The Lonely Earl

by Vanessa Gray

  Dismissing the unwelcome thought of his daughter’s fears, the earl set his mind to the first of many tasks he had allotted himself for the first rainy day. Boxes sat in his library, their wooden tops sheared off, leaving the books packed as they had come from London. Hugh found the smell of pristine leather bindings irresistible. Should he unpack all at once? Or should he choose one here and there and dip into it as though he had a year of leisure?

  In the end, he did a little of both. The first crate contained some of the newer works — Hugh’s taste was catholic, but he drew the line short of Mrs. Radcliffe’s effusions. Rather, he filled some gaps on the shelves that his father had left empty. This first shipment held Edward Gibbon’s “scribblings,” as the Prince of Wales had dubbed the six volumes. By the time Hugh had emptied the bottom layer of the first crate, he came to a stop. Lifting the Life of Johnson in one hand, he balanced its attractions with the slender volume titled Lyric Poems — by some unknowns by the names of Coleridge, and… what was it? Oh, yes, Wordsworth — in the other.

  He set them both down. He would have to have more shelves built, and perhaps some of his grandfather’s selections removed — not sold, of course, but boxed and put away upstairs.

  At length he stood bemused, knowing that his mind was not on this renovation of his library. His, now — not his father’s. It was difficult to realize the extent of his responsibilities now. Besides making acceptable additions to the Crale library, he must give his mind — someday — to adding to Crale Hall itself. In each generation some improvement was expected to the fabric of the structure.

  Now he would have to think of that — but not this month. Perhaps this would be a task for his bride to undertake. Something to keep her, whoever she might be, busy and not too tediously attached to himself.

  He set the books down on the desk. He faced the fact that all morning a delightful face swam between him and his books, between him and renovations at Crale, between him and everything he wanted to do today. A delicately boned face with a very slightly tipped nose, and hazel eyes full of strong disapproval. How could he exorcise Faustina’s face from his waking thoughts?

  There was an obvious way. He could follow his wayward inclination wherever it led. But he dared not. Never again would he let himself be beguiled by a woman — women were fickle, selfish, full of vice and turbulence, and he would not cast his emotions adrift upon such a stormy sea.

  He could not merely avoid her. In the course of events, he would be required to meet her often in public. Perhaps she could be driven to avoid him? The prospect failed to cheer him.

  His restlessness drove him out of the library and into the corridors of his house. He peeped into the drawing room, the morning room.

  He inspected the state dining room where Queen Elizabeth had once dined.

  He rested his hand lightly on the panel covering the secret hiding place where the Jesuit priest Father Campion had found shelter in this great Protestant house, thanks to the compassion of the Crale family.

  He moved down the long gallery, where a few good portraits dimly lit by lancet windows hung like shadows of the past. He strolled aimlessly past the window in the chapel, smashed when the Royalists took Exeter in 1643, and restored by a later Crale.

  He must concentrate on his duty, on bringing himself up to the mark, for he was sadly lacking in interest in Crale Hall. Perhaps, he mused, he would not be alive to finish anything he started now, not with a lunatic poacher, if not worse, in the grounds.

  He quickened his steps, and turned a sharp corner in the corridor. He ran headlong into Vincent, who was coming silently from the other direction.

  “Good God, Vincent!” cried Hugh. “I never expected to see you in this dingy part of the house.”

  “No,” said Vincent in a curious tone. “Nor did I expect you.”

  It came to Hugh then that he had not seen Vincent for nearly two days. A stairway rose directly behind Hugh to the upper floors, and Vincent could easily gain his rooms without ever seeing his brother.

  Or, thought Hugh, he could leave his rooms without notice as well.

  If Vincent were avoiding him, then Hugh would very much like to know why.

  “Sorry to hear about your accident,” said Vincent. “How are you getting along?”

  “Your information is not quite accurate,” said Hugh. “I myself could have told you that I was not hurt. Only Revanche.”

  “Oh, Robbins said…” Then it occurred to Vincent that in civility he should certainly have inquired of Hugh himself. “But I did come to ask you, only you were not in your rooms.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” said Hugh gravely. “By the way, do you know where Maddox is?”

  Vincent was visibly startled. “M-Maddox? No, why should I? What do you want him for?”

  Hugh raised an eyebrow slightly. “I sent word for him to come to see me yesterday. He has not come. I wonder where he is. That is my sole concern — at the moment.”

  Vincent’s face twisted. “I suppose he thinks you are going to dismiss him. I can’t blame him for not showing up.”

  The boy, thought Hugh, is aggressive, testy. Hugh’s curiosity grew apace. “Now, why, I wonder,” he said, casually blocking the way so that Vincent could not gain the stairs, “would Maddox think I should dismiss him?”

  Vincent stared at him. “Robbins says you think Maddox should have caught the poacher the other night. The poachers are pretty smart, you know — if Maddox is at the edge of the woods, then they are in the home coppices.”

  “And was Maddox at the edge of the woods the other night?”

  Vincent turned sullen. “How should I know?” Then, as though the words were forced out of him by strong emotion, he added in a rising voice, “It’s your job to keep track of your underlings, isn’t is? Not mine! You came home to take over the place — well, then, take it over! Mrs. Robbins always liked you best, and she’s happy, for one.”

  Hugh’s tone went silky, a sure sign of danger, which Vincent did not recognize. “And for another?”

  “Pittock, of course,” stormed Vincent. “He would never tell me what was going on. Just made his reports to my father — sick as he was, he would always see Pittock. And after Father died, then Pittock sent his reports abroad.”

  “I see,” said Hugh. “And did you tell Pittock that you wanted to learn how to run the farms? I must believe that was your intention in wishing to become involved in Pittock’s affairs.”

  “Yes! And you’ll never guess what he told me!”

  “In that case,” said Hugh dryly, “I won’t try.”

  “He told me that you were the heir, and not I.”

  “True.”

  Vincent had gone too far to notice that Hugh was increasingly cool, speaking now only in monosyllables. Vincent had carried an abrasive load of fancied and real wrongs for too long, and now he could cast them all on the man he considered the author of his troubles — his half-brother.

  “You,” he said with heat, “have no business here. You should never have come back.”

  “But I did.”

  “Why didn’t you stay in Belgium? We were getting along fine without you.”

  Hugh half-turned away, and then, with an onrush of something like pity, he turned back. “Pittock was only doing his duty, you know.”

  “But,” argued Vincent, “if something had happened to you, I wouldn’t have known anything about running the estate. I wouldn’t be prepared to assume the title or anything…”

  Disastrously too late, Vincent realized where his mad rush of accusation and complaint was taking him. He was helped to this realization by a full look into Hugh’s glittering eyes, so dark that they appeared black. Just so had Vincent’s father looked, more than once, and Vincent had no wish to repeat those experiences. “I … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken so.”

  “That is true,” said Hugh, “but since you have, I think we will have it all. If something happened to me, you said. I know, of course, that you would
be glad to see the last of me. Even when you were in leading strings, you made that clear. You wish I were dead. Then” — Hugh forced the words over the regret that gripped him — “does your ambition reach so far as murder?”

  Vincent paled, and his eyes lost their focus. “You think … The words strangled in his throat. He made as though to rush past his half-brother to the stairs, but he was stopped by an iron grip on his arm.

  “Do I think you were in the coppice the other night?” Hugh surveyed him. “To be honest, I think not. I should hate to believe that a son of my father’s was such a poor shot at so short a distance.”

  Vincent tried to speak, but his lips were too dry even to form the words.

  “But one thing I do know,” said Hugh softly, “is that I believe you know who did stand in the bushes that night.” A smile touched his lips but did not reach his eyes. “And one day, Vincent, you will tell me. I hope you will come of your own will to me with the name, but, one way or another, you will tell me.”

  Whatever Vincent might have said was forever lost. A figure appeared at the end of the corridor, from whence Vincent had come. The portly outline could only be Robbins.

  “My lord,” he called, “Maddox is in the kitchen.”

  “Send him to the library, Robbins,” said Hugh, with little trace of his anger in his voice.

  He loosed his hold on Vincent’s arm. “Perhaps you will wish to accompany me to the library, to see that I do not dismiss Maddox out of hand.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not really. You may wish to remind me of how Maddox saved your life,” he added, as they turned back toward the main wing of the house. “And how he was crippled in your behalf. I pray you do not. At the moment, I am not sure I should be grateful for such a service to the family.”

  “Hugh!” It was half wail, half protest. Hugh ignored it.

  Maddox waited, hat in hand, in the library. He contrived to look exceedingly crippled, with all his weight on one bowed leg, the other with the foot drawn up and wrapped around the calf of the lame leg.

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” said Maddox as soon as Hugh entered, “but I didn’t get word you wanted to see me until just this morning.”

  The game warden shot a comprehensive glance at Vincent before he stood, all attention, before the earl.

  Hugh asked briskly, “What did you find out about the poacher?”

  “I couldn’t believe my ears,” said Maddox, “when Werdle told me that your lordship had been shot at. Just couldn’t fathom it, you might say. Right so close to the house! I haven’t got my inquiries under way, my lord, seeing as how I just heard about the mishap this morning.”

  “This morning?” said Hugh.

  “Aye. I was far out of reach of the news, my lord. Past the brink of Bosk Hill, where I have suspected for some time that there was old Timothy from Trevan making a nice little thing along of some rabbits in there. So I just thought, Til take my blanket and a bit to eat, and just wait until old Timothy shows up.”

  “And did he?” inquired the earl, thinking to receive confirmation from old Timothy of Maddox’s presence some miles away.

  Maddox shook his head sadly. “No, my lord. It was all for naught. He never showed up. And if I hadn’t been so misguided, I might have been right here in those bushes myself. Catching whoever dared to shoot, my lord.”

  His face was full of regret, and nothing else. But the earl had never liked him, and just now he was acutely conscious of that unjust prejudice.

  “But I think I can say this, my lord: all those poachers that I know were right and tight in their beds. I’ve heard that, just this morning.”

  “Including old Timothy,” said Hugh, forcing a smile.

  “To my dying day, I will regret that,” said Maddox.

  Hugh appeared satisfied. Glancing at Vincent, he saw the boy’s face still pale. Something surely was on his mind, still, from that argument in the corridor. He must probe more deeply into Vincent’s troubles. Little as he liked it, Vincent was still as much Crate as he himself was, and therefore Hugh had a duty toward him, as well as to Althea.

  Vincent sidled to the door and slipped through it without a word of farewell. Maddox seemed to settle a bit He had more to say.

  “I just want to tell you, my lord, how glad we all are to have you back at Crale,” Maddox told him. “And you don’t need to fash yourself about young Mr. Crale. I will take care of him now, just as I have all along. That boy will come to no harm as long as I’m alive.”

  Hugh was revolted at such a blatant reminder of the debt the Crales owed the unprepossessing Maddox. A terrible accident it had been, even though Hugh’s recollection was somewhat hazy from the years. Much more vivid was the crippling that same day of the great black horse his father had given him for his birthday. The crippling of the horse resulted in his being shot by Werdle, to put him out of his misery. But Maddox…

  Vincent had crawled to the house, that day, in a state of shock so severe that they could get nothing out of him. A search party had gone out for Maddox, the only name Vincent spoke, and found him, horribly mutilated. His leg had been saved by the best doctors in Exeter, and Hugh’s father had always recognized his great service. Hugh didn’t need to be reminded of his duty.

  After Maddox left, Hugh sank into a brown meditation. Why was it, he wondered, that duty was such a harsh taskmaster? Coming back to Crale, for example. He felt he must, and yet old wounds were awakening. Old scars covered injuries not yet healed.

  And marriage — only the realization that the Crale line must continue could bring him to another such disaster. But this time, he vowed, he would build in certain safeguards to protect himself. The first of these would be to make sure that his emotions were not involved. Not this time. Not ever again.

  And duty was insistent about keeping Maddox on, about taking care of the half-brother he had always despised. Even about making overtures toward winning his own daughter’s affection.

  No — a man would be much happier without the promptings of duty!

  He sighed, and rose. Better blow out the cobwebs, he thought reluctantly, and left the house and its burdens behind him. He walked aimlessly through the park at first, feeling the wet grass slide beneath his feet, a faint mist on occasion falling on his bare head.

  Without knowing quite how he got there, he found he was retracing the steps of the other night. Just here he had feared again for Revanche, when the horse stumbled, on their way to the stables.

  And just here was where he left the coppice and came out into the clearing. Where, if the poacher had still been hiding, he could have seen his unwitting target, loosening the tight saddle girth to ease Revanche, and taking the road to the house. Why had the unknown assailant — and Hugh was convinced it was no poacher — held his fire, then?

  Without hesitation, Hugh now plunged into the shrubbery. The brush was no more than half a dozen feet over his head, but it was heavily leaved and formed as protective a screen as any searcher for secrecy could wish. Only half a dozen feet off the track, he turned and, looking back, could see no trace of the cleared road.

  Where had his assailant stood? Hugh explored. At length he came to a spot that he would choose if he were planning to settle down to wait. The clearing was no more than four feet across, but the ground was grass-covered, and there was a substantial tree to lean against.

  He was kneeling, facing the tree, searching with hands in the wet grass for he knew not what — some sign of patient occupation, he supposed, no more than two days before — when suddenly he felt a crawling prickle along the back of his neck that suggested he was not alone.

  An aroma came to him — one, he recognized with relief, he knew well. An aura of well-used soap. Only one man he knew was as fanatical about soap as he himself.

  “All right, Dawson,” said the earl quietly. “No need to shoot.”

  “My lord!” exploded Dawson in relief. “I don’t even have a gun. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “mayb
e I should take to wearing one. Never needed one among the Frenchies, but here at home in peaceable England, you might say, comes the thought that a man might well go armed. Even in his own house.”

  Hugh rose to his feet and brushed off the clinging wet grass from his knees. “In his own house?” he repeated softly. “Are you telling me something, in your not so devious way, Dawson?”

  “No, sir, I am not telling you anything you do not already know.” Dawson stood stiffly. Hugh’s glance told him that Dawson was truly worried, and laboring under the necessity of not overstepping his place. And Dawson did speak truth. Hugh knew his faithful man did not limit the lengths to which Vincent Crale would go to wreak malice upon him. But he dared not, quite, agree.

  “Come now, Dawson,” said Hugh with his rare winning smile. “We must not make it obvious that we are more than usually alert. A mad poacher is much easier to live with, as a proposition, than … anything else. Don’t you agree?”

  “Well, my lord, put that way, I can’t say no.”

  He stood looking down for a moment, and then seemed to come to a decision. “I was out here yesterday, my lord, and I looked the place over. I want to show you something.”

  He stepped toward a spot where the turf was slashed, and a piece of bare ground showed. “Big enough for a footprint, my lord,” said Dawson, “if the rain hasn’t washed it out.”

  Hugh peered at the sky. “Not much rain yet, but there will be. What have you got, Dawson?” Struck by something in die pose of his servant, he crossed the intervening space and looked down at the spot where Dawson was staring.

  “It’s not there, my lord,” said Dawson. “And not rained on either, in my judgment”

  “What was it?”

  “A footprint. The sharp edge of a boot sole, sort of heavy on one side, like…”

  “Let me see.” Both men knelt on the grass. “See here, Dawson, the mark of fingers — someone has smoothed this away.”