch, pick up a dropped glove or lead her down to supper. Had she been older or less naive, she would have realized that his absence had in fact signaled to her parents a more serious intent. He was too mature and important, too serious in his regard, to have joined the group who pursued her. He was not a man who wanted to flirt and admire; he was a man who intended to marry.

She did not think much about him, but if she had, she would have said that she liked Lord Westhampton. He was quiet, a good listener, and if she made a social gaffe or a naive remark, he would only smile a little and smooth it over. Because she did not count him as one of her circle of admirers, she did not feel any pressure to sparkle or enchant him as she did with many other young men. Though she was not interested in any of them except Anthony, it was accepted that the number of suitors in one’s circle was the mark of a young woman’s success in the Ton, so it would not do for people to see that the knot of admirers around one was shrinking away. So she had to flirt without seeming bold, had to be witty and lively and respond to their attempts at wit without ever seeming to favor one over the others.

With Westhampton, she found, she could talk more easily. She did not worry about trying to appeal to him or needing to maintain a certain image. She simply treated him as she always had any of her older brother’s or sister’s friends. It did not take her long to realize that if she had a problem concerning social etiquette or needed to find out who someone was and where they fit into the pattern of the ton, Lord Westhampton was the person to ask.

Then, one day late in July, her father called her mother and her into the library. Her heart speeded up a little, and her cheeks flushed attractively. Such a summons from Ravenscar meant something important was up, and her thoughts jumped instinctively to Anthony Birkshaw. He had asked Ravenscar for her hand in marriage! In her young, love-drunk mind, it was the only possible outcome to the summer.

Her father stood behind one of the library tables, looking large and imposing, as he always did. Rachel had grown up fearing the man. Stern and religious, with no sense of humor, the Earl of Ravenscar had little liking or understanding of children. He rarely saw his own progeny except on Sundays, when the family went to the church in the village and afterward endured a long reading from the Bible by the earl, followed by a careful catechism from him concerning their religious training at the vicarage and what particular sins they had committed that week. He lived by the precept that children were placed on earth to honor and obey their father, and any form of rebellion was immediately and thoroughly quashed.

The youngest of the three children, Rachel had grown up seeing the battles that raged between the earl and his son, finally ending in a cataclysmic rupture in which Ravenscar had thrown Devin out of the house and told him that he would no longer be received there. Since that time, Rachel had not seen her beloved older brother until this summer. The aching hurt and loss of that split, the terror of her father’s purple-faced rage, were indelibly imprinted on her psyche. Rachel had managed to avoid such painful and frightening confrontations by staying out of her father’s sight as much as possible and never crossing him openly. Her thoughts were her own, but she was careful never to reveal them to Ravenscar.

On that particular day almost seven years ago, however, her father was smiling and pleased. “Well, Rachel,” he said cheerfully, “I imagine you have some idea why I’ve called you in here today.”

“I—I think so,” Rachel answered a little hesitantly. She would not have thought her father would have been this pleased about Anthony’s proposal. She knew nothing about his finances, of course, but he was a younger son of a younger son, his lineage perfectly respectable, of course, but without a title or any prospects for one, and not, she would have assumed, a man of such wealth as to make her father beam with pleasure.

“I’ll warrant you do,” Ravenscar went on in a hearty avuncular way. “Lord Westhampton is quite a catch. Not a duke, of course, like your sister…” He gave this little quip the chuckle he thought it deserved, and went on. “But still an excellent prospect. Title. Lands. Family dating back to one of William the Conqueror’s barons. Yes, I am quite pleased that Westhampton has taken such a fancy to you. Offering a very generous settlement, of course—haven’t worked out the details yet. Of course, he wants to ask you the question himself. But I think we all know what your answer will be, eh?”

“Lord—Lord Westhampton?” Rachel got out through suddenly bloodless lips. There was a strange roaring in her ears, and she thought for a dreadful moment that she might actually faint. “Lord Westhampton has asked for my hand?”

“Why, yes.” Her father cast her a look of surprise that quickly turned dark and suspicious. “Why? Were you thinking it was someone else? Have you given your affections to another?” His voice rose with each question until it was close to a shout.

“Nonsense,” Rachel heard her mother say smoothly, moving up to wrap a hand around her daughter’s arm. “Of course she has not given her affections anywhere. I am sure she was just surprised that a man of such consequence as Lord Westhampton had been so taken by her. Any young woman of proper modesty would be. He is quite a catch, as you said, especially for a mere slip of a girl.”

“Yes, no doubt you are right.” Ravenscar accepted her explanation easily, for he could not imagine his youngest daughter, the one with the least spirit of any of them, opposing him.

Rachel’s mother, fingers digging into Rachel’s arm, then told her husband that she and Rachel must decide exactly how to dress and act for Westhampton’s upcoming proposal, and she deftly steered her daughter out the door, leaving Lord Ravenscar to congratulate himself on landing yet another excellent son-in-law, an accomplishment that he was sure was in large part a reflection of his own consequence.

“Whatever are you thinking?” Lady Ravenscar snapped as she led her daughter down the hall and into the ladies’ sitting room, where she closed the door firmly after them. “You gave me quite a turn. I thought Ravenscar was going to explode. Is it really such a surprise to you? Westhampton has been haunting Cleybourne House all summer.”

“But—but he is a friend of the duke’s. I thought—”

Her mother let out an exasperated sigh. “And to think I imagined that you were handling him skillfully! Ah, well, it’s no harm done. No doubt he assumed you were merely becomingly modest and innocent. Men in love, fortunately, are great fools. Now…we need to plan. Doubtless he will be coming over this afternoon to speak to you, since Ravenscar has given his permission. We must decide what you shall wear. Perhaps Caroline will lend you her Lucy to put up your hair. You must look just so—beautiful, yet not as if you were anticipating his question.”

“But, Mama!” In her panic, Rachel reverted to her childhood name for this woman who was in general far too cool and reserved for a more affectionate name than Mother. “I cannot accept Lord Westhampton! I…”

Her mother stared at her in astonishment, and Rachel’s words faltered to a halt.

“Are you mad?” Lady Ravenscar’s voice was like the crack of a whip. “What do you mean, you cannot accept—” She drew in her breath sharply. “No! Was your father right? Have you given your affections elsewhere? My God, girl, what have you done!” Fear and fury mingled in her face. “Do not tell me you have let a man have his way with you!”

“No!” Rachel gasped, shocked. “How could you think that? I have never—he would never—”

“Good.” Lady Ravenscar relaxed a little. “Then it is nothing that cannot be put right. Who is this man? I cannot believe that I have not seen this happening.”

“It is Mr. Birkshaw. Anthony Birkshaw. And he has done nothing untoward. He has been all that is proper and correct. He would never have incurred gossip by dangling obviously after me.”

“Birkshaw!” Her mother’s first look of puzzlement changed quickly to one of horror. “Anthony Birkshaw! That penniless pup? He dared to try to engage your affections! Oh, Rachel, how could you have been so foolish? What have you said to him? Have you promised him—But, no—no one would regard a silly girl’s promise as binding when he had not had the courtesy or courage to speak to your father first.”

“He has not asked me to marry him,” Rachel assured her. “I tell you, Anthony—I mean, Mr. Birkshaw—has been all that is proper. We have made no promises, done nothing that anyone could construe as wrong. I swear it. But I—I love him, and I know that he returns my feelings. I thought today, when Father called us into the library, that it was he who had asked for my hand.”

Her mother looked at her with a touch of pity. “My dear girl, you cannot think that Ravenscar would have approved such a match, can you? Mr. Birkshaw could not hope to get his permission. He has no money. No prospects. His father is the third son of Lord Moreston. The family runs to males. A plague would have to hit for him to come into the title. And it is only a barony, anyway. I cannot imagine how the man could think he could aspire to the daughter of an earl.”

“I don’t think he thought much about my father’s title,” Rachel replied with rather more asperity than she was accustomed to using with her mother. “It was me he fell in love with.”

“Then all I can say is that he is a proper ninny and so are you.” Lady Ravenscar shook her head. “Well, you had better put such foolish thoughts out of your head—and with no time wasted, either. You have to accept Westhampton this afternoon—and with no unhappy looks, either, to give him second thoughts.”

Rachel’s heart turned in her chest. “But, Mother, how can I accept him? I don’t love him! I scarcely even know him! I—I love another man!”

“There is no reason for him to know that,” Lady Ravenscar retorted. “And it would be best if you got that thought out of your head instantly, as well. Your father would never let you waste yourself on Anthony Birkshaw. I can scarcely believe that you have been so foolish as to have given your heart to a—a pauper!”

“He is not a pauper!”

“Bah! You know nothing about the matter!” Her mother faced Rachel, her lovely face set in cold, adamant lines. “Do you think any of us married for love? That any of us knew our husbands before we became engaged? I can assure you that I did not, and neither did your sister.”

“But Caroline and Richard love each other.”

“Your sister was wise enough not to give her heart until she had given her hand,” Lady Ravenscar snapped. “I cannot believe that you are acting like this. You were always the most biddable of my children, the one I could count on to be reasonable. Obedient.” She paused and gathered her composure, then started again. “What did you think we were coming here for? For you to have a summer of parties and fun? Your father had to swallow his pride and accept a loan from Cleybourne to enable you to have this Season. You knew the reason for it. You knew what you were expected to do.”

“Yes, but—” Tears glittered in Rachel’s eyes. The dreamworld she had been living in this summer was crashing down around her ears. She could see now how foolish she had been, believing that the man she had fallen in love with would be an acceptable spouse in her parents’ eyes. She had let herself believe that her love and the brilliant match she must make would somehow turn out to be embodied in the same person. “I cannot!” she cried out in a low voice. “I cannot marry Lord Westhampton when I love someone else!”

“You can, and you will.” Lady Ravenscar’s voice was implacable. “I am sorry that you were so silly as to let your feelings be engaged. Obviously I was not careful enough. I did not see this foolish romance developing and nip it in the bud. For that, I apologize. But I will take care to correct that mistake now. I will tell Caroline to inform the butler that you are no longer home if Mr. Birkshaw calls.”

“No!” Pain stabbed through Rachel’s chest like a knife. “Mother, you cannot—”

Lady Ravenscar gave her a long, level look. “If I have to, I will tell Ravenscar, and he will send the young man on his way.”

“No!” The thought of her father railing at Anthony and barring him from their house filled her with even more fear. Her father was terrible in a temper; there was no telling what he might say to Anthony—or do to him. It would not surprise her if he took a cane to the young man.

“You will get over this infatuation,” her mother went on, her cool voice like a knife lacerating Rachel’s heart. “I know it must seem to you that your world is ending, but this feeling will pass, and soon. Young girls’ fancies always do. In a few weeks, after you have gotten involved in planning the wedding and choosing dresses for your trousseau, why, you will look back on this calf love and realize how absurd it was.”

“No,” Rachel said in a choked voice. “I will not.”

“You must try. Because I can assure you that you will not marry Mr. Birkshaw. You can turn down the best offer you could hope to receive if you insist, but you still will not marry Mr. Birkshaw. If you think about it, I am sure you will see why Birkshaw has not offered for you. He knows that he cannot: I imagine he barely has the money to support himself, let alone a wife. It is my best guess that he must marry money himself. Perhaps he was foolish enough to think that you had some.”

“It was not about money!” Rachel cried. “We love each other.”

“Well, it is a love without hope,” her mother said remorselessly. “Your father and I will never allow you to marry him. And if you are so foolish as to turn down Lord Westhampton because of this piece of lunacy, I can guarantee that you will regret it the rest of your life.”

Rachel could no longer hold back her tears. She began to sob, sinking into the nearest chair and covering her face with her hands. Her mother watched her with exasperation for a moment, then pulled a dainty handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to her daughter.

“Cry it out, then,” she said. “And when you are done, lie down with a cool rag over your eyes to keep the swelling down. You cannot meet Lord Westhampton this afternoon with puffy eyes.”

“I cannot marry him,” Rachel repeated through her tears. “It would kill me.”

“No. I assure you that it will not. You are not the first young girl to fancy herself desperately in love, and you certainly will not be the last. It never kills them. Of course, if you choose to turn down the prospect of being Lady Westhampton, of having a husband who adores you and will answer your every whim, of owning two of the most admired homes in the country and a limitless number of dresses and jewels—” Lady Ravenscar broke off with a sigh. “Well, we cannot make you accept him, though what your father will say about it, I dread to think. It will be a wonder if I can convince him not to pack us all up and go storming back to Darkwater in a rage, and, lord knows, that will be the end of all your hopes. But one may hope he will see reason. You are admired by other men—though none, of course, as fine a match as Lord Westhampton. There might be another chance for you to get a decent offer before the end of the Season, when we shall all have to return to the country to finish our lives in penury.”

Rachel thought with horror of continuing to stay here this Season, going to parties and trying to attract a husband, when all the while her heart would be breaking. “Mother, I cannot….”

“Then you plan to live the rest of your life a spinster? For you will have no more opportunities to meet marriageable men. We cannot afford a second Season for you, and I can assure you that your father will have no desire to do anything for you if you cross him in this.”

Rachel shuddered, thinking of her father’s ire. She had never been on the receiving end of one of his truly terrible rages. “Mother, please…”

“Child, I cannot help you. You have only two choices—do your duty to the family, accept Lord Westhampton and have a nice, satisfactory life, or refuse and remain with us until we die, and then I suppose you will have to live as a companion to your sister Caroline.

“I want you to lie down now. I’ll send the maid up with cucumber slices and a cool cloth for your eyes. And I want you think about what you are going to do. I want you to consider what will happen to us all if you do not marry Lord Westhampton. I want you to remember this Season and all we have done for you so that you could get a good offer and have a good life. Then decide whether you want to shame your family this way. Whether you are really willing to refuse to do what you are expected to do. What you have to do. I am sure you will come to the right decision about how to answer Lord Westhampton.”

Even now, Rachel thought, closing her eyes, she could feel the pain she had felt all those years ago, the numbed, emotionally battered state in which she had stumbled to her room and lain down on her bed. Exhausted with grief and plunged into despair, she had cried until she could cry no more, while the maid fussed and dried her tears and did her best to repair the damage her outburst had done to her face.

She had lain there and thought, as her mother had told her to do. She knew, bitterly, how foolish she had been, how much she had lived in a dreamworld. And she faced the void of her future, living immured in Darkwater, the object of her father’s displeasure, constantly reminded of what an undutiful daughter she was and how she had failed the family. She could not marry Anthony without her father’s permission, at least until she was twenty-one, and she knew that her mother was right—her father would not give her permission to marry Anthony, the man who had ruined her father’s plans for gaining a wealthy son-in-law. And she knew, too, with sinking despair, that her mother was right about the state of his finances. Lady Ravenscar always knew such things. Besides, it explained why, despite his love for her, he had not asked for her hand. He had known that he would not be acceptable to her father; probably he, too, must make a good match.

Her dream of love died that afternoon. She faced the world as it was, the world in which a daughter married as she ought, as her parents desired. She saw reality, in which love did not hold sway, but only cold, hard reason. Her whole being ached at the thought of joining that world. But in the end, she had risen and let her maid dress her in the afternoon dress her mother had chosen, had let Caroline’s Lucy do her hair up and hide the telltale redness around her eyes with just the barest touch of rice powder. Then she had gone downstairs and accepted Lord Westhampton’s proposal of marriage.