Was Juliana’s half-brother bred up to be a Papist? Gervaise whistled low. How old was William when his mother died?
“Is something troubling you?” Ralph asked in a sharp voice.
“Yes,” he replied and told Ralph everything he knew about Juliana and her family. “Now you know why I brought her here. I fear there is far more at stake than the ownership of Riverside House, yet I am damned if I know what. But I intend to find out.”
Ralph heaved a sigh. “There have been, indeed there still are, many Jacobite plots. The whole country is in a fret as to whether Sophia of Hanover or—if she predeceases Queen Anne—her oaf of a son, George, will inherit the throne. Of course, there are many Roman Catholic claimants to the succession but the Test Act precludes them from inheriting it and everyone knows the country would not tolerate another Roman Catholic king or queen.”
Gervaise raised his eyebrows. Could lily-livered William be party to a Jacobite plot? He looked at Ralph. “I shall trust you to keep Mistress Kemp safe in my absence.”
Ralph chuckled. “I think Barbara has decided you brought the young lady here because you are romantically inclined toward her.”
Gervaise shrugged. He had more important matters than Ralph’s raillery to consider. “What a fool I am,” he said before Ralph could tease him again. He rose to cross the book room to the age-darkened escritoire where he penned a few words. “I should have told Mrs Budgeon neither she nor her family are to tell anyone where my protégée is.”
Ralph crossed one leg over the other. “Budgeon, an unusual name, but who is the woman?”
“The proprietress of the lodging house at which Mistress Kemp stayed in London.”
“Do you think Mistress Kemp left her new direction with the woman?”
“I do not know, but even if she did not, I am certain young Sukey did.”
Ralph’s deceptively lazy, smoke-grey eyes opened a fraction wider. “Who, may I ask, is Sukey?”
“She is Mrs Budgeon’s little niece, who Mistress Kemp employed as her maidservant. I presume the girl told her aunt she would be here. Excuse me, Ralph, you have been very helpful. Now I must send this note to Mrs Budgeon to warn her not to tell anyone where Mistress Kemp is.”
“Why not question the maidservant?”
“Even if I question her in private, and I warn her not to mention it to her mistress, she might let something slip.” Gervaise hurried to the door where he turned to look at Ralph. “Should I take Mistress Kemp with me instead of leaving her in your care?” He shook his head and answered his own question. “No, I will not take her with me to meet the rest of my family—” He broke off instead of saying he would not subject Juliana to an introduction to his stone-hearted mother. No matter what his sentiments were, a gentleman should not criticise any female member of his family.
* * * *
Mrs Budgeon eyed the gold coin in the large gentleman’s hand. She sniffed. Would someone with honest intentions toward the beautiful Mistress Kemp offer a bribe?
“Are you going to keep me waiting all day for a reply?” the gentleman drawled in a low tone.
She did not trust men who lowered their voices and made an obvious attempt to soothe her. Her nose smelled yet another rat. She always trusted her nose. “I don’t know where Mistress Kemp is, sir.”
Dick entered the small parlour. “Yes, you do, Ma. As though our Sukey would leave London without telling us where she was going. They’ve gone to The Grange near Kings Langley, sir.”
Mrs Budgeon sprang to her feet. She clouted Dick across the head with the flat of her hand. With a satisfied smile, her visitor slipped the coin back into his pocket and left.
“Oi, wait, give me that money,” Mrs Budgeon screeched.
Dick rubbed his head. “There’s no reason to get violent, Ma. I’m not a child.”
“I smell something nasty,” she muttered.
“You and your nose,” Dick teased.
She laughed, only to be sorry later, after a literate lodger read a message from Mister Seymour. She glared at Dick. “There, I knew you shouldn’t have told that fat gentleman where Mistress Kemp and our Sukey are.”
“Why would he be interested in our Sukey, Ma?”
“Clodhopper, of course I know he isn’t interested in your cousin. It’s Mistress Kemp he’s after. What are we going to do?”
“Do, Ma? I’ll go to that there Grange to tell Mistress Kemp his high-and-mightiness knows where she is.”
“How will you go there?”
“I’ll hire a horse.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not, Ma? Have you forgotten learning to ride is something I can thank Sukey’s pa for? He taught me to ride when he worked in a stable.”
“We can’t afford for you to go gallivanting.”
Dick removed one of her heavy purses from its hiding place in a sack of beans. “Yes, we can, Ma.”
“Thief,” she screamed.
“I’m no thief, Ma. You’ve always kept me hard at work and never paid me. I reckon I’ve earned this.” He kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be back soon.”
* * * *
Gervaise gazed down at Juliana. She dozed on a sopha in the sun-filled salon, which was heavy with the scent of sweet peas and roses arranged in silver bowls, and vases on the mantelpiece and low tables. He woke her with a caress on her damask cheek.
Her eyes sleepy, she welcomed his presence with a bewitching smile.
In spite of their drowsiness, he wondered if her eyes burned with an enticing invitation. Surely not. What could so young and innocent a lady know about seduction? Nevertheless, he yearned to lean over her and kiss her. “I have come to take my leave of you.”
Still half asleep, she stretched her arms out as though she would embrace him.
Painful desire that caught him by surprise surged through him.
Juliana sat up. She rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “May I not go with you?”
His urgent desire waned. This seemed an opportune moment to tell her of his change of fortune.
“Juliana, do you remember the rattle you purchased for me?”
“Y-yes.”
“It is for my newborn niece, the posthumous daughter of my late brother. If my sister-by-law had given birth to a son and heir, I would not have become the fourteenth Earl of Beaumaris.”
“I can scarce believe you now own Beaumaris Abbey. It is as famous as Woburn Abbey.”
“Yes, I know, and it is now mine.”
Juliana blinked as though she scarce believed him. “I congratulate you.”
“Thank you.”
“Why did you wait until now to tell me you have inherited such a title?”
“The news reached me shortly before we visited the jeweller. Afterwards, the matter did not seem urgent.”
A puzzled crease formed on her brow. “Most gentlemen would have wanted to puff up their consequence to the world.”
“I suppose they would,” he said, remembering how he had suffered at his father’s hands. In his heart of hearts, he loathed the idea of inheriting the title from a man he detested. How would it affect him? Would he ever become as arrogant as his father and others like him? Would this woman he loved become as vain and shallow as his mother?
“Must I remain here while you are absent, my lord?” Juliana asked, her face downcast. “Oh, I do not mean to seem ungrateful. Although I like Lord Carr and Lady Barbara, I would prefer to accompany you.”
He clenched his fists. Now she knew he was both wealthy and possessed of an ancient title, would she pretend to love him? Would she pursue him as so many other women had after he had returned a rich man, to England?
“Although I am flattered by your wish to go with me, I regret I cannot take you,” he said in a harsher tone than he had intended.
Colour stole into Juliana’s cheeks.
Foolish of him to mistrust her, for his new rank and holdings did not seem to impress her. He cleared his throat. “If
I took you with me, it would damage your reputation. You know it is improper for a gentleman to escort a young unmarried lady who is not his relative.”
“It is too late to say so now. You brought me here without a chaperone and took me out and about in London.”
Had he misread her? Did she covet a title? Was she trying to force his hand in marriage? If so, she would not succeed.
“I admit my faults but will not repeat them.”
Juliana pouted, but peered up at him through her lashes.
In spite of his misgivings, he succumbed to the urgent temptation to touch her. He pressed a kiss on the back of her silken smooth hand.
She regarded him with eyes like luminous pools of unfathomable depths. “What is the real reason for you not telling me you might inherit a title?”
Oh, how much he wanted to intoxicate her with his kisses until she became breathless and returned them with ardour to match his, but honour did not allow him to take advantage of her situation.
He smiled down at her again. “Had you known I might wear an Earl’s coronet, would you have regarded me differently?”
“No, to me you will always be the kind stranger who befriended me.”
“No longer a stranger, I hope.”
Juliana blushed enchantingly and lowered her long eyelashes.
He sighed. If his wealth and title did not make him more important than before in her eyes, she was, indeed, a woman “far beyond rubies” such as the Bible described.
“Promise me you will remain here while I am away.”
She hesitated.
“Please promise me you will not leave the grounds.”
“To please you, I promise.”
* * * *
Gervaise descended from his coach, stretched the muscles in his back, and rolled his shoulders against the stiffness of his forest green brocade suit. How uncomfortable his coat—lined with primrose yellow silk—felt, compared to the lightweight, loose-fitting garments he had adopted in India and still wore sometimes in private. The height of fashion had its drawbacks. He thumbed a solid gold button and smiled. His splendour would be worth the effort when he saw his mother’s reaction.
Nervous at the thought of her, Gervaise tugged at his gold-braided cuffs before he stepped forward. With an impassive expression, he looked neither to the right nor left when he entered Beaumaris Abbey, home of his forefathers since the dissolution of the monasteries by the eighth king Henry. Doyle, his late father’s prim, sour-faced butler, admitted him.
Gervaise’s stiff, gold-buckled shoes rubbed against his heels. He wished he had taken more time to break them in.
He looked at Doyle’s wrinkled face.
“Welcome, my lord.”
“I doubt I am welcome.”
A flicker of emotion in the old martinet’s eyes rewarded him. For once, he had discomposed Doyle, one of his late father’s tittle-tattlers. Yet, he knew his duty. He would not dismiss either Doyle or any other elderly servant without a pension.
“Where is her ladyship?”
“In the red salon, my lord.”
Gervaise’s lips curled. “You need not announce me on this—shall we say—happy occasion.”
Conscious of the butler’s assessment of the value of his black beaver hat, laced with a gold band, and his gold-fringed gloves, Gervaise handed them to him.
Gervaise proceeded up the stairs to the half landing, where he paused to look out of the window. Now that his three elder brothers lay in the family vault, the fertile land and all that stood on it as far as he could see belonged to him. By all that was holy, he had earned it by enduring the lash of his tutor’s whip and the bloody floggings his mother ordered for the slightest misdemeanour. “Beat the devil out of the boy,” his pleasure-seeking, selfish mother had instructed.
He entered the salon and advanced across the wide expanse of oak floorboards noting the faded upholstery and frayed curtains. Shabby, he thought. Could his mother not have put her needle to good use? No, her ladyship always preferred a hand of cards to needlework.
What spendthrifts the Seymours were. Wastrels and gamblers! Well, with the aid of good management coupled with his personal fortune, half of which he had invested in The East India Company, he hoped to set all to rights.
His mother cleared her throat. Hard-eyed, she regarded him and then pressed a plump white hand to her chest. How bloated she was; a woman who only cared about herself and whatever she could consume from the world and its pleasures.
Gervaise inclined his head. “No word of greeting, madame?”
“You have come, my lord.” She tottered to her feet and then curtsied in acknowledgement of his position as head of the family.
“Did you not expect me?”
If it would not demean him to give way to anger, he would have ordered her to leave the Abbey forthwith. “With your permission, madam.” He sat down and crossed one stocking clad leg over the other. “Regard my shoes? Do you not think the emeralds affixed to the heels go well with my coat?”
“Unfeeling,” his widowed parent murmured and sank down onto her chair.
“Maybe you are right. Emeralds are cold.”
“You are heartless. Have you no consideration for me?”
“I have never understood the feminine mind. Are emeralds not to your liking?”
“Have you naught else to say? For my part, I never thought I would see you standing in your father’s place.”
“I hope you are not about to say I should tread in my father’s footsteps, for I would be ashamed to do so.”
“How dare you!” Patches of red spread beyond the edges of rouge on his mother’s fat cheeks.
“If my presence distresses you, madam, you have my permission to withdraw. Indeed, you may leave from the Abbey if it pleases you. Your dower lands are intact, are they not?”
She glared at him. “You would thrust me from my home?”
“When did you and my father create a home? You cared only for your own pleasures. Now that the estate has been bled dry your pockets are empty, so you must live on my charity if your dower does not yield sufficient for your needs.”
His mother eyed him. “Your charity? You have no more money than the rest of the Seymours, but I must say you dress fine. How do you contrive to do so?” She tittered with the old, familiar mockery. “One could almost be foolish enough to think you returned from overseas with a fortune.”
“I did.” The two words did not do justice to the satisfaction he experienced.
“What?”
“Return with a fortune.” He smiled, fully conscious of her amazement.
Bereft of words, his mother opened and closed her mouth several times before she rallied sufficiently to murmur, “My dear son.”
He thought of the times when, in spite of being innocent of any wrong-doing, he suffered a beating to protect his younger brother and sister from some childish misdemeanour. His nostrils flared. “I have never been your dear son. Let us understand each other. You shall not have so much as one penny of mine to waste at the card table.”
“Not a penny?” asked a soft voice from the corner of the room.
Gervaise spun round.
A girl, who he had not noticed sitting in a corner at the farther end of the long room, put her needlework down. She stood and then advanced toward him.
“Aphra?”
When she nodded and smiled, he strode forward to embrace her.
“Gervaise, I am so happy to see you, and so will Charles be. He rode out with your bailiff to inspect Four Elms Farm which, I am sorry to say, is in a sad state of neglect.”
He ruffled her golden brown curls, noting her old-fashioned lavender gown. Soon she would dress as befitted an earl’s sister and be presented to Queen Anne, but not by his mother who, if she had the chance, would in all likelihood be unable to resist playing for high stakes in London.
Aphra smiled at him, her eyes shining. “You must see your niece. She is the prettiest baby imaginable. I shall tell our sis
ter-by-law you have arrived. When you wait on her, please be gentle. The midwife said the birth took longer than it should have done, so Elizabeth is still weak.”
“Of course I shall be considerate. Indeed, I hope to please her with the bauble I bought for the babe.”
He visualised Juliana choosing the rattle with care, her dark eyes serious; her lower lip caught between her small white teeth in accordance with her habit when she concentrated.
A young gentleman dressed in a brown broadcloth riding coat, the sleeves of which were too short at the wrist, strode into the room. He ran his hand through his head of wind tousled auburn hair. “My lord, for you are my brother, are you not? I am glad to see you.”
“Can it be? Are you my little brother, Charles?”
The young man nodded and gazed at him. “After so many years I hardly recognise you, but you do resemble the portrait of our great-grandfather. And that is a compliment for he is considered a very handsome man.”
“Thank you.” Gervaise embraced Charles, his only surviving brother. “Call me Gervaise, not my lord.”
How old were Aphra and Charles? After his birth, three of his siblings had died in infancy. Aphra must be eighteen or nineteen, and Charles sixteen or thereabouts. He released him. “It is time for you to go to Oxford.”
“University?” The stripling’s blue eyes lit up with sudden hope. “You will send me to university?”
Gervaise smiled. “Do you not wish to go?”
“Yes, above all things.”
“Good, Barbara told me in her letters that you are studious.” He turned to Aphra. “You, sister, you shall go to London to make your curtsey at the court of St. James.”
“Oh, do not tease, you cannot afford to send me. The estates are bankrupt.”
When seated on the far side of the enormous room, it was obvious that she had not heard him tell their mother he was wealthy.
Far Beyond Rubies Page 12
