Prologue
12 February 1814
If James truly loves you, means to marry you—then I’ll help, somehow. It was over five years since Arabella Shelley had said those words to her sister Meg and helped her to elope with her childhood sweetheart, James Halgate, the local squire’s son.
It was nine months since she had hugged her weeping younger sister Celina and assured her that, if she could, she would help her run away from home too, away from the oppression and tyranny of their puritanical father who was convinced that all women were the vessels of sin and must be controlled and guarded against the slightest temptation.
Dreamy Meg and sensitive Lina had wilted miserably under this treatment, pining for laughter and music, flowers and books. And love. Oh, yes, they had all pined for love, Bella thought, grounding the watering can she had been using to fill up the pewter jugs of greenery set around the font. Flowers were permitted only grudgingly in the Reverend Shelley’s Suffolk church, but ivy and sombre foliage would help remind the congregation of the graveyard that awaited them all, sinners that they were.
Bella sat down in the nearest pew, ignored the cold that soaked into her booted feet from the stone floor and wrestled with guilt once again over her failure to realise what Lina had intended. Without any help from Bella she had run away, leaving only a scrap of a letter from a sister of their dead mother, an aunt none of them had known existed until Lina had found her hidden letter.
The vicar blacked out Lina’s name in the family Bible, as he had Meg’s. If her sisters wrote, then their father intercepted the letters and destroyed them. Bella clung to the hope that if either of them had died, he would not have been able to conceal his knowledge of the bad end they had come to, but sometimes it was hard to hold on to the hope that they were still well and happy.
Bella rubbed her aching back and tried to push away the memory of Lina’s sobs after she had been reprimanded for speaking to the curate. He said I was a trollop, and wicked and leading Mr Perkins astray! How are we ever supposed to find husbands and get married if we may not even speak to Papa’s curate?
Goodness knows, had to be the answer to that question. But Bella knew that her own destiny was already ordained. At the age of twenty-five her fate was to be Papa’s support in his old age. He had told her that often enough, with the certainty that an elder daughter should expect nothing more than to do her duty to her parent.
A lovable parent would be one thing, a sanctimonious, aggressively puritanical vicar, which was what the Reverend Shelley was, quite another. She had cherished hopes that dull Mr Perkins the curate would find one of them attractive enough to offer for, but after the confrontation following Lina’s few words with him she did not deceive herself that he would risk alienating his vicar for the sake of either of them.
Her two younger sisters could not cope with the oppression, the carping, the sheer drabness of life at the vicarage. It was better that they had gone, for she, the sensible sister, was the one who could best cope with Papa who was becoming more suspicious and ill tempered as the years went by. Now she had no younger sisters to protect—only to worry about. It was time to accept finally that her life would be bound by the vicarage walls, and by her duty as the vicar’s plain spinster daughter.
Something tickled her lip and she licked it, tasting salt. Sitting here weeping would not accomplish anything, except to put her behind with her duties, and besides, she never cried. What was the point?
Bella wiped her eyes and looked at the note tablets suspended from the old-fashioned chatelaine that hung from her waist. Complain to butcher re: mutton; mend surplice; assemble sewing for Ladies’ Circle; turn sheets side to middle. Church greenery—that could be crossed off. Another tear trickled down and splashed on to the thin ivory. She dabbed it off, smudging the pencil marks, and bit down on her lower lip until she felt more under control.
Sometimes she did not think she could bear this any longer. She wanted her sisters—even a letter would do. She wanted a hug, a kiss, laughter, warmth. She wanted love.
Bella picked up the remains of the ivy fronds and then lugged the heavy watering can back to the vestry. Once upon a time she had dreamed of a lover coming for her. A knight in shining armour. A gallant nobleman who would sweep her away and cherish her.
Childishness, she told herself, buttoning her pelisse and pulling on her gloves. Fairy tales did not come true and it was not sensible to dream that they might, because waking up from the dream was always bitter disillusion. She locked the vestry and went out through the south door and down to the lych gate where she paused. Beyond it was the lane that led to the Ipswich road and freedom. The road she was never going to take.
She had forgotten her basket, Bella realised. Was it worth going back for it? She half-turned as a voice said, ‘Is this Lower Leaming, ma’am?’
‘No, this is Martinsdene,’ she began, looking back. A stranger got up from the bench sheltered in the shadows of the roofed gate. ‘Lower Leaming is that…way.’ Her voice trailed off.
Blue eyes regarded her with interest and a sensuous mouth curved into a smile that was—surely not?—appreciative. The man was tall, relaxed, elegant. His riding coat was so plain it had to be expensive and a cabochon ruby ring glowed with sullen fire on his ring finger. He raised the hand that was holding gloves and whip and lifted his hat and she saw brown hair that shone, styled in a fashionable crop, the like of which had never been seen in this rural backwater.
‘Thank you, Miss—?’ he said in a voice that sent warm shivers through her chilled body.
‘Shelley,’ she managed. ‘My father is vicar here.’ Even as she said it, she cast a harried look down the lane
to the vicarage as though her father’s hawk eyes could see through the hedge from the study where he was engaged in writing next Sunday’s sermon.
‘Miss Shelley. I am Rafe Calne, Viscount Hadleigh.’ And he bowed, as though she were a fine lady and this was Hyde Park. Bella managed to produce an answering bob of a curtsy. ‘I am staying with my good friend Marcus Daunt at Long Fallow Hall and I must confess to being utterly lost.’
‘Yes, well, in that case you do need the Lower Leaming road,’ Bella said, thankful to be able to articulate something sensible. A viscount, for goodness’ sake! ‘It is past the Royal George inn and then you should take the left fork after the duck pond. If you come through the churchyard there is a bridleway that cuts off the corner—over there, by the holly bush.’
‘Will you not walk that way and show me, Miss Shelley? I seem to have the knack of getting lost.’
‘I—’
But he had already fetched a big bay horse from where it had been tethered out in the lane. He offered her his arm and Bella took it, lost for the words to refuse.
‘You know, Miss Shelley, I have to confess to being somewhat blue devilled. Here I am, supposed to be resting—I’ve been feeling a trifle off colour lately—but I have been so bored I have not been able to relax. Poor Marcus can’t work out what to do with me. So I came out for a ride, got lost and found this charming village and you. And I feel better already.’
Was she supposed to understand that she was making him feel better? No, of course not, Martinsdene was picturesque, artists had been known to stop to sketch it. Bella took a deep breath to steady her fluttering heart and tried not to notice how firm his arm felt under her hand and how warm he was, between her and the wind.
Oh dear, she thought. Now when I daydream I will have a real-life aristocratic hero to visualise. The bridleway was short and the pond soon reached. ‘That way, my lord.’ She pointed.
‘Rafe, please. You are, after all, my rescuer.’ He lifted her hand and kissed her fingertips. ‘May I know your first name?’
‘Arabella…Bella,’ she stammered.
‘Bella,’ he murmured. ‘Belle. Beautiful lady.’
‘Oh, no,’ Bella retorted, common sense coming to her rescue. ‘Now you are gammoning me, my lord.’
‘Rafe,’ he murmured.
‘Rafe…this is…’