Brothers at Arms (9 page)

The thought of having visitors was torture, because Joshua would have to pretend dutiful affection for his mother, whereas she made no such pretence. If he was lucky, she would ignore him, and he much preferred that to the acrimony to which she and Matthew usually subjected him.

Wanting to be first to see who arrived, Joshua and Charlie stood by the sash window at the end of the nursery corridor, while Sophie found a footstool on which to stand. From there, they all had a clear view of the front drive.

No sooner did they see a team of horses, drawing a carriage with big wheels, travelling at a thundering pace, than the lads hurtled down the back stairs to the lower floor, with Sophie running three steps behind.

They dashed through the back door and around the corner of the courtyard, to arrive at the front door just as the equipage swept to a halt. They gasped in delight as a groom leapt down and ran to the horses’ heads.

Seconds later, Roundthorn the butler emerged through the front door, followed by a couple of footmen to collect the luggage.

“Who’s this?” Charlie’s voice was full of awe.

“That’s my cousin, Moreton. He is the heir to Rushmore estate.”

“Like Matthew Norbery?” Charlie asked.

“Oh no,” said Joshua with a laugh. “Not like him at all.”

They might share the position of being heir to their respective fathers’ estate, but Lord Cardington’s eldest son was everything Matthew was not.

As Viscount Atcherly, Moreton Cardington belonged to the Corinthian set. He was a notable whip and excelled in all kinds of sporting activities. Known as a hard rider to hounds, he could shoot and fence with the best, and regularly sparred in Gentleman Jackson’s boxing club in London.

Whereas Joshua’s brother was hard-pressed to drive a gig, his older cousin arrived at Linmore, in advance of the family party, driving his racing curricle with a team of four perfectly matched chestnut thoroughbreds, from the renowned Rushmore stables.

As Joshua gazed at the driver, clad in the uniform of the Four-Horse Club, with a proliferation of shoulder capes on his drab-coloured driving coat, his pride overflowed, and knew that Charlie was similarly impressed. Then he sensed they were not alone. Intent on being first to greet their cousin, Matthew Norbery stood behind them.

“Out of my way, you…”

Joshua realised his position, but was too late to avoid a ringing slap to his head, which knocked him to his knees. When he scrambled to his feet, he realised Moreton Cardington was watching. More than that, this magnificent apparition had ignored his older brother’s overtures of welcome, and was speaking to them.

“Come on, brats, the team looks better from up here,” he drawled, and reached down to help the two lads clamber up the steps. When Charlie and Joshua were proudly settled on the seat he gathered up the reins, preparatory to taking the curricle around the sweep of the drive towards the stables. Instead, he stopped. “Good God, what have we here?”

He raised an eyebrow in surprise when he saw Sophie waiting expectantly with her foot on the first step. He took one look at her ferocious scowl, boomed out a laugh and took hold of the little hand she extended for help. With one deft hoist, she was on the platform at her brother’s feet.

“All right, little missy,” he said. “If you insist, then it’s the floor for you, and no squawking about me driving too fast. If you do, I’ll put you out to walk.”

If awe had a sound, then Sophie made it.

Joshua had never before known such kindness, but he knew he would have to pay for taking attention from his brother. If Matthew did not make him suffer, his mother would.

When the main party of visitors arrived, Lady Cardington immediately made her younger sister aware of her husband’s displeasure at hearing that the family of a cousin had taken Tom Norbery away from his political commitments.

“My dear Jane,” Lady Cardington said in her fussy voice for the third time in as many minutes. “Humphrey was absolutely shocked.”

That was a degree of impertinence Jane would not allow, and one to which she gave a tart response. “Yes, I dare say he was, Clarissa, though what it has to do with him, I do not know. When I sought Tom’s counsel, he took charge of the matter, and decided we could not leave the children in Ireland to be sent who knew where by their uncle – a man with no more sense of family than a stranger.”

“But Humphrey says Tom should not have allowed it…”

There were times when Jane could cheerfully have shaken her sister. Instead, she said in the sweetest voice. “Would you rather have our cousin Charlotte’s orphaned children treated like paupers, and be sent to a poor house?”

Being of a similar age to the daughter of her favourite uncle, Jane had a closer affinity with Charlotte than either of her sisters, and had lost a dear friend when she died.

“Of course not,” Lady Cardington dissembled, “but surely, there was not the slightest danger of that?”

Jane chose her words carefully. “I don’t know, Clarissa. After all, the man married his housekeeper. One doesn’t know what else he might have done.”

“His…?” Abject horror filled her sister’s eyes. One did not do such things.

“To avoid paying her wages, I expect,” she said. “It might well have been a prudent measure, for he did tell Tom his business was not in good heart.”

Later in the evening, when Jane recounted the conversation, Tom said, “Did I ever tell you that you have a wicked imagination, my dear?”

“I cannot deny the truth of that,” she said with a smile, “but I do thank you for being a dear, kind man. I shudder when I think of the life those children have led – especially Sophie.”

“I think Sophie has developed her own resilient way of dealing with events. As you saw with Matthew, she is a formidable opponent.”

“Mmm, I wonder what made her do that. It was almost as if she was punishing him for something.” She stopped. “Do you think it was because he bullied Joshua?”

“But she had only just walked through the door.”

“Yes, but he did make them welcome, when others in the family did not.”

“I wonder if you are right.”

Having planned the Cardington visit with one object in mind, Jane was prepared to endure almost any inconvenience, except the one to which she was subjected. Despite being told repeatedly that Kate lived on her side of the house and took no interest in anyone else’s activities, Clarissa insisted that their elder step-sister be brought into the party, which Jane knew was at Lord Cardington’s behest.

He had interfered many times over the years, for his notion of self-consequence knew no bounds. Jane also knew that Kate would not miss an opportunity to humiliate Tom, particularly in the light of recent events between Matthew’s friends and Joshua.

Watching Charlie, when he met Lord and Lady Cardington, Jane knew her cousin Charlotte would have been proud of her son’s good manners, whereas Sophie behaved towards the visitors with her usual degree of disdain.

At the outset, she wondered how Kate and Matthew would respond to Sophie, but she need not have worried. For a brief moment, the older black-haired woman subjected the younger pugnacious face to scrutiny; and then Sophie adopted the same attitude of unconcern as with Lord Cardington and walked away without uttering a word. Matthew, hovering in the vicinity of his Rushmore cousins studiously avoided her.

Inevitably, she had to listen to Clarissa’s complaints. “I didn’t know where to look, Jane. The child knew not how to behave in Humphrey’s presence. She stared at him in the most insolent way.”

Jane smiled to herself, and felt an affinity with Sophie. She too had the same problem maintaining a polite tongue in her head where Lord Cardington was concerned. He was a person who always knew best, and Clarissa was the perfect wife for him, because she never questioned his judgement, whereas Jane could not imagine a worse fate than being married to such a man.

She spent several interminable days listening to Clarissa’s childhood reminiscences of life at Littlemore House, on two afternoons of which Kate deigned to visit them for almost half an hour, before suddenly standing up and leaving the room without a word. Clarissa looked astounded, but for once Jane was in accord for her sister’s imperfect recollections brought her more pain than pleasure.

Normally active in household duties and visits around the estate, Jane found the perambulating schedule that Clarissa favoured unbearably dull, and her sister viewed the prospect of visiting the sick with distaste. How could two sisters be so different?

The only thing that alleviated her boredom was the knowledge that Humphrey Cardington was not of their number, having at the outset demanded of Tom a tour of the estate, during which he compared the ten thousand acreage of Linmore unfavourably with his property, which was half as large again. Tom bore his pomposity with greater equanimity than Jane would have done.

She knew that the peer had never understood or forgiven her poor taste in preferring the loving friendship of the heir to a lapsed barony, to an offer of marriage from an earl who was named after a royal duke of the Plantagenet line, whom he boasted amongst his ancestors.

When she declined, Lord Cardington had married Clarrisa on the rebound and Jane supposed with a chuckle that she was intended to regret it to her dying day. She annoyed him again, several years later, by refusing to marry his younger brother, a neck-or-nothing rider to hounds. It was just as well she did for shortly afterwards, Granville came to grief on the hunting field.

By then she was considered to be beyond redemption and relegated to the status of being called “Poor Jane”
–
a situation that suited her well.

“My dear Jane…” Clarissa uttered the same words each morning when they met to take breakfast.

What had Humphrey Cardington said now?
Jane wondered, and knew that she was about to find out.

“Humphrey thinks it is most unkind of Tom to keep Kate locked on the other side of the house…”

That Jane would not allow. “The doors are not locked, Clarissa,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Kate is free to run her household as she wishes without interference from us.”

“No, you misunderstand, my dear. Humphrey believes that if Tom and Kate were reconciled, he would be able to accept a title, and life would be much more comfortable for everyone. Just think of the inheritance it would be for Matthew.”

Everyone…? The thought almost deprived Jane of breath.

“Yes, just think about it,” she said in a dry tone. Kate and Matthew would decimate everything at Linmore within five years, and they had no legal claim to it. She sighed, knowing what would come next.

“If only you could persuade him… ”

“No, Clarissa,” she said, resisting the temptation to raise her voice. “I cannot and will not do it. Nor will I argue with you. I will simply ask you politely not to intercede in things that you do not understand.” She almost said interfere, but had no wish to offend before they had agreed to take Matthew and preferably Kate and Caroline to Rushmore. Until that was achieved she would tread softly. It seemed dreadful to be plotting to have a few weeks of freedom, but it was the only way.

She wondered what Humphrey Cardington would say if he knew that Kate’s father, Matthew Stretton, had ended his days on the scaffold, after being convicted of deliberately shooting dead a young man who accused him of cheating at cards.

Clarissa had not known, for she was married before Martha told Jane about the ramshackle family of lechers at Norcott Abbey. She wondered what her own father had thought about it when he had learned the origins of his stepdaughter’s violent tantrums, so characteristic of her family connections.

However difficult the present circumstances; it would serve no purpose for Jane to scream with frustration as Kate frequently did to gain attention. Nor could she reveal that she and Tom were trapped in a coil of Kate’s making. They had lived with the intolerable situation for so long, she wondered if it would ever be resolved.

However tempting it might be to shock Clarissa by telling her exactly why Tom would never dance to Humphrey Cardington’s bidding, there were young people whose lives would be ruined by such a revelation. The scandal would be immense.

It was all so complicated, and she was not going to create more upset when the purpose of inviting the Cardington family to Linmore was to resolve the problem with Matthew. The need to do that overruled everything else.

It was easier to pretend ignorance and change the subject.

“I presume that Fred will be joining the army soon.”

Jane said it because she had noticed the increasing friction between Fredrick, Lord Cardington’s second son, going on eighteen, and his father. She knew of his ambition to join a cavalry regiment and of his father’s refusal to let him out of his control. It caused great resentment, which resulted in many arguments and subsequent humiliation. Everyone must be subjected to his Lordship’s despotic command.

“Oh, no, you are mistaken,” said her sister. “Humphrey will never allow it.”

“Then he is a bigger fool than I thought,” Jane allowed herself to say with asperity. “The time for that was last year, after he overturned the chaise and almost killed the groom.”

Conscience-stricken, Fred had asked Jane to intercede when Lord Cardington dismissed the groom, whose head-injury reduced him to simplicity. Had Tom not shown compassion, Horace would now have been living in the poorhouse.

“But Fred might be killed…” wailed Clarissa.

“And he might do it driving too fast,” said her sister, ruthlessly pursuing an idea she had. “Tell me, Clarissa; how much would a pair of colours cost in a cavalry regiment?”

“Oh Jane, you can’t mean…” Clarissa said, her eyes widening in alarm.

“Yes, I do, Clarissa. I think I will ask Tom to make the purchase on my behalf. After all, Fred is my godson. It is only natural that I should want to help him.”

“But Humphrey would never agree.”

“Then he must be willing to pay the purchase price himself, and tell the world that he is proud of his second son. Otherwise, I will do it,” Jane said, knowing that to challenge Lord Cardington was the only way to stop him interfering in things that were not his concern.