The Deception by Joan Wolf Read Free Book Online

get me. He had procured a special license, he said, and Adrian and I would be married immediately. I changed the wrinkled dress that I had slept in for a fresh one from the case I had packed for the visit to my uncle’s mythical friends, and went downstairs like a sleepwalker.
    The ceremony was performed in the taproom, which the landlord had thoughtfully cleared of local customers. It smelled of ale and mud and the manure that some farmer had dragged in on his boots.
    It was a terrible place for the Ear! of Greystone to be married. I couldn’t look at him, I was so ashamed of myself.
    When the time came for my response, I whispered “I will,” and hung my head.
    It surprised me to find that the sun was shining when finally we emerged from the taproom. My uncle was being charming to the minister, his friend Mr. Wayne looked as if all he wanted to do was to find a bed and sleep, and Adrian’s face betrayed no expression whatsoever.
    His phaeton was in front of the inn; evidently it had been repaired. The bays were harnessed and waiting. I stood in front of the inn, feeling like a package that nobody wanted.
    “Get into the phaeton, Kate,” Adrian said to me. I glanced up at him nervously. His gray eyes were as dark and cold as the North Atlantic. “I am taking you to my estate of Lambourn,” he informed me in a voice that was as cold as his eyes.
    I moved toward the carriage, then jumped when I felt my uncle’s hand touch my arm. “Allow me to assist you, Lady Greystone,” he said in a voice full of delighted malice.
    “Stay away from her, Charlwood.” Two big hands grasped my waist and swung me up to the seat of the phaeton as easily as if I weighed nothing. A moment later Adrian joined me, and the bays trotted briskly out of Luster, moving as if their owner could not wait to leave the little village in his dust.
    * * * *
    It was a gloomy ride during which I uttered only two words: “I’m sorry.” The look he threw me was contemptuous. I didn’t blame him.
    We stopped twice to rest the horses and to eat, but I couldn’t force a thing down my throat. If I had been the crying sort I would have been bawling my eyes out by the time we reached Lambourn. But, as I believe I have said before, I am not that sort. My eyes were dry and my chin was up as we turned into the long, beech-lined drive of Lambourn Manor, one of the many homes of the Earls of Greystone.
    I noticed scarcely anything on that first arrival, but later I came to know Lambourn well and to love it dearly, so I will tell you a little about it now.
    The house was old, and small for a lord’s, but its setting on the windswept, rolling Berkshire Downs was beautiful. The turf of the Downs actually came right up to the doors of the house, making it look as if it were part of the landscape. The inside of the house was old as well; the rooms did not look as if they had been painted in the last hundred years. But I thought the faded colors were lovely and restful—every room was soft with pastel shades of ivory, crimson, pink, and blue, all lightly dusted with gold.
    Greystone rented out most of his land to tenant farmers, who pastured horses and dairy cattle and sheep on the lush turf and grew barley and wheat and oats in the limestone soil. The manor house was kept going by a small staff of permanent servants, and there were two grooms attached to the stables in order to look after the handful of horses that Greystone kept there.
    All this, of course, I learned later. On this first day all I noticed was that the original stone of the house had faded to a lovely silvery gray, and that the servants were not able to suppress their astonishment when Greystone introduced me to them as his wife.
    The housekeeper, whose name was Mrs. Noakes, showed me to my room. I learned later that it was small and shabby by the standards of the Earls of Greystone, but to me it was both large and beautiful.
    “Since you have not brought your own maid, I will send Nancy to