Mrs. Skeffington and Mrs. Letwin-Jones had taken seats near the piano, proud expressions on their faces, and Miss Letwin-Jones appeared to be about to accompany the pianist in a song.
“I wish we could have sat nearer to one another,” Mirandawhispered as the music, and the singing, began. She had to admit that the two young ladies were indeed gifted.
“I wish you’d been at my end of the table,” Lissy said, with a sigh. “I’m surprised poor Cousin Harry was able to eat anything as those young ladies were both determined to hold his attention. It was quite a contest, I can tell you. I was quite glad I had Robert to talk to, as clearly they had no intention of allowing me to speak to Cousin Harry.” She gave a little smile. “Robert is quite a nice young man and confided that his mama had instructed his sister to charm Cousin Harry as best she could. He thought it really rather amusing, as did I.” But a little frown marred her brow.
She heaved a sigh. “How soon before we can politely take our leave?”
Miranda gave a shrug. “Not too long, I hope.” And she smiled sweetly as Mrs. Skeffington looked in her direction, pride at her daughter’s skills shining out of her.
In the diningroom, after the port had gone round several times, and Sir Julian had offered up a box of cigars which Harry had refused, talk not unnaturally came around to his inheritance of Windrush.
“Army man myself,” the colonel declared, as if that hadn’t been obvious due to his title. Perhaps he suspected Harry of thinking him a liar. “Gather you were at Waterloo? Must be quite a change coming up here to rural Northamptonshire. How’re you taking to it? Do you hunt?”
“Better than I imagined I would,” Harry said, hoping the old soldier would leave it at that. He didn’t.
“Gather you were a medic. I was in the Hussars, myself. Fought in India—the Anglo-Mysore War, don’t you know. Nothing but a subaltern back then, but soon got m’self promoted. Just missed out on the Americas. Not sorry though.” He paused, perhaps for breath as he’d rattled this short speech off at such speed. “How was Waterloo,then? Sounded like a tussle I’d have liked to have been involved in. Sorting that Bonaparte out once and for all, the cheeky beggar. Upstart little Corsican.” He drew another breath. “I couldn’t help but notice your limp. Get it there, did you?”
Harry pressed his lips together. The last thing in the world that he wanted to talk about was the war. “Waterloo was much as all battles are, I imagine,” he said, then changed the subject before the colonel could get back to asking about his leg. “With the weather we’ve been having for the last few days, I’ve taken it upon myself to discover something of local history. Sir Geoffrey had an impressive library that has now come to me. I gather this, or I should say a field near here, is the site of an important English Civil War battle.”
Mr. Skeffington nodded with a vigor that suggested an obsession with this very battle. “It most certainly is. Fourteenth of June 1645 for Naseby, eighteenth for Waterloo. One-hundred-and-seventy years apart, almost to the day. Charles the first and Prince Rupert of the Rhine fought Thomas Fairfax and lost. Resoundingly.”
Harry couldn’t decide if Mr. Skeffington was pleased about this royalist defeat or sorry. He cast a quick glance towards Sir Julian, who’d just poured himself some more port. “I thought I might ask Lady Madeley to ride out that way and show me the battlefield. She’s already been kind enough to show me around some of the Windrush estate, something I know must be quite hard for her. So a trip of a less contentious nature might be preferable, if the weather continues to improve.”
Sir Julian uttered a snort which could have been interpreted in many ways. “You should get Skeffington to show you the battlefield,” he said, albeit a little aggressively. “You’ll need someone that knows their history. You don’t want to be relying on a woman’s scanty knowledge.”
Harry eyed Sir Julian’s rotund form. His pale eyes held unmistakable hostility. “On the contrary,” he said, with the smallest of smiles, “Ithink a ride out in that direction would do Lady Madeley the world of good.” An imp of mischief must have been sitting on his shoulder. An imp that would never have been anywhere near him just a week or two ago. “I know she finds riding out with me something to take her mind off her troubles. She’s been most generous with her time. I didn’t ask for her to act as my escort. She volunteered.”
Not quite true, but he was finding a perverse pleasure in baiting Sir Julian.
Who snorted again. “Very delicate lady,” he huffed, swelling like a bullfrog. “She needs gentle handling.” He did not, however, look as though gentle handling was what he had in mind. Now he was three sheets to the wind his eyes couldn’t hide their unmistakeable lust.
“Needs a husband to take care of her,” Mr. Skeffington said. “All women do. Not natural not to have a husband. Pretty young thing like her, all alone in the world and with three daughters to bring up.” He had a rather wistful look in his eye, which Harry could quite understand when he thought of Mrs. Skeffington, who might well vanish into a wrinkle in the bedclothes.
Sir Julian leaned forward, puffing a cloud of cigar smoke into Harry’s face. “I’ll let you into a little secret. She and I have an understanding.” His smile could easily have been called a leer. “Old Sir Geoffrey and I, we had a bit of a discussion a year or two before he died, and he made me promise to look after Miranda, I mean Lady Madeley, if anything ever happened to him.” He huffed. “This was after my own wife had died, mind. So I promised him I would. And now she and I have an understanding. I intend to make her the next Lady Horncastle. We’re keeping it a secret, so this is confidential, you understand.” He chuckled. “She’s still young enough to give me a son, and she’s more than pleasing to look at. I tell you I shan’t be complaining to wake up next to that face every morning.” He shook his head. “Nor next to that body.”
Harry stared. They had an understanding? For a moment healmost believed the man, and then he remembered the look of distaste on Miranda’s face when she thought she wasn’t being observed. The man had the hide of a rhinoceros, clearly.
“In fact,” Sir Julian said with yet another leer, “I’m feeling quite lonely without her. Shall we join the ladies?” And he stubbed out the remains of his cigar.
The remainder of the evening was spent listening to the Misses Skeffington and Letwin-Jones either interminably playing the piano-forté or singing in fierce competition with one another. Harry was under no delusions as to why, and contrived to seat himself on a chair where no one could impose themselves on him. It was with hearty relief that he was able to have his carriage brought round at long last.
He handed in his ladies and got in himself, glad to be able to stretch his leg out at last. Archie Miller put up the step and closed the door, and they were off on the short journey home.
One of the Millers had lit the little interior lantern and its soft light illuminated the relieved expressions on his companions’ faces. He would have liked to have told Miranda what Sir Julian had divulged in the dining room, but not in front of her daughter. In fact, he would have liked to have asked her if it was something she even knew about. But he didn’t.
Lissy, on the other hand, possessed no such inhibitions. “That man is quite odious,” she said, as the carriage rumbled out onto the lane, the little lantern swinging with its motion.
Miranda frowned at her daughter. “Melissa, I don’t know how many times I’ve told you how impolite it is to express an opinion of your host like this.”
“If I’d said he was lovely you wouldn’t have minded,” Lissy retorted. “But he’s not, and you know he’s not. He’s horrible, and I hate the way he fawns over you, Mama.” She looked at Harry for support. “Do you not agree with me, Cousin Harry?”
Put on the spot, Harry wasn’t at all sure how to reply to this. Mainlybecause he wanted to reply in the affirmative, but was held back by a sense of it being extremely impolite to so criticize a man who had offered them hospitality so short a time since. “Everyone is different,” he tried.
Lissy threw him a scowl. “Don’t pretend you found him pleasant,” she snapped. “Because I know you didn’t. I was watching you. You are far too easy to read.”
This took Harry aback somewhat as he’d always fancied himself a closed book. For a slip of a girl to have read him so easily was disconcerting. Could her mother do the same? He glanced at Miranda, but she had put her head back against the cushions and closed her eyes.
He huffed to himself, much as Sir Julian had. “That’s as may be.”
Lissy smirked. “I think I know enough French to say ‘touché.’”
He found himself smiling. “Touché indeed.”
