Page 86 of Wager for a Wife

He locked eyes with Louisa, and she nodded back in acknowledgment. “Well, Louisa,” he said in a carrying tone, still looking at her. “I don’t think Mary is up here after all. We’d better check the rooms on the next floor.”

“I think you’re right, William,” Louisa replied, matching his volume.

Then William put his finger to his lips . . . and they waited.

They didn’t have to wait long before they heard it again—the scuffling noise Louisa had described. The sound was definitely coming from behind the wall, and seemed to be getting closer. As it did, William pushed on the notch in the wall . . . and a portion of the wall shifted out toward them. William immediately slid it to their left.

On the other side of the door was a guilty-looking Mary, her eyes huge in the dim light.

“Well, what do you know, Louisa? Here’s our missing Mary,” William said. “I never knew about this place. I didn’t have the foggiest idea Farleigh Manor had a priest hole.”

“Don’t be angry, Will,” Mary said. “They said everything was to be yours when he was gone, and we was to save it for you. I saved what I could, but it got trickier and trickier. And now he’s gone and you’re here finally. I hate him.”

“Oh, Mary,” William said. He made his way through the little door—he had to crouch down to do so, and once he was through the threshold, Louisa watched him wrap his arms around the girl. “Mary, what have you done?”

It was then that Louisa got her first real look inside the room, beyond Mary and William. She gasped, her hand flying to her throat.

The tiny room—priest hole or whatever it had originally been intended to be—was filled to the rafters with urns, paintings, small sculptures, decorative tables, and other items. Farleigh Manor had been stripped of her finest adornments, but it appeared that a good share of them had made their way into this room. Thanks to Mary.

“He was taking this and that, Will, and we couldn’t stop him. But I got him. I got him in the end. And that other his lordship can’t have them. I won’t let him.”

“What do you mean, ‘that other his lordship’?” William asked her gently.

Louisa’s heart was full as she watched William talk to the obviously distressed girl. He was so kind and patient. What a good father he would be.

“You know. His lordship.” Mary’s voice went pompous sounding.

William laughed. “Do you mean Louisa’s father?”

Mary nodded and then ducked her head.

“He’s a very reasonable gentleman, Mary. You don’t need to have any concerns about him.”

“He won’t take things?”

“No, he won’t take things. In fact, he’s going to help us make Farleigh Manor the lovely place it used to be. Isn’t that grand?”

“But he won’t take things? They’re your things, Will. Not his.”

“No one is going to take anything else,” William reassured Mary. “We can return all these lovely items you protected for me to their places in the house. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

She nodded.

“That’s good, then. We’ll leave them safely in here for tonight and go downstairs to join the others.”

“Everyone was concerned about you when you got upset.” Louisa said, speaking for the first time. She took Mary’s hands in her own. “Mary, I am so glad William had such a good friend as you when he was a boy and that you are friends still. For, you see, I love William.”

“I love Will too,” Mary said. “But not in the married way, like he explained to me. You can marry him, and I will be his friend.”

“I hope you and I can be friends too, Mary,” Louisa said. “I should like that above all things.”

“If you love Will and take care of him and don’t sell his things, we can be friends,” Mary said.

Louisa couldn’t help herself. She laughed and pulled Mary in for a big hug. “Oh, Mary, I vow to you that I won’t sell anything that belongs to him unless he has given me permission to do so. Is that sufficient?” She pulled back, smiling, and looked closely at Mary’s face.

“Yes,” Mary replied seriously.

“I’m glad you approve. And in two days’ time, when William and I get married, I shall vow before God to love him always.”

“And then there will be babies!” Mary exclaimed.

Louisa choked, but William broke out in the biggest laugh Louisa had ever heard escape his lips.

It was a glorious sound.

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