The Mysterious Heir (23 page)

“I would not have wished to come here,” Richard said, as though compelled to speak by the searching look in Elizabeth's eyes. “I would not have come here,” he said forcefully, “if I had any choice. Understand, Elizabeth, I am a proud man. Or was,” he said bitterly, “a proud man. I have little enough to be proud of. A small estate, halfway to ruin, and little more than the lining in my pockets to repair my fortunes with. But I went to London to see if I could raise some blunt to put my estate back in order again. I wished to raise horses. I am good with horses,” he added, staring at Elizabeth as if to dare her to deny this.

“I don't know why I tell you this, except that I must leave the message for Morgan, and you are a good sensible female. I see that. Oh, yes”—he laughed sourly—“I do see everything that transpires here at Lyonshall, though I say little. For I think I am overwhelmed with shame at myself, coming here to do the pretty in hopes that Morgan would be my fairy godmother. A great hulking Cinderella I'd make, too, wouldn't I, Elizabeth?

“No matter,” he went on. “It is almost over and I can at last be myself. I found no eager patrons in London and was almost about to go to the moneylenders, though I knew the danger in that course, when I received an invitation to a rout at an old school friend's house. I met Caroline there.”

Elizabeth noted how he paused when he said the name. How his face and voice softened at the uttering of the name.

“She is the loveliest creature, Elizabeth. Wellborn, graceful, and beautiful. But also well endowed with a modest fortune. But that, I swear, is of no moment to me. In fact, I would far prefer her to be in rags, for then I would have had a chance with her. As it was, I paid her court. And she told me that despite her father's urging her to take someone with more money, she preferred me. I stayed on in London, my ambition outstripping my funds, just so that I could be near her. But when Morgan's letter came, I saw that I might at last have a way to clear her father's objections. As heir to Auden, surely, he could not turn down my suit again.”

A look of hope lit his eyes. Unconsciously he held Elizabeth's hand too tightly, as he went on. “And her father agreed. Agreed, at least, that being named heir would make me more suitable. But he promised nothing. So I came to Lyonshall. And found that I hated myself for it. I do not like to be a beggar. I did not like to parade myself before others, as if in some sort of contest. I would earn my way in life. Perhaps that is why I was so withdrawn and surly. For so much as I needed and wanted Morgan to choose me, so much I also despised myself for vying to be picked as heir. It was not Lyonshall I wanted, it was only Caroline.”

“Ah, Richard,” Elizabeth sighed, touched by the confession that seemed to have been wrung out of him by circumstance.

“I wrote to Caroline constantly while here. And then one day I received a letter from her, in which she said that it seemed her father was looking upon another man's offer with great interest. That's why I hastened back to London the other week. She seemed overjoyed to see me. Genuinely glad to see me. As soon as I could I returned here, for she urged me not to let the others steal a match on me. Elizabeth, do you know what a misery it is to pretend to be someone you are not?” he asked with passion.

Elizabeth winced at his words. And she took his trembling hands in hers, and held them still. “Poor Richard,” she said, looking at him with great sorrow-darkened eyes. “Oh, I know. I do know. Have you told Morgan, my dear?”

“That depends,” the Earl's cold voice said harshly, “upon what he has told me.”

Elizabeth dropped Richard's hands as a guilty child will drop a stolen treat. She looked over Richard's shoulder to see the Earl, leaning heavily upon his stick, staring back at her with a twisted smile upon his lips. Anthony, puzzled, stood beside him.

“Morgan. I must go. I was just telling Elizabeth, so that
she could relay the message to you. Look at yesterday morning's
Times
, Morgan. Look at it!” he cried, thrusting the paper toward the Earl.

The Earl held his hand out stiffly to receive the paper. He seemed abstracted as he took it, and his eyes never left Elizabeth. Finally he gazed down at it and looked to where Richard pointed with a shaking finger.

“Oh,” the Earl said softly, once he had read the words. Then his expression softened as well. He placed a hand on Richard's shoulder. “What can you accomplish by returning now?” he said quietly. “It is done. You must accept it.”

“I must see for myself,” Richard answered, forcing himself under control again. “I must have it from her own lips. At least that,” he said.

Richard took the paper back and gave it to Elizabeth. “There is the end of my tale,” he said to her. “Perhaps it is the end, but I must go and see.”

But Elizabeth did not read the paper, she only started and asked in confusion, “But Morgan knows?”

“Yes,” Richard answered as he made to leave, “he knows everything. Good-bye for now,” he said to the Earl. “I will return only when I know all the truth.” And he left the room.

The Earl looked after him and then said in a musing tone, “Not quite everything. But I do know the lad is only letting himself in for more misery by returning to London. But I think him lucky, though he does not know it as yet. For she was only playing with him. It is the other fellow who is the really unlucky one.”

While Anthony looked at the Earl in confusion, Elizabeth scanned the lines on the much-crumpled paper. It was the social pages she held. After a moment, Elizabeth cried, “She's engaged herself to a Baron!”

“Yes,” the Earl answered in a now bored tone, “as she most likely always intended to do. And it is the poor Baron who will regret this day, long after Richard has put her down to experience. But it is not quite fair to discuss this further in front of Anthony, as he has not been made privy to Richard's
dilemma. And I am not sure he ought to be, without Richard's express permission.”

“Of course,” Elizabeth replied. “I shan't say a word. Anthony, I'm sure Richard will tell you the whole when he returns.”

Anthony shrugged, and the Earl put in swiftly, “Now that Anthony and I have done with our little talk, we decided it was time to come and release you from your lonely waiting. But this morning seems destined for secrets. For Anthony and I have also agreed to keep our discussion to ourselves for a while. Can you bear it, Elizabeth?” he asked quizzically.

“If I must,” Elizabeth said in disappointment.

“Oh, don't worry, Liz,” Anthony said cheerfully, “for Morgan's not come to any decision. That much I can tell you.”

But as the three began to speak of more general things, the Earl wondered at the truth in that statement. For when he had entered the room and seen, for that one moment, Elizabeth's rapt face gazing up at Richard, he had for that one moment felt himself propelled back in time. For it was not the first time he had seen a trusted female's face from a vantage point beyond another man's shoulder. Now, looking at her clear, smiling, animated visage, the Earl sighed and wondered if he had not indeed come to a decision after all.

*

Elizabeth sat upon her bed and finished brushing out her hair. This really, she thought as she rose to put her brush back upon her night table, cannot go on much longer. The summer was slipping away, and the Earl seemed no closer to a decision than he was when they had arrived. Almost, she hated him in her thoughts, as she prepared for bed, for he should not, she thought censoriously, take so long about it. But even as she thought it, she reconsidered. For the moment that he did make up his mind, she knew she would be gone from this place, probably never to return. She sighed heavily and was prepared to blow out the candles when she heard a slight noise at the door, something between a scratching and a rustle.

Elizabeth felt a shiver of alarm. The first thought to come
to her was that of rodents. And if—she shuddered, drawing the covers up around her—the Earl housed rodents in his ancestral home, she would be out of Lyonshall before sunup.

But the noise abated and she heard then only the usual sounds of a summer's night filtering in through her half-open window: crickets, frogs, and the rustling of the leaves on the great trees that surrounded the house. Taking up all her courage (and her night rail's skirt as well), Elizabeth eased herself up and out of bed. She raised her candle high and saw a slip of paper lying on the floor near to her door.

She scanned the few words upon the paper. “Come at once to the blue salon. We must discuss Anthony,” was all it said.

Elizabeth took only a second to try to puzzle out the hand. She had never seen any of the other guests' writing, and as the writing on the original letter that had come to Tuxford could have been done by the Earl's secretary, she could not know if it was the Earl that had sent her this curious note. And she did not know who else would wish to speak about Anthony at this late hour, when all in the house were abed.

A second later, she thought that perhaps Anthony had come to some harm, and the writer of the note wished her to know about it before any other inmate at Lyonshall. He had, after all, lately been in the habit of going out at night with Lord Kingston, “to bend an elbow” (they had laughed) at the local inn at the outskirts of Lyonshall.

It only took a few more moments for fear to encompass her entirely. A greater fear than she had had at the thought of rodent invaders. For Anthony was in her charge and Anthony was her own, and her fear for him riveted her to the spot. The note, however, said “at once,” and rereading those words broke her from her immobility.

She hastily threw on a night robe, tossed her hair back, and barefooted, left her room and flew down the stairs toward the salon, with no thought of propriety, but only of Anthony. She raced to the door to the salon and flung it open. There, she saw at once, stood Lord Beverly, in the loudest, most colorful red-and-gold-patterned robe she had ever seen. Although to be truthful she could not help thinking, she had seen no gentlemen but Uncle and Anthony in their nightwear before.

Lord Beverly's golden curls were tousled and his face looked curiously vulnerable, as though he had just been awakened.

“Where is Anthony?” she gasped as she saw him.

“Deuce take it. How should I know?” Lord Beverly answered angrily. “You're the one I was going to ask that of.”

“What has happened?” she demanded, thinking him only stupid with sleep.

“How should I know?” Lord Beverly asked. “I checked his room before coming down, and he's not there. What was it you wanted to tell me?” he demanded, coming toward her with an odd gait, and she saw that he did not have his slippers on the right feet.

Mutely Elizabeth held out her note.

Lord Beverly took it, and rubbing his eyes, he gazed at it for a long moment, and then fumbled in the pocket of his incredible dressing gown and withdrew a paper. He gave it to Elizabeth and said, “Someone's a joker. Got the same note myself. Thought the young cawker had gotten himself into a scrape, and that Morgan wanted my assistance with him. I've pumped him out once before. Thought Morgan didn't want the ladies to see him in a state again. And I knew,” he said triumphantly as Elizabeth still stood gaping at the identical notes in her hand, “that Harry would be no help in that case. Need a fellow who's got his wits about him for that sort of job.”

“But perhaps he is in trouble,” Elizabeth quavered, “and we are both needed.”

Lord Beverly put his head to one side and pondered. “Might be something in that,” he said slowly. “Then we ought to stay awhile. No end of trouble a green lad can get himself into. Harry might have taken him to a cockfight, or he might have gotten into a brawl with some of the local fellows. If he's battered and bloody, they'd need some strong stomachs to see him right. They might be at Dr. Woods's now and need some help with him when they get home.”

Elizabeth felt her legs grow weak, and she felt a rush of wind in her ears.

“Steady, now,” she heard Lord Beverly's voice say in
alarm. She felt his hands about her shoulders, and found herself propelled into a chair.

“Head between your legs. Ah, umm…limbs,” Lord Beverly said nervously. “Have you any salts with you? Should I burn a feather? Have you any feathers?” he went on desperately, withdrawing his hands from her shoulders as if they were boiling hot. “Put your head down,” he shouted, and then said, as if to himself, “Brandy! That's the thing. Hold on, Elizabeth. Don't swoon, whatever you do.”

But Elizabeth had gotten sufficient control to shake her head in denial when he was back with a brimming glass of brandy that he tried to force upon her.

“Excellent restorative,” he urged, slopping some of it on his amazing robe in his agitation. “Down it all at once and you'll feel more the thing. Go on,” he insisted.

“Bev,” she said in a reedy voice, “if I drink that lot, I'll emulate Anthony at the dinner party. Both ways,” she said in a more normal tone, eyeing the glass in distaste. “For brandy makes me most vilely ill. I'm better now, thank you. It was just the thought of Anthony covered with gore that overset me.