‘Whereas the younger one might, you imply.’
She shrugged. ‘Her name is Bianca, she is no more than nineteen, and she has a lively eye, and an impulsive air about her. I imagine she is no less silly and impressionable than all the village chits who swoon over Seb as he thunders by on that ridiculous horse of his.’
‘Would you describe them as ladies? Albery was in trade, so they easily might not be. God knows where they grew up, and in what circumstances.’ He was frowning disdainfully at the thought, and the classical beauty of his face was marred by it.
‘You may judge for yourself in good time, but I would say so. They are no relations of Mr Albery, but of his wife. They told me that their father had an estate in Surrey – I expect it was entailed, because he is dead, I think, and unlike me, they have not been blessed with brothers, which for your purposes is fortunate, of course. Their mother is living but does not accompany them, because she is said not to care for the country; they have three older sisters, all of whom are married with parcels of brats. I imagine their husbands must be men of no particular distinction; nothing to boast of, at any rate, since they did not take the opportunity to tell me of any rank or title. But their manners are good – better than mine, I’m sure – and the governess is a formidable sort of woman we should take notice of, not a timid little grey mouse. She tried to give me a set-down for my lack of decorum, but I showed her I cared nothing for it. I thought them promising, on the whole. Certainly, they could have been much worse and I would not have been put off.’
‘I notice,’ her brother said, stretching out long, well-shaped legs in front of him and absently scrutinising the polish on his top boots, ‘that you say nothing of the oldest sister. One might imagine that someone who has been languishing on the shelf for a good while, as she has at her advanced age, might be more readily susceptible to my undoubted charms.’
‘Or mine,’ she shot back with an odd air of defiance.
He was entirely unshocked, merely raising an eyebrow. ‘Do you think so? Well, in this instance – if in no other – I will bow to your superior knowledge. How fortunate, if it should be so. Yes, promising indeed. You appear to have done well.’
She flushed again, and said eagerly, ‘I was able to warn them about Major Bartrum – you may trust that I did not neglect to mention that he was the old woman’s godson. No doubt that will raise concerns and make them wary of him, and of his mother. They will think he must surely have had expectations that they have thwarted. His extreme unpleasantness should do the rest.’
Oliver smiled derisively. ‘Vivienne, the day I start to worry that Alistair Bartrum might give me competition in the wooing of a woman, whether she is eighteen or eight and forty, will be the day I sail out into the bay and throw myself overboard. I will not admit that he ever could have done so, even dressed in regimentals, and now, of course, the idea is preposterous. My dear sister, I am touched by your desire to help in this aspect of the matter, but it is not necessary, I assure you.’
They heard a commotion in the hall; the outer door had slammed, and a number of dogs were barking wildly inside the house.
Lord Pallant sighed. ‘Here is Sebastian, come to interrogate you and tell you what he would have done better in the circumstances. “Juvenile posturing,” did you say? He is about to treat us to a fine display of it, no doubt. How very tiresome he is. At least he is pretty, and looks well in the saddle; I see little other merit in him. Unlike you, he cannot even claim to be obedient.’
The library door opened a fraction, and Lord Pallant raised his voice a little to say, ‘Sirrah, you know perfectly well that I will not endure having those ill-trained animals in here. Choose your company, oaf, and learn better manners.’
The door closed, and after a few moments of noisy chaos outside, opened again in silence; the third Pallant entered, having presumably shut his too-lively pets away somewhere in the meantime. He was just as handsome as his older siblings, but his face had a petulant cast which theirs did not share, and showed clearly that he was about to embark on some complaint or other about how he was ill-used. A glance at his brother’s set countenance made him think better, and instead, he said hungrily, ‘Viv, you have gone to see them without me, which I must think was a missed opportunity! But I know Oliver disagreed, so I will say no more about it. Tell me, what were they like? Are any of them well favoured? I hope they are not bracket-faced; it will be the poorest go if they are.’
‘They are all three of them personable enough, but only the youngest is of an age that makes her suitable for your attentions,’ Vivienne said, with a sly glance at Oliver. ‘Her name is Bianca Constantine, and she has black hair and dark-brown eyes, rather in the Spanish or Italian style. I do not think you will discover anything much to complain of. She is a fine, bouncing, well-set-up wench, like both her sisters; no delicate fairy creatures they. I did not find her, or any of them, so very well dressed today, but I am sure that they will do better when they are expecting company. They can afford to now, after all. Their previous circumstances were not particularly luxurious, I conjecture, but we need not care for that. They have enough between them now to make us all excessively comfortable.’
His Lordship said drily, ‘I believe the estate is worth something in the region of £130,000 or more, not counting the property. That would certainly stave off the most rapacious of our creditors. Not that we need waste the bulk of it on paying tradesmen. Once our new situation became widely known, our lives would become far more agreeable in every respect. Unlimited credit, which is now but a distant memory, would be extended to us once more, and we should be able to indulge your desire for fine horseflesh to the full, as well as mine.’
‘I should hope so,’ Sebastian huffed. ‘I have no great desire to marry, you know, and tie myself forever to some dull chit’s apron strings, even if she is tolerably handsome, but I quite see that it is necessary, given our situation.’
‘It need not materially alter your way of going on,’ his brother told him patiently. ‘Once the girl is won and the ring on her finger, her money will be ours, and you need not trouble overmuch how you treat her. Put a brat or two in her belly and leave her here while you seek more congenial amusements in Town, and you shall hear no criticism from me. But youdoneed to win her first, Sebastian. This means you will have to restrain your rather uncertain temper for as long as it takes, I do hope you realise. Your current charming habit of saying and doing exactly what you please will have to be set aside for a while.’
Sebastian glowered with quick resentment and said, ‘Curse you, Oliver, I knowthat! And I could say the same to you, for that matter. Your ordinary high-handed ways won’t serve you if you mean to woo one of the older sisters. It’ll take more than a handsome face to make her put all her new-found fortune in your hands five minutes after meeting you. I daresay she’ll be harder work than the maidservants and farmer’s daughters who are your usual prey. Maybe you’ve lost your touch because they’ve made it too easy for you of late years – well, we’ll see, I suppose.’
Seeing storm clouds gathering ominously on Oliver’s brow, Vivienne intervened hastily to head off a blistering reproach and an outbreak of unedifying but not unusual fraternal brawling. ‘There is no need to fall to pulling caps,’ she said pacifically. ‘We will all need to be on our best behaviour over the next few weeks and months. Quarrelling amongst ourselves won’t help in the least. We require all their fortune, not a part of it. My task is the harder, I think, because the pleasant option of marriage and abandonment is not open to me, as it is to you both. I may well fascinate the elder Miss Constantine and bring her entirely under my power, but who is to say that she will remain there forever?’
‘That’s true, of course,’ Oliver replied, his attention diverted as she had intended. ‘But let us not forget, my dear sister, that there is always the option of a little friendly blackmail. If at some point in the future, I were to discover that my wickedly sapphic sister-in-law had seduced my own innocent little sister, there is no knowing what I might do or whom I might tell in my shock and outrage, is there?’
10
The Constantine sisters had managed to convince Mrs Pritty that they should assist her and Lucy until more staff could be employed; they carried out the tea things to the kitchen, and would have helped her cook dinner if she would have allowed them to. She shooed them firmly out, but did give consent for them to set the table in the small dining room and help Lucy bring in and clear away the dishes both before and after the meal. They would not, she said, be washing plates and pots and pans; not in her kitchen, not while she lived and breathed.
They sat down at six to a solid dinner of stewed pork, accompanied by scalloped oysters, braised onions, carrots and buttery mashed potatoes. There was an apple tart with cream to follow, and local cheeses besides. It was not an elegant or dainty repast, but they were all extremely hungry and fell on it with enthusiasm.
Mrs Pritty had also sent in wine from the late Mr Albery’s cellars, a couple of bottles of old, cobwebby Bordeaux, and it seemed rude not to drink it. This was a celebration, after all, and it was their wine now. They toasted him and his wife, Mr Cotwin, Mrs Pritty, Mr Fisk and Lucy with the small, mismatched glasses that were all the house afforded; Miss Macintyre said that they were antiques.
Afterwards, they sat and played cards in the parlour until they were all yawning over their hands, losing concentration and agreeing that it was time for bed. It had been a long and successful day. The house was real – they all confessed that they had not quite believed in it until they had actually set eyes on it – and it was theirs now, along with everything in it, even if the current contents didn’t appear to amount to much. They were about to sleep in their new home for the first time, and wake to a day full of untold possibilities; they were all three of them laughing a little giddily as they climbed the stairs with Miss Macintyre.
They’d taken the trouble earlier, before it had grown dark, to carry up sufficient water for them all to wash with, though it would be cold by now, and Cecilia knew she really should undress and make ready for bed without delay, but instead, she set down her candlestick and went over to the window. She hadn’t drawn the curtains yet, as the house could hardly be described as overlooked, their nearest neighbours being cottages a few hundred yards away, inland, unseen from here.
There was a slice of moon set in an almost cloudless sky, and the sweep of the view that it offered to her was magnificent. The sea was silvered and foxed like her old Venetian mirror, and almost as calm as the glass tonight, except where white teeth of foam bit at the shore, glowing slightly and making complex, lacy patterns. Distant lights picked out the few scattered dwellings along the bay; those gathered together near the mouth of the estuary must belong to the small fishing village there. Probably that was where their oysters tonight had come from, and perhaps also their no-doubt-smuggled Bordeaux. It was a peaceful scene.
But there was someone, with a light, moving across the sands. The tide was in, or partly in – Cecilia had not been here long enough to tell – and the beach was much reduced in size, but there must still be space to walk along it between the low, crumbling cliffs and the waves, because somebody was doing so, presumably with a lantern to guide their steps. It could not, surely, be the unfriendly Major Bartrum, taking his exercise at such an eccentric hour, so who in the name of heaven might it be?
Cecilia told herself sternly that she had read far too many tales of smugglers, brigands, and French spies; it was far more likely to be someone making his unsteady way home from the alehouse in the village, or from visiting a friend or family member there, to one of the isolated cottages further along the coast. There was no need to look for fanciful explanations when prosaic ones lay ready to hand. It was no affair of hers, either, if people chose to walk about in the dark. She shook her head, closed the curtains, and slowly began to undress.
11
