Chapter 4 #2
“Life,” Sir Clive said. “Real life, where the ladies get the weeps and children wipe their noses on their sleeves and horses come up lame, while young men make fools of themselves in the betting books. Messy, tedious, loud, awkward life. Dantry, though I love him like the cousin he is, is a bit at sea when it comes to getting on with practicalities. A hysterical female would have flummoxed him entirely.”
Hysterical females certainly flummoxed me, though in my experience, a lady usually went round the bend because she’d been driven past all bounds by some clueless fellow, or a procession of clueless fellows.
“We expand our inquiries,” I said, “to include any young lady, initial B, who has been particularly preoccupied lately. Who has begun to regularly take the garden air at nine of the clock each evening, that sort of thing.”
“Your inquiries,” Miss Weatherby said, “not ours. Until the snow melts, I will be confined to the Knot.” The very absence of rancor in her tone suggested house arrest was a bitter penance.
“Spring must follow on,” Sir Clive said, patting her hand, then gathering up the letters and returning them to me.
“Best put these in a safe place, my lord. Would not want any of the footmen getting poetical aspirations and turning the maids’ pretty heads.
If you two young people will excuse me, I’m off to enjoy a hot soak before changing for dinner.
Argue some politics, why don’t you? Vigorous debate does exercise the lungs. ”
He left us alone together in the cozy parlor, somewhat to my dismay.
“Don’t make anything of it,” Miss Weatherby said. “Uncle does not insult me by leaving me alone in your company, my lord. He compliments you, and he well knows that you and Miss West are betrothed.”
“Her Grace is a loyal correspondent.” About which, my feelings were mixed. Hyperia and I had only recently set a date, and yet, we had been engaged for more than a year. Our commitment was far from private, but why must Her Grace apprise Sir Clive of it?
“Sir Clive is a loyal friend,” Miss Weatherby said. “More tea?”
“No, thank you, and I am disinclined to argue politics at the moment. Those letters bother me.”
“They are troubling in one sense, but also understandable. Dantry was not discreet by nature. If a matter sat ill with him, all of England would hear his objections from every pamphlet and pulpit he could find. But he was also, as Uncle says, oddly inept. Dantry would not have known how to curb the enthusiasm of some country belle who’d taken it into her head that she was fated to be his countess.
He had a gentlemanly sort of innocence.”
“You like that about him.”
She fiddled with some latch or other on her Bath chair and rolled over to the hearth, then added a square of peat to the flames.
An ambulatory person could have simply padded over to the window and gazed at the darkening landscape.
In her Bath chair, Miss Weatherby apparently felt that movement required justification by the performance of some task.
One did not pace in an invalid’s chair, or Miss Weatherby did not.
“I did like Dantry, a lot.” She wheeled her chair to a spot opposite my wing chair, deftly grabbing a shawl from the back of the sofa as she passed.
“When I was fourteen and facing either the loss of my leg or life in a chair, Sheldon taunted me by saying I was fit only for Bascomb’s Retreat or begging on street corners.
Dantry bloodied his brother’s nose for that insult and made him apologize.
I have always respected Dantry for fighting that battle for me. ”
“Bascomb’s Retreat?”
“One of those places where wealthy families stash their embarrassments. One of the more discreet. It’s about fifteen miles west of here. From the outside, the appearances live up to the name. Peaceful, settled, pretty, bucolic—and surrounded by estate walls at least six feet high.”
She’d seen the place, in other words, and Sheldon’s taunt had been more than theoretical to her. The subject wanted changing, and I was not likely to have many more opportunities to speak with Miss Weatherby privately, so I seized the moment.
“Do you realize you often refer to Dantry in the past tense? ‘He had a gentlemanly sort of innocence.’”
“Great heavens. Let’s hope I am not prescient. Dantry might well be all that stands between me and Sheldon’s tender guardianship.”
I ought not to inquire. The details were irrelevant to Dantry’s disappearance—or they should be.
“Might you explain?”
She wrapped the shawl about her shoulders, making sure the tails were well clear of her wheels.
“I am approaching the tollbooth on the outskirts of spinsterdom. Sir Clive’s entailed properties will go to Dantry, but the untailed properties, which include the Knot and everything Aunt held through her settlements, will come to me.
I already own some of it, though Uncle is my trustee. ”
“And when Sir Clive goes to his reward, you become wealthier, and Dantry takes over as trustee?” A sensible arrangement from most perspectives. “But if Dantry isn’t available, Sheldon will step in?”
She nodded. “I haven’t wanted to say anything to Uncle, because that would be ghoulish and selfish of me.
Sheldon is no longer a bratty boy. He can be quite nice, which is fortunate if he’s to inherit the title.
I am desperately hoping that Dantry comes whistling up the drive as soon as the snow melts.
I want you to find him for Uncle’s sake, for the sake of the climbing boys and whatnot, but also for my sake, my lord. I trust Dantry.”
Miss Weatherby’s trust was not lightly given. “And the letters?”
“I like your notion that a young lady lost her head over a handsome earl and is making a complete cake of herself. That explains Dantry’s stealthy departure nicely.
You must excuse me, my lord, as I am due to confer with Cook.
If you are comfortable in Lord Dantry’s quarters, I thought we might put you up there.
I’ve had the sheets changed, and the footmen know to keep the fire going. ”
“The apartment is warm, and I need access to Dantry’s effects. Taking over his billet is entirely acceptable.”
For the first time, she smiled at me, truly smiled—a breathtaking transformation, from merely friendly to sweetly alluring—and then she wheeled herself on her way. I knew not to hold the door, though I closed the door in her wake.
Miss Weatherby was quite, quite pretty, when she allowed herself to be. She was also bright, perceptive, and more than capable of running a country manor. Was spinsterdom the fate she’d chosen or simply the only course she allowed herself to contemplate?
Hyperia would have had useful insights on that topic.
I took out the letters and read them all—they were, at most, three sentences apiece—and then returned to Lord Dantry’s former quarters.
I put the billets-doux in the hidden compartment in his traveling desk—where he ought to have been storing them, the dunderhead—and sat down among the welter of writings to pen an epistle to my dearest lady.
The words came, though not with much eloquence.
The situation at the Knot was growing more complicated, and the weather wasn’t helping anything.
When the first supper bell rang, I was only halfway through my report, so I sanded the page and went searching the wardrobe for finery I might borrow from a man who was becoming more of a puzzle the longer he remained least in sight.
When I traveled any distance, I took certain provisions in my saddlebags.
Flint and steel, shaving kit, a change of linen, toothbrush and powder, spare knife, spyglass, spare specs.
I included in both my saddlebags and my breast pocket a card explaining that should I be found in the midst of one of my memory lapses, I was to be returned to Caldicott Hall, where my brother, His Grace, would take responsibility for me.
I hated carrying those cards. Their purpose was not so much to inform passing strangers of my faulty memory—as if that would make a fellow safer?—but to explain to me, when I had lost track of all recollection, who I was and that my situation was a known affliction and easily dealt with.
I wrote the cards out in my own hand, a fact that could be proven to me even in the midst of lapsed memory by having me copy the same words. Of course, penmanship could be forged, but that simple test had been reassuring, even if not entirely convincing.
In anticipation of the evening meal, I’d blown out the candles, so my quarters were illuminated only by the flames of the hearth.
I’d also left a sconce lit in the bedroom, and it was there that I was attempting to make myself presentable in my borrowed finery.
Dantry lacked an inch or so of my height, but because I was appropriating a shirt and cravat, the difference did not matter.
An examination of his clothing suggested that the earl had fashionable preferences, within the limits of good taste. He patronized only the best Bond Street establishments. His jewelry box told a slightly different and more extravagant tale.
For a visit to the Knot, Dantry had brought along matching sleeve buttons in ruby, emerald, and amethyst, as well as a plain gold set styled to represent crossed spurs.
Three gold watches, one plain, two with fancy engraving.
A silver card case finished in ivory and nacre inlay and a pocket comb featuring the same intricate adornment.
The calling cards were cream linen stock printed with bright blue ink. I took two, for no particular reason.
When Dantry had all these baubles on hand, why had he taken his spurs with him? The sleeve buttons were exactly the sort of trinket easily pawned in any sizeable town, while spurs—