Lord of the Beasts

by Susan Krinard

  “Self-control is more difficult when one is afraid of abandonment.”

  “Abandonment? I would never—”

  “Of course you would not, but Ivy must be feeling insecure about her place here after last night’s revelations.”

  “I can assure you that I did not choose to bring Ivy to Edgecott because of my late sister.”

  “Tell me about Lydia.”

  She closed her eyes, dreading the power of her reawakened memories. It was so easy to go back to that terrible day….

  “She is very ill,” the doctor said, rising from his chair beside Lydia’s bed. “She suffers from a severe infection in the scratches on her hand and arm. I have done what I can, but her body is extremely weak.”

  Papa sat down heavily, his face pale with shock. “What are her chances?”

  The doctor shook his head and glanced from Cordelia to the bed. “It would be best if we continued this discussion outside.”

  Papa followed the doctor out of the bungalow, leaving Cordelia alone with the smell of sickness and guilt. She fetched a clean cloth, wet it at the wash stand and gently draped the cloth over Lydia’s hot brow. There was nothing of beauty left in Lydia’s face now; her eyes were deeply sunken, her lips cracked, her hair soaked with perspiration.

  Cordelia dropped her head into her hands, wondering why the tears would not come. She should be weeping. She should be tearing her hair and beating her breast, knowing that she alone was responsible for Lydia’s illness.

  It had been such a small and common thing, their quarrel: Lydia complaining once again of her hatred for their life of wandering, her desire to return to a normal existence in England…Cordelia impatient with her sister’s incessant lamentations.

  “Why will Papa not take us home?” Lydia had demanded. “The longer we remain away from England, the greater chance that we shall be ruined for good society.” She dragged her brush through the wealth of her honey-blond hair and examined the strands caught in the bristles. “Papa cares nothing for the proprieties. Everyone at home will think we have become complete savages!”

  Cordelia was in no mood to indulge her sister’s self-pity. “I have no desire to go back,” she said coolly.

  “That is because it’s already too late for you,” Lydia said. “You’re eighteen. You’ll never be a real lady.” She smirked. “You like being a savage, running about in the forest and villages. I’ve seen you sneak away at night, dressed in men’s clothing. Where do you go, Delia? Do you have a lover?”

  “Lydia!”

  “You think you can have everything you want, while I have nothing. It won’t be that way forever. I despise this place—”

  “Then why don’t you leave?”

  Lydia had flounced away, her face pale with anger. But Cordelia hadn’t believed that Lydia would ever take her scornful advice….

  Papa burst into the room, his hair mussed and his face drawn with grief.

  “What have you done?” he cried.

  Cordelia rose, her legs trembling beneath her. “Papa…”

  “I left Lydia in your care. She is only fifteen!”

  Cordelia stared at the floor. He was right, of course. Lydia was her responsibility, but she had chosen to go out that night, out to the native town where she could be free for a little while, where no one knew her for anything but a local boy in loose and slightly dirty clothing. She had gone to forget how much she dreaded the prospect of returning to England, where there would be no more freedom ever again.

  She had failed to anticipate that Lydia, who so disdained everything that wasn’t proper and civilized and English, would defy her own convictions and flee to the market…that a savage wild animal would escape its captors at the worst possible moment….

  “She may die,” Papa said, “because you abandoned your duty.”

  “I am sorry, Papa…”

  “You can’t be trusted. You’re selfish and wild, just like—” He broke off, his body seeming to shrink before Cordelia’s eyes. “I should never have taken you from England.”

  “No, Papa. It wasn’t—”

  But he fell into a chair and refused to speak again. Cordelia put him to bed and spent the rest of the night by Lydia’s side.

  Two nights later Lydia was dead.

  Cordelia opened her eyes. Donal was gazing at her face, his lips slightly parted.

  “I am deeply sorry for your loss,” he said.

  She worked her hands on the reins, unsure of how much she had said while she sojourned in the past. Evidently it had been enough.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  They rode for several minutes in silence. “You said that Lydia’s injuries were caused by an animal?” Donal asked.

  “Yes.”

  He continued to stare with those shadowed green eyes, drowning her in memories of vine-clad forests and the scent of tropical blossoms. “Your father blamed you for her death.”

  “It was many years ago.”

  Donal reined Boreas close and covered her hand with his. “Then why do you punish yourself for being human?”

  Cordelia snatched her hand away, dizzy with shock. Desdemona nickered. Cordelia looked up to find that they had reached the riverbank, where Theodora had already spread out a blanket beneath a spreading ash. The timing could not have been more fortunate. Cordelia let Desdemona have her head, and the mare carried her toward the blessed sanctuary of the river and her cousin’s company. She dismounted beside the water.

  Donal slid from Boreas’s back and loosed the stallion to join the mare, watching as Cordelia feigned a single-minded fascination with a cluster of flowers growing on the riverbank. She had been strongly affected by his questions, and he could hardly blame her. His own heart was pounding out a tattoo like a shaman’s drum. He had pushed too close to Cordelia’s hidden pain, and his own.

  Fool, he thought. What good comes of your prying? You’ve done nothing but added to her unhappiness. She undoubtedly wishes you in perdition, or at least a thousand miles from Gloucestershire.

  Just as he wished himself away, in some lost and unpeopled place where this morass of human emotions had no power to entrap him.

  He left Cordelia to recover her composure and joined Theodora on the blanket, making certain that his voice was quite steady before he spoke.

  “You have chosen a perfect spot, Theodora,” he said with a slight bow.

  She smiled and offered him a plate. “How was your ride?”

  “Very pleasant.” The untruth came too easily for comfort, and he was certain that Theodora saw through it.

  “I hope you like cucumber sandwiches,” she said, sparing him further questions. “If you will fetch the wine from the river, you may have some of Cook’s famous Madeira cake.”

  Donal did as Theodora asked. He and Cordelia avoided each other by unspoken agreement, and soon the three of them had settled down to the generous repast.

  Cordelia gave her full attention to her meal, eating with exaggerated daintiness. Theodora watched both of them under her dark lashes. Donal was under no illusion that she had failed to note the intensity of his exchanges with Cordelia. He suspected that the older woman was near bursting at the seams with speculation, but she knew well how to keep her thoughts to herself.

  The facade of peaceful normality continued as the cousins spoke in desultory tones of the latest fashion in bodice sleeves and the making of aromatic sachets. One might have assumed that Cordelia had never ventured beyond the confines of a typical Englishwoman’s narrow sphere. It seemed that was what she would have the world believe.

  “I have heard that Shapford has been taken for the summer,” Theodora said, waking Donal from his half doze. “Some foreign countess…Russian, I believe. Have you any news of her, Delia?”

  Cordelia arched a brow in surprise. “This is the first I have heard of it,” she said. “Russian, you say? That is one country Sir Geoffrey and I never visited. We shall call on her once she has had a chance to settle in.”

  �
�I should enjoy it,” Theodora said. “But we must be boring Dr. Fleming with all this talk of women’s affairs.”

  Donal blinked in the dappled shade and sat up. Theodora reclined comfortably against the ash’s trunk, her dove-gray skirts billowing about her like a mass of undisciplined rain clouds. Far from being relaxed by the pleasant warmth and the lazy drone of bees in the meadow, Cordelia sat stiffly upright as if some old governess were examining her for the tiniest lapse in conduct.

  “I brought my volume of Tennyson’s poetry with me,” Theodora said, removing a pair of spectacles from a small case in her reticule. “Shall I read?”

  “By all means,” Donal said.

  Theodora opened the well-thumbed book. “Have you a favorite?”

  “My familiarity with Tennyson is not all it might be. You choose.”

  She frowned over her spectacles and selected a page. “I believe you will like this one,” she said.

  “Oh blackbird! sing me something well:

  While all the neighbors shoot thee round,

  I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground,

  Where thou mayst warble, eat, and dwell.”

  She continued reading, lending pathos to the poet’s complaint that the blackbird, though given the freedom to roam “the range of lawn and park,” refused to sing.

  “Take warning! he that will not sing

  While yon sun prospers in the blue,

  Shall sing for want, ere leaves are new,

  Caught in the frozen palms of Spring.”

  Theodora set the book in her lap and met Donal’s gaze. “Is it not evocative?” she asked.

  Donal could see Cordelia out of the corner of his eye. She showed no sign of having connected the titular bird with herself, and yet Donal couldn’t help but believe that Theodora had deliberately chosen that particular poem for a reason. Like the blackbird, Cordelia was capable of music that she would or could not share with the world, for all her works of charity. She kept her truest song locked within her heart.

  “Shall I read another?” Theodora asked. She turned the pages. “The Lotos-Eaters.”

  “‘Courage!’ he said, and pointed toward the land,

  ‘This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.’

  In the afternoon they came unto a land

  In which it seemed always afternoon.

  All round the coast the languid air did swoon,

  Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.

  Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;

  And like a downward smoke, the slender stream

  Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.”

  Donal recognized the story of Odysseus and his crew’s visit to the exotic land of the Lotos-eaters, where his crew ate of seductive fruit. After they had partaken of the gift,

  “They sat them down upon the yellow sand,

  Between the sun and moon upon the shore;

  And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,

  Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore

  Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,

  Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.

  Then some one said, ‘We will return no more;’

  And all at once they sang, ‘Our island home

  Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.’”

  Theodora closed the book and folded up her spectacles. Donal shifted uncomfortably. Unless Cordelia had told her, she could have no idea that he intended to leave England, his “island home,” once he was finished with his work at Edgecott. Was it toward Cordelia to whom the poem was directed? If so, it was a secret message that Donal did not yet understand.

  Theodora obviously had no intention of addressing his silent questions. She began to gather the scraps of their luncheon, repacking the utensils and plates into their basket. Cordelia got up to saddle Desdemona, and Donal followed to assist her.

  There was a brittleness to Cordelia’s motions, a tension that told Donal he wasn’t alone in his reaction to the poems. He tightened the mare’s girth strap without speaking and called Boreas. The stallion bobbed his head.

  “I know,” Donal said, scratching the horse between his ears. “You’ve been still too long.”

  “Then perhaps we’ll have that race you suggested,” Cordelia said behind him.

  He turned to see her face flushed and her eyes feverishly bright with challenge. Desdemona gave a piercing whinny, and Boreas rolled his eyes.

  “Well?” Cordelia said. “Martin said you had worked wonders with Boreas. Or have you lost your nerve?”

  Donal glanced toward Theodora. “Your cousin—”

  “—can find her own way back to Edgecott,” Cordelia finished. She led Desdemona beside a flat stone and mounted with far more speed than grace. “Are you ready?”

  Donal jumped onto Boreas’s back and collected the reins, drawn into the ferment of Cordelia’s extraordinary mood.

  “On my mark,” Cordelia said. “Ready, steady…go!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BENNET WINTOUR, Viscount Inglesham, watched the dark bay stallion race up the lane at breakneck speed, its long legs flying, and did his best to ignore the rider so expertly balanced in the saddle.

  “It’s just as I told you, m’lord,” Gallagher said. “That devil beast is as fast as they come. He wasn’t worth a ha’ penny when the Missus brought him here, but since the animal doctor came…”

  The animal doctor. Inglesham scowled and slapped his gloves against his hand. He’d taken a dislike to Fleming from the moment they’d met in London, but he’d never expected to meet him again. Far less had he dreamed that the fellow would turn up at Edgecott, favored by Cordelia and eating at her table as if he were her equal.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it. Not by half.

  It was Sir Geoffrey’s scrawled letter that had brought Inglesham back to Edgecott in so untimely a fashion, but he had not found Cordelia available when he arrived. Oh, no. She had been out with Fleming on a “picnic,” of all things, and now she galloped back to the stable like an Amazon, hot on Fleming’s heels.

  She was laughing. Cordelia, who seldom had more than a formal smile for him, a friend and neighbor she’d known all her life. The man she was to marry.

  “I see you don’t like him either, m’lord,” Gallagher said. “He’s an upstart, that one.”

  Inglesham looked askance at the groom. “If what you say is true, he managed what you could not. He tamed that animal and made it run for him.”

  “Aye.” Gallagher turned his head to spit and stopped at the expression on Inglesham’s face. “There ain’t many better with horses than me, that’s certain. But Fleming…” He made a furtive warding gesture with one hand. “What he did with that beast ain’t normal, your lordship.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve watched him. We know his kind in Ireland. He’s—”

  Inglesham never heard the rest of the groom’s opinion, for Boreas dashed into the stableyard, spraying gravel with his hooves, and slid to a halt. Fleming was smiling as he twisted in the saddle to watch Cordelia ride up behind him. Her hair had come loose from its pins and straggled about her shoulders; even from several yards away Inglesham could see that her eyes shone with excitement. She didn’t notice Inglesham at all.

  “Very well,” she said, still laughing and breathless, “I concede the victory to Boreas. And only to him, mind you!”

  Fleming inclined his head. “On behalf of Boreas, I accept your gracious concession.” He bent over the stallion’s neck and whispered in its ear. Boreas walked to Cordelia’s horse, nuzzling the mare while Fleming gazed at Cordelia with far too much familiarity. He spoke in a voice too soft for Inglesham to hear. Cordelia’s fair skin flushed with pleasure.

  Inglesham tossed his gloves to the ground and strode into the yard, carefully shaping his expression to one of pleasant neutrality.

  “Ah,” he said, “Mrs. Hardcastle. I trust you had a pleasant ride?”

  Her head snapped about in surprise
. “Lord Inglesham!” Her flush deepened as Gallagher appeared to help her dismount. With hardly a glance at Fleming she began to rearrange her hair, belatedly aware of how wild she must appear to her servants and intended.

  “Lord Inglesham,” she repeated, smoothing her skirts with nervous hands, “I did not know you were at Edgecott.”

  He bowed. “Alas, I arrived after you had already left.”

  She attempted a smile. “I’m sorry to have missed you. I thought you were in London….”

  “My business concluded more quickly than I anticipated.” He looked past her to Fleming, who had dismounted and held Boreas’s reins in a white-knuckled fist. “I see that you were not without company in my absence.”

  Cordelia followed his gaze. “No. I…Theodora is returning in the dog cart. Dr. Fleming felt that Boreas might benefit from a hard run.” She gestured toward Fleming. “I believe I introduced you in London. Lord Inglesham, you must remember Donal Fleming….”

  “How can I forget the extraordinary circumstances of our first meeting?” Inglesham said. He smiled coolly at Fleming, remembering their brief conversation outside the house when the man had first arrived. It was clear that Fleming remembered the exchange as well, for all that he had failed to heed Inglesham’s advice about keeping to a servant’s place. “Mrs. Hardcastle has informed me that you were working as a consultant at the Zoological Gardens.”

  Fleming nodded brusquely. “I was.”

  “And now you are here in our quiet little county. You must find it very dull, Doctor, to spend your time taming horses instead of wild elephants.”

  Fleming loosened his grip on the stallion’s reins and shifted his weight, settling into a deceptively relaxed posture that hinted of both self-assurance and insolence.

  “If you have any elephants at hand, Lord Inglesham,” he said, “I will be glad to do what I can for them.”

  “I shall keep that in mind.” Inglesham flicked a bit of dust from his lapel. “I can see that I must find you more engaging employment, Fleming, so that you will not feel compelled to fill up your hours performing tasks that are beyond the scope of your profession.”