Elisabeth Fairchild (2 page)

“I hope I did not keep you waiting,” Miles said politely, his manner deceptively unruffled as he joined Ware in the entry to the club.

Ware wore a worried look. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“No need for apology,” Miles calmly accepted assistance from a porter in sliding into the fashionably confining coat he could not have donned otherwise. “I daresay my uncle is enjoying a far more lively evening than I am.”

Ware’s lips tightened. He refrained from answering until they had stepped onto the gas lit steps and the door was firmly closed behind them before, with customary verbal economy, he confirmed Miles’s worst fears. “Damned fool is bent on killing himself.”

Lester Fletcher’s favorite haunt, Brooks’s Club, was a livelier, less orderly spot than the somnolent Travelers. Smoke and conversation hung almost as thick here as the refined air of expectancy in a club where the stakes ran high. Whist, faro, macao and hazard were the games of choice. There were clubs where one might more speedily dispose of a fortune, but at Brooks’s one might do so in the elegant comfort of what appeared to be a rich relative’s country home. The Whigs who played here were serious about the gaming in the Great Subscription Room. No Roman friezes enlivened the swagged simplicity of the ceiling at Brooks’s. Cavorting gods and goddesses, after all, might distract one from one’s cards.

Lester Fletcher was in fine form. Miles was no more than halfway up the white marble stairs to the first floor when the rumble of his uncle’s phlegmy laugh assailed him. The laugh inevitably turned into a fit of coughing. Miles took the risers with a nonchalant haste that left Ware puffing in his wake. Lester’s cough sounded worse than usual.

A tall, handsome, freckled fellow with tousled red hair paused at the head of the stairs, as arrested by the cough as Miles had been. His scowling disapproval of the noise was more pronounced.

“Oh dear,” Ware murmured breathlessly. “The game is finished.”

The gentleman turned his freckled face in their direction and started down the stairs, still scowling. Miles recognized him. “Rakehell” he was called, “Rakehell” Ramsay. Lester had lost many a hand of faro to the man. He was a serious gamester, a reckless better and a dangerous companion for Lester Fletcher in his current condition.

Ramsay ignored Miles as he passed, but to Ware he drawled with bitter sarcasm, “A pity your friend will not live to enjoy the fortune he has won tonight.”

Miles crossed to the table where his uncle sat laughing and coughing and puffing on a cigar. “Winning or losing, Uncle?” he asked with studied calmness.

“Harumph! Winning, my boy, winning. I would not have it any other way.” As he spoke, Lester Fletcher, who knew how unhappy it made his nephew that he so consistently ignored his physician’s direction that he stop drinking, gambling and smoking to excess, made a game attempt to hide his cigar and swallow the cloud he was puffing. The result was another coughing spell and a spiral of smoke that issued dangerously from the pocket of his waistcoat.

“Here.” Miles swept a glass of water from a passing tray and held it above his uncle’s pudgy, palsied hand.

“You do not expect me to drink that stuff, do you?” Lester blustered.

“Your pocket is thirsty,” Miles coolly dashed the contents of the glass onto the smoking fabric.

“Oh my! Am I on fire then?” Lester began to laugh. The attendant coughing attack was more pronounced than before, but Lester was sll smiling and wheezing, “Oh my,” when its severity abated.

Miles summoned up a glass of brandy. “Here, take a sip. See if you cannot still that nasty cough.”

Lester Fletcher took the glass without comment. When he had swallowed a sip, as instructed, he smacked his lips in appreciation and drained it. He wagged a finger at Miles. “You know my leech has instructed me to forgo brandy, my boy. There are those who will say you mean to claim your inheritance sooner rather than later.”

Miles could not smile, though he knew it was his uncle’s intention to provoke humor with his remark. “If you are done here,” he said, “I would be happy to see you home.”

“Home? So early? The night is too young to waste, lad.”

Miles drew forth his gold pocket watch and consulted the time. “Grace and I are off at first light.”

Lester’s bloodshot eyes widened. “Ah, yes, the shearing! Completely slipped my mind. Are you packed?”

Miles nodded. The watch found its way back into his pocket. “The carriage stands waiting.”

“I shall miss you, my boy.” The brightness of Lester’s smile dimmed. His face went slack, but only for a moment, and then the jaw beneath drooping jowls set itself with surprising firmness. “I’ve the strongest premonition I shall be setting off on my own unavoidable jaunt soon.”

Troubled by the change of his uncle’s tone, Miles allowed no hint of his feeling to evidence itself. Lester did not like to be fussed over, even when it came to the matter of his imminent demise. Mildly he suggested, “The trip to Holkham might best be postponed.”

Lester would not hear of it. “Do not delay on my account! I would not stay any man’s progress in the life I’ve left me, you know that.”

“I do not like to think you so bold as to set off alone, uncle.”

His uncle grabbed urgently at his hand. “Never mind tearful good-byes, lad, and bedside vigils. I do not care for them. There’s more reason than ever that you should go to the shearing. I cannot set off comfortably either to Heaven or to Hell, until I am sure an innocent lamb has not been fleeced by this evening’s good fortune.”

“A lamb, sir?”

Lester winked at him. “A devilish pretty lamb, my boy, do not mistake me.”

Beauty tested Miles Fletcher’s penchant for arriving promptly where he was due. It first manifested itself as an uneven thud, a muffled beat, like a heartbeat gone awry. This sound was curious enough to divert Fletcher’s attention from the prospect of arriving at Holkham Hall precisely on time, as was his strict habit. This pleasing prospect he had regularly contemplated in the glassy face of his elegant gold watch. Again and again, like a mechanical flower, it bloomed in the palm of his hand. How gratifying to arrive exactly as scheduled when one came so far, over unfamiliar roads!

The ticking metal blossom was initially drawn forth as his dust covered coach passed beneath the Triumphal Arch marking the edge of their host’s vast holdings. A second time it filled his palm as his team clattered past a half-moon cluster of cottages alongside the straight avenue that forced them up a gentle rise, where the tall, pale needle of an obelisk cut the sky. For a third time, on the far side of that rise, the watch was consulted. Holkham Hall loomed in the distance, the sun glittering on the water of its man-made canal and the picturesque panorama of white sheep and gamboling lambs scatted across green pasturage.

Ffft. Ta-dum.
The noise, curiously out-of-keeping with pastoral vistas, especially followed as it was by the polite flutter of applause and the lilt of feminine laughter, was distraction enough to convince Miles he must click shut the face of his timepiece and tuck it away. But he did not immediately order the coach to slow.

Instead, lifting a crisp, monogrammed handkerchief to his nose, he braved the cloud of dust they raised and leaned his head out of the window in the gracefully liquid manner that was distinctly his own. He meant to identify the thudding noise, nothing more. It sounded vaguely familiar.

Through the trees to his right, a flash of white caught his eye, white columns against creamy yellow brick, white muslin fluttering against the lush green backdrop of newly leafed trees. Almost hidden among the greenery was a hint of Greece in the midst of the English countryside: a Doric style Temple--a thing of beauty. Before it stood a row of female archers, caught by Mr. Fletcher’s passing eye, poised in the moment before arrows were loosed--beauty before beauty. The uneven thud made sense to him now, as the row of longbows released a quicksilver gleaming of feathered shafts at a cluster of ringed, pasteboard and cloth targets set amongst the trees.

There was beauty in the moment, an elegance in the setting, activity and participants. Beauty and elegance never failed to give Miles Fletcher serious pause.

“Hold!” he called, punctuality abandoned. Withdrawing into the coach, he took up his walking stick. It too, was a thing of beauty, the shaft dark ebony, the top an exquisitely rendered marble fist. With this fist as an extension of his own arm, he knocked a brisk tattoo against the carriage roof.

The coach promptly pulled to a stop.

“What? We are not there, are we?” The young woman who nestled in the squabs beside him sleepily raised her head.

One corner of Miles’s mouth lifted. He returned his attention to the window. “Not quite.” He leaned out to direct the coachman to pull off of the main avenue, onto the grassy, shaded track that led to the temple. “Sorry to wake you, Grace,” he said, when the coach rumbled onto the rutted track, throwing them both about. “I think you might like to see this.”

Grace yawned like a kitten as she shoved herself into a more comfortable position. “Very pretty, if one does not mind the bruises required to approach the thing.” She rubbed her hip. “Tell me Miles, is it the temple caught your eye, or the women in front of it?”

“You pierce my ego, Gracie,” Miles murmured as he drew forth, not his watch this time, but a gold-rimmed pince-nez which he polished on his handkerchief with thorough precision despite the inconvenience of being thrown against the squabs yet again.

Gracie laughed dryly. “I am on target then. Spy you some fair Diana? Have you not enough female conquests in London that you must add another bruised heart to your list?”

“Bruised heart? What tender creature have I so injured?” Miles arched a dark brow and narrowed his eyes to examine through the window, with the aid of his sparkling ogler, the armed rank of women, who stood, bows raised and drawn.

“I know enough,”--Grace laughed--“to know you love all women and favor none. There are dozens who go to great lengths to win your attention.”

“So many?” Miles could not smother the grin that leapt to his lips and was as swiftly gone. “Forgive me, my dear, if I appear inattentive, but I cannot resist the sight of beauty, no matter its form.”

“Am I not beautiful then?”

His grin broadened. “Without question, but it does not do to stare at one’s sister, no matter how beautifully she snores.”

“I do not snore!” the Honorable Grace Fletcher insisted, and as quickly lost her serene certainty. “I do not. Do I?”

Miles absently turned his quizzing glass on his youngest sister. She was a fetching creature and she knew it well enough. They were plagued by her admirers wherever they went. “Of course not, my dear. But, your bonnet has been knocked askew and your lace tucker requires attention.”

As she adjusted the tilt of her bonnet--like a flock of birds, arrows flew, drawing both their heads in the same direction. A chorus of cheers rose from the picturesque gathering among the trees.

“Drat!” Grace exclaimed, withdrawing from the window. “Walsh is here! Quick, turn the coach and drive on. I would not have him see me.” She ducked to the floor in a rustle of starched petticoats.

“I do not see him,” Miles languidly studied the crowd. Lord Walsh was no cause for serious alarm. He was but one of the many unappreciated young men who dangled after Grace. Miles could not remember if Walsh had actually made Grace an offer. It was certainly his intention, but his chances of an affirmative response were slim either way. She had turned down half a dozen hopeful suitors, determined, she had told her brother, not to marry at all if not for love, even if it meant marrying a pauper and living in a garret. Painters commonly lived in garrets, did they not? Grace fancied herself a serious artist because she had a knack with watercolors. She was a romantic creature with very high ideals. A garret appealed to those ideals. Miles loved her for her passionate expectations, but he was not about to turn the coach around and head back to London just to avoid one spurned suitor.

 “Ah, I see him now,” he admitted as Walsh hailed him.

“Why did you not tell me he was to number among the guests?” Grace hissed from her ignominious seat on the floor. “I would never have come had I the slightest inkling. I shall not have a moment’s peace to paint with Walsh hovering at my elbow.”

“I thought you liked Walsh.”

“I do.”

“I thought you liked him better than any of that pack of dogs that hounds you.”

“Perhaps I do,” she said. “But, the man wants to marry me, and I do not think I like any man well enough for that.”

“Well, if you like him enough to be civil you had best dust yourself off and sit up,” Miles suggested. “His grace is headed this way.”

Walsh moved purposefully toward them.

“Ooh!” Grace muttered as she shifted to the far side of the coach and rose to the seat, straightening rumpled skirts. “You are insufferably cruel, Miles, not to order the coachman onward.”

“I do apologize,” Miles smiled at her. “But, it would be insufferably rude in me to leave a peer of the realm standing in a cloud of dust when he has made it clear he means to have a word with us.”