by Sandra Heath
“You will be safe, Miss Pranton,” he answered soothingly, hesitating before venturing to put his arms lightly around her. He was clearly uncomfortably aware of Lady Letitia’s watchful glare.
With a creaking and groaning that was really quite awful to hear, the blazing pagoda finally toppled into the lake. Sparks flew, flames flared, and there was hissing and steam as burning timbers were extinguished, but the wild conflagration had already spread to the bridge, which was soon alight from end to end. And still the pleasure boats drifted inexorably toward it, faster now because the breeze chose this of all times to increase.
The smoke was quite choking, and Anthea could feel the heat on her face. The acrid taste was in her mouth, her eyes stung, and she was very frightened. She found herself looking to Jovian for protection, but as she turned toward him she saw him reach almost casually for a decanter of brandy. He refilled his glass but did not drink it; instead he sat back in his chair, his hands flat upon the table before him, his eyes closed, as if with intense concentration. Then he raised both his arms toward the sky. His lips moved, but if he spoke aloud, she could not hear him.
Billowing curtains of smoke drifted across the deck, sometimes concealing him, sometimes exposing him as clearly as in a painting. His arms were still held high, and his hands trembled; then suddenly she thought she felt the boat shudder. Had they struck something submerged in the water? But, no. Inch by amazing inch, all the drifting vessels began to move in the opposite direction, against the breeze and away from danger. There were cries of astonishment all around, because what was happening was clearly impossible.
Lady Letitia cried out with relief. “See, we’re drifting away again! I don’t know how it can be, but we are safe once more!”
Anthea continued to watch Jovian. He lowered his arms, and even in the leaping light of the flames she saw how tired and drained his face had become. Had he just made the boat change direction? Was it possible? All the amazing stories about him came rushing back ... that he could fly and make bottles move. Was this another instance? Could he make a flotilla of pleasure craft drift against the prevailing breeze?
She got up to go to him but then halted as he took the glass of brandy and swallowed the contents. After that he slumped forward, his head on his arms. Her heart hardened; and bitterly, she turned away from him again.
Sir Erebus at last managed to give Corinna into Lady Letitia’s comforting embrace and turned to Anthea with a smile. “Are you all right, Lady Anthea?”
“Yes.”
He came closer and lowered his voice so that only she could hear. “Lady Letitia has intimated that she wishes to invite me to dinner. Would an acceptance on my part be welcome to you?” It was as near a statement of intent as any gentleman could reasonably give without stepping over the invisible lines of etiquette and propriety.
Thinking of Jovian and that glass of brandy, Anthea was again guilty of seeming to encourage Sir Erebus. “Yes, sir, it would be welcome to me.”
Events in St. James’s Park were the inevitable talking point as the ladies returned to Daneway House, but while Lady Letitia and Corinna were concerned with the terrible fire, Anthea could only think of Jovian’s secret but momentous part in their deliverance. To Sir Erebus Lethe she gave no thought at all.
Chapter Ten
There was no unwelcome rain the next morning, the sun shone brightly, and the weather was perfect, and at breakfast Corinna announced she would go for a walk. She had begun to go out now and then on her own, so no one thought anything of it.
Anthea barely noticed what her stepsister was doing, because in the cold light of day she realized how incautious she had been with Sir Erebus. How could she have been so foolish? She knew he admired her, and now he probably thought she admired him too.
Oh, it was all Jovian’s fault! If he hadn’t drained that last glass of brandy and then collapsed in a drunken stupor, she would have been much more prudent! She gazed guiltily at the toast rack beside the little bowl of nasturtiums on the table, for it was no good blaming Jovian. She had been stupid and would now have to deal with the problem as best she could.
After breakfast, when Corinna had been gone some ten minutes, Anthea decided she would feel better if she took an airing of her own. Donning her best blue velvet spencer and a white-sprigged muslin morning dress, she tied a blue-ribboned straw bonnet beneath her chin and then left the house. Her route took her down Berkeley Street, then west along Piccadilly, before crossing toward the entrance to Green Park to see the Temple of Concord.
A fully-laden traveling carriage waited at the curb, facing west. It was a gloomy vehicle, in unrelieved black, drawn by four equally black horses, and it put Anthea so in mind of a funeral equipage that she paused to look. There was no one inside, and she supposed the occupants were stretching their legs in the park before setting off on a journey. The coachman was clad in black too, and he sat so still that he might have been a statue.
Repressing a shudder, Anthea hurried into the park, a place of trees and small herds of cattle and deer. Unlike the disaster in St. James’s Park, the celebrations here had been faultless, and the Temple of Concord stood majestically in the middle of an expanse of open grass. As Anthea approached to take a closer look, she suddenly noticed Corinna talking to a woman beneath some trees about a hundred yards away. There was no mistaking her buttercup-and-gray clothes and golden ringlets; nor was there any mistaking that the woman was the same person who had approached her the previous evening, albeit now wearing beige instead of brown.
The more Anthea studied the stranger, the more certain she became that it was also the inhospitable woman in Berkeley Square on Christmas Eve. Whoever she was, she talked urgently while Corinna listened. Then the latter suddenly stepped back as if utterly shocked.
Realizing her stepsister was distressed, Anthea began to hurry over, but she had gone only a few yards when Sir Erebus Lethe suddenly appeared from nowhere in front of her. He wore a sage green coat and cream cord breeches and smiled as he doffed his gleaming top hat to bow. “Lady Anthea, I am afraid you were so engrossed that you didn’t hear my greetings.”
“Your ... greetings?” Anthea tore her eyes away from the scene beneath the trees to look at him instead.
“I spoke three times before it became necessary to place myself directly in your path.”
“Forgive me, I—I am a little distracted.”
“So I notice. May I inquire why?”
“My stepsister is over there with a lady I do not know, and she seems very upset.”
“Really?” He turned, his ebony walking stick swinging idly in his kid-gloved hand.
“I don’t know who the woman is,” Anthea went on, “but she spoke to Corinna last night in St. James’s Park. Corinna said it was a case of mistaken identity, but...”
“Perhaps it still is. Would you like me to go over and see if—? Ah, the woman is departing anyway.”
“So she is.” Anthea breathed out with relief as the woman pressed something into Corinna’s hand, then hastened out of the park to the black traveling carriage, which promptly drove away toward Hyde Park Corner. Followed by Sir Erebus, Anthea ran across the grass. “Corinna? Corinna, are you all right?”
Corinna turned with a guilty start. “Anthea? And ... and Sir Erebus? Wh-what are you doing here?”
“I simply came for a walk and decided to look at the Temple of Concord. Sir Erebus stopped to talk to me.” Anthea looked curiously at Corinna’s night hand, which was tightly clenched around something.
Sir Erebus bowed courteously. “Good morning, Miss Pranton. Lady Anthea is concerned that you are in some distress.”
“Distress? Oh, no, I’m perfectly all right.”
“That’s a fib,” Anthea observed frankly. “Are you going to tell me she has again mistaken you for someone else?”
Corinna’s eyes slid away. “Er, yes, actually. She became a little persistent, but at last I managed to convince her of her error.”
“Er
ror? Yet she gave you something, didn’t she?” Anthea pointed at her stepsister’s hand.
Corinna’s fingers uncurled reluctantly, revealing a beautiful gold locket, oval and daintily engraved with an ear of wheat. Anthea stared at it, for it was not a bauble but looked very old and expensive indeed. “Corinna, that woman simply gave it to you?”
“Yes.”
Anthea held her gaze. “The truth, if you please, for perfect strangers do not hand out such things willy-nilly.”
Corinna went very red and glanced at Sir Erebus, who immediately withdrew to a discreet distance.
“Well, Corinna?” Anthea prompted.
“The locket was my grandmother’s.”
“Your—? How do you know that?”
“Because the woman you saw me with just now is my aunt, Abigail Wheatley.”
Anthea stared.
Corinna was close to tears. “I’m sorry I fibbed, Anthea, but I am so shocked I really don’t know what to think. I thought my mother’s twin was called Flora, but it seems her name is Abigail and she is very much alive. It also seems that my mother was never married to my father, and that she was still a Wheatley when she fled from home. Pranton really is my father’s name, but I have no right to it because I... I was born out of wedlock, Anthea. My mother lied to me. Oh, the shame of it...”
As Corinna burst into tears, Anthea wished her own suspicions about Chloe Pranton’s first marriage had not been so sadly confirmed. She held her sobbing stepsister and murmured sympathetically.
“Oh, what shall I do, Anthea?” Corinna wept. “I dare not hold my head up in Society now, and Lady Letitia is bound to send me packing!”
“What nonsense is this?” Anthea cried, shaking her a little. “Neither Aunt Letty nor I will think any the less of you, so stop fearing the worst. Besides, no matter what went on before, you are now the Earl of Daneway’s stepdaughter, and don’t you forget it.”
“I... I suppose you’re right.” Corinna summoned a weak smile and fished a handkerchief from her reticule.
“Of course I’m right, and if you imagine an admiring gentleman will be deterred by such a thing, I think you are very much mistaken. It is your beauty that will draw them and your charm and vivaciousness that will win their hearts. And if they need anything else, your close connection to my family will do the trick.”
Anthea paused. “Corinna, you only know all this about your background because Miss Wheatley, or whoever she is, has chosen to tell you. What if she is wrong? What if she is even being malicious?”
“But why would she do that?”
“I don’t know, but then I don’t know her, either. She may have escaped from Bedlam.”
“Don’t be horrid, Anthea. She told me she resides in the house the Wheatley family has lived in for two hundred years.”
“And what house is that?”
Corinna cleared her throat. “I, er, don’t actually know the name of it.”
“You don’t know? Then how ... ?”
“There is no mystery,” Corinna broke in quickly. “She simply forgot to mention it. She said that it was so out of the way in back lanes that the best way to get there was to ask for directions at the local inn, the Cross Foxes. She said the landlord would supply a guide.”
The details passed Anthea by. “How did she find you?”
“She overheard two other ladies mention me by name in St. James’s Park last night. They said Lord Daneway had married my mother in County Fermanagh and spoke of me being blond with green eyes, so she felt sure I must be her niece. She says I am the very image of my mother at the same age.”
“And you believe her?”
“Yes, I do,” Corinna replied.
“What else did she tell you?”
Corinna drew a deep breath. “That there were many papers and diaries in her possession that will tell me all about my family, and if I wish to know more, I am invited to visit. She says she fully understands that you and Lady Letitia may wish to accompany me, and that she has more than ample room to accommodate you as well. She is very aware of propriety and what is expected.”
Anthea was startled. “Where are we invited?”
“Her home in Gloucestershire. That’s where she is going now.”
The fact that Gloucestershire was Jovian’s home county passed briefly through Anthea’s mind but was forgotten again almost immediately. “Corinna, you knew who she claimed to be last night, didn’t you? She asked you to meet her here today.”
Corinna lowered her eyes quickly. “Yes,” she confessed.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come with you, and—”
“I thought it was something I ought to do on my own,” Corinna interrupted defensively.
Anthea felt guilty and pulled back a little. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to sound overbearing. Well, what do you want to do?”
“Do?”
“About this invitation to Gloucestershire.”
Corinna looked urgently at her. “I dearly want to examine those papers and diaries. Do you think Lady Letitia will allow it?”
“I will be honest, Corinna. I have no idea, but Aunt Letty sets great store by propriety, and no matter what, this Miss Wheatley has so far displayed precious little. Why on earth didn’t she simply write to you or to Aunt Letty? That would have been the correct approach.” Then Anthea smiled. “But, if Aunt Letty is agreeable, I am, too.”
Corinna beamed and hugged her. “It is all arranged. She expects us to leave London on Saturday the twenty-seventh and to arrive at her house late on the Sunday.”
Anthea gaped at such precipitousness. “You’ve already accepted? Oh, Corinna!”
“I couldn’t help myself, Anthea. I was alarmed when she approached me again, but her talk of family documents quite carried me away, and when she pressed my grandmother’s locket upon me, I just had to accept the invitation.”
“Not only on your own behalf, but on mine and Aunt Letty’s as well,” Anthea pointed out.
“Anthea, you know your family background through and through and are secure in such knowledge. Can you imagine what it is like to have a great void where one’s past is concerned? Suddenly I may not even be named Pranton, for if my mother did not marry my father, then I am Corinna Wheatley. To be able to discover the truth means everything to me, and I think I will die unless I can go.”
“That is surely a little dramatic,” Anthea replied, “but I suppose I can understand what you feel. Please do not think the matter is settled, however, for even if Aunt Letty agrees, she will first write to Miss Wheatley, as is the done thing. And the twenty-seventh may not suit, and another date have to be arranged instead.”
“My aunt was rather insistent upon the twenty-seventh,” Corinna replied doubtfully.
“I am sure it is not carved on tablets of stone.” Anthea linked arms with her. “By the way, where in Gloucestershire does your aunt live? The Cotswolds?”
“No, a place just north of Bristol in the vale of the River Severn. Near a town called Cathness,” Corinna replied; then her brow creased. “Isn’t that the Duke of Chavanage’s family name?” she asked.
Anthea had halted in dismay. “Yes, it is. Cathness Castle, his country seat, is there.” Of all the places in England Abigail Wheatley might have lived, why did it have to be there?
Corinna was concerned. “Oh, Anthea, will this make it impossible for you to come too?”
“I don’t know.”
“But as the duke is here in London, why should you not go to Gloucestershire?” A new thought occurred to her, and Corinna’s glance slid briefly toward Sir Erebus, who still waited a polite few yards away. She lowered her voice, although it was not necessary. “Anthea, if Sir Erebus is the duke’s neighbor in the country, he must live near Cathness too.”
“That is true, which means that he may well know your aunt, although he gave no intimation of recognizing her. Still, it will not do any harm to ask.” Anthea took Corinna’s arm, and they went to join Sir Erebus, who strai
ghtened expectantly.
“Your sisterly confab is at an end?” he inquired.
As it happened, Sir Erebus did not know Miss Wheatley, but as he explained, he had only lived near Cathness for a little over a year. However, he did know the landlord of the Cross Foxes. “Ah, yes, his name is Obed Dennis, and he is an excellent fellow.” Then he added, “Regarding Miss Wheatley, it occurs to me that the Duke of Chavanage is certain to know of her. I can ask him, if you wish.”
Corinna’s face brightened. “Oh, would you?”
He smiled. “But of course, Miss Pranton, and I am sure that what he has to say will assure Lady Letitia that the invitation may be safely accepted.”
“Oh, I do hope so. I long to go to Cathness.”
Sir Erebus smiled again. “And Cathness will make you very welcome, Miss Pranton,” he murmured.
Anthea was sure some other meaning was hidden in those words, although she could not imagine what it could be.
His smile continued. “Well, ladies, what is your immediate plan?”
To return to Berkeley Square,” Anthea answered.
His dark eyes brushed hers. “May I escort you?”
Corinna answered for her. “That is most kind of you, Sir Erebus.”
“I offer my services gladly, Miss Pranton, and then I will go directly to the duke. A running footman will be sent to Daneway House the moment I learn anything.” His gaze returned to Anthea, lingering a moment longer than necessary, which made her feel awkward. Oh, how she regretted those unguarded words last night.
* * *
Lady Letitia was as startled as Anthea to hear of Miss Wheatley and her news, and was at first inclined to be disapproving of the lady’s methods. The gift of the locket made her frown, she was exceedingly doubtful about the wisdom of going to stay with a stranger, and the connection with Jovian and Sir Erebus made matters worse, as did the absence of a proper address. But what shook her most of all appeared to be that Corinna’s perplexing new relative lived in the vicinity of Cathness.