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“Good God!”
Hal hardly heard Ned’s comment. A heavy pulsing entered his chest and his brain felt as if it were going to explode. His throat tightened, and his voice seemed not to wish to obey him.
“How—how old? The babe. How old is it?”
Weem considered the question, trouble gathering in his sharp-featured face. “Just a toddler, guv’nor. I’d say not much more’n two—three at most.”
“Oh, dear Lord,” groaned Ned.
Captain Colton could not speak. What havoc had he wrought that fateful night? Had he not dreaded this very outcome, lying sleepless night after night in a crude cot in cantonments in Spain? Or bivouacking by an impromptu fire, supping on stewed rabbit, augmented by a potato or two filched from a nearby field? Weem had always been expert at ferreting for food to eke out the most meagre of rations. Would he had long ago had the sense to send him ferreting after this.
The nightmare of his worst fears realised! Yet when Annabel had so steadfastly refused to answer his letters, he had at length supposed that fortune had favoured them. But it had not been so. Had Annabel turned to him in the extremity of this unlucky accident? No, she had not. Hurt rose up, as sharp and bitter as when she had first rejected him.
“Well, that explains the locality,” said his brother musingly, recovering from his first astonishment. “I wonder if it was Howes who set her up at Steep Ride.”
“Who else?” said Hal bitingly. “Why the devil couldn’t the old curmudgeon have come down off his high ropes? If he’d only sent me word—”
He broke off, becoming aware of his batman’s steady regard. Useless to suppose that Weem had not already guessed the sum of it. But there was no need to bandy words in his presence that must necessarily wreck Annabel’s reputation.
“You’ve done well, Weem. I’ll want every last detail, mind, but that can wait.”
Dismissed, the batman withdrew, leaving Hal confronting the accusing eyes of his senior. He threw up a hand.
“You need not look like that, Ned! I did everything I could to make it right. I promise you, I have a stack of letters to prove it.”
“Returned unopened,” agreed Mr Colton. “I know. You told me. What you didn’t tell me—”
“I know. Devil take it, do you think I meant to do it?”
He crossed the parlour, as if he must avoid his brother’s gaze, and went to stare out of the window upon the unkempt lawns. Only a short time ago he had been agreeing with Ned upon the number of gardeners required to return them to a semblance of order. His godfather had been old and ailing for some time, and the place had been allowed to deteriorate. How little he now cared!
“It was at a ball that it happened,” he disclosed, without turning round. “We had not met since she broke off our betrothal. We quarrelled mightily. We were both too much empassioned to have any rationality left. Inevitable, I suppose. So much hot air.” He turned suddenly, the blue-grey eyes afire. “And she did love me, Ned. I swear she still loved me!”
“Then, perhaps,” agreed his brother meaningfully.
An obstruction lodged in Hal’s chest. “You need not say it. What woman could continue to love the man who ruined her?”
Mr Colton came across the room. He was not near as tall, nor as broad in the chest as his brother, and his hair was less vibrant, tending more to gold. But he had the advantage of him in both years and temperament. Hal’s tempestuous personality had ever been his undoing.
“You can’t be absolutely sure, Hal, that she was ruined.”
Hal’s tone was bleak. “Can’t I?”
“She is not precisely living in obscurity. Weem says there is some society there. Evidently she has acquired respectability.”
“Respectability!”
“It’s not lightly won, Hal. It is possible that Annabel did marry. Even if the child is yours, Annabel may have taken refuge under another’s name.”
“The devil she did!” Something clicked in the Captain’s brain. He slammed a fist into his open hand. “No. Annabel didn’t marry a man called Lett. There is no such man.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’ve remembered why it sounded familiar.” Grimness settled in his chest. “Lett was the maiden name of Annabel’s mother.”
His brother was silent for a moment. But Hal’s first shock was fading. Not for nothing was he a soldier. He was a captain, in command, given to swift decisions. What was needed now was not regret, but action. He stiffened his shoulders.
“What will you do?” asked Ned frowningly.
“Oh, I know what to do!”
His brother began to look alarmed. “Now, Hal—for the Lord’s sake, think before you act!”
“I’ve thought for three years. I’m done with thinking.”
“Oh, dear Lord! Hal!’
But Captain Colton was already on the move. Before he reached the door, his brother caught his arm. “Wait, Hal!”
He turned. Removing the hand that imprisoned him, he grasped it strongly. “Ned, I’m coming home with you, so you’ll have every opportunity to argue. But let me advise you not to waste your breath. You can say what you like, but you won’t change my mind.”
Mr Colton grinned. “You always were a headstrong devil.”
Hal’s smile was twisted. “So I may be. But in this case, Ned, there’s a matter of honour at stake. I have no choice.”
The kitchen bench and two of the dining chairs had been brought out and set under the shade of a great chestnut. It was situated just upon the boundary, but it obligingly spread its branches to encompass a good part of Annabel Lett’s garden. A circumstance that enabled her to receive her two visitors in a much pleasanter setting on a hot Saturday in early July than was to be had in the tiny formal parlour within the cottage.
The visitors occupied the chairs, while Annabel took the bench. She was dressed in a sprigged gown of a soft green lawn that brought out the colour of her eyes, although its cut and style were far from fashionable. Its modest neckline, round and plain, and its three-quarter sleeves, together with the frilly cap that covered much of Annabel’s dark hair, gave her an air of respectability.
It was a pose that Mrs Lett had cultivated with care and diligence. And if she had not entirely succeeded in subduing the restless spirit that lurked deep within—which now and then broke out, to her regret, in hasty words—she flattered herself that she had fooled most of her acquaintances in their reading of her character.
But the two ladies present were such particular friends that Annabel felt able to relax her strict guard. She would not have hesitated to entertain them in the larger family room, where Rebecca was permitted to run wild and all was generally at sixes and sevens. But this arrangement allowed little Becky to dash about the garden under her mother’s eye, leaving Janet free to pursue her numerous chores.
Which was as well, for Annabel thought her visitors would have burst with frustration if they had felt themselves obliged to hold their tongues in the presence of the maid. The subject under discussion was far too interesting. Especially since it concerned the man most people had settled upon as having done away with the dissolute Marquis of Sywell up at the Abbey.
“Can it be true, do you think?” asked Charlotte Filmer.
Jane Emerson, a slim brunette with little countenance except a pair of soft brown eyes, gave her characteristic gurgling laugh.
“I should think it all too likely, Mrs Filmer. Have we not all been puzzled as to why Solomon Burneck should have remained loyal to that wretched man? Nothing could more surely explain it than if he had indeed been Sywell’s own son. Don’t you think so, Annabel?”
“Yes, if only it had come out before the Marquis was murdered,” agreed Annabel, accepting with a word of thanks the pebble pressed into her palm by her daughter, who ran off again to find another. “To put it about only when Burneck himself has fallen under suspicion seems to me in itself suspicious.”
“Very true,” agreed Charlotte, and a little shudder ran through her. “I have always found him sinister.”
Mrs Filmer was a gentle female, a great many years Annabel’s senior, but they shared a common bond in the isolation of an existence without the support of a husband. Charlotte’s daughter was grown up now, and had last season gone to London as companion to the Tenison chit—a piece of good fortune for which Mrs Filmer was still thanking Providence.
“Oh, I am perfectly happy to have Solomon for the villain,” said Jane merrily. “Why, he looks a very devil, with that hooked nose, and his horrid black clothes. Thin lips are a sign of meanness, you know, and he has the horridest eyes of anyone I’ve ever met. Set so narrow and close.”
Annabel could not help laughing as she placed the pebble among the growing pile beside her on the bench. “Jane, you are outrageous. What appalling prejudice! I pity your pupils, who are obliged to look to you for example.”
“Fiddle! I am responsible only for their deportment and their performance in the dance. I have nothing to do with the formation of their minds.’
In fact, as Annabel knew, Miss Emerson was one of the more popular teachers at the Guarding Academy in nearby Steep Abbot. Jane had a deceptively demure manner in social situations, but among friends—which term wholly encompassed her students—she exhibited a liveliness of mind, and an endearing warmth that made Annabel sorry for her circumstances. But Jane would have none of it.
“Don’t waste your pity on me, Annabel, for I am perfectly content with my lot,” she had said gaily. “I learned early to be so. I was ever a “plain Jane”, and it is unlikely I should have caught myself a husband, even had it been possible for me to make a come-out.”
Annabel might doubt this privately, but she had said no more on the subject, feeling the more thankful for their friendship that permitted Jane these small respites on her one free Saturday each month. Her company was a boon to Annabel, who could only admire the generosity of heart that left Jane with neither malice nor envy towards others, in particular the more flamboyant and adventurous of the Guarding teachers—like Desirée Nash, who had broken away earlier this year and ended by marrying Lord Buckworth.
“But don’t you think, if Solomon Burneck had been Sywell’s son,” asked Mrs Filmer, bringing the conversation back to the point at issue, “that the Marquis would have got rid of him?”
“Oh, yes,” agreed Jane, setting one graceful leg over the other so that the soft white muslin slithered, “if Sywell knew. You don’t suppose he counted up his by-blows, do you, Mrs Filmer? They must be all over the countryside!”
“Jane, you shocking creature!” protested Annabel. “Pay no heed to her, Charlotte.”
But Mrs Filmer was plainly amused, though she tutted in a fretful way, too. “She is right, of course. Oh, dear, how wretched it is that that dreadful man should be able to scandalize everyone even from beyond the grave!”
“What I want to know,” said Jane more seriously, reaching absently for one of Becky’s pebbles and playing it between her fingers, “is whether you had this from your usual source, Annabel. You get all the news before the rest of us only because Aggie Binns tells it to your Janet. It is too bad!”
Aggie Binns was a wizened diminutive creature who lived a short way from Annabel in a cottage near the village pump. Aggie had been taking in laundry for around thirty-five years, and was the main source of all the gossip emanating from the Abbey. This was because she had for years now been the only female willing to set foot in the place.
“It is not Janet. Janet would scorn to listen to Aggie’s gossip. It comes to me through Young Nat’s mother. You know she helps Aggie with the laundry.”
Young Nat, who inhabited with his mother one of the little workman’s cottages across the green, was by way of being Annabel’s handyman, although he spent a part of each day working the smithy at Farmer Buller’s place at Steep Abbot.
“Yes, but if Aggie had known a tidbit like this,” pursued Jane, “she would not have kept it to herself for so long.”
“Very true,” agreed Charlotte. “The wretched woman does nothing but spread evil everywhere she goes, dragging that little laundry cart.”
The conversation was suspended for a moment as the diminutive Miss Lett, coming up with another treasure, spied the theft perpetrated by Jane Emerson and set up a protest.
“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Becky,” uttered the culprit contritely, holding out the errant pebble.
“Say thank you,” reproved Annabel as her daughter snatched it away.
A pair of big blue eyes peeped defiantly up at Miss Emerson under the red-gold mop of hair, which young Miss Lett invariably refused to allow to be confined under the mob cap suited to her years.
“I don’t think Becky feels that I deserve to be thanked,” commented Jane on a tiny laugh, “and I’m sure I don’t blame her. It is a pretty pebble, Becky, and I am very sorry for taking it away without asking you.”
Rebecca cast a doubtful glance up at her mother’s face.
“There now,” said Annabel. “Miss Jane didn’t mean it, you see. Now say thank you politely.”
Instead, Becky’s gaze came back to “Miss Jane”. With a sudden bright smile, she offered her the pebble to hold. It was accepted with becoming gratitude. Matters now being settled to everyone’s satisfaction, little Miss Lett thought proper to return to her labours, leaving the ladies free to pursue their interrupted discussion.
Jane was vehement in her suspicions of Solomon Burneck. “If Aggie Binns had it from Solomon that he is Sywell’s by-blow, it is certain that he intended for it to be repeated.”
“Yes, but she didn’t have it from Solomon,” objected Annabel. “She got it from his cousin.”
“What cousin? I didn’t know he had a cousin.”
“Had you not heard? Apparently this female cousin came to the Abbey in a panic, having heard that Solomon had fallen under suspicion of the Marquis’s murder. It was she who let it out to Aggie.”
“How foolish! Or doesn’t she know what Aggie is like?”
“That’s just what makes me think Solomon intended for it to be spread abroad,” said Annabel.
Charlotte was instantly convinced. She nodded wisely under the frill of her cap that rippled with the movement. “Yes, I see what you mean, Annabel.”
“No, I think we must vindicate Solomon,” decided Jane, in an abrupt about-face, dropping Becky’s pebble back among its fellows. “Unless his cousin has a reason to lie for him, it must be true. And one can scarce blame him for concealing it before this. I mean, if one had a father whose conduct was so excessively shocking, one would be at pains to hush it up. And Solomon Burneck has always condemned the Marquis. He has forever been quoting that piece from the Bible which instructs us that every dog must have his day. Yes, Solomon is certainly innocent.”
Annabel could not help laughing. “You are readily convinced, Jane. I only hope you may not be made to look nohow by yet more dreadful revelations that prove him guilty beyond doubt.”
Before either of her visitors could answer this, a call from the kitchen interrupted them. A woman of dour aspect, tall but sturdy of figure and clad in the grey low-waisted gown of a servant, came hurrying towards the group under the tree.
“What is it, Janet?”
“It’s the reverend from Abbot Giles, ma’am. He’s got a gentleman with him.”
Annabel rose. “Mr Hartwell? Here in Steep Ride? I wonder what he wants with me?”
The other two ladies were looking equally puzzled. Beyond one welcoming visit, when Annabel first came into the neighbourhood, she had usually seen the Reverend Mr Edward Hartwell only on Sundays. And that at his church in Abbot Giles, when she attended the service. Indeed, she had the intention of going there tomorrow. Otherwise, Mr Hartwell had called upon her only on the occasion of Rebecca’s birthday, bringing a gift—a most kind attention—but she would not celebrate her third until November. Yet here he was.
“I had better go in to him. Is he in the parlour, Janet?”
“He said not to disturb yourself, for he’s coming out.”
And indeed, the vicar was to be seen coming around the corner of the house at that moment. He was a man in his forties, dark-clad as befit his calling, who walked with an energetic step and had usually a cheerful air about him. But as he approached, Annabel thought he was looking a trifle solemn, and a shaft of dismay shot through her.
It was evident that his demeanour had struck her guests just as oddly. Charlotte sounded fretful.
“What can have happened?”
“Lord, is someone dead?” muttered Jane.
Annabel’s instant thought was of her daughter. But that was ridiculous. Becky had been with them throughout. Besides, she was still happily engaged in locating pebbles to add to the trove on the bench.
Then it must be Papa. Heaven forbid it was his untimely demise! They had been at outs, but she could not cease to love him. Only surely it would be Mr Maperton who came to break such news. The lawyer was in her father’s employ. Or was it indeed Mr Maperton who had asked Mr Hartwell to break the news? Had not Janet said that the vicar had a gentleman with him? Only there was no gentleman in sight at this present.
These rapid thoughts had barely passed through her mind when the reverend gentleman was upon her, bowing to the other two ladies, and then fixing Annabel with a gaze of gentle austerity as he took hold of both her hands.
“I had hoped to find you alone, Mrs Lett.”
Instantly, both Jane and Charlotte were up.
“Shall we—?”
“I am perfectly ready to—”
