The Lady in Gray

by Patricia Oliver

  Nicholas let her talk, knowing that he was listening to a pack of lies. “Did you not enjoy Lady Grenville’s famous currant tarts?” he inquired innocently. “I imagine you stayed for tea.”

  “Of course,” Angelica answered instantly, confirming the earl’s suspicion that his wife had not been anywhere near Grenville Hall yesterday, either to paint or to eat currant tarts.

  “And now you must leave me, Nicky,” she said petulantly, confirming another of the earl’s predictions. “I can feel one of my megrims coming on.”

  Nicholas bowed without a word and turned on his heel. As the connecting door closed behind him, he knew that he could never again trust in his wife’s innocence. She had lied to him deliberately about spending the afternoon at Grenville Hall. And Nicholas did not need Tom Gates’s report to confirm this lie. He could confirm it himself.

  The earl and his mother, who believed in spreading her patronage evenly amongst the gentry, had been at Grenville Hall that afternoon, and had sat for nearly an hour drinking tea and eating currant tarts with the family.

  The Countess of Longueville had not been there at all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Portrait of a Pirate

  “Oh, do hold still, Captain,” Sylvia said for the fourth time that afternoon, stepping back from her easel and squinting through half- closed eyes at the canvas. “Unless you really wish to have a crooked nose, sir. That would be no trouble at all, but I rather think it would spoil the overall effect of piratical elegance.”

  “I had no idea pirates were elegant creatures,” the captain replied with a laugh. “The only ones I ever met were a ragtag, motley crew, sadly in need of a bath. Bad teeth, too, most of them. Something to do with their diet, I have heard. And too much Blue Ruin, of course.”

  “You have actually met real pirates?” Sylvia gasped, her attention momentarily diverted from the captain’s nose. “How thrilling! Although I suspect they are not quite as romantical as Mrs. Rad- cliffe paints them in her novels.”

  “Quite the opposite, my dear. Scurvy rogues, every last one of them. Just as soon cut your liver out and fry it for breakfast as give you a civil good-day.”

  “Surely you exaggerate, Captain,” Sylvia protested with a laugh. “And I trust you are, because the Sutherlands have a real live pirate in their closet, and we like to think him respectable. Although Papa had some difficulty in maintaining that fiction when my brother John discovered the record of his hanging at Tyburn in the 1680s.”

  The captain’s eyebrows rose, and another smile lit up his face. “It is good to know that I am not the only black sheep of your acquaintance, my dear,” he remarked lightly. “My father disowned

  me when I took to the sea. He tried to convince me I had sullied the honor of the family by dabbling in Trade. Family tradition had me condemned to the clergy; can you imagine anything more ludicrous?”

  Sylvia shook her head and smiled. “What a waste that would have been,” she agreed, her vivid imagination picturing the handsome, red-headed captain in a more dashing role. “1 think you might have made a wonderful pirate, though. Dressed in a red silk shirt, studded belt, and swinging a scimitar as you boarded a fat Spanish galleon bloated with chests of gold.” She paused and eyed him speculatively. “Have you ever considered—”

  “No, I have not,” the captain broke in emphatically. “A life of crime rarely leads to anything except the gallows or a knife in the back, lass.” He grinned at her, quite charmingly, Sylvia thought. “You must rid yourself of these romantical notions, my dear. Just consider your own family. Did your ancestor not end his career at the end of a rope?”

  “Yes. At least that is what the records show. But he was only a relative by marriage, I will have you know, sir,” Sylvia clarified. “Actually, he was a brother to our famous Lady Giselda, that intrepid lady who came over from France to wed the fourth earl. Jacques Dubois his name was, and he acquired Whitecliffs as a dowry for his only sister. Doubtless with pilfered Spanish gold,” she added with a twinkle.

  “Doubtless,” the captain echoed wryly, settling back into his pose again. “But I have no fancy for hanging just yet. Besides, pirates do not wear red silk, nor do they swing scimitars around except in novels from the Minerva Press. Is it not time for tea?” he demanded a short while later.

  “I am not quite finished for today, Captain, so you will have to wait for your tea.”

  An hour later, Sylvia sighed and stepped back to view the results of her afternoon’s work. She glanced at the captain and noticed he was watching her, a faint smile curving his sensuous mouth. Sylvia returned his smile. For some reason she felt entirely at ease with Jason Ransome. Although he obviously admired her, she felt she could trust him, something she had not done for a long time with any gentleman but Giovanni.

  As she gazed at the half-finished portrait of the captain, Sylvia suddenly realized that with a few changes to the angle of the cheekbones, the length of the red hair, the color of the eyes—from

  Jason’s deep blue to John’s hazel—she might easily turn the captain into her brother. The resemblance was uncanny, and Sylvia realized why she felt so comfortable with Jason; he was an older, more experienced version of John.

  Quite unexpectedly, Sylvia felt her throat tighten. She blinked back tears, angry at her lapse into maudlin sentimentality.

  “This brother John you mention, I take it you miss him,” Jason remarked softly, as if reading her thoughts.

  “Oh, yes,” she murmured raggedly. “John and I were as close as siblings can be. My mother had four girls, and then when she thought there would be no more, John and I came along. We are twins, you know, and did everything together. He was the one who insisted I take lessons with his tutor. Father was furious, naturally. He has no use for educated females.” She laughed shortly.

  “Some men never learn,” Jason said gently, his eyes reflecting his compassion.

  “You sound just like John,” Sylvia confided incautiously. “That is exactly the sort of thing my brother would say. Oh, how I wish ...” she began impetuously, then broke off, mortified at the foolishness of her inchoate thought. “But that is impossible.” She laughed shakily. “And I have only myself to blame. Had I not been so young and naive as to think ... as to believe ... to b-believe that gentlemen m-mean what they say—”

  She stopped abruptly, quite unable to continue, and distressed that she had revealed more than she intended to a complete stranger.

  “If it is any consolation, my dear, I sincerely doubt you were to blame for anything,” the captain said in a low voice. “And you can take it from me that age is no guarantee against naivete, Sylvia. Only consider poor old Nicholas. Was ever a man so taken in by a beautiful face?”

  Startled at the bitterness in the captain’s voice, Sylvia stared at him, her own despair momentarily forgotten. “You knew the countess well, then?”

  Jason’s expression turned harsh. “Oh, yes. I knew her, all right. Nicholas and I went up to London together for the wedding. His brother, Stephen, was still alive then, and he and I stood up with Nicholas.” The captain paused, and Sylvia could see that his thoughts still lingered in the past.

  “I understand it was the event of the Season.”

  “Ah, yes, it certainly was that. Nothing was too good for his Angelica. Even Prinny was there.” He grinned mirthlessly. “The Longue villes have a long history of service to the Crown, starting with that Norman barbarian Henri Morlaix, the first baron, who came over with the Conqueror and received the Castle as a reward for his loyalty. The new countess never tired of hearing tales of the Normans; she was forever twitting Nicholas about his French ancestor, the first baron. The English had the last word, of course, for Morlaix soon became Morley. Angelica was French herself, you know, and it amused her to remember that her countrymen had conquered the English and become kings here.”

  “No mean accomplishment if what the history books say is true,” Sylvia remarked, more interested than she cared to admit in the eve
nts that had shaped the more recent history of the Castle. “I wonder if the new countess saw herself as continuing that first Norman’s invasion?”

  Sylvia had meant the remark as a jest, but the captain’s reaction warned her that she had trodden on sensitive ground.

  “I do not doubt it for a moment,” he said shortly. “No Englishman was safe from Medusa’s reach. Even poor old Stephen loped off after a month to join the Army. He considered retreat his safest option. After all, she was his brother’s wife.”

  “Medusa?” she repeated. “I understood that the young countess was stunningly lovely.”

  “Oh, she was that, all right,” the captain admitted. “But so was Medusa before she allowed her beauty to go to her head. She dared to compare herself to one of the goddesses—Athene, I believe it was. Unwise of her, of course, but there you have it. The irate goddess turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, and any man who ventured to gaze upon her lovely face was turned to stone.”

  “Petrified by beauty,” Sylvia murmured, an idea for a painting already forming in her mind. “I shall have to put that on canvas.” “Precisely, my dear,” the captain confirmed with a cynical smile. “And for the stone faces, just copy every male phiz up and down the Cornish coast and you will have a pretty fair notion of what happened when Angelica DeJardin set foot in Longueville.”

  The Earl of Longueville lounged very much at his ease on the brick terrace at Whitecliffs. He had arrived more than hour since, his excuse a hand-delivered invitation from the dowager to a small dinner party she had planned for three days hence. Instead of riding on to Helston, where he had told his mother he had business with a tenant, Nicholas had allowed himself to be talked into staying for tea.

  This had not been entirely untrue, he told himself as he settled into a comfortable garden chair; he had merely omitted to clarify that the business was not urgent. Old Joel Dudley over on Laurel Farm was getting along in years and had asked permission to bring his youngest boy back from the shipyards in Falmouth to help him with the heavy work. He might have told Tom Gates to take care of the matter, but the lane to Laurel Farm ran past the Sutherland estate, and he was curious to see how Lady Sylvia’s new painting was progressing.

  If he was honest with himself, Nicholas thought wryly, he would have confessed that he actually wished to see the red-haired lady herself. But he was not ready for such honesty, which seemed like a highly dangerous admission to make. Far too revealing, furthermore. Nicholas had no wish to expose himself to any misunderstanding on the part of the lady. It was not his heart he was offering—had that organ not been wrenched from him by a perfidious wife?—but his protection. That should more than satisfy any female in Lady Sylvia’s tarnished circumstances.

  Nicholas smiled at his hostess. He suspected that Lady Marguerite’s fine hazel eyes had seen through his little ploy, but what did he care? What objection might she conceivably raise to an arrangement that she herself had enjoyed for years with the Italian sculptor?

  “I had forgotten what a mass of rose-bushes you have here at Whitecliffs,” he said, amused to find himself talking of gardening. “They seem to do so much better here than at Longueville. Yet the soil must be identical.”

  Lady Marguerite laughed, and Nicholas was reminded of her niece in one of her milder moods. “It is not only the soil, my lord,” she explained. “Roses are like women; they flourish almost anywhere with the right care.”

  The earl glanced sharply at his hostess. What had she meant by that odd remark? Females as roses was a common conceit among poets, of course, but Nicholas had little use for such hyperbole himself. At least, not any longer. There had been a time, ten years ago, when he had indulged in such foolishness with his wife, comparing her to flowers far more exotic than a simple English rose. Angelica had seemed so perfect, almost untouchable, he had imagined in his infatuated state. All too soon he had discovered the flaw in his private paradise. Angelica had not been untouchable, and his paradise had been private no longer.

  For the longest time, he had refused to admit what his eyes were telling him, Nicholas recalled. But gradually Jason’s veiled warnings and Stephen’s precipitate departure from Longueville had taken on sinister significance. Isolated incidents began to add up to more than idle rumors.

  Then one afternoon he had visited the ancient chapel to inspect a window one of the gardeners had reported broken. As he approached, the unmistakable sounds of female giggles issued from the Norman relic. Incensed that some serving wench and her swain had dared use his family’s holy place for their tryst, the earl had dismounted and strode inside.

  The dimness of the interior had prevented him from seeing more than two figures, apparently embracing before the altar. But to his surprise and dismay, the woman who emerged after a prolonged pause had been his wife.

  “Who was in there with you, Angelica?” he had demanded, prepared to tear the scoundrel limb from limb.

  An insouciant masculine laugh had fanned his fury into white hot intensity. Then, like a bucket of cold water, a languid voice had identified the gentleman.

  “None but her own brother, my dear Nicholas,” Jean-Claude DeJardin drawled as he sauntered out into the sunlight, his handsome features set in their habitual sneer. “Have we offended your so English sense of propriety, mon frere ?” The Frenchman snickered under his breath, his cold eyes raking the earl insolently from head to toe.

  Angelica rewarded this impertinence with a rich chuckle. “Do not be such a tease, cheri," she remarked with deplorable levity, the earl thought. “Cher Nicholas only concerns himself with protecting my virtue, Claude, and you would not wish a husband to do anything less, now, would you, cheriT'

  DeJardin had shrugged his immaculately tailored shoulders, encased in one of Scott’s finest creations—one of the many the young Frenchman had casually ordered from the earl’s own tailor. “Enfin, cherie, if it pleases you to be forever censured by an English watchdog,” he murmured half under his breath so that Nicholas could not be sure he had actually heard this additional rudeness.

  The earl had stared closely at his wife, but Angelica had returned his gaze steadily, as if daring him to find fault with her. Nicholas had been quite unable to do so, although his first impression that the couple in the chapel had been engaged in anything but pious entertainment stayed with him for an uncomfortably long time. He was able to shake it off only by reminding himself repeatedly that Angelica and Jean-Claude were, after all, brother and sister. What harm could there be?

  The earl’s uneasy memories were dispelled by the welcome appearance of Hobson with the tea-tray. In any case, Nicholas mused, watching the deft way the butler transferred the tea-cups from tray to table, Angelica no longer had the power to torment him. She was safely laid to rest in the Longueville cemetery, a short distance from that Norman invader with whom she had so often identified herself. As for Jean-Claude, after being informed that he was no longer welcome at Longueville, he had attempted a vicious but futile campaign of blackmail against his brother-in- law. Then DeJardin had disappeared, and the earl hoped never to set eyes on him again.

  A very different kind of laugh from the one that had invaded the earl’s thoughts from the past echoed in the doorway. His eyes were drawn to the sound, and he was greeted by a sight that drove all unpleasant thoughts from his mind. The young woman who stepped onto the terrace was as unlike the sultry Beauty he had loved and lost that nightmarish summer as any woman could be.

  What had Jason called her? An English rose? And no female he knew fit the description as well as Lady Sylvia Sutherland as she trod lightly across the terrace beside the captain to join the group at the tea-table. Her translucent skin was tinged with color—not the heightened red of nervousness, but the muted pink of good health, enjoyment of life, and inner joy. She fairly exuded happiness, and in a sudden flash of insight Nicholas realized that at no time in his brief marriage had he experienced the happiness he had expected to find with a wife. Passion, yes, there had been a surfeit of
that, but not the kind of happiness he saw reflected on Lady Sylvia’s face as she laughed gaily at something his friend was saying.

  Nicholas felt a dull ache for all the lost years of his life. All those years spent in India, far from his Cornish homeland, from his beloved Longueville. Far from females like this one, whose English beauty was unblemished, unenhanced by pots of rouge and lotions. Whose laughter was filled with joy, not seductive overtones, whose smiles were devoid of calculation and cynicism. Whose respect for the marriage vows would be as steadfast as his own had once been.

  Suddenly realizing where his maudlin ruminations were leading him, Nicholas jerked his thoughts back to the present. He must be mad indeed to allow himself, even for a moment, to think of Lady Sylvia in those terms. A discreet liaison with her would be a pleasant distraction from his present celibacy. A summer of delightful dalliance before he removed to London for the Season to begin his inevitable search for a second wife. Nothing more than that.

  He rose to his feet as the laughing couple came to a halt beside the tea-table.

  “My lord,” Lady Sylvia said, greeting him with a smile of such sweetness Nicholas was momentarily at a loss for words. “I must inform you that your pirate friend has turned out to be a most difficult subject. Not only does he jump up without warning to stride about the room like a caged tiger, but when he is sitting down, he will not keep his head still. I swear he will have a crooked nose if he does not have more care.”

  “Pirate?” Nicholas echoed, noting with some alarm the teasing glance the lady threw at the subject of her criticism. “So her ladyship has discovered your secret ambition to fly the Jolly Roger and plunder Spanish galleons, has she?”