The Stanforth Secrets

by Jo Beverley

  “You’d done your part,” said Randal, meeting the other man’s brown eyes. “And what’s this about problems? Is the estate encumbered?”

  Justin realized he wasn’t sure how much he could reveal. Probably nothing, even though he’d trust Randal with his life and, as a grandson of the Dowager Duchess of Tyne, he was perhaps officially approved. But then, he was also a cousin of the suspect Chloe.

  “No. In fact, it’s in surprisingly good heart for property which passed through both Stephen’s hands and Uncle George’s. It’s just in a bit of a muddle. I don’t know if you followed the saga?”

  “Of course. Poor Stephen died in September of last year and your fat Uncle George succeeded him. Knowing George, I assume the reason he didn’t fritter away the whole fortune was he only lived till February and chose to spend that time at Delamere. Must have been the charms of his bucolic beauty, Belinda.”

  Justin choked on his Madeira at the tone of his friend’s voice. “Have you seen her then? Chloe has mentioned her in letters, but never with a description. I assume she must be a raving beauty to have got Uncle George to marry her.”

  “Well,” said Randal with amusement, “I don’t know about that. Henry Staines says he saw them in Lancaster at Christmas and she’s an ordinary sort of girl with gingerish hair. The County were a little put out at having to entertain her, I gather, though he did admit her manners to be acceptable and her accent only slight.”

  Justin looked blank. “Why the hell did Uncle George marry her, I wonder? Oh well. Love is a strange business. What about you, Randal? Cupid’s arrow found you yet? If you were to get married and set up your nursery, you’d be free to rush off to the wars eventually.”

  Lord Randal looked down at his glass. “Rather a long-term project, ain’t it? Actually, I don’t think I’m the marrying kind. What of you? You’re the last of the Stanforths. You’ll have to do your duty.”

  “I suppose so,” said Justin casually. “But not for a while. First I must go up to Delamere and see how things are fixed.”

  “Tell you what, Justin. How would it be if I came with you? Town’s devilish dull. Verderan killed Brightly Carstock in August, good riddance. Ver’s in Ireland to let the heat die down. David became Lord Wraybourne a few months back and he’s off in deep mourning, being a proper Lord and Master. Besides, Grandmama may want to return to the Towers now, and I could escort her. Chloe too, if she wanted to come.”

  Justin looked up quickly. “Chloe will be welcome to consider Delamere her home. I was of the impression your family didn’t accept her.”

  “No. Her family ain’t too hot for her, my Uncle William and my horrible Aunt Susan, that is. I know the Ashbys come either starched or saucy, but they’re an extreme case of the starched, and Chloe’s an extreme case of the saucy, along with yours truly. Chloe and I have always been good friends. That’s the only reason I didn’t blow Stephen’s brains out for running off with her. Anyone who got her out of that house was doing her a favor, but I won’t say I didn’t reconsider a few times. There was no malice in him, but he made a damned poor husband, Justin.”

  The viscount swirled the last of his wine in the crystal glass. “I know. It probably wouldn’t have come to anything, Randal—his mad passion for Chloe—if I hadn’t lent a hand. You knew Stephen. He would have forgotten all about it in weeks. He appeared to be madly in love though, and she was, as you say, so out of place in that house. . . .” He sighed. “One of the reasons I bought my commission was so I didn’t have to watch what I had wrought.”

  Lord Randal’s eyes sharpened a little, and a smile twitched his well-shaped lips. “Well. Chloe has turned out to be a more balanced Ashby than you might expect. I look forward to seeing her again. Am I invited?”

  Justin considered. He could see no harm in taking Randal along, and no plausible reason to refuse the request. The company would be welcome, and if matters turned nasty at Delamere, Justin could imagine no one he’d rather have at his side than Lord Randal Ashby.

  3

  WITH A SENSE OF PREMONITION, Chloe heard the sound of wheels and hooves on the coast road behind her. She allowed herself to hope, however, that they would sweep past and be on their way to the vicarage or Troughton House, anywhere but Delamere. After all, fate could not be so cruel as to have her meet Justin again for the first time in four years when she was covered in mud. Half an hour before, a silly young horse had unceremoniously dumped her onto the damp sands of Half-Moon Bay and then taken off for the stables.

  There was a clear word of command, however, and the vehicle stopped. With resignation Chloe turned to confront not one but two smart equipages with grooms already at the horses’ heads and two equally smart young gentlemen laughing at her as they leapt down from their seats. Hands on hips, Chloe glared at her cousin Randal, looking beautiful as always, and her cousin-in-law, Justin, thinner, darker, tougher-looking, but still handsome. Still heart-tuggingly like her dead husband.

  “Chloe?” Justin said in surprise. More surprise than just at seeing her trudging along the road. Had she perhaps changed too?

  With some notion of showing him she was no longer a hoyden, she dropped a curtsy. “Welcome home, Lord Stanforth.”

  His brows went up and he grinned as he bowed. “Thank you, Lady Stanforth.”

  This appealed to Chloe’s sense of the ridiculous and she burst out laughing. “I warn you there’s a plenitude of Lady Stanforths these days. Two a penny, we are.” Chloe wanted to use his name. Once he’d been Justin to her, but now she felt . . . shy? Surely not.

  She turned quickly to her cousin, and Randal swept her up for a hearty kiss. “You’re looking very fetching, Chloe. It must be the smears of mud which are the finishing touch.”

  “Regulation wear in Lancashire,” she remarked and rubbed her dirty gloved finger down his elegant nose. “Can one of you take me up back to the Hall?”

  As she was standing by his side, it should surely have been Randal who made the offer, and yet somehow she found herself handed up into Justin’s curricle. She caught a glint of familiar amusement in her cousin’s bright blue eyes. What was Randal up to now?

  Justin took up the reins and sent his groom to ride behind the other vehicle. “I do hope you’re going to tell me how you came to take a toss, Chloe. It must be an unheard-of event.”

  “Very nearly,” she agreed as she arranged the skirts of her ruby-red habit and took control of her agitated nerves. “But everyone gets thrown now and again. I was on a young horse and woolgathering when a seagull chose to fly at us. That is the sum of it.”

  “Is the horse likely to be hereabouts? Perhaps Corrigan could find it.”

  “Oh, Mercury will be home by now, I’m sure, the discourteous beast.”

  “How is everything at the Hall?” Justin asked. “I find it difficult to think of it as my home, even though I spent many happy times here as a boy.”

  He spoke so casually, thought Chloe. As if it wasn’t four years since they had last met, since that moment . . . They had never spoken of it, that flash of awareness, and so she couldn’t be certain he had felt it as much as she. She had told herself over and over it had been imagined, and yet here she was, within moments of meeting him, her senses disordered.

  It would not do. She had meant every word when she said she would not bind herself again to a Dashing Delamere.

  She sternly controlled her thoughts and addressed the businesslike subject. “Everything is running smoothly. Scarthwait, who was Stephen’s manager, has carried on, and he is very efficient. You’ll find the land in good heart.”

  “I was a little surprised to find how well-to-do I am. After the estate had been through Stephen’s hands, and then Uncle George’s, I expected to inherit nothing but debts.”

  “That is unfair,” said Chloe sharply. “Stephen may not have been organized, but he left everything to Scarthwait. And he was not terribly expensive. He didn’t gamble, you know.”

  “Except with his life,” said Justin quie
tly and drew the horses up again, waving Randal to pass them and go ahead. He turned to Chloe. “My wits and manners must have both gone begging. I’m very sorry, Chloe, for speaking like that. I wrote, after I had the news, but I’ll say again how sorry I was to hear of Stephen’s death. It has been a year, so I suppose the first pain must have faded but . . .”

  “Oh please don’t, Justin,” said Chloe, looking away, for he was bringing tears to her eyes. “As you say, it is so long ago now. My mourning is past, and there’s no point in going over the ground again.”

  He covered one of her hands with his for a moment. Chloe felt the warmth of it through two gloves, a warmth which swept through her. Her breath caught. Then he clicked the horses to a walk. They drove in silence a little way.

  How would he feel if he knew her hypocrisy? That the tears had come from sadness at not feeling more bereft?

  “How long have you been in England, Justin?” she asked, to break the silence. It was only then she realized she had used his name twice without the heavens falling in.

  “Three weeks. I wrote as soon as I reached London.”

  “Yes, I received it,” said Chloe, summoning up a lighter tone. “With relief and prayers to the Lord, I assure you. I cannot wait to drop the responsibility for Delamere in your lap and flee to a more comfortable place. What with the Dowager wandering the place scaring the servants, and the problem of quite how to treat Belinda, particularly when there was a chance she would be the mother of the next viscount. . . . I have been disturbed in the night by ghosts, and have had to handle a stream of tenants complaining about the sudden influx of soldiers. Some imbecile in London sent them because of rumors of smugglers hereabout. Smugglers! In Lancashire! If it wasn’t for Grandmama, I think I would have gone mad.”

  Justin had tried to interrupt at various points in this tirade but now he only said, with a frown, “Ghosts? Delamere Hall has never been haunted to my knowledge.”

  “Or to mine,” said Chloe, her mood lightened by having released some of her annoyance. “But there have been strange noises in the night. Disturbances to furniture and particularly to the cellars. As the chimney of my room passes down by the storage rooms, I have been awakened sometimes by noises. It isn’t only I who hear them, either. I usually find Grandmama, who is a light sleeper, there ahead of me. Twice the pantries were found in disarray and,” she said forcefully, “I assure you we do not have rats.”

  He looked sharply at her, but his voice was casual as he said, “I didn’t know ghosts were interested in turnips and potatoes.”

  “Nor did I. This one seems mainly interested in apples. Shades of Adam and Eve?”

  “I think I would be more likely to look for a dishonest servant than a spirit,” he suggested. “Are any of the servants new?”

  “No,” said Chloe. Then added, “Well, Matthew, the footman, has not been with us long. Delamere had been without a footman for a while, since Stephen was so rarely in residence and never entertained here. Uncle George hired him. I think Matthew was recommended by George’s old friend, Humphrey Macy. Macy spent a lot of time at Delamere after George inherited. I was very grateful for it. For one thing he has a normal share of sense, and George would listen to him.”

  The road had swung away from the coast, and ran now between hedges. Soon it would pass the driveway to the Hall.

  “And what sort is this Matthew?” said Justin. “Honest?”

  “I think so, or I would have dismissed him. He seems to have settled in here very well, and I have no reason to think he sneaks around the pantries stealing fruit. For one thing, the staff are well fed at Delamere. Now, however,” Chloe added with satisfaction, “it is entirely your problem, thank goodness, and you will do as you think best.”

  She saw his lips twitch with amusement.

  Chloe felt a surprising spurt of satisfaction to have made him smile. He was too solemn for a Dashing Delamere and there were shadows in those warm brown eyes. She remembered the Justin of six years before, bubbling with lighthearted enthusiasm for life, just like Stephen. In the short time before she left to make a new life for herself, it wouldn’t hurt to brighten his spirits.

  Justin swung the curricle between the gates of Delamere Hall and sighed.

  “It must be strange for you,” Chloe said softly, “coming here like this.”

  “Yes it is. I can’t accept yet that Stephen is dead. He was always so full of life. But then I sometimes feel a hundred years old. At least I’ve had this year to accustom myself, though it must have been an awkward time here. Was George’s wife distressed to give birth to a girl?”

  “Belinda is not given to drama but she was disappointed, I think. As mother of the viscount, she could have ruled at Delamere. She thinks little Dorinda gives her a right to live at the Hall, and I suppose she may be correct—Oh dear.”

  The last two words were caused by a figure that had just stepped out from the rhododendrons into the middle of the drive—an elderly lady in the flowing skirts of the last century. Justin reined in his horse and glanced at Chloe.

  “That’s your Aunt Sophronia,” she said quietly. “It must be one of her bad days. Wherever is her companion?”

  Justin looked at the Dowager Lady Stanforth with astonishment, and she glowered at them.

  “What are you doing that is evil?” she asked fiercely.

  “My God,” muttered Justin.

  Chloe leapt down from the carriage. “Oh dear. Why don’t you drive her up to the house?”

  “While you walk?” he said in consternation, and then shrugged. “If you can persuade her up here.”

  The elderly lady greeted Chloe with a sharp, “Hussy!” and made as if to pull away from her hands. Then she recognized her daughter-in-law and her mood changed. She happily allowed herself to be hoisted up into the curricle. Justin looked over her head at Chloe.

  “I feel terrible at leaving you here.”

  “You feel terrible at being alone with her,” she replied quietly with a grin. “Don’t worry. She’s harmless. And no, I am not driving your team even if they are tied. It is no distance. When you get to the Hall, they’ll take care of her.”

  He accepted his orders and drove on.

  “A very pleasant gel,” said the Dowager in the best manner of a Society Lady. “Niece of the Duke of Tyne, you know.”

  Justin looked at her and found that, apart from her clothes, she seemed completely normal. Many elderly ladies clung to the styles of their youth, not liking the high waists and straight skirts of fashion. He was shocked, however, at the deterioration in her since he had last been at Delamere. Aunt Sophronia looked to be well over sixty and yet he doubted she had reached fifty yet. He remembered when he had first visited Delamere at age ten. Then his aunt had been a plump and pretty woman with a merry sense of humor.

  “Yes, I know,” he said in reply to her comment, and got no response. He remembered the lady’s hearing had been failing for years.

  “How are you, Aunt Sophronia?” he shouted.

  “Very well, thank you,” she said. “But I am your mother, Stephen. Try to remember these things. I am sure I don’t know where you have been recently but you are far too brown. I have a lotion. . . .” Her voice trailed off. After a bewildered pause, she said, “Potpourri is quite delightful.”

  Justin stared at the Dowager, wondering what response to make. As the lady was looking ahead and humming a little song to herself, he decided to make none. He had to confess, however, that the thought that he was now responsible for her terrified him more than enemy fire.

  They arrived in front of the house and servants came forward. As soon as someone was at the horses’ heads Justin went around to assist his aunt to the ground. “I’m not Stephen,” he shouted, feeling more than a little foolish, “I’m Justin.”

  The Dowager looked at him. “I suppose you are,” she said with a frown. Then she smiled sadly. “First Stephen, then George, now you. You see,” she said, with a smile that hinted at the teasing beauty of her
youth, “I do know what is going on. Do you want an apple?”

  Justin looked at her with close attention.

  “Why?” he said loudly, wishing he could whisper as seemed more appropriate. “Do you have one for me?”

  She looked at him with well-bred astonishment. “Why would I have an apple with me? I haven’t the teeth for one. But Stephen was coming here to pick apples, and George kept laughing whenever anyone asked for an apple. I don’t think eating apples is particularly humorous, do you? George was dicked in the nob, though, and greedy. Even the Duchess is always asking for apples. Personally, I like a grape. Remind me to give you that lotion, dear. . . .”

  With a fond tap on his cheek, the Dowager Lady Stanforth allowed herself to be led off by her anxious companion, leaving Justin staring after her.

  He thought about driving back to pick up Chloe but saw she was already in sight, walking at her usual brisk pace. She had never been a dawdler.

  Chloe had been hurrying directly toward the house. She was later than expected and there would be matters to be handled, especially with the advent of two young men of fashion.

  When she saw Justin still standing by his carriage, however, she slowed her pace. She didn’t want to speak to him again just yet. It wasn’t only her grubby habit, but the effect he was having on her. She tried to tell herself it was just his resemblance to Stephen, but that wasn’t so strong, not now Justin had toughened. . . . Perhaps it was simply that she’d grown unaccustomed to having gentlemen around. Sir Cedric Troughton from nearby Troughton House was the only regular caller, and there was no comparison between formal Sir Cedric and Justin Delamere.

  When Chloe saw Justin turn to Randal and take him into the Hall she speeded up again but changed course to use the conservatory door. She could make her way to her room from there without any chance of bumping into the new Lord Stanforth.

  How strange the words “Lord Stanforth” had become. She had always associated them with her warm-hearted, feckless butterfly of a husband. Then they had designated fat, greedy, sneaky Uncle George. Now they described Justin, an enigma to her.