Beth Andrews (15 page)

He smiled that breath-stealing smile again. ‘I will tell you something of myself, if you will agree to call me Richard.’

‘Very well, Richard.’

‘Unlike you, Rosalind,’ he began, appearing very much at ease, ‘I am the sole child of my poor parents.’

‘How tragic,’ she remarked, not fooled by his mock-mournful tone.

‘My father was an MP, and much too busy with weighty matters to be bothered with the upbringing of his son and heir.’

‘And your mother?’

‘My mother....’ There was a wry twist of his lips as he mentally exhumed the memories from wherever he had buried them. ‘My mother was a toast of the
ton
in her youth, and is even now a bosom bow of Mrs Drummond Burrell. Both my parents were very well-connected, but she came of quite an illustrious family, and numbers more than one peer among her closest relations.’

‘And are you close to your mother?’ she could not resist asking.

‘As close as I was to my father,’ he replied with a self-deprecating shrug. ‘She would often kiss my cheek on her way to a ball or ridotto. I remember the scent she used.’ He seemed surprised at that, as if it had not occurred to him before. ‘A faint trace of lavender, I think.’

‘And where are your parents now?’

‘My father shuffled off this mortal coil some years ago. My mother married again, and is now Lady Bettisham. I see her very seldom — though quite as often as either of us would wish.’

He treated the matter lightly, but Rosalind felt that she had seldom heard so sad a tale. She had often wished for her family, but it seemed that having family was no guarantee of being loved or valued. She tried to picture St George as a child. Pampered and privileged he might have been, but the most important needs of children had been wanting. Poor little boy!

She knew that he had served honorably in the army, though he had been in India at the time of Waterloo. When questioned about this, however, he was more reticent.

‘My time in India is one which I prefer to forget.’

‘The memories are so unpleasant?’ She was surprised. Most men, she thought, would have been glad to regale her with exaggerated tales of their heroic exploits.

‘Many of my comrades were enchanted with India.’ He let the oars drop and the boat drifted silently, ‘I was not so impressed, unfortunately.’

‘Is it not a beautiful country?’

‘Very lovely — once you look past the appalling customs like
suttee
and the cruel injustices wrought by the Law of Karma, which are not merely commonplace but often institutionalized.’

‘Our own country,’ she ventured, ‘has its share of cruel customs as well.’

‘Believe me, ma’am,’ he said grimly, ‘they pale in comparison with what I have witnessed out there. If anything could make me appreciate England, my time in India did so.’

She did not know what to say to this, and for some time there was silence between them. Only the faint sound of the oars pushing them onward disturbed the stillness. He had spoken with real feeling, albeit some bitterness. She was trying desperately to think of something else which they might discuss without incident, when a sudden sound captured her attention.

Turning her head, she spied three young boys emerging from the stand of trees towards which the boat was drifting. They were all about the same age: ten or eleven years old, she would guess. One of them clutched a small sack of rough worsted fabric. It was from this sack that the sound was emerging in a shrill wail. At first Rosalind had thought it was a baby’s cry. She was, after all, not much accustomed to children. But it quickly became apparent that what was contained in the sack was almost surely feline in nature.

‘What are you doing there?’ she cried out, craning her neck to see. ‘Let that animal go at once!’

The trio was startled into immobility. They stared at the two occupants of the boat.

‘What’s it to yer?’ the one with the sack shouted back. ‘We ain’t breakin’ any law.’

‘There
should
be a law,’ she muttered under her breath.

Then, before she could answer them, St George called out in his much more authoritative voice:

‘Let that animal go at once, or I shall come ashore and thrash every last one of you!’

‘You and who else?’ one of the lads jeered.

Rosalind was so angry that she forgot where she was. Rising from her seat, she opened her mouth and said, ‘If you do—’

Alas, she was able to say no more. Though normally surefooted, she was unused to maritime vessels. One minute she stood erect and ferocious; the next instant, she pitched backward into the pond with a great splash.

Julian, meanwhile, had been watching this spectacle, while Cassandra listened intently. Even Mrs Plummer had roused herself and looked out at the scene being enacted on the water.

‘Rosalind!’ Cassandra was near hysteria. She could only hear the commotion before her, but what was happening remained a mystery. ‘St George, help her! She cannot swim!’

She had barely enough time to enunciate his name before St George was over the side and in the water with Rosalind. He dived down and brought her up quickly, enjoining her not to struggle. She obeyed him at once, and he managed to haul her to the side of the boat with surprisingly little effort.

Sputtering and gasping, her first words were, ‘I must look an absolute fright!’

He threw back his head and laughed aloud, as much from relief as anything else. ‘Only a woman would think of such a thing at a time like this,’ he said, when he was able to control his mirth.

Cassandra, meanwhile, was so distrait that she stumbled forward and promptly tumbled down the gentle slope of the bank and landed in the shallows of the pond, creating her own aquatic spectacle. Julian, directly behind her, fished her out almost before she had time to realize that she was wet.

‘Oh dear!’ Cousin Priscilla, bouncing toward them with eyes now very wide open, could scarcely credit what had happened. ‘Are you all well? Are you drowned? My nerves are quite overset. Such a picnic to our end!’

Clinging to the side of the boat, Rosalind suddenly recollected the cause of this fantastic imbroglio.

‘Where are those oafs?’ she demanded. ‘Have they let the cat out of the bag?’

As if in response, there came a great yowl from the bank. The boys were nowhere to be seen, but their sack, wriggling and squirming, rested near the water’s edge.

‘Shall we complete our mission of mercy?’ St George asked.

‘Cassandra!’ Rosalind called, glancing over her shoulder, belatedly enquiring after her young friend’s fate.

‘I am here, Lindy!’ a cheerful voice answered. ‘Julian has saved me from a watery grave.’

While she spoke, St George swam around to the stern of the dinghy and began to push it towards the bank. A moment later, Rosalind’s feet touched the muddy bottom and she let go of the boat and waded towards the spot where the poor creature lay captive. A strong hold on her arm made her aware that Richard had caught up with her. He placed his arm around her — in the capacity of a helper rather than a lover this time — and assisted her on to solid ground. The little fiends had tied a sturdy knot to hold their victim, and it took almost a minute for St George to untangle it.

After all their efforts, they looked down at the ball of fur before them. This was no cat: it was a kitten, perhaps five or six weeks old. It could fit in the palm of his hand, he thought. As soon as it was released, it ceased to cry. Neither did it run away in fright — which, considering its treatment so far at the hands of humanity, he considered remarkable. On the other hand, it might have been that it simply had no choice. Tied to its tail by a piece of string was a large rock, which had doubtless been intended to provide assistance on its journey to the floor of the pond.

‘Poor thing!’ Rosalind murmured, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘How could anyone be so cruel to something so small and helpless?’

‘I fear that smallness and helplessness are only spurs to violence and cruelty.’

‘No one shall harm you now, little one.’ She picked up the creature and stroked it gently, which seemed to be just the thing, for, wet as she was, the kitten rubbed its head against her hand and emitted that low rumble of sound peculiar to felines.

‘It is an unusual beast,’ St George commented, watching the two with a curious look on his face.

That it was. Not black nor white, not ginger, but a smoke-grey and eyes so pale a green they were almost yellow.

‘What shall you do with’ — he lifted a hind leg gingerly and inspected its posterior — ‘her?’

‘I shall take her home with me, of course.’

‘And what will Welly think of that?’

Welly himself answered this question by waddling up to them at that very moment. He stuck his nose in the kitten’s face, with more curiosity than malice. The kitten, in turn, reached out a velvety paw and placed it on said nose.

‘Friendship at first sight.’ St George eased himself up off of the ground and reached down to Rosalind.

‘Thank God you are alive!’ Cousin Priscilla reached their side slightly ahead of the others. ‘I was never so frightened in all my life.’

‘I do not think that I will ever set foot on a boat again.’

‘Nonsense!’ St George scoffed at this. ‘You were quite enjoying yourself until you decided to go for a swim.’

Rosalind ignored his jest. Handing him the kitten, she reached out to Cassandra. ‘My dear,’ she cried, ‘you are quite drenched.’

‘So are you!’

‘So are we all,’ Julian said, ‘except for the very sensible Mrs Plummer.’

‘We had best get these young ladies home and into their beds before they catch a chill,’ St George reminded them.

‘Trust you to know what to do!’ Cousin Priscilla beamed upon him with approval.

They made their way back to their makeshift pavilion and the blankets upon which they had been seated earlier were transformed into large wraps to protect the two wet damsels.

‘But what about yourselves?’ Cassandra asked, perturbed by the gentlemen’s carelessness toward the elements.

‘Do not worry about us, dearest,’ Julian replied tenderly. ‘As long as you are well, so will we be.’

It was a very different looking party which made its way back to the abbey. Their clothes were dampened but their spirits were as high as ever. Indeed, they were laughing at one of St George’s witticisms as they pulled up before the great stone building. Before they could even open the door of the barouche, however, the door of the abbey swung open and a figure appeared out of the semi-gloom.

A silence fell over the group as they observed this person, who was a stranger to at least three of them: a broad-shouldered, rather stocky gentleman with a balding pate and an exceedingly grim countenance.

‘What is it?’ Cassandra asked, wondering aloud at the air of hushed expectancy around her.

‘I should like to know,’ the figure spoke, and its tone was not precisely welcoming. ‘I should like very much to know what you have been up to, my dear Cassandra.’

Cassandra’s mouth and eyes seemed to be vying to see which could open the widest. There was such a shocked look upon her face that the fact of her blindness was harder than ever to credit. But the cause of her stupefaction became clear when she uttered one single, breathless word:

‘Papa!’

Whenever there is a heavy shower of rain, there are always those who will say that it is ‘coming down in buckets’. That evening it came down in barrels. Looking out through the windows of the lodge, Julian could see nothing but occasional flickers of light reflected from the drops by the glow of the lamps in the drawing-room. It was past midnight on as gloomy and unpropitious a night as one could imagine, and the two men were alone together with no companion other than a bottle of brandy. Mrs Plummer had bid them goodnight more than an hour before.

‘Do come away from the window,’ St George urged him. ‘You have been standing there for a quarter of an hour at least, like a sentry expecting the enemy to attack at any moment. It is most annoying.’

‘I am contemplating my future,’ his friend said mournfully. ‘And a bleak one it is too.’

‘You have missed your calling.’ Richard leaned his head against the tips of his fingers, as though in the throes of a
violent headache. ‘You should have been on the stage.’

Julian finally swung around, letting fall the heavy satin curtain which he had been holding aside to peer out into the darkness.

‘I would not expect you to understand.’ His tone was a mixture of irritation and stoic resignation. ‘You have never been in love.’

‘No,’ Richard admitted, looking across at Julian as he threw himself down upon the opposing chair. ‘That is one disease with which I have never been afflicted.’

‘What am I to do?’

‘Have a little more of this excellent brandy,’ Richard advised practically.

Julian followed his advice, swallowing a mouthful much too quickly. If there was any benefit to be derived from this, it was not immediately apparent. He looked more hopelessly dejected than ever.

‘I love her, Richard,’ he said presently.

‘I take it that you refer to Miss Woodford.’

‘Naturally.’

‘How could it be otherwise?’

‘She is an angel. Such beauty, such grace, such intelligence! Her voice, her air, her manners … everything about her is absolute perfection.’

‘A paragon, certainly,’ St George agreed, though not without a suspicious twitch at the corners of his mouth. ‘The only flaw which she possesses is one so insignificant that one scarcely likes to mention it: she is blind.’

‘Do you think I care two straws about that!’ Julian’s indignation was as impassioned as his praises of the young lady. ‘What man who knows Cassandra could fail to adore her?’

‘At least one that I know of,’ St George muttered under his breath, unnoticed by the younger man. Aloud he merely pointed out, ‘I grant that she is lovely and amiable. But do you really think that your esteemed parents would rejoice at your alliance with a woman who is not merely blind, but — perhaps even more importantly — the daughter of a mere Yorkshire merchant?’