Amanda Scott (8 page)

“Eh, what’s this? Letters?” Lord Arthur looked hard at his daughter, who suddenly wished she were the type of young woman who could faint dead away at a gentleman’s feet. “What letters, Sylvia? What is Greyfalcon talking about?”

Greyfalcon, too, looked at Sylvia, and the look in his eyes gave her to understand that fainting would not be good enough, that the only thing that would save her now was a magic wand, one that would transport her to another land, a land where gentlemen did not exist and could not enter.

She swallowed carefully, holding Greyfalcon’s gaze with her own. “His lordship is tired, Papa. We have had a long journey, and I am persuaded that he is longing for his dinner and his bed. You can discuss all this with him another time. Thank you so much, my lord,” she added, holding out her hand to him, “for seeing me safely home again.”

“Why, you’re most welcome, Miss Jensen-Graham,” said Greyfalcon suavely, ignoring her hand as he grasped her firmly about the waist and lifted her down from the chaise to stand beside him, “but I am in no great hurry. Indeed, I believe that your father and I have much to discuss.”

“No, please, you must—”

“Don’t be daft, Sylvia,” cut in Lord Arthur sharply. “You can’t just send the man off dry, and if I’m not mistaken, there is something very much amiss here. What was that you said about a letter to your creditors, lad? I’ll swear an oath I know not what your meaning may be.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt of that now, sir,” said Greyfalcon, his words sounding to Sylvia much like the cracks of a whip. When his arm came around her shoulders, pressing her forward toward her father, she found herself most reluctant to obey but forced to do so whether she would or not. His voice went on, over her head, and she knew this words were creating more trouble for her than she had ever thought possible. “You must ask your daughter, sir, about her trip to London, about the letters she brought from you, supposedly written in your hand, to be delivered to the
Times
and the
Gazette.
I must thank you for your courtesy in sending them to me first, and for your warning that they would be published unless I returned at once to Oxfordshire.”

Lord Arthur glanced over at the interested postboys. “Have your rig sent ’round to the stables, lad, and come you inside. We’ve much to discuss.”

Sylvia found her voice at last and stepped forward. “Papa, do not be angry. I only did what I—”

“Enough,” Lord Arthur said in a tone she could not remember having heard from him before. “You will retire to your bedchamber at once, daughter. Your apologies can be made at a more appropriate time.”

“But, Papa—”

“Not another word,” he said, standing aside and pointing toward the open door. “Bid his lordship good night and go, at once.”

His tone this time brooked no further argument. Muttering “Good night, sir,” Sylvia fled past her father and up the great-hall stairs to her bedchamber.

A
LONE IN HER BEDCHAMBER,
Sylvia lit the three candles in the silver holder on her dressing table and sat down to peer at her reflection, noting that the flames of the candles were as nothing to the flames in her cheeks. Sent to her room like a child … and with Greyfalcon as a witness. How could her father do such a thing to her?

As the question flashed through her mind, however, she had difficulty meeting her own eyes in the looking glass. Her father had done nothing, really, and considering that Greyfalcon had roused Lord Arthur’s temper to a greater heat than she could remember ever having done herself, Lord Arthur had acted with great restraint in simply dismissing her. He might just as well have reprimanded her severely right there in front of Greyfalcon. This was all Greyfalcon’s fault.

Again, she had difficulty meeting her own gaze in the mirror, for her innate honesty forbade blaming the earl alone. Greyfalcon had done no more than she had provoked him into doing. And, she decided, despite, or perhaps in view of, everything, she would give a great deal to know what was taking place in the library at this very moment.

She could not doubt that the two men had retired to Lord Arthur’s favorite room. The hall, with its magnificent chimneypiece, was an impressive chamber and the one they used whenever they entertained formally at the manor house, but the library was where Lord Arthur spent nearly every hour of every day that he was not sleeping, and even a certain number of those hours. He enjoyed a comfortable doze before the roaring fire with his book lying open on his lap and one of his dogs curled at his feet. Picturing him in that familiar pose, Sylvia smiled. Then the smile faded as she pictured him standing instead by his great desk, stiffly listening while Greyfalcon, no doubt having taken a place before the great fire to warm himself, told him of her perfidy in no doubt painstaking detail.

Would he tell Lord Arthur about keeping her overnight in his house on Curzon Street? She doubted it. But she did not doubt for a moment that he would describe her visit to Brooks’s down to the numbers on the cards she had seen, and the ribald comments that had followed them from the Great Subscription Room, or that he would describe those damning letters right down to the last flourish of Lord Arthur’s forged signature. Indeed, he might well have brought the letters with him. The more she considered the possibility, the more she was certain he must have done so. How could she have neglected to foresee what would happen and to plan in order to avoid this distressing outcome?

Sighing, and unwilling any longer to gaze at any portion of her reflection—such a stupid girl, really there was no accounting for her stupidity—she turned away, swiveling her body on the dressing stool to face the chamber, a pleasant room, decorated in green and white, with a floral carpet on the polished hardwood floor and green curtains at the single, large, stone-mullioned window. Now, with little light coming through the window and only the candles’ glow within, the colors were grayed, but the scent of potpourri from the jugs near the tall, carved door was familiar, and the sense of being at home helped her to relax. If only the thought of her stupidity would cease whirling through her mind.

It was not as though she had never fallen into a trap of her own making before. Her most brilliant ideas had almost always been edited by Christopher, and when they had not been, the pair of them had nearly always come to grief.

She remembered the time she had been moved, at the age of eight, while awaiting Christopher in the kitchen hall at Greyfalcon Park, to replace a bowl of hard-boiled eggs destined for the supper table with newly laid eggs from the henhouse basket left temptingly upon a sideboard. She had said nothing to Christopher until they were both well away from the house, so it had been impossible for him to warn her that company was expected that afternoon. By the time they learned that none other than the haughty Lady Milford, a most intimidating acquaintance of Lady Greyfalcon’s, had been the first person to attempt to crack open an egg, it was too late. Christopher had taken the blame, insisting that he and he alone had been responsible for the prank, and Sylvia had suffered no more than a boxed ear, Christopher’s retaliation for the whipping he had taken on her behalf.

She had attempted to explain to him on that occasion that she had intended the first egg to be his brother’s, for Christopher had complained that Francis, home from school as he was himself then for some holiday or other, had been lording it over him that he was allowed to take supper with the family and not in the schoolroom with a housemaid in attendance as Christopher still did. She had been sure, she insisted, that Francis, greedy as Christopher was always telling her he was, would certainly take the first egg. Christopher had been sadly unsympathetic, telling her then as he had on other, similar occasions that she simply didn’t think matters through, that she must learn to think out all the possible results of a plan before executing that plan. Otherwise, he warned, she would more often come to grief than not. That had not been the only occasion of the sort, of course, because although she did try to think everything through, it was when her ideas were most brilliant that she found it most difficult to think beyond their brilliance to their possibly unpleasant consequences.

Surely, she thought now, it was hard to conceive of how she could ever have thought Greyfalcon would say nothing to Lord Arthur about what she had done, particularly since she had done everything in Lord Arthur’s name. Of course, she had anticipated neither that Greyfalcon would escort her to her very doorstep nor that Lord Arthur would be the first person he would clap eyes upon when he did so. She had thought no further than forcing Greyfalcon’s return to Oxfordshire, and that was the nut with no bark on it. Her goal had been to get him home. That goal she had achieved.

This last thought cheered her a little, and she got up from the stool and moved toward the window to look out upon the darkness. A pair of tall Jacobean cupboards flanked the window with a padded bench between. The window curtains hung from a rod connected to the corners of the cupboards, forming an alcove and hiding the bench from view when the curtains were drawn. As a small child, Sylvia had often curled up on the bench with the curtains drawn, shutting out the rest of the world. It had been her secret place, her haven, and she had confidently imagined that no one would find her there. Indeed, when she was eleven, after her mother had died, she had spent many hours there, curled up alone with her grief.

She had no wish tonight to draw the curtains around her, for she was older now and knew she could not withdraw with such ease from the world or from the consequences awaiting her. But she sat down on the padded bench and drew her knees up, clasping her arms around them and leaning back against the side of one of the cupboards to look out upon the landscape.

The moon was rising over the Chilterns behind her, casting its silvery glow upon the Thames and lighting the sky above the Berkshire Downs beyond, making those hills seem black by contrast. Despite the low rise upon which the house sat, the trees blocked most of her view of the river. She could see only a wide, silvery bend to the southwest, the bend where Greyfalcon’s Island was located. The island itself looked from here to be only a black bulge in the silvery river. She could not see the narrow arched bridge that connected it with Greyfalcon Park, the bridge she and Christopher had run over so many times as children, seeking a magic land on the tree-shrouded island. In daylight she would be able to see the tall chimneys of the great stone house above the trees, but not the house itself.

She pulled open the window and for a moment imagined that she could hear masculine voices drifting up from the library below. There were Jacobean cupboards there, too, ornately carved, two pair of them, flanking the huge stone chimneypiece. And each pair was connected by a padded bench like the one she sat upon. If either pair of windows was open … But she knew in a moment that she had heard nothing, that it was only her imagination, that the windows there would be shut tight against the night’s chill. And she knew, too, that it was just as well she could not hear. The two men in the library were angry with her. And, she admitted frankly to herself at last, both had excellent reason to be.

After a time, she heard the rattle of chaise wheels on the gravel drive, and though she could not see the drive from where she sat, she had no doubt that Greyfalcon was departing. Muscles tightened at the base of her spine as she realized that her father might come in search of her now. He was not, and never had been, a harsh parent, but neither had he ever failed to do his duty when called to notice that there was duty to be done. And tonight Greyfalcon had no doubt made Lord Arthur’s duty plain to him. She did not relish the thought of the interview that was to come.

Having seen the grim look in Lord Arthur’s eyes as he ordered her to seek her bedchamber, she could not but be certain that he was angrier with her than he had ever been before. Still, she did not think he would feel called upon to beat her. Fathers did beat their daughters, of course, even grown-up daughters. It was expected of them when the daughters misbehaved. Just as it was expected of husbands with misbehaving wives. The days of chivalry were dead, long since, those days one read about when knights worshiped their ladies and forbore to lift a finger to hurt them.

Not that Sylvia truly believed in a knight who never raised a hand to wife or child. She had read enough, both at school and under her father’s tutelage, to know that men had forever been held responsible for the behavior of their kith and kin, most particularly for that of their females. The rule of thumb, her father had explained to her, dated from a time long ago, when a man was forbidden to beat his wife with a stick that was of greater circumference than his own thumb. That law, he had said, held true even now, and Sylvia remembered feeling sorry for any woman whose husband had fat hands.

Pushing these unwelcome thoughts aside at last, she looked over at the candles on her dressing table, noting that they had burned nearly to stubs. He would not come to her tonight. Noting, too, that her basin had not been filled, she realized that unless she wished to chance running into him on the stair or in the lower hall, she would have to go to bed in her travel dirt. The decision was not, under the circumstances and in view of her earlier thoughts, a difficult one to make.

Accustomed as she was to waiting upon herself, it was but a matter of a few moments before she was ready for bed. She had blown out her candles and climbed under her quilts before she heard Lord Arthur’s step in the narrow corridor outside her door. He did not hesitate but passed by on his way to his own bedchamber, and not until all sound of his footsteps had receded into the distance did she realize she had been holding her breath. Letting it out in a long sigh of relief, she turned over onto her side and fell quickly asleep.

So tired was she that the morning light might well have passed unnoticed had the maid, one of four who came daily to attend to the housework and serve the meals, not come in and flung the curtains wide with a clatter of rings against rod. Sylvia sat bolt upright, startled, then rubbed her eyes and said with a wry grin, “You’re like to give a person an apoplexy, Sadie, coming in with a racket like that.”