Chapter 6 #2
“Uncle’s dirty tactics. All he said was, if he could have his Jamie back, only on the condition that Jamie would have to move about in a Bath chair, he and Jamie would both have taken that bargain in a heartbeat.”
Wretched old schemer. Dear, wretched old schemer.
“Then Uncle designed a folding ramp for getting me into and out of the dog cart, chair and all. Most of the Knot’s outer doors are now fitted with ramps.
By the time Uncle mused that he might be able to get me back up on a horse, I did not care about dignity, appearances, or ladylike deportment.
I was committed to the cause of my own mobility, and I’d learned how to fight even my own pride in service to my victories. ”
She’d made her point in a roundabout and touching fashion. “And you see in Dantry somebody who has not learned how to commit to or fight for a cause?”
She nodded. “He might have been trysting with a willing woman, my lord, but he isn’t making a dashing jaunt up to Gretna Green. He lacks the boldness.”
In other words, he lacked the courage. Meanwhile, the shire’s best Society gently mocked Sir Clive, who’d been willing to risk his niece’s trust in an effort to win her some independence of body and spirit.
“You have given me much to think about, Miss Weatherby. Might I ask you to consider a subject for me in return?”
“Of course.”
“If the weather continues to oblige, I would like to call upon Sheldon tomorrow at the family seat, because he’s the next logical party to be queried.
I might end up staying the night with him.
When we gather this evening before supper, please share with me what you think I might need to know of him and who else I should question.
Lord Dantry did not take the stagecoach from Middleton, he did not hire a horse, and he’s not biding with you and Sir Clive.
To whom might he go in an hour of need?”
If the man had had any sense, he would have turned to Miss Weatherby herself. She understood his ambitions better than he did himself, and she apparently shared his views.
“I’ll give it some thought. What of the boy? Will he travel to the Dovecote with you?”
The Dovecote, an unprepossessing name for what I knew to be an impressive stately home.
“I’ll make that decision in the morning after consulting the local weather oracle.”
She wheeled herself out, and I barely resisted the urge to stand at attention and salute. Miss Weatherby wore no uniform, but she knew all about fighting, losing, and winning long, hard battles.
“Dantry cannot possibly have gone missing.” Sheldon sat back, crossed his legs at the knee, and stared hard at the fire. “Lost, yes. He’s been lost for years, but not missing.”
The Arbuthnot spare made a handsome picture by the hearth.
He was dark-haired, rangy, and attired as a fashionable country gentleman, but for a pair of tasseled Hessians on his feet.
The true squire would have been in his tall field boots.
Sheldon’s cravat was styled in a tidy mail coach knot, the folds held in place with a tasteful pin of gleaming gold.
A faint scent of balsam lingered about his person.
Compared to him, I felt positively frumpy.
The journey from the Knot to the Arbuthnot family seat had taken me better than two hours.
That relatively brief passage had been due to drifting that half-cleared the lanes for horseback travel while rendering them impassable for most wheeled conveyances.
The exposed ground had already been turning to muck, though it would refreeze by sunset and become treacherous going indeed.
“How is Lord Dantry lost?” I asked.
Sheldon rose, went to the sideboard, and returned with the decanter, pausing to tug the bell-pull.
“Lord Julian, you must believe me when I say that I love my brother. Dantry is the dearest, best, most admirable older brother a fellow ever had. More brandy?”
“No, thank you. I’m still enjoying my first serving.”
Sheldon refilled his empty glass and set the decanter on the mantel.
“Dantry is one of those pure souls who believes in the goodness of man. He’s so pure in recent years, I’m not certain he knows what to make of the goodness of woman, or her other endearing attributes.
He should have been a monastic, though in earlier life…
” Sheldon took a sip of his drink and slanted a how-much-to-disclose look at me.
“Do go on.” The brandy was excellent, but I went cautiously. I was in unfamiliar surrounds, chilled to the bone, hungry, and suffering the usual effects of a troubled night’s sleep.
“When we were growing up,” Sheldon said, “Dantry had a sense of humor. He could poke fun at himself. He’s not a Puritan, exactly, or a teetotaler, but before the title clobbered him, he was much lighter of heart.
He could make small talk without maundering on about the slums or noblesse oblige and Christian duty. ”
He studied his drink, then slanted a quizzical glance at me.
“Aren’t the poor supposed to be with us always?
I forget who said that. Dantry certainly forgets that part too.
He’s very keen on the passage about rendering unto Caesar, provided we aren’t talking about a tariff on imported grain.
He’d tax gin, cause the peasantry to revolt, and then where would poor old England be? ”
Where was Miss Weatherby when one needed an articulate antidote to blaspheming?
“You and Dantry have different politics, I take it.”
Sheldon pushed away from the mantel, his drink in hand, and wandered along a row of windows that looked out over a snow-covered park.
We occupied a sitting room that fell somewhere between formal and family in tone.
The appointments were comfortable—heavy forest green velvet curtains; a green and gold fleur-de-lis pattern on the wallpaper; pink, purple, and green floral effusions woven into the carpet; and claret-colored upholstery on generously cushioned furniture.
The fire blazed, a seven-day clock ticked on the sideboard, and a portrait of two boys, both dark-haired and full of mischief, hung above the sideboard.
More significant than any of that was the sheer warmth enveloping us in a capacious room with ceilings approaching ten feet.
Though silk shawls and woven lap robes hung along the back of the sofa, they were unnecessary, and my chilled and tired bones rejoiced in the luxury.
The rest of the Arbuthnot ancestral pile might well double as an icehouse, but this room was a bit of heaven.
“Not to state the obvious,” Sheldon said, gaze upon the snowy park, “but I am a younger son. I do not have politics. I have the younger son’s dilemma.
How, without jeopardizing my much-vaunted gentlemanly status, do I keep body and soul together in a fashion that, if not abundantly enjoyable, is at least tolerable in dignity and creature comforts? Quite the puzzle.”
He wasn’t too young to have served in the military, though he would have missed university if he’d bought his colors. But he was too necessary to the earldom’s succession, at least until Dantry had a few little lordlings in his nursery.
“You have politics,” I said. “Had you truly no politics, you’d be ignoring or applauding Dantry’s tilting at figurative windmills. Instead, he worries you.” Oddly enough, Hyperia had politics, as did Miss Weatherby.
Did I?
“Very well, mustn’t argue with a guest. I have politics.
What I do not have, then, are prospects, and Dantry racketing off to Manchester to rouse the rabble, or whatever he’s about, simply will not do.
I need him strutting about London, looking important and sounding impassioned, or every shopkeeper in Mayfair will see me sent to the sponging house. ”
“And yet, you are preparing to go up to Town?”
A soft tap sounded on the door.
“Enter!”
A footman pushed a tea cart into the sitting room. He was young, well fed, and his livery fit him as though tailored for him personally.
“By the wing chairs, please, Tuttle. My thanks. I’ll ring when we’re through.
Be good enough to let Mrs. Betancourt know that Lord Julian will join me for supper and be our guest for the night.
Before dear Cook has apoplexies to go with her conniptions, please assure her that we will dine informally at the usual hour.
His lordship was a soldier. I’m sure he can appreciate plainer fare on occasion. ”
“Very good, sir.” Tuttle bowed, half turned, remembered himself, and backed toward the door.
Sheldon finished his drink and set the glass on the sideboard. “The housekeeper’s nephew, or godson, or something. Mrs. Betancourt has a legion of younger relatives who all seem to need employment in domestic service. Where were we?”
We were at the place in the conversation where one of us was making a convincing attempt to distract the other of us from the matter at hand.
“Where do you suppose Dantry might be?” I asked.
Sheldon settled heavily back into the other wing chair angled toward the fire.
“Damned if I know. Left by dark of night, you say? I honestly can’t see Dantry eloping, not with a lady, not to avoid creditors.
Besides, he’s a peer, and most of them are nothing short of eleemosynary institutions on two feet.
In hock up to their top hats, with no obligation to pay anybody. ”
Sheldon passed me a plate. “Let’s not stand on ceremony, if you please.”
Now that an array of sandwiches, jam tarts, and cakes lay before me, I went from hungry to famished.
“What of political rivals?” I asked. “Tories who want the upright Whig earl to cease bleating about the poor, or for him to show some respect for the crown?”