Skylark

by Jo Beverley

  “Lord Darius Debenham was one, too, wasn’t he? I thought of that when I read the news of his miraculous return. You must all be delighted.”

  They had reached the table and he merely said, “Yes,” as he seated her, then went around to his place opposite.

  “How is Lord Darius?” She glanced to either side. “We are speaking of the Duke of Yeovil’s younger son, who was thought lost at Waterloo, but who was discovered recently, still suffering from his wounds.”

  “Fishy business,” Lord Caldfort muttered. “Gone a year?”

  “A head wound, sir,” Stephen said. “That plus the effect of opium for the pain.”

  “Mad, is he?”

  “No, sir.”

  Stephen’s face and tone were equable, but Laura could tell he was angry. Before Lord Caldfort could speak again, he said, “The treatment of soldiers maddened by war is one of the matters under discussion. . . .”

  The conversation became safely impersonal.

  Deft, but that didn’t surprise Laura. Even when young, Stephen had been tactful and skilled at manipulating people. Which was why his awkward proposal had been particularly shocking . . .

  She blocked that.

  The conversation was now firmly political, however, which meant that Lord Caldfort was acting as if the women at the table didn’t exist. Stephen glanced at Laura, and she sent him a reassuring smile.

  Lady Caldfort was frowning, but at least she wasn’t beating her spoon on the table or screaming for the meal. There was no need, anyway. Thomas entered with the soup. As it was served, Laura allowed herself to study Stephen.

  The Political Dandy. When she’d first heard him called that, it had amused her, for he’d given no thought to clothes when young. But then she’d realized that he’d always made the simplest garments look their best.

  When she’d next seen him in London she’d noted that his clothes were elegant in the subtle way made fashionable by Brummell. He wasn’t precisely a dandy, even so, but it had become the thing to designate men who dressed well that way. The Racing Dandy. The Hunting Dandy. The Golden Dandy.

  She chose stewed eels and surveyed Stephen’s current style.

  He was all muted colors, but there was no suggestion of mourning. His coat and pantaloons were plain black, his waistcoat a beautiful damask of beige, black, and silver. His cravat was tied in one of the complicated knots men prided themselves on and held in place with one touch of color, a swirling jeweled pin. Emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds, alive in the candlelight.

  She suddenly remembered that pin. He’d been wearing it at the Arden ball. Wasn’t something grand enough for that occasion out of place here?

  As she ate, ignoring the conversation as easily as it ignored her, Laura considered that event.

  Hal had been cock-a-hoop at being invited. He and Arden were hunting-field acquaintances, but no more than that. He’d wanted to show her off and urged her to order a new gown.

  She’d chosen a gown of daring red, wide on the shoulders and low on her back, which was veiled only by a lattice of ribbons. Hal had given her rubies to wear with it. The gown had been a huge success, and she’d enjoyed the event until they’d encountered Stephen.

  Hal had called him over, mentioning something about Melton. She’d been surprised that Stephen stole time from politics for sport.

  Stephen, she remembered, had been perfectly polite. But he’d given them the courtesy a gentleman reserved for strangers or for those he did not like. She’d thought it was directed at her, but then she’d become aware that Hal had forgotten that he was in a ballroom in London rather than in the Old Club in Melton.

  She’d steered him away from Stephen and guided him through the evening so that there’d been no disaster. But she remembered wishing that she’d not attended, even when Hal had crowned the event later with particularly vigorous lovemaking. That had been the first time that she’d felt ashamed of Hal, and she’d known then that it was because of that encounter with Stephen.

  She’d not returned to London again that year, and in November, Hal had died.

  This simple evening was beginning to resemble an estate riddled with gin traps to catch poachers. An idle question about where she and Stephen had last met had bitten her with steel-toothed jaws.

  Chapter 8

  At least Stephen could be trusted to manage conversation throughout the long meal. At first he tried to include Laura or Lady Caldfort, but was enough of a realist to give up. Laura confronted a pork chop without any appetite and wished Lady Caldfort would make one of her abrupt departures so she could leave, too.

  “Do you have an opinion on electoral reform, Laura?”

  So Stephen hadn’t given up. Laura pulled a face at him, but replied, “It does seem wrong that some members are elected by a handful of people and others by thousands.”

  “Tradition,” snapped Lord Caldfort. “Can’t play ducks and drakes with tradition.”

  Laura took braised turnips and held her tongue.

  Stephen took the same, but said, “Tradition had schoolboys holding the rank of colonel in the army, sir, and you approved of that reform.”

  Laura smiled as Lord Caldfort grunted and attacked his food. He liked to think of himself as a reformer, but it stopped short of anything that would damage his own interests. As Viscount Caldfort he controlled a so-called pocket borough, where the thirty voters elected whom he wished.

  Stephen cut into his meat. “And tradition says that all property owners should have the vote. What, then, of women who hold property?”

  Laura watched in horror as her father-in-law turned puce. “Women? Voting?”

  “Don’t bellow, John,” snapped Lady Caldfort. “You know it upsets my digestion.”

  “To perdition with your digestion!”

  “Don’t distress yourself, sir,” Laura said, shooting Stephen a chiding look.

  Lord Caldfort turned his glare on her. “Would you want the vote, woman?”

  Laura was pinned like one of Lady Caldfort’s insects, unwilling to lie but not wanting to tell the truth and distress him further.

  “See?” he said, turning to Stephen. “She can’t even make up her mind on a simple question! Women don’t have the brains for these things, Ball, and if they do, they’re unnatural. World would go to rack and ruin.”

  “Strange,” Stephen said, looking at Laura from beneath his heavy lids. “As I remember, Laura could give me a good game of chess.”

  Lord. How long was it since she’d played chess?

  “Games.” Lord Caldfort dismissed that with a wave of his fork. “Anyway, how many women own enough property to qualify for a vote? Besides tavern keepers and such.”

  “Perhaps that’s another area of the law that needs examination, sir. Women’s control over their own property.”

  Though Stephen’s expression was innocent, from long practice Laura recognized that he was deliberately stirring trouble. She wished the table was narrower and she could kick him.

  Lord Caldfort let his fork fall. “Damme, sir, but you’re a radical!”

  “I fear I am.” Stephen glanced at Laura and perhaps understood the look she was firing at him. “But I am firmly in favor of law and order,” he added. “Wouldn’t you agree, sir, that the mob must be controlled for the good of sober citizens?”

  Lord Caldfort returned to his meal. “Aye, there you speak sense. Bring in the military. Shoot a few.”

  Laura doubted Stephen had meant that, but he let it go and soon Lord Caldfort was comfortable again, especially when Stephen moved talk to sporting matters. But then that took a strange turn. From hunting to riding, and the old king’s belief in riding for vigor, which hadn’t kept him sane, poor man, and then on to other sorts of races.

  “Running races,” Stephen said as the main courses were removed and the sweets brought to the table.

  “For footmen.” Lord Caldfort’s attention was on a damson pie. He shouldn’t eat such things, but there was no stopping him.


  “And occasionally for wagers. Lieutenant Naismith recently won five hundred guineas in a footrace over five miles. I assume that running would be as healthful an exercise as riding. Or swimming,” Stephen added, glancing at Laura before turning to inspect the pie being offered.

  Laura almost spilled wine down her gown.

  He’d known that she and Charlotte had gone swimming, but something in his eyes suggested that he knew about the other.

  “Swimming!” Lord Caldfort sneered. “Amusement for lads, but nothing more than that. Don’t hold with that sea dipping, either. The king used to do that, and look at where it’s led. Stark, staring mad! A gentleman should stick to riding and walking. I’d be a happy man to be able to do either.”

  Silence settled. Laura could have started a new topic but she was too distracted by wondering what Stephen knew.

  One particularly hot summer’s day when she’d been about fifteen, she, Charlotte, and some other girls had daringly cooled themselves in the River Bar near to Ancross, in a spot where Charlotte said the boys swam. They’d carefully posted a maid to keep watch and only frolicked in the shallows in their shifts, but it had been both wonderful and wicked.

  The next day Stephen had let slip—which amounted to a tactful warning—that the spot could be seen from the upper floors at Ancross. Doubtless he’d thought to deter such folly, but it hadn’t worked. What’s more, it had sparked something even more wicked.

  She and Charlotte had kept watch, with the added weaponry of Sir Arthur Ball’s spyglass. She had to struggle not to smile at how deliciously shocked they’d been to discover that the males swam naked! How intrigued to be able to study their mysterious bodies through the telescope.

  An ache jolted inside her along with a sudden rush of embarrassing heat. She kept her head down as if damson pie fascinated her, but even the swirl of purple juice in rich cream seemed arousing. It was so long since she’d seen a man’s naked body, since she’d pressed against one in her bed.

  Hal’s familiar body. Heavily muscled but lean in the hip, furred on the chest.

  Stephen’s body had been different back then. Even among other young men he’d looked slender, but he’d been swift as a fish through the water. Mostly he’d been in the water and hardly visible, but he’d stood once in the shallows, laughing, pushing wet hair back off his face, caught in a sunbeam, looking like a young water god.

  Then she’d thought her reaction to be shock and embarrassment. Now she recognized that it had been arousal, prickling like heat across her skin, tingling in her swelling breasts, beating like a pulse between her thighs.

  She picked up her wineglass and sipped from it, looking at Stephen through her lashes. If he were Hal . . .

  Lady Caldfort stood, startling Laura out of her shocking thoughts. Without a word, her mother-in-law left the room, and Laura seized the excuse. She stood, murmured, “Gentlemen,” and escaped.

  She fled upstairs. Was she really as pitiable as that? Would her hungers surge every time a virile man sat opposite her at table? She heard a noise below and turned to look back. Jack was striding across the hall toward the dining room. He’d heard about the guest and come to enjoy a bit of company.

  His arrival was as sobering as cold water.

  She rushed up to the nursery to be sure Harry was safe.

  Chapter 9

  Harry was fast asleep, of course, with no evidence of the day’s dramas. He was unguarded, however. Laura hadn’t thought to tell Nan not to leave Harry alone. It wouldn’t even be fair. Nan deserved a little time with the other servants.

  Laura couldn’t bear to leave until Nan returned, however, so she sat by his bed to keep watch, smiling at him.

  He was so beautiful lying there in sleep that he could model for a dark-curled angel. He wasn’t, and in time he would become as troublesome as most men. What fretted her was that he was already adventurous. He was Hal Gardeyne’s son, after all—and hers. In her youth, she’d not been famous for being cautious.

  That swimming expedition had been her idea, as had been the watch kept with the telescope—

  No, she wouldn’t let her mind return there. She had best cultivate the mind of a nun and concentrate on keeping Harry safe through a normal, adventurous youth. But how? To try to wrap him in flannel would be a disaster of its own.

  Perhaps when she was home she could talk about this with her father and oldest brother, Ned. They were such bluff, honest people, though. They’d think her mad, or even worse, come straight to Lord Caldfort about it.

  There was always Stephen. . . .

  He had a complex mind, which her father and brother did not. He knew the law. She pulled a face. The time was long past when she could ask Stephen for help, but she could help herself by finding out what had disturbed Lord Caldfort.

  The door opened and Nan looked in. “Oh, ma’am,” she whispered, “is everything all right?”

  Laura stood and went out into the corridor. “Yes, of course. I came up to check on Harry and decided to sit a little. Sleeping children are delightful, aren’t they?”

  “That they are, ma’am.”

  “Is everything ready for departure tomorrow?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Laura felt reluctant to leave, but that was carrying concern too far, so she went back down to her room. She couldn’t resist pausing at the banister overlooking the hall and listening for Jack’s booming voice.

  There it was. He was in the dining room.

  Laura retreated to her room and had her maid prepare her for bed. It was early, but she had the excuse of today’s alarms, and travel the next. Once she was ready, she sent Catherine to bed.

  She would sit up to make sure Jack didn’t come upstairs, but also, when everyone was asleep, she would invade the study. She paced the room, watching the ticking clock, but then made herself sit and read the day’s newspapers.

  Her eyes read lines of print without taking in much of the meaning, but her attention was caught by a story in the paper about army officers whose minds had been turned by the horrors of war. Stephen had mentioned that.

  They were now to be treated in their regiments for a year before being sent to an asylum, which would give a chance of recovery. Asylums for the insane were horrible places, likely to turn someone mad if they weren’t so already.

  As Caldfort House seemed to be deranging her?

  She looked at the clock. Nearly half past nine. Lord Caldfort was often in bed by ten. Why wouldn’t Jack go home! She opened her door a crack, but even from here she could hear his voice.

  She sat again and moved on to a hair-raising account of the captivity of the English consul in Algiers during the confrontation there in August. The consul and his family, along with some naval officers who had tried to rescue them, had been chained, locked in a pit, and marched over long distances with only bread and water.

  Another story of imprisonment, and one that put her own resentments to shame.

  The prisoners’ release was due to the efforts of the American consul, though the dey of Algiers had been humane enough to send the ambassador’s child back to the safety of a British ship.

  Wasn’t it a universal rule to try to avoid harm to children?

  Only if they were irrelevant to the issue. Other children had not fared well. The Princes in the Tower. Prince Arthur, who had stood between King John and the throne of England.

  She forced her mind back to the paper. Two coaches had come to grief while racing to be first into Brighton. She shook her head. One of Hal’s friends had died in a similar accident. Men seemed to need no reason to kill one another. Improve the roads so they were safer, and madmen raced on them.

  She finished the paper and again looked at the clock. Though she felt it was an age since she’d left the dining room, it was only quarter past ten.

  There was no point to sitting here watching the hands of the clock, so Laura settled to writing a letter to her sister, Olivia, who was wife to a naval captain.

  Was that m
ovement below?

  She opened her door and—praise be—heard Jack call his good nights. A little later, footsteps came up the stairs. She closed her door and listened as someone, surely Stephen, passed and another door closed down the corridor.

  At last.

  Lord Caldfort would be settling for the night in his bedchamber. The servants would be clearing the dining room, then washing the last dishes before taking to their beds. Lady Caldfort had been in her rooms for hours. Laura didn’t know when her mother-in-law went to bed or went to sleep, but she’d never been known to emerge after dinner.

  As the house settled into silence, she itched to set off, but she had the whole night. Though she fidgeted and paced, Laura waited until the clock showed eleven thirty before she would let herself leave her room. Then, senses screwed for any sign of life, she carried her candle downstairs and across the hall to her father-in-law’s study.

  She had a story prepared, though it didn’t stop her heart from pounding. Lord Caldfort kept road guides in his study. Her excuse would be that she wished to study tomorrow’s route. It was flimsy because she knew the way well, but it would do.

  She was, after all, an idiot woman.

  When she arrived at the door, Laura paused once more, ears pricked for any sound, but then she entered the room without further hesitation. If someone was watching, she must not look furtive, even if she felt it. She couldn’t believe that she was intruding into someone’s study intent on reading his private correspondence.

  She crept to the desk, put her candlestick down there, and surveyed the surface again. Nothing had changed since before dinner, except that now she could open the two small containers on top of the desk. The box held small coins; the bowl was empty.

  She hadn’t expected it to be so easy, but it would have been a pleasant surprise.

  Aware that she was passing from excusable to inexcusable, she went around and sat in her father-in-law’s chair. If anyone came in here now, she was sunk.

  She tugged on the handle of the central drawer—and it slid out. She almost laughed with surprise. It didn’t hold letters, however, but only the necessities for writing them. There were sheets of paper, pens, and some open boxes holding sticks of sealing wax, sand, a penknife and such.