* * * *
“Tomorrow we shall start teaching you to ride,” Sybil said, giving the swing another giant push.
Soaring up into the air, Marigold was inclined to think that riding could not be nearly as exhilarating as swinging. She did not know which she enjoyed more, the swooping up higher and higher, or the sudden falling away, which tickled her stomach in the most delightful way.
She was giddy with laughter until looking out over the countryside, she saw something that destroyed all her happiness in an instant. Immediately lowering her feet, she dragged them on the ground and quickly brought the swing to a standstill.
“Sybil—” was all she could say, but that one word held a world of desperation.
“Are you feeling queasy? Perhaps we should not have tried the swing so soon after eating?”
Wordlessly, Marigold indicated the carriage coming at a brisk trot down the lane, and tears began to collect in the corners of her eyes.
“Is that your uncle’s coach?”
Marigold nodded, causing the tears to spill over and run down her cheeks.
“What fun!” Sybil said, hurrying over to crouch down and peek through the garden hedge, so that she could see without being seen.
“Fun? How can you say such a thing? There will not be any fun for me now that my uncle has found me.” Ignoring the possibility of stains on her skirt, Marigold joined her friend on the grass. Together they watched the carriage turn in at the drive and pass out of sight.
“What makes you think he knows you are here?”
“Why else would he have come?”
“Well, of course he is trying to find you, but there is no reason to think he is expecting you to be here.” Standing up, she began to tug Marigold away from the house. “Undoubtedly my mother will be sending for me in a few minutes, so we must be sure that ‘Clara’—that is you, don’t forget—is not conveniently accessible.” Relentlessly she began pushing at Marigold. “Go down that path, and you will find the summer house. Wait there until I come for you. And do not waste any time worrying. You know what a splendid actress I am.”
“You are going to lie to your own mother?” After knowing Sybil for an entire term, Marigold was quite accustomed to Sybil’s little fibs, but somehow evading one of the silly rules at school did not seem as heinous a crime as telling one’s own mother a falsehood.
“I promise you I shall not say one single thing that is not absolutely true,” Sybil replied with a wicked smile. “And if your uncle makes unwarranted assumptions based upon what I say, I am sure that is not my concern.”
* * * *
Terence’s first thought was that Alicia Lady Dunmire was much too young to be a widow. Even assuming that she had married right out of the schoolroom, to have a daughter the same age as his niece would make her at least thirty-three, four years younger than he was.
Her complexion was flawless and her eyes, which were a lovely shade of blue, were unlined. With her slender figure, she did not look a day over twenty-three, and yet for all the youthfulness of her person, her manner displayed a maturity beyond her years.
“I am sure that you will be able to recover your niece,” she said calmly after he explained the events of the day. Her composure somehow made him feel more hopeful than he had felt since his niece had turned up missing.
Abruptly and without warning, the door to the sitting room was thrown open with so much force that it crashed against the wall. Startled, Terence swung around, expecting to see a schoolgirl. What he saw was two grubby little boys, one with a bleeding nose and the other with the beginnings of a black eye.
“It was all his fault,” the smaller boy cried out, pointing to his companion. “I won his marbles fair and square, and he refused to give them to me.”
Producing a man’s handkerchief from some hidden pocket, Lady Dunmire folded it into a pad, tilted the child’s head back, and pressed the cloth to his nose.
“But we are forbidden to gamble, and I say that was gambling, so I don’t have to give him my marbles,” the older boy said, his fists still tightly clenched.
“We shall discuss this later after our company has departed,” Lady Dunmire said. “For now, Desmond, I need you to find Sybil for me and ask her to come in here. And after you have spoken to her, you will see cook about a beefsteak to put on your eye.”
Terence was astonished—no, he was appalled by her callous attitude. Did she not intend to summon the doctor? Here she was sending that poor injured child on an errand when he should have been put to bed! As shocking as that was, it was even less easy to understand why the boys had been allowed to fight in the first place. Surely if they had been adequately supervised, their quarrel would never have come to physical blows.
He had to bite his tongue to hold back certain pithy comments, but Colthurst, who knew this family well enough to step in and take charge, was merely smiling patiently.
“There now,” Lady Dunmire said a few minutes later, “I believe the bleeding has stopped, Eustace. Run along to the kitchen and get your face washed.”
“I confess to curiosity,” Colthurst said after the boys had departed. “How do you intend to adjudicate the problem with the marbles?”
Lady Dunmire smiled. “Why, I do not intend to interfere at all—or at least not much. All the marbles will simply be put away, and the boys may not have them back until they themselves come to an agreement about the proper ownership.”
“I shall have to remember that trick when Louisa and the twins are older,” Colthurst said. “Right now the three of them do not understand the concept of ‘mine’ and ‘yours,’ so they are quite happy to share.”
Terence felt quite left out of the subsequent conversation, which was mostly concerned with ways to manage conflicts between siblings. On the other hand, the stories they were relating made him thankful that he had only the one niece to raise.
In due course, Lady Sybil appeared, looking only slightly less bedraggled than the two boys. When the situation was explained to her, her eyes got big and round, and her expression was most serious. “Well, all I can tell you is that Marigold did not go down to breakfast with me. And on my way back to my room, where I thought she would be waiting to say good-bye to me, one of the older girls stopped me in the hall and said—But perhaps I should not repeat what she said? For it is, after all, only hearsay, and I did not actually see Marigold with my own eyes climbing into a chaise with the dancing master quite, quite early this morning.”
“The dancing master?” Terence asked in astonishment.
The girl turned her soulful eyes on him. “Mr. Lucaster is considered quite handsome by some of the girls, although I have always felt he was a bit undersized and a little too pretty for my tastes. I should not wish to run off to Scotland with him, for I have always considered him to be rather weak and shallow. Still and all, I can see how he would appeal to a timid girl like Marigold.”
“Scotland? Surely you are not saying she has eloped with the dancing master,” Terence said, but his protest carried no conviction.
“Indeed not! I could never believe that Marigold would be so lost to propriety that she would do such a shocking thing as elope,” Lady Sybil was quick to assert, but her expression made it quite clear that she did believe precisely that.
“Perhaps,” Lady Dunmire said, “your friend Clara might know something more?”
“Oh, I am sure Clara has not the slightest idea where Marigold is at this moment. Disliking Marigold as she does, Clara would probably tell an outlandish story about some ridiculous scheme Marigold had for running away. But I shall let Clara know that you wish to speak to her, although it will take me a considerable time to convey the message, since she is presently quite distant from this house.”
A considerable time? When he heard those appalling words, all of Terence’s newly acquired calmness deserted him. Merciful heavens, what was he doing sitting around here wasting even more time while his niece was being abducted to Scotland? For an abduction it ha
d to have been, no matter if that silver-tongued rogue, Mr. Lucaster, may have persuaded her to come away with him.
Every minute Terence wasted put him that much farther behind the eloping pair, so he declined Lady Sybil’s offer to find her visiting school friend—who was not, or so he had twice been told, a particular friend of his niece—and as quickly as good manners allowed, he took leave of his hostess.
“You may borrow my phaeton if you wish,” Colthurst offered magnanimously when they were on their way back to Colthurst Hall. “Your coach is a bit heavy for speed. And you may certainly have any of the nags out of my stables for the first stage. I only wish there were more I could do to assist you. But with Elizabeth’s confinement so close, I cannot accompany you.”
Terence sat sunk in misery. To think it had come to this. After all the pitfalls he had avoided—after all the illnesses and injuries he had managed to prevent—his niece’s entire future was now foundering. She was coming to grief because of a wretched dancing master. It did not bear thinking about.
In an attempt to distract himself, Terence inquired how many children Lady Dunmire had.
“Eight sons,” Colthurst replied. “The eldest, Algernon, is already up at Oxford, and the youngest is only three months old.”
“At Oxford? But—” Terence could not believe that Lady Dunmire was old enough to have a son at university.
“But what?” Colthurst asked, looking at him strangely.
“Either her son is a child prodigy, or Lady Dunmire has discovered the secret of eternal youth,” Terence said.
Colthurst looked puzzled, then his face cleared. “Oh, you were asking about the dowager viscountess. She has just the one daughter, whom you have met. Alicia’s husband, the fourth viscount, died in a hunting accident shortly after Sybil was born—he was a neck-or-nothing rider. The eight boys I was referring to belong to his cousin, who is now the fifth viscount.”
Terence thought for a moment, but Colthurst’s answer had only raised more questions in his own mind. “But if the boys are not her sons, why did they come to the dowager viscountess to settle their dispute? Surely they would have gone to their own father or mother.”
With a smile, Colthurst explained, “The present viscount is a good man and a fine neighbor, but I am afraid he is totally preoccupied with new farming methods. He is so fanatic about such things as mangelwurzels and methods of sowing corn that I almost could believe that he is not aware of precisely how many sons he has.”
“And the boys’ mother?”
“She is too indolent to exert herself in the slightest, and if her sons approached her with a request, she would doubtless turn them over to one of the servants.”
Terence found it disgraceful that the widow should have been imposed upon to such a degree. Some of his disapproval must have shown on his face, for Colthurst continued, “Before you condemn the boys’ parents entirely, keep in mind that Alicia has chosen of her own free will to mother the boys.”
Terence wanted to ask more questions about the dowager viscountess, but he held his tongue lest his friend begin to wonder at his curiosity. When he thought about it rationally, he had to wonder himself why he had such a strong desire to know more about the young widow.
Granted, she was quite beautiful, but Terence had met many a beautiful young lady before. In fact, before he had retired from society to assume the care of his niece, he had been considered quite a catch.
But although his life had changed forever when he had taken on the duties of a surrogate father, he had never regretted his decision. Oblique hints had been dropped at the time by various young ladies, who had each indicated her willingness to become Marigold’s step-mama, but in truth, Terence had never felt any particular affinity for any of the applicants for that position.
So why did he, after all these years, find Alicia Lady Dunmire so intriguing? Why was he feeling so much curiosity about her when his mind should be fully occupied with his niece? He felt mildly guilty, as if he had been disloyal to his deceased brother, and so he bit back the questions he longed to ask—such as whether or not anyone special was courting the beautiful widow.
* * * *
Really, Alicia Lady Dunmire thought while taking tea, it was astonishing how much her daughter’s friend Clara was able to eat. One would almost think the poor child had been starved for years, the way she was stuffing food into her mouth.
Although Mr. Kinderley had not requested Alicia to do so, now that the opportunity was at hand, it seemed appropriate to question her daughter’s friend about the missing schoolgirl. “Clara, we had a visitor today—a Mr. Kinderley. He is the uncle of one of your classmates, and he is most distressed that his niece is missing. Did you happen to see Marigold climbing into a coach with the dancing master?”
Clara’s mouth was—as it always seemed to be—too full for her to speak, but she shook her head quite vigorously, even while helping herself to another portion of syllabub.
“Then did you perhaps notice her speaking to a stranger?”
Again the shake of the head, before Clara reached for the plate of cherry tarts. The child’s abominable manners were not a very good advertisement for Mrs. Wychombe’s Select Seminary, but Alicia did not bother to reproach her.
Having been an active child herself, she knew firsthand what a relief it was to escape the restrictions of boarding school, so she did not make even a token protest when the two girls finished gulping down their food and with only a quick “may we please be excused?” darted back out into the sunshine.
As was her custom after taking tea, Alicia went up to the big house to visit with the present Lady Dunmire. Strolling along, Alicia absently let her mind return to her earlier visitor.
Even thinking about him caused the blood to tingle in her veins in a way she had not felt since ... since her husband had died so many years ago. It was not merely that Mr. Kinderley was handsome, although no woman would have been able to find fault with his dark hair, clear gray eyes, and athletic build.
Nor was it merely the admiration in his eyes when he looked at her—admiration she was so used to seeing in men’s eyes that she scarcely even noticed it any more.
This time she had felt such a strong attraction that she wanted to go to him and touch him. It was almost as if there were some mysterious bond between them—as if they somehow belonged together—that had caused her to be more aware of him than she had been of any of the dozens of men who had wished to court her.
It was too bad he had been so stiffly disapproving of her.
Disapproving? For a moment Alicia wondered why that word had popped into her head, but then she recalled the fleeting look of censure that had crossed his face when the boys had interrupted their conversation.
Remembering the way Mr. Kinderley’s lips had pursed up—quite like the fussiest old maid—Alicia began to believe that his niece might very well have preferred eloping with a charming dancing master in lieu of returning to her uncle, who was doubtless one of those nagging types who did not understand about giving children permission to behave childishly. For a moment she was of half a mind to believe that he deserved the worry he was now feeling.
But then she recollected that Bartholomew had run off to join the army when he was thirteen, and his parents had certainly not been to blame for that. No, as adult as they might seem at times, young people below the age of seventeen or eighteen—and even some of that age—frequently did things that they considered perfectly reasonable, but that adults found totally illogical.
“I hear you had visitors today,” Cousin Edith said without preamble when Alicia joined her in her sitting room.
The image of Mr. Kinderley’s face, which had been hovering around the edges of Alicia’s mind, now sprang to the forefront, but she found herself strangely reluctant to share the memory with another. “Yes, Colthurst dropped by for a short visit. He tells me Elizabeth is quite down in the dumps. The baby is due in three weeks. I believe I shall drive over in the next day or so and
visit with her. Do you wish to come with me?”
Cousin Edith, whose indolence was well known in the neighborhood, was quick to drag out her usual excuses—the weather was too warm, her digestion had been a trifle off, and she felt as if she might be coming down with something. “But in any event, it is not His Grace that I am interested in,” she said in conclusion. “Did he not have another gentleman with him? A Mr. Kinderley?”
Her heart racing but her voice amazingly calm, Alicia explained about the missing niece.
“A niece, you say? How fortunate he is not her father. I assume he is a bachelor then?” Cousin Edith asked with a coyness that indicated quite clearly that Alicia should not be letting any golden opportunities slip by her.
Hoping she was not betraying herself with a blush, Alicia looked down at her teacup and said, “I am sure I could not say. Being an uncle does not preclude being a father, you know. Doubtless he has a wife and a dozen children of his own at home.”
Cousin Edith was easily deflected, since matchmaking required more energy than she was used to exerting. The conversation moved on to more trivial subjects than runaway nieces and uncles who might or might not be bachelors.
But the question nagged at Alicia all the way back to the dower house. Was Mr. Kinderley a bachelor?
* * * *
At the third hostelry they visited in Bath, Terence picked up the trail of his niece and her abductor. Although the head ostler had no knowledge of the dancing master, one of the grooms was better informed.
“Sure, I knows Lucaster by sight—quite the coxcomb, he is. I rented him a green chaise with yellow wheels,” the lad reported. “He picked it up at seven this morning.”
“Which means the scoundrel’s got a good ten hours head start on us,” Sweeney, Terence’s coachman, grumbled irritably.
Summer Escapade Page 3