Kate Moore (18 page)

18

I
T RAINED THE
day Cyril Durant, Viscount Lyndhurst, was buried. The drizzle that dampened mourners and spectators alike perhaps restrained the curiosity of those who had come from London merely on the chance they might glean some tidbit of gossip about the lofty viscount. Margaret did not overhear anything like the rumors of the past two days in town. There the
on dit
was that the viscount had been involved in some shocking intrigue with French spies. Nor was she conscious of more than an occasional interested stare in her direction as she stood beside her parents in the church and later at the grave.

She had insisted on making the journey to Haddon, though her parents had been willing to excuse her from any obligation to the dead man and his family. Her explanation and confession had seen to that. In those first hours after she and Ned had returned to North Audley Street, she had laid the most complete set of facts before her father. She had endured his disappointment over her own role in events and his indignation over the actions of the Durant brothers. And she had risked his anger in her defense of Ned and of Drew. Later she had been obliged to give less detailed accounts to her mother and several gentlemen with legal and military authority. Still, in nearly three days of talk about the circumstances leading to the viscount’s death, she had not spoken to the one whose forgiveness and understanding she most wanted to have, the Earl of Haddon.

Since that night in the gardens he had had a stark, withered look. With his height, his shock of white hair, his mourning clothes, he now looked like nothing so much as a tree blasted by lightning. Every movement, every expression spoke pain, and his desolation both frightened Margaret and stirred her compassion.

Her message about the stolen papers had brought him to the gardens, armed and with a rear guard of gentlemen from the War Office. She wished she could beg his pardon for her disastrous plan, and she wished she could tell him of the nobility of
both
of his sons in those terrible moments at Vauxhall. But she could not intrude on his grief while it was so new, so raw. So she resolved to stay at Haddon as long as she could, waiting for that moment when the earl would wonder how he had come to lose both of his sons at one stroke. She hoped the moment would come soon enough to save Drew Durant.

The moment came, as such moments can, almost without warning. Margaret had claimed the library as her refuge during this, her third and most unhappy visit to Haddon. Each evening she returned to the cream silk wing chair in which she had been sitting the night Drew Durant had stepped through the open window into her life. She had been free to retreat in this manner because Lady Somerley had returned to Wynrose following the viscount’s funeral. The baronness’ nerves had not been equal to the strain of the earl’s grief, Margaret’s stubbornness, and Baron Somerley’s preoccupation with helping his friend settle the viscount’s affairs. Thus Margaret was alone in the library when the earl entered with a gentleman she recognized as someone from the War Office.

She rose at once and curtsied, murmuring her excuses. But the visiting gentleman crossed the room and took her hand.

“Miss Somerley, good evening,” he said. “I must thank you again for your willingness to answer so many of our questions in this dreadful affair. I think you will be happy to know we have traced a number of Croisset’s contacts along the coast. His network will no longer send information to the French.” He patted her hand in an avuncular way and released it. Margaret turned to go but did not get out the door before she heard the earl’s visitor whisper, “A brave one, that girl.”

The earl’s summons came within the hour. A footman ushered Margaret into the library and deserted her before she had taken two steps into the room, two steps which did not begin to cover the distance between her and the earl. To reach him she must take a dozen more steps under his fierce scrutiny. He offered no word of encouragement, but Margaret, thinking of all that he had lost and that which she hoped she might help him regain, advanced.

She took the seat to which he gestured and waited as he paced before her. In his movements she saw the quick energies of one son. In his cold features, the pride of the other. When he spoke, however, he surprised her with words and tone far from those his fierce expression had led her to expect.

“Was I wrong about him, Miss Somerley?” he asked, coming to a halt in front of her. For all the abruptness of his question, the tormenting doubt in it was plain. She had no need to ask to whom he referred.

“
I
was wrong about him, my lord,” she began, wishing to acknowledge her own errors before presuming to comment on his. “I thought him a thief and a traitor.” Her words seemed to transfix her listener. His stare was no longer the unnerving one she had felt earlier; rather it was the arrested expression of one who wishes only to hear more. She went on, telling him of their beginning in the library, of Croisset and their crossing the sea, of the brothers who were waiting for them, the Douro, and the Viper, and through it all of Drew’s courage and kindness. As she came to the end of her narrative, she sensed a return of his agitation. He strode away from her to the far end of the room and back again.

“You, Miss Somerley, may be excused for what you thought,” he said. “You were acting on the evidence of your own eyes. But I, I who had every reason to trust my son, condemned him on hearsay and conjecture.” He took another angry turn about the room, but his steps slowed noticeably as he returned. He seemed to have withdrawn to some place of misery inside himself.

“My lord,” Margaret said gently, “what did happen to make you disown him?” It was a risky question to ask, and she held her breath. The earl at last sat down.

He told her the story of his discovery of important papers among Drew’s personal correspondence and of a letter apparently from a French agent threatening his son with debtor’s prison and worse if he did not pass along the very papers his father had discovered. The earl had then asked Cyril to investigate Drew’s debts and had accepted the viscount’s report that the French were holding Drew’s vowels and bills.

“I was angry and disgusted over the affair with that high-flyer of his. I did not think to check the authenticity of the letter or to question how such documents came to be so handy to my notice or to doubt the motives of my oldest son. I made accusations.”

“Drew did not deny them, did he?” Margaret asked. She could well imagine him at such a moment, how his eyes would change, his expression harden. “In that he was wrong, was he not? In his pride he was at fault.”

The earl did not answer. The silence between them stretched on, sad but relieved of strain by their new understanding of each other and the man they both loved. Margaret told herself to be patient; she would talk to the earl again. Perhaps she should be satisfied to have made the truth about Andrew Durant known, to have restored his father’s good opinion of him. But she had hoped for much more from this conversation.

Then the earl asked, “Where is he, Miss Somerley?”

Her spirits rose at once. The earl was a man of action after all. It was not enough for him to know that he had been wrong. He must make amends.

“Oh, my lord,” she said, “I do not know. He might have gone to Humphrey. He might have returned to that dreadful part of town where he was hiding before. But Ned thinks . . .”

“Ned? Ned Stow?”

“Yes, your lordship.” Margaret felt the earl become distinctly wrathful at the mention of his errant groom.

“What has Ned Stow to do with my son’s whereabouts?” he inquired sternly.

Margaret was obliged to explain Ned’s role in Drew’s bargain with Cyril and her own foolish plan.

“Ned thinks,” she concluded, “that Drew will join the infantry.”

At this the earl jumped up. “Join the infantry? He shall not, by God. I know how to stop that. I know how to find him too, Miss Somerley. I shall do everything—hire the Runners, put out the handbills, alert the army. I shall get my son back.”

“Then he is still your son?” she asked.

“He is, my dear, if he can find it in his heart to forgive me.” He gave Margaret the shadow of a smile, and she gave him her assurances, said her good nights, and turned to leave.

At the door some impulse made her look back. The earl sat at his desk with pen in hand, unseeing gaze fixed on the air. Margaret realized that she had one more truth to tell.

She and Ned had discovered the secret Cyril Durant had wished to take to his grave. It was Ned who had started her thinking in the carriage provided by the War Office as they returned from Vauxhall.

“Cy lied, miss,” Ned had said.

“What do you mean?” she had asked.

“He didn’t aim for Drew and miss like he said. He drilled that Frenchman clean through the heart.”

As Ned spoke Margaret saw herself as she had been, kneeling at the viscount’s side and holding his cold hand in hers. She saw again his other hand squeeze Drew’s and in her mind heard the viscount’s dying word, so faintly exhaled.

“You’re right, Ned,” she had said, wondering that she had not caught it at once. “Cy called him
Drew
.”

At this recognition she had felt a measurable lessening of her pain, and she had resolved that should she ever see Drew Durant again she would convince him of his brother’s one act of love. This little truth that the viscount had denied with his dying breath would be a great gift to give the Earl of Haddon.

“My lord,” she began.

The earl’s formidable energies, restored now that he had a task to do, soon produced results. Messengers and lawyers came and went at all hours; handbills appeared in the village; the household resumed its customary bustle. To Margaret’s delight Ned was rescued from the position of under footman, where her father had agreed to keep him temporarily, and restored to his role in the Haddon stables. A room was prepared for the earl’s only son and heir—Andrew Durant, eighth Viscount Lyndhurst. This last act unfortunately proved premature.

The days collected into weeks. The search settled into a routine. Margaret begged her father to extend their visit and was told she might stay until her birthday, the very last day of June. She rode daily, accepting Ned’s assurances that Drew would return, and read nightly, filling up the time as best she could. Once again she had found the little book of Tom True’s adventures, but now it seemed to her to tell only half of the story.

The earl’s missing son did not appear, and for that reason Margaret’s eighteenth birthday promised to be the most dismal of her life. It rained, spoiling her ride, and the book she had depended upon to save the day failed to amuse her. But most of all, there was no news of Drew, and her bags were packed for the return to Wynrose. Thus it struck her as particularly odd that her father and the earl should be so merry whenever she chanced to pass them. At dinner their high spirits were explained. In honor of her birthday she was offered champagne and an extraordinary feast and then led blindfolded to the drawing room.

Her blindfold was removed, and she found herself facing an enormous, gaily wrapped box. There was nothing to do but accept the gentlemen’s efforts with good grace and begin to unwrap. When layer after layer simply revealed another box to her, her spirits flagged a little. The experience was too like the waiting she did each day. Then she came to the last box. It had nothing in it but a folded piece of paper.

“Open it, open it,” the earl urged. Both gentlemen were beaming at her with barely suppressed laughter in their eyes. She lifted the paper from the box and opened its folds. It was a document she did not at once recognize. She read the words, and blushed.

“Yes, my dear, it’s a special license,” said the earl. “Your father agreed I might get one for you. When my scapegrace son shows up, you may be married at once. Don’t let him go.”

Margaret looked from one to the other of the two men in stunned disbelief. She was to be allowed to stay. She threw her arms around her father, and then the earl must be hugged, and then they must all laugh and laugh. If only Drew would come soon.

Yet another weary interval of waiting had passed before it occurred to Margaret that it might be awkward for her to propose the use of the special license to her love, especially as she could not be sure he meant to offer for her. She sought Ned out.

She found him applying poultices to the legs of a young horse whose behavior in the traces was not what it should be.

“Ned, I have to know. Does Drew love me?” she asked.

“Lord, miss,” answered her friend. He adjusted the wrappings on the animal’s leg. “He loves you,” he said.

“But how can you be sure?” she pressed. Margaret thought she was going to have wait for Ned to tend to each of his four-footed charges before he replied. But in the end he told her all that had transpired in the brothel after she had left, and, at her insistence, he even explained something of the difficulty her love might experience should there be a long period of betrothal. This last explanation so taxed Ned’s powers of delicate speech that Margaret took pity on her friend, thanked him, and left. But the new insights she had gained from Ned’s words set her thinking. Somehow she would convince her love to use the special license, for she had done quite enough waiting herself.

The open library window proved too much of a temptation. He had to look in. He told himself he would just look, for he meant to stick to his new resolves to be less impulsive, more prudent. But there she was in the great wing chair, wearing one of her white muslins, her dark, shining head bent over a book. She looked so much as she had that first evening he could not bear the delay of continuing around the terrace to the more conventional entrance to the hall. How had he let his father maneuver him into such a position? He pulled the window toward him and stepped over the low ledge.

She looked up at once. “Drew,” she said, and her voice started a trembling inside him. He thought he had heard her call his name in the gardens, but he had been too stunned by his father’s rejection to be sure.