"And where is my grandson?"
"Why, I suppose Norman is—"
"Is here!" Shaking her cane impatiently, and hindering Powers by assisting in the removal of Lisette's cloak, her ladyship barked. "You know very well to whom I refer. Don't be missish! Ain't the time!"
Lisette submitted to being hurried to the stairs. "If you mean Strand, ma'am, I neither know nor care! As usual, he blamed me for this, as though—"
"Stuff! The poor lad had good reason, I suspect. Beatrice is here!"
Lisette's lips tightened. The perfect end of a perfect day! "How nice," she said dryly.
"It ain't. At all. Good gad, how these stairs tire my poor old limbs. Your arm, Madam Hauteur! Now, when we meet your sister, you will be so kind as to follow my lead!"
Gently aiding this frail old tyrant into the drawing room, Lisette checked momentarily. Beatrice sat huddled on the sofa and was in the act of accepting the glass of wine Norman offered. Much shocked, Lisette thought her sister looked to have aged ten years. Her usually elegant coiffure was tumbled and untidy, with wisps hanging at all angles. Her dress was creased, her half-boots muddied, and she looked positively shrunken. But worst of all was the expression on her ashen features, an expression that went beyond grief to a dulled resignation that was appalling.
Forgetting everything except that this was her sister, Lisette started forward with a little instinctive cry of sympathy. She was restrained by a claw of a hand.
Norman turned to them and gave a gesture of helplessness, then put down the wine and came to give Lisette a kiss, and whisper, "Another bumble broth! Gad! What a family! Is poor Bolster killed?"
Lisette shook her head, but before she could speak, the old lady said harshly, "Well, madam?"
Beatrice raised haggard eyes, then cowered back against the sofa.
"Your machinations, Lady William," my lady said in that same acid tone, "near cost Jeremy Bolster his life, which would likely have resulted in that ninny Amanda Hersh grieving herself into an early grave." Tears brimming in her dark eyes, Beatrice began a plaintive response that was ruthlessly overriden. "To those two lives," observed the old lady grimly, "we may well add Justin Strand, of whom I—at least—am extremely fond. On top of that, you have very likely broken the heart of your husband, who is so foolish as to love you!"
The effect of this indictment was shattering. Norman, who had retreated to the side of the room, quailed in horror as Beatrice burst into a storm of sobs, and began to sway back and forth in a frenzy of grief.
Unmoved, the old lady snorted, "A pretty display! And one that will avail you nothing. You had best make your peace with your sister, madam!" The only effect this had was to increase the volume of the lamentations, whereupon my lady barked, "Norman! Run and get a pitcher of cold water!"
Only too glad to escape, he shot for the door.
"No-no…" Beatrice raised a wet face and reddened eyes. "I know what—what I must do…"
At the door, Norman looked back, pleadingly. Lady Bayes-Copeland nodded, and he fled, closing the door quietly behind him. The old lady settled herself on the edge of a loveseat, but Lisette, chilled by apprehension, remained standing.
"I—I will confess," Beatrice announced between sniffs. "Though—though I am not the first lady ever… to take a lover, I suppose."
"To take a lover if one has an inattentive, repulsive, or unfaithful husband is one thing," said my lady tartly. "In your case there was neither excuse nor justification. And to plot with that lover to the jeopardy of another member of your own family is despicable!" Her cane rapped on the floor to emphasize that terrible denunciation and she repeated it in her harsh, cracked old voice, "Despicable, I say!"
Her head down-bent, Beatrice said tremulously, "Yes. Only— only I thought James loved me. He said—"
"James?" echoed Lisette, astounded. "Garvey?"
Beatrice nodded. "He said he had a score to settle, and—and so I told him what Charity said about—about Strand leaving you on your wedding night. And about him staying away a week or more. It was James circulated the rumours that you had deliberately repulsed your bridegroom. When Strand confronted him in The Madrigal, James said that you had told him you were a wife in name only and that you were in love with James."
One hand flying to her throat, Lisette exclaimed, "Oh, my God! No wonder Strand challenged him! How I wish he had told me the whole and I'd not have—" A bony finger jabbed into her ribs. She cast her grandmother an irked glance, but said no more.
"James was like a madman after their quarrel in The Madrigal," Beatrice continued, staring blindly at the rug. "I tried to comfort him, but all he could say was that his honour must be satisfied. He begged me to—to convey to him anything I learned about you. He said…" She closed her eyes briefly, her hand beginning to tear at her handkerchief. "He said that if he could just wipe out that stain on his honour, he would—would take me away. That William could obtain a divorce and James would wed me. Lord help me! How little I guessed…"
She began to weep wretchedly, but Lisette was appalled and made no move to go to her.
"When you arrived at Strand Hall and discovered Lisette meant to visit her sisters-in-law," rasped my lady grimly, "you knew that Rachel and Charity were not at Cloudhills. You did not apprise her of that circumstance, but instead sent word to your scheming lover. Correct?"
Lisette gasped out a disbelieving, "Oh, no! You never did?"
Hanging her head, Beatrice whispered, "Yes. It—it was wicked in me, I know. But… I loved him so, and I thought— Oh well, never mind about that. I sent a note to James by my groom that very night. When he received it, he writ a letter to you, Lisette, begging that you not run away to Tristram Leith. And he had the letter taken to Strand at Silverings—as if in error."
"How vile!" uttered my lady in accents of loathing.
Very white, Lisette muttered, "Strand already suspected that I cared for Leith. If he—if he read that …"
"He did, of course," my lady interpolated dryly. "He'd have to be a ninny or a saint not to! And so he set off at the gallop to intercept you."
Lisette threw both hands to her cheeks, but after a moment's puzzling said, "But if Strand learnt I spent the night at Cloudhills, alone with Leith, why did he call out Bolster?"
Lady Bayes-Copeland directed a chill stare at Beatrice. "Ask our traitor."
Wincing, Beatrice explained, "He did not discover that. But Bolster did."
"And was so gallant as to attempt to spare you—all of us— the stark tragedy of having your husband shoot down your brother-in-law!" said my lady.
"But—but…" stammered Lisette, "surely he knew that Justin would call him out?"
"That simpleton?" The old lady gave a scornful bark of derision. "He is brave as he can stare, I grant you, but not one for deep thinking. Nor imagine I think the less of him, for he is a fine boy. Do not forget, my dear, that he and your husband have been friends all their lives. I suspect our quixotic peer traded on that friendship. He probably had no notion Strand would really believe him to have been your secret lover, and hoped merely to confuse Strand into delays, thus providing time in which to reason him from his rage. Instead, Strand called him out and then shot him. Utter folly!"
Beatrice's head sank even lower. Almost inaudibly, she whispered, "N-no."
"What the deuce d'you mean, no?" demanded her grandmother fiercely. "Do you add an admiration of duelling to your incalculable idiocies, madam?"
Beatrice wet dry lips. "Strand d-did not shoot Bolster, Grandmama. James was there. He followed Devenish and then hid behind a tree, intending to shoot Strand in case Jeremy should delope." She heard a startled exclamation and, flashing a frightened glance upwards, saw that her grandmother had come to her feet and that the two women stood there, like some familial tribunal, watching her in horror. Cringing, she faltered, "Only
B-Brutus upset James's team, and James missed his shot and— and wounded Bolster by accident."
There was a brief, stunne
d silence, even the unquenchable Lady Bayes-Copeland rendered speechless by this shocking disclosure. Then, "Now… now here's shameful treachery, indeed!" she breathed. "Which I shall ensure is well circulated among the ton! Must I name you a party to this dastardly plot, wretched girl?"
"No! Oh, no!" Clasping her hands together prayerfully as she blinked up at them, Beatrice sobbed, "I beg—I pray you believe me! I thought James would manoeuvre Strand into a duel and— and wound him—just a little… perhaps. But I never dreamt he meant murder! I was waiting at his lodgings when he came home." She saw her grandmother's lip curl contemptuously, and rushed on. "He was like a man possessed, and took a—a sort of cruel delight in telling me what he had tried to do. I was—absolutely appalled. I taxed him with having deceived me, and he laughed. I was so frightened! I begged that we run away, and be married in Italy when William gave me the divorce."
"Little fool!" snorted her grandmother. "Garvey never loved you! It is Lisette he wants."
"Yes," Beatrice wept, covering her face once more. "So he admitted, at last. And taunted me so—so savagely. It had all been lies from the very beginning. Strand had never boasted of having 'bought' Lisette, as James told me. He said he had at first intended to kill Strand, but then realized that if he waited until after they were wed, Lisette would be a—a very wealthy widow—''
"Foul!" screeched my lady, her cane striking the floor in a staccato outburst of indignation. "And you could listen to such— such wicked infamy, and not come to me—or your papa—with it all? Oh, for shame!"
"I dare not come to you," choked Beatrice. "James said if I told one word of what had happened, he would say I planned it all with him! And he boasted that he would s-soon wed the lady he—he really loved, and be a rich man besides. Oh…! When I think what I have done! And—and my poor, good, grieving William! Oh, how I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead!"
"Very Drury Lane-ish," sneered her grandmother, giving the bell pull a tug. She glanced at Lisette, who stood in white-faced silence, staring down at her sister. "What is in your mind, love? That we must warn Strand?"
"Yes," Lisette answered numbly. "And that I once was so unpardonably foolish as to wish I could wed James Garvey— instead of Justin!"
Chapter 18
All night the rain beat down steadily, drenching the waterlogged countryside and turning the usually gentle drift of the river to a boiling race, the roar of which penetrated even the thick walls of Silverings. With the dawn, the Silvering Sails rocked uneasily in her small inlet, protected to some extent from the mainstream, but occasionally caught by a surge of waters so that she strained at the ropes securing her. One might have supposed that the man who had toiled for so many hours refurbishing the vessel would evince some concern at this sight, for the river became more littered with mud and debris, the safety of the inlet more threatened, with every hour that passed. In point of fact, however, Justin Strand, seated in the windowseat, his back against the walls, his legs across the length of the cushions, saw neither storm, river, nor boat. Wherever he looked, even if he closed his eyes, three faces haunted him: the white, still features of Jeremy Bolster, poor little Amanda's stricken expression, and the scornful countenance of the girl he had worshipped and wed, and who had so carelessly betrayed him. All the way back to Sussex he had been able to think of nothing else. Throughout the hours of darkness he had paced the floor, racked with guilt and fear for Bolster, and scourged by the knowledge that Lisette, denied the love of the man to whom she had given her heart, knowing how deep was the devotion offered by her husband, had still rejected him, choosing to take his best friend for her lover.
He ran a distracted hand through his rumpled hair, reminded that he had come within a hair's-breadth of calling out Leith—a mistake that would surely have broken Rachel's heart. There were levels to tragedy, he acknowledged; for instance, his personal grief was intensified because it had been Bolster who betrayed him. Bolster, whom he'd always held to be the very soul of honour, and totally above such base treachery. Yet, even so, he had not intended to—
A hand touched his shoulder gently. A troubled voice asked, "Sir! Be ye all right? It do be almighty hot in here, so hot as a furnace, yet ye be a-shivering and a-shaking like any aspen tree!"
Strand looked with a smile into Best's honest eyes. "I'm afraid I may have contracted a cold."
"Ar," said Best, uneasily. "Well, I do wish as how Mr. Green would come."
Until they reached here last evening, Strand had quite forgotten that he'd left instructions for his valet to return to the Hall. He had sent the other groom off at once, with instructions that Green was to come down to Silverings, but after the heavy rains of the night, it was quite possible that the roads were flooded. "I'm sure he will get here as soon as he can," he said. "Are the horses dry?"
The stable roof, Best admitted, was beginning to drip in a few places, and he was in fact going down there now, to see if he could make some temporary repairs. "It do be a great pity," he added with a reproachful glance at his employer, "as that fancy French cook bean't here, seein's young Johnny bean't able to have come back in time to do the job."
The image of the lofty Rene condescending to look at the stable roof, much less soil his talented hands upon it, brought a gleam to Strand's tired eyes. "Then let us hope," he said bracingly, "that young Johnny returns with Mr. Green. Meanwhile, do you need help, let me know."
Best grunted. The last person he would ask for help, he thought, was a man who looked fair wrung out.' But he said nothing, and went clumping off to the stables.
Left alone, Strand gave himself a mental shake. All this brooding was achieving nothing. To have left the scene of the duel without first determining the condition of his victim had been reprehensible. But very likely Bolster was not dead at all and would make a full recovery. The thing to do now was to come to some decision regarding his marriage. It was very obvious that Lisette did not want— His gaze having returned to the rain-streaked window, he was much shocked to see the Silvering Sails drifting erratically, secured by only the bow line. If she once got into the mainstream of the littered river, she'd have little chance, and Norman would be heartbroken was she sunk! He sprang up hurriedly, only to reel to the wall and lean there, fighting a sick dizziness. The apprehension seized him that this was not a cold that plagued him, but a recurrence of that abominable fever. He rejected the notion at once. It could not be! Not this soon! He'd had little sleep last night and that, coupled with the chill he'd taken on the boat, had not helped matters. His head soon cleared, and he went over to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of cognac. The potent liquor burned through him, and be began to feel more the thing. Lord, he thought, as he hastened upstairs to get his greatcoat, how Green would rail at him if he should fall ill! He'd never hear the end of it!
The door to his bedchamber was slightly open. Brutus was comfortably disposed in the armchair and his master's new four-caped coat had been fashioned into a burial ground from beneath which peeped the remains of a bone. Exasperated, Strand retrieved his coat while advising the animal in pithy terms of his probable ancestry. Brutus was sufficiently interested as to yawn, raise his head and watch the proceedings. Deciding a walk was in the offing, he sprang down and collected his property before accompanying Strand to the stairs with much enthusiastic, if muffled, yelping.
Outside, the wind was approaching gale proportions. Strand full expected his canine companion to bolt back into the house when he saw the trees whipping about. Apparently, there was not an aspen in sight, however, and neither the sight of drifts being blown across the lawns nor the trees bending before the gale caused the animal to become alarmed.
"I collect," remarked Strand cynically, "that you are very discriminating as to what may cause your intellect—what there is of it—to become disordered! Come along, then. But be warned that I've no least intention of jumping in after you, should you fall in!"
Undaunted, Brutus trundled ahead, tracking down and attending to several enticin
g distractions along their route until, a likely depository for the bone presenting itself, he proceeded to excavate the middle of a flower bed.
Lost in thought and unaware of these depredations, Strand made his rapid way to the dock. The Silvering Sails rocked and pitched at the end of her solitary rope, masts swaying and boards creaking. The aft mooring rope trailed over the side, and must be secured if she was to have any chance of riding out the storm. Strand waited his chance, then sprang nimbly aboard. The erratic motion of the vessel slowed him, but clinging to the rail he staggered aft and began to haul in the rope. The rain was a steady, soaking drizzle, and the wind so strong that at times it buffeted his breath away. It was not an icy wind, but his teeth began to chatter, and the headache which had plagued him for the past two days was becoming more intense. The boat pitched violently, and unable to hold his balance, he swayed to his knees, swearing lustily.
Only the fall saved him. A boathook whizzed past, missing his head so narrowly that it ruffled his hair before it smashed against the rail. Beyond it, James Garvey's face loomed, contorted and dark with hatred. With a bound, Strand regained his feet, barely avoiding a second fierce lunge of the boathook. That Garvey meant murder was very apparent. A pistol would have been swifter and surer, but also, he realized, would both attract attention and rule out the possibility of accidental death.
"Maniac!" he shouted, edging back and from the corner of his eye searching for something to use as a weapon. "Do you want to hang?''
"I want you dead! I want your wife, to whom you have no right! Never fear—I'll not hang!" And on the last word, Garvey sprang forward, the boathook flailing in a mighty sweep. Strand had to leap for his life. He eluded that murderous attack, but landed on a coiled length of rope, and fell heavily. With a triumphant shout, Garvey drove the boathook downward. Strand rolled desperately, and the iron hook ripped through the back of his jacket and slammed into the deck. Snatching up the rope, Strand flung it at Garvey's face. Garvey jerked back, slipped on the wet deck, and staggered, fighting to retain his balance as the boat yawed drunkenly. He recovered almost immediately, but
Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 07] - Married Past Redemption Page 31