by Mary Balogh
More head scratching. “Some village,” the coachman said vaguely. “Can’t remember what it was called, if I ever knew. They was having some big fair there over something or other. The church roof, maybe.” He did, however, remember the name of the town to which he had taken his passengers the following day. “I really ought to have been paid more for my trouble,” he added, squinting shrewdly at Joel. “Cost me a bundle, that trip did.”
“I believe you got off lightly,” Joel told him. “Your journey, for which you had been paid in full, was cut short when you were no longer required to go the whole distance, and Miss Kingsley apparently did not insist upon either a refund for the untraveled portion of the journey or recompense for the unexpected night she was forced to spend at an inn. Did she say anything to you the next day? About who the gentleman was or where she was planning to go in another carriage?”
But there was no further information to be got out of the man, and he dropped no more hints about the losses he had incurred during the ill-fated journey. He seemed somewhat disconcerted by Avery’s languid mention of his unhappy temper and Joel’s grim displeasure.
When Joel and Avery arrived at Mrs. Kingsley’s house on the Royal Crescent, they found every member of both families gathered in the sitting room, all looking identically anxious, with the exception of the children. Jacob was asleep in Abigail’s arms, and Sarah, the younger of Camille and Joel’s adopted daughters, was curled up on her mother’s lap, hovering between sleeping and waking, though she roused herself sufficiently to greet her papa with a wide smile. Winifred, the elder of the adopted daughters, was tickling and smoothing a hand over the bald head of Josephine, Anna and Avery’s baby.
As soon as Joel had given his report, the whole family would have gone tearing off in pursuit of Viola and the mysterious gentleman, who quickly assumed sinister proportions in the eyes of many of them, if Avery had not imposed silence and then reason upon the gathering with the mere lifting of one finger. He then observed that they would resemble a traveling circus and would surely move across the countryside at the speed of one if they all went together.
“I will go alone,” Joel said.
“I’ll come too, Joel,” Alexander, Earl of Riverdale, told him. “I am head of the family, after all, and you may need some assistance. This . . . man is an unknown quantity.”
“You are not going without me, Joel,” Abigail announced with a voice that quavered slightly. “I blame myself for all this. If I had gone with Mama, everything would have been different.”
“If she had taken my carriage and a few hefty servants and a maid,” her aunt Louise, the dowager duchess, said, “everything would certainly have been different. They would have dealt with the pretensions of that man, whoever he is, and sent him packing in some disarray.”
“I am going with you,” Abigail said again.
“And I will accompany you to give you countenance, Abby,” Elizabeth, Lady Overfield, said. “Oh, do not look at me that way, Alex. Of course Abby wants to go search for her mama. And of course another lady must go with her. Wren cannot go in her condition. Why not your sister, then? And, Joel, do not you look at me that way. We may all be needed in one way or another.”
“I do think that is sensible, Elizabeth,” Lady Matilda Westcott, the eldest of Viola’s former sisters-in-law, said in her strident voice. “It would be most improper for two gentlemen to go alone, even if they are Viola’s relatives. What would they do when they find her? And it would be out of the question for Abigail to accompany them without a chaperon.”
That settled the matter. All four of them would go in pursuit, though it was very possible the trail would run cold at the town where Viola had last been seen. Where she had gone no one could begin to guess. Or with whom. That was the question that loomed largest.
They set off before midafternoon in the earl’s carriage, waved on their way by the other family members gathered outside the house on the Royal Crescent. Some of them were tearful, including Camille and Winifred. Sarah clung to Camille’s skirts, looking soulful after her father had hugged and kissed her and climbed into the carriage without taking her too. Jacob was asleep again in his great-aunt Mary Kingsley’s arms.
* * *
• • •
Marcel, Marquess of Dorchester, was not missed at first. André arrived duly at Redcliffe Court, bringing with him the explanation that his brother had been unavoidably detained but would follow shortly. No one peppered him with awkward questions. No one was particularly surprised. That did not mean they were all happy.
Jane and Charles Morrow, as Marcel had predicted, were more relieved than chagrined over the delay. They were not fond of their brother-in-law. Worse, they had strong moral reservations about his possible influence over his children. If Adeline had not been such a silly ninnyhammer, they often assured each other, she would have married someone of altogether stronger moral fiber and there would be no danger of her children backsliding into sin and debauchery. However, she had been both silly and a ninnyhammer, and they could only hope that their brother-in-law’s visits remained both brief and infrequent and that the strength of their own moral influence over their niece and nephew would prove stronger than the effect of heredity.
The marchioness, Marcel’s elderly aunt, and Isabelle, Lady Ortt, her daughter, were more divided in their feelings. On the one hand, they were disappointed that they must wait longer for the marquess’s return and the blistering setdown he was sure to deal the upstart Morrows, who behaved for all the world as though they owned Redcliffe and everyone and everything in it. The two ladies detested the couple heartily. Lord Ortt merely stayed out of their way and had no known opinion of Marcel, whom he avoided even more diligently when they happened to be beneath the same roof. On the other hand, the dowager and her daughter were deeply immersed in the planning of an increasingly elaborate wedding for Margaret, Isabelle’s youngest daughter, and both entertained a gnawing anxiety that the marquess, without saying a word but with a mere lifting of his eyebrows in that way he had of expressing displeasure, might spell doom to their carefully laid schemes.
André was reasonably content, at least at first, to hide out from his creditors and from the shame of his gaming debts until his brother should choose to amble homeward.
It was the normally placid, biddable twins who were the problem.
All the ladies had been in the drawing room when André arrived, all usefully employed with needlework or tatting or knitting. Lord Ortt was there too, his head hidden behind a newspaper. And Bertrand Lamarr, Viscount Watley, was reading a book until the sound of an approaching carriage caused them all to raise their heads. He got to his feet and went to look out the window.
“Is it he, Bert?” Lady Estelle Lamarr asked eagerly.
“It looks like his carriage,” he said. “Yes, it is.”
Estelle would have run downstairs to greet her father on the terrace, but she looked toward her aunt first, and that lady shook her head slightly and smiled fondly. It was not seemly for a young lady to go dashing about the house, displaying unbridled emotion. Estelle looked at Bertrand, who had turned from the window, and a silent message passed between them, as it often did. They were not identical twins, of course, so there was not that almost psychic bond that many identical twins shared. Nevertheless, they knew each other very well indeed, having been almost inseparable since birth. Estelle returned her attention to her embroidery, and Bertrand stayed where he was, much as he would have loved to dash down to meet his father himself.
Lord Ortt slipped from the room unnoticed.
And then their uncle André strode into the room. Alone.
“Father is not with you?” Estelle asked in clear dismay.
That was when he gave his vague explanation about his brother’s having been unavoidably delayed.
“But he wrote to say he was on the way,” Estelle said. “I have planned a party here for
his fortieth birthday the week after next. I begged Aunt Jane to let me, and she said it would be good training for me.”
“I daresay he will be here long before then,” André assured her cheerfully. “How do you do, Aunt Olwen? And Isabelle? Margaret?” He did the rounds of the room, bowing to each of the ladies in turn.
“I knew he would not come,” Bertrand said. “I told you so, Stell.”
“Oh you did not,” she protested.
“And I warned you that your father is sometimes unpredictable,” their aunt Jane said kindly. “I warned you too, Estelle, that he may not be as delighted as you hope at the prospect of a party in his honor here in the country. The company is bound to seem insipid to a man of his tastes. It will probably be just as well if he does not come in time, though I hate to see you spurned and disappointed.”
“Yes, Aunt Jane,” Estelle said as she resumed work on her embroidery.
“He has never spurned us,” Bertrand said, but he spoke quietly enough that his aunt either genuinely did not hear or wisely chose not to comment.
Their father had still not come after a week had passed or sent word to say when he would be there—if he came at all. Estelle grew steadily unhappier as the hope that he would arrive in time for his birthday grew slimmer. Bertrand, unhappy on his own account but even unhappier on his sister’s, tackled their uncle André about the true cause of the unavoidable delay—and then reported to his sister in her room.
By the time he had finished, Estelle had grown unaccustomedly angry—she had been taught that a lady never allowed strong feeling to rob her of a calm dignity. “I suppose,” she said, “that if he set off with Uncle André and then decided to stay in some godforsaken village—were those his exact words, Bert?—I suppose that if he did that and even deliberately stranded himself there without his carriage, there can be only one of two explanations.”
“He found a card game or a cockfight or some such thing,” he said.
“Or a woman.” She spoke with great bitterness.
“I say, Stell, Aunt Jane would have a fit of the vapors if she could hear you say that,” he said.
Her eyes were swimming with tears when she lifted her face to his. “I think it was a woman,” she said.
“Are you thinking what I am thinking?” he asked after they had stared at each other glumly for a few moments. His nostrils flared with a sudden anger to match hers.
“Yes, I certainly am,” she said. “It is time we went to find him. And bring him home. He is not going to ruin the only party I have ever planned. He is simply not. I have had enough.”
“That’s the spirit, Stell,” he said, clapping a hand on her shoulder and squeezing. “We are not children any longer. It is time we asserted ourselves. Let’s go find Uncle André again. He was in the billiard room five minutes ago.”
He still was.
“He could be anywhere by now,” André told them, chalking the end of his cue as though hopeful he was going to be able to resume his solitary game. “I really cannot imagine him staying in that village for longer than a day or two at most. The Lord knows where he went after leaving there or where he is now. There is never any knowing with your father.”
But they went anyway. They set off the following day on a journey they were fully aware might very well prove fruitless. Four of them. Estelle and Bertrand had insisted that their uncle go with them in order to lead them to the village where he had left their father, since he could not remember the name of it. To be fair, he went without any great protest. Redcliffe did not offer much by way of entertainment or congenial company, but he could not go off anywhere alone, since his pockets were sadly to let and creditors might pounce if he went to his rooms in London or to any of his usual haunts. And it was in his own interest as well as that of his niece and nephew to find his brother and persuade him to come home and make good on his promise to lend the money to pay the more pressing of André’s debts. The fourth in their company was Jane Morrow, who went after the failure of all her attempts to dissuade, command, wheedle, and threaten two young people who had never before in their lives given her a moment’s trouble.
“I cannot think what has got into them,” she had complained to her husband when he too had failed to talk sense into his wife’s niece and nephew. “Unless it is bad blood showing itself at last. I shall do all in my power to prevent that from prevailing, however, for Adeline’s sake. Oh, I could cheerfully wring that man’s neck, and I may do it too if we find him, which is very unlikely. It would be easier to find a needle in a haystack, I daresay.”
She was more annoyed than she could remember being since Adeline had insisted upon marrying a young man whose only claim to fame apart from extraordinary good looks had been his wildness. On this occasion she had even threatened to wash her hands of the twins if they defied her wishes. But she went. Duty was too strongly ingrained in her to be ignored. Oh, and affection too, though she did not like to admit to any gentle feelings for such disobedient children.
But she would have a word or two to say to her brother- in-law the very next time she saw him, even though she was very well aware that he would merely look at her in that way he had and finger the handle of his quizzing glass and make her feel like a worm crawling across the dirt before his feet.
How dared he disappoint his children?
Nine
The Marquess of Dorchester employed a man of business to manage his investments and numerous properties, among them the cottage in Devonshire. He considered the man upright, honest, and trustworthy, and therefore did not bother his own head too much with details. However, he did seem to recall that the Devonshire property was tended and maintained by a resident housekeeper and a handyman, conveniently husband and wife, who had stayed on after his great-aunt’s death. He could not remember their name when he sent a letter notifying them of his imminent arrival with a guest and of his intent to remain there for a couple of weeks or so. He addressed the letter simply to the housekeeper. As far as he remembered from a few boyhood visits, there were no other dwellings close by, and the nearest town was several miles to the west. Reaching it entailed either a lengthy and tedious journey northward by carriage to a ford and a sturdy bridge across the river, or a more direct descent of the steep hillside below the cottage by foot or on horseback to a narrow stone bridge and a steep ascent of the hill on the other side.
In either case, one did not simply dash into town to purchase an item or two whenever the whim took one. It would not seem wise, then, to arrive unannounced to the discovery that there was virtually no food in the house or other essential supplies.
They arrived on a warm, sunny afternoon, though there had been a hint of autumn in the air earlier. It was much as Marcel remembered it, though he had forgotten the small village on the eastern side of the valley, closer to the house than the town on the other side. The village was really little more than a church and a tavern and a cluster of houses, however, in a slight dip of land with a view out to sea. What the people who lived there did for a living and for entertainment was anyone’s guess. His guess was that the tavern did a roaring trade, and perhaps the church too.
The valley itself was obscured for the beholder by a slight rise and a few clusters of trees until one came upon it suddenly, a wide swath of greenery sliced into the land with a river flowing through the bottom of it. Its long slopes were carpeted in rich green ferns and shaded by trees, some of which were beginning to show signs of autumn. The cottage, just as he remembered it, was on the near hillside, far enough down the slope to be invisible until one could see the whole valley plunging beneath one’s feet. It had no private garden, though its stone walls were festooned with ivy and other climbing plants. The valley was its garden.
There was a way down to it even for the carriage. A wide dirt laneway approached it from some distance to the north rather than from directly above, in order to minimize the slope. It really was quite impr
essive if one favored remote rural living. Or if one were seeking out a cozy love nest where one was unlikely to be distracted or disturbed.
For his purposes it was perfection itself.
“Oh my goodness.” Viola sat forward in her seat as the carriage topped the rise and began its careful descent to the house. “This is magnificent, Marcel.” She was looking from side to side through the windows, trying to see everything at once.
And it really was. Calling the house a cottage was somewhat misleading, for it was no hovel. Neither was it a mansion, however. There were six—or was it eight?—bedchambers abovestairs and an equivalent number of rooms downstairs, variously designated in his great-aunt’s time by names like parlor, sewing room, morning room, and writing room. It was built of yellowish stone with a tile roof, in which there were dormer windows, presumably belonging to the servants’ quarters. The plants that grew on the walls looked well tended. A thread of smoke rose straight into the sky from a wide chimney. There was a stable block off to one side and a chicken coop.
“What a beautiful house,” she said. “But it must surely have been built originally by a recluse. There is no other building in sight.”
“Or by a romantic,” he said. “Perhaps by a man who wished to escape the bothers of life with a woman of his choosing.”
She turned her head to look at him. There had been a strange tension between them all day with the knowledge that they were approaching their destination. He had been thinking that perhaps he ought not to have suggested this place or any specific destination. For the very nature of running away surely implied no fixed direction, but rather a constant wandering onward as inclination led. They had had a taste of the pleasures of it on the way here.
“Perhaps,” she said, “we are being disrespectful to your great-aunt’s memory.”
“Family lore has it,” he told her, “whispered behind hands, I might add, but children have ears at full attention when they hear whispers. Family lore has it that she lived here for years and years with another woman, euphemistically known as her dearest friend and companion, until that other woman died. And then she lived on here, solitary and doubtless lonely and respectable enough once more to be visited by family members. Respectable and rich. It was during those later years that I was brought here and climbed onto her lap and into her heart—and her will.”