The English Witch (21 page)

Miss Ashmore nodded.

"But I'll tell you, my dear, your father was not so very distressed by that note—though of course he grumbled and carried on. I was most pleased, as you can imagine. For you see what this means. Now, at last, you may have a proper Season."

Miss Ashmore must not have appeared as delighted at this prospect as the countess had expected, for her ladyship went on reassuringly, "Well, of course you must, Alexandra. Will's behaviour last night does make one wonder whether he's settled and mature enough to make an acceptable husband. I recognise, of course, that the gentlemen must indulge, but it is very bad form to show the extent of the indulgence. A man who cannot hold his liquor had better not drink it in the first place. Most especially not when he is endeavouring to win the esteem of a gently bred woman."

***

In the event the implications of this breach of etiquette had not already occurred to his lordship, his sister was in the process of bringing the matter forcibly—and at altogether unnecessary volume, he thought—to his attention. She stood over his bed of pain delivering a scathing lecture of nearly an hour's duration. This he was forced to endure in relative silence, having learned at the outset that no one knew anything of the aborted elopement. All assumed that Miss Ashmore had been sleeping innocently in her own bed the entire night.

When his sister—with the parting declaration that she fervently hoped Miss Ashmore would give him his
congi—
finally took herself off, Lord Arden considered the facts as he had them. It was not easy or pleasant to do so. His head felt as though his horse had been dancing upon it, and twice he had to abandon his meditations in order to retch into the chamber pot. Nonetheless, sick as he was, he saw plainly enough the fine hand of Basil Trevelyan in this business. Trev's sudden appearance so late at the gala. Trev finding him on the terrace.

Damn the intriguing, interfering devil!
He'd arranged matters very neatly, very neatly indeed. The marquess could hardly accuse him openly without admitting his own guilty secret—and if he did, he must implicate Miss Ashmore. His hands were tied. After his allegedly low behaviour of last night, he must count himself lucky if allowed within fifty miles of the young lady. And, for the moment at least, there wasn't one blessed thing he could do about it.

***

"Basil?" Lord Hartleigh repeated, looking at his guest as though the fellow had just escaped from Bedlam.

He had, it was true, expected an apology. But the gothic accusations that followed made the earl wonder whether the young man should be sent back to bed and a physician called in. In the next few minutes, however, as Will summed up the suspicious circumstances, Lord Hartleigh was forced to admit to himself that this tale was very much in Basil's style.

"You know me, Hartleigh," the marquess pleaded. "When have you ever seen me make such a cake of myself? Why, if you called all Dessing's servants together and questioned them, you'd find I had no more than three glasses of champagne altogether."

"So you suspect Basil somehow slipped something into one of those glasses?"

Though Lord Arden meant other glasses at another place, he nodded grimly.

"Why? What had he to gain by it?"

"I'm not sure," the marquess hedged. "Though I can make a good guess, and I mean to set him straight."

"Well, that's only natural. Though I might add it's also a great waste of time. Basil can't be set straight. It's physically impossible. Besides, he's gone after Mr. Burnham."

"Yes, and I'm going after him."

"Now, Will, don't make a mountain out of a molehill. Whatever you suspect—"

"It's no secret that I have been endeavouring to win the affection of the young lady under your roof," Lord Arden interrupted rather pompously. "Last night's events are not calculated to inspire her confidence. I intend to clear this matter up—and with it my character."

In vain did the earl attempt to pour oil on the troubled waters. Will was determined to find Basil and wring the truth out of him. That failing, he would, he hinted darkly, seek revenge.

Well, if he must, he must. Lord Hartleigh shrugged. Basil could take care of himself. Fortunately, not having the remotest idea where his cousin had gone, the earl was spared the disagreeable necessity of offering Lord Arden any other assistance than a reluctant "Godspeed."

Lord Hartleigh, as was his habit in all things, confided the matter to his wife and was a little surprised to see her intelligent blue eyes lit with vexation.

"Gone after him?" she repeated. "And you let him, Edward? Gracious God! What if he kills him?"

"Of course he won't kill him. They've been playing pranks on each other and vowing revenge since they were boys. Will isn't about to risk disgrace and exile on account of a mere female—regardless how much he thinks he wants her."

"I still don't like it. This whole business has gotten completely out of hand."

"Which is what I predicted in the first place. There's nothing you or I can do now. Except, perhaps, report to your mother—as if she doesn't know already."

"Gone after him?" Lady Deverell repeated, bored past all expression. "How very wearisome in this heat." She returned her attention to the book that lay in her lap.

"Mama!"

"Yes, my love." The viscountess did not look up.

"What are we to do?"

"I suppose," Lady Deverell answered vaguely, apparently preoccupied with the book, "we shall have to dress soon. We are promised to the Osbornes for dinner. How distressing for them. With the three gentlemen gone, the numbers at table will be sadly out. How tiresome for Mrs. Osborne when she goes to so much trouble."

"She won't be tired at all if there's gossip to be gotten out of it," Isabella retorted. "I daresay it's all over the county by now after that scene at Netherstone. Mr. Burnham runs away, and then Basil goes after him for no apparent reason, and then Will after
him.
I wonder who'll be next?" She cast a speaking glance at her mother. In answer she received a world-weary shrug followed by a world-weary sigh. "I suppose," she told her provoking parent, "I had better let Miss Ashmore know of it.”

"Why on earth should you do that, my love?"

"Because," was the exasperated reply, "she's bound to remark Will's absence sooner or later, and though you like to tease and make secrets of everything, I do not."

"Why, Bella, my darling, what on earth are you in such a bother about?"

"You, Mama. You know exactly what is going on and you tell me nothing, only sit there like the Sphinx. As though it were the most natural thing in the world that a quiet, studious gentleman like Mr. Burnham should take it into his head to run away. Or that Will Farrington, whose head for spirits is harder even than Papa's, would drink himself insensible. Or that Basil, who makes such a scene about going to London, should turn up at the Dessing's party five days later—and the party half over. Really, Mama, what a ninnyhammer you must think me."

Lady Deverell looked up from her book with a blank little smile. "Why, my dear, now you mention it, it is rather odd, is it not?" She shrugged philosophically. "Still, there's no accounting for the strange starts men will take. Don't trouble yourself about it, dear. Pray do not. I daresay there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything."

"Oh, I daresay there is," Isabella muttered, sarcastically. "Oh, indeed, there must be. And I'm not about to find it out from you, am I? No, of course not. Why should you condescend to tell your daughter anything?"

The viscountess only chuckled while Lady Hartleigh, feeling much inclined to shake her aggravating parent until her teeth rattled, told off the Fifth Commandment to herself and exited from the room.

Though she was in the company of her godmother when the news was told, Miss Ashmore could not keep her voice steady. "Gone after Mr. Trevelyan? Kit why on earth should he do that?"

"Will claims he wasn't foxed at all," Lady Hartleigh explained. "He insists that the little he did drink was adulterated with something else, and that it was Basil did the mixing."

Alexandra was very surprised to hear her godmother explode with laughter, as was Lady Hartleigh. The two stared at the older woman.

What on earth,
Alexandra wondered,
was so funny?
Basil was in danger. He could be dead—even now—at Lord Arden's hands. It was horrible, and Aunt Clem was laughing!

"Now, now Alexandra. Don't take on so. Why, child, you look as if you'd seen a ghost. You too, Isabella. Why, of course it's nothing. They are always at each other, those two. Have been since they were children. Oh, but it is monstrous amusing." Lady Bertram wiped away the tears, chuckling as she did so.

"Yes," Isabella seconded, though with less assurance. "That is what Edward says. So you needn't worry about Will. He'll come to no harm, I'm sure."

It had not occurred to Miss Ashmore to worry about Will, but she didn't mind having this convenient excuse for her too-obvious agitation. She got through the rest of the conversation with as much poise as she could muster, which was little enough, though no one seemed to notice.

She managed to muster a bit more that evening when they dined with the Osbornes and some others, though the visit
was ghastly. Those dreadful girls carried on so about the gentlemen's absence and dropped such thinly disguised hints about her devoted marquess's desertion that Alexandra wanted to throttle them. The Mama was even worse with a horrid smile pasted on her fat face as she asked two hundred times where all the young gentlemen had gone, and why and how.

The evening dragged on interminably. Between worrying about Basil, hating the Osbornes, and pretending all the while to be perfectly at her ease, Miss Ashmore was nearly dead with exhaustion when she climbed into the carriage to return to Hartleigh Hall.

Finally she could retreat to her bedroom, where the cumulative effects of not sleeping or eating properly and being consumed by anxiety resulted, quite logically, in hysteria.

The others were not unduly alarmed about either Basil or Will—but then, they didn't know what had actually happened last night. Though, when you came right down to it, neither did she. Obviously, Basil had had a hand in Randolph's disappearance; and given what he'd done to Will, Alexandra was afraid to imagine the criminal means employed in her other fiancé's case. She was afraid that even if Will didn't get to dispense his own justice, others would.

Basil lying cold and lifeless on the ground. Basil dangling from the end of a gibbet. Such visions were not conducive to rest. She lay awake, frightened and sick at heart and, yes, angry as well. It was bad enough to have fallen in love with a libertine. To be besotted with a villain—a criminal—well, that was the very acme and pitch of stupidity.

It cannot be expected that even one of so philosophical a turn as Miss Alexandra Ashmore could wait placidly for the denouement. She wept a great deal more than she liked when she was private, though she was able to behave rationally enough in company. She was used to pretending, after all. The past three months, it seemed, had been spent in one performance after another. It was only in the loneliness of her bedroom that she let herself give way.

So it went: a performance by day and misery by night, as the days and nights passed and there was no word.

"Have what, my dear?" the gentleman asked mildly, removing his spectacles.

"That horrid creature is back again, and I'm sick of the sight of him. Wherever he goes trouble follows." Mrs. Latham collapsed into a chair, her ample bosom heaving. "Was it not he who came with that wicked man in the first place? Was it not he, back again just a few days ago? Now Marianne is
ruined.
Ruined! And the beast dares to show his face again, smiling and preening himself like a sneaky tomcat."

Her husband, who'd been thoughtfully polishing his spectacles during this tirade, now put them back on again. "But my dear, he's not the tomcat who made off with your daughter. So hadn't you better have him shown in?"

There were ominous signs that his calm assessment of the situation would drive his wife into one of her hysterical fits. Happily, he was able to forestall this dangerous prospect by means of quiet but firm words. In another five minutes, Mrs. Latham was herself again. She haughtily bade Mary show the gentleman in to Mr. Latham's study and then see speedily about some refreshment.

"Well then, Basil, it is just as we thought." Mr. Latham spread out a pile of papers before his guest.

"Actually, it's as Randolph thought. He was certain that Sir Charles's travel accounts had been well received though in a quiet way. My own experience with them showed that the baronet is a frugal traveller. Yes, his so-called patron had ample return on his small investment."

"Well, your aunt suspected as much, you know."

There was a brief silence—hardly more than a few seconds—before Basil answered, easily enough, "Did she now?"

"Or did I neglect to mention that she'd written to me after George returned her bank draft? Yes, it troubled me from the first," he went on, running his eyes over the sheet he held in his hand. "Until you got Randolph talking, I was stymied. George keeps his affairs mighty close. Fortunately, Randolph made a few accurate guesses about his father's business associates, and once I tracked them down it was a simple matter. Their records did not match with what George reported to Ashmore. He'd kept two sets of ledgers, you see. Such a pity, when Ashmore never bothered to examine the accounts."