A Noble Pair of Brothers (The Underwood Mysteries Book 1) (10 page)

“Well, not quite.  I’m disobeying doctor’s orders in walking on it, but I was so bored!  I’m never ill, and not used to being cosseted.  I’d rather bear a little pain than be trapped in the house and completely at the mercy of my fussing sisters.”

“In that case, ought I not insist that you go and lie on the
chaise longue
with your feet up?”

“Yes - but then I shouldn’t be able to talk to you alone.”  Charlotte made this admission in a shy undertone, as though she were revealing some daring and long-held secret, but Underwood’s reaction was not at all what she had expected or desired.

“Great Heavens!”  he expostulated, so loudly that Charlotte sent a nervous glance towards her family, who fortunately remained oblivious, “Where is the amusement in that?  A fusty academian!  I should have thought you would want someone much more exciting than I with whom to spend your leisure time.”

She smiled up at him; “Do you have any suggestions?”

“My brother,” he replied promptly.

“A fusty old cleric?”  She raised her brows quizzically and for the first time managed to make him smile, “Poor old Gil!  Is that really how you view him?”

“No more than I view you as a fusty academian.”

At that moment the double doors opened, “Dinner is served,” intoned Brownsword, the butler, and now the chattering group rose of one accord and began to pair off in preparation for the walk to the dining room.

“Jane had planned that you should take her into dinner, Mr. Underwood, but if I take your arm and limp horribly, she can hardly take you from me, can she?”  Charlotte confided to her companion.  Since it was quite immaterial to him which of the sisters clung to his arm for the stroll across the hall, Underwood was quite content to do as she suggested and promptly offered his arm to her.  Charlotte was young enough to take this gesture to mean something quite different and classed it as a veritable victory.  Her face was adorned with a triumphant smile as she passed her sisters on the arm of her chosen escort.

She was so flushed with the success of this manoeuvre that upon reaching the dining room she ignored her customary seat at the lower end of the table and allowed Mr. Underwood to hold Jane’s chair for her, so that she might be seated next to him.  He, of course, was unaware of the
faux pas
and oblivious of the ensuing confused shuffling of seating amongst the rest of the family.

Apart from the lack of congenial company, Mr. Underwood was also far from impressed by the food he was served.  The meal began with leek and potato soup – the most bland and tasteless of all concoctions, in his opinion, but this was a particularly watery effort.  His heart sank when course succeeded course and nothing much improved.  When the roast was laid before the master of the house to carve, Underwood eyed it with mild horror.  A delicate digestion was one affliction which he really did possess, unlike his many imaginary ailments, and the very thought of roast mutton was enough to stem his appetite completely.

“Only a very little for me, Sir Henry,” he protested, as mildly as he was able, when he saw the great, greasy slabs of meat being thrust haphazardly onto the plate destined for him.

“Little?  Nonsense, man!  You’ve spent far too long crouching over your books.  You need a few good, hearty meals inside you.”  Since he was convinced that a ‘good’ meal was the last thing he was going to receive, Underwood had to restrain himself from delivering a testy response.

Sir Henry, scenting victory, laughed and piled yet another slice onto the platter.  His guest wondered vaguely where he was supposed to fit the vegetables, but he said nothing, for fear of being plied with yet more meat, by way of punishment for dissent.

At last the plate was laid before him and he saw that streaks of solid, creamy coloured fat lined the meat, and that the blood still ran from it.  His stomach lurched in protest and it was as much as he could do to prevent himself from rising from the table and making good his escape.

Charlotte noticed his appalled expression – there was scarcely a moment when her eyes had left his face – and she took pity on him.  Under the cover of the others’ conversation she managed to tell him in an undertone, “Papa allows his two dogs to sit under the table at his feet.  Providing you are discreet, he will never know you have not cleared your plate.

His gratitude for this piece of information knew no bounds and was reflected in his eyes as they met hers.  Colour rushed into her cheeks and she dropped her gaze.       

Underwood was baffled that a smile could provoke so extreme a reaction and the faintest frown creased his brow as he looked down at her bowed head.  Why the devil was the girl acting so oddly?  He shrugged slightly as though to cast off the problem and began to serve himself with vegetables from the proffered dish – at least he would not starve.

Sir Henry appeared to be in an expansive mood, and it was his voice which dominated the dinner table.  Unfortunately his notion of amusing conversation was to heap insults and malicious teasing upon his family and guests.

Underwood was irritated, but by no means surprised, to be chosen as the first victim, “I see the meat is not to your taste, Underwood,” Sir Henry’s voice cut across the general chatter, the chink of glasses and the clatter of silver upon china.  Though Mr. Underwood heard the words quite clearly, it was evident to him that he could make no acceptable reply, so he simply met his host’s eye and waited for him to expound further.  Being the man he was, the wait was not much prolonged, “Well, you have no one but yourself to blame!  If you hadn’t blundered upon me the other day, we should be enjoying well-hung young venison now.”

“In that case, the entire company has my most profound apologies!”  It had been his intention to silence Sir Henry with this deliberate insult upon the meat being served, but his host astounded him by treating the snub as a witticism and laughing heartily at it, “Gad, you’re a man after my own heart, Underwood.  Tell the truth and shame the devil!  Tell me, do you hunt?”

“Only when I lose something,” replied Mr. Underwood in his most absent tone, seemingly engrossed in the delicate task of trimming the worst of the fat from his mutton, but in reality still stinging from the idea of being ‘a man after the heart’ of the odious Sir Henry.  This sally was greeted with general amusement, but Harry scowled.  He, like his father, could conceive of nothing even remotely amusing about the serious business of hunting and he did not welcome it being treated in so light a manner, “My father means do you go hunting?” he said, in a loud, clear voice, as though he were dealing with a particularly obtuse peasant.  Mr. Underwood raised his head, his expression the perfect picture of bewilderment, “I do beg your pardon, have I somehow missed the point?”

Harry was growing angrier with every passing second, “We simply wish to know if you go hunting!” he was almost shouting in his frustration, but Underwood was quite calm, “Hunting for what?” he asked blandly.  The family wondered if Harry would be able to keep his clenched fists to himself.

“Animals, of course,” he blustered, quite sure he was being made a fool of, but scarcely able to believe the man who faced him had the courage to provoke him thus.

“Oh, animals?  No, I can’t say that I do.  The only animals with whom I come into contact on a regular basis tend to wear cravats and do not take too kindly to getting their Hessian boots muddy.”

“This, of course, is not ideal fox-hunting terrain,” intercepted the vicar tactfully, for much as he was enjoying the new sport of Harry-baiting, he was aware that his brother was treading on dangerous ground and considered it safer to turn the conversation to other matters, “But Sir Henry and Harry seem to find plenty of other sport.”

“Yes, I had noticed that, Gil,” replied Mr. Underwood, before anyone else could join the fray, “Sir Henry has no shortage of quarry – be it animal or human.”

“Human?”  Sir Henry snapped out the word with all the deadliness of his gun.  That he was no longer amused was obvious, “What the devil do you mean by that?”

“You seem upset, Sir Henry.  Have I said something I ought not?  I would have thought it was common knowledge that you have mantraps on the estate – it ought to be, in order to give your prey a sporting chance.  Surely a man deserves to know he risks a limb if he poaches on your land!” 

“Oh, man-traps!”  Sir Henry waved a dismissive hand, as though the matter were of small importance, “Of course, they all know.  They tell each other these things over a glass of ale at the inn.  No one ever gets caught in them.  You make too much of a trifle, my friend.”

“A trifle?”  Underwood savoured the word thoughtfully, “A trifle which nearly caused your daughter serious injury.”

“Charlotte should know better than to wander off the footpaths, she’s been told so often enough.”

So, now it was to be Charlotte’s turn, thought Mr. Underwood, and was immediately determined not to allow it, “Charlotte cannot be expected to know where every trap you have laid is to be found.  I thought the general idea was to avert crime, not cause maiming.”

Sir Henry was obviously not pleased at this criticism, but he managed to smile condescendingly at his guest, “You are a town dweller, sir, and cannot be expected to understand the complexities of living in the country.  Life is rather harsh here, I’m afraid – or must seem so to one as cloistered as yourself.”  He managed to make Underwood sound like a rather frail old nun in an enclosed convent and that gentleman drew in a deep breath, fully prepared to deliver a devastating snub, but feeling Charlotte’s hand on his arm brought him to his senses, “No doubt,” he said curtly, effectively putting an end to the argument.

Greatly to his relief the plates were taken away and the next course embarked upon, and by the time this distraction had taken place, the awkward moment had passed and the buzz of conversation rose again to such a degree that Charlotte was able to whisper to him, unheard by their companions, “You must forgive my father.  I know you find it hard to believe, but he really does not mean to be rude.  He simply isn’t used to being contradicted.”

He thinks he is God almighty.  Too many years handing out judgement on the bench, and having the peasant tug a forelock to him had swelled his head to a dangerous degree, thought Underwood maliciously, but said, in an equally quiet voice, “If he intends to invite me again, he had better get used to it.”

She smiled at him; “I shall make him invite you again.”

“Thank you.”  It was a polite nothing.  Underwood could conceive of no circumstances which would bring him again under the roof of the odious Sir Henry.

For the sake of Charlotte, who must live with the man, and Gil, who must tend to his flock under his aegis, Underwood promised himself that nothing Sir Henry could say or do would betray him into losing his temper again that evening, but he had rather over-estimated his own powers of self-control.  Sir Henry was a man with a talent; the talent to perceive the weaknesses of others and heartlessly expose and ridicule that weakness.  His aim was as unerring as a stoat going for the jugular of its prey.  He brought the hunt off the fields and pursued a different quarry indoors.  Mr. Underwood found it more and more difficult, as the interminable evening wore on, to keep silent in the face of his host’s increasingly drunken and cruel barbs to his daughters and son-in-law.  Only his son seemed to escape unscathed, and the poor girls were left in no doubt that he considered every one of them worse than useless, a mere drain on his purse, and that he counted every day he had waited for his son a waste of his precious time.  All the girls were pale and silent when he heaped scorn on their dead mother, but only Maria had the courage to try to quieten him and beg her husband to take away the bottle of claret at his elbow – his second full bottle, by Underwood’s reckoning. 

Edwin Wynter, with more sense than kindliness, wisely refused to do anything of the sort and bade his wife hold her tongue.  Soon after that the ladies rose and prepared to leave the gentlemen to their port.  Mr. Underwood was just wondering how it would look if he made clear his intention of retiring to the music room with the ladies, when Sir Henry turned a bleary eye upon Gil and laughed coarsely, “I say, Underwood, Charlotte confides in me that she has taken a strong fancy to your brother, weak-stomached though he may be!  What say you, we make a match of it?  Marriage to a Wynter should put some blood back in his veins.”

He ignored his daughter’s anguished gasp of, “Papa, please!” and continued, “Damned if I know what she sees to recommend him – I’ve always been more than a little suspicious of men who earn their living by electing to be locked up month after month with a crowd of boys!”

No one in the room could be in any doubt just what Sir Henry meant to imply by this remark, and Gil sent a worried glance in his brother’s direction, being only too aware how Underwood hated anyone to suggest that his chosen profession was anything other than a true vocation, quite apart from the slur which had been cast upon his character, but Underwood’s face remained a mask of indifference.  Not so Charlotte.  First her cheeks flooded with painful colour, then, as her father rambled on, all the blood drained from her face and with tears in her eyes she fled the room.

All who witnessed her humiliation could feel nothing but the profoundest pity.  The scene had been embarrassing enough, but to one of Charlotte’s pride, it must have been utterly mortifying.  Even Edwin admitted to himself that Sir Henry had gone too far this time.  It was obvious the girl was smitten and to have the fellow disparaged to his face, then her finer feelings paraded in so tawdry a fashion was quite unforgivable.