The Deception

by Joan Wolf

  “Very well,” I said. I swallowed. “Then I suppose I will take it.”

  “Christmas is coming,” Mr. Crawford said. “Perhaps you would like to buy a few gifts?”

  I brightened at that thought. In my spare time I had been working on a sampler for Mrs. Noakes, but my needlework was atrocious. If I had some money I could buy her a present in the village. I could buy something for Mr. Noakes and Robert and Nancy and Willie and George, too. I could even buy something to send to Cousin Louisa! I beamed and said, “Yes, I would. Thank you, Mr. Crawford.”

  He looked embarrassed.

  Robert refilled our glasses. The lump on his forehead was certainly sporting an interesting variety of colors. I said, “Are you feeling all right, Robert? That is a truly monumental lump.”

  He grinned at me. Robert was my age and we liked each other. “I’m good, my lady,” he said.

  I turned back to my guest and asked, “Will you be going home to Scotland for Christmas, Mr. Crawford?” When he said he would be, I asked him how his family was doing. He said that they were well.

  “How lovely it must be to have brothers and sisters,” I said.

  “You would not think it was lovely if you found a toad in your bed,” he replied dryly.

  I laughed, and behind Mr. Crawford’s back, Robert smothered a smile. “Did one of your brothers do that to you?” I asked Mr. Crawford.

  “He did.”

  “Tell me,” I demanded. He told me that story, and then, when he saw how interested I was, he told me more. I was entranced. I had always had the only child’s envy of large families.

  When dinner was finished and I rose to return to the drawing room, I had another happy thought. I would buy a present for Mr. Crawford too!

  * * * *

  I bought the presents, and Christmas was not as bad as I had feared it would be. I missed Papa, of course, but for some reason I was so busy all day that I did not have time to brood. Mrs. Noakes had baked her special Christmas bread and she asked me to take a loaf to each of Adrian’s tenant farmers. Everyone invited me in, and gave me punch, and I played with their children. Then, when I returned to the house, I discovered that all my friends had bought presents for me too. I opened them, and then Mr. and Mrs. Noakes and I sat down to an enormous dinner.

  It was not a bad day at all.

  Two days after Christmas I had the first communication with my husband’s family since our marriage. Adrian’s younger brother, Harry, turned up on the doorstep of Lambourn Manor and announced that he had come to meet his brother’s wife.

  Chapter Five

  The young man Mr. Noakes ushered into the library that late December morning had the same unearthly fair hair as his brother, but where the clean bones of Adrian’s face gave an impression of strength, Harry’s more chiseled features were so fine that he looked almost angelic. There was nothing angelic about Harry’s spirit, however, as I was soon to discover.

  “Did you come alone, Lord Harry?” said Mr. Noakes, disapproval oozing from every pore.

  “Don’t be such an old mutton-face, Noakes,” Harry said blithely. Then, to me, “I must say, I had no idea Adrian’s wife would look like you!”

  I glared at him. Harry was not that many inches taller than I, so he was much easier to glare at than his brother was. “Apologize to Mr. Noakes this instant,” I demanded.

  He stared at me in amazement. “Apologize to Noakes? Whatever for?”

  “For calling him a mutton-face.”

  His mouth dropped open.

  “Apologize,” I said again.

  He closed his mouth. “Sorry, Noakes,” he muttered. “Didn’t mean to insult you, you know.”

  The old man’s look of displeasure did not change. “Will you be staying for dinner, Mr. Harry?”

  Harry looked at me once more. “Yes.”

  Mr. Noakes’s frown deepened.

  I regarded Harry’s riding breeches and boots and asked him what he had done with his horse.

  “I know Lambourn is lightly staffed, so I left him at the stable,” he replied.

  I nodded my approval of such thoughtfulness. “I was just going out for a ride, but I should be happy to offer you some tea first.”

  His gray eyes, which were considerably lighter than his brother’s, flicked downward from my face. Then he said, “Madeira would be better than tea.”

  I knew what he was looking at. The Noakeses had been scandalized when I had first appeared in the divided skirt I wore for riding. It was a costume Papa had designed himself. “You can’t continue to wear breeches,” he had said when he presented me with the skirt when I was fourteen. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll ruin the best seat I’ve ever seen by making you ride aside.”

  I had been so pleased by the compliment that I had not even objected to giving up my breeches.

  The divided skirt came to my ankles, and I wore it with high boots, so it was perfectly modest, but it had caused a sensation more than once. Everyone usually forgot about it once I was on the back of a horse.

  I invited Harry to take a seat in the library. “I don’t use the drawing room very much, so there is no fire in there,” I apologized as we sat in the two worn blue-upholstered chairs that flanked the fireplace.

  “It don’t matter,” he replied breezily. “This has always been my favorite room at Lambourn.”

  “It is my favorite room too,” I confided, looking around at the mellow book-lined walls, the big polished desk, the large globe, and the two mullioned windows that looked out over the Downs.

  Mr. Noakes came in with Madeira for Harry and tea for me. He also served us a plate of Mrs. Noakes’s delicious buttered muffins, which he put on a small table between us. I thanked him, and Harry and I helped ourselves to the food.

  “So,” Harry said after he had finished his first muffin, “tell me all about how you came to marry Adrian.”

  “What has he told you?” I asked cautiously.

  “Nothing. I’m up at Oxford, you know, and he wrote me a letter saying that he had married Charlwood’s niece and was going to rejoin Wellington in Paris. He ain’t mentioned you since.”

  I chewed on my lip, regarded the small bronze statue of a dog that graced the mantelpiece, and wondered how much I should tell him.

  “Are you really married?” he asked me.

  “I am afraid that we are,” I said mournfully.

  “And you’re Charlwood’s niece?” His voice sounded incredulous.

  “I am afraid that I am.”

  “Damn,” he said, adding belatedly, “I beg your pardon.”

  I was quite accustomed to hearing men swear. “It is all right,” I said, and went on staring at the statue of the dog. It looked like some sort of a mastiff, I thought. Perhaps it was supposed to be one of King Alfred’s dogs.

  Harry took another bite of muffin, and I could feel him looking at me while he chewed. He brushed some crumbs off his lap and said, “How did it happen?”

  I removed my eyes from the dog, looked at Harry, and decided there wasn’t any point in not telling him the whole story. He would be bound to hear it from his brother one of these days.

  “How rotten for Adrian,” Harry said when at last I had finished. He scowled. “Charlwood must have loved putting the screws to him like that.”

  “I have thought about it a great deal,” I said, “and it certainly does appear as if Charlwood planned the whole episode. Otherwise he would never have known to come looking for me like that.”

  “He planned it,” Harry agreed, pouring himself another glass of wine. “He probably paid someone to damage the axle enough to be sure that it would break.”

  “But why?” This was the question that had plagued me for the last eight months. “This wasn’t just a case of Charlwood trying to catch an earl for his niece,” I explained. “I saw his face that night at the inn, and he looked positively vengeful.”

  The angel face opposite me looked grim. “He was after revenge, all right.”

  “Fo
r what?”

  He paused for a long moment, his eyes searching mine. “I think I will tell you,” he said at last. He put down his glass and lowered his voice. “But it’s a family secret.”

  I leaned toward him, feeling the heat from the fire scorch my cheek. “I swear I’ll never tell.”

  He leaned toward me as well. “It involves my sister, you see. Caroline.”

  The firelight fell on his hair and for a brief, unsettling moment I had a vision of another man, another face. I shook my head as if to clear it and remembered the time that Adrian had told me he had a sister.

  Harry said, “She’s married now—happily, thank God. Has two children and lives in Dorset. But ten years ago, when she was sixteen, she eloped with Charlwood.”

  “What!” The fire cracked as if it were as horrified as I.

  He nodded. “It’s the truth. She wasn’t happy at home— well, I mean to say, none of us were happy at home—and she fancied herself in love with Charlwood. Our fathers had never gotten on, and I think Caroline envisioned herself as another Juliet. At any rate, they actually set off for Scotland. Adrian found out about it, thank God, and went after them. Caught up with them in the early afternoon and got her home before my father knew what had happened.”

  “Ten years ago?” I said. “Adrian must have been a boy ten years ago!”

  “He was seventeen and home for the summer from Eton. He was so furious with Charlwood that he forced a duel on him. Caroline told me about it later. Adrian brought swords and the two of them actually had a duel. Right on the road!”

  Harry’s voice was full of awe as he recounted this deed. I pictured the scene and shuddered. It was lucky for Caroline that Adrian had won. I said as much to Harry.

  “Adrian always wins,” Harry said with simple faith.

  I sat back in my comfortable chair, ran my hand over the faded arm, and contemplated the information I had just been given. Ten years ago my uncle had been twenty-two. It could not have pleased him to be beaten by a seventeen-year-old.

  The fire hissed in the silence and I said, “So Adrian denied Charlwood the wife he wanted, and in revenge Charlwood made Adrian take a wife he did not want.”

  Harry leaned back and stretched his booted legs in front of him. “That’s about it. You must have looked like manna from heaven to Charlwood. It would have been even better for him if you had been ugly, of course, but you served the main purpose. You scotched Adrian’s marriage with Lady Mary Weston.”

  I felt a pang. “Did he love Lady Mary?”

  Harry shrugged. “I don’t know about love, but he was certainly going to marry her.”

  “They weren’t engaged.”

  “He just hadn’t got around to asking her yet.”

  “Perhaps she would have refused him.”

  Harry gave me an incredulous look. “Refuse Adrian?”

  “It is not inconceivable,” I said with dignity.

  He didn’t even deign to reply, so vapid did he consider that remark.

  We finished the plate of muffins in silence. When the last crumb had been devoured, I suggested to Harry that he might like to accompany me to the stable. He agreed and we put on our warm riding coats, left the house through the side door, and walked together along the graveled path that led to the Lambourn stables.

  The grounds at Lambourn were almost as simple as the house. Along the path to the stable there were two stone outbuildings that had at one time served as the dairy and the cookhouse and that now, with the family no longer in any regular residence, were filled with odds and ends of furniture that were no longer needed in the house. The path itself was flanked by turf, winter brown now, but in spring it would be richly green.

  The stable buildings were constructed of the same stone as the house. There was the carriage house, which at the moment contained only a simple country cart, and the barn. The barn held twelve box stalls, all of which looked out on a cobbled central yard. Five of the double Dutch doors were open at the top to allow their occupants air and sunshine; four of the stills belonged to Lambourn’s equine residents and one to Harry’s horse. I started toward the newcomer’s stall, curious to see what he was riding.

  The open door revealed a bright chestnut Thoroughbred gelding, who was happily munching on a pile of hay. I regarded him critically. “What a nice horse,” I said to Harry, who was standing beside me. “He looks as if he has smooth gaits.”

  Harry looked at me in surprise. “They are smooth. How did you know that?”

  “One can often tell by the way the shoulder is set.”

  The surprise on Harry’s face slowly turned to something else. It was a change I had seen dozens of times before. I will never understand why men refuse to think that women are capable of judging a horse.

  “Let me show you Elsa,” I said, and we moved along to the mare’s stall. She was finishing up her own lunch hay, but when she heard my voice she glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t nicker—Elsa thought nickering was undignified—but she moved with queenly graciousness to the stall door, where she accepted a lump of sugar and allowed me to rub the white star on her forehead.

  Harry’s mouth was hanging open, and I smiled. The last few months had seen a dramatic change in Elsa’s appearance. Her neck had a lovely crest, her back had filled in, and her quarters were starting to muscle up nicely. In another year she would be magnificent.

  “How old is this mare?” Harry demanded.

  “Sixteen,” I said.

  “That’s what I thought. What have you done to her?”

  “I’ve been riding her.”

  He looked at my skirt, this time openly. “You don’t use a sidesaddle?”

  I shook my head. “I learned to ride astride, and Papa said it would be a shame to make me change.”

  Willie’s voice came from behind us. “Would you like me to saddle her up, my lady, so you can show Lord Henry how she goes?” He sounded so much like a proud father that I had to smile. Both of the grooms at Lambourn really cared about the horses in their charge.

  “I’d like to see her go,” Harry said. We stood together in the bright cold sunshine and watched while Willie saddled Elsa. On the far side of the barn there were three large fenced paddocks, and I had made a riding ring in one of them by spreading wood shavings over the frozen ground. This is where we took Elsa. The two men watched as I fitted my foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle.

  I have been riding horses in front of my father’s customers for almost all my life, so it didn’t make me at all nervous to ride now in front of Harry. He was impressed. He should have been. Elsa was forward and light and absolutely elegant.

  “Divorce Adrian and marry me,” Harry said when we came to a perfectly square halt in front of him.

  I laughed.

  “Where did you learn to ride like that?”

  “My father. He attended the French cavalry school at Saumur when he was a young man, so he was well grounded in classical equitation.”

  Harry nodded. “You don’t use an English hunting saddle, I see.”

  “Papa abhorred the hunting saddle,” I said frankly. “He said it is responsible for the English being the worst riders in the entire civilized world. He got this old French military saddle for me about five years ago. I wouldn’t part with it for anything on earth.”

  Harry grinned. “Your father would have gotten along great guns with Adrian.”

  This was not as great a surprise to me as you may think. I had been both astonished and delighted when I first got on Elsa to discover how rhythmic her gaits were, how responsive she was to the lightest of aids. And Elsa had been Adrian’s horse.

  Harry was going on, “Your father would have been happy to know that one of Adrian’s projects in France this last year has been to get the king to restore the cavalry school at Saumur.”

  Papa would have been more than happy to hear this; he would have been ecstatic. It had pained him deeply to think that the art of classical equitation might be lost forever
.

  I smiled radiantly at Harry. “That is wonderful news,” I said warmly.

  Harry blinked.

  “Why don’t you let Willie saddle up one of the other horses for you and we’ll go for a ride together?” I suggested.

  * * * *

  By the time we returned from our ride across the Downs, Harry and I were great friends. He would not be going back to Oxford after Christmas, he confided to me as we were sitting in the dining room over Mrs. Noakes’s roast beef dinner. He had been sent down for some silly prank—he did not think it was silly, but I did—and now he had to write to tell Adrian the bad news.

  “I don’t get control of my own money until I’m twenty-five,” he told me gloomily. “So for the next four years, I’m dependent upon Adrian. He’s going to kick up stiff when he hears that I’ve been sent down.”

  “I don’t blame him,” I said candidly. “Whatever are you going to do with yourself for the next eight months?”

  “Damn!” he said. Mr. Noakes gave him a dire frown, but he didn’t notice. “Adrian never went to Oxford. When he was my age he was having fun out in the Peninsula. Now that the war’s over, there’s nothing for my generation to do except go to boring old school.”

  I smiled at Mr. Noakes to show him that Harry had not offended me. “How thoughtless of Wellington to have ended the war before you had a chance to get killed,” I said.

  “Dash it all, Kate,”—we had gotten on first-name terms in the first half hour of our ride—”I know war ain’t fun. But, don’t you see, it’s a way of becoming a man.” He scowled at his glass of wine, picked it up, and drained it off. “Of course, you don’t understand,” he muttered. “You’re a girl.”

  I understood more than he thought. It could not be easy for an ardent young boy like Harry to have such a paragon for an elder brother. Harry was searching for a way to prove himself as good a man as Adrian, and the only outlet he could find was the harebrained pranks that he knew in his heart were not manly but simply juvenile.

  “How did your brother come to go out to the Peninsula?” This was a question that had puzzled me for quite a while. The heir to a great title was not expected to risk his life in battles—that was something a younger son was supposed to do.