Mists of Moorhead Manor Page 18

  Perhaps they would think we were merely arranging an assignation . . .

  Listen to me! Merely arranging an assignation. Grounds for instant dismissal, no murders needed, thank you very much. Yet there was no question about what I had to do. There was imminent danger that the cave was about to be invaded. Now that Huntley had the idea in his head, I suspected he would waste no time returning to explore.

  Therefore at two minutes before eleven, I crept downstairs, candle in hand, and pushed open the bookroom door. The room was warmer than I expected, leading me to suppose that Robert had been here for some time, carefully replenishing the fire. Perhaps he had needed the time alone to think, for the bodies in the cave were a dilemma that might have challenged King Solomon.

  I took the wingchair he indicated near the fire and watched him sink into a matching one directly across from me. And then he shook his head, his eyes meeting mine in a look that said I was the most foolish woman alive. “How could you think Hunt would not come straight to me, bubbling with tales of reviving childhood exploits?”

  Much deflated, I slumped down in my chair, wishing for some magic potion that would cause me to disappear.

  “I find it fascinating, however, that you were bursting to warn me when I had thought you would welcome the grisly discovery.”

  Huntley discovering his mother thus?” I said, my words little more than a hoarse whisper. “The possibility curdled my blood, making your point as nothing else could.”

  A few moments of silence enveloped us before he murmured, “I thank you for that. But what about Tremaine?” he added, his tone suddenly harsh. “How did he come to be involved in this contretemps? You promised to keep the secret, Penny. Are you just another featherbrained female with a mouth that runs on hinges?” Bone-deep hurt darkened his eyes to the color of steel.

  How could he think I had betrayed our secret?

  How very easily I had accused him of shutting me in the cave.

  I unclenched my jaws and, fighting to control my voice, I replied, “He was in the garden, hidden in the mist, the day I first found the folly entrance.”

  “A-ah!” Robert leaned his head against the back of his chair, closed his eyes. “I’ll warrant he didn’t know about that door any more than I did.”

  My head came up. “What?”

  “I had no idea there was an entrance from the garden.”

  I was still digesting this surprising news when he added, “You haven’t answered my question. Does Tremaine know?”

  “He says he has not been inside since childhood. I don’t believe him.”

  Robert groaned. “The problem mounts.” He jumped up, pacing rapidly across the room to the burgundy velvet draperies pulled across the mullioned windowpanes. “What would you have me do?” he ground out, not turning around. “Bury the bones and set up a marker saying, ‘Here lie Lucinda Rothbury, adultress, and Quenton Ridgeway, her lover?’”

  I cringed. The impossible logistics of separating bones had not occurred to me. “Oh, Robert,” I whispered, “I am so sorry.”

  He staggered back to his chair, dropping into it and plunging his head into his hands. “My father likely a murderer, my mother caught in flagrante . . . yet it’s what that knowledge will do to Vanessa, Lady Emma, Hunt, and Ken that I cannot allow. You do understand, do you not, Penny? Say it is so.”

  “I do,” I murmured. “At last I do. Do you have blasting powder?”

  Robert’s eyes met mine, a wry smile slowly spreading across his face. “Always the practical one, are you not? If something must be done, then do it now, and the devil take the hindmost.”

  “I take it Huntley doesn’t know about the garden entrance?”

  “I sincerely doubt it.”

  “Then blow up the smugglers’ entrance at first light. Sealing the folly can wait.”

  Robert favored me with a long look. “We could have used you in the war.”

  “I learned a great deal as the little mouse in the corner listening to command officers talking to each other.”

  Robert chuckled. “And you assume I can lay my hands on black powder and fuse in the middle of the night and that I know how to use them without blowing myself up.”

  “Do you not?” I returned blandly. “I assumed spies spent considerable time with Spanish guerrilleros. And they, I suspect, were quite expert at blowing things up.”

  Silence reigned as the enormity of what we were proposing sank in. Finally, Robert rose to his feet, holding out a hand to help me up. “This will solve but one of our problems,” he said, “but making this decision has lightened my load by half.” He brushed a kiss to the top of my head. “Go to bed, Penny, and think good thoughts of me. I will need them.”

  I took a step toward the door then turned back, burying my face in his chest, where I clung, knowing I must let him go, that time was short . . . but it was so very hard. All else forgotten, I savored his strength, his warmth, my feeling of security—

  Robert stepped back, picked up my candle, and handed it to me. “Goodnight, Penny.”

  Chastened by his sudden coolness, I slunk out, but in the strange way of females, my lips were already forming prayers for his safety.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  My heart urged me to find a window overlooking the gardens. My head told me not even the bulbous waxing moon, only occasionally obscured by flitting clouds, would enable me to see what was happening behind a hill. I climbed into bed, pulled up the covers, and attempted to assure myself that if Robert had survived the Peninsula, he would have no difficulty with a single explosion. Finally, I slept.

  I woke to the brisk rap on my door and the “Mornin’, miss” that had become Alice Ord’s customary greeting as she passed my room on her way to deliver Vanessa’s early tea and toast.

  What . . .? I had expected to wake to the sound of an explosion, to shouts and cries, running feet, confusion . . .

  Robert? What had happened to Robert? Did the explosion not work? Had he changed his mind?

  I scrambled into my clothes, thrust my hair into some semblance of a knot, jabbing myself with a pin in the process, and rushed downstairs to the breakfast room. Where everything was as always—a sea of white linen accented by elegant plates, cups and saucers, and silver polished to shining perfection. Except for Robert, who never came down this early but was sitting there washed, shaved, and perfectly garbed, looking as if he were about to go out for a round of morning calls in Mayfair.

  And then I caught the wicked gleam in his eye as he rose to his feet, pulled out a chair, and waved me into it. While I sat and seethed, constrained by the presence of the footman holding up the wall, he selected all my favorite dishes from under the rounded lids on the sideboard and set the plate in front of me with a flourishing bow. I thought I heard a chortle from the footman, quickly turned into a cough.

  The situation was not amusing. Not one jot of it. How could Robert be so callous? How could he act as if nothing had happened?

  Perhaps it hadn’t. I picked up my fork and glared at him.

  “Careful with that,” Robert murmured. “You look as if you’re ready to stab me.”

  “Tell me!” I hissed from between clenched teeth.

  At that moment Allard erupted through the door—or at least as close to erupting as a proper butler can ever come. He made straight for Robert, bending over to confide, “My lord, there has been some kind of disturbance. Dobbins says that one of the grooms was exercising a horse on the moors and reports that the hillside behind the formal gardens has collapsed, the whole back side falling in.”

  “How very odd,” Robert murmured. “I trust no one was hurt.”

  “No, sir, not that we know of.”

  “Perhaps that heavy rain we had a sennight ago weakened the earth,” Robert offered. “I’ll ride out and take a look as soon as I have finished my breakfast.” He turned to me with a bland smile. “Would you care to join me, Miss Ballantyne?”

  Would I care to join him? I tightened my grip on
my fork, thinking dire thoughts, as I smiled sweetly and assured him I would be delighted.

  “How?” I demanded as soon as we were out of earshot of the stables. “How did you manage such an explosion with no one the wiser?”

  “The explosion was far inside, muffled by earth and stone. More like a low rumble of thunder than the explosion of a canon.”

  “Oh.” I suppose I should have thought of that.

  “Some rocks tumbled onto the folly roof, doing a bit of damage here and there. A good excuse to seal the door during repairs, though I doubt it still opens. I used rather a lot of powder,” he added a trifle diffidently.

  Robert, Lord Exmere, the master dissembler, I thought, when in truth he was the epitome of the arrogant heir, never doubting his right to order the world to his bidding. He must have been a most successful spy.

  We jogged on in silence—the journey to the smugglers’ entrance, which had been a goodly walk when I went with David, was only a few minutes by horseback. When I saw the back of the hill, I gawped—there is no other word for my reaction. The entire center of the modest-sized hill had collapsed inward, turning it into what I fancied a lopsided volcano might look like. Tufts of yellow grass and brown earth peeked out at random from under a jumble of boulders, some of which had rolled across the brook, adding to the rocks strewn across the moorland.

  “The stream is dammed where the entrance once stood,” Robert said. “I’ll have to set men to clear it.”

  He was looking at his mother’s grave and talking about setting men to clear a stream . . . But wasn’t that how men survived crises? By making light of it, even to tossing off macabre jokes that used to have my mother shaking her head. “If one dwells on tragedy…” she’d told me once. “If one cannot shake it off, then madness moves in, seizing you by the throat.”

  I suppose she was right, but reconciling my conscience with the finality of Robert’s action was still not going to be easy. Even though I agreed he had no choice.

  We spoke not a word as we rode home, nor as we walked from the stables to the house. But when we were under the gallery that ran around three sides of the courtyard, my name seemed to burst from Robert’s lip. He stood looking down at me, fists clenched, his lips thinned to a narrow line. “Penny, thank you. I thank you. My family would thank you if they knew what you have done to protect them—and against the dictates of your conscience. Believe me, I will do everything I can to ensure that you never regret it.”

  I could think of no adequate response, so I nodded, dropped a quick curtsy, and left him standing there. Regrets? Any time I was tempted to question my silence on this matter, I would think of Huntley stumbling across his mother’s body . . . and finding her lover’s bones mixed with hers, and I would know that this night’s work had been the right decision.

  But my heart was not with Odysseus as I read aloud that morning. It was with Robert, who, no matter how calm his façade, must surely be suffering over the decision he had made.

  In my single-minded concern for Robert, I forgot about Lord Hycliffe. Guilt assailed me when I looked around the Green Salon where we gathered before dinner and did not see him. No matter what role he had played in the demise of the bodies in the cave, he could not help but be affected by their final interment.

  “Marcus is dining in his rooms this evening,” Lady Emmaline told me. “He has caught a chill, I believe.”

  “Nothing serious,” Robert hastened to add. “With the Durrants due to return any day now, I am certain he will soon be up and about.”

  The Durrants. It was all I could do not to wrinkle my nose. And Robert, of course, was lying through his teeth. The earl was most likely suffering from an excess of relief. Or perhaps I was being harsh. It was possible—just barely, I felt—that the earl was prostrate from renewed grief.

  Robert’s prophecy, however, proved true, for Lord and Lady Rothbury and their family arrived the very next afternoon to broad smiles of welcome from Lord Hycliffe and Lord Exmere, standing shoulder to shoulder in the courtyard. The duplicity of it! My stomach threatened nausea.

  More likely, jealousy, I admitted, as Robert stepped forward to assist Lady Daphne from the coach. She was garbed in a pelisse of rich amber velvet with a bonnet in the latest style to match, one of two golden ostrich plumes dipping low, as if pointing directly toward the classic English beauty of her finely sculptured and exquisitely pale face. Her luminous brown eyes, sharp as a splinter of glass, glanced in my direction. Her chin went up, her whole body stiffened as in a single second she managed to convey both venom and triumph. Mine. Keep away.

  Lord Norvelle’s attitude, alas, was just the opposite. That night, after dinner, he sought me out, declaring all too heartily, “My dear, how delightful to see you again. You and Lady Vanessa are both blooming in spite of the nip in the air.”

  “She is looking remarkably well, is she not?” I returned, ignoring the all-too-blatant admiration in his eyes. “I am happy to say her health has taken a definite turn for the better.”

  His glance sharpened, making a lightning shift from lecher to possible suitor. Of Vanessa, not myself, I hasten to say. “How much better, if I may ask?”

  Was he actually interested in Vanessa? Somehow I could not see a town beau like Lord Norvelle taking an interest in a young lady who might never be fully mobile. Only true love could survive a problem of that magnitude.

  “I am unable to say, my lord. We never discuss it for fear of having our hopes crushed. We strive for improvement and rejoice when we look back over a period of weeks and see some small modicum of success.”

  A slow smile transformed his face from overt rake to well-trained gentleman. “Well said, Miss Ballantyne. The diplomatic corps could use you.” In an abrupt change of subject, he asked, “Will you ride out with me tomorrow? I hear there is a new sight to see—a hill that has fallen in on itself?”

  “You must excuse me, my lord. Tomorrow is not my half-day.” I stood, curtsied, and joined Kenrick at the pianoforte, where we entertained the company with the many verses of “Paper of Pins,” a song that, alas, ended on the sour note of me singing, “An old maid then, I’ll have to be.” I looked up from my interaction with Kenrick to find Robert’s azure gaze fixed on my face. An infinitesimal shake of his head, a wry smile . . .

  Miserable man, what did that mean? He didn’t expect me to be a spinster? Or was it merely a reminder that we shared a dangerous secret?

  After Kenrick and I accepted the applause with gracious nods, I looked toward Vanessa and raised my brows. She stared, shook her head. I crossed to her, bending to whisper for her ears only, “You agreed . . . when our guests returned.” I nodded to David, who strode forward, added a few words of his own. After she returned a reluctant nod, he picked her up and carried her to the piano bench.

  The utter silence in the drawing room was punctuated by a gasp from Lady Emmaline, and a huff from Lady Rothbury. Lady Daphne stiffened with indignation, though it might simply have been incredulity, but Lady Jocelyn gave a small squeal of joy and clapped her hands together. The men merely stared, as if at an apparition suddenly dropped into their midst.

  Vanessa sat tall and proud, flexed her fingers, and nodded to David who stood ready to turn the pages. He might not have read music when Vanessa resumed her piano practice, but he had quickly become adept at following the notes, though whether by sight or by ear I had no idea. I could only rejoice this happy moment had finally come. Too much tragedy permeated the house. Something to celebrate was sorely needed.

  As Vanessa played, I sneaked a look at each of the family in turn. Not a dry eye among them. I even caught Kenrick surreptitiously wiping away a tear. Dear Lord, thank you! At least something had gone right.

  Lady Daphne found me the next afternoon in my refuge in the morning room, where I was seated at a dainty marquetry desk, writing to Mrs. Stinson to inform her of Vanessa’s progress. I was so pleased and proud, you would think I was her mother. A thought that no sooner surfaced than I recalled t
he heap of bones, now likely shattered as well as buried beneath tons of earth and rock.

  Lady Daphne stalked toward me in a flurry of shawl and skirts, looming over me as I had been too surprised to stand up. “A veritable miracle worker,” she spat out. “No wonder the family treasures you.” Her eyes, full of venom, flicked over me like the tongue of a viper ready for the kill. “But you’ll not last—Maman will see to that. She questions your virtue, as do I. And has not hesitated to drop hints to Lord Hycliffe and Lady Emmaline about your unsuitability as companion for a lady of quality.” Lady Daphne offered a sly smile. “After all, how could you possibly be reared in the tail of an army without becoming far more knowledgeable than any proper lady should be?”

  The horrid part of it was, I could not. For all Lady Daphne’s grand airs, I already knew far more about the world than she would likely know if she lived to be a hundred.

  My silence seemed to infuriate her all the more. “I suppose Exmere finds you well schooled in what pleasures men,” she hissed. “You must have learned your lessons well from all those troopers. But you will never be anything more than a tart, sufficient to warm his bed when he’s bored but scarcely worthy of the altar. I advise you to leave now before Lord Hycliffe turns you off without a character.”

  I allowed a superior smile to drift across my face. “You actually fear me?” I asked, eyes wide. “The daughter of a marquess considers a daughter of the regiment a serious rival?”

  “I most certainly do not!”

  “Then if I am so insignificant, what are you doing here?”

  She delivered a stinging slap to my cheek, which, I confess, I had not expected. “You are nothing!” she cried. “I do you a service when I warn you to leave before your reputation is totally destroyed.”

  I scraped back my chair and stood facing her, almost nose to nose. “My reputation, my lady, is spotless. Ask anyone in the regiment. Ask anyone here. Malign me, and you do yourself a great disservice, casting only yourself in a bad light.”