“No, Miss. ’E’s down havin’ breakfast. I’m t’pack his bag.”
She took a step closer. “You served with him on the Peninsula, did you not?”
“Aye.” He puffed out his stout chest. “Still do. An’ proudly. The colonel’s a fine officer. The finest.”
She’d meant to ask Mr. Gordon about Phin’s character away from the mess in East Sussex, though he’d answered that fairly clearly already. His words, though, reminded her of something else entirely, and served to return her floating feet firmly to the floor. “Has he said when you’ll be returning to Spain?”
“Not yet. Fairly soon, I imagine. ’E gets restless without a battle t’fight.”
“No doubt.” Alyse cleared her throat, fighting against the sudden urge to cry. “I won’t keep you from your duties, then,” she said, and turned around again.
Phin had said that she wasn’t alone. He’d probably meant to say that she had company—his—for that evening. Of course he would return to his regiment. He would repair matters here, which would undoubtedly entail shredding his relationship with his siblings beyond repair, and then he would leave again to fight his battles after he’d ensured that he could never return.
She would have her ten thousand pounds, more than enough to buy the silence of a discreet lover or two, if she should choose to pursue that path, but somehow last night when she’d imagined her future, Phin had been a part of it. Stupid, stupid girl, she muttered at herself, and returned to her aunt’s bedchamber.
“Don’t put much on your plate,” her aunt instructed as they went downstairs. “I may not be able to stand that man’s company, and it will appear rude if you leave with a full plate of food.”
Alyse wanted to ask whether Aunt Ernesta would be eating lightly as well, but she had enough silver to help Saunders polish later without giving herself more trouble. So instead she nodded. “I shall sit between you, if you wish it.”
“I do wish it. That man deserves a good dressing-down. He…Oh.”
Aunt Ernesta’s hesitation was understandable. As they walked into the breakfast room, Phin stood at the sideboard piling rolls and strips of ham onto his plate. His appetite hadn’t been what had stopped her aunt in her tracks, however.
It was the uniform. He’d said he meant to wear it again, but she’d forgotten. There he stood, though, in his crimson coat with its blue facing, adorned with his rank and insignia and several important-looking medals, his breeches white and snug across the muscles of his thighs, his black Hessian boots polished to such a shine that they reflected her distorted face in them. Oh, my.
He nodded to them. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” She waited, scarcely noting that Beth and Richard were already at the table. Then Phin’s gaze met hers, warm and welcoming. In a heartbeat he looked away again, taking a seat halfway down the table. But in that second, he belonged to her, and she to him.
“What are your plans for today?” her cousin asked, his attention on Beth. Was his interest a ploy? Did he mean to use the seventeen-year-old to gain ownership of Quence Park? If so, he was more of a monster than Phin could pretend to be even on his darkest day. But it was all conjecture, and she had no idea how Phineas would ever find proof—and certainly not in the three days he’d asked for.
“I’ll return home with William,” Beth answered, “and then Lady Claudia and Janet Harving and I are going riding after luncheon.”
“I hope you ladies will have an escort. There is a highwayman roaming the countryside.”
“I thought he was dead,” Phin commented.
Beth’s smile was directed at Richard rather than her brother. “Are you volunteering, Richard?”
“I certainly am.”
“Good. Then come by Quence at two o’clock.”
“I shall be there promptly.”
“You might have asked me, you know,” Phin put in, around a mouthful of ham.
“No, thank you.” His sister’s smile froze in place, her voice sharpening.
William, his servant behind him, wheeled into the breakfast room. “Good morning, all,” he said, his gaze skipping over Phin.
Oh, this was awful. If Phin was wrong about Richard and Lord Charles, wrong about the misfortunes that had befallen Quence, he would never be able to make amends to his family. And if he was correct, the prospects were even more worrisome. She had to wonder how far he would go to protect his family from a perceived threat. He was a soldier, and saw things in black and white. Life and death.
“You look very official, Colonel,” Richard offered.
Phin nodded. “I’m going riding myself, this morning,” he said. “I didn’t want anyone mistaking me for that damned Frenchman and taking a shot at me.”
All the blood left Alyse’s face, and she sat down hard in her chair. If that had been any more direct, it would have involved slapping gloves and challenges to duels. And still Phin managed to look as though he’d just delivered a hilarious jest.
“A red coat and a yellow horse,” she commented, forcing a chuckle. “You will definitely be noticeable.”
“My intention precisely.” He glanced at her plate, lying beside his. “No appetite this morning?”
She couldn’t very well confess that she’d been forbidden to gather a full breakfast. “There were no strawberries left,” she said instead.
“Ah. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go find something with which to occupy myself. My man brought my horse, so I bid you farewell. Adieu.” With a last bite of his breakfast, he pushed away from the table and strolled out of the room.
“I apologize for my brother’s behavior,” William said to no one in particular, nodding his thanks as his valet brought him tea and two pieces of toasted bread. “He’s having difficulty adjusting to civilian life, I think.”
“That’s understandable,” Richard commented promptly. “He’s served his country for the past ten years. There’s no need to apologize.”
Abruptly Alyse felt alone again, and trapped. They all disliked him and dismissed him—which was as he planned, but she didn’t have the luxury of ignorance. Then she looked down at her plate. The half dozen strawberries that had been on Phin’s plate were now on hers. The man had the skill of a master illusionist. And he’d been thinking of her, even with everything else he had to worry over.
Smiling, she bit into one of the sweet fruits. As she looked up again, William was gazing from her plate to her face. And she didn’t think it was because he was hungry for strawberries. What she was hungry for was the man who’d given them to her.
“What’re we lookin’ at, now?”
Phineas closed his eyes for a moment. He should have done this on his own. Considering the location, he didn’t precisely feel chatty. The soldier in him, though, knew there was a very good possibility he was being watched, if not hunted, and he wanted a second pair of eyes on his side.
“The ruins.” He nodded in the direction of the shallow slope, down to the bottom of the meadow.
“Way down there?”
“Yes, way down there. I want to take a look at the perimeter.”
“Ah. I don’t think th’ Romans’re up fer a siege, then, if that’s what’s worryin’ ye.”
“You are an amusing fellow. Just keep your eyes open, Sergeant.”
“Aye, Colonel.”
He wanted to do a comparison of the terrain versus the notations on the two-part map, but not at the crest of the hill where anyone with a spyglass could see precisely what he was up to. It would have to wait until he descended into the meadow to the ruins themselves. The problem being, he didn’t want to get any closer.
It was ridiculous. He’d faced down battalions of French soldiers, charging cavalry, lines of cannon. And none of them sent sick chills down his spine the way those ruins did.
Better to get the damned business over with. Phineas blew out his breath, squared his shoulders, and nudged Saffron in the ribs. They descended into the center of the meadow at a walk, Gordo
n and Gallant on their heels.
“This was a big place,” the sergeant noted, leaning out to run his hand over one of the remaining standing stone pillars. “’N it’s warm down here. Are th’ hot springs still flowin’?”
“Yes.” Phineas shook himself. “Watch the footing. It can get swampy there where the lilies are growing.”
“Hm. Not too bad now. Probably durin’ the winter. Did ye go swimmin’ here as a lad?”
“Yes.”
“The waters were probably good fer yer brother the viscount, weren’t they? If ye could get ’im down here.”
“William wasn’t crippled then. He could climb down on his own.”
Phineas dismounted, leaving Saffron standing while he walked over to a small tumbled wall away from the main part of the bath ruins. It had happened here. He supposed it would have been devastatingly poetical if he could imagine he still saw traces of the blood—but he remembered quite distinctly that there hadn’t been any blood. None at all. Just William, lying there at a chilling angle, his face white and his mouth open as if he were screaming, though no sound emerged.
“Colonel? Colonel!”
He shook himself. “What?” he snapped, looking over at Gordon.
“Are ye well?”
“Yes. I’m fine. It’s just that I nearly killed my brother right on this spot, and I haven’t been here since that day.” He felt the sergeant staring at him, but continued anyway. “I hate this place, you know?” he said half to himself, slowly circling the wall. “We used to play here all the time, and now I can’t stand to be in sight of it.”
“Then why’re we here?”
“Because it’s important.” Still feeling almost…dazed, as though he’d walked into his own dream—or his own nightmare, more like—Phineas pulled the two maps from his pocket. Setting Richard’s on the bottom, he lay Smythe’s across the top.
It was a better match than the one at the surveyor’s office, and more accurate. Or more recent, at least. The stream had moved its banks in the past few years, but its most recent track was carefully noted.
“You’ve done terrain mapping for me before, Gordon,” he said. “Come take a look at this and tell me what you see.”
The sergeant dismounted to join him at the wall. Phin handed him the maps, and he looked at them for a long moment. “This is definitely here,” Gordon said slowly, turning with the maps in his hands. “But it’s not.”
“Why not?” Phineas had his own theory, but with so many people telling him he was creating havoc to suit himself, he wanted a second opinion.
“Th’ ruins is gone,” the sergeant said, scowling. “Part of ’em is. An’ there’s a new buildin’ in their place. A grand one. An’ another two ’r three over here, on top o’ the hill. An’ a road joinin’ ’em all, heavy like th’ one the engineers had t’put in for supplies last year at Salamanca.” He looked up at the meadow, then down again. “Why would someone want t’build a house in the middle of a marshy hot springs?”
“It’s not a house.”
“Then wh—”
“It’s a bath. And I would guess that those other buildings are inns, up where the ground is firm all year round and they’ll have a view.”
“What the devil is this about, Colonel?”
Phineas sighed, pushing back his growing frustration and anger. He knew how to harness those emotions, how to save them, nurture them, until they could be used—with withering results. “In my opinion,” he returned, taking the maps back and folding them together, “this is the beginnings of the next city of Bath.”
“Bath is past its prime, I thought.”
“It is.” Phineas faced south. Down in the meadow bottom all he could see was the rise of the slope, but at the top would be fields and trees and rivers, and beyond them, the sea. And Brighton. “Imagine a place to take the waters, located between London and Brighton. Not a place to settle in and play whist and grow old and senile, but to holiday for a few days or a sennight and then move on.”
“Holy Jasus,” Gordon breathed.
Here, unlike Bath, there would be a destination at both ends. Brighton was becoming hugely popular, thanks mostly to Prinny’s obsession with building himself a palace there. And it also offered a launching place to the Americas, or to Africa or beyond, and back again.
“These plans,” the sergeant said, gesturing at the map. “Yer brother th’ viscount ain’t a part of ’em.”
“He doesn’t know anything about them.”
“This is Donnelly’s doing?”
“It is beginning to seem so.” Phineas pocketed the maps and strode back to collect Saffron.
“Why wouldn’t he tell yer brother, and they could become partners?”
“Because the money’s in the land.”
The scope of what he’d begun to piece together stunned him. The Frenchman had snatched a few watches and snuffboxes, and it was a robbery. This, though, was a plan that, once begun, would take years to realize. No wonder Donnelly and Smythe had been content with a dog attack here and a pasture flood and cottage fire there. They could afford to be patient; once they secured the land there were still years of planning and building ahead of them.
“So d’we kill ’im?”
“Not yet. I can’t kill a viscount, but I can kill a thief. Unfortunately, I have to prove him one, first.” Of course, there was a second option; Phin Bromley might not be able to settle this with a pistol, but he knew someone who could. The Frenchman.
Satisfying as that might be, however, the part of him that wanted the respect of his family knew he needed to have proof. All he had at the moment was some talk about hot springs, some questionable mishaps, and a map. Hardly enough to drive Donnelly to ground and force him to confess.
They cantered up the slope and back toward Quence House. And then another thought occurred to him. Destroying Donnelly would save Quence, but he very much doubted that a disgraced and hopefully jailed viscount would be willing to settle ten thousand quid on his cousin, whatever agreement they might have made. Alyse would be left with nothing, again, or at best a position as companion to a woman with a jailed, disgraced son.
“Damnation,” he muttered.
“What’s got ye sour now?”
“A choice between two boxes. One holds a poisonous snake.”
“An’ t’other?”
“My damned conscience.” It was more than that, but he didn’t know how to put it into words. Everything was a damned muddle. The only thing he knew clearly was that he needed some help. Luckily he had some waiting close by.
Chapter 21
Richard leaned into the morning room. “Alyse, will you come with me for a moment?”
Cold apprehension ran through her fingers, and she jerked too hard on the embroidery needle, putting a hole in the fabric. Blast it. With a quick look, she set it aside and stood. She could put a rose there, she supposed. “Of course.”
“Fetch me a peppermint tea,” her aunt said, returning to her correspondence.
“I’ll have it brought to you,” her son commented, backing out of the doorway and leading the way toward the stairs. “Saunders, have a cup of peppermint tea brought to Mrs. Donnelly.”
“Yes, my lord. Right away.” With a bow the butler left the foyer.
“Come along, Alyse.” Richard gestured for her to follow him as he ascended the stairs to the first floor.
“I don’t know anything yet, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she blurted. “I only had breakfast to see him, and you saw how quickly he left. The—”
“I know, I know. No worries.”
He left the stairs, walking down the west wing of the house where the bedchambers were. Uneasiness rippled through her. Richard had never shown any…amorous inclinations toward her, but if he was the villain Phin claimed he was, she supposed he could be expected to do anything. If he attempted an assault, though, he would discover that she hadn’t been cowed quite as much as he thought.
When he stopped in front o
f one of the guest rooms, her pulse quickened, and she hung back from him. “What’s this?” she asked, clenching her fists, ready to fight or flee.
“It occurred to me that offering a lofty prize for something is well and good, but it’s rather…intangible.” He reached back and turned the handle, opening the bedchamber door. “Come in.”
“I—”
“My mother has your old room,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, “but this one has a nice view of the garden and the meadow. What do you think?”
Frowning and cautious, Alyse followed him into the room. And stopped. All of her things were there—such as they were. Her mirror, her bedstand and quilt, mingled with the furniture already placed in the room. “What—”
“It’s yours, if it pleases you. Your new room. Do you like it?”
“I…yes, I like it,” she stammered. “But…why?”
“Call it an…advance. A gesture of trust.” He started out of the room, then snapped his fingers and faced her again. “I nearly forgot. Mary will be assuming your duties with my mother, and she will be assisting you, as well. And I’ve instructed the grooms that the mare Snowbird is to be for your particular use.”
Alyse felt her mouth hanging open, and she belatedly snapped it closed. “This is, ah, very nice,” she said slowly, unwilling to relinquish her suspicions entirely. “But…what if it should come to pass that I can’t prove anything about Phin? What if he isn’t The Frenchman?”
Richard smiled, one hand on the door. “Then you will look back at your room in the attic and but wish it could be yours again. Have a rest. Enjoy your day.” Softly he closed the door behind him, leaving her alone.
She stared at the door for a minute. His threat had left a great deal to the imagination, but she understood it. If she didn’t or couldn’t do as he asked, what came afterward would be worse than anything she’d yet experienced.
As she sat heavily on the bed, she noticed that it was much softer and fuller than the one in the attic room. Logically she didn’t have to lose these unexpected gifts; Phin wanted her to give his secret to Richard. If it meant his arrest, though, she wasn’t certain she could do it. It could cost him his life.
Before the Scandal Page 22