The Noblest Frailty

by Patricia Veryan

  “What’s this?” asked Devenish, belatedly becoming aware that something was brewing. “Who needs help?”

  “Socrates!” wailed Mrs. Drummond. “My poor baby is lost, and Mr. Winters just stands and talks. And you sit! Will no one help the poor darling?”

  “Lord save us aw’!” The General snarled.

  Devenish promptly joined the search party, and Yolande again voiced her willingness to assist. “Famous!” Devenish nodded brightly, ignoring his own unease. Noting Tyndale’s dark frown, he added hastily, “But it is dusty in there, m’dear. Might spoil your pretty frills and furbelows.”

  “Pooh!” said Yolande.

  Side by side, they walked up the steps and into the Great Hall. As before, Devenish was seized by the same unreasoning terror. He felt the blood drain from his face and, dreading lest he betray his craven fears in front of the girl he loved, forced his rubbery knees to obey him, and walked briskly to the rear door. The corridor stretched out in a dim, chill menace. Clenching his teeth, he walked on and began to call the missing dog.

  In the Great Hall, Tyndale looked after his cousin, his lips a thin line of vexation. Yolande, uneasily alone with this disturbing gentleman, said brightly, “Why, it is not near so bad as I had feared.” She started forward. “Whilst we are here, we can find where the linens—”

  A firm hand seized her elbow, drawing her to a halt. She swung around, her heart thundering, her brows raised enquiringly.

  Craig said a soft but determined, “No. I thank you.”

  He was very near, and yet the grey eyes were devoid of expression, telling her nothing. Puzzled, she demanded, “But, why ever not, sir? Do you fancy me thrown into a pucker by a little dust?”

  “No, ma’am. But—I could not endure to see that very pretty frock sullied. Castle Tyndale is—is not yet ready to receive you.” Brave words, spoken with the most honourable intention, but his heart cried out to her, and he did not remove his hand from her arm.

  Yolande knew that she should leave. Hastily. Instead, she murmured a vague “Most … inhospitable … Major.”

  For Craig, all other matters and individuals had ceased to exist. “Why must you be so unforgivably lovely?” he thought yearningly. “I shall never see you again, my dearest, my darling girl…”

  Yolande did not know that her lips were slightly parted, her eyes dreamy, but she saw the emptiness in Craig’s eyes change to an expression of tender worship that took her breath away. It seemed to her that he was bending to her, but she neither moved, nor experienced the least desire to break this spell. The seconds slipped away and not one word was spoken. But two hearts met and the message they exchanged was as clear as though it had been shouted from the battlements.

  And then, somewhere close by, Devenish whistled for Socrates.

  Craig started. Dismayed by his shameful weakness, he said brusquely, “You had best wait outside—cousin.”

  His words restored Yolande to reality. Equally shocked, she turned from him and, without a word, walked across the Great Hall and onto the steps.

  Craig watched her go. He whispered, “Goodbye, my lovely one…” and, sighing, went to assist in the search for Socrates.

  The sky had become white. Yolande lifted a shielding hand against the sudden glare and walked as slowly as she dared down the steps and along the path. Her head was a whirl of confusion, impressions chasing one another at such a rate she could scarce comprehend them. She knew only that she was very unhappy, and that her once neatly mapped-out life had become a chaotic muddle. But she also knew that if she betrayed the slightest sign of discomposure, one of her aunts was sure to notice. She must bring her rioting emotions under control or there would be anxious enquiries with which she was in no state to cope.

  Luckily, however, Mrs. Drummond had other matters on her mind and, before her niece had quite come up with them, was calling anxious questions as to the whereabouts of her pet.

  “I can be of no help, alas,” Yolande answered. She summoned a smile for Mr. Donald, who stood courteously to assist her to sit beside her aunt. “I have been banished.”

  “Would not let you stay, eh?” The General chuckled. “Speaks his mind, does Tyndale. Fine young fella, but he bears little resemblance to his sire. You’ll recollect Jonas Tyndale, Donald?”

  “Aye,” said Mr. Donald, laconically.

  “Wild as any unbroke colt.” Sir Andrew nodded. “’Tis Devenish takes after him, had ye noted that, Donald?”

  “Aye,” said Mr. Donald.

  “He has nae a mean bone in his body,” observed the General, glancing covertly at Yolande. “But he’s a feckless, reckless laddie, just like his uncle was, and no good end will come to him does he not bend his energies to something better than—er—”

  “Than—murder?” interposed Mrs. Drummond, her anxious gaze on the castle.

  Yolande gave a gasp and dropped the lemon tart she’d just taken up. Mr. Donald directed a fuming glance at the bereft dog lover, and the General frowned, “Losh sakes, woman! What cockaleery nonsense are ye blathering at?”

  Alarmed, Mrs. Drummond prattled a defensive, “Why—why, what’s in the blood will out! And you yourself said that Alain takes after his Uncle Jonas!”

  “And what has that to say to anything? Jonas Tyndale may have been wild, and fought him a duel or two. But he didnae murder!’”

  “I seed a duel once,” Josie began, reminiscently. “It was—”

  “Of course not,” Yolande put in, fixing her aunt with a look of desperate warning. “You must be thinking of someone else, Aunt Arabella.”

  “No such thing!” retorted that lady huffily. “No one was supposed to know, of course, but I chanced to hear Mrs. MacInnes speaking of it to Sir John Gordon at the party last night. Jonas slaughtered poor young Stuart Devenish in cold—”

  “Aunt!” Yolande blurted, her heart hammering with dread. “You really must not say such things!”

  “Losh! What a prattle box!” Mrs. Fraser muttered scornfully.

  Mrs. Drummond’s gaze darted from Yolande’s white face and imploring eyes, to her sister-in-law, to the General’s intent glare. “Oh, dear! Have I … spoke out of turn?” she wailed.

  “Now—by God!” breathed the General. “Have I been kept i’ the dark all these years? Damme, but I’ll have the straight of it the noo! Be still, Yolande!” He turned glittering eyes on his friend. “Donald? D’ye ken aught o’ this? Caroline…?”

  Mr. Donald scowled at his plate. Mrs. Fraser put up her chin, pursed her lips, and finally announced that she was not, nor ever had been a gabble-monger!

  Walter Donald met Yolande’s distraught gaze and shrugged helplessly. “’Tis nae use, lassie. The word’s oot, I fear. Hamish MacInnes told me ’twas all over the county, yesterday, so—”

  “You mean it is truth?” Drummond’s voice cut like a knife through those reluctant words. “Jonas Tyndale murdered his fine young brother-in-law? And ’twas put out as an accident?” His face purpling, he sprang to his feet, Mr. Donald and the ladies following suit. “Now—blast it all! Why was I not told? Am I held too senile—too decrepit and irresponsible a gabble-monger to be trrrusted wi’ family secrets?”

  “You were in India,” Yolande said faintly. “Nobody knew—save a few servants. And—my mama, because she went to nurse poor Aunt Esme, but—”

  “Do ye tell me, girrrl, that my blithering idiot of a son fancied I must nae be trusted wi’ the truth?” raged the General, beginning to pace up and down like a hungry tiger. “That puir wee lassie! Her ain brother had murrdered her husband! ’Tis nae wonder she lost her babe! My Lord! What infamy! Stuart was in every way a fine gentleman, wherefore that wild creature Jonas hated him with a passion and judged him unworthy! How did he do it? Shot? Steel? Poison? I’d nae put it past the scoundrrrel! Well? Answer me, someone! The cat’s frae the bag—no use trying to wrap things in clean linen at this stage!”

  Josie had slunk away and was cowering behind the landaulette with the two footmen who ha
d speedily made themselves least in sight—and were listening eagerly. Mrs. Drummond, cringing before her father-in-law’s wrath, mumbled, “Jonas p-pushed him from—from the battlements! And old Mr. Tyndale banished him to the Colonies and forbade him ever to use the family name, or return to England. Which is the shameful reason his son used the name Winters!” Encountering Yolande’s seething glare, she wailed, “Now—never be cross, love! By what Mr. Donald says, your grandfather must soon have heard it, at all events. Better it should come from one of the family, than—”

  “Aye,” snarled the General. “And better yet had either of those two alleged gentlemen had the decency to have owned to it!”

  Mrs. Drummond gave a joyous cry as Socrates reappeared and raced to fling himself, shivering, into her eager arms.

  Tyndale and Devenish were also returning. Yolande’s attempt to speak was cut off by a savage, “You will be silent, girl!” And her grandfather, tall, austere, and rigid with anger, ground out, “So ye found the pesky creature!”

  “He found us, more like, sir.” Devenish grinned blithely. “Shot down the stairs like the devil himself was after—” The tension of the group conveyed itself to him, and he stopped speaking, looking uncertainly from one to the other. “Something wrong? Cousin Craig and I wasn’t gone too long, was we?”

  “Nae, laddie,” purred Sir Andrew with an awful smile. “’Tis only that I’m a mite fashed that ye’d address yon deceitful upstart as ‘cousin’!” His chin thrust forward. “The son of the man who murdered your sire!” he roared.

  Devenish stiffened. Tyndale, the colour receding from his face, snapped, “There is no proof of that, sir!”

  “Is there not? I am told that your father deliberately pushed young Stuart Devenish from the battlements of yon accursed castle!” The General threw up an authoritative hand to silence Devenish’s attempted intervention. “Donald”—his contemptuous gaze seared past Tyndale and Devenish—“I know you to be an honourable gentleman. If you will be so good as to tell me what you have heard I shall not question the truth of it.”

  Tyndale clenched his hands and flushed darkly, but said nothing. Devenish, his own colour rising, flung up his head and frowned, waiting.

  With a commendable paucity of words, Donald sketched the tragedy that had occurred here twenty-four years earlier. And all the time, Sir Andrew’s cold gaze drifted from one to the other of the young men standing so silently before him.

  “And that,” Donald concluded regretfully, “is all I know, Andy. I might add that I only learned of it yesterday afternoon.”

  “Would I had done so!” said Sir Andrew, shooting a brief, angry glance at him. “I’d have known better than to introduce these two—individuals—to my friends, or allow either of ’em to make sheep’s eyes at my granddaughter!”

  “Sir,” said Tyndale, with his share of hauteur, “I can understand your anger, but—”

  “Then ye’re in the wrong of it tae starrrt with! I’ve no anger towards you, Tyndale. Ye’ve my sympathy, rather. Aye, my deepest sympathy for the black shame that has been handed doon tae ye! No, sir! Ye’ll no speak till I give ye leave. Which is not yet!”

  Tyndale subsiding, though he was white and trembling with rage, the General turned his attention to Devenish, who fronted him pale but proud, a slightly condescending droop to his eyelids that served merely to further infuriate the old gentleman. “As for you,” snorted Drummond, “what manner of man is it cries comrade with the son of the rogue who killed his sire? I knew you for a wild young scalliwag. I dinna ken ye were withoot honour! Ye’re just like Jonas! Ah, ye’ve heard that before, I see! Well, ye’ve heard the truth on’t! And had I known ye for the man ye are, ye’d no hae set foot in my hoose! Either o’ ye!” Scarlet with wrath, he spun around to shout, “Verra well, you two skulking behind the coach there! Come and clear this away as fast as may be!”

  “Grandpapa!” Yolande began tearfully.

  “By your leave, ma’am,” Tyndale intervened in a voice she had never heard. “Sir, you have judged on hearsay. I shall not. Somehow I mean to prove my father innocent of intent to do murder. And Devenish—”

  “Will speak for himself, if you please,” said that individual his tone as cold as his cousin’s. “General, my initial reaction to the truth of my father’s death was very similar to your own. I have since discovered my cousin to be a gentleman. One to whom I probably owe my life. I mean to help him come at the real truth of the tragedy, but whatever comes of it has little to do with the fact that I have offered for your granddaughter, and been given reason to believe she—”

  “Well, she don’t!” Drummond overrode harshly. And loftily disremembering that two of his sons had married Englishwomen and that Yolande was half-English, said, “I would suggest that since ye’ve very little Scot in you, sir, you hie yourself back to your homeland and wed a girl closer to your own unfortunate background! Ladies—into the carriages, if you please!” With sublime arrogance and a spate of snapped-out orders, he marched towards his bay, but turned back, coming full circle to announce, “The bairn is innocent and can stay at Steep Drummond until you, Devenish, are ready to return to England. Then, you may come and collect her.” Not so much as glancing at Tyndale, he finished a brittle, “Alone!” and stamped to where the grooms were saddling his horse.

  For an aching moment, Tyndale looked squarely at Yolande, then he strode off to find Lazarus.

  Wrenching her gaze from his tall, erect figure, Yolande faced Devenish, who came to her side, one cautious eye on the General. “Whew!” he breathed. “What a devil he can be. Bad as my own tyrant, and worse! Understandable, I suppose, but—not entirely justified. Craig’s a good enough man, Yolande.”

  She smiled wanly. “He said the same of you. Dev, whatever shall we do?”

  He took her hand and gripping it with a confidence he could not feel, said firmly, “You will do nothing. Don’t let the old fellow scare you. He’s all huff and puff, you know. Chances are he’ll go off the boil and begin to think he was a shade hasty. At all events, I must stay with Tyndale—for a while at least. When I come to get Josie, you’ll—you’ll not back off from what you promised?”

  Suddenly, he looked very anxious. Yolande returned the pressure of his hand and said staunchly, “I’ll not back off, dear Dev.”

  Chapter XI

  THE SKIES DARKENED while Devenish and Tyndale were exploring the castle, and soon rain was pattering down, the gloomy weather and clammy chill adding to the forbidding aspect of the great, silent, high-ceilinged rooms.

  Scanning a vast bedchamber, the bed hangings and furniture swathed in Holland covers, Devenish remarked, “You know, coz, Yolande spoke truly—it could be jolly fine if you was to bring the place up to style. It would cost a mountain of blunt, though.” And he wondered which of the rooms his parents had occupied, and how it had all looked when his gentle mother was alive.

  “Might be worth it,” Tyndale mused. “I wonder what scared Socrates so badly.”

  Following him from the room, Devenish did not voice his thought that the scruffy hound was not alone in finding Castle Tyndale daunting. “A cat, probably,” he said lightly. “A black one, of course!”

  The next corridor they came upon was dim and very chill. Tyndale opened the first door, “Perhaps,” he agreed. “I must—” He stopped. A pleasant bedchamber was before them; a room of painted ceilings, soaring leaded windows, a graceful canopied bed, its blue silken hangings free of dust covers, and a fine carpet of great size laid down in readiness for the new occupant. A stone fireplace was between the windows, and hanging over the mantel the portrait of a lovely fair girl, looking down with proudly tender eyes at the infant she held: a tiny infant, richly gowned, and having tufts of golden hair and deeply blue eyes. There were portraits of Esme Devenish at Aspenhill, and an impressive family group at Devencourt, but this portrait had a rare charm and warmth and, captivated, Devenish gazed up at it. Beside him, Tyndale was again struck by the stark pathos of the tragedy. He gla
nced from the radiant joy in the face of his long-dead aunt, to the awed features of her grown son, and guilt fastened steel claws in him. Only a short while ago he had been standing beside this man’s love, wanting nothing so much as to sweep her into his arms and claim her for his own. The slightest encouragement from Yolande would have been all the impetus he would have needed to speak his love and try to win her from Devenish. Disgraceful behaviour in any man, but especially dishonourable in his own case, to attempt to steal the betrothed of a man who had already been so cruelly wronged, whether deliberately or accidentally, by the Tyndales!

  “Was she not lovely, coz?” breathed Devenish.

  “Indeed she was. I collect the caretaker must have been told you would wish to have this room. I suspect it was occupied by your papa when he—” It seemed to him that he heard something odd, and he stopped abruptly.

  Devenish seized his arm and hissed, “Listen…!”

  At first, the silence was absolute save for the faint drumming of the rain on the high Gothic windows. And then, faint and stealthy, came a soft shuffling, followed by a muted thump. Aghast, the two men looked at one another through a moment so intensely still that the air seemed to throb in their ears. All too soon another sound disturbed the quiet: an echoing wail, muffled with distance, but unutterably forlorn. The hair lifted on the back of Devenish’s neck. His eyes grew dim, and his breath was snatched away. Of a less imaginative nature, Tyndale’s calm was considerably shaken. Then, “Oh, good gad!” he exclaimed bracingly. “It must be that fool, Montelongo! Likely having the deuce of a time with our trunks and never dreaming his howlings would petrify us!”

  Very aware that he had betrayed terror, Devenish coloured up and disclaimed, “I trust you apply that term to yourself, Tyndale!”

  “Oh, but of course.” Tyndale held open the door and bowed with a flourish. “You were perfectly controlled.” But as Devenish sauntered past, he added mischievously, “A little green, perhaps.”