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The Comtesse joined them as they seated themselves at the long refectory table, with the Earl at its head and Bella at the opposite end. Elizabeth took her place on his lordship’s left. ‘This place is as cold as a tomb,’ she said, looking at the dismal fire. ‘And just about as cheerful.’
‘I am sorry, my lady,’ Bella said. ‘We do not often use this room and it is the first fire we have lit in here this year. I fear the chimney needs sweeping. I will see to it first thing tomorrow.’
‘Uncle, you need a proper housekeeper,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Isabella is far too young for such a responsibility.’
‘I think Bella does very well,’ Edward said. ‘I do not doubt that his lordship allowed her no time to prepare for such an unexpected influx of visitors.’
‘That would account for the state of my room,’ Elizabeth said, watching as Daisy, in a new dress and apron and shaking with nerves, brought in the first course with the help of a temporary footman from the village. ‘It is thick with dust and the fire is so feeble it is no better than a peasant’s.’
Bella did not think the Comtesse had any idea of what a peasant’s fire was like, or that the poor man would not think of lighting one in a bedroom.
‘Your own fault,’ the Earl put in. ‘We do not keep rooms ready against unexpected guests. It would be a criminal waste in these hard times. I suggest you change apartments with your son, whose rooms were prepared.’
‘Of course, Mama,’ Louis said, anxious not to quarrel with his great uncle. ‘I’ll have my things moved out as soon as we have finished our meal.’
Slightly mollified, Elizabeth turned to Bella. ‘Where is Miss Battersby? I would have expected her to have come forward to make me welcome if you were too busy, attending to everyone else’s needs.’
‘She is visiting her sick sister in Downham Market. I expect her back at any time,’ Bella explained.
Elizabeth was shocked. ‘My lord, surely you are not keeping a young unmarried girl here without companion or chaperone? There will be the most prodigious scandal if it gets abroad.’
‘Fustian!’ he said. ‘I am her grandfather and this is her home. Always will be…’
‘As to that, I am sure Louis is not such a pinchpenny as to deny her a home when he comes into his own, but it will hardly be proper for her to stay here while he is unmarried.’
‘You presume too much, madam,’ the Earl said, favouring her with a glacial look.
‘Oh, Mama,’ Louis put in. ‘His lordship is determined on Miss Huntley bringing forth an heir before he dies.’
‘What is that to the point?’
The Earl sighed. ‘Tell her, Louis.’
‘His lordship is determined on marrying her to one of us,’ Louis told his mother, his usually pale complexion suffused with colour. ‘It is to be a condition of inheriting.’
‘You mean he is trying to force you to marry Isabella?’ She looked at the girl as she spoke and her expression told clearly what she thought of that idea.
‘Or Edward. Or James. Or Robert,’ he said morosely. ‘Her child will take precedence.’
‘He can’t do it,’ she said. ‘She is a female and the estate is entailed.’
‘Would you like to put it to the test?’ his lordship said.
‘I own Edward might think he had a claim,’ Elizabeth conceded, ‘though he would be in error, but the other two…’ It was past belief and her voice rose as she appealed to her uncle. ‘I cannot conceive that you would ever consider them. One is a clodhopper and the other a scapegrace.’
‘I said Bella may have her choice and I shall hold to that,’ he said. ‘James has already indicated his intention to offer for her.’
‘You will never let her go to the muckraker? My goodness, you must be touched in the attic even to think it. James Trenchard in this house!’ She laughed loudly, though her laughter was a little forced. ‘Can you imagine it? He would keep pigs in the drawing room and chickens in the hall. I should hope Isabella has more sense than to consider such an offer. And as for you, Edward, you are already engaged to Miss Charlotte Mellish.’
‘Not precisely,’ he said laconically.
‘How so, not precisely? Either you are or you are not, and I have it on good authority it wants but the announcement in The Gazette. You will be the worst kind of rakeshame if you renege on it and deserve to be cut dead.’
‘For your information, ma’am, I have not yet made a formal offer and may be rejected.’
‘Oh, so you mean to make yourself so disagreeable to Miss Mellish that she will have no hesitation but to end the affair. Very clever.’ She turned to Bella. ‘You would be making a fatal mistake if you were to take him on those terms, my dear…’
‘I have not said I will have any of them,’ Bella said in an anguished voice. ‘I cannot think that all this quarrelling and argument can result in happiness for any of us. Grandfather, please, tell everyone you have been hoaxing them.’
‘I shall tell them no such thing.’ He turned to the footman who had brought in the second remove and signalled him to serve it. ‘Now let us finish our meal in peace.’
The Comtesse opened her mouth to speak again but changed her mind and began eating her fish course with studied concentration. Bella knew she would have more to say as soon as the meal was over and she dreaded it.
She looked up and saw Edward smiling at her. She was not sure whether he was laughing at her or sympathising with her. Did he really mean to turn his back on Miss Mellish and make her an offer for the sake of the inheritance? What would it be like, being married to him under those conditions, knowing she was second best? It would hardly be propitious for a happy marriage. And would he be faithful to her? How long before he neglected her and sought the arms of Charlotte?
The interminable meal dragged on, as course after course was placed before them, picked at and taken away. The ladies remained silent, but Louis became increasingly foxed on his lordship’s wine and even Edward seemed to have lost some of his haughtiness by the time they reached the fruit course. They seemed to have forgotten, or were ignoring, the reason they were there and spoke of every subject under the sun except the one uppermost in their thoughts. It was like a cat and mouse game. Bella was counting the minutes to her escape when Jolliffe came to tell his lordship that Captain Huntley had arrived.
‘Then he may go hungry,’ his lordship said. ‘We have nearly finished. Put him in the drawing room to wait for us there.’
‘My lord, he is…’ Jolliffe paused. ‘He is somewhat dishevelled. I believe he has met with an accident.’
Bella gasped and even Elizabeth looked startled. Edward put down his cutlery and rose. ‘Is he hurt? Where is he?’
Robert himself appeared in the doorway behind Jolliffe. His beautiful cloth coat was torn and muddied, his cravat askew and he had lost his hat. What was worse, he had a bad cut over one eye which was encrusted with dried blood and a great purple bruise below it. He bowed to Elizabeth at the same time as he managed a quirky smile for Bella, who would have rushed forward to help him if the look he gave her had not halted her in her tracks. It warned her to be silent and not invite her grandfather’s close questioning. ‘A thousand apologies, ladies. I will take my leave until I am more presentable. Excuse me, my lord.’ To Edward he said, ‘Help me to my room, Teddy. Need a bath.’ He limped out of the room on the arm of his brother.
‘Well!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘Been brawling like a prize-fighter and dares to show his face in the dining room. What is the world coming to? No manners any more, no respect. Is it any wonder the lower classes defy their betters when they have no good example to live by.’
‘I am sure Robert has not been brawling,’ Bella said, wondering just what had happened. ‘No doubt he will enlighten us when he is feeling more the thing.’
‘Then let us retire to the drawing room, you and I,’ the Comtesse went on. ‘We shall have a comfortable coze, while his lordship and Louis talk business.’ And with that she took Bella’s arm in a very firm grip, curtsied to the Earl without relaxing it and almost dragged the girl to the drawing room.
‘Now,’ she said when they were seated and the teatray had been brought in, ‘tell me what has brought on this curious humour in my uncle. Have you noticed him behaving strangely lately? Not quite himself, eh?’
‘He has been perfectly at ease with himself, except for his gout. It troubles him a great deal but he will not take the doctor’s advice and refrain from drinking. He says gout has nothing to do with the claret and burgundy he consumes, but is caused by the wet weather we have been having. And he may be right. It has been the wettest spring anyone can remember and many of the fields are inundated, which does not make the labourers’ plight any easier. Farmers like James are in sad straits themselves and cannot pay their men who have to apply to the parish…’
‘Are you being purposely obtuse, Isabella? I care not a fig for the farmers, so long as they pay their rents on time. I am talking about this insane notion to marry you off for a legacy. I do believe old Hanson has put the old man up to it.’
Mr George Hanson was the Earl’s legal man. ‘Why should he do that?’
‘To try and disinherit Louis. He has never looked on my son with any favour. He sees him as a Frenchman and therefore to be viewed with suspicion, which is very hard on my poor boy who has spent almost his entire life in England and renounced his lands in France.’
‘Renounced them?’ Bella queried, dragging her mind from what was happening upstairs to pay attention. ‘I thought they had been taken from him by the Revolutionaries.’
‘They were, but there are moves afoot to restore them. They will be ruined and worthless by now, of course, and I do not wish to go back.’ She shuddered. ‘And if we are not careful the contagion will spread and we shall have revolution here, on our doorstep.’
‘Oh, no, surely not?’
‘I saw evidence on our journey here—ricks burned, barns pulled down and posters pinned to empty shops. “Bread or blood,” they say. It is how it started in France. We need steadfast people like Louis at the helm to prevent it. That is why it is so important his legacy should not be put up to auction.’
Bella would not have described Louis as steadfast, but she let that go. She smiled crookedly. ‘Is the notion of your son being married to me so distasteful, my lady?’
‘Oh, you are a pleasant enough chit but, tell me, what have you to recommend you to a man of the world like Louis? Tucked away in the country, the companion of an old man who has forgotten what it is like to be in Society, how can you possibly know how to go on? Louis needs someone from the ton, someone with presence, not a timid little mouse. The court is full of beautiful women and Colette has the ear of the Regent, who will advise us.’
It was not only the Regent’s ear Elizabeth’s daughter had, Bella thought irreverently. By all accounts she had been possessed of other parts of his anatomy on occasion. And Louis must be a poor apology for a man to allow his mother and sister to choose his bride for him. ‘I would not dream of coming between Louis and his aspirations at court,’ she said.
‘Good. Then we are agreed. You will refute this strange idea of the Earl’s and not choose any of them. I can promise you, on Louis’s behalf, that you will not be let starve.’
Bella supposed she was meant to be grateful for that, but before she could find a suitable reply his lordship and Louis had come into the room and she was obliged to busy herself, pouring tea for them. It was only when no one spoke that she realised both men looked furious. Louis was decidedly pink about the ears and the Earl’s face was almost purple. Bella was afraid he was going to have a fit of apoplexy.
‘Grandpapa, I do believe you have overtaxed yourself,’ she said. ‘Should you not go and lie down for a while?’
‘I will go when I am ready. Where are Edward and Robert?’
‘They have not come down again.’
He rang the bell furiously and sent the footman scurrying upstairs to summon the two young men. When they appeared, Robert had bathed and changed his clothes and was wearing a green frockcoat, pale brown pantaloons and tasselled Hessians, with a fresh shirt and a new cravat, though there was no disguising the injury to his face.
‘Well, what have you to say for yourself?’ his lordship asked when the young man had made his apologies for his earlier appearance.
‘I was on my way here when I was set upon by a mob,’ he said, seating himself and taking a cup of tea from Bella, who found her hand shaking so much the cup rattled in the saucer. ‘They were the equal of any bloodthirsty French soldiers I met on the battlefield. And I had no weapon, not that a gun would have availed me, there were too many of them. They pulled me from my horse and demanded my money.’
‘Where was this?’ Bella asked.
He turned to look at her, surveying her slowly, taking in the homely grey dress and heightened colour and deciding that her obvious effort to appear unattractive had had the opposite effect. She was lovely. ‘At the crossroads between here and Eastmere. They were marching and filling the whole road. I could not avoid them.’
‘I should hope you did not give in to them,’ Elizabeth said.
‘I would not be sitting here if I had not, but I did not submit without a protest, which is why one hothead dealt me a blow with the club he carried.’
‘Rabble,’ the Comtesse said. ‘Call out the militia. Hang the lot of them or we shall end up with our heads in a basket, just as it happened in France.’
‘Oh, I do not think so,’ Robert said mildly. ‘The cases are very different. These are simple men driven to excess. When I expressed my sympathy with them, they took the money I proffered and bade me proceed very civilly. They did not take other valuables, or my luggage, which is a blessing or I would have had nothing to wear but what I stood up in.’
‘Did you see Mr Trenchard?’ Bella asked.
‘No, should I have?’
‘He was sent for to go home. His servant said the labourers were threatening to pull his barn down and wreck his house.’
‘No, I did not see him. But he is not the only one to suffer—the mob I saw had been on the rampage for some time, most of ’em pot valiant. It will take the militia to make them return to their homes.’
‘Oh, dear, I hope there will no blood shed,’ she said. ‘The poor have been sorely tried, what with the price of flour and bread rising so high and wages so low.’
‘Your sympathy does you credit, Bella,’ Edward said. ‘But it does not give them the right to take the law into their own hands. Destroying the property of those they depend on will not serve.’
‘Did you demand their names?’ the Earl asked Robert. ‘I can send for the constable to have them taken up and charged.’
‘No, I did not. It is unlikely they would have furnished them if I had.’ He put down his cup and stood up. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I am devilish hungry and as Edward has been so obliging as to replace the contents of my purse, I will repair to the local hostelry and bespeak me a meal.’
‘Oh, dear, how thoughtless of me,’ Bella said. ‘Robert, please, be seated again and I will ask Cook to find something for you…’
‘No need, my dear, no need at all. I shall do very well at the tavern.’
‘But do you not wish to know why his lordship has called us all together?’ Louis asked.
‘Oh, as to that, Edward has acquainted me with the facts of the matter. I am sorry to say it, but I think the whole thing is a fudge and I wish I had saved myself the expense of the journey to hear it. I might still be in possession of my purse. And this…’ He pointed to his eye. ‘This might be its proper size and colour.’
Bella was delighted by his answer and found herself smiling. He swept her an elegant leg and then moved forward to take her hand and raise it to his lips. His brown eyes, looking into hers above the hand he held, were full of merriment. She was glad someone could find humour in the situation. ‘My apologies, dear Bella. I do not mean to disparage you, but you must see that any marriage based on coercion will not serve. Besides, however much I might wish to, I cannot enter a contest against my brother. He has a right, I do not.’
‘Right!’ Louis exploded furiously. ‘If anyone has a right—’
‘Oh, please, do not quarrel,’ Bella intervened. ‘I cannot bear it. Grandpapa, please say something…’
He simply smiled and rang for Sylvester to help him to his room. As soon as he had gone Elizabeth bade Louis follow her upstairs to see if the servants had obeyed their instructions to change their rooms and, no doubt, to talk about what they would do next, leaving Bella facing Edward and Robert. She looked from one to the other in despair.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘This is none of my doing. I cannot think what has got into Grandfather…’
‘Touched in the attic,’ Robert said. ‘Must be. Not fair on you, not fair at all. Edward thinks so, too, don’t you, Teddy?’
Thus appealed to, his brother agreed wholeheartedly. ‘If he is thinking of your future, as he says he is, then he could easily secure that with an annuity or a good dowry.’
‘But don’t you see?’ she cried. ‘My dowry is to be Westmere.’
‘I am not sure he can legally do it,’ Edward said.
‘Oh, how I wish Papa were still alive,’ she said. ‘There would be no argument and none of this would be happening.’
‘If it is any comfort, you have our support,’ Robert said. ‘I promise you neither of us will offer for you.’
It was all too much and she fled to her room, where she flung herself across the bed and sobbed. How could her grandfather be so cruel? How could Robert think it would give her comfort to know that he would not offer for her? He still saw her as the young cousin he had sometimes condescended to amuse as a child, the little girl he had taught to ride and fish when he had visited Westmere on his summer vacation from Cambridge. But as her grandfather had pointed out, she had gown up and was now at a marriageable age. Oh, how she wished Miss Battersby would come home. She needed her.
Ellen Battersby was a little dotty, given to romantic notions and great sighings over the novels she read, and would insist on using their characters as examples of how to behave or not to behave. Bella humoured her, which was more than the Earl did. He was often so outspoken as to be rude to her and consequently the poor woman avoided his presence as much as possible. Perhaps that was why she had stayed away so long. But Bella needed her.
If Miss Battersby could not come home, then she would go to her and seek her out. It was only a short ride to Downham Market, and if no other remedy for her troubles presented itself, then she would stay away, find a way to earn her own living. She rose and changed into her riding habit. She did not want to meet any others of the household for they would surely want to know where she was going, so she carried her boots in her hand and crept along the upper gallery towards the back stairs.
It was gloomy and smelled damp in this unused part of the house, and she shivered a little, as if the ghosts of previous Huntleys were following her progress. She was glad when she found the small door at the back of the oldest part of the building and slipped out into the fresh air.
Bella stopped to put on her boots, gathered up her skirts in her hand and sped to the stables. The stable boys were all busy elsewhere and the head groom was, no doubt, sleeping off his dinner in the room above. She spoke quietly to Misty to stop her snickering while she saddled her, then she led the mare out and, mounting from the block by the stable door, rode down the drive and out onto the road, where she turned towards Downham Market.
Absorbed by her own problems she had not given a thought to the riots or whether she might be riding into danger, but it became apparent the minute she entered the small hamlet of Eastmere, which was on the road to Downham Market. A crowd of angry men and women were marching down the street, carrying pitchforks and clubs. Two of them held a banner. ‘Bread or blood,’ it said in crude black letters.
She reined in and pulled Misty to one side to allow them to pass, but there were so many and they were so angry. They pushed and shoved and frightened the mare so much she snorted and pranced and was in danger of injuring those nearest to her. Her rider hauled hard on the reins but the horse, objecting to this unaccustomed harsh treatment, reared up so violently that Bella was thrown down among the trampling feet.
The first person she saw when she opened her eyes was Robert. He was kneeling beside her and she had her head in his lap. ‘Thank the good Lord,’ he said. ‘I thought you were done for…’
‘Misty threw me…’
‘I know, it was lucky I saw it happen, though I could hardly believe my eyes. After what happened this morning, how could you be such a ninny as to ride out alone?’
