Duty and Desire

by Pamela Aidan

  “Watch out! Out of the way!” yelled Monmouth as he sawed at the reins to no avail. Miss Farnsworth looked over her stylishly clad shoulder to see the Viscount bearing down upon her at a reckless speed. Her face turned white, and she immediately began pulling on her reins, urging her mount over with a generous application of her crop. This action did not sit well with the animal, who not only ignored all her commands but began to engage in a series of tight hops that positioned its hindquarters for a concerted defense of its lead position.

  Monmouth’s horse swung to the right, determined to pass the other, who was equally determined it should not. As he drew near, Miss Farnsworth’s horse neighed out a warning and bunched its muscles. In a flash, the animal flung a well-aimed kick, causing Monmouth’s beast to stumble and scream out in anger.

  Darcy reached Miss Farnsworth just as her mount was preparing to answer the challenge. He made a dive for her reins, but to his chagrin, Miss Farnsworth jerked the horse’s head away, her face red with anger. “Stay away!” she commanded him as she worked furiously at the reins. “Do you think I am such a ninny! Stand back, I say!”

  Astounded, Darcy paused but then made another attempt at the reins. If he could draw the animal into a tight circle…His fingers grasped only air, and then with a great leap, Miss Farnsworth’s horse was off after the other. Darcy wheeled his mount around and followed after, praying that with or without Miss Farnsworth’s help he could stop the runaway before a very nasty accident occurred.

  The uproar had not been lost on those in the sleighs, but as they had not seen all, it was mistaken for a race. The passengers called out encouragement to the various riders and to their own drivers to keep up with them. Looking ahead to Monmouth, Darcy could see that he had finally succeeded in forcing his horse off the track and into the snow. Greatly impeded by the drifts, it was slowing, and he had no doubt that Monmouth would soon be back in control. He returned his attention to Miss Farnsworth, who was still careening along the track. Confound the woman! Why had she not done the same?

  Although she may not have appreciated it had she known, Miss Farnsworth had not been given the fastest horse in Lord Sayre’s stable, and for this, Darcy was soon thankful. Although the slickness of the track caused his bay occasionally to lose its footing, it recovered quickly each time, its long legs eating up the distance between them and the runaway. Cautious this time of the temper of both the horse and its rider, he eased up alongside them.

  “What are you doing!” Miss Farnsworth glared at him but received no answer as Darcy edged closer and closer, forcing the other horse from the track and into the snow-covered field. “I do not need your help,” she shrieked. “You’ll cause it to break its legs!” Darcy leaned over, grabbed a rein, and immediately turned his mount away, forcing the other to turn. After twenty yards thus, he was able to bring them both to a halt.

  “Your pardon, Miss Farnsworth.” He restrained a desire to match her glare for glare. “But I beg to disagree. It was too dangerous to allow the animal its head. Better a lamed horse than a broken neck, ma’am!” Before she could issue him the heated reply that was forming on her lips, Trenholme and Monmouth brought their mounts up on either side.

  “Miss Farnsworth,” the Viscount began immediately, “I am aghast at the danger in which I placed you! Please, allow me to beg your forgiveness and assure you that it was not my intention to test your horsemanship, for which, miss, I must say, I salute you.” The steel in Miss Farnsworth’s countenance softened quickly under Monmouth’s soothing speech, and by its end, she was once more the agreeable young woman who had charmed them in the courtyard.

  “My lord, you are quickly forgiven, for I was in little real danger.” She studiously avoided Darcy’s face, choosing rather to exert her charm upon Monmouth.

  “You are too modest in your praise, Monmouth,” Trenholme interrupted. “Miss Farnsworth, you were magnificent!” Darcy looked between the two men in disbelief. Both incidents had betrayed an abysmal lack of caution or understanding of horseflesh on the part of both his old roommate and the lady. Trenholme’s part had been wholly that of a coward, offering no help during the danger at all! Without a word, Darcy urged his mount back onto the track with the conviction that, with such encouragement as the two were giving Miss Farnsworth, the accident that had been avoided would merely be postponed.

  The sleighs caught up to them in a matter of minutes, and the situation was explained and exclaimed upon for a full quarter of an hour before they recommenced the outing to the stones. The riders took up places beside the sleighs so that conversations begun could continue. It was a question from Miss Avery that drew Darcy beside the sleigh conveying her, her brother, Lord Sayre, and Lady Felicia.

  “I don’t know, Bella. Ask Sayre,” Manning grumbled at his sister. “And mind you speak up, girl.”

  Miss Avery swallowed nervously as she turned her eyes upon Sayre, causing Darcy to feel a new burst of pity for her; but her curiosity must have outweighed her fear in this instance, for she blurted out her question. “My l-l-lord,” she began, her voice quavering, “Lady Sylvanie s-s-said that t-the stones have a n-n-name, and that w-when stones have n-names, they have a story. Is that t-t-true?”

  Sayre smiled at his sister-in-law. “Miss Avery, there are always tales, nonsense really, about old things: old castles, old tombs, old trees, old stones. The King’s Men are no exception. I am sure there are any number of stories about them.”

  “King’s Men?” Miss Avery’s brow creased in confusion. “Lady Sylvanie did not c-call them th-that!”

  “Ah…well,” Sayre responded but then lapsed into silence.

  “Miss Avery is correct, my lord,” Lady Felicia said. “Lady Sylvanie called them the Knights, I believe.”

  “The Whispering Kn-knights!” Miss Avery declared triumphantly. “Yes, th-that was it! C-can you tell us the s-story, my lord?” Darcy was not the only listener to be taken by surprise by the vehemence of Sayre’s answer.

  “It is all rot, I tell you! Nothing to it!” His Lordship’s eyes stormed black in his pale face. Miss Avery cringed visibly.

  “What is ‘rot,’ my dear brother?” Trenholme advanced his mount to take up the place on the side opposite Darcy’s.

  “The Knights!” Sayre huffed. “Rubbish, all rubbish!”

  “I would like to hear the tale,” Lady Felicia said, smiling up at Trenholme, “rubbish or no.” Trenholme cocked a brow at his brother, but Sayre only snorted and looked away.

  “It is a dark tale, my lady, and perhaps not fit for delicate ears,” Trenholme began solemnly. Darcy rolled his eyes as the man baited his audience. As Darcy expected, Trenholme’s listeners demanded he begin immediately. “The stones have been called the King’s Men for only the last hundred years. From time immemorial, they were known as the Whispering Knights.”

  “Why was the name changed?” asked Manning. “King’s Men…Whispering Knights! What nonsense!”

  “As I told you,” interrupted Sayre.

  “It is said,” Trenholme continued, regathering his audience, “that our great-grandfather took the opportunity to change its name when some writer fellow came through Oxfordshire gathering local tales. Our grandsire told him they were called the King’s Men, made up some Banbury tale about them, and sent the fellow on his way. So, to the world outside Chipping Norton, they are the King’s Men, but those who have lived here all their lives know better.”

  “Why d-did he d-do that?” Miss Avery’s fascination was complete.

  “Because of the legend, Miss Avery, the legend of the Whispering Knights. He wanted to put a stop to it. But I ask you, can a mere change of name confound a legend?” Trenholme looked to his rapt audience for an answer, but no one ventured to gainsay him except Sayre, who snorted again and shifted his bulk in his seat. Darcy bit his lip to prevent himself from laughing at the easy success of Trenholme’s strategy. He was quite good, really.

  “The legend, Mr. Trenholme, tell us the legend.” Lady Felicia reache
d across and took Miss Avery’s hand.

  “Yes, the legend…A thousand years ago the land here was the domain of a powerful lord. Norwycke Castle faces toward his fortified hill, actually.” Trenholme’s voice dropped. “As with many such men at that time, he had enemies from both without and within, including one of his own sons. This unfaithful son was assisted in his disloyalty by six of his father’s knights, to whom he had promised wealth from his father’s strongbox or deeds of land if they would support him. The night came when they were to strike, but within moments of their appearance, the cry of ‘Treason, treason!’ rang through the keep.” Miss Avery clutched Lady Felicia’s hand at Trenholme’s cry and gasped aloud. Manning and Lady Felicia were hardly less caught in the tale, their eyes trained upon Trenholme.

  “Yes, and then?” demanded Manning.

  “The conspirators knew they had been betrayed, but which one was the betrayer? They had no time to determine who among them it was, for flight was their only chance to survive. They fought their way out of the keep and past the gates, never thinking to ask themselves how they had succeeded in winning past all their lord’s mighty men. All they knew was that life lay across these fields and on to the sea and Ireland.”

  “Rather careless of this lord to let them slip through his fingers when he had been warned,” Manning observed, his air of disinterest now flown.

  “Careless? Or part of the plan?” Trenholme countered. “The traitorous son and his men fled for their lives over these very fields, only to be met by his lord father and his personal guard. The lord cried out to his son to lay down his arms, but he answered his father with great curses and called his men to resist. They formed a circle, the better to protect each other’s backs, and railed against the lord and his guard, challenging them to come to and fight. All, that is, except one. The betrayer, or rather the knight loyal to his lord, stepped from the circle and stood with his lord. Enraged with the man at whose hands his dreams had been slain, the son drew a knife from his boot and threw. It flew true, and the faithful knight fell dead at the feet of his lord.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Lady Felicia and Miss Avery, their eyes as wide as the buttons on Manning’s greatcoat. Darcy smiled. Yes, Trenholme was very good indeed. It lacked now only the curse. There was always a curse. He looked away to Sayre and discovered a listener who was no longer derisive of the tale being told. The hand grasping his walking stick was actually trembling! The other was occupied in loosening the knot at his throat while he attempted to take in gulps of air without attracting the notice of his companions. Good heavens, the man was clearly rattled! Darcy narrowed his gaze upon Trenholme.

  “‘Oh’ indeed!” repeated the storyteller. “The lord knelt at the side of his fallen knight and pulled the knife from his body. Then he rose and faced his son. In the hearing of all he disowned him, called him traitor and worse. The rebels jeered and rattled their swords against their shields. ‘These are the dogs that have sworn you fealty, bought men you bribed with your own birthright?’ the lord asked. His son said nothing, but his eyes spoke everything that was in his black heart.

  “‘Tonight, I curse you,’ declared the lord, ‘and all who would sell their patrimony. To you it is given to hunt down such curs to join you here in this field forever.’ With those words, he threw the bloody knife into the ground at the son’s feet, and in an instant, they all were turned to stone.”

  Miss Avery cried out at Trenholme’s end and moved to sit between her brother and Lady Felicia. Manning swallowed several times before he was able to summon up a laugh. “Sayre was right, Bev, a great deal of rubbish fit only for frightening children.” The stones could now be seen across a small dale. The drivers turned the teams away from the main track into a smaller one prepared for the passage of Sayre’s guests.

  “A dreadful tale, Mr. Trenholme.” Lady Felicia brushed at her coat. “It is no wonder that your grandsire desired to change it.” She paused and then queried, “But why ‘whispering’? Is there something you have not related, sir?”

  “Why, yes, there is, my lady,” Trenholme replied, as if she’d reminded him of something he’d forgotten. “It is said that the rebel knights watch over the lands that make up the old lord’s estate for any who would break up the holding or sell it off piecemeal. And if they find such a one, he is given warning so he may mend his ways before they come for him.”

  “A warning?” Darcy asked, an appalling suspicion forming in his mind.

  “Yes, Darcy, they whisper his name.”

  As the drivers pulled the teams to a halt at the base of the hill from which the Knights maintained their reputed vigil over the countryside, Darcy dismounted and handed the bay to a stable boy who had appeared rather suddenly from behind a less sinister outcropping. Evidently, the party had been preceded to the site by a number of Sayre’s servants. Now visible to one side was a sledge from which refreshments for the guests had been unloaded and a cheery fire prepared against their arrival. As he watched the occupants of the sleigh disembark, Darcy could not determine whether Miss Avery or Sayre was the most affected by Trenholme’s recital. Once coaxed out of the conveyance, Miss Avery made obvious her wish to stay close to her brother by clinging to his arm. Manning, just as clearly, desired her elsewhere and finally sent her over to the fire with an order to “drink something hot and try to stop behaving like a little fool.” Sayre made straight for the fire as soon as he descended, demanding a flask of whiskey be produced immediately. No sooner was the flask in his hand than he availed himself of a prodigious gulp, all the while regarding the stones with a baleful eye.

  Those who had not been privy to Trenholme’s story strolled toward the path that led up to the circle of weathered, lichen-covered stones on ground swept almost clean of snow by the wind. “Come, Sayre, are you not joining us?” Trenholme called from among the other guests, displaying a glee in his brother’s fearful loss of composure that Darcy found, under the circumstances, not only distasteful but disturbing. “P’rhaps we shall catch a whisper or two!”

  “Go to the Devil,” Sayre shouted back and turned away from the stones and his brother’s laughing countenance.

  As troubling as his hosts’ behavior appeared, Darcy was disinclined to indulge in further speculation upon it. The suspicion that had arisen in his mind concerning Trenholme’s purpose during his tale was dismissed as unworthy and evidence of his own disordered thoughts rather than nefarious intent on the part of the teller. Sayre and his brother had engaged in a certain rivalry as far back as Eton, he reasoned, and it most likely extended to the cradle. That in the intervening years its animosity had increased was not to be marveled at, although the turn it appeared to have taken was a curious one. Darcy would not have credited that either brother was of a superstitious nature beyond that of any man addicted to the gaming table. At least, when it came to stories of ghosts and their curses, he would have derided the notion, save it was undeniable that Sayre had been profoundly affected. Even as Darcy looked on, His Lordship downed another gulp from the flask, his nose shining a distinctive pink against an unnaturally pale visage.

  Turning away to join those on the stroll, Darcy began up the short, steep hill. At the head of the party, Trenholme acted as guide. Poole and Monmouth followed closely, as did Miss Farnsworth, who had tossed the train of her habit over one arm, thus exposing a shapely pair of ankles as she strode with the gentlemen. Behind them, Lady Sayre leaned upon Lord Chelmsford’s arm, Lady Chelmsford having decided to remain with the warmth offered by the fire, and the two appeared engaged in close, private conversation as they slowly made their way after the others. Having divested himself of his sister, Manning squired Lady Felicia toward the stones, taking every opportunity the terrain offered to put a hand to her waist in assistance. There was but one of the party unaccompanied in the climb to the Whispering Knights, Darcy noted, and she appeared to be waiting for him.

  “You see, I am quite left behind, Mr. Darcy.” Lady Beatrice smiled helplessly at him as he drew near
her. She rose from her perch upon a fallen companion of the stone guards above them. “I fear the way is rather steep.”

  “Please, permit me to offer you my arm, my lady.” Darcy extended his arm, suspect of her true purpose in waylaying him and in no doubt that she would enlighten him soon enough.

  “Thank you, sir. I see your manners are those of a more polite century than this.” Lady Beatrice’s lips pursed for a moment as she looked up to those who had so unceremoniously left her to fend for herself before turning a handsome smile upon him.

  “You are very kind, ma’am,” he replied smoothly. Lady Beatrice was not exactly a young widow, perhaps just forty years old, but she could not be accused of looking her age. Rather, with her fine figure, delicate porcelain complexion, and gracious manner, she was the fulfillment of what was as yet only a promise in her daughter. Regardless, he was fairly confident it was of her daughter that she wished to speak. Whatever were her designs, Darcy was not to discover them as yet, for a call from behind them stopped their progress.

  “M-my lady, Mr. D-darcy,” gasped Miss Avery as she hurried toward them. “Your p-pardon, ma’am, but may I accompany you? I do not w-wish to stay with Lord —” She stopped and bit her lip. “That is, L-lord Sayre is not…Oh, dear! I m-must see my b-brother!”

  “Of course, my dear.” Lady Beatrice withdrew her hand from Darcy’s arm and drew the young woman’s arm through her own. “You may certainly accompany Mr. Darcy and myself; is that not so, sir?” Darcy nodded a curt assent as he looked back to the fire and Lord Sayre, who was still nursing his flask. Blast the man! Had he no better sense than to disgrace himself and then frighten his young kinswoman with his intemperate behavior…all because of a legend? And Manning! Darcy looked back up the hill to the Baron, silently excoriating the fitness for Society of one who showed more interest in another man’s betrothed than in the safety and comfort of his own sister.