This reflection served only to deepen the tumult under which Phoebe was labouring and she could not withstand letting out a groan.
“Dear me, that sounded perfectly despairing,” said a voice behind her.
Phoebe turned quickly. “Lady Francis!”
The newcomer took her arm and drew her willy-nilly towards the dining-parlour situated off the hall near the front door. “Let us slip in here for a space. I dare say the fire has not died and it should be warm enough.” Once inside, Lady Francis closed the door and drew Phoebe away from it towards the window. “There, now we may speak freely.”
A pair of grey eyes surveyed Phoebe and she felt her face grow warm. Embarrassment threw her into speech. “I have nothing of import to say, Lady Francis.”
“Call me Ottilia. Or Lady Fan, if you prefer,” said the other with a smile that warmed Phoebe unexpectedly. “After all, we are going to be related, are we not?”
Phoebe tugged on an unsteady breath. “That is debatable.”
“Has he offended beyond forgiveness?” The lady’s gaze, disconcertingly clear, did not shift from Phoebe’s face. “I beg you will set no great store by this little interlude.”
“Little!”
“There can be no future in it, you know. Giles will realise that before long, and then you may be comfortable again.”
Phoebe’s gorge rose. “Comfortable? I shall never be comfortable again. Even if he recovers his senses, how could I trust him after this?”
Lady Francis did not speak for a moment, but a faint frown creased her brow. “I understood it was an arranged alliance between you?”
“And he may therefore spurn me for another with impunity?” She bit her lip on the fury rising in her bosom, noting the other woman’s raised brows. Her tone became clipped. “I should not say so. There has been no formal offer.”
“But you consider yourself promised, I take it?”
“As I thought he did. Evidently I had it wrong.”
Lady Francis did not speak, but the sympathy in her features almost overset Phoebe. She turned and swept to the window, gazing out upon the drive without seeing it, struggling to regain her composure. The thought flitted across her mind that her father would never tolerate the match should he hear of this fresh disaster, with Giles’s inamorata involved in the guardian’s death.
Remembrance broke into her thoughts. There was something more, was there not? On impulse, she turned on Lady Francis. “I wish you will tell me the whole, Lady Fan.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Impatience overtook Phoebe. “You need not look so startled. It is plain to me that you and Lady Polbrook are holding something back. What is it? What more is there to this business with Miss Roy? And pray don’t try to fob me off!”
A little smile appeared. “Indeed, I should not dare attempt it.”
Warmth crept up Phoebe’s cheeks, and her voice became stiff despite every effort to maintain a cool tone. “You must excuse my bluntness, ma’am.”
“I like it,” said the other unexpectedly. “I must confess to a similar candour on occasion.”
“Then exercise it now, I beg of you.”
“Very well, if you insist. I am afraid Giles being in close association with Willow Court has put him in a little danger, should it prove out that Sir Joslin did not die a natural death.”
Blankness invaded Phoebe’s mind. “I don’t understand you.”
“Then let me be plain. I have a suspicion Sir Joslin was murdered, possibly by an overdose of opium. Giles was sent for to the house by Tamasine Roy this morning, and it appears that there was — when we do not yet know — some jest between them of the necessity to have Sir Joslin out of the way.”
Shock clouded Phoebe’s brain as she spoke her thought aloud. “You mean he may be suspected of making away with this man?” The memory leapt into her head of Giles’s distress, when she had received his confidences on the subject of his mother’s death. “It cannot be so! After what has passed? No, no, I dare not believe it to be possible.”
But a seed of doubt rose. Lady Fan’s next words fostered it.
“Not even if he were head over ears in love?”
A shaft sliced through Phoebe’s bosom, and she felt the tremble at her lips. She suppressed it, meeting the other woman’s steady regard. “I would wish not to think so. Yet one cannot truly know another’s mind.” She tried to bite back the words, but they would come. “If he was utterly dazzled, who can say? He might do a great deal for a woman if his heart was touched.”
Lady Fan’s gaze did not waver. “Have you reason to know as much?”
With difficulty, Phoebe spoke, unable to help the bitter note. “I thought I had, but it seems I was mistaken.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
The abruptness of the question pierced Phoebe to the heart, but she did not think of prevarication. “All my life.”
“Yet you can still find it in you to fear his involvement in a possible murder.”
Phoebe’s eyes pricked. “Is it disloyal of me? I have never been blind to his faults. Indeed, this episode fills me with dismay as well as jealousy.”
“How so?”
“It has long been my fear Giles might follow in those footsteps most dear to him, now sadly lost.”
“His mother, you mean? I understand you, I believe.”
Phoebe eyed her in some discontent. “I should not have spoken, I dare say. But I cannot suppose you ignorant of the truth, for I know you were instrumental in discovering who killed poor Lady Polbrook.”
She dared not say more. Giles, she knew, had never acknowledged the truth of the rumours of his mother’s frequent infidelities. Yet here he was, hell-bent on setting the countryside alight with his determined pursuit of Miss Tamasine Roy. And now he was potentially suspect in this death!
Her feelings threatened to overcome her. Summoning her courage, she prepared to take her leave. “I must go, ma’am. I should not have spoken with such candour. Pray do not betray me to anyone.”
“You may be sure I shall not, my dear.”
Phoebe thanked her, heading swiftly for the door. She turned there and looked back, beset by a nagging fear. “I beg you will send to me, Lady Fan, the moment you discover anything to the purpose.”
She did not wait for an answer, but wrenched open the door and sped into the hall, grabbing up her thick pelisse, which she had left upon a convenient chair and shrugging it on without bothering to do up the buttons. Stepping out of the front door of the Dower House, Phoebe looked along the drive for the phaeton in which she had arrived and saw it a short distance away. The groom who had driven her was walking the horses. But the sight of her carriage paled into insignificance as a second vehicle turned into the driveway.
It was a curricle and pair, driven by none other than Giles, Earl of Bennifield.
Recognition threw an unwelcome surge of discomfort into Giles’s chest. With reluctant acknowledgement, he realised he had been dreading this first meeting. It was not guilt, for there was no reason for him to feel it. But Phoebe was a dear friend, and he had hoped to confront her in his own time. With the knowledge of his present position with regard to Tamasine Roy, her advent just at this moment was little short of disastrous.
There was nothing for it now, however, for Phoebe had halted on the threshold of the Dower House and was clearly awaiting him.
Giles pulled up his pair as the vehicle approached the porticoed entrance, and waved his whip in salute. Waiting only for his groom to get down and go to the horses’ heads, he leapt nimbly from the curricle and strode up to where Phoebe awaited him. He adopted as nonchalant a tone as he could command.
“When did you get back? I was not expecting you so quickly.”
There was a deal of reserve in her usually frank gaze, he thought, but she answered coolly enough. “We returned a few days early. You know how Mama and my aunt cannot resist quarrelling if they are more than a week or two together.”
Giles l
aughed. “Did Lady Hemington leave in a dudgeon again?”
To his relief, the sober look gave way a little and Phoebe smiled. “Not quite that. Papa made an excuse to come away early, especially, so he said, to prevent matters reaching that extreme.”
“Shrewd of your father.”
“He can’t bear wrangles, as you know.” Phoebe paused briefly. “Nor any hint of scandal.”
Detecting a faint note of censure, Giles bridled. “I am hardly to be blamed for my father’s follies.”
“Not your father’s.”
The flash at her eyes made Giles poker up the more. “Someone has been busy.”
Phoebe’s gaze held his, and it came to Giles that of all things he had been dreading, the worst was her naked eyes. Even as a child, she had been incapable of hiding her feelings. It had the effect of throwing him on the defensive.
“You do blame me. I didn’t think you would be so prejudiced, Phoebe.”
Anger leapt into those orbs. “You didn’t think of me at all!”
A truth that could not but add fuel to the flames, for Giles knew his only thoughts of Phoebe had been to negate the possibility of her standing as a bar to his pursuit of Tamasine Roy.
“Is that an accusation? If so, I should be glad to know how I have offended you.”
Phoebe’s tone became scornful. “Giles, that is unworthy. You know perfectly well that your chasing after some pretty petticoat is bound to reflect upon me.”
“By which you refer, I collect, to Tamasine Roy?”
She eyed him frowningly for a moment, and when she spoke her tone had altered. “I hear she is a diamond of the first water.”
The image of Tamasine’s heavenly features, languid after his kiss, leapt into his head and his senses swam. He spoke without thought. “She is breathtaking. Such an innocent too.” Only half conscious of putting out a hand, he dropped into the easy camaraderie they had always shared. “Phoebe, had you met her you must also have befriended the poor child. Her situation is pitiable. And now she has lost her guardian, her future is uncertain.”
He broke off, recalling that his quixotic promise had now assured Tamasine’s future. With relief, he remembered his insistence on secrecy, and realised he could say no more. “She is so very vulnerable,” he ended, feeling how lame this sounded.
Phoebe looked at his hand but she did not take it. Baffled, and a little hurt, Giles withdrew it. When her glance rose to his, the violence of feeling in her eyes took him aback.
“Vulnerable? When she may well have engineered his death for her own advancement?”
Stunned, he stared at her. “Have you run mad?”
“Not I, Giles. I am perfectly in my senses, which is more than can be said for Tamasine Roy.”
Resentment swamped him, the greater for the niggling doubt at the back of his own mind. “Are you at that? You, as well as everyone else? I would not have thought it of you, Phoebe.”
“And I would not have thought you capable of scheming with your — your madwoman — to dispose of her guardian in order that you might take her to wife.”
“What?”
Her voice rose to a pitch that physically hurt his eardrums. “Indeed I did not think it. I thought you a man of honour, of delicacy. But it seems I had it wrong.”
“How dare you, Phoebe? I thought we were friends.”
“Friends do not offer insults to each other.”
His fury surged the higher with the recollection of his uncle’s earlier disquiet regarding his jest with Tamasine. He hit back. “Then what am I to think of your accusing me of murder, for it is no less? Besides, what insult have I offered you?”
“If panting after a worthless doll is not an insult —”
“How in Hades could that insult you?” Giles thundered, riding over her. “You force me to remind you, Phoebe, that our friendship is all the relationship we have.”
Her expressive eyes grew dark, and then flashed fire. “If indeed we have that!”
Chapter 6
Pushing past Giles, Phoebe fairly ran towards the waiting phaeton, which had taken the place of his own vehicle, his groom having begun to walk the horses. Mortified, Giles knew an impulse to dash after her and retract his words. He ought at the least to go and hand her up into the carriage, but his feet remained rooted to the flags of the entrance portico. He did not move until the Graveney groom had assisted his mistress to mount and hopped up himself, taking the reins in hand and giving the horses the office to move off.
Phoebe did not look back, and her face remained firmly averted until the carriage had straightened into the drive and all Giles could see was the back of her bonnet.
Cursing, he went to ring the doorbell, reflecting that he could hardly do worse with his grandmother.
“Good day to you, Biddy,” he said to the youthful maid who answered the door.
“Master Giles! Have you come to see her ladyship? We’ve visitors, my lord, for the doctor as is Lady Francis’s brother is come with his family.”
“I know all about that,” Giles said, adopting a tone of insouciance that in no way reflected the slight rise of apprehension at the prospect of his interview with the dowager. Despite what he had said to his uncle, his grandmother could be formidable. Yet unless she was seriously displeased, he had hopes of succeeding in cajoling her, as he usually did. At this juncture, he desperately needed her support.
“Who is in the parlour at this moment, Biddy?”
“Her ladyship and Lady Francis,” said the maidservant, counting off on her fingers. “Mrs Hathaway is there too. Oh, and Miss Mellis.”
“Not my uncle?”
“He’s gone off with the doctor and them two lads, my lord.”
That was a relief. With luck, his uncle Francis had refrained from recounting their conversation at Willow Court. Nor spoken of Tamasine’s embarrassing greeting. Still, he was in no mood to do the pretty.
“Do you think you could contrive to get my grandmother out of the parlour, Biddy? I’ll wait in here.”
As he spoke, he pushed open the door to his grandmother’s study, as she chose to call the small library situated opposite the dining parlour. The maid assured him she would do as he wished, and hurried off. Giles took a turn or two up and down the room, pacing beside the glass-fronted bookcases along one wall and avoiding the knot of seating surrounding the fire. On edge, he flung himself into the chair before the escritoire in the bow window, fiddling with a pen from the inkstand and stabbing its point into the leather-bound blotter. His thoughts were not happy.
His grandmother was under the misconception he was all but betrothed to Phoebe. What would she say if she learned of this morning’s unfortunate betrothal? It was not that he did not wish to marry Tamasine, but he was obliged to admit the moment was not propitious. He was rehearsing what he might say under his breath when the door opened to admit the dowager. She was unsmiling, and her greeting was not encouraging.
“Well, Giles?”
He got to his feet at once, essaying a smile. “I hope I see you in good health, Grandmama.”
Her brows rose in a look that deepened his apprehension. “I trust you are not going to pretend you are come on that account.”
He sighed out a breath. “No.”
“Did you happen to meet Phoebe on her way out?”
Giles nodded, giving vent to a despairing sigh. “I didn’t handle it well, Grandmama.”
Her features softened and his spirits rose a little. She moved into the room. “I don’t suppose you did. The men in our family seldom do know how to act in difficult situations.”
Giles took his courage in his hands. “The thing is, ma’am, I don’t consider myself promised to Phoebe.”
To his discomfort, the black eyes sparked. “Not since you encountered Tamasine Roy at all events.”
“Before that.” He took a hasty turn about the open space between the desk and the chairs by the fire and faced her again. “The proposed match was not of my making, you know that
. If Phoebe was led to expect it, you had better blame her father rather than me.”
“Oh, I do,” responded the old lady unexpectedly. “And yours.”
“Then I wonder at your countenancing such a thing.”
“It had nothing to do with me, boy. The notion came out of the heads of your father and Lord Hemington years ago.”
Giles balked. “You need not try to fool me, Grandmama. Nothing happens in this family but it has your sanction.”
An odd laugh escaped his grandmother, but Giles detected no humour in it. “I wish it was so, Giles. A number of events would not have taken place had that been true.”
There was no mistaking the meaning of this. “You mean my father would not have been permitted to marry Violette.”
“I could hardly prevent him.” There was a snap in his grandmother’s voice. “I don’t object to his marriage per se, but only to the timing of it.”
A growl of resentment burgeoned in Giles’s bosom, and the whole vexed question of his mismanagement regarding Tamasine was relegated to second place. “Why didn’t you stop my father? Why had he to sully Mama’s memory?” Bitterness rose up to choke him. “And now, merely because I have met someone whom I could truly love, I am to be tarred with the same brush.”
To his chagrin, his grandmother’s lip curled. “Love? You are infatuated, Giles. And with a girl whose fitness for any sort of liaison must be in question.”
“Tamasine is not deranged! I will not have her maligned.”
The dowager’s dark gaze raked him. “Either you are a blind fool or an obstinate one, but a fool you most certainly are, Giles.”
He bit back the urge to respond in kind. “I thank you, ma’am.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, boy. It doesn’t suit you.”
With difficulty, Giles held his tongue. He whisked away again, refusing to meet his grandmother’s eyes. Her voice came again, controlled but, to his ears, redolent with underlying rage.
“Foolishness I might forgive. What I cannot endure is that anyone should hold my grandson in suspicion of collusion to murder.”
Giles whipped round, staring at his grandmother in blank horror. “You believe that?”
The Lady Fan Series: Books 1-3 (Sapere Books Boxset Editions) Page 80
