Читать книгу The Questioning Miss Quinton - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 8

AS HE WAITED for the reading of the will to begin, the only sounds Patrick Sherbourne could hear in the small, dimly lit chamber were intermittent snifflings—emanating from a woman he took to be housekeeper to the deceased—and the labored creakings of his uncomfortable straight-backed wooden chair, the latter bringing to mind some of his least cherished schoolboy memories. He lifted his nose a fraction, as if testing the air for the scent of chalk and undercooked mutton, then looked disinterestedly about the room.

That must be the daughter, he thought, raising his quizzing glass for a closer inspection of the unprepossessing young woman who sat ramrod straight on the edge of a similar wooden chair situated at the extreme far side of the room, placing either him or her in isolation, depending upon how one chose to look at the thing.

No matter for wonder that Quennel kept her hidden all these years, he concluded after a moment, dropping his glass so that it hung halfway down his immaculate waistcoat, suspended from a thin black riband. The poor drab has to be five and twenty if she’s a day, and about as colorful as a moulting crow perched on a fence.

She looks nervous, he decided, taking in the distressing way the young woman’s pale, thin hands kept twisting agitatedly in her lap. Odd. Nervous she might be, but the drab doesn’t look in the least bit grieved. Perhaps she’s worried that her dearest papa didn’t provide for her in his will.

That brought him back to the subject at hand, the reading of Quennel Quinton’s will. Professor Quinton, he amended mentally, recalling that the pompous, overweening man had always taken great pains to have himself addressed by that title, although what concern it could be to the fellow now that he was six feet underground, Patrick failed to comprehend.

The other thing that Sherbourne was unable to understand was the Quinton solicitor’s demand for his presence in this tall, narrow house in Ablemarle Street, after one of the most woefully uninspiring funerals it had ever been his misfortune to view.

He had not met with Professor Quinton above three times in the man’s lifetime—all of those meetings being at the Professor’s instigation—and none of those occasions could have been called congenial. Indeed, if his memory served him true, the last interview had concluded on a somewhat heated note, with the irate Professor accusing Sherbourne of plagiarism once he found out that the Earl had entertained plans for compiling a history of his own and saw no need to contribute information to Quinton’s effort.

Easing his upper body back slightly in the chair, he slipped one meticulously manicured hand inside a small pocket in his waistcoat and extracted his heavy gold watch, opening it just in time for it to chime out the hour of three in a clear, melodic song that drew him an instant look of censure from the moulting crow.

He returned her gaze along with a congenial smile, lifting his broad shoulders slightly while spreading his palms—as if to say he hadn’t meant to interrupt the strained silence—but she merely lowered her curiously unnerving brown eyes before averting her head once more.

“Bloodless old maid,” he muttered satisfyingly under his breath without real heat. “I should buy her a little canary in a gilt cage if I didn’t believe she’d throttle it the first time it dared break into song.”

“Prattling to yourself, my Lord Wickford? Bad sign, that. Mind if I sit my timid self down beside you? I feel this sudden, undeniable desire to have someone trustworthy about in order to guard my back. But perhaps I overreact. It may merely be something I ate that has put me so sadly out of coil.”

Patrick, who also happened to be the Eleventh Earl of Wickford, looked up languidly to see the debonair Pierre Standish lowering his slim, elegant frame into the chair the man had moved to place just beside his own. “I didn’t see you at the funeral, Pierre. It wasn’t particularly jolly,” Patrick whispered, leaning a bit closer to his companion. “By your presence, may I deduce that you are also mentioned in the late Professor’s will?”

Standish carefully adjusted his lace shirt cuffs as he cast his gaze about the room with an air of bored indifference. “Funerals depress me, dearest,” he answered at last in his deep, silk-smooth voice, causing every head in the room to turn immediately in his direction. “I would have sent my man, Duvall, here in my stead this afternoon, could I have but carried it off, but the Professor’s solicitor expressly desired my presence. It crossed my mind—only fleetingly, you understand—to disappoint the gentleman anyway, but I restrained the impulse. Tiresome, you’ll agree, but there it is.”

He paused a moment, a pained expression crossing his handsome, tanned face before he spoke again in the same clear voice. “Tsk, tsk, Patrick. Can that poor, plain creature possibly be the so estimable daughter? Good gracious, how deflating! Whatever Quinton bequeathed to me I shall immediately deed over to the unfortunate lady. I should not sleep nights, else.”

Sherbourne prudently lifted a hand to cover his smiling mouth before attempting a reply. “Although I am fully aware that you are cognizant of it, dare I remind you that voices rather tend to carry in quiet rooms? Behave yourself, Pierre, I beg you. The creature may have feelings.”

“Impossible, my darling man, utterly impossible,” Standish replied quickly, although he did oblige his friend by lowering his voice ever so slightly. “If it has feelings, it wouldn’t be so heartless as to subject us to its so distressing sight, would it? Ah,” he said more loudly as a middle-aged man of nondescript features entered the room and took up his position behind the Professor’s scarred and battered desk. “It would appear that the reading is about to commence. Shall we feign a polite interest in the proceedings, Patrick, or do you wish to abet my malicious self in creating a scene? I am not adverse, you know.”

“I’d rather not, Pierre—and you already have,” Sherbourne answered, shaking his head in tolerant amusement. “But I will admit to a recognition of the sort of uneasiness you are experiencing. At any moment I expect the proctor to come round, crudely demanding an inspection of our hands and nails as he searched for signs of poor hygiene. It is my conclusion that there lives in us both some radical, inbred objection to authority that compels us to automatically struggle against ever being relegated to the role of powerless standers-by.”

“How lovely that was, my dearest Patrick!” Pierre exclaimed, reverently touching Sherbourne’s arm. “Perhaps even profound.”

The solicitor had begun to speak, to drone on insincerely for long, uncomfortable moments as to the sterling qualities of the deceased before clearing his throat and beginning the actual reading of the will, the first part of which dealt with nothing more than a series of high-flown, tongue-twisting legal phrases that could not possibly hold Sherbourne’s interest.

“I wasn’t aware you were acquainted with old Quinton,” Patrick observed quietly to Standish, having realized at last that Pierre had never sufficiently answered his earlier query on the subject. As if they were exchanging confidences, he went on, “Indeed, friend, I am feeling particularly stupid in that I have failed to comprehend why either one of us should be found unhappily present here today. For myself, I can only say that the good Professor did not exactly clasp me close to his fatherly bosom whilst he was above ground.”

“I knew the man but slightly, untold years ago in my grasstime,” Standish replied, adding smoothly, “though I had foolishly not thought to inform you of that fact. I trust, dearest, that you will accept my apologies for this lapse.”

“Why not just call me out, Pierre, and have done with it?” Sherbourne asked facetiously, slowly shaking his blond head, as he should have known he couldn’t get past Standish so easily. “And please accept my apologies for my unthinking interrogation. I was striving only for a bit of mindless, time-passing conversation. I assure you it was never my intention to launch an inquisition.”

“Are you quite set against starting one, then?” Standish asked glumly, appearing quite crestfallen. “A pity. I begin to believe I should have welcomed the diversion—if not the thumbscrews. Our prosy friend behind the desk is not exactly a scintillating orator, is he?”

Just then Patrick thought he caught a hint of something the solicitor was saying. “O-ho, friend, prepare yourself. Here we go. He’s reading the gifts to the servants. We should be next, before the family bequests. What say you, Pierre? Do you suppose it would be crushingly bad ton if we were to spring ourselves from this mausoleum the moment we collect our booty?”

“Shhh, Patrick, I want to hear this. Oh, my dear man, did you hear that?”

“I’m afraid I missed it, Pierre,” Patrick said, amused by the patently false concern on Standish’s face.

“Quinton left his housekeeper of twenty-five years a miserly thirty pounds and a miniature of himself in a wooden frame!” Standish pronounced the words in accents of outraged astonishment. “One can only hope the old dear robbed the bloody boor blind during his lifetime.”

The solicitor reddened painfully upon hearing this outburst from the rear of the room, then cleared his throat yet again before continuing with the next bequest, an even smaller portion for the kitchen maid.

“As the Irish say, my dear Patrick, Quinton was a generous man,” Pierre ventured devilishly. “So generous that, if he had only an egg, he’d gladly give you the shell.”

This last remark was just too much—especially considering that the housekeeper, upon hearing it, gave out a great shout of laughter, totally disrupting the proceedings, while drawing Standish a chilling look from Miss Quinton. The angry solicitor removed his gaze from the document before him, prepared to impale the author of such blasphemy with a withering glare, but realized his error in time. A man did not point out the niceties of proper behavior to Pierre Standish—not if that man wished to die peacefully in his bed.

Flushing hotly to the top of his bald head, the solicitor quickly returned his attention to the will, reading importantly: “To Patrick Sherbourne, Eleventh Earl of Wickford, I hereby bestow all my considerable volumes of accumulated knowledge, as well as the research papers of a lifetime, with the sincere hope that he will, as it befits his moral responsibility as an honorable gentleman, continue my important work.”

“He never did!” came the incredulous outburst from the housekeeper as she whirled about in her seat to look compassionately at Professor Quinton’s only child. “Oh, Miss Victoria, I be that sorry!”

“Not half as sorry as I am,” Patrick told Standish in an undertone. “I shall have to build another library at Wickford just to hold the stuff.”

“If I might continue?” the solicitor asked as the housekeeper’s exclamation had set the two other occupants of the room—a miserably out-of-place kitchen maid who was ten pounds richer than she had been that morning, and a man already mentioned in the will and identified as the Professor’s tobacconist (and the recipient of all the Professor’s extensive collection of pipes)—to fidgeting nervously in their chairs.

“It’s all right, Willie, honestly,” Victoria Quinton soothed softly, patting the housekeeper’s bony hand. “I’m sure the Professor had his reasons.”

Wilhelmina Flint sniffed hotly, then said waspishly, “He had reasons for everythin’ he did—none of them holdin’ a thimbleful of thought for anyone save hisself.”

“Enough! What’s done is done. Please continue, sir.” Victoria said in a voice that fairly commanded the solicitor to get on with it.

“To Mr. Pierre Standish—who knows why—I bequeath in toto the private correspondence in my possession of one M. Anton Follet, to be found in a sealed wooden box presently in the possession of my trusted solicitor.”

Upon hearing this last statement, Patrick stole a quick look at his friend, but could read no reaction on Pierre’s carefully blank face.

“The remainder of my estate passes in its entirety to one Miss Victoria Louise Quinton, spinster. That’s the last bequest,” the solicitor told them, already removing his spectacles in preparation of quitting the premises. “Mr. Standish, I have the box in question, and the key, here on the desk. If you’d care to step up, I’ll relinquish them as soon as you sign a receipt to that effect.”

“My, my. Secret correspondence, Pierre?” Sherbourne suggested, looking at the other man intently. “Do you know this Follet fellow?”

“I know a great many people, Patrick,” Standish answered evenly, already rising from his uncomfortable seat to bow slightly as the ladies quit the room, Miss Quinton in the lead, the uneven hem of her black gown sweeping the floor as she went. “Your recurrent curiosity, however, begs me ponder whether or not I should be performing a kindness by furnishing you with a comprehensive listing of my acquaintance, as a precaution against your spleen undergoing an injury, for example.”

“Put m’foot in it again, didn’t I, Pierre? And after I promised, too,” Patrick remarked, grimacing comically at his faux pas. “I’ve no doubt you’ll soon find me nattering with the dowagers at Almack’s—lingering at the side of the room so as to catch up on all the latest on-dits. I implore you—can you think how to save me from that pitiful fate? Perhaps, in your kindness, even suggest a remedy?”

“A diverting interlude spent in the company of young Mademoiselle La Renoir might prove restorative,” Standish offered softly, accurately identifying Wickford’s latest dasher in keeping. “I hear the dear lady is inventive in the extreme—surely just the sort of diversion capable of ridding your mind of all its idle wonderings.”

“While ridding my pocket of yet another layer of gold, for La Renoir goes through her ingenious paces best when inspired by the sparkle of diamonds.” The Earl shook his head in the negative. “How jaded I have become, my friend, for I must admit that even Marie’s seemingly endless repertoire of bedroom acrobatics have lost their ability to amuse me. I’d replace her, if not for the ennui of searching out a successor. My idle questions to you today are the most interest I have shown in anything for months. Perhaps I am past saving.”

“Er, Mr. Standish,” the solicitor prompted, pointedly holding his open watch in the palm of one hand.

Standish ignored the man as if he hadn’t spoken. “Boredom can be the very death,” he told Patrick sympathetically, idly stroking the thin, white, crescent-shaped scar that seemed to caress rather than mar the uppermost tip of his left cheekbone. “I was bored once, my dearest, so you may believe that I know whereof I speak. Ended by wounding my man in an ill-advised duel, as a matter of fact, and nearly had to fly the country. That woke me up to the seriousness of my problem, I must say! Once free of the benighted bolt hole I had been forced to run for until the stupid man recovered—for a more cowhanded man with a sword you have yet to see—I vowed to show a burning interest in all that had been so nearly lost to me.”

“Such as?” Patrick prompted.

“Such as, my darling Patrick, an extreme curiosity about the human condition, in all its frailties. Oh yes— I also acquired an even more intense concern for my own preservation.”

“I’d really rather not carve up some poor innocent, just to start my blood to pulsing with the thrill of life, if you don’t mind, Pierre,” Wickford pointed out wryly. “Although I am sure that is not what you are suggesting.”

“What I am suggesting, darling, is that you look about yourself for some enterprise or pursuit that can serve to hold your interest for more than a sennight. In my case, the observation of my fellow creatures has proven to be endlessly engrossing. For you, well, perhaps Professor Quinton’s papers will inspire you to complete his work.”

“Or prod me into slitting my throat,” the Earl muttered, shaking his head. “I do see your point, Pierre. I thank you, and I promise to give your suggestions my deepest consideration.”

Extracting a perfumed handkerchief from inside his sleeve, Pierre waved it languidly before touching it lightly to the corners of his mouth, saying, “It was nothing, my darling man. But I’m afraid I really must leave you now, before our poor solicitor person suffers a spasm, dithering back and forth over the fear of offending me and his desire to return to his own hearth and slippers—although I fail to comprehend why anyone should fear me, as I am the most peaceful man in all England.”

“And I’m next in line for the throne,” Sherbourne responded playfully, to be rewarded by one of Standish’s rare genuine smiles.

“Et tu, darling?” he commented without rancor. “Ah well, I imagine this common misconception of my character is just a cross I must bear. Pray keep me informed of your progress, my dearest Patrick, for I shall fret endlessly until I know you are restored to your usual good frame.”