Wicked Company (63 page)

The earl’s booming voice blared over the assembled crowd and their low chattering ceased at once. In its place bloomed a sudden, embarrassed silence. Sophie, dying a thousand deaths, stood near a door adjacent to the make-shift stage in the great hall as Roderick, Vaughn, and Vaughn’s bride of four months, Dilys, hastily entered the changing room to prepare for the play.

Dreading every second of the next half hour, Sophie nervously glanced down at her attire. She was dressed as a scullery maid whose task was to retrieve the downed birds from the mouth of a hunting dog, played by Vaughn, who was just donning a canine mask the same color as his bark brown suit. His bride, Dilys, looking as miserable as Sophie felt, had put on the apron of a cook into whose pot Sophie would soon be throwing an abundant number of dead grouse.

“All right, everyone!” Sophie hissed to the assembled players, “all I expect is that you do your best and help each other if one of you should forget your speeches,” she added with a pointed look in the direction of Sir Bartle Porter-Jones, cast as the kennel master, and Trevor Bedloe, who appeared petrified—now that the time had come—of playing the role of the dog-owning laird in front of the irascible Earl of Llewelyn.

Roderick strode out and recited the prologue without missing a word, much to Sophie’s relief. She smiled at him with heartfelt gratitude as the first players made their entrances and the one-act piece got underway.

The play had reached its halfway point when, out of the corner of Sophie’s eye, she noticed Sir Bartle and Trevor Bedloe making unscheduled appearances. In lieu of his assigned kennel master’s costume, the baronet had donned an elegant suit and sported a walking stick that could only belong to the earl himself. He had managed to attach bits of moss to his own eyebrows, giving him the unmistakable appearance of Roderick’s sire. Walking arm-in-arm with Trevor Bedloe, who ad-libbed some nonsense about the prowess of his celebrated hound, Sir Bartle made his way toward Vaughn and executed a swift kick to the scion’s backside. The supposed bird dog tumbled painfully to his chest, momentarily stunned by this unexpected bit of business.

Sophie shot a horrified glance at Roderick and Rowena as Sir Bartle began to swagger around the stage, insulting each player in turn. Finally, he approached Sophie and boldly reached out, pawing the front of her dress.

“Come here, my sweet scullery,” he pronounced heartily, swiftly plunging his hands down the front of her bodice while from behind, Trevor pinned her arms against her sides. “Let me have a glimpse at those fair paps,” Sir Bartle leered. “Not quite a handful, are they, dear?” he declared bumptiously, cocking an exaggerated eyebrow in the direction of Sophie’s chest. “Better yet!” he exclaimed effusively to his cohort, Trevor Bedloe, “where’s the housemaid, Glynnis? ’Tis in
her
arms I always find I can forget that cursed wife of mine!”

There were nervous titters from some of Roderick’s guests in the audience, but most of the assembly were staring at the earl to gauge his response.

“You
dare
to do this!” Roderick’s father roared, leaping to his feet and shaking his cane at his second son, who stood frozen next to the panelled wall. “You and your guests
dare
insult me in my own
house?”

“But, Father—” Roderick countered.

“Evansmor is Roddy’s abode,” Rowena spoke up boldly, overriding her son’s attempt to defend himself.

“By God, ’tis not!” he shouted, glaring at his wife. “Not till I die, by that foul marriage contract I wish to Christ I’d never signed!” His eyes glittered with fury as he shouted at his son. “’Tis
you
who are behind this! Your mother is merely a maker of mischief, but you… you have always been a plague on my house! If you were not my own flesh and blood, I would call you out, you worthless puppy!”

“’Twas
my
little joke,” Rowena insisted, her voice rising shrilly. She stared uneasily at her husband of nearly forty years. “’Tis traditional, as you well know, Basil,” she said in a calmer tone intended to soothe the situation, “to be a bit larky at these events. I see you’ve not the stomach for it, and I beg your pardon most sincerely.”

The earl utterly ignored his wife’s mollifying words and turned, instead, to face the group gathered motionless on stage. Trevor’s uncertain grin had faded and even the brazen Sir Bartle looked discomforted.

“You, Bedloe, are discharged forthwith! And without references!”

“But sir—” he began, looking from Rowena to Roderick, “I only—”

“Discharged, I say! Now get out, or I will have you shot for trespassing.” He turned to the baronet from Henley. “Porter-Jones,” he ordered, “you are to leave this house at once! And you, Roderick,” he added, addressing his second son coldly, “will vacate these premises within the month. You and your perverted friends can go back to the London stews, where you belong. You’ll have your two thousand a year, but you’ll not spend it under
this
roof!”

The Earl of Llewelyn drew himself up with more dignity than Sophie would ever have imagined the cantankerous man possessed. Turning to face the audience in Evansmor’s great hall, he scanned the collection of two dozen house-guests whose mouths were all agape.

“Need I say, this evening is
at an end!”

***

Loud pounding and insistent shouts roused Sophie from a drugged sleep brought about by the brandy she’d deliberately consumed to blot out the calamitous evening.

“Sophie! Wake up! Sophie, ’tis
me…
Rowena Darnly!” a voice cried at her door. Sophie lifted her head—which felt stuffed with cotton wool—from the pillow and pushed herself upright in bed. “Sophie! Is Roderick with you?” Rowena pleaded, now shouting through the closed window and rattling its frame. “There’s been a dreadful accident at the mines! I must find Roderick!”

Sophie leapt up and fumbled for her dressing gown as she raced for the door, flinging it open.

“He’s not here, Countess,” Sophie protested, “nor has he been,” she added, noticing Rowena’s pony tied to a nearby tree.

“He’s not in his chambers!” Rowena cried distractedly. “There’s been a cave in! Basil and Vaughn…” her words drifted off.

“Come in,” Sophie said swiftly. “I’ll just dress quickly and help you search.” She grabbed a simple wool gown from a peg, forgetting her stays, and began to fasten the row of buttons at the back of her bodice.

“Here, let me do that,” the countess said grimly. “I was hoping against hope he’d be with you, although I suppose that was too much to wish for.”

Sophie barely heard her remark as she mentally reviewed places where Roderick might logically have ended such a dreadful evening.

“Shall you try the stables and I’ll check the hay byre?” Sophie asked, donning the kid boots Roderick had provided her.

“Right!” the countess agreed, looking haggard and distraught. “I’ve got the entire household looking for him. If you don’t find him, meet me back here in ten minutes’ time,” she commanded.

Sophie snatched a wool shawl off a chair and dashed into the chilly September morning. Several of Roderick’s hunting dogs ran through the trees and barked at her heels, having escaped, she surmised, when Rowena checked the kennels for signs of her son. Yapping ecstatically, the hounds ran joyful circles around Sophie as she trotted in the direction of the hay byre fifty yards away.

When she reached it, she was panting from exertion. Attempting to catch her breath, she went round to a side door and cracked it open six inches. One of the hounds slipped through in a flash, its nose glued to the ground, sniffing intently. Sophie was about to open the door wider and enter the musty interior herself when her eyes widened in shock.

There, not twenty feet in front of her, lying on a mound of fresh hay, were three sleeping figures. Articles of clothing were strewn everywhere. Roderick and Trevor Bedloe slumbered side-by-side, naked and entwined in each other’s arms. Snoring softly, with one thigh cast across her employer’s flank, lay Glynnis, the housemaid.

I’ve managed it with jades like Mary Ann, but I must find out if—
Roderick had cried out to her in his drunken stupor the night of the haying fete.

Sophie stared at his nude form, an incipient paunch marring his otherwise well-proportioned build. He was twice the size of Trevor Bedloe in every way, and Sophie shuddered at the thought of what acts the three had committed during the hours she was asleep in her cottage bed.

The man must be utterly twisted, Sophie thought, recoiling from the sight that met her eyes this misty morn. Was he a lover of women or a lover of men… or perhaps merely a seducer of
both
if licentious circumstances presented themselves, as they obviously had the previous night.

And yet she felt a strange sympathy for a man whose brutally disdainful father ignored him out of contempt for his artistic leanings. What did it do to a son, to see his brother so favored while he was utterly despised?

She stared as if in a stupor at the three naked forms that recalled to mind the foul engravings for
Fanny Hill.
As long as Roderick Darnly wasn’t insensibly drunk, he had always been thoughtful and utterly correct in his manner toward her. And he had been so kind when little Danielle had died…

Unable to wrestle with the dark complexities of the Darnly-Llewelyn clan, Sophie stumbled backward, her trembling hands quickly shutting the barn door. The hound trapped inside began barking frantically. The noise was certain to arouse his master, however dulled with spirits Roderick’s brain might be. Instinctively, Sophie ran as fast as she could into the grove, hiding behind a fat hedge that bordered the beech trees.

Within five minutes, Roderick burst through the barn door Sophie had surreptitiously shut, hastily tucking his shirt into his wrinkled breeches. He was heading in the direction of the gardener’s cottage just as Rowena rounded its vine-shrouded corner.

“Oh, God, Roddy!” she screamed. “Come quickly!” She was mounted on the pony she had ridden to Evansmor. “Basil and Vaughn are trapped in Number One shaft! Some timbers overhead apparently loosened when the pumping began, and a portion of the mine fell in. Hurry! Everyone’s massing to try to dig them out.”

Roderick’s already pale face had turned ashen. He glanced around anxiously as his mother rode off, her pony’s hooves throwing divots of grass in all directions. Meanwhile, Sophie ran pell-mell through the grove, emerging at the far end and then circling back toward the cottage.

“The countess told me what has happened,” she panted, running to his side where he stood motionless near her door. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere. I thought you might be at the kennels. I’ve just come from there,” she lied, anxious he should not know she was now privy to the morbid secrets of his private life.

“I was just—” he began, appearing unmistakably relieved.

“Come!” Sophie interrupted, firmly taking his arm. “I’m sure your mother’s ordered the stable lads to saddle your mount.”

Within minutes, she was riding behind Roderick, her arms wrapped around his waist. She held on with all her strength as he thrashed the beast’s sides and urged the steed up the rutted road that led to the bleak, windswept coal fields.

Men were already digging frantically by the time they arrived. Darnly threw himself off his horse, grabbed a shovel, and disappeared into the shaft. A clutch of women huddled around the countess, who was barking orders like a steward.

“All you women, take off your petticoats
now,
and we’ll tear them for bandages. Mattie, make a big cauldron of tea in the warming shed, will you? And Dilys, be a love and help her carry it back here, swiftly as you can,” she commanded Vaughn’s tearful young wife. “John, have your men find something that will serve as stretchers. Quickly, now!” she urged.

Slowly, painstakingly, the men carted away a ten-foot-square section of dirt fifty feet from beneath the surface, shoring up the tunnel with stout timbers as they made progress. Then, several miners with stretchers disappeared into the entrance of the shaft. Ten minutes later, two reappeared, carrying the earl, who seemed barely to be breathing. Sophie’s eyes shifted to absorb the sight of Roderick emerging from the mine. He paused at the entrance, blinking slowly in the bright September sunshine that had broken through the clouds. His cheeks were bathed with moisture and in his arms he bore the broken, lifeless body of his twin brother. Vaughn’s clothes were soaked through with water and his red hair was now completely covered with mud and black soot. In a kind of daze, Roderick stared straight ahead, as if seeing his future stretch before him.

Sophie battled all sorts of wild musings as it dawned on her that this tragedy decreed that the younger brother by two minutes, consumed his entire life by envy and resentment, had suddenly succeeded as Viscount Glyn, heir to the estate of the father he so bitterly despised.

Twenty-Five

A
PRIL 1769

Sophie sat quietly on a stone bench, fingering a clutch of yellow daffodils. She gazed at the small granite slab that burrowed into the spring grass in a corner of St. Paul’s churchyard. After three years, the sharp edges of her daughter’s miniature headstone had been softened by gray-green lichen. Purple irises pushed their heads through the mounded earth near Danielle’s resting place. Glancing down at the yellow petals she held in her lap, Sophie wondered if spring had come to Wales, gracing poor Vaughn Darnly’s grave near Glynmorgan Castle with flowers like these.