Wedding Night Revenge (11 page)

Edgar exploded, shrunk into his seat then hiccoughed and swore. He waved a disgruntled hand at his brother-in-law, scattering a stack of sovereigns in the process. 'Fine' me something to scribble with,' he directed him rudely.

'An' mine' your own business...' He turned to Alexander Pemberton. 'Did I ask him to make m'excuses? Alibi for me only the once...only once ever has he done that...'

'Have you got something to say?' Connor quietly drawled at Lord Harley. He stuck a cheroot in his mouth and lit it. Having settled himself in Nathaniel's chair, he lay back in it, long legs stretching out lazily to the central pedestal.

Blue eyes raised, gazing at the furious-faced man through a haze of slate smoke, whilst Edgar, beside him, continued to mumble and hiccough and pull out his pocket linings in search of some cash.

'It ain't in the rules. You want to play, Devane, wait till this game's done.'

'Anybody got any objections to me buying Chamberlain out and playing now?' Connor asked the few men seated about the table who were still in the game.

'None at all,' Toby Forster declared with a grin. 'Too deep for me in any case,' he explained. Having folded his hand, he lay back in his chair with an air of someone relishing future proceedings. His friend, Frank Vernon, looked at him lounging at ease, looked at his cards, then, with a hopeless groan, pitched them in too.

'Just the three of us, then,' Connor told Benjamin Harley and, withdrawing the cigar from between his teeth, he placed it carefully on the pewter ashtray.

Lord Harley's face turned a dull red, then the blood drained from his complexion as slowly the full implications of this subtle manoeuvre sunk in.

His frustration erupted in a muttered imprecation forced through his set teeth.

Connor smiled, amused. His eyes remained cold. 'Come, don't fret, Benjamin,' he drawled silkily, while watching Edgar scratching script in black ink on to the white parchment that his brother-in-law had brought him.

With a flourish the pledge was signed, the quill was lobbed back in the direction of the standish and Edgar flopped back in his chair. Connor's vivid blue gaze was still riveted on the parchment as he mocked Harley, 'I'm sure your lady friend will wait...unless, of course, she's sober now and remembers you...'

'I shall send an express to Beaulieu Gardens. Yes, I've decided, that's definitely what I shall do.'

Rachel sighed. She had heard these declarations a score or more times in as many hours. 'Send it then, Mama,' she agreed in defeat.

It had been two days since a violent storm subsided, having lasted a day and a night, before rumbling on its way. Still her father had not returned to Windrush, neither had he sent word of what occasioned his delay. He was only a few days' overdue and she had explained away his non-appearance and the lack of a messenger arriving with a note as being, in all probability, due to the hostile elements preventing anyone travelling north out of London.

Old Ralph had innocently contradicted that comforting train of thought. On their first venture out in the carriage along the sludgy track to the village of Staunton to pay a visit to friends, he'd cheerfully asserted that the folk of Cambridgeshire be best battening down the hatches next. The tumultuous weather was not heading south to London but blowing north-west. And, over the years, Ralph had proved himself to have an instinct for these things.

He could smell snow in the air, see frost in hard bright night skies, feel a mist in his bones... Yet, still Rachel persevered with telling her mother that London might now be under siege from the weather.

In truth, she
was
feeling an odd twinge of apprehension over her papa's whereabouts. Not that she feared for his safety, but she knew that sometimes, when in all-male company for too long, he allowed himself to be distracted by a carafe or two of fine burgundy...or brandy...or suchlike. But he was not often
very
drunk. Just once or twice had she seen her papa drowning in his cups...and it had been an alarming and degrading sight. She could quite clearly recall being appalled at the way alcohol could ravage a seemly gentleman and render him a witless wreck.

Rachel bowed her head towards the semi-circle of sunshine silks on the carpet. With a sniff she pushed all else but June's wedding to the back of her mind. A finger hovered first over a butter-coloured hank and then moved to one of a lemon hue. Plucking up the richer thread, she passed it to Madcap Mary.

'M'um.'

Rachel acknowledged the servant's grunt of thanks with a quiet, That needlework looks beautiful, Mary.' She ran a finger over the delicate gold filigree loops that were forming about the hem of a snowy damask napkin.

Her praises were sincere; her admiration the more pronounced for owning her own skill with a needle and thread was amateurish in the extreme. The fact that this oafish-looking young woman could produce # something so exquisitely fine filled her with a sort of joyous amazement.

'M'um. Thank you, m'm.'

Rachel watched a pleased flush tint colour into the servant's sallow complexion and Mary anchored a floppy strand of copper hair back behind an ear with a finger as thick as a sausage.

Rachel heard her small, childlike sigh of contentment as she settled her shapeless bulk back into the armchair and her fingers flew even faster.

Rachelt placed a few more hanks of the same shade on the stack of pristine linen that lay folded neatly on the chair arm.

Standing up, she walked off to the window and gazed immediately in the direction of the sentinel horse chestnut trees that marched off up the driveway. The pleasant vista was absent of a human presence; then Ralph's son, Pip, their general handyman, appeared from behind a bush. He was backing slowly on to the main track whilst methodically raking shingle.

Rachel sighed and accorded her mama an idle glance. She had settled enough from fretting over her husband to concentrate on composing a list of viands required for the weekend.

In the hope of keeping her mother distracted from thoughts of her father, Rachel ventured that a haunch of lamb or a goose might make a nice change from veal or beef...

'Your papa is not so keen on fatty meats as he was: they're too rich for his digestion now he is grown older. Oh, I must write a note and send it with Ralph straight away to the post carrier. I swear some ill is befallen him...'

'I think, Mama, you ought abandon that idea,' Rachel said with an incipient smite. Spinning away from the window, she sped, dimity skirts in fists, to the door. Having yanked it open she spun about and apprised Ijer startled mother, 'Papa is just appeared at the bend in the road.'

'What on earth can it be?' June whispered, her hazel eyes round with worry in her small, heart-shaped face. 'Why is Mother so distressed, do you think?'

'It is nought... She is probably just chiding him over his tardiness,' Rachel said with an unconvincing little laugh. She slid a look at Sylvie; even their youngest sister, who was wont to let family squabbles fly over her pretty head, looked subdued and a mite anxious as the commotion emanating from the library carried on unabated.

Another shriek, this time of a timbre that could only be described as despair, shivered the house. It had June immediately out of her chair. At the door, she hesitated, wringing her hands together, then looked agitatedly at Rachel.

'Perhaps we
should
go and see...'

'No...' Rachel said quietly, aware of Sylvie's clinging eyes on her, too.

'Whatever it is we will know soon enough. Let Papa have his say, in private.

We will know soon enough,' she repeated gravely.

Her father had been home not yet an hour. Instead of the smiling dapper Papa she had been expecting to welcome over Windrush's threshold, a man she barely recognised had shuffled wearily in, looking as though he had not enjoyed a wash or a shave for some days. His dishevelled appearance was nothing, though, to the moody cast of his features, or the droop of his posture. He looked as though a burden of cares weighed upon his shoulders.

With barely a coherent greeting for his eldest daughter, he had slowly rid himself of the encumbrances of rumpled cloaks and hat, then cut off her questions with, 'Let me speak to your mother first, my dear. Time enough to deal with you later...'

And so Rachel, out of astonishment, had complied with that. But still the haunting sight of that grey-faced man, bristly of chin, and jaundiced of eye, dragging past her into the bosom of their house, set her stomach in knots.

Something bad had happened and an inherent sense told her that somehow it affected her more than the others. More even than their hysterical mama...

A short while ago she had been reflecting on the last time she had seen her papa drunk. It had been six years ago. The same amount of time since she had listened to her mother's grief-stricken cries resounding through the house when she learned the news of dearest Isabel. Rachel felt lead settle in her stomach. Some tragedy of similar magnitude had occurred to overset her mother to such a degree and put her papa so out of countenance. Part of her wanted to run to her room and put a pillow over her head to shut out the terror as she had done years before. But then she had been but nineteen. Now she was stronger, more mature and hiding would not do. No, hiding would not do, at all. She needed to know what disaster she must now face. On a sigh of capitulation she sombrely left the room with her two younger sisters, pale and silent as spectres, drifting in her wake.

'You do not seem shocked, Rachel. Or not as shocked as I imagined you would be,' Edgar Meredith ventured, shattering the still silence in the room.

'I own I was worried you might scold your old papa.' The notion seemed to leave his humour unimpaired.

Rachel raised her ice-blue eyes to his face. His weak, appealing smile faded and he visibly flinched beneath that fleeting, freezing stare. Then his eldest daughter's contempt was turned on the crumbling embers in the grate.

Edgar hurrumphed deep in his throat, rubbed at his grey, bristly chin. He pushed himself from his armchair, and began pacing the room with an attempt at a jaunty step. 'I said to your mama it is no momentous disaster.

And I can see that my sensible girls are in accord with their papa's calm and reasonable view,' he continued, happily regarding the three solemn young ladies perching awkwardly on the very edges of their chairs in Windrush's impressive library. No one looked at him, not even little Sylvie. Her head was bent towards her fingers clasped in her lap while her slippered heels beat backwards against the base of the chair, one after the other, one after the other, in relentless rhythm, until suddenly her mother shrieked, 'For God's sake stop that, Sylvie, I implore you! My nerves...'

As his wife quickly turned her face away to the wall again to shield from sight her red-rimmed, puffy eyes, Edgar resumed quickly, 'Yes; no momentous disaster. We are not poor. We are not ruined. We simply must relocate and revise our plans a little. In fact, those wedding guests who are presently in town and have made it clear they are loath to miss out on the other highlights of the Season by journeying to stay for some days in Hertfordshire will be relieved...nay, delighted by the change of venue. The Winthrops' ball might not, after all, clash with June's dates. Beaulieu Gardens is appointed well enough to receive any amount of eminent guests, and is so centrally positioned for everyone...'

'Then we must rejoice, must we not, that we shall, after all, not incommode any of them.' Rachel's slow, stinging sarcasm cut off any more of her papa's persuasion. Stiffly she pushed out of her chair, clasped white-knuckled fingers in front of her, in a pose that could have been mistaken for humble.

'Tell me again, Papa... Yes, please do repeat, very precisely, what you have done, for I find I cannot quite comprehend that anyone...
anyone...
but especially not a fond father anddevoted husband would act in so...so selfish, so stupid, so irresponsible a way as to have jeopardised...'

'Don't
dare
give me that insubordination, miss!' Edgar roared into his daughter's audacious tirade, making his wife grip the chair arms and blink rapidly at the wall. June's head bowed almost to her lap to hide her glistening eyes. 'I shall do as I wish with my own property, when I wish, without being lectured on the subject by a female who has no right to ever challenge my behaviour...'

'I have every right. It was mine! By birth it was
mine!'
Rachel breathed in a raw, choking voice. 'You have gambled away what was lawfully mine.'

Edgar approached her, bristling defensively beneath her rage and disgust.

Their heights were almost equal, so to impress on her his superiority he expanded his chest on a deep breath and jutted his chin. 'No, miss...it is...was...mine,' he corrected in a clipped tone. 'It is
mine
until the day I die; thereafter is it...was it
...yours.
As you see, I still breathe, and shall continue to do so, despite that fact that I know how very much you desire to choke the life from me.' His mouth tightened as he saw the betraying tide of rosy colour staining his eldest daughter's complexion. His voice quivered with authority and emotion as he resumed, 'I say again, in case you are at all unsure of my meaning, that I shall do as I will with my own chattels. Never shall I beg leave to act from dependants who benefit from the shelter and support I provide. I refuse to be upbraided or nagged...' This was addressed to his wife. 'And I refuse to account to any of you for my gambling or my drinking or for any other masculine pleasures in which I might decide to indulge.'