Barbara Metzger (23 page)

He knew his duty at twelve o’clock, too, when Juneclaire was not in the ballroom for the unmasking. He couldn’t very well make the announcement without her, and he could not even kiss her happy New Year, damn it, when the infuriating chit had shabbed off on him. Again. Plainly his duty was to find her and hold a pillow over that beautiful face. He started looking for her as quietly as he could, considering he clanked with every step.

Juneclaire was in the library, explaining to Uncle George that he wasn’t a murderer at all, but he was buried in the family cemetery.

“Must have been my man Hawkins. He was supposed to ride for the doctor. I never could figure what happened to him.” Uncle George was sitting at the earl’s desk, eating lobster patties and drinking champagne.

“But aren’t you happy? You can come back now. Vicar Broome over at Bramley remembers you; he said so when he was sending me here. He can help you reestablish your identity if Lady Fanny won’t. You can come home!”

Uncle George took another bite. “Old Boomer Broome still wears the collar, eh? Well, he can help with my soul, but that’s not enough, I’m thinking, to keep my body from getting to hell via a hempen ladder. You see, I wasn’t quite honest with you, poppet. Not that I didn’t think I’d killed Robert. When Hawkins didn’t send me word, I was sure I had, and I fled the country. And after that, nothing seemed to matter, so . . .”

Juneclaire’s heart sank. “How bad?”

“Bad, puss. Did you ever hear of Captain Cleft, the pirate?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Surely there’s something we can do. Merry would know who to—”

“No, I won’t hand the boy any more shame.” He was up and using the scythe as a cane to limp toward the door. “Come on now, you’re missing the ball. All those young fellows will be looking for the second-prettiest girl here.”

“Who is the first?” she asked, dreading lest he name Sydelle.

“Why, Fanny, of course. I wonder if there are any macaroons?”

They were nearly to the supper room when Juneclaire begged him to consider consulting a lawyer. “Lady St. Cloud’s man Langbridge is very kind. I’m sure he’d help. Please say you’ll try. Otherwise I’ll—”

She never got to say what she’d do, for just then St. Cloud spotted them. He was furious that Juneclaire had deserted him, and for a pillow-stuffed humbug at that! He was even more furious when Father Time limped into the refreshment room and his flowing robe billowed up to reveal a peg leg. This was the bastard who was haunting St. Cloud’s house!

With a mighty bellow St. Cloud drew the broadsword from its sheath at his side. The bloody thing was so heavy, he needed both hands to hold the point up. Guests scattered; women screamed. Father Time saw Nemesis coming and reached out with his scythe. He swept the punch bowl to the floor, then the tub of raspberry ices, shipped out from Gunther’s specially. Then he fled back to the library, while the French knight picked his way through the sticky mess past one happy pig in sherbet. When St. Cloud reached the library, followed by half the company, the old man was gone. Disappeared, vanished.

“Good show, St. Cloud,” the admiral called out. “Out with the old year, eh? Happy New Year!”

“
I
t’s not Uncle George, I tell you!” The teacups were rattling again. St. Cloud wondered if he’d ever know another peaceful breakfast, with coffee and kippers—and no conversation. Why couldn’t Juneclaire be like other women and sleep till noon? Why did she have to look so delicious in peach muslin, with a Kashmir shawl over her shoulders?

“He likes macaroons and hates carrots, just like the dowager said he would,” she insisted.

“Juneclaire,
I
like macaroons and hate carrots. That does not make me Uncle George any more than it makes your impostor.”

“But he knows the secret passages and the priests’ holes. Not even you know them.”

“I told you, my father died before he passed on the information. He was afraid Niles and I would get lost in the tunnels.”

“He knew you’d bedevil the housemaids, more likely,” Lord Wilmott interrupted. “You were an undisciplined cub even then. I say this is outrageous. George Jordan, indeed! The fellow is gone and good riddance.”

Juneclaire stuck doggedly to her argument. “But he would know the trick to getting into the hidden compartments. His father would have told him, my lord.”

“Any number of servants could have known, even this Hawkins person he mentioned. Maybe that’s who he is, some old employee come to blackmail the family or something. It won’t wash. The dirty linen’s been hung in public so long and so often, it’s not worth a brass farthing. I told you I would have my man in London look into the matter of Hawkins.”

“You won’t find him. He’s in the graveyard.”

“Damn it, Juneclaire, you only have some actor’s word for that!”

“But I wasn’t seeing ghosts, was I? There really was a man with a peg leg?” He had to agree. “Then why can I not be right now? I’m not crazy, Merry. Why do you have to be right always, just because you are St. Cloud?”

Uncle Harmon’s gorge was rising. “Why are you even listening to this rag-mannered fishwife, St. Cloud? George Jordan disgraced this family, miss, and it has taken over twenty years to rebuild our standing. Twenty years before
you
got here to stir things up.”

Now St. Cloud pushed his plate away. “You forget yourself, Uncle,” he said quietly. “Miss Beaumont is entitled to her opinions, and I respect her for expressing them. She and I may or may not quarrel over the coffee cups for the next twenty years. That is our decision. Where you break your fast is yours . . . for now.”

Juneclaire was not sure if he meant they may or may not be married, or they may or may not argue, but she was content. He had stood up to his family for her.

Harmon Wilmott was not content. He knew better than to disparage the drab female who was ruining all his plans, but the thought of another uncle coming back from the beyond, this one with a more valid claim to St. Cloud’s largess, stuck in his craw. Drooping jowls quivering in outrage, he declared, “George Jordan is better off dead. The man was a coward and a ne’er-do-well.”

Before Juneclaire could say that Uncle George seemed to have done well enough on the high seas, St. Cloud stood up and tossed his napkin on the table. He may as well have thrown the gauntlet. “Uncle George was a soldier, a decorated hero. No one shall say else. If you are finished crumbling your muffin, Miss Beaumont, perhaps you would accompany me this morning.”

He took her to the attics again, leading her gently this time, pointing out various ancestors’ portraits along the way, telling her some of the history of the place. What he wanted her to see was in the lumber room with the broken bed frames and rickety tables. The earl pulled a gilt chair with only one armrest over toward the window and wiped the seat with his handkerchief for her. Then he pulled a painting out from behind a warped chest of drawers and turned it so Juneclaire could see.

Two young men looked back at her. Boys, really, they were cut from the same cloth as Merry. Both had black hair, worn long and tied in back as was the style, and both had green eyes. The seated one had Merry’s serious look, as if he already knew the weight of his duties. The other, younger lad was smiling. He had Merry’s chin. Captain Cleft.

“This is not the man I chased last night,” St. Cloud said. “I knew Uncle George. I knew him well.”

“But that was over twenty years ago, you clunch, and you were just a child. People change, especially when they lead hard lives. You said yourself the body they brought back was mangled. It could have been Hawkins, Merry. It could.”

He sat on a stool next to her chair and looked out the window. “I said I will send to London, have my man-at-law look into the matter. But—”

“But you are not happy at the possibility. You’d prefer to think that I am a gullible nodcock and some plump old graybeard has fallen down your chimney and into the wainscoting by accident.”

He took her hand. “I am sorry for thinking you were foxed or purposely trying to cause trouble. And I swear I’ll try to keep an open mind.” He laughed at himself, bringing her fingers to his lips. “How is that for a resolution? Is it too late? I’ve already admitted I was wrong about you. But, Junco, there is more to the story than you know. My mother is weak, you know that. And she went through hell for the man, not once but twice. I cannot ask her to face him again.”

“It has to be her decision, doesn’t it?” She returned the pressure of his fingers, trying to give him strength and comfort.

“Then where is he? If he is George, why doesn’t he walk through the front door and shake my hand like an honorable man? Why didn’t he come forth and say what happened that night at the quarry? You said you convinced him he wasn’t a murderer.”

This was not the time to tell Merry his uncle was a pirate. Then again, she thought more cheerfully, if he could accept that, he could accept a penniless nobody in the family, too. “I, ah . . . believe he’s working on that now. You St. Cloud men seem to have a surfeit of pride, you know. He has his own sense of honor.”

St. Cloud stood and drew her up beside him, still holding her hand. “Speaking of honor, Miss Beaumont,” he started.

She pulled her hand back. “No, my lord, I know what you are going to say and I don’t want to hear it. I do not want your words of honor and duty and making things right.”

He brushed a curl away from her cheek, but his hand stayed to touch the soft skin there. “No? I thought marriage proposals were supposed to start that way. I am supposed to ask for the honor of your hand, and you are supposed to thank me for the honor of the offer. That’s what I’ve always heard, anyway. I only did it that once before, you know, in the barn. But here, I’ve turned over a new leaf for the new year. I’ll admit I could be wrong again. What words should I say instead?”

Words of love, you cloth-head, she wanted to shout. But she only whispered, “If I have to tell you, I do not want to hear them.”

He was staring into her deep brown eyes as if the answers to the universe were hidden there. His fingers stroked her knitted brows, her chin, her lips, sending tremors where she did not know tremors could go. “Ah, my sweet, perhaps we do not need words after all.” He bent his head. She raised hers and closed her eyes. His breath was warm on her lips. His hands had moved to her back, pulling her closer till their bodies were touching, the lean strength of his against the soft curves of hers. His breath came faster as their lips came to—

“Pardon, my lord, but there are two young persons come to see you and Miss Beaumont.”

 

“Good grief,” Juneclaire said, “what are you two doing here?”

Rupert and Newton Stanton were staring around his lordship’s library as though they’d never seen so many books in one place. For all the attention they spent to their schooling, likely they had not. Root was wearing a spotted Belcher neck cloth in imitation of the Four-Horse Club, and Newt was dressed in the height of absurdity in yellow pantaloons and shirt collars so high and so starched, his ears were in danger.

After Juneclaire’s introduction, St. Cloud surveyed them through his quizzing glass like particularly unappealing specimens of insects suddenly come among his books. “Indeed, to what do we owe the unexpected pleasure?” he drawled.

Root squirmed and Newt felt his collar shrink. They knew Satan St. Cloud’s reputation. Then again, it was his reputation that sent them here.

“Actually, Mama sent us,” Root confessed. He was the eldest. He knew his duty. Hadn’t Mama spent two days drumming it into him? “She got your note, saying Clarry was here under your protection.”

Newt giggled nervously. “There’s protection and there’s protection,” he continued, trying to sound worldly. Compared to St. Cloud he was as urbane as a newly hatched chick. “So Mama sent us to check.”

Juneclaire was embarrassed for her family. “You gudgeons, you are insulting the earl,” she hissed.

Root stood firm. “Reputation, you know. His. Yours.”

“Well, of all the—”

“Excuse me, Miss Beaumont. I am not quite clear on the purpose of our guests.”

Juneclaire knew from that sardonic tone that St. Cloud was very angry. “It’s my fault, my lord. I should have written to Aunt Marta myself, to reassure her of my well-being. I’ll just take my cousins to the kitchens, shall I, and get them a bite to eat for their return trip and send them—”

“I say, Clarry, we just got here!”

“Mama’s not going to be happy, ’less she knows for sure there’s nothing—”

“Miss Beaumont,” the earl interrupted, in a quiet, smooth voice, “prefers to be called Juneclaire.”

The boys nodded. “Yes, sir” and “Yes, my lord.” Their tutors would have been shocked to see such instant obedience. Even Juneclaire was impressed.

“Now, Master Newton, Master Rupert, you shall answer me this: Did your esteemed parent really send two unlicked cubs to ask my intentions toward her niece?”

Juneclaire giggled, thinking of his intentions not ten minutes past. He sent her a quelling look. Both boys found the design in the carpet fascinating. Put like that, Mama’d sent them to their doom. And the earl was not finished. “Did she treat her responsibilities so negligently that she did not inquire into Miss Beaumont’s health, how she came to be here, or her future plans, but only the state of her virtue? Did she think so ill of Miss Beaumont to think that she might consider
carte blanche?
That does not speak well of her upbringing at your mother’s hands. Finally, did you, men-about-town that you are, think that I would bring my
chérie amour
here to my ancestral home to meet my mother and grandmother?”

“That’s enough, my lord. Let them be. They’re only boys. They meant no insult.”

“No? I wonder what they were supposed to do if they found you dishonored. Call me out?”