by Amanda Scott
Shaking beads of water from his yellow oilskins, the postboy, who was in fact a small, weather-beaten, middle-aged man, nodded and reached to take the money Manningford held out to him. “Right you are, sir. I’ll have my sup and be getting straight back, if it’s all the same to you.”
Mr. Lasenby, having followed Manningford to the flagway after carefully shutting the protesting hound inside the chaise, paused now to savor the full impact of the semi-elliptical, five-hundred-foot sweep of thirty houses joined in a single facade designed simply at ground level, elaborately above. “I say, Bran, are these houses all the same inside, too?”
“Not at all. In point of fact, if you were to step ’round to the far end there, by the Marlborough Buildings, and have a look at the backside, you’d see what a sham all this frontage is. From behind it looks like any street of houses in London, growing together cheek by jowl but all different sizes and all in a scramble.” Noting that the dog had continued to voice its disapproval of being left in the chaise, he glanced at it and said, “Silence, dog. I wonder what I shall do with you. Here, Sep, stop gaping about and come inside. I must find someone to deal with all this.” Extracting a key from his waistcoat pocket, he strode up the stone steps to the white-painted front door.
“Look here,” Mr. Lasenby said behind him. “Perhaps we ought to put up at an inn instead. If your father has no servants, we’ll be a dashed nuisance to him.”
“No, we won’t. We needn’t even see him.” Manningford pushed the door open, revealing a small, high-ceilinged entrance hall and, beyond an elaborately framed white arch, a curved stair with a dark wood railing. Two doors stood at right angles to the archway, both white and framed to match. Both doors were closed.
“Porter’s chair, but no porter,” Mr. Lasenby observed in disapproval, looking around. “Marble walls?”
Manningford shut the front door. “Painted with feathers and twigs to look like marble,” he said. “Fashionable forty or fifty years ago and probably not painted since. That stairway is not stone, either. Only looks like it, and the floor here is wood, not flagstone. Come up to the library, Sep. You’ll be more comfortable there while I see if anyone is about.”
“What’s behind those two doors?” Mr. Lasenby asked as Manningford strode through the archway ahead of him.
“Saloon to the right and dining room to the left,” he said. “If anyone is here, they will be upstairs. Come on.”
But Mr. Lasenby hesitated. “Look here, Bran, what do you mean we needn’t see your father? I’ve heard tales about the man but discounted most of them.”
“You’d have done better to believe them, Sep.”
“What, that he don’t see anyone? That he ain’t set foot out of this house in thirty years?”
“Not thirty, only twenty-five. You should feel honored, Sep. You are the first guest I’ve ever brought to stay here.”
“But surely, you see him!”
“I wouldn’t recognize him if I were to meet him coming down these stairs,” Manningford said grimly.
“You’re bamming me.”
“No. He sees only one man, his personal manservant, and how Borland has put up with him all these years, I’ll never know.”
Mr. Lasenby chuckled. “Perhaps this Borland murdered him years ago and has merely been having you on ever since.”
Manningford glanced back over his shoulder. “Don’t think that hasn’t been suggested by others before you, Sep, but I exaggerated the case. My sister Sybilla—the one married to the Marquess of Axbridge—has pushed her way in to see him once or twice, counting the cost afterward, and my brother, Charlie, sees him once a year. I don’t see him at all.”
“But did you never try? I should have thought—”
“Only once, when I was nine, but I got no farther than the door to his study. He ordered Borland to thrash me for daring to disturb him, and though the punishment was light, I never made another attempt.” At the top of the stair he crossed the landing to throw open a pair of double doors, revealing a spacious, book-lined room decorated in shades of peach with white-molding trim. “The library, Sep, and Madeira or some such thing in the decanter over there. Help yourself while I see what I can discover.”
Waiting only until Mr. Lasenby had removed the stopper, sniffed, and begun to pour wine into one of the glasses set beside the decanter, Manningford shut the doors and turned to a second flight of stairs, narrower than the first, leading to the top floor. In most houses in the crescent, the top-floor rooms were allotted to servants. Here, the entire floor had been taken over by Sir Mortimer and his man.
Manningford paused on the upper landing to run a finger inside his neckcloth, rubbing the area that had been chafed in the carriage. Then, absently smoothing a crease, he stood for a moment longer, regarding the closed door opposite the head of the stairs. A narrow corridor led away from the landing on each side, but he felt no inclination to explore either passage. His attention was riveted on the room directly before him, but he felt no fear and little curiosity. Whatever feelings he had had as a child had long since faded, and the man who spent most of his hours in that room stirred interest in him now only as the chief source of the funds he required to live as a gentleman.
He drew a deep breath, stepped forward, and raised his hand to knock, but before he could do so, a door in the right-hand corridor opened and a barrel-shaped man in his late fifties, wearing a dark coat and breeches, emerged quickly from the room, his right index finger pressed firmly to his lips. Shutting the door behind him, he stepped quickly to the landing and murmured in a tone so low that Manningford had to strain to hear him, “Come back downstairs with me, sir, if you please.”
Turning to follow him, Manningford muttered back, “I’ve put a friend in the library, Borland. Where are the other servants?”
“Gone, sir, most of them. We’d best use the drawing room if you’ve put him in the library. Saw you from the window, I did, but couldn’t get away till now without him getting suspicious, and fair popped my ears, trying to hear you come up them stairs so’s I could tell you what’s happened before you see the master.”
“See him?”
“Yes, sir. I didn’t know where to send word to you, and what with Lady Axbridge and the marquess visiting in France, and Lady Symonds being in Scotland with Sir Harry and the children, and what with him saying he don’t want to be plagued by Mr. Charles telling him what Mrs. Charles thinks he ought to be doing about everything, well I—”
“Never mind all that,” Manningford said in a normal tone as he reached the lower landing and turned to the right. “What can my brother or my sisters, let alone their respective spouses—or myself, for that matter—have to do with anything here?”
“Sir Mortimer’s ill, Mr. Brandon.” His voice, now that he, too, spoke normally, was harsh, but his manner was gentle.
“How ill?” Opening the door to the drawing room, Manningford stepped inside, and when Borland did not answer at once, he turned and said curtly, “Is he going to die?”
The manservant gave him a direct look. “Would it distress you if he did, sir?”
“I don’t know him. How could it distress me?” On the chimneypiece in the center of the west wall hung a painting of his mother, and he glanced at it now. “My father left us when she died,” he said, allowing his gaze to linger on the pretty woman in wide red skirts and narrow waist, her hair powdered and piled atop her head, her right hand emerging from a flow of frothy lace to caress the slender black and white dog curled in her lap. “He never left the house, Borland, but he left my brother and sisters and me when I had scarcely turned three. I wish I could believe he did so out of grief at her loss, but I have never had reason to believe he cared for anyone.”
Borland nodded. “I know that, sir. A hard man to know, is the master, and a harder man to love. I, who have served him these thirty-five years and more, can say so without hesitation. Still, he needs you now.”
“Me? I think not. I am here only because I’ve
let boredom, generosity, and my old devil, impulse, carry me to a point I swore seven years ago I’d never reach again. The loans are still out, the luck’s still against me, and though I’d hoped to recoup my losses last night, I only made things worse. So, since it’s little more than a fortnight to quarter-day, and since I haven’t come a-begging in all those seven years, I thought—”
“He won’t do it, sir,” the manservant said grimly, “and ’tis sorry I am to hear you’re in straits, for ’twill give him the sort of edge he best likes to have over his opponents.”
“Edge? Opponents?” Manningford glared at him. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“He needs help, Mr. Brandon. He has asked to see you.”
“Then he knows I’m here?”
“No, but I promised to send for you just as soon as I got word of where to send, and he’s been that impatient. Every morning he wants to know did I find you yet? I’d have taken you into his study to talk, but he’d be bound to hear us there, and then the fat would be in the fire.”
“How so?”
“Shout for me to bring you to him straightaway, he would, and if you refused, the good Lord only knows what would come of it, for it won’t do for the master to be losing his temper.”
“You afraid he’d turn you off with the rest?”
“I wouldn’t go, sir, but I don’t deny I fear his rages right enough. ’Twas one of them put him where he is now, which is to say flat on his back in his bed. Another such could carry him right off and aloft, the doctor did say.”
“He’s seen a doctor? You astonish me.”
“Found unconscious on the floor, he was, sir, three days ago. I had been to the receiving office and back, and had to go out again almost directly, and while I was gone, one of the maids heard a terrible crash and rushed into the study to find him lying on the floor, unconscious and looking ever so queer, she said. She set up a screech, of course, and Mrs. Hammersmyth sent for the doctor, not knowing what else to do and fearing he might die. He awakened after they had got him into his bed, and was right furious, of course, that so many persons had dared to enter his rooms. Turned the lot of them off, he did, before ever I had returned, even the Hammersmyths, who’ve been here as long as I have myself, and how we shall find another housekeeper and butler as capable as what they was, I’m sure I do not know, and so I told him, but I might as well have talked to a fencepost.”
Brandon grimaced. “Something must be done about that.”
“Said they won’t come back, sir, not if Lady Axbridge were to ask them, but I do think they ought to get their pension.”
“What, he cut them off?”
“Turned them all out without a character. A shame it was, and so I told him, but there, I told you the good that did.”
“Well, I don’t know what you think I can do about it. If Sybilla were here, she might be able to manage him, a little, and she would certainly provide references for the servants who need them, but until she returns from the Continent, I don’t see what can be done. I certainly can’t write characters for them. A lot of good it would do if I tried. Perhaps Mrs. Charles would—”
“People would shake their heads at any testimonial for a position in Bath what came from a lady living thirty miles away, sir, and she hasn’t even met one of the chambermaids who left.”
“Well, I’m sorry then, but I can’t think what you expect me to do. Good Lord,” he added as a new thought struck him, “don’t tell me we haven’t got a cook!”
Borland shook his head. “Cook is still here, sir, and the scullery maid. They don’t never leave the kitchen, so I took the liberty of telling her she weren’t included in the order, and she agreed to stay, though it was a near-run thing, she being right friendly with the Hammersmyths. If you don’t mind waiting until I get Sir Mortimer settled for the night before having your dinner, I’ll serve you myself. But you must see him, sir.”
“Very well, I suppose I must, but don’t expect any good to come of it. I mean to ask him for that advance, you know, and he is likely to rant at me when I do so, just as he always ranted at you when you served as my envoy.”
“You won’t get it, sir, but you’ve only to stay here, after all, at least till quarter-day, and I’ll have new servants hired in a pig’s whisper, so you’ll be comfortable enough.”
“But I don’t want to spend a fortnight in Bath.”
“See him, sir. Let him tell you what he wants of you.”
“You tell me.”
“I’ve promised him I won’t do that.”
“Do it anyway.”
Borland smiled. “No, sir. I’m Sir Mortimer’s man.”
“Very well then, damn your eyes. Take me to him.”
At the door to Sir Mortimer’s bedchamber, Borland paused, looking at Manningford as if to give him time to collect himself.
Manningford merely nodded, whereupon the door was opened, revealing a bedchamber decorated in the French manner, with tall, aqua-satin-draped windows overlooking the rolling green hills and fields to the south. The walls were hung with blue-and-white-striped cotton, repeating the colors in the floral Aubusson carpet, but the chief article of furniture, the one that promptly drew his attention, was the wide bed with its blue-silk spread and ornately painted headboard and footboard. But it was not the bed itself that interested him so much as its occupant.
Propped up against thick pillows, his craggy face pale with illness, Sir Mortimer, in a white nightshirt, and a cap from beneath which his gray hair hung limply, glared at them with startlingly blue eyes hooded by heavy lids, looking not the least bit pleased to see his younger son. “Wondered where you’d run off to, Borland,” he grumbled, his voice weak, his words slurred, as though he had drunk too much wine.
“I’ve brought Mr. Brandon to you, sir.”
“So I see,” he replied testily. “Get me some water, man. I’m parched.”
Borland hurried to the side of the room, where a ewer and basin sat on a mahogany side table. Pouring water into a glass, he hurried back to the bedside. The old man made no attempt to take it from him, and the manservant held it to his lips so that he might drink.
When he had done so, Sir Mortimer turned his head away from the glass and glared again at his son. “Well, you see why I sent for you. What have you got to say for yourself?”
“I’m sorry you are ill,” Manningford said, “but I don’t see what it has to do with me. I came up because Borland insisted and because I hoped you might see your way clear to advance me my next quarter’s allowance at once. ’Tis only a fortnight, after all, before it’s due, and I’ve had some unexpected expenses.”
“Have you now? Thought you’d learned the futility of trying to hang on my sleeve. I suppose it’s because Axbridge is out of reach, since Symonds never has a groat he don’t need himself and Clarissa keeps Charlie firmly under her fat thumb. Well, you’ve dipped your bucket into a dry well, coming to me.”
Having expected the old man to leap into a rage, Manningford was encouraged rather than daunted by this reply. Seeing no good to be gained by denying that he had made any attempt to borrow money from his other relatives, he drew up a chair next to the bed and said calmly, “I don’t suppose you mean that you’ve lost all your wealth, sir, so perhaps you will be good enough to explain to me just what you do mean.”
“Where do you suppose I get my wealth, sir?”
Taken aback, Manningford replied, “I don’t know. No one ever thought to tell me, and I never thought to ask.”
“Just came ’round with your hand held out.”
“I suppose I thought it came from your estate at Westerleigh,” Manningford said calmly.
“All that’s been turned over to Charles long since. I’ve kept only my private fortune, augmented by certain investments I’ve made, but the main source no one would guess if he were to speculate from now till the millennium.”
“Then I shan’t try. Do you mean to tell me?”
“I never meant to do so—n
ever thought it would be necessary—but the case is altered now. My right hand’s of no use to me since that fool seizure, but Borland has all he can do to look after me and I refuse to have my privacy invaded by an outsider, so you are the logical answer to my problem.”
“I suppose you mean for me to manage your investments,” Manningford said, “but I know nothing about such things. You would do better to hire a proper man of affairs.”
“The investments are part of it, certainly,” the old man snapped, “and since, if you behave yourself, you stand to inherit this house and a tidy fortune when I’m spent, you’ll do well to learn how to keep it all and not give me a lot of backchat. I’ll see to it you get a proper power of attorney, but that ain’t even the heart of the matter. There’s still the novel.”
“What novel?”
Sir Mortimer’s glare faltered, and he looked away, saying gruffly, “That’s what I’ve been doing this past quarter-century. I write books.”
“Good God, sir, what sort of books?”
“Popular ones, damn your eyes! Gothic romances. And you needn’t poker up like that. You’ve been willing enough to take the profit, damn you; the time has come to do some of the work.”
Twenty minutes later, fiercely indignant and hoarse from arguing, Manningford stormed down the stairs and into the library, startling Mr. Lasenby so much that he spilled his wine.
“By Jove, Bran, look at that! My best waistcoat!”
“I don’t give a damn, Sep. We’re leaving Bath. But before we go, we’re going to abduct ourselves an heiress!”
III
BY THE FOLLOWING MORNING, the last of the rain clouds had departed and the sun shone brightly as Nell walked along the path near the bowling green behind the Sydney Gardens Hotel. There were no bowlers to be seen just then, for the peaceful gardens were nearly empty of people. The air smelled fresh and clean, and the birds sang cheerfully, their songs combining in a chorus from the shrubs and trees lining the smooth, well-raked gravel path, but the only other sound was the crunch of Nell’s sensibly shod feet as she walked.
