The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5 (114 page)
Read The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5 Online
Authors: Catherine Coulter
Colin said as he nibbled on her earlobe, “I like your laugh, Sinjun. It’s soft and warm and as sweet as a moonless night.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
MAD JACK
A
Jove
Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©
1999
by
Catherine Coulter
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ISBN:
978-1-1011-9097-5
A
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First edition (electronic): July 2001
To Lesley Delone,
An excellent chef and flower designer,
And best of all, a splendid friend.
I hope we’ll be singing Y&R together for a
Very long time to come.
St. Cyre Town House
London, 1811
March 25th
G
RAYSON ALBEMARLE
St. Cyre, Baron Cliffe, read the single page one more time, then slowly crumpled it in his hand.
Some letter,
he thought, as he threw the ball of paper into the fireplace. Not many words on the page, but most of the few there were vicious and malevolent. He watched the paper slowly crinkle around the edges, then burst into bright flame.
He walked out of the drawing room and down the long corridor toward the back of his home. He opened the door to the library—his room—all somber and warm and filled with books and little else. The heavy, dark gold velvet draperies were drawn tightly against the night, the fire low and sluggish because none of the servants had known he would be coming into this room at this time.
They all thought he’d left five minutes before to visit his mistress.
He thought of the damned letter and cursed, but not as
fluently as his father had when he was so drunk he could scarcely walk. He sat down at his desk and took a piece of foolscap from the top drawer, dipped the quill into the ink pot, and wrote:
If I receive another threat from you, I will treat you as you deserve. I will beat you senseless and leave you in a ditch to die
.
He signed his initials, GSC, slowly folded the paper, and slid it into an envelope. He walked to the elegant Spanish table that sat against the wall in the entrance hall and placed the envelope onto the ancient silver salver that his butler, Quincy, cleaned every other day, at one o’clock in the afternoon, without fail.
He wondered as he walked in the cold, clear, early spring night to the apartment of his sweet Jenny what would happen now.
Probably nothing. Men of Clyde Barrister’s stamp were cowards.
Carlisle Manor
Near Folkstone
March 29th
There was nothing more to say, damn her. He was panting with rage at her, the ungrateful little bitch. He couldn’t help himself. He raised his hand to strike her, then got hold of himself. “If I hit you, Carlton will know it and perhaps not want you.”
She whimpered, her head down, her hair straggling long and tangled and sweaty down the sides of her face.
“Silent at last, are you? I never thought I’d see you mute as a tree. It’s refreshing for once not having to listen to your complaints and see those looks of yours. Silence and
submissiveness are very charming in women, in you especially, though I’m just now seeing them for the first time. Well, perhaps it’s over, eh? Yes, you’ve finally given up. You won’t go against me anymore.”
She said not a word. When he grabbed her chin in his hand and forced her head up, there were tears in her eyes. But still he frowned. He stared down at her hard, still breathing hoarsely from his pacing and yelling. But his face was no longer as flushed as it had been a minute before, and his voice no longer trembled with rage when he spoke. “You will marry Sir Carlton Avery. He will return tomorrow morning. You will smile shyly at him and tell him that it is your honor to become his wife. I have given him my blessing. The marriage settlements are agreed upon. Everything is done. You will not disobey me, or when I next see you, I will make you very sorry.”
He grabbed her chin again, saw the tear streaking down her cheeks, and smiled. “Good,” he said. “Tonight you will bathe and wash your hair. You look like a slut from Drury Lane.” He swiftly left her bedchamber, humming with his victory. Still, because he didn’t want her to forget that he was serious, he slammed the door behind him. She heard his key grate in the lock. She heard his heavy-booted footsteps receding down the long corridor. She drew in a deep breath, looked upward, and said, “Thank you, God. Thank you, God.”
He’d forgotten to retie her hands.
She lifted her hands, looked at the ugly, raw bruises on her wrists, and began to rub feeling back into them. She bent over to untie her ankles, then rose slowly from the chair where she’d been trussed up like a criminal for three days. She relieved herself and quickly downed two glasses of water from the carafe that sat on her bedside table. Her
breathing calmed. She was very hungry. He hadn’t allowed her any food since the previous evening.
But he’d forgotten and left her hands untied. Perhaps he hadn’t forgotten. Perhaps he believed he’d finally broken her and tying her hands didn’t matter. Well, she’d tried to make him believe that. To hold her tongue had cost her dearly. To squeeze tears out of her eyes hadn’t proved so difficult.
Would he come back? That got her into action more quickly than having Farmer Mason’s bull Prixil racing toward her across the south field would have. She had to leave in the next three minutes, perhaps sooner.
She’d thought of this so often during the long hours of the past three days, had meticulously planned it, modified her plans, pictured everything she would be able to carry in the small, light valise.
The next two minutes she spent tying the ends of her two sheets together, slinging them out of the second-floor window, and praying that she would fit through the tall, narrow opening. No doubt she was thinner now than she had been three days ago. She’d stared at that window off and on during the past three days, knowing it was her only way out. She would have to squeeze through it. She had no choice at all.
She managed, barely. When she was dangling six feet above the ground, she looked briefly back up at her bedchamber window, then smiled. She let go and rolled when she landed on the soft, sloping ground. When she stopped, shook herself, and found that she’d gained only a few bruises from her jump, she looked back at her home once more, its lines soft and mellow beneath the brilliant light of the half-moon. A lovely property, Carlisle Manor, one that had belonged to her father, Thomas Levering Bascombe, not this bastard, not this man who’d married her
mother after her father had died. And now Carlisle Manor was his, all his, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
With luck she wouldn’t be missed until the morning. Unless he remembered and came back to tie her hands. Then things would be a bit more difficult.
At least Georgie was far away from here, all the way up at York, and thus would be safe from their stepfather’s rage when he discovered that his pigeon had escaped the cage.
His pigeon also knew where to go.
St. Cyre Town House
London
April 2nd
“M
Y LORD
.”
“Keep your voice down, Quincy,” Gray said, not opening his eyes. “Eleanor’s asleep.”
Quincy eyed the sleek Eleanor and lowered his voice to a whisper that he soon realized wasn’t all that much of a whisper, since Eleanor opened her eyes and frowned at him. “It’s important that you come to the drawing room, my lord. You have visitors.”
The baron lightly stroked his fingers over Eleanor’s soft back one more time, patted her head, trailed his fingers along her jaw, which made her stretch out beneath his hand, then stood. Eleanor raised her head, blinked at him once, twice, then flattened herself again. She didn’t move.
“She’s still sleeping,” Gray said. “She does that sometimes, have you noticed? She’ll look you straight in the eye, then just blink out again. I don’t think she wakes up
at all. Now, it’s very early for visitors. What visitors?”
“Your two great-aunts, my lord.” Quincy eyed the silent Eleanor. He would have sworn that Eleanor had been very much awake when she heard him.
“What two great-aunts?”
“From what Miss Maude said, they are your mother’s aunts.”
He was frankly surprised. He remembered them, but it had been so many years, too many years. He’d been a young boy, perhaps seven, when they’d last visited.
He stared at the soft, pale brown leather chair his mother had loved. He could still see her lightly rubbing her palm over the seat. It was odd that he would remember such a thing, since they’d stayed in London seldom over the years. “Those old ladies. I haven’t heard from them in more years than I can count. I wonder what’s going on.” His mother had been an only child—more’s the pity, Gray had thought many times. If she hadn’t been, perhaps there would have been a brother to protect her; her father had died in the colonial war in a place called Trenton and there’d been no man at all to take her part. There’d only been her son, a very little boy, who’d been helpless to save her until he was twelve.
He shook his head. Long-past memories, dead memories that should stay buried since there was nothing to be done about them at this late date.
Gray had eaten his breakfast some two hours earlier and had been working a bit in his library, his only companion his prideful Eleanor. He stretched as he walked toward the front of the house. The St. Cyre town house stood in the middle of the block at Portman Square. Its drawing room gave onto the park across the street, just now coming into its spring plumage.
It was a wretched morning, gray and drizzling, the air
damp and cold. It was the second of April and there wasn’t a hint of sun—not that the sun was ever really expected in London.
When he walked through the drawing room double doors, hearing Quincy say in his gravelly voice, “Lord Cliffe,” he nearly stopped dead in his tracks.
Two old ladies were standing there in the middle of the large room, all muffled up in scarves, bonnets, cloaks, and gloves, staring at him like he was the devil himself.
“You are my great-aunts?” Gray asked as he walked toward them, smiling easily because he was a gentleman. Today, which had promised to be rather boring until he took himself off to Jenny’s apartments to make love to her until he was scarcely breathing, had now changed course.
One old lady stepped forward, taller than most females he knew, thin as a post, her face long and narrow, her skin dry and slightly yellowed, like aged parchment. She looked at least old enough to be long dead, but her walk was spry, the look on her face determined.
“We need your assistance,” she said, her voice low and quite beautiful. She had a very long neck and a lovely mouth that still held nearly a full complement of teeth, from what he could see. He bowed, waiting, but the old lady just looked at him, then stepped back, like a soldier returning to formation.
The other old lady, this one short and very slight, looked briefly at her sister, then took three steps toward him, dainty little fairy steps. “I’m Maude Coddington, my lord. What Mathilda would have said if she’d felt like it, which she rarely does, is that we’re your great-aunts. We were your grandmother’s younger sisters. Unfortunately your dear grandmother, Mary, died birthing your mama, our little niece. Our other sister, Martha, died of an inflammation of
the lung three years ago, and that leaves only Mathilda and me.”
Maude looked fluffy, what with all the ribbons and bows that adorned what he could see of her gown. There were even several swags of fruit on her bonnet, grapes and apples. She probably came only to the top button on his waistcoat; Mathilda came to his forehead. These two were sisters? He wondered what his great-aunt Martha had looked like. He’d once seen a portrait of his grandmother, painted when she was eighteen.
“It was the vicar’s fault,” Aunt Mathilda said.
“I beg your pardon?” Gray said. “What was the vicar’s fault?”
“Martha,” Aunt Mathilda said.
“What Mathilda would mean, were she to feel like telling you of the incident, is that our sister, Martha, was walking with the vicar and it began to rain and he did bring her home but it was too late. She became ill and died.”
“Oh. I’m very sorry.” He smiled at them because he was exquisitely polite and because he was frankly curious. They’d also made him smile. He said, “Thank you for explaining things more fully. Now, please, won’t you be seated? Yes, that’s right. Ah, you’re here, Quincy. Do bring us some tea and some of Mrs. Post’s lemon rind cakes.” He waited until the two old dears had arranged themselves on the settee opposite him. Then he sat down. “Aunt Mathilda said you need my assistance. What may I do for you?”
“Not money,” said Mathilda.
“Exactly,” said Maude. “How very distasteful that would be, two old ladies coming to you with their mittens out. No, we have no need to beg financial assistance from you, my lord. We live near Folkstone. We are comfortably situated. Our father left us very well off indeed.”
“Rich husbands,” Aunt Mathilda said.
“Yes, well, our husbands left us well situated as well. They were good men, as men go, and thank the good Lord that they always go, eventually.” Aunt Maude drew a deep breath and added in a very dramatic voice, “No, my lord, we beg your assistance as head of the St. Cyre family.”
“Very young,” said Mathilda.
Gray said slowly, “I suppose I am rather young to be the head of the family, not that there’s all that much family to head. I just turned twenty-six. I have some cousins that I never see, who probably don’t care if I’m above the ground or under it, but no one else until now. I’m very pleased to have you as my aunts. I will naturally offer you any assistance I can. Ah, here’s Quincy with Mrs. Post’s cakes and the tea.”
Gray watched as Quincy, who’d been very thin as a young man and now, in his middle years, had become as plump as one of Mrs. Post’s buttocks of beef, laid out all the food, poured the tea, and then assisted the two old ladies out of their myriad layers of clothing. Mathilda was dressed entirely in black, from the old-fashioned bonnet on her head to the slippers on her long, narrow feet. All black. Even the cameo at her throat was black. He’d never in his life seen a black cameo.
Maude was dressed in purple. No, that wasn’t exactly right. There was some brown and pink mixed in there, diluting the purple, which was a visual relief. There was a word for that color. Oh, yes, it was puce, a very ugly word, he’d always thought—sounded like the color of day-old remains. Her bonnet was puce, the slippers on her very small feet were also puce. Puce, he thought, looked rather nice on Maude.
When the two ladies were seated again, cups of tea held gracefully in their veined hands, Gray said, “Pray tell me what you would like me to do.”
Mathilda took a sip of her very hot tea and said, a wealth of information in her eyes, “Flood.”
Maude bit into one of the lemon rind cakes, sighed, showing teeth as nice-looking as her sister’s, then swallowed and said, “We recently had a fire at our lovely home just north of Folkstone. It’s called Feathergate Close, has been for three hundred years. We’re not certain why, but it is a charming, rather romantic name, don’t you think? Not, of course, that it matters much, after all this time. Actually, after Mathilda and I die, Feathergate will come to you.” Maude paused, beamed at him, then continued quickly after a quick nudge from Mathilda—more of a sharp poke, actually.
“Yes, dear, I’m getting to the point. One doesn’t want to rush things. The boy must be softened up properly.”
She gave him a beautiful smile. He supposed that meant he was properly soft. “Now, in any case, after this dreadful fire, there were many repairs to be done. We would like to remain here with you for a while, until our house is habitable again.”
“What about the flood?”
“Oh,” said Maude, delicately wiping her fingers on the soft white napkin after she put another lemon rind cake into her mouth. “The flood came after the fire. Our dear mother’s Chippendale dining room chairs nearly floated out of the manor. Unfortunately the flood didn’t come in time to put out the fire, but rather a full three days later. Then it rained and rained. It was more depressing than having the vicar propose yet again to Mathilda, which he did just last Sunday morning, after services, right there, in the nave of our church.”
“What did Mathilda do?” He was sitting forward, fascinated.
“What? Oh, she told him yet again that she’d had her
taste of the marital flesh and she believed, given the evidence of him standing right there in front of her, that he would provide her nothing that would enhance either her experience or her current well-being.”
“Aunt Mathilda, you said all that?”
“It’s what she would have said if she’d wanted to,” said Aunt Maude. “Your great-aunt Mathilda is a moving speaker, an orator of great breadth, when she wishes to be. I believe with the vicar, however, Mathilda merely had to look down her nose at him and let it quiver just a bit. It told him quite enough. She does not believe him to be worthy of any of her excellent oration.”
Aunt Mathilda nodded complacently. “That’s right. Mortimer killed Martha, after all.”
Maude cleared her throat again. “He probably didn’t do it on purpose, but he did take Martha for a walk, as we already told you, it rained, and she died. He was very sorry. But now he wants Mathilda.” She stopped, gave a deep sigh, and continued. “It’s a pity that he couldn’t have prayed to prevent the fire and the flood. But he didn’t. There is quite a bit of damage from both the fire and the flood, and so there was no choice but for us to come to you and throw ourselves upon your mercy. Will you let us remain with you for a bit of time, dear boy?”
This was quite the strangest thing that had happened to him in some time. Gray looked from Mathilda, the orator if only she felt like orating, to the slight, more informative Maude, pictured their mother’s Chippendale dining room chairs floating out of a house onto a front lawn, grinned at them, and nodded. “It would be my pleasure, ladies. May I also offer my assistance in the repairs being made to your home? I can send my man down to Feathergate Close to ensure that everything is going the way you wish it.”
“No,” said Mathilda.
“Actually, my lord . . .” said Maude, leaning forward. Then she just stopped. Gray blinked as he saw his mother’s lovely pale green eyes in Maude’s face, pale green eyes that were also his. Maude looked briefly at Mathilda, then cleared her throat. “We have men we trust entirely doing the work. We feel that everything is being done as swiftly as possible. We are content.”
“I see,” said Gray. He took a drink of his own tea, now tepid. “Naturally you are welcome in my home.”
“Alice,” said Mathilda.
“My mother Alice?” Gray asked, an eyebrow up in question.
“Ah, yes, your dear mother,” said Maude. “She was such a lovely little girl. We missed her sorely when she was wedded to your father, although that was so long ago we’re not really certain if that is precisely what we miss. But you know, your father took her away immediately. We saw her only twice between her marriage to your father and your birth. Why, I believe the last time we saw you, you were a very little boy. Ah, yes, whenever we thought of dear little Alice, we missed her.”
“Bloody rotter,” Mathilda said and stared hard at Gray.
“What Mathilda means, if she felt like explaining things more fully, is that we weren’t at all certain at the time if your father was truly an excellent enough gentleman for our little niece. Your mother was so very gentle, so loving, so—well, weak, to spit out the truth of it. I imagine that had your father been a saint, Mathilda would still feel he wasn’t good enough for your mother.”