Behind the Mask (House of Lords)

by Brooke, Meg

  "Thank you, Mr. Jameson," Colin said.

  The steward nodded curtly and was gone.

  "A secret tunnel?" Strathmore said, peering carefully at the plan. "This is getting progressively more complicated by the minute."

  "Steady on," Colin cautioned. "We're not even close to the home stretch yet."

  Eleanor chose one of her favorite dresses to wear that evening and she sat for far longer than she usually did before the mirror, allowing Lily to style her hair elaborately. "You look lovely, Miss," Lily said when she had finally finished. "Lord Pierce will think so, too."

  Eleanor smiled. The servants all seemed to think Lord Pierce was here courting her, though she had told Mr. Jameson at least part of the truth. The steward had seemed concerned but not particularly surprised when she had gone to his office that afternoon to tell him that their gentlemen guests would require the plans of the house and the maps of the estate.

  "I suppose it's all part of the routine when there's a royal visit," he said, not sounding convinced.

  "I suppose so," she agreed, knowing that she sounded no more convinced than he.

  "Just imagine the hullabaloo when she actually arrives!"

  Eleanor didn't have to imagine. She was already living it. After they had returned from their ride she had spent the rest of the afternoon with Mrs. Parkinson, the cook, going over menu ideas. The princess and her retinue would only be at Sidney Park for four days, but it felt as though she was going to be staying a year with all the meat, wine, and delicacies that had to be ordered.

  "If we are not all quite rotund by the end of this visit I will be shocked," Eleanor had said as she surveyed the lists of desserts and pastries that were already being prepared. "Fifteen jars of lemon curd? Are there any lemons left in the orangery?"

  "Not that we could find, Miss," the cook had said ruefully. "I sent Betsy up there only yesterday to shake the trees."

  Sidney Park boasted, among its other eccentricities, a beautiful glass orangery in which grew several fine trees. The first Viscount Sidney had been an admiral—in fact, it had been his service fighting against the Armada that had earned him his title and the Park. But he had always had a terrible fear of scurvy, and had built the orangery as a ward against the ailment. Subsequent generations had been benefitting from it ever since. Eleanor had fine memories of playing under those trees in the winter with Toby.

  That had been long ago, when they were children and he was no more than a boy whose age made him an ideal playmate for Eleanor and her brother. It was only when they had gotten older that things became more...complicated.

  Had it really been five years? Would he look the same as he had back then?

  She asked herself these questions as she went downstairs.

  Her mother and sisters and Mr. Strathmore were already in the drawing room. Georgina had her feet tucked up under her and a book spread across her lap. Maris was pretending to be hopeless at chess and flirting with Mr. Strathmore over the board. Her mother was sitting on the sofa, staring into space. Eleanor went to her, and as she drew near her mother seemed to snap out of her stupor.

  “Oh, Eleanor,” she said, smiling charmingly. “I was just beginning to wonder where you were. That dress looks lovely.”

  “Thank you,” Eleanor replied sitting down beside her. “You look lovely.” Lady Sidney had long since ceased wearing full mourning for her husband, but she still wore only the mauve and lilac tones of half-mourning, and the jet mourning brooch with a lock of hair inside was securely pinned to the shoulder of the gown she wore tonight. Eleanor had not seen her mother without the brooch since the day it had arrived three months after her father’s death.

  “I feel ancient,” Lady Sidney said softly, looking across the room as Maris giggled loudly.

  “Well, you don’t look it,” Eleanor insisted. Her mother was barely fifty. She had been almost ten years her husband’s junior, and had had Leo barely a year after their marriage. The intervening years had been kind to her. Her dark hair was just starting to gray, and her complexion was still pearly, her face relatively free of wrinkles. She was a lovely woman. Eleanor thought of the Earl of Sheridan, who had been a friend of her father’s and had spent much of the last season flirting rather shamelessly with her mother. Was her mother happy, she wondered? Would she still be when her daughters had married and left the nest?

  The door swung open and Mr. and Mrs. Hollier were announced. They came in, a graying man with a large paunch and a plump, pleasant woman about five years his junior. Everyone rose to greet them, and when she stood Eleanor saw the man standing behind them.

  Toby Hollier had changed considerably. Five years ago he had been a pale, lean, sandy-haired young man of twenty-one. Now his hair looked blonder, lighter against the tanned skin he had no doubt acquired in India. When he smiled his teeth looked very white. He was of middling height, and that had not changed, but he had put on some bulk in the last five years. His shoulders were broader than she remembered. But it was his watery blue eyes that were the strongest reminder of days gone by. When he met Eleanor’s eyes, she felt her heart begin to hammer in nervous agitation.

  Mrs. Hollier and her mother had been speaking, and now Lady Sidney turned to present the girls.

  “Eleanor,” Mrs. Hollier said, “you are looking well.”

  She had of course seen Mrs. Hollier every year, when they came up to Sidney Park at the end of the season, but she stepped forward to be embraced as though it had been a decade since they last spoke. She closed her eyes, not daring to look up to see if Toby was watching.

  “Georgina, Maris!” Mrs. Hollier cried. “I do believe you’ve both grown!”

  “I suppose we have,” Maris said cheerily. “We’ve certainly been eating enough.”

  Then Lady Sidney was presenting Mr. Strathmore. “We have another guest as well, Lord Pierce. I’m sure he’ll be joining us shortly.”

  “Lord Pierce?” Toby asked. It was the first thing he had said. “The Earl of Townsley’s son?”

  “Do you know him?” Eleanor’s mother asked as they moved into the room and took their seats. Eleanor looped around behind the sofa on the pretense of looking over the chessboard, though in reality she was hoping to wait until Toby had taken his seat so that she could sit as far from him as possible.

  “Not in person,” Toby was saying, “but by reputation.”

  “His father wants him to look over the improvements we have made here. Apparently the great house at Townsley is in need of renovations.”

  Toby nodded thoughtfully, taking one of the armchairs while Mr. Strathmore took the other. Eleanor circled around and sat between her mother and Mr. Hollier. She ought to say something to him, she knew, but she could think of nothing to say. “Why did you give up?” and “Why didn’t you write me even once in five years?” were hardly appropriate questions for the drawing room. Indeed, she was not certain she would ever be able to ask them. She was not even sure she wanted to know the answer.

  Her mother and Mrs. Hollier were chatting amiably. Maris was pretending to listen as Toby and his father discussed estate affairs with Mr. Strathmore. Between Maris and Mrs. Hollier, Georgina was watching Eleanor, a thoughtful expression on her face.

  The door opened again, and Lord Pierce strode in, dressed just as impeccably as he had been the evening before. His moustache twitched up at one corner in what might have been a smile. Eleanor’s mother sprung up to introduce him. The Holliers stood to meet the last guest. Then, mercifully, supper was announced and everyone began to pair up.

  Lord Pierce held out his arm for Lady Sidney, as was her right. Mr. Strathmore, as the only other male guest not related to her, held out his arm for Mrs. Hollier. Then Mr. Hollier extended his arm for Eleanor. She took it, grateful that Toby had been forced to lead Maris and Georgina in. Before the guests had arrived Eleanor’s mother had been lamenting the uneven numbers, but neither Toby nor the twins seemed to mind.

  “My son has changed, hasn’t he?” Mr. Hollier as
ked as they went into the dining room.

  “Indeed,” Eleanor said noncommittally.

  Mr. Hollier chuckled. “His mother and I almost didn’t recognize him. And you know, he made a great fortune in India.”

  Behind them Toby cleared his throat. His father laughed even more heartily as he held Eleanor’s chair out for her. She was seated between Mr. Hollier and her sister Georgina, with Mrs. Hollier across the table, and so she was spared from having to speak to Toby, who was kept much occupied by Maris.

  It was only after the meal had ended and the ladies were moving back into the drawing room that Eleanor found herself walking with Georgina. “Is everything all right?” her sister asked.

  “Of course,” she replied airily, aware that Maris was listening.

  Georgina’s expression said that she didn’t believe Eleanor for a moment, but she let the matter drop.

  When the gentlemen joined them again, Toby came right to the empty seat beside Eleanor, dropping into it gratefully, as though he had run all the way from Havenhall. The maid served him a cup of tea, which he sipped for a few moments. With a nod from Lady Sidney, Georgina went to the piano and began to play.

  “We must persuade you to sing to us tonight, Eleanor,” Mrs. Hollier said.

  Eleanor shook her head. She could not possibly imagine singing this evening, not when her heart was still hammering in her throat at Toby’s nearness. “I am afraid my voice is rather tired tonight, Mrs. Hollier,” she said apologetically. “Perhaps another time.”

  “Indeed,” Eleanor’s mother said, “you will all be invited back soon, you know, once the schedule for the princess’s visit has been approved. And we will be at home Monday and Tuesday afternoon next week.”

  “You may certainly expect to see us,” Mrs. Hollier said, smiling enthusiastically. Then she glanced at Eleanor and winked.

  If she could have melted into the sofa and vanished from view, Eleanor would gratefully have done so. As it was, another hour passed before the guests declared their intention to leave and she could, at last, escape up to her room.

  EIGHT

  August 30, 1834

  The next morning Colin rose rather sluggishly. He had had a restless night, his mind churning with thoughts of Yates and the mission and the seven days remaining before the princess’s arrival. Then, when he slept, he had dreamed rather bizarrely of Miss Chesney and the way she had sat so silently beside the young Mr. Hollier in the drawing room.

  When the ladies had gone and Colin had been left with Strathmore and the two Hollier men in the dining room, the talk had turned to India. He could tell that Strathmore was attempting to feel out whether that was where he had encountered Mr. Hollier. As far as Colin could see, that was not where his companion knew the man from, and he was also aware that the inability to place him was troubling to Strathmore, who had told Colin himself that he had an excellent memory for names and faces.

  “Were you never in Mysore, Mr. Hollier?” Strathmore asked.

  Hollier shook his head. “No, I spent two years in Bahawalpur, monitoring the negotiations there, and before that I was in Delhi.”

  Strathmore nodded thoughtfully.

  “Will you return to India?” Colin asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” Hollier said. “I have made my fortune, and I am satisfied. No, my hope now is to settle down.”

  “And hopefully to give us those grandchildren we’ve been after him for,” the elder Mr. Hollier said, chuckling merrily, his jowls and paunch jiggling.

  Young Hollier actually looked embarrassed, but Colin did not miss the quick glance he cast at the doors to the drawing room. Did he have some sort of arrangement with one of the Chesney daughters? Did he hope for one?

  It was only when they went into the drawing room and Colin observed the strange tension between Hollier and Miss Chesney that he understood. When the man had gone to India, Miss Chesney would have been barely old enough to marry. The two of them had either had some sort of understanding and not been allowed to marry, or one of them had wanted the other and found their affections to be unrequited. From the look of sheer misery on Miss Chesney’s face Colin guessed it was the former. He also did not miss the way Lady Sidney and Mrs. Hollier looked expectantly at the two young people, as if young Hollier might at any moment go down on one knee right there in the drawing room.

  It was of no import to him, Colin told himself. It would certainly be a reasonable alliance for Miss Chesney, especially if she hoped to stay near Sidney Park. There was no reason for him to feel as much consternation as he had at her misery. She was not his responsibility, nor were her feelings any of his concern. Let her brother deal with it when he arrived.

  Still, by the next morning he still could not take his mind from her. He would go out and ride the perimeter, he decided. A chance to clear his head was all that he needed.

  John Mowbray, the brawny head groom, was already out in the stableyard, and he smiled when he saw Colin. As he waited for his horse to be saddled, Colin chatted amiably with Mowbray, asking the sort of questions he planned to put to the rest of the staff later in the day. Mowbray, it turned out, had lived on the estate all his life. His father had been head groom before him, and his father before that. In his youth Mowbray had been a playmate of the future Viscount Sidney and Toby Hollier, as well as Miss Chesney.

  “Something of a tomboy, then?” Colin asked.

  “I suppose you could say that,” Mowbray laughed. “She certainly knew how to climb a tree, and she was a bolder rider than any of us. She never backed away from a dare. Being the littlest and a girl to boot probably had some influence, but I don’t think she’s changed much since then.” Suddenly, as if realizing only at that moment how his analysis of his mistress’s character would sound, he said, “Of course, it’s not my place to say such things about Miss Chesney. Forgive me, My Lord.”

  “No indeed,” Colin said.

  Mowbray’s brow wrinkled. “Then perhaps you will permit me a question, My Lord,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “Are you pursuing Miss Chesney?”

  “Pursuing her?” Colin asked, playing dumb.

  “Do you mean to marry her?”

  Colin thought he might actually be flushing. “No, no,” he said, holding up his hands. “I assure you, that is not my purpose in coming here.”

  “And whyever not?” Mowbray demanded. “Is there something wrong with her?”

  His tone was so serious that Colin stared at him for a moment before realizing he was joking. Then both men laughed, and the tense moment had passed. Colin mounted the chestnut he had been given yesterday and rode out of the stable yard. But he felt John Mowbray’s eyes on him all the way to the end of the yard.

  In a way he was glad that the servants all seemed to think his purpose at Sidney Park was strictly social. It meant that Mr. Jameson was as circumspect as he appeared, and that Eleanor had managed to keep her mother and sisters from learning his true purpose. But it also made things far more difficult than they might have been had Lady Sidney known the true reason behind his visit. Yet that would also have caused difficulties, particularly when the princess arrived with her mother and her mother’s weasel of a comptroller.

  Colin had met Sir John Conroy on two occasions, neither of which he would ever forget. The first time was right after Colin had entered the Foreign Service. He was still learning the ropes, working routine duties and trying to find his way in the maze of national security. Princess Victoria’s half sister Feodora was planning a marriage to Prince Ernst of Hohenloe-Langenburg. Among the retinue who had appeared in London for the wedding was a man called Franz Bernhard, a revolutionary and unstable young man, whom Colin had been sent to squire around the city in the days before the actual marriage celebration. Bernhard had proved to be a rather boring, idle sort of youth, and Colin, who had just turned twenty-three, had quickly begun to chafe at being his shadow. But he had relished the chance to observe Sir John up close, since the man had a reputati
on for being a ruthless, cunning viper. It was he who had devised the Kensington System, the rules under which the Princess Victoria was being raised. At the time the child had been only ten or eleven, and had been quite cowed by her mother and Sir John. Colin had seen her only once, and after the prince’s party had departed with his new bride, he had thought very little of the strange circumstances under which the princess lived. But then nearly two years later, just before Colin was to leave for the Continent, Sir John came to the Foreign Office at Whitehall to ask the new Foreign Secretary, Viscount Palmerston, to expel many of the agents of the princess’s Uncle Leopold from the country. Palmerston had, of course, denied the request, and Sir John had become so enraged that he picked up a letter opener and threw it through the window. The glass had scattered all over the carpet as Sir John turned smartly on his heel and marched out of the room.

  Naturally, these experiences had not fostered a great deal of respect for the Duchess of Kent’s comptroller in Colin’s mind. But he had learned that if there was one thing Sir John respected, it was rank. He had not pursued the matter any further after that incident, and it was because Palmerston was the highest authority to which he could appeal. He had reached the top rung, and he would not have been satisfied if he hadn’t.

  But understanding him didn’t mean Colin trusted the man. He would have to be watched carefully.

  For now, however, Colin meant to clear his mind of his troubles. He rode across the bridge and through the trees towards the south hill. He had a pair of Steiner binoculars that had been a gift from Angeline in his pocket, and he thought he might be able to get a wide view of the flats from the top of the hill. But when at last he came out of the trees atop the shallow ridge, he saw that there was not much he would be able to survey. The flats were shrouded in fog.

  "It will clear by midday," Miss Chesney's voice said. Colin turned to see her sitting atop her powerful bay, dressed just as she had been yesterday morning. He had thought she was not yet awake when he slipped out of the house, and it occurred to him that John Mowbray had not mentioned that she had gone out riding.