The Arrangement (8 page)

“I get sick if I ride too long inside a coach,” I said with inspired invention. “Do you think it would be possible for me to ride up on the box with Grove for a while?”

I could feel him looking at my profile, which I tried to keep expressionless.

“It will be cold up on the box,” he said.

The cold on the box was infinitely preferable to the heat I was beginning to feel inside the coach.

“I am dressed warmly,” I said firmly, “and I would rather be cold than sick.”

“Very well.” He opened the window, leaned out, and shouted to Grove to stop the horses. We alighted in the middle of the road, which was the only area not covered in snowdrifts. I could see the tracks of the Brighton Mail that Grove was following.

Before I could protest, Savile put his hands on my waist and swung me up next to Grove on the high box. I felt the touch of his hands all the way through my wool dress and my pelisse.

Grove looked at me as if I were insane. “It’s too cold for you up here, Mrs. Saunders,” he said.

I trotted out my lie about feeling sick.

Grove’s mouth set in a disapproving line, but he unwrapped the plaid wool blanket from around his legs and handed it to me.

“No, no, no!” I protested in distress. “I do not mean to rob you of your blanket, Grove. I shall be fine, I promise you.”

From his position on the ground beside us, Savile recommended, “Tuck the blanket around yourself, Mrs. Saunders. I can promise you that as long as you’re beside him, Grove won’t use it himself, so someone might as well get the benefit of its warmth.”

I looked at the set of Grove’s jaw and knew that Savile was speaking the truth. I felt terrible. “Thank you, Grove,” I said in a small voice.

“Ye’re welcome, Mrs. Saunders.”

The earl disappeared, and Grove picked up the reins after he heard the coach door slam closed. He clucked to the chestnuts and we moved off again at a slow trot.

I hunched up, wrapped the blanket around myself, and tried to convince myself that I wasn’t freezing. I could have ridden in that temperature, because when you ride you are exercising. Driving is sedentary, however, and after an hour I was shivering badly. I was just about to ask Grove to stop so I could get back into the coach when the earl once again called for Grove to halt the horses.

“Time to switch places, John,” Savile said as he came to stand beside the box. “I’ll drive while you get in out of the wind for a bit.”

“It ain’t windy, your lordship,” Grove protested.

“It is when you’re sitting on an open box behind trotting horses,” the earl returned. “Come on, man. Get down.”

Grove wrapped the reins and slowly got to his feet. He moved stiffly, and I realized that the cold had gotten into his joints.

I felt even more guilty about stealing his blanket.

Grove jumped to the ground, staggered, and was supported by his lordship’s gloved hand.

Savile looked at me. “You too, Mrs. Saunders,” he said. “Your stomach must be feeling better by now.”

“Yes, it is,” I said through chattering teeth.

The earl reached up, and without any hesitation I put my hands on his shoulders and let him lift me to the ground. He held the coach door for me and I got in, followed by Grove. Savile shut the door and after a minute we felt the coach rock a little on its springs as the earl climbed up onto the box. Then we were once more moving forward.

“Oh dear,” I said. “I still have the blanket!”

“Keep it, Mrs. Saunders,” Grove recommended.

I felt a flash of irritation.
If the two of them are so determined for me to keep this benighted blanket, then I will!
I thought. I tucked it around my waist and leaned back, grateful for the soft squabs and the lack of wind. I closed my eyes and pretended to go to sleep.

The slow trot of the horses was extremely soporific and I was almost asleep for real when the carriage stopped again and the men once more changed places. I lifted my heavy eyelids and regarded them sleepily. Then the carriage moved off and once again my eyes closed.

Someone rearranged the blanket around me. I mumbled a word of thanks and drifted off into oblivion.

* * * *

I opened my eyes to feel a strong male arm holding me snugly against a big warm body. I realized that the wool under my cheek was that of a man’s coat.

I struggled hazily up from the depths of unconsciousness.

“Tommy?” I said.

“I’m afraid not, Mrs. Saunders,” said the Earl of Savile.

I jerked away from him and sat bolt upright, horrified that I had been sleeping on his shoulder.

He appeared not to notice my reaction. “You woke up just in time,” he said. “Savile Castle is just ahead.”

I gazed through the coach window and saw what looked like a magical castle right out of the Arthurian legend rising before me out of the snow.

“Good heavens, it really
is
a castle,” I said.

“Yes,” agreed its owner, “it is.”

I stared at the distant, high gray stone walls, cornered with four perfectly symmetrical towers, and wondered if I would find noble knights and damsels in distress within. Surely they had to be in residence somewhere!

Savile said, “You can’t see much of it now, because it’s frozen and covered by the snow, but there is a moat. Well, actually it’s a small lake. The castle is built on an island.”

I turned from the window and gave him an incredulous look. “This amazing edifice actually has a
moat?”

He grinned, something he should not have been allowed to do.

I turned back to the window, thus averting my eyes from that criminally attractive smile. “When was it built?” I asked. “During the same period as Camelot?”

He laughed. “Not as early as that. One of my ancestors built it during the reign of Richard II.” His voice was pleasant and informative, but I could hear the pride he was trying to conceal.

I couldn’t blame him.

“The Hundred Years War was going on and there was fear of a French invasion,” he continued. “At that time the River Haver, which creates the lake, was a passable tributary of the Thames, so the king issued my ancestor a license to crenellate the manor house, which stood on the shore of the lake”—he gestured—“over there. My ancestor, the first Raoul, decided instead to pull down the manor house and build a fortified, castle on the island.”

I looked at the walls and towers we were approaching. They appeared less magical and more formidable the closer we got. I stared at the notched battlements and said, “Well, it is most certainly crenellated and fortified.”

“Yes, we are well equipped to pour slaked lime, stones, and boiling tar or water on any enemies who might make it past our outer defenses,” he assured me.

I laughed.

The coach bounced once and then rolled forward more smoothly. I could see from my post at the window that we had passed onto a narrow roadway from which all the snow had been cleared.

“At one time, this causeway was made of timber,” Savile said. “Today, of course, it is made of stone.”

The coach tooled along the cleared roadway, which apparently was really a bridge, until we reached a free-standing stone tower some two hundred yards in front of the main door set into the castle wall. I looked up, rather expecting to see Elaine hanging out the window searching for her long-lost Lancelot.

“We are now on an island that is only a little larger than the tower next to us,” the earl informed me. “At one time this was the first line of defense for the castle.”

The coach stopped, the tower door opened, and an elderly man stepped out. Savile rolled down his window and a blast of cold air rushed into the coach.

“Welcome home, my lord!” the elderly man called. His face was beaming. “We made certain to get the causeway cleaned off for ye!”

“Good job, Sims,” the earl said good-humoredly. “Tell me, has Lady Devane arrived yet?”

The smile disappeared from Sims’s face. “That she has, my lord. And Mr. Cole with her.”

“That’s no surprise,” Savile muttered under his breath. He nodded to the elderly gatekeeper, rolled up the window, and settled back against the squabs as the coach moved forward once more, a small frown between his brows.

The earl had so obviously forgotten my presence that I hesitated to question him. Instead, I watched in silence as we passed through the huge, arched stone gate, which must once have been closed by a portcullis, and entered within the castle walls.

Suddenly the Middle Ages vanished, and my amazed eyes beheld a snow-filled courtyard in the center of which stood an exquisitely beautiful Renaissance house built of rich golden-yellow stone streaked with reddish brown.

It was a totally unexpected sight and I must have made a sound indicative of my astonishment, for at last the earl’s attention swung back to me.

“It does that to everyone the first time they see it,” he said humorously. “I think it was the seventh Raoul who decided to tear down most of the medieval buildings and put up a modern residence for himself.”

By “modern” I judged he meant either Elizabethan or Jacobean.

“Your family rather went in for tearing down and starting fresh,” I said.

He laughed.

“Your family crest is the lion?” This was far from being a wild guess on my part, as stone lions topped all of the gables as well as the main entrance before which we had halted.

“Yes,” said Savile, “as a matter of fact, it is.”

A butler in full livery was coming out the front door. Savile opened the coach door on his side and stepped down before anyone could come to open it for him. For perhaps a minute he stood talking to the butler not far from the arched front door of the house, then the butler turned and went back into the house while Savile came to my side of the coach. A footman appeared with portable steps, and Savile assisted me to alight onto the snow-cleared drive.

“I’ve sent Powell to find my sister, Mrs. Saunders,” the earl said genially. “She will see to it that you are made comfortable.”

It annoyed me no end, but I suddenly found myself extremely nervous about staying in that great house.

“Does Lady Regina know I am coming?” I asked Savile.

“No one knows you are coming,” he returned. “In fact, I rather think your presence is going to be a shock.”

He sounded pleased.

That made me even more nervous.

There were no stairs leading into the house; we simply went in the immense front door and found ourselves in what at one time had obviously been Raoul the Seventh’s Great Hall. I shot a glance at the stone fireplace, with its massive chimneypiece carved with lions and its ornate strapped overmantel, and thought incredulously,
Do people really live in a place like this?

The sound of piano music drifted into the hall from a room close by. It stopped abruptly, and Savile said to me, “That was Ginny at the piano. She should be here in a moment.”

I nodded tensely.

A woman came into the Great Hall from the doorway on my left.

“Raoul,” she said warmly. “You’re here at last. You’ll be mortified to hear that everyone else made it before you. What an insult to your famous chestnuts!”

She crossed the polished wood floor to the earl, who bent and kissed her on the cheek.

“I’m late because I had to stop to pick someone up,” Savile said to his sister. “Ginny, let me make Mrs. Abigail Saunders known to you. Mrs. Saunders, this is my sister, Lady Regina Austen.”

“How do you do, Lady Regina,” I murmured.

“Mrs. Saunders,” she said, giving me a mystified look.

“Mrs. Saunders figures in George’s will,” the earl said, “and I thought she should be present to hear it read.”

Lady Regina’s look went from mystification to astonishment. She said feebly, “Indeed.”

A small silence fell, in which I regarded Lady Regina gravely. She had her brother’s dark blond hair and finely sculpted face, but her eyes were brown, not gold.

“You will have Mrs. Ferrer show her to a room, won’t you, Ginny?” the earl said.

Lady Regina’s good manners reasserted themselves. “I will show her to a room myself,” she said, and smiled at me.

The earl smiled at me also and said, “I will leave you in the capable hands of my sister, then, Mrs. Saunders.” He departed in the opposite direction from which Lady Regina had come.

I wanted to beg him not to leave me, but obviously that was not feasible, so I straightened my spine and resolutely followed Lady Regina across the floor to the beautiful staircase that, after the fireplace, was the room’s outstanding feature.

Graciously, charmingly, relentlessly, Lady Regina began to quiz me. “Did you have a long drive, Mrs. Saunders?”

“Rather long,” I replied quietly. “The roads were still quite filled with drifts, but we were able to follow the path of the mail.”

“Ah,” said Lady Regina.

We had reached the top of the stairs and I looked around at the imposing room I found myself in.

“What a magnificent room,” I said, trying to turn the subject.

“This used to be the Great Chamber,” Lady Regina told me. “At the time the house was built, rooms like this were used to entertain one’s noble guests.”

From ornate ceiling to marble floor, the room was intimidatingly magnificent. The paneled walls were decorated with a wealth of curious carvings, which later I would discover included winged horses, chimeras, and mermaids. The chimneypiece was what caught my immediate attention, however. I stared at it in unabashed awe. It was a truly remarkable piece, made of alabaster and black, white, and gray marble, and decked with strapwork, acanthus scrolls, and garlands of musical instruments and flowers.

Lady Regina saw where my eyes had lighted. “The chimneypiece has been described as one of the finest works of Renaissance sculpture in England,” she told me, with the pride I had detected in her brother’s voice earlier.

“It is magnificent,” I said. I glanced at the room’s only furniture, which were some carved oak chairs set along the wall. “Is the room in use today?”

“My parents occasionally used it as a ballroom,” Lady Regina said.

She turned to her right and began to lead me through a succession of smaller, less formal rooms, all the while asking me questions.