The Young Pretender Page 3

"I was already waist deep in the lake. 'Twas pure farce."

  "Fortunately you bobbed up."

  "Aye, with Mick on the spot to pull me out."

  Everyone laughed, and Michael's ears turned red. Jean fancied he had already made much of his heroism.

  She finished her tea and stood up. "No, please sit. I must see to Mrs. Finch."

  Sholto rose and laid his napkin beside his bowl. "D'ye fancy ae wee keek at your faither's ornamental water, Lady Jean?"

  "Aye." She smiled at him. "Half an hour?"

  He nodded, and she slipped from the room. She could hear the chatter rise behind her.

  Upstairs she looked in on Alice who was indeed still asleep. Then she changed into her traveling costume and pelisse. Elizabeth's gown was far too long for Jean to wear outdoors in the wet. She wished for the trunk that held her walking shoes.

  When she returned to the ground floor, she found Sholto, wearing a driving cape but no hat, in the foyer at the half-open front door. He was in conference with a grizzled man she recognized as Josiah Quillan. Quillan had the Home Farm. Both men turned as she approached, and the farmer bowed. "Lady Jean."

  She held out her hand. "How are you, sir? And your wife?"

  He shook hands, assured her they were both well, and offered his condolences. Word of Fanny's death was already in the air. Jean's stomach clenched. She must write Miss Bluestone.

  Quillan and Sholto finished their discussion of storm damage to the farmer's stables, with the steward promising to shelter a valuable mare and her foal at Brecon. They shook hands, and Quillan hurried off. The door closed behind him.

  "I'm sorry to keep you," Sholto said. "He thinks he's bred a prize hunter. The foal is too long in the hocks, though."

  "A pity."

  "A man must dream."

  "Do you hunt?"

  "No, not at all, neither fox nor grouse. I'm a dab hand at fishing. Speaking of that, there'll be a strong smell of fish down by the lake. Be ready for it."

  Jean grimaced.

  He made heavy work of reopening the front door one-handed. At last he stepped out onto the porch that formed the overblown entrance to the mansion. This terrazzo commanded a wide view of the mudflat that had been her father's ornamental lake. The pavilion and bridge looked forlorn against a background of gleaming muck. It was false dawn by then and still drizzling.

  "Oh dear! How Papa would hate to see it!"

  Sholto made a clucking sound she took to be sympathy. "Fine rich soil, my lady. Now, if Lady Clanross fancied a garden there--"

  "No!" She stared at him. "You're a humbug, sir."

  "Only some of the time." He rubbed the back of his neck. "'Tis a problem of engineering. I'll have to order a load of stones to reinforce that weak bank." The hand fell. "Is that no'--aye, it is."

  "Charles Wharton!" Jean exclaimed. "He must have heard of your injury." The speed at which news traveled in the countryside was a wonder.

  Sholto muttered something.

  Jean ran down the steps to greet Charles. He was an old friend.

  As he dismounted, a groom sped to take his reins. "Walk her to the stables and give her a good feed of oats, lad. We've a long road ahead of us. Jean, my dear, how are you?" He removed a saddle bag with one hand and folded her in a comforting embrace with the other. "Is it true what they're saying about Fanny?"

  "She's gone, Charles."

  He squeezed her shoulders. "Poor child."

  It wasn't clear whether he meant Fanny or Jean, and Jean didn't care. She liked his warm solidity.

  "She couldn't live, you know."

  "Yes, I do know. How did you hear?"

  "Somebody in the village. Shall I break the news to Miss Bluestone?"

  "Oh, Charles, will you?" She buried her face in his damp cloak. "No, I must write her a note at least. Tell her I can't come to her today. Alice must rest before we go out."

  "Knocked up, is she?"

  "Inevitably. To be fair, we were wet and chilled. Alice always feels the cold."

  Sholto cleared his throat.

  Charles turned. "Ah, Sandy. Did I or did I not tell you to avoid straining that collarbone? I daresay Durbin tried to put it back in place. Let's go have a look."

  "It's all right."

  "Not if Durbin laid hands on it."

  "I was about to inspect the dower house."

  "Then we'd best move briskly." It was not yet nine.

  "No."

  "Yes," Charles said. "Now. I can do it here, in front of God and Lady Jean, or in the estate office where you may groan freely. Take your pick." He tapped the saddlebag in which he carried his medical necessities and turned back to Jean. "This fool broke his collarbone last summer. I told him not to distress it, but did he listen? No. He took up rowing boats. Write your note for Miss Bluestone, Jean. Where shall I look for you?"

  "The morning room." It was the only ground floor room not in dust-covers. Other than the kitchen and the staff dining room, of course. And the estate office. She wondered whether she could ask someone for paper and pen at this hour.

  Michael supplied her needs. She crumpled three sheets before the right words came. By the time the note was done, tea had appeared along with cut bread and cold gammon.

  Jean buttered a slice of bread and drank another cup of tea. Charles came at last. He was frowning but rubbed his hands at the sight of the food. "Ah, that's the ticket."

  "How is your patient?"

  "He'll live." He cut a large portion of ham. "I had to reset it. I don't think he'll be riding about in the gig this morning."

  Jean choked bread that tasted of sawdust.

  "He said to tell you he'll send Durbin for your traps." He plunked himself down opposite her and made inroads on the meat, slurping tea when the salt got to him.

  Jean swallowed tea and chagrin.

  "And don't race off to play the nurse, Lady Bountiful. You've had enough of that in the last year. I dosed him with laudanum. With any luck he'll sleep until noon." Charles was not noted for reticence or tact.

  "Why do you call Mr. Sholto Sandy? I thought his Christian name was James, and his hair is brown, not fair."

  "It's lighter in summer. He always loses his hat." Charles snickered.

  "What?"

  "Alexander. His name is Alexander. Pretentious appellation for a crofter's brat, eh?"

  "There are few crofts in that part of Scotland," Jean said coldly. "And Alexander, like George or Charles, is a royal name. Little boys have always been named for kings. I thought the man was your friend."

  "He is. He called me the spawn of Sassenach reivers. I always wondered what the ancient Whartons did to make their fortune. What's a reiver?"

  "A cattle thief."

  Charles gave a hearty laugh and cut a large bite of ham. "Don't you call him Alexander, mind."

  "I shall call him Mr. Sholto."

  "Very proper. When Sandy came south, he decided it would be prudent to turn himself into James, lest the lads take exception to working with Alexander the Great. He was only seventeen, after all." He took another gulp of tea. "He was named for an uncle. Alex the uncle was, so he became Sandy. James is his middle name."

  "You know him well."

  "Fairly well. He's a good man to deal with. Awake on all suits, of course. He has to be, but he's generous-minded and dashed amusing when he chooses. Used to take Fanny for long drives when she first fell ill. I told him I thought the fresh air might help her."

  "They were friends," Jean said slowly.

  "Nothing beyond the line, Jean. Miss Bluestone or Miss Mackey went with them. The point is, he's a busy man, but he made time for Fanny."

  "I must thank him."

  "Miss Bluestone already did. So did Fanny. Don't embarrass him--or me. I'm always talking out of turn, or so Cecy tells me." Cecy was his wife, Jean's cousin.

  "How is Cecilia?" The right question.

  He spoke at length. Cecilia was breeding again. Number five this would be. A great beauty in her day, Cecy now weighed tw
elve stone and was still a great beauty, though as dim-witted as ever. Charles was devoted to her. Jean found her dull. Charles's sister Mary, however, was a favourite with all the Conway sisters, so Jean asked after Mary. Charles cut himself another helping of gammon.

  3.

  Jean had expected to spend the day staring out a window and thinking of Fanny, or perhaps writing in her journal. She had kept a journal for years now, but as Fanny sank toward death Jean found she could no longer bear to chronicle the days. She had brought the journal in the carpet bag out of habit, although it was two months since she'd touched it. Time and the pages of her daybook yawned before her. When she discovered that Mrs. Smollet and her staff were gathering goods for the relief of flood victims, she volunteered to help.

  She spent the morning exploring the Brecon attics and boxrooms with a housemaid and Will, the second footman. In one trunk, they were mightily amused to find hoops and panniers and peach-hued satin knee breeches leftover from her grandfather's day.

  As nobody, not even flood victims, would be caught dead in such paraphernalia, they wasted time, but they did come up with some useful clothing and household items, and Mrs. Smollet and Cook, at Jean's suggestion, heaped containers of the staple foods amassed in half-year lots for Brecon's pantries. Oatmeal, for example. Since the family were not due to return until Easter, there would be ample time to replace the supplies.

  Jean was awed by the inventory of linens the housekeeper showed her. Brecon boasted thirty bedrooms. The housekeeper kept close track of the stores of food too. Jean was happy to see that Tom's servants didn't cheat him, and she was able to assure Mrs. Smollet that Elizabeth would want her to be open-handed, especially with neighbours.

  When she darted back to her room to rinse off the attic dust, she bumped into Alice emerging for the mid-day nuncheon.

  "Sleep well?"

  Alice sighed. "Not a wink. I dreamt I was drowning."

  "But you didn't, thanks to Mr. Sholto." Who almost did.

  Alice sniffed. "When I consider we could have stayed on at the dower house in perfect comfort--"

  You'd have drowned in Fanny's bed. Jean bit back the sarcasm which, in any case, wasn't just. No one had suggested the water would reach the first floor. Alice would not have drowned and might well have slept through the flood with the quilt over her head. Jean had no doubt her companion would embroider her version of events for the benefit of the girls and Miss Bluestone.

  Mr. Sholto did not join the ladies for their meal, which was served in the morning room. Jean supposed he was still deep in opium dreams, but Michael, who was waiting on them, said that Sholto had gone down to the village with the supply waggon. To check on his cottage.

  Cottage?

  Shortly after Michael had served poached chicken, Mrs. Smollet bustled into the room to announce the arrival of the trunk and bandboxes from the dower house. Splashed, she said, but not soaked.

  "I can't believe the water reached that high." Alice's voice quavered.

  "Ground floor's ruined," Michael said with relish. He poured wine.

  That sounded like melodrama to Jean.

  Mrs. Smollet gave Michael a minatory frown as if to remind him that footmen did not engage in conversation with the people they were supposed to serve.

  "Mr. Sholto lives in one of those cottages near the bridge," she said in response to Jean's query.

  "Two up and two down?" Jean asked. "One of those?"

  The housekeeper nodded. Her nose wrinkled, but she refrained from negative comment. "I b'lieve 'twas flooded, Lady Jean, though he didn't say. All the houses in that area took some damage."

  Michael slipped from the room like an eel.

  "Why in the world is Sholto living in a cottage? He's his lordship's agent!"

  "You may well ask, my lady. We were all scandalized, but there, Mr. Moore's son Robert was wishing to move his family to the village from Chacton because of the air." Chacton was a mill town.

  Moore had been Jean's father's steward as well as the present earl's. He and his family had lived in a handsome house in the village as long as Jean had known him and for decades before that. A crotchety man, he'd been dead two years now. Jean had found him overbearing, though he'd always dealt politely with her.

  "The widow was glad to see her son and his family in the house he grew up in, leave alone she wouldn't need to move her own belongings. She decided to live with her son. It's all right and proper, to be sure. Robert Moore leased the house and pays a good rent."

  Jean couldn't imagine Clanross desperate for rent.

  Alice said, "The Steward's House is a perquisite of the position."

  "I'm sure I don't know about perquisites." Mrs. Smollet sniffed. "I asked Sand...er, Mr. Sholto, and he just laughed and said he'd rattle about like a dried pea in a kettle was he to move there."

  Alice cut a bite of chicken. "He lived with them, you know, when he first came as Mr. Moore's apprentice. They're fond of him. I daresay he suggested the new arrangement."

  "He says the cottage suits him. It wouldn't," Mrs. Smollet added darkly, "if he had a family. Young man like that. He ought to be married."

  Jean pushed bits of chicken about on her plate. Any unwed soul between twenty and forty heard the "ought to be married" aria on a daily basis. She felt some sympathy for the absent steward. It wasn't that simple. At least she hadn't found it so.

  After assuring Jean and Alice that their clothing would be brought to them in a pig's wink, ironed and speckless, Mrs. Smollet bustled off, leaving Michael to serve the pudding.

  When the meal was over, Alice retired to her room to rest her eyes. Jean trailed upstairs to the small withdrawing room. She thought about her journal again. Too depressing. Instead, she set about writing to Kitty and Anne. As she lived in London, Anne would know of Fanny's death, of course, but Jean was fond of Anne and took comfort from telling her something of her own feelings. She also gave an abbreviated account of their adventure on the lake, lest Alice send off a blood-curdling version of what had happened and frighten everyone. Or blame Mr. Sholto for their close call.

  Writing Kitty was less satisfying. Jean did not like Lady Kinnaird. She and Maggie had spent two wretched years in Kitty's household after their father's death, and the three younger girls had had to endure another year before Tom and Elizabeth rescued them and set up a home for all five of them at the dower house. Kitty had been neither kind to Fanny nor attentive to any of her sisters, but she would expect an account of Fanny's last days.

  Jean said what was minimally true, that Fanny had died quietly and had seemed, at the end, to accept her fate. That duty done, Jean threw herself at last into a long letter to Maggie, her twin.

  Twins ran in the family. Tom had had a twin sister who died when they were eleven. Elizabeth had borne him twin sons, and Kitty had a matched set too. Though Jean and Maggie looked so much alike their relatives had often been unable to say which was which when they were girls, they were different in all other ways.

  Maggie had wed at nineteen, Fanny's age, and was already the mother of three, content with her pleasant but unremarkable spouse who was Clanross's political secretary. Maggie's only flaw, so far as Jean was concerned, was her determination to marry her twin off to some congenial friend of her husband. This would have suited Anne as well, for she was married to an MP and kept a notable Radical salon when Parliament was in session. Jean's bout of nursing had given her respite from nearly intolerable pressure to turn herself into a political satellite.

  That was an unsettling thought. Had she used Fanny's illness as a form of escape? She'd have to ask Miss Bluestone. Troubled, she rose from the desk and went to the window to look out at what had been the lake. Two of the grooms were wandering along the shoreline, pointing to stranded objects, laughing, jostling, and elbowing each other. She wondered why young men did that.

  She was about to turn away when something caught her eye. Two riders approached from the direction of the village. One was a groom, from his rough
dress and cap, and the other rode side-saddle.

  Good Lord, she thought. It can't be. She squinted. She had never seen Miss Bluestone on a horse, but the stout black-clad figure on the bay was beyond doubt her beloved governess.

  Jean dashed from the room and down the stairs in time to open the door as Miss Bluestone reached the entrance. Michael followed, protesting. Opening doors was his perquisite whilst the butler was off gallivanting in London. The groom was helping the governess dismount, a procedure that took time.

  Enough time for Jean to compose herself and wait like a lady. Her good intentions lasted until she saw Miss Bluestone's calm, square face with the faint moustache and the kind eyes smiling at her. "Oh, Miss Bluestone," she wailed like the fourteen-year-old she had been when they first met, "Fanny's dead."

  To her astonishment, Miss Bluestone embraced her. "I know, my dear Jean, but thank heavens you aren't!"

  Michael cleared his throat.

  Jean's talk with Miss Bluestone eased her feelings, as she had known it would. What surprised her was the degree to which the governess revealed her own grief.

  Miss Bluestone had always been calm and kind, but she was also reserved. All Jean knew of her personal life after years of acquaintance was that she had a sister called Sophrosone who lived in Bristol and had many children. The governess took an abiding interest in botany and was devout without being in any way evangelical. That was the sum of Jean's knowledge. Until today.

  Miss Bluestone confessed that Fanny's death, though expected, had struck her deeply. She had loved Fanny, of course, but she had also considered the girl her greatest triumph as an educationist.

  "They told her she was stupid! Even Miss Mackey." She blew her nose on a square of linen with a neat black border. "Frances was not at all stupid, she just couldn't read."

  "I remember," Jean murmured. "She was short-sighted."

  "Oh, it was more than that. The new spectacles helped, but her mind did something strange to letters--she confused the small b and d, for instance. I've forgotten all the oddities, but once she understood what her problem was, she worked hard to compensate for it." Her firm mouth quivered. "Do you remember how proud Frances was when she first read a book all the way through?"