Amberley Chronicles Boxset I: The Impostor Debutante My Last Marchioness the Sister Quest (Amberley Chronicles Boxsets Book 1) (21 page)

Chapter 7

Lord Molyneux ensconced himself and his valet at Minnover Hall with ridiculous ease, just as he had expected. In the late afternoon, only hours after his arrival in the area, he rode one of his host’s high-strung hunters in the direction of the Ellsworthy residence, to pay a call on Lady Minerva.

He knew her brother James from Eton, though not well, as James had been two years before him and in a different House. He also vaguely recalled exchanging small talk with James’s blonde wife at some forgotten ball. All he remembered, apart from her vivid beauty, was that she claimed to prefer the country to town.

The Hall was of modest but pleasing proportions, and the hedges and gardens looked well-kept. He passed a coppice with mares and foals contentedly grazing; though not up to his stud’s exacting standards, the horses looked good enough. Upon arrival in the courtyard he swung down, handed the horse’s reins to a groom and gained immediate entrance to the front hall though a wide-open door. There were no servants in sight. A ramshackle household – anyone could have just walked in.

Before he could be properly announced, he was accosted by a small brown-haired child in a blue dress. “Are you a visitor?” she asked, eying Rook with interest. “Why do you have those funny hairs on your face?”

“It is called a moustache,” Rook said stiffly. “Have we been presented?”

The child laughed indulgently. “I am four years old. I don’t need to be presented yet, Nanny says.”

Rook looked around in growing irritation, wondering where this derelict Nanny was hiding. “I have come to visit Lady Minerva,” he said. “Don’t you have a butler here, to tell her about my call?”

“He is busy in the attics,” the child confided. “If you like, I can take you to Aunt Minerva.”

“That would hardly be correct,” he objected, visions of the lady at some intimate task – such as, in a bathtub – floating before his eyes. “I will wait here until I can be announced in the usual fashion. Are you a daughter of this house?”

“I am Lady Verena Belinda Mary Minerva Ellsworthy,” the child replied with enormous dignity.

Rook bowed ironically. “Honoured to make your acquaintance, milady. I am Lord Molyneux, at your service.”

“Verena!” a familiar voice called, and presently his quarry herself, charmingly dressed in yellow cambric, came into view. “Oh, there you are. I vow it is worse than a flea circus, keeping an eye on all three of you.”

“This gentleman has come to call on you,” Verena told her aunt.

“Oh – hello, Rook. My lord Molyneux.” She curtseyed correctly. “I was not expecting you.”

“Weren’t you? I am surprised. I thought you knew me better than that.”

“Or at least not right now, when I am very busy with these naughty children.” Minerva winked at Verena. “Weren’t we supposed to play hide and seek in the shrubbery?”

“But I found this gentleman standing all by himself in the hall, and Jenkins is busy,” Verena pointed out. “I could not just go by and leave him there, could I?”

“No, of course not. Well done, Verena.” Minerva lightly touched her hand to the little girl’s head. Rook was surprised at the easy familiarity between the young aunt and niece, but decided it boded well for her future role as mother. Verena had to be Amberley’s only child, of course.

“Now that I am here to talk to our guest,” Minerva told Verena, ”please tell Aunt Charlotte, and then Cook. She might send tea and refreshments to the morning room.”

The child skipped away on her errand. Minerva looked after her with a fond smile before turning to Rook. “You’d better come in here. Sorry about having to wait, the household is at sixes and sevens today.”

“For any particular reason?” Rook asked, following her into a medium-sized room with blue-green wallpaper and gold-coloured velvet curtains.

“Nothing to concern you, my lord.” She looked at him with a thoughtful air. “I am sorry to say that I have been kept so busy over the last week, that I have not found much time to think about your flattering proposal. But since you are here, if you want an answer right away, I fear it must be
no
.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” He caught himself. “I beg your pardon. Forgive me if I am a little puzzled; I thought I was given encouragement, and wonder if it was anything in my person or behaviour that caused you to change your mind.”

“I don’t think excessive frankness is a good idea on such occasions.”

“Humour me, if you please, Lady Minerva.”

“It’s difficult to put into words.” Minerva tilted her head, studying him as though he were a Greek statue at the British Museum. “You are perfect in so many ways – but your flaw is that you are too conscious of it. I am beginning to think that an ordinary mortal would suit me better.”

Rook was speechless.

“That has surprised you, I suppose? Let me guess – you never seriously contemplated that any lady might not be overjoyed and honoured at your choosing her. And yet I would bet that you don’t love me, or planned to ever do so.”

“Now you are becoming melodramatic,” he said between stiff lips. “I am sorry I insisted on a frank answer.”

“Yes, I thought you would be,” she retorted, not visibly abashed. “I am glad you came, Rook. The uncertainty was weighing on me, and probably on you too. Now we can both go forth and look for the person who really suits us in every respect.” She fell silent again, contemplating his creased brows. “It feels right. I am sorry.”

“In that case, there is nothing more to say. I will relieve you of my presence, Ma’am.”

She laughed. “Now who is being melodramatic? You will live to thank me for this, and before too long, I suspect. Let me accompany you out; I don’t suppose you feel like waiting for the tea I ordered.”

Mutely shaking his head at her levity, Rook followed in her wake, and took his leave with excruciating correctness.

Well! He was stunned as he retrieved his horse and swung into the saddle with the ease of lifelong practice. 

He, the Marquis Molyneux, future Duke of Ottway, baldly rejected by a chestnut-haired jade, who thought him too – arrogant, was it? Or conceited? A mixture of both? Not that it mattered. Who did she think she was, to have the right to such an opinion?

He was well rid of her, of course, now that he had a better understanding of Lady Minerva’s character. But how could he have given her the occasion to reject him, when it should have been his own decision that she was unsuitable? Somehow he had blundered, though for the life of him he could not pinpoint exactly how or when.

Unable to wrap his mind around this humiliating setback, he cantered towards a tavern he had noticed earlier, on his way to this disastrous interview. There, for the first time since his undergraduate days, Rook proceeded to drink heavily. Not even reckoning the common clientele and the indifferent quality of the liquor, eventually he managed obliterate the last few hours from his mind.

+++

Lady Minerva and Alphonse were driving around the neighbourhood in the barouche, having volunteered to personally deliver invitations for the ball to be held at the Hall three weeks hence.

“I understand that your suitor paid a very short visit to the house before we set out?” Alphonse asked. “Verena liked him, she told me, apart from that silly moustache. Do I have to wish you happy?”

“How tactless to bring it up,” Minerva said in mock indignation.

“Curiosity has long been one of my besetting sins. I surmise that you sent him on his way, as strange as it would seem to most people.” His own mother, for instance, and certainly hers. The dowager Lady Amberley was a force in the family, and Alphonse could only wonder at her poor judgement, absenting herself at such a time.

“I set him free,” she admitted. “My brain said one thing, but my instincts were strongly warning me against the match. It is not as though I will not find someone else, of more modest rank, but just as pleasant.”

“Based on my own experience, I congratulate you on heeding that inner voice, which is usually wiser than the brain. I have regretted it later, whenever I acted against it.” Minerva wondered if that was an oblique reference to his short-lived marriage.

After a moment Alphonse went on, changing the subject. “If – when – Miss Conway comes to visit, I would beg you to be kind to her. You are established here in the bosom of a loving family, while she is an orphan with only two old people left to protect her, apart from her horrible father. And of all of us here, you are closest to her in age.”

“Of course I will be perfectly courteous, and polite.”

“That was not what I said, Minerva.”

She tossed her head. “Since coming here to Sussex I am constantly treated as though I was a shrew. I do not like it, Alphonse. Do give me some credit, please.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You have become stuffy and moral, not at all like you used to be.”

“I can only beg your pardon once again.”

“How silly we must sound,” she said with a light laugh. “I must confess that by now I also hope that the Conways will come here, including the evil father, to be thrown in the horse pond and beaten to a pulp by your manly fists. The whole thing strongly resembles a farce.”

“Let us hope your imagined ending comes to pass. It certainly seems fitting.”

“I liked that young solicitor, Mr. Beecham,” she said. “James treats him more than a friend than an employee. Do you know him well?”

“Not well. He was recommended to James by Jonathan Durwent, a friend from our mutual university days. Jonathan works in the city, very successfully, and he sent Beecham to James when your brother had a tricky legal problem on his hands. From the way they act towards each other, I deduce that they have an ongoing business relationship based on trust, which has gradually turned into friendship.”

“Durwent must be the friend that mother disapproves of so strongly,” Minerva said. “I have heard her tell James several times that a cit is not a proper friend for a gentleman of his station. Not lately, though, as James no longer listens to her harangues.”

“That explains why he never introduced Jonathan to you. Your mother is misled by her prejudice, however. Durwent comes from a perfectly respectable family. I understand his father was a vicar somewhere in the north. By now he could buy and sell most aristocrats. Why would Lady Amberley reject Jonathan, after allowing your oldest sister to marry that Bristol shipping magnate? Between the two, Durwent is far preferable.”

“Yes, well, Mother is not always entirely reasonable in her judgements. And I suppose your friend was not always so rich. If she took a dislike to the friendship when he was just starting out on his career, she would not later change her mind just because he was successful, if she even took notice of it.”

“No need to say any more – remember that I know your whole family of old.”

Both were silent for a few minutes, lost in thought. “That is Mallow House just across the bridge, where we can hand over the next batch of invitations. Everyone will be all agog to see that they were brought by a genuine French Marquis.”

“I have only been a Marquis for the last two years of my life,” Alphonse said. “In fact, we were quite poor during my childhood. To send me to Eton, mother had to sell the heirloom sapphires she had smuggled out of France in her bodice.”

“She must love you greatly, to have made such a sacrifice.” Minerva tugged on the obedient mare’s rein to make the sharp turn towards Mallow House. “I hope you gave her other sapphires once you could afford them?”

“According to Mother, these were irreplaceable, of a quality never seen before or since. But I thank you for putting the thought in my mind; perhaps I can find and recover them for her. Though they could be anywhere in London, or beyond, of course.”

“Mr. Beecham could help you trace them,” she suggested as she brought the horse to a standstill and waited for him to help her out of the conveyance. “He strikes me as a man who would be adept at that sort of thing.”

“Good idea. Thank you again, Minerva.”

Chapter 8

From what Celia could tell, Sir Mortimer had not taken Mr. Beecham’s warning very seriously. She was thus astonished when two days later, over lunch, he charged her to pack for an extended stay in the country, and not to take her gossip-loving maid along, nor tell anybody their destination.

“I cannot tell them, as I don’t know it myself,” Celia pointed out. “Just where
are
we going?”

“We will be staying with friends of a friend,” he said mysteriously, “The distance is not too great. I will explain all once we are gone from here.”

“I must tell grandmother where to direct her letters, Uncle.” Celia’s grandparents had frantically searched for her during several years of her childhood. She was not willing to subject her grandmother to another such episode.

“Just tell her that you are visiting friends. We will send a groom with your news, and to pick up any letters, sometime next week. She will understand that we must think of your safety first.”

“Of course she will.” Her grandmother, a simple woman, doted on Celia. “I don’t want to stay away from her long.”

“You can pay her a surprise visit, if this journey should take longer than I anticipate. Make sure to pack your most becoming clothes, Celia, our hosts are fashionable people.”

Celia went about her preparations, puzzling about this unexpected development, and increasingly curious. She made time to pay an extended farewell visit to her grandmother.

Her uncle’s old but well-maintained travelling coach was ready and packed in short order. Although they departed at first light, around four in the morning at this time of the year, the whole household watched them drive off.

As the travellers endeavoured to ignore the jolting over potholes and furrows, Sir Mortimer showed his niece the invitation he had received from the Hon. Mrs. James Ellsworthy, to join them for a visit of some weeks in their country home in Sussex.

“Who are they?”

“I have not met the family, but they are close friends of the Marquis de Ville- Deuxtours. You remember, the man who sent me that most excellent cognac?”

“The one with a huge castle in the Loire Valley?” Celia had regarded her uncle’s marquis as a mythical being, and was astounded at this evidence that he existed in the realm of ordinary mortals. “Even so, why would they invite us?”

“I do not know the details, but I understand there is a common interest. They have also been wronged by your father at some time in the past.”

“That makes even less sense,” Celia complained.

“I looked up the Ellsworthy family in Debrett’s Peerage when I received the letter. Our host is the younger brother of the seventh Earl Amberley, and may yet be the eighth earl, as the current one has only a daughter so far. But they are both still comparatively young men. The Marquis will also be staying with them, according to Mrs. Ellsworthy’s post scriptum, as well as Lady Minerva Ellsworthy, the youngest sister of the earl.”

“These people sound far above my touch,” Celia said with a tinge of apprehension. “Earls and Marquesses?”

“That was my main reason to accept the invitation,” her uncle said frankly. “You are wasted on the yokels of our own village, and as you said yourself the other day, the only titled men we meet there are too old, and all married. This visit will enable you to mix with young people of a more refined society, and you will soon find that you can hold your own with them.”

“I hope your confidence is justified, Uncle.” Celia vividly remembered her school days, when most of the well-born girls had mercilessly mocked her for her brewery fortune. It was little use having backbone and trying to hold your own, if the majority was set against you. “Do they know all about my father, and the breweries?”

“Of course. If they invited you anyway, it is because they want to meet you. Hold your head high, my dear.”

They continued to converse on several other subjects and had been driving for a considerable time when the coach drew to a sudden stop in the middle of the road.

“Beg pardon, Sir, Miss,” their grizzled coachman shouted without descending from the perch. “There is a dead gentleman lying in the ditch yonder. Should I do something about him, or drive on?”

Uncle and great-niece looked at each other in astonishment.

“We’d better investigate,” Sir Mortimer said heavily, reaching for the door. “Stay here, Celia.”

Paying no attention to this ridiculous command, Celia nimbly jumped down from the other side, and hurried to the prone figure of a tall man half hidden by the high grass, not far from a bushy hedge running by the road’s side.

“He still breathes,” she said in relief, after watching carefully for a moment.

“Those riding boots come from a master,” her Uncle commented, looking the unconscious man up and down. “Undoubtedly a gentleman. Is he just drunk, I wonder, or did he have an accident? Probably both.”

Now that her attention had been drawn to it, Celia also noticed the faint scent of alcohol, and fastidiously wrinkled her nose. Experimentally she shook the gentleman’s arm, finding it surprisingly heavy.

“Sir! Wake up, Sir!”

A faint groan was the only answer. She touched her hand to the man’s brow, finding it cool to the touch. Closer examination revealed a darkening bruise on the side of his skull.

“Thrown from the horse when he tried to take that hedge intoxicated,” her uncle decided. “He’s been exposed for a while already, and may die if we leave him here. Young fool! Of course his spine may also be broken, in which case he’s done for. Otherwise he’ll probably recover with a nasty headache.”

“Well, let’s get him to the coach,” Celia said. “We should be quite close to our destination, and these hospitable Ellsworthies will surely be willing to shelter him, as well as ourselves.”

The mechanics of the rescue had all three of them sweating, and the coachman swearing, by the time the two men managed to heave the big brute into the carriage, while Celia was holding the horses’ heads. If the stranger had not woken up enough to take a few dizzy steps, propped up between the coachman and Sir Mortimer, it would have been quite impossible. As soon as he felt the padded seat of the coach under his rump he fell insensible again, forcing Celia and her uncle to squeeze into opposite corners as best they could. A good thing, Celia thought, that her uncle was still slim, and not portly like so many of his contemporaries.

“I’ll be glad to arrive soon,” Sir Mortimer said, wiping his brow. “The fellow weighs several tons.”

“Apart from the moustache, and needing a shave, he looks fairly handsome,” Celia observed, scrutinizing the pale features with interest. “Strong and fit, so he will recover soon, I do hope.”

“You have a good heart, child. For all we know this accident is his own fault. The drunkenness most certainly is.”

“Even so,” Celia said obstinately, wondering what colour the stranger’s eyes would prove to be. “You realize that we have already had an adventure, a mere few hours after setting out from the Manor? We should travel more often.”

Sir Mortimer snorted. “God forbid that this should become a frequent occurrence. The coat is also of top quality, now I look at it. A rich gentleman like that really ought to know better than fall into such a scrape.”

“So should a poor man,” Celia said. “Even more so, because passers-by are more likely to assist a well-dressed stranger than a shabby, slovenly one.”

“We would have done our Christian duty, I hope, even in that case.”

The carriage had resumed its jolting way, albeit more slowly. The movement led the man to groan again, and he finally opened his eyes – hazel, – to cast a confused, bleary eye on the dim interior of their coach.

“Good morning,” Celia said, keeping her voice low and soothing. “You have had an accident. May we know your name and direction?”

“R-rook”, the man said, closing his eyes again, as though even this light was too much for them. “Who are you?”

“I am Sir Mortimer Conway, Mr. Rook, and this is my great-niece, Miss Celia Conway.”

“Charmed,” the man slurred without re-opening his eyes. Presently a loud snore filled the interior of the coach. Its two wide-awake passengers were greatly relieved when some ten minutes later the carriage drew up outside a large country house of grey stone, built in the solid style of Queen Anne’s reign.

The coachman attached the stairs and they extricated themselves from the coach with some difficulty, with the large snoring man still taking up far more room than a single person had any claim to.

A beautiful blonde lady in her late twenties came out of the house to bid them welcome, introducing herself as their hostess, Mrs. Ellsworthy, in an unpretentious and kind manner. Sir Mortimer gallantly kissed her hand. “We need to beg hospitality for a stranger as well as ourselves. Not four miles from your Hall we came across an unconscious man, who had apparently fallen from his horse. We got him into the carriage with some difficulty. I hope you have some able-bodied servants who can get him out again?”

“What’s that?” Mrs. Ellsworthy approached the carriage and looked in, her expression quickly changing to mingled dismay and amusement. “Oh dear. I know this gentleman.”

“So much the better. He told us his name was Rook.”

“So it is,” Mrs. Ellsworthy said with an odd little smile. “I do hope he is not too badly hurt.”

“He was also quite drunk, I think, when he fell,” Sir Mortimer observed with disapproval.

Mrs. Ellsworthy briskly issued her orders, and the sleeping man was forthwith carried into the house on a detached door by four grooms. Despite their size and wiry strength, it was no easy task. “Take him to the green room,” Mrs. Ellsworthy instructed, before conducting Sir Mortimer and Celia to their own, perfectly pleasant apartments on the first floor. She invited them to join the family at breakfast as soon as they had settled in, and hurried off to check on the disposal of her supernumerary guest.