He watched the young aristocrat walk briskly to the door, and wondered what particular problem was causing the black brows to draw into such a scowl this morning. The door closed, and Gould shook his head worriedly. Mr. Valentine had fought hard to overcome the unknown malady that had afflicted him in March, but here it was June and he still suffered dizzy spells, and did not look—
The door burst open, and Montclair's dark head was thrust inside. "Forgot," he said, with a grin that banished the grimness and took years from his lean face. "Good morning, Gould."
"Good morning, sir," said Gould gravely. The door was slammed shut, and the valet smiled and began to hum as he started to tidy up the shaving paraphernalia.
Montclair asked a hovering lackey to bring toast and coffee to his study, and made his way to that ever welcoming haven. He crossed at once to the harpsichord and stood with one hand on the lid, staring blindly at the keyboards. In Town, good old Jocelyn and Dev had been concerned about him, he knew. Dev had ridden up twice since then, and it was a good two hours' ride— even the way Dev rode—for Devencourt was situated high in the Cotswolds and the private road was far from easy. Had they suspected, as he suspected, that the Mohocks had not been Mohocks, but hired assassins? Or had his friends merely been concerned because he was obviously not in the pink of health? "Damn!" he snarled explosively, and sat on the bench.
He began to play a piece by the incomparable Mr. Mozart. His fingers flew and the old harpsichord vibrated. Lost in his music, he didn't hear the lackey come in with his breakfast, and when he sensed a presence beside him, he whirled, crouching low, his fists clenched and his face so murderous that the lackey came near to dropping the tray. He deposited it nervously on the top of the harpsichord and fled, pale and shaken.
Pouring himself a cup of the steaming coffee, Montclair whispered a frustrated "Valentine sir, you are a blasted fool!" and scarcely noticed when the first mouthful scalded him. But was he being a fool? Was he imagining it all? Or was his greatest dread becoming reality—the ever deepening fear that the illness was seriously impairing his mind? He spread strawberry jam lavishly on a piece of toast, and glanced around with schoolboy guilt because of his gluttony, but after only two bites his mind had reverted to the incident in Town, and the toast was abandoned.
The first such incident had occurred almost a year ago, when the pole on his racing curricle had snapped. He'd come away with no worse than three broken ribs and some bruises, but both horses had to be destroyed, and one had been dear old Flinders, a friend of many years, and mama's favourite. Later, Charlie Purvis, the head groom, had told him that it was "odd" the pole breaking like that. "Looked almost as if it had been tampered with, Mr. Valentine…" He'd paid small heed. Who would want to do him a mischief?
A few months later, he'd been riding Allegro—not the most placid of his horses, certainly, but a joy to ride and a real goer. Topping a familiar rise at his customary high speed, he'd seen too late that the smooth downward slope was smooth no longer, but a widespread deathtrap of piled chunks of rocks and timber. There'd been no possible chance to avoid disaster. The big ugly bay stallion had made a gallant try and almost cleared the debris. Uncle Selby had said it was a miracle they both hadn't been killed, and scolded because he'd so often cautioned that 'dear Valentine' rode like a madman. Nursing a broken ankle, he'd been grateful that Allegro had fallen clear and suffered only some scrapes. The most disturbing aspect of the matter was that he followed exactly the same route several times a week, and never had there been any obstruction on the down side of that hill. It was open country, off Longhills land, and why the great pile of wreckage had been assembled there, or who had left it, could not be discovered. But not until the poacher hunting pheasants had come so damnably close to blowing his head off in March, followed in May by the attack in Town, had he accepted the possibility of a plot against his life.
He took up his coffee again and sipped broodingly. Why? He was not without enemies, his temper was quick, and his impatience with nonsense had ruffled a few feathers. But he could think of no one who would really want him dead. If he held the title, and if the next in succession was his uncle, then perhaps— But what rubbishing stuff! He did not hold the title, and if he ever should—God forbid!—he and poor Hampton Montclair would still stand between Junius Trent and Longhills. Seized by disgust for such basely unwarranted suspicions, he slammed down the coffee cup and launched into his new concerto. It was a fiery piece, the final movement rising into a most difficult accelerando, but his skilled fingers mastered the challenge. Revelling in the sense that it was good—that he had achieved something really worthwhile, he swept into the last crashing chord, and sat with head thrown back and eyes closed, exhilarated.
"Ti! Help Monsieur Valentine! Quickly!" Montclair groaned a curse and spun around, coming practically nose to nose with the short but solidly built Oriental who was Imre Monteil's groom and constant companion. Just before he'd come down from Oxford Montclair had met a young Chinese, and because he had an enquiring mind had struggled to overcome the accent which had made conversation difficult and tended to isolate the foreigner. His persistence had been worthwhile; he'd learned much of the Orient and its customs and had parted from the humble and softly spoken Mr. Li with the awed conviction that he had made friends with a genius. Ti Chiu was a very different proposition. Junius Trent contemptuously described his features as chunks of granite which had been so haphazardly tossed together as to hide his eyes. Montclair was not one to judge by appearances, but he had to admit that Ti Chiu was not a well-favoured man. He had never been known to smile, and seldom looked directly into the eyes of another, keeping his own downcast. His big hands were outstretched now, and Montclair recoiled, saying irritably, "I am perfectly well, thank you!"
Ti Chiu bowed and scurried back to stand, dwarfed, behind his master.
"Are you quite sure, my poor fellow?" The Swiss wandered nearer.
Standing, Montclair was once more conscious of the extreme dislike he harboured towards both this elegant gentleman and his craggy servant. "Quite sure," he said coolly. "What can I do for you?"
He was granted the wide smile that failed to bring the slightest warmth to the flat, dead eyes. "But you have already done everything—or almost everything—dear Valentine. I am come, in fact, to thank you for yet another visit most delightful."
"You are leaving us, monsieur?" said Montclair, ignoring the qualification.
"My affairs, alas, demand my presence in Brussels. I trust you will accept my invitation and visit me at some time of your convenience. Assurément, I may offer you more sunshine than you enjoy here in your—green and pleasant land."
"If you find England so gloomy, sir, you must be relieved that I would not sell Highperch to you."
"Ah, but one must have change, eh, mon ami? Do you go now to your so charming trespasser? I shall wish you good hunting with the bewitching widow."
It was the closest approach to enthusiasm that Montclair had ever seen in this man, and his dark brows lifted. "That's not how my uncle describes her, monsieur."
"Me, I am more in agreement with your cousin's impression of her, but you will judge for yourself. And when I return, my dear sir, I shall hope to persuade you to let me buy the cottage. You may change your mind, if I make a more substantial offer, n'est-ce pas?"
"No. Goodbye, monsieur."
"Ah, but that is much too final. I say instead au revoir, for we shall meet again."
Valentine acknowledged Monteil's bow with a short nod, gave a sigh of relief as the ill-assorted pair strolled from the room, and muttered, "Not if I can help it!"
Having no desire to be caught up in the involved and formal farewells that Lady Trent appeared to find indispensable, he left the house by way of the conservatory, detoured around the kitchen gardens and lodge gates, and walked into the stable block. The head groom, a sturdy little Welshman on the light side of forty, was looking up at a disgruntled-seeming individual mounted on a grey horse, with a worn
valise tied to the pommel.
"A sorry fool ye are," the Welshman said in his pleasant singsong voice, "to let yerself be pushed out of a steady situation by a dumb beast!"
The rider started away, but turned in the saddle to call, "Maybe I am. But I ain't so big a fool as you, Charlie Purvis, to stay and be chewed by the brute. I come here to work wi' horses—not be attacked by a bloody great wolf!" He drew level with Montclair, fixed him with a resentful eye, but touched his hat and muttered, "Goodbye, sir," before he rode on.
Purvis, short, dark, and with an impish look in his blue eyes, hastened to Montclair's side.
"Doesn't like my cousin's hound, is that it?" asked Montclair.
Purvis had been head groom at Longhills for twenty years, and did not feel it necessary to guard his words. "We none of us like the dog, sir, but it took a special dislike to Jim, I'll not deny. Bit him three weeks ago and again today. I will not say as I blame him fer going away, since we are not allowed to strike the creature."
"Devil you aren't! No man in my brother's service is expected to stand for being savaged by that hound and do nothing about it! I broke a stick on Soldier when he came at me last year, and he's kept his distance since. He's just a bully, and has to be put in his place."
"Like his master," said Purvis under his breath.
"What's that?"
"Er, I said he's a bastard," said the Welshman, round-eyed and innocent. "And ye're one of the family, Mr. Valentine. 'Tis a different matter fer ye, if I may be so bold as ter say so."
"You don't seem to lack for that quality," said Montclair, who had a good pair of ears.
Purvis looked chastened, but a different expression came into his face as he watched the younger man stride briskly out of the yard. He turned his glance to the great house, frowned, and spat at the cobblestones. "Past time you come home, Lord Geoffrey Montclair," he muttered. "Long past time!"
Comfortably stretched out on the shabby sofa in the spacious withdrawing room of Highperch Cottage, Andrew Hartley Lyddford turned the page of the novel he was reading and gave an amused snort.
His sister peeped into the room to see if he was sleeping, heard the snort, and—because she had selected his reading material—was somewhat puzzled. She walked over to him. "What are you giggling about?"
He closed the volume hurriedly, having first put a finger between the pages to mark his place. "Oh, it is this stupid book." His grey eyes widened as he looked up at her, and before she could comment, he asked laughingly, "What the deuce are you about, Sue? Be dashed if you don't look a fright! Whatever shall you do if Lady Selby Trent comes calling?"
Susan had been helping Mrs. Starr and Martha Reedham with the unending task of cleaning this funny old house, and was clad in her oldest gown, a grubby apron tied about her shapely middle, and an old mob-cap containing her luxuriant hair. "Swoon," she replied with a grin. "But never fear, that odious woman will not set foot in this house—unless it is with a constable to eject the brazen Widow Henley. However, if any of that horrid Montclair contingent should come, my lad—"
"I am four and twenty, and one year your senior, Madam Sauce. Do not be addressing me as if I were a mere snip of a child."
"—you will at once be packed off to your bed again," Susan went on, unperturbed. "We want no more pitched battles, and I cannot have you prancing about after taking such a nasty whack on the head."
She had mothered him since 1805, when their beautiful but frail mama had begun to grieve herself into an early grave. Lieutenant Hartley Lyddford had been one of Lord Nelson's most able upcoming officers, a wellborn man in whom the good looks of the Lyddfords had been allied to a winning manner and a keen mind that remained cool and collected however fierce the action. The admiral had prophesied a brilliant career for Lyddford, but at the height of the Battle of Trafalgar a mizzen-topgallant mast was shot through and, falling, had written finis to that career before Lyddford reached his thirty-sixth birthday. The lieutenant had accompanied the commander he worshipped on a voyage into the hereafter, and his widow, lacking either the will or the courage to face life's struggles without him, had followed him within a year of his death.
Susan had seen her father as an heroic, beautiful, and godlike creature, and had adored him. Now, scanning the handsome features that were so very like those of her papa, she thought Andrew looked pale and rather drawn despite his cheerful grin. She also became aware that her neat bandage was missing from his dark curls, and her eyes sparked indignantly.
Not for nothing had Lyddford shared the same roof with this dauntless young woman for most of his four-and-twenty years. "My particular form of concussion," he declared hurriedly, "will manifest itself in tearing limb from limb any female who dares wrap another piece of sheet around my noble brow and turn me into a figure of fun for anyone chancing to pass by!"
Susan bent a thoughtful look on him and walked over to the window. The sky was acquiring a few clouds and a whitish look, and the treetops were tossing restlessly. She ran one slim fingertip down a leaded pane, sighed, and turned about.
"Now what has you in a pucker?" asked Lyddford curiously.
"I was looking for passers-by. There are none. Rest there, if you please, while I go in search of a male to wrap a bandage around your noble brow, since it would appear that only females are denied that glorious opportunity." He laughed, and she added more soberly, "No, but you really must be good, Andy. If you cavort about and fall again I shall be obliged to send Angelo to find a proper physician."
"He wouldn't be able to pronounce it—much less find one. And besides, if all I hear is truth, physicians are far from proper!"
He had forgotten to keep the book facedown. Susan gave a small outraged cry and pounced to snatch it from his hand.
"What's this?" She read the title aloud. "Santo Sebastiano or the Young Protector by Mrs. Cuthbertson?" Unable to keep the amusement from her voice, she said in pseudo-shocked condemnation, "Andrew—Hartley— Lyddford! This is not the book I gave you! Whatever would Grandpapa have said?"
"Likely that he'd read it, and it's a jolly good book. At any rate, it's better than that awful thing you selected! The Dairyman's Daughter, indeed! If ever I read such stuff!"
"It is elevating to the mind," she said primly, holding the substitution out of his reach. "They say it has already sold over a million copies!"
"Then there are over a million Britons who are bored to distraction, and likely mobbing the bookshops demanding their money back! No really, Susan, if the people in that wretched tale aren't dying, that widgeon of a heroine is busily converting 'em! Do you know, the chit converts everyone in sight, including her sister? And the sister dies anyway! In the end, she dies! Jupiter! It's enough to give a man the moulding miseries!"
She laughed and waved the book at him. "Well, in this one everybody swoons!"
"So you've read it, you little varmint."
"Yes." She sank to her knees beside him. "Did you keep count of all the bodies thudding to the boards? I thought it so diverting. Even Lord St. Orville swoons!"
"True. Still, it's a ripping good tale for all that. I especially liked—" He stopped, a faint frown tugging at his dark brows as his sister glanced again to the window. She was not one to fret for nothing. He tugged gently at a strand of glossy hair that had escaped the mob-cap. "What are you worrying at? I've my pistol loaded and ready in case those clods should come back. And when we have our day in court we'll send Montclair to the rightabout soon enough."
"I'm sure we will," she said. But she spoke absently, and her troubled gaze was still on the window.
Lyddford watched her, his eyes sobering. If ever a girl deserved the good things of life, it was his Susan. No man could wish for a better sister; nor, he thought loyally, a lovelier one. But poor Sue's path through life had been far from easy. With the best will in the world to provide for his family, Papa had been a younger son with no expectations other than what his Navy pay and the possibility of prize money would bring him. After his death
they'd been all but destitute, existing on the begrudging charity of Papa's brother, Sir John Lyddford, surely the worst piece of clutch-fisted snobbery ever created. Grandpapa Tate, as different an article to mama as could have been imagined, had left the merchantman he'd commanded for the East India Company, and come home to, as he put it, steer his daughter's children "through the shoals to the Isle of Dreams." It was Grandpapa who had moved them into decent lodgings and seen to it that they were able to enter the fringes, at least, of Polite Society. It was Grandpapa who'd presented Burke Henley to Susan, and had said he was a "fine young gentleman with a comfortable fortune behind him."
Lyddford had never really known whether Sue married the dashing Henley because she loved him, or for the security a wealthy young man could offer. Wherever their 'Isle of Dreams' was, however, Burke Henley had not possessed the chart to it. Good-natured and easy going, deeply in love with his bride, always full of fun and high spirits, he had willingly paid his brother-in-law's University expenses for two years. But in the third year of his marriage he had come home from sea and been stationed at the Navy Board in London, with easy access to the clubs and theatres he'd patronized before entering upon a naval career. It hadn't taken long for him to fall in with some old friends. When Grandpapa had pointed out that they were now part of a very fast crowd, Henley had only laughed at the old gentleman for his "sanctimonious preaching."
Not his wife nor any member of his family could make Henley listen to reason. After Grandpapa's death, he had been even less restrained, and had very soon whistled his fortune down the wind. Perhaps it was guilt that had made him turn to drink, or perhaps that weakness had always been there too. At all events, bad had led to worse, and now poor Henley's honour was clouded and he was dead this year and more. Susan was disgraced and rejected by the haut ton, and they were reduced to living in a neglected rundown old barn of a house, miles from anywhere.
Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 09] - Logic Of The Heart Page 5
