Amanda Scott (15 page)

“I did, but nothing in this world would have dragged me back there a second time in a like condition. I’d never have heard the end of it. And it’s as well for you, my lass,” he added grimly, “that I didn’t go near the house. To say that I was in a rage is to understate the case. My temper works as yours does, remember. If I lose it, I quickly forget the cause. But though the first heat cools with time, if I must restrain myself for long, if I am not allowed to forget, but am further provoked … Do I need to explain this any more clearly?”

“No,” Emily replied, “but if your answer to our problem is merely to say that I must not provoke you, I cannot see that we are any farther forward, because—”

“I didn’t say that.” He gestured toward an opening in the trees ahead of them. “There is the house now. We can continue this discussion later.”

M
ERIDEN PARK HOUSE, NEARLY
twice as large as the Priory and a good deal older, had been augmented over the centuries until it was a sprawling pile with little symmetry in its design. Emily thought it beautiful nonetheless. For the most part it was constructed of the rose-colored brick so common throughout Yorkshire, and its setting high on the edge of the wooded escarpment, overlooking the lush dale below and the broad, rolling moors beyond to the east, provided a remarkable view.

Inside the house, Meriden turned her over to the care of his housekeeper, Mrs. Kelby, while he attended to his business. When they met later for the promised nuncheon, there was no chance for private discussion because of the hovering servants.

“Your house is beautiful,” Emily said as she accepted a serving of sliced fruit. “Mrs. Kelby very kindly showed me over the central block.”

“No time to see much else,” he said, smiling. “I still get lost from time to time, but this warren used to afford me the most wonderful opportunities to lead my sisters a merry chase.”

She chuckled. “When I think of the rude things you said about my childhood—”

“True, every one. Can you deny them?”

“No, though I wish I could. Since meeting you, I find I have wished on numerous occasions that I had led a saintly life, just so I could tell you to your face what a sad case you are.”

“Tell me anyway,” he invited.

She shook her head. “Having pointed out to me how very unequal the score is between us, ’tis ungentlemanly of you to bait me now,” she said. “I confess to feeling some sympathy for your sisters, however. Mrs. Kelby told me you expect one of them to pay you a visit soon.”

He nodded. “My sister Janet, Lady Filey, is coming next week from Richmond with my mother.”

“I am surprised Lady Meriden does not live here.”

He laughed. “She much prefers the household at Richmond, for she and Filey’s mama are great cronies. I’d have to import a poor relation to bear her company here, and she wouldn’t like that nearly as well as being with Janet, her children, and old Lady Filey.”

When they stood together on the front terrace later, looking out over the vast gentle landscape, Emily said, “I thought the moors were more barren, bleaker. I didn’t expect to see so much color everywhere.”

“It’s the heather coming into bloom, mostly,” he said, “but the longer one looks upon the moor, the more one sees.” He put his arm around her shoulders and added quietly, “‘Everywhere peace, everywhere serenity, and a marvelous freedom from the tumult of the world.’ The abbot of Rievaulx Abbey, which is near here, wrote those words over four and a half centuries ago, but they provide as apt a description now as they did then.”

Emily had gone very still the moment he touched her. She did not want to move, but she wished he would take his arm away. If only his embrace did not make her feel so warm, so safe, she thought. This was a new Jack, one she was not certain she could handle. Accordingly, she greeted the arrival of her groom, leading their horses, with a sigh of relief.

They rode silently for a time. Then Jack said suddenly, “I think I was wrong about Oliver.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “I thought at first you were right about him, but I find I like him in spite of his faults.”

“What do you think of Saint Just?”

She shrugged. “I don’t like him as well, but that may be only because Harry Enderby doesn’t like him and I like Harry. Moreover, Mr. Saint Just is not my nephew. He certainly puts himself out to charm, however.”

“Miss Lavinia doesn’t like him either.”

“Miss Lavinia doesn’t like men,” she pointed out. “Oliver did say that Mr. Saint Just and Dolly had joined forces to convince him that the York scheme was a good one.”

“I think Oliver has been accustomed to follow Saint Just’s lead for some time now,” Jack said. “I recognize the man’s type. You heard him yourself, rattling on about gaming hells and vast sums lost at the track. When there are no ladies at hand, he talks mostly of game little bits of muslin and birds of paradise. More talk than action, probably, but I shouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that he’s here on a repairing lease.”

“Harry Enderby suggested the same thing once, I believe,” Emily told him. “Of course, he tends to disparage anything of which Dolly approves, so I paid him little heed at the time.”

Another silence fell. Then he said abruptly, “I may have been wrong in the way I dealt with Melanie too.”

“You know you were,” she said flatly.

He looked at her. “I don’t know it for a fact, but I won’t argue the point with you now. We’ve got to declare a truce between us, and I think one way to achieve one is if you leave Giles and Oliver strictly to me and I leave you to do your possible with Melanie and Dolly. I scarcely heed Dolly’s megrims anyway unless she forces them upon my attention, and perhaps you can persuade Melanie to confide in you.”

“You will truly leave her to me?”

His jaw tightened. “Don’t mistake truce for surrender, Emily. I still don’t make idle threats. If Melanie arranges any more of her odd little ‘loans,’ she will have to answer to me, and I promise you, I won’t spare her. Until such a thing occurs, however, you may do what you can to draw her out. That is all I can agree to allow, I’m afraid. Why did you burst in upon us today, anyway?”

Accepting the change of subject in order to avoid heated debate, she explained about her missing jewelry, deleting her opinion of the Bow Street Runner and telling him only that she had reported her loss. When another silence followed, she commented casually, “I have offered to teach Melanie to swim, Jack. The pond is a good place to talk, if we can be assured of our privacy.”

“I’ll see to that,” he said. “’Tis a good notion, lass. Perhaps you can induce her to trust you.”

Emily was certain she would succeed in that endeavor, but Melanie confounded her. Though the child proved to be a willing, even an enthusiastic pupil in the days that followed, not one word would she speak about her own affairs. At first Emily tried subtlety, attempting to approach the subject obliquely. When that failed, she tried more direct methods.

“I have been meaning to apologize to you, Melanie,” she said on the third day of their late-afternoon lessons when she and the child had sprawled next to each other on a flat, sunny rock to dry their shifts before donning their clothes.

Melanie looked at her curiously but did not speak.

“For entering the library without warning the other day,” Emily explained gently. “I ought not to have done such a thing, but I acted without giving thought to the fact that your Cousin Jack might not be alone.”

Melanie flushed deeply and looked away.

“Why did he punish you, Melanie?”

“You know.” The reply was nearly inaudible.

“Only what he told me,” Emily said, “and he did not explain why you needed money. Does he not give you a generous allowance?”

Melanie nodded.

“But you required more?” Emily prompted.

Melanie nodded again.

“Why?”

After a long silence Melanie looked at her. “I am sorry I made Cousin Jack angry, Aunt Emily. I didn’t mean to do so.”

“No, darling, of course you didn’t,” Emily said, adding with a conspiratorial grin, “Nobody in her right mind would make Cousin Jack angry on purpose.”

Melanie smiled wanly, then said, “My shift is dry now, Aunt Emily. Ought we not to put on our dresses again?”

“Tell me first why you needed the money, Melanie.”

But that Melanie would not do. There were tears in her eyes when she shook her head, and Emily forbore to press her. Instead, once they had returned to the house and Melanie had been turned over to Molly, the upstairs chambermaid, to dry her hair, Emily went directly to the schoolroom.

“Miss Brittan,” she said, finding that lady reading a French novel by a cheery fire, “I must speak to you about Melanie. Has she told you about her recent confrontation with Lord Meriden?”

Miss Brittan marked her page and set aside her book. Then, indicating a second chair by the hearth, she said, speaking in her precise way, “Pray sit down, Miss Win-grave. Certainly you have seen by now that Melanie confides in no one. Was the confrontation one of which I ought to have been made aware?”

Emily, sitting, shook her head. “Meriden said she needn’t tell you if she didn’t wish to do so, but I am convinced that there is more to the incident than we know. In the short time since my arrival, Melanie has lost weight. Her color is pale, and she has dark hollows under her eyes, as though she does not sleep well. But she will tell us nothing about what distresses her. It is not my custom to break a confidence, but because I believe we must put our heads together in order to help her, I will tell you what happened. Please understand, however, that Melanie has already been punished.”

Miss Brittan promising to keep faith, Emily explained as much as she knew about Melanie’s visits to the village and Meriden’s discovery of the method by which the child had been obtaining money.

Looking aghast and not a little displeased, Miss Brittan exclaimed, “I know not what to say, Miss Wingrave! I must be at fault, for I had no idea that anything of this sort had occurred. I can assure you that while she is under my eye, Melanie has no opportunity to do such things; however, I do have my half-day on Wednesday afternoons, when I visit a friend, whose coachman drives me home at nine o’clock. Hitherto I have given Melanie but light tasks to accomplish in my absence, but I promise you that that will no longer be the case. I will be breaking no confidences of yours if I inform her that I have discovered that she is frequently away from the house during my absence. Indeed, a brief conversation with Merritt should suffice to provide me with what little information I require. In any event, I shall speak sternly to her and provide her with more work to do during those afternoons. Of a certainty, the nonsense will stop.”

Despite such reassurance, Emily could not rest easily, for she did not believe that the governess understood that the problem rested not with keeping Melanie out of trouble but with discovering why she had behaved as she had. Understandably, Miss Brittan was concerned that she would be blamed for Melanie’s peccadilloes, but neither did it reassure Emily to recall that although she had attempted to elicit a promise from Melanie never to obtain money by such methods again, the child had never actually said she would not. Indeed, all she would say on the subject was that she was sorry to have vexed Cousin Jack.

Accordingly, the following Wednesday afternoon Emily waited only until she knew Miss Brittan had departed to visit her friend before taking herself off through the home wood to the fork leading up to the moor and beyond to the village. Concealing herself in the shrubbery, she had not long to wait before Melanie appeared, walking quickly and keeping her eyes firmly fixed upon the road ahead of her, as though she was afraid of what she might see if she looked to one side or the other.

Once the little girl was well ahead of her, Emily emerged from her hiding place and followed her uphill through the woods and across the open moor into the village. Melanie went, just as Emily had expected her to, along the cobbled street and into one of the village shops. It was not the chandler’s, but that with the sign of the apothecary; yet Emily had no doubt that the child was spinning him the same tale that she had used before.

Stepping quickly into the mercer’s, she waited until Melanie had returned to the road before following her again. The child walked more slowly now and twice glanced about her, and though she did not actually turn around, the openness of the moorland made it necessary for Emily to fall well behind her until she turned downhill into the woods again. Hurrying to catch up, Emily snatched up her skirts and ran, but despite her haste, she rounded a curve in the road barely in time to see Melanie hand something to a stooped and elderly woman, who then turned away and vanished into the thick shrubbery.

Melanie hurried homeward, and Emily, making no attempt now to conceal her presence, sped after the old woman. Discovering the direction she had taken was not difficult, for there was a clear, though narrow path leading through the shrubbery. Emily followed it, taking care in her haste only to avoid those branches that threatened her face and eyes. Once she thought she caught a glimpse of the old woman’s gray gown just ahead, but though she moved as quickly as she could, she saw no more.

Coming to a small clearing, she paused. The path had disappeared altogether, and she was uncertain of which direction to take. The sound of a footfall directly behind her startled her so that she cried out in alarm as she began to turn toward the sound, but her cry was cut off abruptly when, with a sharp explosion of pain in the back of her head, she collapsed to the hard leaf-strewn ground.

“Aunt Emily, Aunt Emily, oh, please wake up!”

Small hands smoothed hair from her face and touched her shoulders, pressing but not shaking her. Emily became aware of a chill in the air and the prickling of leaves, sharp pebbles, and dried twigs beneath that side of her body upon which she was lying. Only when she tried to move did the sharp, pounding ache in her head make itself felt.

“Be still, Aunt Emily,” said the anxious voice from behind her. “Oh, I was so afraid she had killed you. Are you badly hurt? Shall I run for help?”