The Ravenscar Dynasty (55 page)

‘I'm not surprised he wants to leave Oxford. You know as well as I do that George is not the best
student. He'll be nineteen this year, and perhaps we ought to try to persuade him to stay on…' She paused, shook her head. ‘Whether he will do that I just don't know.'

‘I don't either, he's always been a law unto himself, old George has.' Edward sighed. ‘He seems to think that because I went to work at nineteen he should do the same, but my circumstances were awfully different.'

Cecily remained silent, not wanting to let her mind go back to that terrible January eight years ago, when her husband and son, brother and nephew had died in Carrara. She couldn't bear the pain.

Ned told her, ‘I'm hearing the same song from Richard, too. He wants to leave Eton and come to Deravenels. To be my personal secretary, he says.'

‘Now why doesn't that surprise me?' Cecily remarked with a warm smile, thinking of her last child. ‘He's always worshipped you.'

‘And been extremely loyal to me as well,' Edward murmured. He shook his head. ‘I know Richard doesn't really like Elizabeth, but at least he makes an effort to be civil, even cordial. However, George is the bitter end, quite ghastly at times,
rude
, and he loathes my wife. I can't imagine why. He doesn't even know her very well.'

‘If only she could be less…
cold
, I think that's the best word to use. Not so grand, so…proud.'

‘I do love her,' Edward said, staring across the table at his mother. ‘And she loves me. Of course there are problems…at times, but then all married couples have problems on occasion.'

‘I hope you're not…leaving her alone too much in the evenings,' Cecily began, and then hesitated,
wondering whether she should continue, say more. She was on thin ice with this, she was well aware.

Her son saved her the trouble of continuing when he exclaimed quietly, ‘I don't have a mistress, Mother, if that's what you're thinking, and I haven't been
straying
. I promise you that.'

Cecily simply stared hard at him eloquently.

Laughter bubbled in his throat, and then he said, ‘I know you don't believe me, but I'm quite reformed.'

‘For how long?' she asked before she could stop herself.

‘I don't know,' he admitted, and gave her a regretful look.

The butler let Edward into his house on Berkeley Square. ‘Evening, Mallet,' he said as he shrugged out of his overcoat and handed it to the other man. ‘Mrs Deravenel asleep, is she?'

‘Yes, sir, I believe so.'

‘Right-o. Pour me a cognac please, Mallet, and put it in the library. I've some work to do before I go to bed.'

‘Certainly, sir.'

‘And you can lock up and retire yourself,' Edward added as he moved toward the staircase.

‘Thank you, sir. And goodnight, sir.'

‘Goodnight, Mallet.'

Edward climbed the stairs two at a time, and went quietly down the corridor to Elizabeth's bedroom. Opening the door as gently as possible, he went in.
Much to his surprise she was sitting up in bed, the
Illustrated London News
in her hands.

She glanced at him and smiled. ‘How was your mother?'

‘Very well and she sends you her best.'

‘Did she say if she's coming to the birthday party for Bess?'

‘She didn't, but she mentioned it, and I'm sure she's coming, sweetheart. What grandmother would miss the third birthday celebration of her little granddaughter?'

Elizabeth nodded. ‘I hope
I'm
there. I feel as big as a whale tonight…I might well give birth tomorrow and not March, as the doctor says I will.'

He bent down, kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘Everything's going to be fine, don't worry so much. You're healthy and strong.' He moved across the floor of her bedroom, opened the door to his room which adjoined, struggling out of his jacket.

A moment later he came back into Elizabeth's bedroom wearing a silk robe over his shirt and trousers. ‘I have to go downstairs and work for a while, darling. So don't stay awake, I'll be quite a while.'

‘But you will sleep here with me tonight, won't you, Ned?' she asked. ‘I do miss you when you use your own bedroom.'

‘If you're sure I won't disturb you in your condition.'

‘No, no, I prefer it when you're by my side.'

‘Then I'll be here…when I've finished my work.'

He went out into the corridor and climbed the staircase to the next floor, the nursery floor. Again he
crept across the landing, not wanting to awaken the nanny, and quietly opened the door to the girls' room. There was a tiny night light burning on a chest-of-drawers, and he could see that his daughters were fast asleep in their narrow beds. He went over, looked down at Bess; her red-gold hair was just like his and it tumbled all over her pillow. He smiled to himself, and glanced at Mary. The two-year-old was as blonde as Elizabeth, and very pretty. Fast asleep and sucking her thumb.

‘Sweet dreams, my sweethearts,' he whispered, and crept out.

Before going downstairs Edward returned to his own bedroom, moving quietly so as not to disturb Elizabeth. He took a piece of paper out of his jacket and put it in his trouser pocket. God forbid Elizabeth found it. Not that she would know what it actually meant. But he had no wish to inflame her in any way.

Although he had remained with her, there had been times when he had felt like walking out, leaving her for good. She was difficult to live with, especially when something came over her and she went berserk. Like the scene she created with Richard a few months ago, when he had come into the library at Ravenscar to find her behaving like a harridan with his brother. At this moment he could see her in his mind's eye: her face twisted with fury, Richard looking puzzled, as if he had been taken by surprise in some way, and didn't understand her anger.

‘What's going on?' he had demanded, staring at Elizabeth, going to Richard and putting his arm around his youngest brother.

‘He knows what's going on,' Elizabeth had shouted. ‘Ask him.'

‘You sound like a fish wife,' he had snapped at her, and looked at Richard. ‘Is there something you want to tell me, Dickie?'

‘I was taking a book out of the library, and Elizabeth became angry, I'm not sure why, except she said I couldn't take books. That the books belonged to her children, not to anyone else.'

‘Are you going insane?' he had demanded of his wife, a cold anger taking hold of him. ‘My brother can have anything in this house.
Absolutely anything
. Do you understand that? And you're not to scream and shout at him the way you do. My God, you're like a virago. Mind your manners, woman.'

He recalled that look on her face so easily, a look of hauteur, and of pride. ‘I merely said I didn't want it to get lost, that's all, Ned. The book is part of the leather bound sets of Shakespeare's tragedies, extremely valuable.'

‘I don't give a damn if they're worth a million pounds. You're not going to inflict your ill humour and temper on my family. And that goes for all of them, not only Richard. You are cold and mean with them, and I won't have it, do you hear?'

She had nodded, turned on her heel and walked out of the library, and he had sat with Richard for a while, comforting him. His brother frequently suffered at Elizabeth's hands. She liked to torment the boy, possibly because she was jealous of the relationship, jealous of his love.

Edward sighed, closed the door of the armoire,
walked across his bedroom, looked at himself in the mirror on the chest of drawers. The bruise on his temple had faded, was almost invisible now. Ten days ago it had been purple, and he had told everyone he had walked into a door. In reality, Elizabeth had thrown a heavy glass paperweight at him during another of her temper tantrums. Even though he had dodged when she had hurled it at him it had glanced across his temple, and left the bruise.

He remembered now how he had sat down heavily, holding his head. She had come to him, of course, full of apologies, worried that she had injured him, and she had. He had thrown off her hand on his arm, pushed her away as he had risen, and gone into the bathroom to examine himself. Now he glanced at the small writing desk where the paperweight sat. It could have killed him. She had been standing in this very room, going through the pockets of his jackets and trousers, looking for God knows what, evidence of infidelity he supposed. They had had one of their worst rows and she had thrown the paperweight, and if he hadn't been swift he might well be dead.

Shaking his head, Edward turned away from the mirror, and slipped out of his bedroom, went slowly downstairs. She was a bitch at times, no two ways about it. She had led him quite a dance since their marriage. And yet she could come to him, wheedle herself into his good graces again, suffuse him with passion and sensuality in bed, and make her peace with him. For a while at least. She would never change, he knew that now. And neither would he. He stayed with her because of the two girls, and because he wanted a family life.
She was tranquil now, but he never quite knew when she would explode, start a quarrel with him, or insult his relations.

Ah well, he thought. So be it.

Mallet had not only poured him a large cognac and placed it on his desk, but the butler had also stoked the fire. It was burning brightly up the chimney and looked as if it would burn on for hours.

Striding over to his desk, Ned sat down and shuffled the papers, looking for the notes he had made several days before. After months of digging he and Alfredo Oliveri had finally found the money Aubrey Masters had skimmed from their diamond mines in India, and hidden. Well, to be honest, he and Oliveri had not found it, the remarkable Amos Finnister had. When they had finally come up empty-handed after years of investigating, Finnister had decided to have Mildred Masters followed. It had been the widow woman who had eventually led them to her accounts—in various banks in the suburbs of London. Who would have thought of looking there? To avoid prosecution she had surrendered the accounts which contained the stolen Deravenel funds.

Edward had invested the cash, six years ago now, and from his recent notes he saw that he had quadrupled the money. He clipped the notes to the latest balance sheets, and closed the folder.

He went through another pile of papers, initialled many so that his secretary could file them away, and

then he sat back in his chair, glancing around the library.

He nodded to himself, liking this room, remembering how he had planned the library so carefully, wanting it to be perfect. Johnny had helped him, had given him some ideas. But in the end he had not copied either the Red Library at Thorpe Manor, which was far too red for him, nor his mother's library swathed in dark green and white. Instead, he had used wood panelling.

The room was lined with silver birch, and had burgundy-leather bound books from floor to ceiling on either side of the intricately carved fireplace. Above the fireplace was one of his favourite paintings, an oil by Alfred Sisley called
Le Givre
, and painted in 1872. It was a wintry landscape of bare trees and snow-covered moors, which reminded him so much of Ravenscar.

Bookshelves made of silver birch lined the other walls, and there were touches of dark burgundy in the heavy brocade curtains at the windows, and the sofa and armchairs upholstered in a similar burgundy velvet, while the floor was covered with a valuable Oriental carpet patterned in dark reds, blues and greens.

The house had been finished by the time he had married Elizabeth; fortunately, she had never wanted to change anything, sharing his taste for opulence, luxury, extravagant fabrics and mellow antiques. He remembered now how relieved he had been at the time.

He was also relieved that she had been relatively peaceful through
this
pregnancy. But then he had given her no reason to be challenging or contentious. He had not told his mother the truth earlier that evening when he had said he was reformed, and that he didn't have a mistress, that he hadn't strayed.