Sheri Cobb South (18 page)

Miss Hollingshead turned quite pink in the face. “How can you say so, Mama, when it was you who invited him to accompany us?”

“Since Mr. Meriwether is our distant cousin, Emma, I could hardly exclude one of the family,” said her mother in quelling accents. “However, he was under no such obligation to accept the invitation once it was offered. His disregard for the needs of the parish makes me question his readiness for such a responsibility.”

“Yes, Mama,” Miss Hollingshead said woodenly, sipping her chocolate. But although her eyes were meekly downcast, her knuckles shone white on the elegantly curved handle of her cup.

The group rose from the breakfast table just as the butler entered the room with the information that the other merrymakers had arrived. After a general exchange of greetings all around, Lady Anne took charge of dividing the party into three smaller groups, more or less equally distributed among the three available conveyances.

“Cousin Colin, will you be so good as to escort my daughter and her governess?” she asked Mr. Meriwether, gesturing with one white hand toward the cumbersome Hollingshead carriage.

“I should be honored,” the curate assured her with every indication of sincerity. However, Lady Fieldhurst could not help noticing the light that flared briefly in his eyes only to be extinguished when the mention of Miss Grantham made it plain to him precisely which of Lady Anne’s daughters he was to accompany. Was Lady Anne truly so oblivious to the young man’s disappointment, the viscountess wondered, or did she take a certain cruel satisfaction in dashing his hopes?

“Mr. Kendall, we must not allow Lady Fieldhurst to return to London without having been tooled about in your new phaeton,” Lady Anne continued, giving her elder daughter an almost imperceptible nudge toward the only gentleman of the party who did not consider himself a suitor for her hand. “Mr. Carrington, if you would be so kind as to take Emma up in your curricle?”

The three gentlemen moved toward the various carriages in order to assist their fair passengers, and Lady Fieldhurst realized that the time for her performance was at hand. She gave a surreptitious tug to the neckline of her gray walking dress, reminding herself that she was, at least for the nonce, a merry widow engaged in an amorous intrigue with her footman and open to the prospect of a second intrigue with a gentleman of her own class. Thrusting her shoulders back in order to make the most of an admittedly small bosom, she edged away from Robert Kendall’s dashing vehicle and sidled nearer to Mr. Carrington and his more sedate equipage.

“Oh, my!” she exclaimed, clasping one gloved hand to her bosom. “I am quite terrified, Mr. Kendall. Such great yellow wheels! Why, I daresay we shall be sitting at least four feet off the ground!”

“Five,” he confessed with a smug smile.

“
Five?
Worse
and worse! Mr. Carrington, if I fall out of Mr. Kendall’s phaeton, you must promise to come at once to my rescue.”

Jasper Carrington did not disappoint. “I confess, I cannot feel quite safe in these high-perch jobs myself. If you would prefer to take a seat in my curricle—”

“I say, what a capital notion!” seconded Mr. Kendall with unflattering eagerness. “You will be much more comfortable with Mr. Carrington, and Emma—Miss Hollingshead—may ride with me.”

This proposal being agreed upon by all parties, it was quickly put into practice. Lady Fieldhurst allowed Mr. Carrington to hand her up into his curricle, then smiled coyly down at him.

“What an excellent carriage this is! I shall feel quite safe now,” she said, patting the seat invitingly.

He climbed up beside her, and soon they were bowling along at a smart pace with Mr. Kendall’s phaeton before them and the Hollingshead berline bringing up the rear. The sun had by this time grown quite warm, and Lady Fieldhurst unfurled a dove-gray sunshade adorned with black ribbons.

“How thankful I am to be in Yorkshire and not London!” she declared to her traveling companion. “I shudder to think of what the Metropolis must be like in such weather.” She suited the word to the deed, shrugging her shoulders in a way that made her bodice inch still lower.

“You should be thankful, then, that we are in England and not in India.”

While courteous enough, this tepid response to her unsubtle invitation suggested a most unflattering immunity to her charms. Still, Mr. Carrington had given her a golden opportunity to turn the conversation, and she did not hesitate to make the most of it.

“Were you very long in India, then?”

He inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Twenty years with the East India Company. In fact, it was in India that I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Danvers.”

“Did you, indeed?” asked Lady Fieldhurst, squirreling away this information for the future edification of John Pickett. “What a surprise it must have been for you, to discover that your acquaintance from the East was now your near neighbor!”

“Oh, it was no surprise. I knew he had taken up a position as rector of this parish. In fact, it was for that reason that I decided to settle here.”

“The two of you must have been very close,” observed the viscountess.

“Close?” Mr. Carrington shook his head. “I fear our personalities differed too much for intimacy. I was a rackety young man come East to make my fortune, and he was a missionary to the natives.”

“A noble calling.”

“Indeed it was, and it would have been difficult to find a man better suited to it. I believe he might have been happy to remain there for the rest of his life, had not his health necessitated his removal to a more moderate climate.”

His health, Lady Fieldhurst wondered, or his reputation? She had never seen the vicar’s illegitimate son, but if John Pickett were to be believed, the boy was as dark as a gypsy—or, perhaps, as a Hindoo. But if the missionary had fathered a son on one of the native women, surely it would have been safer to have left the child in India, rather than risk the scandal following him back to England.

Realizing that some response was expected of her, Lady Fieldhurst hurried into speech.

“And so Mr. Danvers returned to England for his health, only to meet with a vi—” She had almost said “violent,” then remembered that none of his neighbors realized the vicar had been murdered. “—Tragic death,” she amended hastily. “Life is full of ironies, is it not? But do not let us talk of such things on such a glorious day! Pray, tell me more of India! Are the women there very beautiful?”

“Oh,
very
beautiful,” he assured her. “Though of course they can’t hold a candle to our English ladies.”

“Very prettily said, sir,” applauded the viscountess. “And yet England’s beauties failed to tempt either you or Mr. Danvers to matrimony.”

“Ah, but marriage is a very different thing,” Mr. Carrington observed with a roguish smile.

Lady Fieldhurst laughed coquettishly, but in spite of her best efforts to draw him out, her companion never confided the least hint of romantic intrigue on the vicar’s part. If Mr. Carrington knew anything about Mr. Danvers’s indiscretions (which by this time she had begun to doubt) he clearly intended that the vicar’s secrets should die with him.

Satisfied (albeit disappointed) that she would get no more pertinent information from Mr. Carrington, she resolved to focus her efforts on Mr. Kendall. But when the party stopped in Knaresborough for a light luncheon, it was borne in upon her that she would have a rival for that young man’s attentions. At any other time, she might have found it amusing to watch Miss Hollingshead flirting outrageously with the young dandy while ignoring her once-favored suitor. At the moment, however, this obstacle to her plans left the viscountess feeling almost as frustrated as the despondent curate. Her position at the table precluded conversation, sandwiched as she was between the gallant but unforthcoming Mr. Carrington on her right, and the garrulous Miss Susannah on her left. Eventually their meal was completed and the party piled back into their various vehicles, but here, too, her efforts were thwarted, hoist, as it were, on her own petard: she could hardly ask Mr. Kendall to take her up in his phaeton now, after perjurously professing herself terrified of it.

At last the three vehicles lurched to a stop and their passengers disembarked, all save Miss Susannah rather stiff from the drive. The ensuing walk through a stand of beeches, while hard on Lady Fieldhurst’s new kid half boots, served to work out the soreness. By the time they reached the cave where Ursula Sontheil Shipton, renowned locally as a prophetess, had reputedly been born over three hundred years earlier, all seven were eager to explore the wonders of nature.

As they approached the Petrifying Well, Lady Fieldhurst saw her opportunity. Supposing that the six-and-twenty years in her dish would seem ancient to one only recently emancipated from Oxford, she abandoned the coquettish demeanor she had employed with Mr. Carrington, and instead drew from the example set by a number of dowagers who had terrified her during her first Season: expressing a wholly imaginary dread of turning her ankle on the uneven ground, she commandeered Mr. Robert Kendall’s escort. That foppish young man was not proof against a determined lady, and so with one darkling glance at Emma Hollingshead approaching the well on Mr. Carrington’s arm, he offered the viscountess his own. They exchanged polite commonplaces as they approached the sheer rock wall. Water cascaded over its face in a solid sheet, its flow interrupted at the base of the rock by various personal items—a glove here, a handkerchief there—in various stages of petrifaction. Miss Susannah, escaping from her governess, almost fell into the water in her eagerness to add her own contribution to the collection.

“What an excellent notion!” exclaimed the viscountess, and began to tug at the fingers of her black leather gloves.

“Here, no need for that,” protested Robert Kendall feebly, tugging off his own York tan glove with obviously reluctant chivalry. “Allow me.”

“Oh, but I insist, Mr. Kendall,” said Lady Fieldhurst with her most charming smile. “I am wearied to death with black gloves and welcome the opportunity to rid myself of them, if only for a little while. You can have no notion of how tiresome it is, being obliged to subjugate one’s own taste to others’ notions of what is proper.”

A disinterested observer might have pointed out that her walking dress, though sober in hue, was nevertheless in the first stare of fashion. Young Mr. Kendall, however, was far from disinterested. In fact, he was much struck by the hitherto unsuspected similarity in their respective situations.

“Say no more, my lady!” he exclaimed, regarding with new eyes this unexpected soulmate. “I know exactly how you feel! Although I am not in mourning, as you are, I have frequently been obliged to set aside some modish new garment because of my father’s antiquated notions of what constitutes appropriate attire.”

“How very distressing for you,” commiserated her ladyship. “Every feeling revolts at such unnatural restrictions! Of course, I must consider myself fortunate in that I am at least financially independent of those members of my late husband’s family who might seek to keep me in perpetual mourning, had they the power to do so. Others, I daresay, are not so fortunate,” she added with eyes demurely downcast.

“I suppose I must consider myself fortunate in that regard as well,” Mr. Kendall conceded grudgingly. “A modest competence from my godmother frees me from my father’s purse strings, if not his tastes.”

And so, thought Lady Fieldhurst, filing this information away for Pickett’s consideration, Mr. Kendall had no shortage of funds and therefore no reason to blackmail Mr. Danvers.

The oddities of the Petrifying Well having been exhausted, the group turned their attention to the nearby cave. Avowing their determination to remain together, the intrepid explorers armed themselves with lanterns thoughtfully provided by Mr. Carrington. To the satisfaction of the entire party, even Miss Grantham had apparently abandoned her intention of remaining outside, for she accepted a lantern willingly enough and led her enthusiastic young pupil into the darkness.

In spite of their stated intentions, it was perhaps inevitable that as they wandered deeper into the cave, whether by accident or design, the party split apart. First Miss Grantham and her charge stopped to examine a peculiar rock formation, then Mr. Kendall fell behind in order to remove a stone lodged in the heel of his boot. Lady Fieldhurst did not realize how isolated she had become, until she turned to address a remark to the curate, and found herself quite alone.

“Mr. Meriwether? Where are you?” The rock walls flung the question mockingly back at her.

“Mr. Meriwether?” she called again. “Mr. Carrington? Mr. Kendall?”

She held her lantern higher, but the meager flame failed to penetrate the inky blackness. Sir Gerald’s boyhood recollections of being lost in the cave flooded her brain with vivid clarity. Clearly it behooved her to locate the rest of the party without delay. Unfortunately, she had no very clear idea of which direction to go. She turned and, choosing her steps with care, began to retrace her path. Air currents from unseen crevices caused the flame from her candle to dip and sway, and for one terrifying instant threatened to extinguish it altogether. At last, the sound of voices reached her ears. Picking up her pace, she moved in the direction from which they seemed to come. As she drew nearer, she recognized the voice as that of the curate, Mr. Meriwether.

“Will you not even speak to me? What have I done to give you such a disgust of me? Surely you must know that my feelings for you have not changed!”

“It is not your feelings that disgust me, but your actions!” Lady Fieldhurst was not surprised to learn that his companion was none other than Miss Hollingshead.

“My actions? Of what are you accusing me, Emma?”

“Where did you go when you left me that night? You could not have returned to your rooms in the village, for the bridge was out. So I ask again—where did you go?”

The simple question was followed by a silence which spoke volumes. For a long moment, there was no sound except the distant gurgling of a subterranean stream.