As Daisy had struggled to keep her bitterness from coloring the days and weeks following his death, word of his final wishes began to whisper through the salons of Mayfair. The Chatwick fortune was up for bidding!
In fairness, Daisy had enjoyed the attention at first—it was a welcome change after caring for a sickly husband for so many years. She quickly became one of the most sought-after women in London...but, as it was readily apparent to everyone, not for herself. She was a widow with a fortune and a deadline for remarriage, and that was like raw meat to lions as far as the bachelors of the Quality were concerned. She could hardly keep them from her door.
As time ticked by, and the vultures flocked around her, Daisy began to distrust the intentions of anyone who came calling. She felt suffocated by it all and began to question her own instincts. Bishop Craig made the situation all the more intolerable as he began to negotiate on her behalf—without her knowledge—with men she scarcely knew. Her pleas to him to stop fell on deaf ears. “Your husband put his trust in me, Lady Chatwick. I will not let him down in this.”
There was nothing she could do, and Daisy had all but resigned herself to her fate. But then, five months ago, as if delivered on the wings of angels, came the letter from Robert Spivey. Rob.
Rob was now a captain in the Royal British Navy. She really didn’t know more about him than that, for it had been a little more than eleven years since she’d last seen him. She’d imagined he was married and surely had children of his own. She thought that he’d forgotten her altogether. Eleven years was a lifetime in loves lost, wasn’t it?
Well, she’d not forgotten him. He’d been her first love, her deepest love and her only real love.
Ah, but they’d been so young when they’d met, so hopelessly idealistic. They’d dreamed of a future together—nothing terribly magnificent, mind you, but one that suited two people consumed with each other and with love. A future that had room for only the two of them.
Lord, how naive she’d been then! She used to daydream of how they would live: in a thatched-roof cottage with window boxes filled with flowers. They would have children, too—robust, healthy children—who would run among the fields of heather. She would have a garden, and take great pride in it, entering her flowers and fruits in the village festivals. At night, she and Robert would lie in bed beside each other, listening to the sounds of their children slumbering, their dogs in their corners. And they would make love, sweetly, gently, reverently.
What silly dreams. She’d always known her path, and no amount of wishing could change it. Daisy was the only surviving child of two elderly parents, and she was the shiny bauble they dangled before titled and wealthy men. She’d known since she was a girl that she would be married to a fine family, that her marriage would consolidate fortunes and land and forge important connections. But then she’d met Robert, and she had foolishly believed that if two people truly loved each other, they would find a way to be together.
In the eyes of her parents and society, however, Robert wasn’t good enough for her. He’d even warned her he wasn’t, so much more present in the truth of their affair than she’d been. He knew that because he didn’t have a title, or any wealth to speak of, and was merely the son of a country vicar, her parents would never agree to a marriage. It was true—while she was dreaming of her idyllic life with Robert, her parents were striking the marriage bargain with Clive. Daisy’s fate had been sealed before she even knew what was in the offing.
When she found out, she’d begged Robert to elope with her, but Robert, always the voice of reason, had refused. “I would never dishonor you in that way, Daisy,” he’d said gallantly.
She’d argued with him. “Dishonor me! Take me from here, please! You love me—how can you let me go?”
But let her go he had. “You must accept it,” he’d said.
Wasn’t it funny that those were the exact words Clive would utter to her from his deathbed many years later? You must accept it.
Robert Spivey’s family had managed to arrange a commission in the Royal Navy and he’d left Nottinghamshire without even saying goodbye to her. He had forced her to accept it.
Daisy was older and wiser now, and she was determined that she’d not merely accept these things in her life. She wouldn’t accept that an old bishop would tell her who and when she had to marry. She wouldn’t accept that one of the most important decisions of her life had been tainted with a fortune that followed her everywhere she went.
And then, the letter had come. It is with sadness and grave concern that I have received the news of your husband’s passing, he’d written. Long have I kept you in my heart, Daisy. I will not lose you to another man again...
He’d written that he was sailing soon, but that his commission in the Royal Navy would end this year, and at such time, he hoped she would welcome his call to her in London.
Daisy had been astounded. Heartened. How was it possible that after all these years, her love for Robert could burn so brightly? And yet, she could feel it, along with all the hope gurgling in her. Unfortunately, he did not say when he might come to London. What did this year mean? Tomorrow? In six months’ time? That would be too late for Daisy.
She had to give Robert time to reach her and thereby put an end to the madness around her. And the only way to do that was to escape London for a time.
She had discussed the letter and her predicament with her good friend, Lady Beckinsal, who had urged her to go, to give the poor man time to end his commission and come to London to save her before Bishop Craig forced her into an unhappy marriage. “If he comes so soon as the summer, simply tell your butler to ask if he’d like word sent to you. He will wait for your reply if he still esteems you,” she’d said with great assurance.
A knock on the coach ceiling from above startled Daisy from her rumination; Belinda opened the little hatch to the driver as Daisy sat up, wincing as her stays dug into her ribs once again.
“Milady, Auchenard just ahead,” the driver called down. The coach was slowing, turning right.
Daisy braced her arms against the wall of the coach and peered out the dusty window. It was so filthy she could scarcely see, but she could make out a tower above a high wall. The vegetation next to the road was so overgrown that she couldn’t see much else. There was no livestock, no cattle, no sheep—nothing but untended meadow and forest.
A few moments later, the coach shuddered to a stop. Ellis pushed himself up and crowded in next to Daisy, peering out the window. “Is this it, Mamma?”
“It is.”
The coach door swung open; Ellis kicked the step down and then practically leaped out of the coach with more vigor than Daisy had seen from him in days. She followed her son, shook out her skirts and put her hands to her back as she gazed at the structure before her.
Belinda stumbled out after her, knocking into Daisy and catching herself with one hand on her shoulder. “Oh dear,” she said as she, too, gazed up.
“Oh dear” was the kindest thing that might be said. The old hunting lodge was much larger than what Daisy had expected, really—it looked more like a medieval castle. The stone was dark and weathered, and ivy ran unchecked and wild over half of it. Long tendrils of it danced in the early-evening breeze. There were two towers anchoring the structure on either end. The windows—a few boarded—were dark and looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned in years. There were numerous chimneys, at least two of them crumbling, and there was no smoke rising from any of them. Auchenard seemed completely deserted.
“I thought a caretaker looked after it,” Daisy said, baffled. This had not been cared for in the least—if anything, it had been abandoned.
“Ah, there you are!” The front door, large and wooden and battered by weather, opened, and her late mother’s brother, Uncle Alfonso, strode toward Daisy as the other chaise and the wagons