The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter: A Victorian Romance

  THE VISCOUNT AND THE VICAR’S DAUGHTER

  A Victorian Romance

  Copyright © 2018 by Mimi Matthews

  E-Book: 978-0-9990364-2-6

  Paperback: 978-0-9990364-3-3

  Sale of the electronic edition of this book is wholly unauthorized. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part, by any means, is forbidden without written permission from the author/ publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Cover Image: George P. A. Healy (1813–1894). Euphemia White Van Rensselaer. 1842. Oil on canvas, 115.1 x 89.2 cm. Bequest of Cornelia Cruger, 1923. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from The Advertisement

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Mimi Matthews

  For Ash and Sapphie

  North Yorkshire, England

  Autumn, 1861

  Tristan Sinclair, Viscount St. Ashton, strode through the woods that bordered the ramshackle estate of his hosts, Lord and Lady Fairford. His father, the Earl of Lynden, was waiting for him back at the house. To beard him in his proverbial den, no doubt. Why else would he have tracked him to the wilds of Yorkshire, seeking him out at one of the most notorious house parties of the season?

  “Your father is here, my lord,” his groom had whispered as Tristan dismounted from his horse and tossed him the reins. “He is taking tea with Lady Fairford and has asked to be informed the moment you arrive.”

  Tristan was tired and irritable. He’d spent all day in the saddle. His servants had travelled ahead in the carriage, leaving the posting inn at the crack of dawn, while he’d remained abed, sleeping off the effects of a night of heavy drinking. And now, here he was, hiding out in the woods as if he were a boy of ten instead of a man of two and thirty.

  He struck a low-hanging branch with his riding whip, severing the wet leaves with a loud, satisfying crunch. “Damn and blast!”

  And then he heard it.

  The unmistakable sound of a woman weeping in the woods.

  Tristan stopped where he stood and listened. Yes. It was, indeed, a woman. He would recognize that muffled sound anywhere. He’d certainly heard it enough in his lifetime. More often than not, he’d been the cause of it. And yet…this weeping woman did not sound at all like the distraught mistresses, angry actresses, and spoiled heiresses he’d often provoked to tears.

  This woman sounded as if her heart was breaking.

  It seemed to be coming from within a cluster of trees just up ahead. There had been a broken down little folly there once, a popular location for lovers’ trysts, as well as the many and varied debaucheries that were the hallmark of Lord and Lady Fairford’s house parties. He’d once met a raven-haired widow there in the moonlight. Meg something? Or was it Mary? He couldn’t recall. It had been years ago when such anonymous, amorous adventures still held some appeal for him.

  Perhaps that was what he was hearing now? A liaison gone wrong? It wouldn’t be unthinkable that a gentleman might bring his lover here to break things off with her. That would certainly explain the tears.

  He would do better to ignore it and continue on his way. A random weeping woman was none of his affair.

  Unless she was hurt.

  Tristan was far less compassionate toward women than he’d been in his youth. He’d spent too many seasons being pursued by marriage-minded mamas and young ladies determined to wed the heir to one of the wealthiest earldoms in the country. For years he’d avoided the canniest tricks and the most outlandish traps, all the while becoming more and more jaded about the female sex.

  Nevertheless, something about that pitiful sound compelled him forward.

  He was vaguely conscious of the state of his appearance. His greatcoat and breeches were stained from travel. His cravat was a wilted disgrace and his boots, normally polished to a mirror-shine, were scuffed and filthy. Good God, but he must look like some shabby country squire! And, as if that image were not repulsive enough, he was well aware that he reeked of horses, sweat, and the aftereffects of a night of heavily liquored self-pity.

  Not that any of that had ever mattered to a woman before.

  Tristan came to a gap in the trees and, turning his large frame sideways, ducked through it. Wet leaves brushed his greatcoat, the smell of damp wood and sodden grass permeating the air. His eyes found the folly at the edge of the small clearing, exactly as he remembered it. Like much on the Fairfords’ estate, it was in desperate need of repair. Half the roof had rotted away and the steps leading up to it were splintered and broken.

  There inside, he saw the small, hunched figure of a woman in a drab, ill-fitting gown. A ray of sunlight through the branches of the trees glinted and sparkled off of something on her face.

  Spectacles.

  Tristan grimaced. He didn’t need to go any closer to identify one of the ranks of colorless, bespectacled lady’s companions who trailed meekly in the wake of Lady Hortensia Brightwell. Every year, Lady Brightwell had a new one. And yet, somehow, they always looked the same. Hair scraped back into a tight little knot. Shapeless, drooping gowns. And, on every single one of them, spectacles.

  He’d long suspected that Lady Brightwell chose her companions specifically for their lack of charm and beauty.

  Tristan hesitated only a moment before striding forward to the folly. He had no interest in comforting a dreary little spinster, but if the alternative was returning to the house where his father was waiting to read him a lecture, comfort her he would. And who better? If there was one thing the Viscount St. Ashton understood, it was women.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said as he vaulted up the broken steps.

  At the sound of his deep voice, the woman sprang up from her seat. A crumpled paper fell from her lap onto the ground. She looked at it and then looked up at him. For an instant, Tristan thought she might bolt.

  He raised a staying hand. “Don’t be uneasy,” he said. “I mean you no harm. Indeed, I meant to offer you some assistance.”

  She stared at him through spectacles that were steamed from her tears and then, with a choking sigh, she sank back onto the wooden bench and covered her face with her hands.

  A rare pang of sympathy briefly softened his expression. The poor little antidote. One might think that she had just discovered that her entire world had come to an end. Perhaps she had been given the sack? Or perhaps one of Lady Fairford’s less reputable houseguests had attempted to steal a kiss?

  Moving as carefully as he would if he were approaching a wild animal, Tristan crossed the folly to stand at her side. He did not wait for an invitation. This was not a drawing room in Mayfair and she was not a gently bred young lady. He sank down beside her on the bench, close enough that his thigh brushed presumptuously again
st her skirts. And then he looked at her. Really looked at her.

  Damnation, but she was not an older lady at all. In fact, she appeared to be a relatively young woman. Her overlarge gown hung over what his practiced eye recognized as a slender and altogether pleasing frame. And the severe knot at the nape of her neck did nothing to disguise the light golden splendor of her hair. It was glossy and fair, several strands escaping their imprisonment to fall forward over her face and hands.

  Small, elegant hands with delicately tapered fingers.

  “Come now,” Tristan said gruffly, “this won’t do. You’re weeping directly into your hands. Have you no handkerchief?” He extracted his own from the inner pocket of his greatcoat and offered it to her. “Here. Take mine.”

  She took it from him with trembling fingers, immediately clutching it to her face.

  “Give me your spectacles,” he commanded.

  “M-my spectacles?” she asked.

  He extended his hand. “I shall clean the lenses while you compose yourself.”

  She responded to his peremptory tone with the automatic obedience he expected from those in subordinate positions, removing her spectacles and dropping them into his outstretched hand. She then covered her face with his handkerchief once again.

  Tristan examined the metal-framed spectacles with vague interest. They were bent and misshapen and, quite obviously, too large for her face. Secondhand, he decided, just like everything else she was wearing. He polished the wet lenses on the edge of his sleeve. When he had finished, he held them up to ascertain his handiwork, squinting as he looked through the lenses. They were as clean as he could get them. So clean that he could see right through them to the surrounding woods. He turned to look at her, his dark eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Either you and I suffer from the same abnormality of vision…or these lenses are made of clear glass.”

  “Oh, please go away, sir,” she said on a sob.

  He folded the spectacles and tossed them carelessly onto the seat beside him, well out of her reach. “I assume Lady Brightwell gave them to you.”

  That got her attention. She lowered the handkerchief, peering up at him over the edge of it with the loveliest pair of gray eyes Tristan had ever had the privilege to behold. “Do you… Do you know Lady Brightwell?” she ask in a husky, tear-clogged whisper.

  And then her hands slowly dropped to her lap, taking the handkerchief with them.

  Tristan stared at her, temporarily struck dumb. To say that her face was beautiful would not be entirely accurate. He had seen many beautiful women in his lifetime. Veritable goddesses.

  The woman sitting in front of him now was no goddess.

  She was, he realized somewhat nonsensically, more in line with being an angel.

  Her face was ever so slightly heart-shaped. Her mouth full, soft, and unexpectedly kissable. Gently sculpted cheekbones, a straight, elegant nose, and gracefully winged brows several shades darker than her hair finished the picture.

  And then there were those eyes. Wide, fathomless eyes. As stormy and tempest-tossed as the rain across an uncertain sea.

  He swallowed hard. “Yes, I know Lady Brightwell,” he said, far more harshly than he had intended. “And I recognize your breed as well. A companion, are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And these?” Tristan motioned to the spectacles. “Did they come with this revolting gown and this wretched…I dare not call it a coiffure.” He frowned at her hair. “It’s a sort of uniform, I take it. Lady Brightwell’s uniform for a lady’s companion.”

  “Yes,” she admitted. She brought his handkerchief to her face and, quite energetically, blew her nose.

  Tristan had never seen a lady attend to the business in such a matter-of-fact manner. “No woman would wear them by choice,” he said. “Especially not a young lady like yourself.”

  “I’m not a young lady.”

  He raised his brows. “No? How old are you then, madam? Thirty? Forty?”

  “Six and twenty.”

  He knew he was being rude to her, but couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Six and twenty? So, not a young woman after all.”

  She completed drying her tears and then, for the first time, turned to look at him directly. What must, under better circumstances, be a rather enviable porcelain complexion was splotchy with weeping and her perfectly proportioned little nose shone red as a beacon. “How old are you, sir?” she enquired sharply. “Fifty? Sixty?”

  Tristan was surprised into a crack of laughter.

  She did not smile. She merely looked at him, her expression as reproving as a schoolteacher’s.

  He felt a twinge of remorse. It was a novel sensation. A deuced uncomfortable one, too. “I’m two and thirty,” he informed her. “Practically in my dotage.” He paused before adding, a tad roughly, “I beg your pardon if I have offended you. My only excuse is that, in the past, when confronted with a female in tears, I have often found incivility to be a great restorative. I suppose with you I must try some other remedy.”

  “Pray don’t.”

  “You’d prefer I go?”

  “Yes.” She looked like she would have said more, but a slight breeze stirred the crumpled paper at her feet. Recalling its presence on the ground, she paled. She moved to pick it up, but Tristan anticipated her, reaching out and sweeping the crumpled paper up in his hand. “Oh don’t!” she cried.

  “What is this, then?” he asked as he flattened out the paper. “A love letter?”

  She held out her hand for it, but he moved it just out of reach. “Give it back!” she demanded. “It’s private! You have no right!”

  “I daresay,” he muttered. But having smoothed out the paper, he realized that it was not a love letter at all. It was an ink smudged drawing and a few lines of text which read:

  My beloved speaks and says to me:

  Arise, my love, my fair one,

  and come away;

  for now the winter is past,

  the rain is over and gone.

  There was more, but it was illegible. It looked as if the inkwell had spilled over it, obscuring not only the remaining words, but part of the drawing as well.

  “Please give it back to me,” she begged him.

  “What is this?” he asked, genuinely curious. “A poem you’re writing?”

  Her slender frame stiffened with something that may well have been outrage. “A poem! How can you say so? Don’t you recognize it, sir?”

  Tristan shrugged one broad shoulder. “I can’t say that I do.”

  “It’s the Song of Solomon. From the Bible.”

  “Ah, that explains my unfamiliarity.” He frowned, reading the words once again. “The winter is past. The rain is over.” He looked up at her. “What did the rest say? This part here where you have spilled ink?”

  “I did not spill any ink!”

  “No?”

  She dashed away a fresh tear with the back of her hand. “The part that’s ruined—the part just there—it was an earlier verse.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  She cast him another reproachful glance. Clearly she thought he should know it already. As if he might recite a Bible verse as easily as the latest music hall ballad. As easily as she recited it to him now:

  “Set me as a seal upon thine heart,

  as a seal upon thine arm:

  for love is strong as death—”

  An unaccountable rush of warmth crept up his neck. He cut her off before she could say another word. “That’s from the Bible?”

  “Yes.”

  Tristan cleared his throat. “Well. It is rather…”

  “It’s beautiful,” she declared.

  Beautiful. Perhaps it was. What did he know of the Bible? He had read it, of course. He was a well-educated gentleman, after all. A well-bred one, too. As a boy, he’d even attended Sunday services with his father and brother at the family seat in Hampshire. He well recalled the hours spent sitting in the family pew, affecting a dutiful interest in the dry, toneless
hymns and the long drawn-out sermons.

  But that was a lifetime ago. In the years since, no one had had the temerity to spout verses or psalms at him. Not that any of his confederates would do so. Most of them were as sunken into depravity as he was himself. “Who is it for?” he asked. “Some beau of yours?”

  She lunged for it and, before he could lift it out of her reach, snatched the paper from his hand and pressed it safely to her bosom. “How dared you.” Her low voice was heated with indignation. “It’s going to be a book of verses. An illustrated book of verses. It’s not for some beau.”

  And then she began to weep all over again.

  Tristan felt a queer tightening in his chest. “My dear girl, what the devil are you carrying on about? Did one of Lady Fairford’s footmen force a kiss on you? Or was it Lord Fairford himself?” The very thought made him inexplicably angry. “Confound it. Did no one warn you to be careful here?”

  She wiped at her remaining tears with his sodden handkerchief. “Yes. Lady Brightwell said I must take care never to be alone with any of the gentlemen at the house party. But it…it wasn’t a gentleman who upset me so.”

  Tristan winced. “One of the ladies, was it?”

  “Yes. Lady Brightwell’s daughter. Felicity.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  She gasped at his language. “Sir!”

  Tristan was unrepentant. “Are you saying that Miss Brightwell…?” He ran a hand through his already disheveled black hair. The very idea! He’d known that Felicity Brightwell was forward and a bit wild, but he would never have guessed that her tastes ran to women. Come to that, he would never have guessed that Miss Brightwell would even be here. She was a chit of one and twenty and still actively seeking a husband. Or so he’d been led to believe. “Good God, what did she do to you?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve already said too much.”

  “You’ve hardly said anything.” He paused, watching her. “And why not? Do you fear I’ll betray your confidence? I assure you, Lady Brightwell and her daughter are no friends of mine. And even if they were, your secrets would be safe with me.”

  “I shouldn’t even be sitting with you like this.”