The Folly at Falconbridge Hall Read online

  The Folly at

  Falconbridge Hall

  By

  Maggi Andersen

  KNOX ROBINSON

  PUBLISHING

  London • New York

  The Folly at

  Falconbridge Hall

  By

  Maggi Andersen

  KNOX ROBINSON

  PUBLISHING

  London • New York

  KNOX ROBINSON

  PUBLISHING

  3rd Floor, 36 Langham Street

  Westminster, London W1W 7AP

  &

  244 5th Avenue, Suite 1861

  New York, New York 10001

  Knox Robinson Publishing is a specialist, international publisher of historical fiction, historical romance and medieval fantasy.

  Copyright © Maggi Andersen 2012

  The right of Maggi Andersen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Knox Robinson Publishing, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning the reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Knox Robinson Publishing, at the London address above.

  You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-908483-36-2

  ISBN ePUB 978-1-908483-99-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  and the United Kingdom.

  First published by KRP in Great Britain in 2012.

  First published by KRP in the United States in 2013.

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  www.knoxrobinsonpublishing.com

  Other Books by Maggi Andersen

  The Spies of Mayfair Series

  A Baron in Her Bed

  The Reluctant Marquess

  Prologue

  A full moon painted the gardens in a chiaroscuro of deep purple and pewter. She hurried along expecting sprites to emerge to dance amongst the trees on such a magical night. Would he be pleased? Her heart beat fast with the anticipation of seeing his handsome face. The lake was liquid silver, smooth and calm.

  The folly awaited. She began to quote from her favorite poem. “And by the moon the reaper weary, piling sheaves in uplands airy, listening, whispers, ‘’Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.’”

  A man appeared at the top of the steps. “What have you got there?”

  She held up her prize.

  Chapter One

  1894 Clapham, England

  Vanessa Ashley planned to arrive at her destination cool and composed, but she felt like a wilting lily. She dabbed her handkerchief at the sweat trickling into her collar as heat gathered beneath her chip-straw bonnet. Clapham High Street Railway Station was a noisy and smelly hub of activity, luckily the residence that was to be her new home lay in the countryside.

  A short, bearded man approached her and politely touched his hat. “For Falconbridge Hall, miss?”

  “Yes, I’m Miss Ashley. Thank you … Mr.?”

  “They just call me Capstick, Miss Ashley. This way.” He led her to a trap. After he’d loaded her trunk and her bicycle on board, they seated themselves. He slapped the reins and told the horse to walk on. “You’re the new governess?”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  “Another one,” he muttered and shook his head.

  Startled, Vanessa stared at him. “How many have there been?”

  “A few. They don’t stay long.”

  “But why?”

  Capstick declined to comment. He just grunted and shook his head.

  “Well, I intend to.” Vanessa straightened her shoulders. It was true she had never wished to be a governess. Even though she was still quite young, her wish for children of her own now seemed unlikely, and if this was to be her fate, she intended to make the best of it. A person without funds, indifferent looks, and a lack of grace had no other course open to them.

  “Good luck to yer, then.” Capstick grinned at her, revealing a large gap in his front teeth.

  With reassuring skill, he negotiated around a horse-drawn tram as they passed the bandstand on the common and then drove down tree-lined avenues. Villas were soon replaced by streets of gracious homes set amid beautiful gardens. A sign, reading Clapham Park Estate, appeared, followed by larger country houses on acreages.

  They passed the last of the houses and were out in the countryside now. Green fields crisscrossed by hedgerows stretched away to a line of forest in the distance. The trap followed the road beside a high brick wall for about a mile until they came to a pair of impressive wrought iron gates with Falconbridge Hall emblazoned on them in gold lettering. Capstick drove through, and a house appeared above the trees. Many chimneys rose from the massive slate roof.

  Ahead of them, a stocky dark-haired man rode a magnificent bay horse across the lawn and vaulted a hedge. Vanessa had a glimpse of dark, gypsy eyes and a white smile beneath a black moustache. Before they drew level, he turned the animal and rode towards the woods.

  “Who was that?” she couldn’t help asking, watching him disappear into the trees.

  “That’s the groom, Lovel, exercising the master’s horse.” Capstick shook his head. “The gardeners will not be pleased.”

  The gravel drive bordered by lime trees curved around through formal gardens to the front of the house where he left her, disappearing with her trunk and bicycle toward the rear entrance and, she presumed, the coach house and stables.

  The sprawling red brick house had sandstone trim around the windows and a tower at one end, ivy covered its walls. It was older and far bigger than those they’d passed on their way from the station. The house had settled into its surroundings, and she had the feeling it had been here for a very long time while the urban sprawl of Clapham edged ever closer.

  Conscious that she looked rumpled and untidy, Vanessa smoothed the skirt of her olive green linen dress and straightened the limp white collar with travel-stained cotton gloves. She picked up her bag and stepped up to the paneled door flanked by stout white columns.

  Before she could knock, a maid wearing a mobcap and a white apron over her grey floral dress opened the door. “Miss Ashley? Please come in.”

  Surprised not to be met by a butler in such an establishment, Vanessa stepped into the wide entrance hall. One of those new inventions, the telephone sat on a table. A fine Persian carpet ran the length of the parquet floor, pale green satin papered the walls, and fringed and tasseled emerald velvet drapes hung from the windows. Potted ferns clustered in corners, and a gracious staircase led upward. Despite fractured light filtering down from a stained-glass window above the stair, the house was so gloomy inside dusk might have fallen.

  “The master’s in his study, miss. Please wait here while I announce you.”

  Vanessa sank gratefully onto the edge of a straight-backed chair. It had been hours since she’d had a drink, and her mouth was horribly parched. Now her knees had developed a worrying tendency to tremble. To distract herself, she studied the remarkable flesh tones on the naked woman’s torso of the oil painting hanging on the o
pposite wall. A François Boucher if she was not mistaken. More flesh than was decent, surely.

  Her father had preferred the sea and boats as his subjects. He considered the naked body to be soft pornography and not fine art but altered his opinion after nudes became an important asset to any wealthy man’s collection and began to fetch high prices. More than once, Vanessa had come across nude models posing in his studio, barely covered by drapery and, sometimes, wearing nothing at all.

  At the thought of her father and their home in Cornwall, a wave of homesickness passed over her; she had never envisaged such a drastic change in fortune. She swallowed and focused her mind on the letter and the offer that had brought her here.

  In his fine script, the viscount had been brief and to the point. He was a widower with a young daughter in need of tutoring. An associate of her uncle’s had approached him on her behalf. She’d read his words with disquiet. He sounded so business-like and … unsympathetic. He had been informed that her mother and father died from the influenza, but his few words of condolence failed to make her more confident of what lay ahead.

  The maid’s head appeared over the banister rail. “The master will see you now.”

  Vanessa walked up the wide oak stair to where the maid awaited outside a door. A deep voice answered her knock. Vanessa turned the knob thinking how she would have liked to wash before meeting her new employer; it was difficult to appear cool and in control when so hot.

  The room she entered was also gloomy. A gas lamp glowed where a man sat in shirtsleeves and braces, his dark head bent over a desk. She took two uncertain steps and paused in the middle of a crimson Persian rug. Vanessa clasped her hands together and inspected the room. Shelves of leather-bound books lined one wall. Heavy bronze velvet drapes, pulled halfway across the small-paned windows, framed a narrow but magnificent view of parkland where broad graveled walks trailed away through well-grown trees. She suffered a sudden urge to walk across, pull the curtains back and throw open a window.

  Lord Falconbridge put down the butterfly under-glass he had been examining and pushed back his leather chair, rising to his feet. As she edged closer, he donned his coat and came to shake her hand. “Miss Ashley.”

  “How do you do, my lord?”

  He motioned her to sit then sat himself.

  He would be in his mid-thirties, she guessed. His good looks made her feel even more untidy. His dark hair swept off a widow’s peak, and he had a deep cleft in his chin. He removed his glasses, and his eyes were a similar bright blue to the butterfly. Dark brows met in an absent-minded frown as if she was an unwelcome distraction. “Welcome to Falconbridge Hall. I hope you had a good journey?”

  “Yes, thank you, my lord.”

  “You’ve come quite a long way. You must be tired.”

  “I broke my journey with an aunt in Taunton, my lord.” Her aunt was quite elderly, and Vanessa had slept on the sofa, but she didn’t feel at all tired. She expected fatigue would strike once the initial rush of excitement had faded.

  “My sympathies for your loss, Miss Ashley.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You have had no experience as a governess, I believe.”

  “No.”

  “Do you like children?”

  “Very much, my lord.”

  “Then you have had some involvement with them.”

  “Yes, I was very fond of my neighbors’ children. I minded them quite often as their parents were both in business.”

  “You had no opportunity to marry in Cornwall?”

  “I had one offer, my lord.” The widowed vicar, Harold Ponsonby, had offered, in an attempt to rescue her from the heathenish den of iniquity in which he found her.

  He eyed her. “And you refused him?”

  Might he think her imprudent? “Yes.”

  “Do you have a particular skill, Miss Ashley, which you can impart to my daughter?”

  “No, my lord.” She drew in a breath. She had not expected such a question. “Sadly, I did not inherit my father’s artistic talent, but I have my mother’s enquiring mind and her interest in history and politics.”

  “Politics?” He stared at her rather long, and she wished again that she’d had time to tidy herself. “We shall see how you get on. The rest of the day is your own. We will discuss your duties in the library tomorrow at ten. Mrs. Royce, my housekeeper, will show you to your room.” With an abstracted glance at his desk, he rose and went to pull the bell.

  The mahogany desktop was completely covered with pens and papers, a microscope, a probe of some kind, a set of long-handled tweezers, a large magnifying glass and a small hand-held one, tomes stacked one on top of the other in danger of toppling, and the butterfly in its glass prison, its beautiful wings pinned down, never to soar again. Caught by its beauty and premature death, Keats’s poem Ode to a Grecian Urn, rushed into her head. “Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought…As doth eternity.”

  The viscount swiveled, and his eyebrows shot up. “Pardon?”

  Vanessa jumped to her feet as heat flooded her cheeks. She’d said the words aloud. She must have had too much sun. “Keats, my lord.”

  “Are you a devotee of the Romantics?”

  “Not especially.” Annoyed with herself and, irrationally, with him for pursuing it, she said, “Forgive me, it was a random thought.”

  He folded his arms and studied her. “You are given to spouting random philosophical thoughts?”

  She tugged at her damp collar. “Not usually. I’m a little tired, and it’s been so hot.” Hastening to change the subject, she stepped over to the wall covered in framed butterflies of all sizes and colors. One particular specimen caught her eye. “Exquisite.”

  She felt his presence disturbingly close behind her. “Which?”

  She pointed. “This one, with patches of crimson and deep blue on its wings.”

  “You have a good eye. That’s a Nymphalidae from Peru. Do you know much about butterflies?” She looked at him, finding his blue eyes had brightened.

  “Very little, I’m afraid,” she said, aware her contribution to this discussion would prove disappointing. “We get many orange ones with black spots in Cornwall.”

  “Dark green Fritillary.” The interested light in his eyes faded.

  “That can’t be. They’re orange,” she said.

  “That is their name, dark green Fritillary.”

  “Why would they call it dark green when …?” Her voice died away at the impatience in his face.

  “That species is common and of little interest.” He studied her. “Unless you took notice of some interesting aspect of their habitats?”

  “No, not precisely, my lord … uh, they seemed to gather in trees and grasses ….” She nipped at her lip with her teeth, as he nodded and turned away. Would a governess be required to know much about butterflies or botany? Beyond Cornwall, her knowledge of flora and fauna was barely worthy of comment.

  A woman entered the room, her neat figure garbed in black bombazine, with a lacy cap over her brown hair and a watch pinned to her breast. A large bunch of keys jangled at her waist. Vanessa thought her to be in her early-forties. She had a pointed nose and sharp eyes that looked like they would miss little.

  “Ah. Mrs. Royce, this is the new governess, Miss Ashley. Please give her a tour of the day nursery and school room and introduce my daughter to her before you take her to her quarters.”

  “Yes, milord.”

  “Miss Ashley.” His lordship nodded. “I shall see you here again at ten o’clock tomorrow. We’ll discuss your plans for teaching my daughter. I’m extremely keen that she becomes proficient in mathematics, the French language, and botany.”

  “Botany, my lord?” Vanessa’s fears were realized. Completely unprepared, she looked around wildly at the books lining his shelves. Might she have time to bone up on it? She read some knowledge of her discomfort in his eyes and lifted her chin. “Surely English and history are equally as important?”

  �
�That goes without saying.” He turned back to his desk. “Tomorrow at ten.”

  Summarily dismissed, Vanessa followed the housekeeper along the corridor. Did she catch a satisfied gleam in his eye before he turned away? Her mind filled with questions. Was it going to be difficult to work for him? Might it be why governesses did not stay long here?

  Mrs. Royce glanced at Vanessa’s wrinkled gown and scuffed shoes. “You’ll be suffering from the heat, I expect. We’ve had the devil of a summer.” Without waiting for a reply, she opened the day nursery door as a young maid jumped up. She dropped her sewing as she bobbed.

  “This is the nursery maid. Agnes.”

  Vanessa greeted the maid as Mrs. Royce approached the child who hadn’t acknowledged their presence. “Miss Blythe, this is Miss Ashley, your new governess.”

  Blythe looked up from where she knelt beside a doll’s house with the distant expression of someone woken suddenly. A ragdoll with a china face lay in a tumbled heap beside her. Slender brows frowned at the intrusion, reminding Vanessa of her father. She climbed to her feet.

  “Please to meet you, Miss Blythe.” Vanessa smiled and stretched out her hand. “I’ve so looked forward to this moment.”

  “How do you do?” Blythe said politely. Blythe slipped her little hand into Vanessa’s and, after the merest touch, withdrew it. She had inherited the black hair and blue eyes of her father, and his height; at ten, Blythe almost reached Mrs. Royce’s shoulder.

  “It’s almost time for afternoon tea,” Mrs. Royce said. “I’ll take you to your room, Miss Ashley.”

  The housekeeper shut the nursery door and led Vanessa down the corridor.

  Her new charge seemed quite subdued. Vanessa wondered if the girl spent much time shut up in the day nursery with the maid. She planned to change that immediately. A child should be outside in the fresh air in the cooler part of the day. Vanessa had spied a lovely shady folly through the trees, like some ancient relic from the past. She hurried to catch Mrs. Royce, who was walking briskly along the corridor.