Anne Barbour (23 page)

“Is it not nice to know that one is good at one’s job? Without the knowledge of the enemy’s movements, strengths, and weaknesses that we have brought to Wellington on a daily—sometimes hourly—basis, he would not be enjoying the success in the Peninsula that has been his these past months. Many more Englishmen would die without our efforts on their behalf. Some of the men have lost their lives in the pursuit of this duty.”

Catherine felt shamed. Who was she to point her finger at those who risked life and limb in the performance of a function so vital to the war effort? Her thoughts must have been reflected in her face, for after a moment, Robbie’s voice softened. “But you are right. Many of us have done a great many things in the name of England of which we cannot take particular pride.”

“Such as duping a witless spinster?” asked Catherine sharply.

Robbie sighed. “No, that was not well-done of him—and I know he is sorry for it, but, as he has explained to me—and no doubt to you—he had little choice.”

“Oh, yes, he did explain that. Most reasonably. I just don’t think I believe him.”

“Believe him, Catherine,” said Robbie earnestly. “I know he paints himself in a very bad light, but—well, there is a reason for all that.”

“His father?”

Robbie glanced at her sharply. “You know about him?”

“A little. Justin told me something of his background before he entered the army. You knew him then, did you not?”

“Oh, yes. I used to spend school holidays at Sheffield Court. Those were good times, for the most part—except for Justin’s father. Henry, that is, the eighth Duke of Sheffield.”

Catherine was startled at the sharpness in Robbie’s voice, and her gaze dropped to her lap. She pleated the skirt of her blue muslin morning gown. “I understand Justin and his father did not get on very well.”

“That’s putting it mildly. In old Harry’s eyes, Justin could not put a foot right. He was constantly railing at the boy about his behavior, or his appearance or—” Robbie drew a deep breath. “I often thought that getting sent down from Oxford was the best thing that ever happened to Justin, for otherwise he might not have ended up as one of the best of Wellington’s agents.”

“And did Justin’s father condone that?”

“As a matter of fact, the duke knew nothing about what Justin
did in the army. He knew only that he had purchased a commission. Of that, I think he did approve, since a military career is so eminently suitable for a younger son. However, by that time he had unburdened himself of any responsibility for Justin’s actions, and he claimed to be supremely indifferent as to the manner in which path his son chose in what he categorized as his unswerving journey to perdition. According to St. John, that’s how he put it.”

“Ah, yes, St. John.”

“Justin’s older brother. His only brother, the son of the duke’s first wife. You see,” Robbie continued after a moment, observing Catherine’s blank stare. “The Duke of Sheffield first married Lady Emily Derwent, the daughter of the Marquess of Marchinton. As I understand it, it was the premier match of the season—possibly even the decade. Nothing could have been more propitious than the union of the two ancient, honorable, and horrifically wealthy families. St. John was born a year later to much fanfare and general satisfaction. Unfortunately, Emily contracted a virulent fever the following year and within three days had passed away.”

“How terrible,” murmured Catherine.

“Yes, wasn’t it? And unfortunate, too, since, although the duchess had dutifully produced an heir, she departed this vale of tears before cranking out the requisite spare, a lack which the duke evidently felt he must address.”

Catherine was chilled at the crudity of his words, but said nothing, merely lifting her brows so that he would continue.

“As you may infer from what I’ve said, up to this point in his life, the duke had never strayed from the path of propriety. From all reports, he had done what was expected of him for all of his six and twenty years—participated in the right sports as a boy, indulged in a judicious display of high spirits as a youth, joined all the right clubs as a young man—well, you see what I mean. Upon the death of his lady, however, something snapped. Oh, it was a brief, uncharacteristic slipping of his leash, and one that he would come to regret bitterly, but apparently the duke fell in love—and with a most unsuitable young woman.

“Her name was Amelie de Brissac. She was the daughter of an
émigré
, and she was a lady’s maid! She was a tearing beauty by all accounts, and Harry was dazzled out of his well-ordered wits. For the first and only time, he ignored the conditioning of a lifetime, as well as the loudly anguished strictures of his family, and took the ‘foreign tart,’ as she was termed by one of Justin’s aunts, to wife.”

By now Catherine was feeling physically assaulted by the manifest indignation that flowed through Robbie’s narrative like a hot current.

“At least,” she whispered, “the duke was given a chance at happiness. Was it a good marriage?”

“No, indeed. They were miserable! Within a few months, Harry apparently came to his senses, waking to the realization that he had made a truly ghastly blunder. Everything in his duchess that had caused him to fall in love with her—her beauty, her wit, her impulsive vitality—he now loathed as a reminder of his momentary aberration. He made her life a living hell with his criticism and his caustic tirades.”

“How—how do you know all this?”

“Mostly from Justin, in bits and pieces. And some of it from St. John—saintly, insufferable St. John. He, as the fruit of the good and pure Emily, could do no wrong. The duke petted him like the favorite son that he was, and regaled him with tales of Justin’s mother’s general unworthiness. The failings of her son, of course, were only to be expected and duly elaborated upon for Sinjie’s benefit. By the time I knew Justin, he fully realized that Sinjie and his father existed in another universe, far removed from the one inhabited by his own unacceptable self—a world of mutual esteem and satisfaction.”

“Are you saying the duke turned Justin’s brother against him?”

Robbie frowned. “I don’t think he did so purposely. Such behavior would have been beneath him. It was more a case of, ‘Boy, why can’t you be more like your older brother? He knows what is expected of him and never disappoints me.’ Or, ‘You deliberately took that sword down from the wall, after you were told not to touch the armaments? St. John would never have done such a thing. But I suppose it’s only to be expected from—’ ” Robbie broke off. “Lord, I don’t know how many times I watched him whittle Justin down to a sullen lump of unhappiness. And then,” he continued a moment later, “Sinjie would take up the thread. Taking Justin aside, he subjected him to lecture after solemn lecture on his shortcomings and his tainted background, his lack of anything approaching an appreciation of what was due his station. He would generally conclude with a blanket indictment of Justin’s character.”

“Good God,” gasped Catherine. “He would humiliate his brother so? In front of his friend?”

“Indeed. I think my presence lent a certain spice to the occasion for St. John.”

“What a dreadful young man!”

“Mmp. At any rate, one can’t say that Justin did not try to measure up to his father’s ridiculous expectations. I believe he thought if he could accomplish that, his father would love him, and St. John would—well, at least tolerate him. But, as might have been expected, his efforts tailed at every turn. With the best will in the world, he managed to feature in a veritable parade of disasters, from overturning his boat in the lake to scaring all the broody hens into nervous prostration one day when we were practicing ambuscades, to allowing his dog to commit an indiscretion on Lady Pimfret’s skirt.”

“But surely those were all boyish mishaps.”

“Not in the duke’s eyes. It seemed to me as though Justin was taken to task at least once a week for some solecism or other.”

Catherine sat silent for a moment. “And St. John never got into trouble at all?”

“Never. He was Justin’s shining example and he never let the boy forget it.”

Catherine expelled a long, shuddering sigh. “But the duke finally washed his hands of Justin. How did that come about?”

“Ah. Well, over the years, Justin’s transgressions became more, er, purposeful. I think he rather began to enjoy his wicked reputation and found a certain degree of fulfillment in his increasingly reprehensible pranks. He began to take a certain perverse pleasure in displeasing Harry and in scandalizing St. John, although by now Sinjie had pretty much given up on reforming Justin, particularly since on one occasion Justin nearly put a period to his existence when he opened his mouth once too often.

“In his teens, he got into some serious trouble from time to time, involving magistrates and constables and other minions of the law. He got into fistfights, he devised pranks that were borderline destructive, and on one occasion, he was caught stealing money from the church poor box.”

“No!” exclaimed Catherine, shocked.

“Oh, yes. I understand that an old woman in the village wanted a new hat for her grandson’s christening and could not afford it. The woman had been kind to Justin, and, as he told me later, it seemed to him she was as deserving of a new hat as the town drunk was of money for a pair of boots—money that would probably only have gone for a monumental bender.”

“Oh, dear,” said Catherine, suppressing a smile.

“At any rate, all during our days at Eton, Justin was constantly immersed in hot water, and when he went up to Oxford, despite my best efforts to the contrary, he fell in with an extremely undesirable set of youths. They were the sort that might have been designed to lead an unhappy, headstrong lad directly to perdition. They drank themselves into oblivion every night, seduced every female who would allow it, regularly boxed the Watch—that sort of thing. Old Harry finally warned Justin that the very next time he was notified by the bagwig that his son had been up to no good, he would abandon the boy to his own devices.

“I was not on hand to observe what happened next, but Justin described the whole thing to me later. The very next night, he and a group of his compatriots drove their curricles through the streets of Oxford. It was late, of course, but they caroled merrily at the top of their lungs, mostly bellowing out obscenities. When they entered a particularly narrow street, one of them discovered that by flicking his whip to the right and to the left, he could reach the windows on either side. It was the work of a moment to wager on who could break the most glass in a single pass down the street. Justin won, of course.”

“Of course,” murmured Catherine.

“They thought the whole thing glorious fun at the time, but as you can imagine, the bagwig took a dim view of the escapade. The residents of Cricklade Lane were clamoring for Justin’s hide, and he was only too willing to give it to them. To Justin’s unbelieving horror, his father not only refused to pay for the damages, but sent a message that his son would no longer be welcome at Sheffield Court. I went to the old man myself to plead for Justin, but I was turned out of the house before I could even begin my carefully prepared speech.

“Justin had no money of his own, of course, so he spent a wretched few weeks in the parish clink. Being a duke’s son, even one who had become a persona non grata in his own home, he was not punished any more harshly than that.”

Catherine blinked to dispel the unwelcome tears that welled in her eyes. “And that’s when he went to London to seek his friend’s assistance?”

“Yes, and he and the duke never spoke with each other again.”

“Dear God,” whispered Catherine. She could not help but note that Robbie, for all the length of his discourse, had not shed any light on the matter of the seduction of St. John’s fiancée, but so many other things had been made clear to her now.

Chapter Fifteen

“Aha. Very unwise of you, my dear, to put your queen in such jeopardy.” Justin nudged a rook into a new position on the hoard.

He and Catherine sat opposite each other on the secluded little terrace that lay just outside the library, engaged in a sanguinary game of chess. He watched the play of sunlight on the tendrils of Catherine’s hair that had managed to escape her muslin cap, and realized that he had rarely spent a happier two weeks. If it were not for the cloud that hung over him in such persistent malevolence, he might have imagined himself died and gone to heaven.

Catherine had unbent remarkably since Robbie’s departure for London the morning after his arrival. She had added her support to his pleas to Adam to include a trifle more mobility into his daily routine, and had ordered several footmen to place themselves at his disposal for the purpose of carrying him to a chair placed in some sunny spot just outside the house.

He no longer needed carrying, of course. He had started walking about the house and grounds on his own over the last few days, and had spent a number of clandestine hours in his bedchamber, exercising. He had made rapid progress in his recovery, and knew he was now strong enough to make his way to Sheffield Court. He had not spoken to Catherine of this.

“Aha, yourself, my lord. Check.”

Justin came to with a start and glanced at the board in some confusion. Catherine had completed her play and was gazing at him in pleased anticipation, mixed with an unmistakable smugness.

“Escaped your doom, have you?” he asked lightly. He leaned forward to contemplate his situation, taking her hand for a moment as he did so. Smoothly and firmly, she removed it from his grasp. He laughed ruefully to himself as, with great precision, he obliterated the knight Catherine had set up to protect her king. Catherine may have unbent, he thought, but she was still wary of him. She was cordial and helpful and seemed truly interested in
his plight, but she rarely allowed herself to be alone with him and she conversed with him on only the most general of subjects.

Which was all to the good, of course. Whatever had befallen her in the hands of Francis Summervale, she had obviously emerged from the encounter with her moral standards intact. No dalliance for Miss Catherine Meade with feckless strangers. In addition, she had very properly taken him in a certain dislike. Such being the case, he was loath to force his attentions on her.