Double Deception (7 page)

Penelope glanced apprehensively at Lady Sarah. "I have not finished my bread and jam, Perry. And neither have you," she added with a saucy smile. "So we shall both have to wait, shall we not?"

Sylvester turned to Lady Sarah and was startled to see the softening of her expression as she gazed fondly at the child.

"How soon can we expect to welcome the Rathbones, Aunt?" he inquired smoothly, amused at the slightly flustered look that flashed briefly in Lady Sarah's eyes.

"The Rathbones?" Peregrine repeated, a puzzled frown on his face. "Who are the Rathbones, Aunt Sarah? I do not recall—"

Lady Sarah interrupted rather brusquely. "You do not know them, Perry, so it does not surprise me that you cannot remember anyone by that name."

"Oh, but I do," Peregrine said quickly, his frown deepening. "The name is definitely familiar, Aunt, but I cannot for the life of me make the connection."

The earl shot a warning glance at his aunt, but Lady Sarah rose admirably to the challenge. "You are probably thinking of Colonel James Rathbone from the Dorset Rathbones, dear. He and his sister visited the Castle briefly one summer when your dear mother was still with us. As far as I know, he is now married and residing in London. He married one of the Harrison girls, I believe." She paused and appeared to consider her words. "Or was it Lord Sheffield's youngest daughter, I wonder?"

"Never heard of any of them," Perry said briefly. "And I do not recall any Colonel Rathbone coming to the Castle either." Sylvester glanced at his aunt admiringly. It did not surprise him that his son remembered nothing of such a visit, for the earl was convinced that the whole episode was pure invention on Lady Sarah's part.

It was a great pity, he mused, that his great-grandfather had cut short his youngest daughter's highly improper career on the stage so many years ago. The scandal had occurred in Sarah's youth, when she and another of the pupils of Mrs. Hawthorne's Academy for Young Ladies in Bath had escaped through an upstairs window and gone off to London in the company of a groom in the unfortunate Mrs. Hawthorne's household. Everything had been hushed up, naturally, but while Lady Sarah had been rescued from a life of shame by her irate father, her companion in sin had remained in London and gone on to become an actress of some note. Her stage name—and the rumors of her legions of lovers—had been all the crack in his father's time, Sylvester recalled, but he knew for a fact that the woman had been a Rathbone, although her family had very publicly disowned her.

And now she was coming to St. Aubyn Castle.

"Augusta Rathbone is an old school friend of mine," Lady Sarah said dismissively. "She has promised to spend a few weeks with me this summer, and will be accompanied by her granddaughter, Viviana, by all accounts a charming young person. Do pass your father his tea-cup, Perry," she added sharply, forestalling any further questions on the subject of their mysterious guest.

"I am sure we shall all enjoy the addition of a charming young lady to our party, my lady," piped a bright voice from a low chair on the other side of his aunt.

For the first time since his arrival, Sylvester looked at the frumpish, rosy-faced woman who had uttered these prophetic words. Mrs. Easton radiated banality from the tip of the crimped curls clustering atop her small head to the profusion of ribbons, bows, and furbelows that adorned her excessively bright afternoon gown of dubious vintage.

Nobody paid the slightest attention to this odd, diminutive creature except Mrs. Standish, who threw her aunt a small smile. Mrs. Easton appeared not the least put out by the lack of reaction to her innocuous comment, merely reaching for another currant tart with plump, eager fingers.

The earl looked away. The lady's remark struck him as eerily ironic, and he could not help smiling to himself. How many of this odd party gathered on his ancestral lawn would actually derive any enjoyment from the addition of Viviana Rathbone to their number? he wondered. He could think of only one. Himself.

***

Long after tea was over and Lord St. Aubyn had escorted his aunt back to the house, and after Mrs. Easton had excused herself to retire to her room for a rest before dressing for dinner, Athena sat on beneath the old oaks, her mind in a turmoil. She had resisted Perry's entreaties to join him in a game of croquet, and now listened with only half an ear to his shouts of encouragement and Penelope's squeals of delight as she maneuvered the wooden ball through the hoops.

Something about the earl's sudden appearance at the tea party that afternoon did not ring quite right. He had stared at her rather brazenly, she thought, and she had been disconcerted by the glint of amusement she had detected in his eyes. Those eyes had disconcerted her, too. She had thought them black, or at least a dark brown, that morning they had met in the library. But in the summer sunlight they had been blue—a deep, startling, midnight blue that hovered on the edge of black.

And he had been amused, she was sure of it. Or could she have imagined that flicker of laughter in those blue depths? The question that intrigued and, she had to admit, alarmed her was why he had abruptly changed from the fiercely outraged parent of two days ago to the almost benevolent pose he had adopted at the tea-table.

Athena was sure the earl's cordiality had been assumed. She could think of no other explanation, and the notion that he had abandoned his plan to bribe her disturbed her even more. At least when faced with the earl's open attack, she knew where she stood. His false cordiality—for what else could it be? she asked herself for the tenth time—made her increasingly uneasy. What perverse strategy was he planning to drive her back to London? she wondered.

"A penny for your thoughts, love."

Athena glanced wryly at her betrothed, who threw himself into a chair beside her. Peregrine was such an innocent. He had been visibly pleased at his father's appearance, and Athena doubted that he had given a thought to the earl's sudden change of mood. His second remark proved her wrong.

"I do believe that Father is reconciled to our marriage, Athena. Did I not tell you he would come around when he got to know you better?" he said with such enthusiasm that Athena had not the heart to confide her fears. What would the viscount say if he knew that his beloved father had offered his chosen bride three thousand pounds to jilt him? she wondered. Her heart cringed at the notion of inflicting so much hurt on poor Perry. An open breach between father and son was one thing she earnestly wished to avoid.

"You are not still worried about his disapproval, are you, Athena?" Perry inquired with an infectious grin. "I promise that we will be able to post the banns within a week. Sooner if you like, for I am certain Father will not hold out much longer against us."

Athena forced herself to return a cheerful smile she was far from feeling. "I believe you may be right, Perry. But humor me in this, dear. Let us wait until we all feel more comfortable with one another. There is no need to rush into anything, after all, is there?"

Peregrine looked slightly downcast. "No, I suppose not," he replied dubiously. "But I do so wish to provide you and Penny with a secure future, my dear."

Not for the first time Athena fancied her betrothed sounded perilously like a little boy who had been deprived of a special treat. She put the unkind thought aside and suggested that it was time to dress for dinner.

For the rest of that week Athena could find no real complaint to make about her host. The earl appeared regularly at the dinner table, and occasionally took tea with the family in the garden. He was pleasant enough, she admitted to her aunt one evening as Mrs. Easton accompanied her into Penelope's room to say good night, as they were in the habit of doing, before retiring for the night.

"You are making a big pother over nothing, my dear Athena," her aunt scolded in her lighthearted way. "I cannot believe that his lordship could find anything amiss with you if he tried, dear. And I got the distinct impression this evening that he is more than a little taken with you himself."

Athena stared at her aunt, aghast. "You are certainly exaggerating, Aunt," she replied curtly.

But her aunt's words chased all thoughts of a peaceful night from her mind. The more Athena argued to herself that her aunt had grossly mistaken the matter, the more a reckless voice in her heart urged her to take advantage of the earl's mellowing disposition—and there was no denying that he had, for whatever reason, mellowed towards her—to gain his approval of her marriage to his son.

A dangerous game, to be sure, her common sense warned her. But if played with discretion, one that could well yield bountiful rewards.

Two days later Athena began to suspect that she had seriously underestimated the mellowing of Lord St. Aubyn's feelings towards her.

The first indication she had that anything was amiss occurred during the tea hour, which had become a ritual gathering under the oaks on the lawn, often attended by the earl.

That particular afternoon, the pleasant rural tea-party that Athena had come to enjoy as the highlight of her day had been interrupted. Shortly after nuncheon the sun had disappeared and a misty drizzle drove the ladies indoors. Peregrine and Lord St. Aubyn took advantage of the cooler weather to go on a tramp through Hangman's Wood, so called ever since an early Baron St. Aubyn had hanged a marauding Saxon there in the uneasy days of the Norman Conqueror.

There had been no question of serving tea in the garden, and Lady Sarah had insisted upon gathering in the formal Blue Dragon Saloon. Since Aunt Mary excused herself to accompany Penelope upstairs to the nursery to have her tea, Athena and her hostess sat together in Oriental splendor surrounded by what Athena supposed must be a small fortune in exotic furnishings.

It was not an ambiance conducive to comfortable conversation, and Lady Sarah seemed more than usually withdrawn into her aristocratic cocoon of aloofness and condescending small talk. After fifteen minutes of such stilted exchange, Athena wished she had gone upstairs with her daughter. She could well imagine the lively conversation that would be going on at that very moment between her Aunt Mary and the irrepressible Penny.

Could she get away by pleading a megrim? she wondered rather desperately. Or dare she introduce a topic more inspiring than the unseasonable break in the weather, upon which her ladyship had droned on for quite five minutes? Or should she try something quite unpardonably gauche, like dropping the fragile Limoges tea-cup Lady Sarah had just passed her onto the writhing mass of blue dragons, whose furious golden eyes glared up at her from the floor?

Athena was rescued from having to resort to mayhem by the sound of the Saloon doors opening. She turned eagerly, expecting to see Perry come bounding in, a contagious smile on his handsome face. She was disappointed.

The butler stood on the threshold, his impassive features set in their normal rigidity, his colorless eyes fixed on a point in the far distance, his mouth pursed into what Penelope had dubbed his stewed-prune look.

"Mrs. Augusta Rathbone and Miss Viviana Rathbone, milady," he intoned in his driest, most toneless voice.

Lady Sarah moved not a muscle, but Athena, who was looking directly at the butler, received the full force of the Rathbone ladies' entrance.

Mrs. Rathbone entered first, and her aplomb and style were such that, for a moment, Athena fancied the newcomer to be Lady Macbeth herself, borne along by the force of her overweening passions. She was a splendid figure of a woman, tall and stately, her white hair swept up into a fashionable knot beneath an elaborate straw bonnet that even Athena's untutored senses recognized as the
dernier cri.
Her traveling gown, in a warm wine-red lustring trimmed with blond lace, was deceptively simple in its elegance, and Athena did not doubt that it had cost more than she herself spent on clothes in a year.

Although Athena knew that Mrs. Rathbone could not be much less than seventy years old, she had to admire the youthful manner in which the visitor swept into the Saloon and advanced upon her childhood friend with arms outstretched in a charming gesture of affection.

"Sarah!" she exclaimed in a throaty contralto that filled the room with resounding echoes. "My dearest, dearest Sarah! We meet again after so long. Do not get up, dear," she added in that wonderfully musical voice, although she must have seen as well as anyone, Athena noted with amusement, that Lady Sarah had made no move to do so. That did not prevent her from embracing her hostess effusively.

"I shall just sit here beside you and be comfortable," she continued, suiting action to words by seating herself gracefully on the blue-striped brocade settee and removing her red kid gloves. "You have no idea how I long to recall those marvelous times we had at Mrs.... Mrs. . .. what was that dreadful woman's name, dear? Hawkins?"

"Hawthorne," her hostess supplied, with a faint smile breaking through the sedate mask she had worn all afternoon. "Mrs. Iphigenia Hawthorne, I believe. And surely you exaggerate, my dear Gussie, when you call those days marvelous. The woman was a veritable dragon, as far as I recall. If your brother had not kept us supplied with pastries during his visits, we might well have starved to death."

"Ah, yes, dearest, dearest Adrian." Mrs. Rathbone sighed theatrically, one elegant white hand brushing her brow briefly. "What a handsome devil he was, too, Sarah. And more than a little taken with you, my dear, as I recall."

Had Athena considered it at all possible, she might have said that Lady Sarah blushed, but her attention was drawn to a second visitor who appeared suddenly—and with quite deliberate theatricality, Athena thought—in the doorway.

"Ah, there you are, love," Mrs. Rathbone purred in her wonderful voice. "Allow me to introduce my darling granddaughter to you, Sarah," she said, flinging out an arm dramatically in the direction of the young lady who stood poised on the threshold, as though awaiting just such a cue to make her entrance. Miss Viviana Rathbone quite literally took Athena's breath away.