Joan Wolf (14 page)

Nell ignored her mother’s protests and shot more words at me. “Gerald had been after you for months to marry him. Stephen knew that very well. And he also knew Gerald’s reputation with women. As Mama just told you, Annabelle, Gerald didn’t want his brother to leap to the wrong conclusion. That is the only reason he misled Stephen about the date of Giles’s birth.”

I made myself breathe slowly and deeply. There was only one fact that mattered to me at the moment, and I needed to be certain of it.

I said clearly, “When does Stephen think Giles was born?”

Aunt Fanny wrung her hands again. “Gerald told him early October, dear.”

Stephen thought that Giles had been born in early October.

It had never occurred to me that he might not know the correct date.

Nell’s intelligent eyes were watching me closely, and I struggled to keep my expression from betraying me.

“Well, it is of no importance now,” I managed to say with a semblance of calm. “We are still several days away from the festival. Doubtless Stephen will return in time.”

“I am sure that he will, my dear Annabelle,” Aunt Fanny said. Her voice was trembling with relief that I was letting the matter drop. “I am sure that he will.”

* * * *

It was not Stephen, however, but Jack who appeared unexpectedly in my office the day before Giles’s birthday. He came over to the desk where I was making a menu for the cook, kissed my cheek, and upbraided me for not letting him know about the festival.

“I only decided to go ahead with it last week,” I said. “I did send to London to inform you, but there was no one at your lodgings and I didn’t know where else to look for you.”

“I was at Rudely,” Jack said.

He was lounging with one hip against my desk, and I looked up at him with my eyebrows lifted in surprise. Rudely was the small estate in Hampshire that Gerald’s grandfather had bought many years ago for Jack’s father, who was his younger son. It had been a nice little property once, Gerald had told me, but after Jack’s mother had died his father had let it go badly. This was the reason Jack had been brought up at Weston with his cousins and not at his own home.

“Sit down, Jack,” I said. “I didn’t know you ever went to Rudely.”

He shrugged and went to sprawl lazily in the comfortable old velvet chair that faced my desk. “I haven’t been there since my father finally succeeded in drinking himself to death last year. I thought it was time to take a look at the wreck and see what needs to be done to salvage it.”

I was shocked. “I never knew your father drank himself to death!”

He gave me a humorless smile. “It’s one of those little secrets the Grandvilles like to keep hidden from the rest of the world.”

“I’m not the rest of the world,” I protested indignantly. “I’m a Grandville!”

He shrugged again. “I suppose no one wanted to sully your beautiful ears with so sordid a tale.”

I gave an annoyed exclamation; he looked back at me out of somber eyes and said nothing. Belatedly, I understood that I was being tactless. “Is the house really in such bad condition?” I asked hurriedly.

“Yes,” came the uncompromising reply.

His hard mouth looked even harder than usual. I turned away from him, picked up my pen, and began idly to sketch on the edge of my menu. “Gerald once told me that Rudely was a nice little property when your grandfather bought it,” I remarked. “Perhaps you can make it a nice little property again.”

“It could be restored, but it will take money,” Jack said in a voice that was as hard as his face. “And even if I repaired the house sufficiently to make it livable, I wouldn’t have the money to keep it going.”

I added a few flourishes to the design I had drawn. “Doesn’t it have any farms attached to it?” I asked. I knew that the income to keep Weston running was derived largely from the farms we leased out to tenants.

“It did,” Jack replied grimly. “I sold them last year to pay off the mortgage my father had taken on the house.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Precisely.” I heard his big body shift in his chair. “The house and the gardens and the home farm are clear, but without rents I have no way to keep them going.”

I returned my pen to its holder and returned my gaze to his face. Jack had never before discussed his finances with me, and I felt compelled to try to come up with a helpful suggestion.

“Perhaps you could sell Rudely and buy something smaller,” I said.

His expression told me instantly that I had not been helpful. “Rudely
is
small, Annabelle,” he said. “It’s about as small as a house can get and still be regarded as the residence of a gentleman.”

I bit my lip and thought about assuring Jack that he would always have a home at Weston, but I knew such a reassurance wouldn’t help. In the world in which we lived, a gentleman owned his own property. It was his badge of respectability. Jack needed to be “Mr. John Grandville of Rudely,” not Jack Grandville, poor relation of Weston.

Surely, I thought, the rest of the family understood that.

“Don’t look so worried, Annabelle,” he said. “I didn’t mean to saddle you with my problems.”

“Did Gerald know that you had to sell the farms to pay off the mortgage?” I demanded.

The blond head, so like Gerald’s, nodded an affirmative.

Gerald knew and had done nothing.

“What about Uncle Adam?” I asked next. “Does he know?”

“I discussed the situation with Adam. He was the one who advised me to pay off the mortgage to save the house.”

“For goodness’ sake, Jack,” I said in distress, “didn’t either of them offer you any help? “

He looked at me as if debating what to tell me. “They offered me advice,” he said at last.

“What kind of advice? “ I asked in bewilderment.

“They told me to marry a girl with money.”

It was the second time in this conversation that he had shocked me.
“What?”

He actually laughed. “I wish you could see your own face, Annabelle. Such scandalized disapproval!”

“Will you do it?” I asked baldly.

“I don’t know.” A muscle flickered along the line of his jaw, as if he had just clenched it. “The only girl I’ve ever loved married someone else. If I have to marry without love, I suppose it might as well be to a girl who has money.”

I dropped my eyes to my decorated menu and said with a little difficulty, “I suppose I am a romantic, but I believe one should marry for love.”

He replied with slow deliberation, “Annabelle darling, you of all people should understand that sometimes it is necessary to marry for expediency.”

I went perfectly still, staring as if mesmerized at my unfinished menu.

The silence seemed to go on for a very long time. Then Jack said, “They told me in the stable that Stephen was home.”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “He’s not here at the moment, however. He went on a visit to Francis Putnam.”

“How does he look?” Jack asked.

“He is very brown,” I said, and looked up.

“Mmmm?”

The blue eyes on my face were much too knowing. I said, “I’ve finished buying this year’s batch of horses.”

Mercifully, he followed my change of subject. “Have you had them out yet?”

“I’ve hacked them through the woods a bit,” I said. “Physically, they are very talented. They know absolutely nothing, however.”

“They never do when you first get them,” he reminded me.

I leaned back a little in my chair. “The cubbing season is almost on us,” I said. “I bought a big bay from the Egremont stud that I think you will particularly like.”

“Is that an invitation?” he asked.

“It’s more like a plea,” I retorted. “You know how much I appreciate your help during cubbing season.*
9

Cubbing season was the time during late summer and early autumn when the young hounds were first taken out to learn their business from their elders. There was no hunt field present during cubbing, only the hounds, the master, and a few assistants. I had found cubbing to be a good time to introduce my new horses to both hounds and woods, and Jack was one of the few people other than myself whom I trusted to do this the right way. Thoroughbreds who have done nothing all their lives except run as fast as possible can be very excitable, and Jack was very good with excitable horses.

“I take it I am a member of the Sussex Hunt, then? “Jack asked sardonically.

“You most certainly are.”

“Stephen agreed to pay my fee?”

“I paid your fee,” I said.

He straightened up in his chair. “Damn it, Annabelle, I didn’t want you to do that!”

“I really need your help, Jack,” I said matter-of-factly. “I consider your subscription a business expense.”

I looked calmly back at him, and after a moment he relaxed. He lifted his thick blond eyebrows. “Oh well, as long as I’m a business expense,” he drawled.

I picked up my pen. “Tell Mrs. Hodges to put you in your usual bedroom,” I said. “I can’t sit here talking to you any longer; I have got to get this menu done for Cook.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said mockingly, and rose to his feet. “I understand that Adam and Fanny are staying here also?”

“Mmm,” I said. “Jasper and Nell, too.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled. “How delightful.”

“Dinner is at the usual time,” I said, and once more regarded my menu.

“Is Giles in the nursery?” he asked.

I looked up, surprised by the question. “Why?”

“I brought him a birthday present,” Jack said. “It’s the reason I came. I didn’t know you were having the festival and I thought the poor little beggar might be feeling a bit blue-deviled.”

I felt a warm glow in the region of my heart. It always made me happy when people thought of Giles. “How kind of you, Jack,” I said.

His lids were half-lowered, so I couldn’t see the expression in his eyes. “Is he in the nursery?” he repeated.

“Probably not at the moment,” I said. “He and Miss Stedham went to the lake to fish. I haven’t seen the dogs yet, so they mustn’t have returned.”

“I was wondering where the ubiquitous dogs had got to,” he commented.

“Why don’t you walk down to the lake and meet them?” I suggested.

He surprised me by replying, “Perhaps I will.”

I watched his broad back until the door had closed behind him, then I sighed and returned to my menu.

* * * *

It was the night before Giles’s birthday, and still Stephen had not come home. The family group in the drawing room broke up at eleven and I went along to my bedroom. I did not get undressed, however, but told Marianne that I was going to take the dogs for a walk. I often did this before I went to bed, so no one thought it unusual when I let myself out the small door that lay between my office and the saloon.

The moon was full and I could see perfectly as I walked along the path that skirted the south gardens, the dogs trotting faithfully at my heels. I could hear the splash of water in the rose garden fountain as I set my feet on the path that would take me to the Ridge.

The summer night was very still. The scent of August roses hung heavy on the air, and I could hear the crunch of gravel under my feet as I started out along the garden path. Somewhere in the garden a nightingale began to sing. The dogs streaked past me and disappeared into the darkness.

They were nowhere in sight when I finally reached the woods. The gravel path turned at a right angle here and began to run directly east, forming a boundary between landscaped park and natural woodland. A narrow dirt track continued on into the woods, and I knew that if I followed it for several miles, I would end up in a small secluded cove on the Channel.

It had been a cold January night more than five years ago when Stephen had been surprised on this track by a party of revenue officers. He had been leading a train of three horses, all of them loaded with brandy smuggled from France. Someone had informed the authorities that a shipment was coming into the cove that night, and they had been waiting for him. The rest of the smugglers, hard-bitten professionals all, had gotten away. Stephen, at eighteen, had been left to face the music alone.

Free trading was an old and established pastime in Sussex, but the government had expanded its presence on the Channel coast in order to be ready should Napoleon decide to attempt an invasion. We were a country at war, and the government was coming down hard on free traders, who had been known to smuggle gold into France so that Napoleon could pay his mercenaries. If Stephen had not been an earl’s son, he might well have hung.

I was wearing an evening dress and shoes and did not want to go into the woods. I crossed my arms against the cool breeze that had sprang up and waited for the dogs on the edge of the gravel path. The moon was hanging full and bright in the starry summer sky, and the softly rustling leaves in the woods before me seemed to give voice to the restlessness that I felt within myself. I pressed my hand beneath my left breast and felt the beating of my heart.

I drew in one deep, slow breath of the moist night air, and then another. I thought I could smell the salt from the Channel. I remembered how the salt used to taste on my skin, how it used to sting all the scratches that I seemed always to be covered with when I was young. I closed my eyes, my senses filled with the smell and taste of the sea.

And once again I am fifteen years old, and Stephen and I have gone to the cove so that the spaniels can swim.

* * * *

Merlin and Portia had been eight weeks old when Sir Matthew gave them to the earl as a present for me. I had been helping Sir Matthew with the hounds since I was ten, and I began to ride out with the hunt when I was twelve. Sir Matthew had seen the two ink black spaniel puppies at a friend’s house and had known I would adore them.

Since Stephen’s old dog had died the year before, I gave him Portia and kept Merlin for my own. Now the puppies were a fully grown fourteen months old, and during the hot summer weather we often took them to the cove so they could swim in the cold seawater. They liked it better than the tepid lake.

It was a hot August day, and I had taken off my shoes and kilted up my dress’s sprig muslin skirt and was standing next to Stephen in knee-deep water, watching him throw a stick for the excited dogs.