Road to Gretna Green Read online

  “I do.”

  “I do not.”

  “That is your final word on the matter?”

  “I wouldn’t marry her under such circumstances if she were the last redheaded gypsy worth a fortune this side of hell! Clear enough?”

  Again Lord Salkeld glanced past his son and at Helen. She had slumped against the doorjamb, trembling with sadness, tears spilling onto her cheeks. And again he held her gaze, to make certain she understood. She stared back at him, mute. To her great misery she understood very well indeed.

  With an imperceptible nod to her, he scraped back his chair and got to his buckled shoes, saying calmly to his son and heir, “Your feelings and wishes are duly noted. I will say no more on the matter, only that you will rue this day, sir. Mark my words.”

  Helen did not hear Royston’s reply. She fled the room. He unaware she was there. When he tried to say his farewells the next day, she feigned illness. She did not see him again until the commemorative service for her husband, Sir William Dysart. Her knees had almost buckled with surprise at his presence, but she had managed to remain upright. She was Lady Dysart. She was a grieving widow. She was determined to honor her husband’s memory with the respect owed him.

  Six years had come and gone since that day in Lord Salkeld’s book room. She was no longer a silly young girl with stars in her eyes who believed her cousin when he said he would save her from a marriage with his brothers, vowing to whisk her off to Gretna Green to marry her himself when the time was right. That girl no longer existed; the stars had gone out of her night sky.

  A week after Royston departed for France, she received a visit from Sir William Dysart, a longtime family friend of the Merediths. Over the course of the next month this widower who was twice her age became a gentle but most persistent suitor. And then one day he came bearing gifts: a string of pearls and a diamond-and-pearl engagement ring—small tokens of his affection—and with them he asked Helen to be his wife.

  Encouraged by her uncle, Helen accepted Sir William’s proposal. If she gave any consideration to the fact she was marrying her widowed suitor to douse the disappointment at being rejected by the man she loved, it was fleeting. She was young and naive and believed herself capable of forgetting any feelings she may have harbored for Royston precisely because of her youth and naivety. Royston had gone to France to make a life for himself there, and so she was equally determined to make a life for herself anywhere but at Carlisle and the Salkeld household. And so when Sir William vowed to cherish her all the rest of his days, she believed him. What more did a girl require of a husband?

  Sir William stayed true to his word, and while her marriage was not an unhappy one, she soon realized she was not in love with her husband. She did her best to be a good wife, and she never let him know her true feelings. But he knew, and had always known. And one day, less than a year into their marriage, he confided he had known all along that she was in love with Royston Meredith. But it did not greatly bother him. She was too shocked to even pretend to refute the claim, and he thanked her for not doing so. What mattered to him was that she belonged to him. She was his wife. All he required of her was that she remain compliant in the bedchamber and remain faithful, in deed if not in thought. He then startled her further by casually mentioning that he had paid her uncle the princely sum of £5,000 to have his consent to their marriage. He would have given Salkeld twice that to make her his, but her uncle was an avaricious fool who grasped at the first offer made to him. Nor did Sir William think much of the son. He could not for the life of him fathom why Royston Meredith had passed up on the chance to marry her, because it was obvious to him—and he had known Royston since he was in leading strings—that the young man was just as in love with her as she was with him. Porridge for brains must run in the Meredith family.

  Helen was inclined to agree, and she quickly dismissed such poignant recollections from her thoughts. This was Edith’s tea party, and she must not allow Royston’s presence to distract her from the occasion. So she searched the crowd with her eyes, wondering what had happened to Grace. Her young cousin had been right behind her just before the double doors were opened by a footman to admit them to the drawing room.

  She was about to mention this to her uncle, when she realized Royston was staring hard at her. So hard in fact that she wondered if he had been able to read her thoughts. She stared back, expressionless, and he quickly looked away. In fact he returned to the sideboard, as if wanting to put space between them. Her gaze followed him, thoughts returning to that fateful day in her uncle’s book room when he had so vehemently rejected her, and she had a sudden impulse to ask him for an explanation. Surely, with the passage of time, they could talk about it as adults and remain unaffected.

  She reasoned it was better to have the question answered now, before Edith’s wedding. She could then spend the rest of her time while in Carlisle and at the wedding without worrying about what his response might or would be, speculation gnawing away at her the entire visit, as it had all the way up from London.

  She closed her fan and followed him to the sideboard.

  Chapter Six

  Before she could say one word to Royston, the youngest Meredith appeared beside Helen in a cloud of pretty pink petticoats, large, bright eyes full of excitement to be attending her sister’s tea party. A tall, thin girl of seventeen, with the family’s perfectly arched brows, her exuberance and playfulness reminded Helen of herself at the same age. Although, she had never possessed Grace’s audacity of spirit to say and do as she pleased regardless of parental authority.

  This was never more in evidence than when Grace went straight up to her brother, and said cheekily, “You look to have the worry of the world on your shoulders, Roy. Had you thought I’d run off to Gretna Green as I have vowed to do on no less than four occasions?”

  Royston could not hide the smile in his eyes but managed to keep the amusement from his voice.

  “No. Not that I don’t think you capable of running off. I just don’t think there’s a boy—and I do mean boy—who’d be silly enough to run off with you.”

  Grace pouted, feigning offense.

  “Charlie is not silly. In fact he is very sensible.”

  “He is. Which is why he won’t run off with you to Gretna Green or anywhere else.”

  Grace included Helen in the conversation by drawing her arm through hers and bringing her closer, saying conspiratorially, yet loud enough for her brother to hear every word, “I invited Charlie to join us, but he’s not permitted into Papa’s drawing room because he’s the son of Mr. Lawson, our steward. So he’s practically a servant, though he is in truth an employee, which is different.”

  “It is different. What remains the same is, servant or employee, you won’t be marrying him anytime soon,” Royston stated without heat.

  “I do not see what it is about Charlie that has made you take him in such offense.”

  “You misconstrue me, Grace,” Royston said with a grin and a shake of his head. “It has nothing to do with Charlie. I like him. He may marry whomever he pleases, and I wish him well. But you have many more years of growing up to do before you marry anyone.”

  Grace cocked her head, a glance at Helen. “How many more years?”

  Royston threw out a number. “Four. Perhaps five—”

  “Five years?” Grace hissed. “You cannot mean it!”

  “I do.”

  “In five years I’ll be older than Edith is now, and she is about to be married. And no one stopped—”

  “You are not Edith—”

  “No, not Edith,” Grace corrected. “Cousin Helen. No one stopped Cousin Helen from marrying Sir William, did they? You were how old, cousin?” she asked, turning to Helen with an open look. “Seventeen, or were you eighteen?”

  Helen suppressed a smile. She was aware Grace knew the answer and was merely provoking her brother, thus she answered her directly, without affront or surprise.

  “I married Sir William two mon
ths after my eighteenth birthday. You were there, remember? As my flower girl, scattering rose petals here and there, but mostly over the guests.”

  “Oh yes! So I was!” Grace replied with feigned surprise, keeping up the pretense of lost memory. She giggled behind her fan. “I sprinkled a handful of petals over Edith’s head, too, and she was most unhappy because she was flirting shamelessly with one of Sir William’s sons.” She stared at her brother, all laughter aside. “So if Cousin Helen was permitted to marry at eighteen, and a man as old as Papa—”

  “Not quite, Grace, dear,” Helen said softly.

  “Not quite,” Grace agreed. “But, and you will excuse me for saying so, cousin, he was just as fusty as Papa.”

  “It has nothing to do with age!” Royston stuck in, not a glance at Helen, face flushed with embarrassment to be discussing his cousin’s marriage, and Sir William in particular.

  “Does it not?” Grace asked with that same look of bemusement that hid her real intent. “Then you should have no objection to your sister marrying the steward’s son, for Charlie is only three and twenty, so only five years my senior.”

  Like Helen, Royston was not fooled. He knew he was being goaded, but he was beyond caring. He needed to set the record straight.

  Gaze fixed on Grace, as if Helen were not there at all, he explained patiently, voice lowered so as not to attract the attention of their guests, “Our cousin’s marriage was different. She was an heiress. You are not. Sir William was a man of means and position. Charlie is not. And she had a—a choice. You do not.”

  “Choice?”

  Grace and Helen blurted out the word in unison, and with the same incredulous disbelief.

  Royston looked at Grace, and then at Helen, and for the first time since she’d entered the room, he looked into her eyes, but it was his sister he addressed.

  “Why, yes, Helen did, Grace. She chose to marry Sir William Dysart. No one forced her into it, did they, my lady? Just as I would not force Grace into marrying someone she did not want to have as a husband. But as her brother, I can and will counsel my father to stop her marrying before she is of age. Something my father should have done for you. Though . . .” He smiled sadly. “Perhaps he did do so, but you were still determined to marry, and marry well, and then how could he refuse? Sir William Dysart was an eminent and wealthy politician and quite the matrimonial prize.”

  “Prize? You think . . . You think I married Sir William because—because he was a—a prize?”

  Shock dried Helen’s throat, and she pressed her lips together, unable to go on, though a great wave of words had rushed up into her mouth. But she was circumspect enough to take stock of her surroundings. She was in a drawing room full of guests attending Edith’s tea party. It was not the time to continue such a conversation, as much as she wanted to forgo the occasion and drag Royston into an adjoining room and demand he explain himself. Grace had no such compunction.

  “You have a strange notion of what constitutes a prize, Roy! Besides, if you’d been here and not in France, Cousin Helen would never have married Sir William at all, would you have, cousin?”

  “Behave yourself, Grace, or I’ll have you returned to the schoolroom where girls of your age belong,” Royston demanded, face flushed with angry embarrassment.

  Grace did not wait for Helen’s answer. Nor did she heed her brother’s warning. What she had to say needed to be said, and she’d been waiting many years to say it. She cared not a jot that they were in a crowded drawing room. Still, she did her best to lower her voice to a hissed whisper.

  “You promised to marry her, Roy. You promised. You promised to save her from marriage to Thomas and Matthew. I may have been only eleven years old at the time, and no doubt you thought me too young to understand. But I have ears, and I heard the promises you made to Helen, and I was glad of them. Edith was glad, too. We loved our brothers, but we always knew it was you Helen loved. And we thought you loved her just as much! You cannot deny it! And you cannot deny what I heard: you said that you would rather run off to Gretna Green with Helen than allow Papa to marry her to Thomas or Matthew. But you didn’t save her because you went off to France instead.”

  “Grace, I—”

  “Grace, please don’t upset yourself so,” Helen said gently, cutting Royston off and pressing her lace handkerchief on her young cousin. “It doesn’t matter. Not now. Not after all these years. We were just children when we made those promises to each other.”

  When Grace just stood there looking miserable, Helen turned her away from the room, pried the handkerchief from her fist, and gently patted her wet cheeks dry. She spoke to her in a low, soothing voice.

  “You must not blame your brother for my marriage. I do not. I married Sir William of my own free will. If I have one regret, it is leaving you and Edith. I had hoped to reside nearby, but—but as a parliamentarian Sir William needed to be in London. And perhaps that was for the best . . .”

  She pocketed her damp handkerchief and kissed her cousin’s flushed cheek, saying with a glance up at Royston, who was frowning with concern at his sister, “Your brother had to go to France because—because healing is his—his—calling. And a young man who needs to concentrate on his career does not need the distraction of a wife. So you see, it all worked out for the best, and here we are! Still friends.” She smiled brightly. “Now, we must think of Edith and her wedding and her happiness—”

  “Not matter? Still Friends?” Royston whispered hoarsely, taking a step closer to Helen. “You can be calm and cavalier with your feelings if you please, but don’t pretend to know mine!”

  He’d been forcing himself not to interrupt Helen’s soothing monologue because it was having the desired effect on his sister, and he certainly did not need another scene. Their guests had witnessed enough drama from Grace’s entrance and subsequent hollow pronouncements about running off with the steward’s son. So he was prepared to let Helen reason with her. But whatever circumspection he possessed evaporated when she had used the word friends. And having made his initial outburst, it was as if the dam that had been holding back his feelings finally burst, allowing them to come rushing forward, caution swallowed up in the torrent.

  “It matters to me. It has always mattered to me that you married someone else—that you chose to marry Sir William. It matters that you had such little faith in my promises—in our promises to each other. We may have been children when we first made them, but nothing had changed for me about our future right up until the day I discovered you had married another. Our lives would have turned out very differently indeed had you heeded my words. Had you trusted in me.” He regarded his sister, who was staring at him forlornly. “Don’t lay all the blame at my feet, Grace. No doubt Helen had her reasons for disregarding my letter. Perhaps it was wrong of me to make such presumptions as I did, because they weren’t enough to convince her to wait until my return from France, were they?” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Edith approaching with one of the guests and quickly came to a sense of his surroundings. He bowed stiffly. “You will have to excuse me. I am being a neglectful host.” Before he turned away, he said to Helen, “Because we are still friends, I am willing to discuss this further with you. But it will have to wait until tomorrow. And as we’ll be stuck in a carriage for several hours, what better way to pass the time! Excuse me . . .”

  Grace and Helen watched him step across to Edith to be introduced to her guest, and then both looked at each other, puzzled. They mouthed the same word and in the same incredulous manner.

  “Letter?”

  Chapter Seven

  Helen was determined to take Royston up on his offer and ask about the letter but knew that discussion would have to wait until the journey to Dumfries for Edith’s wedding. Thus she put it out of her mind and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon tea. It was a spectacular success, and even Lord Salkeld was able to offer up his congratulations to his daughter and son on a most excellent turnout. Edith was very happy, and that’s all tha
t mattered to anyone. And then, just as the guests were taking their leave, Royston was called away to attend to a patient and did not return in time to have supper with the family.

  After supper, the cousins sat over their needlework about the fireplace in the sitting room, Helen entering into the excitement of the preparations in place for Edith’s wedding at Comlongon Castle, while Lord Salkeld dozed in his favorite chair. And such was the happiness of the two sisters to have Helen returned to them that they remarked it was just like old times, when they were all girls in their teens growing up together. Edith pointed out that one thing about her teens she did not miss was being teased mercilessly by her three brothers. Yet various examples of this teasing provoked giggles. Though when Edith admitted that Royston was always too serious to enter into their brothers’ scheming and that he always protected Helen from their playful pranks, there was a moment of awkwardness. But Helen smiled and lamented that she, too, had missed her cousins, even the teasing pranks of Thomas and Matthew, and everyone again fell into easy conversation. That is until Grace voiced what the family knew but which had never been spoken aloud: Roy returned from France a much more serious young man than when he had left. Edith and Grace were convinced the change had everything to do with Helen’s marriage to Sir William Dysart.

  Helen ruminated about this and the discussion of the previous night while seated at the breakfast table the next morning. She often wondered how different her life might have been had Royston not gone off to France. But she never forgot his words to his father about her: “I wouldn’t marry her under such circumstances if she were the last redheaded gypsy worth a fortune this side of hell!” Words that still stung after all these years. So while she could wish there had been a different outcome, she was not bitter. She had always preferred to concentrate on the positives of what life had dealt her and so was optimistic about the future and what it might hold and did not dwell on what might have been, which seemed to be what Royston had been doing since he’d returned from abroad.