The Shocking Miss Anstey (9 page)

He moved slowly up the path, drawn to her in a glow of pleasure. She was not Anice. She was in another world from Anice, but for the moment he could not think of that. They were separate and would never meet. But instinct had been right. There
were
other people in England, and here was one of them.

She heard his slow footsteps and turned to face him. Her brother turned with her, remembering his duties.

‘I’ve a friend,’ he said quickly. ‘You’ll have my message. Captain Grant.’ He paused for the proper moment. ‘And my sister, Lady St. Hollith.’

‘You’re most welcome, Captain.’

Her voice was firm and pleasant, but he noted her use of his rank. She had done it easily, as if she were used to it, and he remembered that she would be. Then she stretched out her hand, and at once he was bowing over it.

‘I hope I’ll not be a trouble,’ he said. ‘I feel an intruder.’

‘Of course you aren’t. I’ll be glad to hear more of you.’

‘It’s kind of your ladyship.’

‘Don’t call me that. It doesn’t fit me--here.’

‘Then don’t call me Captain.’ He moved a little closer and was looking into her eyes. ‘It’s not needed either. The less formality, the better.’

It was Lord Barford, quiet and tactful, who exploded the mine. He had no intention of doing that. He merely turned to his memories and spoke of the past, and he could hardly be blamed for the effect he had on Grant. He did not know the circumstances, or--as he might have put it himself--how the cards had been dealt.

It came at the end of the week, on Grant’s third morning with the Wickhams. They were at leisurely breakfast together, that cool and golden morning, when a footman came from the Manor House carrying a note from Lord Barford. It was in his own laconic style, asking briefly for the company of Captain Grant at dinner that day.

‘What shall I do?’ asked Grant.

‘Go,’ said John. ‘You’ll get a decent dinner.’

‘What does he want me for?’

‘Talk about his son, I should guess. I gathered the other night you knew him.’

‘Very slightly. In fact----’ He stopped, half irritated by the whole thing. ‘Are
you
going?’

‘He knows I’m busy.’

This meant his father’s affairs. He had been busy with them since his return, pressed by an attorney who seemed to think that the late Sir Harry Wickham had been more a soldier than a man of business. Apparently there were difficulties, and the attorney was due again that afternoon, a prospect that did not seem to please John. He pulled a wry face, and across the table his sister laughed softly. Then she turned to Grant.

Tm afraid you’ll have to go,’ she told him quietly. ‘It’s Uncle Barford’s way. He thinks he’s head of the family.’

‘Isn’t he?’

‘Not of this one, even if my mother
was
his sister.’

‘What does he want me for?’

‘Hasn’t John told you?’

‘Barford’s son?’

‘Yes.’ She looked steadily at him. ‘You wouldn’t think he has soft spots. He’s rather a man of the world, all polish and manners, but he’s soft in
that
spot. He likes talking about the boy. So if you knew him----’

‘I hardly did. I never served in
Royal Sovereign,
even if I did meet her midshipmen occasionally, and to be quite honest I can’t really remember which of them he
was.
There was a red-haired tearaway who was certainly heir to someone, and a fair-haired youngster who---‘

‘That’s the one.’

‘So you remember him?’

‘In a village?’ Again the soft laugh came. ‘I think he was good-looking enough to make any girl remember him. I was only fifteen, mind you, when he was last here, and I suppose he’d have been about eighteen. That was his last leave, and he kissed me in the park under the trees-----‘

‘Oh ho!’ said her brother. ‘You never told me that.’

‘No?’ For an instant her eyebrows lifted. ‘You were an ensign then, John, very fine in scarlet, and I never asked how many girls
you
kissed--here or elsewhere.’

‘It was elsewhere. There weren’t any here.’

‘There was at least one, and you know who
she
was. However...’ She turned sardonically back to Grant. ‘Dick Barford was the fair-haired one, if that clears your memories at all.’

‘Yes.’ He spoke thoughtfully. ‘I suppose he joined
Royal Sovereign
after that---‘

‘And didn’t come back. Precisely.’ She nodded shortly. ‘He wasn’t the only one. So you’d better go and talk to his father. Or listen to him.’

‘It sounds delicate. How of his mother, by the way? I take it that Lady Barford is dead?’

‘No.’

‘Then---‘ He stopped short as he met her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There has never been a Lady Barford. He didn’t marry.’

‘Oh!’

‘It’s common enough.’

‘I suppose so. Who was the mother?’

‘Someone in the village. That’s common enough, too.’

‘The only thing that isn’t,’ said John suddenly, ‘is that Barford was honest about it. He owned the boy and looked after him. Apple of his eye, as Mary says. It sometimes works that way.’

‘Ye-es. Well, I suppose I must go.’

It was scarcely half past three when he walked across the park in the warm sun of afternoon. He went past the lake, and as he came to the fringe of cedars he saw Lord Barford, now in a sky-blue coat above his pantaloons, walking on the lawn before his library windows. His greeting came at once, and they exchanged politenesses until they were settled in the library with the sherry and a rich dark madeira to support it.

‘They go together,’ said Barford, ‘the one bringing out the flavour of the other. It’s a taste that can be criticized, I know.’

He said it lightly, as if to hint that he was not to be disturbed by that, and he glanced through the open window at the sunlit lawn before he spoke again. He was very much at ease, and he seemed to appreciate his surroundings as well as the wine.

‘Do you know John Wickham well?’ he asked. ‘Hardly as much. Just a week together, in a ship I commanded.’

He explained what they had done, and Barford listened carefully, asking a question or two that showed him as the man who had been Ambassador to Lisbon and knew something of the operations on that coast. Then he gave a smiling nod.

‘A pretty piece of work,’ he commented. ‘I’ll congratulate you both. No, I mean it. I’ve said I’ve a bond with the Navy, and as for John--well, apart from his own merits and its being my own regiment, I’m glad for his father’s sake. He was my good friend.’

‘Sir Harry Wickham?’

‘Sir Harry Barford Wickham, to be exact. It’s a family friendship, you see. His father and mine were in the regiment together, and they sold out together. Seventeen-forty-six, that was, after Fontenoy and the Jacobite affair.’

‘And Wickham settled here?’

‘Oh, not at once. He had an odd adventure first, but he was here four years later with another man’s--well, I won’t say wife, but another man’s widow, a very recent widow. They arrived together, most lovingly.’

‘With the village witch, I hear?’

‘Oh, you’ve heard that, have you?’ Barford sat back, and for an instant he paused, with his eyes thoughtful. Then he went steadily on, with nothing but polite interest showing in his face. ‘Yes, she came with them--young and charming, it seems--and they seem to have thought the world of her. But we seem to be forgetting the wine. I told you that madeira follows sherry.’

He leaned forward for the decanter, very much the host, and carefully filled the glasses. Then he sat back, holding his wine to the light, glancing for a moment at the lawn and the graceful cedars.

‘All I was trying to say,’ he went on, ‘was that the Wickhams are almost of my family. Harry Wickham and I were almost brought up together, and he married my sister. Now he’s gone, by a stray musket shot, and I feel alone. You’ll call me a man of sentiment, perhaps?’

‘Indeed I shall not. I’ve seen too much of war.’

‘I beg your pardon. I should have remembered. We’ll say a man of sensibility--if it’s not a term of contempt in these days.’

‘Surely not?’

‘Things are not what they were. An evil wind has been blowing from France, a wind of change and violence--of revolution, as they called it---and the graces have withered. A man of breeding is now a man who breeds dogs, or perhaps horses--which is not what we used to mean. But I become trite. All I wished to observe was that you and John did a very pretty operation together, and I’m glad of it.

John, when all is said, is my nephew, and you---‘ He stopped, holding it in suspense for a moment, while he seemed to contemplate his wine. Then he spoke deliberately. ‘I had hoped, of course, that friendship with the Wickhams would be continued in another generation, but it is not to be. You know why.’

He had come to it at last, as Mary had said he would, and Grant looked straight back at him, making no pretence to misunderstand. He thought he had better grasp the nettle and be done with it.

‘You mean your son?’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t pretend that I knew him very well, and of course it’s ten years since Trafalgar. But I do remember him. Tall and fair-haired, and rather good-looking.’

‘Uncommonly good-looking. I can say that, because it did not come from
me?

Again his eyes moved for an instant to the peaceful lawn, the trees and the cloud-flecked sky above, and he seemed to hesitate. Then from his fob pocket he took a slim gold locket and held it for a moment in his hand before he opened it. He took another long moment, and then spoke steadily.

‘I had it done on his last leave. He didn’t like sitting for it, but I persuaded him, and I’ve thanked God ever since.’

He held it out, obviously a miniature of his dead son, and Grant leaned dutifully forward to take it. He knew he must show a proper interest, one that it was hard for him to feel, and he tried to compose his expression as he took the locket and its portrait of the boy who had died at Trafalgar. Then he looked carefully. ‘Good God!’

The words left him before he knew of them. It was the face of a boy, set above the familiar blue of a midshipman’s jacket, and it was not effeminate. The sex was unmistakable. Yet it was Anice who was looking at him from the pool of ivory. The artist had captured something, the mischievous smile, the crinkling forehead, the expression in the eyes, and he had never a doubt that it was her. Or, rather, it was
not
her. He knew it was not. It was a boy, a boy he had known, and the forehead was his, and the shape of the chin. They were not of Anice, but the smile was hers, and the eyes, and all that was alive in the face, and it could not be by chance. It was too exact. It could not be counterfeit, and he knew that these two were kin. Anice could be sister to the boy, and if she were not quite that she must at least be kin. Yet not, perhaps, to Barford, who was father to the boy. This face had not come from him.

‘What is it?’

Barford spoke suddenly, and Grant looked up, knowing that he must have shown something. Then, drawn to it compulsively, he looked again at the face in the ivory, seeing now the hair which had almost the gold of hers.

‘Who---‘

He stopped himself in time. He had been about to ask who it was, but he knew who it was. It was the boy, Barford’s son, his natural son.

‘It--it reminds me of someone.’

‘Of course--since you knew him.’

‘Yes.’ He was trying to get a grasp on things now. ‘He was certainly good-looking. His mother, perhaps?’

‘No one would say it was from me.’

‘With that hair--no. But who was she?’

‘Did they not tell you? I thought perhaps Mary . . .’ Barford leaned forward and took the miniature. He glanced at it and then sat back, sipping comfortably at his madeira while his eyes strayed to the trees and the sunlit lawn. He seemed at his ease, and he had even a touch of amusement as he went placidly on.

‘Strange forbearance. But we mentioned the village witch, who came here with the Wickhams. This was her daughter.’

‘The boy’s mother?’

‘Of course. Mary will tell you, if I don’t. So . . .’ Again he paused, and sipped his wine. ‘Ann Hart--that’s the charmer who came with the Wickhams--had a daughter a little later, and there’s some reason, by the by, to think that the father was a Wickham. But we’ll let that pass. She had a daughter. Her own hair and colour.’

‘Not a witch, I hope?’

‘In that sense, no. In another sense, I found her a witch indeed.’

‘I’m glad, my lord.’

‘You need not be formal. We are at wine.’

‘Excellent wine. But what happened to her?’

‘She died. And I was left with Dick. I did at least own him.’

‘One should, surely?’

‘Not many do. But I was too proud of him not to. I owned him at once, and I brought him here when his mother died. He was six years old then--a little fair-haired boy with curls and those deep-blue eyes, and he was all I had. He was just nineteen when the Frenchmen killed him, and I had not seen him for months.’

‘I know. It was endless, that waiting before Trafalgar. But was he the only child?’

‘As I’ve told you--my only son.’

‘Yes.’ Grant nodded, and knew that it was not so. ‘I thought there could have been a sister.’ ‘Not by me.’

The tone had changed abruptly, and Grant took the inference at once. There
had
been a sister, by another father, and Barford had not liked it. He did not like it yet, and it was a topic to avoid. But the sister--the face in the ivory came suddenly back to him--must surely be Anice, or
might
be Anice, and he could not leave it at that. He must find out somehow, but not at this moment. He glanced at Barford, and knew he must not. On this point the man needed careful handling, and the sooner he were diverted to something else the better. But there was Mary, who would certainly know, and possibly the whole village would know. Somebody would talk, perhaps gladly, but in the meantime---

‘Need we talk of this?’ Barford’s voice came suddenly. ‘It’s not a happy memory.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Not at all. Talk does drift, and sometimes unfortunately. Let us turn to something else.’ His courteous smile was showing again now. ‘I’d like to hear more of what you did along the coast these recent years.-Did you know I had the Lisbon Embassy for a while?’