by Pamela Aidan
Miss Avery sat down once again beside him, shunning the false sympathy of the ladies for a quiet corner and another cup of tea. Manning stood by her like a guard dog, daring anyone to press his sister further on the matter. “I am indebted to you, again, Darcy,” he offered quietly. Their eyes met in silent understanding over the top of Miss Avery’s braided hair. “Since you’ve had the tour,” Manning continued disinterestedly, “perhaps you would fancy another round of billiards. Allow me the opportunity to even the score, so to speak.” Manning’s choice of words and the lift of brow at the last clearly signaled his desire for private conversation.
“I am most obliged, Manning,” Darcy replied to his curious offer.
“As soon as my sister joins Sayre’s tour tomorrow, then?”
Darcy nodded. “I shall meet you in the billiard room.”
“Excellent!” Manning replied evenly. Speaking low to Miss Avery, he helped her to rise; and after making their apologies to Sayre, he escorted her from the room.
“Pardon me, sir, but you must remain quite still, with your head held so.” Fletcher nudged Darcy’s chin a degree higher and, taking the ends of the neckcloth once more in hand, began the first intricate fold of his masterpiece. Darcy rolled his eyes in frustrated submission but did not dare to reply for fear doing so would necessitate that the torturous procedure begin again with another fresh cloth. He had promised Fletcher, he reminded himself grimly, and tonight, his valet had declared, was the night that The Roquet should make its appearance.
He glanced quickly at the man before training his eyes once more upon the ceiling. Although Fletcher’s hands were going through the motions of tying his victorious white linen creation, Darcy could see that the valet’s mind was absorbed with Darcy’s account of his interview with Manning around the billiard table.
Lord Sayre had not been best pleased when Darcy had quietly informed him the next day that he would not be accompanying the party on the tour of the castle. His Lordship’s forehead had creased in irritation as Darcy gave his reasons and offered his apologies, but it cleared considerably when he mentioned billiards with Manning.
“Well, if you are to entertain Manning, that is all right and tight,” Sayre acquiesced with a forced smile. “We shall return from our little ramble just in time for the ladies to change for tea. Then we shall have a short round of cards with them, some music, supper, and later it will be off to the library.” Tapping a finger against his nose, he warned with a smirk, “I hope you will not bleed too freely around Manning at billiards, Darcy, for I believe you shall have an opportunity to raise quite a breeze tomorrow night.”
“Does His Lordship mean to put up the Spanish sword tonight then, sir?” Fletcher had interrupted.
“Quite possibly,” Darcy replied before looking him askance. “You know about —?” Fletcher’s raised brow gave answer to his question. “Of course you do! Why am I surprised?”
“I have no notion, sir,” the valet replied.
Darcy had waited until such time as he could decently expect Manning to be in the billiard room and then made his own way to their assignation. When he arrived, it was to the solid thwack of ball hitting ball as Manning sent the spheres speeding across the green baize.
“Manning,” he greeted him as he unbuttoned his coat and shrugged it off.
“Darcy.” Manning straightened and put aside his cue stick. The Baron advanced toward him and then, to Darcy’s surprise, passed him, proceeding on to the door, and looked carefully up and down the hall before closing it. “I find myself doubly indebted to you, Darcy,” Manning began when he turned back to him, “and I loathe being in anyone’s debt. I wish to settle, here and now!” Manning waited briefly for him to reply but then plowed ahead before he’d uttered any of the appropriate phrases. “Something is not right, Darcy, and has not been right ever since those women arrived.”
“Those women?” he repeated.
“Sylvanie and that serving woman she brought with her! This whole business is too smoky by half.” Manning scowled. “Yet Sayre will hear nothing to the contrary, do nothing to settle the matter, save continue his reckless gambling. Soon he’ll not have a feather to fly with.”
“Unfortunate, no doubt,” Darcy replied, “but what does Sayre’s imprudence have to do —”
“With you, Darcy?” Manning shook his head. “Monmouth was right on the mark. You are the ‘big trout’ Sayre hopes will snatch the bait and solve his problems for him!” He leaned across the table and fixed him with a solemn regard. “Darcy, you should know that with the leaving of Sylvanie from his house for yours, a heretofore unknown piece of property in Ireland belonging to the late Dowager Sayre will be sold and seventy-five percent of the proceeds will fall into Sayre’s profligate palm. That is what it has to do with you.”
“If I am satisfied with the lady, what is Sayre’s windfall to me?” Darcy returned, taking another page from Dy’s book and feigning boredom. “I have no need of any property in Ireland.”
Manning’s scowl deepened. “But Sayre does, or rather the money from it, and desperately. So desperately that he will not look into the circumstances surrounding the affair, which are more than strange.” He walked back to his cue stick and, picking it up, began sliding it back and forth between his fingers. “Earlier, you asked Sayre about his stepmother, and he told you that she had left England for grief of his father, did he not? That was a lie!”
“Continue.” Darcy nodded and picked up the other cue stick.
“Sayre and Trenholme hated the woman and her child. As soon as Sayre succeeded to the title and control of his father’s estate, he drove them out, sent them packing to Ireland with no more an allowance than would feed a mouse.” Manning pounded the end of his cue into the floor. “Yet, eleven years later, that same woman has, on her death, left the man who dispossessed her a tidy property on the condition that his half sister is brought back to England and married advantageously.”
“An admirably canny lady.” Darcy shrugged as he examined the disposition of the balls upon the table. “She played her cards well and secured for her daughter a chance for a future.”
“Rather too well, I should say,” Manning returned. “Think on it, Darcy! Ten years after ridding himself of his stepmama and sister, Sayre has succeeded in running his estate nearly into the ground and is in dire need of cash. Meanwhile, the cast-off sister has come of marriageable age. Then an unheard-of case in Chancery Court is decided, awarding the dowager a piece of land, and not long thereafter, the woman dies!” His eyes narrowed. “Everything is so very damned convenient.”
“Not for the dowager,” Darcy remarked, snapping the tip of his cue against the ball and sinking his call.
“Perhaps, even for her.” Manning looked at him sharply. “Darcy, Sayre has no real proof that his stepmama is truly dead or that the property even exists!”
“What! You are joking!” Darcy dropped the cue upon the table and faced Manning. “On what basis was Lady Sylvanie recalled from Ireland, then?”
“A copy of the dowager’s will and the testimony of her solicitor — a cousin of some sort, I believe.”
“And Sayre has sent no one to Ireland to secure the matter?”
“Oh, one was sent to deliver Sayre’s invitation and send Lady Sylvanie home to Norwycke,” Manning replied with a mirthless laugh, “but during his first two months in Ireland, he wrote only of delays and difficulties with the cousin and the Irish courts. The dowager’s family lands are particularly remote, it seems, making travel difficult and correspondence almost impossible. Then, all communication stopped. Sayre hasn’t heard from the man in weeks, nor will he send another to find what has become of the first.”
“Are you saying, Manning, that Lady Sylvanie has perpetrated an elaborate fraud upon Sayre, and he refuses either to see it or to do anything more to acquire the truth of the matter?” Darcy demanded incredulously. “It is beyond belief!”
“Is it, Darcy?” Manning met his skepticism with steely c
ertainty. “It is what Trenholme suspects; although he, too, would rather believe that all will come right in the end and this phantasmal property will prevent his brother from ruining them both.”
Darcy took a breath to reply but held it instead while he searched the Baron’s countenance for any intimation of deceit. Manning had known exactly what he was about and had steadily returned his regard.
“I have not yet convinced you, I see.” Manning sighed. He laid down his cue and, clasping his hands behind his back, had stepped away from Darcy to one of the few paintings that still remained upon the billiard room’s walls. It was of the typical sort, a spaniel bitch serenely gazing out at the viewer as her litter gamboled about her. “What I tell you now, Darcy, I tell you only because of the exceeding debt your kindness to my younger sister has laid upon me. But in discharging it, I lay my other sister open to your derision and must have your word as a gentleman that no hint of what I will reveal to you will reach her ears.”
“You have it,” Darcy replied, extending his hand.
Manning took it in a crushing but brief grasp before looking away from him and establishing some distance between them once more. Then, he took a deep breath and began, “You know, of course, that Sayre and my sister have been married for six years now; and, as is very obvious, she has given him no heirs.” His jaw worked in grim designs. “Nor has she had even the cold comfort afforded by the tragedy of a miscarriage. In short, nothing has come of the union, and although it is not apparent, my sister grows despondent — despondent enough to turn to other means.”
“Mr. Darcy! Good heavens, sir! He must mean…”
“What can you mean, Manning?” Darcy demanded. “Speak plainly, man!”
“In plain speech, then!” Manning made no attempt to hide the anger that the necessity for this confession suffused in him. “My sister believes that Sylvanie or that hag of hers can work some sort of miracle which will allow her to conceive. I do not know in what manner she convinced her or what promises were exchanged, but Letitia has put herself entirely in Sylvanie’s hands in this. I think Sayre half-believes her as well. For Letty’s sake, for the coin he hopes to realize from the sale of the Irish property, and for the outside possibility of producing an heir, Sayre will do nothing to gainsay his sister or appear to delve too closely into her affairs until he can safely dispose of her in marriage.” Manning’s gaze had swung back then to meet Darcy’s, piercing the guard he’d thrown up at such an incredible tale. “Believe what I have told you, Darcy, or dismiss it; I consider my debt to you repaid, sir, in toto!” And with a curt bow, Manning had left the room.
“Almost finished, sir.” Darcy could feel the whole construction draw his collar tightly around his throat as Fletcher made the anchoring knot. He swallowed largely a few times to prevent the knot’s creator from drawing it so that he could not breathe or converse and devoutly wished that he could see the man’s face.
“Done, Mr. Darcy. You may look down — slowly, slowly, there! Perfect!” This time when he rolled his eyes, Darcy made sure Fletcher saw him. The valet allowed himself a fleeting smile before turning to retrieve his master’s frock coat.
“Well, Fletcher?” Darcy asked as he pulled down the corners of the coat and began buttoning it up. Fletcher had dressed him all in black, as he’d done for the Melbourne triumph, and as Darcy examined himself in the mirror, he found the entire effect as imposing as he could wish for such an evening as he anticipated.
“Commanding, sir, and elegant. Just what is needed this evening, if I may be so bold, sir.”
Darcy snorted and shook his head. “You are most likely right, but I was more interested in the opinion you have reached concerning Manning’s story. I believe he was telling the truth, at least as far as he knows it.”
“I agree, sir. Such intimate details of one’s family are not tossed about lightly, and Lord Manning is particularly close about his affairs. His man is quite free about His Lordship’s female conquests, but on any other matter he is strictly silent.”
Darcy strolled over to the dresser in search of his jewel case. The emerald stickpin that matched his waistcoat would do nicely. “You know what that means, then?”
“A great deal, sir. At the least it establishes that Lady Sylvanie, or more likely her maid, was the one who came into your rooms to discover something with which to fashion a charm. And it was, as I suspected, a love charm, sir. Given Her Ladyship’s advances yesterday and” — Fletcher cleared his throat as his master winced — “ahem, your response, sir, I’ve no doubt she puts some store in its power.”
“Yes, that…at the least,” Darcy agreed as he retrieved the case from the drawer and laid it atop the dresser. “But more to the point, it goes a far distance in explaining Sayre’s and Trenholme’s very peculiar behavior and their present treatment of Lady Sylvanie. Sayre will do anything to see her married according to the terms of the will. Meanwhile, Trenholme chafes at Sayre’s restraint of his animosity at being beholden to a woman he has always despised.”
“And fears, sir,” Fletcher interjected. “Mr. Trenholme fears the lady, the maid, or both as he fears that His Lordship will gamble their patrimony out from under him. It is a wicked fearfulness, Mr. Darcy, that seems everywhere in the castle.”
Darcy opened the case. The emerald stickpin lay glinting in the candlelight atop the carefully wound silk threads of Elizabeth’s bookmark. He retrieved the pin and, looking into the small mirror to one side, thoughtfully positioned it in The Roquet’s folds. “You have not mentioned the most ghastly aspect of this shocking state of affairs.” He looked over his shoulder.
“The Stones, sir?” It was more a statement than a question.
“Yes,” Darcy affirmed quietly as he turned to his valet, “the Stones.”
Biting down on his lower lip, Fletcher slowly shook his head. “Such a bloody, evil deed, sir! Could a woman…pretending that it was a babe…?” Fletcher looked up at him, his face stricken by the implications his thoughts were forming. “I can hardly credit it, Mr. Darcy.”
“Nor can I.” Darcy sighed. “Yet all our information points in that direction. Lady Sylvanie or her companion.”
“Or both,” Fletcher added. “Could it not be, perhaps, that someone else…an agent of one of them…did the deed at the Stones?”
Darcy frowned. “Unlikely. The sacrifice was either a demonstration of power or a bid to gain it. The one who hoped to acquire something from it was the one who performed the deed.” He turned back to the jewel case, his gaze fixed on its contents. “Remember that first night we were here, Fletcher, and we saw a figure in the garden? Could it have been Lady Sylvanie?”
Fletcher drew out his response. “Y-yes, Mr. Darcy, it could have been a woman.”
“I believe you are right, and I also believe that things cannot continue long as they are.” Darcy reached out his hand and lightly brushed the bookmark; then, coming to a decision, he plucked the silken threads from their resting place. Fletcher’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“A good-luck charm, Mr. Darcy?” he asked in disbelief.
“Neither do I believe in charms, Fletcher,” he returned, “but in this maelstrom we have stumbled upon, I find myself in need of an anchor, some still place of goodness and good sense.” He held out the strands in his palm. “These slender threads remind me that there is such a place in the world.”
“And so there is, sir.” Fletcher nodded gravely.
“Stay within call tonight, Fletcher. No rambles.” He headed for the door. “And I shall require your attendance in the library tonight.”
“In the library, Mr. Darcy? Like Lord —— ’s valet?” Fletcher’s face was a study of pleasure and surprise. “Very good, sir!”
Supper was a lighthearted affair, an incongruous bark of frivolity which rode lightly on the wake left by the uneasy tide of revulsion that had arisen from the discovery two days before. As he looked down Sayre’s massive table, Darcy was struck once more by the shallow nature of his compani
ons. Once they had recovered from the shock of what had been found at the Stones, they dismissed it from their minds so easily, as one more on dit to add to their store. Sayre and Trenholme he could understand. Neither wished anyone to think on the incident further; both set themselves to the distraction of their guests with a rare commonality of purpose. Manning remained somewhat taciturn, but for all his dark warnings, he was not averse to exchanging razor-edged quips with the others at table. Evidently, he had also decided to renew his flirtation with Lady Felicia, for he was often to be seen whispering at her ear and receiving pretty encouragements to continue doing so. Even timid Miss Avery smiled, almost flirting with Poole, who also enjoyed the attention of Miss Farnsworth on his other hand. Only Lady Sylvanie showed herself subdued.
Darcy watched her covertly through the course of the meal. At every story or sharp jest, with every lift of his wineglass, his glance would flicker in her direction, only to see the same look of regal serenity, touched now and then with a faint, cool smile. Despite his knowledge, he began to waver. Later, he watched her openly as she delighted them once more with her harp. The sweet lull of her music caused him to question his own memory. Was this the woman who had challenged him so intently in the gallery and then offered herself to him in the next breath? Could he really believe that the slim, supple fingers which charmed such music from drawn strings were also capable of performing dark, violent acts on a night-swept hill? The images were irreconcilable, but in what other direction could his information lead?
“I say, could we not have some dancing, my lord?” Monmouth queried when Lady Sylvanie had laid aside her harp. “Surely there is someone among our company who could play a reel tolerable enough for dancing.” Darcy need not have stifled his groan, for it would never have been noted above the ladies’ exclamations approving Monmouth’s plan. Lady Chelmsford was immediately petitioned to furnish the needed music. Assured of her compliance with the scheme, Lord Sayre rang for more servants to come clear the middle of the room and roll up the carpets.
