Amanda Scott (10 page)

“He is free,” Sydney said. “The entire camp moved out this morning, doubtless heading south to a warmer climate. I had no wish for Mama to learn about the burglary, nor did I wish to see the whole sorry tale made a gift to the Bath quizzes.”

“Then why do you not leave well enough alone?” she demanded, angry at the thought that he wished only to avoid being made to look foolish and seemed to have no concern for how she would look. “Why tell Godmama or Puck anything about it?”

“Do you honestly think they will not find out if we don’t tell them?” he asked, unruffled by her display of temper.

“Barring the servants—and you say they will not tell—no one else knows anything about it!”

“Manningford knows.”

“Well, he won’t talk.” But even as she said the words, she wondered if they were true. There had been no reason before to swear Brandon to secrecy, and while he did not know yet about the burglary, she would have to tell him. Since he never minded making himself the butt of his own tales and rarely concerned himself with the feelings of others, she knew she could put little faith in his remembering any promise she might winkle out of him now about keeping such a good tale to himself.

Sydney was watching the changing expressions on her face, and he said now, “Just so. Even if he does not speak, do you think Mama will not soon be telling everyone she knows about her mysterious count? Bad enough if her bosom bows only wonder why none of them has ever heard of him. Much worse if they find out the truth and Mama is made to look the fool.”

Carolyn paled at the thought. “That would be dreadful. Oh, Sydney, I never meant any of this. I wanted only …” But she could not finish, comprehending as she did now that she had acted out of pure impulse and ought to have thought her plan through more carefully before doing something that might have hurt them all. “I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing tears and hoping he would not see how distressed she was.

“No need to tell me that,” he said quietly, “and if you talk to Mama today, no real harm will have been done, for I doubt she has had time yet to post any letters or talk to her friends. This road we are turning onto now is more than a thousand years old. Come on, and we’ll give these nags some exercise.”

Following willingly when he spurred his sleek bay hack to a canter, she was grateful for the cooling effect of the crisp air, and astonished that so ancient a road was still in good repair. When he drew his horse up again a quarter of an hour later, she saw with rueful amusement that scarcely a single fair hair was out of place beneath his hat. He was not breathing hard, and she could not imagine how he did it. Tendrils of dark hair curled about her face, and her hat tilted drunkenly over her brow.

He smiled at her as she righted it, and her spirits lifted. “Ready to go back?” he asked.

She agreed, quailing at the thought of facing the dowager and Miss Pucklington but determined to have the confrontation over and done quickly. Leaving Sydney in the hall when they returned, she went at once to the morning room, where she found the two ladies alone except for Hercules, who was happily engaged in worrying a cushion under the sofa.

“Here is Carolyn, Judith,” Lady Skipton said in an irritated tone that nearly destroyed Carolyn’s fortitude at the outset. The dowager sat near the window overlooking the hedged garden on the east side of the house, and her russet bombazine skirts rustled as she shifted her position to face Carolyn. “I cannot think why you must come to us in your riding habit, my dear, but it is of no consequence now, for Matilda has put me out of temper. Only listen to this,” she added, holding up a letter. “As I have just been telling Judith, Matilda has now quite passed beyond the bounds of what I will tolerate.”

“Good gracious, ma’am, what has she done now?” Carolyn asked as she stooped to rescue the cushion. This was not done without spirited objection from Hercules, but she succeeded at last and returned it to the sofa as she took her seat there.

The moment she had done so, the dowager, having watched her with a jaundiced eye and an air of extreme patience, said Matilda had now gone her limit. “Laboring under a mistaken belief that my Louis-Fifteen console table belongs at Swainswick, she desires that I shall return it to her, if you please. The nerve of that woman, choosing to believe that my belongings are hers! I had thought to leave that table to Skipton in my will, but now I shall leave it to Sydney, for I never heard the like.”

Surprisingly, in view of the uncountable number of furnishings that the dowager had brought with her from Swainswick to Bathwick Hill, Carolyn knew the table to which she referred, an elegant piece with gracefully curved legs and a classically decked frieze. She had no wish to attempt to convey to her godmother the fact that the console table, like most of the furniture she had carried away, did indeed belong to the estate and not to her, but was spared the necessity by the dowager’s habit of talking without expecting a reply from her audience.

“Not one line about poor Harriet’s health, of course, or dear little Stephen,” she said, “but she dares to take exception to the gift I sent Reginald for his eleventh birthday and seems to believe I have encouraged his misbehavior at school. I do not understand the woman.”

“What did you send him, ma’am?” Carolyn asked, being in no rush, now that she had a chance to speak, to change the subject to the previous evening’s activities.

“A perfectly splendid archery set. Very dear it was, too.”

“I collect,” Carolyn said dryly, “that it somehow contributed to the mischief.”

“Reginald,” said the dowager loyally, “did nothing very terrible, whatever Matilda may say.”

Miss Pucklington said in a reasonable tone, “It cannot be thought unwarranted, Cousin Olympia, for a master at Eton to object to being made the target of a steel-tipped arrow.”

“Reginald did not shoot a master, Judith. He made a guy to resemble him out of a few of the man’s clothes stuffed with straw. A perfectly understandable act, I’m sure.”

Carolyn chuckled. “Not to the master, perhaps.”

“Nonsense,” declared the dowager. “He would have liked it a deal less had he been in those clothes. He made a great piece of work out of a mere game, and he ought to be ashamed. Matilda insists that Reginald was lucky not to have been expelled, but that is absurd. ’Twas only a boy’s prank, after all.”

Carolyn, seeing an opening not to be missed, drew a quick breath and said, “I hope you will be as understanding about something just as childish that I have done, ma’am, although I fear that you will not.”

The dowager, whose mouth had been open to continue her diatribe against her daughter-in-law and the minions at Eton, snapped it shut for a brief moment to level a gimlet eye at her goddaughter. “What’s that you say? What childishness? You are not eleven years old, you know.”

“I know I am not, ma’am, but that did not prevent me from being childishly thoughtless in this matter, a fact that Sydney has made abundantly clear to me.”

“My son is displeased with you?”

Carolyn realized that she had said the wrong thing. Remembering the economies enforced upon the household during its master’s absence, as well as her godmother’s uncharacteristic tolerance of Sydney’s wishes, she began to see matters in a new light and hastened to put the dowager’s apprehension to rest.

“To be sure, he was vexed, ma’am, but on your account and Puck’s, not his own. You see, he knows I deceived you both when I attempted to play a practical joke on him. I simply didn’t think, and so I must apologize to you both and hope you will not be incensed with me, though you have every reason to be.”

“What practical joke?” Lady Skipton demanded. “I thought you must have outgrown such foolishness.”

Making no attempt to insist that it had been a very long time since she had last done such a thing, Carolyn said earnestly, “You of all people must know how it is with me when someone says I must or I must not, and when Sydney insisted that his judgment of people was greater than my own and that I must always trust him to know best … Well, you can imagine how I reacted. ’Twas no more than a challenge to be met.”

“I daresay,” the dowager said grimly.

Miss Pucklington said, “We know how it is, my dear, but what is it that you did?”

“The most dreadful thing, Puck. I’m afraid Count Salas is no foreigner. That is, he is, but he is not a count. Oh, dear,” she added ruefully, “I am making a mull of this. The plain fact is that he is an imposter. I introduced him to Sydney merely to prove that he would accept a man for what he appeared to be as easily as anyone else would. I had no intention of …”

“Of fooling us as easily?” Miss Pucklington suggested. When Carolyn nodded apologetically, she said, “I am sorry to hear that the count was not what he appeared to be, for I quite enjoyed his conversation, you know, but I daresay Cousin Sydney was not deceived at all if the man was not genuine, so no doubt you have learned a valuable lesson, my dear.”

This was not precisely the way Carolyn wished to view the matter, but she kept a still tongue in her head and glanced back at her godmother to see how that lady was taking the news that she had been duped. The signs were not good.

The dowager was frowning heavily. “If Sydney was not deceived, why did he not say so at once?” she demanded.

“I believe he did not wish to create a scene at your dinner table, ma’am. He hoped that Salas would do nothing to disgrace you, and he preferred that you discover the deception in a more private manner. I assure you, he thought only of your comfort.”

“Very kind of him, I’m sure. ’Tis a pity you and your accomplices did not think of my comfort before you decided to amuse yourselves in such a fashion. Must I now expect to receive the condolences of my friends for falling victim to this deceit?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. Neither Salas nor Brandon will tell anyone else, for Salas has gone away and once Brandon knows you are in possession of the facts, he will say nothing to anyone. I will see to it that he understands he must not.”

“I see. Who is this Salas, if you please?”

Carolyn swallowed. “He … I’m afraid he is a gypsy.”

The explosion she anticipated did not materialize. To her surprise, the dowager nodded grimly as though she had expected no less. “Bad enough that he was foreign,” she said. “Of course, I knew him for a rogue the instant I laid eyes on him, but I did not like to say anything, not wishing to embarrass you or Mr. Manningford when you had said the man was his friend, but I did keep my eye upon the silver. Sydney can be very glad of that, and so I shall tell him if he mentions the matter to me.”

Carolyn could think of nothing whatever to say to that, but as usual, there was no need since the dowager continued in this vein for some time, talking herself into a good humor by the time she was done simply by congratulating herself on what she viewed as her own shrewd perception, and since Miss Pucklington contributed only such comments as might be guaranteed to please, there was no one to contradict her. Carolyn made her escape twenty minutes later with a feeling of quite undeserved relief.

Though she feared that word of what she had done would somehow leak out, her apprehension was eased by the news several days later that Mr. Manningford had gone out of town and then eased even more when she learned from Cleves the next day after that that the gypsies had moved well to the south.

“Near Uphill they be now, making their way into Cornwall for the winter,” he said as he tightened her saddle girth before their morning ride. “Can’t think why it should be warmer near the coast there than what it be here, but so it is. One would think all that air from over the water would be a sight colder.”

“There is a warm ocean current that flows near the west coast,” Carolyn told him, greatly relieved by his news. “You are certain they are gone, Cleves?”

“Aye, miss, and the folk in Cornwall be right welcome to them. Magic with horses, they be, but even more magic with making the belongings of others disappear, when all’s said.”

She stared, wondering for a brief moment if he might have been one of the servants called to the library to subdue the gypsy. Then she realized that the notion was an absurd one, that there would have been no need to send to the stables for help with more than enough menservants at hand within the house. Odd though, she thought, that she had not seen so much as an oblique look from one servant to another to indicate secret knowledge. Not Ching Ho, of course, but one would expect at least one of the others to boast of having caught a burglar in the act, yet not so much as a wink had she seen.

N
OVEMBER WAS UPON THEM
at last, with Carolyn’s twenty-first birthday fast approaching, and the numerous festivities of the Christmas season to follow. Of primary importance to Miss Hardy, of course, was the anniversary of her birth, for on that auspicious day, she would at long last come of age.

“Not that it means a great deal really,” she complained to Sydney when he mentioned the upcoming date as they indulged themselves one rainy afternoon in a game of chess in his library. “It is not as though I shall come into control of my fortune, after all, or even be able to set up my own household.”

His eyebrows lifted in gentle inquiry. “I had no idea that you wished to leave us, Caro. Have you been unhappy?”

“No, of course not.” She smiled at him. “No one could be unhappy under this roof. You are very kind to have us here.”

“I see what it is,” he said, moving his queen’s bishop. “Not unhappy, merely addled of mind. You are generally more likely to reproach me than to call me kind, Caro. What’s amiss?”

She laughed, thinking how comfortable a companion he was. “You may roast me all you like, but I shan’t allow you to provoke me only because I choose to thank you.”

“There is no need to do so, however,” he said more seriously. “You are welcome here.”

“I am glad of that, of course. Not that you had much to say in the matter when your mama decided to remove us here.”

He raised his eyebrows again.

“No,” she said, “don’t try to cozen me into believing you might have stayed Godmama from her purpose. I should not believe you. She was determined, you know, which means she would not have listened to your excuses or to any suggestion that she go elsewhere. Certainly, not to the Dower House.”