She turned from the window as a scratching on the door heralded Verity Tretteign, a vision this morning in rose-colored muslin and cherry ribbons. “There you are, my dear.” She gushed her way into the room, her manner in almost ludicrous contrast to last night’s suspicion. “See how early I am got up on your behalf! Ross says it is my place to break the news to Papa.” Odd to think that this fluffy creature was his mother. But Mrs. Tretteign was looking her over dubiously. “You will forgive me, I am sure, my dear Christina, since we are aunt and niece—how strange it sounds. Being a mamma has always seemed quite bad enough.… But, as I was saying, Papa is a great stickler for female elegance.…” She dwindled into silence, her eyes reproaching Christina’s uncompromising gray gown.
“You think I won’t do? I’m afraid my wardrobe is not very extensive. There was not much dressing where I am come from.”
“No, no … of course not. Quite out in the wilds, was it? You must tell me all about yourself one day, but the question is, what’s to do now? My lavender-colored muslin, perhaps? But, no, absurd. You are quite a head taller than me are you not? Such a big girl … I expect it is the American climate or something. Why, I really believe that you are taller than your cousin Richard.”
“Richard Markham? Is he here?” Christina was not prepared to discuss her unfashionable size.
“Oh no. He hardly ever comes. He’s so busy, you see, in London. He has a most important position … let me see, is it at the Foreign Office, or the Board of Control? I never can remember. But the fact remains that he can hardly ever be spared. What a pity you did not know to get in touch with him while you were in London. He would have seen to everything for you and prevented your arriving in such a scrambling sort of a way. Oh dear!” She started to her feet. “There’s Papa’s bell. Oh, what in the world shall I say to him?”
“Let me go,” said Christina. “He might as well see the worst at once.”
“Child! You don’t know what you’re saying. He’d never forgive you—or me neither. You have no idea.… Yes, Parkes?”
“Mr. Tretteign is asking for you, madam.”
“Oh, thank you, I was afraid, I mean I expected.… Tell Mr. Tretteign I will be with him directly, Parkes … and not a word—”
“He wishes to know what all the commotion was last night,” said the old man. “It roused him from his first sleep, I’m sorry to say.”
“Oh, Parkes! Is it very bad?”
“It will be, ma’am, if you don’t go to him directly.” And then, as she fluttered out of the room, “The men who brought you last night are asking for a word with you, Miss Christina.”
“The men? But why? I paid them off last night and thought them gone long since.”
“And so they should be, miss, but sitting in the kitchen is what they’re doing, drinking our best home-brewed and talking mighty queer, if you ask me—and asking your pardon, miss.”
“Of course.” Odd that a tacit alliance should already exist between them. “But—what are they saying, Parkes?”
“Why, nothing to the purpose, but a deal of hints that I don’t quite like the sound of. Did something … happen to you on the way here?”
“Happen?” Thoughts flashed through her mind like lightning. But no need, really, for thought. Her decision was taken. Ross must be protected, the men silenced. Well then, how? Quick … think. No chance, surely, of the men recognizing Ross. They had never been near him; most important of all, they had no way of knowing she had bitten him. The telltale mark on his hand would mean nothing to them. “Happen?” she said again. “Why, nothing to signify. We lost our way. There was a barricade across the road and we had to take some time pulling it down. You know how late we were.… But, why, Parkes, what do they say?”
“It’s not what they say, miss, so much as what they don’t say. A lot of talk about never coming into these parts again … and shrugs and groans, and something about needing danger money to come on the marsh …”
“A lot of talk, in fact.” She had come to her decision now. “If you ask me, Parkes, they had a couple of flasks along and were drunk as owls last night. It was lucky for me they got me here at all. And now they are talking big because they are ashamed of themselves.”
“It might well be that.” He took it with evident relief. “But, a barricade, you say? Whereabouts would that be, miss?”
“Not far from here. I thought it must be something to do with the coastal defenses. I hope there won’t be trouble about our taking it down.”
“I’m sure there won’t. As for the men, will you see them? I’d be glad to see the last of them, I don’t mind telling you, and so would Cook.”
“Of course. I’m only sorry they have been such a trouble to you. But … do you think my cousin Ross would help me deal with them? They think me a crazy Yankee, I’m afraid, and might pay more attention to him.”
“Mr. Ross?” Was he taken aback by this apparently logical suggestion? “I—I think he’s still in the breakfast parlor, miss. Shall I ask him?”
“No, thank you, Parkes. I’ll ask him myself.”
Ross had finished what looked to have been an enormous breakfast and was sitting, very much at his ease, reading a three-day-old copy of the Morning Post. He made as if to rise when Christina entered the room, then settled back into his chair and smiled at her over the paper. “You see, Cousin, I treat you quite as one of the family. Have you come, after all, to pour my coffee for me? I am desolated to disappoint you, but I am afraid you are too late.”
Impossible not to admire the coolness of it “No, Cousin.” She kept her voice cool as his. “But I am glad you treat me as family, for I am come to ask a favor of you.”
“A favor?” Did something close in his face? But, “Granted, of course, Cousin Christina.”
“Thank you. But I wish you would call me Chris—my father always did.” Now why in the world had she said that?
“Chris? Why not? It’s certainly less of a mouthful. But—this favor?” Again that shuttered look. Women—favors. He clearly did not like the connection. His mother perhaps? Did she always want something?
No time to be thinking about that. “Yes,” she said. “The men who drove me here haven’t gone yet. Parkes says they are sitting in the kitchen throwing out dark hints of strange doings on the marsh, and danger money, and I don’t know what all. Of course, what they want is simply money. I gave them quite enough last night.”
“How much?” And, when she told him, “Just right. What makes them ask for more?” His bright eyes held hers in a look full of speculation and, surely, amusement.
“I told Parkes I thought they were drunk last night. We encountered a …” She paused, watching him.
His eyes were brighter than ever. “Yes, Cousin? You fill me with curiosity. Something out of Mrs. Radcliffe perhaps? A ghostly monk, for instance?”
“Nothing half so interesting. Merely a kind of barricade across the road. Not very well built. It did not take us long to pull it down, but of course it did make us late. I think what with that and all they had drunk they have dreamed themselves into some fantasy of adventure—lord knows what, I didn’t trouble to ask Parkes.”
“Quite so. And now you would like me to knock their heads together for you?”
“Precisely. I don’t intend to give them any more money. I can’t afford it, for one thing. And, besides, I think it would be a mistake.”
“I am so sure you are right, Cousin. Were they maudlin, would you say, when you arrived?”
“I was too tired to notice. But Parkes would know.”
“Of course. Our invaluable Parkes. I will have a word with him, and then—dispose of them for you. Do you wish to be present?”
“Not in the least. But I think perhaps I should.” Once again their eyes met and locked and then his flickered down, just for the shadow of a second, to the red mark on his hand. She smiled at him warmly. “Your bitch bit hard, Cousin. I hope you have disposed of her.”
“You think I ought
to?” He had risen now and pulled the tasseled bell rope. “I wonder …” And then, to Parkes, who must have been hovering outside the door, “Miss Tretteign and I will see her driver and the other man in the Great Hall. Were they pretty far gone last night?”
“Oh, half seas over.” Parkes seemed to take a cue. “And so Jem will testify who had to help put them to bed. They ended up on our mead, you see.”
“Did they so? No wonder if they had delusions. Thank you, Parkes.”
Chapter Three
The Great Hall lived up to its name. Long, high, dark and draughty, it was furnished only with an immense trestle table and a few chairs. Even on this mild October day, the air struck chill and lifeless, and Christina, shivering a little in a dress that had seemed unreasonably warm elsewhere, was not surprised that the two men who awaited them already had a slightly diminished look. Her cousin had calculated well. The mere size of the room had had its effect on the two cockneys, and the sight of him, tall and commanding in his scarlet uniform coat went far to finish the business. They had expected to bully a girl, a stranger; they found themselves knuckling foreheads to one of their hereditary masters.
Their rout was swift, complete, and, Christina thought, probably lasting. Ross asked curtly what they wanted, and the coachman stammered out something about being benighted, assaulted, in terror of their lives. Some small compensation.… His voice dwindled away under Ross Tretteign’s contemptuous stare.
“Moonshine!” said Ross. “Assaulted, were you? A strange thing that my cousin here remembers nothing of the matter. And how, pray, did you get away? Put up a gallant resistance, did you, and overpowered them without receiving so much as a scratch yourselves? A likely story to tell your friends in town, but don’t be surprised if you get the name of a couple of lying drunkards and dwindle into hackney coachmen for lack of custom. I’ve heard about the inroads you made last night on our mead. Well, I don’t blame you. They should have warned you how strong it was.… But even so, I know I’d not hire a coachman who suffered from delusions.”
“Delusions, sir?” The coachman plucked up a bit of spirit. “But the young lady must remember—she paid us to say nothing.”
“And thus you reward her? But … did you, Cousin?”
“Of course not, any more than I remember anything about this so-called assault. I may have tipped them a little more highly than I should have, being a stranger, but, if so, what are they complaining about?” She could not help feeling sorry for them as she saw the ludicrous change in their expressions.
“Precisely.” Ross took it up. “What are you complaining about? You’d best be off before I look into the amount she overtipped you and complain to your employers. You’re from the Bolt in Tun, in Fleet Street, are you not? I thought I knew your hangdog faces. I don’t suppose you’d want this absurd story to get back there. Well, I’m a humane man, I’ll say nothing about this piece of work, and my cousin, I know, will be ruled by me. So, if you can but bridle your own tongues—which, frankly, I doubt—you may not be ruined yet.”
The reversal of positions was complete. The two men who had begun by considering blackmail, found themselves thanking this formidable young man for his forbearance, and shuffled their way out, speeded by his Parthian shot, “I often put up at the Bolt in Tun when I come to town. I must remember to look out for you there and see what new fantasies you are indulging in.” And then, as they, pulled the huge nail-studded door to behind them, “Well, so much for them.”
“Poor things. It hardly seems fair, somehow …”
“Fair? What’s fair in this world?”
She sighed. “Nothing, I suppose. But I do congratulate you, Cousin. You certainly routed them, horse, foot and guns. And now—I’m to be ruled by you, am I?”
His laugh sounded older than his looks. “I thought I saw you rise to that one. Yes, Cousin, you are. You, too, are going to forget that anything out of the way happened last night. If you know what’s good for you.”
“Threats, Cousin?”
He shrugged. “If you wish to take it so. Or, a request, as from one long-lost cousin to another. Should I play-act it for you. ‘Dear Cousin, as a favor to me …’”
She could not help laughing at his ridiculous falsetto. “Oh, very well, but I hope you know what you are doing.”
“Better than you do, that’s one thing certain.”
“Now what, exactly, do you mean by that?”
“Why, anything you like.” Impatiently. “And now, if you will excuse me, I have better things to do with my morning than to be trying conclusions with a girl.”
“You don’t like women much, do you, Cousin?” Now why in the world had she said that?
But he only laughed his oddly cynical laugh. “You’ve met my mother. Tell me, why should I?”
It was not the best possible moment for Mrs. Tretteign to pop her blond beringletted head around the big door. “Oh, there you are Christina. And you, Ross?” Amazement, and something else, in her voice now. “Are you showing your cousin the house? But what an odd place to begin.” Her glance dismissed the high hammer-beamed roof and intricate paneling of the big hall as beneath contempt. “Besides, she must be quite perished with cold, even in that”—a significant pause—“dress.” Her own airy muslin made further description unnecessary.
Surprisingly, Ross filled the angry little pause. “She’s certainly dressed more suitably for a tour of the Abbey than you are, Mamma, so why not leave us to it?”
“You mean, you really are showing her the place?”
“Why not? She must see, sometime, what a white elephant she has come home to, and what better guide than I?”
“Well, of course, if you put it like that … But don’t expect me to come too—and don’t let him take you in the cloisters, my dear, not even in the daytime. It’s not safe.”
“Not safe?” asked Christina. “But surely in that case they should be repaired.”
This time Ross’s laugh was entirely gay. “You quite mistake my mother, Cousin. She does not mean that a coping stone will fall on your devoted head, merely that you may take a private haunt away with you.”
“A private … you are laughing at me, Cousin.”
“Nothing of the kind.” This, sharply, from Mrs. Tretteign. “I suppose you cannot be expected to understand, child, being from such a new country, but there are things here in England that must be treated with respect.”
“Well, of course …” she said, puzzled.
Once more Ross’s harsh laugh echoed from the beamed roof. “She don’t mean the king and queen, Cousin, nor yet the mother of parliaments. She’s talking about the ghostly monks in the cloister.”
“Ghostly monks! You cannot be serious!”
“Who, I? Well, that’s another question, but, just look at my mother—she is. And, it’s true, odd things have happened to people who walked in the cloisters at night—or, for the matter of that, sometimes in the daytime.”
“You don’t understand, my dear.” Mrs. Tretteign again. “There were terrible things done here at the time of the Reformation … and in the cloisters, particularly.”
“And, I’m afraid, by a Tretteign, among others. Some say the Tretteigns are immune to the curse on the cloisters … because they have a private doom saved up for them. Others that it is more risky for them to go there than for anyone else. Personally, I don’t believe a word of it.” Christina sighed with relief at this belated note of sanity. “But, just the same, you will, save my mother, and even more so, the servants, some anxious moments by keeping away from the cloisters. Which, by the way, are also in a most lamentable state of disrepair, since no stonemason will go near them, so that in fact you might easily be killed by a coping stone before you’d even had time to be frightened by a ghostly monk.”
“Ross!” His mother sounded genuinely shocked. “You must not speak so.”
“No? Poor mother.” And then, impatiently, “Well, Christina, do you wish to see the Abbey, or not.”
“Of course I do. But … Grandfather?”
“Oh, I clean forgot,” said Mrs. Tretteign. “That’s what I came to tell you. Papa says he has no intention of seeing you until he has had time to study the letter you sent him. He doesn’t seem quite sure …” She paused.
“Whether Christina is Christina?” put in Ross. “To be expected. Nor were we, remember?”
“But you are now?” Christina could not help asking.
“Oh yes. No one but a Tretteign …” He let it hang. “So have we sent for the letter, Mamma?”
“Yes, of course.… I should think by after dinner—”
“A pleasure postponed.” Sardonically. “Well, in that case, Cousin Christina, there is nothing to prevent your enjoying a conducted tour of the estate.”
“I do wish you would call me Chris.”
“Chris?” said Mrs. Tretteign. “Most unsuitable.”
“Well, come along then, Chris,” said her son.
“You’re sure you can spare the time?” Christina picked up her skirts, ready to follow him.
“But, Christina,” said her aunt in an awful voice, “you surely cannot be proposing to go out without your bonnet?”
“Oh dear.” She stopped in the doorway. “Must I really? Just about the place like this? I never did—”
“What you did in America,” said her aunt in quelling tones, “is entirely beside the point, and the less said about it the better. In England you will, I hope, try to conduct yourself as much like a young lady as is possible. Besides, I had hesitated to mention it, but really your hair … I tremble to think what Papa will say.”
Watch the Wall, My Darling Page 3