The Bishop's Daughter (13 page)

"Blasted careless of me. Roses are so damned hard to grow."

Harry glared out the window, watching Crosbie struggle painfully to his feet. Although he risked a longing glance at Lady Lytton, the fellow possessed enough sense to limp away from the house.

Striding into the hall, Harry shouted for one of the footman to make certain Crosbie found his way off the property, also snapping out, "Tell Grayshaw I want a word with him."

His once redoubtable manservant was getting confoundedly careless about whom he let through the front door. It would be much easier to vent his exasperation with Grayshaw than return to deal with Sybil.

Harry did not relish having to preach propriety to anyone. Considering his own past, it made him feel ridiculous. But damn it all, Sybil was his stepmother. No matter how foolish the woman was, he couldn't stand idly by and let a jackanapes like Crosbie make a cake of her.

When he returned to the sitting room, he expected to find Sybil already sunk into hysterics. Instead she stood silhouetted by the window, drawn up into a dramatic pose that would have done credit to a Sarah Siddons.

"Harcourt! You are entirely too cruel."

"I don't call it cruel to try to protect you from the havey-cavey intentions of Lucillus Crosbie."

"Lucillus is a gentleman. He wants to marry me."

 "He's a dashed—"

"Don't shout!" Lady Lytton pressed one hand to her brow. "Your voice goes right through my poor head." She staggered to the sofa and began searching behind the pillow for her smelling salts.

Harry had not realized he was shouting. It was amazing how Sybil always found his voice too loud when he was saying something she did not care to hear. He continued doggedly, "Crosbie is a dashed fortune hunter.

"He is not! You don't know him. He has the sweetest nature imaginable." Sybil paused long enough to uncork the bottle of sol volatile and take a fortifying sniff. "He is willing to consign my widow's jointure to perdition if that is what it would take to convince you of his good intent."

"Is he indeed? And what the deuce would the pair of you live upon?"

"Lucillus has prospects. He is a brilliant sculptor."

Harry rolled his eyes.

Sybil thumped her plump fist angrily against the sofa. "Even you said the statue for your memorial was well executed."

"Yes," Harry grudgingly conceded, "but in questionable taste."

"That wasn't Lucillus's fault. He was obliged to use a statue of Apollo he had already designed. He merely changed the head and substituted a sword for the lyre. It was remarkably clever of Lucillus and a great savings as well."

"You mean you obtained my memorial secondhand?" Harry asked in a slightly unsteady voice.

Lady Lytton bristled defensively "The tidings of your death came at very short notice, Harcourt. I managed the best I could."

"So you did." Harry's lively sense of the ridiculous overcame him. Despite how hard he tried to control it, a bark of laughter escaped him.

Her ladyship eyed him reproachfully. "I never thought even you could be this unfeeling, Harcourt. When you were named as trustee of my jointure, I never said a word, though I did think it most odd, that a child should be given such control over the parent. But I trusted you to behave reasonably. Both of Sybil's chins quivered. "But you wish to see me a human sacrifice. Buried alive with your father."

Harry sobered immediately. "No, I don't. Believe me," he added with great feeling. "No one wants to see you remarried more than I. But not to a court card like Crosbie. Damn! For you to be setting up a fool like that in my father's place. It's an insult to his memory."

Sybil's face colored, her cheeks turning the same bright red as her rouge. "No one respects your father's memory more than I. I have been a good widow, but I am far too young to go on alone. I hate black and Lucillus is not a fool. . . ." Her tangled speech trailed off into incoherency, the inevitable flood of tears commencing.

As she sobbed tragically into her handkerchief, Harry watched her in acute discomfort. He hated making anyone so miserable, and there was nothing more odious than being told that something was being done for one's own good.

But any temptation he might have felt to yield was checked by the memory of those final hours he had spent at the old earl's bedside. His father had known he was dying, but he wanted no clergyman about him, only Harry and his pack of hunting dogs. The governor had no fear of death and no regrets about the way he had lived his life save one.

"I should have never married again," his father had confessed to Harry. "There was only ever one woman for me, my boy and that was your mother. Poor Sybil. I've been the very devil of a husband to her. The foolish creature has not a whit of sense or she never would have had me. It's going to be up to you to look after her when I'm gone, Harry."

Harry's throat tightened at the memory. It was the only thing the old earl had ever asked of him, the only responsibility he had ever laid upon Harry's shoulders. There might be little else in his life he had ever done right. Surely he could manage to fulfill his father's one simple request.

Harry's conscience pricked him just a little, for he knew it was not only the old earl he was thinking of, but Kate. Good lord, what would she think of him if he was so careless of his duty as to permit his stepmother to wed some silly chubb half her age?

Even though he was disturbed by Sybil's gusty weeping, Harry remained resolved. He made one more effort to console his stepmama, patting her awkwardly on her shoulder.

"I tell you what I will do, my lady. At the end of the summer, I will convey you to Bath. You've always enjoyed taking the waters, and the town would be full of more eligible suitors."

"Old men with the gout!" was Sybil's wailing response to this hopeful suggestion. Recognizing the beginning of some strong hysterics, Harry prudently backed toward the door. He suddenly realized that this was the first time he had entered Sybil's room without breaking any china, but he did not expect his stepmother to take much consolation in that at the moment.

Julia Thorpe unfurled her parasol, shortening her longer stride to match Kate's as they strolled through the village of Lytton's Dene. Miss Thorpe, as ever managed to present a crisp, fresh appearance, despite the heat and dust coating the lane.

Kate could not help recalling a laughing remark Harry had once made about his cousin's cool elegance. "Aye, icebergs don't easily melt."

As for herself, Kate could already feel her curls damp with perspiration beneath her bonnet, and her muslin gown clung to her as shockingly as though she had deliberately dampened her petticoats. She wondered what possessed her to be ranging abroad on such a hot afternoon, except that she had decided she had been keeping too close to the house of late. She had been nowhere since last Sunday and was beginning to feel quite out of touch with the world.

"With the world?" a voice insider her jeered. "Or with Harry Arundel?" It was quite true she had neither seen nor heard from Harry since their abrupt parting at her gate. Her manner had not been such as to encourage his lordship to call again. Perhaps she had convinced him at last to abandon his pursuit of her. Perhaps he had simply found something more interesting to occupy his time.

In either event, she told herself, she felt relieved that Harry had ceased to plague her, although her relief had taken on a most strange form, leaving her feeling restless, starting at every knock upon the cottage door, flying to the window to gaze out at every passing rider.

Such nervousness, however, Kate had convinced herself, had nothing to do with Harry's absence. No, more likely it was to be blamed upon the vicar's sister, for although she had seen nothing of his lordship, she had seen far too much of Julia these past days.

Even now as they skirted past Mr. Rising's carpentry shop, the smell of wood shavings and the clang of hammers heavy in the air, Julia seemed all too oppressively close to Kate's side.

"It is far too hot to be out walking," Julia complained. "I declare we both must be quite mad."

Kate refrained from reminding Julia that she had not been invited along upon this expedition. It had been Julia who had insisted upon accompanying her.

"If you are feeling unwell," Kate began hopefully, "and wish to return to the vicarage, I would quite understand."

"My dear Kathryn, I would not think of abandoning you." Julia gave her one of her arctic smiles, and linked her arm through Kate's in a possessive manner Kate found suffocating. The thought flashed through her mind that now she knew how prisoners in gaol must feel, so closely guarded. She dismissed the notion at once as mere peevishness, borne out of the heat.

"So where is it that you wish to go?" Julia asked after the manner of an adult humoring a tiresome child.

"I had thought of calling in at Miss Lethbridge's."

Kate indicated a small pink-and-white brick shop with some bonnets displayed in a bow-front window.

"Why ever would you want to go in there? That wretched woman trades in nothing but gossip."

Kate had to agree, and as a bishop's daughter, of course, she had no use for gossip. All the same she heard herself replying, "Miss Lethbridge has acquired a length of brown merino that I am thinking of purchasing to have done up into a winter cloak."

Julia made no comment, but her opinion was expressed clearly by the supercilious fashion in which she arched her brows. But she followed Kate to the shop across the lane without further demur.

The interior of Miss Lethbridge's shop was small and close, the narrow shelves crammed with an odd assortment of fripperies, laces, ribbons, gloves, bonnets, and stockings that comprised the elderly spinster's stock in trade. The establishment was empty when Kate and Julia entered, Miss Lethbridge folding up the silk fringe she had failed to sell to her last customer.

The diminutive woman summoned up a polite smile for the vicar's sister, but she bustled out from behind the counter to greet Kate with enthusiasm.

"The brown merino, Miss Towers? Bless you, my dear, I shall fetch it in a trice."

Hurrying to one of the lower shelves, Miss Lethbridge dragged out a bolt of cloth that she displayed to Kate upon the counter.

"A good serviceable fabric, my dear," the shopkeeper said.

Kate half-heartedly examined the ugly fabric that was the exact shade of the mud that filled the lane after a hard rain. She was aware of Julia close at her elbow, the lines of her face taut with a kind of bored impatience. It roused a rare streak of perversity in Kate, and she took her time about studying the fabric, although she wondered herself why she persisted in lingering when she had no intention of making a purchase.

As usual, Miss Lethbridge's tongue ran on at such a breathless rate of speed, she was oft unintelligible. Kate listened in desultory fashion, having no interest in the latest prank of the squire's hoydenish daughter or how the butcher's boy had been caught stealing a slab of bacon.

But the shopkeeper's next remark caused her to glance up eagerly. "I beg your pardon, Miss Lethbridge. What did you say about Lord Lytton?"

Miss Lethbridge blinked, her bright inquisitive, eyes rounding in surprise. "Why, nothing, my dear. I merely remarked that if you did wish to buy the cloth, I would have it sent to your cottage. On such a hot day, you surely wouldn't want to carry it."

"Oh," Kate said faintly, a rush of embarrassment flooding into her cheeks. Beneath Julia's sharp stare and Miss Lethbridge's look of motherly amusement, Kate felt ready to sink beneath the floorboards.

It only made matters worse when Miss Lethbridge patted her arm. "Bless you, child, there's no need for you to color up so. I am sure all the young ladies hereabouts are fair starved for some word of Lord Harry. I have been telling everyone—"

"I assure you," Julia interrupted icily, "neither Miss Towers nor I am prey to any such vulgar curiosity."

Kate knew she should agree with Julia, but she felt more like stuffing a kerchief in Miss Thorpe's mouth. Miss Lethbridge appeared affronted.

"I do not consider it vulgar to show a friendly concern for one's neighbors," she huffed. "But far be it from me to burden you with any tales of his lordship. The poor lamb." Miss Lethbridge heaved a deep sigh before briskly setting about to refold the bolt of brown cloth.

It was entirely too much for Kate. Despite Julia's look of disgust, Kate put her hand over Miss Lethbridge's to still the woman's movements.

"Oh, pray, Miss Lethbridge. Whatever did you mean? Why did you call the earl a poor lamb?"

Miss Lethbridge's lips were compressed in a taut line, but when she glanced up at Kate's face, her expression softened.

"Why, only that I think there must be something gravely amiss with his lordship since he's come back. He's done naught but a little gentle riding over his own estates, nothing at all in his usual dashing style. There's some as have been saying that Lord Harry was wounded more badly at Waterloo than any of us know."

"Surely not," Kate faltered.

Miss Lethbridge nodded solemnly. "Why else would the earl sell off all his best hunters?  It is obvious the poor gentleman must not be able to ever hunt or jump again."