The Lonely Earl (25 page)

“Hysterical!” said Mr. Astley, affronted. “She has every reason to give way.” 

“She has none-at all,” retorted Ned, heartened by the presence of his cousin.

“He promised me—”

Ned grimaced. “I never promised you so much as the time of day,” he said with heat. “I don’t know where you got such an idiotic notion.”

“You can’t deny that you have been making calls on my daughter?” cried Mr. Astley, his voice becoming shrill. “What was she to think except that you wished to marry her?”

“Marry! Mr. Astley, surely you cannot wish Helen to marry a man who quite clearly is not interested in her?” marveled Faustina.

“There are my daughter’s feelings,” said Mr. Astley, somewhat calmer.

“But his mother said he was interested!” wailed Helen. It was becoming obvious to her that she had overestimated Ned’s feelings for her, and while she could not be expected to give up her hopes with good grace, what was gone was past weeping for. Besides, as Faustina had just said, a swollen face and red eyes were never attractive.

“But I still don’t understand what has caused all this heat,” complained Faustina.

“I told you I came to bring Miss Bidwell a book,” said Ned with a strong attempt at calm narration. “And I took it in to her.”

“My daughter thought, of course, he had come to see her, and she hurried to receive him,” said Mr. Astley with a waspish glare at Ned.

“He…” said Helen, rousing to thunderous tones of tragic drama, “was kissing her. I am so ashamed even to say the words — but there was no shame in that room!” She pointed vaguely toward the back of the house, where, presumably, Mary Bidwell sat with her ankle upon a stool and her thoughts in a spin.

Ned kissing Mary? Faustina gaped at Ned in astonishment. He was rosy with embarrassment but gave no indication of backing down.

“I must see Mary,” said Faustina hurriedly.

“You do not believe me?” cried Helen. 

Faustina stood in the doorway, her skirts belling around her. “Oh, yes, I believe you,” she said, adding, “but I can’t see that it is a concern of yours. Mary is surely of age?”

She turned and sought out the room, small and confined, where Mary spent her days. This day, at least at the moment, she spent in tears.

Faustina took her hand kindly. “My dear,” she said, “you must try to bear up. I am foolishly fond of my cousin Ned, but I cannot believe he would deliberately insult you.”

“Oh, no, Miss Kennett,” Mary said with a last gulping sob. “I am sorry to seem so missish. But Sir Edward has been so kind, and said… said
such
things… and then, to have all this… this misunderstanding. It is too bad of them!”

“I should think your ankle pains too?” Faustina adjusted the pillow beneath it. “I never gave Helen any credit for being helpful in a sickroom, but any idiot would know this pillow is wrong.”

She spoke bracingly, trying to decide what to do. If Ned were serious, as she strongly suspected, then her way was clear. After a moment she said, “Forgive me, but what did Ned say to you?”

Mary looked away, out of the window, and did not answer. Well, her way was clear anyway. She got to her feet with decision.

“In any event, you cannot stay here. I should imagine that you will be glad enough to leave such a house. I vow I could not abide such a pair myself.”

“But I cannot travel,” said Mary, “and I do not know precisely where I can go.”

“My dear, leave all the arrangements to me. I’ll send Woods, my maid, to pack for you, and before tea you will be out of here.”

Mary sank back among the pillows. “I cannot…” she said, her lips quivering.

“Of course you can. Now, don’t worry. Let someone else,” Faustina added with great kindness, “take care of you for once.” 

She left Mary weak with relief, and returned to the drawing room. Silence had, blessedly, fallen upon the trio. Ned started up anxiously, and she smiled reassuringly at him.

“It is too bad, Mr. Astley,” she began briskly, “that a guest under your roof has been treated so shabbily.”

“I quite agree,” said Mr. Astley, glancing sullenly at Ned.

“Helen, I had not expected you to behave in such an ill-bred fashion to a guest.”

“She is not a guest, you know,” said Helen spitefully. “She simply has no place else to live.”

Mr. Astley agreed. “A charity case.”

Ned made a motion as though to protest sharply, but Faustina quelled him with a glance. “I find it hard to believe that Miss Bidwell — a near cousin to Lady Horton, is she not? — is a charity case. I should imagine that you have misread the circumstances. That is a habit you have, is it not, Helen?”

Without waiting for an answer, Faustina swept on. One part of her mind told her that she must bear a startling resemblance at that moment to her aunt, sweeping all objections ruthlessly aside.

“Woods will come to pack Miss Bidwell’s things and bring her to Kennett Chase.” She was relieved to see the happy light spring up in Ned’s eyes. “Where she will be my honored guest.”

She never looked back. She swept erectly out of the room, hearing Ned pounding close behind her. Not until they had reached the street did she turn to him. “Ned, what on earth are you thinking of? I vow I have never experienced such a half hour!”

“Faustina, you’re good as gold. I wouldn’t have been able to get Mary out of there myself.” He looked nervously back at the cottage. “Do you think she’ll be all right there?”

Now that it was over, Faustina’s amusement stirred. “You think they will smother her with pillows? I doubt that Mr. Astley will allow Helen full rein to her emotions.” 

“I am going to marry her, you know.”

Faustina feigned innocence. “Helen? But I thought that’s what the row was about!”

Ned turned a blazing eye on her. “You know I mean Mary Bidwell. She is the sweetest, most uncomplaining girl, Faustina. And such a well-informed mind. Do you know —?”

“Please, Ned. You know, I’ve heard that when love comes to someone in middle years, it hits unusually hard. Would you agree?”

“Faustina! Middle years!”

“Your mother will not like it above half,” thrust Faustina as they strolled back to the Green Man, where she had left her gig. “I dread the thought of what she will say when she learns of it.”

“My mother has long since ceased to rule me,” said Ned. “It will not signify. I’m thinking of a special license, as soon as Mary’s ankle is mended.”

They reached the Green Man. Ned begged a ride home with her. “I can’t go back to that place,” he said forcefully. “I’ll send Linden for my sorrel.”

“Good,” she said, “it will give me the opportunity to tell you my urgent news.”

“Oh? First then, before you tell me, I must share my news with you.”

He took the reins, and Faustina clung with both hands to the side rails. It was well she did so, she thought later. It kept her from falling off the seat with the shock of Ned’s news.

“I’ve got the proof I’ve looked for,” he said with complacency. “The smugglers are going to find out that I am not so stupid as they think.”

“Proof?”

“Proof of the identity of the leader of the smuggling band. The one who is going to land the Napoleon spy, and we’re going to catch him at it.”

“Who is it?” asked Faustina at last, hearing her voice sounding like that of a stranger.

He did not answer directly. “I’m glad you have such strong feelings against the earl,” he said bluntly. “Not that I would hesitate in doing what needs to be done. But it makes it easier to know that Hugh’s troubles won’t affect you!”

Her knuckles turned white on the rail. Hugh! A smuggler? She could not believe it. This was the first time that a spy had been mentioned in her hearing, and she began to realize the deadly importance of this particular smuggling ring.

Hugh would never lower himself to treason! Besides, was he not the target of the assassins? But suppose that was all a mistake? Suppose Althea had got the narrative all mixed up? It was likely, indeed. And she was forced to reflect upon her lack of real knowledge of Hugh — what could lie behind that smile?

What she did know, she realized as they came through the open gates of Kennett Chase, was that Hugh’s troubles were not a matter of indifference to her. Quite the contrary!

She did not know when the transmutation had taken place. But it had to be her own secret. She could do nothing but warn Hugh of the trap set for him. She could do that much.

She couldn’t!

The trap was to be sprung that very night. Aubrey was the only one who knew where Hugh had gone — as far a she knew — and Aubrey had already left! But, then, Ned couldn’t lay hands on him, could he?

“What was your news?” said Ned. She stammered something, and Ned, lost in his rosy dreams of Mary Bidwell, and unaware that his discovery of Vincent’s guilt — reflecting upon the good name of the earl himself — was not sufficiently explained to his cousin, did not press her further. 

Chapter 17

At the moment when Faustina learned from her cousin of the trap to be set for the leader of the smuggling band, whose identity was proven, so Ned had hinted, to be Hugh Crale, Hugh himself, unaware of developments in Trevan, was stabling his borrowed mount — Aubrey’s roan — at an obscure inn near the waterfront at Teignmouth.

He had seen the direction Ned’s inquiries were taking. It would not fool even a lesser intelligence than his own to draw conclusions from Ned’s pointed questions.

Although it seemed to Hugh that the fact that a bullet had been aimed at him was significant in establishing his innocence, apparently Ned subscribed to the poacher theory, or else considered that Hugh had somehow contrived to shoot his favorite mount in the neck, creased his own jacket across the shoulders, and set current a tale to draw suspicion away from himself.

Ned’s respect for Hugh’s ability was never more apparent, Hugh thought with grim humor, than in the trusting belief that he could have managed such a feat.

But Hugh had given thought to the subject himself. He did not like being shot at, for one thing, and he was beginning to see that a stain on the name of Crale, no matter how undeserved, was an event that he would not welcome. He decided to pursue certain lines of inquiry of his own.

He was dressed for his journey in shabby clothes, and left his gray with Aubrey, whom he could trust not to betray him. The gray was simply too well known, at least among those with firearms and a penchant for lingering in ambush.

After Hugh booked his room, he sauntered out into the town. He had not been here since he was a half-grown boy. His father had kept the
Gray
Goose
in this harbor, and while Hugh was not the sailor his father had been, he was more than passably competent in the ways of small boats.

Teignmouth lay partly on a peninsula between the river Teign and the sea. Behind the waterfront, dotted with buildings, rose the beginning of the uplands, rising gradually to high, windy moors.

It was an unchancy town and had twice been burned by the French, but the ancient church still stood, dating from the time of Edward the Confessor, before William the Conqueror took ship to cross the channel.

Hugh was little interested on this occasion in the Church of St. Michael, or other sites of surpassing historical interest. He made his way, not too directly, to the harbor. He was satisfied that no one from Crale had followed him. But the smugglers must have friends and allies ashore, here and there, and Teignmouth was a likely hive for such allies. He needed to go carefully.

The harbor was filled with boats, fishing vessels just returning from their day’s work, one or two pleasure boats, smacks, and, not surprisingly, a boat that he recognized as a government vessel. Full of Ned’s men, no doubt. He showed no interest in the beehive activity aboard.

There was at first sight no sign of his father’s yacht. That had been a boat! he remembered. A lovely shape, forefoot neatly taking the waves as they came, shaking herself daintily after plunging into sea-green water …

He shook off reminiscence. The boat had been sold, no doubt in his father’s latter days, when he was too ill to set foot on his yacht again. But Hugh possessed an overwhelming urge to know who the new owner might be.

A little pretense was in order. He sought out an antique boatman sitting idly in the stem of his rowboat. “Can you row me around the harbor?” he asked the upturned face with its rim of untidy whiskers circling stumpy teeth.

“Too busy.” Hugh allowed coins to jingle. “Aye.”

Hugh dropped down into the boat. “One now,” he promised, “and one when
I’m
safely ashore.” 

“What would your honor be looking for?” said the boatman, pulling into the harbor. “Want to go aboard yon fishing
Dolphin
? They’m made a good catch today. Riding low.”

Hugh told him, “I’m looking to buy a boat. Know of any?”

“What may you want it for? Fishing? I don’t think.”

He would have to abandon any pretense of being a workingman. He looked ruefully at his uncallused hands. “No,” he conceded. “A pleasure boat.”

“No, Exeter’s the place for that kind of boat. Not much in the line of fancies around here.” The boatman chattered away as they made a fruitless circuit of the harbor. The smell of brine in Hugh’s nostrils, mingled with certain other fishy and decaying odors, was not pleasant, but his search was not over yet. Strange how fine sea air and the unsullied water of the sea could degenerate into this reeking bilge in harbor.

He was eyeing with particular distaste a noisome collection of sea wrack near the shore when he spied the yacht. In a cove, she was, half hidden by low-growing alder trees. But the boat was there, in a backwater of the river.

“What is that?” he said. “Looks like a shipwreck.”

“Nothing of it,” said the boatman hurriedly. “But you wouldn’t want it. A lubberly boat, not fit for a gentleman.”

Hugh allowed the canard to go unprotested. For in those few moments as they passed the mouth of the cove, his eyes, sharpened by his recent recollections, recognized the rakish lines, hidden, as they were, under old tom nets draped over the side, and peeling paint.

A lubberly boat? It was his father’s own yacht. Hidden even disguised.

Hugh allowed the boatman to finish his lazy circuit of the harbor, without comment. He gave the boat in the cove no more notice. But his thoughts were stirring.

The harbormaster greeted Hugh, in his own identity now, with some cordiality. Hugh did not mention the boat in the cove. 

“Aye, come to buy another boat? Don’t know that we have much, your lordship. Probably Exeter’s your best bet for a yacht.”

“Too bad the
Gray
Goose
was sold,” said Hugh conversationally. “It would have suited me now. Strange how we can’t look years ahead and see what our interests will be, isn’t it?”

Mr. Guildford glanced sharply at him. “Only three months ago, sir. According to my recollection.”

Hugh was startled into indiscretion. “You mean the yacht was sold that recently? I wonder if your recollection can be right. I do not question the sale, you understand.”

“Well, my lord, put it that way,” said Mr. Guildford, less huffy. “The date’s right, near enough. I mind it was the time my Judy had the measles.”

Pressed for a more accurate reckoning, the harbormaster consulted his records. “Here it is,” he said at last, following his square-ended forefinger down the sheets, “last February. The twenty-seventh, it was. Just about three months ago. I’m hard to fool, you see, on dates, your lordship.”

Hugh nodded, and after a few more words, took his leave. “By the way,” he said at the door, “Pittock must have been out of his element dealing in yachts!”

“Not a bit of it, sir,” said Mr. Guildford stoutly. “It was not Pittock. It was… can’t think of his name, now, sir, but it was all right. He had your note, so I went right ahead.”

“My note?”

“Aye, sir. Directing me to sell the yacht.
In
your lordship’s own hand, it was. As you would know, of course.”

The time for pretense was over. Someone had forged his name to an order to sell the
Gray
Goose
. Only three months ago, his father dead, and Hugh still in Belgium.

Whether the carrier of the forged note were Vincent or not, Hugh knew he must get to the bottom of the crime. “What did the man look like?”

In an hour, his work in Teignmouth was finished. He had obtained a description of the man with the note to sell,
not
in Hugh’s own hand. A description, while brief, was yet satisfactory — not Vincent.

Hugh paid his reckoning at the inn and rode the roan out of the valley and onto the barren gale-swept moor. It was a thoughtful journey. Hugh had much on his mind.

The yacht was sold, not by his father, but after his father’s death. This was in fact an act of thievery, since the yacht was an asset belonging to the new earl.

He knew the man who had brought the note of instructions. But that man was only a servant. Someone moved behind him. And that someone, Hugh thought with bitterness, could very possibly be his own half-brother. There were some questions that Vincent would have to answer.

And yet, the idea that Vincent had thus schemed lacked conviction. Why sell the yacht? Quite likely so that Hugh himself would not make a nuisance of himself wanting to sail the boat that, according to all the evidence, the smugglers themselves were using. The name of the new owner could not be found, but in fact Hugh doubted whether such a name referred to a bona fide person.

But it was Vincent who had written him about the yacht — and therefore Vincent knew more than he should.

Hugh rode on. The wind swept across the high moors with a desolate sound, as though coming from the lonely ends of the earth. It suited his mood for the moment.

Cold, lonely, on the outside of living — when on the inside, where he so much longed to be, there was gaiety and laughter, the blaze of indignation and the sweetness of generosity and kindness…

“In fact,” he told the roan, “there is Faustina.”

Her face swam before him in such detail as to surprise him — the dimple at her left cheek when she smiled, the amber curls, the dancing light in her wide-set eyes that heralded some telling shaft she was about to launch at him.

He informed the empty air, “I’ve been struck by a thunderbolt!”

Well, he thought, it’s happened. My scheme worked better than I knew — except that it is I who will be on my knees to her! And, without a doubt, he mused, she would tell him to his face the same things that she had told her aunt, words that floated out of the open window and etched themselves upon his brain.

A more odious creature I have never seen! She had said that.

I pity from the bottom of my heart whoever marries that monster! Had she said that?

By the time Hugh reached the White Elephant at Ashburton, he was in a black mood. A cup of coffee would be good, and surely he didn’t want to ruin Aubrey’s horse.

He turned his mount over to the willing hands of a stable boy, and followed to see the roan well cared for. Another horse in the stable stomped a hoof at the sound of Hugh’s voice, and he peered into the dusk. There, to his astonishment, stood Revanche!

He had left the horse in the stable at the vicarage. What had that fool Astley done! With an abrupt word to the stable boy, Hugh turned on his heel and strode across the stableyard to the inn.

Summoning the landlord, Hugh eyed him balefully. The landlord was not prepossessing, but aside from a tendency to cringe unbecomingly, Hugh did not find him offensive.

“Perhaps you can enlighten me, landlord,” Hugh began with a clutch at civility. “I should like you to tell me how you came to stable that gray horse I see in your stable.”

“Ah, yes, a fine horse he be,” agreed the landlord. “Was you wishing to buy it?”

“No,” said Hugh in a stifling tone. “Do you have it to sell?”

“Not just now, my lord. But his owner is about to slip his wind, don’t you see.”

Good God! thought Hugh. Was his assassination such a foregone conclusion that his effects were being parceled out among the countryside? His thoughts reeled.

“I should tell you,” said Hugh, leaning across the counter to address the landlord with force, “that I am the Earl pf Pendarvis, and that horse is mine.”

A flicker of honest bewilderment touched the landlord’s face. 

“I fear I have no identification,” Hugh continued, “except for my signet ring, but—”

“Oh, my lord, I’m not doubting your lordship at all; Not at all. But you must see my predicament, my lord. If you are the Earl of Pendarvis, and I doubt it not, then who, my lord — who is the Earl of Pendarvis who is upstairs dying in my best room?”

Without a word Hugh bounded up the stairs. He found himself in a narrow hall with a window at the far end and four doors alternating along the walls. The first three doors opened on empty rooms. Behind the fourth door he found what he sought.

A sloping ceiling. A narrow bed. A raddled old woman sitting in the one chair.

And in the bed, clearly feverish and in quite desperate situation, lay Aubrey Talbot.

“Aye, sir, the poor man is mortal wounded. Said his name, and that’s it. A footpad got him, like as not,” said the old woman.

Hugh slipped his arm under Aubrey’s shoulders. “It’s Hugh, old man. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Pendarvis. Help!” The words died away into a moan. Determination took hold of Hugh and shook him. Aubrey was not going to die. He, Hugh Crale, was not going to permit it! “Where’s the doctor? What is he about?” he demanded.

“Doctor’s been,” said the nurse briefly, exhaling alcoholic fumes. “
And
gone.”

Hugh stormed downstairs. It was already past noon. He made rapid calculations, called for pen and paper and a messenger.

“I wish my own doctor to see him,” he informed the landlord.

“Not far to Trevan,” said the landlord helpfully. “Like as not your doctor will get here before nightfall.” He puzzled a moment before adding, “Or the other earl’s doctor. Whichever.”