Amanda Scott (56 page)

“By God—” Lyford reached for her, but Gwenyth grabbed his arm with both her hands.

“Do not, my lord,” she said sharply. “I will talk to her, I promise, but leave us now, if you please.”

He looked at her angrily, then glanced again at Pamela, who merely stood watching him as though she observed an exotic beast at the Tower of London. Returning his gaze to Gwenyth, he said, “Very well, but you and I will talk tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.” She was conscious of deep relief when he turned on his heel and strode away from them, but she still had Pamela to contend with. “Come into my bedchamber,” she said. “You can help me get the tangles out of my hair. I dare not ring for Annie. She would drive me to distraction with her scolds.”

Pamela followed with alacrity, demanding to know the whole even as the door shut behind her. “And do not think to fob me off with some Banbury tale, Gwen, for I won’t have it. Where have you been? And why were you with Marcus?”

“I was swimming,” Gwenyth said shortly. “I was hot, and my body ached. I thought a swim would—”

“You weren’t swimming with Marcus!”

“No, he found me,” she said, sitting on the stool by her dressing table. “I swam from the riverbank at the bottom of the garden, but I drifted too far down the river. He had seen me from the library and came to fetch me, that’s all. And really, Pamela, you would do better neither to refine too much upon it nor to tease Lyford. You will only make him angry.”

“He will have to do as I wish now,” Pamela retorted, beginning to unplait Gwenyth’s tangled hair.

“You know better than that. He will allow you to prattle what you know to whomever you like and then he’ll have us both to suffer the consequences.” That Pamela would accept her first argument was too much to hope. Finally, in exasperation, Gwenyth said, “Lyford is already vexed with me, Pamela. And my aunt and the countess will be both shocked and displeased if they come to hear of it, as they certainly will if you continue to tease him.”

Pamela frowned, then said quietly, “I don’t wish to cause you further distress, Gwen, though I do mean to make Marcus take me back to London. If he has been scolding you … well, I know what that is like. Not,” she added with a grimace, “that you do not deserve scolding. Why, if I had been so foolish as to swim alone at night—if I could swim, that is—you would—”

“I know,” Gwenyth said, laughing in relief. “Lyford asked me what my brother would have had to say if he had seen me, and I can tell you, the very thought set goose bumps to dancing on my skin. I am very glad that Tallyn is many miles away.”

When Pamela left her to her own reflections at last, Gwenyth found it hard to sleep, for her thoughts were busy ones. The more she thought about the things she had learned since coming to Molesford, the harder it was to imagine the earl being party to anything underhanded. Still, he had never denied that he needed money, and if, as her aunt supposed, there was something amiss with the Hawtrey Shipping Company, it was possible that the earl had been part of it for a long time and that it was somehow connected with whatever was happening at the abbey.

On the other hand, Silas Ferguson had been killed, and she could not believe the earl a murderer. She might believe many other things about him, but not that. It was true that she had come to Molesford to keep him from forcing Pamela into marriage, but she had seen at once that he had had no such intention, and everything else she had learned of him had been to his credit. So much so that she had fallen in love with him.

Instead of making her task easier, that last notion, leaping to mind as it had, had frightened her, for she knew she could not be thinking clearly. As she tried to put her thoughts in order, she tossed and turned uncomfortably, the sultriness of the air around her turning her bedclothes into a wrinkled mess. By the time she finally fell into exhausted slumber, she had come to the conclusion that the only thing to be done was to put the business into hands more experienced with such matters than her own.

The following morning, as soon as she had dressed, she found paper and pen and wrote to Sir Antony. The letter was not one of her better epistolary efforts, by any means, for she decided at once that it would not do to write everything down, lest it fall into the wrong hands. If he was away, she could trust Meriel to send it on to him and hope that he would comprehend it well enough to advise her. Still, there might well be need for action soon, before Sir Antony could arrive. After some thought, she realized that she had to trust Lyford. There was no one else.

Taking time only to entrust her letter to Frythorpe for posting, she hurried to the breakfast parlor, where she found her aunt eating in solitary splendor.

“Where is his lordship?” Gwenyth demanded without ceremony.

“Gone to the stables,” Lady Cadogan replied, regarding her with curiosity. “You look big with news, my dear. What is it?”

“I must speak with him first,” Gwenyth said.

“Well, it might not be the best time now,” Lady Cadogan said, “because he’s bound to be out of temper. What must that idiotish Pamela do but get up betimes only to tease him to take her back to London. She sat here at the table with us, casting the oddest looks at me while she talked nonsense to him about what she might say if only she wished to say it. I can tell you, dearest, ’tis a wonder the man didn’t strangle her. And then what must she do but follow him when he left, still prattling of balls and parties and the king’s Jubilee.”

“If Lyford does not strangle her,” Gwenyth said grimly, turning toward the door, “I shall attend to it myself.”

She pushed past a young footman entering the room and hurried downstairs and across the courtyard to the stable entrance. There was no one inside except for Joey Ferguson, who waved at her, and another groom who did not look up from the bridle he was polishing. Hearing an angry scream outside in the yard, and recognizing Pamela’s voice, Gwenyth quickened her pace, emerging into the sunlight in time to see the earl take his cousin by her shoulders and give her a hard shake.

Pamela shrieked at him to stop, and he snapped something at her that Gwenyth could not hear. Neither of them heeded the sound of approaching hoofbeats or saw the broad-shouldered horseman bearing down upon them. He was upon them in seconds, leaping from his saddle to grab the earl by the arm before Gwenyth could do more than gasp in astonished dismay.

Startled, Lyford released Pamela and whirled to face his aggressor, but a sharp right jab to his chin felled him to the ground before he could so much as open his mouth to speak.

“Joss!” Gwenyth cried, rushing forward.

“Oh, thank you, my lord,” Pamela breathed, clasping her hands at her bosom and regarding the Earl of Tallyn with shining eyes. “He frightened me so!”

“Are you quite all right, Miss Beckley?” Tallyn inquired, turning toward her solicitously as he rubbed the knuckles of his right hand against his leather coat. “Good thing I came along. No one out front to take my horse, you know, which don’t say much for the way this place is run, if you ask me. That fellow didn’t hurt you, did he? By God, if he did—”

“Joss, look what you’ve done,” Gwenyth cried, falling to her knees beside Lyford and feeling for his pulse, her heart hammering with fear in her breast. “You might have killed him!”

“Might yet if he’s hurt Miss Beckley,” Tallyn said grimly. “Who is the fellow, anyway?”

“He is Lyford,” Gwenyth snapped. “Our host.”

“Well,” said Tallyn, unimpressed, “he ought not to go about molesting defenseless young females. Are you sure you have not been harmed, Miss Beckley?”

Pamela began to assure him that she was unhurt, but Lyford groaned just then, and hearing him, Gwenyth sighed in relief and turned quickly back to him. “Thank heaven, he is coming round. Lyford, wake up.” Glancing up a moment later, she noted that Tallyn and Pamela were still involved in their own conversation and that the incident had drawn an audience.

“Joey,” she called as the boy emerged from the stable with the clear intention of joining the grooms and stableboys already in the yard, “fetch his lordship a damp cloth.”

“Aye,” he shouted back.

“Don’t try to sit up yet, sir,” she told Lyford when he opened his eyes. “You will be better in a moment.”

“Damn,” he muttered, ignoring her and trying to sit, his hand to his jaw. “I think he loosened a tooth. Who is that damned maniac?”

“My brother Tallyn,” she said briefly, taking the damp rag Joey handed her and attempting to apply it to the earl’s chin.

He took it from her, eyeing Tallyn and Pamela with disfavor. “Your brother, eh. What’s his interest in my cousin?”

“None, sir. He met her once, that’s all, and he seems to have misunderstood your intentions toward her just now.”

“No, he didn’t. I was ready to murder the wench.”

“Can you get up?”

Tallyn turned back to them as the earl got shakily to his feet, and the two men glared at each other for a long minute before Gwenyth said, “Joss, you must apologize. You misunderstood. Lyford is Miss Beckley’s guardian.”

“Don’t refine too much upon that,” Lyford said with a sigh, extending his hand to Tallyn. “I’d no doubt be thanking you if Pamela had been struggling with anyone else and you’d intervened. You didn’t know me.”

“Good of you to say so,” Tallyn said, shaking his hand. His manner was still reticent, but he relaxed when Lyford began to smile, only to grimace in pain instead. Tallyn smiled ruefully. “Sorry about that.”

“You’ve got steel in that fist,” Lyford told him. “You must practice.”

“I do,” Tallyn agreed. “Spent time in America, where it don’t do for a man not to be able to defend himself. Once had to dust three fellows at once, but that’s another tale. Guess I ought to be thanking you for looking after my sister. Trust she’s behaved herself.” When Gwenyth looked guiltily at Lyford, remembering a portion of her conversation with him the previous night and what she had said to Pamela afterward about being glad Tallyn was not at hand, the look was not lost on her brother. “See she hasn’t. Care to tell me about it?”

Lyford looked at her, and for a fleeting moment she feared that he would, but then she saw the teasing amusement in his eyes and her fear vanished.

He said, “Nothing at all. We’ll go inside, shall we? Have you breakfasted, Tallyn? You’ve come at a dashed early hour, you know, for paying a call.”

“Came late’s what I did,” Tallyn said, interrupting himself to give brief instructions regarding his horse to one of the grooms before adding, “My man’s coming later with my gear. I put up in Pangbourne last night and rode on this morning. Had breakfast near about sunup.”

Lyford glanced at the group of stableboys and grooms, and the look was enough to empty the yard at once. “You’ll stay for a few days, I trust,” he said.

Tallyn nodded. “If you haven’t had your fill of Trahernes.”

“I haven’t.” Lyford looked at Gwenyth again, and the tender expression in his eyes made her blush. As she turned, she found her brother regarding her rather oddly. He opened his mouth as though he would say something, but shut it again and offered his arm to Pamela instead.

“Don’t look at me like that again,” she muttered to Lyford under her breath as they followed the other two around to the front and into the house.

She heard him chuckle. “Why not? I like to look at you.”

“Lyford, don’t be nonsensical, or that sore jaw of yours won’t be the only consequence of my brother’s genius for misunderstanding.”

“Whatever do you mean, my dear?”

“And don’t call me your dear!” she hissed.

“Very well, my love.”

“Lyford!”

“I think,” he hissed back, “that I shall take a leaf from my little cousin’s book.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

“Blackmail.”

“Blackmail?”

“Yes, surely you know the sort of thing. If you are not kind to me, I shall have a nice long chat with the estimable Tallyn. I’ll wager he won’t think highly of your liking for the water, my love, or of your visit to Covent Garden.”

“You wouldn’t,” she declared flatly.

He grinned at her. “We’ll see.”

D
ENIED IMMEDIATE OPPORTUNITY FOR
private conversation with Lyford, Gwenyth found herself occupied for some time with her brother. She considered confiding in him but decided almost at once that to do so would require rather too much explanation for her comfort. Indeed, she was grateful that Tallyn did not question her, and he did not do so for the simple reason that Pamela managed to accompany them wherever they went.

Under ordinary circumstances, Gwenyth might have wished her at Jericho, but as it was, she had no wish to be alone with Tallyn. Nor did she stop to consider why he did not demand a few moments alone with her, for she had other matters on her mind. There was one task, at least, that she wanted to see to at once.

When she offered to take Tallyn over the house and grounds, Pamela announced cheerfully that she would go too, and it was an easy matter for Gwenyth to guide them toward the stables. Leaving Pamela to accompany Tallyn while he looked the place over, she went in search of Joey and found him in Cyrano’s empty stall, only to discover that Lyford had been ahead of her.

“Said he’d dust me jacket hisself if he heard I were treasure-huntin’ again or even talkin’ ’bout it,” he said, grinning at her. “And Mr. Powell were here this morning too. He done told me ter keep clear or e’d tell me dad. Don’t like Mr. Powell much, I don’t, but I do what me lord tells me.”

Gwenyth thought about Mr. Powell for a moment. He was Welsh, which was certainly a point in his favor, but she wondered why he would concern himself with the boy. No doubt, she decided, he had been acting on Jared’s orders.

They met Jared himself in the stableyard, and when Gwenyth had introduced Tallyn to him, he said he had been searching for Pamela to invite her to ride. Assenting at once, Pamela promptly asked Tallyn if he wouldn’t like to join them. Her invitation, Gwenyth noted, did not much please Jared, but he rallied quickly, extending his own to include Gwenyth.

She refused without a qualm, having no worries about Pamela so long as she had two escorts, and certain by the way the two men looked at each other that neither would leave her alone with the other. She had hoped to take the opportunity to speak with Lyford, but he was nowhere to be found. She did not see him until dinner, and by then the lines of battle between Tallyn and Jared had been clearly drawn. The two men looked daggers at each other throughout the meal.