A Stranger at Castonbury - By Amanda McCabe Page 0,25
She had fled from the Dower House at Castonbury as soon as Harry had returned from Spain. Her ruse had been discovered, and no one on the estate was sure where she had gone. His father, despite his blustering threats of hangings, hadn’t chased after her, and his siblings were too relieved at learning that their brother was still alive to care. Only one person had seemed concerned about her, and that was the Castonbury estate manager, William Everett.
‘I know what she did was terrible, my lord,’ he had said to Jamie as they walked over the fields. ‘But she must have been coerced in some way, I’m sure. She was too gentle to come up with such a scheme herself. I fear something amiss might have happened to her.’
Jamie had learned a great deal about reading people in Spain, about gauging the true thoughts and emotions they hid behind their words. Everett had worked for the Montagues for a long time and had a reputation for scrupulous honesty and openness. Jamie saw that his words were true—he did believe Alicia to be a good woman pressed in some way to do a bad thing. The man was concerned about her safety now.
And what was more, he cared about her. In his eyes Jamie could see the raw fear, the tenderness, when he said Alicia’s name. The tentative spark of hope. He was afraid he himself had looked just like that when he first saw Catalina. Lovestruck. Foolish.
So Everett saw good in Alicia. But he didn’t know where she had gone. Neither did anyone else on the estate or in Buxton, and most seemed to wish she would stay gone. But finding people who didn’t wish to be found was something else Jamie had learned in Spain. When he went to London to settle the financial accounts, he had looked up some of his more disreputable contacts and got to work.
That work had led him here, to this deserted-looking cottage. It didn’t look like a place where anyone could live, especially not a gentle lady with a small child, but perhaps that was its attraction. No one would think to look here, especially since it was actually close to Castonbury, plus the owner of the land had been abroad for a long time and would charge no rent. He wondered at the cunning mind that had discovered this clever hiding place, that had thought up this dastardly scheme in the first place
Jamie braced his leg against the seat and grimaced as he studied the silent house. He didn’t need to use the stick to get about as much any more—the long walks over the estate to survey what needed to be done had helped with that. But the day in the curricle had made the scars stiffen.
‘You just need to get on a horse again, get out in the hunting field,’ Phaedra had said, sure that a good gallop could cure any ill. But he had laughed and told her that was still a long way in the future, and he had bought this curricle instead. Just one more thing he couldn’t yet do that was expected of him as the heir.
Or maybe it was the knowledge of what he had to do now that made his leg ache. He had hoped that in coming back to Castonbury he would at least have been able to find some peace, to cease to fight the battles of the world. But there could be no peace until this strange matter was dealt with once and for all.
And he was the only one who could do it. It was his name that had been used to dishonour his family. He had to end it.
Jamie lowered himself from the high seat and tied the horse up to the garden fence. He watched the house surreptitiously the whole time, pretending to be absorbed in his task, and he was rewarded by the flicker of a curtain at an upstairs window. He glimpsed a flash of pale hair before the fabric fell back in place.
Someone was there, after all. Was she alone?
Jamie pushed open the broken gate and made his way carefully up the overgrown path. The silence seemed to roar around him, the wind through the trees, the rustle of the old, dried leaves and dead flowers under his boots, the creak of the house.
At the door, Jamie rested one hand on his hip where he could feel the weight of his pistol tucked inside