by Jane Ashford
“Isn’t that what I just said?” Harriet replied.
“Not precisely,” said Cecelia. “There is something in what you say, Harriet. But young women have the opportunity to choose.” She remembered her aunt’s description of the queen bee’s flight. That would be more satisfying.
“A few do. The ones at the top of the heap.”
Sarah looked even more uneasy.
“There’s Prince Karl.” Harriet nodded toward the park gate where a group of riders was just entering. “He’s gathered quite a following since the match.”
Cecelia turned and walked swiftly toward a line of shrubbery. “I don’t want to speak to him today.” She particularly didn’t want to be the target of all eyes while she did so. She stepped around a bush and out of sight of the gate.
Sarah and Harriet followed smoothly, but their successful evasion of one peril led them slap into another.
“Miss Vainsmede,” called an imperious voice from a side path. Lady Wilton, leaning on a cane and the arm of a maid, stumped up to them. She stopped very close to Cecelia and peered up into her face. “Where has he gone?” she demanded.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Tereford. Where has he gone? He is not at his rooms. His man seems to have no idea where he is.”
“What?” Feeling crowded, Cecelia backed up a step.
“Is there something wrong with your hearing, girl? He has not been seen since that idiotic sword fight. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.” Surely Lady Wilton must be mistaken.
“Well, you ought to know. You have let this matter get out of hand.”
“I? What has it to do…”
“You know very well what I mean.”
Cecelia stood straighter, resenting the old woman’s dismissive tone. “I assure you that I do not, Lady Wilton.”
“A woman can always maneuver a man if she makes the effort.”
“Indeed? Can you give me lessons?”
“Don’t be insolent with me, girl!”
“I was quite sincere. Wasn’t I, Harriet?”
Harriet started, surprised to be brought into the conversation. Then she bit back a smile.
Lady Wilton scowled at all of them. “This is an outrage! Tereford has important matters to attend to. He shouldn’t be playing with swords, and he certainly can’t go off sulking like a spoiled child.” She fixed her intimidating gaze on Cecelia. “I expect you to do something about this.”
“Then I fear you will be disappointed, ma’am.”
“Miss Impertinence! How dare you speak to me so?”
“I did not mean to be rude. Simply clear. Tereford is not my responsibility.”
“You’ve decided to take the prince then?” asked the old woman. She shrugged. “I’m not certain that is wise. He comes from a small, insignificant country. Nothing to compare with an English duke.”
Cecelia had to struggle with a flood of anger. “There has been no occasion for a decision. Nor do I have any expectation of making one. Of any kind.”
“He hasn’t offered? After the way he hovers over you? I know foreign manners can be different, but that is outside of enough.” Lady Wilton appeared quite indignant on her behalf.
“Like a gourmand debating his choice in a chocolate box,” said Harriet.
“What?” James’s grandmother swiveled to frown at her.
Harriet looked as if she wished she’d kept silent.
Lady Wilton examined her from head to toe. “Improved expectations do not give you a license to say whatever you please,” she said. “Still less to be offensive.”
“She wasn’t,” said Sarah.
This brought Lady Wilton’s glare over to her. “In my day, girls did not speak unless spoken to. And often not even then!”
“So you were silent and demure?” asked Cecelia. “I beg your pardon, but it is difficult to picture, ma’am.”
Lady Wilton gave a snort of laughter. “That is neither here nor there. We were speaking about James. You must find him and bring him to me, Miss Vainsmede. I insist!”
“I cannot promise that,” replied Cecelia. She sketched a curtsy. “We must not keep you from your walk any longer, ma’am.” She moved away quickly and managed to ignore Lady Wilton’s burst of indignation.
That did not end the matter, however. Cecelia was asked about James over and over through the remainder of their outing, as if she was some sort of authority on his movements. And his absence was the talk of the party she attended that evening.
By the end of the following day word had spread everywhere that the new Duke of Tereford had disappeared from London society.
The gossips went wild.
Eight
James Cantrell, at the end of his first month as one of the highest-ranking peers in the realm, sat in a house crammed with broken-down furnishings and decided that his life had become a rather similar mare’s nest. Somehow, steps that had seemed reasonable one by one had led him to that blow at the end of the fencing match. And its consequences, which he must of course face. Just not now.
He’d discovered one functional bedchamber on the first floor of his great-uncle’s town house. It contained the customary furnishings, not an insane, dusty tangle of discarded items. The single servant had clearly cleaned and aired it out before she departed. The sheets on the bed were fresh, and whatever clutter Uncle Percival had left was tidied away. The previous duke’s clothes remained in the wardrobe, however, and his shaving gear on the washstand. James hadn’t brought himself to use either. He still wore the shirt, coat, and breeches in which he’d fought the disastrous bout. His cheeks rasped with whiskers. His hair had been left to its own devices.
James was aware of the irony, and that he was sulking. But awareness seemed to make no difference to his mood. He couldn’t bear to see anyone after that shameful public loss. It was all too easy to envision the stares, the titters, the sly enjoyment of men he’d bested in the past. The pity! He would not endure it. His distinguished place in society was based on his athletic prowess, his enviable style, his unflappable manner. Now, with one foolish impulse, he’d destroyed the identity he’d been shaping since he was fifteen years old. He couldn’t see, at this point, what he was to put in its place.
So he stayed quiet in the large, eerie house. He didn’t use lights where they could be seen from the street. He lit no fire in the bedchamber. When twilight fell, he sneaked out a side door with his hat pulled low, swathed in a scarf from his great-uncle’s wardrobe, to buy pies from a nearby shop. The greasy pastry barely sufficed to keep body and soul together. He was increasingly hungry, and the poor diet was upsetting his innards as well. Fortunately, his great-uncle hadn’t interfered with the wine cellar. James had made good use of the dusty bottles there and was not reduced to the water pump in the kitchen.
Perhaps too good a use, he decided as he stared into the mirror on a gray rainy morning. He barely recognized the image staring back at him. There were smudges of dirt on his clothes despite all his care. This place was rife with dust. His scruff of whiskers shadowed his face. His hair stood up in lamentable spikes, and he hadn’t even put on his neckcloth today. The open collar below his stubbled chin demonstrated an utter abandonment of standards. He’d lost the person he had been. He was no longer the Corinthian who’d led society before the prince defeated him.
James turned away from the mirror. He knew this was unacceptable. He had to return to his rooms and take up his life. But he wasn’t ready to do so until he could see what it would be after this.
He left the bedchamber and edged along a corridor nearly filled with detritus. This house made one feel like a serpent, slithering through narrow spaces, bending and twisting around a dusty maze. He navigated the obstacles to the room he’d chosen to begin the work of clearing away. It was the smallest he could find on the ground floor, which had been his s
ole criteria. A place to begin when isolation and boredom had goaded him into action.
He wedged into the space he’d dealt with so far. He’d found a few things he wanted to keep and taken those to his bedchamber. When he had this space emptied, he would store them here, lest it also fill up around him. Items he wished to be rid of went out a window that opened onto a walled garden. He’d forced a path to the window and thrown it open first thing in a bid to disperse the musty smell.
James confronted the jumbled pile of things. What had been in Uncle Percival’s mind as he accumulated all this? How had he not seen the madness?
James reached into the mass and pulled out a large hourglass in a carved wooden frame. Rubbing at the dust covering it, he found that the glass was cracked in several places. The sand had run out. “How very apt,” he told the air. “But I find it difficult to appreciate the humor.” He carried the hourglass to the window and tossed it onto the pile of moth-eaten tapestries he’d thrown down to muffle any noise from his discards.
As he turned back, a thumping sound intruded. Someone was knocking on the front door. He stood still until the rhythm stopped, and then for a few minutes afterward. This had happened once before. Whoever it was could go away.
When he felt certain they had departed, he went back to work, pulling out a burnished case that looked as if it might hold dueling pistols. Those would come in handy if he decided to shoot himself. “Not amusing,” he said aloud to whatever aberrant part of his brain had produced this thought. “Not in the least.”
Opening the case he discovered a set of flint blades that looked very ancient. They were beautifully crafted—a spearhead and several knives. He couldn’t imagine how anyone had made such exquisite leaf-like shapes with primitive tools. He picked one up and sliced a tiny cut in the ball of his thumb. They were incredibly sharp, as effective now as when they were created centuries ago. Carefully, he set the blade back in the case. He would keep these, he decided, though he had no use for them. They were too lovely to discard.
He set the case aside and went to haul out a massive wooden chair. Various small items rained on his head as he pulled. Narrow and probably nine feet tall, the seat had an ornately carved canopy that towered over him. This looked like something a Tudor king would sit in while he ate his way through your stores on a royal visit. It was also riddled with woodworm. Powdery residue darkened his hands. When he yanked again, one arm came loose and fell off, eaten through by the pests. Which made it much easier to chuck the chair out the window onto the pile of fabric.
With the chair gone, the mound of rubbish in the room groaned, tilted, and resettled, fortunately without burying him in a painful avalanche. A skitter of tiny feet told James that the local residents were not pleased by his incursion. “Your days are numbered,” he declared.
“And now you are speaking to mice,” he added. “Splendid.” He reached for the next bit of ducal inheritance.
***
Cecelia felt certain that James was in the town house. She didn’t know why, but she was sure he’d gone there. And whatever she’d told Lady Wilton, she couldn’t resist checking her intuition. She’d come to Tereford House alone, however, in a plain dress and bonnet to avoid servants’ gossip.
She’d pounded on the front door and called out to him, with no result. Unsurprised, she walked around the corner to the mews behind the house. She did not sneak, but she did check to see that no one was watching before she slipped into the narrow cobbled lane.
The house wall turned the corner and extended along it. Cecelia soon came to the stables that served the town house. They were closed up, naturally. She tried the door beside the larger carriage portals, expecting it to be locked, and found that it opened easily under her hand. She stepped inside and came face-to-face with a very thin, worn-looking woman in a threadbare stuff gown.
For a moment, they were equally startled. Cecelia nearly dropped the basket she held over her arm. Then the woman scowled and said, “What do you mean, walking in here without so much as a by-your-leave?”
“I didn’t realize anyone was here,” replied Cecelia.
“Well, we are.”
There was a quiver in the woman’s voice. Several ragged, skinny children peered from behind her skirts. “Did you work for the old duke?” Cecelia asked.
A flash of fear in the woman’s pale-blue eyes told Cecelia that matters were not that simple. “The old man’s dead,” the woman said. “And we ain’t leaving.”
She looked desperately tired. Examining the group more closely, Cecelia concluded that this poor family had somehow discovered the unusual situation and taken advantage of it to move into the empty building. So, despite her bravado, the woman must know that they could be ejected at any time. But it wasn’t Cecelia’s place to do so, even had she wished to. “I don’t care about that,” she said. “I just want to get inside the house.”
“There’s a little door in back,” said one of the children, a boy who looked about ten. “Mostly they forget to lock it.”
“Ned!” exclaimed his mother. She evaded Cecelia’s eyes, making Cecelia wonder if they slipped inside now and then to steal small bits they could sell. No one would ever discover the losses from the old duke’s hoard. In fact, she thought this might be a worthy use for some of it.
“I ain’t gone in since the new fellow come,” said Ned with an air of wounded virtue.
“New fellow?” asked Cecelia.
“Been here a day or so. Came through the front real quiet like. We was thinking he might be…”
“Ned,” repeated his mother.
The boy fell silent.
He must be referring to James. She’d been right then. “Will you show me this door, please?”
Ned glanced at his mother for permission, received a defeated shrug, and led Cecelia through the dim, neglected stables and out into a cobbled yard behind the house. In better light she could see that the boy’s clothing consisted of layers of tattered garments. Beneath them he was even thinner than he’d first appeared. The family was obviously destitute with no home to go to.
He took her over to a low door at the back of the house. As he’d promised it opened without difficulty. Cecelia dug in her reticule for a coin and handed it to the lad, then shut the door on his incredulous delight. Not wishing to be followed, she shot the bolt.
She was in a small, dark space facing a stair leading down to the cellar. Light came through a half-open door on the right. She went through it into the kitchen, large and echoing. She saw no sign that the room had been used recently. The hearth was cold. But at least it was not crammed with things like the other rooms she’d seen here.
She made her way quietly across it and down the cluttered corridor to the front entry. There she stood still, listening. At first there was nothing, just the vacancy of a cold, empty house. Then something—a quick, sharp exclamation came from the hallway she’d just traversed.
She followed continuing sounds to a cross corridor and then to a small chamber at the back corner of the house. There she found James maneuvering a battered footstool out of the ceiling-high pile.
Cecelia stopped in the doorway, shocked by his appearance. He looked like a vagabond—dusty, unshaven, disheveled. She’d never seen James in such a state in all the years of their acquaintance. A small sound escaped her.
James whirled, dropping the footstool. He stared as if she was an apparition. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
“I was looking for you,” she answered. “Of course. Everyone is wondering where you are.”
His dark brows came together in a scowl, and his fists clenched. “It’s no business of theirs.” He glared at her. “I suppose you told everyone you were coming here to look for me.”
“No, James, I did not.”
His features relaxed a bit.
Cecelia breathed the stale mustiness that permeat
ed the house. The air was full of dust. “How can you stay in this place?”
He grimaced. “Uncle Percival’s bedchamber is…not insupportable.” He put a hand to his chin as if suddenly conscious of its unshaven state. “So now you know where I am. You can go.”
“You won’t even offer me a cup of tea?”
“I have none.”
“There must be some tea left in the kitchen.”
It seemed he had not thought of this. “I have no idea.” There was a spark of longing in his blue eyes.
“Also, I brought you scones.”
The longing ignited into burning avarice.
“As well as some other things,” Cecelia continued. “Bread and cheese and apples. Because I couldn’t imagine, if you had come here, what you’d been eating.”
“Pies,” he said hollowly. “Horrible, greasy pies. With ominously unidentifiable fillings.”
“Oh, poor James.”
“May I have an apple?”
She took one from her basket and tossed it to him. He caught it and bit in as if he was starving. “I will even make the tea if we can find some,” she added.
James devoured the apple as they navigated past the piles of hoarding to the kitchen. Cecelia found a nearly empty box of tea in a cupboard and began to fill a kettle at the pump. “Will you make a fire? Can you?”
“Of course. May I have a scone first?” James reached toward the basket she’d set on the table and seemed to notice the dirt under his fingernails. He drew back. Cecelia set the kettle aside, took the cloth from the basket, and gave him a scone.
He took a bite. “Ah.” He gobbled it up in seconds.
He started a small fire in the hearth, then ate a second scone as they sat on a wooden bench and waited for the kettle to boil.
“You must be quite uncomfortable here,” Cecelia said.
He looked away, annoyed or ashamed. She couldn’t tell.
“You cannot stay on. You should go home, James.”
His jaw tightened. “I suppose everyone is talking about the fencing match.”