Last Night's Scandal (2 page)

As they were digging out a sizable fragment of a stair from a bed of crumbled mortar and rubble, the lantern light shone on a round object that didn’t look like a bit of mortar or stone
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fragment.

Jock picked it up and squinted at it. “Look at this,” he said.

That isn’t exactly what he said. He and Roy spoke a Scottish version of English that the average English speaker might easily mistake for Sanskrit or Albanian.

If they had spoken recognizable English, it would have sounded like this:

“What have you got there?”

“Dunno. Brass button?”

“Let me see.”

After scraping off dirt, Roy said, “A medal, maybe.” He peered at the object.

“Old medal?” said Jock. “Some of them fetch a good price.”

“Could be.” Roy scraped some more and peered some more. Then he spelled out painfully, “R-E-X. Then a mark, not a letter. Then C-A-R-O-L-V-S.” Jock, whose reading skills extended to recognizing a tavern sign, said, “What is it?” Roy looked at him. “Money,” he said.

They returned to digging with renewed energy.

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Chapter 1

London

3 October 1831

P
eregrine Dalmay, Earl of Lisle, looked from one parent to the other. “Scotland? I most certainly won’t.”

The Marquess and Marchioness of Atherton exchanged glances. Lisle didn’t try to guess what it meant. His parents lived in their own world.

“But we were
relying
upon you,” his mother said.

“Why?” he said. “I made it clear in my last letter that I’d stay only a short time before returning to Egypt.”

They’d waited until now—moments before they were due to leave for Hargate House—to tell him about the crisis at one of the Dalmay family’s Scottish properties.

Tonight the Earl and Countess of Hargate were giving a ball in honor of the ninety-fifth birthday of Eugenia, Dowager Countess of Hargate, matriarch of the Carsington family.

Lisle had returned from Egypt to attend, and not simply because it might be his last chance to see the wicked old lady alive.

Though a grown man of nearly four and twenty, no longer in Rupert and Daphne Carsington’s care, Lisle still regarded the Carsingtons as his family. They were the only proper family he’d ever known. He wouldn’t dream of missing the celebration.

He looked forward to seeing them all, especially Olivia. He hadn’t seen her in five years, since his last visit home. When he arrived in London a fortnight ago, she’d been in Derbyshire. She’d returned only yesterday.

She’d gone to her parents’ country house early in September, mere days after the coronation, on account of a broken engagement. It was her third or fourth or tenth—she’d reported them all in her letters but he’d lost track—and reputed to have beat all her previous records for brevity. Not two hours had passed between her accepting Lord Gradfield’s ring and sending it back to him with one of her heavily underlined and capitalized letters. His lordship had taken his rejection hard, and provoked an innocent bystander into a duel, during which the men had wounded each other, though not mortally.

The usual excitement with Olivia, in other words.

Lisle certainly hadn’t come home on his parents’ account. They were ridiculous. They had children, but it wasn’t a family. They were entirely wrapped up in each other and their endless dramas.

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This was typical: a great scene in the drawing room, about a topic normal people would have reserved for a rational discussion at a suitable time—not minutes before setting out for a ball.

Gorewood Castle, it seemed, had been falling down for the last three or four hundred years and sporadically undergoing repairs in the course of those centuries. For some reason they’d suddenly decided it must be restored to its former glory, and he must go there to oversee the work because of some trouble with . . . ghosts?

“But you
must
go,” his mother said. “Somebody must go. Somebody must do
something

.”

“That somebody ought to be your land agent,” Lisle said. “It’s absurd that Mains can find no workers in all of Midlothian. I thought the Scots were desperate for work.” He moved to the fire to warm his hands.

The few weeks since his return from Egypt weren’t enough to acclimate him. This English autumn felt like dead winter to him. Scotland would be intolerable. The weather there was vile enough in midsummer: grey, windy, and rainy, when it wasn’t snowing or sleeting.

He didn’t mind harsh conditions. Strictly speaking, Egypt was a more brutal environment.

But Egypt offered worlds for him to uncover. Scotland offered nothing to discover, no ancient mysteries to solve.

“Mains has tried everything, even bribery,” Father said. “What we need is the presence of a male family member. You know how clannish the Scots are. They want the laird of the castle to take charge. I cannot go. I cannot leave your mother when her health is so fragile.” She was pregnant again, in other words.

“It seems you must abandon me, my love,” said Mother, lifting a limp hand to her head.

“Peregrine has never cared about anything but his Greek and Latin and Toxic.”

“Coptic,” Lisle said. “The ancient language of—”

“It’s always Egypt,” Mother said with an ominous little sob. “Always your pyramids and mummies and scrolls, and never us. Your brothers don’t even know who you are!”

“They know me well enough,” Lisle said. “I’m the one who sends them all the jolly things from foreign parts.”

To them he was the dashing and mysterious older brother who had exciting adventures in a wild and dangerous land. And he did send them the kinds of gifts that delighted boys: bird and cat mummies, snakeskins, crocodile teeth, and beautifully preserved scorpions. He wrote to the lads, too, regularly.

Yet he couldn’t altogether quiet the inner voice telling him he’d abandoned his brothers. It was no good answering that he could do nothing for them here, except share their misery.

Only Lord Rathbourne—known throughout Society as Lord Perfect—had ever been able to manage his parents. He’d saved Lisle from them. But Rathbourne had a family of his own now.

Lisle knew he needed to do something for his brothers. But this castle business was nonsense. He’d have to postpone his return to Egypt for how long? And for what?

“I don’t see what good my shivering in a dank, crumbling old castle does my brothers,” he said. “I can think of no more ridiculous errand than traveling four hundred miles to save a lot
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of superstitious laborers from hobgoblins. Not that I understand what your villagers are afraid of. Every castle in Scotland is haunted. Every
place
is haunted. Battlefields. Trees. Rocks.

They love their ghosts.”

“It’s more than ghosts,” his father said. “There have been shocking accidents, bloodcurdling screams in the dead of night.”

“They say a long-dormant curse was reawakened when your cousin Frederick Dalmay accidentally trod on the grave of Malcom MacFetridge’s great-great-grandmother,” his mother said with a shudder. “Frederick’s health began to fail immediately thereafter. In three years, he was
dead
!”

Lisle looked about him, wishing—not for the first time—there was someone he could turn to and say, “Do you believe this?”

Though his parents were no more capable of seeing reason than Lisle was of seeing unicorns, his own sanity demanded that he introduce facts into the conversation.

“Frederick Dalmay was ninety-four years old,” he said. “He died in his sleep. In a house in Edinburgh ten miles from the supposedly cursed castle.”

“That isn’t the point,” said his father. “The point is, Gorewood Castle is Dalmay property and it’s falling to pieces!”

And you never cared about it until now,
Lisle thought. Cousin Frederick had left the castle years ago, and they’d let it be neglected.

Why, suddenly, had it become so important?

Why else? He was home and couldn’t ignore them the way he ignored their letters. It was a ploy to keep him in England. Not because they needed him or wanted him. Merely because they thought this was where he ought to be.

“What does he care?” his mother cried. “When has Peregrine ever cared about us?” She flung herself out of her chair and toward one of the windows, as though she would hurl herself out of it in despair.

Lisle was not alarmed. His mother never threw herself out of windows or dashed her brains out against the chimneypiece. She only acted as though she’d do it.

Drama was what his parents did instead of thinking.

“What monstrous crime did we commit, Jasper, to be punished with this stonyhearted child?” she wailed.

“Oh, Lisle, oh, Lisle.” Lord Atherton put his hand to his head and assumed his favorite King Lear pose. “Who can a man turn to if not to his eldest son and heir?” Before he could launch into the usual speech about ingratitude and marble-hearted fiends and thankless children, Mother took up the cause. “This is our payment for indulging you,” she said, her eyes filling. “This is our reward for putting you into the care of Rupert Carsington, the most irresponsible man in England.”

“Only the Carsingtons matter to you,” Father said. “How many letters have you written to us, in all the years you’ve spent in Egypt? I can count them on one hand.”

“But why should he write, when he never thinks of us?” said Mother.

“I make a simple request, and he answers with mockery!” Father stormed to the fire, and struck his fist upon the mantelpiece. “By God, how am I to bear it? With worry and care, you’

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ll drive me to an early grave, Lisle, I vow.”

“Oh, my dearest love, don’t say so!” Mother shrieked. “I could never go on without you. I should swiftly follow you, and the poor boys will be orphaned.” She hurtled away from the window to sink into a chair, and commenced sobbing hysterically.

His father flung out his hand, indicating his distraught spouse. “Now look what you’ve done to your mother!”

“She always does that,” said Lisle.

Father let his hand fall, and turned from him in a huff. He drew out his handkerchief and pressed it into Mother’s hand—in the nick of time, too, because her own would soon need wringing out. She was the most prodigious weeper.

“For the boy’s sake, we must pray that dreadful day never comes,” Father said, patting her shoulder. His eyes filled, too. “Lisle, naturally, will be off on his jaunts among the heathens, leaving his brothers to uncaring strangers.” His brothers already lived among uncaring strangers, Lisle thought. If orphaned, they’d go to one of his father’s sisters. Though Lord Atherton had lost one—Lord Rathbourne’s first wife—some years ago, the other six were in fine fettle, and wouldn’t notice a few more added to their own large broods. It wasn’t as though any of them actually cared for their children directly. Servants, tutors, and governesses reared one’s offspring. Parents had little to do but put their noses in when not wanted and find ways to annoy everybody and devise ridiculous and inconvenient schemes to waste one’s time.

He wouldn’t allow them to manipulate him. If he let himself be drawn into the emotional whirlpool, he’d never get out.

The way to keep on solid ground was to keep to the facts.

“The boys have scores of relatives to look after them, and more than sufficient money to live on,” he said. “They won’t end up abused and starved in an orphanage. And I will not go to Scotland on a fool’s errand.”

“How can you be so heartless?” his mother cried. “A family treasure faces extinction!” She sank back in the chair, letting her husband’s handkerchief drop from her trembling fingers as she prepared to swoon.

The butler entered. He pretended, as he always did, that an emotional extravaganza was not in progress.

The carriage, he told them, was waiting.

T
he drama didn’t end with their departure, but continued throughout the drive to Hargate House. Thanks to the late start and the press of traffic, they were among the last to arrive.

Lisle’s parents resumed their reproaches before and after greeting their hosts and the assorted Carsington husbands and wives, and in the interval before they made their way through the crowd to the guest of honor.

The birthday girl, the Dowager Countess of Hargate, appeared unchanged. Lisle knew, thanks to Olivia’s letters, that the old lady still gossiped, drank, and played whist with her friends—known among the Carsingtons as the Harpies—and still found ample time and energy to terrorize her family.

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At present, garbed in the latest and most expensive mode, a drink in her hand, she sat on a sort of throne, the Harpies clustered about her like ladies in waiting to a queen. Or perhaps like vultures about the queen vulture, depending on one’s point of view.

“You’re looking sadly peakish, Penelope,” she told Mother. “Some bloom when they’re breeding and some don’t. A pity you’re not one of the blooming ones—except for your nose.

That’s red enough, and your eyes, too. I shouldn’t weep so much, was I your age, nor dropping brats, either. If you’d asked me, I’d have advised you to stick with the birthing business when once you’d started, instead of stopping and leaving it until all your looks went and your muscles stretched past mending.”