The Lonely Earl

by Vanessa Gray

  Mary’s fingers pleated the coverlet. “Yes. I am glad to do it, you understand. It is gratifying to know that my relations think of me when there is nursing to be done. They are kind enough to say they need me.”

  Ned found that he was again angry. This sweet, uncomplaining girl was clearly the victim of any of her family who did not wish to be bothered with illness. Send for Mary, they probably said. She’ll come, and we can all go on about our own affairs.

  Unfortunately, Ned’s strong feeling was reflected in his frown. Her voice faltered, and believing him bored, she reverted to a subject they could talk of more freely.

  “Is this part of Devonshire known to you?” she inquired, smiling at him.

  “No, my own place is in Dorset.” The talk moved into more general channels. He rose after a few minutes and said abruptly, “My cousin will come to see you soon. She asked me particularly to tell you.”

  Mary offered her hand in farewell, and Ned bent over it, his thoughts churning too vigorously to be put into words. Besides, he thought, he dared not distress her further. It was as well for them both that they did not know that Helen, from her chair in the drawing room across the hall, could, by merely lifting her gaze to the mirror over the mantel, see how unnecessarily long — in her opinion — Ned lingered over Mary’s fingertips.

  Ned went back to the Chase, making a determined effort to put his affairs into their proper perspective. First — clenching his jaw with determination — he would find out who was the traitor in their midst who was using his own yacht to land a Bonaparte spy on the shores of Devonshire. And he would find out, he had no doubt. He only hoped that it might be someone he did not know, but all signs pointed to a man he had begun to respect, and even, to his regret, like.

  But if Hugh Crale had so far forgotten his family traditions and his duty to England as to be a part of this nefarious scheme, he, Ned, would have no hesitation about unmasking him.

  But the gentle voice of Mary Bidwell intruded on his cogitation to an extent that might have astonished Mary, and even surprised Ned himself.

  Arriving at the Chase, Ned, wrapped in his own turbulent thoughts, was startled to discover that an air of agitation extended even into the entrance hall. A sort of quivering in the air, he thought after a moment’s consideration, a disturbance, as of some storm offshore, so to speak.

  Cocking his head to listen, he could recognize voices in raised pitch. A disturbance, after all, that he was more than ordinarily familiar with.

  Muttering a short word to himself, he climbed the stairs with a strong determination to deal with the problem once and for all.

  The center of the storm was located in the sitting room occupied by Lady Waverly. It was also, at this moment, occupied by Sanders, by Julia, by a harassed Bucky, and by Faustina.

  He stopped on the threshold. Certain signs told him irrefutably that Louisa was already in alt, a state that in the ordinary way would have been reached only after several hours. With practiced eye he determined that this was one of his mother’s more ambitious spasms.

  Beckoning to Faustina, he would have ascertained for himself the cause, but there was no need. Catching sight of her son, Lady Waverly clutched her bosom with a ringed hand extending from an expensively laced sleeve. “They sent for you, didn’t they? I knew I was dying. I told them all. I’m dying, Ned, and all because of my children!”

  The words came out in dramatic explosions, but Ned narrowed his eyes in disapproval. There was something more than her habitual tantrum for the purpose of obtaining her own way. Something must be seriously amiss.

  Manfully he tried to stem the tide. “Mother, now, what is all this? You know we are devoted to you. Julia dotes on you, and I—”

  “Julia!” The word came out in a screech. “Julia will be happy to see me dead. She has so little regard for my wishes … Well!” Lady Waverly sank onto the small settee, for once not disposing her skirts with care. This alone was sufficient to alarm her son.

  He raised his eyebrows at Julia. “Can someone tell me what has caused all this?” he inquired plaintively. “I cannot deal with this—” It was an unfortunate word.

  “Deal with this? Deal with this, did you say? Your mother is only someone that must be dealt with like an unwanted parcel…”

  Lady Waverly did not stop there. But her audience had turned its attention, with some slight hope, to Ned. “I perceive it is my sister who has caused this disturbance,” he said to his cousin. “Pray what has she done now?”

  He looked at Julia. But his sister could only stand with frightened eyes fixed with real alarm on her mother, who was now hiccupping.

  Faustina said, “I do not know precisely, but I think it has something to do with Mr. Talbot.”

  “Talbot?” Ned allowed his jaw to hang slack for a moment in surprise before he took a deep breath and said, “Now, Mother, this will not do, you know. I cannot conceive of Talbot’s going over the line. He’s a gentleman, and he wouldn’t—”

  “Don’t tell me about Mr. Talbot! Sanders, why aren’t you packing?”

  “For the reason that you didn’t tell me to pack,” retorted Sanders. She thrust a vial of smelling salts under her mistress’s nose, but Lady Waverly struck her hand away.

  “I’m telling you now! I will leave this house at once. All my hopes dashed, all my plans overset, and nobody cares! Well, Sanders, pack!”

  Sanders hesitated too long. Lady Waverly, with surprising speed — considering how near death she claimed to be — dashed into the adjoining bedroom and dragged a portmanteau from the wardrobe. “If you won’t, then I must. Remind me, Sanders, the minute we get back to London, you’ll be dismissed! Without a reference. You wouldn’t want the kind of reference I would give you, I warrant you!”

  Her family, as one with Sanders, crowded into the doorway to experience the unaccustomed sight of Lady Waverly packing her own bags. It was a simple process — she simply swept garments from hangers and crammed them into the open receptacle before returning for another armful.

  Faustina saw that it was time to intervene. “Now, Aunt Louisa, I shall send for the doctor, and he’ll make you comfortable in a moment. You really must not exercise yourself so strongly. You are causing us all such distress!”

  The open doorway into the hall had allowed Lady Waverly’s clear voice to carry, and the sound of it, if not the words, had reached the ears of Lord Egmont on the floor below. Firmly he had turned his mind off, even closing his library door against the sound, but eventually he decided it was time to take a hand.

  “What’s amiss?” he demanded bluntly from the doorway. “It sounds like an assembly of all the cats in Devonshire!” Faustina sent her father a glance full of desperate appeal. Manfully he responded.

  He stood in the doorway of Lady Waverly’s bedroom and surveyed the situation without apparent emotion. Finally he raised his voice. “Can’t find your sand pail, Louisa?”

  A nonsensical remark to Faustina, yet it reached Louisa as nothing else had done. She ceased, holding an armful of clothes in midair, and slowly turned to face her brother-in-law.

  “Wh-what do you mean?” she said in an altered tone.

  “The last time I heard screeching like that,” he told her, “was when you built a sand castle over your beach pail, and then couldn’t find it. I suppose you’ve done much the same this time — your own fault, probably.”

  Louisa Waverly drew herself up to her full height. “I am leaving this house. At once. Pray have my carriage brought around. I shall leave my clothing behind for Faustina to pack.”

  “Rubbish,” said Egmont brutally. “You’re in no shape to travel. Look at you. At the first inn, they would send for the constable. You’ll be lucky not to end up in some nursing home where nobody knows you.”

  It was going to work! Faustina silently blessed her father’s unerring judgment. But the issue was not yet settled. Louisa cried, “If the trip kills me, I won’t care. Julia would be happy. And all my life I’ve sacrificed for m
y children, only to be repaid like Moses!”

  “Moses?” said Egmont, briefly diverted.

  “All his children turned against him!”

  Ned offered, “I think she means Job, sir.” Egmont’s frown quelled him.

  “I do not pretend to know what idiotic fancies you’ve got into your head, but I do know that I shall not allow you to travel in such a state. It would not do, you know. Faustina, send for Dr. Harper.”

  With relieved obedience she scurried from the room. Behind her she could hear her aunt crying out, “First Faustina, who nearly killed me. She simply refused all the suitors I managed to snare for her.”

  Ned started at this obvious travesty of the truth, but Egmont raised a hand, and Ned subsided.

  “And now Julia. James, these children will drive me out of my mind.”

  Bluntly, with a touch of deliberate cruelty, Egmont said, “How would you be able to tell?”

  With the ease of long acquaintance, he was able to predict the precise spot where the china pitcher would shatter on the wall near his head. “I’m happy to see,” he said equably, “that your aim has not improved over the years, either.”

  After the doctor had come and gone, leaving various potions and a feeling of relief behind him, peace descended at last upon the household. Faustina slipped down the stairs and tapped lightly upon her father’s closed door.

  “Now, then, child,” said Egmont when she entered, “I don’t like that look on your face. Louisa is not going to upset you like this!”

  “But she already has, Papa. And thank you for putting a stop to it. Although I don’t know how long the drops will last. This is the worst time ever.”

  Gloomily Egmont agreed. “How soon can she travel, do you think? She wouldn’t have to go as far as London, you know. We could send her to Beaufort.”

  “Don’t give such encouragement to your hopes, Papa,” said Faustina with a weary attempt at lightness. “If she in fact recovers sufficiently to travel, then it is my belief that she will consider herself recovered sufficiently to stay and pursue her own ends.”

  “Are we right, Faustina? Does she really want to marry that child off to Pendarvis?”

  “I just don’t know. She says so, and I must say she seems even more determined upon the match than when she came. But this last spasm — I don’t know what caused it. Julia and Mr. Talbot were not left alone for more than a moment while we all dealt with Mary Bidwell’s ankle, and Althea’s fright, and the body… I mean, the kegs. But she seems to have taken it into her head that Julia is about to elope with Aubrey Talbot!”

  “Windmills in her head,” pronounced Egmont. “But I must say, the child could do worse. He is well connected, has a moderate income and a pleasant seat in Kent.”

  “You know him?”

  “Knew his father. I hear young Talbot takes after him.” He was lost in thought for a few moments. “Heredity,” he added, “is a funny thing. Very peculiar the way it works out. Now, take Louisa — no, no, not literally! — and your mother. Sisters they were, full sisters. And yet, different as night and day. I used to visit my Barton cousins, don’t you know, neighbors to the Wanscotts, your mother’s people. You see what Louisa is like. Imagine the exact opposite, and that was your mother.”

  “How could that be?”

  “Your mother took after her father, old Lord Wanscott. A man of strong common sense. I liked him. But he would ride at his fences too fast. As you do.”

  Faustina smiled faintly. It was an old point of discussion between them — the way she rode at her fences. He was secretly proud as Lucifer of her, but it would not do to say so.

  “But their mother!” He closed his eyes, and a strong shudder went over his frame. “Gadfry!”

  “I do not remember her, but I imagine Aunt Louisa over again?”

  “To the life!”

  Presently Egmont resumed. “Now take young Vincent. He takes after his mother. And young Hugh…”

  Faustina cocked her head quizzically. “Are you warning me, Papa, against Vincent?”

  Egmont looked at his darling daughter. She was partial to Vincent, of course. She heard only his side of any controversy. But Vincent was not on his mind today. If Egmont had hopes of a union between his daughter and the son of his great friend, no one would ever know it. But he was sorrier than he could say that she had taken Hugh in such aversion.

  “No need,” said her father, neatly tidying up the conversation. “You have sufficient sense to know what you’re doing. I never feared that you would give Vincent any encouragement.”

  “Good sense?” said Faustina in a small voice. “I wonder.”

  She emerged from the library into the hall, and cocked her head, listening. All was quiet, and she judged that her aunt had indeed taken the drops that Dr. Harper had left. When Faustina had sent Bucky away to rest, and left Sanders in charge, that woman was still coaxing her mistress to drink down the draft, and Louisa was stubbornly refusing.

  “You give the air, Miss Kennett, of being a conspirator in a gunpowder plot,” said Pendarvis, just coming in the open door.

  The remark was apropos, she thought, and sudden amusement struck her. “In a way, we have had some fireworks,” she said. “I suppose you have come to see Papa, though, and I must not keep you from him.”

  “Not at all, Miss Kennett. I came to see you,” said the earl.

  “Me?” It was a remark of less graciousness than she wished.

  A twitch of amusement touched the earl’s lips, but he maintained his solemnity as she ushered him into the drawing room. When they were seated, and the earl had refused refreshment, he said with concern, “You mentioned fireworks? Pray believe that I do not wish to pry, but I perceive that you are distressed. Is there anything I can do?”

  Short of carrying off Aunt Louisa, she thought to herself, there was little anyone could do. But she said, “How kind of you to offer! But there is really very little, I think, to be done. My aunt was feeling not quite the thing. We have had Dr. Harper, you know, and I think she is better. She does not sleep well, you see, and then…” She stopped short. He was a dangerous man, she realized. How easy it would be to confide all one’s cares to him; she was convinced suddenly that he could deal effectively with whatever came along. For just a moment she wavered. She could not, of course, tell him of Aunt Louisa’s scandalous behavior, but she could melt toward him just a little.

  “I came,” Hugh said after a few moments’ scrutiny of her expression, “to tell you how much Althea enjoyed the picnic yesterday.”

  “I’m so glad!” said Faustina warmly. “She did not suffer from her fright? I could not be sure she had not seen the kegs in the water.”

  “And drawn the same hasty conclusion that you did?” Hugh rallied gently. “No, I think she must not have seen the object. At any rate, when the maid turned her over to Mademoiselle Deland, the child was so exhausted she was speechless.”

  “Speechless?” Faustina said quickly. “Isn’t that strange?”

  Hugh began to kindle. “I believe I said she was exhausted. Do you find that difficult to understand?”

  “Not at all,” said Faustina readily. “However, I would think she would have a good deal to say, if she, in fact, did enjoy the outing.”

  With an effort Hugh suppressed a retort, and said merely, “Perhaps she did. After she was out of my sight. Of course, you realize that her silence in my presence is understandable, since she fears me so.”

  The two were glaring at each other when Egmont made his appearance. Dismayed for a moment, he recovered sufficiently to advance toward the earl with hand outstretched, and soon the conversation settled into more general paths.

  “I believe,” said Faustina brightly, “that Mr. Astley was able to add to his butterfly collection yesterday.”

  Egmont stared at her. “Gadfry! Is he still at that?” Turning to Hugh, he added with force, “He finds it convenient to pursue his biological interests, usually when there is something of import to be d
one.”

  Hugh said with a laugh, “Yesterday we did not miss his presence greatly. But that brings me to ask your advice, sir. I will not suffer that fool to preach to me every Sunday.”

  “Your father simply did not go to church,” said Faustina irrepressibly. “I had not expected that you would be more religious than he.”

  “My father’s interests lay in different fields from mine, I admit,” said Hugh stiffly. “However, I cannot allow an outside influence to divert me from what I consider my duty. And I believe that the present vicar will drive me from my own church, if he is permitted to do so.”

  A disturbance at the door brought the three of them bolt upright, just in time to see Lady Waverly make her grandest kind of entrance, followed, like a pale shadow, by Julia.

  “How delightful to see you, Pendarvis!” she cried with a glad smile and outstretched hand. “I did not know you were here until moments ago. This naughty niece of mind did not send word to me. But I must not scold her, you know. She meant well.”

  Faustina exchanged a stunned glance with her father. Louisa welcomed the earl as if it were her own drawing room. Only a trace of red around her eyes lingered to show that there had indeed been a volcanic uprising of emotion in recent hours.

  “Touch of the sun,” she was saying. “I am so distressingly sensitive. But I am quite recovered now.” She shot a meaningful glance at Egmont. “Quite recovered.”

  Faustina’s thoughts whirled. She had believed that her aunt’s hysterics were real, and in fact, she decided, they were. As a slight rocking produced a tempest in a shallow basin, and was easily quieted, Louisa’s emotions were storms on a minuscule scale.

  But devastating, nonetheless.

  “My poor Julia,” said Aunt Louisa, drawing her daughter forward by the wrist. “She has worried so about her mama. I vow I don’t know what I shall ever do when she leaves me. But I must let her go.”

  Faustina could not have spoken a word, not then, not if her life depended on it. Julia looked, at that moment, very gray and almost ill. She looked actually older than her mother, but it was the look of sheer misery in her eyes that reached out to Faustina.