Wicked Company (62 page)

“Your father has no taste for the theater?” Sophie wondered aloud.

“Can’t abide it. Which is one reason, I’m sure, why my mother enjoys mounting such spectacles. She has a true Welsh strain in her… insisted on teaching us to speak the language. She reveres poets above all men, especially over her supposed Lord and Master—my father.”

“You are able to speak Welsh?” Sophie exclaimed admiringly.

“When I was a lad, she’d have me recite druid incantations after tutoring from Old Taf.” He laughed harshly. “I think she did it just to annoy the earl.”

“And does your father not enjoy poetry at all?” she wondered.

“A bit of Shakespeare, I suppose. There were always rows between my parents over my mother’s patronage of various odd local characters and aspiring artists.” He looked at her closely to gauge her reaction. “Just a cozy Welsh family, to be sure.”

“Does Vaughn enjoy theatricals as much as you seem to?” she inquired cautiously, marveling at Darnly’s sudden openness, which seemed so out of character. She guessed he was employing every bit of charm to convince her of the correctness of her decision to remain at Evansmor.

“As soon as we were sent away to school when we were eight, it became clear that Vaughn’s bent was of a much more scientific nature,” Roderick disclosed with a wry smile. “His tinkering with that mechanical pump is a perfect example. I seriously doubt he can make it work, but it amuses him to try. I, however, continued to dabble in the dramatic societies when I was at Oxford, so Mother won out where one of us is concerned.”

“And thus, your interest in Drury Lane?” she ventured.

He shrugged. “Better
that
than wagering a fortune at faro—as certain ‘gentlemen’ of our acquaintance prefer.”

Sophie managed a polite smile at his allusion to her estranged husband and reached for her manuscript.

“Well, I hope the play will suit,” she said. “I should let you get on to complete all the arrangements…”

“Oh, and Sophie,” Roderick said, interrupting her exit. “I fear I must warn you that there is likely to be a fair amount of… imbibing among my guests in the evenings during the shoot,” he informed her casually. “Please feel free to join us for dinner or have your meals sent down to the cottage—whatever you’d prefer. Just have a word with Evelyn.”

“Thank you for offering me the choice,” she murmured and took her leave, quite sure from these tactful remarks that she was meant to confine herself to her quarters behind the grove of beeches until she was needed to supervise her play.

***

Each day during the following week, new guests began arriving at Evansmor, and the staff had its hands full every minute. Roderick’s coach was on perpetual duty to and from Swansea, and the lasses imported from the town were kept relentlessly busy peeling potatoes and stirring cauldrons of hearty soups overseen by the efficient Mrs. Williams. Many guests brought their own servants and they, too, had to be accommodated.

Sophie found it rather dangerous to venture out into the parkland as the season wore on. Shots rang out for hours at a stretch as the hunters bagged brace after brace of black grouse, the stated object of the annual exercise. Mrs. Williams’s dinners began to feature grouse in red currant sauce, grouse
encroute,
grouse fricassee. At any moment, Sophie expected to see grouse served in a sea of frothy syllabub.

One moon-filled night, she was awakened by the faint strains of a harp being played in the distance. The odd, musical intrusion had interrupted a dream in which Hunter flung juggling pins high above the roofs of Edinburgh. Shaken by how tangible his presence had seemed, she pulled on her dressing gown and stumbled toward the desk near the window. She pushed it open several inches and the melancholy music grew louder, shifting suddenly to a fierce, staccato plucking sound that had about it a dire, ominous quality.

Her eyes grew wide at the unlikely sight of a column of hooded figures weaving in and out among the beech trees at the far end of the grove. To her vague alarm, the procession was wending its way in her direction, led by Sir Bartle Porter-Jones, whom Sophie had met the previous day at the manor house.

Old Taf, the harper, had installed himself behind a tree not fifty yards from her cottage door. A tall robed figure she recognized as Roderick broke from the ranks of druidlike specters and strode up to the musician, bidding him to cease his playing as he pointed in the direction of the gardener’s cottage.

From her shadowed vantage point, Sophie watched, transfixed, as the dozen or so robed gentlemen, each one carrying a lighted taper, formed a circle around a large boulder encrusted with moss and lichen that stood in the center of the grove. Among the masculine faces draped in monk’s cowls, she identified several of the shooting aficionados who had been summoned to Evansmor at Darnly’s invitation.

Sir Bartle Porter-Jones ceremoniously placed an object of some sort on the uneven surface of the stone “altar.” Intermittently, moonlight streamed in silvery shafts through the trees as wisps of clouds drifted across the night sky. Sir Bartle leaned toward the waist-high boulder, fumbling with what appeared to be a small cage. Suddenly an animal attempted to make its escape as Porter-Jones swiftly withdrew a long knife from beneath his flowing black robe. With a flash of steel, the baronet pierced the defenseless creature to the heart.

Sophie gasped, feeling ill, and leaned against the windowsill to steady herself. Could this be one of those rituals associated with the Hell Fire Clubs she’d heard whispered about? Articles in
The Public Advertiser
had boldly hinted at certain associations of men—mostly among the nobility—who dressed in medieval garb and cavorted in strange ceremonies before a statue of Venus—or worse, who practiced the black arts in obeisance to Satan himself. Despite her repugnance, she found herself incapable of pulling her eyes away from the strange and horrifying spectacle unfolding in front of her.

Next, Sir Bartle dipped his fingers in the animal’s blood and in turn, solemnly anointed the forehead of each robed figure. As he made his way around the circle, he appeared to be mumbling some incantations whose words Sophie could not quite catch.

The harper, Taf, suddenly abandoned his instrument and made his way unsteadily toward the group, muttering in a strange tongue Sophie took to be Welsh. As he approached the circle, the assembly made a deep bow, as if to a druid priest, and Taf held up his trembling, arthritic hands to the shrouded moon, murmuring a slow, rhythmic chant that grew gradually more intense as Darnly and a few others joined in, speaking in the tongue only they understood. The chorus of dissonant sounds sent shudders down Sophie’s spine.

At length, another cloaked figure stumbled toward Old Taf, prodded forward by none other than Trevor Bedloe, swathed, like the others, in black. The prisoner was forced to kneel on the brown leaves that carpeted the grove while the elderly Welshman dipped his fingers into the carcass of the slaughtered animal and painted an obscure symbol on the forehead of the hostage.

Suddenly Sophie gasped and her hands flew to her face. The moon had emerged from behind a small curtain of mist and, for the first time, she had a distinct view of the pathetic animal sacrificed senselessly in this hideous rite.

“Oh no!” she whispered, stricken by the sight of a cat, its fur stained dark red. She raced across her chamber and snatched its litter mate, Marmalade, off the bottom of her bed. Sophie held the ball of fur tightly under her chin as tears streamed down her face.

Then, drawn inexorably back to the window, she gazed into the grove as Taf’s bloodied hands fumbled with the tie securing the kneeling captive’s cloak. With a dramatic gesture, he flung the garment aside, revealing the naked, trembling form of the housemaid, Glynnis. The woman slowly raised her head to the heavens, allowing her long hair to cascade down her glistening white shoulders and bare back. Her full, pendulous breasts heaved with fear—or excitement—as each man in turn stepped forward to caress some portion of her body.

Shaking uncontrollably, and fearing for the poor young woman’s safety as well as her own, Sophie stumbled to the sideboard, poured a brandy and gulped it down. She splashed a second into her glass and ran over to her door, checking to be sure the bolt was shut tight. Then, with nary a glance outside, she secured every window, feeling lightheaded from the spirits she had consumed so compulsively. Crawling into her four-poster, she pulled both the covers and the pillow over her head, clutched her cat to her bosom, and fervently prayed to be swiftly delivered from this foul Welsh den of iniquity.

***

“Sophie, dear, you must erase that worried frown from your lovely face,” Rowena Darnly insisted, rearranging a clump of yew branches installed to the right of the small stage that now stood in Evansmor’s great hall. “A bad dress rehearsal means a stunning first performance! You, of all people, must know that!”

But Sophie was hardly listening. Instead, her gaze was drawn to Glynnis, the housemaid, who was silently clearing away the tea things. Her long hair was tucked neatly beneath her housemaid’s cap and her uniform was immaculate. Observing the young woman’s composure, Sophie concluded that Darnly’s servant must have derived some dark form of pleasure from having been the center of attention during the bizarre rite that had taken place earlier that week.

Roderick was about to excuse himself to consult with Mrs. Williams and her minions who were in the last stages of preparing for the final banquet.

“I beg your leave as well,” his brother, Vaughn, said politely. “I plan to spend the rest of the day at the foundry, readying my mechanical pump for its first full-blown test tomorrow morning.”

“I doubt, after this evening’s festivities, you will garner much of an audience at the mine for such a feat at so early an hour,” Roderick commented wryly.

“No matter,” Vaughn shrugged. “Father is curious enough to see if it will function properly to have agreed to accompany me down the shaft to give it a go, and that’s all that matters.”

“Always anxious to please the guv’ner, aren’t you, brother?” Roderick drawled. “Well, if any of us can, ’twill be you, I have no doubt.”

“With all your preoccupations this week,” Sophie intervened hastily, “at least you and Vaughn have both learned your lines.”

“Which is more than I can say for Sir Bartle,” Vaughn said sympathetically.

Sophie stiffened at the mention of his name. A vision of the baronet plunging his knife into the gray cat’s body flashed before Sophie’s eyes. She silently berated herself for lacking the nerve at rehearsal to administer the dressing-down the man deserved for not having memorized one speech in its entirety, let alone for his barbarism toward that poor, defenseless creature.

“Now, not to worry, Sophie,” Rowena hastened to assure her son’s guest, whose frown had deepened. “I’ve chastised that reprobate so severely, Porter-Jones dare not show his face at dinner if he hasn’t mastered his speeches by tonight. All will go swimmingly, I’m sure! And besides, tradition dictates that the playlets presented at these fetes contain a surprise or two.”

“Surprise?” Sophie said, alarmed. “What do you mean
surprise
?”

“Oh, the cook tips up, dressed like a duchess,” Vaughn explained, “or if someone among the company is truly in his cups, a pony may be led into the drawing room.”

“Oh, dear,” Sophie responded faintly.

“’Twill go swimmingly, I tell you,” Rowena soothed. “’Tis all in good fun.”

“Let us hope so.” Sophie smiled wanly, her nerves still raw from the scene she had witnessed among the beeches near her cottage. All she wished for now was that this wretched house party would come to its expected conclusion and she would find herself on her way back to Half Moon Passage two days hence, as planned.

“Even the earl has deigned to join our company tonight,” Rowena volunteered. “Something amusing is bound to take place.”

***

“Can’t you direct that confounded harper to stop twanging out those Welsh dirges?” demanded Basil, the Earl of Llewelyn.

The head of the Darnly household, whose height, though somewhat stooped, matched that of his second son, cast a disgusted glance in Old Taf’s direction. The earl’s scowl served only to emphasize his prominent eyebrows, the narrow furrow between them creating a single slash of grizzled hair. The soiled silk waistcoat covering his paunch forecast what Roderick himself might one day look like if he continued, as he had this night, to match his father in the consumption of claret and grouse.

“The bard sings of ancient battles, the great victories that secured the very castle you call home,” Rowena added bitingly. “Surely, m’lord, you would not deny our sons their heritage?”

“But why deny
me
a respite from this infernal din?” Basil demanded. “When will they begin the play?” he asked of no one in particular. “Tell your cook, Roderick, that the cockle soup was off. I’ve got the beginnings of an ache in my gut, and now a headache to boot, from that infernal musician from hell.” He cast a disgruntled look around the room as more guests filed in and selected their seats. “I’ve got to be up early, you know! I promised Vaughn I’d watch him make a fool of himself, didn’t I, son?” he declared, giving his heir a skeptical look from beneath his bushy gray eyebrows. When no one commented, he loudly thumped his gold-headed cane on the floor. “Roddy, for God’s sake, man… tell that female scribe of yours to get your mincing friends on the boards and let’s be done with it!”