Grace Gibson (6 page)

The subject of so sincere a conversation could hardly have known she was thought of at all. Indeed, Mary Fanley could barely think, so beside herself with consternation was she. Her pin money, long held in a certain satin covered box in a small unlocked drawer in her vanity, had been slowly dwindling. Mary knew now, days after first thinking that the little money missing from her box was purely her imagination, that much more had gone.

Her suspicions quickly passed over all the household. None of the servants presented themselves as reasonable suspects. They had no one new, had never once experienced theft at Greenly, and now would be a rare time for it, given that the estate was doing so well. Her father was thrifty, but only because he spared no expense for Greenly. He had recently given every worker on the estate the staggering amount of five pounds apiece as a harvest gift.

Mary fell into distraction, for she knew that she must, with great reluctance, suspect her brother Will.

With this sad business firmly tucked in her heart, Mary began to observe Will and his guest, Oscar Neville. Neville’s manners remained smooth as ever; but he had lately begun to lord over Will. And Will, desperate to show he was not some child in knee pants, had borne the treatment as only a hot-headed nineteen-year-old can — he reacted.

“I say, Will,” Neville said at dinner, “I have a passion to see the Hanley estate that your papa says is so shockingly untended. We could stop at the Green Man for a pint, if you’re a good lad that is.”

“Shockingly bad.” Mr. Fanley agreed. “Yes, Will, take Oscar to see how an estate should never look. And look at it yourself, for I want you to take a lesson there.”

“Oh, well, certainly we can go see it if you’d like,” Will replied sulkily, “but indeed it is quite boring. You passed it on the way here, Oscar, and I had much rather go up to the Himmels for a visit.”

“Well, if it is the schoolroom you are in the mood for, the Himmels it is.” Neville winked at Mary. There was a certain young miss of sixteen at the Himmels who was not yet out, and ever since he discovered that Will had a tender eye for the girl, Neville never missed an opportunity to apply a little friendly ridicule.

“Roger has a new hunter I’d like to see, that’s all,” Will exclaimed with unmasked frustration and a faint blush. “But if you are so keen on the Green Man, then by all means, let us go.”

“Is the Green Man an inn in Hampton?” Mary asked.

Glances were exchanged. “Yes, a rather homey place, I’d say, wouldn’t you Will? Most wholesome. With a good landlord, who looks after young bucks who’ve come for some roadside refreshment.”

“Hm,” Will assented, but he passed a look to his friend that spoke a homily on repression.

“I’ve a mind to stop in then,” Mary said breezily. “I have been meaning to spend some of my pin money at the drapers and Maria says the shop in Hampton is uncommonly well set up.”

Will looked up sharply. “You cannot be thinking you will ride all the way to Hampton for some muslin, when our village shop is just as good. Papa, you must not let her do it!”

“Do what? Oh, ride to Hampton? I say, Mary, if you do go, there is a book seller’s shop I would like you to visit for me. There is a publication I would like; I will write it down if you will remind me.”

With a hint of mischief, Oscar Neville added his voice to the subject. “Miss Fanley, if you arrive in time for tea, stop and find us at the Green Man.”

When Will responded to this suggestion with a fiery glare at his friend, Mary relented. She could not see her brother made so miserable and she had discovered what she had set out to learn. “Well, if you do not think it is a good idea then I will give it up.”

Her brother looked at her with resignation, for he knew he was caught. He returned to making conversation with Oscar, although he showed no inclination for it. They talked languidly of horseflesh, with a few references to Newmarket and cart racing which distressed Mary a little, but she kept her father comfortable and distracted until the meal was finished.

That evening, while in her bedchamber, Will knocked lightly on her door. She opened it without surprise and welcomed him to a chair. “So are you betting on horses Is that what goes on below stairs at the Green Man?”

“I only borrowed the money, Mary. I promise you. I’d no intention you’d ever know.” Here he paused, and said in a disapproving voice, “You have a shocking amount of pin money lying around. I’d no idea father was so good to
you
, and
my
pockets are always hanging outside my breeches.”

“Papa is not
so
good to me as you suppose. I have saved my pin money for quite some time now, since I’m not much in the way of dress parties. And, I economize, Will, where you do not.”

He flashed her a surrendered look. “I know I’m devilishly loose, but I’ll pay you back in two days’ time.”

“You’ll not need to pay me back at all, if you will but tell me what sort of game you are getting into.”

“You are not my mother,” he said a little savagely, “and I said I will pay you back.”

But in two days’ time, all Mary saw from Will was a cavalier face. Indeed, he seemed to laugh loudly and speak with devil-may-care abandon on any subject. Oscar Neville encouraged this reckless mood, occasionally offering to walk out with Mary and thereby causing Will a moment of undisguised terror. She could only guess that Will’s expectations had sunk. And with Neville playfully threatening to tell all, Will, who was just a boy after all, was stuck acting as if all was right in the world.

Indeed, to the degree her brother suffered abysmally, Mary began to suffer herself. The shine had worn off Mr. Neville just a little; she found him mildly tiresome while she waited for some sort of reckoning with her troubled brother. Surely, she thought, when four days had elapsed, the evening would find a chastened boy in her bedchamber offering up an explanation. With this in mind, she counted out her pin money and prepared to relinquish the whole of it in anticipation of rescuing him from this scrape.

But her hopes were dashed. During nuncheon, an express came for Mr. Fanley from the Marquis of Denley. Her father was delighted and put down his fork so he could open the missive. “From Robert!” he had said to all around the table. “Here, I will read it.” While all sat expectantly waiting to hear it read aloud, Mr. Fanley silently perused the letter from top to bottom, finally putting it down with a pat of satisfaction.

“Papa!” cried Mary. “What did he say?”

“Oh. Quite right, Mary. He is coming. Indeed he and Eversham had planned to be here tomorrow, but it is quite wet to the south so they expect to be here by week’s end.” He fell to musing, sometimes aloud and sometimes silently, as to what he would first show the Marquis of progress at Treehill, a list of vague concerns, a quantity of favourable reports and one or two very dark mumblings about poaching two counties to the west.

A little while later, as Mary sat tatting lace in the main salon in a patch of autumn sun, she was surprised when not Will, but Oscar Neville joined her. Rather than the charming half smile she was used to, his face was serious, and she looked up at him with no small degree of curiosity.

“I wonder that your father can welcome such a man,” he said with a grave shake of his head.

“Do you mean the Marquis of Denley?”

“Indeed, who else? I know nothing of his uncle…that is to say, I understand him to be perfectly respectable with a most serious character.”

“Then you had better say you know nothing
bad
of the uncle.”

“It is better than I can say of the nephew,” Oscar replied with his great dark eyes on her.

“Hm.” Mary went back to her lace. Inexplicably, she was no longer eager to hear tales from Mr. Neville, particularly about Lord Robert.

Mr. Neville stood abruptly and began to pace the room. “It is outside of enough that he is allowed here, in the midst of a respectable family, with a young and virtuous lady whose reputation is above reproach.”

“Mr. Neville!” Mary exclaimed. “Calm yourself! Indeed, I have been thrown much into company with the Marquis, and though I find him officious and…and high-handed…and abominable!…I cannot hold him in contempt for he has never been inappropriate to
me.”

Neville returned urgently to his chair and moved it closer to Mary. He took her hands in his and said, “Were it in my power to keep this information from you I would, but I cannot in good conscience allow you to play hostess to such a man without knowing his true nature.”

“Sir?” Mary’s face grew cold. “You want to tell me something of the Marquis of Denley?”

“He is, Miss Fanley, a man of such ill repute he has been
removed
from town, some claim through coercion by the uncle.” This grave announcement was made while he still held her hands in his.

“Whatever can he have done?” she gasped, instantly removing her hands from his grip.

“Aside from squandering the family fortune in the most injudicious games of chance, and being dunned by every creditor nameable, he is in deep with the moneylenders, has a dangerous temper and a history of duelling. It is a known speculation that he is in hiding following a duel in which his adversary suffered a serious wound and may not live. And to think, I find him
here
among my friends. All this is very bad, but the most pressing fact of which I must make you aware is that the Marquis of Denley is a known seducer!”

Mary paused. “I see. I thank you for the warning, and I assure you, that I will have a care for my reputation when he is among us.”

Neville sat back. “I fear you do not see, Miss Mary. His being among you is enough to see your reputation damaged, perhaps irreparably.”

She stared at him. “If what you say is true, my reputation is already damaged
irreparably
, and I see nothing more to do about it. But really, Mr. Neville, I become quite uncomfortable discussing my virtue with you. It is not proper in the least.”

He took her hands again. “Indeed, it is not proper, and for that reason alone, I hesitated to come to you. But my regard for you is such…is such that I determined to exert myself in spite of the danger that I would offend you. But you are very much mistaken that there is nothing more to do about it. I flatter myself that I alone know of your…acquaintance…with a man of such ilk. For that, we are fortunate. But what remains is for you to put a word in your father’s ear so that such a person should never be allowed to visit.”

It was Mary’s turn to stand very abruptly. “Mr. Neville, I thank you for your exertions, but I take leave to tell you that indeed you have offended me! I have listened to you discuss my virtue and muddy the character of my father’s friend, and I have borne with you placing me under obligation to you for your silence about my association with a town rake. But to suggest that my father must be led like a milk cow is most insulting!”

Mr. Neville stood and bowed stiffly. “Then I beg your pardon, Miss Fanley, for importuning you.”

Mary did not grace this with any response. She swept out of the room and into the hallway, grabbed her shawl and went out of doors for a long and angry walk.

The road to the village took her past fields now golden, through copses of copper coloured leaves, and along the hedgerows where she and Will had played hide-and-seek as children. She allowed that she had been imposed upon by Mr. Oscar Neville, that she had been swayed by his charms and enamoured of his compliments. She also allowed that, for all the niceties of a gentleman’s tender attentions, she would much rather cross swords with Lord Robert of Denley, for he was not duplicitous and she could never accuse
him
of flattery.

Truly, when she put one up against the other, Mr. Neville had revealed himself to be all polish and no substance, whereas Lord Robert was slowly becoming a substantial point of interest to the inhabitants of Greenly. Jim Barry served Mr. Neville punctiliously, but his enthusiasm was reserved for His Lordship’s return. Mrs. Darlington made sure the accommodations were well set up for Master Fanley’s friend, but only for the Marquis did she embroider new pillow tops and wash the bedding with lavender water. And the Greenly cook, Sue Wilkins, who took exception to special requests, would not bother to know Mr. Neville’s favourite dish, but she had assembled a detailed list of every morsel that “His Honour” had ever even vaguely complimented.

Mr. Fanley’s preference was also clear as daylight. He relished Denley’s dawning interest in the art of estate cultivation, he delighted in the restoration of Treehill and its master’s rightful return, and he was ever at his ease with Robert. Oscar Neville was a passing acquaintance, but Lord Robert spent many a comfortable hour in the saddle alongside Mr. Fanley’s country curricle as they tooled through the acres of Greenly and beyond.

These points of comparison were enough to lower Mr. Neville in Mary’s opinion, but she felt sure he was the source of mischief that had blue-devilled her younger brother. For that, he was entirely sunk beyond redemption. If he were to admire her blooming cheeks till her deathbed, she would never believe him to be worthy of her confidence; though Lord Robert admired nothing about her, she felt sure she could depend upon him if she were ever in straightened circumstances.

In the end, Mary turned back toward home. She anticipated Will’s return to Oxford, when he would leave the worldly and questionable influence of Mr. Neville behind him. As to her own course of action, Mary determined to be civil to Neville and patient with her brother’s reticence. Upon the more interesting advent of the Marquis’ return, she pledged herself to show him her most ladylike manners and treat him with a brand new deference.

But the day still held more upset for Mary Fanley. On her return to Greenly House, she was accosted at the door by Mrs. Darlington.

“Oh, Miss!” she cried, waving her apron in agitation, “I’m so glad you’re come home!”

“What is it Mrs. Darlington? Have the pigs got into the garden again?”

“No, it is only that the young gentleman is leaving of a sudden, and the young master is all in knots over it, insisting he cannot go, and now he’s got your father in a rare taking.”

“Good God!” Mary exclaimed, disposing of her shawl. “Are they in the library?”

“Yes ma’am, except the young gentleman is abovestairs and has called for his trunks — but Jim says he cannot see to it because he is forbidden to do so by Master Will.”

Mary did not stay to sort out the matter of trunks; instead she marched into her father’s library where she was greeted with cries of relief from her father, and assertions of mutiny from her brother.

“Tell him, Mary!” demanded Will. “Tell him that Oscar must stay and the Marquis of Denley and his uncle Who-Ever-He-Might-Be should be relegated off to Treehill or the Inn at the Village!”

“They cannot be sent to Treehill, Mary!” Mr. Fanley interjected. “It is October already and the masons have yet to proof the chimneys. And there’s not a servant to be had at this date, as all are gone off or have secured their posts for the winter. And never the inn. Never! They have the dampest sheets in the country there.”

“Of course they will not be sent off, Papa,” Mary said reasonably, causing Will to leap to his feet in outrage. But a look from her silenced him, and she continued in the most reassuring way while opening the curtains to let in the late afternoon light. “No doubt Mr. Neville is only trying to be polite. He will not want to overburden Greenly with guests, not knowing our capacity. I am sure that Will and I can speak to him and convince him that he has a claim on our hospitality that does not expire with the arrival of a mere two extra persons.”

Mr. Fanley seemed vastly relieved. “Yes, Mary, I knew you would see to it. I cannot like Mr. Neville to be leaving us so abruptly. Will, you know, is uncommonly fond of his company, and I would not like to see some sort of rupture because we have not done our part to make him stay.”

“I will take care of it Papa,” Mary said breezily, and then she took Will by the arm and firmly led him into the hall and closed the library door. “Now, Will, before you speak another word, I warn you not to go spreading alarm with Papa. I will not allow him to be upset.”

“But Oscar says if the Marquis comes,
he goes!”

“Yes, and I have reason to think I may have contributed to that, but lower your voice. There must be something I can do.”

“But I’m afraid there is not,” Mr. Neville said from behind them.

Will and Mary, much shocked at having been overheard, turned around. “Oscar!” exclaimed Will in mortified accents.

“Forgive me, but I was seeking out my hostess to take my leave.”

“But you cannot go,” Mary said lightly.

He smiled at her lack of conviction, and with a flourish, he took her hand and lightly kissed the tips of her fingers. “The matter we spoke of earlier is forgotten,” he said smoothly, “and you are not to suppose my removal has anything to do with what I said to you.”

She blushed and dipped a faint curtsey. “Then I admit we are quite in the dark as to why you feel you must remove with such suddenness, sir.”

He straightened and released her hand with flair. “I have been assailed of late with invitations from Jack Himmel, and I cannot in good faith reject him, Miss Fanley. He has got wind that you will be entertaining guests by week’s end. How servants talk! It is the greatest shame on earth that nary a secret can be kept between country houses. Be that as it may, Jack insists if I do not come now, he will no longer be in charity with me.”

“But sir, the Marquis is unknown to Will, and he cannot let you go now that my Papa will be closeted with the stewards and talking day and night of Treehill.”

Will stood at her side in great agitation. “That is it exactly, Mary. Good God, Oscar, if you leave us now, it will be all yields and drainage plans for me!”

“My dear boy, I am only at Blevington; I can be found I assure you. In fact, I expect you to be visiting the schoolroom at least every other day. Then you can come and have a game of piquet with the men, unless, as you say, you are determined to give it up.” He flashed Will an angelic smile. “Now, be so good as to allow your man to retrieve my trunks and I’ll be off. I’ve promised Mrs. Himmel I would make eight at her table.”