Seacliff (10 page)

Twice, Caitlin thought. Twice!

She dismissed the woman with a brusque wave and turned to stare up through the balustrade at the door to her husband’s den. In defiance of all of Oliver’s rules he’d met with someone here at the house, the rider with the white patch; and James Flint had been here twice, and neither time had he attempted to speak with her. Since he was definitely not the sort of man who would cringe at or shy away from a husband’s wrath, he had another reason—and as she made her way slowly, thoughtfully, downstairs she wondered if she had a reason to feel used.

7

T
he sitting room was dominated by a massive fieldstone fireplace that extended the entire length of one wall. Two armchairs and a low, scalloped couch embroidered with gold, silver, and spring green designs were arranged before it. Similar settings were placed throughout the room to take advantage of the large bay window overlooking the sweep of the front lawn, or the relative peace of the far comer where conversation was held to a minimum. Here were the only shelves Oliver had in the house, the books being kept for occasional reading. The rest of the walls were taken up by hunting tapestries and oil portraits of the Morgans, including one of Oliver himself in full major’s regalia over the mantel.

As Caitlin sat in a fireplace armchair, Mary hurried in with a long taper to light the candles in their ebony sconces. The girl said nothing, but Caitlin noticed she’d been weeping. Curious, she thought, but no more curious than the rest of the day’s events and discoveries. She’d been waiting for nearly two hours, keeping her hand on a book of French poetry while her gaze flitted often to the foyer. She hoped Oliver would come down long enough before dinner so she could ask him the dozen questions that were swirling through her mind. Her temper had surged and calmed as she considered Flint, and Oliver’s annoying restlessness, and when she found herself reading the same verse repeatedly, without understanding a word, she closed the book and laid it on the small round table near her left hand.

At that moment Gwen entered the room. She paused a moment, her hands buried in the ample folds of her simple brown skirt. Then she stalked across the floor to stand behind the couch. Her eyes were ablaze with rage, and her chin trembled with the effort to keep from shouting. Her cheeks flushed, and she swallowed several times while she avoided Caitlin’s astonished, concerned look.

“That… man,” Gwen finally managed, her voice tight and harsh, her eyes softening now as tears welled. Quickly, she swiped the back of a hand over them, dried the hand on her square-necked blouse. “He’s impossible!”

Between Gwen and the couch was a long, narrow walnut table upon which lay an engraved silver tray with several crystal wine glasses and a decanter of dark brandy. Gwen’s right hand closed around the neck of the decanter, and for a moment Caitlin thought she was going to yank out the stopper and pour herself a drink.

“Gwen,” she said softly, and the hand fell away.

Gwen looked at her—fury and sorrow twisting her lovely round face into something close to hideous while her throat worked to force out the words.

“Gwen, what happened?” Though she wanted to rise and take her friend in her arms, she sensed that a single movement on her part would send Gwen racing from the room. It was all she could do to keep herself still.

“He beat him!” Gwen said loudly, turning toward the window and glaring at the dying light. “He… the monster beat him!”

Caitlin did rise then, and came around the couch to the table. After a moment’s hesitation she poured a measure of brandy into a glass and handed it to Gwen. When Gwen shrugged the offer away, Caitlin grabbed her arm.

“Beat him,” Gwen whispered. “Beat him like he was some kind of street dog. I can’t believe he’d really do that to him.” A tear shimmered, and fell untouched.

Caitlin gently forced the glass into her hand, then led her back to sit on the couch. Gwen stared at the brandy as if it were something totally alien to her, looking to Caitlin who nodded and then drank it as if it were water. She choked, and Caitlin poured another, a more generous portion. Then she sat on the couch beside her.

“Who?” she said. “Who beat whom?”

Gwen held her glass in two hands and stared blindly at the hearth. “Sir goddamned bloody Oliver beat Davy, that’s who!” she spat out the words as though Morgan’s name were an obscenity. “For no reason at all he beat the poor boy around the stableyard. Kicked him! Thrashed him!” She turned to Caitlin suddenly, the tears flowing freely. “Why? Davy’s a good boy, Cat, you know that for a fact. He’d never…” She swallowed and turned away quickly. “He never would, you know. He’s a good boy. He’s a good boy.”

Caitlin pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and daubed at the tears until Gwen freed one hand from her glass and took the handkerchief herself.

“Are you sure Oliver beat Davy?” she said, trying mightily to keep her voice calm. She knew enmity between Daniels and her husband existed, but though she loved Davy dearly she would not put it past him to make up such a story to cover a wrong.

Gwen nodded vigorously and blew her nose. “He was in the stable, curryin’, Davy was. Without so much as a by-your-leave, the major comes in and starts knocking him about, pushing him to the ground and— and…” She drained the glass and took a long, deep breath.

Caitlin put a hand on her friend’s arm, stroked it while Gwen struggled for speech. “Gwen,” she said, “I hate to say this, but you know how Davy is at times. And you know how he’d like nothing more than to have you fuss a bit over him. A fall, perhaps, and he—”

Gwen snatched her arm away and stood glaring. “David Daniels does not lie to me, Cat! If he says Sir Oliver thrashed him, then that’s what happened.” A pause, and Gwen’s face drained. “I don’t believe you’re actually defending him, Cat. How could you? How could you after what he’s done?” Caitlin cursed herself roundly for not thinking before speaking, and tried to appear as contrite as she could. “I am not defending him, Gwen. If he did indeed lay a hand on Davy—”

“Dammit, Cat, he did! I just told you he did!” Her hands clenched into fists at her waist, and her foot slammed on the floor twice. “He did!”

Caitlin leaned back and stared at Gwen’s swollen red eyes, her quivering lips, and felt her own expression harden. “You say he kicked him. Several times? Once? Did Davy say anything? You know how my husband is, Gwen. Did Davy say anything to him?”

Gwen hesitated, her gaze wandering about the room like that of a small animal searching furtively for an escape. She lifted a trembling hand, dropped it wearily, and stared into the glass she suddenly realized was still in her hand. Her lower lip quivered; there was a faint tic under her right eye.

“Gwen?”

In a soft voice, reluctantly: “He didn’t …well, he didn’t actually put a boot to Davy, no. Not a boot, anyway. But that—”

“How many times did Davy say he’d been struck?”

“Cat, I don’t—”

“Answer me,” she demanded as kindly and sternly as she could, rising swiftly to take the woman’s arm in a gentle grip. “Gwen, how many times was Davy struck?”

The young woman swallowed heavily, but still refused to meet her probing stare. “All right. Once,” she finally admitted. But she added, quickly and desperately, “But he didn’t have to hit him, Cat. He didn’t! All Davy said to him—” She stopped guiltily, and Caitlin gave her a soft, encouraging smile that almost brought a smile in return.

“Yes?”

“Well…”

A caution: “Gwen.”

Gwen looked to the floor. “Davy says he called the major a bastard.”

Caitlin groaned and closed her eyes, opened them and raised her eyebrows in mild exasperation. “Why? Why would Davy do a stupid, reckless thing like that?”

A helpless shrug, and Gwen looked up. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. And Davy … he wouldn’t say. He told me some things, but he didn’t tell me all of it.”

Caitlin lowered her arms and moved heavily to the hearth, looking blindly at the fresh logs and the gleam of the brass andirons. Her hand pushed through her hair, and came to rest on her shoulder. “Davy knows better than that,” she said, almost to herself. “I can see how he is around Oliver. And,” she added flatly and turned quickly, “I can see how you are around Davy, you know.”

Gwen’s mouth opened in astonishment, then closed tightly while she fought to regain control of her temper. Then, abruptly, she went on the defensive. “But the man hates us, Cat! Why… why, he couldn’t hate us more if we were the French.” She looked past Gwen to the front hall, feeling the tension make a wooden mask of her face, and an icy flow of her veins.

“It doesn’t matter that he dislikes you,” she said sternly. “Though God knows you’ve given him little chance to feel anything different.”

“Cat, please—”

“And,” she said, her voice rising, “it does not matter to me what Davy said to him. I do not approve, mind, but I know the lad well, and he must have been provoked or he would not have said something so completely, so terribly wrong.” Her eyes narrowed then, and Gwen backed away from her. “It was wrong; you must understand that, Gwen. It was wrong, what Davy said.”

Gwen nodded quickly.

“And it was equally wrong for my husband to strike him. He has no right. Provoked or not, he should not have raised a hand.” A fist pressed hard to her chest. “He has no right!”

In the face of Caitlin’s anger Gwen seemed abruptly ill at ease, regretting that she had said anything at all. Her lips moved soundlessly, and her expression lost its combination of rage and sadness, twisting instead into fearful concern.

“Cat, he mustn’t know what I’ve told you. He mustn’t know I’ve said anything at all.”

“What?” she snapped, the obsidian eyes turned to glaring stone.

“If …if you say something to him, he’ll only take it out on poor Davy again. Or on me. It’ll only be worse, Cat, believe me. I’m…” She put a trembling hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry I said anything at all.”

“No,” Caitlin told her sharply, striding purposefully off the hearth and taking her friend’s hands in her own. “My God, no, Gwen, you must never think that. Never. You must tell me everything. Do you hear me? I’m not permitted to discipline Bradford or the others, and by God I don’t care what Oliver thinks, he is not permitted to take such charge of my people. My own people!”

She took a trembling deep breath to say more, to bring some small comfort to ease the pain Gwen was feeling, but in the midst of her pause she could hear the clatter of heavy footsteps descending from the gallery.

“Listen, Gwen,” she said quickly, her gaze on the doorway. “You must promise me something.”

“Cat—”

She lowered her voice almost to a hissing. “There’s no time! You must promise me something.”

Gwen, confused, nodded rapidly.

“If this ever happens again, or if anything like it comes to your ken, you must come to me at once, do you understand?”

“I … yes.”

“You swear to me, Gwen?”

Gwen put a hand over her heart. “I swear.”

The footsteps paused, their echoes in the hall swiftly fading.

“All right, then. Get along now, before he finds you here. I’ll speak to him, believe me. This won’t happen again.”

Gwen opened her mouth as though she were anxious to say something more, but the renewed hard crack of boot heels against stone sent her racing from the room, through a narrow door in the paneled back wall. Caitlin waited with hands at her sides until Oliver stood framed in the doorway. He wore his black silk dressing gown open as if it had been flung on in haste, and his shirt was unfastened halfway down his chest; the disarray took her aback until her mind’s ear heard again the distress in Gwen’s voice.

“Oliver, I must talk to you.”

Oliver nodded once, but said nothing. He walked calmly to the brandy and poured himself a portion much larger than he usually took so soon before dinner. He stared at the glass for several long moments, and her own tempered anger prevented her from seeing immediately that his face seemed abruptly older, more lined, and that the flesh on his scalp appeared as fragile as parchment.

“Oliver?”

He lowered the glass without sipping the brandy and crossed to her side to lead her to the couch.

“Oliver, what is it?”

He cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable. “This afternoon,” he began.

“Yes,” she said sharply. “I want to talk with you about that. I would like to know by what right you have struck one of my people.” Oliver looked at her stupidly, blinking rapidly until he was able to comprehend what she was saying. Then he pulled away slightly without releasing his grip. “You have heard.”

“I have.”

“It was necessary.”

“Oliver”—she lowered her voice—”I cannot see the necessity of striking anyone who is part of the staff. And especially someone who is my friend.”

“Caitlin, this is not a proper topic for discussion in my household.”

She reacted as if she had been slapped. Hot blood rushed to her cheeks. “How… how dare you!” she said. “How dare you speak to me this way! David Daniels, may I remind you, sir, is a member of my household. I would not presume to take a switch to that sniveling child, Mary, just because she mutters about me behind my back— though I would take pleasure in doing so, I assure you—and I fail to see how—”

“The lad was insubordinate,” Oliver said, his tone oddly muted.

“Oh, Oliver, for heaven’s sake, this isn’t the army, and these are not your soldiers we’re talking about.”

“Caitlin,” he said firmly, “this is not what I wished to speak with you about.”

Her mouth opened, closed, his words finally soaking in. Was he going to tell her why James Flint had been in the house without her knowledge? And in thinking his name, Caitlin wondered if Flint hadn’t, for some reason, told Oliver about their tryst. The idea of it chilled her, but she was relieved when she sensed her husband was not the slightest bit angry.

“Very well,” she said, when she understood he’d been expecting some sort of response. “We will discuss it later. What is it you want?”

His fingers kneaded the backs of her hands, and suddenly she was filled with the most uncanny feeling of dread. “Oliver, tell me.”