by Mary Balogh
“You are lost,” he said curtly. “Your coachman took a wrong turn somewhere. He should ask at the village inn for directions.”
Elliott turned to him, and they stared at each other.
“It is Con Huxtable I am looking for,” Elliott said. “You look like an unkempt, haggard version of him.”
Someone else descended from the carriage.
Stephen.
Constantine turned his eyes on him.
“She could not keep her mouth shut, then?” he asked bitterly.
“She being the Duchess of Dunbarton?” Stephen said. “She was beside herself with anxiety, Con, not just for you but also for that poor condemned man. She begged me to escort her to London so that she could appeal to Elliott. She believed he could help. Are we still needed? Have you been able to clear up the madness without us?”
“I have not,” Constantine said. “But I do not need help, Stephen. Neither yours nor Moreland’s. The house is full. There are no rooms to spare. May I suggest not staying at the village inn but driving on to a more respectable coaching inn?”
He was behaving badly. He knew it and was powerless to stop it. He was so dashed tired. And angry. And terrified.
“A stubborn mule,” Elliott said. “He named himself well, Stephen, would you not agree? But this pompous ass has not come all the way from London only to be sent on to the nearest coaching inn. He is going to throw his weight around—for what it may be worth.”
Stubborn mule. Pompous ass. She really had been talking.
“I don’t need you, Moreland,” Constantine said. “And this is my property. Get off it.”
“I know you don’t need me, Con,” Elliott said. “But perhaps Jess Barnes does. Not that I can promise to be any help. But I have come to try, and I am staying until I have done so even if I have to sleep in the carriage just beyond the gates of your property.”
“Con,” Stephen said, “we care. A whole lot of people care. And why the devil did you not tell us about this place when I first came to Warren Hall? Why make such a secret affair of it?”
“It was upon your jewels, or what were potentially yours,” Constantine said, “that this place came into existence, Stephen. If you are as rich as a monarch now, you would have been as rich as Croesus if those jewels had not been put to another use.”
“Do you think I would have cared?” Stephen asked. “Do you honestly think it, Con? Or that Meg would have cared? Or Nessie or Kate? Did you not owe it to your brother’s memory to tell us?”
“No,” Constantine said. “Jon did not do this to impress anyone. He did it because he wanted to, because it was right. And if I had told you, then Elliott would have known, and he would have done all in his power to reverse what had been done. This project was in its fragile early stages at the time.”
“Surely he would not if you had explained,” Stephen said. “Would you, Elliott?”
They both looked at him. He was staring at the ground, his features hard. There was a lengthy silence.
His cousin, Constantine thought. His best friend most of his life. His partner in crime when they had both gone to London as very young men to sow some wild oats.
And then Elliott’s father had died suddenly, not long after Jon had made his ghastly discovery about their own late father’s activities and dreamed his dream of Ainsley and made Constantine promise to tell no one about it. Jewels had been sold, Elliott had noticed they were missing and almost at the same time had found out about all those women and their children in the neighborhood. And the whole mess had blown up in the faces of Elliott and Con.
Ass and mule.
There was a soreness in Constantine’s chest as he waited for Elliott to answer Stephen’s question.
“I loved Jonathan,” he said at last, without lifting his eyes. “It was a painful thing, that love. And then my father died, and I was responsible for him. I knew you were quite capable of looking after both him and his affairs, Con. But I was young and almost overwhelmed by all my new duties, and I felt obliged to do all that was proper and fully understand his business before bowing out and leaving all to you as my father did before me. But then I found that a large number of the jewels were missing, and you refused to explain but merely told me to go to hell when I asked, and—”
“You did not ask,” Constantine said, his voice flat.
His cousin looked up with an impatient frown.
“Of course I asked,” he said. “I could not simply let something like that go, Con.”
“You did not ask,” Constantine said again. “You told me I was a thief.”
“I did not,” Elliott said.
“Did.” Constantine grinned without humor. “Did, didn’t, did, didn’t. Sound familiar, Elliott? We must have spent half our boyhood saying one or other of those words to each other. Often it ended in fisticuffs and then laughter. But not this time. It does not matter anyway. Even if you had asked and I had answered and you had believed me, you would not have allowed it to go on. You would have stopped Jon and ruined what turned out to be his life’s work. His legacy.”
“Surely not—” Stephen began.
But Elliott was staring at Constantine with unfathomable eyes.
“I probably would have,” he admitted. “My instinct was to protect Jonathan, even from himself. I always marveled at the way you treated him like a regular person, Con, but one who needed to be met at his own level. I always marveled that you could play with him for hours on end even when he had passed childhood. I thought my duty to him needed to be taken seriously. But you used to make a game even out of that and infuriate me. And you did it deliberately. You can have no idea how—”
He stopped abruptly and shook his head, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“You are quite right,” he said. “I would have stopped him. I would have assumed that he could not possibly know just what he was doing. But he did know, didn’t he? You always used to say, Con, that Jonathan was love. Not just loving, but love. You were right about that too. And you were right not to answer my questions—if indeed I asked them as I am convinced I must have. You were right to keep your secrets. You were right to be a stubborn mule.”
“Don’t send us away, Con,” Stephen said. “Perhaps Elliott can help. Perhaps I can. Perhaps not. But don’t send us away. We are your relatives, and you need us even if you do not realize it. Besides, the Duchess of Dunbarton sent us, and I believe she may well be brokenhearted if you turn us away without allowing us even to try.”
Constantine stared broodingly at him.
Hannah had sent them.
Hannah.
The soreness in his chest deepened.
“There are spare rooms at the dower house,” he said, pointing off to the east to where the house could just be seen nestled among the trees not far from the artificial lake that a previous owner had had constructed. “It is where I live. If it is not too humble for your tastes, you may stay there.”
It was a grudging enough invitation. He was not sure if he was glad to see them or not. Perhaps it did not matter how he felt, though. He was not the issue here. Jess was. Could Elliott help? Elliott with his damned dukedom and his aristocratic air of consequence?
And his honesty?
“Please come to stay with me,” he said before either man could answer. “You need baths and rest and a good meal before anything else. Come.”
“When—” Elliott began.
“Four days,” Constantine said abruptly. “There is all the time in the world.”
And he went striding off ahead of them down the gravel path that led to the dower house.
Four days.
He could hear them coming behind him.
ELLIOTT AND STEPHEN went off to call on the judge the following morning, both dressed with immaculate elegance. Elliott would not allow Constantine to accompany them. Not that either he or Stephen could have stopped him if he had chosen to go anyway, but he reluctantly conceded that it was probably for the best that h
e remain behind.
Elliott sought him out alone before they left.
“I have been having a look around, Con,” he said, “and talking with some of your people. You are doing well here. You have been doing well for some time.”
Constantine looked at him, tight-lipped.
“Did that sound condescending?” Elliott asked with a sigh. “It was not meant to be. I am brimful of admiration. And contrition. And shame. It was not you with all those women, was it? It was—my uncle? Your father?”
Constantine said nothing.
“Mine was no better,” Elliott said. “I grew up believing him to be a paragon and devoted to my mother and my sisters and me. It was only after his death that I learned about his long-term mistress and the rather large family he had had with her. Did you know about them? The whole of the rest of the world seemed to, including my mother.”
“No,” Constantine said.
“I had been living a pretty wild existence for the previous few years,” Elliott continued. “I was suddenly terrified that I would turn out like him, that I would be a wastrel, that I would let down my mother and sisters as he had done. And so I lost all my humor, Con, all my sense of proportion. And when you resented my interference, as you saw it, in Jon’s affairs and did all in your power to annoy me, I only grew more irritable. Especially when I realized that things were not as they ought to be at Warren Hall, that my father had neglected his duty in yet another area of his life.”
It was, Constantine supposed, some attempt at an apology.
“Jonathan discovered the truth about your father?” Elliott asked.
“Yes. Two of the women—two sisters—came to talk to him when I was away one day,” Constantine said. “I had never seen him so upset, so disillusioned. Or so excited as on the day he concocted his grand scheme. I doubt I could have denied him my help in bringing that to pass even if I had disagreed with him. Which I did not. I had known for years. It had sickened me for years. But the little help I had been able to provide had been akin to wrapping a small bandage about a belly rip.”
“Con,” Elliott said after a short silence. “You were not innocent in what happened between us. I am almost certain that I asked. But even if I did not, you could have denied the charges, forced me to listen to the truth. I would have believed you. Good God, you were my friend. We were almost like brothers. But you did not want me to know. You did not want me to believe. You admitted it yesterday. For of course, as Jonathan’s new guardian, I would not have permitted him to continue to denude his own estate for the sake of what would at the time have seemed a mad project. And I would have been right. He ought not to have been allowed to be so reckless. I would also have been wrong. Colossally wrong. But none of us could have predicted that at the time. It would not have been easy for me, Con. By withholding the truth, you enabled both Jonathan and yourself to do what was right. But you forfeited our friendship in the process and made me into the sole villain. The pompous ass.”
“You were,” Constantine said.
“And you were the stubborn mule.”
They stared at each other. The stare threatened to become a glare until Elliott spoiled it all by allowing his lips to twitch.
“Someone should paint us,” he said. “We would make a marvelous caricature.”
“You are doing all this just for Jess?” Constantine asked.
“And for the Duchess of Dunbarton,” Elliott said. “And for Vanessa. She longs to forgive and be forgiven, Con.”
“To be forgiven?” Constantine said with a frown. “I am the one who wronged her. Horribly.”
“But you apologized,” Elliott said, “and she would not forgive you. I know she has felt bad about that ever since. When the duchess called on us with Stephen, Vanessa saw a chance for some redemption. Perhaps for all of us. If I came for any one person, I came for her. I love her.”
“I know,” Constantine said.
“And I came for you too,” Elliott said, looking sharply away. “You are, despite everything, someone I once loved. Perhaps someone I still love. Good God, Con, I have missed you. Can you fathom that? I believed all those things about you, and I missed you?”
“This is getting almost embarrassing,” Constantine said.
“It is,” Elliott agreed. “And Stephen is probably waiting for me. Before I join him, Con, will you shake my hand?”
“Kiss and forgive?” Constantine said.
“I will forego the kissing if it is all the same to you,” Elliott said, holding out his right hand.
Constantine looked at it and set his own in it.
“As I remember it,” he said, “you did not ask, Elliott. You assumed. But as you remember it, you asked, and I told you to go to hell. We can never know who is right. Maybe it is just as well. But you had just lost your trust in your own father, and I was desperate to preserve Jon’s dream. We never were good at talking to each other about pain, were we?”
“A gentleman never admits to feeling any,” Elliott said as they clasped each other’s hand tightly. “I have to put on all the full force of my pomposity now. I’ll try not to be an ass, though, Con. I’ll try my best to get Barnes reprieved. I hope my best is good enough.”
“So do I,” Constantine said fervently.
He still felt sore that he was going to have to remain behind at Ainsley, idle and helpless. But for the moment the best he could do was let his cousins go and do what he could not. Or at least try.
And if they failed?
He would grapple with that when the time came.
When? Not if?
He headed off for the farm, hoping there was some hard manual labor in which he could immerse himself.
FOR THE NEXT three and a half hours he was, Constantine soon became aware, the focus of attention at Ainsley. He was chopping wood beside the stable block. He had stripped to the waist and was giving the task his full attention and every ounce of strength and energy he could muster. Nothing in the world mattered except piling up enough wood to last through next winter—and perhaps even the winter beyond that.
The grooms and stable hands were all at work in the stables. None of them took a break, even when midday came and went. But every single one of them found some plausible reason for appearing at the stable yard gate with strange regularity. No fewer than three of the women were weeding the kitchen garden even though Constantine had observed just two days ago that there was not a weed in sight. Perhaps it was the hunt for new ones that was taking them so long. Two of the boys were handing him logs to chop when one would have been quite sufficient. Millie carried out a tray of drinks and oatmeal biscuits twice and stayed to help one of the boys stack the wood against the outer wall of the stables the second time. The cook came to the side door, presumably to see what had happened to Millie. But instead of calling her to come back or returning to the kitchen after seeing that she was busy, she stayed where she was for some time, drying her hands on her apron. They must have ended up being the driest hands in England. Roseann Thirgood was giving her group of reading pupils a lesson outdoors, perhaps because the weather was warm and the wind gentle enough that it took only two hands to hold open the pages of each book. Another of the women felt it necessary to shake her duster out of a side window of the house every few minutes and to lean out to see where the dust landed.
They all knew, of course, that Elliott and Stephen had gone to talk to the judge, though Constantine had not told anyone. And they all knew why he was chopping wood so ferociously. None of them spoke to him. Or to one another, for that matter. Except Roseann to her pupils, he assumed, though he did not hear any of them.
And then everyone who had disappeared for a few moments reappeared, and everyone who was busy—or pretending to be—stopped work, and the weeders straightened up, and Millie dropped the two pieces of wood she was carrying. The cook dropped her apron. Constantine paused, the axe poised above his shoulder.
Horses.
And carriage wheels.
He lowered
the axe slowly and turned.
The same ducal carriage as yesterday. The same coachman and footman, their livery brushed to a new smartness since yesterday.
Constantine even forgot to breathe for a moment. If he had thought about it, he would have been willing to wager that everyone else forgot too.
The carriage did not proceed all the way to the front doors. It stopped outside the stables. Perhaps the men inside had seen the scattered crowd and Constantine in their midst.
Stephen jumped out first, without waiting for the steps to be put down. He looked about him and then at Constantine, who felt rooted to the spot. He had not moved closer to the carriage.
“It hangs in the balance,” Stephen called for all to hear.
An unfortunate turn of phrase.
Elliott also descended without benefit of steps.
“The judge is to consider the matter,” he said, also loudly enough for everyone to hear. “His final verdict is by no means sure, but if he does reprieve Jess Barnes, it will be into my keeping and on condition that I take him far away from here and never allow him to return to any part of Gloucestershire.”
Constantine was almost convinced he heard a collective exhaling of breath. Or perhaps it was only his own he heard.
He set down the axe against a stack of unchopped wood and walked closer to his cousins, who were walking closer to him.
“Elliott was absolutely magnificent, Con,” Stephen said. “I almost quaked in my boots myself.”
“No, you did not,” Elliott said. “You were too busy oozing your legendary charm, Stephen. I was almost dazzled myself.”
“But the judge was not quite convinced,” Constantine said.
“To give the man his due,” Elliott told him, “he has backbone, Con. I had the impression that as the day draws closer, he is beginning to regret the harshness of the sentence but has been unable to see a dignified way out. You must have softened him up. He wants to give us what we ask, but he does not want to give the impression that he has been overawed by a couple of men with titles but really no authority over him.”