Scandals of an Innocent (8 page)

“Philip will be next in line for the marquisate,” Celia Vickery finished, her words dropping into the room like pebbles down a well.

This aspect of the situation had already occurred to Miles although he wished that his sister had not made it quite so explicit. The Dowager Lady Vickery was looking stricken now, and Miles felt impatient to see his mama’s distress. She cared too much, that was the problem. She cared about their father’s reputation, she cared desperately about Philip’s future, she cared about the loss of Drum, and she even cared about
him
with a fondness Miles found inexplicable and utterly unwelcome. Looking at Philip’s youthful, clear-cut profile, Miles felt some emotion stir within him and dismissed
it abruptly. It was too late for him to have any feelings of love or affection or even obligation toward his family. Old memories and emotions rose in him and he slammed the door on them, trapping them in the dark recesses of his mind. He wanted no love from his family now. He had lost them all when he had been eighteen, and it was too late to heal the breach. He would pack his mother and siblings off back to the South as soon as he could. They had, at least, been offered the sanctuary of a grace-and-favor cottage on a cousin’s estate in Kent so he need not worry that they would starve. They lived in vastly reduced circumstances, they were poor relations, but at least they were not begging on the streets.

“Mr. Appleby,” Philip said importantly, “is of the opinion that a belief in superstition is no more than a demonstration of an ill-educated mind.”

“Your tutor is a man of great wisdom,” Miles said. “I am glad to think that you are not in the care of a superstitious fool.”

“But we must make
sure,
” Lady Vickery protested. “We cannot afford to take any risks!” She sat forward in her seat and grabbed hold of Philip’s hand in what she clearly thought was a reassuring grip. “The only solution is for you to marry at once, Miles. I know that you have always been most resistant to the idea of matrimony, but it is your duty to provide an heir immediately in order to save your brother!”

“A charming thought, Mama,” Lady Celia murmured. “Miles can ensure the succession of another hapless sacrifice to the Curse of Drum.”

Miles smiled at her. “On past experience I do not think that one son will be enough, Mama,” he said.
“Drummond needs an heir and several spares before Philip is safe. Look how many of our cousins have been cut down in the past.”

“Pray do not joke about it, Miles,” his mother said, her lip quivering piteously. “You always had a most lamentably odd sense of humor.”

“Your mama does have a point, my lord,” Mr. Churchward said. “It would be extremely advantageous for you to marry, and preferably to an heiress. Leaving aside the so-called curse, that would at least buy you time and stave off the most pressing of the moneylenders—”

He broke off as there was a loud ping from one of the springs in his wing chair. “I do beg your pardon,” he added. “This chair is particularly uncomfortable.”

“The furnishings here are all ghastly,” Lady Celia agreed, looking around the high-ceilinged room with deep disapproval. “The first thing that Miles should do is to have a bonfire.”

“Can’t do that,” Miles said. “When I say we have to sell everything, Celia, I mean everything, down to the last stick of firewood and the last chamber pot.”

Once again there was a silence. Lady Vickery fidgeted with her gloves. She looked pained, as though she had swallowed a fish bone. Celia’s firm expression softened slightly.

“I am sorry, Miles,” she said. “First Vickery Place, then Vickery House and now this! You must feel dreadful—”

“It can’t be helped,” Miles said briskly. Celia’s sympathy was the last thing he wanted. He did not need her pity. He looked at his mother’s pinched, white face. She was aware that he would forever be remem
bered as the man who had sold Vickery and sold Drum, too, the reckless, extravagant marquis who had brought the family fortunes so low that they were in the dust. It was unfair that he would take the blame for the extravagance of others but Miles was blisteringly aware that life was never fair. He had learned that lesson at eighteen when he was banished by his father for bringing the family honor low. Since then he had taught himself to care for nothing.

A knock resounded through the castle, the sound echoing off the stone of the walls and bouncing back to assault the eardrums. Lady Vickery winced.

“I believe that will be Frank Gaines, of Gaines and Partridge, the Skipton law firm,” Miles said. He looked at Mr. Churchward. “I asked him to join us to discuss the very matter you touched upon, Churchward—the business of my marriage.”

Lady Vickery gave a squeak of excitement. “Oh, Miles, you good, good boy! I knew you would not stand by and see your brother taken by the family curse!”

“This has nothing to do with the curse, Mama,” Miles said harshly, “and everything to do with my need to marry money very quickly indeed.”

“I will answer the door,” Lady Celia said practically, rising to her feet, as the knocker thudded again.

“Celia, no.” Lady Vickery was appalled. “That is what the servants are for.”

“Miles has no servants, Mama,” Celia said. “Have you not been attending? He is ruined, in Queer Street.” The knocker sounded a third time and she frowned. “Good gracious but Mr. Gaines is an impatient man.”

“Thank you, Celia,” Miles said as she headed for the door.

His sister dropped him a curtsy laced with irony and left the room. Whilst she was gone, Miles leaned an arm along the top of the stone mantelpiece—which needed a good clean and left a line of dust on the sleeve of his jacket—and reflected how uncomfortable the other occupants of the room looked. Philip was fidgeting and looked thoroughly bored to be so confined. Miles wished his mother had left Philip in London with his tutor. The boy should really be at school, but Miles could no longer afford to pay for his brother’s education and had only been able to afford the services of Mr. Appleby because he was a distant connection of the dowager and had grudgingly offered to reduce his fees out of family feeling. It was something, Miles thought, when even the tutor was patronizing his poor relations.

Lady Vickery, meanwhile, looked as though she was sitting on a bed of nettles. Clearly the news of Miles’s imminent betrothal had excited her considerably and she could not wait to hear the details. She huddled on the sofa in her winter pelisse, holding her hands out toward the fireplace in a vain attempt to get warm. In this drafty medieval castle it seemed almost impossible to build up any heat at all. The stone fireplaces were all broad enough to house an army, and the fire that Miles had coaxed into life in the red drawing room today could not be felt beyond a radius of three feet.

Mr. Churchward shuffled his papers again for no particular reason and cleared his throat simply to break the silence. He looked as though he would be happier taking refuge behind a desk and preferably one a long way away from this shabby castle with its uneasy atmosphere. He, too, was a man who preferred the bustle of city life, and Miles knew that the isolation and
harsh beauty of these Yorkshire hills was not to everyone’s taste, particularly in winter. And then there was Drum Castle itself, which seemed so different from Miles’s childhood memories. He had spent a great deal of time here in his holidays from Eton, for his cousin Anthony had been an almost exact contemporary of his and the castle had rung with sounds of their martial games. Miles was not remotely superstitious, but even he was forced to admit that there was something strangely oppressive about these dark rooms now, crisscrossed as they were with spiders’ webs and trails of dust. Drum Castle seemed positively Gothic now, weighed down by its heavy furnishings and by the dark curtains that closed off the dusty windows. Today, with the wind lifting the hangings from the old stone of the walls and making the building creak and groan, it felt like a castle in a nightmare. Really, Miles thought, one would hardly need a family curse to send one demented in a very short space of time.

Miles thought of the so-called Curse of Drum and of the deaths of his two predecessors. His cousin Freddie’s death had been unpleasant, but it could have happened to anyone, Miles thought ruefully, or at least to anyone who had the sensual appetite of his cousin and the lack of discretion to match.

Anthony, the fifteenth marquis, had been a different matter. He had been cut down at Vimiero, a member of the 20th Light Dragoons who had suffered shocking losses during a cavalry charge. Miles, who had seen the action himself, shuddered inwardly. He had liked Anthony very much and still felt his loss keenly. Their childhood friendship had matured into an
easy adult comradeship. His cousin was one of the few people he had been able to talk to of their shared experiences in the Peninsular Wars. Coming back to civilian society had been a strange and isolating experience after the carnage of the battlefield. No one who had not been there could understand what it had been like, and the well-meaning attempts of some of Miles’s relatives and friends to assure him that they understood his dark moods simply made him feel more alone.

The door opened and Celia reentered the room, followed by a man in well-cut clothes who looked to Miles’s eyes more like a sportsman than a lawyer. Frank Gaines was a big man, tall, broad shouldered and with the durable air of someone who would wear well in adversity. He had brown hair peppered with gray and a humorous but observant glint in his gray eyes. His face was lined and burned dark from the sun, and his nose looked like a bent bow. Miles liked him on sight, although he was fairly certain that any cordiality between them was unlikely to last through the discussions of his proposal of marriage to Alice Lister. As one of Alice’s trustees, Gaines would be a difficult man to win over.

Miles was also amused to see that Celia, whose chilly composure in the presence of the opposite sex was legendary, was looking ever so slightly flustered. He wondered what on earth had occurred between Frank Gaines and his sister in the hall.

Gaines set a chair for Celia, who thanked him in arctic tones. He gave her a look that made her blush, faintly but distinctly, and set her lips in a very straight line. Mentally raising his brows, Miles held out a hand to Gaines and was not surprised to discover that the other man had a very firm handshake.

“Glad you were able to join us, Gaines,” he said.

“How do you do, my lord,” Gaines responded. “It is a pleasure to see you in such good health.”

Miles’s lips twitched. “Thank you, Gaines. Give me time. I have only been Marquis of Drummond for a very short while. My relatives are doing their best to convince me that the family curse will carry me off in the fullness of time.”

“Indeed, my lord,” Gaines said, smiling.

“May I introduce my mother, the Dowager Lady Vickery, and my brother, Philip,” Miles said. “My sister you have just met, of course, and Mr. Churchward must be well-known to you, I imagine.”

Gaines bowed to Lady Vickery and to Philip with aplomb, gave Lady Celia a look that made her raise her chin with hauteur and nodded to Churchward. He took the chair Miles indicated and sat down, uncoiling his long length with a sigh.

“Would you care for refreshment, Mr. Gaines?” the dowager asked hospitably.

“Because if so,” Celia put in, “you will have to make it yourself. My brother has no servants, having no money with which to pay them.”

“At the least we are spared that shocking stew that passes for tea in these parts,” the dowager said with a shudder. “You can stand a spoon up in it!”

“That is how we drink tea in Yorkshire,” Miles said. “Churchward, Gaines and I are going to get down to business now, Mama,” he added. “Might I try to persuade you once again to repair to Fortune’s Folly where, one hopes, Laura’s servants will be able to serve you tea to your satisfaction?”

“I would not dream of it!” the dowager declared. “If
you are to discuss your marriage plans, Miles, then I wish to be here!”

“And so do I,” Celia added, unexpectedly, “to hear which deluded woman is actually prepared to accept your suit, Miles.”

“As to that,” Miles said, “I yesterday made a proposal of marriage to Miss Alice Lister of Fortune’s Folly.” He turned courteously to Churchward. “I apologize that I have not had the opportunity to apprise you of my plans in advance, Mr. Churchward. I understand that you are one of Miss Lister’s trustees, with Mr. Gaines here as the other, which was why I asked to speak with both of you today.”

“Indeed I am Miss Lister’s trustee, my lord,” Churchward said, surprise registering in his voice. He exchanged a look with Frank Gaines, who raised his brows expressively.

“Has…has Miss Lister accepted your suit, my lord?” Churchward continued, in tones that did not fall far short of incredulity.

Miles nodded. “She has.”

He saw Frank Gaines stiffen at the news and his brows snap down in intimidating fashion. “Indeed, my lord,” he said. “You do surprise me. I was under the impression that Miss Lister held you in strong dislike.”

“I managed to find a way to persuade her,” Miles said smoothly. He knew the lawyer was suspicious but told himself that Gaines could not prove anything—not if Alice kept quiet about the blackmail, which she surely would having so much to lose.

“Oh, Miles could persuade any woman to marry him if he tried hard enough,” Lady Vickery put in helpfully, “and what young lady would not wish to be Mar
chioness of Drummond?” She leaned forward. “How big is Miss Lister’s fortune?”