But I am afraid of you, Catherine thought. I do not know you, and you do not know me. Years of friendship aside, we are strangers. And if you find out … if you find out what I really am, you will utterly destroy me. She swallowed.
But if she married, she could have a son.
Wait! Could that be the reason for Sir Lyle’s offer? Did he know of the title?
“Sir Lyle,” she said carefully. “Is there any reason for your sudden interest?”
For a moment she thought he would laugh. But he said gravely, “Does it seem so sudden, after all our years of friendship?”
“You have never thought of me in this way before.”
Sir Lyle pretended to be hurt. “Did you not know? You have held my heart in your hands all along.”
“Oh, come! We have known each other for years, it is true. But many of those years were spent with you on the opposite side of the globe, tending to those ships of yours. And not a letter or word from you until you found yourself wandering past Mansion Place again.”
“Did that disappoint you?” His lips twitched.
Catherine made a sound of frustration. “You know perfectly well what I mean.”
Sir Lyle rose. He went over to the far window and peered outside. “The first wave of visitors is arriving.”
Catherine half rose from her seat. “What?”
Sir Lyle turned. “Two fops and a gossip-monger. I expect they are here to quiz you on your new title.”
“Oh, no!”
“And one or both … gentlemen will probably ask for your hand.”
“I must get Lydia,” Catherine exclaimed. “She will turn them away.” She pulled herself up.
Sir Lyle went over to help her. He took her arm. “Wait. Catherine, you cannot stop them. The word is all over Bath.”
Catherine turned to look directly into his face. “And you? Is that why you are here? You of all people do not need my money.”
“Your title would be of immense assistance to me,” Sir Lyle said bluntly. “It would open doors that are currently closed to me.”
Catherine turned away. “I do not know what to do,” she muttered. She shook her head.
“Our son, Catherine. Our son would be the next earl. You would be the matriarch of a dynasty.”
Something caught in her throat. She shook her head mutely again. “I do not know,” she whispered.
“I will stop tormenting you.” Sir Lyle released her arm. With his fingertips, he turned her head gently until she looked at him. “You know I am very fond of you.”
Catherine tried to smile. “And I of you. I cannot think right now. I must – I must go to Wansdyke.”
“You cannot avoid the curious forever,” Sir Lyle warned.
“I will handle them,” Catherine said.
“I am sure you will.” Sir Lyle removed his hand. “I will see you at Wansdyke, then. If you will allow me.”
“I would not turn you away, Sir Lyle.”
“That is all I ask.”
He bowed and left.
She could not decide. She had thought she would have time, time to think carefully about her course of action.
Marry Sir Lyle? Yes, he had a reputation as a rogue, and he was in trade, but he was still a gentleman. Even her father would not have objected to such an alliance. She could be the mother of the next earl within a twelvemonth.
Why, then, did she feel so uncertain?
Chapter 9
The note was short. The child who handed it to Jocelyn was rosy cheeked, well scrubbed. A happy, healthy boy of eight or so, lurking hopefully about the inn as his parents cleaned and cooked and attended to their guests. Jocelyn obliged him with a generous tip, remembering the skin-and-bones children in the streets of Bombay.
How happy you are, he thought, watching the boy scamper down the stairs with his prize clutched tightly in one hand. How happy I was – once. But his world had come to a crashing halt around him before he was even that old. He envied the boy’s simple life of hard work and hard play. There was something very clean, very honest, about a child’s life.
Your name is on the list. They will discuss your case within the week. Do nothing, go nowhere.
No signature.
Its meaning was both clear and obscure. He knew what the list was and what case the note referred to. At last, they were to decide what was to be done with him. And, depending on who was present at the meeting, his exemplary record would speak for itself, or the truth about his past would come out and there would be a court martial. Perhaps worse.
Do nothing, go nowhere. Was that meant to be helpful counsel, or a warning that he should not flee?
He wondered who had sent the note. Barrington had said something about friends. But he dismissed the thought. He had no friends in high places – or anywhere else, for that matter. If there were a way to gain favour with the Admiralty, he would take it. He wanted nothing more than to get back to sea. He would do anything, anything at all. But he had no friends in high places.
Forster was visiting friends nearby; his tiresome sister and her friend were with him. Although the afternoon was advancing, the sun was still high in the sky – a sign of the impending summer. Lovely weather for a countryside walk. That settled it. Jocelyn picked up his hat and walked out, leaving the note and all of its implications behind him.
The Kingsmith Arms lay on the edge of town. It was a respectable country establishment without the air of fashionable address the more popular Bath inns commanded. Jocelyn declined the groom’s offer of a ride into town on the cart. Instead, he walked behind the inn, jumped over a stile, crossed a stream by a rickety bridge, and headed across a muddy field scattered with dandelions. Startled rabbits scampered away as he strode easily through squishy mounds of wet green grass, his feet locating the smoothly tramped path with the instinct of one born and bred in the country. He breathed deeply of the ripe scent, thrust his hands in his pockets and slowed his pace slightly. He came to a fence and hesitated. He did not know where he was heading or whether he would be able to find his way back, but he decided to follow the track the cows had trodden up the slight hill that rose some distance behind the inn. Although the slope appeared gentle, some sections of the path were still steep enough to cause Jocelyn’s boots to slip and his pace to falter. Breathing hard, he climbed on. He turned as his way flattened out and he neared the top of the hill, eager for a view of the little farms dotting the countryside and the not-too-distant golden stone of Bath. Afternoon sunlight placed a yellow halo over all; his heart considerably lightened, he turned to resume his climb.
Once at the top, he saw the parties responsible for creating his path grazing peacefully in a wide green field. He felt a trifle disappointed. Was this all that lay beyond? He had hoped his walk would show him something more interesting than field upon field of munching cows and yellow dandelions. If he wanted a different view, his only choice was to follow the stream at the foot of the hill until it disappeared into a distant copse.
The stream was a pathetic thing compared to the wide Avon, but sparkling clean and obviously spring-fed. It had cut deeply into the moist earth and it seemed that any woods that remained in this part of the country rose up about it – perhaps because the steep banks made it too hard for animals to reach the water and the wet ground surrounding it made the approach difficult.
Jocelyn stopped to drink, and was pleased to discover that the water was ice-cold and delicious. He strode on, pausing only to pick up a handful of dense clay from the bank. No good for crops, he noted. Then he laughed. It was a wonder that he could remember anything at all about agriculture given his rural childhood up north was long past and that, ever since he turned thirteen, he had spent all his time either on board a ship or trying to get onto one.
The trees grew denser, and the stream widened until, Jocelyn realised, he could no longer step across it or splash through it with ease. He wondered whether the view above the high bank on the other side was still one of boring cows and grass, an
d decided that it was not worth negotiating the claggy mud to find out.
“I have missed England,” he said aloud. The words fell flat in the damp of the wood. It was a spectacular change from the salty air of the deck, where even the laziest sailors sprang to duty at the mere sound of his voice.
“England!” he boomed, wondering if volume would make a difference to the resonance of his voice. It felt as if his throat had been invaded by a miasma of dense fog. How very odd. Sea air was damp; life aboard ship was damp. Why, then, did England feel so wet? So ripe? So earthy? Perhaps that was it. No man could survive at sea without support from land. But, in England, a man could till an acre and Mother Earth would make him king. As long as he has an acre, Jocelyn reflected. He laughed out loud, pleased at the thought. He had plenty of money. Perhaps he should just set himself up as a gentleman farmer somewhere. Not around Bath, certainly, but somewhere. Down in Cornwall, or up north near the Lakes.
If they are going to get me anyway, he thought, perhaps it would be as well to make them knock at a door of my own.
He imagined the scene: the starchy correctness of the butler, the polite curiosity of the housekeeper, as the men from the Admiralty came to take the master away.
It was possible that he would be allowed to return to duty, without a devastating court martial. Here, alone in the little wood, he could acknowledge that. His admiral in Gibraltar liked him. Respected him a great deal, in fact. Thought that he was destined for greatness.
What rubbish!
There were some who liked Avebury – and a few who hated him.
Jocelyn knew a great deal about the hatred of men. He had seen it work its violence in so many places, in so many ways. Strange, when he was not a man of violence himself. Rage and anger confused him on a fundamental level – he was not prone to either feeling. Had all emotion been stamped out of him on that cold November day when his father had been executed? He had been a lad of seven. His eyes had not actually seen the death blow. But his soul had absorbed the energy of the howling mob.
He knew how deep feelings of rage ran, but also how soon they were spent. While he would never understand it himself, he was not a coward, and he would not run. He had no particular reason to save himself.
Voices. He ceased his contemplation of the stream, looked up and slowed his pace. He cocked his head, listening. A raindrop splashed on his cheek. He hadn’t noticed the drizzle, the merest shadow of a cloud obscuring the bright sun, shaded as he had been by the trees and sheltered under his hat and the thick fabric of his uniform.
No, not voices. One voice. A lady. Singing. Humming, perhaps. But in the rain? The song came from beyond the high bank on the other side of the stream. A milkmaid? No, for once he could not hear any cows in the field beyond, thank goodness! And it was definitely a female voice, not a boy’s. So it could not be a farm hand.
Jocelyn came to a stop and looked down at the water. He was curious, but the stream was too wide to cross without soaking at least his boots and probably his clothes, too. The bank was too steep and muddy for him to climb up without getting filthy. He shrugged and was about to walk on when, from the corner of his eye, he saw the plume of a feather waving above the top of the bank. He turned his head. At first, all he could see was the feather, but it danced and shook until the hat to which it was attached also came into view. And then, very slowly, a face. It belonged to Lady Catherine Claverton.
Chapter 10
“Captain Avebury!” The words barely emerged from her lips. Little loose strands of blonde hair surrounded her face. Her hat was damp. She seemed nonplussed, startled as she peered at him over the top of the bank.
It was certainly a great deal easier to address her here than in the cloying surroundings of a Bath ballroom. “Good afternoon, Lady Catherine!” he called up to her. “Are you also taking a walk?”
“A crawl might be a more apt description,” Catherine replied, the hint of a smile in her eyes. “My horse isn’t fond of this mud, and refused to jump any of our usual fences. So I’ve been walking – but now I can see why he refused to allow me to ride him today.” She made a face and held up her hands. The palms of her gloves were caked with brown mud, utterly incongruous against the fine kidskin.
“Good God,” Jocelyn burst out. “Did you fall?”
The hint of a smile vanished. Jocelyn realised too late that, while he had not been thinking of her limp when he spoke, she must be accustomed to people treating her like an invalid. Now he wondered how she managed to ride as easily as she implied. “No,” she said carefully. “But this bank is rather steep. I was hoping to stand at the very top, but the climb is quite beyond me, I’m afraid.”
“Then it will gratify you to learn that I was thinking of making the same climb, but from this side,” Jocelyn said, smiling. “It is indeed rather steep. Perhaps too steep for me, too.”
A proper smile finally appeared on Catherine’s face. “You exaggerate, sir,” she teased.
“I do not, indeed. Let me demonstrate.” Hardly knowing what he intended to do, Jocelyn plunged into the stream and promptly sank up to his thighs in cold water. Gasping, he pushed forward, his boots slipping over smooth grey stones, creating ripples that scared silvery little fish, making them zip away in great big schools. He could feel the liquid seep up toward his crotch and, in a burst of energy, fought his way to the slippery bank beyond.
Catherine’s pale face looked down at him from the top of the bank. “You have convinced me,” she called, pleading. “Do not go any further.”
Without replying, Jocelyn began to scramble up the side of the bank, grabbing tufts of wet grass to help his hand-over-hand ascent. He did it automatically, it was just like climbing the rigging of a ship, he thought. Except the rigging of a ship wasn’t usually wet and green and slimy. Not on his ship, at least. Just as he stretched for the top of the bank, his boot slipped and he went sliding back whence he came, the front of his uniform soaking up the mud as he went.
With a cry of dismay, Catherine moved instinctively to catch at his hands, but his descent was completed before she could grab at him. “Do not come up,” she pleaded. “You will make yourself ill – you are soaking wet!”
Jocelyn dug the toes of his boots into the side of the bank, and began to slowly pull himself up again, this time jamming his elbows into the mud. Grunt, grunt, heave, heave. For a peculiar reason he could not have described, his heart was lighter, his spirit at ease. The harder he worked, the better he felt. What was this strange sensation? Perhaps it was the same concentration as that which kept him happy at sea. But he had never experienced this calm mental energy on land – there, he was awkward, silent, nervous.
He was at the top and staring into Catherine’s unhappy face. “There, you see?” he said, breathing hard. “Here we are, each stuck on our own side, but both covered in mud.” He smiled at her.
Something about their face-to-face encounter struck Catherine, and she burst into peals of laughter. “Oh, you absurd creature!” she gasped. Suddenly, she teetered and began to slip slowly back down her side of the bank. She grasped wildly at the ground, nearly falling over backwards in an effort not to fall and cover her riding dress with grass stains and mud. Jocelyn grabbed her hands then, having steadied her, let go, pulling a wry face at the new layer of mud on her gloves.
“Don’t slide back without taking me with you,” he said, trying to lighten the moment. In the wide fields behind Catherine, a brown horse nibbled peacefully at the grass. And, on a hillside further in the distance, Jocelyn could see the outlines of a grand house surrounded by shrubbery and a carefully cultivated park.
“Come with me, then,” Catherine said, still panting from her near accident. She coughed. Jocelyn looked back down at her. Her face was very close to his. He could suddenly feel every wet inch of his clothes clinging to his skin. Involuntarily, he shivered.
“See, you are cold,” she chided. “You must come home with me, to Wansdyke.”
“Wansdyke? Is that Wansdyk
e over there?”
“Yes. I only stay at Mansion Place when I must. Wansdyke is my home.” She paused, then said, “You never visited me at Mansion Place.”
Jocelyn examined his muddy palms, then studied Catherine’s side of the bank. There was a sudden steep drop to a small ledge which allowed her to stand precariously and look over to the stream, but the slope flattened out quickly behind her. Grimacing, he dug his nails into the earth and pulled himself up using only his chest muscles and biceps. He winced as he brought his legs over. What a disgrace! At sea, he climbed like this every day. He could feel the strain in his chest, a burning ache that ought not to be there. This was the wretched result of mooning about in Bath, brooding about God knew what ridiculous, uncontrollable—
“Are you all right?” Catherine put a hand on his arm and gently turned him to face her. Seeing her horrified expression, Jocelyn examined his previously pristine uniform. It seemed beyond rescue.
He looked up at her. The rain had stopped, and the wilted feather on her hat drooped by her ear. She was wearing a perfectly ordinary navy-blue habit with no trim or decoration. It was damp but relatively clean. However, she had pushed back wisps of her hair with muddy gloves, leaving streaks of dirt along her temples. He was suddenly filled with admiration for this woman who had taken her horse out into the mud and who, when the animal had refused to go any farther, had insisted on struggling by herself to see a view. And who didn’t seem to mind a bit of mud in her hair.
“You’ve got mud in your hair,” he said cheerfully.
“Is that all?” Lady Catherine said, pressing her lips together. “I’m sure I must look a fright.”
“For a lady on a ride, not bad at all.” Jocelyn cast another rueful look at his clothes. “I apologise for my … er … dishevelled state. I enjoyed the climb, however. I am grateful to you for the suggestion.”
The Portrait Page 6