by KJ Charles
“Laugh or cry. Still, he leapt to your defence in a most impressive way. Or are you a pacifist?”
“Not when it comes to Maurice Haworth,” Miss Singh assured her. “And...well. As it happens, Preston asked me to marry him last night.”
“Good heavens. Will you?” Miss Singh nodded, the look in her eyes saying everything. “Oh, congratulations. How wonderful.”
“I haven’t told anyone else. The atmosphere is hardly appropriate, and to be honest, I don’t want Haworth’s opinion.”
“I do understand, and I shan’t say anything. But I’m thrilled for you. He seems awfully decent.”
“He is. I suppose you must think it’s a rather peculiar match.”
One couldn’t argue with that on the face of it, but Pat shook her head. “Not at all. Nobody could possibly think that when you look so happy.”
Miss Singh flushed becomingly. “Thank you, Miss Merton. That’s very kind.”
“Pat, please.”
“Victoria, then. Thank you. Oh, don’t let me keep you from your breakfast.”
“I can congratulate and eat at the same time,” Pat assured her. “Have you known each other long?”
That led Miss Singh—Victoria—into an account of how she had met Preston at a different country house party. She looked about five years younger when she wasn’t forced to guard herself, and very pretty. She was speaking with great animation when they both heard a tread on the floorboards. Pat whipped around; Victoria clamped her mouth shut.
Fen came in, looking somewhat wary. “Good morning. I’m sorry, am I interrupting?”
“No! Not at all.” Pat glanced at Victoria. “We were just discussing, uh—”
“Really, I can go.” Fen had dark rings under her eyes. She smiled with a hint of effort. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“You aren’t, Miss Carruth,” Victoria said. “I was just telling Pat, between ourselves, that Preston and I are engaged to be married.”
“Oh!” Fen clapped her hands to her mouth, then scurried over to the table, and wrapped Miss Singh in a heartfelt embrace, which she returned, looking startled but pleased. It was the kind of open-hearted reaction Pat was never very good at; she wasn’t one for hugs.
Fen was damp-eyed when she released the other woman. “Well, that is wonderful. I suppose you’ve already told Pat all about it, so...you’ll just have to tell me all about it over again.”
“I will.” Victoria glanced between them. “Thank you both. I didn’t expect to have people to share this with.”
Fen’s eyes rounded. “Does the Countess not approve?”
“I haven’t told anyone else.” Victoria briefly repeated her situation. “So if you could keep it under your hat for now, just until things calm down?”
“Of course.” Fen looked pleased, and a little pink. “Naturally I will. We can find a discreet corner after breakfast—this house is just a lot of discreet corners stuck together, isn’t it?—and settle down for a proper talk.”
“That sounds like a good idea. We won’t be doing much else.” Victoria cast a rueful look at the window.
They chatted about possible entertainments for the day while Fen helped herself to breakfast. Victoria was far more voluble than Pat had expected once she’d let her guard down. Pat wondered what it must cost her to keep up the remote, silent facade for fear of unpleasant comment, and sent extra maledictions in Haworth’s direction.
Jack and Preston came down as the women were finishing breakfast. Preston beamed when he saw Victoria in a way that Pat suspected would let the cat out of the bag before too long. She took the opportunity to excuse herself, and Fen followed.
“Hello,” Fen murmured as they headed upstairs.
“Hello, you.” It felt peculiar to walk next to her, demurely clad in a day dress, after last night. The taste of Fen’s lips, the weight of her breasts, the way she’d moved under Pat’s hands. “Did you sleep well?”
“Oh, well.” Fen pulled a face. “Not really. The storm. And the prospect of today.”
She hadn’t changed her mind about ending the engagement. Pat couldn’t help the skip in her heart. “I can see that. You’ve spent more time in the Court than I have: what’s the best discreet corner to lurk in?”
“There’s a couple of small sitting rooms on the ground floor of the East Wing that nobody seems to use, and two more on the first floor. All the bedrooms on that side are empty. Apparently the wind catches them dreadfully.”
“It’s catching the entire house fairly badly. Should we—?”
“I ought to speak to the Earl and Countess first. I can’t say I’m much looking forward to that.” They’d reached Pat’s bedroom. She paused at the door; Fen gave her a gentle shove inside, and quietly closed the door behind them.
“Um,” she said.
She’s going to say it was a terrible mistake. Or a delightful evening but not to be repeated. She’s going to ask me to be discreet. The thoughts buzzed through Pat’s head. She made herself stand straight. Whatever Fen wanted, she would be decent and dignified about it.
“Gosh, you look alarming,” Fen said. “Are you intending to give me bad news?”
“No!” Pat said hastily. “Not at all. Er, are you?”
Fen shook her head. She looked miserable, and Pat remembered her earlier thoughts and stepped forward, opening her arms. Fen moved into them as though it were entirely usual to do so, resting her head on Pat’s chest. “Oh goodness. Sorry.”
“That’s all right.” It would always be all right to hold her. Pat wrapped her arms around Fen’s shoulders. “What’s up?”
“I feel awful. Leaving Jimmy and the Wittons in the lurch, and I know it’s all his fault, but I still feel it.”
Pat nodded. Fen’s hair tickled her face. “I do know, but you aren’t obliged to restore the Yoxall family fortunes. Um, Fen?”
“Mmm?”
“About last night.”
Fen wriggled. It was a wriggle into Pat, a little happy shimmy that sent remembered pleasure shooting up her nerves. “Ooh. Yes. What?”
“I just wondered—well, how you felt about it.”
“Marvellous.” Fen tipped her head back. “Quite terrifically marvellous. Which I am a tiny bit guilty about, but not really. I shall have to leave, you know, in the circumstances.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ll wait until Jimmy’s spoken to his parents, and then I shall speak to them, and I imagine they’ll have me driven straight to the railway station after that.”
“Where will you go?”
“Home. I don’t really want to go back to London and sit through another scandal.” Fen hesitated. “Please don’t feel obliged, but I wondered if you’d like to come for a visit? Our place is in King’s Norton, outside Birmingham, quite in the countryside.”
Hope fluttered in Pat’s chest like a trapped bird. “Would you like me to?”
“Very much. You could teach me to shoot. Daddy won’t be there so it would be awfully private. Just us. And you need somewhere to stay while you do nothing, and I can’t socialise with a third broken engagement, and if it wasn’t for this party going horribly wrong we could have had three weeks to get to know one another more and—well, I’d like it awfully if you would.”
“Yes. When?” Pat probably sounded like a child hoping for a treat, but the prospect felt like Christmas. A private visit, with Fen, just the two of them and countryside to explore...
“As soon as you like. You could say you were keeping me company in my distress. I’m sure I oughtn’t be alone with my broken heart.” Fen adopted an expression suggestive of a mournful kitten. “It would be only kind.”
“You are a menace,” Pat said, and kissed her.
Fen extricated herself a few moments later, eyes glowing, and went to check her hair in the mirror. “Goodness. Do I look far too happy for someone who just ended an engagement with a future earl?”
“A little.”
“I’ll think sad thoughts.�
� She smiled up at Pat, the real, hesitant smile that never failed to stop her breath. “You know, this really ought to count as the worst house party ever given, but I’m so very glad I came.”
“Like the curate’s egg, good in parts,” Pat agreed.
“Exactly.” Fen beamed at her. “I’d better go untangle my affairs, hadn’t I?”
“Do you want moral support? I wouldn’t normally expect the Earl to blame you, in the circumstances, but the way things have gone here, nothing would surprise me.” Lord Witton’s urgent need for money, so much worse than she’d realised, might well outweigh decency. Pat wondered if she was obliged to mention it. She didn’t want to be trapped between Bill’s confidence and Fen’s well-being.
“No, that’s all right. I dare say he’ll be disappointed but he’s a fine man at heart. I think. Load a gun and come running if I scream. Oh, but one probably oughtn’t run with a loaded gun, ought one? Like scissors.”
“You are ridiculous.”
“I know,” Fen said. “It’s part of my charm.” She sauntered out, looking irresistibly pleased with herself. Pat shook her head, went to the mirror, and discovered she was flushed and grinning like an idiot.
She found her book, which had apparently been knocked under her bed the previous night by some careless person’s flailing limb, and headed out. Fen would doubtless need some time to untangle her affairs, so Pat would find herself a nook to sit in where she could wait out the day. She decided to head for the East Wing. She was fairly sure she could reach it by carrying along the corridor from her bedroom; it was worth a try in order to avoid going through the main hall and meeting anyone.
Her room was the last one in use on this floor. The corridor took her past several closed doors, then a turn to the left brought her into the East Wing, past a servants’ stair which would lead to the working part of Rodington Court. This looked dusty with disuse, which was reasonable given the house was considerably understaffed. The main stair would be toward the front of the house. She headed in that direction, passing several doors, and indulged herself in a look-around since the area was clearly not anyone’s personal quarters.
Most of the rooms were in holland covers. Just two towards the front of the house seemed to be in occasional use: one a book-lined study of the sort that offered absolutely nothing to read, with a wide leather couch and a smell of elderly dogs and disintegrating paper; the other a bare space with a desk against one wall, a chair, and two armchairs by the empty grate, not covered and rather shabby. Neither was an inviting place to sit, though the first floor position on this empty wing would guarantee privacy. Everywhere had a smell of slightly damp dust, although the lashing rain was doubtless partially to blame for that.
She took the staircase down to the main hall once she found it, and realised it brought her back to the room she’d sat in to clean her gun on her first day. She opened the connecting door to the next room to check for blackmailers, and saw a more comfortable area with a deep armchair, which she decided to claim. It still wasn’t precisely cosy with the wind and rain thrashing against the window, but that couldn’t be helped. She shut the connecting door behind her, and settled down with her book in peace.
That lasted for perhaps an hour before she heard the raised voices from the next room.
“...absolutely shitty thing to do!” That was Jimmy, thick-voiced and furious.
“Shitty?” Bill demanded, explosively. “Me, shitty? Well, it takes one to know one, you bastard. How you have the bloody face to talk to me about deception—”
“For Christ’s sake, I had no choice!”
“Nor did I!”
Pat cursed internally, albeit not in the men’s appalling language. Did nobody in this house ever take precautions to have a private conversation? Well, she was not going to eavesdrop for a second time, which meant leaving at once or making her presence known. Respect for privacy briefly warred with a combination of curiosity, sisterly protectiveness, and a desire to give Jimmy the telling-off he deserved. Privacy was roundly defeated, so Pat uncurled from her chair, gave the connecting door a perfunctory knock, and opened it.
Bill and Jimmy were facing off on their feet, Bill rather white, Jimmy red. Both had a look Pat couldn’t have defined, but which went with the raw notes she’d heard in their voices, and she strode briskly into the room wondering if she’d need a jug of water. “All right, that’ll do.”
“Would you mind, Pat,” Bill said through his teeth.
“If you proclaim your business at the top of your voices, you can take the consequences. We’ve had enough throttling people.”
“I’m not going to throttle anyone. Nor is Jimmy.”
“Don’t bloody bank on it,” Jimmy said. “Sorry, Pat. Sorry. I—hell. Oh hell.”
He sat abruptly, dropping his face into his hands. Bill looked down at him, then turned away.
“Goodness.” Pat shut the door, in case anyone else happened to be wandering around. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I should say, Fen told me the engagement is off.”
“What?” Bill barked.
Pat ignored him. He needed to calm down. “I needn’t say how I think you’ve behaved, Jimmy—”
“I’ve nobody to blame but myself. You don’t need to tell me that.” Jimmy’s face returned to his hands.
“Well, you seemed to be piling the blame on Bill.”
“Ah, no,” Bill said. “Jimmy is annoyed with me because I’m here to look into his father’s financial affairs.”
“Yes, well, that’s a rotten thing to be doing,” Pat pointed out. “As he well knows, Jimmy, and since he’s the only person who’s trying to give your father a fair hearing—”
“For God’s sake! What do you know about this?”
“Enough to suggest you simmer down,” Pat said crisply. “Bill’s on your side, you oaf.”
“I’m not,” Bill said. “Or—God rot it— Look it would have helped a great deal, still would, if you were honest with me. That’s all.”
“About what?” Jimmy demanded. His eyes were wet. “That I asked Fen to marry me because Father’s lost a fortune and Haworth’s draining us dry? Well, I did, and I’m sorry, and I couldn’t even carry that through, and for all I know your people are planning to gaol my father for his part in the crash so perhaps you could just go away and let me try to face up to this almighty mess with a bit of dignity!”
“It’s a bit late for that,” Bill muttered.
“Do shut up,” Pat told him. There was only one other chair, behind the desk; she pulled it round to sit by Jimmy. “Come on, old thing. We’re not going to leave you in trouble. Fen’s been awfully good about what you must admit was a damn fool thing to do. Why don’t you tell Bill what he needs to know and let him help you?”
“I’m here to do my job,” Bill said. “Not help.”
“Oh, rubbish. The Earl is patently honest.”
“It hardly matters what he is.” Jimmy sounded exhausted. “It’s his name on the papers. He signed everything Maurice told him to sign. I’ve no doubt he signed things he shouldn’t have, things that are probably inexcusable. He was in well over his head, he really believed for a while that he was some sort of speculator, and—oh, the devil. You have no idea what it’s been like for him and Mother with that bloody man in our lives.”
“If Haworth fooled your father into signing things he didn’t understand, he needs to say so,” Bill said. “I am sure we—you—can make his case. This is a complex, clever fraud of which nobody who’d met the Earl could imagine him capable.”
“I suppose you mean he’s not bright enough to be crooked.”
“It runs in the family,” Bill said. “Tell him to talk to me.”
“I can’t. He won’t.”
“You’d better. The alternative won’t be pretty. Other people have lost a lot of money and your father will be the scapegoat.”
“Do you think we don’t realise that?” Jimmy demanded. “Do you think I want to protect that cancero
us growth of a man? We cannot act against Maurice!”
“Why the devil not?”
Jimmy flung his hands up, a gesture far more eloquent than any speech. There was a silence.
“Fine,” he said at last. “If you want to know... God, where do I start. With Anna, I suppose. She’s stuck with him. There’s no chance of her obtaining a divorce on the usual grounds because she’s played the fool so notoriously—Jack is only the latest of her boy friends. And Maurice isn’t physically violent. He lands all his blows on one’s nerves, if you see what I mean.”
“They could still separate.”
“But she won’t,” Jimmy said. “She’s tied to him. I don’t understand it. He treats her like dirt and she has her gentlemen friends, but if you say a thing against him she’ll defend him to the hilt. And then there’s the child, George.” Jimmy pushed his hands through his hair. “He’s not Maurice’s, you know.”
“You mean, adopted?” Pat asked.
“No, I mean my sister bedded an American jazz musician,” Jimmy snapped. “George takes after his father. Brown as a berry. But in law he’s Maurice’s, and if Anna left him, Maurice would be entitled to keep the boy.”
“Would he want to, given his views?” Bill asked.
“I expect he would like a helpless child to torment, yes,” Pat said. “My God, Jimmy.”
“Quite. He keeps George from the parents—I told you, didn’t I? They barely see him, their only grandchild. He’d be in line for the earldom if anything happened to me, yet he’s being brought up God knows how.”
“He can inherit through his mother?” Pat asked.
“The earldom is held in fee simple, so it goes to Anna, then George, if I die without issue. Could we not discuss inheritance law now? The point is, Maurice uses the poor scrap as a carrot or stick against the parents, and there’s not a damn thing to be done. And then there’s this cursed business with the firm. Maurice turned up with things for Pa to sign. Fed him a lot of jargon, switched between treating him as a high financier and shouting that the old chap was trying to get him sacked if he asked questions, held the chance of seeing George over his head—oh, he ran rings round the old man. He claims to have lost everything when the firm crashed, though you’ll never persuade me he hasn’t squirrelled a good lot of cash away somewhere, and he’s been living the high life at our expense ever since. And we’re all of us terrified to stand up to him, because God knows what he might do to Father, or Anna, or George. It’s like having a family curse.”
