by Jane Ashford
The earl said his piece. And then the others spoke, briefly, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and candor. Compton came very near tears, while Furness was tight-lipped and laconic. The talk was surprisingly engrossing. And when they were done, Roger found that the simmering anger the day had brought was eased. Which was a boon he certainly hadn’t expected to receive from a dinner at White’s, he thought as he headed back to his hotel.
One
Roger urged his horse to greater speed on the firm sand at the verge of the waves. A good gallop could always relieve his feelings. And late July was surely the best time for it here at the edge of the North Sea. The Northumberland wind still had a bite, but the sun was warm on his back, and there was no sign of rain. The stone pile of Chatton Castle, with all its attendant responsibilities, receded behind him. The shore stretched ahead. For an hour or so he could be solitary and carefree.
And so, of course, a figure on horseback appeared ahead, riding toward him. The mount’s glossy gray coat and the rider’s neat silhouette told him who it was. Roger muttered a curse. His luck was out today. “You’re on my land,” he said when their paths intersected.
“Not according to my father,” replied a haughty young lady in a fashionable riding habit. “He would say that you’re on his.”
“The deuce. Is this that stretch?” Roger looked around and realized that he’d come farther than he’d noticed. He was on a piece of land at the edge of his estate that was the subject of a border dispute, started by his father and hers some years ago. The ham-handed way the two men had tried to settle the matter had roused a world of troubles.
“You know it is,” she said.
Roger looked at her. In one sense, he’d known Fenella Fairclough all his life. They’d grown up on neighboring estates and met at various children’s parties in their youth. In another sense, however, he hardly knew her at all. A female had no right to change so much between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three, Roger thought. She’d been a gangling, tongue-tied girl when she left for the north five years ago, after the fiasco of their rejected betrothal. She’d been fearful and retiring, the sort of female one was surprised to hear had been present at a soiree or assembly. And she’d come back the opposite of all those things—forthright, impatient, alarmingly astute. Not to mention far more curvaceous. The first time he’d seen her again, on her return to the neighborhood, he hadn’t recognized Fenella.
She had the same pale-red hair and blue eyes, the same pretty oval face, but the expression was far different, and the words that issued from that full-lipped mouth could sting. How well he knew that! “You’re out alone, without even a groom?” he asked. She’d scarcely ridden in their youth, finding horses large and intimidating as he remembered it. The gray she was on now would have terrified her then.
“As are you,” she said.
“A completely different case,” Roger said.
Her eyes flashed. “I suppose I can ride as I like on our own land.”
“Hah!” It was a distinct hit. Almost amusing, if circumstances had been different. “You’re all too ready to ride anywhere, even through a tempest.”
Exasperation tightened her jaw. “Please tell me that you’re not going to start with this again. I thought you’d given up that stupid story at last.”
He had. And he rather wished he hadn’t referred to it now. But the visit to the Crenshaws had kicked up all sorts of inner turmoil. The ranting of Arabella’s parents, particularly her mother, in London had brought everything back. Coupled with his tendency to utter the wrong word at the wrong time, it had tripped him up.
“I am very tired of telling you that expedition was Arabella’s idea, not mine, Chatton. And that I did my best to stop her.”
“Splendid. I’m tired of hearing it.”
“You don’t hear. That’s the problem.” Miss Fairclough sighed. “Can we not leave this behind us? You haven’t mentioned it in months.”
Easy for her to talk of moving forward, Roger thought. She didn’t have to face Mrs. Crenshaw. An irritated sound escaped him.
“You are the most intractable man,” said Miss Fairclough.
“Intractable, is it? Did you learn such words north of the border?”
“I learned to express my opinion.”
“No matter how misguided. Typical from someone whose mother was a Scot.”
Her lips twitched. “Have we descended to childish insults? Very well. Your mother is a soft southerner.”
“You like my mother! And she’s always disgustingly kind to you.”
Miss Fairclough’s face softened. “She is kind. Though hardly disgusting.”
“Oh, you can do no wrong in her eyes.”
“On the contrary.”
Their eyes met. Roger could tell that she was remembering, as was he, that his mother had wanted him to marry her. When she was a biddable girl, not the waspish young lady she’d become. Roger didn’t recall his mother’s reasons. He knew they hadn’t been related to the cold merger of properties that their fathers had proposed. They’d both rejected that scheme, five years ago. And of course they’d been right. Absolutely right.
“I must go,” said Miss Fairclough.
Strictly speaking, he ought to offer to escort her. But Roger didn’t care. He wanted his solitude back. And he knew she wouldn’t welcome his company. He settled for a bow from the saddle and watched her ride away. Really, she’d become a bruising rider in her years away.
* * *
Fenella urged her horse toward home, fuming, as she nearly always was after an encounter with Chatton. She was so tired of hearing about the notorious ride into the storm that had brought on his wife’s fever and led to her death. His position was quite unjust. The expedition really had been entirely Arabella’s idea. Fenella had tried to talk her out of going. But the newly minted Marchioness of Chatton had not been a persuadable person. Indeed, Arabella had been spoiled and stubborn. Add discontent to that, and you had a volatile mixture.
Silently, Fenella acknowledged that she hadn’t liked Arabella at first. But she’d begun to feel sorry for a girl of nineteen taken so far from her home and discovering that she didn’t like the windswept coast of Northumberland or, indeed, her new husband. Fenella had watched the newcomer realize that a title didn’t make up for a lack of common interests or clashing temperaments.
With Fenella’s sympathies roused, and Arabella very lonely, they’d become friends of a sort, despite Arabella’s chancy nature. Wistful tales of London revealed that Arabella’s parents, particularly her mother, had engineered the marriage, intent on social advancement. Fenella suspected that they’d forced Arabella to relinquish a prior attachment, over which she sometimes wept. For the Crenshaws, Chatton’s position had been everything, his personality irrelevant. And so two young people had been yoked together with little chance of happiness, as far as Fenella could judge. It was sad. And none of her business, of course. Indeed, her history with Chatton made Arabella’s confidences awkward. Yet she couldn’t have rejected her, Fenella thought as she rode. It would have been cruel.
Three and a half years with her Scottish grandmother had taught Fenella a good deal about kindness. Which was ironic on the face of it, because many thought her grandmother a terrifying old lady. Grandmamma came from a long line of border lords who had harried the English and feuded with each other for centuries. She was as comfortable holding a pistol as a teacup. And she’d explained to Fenella that kindness could be quite a complicated exercise, requiring thought and care.
The time with her grandmother had made her feel older than her years, Fenella thought. Certainly more than a few years older than Arabella. Fenella often wondered what might have come to Arabella, and indeed Chatton, if she hadn’t died so young. But that would never be known.
On this melancholy note, Fenella reached her home and turned to the stables, where she left her mount. Loo
ping up the long skirts of her riding habit, she walked to the side door of the great brick pile where she’d grown up. She’d missed Clough House while she was gone. Yet she wasn’t entirely glad to be back.
A housemaid met her on the threshold, as if she’d been waiting there. “The master’s asking for you, miss.”
“I’ll just change out of my habit,” said Fenella.
“He’s fretting.”
Fenella adjusted her grip on her skirts and started for the stairs.
Her father’s illness had changed him. He still growled and demanded, but the tone was querulous now. And too often bewildered. It had startled Fenella when she’d been called back home to oversee his care.
She was struck again by the irony of the situation as she walked up the stairs. Her two sisters had always gotten on better with Papa, mainly because he’d made no secret of his bitter disappointment that Fenella wasn’t born a son. “Third time’s the charm,” he’d used to mutter. “Only it wasn’t.” He’d shadowed the last years of her mother’s life over this supposed failing, and he’d seemed to feel that Fenella owed him extra obedience to make up for the lapse. And so he’d thought to marry her off like a medieval magnate disposing of his chattel. Well, he hadn’t managed that.
But Greta and Nora had families of their own to occupy them and had happened to settle far away. Everyone had thought it Fenella’s duty to come home, and so she had. Part of her had welcomed the chance. She didn’t wish to be forever estranged from her father.
How did it feel, Fenella wondered, to have the defiant daughter in charge of his sickroom? What if she’d accepted one of the offers of marriage she’d received in Scotland? Where would he be then? But they never discussed such things. They were not a family who spoke of their feelings, she thought as she entered his room. Before her stay with Grandmamma, she’d hardly recognized what her feelings were. “Hello, Papa,” she said.
“Where have you been?”
“Out riding.”
“Enjoying yourself, eh? Using my horses. With no thought for me lying neglected here.”
In fact, Fenella’s mount was her own, a gift from her grandmother, though the mare was eating the estate’s fodder, of course. “On the contrary, I made certain Simpson was with you.”
“That doddering excuse for a valet! I sent him away.”
Simpson had been with her father for as long as Fenella could remember. He was probably hovering behind the dressing room door right now in case he might be needed. Her father really was the most difficult of patients. “Shall I read to you?” she asked.
“Pah!” He shoved at his coverlet. “I want to be up out of this damned bed.” He tried to rise, and rediscovered the weakness in his right side, which he forgot from one day to the next. The drag of his arm and leg kept him from the outdoor pursuits he loved. And the vagueness of his mind made other favorite amusements, like cards, vastly frustrating for all involved. The doctor had said that her father would probably never recover from the bout of apoplexy that had felled him. Fenella didn’t blame Papa for cursing. But that didn’t make tending him any easier.
Her father fell back onto the pillows. “Why does no one come to see me?” he asked. “Chatton might stop by, I would think, knowing I’m ill.”
Well aware that he was referring to the current marquess’s father, and indeed to a time before they’d fallen out, Fenella didn’t know what to say. The first time he’d complained of this, she’d told him his old friend-foe was dead. But he never remembered.
“Or Pierson,” her father added. “Many’s the good turn I’ve done him. He might spare me half an hour’s visit.”
It would be good for him to see familiar faces, Fenella thought. But the Piersons had moved to Kent years ago. Her father had no friends left nearby. She’d send for the vicar again. His conversation could soothe, when it didn’t infuriate.
“But I’ve only you,” he went on. “If you’d been a son, as you were supposed to be, I wouldn’t be laid low like this. And no one to come after me on the estate.”
Resisting the urge to argue with him, Fenella went to change her dress and then discover where Simpson was lurking so that they could discuss what to do.
* * *
When he reached home, Roger found his mother entertaining a visitor to Chatton Castle. Their neighbor Harold Benson was sitting with her in the small drawing room that overlooked the sea. Benson, short and round and bald, always reminded Roger of the drawings of Humpty Dumpty in children’s picture books. Now, he jumped up and offered a bow, proving that he did bend in the middle.
“Roger, just in time!” said his mother. “We are talking about the historical pageant on Lindisfarne at the end of August. I’ve been telling Mr. Benson that of course we will do all we can to help.”
If his mother had had a coat of arms, that might have been the motto engraved upon it, Roger thought. Her impulse was always to help. The problem was that the consequent obligations piled up until she was hard-pressed to fulfill them all, and then she bounced from one to another like a fly trapped by a closed window, buzzing with anxiety. Waving Benson back to his chair, Roger sat down beside her, wondering if he could keep her from going distracted over this pageant. A happy smile lit her face. Fair-haired and slender, her features scarcely lined, she didn’t look her fifty years of age.
“It’s to be bigger than I realized,” she went on. “With Romans and Vikings and Saxons. And monks, of course.”
“Isn’t that a poor place to hold a festival?” asked Roger. “The road out to Lindisfarne is underwater at high tide.”
“There’s a well-marked path,” said Benson. “People only need to take care and mind the tides. And the holy isle has been the scene of a positive panorama of British history.” Benson was an avid scholar, their local expert on just about everything. Particularly in his own opinion. On his small, neat estate just south of Roger’s lands, Benson inhabited a house overrun by books.
Roger’s mother clasped her hands. “There will be a special presentation of speeches from Macbeth by a leading London actress. Only think!”
Their visitor’s plump cheeks creased with distaste, making him look like a dyspeptic chipmunk. “Very dramatic, I’m sure. Of course Shakespeare got that story wrong in almost every respect. The chronicles give no hint of such machinations. Macbeth was an unexceptional king of Scotland. And nothing at all is known about his wife!”
“What day is it to be?” asked Roger before Benson could launch into a lecture on medieval politics north of the border.
“The last day of August,” answered Roger’s mother.
“I’m glad it’s all going smoothly,” said Roger, hoping to plant the notion in her mind that not too much help was needed.
“Ah,” said Benson.
The concern he packed into that brief syllable told Roger that the bad news was coming.
“We do have rather a problem over who is to portray Saint Cuthbert. Such an important figure in our local religious traditions, you know.”
“I’d think some vicar or bishop would be pleased to do so,” said Roger.
Benson made a wry face. “Precisely. Too pleased. A rather fierce, ah, competition has developed in the church over the role. I understand that a parish priest and a canon nearly came to blows. Shocking. I’ve thought of suggesting that it should be a great man of the neighborhood instead.”
“You don’t mean me?” said Roger, horrified at the thought.
Their visitor looked equally perturbed. “No! That is, no, Lord Chatton. I would never… There’s no thought of that.”
Roger sat back, relieved and somehow a bit piqued at the vehemence of Benson’s rejection.
“I certainly hope you will take a part in the pageant,” Benson added quickly. “There are all sorts of roles. Viking raiders, marauding Saxons or Scots.”
Was he seen as so bellicose? Rog
er wondered. But since he didn’t want a part in the least, it didn’t matter.
“I think Roger should be a Roman commander,” said his mother. “With a toga and a chariot.”
He choked back a horrified laugh. Where had that idea come from?
“Ah, strictly speaking, the Romans were not a force this far north in England,” said Benson. “And chariots, you know, would never have been used on—”
She went on without seeming to hear. “You could use one of the swords hanging above the hall fireplace,” she said to Roger.
“Those are claymores,” said Benson. “The two-handed medieval sword, you know. Nothing to do with the Romans.”
“And I’d be hard-pressed to wield one,” said Roger. “Lord knows what they weigh.”
“The Romans carried a much shorter weapon called a gladius,” said Benson. “But as I said, we had few Romans hereabouts.”
He spoke as if Roger was longing for a role but was worried about taking it. Roger set to work to dispel that wrong-headed notion and managed to avoid promising any sort of participation in the August pageant, amusing his mother even as he annoyed their scholarly neighbor.
Two
The following day brought a surprise to Chatton Castle. As Roger was looking over a list of rent rolls, he was informed that a traveler had arrived and was asking for him. The card he was handed startled him, but when he went to the front hall, he discovered that Lord Macklin was indeed in his house.
“I’m on my way to Scotland for some fishing,” said the newcomer. “When I found we were passing your home, I thought I’d stop to see you.”
“Splendid,” said Roger, and found he truly meant it. He’d recalled the dinner in London quite often since the spring. The occasion stood out in his mind as both unusual and, somehow, comforting. He was genuinely glad to see the earl. “I hope you’ll stay a few days.” He noted Macklin’s traveling carriage standing outside. An older man who was clearly a valet waited beside it, along with a homely youngster Roger couldn’t immediately categorize.
