Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 01] - Some Brief Folly (36 page)

"Yes." Able to breathe again, the guilty plotter relaxed.
"Fine young fellow."

"I rather thought he would be. I've met his brother twice and
cannot help but like the man. I do so pray it will not come to a
meeting between them, but they are both so terribly hostile."

Buchanan frowned but said nothing. Certainly Gains had
sufficient reason to demand a meeting at any time he chose. A duel was
not imminent, however. From what Archer had said of Hawk's injuries, he
would be unable to walk for a week, at least. He thought, Thank God!
and could have sunk from self-loathing.

Sir Simon had much to learn of the stubborn nature of Garret
Thorndyke Hawkhurst.

By three o'clock that December afternoon, a breeze had sprung
up, and by four the fog was definitely dispersing. Stephanie was laid
down upon her bed, having spent much of the night sitting beside her
brother, and Buchanan was in the stables, checking over his horses and
equipment in preparation for the journey to Bath the following day. In
the drawing room a shocked group had gathered to hear Euphemia's
account of what had transpired at the ruins. Carlotta and Dora were
seated at a card table which had been set up so that they might work on
Christmas decorations. Euphemia sat beside the fire, with the
Constable, a paunchy, middle-aged gentleman named Mr. Littlejohn, next
to her. Kent was kneeling at her feet, listening intently to the
proceedings, and the Admiral stood with his back to the hearth and
glared at the Constable.

"Most dastardly thing I ever heard of!" he snorted, pulling at
his whisker and managing somehow to imply that the entire matter could
be laid at Mr. Littlejohn's door. "Murdering Bedlamites running loose
through the countryside, assaulting the Quality! Deplorable!"

Mr. Littlejohn appeared to be more concerned over why Miss
Buchanan had been "traipsing about in the fog," a concern that drew an
outraged snort from Wetherby.

Not altogether accurately, Euphemia explained that, having
been confined to the house for some days with a sick child, she had
felt the need for a breath of air and had gone out, only to become
lost. "I chanced to hear Mr. Hawkhurst calling and managed to find him."

"But whatever was Hawkhurst doing on top of the tower, love?"
Dora looked up from the paper chain she was fashioning and said
curiously, "He could not have gone up there for the view, you know, for
the fog was too thick to see anything."

The Constable, writing painstakingly in his tablet, suspended
his endeavours to nod approval and tell her that was "a good point."

"Hawkhurst has for years loved to look at that view." Carlotta
set her glass upon the table and thought the contents were not nearly
as agreeable as the ratafia which had plunged her into disgrace after
the party. "That," she went on absently, "is a well-known fact in the
neighbourhood."

The Admiral chomped his jaws with an impatience that was
heightened as the Constable, writing busily, muttered, "A… well-knowed…
fack. Still, fack remains as it were a sight odd to look at the view
when there wasn't none. And a odder sight. Or a sight odder," he
frowned uncertainly, "that any persons would have knowed as he was
a'going up on that there tower on that
partickler
afternoon so they could leave that there trap there. Now, you may
wonder as how I knows that!" He scanned the baffled group with a
portentous eye. "I
knows
as it musta been left
fer Mr. Hawkhurst, 'cause no poacher in his right mind would set his
traps atop a fifty-foot tower! Less'n he were looking fer to catch a
eagle!" He leaned back, smiling around triumphantly, until he met the
molten glare levelled at him by the Admiral.

"I would not think," Dora offered sapiently, "that a poacher
would use a trap like that for an eagle. Would it not be…" she
attempted to remove a paper loop from her sticky fingers, "… rather
large? Eagles have small feet."

Wetherby gave a subdued snarl and gritted his teeth at the
chandelier.

"Ar! Very true, ma'am," smiled Mr. Littlejohn. "You got a real
head on your shoulders! I don't rightly know what you'd use to catch a
eagle, but—"

"God bless it!" roared the exasperated Admiral, "there
are
no damnable eagles hereabouts!"

"Ar," agreed the Constable and added with remarkable sagacity,
"No more there bean't any bears neither! And, even if there was, why a
trap, I ask you? Fella wants to kill someone, he shoots him, or sticks
a knife in him. Don't go leaving no Russian bear tamer lying about on
top of a fifty-foot tower on the off-chance his murder-ee, as you might
say, would fancy a stroll on top o' said tower to admire the view in
the middle of a thick fog! Odd, says I!" and he nodded with ponderous
vehemence. "O-d-d…"

"Nothing odd about it, Littlejohn," Hawkhurst contradicted
from the doorway. "It gave the man a chance to kill me with no risk of
incriminating himself."

Euphemia and Dora both sprang to their feet. The Admiral spun
around, and Kent rushed to seize Hawkhurst's hand and beam joyously up
at him.

"No use, sir," sighed Bryce, helping his cousin into the room.
"Couldn't keep him upstairs."

"Oh, Hawk!" worried Euphemia, forgetting herself. "Dr. Archer
said—"

"Man's a quack!" proclaimed the Admiral, pleased by her
proprietary air. "Sorry, m'dear, but he always was. Don't blame you a
bit, Garret. Kent, stop jumping up and down and bring that footstool
for Mr. Hawkhurst."

Kent obeyed with alacrity. Bryce eased the invalid into a
chair, then bent and, keeping one eye watchfully on his face, lifted
the bandaged leg.

Hawkhurst's gaze lingered on Euphemia, and, if he noted that
she looked a little wan today, she noted the flicker that touched his
eyes as Bryce lowered his foot. Her hand went out to him in an
instinctive gesture of sympathy. He smiled and winked at her. Not very
much, but seeing it, Dora smiled dreamily and spread glue on her thumb,
while Wetherby could have danced a jig and, turning to the Constable,
felt almost in charity with him as he declared, "Now you'll get your
answers, Littlejohn!"

The Constable's enlightenment was delayed, however. Lady Bryce
attempted to lift her glass and let out a cry of vexation when she was
unable to do so. There was, it appeared, a crack in Dora's pot of glue.
Considerable consternation ensued. Ponsonby and two maids were summoned
to rectify the situation, not benefitting from the acid suggestions of
Lord Wetherby and Colley's barely contained hilarity.

At length, however, the glass was pried from the table and the
gluepot set onto an old chipped saucer. Scarlet with mortification,
Dora crept to the rear of the room, and Coleridge sauntered over to
help with the paper chain while engaging her in a whispered
conversation.

Constable Littlejohn, who had watched the upheavel with a
reinforcing of his convictions that most of the Quality were short of a
sheet, resumed his questioning. Hawkhurst's lazy drawl was noncommital.
He told Littlejohn that he had walked to the tower because "it was too
foggy to ride," which infuriated his grandparent as much as it
satisfied the good Constable. The rest of his answers were as asinine,
but Littlejohn took them all down as though they were pearls of wisdom.
Aware that the Admiral was becoming apoplectic, Coleridge concealed his
own mirth sufficiently to enquire if the minion of the law would care
to see the bear tamer. It transpired that Littlejohn would very much
like to see both the "murder wepping" and the glass of home-brewed that
was cunningly offered. Bryce led him off and, with a conspiratorial
grin at his cousin, closed the door.

"And now," gritted the Admiral, stalking over to frown down at
his grandson, "before that cloth-headed gapeseed comes back, let us
have some plain speaking, sir! I've been chatting with your grooms, and
I hear this is not the first time an attempt has been made on your
life. Why was I not told? It was not Gains! For all his justification
he'd not resort to such loathly means and is no coward, so do not hand
me that farradiddle! I put it to you, Hawkhurst, that I mean to track
down this villain, if I must call in Bow Street to do it! In fact, I
think I shall send a man off to Town in the morning for that—"

"No, sir!" Hawkhurst sat up very fast, winced sharply,
clutched his knee, and subsided, as Kent ran to pat his shoulder
comfortingly.

"By Jupiter!" ejaculated Buchanan, wandering in and staring at
Hawkhurst in stunned shock. "You're up?"

"Garret!" barked the Admiral testily. "I want some answers, if
you please!"

"Well,
I
do
not
please!" Hal Archer surged into the room. "Pon… son… by!" His howl
rattled the glasses. Dora, who had been blowing back a lock of hair
that persisted in falling into her eyes, was so startled that she
forgot she still held the glue-brush and pushed the curl back with it.

"Archer," fumed the Admiral. "Will you be so kind as to—"

"Your lordship, I will not!" the doctor retaliated, not
waiting to learn what the opposition had to say. "In this instance,
I
am at the helm! And I shall do as I dashed well please! Oh, there you
are, Ponsonby. Help Mr. Hawkhurst to his room. At once! The sooner he
is out of this bedlam, the better!"

The Admiral was so incensed by both interruption and
delineation that he found it necessary to follow doctor, butler, and
patient up the stairs, vociferously expressing his resentment each step
of the way. Kent, slipping in beside his hero, found Ponsonby
supporting him on one side and a cane employed on the other. Undaunted,
he gripped a corner of Hawkhurst's jacket and thus became a part of the
small procession.

Euphemia, meanwhile, moved to the aid of the hapless Dora, and
Carlotta proceeded to offer some barbed advice as to the best method by
which the glue-brush might be extricated from her relative's locks.

Unnoticed in the confusion, Buchanan and Stephanie drifted
quietly away.

Archer's mood had mellowed considerably when he left his
patient half an hour later. Encountering two worried young ladies in
the hall, he told them that, if Hawk could be chained to his bed so
that the stitches might have a chance to hold, the leg would doubtless
heal in due course. Euphemia's fears were considerably eased by this
news, but to her surprise the usually calm Stephanie questioned the
surgeon so exhaustively that he at length advised her not to be a silly
goose, for she knew her brother was forged of Toledo steel.

Downstairs, meanwhile, Coleridge and Mrs. Graham were in
spirits because the fog had lifted, thus enabling them to drive into
Down Buttery for the Broadbents' annual Christmas party, and when
Stephanie and Euphemia joined them, Colley urged that they go along.
Lady Bryce entered a caveat, saying it must surely be improper to
attend a celebration after their dear Garret had been so murderously
set upon. Dora's face fell. "I am sure you are right, Lottie," she said
wistfully. "We had best not go." Colley looked downcast, but to
Euphemia's delight the Admiral intervened. Hawk, he said, would be the
last to wish anyone to miss some merrymaking on his account, and he
urged that they all go. In the event, only Carlotta, Dora, and
Coleridge took his advice. Euphemia pleaded weariness, but actually had
no wish to leave Hawkhurst on what would be her last evening in the
great house. Buchanan said he had some letters that simply must be
attended to, and Stephanie declined on the grounds she wished to spend
some time with her dear Euphemia. At the last moment, Colley asked if
he might take Kent along. "It will be a little late for him, because
there will be dancing half the night after the children's party is
over, but it's a grand affair, Mia. All the village children are
invited, and he would likely have a fine time. And never worry, they've
a large house, and there is sure to be a spot where he can curl up
until we leave." Euphemia accepted gratefully. Kent was summoned and,
thrown into a fever of excitement, went racing joyously off in search
of his coat and hat.

The house was quiet when at last they were gone, and Euphemia
was very glad when dinner came to an end. Not only was she extremely
conscious of the lack of Hawkhurst's vital presence at the table, but
the knowledge she was to leave tomorrow, coupled with the fear that she
might never see her love again, weighed heavily upon her spirits.
Fortunately, the Admiral was in a high good humour, and his amusing
reminiscences of a Christmas he had passed in Bombay brightened the
meal until he directed a casual enquiry to Ponsonby as to Hawkhurst's
disposition. The butler replied gravely that Constable Littlejohn had
been with the master for the last hour and more, whereupon Wetherby
rose up like an erupting volcano. "I vow that maggot-wit has settled in
like a bulldog," he snorted. "Pray excuse me, for I must kick him
downstairs before he wears poor Hawk to a shade!" Saying which, he
sailed out with all storm signals flying.

Euphemia and Stephanie left Buchanan to his port, but he
joined them very shortly, and a few moments later the Admiral returned.
The Constable thought the village blacksmith might be able to shed some
light upon the possible owner of the bear tamer. Would they forgive so
flagrant a breach of good manners did he accompany Littlejohn into Down
Buttery? Implored not to stand on ceremony at such a time, he kissed
his granddaughter and told her not to wait up for him, adjured Buchanan
not to go rushing off in the morning without allowing him to say his
farewells, and winked mischievously at Euphemia. "As for you, dear
lady, I've no doubt we shall see
you
often enough
after the holidays."

Watching him stride briskly from the room, Euphemia longed to
share his confidence. She stifled a sigh and glanced around to find
Stephanie watching her. The girl said earnestly, "He is quite right,
Mia. We
will
be seeing you. Very often. No
matter… what happens."