The Tyrant (43 page)

Moving towards the door, the clergyman shrugged. “A bit pretentious,” he said, his face somewhat pale. “But if that's what the poor woman wants…”

“Pretentious, indeed,” agreed Fotheringay, scowling at the slab. “Samuel Charters, Third! Good Gad! Some of these blasted peasants give themselves airs!”

*   *   *

“Oh, how I wish you might have seen it, Grandmama,” cried Sinclair exuberantly, as they gathered together in the withdrawing room that evening, an envious Jeffery perched on the arm of the sofa beside his mother and Phoebe seated near Lady Martha, who hung on Sinclair's every word, her eyes alight with excitement. “You could all but feel Fotheringay's frustration when they came out of the stonemason's, and in jig time he and his troopers had gone clattering off!”

Phoebe smothered a yawn and said sleepily, “Father Albritton was grinning so broadly that we could see it, even up on the hill.”

“And went straightaway back into the shop,” her brother added. “He knew! No doubting.”

“Well done! Oh, well done!” exclaimed the old lady, beaming at the conspirators as though she were part of their scheming.

“I only marvel that you were not killed, going over the top of Phantom Hill,” said Lucille, shivering. “I am very grateful you had the good sense not to try and follow them, Jeffery.”

He flushed. “So am not I!”

“It must have been horribly difficult for you, Meredith,” said my lady, eyeing the quiet Carruthers with some unease. “I hope you have not overtaxed your strength.”

He straightened. He was extremely pale, but he grinned at her brightly. “It was worth every minute, ma'am. It is done! We've to get Lance to another hiding place, but I've already thought of one will serve well enough till we can whisk him to safety in France. The worst of it is over now, and at last we can have done with this silly masquerade!”

Phoebe's heart gave a lurch.

Lady Martha said curiously, “Masquerade?”

Meredith chuckled. “I think we should tell them now, Miss Ramsay. This has gone on long enough.”

Dimly, Phoebe knew that Sinclair was looking at her, his fine face very intent, and that Mrs. Carruthers had begun to fan herself nervously. She felt icy-cold and suspended, as though awaiting a blow that came, with slow inexorability, to slay her.

“I am very sorry that it was necessary for us to deceive you,” said Meredith, smiling around at three puzzled faces and carefully avoiding the other two, “but we had little choice. You see, Lady Martha, when your granddaughter and I were discovered in the Pineridge basement, we had been hiding poor Lance. There was no compromising behaviour between us. No mutual and overwhelming surge of passion, or anything of that nature. In point of fact, we neither of us wanted this betrothal, since we both have interests—ah, elsewhere. But—”

Lucille dropped her fan. “Meredith! What are you saying?”

“Why, that there really was no betrothal, dear Mama. It was an embarrassment merely that we could not explain without endangering us all, so—”

“So now,” put in Lady Martha, her voice hard and cold, “you wish to break the engagement?”

“But, my dear ma'am, there
was
no—”

Sinclair interposed a grim “Phoebe, you say nothing. Is it your wish to terminate your betrothal to Carruthers?”

Remote, frozen, Phoebe thought, ‘He doesn't want me. He enjoyed a dalliance, nothing more.' Achingly, she remembered saying after he had kissed her in the old Keep, “You take advantage of the situation.” And his reply, “Of course.” He had been honest with her from the start. He'd said he had no wish to marry. But she had come to think … Only she was wrong. He did not want her.

“Phoebe…?”

Sinclair was staring. They all were staring; all so angry. She looked at Meredith and found him watching her in an amused way. She must not betray the fact that her heart was shredding into hurting little pieces. She must not make more of a fool of herself than she already had done. In a voice that sounded as if it came from a thousand miles away, she said, “Sin, you know how I felt when we were forced into this … deception.”

“Deception…” whispered Lucille, white to the lips.

Lady Martha got to her feet and marched to stand directly in front of Carruthers, who at once stood to face her. “I think I cannot accept this,” she said. “It has seemed to me that you and my granddaughter—”

“Shared a kindness for each other?” he interrupted. “Why, so we do, ma'am. I admire Miss Phoebe greatly. Only—as I told her from the start, I do not want her for—my wife.”

Lucille uttered a shriek and burst into tears. Sinclair jumped up, scowling.

Phoebe said, “It is perfectly true, Grandmama. And Mr. Carruthers was aware from the start that I—loved Brooks.”

Lady Martha glared at her. “Yet from what your mama told me, and certainly since I came, for ten days you have been looking at him as if he was some young god; and he's been looking at you as if you wore a halo and wings. Now you say you do not care for each other! All well and good, but—how d'you mean to get out of it without scandal is what I'd like to know!”

Meredith gripped his arm. He looked very tired and haggard. “I expect we cannot,” he said. “I'm afraid I shall have to be jilted.”

Lucille succumbed to screaming hysterics.

*   *   *

By ten o'clock next morning, the valises and portmanteaux had been packed and the horses poled up. A pale but composed Miss Phoebe Ramsay, a tight-lipped Mr. Sinclair Ramsay, and a flushed and furious Lady Martha Ramsay had entered the first carriage. Ada Banham had said her farewells to a stricken Henry Baker and gone, scattering tears, into the second carriage. Now, with a cracking of whips and rumbling of wheels, they departed, leaving behind a Meredith Hall that seemed echoingly quiet, and servants who trod softly and looked solemn, knowing that very soon the newspapers would carry news of the broken betrothal and that once again they would be obliged to defend the honour of their house against the jeering staffs of all the neighbours.

Jeffery's attempt to speak with his brother met a level stare that froze him to the marrow. He faltered into silence and went off defiantly in search of Rosalie Smith.

Emerging from her suite an hour later, her eyes red from weeping, but with rage strengthening her, Lucille found no sign of her quarry. She knew where to look, however, and made her way up the hill girded for war.

She found him leaning against the crumbling Gothic wall, his back to her as he gazed down at the whispering stream. Alone, silent, hostile, antisocial; his father all over again. The sense of her own ill usage brought stinging tears to her eyes and she ran up behind him, saying on a sob, “How
could
you, Meredith? How
could
you? You knew what it meant to me, and now … Oh! We will be laughingstocks! Shunned! And just when I had so hoped we might at last…”

She did not finish her denunciation for, wearily, he turned to her and she saw his eyes. The years rolled back. She was young again, kneeling beside the grave of her slain lover, knowing her heart had been buried with him.

She reached out. “Oh—my
dear,
” she said tenderly. “My
very
dear…”

For an instant, Meredith stared blindly at her. Then, with a muffled sound that was neither groan nor sob, yet something of each, he walked into her arms.

XIX

“Is unnatural,” stormed Sir George Ramsay, glaring across the breakfast table of his London house, and slamming down his copy of
The Gazette.

“Oh, dear,” his wife sighed. “Is it Mr. Pitt? Or are they slandering poor Walpole? Or has the Prince of Wales done something outrageous again?”

“For pity's sake, don't be such a thimble-wit, Eloise,” he snapped. “It is our daughter I refer to. There's no pleasing the gal, I vow! She yearns, she sighs, she wilts”—he gave an exaggerated impersonation of a lady wilting—“for Brooks Lambert, but gets herself compromised by Meredith Carruthers. We manage to rescue her from that stew, only to have her quarrel with Carruthers. Though, mind you, Eloise,” he interrupted himself, eyebrows bristling, “I consider
his
conduct thoroughly reprehensible, and have no doubt he is now beyond the pale, socially, at least.”

Phoebe kept her lack-lustre eyes on her plate and said nothing.

“You have got egg on your cravat,” said Lady Eloise, glancing at her mulish-looking son, and her just as mulish-looking mother-in-law.

“Being a generous, fair-minded father,” Sir George went on, ignoring his wife's irritating observation, “I have told her she
may
wed Brooks Lambert, and does she brighten? Is she grateful?” Silence following this pained enquiry, he snarled, “It would be gratifying was the head of this house to be informed exactly
why
this betrothal was terminated, and whether it is my bounden duty to call that cad out!”

“Fiddle-faddle!” exploded his formidable parent. “If any calling out was needed, young Lambert would have—” She closed her lips as a footman trod discreetly into the room and proffered an ivory-and-gold salver to her granddaughter. “Callers? At this hour?” she snorted.

Phoebe stared down at the card, losing all her colour. Lady Eloise, deeply worried about this quiet stranger who had replaced her sunny-natured daughter, asked “Dearest? Is it someone you do not wish to see?”

“Oh, no, Mama,” said Phoebe breathlessly. “P-pray excuse me.”

Lucille Carruthers, a vision in gold silk, waited in the morning room, and came to her feet as Phoebe hurried to greet her.

“Good day, ma'am. I did not know you was in Town. How very kind in you to call. May I offer you a cup of tea, or—”

“Nothing, I thank you.” Lucille resumed her seat on the blue velvet sofa. “I was afraid,” she said timidly, “that you might refuse to receive me. Under the—the circumstances. But I brought Rosalie to Town to shop for her bride clothes, and—”

Phoebe gave a gasp, and blanched.

“Oh, good gracious,” said Lucille. “I had thought you knew. We met your brother in the Strand—did he not mention it?”

Forcing her numb lips to move, Phoebe said that Sinclair must have forgot. Somehow, she managed a smile. “I am to be wed soon myself, so I can guess how happy Miss—Miss Smith must be.”

“Oh, she is in alt, sweet child, despite the difficulties. She has loved him all her life, you see, but never dreamed they would be able to wed.”

“How lovely,” said Phoebe, a ghastly smile distorting her lips while a claymore transfixed her heart. “I had heard M-Meredith was ill. I trust he is recovered.”

Watching her from under her lashes, Lucille murmured, “My son will never pamper himself, you see. Infection set in, and he was very ill for a few days.” She saw terror in that white, lovely face, and her heart was wrung. Looking up, she said quietly, “He is much better, my dear. Physically, at least. But I did not come here to speak of Meredith, but of myself.”

Phoebe watched her wonderingly. Lucille gripped her reticule hard, and said, staring at it, “You see, I did not quite finish my—my story, when I was telling you about my husband. You will remember I said that Paul found out about Edvard?”

“Yes. But—oh, ma'am, I know how painful it is for you to speak of it. Pray do not—”

“But, you see, I must tell you the—the whole. I neglected to tell you that … there is a joke about the Hoagland family. It is said that—none of the wives can for long escape the … the Hoagland Double.” Her cheeks very pink, she said, “I prayed I might be spared, but—within a year of meeting Edvard I—I was in the family way.” She heard Phoebe's shocked little gasp, and not daring to meet her eyes, rushed on, “I gave birth to twins. I knew that my husband would guess at once, if he saw the babes, so I swore my maid and the midwife to secrecy, and put one of my dear children out for adoption. Paul did not suspect, and as time passed, his visits became infrequent. If he did come, his servants came first so as to prepare for him, and I had time to send Jeffery to visit friends. Only … on the day he scarred Meredith, he arrived unexpectedly. He entered the Great Hall just as Jeff was running down the stairs. My son was almost six years old. Paul had not seen him for two years, and instead of a babe, he saw a very fair child. He took one look, and knew. Luckily, Nurse saw Paul's face, and she hurried Jeffery into a carriage and took him off for a drive.” She paused, and after a small, tension-charged silence, finished in a very small voice, “
That
was—was why Paul was so enraged, you see.”

“Oh … my!” whispered Phoebe. “How very dreadful for you. Did you ever see your other twin again, ma'am?”

Lucille smiled shakily. “How kind and understanding you are. Yes. I thought I was being so clever, you see. The family with whom I placed my little one were not happily situated in Town. Grace, although only five years my senior, had been my companion, and her husband, John, was born on the Carruthers estate. He had charge of Paul's horses and was often brought to Town when Paul was courting me. His marriage was—ideal, save that they were not blessed with children. I knew they would be good to my babe, and they were indeed. Eventually, I persuaded them to return to the village, and I gave them funds to start a little business.” Meeting Phoebe's look of disbelief, she continued, “They are dead now, but always kept my secret. Even their families believed the child was their own. My—my daughter is grown, of course, and—”

“Oh! My dear God!
Rosalie?
Poor Meredith is so deep in love and does not know the girl is—”

Lucille said gently, “But—he
does
know, my dear. He has known for years, which is why he has always taken a great interest in her. A sadly misinterpreted interest, which is my fault. I straitly forbade Meredith to reveal the truth to a living soul. I so—so
dreaded
more scandal. I knew if the facts came out, people would censure me even more, for allowing my daughter to be brought up a commoner. And that all the terrible stories about Paul would be revived again. I”—she wrung her hands—“I just could not
bear
it! Merry begged me to let him tell Jeff, but I refused and so he—dear loyal soul, kept my secret.”