The Reluctant Bride Read online

  The Reluctant Bride

  Georgian Mystery Series

  Beverley Oakley

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Spring 1813

  * * *

  ‘It’s not a sin, unless you get caught.’

  The gentle breeze seemed to whisper Jack’s teasing challenge, its soft, silken fingers tugging at Emily’s ingrained obedience. She put down her basket and stared longingly at the waters below, sweat prickling her scalp beneath her poke bonnet as desire warred with fear of the consequences.

  ‘Where’s your sense of adventure, Em?’

  Still resisting, Emily closed her eyes, but the wind’s wicked suggestiveness was like the caress of Jack’s breath against her heated cheek; daring Emily to shrug aside a lifetime of dutiful subservience – again – and peel off her clothes, this time to plunge into the inviting stream beneath the willows. She imagined Jack’s warm brown eyes glinting with wickedness. Taunting her like the burr that had worked its way into the heel of her woollen stockings during her walk. Exhaling on a sigh, Emily opened her eyes and admitted defeat as she succumbed to the pull of the reed-fringe waters.

  Desire had won, justified by practicality.

  If she had to remove one stocking to dislodge the burr she might as well remove both.

  Scrambling down the embankment, she lowered herself onto a rock by the water’s edge.

  Her father would never know.

  If he glanced from his study in the tower room, where he was doubtless gloating over his balance sheet, he’d assume she was a village lass making her way along the track. Emily had never seen him interest himself in the poor except …

  Like most unpleasant memories, she tried to cast this one out with a toss of her head, still glad her father had never discovered what she’d witnessed from her bedroom window one evening five years ago: the curious sight of Bartholomew Micklen ushering the beggar girl who’d arrived on his doorstep into his carriage.

  Then climbing in after her before it rumbled down the driveway and out of sight.

  Now was just another of those moments when Emily was glad her father remained in ignorance. Her insurance, should she need it, was that she knew a few of her father’s secrets the excise men might just want to know.

  By the time the first stocking had followed Emily’s boots onto the grassy bank she was bursting with anticipation for her swim.

  What did one more sin matter when she’d be Mrs Jack Noble in less than a week?

  The second woollen stocking came next. Fine enough quality but ugly and serviceable, like most of her clothes. Jack had promised her scarlet silk stockings spun with salutary Bible story scenes on his return from his covert mission to the Continent. This, he’d suggested as he’d debunked her father’s theory that all women’s flesh was vile and corrupt, would enable her to feel as dutiful a daughter as a wife: sensuous silk for sinning with her husband-to-be, saintly stories for her sanctimonious father.

  Jack liked to shock her.

  With water up to her shoulders, Emily raised her arms above her head in a swift arc, splashing for the pure pleasure of it and glorying in her sinful nakedness. Who would ever know?

  Finally she acknowledged she was living on borrowed time. She dried herself with her chemise, which made it thoroughly damp by the time she pulled it over her head, then sat down on the rock again and stretched out her bare right leg, pointing her toe as she pretended to ease on a scarlet stocking emblazoned with winged chariots. Exhaling on another sigh of pleasure once she’d pulled on her dress, she raised her face to the sun. When she was Jack’s wife, she’d contravene every sin she could think of. He would buy her gowns that stretched the limits of decency. She’d dance naked with him on the lawn.

  Grunting with irritation when she was unable to ease her boot over her damp foot, Emily hurled the ugly lump of leather over her shoulder. Though she’d have to climb to the top of the embankment and put it on later, it was catharsis not to be called to account for giving vent to just one of life’s daily frustrations.

  ‘Good God, what was that?’

  The outraged expletive, followed by a peevish whinny, confirmed she was no longer alone. Feeling foolish, Emily scrambled up the river bank.

  ‘I presume this is what you’re looking for?’ A tall, straight-backed soldier regarded her from the saddle, her boot dangling from one gloved hand. He was dressed in the green jacket of one of the two Rifle battalions and Emily’s heart fluttered with excitement as she looked past him.

  But Jack was not there and her disappointment was quickly replaced by embarrassment at the soldier’s unsmiling scrutiny. The unsettling effect of his dark gaze was intensified by a thin ridge of scar tissue which slashed his left cheek in a graceful arc from eye to ear.

  Lowering her head so the brim of her bonnet kept her face in shadow, Emily accepted the boot. ‘I had no idea anyone was on the path,’ she mumbled, hoping he’d put her lack of grace down to the poor manners of a country rustic. Not that it mattered. His restless gaze, caught in the glare of the sun, had barely registered her face.

  The young soldier waved a dismissive hand, then shaded his eyes, straining to see into the distance as if uncertain of his present course. ‘I’m looking for Micklen Hall.’

  Emily’s foreboding increased. What business had this man with her father? Worse, what if he should recognise her if her father called her to attend to him to pour tea? Unlikely, but not impossible.

  She briefly considered confessing her truancy, begging him to refrain from mentioning their meeting, but the soldier’s erect bearing and forbidding expression suggested he’d condone her behaviour no more readily than her father would. Her next thought, that perhaps he was a friend of Jack’s, was quickly dismissed. He might be roughly the same age but all similarities ended there. While his regular features and strong chin combined to create an effect of rugged handsomeness, enhanced, surprisingly, by his scar, his frosty demeanour was as different as possible from her easy-humoured, roguish betrothed.

  She pointed behind him, over the hill. ‘You took the wrong turn when you came out of the beech wood, sir.’ Bobbing a quick curtsy, her manner was deferential. She was not dressed according to her rank. He’d forget her the moment he left. He’d barely looked at her and the sun was in his eyes. ‘It’s only a few minutes on horseback.’

  He thanked her, and she watched him wheel his horse around, urging it into a gallop until he was a speck in the distance.

  Emily waited until he’d crested the hill before she set her reluctant footsteps in the same direction. She’d be half an hour behind him, but if the stranger were not gone by the time she arrived she’d slip in through the servants’ entrance and keep to her room until dinner.

  If she were as lucky as last week, no one would even know she’d left the house.

  If she were as lucky as last week, her latest sin would have no repercussions.

  Major Angus McCartney was out of his depth.

  He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Only five minutes in this gloomy, oppressive parlour after the women had arrived and he was questioning his ability to complete his mission, a feeling he’d not experienced before Corunna four years before.

  He’d been unprepared for the assault on his senses unleashed by the beautiful Miss Micklen. He shifted position once more, fingering the letters that belonged to her. For two years he’d carried the memory of the young woman before him as a confident, radiant creature in a white muslin ball gown with a powder-blue sash. Now her tragic, disbelieving gaze unleashed a flood of memory, for in her distress she bore no resemblance to the paragon of beauty at the Regimental Ball, a bright memory in an otherwise tormented year after he’d been invalided out of Spain. Clearly Miss Micklen did not remember him.

  She’d remember him forever now: as the harbinger of doom, for as surely as if he’d pulled the trigger he’d just consigned her hopes and dreams to cinders.

  She turned suddenly, catching him by surprise, and the painful, searing memory of the last time he’d confronted such grief tore through him.

  Corunna again. As if presented on a platter, the image of the soldier’s woman he’d assisted flashed before his eyes, forcing him to draw a sustaining breath as he battled with the familiar self-reproach which threatened to unman him.

  He reminded himself he was here to do good.

  ‘A skirmish near the barracks?’ the young woman whispered, resting her hands upon her crippled mother’s shoulders. ‘Last Wednesday?’

  ‘That is correct, ma’am.’

  Mrs Micklen muttered some incoherent words, presumably of sympathy. Angus pitied them both: Miss Micklen digesting her sudden bereavement, and the mother for her affliction. Th
e older woman sat hunched in her chair by the fire, unable to turn her head, her claw-like hands trembling in her lap.

  He cleared his throat, wishing he’d taken more account of his acknowledged clumsiness with the fairer sex. He was not up to the task. He’d dismissed the cautions of his fellow officers, arrogantly thinking he’d be shirking his duty were he not the one to deliver the news. It was condolences he should be offering, and he had not the first idea how to appeal to a frail feminine heart.

  Nor was he accustomed to the lies tripping off his tongue as he added, ‘A tragic mishap, ma’am, but Captain Noble acquitted himself with honour to the end.’

  Miss Micklen’s gaze lanced him with its intensity. Tears glistened, held in check by her dark lashes. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered, moving to draw aside the heavy green velvet curtain and stare at the dipping sun. ‘Jack told me he was on the Continent.’

  Choosing not to refute Jack’s lie, he said carefully, ‘An altercation occurred between a group of infantry in which I was unwittingly involved. When Captain Noble came to my assistance he was struck a mortal blow to the head. I’m sorry, Miss Micklen.’

  He wished he knew how to offer comfort. The beautiful Miss Micklen of the Christmas Regimental Ball had seemed all-powerful in her cocoon of happy confidence. Unobtainable as the stars in heaven, he’d thought as he’d watched her skirt the dance floor in the arms of the unworthy Jack Noble. For so long he’d carried Miss Micklen’s image close to his heart and this was the first time he’d been reminded of Jessamine.

  God, how weary he was of war.

  Two women, torn apart by grief at the loss of their soldier protector.

  This interview was part of his atonement.

  Angus dug into his pocket and held out a bundle, tied with red ribbon. ‘Captain Noble’s letters, ma’am.’

  She took them with one graceful hand. The other fingered the brooch fastened to the collar of her high-necked gown. Angus was surprised by its modesty. Jack Noble’s taste in women ran to the ostentatious, though perhaps it was not surprising he would choose a wife as different as possible from his doxies.

  ‘Bear your sorrow with dignity, Emily.’ The old woman spoke in French. ‘You come from noble Normandy stock.’

  Angus studied Miss Micklen’s shapely back as she gazed silently at the letters before raising her head to stare into the gathering darkness. The calm before the storm? His mother’s propensity for the vapours had taught him that females were wont to give vent to their wounded passions with no thought to present company.

  Miss Micklen was stronger than that.

  She turned. ‘What was Jack was doing with you, Major McCartney, in Chester,’ she challenged, ‘when he told me he was traveling directly to the Continent?’

  Angus wished he’d thought of some other excuse that did not involve himself in order to preserve the gilded image she held of her false fiancé. ‘A confusion of dates, I’m sure, Miss Micklen. Captain Noble was with his regiment, in Chester.’ At least that part was true.

  Her lip trembled and she lowered her voice, suddenly contrite. ‘I’m sorry, Major McCartney. Jack was your colleague. No doubt your friend, too.’

  He felt his own heart respond and flower. She was no longer the careless beauty whose gaze had failed to register him during the spate of balls they’d both attended that memorable season. In her most painful hour she was capable of compassion.

  She extended her hand. ‘It’s a painful cross you bear, Major McCartney. Jack was denied the glory of giving his life in battle for his country, but you saw your comrade struck down’—her voice broke—‘to save your life.’

  She pulled on the bell rope then turned to the thin, weary-looking parlour maid who appeared. ‘Show Major McCartney out, please, Lucy.’

  ‘If there is any assistance you require …’

  ‘No, but thank you, sir’—she sounded as if she might break down at any moment—‘for giving me the comfort of knowing Jack died a hero.’

  With a heavy heart, he bowed himself out. The comfort of lies. They sat ill with him.

  But then, lying was the least of his sins. He’d lost his soul the day he laid eyes on Jessamine.

  Gathering her cloak and bonnet the moment the dust had settled upon the major’s departure, Emily slipped out of the kitchen door and fled across the meadow. There’d been no hint that Major McCartney recognised her as the lass on the road, preoccupied as he clearly was by his impending mission. Not that it would have mattered if he’d unwittingly implicated Emily in this afternoon’s truancy. Her father had looked as if he were about to punish Emily, regardless, the way the tendons of his neck had swollen about his bitter face, red with suffused anger, when he’d heard the news.

  As if Emily were to blame for Jack’s death.

  At the top of the hill she glanced down at the church in which she and Jack would have married the following week. She didn’t stop. Only when she reached the old, disused woodcutter’s cottage, deep amongst the elms, did she feel safe. Throwing open the door, she hurled herself onto the pile of hessian sacks in the corner, the setting for the delights she’d shared so recently with Jack.

  Her heart had been ripped in two. Without Jack she had no buffer against the harshness of her world.

  When her passion subsided, Emily dragged herself into a sitting position and rested her head on her updrawn knees.

  Jack, the man who had wooed her with such tenacity despite her initial reluctance, the man who had breached her defences with his teasing humour and whose twinkling eyes and boyish grin never failed to make her pulse beat faster, was gone.

  Wiping away her tears, she bent to pick up a half-smoked cheroot lying nearly obscured beneath an old log. Jack had smoked it just over a week ago. Clenching it in her fist, she closed her eyes and pictured the scene: Jack’s smooth, muscled chest upon which she’d rested her head. With loving reassurances he had coaxed her out of her fear. Tenderly he had massaged her temples with his long, sensitive fingers; fingers which had taught her that not only lips could show what joy and delight there was in loving. Her body burned at the memory, but not with shame, for she was proud to have loved a hero.

  An image of grim-faced Major McCartney intruded, pushing aside her recollections of smiling, tousle-haired Jack. The scar puckering the soldier’s cheek and his stiff, military bearing only reinforced her aversion to men with no sense of humour. Men who did not know how to wring the joy from life. Unlike Jack. But Jack was dead and her world had fallen apart. There would be no more joy for her now.

  Wind rattled the shutters. Distracted, Emily noticed the rain had begun to breach the meagre defences of the crudely constructed hut. She exhaled on another sob. She didn’t care if the water rushed under the door and drowned her.

  After a few minutes, rational thought returned. How could Jack have been in Chester when he had intended crossing the channel on another secret assignment the day after his visit to Emily?

  If only she’d quizzed the Major more thoroughly. He’d said he was putting up at The Four Swans and to call on him if he could be of assistance.

  Emily shuddered. She never again wanted to lay eyes on the tense, awkward soldier whose life had been saved through Jack’s sacrifice.

  Chapter 2

  Autumn had set in and the surrounding patchwork of fields looked barren.

  Angus shivered, despite his army greatcoat, as he and his brother navigated the narrow cliffside path on horseback. He glanced at the base of the froth-fringed sheer drop far below him to his left and wondered when the bridle path would be swallowed up by erosion. This was smuggler’s territory. No doubt the excise men would have a field day if they only knew which caves and caverns harboured the contraband he had no doubt sustained the local community.