Sweet Bargain (7 page)

The next morning brought the men and materials to restore the stable, and directing their work drove all thoughts of the trespasser from Nick's mind. He was beginning to understand his uncle's obsession with Haverly, with making something fine and enduring and
his
. He did not think of the attacks on his stream again until he came awake in the dark, his senses aroused by some subtle difference in the feel of the night around him. With his next breath Nick knew what it was. The waterwheel had stopped, and somewhere outside his room a fire was burning.

When he reached the burning timbers, timbers that only that afternoon had been numbered and stacked, he knew his project had been sabotaged, but he didn't stop to blink. He found Farre ordering the master carpenter's men into a bucket chain from the cistern to the blaze. A quick inspection showed that in spite of the stopped wheel, the cistern held enough water to put out the fire, so Nick joined the line. He passed bucket after bucket along the line of quick hands, his anger as palpable a heat in him as the fire that reddened his face and brought sweat to his brow.

With the dawn Nick and Farre and the master carpenter inspected the waterwheel and found the severed pulley that had rendered the machine useless. The carpenter took an optimistic view of the damage, assuring Nick that both the wheel and the stable roof could be restored by his workers. But Nick hardly listened. The odor of charred timbers was in his nostrils; Farre's face, weary and soot-smeared, was before him; and the prints of certain boots and paws were clear in the mud. His mind rapidly calculated the earliest moment when he could lodge his complaint with Mr. Augustus Shaw.

From the morning room Bel saw the earl approach the door of Shaw House. The haste of his dismount, the urgency of his stride, and the implacable expression on his handsome face told her he was not merely making a neighborly call. The bell rang with a note of jangling insistence she had not imagined such a mechanism could convey. Then Jenner knocked discreetly on the morning-room door.

"Miss Bel, Lord Haverly to see your father."

"Thank you, Jenner," she said, rising slowly. A little curl of steam drifted up from her teacup, and she regarded it wistfully. She wished her parents were home. Once again her father had gone to Hilcombe on behalf of the accused villagers, and this time her mother had accompanied him. Bel shook out her skirts. Jenner was holding the door for her.

"Dick and I will be about, Miss, should you need us," Jenner whispered as Bel passed.

Darkly clad, his back to her, Haverly stood looking out the tall windows at the far end of the rose drawing room. He did not appear to have heard her enter. His left hand hung clenched at his side, and his right slapped his gloves against his thigh impatiently.

She had imagined her next meeting with him would be at her uncle's dinner, surrounded by all the Shaws. There she meant to be cordial and indifferent, giving the earl no more than civil smiles and exchanging no challenging glances with him. With his sudden arrival at her door, she was embarrassed to have given any thought to the matter of seeing him at all. She did not know how to begin with him. He seemed so threatening in the soft sunny room with its chintzes, its vases of roses, its dusting of pollen on the polished tables.

"Good morning, Lord Haverly," she said. He whirled to face her, and she had the satisfaction of observing surprise and consternation in his dark eyes. Apparently she had thrown him off balance.

Nick recovered and turned away immediately. Had the man misunderstood his request? He could not see Bel Shaw just now. Seeing her so close would make him mush-brained, and the arguments he meant to make must remain clear in his mind. "I came to see your father," he said, "in his capacity as magistrate."

This bit of rudeness did little for Bel's resolve to play the gracious hostess in her parents' absence; nevertheless, she invited her visitor to sit, informing him that her parents were in Hilcombe for the morning.

"If you wish to relate your business to me, Lord Haverly, I will tell my father of it as soon as he returns," she offered, seating herself on a pale blue sofa opposite the window where the earl stood. He stared at her for a minute but made no move to sit in any of the chairs near her.

Relate his business to her?
In a room full of the unbearable softness of roses while she herself looked as delicate as petals against the sky. "
Will
you tell your father the reason for my call? I wonder, Miss Shaw. You may not wish to give my complaint to your father when you hear what it is."

"Lord Haverly, I am not in the habit of withholding messages from my father." The man meant to insult her again, and she was forced to remind herself that the earl had a claim to her father's justice and she must act calmly and justly in her father's place. She folded her hands in her lap and looked up at him with as civil an expression as she could manage. She would not offer Lord Haverly any refreshment.

"Very well," said the earl. He stood opposite her, his back to the windows now. "Tell your father I have been troubled since Sunday last with attacks upon my stretch of the Ashe, with persons who have polluted the stream, and dammed it twice." His gaze challenged her.

"I will."

'Tell him I suspect your brothers."

"No!" She jumped up and strode toward him, stopping just inches from where he stood. "My brothers have not been near your stretch of the Ashe since the day we met," she said, giving to each word a distinctness and emphasis that could hardly be mistaken.

He did not move or look away, but met her anger with an unflinching gaze of his own. "How can you be sure of that?" he asked.

Now she saw what folly she'd been guilty of in giving in to Auggie and her cousins that day. She had brought them all under suspicion. "My brothers are neither criminals nor sneaks. When we fished the Lower Ashe in the past, we did so openly, with the permission granted to the trustee. Your purchasing Courtland put an end to our fishing there."

"Yet you were fishing there the day I arrived. And that was poaching, was it not? Would not your brothers, resentful of my claim to the Ashe and encouraged by your own example, take vengeance on me if they saw the chance?"

"My example encourage criminal acts?" They had come to her next folly. In his eyes she saw his awareness of her petty revenge against him. Suddenly she felt small and childish next to him. The comfortable muslin she had chosen for a Saturday at home seemed absurdly girlish, her dignity impossible to maintain. Her hands shook, but she concealed their shaking in the folds of her gown. She was Augustus Shaw's daughter. Her brothers were not furtive, desperate characters with no respect for the law, and this earl could not insult them so. Did he in his pride imagine that the Shaws had none? He was unbearable. He deserved no justice from her. "I will tell my father you have a complaint to make, Lord Haverly."

She meant to dismiss him, he saw. It was time to nod and bow and withdraw, but though his mind understood her intent, his body would not obey. She was too near, and a taut weakness held him rooted to the spot. The morning sun streaming through the tall windows burnished her hair and the tips of her lashes, and her eyes burned blue. "It is not only attacks on the river, but wanton destruction as well. Last night someone severed the main pulley on my waterwheel and set fire to the timbers which were to restore my stable."

She gasped. He accused her brothers of no less a crime than the one of the poor villagers her father meant to defend. "You imagine my brothers were in any way responsible for such acts?"

He had provoked her defiance now. It was there in the deceptive sweetness of her voice. "I have evidence," he said.

"Evidence against boys who lay asleep in their beds while someone else set fire to your lumber and damaged your waterwheel? Acts which boys could hardly have done?"

She seemed now to imply that he was absurd, and her tone roused him from the lethargy that her nearness had created. His anger was back, and he felt powerless to contain it. For the first time in his life he had something that was wholly his, not Haverly's, not something carelessly abandoned by his parents, but his, and he would not endure any trespass against it. "Should I not accuse the only poachers I have caught in the act? Should I not suspect that those who would poach boldly by daylight would do worse under the concealment of night? Should I not suspect boys led by an unprincipled young woman, boys whose father knew my plans for Courtland better than any?"

"You accuse me of lack of principle? My father of indifference to his children's honor?"

"I do." They were glaring at each other now, and he was conscious of a desire to force her to drop her gaze from his.

"And this is the message you wish me to convey to my father upon his return?"

She was daring him, pushing him to say it, and he would. "It is."

For an instant she looked stunned. Then her eyes became cold. "Lord Haverly, as my father is the most principled and fair of men, he will want to know of these crimes against your property. I will tell him the facts as you have conveyed them to me. I will not, however, mention your accusations against the Shaws. Those you must make when you meet him."

She did not openly dare him, but the proud lift of her chin and the steadiness of her gaze told him he was being dared all the same. "I will," he said.

"Then, Lord Haverly, know this," she said. "I will never forgive you for your insults to my family. Good day." She gave him a curt nod and was gone before he had time to think himself a very great fool.

Saturday evening

Dear Tom,

You must know that everyone here has you in mind and wishes for your safety and prosperity. If it is foolish to wish for both, then you must allow us to be foolish on your behalf, for though you must encounter danger if you are to prosper, I hope it is very little danger compared with the greatness of the prizes you take.

Without word from you I cannot be sure which of my letters has reached you and must begin at the beginning of my news. We are troubled with a new neighbor, the Earl of Haverly. His purchase of Courtland Manor and lands has ended Father's trusteeship of that property and our pleasure in the Ashe. I am sure it need not be so except that the earl is a cold, arrogant, possessive man. His pride is unbearable, and I cannot begin to tell you the half of his insults to the Shaws. You would feel obliged to call him out and that would not do. You must concern yourself with the Turks, and I must fight this battle on my own. I am not without resources against such an enemy, and when you are home again, Tom, I will tell you of a small victory against the earl.

Of course, everyone toad-eats him but the Shaws, and he has taken us in dislike and accuses
us
of attacks on
his
stream and property. He made such accusations to me as you will hardly credit, suggesting that our brothers have been responsible for damming his stream and setting fire to timber on his property.

Father and Mother cannot see his arrogance. They see only the London air and fine coats. Indeed, Father takes the man altogether too seriously. If the earl summons, Father goes, like the veriest lackey in the man's hire. It is as if in purchasing Courtland, his lordship had purchased us all. Today, Father returned from hours of work in Hilcombe and rode immediately to hear the earl's latest complaint. And what is worse, Uncle Charles has invited the man to a Shaw dinner tomorrow night. Well, after what he has said to me today, I can hardly be civil to him no matter whose drawing room he enters, but I suppose it is rather unlikely that his lordship will deign to sit down to one of Aunt Margaret's dinners. It is too bad, really, for her custard might melt his arrogant heart.

No doubt you will hear more favorable accounts of our new neighbor from others, but you may trust me not to be blinded by the man's coats and the rumors of his vast acres.

Your loving sister,

Isabel

Chapter 9

THE RESULT OF gathering so large a family as the Shaws into so modest a room as the vicarage parlor was an unsettled scene, like the crowding of spectators at a mill or an auction. Yet from the threshold Nick was able to distinguish Bel Shaw among all her fair-haired relations. She was sitting on a faded green velvet chair, her golden head bent toward a small boy, who cupped some treasure in his outstretched hands, offering it to her. She might have been Titania on a moss-covered stump in the forest, so regal and solemn was her air, so delicate the gown that flowed over her knees.

As Nick was announced, she looked up, glanced coldly at him, and returned her gaze to the boy. Nick had a fleeting recollection of himself as a boy venturing into the drawing room during one of his parents' house parties and retreating at such a glance from his mother. The Earl of Haverly need not retreat, however, and he stepped forward. His host and hostess claimed his attention, leading him toward a red-haired gentleman of imposing dimensions, made grander by the brilliance of a yellow waistcoat. Beside him was a tall woman in white with an immobility of countenance that made her appear as if she were carved in stone. As Nick guessed, these were the Darlingtons.

Then the younger Darlington was presented to Nick.

Their eyes met, and Nick knew that his dislike of the man was reciprocated. Darlington's shoulders were every bit as broad as Nick remembered, the man's hands large and heavy, the face, handsome, Nick supposed. Women must admire such a face, with its smooth, regular features and cool green eyes.

"A pretty stretch of the Ashe you purchased, Haverly," said Darlington. "Are you an angler?"

"I've been known to flog a stream," said Nick.

"You'll be lucky to keep the Ashe to yourself then. The Shaws have fished that stretch forever."

Was there a deliberate challenge in the words, or did Nick imagine the mockery in them? "So I've been told," he replied.

"Lord Haverly," interrupted his host, "let me present my other brother." In the next half hour Nick encountered such a bewildering number of fair-haired, blue-eyed people named Shaw that he had to exert himself steadily to remember who was who. Twice he encountered members of the fishing party he had chased off his property. When presented, they responded like well-schooled children, but their eyes did not meet his, and their unease renewed the suspicions Nick meant to lay to rest. He was considering the sullen look of Auggie Shaw when dinner was announced.