by Sheila Walsh
Gorton had recovered sufficiently to take up very light duties, and in his austere way endeavoured to show his gratitude to Theo, but he looked so frail that the bulk of the responsibility for Lord Radlett still fell upon her. Ever-mindful of Sir James’s precepts, she was inclined to indulge his whims in most things, and since he seldom cared to have her out of his sight, the strain eventually began to tell.
This was the situation Benedict found when he returned on a brisk February afternoon. In the presence of her grandfather, Theo happened to mention that she was going riding with Aubrey and brought down about her ears a blistering tirade of abuse against the boy and his parasitic mother. Her patience snapped and she began to defend them furiously, arguing that they had little choice but to remain.
‘If you don’t wish to be plagued with them, as you put it, the answer lies with you, for you have only to provide Selina with a house in London ‒ a very small house would suffice ‒ and an income to support it, which is no more than is due to your son’s widow, I’m sure … and she would be glad to leave here!’
She stopped, appalled by her outburst and alarmed at the high colour suffusing her grandfather’s face and his laboured breathing. ‘Oh!’ she cried, closer to tears than Benedict had seen her since the crisis days.
He rose from his chair, and took her arm. ‘Go along,’ he ordered, propelling her towards the door. ‘Aubrey will be waiting.’
Theo dragged her feet, half glancing back. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at him. Perhaps …’
‘No perhaps. My dear girl, can you not see how much he enjoys bringing you round his finger? If all his self-indulgence to date hasn’t killed him, he won’t now die of a little plain speaking.’
When the door had closed behind her, Benedict walked across to the emaciated figure hunched belligerently in the chair by the fire, wrapped in rugs, and stood looking down at him, frowning.
‘You don’t deserve that girl, you know.’
‘None of your business,’ growled his lordship.
‘In fact, I wouldn’t blame her if she decided to leave,’ Benedict continued remorselessly.
‘She won’t do that. I have her promise on it.’
His complacence exasperated the young man. ‘Then the more shame to you. I sometimes wonder if you realise quite how much you do owe to Theo.’
Theo was very quiet as she and Aubrey took the road alongside the poplars and then struck out across the fields in the direction of Hatherton. And since it was she who usually initiated the conversation, a prolonged silence ensued.
Several times Aubrey glanced at her rather set profile before finally bursting out: ‘You didn’t have to come, you know! I never could understand why you should wish to in the first place, and if my presence bores you I can quite easily go off on my own!’
She seemed to come out of a dream, turning to him swiftly, her eyes very bright, almost as though she was close to tears.
‘Oh, I say …’ he began awkwardly.
‘Forgive me,’ she said with an abrupt apologetic laugh. ‘For a moment I was preoccupied. Very rude of me.’
He stammered his own apology and they both laughed, releasing the tension. At Theo’s suggestion, they put the horses to a brisk canter, and with the wind in her face, she suddenly felt much better.
‘Aubrey, what would you most like to do ‒ if you could choose?’
He seemed taken aback by the question. ‘Mama hasn’t been talking to you, has she?’
‘No. Why should she?’ Theo looked at him. ‘There is something, then?’
He shrugged. ‘It isn’t anything she knows about ‒ only she supposes that I ought to wish to go to London as much as she does … to become a man of fashion!’
‘But that isn’t what you want?’
Aubrey threw his head up, staring straight ahead of him. ‘There’s no way by which I can have what I want,’ he said bitterly, and then as though he couldn’t stop the words rushing out: ‘I want to join a cavalry regiment!’
Theo was surprised, but was quick to hide it. ‘Well, then?’ she asked.
‘To buy into a good regiment is expensive ‒ quite beyond anything I could hope for.’ He turned towards her, and for the first time since she had known him she saw his face become truly animated. ‘Oh, but I would settle for much less, except that Mama wouldn’t hear of it. I say, you won’t blab to her about this, will you?’
Theo assured him that she would not.
‘She doesn’t understand, you see … sometimes I’m so confoundedly bored and cross-grained I think I might run away and enlist!’
His cry was the cry of all young things throughout the ages eager to cut the leading reins and strike out for themselves ‒ a mingling of frustration and recklessness that might just prove pressing enough to drive him into doing something rash. Theo hid her unease behind a brisk sympathetic manner.
‘Yes, well, I’m very glad you have told me, Aubrey, and I do beg that you won’t fall into a despair or rush into anything irrevocable, because if I have learned one invaluable lesson in my three and twenty years, it is that one can never guess what tomorrow may bring.’ She smiled encouragingly at him. ‘Why, only a matter of months ago I thought my life was quite hopeless ‒ and now here I am with a whole new set of challenges!’ Aubrey was regarding her in a way that vaguely troubled her, with a kind of awed admiration that made her realise a little belatedly that he was at an impressionable age and she the only female, aside from his mother, within his orbit. She did hope that he wasn’t about to develop a tendre for her! To give his thoughts a new direction she suggested a gallop to Mile End Farm and set off without farther ado. He let out a loud ‘Huzza!’ and urged his mount in pursuit.
When Benedict came upon them later, crossing the hall, still glowing from their ride, still laughing and talking, he regarded them with an enigmatic eye.
Aubrey met that look and was at once embarrassed and a little put out. Somehow Benedict always managed to make him feel his lack of years. There was that indefinable air about him, the careless unconventional devil-may-care air that epitomised for Aubrey all the experience, the untold deeds locked in a past not quite respectable and shrouded in mystery. At this moment it only served to bring home to him his own inadequacy and lack of prospects.
The magic of the afternoon was at an end. He turned to Theo, flushed and stammering slightly.
‘Th-thank you! I enjoyed that above everything!’ He gave her an abrupt little bow and hurried away.
‘I’m not sure that you should encourage that halfling,’ Benedict mused, looking after him. ‘He is fast developing a severe case of calf-love.’
‘Oh dear, I do hope not,’ Theo sighed. ‘Poor boy! He is so very unhappy already.’
‘Boys of his age frequently are.’
Theo frowned at him. ‘How very unhandsome of you! Only the other day you were voicing some sympathy with his situation.’
‘Maybe then I was feeling in a charitable mood,’ he drawled.
‘And now you are out of countenance, I think.’
His laugh rasped slightly. ‘Blame that plaguey grandparent of yours. He is a man given to sudden whims, as you should know better than most. Nothing will now do for him but to see his man, Cartwright, as soon as maybe. So I must go to London to fetch him.’
Theo wondered why the news of his going should leave her feeling unaccountably flat, and shrugged the thought away. ‘Should Grandpa be concerning himself with business matters so soon?’ She could not help sounding anxious.
‘No, but when did that ever stop him?’ said Benedict drily. ‘Incidentally, I hope you may find him a somewhat chastened character ‒ for the present, that is. I have been ringing a peal over him about his treatment of you, and then Aunt Minta came in and I left him to her tender mercies.’
‘There was no need,’ she said quickly.
He came very close, tipping her face up to him with one finger placed under her chin.
‘There was every need,’ he said, and kis
sed her mouth lightly.
She protested, her hand flying to grasp his wrist, but the colour, already warm in her cheeks from her ride, warmed a little more, and her heart did a curious little flip.
‘Cousin’s privilege,’ he murmured sardonically, and then they were apart again and he was resuming their conversation as though nothing had happened, and she was left with a curious feeling of frustration.
Theo found the reluctant penitent still sitting, staring into the fire.
‘That scrapegrace of a great-nephew of mine tells me that I treat you badly,’ he said without looking at her. She thought it was probably the closest he was likely to come to an apology.
‘I daresay I shall survive,’ she said lightly, removing her hat before going to her room to change her dress, for she had long since given up her occupation of the dressing room.
‘I’ve had that sister of mine here, too,’ the gruff voice continued. ‘Gave me chapter and verse of your doings … made sense of much that had me confounded, thanks to your damn silly notions of secrecy! Why’d you do it, eh?’
Theo’s step slowed, halted ‒ but she didn’t speak.
‘Well?’ His sudden ferocity made her jump. ‘Ye could have turned your back on me that first day ‒ and many times since. So why didn’t you?’
Theo swung around to look at him. She saw the jutting profile, intensely proud, the now spare folds of skin quivering with the effort of keeping his head erect, and she ran across the room to sink beside his chair, her skirts billowing round her.
‘Because Papa would never have forgiven me for leaving you,’ she cried unsteadily. ‘It was for him that I came, and through him, I believe, that I have come to feel as though I am a part of you’ ‒ her own chin jutted ‒ ‘whether you like it or not!’
‘Coals of fire, eh?’ he growled.
‘If you like!’
The two pairs of dark flashing eyes clashed and held. His voice grew harsh.
‘I’ve no doubt you think I treated your father shabbily?’
‘He never permitted me to believe it,’ she insisted.
‘But you thought it, none the less,’ he said. ‘Well, I did! He was so like your grandmother! She ought not to have been taken from me so soon …’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Every time I looked at John I saw her, and cursed him for reminding me! And when I saw you that first time … just for a moment, I thought …’
‘Please, Grandpa ‒ it doesn’t matter any more!’ she cried, shaking her head, agitated by the thought that he might seriously distress himself, and a strand of hair, worked loose by her afternoon’s exertions, slithered from its pins to lie against her shoulder.
His hand moved shakily, like the tentative hand of a blind man, to touch it, his uncertain fingers seeking for the pins that held the knot in place and then pulling them out one by one so that it all came spilling down about her face. She sat very still, close to tears, as he fumblingly explored its silkiness.
‘So like her!’ he muttered. ‘D’ye know, many a time I thought it was she who was there with me when I was lost in that damnable no-man’s land … her voice sounded different, but it was so clear, that voice … so young and fresh and full of hope, that I stopped being afraid …’ He glared at her. ‘I daresay you think grown men shouldn’t be afraid?’
‘I know Papa was,’ she said huskily, ‘during the worst times. And yet he was so brave for so long!’
Lord Radlett uttered something very like a groan of pain. ‘Minta told me,’ he said in a voice thick with emotion. ‘Damned ironical, meeting a violent end, the way he did! Gentlest boy I ever knew. Damned ironical!’
‘Yes.’ Theo felt suddenly too drained to say more. Her foot was fast going to sleep, but with the communion between them so complete, she was reluctant for the moment to end. It was so quiet that the ticking of the clock beat a steady rhythm in her head.
‘Well, God be thanked, I now see my way clear,’ he said suddenly. ‘I mean to do right by you, child. There’s much to make up for, and little enough time to accomplish it, but we have already made a beginning.’
Theo thought of Benedict’s visit to London, the lawyer and all the repercussions that were bound to ensue. She moved restively and stood up, wincing over the cramping numbness in her foot.
‘You don’t have to do anything for me, truly!’ she pleaded. ‘That isn’t why I came.’
‘I know, I know!’ he said with a faint rumble of mirth. ‘But ye can’t stop me if I have a fancy to make you dance to my tune!’
Chapter Seven
Theo was in the drawing room with Selina when Benedict arrived from London, bringing with him the prim-faced lawyer. They went straight away to the Viscount’s room, and remained closeted there for so long that she began to wonder if the business had been concluded and the man had gone without her knowing.
She would not admit to curiosity, but the time seemed to drag and the sight of her companion struggling with a half-completed reticule, the instructions for which were clearly set out in the Lady’s Magazine before her, did little to soothe her. She was driven more than once to peer out of the window rather than watch, yet even here, there was little to engage her interest. A capricious wind soughed round the corners of the house with seasonal fervour, buffeting the newly burgeoning trees beyond and moving like an undulating shadow over the avenue of yew trees that bordered the long walk.
‘Oh, what’s the use? It isn’t as if I shall ever use the wretched thing!’
Theo turned in time to see Selina throw the offending work as far as it would go. She walked across and picked it up.
‘It’s very pretty,’ she said encouragingly. ‘And very unusual with this white and gilt threadwork.’ She sat down beside Selina to study the pattern. ‘Of course you must finish it. See, it isn’t so difficult.’
‘The material came from a spencer I had once. It was vastly becoming!’ Selina sighed, and watched Theo’s nimble fingers making sense of the incomprehensible instructions. ‘How fortunate you are. I never was the least use with a needle!’ She sighed again. ‘I can’t think why I ever began it, except that it was something to pass the hours.’
It was at times like this that Theo found her patience most tried by this butterfly of a woman. To be sure, she had had an unfortunate experience and was clearly the sort of person who needed company (preferably male), as surely as plants need light to thrive, but it seemed to Theo so poor-spirited to sit and sigh and do nothing positive to alter things.
‘Did I tell you?’ she said with determined brightness. ‘Gorton is well enough now to resume his full duties, so I shall have more time at my disposal. Perhaps, if you would care to, we can send away for some material and make one or two new dresses for spring?’
A light sprang into Selina’s eyes, but it was quickly quenched as she reflected bitterly on the unlikelihood of her being able to afford one new gown ‒ let alone several.
‘Oh, fustian, as Grandpa says. You leave that part of it to me. The dresses in this magazine are out of date, of course. We shall need to purchase a new one, but still …’
Theo began to leaf through the magazine, stopping here and there to examine a pattern with a critical eye, and this kept them both absorbed until Purley came in to say that his lordship would be very much obliged if Miss Theo would step up to his room.
She found Lord Radlett sitting up in his bed, supported by a quantity of pillows and wearing his most elaborately frogged dressing-gown; a quizzing-glass dangled from his neck, and a snuffbox (its contents expressly forbidden by the doctor) was defiantly clasped in one hand. Theo was convinced that it was no happy accident that a stand of branched candles had been placed near enough to the bed to highlight the leonine head with its awesome profile. As she dropped a deferential kiss on the noble brow, she wondered if Mr Cartwright had been suitably impressed. Intercepting a droll look from her cousin, she was obliged to smother a grin.
The lawyer, who had been writing at a table near the window, stood somewhat ill
at ease as she came in. With the introductions and preliminaries at an end, Lord Radlett got down directly to the purpose of his visit.
‘There is no need to waste time with a lot of flim-flammery,’ he said impatiently as Mr Cartwright cleared his throat in expectation. ‘The plain fact is, I’ve decided to settle a sum of money on you now, rather than leave it to you in m’Will.’
Theo opened her mouth to protest.
‘Tch! Tch! Don’t interrupt me, child. Gets me muddled. Cartwright here can fill you in on all the details later.’ He frowned at the lawyer. ‘But in essence it’s to be an allowance to be paid monthly. It should keep you very comfortably in gewgaws until such time as you marry.’
‘No, please!’ Theo cried, agitation making her less than careful how she spoke. ‘This is not necessary, and I don’t want …’ She covered her burning cheeks with the palms of her hands.
‘Grandpa, you are more than generous, and I’m sure you mean it for the best, but I cannot accept such an arrangement!’ She saw his brows draw together ominously. ‘Oh, I beg that you will not be offended, dear sir, but I have no need of it. I have money left me by my father … more than sufficient for my needs!’
‘Humgudgeon! First time I ever heard you say anything so cork-brained! Damme if I care what John left you ‒ you may dispose of that as you please.’ He thus dismissed her argument as being of little worth. ‘I’m concerned with providing for your future in my own way. Can’t expect to move in first circles without money behind you, like it or not.’
Theo looked to her cousin, who shrugged, and then to the lawyer, whose thin-nosed expression clearly indicated that he considered her undeserving of such generosity. A feeling of helplessness engulfed her.
‘I wasn’t aware that I might be expected to move in first circles,’ she ventured.
‘Well, of course you will. Got to have a bit of a whirl before ye settle down!’
