by Candace Camp
“Cousin Geoffrey said I was a damned rascal!” Gilbert added proudly.
“Did he now? Did you give your cousin a difficult time?”
“No!” Gilbert looked indignant. “I let him hold my soldier some of the time.” The toy in question was still clenched in his fist, and he held it up to show it to his aunt. “And we played games. Didn’t we, Mama?”
“Yes, dear. We counted cows and horses and sheep. It was most enlivening.” Phoebe’s eyes twinkled merrily.
“Oh, my.” Julia looked at her sister-in-law as Gilbert skipped ahead of them to the steps. “I am trying to picture Cousin Geoffrey counting horses and cows and sheep.”
Phoebe laughed. “Poor dear man. He was an angel, bless him. I was scared to come all by myself, and I am afraid I more or less trapped him into escorting me. I should have told him he might prefer to ride outside the carriage, but I forgot. Gilbert nearly plagued him to death with questions, and, poor little tyke, Gil got travel sick, as he so often does.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. Four times.” Phoebe held up her fingers to emphasize the point. “We had to stop by the side of the road each time. Of course, Geoffrey had to ride facing backward, so that Gilbert could ride facing front, because it makes him less sick. But the crowning blow was when Gilbert put his fingers in his mouth and began to wiggle that tooth, as you know he does. When he pulled it out triumphantly, blood and all—well, I have never seen such horror on a man’s face before.”
Julia laughed. “I wish I had been there to see it! That would have been worth paying admission.” She linked her arm through Phoebe’s and followed Gilbert up the steps to the front door. “Now, I want you to come in and meet Lady Stonehaven. She is almost enough to induce me to marry Deverel.”
Phoebe looked at Julia askance. Deverel? He was Deverel now, not the dreadful Lord Stonehaven? What was going on here?
14
Inside, they found Geoffrey talking to Lady Stonehaven and Deverel.
“Lady Stonehaven,” Julia said, smiling and leading Phoebe forward. “Please allow me to introduce you to my very dear sister-in-law, Lady Armiger. Phoebe, this is Lady Stonehaven, who has been so kind to me. Lord Stonehaven, of course, you know.”
“We have met,” Deverel acknowledged, casting a sardonic look at Julia. “Of course, that was back when you wore spectacles, Julia.”
His mother glanced at him oddly. “What—oh, I suppose that is one of your nonsensical jokes.” She stepped forward to take Phoebe’s hand. “Dear Lady Armiger, I am so glad that you are here.”
Phoebe looked rather abashed and said, “I am sorry to drop in on you like this. It is just that when I got that note from Julia, it, uh, worried me.”
“Don’t give it another thought,” Lady Stonehaven assured her breezily. “Of course you would want to be here to support Julia when she gets married, and I am sure that she wants you here. It is only natural to want one’s family around. If anyone is to blame, it is Deverel, for giving us so little notice of the nuptials.”
“We will stay in the inn in the village, of course,” Phoebe assured her, ignoring the subject of marriage.
“Nonsense. It is quite inadequate. I am sure you would not be comfortable. You must stay here. It’s a big old house, and it will take only a few minutes to put rooms to right for you. It’s so pleasant to have visitors.”
Phoebe looked doubtful, but she subsided with a grateful murmur. At that moment, Gilbert decided that it was time to make his presence known.
He had been staring up intently at Stonehaven from the moment they walked in the door, and now he piped up, “Are you a bad man?”
“I beg your pardon?” Deverel looked down at the boy.
“Gilbert, no!” Phoebe cautioned, blushing, and Geoffrey groaned, covering his eyes.
“My mother said we were going to take Aunt Julie away from a bad man. Is that you?”
“Gilbert!” Phoebe clasped her hand over the boy’s mouth, mortified. “I’m sorry, Lord Stonehaven, he—that is, I—”
“Yes?” Deverel raised an eyebrow, listening politely.
“Deverel, do stop being annoying,” Lady Stonehaven said crossly. “Our guests will think you are quite rag-mannered.”
“Yes, Mother.” He turned back to Gilbert. “Actually, my boy, I think there are times when all of us tend to be bad men, so I have to admit that sometimes I am. Are you ever a bad boy?”
Gilbert nodded, not without pride. “Lots and lots of times. Yesterday Nurse said I was an imp of Satan.”
“Did she, now? You must have made her pretty angry.”
“I took her ribbon, and she said I spoilt it.” He added with a look of righteous indignation, “But I didn’t lose it. It was right there round the kitty’s neck. I needed a lead, you see.”
“I am sure the ribbon made a lovely lead.”
“It did!” Gilbert seemed impressed with Deverel’s understanding. Apparently deciding that Stonehaven was worthy enough, he stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out his tooth. He held it out to Stonehaven, saying, “I lost a tooth on the ride.”
Behind him, Geoffrey made an inarticulate noise and turned away, but Deverel won Gilbert’s respect by squatting down to his level to examine the boy’s prize. “I must say, that’s a fine-looking tooth. Was it very hard to get out?”
Gilbert shook his head. “I kept wiggling and wiggling, and all of sudden, pop! Out it came!” He grinned with delight at the memory.
“It sounds like an exciting trip.”
“Yes, and I sicked up four times.”
“Traveling by coach makes you sick? You must have been very brave to have come on the trip, then.”
Gilbert considered the matter and nodded gravely. “I was.”
“Sometime you must let me take you out in my curricle, for it hasn’t a top, and I find that when the breeze is blowing in your face and you can see everything around, you don’t feel nearly as sick.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Lord Stonehaven, that is so kind of you,” Phoebe murmured, looking rather guilty. “Gilbert, you mustn’t plague him.”
“I wasn’t plaguing him,” the boy argued, with some justice. “The bad man wanted to talk to me. Didn’t you?” He looked at Stonehaven for confirmation.
“Yes, I did. But perhaps you could call me Deverel instead of ‘the bad man.”’
“All right.”
“I say, the boy seems to like you,” Geoffrey commented, a trifle awed.
“I like you, too,” Gilbert assured Geoffrey.
“You do?” Geoffrey’s eyes widened in such surprise that Julia had to smother a laugh.
“You let me play with your watch and fobs. And you didn’t yell at me, even when I sicked up on your shoes.”
“Oh. Well, poor little devil, I don’t suppose you could help it,” Geoffrey allowed, though he looked a trifle green at the memory.
“You know what, Gilbert? We shall have to go riding while you’re here. Maybe fishing. We have a splendid pond.” Deverel shot a twinkling look of mischief at Geoffrey. “Just us men—you and Cousin Geoffrey and I.”
Gilbert jumped straight up with a screech and began to babble questions. Geoffrey began to try with almost equal energy to get out of the proposed expedition.
Lady Stonehaven interrupted both efforts, saying smoothly that dinner would be growing cold soon, and Cook would probably have all their heads if they ruined her lovely meal. The butler had already seen to it that two extra places were laid, and a maid whisked Gilbert and his nurse off up to the nursery, where, Lady Stonehaven assured Phoebe, it would be a delight to have a child again after so long.
“My only child, you see,” she said with a mock disapproving glance at Stonehaven, “has been so very disobliging as to not yet provide me with an heir.” She smiled fondly at Julia. “Of course, if I am very lucky, that will change.”
After dinner the women retired to the drawing room for a cozy chat, while
Deverel attempted to soothe Geoffrey’s lacerated nerves with a brandy in his study. Then the men rejoined them for some more polite small talk. So it wasn’t until the party broke up for bed that Phoebe was able to have a private talk with her sister-in-law and find out the answers to the questions that had been plaguing her.
Julia had suggested that Phoebe simply stay with her, so that the servants would not have to make up another room. As soon as the maid had helped them undress and left, Phoebe whirled on Julia.
“What happened?” she asked breathlessly. “What is all this about getting married? And why did you ask for your box of mementos?”
“You brought it, didn’t you?” Julia asked a little anxiously.
“It’s in the trunk with your clothes.” Phoebe pointed toward the traveling trunk full of dresses.
“You are the best of friends, as well as the best of relatives!” Julia went over to the trunk and opened the lid, looking down at the dresses and undergarments folded as if the trunk contained the crown jewels. “Oh! I never thought I would be so grateful to see my clothes! You can’t imagine what it’s like to wear the same dress three days running, even if Teresa was kind enough to have it cleaned for me.”
“Teresa?”
“Lady Stonehaven. Isn’t she a jewel?”
“She’s delightful,” Phoebe agreed. “It’s hard to imagine that Lord Stonehaven is her son.”
“Isn’t it?” Julia pulled out the teakwood box, caressing its smooth surface. She opened it. Inside lay packets of letters, bound with ribbons.
“I don’t understand,” Phoebe said. “Why did you want that box? Was it a secret message of some kind?”
“I wanted the letters. You see—” Julia stopped abruptly, suddenly realizing that she was about to let her wayward tongue run away with her. She could not tell Phoebe about the suicide note, at least, not until she had proved that Selby did not write it. “I, well, I was going to check them against the letters Selby supposedly wrote. To show that he didn’t write them.”
“Oh!” Phoebe began to laugh. “Wait until I tell Geoffrey. I was certain that you were trying to let me know that you needed to be rescued, the way that girl in the book did, you know….”
Julia began to laugh. “Oh, no! The one with the statue of Ares?”
“Exactly. But Geoffrey wasn’t sure, because he never trusted those ‘plaguey Greek fellows.”’
Julia laughed even harder. “I can just hear him. No doubt he thought them too tiring.”
“Actually, he said that he thought they were a bunch of loose screws.”
“And so they were.” Julia wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. “Dear Cousin Geoffrey.”
“He was very kind, you know, to bring me here. I’m sure he didn’t really want to, not a bit. But enough about that. Tell me what happened! Why are you at Stonehaven? And why did Lord Stonehaven tell Pamela that you were married?”
“Let’s sit down, and I’ll tell you.” She climbed up onto the high bed, patting a spot beside her, and Phoebe followed suit. “Nunnelly was right. Deverel escaped. But he didn’t run away. He waited until I came back—strangely enough, I came back to let him go, because I could see that it wasn’t going to work at all. He would never have told me anything. But he didn’t realize who I was. He thought I was part of a gang that was trying to extort money from him. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him any different. He carried me off to the inn in Whitley. Fortunately, the landlord didn’t see my face. Deverel told him I was his wife, and he had me wrapped up in my cloak so that the man couldn’t see that I was tied up.”
“Tied up!” Phoebe’s face paled. “Oh, Julia!”
Julia saw her gentle sister-in-law’s expression and was instantly contrite. “I shouldn’t have told you that. I’m sorry. It wasn’t terrible. He didn’t hurt me. He was just frightfully angry—which I can understand,” she conceded. “He started trying to find out about this supposed gang, and finally I made something up, but he didn’t believe me. Anyway, the long and short of it is—” she finished blithely, leaving out a great many of the details of that night “—that the next morning I tried to escape down the stairs, and he came after me and, well, he had his arms around me and we were struggling.” There was no reason, she thought, to mention the kiss. “And who should walk in the door but Major Fitzmaurice and Pamela St. Leger? Even Thomas was there! Fitz was escorting them home, you see, and they had stopped for a late breakfast before they got to Farrow.”
“Julia!” Horror was written on Phoebe’s face. “Oh, no! This will be the ruin of you!”
Julia sighed. “That is what Deverel said. That’s why he told them that it was all right, because he and I were married. I could have kicked him, of course, because that will make it look even worse if I don’t—I mean, when I don’t marry him.”
“Not marry him! But, Julia, love, how can you not?” Phoebe protested. “I mean, to be caught together at an inn in the morning.”
“Without our shoes on,” Julia enlarged upon the scandalous elements of the scene. “We had obviously just gotten up.”
Phoebe grew even whiter. “This is horrible. Pamela will spread it everywhere! Why, Varian already knows about it. Fitz told him as soon as he got back. That man could never keep a secret.”
“I’m sorry, Fee….” Tears welled in Julia’s eyes, and she took Phoebe’s hand. “I know it will be a great scandal when I don’t marry him, but—”
“Don’t say that!” Phoebe cried softly. “Julia, you have to marry him.”
“No! Not you, too, Phoebe? How could I marry him? After everything he’s done?”
“But…what if we were wrong?” Phoebe asked worriedly. “What if he isn’t the person who took the money? I mean, we have no real proof that he did. He acted like a gentleman when he pretended that you and he were married, in order to save your reputation. He didn’t have to, you know. He could have told them the whole story, and then you would have been in an even worse scandal.”
“He said…” Julia continued in a small voice. “He said it was his duty. He said he had compromised me by kidnapping me that night.”
“Does that sound like the sort of thing a man who embezzled money and put the crime off on another would do?” Phoebe began to chew at her lower lip. “He was so good with Gil tonight. He knew just what to say.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not an embezzler. He probably felt guilty because Gil is Selby’s son.”
“I don’t know. What if we did those things to an innocent man?” Phoebe looked in horror at her sister-in-law.
“We don’t know that. None of those things prove that he didn’t embezzle the money.” Julia frowned, her own doubts welling up in her again. She tried to suppress them. She could not let herself think that way; it was too horrible to contemplate. It was as if a great pit yawned at her feet. What if she had been wrong? What if she had set out to ruin an innocent man? What if she had permanently alienated herself from the one man whom—
“No!” Julia jumped off the bed and began to pace. “How can I marry him after all this? What I’ve done? What he’s done? There’s no hope for us! He hates me. How could I live the rest of my life with a man who hates me? No. It’s impossible.” She turned, her eyes flashing. “I have too much pride to accept his charity. He would be able to hold it up to me my whole life, how he saved my good name by marrying me.”
She made a disgusted face.
“All right,” said Phoebe, who had been watching Julia’s nervous movements with some anxiety. “Of course you don’t have to marry him if you’re set against it. I just thought—but we won’t talk about it any more tonight.”
“Thank you.” Julia looked at her a little sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I hate this feeling of being forced…and I have despised him for so long.” Her voice dropped to a tormented whisper. “What if he didn’t do it? Who else could it be? It wasn’t Selby. It could not have been Selby.”
“No! No, of course it wasn’t,” Phoebe assured her. “Yo
u must not think that way. Come. Let’s go to bed now.”
Julia nodded, and climbed into the bed. They crawled under the cover in troubled silence and waited for sleep to come.
Julia awoke the next morning feeling hardly more rested than when she had gone to bed. She could not get the thought of marrying Stonehaven out of her mind, and it occurred to her that perhaps a walk after breakfast might help her to straighten out her thoughts.
She and Phoebe found Lady Stonehaven still at the table when they went into the breakfast room. The older woman greeted them with a smile.
“You’ve missed Deverel, I’m afraid. He left rather early this morning, with young Master Gilbert. I believe they were going to investigate possible fishing spots.” She turned her twinkling gaze on Julia. “Deverel was certain that you would wish to be included on their expedition, Julia, dear, but I managed to persuade him that you needed your sleep.”
Both Phoebe and Julia, who well knew Gilbert’s lively nature early in the morning, laughed. “Thank you, ma’am,” Julia said with real gratitude.
“Poor man,” Phoebe added. “I wonder if he knows what he is in for.”
“Dev seems to be rather good with children,” his mother said with evident pride. “He got off to a bad start with poor Thomas, but I blame that largely on Thomas’s mother. Pamela never liked him, you see, and when Thomas was young, she discouraged him being around Deverel.”
“That sounds like something Pamela would do,” Julia agreed. “Why did she dislike him? I always thought Pamela had a decided partiality for handsome men.”
“He is handsome, isn’t he?” Lady Stonehaven agreed fondly. “Actually, I think it was Pamela’s partiality for men that made her dislike him. Walter was Dev’s best friend, and Deverel would never have done anything to hurt Walter.”
Phoebe’s eyes widened. “You mean, you think Pamela made advances toward Lord Stonehaven?”
Teresa shrugged. “He never told me. But having seen the way Pamela acted around him, I have little doubt of what she wanted. She was hardly subtle in the way she flirted and hung on his arm at every opportunity. It was obvious to everyone except Walter, of course. I never could understand how such a nice man could be so smitten with her. Then she started acting very cold toward Deverel, and she obstructed his seeing Walter—coming down with an illness when Walter was about to come visit us, so that he couldn’t leave Farrow, or deciding that they should go to Bath for a few weeks at a time when Dev was scheduled to go there. That sort of thing. It was obvious that something had made her furious at him. The only thing that I can think of is that she grew too bold and direct, and Dev turned her down.”