Candia’s face crumpled. “But I want to be with you. At such a time! It is not fair. There is something horrid going on and no one will tell me what it is. It is to do with Mama’s passing, I know it is.”
Randal’s harried glance fell first upon Harriet and then swung towards Francis. He gave a tiny shake of his head, knowing his own eyes must echo something of the anguish in his brother’s orbs.
“Candia, my dear, you must be sensible,” Harriet pleaded, trying to extract the girl from the frantic clutch she had upon Randal’s arms.
“No! I will not be put off.”
“Candia, enough!”
Her father’s sterner tones had only the effect of reducing the girl to noisy sobs. Francis moved in. “Candia, pray be calm.” He added sotto voce, “Randal, for pity’s sake, deal gently with her!”
And then, like a balmy wind, the cool tones he was coming to know so well poured gentleness into the maelstrom.
“Dear Lady Candia, you are perfectly right. We have dealt foolishly with you, for are you not a woman grown, endowed with common sense and practicality? Come, if you please, with me and let your father see to his affairs. Your aunt and I may tell you just how things stand, and then you will decide for yourself how best to help your papa.”
How did she do it? Before Ottilia was halfway through this diplomatic speech, Candia’s lamentations ceased as if by magic. Admittedly she was gazing at her grandmother’s companion as if she might have descended from the moon. But such was the force of that calm personality that his niece allowed herself to be led, meek as a lamb, back into the dining parlour.
Harriet cast him an eloquent look as if to indicate her own astonishment, and Francis jerked his head to her to follow after the pair. He turned to his brother to find Randal staring, his mouth at half-cock, as if he had been caught a blow in the chest. His stunned gaze came around to Francis.
“What in Hades was that?”
Francis bristled. “That, my dear brother, is Mrs. Ottilia Draycott, officially Mama’s companion, but in reality our saviour in this hideous predicament.”
Randal’s brows shot up. “You speak in riddles, my boy. Explain.”
Francis took his arm. “I shall do so, but let us repair to a less public spot.”
He began drawing his brother towards the library, but Randal held back, his anxious glance going to the parlour door, into which at that very instant was hurrying Mrs. Thriplow.
“Leave Mama to attend to them,” Francis advised.
“Yes, but I am not at all sure —”
“You need have no fears. Mama is perfectly well able to behave with all the discretion in the world. You need not suppose her incapable of compassion.”
“Yes, I daresay, but I am thinking of Violette. And the children are already overwhelmed.”
Francis fairly pulled him into the smaller lobby. “Let them be settled, man. Did you not see Thriplow going in? There will be time enough for explanations.”
At last Randal allowed himself to be shepherded to the library door, and it was instead Francis who halted, realising they had a follower. He turned on the man Grice.
“What the devil are you at, fellow? Do you think my brother is going to make his exit via the book room window?”
Randal let out an exasperated breath. “He accompanies me everywhere, damn him!”
“Well, he is not coming in with us.”
Benjamin Grice held his ground as Francis glared at him. “I’ve me orders, sir.”
“I have not the faintest interest in your orders,” Francis told the man, vainly trying to control a spurt of fury. Everything else, and now this! “I have private matters to discuss with my brother, and your presence can well be dispensed with.”
The man did not even trouble himself to shake his head, but looked squarely into Francis’s face. “I’ve to keep the quarry in sight at all times.”
“Damn your impertinence!”
Grice did not even blink. Francis found his fixed stare peculiarly unnerving. His brother uttered a mirthless laugh and gave him a familiar buffet on the shoulder.
“No use, old fellow. Do you think I haven’t tried to be rid of him by every means I could think of? I’ll say this for Bow Street: They train their fellows well. Grice is up to every ruse in the book. Aren’t you, Benjamin, eh?”
The mock familiarity and the jocular tone were so typical of Randal that Francis had the oddest sensation of his presence. As if he had only fully taken in the reality of his brother’s return at this particular instant. He sighed defeat.
“Let him stay, then.” And turning to Grice, “But you’ll remain out of hearing at the window, if you please. The library, thank God, is a wide enough room.”
With which he ignored any effect his words might have had, turned his back upon the Runner, and tucked his hand companionably into his brother’s arm as he headed through the book room door.
Dinner was necessarily a stilted affair, the presence of Madame Guizot putting a stopper upon any freedom of conversation. Her children, Bastien and Lucille, who were respectively twelve and fifteen years of age, as Lord Polbrook informed the company, had been put into the charge of the housemaid Jane until such time as a French-speaking individual could be engaged. Whether this was to be a maid or a governess had already become, Ottilia gathered, a matter of altercation.
“Randal will have it that their education must be continued in French,” Sybilla had ranted in a brief interchange conducted in her bedchamber, whither the dowager had come to find her for the purpose, Ottilia suspected, of venting her spleen. “Of what use to teach them in French, said I, when they are destined to live in England? I might as well have spared my breath. It seems this Madame Guizot —” muttered in a tone of ill-concealed scepticism “— has no notion of settling in this country, fondly imagining the day will come when she may return to her homeland.”
“I fear she is doomed to disappointment,” Ottilia said mildly.
“Just what I said to him. But he is adamant the woman must be humoured. As if there were ever the slightest use in encouraging false hopes.”
“Did you say so?”
“How could I, with the dratted female in the room? I have had no opportunity for private speech with Randal all day, for if she is not there, that wretched Runner must needs be like a shadow at his back.”
Ottilia had commiserated with Sybilla’s frustration, but a reprieve from this latter scourge at least had come just before dinner was to be served. A message had arrived for the man Grice from Bow Street, upon receiving which he had departed the Hanover Square mansion.
Amazed, Lord Polbrook had watched him leave the parlour where the family had foregathered and turned to his brother. “How did you manage it, Fan?”
Lord Francis had grinned. “I sent a note to George, begging his intercession with Justice Ingham.”
“Good gad, then I am much in his debt!”
“More so than you know,” had murmured Lord Francis, sending a glance across to Ottilia.
Randal had claimed his attention, grasping his hand. “And to you, brother. You have been sorely tried these past days.”
“Randal, I must speak with you alone,” said the dowager, urgency in her voice.
Lord Polbrook rubbed a hand across his chin. “Yes, presently, ma’am. But Francis has given me an account of events, you know.”
“I do not wish to talk to you of events.”
Lord Polbrook looked decidedly uncomfortable, Ottilia thought. And no wonder. She imagined everyone in the room, including Madame Guizot from the apprehensive expression in her eyes, was perfectly aware of the intended subject of discussion.
The Frenchwoman spoke very little English, but Ottilia suspected that, like all foreign language speakers, she understood more than she was able to express herself. Lord Polbrook was fluent in French, and both Sybilla and Lord Francis had a good command of it. Ottilia’s was indifferent and she therefore bore little part in the dinner table chatter, although she
gathered enough to know it was confined to innocuous subjects.
At liberty to indulge her own thoughts, Ottilia seized the chance to take stock of the gentleman whose absence at a crucial moment had caused all manner of difficulties to his relatives.
He was a much larger man altogether than Lord Francis, whose lithe figure had a grace wholly lacking in the brother. He was not nearly as good-looking, although the resemblance was marked. Both had the lush hair and dark eyes of their mother, although Francis’s locks were much lighter than those of either of his siblings, but the elder brother had heavier jowls and his cheeks were broad. Ottilia judged him to be of mercurial temperament, for a peevish tone often underlay his apparent good humour.
This would scarcely surprise Ottilia under the circumstances, was it not patent Lord Polbrook was not in mourning for his wife. The irony of his returning one week to the day of a departure made in ignorance of Emily’s violent and tragic death had clearly passed him by. His attention seemed to be taken up primarily with the plight of Madame Guizot and her children, and if it were not for the nuisance of the marchioness having met her end in a manner that enforced a priority of interest upon him, was Ottilia’s cynical thought, she was ready to believe he would have welcomed his newfound freedom.
Barely had this thought passed through her mind than a thunderous knocking was heard upon the front door. The Frenchwoman started more nervously than the rest of the company, and Ottilia reflected that the events of the past days had done much to inure them all to sudden shocks. Possibly in response to Madame Guizot’s reaction, Lord Polbrook chose to take a high-handed attitude, turning to the butler.
“What the deuce is that infernal row? Cattawade, go and tell whichever fool is battering on the door that we are not receiving. And if it is that fellow Grice back again,” he called after the butler, who was making his stately way towards the door, “let him kick his heels in the street until we are finished.”
Almost without her realising it, Ottilia’s eyes went to Lord Francis. She found him tight-lipped, his dark eyes burning. Was he angry at his brother’s insouciant resumption of his position as head of the family, just as if nothing had happened? She could sympathise, for he had been left to deal with the calamity, and his life had been turned inside out. Though to be sure Lord Polbrook had not known what was to happen within hours of his departure.
The dowager was uncharacteristically silent, but Ottilia saw her with eyes trained upon the wall, as if she sought to see through into the hall beyond, from where the sounds of an altercation were springing up. She could hear Cattawade’s deep tones against a high-pitched feminine wail, both of which were overborne by a voice that began at once to be familiar. Evidently Lord Francis recognised it also, for he started up from his place.
“Hell and the devil!”
His brother’s eyes turned swiftly towards him, a frown creasing his brow. “What’s to do, Fan?”
But there was no opportunity for Lord Francis to respond, for hasty footsteps sounded without, the door was wrenched back, and Lord Harbisher thrust through the aperture, closely followed by his wife, the butler bringing up the rear.
The earl’s violent glance swept the room and fixed upon Lord Polbrook seated at the head of the table.
Chapter 17
Lord Harbisher started forward. “Ha! I knew it. Murdering fiend! You dare show your face, do you? Damned if I don’t smash it to pieces!”
The marquis, plainly astonished, sat blinking under the onslaught until Harbisher, with a howl of rage, launched himself at the man.
“Hugh, no!” shrieked his wife.
Polbrook had no time to do more than half rise from his chair before the earl was on him, fists pounding wildly. The victim fell back, raising his arms in an attempt to fend off his attacker, grunts of protest issuing from his throat.
Ottilia shot out of her seat with no very clear idea of what she could do, but Lord Francis was already in the fray, yelling at the footman who had been assisting the butler to serve dinner and was hovering by the sideboard.
“Abel, don’t stand there like a stock, you fool! Help me seize him.”
A cacophony of voices, one distinctly French, added to the hubbub as the two rescuers heaved at Harbisher’s shoulders. Lady Harbisher darted about them, alternately hectoring and pleading. Ottilia went to the woman and pulled her apart without ceremony.
“They will do better alone, ma’am. Pray calm yourself.”
“I tried to stop him,” she uttered tearfully, “but the moment the message came, nothing would do for him but to come round at once.”
“What message, Lady Harbisher?” asked Ottilia, trying to make herself heard above the grunts and growls issuing from the male element still locked in combat.
The wispy creature had her eyes still on her struggling spouse, and there was a breathless quality to her voice. “He set a man to watch the house.”
“This house?”
Lady Harbisher nodded. “The fellow was to bring news of Polbrook’s arrival. Hugh would have been here long since, but that he was out of town.”
At this point the earl was successfully detached from his brother-in-law’s person, but Lord Francis and Abel were obliged to hold him back. He was panting, and his voice was hoarse, but he continued to revile the marquis.
“Dastard! You killed her. Assassin!”
The marquis rose, flinging out his arms. “Have you run mad, Hugh? Of course I did not kill Emily.”
“You hated her. You wanted to be rid of her.”
“Even if that were true —”
“You admit it!”
“Nothing of the sort, I merely —”
“By God, Polbrook, you’ll answer to me!”
“That is enough!”
Startled into silence, both men turned as one to stare at Lord Francis. Ottilia was no less astonished at the harsh fury of his utterance. She had not supposed him capable of so thoroughly losing his temper.
“If you don’t cease this ridiculous charade this moment, Harbisher, I will have you conveyed to Bedlam for a lunatic,” he pursued, the deadly calm of his voice in no way lessening its effect. Then he turned on his brother. “As for you, Randal, you would do well to keep your mouth shut. If neither one of you has the common decency to observe a little dignity in the face of Emily’s demise, then I recommend you look upon the gruesome ravage of her features, as we had no choice but to do. If that does not bring you to your senses, nothing will.” Ottilia could have applauded. Lord Polbrook dropped into his chair, looking shamefaced, and took refuge in his glass. The earl, a dull colour seeping into his cheeks, fell back, his shoulders drooping. His mouth worked, and then his hand went out and grasped Francis’s arm.
“I am well rebuked.” A bitter note crept into his voice. “But do not suppose me content. I will have justice.” He cast one last glance of loathing upon his brother-in-law and turned to look for his wife. “Come, Dorothea.”
The frightened woman hurried up to him. “I am here, Hugh.”
With pity, Ottilia saw the man stagger a little as he set a course for the door. Lady Harbisher, slight as she was, took his weight, supporting him to where the butler was holding open the door. He looked back. “Let him look to his lawyers, I say, for I will have justice.”
His departure left an atmosphere one might slice with a paring knife. Ottilia sought in vain for a way of breaking it without worsening the mood. Then Sybilla, who had remained mute throughout the altercation, rose magnificently to the occasion.
“Be so good as to serve the remove, Cattawade. And replenish the glasses, if you please.”
Galvanised, the butler immediately set the footman to removing platters, despatched Jane to the kitchens, and himself went round with the claret. The dowager addressed a commonplace remark in French to Madame Guizot, who bravely attempted a response as close to normal as possible. Ottilia watched Lord Francis go around the table and resume his seat. He did not look at his brother, and stealing a glance towards
the head of the table, Ottilia saw that the marquis was likewise avoiding eye contact. He had tossed off the contents of his glass and was watching the liquor splashing into it from the decanter in the butler’s hand. He drank deeply of the replenished supply, downing half the contents at a gulp. It had not escaped Ottilia’s notice that he had imbibed freely throughout the meal. A habit of drowning his sorrows? If so, it was not an uncommon method.
From what Lord Francis had told her, in a swift exchange seized earlier in the day, the marquis’s indulgence was understandable. In their discussion in the library, Lord Polbrook had admitted the violence of his quarrel with his wife that fatal night, but had vehemently denied any intent of harm. His memory of time was less than useless, Lord Francis complained, for he could not precisely place his homecoming from the ball nor his leaving the house, averring he’d been in no state to be consulting his watch. But he was adamant that Emily had been alive and well when he had last slammed himself out of her chamber. On the subject of the fan, he had become voluble and incensed enough to corroborate Mary’s recollection, declaring his right to withdraw it from his wife’s possession and his anger at her practice of using it as a lure, of which he was fully aware. Ottilia could not think him a reliable witness and believed it would go hard with him should the matter come to trial.
By the time dinner finally came to an end, a semblance of good relations had been restored, the brothers addressing one or two innocuous remarks to each other. It was well they had a moment alone with the port, Ottilia thought, as she followed Sybilla and Madame Guizot to the parlour.
When the gentlemen joined them, the Frenchwoman excused herself on the score of seeing to her offspring. She added, with a nervous flicker of her eyes towards the dowager, that she hoped they would understand her tiredness from the journey. Once she had seen the children, she would go to bed.
The dowager sent her on her way with every expression of goodwill, but added a sharp rider, in English, to her elder son as he made to escort Madame Guizot. “Do not forget, Randal. In five minutes, in the library, if you please.”
The Lady Fan Series: Books 1-3 (Sapere Books Boxset Editions) Page 27
