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Chapter One
Suffolk, 1842
Aurelia, Viscountess of Strafford, strutted through the front door of Strafford Manor, gardening tools in hand. An unusual sun bathed her serious features in that early spring day. There was plenty to be done with the end of winter. Vegetables to grow, orchard to clean, garden to re-develop. A whole estate to oversee. Not that she complained. Oh, no! These were the most content two years of her life, to be sure.
Her hand waved to shade her rosewood brown eyes, surveying the land about to reborn after a quiet, peaceful winter. A winter where she, the tenants and the servants received enough to eat, enough coal to get warm, enough certainties in life. Diametrically different from when she arrived. No, she would not relive those heart-clenching days, not now when everything was in its due place.
A cool breeze feathered her satin creamy skin as fast passing clouds played hide and seek with the sun. Beyond the front gardens, a crystal lake stretched up to the drive leading from the estate front gates to the manor. Her rosewood gaze ran over the mirrored waters. She had had a picnic area built on the farthest corner of the lake, her favourite spot of all. She had spent many an hour sitting and admiring the view during these blessedly uneventful two years.
Strafford manor was a baroque mansion planted in the middle of Suffolk. The portentous porch elevated majestically in the centre which one reached by climbing large steps. On one side, it elongated into an airy terrace for carriages’ arrival, and where one might sit and survey the countryside as far as the eye could see. The red-bricked house exhibited high windows in a rounded design, which lent it delicate lines. Built in the time of Queen Anne, it housed one of the oldest noble families in the country.
A movement far in the drive caught her attention. At first, it seemed like a bird flew back there. As it moved closer, she discerned a horse, a person on it, a moment passed, a man riding it. It should not be the steward. She had spoken with him this morning and he had informed her he would be organising the sowing of the fields with the tenants. Her mind searched for possible visitors at this morning hour, the horseman approaching more and more. In the distance, she devised his features. The features she had hoped never to see again for the rest of her normal, quiet and peaceful life. Her husband.
Her hand clutched the spading fork until the blood ceased circulating in it. A myriad of feelings trespassed her heart, none of them cheerful. Anger, sorrow, frustration, all shades of turmoil. In the lot of them, anger was the strongest. The life she had painstakingly carved for herself would come to an end in less than a minute. There was not a single thing she could do about it. Stop! She commanded herself. She would cling to what she had constructed with teeth and nails come what may! A firm promise to herself.
In that last minute, a patchwork of bitter memories paraded her mind. Memories of the most wrong man she should have ever married. She had had choices, but she had fancied herself in love with him. They say you must live with your choices. Precisely. Three long years of sheer unhappiness was the choice she had had to live with. Until he took off, leaving quietude and security in his wake. Now, the sense of loss assailed her with the force of a giant sea wave. The loss of the joyful life of the past two years.
Conrad Warndale, Viscount of Strafford, rode his weary horse through the estate drive with a sense of coming home completely alien to him. Two years serving in India had not prepared him to this. He had thought about thousands of things during this time, but never about how he would feel upon seeing his lands again. He had missed many things, and people - a person - while away. The manor itself remained in the background. This concept of… belonging came to mind. After having experienced so much, seen so much—too much to tell the truth, belonging came as a novelty. He had departed a strange country, an even stranger culture, askew politics, violence, death - useless death. The right decision to come back, even though there remained loads he regretted.
His dark eyes lifted to the distance, he saw the woman on the manor’s portent entrance. Immediately he recognised his wife. The woman he abandoned; had to. The woman that visited his mind only too often. He discern her standing on the steps straight, chin up, proud, her rosewood stare hard and uncompromising. Her equally rosewood hair caught in a simple chignon at her nape. He remembered her hair falling in smooth waves around her shoulders. Not very tall, nevertheless curvaceous in all the tempting places. An air of maturity about her, even from afar. A grip of expectation caught him at the sight of her. He had thought of plenty to tell her.
Aurelia awaited his approach, stance frozen. She could not move a muscle; they clenched tense to the point of cement. Nonetheless, the sight of him stirred her somewhat. His black hair under his hat, the dark eyes; she still remembered his tall frame. He had always been one of the most handsome men she had the privilege to look at. Three years of hell with him dissolved her opinion about his looks. In the end, she solely saw him as the ugliest person on Earth. At that moment, she realized he appeared weathered; in his eyes, an expression of someone who had seen a multitude of scenarios. It did not matter; she did not want him here, ever. It did not import this was his manor, his title. Nothing mattered, but her peace of mind. And she would keep it at any cost!
The sound of the hooves became louder in her reluctant ears, the horse bigger, the horseman more antagonistic to her. Seconds vanished and he stanched in front of her, the front steps down separating them. He took off his hat, his black as midnight hair a little long and dishevelled by the wind. Disgust warred with something in her middle. Something hot and unwanted. She ignored it as she eyed him hard.
“You are home.” She pronounced dryly.
“Good morning, Aurelia.” His voice sounded deeper than she remembered, more appealing, velvety, suggestive.
“The ‘good’ part has just fled, it seems.” If it snowed, there would not be so much ice dripping from her words.
His appreciative stare travelled from her unassuming chignon, down to her practical service dress and unladylike boots. The inspection made her positively uncomfortable, heat warming her frozen muscles.
“It is nice to receive such a welcome!” His sarcasm not lost on her.
She ostensively analysed him from hat to soiled boots, all dusty man and sweaty clothes. Her stance conveyed the very concept of unwelcome.
Her lips lifted in a disdainful grin. “Welcome home, Lord Strafford.” With this, she forced herself to move, turned and marched to the vegetable garden, not looking back to his unwanted presence.
So much for a sense of coming back! Conrad thought, dismounting and leaving his horse with the groom. Plainly clear she did not regard highly of his being back. He strode the entrance hall, greeting his butler, who greeted him in a not so enthusiastic way.
He walked past halls and rooms, observing the strict order and undeniable conservation they showed. Furniture, painting, rugs clean, if not in the latest fashion. The whole house smelled fresh and scrubbed, no dust in the corners, no darkened fireplaces, no untidy cushions. Everything in such perfect order, it amazed him. He did not remember it being so before. He went up the stairs to his chamber. His bedroom showed no different state. His canopy bed immaculately done, counterpane washed, if a little old-fashioned, the surrounding curtains well arranged, rugs and window panes in perfect order. Nothing was new, everything dated from before he left, but seemed utterly well conserved. His wife had kept his house spotless! She had not spent his money redecorating, though.
He ordered a bath. His trunks would be arriving the next day with his valet.
Aurelia stabbed the dirt as if she might kill her internal demons thus. Her mind raced round and round. Her husband would certainly resume the estate management. The squanderer! In the three years they had spent together, there was never enough to manage the house. She had perpetually lived in dire straits. The first year she feared she would go hungry. Only her skilful sense of organization prevented her from such sad fate.
In the second year, she learned. She had worked hard in the orchards, the vegetable garden to have enough to prepare jams and pickled vegetables; the extra milk turned to cheese. She had garnered all the crops she could muster to keep them in the larder, made preserved meat of all kinds and kept all the coal she found. The wool from the sheep, she partly sold and used the rest to make her clothing. She had worked harder than any tenant or servant so that winters would not be gloomy as the first one. The fear of shortages constant. She mended the curtains herself, conserved the furniture, polished the silver. It was a crazy need for safety in a marriage which never offered her a shred of nurture.
In the wake of it all, her heart came out squashed. As if a thousand horses had trampled on it. It bled. Bled some more. Then it dried. And died. She had no more love in her. No more giving. No more tenderness. There was only pain and anger. He had seen to it. Thoroughly.
When he left, the sense of relief so enormous she almost threw a party. Since then, she had grabbed the management of the estate as well. By reading all the books about estate governance she found in the library, listening attentively to the steward’s opinion. John Coleman, the steward, taught her a lot. Now they worked as a team planning for the future, the tenants’ welfare and the productivity of the land. This gave her a sense of being in possession of her own life and gave her the sought after safety. Not seldom, she imagined herself a widow, strange as this might sound. Of course, if widowed without an heir, her brother-in-law would inherit the title. She would have provisions, though. A cottage in those lands and an allowance. Not bad, compared to the difficulties she had faced in three years with her inutile husband.
She worked incessantly in the garden for hours, barely stopping for luncheon. When she looked up to the sky, the sun almost on its way to setting. She dried her brow with her sleeve and stood up, taking out her straw hat.
“Do you always work this hard around the house?” Conrad’s question startled her and she turned abruptly to him.
Dirt spread all over her apron, her face with dirt spots and her hands darkened with soil. Not the best appearance for a husband who had just returned home. She did not give a fig! He could go to the blazes! More than that, she had promised herself she would lead a satisfying life even if she had to remain married to… him!
“Springtime is bound to get busy.” She answered with no intonation, as indifferent as she could sound.
She took courage to look him in the eye then. His dark attention fixed on her, assessing her. He had bathed, shaven and changed his dusty clothes. His tall frame clad in breeches, white shirt and a dark brown coat which contrasted with his midnight hair. A tingle of awareness singed her, and she was vexed with it.
“There are servants for that.” He shifted his weight to one leg, his coat tightening around his chest, which seemed more muscular than she remembered. His skin tanned with the Indic sun. He had matured, she concluded.
Suddenly, a memory popped up in her mind. He, arriving at the manor mid-morning four years ago. God knew where he had been, gambling, most like it. His hair mussed up, his coat open and his shirt thorn. He had had a drunk look about him, glazed and unfocused, barely able to stand. The disgust which invaded her then had been so inevitable even looking at him would have caused her to be sick.
“There are not enough servants.” She informed. “John and I agree that we should save money for when the crops are not so plentiful.” She nearly tapped her mouth for using the steward’s first name. She never used it, but it escaped now.
“John?” Since when she and his steward were on first names basis? He wondered at it and a sting burned in his chest. He had left her to her own devices for two years. Who knew what happened? More to the point: who was to blame?
“Mr Coleman, if you prefer.” She lifted her chin defiant. Her rosewood hair caught the sun in reddish streaks.
“I do prefer my wife not to be too familiar with my steward!” He countered vexed.
Her eyes narrowed irritably. “What you prefer i
s not my concern.”
