Lord Greywell's Dilemma (3 page)

But Sir Edward had left, or at any event had hidden himself so well Beeton was unable to locate him, and Elspeth led Mr. Blockley to the Gold Saloon resigned to entertaining him by herself. She was careful to choose one of the Queen Anne chairs, because if she sat on the sofa he would certainly place his emaciated body as close to hers as he dared.

Until the tea tray was brought in, his eyes wandered about the room, lighting on those objects he most admired—the sleigh-shaped settee in the corner, the pair of rosewood card tables inlaid with brass marquetry, the ormolu clock depicting a boat navigated by Time and Youth, the pair of French candelabra in the form of Cupid drawing a bow, the half-dozen
famille rose
Chinese vases. Elspeth herself found little to admire in the room besides the Queen Anne chairs. Her taste was much less ornate than that of either her late mother or her father, and she would have been content to consign most of the elaborate pieces to the attics, or donated them to one of the church fetes as prizes.

“Mrs. Beeton has done herself proud,” Mr. Blockley announced, eagerly eyeing the plates piled with cakes and biscuits. “I wonder if she knew who it was who was joining you.”

“I’m sure she must have,” Elspeth said, “since Beeton himself carried word to her when he carried my basket to the kitchen.”

“Lord Knedlington swears he wouldn’t have a woman cook in his house. I’m sure I’ve heard him say it half a dozen times.”

“Yes, Lord Knedlington does have a habit of repeating himself,” Elspeth agreed. “The meals I’ve partaken at Mundham haven’t been anything out of the ordinary, however. Mrs. Beeton does very well for our purposes.”

“Quite, quite.” He downed one of the small cakes in two bites and wiped his fingers fastidiously on a napkin. “Sir Edward is not fond of entertaining, I believe.”

“Only when I urge the necessity on him,” Elspeth said, wondering how many times they’d covered this ground. Mr. Blockley was not an outstanding conversationalist. His interests were narrow and his opinions were legion.

“I came by today especially to speak with you,” he said now, drawing his chair a little nearer to hers. “It has come to my attention that you’ve spoken with Jane Berwick, promising to give her support for her child. Really, Miss Parkstone, it won’t do!”

Elspeth stared at him in surprise. “Why ever not? You know I’ve made similar arrangements with several . . . others in the neighborhood. Since my father doesn’t see fit to do so, I have no choice but to attend to the matter myself.”

“But Jane Berwick isn’t a member of the church, my dear! One can’t be doling out charity to a heathen. It’s quite obvious she isn’t properly penitent.”

“I see. She and her babe are to starve because they don’t fall within your purview. I’ve never heard such nonsense, Mr. Blockley,” she declared, setting down her teacup and frowning at him. “Perhaps you think my father is penitent? If there is error here, it is as much on his side as hers, and I certainly can’t recall when last he attended church. Really, I’m surprised at you.”

His sunken cheeks swelled with indignation. “My dear Miss Parkstone, you are no judge of the matters involved here. Do you presume to tell me how to conduct the spiritual business of this parish? Sir Edward’s behavior is not for you to criticize. I thought I had made that perfectly clear to you years ago. He is your father, and you owe him a proper respect. I am the rector of your church, and you owe me no less. These are concerns in which I am highly educated, ordained to carry out for the Church of England. No one has ever questioned my authority in the parish, least of all a woman of your age. I think you owe me an apology.”

Elspeth considered his mottled face for a few moments before rising from her chair to pace about the room. “I don’t question your authority in spiritual matters, Mr. Blockley,” she murmured with her back to him. “But I question anyone’s right to allow a woman and child to starve for any reason, least of all a Christian one. My father got Jane Berwick with child, and—”

“Ah, but he didn’t,” the rector interrupted triumphantly. “Or if he did, it was the merest chance. Everyone knows the Berwick woman had been keeping company with that n’er-do-well Odiham, who was forever throwing himself on the parish to support. Well, he’s in the workhouse now, having refused to marry her, and she’s simply looking for someone to support her.

“What an easy mark you proved! How foolish you will look supporting her and her child, when everyone knows the babe is not Sir Edward’s. She’s a loose woman, Miss Parkstone, with an eye for any advantage to herself. How your neighbors will laugh at you! And when I come to warn you of the disaster, you rip up at me like the veriest shrew!”

He straightened his neckcloth with a smugness that grated on Elspeth’s nerves, and when he lifted one eyebrow to state, “It is most fortunate you and I never formed a closer connection,” she almost walked from the room.

“Most fortunate,” she said in a flat voice. Her interview with Jane Berwick had been almost as trying as this one, and she had only agreed to provide for the woman and her child out of a sense of duty, and because the woman’s full-blown figure was just the sort that seemed most to attract Sir Edward.

If what Blockley said were true . . . well, it wouldn’t really have mattered, since the parish was in no position to take care of the woman, and she really couldn’t be allowed to starve, could she? It was true Jane had spent a great deal of time with the man Odiham, and it had made Elspeth wonder, but there had seemed nothing else she could do. She had been firm in not allowing the woman to bargain for more money than Elspeth ordinarily awarded to Sir Edward’s love children.

“You will, of course, excuse me,” Mr. Blockley said now, rising and smoothing down his sleeves. “I think this must be a good lesson to you, Miss Parkstone, on the errors of self-conceit. It does not become a young woman to think so highly of herself that she sets herself in opposition to her father and her pastor. Good day.”

 There were a great many things Elspeth would have liked to say to him, but she didn’t. She was not a docile woman by nature, and his goading infuriated her so she could scarce sit down when he had withdrawn from the room. Instead she grabbed up a queen cake remaining on the plate (there was only one left, since he had eaten four of them) and ran with it to the window overlooking the drive he must ride down as he took his departure.

Years had passed since she had aimed a projectile at anything, least of all a man’s hat, but she silently opened the window and waited for his tall, lean figure to pass beneath her on horseback. Taking careful aim, she sailed the cake downward at the beaver he wore, and felt a great deal of satisfaction as it smacked the hat from his greasy black locks. She quickly hid behind the draperies to one side of the window and listened to the very ungenteel language he spouted.

“Where are you, scoundrel?” he yelled. “How dare you knock the hat from a man of the cloth? Have you no respect? Demme, you have not heard the last of this.” There were sounds of scuffling on the drive, and Elspeth peeked out to see him attempting to regain his horse, which was loath to stand still while Mr. Blockley tried to put his foot in the stirrup. His hat, already muddy from its first fall, tumbled from his head again and was trampled under the horse’s hooves and permanently ruined. With another muffled oath the rector grabbed hold of the reins with a violent tug, and the bay balked, releasing himself, and cantered off down the drive.

Mr. Blockley stared after his horse and then threw one last, scathing glance about him to discover the perpetrator of this foul deed. It did not occur to him for even a moment that it was Elspeth Parkstone. The queen cake had disintegrated on impact. Any urchin might have done it, he decided. Possibly one of the stable lads whom he’d reproved for their laziness when he’d left his horse before joining Miss Parkstone in the kitchen garden.

As he stomped down the drive, meditating on the two-mile walk he had ahead of him, Elspeth stood at the window and made a face at his retreating back. It was the first time she’d behaved in such a fashion since her mother’s death, and she felt surprisingly good about it, all things considered.

Chapter Two

David Foxcott, Fourth Viscount Greywell, read Hampton Winterbourne’s letter with mounting astonishment. His uncle had always seemed a sensible, if rather prosaic, gentleman, and his kindness in coming to stay with Greywell during the last few months had been more than welcome. There was great relief in having someone lift him even temporarily out of his solitary self. That his Uncle Hampden had been unable to provide him with any answers to his dilemma was only expected. To have him suddenly propose a most outrageous solution was enough to make Greywell toss the letter angrily from him onto the growing pile of condolence letters.

The draperies had been drawn against the gathering gloom outside and a lamp burned at the corner of his desk, but he closed his eyes against even the flickering images of the furniture around him. He was still in his riding clothes, his topboots dusty from the long, exhausting gallop he’d made that afternoon. Always he hoped for some cessation of the pain he felt, hardly believing that this nightmare wouldn’t end and everything be as it had four months previously.

But nothing changed. When he returned to the manor Caroline wasn’t there, his child was still feebly clinging to life but showing no improvement, his servants went around with hushed voices and soft treads. He had no appetite for the meal which would soon be announced, and could scarcely remember what Mrs. Green had planned to tempt him, though she had, as always, taken the trouble to consult him that morning.

Several times Greywell had told himself he must get hold of his life, take a firm grip on the reins once again and move forward. But there was no direction in which he chose to go. If circumstances had permitted, he would have gone to Vienna, knowing that his services might be useful. The involvement in diplomatic bargaining would have brought some release from tormenting thoughts of his wife.

Poor Caroline, so young, so vital, now laid to rest in the churchyard with the unweathered marble tombstone. He had stopped visiting her grave regularly, since people stared at him so, and there was really no purpose served. He thought of her no less often in the house, or out riding, or even by the river where he had attempted to fish once or twice since her death. Was there no end to this regret?

Apparently the doctor had warned Caroline that it would be a difficult delivery, but she’d not told Greywell, until the pains started. In fact, she had confessed then that the doctor had told her it wouldn’t be safe to try for another child after her two disastrous miscarriages. Why hadn’t Wellow told him?

But Greywell knew. The doctor had assumed Caroline would tell him, and she hadn’t. She was young and spirited and prone to think of herself as invulnerable. Greywell remembered she had said, shortly after the second miscarriage, that doctors didn’t know everything. Sometimes Greywell wondered if she’d worried during the time she carried the child, but he’d never seen any evidence of it, and he could almost believe she’d forgotten the doctor’s warning. She had been good at forgetting things she didn’t wish to remember.

It was not her fault, really, that she’d developed a rather self-centered view of life. Her parents’ only child, she had been petted from the moment of her birth, and when her parents had died, her aunt had cosseted her out of infinite pity for her loss. The wonder was, rather, that even given her tendency to think first of herself, she had been such a delightful young woman. Her iron will had not made her any less outgoing, or any less desirable. She had reminded Greywell of a Greek goddess—beautiful, imperious, and yet intelligent and carelessly generous. It was her vitality, her intoxication with life, that had first attracted him to her. He had seen her at Lady Rossmore’s ball, surrounded by half a dozen gentlemen, her eyes sparkling with excitement and good humor, and he had immediately begged an introduction. While the other fellows hesitated, fingering their cravats and their quizzing glasses, he had walked away with her for the first quadrille of the evening, and he’d never regretted his determination.

Caroline had been too young at the time, not quite eighteen, to have given much thought to marriage. Her life consisted of a swirling round of balls and parties, breakfasts and picnics, rides and drives in Hyde Park. Greywell had not rushed her. It had been his tactic to watch from the sidelines, occasionally escorting her and her aunt’s friend (who had introduced her to London) to some entertainment, but never making a fool of himself as some of her youthful admirers did with their histrionics.

He was her most elusive suitor, always elegant, always polite, always an amusing companion, but never quite declaring himself as the others were wont to do. Whether this appealed to her as a challenge or whether she merely became accustomed to his steady regard, Greywell never exactly knew, but she turned to him in the end, during her second season in London.

Perhaps it was an acknowledgment of her need for a stabilizing influence in her life, a solid core around which she could revolve at will and return to with relief. Even after they were married she continued to attend half a dozen entertainments each week, but she seemed to appreciate a quiet evening at home with him as well, where they would sit in front of the fire, with him reading aloud from some novel he thought she’d enjoy, or explaining to her the intricacies of foreign policy. She would sit beside him on the sofa in the London house, her blond hair spilling over his shoulder, her head nestled against his cheek.

Greywell was rudely wrested from this reverie by a tap at the window. Frowning, he rose to pull back the curtains, knowing even before he revealed his caller who it would be. No one in the entire length of his thirty-two years had been given to tapping at his window to gain his attention except Abigail Waltham. She peered at him now, myopically, through the glass, her wispy gray hair tossed by the slight breeze, her features indistinguishable in the gathering dusk. Greywell had never understood why she didn’t come to the front door, a much more appropriate form of entry, but he smiled now, with faint welcome, and motioned her toward the library, where doors opened out onto the terrace.