The Arrangement

by Joan Wolf

  If the property John had found for me was in good condition, and if he could get the lease down to seven hundred pounds, I would have to take it. I would have to pack up Nicky and my meager belongings and leave Savile Castle and I would never be able to return again.

  Nicky was still too young to understand what was happening between me and the Earl of Savile. In another year or so, however, he would no longer be too young, and I couldn’t chance him tumbling onto the truth. As always, Nicky had to be my prime concern.

  “Twere all one

  That I should love a bright particular star…”

  The lines from All’s Well that Ends Well came into my mind once more.

  Oh, Raoul, I thought, come back to me soon. Please give me just a few more memories to hold on to for the rest of my life.

  * * * *

  He met me on the other side of the lake, at the charming half-timbered cottage that his grandfather had built as a plaything for adults. He was riding Satan, and at the sight of his tall figure on the huge black horse my heart leaped into my throat.

  We stopped so that we were facing each other on the road.

  “You’re back,” I said foolishly.

  “Yes, I just returned. Grove told me that you were out on Narsalla, that you had assured them in the stables that I had said you could take her out alone.”

  I knew I was in the wrong, which put me on the defensive. “Good heavens, Raoul,” I said tartly, “I make my living with horses. I can assure you that I am perfectly capable of going for a ride by myself.”

  “Of course you are,” he replied mildly, effectively taking the wind out of my indignant sails. “I am sorry that I hadn’t made it clear myself.”

  “Oh,” I said. I patted Narsalla’s arched gray neck. “Well then, that’s all right.”

  “I have not even been back to the house,” he said. “I came looking for you immediately because I have to talk to you.”

  I gave him a wary look. There was a grave expression on his face and the golden eyes that met mine gave away nothing. I said, “If you are going to ask me any more questions about Nicky’s birth, there is no point in our talking. I told you before that I have nothing to tell you.”

  He said, “I have a few things to tell you, however, and since I would like to say them away from where we might be interrupted by one of the family, I suggest that we stop here at the cottage.”

  My spirits lifted. “Have you discovered who is trying to harm Nicky?”

  “Not precisely, but I think I may be close on the trail.”

  “Thank God,” I said fervently, and I turned Narsalla toward the cottage. Together we dismounted in front of the hawthorne bush that set the cottage off from the road and I loosely tied Narsalla’s reins to the white picket fence. Raoul did the same with Satan, then we went inside the fence and sat side by side on the iron garden bench that was placed amidst the flower garden in the front yard. The horses began to nibble the greenery around them, and I folded my hands in my lap and looked up into Raoul’s face.

  “Well?” I prompted. “What did you find out?”

  He took his time answering, slowly removing his gloves and flexing his bare fingers as if he needed time to think. Finally he said slowly, “Two days ago, immediately after I hired the Bow Street runners and sent them here, I drove from London down to Devane Hall.”

  Suddenly I was not sure I wanted to hear what he had to say. “Why did you do that?” I asked tensely.

  I watched his hands smooth the soft leather driving gloves on his thigh. The gold signet ring he wore on the fourth finger of his right hand winked in the sun. He replied, “I must tell you that I did not go in my capacity as executor of George’s estate, Gail. I went with the sole purpose of seeing your Aunt Margaret.”

  Suddenly it seemed that the air did not want to come in and out of my lungs. I forced down my rising panic and said breathlessly, “How dare you?”

  He didn’t answer that. He said only, “She was very loyal to you, Gail. She told me nothing.”

  Relief flooded through me, and I said contemptuously, “Loyalty is evidently a virtue you know nothing about.”

  He said, “So then I was forced to go to see Lady Saunders.”

  At that I leaped to my feet and whirled to face him. “You didn’t do that! You didn’t go to see Tommy’s mother!”

  He kept his seat and regarded me steadily. “I am afraid that I did, and a miserable old harridan she is.”

  I could hear my labored breathing. “She hates me. She always hated me.”

  His voice was very gentle as he answered, “I could tell that very easily. She had no compunction about informing me that Nicky was born six months after your marriage, that he was not her grandson, and that you had talked her son— who was besotted with you—into accepting Nicky as his own child.”

  I turned my back on him, folded my arms across my breasts, lifted my chin, and said nothing. What, after all, was there to say? The picture Lady Saunders had painted fitted all too well with the facts as they must have appeared to Raoul.

  Consequently I was stunned when Raoul said next, “So then I asked Lady Saunders if she would tell me the name of the village where you and your husband lived when you were first married, and she did so.”

  Suddenly I was very, very frightened indeed. Slowly I turned to look at him. I said pleadingly, “You did not go there, Raoul?”

  “Yes, Gail, I did.”

  I took a few steps back from him, in a manner that was reminiscent of the way I had backed away from Roger in the library the other night. In truth, I felt just as threatened, although in a completely different way.

  “The minister’s wife in Highgate remembered you well,” Raoul said.

  “Oh God,” I said. “Oh God.” I shut my eyes.

  When I opened them again, he was standing only a few feet from me. With a mixture of anger and bewilderment, he asked, “Why the hell have you been hiding this, Gail? It’s not a disgrace, for God’s sake! Your sister died in childbirth and you adopted her child as your own. What is so terrible about that?”

  My hands were balled into fists at my sides. “I promised Deborah that I would never tell Nicky that he was baseborn,” I said. “I promised her that he would always think that he was mine, that I would never tell anyone else the truth about his birth. And he is mine! From the moment that Deborah put him into my arms, he was mine! Deborah is dead, and the only thing I can do for her is to give her child the greatest security and love that I am capable of.” The look I gave him was scorching. “Even Lady Saunders doesn’t know that Nicky isn’t mine. Tommy told her that he was. No one knows that Deborah came to Tommy and me four months before Nicky was born and asked us to help her. At least no one except a few people in Highgate—whom you had to seek out!”

  “I would not have had to seek them out if you had been able to trust me with the truth,” Raoul said quietly.

  There was a disquietingly bleak look on his face that somewhat quenched my rage. “I made a solemn promise to my sister,” I repeated in a more level tone of voice. “I did not feel I could break it.”

  After a moment, Raoul said, “In fact, the people in Highgate were remarkably secretive. The minister’s wife said nothing to me about Nicky not being yours.”

  I said, “Then how did you find out?”

  “I went to the cemetery. There was a grave for a Deborah Longworth. She died on December twenty-second, 1810—the day after you told me Nicky was born.”

  I rubbed my temples, trying to think what I might say to him.

  “I gather that George was Nicky’s father?” he asked next.

  “Yes. Deborah and he were in love and he had promised to marry her. Deborah would never have gone to George otherwise! But then George’s father discovered Harriet and began to pressure him to marry the Cole fortune. Deborah had too much pride to remain in Hatfield and watch George courting someone else, so she came to Tommy and me. A month after she left, George finally succumbed to his father’
s pressure and married Harriet.”

  My rage was gone, leaving me feeling drained and tired. I thought about what Raoul had just told me and a curious fact stuck out.

  “What made you go to the cemetery?” I asked.

  “I went to look for Deborah’s grave,” came the startling reply.

  I looked up to search his face. “But…if the minister’s wife in Highgate had said nothing to you about Deborah, why would you do that?”

  “Because I suspected the truth,” he said.

  I leaned my back against the fence and felt the heat of the wood through my dress. Narsalla nibbled at a piece of my hair, thinking it was part of the shrubbery. “You suspected?” I echoed in amazement.

  “Nicky had to be George’s son—there was no other explanation for that legacy,” he said flatly. “And in my mind I had narrowed the possibilities down to two scenarios. The first scenario was that George had raped you.”

  The look he gave me was extremely grim. “Aside from the fact that the thought of this made me want to murder a man who is already dead, I didn’t think that you would have allowed such a thing to happen.”

  “Are you mad?” I said incredulously. “George, rape me?”

  The faintest trace of humor, the first I had seen since we had begun the conversation, quirked the corners of his mouth. “Precisely. The other explanation, then, was that Nicky was George’s son but not yours. Once I began to look around for an alternate mother, the picture became clear.”

  Narsalla’s warm nose nuzzled my neck. I thrust my hands through my hair and stared at Raoul. I felt limp.

  I said, “But, Raoul, why didn’t you just think that I had had an affair with George?”

  “I did think that at first, but I haven’t thought it for a long, long time,” Raoul said.

  My eyes stretched wide in astonishment. “But here I was, having an affair with you. Why should you stop thinking me capable of having had an affair with George?”

  He gave me the smile that turned my knees to water. “Because, sweetheart, I gave you credit for good taste.”

  He began to walk across the small space that separated us and I felt my breath begin to hurry and my heart begin to pound. I tried to summon up the fury I had felt toward him just minutes earlier, but it had died.

  I said pleadingly, “You will not tell any of this to Nicky, Raoul?”

  A flicker of anger crossed his face. “Of course I won’t tell Nicky. But you are going to have a difficult time explaining that legacy to him, Gail.”

  “I wouldn’t if you would just let me refuse it.”

  He murmured, “It seems to me that this is where we started,” and he bent his head and kissed me.

  The two horses regarded us with interest as we moved from the fence to the garden seat. I was wearing a riding habit and Raoul was wearing riding clothes and it was a little difficult for us to get our hands where we wanted them to be.

  We settled for kissing.

  I loved him so much, I thought. I kissed his ear, his nose, his jaw. I ran my fingers through his hair.

  “We could move into the cottage,” he murmured after a while.

  “That is an excellent idea,” I replied, and he stood up first and pulled me up by my hand to stand beside him. Then he leaned over me again and I bent like a reed before his superior height, his strength, his need.

  From down the road came the sound of children laughing. Raoul and I leaped apart like guilty things surprised.

  “Mama!” Nicky shouted.

  “Uncle Raoul!” cried the Austen boys.

  “We’re going fishing! Do you want to come?” everyone called.

  Raoul gave me an extremely frustrated look.

  “Tonight,” I said, and smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I didn’t get much sleep that night either, but I awoke feeling invigorated, not depressed. Before Raoul returned to his room, he had told me only that he was “making serious inquires” about the situation regarding Nicky. I had not pressed him further because I felt that the inquiries must be about Roger and I knew that it had to be difficult for Raoul to consider such dreadful things about his cousin.

  After breakfast John left to look at the property he had found for me in Hertfordshire. Raoul saw him off with a cheerful, encouraging word, and I must confess that I found it more than a little dejecting that Raoul seemed not to be overly concerned that I might soon have somewhere else to live.

  What did you expect? I scolded myself. You always knew that your sojourn at Savile was going to be a brief one.

  But it hurt bitterly to think that he regarded our being together so lightly.

  I won’t think about it, I told myself, and I went down to the stables to take Narsalla for a too-reckless ride through the countryside. As I was passing the Jenkinses’ farm I stopped on impulse, and Mrs. Jenkins and I had a pleasant cup of tea together in her kitchen.

  When I returned to the house, Ginny informed me that a mysterious young man had arrived from London and had been closeted with Raoul in his office for well over an hour.

  “Something is going on,” Ginny informed me. “Between Bow Street runners all over the house, and now someone who looks like a law clerk taking up Raoul’s entire morning! Well, something is certainly happening.”

  The two men emerged from Raoul’s office at about one o’clock and went into the family dining room for luncheon. Apparently everyone had been on the watch, for the entire household, with the exception of John, magically appeared at the same time in order to share luncheon with Raoul and his guest.

  Raoul introduced his companion as Mr. Robert Slater. Mr. Slater was pleasant and quiet and seemed to be a gentleman.

  “Are you a solicitor, Mr. Slater?” Ginny asked as she helped herself to some grapes from Raoul’s greenhouse.

  “No, my lady, I am an investigator,” the young man replied calmly.

  This caused a minor sensation at the luncheon table.

  “An investigator!” Roger said. “Do you mean someone who ferrets about in other people’s private business and then reports upon it for money?”

  Mr. Slater’s thin, intelligent face was expressionless. “I wouldn’t describe my profession in quite those terms, Mr. Melville.”

  I remembered Raoul’s “inquiries” and said nothing.

  Ginny gave Roger a repressive look and said, “Don’t mind my cousin, Mr. Slater. I can assure you that the rest of us don’t.”

  Mr. Cole wiped the whole bottom part of his face with his napkin. “Well, if someone hired you, sonny, then I’d sure like to know who it was and why.”

  Raoul leaned back a little in his chair. “I hired Mr. Slater, Cole,” he said. “As I’m sure you all know, I have been extremely concerned about these so-called accidents that have been occurring here at Savile recently, so I asked Mr. Slater to investigate the matter for me.”

  Roger asked in a silky voice, “And what did Mr. Slater discover?”

  Raoul looked around the table. “If everyone is finished with luncheon I think it would be a good idea if we adjourned to the library, where we may be private.”

  We all got up from the table with alacrity and followed him. I saw as we came into the library that five chairs had been set in a semicircle around the front of the big table. On the opposite side of the table sat a thin, pale, nervous-looking man whose hands were clasped tensely in his lap.

  Raoul gestured us to the five chairs. “Please be seated.”

  We all took our seats. I sat between Ginny and Roger, with Harriet on Ginny’s other side and Mr. Cole on the end.

  Raoul and Mr. Slater went behind the library table and took the two other chairs that had been set there, Raoul sitting in the middle, next to the nervous-looking man. He lightly clasped his long-fingered hands on the table in front of him, regarded them with a faint frown between his straight brows, and began to speak.

  “Over the past weeks it has become increasingly clear to me that the dangerous things that have been occur
ring at Savile Castle recently have been directed against Nicholas Saunders.”

  I felt Ginny turn to look at me, but I kept my eyes focused on Raoul.

  He went on, “I saw no immediate significance in the matter with the bridge, which could simply have been the result of neglect. But then Nicky’s pony was poisoned.”

  Roger spoke up. “There is no proof that that pony was poisoned. It could simply have colicked.”

  Raoul’s brows rose in disbelief. “Possibly. But the suddenness and violence of the attack spoke more of poison than it did of colic.” Once more he looked down at his loosely clasped hands, then he looked up and said quietly, “Then there was the death of Johnny Wester.”

  Mr. Cole shifted noisily on his chair. “Well, it don’t make sense to me how you can think that the death of the Wester nipper had anything to do with young Nicholas.”

  Raoul’s face was set hard. “I believe that Johnny Wester was killed on the mistaken assumption that he was Nicky,” he answered. “Remember, no one but the boys knew that they had added Johnny to their game. And Johnny is very similar in height and coloring to Nicky. I believe that whoever shot that arrow thought that he was shooting at Nicky.”

  My hands were clasped tightly in my lap. For a brief moment, Ginny’s hand closed over them and squeezed comfortingly.

  From behind the library table, Raoul went on, “Naturally I began to ask myself what possible threat Nicky might pose to anyone that it should become so essential to get him out of the way.”

  The room was deathly quiet.

  Raoul said, “At first my thoughts turned to Roger.”

  Roger yelped in protest but Raoul ignored him. His somber golden eyes moved slowly from Mr. Cole, to Harriet, to Ginny, to me, and then, at last, to Roger. He said, “I knew you needed money, Roger, and if Nicky were dead, the money set aside for him in George’s will would be available to you. But the more I thought about this possibility, the less I liked it.”

  “Thank you, Savile,” Roger said ironically.