The Lonely Earl (15 page)

Ned’s pink cheeks puffed out. “That is not what I was trying to say!” he exclaimed. “This smuggling business has been tracked home to Devon — someplace along the west coast of the bay. And all indications are that we can narrow it down even further. And if someone thought…” He lapsed into silence, apparently trying to frame his suspicions so that, Hugh guessed, they would not sound like suspicions.

He failed. Hugh thought it was time to leave — he had some thoughts to put into order himself, and he longed for solitude. He rose again, and this time his departure was not hindered.

“I am sorry I could not help you,” he said civilly. “Will I see you tomorrow, Ned? You might find it interesting to … become reacquainted with the shore of the bay.”

He did not wait for an answer. Bowing to Egmont, he stepped through the door, and Bone saw him out to the terrace. He found his thoughts were clamorous indeed, and stepped down the drive in a determined stride, leaving the two men in the library to look at each other.

“You came on too strong,” said Egmont at last. “I don’t like it He’s a neighbor, and in my house as a guest…”

“I was civil enough,” said Ned.

“But the man’s a peer of the realm. You practically accused him of treason. Bringing a spy into Devon. Running a contraband ring, I suppose you would call it? Nonsense! Ned, you know your business, I think, in most cases. And I have no quarrel with your brains. But I think you’re way out on tins one.”

“Why?” said Ned, adding shrewdly, “Just because he’s the son of your old friend? Let me point out that he’s spent years abroad, and married a Frenchwoman. You don’t know what kind of man he turned into. He could have been running a smuggling operation for years — he knows the territory around here. Didn’t he sail the bay in his father’s yacht for years?” 

“But,” pointed out his uncle, “he’s been in Brussels lately, he said.”

Ned rose. Triumph edged his words as he informed his uncle, “The smugglers bring brandy and other contraband out of Belgium. What more likely than, if Napoleon’s got to land a spy, that he use these brigands who are already experienced…”

Egmont raised a hand in protest, but Ned swept on to deliver his final point. “… and the leader himself comes home to supervise operations from this end?”

Chapter 11

The picnic did not take place on the appointed day. The fair weather, which had held, as though in special beneficence for Louisa Waverly’s party, now broke, and the morning of the picnic dawned cold and drear.

The clouds scudded past barely above the treetops, stealing color until the landscape looked steely and unfriendly. Hugh turned from the library window at Crale with resignation. He could not take his daughter out into weather like this — no matter how much she would like to go. There was nothing for it but to tell her.

He toyed with the idea of having Zelle inform the girl of the altered plans. After all, he employed the woman for that very purpose — to stand between himself and his child. For the child was an ever-present reminder of his misery for the past six years, and he hoped in time, though not to forget it, yet to come to some kind of terms with it.

But Faustina had done her work better than she knew. He could not now summon Zelle and give her instructions and then forget about it. For a man whose duty had come upon him strongly and without a great deal of warning, he found that duty was excessive in its requirements.

He had already come to terms with the idea of marrying again, for the benefit of the Crale family, past and future. So much was settled. He would go to London, after he got things in shape here at Crale, the accounts in order, and the fields flourishing again as they had not during his father’s years of declining health, and, in London, choose a suitable bride.

He had no illusions as to his personal charm, even before Faustina had laid his faults bare to the world. But he knew, none better, that a title, especially an exalted one such as his, and a sufficient income would bring him nearly any female he chose. That endeavor, however, lay in the future.

Today’s duties were rather more exigent. And one of them was to explain to his daughter why there would be no picnic today.

She came promptly when he sent the maid Prudence for her. Althea came into the presence of her papa and stopped just inside the door. Prudence, round-eyed with apprehension, closed the door softly behind her.

Even the servants, thought Hugh bleakly, believe me too harsh and unfeeling.

“My dear,” began Hugh in a conciliatory tone, “I know you have been looking forward to the picnic today.”

Althea nodded, an appealing soberness in her small figure. She stood straight and watched him with her eyes that suddenly reminded him of his mother. Hugh began again. “You must be aware that the weather is against us.”

Althea smiled briefly. “I know. It is too cold. We — that is,
I
— should not like it.”

“We’ll go the first day it is warm enough,” promised Hugh recklessly. Suddenly he was seeing this child of his through eyes that, to be honest, had not looked at her for some time. Not really looked at her.

Faustina’s words echoed in his mind: How well do you know your daughter? How much time have you spent with her? How do you know she is incorrigible?

Drat the woman! he thought balefully. But he knew that, now that he was aware of these questions, he must deal with them. But in his own way! he thought with determination.

“How will that be?” he said awkwardly.

“Fine, sir,” she said with politeness.

“Well.” After a moment, during which she watched him with an unnerving stare, he began again. “How do you like it here at home? This is our home always now, you know. Are you getting acquainted?”

She was clearly mystified at his attention, he thought, and that reaction lent credence to Faustina’s cutting remarks. But it seemed to him that there was something more than mystification in the child’s mind.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “My friend Faustina let Mrs. Cotter give me a kitten. But Zelle says I must keep it in the stables. Where cats belong,” she parroted, and then finished swiftly, “but he’s not a cat, he’s a
kitten
.”

“I see no reason,” he said, passing a milestone without recognizing it, “why you may not have the kitten in your room.” It was the first time he had overridden Zelle’s orders. “Tell her I said so.”

The child’s face lit momentarily before it became shadow-touched. Hugh decided, after he had sent Althea away some moments later, that what he had seen in his daughter’s eyes was an emotion that had no business there.

Fear.

And perhaps — he gritted his teeth — Faustina was right The child was certainly afraid. He thought over his remarks and could think of nothing that she might have taken amiss. But nonetheless, Althea Crale was afraid. And, without a doubt in Hugh’s mind, his daughter was afraid of him.

Althea, on her part, left her father’s presence with a mixture of emotions. She felt very grown-up, having been summoned just like Zelle or Mrs. Robbins to go to her Papa in the library. And her heart had bounded to suffocation when she was told that she could have her dear little white kitten upstairs in her own room.

But then Papa had spoiled it all. She should have known it would not work, not if she herself had to tell Zelle what Papa had said. No, she could not do that.

She wouldn’t tell Zelle anything, for fear she would say too much. Last night had been another of those nights. Zelle had waited until she thought Althea was asleep, and then tiptoed out of the room. She hadn’t gone to her own room on the other side of the small sitting room they shared, but instead — Althea listened carefully — Zelle had gone out into the corridor.

This was not the first time Zelle had left her alone and not come back until very late. Althea’s curiosity, having little to occupy itself, was piqued uncontrollably.

After Zelle had left last night, Althea determined to follow her. On other nights she had heard a door close somewhere below her window. Last night she had waited in her dark bedroom until she heard the familiar sound. Her eyes, round with excitement, caught sight of a figure she recognized flitting in the dusk across the lawn toward the outbuildings. Althea marked the exact spot that Zelle had vanished.

Practical as usual, the child found her shoes and her jacket and slipped out of her bedroom into the sitting room. There were no burning candles. Zelle did not expect to be back for a while.

Althea hurried to the door into the hall and lifted the latch.

The door was locked.

She tugged hard at the door, but it did not budge. She was locked in.

Zelle had locked her in!

Althea had spent part of her neglected years on the fringe of conversations among elderly concierges, and all the horrors of their memories came flooding back to her now. Suppose the house caught fire — suppose a candle tipped over, somewhere, and the house blazed up at once. How would she get out? She would be trapped!

No one could know the terrors of the rest of that night for Althea. Now, in daylight, her fears were lessened. Zelle had come back, and the house had stood calm and quiet through the dark hours.

But, she reasoned, if Zelle learned of Papa’s approval of the kitten, then Zelle’s black beads of eyes would kindle in anger, and the inevitable question would follow: “So, you spoke to milord! And what did you
tell
your papa,
hein
!’

Althea, experienced in such matters, did not quite like the idea of Zelle in a rage. No, she would not tell Papa’s message. And as she trotted back down the endless corridors to her own rooms, she did not know that her father sat in grim thought at his desk. Fear had appeared in her eyes — but its cause was beyond the earl’s suspicions, for the moment.

Dismissing the unwelcome thought of his daughter’s fears, the earl set his mind to the first of many tasks he had allotted himself for the first rainy day. Boxes sat in his library, their wooden tops sheared off, leaving the books packed as they had come from London. Hugh found the smell of pristine leather bindings irresistible. Should he unpack all at once? Or should he choose one here and there and dip into it as though he had a year of leisure?

In the end, he did a little of both. The first crate contained some of the newer works — Hugh’s taste was catholic, but he drew the line short of Mrs. Radcliffe’s effusions. Rather, he filled some gaps on the shelves that his father had left empty. This first shipment held Edward Gibbon’s “scribblings,” as the Prince of Wales had dubbed the six volumes. By the time Hugh had emptied the bottom layer of the first crate, he came to a stop. Lifting the
Life
of
Johnson
in one hand, he balanced its attractions with the slender volume titled
Lyric
Poems
— by some unknowns by the names of Coleridge, and… what was it? Oh, yes, Wordsworth — in the other.

He set them both down. He would have to have more shelves built, and perhaps some of his grandfather’s selections removed — not sold, of course, but boxed and put away upstairs.

At length he stood bemused, knowing that his mind was not on this renovation of his library. His, now — not his father’s. It was difficult to realize the extent of his responsibilities now. Besides making acceptable additions to the Crale library, he must give his mind — someday — to adding to Crale Hall itself. In each generation some improvement was expected to the fabric of the structure.

Now he would have to think of that — but not this month. Perhaps this would be a task for his bride to undertake. Something to keep her, whoever she might be, busy and not too tediously attached to himself.

He set the books down on the desk. He faced the fact that all morning a delightful face swam between him and his books, between him and renovations at Crale, between him and everything he wanted to do today. A delicately boned face with a very slightly tipped nose, and hazel eyes full of strong disapproval. How could he exorcise Faustina’s face from his waking thoughts?

There was an obvious way. He could follow his wayward inclination wherever it led. But he dared not. Never again would he let himself be beguiled by a woman — women were fickle, selfish, full of vice and turbulence, and he would not cast his emotions adrift upon such a stormy sea.

He could not merely avoid her. In the course of events, he would be required to meet her often in public. Perhaps she could be driven to avoid him? The prospect failed to cheer him.

His restlessness drove him out of the library and into the corridors of his house. He peeped into the drawing room, the morning room.

He inspected the state dining room where Queen Elizabeth had once dined.

He rested his hand lightly on the panel covering the secret hiding place where the Jesuit priest Father Campion had found shelter in this great Protestant house, thanks to the compassion of the Crale family.

He moved down the long gallery, where a few good portraits dimly lit by lancet windows hung like shadows of the past. He strolled aimlessly past the window in the chapel, smashed when the Royalists took Exeter in 1643, and restored by a later Crale.

He must concentrate on his duty, on bringing himself up to the mark, for he was sadly lacking in interest in Crale Hall. Perhaps, he mused, he would not be alive to finish anything he started now, not with a lunatic poacher, if not worse, in the grounds.

He quickened his steps, and turned a sharp corner in the corridor. He ran headlong into Vincent, who was coming silently from the other direction.

“Good God, Vincent!” cried Hugh. “I never expected to see you in this dingy part of the house.” 

“No,” said Vincent in a curious tone. “Nor did I expect you.”

It came to Hugh then that he had not seen Vincent for nearly two days. A stairway rose directly behind Hugh to the upper floors, and Vincent could easily gain his rooms without ever seeing his brother.

Or, thought Hugh, he could leave his rooms without notice as well.

If Vincent were avoiding him, then Hugh would very much like to know why.

“Sorry to hear about your accident,” said Vincent. “How are you getting along?”

“Your information is not quite accurate,” said Hugh. “I myself could have told you that I was not hurt. Only Revanche.”

“Oh, Robbins said…” Then it occurred to Vincent that in civility he should certainly have inquired of Hugh himself. “But I did come to ask you, only you were not in your rooms.”

“I appreciate your concern,” said Hugh gravely. “By the way, do you know where Maddox is?”

Vincent was visibly startled. “M-Maddox? No, why should I? What do you want him for?”

Hugh raised an eyebrow slightly. “I sent word for him to come to see me yesterday. He has not come. I wonder where he is. That is my sole concern — at the moment.”

Vincent’s face twisted. “I suppose he thinks you are going to dismiss him. I can’t blame him for not showing up.”

The boy, thought Hugh, is aggressive, testy. Hugh’s curiosity grew apace. “Now, why, I wonder,” he said, casually blocking the way so that Vincent could not gain the stairs, “would Maddox think I should dismiss him?”

Vincent stared at him. “Robbins says you think Maddox should have caught the poacher the other night. The poachers are pretty smart, you know — if Maddox is at the edge of the woods, then they are in the home coppices.”

“And was Maddox at the edge of the woods the other night?”