Читать книгу Regency Collection 2013 Part 1 - Хелен Диксон, Louise Allen, Хелен Диксон - Страница 46

‘You are going where?’ Mrs Herrick sat bolt upright on the chaise, sending a shower of copies of Ackerman’s Repository of Useful Arts cascading to the floor.

‘Newcastle upon Tyne,’ Lily repeated. ‘I shall want the travelling carriage, John Coachman, two footmen and Janet.’

‘But why?’

‘I intend looking at that new warehouse Lovington wrote to recommend we purchase. I shall also have a very close look at the books; I am most suspicious about the decline in demand for tea in the north east that he is reporting.’

‘Then send for him to come here! And surely an agent can assess this warehouse? Or one of your trustees can go.’

‘I want to go. I am tired of London, and I want a holiday, and no one can say I am running away from a scandal now.’ Lily sat down and reached for the standish and pen. There were apologies to send for invitations she had already accepted, and Lady Billington to warn that she would not be required until further notice.

‘You are running after that man,’ Mrs Herrick accused. ‘Lily, you cannot do such a thing.’

‘I shall certainly call upon Lord Allerton,’ Lily replied with dignity. ‘I wish to thank him for a number of things.’

‘Lord Allerton? Who is he?’ Mrs Herrick swung her feet off the chaise and groped for her vinaigrette.

‘Oh, of course, I forgot, you do not know.’ Lily put down the pen. ‘Mr Lovell is actually the Earl of Allerton. I only found out at the Duchess’s ball on Monday night.’

‘Why did you not tell me?’ Mrs Herrick demanded. ‘Of all the bird-witted girls! We could have invited him to dinner, thrown a party, goodness knows what. We have an earl living at the bottom of the garden and you let him go! Words fail me.’

‘We quarrelled.’ Lily folded a note and stuck a wafer on it with a thump. ‘However, it was my fault. Largely my fault,’ she corrected, thinking of Jack’s numerous infuriating tendencies. ‘And I do not like being in the wrong and not admitting it. Besides, I am indebted to him.’

‘Then write him a polite note thanking him, child!’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘For what, exactly, are you indebted?’ Mrs Herrick added suspiciously.

‘He knocked Lord Dovercourt out and he fought a duel with Adrian Randall, both on account of their insults to me.’

‘Oh, my heavens.’ Mrs Herrick seized the smelling bottle and subsided back on to the chaise-longue. ‘A duel! The scandal! Was anyone killed?’

‘No, although Lord Allerton was wounded. And there will be no scandal.’ Lily reached for another piece of notepaper. ‘I shall have my holiday, I will attend to business, and I will call upon Lord Allerton and have a civilised conversation with him.’

Mrs Herrick was fanning herself with a copy of the Repository. ‘You must take a chaperon.’

‘No. I am sorry, Aunt, but Janet will be quite sufficient. Lady Billington will not want to leave London at this time in any case.’

‘There never was any use arguing with you, you stubborn girl,’ Mrs Herrick moaned faintly. ‘Just like your mother. How long will this benighted journey take you?’

‘Two or three days, I imagine.’ Lily frowned in calculation. ‘It takes the stage just over thirty hours, but they do not stop at night. I will go and find an atlas.’

‘You cannot travel on a Sunday,’ her aunt announced as she returned and laid the book open on the table.

‘No, naturally not,’ Lily agreed, tracing the road. ‘I think if I make an early start tomorrow I should get to Stamford by evening. Then to York the next day, which will be Saturday. I shall stay there on Sunday. Just think, I will be able to attend services in the Minster.’ Aunt Herrick brightened at the thought of such an uplifting and unexceptionable experience. ‘Then Newcastle on Monday.’

‘But where will you stay?’

‘Mr Lovington is married; I imagine he will invite me to stay.’

‘Then you must write to warn him.’

‘And give him time to adjust the books? I may be doing him an injustice and the fall in business is merely a change in local demand. But he might be dishonest, or he might be simply idle. I shall see.’ Lily sat down and began to make a list. ‘I may even travel over to the Lakes—it would be a pity to go that far north and not take advantage of the sights.’

If one was to become resigned to being a wealthy spinster, one might as well take advantage of the freedom that should accompany that state. For after all, if one was not in the Marriage Mart, one did not have to behave like a meek little ninny. Only, resignation seemed a hard state to achieve just at the moment.

Jack reined in the landlord’s cob and sat looking out over the shallow valley that cradled Allerton Castle. Home.

Home almost forty-five hours after he had left the Bull and Mouth, ten since he climbed down into the yard of the Saracen’s Head in Newcastle. It had been three in the morning when he arrived, after thirty-five hours on the coach, thanks to a cast shoe just north of Stamford. There had been coffee gulped scalding in a dozen crowded tap rooms, indigestible meals left half-eaten, and the enforced company of five other people, who, however many times they changed at the various halts, always seemed to include one man who snored, two who had never washed in their lives, one woman with a rich head cold and a convivial soul who just wanted to talk.

And despite the discomfort, the distractions, the pain in his arm, there had been far too much time to think.

His wound throbbed sickeningly and he thought he was probably running a low fever despite the few hours of snatched sleep at the Saracen’s Head. He had slept like the dead, only to be awoken by a shriek. He opened one eye, saw the door shutting on a flurry of skirts, then glanced down. Ah. Hazily he recalled dragging off all his clothes and falling on to the bed. There had been apologies to be made before he got any breakfast.

Now, with the breeze ruffling the trees and bringing him the soft sound of the Aller running over its bed of stones, he began to feel almost human again. The stark mass of the castle, one corner tumbled into ruin, glowed gently in the morning sun. Home. He shook the reins and the cob responded, taking the light gig down on to the bridge over the long-dry moat and into the courtyard in front of the castle.

‘Jack!’ It was Penelope, hurling herself down the front steps without a thought for the fact that her hair had gone up, and her hemlines come down, upon her sixteenth birthday two months previously. ‘You’re home! Grimwade, tell Mama that Jack is back!’

Jack grinned as the butler appeared through the battered oak doors. ‘Good morning, my lord.’ He fixed a dour, but affectionate, eye on the youngest Miss Lovell. ‘Miss Penelope, I believe that her ladyship is well aware of his lordship’s arrival, having heard your cries of joy from the turret, as we all did. Wilson, take the gig round to the stables and bring in his lordship’s luggage.’

Jack handed the reins over and climbed down, fending off his sister’s bear-hug with his good arm. ‘Hello, brat. Have you been good while I’ve been away?’

‘Of course. I am a young lady now, after all.’ She tipped her head to one side and regarded him critically. ‘You look dreadful. Have you been carousing? I expect you have. And visiting dens of iniquity, whatever they are.’

‘Only one, and that was not so very iniquitous,’ he admitted. ‘I had a very long and uncomfortable journey back on the stage, that is all. And young ladies know nothing at all about carousing.’

‘Pooh,’ Penelope retorted inelegantly. ‘I think it is all a hum anyway, being a young lady. I mean, my hair is a nuisance, I keep tripping over my skirts, I am supposed to behave all the time, but I don’t get any of the fun. No balls, no parties, no flirting.’

‘You are in training,’ Jack explained, tucking her hand under his elbow and nodding his thanks to the butler, who was standing holding the door. ‘How is everyone else?’

‘Boring,’ Penelope pronounced. ‘Mama nags me about my deportment, Caroline is mooning over George Willoughby of all people and Susan is writing poetry and insists on reading it after dinner.’

‘Is it any good?’

‘Ghastly. It is all about how depressed the moors make her and how the lowering face of nature reflects something or another in the human spirit. I wish she would fall in love like Caro—at least she droops about quietly.’

‘No one in this house droops, least of all young ladies. Darling, how are you? You look frightful!’ Jack grimaced as his mother swept out of her sitting room and kissed him, then took him by the shoulders and stood back to survey him. ‘Are you running a fever, Lovell?’

‘Possibly—I was a little under the weather when I left London. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure. I was just telling Penny that the stage was hideously uncomfortable.’

‘Did you have to travel in the basket?’ his youngest sister crowed. ‘And look at your hair! Is it all the crack?’

‘It is very smart and I am sure your brother travelled inside in a perfectly respectable manner,’ her mother said bracingly, but the look she shot Jack showed thinly veiled anxiety. He realised she had noticed the scar on his temple. ‘Have you had breakfast?’

‘I could eat another one.’ He grinned at her reassuringly. ‘Where are Susan and Caro?’

‘Here!’ Jack surrendered to being kissed, hugged and questioned and finally, with relief, to being dragged off to the small dining room, where he could take refuge in his own chair to wait for the simple snack he was assured Cook would toss together in a moment. Knowing Cook’s views on what constituted ‘proper’ food suitable for his lordship, he was resigned to a wait of at least half an hour, so he sat back and regarded his family affectionately.

‘That is a very fetching cap, Mama. And, Caro—is it possible you were in such looks before I left?’ His elder sister, at eighteen, was suddenly growing into a beauty. She blushed, but did not respond to his teasing. Possibly Penny was right—was he going to have to investigate George Willoughby’s suitability? He could recall very little about the man, he only hoped he was eligible. Interfering in someone else’s love affair would be far from his inclination at the best of times—now the very thought touched raw nerves. ‘And, Susan, how does the epic poem progress?’

‘Very well.’ At seventeen Susan was not yet a beauty like her elder sister, and possibly, with her solemn expression, never would be, but she had a serious charm all of her own. ‘I have every expectation of seeing it published.’ She spoilt this confident assertion by wrinkling her nose at her younger sister. ‘Whatever Penny says.’

The incipient argument was quelled by the arrival of the coffee pot. Lady Allerton poured and the three girls sat round the table, watching him attentively. Despite his tiredness, Jack burst out laughing. ‘Are you all going to sit there watching me eat my breakfast?’

‘Of course,’ Penelope replied with dignity. ‘We have missed you.’

‘I cannot believe you have missed watching me break my fast.’ The coffee was bliss, warming through his veins like strong drink.

‘Well, no,’ she conceded. ‘You are always so silent at breakfast.’ All four women watched him, three of them far too well bred to demand of the head of the household a full account of his business in London and news of his success, and the fourth all too aware that to clamour to be told would result in her being sent off to her room forthwith.

What to tell them? How much to say? And should he tell them the decision he had finally reached by mid-afternoon the day before, when the stage had finally reached York?

Jack smiled. ‘I will tell you all about my adventures before dinner,’ he promised. ‘I am going to eat my breakfast and then sleep for hours.’

‘Dull,’ Penny pronounced, caught her mother’s eye and subsided as the platter of ham and eggs was borne in, followed by a steaming sirloin and a trencher of bread and cheese. ‘Cook must think you’ve been starving in London.’

‘I have. No one cooks like this.’ Jack pulled the sirloin towards him and inhaled. It was a vile slander on Mrs Oakman’s kitchen, but it would get back to Cook and please her. ‘Tell me all your news while I eat.’

They all joined in, telling of their doings, the local gossip, the good news about the state of the flocks, and Jack ate, half-listening, content simply to be home. He glanced round at the room with pleasure, which turned to unease the longer he looked. Despite the best efforts of his mother and the housekeeper the hangings could hardly be called pleasantly faded any longer—they were looking downright shabby. And the ceiling was blackened from years of log fires, the furniture not so much antique as old.

They had all grown used to the castle, loved it too much to be critical. By going away he had come back with fresh eyes. What would Lily make of it? It was the first time he had allowed himself to think directly about her since he had climbed out of the coach at the Saracen’s Head. Would she be fascinated by the age of the place or critical of the state of it? Charmed as he was or appalled? Or worse, amused.

Jack accepted a second cup of coffee with a murmur of thanks and tried to imagine how Lily would redecorate in here. ‘What are you smiling about?’ Penny demanded.

‘I was thinking that a little redecoration might be in order.’

‘Did you see many fashionable interiors in London?’ Susan put down the pencil with which she had been listing rhymes for ‘gloom’ in her notebook, and looked up with interest.

‘Some. One house in the very forefront of fashion—I was thinking how it would translate here.’

‘Describe it, please, dear.’ Even his mother sounded interested.

‘Well.’ Jack closed his eyes, the better to conjure up Lily’s best spare bedroom. ‘It is in the Egyptian manner—’

‘With mummies?’

‘No, Penny. No mummies. But the couches were in black and gold upholstered with leopard skins, and instead of legs they were supported by gilded crocodiles. The carpets were woven with borders of papyrus and strange birds and the torchères were made like palm trees. Oh, yes, and some things had camels embossed on them.’

‘Gilded crocodiles!’ He opened his eyes and saw Penny’s fascinated expression. ‘Whose house was it? The Prince Regent’s?’

‘No, it belonged to a very rich and very fashionable lady.’ He caught Caro watching him, realised he was still smiling and straightened his face. His sister’s eyebrow lifted, just a touch. Caro always could read him better than any of them.

‘I do not think crocodiles would be right in here,’ Susan said doubtfully. ‘And we would have to change all the furniture.’

‘I promise, no crocodiles. But new hangings, perhaps?’ Everyone looked cheerful at the thought and Jack grimaced inwardly. He had hardly been home an hour and he had given the family the impression that there was money to spare for redecorating the castle. That was what came of being so ill disciplined as to be thinking about Lily when he had promised himself that he would do no such thing.

The trouble was that everything conspired to bring her to mind. He had longed to see her sweeping into the coffee rooms of the inns along the way, demanding fresh coffee and her eggs done just so. He could even imagine her trying to hold up the stage while she finished her meal, blithely confident that even the formidable coachman would sacrifice his sacred schedules if Miss France demanded it.

It was easier to imagine Lily, bossy and demanding, than to recall her face as he had left her on the terrace, flushed and breathless after that cruel kiss, pain and anger in those wide green eyes.

‘Shh, he’s asleep.’ It was Penny, attempting a tactful whisper. Jack opened one eye and found his family regarding him tolerantly.

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Go to bed, dear,’ his mother said, making him feel eight years old again. ‘And do not come down until dinner time!’

Jack made his way slowly upstairs, exchanging greetings with the servants as he went. Up the main staircase, installed by the Tudor baron, through the Long Gallery, modernised by the first earl in the early seventeenth century, then up the spiral staircase, part of the original castle. The weight of his ancestors and their expectations seemed to weigh on his shoulders and he wondered why he had not had the sense to take over his father’s comfortable suite on the first floor.

Still, the tower rooms were every boy’s dream of what a castle should be and he had been too fond of them to move when he inherited. Lily would doubtless want to add several arrays of armour, a tasteful array of battleaxes and some antlers.

Stamping firmly on the idea of Lily redecorating his bedchamber, Jack pushed open the door and found the room already occupied.

‘My lord, welcome home. I have unpacked your luggage already.’ It was Denton, his valet. The contents of his bags seemed to have been divided into three unequal piles. The largest Denton was pushing into the arms of a footman, with instructions to have them laundered immediately. Another pile, regrettably torn, was dropped in a corner and the valet was hanging up the meagre remains.

He waited until the footman had closed the door. ‘I collect your lordship has been fighting. Unfortunately, I do not believe it will be possible at this late stage to remove the blood, and one does not wish to alarm the ladies, so I will destroy the linen concerned.’

Guiltily Jack remembered throwing his shirt and neckcloth into his bag after his fight in the alehouse. Then there was the shirt that had had all its buttons torn off when he and Lily … and he seemed to recall a neckcloth … and the pile of handkerchiefs, which had been the first thing that came to hand when he knocked over the inkwell one afternoon.

‘Yes, well, order me some more shirts and neckcloths, Denton.’

‘Fisticuffs, I imagine, my lord.’ There was a faint hint of a question.

‘Yes. I won.’

‘Excellent, my lord.’ The valet shook out one remaining shirt, revealing a thin brown line across one sleeve. ‘This, however …’

‘This, however, is not something we discuss outside this room,’ Jack said firmly, shrugging off his jacket and beginning to unbutton his shirt. ‘And, yes, I could be said to have won that one as well.’

‘Darling, you look so much better.’ His mother’s greeting was as calm and warm as always, but Jack could sense the tension under it. He had not come home with a broad smile and a banker’s draft in his wallet and now she, and no doubt Caro as well, were braced for the worst.

‘Six hours’ sleep and a bath works wonders.’ He smiled at them and went to stand by the fireplace, empty now save for a massive arrangement of foliage and flowers. And the carefully applied dressing on his arm, which Denton had contrived to fit under his evening coat, completed the transformation from dishevelled coach traveller to English nobleman in his own castle.

‘I like your hair,’ Susan pronounced. ‘But how did you get that scar?’

‘I found myself in the middle of the most incredible event—a hoax of some sort, and a near riot as it turned out.’ He began to tell them about it as Grimwade announced dinner, and the tale took them through almost to the dessert.

‘Three undertakers and a bear!’ Penelope’s eyes were like saucers. ‘How I would have liked to see that.’

‘It was in the newspapers. To think we read about it and with no idea you were involved,’ Susan marvelled.

‘I do hope that Miss France sent for a good doctor,’ Lady Allerton remarked. ‘Poor lady. What a shock at her age.’

‘Yes, Doctor Ord was excellent. Her age?’

‘I assume she is an elderly spinster, living alone like that.’

‘Oh. Ah. Yes, a spinster.’ Both Caro’s eyebrows were raised now. She gave him a quizzical glance and resumed her dinner. Jack could feel himself colouring. ‘I attended a ball given by the Duchess of Oldbury just before I left London.’

As a diversionary tactic it worked marvellously and Jack was still being bombarded with questions when they all retired back to the panelled drawing room, Jack bringing the decanter with him. He could not put it off any longer.

‘I did not succeed in finding an investor for the mine,’ he said baldly. ‘I am sorry, but it seems we are too far north and too far from any canals.’

‘Oh.’ His mother folded her hands neatly in her lap and was silent for a moment. ‘I am sure you did what you could, dearest.’

Jack took a gulp of port. Oh, yes, he had done everything he could. Everything except swallow his damned pride and bring them home a fortune beyond their wildest dreams and with it security, dowries, comfort and no more worries.

‘It is too bad!’ it was Penny, on her feet, hands clenched, tears in her eyes. ‘Why are we so poor? Why cannot Jack make the mine create money? Mr Roper in the next valley does—he is sinking new shafts and he inherited at almost the same time as Jack did. Everything was all right when Papa was alive!’

‘Penelope!’ Caroline jumped to her feet and shook her sister by the shoulder. ‘Apologise to Jack this minute!’

‘That was very unfair, Penelope.’ Lady Allerton got up, her face white. ‘I think I will retire, if you will all excuse me.’

‘And you too, Penelope,’ Susan added angrily into the shocked silence as the door closed behind their mother. ‘I am ashamed of you!’

Jack stood where he was, feeling sick. He had enough on his conscience as it was; the injustice of Penny’s attack somehow seemed deserved.

‘No.’ Caroline rounded on her sisters. ‘Sit down, both of you. It is about time you knew the truth.’ Jack held up a hand to try to stop her, but she shook her head. ‘I know about Papa, and I think it is about time the others did too. I will not have them blaming you for what is not your fault.’