Amanda Scott (10 page)

“Been enjoyin’ a gossip, I daresay,” said the marquess in his cultivated tones as he settled himself cautiously into a chair near Diana’s. He used a cane when he walked and propped it now against a low parquetry table near his chair. When the cane began to slide, Diana caught it and replaced it more securely. The marquess thanked her. “You’re looking well,” he said, “not a bit as if you’ve suffered from all this racketing Simon tells me you’ve been doing.”

“Oh, I’m perfectly stout, sir,” Diana told him, grinning saucily. “’Tis only Simon playing at master that brings us here. He would have it that a repairing lease was in order.”

“Not increasing, are you?” demanded the old man.

“No, sir.” But, caught off her guard, Diana blushed, avoiding her husband’s eye.

“Will you take tea, Marimorse?” asked Lady Ophelia haughtily.

“Well, of course I shall,” said the old man tartly. “Always do, don’t I? What a thing to ask. What was I saying before?”

“You were telling me, sir,” Simon put in quickly, “just before we joined the ladies, that Parliament is once again considering the income tax issue. I know that Diana, at least, would be most interested to hear your views on that matter.”

Diana knew perfectly well that Simon meant to divert the marquess before that gentleman remembered what he had asked her and further offended Lady Ophelia, and she was grateful to him, particularly since she knew he was annoyed with her for her earlier words and had enjoyed her discomfiture when the marquess demanded to know if she was with child. Consequently, she responded instantly to her cue, expressing great interest in what was now to be done about the dreadful income tax.

“Aye, dreadful it is, and so you may believe, my dear,” said the marquess, accepting his cup of tea and glaring at them all. “Imagine taxing one’s income. A vile, Jacobin, jumped-up, jack-in-office piece of impertinence is what I have always said. That’s what it was when they inflicted it upon us three years ago, and that’s what it is now that they
say
they mean to do away with it.”

“I daresay more money was needed to support the war effort,” said Lady Ophelia placidly, helping herself to a cake from the silver tray at her side.

“Fustian,” retorted the marquess. “A good number of wars have been fought without recourse to such a thing in our history. I ask you, is a true Briton to have no privacy? Are the fruits of honest labor and toil to be picked over farthing by farthing by the pimply minions of bureaucracy?”

“For all the world,” Diana told Simon when they were able at last to retire for the night, “as though your papa has been making and scraping and hoeing the weeds in his own fields.”

“Shame, shame, Diana mine,” Simon said softly against her curls. “Papa feels strongly about many things, though he has long since left the responsibilities of the estate to me. He washed his hands of Pitt, of course, after the Catholic issue, and he despises Addington for being poor-spirited. Still, he wields a deal of influence in some quarters and keeps his fingers in a number of pies just by virtue of his overwhelming correspondence.”

As the days passed swiftly by, Diana saw the truth of Simon’s words. The marquess paid scarcely any heed whatever to the upheaval all around him as the servants prepared for the Christmas festivities. Instead, he spent his days contentedly at the large desk amidst the gothic splendors of the new hall, writing letter upon letter.

Diana spent her own days helping Lady Susanna to decide which of her new gowns would be most suitable to be worn once their guests began arriving, and assisting Lady Ophelia in directing the servants’ activities. She saw little of Simon during the day, for he spent his time with the bailiff, going over accounts and hearing complaints and recommendations for improvements to be made on his father’s vast estates. The fourth day after their arrival, the marquess’s prediction with regard to the weather was fulfilled. Rain began to fall steadily soon after breakfast, and by late afternoon the temperature had dropped noticeably. Simon, returning from a tour of the succession houses, informed them that the ground outside was turning icy and that they would likely have snow before morning. Only Lady Susanna was gratified by the information.

“We shall have a white Christmas,” she said happily.

“One must hope,” said her aunt dampingly, “that the roads continue to be passable for another week at least, and that we do not find ourselves either bereft of company or enduring rather too much of it. I cannot think our guests will like to travel in bad weather.”

Despite the fact that snow fell during the night, the inhabitants of the abbey were brought to realize that the roads had at least remained passable enough for the mail coach from London when Lord Roderick Warrington arrived shortly before supper, announcing that he had taken passage on this conveyance as far as Bath, where he had prevailed upon a farmer to carry him to Alderwood in an ancient gig.

“Good Lord, Rory, whatever possessed you to have recourse to such a mode of travel?” demanded his sister when she learned of his experience. “You and Simon never travel any way but by post chaise!”

“Pockets to let,” explained her scapegrace brother, grinning at Diana, who entered the hall in time to hear the exchange. “Hoped to impress the almighty Andover and the even almightier Marimorse with my wonderful sense of economy, don’t you know?”

“They are both more like to scold you for making a cake of yourself, as I’ve no doubt you did,” Diana said, teasing him as she allowed him to give her a brotherly hug and helped him to divest himself of his heavy but stylish traveling cloak.

Lord Roderick Warrington was nearly as tall as his twin, but there the resemblance between them ended. Rory’s hair was lighter and his eyes more green than golden. His figure, too, was more graceful than Simon’s, and his attire more modish. He had little liking for the sports that Simon loved, though Diana knew that he was nearly as much of an expert as his brother with the small sword and foil. But Rory’s talents were more appreciated in the ballrooms and salons of the
beau monde
. He was a favorite dancing partner with all the ladies, and he played a good hand at whist. That he preferred to play for larger stakes than were allowed at mixed card parties was unfortunately the case, and the fact that he had an even greater liking for the wheels and bones of the more rakish gaming halls was also unfortunate. These favored pastimes had brought him more than once within ames ace of finding the bailiffs at his door and had earned him the rough side of his brother’s tongue and more than a few uncomfortable letters from and private audiences with his parent. The marquess considered his younger son to be a scapegrace ne’er do well, and consistently refused to increase his allowance beyond the pittance—as Lord Roderick assured everyone it was—that was granted to him.

“Simon ought to appreciate my efforts,” Rory assured the two young women now as he rubbed his chilled hands before the hall fire. He looked down at his trouser leg, frowning. “Damn, I’ve a crease in these breeches.” He rubbed at it ineffectively, then looked up at them with a grimace. “Travel by mail is an abominable experience. Innkeepers are insolent, hostlers are sulky, the maids are pert, and the waiters impertinent. I dined last night at the Angel in Reading, and the meat was tough, the wine foul, the beer hard, the sheets wet, the linen dirty, and the knives seem never to have been cleaned. Assure you, any home would be better. Hello, aunt,” he added as Lady Ophelia entered the room, “I’ve just been telling them I came to Bath on the mail coach.”

Lady Ophelia lifted an eyebrow. “Indeed, I trust you had good reason for such a thing. I cannot believe it can have been an edifying experience.”

“Oh, but it was,” Rory assured her. “The first stage was enlivened by the quarreling among the roof passengers over who would get to tool the coach. All very frolicsome, but one fellow was knocked off, and we had to stop for him, which did not please the coachman, I can tell you.”

Rightly guessing that Lord Roderick had numbered among the quarrelsome roof passengers himself, Diana could only be grateful to learn that driving rain had forced him to seek shelter inside on the next stage of the journey. By the time he had reached that point in his description they had been joined by the marquess and Simon, who had learned of his arrival. Diana did not think Simon or his father looked to be much impressed by Rory’s choice of vehicle, but both laughed when he told them that traveling with two women had proved harmless enough, though one of them had threatened eternally to be sick.

“All went well enough, however,” he said cheerfully, “until the off leader shied at a fox dashing across the road. The coach lurched, then tumbled into a ditch, the road being soft with mud and slick with ice.”

“Good gracious me,” said his aunt, settling into her favorite chair to hear the rest of his tale. “I trust you were not injured. That sounds very dangerous to me. I cannot think what the coachman was about to let it happen.”

“Not a bit of it, ma’am. The ditch wasn’t deep, you know, but the two women, curse them, started shrieking fit to wake the devil, and one gentleman was thrown clean off the roof into the hedge. He was pulled out later by your obedient servant and the guard, but the horses were in a tangle, backing and struggling, so it was as much as the coachman could do to calm them. The guard and a gent in a bottle-green coat went to aid him and after twenty minutes and much hard swearing of oaths, the horses were got free of their harness and taken up on to the road where it was discovered that the leader was lame in the near fore. I did what I could to bathe the swelling with water from the ditch but it wasn’t much use, since I don’t chance to carry spermacetti lotion on my person when I travel.”

“Indeed,” Simon said wryly. “What then? Did you rescue the ladies?”

“Oh, someone pulled them out, though with all the shrieking and complaining I’d as lief have left them where they were,” Rory replied, twinkling. “The coach was firmly wedged in the ditch, you know, and no amount of effort would move it. The females remained hysterical, and the man from the coachtop—the one in the hedge, you know—seemed to be suffering from concussion. But no one paid him much heed, for an argument blew up between the coachman, who insisted upon staying with his horses, and the guard, who insisted upon staying with his mails, as to who should go for aid. Neither would give way, so finally the gent in the bottle-green coat took one of the horses and went into Newbury. It was drizzling by then, so we were all pretty miserable, I can tell you. It was a full hour before he returned with fresh horses and we were able to pull the coach out. Then, since one wheel was found to be insecure, only the ladies rode. The men walked. It took us another hour to reach the inn, and our reception was scarcely of a nature to encourage me to favor that hostelry again.”

“What an adventure,” said Lady Susanna appreciatively, when he paused for breath.

“Easy for you to say, miss,” retorted her brother. “You’d have been riding in the coach. I ruined a perfectly good pair of boots walking through all that mud, wasted half a morning in Newbury waiting for the coach to be repaired, and I have reached the melancholy conclusion that my second best breeches will never be the same again.”

“What have you done with your valet?” Diana inquired.

“Gave him and my tiger two days’ leave in Reading,” replied Rory carelessly. “They will arrive with my curricle tomorrow.”

“So much for your economy,” Simon told him amid laughter from the others. “By the time you pay their expenses and repair your precious wardrobe, you might just as well have hired a post chaise and four.”

Rory grinned at him, unabashed. “Well, you might at least appreciate the gesture after all you said to me less than a week since.”

To Diana’s relief, although the marquess demanded an explanation of these words, Simon diverted him with an offhand remark and the incident passed off harmlessly. But when she commented later to her husband that his twin seemed at least to be making an effort to mend his ways, Simon refused to discuss the matter, his expression indicating that his jealousy lay very near the surface.

Not wishing to upset their present amicable relationship, Diana dropped the subject, but she had no intention of letting Simon’s foolish jealousies keep her from enjoying a comfortable chat with her brother-in-law. Thus it was that when she found Rory alone the next day in the blue parlor, a charming room lined with early eighteenth-century paneling and numerous family portraits (including one of the irrepressible Sir William Warrington), she made no effort to elude him but demanded instead to know if he had heard anything further about Mademoiselle Sophie.

“As a matter of fact,” he confided, “I broke my journey in Reading purposely in order to visit with the comte. He has a house near there at Langley Marsh, you know—at least, I daresay you didn’t know, but he has. In any case, I spent a good part of yesterday there, and as I’d no wish to set their tongues wagging, I thought giving my men leave and taking the coach the rest of the way was a rather knacky notion. But, Diana,” he added with a frown, “you may imagine my consternation when the comte informed me that he hasn’t heard a word from his family since madame wrote to inform him they had arrived safely at Calais.”

“Well,” Diana said practically, “that cannot have been more than a week or so ago, after all. No doubt they are having bad weather in France, too, and the mails have been delayed accordingly.”

“’Tis possible, I suppose,” he admitted, “but I took the liberty of inviting de Vieillard to join us over the New Year all the same. I cannot rest easily, Diana, until I know that Sophie is safe.”

She realized that he was seriously worried and forebore to tease him, even going so far as to submit to hearing a catalog of his Sophie’s numerous virtues, although she had heard them all before. It was at such times as these, whether he waxed enthusiastic over a horse or a woman or merely a new suit of clothes, that she found herself hard-pressed to recognize that Rory was Simon’s twin and not a much younger brother. And it was not only his enthusiasms but his complaints as well. He railed over the fact that both his father and brother refused to recognize that he was a gentleman grown and no longer a child, but even as he was complaining he managed to infuriate one or the other of them by indulging in childish excesses. Diana had wished more than once that she could help him, for in some ways she understood Lord Roderick better than she understood her husband. Simon could be positively stuffy about some things, while Rory never was. And Rory never scolded.