Ran laughed. “It was never proved, but they did die very conveniently. That may actually be true.”
“Oh. Now this is the Third Marquess, who went mad and had to be kept locked up in the arch tower.”
“Well… he was certainly not quite well.” One could not mention the pox to a young lady. “He did live in the arch tower, because he suspected he was infectious.”
“Oh. Now this handsome fellow is Lord Alfred Litherholm… who fled to the Continent because of gaming debts?”
“There may have been some, perhaps, because that generation gambled excessively, but I believe his journey was no more than the usual Grand Tour.”
“Hmm. The Fourth Duke, who built Valmont. Correct?”
“Almost. The Third Duke bought the land and the original manor house, and commissioned the design, but he died before it was completed. His portrait hangs over the main staircase. The Fourth Duke is responsible for much of the interior, and he began the art collection.”
“He had the eight lodges built to house all his mistresses… no? And secret passages and screens so he could spy on everyone.”
“There is no knowing what his intention was. Everything about Valmont is so symmetrical that eight lodges, evenly spaced about the perimeter, align perfectly with the design, but he certainly used some of them to house his former mistresses, so that is partly true. As for the secret passages, there are a good number of concealed doors and service stairs, but that is normal in such houses to allow discreet access for servants. I take it Ger filled your head with so much nonsense?”
“You know what he was like,” she said, lifting cool grey eyes to his. “Always making up stories. He was most entertaining when he was in a funning mood. I never took him entirely seriously. Oh… and there he is.”
The last portrait in the gallery was the most recent, depicting the two sons of Valmont at the time of their majority. Ger, as befitted the elder, destined to be the duke, was shown raised on the second step outside the main entrance, one slender hand resting on a stone finial with the heir’s ring prominent on the middle finger. Ran, the spare second son, stood on the drive below, looking up at his brother. The artist had captured them well, so well that Ran felt the same burst of grief whenever he looked at it. Oh Ger, why did you have to die?
Ruth stood quietly gazing at Ger, her face grave.
“Oh, such handsome young men!” Miss Bucknell cried, rummaging in her reticule for a handkerchief. “So tragic!”
“Too much sensibility, Patience,” said Lady Maria crossly. “Do control yourself.”
“I beg your pardon, Ran,” Ruth said, her well-modulated voice a soothing contrast to the chaperons’. “This must be distressing for you. Shall we return to the Grand Saloon? I love to play the instrument there. It is such a magnificent Broadwood.”
~~~~~
After three days of rain, there was finally an opportunity to escape from the house. Ruth was a fine horsewoman, he knew, but even so, his breath caught at the sight of her in her riding habit. Had ever a woman looked so lovely? He felt a surge of pure pleasure as he lifted her into the saddle, and watched her efficiently settle her skirts.
“Your horse awaits you, Your Grace,” she said, with just the hint of a smile in those grey eyes.
“Oh… of course.” Reluctantly he tore his eyes away from her, and hopped lightly onto his own mount.
Ran had hoped that this might be his opportunity to talk to Ruth, but still he was thwarted. The middle-aged Lady Maria had retired from the ranks, defeated, for she was no rider, but Miss Bucknell, being only a few years older than Ruth, was made of sterner stuff. She gamely appeared in the stables in a drab riding habit. She would not permit Ran or the groom to toss her into the saddle, preferring the mounting block, and arranging herself with a great deal of wriggling so that her voluminous habit afforded not a single glimpse even of her boot.
Ran led the ladies out of the stable yard, Ruth on a lively young mare, Miss Bucknell on a more placid mare and a stolid groom bringing up the rear. At first Ran maintained a slow pace, and Ruth rode alongside him, controlling her spirited mount without effort. She commented on some small changes since her last visit two years earlier, and listened with seeming interest to his plans to renovate the grooms’ quarters and the gardeners’ cottages. But gradually he began to speed up, so that Miss Bucknell, no very confident rider, began to fall behind, with the groom watchfully bringing up the rear. Eventually, they came to an open stretch of ground, sloping down towards woodland some distance away.
“Shall we?” Ran said, with a quick smile at Ruth.
Almost before the words were spoken, she had urged her mount forward, faster and then faster still. Ran stayed slightly behind her. He told himself it was so that she could set her own pace, as she felt most comfortable, but it also gave him an admirable view of her as she flew over the smooth grass. Such a splendid rider! He thought he could watch her for ever.
All too soon they reached the woods, and here she pulled up, her horse tossing his head and Ruth herself flushed with the exhilaration of the ride. Ran could not take his eyes off her.
“That was such fun,” she said, laughing, “but we had better wait for poor Cousin Patience to catch up.”
Poor Cousin Patience was labouring at a steady trot across the greensward, as fast as her fat little mare would carry her, and would be with them in no more than a minute or two. Ran could not waste the opportunity. However odd it might seem to Ruth, still alight with the pleasure of the ride, he must speak now or there may never be another chance.
“Ruth…”
She turned to him, and he could see by her face that she understood, for instantly the polite mask she showed the world fell back into place.
“Ruth, forgive me, but I must say this. You have been put into a very awkward position by Ger’s death, and to your father it must seem like the ideal solution for the understanding you had with him to transfer to me. I must ask you if… if you truly wish for this. I would not for the world have you pressed into a situation distasteful to you.”
Her eyes slid to Miss Bucknell, growing nearer every second, but she answered calmly. “It is awkward for both of us, Ran. The same considerations apply to you, also.”
To his ears, her voice sounded cold. What did she expect him to say? There was no time to consider his words, to craft the perfect response, but he was far more concerned with the risk of saying too much than too little. “Naturally I am very willing to—”
Was that a flash of anger in her eyes? “Then we are in accord,” she said crisply, deftly turning her horse and urging him into the woods.
“Oh, Your Grace, such… a turn… of speed!” puffed Miss Bucknell as she reached them. “Must urge… more caution… What would dear Lady Ruth’s parents say if—?”
“I beg your pardon for alarming you, Miss Bucknell,” Ran said in flat tones. “Lady Ruth is a most accomplished rider, however. I do not believe there was any real danger.”
But Ruth was gone, and heard nothing of the compliment.
That was the only private conversation Ran had with his future wife. For the rest of the visit, she was perfectly composed, the epitome of the gracious and charming guest, with not the slightest crack in the façade she presented to the world, and Ran could only suppose that it was as her father had said — that she accepted him in duty.
It was enough. It would have to be enough.
~~~~~
A few days after Ruth and her family had left, Ran and Max Lorrimer rode towards the eastern lodge. It was four in the afternoon, and already growing dusk. Ran dismounted to open the gate, and the two horsemen passed through. The eastern gate was one of several which had the usual carriage drive on the Valmont side, but no matching road on the other. There was, in fact, no need for drive or gate or lodge at all, but at Valmont, symmetry was all, so there the gate stood.
On the far side, a straight track led through old-established woodland of oak and beech, leafless still at th
is season, but dark and gloomy at this hour. The horses knew their way well, however, so the two men rode without haste for a mile or so, emerging by way of a wooden gate in a high brick wall into the clear signs of a gentleman’s garden. Passing through the rather disordered shrubbery, they rode between scruffy lawns to a modest stable block, where an elderly groom with a lamp took charge of the horses. Across the yard, they entered the house through the kitchen door.
“There you are!” cried the young woman in a voluminous apron, as she manoeuvred a pot of something over the fire. “And Ran, too — how lovely! It is good to see you without your black coat, my dear. Visitors all gone?”
“All gone. How are you, Alice? It seems an age since I was here.”
“Not since Twelfth Night, I think,” she said. “What a stranger you have become lately. Peter will be pleased to see you.”
Harebell Cottage was a modest house, not the largest in the village of St Peter’s Cross, but home to some of Ran’s dearest friends. Peter and Max, the two sons, had grown up alongside Ger and Ran, the four of them learning to ride and fish and shoot together, roaming the Valmont estates as a group and attending the same school and university. Although all were good friends, Peter and Ger had had an especial closeness, and Ran and Max likewise.
Their fathers had been wise enough not to interfere in this easy-going friendship, despite the very different destinies of their sons. Peter Lorrimer, the elder son, supplemented the modest competence he had inherited with attorney work. Max had become indispensable to Ran as his most trusted secretary. Their sister, Alice, kept house for her brothers. She was a lively, pretty girl, but had never married, despite numerous eligible offers, for why, she said, would she do so when she was already mistress of a perfectly good establishment?
Although he now lived at Valmont, once a week Max went home to eat his dinner with his family, and the Litherholm sons had always had an open invitation to avail themselves of the same hospitality. After the formality of a week with the Duke and Duchess of Orrisdale, Ran looked forward to a relaxing evening amongst friends.
They were too considerate to ask him directly about Ruth, but as soon as their dinner was laid out on the table and the manservant had withdrawn, Ran said, “I expect you have guessed it already, but I shall be going to Mallowfleet next month for Lady Ruth’s birthday celebrations, and our betrothal will be announced there.”
“Well now, how delightful it will be to have a duchess at Valmont again,” Alice said, amidst the chorus of congratulations. “Is she as lovely as rumour makes her?”
“Lovelier,” Ran said at once. “I never saw a more beautiful woman.”
“Ah!” Alice said, laughing. “You like her, then, and you will make an ideal husband, Ran, with such an attitude.”
“It is true,” Max said. “She is a diamond of the first water, and wonderfully accomplished.”
“All such ladies are wonderfully accomplished,” Alice said, at once. “I set no store by that, but if Ran thinks her a beauty, that is an excellent foundation for marriage. And you are… content, Ran? She was destined for Ger, after all.”
There was a sudden alert silence, like the dropping of a stone into a pond.
“I am content,” he said without hesitation. “I was concerned that her father might be pushing her towards me, in place of Ger, but she… she is willing. We are… in accord.” Her own words, and yet they made him shiver. What did they mean? Was she truly willing, as willing as he was, or was she simply accepting the duty laid upon her by her father?
“That is good,” Alice said, calmly ignoring his hesitation. “And you are to take your seat in the House of Lords in the spring, or so Max tells us? So we must address you as ‘Your Grace’ now.”
“I trust that in private you will call me Ran, as always,” he said, smiling. “There must be no formality between us, such good friends as we are.”
After dinner, they played vingt-et-un for farthings, talking about the latest Royal scandals, the frailty of the Valmont chaplain, the new coal mine — anything and everything but Ran’s forthcoming marriage. But as he and Max prepared to leave, Peter laid a hand on his arm.
“I wish you very happy, Ran, and Ger would have wished it too. He would have wanted you to go on with your life, and build a future. I hope Lady Ruth appreciates how lucky she is, and I say that as one of Ger’s best friends in this world. He had many good qualities, and I loved him dearly, but I never thought that Lady Ruth was the right wife for him, or he the right husband for such a gently raised lady.”
“Yet they were in love,” Ran said. “Affection smooths a great many differences.”
“I know nothing of that,” Peter said. “Ger never spoke of her in such terms, so I cannot say what was in his heart, but you know what he was like, Ran. So volatile! Up in alt one minute, in despair the next, and I never knew anyone able to coax him out of his low spirits, not even you. Maybe Lady Ruth could have done it, I cannot say, but it always seemed to me that they were thrown together and the marriage expected, and a high-born lady like that— I wondered a great deal how it would work. But you are the most even-tempered man in Christendom, and the best mannered and most correct. Your wife will be a fortunate lady indeed, and Ger would have been the first to say so.”
Ran could find nothing to say to such kindness, except to thank him and hope with all his heart that he might be right. There was nothing he wanted more in the world than to make Ruth happy. If only he could! But he was not Ger, was not the object of her affection and could never be so. He would always be second best. It was a dispiriting thought.
4: Identification
MARCH
The Benefactor’s lawyer arrived on a cold, grey, windswept day, a last fling of winter before spring greenery burst forth everywhere. Mr Willerton-Forbes was attired in the very latest Bond Street style, and looked splendidly unlike a lawyer. He brought with him a Captain Edgerton, a small man flamboyantly dressed in the garish insignia of the Four-Horse Club and wearing a sword, and Mr Neate, a slender man dressed entirely in black and the only one of the three to look like a lawyer.
Ran saw them in his private office, with only Max in attendance. The business was mercifully brief, merely to confirm his identity, and that he was the next of kin of the late Seventh Duke of Falconbury, his brother.
“His Grace your brother left no wife, no child?” Willerton-Forbes said gently.
“None. I have spent a year fruitlessly searching for evidence of such a situation, but in vain,” Ran said. “I must conclude that he never married.”
“Then, Your Grace, I am pleased to inform you that I am empowered by the Benefactor to bestow upon you the sum of one thousand pounds,” Willerton-Forbes said. “You may receive this benefice in any form that seems good to you, or, if you wish it to be invested or transferred to some other person, I shall, naturally, follow your instructions in the matter.”
Ran had had a whole year to consider what he might do with this largesse. “I have no need of it, but there are five parishes within my gift,” he said. “The sum of two hundred pounds apiece would alleviate a great deal of want amongst the parishioners. Mr Lorrimer will furnish you with a list.”
“I shall be delighted to oblige you, Your Grace. That is most satisfactory, if I may say so. I am most relieved to have obtained an audience with you at last, for although we have corresponded on occasion, I cannot execute the Benefactor’s instructions as I should wish without meeting each recipient in person. Your Grace, might I be permitted to ask a question, a matter that has been exercising me greatly and on which, perhaps, you may be able to set my mind at rest?” Ran nodded his acquiescence. “Are you the Benefactor?”
Ran could only laugh. “You do not know his identity? And whatever makes you think I might be responsible?”
“Your reluctance to receive me, Your Grace, and your wealth. There are few men in England who could afford the six and twenty thousand pounds the Benefactor has given.”
“Plus expenses,
” Ran said, in amusement.
“Indeed,” Willerton-Forbes said, eyes twinkling. “Plus considerable expenses. It would be an appropriate memorial to your brother, or so it seemed to me. And I note that you have not, in fact, answered the question, Your Grace.”
Ran chuckled. “You must be formidable in court, Mr Willerton-Forbes. I did not want to see you, it is true, having no need of the Benefactor’s charity. Perhaps it was discourteous of me, but I was sunk in grief and saw no one beyond the most minimal call of duty. But to answer your question, I am not the Benefactor, nor do I have the least idea who he may be.”
“Ah. What a pity,” Willerton-Forbes said. “It would have been such a neat solution to the question.”
“Do you need to know who provides the money you so liberally bestow?” Ran said.
“No, but one so dislikes mysteries, Your Grace,” Willerton-Forbes said. “My brief is, you may think, a simple one, yet I have been beset with mysteries. One wonders, for instance, why a sound ship, manned by a competent crew, and sailing in calm waters with good visibility, should drift onto rocks and founder. One wonders, for a further instance, why one of the passengers, travelling under the name of Louis Fields, should turn out to be a woman, and not a man at all. One wonders, for a third instance, why one particular passenger, a Mr Jonathan Ellsworthy, has no history and springs up out of nowhere on the Brig Minerva.”
It was Max Lorrimer who cut in. “Must every man have a known history, Mr Willerton-Forbes?”
Captain Edgerton, who had been prowling restlessly about the room, stopped abruptly. “Every man has a history, sir. He may choose not to share it, but the history is there to be found, if only one knows where to look. But when a man says that he grew up in an orphanage in Carlisle, yet no such person is recorded in that fair city, one begins to wonder.”
“Men change their names all the time,” Max said in amused tones. “There is no crime in it. A man falls out with his family — or his orphanage, in this case — and wishes to begin his life anew, so he gives himself a new name. His given history — the orphanage in Carlisle — may still be true, even though the names do not match.”
The Duke (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 6) Page 4
