A Dog in a Doublet Page 21

  He straightened then and held his arm out to Clarinda. She got to her feet and grasped it, reassured by the strength of the heavy muscle under his coat.

  “Baden, Miss Trinton,” Harry said, the words clipped and as cut glass as Clarinda had ever heard them. “May I request your company for dinner tonight? A private party, you understand,” he added, casting an icy glance in Edwin’s direction.

  Baden, who was trying to compose himself, gave a taut nod. “Honoured, my lord,” he said, looking defiant.

  Clara watched as Harry gave him and Rebecca a polite bow and then escorted her out, cutting Edwin and his mother completely.

  ***

  It was quiet for the next couple of days. Judging it prudent, Harry called on Clarinda to keep her out of the house and to get a little breathing space himself. The rest of the time, he kept his head down, not wanting to invite any more tiresome displays from Mariah.

  Baden began to shadow him a little, and Harry accepted his presence, if with caution. They played chess and cards, and Harry had to admit he didn’t dislike the fellow. He wasn’t quite the shallow dandy he made himself out to be, and Harry suspected a half decent man lurked somewhere inside. He wasn’t yet so convinced as to let down his guard, however.

  “Your law man should be here soon, I imagine?” Baden asked, after Harry had beaten him at cards for the third time that day.

  Harry nodded, lifting the cards in an enquiring manner as Baden pulled a face. “Lord no, have mercy, man. You’ve the devil’s own luck today.”

  Harry chuckled and put the cards away. “I had a letter from him this morning, as it happens,” he said. “He’ll arrive in Tenterden late this evening and be with us in the morning.”

  Baden nodded, hooking one long leg over the arm of the chair and sprawling out, drink in one hand. “Good,” he said, sipping at his drink with satisfaction. Harry had taken pity and poured him a decent glass after the scene with Edwin, and rather suspected this was why he was suddenly the man’s bosom companion. “Just stay alive until then, will you?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Harry said, his tone dry as he poured a drink for himself.

  “I really don’t want it,” Baden said, startling Harry a little with the abrupt change of subject.

  Harry concentrated on putting the stopper back on the decanter and settled himself back in the chair, regarding Baden for a moment before he replied. The man was several years Harry’s senior, but he seemed absurdly young to Harry in that moment, sprawled out in the chair.

  “Stamford, you mean?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral.

  Baden nodded and sat up, all affectation of indolence gone from his lean frame. He seemed alert all at once, and deadly serious. “I don’t want it. I never have.” He gave a little laugh, a self-deprecating sound as he stared into his drink. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, Harry,” he said with a smile. “I’m not a fool. If the place was up to snuff, I might even consider knocking off Wilfred and Edwin for it. God, it would be a pleasure,” he said, with a glint of despair in his dark eyes. “But it isn’t, is it?”

  Harry laughed and shook his head. “No,” he replied, seeing no need to say any more; it was obvious enough to any with a care to look.

  “No.” Baden smiled back at him. “I’m not as stupid as they’d like to think,” he said, jerking his head in the general direction of his brother’s whereabouts. “And I’ve been around the place, and ... dammit, Harry, the place is falling down!”

  “Not quite,” Harry replied, finding himself a touch defensive. “But it needs a good deal of work and management to bring it back to what it was.”

  Baden nodded, looking as though he felt vindicated in some way. “See, I knew that,” he exclaimed. “They talk about Stamford like it’s some blasted golden goose, but it isn’t, and when they realise that ...” He stopped, but Harry knew the answer in any case.

  “They’d sell it,” he said, the idea sticking in his throat like a burr.

  Baden nodded. “All that history, all those generations of our blood, gone from Stamford.” He shook his head and sat back, looking appalled.

  “My God,” Harry said with a shiver down his spine, almost as though the old man himself was breathing down his neck with fury. “Alistair would turn in his grave.”

  “That’s why you must have it, Harry,” Baden said, and Harry wondered if he really was as sincere as he appeared. “I don’t want all the work involved in this place.” He made an expansive gesture with his glass. “I want to travel and have fun, go to parties and see amusing people ... and to be amused.”

  Harry pursed his lips, thoughtful, and not completely convinced. “You’re better than that, you know, Baden.”

  The man snorted and downed the rest of his drink. “Maybe,” he said with a shrug, staring at the empty glass. “But life was pretty grim for a long time, Harry. I feel like it owes me something, and besides,” he added, with that too-charming grin, “if you have the place, I know I’ll always have a friendly face to come to, cap in hand when I’m up to my neck in the river tick.”

  “Aha,” Harry exclaimed, amused. “Now it all makes sense.” His laughter subsided, though, and he looked back at Baden, deciding to take a chance.

  “And what about all that history, what about having a Preston at Stamford? What about blood?”

  Baden sat forward then his handsome face creased into a frown. “That’s the funny thing about it though, Harry. You feel more like my blood than any of them ever have.”

  Chapter 25

  A short heeled wench - one apt to fall on her back

  - The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose.

  “Hello, Harry.”

  The voice was low and seductive and Harry looked up from his desk to see Rebecca framed in the doorway.

  It was late and the candles were burning low, guttering in their sockets. Rebecca closed the door and walked towards him, a trifle unsteady. She’d been drinking.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Miss Trinton,” he said, getting to his feet and watching her with wary eyes. “It’s late. I’ll call for Mrs Fletcher to help you to bed.”

  “Oh, don’t do that,” she said, looking up at him from under her lashes and pouting. “Though ...” she said, licking a full pair of lips. “You can help me, if you’d like to.”

  Harry scowled at her and tried to remind himself the woman was drunk and not in possession of her senses. Nonetheless, he was filled with revulsion for her. She must know that her fiancée had been in this room most of the afternoon, that his whole family were here. What was she thinking?

  “I do hope you inherit this place, Harry,” she said, slurring the words a little. “Just imagine being a viscountess,” she murmured, looking as though she’d given it some considerable thought already. “I’d love to live in a castle. Like a princess.” The words were said on a sigh as she stared around the large, oak-panelled room. There was something in her expression that made Harry only too ready to believe her. He didn’t doubt that she would love to live here, and he somehow doubted she’d be fussed if it was with him or Baden. Just whoever happened to have the title. Would she even try Wilfred if it came to it, he wondered, and had to swallow hard as his stomach roiled.

  He moved from behind the desk, giving the woman a wide berth as he walked to the door and opened it wide.

  “I suggest you go to bed, Miss Trinton,” he said, his tone harsh. “Before anyone notices you’ve gone.”

  She snorted, looking at him with disgust as she headed towards the door, her steps the studied movement of the inebriated. She paused in front of him and wet her lips, tracing one long finger along the too-visible décolletage at her bosom.

  Harry stared back at her, unmoved, and she gave a little huff of irritation.

  “You really are a prig, aren’t you,” she said in disgust, before sashaying out and up the stairs.

  Harry closed the door with a sigh of relief. Going back to his books and ledgers and his plans for Stamford’s fu
ture, he sat back down at the desk and stared at the assorted papers. “God, you’re a fool,” he muttered, putting his head in his hands. Despite telling himself to accept the inevitable, that Stamford would never be his, a stubborn, die-hard flicker of hope refused to snuff out. Every now and then, it would flame a little, fed by some ridiculous sense of optimism and Harry would nurture it, despite knowing it would be kinder to kill it and accept the inevitable.

  Somehow, it was like that morning years ago, when he had woken in a freezing barn, deathly cold and with hunger gnawing at his belly. He’d had no reason to hope that morning, no reason to believe the world wouldn’t chew him up and spit out the pieces. Yet the snow-covered beauty of this landscape had crept under his skin and into his heart and brought him peace, and a sense of hope. It was the same feeling he got when he thought about his lovely Clara, loving her beyond reason, even knowing she was far out of his reach ... and it was the same for Stamford, too.

  When he looked upon the castle’s vast, crumbling façades, its lush pasture and thick woods and the little curling streams that burbled and twisted in and out of the fields like a silver ribbon on a sunny morning, he felt a surge of ... hope.

  Well, for now, both Clara and Stamford were his, and he’d plan for their future, foolish and ridiculous as that was. It was the old goat’s dying wish, after all.

  Dog in a Doublet, Harry.

  Harry looked up and smiled at the portrait over the fireplace. He’d found it in one of the upstairs bedrooms, tucked away in a dark corner. Alistair Preston, Viscount Stamford. The painting must have been done a few years before Harry arrived at Stamford, as Alistair looked much as Harry remembered him then. According to Beryl, he’d had it done, grudgingly, as it was tradition in the family to have a portrait at regular intervals, and he felt he wouldn’t be around much longer. He’d fallen out with the artist, however, inevitably, and become so furious at the bill he’d received that he’d refused to even look at the finished painting.

  It was a good likeness. That hard-headed, rather brittle character stared from the canvas with defiance in his eyes, but Harry thought he could see amusement there, too, that dark, rather devilish sense of humour that he’d come to appreciate himself.

  “You must be laughing your socks off,” Harry muttered, pouring himself out a drink and raising it to the portrait. “You old goat.”

  He sat in the study for another couple of hours, trying to concentrate on his work and failing, but knowing he’d never sleep. He was too restless, furious with Edwin and the rest of the devil’s spawn, and frustrated by the inability to do anything about them. And then there was this law man, Formby.

  His stomach clenched.

  He was pouring a second glass when he heard a strange scuffling noise outside in the hallway. Getting to his feet, he went to look, uneasy in case Rebecca had decided to have another go, or if perhaps his would-be murderer was prowling. He opened the door and the noise stopped, the only sound now the eerie howl of the wind curling around the great walls of the castle.

  Harry stood in the hallway, his skin prickling and holding candle aloft as he listened, but heard nothing more. Walking to the front doors, he unlocked them and stepped outside. It was blowing a gale, and he hauled in a deep breath. The last of the dry, dead leaves of last winter that gathered in corners to decay and moulder had been stirred by the fierce wind, blowing up around castle and skittering in through the doorway as he stood outside. Harry stepped back in and shut the door before any more mess was made. He wondered with a sigh of longing if the gardens would really ever be as tidy and magnificent as he saw them in his imagination, rather than a constant effort in futility as they had been since he’d arrived. But at least there had been no murderers lurking.

  Looking on the bright side.

  So deciding his imagination had been playing tricks on him, he went back to the study.

  After a third - generous - measure, his eyes felt heavy and he thought perhaps he’d sleep. It was well after three in the morning, and Formby was due at eight am, so he may as well try to get some rest. Snuffing all but one of the candles, he checked the fire in the hearth and left the study, climbing the stairs and feeling the weight of his worries pressing down on him with each step.

  Moonlight slanted through the upstairs windows, fading in and out as fast-moving dark clouds slid over it, hiding and revealing the glowing orb of the moon like a magician pulling away a silk scarf to uncover a trick. Harry paused, looking outside and watching the tree tops sway back and forth, lithe as dancers, as a fierce north wind bent them to its will.

  What a dismal summer.

  He carried on as the grand staircase turned back on itself, holding the candle higher as the moon disappeared once more, and drawing in a startled breath as it reappeared to reveal a figure silhouetted against the grand arched window at the end of the corridor.

  Norah turned as he approached, and though he grimaced inwardly, he had no choice but to acknowledge her, seeing as she was standing outside his bedroom door. She was dressed only in a fine white nightgown that revealed too much for Harry’s comfort.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she said, raising a glass of something that wasn’t warm milk to him with a smile. “You too?”

  Harry nodded, watching her with caution. He wondered where Brewer was and wished to God the fellow would appear and take the blasted woman away.

  “I’m sorry, by the way,” she said, looking up at him as he approached.

  Harry frowned, not wanting to get into a conversation with her, but curious nonetheless. “What for?” he asked, eyeing her with suspicion.

  She was a remarkably attractive woman, still, Harry had to admit. If it weren’t for the rather bitter turn to her mouth and the cynicism in her eyes, he would have thought her beautiful. But life with Wilfred Preston can’t have held much in the way of pleasure, and he hardly blamed her for taking hers where she may.

  “For all this ... turmoil,” she said, shaking her head and looking out of the window. “God, I don’t want to live here,” she said on a shudder. “Incarcerated in this mouldering pile in the middle of nowhere.” The words were spoken with revulsion. “At least in town I can get out,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I can get out and away ... from him. I can go places, see people, but here ...” She looked up at Harry with anguish in her eyes. “I’d just as well throw myself off that tower,” she said, nodding to one of the soaring crenulations that jutted out visibly from this vantage point.”

  “Then speak to Wilfred, make him drop this ridiculous claim,” he said, too angry with them all to be kind, even though he pitied her.

  She laughed at that, her dark eyebrows arching in astonishment. “You think he’d listen? To me?” She gave a delighted crow of laughter and Harry hushed her.

  “Do you want to wake the whole house?”

  “No,” she said, setting her glass down on the sill and looking up at him. She reached out, and picked a dead leaf from his hair, dropping it to the floor with a smile before placing her hand flat on his chest. “No, I don’t,” she whispered. She stepped closer, meaning to press against him, and Harry grasped her hand and removed it, holding her off as he held the candle aloft in his other. The flickering light fell on a face full of desperation and loneliness.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Preston. It’s late, and I’m tired.”

  “Oh,” she pouted, trying to flirt but looking ever more needy as she tilted her head to one side. “I’m not the least bit sleepy.”

  “Well, I am.” Harry dropped her hand and turned away to open his door, but she grabbed his arm.

  “Wouldn’t you like to have his wife?” she demanded, the words pleading. “Wouldn’t it please you to take that from him, when he’s trying to take everything from you?”

  Harry looked down at her and found he felt nothing but sorrow for her.

  “You shouldn’t sell yourself so cheap,” he said, his voice low. “You’re worth more than him.”

  With that, he c
losed the door on her, and was careful to lock it. There was a curse and a thud as she kicked the door on the other side, and then it was quiet.

  ***

  Harry groaned as Reggie pulled back the curtains. The weather was still uncertain and a white sky glared through the glass, harsh and uncompromising. Harry squinted and forced himself upright.

  “What time is it?”

  “Six, my lord. I thought I’d best wake you, as you showed no sign of stirring. What with Mr Formby due.

  Harry nodded, yawning. “Thanks. I think I might have slept to lunchtime if you hadn’t.”

  “I thought so, too,” Reggie said, smiling as he set about to pick up a breakfast tray and carry it over to the bed.

  “What’s this?” Harry demanded. “I’m not an invalid.”

  Reggie gave him a reproving look. “No, my lord. But the last viscount always breakfasted in bed, and Mrs Fletcher thought it only right and proper ...”

  “Blast right and proper,” Harry muttered and then caught the look in Reggie’s eyes.

  “What?”

  Reggie sighed, pausing before speaking. “It’s only, she’s in a bit of a strange temper this morning. She’s worried, what with this law man coming and ... I think she wants to support you however she can.”

  “Oh, very well,” Harry said, knowing he’d have Beryl sulking if he didn’t do as he was told. “But just this morning, and only to please Beryl,” he added with a mutinous tone.

  “Very good, sir,” Reggie replied, his lips twitching a little.

  “Anyone else about yet?” he asked, pouring himself coffee and stirring in two large lumps of sugar.

  “No, sir, not that I’ve seen.”

  “You know you can call me Harry. In fact, I wish you would,” he said, buttering a roll, soft and still warm from the oven. “At the very least when we’re alone.”