Cecilia Or Flight From A Shadow

by Catherine Bowness

  Lord Waldron listened to this exchange with interest but did not interrupt until Endymion paused. Then he said, “Has he paid?”

  “Not all of it, but I have his IOU. He admitted that he’d have to sell up!”

  “Sell up!” Cecilia exclaimed. “However much did you win?”

  “Several thousand.”

  “Pounds or francs?”

  “Oh, pounds. The man’s English. He’s a Viscount, I believe, and has several properties and a quantity of land. I daresay he may be able to retain some of it.”

  “I’ve been making enquiries into the Merdles,” the Earl said, “because, like you, I judged the father had a good deal to hide. The son is, I think, ignorant of his family history and is, in any event, an innocent.”

  “I hope he hasn’t been lying about how much money he has - had,” Endymion said.

  “No, I don’t think so. He is, as you say, a Viscount and comes from an old and noble family. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens in these sorts of families, there was something of a feud between this man and his brother – his older brother, I should tell you. It is quite unusual, and peculiarly unfortunate, when a father has two sons and neither of them turns out to be particularly amiable. One feels a degree of sympathy for the father.”

  “Probably wasn’t amiable himself,” Endymion murmured.

  “I would be careful about making a judgment of that sort,” Cecilia said. “Our father was not in point of fact amiable. He seemed on the surface to be perfectly pleasant, but he abandoned our mother several times and, on at least one occasion, married another in an illegal ceremony – possibly under one of his many assumed names - only to abandon her in due course and return to Mama. The character of the father may well be inherited by the son or sons – or even the daughters – but I hardly think you are in a position where pointing that out will show you in a good light.”

  “No; you are right.”

  “Shall I continue with my story of the two unamiable sons?” the Earl asked, not unamused by this little side argument.

  “Yes; what, by the way, was their father like?”

  “I have not heard any particular ill of him; he married a respectable female, one Annabel Hawksley, and they had two sons who spent their childhood fighting each other. They were not short of money, possessed a number of properties and lived as quietly as they were able in Shropshire.

  “When the sons grew up, their fights became more serious, so much so that the elder, after a particularly vicious dispute during which he almost killed the younger, left the country. I believe he may have thought he had put a period to his brother’s existence. In any event, he disappeared completely, never to return.

  “Consequently, when the blameless and ill-used father died, it was the younger, the present Lord Merdle, who stepped into his shoes.”

  “Are you saying that the elder is not dead?” Endymion asked.

  “No, I believe he is. But he did not die immediately after he left the family home; he lived long enough to marry and beget at least one son. Our Lord Merdle, therefore, is not – or should not be – Viscount, unless all the sons of the elder brother have also died.”

  “Do you know for a fact that he had sons?” Endymion asked.

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  “Yes; that much is recorded but I did not, until recently, know what became of them – or of their mother. She was a Roman, by name Maria Carlotta Nalozzi.”

  “What was the year of their marriage?” Cecilia asked.

  “1791. It took place in England.”

  “What was she doing there? Did she cross Europe and reach England in spite of the Revolution?”

  “No; I believe she had come much earlier because, when they married, they already had two sons.”

  “Good God! Why the devil didn’t they marry before?” Endymion asked.

  “I don’t think he wanted to draw attention to himself by doing anything that might have alerted either his father or the authorities of his return to England. During his time abroad, I imagine he had learned discretion. It was probably only on returning to his homeland that he discovered his brother still lived.”

  “Why did he return?” Endymion asked.

  “I don’t know; perhaps he thought he could take up his proper place as heir to the Viscountcy, although he does not seem to have attempted to do this. Instead, he joined the army and had, I believe, a distinguished career.”

  “And did they have more children after they were married?” Cecilia asked.

  “Yes, four more, only one of which was a son. He, of course, is now the rightful Viscount Merdle.”

  “Why has he made no attempt to take back his patrimony?” Endymion asked. “And, if he does, in the future, decide to do so, will I be obliged to give back the money I have won off the usurper?”

  “No, I don’t think so. You’ve won it off the man not the Viscount, as it were. The thing is that I don’t think he – the rightful heir - knows who he is. Lord Merdle, on the contrary, has discovered whom he has to fear so far as losing his position goes, and has, if I am not much mistaken, decided to do away with him.”

  “Good God!” Endymion exclaimed. “Should he not be taken into custody?” He grew thoughtful and then said, “You remember when I fell off my horse, Cissy?”

  “Yes, I wanted to call a physician, but you would not let me. Indeed, you grew quite angry with me.”

  “Because someone – I never knew who but have a suspicion I do now – tried to shoot me.”

  “Heaven! Did he hit you?”

  “No, fortunately not, but the shot startled the horse, which bolted – and I fell off. How, by the way, did you discover all this, my lord?”

  “I have a number of contacts, due partly to my job and partly to my own position amongst the nobility, although I own I had not heard of Viscount Merdle before. This one, like his father, has for the most part stuck closely to his home in Shropshire. He has one son – this one now travelling with him. His wife died fairly recently. But I don’t think he came to Europe in order to accompany his son on a grand tour, I think he came to find and remove the man whose title he has usurped. His father, the blameless one with the disagreeable sons, died a few years ago and, although no one – so far as I know – has disputed his right to the title – he no doubt felt insecure on account of fearing that his brother might have married and sired a son.

  “Like me, he has done a good deal of digging into the past and, although it was difficult to follow the elder son’s erratic path on account of his frequent changes of name, it was by no means impossible. Indeed, the only time he seems to have used his proper name was when he married Maria Carlotta; that marriage is recorded as having taken place between Walter James Ferdinand Moate, elder son of Viscount Merdle on the fifth of April 1791.”

  “But what made you so interested in Lord Merdle and his motives?” Cecilia asked.

  “I think you know that,” Waldron said quietly.

  She shook her head but said, “Some of the names match but I still don’t see why you became suspicious of Merdle.”

  “Because of his excessively shifty behaviour. He turns up at an isolated post house in the Alps, hangs around until he learns that some people have been rescued from an accident on the road, retires in short order to his chamber as soon as he hears them arrive and leaves absurdly early the next morning without waiting to eat breakfast.”

  “I agree it was shifty, as you put it,” Endymion said, “but I still don’t see why you were interested. Is part of your job acting as a sort of detective?”

  Lord Waldron laughed and said, “It is not the first time I have been compelled to look into a suspicious person’s past. I have been wondering whether, when I give up the diplomatic service, I should take up a role as a private investigator.

  “No, the reason I was interested was because he and his son happened to choose the same inn that we did. They travelled, more or less, the same way we had and must have passed the spot where you went off the road. In sp
ite of this, he neither stopped nor reported what he must have seen but, instead, drove on to the first inn he came to and waited to learn the outcome of the accident.

  “Although he dined with you, Helen, he made sure that he didn’t meet any member of the Moss family, scuttling off to bed the minute he heard our voices and darting off altogether before we rose the next day.

  “It was only when we got here that he met you, Cecilia, and immediately began to pay court to you in a manner which you judged sham. You have not met him before, have you?”

  “Not to my knowledge, no.”

  She had become very thoughtful and Lord Waldron took her hand and, kissing it with unusual tenderness, held it firmly between his own as he continued.

  “From your description – the grinding noise as well as the fact that the carriage appeared to break up before it began to fall – I suspected from the beginning that someone had tampered with the vehicle. Unfortunately, it disintegrated so completely that it would be impossible to ascertain now what precisely had been done to it to ensure that it did not arrive at its destination. A journey through the Alps, with its long, winding route through the mountains, offers an almost unique opportunity to cause an accident which is likely to kill everybody on board and leave no clues as to the cause.

  “But, even before this, I confess I was intrigued by your story – or what fragments you allowed to escape from your watchful tongues. You were from the outset a fascinating family – so remarkably good-looking, so clearly Quality - although you denied it – so close and protective of each other – and such a curious combination: a mother with three more or less grown-up children, one of whom has clearly suffered damage of some sort, fleeing from a nameless scandal and all – apart from Phyllis, who does not altogether understand – convinced of the impermeable stain of some family shame for which I immediately suspected you were none of you responsible.”

  By this time, it was not only Cecilia who had some inkling of what Lord Waldron had discovered and how nearly it concerned them.

  “What precisely are you saying, my lord?” Endymion asked.

  “You say you wished to make my cousin your wife almost from the first moment of seeing her; I wanted to make your sister mine,” the Earl said, “but I knew, from my conversation with her that first evening after you had all gone to bed, that she would never consent because she considered herself tainted in some way. We both agreed, by the way, that there was no hope at all of you being permitted to marry Helen and determined to do our best to prevent you from forming an attachment to her.

  “I fell in love with Cecilia the moment I saw her face at the window and wanted to help in any way I could. It seemed to me that she was a fair maiden in distress, although I don’t suppose she likes my saying so for I never met a female so determined to do everything herself. It didn’t take me long to realise that, if I offered her my hand and heart that first evening, she would reject both with withering pride and that the best help I could provide would be to reinstate you in Society.”

  “Are you making this up?” Cecilia interrupted.

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  “No.”

  “Then why have you never declared any of this before but choose to do so with two witnesses?”

  “You seem to have forgotten that I did mention it very early in our acquaintance; you brushed me off. After that, I realised you would give any reiteration short shrift if I could not first convince you of my earnestness. In any event, I am explaining the reasons why I took what you clearly consider an unnatural interest in your family and why I was determined to lift the shadow under which you all live. Bear with me.

  “At first, I was not of course in the least interested in the Merdles. Their part in your story only came to light when I began to investigate your antecedents. I was, as I say, suspicious of the cause of the road accident immediately. When I discovered who you were – although you did not seem to know the whole – everything became a lot clearer.”

  “Who we were – are?” Endymion asked. “I may be very slow, but I am still not altogether certain where this story is leading, although you have aroused my suspicions now.”

  “I think your sister has guessed.”

  “She’s sharper than I and spent longer at school.”

  “Oh, Dym,” Cecilia said. “You are being quite extraordinarily dim; perhaps it is because you do not want to know the truth.”

  “Tell me then.”

  “You know how we have kept changing our name,” she began, adopting a style of narration almost as obscure as the Earl’s. “We have been called Mott, Moon, Mole – I can hardly remember half of them although they all began with M-O - and now we are Moss. Sometimes we have had a second, hyphenated, name attached. It’s a wonder we have managed to keep up with it. Our real name, our father’s name, was Moate.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because one of the things Mama insisted on packing when we left Sussex was her marriage certificate. I read it and knew that she was Maria Carlotta Nalozzi and that Papa was Walter James Ferdinand Moate and that they married on fifth April 1791. I knew, therefore, that I was the first of their legitimate children, born a year later. You were only thirteen when Papa died, which was why neither she nor I told you. Indeed, neither she nor I have ever discussed the date of her marriage nor the fact that James and Walter were born before it took place. Since I knew nothing about the rest of the Moate family or about the Viscountcy, I saw no reason why our brothers being illegitimate mattered. Of course, now that my lord has explained the history, I can see that it does.”

  “My God!” Endymion exclaimed, looking horrified.

  “Indeed,” Waldron said, taking up the story again. “You are the rightful Viscount Merdle.”

  “What? Are you telling me that I have won tens of thousands of what I presume must all along have been my own money?”

  The Earl seemed to find this amusing for he began to laugh immoderately.

  “I wonder if Merdle will find it so hilarious,” Endymion said when he had sobered enough to speak.

  “Will he be left with anything?” Cecilia asked.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Waldron told her. “It depends how his father left it. The estate will be entailed so will mostly come to the heir, but he may have specified a legacy of some sort to his second son. It is usual to do so; that is how my Uncle Charles has come by his property and on which he has been living all his life.”

  “So the money I have won from him – will that in fact have been his own and not my patrimony?” Endymion asked.

  “Yes – I believe so, which makes it likely that he will be unable to pay the whole. He will be bankrupted.”

  “Oh, that is hard!” Cecilia exclaimed. “He has lost everything he believed he had – and even that which perhaps he did not know he had!”

  “Precisely,” the Earl agreed.

  “You are too soft-hearted,” Endymion told her. “Or is it that you are more attached to him than you have so far admitted?”

  “He is my uncle!” Cecilia pointed out. “And yours too! Do you have no family affection for him?”

  “No, none at all. Pray don’t forget that he tried to kill us all. Your affection is misplaced, dearest Cis!”

  “I own I had forgot that, but there is no proof of his evil-doing, is there?”

  “No,” Waldron said, “although I daresay that, given time, I will be able to find it.”

  After that, the Earl insisted they break up their cosy little foursome in the tiny room and return to the party for, he pointed out, people would begin to think it decidedly odd that they had all disappeared.

  They found, when they emerged, that the man who had claimed to be Viscount Merdle had left and, since there was no sign of his son, it was to be supposed that he had gone with his father.

  There was still, of course, the newly revealed scandal to be outfaced but Lord Waldron, keeping a firm hold on Cecilia’s hand, led her on to the dance floor. If people noticed – and pr
esumably they did and had no doubt been talking about the scandal while the four were absent – they gave no sign when the pair joined the set that was forming. His lordship was sufficiently respected to silence the whispering and to reinstate the Mosses – in reality, of course, the Moates.

  Endymion led Helen out and the rest of the evening passed agreeably enough, although, after that dance, he left Helen with her cousin and Cecilia while he sought out those of her creditors who were still at the party and retrieved her IOUs.

  On reaching the Earl’s house, the two couples separated although not before Endymion had requested an audience with his lordship in the morning.

  As Cecilia mounted the stairs with Helen, the Earl came into the hall and begged a word with her in private.

  “What, now, my lord? Is it not late?” she asked, arching her brows and looking down on him from her position a few steps up the stairs.

  “Yes, now. I will not keep you long, but I have something which I do not wish to wait until morning to say.”

  “Very well. Good-night, Helen.”

  “Good-night, dear Cecilia.”

  Cecilia came down the steps and suffered herself to be led into the saloon which looked out across the lake. The water was still and dark but for a bar of moonlight striking across it. Above, the sky was full of stars and an almost full moon.

  “You were annoyed with me earlier,” he said to her back, for she had gone to the window, where she stood gazing out across the water.

  “Was I? It was a momentary irritation.”

  “I don’t think it was – and, what’s more, I believe you to have been justified in taking exception to what I think you took to be an ill-timed declaration.”

  “I was surprised, that is all, and a little uncertain as to what you meant.”