by Sheila Walsh
Theo was beginning to feel that she had stumbled pell-mell into a madhouse. She glanced at Benedict and saw that he was enjoying her initiation. Her chin lifted a fraction as she replied, as pleasantly as she was able, ‘Only when driven to it, ma’am. I am, in general, reckoned to be the most amiable of creatures.’ Her eyes dared him to question it.
The old lady saw the look that passed between them, and chuckled again. ‘Well, we shall soon see how much like your father you are.’ Her eyes clouded. ‘It is hard to believe that he is dead. I don’t know if you feel up to speaking of it, m’dear …’
Staring down into the flames, Theo had to subdue a momentary sensation of panic. It had to be done sometime. Better perhaps to get it over. She felt rather than saw Benedict come up behind her, and found herself resisting an impulse to lean back against his shoulder for comfort ‒ an absurd impulse, when she scarcely knew him.
‘You don’t have to, you know.’
The unexpected gentleness in his voice was almost her undoing, but she wouldn’t cry, she told herself, and schooled her voice into steadiness.
‘It’s all right.’ She half turned to look up at him, her profile delicately etched by the firelight. And then she looked around at the rest of them grouped in their various attitudes.
‘I’m not sure how much you know about Papa’s life?’
‘Very little,’ drawled Beau languidly.
‘For many years he ran a very successful school for boys in Philadelphia,’ she began.
‘How quaint!’ murmured Selina. Benedict frowned at her.
‘He was ever bookish,’ said Miss Radlett. ‘And your mama?’
‘She died when I was born. But that is neither here nor there. Last year, Papa decided that he would like to open a larger school in Washington, and we went there to look at a property. Only, while we were there, your General Ross marched in with his troops …’ Theo’s voice shook a little with the bitterness of the memory. ‘They ransacked the place, and they burned the White House and the Capitol.’ She looked around at their polite faces and wondered if any of them, with the possible exception of Benedict, had any idea of how it was. ‘Feelings were running very high, as you might imagine, and a lot of men were fighting drunk.
‘When Papa tried to reason with one of them, the man accused him of being a dirty no-good English bastard, and shot him.’
In spite of all her good intentions, tears blocked Theo’s throat ‒ they stung her eyes, and she blinked them away angrily.
‘My dear child, this is too painful for you!’ cried her great-aunt, much distressed. ‘I should not have asked.’
Theo shook her head, swallowed several times, and said doggedly. ‘There isn’t much more, so you might as well hear it. It wasn’t easy to get a doctor in Washington that night ‒ and when one finally did arrive, he was of little help. The bullet was lodged in a difficult spot, and there was no way in which it could be removed. It was his opinion that my father would not survive until morning.’ She looked up bleakly. ‘In fact, he lived for almost a month in pain, and getting weaker and thinner every day until I prayed that he would die!’
There was a silence in the room. A log settled in the fire, sending up sparks. Theo shuddered, feeling suddenly empty of all emotion.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I ought not to have inflicted all that upon you.’
There were murmurs of ‘No, no …’ and embarrassed looks, only Benedict saying with a quick impatient gesture, ‘Don’t be nonsensical! Why should you not?’
She lifted her head. ‘Because there is no one I despise so much as the person who dwindles into maudlin recollection, cousin.’
He looked slightly disconcerted, and then smiled wryly. ‘I might have expected that, I suppose. But what happened to your school?’
‘I continued to run it for a while, but it was difficult to find a good schoolmaster to replace Papa, and eventually I closed it, though I have kept the house for the present ‒ until I decide what to do for the best.’
The door opened to admit Purley, and Selina looked relieved.
‘Ah, good. We are ready to dine.’ Her eyes once more raked Theo from head to foot. ‘Unless Theodora wishes to change her dress.’ For the life of her, she could not keep the waspish note out of her voice. ‘I am sure we shall not regard the inconvenience, in the circumstances. Your boxes will have been taken up, no doubt …?’ Purley inclined his head. ‘We have put you in your father’s old room. Hardly a suitable choice, perhaps, but then we could not be expected to know …’
‘Selina, you are being confoundedly tiresome,’ Benedict said.
Beau’s voice cut in, bored ‒ but with an edge. ‘Let us not dwindle into wrangling, I beg of you!’ He turned his heavy-lidded eyes to Theo, their expression unreadable. ‘What is your wish, child?’ He wafted a handkerchief airily. ‘We are entirely at your disposal.’
She was all too aware of the tensions in the air. Only Benedict seemed unaffected. She shrugged off a threatening despondency, to say with determined cheerfulness, ‘There is no need to hold up dinner on my account if you will accept me, travel-stained as I am.’
It was not the easiest of meals; the conversation, such as it was, being conducted in a kind of strained politeness, and hungry though Theo had thought herself to be, she now found her appetite had quite deserted her, and she wanted nothing more than to be alone to collect her disordered wits.
Selina displayed a similar want of appetite and watched impatiently as Aunt Minta ate her way steadily through each course with an obsessive dedication until there was nothing left to be consumed. Even then the old lady was slow to admit to repletion, and when several meaningful glances failed to move her, Selina took it upon herself to rise, gathered up her shawl, and indicated in the most patronising way that they should retire to the drawing room and leave the gentlemen to their port.
So it happened that they were all on their feet when a disturbance could be heard beyond the doors, which almost at once swung inward. A figure of bizarre aspect filled the opening.
In his prime, Lord Radlett had been a man of formidable proportions; even now, as he threw off the well-meaning support of his black-coated valet to stand swaying, shoulders back and leonine head thrust belligerently forward, there was a hint of unleashed power about him, though this was belied by the skin stretched paper thin over his prominent cheekbones and hooked nose. His hair, as snow-white as his sister’s, grew with surprising vigour from a high forehead and fell, unconfined, until it touched the collar of a much-frogged dressing-gown heavy with gilt embroidery that glittered in the candlelight.
But it was his eyes that held Theo ‒ they blazed with a compelling, febrile intensity beneath soaring white brows, as they sought her out and fixed on her. She quelled her apprehension, telling herself that this was her father’s father ‒ she was flesh of his flesh in a manner of speaking. The thought should have uplifted her, but it failed quite dismally to do so. Unable to bear the tension a moment longer, she stepped forward smiling, hands outflung to him. There was no response, not a glimmer of acknowledgement, only a silence that stretched until, with a final fulminating glare, his lordship turned unsteadily on his heel and tottered away, leaning heavily on the arm of his valet, who had been hovering like a watchful crow. The doors had been left open, and as Theo watched the slowly retreating procession, her face felt like a mask that had been hammered into place. She was dimly aware that all interest was centred upon her, awaiting her reaction. But it was Benedict whose eyes she sought, and she found a look in them of fury mingled with something remarkably akin to compassion flung out to her like a lifeline. She held to it with blind gratitude while she salvaged what she could of her disordered emotions.
It was Great-aunt Minta who finally broke the silence, tutting audibly. ‘How very like Edmund!’ she exclaimed. ‘He had ever execrable manners, you know. But I shall tell him exactly what I think ‒ oh, you may be sure I shall tell him!’
Theo made a swift deprecating
gesture, her voice husky. ‘No, please ‒ I beg you will not!’
‘Such generosity,’ murmured Beau in admiration. ‘You are an example to us all, my dear. Pray accept my apologies in my uncle’s behalf.’
Selina moved impatiently. ‘What I want to know,’ she said waspishly, ‘is how a man so close to death as he would have us believe him to be managed to negotiate all those stairs.’
Her words could not have been more inopportune, for at that precise moment there was a sudden commotion among the hovering servants in the hall, and a skirl of fear was forced from her as Lord Radlett faltered, threw back his head, and then appeared to crumple without a sound. The distressed valet, unable to support his insensible master, was already lowering him to the floor as the servants all rushed forward.
Chapter Three
In the dining room, Theo was the first to recover from the shock. She lifted her skirts and ran, while Benedict, having seen that Beau was unable or unwilling to act, wasted no more than a contemptuous glance on him before following hard on Theo’s heels.
He found a scene of confusion which was clearly beyond the elderly butler’s ability to resolve, upset as he so obviously was. Theo, already on her knees supporting her grandfather’s head on her lap, was trying vainly to get someone to attend to his lordship’s valet, who was in a state of near collapse at her side.
She looked up gratefully as Benedict strode into their midst and began to issue a number of tersely-worded instructions. Within moments one footman had been dispatched to summon the doctor, while several more lifted the valet and carried him away, unable to do more than protest weakly that his place was with his lordship.
With order restored, Benedict was able to give his attention at last to Lord Radlett, who lay ominously still, cradled in Theo’s arms, his face betraying an alarming pallor.
‘Let me have him now,’ he said, his voice amazingly gentle.
She smoothed back the white hair from her grandfather’s bloodless brow one more time before reluctantly surrendering him to her cousin. Relieved of the weight, her arms trembled and she remained kneeling, shaken to the core by the great surge of emotion that, unbidden, had suddenly possessed her for this man she scarcely knew.
‘He isn’t dead!’ she declared fiercely.
‘No, but we must get him to bed.’ Benedict was quietly matter-of-fact, and his manner helped to calm her. She scrambled to her feet and watched him supporting Lord Radlett’s lolling head firmly against his shoulder as he summoned one of the remaining footmen to assist him in carrying the unconscious Viscount to his room.
Theo hovered indecisively, wanting to be of use, yet conscious that she was very much the newcomer in this strange household. While she still hesitated, she turned and saw that Great-aunt Minta had come from the dining room and was also watching her brother being carried from sight. How long she had been there Theo did not know, but there was such a lost, uncertain look about her that she at once went to put an arm about the plump drooping shoulders. The old lady attempted a gallant smile, but her mouth went sadly awry.
Theo gave the shoulders a reassuring squeeze, but before he could speak, Selina came drifting towards them in a cloud of draperies, with Aubrey, his handsome face sullen, a few steps behind.
‘Well,’ she said in faintly aggrieved tones, ‘that was all most unfortunate, though no more than one might expect in this house, I’m sure. And it has put Beau in a very strange mood. I believe he almost thinks himself master here already. He as good as told Aubrey that he had no wish for his company over the port.’
‘I wouldn’t have stayed anyway,’ muttered the graceless young tulip. ‘He has the most odious way of making me feel as though I were still in short coats!’
‘That is nothing to how he will behave if Lord Radlett dies! I would not be in the least surprised if he turns us out of doors almost before the old gentleman is cold!’
‘Ma’am ‒ I beg you to mind your words.’ Theo had felt Aunt Minta flinch, and rushed impetuously into speech without stopping to think. Selina, on the point of reproving her, encountered those dangerously flashing eyes, thought better of it, shrugged, and drew her wraps closer about her.
‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know why we are standing around in this draughty hall, when there will be a fire burning in the drawing room. Are you coming, Aunt Minta ‒ Theodora?’
There was an offhandedness in her manner that irked Theo. She glanced swiftly at Aunt Minta, who seemed to have recovered herself somewhat, and the old lady, misinterpreting her look, patted her hand reassuringly.
‘You go along, child. Poor Selina ‒ try not to judge her too harshly. She is a very unhappy woman. It will be good for her to have you for company.’
It would have been ungracious for Theo to confess that she had no wish to bear Selina company ‒ that upon brief acquaintance she found her vain and shallow and exceedingly selfish. Instead, she prevaricated.
‘But what of you, ma’am?’
‘I shall retire to m’bed.’ The old lady straightened her back, and much of her former bluntness had returned. ‘No, ye don’t have to bear-lead me,’ she snapped as Theo offered to see her to her room. ‘I ain’t so feeble that I need help. Go along with you now, and let me be.’
Feeling a general sense of rejection, Theo watched Aunt Minta stomp away bristling with outraged dignity, and then slowly followed in Selina’s wake.
The drawing room proved to be much larger than the library. It was rather shabbily furnished in an antiquated style, but beneath the candlelight and with the flames licking round the logs in the huge hearth, the faded gold curtains and striped furnishings acquired a comfortable warmth, and it occurred to Theo that with a very little care and imagination the room might be made quite pleasant.
‘Will the doctor be long coming, do you think?’ she asked.
Selina gave a little shrug. ‘I haven’t the least idea. His house is no more than two miles away, but if he should be out to dine …’
‘I see.’
Selina had settled herself on a sofa near the fire, and she watched Theo now as she wandered about the room, aimlessly picking objects up and putting them down again. Her initial assessment of the girl as an insignificant dab was rapidly undergoing a change, for in spite of a certain reticence of manner, due no doubt to the confusing nature of events since her arrival, there had been occasions during dinner and since when she had asserted herself in a way that showed a disturbing independence of spirit.
Nor did she care for Benedict’s attitude towards the girl ‒ a kind of camaraderie appeared to exist between them which, if they had truly met for the first time earlier in the day, must be nipped in the bud. If Benedict was to be of use to anyone, it should not be to this American interloper.
‘Cousin Benedict seems very much at home here,’ said Theo suddenly, as if reading her thoughts. The opportunity seemed heaven-sent.
‘Yes, doesn’t he?’ Selina purred. ‘Clever man!’
Theo looked at her in surprise. ‘Why clever?’
Selina’s blue eyes opened very wide. ‘Lud, my dear! Wouldn’t you think someone clever who appears out of nowhere, announces that he is Lord Radlett’s great-nephew just home after years in India, and proceeds to make himself all but indispensable to the old man?’
‘When was this?’
‘Oh, I really can’t remember. About two months ago, I believe.’
Theo found that her heart was beating uncomfortably fast. Her cousin was her only lifeline in this curious household. She didn’t want him proved false. And yet, hadn’t she herself found him enigmatic?
‘Are you saying that Benedict is an impostor?’ she asked, dry-mouthed.
‘Heavens, no!’ Selina tittered. ‘There was never any question of challenging his credibility. Even Beau acknowledged him to be genuine, little as it pleased him to do so, for it was Beau who was partly instrumental in getting him packed off to India in the first place ‒ more than ten years ago now. It seems that his youthful foll
ies had become an acute embarrassment to his family …’ Selina threw her what could only be termed a knowing look.
Theo said in a strained voice that she thought people were sent away only when they had done something dreadful, like killing a man in a duel.
The older woman’s trill of laughter sounded almost offensively coy. ‘Well, I’m not saying that it wouldn’t have come to that, had he remained. You see, matters came to a head over some dreadful scandal involving the wife of a very high government minister who was hellbent on calling him out.’ She sighed. ‘I must say, I wish I had known Benedict then ‒ he must have been a prodigiously handsome, wayward youth!’
Theo picked up a small figurine and examined it minutely, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She was seeing Benedict’s lean saturnine features and trying to visualise them before time, experience and India had left their mark on him.
‘I wonder what made him come back after all this time,’ she said.
‘Same thing that took him away, I shouldn’t wonder,’ offered Aubrey with a derisory snort as he sprawled in a chair opposite his mama. ‘As for his turning up here … gave us some Banbury tale that Lord Radlett had heard of his return and had sent for him! I mean … as if anyone knowing the old man wouldn’t spot that for a hum right away!’ The boy’s tone was scathing. ‘More likely he’d reached point non plus … escaping the duns. It runs in the family, if Beau is any example.’
‘Aubrey!’ protested his mother faintly. ‘You will give Theodora quite the wrong impression!’
‘Well, why else would Benedict choose to kick his heels down here?’ the youth continued doggedly. ‘It ain’t for love of any of us! No, it’s plain as your nose … parents dead … arrives home with pockets to let … latches on to the only member of the family known to be full of juice, and sets out to turn him up sweet … and not without success!’
