The Lonely Earl (16 page)

Vincent turned sullen. “How should I know?” Then, as though the words were forced out of him by strong emotion, he added in a rising voice, “It’s your job to keep track of your underlings, isn’t is? Not mine! You came home to take over the place — well, then, take it over! Mrs. Robbins always liked you best, and she’s happy, for one.”

Hugh’s tone went silky, a sure sign of danger, which Vincent did not recognize. “And for another?”

“Pittock, of course,” stormed Vincent. “He would never tell me what was going on. Just made his reports to my father — sick as he was, he would always see Pittock. And after Father died, then Pittock sent his reports abroad.”

“I see,” said Hugh. “And did you tell Pittock that you wanted to learn how to run the farms? I must believe that was your intention in wishing to become involved in Pittock’s affairs.”

“Yes! And you’ll never guess what he told me!”

“In that case,” said Hugh dryly, “I won’t try.”

“He told me that you were the heir, and not I.”

“True.”

Vincent had gone too far to notice that Hugh was increasingly cool, speaking now only in monosyllables. Vincent had carried an abrasive load of fancied and real wrongs for too long, and now he could cast them all on the man he considered the author of his troubles — his half-brother.

“You,” he said with heat, “have no business here. You should never have come back.”

“But I did.”

“Why didn’t you stay in Belgium? We were getting along fine without you.”

Hugh half-turned away, and then, with an onrush of something like pity, he turned back. “Pittock was only doing his duty, you know.”

“But,” argued Vincent, “if something had happened to you, I wouldn’t have known anything about running the estate. I wouldn’t be prepared to assume the title or anything…”

Disastrously too late, Vincent realized where his mad rush of accusation and complaint was taking him. He was helped to this realization by a full look into Hugh’s glittering eyes, so dark that they appeared black. Just so had Vincent’s father looked, more than once, and Vincent had no wish to repeat those experiences. “I … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken so.”

“That is true,” said Hugh, “but since you have, I think we will have it all. If something happened to me, you said. I know, of course, that you would be glad to see the last of me. Even when you were in leading strings, you made that clear. You wish I were dead. Then” — Hugh forced the words over the regret that gripped him — “does your ambition reach so far as murder?”

Vincent paled, and his eyes lost their focus. “You think … The words strangled in his throat. He made as though to rush past his half-brother to the stairs, but he was stopped by an iron grip on his arm.

“Do I think you were in the coppice the other night?” Hugh surveyed him. “To be honest, I think not. I should hate to believe that a son of my father’s was such a poor shot at so short a distance.”

Vincent tried to speak, but his lips were too dry even to form the words.

“But one thing I do know,” said Hugh softly, “is that I believe you know who did stand in the bushes that night.” A smile touched his lips but did not reach his eyes. “And one day, Vincent, you will tell me. I hope you will come of your own will to me with the name, but, one way or another, you will tell me.”

Whatever Vincent might have said was forever lost. A figure appeared at the end of the corridor, from whence Vincent had come. The portly outline could only be Robbins.

“My lord,” he called, “Maddox is in the kitchen.”

“Send him to the library, Robbins,” said Hugh, with little trace of his anger in his voice.

He loosed his hold on Vincent’s arm. “Perhaps you will wish to accompany me to the library, to see that I do not dismiss Maddox out of hand.”

“Do I have a choice?” 

“Not really. You may wish to remind me of how Maddox saved your life,” he added, as they turned back toward the main wing of the house. “And how he was crippled in your behalf. I pray you do not. At the moment, I am not sure I should be grateful for such a service to the family.”

“Hugh!” It was half wail, half protest. Hugh ignored it.

Maddox waited, hat in hand, in the library. He contrived to look exceedingly crippled, with all his weight on one bowed leg, the other with the foot drawn up and wrapped around the calf of the lame leg.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” said Maddox as soon as Hugh entered, “but I didn’t get word you wanted to see me until just this morning.”

The game warden shot a comprehensive glance at Vincent before he stood, all attention, before the earl.

Hugh asked briskly, “What did you find out about the poacher?”

“I couldn’t believe my ears,” said Maddox, “when Werdle told me that your lordship had been shot at. Just couldn’t fathom it, you might say. Right so close to the house! I haven’t got my inquiries under way, my lord, seeing as how I just heard about the mishap this morning.”

“This morning?” said Hugh.

“Aye. I was far out of reach of the news, my lord. Past the brink of Bosk Hill, where I have suspected for some time that there was old Timothy from Trevan making a nice little thing along of some rabbits in there. So I just thought, Til take my blanket and a bit to eat, and just wait until old Timothy shows up.”

“And did he?” inquired the earl, thinking to receive confirmation from old Timothy of Maddox’s presence some miles away.

Maddox shook his head sadly. “No, my lord. It was all for naught. He never showed up. And if I hadn’t been so misguided, I might have been right here in those bushes myself. Catching whoever dared to shoot, my lord.”

His face was full of regret, and nothing else. But the earl had never liked him, and just now he was acutely conscious of that unjust prejudice.

“But I think I can say this, my lord: all those poachers that I know were right and tight in their beds. I’ve heard that, just this morning.”

“Including old Timothy,” said Hugh, forcing a smile.

“To my dying day, I will regret that,” said Maddox.

Hugh appeared satisfied. Glancing at Vincent, he saw the boy’s face still pale. Something surely was on his mind, still, from that argument in the corridor. He must probe more deeply into Vincent’s troubles. Little as he liked it, Vincent was still as much Crate as he himself was, and therefore Hugh had a duty toward him, as well as to Althea.

Vincent sidled to the door and slipped through it without a word of farewell. Maddox seemed to settle a bit He had more to say.

“I just want to tell you, my lord, how glad we all are to have you back at Crale,” Maddox told him. “And you don’t need to fash yourself about young Mr. Crale. I will take care of him now, just as I have all along. That boy will come to no harm as long as I’m alive.”

Hugh was revolted at such a blatant reminder of the debt the Crales owed the unprepossessing Maddox. A terrible accident it had been, even though Hugh’s recollection was somewhat hazy from the years. Much more vivid was the crippling that same day of the great black horse his father had given him for his birthday. The crippling of the horse resulted in his being shot by Werdle, to put him out of his misery. But Maddox…

Vincent had crawled to the house, that day, in a state of shock so severe that they could get nothing out of him. A search party had gone out for Maddox, the only name Vincent spoke, and found him, horribly mutilated. His leg had been saved by the best doctors in Exeter, and Hugh’s father had always recognized his great service. Hugh didn’t need to be reminded of his duty.

After Maddox left, Hugh sank into a brown meditation. Why was it, he wondered, that duty was such a harsh taskmaster? Coming back to Crale, for example. He felt he must, and yet old wounds were awakening. Old scars covered injuries not yet healed.

And marriage — only the realization that the Crale line must continue could bring him to another such disaster. But this time, he vowed, he would build in certain safeguards to protect himself. The first of these would be to make sure that his emotions were not involved. Not this time. Not ever again.

And duty was insistent about keeping Maddox on, about taking care of the half-brother he had always despised. Even about making overtures toward winning his own daughter’s affection.

No — a man would be much happier without the promptings of duty!

He sighed, and rose. Better blow out the cobwebs, he thought reluctantly, and left the house and its burdens behind him. He walked aimlessly through the park at first, feeling the wet grass slide beneath his feet, a faint mist on occasion falling on his bare head.

Without knowing quite how he got there, he found he was retracing the steps of the other night. Just here he had feared again for Revanche, when the horse stumbled, on their way to the stables.

And just
here
was where he left the coppice and came out into the clearing. Where, if the poacher had still been hiding, he could have seen his unwitting target, loosening the tight saddle girth to ease Revanche, and taking the road to the house. Why had the unknown assailant — and Hugh was convinced it was no poacher — held his fire, then?

Without hesitation, Hugh now plunged into the shrubbery. The brush was no more than half a dozen feet over his head, but it was heavily leaved and formed as protective a screen as any searcher for secrecy could wish. Only half a dozen feet off the track, he turned and, looking back, could see no trace of the cleared road.

Where had his assailant stood? Hugh explored. At length he came to a spot that he would choose if he were planning to settle down to wait. The clearing was no more than four feet across, but the ground was grass-covered, and there was a substantial tree to lean against.

He was kneeling, facing the tree, searching with hands in the wet grass for he knew not what — some sign of patient occupation, he supposed, no more than two days before — when suddenly he felt a crawling prickle along the back of his neck that suggested he was not alone.

An aroma came to him — one, he recognized with relief, he knew well. An aura of well-used soap. Only one man he knew was as fanatical about soap as he himself.

“All right, Dawson,” said the earl quietly. “No need to shoot.”

“My lord!” exploded Dawson in relief. “I don’t even have a gun. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “maybe I should take to wearing one. Never needed one among the Frenchies, but here at home in peaceable England, you might say, comes the thought that a man might well go armed. Even in his own house.”

Hugh rose to his feet and brushed off the clinging wet grass from his knees. “In his own house?” he repeated softly. “Are you telling me something, in your not so devious way, Dawson?”

“No, sir, I am not telling you anything you do not already know.” Dawson stood stiffly. Hugh’s glance told him that Dawson was truly worried, and laboring under the necessity of not overstepping his place. And Dawson did speak truth. Hugh knew his faithful man did not limit the lengths to which Vincent Crale would go to wreak malice upon him. But he dared not, quite, agree.

“Come now, Dawson,” said Hugh with his rare winning smile. “We must not make it obvious that we are more than usually alert. A mad poacher is much easier to live with, as a proposition, than … anything else. Don’t you agree?”

“Well, my lord, put that way, I can’t say no.”

He stood looking down for a moment, and then seemed to come to a decision. “I was out here yesterday, my lord, and I looked the place over. I want to show you something.”

He stepped toward a spot where the turf was slashed, and a piece of bare ground showed. “Big enough for a footprint, my lord,” said Dawson, “if the rain hasn’t washed it out.”

Hugh peered at the sky. “Not much rain yet, but there will be. What have you got, Dawson?” Struck by something in die pose of his servant, he crossed the intervening space and looked down at the spot where Dawson was staring.

“It’s not there, my lord,” said Dawson. “
And
not rained on either, in my judgment”

“What was it?”

“A footprint. The sharp edge of a boot sole, sort of heavy on one side, like…”

“Let me see.” Both men knelt on the grass. “See here, Dawson, the mark of fingers — someone has smoothed this away.”

They stared at each other. “What kind of man, my lord, goes about erasing his own footprints?”

“Exactly.” He frowned a moment. “Dawson, do you think you could make a duplicate of that print? Here in the ground?”

When Dawson had finished, it was a fair imprint of a boot, unusually cut into the ground more heavily on the outer edge. “Like a lame man,” said Dawson succinctly. “And we know who that is.”

“Or,” said Hugh slowly, “someone who wanted it to look like that”

“Then, my lord,” said Dawson simply, “who erased the print?”

Hugh grinned. “Maybe the lame man himself, knowing he was set up as guilty.”

“Perhaps,” said Dawson reluctantly. “I still think…”

“No matter what you think,” said Hugh, not unkindly. “First we’ll need proof before we say anything. And proof is what we’ll keep our eyes open for.”

Gratified at his employer’s inclusive pronoun, Dawson nodded. Then he said, “It’s going to rain. Hear it starting yonder?”