“I’ll ask my Aunt Maybella, although she and my mother evidently never got along very well. She’s never called me anything but Corrie. Once when I was little, I’d been playing with my dog Benjie, both of us minding our own business all right, so Benjie had gotten just the littlest bit muddy, and so he did escape me and ran into my uncle’s library. I’ll even admit that he rolled around on top of my uncle’s desk and tore up two leaves my uncle was pressing. Well, that was when Uncle Simon yelled out my full name for the first time.” She paused a moment, looking out over the west gardens. “I didn’t know who he was yelling at.”
“Corrie, forget the nastiness. I will speak to my father; he’s the only one who can do anything about my grandmother’s meanness. I heard him tell my Uncle Ryder that my grandfather had doubtless hurled himself to the hereafter, just to escape her.”
“It doesn’t matter. I will simply avoid her in the future. I must be going. Good-bye, James.” And she went out the estate room glass doors, out into the gardens. If she meandered far enough, then she’d run smack into the naked Greek statues, all of couples copulating in varied positions. He and Jason had spent many many hours staring at those statues, giggling and pointing when they were young, then looking at them through very different eyes when they’d gotten older. To the best of his knowledge, Corrie had never been in this part of the vast Northcliffe gardens. He yelled, “No, Corrie! Come back here. I want you to have some tea and cake with me.”
She turned, frowned at him. Reluctantly, she came back into the estate room. “What kind of cake?”
“Lemon seed cake, I hope. It’s my favorite.”
She looked down at her boots, then up again, but not at his face, over his left shoulder. “Thank you, but I must go home. Good-bye, James.” And she dashed out the doors. He watched her run into the gardens. There were paths leading out; surely she wouldn’t explore; surely she wouldn’t find the statues.
JAMES FOUND HIS father in his bedchamber, alone, bandaging his arm.
“What happened, Father?”
Douglas jerked around, then heaved a sigh of relief. “James. I thought it was your mother. It’s nothing really, an idiot shot me in the arm, nothing more.”
James’s fear sliced right through to his belly. He swallowed, but the fear just kept bubbling up. “This isn’t good,” he said. “Papa, I really don’t like this. Where’s Peabody?”
James hadn’t called him Papa for many years now. Douglas tied off the strip of linen that he’d ripped from his shirt, pulled it tight with his teeth, then turned and managed a smile. “I’m all right, James.” Then because James looked afraid, Douglas walked to him, and pulled his precious boy against him. “I am just fine, it’s just a bit of a sting, nothing to worry you or me or anyone, particularly your mother who will never find out about this.”
James felt his father’s strength and was comforted. He also realized that he was now as large as his father, this man he’d looked up to all his life, seen as a god, an omnipotent being, and now they were the same size? He said against his father’s ear, “Did you see who it was?”
Douglas took James’s arms in his hands and stepped back. “I was riding Henry out on the downs. There was a single shot and Henry knows an opportunity when he sees it, and, of course, he threw me. I’d swear that damned horse was laughing down at me lying there in the bushes where I landed, luckily. I looked afterward, but the fellow had left no signs. It could have easily been a poacher, James, an accident, pure and simple.”
“No.” He looked his father right in the eye. “The Virgin Bride was right. There is trouble here. Where’s Peabody?”
“I got rid of him right away, sent him to Eastbourne to fetch some special pomade for me, I made up a name-Foley’s Special Hair Restorer.”
“But you have lots of hair.”
“No matter. It’ll drive Peabody quite frantic when he doesn’t locate the pomade, something he deserves since he’s always sticking his long nose in my business.”
James drew a deep breath. “I want to look at your arm, Father. Jason is right as well-someone is after you. We have to do something. But first I want to see for myself that the wound isn’t bad.”
Douglas raised a dark brow at his son, saw the fear in James’s eyes, and knew James had to see for himself that the wound was nothing.
“Very well,” he said, and let James untie the linen he’d just wrapped around it.
James studied the angry red slash that had torn through his father’s flesh. “It’s nearly stopped bleeding. I want to wash it, then I want Hollis to see it. He will have some salve to put on it.”
Of course Hollis had exactly the right nasty mixture. He also insisted, under James’s watchful eye, on smearing it over the gash himself. “Hmmm,” he said. “Hand me the clean bandage, Master James.”
James handed him the clean linen. The old man’s hands shook. From fear for his father? No, Hollis never was afraid of anything. “Hollis, how old are you?”
“Master James?”
“Er, if you don’t mind my asking your age?”
“I am the very same age as your esteemed grandmother, my lord, well, perhaps she is a year older, but one hesitates to speak bluntly about such things, particularly when it involves a lady who is also one’s mistress.”
“That means,” Douglas said, laughing, “that Hollis is older than those Greek statues in the west gardens.”
“It does indeed,” Hollis said. “There, my lord, you’re tied up right and tight. Would you care for a tetch of laudanum?”
His arm throbbed, but who cared? He raised a haughty brow, looked disgusted, and said, “No I would not, Hollis. Are the two of you happy now?”
The door opened and Jason walked in, turned white, and blurted out, “I knew it. I just knew it was something bad.”
James looked at the blood in the basin of water, swallowed, and told his brother what had happened.
“You know, sir,” Jason said before the three of them went downstairs, “Mother will know there’s something wrong when she sees the bandage on your arm.”
“She won’t see it.”
“But you and Mother always sleep together,” James said. “Surely she’ll see it. I heard her say once that you never wore a nightshirt.”
James said quickly, “She didn’t know we were listening.”
“Hmmm,” Douglas said. “I’ll think about that.”
“We don’t wear nightshirts either,” Jason said, “once we heard that you didn’t. What were we, James, about twelve?”
“Something like that,” James said.
Douglas felt a lurch in his chest. He looked at his boys-his boys-and the throbbing in his arm became nothing at all.
Of course Alexandra found out quickly enough, not later than five o’clock that afternoon. Her maid, Phyllis, told her what the laundry girl-who’d washed a bloody linen strip-had told Mrs. Wilbur, the Sherbrooke housekeeper, who had rightfully passed it along to Hollis, who’d told her sharply to close her lips over her teeth, which, naturally, Mrs. Wilbur hadn’t, and thus it had come to Phyllis’s sharp ears over a cup of tea in Mrs. Wilbur’s parlor.
“A bloody cloth?” Alexandra said, swiveling about on her dressing chair to stare up at Phyllis, who had mossy green eyes and a lovely thin nose that constantly dripped, necessitating a handkerchief in her right hand most of the time.
“Yes, my lady, a bloody cloth. From his lordship’s bedchamber.”
Alexandra raced out of the bedchamber and through the adjoining door to confront her husband, to run her hands all over his body, to even check the teeth in his mouth. Curse him-he wasn’t there. And she knew when she confronted him, he would look down his elegant nose at her, call her a twit, and tell her it was all a tale invented by some silly girl in the laundry room.
Even though it was five o’clock in the afternoon, Alexandra hurried downstairs to the butler’s pantry, a lovely airy room with black and white marble tiles on the floor. The only problem was, Hollis wasn�
��t alone. Indeed, he was in the embrace of a woman. A woman she’d never seen before. Alexandra stared, then retreated, step by step, until she quietly closed the door.
Hollis hugging and kissing a strange woman? It seemed suddenly that everything was flying out of control. She forgot about nailing down proof so Douglas couldn’t look down his nose at her, and burst into the estate room where her husband was in conversation with the twins. She looked at them all with new eyes. The twins were in on it, whatever it was. The three of them were in a secret conversation, she knew it, one that excluded her. She wanted to shoot all of them. Instead, she said, “Hollis is kissing a strange woman in the butler’s pantry.”
CHAPTER FIVE
When you have no problems, you’re dead.
ZELDA WERNER
DOUGLAS AND THE twins shut their mouths fast. Douglas said, “Er, Alex, my dear, did you say that Hollis was kissing a strange woman? In the butler’s pantry?”
“Yes, Douglas, and she was much younger than Hollis, no more than sixty years old, I’d say.”
“Hollis taking liberties with a younger woman,” Jason said, threw his head back and laughed, then stopped. “My God, Father, what if she’s an adventuress, after his money? I know he’s well-heeled. He told me you’d been investing his money for him for years and he’s nearly as rich as you are now.”
“I will ensure that Hollis hasn’t been snared by a rapacious grandmother,” Douglas said.
James said, “You’re sure they were actually kissing, Mother?”
“It was a rather passionate embrace, and yes, quite a bit of nuzzling and kissing,” Alexandra said. “I’ll tell you, it fairly made my eyes pop out of my head.”
She took a step closer to her husband and whispered, “They both appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely.”
Douglas said, “One hopes this is the young woman Hollis intends to marry.”
His wife and his sons stared at him.
“You know about this, Douglas?”
“He spoke of marriage several days ago-something to the effect that a young wife would make him feel just fine.”
“But-”
Douglas raised his hand to cut her off. “We’ll see. After all, it really isn’t any of our business.”
James said, “It’s Hollis, sir. He’s been here longer than you have.”
“Do not equate old with dead,” Douglas said. “A man isn’t dead in his parts until he’s six feet under. Strive not to forget that.”
Alexandra sighed. “All right, enough of this excitement. Now, Douglas, you will tell me what happened to you and you will tell me all of it. You will include all references to a bloody cloth found in the washbasin in your bedchamber, and you will not fob me off with a cut finger.”
“I told you she’d find out, sir,” Jason said.
“Mother even found out that I’d kissed Melissa Hamilton behind the stables when I was thirteen,” James said. He gave his mother a brooding stare. “I’ve never figured out how you found out about that.”
Alexandra looked at him. “I have spies who owe me their loyalty. It’s best you never forget that. Just because you’re men now doesn’t mean that I’ve sent my spies into retirement.”
“They certainly must be old enough,” Jason said, and gave her a beautiful smile.
Alexandra said, trying not to melt under that smile, “Now, Douglas, speak and make it to the point.”
“All right if you’re going to make a big to-do about it.”
Alexandra grinned at him. “I wonder, is that the Virgin Bride I hear applauding?”
TWYLEY GRANGE,
HOME OF LORD AND LADY MONTAGUE
AND CORRIE TYBOURNE-BARRETT
“My goodness, is it you, Douglas?” Simon Ambrose, Lord Montague, came quickly to his feet, blinked as he shoved his glasses up his nose, and nearly tripped over a journal that had fallen from the table at his side. He straightened himself and his vest.
“Yes, Simon, and I am here without invitation. I hope you will allow me to enter.”
Simon Ambrose laughed. “As if you wouldn’t be welcome to come into my bedchamber if you wished to leap through my window.” Simon frowned. “Of course, you wouldn’t be quite so welcome if you slipped into Maybella’s bedchamber, but that is a possibility that isn’t likely to occur, is it?”
“No more than you climbing in through Alexandra’s bedchamber window, Simon.”
“Now that is a thought that tickles my brain.”
“Don’t let it tickle too much.”
Lord Montague laughed, waved Douglas to a seat. “It is very pleasant to see you. Maybella, here is Lord Northcliffe. Maybella? ”You are not here? How very odd that I don’t see her, and I’d believed she was close by, maybe sewing in that chair over by the window. Simon sighed, then brightened. “Surely Corrie must be near. You know, she’s quite able to entertain guests in her aunt’s absence. Or maybe not.” He threw back his head and yelled, “Buxted!”
“Yes, my lord,” said Buxted, hovering at Lord Montague’s elbow. Simon shot into the air, knocked his glasses off, and stumbled backward to hit against a small marquetry table. Buxted grabbed his arm and pulled him upright with such energy that Simon nearly went over on his nose. Once Simon was upright, Buxted handed him his glasses, and straightened the table. He then began brushing off his master, saying, “Ah, my lord, what an idiot I am, surprising you as I would a young lass who’s hiked up her skirts to cross a stream.”
Simon said, “Ah, yes, that is better, and quite enough. What happens when you surprise a young lady with her skirt up, Buxted?”
“It was a thought that shouldn’t have traveled further than my fantasies, my lord. Wipe it from your mind, sir. Long white legs, that’s all there can be at the end of that delightful thought.”
Douglas remembered what Hollis had once said of Buxted, “He is quite maladroit, my lord, altogether scattered in his brain, and quite an entertaining fellow. He and Lord Montague fit together excellently.”
Douglas smiled to see Buxted still brushing off Simon even as Simon was trying to push him away. “Buxted,” Simon said, slapping at his hands, “I have need of Lady Maybella. If you cannot find her, then bring Corrie. Perhaps she is helping in the kitchen, the girl loves to bake berry tarts, at least she did when she was twelve. Douglas, do come in and sit down.”
“I don’t know who is where, my lord, no one tells me anything at all,” Buxted said. “Ah, my lord Northcliffe, please do be seated. Let me move his lordship’s precious journals from this lovely brocade winged chair. There, only three left, and that makes the chair look interesting, does it not?” Buxted hovered until Douglas sat himself on the three journals. Then he went flapping from the room, his bald head shiny with sweat.
Douglas smiled at his host. He quite liked Simon Ambrose. Simon was luckily rich enough so that he was known as eccentric, rather than batty. And he was as eccentric today as he’d been twenty years before, when, after his father had passed to the hereafter, Simon, now Viscount Montague, had taken himself to London, met and married Maybella Connaught, and brought her home to Twyley Grange, a neat Georgian house built upon the exact foundation of the granary attached to the long-defunct St. Lucien monastery.
Douglas knew that women vastly admired Simon until they came to know him well, and realized that his very handsome face and his sweet expression masked a mind that was usually elsewhere. But when, upon rare occasion, his mind did focus, Douglas knew he was very smart. Given Simon’s mental inattention, he’d wondered upon occasion how the wedding night had gone, but surely something had transpired since Maybella had birthed three children, all, unfortunately, having died in infancy. Simon had a younger brother, Borty, who was as batty as he was, waiting in the wings. His brother was obsessively devoted to the collection of acorns, not leaves, like Simon.
Simon said, his glasses now firmly on his nose, “Truly, Douglas, I didn’t forget you were coming, did I?”
“No, this is a surprise visit, Simo
n. I’m here because I fear my wife would come if I didn’t.”
“That’s all right, isn’t it? I quite like Alexandra. She could come into my bedchamber anytime she wished.”
“Yes, she is likable, but you can forget her coming through your bedchamber window, Simon. The point is that my wife has no taste in clothes.”
“I see. Goodness, I had no idea. I assure you, whenever I see her, I am struck by how very round and white, er, well, it’s best to stop right there, isn’t it? She is very lovely, I will say, and wisely leave it at that.”
“That is because I dress her,” Douglas said.
“Now there is a thought that stirs the imagination.”
“Don’t let it stir too much, Simon.”
“Yes, I can see that such an observation might quiver the embers of a man’s passions. But she is really quite lovely-well, perhaps it is best that I put a period to that thought. Now, is there a problem with Maybella’s clothes, Douglas? Or mine?”
Douglas sat forward, clasping his hands between his knees. “No problem at all. This is about Corrie. The thing is, Simon, Corrie is just like my wife in that she has no idea about clothes. When my wife told me she would speak with Maybella and advise Corrie, I knew that to avert complete disaster I had no choice but to come here myself and see to it. Now, if you will call in Corrie, I will tell her what it is she must wear. You know, the colors and styles of gowns and such. Of course, you want her to appear her best in London.”
“Well naturally,” Simon said, and blinked rapidly. “I’ve always thought Corrie dressed quite nicely, like her aunt, as a matter of fact, when she’s not wearing her breeches. Isn’t that odd that all her gowns are light blue, like Maybella’s? And her boots-they are always highly polished, at least they were the last time I chanced to notice them. But, perhaps that was a long time ago. I don’t often notice feet, you know.”
“No, probably not. I agree with you. Her breeches, in particular, are doubtless of excellent style and cut. But the thing is, Simon, London is a vastly different place. Young ladies don’t wear boots in London nor do they wear stylish breeches. You do remember?”
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