The Lonely Earl (11 page)

“You are without doubt the crudest man I have ever known!” cried Faustina. “Completely cruel, unfeeling — to be so thoroughly nasty to a child is outside of enough! I wonder you can keep your countenance in public.”

“Cruel?” said the earl softly. “I merely exercised my parental rights. As you pointed out in the Green Man, I am sadly remiss…”

He may as well not have spoken. Faustina, once having lost her temper, made a thorough job of it.

“It is a terrible thing,” she cried, “to treat your own daughter in such a way that she is terrified of your very presence.”

“I think you told me once before,” he said evenly, “that my daughter was afraid of me.”

“As though you were Lucifer!” she confirmed with vigor.

“Believe me,” he retorted, “Lucifer is a blood relative of that child. A true imp!”

“You are criminally negligent. I have an idea that you would not like to be hailed before the judge for such a charge?”

He looked at her in honest amazement. So far, he had held his own temper, but his control was fast slipping. He was not sure how long his iron grip could last. “Negligent? Criminally so?”

“That excuse for a nurse you have for Althea is incompetent at the least. She spends her time at the Green Man—” 

The earl looked at her through narrowed eyelids. “You’ve spied?”

“Everyone in Trevan tells me so,” said Faustina with reckless disregard for the truth. “The child is not supervised in the least — that episode at the Green Man was just one incident. And today — she slipped away, and if our gardener had not caught sight of her, who knows what could have happened?”

“The child is incorrigible,” said the earl. “It is no affair of yours, but since you have kindly taken an interest in my affairs, I will tell you that much. She is totally unmanageable. Just like her mother!”

Pendarvis was white with anger. He wished strongly he had not referred to Renée, but her name could not be taken back now.

Faustina had the last word, slipping it in while the earl clamped his lips tightly. “You would scarcely know whether Althea is incorrigible or not, would you? You spend so little time with her.”

“Faustina.” It was Egmont’s quiet voice, scarcely audible. But it was sufficient.

Pendarvis, rigid with rage, stalked to the door. “When I feel the need to mend my ways and retrieve my character, Miss Kennett, I shall come to you for instruction. Your calm discourse and gentle ways will provide a peerless example.”

Egmont silently opened the door to let him through, and then closed it again. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps Pendarvis would have walked, unseeing, headlong into the door if it had not been opened for him.

Faustina breathed hard, her fists clenched. Her father watched her for a few moments without comment, and then, reassured by a lessening of her breathing and a slight recession of her high color, suggested softly, “Sit down, my dear.”

“What good is that?” she flung sharply back at him. And then, being somewhat restored to herself, she looked appealingly at her father. “My dear sir,” she said, “I am sorry. Please forgive me for such an unworthy retort.” 

“My dear, of course.” After a further short silence, Egmont ventured again. “You shouldn’t have, you know.”

“I know, Papa. But he angers me so.” She was bewildered. “It is not my wont to become so distraught. I hope it does not mean I am sickening for something. That would be outside of enough. Imagine” — with a wan flash of humor — “how Aunt Louisa would cope with all the details of the party that she has gaily handed over to me. If it were not for Bucky, I do not know how I should go on.”

“Forget the damned ball!” exploded Egmont. “Now, tell me about this child. What is it? I feel a bit on the fringe, you know.”

She told him, first about the episode in the yard of the Green Man. “… and there she was up a tree, and couldn’t get down. And Zelle — that idiot nursemaid, you know — was in the inn flirting with Joe.”

“Joe Kyd?”

She nodded. “And Betsy fears Zelle’s influence on him, and besides… Pendarvis arrived, very superior, and when I pointed out the danger his child had been in, he said very calmly that he hired people to deal with her and I was not one of them!”

Her sense of humor reasserted itself, and she began a chuckle, not vigorous, but sufficient to allay Egmont’s fears, at least for the moment. “Imagine how I must have looked, Papa, standing there with my jaw slack, I have no doubt, watching Lord Pendarvis drive off down the road to Exeter.”

“I can imagine it,” said Egmont dryly, “and I don’t really like it much.”

“Then,” resumed Faustina after a long time, “there was today. She ran away from Zelle, and young Jugg found her up in Miser’s Woods. Imagine what could have happened if no one had found her!”

“But someone did,” said Egmont reasonably. “Jugg should have taken her back to Crale Hall.”

Faustina shook her head. “I should imagine she would not go. And he wouldn’t want to force the child. But she would not go home from here if I hadn’t diverted her with a promise of a picnic.”

Egmont lifted his head. “Was that what happened? I wondered how a picnic got into this.”

“And she quieted down and said she would go home at once.
If
we had a picnic tomorrow.”

Egmont watched his daughter with sympathetic eyes. He would have died before he admitted as much, but without Faustina his life would be over. It was as simple as that. And now she was in distress of mind, and he could do nothing. Wisely, he knew that her own solutions, eventually, would be the best for her, but he yearned over the slow working out of those answers, and the distress she must suffer in the meanwhile.

“So,” Faustina resumed, “no picnic. And the child will think I lied to her. And…”

“Does that mean such a lot?”

Faustina looked quickly at him. “Well, Papa, a promise is a promise, and that child has little enough to hold on to.”

“I meant, my dear, to you. The promise was given, of course, but it is not your fault that you can’t keep it.”

“It’s not for me, Papa. The child is spoiled, of course, and she must be brought under some kind of control. Dear Bucky could do it.”

Warningly, Egmont pointed out, “It is not for you to manage, my dear.”

“But she is
not
incorrigible!”

“I wonder.”

“Mrs. Cotter made her happy in the kitchen. She came along willingly, I gather, with Jugg. It was only when she was forced to go home that she refused.”

Egmont was pursuing a trail of his own. At length he came to the end of it. “I remember now,” he said. “Young Hugh ran away from home once — hid out in that sort of cave in the cliff near Teignmouth. Devil of a time to get him out of there and home again.” He chuckled reminiscently. “Hugh was wrong.”

“You mean in running away?” she ventured at last.

“No, no. When he said this child took after his wife.” 

“How do you know?”

“She is the spitting image of Hugh — she’s more Crale than French, I’ll swear to that!”

His conclusion was no consolation to Faustina. The fact was that Faustina was bitterly regretting her outburst, even though its motivation sprang from the highest principles. Incorrigible! she thought, but the object of her meditation was not the earl’s small and neglected daughter. Instead, her thoughts ran more on speculation about the earl’s peppery wife. He had made a disastrous marriage, so much she knew. Now she was beginning to catch a glimpse of the hell it had been — not that she would ever know all of it, she told herself, nor care.

But for the first time, that last word rang false in her ears. That woman must have treated him to many such scenes, like the one just now in this very room, she thought — and somehow Faustina felt smirched at the thought of putting herself into the category of Renée Crale. She would not do it again, she vowed in silence. Never again!

There would probably not be the opportunity, for one thing. And the conclusion wrung the words from her: “I’ve ruined it all!”

Startled, Egmont raised his eyebrows at his daughter. She gave no further hint of her thoughts, though, and he lapsed into his own. What had she ruined? he wondered. And then, more specifically, what did
all
include?

He devoutly hoped that Faustina wasn’t running into trouble, but what he meant by “trouble” was vague and ill-defined. It held a darkish color, but the baron was not one to brood for long, and he cleared his throat and stood up.

“Time perhaps to join the others?” he ventured.

As if waking from sleep, Faustina took a moment to return to the present. “Oh, yes. We’ve been gone hours!”

Egmont consulted the timepiece on the mantel. “Only twenty minutes!” he marveled. It had seemed like the better part of a century.

Emerging into the hall, Faustina thought that nothing had changed, that the time had been folded together and only a second had passed.

For Aunt Louisa stood in the doorway of the drawing room, and Julia at the foot of the stairs, holding Althea’s hand. From the back of the hall came Mrs. Cotter, mouth a straight disapproving line, escorting… Zelle.

Lady Waverly, amused, explained. “The earl was so unheeding — I would not wish to say ‘furious,’ for surely nothing you could say, Egmont, would enrage a man of such breeding — so careless, perhaps, that he simply went out the front door and forgot his daughter.”

“He always doesn’t see me,” pointed out Althea.

“Now…” began Lady Waverly.

But Zelle had found her way to the center of attention, and with the dramatic flair that she never tried to control, burst out, “It is not true! Always he ask me how it is she is doing — does she like the new home, would she want a pet, does she need new clothes? All these things he ask.”

Zelle was slight and dark of hair and eye. Her thin pointed face spoke of deprivation in her early years, and, if one were generous, it would explain perhaps many of the grasping thoughts she exhibited. Lady Waverly was not generous. “And you say to him?” she prompted silk-fly.

Zelle’s dark eyes flitted momentarily toward this highborn lady, this one that thought she was better than anyone else. Well, Zelle would put her in her place. She inclined her head in a civil bow that was half courtesy and half instinct, and said, “I tell milord that all is well. That we do not want for anything. Is that not right, child?” She looked steadily at Althea.

Althea returned her gaze for a few seconds before she answered in a voice barely audible, “Yes, M’zelle.”

“Now we go,” announced Zelle. “Take my hand, so there is no running away again. This is something you must not do—”

“My men,” said Althea quietly. “I do not leave without my men.”

“Men?” echoed Zelle, caught by some vision of her own. 

“Oh! Her gingerbread men!” cried Mrs. Cotter, and she bustled to the kitchen to retrieve the parcel. “I took it out with me, not wishing to set it down anywhere,” she explained. “Now, mind, child — I mean, Lady Althea — only one of these for dessert tonight. Save the rest for tomorrow.”

They stood silent in the hall after Zelle’s voluble leave-taking with Althea. Even in attendance upon the earl’s daughter, Zelle thought it best to leave through the service wing, under the escort of Mrs. Cotter.

It was as though a spell had been cast upon them. Finally, Louisa Waverly moved, and at once the spell was broken. They followed her into the drawing room. Seating herself on an elegant little chair done in gold velvet, spreading her skirts about her feet with conscious grace, she spoke. “That woman! Totally unsuitable! I must think—”

“No, Louisa!” said Egmont sharply. “You do so little that we don’t need to have you start thinking now. The earl is his own master, you know, and he won’t take kindly to interference. Believe me,” he added, darkly reminiscent, “he won’t. No matter how well meant.”

Faustina broke in. “Don’t worry, Aunt Louisa. You will not have the opportunity to rearrange the earl’s affairs. He will not be coming to the ball. Nor, I should imagine,” she added in a somewhat strangled voice, “will he deign to honor Kennett Chase with his overbearing presence under any circumstances!”

To her horrified surprise, Faustina burst into tears. She rushed from the room, past a surprised Bone, and hurried up the stairs toward the safe haven of her own room.

Behind her, the reaction was not quite what she might have expected. Louisa Waverly looked long after her niece with eyes narrowed to speculative slits. “James,” she said, using her brother-in-law’s Christian name to emphasize the seriousness of her remarks, “you must get the earl back to Kennett Chase. He must attend my ball. I am determined upon this.” She seemed about to explain further, but she changed her mind.

“Dammit, Louisa,” exploded Egmont, more moved by his daughter’s unprecedented outburst than he wished to admit, even to himself, “I can’t move the man around like a pawn on a chessboard! If he wants to come, he will, and if he doesn’t, well, there’s nothing I can do about it!”

He turned grumpily to the door.

His sister-in-law’s sweet, artful voice floated after him. “I was just wondering, James, what interpretation the earl might put on Faustina’s bursting into tears at his defection.” She added outrageously, “I should think it would interest that dreadful nursemaid to the point that Faustina’s reaction might make a good
mot
— if they have such things — at the Green Man.”