Part 23 (2/2)
Nash rose. He thanked Rothewell with perhaps somewhat less enthusiasm than he had greeted the man and took his leave.
Following his guest's departure, Lord Rothewell and his boon companion, the brandy gla.s.s, paced the floor of the study for a time. After some thirty minutes had pa.s.sed, he went to his desk and, with broad, decisive strokes, penned a few sentences on a sheet of his best letter paper. Then he went to the bellpull and summoned Trammel.
”I wish my coach made ready for a journey to Suffolk,” he said.
”Yes, my lord,” said the servant. ”Will you take the coupe or the traveling coach?”
”The coupe but I do not go with it,” he answered. ”I shall have need of the big coach myself on Thursday.”
”Very well, my lord,” said the servant. ”But where is the coupe to go?”
”To my aunt's house,” he answered. ”I have written Lady Bledsoe's address on this letter. I wish the coachman to deliver it to her in person. He is to await my aunt whilst she packs, then deliver her ladys.h.i.+p to her daughter's house in Grosvenor Street.”
”To-to Lady Sharpe's, my lord?”
”Yes,” said Rothewell in some satisfaction. ”To Lady Sharpe's.”
”But...but what if she won't cooperate, my lord?” asked Trammel.
”Oh, I think she will,” he murmured, taking up his brandy again. ”Yes, I think that this time, for once, Aunt Olivia will do the right thing-instead of the selfish thing.”
Chapter Twelve.
A Rendezvous in Hamps.h.i.+re Xanthia leaned her head against the gla.s.s of her brother's finely appointed traveling coach and watched the neatly whitewashed houses of Old Basing go flying past. Unfortunately, the jostling motion of the carriage proved too much. Xanthia sat up again and tried to focus on the world beyond. It was difficult, for she was burning with impatience-and with curiosity, too.
Three days had pa.s.sed between the morning she had left Nash's bed, and the afternoon he had arrived unexpectedly in Berkeley Square. Three days of utter agony. Three days of being unable to focus on her work, or anything else which mattered. Oh, she had gone through the motions, accompanying Louisa to a ball, a tea, and two musicales. Nonetheless, she could not have said with whom she had conversed, or what she had worn. Even her days in Wapping had been a blur. Everything, including her next breath, seemed to hang by a silken thread, awaiting Nash's next move-if there was to be one.
Well, move he had. And now she was en route to his home-and not in the dead of night, whilst hidden behind a veil, but as an invited guest. To his stepmother's birthday party. It seemed the sort of affair to which one would invite only one's closest and most significant friends. Did Nash hold her in such regard? Certainly he barely knew her brother. Kieran had insisted, however, that they go-which, the more she thought on it, seemed very odd indeed. He had made all the arrangements. He had written something to Aunt Olivia, though he wouldn't say what, precisely. And today they would arrive at Brierwood.
Already they had been five hours on the road, but it felt as if they were no closer to Nash. Xanthia was on tenterhooks-and yet filled with a sort of dread, too. Would Nash seem the same person when they were in the company of other people? What would his stepmother be like? Or his sisters? Would they like her? Did it matter? Good heavens, would people say they were courting?
It was all too much. Xanthia leaned against the window again, looking for something which might distract her. In the distance, she could see an ancient church, its squat gray tower stark against a near cloudless sky. Well-dressed men were streaming from the wide-arched doorway, and beyond them, by the churchyard, two gentlemen held open the lych-gate. They looked mournfully down the green slope at the pallbearers who were carrying the bier high on their shoulders. A funeral, then. Kieran's coachman had already slowed in deference to the dead.
”You look sad, Zee.” Her brother was paging absently through one of the magazines he had brought along. ”I hope I have not made a mistake in insisting on this trip?”
She smiled faintly. ”No, there was a funeral,” she said, gesturing at the window. ”That's why we slowed.”
”Ah.” Kieran lowered his head to better see, but the churchyard was vanis.h.i.+ng in the distance. ”Nevertheless, you have been squirming like an impatient child this last hour or better,” he remarked. ”It makes me think of the old days, when Luke would dress us up and drag us into Bridgetown for Sunday services-trying, I suppose, to be a parent.”
Xanthia sighed. ”It really does feel as if we have been traveling for weeks,” she complained. ”Why must England be such a vast place? And why must it always be so cold when one travels?”
Kieran turned his gaze from the window and laughed. ”Zee, England is a very small country,” he answered. ”You are used to the distances and temperatures of Barbados. And perhaps you are just a little anxious, too?”
Xanthia drew her cashmere shawl a little tighter and turned again to the scenery, this time the fertile, rolling fields of Hamps.h.i.+re. ”What did you say, Kieran, to Aunt Olivia in that letter?” she asked. ”Why won't you tell me?”
This time, he answered. ”I simply told her it was high time she came down to London and did her duty by Louisa,” his eyes suddenly dark and hard. ”And by Pamela, too. She is carrying the woman's grandchild, for G.o.d's sake. A week in town shan't kill her.”
”And she really is coming?” said Xanthia quietly. ”We have not abandoned poor Louisa, have we?”
”She really is coming,” Kieran rea.s.sured her, tugging out his watch and glancing at it. ”Actually, she is probably there by now. It is not so terribly far to Aunt Olivia's.”
In the confines of the carriage, Xanthia tried to stretch. ”I still think,” she said on a yawn, ”that you blackmailed her.”
Kieran hesitated oddly. ”Blackmailed her?” he echoed. ”With what, pray?”
Xanthia collapsed against the banquette and regarded him across the carriage. ”I've no notion,” she finally said. ”But I know Aunt Olivia cares for none but herself. To bring her to London in the midst of the season...oh, yes, I think you had some sort of trick up your sleeve, brother dear.”
Kieran's mouth merely quirked with humor. He returned his gaze to his magazine. Xanthia wadded up the carriage blanket she'd been wearing over her knees, stuffed it against the window, and rested her cheek on it. She drifted off to the rocking of the carriage and slipped into a hazy dream about Nash, who was wearing the black cloak and horns he'd worn at Lady Cartselle's masque and leading her through some sort of dark, twisting pa.s.sageway.
When she stirred to awareness sometime later, the carriage was lurching left to make a turn between a pair of imposing stone gateposts. The ma.s.sive monoliths were crowned with glittering falcons which were clutching golden orbs in their claws.
Kieran stared up through the carriage window as their huge coach swung through the gate. ”I wonder,” he said dryly, ”if Nash has to climb up there and polish those silly fandangles himself?”
She looked up at her brother, and blinked. ”We...we are there?”
Kieran nodded. ”We are there,” he said. ”And soon you may see Lord Nash in the flesh, my dear, and fly at him with all your burning curiosity.”
Alas, it was not to be.
”I am frightfully sorry to say that Nash has been delayed,” said Lady Nash in a cheerful, chirpy voice. She was escorting Xanthia and Kieran up the sweeping stone staircase, and into a ma.s.sive entrance hall laid with marble and dripping with gilt. ”Tony did not know until the very last moment, you see, that Jeffers had even died.”
Kieran's brow furrowed. ”And Mr. Jeffers was who, again, ma'am?”
Lady Nash smiled and clasped her hands in an almost saintly gesture. ”Their childhood tutor,” she chirped again. ”A lovely and most learned man. But he retired to Basingstoke, then he died. I have noticed that happens quite a lot.”
”I beg your pardon,” said Kieran. ”What happens?”
”Retainers retire-then they die.” Lady Nash seemed to take it as a personal affront. ”I think the physicians should look into it. It is such a frightfully odd coincidence-and then one must deal with the funeral, mustn't one? It is such a dreadful inconvenience, but Tony and Stefan-Nash, I mean-well, they could hardly pa.s.s right by the service, could they, when it was to be on their way here? Of course they could not.”
”Indeed not, ma'am,” said Kieran, though it hardly seemed necessary. Thus far, Lady Nash had answered all her own questions-and quite thoroughly, too.
Xanthia could already see their hostess might not wear well with Kieran. She was the sort of overly cheerful, pleasantly dull woman who twittered, and emphasized every other word as if it might be her last-and her most important. But it would be neither. Five minutes into their visit, Xanthia was confident Lady Nash would go on yammering from beyond the grave. The woman had not flagged since the moment she'd greeted them in the carriage drive.
”Now!” said her ladys.h.i.+p brightly. ”You really must be worn to a thread. Why do I not show you to your rooms? And then the girls would so much like to have tea with you, Miss Neville-and with you, too, Lord Rothewell.”
Footmen were moving efficiently about the hall now, and sweeping up the double staircase with various bits of baggage, despite the fact that they had been given no instruction at all. Xanthia watched her dressing case vanish into the nether regions of Brierwood, and wondered if she would ever see it again. But one pile of luggage, a trunk and two portmanteaus in perfectly matched brown leather, remained untouched.
”I see that someone has arrived before us,” Kieran remarked. ”Do please ask the servants to see to their things first. We are in no hurry.”
A frown sketched across Lady Nash's face. ”Oh, those are Jenny's,” she said lightly. ”They came down hours ago. I mean, she is such a dear-but so dreadfully impatient and full of energy. I daresay she went down to the stables to see to her carriage. She does like things arranged just so, and the servants never do things quite perfectly, do they?”
Since Lady Nash had paused for breath, Xanthia turned around. ”I beg your pardon, ma'am. Who is Jenny?”
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