Page 8 of Ambition (The Chaplain’s Legacy #6)

H arraby Hall was not like any house Olivia had ever seen before.

It was not vast and imposing, like Lochmaben Castle, nor solidly square, like Corland, nor light and airy, like Westwick Heights.

It looked as if a child had thrown together bricks of different sizes and shapes and colours.

At one side was a tower, with narrow slits for windows, and on the other, rooms projected outwards from the walls.

The central part of the house was a single storey, but behind it could be seen other, higher wings.

The roof featured an array of battlements, statuary, oddly curved protuberances, chimneys of varying styles and a clock tower. It made Olivia want to laugh.

In some respects, however, it was like any other great house, for out poured an army of footmen, followed by Lord Harraby, who ushered them into the great hall, with its arched roof supported by wooden beams.

“Forgive my wife for not being here to greet you, but she is taking her mandatory afternoon rest,” he said. “On behalf of both of us, may I say how pleased I am that you could both come. You are very welcome to Harraby Hall.”

Lord Harraby personally conducted them to their rooms and left them to the ministrations of a friendly housekeeper and a pair of maids.

Gowns were changed, hair was brushed, faces were washed, a tray of tea and cakes arrived, then Lady Esther settled down to write to her husband, informing him that they had contrived to survive a journey of fifteen miles unscathed.

Olivia wondered if she should write to Papa, but somehow the excitement of a new house and new people to meet overwhelmed any desire for so sedentary an occupation.

Instead, she gazed out of the window at the little patch of gardens which was all that was visible — new gardens to explore, too!

Everything was new and thrillingly different.

But a solitary walk did not appeal, either. People, that was what she needed.

“May I go downstairs and find some company?” she said.

Lady Esther looked up absent-mindedly, tapping her nose with her pen. “Later, my dear. We should rest before dinner. You may go to your room, if you wish, and read or have a little lie down.”

“Thank you.” Curtsying, she left the room, but as she crossed the passage to her own room, she heard a burst of laughter drifting up from below.

As softly as she could, she crept to the top of the stairs and peered downwards.

She could hear voices, dim and indistinct, then a louder voice — “No!” it cried.

Another burst of laughter. How much she longed to be down there, listening, laughing, part of a big merry group where people talked of happy things, and not of murdered chaplains and illegal marriages and poor, poor Granny, so near to death and yet clinging tenaciously to life.

“You must be Lady Olivia,” said a voice behind her, a voice filled with amusement.

Olivia spun round to see a young lady of her own age, blonde curls piled high under a wisp of lacy cap. Then, with a shock, she noticed that she was large with child. This, then, must be Lady Harraby.

“Oh! My lady! Yes, I am… Olivia Atherton, that is.”

“Harraby has told us all to address you as Lady Olivia. But do you wish to go downstairs? No need to lurk on the landing like this.”

“I should love to… but I must not. Lady Esther has told me to stay in my room until the dinner hour.”

“Then let us go there and have a pleasant coze. I am so happy to have you here — another woman my own age. The house is full of guests but the females are all either matrons who want to talk to me about babies, or else embittered spinsters. I am not yet ready to be a matron — I still want to dance, when my shape permits.” Patting her stomach with a little laugh, she linked arms with Olivia and together they entered the bedroom, the door firmly closed behind them.

“Now do tell me all about yourself, for Embleton said very little about you, except that you are very pretty and I can see that for myself. What a dreadful time you have had of it. A murder! But someone confessed to it, we heard. That must be a relief.”

“Except that he did not do it,” Olivia said.

“It is the oddest thing, and it is all Tess Nicholson’s fault — she is the daughter of the man who was murdered, you know — but no one can quite understand it.

This man, who was just a village woodworker, was supposed to be in love with her, but now he has married someone else, a dairymaid or poultry maid or some such, and Tess has gone away to marry some man no one has ever heard of at Durham. It is most perplexing.”

“Well! That sounds most dramatic,” Lady Harraby said. “How fascinating! But the man who was murdered… the chaplain… he was not ordained. And so…”

Olivia sighed inwardly. The ‘pleasant coze’ presumably meant prodding her for all the family’s scandalous events of the last few months. She told Lady Harraby all that was public knowledge, and had to listen to a great deal of sympathetic verbiage followed by yet more questions.

When she could get a word in herself, she said, “Are there many guests at Harraby Hall at present?”

Lady Harraby rattled off a list of names, none of which meant much to Olivia. But there was one name missing.

“And your brother… Lord Embleton? He is here, too, is he not?”

She laughed, a melodic tinkle. “Oh, him! The embittered spinsters drove him away, but to be honest, he is not good in large groups like this, not unless we all speak in Latin or some such. A whole month with his Cambridge friends, that was no trouble to him, but here he vanishes at the first attack from a marriageable female.” She sighed.

“You would suppose he would be used to it by now, and have evolved strategies to deal with encroaching persons. He will be a duke one day and is quite unable to step outside his front door without sycophants and parasites attempting to latch onto him.”

This was a blow — after all this effort, Lord Embleton was not even there!

Disappointment washed over Olivia, so acute that she barely noticed the rest of this speech.

It was only when Lady Harraby’s maid came looking for her to dress for dinner that she realised that she was herself just such an encroaching person as Lady Harraby described.

But at least she had reason to believe that the marquess had indeed evolved strategies against encroachment, for had he not refused to enter the empty library with her without a chaperon?

And he had left after the embittered spinsters attacked him.

Well, if there were no Lord Embleton, she would just have to amuse herself with the remaining guests, although she had no warm feelings towards the embittered spinsters who had driven away her quarry. Clearly, they were not very subtle.

Olivia and Lady Esther were early in descending to the saloon, sitting decorously together on a sofa as other guests drifted in.

Lady Esther was engaged in conversation with Lady Harraby — ‘as one duke’s daughter to another’ , as she put it — when a somewhat larger group arrived, consisting of a grey-haired woman, a nondescript man, and two women whom Olivia had no trouble identifying as the embittered spinsters, from their age and sour faces.

Lady Harraby eased herself to her feet and began to move forward to greet them, but before she was halfway there, the man gave a sudden exclamation, his eyes fixed on Olivia.

Ignoring Lady Harraby, he crossed the room steadily, his eyes locked on Olivia. When he reached her, he fell to his knees at her feet.

“How come you here to haunt me, fair ghost?” he declaimed, throwing his arms wide as if he were on a stage.

“What mischief brings a phantom to this place? Or has my fevered imagination conjured this most beautiful of apparitions? Nay, do not shake your head, fair ghost, for I am in earnest. Tell me, tell me at once what you are doing here.”

Olivia was bemused and a little afraid of so much intensity in a man she had never seen before in her life, but there was something ridiculous about the situation, too, that made her want to laugh. Lady Esther, however, was not at all amused.

“Desist, sir! I believe you have consumed too much brandy.”

“Not a drop, I swear it, or I should not be so confused, ma’am. For here is one I had no expectation to see, indeed I had word only a few days ago that she was settled elsewhere and therefore cannot also be here. Yet here she is! It is extraordinary!”

Olivia began to understand. “Can you not think of an explanation, sir? For I assure you I am no ghost.”

She smiled at him, and he cried out. “A dimple! You have a dimple just there, so I must conclude… I was mistaken in you, fair ghost. But you are so alike, it is incredible. Except younger… you are younger.”

“Six years.”

“Is it so? And yet… you are almost the age she was when I first saw her. Until you smiled and I saw the dimple, I could have sworn you were Izzy as she was. But she has no dimple, and I see now, you have the better figure.”

“Sir!” Lady Esther said coldly. “Pray do not continue in this vein, when you have not even been introduced to us.”

Lady Harraby was hovering, shaking with laughter. “Ma’am, may I present to you the Earl of Kiltarlity from Strathinver, in Scotland. Lord Kiltarlity, this is Lady Esther Franklyn of Highwood Place in the North Riding, and your fair ghost is—”

“A daughter of the Earl of Rennington and younger sister of Izzy, now Lady Farramont of Stonywell, although I have forgot your name, my lovely ghost,” Lord Kiltarlity said.

“Olivia. I am Olivia Atherton,” she said, laughing at him, as he rose from his knees and sat beside her, his eyes brimming with amusement.

“Lady Esther,” Lady Harraby said, “shall we leave them to talk, while I introduce you to Lady Kiltarlity and the Miss Osborns?”

Reluctantly, with another glare at Lord Kiltarlity, Lady Esther allowed herself to be drawn away to the grey-haired woman and the embittered spinsters.

“Osborn,” Olivia said in satisfaction. “You are Izzy’s suitor, Robert Osborn.”

“I am, or rather I was , but now I have this wretched title to contend with. I never wanted it, you know, and certainly never deserved it, but my loyal, honourable, courageous brothers all fell in the King’s service, and I ended up as an earl, for my sins.”

“I am the opposite,” Olivia said. “I have lost my title, for no longer am I Lady Olivia.”

“Then let us both revert to our former happy state,” he said, with a smile which lit up his face. “You shall be Lady Olivia to me, and you may call me Robert, as Izzy did. You are extraordinarily like her, you know.”

“Except for the dimple. I know.”

“And the better figure,” he whispered. “The much better figure. Are you like her in ways, too? Do you explode and throw things and yell at people?”

She giggled. “No, sir, I do not.”

“Thank God! One Izzy in the world is enough, I think. Ah, there is dinner ready for us. Will you sit beside me and tell me all about yourself?”

She lowered her eyes demurely. Lord Embleton may not have been present but here was someone new and exciting to talk to. “I should like that, Lord Kiltarlity.”

“Robert, if you please.”

“I cannot possibly call you by your Christian name.”

“Then Osborn. All my friends call me Osborn, even now, and we are going to be friends, are we not?”

“I hope so… Osborn.”

As he led her into the dining room, Olivia felt a little bubble of warmth inside. A friend! Yes, she would like to be friends with this curious man. She would like that very much.