by Carola Dunn
“Once I had asked Cousin Tabitha to come and live at Corycombe, it became impossible to send her away. She has been saying for years that she only stays to oblige and her brother wants her to keep house for him, but when I suggest his claim is the greater....” She sighed.
“You are too soft-hearted.”
“That is what she says,” Lilian pointed out crossly. “She reprimanded me as though I were still in the schoolroom for taking Miss Bertrand in. Now I shall have to endure a lecture on my folly in taking her back when she clearly wishes to go home. Malcolm, do you know why she ran off?”
“No.” He could not speak of Miss Bertrand’s desire to return the ring to her cousin without inviting a host of further questions impossible to answer.
“I pray it was not I who drove her away. She said one or two odd things--nothing so very dreadful, as I should know who have five brothers! But I fear I failed to hide my dismay. I behaved just like Cousin Tabitha, in fact! I shall never forgive myself if Miss Bertrand left because she felt unwelcome.”
“You are incapable of behaving like Cousin Tabitha! I wager your dismay was nought but a fleeting expression, not a regular Bill of Attainder. It’s more likely to be my fault. Considering the...unfortunate circumstances of our first encounter, no doubt she was simply overwhelmed with embarrassment at the prospect of seeing me again.” Malcolm made the suggestion to comfort Lilian, but he was suddenly horribly afraid it might be true.
“Fustian! Your fault, for saving her life? Twice now! Her chief emotion must be gratitude.”
“Come now, Lilian, you must own she has cause for embarrassment. Any virtuous female of the slightest sensibility must be mortified to know a gentleman has made himself familiar with her--”
“Malcolm! My dear, spare my blushes. You are right, of course, and I do believe Miss Bertrand to be virtuous and not without sensibility. Yet she agreed to see you last night. You did not give her further cause for awkwardness?”
“Certainly not. She talked freely, argued with me in fact!” He smiled, remembering her spirited defence, her insistence on paying for the ring. “She must have had some other reason for running off in the middle of the night without a word. I daresay she was muddled by the laudanum. What on earth was that pink garment she had on under her coat?”
“Mrs. Wittering’s best dressing gown.”
“Mrs. Wittering’s!” Malcolm tried to imagine the stout housekeeper in pink quilted satin instead of her usual black.
“Mine and Emmie’s are too small and I will not ask Cousin Tabitha after the fuss she made over lending a nightgown, let alone helping me dress her in it.” Lilian frowned in thought. “Mrs. Wittering lent her dressing gown gladly so perhaps she will not mind sitting with Miss Bertrand sometimes, though it is hardly part of her duties. I offered to send to the Manor for Miss Bertrand’s abigail but the poor girl has none.”
“You will be short-handed with neither Miss Thorne nor Emily to help. I shall take my turn.”
“My dear brother, even without considering--in your own words--the unfortunate circumstances of your first encounter, absolutely not!”
“I hope to marry her, Lilian,” Malcolm said quietly.
Lilian’s jaw dropped. “B-but you hardly know her!”
“I know her well enough to admire her courage, her spirit, her...” He must not speak of her loyalty to her cousin. “Her beauty. Well enough to know my mind.”
“Oh, Mama is constantly writing to tell me you are in love again,” Lilian recalled with obvious relief.
“I can’t deny I have often admired a pretty face, but never to the point of wishing to see it over breakfast every morning for the rest of my life!”
“You don’t believe you have compromised her, do you, Malcolm? Because of the unfortunate way you met?”
“No! Padgett will not talk. Jessup saw nothing. Dr. Barley is bound by professional discretion and you told me Jenny Pennick and Miss Thorne will keep their mouths closed.”
“Whatever her faults, Cousin Tabitha is no tattlemonger. Surely Miss Bertrand is unlikely to broadcast her misfortune. Yes, I daresay you are safe. You are not obliged to marry her.”
“It’s not a matter of obligation. I wish to marry her.”
“Indeed, Malcolm, she is not at all a suitable bride for an Eden.”
“Her birth is good enough,” he argued. “You said yourself her father was a count or viscount. Etiquette can be learned. As for lack of fortune, that is no one’s business but my own. My income may be modest but I can afford to support a wife who considers a library subscription to be an extravagance!”
“No, does she? Poor child! All the same, Mama and Father will be appalled when they hear--”
“Don’t tell the family. They will only brush it off as my latest diverting start,” he said bitterly.
As a child ten years younger than his nearest brother, he had grown accustomed perforce to seeing his every attempt at emulation greeted with indulgent amusement. He had done well at Harrow, but not quite as well as Reggie academically or Peter at sports. Reggie was now a Dean at Canterbury, Peter a Brigadier, James Ambassador to some obscure Balkan kingdom: in the Church, the Army, or the Diplomatic Service, Malcolm would always be a poor second. And Radford, of course, was heir to a marquisate, to their father’s title and lands--admittedly an honour to which Malcolm did not aspire.
His present occupation was not one about which he was able to boast to the family, which was one of its attractions. Whatever he did they would not take seriously. He could marry a royal princess and he’d still be the runt of the litter, so why should he not please himself?
Miss Bertrand was the wife for him. Miss Bertrand? “Dash it, I don’t know her christian name! Blount said Miss...Marie?”
“Mariette,” Lilian corrected him distractedly.
“Mariette.” He savoured the word, then looked up at the ceiling. “Mariette,” he said softly, “you must get well quickly, for I mean to woo and win you!”
Chapter 5
“Captain Aldrich, my lady.” Blount stood aside and the captain stepped into the drawing room. He wore unobtrusive riding clothes, not his uniform, Malcolm noted with approval. His visit to Corycombe was not exactly a secret but there was no sense drawing attention to it.
Malcolm went to meet him and shook his hand. “Good to see you again, Des. Lilian, allow me to present Captain Desmond Aldrich. I fagged for Des at Harrow and he’s never let me forget it.”
Hearing Lilian’s sharply indrawn breath, Malcolm wondered if he should have warned her about the captain’s empty sleeve. However, she rose with her usual graceful composure and held out her hand.
“Welcome to Corycombe, Captain Aldrich.”
“My lady.” Des flushed slightly as he bowed over her hand. “Your pardon for intruding, ma’am. I asked for your brother but the butler--”
“Blount was instructed to show you in here, captain. You are just in time to join us for dinner.”
His flush deepened. “I thought I had come early enough to complete our business and be gone before you dined. I’m not dressed for company.”
“We keep country hours, sir. We expected you to dine with us, though Malcolm was uncertain just when you would arrive. And if I have no quarrel to your dress, I am sure Cousin Tabitha and Emily do not. May I present you to Miss Thorne? And this is my daughter.”
Miss Thorne’s expression made it plain that she strongly objected to the captain’s dress, and probably to his presence. Her nod was frigid.
Emmie made a most presentable curtsy. “How do you do, sir,” she said breathlessly. Far too shy and too well-brought-up to enquire about his missing arm, she was nonetheless obviously dying to ask. Her uncle diagnosed an incipient case of hero worship.
“Miss Thorne, Miss Farrar.” Even as he bowed, Des stared at Emily. He turned to Lilian. “Your daughter?”
It was Lilian’s turn to blush. “Yes, captain.”
“Impossible!” he said with conviction.
<
br /> Though Des was Malcolm’s elder by a mere four years, his life at sea had weathered his thin face and he looked older than the youthful Lady Lilian. With a becoming pink in her cheeks, she appeared younger than ever. Malcolm suspected the sailor’s blunt disbelief pleased her more than any number of polished compliments. His sincerity was unmistakable.
Blount came back to announce dinner. Lilian beckoned to him and spoke briefly in an undertone. “Certainly, my lady,” he said and departed with rather more haste than was quite proper in a very proper butler of his age and dignity.
The captain gallantly offered Lilian his only arm, Malcolm gave his two to Miss Thorne and Emily, and they proceeded to the dining room. In such a small company conversation was general. The inevitable topic was Miss Bertrand’s “accident.”
“The lady has my deepest sympathy,” Des said when he heard the story--with the tactful omission of the precise part of her anatomy which had been peppered. “A painful business!”
Too curious to be shy, Emily seized the opening. “Does it hurt dreadfully to be shot, sir?” she asked.
“Emmie, dear!” her mother expostulated.
“That’s all right, ma’am.” Des touched Lilian’s arm reassuringly, then, as he realized what he had done, he hurriedly withdrew his hand and turned to Emily. “Yes, Miss Farrar, it hurts dreadfully.”
Soup forgotten, she leaned forward, eyes wide. “Was it the French who shot you?”
“I believe so, though truth to tell I didn’t much care whether the cannonball was French or Spanish.”
“You fought at Trafalgar?” Lilian was almost as wide-eyed as her daughter.
“I had that honour.”
“You must have known Lord Nelson, then?”
“Not personally, ma’am,” said Des regretfully. “I met him several times but only as one of many captains. Admiral Collingwood was my immediate superior.”
Despite this disclaimer, Lilian and Emily wanted to know all he could tell them about the hero of Trafalgar. Even Miss Thorne put in a question or two. And in spite of his modesty, some of the glamour of that glorious victory clung to Captain Aldrich.
While they talked, Blount and the footman, Charles, removed the soup. Malcolm noticed every dish served thereafter was cut up so as to be easily eaten without a knife. So that was what Lilian had whispered to the butler! Mariette’s difficulties must have given her the notion. She really was a dear, even if her exaggerated notion of his consequence led her to the featherheaded opinion that Mariette was not good enough for him.
The dishes in the second course had been prepared in the same way. Des ate hungrily without apparent awareness of the pains taken to accommodate him, but Malcolm had seen him struggle to cope with a slice of beef during his convalescence, too proud to ask for help. He was sure his friend appreciated Lilian’s thoughtfulness, compounded by her silence on the subject.
Her curiosity about Lord Nelson satisfied, Emily asked, “Are you still in the Navy, sir?”
“Yes, Miss Farrar. Just when I was about to be invalided, I was offered a position ashore instead, under Rear-Admiral Gault at Devonport. I was lucky enough to have a friend put in a good word for me.”
He looked at Malcolm, who said hastily, “Your grandfather, Emmie.”
“At your uncle’s behest,” Des told her.
“The least I could do for the man whose boots I used to black!”
“Did you really, Uncle Malcolm? Is that what you meant when you said you fagged for Captain Aldrich? What else did he make you do?”
“That is enough, Emily,” said Lilian. “We shall leave the gentlemen to their port and their business.” She led Miss Thorne and Emily out.
The captain’s gaze followed her every step of the way.
As soon as Blount had set out the port and brandy and closed the door behind him, Des sighed and said, “When you wrote that you were staying with your elder sister, I pictured a stout, matronly woman like my own elder sister.”
“Lilian must have come as quite a surprise, then.”
“That she did! Before I forget--not that I’m likely to--will you convey my thanks to her ladyship for...for the meal?”
Pouring brandy, Malcolm nodded his understanding. “Of course, old lad. Here, try this. It crossed the Channel long before Boney set himself up.”
Des visibly tore his mind from Lilian’s kindness, and her charms. “Thanks.” He warmed the glass in his hand, sniffed, and sipped. “First rate. It still comes across, you know. Navy, Preventives, Excisemen, between the lot of us we’ve never been able to stop the smuggling.”
“I know,” Malcolm said grimly.
“Are smugglers concerned in this mysterious affair which brings you down to Devon?”
“They have a rôle in it.”
“And is Miss Bertrand involved, by any chance?”
“Only on the periphery. How the deuce did you guess?”
“Your expression when she was talked about. I remember the look from our schooldays. You were concealing something.”
“Not a parcel of goodies from home,” Malcolm said, grinning.
“I still remember those fruitcakes. All right, what’s going on, and where do I come into it?”
Malcolm reached into his inside pocket for his letter of commission, unfolded it, and laid the parchment before the captain. Des read it in silence, then looked up.
“The First Lord! I thought my position wasn’t all your father’s doing. You have some influence at the Admiralty.”
“Not much. I’m just an errand boy. This is the first mission entrusted to me.” He drew his chair closer and lowered his voice. “It starts, believe it or not, with a smuggler with a patriotic conscience.”
“A contradiction in terms, if ever I heard one.”
“Not quite. True, the fellow don’t cavil at cheating the Customs and Excise, nor at trafficking with the French. But when he was asked to carry a letter, he opened it and read it and didn’t like what he saw. He turned it over to a local Justice of the Peace--who turns a blind eye in exchange for his share of smuggled brandy and a bit of lace for his lady, I daresay—and the Justice sent it up to the Admiralty.”
“Naval secrets?”
Malcolm nodded. “It ended up on my superior’s desk. There wasn’t much to be done at that point. We assumed no more letters would be entrusted to the man since the one failed to get through.”
“You didn’t question this smuggler?”
“We don’t know who he is. The Justice, William Penhallow, refused to say more than that it is a Cornishman, on the grounds that if the fellow ceased to trust him we’d hear no more.”
“Reasonable, I suppose,” Des admitted.
“Effective, at all events. There have been three more letters.”
“You don’t know where he gets them, I take it.”
“He swears to Penhallow he doesn’t know the man who gives them to him, only that he’s a buyer of run goods and by his voice he’s a Devon man. They all sound the same to me.”
“Oh no, if I’ve learned anything living down here it’s that you can tell which side of the Tamar a man comes from by his speech. Still, that’s not much help.”
“No. Apart from anything else, the man is probably no more than a messenger and may know neither the contents of the letter nor who provides the information. Fortunately we have another clue. The letters are all marked with a curious seal, presumably to verify their provenance to the recipient. A seal in the form of a sphinx.”
“A sphinx! Unusual indeed, but how the deuce do we go about tracking down its owner?”
“Oh, I’ve already done that,” Malcolm said nonchalantly.
“Already? You only reached Plymouth yesterday, didn’t you? Good gad, you Whitehall men work fast!”
“I’d like you to think I’m incredibly clever, but it was quite fortuitous,” Malcolm confessed, taking the goldsmith’s work from his pocket and pushing it across the table. “I decided a copy might come in useful.”
“Not I.” He grinned. “Merely indulging in a little mystification to whet your curiosity.”
“You have. Start at the beginning.”
“I was in the coffee room at the Golden Hind, whiling away the hours before I met you. A young man approached me and asked if I cared for a game of piquet. I had nothing better to do. If he saw me as a pigeon worth plucking, well, I cut my eyeteeth long ago.”
“A mixed metaphor which would have earned you a couple from old Venables. You won the seal from him?”
“Yes, he lost all his rhino and pledged his signet, a rather attractive Tudor ring.”
With a frown, Des pointed out, “If he uses it to pass secrets to France, surely he’d not risk losing it.”
“I’ve learned more of him since. He’s a young scapegrace, and a dedicated gambler. The ring is a valued heirloom which he was desolated to lose, but that didn’t stop him wagering it on the turn of a card.”
“He’s betraying his country for the sake of the money, then. Who is he?”
“Sir Ralph Riddleworth.”
“Young Riddlesworth! You’re right, he’s a gambler. I’ve often seen him at cards or dice with our officers and generally losing. I wouldn’t have guessed he had the wit or the nerve to make a spy.”
“It’s not difficult to appear stupider than one really is,” said Malcolm wryly, “as I can attest from personal experience.”
Des laughed. “Though I know you to be far from stupid, my friend, I admit I never guessed you had much on your mind beyond the latest way to tie a neckcloth.”
“Good gad, man, the set of a coat and the pattern of a waistcoat are just as important!”
“That’s a pretty one you have on.” He pretended to raise a quizzing glass to Malcolm’s grass-green waistcoat, embroidered with primroses. Then he turned serious again. “I’d give a monkey to know which of our fellows is the gabster, and whether on purpose or through careless talk.”