Bound by a Scandalous Secret (The Scandalous Summerfields)

by Diane Gaston

  Besides, it would send the wrong message to her.

  Instead he whispered to her, ‘Tinmore is unpleasant and cruel. I am sorry for you and your sister.’

  ‘I am able to bear it,’ she whispered back, ‘but I worry about Lorene.’

  ‘We will begin at the hall,’ the butler said, cutting off more conversation.

  Genna inclined her head towards the butler. ‘Dixon will repeat anything we say to each other.’

  Ross took the warning and stepped away from her.

  The hall, the first room seen when one entered the house from the main entrance, was wainscoted in dark mahogany and its walls were adorned in armament of early times, when it was important that a lord show his military strength. Though the swords, battleaxes, lances, rapiers and pikes were arranged in decorative patterns, the sheer numbers were a warning.

  ‘You can see,’ the butler intoned, ‘the power that has always been a part of the Earls of Tinmore.’

  Rossdale Hall had an armament room with twice as many weapons on display and countless more stored away in an attic somewhere, but Ross did not mention that fact.

  ‘Depressing, is it not?’ murmured Genna just loud enough for Ross to hear.

  Dixon gestured to a huge portrait of a gentleman on the left wall. ‘This is the first Earl of Tinmore, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth and one of her trusted advisors. He was given this land and title as a reward for his faithful service to the Queen.’

  The first Earl had the pointed beard, ruff and rich velvets of his era.

  ‘And on the right is his Countess.’

  The portrait matched the size of the first Earl of Tinmore’s. His Countess wore a black gown with an even wider white ruff and huge puffed sleeves.

  ‘The house has over one hundred rooms…’ Dixon said.

  He led them from salon to dining room to gallery and Ross made no more attempt to talk with Genna. This house tour had none of the delight of her tour of Summerfield House. His only consolation was that they were free of Tinmore’s company.

  And he could watch Genna.

  In each room, Genna paid close attention to the paintings. The house contained an impressive array of them. Most were Italian, as Tinmore had suggested. Ross recognised the style from the Grand Tour he and Dell had taken in their youth, but there was also an impressive number of Dutch paintings, classical sculpture, and later portraits by Lawrence and Reynolds.

  What was she thinking as she examined the artwork? Ross wondered. Her mind was alive, he could tell, but he did not have an inkling what was passing through it.

  He rather liked that.

  * * *

  Tinmore waved a hand towards the pianoforte. ‘Play for our guest,’ he demanded of his wife.

  Dell steeled himself. He’d managed to act as if he was not affected by Lorene, but he did not know how long he could tolerate Tinmore’s company. He would have fled the room with Ross and Genna, but he could not bear to leave Lorene alone with him.

  Foolish. She was his wife. She would be alone with him the moment they left for Summerfield House.

  She rose from her sofa and gracefully moved to the pianoforte in one corner of the room. The pianoforte was a work of art unto itself, like the walls of the room with their Roman gods spilling over each other. Trimmed in ebony and gold, the pianoforte sparkled in the candlelight, as dreamlike as the Mount Olympus scene.

  Dell held his breath as her hands touched the keys. Since the night she had played for him at Summerfield House, he could not get her music out of his head—or the vision of her playing it. It came back to him during moments of solitude when he could not keep himself busy enough to stop thinking.

  She began with the Beethoven piece she had played for him before, the one that revealed to him all her sadness and loneliness and so reminded him of his sister. It took a few bars of the music to transport her and then her lovely face glowed as if the music had lit her from within. He had to close his eyes from the sheer beauty of her.

  ‘No. No,’ her husband interrupted. ‘Do not play your gloomy nonsense!’

  She stopped with a discordant note and her back stiffened.

  Tinmore had downed another glass of brandy. How many had he consumed? Dell and Ross prided themselves on being able to empty a few bottles at night, but where they’d restrained themselves, Tinmore had indulged.

  ‘Our guest does not want to hear this.’ He pounded on the carpet with his cane.

  ‘I assure you I do wish to hear whatever your wife chooses,’ Dell said through clenched teeth.

  Tinmore smirked at him. ‘You need not be polite, Penford. She can play something cheerful. Something fitting for Christmas Day.’

  She paused for a moment, as if collecting herself, before she played the first notes of Here We Come A-wassailing.

  Lord Tinmore started to sing, ‘“Here we come a-wassailing among the leaves so green—”’

  Another fit of coughing overtook him.

  Lorene rose and hurried over to him. ‘My lord, you are ill again.’

  Dell poured him a cup of tea, tepid now. Better tea than more brandy. He handed it to Tinmore without milk or sugar. Tinmore gulped it down and the coughing eased, but his breathing was laboured.

  ‘You are wheezing.’ Lorene placed a hand on Tinmore’s forehead. ‘Let me help you to your room.’

  Tinmore pushed her hand away. ‘Stop fussing. Think of your duty, woman. We have a guest. You stay and entertain our guest. Wicky will take care of me.’ He motioned for the footman attending the room to approach. ‘Help me to my room and get Wicky for me.’

  ‘His valet,’ Lady Tinmore explained.

  Dell did not care who tended to Tinmore.

  The old Earl hobbled out of the room with the footman bearing his weight. His coughing came back, echoing behind him.

  This damned man. How could he be so churlish towards his wife, even while she showed him great solicitude? How did she bear moments like this, being callously dismissed and rebuffed?

  She still faced the door from which her husband exited. Dell indulged in his desire to gaze at her, so graceful, so perfect.

  Lawd! Why should this woman be married to such a man?

  He raised his arm, wanting to comfort her, but he had no right. He had no right to even speak to her about her husband.

  But he could not help it. ‘Does he always speak to you so?’

  She turned and lifted her eyes to his. ‘Quite often.’

  ‘He should not,’ he answered in a low voice. ‘You do not deserve it.’

  She lowered her lashes. ‘It is kind of you to say so.’

  There was so much more he wished to say. He wanted Tinmore to go to the devil and never do her feelings an injury again.

  Instead the two of them stood there, less than an arm’s length apart. Too close. Much too close.

  He could not help but reach out and touch her arm. ‘Would you play the Beethoven piece for me?’ he murmured. ‘I would very much like to hear it again.’

  She nodded. ‘Of course.’

  She returned to the pianoforte and began Pathétique and the notes of the music transformed into sheer emotion. He could not quiet the storm inside him. As she played he walked back to the chair where he had been sitting, spying on the table the miniature Genna had painted of her. Lorene’s back was to him and, for the moment, there was no one else in the room. He picked up the miniature and placed it in his coat pocket.

  When she finished Pathétique, she turned to him. ‘Do you mind if I play some of the music you brought to me?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he responded. He picked up the box and brought the sheet music to her. She set it on the piano bench and started to look through it.

  ‘Some of this is so frivolous,’ she said. ‘Some too simple.’
>
  ‘Like what?’ he asked.

  ‘King William’s March,’ she responded. ‘This is one of the first pieces I learned to play.’

  She put the sheet of music on the stand and played the crisp lively notes. He stood behind her and watched the confident movement of her fingers on the keys and was glad that the music had led her to something more cheerful. When the piece was done her mood seemed to have lifted.

  She looked through her box again. ‘Let us look for a nice song!’

  ‘The wassail song?’ he asked.

  She laughed. ‘No, not that one.’ She continued to riffle through the pages. ‘This one.’ She handed him a sheet.

  ‘Barbara Allen?’ He placed it on the stand. ‘Even I know that one.’

  She placed the box on the floor and moved over on her bench. ‘Then sit and sing it with me.’

  They sang the old song together, her voice high and crystalline; his deeper.

  In Scarlet town where I was born

  There was a fair maid dwelling…

  The song was a tragedy, two lovers dying.

  She played other pieces of music from her box, all songs of thwarted love, it seemed. He remained at her side, watching her, joining in on the songs when he knew them. Time seemed suspended as her music went on.

  ‘You select one,’ she said, handing him the box.

  He picked out The Turtle Dove. She played and he sang.

  Fare you well, my dear, I must be gone,

  And leave you for a while,

  If I roam away I’ll come back again,

  Though I roam ten thousand miles…

  He sang to the end of the song:

  O yonder doth sit that little turtle dove,

  He doth sit on yonder high tree,

  A-making a moan for the loss of his love,

  As I will do for thee, my dear.

  When he finished, she placed her hands on the bench at her sides, but continued to stare at the piano keys. The room turned very quiet.

  He touched her hand, a bare touch with only two fingers entwined with hers. He was merely feeling sympathy for her, was he not? She was a relation of sorts so it stood to reason he would care about her.

  Very slowly she faced him and met his gaze.

  Dell stopped thinking.

  She leaned towards him, still holding his eyes.

  The door opened and Genna’s laughter reached their ears.

  Genna and Ross entered the room.

  ‘We are finished with the tour!’ Genna said.

  Dell stood up and moved away from the pianoforte. ‘And we must take our leave,’ he said.

  ‘Now?’ Ross looked surprised.

  ‘Yes—now—’ Dell sputtered. ‘Lord Tinmore took ill again. We should leave. Now.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  London—February 1816

  Six weeks later Genna sat behind her sister in the recesses of Lord Tinmore’s box at the Royal Opera House. Onstage was Don Giovanni and all the ton were keen to see it—and to be seen seeing it. Thus, the boxes were packed with ladies in silks and gentlemen in impeccably tailored formal dress. Those in the orchestra were not so fashionably dressed, but those people mattered very little to the fashionable world.

  Genna loved to see the fashionable clothes the London ladies wore. Genna, though, considered it important to set herself off from the latest fashion, with a twist on whatever was the rage. She and Lorene used a modiste who used to be their sister Tess’s maid. Nancy was a particularly creative collaborator in Genna’s quest to express herself in her dress.

  Her wardrobe, of course, was possible only through the benevolence of Lord Tinmore, a fact which niggled at Genna’s conscience a little, even though he considered her dress mere pretty packaging to attract suitors. Tinmore’s intention was to marry her off this Season. Genna was just as determined to resist.

  If she could only hold out this Season. In the autumn she would turn twenty-one and then she intended to do as she pleased.

  In the meantime she would enjoy the Season’s entertainments, like this lovely opera, so filled with humour and drama. The Season was hardly at its height, but more of the fashionable elite arrived every day and more and more were hosting balls, breakfasts, or musical soirées.

  Not that Genna expected to be invited to many of them. Tinmore was a generation or two too old to be on everyone’s guest list and Genna was certain many hostesses seized on any excuse to keep from inviting the scandalous Summerfield sisters.

  ‘Look! Look there!’ Tinmore cried above Leporello’s solo. ‘I do believe that is the Duke of Kessington.’ He lifted his mother-of-pearl opera glasses to his eyes. ‘Yes. Yes. It is. Rossdale and Penford are in his company.’

  Rossdale. Her heart skittered.

  She knew there was a chance she would see Rossdale during the Season. It was unlikely they would attend the same entertainments, but it was possible that their paths would cross somewhere like this. She hardly knew what greeting to expect from him, if he deigned to greet her at all. He and Penford had left so abruptly on Christmas Day. They quit Lincolnshire entirely within that same week, she’d heard, even though they’d said they would stay past Twelfth Night.

  Something must have offended them. What other explanation could there be? Something must have happened while she and Rossdale were touring the house. Lorene professed to know nothing, but Genna did not know whether to believe her or not.

  She’d missed Rossdale. She fancied him her friend and Genna had enjoyed his company more than anyone she could remember.

  Although perhaps he’d merely been kind to a silly chit with scandalous parents and siblings.

  ‘Who is Tinmore talking about?’ her sister Tess leaned over to ask.

  Another of the delights of London was the opportunity to see Tess, who now stayed in town most of the time with her husband and his parents, Viscount and Viscountess Northdon.

  Genna answered her. ‘He is talking about our cousin, Lord Penford, and his friend. They sit in the Duke of Kessington’s box.’

  ‘Our cousin attends the opera with a duke?’ Tess’s brows rose. ‘Impressive.’

  ‘His friend is the Duke’s son,’ Genna explained.

  The Duke’s box was positioned almost as advantageously as the King’s box, which seemed a great distance from Genna at the moment.

  Once she would have told Tess about every moment with a man like Rossdale, but since Lorene married and turned their world on its ears, Genna had become too used to keeping secrets.

  Tess glanced at the Duke’s box again. ‘Lorene told me you had dined with our cousin, but I did not know about his friend.’

  Genna joked, ‘I suppose Lorene and I are so accustomed to lofty acquaintances that it quite slipped our minds to tell you.’

  Tess laughed. ‘Who would ever have thought any Summerfield sister would be acquainted with a person of such high rank?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Though he might pretend not to know her now.

  * * *

  Ross saw Tinmore gazing at his father’s box through opera glasses. Whether Dell saw Tinmore, too, Ross could not tell. He didn’t dare ask either. Ever since Christmas night Dell had acted very strange. First he’d insisted they leave Tinmore Hall abruptly, then he’d decided to quit Lincolnshire entirely. Ross thought he would have left on Boxing Day if he could have, but it took a little longer than that to complete his business there.

  Ross asked once what had happened to make Dell so adamant about leaving. Dell told him he did not want to risk having to be in Tinmore’s company again. Neither he nor Ross could abide the man, but Ross had been disappointed that their visit was cut so short. He’d have risked a few moments in Tinmore’s company if it meant spending more time with Genna. He’d at least hoped they would hav
e had a chance to discuss the house tour or the artwork she’d examined that night.

  Now every time he saw a painting, even the familiar ones in his father’s town house, he thought of her. Would she see the painting as he did? Would she learn something from the artist’s technique?

  He must confess, he’d never given artistic technique a thought until meeting her, until seeing her wild use of colour in that watercolour of Summerfield House.

  Was she in Tinmore’s box? he wondered. He could not see her and he certainly did not wish to call upon Tinmore during the intermission if she were not present.

  Could he renew his friendship with Genna here in London? He did not see how. Eligible men and marriageable women could not simply enjoy one another’s company without wagging tongues putting them both in parson’s mousetrap.

  On stage Don Giovanni attempted to seduce Zerlina. ‘This life is nought but pleasure,’ he sang in Italian.

  But life was not all pleasure, Ross thought. For many there was nothing but suffering. He and Dell had visited some of the Waterloo wounded who’d been in Dell’s regiment, men merely hanging on to life by a thread. He’d brought them bottles of brandy, but what they’d really wanted was food for their families. He’d seen to that later. Those families would never go hungry again.

  If his father the Duke knew of his charity, he’d scoff and insist that the real solutions lay in Parliament. To his father, Parliament and its politics were everything. Even the guests the Duke had selected to share his box were chosen to bring some political advantage. Ross was not even sure his father and his wife paid any attention to the marvel of this opera.

  What about merely inviting friends because you enjoyed their company? And why not help suffering individuals now? What was wrong with doing things his own way, not like his father?

  Ross and Genna were alike in that way. They both wanted to choose their own way.

  Ross stared at Giovanni, so determined to do as he wished, as reprehensible as his wishes were. Ross’s desires were not reprehensible. He wished to do good for people. But the important thing to him was to assist by his own choice, not someone else’s, not what the politics of the situation would require of him.