Joan Wolf (5 page)

Gerald had excelled at social occasions like dinner parties. He had been a man of easy temperament and lavish charm—”the sun child,” Jack used to call him, not without bitterness. It must have been difficult for less fortunate men not to have envied Gerald.

Adam’s voice recalled me to the present. “I was talking to Matthew Stanhope today, and he tells me that the hunt subscription price is going to have to go up to a thousand pounds.”

“That’s a big increase, isn’t it?” Jack asked.

Adam explained about Susan Fenton’s shrubbery and the solution I had come up with.

“You can’t eliminate visitors from riding out with the Sussex Hunt, Annabelle,” Jack said sharply. “Where is that going to leave me?”

Jack was a keen huntsman, and he often came down to Weston in order to ride out with us. He could do this cheaply, as he could always count on me to provide him with a horse.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to join if you want to ride with us next year, Jack,” I said.

His blue eyes blazed with sudden temper, and he slammed his fist down on the table, making the dishes jump. “I can’t afford a thousand pounds! You know that, Annabelle!”

Aunt Fanny chattered in distress as a footman hastily came forward to wipe up the wine that had spilled from her glass when Jack’s fist struck the table.

“If you don’t watch that temper of yours, Jack, you’re going to find yourself in real trouble one of these days,” Uncle Adam said grimly. “Annabelle is right. The Fenton child could have been badly hurt. Killed, even.”

“What does one farmer’s brat more or less matter?” Jack said rashly.

Nell’s breath drew in with a small, shocked sound.

“You don’t mean that, Mr. Grandville,” Miss Stedham said quietly.

Jack shot her a look, and his mouth, which had thinned dangerously, relaxed a trifle. “I suppose I don’t,” he grumbled.

“Of course you don’t,” I said. I drummed my fingers on the napkin in my lap, thinking. I did not want Jack deprived of his hunting. He helped me keep my horses fit.

“I know,” I said brightly. “The Weston estate will pay for your subscription, Jack.” I knew Gerald would never have paid for Jack’s subscription, but surely this huge estate could bear the cost of a meager thousand pounds. I looked at Adam. “That will be all right, won’t it, Uncle Adam?”

“I am no longer the proper person to consult about such matters, Annabelle,” Adam said gravely. “According to Gerald’s will, the only person who now has the right to make decisions about estate disbursements is Stephen.”

My brow smoothed out. “You have been running Weston for over twenty years, Uncle Adam. I rather doubt that Stephen will wish to step in and replace you.”

“I should hope not,” Aunt Fanny said in an unusually forceful voice.

“Well,” Jack drawled, “I don’t know if I agree with you, Fanny. I know I have a much better chance of getting a thousand pounds out of Stephen than I do out of Adam.”

We all laughed.

“ That is certainly so, Jack,” Aunt Fanny said with a sigh. “A softer-hearted boy than Stephen never lived. I could never understand how he came to be embroiled in smuggling!”

“I have often wondered if the evidence against him was contrived,” Nell said.

“Stephen admitted responsibility,” I replied in a flat, hard voice. “I know because I heard him.”

In fact, I had been listening at the connecting door between the morning room and the library while the earl and a government officer questioned Stephen.

I
am responsible, Papa. There is no one else.

Those were his words and he had stuck to them, even when he was told the government would not press charges if he left the country and went to Jamaica.

He had chosen to go to Jamaica.

And I had chosen Gerald.

“... do you think, Annabelle?”

I blinked and pulled my attention back to the table.

“I beg your pardon, Aunt Fanny,” I said. “I did not hear you.”

She repeated herself, and dinner went on.

Chapter Four

At the end of May a ship docked at Southampton with letters from Stephen. One was addressed to Uncle Adam, and one was addressed to me.

I retreated with mine to the privacy of my dressing room, annoyed to discover that my hands were shaking so badly that I had difficulty opening the envelope. Finally I managed to extract a single sheet of paper that was only half-covered with writing. In his familiar, sprawling scrawl, Stephen wrote that he was sorry to hear about Gerald, that he understood and shared my grief, and that he would be home as soon as he could complete some unfinished business pertaining to the plantation. I was to give his regards to Giles.

His regards.

I crumpled up the letter and tossed it into the fireplace.

Adam came to see me later in the day with his
letter, which, I was interested to note, ran to five closely written pages.

“Stephen writes that he is divesting the estate of the sugar plantation,” Adam said in an expressionless voice as he took his usual chair in the library.

“Divesting the estate?” I blinked. “Do you mean he is declaring bankruptcy after all? “

“No,” Adam said deliberately. “Stephen says that he is giving the plantation to the slaves.”

I rubbed my nose and regarded Adam’s impassive face. “Giving?” I said after a while.

“That is what he writes.” Adam rattled the pages he was holding clenched in his fist. “Apparently, Stephen has not been planting sugar for the last several years. Instead he divided the plantation into plots, which he then turned over to the slaves, and they have been cultivating crops for their own sustenance as well as to sell. He has even,” Adam said grimly, “imported some English livestock for them.”

“Are slaves allowed to own property?” I asked curiously.

“Stephen is giving them their freedom first, of course,” Adam replied.

I couldn’t help my grin. “How like Stephen,” I said.

“This is not amusing, Annabelle,” Adam said. And indeed, he did not look amused. His nostrils were pinched and his face was flushed. “That plantation is worth a great deal of money.”

“It
was
worth a great deal of money,” I corrected. “None of the Jamaican sugar plantations have been making money for decades, Uncle Adam. First they were hurt by the American war, and then, when Napoleon closed all of Europe to English trade there were not enough markets to buy all the sugar that Jamaica produces. The plantation may have been a gold mine for Weston at one time, but it’s been nothing but a dead loss for many years.”

Adam looked annoyed. “I certainly know all of that, Annabelle. The plantation may well be profitable again, however, now that it looks as if Napoleon is finally beaten.” Adam tapped the pages of his letter against the mahogany wood of his chair. “I am telling you now, Annabelle. Stephen’s action is directly contrary to Giles’s best interest. He should not be allowed to do this.”

“The question is,
can
he do it?”

“Are you asking if he is legally empowered to give the plantation away? “

I nodded.

“Yes,” Adam said bitterly, “he is.”

I shrugged. “Then there is nothing I can do to stop him, Uncle Adam.”

The intelligent gray eyes held mine, and then he expelled his breath and sat back in his chair, the tension draining visibly from his shoulders. “I suppose there isn’t,” he said. “By the time a letter from you could reach Jamaica, Stephen would probably be on his way home.”

“We don’t need the plantation,” I said. An unpleasant thought struck me, “Or
do
we? Are we in dun territory, Uncle Adam?”

Merlin, hearing the sharp note in my voice, lifted his head from his paws and gazed at me alertly. I bent to give his silky black head a reassuring pat.

“No, no, my dear, there is nothing like that. I did not mean to alarm you. Giles’s future is very well secured.”

Merlin’s head dropped back to his paws.

“There are no nasty debts or mortgages that I don’t know about? “I said.

“Nothing like that, Annabelle,” Adam repeated firmly. “The earl’s income is about twenty thousand pounds a year— and that is the sum that is left after all the costs of the estate and the pensions to old servants have been paid.”

This was a very healthy income indeed. “You have done well by us, Uncle Adam,” I said warmly.

He smiled faintly in acknowledgment and said, “Thank you, my dear.”

Portia got up, stretched, and went to lie down in the sun in front of the window.

“Have you heard from Jasper?” I asked.

Jasper was Uncle Adam’s son, a captain of cavalry who had been in Spain with Wellington for the past two years.

“We had a letter just yesterday.” Adam smiled. “It seems that Stephen is not the only Grandville who will be coming home.”

“Jasper is coming home?”

Adam nodded.

“That’s wonderful news, Uncle Adam! Aunt Fanny must be in alt.”

He grinned. “She is. We all are.”

Merlin had decided that his sister had a better spot than he. He got up, padded across the Turkish carpet to the patch of sun where Portia was dozing blissfully, and stretched out beside her. They looked like twin inkspots on the red carpet.

“This wretched, wretched war,” I said. “But it does seem as if it is finally coming to an end.”

“Now that the Allies have taken Paris, I should think it inevitable,” Adam said.

“It will be so good to see Jasper again,” I said.

Uncle Adam shot me an enigmatic look and did not reply.

I said next, “I wonder if Jasper will want a subscription to the Sussex Hunt?”

At that, Adam threw back his head and laughed. “Annabelle, you are so predictable!”

“I am only thinking of Jasper,” I defended myself. “He won’t be able to hunt with us if he doesn’t have a subscription.”

“I will buy a subscription for Jasper,” Adam said. “I wouldn’t want the lad to miss his fun. He’s had a rough enough time in Spain these last few years.” He got to his feet. “Who is collecting the subscription money—you or Stanhope?”

I was delighted. “I am, Uncle Adam. But you don’t need to pay me until August.” I rose to see him to the door, and both dogs opened their eyes and yawned.

Adam gave me a humorous look. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to remind me, Annabelle.”

“You are a terrible tease,” I replied.

He laughed and patted my arm. “You must forgive an old man who has known you since you were a solemn-faced little girl.”

I smiled at him affectionately. “I’m glad about Jasper,” I said.

“So am I.” He patted my arm once more and went out the door. I called to the dogs and we went up the stairs to the nursery to have luncheon with Giles.

* * * *

The day Stephen came home, the hazy August sun was shining on golden fields of wheat, ripe for harvesting. The air was sweet with the smell of cut grass, and the horses in the paddocks were standing head to tail, lazily swishing away the flies. In the distance the turf of the Downs looked like green velvet against the blue of the sky.

Giles had recently become interested in fishing, and the two of us had spent the afternoon out at the lake. I was wearing an old, grass-stained gown, my hair was done in a single braid down my back, and my bare feet were thrust into a disgraceful pair of ancient leather slippers. It was the sort of costume that would invariably provoke Gerald to complain that I looked like a farm girl.

As soon as we came in I sent Giles upstairs to the nursery while I lingered for a moment in the Great Hall to consult with Mrs. Nordlem, our housekeeper, about cooking the fish Giles had caught. I was still in the hall when a hired carriage came rolling up the drive and stopped in front of the stately front steps of Weston Hall.

Hodges heard the carriage, went to one of the tall narrow windows that flanked the front door, and glanced out. He clicked his tongue in disapproval of the shabby equipage. Then his back stiffened.

“Good God,” he said, “it’s Mister Stephen!”

I stood as if rooted to the marble floor.

“Mr. Stephen?” Mrs. Nordlem’s small, trim figure was quivering with delight. “My lady, did you hear? Mr. Stephen has arrived!”

“Yes,” I said, “I heard.”

Hodges had already thrown open the front door as wide as it would go and gone outdoors into the hot afternoon sun. “Mr. Stephen!” I heard him cry. There came the tapping of his feet as he ran down the stone stairs. “Welcome home!”

Then, for the first time in five years, I heard Stephen’s voice. “Thank you, Hodges,” he said. “It is good to see you again.”

My legs felt as if they would not bear me up. My mouth was dry and my heart was hammering.

Stop this, Annabelle! I commanded myself. I breathed slowly and deeply, trying to get myself under control.

Stephen walked in the open front door, saw me, and stopped as suddenly as if he’d been shot. We stared at each other across a seemingly endless expanse of black-and-white marble.

He looked the same, yet somehow he was different. The mahogany brown hair, the level brows, the narrow, slightly arched nose, which bore a distinct bump where it had once been broken, the thin, beautifully chiseled mouth, the familiar deep blue eyes: all of these were the same. Yet they looked sharper than I remembered, as if all of the softness of boyhood had been burned away by the hot Jamaican sun.

He said my name, and his voice sounded unsteady.

Portia, who had once been Stephen’s dog, recognized his voice and hurled herself across the marble floor, barking ecstatically.

“Portia! How are you, girl?” He bent to pet her, but she was too excited to stay still. She raced back to me, barked three times to tell me the wonderful news of Stephen’s arrival, and then tore back to him, skidding along the marble floor in her excitement. Merlin decided to get in on the fun, and he also went to greet Stephen. Both dogs’ tails were wagging so hard, their whole bodies shook with the force of it.

The dogs gave me a chance to gain my composure. I crossed the marble floor after them, and conscious of the watching eyes of Hodges and Mrs. Nordlem, I held out my hand. “Portia missed you,” I said. “Welcome home, Stephen.”