“No,” replied Amelia. “Only for a month or so.”
“He is a very handsome gentleman, is he not? And the most fierce horseman I have ever seen. Does he hunt?”
“No. Hunting is forbidden on the Rutlidge estates.”
“Really? Well, it is a great shame, for I should like to ride to hounds with him, though he is… a bit odd… don’t you think? I confess I do not know what to make of a man who is a nonesuch on horseback, but barely able to butter his own toast.”
“I thought he managed his toast quite admirably,” replied Amelia with a lift of her chin as she remembered that Geordie had had a bit of trouble at breakfast.
“Well, I do not mean to insult him, believe me. It is just that I know so little of him. Mother mentioned some kind of an accident when he was a child?”
“He was caught beneath an overturned mail coach,” explained Amelia with a fierce light dawning in her emerald eyes. “He was seriously injured, his mind as well as his body, and he cannot do some things as well as the rest of us. But I dare say no one here equals him in determination and fortitude.”
“I thank you for making his situation clear to me,” Pamela replied quietly. “I only hope I may make it clear to Lydia.”
“Make what clear to Miss Lydia?” asked Talbot, riding up.
“Why, that your brother is slow, Mr. Talbot,” answered Amelia, bringing a blush to Miss Clinton’s face, “though I suspect Miss Lydia is already quite aware of it.”
“Undoubtedly,” Talbot grinned. “Geord is fast to tell people he is slow. I have come as an emissary, Miss Mapleton,” he added with a gleam in his eyes, “to see if you will race your brothers and Robert and I to the next tollgate. Are you game for it?”
“You will lose,” she told him sweetly. “But it will serve you right.”
“And, Miss Clinton, will you join us as well?”
“Indeed,” nodded the young lady, “Bon-Ton longs for a run.”
“Geord, it’s a race!” Lord Mapleton called riding up beside the earl as the competition began. “Will you bet me who wins?”
“Amelia will win,” the earl stated confidently.
Max laughed. “Then we cannot bet on it, Geordie, because she is the one I would lay my money on as well.”
In the end, Max and Geordan proved correct. Amelia left the others far behind. “Unfair,” Talbot protested. “Geord has been teaching you his tricks.”
“Yes,” laughed Amelia, her face flushed with the exercise and the joy of victory. “It is not always the fastest horse that takes the prize, you know.”
“But we do not have a prize to give you, Amy,” grinned Kit.
“I should not worry,” David drawled. “Tony will think of something—won’t you?”
“Of course he will,” Robert laughed, “but you must give him time, Amy. Sooner or later it will occur to him what a suitable prize may be.”
A bit more than two hours later, the noisy raillery that had gradually developed among the partygoers dwindled into silence as the first of the carriages turned into the Westerley drive. All eyes focussed on the wilderness around them. “Oh, how beautiful it is,” Miss Thackett whispered to Lydia Clinton beside her. “Look how the shadows wash across the drive, and the bits of sunlight, how the sparkle and shimmer among the leaves.”
Mouse, recognizing immediately that they were home, fretted and danced beneath the earl, begging to run free. Geordan, with an apology to Amelia, who was then riding beside him, had an overwhelming urge to free himself and loosed the reins. They turned left into the trees and in a moment all sight and sound of them were gone. When at last the house came into view around the last turn of the drive, a number of surprised gasps and murmurs ascended into the air. “So, what do you think of the place, Miss Mapleton?”
“Ugly,” Miss Mapleton pronounced quite clearly.
“No, do not say so. It is my ancestral home, you know.”
“I am afraid, Mr. Talbot, that even that does not improve its appearance,” Amelia grinned. “Have you ever thought of disowning your ancestors?”
“Yes, every time I round this bend,” laughed Tony. “But then I spy my mother at a window, or Uncle James, fiddling about the stables, or Geordan,” he stopped, and leaning across to her, put an arm lightly around her shoulders and pointed to their left. “Or Geordan,” he continued as she gasped, “crashing neck-or-nothing out of the trees and soaring skyward on the back of that Pegasus of his…”
The earl, who at that precise moment unknowingly illustrated his brother’s words in the clearing below them, set Mouse straight on toward the stables without slowing.
“… and then, Amelia,” Talbot finished, “I do not think the place ugly at all.”
As Geordan and Mouse disappeared around the oddly constructed building, Miss Mapleton turned her gaze back to Tony and a strange little mist of wistfulness seemed to envelop her. “I think,” she murmured with a hesitance most unlike her, “I think that I should like to get to know Westerley.”
“And so you will,” Talbot replied, his mouth beginning to twitch up at the corners. “Come, Amelia, the others are almost to the house.”
MARTIN, who had come down the day before with several of the other servants to assist the Westerley staff, was frowning intently at the earl and Mouse when Tony and Amelia followed the others around to the stables. “You will not, Master Geordan,” Martin said gruffly. “I shall stable Mouse for you, as you know I am perfectly capable of doing.”
“B-But you have all the other h-horses to c-care for, M-Martin,” Talbot heard his brother reply in a confused voice. “And M-Mouse will b-be repre-r-repre-hensible because he w-will not like to, to, have s-strange hacks in h-his stables.”
Descending from the carriages and mounts in the stable yard, since there was no front drive or forecourt at Westerley, the others were speaking in hushed voices about their impressions of the place and took no notice of the small altercation at first. But the countess noticed. With determined steps and a shake of her copper curls, she went directly to Martin’s side. James, Lady Mapleton and the duchess followed directly behind her. Lord Mapleton, handing his reins to one of the stable boys, hurried to join his wife. His curiosity grew as he drew near enough to hear the earl’s continuing protestations and Martin’s determined resistance.
“Geordan,” the countess ordered, “do not plague Martin. He is in charge of the stables and will do as he sees fit.”
Amelia noticed, as Talbot assisted her to dismount with a few feet of the earl and Martin, that the countess glanced quickly at Tony with a tantalizing and very suspicious gleam in her eyes.
“B-But Mama, Mous wishes for me t-to s-stable him. S-See?” Geordan protested, passing the stallion’s reins to Martin’s hands. Mouse, obviously opposed to such desertion, reared on the instant, and the earl snatched the reins back before Martin should be harmed.
“Mouse is a horse, Geordan,” said the countess stubbornly. “He is not the master of Westerley.”
“N-No,” replied the earl, “I know he is n-not, Mama.”
“The trouble is that Mouse does not know it,” his mama frowned. But even the frown, Amelia noticed, was made suspect by the look in the lady’s eyes.
“Well,” Talbot sighed, “I suppose it is not worth having Martin trampled to death over, Mama.”
“I shall be no such thing, Master Tony,” Martin exclaimed indignantly.
“No, probably not, but Geordan will discover our secret before the end of the day, anyway. Let him stable Mouse.”
Martin shook his head sadly, but a smile grew upon his lips and in his eyes as he bowed the earl and Mouse past him.
“What secret?” Miss Mapleton whispered, as the rest of the party, drawn by Mouse’s rearing, gathered about.
“You shall see for yourself,” Talbot grinned, offering her his arm and leading Amelia and the rest of the curious company into the stables. He led them down past the first few stalls, the sweet smell of hay rising about them, and then
brought them to a halt. A few yards beyond, with Mouse nudging at his shoulder, the earl stood silently staring down into a box stall. “Something wrong, Geord?” Talbot asked.
“Whatever is the matter, Geordan?” the countess queried. “Will Mouse not enter the box even for you?”
The earl looked up at them and then back into the stall and then back up at them again. “T-Tony,” he said in a very small whisper, “there is a p-pony in Mouse’s st-stall.”
“You are bamming me!” Talbot exclaimed.
“N-No. It is the Sh-Shetland that n-no one wanted at, at T-Tattersalls.”
“No, is it?”
The earl nodded solemnly as Mouse began to nibble at his curls. Amelia’s hand tightened significantly on Mr. Talbot’s arm, and he grinned down at her, his eyes alight with golden warmth. Then he winked and looked back to the earl. “Correct me if I am wrong, Geord,” he said, “but I seem to recall that someone wished to purchase the silly thing.”
“That was m-me,” the earl whispered in awe.
“No, really? And now it is here in Mouse’s stall?” Talbot put a hand over Amelia’s and drew her forward to within a few feet of the earl. He glanced down into the stall and Amelia did likewise, sighing at the sight of the tiny brown pony that looked back up at her. “Then I must suppose that it has come to live with you,” Talbot grinned. “Happy birthday, gudgeon!” he added, reaching out and giving the earl a quick, one-armed hug.
“Thank you, Tony,” Geordan stammered. “Mama,” he cried then, blinking wide-eyed at his mother, “may I k-keep her?”
The countess and everyone else laughed at that. “Well, I should hope so,” his mama replied. “She has been living at Westerley since Tony sent her down weeks ago and, I suppose, thinks it to be her home. It would be sad to send her away.”
“See if Mouse will enter the box with her, Geord,” Talbot suggested. “Perhaps he will like the pony.”
The earl urged the stallion gently into the box and began to unsaddle him. The pony, Amelia saw, was not the least leery of either of them and came first to nudge at Geordie’s thigh and then to take a quick sniff at Mouse. Mouse shied away, then looked down at the thing, snorted, and sniffed back. Within a few moments all three of them were making friends, and the laughter in the earl’s eyes as first one and then the other assaulted him in search of the sugar lumps he kept in his coat pocket made Miss Mapleton wish that she could give the earl everything he desired for the rest of his life. She glance up to catch Mr. Talbot staring, not at the earl and the pony, but at herself. “Enough, Geord,” he said, when he found her looking at him. “There will be time to play with her later. We have guest who must be seen to.”
The earl fed each of the horses two lumps of sugar more and then edged from between them and out of the stall. “Is it r-really my b-birthday, Tony?” he asked in a quiet voice which only Miss Mapleton and his brother could hear.
Talbot nodded. “You always forget, Geord. Mama and Uncle James and I have come to depend on you to do so.”
“D-Does everyone know?”
“Yes, my dear,” Amelia smiled, placing an arm about his waist and giving him a quick hug. “We do all of us know that your birthday is tomorrow, and that is why we have all come to Westerley—to help you to celebrate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ONCE the partygoers had been shown to their chambers, the luggage delivered and themselves refreshed, the assembled in Westerley’s main parlour, which boasted a line of six leaded-glass windows reaching from floor to ceiling and looking out upon the small front lawn and surrounding hills. The furnishings of the room, unique to an earlier generation, gave a sense of solidity, severity and security that appealed immediately to the Duchess of Richmond. “It looks much as did my grandmother’s home in Yorkshire,” she smiled. “Why, Cecily, you have even retained the tapestries. They are most impressive.”
“Yes, Aunt Theckla,” grinned the countess, “and quite necessary to ward off the cold in winter. This is a very old, rackety place, I am afraid, though some of the newer rooms are a great deal more cosy. Still,” she said with a wink at Lady Mapleton, “I do believe one ought to leave history intact in at least one room of one’s home. Everything cannot be continually redecorated. And Daniel’s fondness for these old furnishings would not be denied. But we do not sit here often. It is much too draughty and very, very sombre, do you not think so?”
“Indeed,” smiled the duchess, “almost as sombre as my grandmother herself.”
Pamela Clinton, sitting upon an elegantly carved, heavy oak chair with silk cushions of deep puce and gold, surveyed the room as if it were a museum. She studied every piece of furniture, each direction, every painting with incredible intensity.
“I think, Miss Clinton,” Lord Bristol grinned down at her, “that this mausoleum has begun to prey upon your mind.”
“Oh, no. But it is quite Gothic, is it not? And quite unique. Why, that painting above the fireplace is most definitely a Raphael. And that vase in the corner near the side windows is undoubtedly of Venetian craftsmanship. And this chair, indeed, most of the furniture, a century or more old. And yet see how the wood keeps its shine and the grain of it is not rubbed away. It’s almost as if it were crafted yesterday.”
“I, myself,” Lord Bristol replied, “have little love for things old before I was born.”
“Ah, but it is a heritage, Lord Bristol, a pride not much thought of now, to live one’s life among such possessions. And one could never purchase them today. Why, it would cost a king’s ransom to fill one half of this room with such antiquities.”
“Indeed,” Bristol nodded, knowing full well that the inside of Miss Clinton’s head was calculating the worth of just this singular room in a house filled with sumptuous decor. “The Earls of Rutlidge have never been paupers, Miss Clinton. Nor done less than improve their estates through every generation to the tune of at least three thousand a year.” Bristol watched as her eyes grew large and round with the thought of it.
“Why, Lord Rutlidge must be a frightfully wealthy man!” exclaimed Miss Clinton in a hoarse whisper.
“Frightfully,” agreed Bristol. “I believe his holdings outstrip even Golden Ball’s fortune, though it ain’t talked about the way Ball’s is. Not a rum touch among the earl’s, you see. Never a one of ’em that spent his flimsies recklessly. Always a profit, in everything, among the Earls of Rutlidge.”
“Possibly because none of them lived long enough to spend what they made,” Talbot offered with a laugh, coming up beside Miss Clinton’s chair opposite to Bristol. “Has Chet told the tale of the headless earl yet, Miss Clinton, or does he only regale you with monetary legends?”
Lord Mapleton, who leaned languidly against the mantelpiece, in a quiet conversation with James Farber, looked up with a critical eye as the earl joined the rest of the party. “Tyler has come down to Westerly as well, has he?” Max asked, his gaze drawing James’s attention to the earl.
“Cecily thought it would be helpful if he and Parsons and some others were available,” James grinned. “Though I doubt even Tyler will keep Geord looking so proper as long as till Sunday.”
“But he has managed to repair the destruction wrought by that pony and Mouse, James, and that alone is an accomplishment.”
“Indeed. But I think both animals will have another chance before the day is over. Geord will visit that pony again.”
The earl, in fact, had every intention of returning to the stables as soon as possible, and of taking Miss Lydia with him. “F-For I have g-got an idea,” he told that young lady quietly. “As s-soon as we c-can be alone, I sh-shall t-tell you about it.”
THE picnickers, escorted to a wild glade that stretched along the stream, betrayed not the least sense of boredom or insipidity at either the setting or the company. The food, packed into eight very large wicker baskets, had been carried to the glade by several servants with the help of the earl’s gig, and had been waiting for them upon their arrival. Blankets and cloths lai
d out upon the ground provided their dining tables and chairs. China and crystal had been set out upon them. Lemonade, ratafia and raspberry iced waters waited to quench the thirst of the ladies. The earl’s best porter, sherry and hock, and crystal bowls of negus and rack punch lured the gentlemen, even at such an early hour of the afternoon.
“I am aware,” announced the countess, as the bedazzled group gazed about them, “that you are none of you used to eating at such an hour as this, but at Westerley it is impossible to go on from breakfast to dinner without a substantial repast between, especially when one spends the time out of doors. And since we have all been travelling besides, I thought it would not prove ill to provide you a picnic that will tide you over until the evening.” Around them emerged dishes of roasted hare and roast pheasant, roast woodcock and snipes, stewed mushrooms, lamprey, pea chicks, and fresh asparagus. Creams and jellies and puddings also abounded, tempting them to try just a piece of this or a bite of that, while the informality of the setting sent them off to explore the landscape with plates, glasses and napkins in hand, and to wander back for yet another taste of what most attracted them.
Lord Mapleton, with the deep bow of the courtier, begged his lady’s company and led her off into the trees to follow a path upward toward the crest of the hill. Lord Bristol, with Miss Sonnesby on his arm, declared a need to explore the path of the stream downward and set off to do so, accompanied by Pamela Clinton and David Mapleton. Miss Thackett and Kit Mapleton, Mr. Talbot and Miss Mapleton, all desired to wander about the woods in search of other glades and vistas equally as lovely, and shortly only the duchess, the countess and James Farber remained at the original site. “I believe, girl,” said the duchess, her eyes weary,
Amelia's Intrigue (Regency Idyll Book 1) Page 27
