Then she looked away from him as Diana and Walter came running up from behind the cottages.
“Oh, Eleanor!” Diana called in genuine distress. “Come quickly! Your mother’s been taken ill.”
All thoughts of the infuriating Mr. Campbell took instant flight. Eleanor and her mother weren’t close. The Countess of Acton was too elegant, too clever, and too beautiful to have ever made a particularly warm mama, but Eleanor loved her and even felt an odd sense of wanting to protect her.
Lord Acton was a harsh man. Eleanor’s parents had married because it was a brilliant match, not because of any empathy or love, and they had almost nothing in common. Lady Acton wasn’t able to take refuge in her children, though in a distant way she wanted them to be happy. Instead she had thrown herself into the giddy delights of high society and become a social butterfly.
Yet though the countess might look fragile and delicate, she was never ill. Eleanor’s concern was genuine as she ran after Diana.
Lady Acton was sitting on the firewood pile outside the church. The major hovered over her in obvious distress.
“What is it, Mama?” Eleanor asked as she hurried up.
“Nothing, really! Pray don’t refine so, everyone. I just felt a little faint while in the church, that’s all. The fresh air has me quite revived.”
“Let me go for the carriage, my lady,” Mr. Campbell said. He had followed Walter and the girls. “You shouldn’t walk back to Hawksley.”
Eleanor sat beside her mother and took her hand. Lady Acton’s pulse was a little fast and her skin seemed pale and clammy.
“You are so kind, Mr. Campbell. Will you go?” the countess asked, looking up at him.
He bowed. “Nothing would bring me more pleasure.”
“I saw a cob in the pasture behind the church,” Walter said. “Come, I’ll help you get him.”
Eleanor watched, her heart full of confusion, as the two young men ran off to fetch the horse.
* * *
The cob wore a leather halter. Lee took a piece of twine from the gate, enough to form makeshift reins.
“You’ll send for a doctor, won’t you?” Walter Downe asked as his friend caught the surprised nag.
Lee looked back at him with faint derision. “Do you think one necessary?”
“For heaven’s sake, Lee! Lady Acton looks as if she’s seen a ghost.”
“Precisely! Lady Acton isn’t sick. She’s had a shock. Something has happened to frighten her. Now what, do you suppose?”
“Frighten her? What could have scared her in a church?”
Lee leaped onto the horse’s back, then smiled down at his friend. “No so much what, sir, as who.”
“What do you mean? Sir Robert Crabtree was Lady Acton’s only companion in the church, wasn’t he? I hardly think a straightforward major of his type is likely to frighten a lady.”
“So what sentiments do you believe our host at Deerfield entertains for the countess, sir?”
Walter spluttered. “Good Lord, I would have said that if the major has any feelings for Lady Acton, they take the form of doting admiration—”
“—which may be true, also.”
“But your perceptive gaze goes much further, I suppose?”
Lee laughed and turned the horse’s head toward Hawksley Park. “If you like.”
“And any judgment that results, you will obviously keep to yourself. Damme, but you’re a dark horse, sir!”
“Exactly,” Lee said. “But now I must ride this pale horse bareback across hedge and stream, and through hamlet and forest, as if chased by the hounds of hell—all to fetch a carriage for Lady Acton. Please go back and offer the ladies your strong arm and your courage until I return. Especially my sister!”
He set the cob into a canter and left Walter Downe staring after him.
* * *
By the time the curricle arrived, driven by the Hawksley coachman in person, Lady Acton seemed quite recovered.
Eleanor watched Mr. Campbell as he rode up behind the carriage. He sat the horse so easily, a personification of power and grace. It didn’t seem to have bothered him in the least to ride fast across country with no saddle and only a halter.
He slipped from the cob’s back and rubbed one hand down its neck. That lovely, long-fingered hand that had touched her nape and cheek so sweetly at the inn. She bit her lip and looked away as he bowed to the ladies.
Lady Acton nodded to him, laughed gaily, and allowed the major to help her into the carriage.
Eleanor was obliged to climb in beside her mother. Walter handed Diana up beside them.
Mr. Campbell stood to one side, casually holding the cob by the halter. The three gentlemen would walk back to Deerfield and send inquiries later.
As the carriage bowled away, Eleanor—against her better judgment—glanced back. Yet she could read nothing from Mr. Campbell’s expression, for that gentleman appeared to have forgotten her. He was deep in conversation with Major Crabtree.
She turned back to stare up at the parasol that had cost him so much effort. He was quite ruthlessly charming, wasn’t he? Yet it could only be a game for him, for he was entirely ineligible and he knew it. She did her best to laugh at herself as she tried to thrust the disturbing images of the loveliest man she had ever seen out of her mind.
“Are you quite the thing now, Lady Acton?” Diana asked. “We were all worried.”
“My dear child, of course,” Eleanor’s mother said. “It was just the cold and all those sad memorials of lost souls in the nave.”
Eleanor said nothing, but she didn’t believe that for a moment. Something was still wrong. Lady Acton had recovered her color and poise, but her manner still betrayed tension, as if strings pulled at her spine. Yet it was severely out of character for the countess to betray any untoward emotion.
So what had really happened in the church?
* * *
Lady Augusta was in alt as they all sat at dinner that evening. She turned to Lady Acton with considerable satisfaction.
“I thought it could not be suitable, Felicity, for you to tramp about the lanes as if you were a nobody. Look at the result! You had to be brought back in a carriage, as white as a sheet. It causes distress among the tenants when we do what is inappropriate. Nothing is more important than to maintain the distinctions and dignity of our station. Pride of birth, of rank—social position is everything. Society would be overthrown without it.”
“No doubt we shall have revolution if countesses walk too often,” Lady Acton replied acidly. “But since Acton is an older title than Hawksley, I don’t think it is your place, Augusta, to criticize what I choose to do. I was a little faint from the wind, nothing else. It is hardly enough to cause scandal.”
Lady Augusta sniffed and relapsed into silence.
Eleanor swallowed her smile and looked down at her dish of fruit. It must rankle that the Countess of Acton enjoyed precedence over the Countess of Hawksley, due to an accident of history. And perhaps it was also frustrating that Lady Acton was such an accepted arbiter of taste. Scandal had never been attached to her mother’s name, in spite of her beauty and fortune.
Nevertheless, the Hawksley name was among the greatest in the land, and Lady Augusta would have to take comfort in that.
* * *
“Robert, thank God! In here—we can be alone. Do you know anything more?”
Eleanor sat up with a start. After dinner she had retreated to the library, where she found a wonderful selection of old books. Choosing one from the shelf, she had curled herself into a large old-fashioned settle by the fire. Diana and the dowager countess were playing cards together and she thought her mother had retired. Eleanor had excused herself also and escaped into this lovely room with its rich old paneling and shelf upon shelf of books. There was nothing she particularly needed to think about, but she felt oddly fragile and she wanted to be alone.
When she had first heard the door open, she had begun to stand up, but now she was frozen where
she sat.
It was her mother’s voice and Lady Acton was not alone.
“Sweetheart, are you recovered, truly?” a man answered. “I felt like a brute to give you such news in the church, but what else could I have done?”
Eleanor shrank back into her settle. The tall wings hid her from anyone else in the room, and it was far too late now to make herself known. But for heaven’s sake! Major Crabtree was calling her mother “sweetheart”?
“No, you did right, of course,” Lady Acton said. “I had to know immediately and it was private there. No doubt I shall get my own request soon enough. You have given me some warning and for that I am grateful. Better to feel faint in Little Tanning than pass out beneath the breakfast table at Hawksley.”
“But such news! It tears out my heart to see you so distressed.”
Lady Acton gave a bitter little laugh. “How could you keep my letters after I instructed you to burn them, as I did yours?”
The major’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it, even though I know every sentence by heart. Your sweet words are all I really have of you, my dear.”
“Then I wish you could have relied on your memory, since it’s so perfect. Now this unknown person has them. Stolen, you say, from Deerfield?”
“I am more than mortified, Felicity. If I could get the letters back by cutting off my right hand, I would do so.”
“I imagine that our gold will be more to our tormentor’s taste than your flesh, Sir Robert, however nobly given. How much is he asking?”
The answer seemed wrung from him. “More than I have.”
“But not, probably, more than I have. Very well! I am prepared to be bled dry. I have my own fortune. The earl shall never know. Indeed, he must never know or I shall be ruined.”
“I am so angry and humiliated,” the major said. “Yet I cannot find it in my heart to regret our love, Felicity. You are more to me than the earth.”
“Oh, spare me, sir! We are adults. We know quite well what we have meant to each other. Pray, don’t make it more than it is. You may regret nothing, but I regret everything very bitterly. Had you done as I asked and burned my letters, we wouldn’t now be considering the pleasures of being blackmailed.”
“Forgive me, my dear. I’ll move heaven and earth to find the villain who stole the letters, believe me.”
“He’s picked a good target, hasn’t he? The Countess of Acton! This rogue is going to become a very rich man. Now, leave me, sir. Tomorrow will be soon enough for me to begin to decide which jewels I shall sell.”
The door opened and closed again. The major had left.
Eleanor sat where she was and listened for her mother to also leave the room. She now understood exactly why the countess had looked so ill when she came out of the church. She felt a little pale and clammy herself. It might be a shock for Lady Acton to learn that her indiscreet letters had been stolen and were in the hands of a blackmailer, but it was perhaps more of a shock for her eighteen-year-old daughter to learn that her mother had been having an affair.
Yet could she blame her? The handsome major was witty enough company. Compared to her father, who often behaved something like Henry VIII with the headache, he must have seemed charming indeed. It was only natural that the countess had looked outside of her barren marriage for a little solace.
But this business of the letters was a disaster. If it ever came out, the earl could demand a divorce. Lady Acton, who lived only for society, would find herself an outcast. No wonder she was prepared to sell her jewelry!
Eleanor almost felt like weeping, as much in rage as in grief. What crime was more despicable than blackmail? Her mother had never harmed a soul. Did a moment of human weakness deserve a lifetime of punishment? Who could possibly have stolen the letters?
And then unbidden it came to her: “First you must tell me what you know about blackmail, brown hen.”
Leander Campbell! When they had first met at the Three Feathers, he had said that. She had thought he was threatening to blackmail her over their compromising encounter, but he stayed often at Deerfield and he gambled for a living. He must be in constant need of money. Opportunity and motive, both were there.
She had thought him arrogant and infuriating, but not really so completely despicable. Now why should that realization hurt so very much?
“How much did you hear?”
Eleanor was so lost in her own misery, she didn’t respond until Lady Acton sat beside her and repeated the question. “How much did you hear, Eleanor?”
She looked up to meet her mother’s gaze. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, truly, but how could I make myself known with the major here? Oh, Mama, I’m so terribly sorry. No wonder you felt ill!”
“Oh, it was nothing,” Lady Acton said. “I admit I was upset when I first heard, my dear, but it’s not the end of the world. Why, I think being blackmailed might add a little spice to life. It’s never happened to me before.”
“But to sell your jewels! Won’t Papa notice?”
“Dear child, I have a fortune of my own, as no doubt the blackmailer is aware. Sir Robert isn’t lacking for funds, either, and he’s determined to get my letters back. It’ll be a while before my diamonds must go to be cleaned, believe me. Do you hate me?”
Eleanor gazed into the lovely black eyes. “Hate you? Why?”
“For not being faithful to your father.”
“No, of course not! How could I? You didn’t choose him.”
At which Lady Acton threw back her head and laughed. “No, my father did and at the time it broke my heart. I thought I was in love with another young man, you see, who was entirely unsuitable. But he married someone else, and your father and I rub along well enough. Lord Acton’s a good man at heart, Eleanor, and I wouldn’t hurt him for the world. He must never know about this.”
“Papa certainly won’t learn it from me.”
“I know he won’t. And no doubt my letters will be recovered, so he won’t learn from the blackmailer either.”
“Do you have any idea who the villain is?”
“None. But he’ll reveal himself eventually and then Robert will shoot him. Now, in the meantime, I want you to put it out of your mind. Promise me that you will?”
Eleanor shook her head. That was the one thing she couldn’t promise. If Leander Campbell was blackmailing the major and her mother, she would do her best to stop him. In the meantime, she had no proof and she had better keep her suspicions to herself.
Lady Acton chucked her gently under the chin. “Never mind, Eleanor. You’re a remarkable child and so are your siblings. If there’s one thing I shall never fathom, it’s how your father and I produced such a splendid brood. And, yes, you are all your father’s children.”
With that, she rose gracefully to her feet and winked.
Eleanor grinned back. “I would never doubt it, Mama. We all look like different bits of the two of you, except me,” she said. “Look at Richard—he has your eyes and Papa’s hair. But I’ve seen the portraits of Papa’s mother, and she and I might have come out of the same plain brown pod. Actually, I wouldn’t mind in the least having a different father, but there you are. We don’t choose our parents.”
“Nor do we choose our children,” Lady Acton said with mock severity, before she turned with a last shared smile and left the room.
Eleanor stared into the fire.
Mr. Leander Campbell! An image of him carelessly running along the rooftops and athletically controlling the bareback horse danced in the flames. He was so very handsome and undeniably charming, she had certainly been dazzled for a moment.
Well, she shouldn’t blame herself too much if her head had been turned. She had spent most of her life in complete shelter at Miss Able’s Select Academy for Young Ladies. What did she know about rogues like Mr. Campbell? Her brothers were selfless men of impeccable honor, who lived and were prepared to die by their personal codes, however much they might delight in a careless appearance.
Meanwhile Leander Campbell seemed to be entirely ruthless. He hadn’t thought twice about threatening her at the inn. He was trying to get Diana to elope with Walter. No doubt it was somehow a way to steal his sister’s inheritance. And now it seemed that he had stolen her mother’s letters and was blackmailing her and the major about it.
Mr. Campbell might be Diana’s half-brother and used to the blind adoration of females, but he hadn’t met Acton determination before and he didn’t know that Lady Eleanor Acton knew about his game.
Virtus Actonorum in Actione Consistit. It was the Acton motto: Action is the Acton virtue.
If he planned to blackmail Lady Acton, the arrogant Leander Campbell was going to find out very soon that he had at last met his match.
Chapter 6
At that moment the arrogant Leander Campbell was indeed thinking about blackmail. He and Walter Downe were sitting comfortably before the fire at Deerfield. Each man sipped gently at a glass of the finest brandy from the major’s superb cellar. Lee held his up for a moment to the light and watched the seductive change in its color.
“Have you learned anything, Lee?” Walter asked.
“About Manton Barnes? No, I haven’t. Sir Robert was never close to his nephew. Certainly, Barnes was rarely here as a child. We met for the first time at Eton. Sir Robert claims to know very little about Manton’s private life and to take little interest.”
“Then he kept his secret from his uncle?”
Lee looked thoughtfully into the hearth. “It would appear so. Sir Robert said all the correct things when he learned of our friend’s death, but I don’t think it touched him very deeply. I’m afraid that the impeccable military gentleman you have met at every rout and soirée for the last several years has never been a man to show much genuine emotion.”
“Then he wouldn’t suspect suicide?”
“Why should he? There’s no reason to think he knew Barnes might be facing the gallows. No, someone else knew, and I suspect it was Blanche who told him.”
“Miss Blanche Harrison?”
“Who else? She was devastated when Barnes broke off their engagement. I suggested he make some excuse, but perhaps he told her the truth and in her distress she went to someone else for help, someone who used that knowledge for blackmail.”
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