An Aria Writ In Blood (The Underwood Mysteries Book 4) (3 page)

*

Underwood woke early on the morning set for their departure to London and he surprised himself by being overcome by a wave of homesickness as he thought of leaving his little house for several weeks to come.  As he looked about him, savouring not only the familiarity of his surroundings, but the peace in which he was able to do it, he wondered anew at his own folly in agreeing to follow the wedding trip with a sojourn in Brighton.

He had to smile to himself at the turn his thoughts had taken, for he had always lived a rootless existence prior to meeting and marrying Verity.  Even his years at Cambridge had been spent in chambers and lodgings not his own.  There had actually been boxes he had never bothered to unpack, books which had never stood on a shelf.  Possessions had never meant a great deal to him; as long as he had food in his stomach, clean linen, a bed on which to rest his weary bones, books to read and quill and ink to write, he had considered himself a contented man.  Suddenly he had Verity and she had turned four walls and a roof into a home, warm and welcoming, a happy haven – merely content no longer, he now knew what it meant to be happy – even with all those little irritations and quibbles which marred married life.  Leaving his home was not going to be easy, but at least he had his family with him.

The journey to London was not so arduous in fair weather as it was in foul, but even so, it was long and tiring, especially with a lively little minx like Horatia clambering about the carriage, seemingly tireless and undeniably tiresome.  For the first few miles the novelty and excitement of being in a carriage was enough to amuse her.  There were wondrous things to be observed from the windows and Mama had taken care that all her favourite toys were to hand, but it was not long before the knowledge of the confined space within the vehicle began to irk her.  Every effort to entertain her failed dismally and both Underwood and Verity could only be grateful that Gil’s future father-in-law had insisted that they travel post at his expense.  The notion of a display of Horatia’s bad temper in a public coach was horrible to contemplate.  They had not even crossed the border out of Derbyshire when Underwood was rapping on the roof and requesting the driver pull over to the side of the road and allow his little darling to stretch her legs.  It was at this point that Toby could stand by in silence no longer.  He tried very hard to restrain himself, but the truth must out.  He took hold of Horatia very firmly and spoke sternly to her, “Now, Miss, we have a long way to go and we are already thoroughly tired of your tricks.  You will sit still and behave yourself, or I will know how to deal with you.”

Actually, he had no more idea how to control her than had her parents since they were all reluctant to use physical chastisement on so engaging a child, but Horatia evidently did not see beyond the façade of severity, for once back in the carriage, she sat between her parents like a small cherub and presently fell asleep.  She was not entirely perfect for the remainder of the journey, but neither did she risk provoking her father into tossing her out of the window.

Underwood never thought he would be glad to arrive in town, but he was immensely relieved when the horn called up the final change of horses and he knew the next stop would be the outskirts of the city.  Once Hampstead Heath was traversed, the family became gloomily aware that there could now be no turning back.  They were committed to the protracted stay and no possible escape could be contemplated.

The earl was looking forward to their company in Brighton, it being his first summer there in many years without the solace of his daughter’s presence.  He had hinted, though never put his complaints into words, that the very thought of being alone with his wife for the whole season was more than he could contemplate with fortitude.  Underwood felt his brother had shown unusual spirit and quite unexpected wisdom in plotting to whisk his new wife off to Italy; he could only regret he had failed to do the same.

He had, however, withstood the kind invitations to stay in the earl’s London residence.  No matter how large and imposing the residence, it could never be big enough to contain Horatia.  The earl, subsequently and very sensibly, had seen the advantage of having all his guests stay in a nearby rented house.  All weddings must naturally entertain a variety of characters who could scarcely be expected to remain upon good terms with each other for any longer than the ceremony lasted, so housing them all a few streets away instead of under his own roof was an excellent notion for which he gave Underwood full credit.

Mr. Underwood cared nothing for that; he merely congratulated himself upon avoiding the necessity of a tedious house party.  He was a very private man, who unlike most of his contemporaries hated the tradition of living under another man’s roof for protracted periods.  The whole of polite society existed for the round of visits, parties and dinners which took place throughout the year, making the sleeping in one’s own bed a rare event.  Underwood refused to live like this.  He was essentially a selfish creature, wanting to follow his own desires at all times, but too kindly to inflict his selfishness upon others – with the notable exception of his brother, with whom he lived quite happily for months on end, oblivious of any irritation his presence might cause.  To give him his due, he would also have quite contentedly done his brother the same service, should the need ever arise, but of course it never did.  Whenever possible, Underwood did precisely what he wanted, exactly when he liked, often defying convention, but never knowingly inconveniencing others.  In these circumstances, a rented house, with added servants, suited him very well.

Verity simply did not care where she stayed, as long as she had her beloved Underwood and Horatia with her.  The house had the added bonus of keeping her largely apart from those dreaded, terrifying aristocrats, whose scorn she so heartily feared.

The scale of the earl’s wealth and influence showed itself in the fact that the entire house-guest list had been given accommodation, so that Verity and Underwood found themselves confronting the same faces at breakfast as they had the evening before at the earl’s table.  Underwood, as was his wont, took every opportunity to scan the faces of his fellow guests and it was not long before a brief mental sketch of each character existed in his mind.  They were sketches, however, which were always liable for revision.

*

CHAPTER THREE

(“Coelum Non Animum Mutant Qui Trans Mare Currunt” - Those who cross the sea change the sky, not their spirits)

The last thing the Underwoods had desired was to attend a formal dinner on their first evening in London, despite the fact that the journey had been pleasantly uneventful and relatively easy.  Thanks to their host, even the posting house which had seen their overnight stay had been of a high quality, with clean sheets, good food and excellent service.  Underwood could not recall ever having travelled with such ease in his life before, but even so, he was still tired and cramped after hour upon hour in a carriage and wanted nothing more than his bed.  However, as Verity gently pointed out, they were very much in Cara’s father’s debt for their journey and their present habitation, so he availed himself of the hip-bath and admitted to feeling much more the thing after it.

The dinner proved to be much less of an ordeal than either husband or wife imagined.  The other guests were mostly old friends, in London for the same reason as themselves – Gil’s wedding.

Besides Cara and Gil, there were the Hanbury crowd. Consisting of Lady Hartley-Wells, who had lumbered down in her gigantic old coach with Miss Cromer, taking three days; Jeremy James Thornycroft, the legless Waterloo veteran, and his long-suffering wife Adeline; Dr. Francis Herbert and his wife Ellen and the ‘Wablers’ – Jeremy’s similarly injured compatriots.  They had all lost limbs or eyes at Waterloo, but such disfigurements did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm for life.  They promised to make Gil’s wedding an affair to remember and Underwood wondered at his brother’s bravery – or was it foolhardiness? - for inviting them.  They seemed unlikely companions for a staid clergyman of Gil’s stamp, but he was exceptionally fond of them all, as they were of him, and he had been known to exchange ribald comments with them on occasion, shocking all who knew him.

The others at the meal were unknown to Underwood, though he knew, of course, of their existence.  The first was Cara’s brother Trentham and the other her uncle, Lord Peter Lovell, who was accompanied by an incredibly exotic wife, Luisa, who proved to be an Italian ex-opera singer.  At a time when women who chose the stage as their living were regarded as little better than prostitutes, this marriage was evidently a love-match, but there was no happy spark between the couple which proved this supposition.  The husband, Lord Peter, was a surly individual, who glowered as his lovely wife sparkled and looked as though he wished himself anywhere on earth but here with his family. 

Underwood drank his wine, became pleasantly mellow and watched the developing situation with disinterested fascination, whilst appearing to be merely heavy-lidded with weariness.             

His chance to question his brother came when the gentlemen rejoined the ladies after dinner.  They had not lingered long over their port as Peter made it obvious he did not care to be away from his wife’s side.  He paced the room like a caged lion, tossing off glass after glass of port, then brandy and making even the normally quite serene Earl fidget in his seat, as though he was faced with a fractious child in possession of a loaded gun.  At last it was agreed that they should set up card tables with the ladies, much to the evident relief of all.

Since Underwood and Gil did not particularly care for cards, they were able to sit aside from the players and sip their tea, which they both much preferred to the port – though Underwood was fond of the occasional nip of brandy.  The women of the party were happily engaged in gossip of their own, so they were able to speak freely without being overheard.

“Well, Gil, it seems to me that your new relations are proving to be quite as intriguing as the old,” said Underwood, as he watched Peter Lovell, with obvious relief, seat himself within easy touching distance of his wife.  After all his requests to be allowed to return to her side, he now neither spoke to her, nor bestowed so much as a brush of his hand against hers.  Underwood would have felt no surprise had he swept her into an embrace and kissed her passionately, so fraught had been his reactions in the dining room, but there was nothing.  He merely sat and glowered in her direction, whilst giving scant attention to his hand of cards.

Gil followed the line of his glance then shrugged non-committally.

“Oh, you refer to Peter?  I admit he seems a strange fellow, but Cara professes to be very fond of him.”

“And you, Gil?  What do you think of him?”

For once Gil gave a straight answer to a question – and one which owed nothing to his usual attempts to find good in all mankind, “I should not care to find myself in his black-books, Chuffy.”

“Dangerous?”

“I feel so – especially where his wife is concerned.  He has fallen into the classic trap, and it is beyond him to deal with it.”

Underwood was at once alert, “Tell me more, brother.  What do you mean by the ‘classic trap’?  Did she fool him into a disastrous marriage?”

“Not at all.  No, the eagerness was all on his side.  According to Cara, Luisa told him that they should not marry, that it would be better for all concerned if he merely took her as his mistress, but he would have none of it.  Nothing but marriage would do for him, for he could not bear the idea that she might be free to take other lovers when he was not with her.  Now he cannot bear the knowledge that all his friends think him a fool for marrying a woman he could have had without ‘benefit of clergy’ as the saying goes.  He also does not trust her an inch.  He assumes that if she was willing to be his mistress, then she will be similarly light with her favours to others.  He does not understand, Cara says, that she was only willing to give herself to him because she was madly in love with him.”

“And is she light with her favours?” asked Underwood scandalously.  Gil gave him a reproving glance, “Really Chuffy!  How should I know?  I can only say I have seen no evidence of it, but what would I know of such things?  She is an incorrigible flirt, but I suspect that is merely high spirits.  She seems to me to adore her husband.”

At that moment her laughter echoed about the room and she waved her hand.

“Oh, but that is too delicious!  Where is my Pietro?  I must tell him.”  She turned her head and sought out her husband, then having found him, her delighted expression lit the room.  For the first time that evening Underwood saw Peter Lovell smile.  Without preamble he threw his cards into the centre of the table and rose to his feet.

“Dammit, Lovell, you can’t leave now!  I’m about to win a fortune from you,” protested Jeremy James, but Lovell merely threw him a disdainful glance, “You’ve won it, my friend, well done!”  With that he walked across to his wife.  Underwood could have laughed aloud at the expression on the ex-soldier’s face.  Triumph and greed at the size of the pot struggled with the frustration of realizing that he would never know if he had won fair and square.

Lovell, it seemed, did not care.  Apparently the mood of the dinner table was banished, for he took Luisa’s hand, bent over her to kiss her on the lips, then seated himself beside her, “What is too delicious, my love?”

Underwood ceased to listen when it because obvious they were discussing some minor scandal attached to one of their cronies.  His attention was on the card-players now.  They were mostly men, except Lady Hartley-Wells, who played regularly with the ‘Wablers’, and the Countess, whose main aim was apparently the curbing of her son’s worst excesses.  Trentham played to win, hated to lose and threw good money after bad.

As the engrossed Jeremy James shuffled in preparation for the next deal, the others observed Peter Lovell’s antics with his wife, their emotions, as plainly writ on their faces, a pretty even blend of amusement, envy and disgust.  Luisa was undoubtedly lovely, and had that almost indefinable aura which spoke of her allure between the sheets, but it simply wasn’t cricket for a man to show so crudely that he was in love with his wife.  It unmanned him in the eyes of those who had watched him leap to his feet and dash to her side, simply because she had raised her little finger.

Underwood began to understand more fully the thin line Peter was treading.  His entire existence must be a constant and agonizing pulling in every direction, trying to please others as well as himself.  An impossible task for anyone, but more so for one of his pride and arrogance.  How it must sting him when he saw the scorn in the expressions of his male friends, but he found himself unable to resist the lure of his lovely wife.

Small things became more and more evident as the evening drew to a close.  Underwood now noticed that both the earl and his countess treated their sister-in-law with icy civility – and not merely because they considered her a lowly addition to the family.  Underwood caught Trentham in an unguarded moment ogling his aunt-by-marriage in a very un-nephew-like manner.  This was, perhaps, not so very surprising.  Luisa was considerably younger than her husband, by fifteen or even more years.  Trentham was just nineteen and of an age to be captivated by the stunning face and figure of a romantic ideal, an exotic, foreign ex-opera singer with a vividly colourful past.  And as Underwood was only too aware, after the trouble into which he had fallen at the hands of a slimy rogue called Barclay Conrad, Trentham’s parents kept him on a very short rein.

No wonder the tension in the house was evident to all but the most insensitive of observers.  Certainly Underwood was no longer confused as to why someone as vivacious as Cara Lovell should have fallen head over heels in love with his rather too staid younger brother.  The poor girl was obviously looking for a haven of peace and harmony.

The mystery of the banishing of the Lovells to a rented house was also solved. Even Underwood, who took no note of convention, had thought it rather odd that the Earl had failed to invite his own brother to reside under his own roof.  The reason was now painfully evident.

It was with some relief that he was claimed by his wife.  As Verity looked up into his eyes, her own very expressive orbs told him that she too had been taking note of every complicated emotion which pervaded the atmosphere.  He kissed her hand, never more grateful that he had her for his own, and need never again put himself through the torture of insecurity and passion which held Peter Lovell in thrall.  Verity often assured him that she would love him forever – but should she ever cease to do so, he would be the first to know!  Strangely enough, that was a comfort to him.

As is usually the case, almost everyone decided that the evening was over in the same instant.  It took only one brave soul to admit they were ready for their bed, and within minutes the hosts and guests were gathering in the hall.

In the general confusion of capes, cloaks, greatcoats and stoles being claimed by their various owners, Underwood, as was his wont, stood slightly back and allowed the melee to go on without him.  In doing so he glanced about him and after he had taken in the grandeur of the hall, with its high ceilings and lavish decorations, he happened to catch sight of a small figure waiting patiently by the doorway which led to the servants’ quarters.  His first reaction was surprise that a child should have been allowed to stay up so late, but upon closer inspection he realized his error.  It was not a child, but a man, though one who stood not much higher than three feet.  From his garb it would seem he held the position of footman or personal groom to a lady, and when Luisa Lovell turned and called to him, everything became clear to Underwood.  Only Lady Luisa Lovell could have a dwarf for a manservant – and only Peter Lovell could allow it, knowing that in this servant, at least, there was a man whom his wife would never look to with lustful eyes.  That, however, would count in only one direction.  From the way Giovanni’s face lit up when she beckoned to him, he was quite as smitten by her as most other men.

Underwood once again thanked God he had found the love of his life – the very thought of such messy emotions as these here displayed quite horrified him.  He felt nothing but the profoundest pity for the man who had fallen in love with and married the Italian temptress.

*

After breakfast the following morning, the Underwoods proposed to take a walk in the park, to give Horatia an airing, but they were rather taken aback to find that their family outing was suddenly turned into a household jaunt.

Upon being asked their plans for the day, Verity had innocently admitted to the walk and at once Luisa had turned pleading eyes upon her husband, “Pietro,
caro!

C’e il sole!
  The sun is shining – please take me to the park.”

He shrugged with great good humour; “I have no objection, if Mrs. Underwood does not mind our company.”

“Not at all,” Verity hastily assured him, cleverly hiding her disappointment.  She valued her time alone with her husband and daughter above all things, “But I must warn you, Horatia can be very demanding.”

Luisa sank to her knees, enfolding the giggling child in a smothering embrace, “But I love bambinos – I mean babies.  My husband disapproves of my returning to my mother tongue, Mrs. Underwood.  Is he not foolish to feel so?”

Mrs. Underwood was not about to come between husband and wife on that, or indeed any other subject – especially not when that husband was the tall and imposing figure of the Earl’s younger brother.

When Underwood rejoined them, having gone briefly back upstairs to refill his snuff box, which had become sadly depleted the night before, due in the main part to the Wablers, who all liked to imbibe, but who couldn’t be bothered to keep their own sorts, he found the party now numbered ten.  If he was at all surprised or disappointed to have his family thus invaded, he made no mention of it, merely suggesting that a request for a cold collation and wine be sent to the kitchens, with orders that the food be packed in baskets and delivered to the park in due course.