Keeping the Castle (23 page)

20

THE NEXT MORNING I escaped any further scrutiny by coming downstairs very early, leaving a note behind me on my pillow to explain that I had gone back to the castle to view how it had weathered the night. Then I crept out of doors without being seen by any of the servants. Fido and I walked swiftly down the drive.

As is often the case after a powerful, destructive storm, it was an achingly beautiful day. Even so late in the summer, I could still hear the occasional skylark singing, and the fields were speckled with red poppies. I saw as we walked along that ours was not the only family to have suffered damage, spying downed trees and once-tidy farmyards turned to boggy marshes. The farmers were hard at work already, sawing up limbs and adding to their woodpiles for the winter.

None of this beauty or industry lifted my spirits, however. I felt as tho’ I moved along in my own little dark cloud of despond, and when I arrived at the castle, the gloom only deepened.

The cliff face had crumbled still further, dragging more of my home with it into oblivion. Now the castle, which had been built in the shape of a knobby, lop-sided square, was shaped like a capital E with the middle stroke missing. The entire east wing was gone, as was the land that had once supported it.

“Take care, Miss Crawley, the ground’s none too stable near the edge.” It was Jock, also come to assess the damage. “You can see there’ve been more rock falls in the night.”

“Oh, Jock!” I cried, and could speak no more.

He understood me well enough, though. If it had been permissible between the young mistress and a servant, he would have patted my arm. As it was, he nodded and tugged at his forelock. “Yes, miss,” he said.

I sighed. “We shall have to think what is to be done,” I said. “But at present, I believe I would like a moment or two alone.”

“Yes, miss.” And he went away.

I sat down on an outcropping of stone a safe distance from the scene of the disaster, careless of the effect this might have on my dress. Fido, sensing my desolation, crawled into my lap and, slowly and methodically, licked my hand all over. I sat like this for a long time, not thinking much, but becoming aware that I had eaten nothing since dinner the night before, and wondering if my favorite shawl had gone over the cliff in the night with the rest of my wardrobe.

“I told you it was a foolish place to build,” said a voice in my ear. “I cannot imagine what possessed your great-grandfather to do such a thing. And the folly of digging that moat! It weakened already unstable ground to the point of disaster.”

I did not turn to look at Mr. Fredericks, for my tears were flowing freely. I said nothing.

“The rest will follow it into the sea in the next year or two,” he persisted. “Give it up, Miss Crawley.”

Something shifted under the castle, causing an internal floor to cant seaward. Three of our decrepit chairs slowly slid down the slope and fell to the beach below.

“Do you see?”

At this I
did
turn, still saying nothing.

He recoiled at the sight of my (no doubt) reddened, wet, and swollen face.

“You’re not crying, are you?”

“Of course I am crying, Mr. Fredericks!” I replied, exasperated. “What else would you have me do?”

“But you mustn’t do
that!
I had no idea you would
cry
about it.”

“I am made of flesh and blood like other women, Mr. Fredericks. How did you think I would react?”

He seemed a bit at a loss. “Well . . . I thought you would be annoyed with
me
, as you usually are.”

“Other than your monumental lack of tact in coming here to rub salt into my wounds, I do not see what you have to do with it, sir,” I said. “How would my being angry with you have helped in any way?”

Again he thought this over. “It would have cheered
me
up, at any rate,” he said at last.

“In that case, I apologize for not considering your entertainment,” I said. “I was distracted for the moment, thinking about Alexander’s future, as well as my mother’s.”
And my own
.

He was silent a moment. “You do realize, don’t you,” he said, “that Bumbershook has been getting his nerve up to propose to your mother for the past fortnight? This’ll tip him over the edge,” he added, gesturing at the ravaged castle. “Hah! ‘Tip him over the edge’! That’s quite good.”

“What?”

“Of course. The only thing that’s stopped him so far is the tremendous stink it’ll cause amongst the members of the
ton
. They’re a terrific bunch of snobs, that lot. You’re nobody, you see, you and your mother,” he explained helpfully, “and there’s hardly any money.”

“But . . . the Marquis of Bumbershook and . . . my mother?”

“You’re not very observant, are you?” he said. “They’ve been inseparable all summer long.”

“True . . .” I admitted. “But then, Alexander—”

“I’ve advised him to adopt the boy. He has no other children.”

“Oh! You have?”

“Yes, and then of course . . . well, you see there’s something else, something that might have an effect on all this.” He broke off and turned away from me. Looking more awkward and self-conscious than I had ever seen him, he picked up a stick from the ground, which he threw for Fido.

Fido leapt enthusiastically from my lap and raced off after it. Mr. Fredericks stood with his back to me, watching the dog as he ran.

“What is it?” I asked, as he seemed to have dropped the subject.

“What is what?”

“The ‘something else’ that might have an effect on the Marquis marrying my mother and adopting my brother,” I reminded him.

“Oh yes. Well . . .
my
marriage. I’d never intended to marry, you know, but lately, I have been thinking I might, if the lady were willing, at any rate.”

I fell silent. Was he confiding in me about Miss Vincy? How could his marriage to her affect my mother’s to the Marquis?

The wind was picking up, and tendrils of hair blew across my face. I used this as an excuse to shield my eyes from his gaze with my hand. The silence stretched out, longer and longer. Fido barked off in the distance.

“Marriage to whom?” I said, at the exact same moment
he
said, “Damn that dog! He’s far too close to the edge.”

I rose from my seated position in alarm and looked where he was pointing. True enough, Fido was perilously close to the insecure rim of the precipice.

“Fido!” I cried, “Come back here at once!”

Fido paid no attention to this admonition whatsoever, as he was barking madly at a squirrel in a tree.

“Fool dog!” Both Mr. Fredericks and I said in unison. We broke into a run, calling his name in angry tones. At length, unable to see the squirrel any longer, he ran back to us, wagging his tail amiably.

Mr. Fredericks found a length of string in his pockets which he used to secure Fido, and we walked back to the rock where we had been sitting. Some of the tension of our conversation had dispersed.

“Idiot beast,” he observed. “I ought never to have given him to you. He’s a perfect nuisance sometimes.”

“Mr. Fredericks,” I said, gathering up my courage, “you were speaking of your . . . your possible marriage.”

“I was,” he admitted. “Look, you’ve led a sheltered life here in this small village out in the middle of nowhere, Miss Crawley. You may not realize the difference that money makes.”

My jaw dropped open. “I?
I
may not realize the difference that money makes?
I?
”

He looked at me uneasily. “Perhaps you do, then,” he muttered. “It’s only that, marriage, you know, requires—”

My patience snapped. “Are you attempting to say, in your inimitable fashion, sir, that you cannot offer for my hand in marriage because I am too poor? If so, I beg you will desist, because—” Here I broke off and began to sob noisily.

“What? No! Oh, in the name of all that’s wonderful, she’s crying again! Stop that at once, I tell you!”

“I will not!” I shouted at him, tears splashing down my cheeks. “And what do you mean that
you
ought never to have given me Fido? You didn’t! The Baron gave him to me.”

“He most certainly did not!” Mr. Fredericks roared, growing red in the face. “I chose that pup, and paid a pretty penny for him, I might add.
I
paid! I always pay! Haven’t you worked that out by now?”

I stopped crying and stared at him.

“Yes, you . . . you
great booby
! Everything at Gudgeon Park that is new or beautiful or even useful is there because
I
have paid for it. Every chair, every carpet, every silver candlestick, every kitchen knife! Boring’s a bit short of the ready, didn’t you know? The pair of them have hardly a pound I haven’t given them.”

He picked up another stick and began to slice at the grass with it. “Not his fault, really,” he said in a more composed tone of voice. “His uncle didn’t leave him much scratch to begin with, and then that mother of his is an inveterate gambler. The money that woman has run through! He was most thankful to get her away from London, up to the country where gambling stakes run more towards shillings than pounds.

“I let people believe it was his money behind the Park. Why not? I had no house myself and didn’t need one. In fact, I’ve mostly preferred people
not
know my income and influence. And he was good to me when we were boys, at a time when he need not have been kind. But he has barely enough money to pay the servants, let alone refurnish the place. That’s why . . .” he broke off, and raised his eyes to mine for one brief moment, and then dropped them again.

“That is why,” he continued, prodding at a stone with his stick in much the way he had bedeviled the carpet the night before, “Boring
had
to marry for money. He had to, and I had no quarrel with that, until he began distinguishing you in that very open manner. I thought . . . we all believed he was madly, hopelessly in love, and proposed to forfeit the estate, give up everything, in order to marry you.

“Well, you appeared to return his affections, so there seemed nothing to be done about it. And your mother was so
dense
about understanding when people tried to hint at his financial situation. I believe he
did
love you, but then . . . well, practicalities intervened. Real life, and real responsibilities, as presented by Mrs. Westing, mostly. She’d hoped to get her hands on Vincy’s fortune, of course, but Miss Vincy doesn’t want to marry, and Boring hasn’t the brains or character to appreciate her, so—”

I interrupted. “You say that Miss Vincy does not wish to marry. Not even . . . not even you? She is very fond of you.”

He looked up, surprised. “Me? Lord no. She’s fond of me, yes, as I am of her. But marriage? Never. She’s had an unfortunate experience—well, you know that! She no more wants to marry me than she does that young idiot Godalming. All she wants to do is to be left alone to paint. Nor have I the least desire to marry her, as much as I like and admire her.”

I shook my head slowly, trying to clear it.

“I do not understand. The Baron and Mrs. Westing, poor, and you, whom I believed to be merely your cousin’s man of business, rich? Where did the money come from? I beg your pardon for my curiosity, but I really feel I must know.”

“Some from my father, of course, but—”

“Wait! Your father was but an employee in a shop, or so I have always been told.”

“To begin with, yes. The owner went bankrupt, my father bought him out, shillings on the pound, and so he got his start. My mother was no fool. She knew he was a clever man, and an ambitious one, when she ran away with him. It wasn’t for his beauty she admired him, I can tell you.”

“But I thought that that was exactly why—”

Mr. Fredericks paused and pulled a locket out of his pocket. He opened it to reveal two miniature portraits. “This,” he said, pointing to the lady, “is my mother as a young woman. The other is my father.”

“Oh! My! Yes, yes, I see what you mean. Presumably there must have been some other quality that attracted her.”

“He was a great businessman, my father. By the time he died he owned a string of shops and was in negotiations to purchase a ship-building company. And I have . . .” Here he paused and looked down modestly. “I have rather built on his successes. I now own most of his original businesses, several carpet and cloth looming manufactories, three banks, a sizeable fleet of ships, several sail makers, two lumberyards, and a button factory.”

“A—a button factory?” was all I could think of to say. “I didn’t know such a thing existed.”

“Yes, clothing and textiles—they’re all going to be made in factories in the future. That’s the way to make clothing affordable. And a button factory speeds the process.”

“Really? How . . . how extraordinary.”

“Yes, and I have been neglecting business all summer, hanging about up here on what might as well be the back side of the moon (tho’ I
have
made some progress towards establishing a cotton mill in York, and Vincy and I have done a little tea trading as well) because, well, because I wanted to see what would happen to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes. I assumed you would marry Boring, of course, but if you didn’t, well . . .”

“Yes?”

Here Mr. Fredericks became incoherent again. “It’s only that if you were to, you know, do me the honor and so on, it might spur old Bumbershook on a bit, you see.”

“What
?” I demanded, my head whirling.

He regarded me warily. “Now don’t get upset again, will you? It’s just that if you married into money, especially money on a rather impressive scale, that would be a bit of an inducement for Bumbershook to marry your mother and adopt little Alexander, you see? Not that he needs an inducement, exactly, but it wouldn’t occasion quite so much comment in society, if you understand me. And I am not such a bad marriage prospect as a lot of new money is,” he added anxiously, “being the grandson of a baron.”

I thought about this.

“You’re not going to cry, are you? I’d much,
much
rather you were angry.”