Fallen Angels (32 page)

She walked from the church into the sunlight. She kept her head high. Until her brother returned she was Lazen. She would be a great lady.

—«»—«»—«»—

The Castle seemed silent after the Earl's death. The visitors went, the great rooms and long corridors were quiet. Flax sheets covered the furniture in the Earl's room. His bedding and mattress were burned. Campion moved the portrait of her mother to the Long Gallery.

She was busy. A quarter day was due and she had to sign letters and seal them with the Castle's great seal. She had done it often enough for her father, now she did it for the sixth Earl. She heard nothing of Toby.

She wrote to Lord Paunceley, prevailing on her father's old friendship, and begging his Lordship that Toby should be brought back from France. There was no reply. The news from the Vendee, where Toby helped the rebels, frightened her. She dreaded the post, the London newspapers, the sound of hooves on the gravel that might be a messenger bringing the tidings of another death.

She heard nothing of Christopher Skavadale. At night, when Lazen seemed empty, she would remember the kiss, but it seemed now to belong to a distant past, a time when her father was alive, when Lazen had a purpose. The search for love's wonder was drowned in grief, in hard work, just as the black drapes of mourning dulled the Castle's rooms.

Lord Culloden went to London. He said he would return in a month. Their marriage was postponed.

The wedding gifts were still piled in the Yellow Drawing Room. The townsfolk had given her a splendid, beautiful picture of the Castle. Campion herself was in the foreground of the picture, driving her phaeton behind high stepping bays at the Castle gate. The painting was meant to hang in the large room of Periton House. Campion no longer rode to see if the plaster dried on the walls.

She schooled Hirondelle, riding the mare to the lonely chalk hills north of Lazen, galloping under clouded skies of summer, and slowly, as the crops ripened to harvest, she felt her old obsession return. Skavadale, Skavadale. Hirondelle reminded her of Skavadale. As her grief mellowed so the dark, slim, lively face came back to haunt her waking dreams. 'He'll come back to us, Hirondelle.' She would say it on the lonely hilltops, her voice snatched by the summer wind into emptiness.

Her evenings she spent in the Long Gallery. She played old, half-forgotten tunes on the harpsichord. She would look sometimes at the portraits of the first Countess in her old age and she would see herself as she would look in age, and she wondered if, when she had that grey hair and that straight back, she would reflect on a barren, wasted life. Mrs Hutchinson, Carline, the Reverend Mounter, all thought she was obsessed by melancholy. She was thinner, her lovely face shadowed. Letters were sent to Uncle Achilles. Dr Fenner was called to the Castle, but Campion refused to see him.

Yet one morning she suddenly seemed brighter. She took breakfast and ordered Wirrell, the estate steward, to come to the Castle. She walked with him to the lake, her voice crisp and her manner energetic, and the Castle was glad that she seemed to have recovered some of her old, happy ebullience.

They were less happy with the task she had set them. She had ordered the sunken barge to be taken from the water.

A footman who was a strong swimmer looped chains over the prow, hooking them beneath the swell of the Lazen escutcheon. The fence of the park had to be taken down to give the horses room to haul westward, yet even with thirty horses being urged on by grooms and farmworkers it seemed the barge could not be shifted.

She insisted they keep trying. She ordered a rope tied to the pavilion and pulled sideways to rock the boat in its mud bed and, as the pavilion pillar splintered, so the great teams jerked forward and Wirrell shouted to keep them moving and the men cheered because at last the hull had freed itself from the clinging slime of the lake's bed.

Campion laughed with the soaking, happy men as the boat came, smeared and stinking, lurching up onto the bank with the water pouring from its sprung planks. She saw the cutlery, broken crystal, and smashed china on its deck. George Hamblegird, who feared he would have to rebuild the craft, scratched his head beside her. 'Better let her dry out, my Lady, before we lift her onto a wagon.'

She smiled at him. 'I don't want it lifted onto a wagon, George. I want it burnt.'

He looked at her in astonishment. 'You want what?'

She was walking away from the barge. 'I said burn it!'

Some thought that her father's death had turned her brain, but the order had come in the voice of a great lady and the order was obeyed. It took two days, the wood was so wet, but by cramming the soggy interior with pitch smeared lumber and tinder, the boat was burned. At night Campion could see the dull red of the fire, and by day there was a smear of smoke that drifted over the park. When it was done, and when the barge was just scraps of blackened timber on the scorched grass, Hamblegird brought her a curious, knobbly lump of silver. 'Reckon that be a knife we didn't find, my Lady, melted right down!'

She put it on the Long Gallery mantel like a trophy.

Yet if burning the boat in which she had accepted marriage was her private gesture, there could be no such public gesture. In August, in a flurry of dust, outriders, carriages, and servants, Lord Culloden returned. With him, whether by accident or design, came Uncle Achilles and Cartmel Scrimgeour.

She felt as if the tribe of men, the capable, authoritative tribe, had come to end her days of sad freedom. There was a sudden air of decision in the Castle, like a cold wind in a warm house.

Lord Culloden, the day of his arrival, begged to walk with her in the WaterGarden. Mrs Hutchinson, bundled with shawls against an unseasonal north wind, sat in an arbour of roses to watch them where they paced the walks.

Campion, a black parasol over her head, kept her elbows tight to her side so that Lord Culloden could not take her arm. She walked slowly, stopping often to stare into the slow moving, shallow canals where the carp swam among the lily pads. Lord Culloden seemed to turn his body towards her as he walked. He gesticulated. Mrs Hutchinson, half dozing among the roses, thought how solicitous he looked as he spoke so earnestly to Campion.

'I worry for you, dear Campion.'

'I would not have you worried, my Lord.'

Their shoes seemed loud on the gravel. From the lawns beyond the Garden House came the slithering whisper of scythes.

Lord Culloden took off his black hat, frowned at the red lining, then put it back on. 'You would not see Dr Fenner?'

Campion stared at the gravel ahead of her. 'I am not ill, my Lord.'

'You're thin, my dear, very thin.'

'I've always been thin.' She said it defensively and stopped on one of the bridges. She stared into the water.

Lord Culloden leaned his back against the bridge. In London Valentine Larke had given him good news, news that the French government forces were closing on
Le Revenant,
and that soon, very soon, Larke expected to hear of the death of the sixth Earl. Larke also told Culloden that the Fallen Ones were demanding a swift marriage. 'I don't care if she's in mourning! She has to be tied up, my Lord. There must be no loose ends that can be dragged out into the open. Marry her!'

Culloden looked sideways at her. Light was reflected from the canal, light that rippled on her face as it had on that day in the pleasure barge. He thought how beautiful she was, like a shy, wild creature that had to be tempted with exquisite cunning into the nets of the hunters. It was a pity she must die, though he was consoled by the knowledge that, before she was sacrificed, he would take her in marriage. And then? He still did not know how she was to die. He pushed the problem away and turned, so that his elbow was beside hers. He touched a finger to the ends of his moustache. 'Your uncle and Scrimgeour asked me to talk with you.'

She looked at him. So the conjunction of their arrival was no accident. She looked back at the wind-rippled water, bright with lilies. 'You needed to be asked, my Lord?' A fish moved in the dark shadows beneath her and she knew she had been churlish. It was not Lord Culloden's fault that the Gypsy haunted her dreams. She looked at him. 'I'm sorry, my Lord.'

As an act of contrition she let him take her elbow. He talked softly but persuasively. He talked of a danger to Lazen, of the future's uncertainty, of Toby's irresponsibility. She protested at that, but it was true. Toby should be here, not pursuing his futile vengeance in France.

Culloden spoke of Sir Julius. 'Rumour says he's drunk twenty hours of the day. Rumour says worse.'

'Do we listen to rumour, my Lord?'

He shrugged. 'Can you imagine Julius taking up residence here? How will you spend your days, my Lady? How will you stop him destroying the pictures, the treasures, the books? And how will you spend your nights?'

She said nothing. She stopped at the north west corner of the garden and stared at the white temple across the park. If it was Skavadale's hand, she thought, that held her arm, then she would not want to shrink from the touch. She let the wind catch her parasol and used the sudden motion to disengage her elbow.

Lord Culloden took a deep breath. He folded his hands at his back. He cleared his throat. 'I once asked for your hand in marriage, dear lady,' he sounded acutely embarrassed, 'and now, with great trembling, I do so again.'

She stopped. She looked at him quizzically.

He smiled. 'I would bring to your life some solace and joy. I fear more unhappiness, I fear your cousin, I wish only to protect you as I once had the honour to do.'

The memory of her rescue on the Millett's End road always brought a pang of guilty debt to Campion. She looked down at the gravel. 'My Lord?'

His voice was low and urgent. 'It is seemly to wait, dear Campion, to wait till the mourning is over, but I fear for you if we wait. You will forgive frankness?'

'I would be grateful for it, my Lord.'

'We should marry. We should have a quiet ceremony. Later, when the unhappiness is forgotten, we can celebrate. It is your uncle's belief that your father would have wished it so, and it is Scrimgeour's opinion that we should wed and wed soon for Lazen's sake.'

She said nothing. She turned and walked along one of the paths. She had promised her dying father that she would marry, that she would have Lord Culloden to protect Lazen. That promise was heavy in her, as heavy as the promise that Skavadale would return.

She thought how she leaned on the Gypsy's promise, leaned on it as if her life was not her own, but in the hands of some benevolent fate. She waited for the Gypsy to come back as if he could free her from her own promise.

Yet she knew Christopher Skavadale did not have that power. What was between herself and the Gypsy, what had happened on that guilty, star-bright night, was a thing of shadow. The reality was the Castle, her brother's absence, the promise she had made to a dying man.

She looked into Lord Culloden's face, seeing the lineaments of middle age, the heavy face of a man who would be master of a great fortune. She could see him big in a saddle, his voice confident, a man of few ideas and those irrefutable. Yet, she supposed, that was what Lazen needed. She did not think him a bad man. The worst that she could say of Lord Culloden was that he had a moustache, that his waist filled perceptibly, and that his touch did not make her veins thrill with excitement. 'I will think about it, my Lord.'

'I ask nothing more.'

She thought that he asked for a great deal more, but she smiled, said that the wind was chilling her, and went indoors.

—«»—«»—«»—

Dinner that evening was an uncomfortable meal, the conversation more notable for its silence than its words, and Campion was glad to leave the three men to their port, walnuts, cigars, and the chamberpot that was taken from its place in the sideboard.

She went to the Long Gallery where, an hour later, Uncle Achilles found her.

She smiled as he sat beside her. He put his boots on the window seat, shook his head, and imitated Cartmel Scrimgeour's unctuous voice. '"What exquisite port, what splendid refreshment!"'

She smiled.

Achilles d'Auxigny laughed. 'It was execrable port. I ordered the very worst from your cellarmaster because I knew Scrimgeour wouldn't know the difference. I then kept the brandy for myself!' He waved at the decanter he had brought with him. 'You don't mind?'

'Of course not.'

'Or if I take a cigar?'

'Please.' She watched as he lit the cigar from a candle. 'You've come to lecture me, haven't you?'

He nodded. 'As an uncle, a bishop, and a sinner it is my solemn duty.'

She said nothing. The smoke from his cigar drifted into the night beyond the window.

Achilles poured brandy. 'Poor Lord Culloden. Poor puzzled Lord Culloden. The English are so bad at being puzzled, so very bad. It means that God isn't doing what they expect him to do. Poor Lord Culloden.'

She had to smile at his extravagant tone of voice. 'Poor?'

'The silly man, my dear Campion, has somehow got it into his head that you do not wish to marry him.' Achilles smiled at her. 'He's quite right too, isn't he?'

He looked at her so impishly that he made her laugh, a rare sound in these weeks since her father had died.

He smiled at her laughter. 'And I am here, dear niece, to tell you that you should marry him.' He made a rueful face at her. 'Your father wanted it, I think you need it, and I'm sure Lazen needs it. Mr Scrimgeour,' and here Uncle Achilles made his voice pompous, 'is most insistent that you marry Culloden. The only sensible thing for the girl to do!' Achilles smiled at her. 'Forget love. It's a dream. It might come, it might not, and it doesn't matter. Love is a fancy for the unfledged. Marry him and make Lazen safe, then find yourself a nice, warm lover if you need one.' His face was mischievous. 'You could even try the Prince of the Gypsies.'

She looked at him in alarm.

He laughed. 'Don't worry, my dear niece. I did not tell Lewis the truth.' He tapped ash into a porcelain bowl. 'I saw you leave the ball that night. Did you go to our noble savage?'