The Gallant Guardian (19 page)

“We are going to visit Lord Lydon, Charlie? Famous! Will we be in the carriage for hours and hours? Will I get to see London? Can I ride on the box with Speen?” William, sitting on a corner of
Charlotte’s bed watching Charlotte and Lucy pack, bounced up and down in his excitement.

“Whoa, William. Catch your breath, dear, so I can answer your questions one at a time.” Charlotte could not help chuckling. His enthusiasm was so infectious that even she began to look forward to the change in routine and scenery. The prospect of new sights and different people was enough to make her forget for a while the reasons behind their journey. She folded a paisley shawl and handed it to Lucy, who was packing the valises. “Yes, we shall be in the carriage for some time. No, we shall not be going to London, but to Lord Lydon’s estate in Kent, and you will have to ask Speen if you can ride on the box with him.” She leaned over to ruffle his hair. “But we shall ask Cook to pack a hamper and, if the weather is fine tomorrow, which I expect it should be, we shall have a picnic.”

“A picnic! Hooray! I’ll go tell Cook.” William jumped up and was out the door before his sister could say another word.

~~~~

The rest of the day. Charlotte was too preoccupied with instructions to the staff and last-minute packing to wonder how their guardian would take their sudden eruption into his life, but the next morning when, after a hurried breakfast, she at last sank back against the squabs of the carriage, exhausted from having been awakened before dawn by a brother in a fever of expectation, she was assailed by misgivings. Already she could picture the marquess, one dark brow raised in ironic disbelief as she explained their sudden appearance on his doorstep. The reasons behind their flight from Harcourt
did
sound rather fantastical, Charlotte admitted to herself as they rolled down the gravel drive, but fantastical or not, she was not willing to risk William’s safety to find out.

She glanced over at her brother’s face, which was alive with interest. To him, the entire episode, from his successful restraint of a runaway horse to a sudden journey into Kent, was a huge adventure. Charlotte prayed that that was all it ever would be. The thought of life without him, his sunny, smiling face, all his little enthusiasms, the blue eyes so full of love and affection, were all she had. His was the only love she had ever known except for the dimly remembered feeling of her mother, so faint and faraway that she sometimes wondered if it had been real at all.

“Look, look, Charlie, there is Mr. Mapplethorne.” William leaned out of the window to get a better look at the gig they overtook as they turned from Harcourt’s drive onto the main road. He waved vigorously.

The shopkeeper smiled and nodded as they passed.

“I wish I had told him we were going away. I did not get to tell anyone we were taking a trip, not even Mr. Dashett. Mr. Dashett will wonder where I am. Sometimes he even lets me hold the horses when he is putting shoes on them.”

“Well, you will be able to tell him all about your journey when you return, and won’t he be surprised?” Charlotte was just as glad that the blacksmith, a greater source of gossip even than the barmaid at the Green Dragon, had not been given the slightest hint of their departure. The less gossip there was, the less likely Cecil was to hear where they had gone from Tom Piggott, or anyone else he might have bribed to keep an eye on the young earl.

“Yes he will be surprised,” William replied with great satisfaction, “because I have never been on a journey before, have I Charlie? You went to London, but
I
did not go to London.”

“No, you did not go to London, but I was hardly gone at all. If I had been, I would have missed you dreadfully.”

“If I am good on this journey, will you take me to London some time? Jem says there are lots of fine horses to be seen there, but it is very crowded.”

“I shall take you there some day and you can see for yourself,” his sister promised. Then with a sigh of relief at having safely escaped Harcourt and its environs without mishap, Charlotte leaned back and gave herself up to the motion of the carriage, trying to empty her mind of the questions jostling with each other for a place in her consciousness. She had dealt as best she could with the threat to William; nothing would be served by worrying further over it. When she had had time to relax and think calmly, she would consider how to proceed, but for the moment she was simply too exhausted to do anything more than stare blankly at the passing countryside.

They ate lunch atop Crockham Hill, though William, who raced around taking in the magnificent view from every angle, was too excited to do more than swallow a mouthful of the pigeon pie and cold pheasant that Cook had packed. He even ignored his favorite, apple tart, in his eagerness to be on the road again.

Just as the sun was beginning to sink and a light mist was rising over the low places, they entered Aylesford and, after crossing the medieval bridge, stopped to ask directions of a prosperous-looking
farmer, who directed them to Lydon Court a few miles beyond the village. “You cannot see the house from the road, but there’s no mistaking the gates or the gatehouse,” he added, eyeing them curiously. It was rare for the marquess to be at home receiving visitors, and rarer still for those visitors to be a young lady of obvious gentility and a lad whose mouth and nose bore enough resemblance to hers to be either a brother or a cousin.

The farmer’s directions were easily enough followed and they were soon drawing up in front of Lydon Court, whose long, low brick facade glowed pink in the soft evening light, the gilded ball atop the central cupola gleaming like a beacon in the last rays of the setting sun. Lydon was not so large or impressive as Harcourt, but it was a good deal older, its exterior having been left virtually unchanged since its construction during the reign of Charles I.

Though lights glowed in most of the windows, there was a strangely deserted air in the courtyard. When a footman finally did appear, followed closely by the butler, both servants wore the slightly startled air of men who had been called upon unexpectedly. Both of them tugged at their coats as they hurried down the steps, as though they had been attending to something else when interrupted by the arrival of the Winterbournes’ carriage. However, the greeting was gracious enough and the butler sent the footman with the message to the housekeeper, Mrs. Purdy, to have the bedchambers prepared for the travelers as naturally as though Charlotte and William were frequent guests at Lydon.

“I shall tell his lordship of your arrival, my lady, and have some refreshments brought in,” he reassured Charlotte as he led them into the low entrance hall ringed with marble columns below and a portrait gallery above. Charlotte glanced without much success at the portraits above her, for they were too high to make anything out. Her attention was quickly distracted by a burst of raucous laughter from a brilliantly lighted room halfway down the hall along which the butler was conducting them. As they passed the room, she peeked surreptitiously over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of a table littered with wine glasses and the remains of a sumptuous meal.

The guests seated around the table were laughing uproariously, their attention focused on a dark-haired woman in a gown cut so low as to leave nothing to the imagination. She had one arm around the neck of a man who was obviously her companion and one around someone who closely resembled the marquess, though
it was too far away for Charlotte to be absolutely certain. The others were leaning back in their chairs and up against one another in a most intimate, provocative manner, one saucy red-haired young woman even going so far as to sit on the lap of a most appreciative gentleman.

Charlotte’s eyes widened. So that was what people meant when they whispered disapprovingly about the antics of rakes and libertines. Actually, it did not look shocking so much as it did fun. She would have liked to observe it all more closely, but afraid of attracting the notice of William or the butler with her curiosity, she hastily directed her gaze in the opposite direction at some ancient suits of armor along the wall just as the butler opened the door into the library.

The room into which they were ushered was larger and less intimate than the richly paneled room at Harcourt, but the dying fire was quickly poked into a roaring blaze. Charlotte was grateful for its welcoming warmth, for the chill of the evening had begun to make her wish she had brought a heavier cloak instead of the yellow sarcenet pelisse she was wearing.

“Thank you.” Charlotte made herself comfortable on a sofa directly in front of the fire while her brother ran to the windows that surveyed the vast park and the pastures beyond. “Do you think Lord Lydon’s horses are still in the pasture, or have they come in for the night? He said he was raising them, you know.”

“Yes, he did,” Charlotte answered wearily. Ordinarily, she was delighted to join in her brother’s conversation, but hours of responding to speculations on the oddly shaped ost houses they passed, or the numbers of sheep, the height of a towering church steeple, and numerous other points of interest along the way had quite worn her out and emptied her of all conversation. For the moment all she could do was stare fixedly into the dancing flames and hope that their guardian would not be too angered by their sudden descent upon his bachelor household.

Chapter Twenty-one

Lydon’s face as his butler whispered in his ear the news of his unexpected guests’ arrival registered all the annoyance that Charlotte had feared. The first spurt of anger he felt at being interrupted was quickly followed by a more rational response as he disengaged himself from the soft arms of the very obliging actress seated next to him. Charlotte was not the clinging, helpless sort of female who needed masculine support or attention. He knew her far better than that. She would not leave the pleasant, comfortable, and familiar atmosphere of Harcourt to go baring about the countryside with her brother unless something was seriously amiss. But that she should appear at this particular moment, when he was entertaining guests, some of doubtful respectability, was unfortunate, to say the least.

Max had run into Tubby Westrup, Jack Standish, and Colly Forsyth at Tattersall’s a fortnight ago and had been hailed with delight by some of the choicest spirits ever to pass through the portals of Government House in Calcutta. There had been little difficulty in recognizing them, for the colorful trio was easily distinguished from the rest of the crowd by the outrageous parti-colored waistcoats and bright hues that only an Indian tailor could have been talked into making up as a jacket.

“Lydon, you old dog! You can’t have been in London long, for we haven’t heard news of any daring curricle races, duels, or legions of lovelorn ladies.” Tubby greeted him in his great booming voice and gave him a huge buffet on the shoulder. Tubby, an enormous man of prodigious appetites, had caused his father, the Earl of Claverdon, almost as much annoyance as Max had caused his, and the two of them, after discovering one another at the racecourse in Calcutta, had soon become fast friends.

“Tubby, what brings you here to the metropolis? Surely life in England, even in London, is too flat for your tastes.”

“That it is, my boy, that it is. But the pater is doing poorly and wanted to lecture me one last time before sticking his spoon in the wall, and Colly and Jack were making Calcutta rather too hot for themselves, so here we are—and dashed boring it is too. London didn’t used to be this flat, but now everyone is so respectable it makes you want to turn up your toes. Why even Mad Dog St. Clair has become a father and is as dull as a parson. Who would have thought it?” Tubby paused in his litany of woe to direct a suspicious glance at Max. “You have not gone and done something stupid like getting leg-shackled, have you?”

Max chuckled. “Have no fear, Tubby. You know me better than that. I prize my freedom too highly to sacrifice it to some woman who would spend the rest of her days trying to turn me into a lap dog.”

The four friends had spent a pleasant morning sauntering among horse fanciers of all types, from grooms to dukes, admiring magnificent shoulders here, a noble head there, and recalling some of their more outrageous exploits. The marquess had ended by inviting them all to join him in the country. “For surely you will have set London on its ear by then and will be looking for some cover to run to.”

Not wishing to trespass on Lydon’s hospitality without giving something in return, Tubby had convinced some obliging ladybirds to take time off from their minimal duties on stage to liven up the house party and they had all journeyed down from London several days before. There was no doubt that the
ladies
had added to the hilarity of the mealtimes, entertaining them all with ribald jokes and tales of life backstage. They had contributed less to the outdoor activities, not being the least interested in riding, fishing, or even touring the countryside in their companions’ dashing curricles, preferring instead to lie abed until noon and spend the better part of the afternoon chattering among themselves and dressing for dinner.

In actuality, the gentlemen preferred this state of affairs, as it allowed them freedom to indulge in all the pursuits that sporting-mad gentlemen enjoyed in the country. It had been a relaxing, convivial time, one so reminiscent of the old days in India that Lydon had been able to put all his duties and obligations out of his mind completely. And now, here was one of his duties come to confront him in his refuge. Regardless of the reasons—and, knowing Charlotte, the marquess felt that they were probably entirely
justified—he was more than a little irritated at having his sojourn so rudely interrupted.

Scowling ferociously, the marquess pushed back his chair and stalked from the dining room, leaving his dinner partner to transfer her plump, white arms to the neck of Jack Standish instead. His scowl deepened as he strode down the hall to the library and flung the door open. “What in the blazes—”

“Lord Lydon, Lord Lydon, we came all the way from Harcourt to see you and we had a picnic and Speen let me ride most of the way on the box with him.” William ran from his place at the window, his eyes shining with eagerness and excitement. “We’re here. Isn’t it famous? Can I see some of your horses that you are raising? Charlie says I mustn’t plague you, but I saw one in the pasture and he is splendid. Will you let me see him?”