The Lonely Earl (9 page)

Shorn of its deviations and intriguing byways, it was simply this. Betsy Kyd’s son, Joseph, was the spitting image of his father, Ben. A fine man, said Betsy, if a little lacking where it counts. She tapped her forehead significantly. Faustina privately felt that Betsy had sufficient intelligence for two.

Joe had been courting young Hester, the girl who helped Betsy in the kitchen — “since they was in they cradles” — until he got bemused by the exotic foreigner who had come to Trevan.

Faustina looked her question, and Betsy explained. “That foreign woman who’s up at the earl’s. You remember her? Taking care of the little Lady Althea — I don’t think. How can she, when she’s here all the time in my public room, drinking one brandy — one small brandy! — all the evening. And making eyes at Joe till he’s fair out of his head. And he can’t see Hester for the moon!” “Hester’s such a pretty girl,” began Faustina, but Betsy interrupted her.

“Aye, I know that. And smart to boot. She’ll run this place when I’m gone. That is,” sniffed Betsy, “if she gets a chance to. And what I’m leading up to say, Miss Faustina, is, could you talk to him?”

“To the earl?” echoed Faustina. “What could I say?”

Betsy’s disappointment flickered over her face. “I thought you’d know what to say.”

Faustina revolved the problem in her mind swiftly. Surely she could not refuse to help Betsy. On the other hand, she had once before tried to point out to the earl his duty regarding his daughter, and she shrank from a repetition of that dreadful scene.

But old loyalties lie deep and die hard, and Faustina smiled at her former nurse. “I’ll think of something,” she promised, and prepared to take her leave.

With Julia separated from the cunning kitten, and Samuel from the bar, Faustina mounted to the seat and took up the reins. Tooling the curricle smartly out of the inn yard and turning right down the road that led to Kennett Chase, she answered Julia’s question absently. “Yes, I do have a promise of help from Betsy,” said Faustina. “She’s lending us Hester, and her cousin’s two daughters from over toward Bovey Tracy. I think for the moment that will be sufficient.” 

Julia remembered something she had heard at the Green Man. “What’s a mort?”

“A
what
?”

“A mort. As in ‘I’ll give you a mort of eggs for the nog.’”

Faustina chuckled. “Betsy’s sister has more eggs than she needs, and she will sell us a great many to put in our eggnog. The mort is… more than you can count, I suppose.”

Recollecting other amusing oddities of speech, the girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves at least halfway home.

Then, as they passed by the great gates of Crale Hall, Faustina sobered. She could not, of course, confide Betsy’s trouble to Julia. But her young cousin noticed her sudden silence. “What’s amiss?” she ventured.

“I wish Hugh’d never come home!” exploded Faustina.

“I don’t,” said Julia promptly. “I wouldn’t be here with you, then. And you wouldn’t be letting me drive the curricle.”

“Drive the curricle!” cried Faustina in accents of horror.

“Please!” begged Julia. “Your horses are such lambs, and I do know how to drive.”

“What a gammon!”

Julia continued earnestly, “Since you were in London. But Ned was so cross with me about it that I wouldn’t drive with him anymore.”

After they left the gates of Crale behind on their left hand, Julia managed to coax her cousin into relinquishing the ribbons. Faustina watched Julia’s handling the reins with a critical eye, then, seeing that the girl was doing well, lapsed into her own thoughts again.

She glanced over her shoulder at Samuel. He was hunched over, jaw dropped, face flushed. His breathing was somewhat labored, and Faustina was alarmed until she remembered that she and Betsy had been talking for some time, long enough for Samuel, unsupervised, to partake generously of the bar’s amenities.

“Dead to the world,” Faustina pronounced with disgust as she turned back to Julia. “I should never have left him out of my sight. But now we can talk.”

Nonetheless, she spoke in a low voice, lest some word penetrate to Samuel’s ears, repeating, “I wish Hugh had never come back. He was nice, once, but I can’t tell you how disagreeable he is become.”

“Something about his marriage, Mama said.”

“I don’t know all the details,” Faustina said regretfully. “Papa seems to think they were quite dreadful. But he is so terribly changed.” She told Julia about that day in the yard of the Green Man.

“He didn’t even remember you?”

“I suppose that does sound odd. But you see, he was six years older, and that makes quite a difference when you’re only fourteen. He was grown up, and I was a child, and no wonder he didn’t remember me.”

They rode in companionable silence for a few moments. Julia’s mind was on her driving, and Faustina’s thoughts were troubled.

“And I don’t care!” she finally burst out in a resolute, unnecessarily loud voice. It proved disastrous.

Julia, abstractedly concentrating on her driving, was not proof against sudden shock. Her hands faltered on the ribbons, and the horses seized the opportunity to hurl themselves down the road. Julia cried out and dropped the reins entirely. Faustina made a demented grab for them, and in her zeal reached too far. The lightly balanced curricle promptly left the road and turned over in the grassy ditch.

It was a few moments before Faustina realized that the odd hempen taste in her mouth was in fact the string wrappings of a parcel containing, to the best of her recollection, a length of pink gauzy muslin shot with silver, sufficient to make a fetching scarf to go with Bucky’s silver hair. The boot lid must have sprung open in the accident.

“Julia!” she cried, and gingerly got to her feet to assess the damage.

Julia had sustained a bruise on her cheek and a grass stain on her light dress. Her limbs, however, were all in working order. The parcels were strewn about the grass, and Faustina allowed a passing thought to escape her lips. “I wish I had counted the number of parcels, so we will know when they are all picked up.”

“There were nine,” quavered Julia. “Nine men morris, that’s how I remember. Nine men in brown paper parcels…”

Faustina took quick and decisive steps. “Julia, you can’t drop out on me now, not when you know how much I need you. Samuel’s hurt, I think.”

“You look to the horses,” gulped Julia, suddenly shuddering and then presenting a revivified smile. “I don’t want to see another horse for a little while. I’ll check on your groom.”

Samuel had fallen easily — thanks, he would have said, to his foresight in imbiding sufficient ale to relax his limbs to a noticeable degree. Faustina was struggling with the frightened horses when she heard the sound of wheels coming behind them. Wheels, and men’s voices.

She had hoped to get everything straightened away, and even allowed herself a vain hope that no one need ever know what had happened. The fewer witnesses the better — but perhaps this was someone from the Chase. She could manage them.

But it was not.

The light phaeton approached rapidly. It was a crowded vehicle, as she could see when it came closer. She could identify the driver.

The Earl of Pendarvis.

And Vincent. Pittock, the Crale farms manager. And Dawson. Faustina’s heart sank.

The earl drew up his team to the side of the road. The men jumped out, all but Hugh, who surveyed the scene from the advantage of his high perch.

“Faustina!” cried Vincent, dropping to the ground and running to her. “What on earth happened? A wheel come off? Horse shied? But you know how to handle a pair!”

Then the earl’s voice drawled, “More than you seem to, Vincent. Send Dawson to bring the horses back. You and Pittock might see what you can do about righting the carriage. Dear me,” he added after a sweeping survey of the scene, “is he badly injured?”

Faustina correctly identified the object of the earl’s concern. “No, I fear that Samuel made too free with his time at the Green Man.”

She was conscious of the earl’s piercing stare, and felt her cheeks redden. What a predicament to have him find her in! And then, a part of her mind scolded, what difference does it make to you?

She lifted her chin. “I fear I don’t know just what caused the accident.”

“Faustina…” began Julia, but Faustina’s frown halted her in midair. There was no time for further explanations then. Julia set herself to retrieving all the parcels that had spilled when the curricle turned over. Samuel, stretched still on the ground, showed signs of reviving, and, adjured stoutly by Pittock, scurried to his aid.

Faustina refused to meet the earl’s eyes. She watched Dawson and Pittock lifting the light rig from its side, and yet she did not see them. She had been foolish to let Julia handle the ribbons, and yet the horses were decidedly well-mannered. The girls had simply become engrossed in their conversation. About Hugh. The thought that her own outcry against the man had so startled Julia came forcefully to her.

“It’s all my fault!” she said in a low voice.

“I would expect so,” said Hugh reasonably. “But I cannot understand it, I confess. A clear road. No one in sight.”

“Pray do not distress yourself over searching for reasons, sir,” she said tartly. “I must express my thanks for your help… or rather,” she added, eyeing the earl’s leisurely position atop the seat, “your men’s help.”

Hugh smiled faintly. “I assure you that without my hand on the ribbons, my new blacks would add to the debacle without hesitation. So you see, I am helping.”

The smoldering glance she sent him apparently moved him not a jot.

The curricle was set back upon its wheels. Vincent and 

Dawson soothed Faustina’s horses, urging them gently between the shafts. Fortunately, the harness had only loosened, and not snapped, so they could travel the short distance home.

The last of the parcels was stowed in the boot beneath Samuel’s feet. Julia, pale and silent, had mounted to the seat, and Faustina took a last look at the ditch. The turf, was torn badly, but time would cover all trace of the mishap.

The sound of wheels came to their ears. Faustina turned to look, and a cry of dismay escaped her. Hugh peered down the road at the carriage approaching from the direction of Trevan, and observed, unnecessarily, “Here comes the vicar!”

“I must thank you, sir,” said Faustina in great haste, “for your timely assistance. Julia and I are already seriously late in getting home. We must be on our way.” She glanced at the carriage lumbering to a halt, and added, “At once.”

“Civility,” said the earl prosily, “requires that at least you stay and greet the occupants of the coach.” He eyed her severely, and added in a low voice full of amusement, “Little did I think, Miss Kennett, that day at the Green Man, that I would in so short a time be required to instruct
you
in your duty.”

Incensed, she did not condescend to answer him. When the carriage drew up and stopped beside the curricle, she put as good a face on it as possible, and smiled courteously at the vicar as he descended from the carriage.

In the midst of his greetings, Mr. Astley caught sight of the raw red track of the curricle’s path into the ditch. “What is amiss? Dear me! An accident? How fortunate that we should have arrived just at this time! To be of service is the highest endeavor of mankind, you know.”

The earl said, “A small mishap, Mr. Astley, and all mended.”

The vicar did not move from his stance in the middle of the road. “I was on my way to call on Lord Egmont,” he announced, “as is my most pleasant duty. To thank him and Lady Waverly for the invitation to the ball, you know. How kind of them to include my daughter. And our houseguests!”

“Houseguests?” echoed Faustina blankly.

The earl said nothing, but instead eyed intently the passenger who had just alighted from the coach. Recognition lit his face as he cried out, “Talbot?”

The man addressed stepped forward eagerly and wrung the earl’s free hand. “Crale! I had no idea…” Then the truth reached him, and he faltered. “You’ve inherited? I confess when they mentioned the Earl of Pendarvis, I thought of course of your father. How could I be so foolish!”

They talked with the ease of old friends, and the vicar was hard put to introduce a wedge into the conversation for the purpose of introducing Helen and her friend Mary Bidwell. The vicar’s voice dropped, not quite far enough, when he mentioned privately to Faustina that Miss Bidwell served in fact as companion for Helen, A companion! thought Faustina, and glanced at Mary. One step above a governess was a companion, and yet Faustina could not quite reconcile the well-bred air of Miss Bidwell with a lowly position.

Miss Bidwell’s cheeks flamed, and Faustina knew that she had heard the vicar’s description of her. Faustina impulsively advanced to Mary and said warmly, “I am so glad to meet you, Miss Bidwell. You must come to visit me someday. I’ll send the trap for you. And Helen, of course.”

Helen in the meantime had made use of her time. She was now possessed of the details concerning the accident, at least most of them. “This is the result of ladies moving out of the sphere in which they have been placed,” she informed Faustina. “It is very unfeminine, I have always felt, for a lady to drive herself. I swear I would never attempt such a rigorous task as handling a horse myself.” She turned to the earl and added archly, “Or a team, such as yours. Don’t you agree, sir?”