Carola Dunn (3 page)

He put away the intriguing possibility for the moment. He didn’t want to embarrass the young woman at his side by enquiring into her parent’s legitimacy. “I beg your pardon, Miss Wingate, I don’t mean to pry. I’m Miles Courtenay; Sir Barnabas was my godfather. I imagine we are in Dorset on the same errand.”

“In hopes of an inheritance,” she said candidly. “I ought to have arrived yesterday, but when I reached London the waybill for the stagecoach was already full.”

“And I only received the lawyer’s letter yesterday. I’ve driven day and night.”

“Then you must be as tired as I. Let us hope the Will is not too long or I shall fall asleep in the middle.”

They fell silent as he negotiated the twists and turns of the narrow lane between high hedges. Occasional gates gave glimpses of green meadows, with the course of the Riddle marked by willows and poplars, yellowing already. Just before Kingstonriddle they were held up by a herd of cows crossing from one field to another in a leisurely manner. Miles saw Miss Wingate’s hands clenched tight in an agony of impatience.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “We’ll be there in time. It’s less than a mile to the turning.”

“You must have come this way often?”

Her tone was questioning, and he guessed she was anxious to discover on what terms he had stood with the baronet. Two could play at that game.

“Often enough, though not of recent years. And you?”

“Never, but of course Mama grew up at Addlescombe.”

So Miss Wingate’s mama was the straying sheep, it seemed, not Sir Barnabas. Miles was too tired to work out whether that increased or decreased his chances of a substantial legacy. He drove through the village and turned off along the Addle, a narrow, crystal-clear brook slipping smoothly along over its flinty bed.

They passed through a belt of woodland and emerged into a valley surrounded by high green hills.

“I do believe the sun is coming out,” Miss Wingate exclaimed. “Perhaps it is a good omen.”

“Perhaps,” Miles grunted.

“How the stream sparkles! The countryside is very pretty, is it not? I have never lived in the country.”

He roused himself to regard the familiar scene. Here the Addle meandered between beds of watercress. On either side, rusty-red cattle grazed the lush pastures while winter wheat already striped the pale, chalky arable fields with green. A team of hedgers and ditchers with scythes, billhooks, and spades stood aside to let the curricle pass. Miles noted repairs to a five-barred gate, the new wood yellow in contrast to the weathered grey of the old. No fallen, rotting timber marred the autumn-hued copses, and a multitude of sheep dotted the encircling hillsides.

Sir Barnabas had always been an exacting, though fair, landlord, and apparently he had not loosed the reins in his latter years. Addlescombe was still a rich, productive estate.

The sight pleased Miles, though it was a long time since such matters had had any relevance to his life. That was not likely to change. The manor and the farms would presumably go to his godfather’s younger brother, heir to the baronetcy. Unlike Miles, Neville Philpott had been willing to put up with Sir Barnabas’s misanthropic autocracy in exchange for a life of ease.

Or
was
Neville the heir? Miles had always assumed so, but if a daughter unknown to him suddenly turned up, an unknown son seemed equally possible.

And how would that change his chances?

“Has your mother any brothers, Miss Wingate?”

“No, she is an only child, which makes it all the sadder that my grandfather should have cast her off so thoroughly. He cannot have been a happy man, I think.”

That the shabby female at his side should pity the wealthy baronet struck Miles as exquisitely humorous. A chuckle escaped him.

She looked up at him, frowning. “Why do you laugh, sir? Was my grandfather in fact perfectly contented despite the estrangement?”

“No, happy and contented are not words I’d ever associate with Sir Barnabas. I beg your pardon for laughing, ma’am. Truth to tell, I’m too fagged to know what I’m about.”

“Then let us hope you will not upset us in the ditch,” she said tartly.

He grinned and shook his head. “Never fear. I can manage the last half mile.”

The lane branched. To the left the square church tower and part of the village were visible, straggling along the lower slopes on the west side of the valley. Taking the right fork, over a flat stone bridge, Miles pointed ahead with his whip.

“There’s the house.”

Addlescombe Manor, starting as a thatched brick-and-flint farmhouse, had sprawled in all directions at the whim of succeeding owners. Here two stories, there three, with dormer windows scattered at random, parts were built of grey Portland stone, parts of local yellow stone, giving it a patchwork appearance. Walled kitchen gardens at one end, together with the stables at the other, added to the apparent length of the house.

“It’s very large,” murmured Miss Wingate, her fine eyes widening.

“I’ll set you down at the front door and drive around to the stables.”

“Oh no, pray take me with you!”

“As you wish, but you need not fear them, you know.”

“It’s just that I’m sure there must be a butler, and I should not know what to say to him. Them?” she added in a tone of deep foreboding. “You mean a number of people live here? Who are they?”

“A choice assortment of purse-pinched relatives, living at the old man’s rack and manger, and at his beck and call. I shan’t describe them. You’ll meet them soon enough.”

“Mama did mention that her uncle and his family lived here when she was growing up, but that was more than twenty years ago. So they are still here?”

“They were six years ago.”

As he drove into the stableyard, Miss Wingate was silent. No doubt she was contemplating the existence of considerably more competition than she had expected for Sir Barnabas’s fortune.

A groom hurried to the horses’ heads and Miles stepped down, every muscle protesting the long drive. Following him without waiting for assistance, Miss Wingate stumbled a little. He quickly put out his hand to steady her, alarmed by her pallor.

“Are you all right?”

She gave him a tremulous smile. “A trifle dizzy. I shall be quite all right when I have had something to eat. Do you think we are too late for breakfast?”

“My dear girl, why did you not tell me you’re hungry? I have an apple in my pocket.” He produced it.

“My saviour!” She pulled off her glove, serviceable York tan, worn but well kept, and took the apple. “Thank you, sir, I am simply ravenous.”

“Eat as much as you can before we meet anyone,” he advised.

“Oh dear, I suppose it is not good manners to march munching into a strange house,” she said in dismay as they entered by a back door.

“Fustian! I was merely thinking that it would be a pity to waste any of it.”

At this attempt to put her at her ease, her lips curved upward, and Miles was struck again by the enchanting quality of her smile. Apart from that and her eyes, she was no beauty. Her chin was too pointed, her nose undistinguished, her hair--what he could see of it under the hood--of a commonplace brown. As she walked beside him, crunching the apple, he realized that she was taller than he’d thought, the top of her head on a level with his eyes. Himself of middling height, he was generally attracted to shorter females, with a preference for a voluptuous Pocket Venus. Miss Wingate’s figure was disguised by her cloak but he rather thought she was on the skinny side.

Of course, whatever the cause of her mother’s exile, Miss Wingate appeared to be respectable, whereas the creatures he assiduously pursued were invariably quite the reverse. On the other hand, she had accepted a lift from a stranger. She had more or less requested it, in fact, with no signs of bashful modesty....

“What shall I do with the core?” she whispered urgently.

He whipped out his handkerchief, received the remains in it, and stuffed it back in his greatcoat pocket as they reached the small front hall. Not much wider than the passage by which they had entered, it had two more corridors leading off it and two doors besides the front door. A carpeted staircase rose to a square landing before continuing to the first floor. Against one wall stood a long-case clock, an umbrella stand, a couple of straight, rush-bottomed chairs, and a half-moon table, on which Miles dropped hat, gloves, and whip.

The butler appeared. Almost as starchy as his late master, Snodgrass inclined his head in a minimal bow. “Mr Courtenay,” he said, sounding as censorious Miles remembered him, “and...?”

“Miss Wingate,” Miles informed him.

“If you will please to come this way, the family is gathered in the drawing room.” He opened the door to the left of the front door and announced, “Miss Wingate. Mr Courtenay.”

Snodgrass stood aside and Miss Wingate stepped into the room. Close behind her, Miles saw seven pairs of eyes turn to stare. Miss Wingate froze.

“Courtenay? What the deuce?” barked Neville Philpott.

Mrs Chidwell raised her lorgnette and regarded the pair in the doorway with cold eyes. “Mr Courtenay, how dare you bring your doxy to Addlescombe!” she snapped.

The clock in the hallway struck nine.

* * * *

Perched on the inkstand, Sir Barnabas watched as his household filed into the library. He would have preferred a more dignified seat. However, in the weeks since his death he’d discovered that being read through was uncomfortable and being sat upon definitely painful--as well as still less dignified than the inkstand.

The rest of the kneehole desk was covered with Harwood’s papers, and every chair was needed for the vultures gathering in hopes of profit from his demise. He could have sat on the long table, pushed out of the way against the far wall, but he wanted to see their faces.

Despite their eagerness, they were late, he noted irritably. Nine o’clock was the hour he had specified for the reading, not for them to begin to straggle towards the library. Lawyer Harwood was an ineffectual fool.

The tubby little man stood behind the desk, nervously consulting his silver turnip watch and casting uneasy glances at his insubstantial friend and client. He was the only one to whom Sir Barnabas had so far succeeded in revealing himself, albeit indistinctly. It was to be hoped he was competent to see the terms of the Will carried out to the last letter, even those he had fervently argued against.

The hopeful heirs were in for a shock, thought the late baronet, rubbing his spectral hands together in something approaching glee.

Inevitably Cousin Euphemia Chidwell waddled in first. Massive and determined in her perpetual purple, the widow always managed to push ahead of the milksop who was now Lady Philpott. Even before his death, Effie had even usurped his wishy-washy sister-in-law’s position as manager of his household. Much he cared, as long as it was ordered to his liking. Of course, if there was any actual labour involved, poor Sophie was the one who did it.

Jane, Lady Philpott, trailed in limply, her shawl slipping off one shoulder as usual. Sir Barnabas felt the usual surge of irritation. In other circumstances he’d have growled at her to to straighten her clothes.

She leaned on the arm of her daughter, Matilda, a small, spare, loud-voiced spinster of six-and-thirty, smelling of horses and dogs. Her uncle had long since given up hope of matrimony removing her from his house. The two gentlemen who had risen to the bait of the large dowry he offered, she threw back on the grounds that neither could keep up with her in the hunting field.

Sophronia pattered in, last of the ladies, always a little breathless, pink-cheeked and softly plump. Somehow her crooked cap and the hairpins constantly scattering from her white hair never annoyed Sir Barnabas as did Jane’s shawl. He had been tempted to bequeath a little extra to Sophie. She’d not reap the benefit of it, though, having been firmly under her sister Euphemia’s thumb since childhood.

Neville was next, Sir Neville now, strutting like a pouter pigeon in the glory of his new title. He had never taken the least interest in the Addlescombe estate and was utterly unfit to run it.

So was his son, Aubrey. Once a beautiful youth, Aubrey at forty expended all his energy in fighting the encroachment of the years. He had never married because a plain wife was unthinkable and a pretty one too much competition. Sir Barnabas snorted as the creak of his nephew’s corset reached his ears. Man-milliner!

His other nephew, his sister’s son, entered with the grave mien proper to a clergyman. The Reverend Raymond Reece was a sanctimonious sapskull with the most deplorable Romish tendencies, but no one else had offered him a living and after all, he was family.

And that was the lot, except for the servants, unless....

Sir Barnabas’s breath caught in his throat, or would have, had he been breathing. The girl was Anthea’s image. She must be about the age Anthea had been when she faced him with defiance in her eyes and announced that she’d marry Frederick Wingate or no one.

His daughter marry a strolling player! Out of the question, not even worthy of discussion.

So she had run off with the fellow. He had managed to hush it up, giving out that she had gone to stay with relatives, and later that she had accepted a suitor and was living in a distant part of the country. None of the neighbours had ever been so impertinent as to ask him for further news of her.

Anthea had written to her father announcing her marriage. He had not replied. A second letter notified him of the birth of her child. Again he had not responded, but he had kept the letter. Nerissa was the chit’s name, a constant reminder of the theatrical world with its notorious immorality, in the midst of which his granddaughter had been brought up.

No one could have guessed it by looking at her. In her simple olive-green dress, long-sleeved and high-necked, her hair pinned up in braids, her face innocent of paint, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

But after all, that was the nature of the beast. The most infamous Cyprians were capable of appearing on the stage as the innocent Miranda, the maligned Desdemona. What the hussy hoped to gain by this show of modesty now that her grandfather was dead, he failed to guess. Perhaps she hoped to influence Harwood in her favour.