Double Deception (11 page)

"He was reluctant at first, of course," the Beauty interrupted in that clear, caressing voice of hers, casting a brilliant smile in Athena's direction. "But I assured our dear viscount that you would not object in the least, Mrs. Standish. And darling Penelope will not mind either, will you, dear?"

The honeyed tones were so patently false that Athena wondered how Perry could not see the web the Beauty was intent upon weaving about him. She would have liked to give the sly minx a piece of her mind, but politeness forbade it, so she merely looked straight into Perry's blue eyes until he was forced to lower them in confusion.

Penelope, unhampered by such niceties, looked up at the Beauty with one of her deceptively angelic smiles. Athena held her breath. "You are very welcome, Miss Rathbone," her daughter said politely. "I am so glad to see someone besides me is fond of spiders."

"Spiders?"
The Beauty's voice was no longer musical, Athena noted.

"Yes, spiders," Penelope responded nonchalantly. "Spiders like dark places, you know. There are bound to be millions of them in the dungeons."

The Beauty let out a squeak of terror and turned anxious eyes to Peregrine, who was looking rather bemused.

"You never told me there would be
spiders
in the ruins, my lord," Miss Rathbone whispered plaintively. "I cannot go if I am to be attacked by millions of the nasty creatures. Escort me back to my grandmother at once, if you will."

"But you promised me you would show me the dungeons, Perry," Penelope cut in, the threat of imminent tears in her voice. "You
promised."

Athena regarded the flustered viscount with interest. He was evidently feeling very uncomfortable. Perry knew from past experience that Penny's tears would be loud and copious if she felt herself cheated out of the promised treat. On the other hand, the Beauty might prove to be equally intractable. He glanced appealingly at her, but Athena refused to come to his rescue.

"You are exaggerating, as usual, Penny," he said after a brief pause. "There are no spiders in the dungeons, Miss Rathbone." He turned to look at the Beauty, who was clinging frantically to his arm and quite mangling the sleeve of his new coat. "I have been there hundreds of times, and I have yet to see a single spider."

"What a bouncer!" Penelope exclaimed with a giggle. "If Miss Rathbone is scared of a few spiders, she should stay behind."

"I am not scared of a few spiders," the Beauty protested, her voice edged with anger. "I merely do not wish to have millions of them crawling all over me, that is all." She shuddered visibly and clung more firmly to Perry's arm.

"They do not bite, you know," Penelope remarked casually. "Unless you squish them, of course. They do not like to be squished."

The Beauty let out another faint scream and sagged against the viscount in what Athena considered a really impeccable semblance of a swoon. The girl should have been on the stage, she thought viciously. She might have made her fortune.

It required the combined efforts of the viscount and her daughter—Penelope having realized that without Miss Rath-bone's presence there would be no visit to the dungeons—to convince the distraught Beauty that she would be quite safe from the occasional arachnid that might so far forget itself as to venture within ten feet of their party.

In the end she very prettily agreed to put herself into the viscount's capable hands—an expression that jarred Athena's already exacerbated sensibilities—and allowed herself to be led into the dim interior of the Abbey, her hands still firmly attached to Perry's arm.

The Earl of St. Aubyn had been amused at the little tableau enacted on the bank of the stream between his son and the three females, all of whom appeared to be annoyed with him. Mrs. Standish glared at poor Perry stonily, while her daughter bandied words with him quite shamelessly. Miss Rathbone was definitely the most vociferous of the three, for her high-pitched shrieks—quite unrehearsed this time, Sylvester was convinced—had caused the three elder ladies gathered around the picnic table to glance in her direction curiously.

At one point, the Beauty appeared on the point of swooning, and Sylvester noted with perverse satisfaction that the widow's expression became even more thunderous at the blatant way in which her rival clung to Peregrine's arm after her second scream. The wench had better take care not to overplay her role, the earl thought cynically. Peregrine might be an inexperienced puppy around females, but he was not entirely without common sense. He would drop a word of caution in his aunt's ear.

Their differences apparently settled, the group moved towards the entrance to the ruins, all but the Beauty carrying the oil lanterns provided by the footmen. Sylvester followed them with his eyes until the party disappeared into the Abbey. He did not envy Peregrine escorting three females through the dank passageways of the Abbey, and wished that he had not been obliged to put on this little farce to save his only son from the grasp of a fortune-hunting widow.

Actually, the rout of Mrs. Athena Standish was going according to plan, he thought, and within a few days, perhaps after another sennight, she would recognize her defeat, pack her bags, and return to London. Had she played her cards more wisely, Sylvester reminded himself cynically, the widow might have left St. Aubyn's three thousand pounds richer than when she arrived. But she had been greedy and held out for the big prize.

Greedy? Somehow the sin of greed did not fit Mrs. Athena Standish, and the idea made him uneasy. If she was not greedy, what could be her motive in coercing a boy almost young enough to be her son into matrimony? It could not be love. Sylvester had seen no sign of passion in either of them. His son was Clearly infatuated with the widow; however, it was a boy's romantic infatuation for a charming woman. But now that the radiant Miss Rathbone had appeared upon the scene, perhaps Peregrine would be forced to recognize his relationship with the widow for what it was, mere puppy love.

But it would be up to Mrs. Standish to release Peregrine from his commitment. Sylvester knew that his son would never— even if he could be brought to see how mistaken his choice of bride had been—break his word once it had been given.

Sylvester grimaced. It must be bis task to ensure that the delectable Athena Standish would be ready and willing to give up her claim on his son. A task he was beginning to look forward to with considerable relish. A task that would take his mind off the projected treatise on Ming porcelain he was writing for the Royal Historical Society. Two weeks ago the prospect of any delay in his work—particularly for such a frivolous reason— might have caused him no little annoyance. This afternoon, sitting at his ease beneath the ancient oak and listening with amusement to Mrs. Rathbone's thrilling voice relating some
on-dits
of an undeniably scandalous nature, Sylvester felt more alive than he had in years.

These pleasant ruminations came to an abrupt end when the earl heard a collective gasp of dismay from his three companions, and turned to witness his son emerging from the ruins, carrying a lady in blue clasped in his arms. Sylvester sprang to his feet as Perry approached, his gaze flying to the entrance of the Abbey.

There was no sign of Mrs. Standish or her daughter.

Sylvester felt a twinge of alarm.

"Oh, Perry," Mrs. Easton exclaimed in a tremulous voice, echoing his own alarm, "where is Athena? And our dear Penny? Never say you have left them alone in the dungeons?"

Peregrine deposited Miss Rathbone—who never ceased uttering pathetic little mewling sounds, and complaining about her broken ankle—in a chair beside the table. Sylvester noted that his son looked rather harried as the Beauty's arm clung tenaciously to his neck. After freeing himself from this stranglehold and assuring the young lady and her grandmother that her ankle could not be broken, but was in all likelihood merely strained, Perry mopped his face with his handkerchief and glanced apologetically at his father.

Had Perry stopped to think, the earl wondered curiously, what an entire lifetime with such an insipid creature would be like? He must really speak to his aunt about the young actress's penchant for melodrama. Ladies—at least none worthy of the name—simply did not hang upon a gentleman's neck as though they were drowning. Such behavior should be confined to the Green Room at Drury Lane, where standards were considerably more relaxed.

"Yes, indeed, Perry," Lady Sarah snapped, having risen to hover over the languishing Miss Rathbone, "what have you done with poor Mrs. Standish and her daughter? Answer me, boy."

"I have not done anything with Mrs. Standish," Perry replied in aggrieved tones. "She insisted upon going on without us—" 

"You left the poor lady and her daughter to wander around by themselves in the dungeons?" Lady Sarah's voice rose to a pitch that rivaled Mrs. Rathbone's piercing soprano. "Have your wits gone begging, boy?"

"She will be paralyzed with terror, poor creature," Mrs. Rathbone remarked feelingly.

"What could you have been thinking of, Perry?" Mrs. Easton wailed, wringing her hands and looking as though she might swoon at any minute.

"Athena is not one of your silly ninnyhammers who go off into the fidgets over the least little thing," Perry said defiantly. 

"Oh, yes, indeed," confirmed Miss Rathbone in a wavering voice. "I think she is
so
brave. Why, she is not even afraid of spiders. Can you credit it? Did she not say so herself, Peri—my lord?"

"There are no spiders in the dungeons," Peregrine said flatly. "And since I intend to return immediately to finish the tour I promised Penelope, there is nothing to get into a pother about." 

"Then I suggest you do so without further delay," Sylvester said shortly. The Beauty's slip of the tongue in using his son's name had not gone unnoticed by any of those present, as he knew the sly minx had intended. But since his overriding concern at the moment was the safety of the intrepid widow, the Beauty's tricks failed to amuse him.

"Oh, do not leave me like this, my lord," Miss Rathbone wailed piteously, stretching up to grasp Peregrine's sleeve. "You promised to escort me back to the house and have the doctor sent for. I cannot believe you can be so heartless—"

"Stuff and nonsense!" Mrs. Easton exclaimed loudly. "What fustian you do talk, girl. Get back in there this instant, Perry, and do not return until you bring Athena and Penny with you."

"But, his lordship promised—"

"Oh, do hush, Viviana," Mrs. Rathbone commanded sharply. "You are being very tiresome, child."

This unexpected reprimand produced an instant flood of tears from the Beauty, who managed—Sylvester noted irritably—to weep copious tears without in the least impairing the loveliness of her face.

Peregrine shot an anguished glance at his father, and Sylvester saw what had to be done.

"Take care of the ladies, Perry," he ordered tersely. "I shall go in search of Mrs. Standish and her daughter myself."

Picking up the viscount's discarded lantern, the earl strode down the slope and entered the dim labyrinths of the Abbey without a backward glance.

***

The moment Athena stepped into the dim interior of the Abbey, she felt the weight of a thousand years of history press in upon her. The rough-hewn stone walls that arched over her head to form the low ceiling seemed to exude a sense of other-worldliness that soothed her battered nerves. The sensation of having stepped into another era came over her, and for a moment Athena allowed herself to imagine what it must have been like to live thus sheltered from the harsh realities of the world.

But harsh realities had intruded even into this sacred place, she recalled, just as they had in her own life. Had not the Abbey been ransacked, pillaged, burned? Did it not stand, imposing relic that it still was, on St. Aubyn land, a stark reminder of power and prosperity laid low? Of the ephemeral nature of all things mortal?

Athena shuddered, her gaze settling on the slight figure of her daughter, skipping along in front of her, lantern swinging crazily.

"Penny," she called, brushing her maudlin fantasies aside, "do not get too far ahead, dear. I would not wish to lose you if you take the wrong turn."

"Pooh!" her daughter exclaimed with childish disregard for such fears. "Perry told me exactly which way to go, so trust me, Mama. I can lead you straight through the dungeon to the torture chamber. Just follow me."

"Torture chamber?" Athena repeated, between alarm and amusement. "Perry said nothing of torture chambers, you silly minx. And I beg you will say nothing of the sort to Miss Rathbone; she will swoon for certain if you do."

"Miss Rathbone is a ninny," Penelope stated emphatically. "Fancy being scared of spiders. I cannot wait to hear her scream when she sees the rats."

"Rats?" Athena murmured in a faint voice. "Perry said nothing of rats, either, Penelope. I beg you will restrain your imagination, dear. I do not much care for rats myself."

"Oh, Perry says they will not hurt us," her daughter reported blithely, her voice carrying eerily in the cavernous passageway. "Unless they are hungry, of course. Then they might—"

"Enough!" Athena said sharply, aware of a tremor in her voice. "And I think we should wait here for Perry to catch up with us." She glanced uneasily over her shoulder at the dark tunnel behind her. "I cannot see any sign of his lantern."

"Oh, Mama, do come and see this!" Penelope cried excitedly, her lantern joggling wildly. "These must be the stairs down to the dungeons. Just as Perry said. You see, I do remember the way," she added proudly.

Athena stared dubiously at the narrow steps that led down into the darkness below. Suddenly the whole idea of exploring the lower regions of the Abbey did not sound quite so appealing as it had when Perry proposed it. She had never imagined that darkness could be so very intimidating.

Penelope seemed to be affected by no such fears, for she took a step down the stone stairs and glanced eagerly back at her mother. "Let us at least see what is down there, Mama," she begged. "Perry will be along directly. No doubt Miss Rathbone has swooned again, the silly creature."