Silverbridge

by Joan Wolf

  “The kitchen is in the basement,” he said. “It was much easier to use the original than it was to install a new one upstairs.”

  “That is understandable,” Tracy said, mimicking his carefully polite tone.

  She followed him down the staircase that led to the green marble hallway, where he opened a door revealing yet more stairs. He switched on a light, and they went down another flight, ending up in a very large but surprisingly cozy kitchen. When Harry entered, his two spaniels arose from the sofa under the window and came to meet him, tails wagging eagerly. As he greeted the dogs, Tracy looked around. Besides the sofa and table and chairs, there was a large oak sideboard displaying an assortment of china, soup tureens, and a big bowl of fruit. The stove looked modern, as did the refrigerator. The countertops were the same color oak as the table. The wood floor was darker.

  The spaniels pattered out into the back hall.

  “I usually come down before I go to bed and take them out,” Harry said. “I’ll just let them out now, if you don’t mind.”

  He disappeared into the back hall, and, a moment later, Tracy heard the sound of a door opening and closing. He returned almost immediately without the dogs and went directly to the refrigerator, murmuring, “I’m sure there must be something here.”

  When he withdrew his hand from the refrigerator it was holding a plate covered with plastic wrap. He said expressionlessly, “Mrs. Wilson left some stewed chicken for Meg, but she must have eaten with the movie people.” He looked at Tracy. “I can warm it in the microwave if you like.”

  “I don’t want to eat Meg’s dinner,” she said. “Some cheese and crackers would be fine.”

  He was looking at the plate in his hand. “Meg isn’t going to eat this. It will only get thrown away. You might as well have it.”

  “How can I possibly refuse such a gracious offer?” Tracy said.

  He shot her a look but didn’t reply. Instead he popped the plate into a large microwave oven that sat on top of one of the counters and expertly pushed some buttons.

  “Would you care for something to drink?” he said with exaggerated courtesy. “We have some fizzy water that Meg likes. Or I can offer you a glass of wine.”

  “Fizzy water will be fine,” Tracy said. She went to sit at the oak table, putting him in the position of serving her.

  He didn’t seem at all discomposed by this maneuver. He opened the bottle top, poured the water into a glass, and brought it to her. The microwave beeped, and he went to remove the plate, which he brought to her as well. “Hold on,” he said, and went to get a knife, fork, and spoon from the sideboard drawer.

  As Tracy lifted the fork she saw that the kitchen flatware used at Silverbridge was heavy, solid silver with a coronet engraved on the handles. The dinner plate, on the other hand, was the kind of modern stoneware that one could put in the microwave.

  “Oh,” he said. “I forgot.” He went back to the sideboard and returned with a heavy white damask napkin, which he spread ostentatiously on her lap. “There. I believe I’ve done everything expected of a good innkeeper.”

  Tracy was annoyed. Somehow he had got the best of her. She ignored him and began to eat.

  He hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure what to do, then he took the seat across from her. Tracy glanced up from her food and found him looking at her. His open collar revealed a strong, slim neck and an elegant but firm jaw- line. She quickly looked down at her plate, speared a piece of potato, and said offhandedly, “Do you have any ghosts here at Silverbridge, my lord?”

  “Are you one of those ghost-busting Americans who go around collecting haunted houses, Miss Collins?” There was amusement in his voice.

  “No, I am not.” It was difficult to make an American voice sound as chilly as an English voice, but Tracy managed it. “I am merely trying to make conversation with a very rude man. However, if you prefer to be silent, that is perfectly all right with me.”

  She shot him a scorching blue look and ate the piece of potato on the end of her fork.

  For a moment she didn’t think he was going to reply. Then he rubbed his hand across his eyes, and said stiffly, “I beg your pardon. I have been rude. I have a great many things on my mind, but it isn’t fair to take my bad temper out on you. Please forgive me.”

  The words were okay, but the tone was wrong. Tracy picked up her glass, looked at him, and for a brief second their eyes met and held. An electric current flashed from her toes to the ends of her still-damp hair. She mumbled, “Of course,” and quickly returned her gaze to her food.

  She heard him shift in his chair. “We don’t have any ghosts that I know of. They are supposed to lurk in places where they met a violent death, isn’t that so? Most of the violent deaths in my family were met on the battlefield, not here at Silverbridge. For such an old house, we are remarkable spirit-free.”

  Tracy moved a piece of celery to the side of her plate. She kept her voice casual as she asked, “Do you know which ancestor of yours lived here during Regency times?”

  “That would be Charles Oliver, the tenth earl,” he replied.

  Charles.

  Tracy returned her fork to her plate with an unsteady hand. She felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “You’ve gone quite white.”

  She waited a moment until she was certain she had control of her voice. “I’m fine.” She wanted a drink of water but was afraid her hand was trembling too much to pick up the glass. “You must be very familiar with your ancestors. You certainly came up with that name in a hurry.”

  He leaned his shoulders against the back of his chair. She noticed that his eyebrows were the color of his hair, but his lashes were as dark a brown as his eyes. He said, “I’ve always felt a kinship to Charles. He fought in the Peninsula during the war against Napoleon, and he managed to learn the elements of classical riding while he was in Portugal. It was he who built the indoor riding ring here at Silverbridge. Actually, I have a portrait of him hanging in my office.”

  Tracy reached for her glass and realized it was empty. She asked if there was any more water.

  “Certainly.” He went to the refrigerator, opened another bottle, and returned to pour it into her glass. She drank half of it.

  “Is that chicken too salty for you?” he asked.

  “Not at all. It’s delicious. I’m just very thirsty. It must be because my sleeping schedule is all out of whack,” She put her glass down and stabbed another piece of chicken with her fork.

  For a long while the hum of the refrigerator motor was the only sound in the room. It was Harry who made the next attempt at conversation. “So you ride yourself, Miss Collins?”

  The refrigerator motor switched off as Tracy answered. “I had a wonderful Thoroughbred mare I used to show when I was in high school. When I went away to college I retired her to a big farm in Virginia, and I’ve done very little riding since.” He actually appeared to be interested in what she was saying, so she continued. “I rode hunt seat, of course. That’s what equitation is in America. But I have always loved to watch dressage. It comes the closest to the Greek myth of the centaur of any of the riding disciplines, I think.”

  For the first time in their brief acquaintance, he regarded her with approval.

  A single sharp bark came from outside the kitchen door. “Excuse me,” he said as he got up to go and let the dogs back in. They trotted into the room, their nails making scraping sounds on the bare wood floor. Marshal went to take a drink from his water dish while Millie jumped on the sofa and made herself comfortable.

  Harry returned to the kitchen table. Tracy had finished the food on her plate, but he didn’t appear to notice as he sat back down. She wanted to keep him talking to her, so she resumed the conversation about horses. “Whom did you study with?”

  He replied gravely. “I was fortunate enough to spend a year with Nuno Oliviero in Portugal.”

  “Oh wow,” Tracy said, genuinely impressed. “I’ve
only seen pictures of him on horseback, but even in a still picture you can see that he was something.”

  “So you have heard of him?”

  “Yes, I have heard of him,” she replied. “I have also heard of Podhajsky. And I once saw Reiner Klimke ride Ahlerich to music at the National Horse Show in New York.” Her tone softened. “I actually cried, it was so beautiful.”

  He folded his arms on the table. “Klimke is my hero. He competed internationally, yet he always remained faithful to the ideals of classical horsemanship. He was able to marry the competition to the art, and that is something I have been trying to do.”

  His brown eyes sparkled in the light of the overhead lamp. The slight line that had drawn his brows together when first they came into the kitchen had vanished. He looked enthusiastic, and devastatingly attractive.

  Tracy felt her back stiffen as she resisted his too- potent appeal. When she spoke her voice was crisp. “By all accounts, you have been successful in doing that. You took a third at the Olympics, which is fabulous, considering the competition from the Germans and the Dutch.”

  He nodded politely and noticed for the first time that she had finished eating. “Would you like something else? I believe there is a pudding in the refrigerator.”

  “No thank you.” Tracy did not share the English passion for pudding.

  He picked up her empty plate and carried it to the sink. Tracy followed with her silverware and glass and watched as he placed everything neatly on the drain-board. She waited, curious to see if he would attempt to wash up.

  He didn’t. He turned to her, and said, “Meg and Mr. Melbourne must have returned by now. Perhaps we should go back upstairs.”

  Tracy hesitated, then brought out the question she had been dying to ask for the last twenty minutes. “Before we do, my lord, I wonder if I could see that picture of Charles Oliver you mentioned.”

  He gave her a curious look. “Why on earth should you be interested in Charles?”

  Tracy was not an actress for nothing. She laughed, and said lightly, “It’s the Regency thing. I’ve grown rather interested in the period, and I’d find it fascinating to see a picture of the man who lived in this house at that time. But if it’s going to be a bother, forget it. We can go upstairs.”

  “It’s not a bother,” he said. “You can see it if you like. Come this way.”

  Tracy followed him into a narrow hallway, which was closed off halfway down, and Tracy guessed that, like upstairs, only a portion of the basement was heated. He opened a door on the left side of the hall, flicked on a light, and motioned Tracy into his office.

  It was a shabby and comfortable-looking room, with glass-fronted bookshelves, several file cabinets, an old leather sofa and two chairs, a large mahogany desk with a computer and a faded red-and-blue Oriental rug on the floor. Over the stone fireplace on the left wall hung the full-length portrait of a man in military uniform. Tracy knew him immediately. It was the man she had seen on the bridle path, the man she had seen in the drawing room with the girl who looked like her.

  Charles Oliver had been painted full-length, wearing his uniform and posed against a backdrop of rocks and trees that suggested the landscape of the Iberian Peninsula. He was hatless, with a sword cradled in his arms and a cloak hanging dashingly off one shoulder. The embroidery and the gold buttons on his uniform were gorgeous. He stared out upon the room with a careless supremacy that was simply breathtaking.

  “Lawrence did it,” Harry said.

  “He looks like a lord of the universe,” Tracy said in a choked voice.

  “He was,” Harry replied. “He was born an Oliver, which meant he had a knowledge in his bones and blood and brain of his own superiority over 99 percent of the rest of the world.” He turned to look at her. “That’s what it was like to be an aristocrat in Britain during the last century, Miss Collins.”

  “You sound as if you wished it was still that way, my lord.”

  “It would be nice.”

  “He looks like you,” Tracy said in a low voice.

  “Yes. I know.”

  With the faces of the two men in front of her, Tracy could see that the resemblance between them was as uncanny as she had first thought. Charles’s hair was a brighter gold, his nose was more aquiline, and his eyes were not quite as dark a brown. But the two men could certainly have been twins.

  “Was he married?”

  He gave a short laugh. “He was the Earl of Silverbridge. Of course he was married. He had two sons, the eldest of whom succeeded to the earldom after he died.”

  Tracy had several other questions she longed to ask: Was his marriage happy? Did he have a young cousin he employed as governess for his children? But she could hardly expect the present Lord Silverbridge to know the answers to those questions, and he would be exceedingly startled by her asking them.

  They were standing side by side facing the picture, and even though Tracy’s eyes were focused on the man in the portrait it was the man beside her whose physical presence she felt with an almost frightening intensity. She had a sudden, wild desire to throw herself into his arms, to feel the length of his body pressed against hers, to feel his mouth covering her own…

  She closed her hands into tight fists, pressing her nails into her flesh.

  “It’s almost time for the news,” he said. “We’d better be getting upstairs.”

  Tracy agreed, so shaken by her reaction to him that she didn’t notice the sudden hoarseness that had come into his voice.

  9

  Meg and Jon were indeed in the morning room, and Tracy went to sit beside Jon on one of the sofas. Harry turned on the television and a BBC report of a meeting of the European Union that was taking place in Brussels came on. Ebony appeared out of nowhere, jumped on his lap, and he began to pet her as he watched the show.

  Tracy could feel the tenseness in Jon’s body as he sat beside her. She glanced at him once out of the side of her eyes and his facial expression was as rigid as the rest of him. He really doesn’t like Lord Silverbridge at all, she thought.

  When the program was over, Meg said, “Before I forget to tell you, Harry, Tony called. He’s coming down tomorrow, and he’s going to stay for a while.”

  Harry stopped petting Ebony. “What about his job?”

  “He says they don’t keep him on a schedule,” Meg said airily. “He can do pretty much what he wants to do.”

  Ebony meowed loudly, and her owner went back to stroking her. “I must apologize, Mr. Melbourne, but I am afraid that you will have to share your bathroom with my younger brother while he is here.”

  “That is perfectly fine,” Jon replied, but the stilted tone of his voice did not match his accommodating words.

  The earl appeared to notice Jon’s chilliness and actually made an effort to bridge it. “Would you care for a nightcap, Mr. Melbourne, Miss Collins?” he asked. “I can offer you sherry, brandy, or whiskey.”

  “I’m afraid that alcohol gives me a headache,” Tracy said, “but please do go ahead without me.”

  “Mr. Melbourne?”

  Jon glanced at Tracy, to see if she was going to leave. When it became apparent that she was not, he replied, “Thank you. Sherry would be nice.”

  Meg said, “I’ll have brandy, Harry.”

  The earl’s brows drew together as he regarded his young sister. Her returning blue stare was wide and innocent. After a moment, he shooed Ebony off his lap, stood up, went over to a beautiful cabinet of inlaid satin-wood, took a key from his pocket, and bent to open the cabinet door. As he poured the wine and the brandy, Tracy’s eyes moved irresistibly to the large oil painting that hung on the long wall between two windows. She got to her feet and went closer to examine it.

  She was still standing there when Harry joined her, a glass of sherry in his hand. “I see you have found another of our family portraits, Miss Collins.”

  “Yes.” She was looking at the full-length portraits of two teenage blond boys, with a sleek greyhound between them. Th
e background scene was recognizably the lawn at Silverbridge.

  “Those are Charles’s two sons,” her host informed her. “The one on the left, William, was actually the earl at the time the picture was done.”

  Tracy was acutely conscious of him next to her and stepped closer to the portrait to put more space between them. She gazed earnestly at the tall, slender, blue-eyed youngster who stood to the left of his brown-eyed brother.

  From behind them, Jon said, “He seems rather young to be an earl.”

  “Yes.” Lord Silverbridge turned to answer Jon. “His father was killed in a hunting accident when he was only thirty-four.”

  A stab of wild grief pierced through Tracy, totally surprising her. She closed her hands into fists and willed herself not to cry out.

  What is the matter with me? she thought, half in anger and half in fear, as she stood, rigid and breathless in front of the portrait of Charles’s sons.

  Lord Silverbridge continued speaking to Jon. “Charles Oliver was the earl who lived here during the period you are supposedly filming. Miss Collins was curious about him, so I showed her a portrait I have in my office.”

  Before Jon could reply, Meg complained, “You hardly gave me any brandy, Harry.”

  “I gave you enough,” he returned evenly. “You don’t have the body weight to tolerate any more.”

  Tracy forced herself to turn away from what had become a blurry picture, blinked hard twice, and faced the group behind her. She breathed slowly in and out, unnerved by her emotional reaction to Charles’s death.

  Jon was still sitting on the sofa, holding an almost-finished glass of sherry; Harry was standing four feet from her, holding a full glass; and Meg was sitting on the edge of another sofa, her glass empty.

  “You always blame everything on my being too thin,” she said, her face flushed with anger. “You’re always after me to eat and drink something disgusting. I should think you would be pleased to see me ask for more.”