Elisabeth Kidd (11 page)

Robert wondered idly about Sabina’s views on love matches. Did she envy George and Rose Theak, as he did? Did she believe in life-long fidelity? He knew for a fact that, having produced two male children, Lavinia had no further interest in the marriage bed and that Richard was less distressed than relieved by this attitude. He also believed, although he did not know for a fact, that Richard still harbored a
tendre
for Dulcie Bromley, for he had chosen a mistress—a discreet lady whom he had set up in an impressive mansion near Rugby—who was the image of his former fiancée.

Robert had thus far avoided discussing the terms of Earl Bromleigh’s will with his brother, but he knew that he must do so quickly, for it would be bound to become common knowledge before very much longer. Therefore, when the ladies had left the gentlemen alone with their port, he addressed his brother.

“Richard, there is a matter of some importance that I must discuss with you.”

The earl finished lighting his cigarillo—one of a supply, very fragrant but much despised by his countess, which Robert had sent him from Spain—and turned to the third gentleman in the party, who had leaned forward expectantly at Robert’s words. “I trust you will not take it amiss, sir, if I ask you to leave us in privacy.”

Mr. Jennings appeared not to have heard, but when the silence began to lengthen, he reddened slightly and stood up. “Yes, yes, certainly. I beg your pardon, I am sure.”

“Winston will see that you have your port and anything else you may require in the library.”

When Mr. Jennings had gone out, murmuring flustered apologies and looking distinctly disappointed, Richard stared into space for a moment, his arresting light eyes blank, then turned to his brother.

“Doubtless you did not wish the good parson included in the conversation. Everything he hears goes directly to Lavinia. Not that she might not have to hear in any case, if what you wish to discuss concerns her in any way.”

“Not directly, but I daresay she will have to be informed at some point.”

Robert had been admiring his brother’s ready assumption of authority and the unobtrusive way he wielded it. He must have acquired this assurance with his title, for Robert remembered him as being a somewhat solitary boy, who appeared not to care whether he was included in the other children’s games or not, with the result that none of the other boys paid the least mind to him. Perhaps the title had given him the self-confidence he had once lacked. Robert had seen similar transformations in army officers who, when they bought their commissions, had no experience or talent for leadership, but then found the knack for it buried somewhere in their personalities. He had always been uncritically fond of his brother, despite his apparent lack of warmth, but now be began to admire him as well.

“Does this have to do with Earl Bromleigh’s will?” Richard asked, when Robert did not immediately broach the subject which had prompted him to ask for this interview. He raised his brows in surprise.

“You know?”

“I
am
a magistrate, remember. Very little of this sort of thing escapes my notice.”

“Then I beg your pardon. I should have informed you earlier, but I thought—I hoped everything would have worked itself out by this time.”

“And it has not?”

“The lady does not wish to marry me.”

“That is scarcely to be wondered at, surely. She
is
a Bromley.” He looked at Robert, his light eyes unreadable. “Do you wish to marry
her
?”

“Yes.”

Richard digested this for a moment, and Robert had the impression that his answer was unexpected. Unlike Lavinia, who had married into the family and taken on its prejudices as her own, Richard’s sense of family loyalty was strong but practical. He continued the quarrel with the Bromleys because it was a tradition. Yet he was ready enough to spurn tradition when it became burdensome; he had, indeed, not hesitated to banish some traditional, but hideous and moth-eaten, wall hangings from this very room when he assumed the title.

Robert had hoped to enlist his brother’s aid in his crusade against at least this one vexatious tradition if he could, but Richard had, possibly also as a result of his solitary childhood, always considered himself above any kind of common brawl, which he doubtless saw this issue developing into all too easily.

“I should counsel patience, my dear Robert,” he said now, not unexpectedly. “As I understand the terms, she will be much the worse off than you if she does not agree to marry you.”

“There is a little more to it than that,” Robert said, and explained as briefly and unemotionally as he could the incident on the canal. At the end of his tale, Richard looked as if he had swallowed something distasteful. But if he were disappointed to find any member of his family involved in such a disgraceful imbroglio, he was tactful enough not to say so.

“In that case,” he said, stubbing out his cigarillo as if to declare that he washed his hands of the whole affair, “I must leave you to decide what would be the best course of action for you. I fear this kind of thing is wholly outside my experience. Of course, if there
is
anything I can do to help…?”

Robert smiled and shook his head. “Thank you, Richard. I wish there were, but I fear you are right. I must work this out for myself.”

“Do keep me informed, however,” Richard said, rising from his seat.

“There is one thing,” Robert said, before Richard reached the door to the parlor where the ladies awaited them.

“Yes?”

“Please explain the situation as best you can to Lavinia. I am afraid that is wholly outside
my
capabilities.”

Richard smiled wryly. “This is one situation in which I will take your military advice, dear boy, and get over the rough ground as quickly as possible.”

Robert grinned and put his arm around his brother’s shoulder. “You’re a good fellow, Dickon, in a pinch.”

* * * *

Robert thought it a politic move on his part to get himself out of the house early the next morning, before Lavinia awoke, in case Richard had been brave enough to broach the subject of his unsuccessful courtship of Sabina Bromley in private the night before. He did not think he could face Lavinia’s reaction over the breakfast table.

He saddled his horse, Salamanca, and took him out for a long ride over the still misty hills. The stallion knew the ground better than he did by now and, being given his head, in turn allowed Robert to empty his mind of all thought, the better to look at the new day in a clear light.

He rode first to his favorite vantage spot, a slight rise behind the Abbey which overlooked the Avon valley and on a clear day, well into Leicestershire. It showed him clearly that “green and pleasant land” of Blake’s that he had missed so much in Spain’s dramatic but barren mountains.

He continued through open fields, giving Salamanca his head, and rode into Ashtonbury village. It was seven o’clock by now, and he decided to break his fast at the Feathers rather than return home. Even if he did go home, he reflected, he would no doubt be there well before anyone but his nephews was awake and thinking about breakfast. Besides, he had become fonder of the village also since his return to England. It seemed to him to represent everything that was best in English life and English people, and he had lived without both long enough to appreciate those qualities of cohesiveness and neighborliness without intrusiveness which characterized English villages.

And he knew there was always a welcome at the village inn, where the master at least pretended to remember him from his previous visits and the hostess took a motherly interest in his welfare. Apart from that, the food was plentiful, excellent, and not French.

The Feathers was situated at the end of the High Street under a sign featuring two large plumes and a small coronet between, a design which Robert suspected had some connection to the rival earls, but he had not yet worked it out. The inn was a low, timber-framed building with benches provided on either side of the door for the regulars and a dim interior which on rainy days required candles to be lit all day long. The ale, however, was exceptionally good.

When Robert pulled up and dismounted, however, his mind on a pint of the best, an unexpectedly familiar voice greeted his ears.

“Hullo! There’s a horse I know. Where’s your rider, boy? Did you toss him off?”

“Nicky, by all that holy! What are you doing here—and up at this hour?”

Robert came around to Salamanca’s other side, where he found Nicholas Glyn, Viscount Markham, standing at a typical posture—hands on his hips and a grin on his tanned face—and flung his arms around him. The former lieutenant was no longer in uniform, having exchanged it for biscuit-colored pantaloons, a pearl-grey coat over a darker grey waistcoat, a spotted neckcloth, and a bell-topped beaver hat. In his hand, he carried—when he was not swinging it to illustrate a point—a cherrywood walking stick with a carved ivory grip.

“I haven’t been to bed yet, of course,” his lordship announced cheerfully. “Here, steady on, old fellow, I ain’t in the Royals anymore and don’t have to put up with abuse from superior officers.”

Robert stepped back and admired the ex-cavalryman’s modish apparel while the tall, black-haired, and exceptionally elegant viscount struck a pose before him. “I see that you are a civilian again—although I hesitate to call you a gentleman in that get-up. When did you sell out?”

“Oh, months ago, but had to spend some time with my family or I’d be disinherited. These fellows,” he added, indicating his two companions, “have just come home, however. You remember Charles Trent and Lambie Williams? We’re all going to Wales by way of Derby to see them both safely home. Can’t trust them to find their way on real roads, you know. Like as not to gallop across every field of rye they see.”

Robert acknowledged the two officers still in uniform, one a thin redhead, the other a muscular Welshman only slightly shorter than his tall English fellow officers, both of whom were well known to Robert from certain disreputable escapades in the field having nothing to do with battle.

“Don’t listen to him,” Mr. Trent advised. “This is a forced march if I ever endured one. Couldn’t even bring my man along to give me a decent shave in the morning.”

“No one’s going to notice if you don’t shave for three days, boyo,” said Mr. Williams, “but those of us with real beards are likely to be mistaken for footpads along these sassenach back roads. I won’t feel safe until I’m on Welsh ground again.”

“Where you can plot against us in that heathen language of yours,” Mr. Trent rejoined.

Robert recommended that they all pay a visit to the local barber, who had a wicked way with a razor. The viscount gave him a dubious look, but Robert only smiled angelically back and led the threesome into the inn. They sent the landlord scurrying for a mammoth breakfast, during which the old friends shared the news since they had last seen one another of absent friends and old escapades.

Two hours later, they were again standing outside the inn attempting to say good-bye. The viscount flung his arm around Robert’s shoulder and promised to write.

“Don’t gammon me, Nicky. You know you never do, or you would have let me know you were coming through Leicestershire.”

“An oversight only, dear boy. Couldn’t find any paper, and my pen needed mending.”

“Look here, Nicky, I wish you wouldn’t go just yet,” Robert said. “There’s plenty of room at the Abbey for you all, and I can use the company.”

Viscount Markham gave his friend a shrewd look and asked, not without sympathy, “Lady didn’t wait for you, eh? Pining away, are we?”

Robert shrugged. “It’s a long story.”

At that moment, Mr. Trent came up waving a handbill. “Look at this, Markham. There’s a fête here day after tomorrow, with racing. What do you say we stay on a few days and show the locals how it’s done?”

The viscount clapped his friend on the back, and informed him that he had just been arranging accommodation for them. “Stroke of luck here, Lambie. We get to make our billet in an abbey tonight. What do you say to that?”

“Better than a convent,” said Mr. Williams, speaking from experience. “The wine will at least be drinkable.”

Chapter 8

Sabina having made up her mind to come down to dinner, it was only a matter of days before Dulcie Bromley was able to persuade her sister-in-law to accompany her and their visiting cousin into the village to perform a few minor errands. It was only after they had returned to Bromleigh Hall that Dulcie realized that Sabina had been willing to go only because she had determined to put the whole incident of her accident behind and carry on as if nothing had changed since the day her father’s will was read. Unfortunately, Dulcie understood this only after Sabina’s carefully constructed self-deception had begun to fall apart around her.

Georgina Campion had, Sabina had always said, been born, like Beatrice, in a merry hour. She never failed to bring sunshine into the house with her when she came to visit, for which all the Bromleys felt grateful. In deference to the family’s obligatory state of mourning on this occasion, she had arrived clad in sober black, but her cousins, led by Lewis, had rapidly teased her out of it, saying they would not have her at meals unless she showed off her latest gowns for them, the more colorful the better.

Georgina obligingly went immediately up to her room and changed into a green-and-white sprigged muslin day dress with a wide sash and ruffles along the hem, which was universally approved. Georgina had an excellent fashion sense, and this costume went so well with her strawberry-blond curls and green eyes that she made Sabina feel positively dowdy despite her superior height and better figure.

Nonetheless, and although she had announced that she would not continue to wear black within the confines of Bromleigh Hall either, Sabina made no demur when her maid proffered the despised black bombazine on the morning of their expedition to the village. She said only that she preferred one of the lighter-weight silk gowns, then donned it complacently and added only a small cameo broach by way of ornamentation. She even ascended the carriage with her bonnet veil down and when, half a mile down the road, she unpinned this and stuffed it into the pocket in the door of the vehicle, Dulcie made no comment, seeing this as a minor setback. In any case, Sabina’s complexion was so pale as to leave no observer in doubt of her continued grief at the loss in her family.