by Candace Camp
“You know, Crispin, I wish I could have, too.” Sir Philip looked a trifle wistful. “I always enjoyed the time I spent on Blackley Fen.”
“What are all these windmills?” Olivia asked. “Why are they here and why are there so many of them?”
“To pump the water out of the fens. They are no longer used, of course. Now they use steam engines for the pumps, but in the seventeenth century they were all over, driving the huge pumps that kept the fens from reclaiming the soil. Many of them were torn down after they went out of use, but there are many of them still standing.”
“It’s fascinating,” Cassandra breathed. “It looks…almost foreign.”
“There are those who say that fen country is a world unto itself.”
In a little more than two hours, they turned off the road and started up the lane leading to Haverly House. The lane was shaded by a row of stately silver birches on either side, and among them grew masses of rhododendrons, delighting the eye with great splashes of red, purple and blue. Cassandra drew in her breath with astonished pleasure, and Sir Philip smiled, pleased by her reaction.
“This is beautiful!” she exclaimed, craning her neck this way and that to take in all the color.
In the distance the trees ended before a magnificent gray stone house, its stately walls softened with ivy. Cassandra felt a stab of pleasure at the beauty of the estate, but mingled with it was regret that their journey was over. The three days had been tiring, but they had been wonderful, too—spent largely in Sir Philip’s company and largely out of her aunt’s and Joanna’s. She knew that it could not be the same once they were inside his house.
The massive double doors were opened by liveried footmen before the carriage came to a halt, and by the time the vehicle had stopped, a footman was there to fold down the steps and open the door. A tall man with a yellow, cadaverous face and a wealth of thick white hair descended the steps of the house with great dignity.
“Good day, Sir Philip. Welcome home,” he said gravely, bowing.
“Good day, Shivers. These are my guests, Lady Cassandra Verrere, Lady Olivia, Lord Chesilworth, and there, in the driver’s seat, is Master Hart. No doubt you will think you are seeing double. His lordship and Master Hart are twins.”
“Of course, sir.” The butler bowed gravely toward the two young boys. Even Hart seemed subdued by his dignity.
The second carriage pulled in behind them and stopped, and Sir Philip turned to introducing Mrs. Moulton and Joanna. At that moment a blur shot out the front door and vaulted down the steps.
“Philip!” The girl leaped from the last step into his arms, trusting Philip to catch her, which he did with the ease of long practice.
“Georgette!” He hugged his sister and gave her a buss on the cheek, chiding playfully, “Are you never going to start behaving like a lady? My guests will think you are a hoyden.”
Georgette turned toward the others, grinning infectiously. She was beautiful, Cassandra thought, and much resembled her brother, with thick dark locks and the same golden-brown eyes, now sparkling with interest as she surveyed the new arrivals.
“I’m so happy to see you! It has been ages since Philip brought anyone home to visit, and it is deadly dull here.” She stopped, looking a bit embarrassed. “No. I said that wrong, didn’t I? I mean, I would have been happy to see you even if it were not dull here. But since it is,” she added irrepressibly, grinning, “I can tell you that I am twice as happy to see you.”
Before Philip could introduce her around, an older woman emerged from the house and advanced on them, smiling, her hands outstretched. “Philip! My love!”
“Mother.” He smiled and greeted the woman with a kiss on the cheek. “You are looking lovely, as always.”
She patted his cheek. “Darling boy. Now introduce me to everyone.”
“Yes, Philip, please do.” Joanna said, coming up beside him and linking her arm with his in a possessive way. “I am so looking forward to meeting your family.”
Philip glanced down at her in some surprise. At that moment, another woman appeared on the front steps. She looked to be in her twenties, not unattractive, but dressed in the plainest of ways, her hair pulled back tightly into a bun. She carried an equally plain straw bonnet and was pulling on her gloves.
“Sarah!” Lady Neville turned to the young woman with a smile. “Do come here and see Philip. He has just returned with his guests.”
“Yes. I see. That is why I—I do not wish to intrude….”
“Nonsense,” Lady Neville said calmly. “You are not intruding. Why, you are practically one of the family. Isn’t she, Philip?”
The woman colored a little with pleasure at Lady Neville’s words and came forward.
“Miss Yorke was paying us a social call when you arrived,” Lady Neville explained. “She is in charge at Silverwood, and a very dear friend of the family.”
Silverwood? Cassandra wondered what Silverwood might be and what she was in charge of there.
Her question was all too quickly answered, for Georgette went on bouncily, “Yes, she takes care of Philip’s children—and a daunting task it is, too.”
Philip smiled, disengaging his arm from Joanna and taking Miss Yorke’s hand in greeting, saying, “Good day, Miss Yorke. How are the children?”
“Doing well, Sir Philip. Of course, they have been asking about you frequently.”
“I shall be sure to visit them first thing tomorrow. But pardon me, I am forgetting my manners. I was about to introduce everyone.”
Through this exchange, Cassandra stood, stunned. Her heart seemed to have dropped clear down to her toes, and her stomach was twisting into knots. She could not think, hearing over and over again Georgette’s words: Philip’s children.
It was true! Sir Philip was so promiscuous that he had a whole houseful of illegitimate children, and he had set them up in a house that was obviously near here. Cassandra had not believed that what her aunt told her was true; it had seemed too preposterous. Her gaze turned involuntarily toward Aunt Ardis. The woman nodded at her with grim significance, and Cassandra’s stomach felt even sicker.
Philip was going through the long introductions now, and Cassandra tried to smile and greet everyone. His mother greeted her placidly. How could she speak of this Silverwood place so calmly? Planting a whole household of one’s illegitimate children practically on one’s mother’s doorstep seemed to Cassandra a slap in her face. Cassandra could not imagine treating it with such equanimity.
Lady Neville suggested that they go back inside, but Miss Yorke demurred. “I am sure that you wish to visit with your guests. I will come again another time.” She smiled in the general direction of the visitors. “I hope you will come to visit Silverwood while you are here.”
Aunt Ardis’s jaw dropped, but Cassandra managed to reply with a faint, “Yes, of course. Thank you.”
Miss Yorke started off, and Lady Neville repeated, “Do let’s go inside, where we can be comfortable. I am sure that you must be exhausted after your journey.”
“Not I,” Joanna said gaily, flashing the woman a dimpling grin. “Sir Philip is so considerate that it made the trip quite easy.” She turned toward Philip’s sister. “I myself am looking forward to a long coze with Georgette. May I call you Georgette? Philip has spoken of you so often that I feel as if I know you already.” She gave her the same dazzling smile, slipped her arm through the girl’s and steered her toward the front door. “I am quite sure that we are going to be the closest of friends.”
Georgette looked a trifle taken aback but went along with Joanna, and the others followed. Aunt Ardis grabbed Cassandra’s arm and held her back behind the others.
“You see?” she hissed into Cassandra’s ears. “Did I not tell you?”
“Yes, Aunt. You did.”
“I hope you have taken m
y warning to heart,” Aunt Ardis continued.
“Yes.” Cassandra tried to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach. “Don’t worry. There is nothing between Sir Philip and me, and there never will be.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CASSANDRA DRESSED FOR dinner in her best gown, but even so, she felt dowdy sitting at the elegant long table in Haverly House. The seemingly endless expanse was made of teak and polished to a mirror gleam. A silver epergne of fruit graced the center, so tall that Cassandra was grateful their small group did not go down so far, for it would have made conversation across the table impossible. All the dishes, silverware and crystal were of the finest, and from overhead in the enormous wainscotted room, crystal chandeliers showered them with soft light.
Chesilworth had once been such an elegant house, Cassandra knew, but it had not been so in her lifetime—or even that of her father. The best pieces of silver had all been sold, most of them long ago, and the ceiling of the Chesilworth dining room had become so stained from water leakage that they had given up eating there and taken their meals in a much smaller room nearer the kitchen. Even Moulton Hall, which her aunt liked to think of as being furnished in the best of style, could not compete with Haverly House’s ageless elegance.
Cassandra’s best dress, other than the ballgown she had worn the night of her aunt’s party, was a dark brown silk that she had made over from one of her mother’s dresses and had brightened up with new trimmings of beige lace. It was a nice material, of course, and she and Olivia had managed to make it look rather up to date in style. But it was not the best color for her pale skin and light blond hair, and nothing she had been able to do could make the neckline and shoulders of the dress fit right. Besides, she thought, it was the sort of color old ladies wore, a feeling which was confirmed when Sir Philip’s grandmother entered the drawing room wearing a gown of very similar color.
On Lady Neville, of course, it looked exactly right, especially given the blaze of topazes that encircled her throat and winked in her ears. It helped, of course, that the tobacco-colored gown had obviously been designed and sewn by a master modiste rather than created by a seamstress in Dunsleigh and altered by two less-than-accomplished girls.
Cassandra looked across the table at the formidable old Lady Neville. It had come a little as a surprise to find herself seated at Sir Philip’s right, with his grandmother on the other side, and his mother, Aunt Ardis and Joanna down the sides of the table. Then she had realized that in terms of nobility she outranked not only her aunt and cousin, but even Sir Philip’s mother and grandmother.
“Well, my gel,” the elder Lady Neville drawled in an aristocratic tone, fixing Cassandra with a bright eye. “So you are the one I wanted to see.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cassandra answered dutifully, grateful that Sir Philip had filled his grandmother and mother in on the details of his lie—and, apparently, that they were willing to go along with it.
“Yes,” Aunt Ardis interjected. “I had forgotten—you were friends with Cassandra’s grandmother, weren’t you?”
“Yes.” The old lady sighed, looking out blankly across the room as if seeing across time. She was, Cassandra decided, something of a ham. “Dear Caroline.”
“Caroline?” Aunt Ardis asked, looking confused. “I thought your grandmother’s name was Emma, Cassandra.”
Cassandra gathered breath to explain away the discrepancy, but she need not have bothered. Lady Neville the elder obviously was quite capable on her own. She turned a cool stare in Aunt Ardis’s direction, one eyebrow slightly raised. It was a look she had used a few minutes earlier, when she had heard Joanna addressing her grandson familiarly as “Philip.” Joanna had turned pale and subsided, not speaking since.
“No doubt you are mistaken,” Lady Neville told Aunt Ardis, with a just a hint of gracious forgiveness in her voice.
“I believe Grandmama went by a different name when she was older,” Cassandra hastened to tell her aunt. “She, ah, came out with a cousin, I believe, whose name was also Caroline, and so she started using Emma, her second name, and of course that was the name by which Grandpapa knew her, so it hung on for the rest of her life.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” Lady Neville agreed. “I remember the cousin now. Not nearly as pretty as Caroline.” She turned her regard back to Cassandra. “It’s something I never thought I would live to see—a Verrere in Haverly House.”
“It was hardly a blood feud, Grandmother,” Philip commented with some amusement.
His grandmother glanced at him coolly. “Of course not, Philip. We are English, after all.”
“Yes, Grandmother.” Philip looked chastened, except for the twinkle in his eyes.
His grandmother obviously saw the wicked light in his eyes, for she added, “Don’t you laugh at me, young man,” and smiled in an affectionate way that took the sting out of her words.
“Me?” Philip managed to look indignant. “Never.”
“Don’t try to distract me, either. I was talking to Miss Verrere.”
She studied Cassandra for a moment, and Cassandra tried not to squirm under her regard. Finally she said, “You look like a very sensible young woman, Miss Verrere. I approve.”
“I, uh, thank you.” Cassandra was not sure exactly what Lady Neville was judging or approving her for, but she was grateful that she had not been found wanting.
“Did you tell Philip about the intruder, Violet?” the old woman went on, changing course once again.
“What?” Philip barked, sitting up straighter, and Cassandra leaned forward intently.
“I forgot,” the younger Lady Neville admitted. “It happened several days ago.”
“Three days. Scarcely a lifetime, Violet,” Lady Neville remarked acidly.
“Mother! Why didn’t you tell me? What happened? Someone entered the house?”
“Actually, very little happened. No doubt that is why it slipped my mind.” Lady Violet, quite lovely in a watered silk gown much the shade of her name, looked as if things frequently slipped her mind. “I didn’t hear it, of course. Shivers told me about it the next day. He said that someone broke into the house in the middle of the night. Fortunately one of the servants heard the noise and went to investigate. He found the man in the library. They tussled, and the intruder ran away. Nothing was taken.”
“The library?” Philip repeated flatly, and his eyes went involuntarily to Cassandra.
“Yes. Odd, isn’t it? He didn’t try to get the silverware or anything valuable. There is nothing in the library but all those books. I suppose he must have thought there was a safe hidden there.”
“Yes, most likely.” Sir Philip drummed his fingertips on the table a time or two. “Are you sure that nothing was removed from the library?”
His mother looked faintly surprised. “I did not check it myself, dear. I wouldn’t know if something was missing in there, anyway. That is what Shivers related to me. I believe the footman who caught him was Michael. You might ask him if the burglar was carrying anything when he found him.”
“Yes. Perhaps I shall.”
Cassandra would have liked to pursue this highly interesting development further, but from then on the two Lady Nevilles kept the dinner conversation on a firmly trivial ground. After dinner Cassandra spent an interminable time in the drawing room with the other women. Lady Violet politely suggested that Joanna might play something for them on the piano, and Joanna, not a good pianist at the best of times, had been so unnerved by Philip’s grandmother that she stumbled through a sonata that was as painful for her listeners as for herself.
Lady Neville decreed that there had been enough piano for the evening, and so they passed some time in stilted conversation. It was a relief when Sir Philip returned to the room, but Cassandra still could not talk to him alone. It wasn’t until Lady Neville retired to her room and Lady Viol
et kindheartedly let Joanna attempt another piece on the piano that Cassandra got any chance to speak to him.
Cassandra was sure that Joanna expected Philip to come stand behind her and turn the pages for her, but he sat down beside Cassandra and murmured under cover of the noise, “Well? What do you think?”
“That someone was searching the library for something other than what one would normally consider theftworthy property,” Cassandra replied promptly. “The Queens Book, for instance.”
“It seems highly suspicious. It also would seem unlikely that it was anyone other than the same man who broke into Chesilworth.”
Cassandra nodded, then added, “However, we are basing this on nothing but speculation. Nothing was taken either time—or, at least, nothing that we know of.”
“I am fairly certain that he did not get anything here. I took the opportunity to slip out to the entry hall, where Michael is on duty this evening, and I spoke to him about his little adventure. He said that he caught the man only moments after he entered the library. Michael had not yet gone to bed. He said he was making a last-minute check around the house before retiring, but I have my suspicions that he had been paying a visit to one of the maids’ rooms on the fourth floor. Whatever the reason, he heard glass breaking in the conservatory and went to investigate immediately. He doesn’t believe that the intruder had the time to seize anything, and he is certain that the man had nothing in his hands, for he swung at Michael, and they struggled for a few minutes. I asked him what the intruder looked like, but he said that it was too dark for him to see.”
Joanna made a great show of slowing down her playing and fumbling to turn the page, casting a beseeching look over her shoulder toward Philip, but he did not even look up. At the end of the next page, Joanna managed to send several sheets tumbling from the stand when she turned the page, and she stopped abruptly.
“I am so sorry.” Looking aghast, Joanna hopped off the stool to pick them up.
Philip’s mother, with a sigh, said, “Philip, do come help Miss Moulton by turning the pages of her composition.”