by Лорен Уиллиг
Innes reminded Robert tremendously of his father: an inebriate brawler, and all-around lout. The only thing noble about his father had been his name, and he had done everything possible to debase it. He had died as he had lived: in a brawl in a tavern.
Like his father, Innes had a certain rough charm that was nine-tenths bravado and one-tenth pure thuggishness. Plied with enough strong drink, away from Medmenham’s inhibiting presence, Innes would cheerfully tell him anything and everything he knew — presuming he knew anything at all.
As for Frobisher, there was a different kettle of eels, and just as slippery. Given the way Medmenham had quelled him the night before, Robert had no doubt that Medmenham held something over him, even if that something was only the threat of cutting off his access to their exclusive society — but he might be driven into admissions by his own desire to boast. With the right conditions, he might just be egged into bragging about their secret rites and what a very central part he played in them all. But would he know Wrothan?
And then there was Freddy Staines, who might be questioned if only Medmenham would ever leave his side. Staines hadn’t been part of the group the night before, having taken to his bed with an attack of la grippe that Robert suspected more aptly translated to the mother of all hangovers. Once he made his appearance on Christmas morning, he had been impossible to pry away from the rest of the pack. The four of them moved in concert, like a pack of dogs. They had gone together from Girdings to the village church, and then from the village church back to Girdings for the Duchess’s morris dancers, mummers’ plays, and other pseudo-medieval flummery. Robert had left them all in the hall, placing wagers on whether St. George, as played by the village blacksmith, was going to trip over his own spear.
They placed wagers on everything. So far, he had watched them wager on how many times the Vicar would say “um” in the course of his sermon (thirty-two); whether anyone would slip on that icy patch right in front of the steps (yes, but only because Innes crowded them into it, which was accounted a foul); and how many times Turnip Fitzhugh would walk right into the same sprig of mistletoe before remembering to duck (eight and still counting). When they started wagering on whether the Dowager Duchess wore drawers, Robert knew he had to get out. While the others were peering interestedly at the Duchess’s nether regions, he had ducked under that dangling mistletoe, slipped out the door of the hall, and kept right on going. Even a mere two rooms away, the air felt clearer and sweeter, free of the miasma of last night’s port that seemed to seep through the pores of their skin like rot.
Or maybe he was the rotten one. If they were rogues, then wasn’t he doubly so, for using them?
Grimacing, Robert rubbed his head. Life had been much simpler back in the Regiment, knowing one’s task and one’s enemy, knowing that one was fighting for the cause of right, and that it was honor to do so. The extermination of a traitor ought to be an honorable goal as well, but the means of it — the spying, the skulking — made him feel unclean.
Robert turned right, walking briskly through an abandoned music room and an anteroom of uncertain utility. The sound of his own strides echoed after him, pursuing him down the row of linked rooms like a phalanx of angry ancestors. At the end of the row, he came to the gallery, a vast rectangle of a room that stretched across a full half of the West Front of the house, the perfect place to stretch one’s legs on a cold afternoon.
Afternoon sunlight spilled through the long windows, turning the parquet floor the color of fresh honey. Silver threads sparkled in the ice blue upholstery, and even his ancestors in their heavy, gilded frames looked less grim than usual in the frank glow of the late afternoon sun.
Robert’s steps slowed as he realized that someone else had taken advantage of the sunshine and solitude. Halfway down the long room sat Charlotte, curled in a comfortable ball on a padded bench by the window.
There was a book in her lap, of course, tilted to catch the sunlight. She had tucked her feet up beneath her, tucking the long skirt of her green wool dress up around her for warmth. She sat with one cheek leaning against the cool of the windowpane, pulling her hair free from its pins so that it stood up unevenly against the window on one side and snaked down on the other. With the sunlight washing over her, she glowed like one of the illuminated capitals on a medieval manuscript, from the gold of her hair to the deep green of her dress and the rich red of the cover of the book in her pale hands.
She didn’t look up as he ventured nearer, all her attention bent upon the page in front of her.
Robert tilted his head to try to read the title. “ ‘Evelina’?”
“What?” Glancing wildly up, Charlotte dropped her book and cracked her head against the glass. “Owwwww.”
Robert winced in sympathy.
“I’m sorry,” he said, bending over to retrieve her book. From the look of the binding, it had been in an advanced state of dilapidation even before taking its latest plunge. Robert smoothed out a bent page, closed the cover, and handed it ceremoniously back to her. “I shouldn’t have startled you.”
“That’s all right,” said Charlotte, holding out one hand to take the book from him as she pressed the other to the back of her head. “I was just . . .”
“Elsewhere?” Robert provided for her.
“Very much so.” Charlotte looked tenderly down at her book with the sort of affection usually reserved for well-loved pets and very small children. “Evelina was just carried off by Sir Clement Willoughby!”
Having no idea who either party was, Robert couldn’t tell whether that was a cause for congratulation or condolence. “Is that good or bad?”
“Very bad,” Charlotte informed him. “But fear not, she manages to free herself from his vile clutches.”
“I am immensely reassured to hear that.” Robert looked quizzically down at her. “I gather you’ve seen this Evelina carried off by Sir What’s-His-Name before?”
“Many times,” Charlotte admitted. She regarded the battered binding critically. “I may need to get a new copy soon.”
Robert rather felt that would be in order.
“Shouldn’t you be watching the mummers?” he asked, with mock reproach.
Wriggling her legs out from under her, Charlotte cast about for an excuse. “I saw them last year?”
“And they’re awful,” said Robert drily.
Charlotte grimaced. “And they’re awful. But they do try so hard.”
“It might be less painful if they tried a little less hard.” Robert held out his hand to help her off the window seat, since she seemed to keep getting tangled in her own skirts. “Having St. George battle both Bonaparte and a group of maddened pygmies was certainly a unique concept.”
“It might have been worse,” said Charlotte, shaking out her skirts, which were sadly wrinkled from her sojourn by the window. There was a crease across one cheek where she must have been leaning against the edge of the drape. She looked flushed and comfortable and adorably rumpled. She shoved a stray wisp of her hair back behind her ear, a move that did little to right the rest of her coiffure. “Last year they had Mr. Pitt fighting off the Saracens with a broomstick.”
“I’m sure he’s capable of it,” said Robert diplomatically. “Should there be any Saracens to fight.”
“I believe they’re called Ottomans now,” said Charlotte. She tucked her book neatly under her arm. “I wonder if any of them still think of us as Normans.”
Robert had to confess that it wasn’t a problem that had ever presented itself to him before. “Were we ever?”
“Well . . .” Charlotte bit down on her lower lip as she considered the question. “Grandmama would like to think so, but I’ve found no documents going further back than the sixteenth century. All of the stories about the Lansdownes at the Battle of Hastings and Agincourt come from an Elizabethan chronicle that purports to tell the history of the family. I rather doubt that it’s entirely accurate.”
She looked at him so expectantly that Robert couldn’
t quite bring himself to admit that he’d had no idea that they’d had any ancestors anywhere near Agincourt.
“You don’t believe it, then?” he heard himself asking, as if he had every idea what she were talking about.
“Doesn’t it strike you as more than a little bit suspicious that there aren’t any mentions of us at all before the Tudors? The Elizabethans had a lamentable tendency of making up ancestors,” she added confidingly. “Especially if they hadn’t any.”
“Are you saying we’re nothing but upstarts?”
“Not exactly upstarts,” Charlotte hedged. “More . . .”
“Opportunists,” Robert provided. His father must have been a chip off the old block.
“Adventurers,” Charlotte corrected. She rolled the word off her tongue with obvious relish. “Elizabethan privateers sailing the high seas in search of Spanish gold.”
“In other words, pirates.”
“But very gentlemanly ones.”
“Gentlemanly” wasn’t quite the term Robert would have applied to the sort of person who boarded other peoples’ ships, but it seemed cruel to deprive his cousin of her romantic illusions.
“Sir Nicholas Lansdowne was a great favorite of Queen Elizabeth’s,” explained Charlotte. “It’s said that when Sir Walter Raleigh threw down his cloak for the Queen, Sir Nicholas stepped in, swept her up in his arms, and carried her right over Sir Walter’s cloak.”
“Thus keeping his own feet dry?”
“And the Queen’s favor.” Charlotte looked as pleased as though it were she who had trampled on Sir Walter’s cloak.
“I’m surprised Sir Walter didn’t call him out.”
“Oh, he did him one better. He hired a gang of bravadoes to set upon Sir Nicholas that very night.”
“Don’t tell me. Sir Nicholas ran them all through and then sent a mocking note to their master.”
Charlotte shook her head, a mischievous smile plucking at the corners of her lips. “No. He had too much sense for that. He crawled under a carriage, down a back alley, and took the next available ship to the West Indies.”
Robert regarded her with bemused fascination. “Where did you learn all this?” He couldn’t imagine the Duchess blithely telling tales of the peccadilloes of her husband’s ancestors; other peoples’ ancestors, yes, but Dovedales, no.
Tilting her head, Charlotte smiled reminiscently. “My father.”
Robert felt his answering smile freeze on his face.
His cousin didn’t seem to notice. She was a thousand miles away, in the golden haze of once upon a time. “He used to tell me bedtime stories about all the characters lurking in our family tree,” she said fondly. “We do have some wonderful rogues to our credit. Or discredit, I suppose.”
Discredit was one way of putting it. Every time she said “our,” he felt the lash of it like a whip on his back. It didn’t seem right that he ought to be included in that “our,” in that family history, when he had stumbled in off the sides, the collateral line of a collateral line, when he bore the title her father had borne so briefly, the title his own father had plotted and schemed and quite possibly murdered to acquire.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry that I’m here and he’s not.”
Charlotte looked up at him in surprise. “It’s not your fault.”
What could he say to that? It had felt like his fault. It still did. He remembered coming with his father to Girdings all those years ago, like vultures hunting out their prey. Only his father hadn’t bothered to wait until his prey was decently dead before descending on the carcass.
He had never known whether their arrival had hastened the Duke’s death. The loud and constant rows between the Dowager Duchess and his father certainly couldn’t have done anything to improve the Duke’s condition. As to whether his father had done anything else to speed along the Duke’s demise . . . he would never know for sure.
Charlotte’s eyes searched his face. Whatever she saw there made her brow wrinkle with concern. “I wouldn’t want you to think that I don’t want you here. I’d rather have you here than neither of you.” She bit her lip in frustration. “Oh, dear. That came out wrong somehow.”
“No,” said Robert simply. “It didn’t. It came out just right.”
Charlotte didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy trying to make him feel better. “You were so good to me in that awful time,” she said earnestly. “I missed you terribly when you left.”
She had been very easy to be good to. It had been an undemanding way of assuaging his own conscience, taking the time to pay attention to a neglected little girl six years his junior. If he were being honest with himself, it had been as much to distract himself as her, an excuse for staying out of the way of their brawling elders. At least dancing attendance on her had never been dull; she played elaborate games of make-believe, spinning fanciful stories in which he sometimes participated and sometimes just watched.
Robert smiled at the sudden recollection of one of those fancies. “Do you still believe in unicorns?”
Charlotte’s cheeks flared with color. “I can’t believe you remember that after all these years!”
He hadn’t, until now. “How could I forget? It’s not everyone who goes unicorn hunting with a plate of jam tarts.”
“I thought it might be hungry,” protested Charlotte. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“It was.” Robert smiled reminiscently. “Those were excellent tarts.”
“You told me the unicorn had come for them!”
“I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”
Charlotte folded her arms across her chest, trapping her book in front of her breasts. “You mean you liked raspberry tarts.”
“That, too.” Robert grinned down at her, watching as she struggled to keep up her air of mock reproof and failed miserably. He was surprised to hear himself saying, “Perhaps we should go unicorn hunting again sometime.”
Charlotte beamed at him. “Only if you leave some of the tarts for me this time.”
“We’ll have the kitchen make up a double batch.”
“Triple,” corrected Charlotte. “We’ll want some for the unicorn.”
Looking down at her shining face, her hair glinting like a personal halo in the light of the setting sun, Robert could almost believe she might find her unicorn, somewhere out in the gardens of Girdings House. In the army, overseas, he would have scoffed at the notion that such radical innocence could still exist, even tucked away in the remote corners of an English country house. It was a bit like stumbling upon a unicorn, or some other creature generally believed extinct.
Reaching forward, Robert tucked one of her flyaway curls back behind her ear. “You look like a lady in a medieval tapestry. All you need is the unicorn at your feet.”
“And one of those big, conical hats,” suggested Charlotte, tilting her head in a way that he remembered from all those years ago. “I believe those are de rigueur for unicorn-hunting maidens.”
“We’ll have to find you one,” said Robert. “There must be one somewhere in this great pile.”
Clasping his hands behind his back, he glanced around the gallery. Great pile didn’t even begin to describe it. The sheer vastness of Girdings House resisted comprehension. Forget conical hats — one could store a whole regiment away in a corner of one wing and never even know they were there.
Robert was startled out of his thoughts by the tentative touch of a hand against his arm.
He looked down to Charlotte regarding him earnestly, her book tucked under one arm.
“I really am glad to have you back. I would never want you to think otherwise. You were all that made that time bearable.”
“The feeling was mutual,” he said soberly. Robert thought of Medmenham and Staines in the other room, of the sour smell of spilled port, and the hideous dark holes being burned into his soul, and realized with surprise that he hadn’t given a thought to any of them the whole time he had been in the gallery. “It st
ill is.”
Charlotte’s face lit with such gratitude that Robert found himself, for once, entirely at a loss. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t deserve that kind of approbation, he wanted to tell her that he wasn’t worthy of such simple, uncritical affection, but his throat closed around the words.
Instead, he did what he did best. He pasted an easy smile across his face, held out his arm, and said teasingly, “Shall we see about finding you that hat?”
“Yes, let’s,” said his lady with the unicorn, and she walked out with her arm tucked trustingly through his.
Chapter Four
“How goes the Parade of Eligibles?” demanded Lady Henrietta Dorrington, flinging herself into a chair beside Charlotte.
They were in the Gallery of Girdings, where all the furniture had been pushed back against the walls to make room for dancing. Tonight’s was only an informal dance, a prelude to the grander festivities that would take place the following day. Some of the local families from the county had been invited. They stood in their own little groups around the edges of the room, the red-faced squires and their fresh-faced daughters looking like the characters in Charlotte’s books.
Tomorrow, a larger party would be coming up from London, replacing the locals and augmenting the house party. There would be proper London musicians, champagne flowing down the center of the table, and hothouse flowers blooming improbably out of immense marble urns. There were rumors that the Prince of Wales himself might make one of the party, rumors that Charlotte suspected her grandmother had put about herself for the sheer fun of watching people scrounging around corners, looking under sofas for misplaced royals.
Henrietta and her husband had only joined the house party that afternoon, just in time for the Twelfth Night celebrations, having spent the bulk of the holiday with Henrietta’s family in Kent, engaging in what Henrietta blithely referred to as “a spot of parental placation.” Charlotte was ridiculously glad to see both of them. She was bursting to discuss the last week with Henrietta, to present everything that had occurred to her more assured friend for dissection and analysis. Not that Charlotte was sure there really was anything there to dissect, short of her own imagination, but it was rather nice to be the one with something to dissect for a change.