Page 32 of The Lyon Rampant

A little curl of smoke wafted toward Belinda. She smiled. “Everything smells much better out here in the countryside than in London. I don’t know what people burn there—but much of it isn’t wood. Coal seems to be the most popular choice for fuel. Sometimes the smoke hangs in a cloud over the city, hurting the back of your throat.”

“I don’t know why people want to be in the city in the first place. All that hustle and bustle—it gives me a headache just thinking about it. But I do know what coal smoke smells like, as it’s not all countryside around here, as you know. Over Tavistock way, and on into Cornwall, there’s all those mines, and ore stamps, and furnaces, and pumps, and engines and I don’t know what. Smelly, and noisy, too.”

Belinda pushed her sleeves up and started peeling off rosemary leaves.

“I don’t know much about such industries. Perhaps I should try and learn and then I’ll have something to talk about when I go back to Forty Court. Or London—when they’re prepared to have me back.”

“Oh, she’ll want you back, will Miss Araminta—I mean, Lady Lamb. No! I mean the countess as she is now. Imagine us having had a future countess staying here, in this very inn, I gather! When the baby comes, she’ll want somebody there who knows all about it.”

Belinda’s mood of bland contentment collapsed. The fortress she’d erected to protect her from the pain of losing her baby—which had happened in this very building—was easily weakened.

“Excuse me just a moment, Maisie,” she said, hoping the girl wouldn’t notice her distress. “I haven’t had my dose this morning.”

She escaped to her bedchamber which, thankfully, was not the one where she’d had her lying-in and been forced to watch the pathetic little bundle being whisked away from her. Flinging open the cupboard, she uncorked a bottle and without bothering to measure it, took a swig of the nerve tonic. Then she gazed round the room, with its tidy bed and hand-sewn counterpane, the rickety floor, the tiny fireplace full of shoes because she had nowhere else to put them, and the thick glass window. There was so much comfort to be found here, yet it seemed nothing could fill the void left by the loss of her beloved William and, later, their tiny son.

Through the bubbled glass of the window, she could see the tower of the village church, and the tops of a few ancient gravestones, tilted at various angles by the march of the centuries. Little Adam had been buried there, in consecrated ground because she’d arrived at Buckleigh in widow’s weeds, and no one had known that the baby was conceived out of wedlock.

Belinda took a bracing breath. It was long past time. She must go there, now.

Throwing a cloak over her shoulders, she trotted down the stairs to the kitchen. “I’m just heading to the church for a moment. I’ll finish the mutton and supervise the syllabub when I get back—I promise not to be long.”

Maisie looked puzzled but nodded her assent, and Belinda left via the back door to the garden, where she gathered some early valerian flowers and a few violets into a little nosegay.

White clouds billowed from all the chimneys in the village, filling her nostrils with the scent of wood smoke. People were busy with their daily occupations, but there was still a feeling of community, with everyone greeting everybody else so cheerfully. In London, one was lucky to be greeted at all; and even if a stranger was friendly, one’s inclination was to tense up and clench a hand over purse or pocket.

Belinda pushed open the creaking gate and made her way up the overgrown cobbled path and across the grass to the outer edge of the graveyard. There was Adam’s grave, marked by a simple gravestone, bearing only the boy’s initials—A. C.—and the date of his demise.

Tears blinded her eyes as she knelt, and touched the little stone, so pale and fresh amongst the lichen-covered monuments of Adam’s fellow departed. With trembling fingers, she began arranging the flowers in a spray at the foot of the stone.

The gate creaked again behind her, as some other villager came in, perhaps to sweep the paths or to honor a dead ancestor. They would leave her alone, she was certain, as they were bound to understand that she was grieving and didn’t want to be disturbed.

The tears were rolling down her cheeks and she felt as if she was melting and shriveling inside. But she was dragged out of her grief when a male voice close at hand—a voice that sounded all too familiar—said, “Good morning.”

She got to her feet and turned, stared up at the gentleman before her, then dashed the tears from her eyes.

It couldn’t be! What was he doing here, in this tranquil churchyard in a village in the middle of nowhere?

“Mr. Darvill?” Her voice shook and grief clogged her throat, more powerful even than her shock at being confronted by her nemesis.

“They told me I’d find you here. Oh, great heavens, whatever is the matter, Belinda?”

She had no idea why it chose to happen then, but it was as if her heart had shattered into a million pieces, and the next instant, she was in Darvill’s embrace, sobbing out her misery against his chest.