The Windflower (56 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Crimson berries nodded gaily among the feathery leaves of the mountain ash tree above Merry's head as she sat with her aunt and Devon's mother three days later. Ducklings paddled on the garden's glimmering pond and wandered, quacking, among the sunlit asters. From the unshorn yews robins whistled, their darting shadows sweeping fleetingly over trailing fuschias, the mellow roll of freshly scythed grass, and ornamental stones with their gilded lichen crusts. Aline had directed her long-suffering steward and a footman to bring the pianoforte into the garden. Wouldn't it be charming on such a nice day to have music among the leaves? Puffing and grunting as they bumped the instrument down the porch steps, the male servants gave no particular appearance that they agreed. Aunt April teased that Aline only wanted it outside anyway, as a stand for her gardening tools, and the rapidly growing collection of trowels and work gloves and plant snips that landed on the pianoforte's back did nothing to belie that accusation.

Merry sat at the pianoforte trying to pick out the notes of a popular melody while her aunt stitched on a tambour and Aline began to massacre the weeds in a spearmint bed beneath her sundial. Grubby, Devon had said of his mother, and when a footman came bearing an envelope on a silver tray, Aline left little soily fingerprints on the paper as she picked it up.

Small, impetuous in her movements, quick to smile, Aline Cran-dall was difficult to dislike. She was by turns playful and enchant-ingly dour, and she seemed to regard the world outside her garden as a strange, startling place to be approached with caution. She was I with acquaintances, and with all except her closest friends, wa and wary at the same time. Of the generosity of her nature there could be no doubt. Aunt April had revealed to Merry that on April's arrival in England, frightened, dejected, fearful for her lost niece, Michael Granville (a most attentive man for all the frigidity of his nature, April asserted) had delivered her unto Devon's grandmother, a dreadful female, who had demanded to know in a powerful shout what had she
done
with her niece. All had been a nightmare until Aline arrived with Lord Cathcart to bear off Aunt April to the safety of Teasel Hill, where she had been made to feel welcome as a friend and companion, though she had no claim on them for all that Aline said that any victim of Devon's grandmother's conniving became a sister of
hers
on the instant. In the long months of separation, being helpless and able to search for Merry only through the tortuous channels of diplomacy, April had drawn strength from Devon's mother. It was nice to think that one thing, at least, had gone well. Nice. But again—ironic.

A frown gathered on Aline's face as she read the note. She looked up from the page and said, "We have to go to a ball." She added with mournful satisfaction, "I knew it." She stuck the letter between her teeth, chomping downward in a comical gesture of derision, and Merry found herself thinking as she had many times in the three days before how Devon's mother bent one's preconceived notions of duchesses. Her appearance illustrated the point that it was possible to be an alluring beauty at age forty-two, even though her hair was usually collapsing like a stack of acrobats, her fingernails were chewed to the quick and, more often than not, grimy, and she had a gap the width of two straws between her front teeth that she poked at nervously with the tip of her tongue when, as now, she was taken with some serious thought. She dropped to the pianoforte's bench beside Merry, thrusting her forefinger meaningfully at the crest on the embossed envelope.

"This always means trouble," she sighed. "The mark of the Crandalls."

It was a unicom rampant, the archetype of Merry's dreams. She must first have seen it, then, on letters Devon's grandmother had written to April so many years before—the mythical animal which had taken life and grown in Merry's dreamy heart. The unicorn. Devon's heraldic device. An unaccountable smile narrowed the corners of her lips.

"Devon's . . ." She took the envelope from Aline, moving like one in a daze.

Aline's fingers went to the keyboard, picking out a bright melody, depositing smears of topsoil on the ivory keys. "Well, it might be Devon's, but you've probably seen by now that he doesn't care a bean about the trappings of his rank. His armorial emblazonments might bear a wheat sheath and two teacups for all the interest he's ever displayed in them. Mind you, we have a great bronze statue of one—a unicorn, that is—in the linden grove that Devon's grandmother had shipped all the way from Italy for him on his christening.
Such
an inappropriate present for an infant. And Lord Cathcart says the unicom isn't native to British legend in any case."

"I'm not so certain." Aunt April, glancing up from her tambour frame, looked not so ready to dismiss the graceful creature. "What about the bicorne and the chichevache? They are like the unicom in appearance, are they not?"

"Alike, but different." Aline Finished the short melody with a sloppy trill and folded her hands in her lap. "Do you know about them, Merry?"

"No." Merry didn't look up.

"The bicome," Aline said, "happy creature that he is, roams the countryside feeding on henpecked husbands. When you see drawings of him, he appears always as very plump and satisfied, his prey being so abundant. The chichevache, who only eats dutiful wives, has all its ribs showing from starvation." Wickedly grinning, "From what I know of your spirit and Devon's, I don't think we'll have to worry about the pair of you becoming a meal for either beast. What we have to worry more about is becoming a meal for your grandmama-in-law. She wants us to visit her."

With startled dismay Aunt April said, "Oh, no!"

"How bad could she be?" Merry, used to pirates, began to smile.

"She bellows," said Aline firmly. "She belittles. She throws her snuffbox. Not with men, though. I don't go next or nigh her unless I have Devon or Cathcart with me. Not that I'm a coward," she added hastily, misinterpreting Merry's expression. "But when I see her alone, what she wants is to chastise me for things Devon does, which are
not
my fault. He's a man now, and I don't mean to hang on his coattails." The wide-set hazel eyes grew rueful. "I couldn't control him if I wished. Even as a child he didn't need me. He was always—just himself. He's changed, though." A smile flashed.
"Love.
Oh, please, don't look embarrassed. I don't believe I've been happier in years. Finally Devon says he's come home to live, and he's hardly spent more than four consecutive nights here since his fifteenth birthday. It was hard for him, having no one of his very own, and he doesn't like a thing that men of his class are supposed to enjoy. Cards bore him, and so do prizefights and horseracing and driving in Hyde Park and gossip and talking about sorts of snuff; and he
will
not have a valet—so there you are."

Trimming a thread, Aunt April ventured, "And yet, Aline, even
the flower
of the ton speak highly of him."

"So they do. Hypocrites! It's impossible not to please them." Devon's mother rubbed her nose emphatically, leaving a smudge on the tip. "It's all due to his rank, and his—well, his etcetera. They followed Jasper the same way. Whatever he did became the fashion. When he married me, two of his most slavish admirers actually wed their gardeners' daughters also, though one was twenty-five years older than the groom. And after we bought Teasel Hill, farmers could hardly find feed for their stock that season because the aristocracy was so busy thatching cottages for themselves with it. That makes me think! Merry, can you dance?"

"I—well, perhaps a bit."

"A bit won't be good enough. The old duchess is giving a ball to introduce you into society, and you have no idea how
they'll
sneer if you don't appear to advantage on the dance floor. You'll be such an object of envy that the least little thing you do will be dissected." She broke off, laughing delightedly, pulling Merry to her feet with both hands. "You have the drollest face! So expressive! First let's see what you know of the waltz. Say that I were a man and were to put my hands—-so—on your waist. What would you do?"

"Retreat to the other side of the piano," Merry said promptly.

"And pert also," Devon's mother observed with a grin and a lowering brow. She lifted her skirts calf-high. "Watch my feet. Can you imitate the steps? Slowly at first . . . Oh, that's good. Very good. Then turn. Yes. Oh, April, are you going to play for us? What a wonderful idea!"

Watching Devon's mother lift her arms to the shoulders of some imagined beau to gaze dreamily into his eyes, Merry grinned as she saw from the corner of her eye that Aunt April was surreptitiously wiping soil from the keys with her handkerchief. Swaying to her aunt's first experimental notes, Merry waltzed dutifully if stiffly over the grass, her skirts belling as she circled a bed of blue asters, feeling a little ridiculous but not caring, and thinking of Devon's hands—so—on her waist. Her waist. Her hips. Her thighs . . . Rarely had three days seemed so long. For all her doubts, this was a lovely place, and her days were almost idyllic; but there was no ease from the ache of missing him, of picturing him in London surrounded by fawning companions. Friends, peers, old lovers ... A thousand uncertainties roiled through her mind like spanking wingbeats, and she had ten questions for each of those. Through cautious inquiry she had learned that Aline had borne another child, Leonie, an engaging tomboy who had fenced and swam and played captain on the estate cricket team; Aline mentioned her from time to time with sad eyes. She had died eight years ago, Aunt April said, on a voyage to renew a friendship with a schoolmate in Jamaica. If Michael Granville was connected with her death, no one here seemed to know that. Aline spoke of him casually as her late husband's cousin, a favorite of the dowager duchess, and that was enough probably to account for the vague distrust Aline seemed to have for him.

Aline's animosity toward Rand Morgan went much deeper. She couldn't speak his name without her eyes becoming opaque with anger, and her most profound bitterness toward Devon's grandmother sprang from her conviction that it was Letitia who, Aline said, had engineered Devon's acquaintance with Morgan. Fond as Merry was coming to be of Devon's mother, she had to admit to herself that the accusation seemed a little extreme; unless Devon's grandmother was a madwoman, she wasn't likely to have wanted to expose Devon, on whom she clearly doted, to the influence of a man like Morgan.

Having a famous pirate as part of one's family seemed to be an interesting if explosive circumstance. Interested, sympathetic, Merry wondered if Aline knew that Morgan was her late husband's son, and if she didn't know, how she accounted for Devon's affection for the man. The espionage link, perhaps. It was no wonder the Cran-dalls intrigued people on both sides of the Atlantic; as a family they were fascinating, with their secrets, their abilities. And now, for better or for worse, Merry was one of them. A queasy stomach inevitably accompanied that thought.

Glancing down suddenly, Merry saw she was surrounded by ducklings, attracted by her swinging skirts. She stepped left to avoid one tiny yellow ball; then quickly right to miss another; then she toppled backward. Ducklings scattered in a golden star burst. Aline swooped laughingly down to pull her upright.

"Aren't they a nuisance?" Devon's mother said.
"Most
ducal residences have the good fortune to have swans. These are Devon's ducks, or their descendants, anyway. Did he tell you? No. I don't suppose it's the sort of thing young men are given to confessing to their brides." She swept a duckling up and handed it to Merry, demonstrating how it liked to be petted. "When he was seven, a whole brood of ducklings followed him home from the river one afternoon—orphans, they must have been—and they seemed utterly convinced Devon was their mother, and they followed him everywhere. It was the funniest thing.
Such
a mess at suppertime. They slept in his bedroom at night, and when I came to wake him in the morning, I'd find his head and shoulders all wreathed in little bits of fluff, hopping up and down on him, trying to wake him to take them to feed. Poor little things, they got so used to him that they wouldn't learn to swim; they just struggled and floundered and coughed when he put them in water. Do you know how he taught them? By taking them to the river and sailing off in his sailboat. At first they stayed on the bank, crying so pitifully, but soon enough they hopped into the water to swim after him furiously. And my husband said—he said—" She stopped, nonplussed. "I don't recall quite what it was he said, though I suppose it will bother me all afternoon until I think of it. ... Well, never mind. Anyway, it was something clever. He was a hideously clever man, you know."

Merry smiled, stroking the duckling. "Was part of the reason you chose to live here instead of at the historic residence of the St. Cyr family that you wanted your children to have a more normal childhood?"

"Yes." Aline flopped down cross-legged on the grass, collecting ducklings on the stained pink dimity over her lap. "Aside from the fact that the St. Cyr manor has ninety bedrooms and two great wings, I still could not live in the same building with Devon's grandmama. She's absolutely ruled there for fifty years, and it always seemed cruel to me for the eldest son to bring home a young wife to outrank his mother." Suddenly impish, she rested back on her elbows. "I hope you won't have the bother of me living here for too long." Ignoring Merry's protest, she continued, "Tell me, what did you think of Lord Cathcart?"

It was more than a casual question. Merry was glad she was able to answer with sincerity. "I thought he was charming and kind."