Chapter 5 #2
“They are all glad to have you home,” I said as I swung onto Atlas’s back. The frigid saddle sent a cold shock all through my body. “Though the baron’s joy is a subtle thing.”
So subtle that Lord Dunsford watched his middle son only when he thought nobody was looking.
The previous evening, he’d had the kitchen put on an enormous spread in the midst of holidays featuring several banquets.
The baron also refrained from annoying Bryson directly as he habitually twitted Algernon.
Bryson, already mounted on an aging chestnut gelding, made no reply until the horses had left the stable yard proper, their breath forming white clouds on each exhale.
“The family and friends always appear glad to see me,” Carstairs said, “then sorry to see me leave. For all I know, Algernon is playing some sort of extended joke by threatening me, or Papa is keeping me away from the local marital prospects until Algernon makes his choice.”
“Do those prospects include the Misses Delaplane?”
A couple inches of snow had fallen overnight, making the day painfully bright in addition to painfully cold. The sort of cold that attacks with each fresh inhalation and cuts on the slightest breeze.
My blue spectacles protected my eyes from the glaring sunshine, though only up to a point beyond which I was asking for a megrim. I’d been too close to an exploding powder wagon fairly early in my military career, and for a time, both my hearing and my vision had been dodgy.
“Peter led the charge on the Delaplane heiresses,” Carstairs said, “interestingly enough. He and Robin have three lovely daughters. Peter takes that business about being fruitful and multiplying seriously.”
Philomel, Wren, and Robin. “Is there a brother named Jay or Phoenix?”
“The boys have solid English names—Frederick and Gulliver. Fine fellows. Gulliver served with the artillery. We keep in touch. Freddy is the heir and a more genial neighbor you will not find. He’ll be in the first flight side by side with Algernon.”
I had declined to ride with the hunt, citing the distance Atlas had traveled, but I was also disinclined to gallop over hill and dale in pursuit of one lowly fox just trying to keep her family fed.
Bryson had offered to hack out with me, creating an opportunity for us to confer and for me to do more reconnaissance.
“The estate doesn’t show to best advantage in winter,” Bryson said, turning down a tree-lined bridle path. “I’ll show you the local vista and point out who lives where. The bridle paths go in all directions, just as they do in Surrey, and any part of Dunsford is lovely to me.”
He was homesick, as a soldier on leave was still somehow homesick.
“We will find your tormenter and put a stop to the harassment, Carstairs. I would not be here if I believed that goal unattainable.” I had also wanted an excuse to leave the Hall, and Carstairs had obliged.
“Are the Delaplane ladies truly heiresses?”
“Philomel and Wren are heiresses by local standards. I’m sure London boasts brighter diamonds every Season, but the Delaplanes lead the pack hereabouts.
The arrangement is a bit curious. The first sister to marry—Robin, the middle sister—came into a decent sum.
The second sister will get a bit less, and the final sister less still.
Somebody wanted to reward haste and punish straggling. ”
“And Parson Petey landed the one with the largest settlements?”
“He and Robin claim to be a love match. I’m not sure the logic still applies three children on. Peter was more or less ordered into the Church by my father, despite being an excellent fit for the cavalry. I took that billet by paternal decree, leaving Peter for the Church.”
An heiress to come home to would be a comfort for any curate, whose post was often poorly compensated and thankless.
“Why hasn’t Algernon proposed to the eldest sister?”
We emerged from the trees onto an overlook that enjoyed a damnably fresh breeze.
The snowy fields of rural Hampshire spread out before us, crisscrossed by fence lines, hedges, and lanes.
The rolling terrain was also dotted with spinneys, the occasional smooth white oval indicating a frozen pond, and larger stands of trees.
In spring, the view would be lovely. On a sunny winter morning, it was painfully bright and brutally cold.
“There they go,” Carstairs said, taking out a flask and waving it at a vee of riders crossing the fields below. “The chestnuts thundering neck or nothing for the wall are doubtless Algernon and Frederick. They were racing like demons when they both rode fat ponies.”
Algernon and Frederick were some distance behind the hounds, of course, also well ahead of the first flight proper. They both cleared the fence in perfect rhythm and had to slow on the opposite side to avoid catching up with the pack, which had apparently lost the scent along a snowy stream bank.
One for Reynard.
“Peter has more care for his horse,” Carstairs went on, tipping the flask to his lips. “He’s cantering along behind Papa’s bay.”
The baron and Peter also took the fence in fine style, if at a more decorous pace. “You aren’t longing to join them?”
Carstairs put his flask away. “Lost any appetite I had for chasing foxes when I was in Spain. Then too, a gamekeeper knows how much damage a careless hunt can do to the land, all in the name of catching one little fox, who often eludes thirty couple hounds and an equal number of drunken riders.”
Soldiers did tend to view blood sport differently from civilians. Death and suffering as entertainment sat ill with most of us, even the death and suffering of lowly creatures.
Then too, the bitter cold had chased the feeling from my toes, and my nose and cheeks weren’t far behind.
Atlas stomped a hoof, a horsy rebuke for denying him the pleasure of a morning gallop. “Have you been tempted to marry a Delaplane?”
Carstairs snorted. “Oh, of course. Wren was the object of my fancy. Every young man for twenty miles around considers the same notion, but most of them learned a lesson from Peter. Yes, Robin Delaplane had fine settlements, all tied up in trusts and annuities and preconditions. Peter was more comfortable than most curates, but his situation is not as well-heeled as he’d anticipated.
He’ll do better now that he’s Vicar. Papa will see to that. ”
“But surely those settlements were negotiated. Had the Carstairs family wanted greater access to the Delaplane fortune, that would have been possible.”
“Papa handled the negotiations on Peter’s behalf. You’d have to ask one of them for those particulars. The late Mr. Delaplane was ferociously protective of his coin and his daughters. That golden edifice at the foot of the hill is the Quiggan manor. Glen Maye. You called there in December.”
“I did. A gem of a property.” Very well maintained. Not so large as to drain the exchequer, but big enough and well designed enough to qualify as stately. “Where do the Delaplanes bide?”
“That sprawling monstrosity around the other side of the hill. Both properties march with Carstairs land, and Lady Clo gets on quite well with the Delaplanes. I’ll show you the paths that lead to each.”
Carstairs said little as we rode along wide bridle paths where the wind was mercifully less bitter.
The woods needed some maintenance, but could not be called neglected.
An occasional tangle of deadfall, a few large trees left to rot where they’d landed, an overabundance of bracken and underbrush, possibly to provide cover for game.
“I would rather be the gamekeeper at the Keep—the boot-boy, for that matter,” Carstairs said, “than spend another year tramping around on MacNamara’s land. I have acreage of my own—around the back side of that hill—and cannot think why I’m being kept from it.”
The hardest part of any siege was the waiting.
“Keep asking yourself about motives. Something obscure might occur to you. A duel. An insult that started rumors that put somebody in disgrace. A silly bet gone awry. A hand of cards that left another fellow buried in debt. You would scoff at the threatening letters, except that some part of you must believe they are based in fact.”
“Nobody leads an entirely blameless life, my lord. Wellington himself hasn’t been able to avoid scandal.”
Neither had I. “Perhaps being home will jog your memory. Might you introduce me to Frederick Delaplane at the hunt breakfast?”
“Happily, but why?”
“One justification for keeping you out of Hampshire would be to leave the field clear for other bachelors to marry the local heiresses, as you yourself noted with regard to Algernon. You are well-born, solvent, and of age. A war hero by some lights. If Frederick seeks to keep the Carstairs family from making further inroads on the Delaplane fortunes, then exiling you aids that cause.”
“How would Freddy know of some dark deed in my past with which to torment me—which dark deed I myself cannot recall?”
“You have not caught the spirit of this investigation, Carstairs. At this phase of the proceeding, when we are hard-pressed to discern any motive, much less suspects and opportunities, we must be imaginative and curious.”
He patted his horse’s shoulder. “Explain in plain English, my lord. I am merely a lowly gamekeeper.”
He was also the baron’s spare. Peter would move one step closer to the title should Bryson meet with an untimely reward. If coming home put Bryson in danger, then the notes that appeared threatening might, in fact, be intended to preserve his safety.
Complicated, to borrow a term from my dear Perry.
“Recall,” I said, “that Frederick and his siblings have probably run tame at the Keep since boyhood. Frederick is thick with Algernon in a half-friends, half-rivals manner we saw in quantity in the military. If Algernon knows of your dark deed, or has attributed a dark deed to you for the sake of a good tale, then Frederick might well have heard of it.”
We finished our ride to the Keep in silence.
The hunt breakfast, which resembled a Venetian breakfast with—thank providence—roaring bonfires, was laid out in the lee of the Keep’s stable yard.
As riders straggled in, sometimes in groups and pairs, the buffet was replenished, the punchbowls refilled.
Riding to hounds was not a pastime for those with pockets to let.
“Peter will walk his horse in,” Carstairs said. “Freddy and Algernon prefer to arrive with more dash, when they’re running true to form.”
As if on cue in a stage play, they cantered up the lane, side by side, their horses laboring with each stride.
“You mustn’t glower,” Carstairs said as a groom took both of our mounts. “The stable lads will ensure every equine is properly cooled out and given a mash, or Papa will know the reason why.”
I hadn’t seen Atticus at first light when I’d come down to the stable to deal with Atlas’s loose shoe, and I did not see him now, despite the bacony aroma of the hunt breakfast perfuming the air. Perhaps the boy was catching up on his rest, which was as good a use of his time as any.
“Bryson!” Miss Amelia Quiggan waved to us from a bench in the sunny stable yard.
“I would have hacked out with you and his lordship had I known you were intent on riding.” She approached in a fetching habit of burgundy velvet, her hair caught back in a sensible bun, a twig of dead asters clinging to the hem of her habit.
“Amelia, good day.” Carstairs bowed. “The brisk air has put roses in your cheeks.”
“The punch and the wretched cold have imbued my cheeks with an unladylike flush, and you must work on the originality of your compliments. My lord, good morning.” She bobbed a curtsey at me.
“Why must Algernon and Freddy ride their horses half to death? We lost the scent three times this morning. Galloping headlong wasn’t called for. The fox was too smart for us.”
“The fox was lucky,” I said. “As cold as it is, there isn’t much moisture in the air to hold the scent, and what snow fell overnight was of the driest variety. Much like snow at high altitudes. Then too, a light wind is usually the fox’s friend because it helps disperse the scent.”
Miss Quiggan’s brows knit. “Dry snow?”
“Forgive his lordship,” Bryson said. “He did some tracking in Spain. Let’s scold Algernon and Freddy in person, shall we?”
He offered Miss Quiggan his arm, and I was left to trail along behind, feeling silly for having digressed into hunting technicalities. Also annoyed.
I’d done more than some tracking in Spain. The master of foxhounds would have found my observations the next thing to obvious, but that same master hadn’t been able to cast his hounds with much success.
I was hungry, I wanted to call on Lady Clotilda and her guests, and I was worried about Atticus. I nonetheless lingered at Carstairs’s side until he got around to introducing me to Freddy Delaplane, whose sisters had joined him and Algernon near the punchbowl.
Freddy was a fine-looking specimen. Perhaps all the young men in that corner of Hampshire were tall, dark-haired, and jovial. He greeted me with a bow and a grin, shook his gloved fist at the dratted fox, and breathed fumes all over the morning air.
I endured a few minutes of that, then extricated myself from Philomel Delaplane’s literal grip. For a songbird, she could take a raptor’s grasp of a man’s arm.
I left for another time the delicate business of explaining to Carstairs that if Freddy had motive for keeping him away from the heiresses and if Algernon were equally inspired to exclude his younger brother from the sight of the wealthy young ladies, then even Lord Dunsford—if matrimonially inclined—must also join the short list of suspects.
Ladies with hefty marriage settlements had given me the start of one motive, and that was progress.