Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I had hoped that the time spent with Hyperia could be devoted to pleasantries, to fresh air before the focus of the day turned to the great feast with which it would end. I was not as keen on the brilliant winter sunshine, which added an ache in my eyes to go with the ache in my head.
To say nothing of the ache in my heart.
And yet, the day offered us a milder sort of chilliness than we’d had recently.
Icicles grew from the eaves of the stable like sparkling stalactites and dripped steadily onto muddy ground.
The warmer morning air carried the rich scent of horses, and the grooms’ steaming barrows left damp tracks going from barn to muck pit and back.
I thoroughly inspected the saddle, bridle, and girth on Hyperia’s mare, then boosted my intended onto her mount.
Hyperia was quiet, directing her horse with the casual grace of the accomplished equestrienne.
When Hyperia did speak, it was to greet Bryson Carstairs, who rode his aging gelding along the path he’d shown me to the overlook.
“Miss West, good day. My lord, you look none the worse for yesterday’s ordeals.”
“Greetings, Carstairs. I grant you, the dunking in the pond qualified as unpleasant, but losing my footing on the bridge hardly counts as an ordeal. What should we know about tonight’s gathering?”
He nudged his horse to fall in beside Hyperia’s mare.
“Avoid the men’s punchbowl, or do as Algernon does and start the evening with a full cup and finish it with that same cup only half empty.
I cannot tell you how sour a head I had before he put me onto that simple strategy.
The recipe is deceptive. Tastes like the best mulled cider you ever enjoyed, but come morning, you will take a vow of eternal temperance. ”
“Whose recipe is it?” Hyperia asked.
“Papa’s. The punch is his imprimatur on what is otherwise Lady Clotilda’s grand affair.”
Bryson looked tired to me, though he should have spent his leave in Hampshire resting up, for once idling about indoors instead of tramping the woods.
“What of the orchard wassailing?” I asked. “We pour cider on the tree roots and yodel like pagans in the dark?”
“More or less. Adds a dash of Beltane revelry to the end of Yuletide. In recent years, the young ladies have joined the outing. Perhaps you might allow me to escort you, Miss West?”
I wanted to knock him off his horse for that bit of gallantry.
“I must disappoint you,” Hyperia said. “I will likely be danced off my feet by midnight, and marching across the fields in the cold and dark might be beyond my powers. If the harvest is poor next year, you can blame my tired feet.”
“Wise of you.”
“Might you invite Miss Wren?” Hyperia asked. “I understand that Philomel has been offered Sandy Quiggan’s escort, and Algernon has been granted the pleasure of accompanying Miss Quiggan. Wren might be left to admire the potted palms with me if you don’t step forward.”
“That’s a bit delicate.” Bryson drew his horse to a halt at the edge of the overlook.
The pack was nowhere in evidence, and rural Hampshire presented a tidy, if wintry, landscape below us.
“I once thought to offer for Wren. Peter was growing enamored of Robin, and she was certainly not the eldest, so I thought to better acquaint myself with Wren.”
“She is good company,” Hyperia said. “Sensible like Robin, friendly like Philomel. Fierce with backgammon or chess, but reticent when it comes to gossip.”
“That was my assessment as well.” Bryson’s gaze traveled to the Delaplane manor. “Wren seemed kindly disposed toward me, even knowing I planned to buy my colors. I hadn’t thought to solemnize the vows before joining up, but I had hoped…”
“To have somebody to come home to.” I patted Atlas’s shoulder rather than meet Hyperia’s gaze.
“Exactly. I assumed Algernon would offer for Philomel. They are of an age and seem to understand each other.”
And yet, years later, Algernon had not offered for Philomel, and Philomel had not accepted any other swain’s addresses. What on earth was afoot at Dunsford Keep?
“Algernon understands Miss Quiggan.” I made that observation half to myself. The lady was to have his good-night waltz and his escort wassailing. Not quite sharing two dances, except perhaps by local standards.
Hyperia nodded. “Miss Quiggan always speaks highly of the Dunsford heir.”
Carstairs looked surprised. “Quiggy and Algie? He’s older than she is, though I suppose that’s not unusual. Interesting. This breeze is brisk. Might we return to the trees? A frostbitten nose makes a poor impression on the dance floor.”
“Frostbitten toes are a poor fit with dancing slippers.” Hyperia turned her mare back down the path. “Do all the local children come see the ballroom before the dancing begins? Leander is beside himself with anticipation.”
“They do,” Bryson said. “Tradition and all that. I recall peeking in on the Twelfth Night ballroom myself as a boy. A bit of fairyland come to the Keep, but the next morning, the grumbling footmen, surly maids, and endless tidying up tarnished the magic. The baron would take his pack out, except that nobody is fit to ride with him, so the hounds get the day after the banquet off.”
“Then you should take the opportunity to ride out with him,” I said. “Ask your father to hack your acres with you. He misses you terribly, cannot ask you to come home, and probably needs assurances that you’ll look after Algernon when the old boy is called to his reward.”
“Algernon needs no looking after.” Said with the touch of the asperity a younger sibling voiced at the suggestion that an elder deserved special consideration.
“On the contrary,” I replied. “Those afternoon hours when you aren’t sure what Algernon is getting up to?
He’s nose-deep in the ledgers and steward’s reports, trying to manage the Keep’s finances and fending off advances from the Committee for the Peace, the Committee for Widows and Orphans, and the Committee for Anything at All of Any Significance within twenty miles of the Keep. ”
Bryson rode along for a dozen yards in silence. “Algernon and I both enjoy poetry, but I didn’t realize we shared an affinity for figures. He has always avoided any clerical task as too dull to be borne.”
No peer who wanted to remain solvent could eschew a clerk’s appreciation for ciphering. No squire or shopkeeper had that luxury either.
I turned the conversation back to safer ground. “Hack out tomorrow with your father. We’ll be leaving the day after, and you might not have another chance.”
“Listen to his lordship,” Hyperia said. “Regret makes a cold bedfellow, and your papa looks a bit choleric to me.”
“He does.” Bryson turned his horse in the direction of Lady Clotilda’s holding.
“Papa has a vitriolic nature, but he’s looking chronically pink about the gills to me as well.
You say he misses me, my lord, but I believe it more the case that I’m adding to his frustrations.
Algernon is still the charming bachelor-at-large, Peter has yet to sire a son, and I’m chasing hares in Surrey. We vex Dunsford on every hand.”
To my great exasperation, Bryson accompanied us into Lady Clotilda’s stable yard. He waited patiently atop his gelding while I assisted Hyperia to dismount. I stepped back at the appropriate moment, and a stable lad led the mare away.
“Julian, you will be careful?” Hyperia spoke quietly enough that Bryson ought not to hear. “Somebody apparently resents your presence, and you’ve already banged your head once. If you come down with an ague this afternoon, nobody will be surprised.”
“You be careful too,” I said, brushing a kiss to her cheek. “Go nowhere alone. If animosity is being directed toward me, and Atticus came to grief as a result, then you are not safe either.”
She astonished me witless by wrapping me in a quick, fierce hug right there in the sunny, chilly yard.
“Somebody is very nervous about the answers you’re determined to find, Jules.
That is a sure sign you are making progress and must not relent.
I will take care, you are already on your guard, and Atticus is a canny lad.
You’ll sort Mr. Carstairs out, and his very odd family and neighbors too. ”
The vote of confidence was as surprising as the hug. I half expected Carstairs to tell me to give up the investigation, and Hyperia’s homily fortified me for that battle in advance.
I wished her faith in me as a prospective husband was equally ironclad, but that discussion apparently awaited us on another day. I bowed over her hand, took my leave, and climbed back into the saddle.
Carstairs waited until we were once again on the wooded trail before launching his broadside.
“Please desist with the questioning, my lord. I don’t want your death on my conscience. We attend tonight’s festivities as a pair of genial bachelors, we recover from our excesses tomorrow, and then we leave this place the day after.”
His tone said he might quit the Keep and never return.
“I have another suggestion. Why not overstay your leave? Bide here for a few extra days and see what your detractor does about it, if anything.”
I’d been considering strategy—mine and that of Carstairs’s enemy—and it struck me that something in the nature of a siege might serve Bryson’s purposes.
“Caldicott, you are daft. You might well have been shoved about on the bridge last evening, but you jostled your brainbox to such a degree that you can’t recall the assault.”
“I am not daft, and I do recall the assault. Would you like to know what I learned from it?”
He looked at me with the gaze of a man in purgatory. “You were pushed?”
“Quite firmly. I nearly went into the water, nearly lost consciousness for that matter. Your enemy is both determined and careful, but they have limited weaponry. I say we simply stay in camp awhile longer, keep prodding, and let them fret themselves into a revealing blunder.”