A Cousinly Connection Read online

  "You might consider my feelings before you work yourself into a fever and wind up sticking your spoon in the wall. Damn your selfish hide, I've not so many friends left I can spare you."

  "Sneck up, Will." Julian rubbed his hands over his face and grinned at Will sidelong. "Listen to that. I'll turn into a proper Yorkshireman yet." He picked up the brown coat and poked one arm into a sleeve. "Here, help me into this."

  Will obeyed. "How's that?"

  "You'd not make your mark as a gentleman's gentleman. How does Peggy go on?"

  As Margaret was increasing again and due to commence labour at any moment, Julian had chosen his subject shrewdly. Diverted, Will entered into a lengthy analysis of the perils of paternity to which, owing to his protracted absences on duty, he was not yet accustomed. In fact he was given to moments of unreasonable anxiety when he imagined Margaret perishing in childbirth, but he was a sensible man. As she had borne one child without much difficulty, he generally talked himself out of despair. Julian was content to let him ramble and sit quiet.

  After perhaps five minutes of fears and imagining, Will broke off with a self-conscious laugh. "I beg your pardon, old man. What are you at to let me go prosing on and on?"

  "Matrimony has been the ruin of you," Julian said lightly.

  Will flushed and grinned like a youth of twenty.

  "How is the heir?"

  "You should see him now, Ju. Young Will is walking as steady as a seasoned trooper."

  "A splendid example to me."

  Will fumbled in the pockets of his greatcoat. "I forgot. Peggy said I should give you this." He extracted a clumsy packet and handed it over. "Now what have I done to send you into the whoops?"

  Julian shook his head, speechless.

  "It's pork jelly," Will explained.

  Julian spluttered.

  "Why, dammit man, she's concerned."

  At that his friend sobered. "I know, but if what you say is true, she had much better save her concern for herself. Tell her I thank her for it." He smiled. "I'll place it in my collection along with Mrs. Bradford's Essence of Veal Knuckle and Thorpe's liniments and my cousin Georgy's bog-oak walking stick. Have I shewed you that?"

  Will shook his head ruefully. "Lord, I might've known you'd be fussed beyond bearing. It's a wonder you don't wish me in Jericho."

  "Oh, not so far. Scarborough, perhaps. Will, don't get up yet."

  "I only stopped by to see how you did."

  "And to bring Peggy's placebo. Tell me, do I eat it or rub it in?"

  "I wish you will be serious, Ju. This parade-ground drill is all very well, but you're worn to the bone, man. Try it later."

  "That's just what I can't do," Julian snapped. "If I wait until later, the leg will tighten like wet rawhide. It pulls, Will. Do you remember poor Whitney? They might as well have chopped his leg off after Salamanca. It was never any good to him again. I won't be tied to a bathchair for the rest of my days. My God, if I lived to be seventy-seven that'd be fifty years of sitting."

  Will didn't speak.

  "It's the devil," Julian muttered.

  Will threw up his hands in mock surrender. "Bastante! I'll stop jobbing at you, but I wish you'd come back to us for a while at least..."

  "And try my hand at midwifery," Julian interrupted acidly. "Do you try for a little common sense. I'm very well suited here and," he took a breath, catching at his temper with visible effort, "I think I'm already sufficiently in your debt--and Peggy's."

  Will stiffened and felt his neck go red.

  "No, you don't want to talk about it," Julian said shortly. "I know that well enough, but let me speak my piece."

  Will made to rise.

  "And don't turn tail and run. I can't chase after you."

  Will sat back stiff as a pillar.

  "That I owe you my life is beside the point," Julian went on in a dogged voice. "The fact is I was too sick in Brussels to think, or I'd not have let you squander the ready at the rate you did."

  Will shifted. He caught a glimpse of his friend's face, which was white under the fading tan and set in grim lines.

  "I wish you will give me an accounting of that little sea excursion you took me on. There's no reason for you to bear the cost of that."

  Will got up. "You'll oblige me by not mentioning the matter again if we are to continue friends."

  "Very dramatic. When did you take to reading novels?"

  Will shook his head. "Don't try me," he said softly. After a moment Julian lowered his eyes.

  "Help me to the chair." Julian's voice was flat with exhaustion. "Let's go in. I'm cold." And, indeed, he was shivering again.

  "Damned fool," Will murmured, uneasy but determined.

  Julian did not reply.

  As they reached the house, however, they were forestalled by Mrs. Bradford, the housekeeper, from the admirable intention of puffing a cloud and taking a glass or two of claret.

  "There's a person here to see you, Mr. Stretton. I knew you wouldn't want him out there." She nodded at the terrace window through which Will had just trundled the bathchair. "But he's come from Lunnon and he's mortal impatient to see you, sir. I've put him in the library."

  Julian swore under his breath. "What sort of person?"

  Mrs. Bradford handed him a card.

  "Leak and Horrocks." He stared at it. "Oh. Probably a clerk from my father's man of business."

  Will grunted. A trifle late for his lordship to be making anxious paternal gestures.

  Apparently Julian thought so, too, for he shrugged and jammed the card in his pocket. "Some tedious legal nonsense. No need for you to go off without trying my claret, Will." He gave the chair a sharp thrust and rolled down the corridor that led to the interior rooms. "A new pipe. Best so far."

  Will followed him.

  As they negotiated the library door, a young man with butter-yellow hair and a spotty complexion sprang to his feet and looked uncertainly from one man to the other.

  Julian put a hand to his bedraggled neckcloth as if he were suddenly conscious of presenting a slovenly appearance. "Mr. Crofts? I'm Julian Stratton. Mrs. Bradford informs me that your business is of some moment. I trust that's so."

  "Er, yes." The boy's voice squeaked, and he cleared his throat. "That is, yes, sir, if you are Major the Honourable Julian Alexander St. John Stretton." He seemed doubtful.

  Julian's mouth quirked. "The same."

  "I have the sad duty, sir, to inform you of Lord Meriden's death."

  Will felt his stomach knot. Julian had gone very still. After a moment his friend said mechanically, "I'm sorry to hear it. Apoplexy, I collect. Rather sudden, was it not?"

  "Yes, sir." The boy was in obvious misery, his chin wobbling, but Will perceived that some other emotion--fear? no, excitement--was working in him also. At last he went on in a rapid breathless voice, "That is, I apprehend I should say, yes, my lord."

  "What!"

  The boy jumped.

  Julian pushed himself forward, his knuckles white on the chair wheels. "Tell me."

  "Ow, dear, Mr. Horrocks warned me you might not have heard the tragic news, but I thought he was bamming me. Everbody knows. Ow, sir, my lord, that is, I'm that sorry!"

  "Stop blethering," Will roared.

  Far from wishing to flee--his first impulse--Will was now consumed with curiosity. An entire division under Soult would not have driven him from the library. Julian a lord? Impossible.

  "Explain yourself, Crofts," Will demanded.

  The clerk closed his eyes and took a gulp of air. "The Honourable Henry Stretton, sir, has been dead these two weeks. His lordship was so stunned, what with his grief and the scandal--"

  "Scandal?" Will interposed. Julian had neither spoken nor moved.

  "Mr. Henry Stretton was killed in a duel, sir."

  "Oh, dear God," Julian whispered. "Not Harry, too. They're none of them left."

  The silence extended. After a long time, Crofts ventured timidly, "But, my lord, it's not true, you know
. They're not all gone. There's the Honourable Vincent and Miss Stretton and Miss Drusilla and Mr. Felix..."

  "His lordship was not referring to his half-brothers and sisters," Will said shortly.

  "Her ladyship..."

  "A very good kind of woman, no doubt . Ju?" He gripped his friend's shoulder.

  "I...yes. In a moment. Will, don't leave me."

  "No, I'll not leave," Will said comfortably, his voice at odds with the glare he sent the clerk, "Mr. Crofts, go out and desire Mrs. Bradford to bring in a tray. Tell her the brandy. Snap to it." He used the parade-ground voice that had been his chief military asset. Crofts fled.

  Will went over to a bookshelf and stared hard at a leatherbound copy of the Moral Discourses of Epictetus left behind by a previous inhabitant. When he thought his friend had been silent too long, he said with calculated bluntness, "Shouldn't have thought you'd take it hard, Ju. Shock, of course. Not close to this brother, was you?"

  "I can't remember what he looked like," Julian said dully.

  Will cursed under his breath. He knew very well what the trouble was, for he had felt the same dazed emptiness Julian's voice betrayed--after Waterloo, when he had found name after name of men he had known and loved better than his own brothers on the lists of the dead.

  Will had assumed Julian's physical suffering occupied his mind sufficiently to save him from that ordeal of loss, but he saw now that his friend had been spared nothing and that the shock of this absurd melodrama--for Will could not think of the death of such an indifferent parent, such a feckless brother, as anything other--had merely plunged Julian three months back into a far more bitter tragedy.

  "Julian? Ju, old friend..."

  "I'm sorry." Julian took a shaky breath. "You're right, of course. I doubt if I saw Harry above three times since I first went abroad. He wrote me once. I fancy I lit a cheroot with the letter."

  "Come, that's more the thing. Shall I go find that rabbity clerk?"

  There was a clatter outside. Julian shook his head. "Unnecessary. He just dropped my best decanter." He cocked his head toward the door, the ghost of a grin on his face. "Mrs. Bradford is beating him with her chain. How edifying. Perhaps you should jump to his rescue."

  * * * *

  Will did not remain with his friend long after the shaken Crofts had embarked on what promised to be a marathon of paper-signing, but he stayed long enough to extract a promise from Julian not to go jauntering off to London, however urgent his affairs might be.

  "Fuss-budgeting again, Will?" Julian had begun to look less white about the mouth.

  "Yes. And what's more I'll keep you to your word."

  "I've no intention of going to London." Julian held out his hand.

  Will clasped it. "Your hand on that?"

  Julian smiled. "I can't very well leave until after my first try at godfathering."

  Both men, having come to a tolerable understanding, rightly ignored the dismayed bleat with which Crofts greeted their pact.

  Shortly thereafter, Will found his wife in that condition not uncommon to ninth-month-pregnant ladies. Impatient.

  "You took a great while to deliver the pork jelly." Her voice, normally soft, rang shrill.

  Her remark set Will off, and it was some minutes before he recovered himself sufficiently to tell her the story of his afternoon. She was so dumbfounded she forgot to question his laughter, and after listening open-mouthed to his narrative subsided into half-phrases. "Dear me! Only fancy! Poor Julian, but my goodness! Bless me, what a surprize!" and so on.

  Margaret was the kindest of women, however, and she soon overcame her astonishment sufficiently to grow very distressed for their friend's losses. Will had to explain to her what he knew of the late Lord Meriden's character as a parent. At that she grew indignant, for she had vaguely imagined Julian to be orphaned, and felt that such a neglectful family deserved nothing better at the hands of Providence.

  Will said cautiously, "Providence may have had a hand in it, but from what I gathered of that snerp, Crofts, Ju may find his elevation something less than providential. In addition to a barony of the first creation, he has succeeded to a load of debts and the guardianship of seven brats he's never laid eyes on. It don't bear thinking on."

  "What a very odd family they must be, to be sure," said Peggy rather faintly.

  Chapter III

  Directly Jane, her father, and Miss Goodnight set out for Dorset it commenced to rain. The journey, which should have taken no more than five days by easy stages, dragged to a week as one of the horses lamed itself on the heavy roads and then to ten days when the rear axle splintered. Mr. Ash, never cheerful out of sight of his chalky acres, grew gloomier as the miles dragged on. He was sure the potatoes he was trying on as an experiment would rot in the ground and the mown hay would mould.

  Jane thought his absence would do her elder brother, Tom, a deal of good, for he seldom had a free hand. She did not say so, however. Although she was far too occupied ministering to Miss Goodnight, a poor traveler, to soothe her father as she ought to, she could at least contrive not to set him fresh anxieties. She forbore to mention Tom.

  By the time they reached Dorchester, all three were too cross to admire that handsome county-town. They passed through Whitchurch and up into the rolling hills in which Meriden Place lay, but Jane would not have had the time to admire the pleasant prospects their elevation allowed them, even if she had been able to see through the murk of rain. Miss Goodnight cast up her accounts. As for Mr. Ash, he announced his intention of repairing to Lyme Regis forthwith.

  He averted his eyes from Miss Goodnight. "Perhaps there will be some vessel there to take me home. James may return the carriage, for you know, my dear, he is most reliable, and I must see to the potatoes myself."

  "But Aunt Louisa..."

  "I shall speak with your aunt." He drew a sheaf of closely written papers from his coat. "I took the precaution last night of writing down such advice as I think will be of use to her."

  Jane made no reply.

  Her father added defensively, "I am sure Meriden's man of business has dealt honourably with her. Perhaps I can return when this stepson of hers comes to take up his residence."

  "If he stays away until after the last harvest," Jane murmured.

  "Eh?"

  "Nothing. Only look, sir, surely that is a gatehouse or lodge of some sort."

  "It seems familiar." Mr. Ash had visited his sister at Meriden once or twice. Jane had not. Her sojourn with her aunt had been spent entirely in London. She began at last to feel some anticipatory interest. She would be staying here several months, perhaps even until Christmas. She hoped the grounds would not prove insipid.

  No one at the gatehouse shewing a disposition to bar the way, they continued up a curved avenue set between plantations of rhododendrons whose dark leaves hung down like soggy dusters. An admirable sight in early summer no doubt. Jane would have preferred beeches. The drive rose, and presently they came into open ground and could see Meriden Place itself, set on a knoll of some natural prominence and surrounded by handsome stone terracing.

  The house was built in the same grey Dorset stone as the terraces and was not above seventy-five years old, so there was nothing in the lofty windows and severe facade to give one a disgust of its proportions, but it did not look precisely cheerful. As they bowled up the carriageway, Jane could see that a large black crepe bow had been appended to the main door and that it, like the rhododendrons, drooped with damp. About the exterior of the house, small jarring signs of neglect betrayed an indifferent master. The privet wanted trimming.

  They were ushered into the mansion by an aged butler who looked as if his feet hurt him. Addressed by Mr. Ash as Turvey, this worthy unbent sufficiently to tell them that her ladyship was not yet down but would be informed of their arrival forthwith. He took their wraps--Jane's pelisse and Mr. Ash's greatcoat, for Miss Goodnight confessed to a chill--then shuffled off in a dispirited manner, leaving them to their thoughts. The larg
e salon into which he had shewed them loomed grimly. Drapes of a somber hue shut out the watery daylight, and a small fire of seacoal did little to take the chill off the air.

  Jane gazed about her in some surprize, for her memories of her aunt's London house called up a blaze of wax candles and glittering crystal. The dank gloom of the salon could scarcely have contrasted more sharply. She opened her lips to make some such comment to her father, who was rubbing his hands and looking about him with an air of forced cheer, when there was a rustle at the door, a mutter from the dispirited butler, and Lady Meriden entered.

  The dowager, then in her fortieth year, was a tall woman of gaunt, rather dramatic good looks marred by years of child-bearing. Swathed in yards of becoming crepe, she tottered into the room on the arm of her eldest daughter, Maria. Raising her great sunken eyes to Mr. Ash--no mean feat considering he was just her height--she exclaimed, "Oh, John, best of my friends, my dear, dear brother, how I have needed your wise counsel!"

  Jane saw appreciatively that Lady Meriden had caused one of the footmen to hold a branch of lit candles such that the soft light haloed her head and deepened the shadows on her ravaged features. Jane scarcely had time to school her expression, however, for her aunt turned to her at once and swept her into a rose-scented embrace.

  "Dear Jane. So comforting, my dear." The soft powdered cheek brushed Jane's damp brown curls. "Now we shall learn again to be cheerful" And, on a little sob, "If ever we may smile again in this doomed family. Ah, John, John, whatever shall I do? My poor wee bairns..."

  Jane and her father tried simultaneously to pat Lady Meriden's quivering shoulders. Bairns, Jane thought, embarrassed and unwillingly amused. Lady Meriden came of good Sussex stock and had never in her life been closer to Scotland than Harrogate.

  "Mama!" Maria exclaimed at last. "Please don't. You'll make yourself ill again. Please!"

  Her mother essayed a final sob and allowed herself to be ensconced in the deepest chair, with her own maid, a young footman, and Maria hovering near with screens and shawls. Miss Goodnight, reviving magically under the stimulus of another's distress, fluttered about the chair making noises like the cooing of many doves.