The Charmer (12 page)

The last stop of the day was Haford. This was not a rotten borough, but a largely populated one in the shadow of one of Everdon's coastal manors, Staverly.

A steady rain greeted their arrival. The whole countryside seemed to have congregated in the town. Silent tension quivered off the congested streets in a way that made the earlier demonstrations seem benign.

Harvey Douglas, the M.P., appeared oblivious to both rain and danger. He met the carriage with a broad-toothed smile parting his tawny mustache and beard. It turned out that the duchess knew him.

“It is good to see you, Mister Douglas. When I saw the list of candidates, I was delighted to recognize at least one name.”

He helped Adrian guide her to the local inn. Already the wagons were being unloaded there. “Saved enough as your father's steward at Staverly to buy some property, I did. Was proud as a man can be when he offered me the seat. I'd like to think that I've done the job as well as any man could.”

He grinned at Adrian for confirmation. Douglas had indeed been the consummate puppet M.P. He never expressed an opinion and probably did not possess any. Other “owned” members of the Commons sometimes chafed at their obligations, but Douglas thrived on them because politics did not interest him at all. His position gained him entrée into drawing rooms otherwise closed to him, and he got to play the big man at county assemblies. He was understandably grateful to the dead duke for the gift of social elevation.

And also grateful to Gerald Stidolph. Adrian remembered that it had been Stidolph who had recommended Douglas for the seat when its last occupant passed on five years ago. Stidolph's influence in the matter had made his own position in the duke's favor very clear to everyone.

“The town is unusually busy considering it is not market day,” Adrian observed as they all shook off the rain.

“They're curious. Haven't seen the duchess in years. It's all Everdon land around here. I had the husting put up near the church. I expected a crowd, what with the duchess returning, and thought they would want to see it. I hadn't thought it to rain, of course.”

“We will go to the church shortly,” Adrian instructed. “I will tell you now that the duchess is making no formal statement regarding reform.”

“I don't understand. The duke—”

“It is for the duchess to decide now.”

“But I've already let it be known how we stand. He made it very clear on the last bill how we were to vote. You know that, Burchard. You are the one who gave us the word.”

Sophia cocked her head. “It was not for you to let it be known without my saying so, Mister Douglas.”

“Of course, Your Grace. But people have been asking, and Mister Stidolph explained that Everdon would stand against any new bill as it did the last one.”

She stood, assuming the formidability that she could summon unexpectedly. “Do not assume that Mister Stidolph, or anyone else, knows Everdon's mind now. No one will give you the word on this except me. Until I do, you are not to speak in my name. Now, if you understand that, I am ready.”

The main coach had already been taken away, but the servants' open carriage still stood outside the inn. Adrian requisitioned it from the groom and handed Sophia in. He took reins in hand and trotted quickly to the church. The farmers and townspeople formed a river behind them.

By the time they had all taken their places on the platform, at least three hundred men and women had gathered to hear their landlord speak. Adrian wished they were not so quiet.

Douglas introduced the duchess with a long speech that extolled her father's benign rule in the region.

Sophia stepped forward to speak. Silence fell until only the splattering rain could be heard. She launched into her standard nomination.

She never got past the third sentence. The tension in the crowd snapped, releasing a barrage of emotion.

It was as if someone had given a signal.

“Support reform!” a man called.

“We want our due!”

“Go back to France!”

Sophia persevered, finishing the brief announcement while the crowd transformed into a mob. Political sentiments of every color mixed freely with personal grievances in the uproar. Some yelled at landowners, some at the government, some at reformers, and some at Sophia Raughley herself. She stood straight as a rod, letting the swells of anger crash against her.

Adrian stepped close to her. “Time to go.”

She ignored him and raised an arm against the tide. “My good people. This is no way to settle differences or to influence events.”

“
Now,
Your Grace.”

“Only rational discourse will help us find common ground.” Her voice barely penetrated the uproar.

The agitation grew physical. The crowd milled and surged. Fights broke out. Sweating with fear, Douglas bobbed his respects and disappeared.

“My apologies, Duchess.” Circling her waist with his arm, Adrian pulled her to the stairs. Amidst the increasing roar of resentment, he hauled one indignant, squirming duchess away.

He pushed her into the carriage and jumped up to take the reins, cursing Douglas for being too stupid to fathom what had been brewing right under his nose.

He moved the horses, aiming for the closest edge of town. Most of the crowd peeled away, but some bolder men clutched at the reins. He whipped them off. A scream from Sophia shot his head around. Hands were grabbing for her.

“Up here,” he ordered.

She furiously slapped off the dragging arms. Half-crawling, half-tumbling, she managed to climb over the seat. Adrian grasped her arm firmly with one hand while he maneuvered the horses with the other. When she had all her limbs beside him, he slammed her down where he could keep an eye on her. He whipped the horses into a gallop, trusting Providence to move people out of the way.

He careened past the church and onto the northern road while rain poured down on the huddle of black cloth, white face, and flaming eyes beside him.

A mile out of town he pulled the horses to a stop.

She rose, the drenched bow of her bonnet sagging over one of her livid eyes. “I had things well in hand back there. They were coming around. Now there will probably be a riot and all of England will hear that I was run out of a town on my own property.”

“The riot was underway before you left. That is what we call a crowd of three hundred fighting in the streets here in England. I need to walk the horses, so sit down.”

“Where do you get the notion that you can manhandle me whenever you feel like it? I will not have you picking me up and carting me about at will, especially not in front of all those people. Paris was bad enough, but this was inexcusable.”

“None of those people noticed or cared. Now, sit or you will fall.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her down.

He got the horses moving. She sniffed with indignation, still beautifully angry. Drops of water dripped off her bonnet's edge, right onto her nose.

“How are those people ever to take me seriously after what you did?” she fumed. “It was extremely presum—”

“Don't say it,” he warned.

They drove past sodden fields for a few more miles.

“Turn around now. I am sure that things have calmed down,” she said.

“The hell I will, and the hell they have. When a mob gets its blood up like that, it doesn't calm for hours, unless the yeomanry enforces order. With any luck it has been called up.”

“If you are not returning to Haford, where are you going?”

“Someplace dry and safe. I am taking you to Staverly.”

“No. I forbid it. I will not go there. As the Duchess of Everdon I order you to turn this carriage around.”

“For someone who claims not to want the position, you throw out ducal orders easily enough when it suits you. I don't care about your noble prerogatives right now. I suspect that your Captain Brutus was on that street, managing the whole thing. Staverly is the closest place where you will be safe and that is where I am taking you.”

The road met the coast and curved east along its edge. The rhythm of crashing waves joined the faster beat of pounding rain. Sophia retreated into a simmering anger, ignoring the downpour that had drenched them both to the bone.

The gates to Staverly were closed, but a man stepped out of the gatehouse upon their approach.

“No one goes in here,” he announced as Adrian pulled up the horses.

“This is the Duchess of Everdon.”

The old man peered beneath the bonnet. “Miss Raughley! I got no word you would be visiting, Your Grace.”

“It was a sudden decision, and not mine, Martin.”

Martin looked down the road. “Are the others following? None to do for you here, Your Grace. You know how the duke left it.”

“We are alone,” Adrian explained. “There was trouble in Haford. Are you saying the house is closed? There are no servants here?”

“Just me, as Her Grace could have told ye.”

“Then we will have to make do. Close and lock the gate behind us, then go to a nearby farm and buy some provisions.” He handed over some shillings. “You are to sleep here tonight. If anyone tries to enter, come and get me.”

The drive wound through a quarter mile of overgrown park before stopping in front of an old Tudor manor. Chipping plaster and high weeds announced that no one had tended the estate in years. The sea roared louder here, and Adrian surmised that the cliffs began not far from the garden doors.

He handed Sophia down. An overhang waited five steps away, but she remained in the rain, gazing up at the half-timbered facade.

“We used to come here every summer when I was a girl.”

“It is a charming property. Why did your father let it go to ruin?”

Gathering her drenched skirts, she headed to the door.

“It is a wonder that he did not burn it down. This is where it happened. This is where my brother Brandon died.”

chapter
13

S
he supposed that she always knew that she would have to come back to Staverly. Perhaps it was fitting that it would be on the day when she had made such a magnificent failure of being Alistair's heir.

She paced around the library, pulling covers from the furniture. Puffs of dust rose like specters following her progress.

Adrian lit a fire to burn off some of the damp that had claimed the house years ago.

“We should see if there are some dry clothes for you,” he said, poking at the coals.

“And you too. Follow me.”

She led the way up to the bedchambers, grateful that Adrian was much larger than Brandon and she would not have to go into the room her brother had used.

“You will find that this is not a very large house. Mother would not let Father add to it. She wanted it reserved for family life.”

A few items remained in the duke's wardrobe. They reeked of Alistair. The whole house did. Marleigh was so large that one could find places where he had never gone much, but that was not the case here.

“You can sleep here. Martin has kept it clean, in case my father should ever come. You should build a fire here as well. This chamber was always cold, even in the hottest summers.”

She left him and entered her mother's old room through the dressing chamber. Unlike Marleigh, where Celine had methodically obliterated the memory of the first duchess, nothing had been changed here.

Nostalgia squeezed her heart while she rummaged through the personal items still imbued with that gentle woman's scent. Finding a high-waisted muslin gown and some underclothes and slippers, she scurried out as fast as she could and sought her own small chamber.

Memories bombarded her. She gazed out the small northern window. Every summer she had played in the garden below. When she was seven she had learned to swim in the surf. She could spot the rocks near the sea that her imagination had transformed into a castle.

She remembered starlit nights sitting at this open window, dreaming about a pure and passionate love.

A shelf held the items collected in the course of twenty summers. They contained the story of the girl she had been once. She had left them all when she and her father hurriedly departed that last summer, just as she had left behind the girl herself.

She opened the wardrobe and tossed them all into it. The tokens of play with Brandon. The book of romantic poems written her fifteenth summer. The radical tracts toted here the season before Captain Brutus, when the idealism of youth had excited her intellect much as her Robin Hood would soon excite her womanhood.

She slammed the door closed, as if she could silence the memories if she hid their remnants. She began peeling off the black weeds.

The old-fashioned, scoop-necked muslin gown would not cover her stays, so she stripped naked and then slipped it on over only her mother's chemise. The damp had turned her hair to ringlets. She gathered most of them into a topknot and let the rest hang around her face. Turning to the long oval mirror, she surveyed the results.

A ghost stared back at her. Long and willowy, wearing this same high-waisted white gown with its scattered violets, it approached with a gentle smile and comforting arms. She could not remember why her mother had come to her that afternoon, but suddenly it might have been yesterday.

She had never realized how much she resembled her mother. The nose and chin were Alistair's, but the rest, the eyes and hair and face, were not.

She suddenly realized that she could not run away from the ghosts. They did not exist in objects and places that she could avoid. They were in her, all of them, waiting to be recognized. Good ones had been ignored along with the ones that brought pain.

She ran to her mother's chamber again and grabbed a long fringed shawl. Passing the main bedchamber she saw through the open door that Adrian had built the fire.

She found him bending to the old hearth in the kitchen. Pails of water had been brought from the nearby pump house and he had wiped the dust off a table where some cheese and ham waited.

“You have not changed your clothes,” she said.

He rose and combed his damp locks back off his forehead with his fingers. “I took care of the horses.”

“You had better take care of yourself now.”

He gestured absently to the food, began to speak, then stopped. He looked her way with a serious expression. “I apologize for making you come here. I did not know what this place meant to you.”

“You could not know. Your decision was sounder than my denial.”

“The rain looks to be stopping and there is at least an hour before dusk. I will ride back to Haford and see how things stand. If it has calmed, I will come and get you. I know the road now and once the clouds break there will be some moon, so it will be safe enough even at night.”

She found a knife on a shelf and wiped it with the damp cloth. She sliced a bit of cheese and nibbled. As soon as she tasted, she knew which farm Martin had gone to.

“It will be dawn before all those trips are made. Do not look so worried. I am not going to turn into a madwoman on you. I never thought to return here for many more years, but now I wonder if it was a good thing to come. There is a sweetness to the sadness. Also, I had forgotten how beautiful it is here.”

She fetched some crockery cups and poured the home-brewed ale that had arrived with the food.

“You are sure that it will not distress you?”

“No, but it occurs to me that if I am not going to live my whole life getting back at him, as you put it in the park, this is a good place to start. Besides, the ghosts will come whether you are here or not. I'd rather not face them entirely alone.”

The rain had stopped, and rays from the low sun peeked golden light through the clouds. Sophia opened the door to the kitchen garden so the fresh breeze could enter. Through the growth she spied the roof of the Chinese gazebo that perched on the cliff at the end of the gardens. One could see the sea and rocks of the whole cove from it.

Not yet. She would enjoy the good memories first.

She inhaled the clean scent of a newly washed world and admired the sparkling droplets on the high grass before turning back to the table.

She looked beautiful standing near the open door. The breeze fluttered the tendrils around her face and the late sun bathed her pale skin in hazy gold.

The dress must be at least twenty years old, but it suited her perfectly. The low neckline displayed delicate bones and the thin muslin curved around her soft breasts, emphasizing them with its cinched high waist. The ethereal rays made the cloth vaguely transparent, showing her legs and the absence of any petticoat underneath. Adrian had seen her in black so much that he had forgotten how fresh and vibrant and youthful she could appear.

She took her seat. “What will you do first? Eat or get out of those wet clothes?”

“I had thought to eat, but if Your Grace demands the latter, I will oblige.” He teased even though she had not asked him to stay for lovemaking. The request had been much more flattering than that.

He broke some bread and cut some ham.

“I have been thinking,” she mused as she munched more cheese. “Mister Hawkins may be right. From what we have witnessed, reapportionment may be inevitable.”

“Do you want the people who attacked you today to make English law? Did they strike you as suited to the task?”

“You must admit that the way things stand is unfair.”

“Much in life and government is, but the system works well with its checks and balances. It is not clear that the alternative would.”

“The French and the Americans have fairer systems.”

“The French system gave the world Napoleon and a generation of war. The American system permits the continuation of slavery. The influence that the upper house exerts on the lower one here maintains stability and avoids governance by the mob.”

“It does more than that. We both know it preserves privilege too.”

“Your privilege, Duchess. Even so, there have been some reforms that were not in the lords' interest. Voices for change are heard.”

“So you really believe it should be stopped? If you would neither win anything nor lose anything by your vote, would you vote reform down?”

He met her frank gaze. “What are you asking me?”

“I am asking what you really believe about this. And I suppose I am asking just how thoroughly you are Wellington's man.”

“In other words, am I a toadying sycophant? I regret to say that those of us who must make our own way are, to one degree or another.”

She looked down quickly. “I am sorry.”

“Do not be. It was a fair question. I did not form my opinions and persona in order to gain a powerful man's favor. Wellington would see right through that, for one thing. I do not always agree with him or the ministers, and I present my own arguments. However, if you are asking if I have ever cast a vote for a position with which I did not agree, the answer is yes. Politics always involves compromise. And if you are asking if my general agreement with the party leadership has benefited me, again the answer is yes.”

He spoke more sharply than he wanted, for reasons he did not care to explore. She grew subdued while she watched him. He had the sensation that he had revealed more than he knew, and that she was comprehending something he did not fully grasp himself.

“You must think I am insufferably spoiled,” she said. “Childish and self-absorbed and resentful about a life that most would kill for. How unfair it must seem to you that a woman who knows only parties and gowns should be given the kind of power that belongs to Everdon.”

“I do not judge its fairness at all. I do not think that you know only parties and gowns, and I only find you a little spoiled, and not much at all when it comes to the things that truly matter. As to your self-absorption, I think that you are salving wounds that I cannot know about.”

“Can't you? I look at you and find myself thinking that if I had been required to make my own way, the achievement of doing so might have healed those wounds, or at least made them less significant.”

The quiet observation unsettled him. He had not expected the ghosts confronted here to be any from his own life.

He rose. “I will go and change now. If when you next see me I am too informal, you must forgive me. It remains to be discovered what of the duke's wardrobe will fit.”

She laughed and picked at her muslin skirt. “At least your garments won't be twenty years out of date.”

He lifted two buckets and paused to look at her. He memorized the image of her smiling, with bright eyes and the hint of sadness behind that glitter, and the shadows of her feminine curves still visible in the last of beautiful light.

“It is a lovely gown,” he said, turning away. “And you look beguiling in it.”

She was gone when he came back down. Dark had fallen, and he guessed that she had sought solitude in her chamber, perhaps to sleep after the day's tumult, perhaps to hide because of last night's advances. He had thought it would be pleasant to spend the evening with her, and so he entered the empty library with some disappointment.

The shelves mostly held popular novels and the lightest of poetry, the kinds of things one might read during a holiday by the sea. He tried to pass the time with one of Humboldt's travel portfolios, but the exotic engravings could not hold his attention. He wondered if the ghosts were upstairs now, and how Sophia was dealing with them.

Putting aside the portfolio, he made his way to the whitewashed kitchen and out to the gardens. The night sky was perfectly clear and a refreshing breeze blew through the shirt that he wore without coats. He headed toward the cliffs.

The sloping roof of a Chinese gazebo loomed against the star-speckled sky. He began to walk around it when he noticed a shadow move inside. Sophia rocked back and forth against the balustrade as a child might, stretching away on extended arms and then pulling forward until her head stuck up toward the sky.

She stopped suddenly, bending out. “Burchard?”

He stepped onto the planked floor. “I did not intend to disturb you. I assumed that you had retired.”

“I decided to come out here first and look at the sea.” She pointed down at dark masses. “Even at night you can see all the way around the little cove. That big shadow is a point of land marking its eastern curve. The water near the land is very placid, except over there. We used to swim every day. Everyone except Father.”

“You came to visit the memories?”

“I suppose so.”

“Good ones, I hope.”

“Not entirely.”

He could not see her face, but he knew that distracted tone. “Do you want me to leave?”

“I think that I was hoping you would come.” She resumed rocking, angling back and then pulling forward until her hips hit the balustrade. He pictured her doing that over the years, learning each summer that the wood hit differently on her growing body.

“Do you know what Jenny said about you that first night? That you were the sort of man one wants to hand things to because you will make it all come out right in the end. That is why the Foreign Secretary found you useful, and why Wellington depends on you, isn't it? It was rude of me to suggest otherwise today.”