The Last Earl

by Lara Blunte

  She forbore from asking Lady Ware questions that might bring back too many memories, and would instead get information out of Jack or Charles Dalton when they came to call.

  "Lord Halford will be quite the topic of discussion when he returns," Catherine remarked to the brothers. "Gone eight years!"

  Charles looked discomfited and started fidgeting, "It is understandable, I think, that after what happened…"

  "A gruesome affair!" Jack interrupted, crossing his legs and grimacing. "Enough to turn anyone mad!"

  Catherine addressed Charles, "Did you have the impression that he was mad?"

  Charles was taken aback by the line of questioning, "No!"

  Jack laughed, "Charles, you find one of England's richest peers in a Russian steppe wielding a rifle and you think him sane!"

  Charles flushed, as he despised gossip or calumny. "Lord Halford was not a mercenary soldier, as he later told me. He was going about some business of his own. And in spite of the...odd circumstances, he gave me no reason to suspect that he could be even slightly deranged. He was in perfect control of his faculties."

  "But he does have the mad blood of the Stowes," Jack insisted knowingly. "Do you not remember, Charles, the scandal there was in London when he slapped Lord Finley across the face in public?"

  "Jack!"

  "And it was Stowe who was carrying on with Finley's wife, not the other way round!" Jack let out a cackle. "He slapped the man he was cuckolding as if he were a girl! And Finley did nothing about it!"

  "Jack!"

  "Oh, Captain Dalton," Catherine laughed. "Don't be so old-fashioned. Remember, I was brought up in France."

  Charles resolutely avoided imagining what France was like. Certainly, if Lady Ware had been present, Jack (whom he must chastise later in no uncertain terms) would not feel as free to impart very inappropriate information to a young lady. However, he had understood that Lady Ware was incapable of telling Catherine what to do or of imposing anything on her, and the girl acted very much like the head of the family, indeed as if she were twice her age and married.

  "What amazes me is that he bothered to save Charles' life," Jack continued.

  "He did save my life, Lady Catherine," Charles said, ignoring his brother. "And naturally I am thankful to him."

  "The real question," Catherine went on reflectively, "is not why he left, but how he escaped being murdered that night."

  Jack readily opened his mouth to answer, ignoring Charles's frown. "Oh, it's clear he was meant to die as well. His horse threw a shoe and he had to sleep at some inn on the way. Never did a horse shoe bring so much luck!"

  "Luck!" Charles cried, his cheeks slightly purple now. "How can you call anything connected to that day luck?"

  Jack shrugged innocently and pushed his bottom lip forward. "Well, he is alive ─ and seems to have a charmed life because even a bullet to the chest in the Crimea didn't kill him."

  "But is he really the last Earl of Halford?" Catherine interrupted. "Wasn't there a cousin?"

  "There was, Edmund Lawson," Jack contributed. He had a deep and accurate knowledge of any family with a long name and a large fortune. "Son of Bianca, the estranged sister of the old Earl. He would inherit the fortune and the properties, and even the title. But this Edmund died in India two or three years before the tragedy. Joined the East Indian army as a lieutenant through a commission the Earl purchased for him, caught a bad fever and was carried away." Jack leaned back, crossing his legs the opposite way. "The whole race is cursed, cursed, cursed!"

  Everything that she learned only made Catherine's curiosity sharper. She would sit near the fire in the parlor until she started nodding into sleep, and then go to her room with a sense of growing impatience. She had never liked to wait for anything.

  He finally arrived on the one night when she was profoundly asleep, worn out by the vigil of former days. She heard nothing, and only knew he had come when her young maid brought her the morning tea.

  "Madame, he is here!" Henriette said excitedly in French, opening the curtains. "His Lordship has arrived!"

  Henriette, a blonde good-natured girl with perpetual red cheeks, had been Catherine's maid since both girls were fourteen years old and she took enormous interest in everything that concerned her mistress. Her loyalty to Catherine was complete, and through the young lady Henriette lived a life of borrowed excitement and glory. Catherine would never have considered going to England without Henriette, and Henriette would never have dreamt of staying behind.

  Catherine sat up in bed, immediately awake. "But when?"

  "In the middle of the night. Her Ladyship had to send for Dr. Forsythe, he was very poorly! She has been in his room all night, tending to him."

  "Have you seen him?" Catherine asked eagerly as she leapt out of bed.

  Henriette nodded enthusiastically, "Oh, oui, je l'ai vu!"

  "Well, what is he like?"

  Henriette bent over in laughter. "Vous verrez!"

  Catherine grabbed her robe and started putting it on. "What do you mean, I'll see? Tell me!"

  "Non, vous verrez!"

  Catherine lunged towards Henriette, who escaped laughing, "Vous verrez, vous verrez!"

  "Tell me what's wrong with him!"

  There was more helpless laughter from Henriette, especially when Catherine stopped across the bed with a disappointed face. "I know, he's fat! Or too hairy! His teeth?"

  Henriette was near tears. "I won't say anything!"

  "I hate you!" Catherine ran out of the room in slippers and velvet robe and went to look at the closed door of the room where the stranger lay. She could hear nothing when she put her ear to the door, but it suddenly opened and her mother came out, looking very tired.

  "Shhh!" Lady Ware put her finger to her lips and closed the door behind her softly. "He is asleep, thank God. Dr. Forsythe has just left and says he is not in danger. It's just exhaustion."

  "You must let me help you care for him," Catherine said, caressing her mother's arm.

  "No, child," her mother replied with some severity. "It is not a task for an unmarried girl! He is a grown man and you do not even know him!"

  In the days that followed Lady Ware was adamant on that point and even Catherine's iron will could not overrule hers. Adrian was far too weak to receive any visitors, and only Lady Ware and Dr. Forsythe ever entered his room. Her mother would, without any prompting, badger her with bulletins about his health: he was better, he had eaten, he had had a relapse, he had slept badly, the doctor had prescribed laudanum, he had a fever, he had spoken a little to her at last.

  Both Charles and Jack Dalton, on the other hand, were glad of the excuse that the Earl's presence offered to redouble their attentions to Catherine. They came every day, hats in hand, to have news of the invalid, which Lady Ware, when she had the time, would impart at great length.

  "The Earl saved my life, y'know," Charles would tell his brother before leaving his house. "I must ask after him. You needn't come, if you don't want to!"

  But Jack would give his mustache a final twirl in front of the mirror and say, "I must thank him too, cher Charles! After all, you are my brother."

  Catherine was so impatient that she thought she would disobey her mother and take up Adrian's tray or his medicine. But for some reason she dared not do it. Her mother was practically never out of the sickroom, and looked so worn out and worried that she was not heartless enough to disregard her prohibition. Not only that, but she vaguely felt that the man who slept behind the closed door a few feet from her own bedroom was not like the men she had met so far, and the thought held her back.

  However, she did not want to waste another minute thinking that the tragedy and his disappearance might have given Adrian some allure that was wholly undeserved, to then find out that he was just like any man.

  No, she would not wait another day! She thought about it for so long that she became convinced that he was some sort of monster, and that she would never forgive herself for having wasted so m
uch of her time thinking about him, simply because she had nothing else to do.

  At night she armed herself with courage and waited until her mother went to bed. She entered the room, holding a single candle. She knew he was still taking laudanum and would probably sleep on, but if he awoke, she would think of a probable excuse to be there.

  The only light in the room came from the fireplace near the bed, which threw fitful shadows on the sleeping form of a man, his head lying in dark contrast against the white pillows. She held her breath as her feet moved over the carpet, but he slept on his back, his face turned towards her, one hand resting on his stomach.

  As she approached, her eyes never left him. She saw that his hair had been smoothed away from his forehead and that there was a scar like a half moon near his left eye. In his sleep he had tossed the bedcover, revealing part of his chest and one long leg.

  She thought he was the handsomest man she had ever seen.

  So this is the mad Earl of Halford, she told herself.

  Catherine looked closely at him for another minute before silently going back to her own bed.

  Five. The Earl

  Two days later, Henriette woke Catherine to the breathless news that the Earl had disappeared from his room in the middle of the night.

  "Ill as he was!" Lady Ware lamented. "It is exactly what he did, all those years ago. Where can he have gone?"

  Catherine helped her to sit down and tried to comfort her, "Do not fret, mama. He cannot be very far. We will find him."

  "But it is so cold out there! And he was not himself, with all the medicine and the fever. He was quite delirious! Where can he have gone?"

  "I think I know."

  Lady Ware looked at her daughter with eyes as big as saucers. "Tell me, then!”

  "Mama, do you not see? He must have gone to Halford. It is what he would do, as soon as he had any strength."

  "I cannot believe it! To that place, to suffer and relive again the horrible moment when they —" she stopped with a sob. "I will not believe it! Why, he would stay as far from it as he could!"

  "Then he would hardly have come to Lytton Hall, mama. Now that he is so near his own home, he must go there again."

  Lady Ware was crying disconsolately, "What a terrible thing for him. How he must be suffering! He has said nothing of it to me all these days, as if it had never happened! I must go after him! Heaven knows what may have happened!"

  "Stay, mama. I shall go," Catherine said, getting up. "I can ride there in a moment with a groom, and take a horse for him. I shall not be long."

  As she went up to her room Catherine reflected that, strangely enough, this was not a task that she relished. If she were right, and Adrian had gone to Halford, he must not be in a very cordial mood. And, though she was curious, she did not like to be caught infringing someone else's privacy; still less the privacy of a handsome stranger who was, by all reports, insane.

  Yet she prepared herself carefully, putting on an emerald green riding habit, and rode towards Halford, followed by a groom who pulled another horse by the bridle.

  When she and the groom arrived at the castle, she was newly struck by its magnificence. Lytton Hall was a beautiful house, but Halford Castle was unusual. Built in light colored stone, its faintly exotic dome and delicate spirals contrasted with the elegance of its façade somehow creating an exquisite whole. She remembered Lady Ware saying there were more than three hundred rooms in it.

  She instructed the groom to wait by the front court and went round to the kitchen, which was the entrance she had always used as a child. Seeing that the door was ajar, she pushed it open. It creaked on its hinges, as if complaining that it should be disturbed twice in the same morning. Catherine stood a moment at the threshold, feeling as though she were invading a shrine. Her eyes slowly became used to the dimness inside, and taking a deep breath she walked in.

  The kitchen was ghostly with its empty hearth and the covered shelves, table and chairs. She walked through it rather quickly and found the stairs that would lead her to the hall.

  Only the light from the exquisite stained glass windows above illuminated the main hall. The ceiling was very high and it curved repeatedly, as in a Romanesque cathedral. The family crest was engraved in stone on top of the front door: a leopard walking, holding a rose over seven castles. If she remembered correctly, it meant to depict the victory of Halford ancestors over treacherous lords and, it was said, their allegiance to the house of Lancaster.

  The great chandelier was covered by a white cloth as big as a ship's sail. She glanced down the corridors that split from the entrance to the right and left: she remembered there were ten drawing rooms, five to each side, each more superb than the other, but the doors to them were closed.

  Spiders had made themselves at home, though in the cold only the remains of their webs were left, looking white and flimsy as she wiped them aside with her riding stick. The very air seemed to hang still in expectation as she moved slowly forward. Her skirt made whispering sounds behind her, as if she were being followed by outraged spirits talking among themselves.

  She wondered which way to go, until her eyes fell on footsteps that had been recently left on the dusty floor. They led up the marble staircase and irresistibly she began to follow them, placing her own feet where she assumed Adrian's had been just a little while before. She followed the steps until she found herself in the largest bedroom, which had been her aunt's.

  The windows were wide open to the chilly air, showing the glittering river in front of the castle and what seemed like an endless expanse of white. A pile of snow had been blown inside by the wind so that the floor, the vanity table, the mirror and chair were covered with it. The bedroom was like a tableau from a fairy tale; it had a strange beauty, but it made her shiver, and not only with cold. It would not have surprised her if her murdered aunt had appeared, pale and frozen, to speak to her.

  "Good morning."

  Catherine gasped and turned around. Adrian was standing at the door, wearing no jacket or coat in spite of the cold, only breeches and a white shirt.

  Now that he was awake she could see how tall and strong he was, how intense his dark blue eyes; she could see that he had another scar, a small nick high on the bridge of his nose. She had never seen a living thing as striking as he was. She felt less certain of herself than she had ever been, but she made an effort to speak, realizing that, for once, she had been caught at a disadvantage.

  "I am ─ I am your Aunt Helen's daughter."

  He gave a crooked smile. "Kitty!"

  Her eyes widened. "My name is Catherine!"

  Adrian had begun advancing towards her. She forced herself not to move.

  "Aunt Helen has talked of nothing but you, and how much you wanted to meet me," he said as if he knew everything that she had been thinking for days, but he couldn't know. He stopped within an inch of her. "Though it's true that 'Kitty' is no good. A beautiful cousin like you ought to be a 'Kate'."

  He was looking at her very closely, and she tried not to waver under his gaze. There was quite a bit of irony in his eyes, but she had found her composure.

  "I'm not your cousin, or in any case it would be to a very distant degree," she said with apparent calm. She looked behind her at the open window and the snow. "I didn't mean to intrude, and I am sure you can take care of yourself, but is it not very cold? And you have no coat, and there's no fire."

  "I feel warm," he said almost dreamily. Catherine understood with some alarm that he had been drinking, and that the flame that burned in his eyes had been put there by wine.

  "Perhaps you have a fever?"

  He shook his head, then he took her hand and put it on his forehead. "You see? No fever. You can report back to Aunt Helen. She has been very kind, but she shouldn't worry."

  Catherine was shocked that he should touch her without permission, but she said nothing as he moved past her and walked towards the vanity table. He looked at either side of the window. "The curtains had to b
e taken down. They were never put back."

  She felt the hairs on the back of her neck begin to rise. He couldn't be speaking of the murders!

  "It was here that she was first stabbed," he said in a matter-of-fact voice. "And then she went...there." He pointed to a spot near Catherine and smiled at her. "I'm sure the room is not as interesting to visitors without the blood all over it."

  Catherine's hand flew up to her mouth, "You're mad!"

  "So they say." He shrugged. "But you, on the other hand, are quite valiant. Not afraid of ghosts?"

  "How can you?" Catherine cried, and ran out of the room.

  As she sailed down the marble steps she could see that he had walked to the banisters slowly to watch her, as if to make sure that she was really leaving. She marched over the stone floor of the hall and pulled the door of the house open with all her strength until she was outside again. She rushed down the steps and, ignoring the groom's concern she climbed on her horse rode away furiously. The groom and the other horse followed.

  When she arrived at the Hall her mother came towards her to know what had happened and trembled when she saw how pale Catherine was. "Oh, Kitty, what has happened? Have you seen him? Has he done himself some mischief?"

  With great difficulty Catherine held back the bitter recriminations against Adrian that sprang to her lips. He had treated their concern for him as vulgar curiosity and behaved unlike any gentleman she had ever met.

  For her mother's sake, she controlled herself and said with as much equanimity as she could muster, "He does not wish to be disturbed, mama. Leave him to himself."

  "But how, Kitty, it won't answer! He's very sick!"

  Catherine walked past her mother and began going up the stairs, mumbling. "Not with anything that can be cured!"

  Six. A Meeting

  It was not long before everyone knew that the mad Earl had locked himself in the castle and saw no one. Lady Ware herself, in her immense bewilderment, was the first to spread the news to the women who came to visit her, who wasted no time publishing it abroad.