Love's Way (24 page)

“I expect you know who I mean?” he asked. I nodded judiciously, concealing my smirk at him and his difficulties.

“We are in this together, if it comes to that,” he said, leaning his head closer to mine. I gave him a cool stare at this speech.

“I have a good idea of his business dealings. I know he has advanced large sums to your brother, Miss Barwick, and know why he had done so. Oh, he does not plan to tear Ambledown down, as
I
had intended, though I at least offered you a fair price for it. No, it is his wish to get hold of it for himself, to incorporate it into the village as a museum. Ambledown is the oldest home in the area. That is why he had it restored. He thinks he could charge half a crown for a tour of it, and tourists, you know, like to feel they are absorbing a little history and culture, as well as enjoying themselves. He feels it would give a little dash of quality to the village. He will have it in his hands by the year’s end, unless you have some plan for your brother to repay those notes he has drawn from Gamble.”

“Edward signed no such notes. Gamble is to be repaid in stock over the years ...”

“For that fancy mount, yes, but the renovations to Ambledown were secured separately with a note. There is no point prevaricating with me, Miss Barwick. I was present when your brother signed. It was done at my own hotel.”

“With your help and connivance, no doubt?” I demanded. He did not deny it, and I didn’t doubt for a moment he told the truth.

“There was no thought in my own mind that your brother could possibly hold on to the place for more than a year. I wanted to buy it and subdivide. Gamble convinced me it would be better to restore it, and use it as a tourist attraction. He can be persuasive; he convinced me he was right, and suggested I use my money to open the pleasure park instead. Only it is much more expensive, which is why I mortgaged Wingdale Hause. I believe it was his intention all along to overextend me, so that I lose the whole.”

I rather fancied this convincing occurred the night Gamble prevented Wingdale’s men from burning us out entirely. If he were not a blackmailer as well, I would be surprised. Wingdale looked very sheepish.

“He has got
me
over a barrel too,” he said baldly. “Our only hope is to pull together. If Carrick will lend me money to pay off the mortgage installments for a few quarters, I can go ahead with the lakeside park, which will bring in good revenues. Your friend will make a good profit.”

“That is no help to us in holding on to Ambledown. If Mr. Carrick wishes to invest his money, why should I ask him to help you, rather than us?”

“Carrick is full of juice. He can afford both. He will pay up fast enough if you will accept his offer of marriage.’’

“Unfortunately, I have already refused him. Good day, Captain Wingdale,” I said.

The man wanted to kill me. He had bared all his secrets, given me back my silver tea service, all for nought. He leapt to his feet, ready to attack, but something held him back. Some thought that I must now be forced to accept Carrick perhaps, and might still be brought to do what I was asked. He took a surly but not downright rude departure.

“Thank you so much for the tea service,” I called after him, rubbing salt in the wound, and enjoying it very much too.

While the front door was still rattling, I ran to Edward’s study to rifle his desk. His copy of the demand bill was there—fifteen hundred pounds we owed to J. R. Gamble, payable on demand. I could not but wonder what happened if (say when) we did not pay. The house was already mortgaged—he would not get the house, the bank would. Edward would be proclaimed a bankrupt. I supposed the house would be sold (to Gamble) to settle our debts. He would open it to tourist traffic—such dames as “Lady” Trevithick would be tramping through it.

The item of major importance and uncertainty was Gamble. If he held Edward to the letter of the note, he would ruin us. I was not so worried as I ought to have been. Somehow I had the idea he would come riding up on his mount and magically explain all his sins away. The more fool I!

Chapter Twenty-four

I sat in readiness for Gamble’s descent upon us, visualizing what form it was likely to take. If I turned coldly on him, would he get right down to blackmail? In my simple mind, you see, I thought an embrace betokened an offer of marriage, and naturally a man could not bankrupt his own bride’s family. There was plenty of melodramatic daydreaming to be wrung from the circumstances. The prospect of being suborned into marrying the man offered the potential of a lifetime of being able to throw it in his face. As though his pride would ever tolerate such a thing! I must have been mad to think it.

One other episode occurred before nightfall. A note arrived from Torn Carrick. He remembered enough of last night to have composed and dispatched an insultingly curt note informing me he now considered himself free of any further responsibility to myself. He sent it with a servant, whom I requested to wait till I had time to return the insult. Mine took the form of expressing my delight that he had at last comprehended my true feelings for him.

Throughout the whole day Nora did not once pick up her netting. The blue rattan box sat forlornly at her feet while she fingered the copy of Edward’s note for fifteen hundred pounds and made hieroglyphics on a piece of brown paper, figuring how we might pay the sum off from our income of five hundred pounds a year, quite three hundred of which went into mortgages before we ate a bite, bought a stitch of clothing or so much as a candle.

As dinner hour approached, she had mentally sunk to dispensing with candles and lighting our home with rush dipped in grease, like the lowliest squatter who sits in his wattle hut on the commons. She was privy to Edward’s chaotic financial dealings, but I did not wish to raise any false hopes in her that Gamble might be planning to save us by marrying myself. If I were wrong, I would have enough trouble without being a woman scorned into the bargain. As the hours dragged slowly by and still he did not come, my daydreamings were taking on a more sombre hue.

She had a high enough opinion of him that she did say occasionally, “We’ll put it to him when he comes to call, about waiting a bit for the repayment of the note.”

The reason Edward is not mentioned in this vigil is that he had taken to the hills to check the herd for the new misery that was going around, some pest that needed controlling. Ulrich had notified him of it.

“Maybe
you
are the one to mention it to him, Chloe,” she said, frowning at her brown paper. “You have a better head for business than Edward.”

I really could not imagine why he did not come. When Edward returned for his dinner, he gave us some inkling as to the reason. After telling us the doleful news that another dip might very well be required for our pesky sheep, he said, “One would take the roads around Grasmere for those of London today, with all the fine equipages trotting along. Gamble’s guests leaving, of course.”

This caused me to think Jack had been unable to leave them to come to me, and also to wonder whether the evening might not see the greater part of them gone, which would leave him free to call. As eight turned to nine, and (what seemed like twenty hours later) to ten, I was forced to admit he had no notion of coming near us.

The next day saw an interesting development in the village—one that affected us all—but we only heard of it in the streets, like everyone else. It was one of those momentous announcements that comes only once or twice in a lifetime and is greeted with about half the reverence of the instituting of a new monarch. Lord Carnforth had stepped down as our Deputy Lieutenant, and in his stead Mr. J. R. Gamble had been assigned to the post. He was
to be the new chief executive authority and head of all the magistrates in our county. That same day, Magistrate Miller discovered himself too old to carry on, and tendered his resignation. It was generally considered this was done to save him the embarrassment of being removed from office.

I waited in hourly expectation of hearing that the culprits who had burned down our barn had been re-arrested, but by that time they had gotten far enough away that they could not be discovered. The town held its breath to learn who the new magistrate would be.

I was familiar enough with the character of Tom Carrick to know he would not refuse the offer. Indeed, he would have done better than anyone else I could think of. I will grant him a sense of justice and enough common sense to carry out the job, even if I personally cannot care for him. What we have here is not an unpaid Justice of the Peace but a Stipendiary Magistrate, and though Carrick had less need of the stipend than most, he would have enjoyed the consequence of being addressed as His Honour Judge Carrick. Tom’s was the name, the only name, being bruited about town in any case.

Captain Wingdale looked very worried indeed. It need hardly be said that Judge Carrick would not care to be half-owner of a shady pleasure park that offended so many citizens. I did not happen to overhear the exchange, but Miss Johnson told us that Tom Carrick had said in a loud voice within the Captain’s hearing that if
he
were Judge, he would certainly look into such havey-cavey goings-on as having nightly assemblies. If there wasn’t a law against it there ought to be, he said, for it was known to disturb the peace of the year-round inhabitants, and why should the entertainment of a parcel of tourists take precedence over the regular owners and taxpayers of the district? That Tom’s speech was taking this judicial accent led me to believe Jack must have been sounding him out on the appointment, possibly in payment for not lending Wingdale the money he had requested.

And still the next day and night Jack did not come to call. Emily did,
sans
chaperone. She came so close to dinnertime we were obliged to either let our dinner grow cold, or ask her to join us. I think the saucy girl put off her visit till she saw Edward coming home down the fells, which are visible from the Hall. She spent her time gazing at Edward, and gave us not a shred of hard news that we had not already picked up in the village.

It was Nora who asked her point blank if Tom was to be our new Stipendiary Magistrate. “Cousin John did not say so,” she answered carelessly.

“What
did
he say?” Nora asked, driven to this frank extremity.

“He told me to put on my prettiest gown and come over, before Aunt Crawford decided to come with me,” she admitted, and laughed gaily in Edward’s direction.

Nora and I had been pinching at him, verbally chastising him for being such a wet goose as to have signed demand bills when he had not a guinea in the bank with which to repay them. He assured us no demand would be made, which earned him the title of simpleton. All our nagging had him down at the mouth, but other than that I think he was inclined to honour Emily with an offer.

At such a tender age, a young gentleman is easily ensnared by an Incomparable. I was so vexed to see her throwing her cap at him again that I did not join the others in the saloon after dinner, but went outside to catch the nightly performance of my friends, the cardinals. Those artful, beautiful creatures must have read my wishes. They selected the most picturesque perches for their nightly song—low-hanging boughs—while they trilled and warbled to each other.

There I sat when
at last
Mr. Gamble came cantering up the hill. My heart tightened in my breast, while I prepared myself for some exciting interlude. “Good evening, Chloe, is Edward at home?” he asked, without even dismounting.

“Come to haul Emily home again?” I answered in the same casual manner. “You will find Edward with her in the saloon.”

“It’s just Edward I have to see.”

“It is about payment for your demand bill then, I gather?”

That finally got him to do more than glance at me as if I were a stranger. The look he turned on me held much in it of hate. It was a cold, hard look, full of animosity. I was astonished. “Can it be possible you have condescended to speak to Captain Wingdale?” he asked.

“It seemed hard to turn him from the door when he came from the village especially to see me. But you need not squirm, Jack. I have not used my powers to get Tom to bail him out. I expect you will be able to foreclose on his mortgage, unless he succeeds with someone else. Pity he had not asked Sir Arthur. He’d skin his mother to make a profit.”

“Which powers are these you speak of? Mr. Carrick’s last heard opinion of you did not lead me to believe you held power to do anything but annoy him.”

“That would be
after
you bribed him with the position of Magistrate for the County, I expect.”

“He didn’t need any bribing,” he answered, and cantered on around to the stable.

I was sorry to see him go so soon. I had hoped to get in a few jibes about his museum before he left. I was strongly tempted to run after him and do it. He had come home from India, raising hopes that he would take hold of things, and he had done so, but in such a selfish way that we were in worse straits than before. It would be he rather than Wingdale who owned the new village. That was all. He would never tear down the expensive Wingdale Hause. He would go on running it as before, posting up bills to advertise his lakeside park and his museum. He would somehow get Wingdale’s waterside property from him, as he got everything else. As our Deputy Lieutenant, there would be no stopping him. Soon he would be Lord Carnforth as well, to lend distinction to his vulgarities.

As the shadows stretched longer and the sun sank lower, I finally decided to go inside and see what was going on. Clearly Mr. Gamble had no intention of coming back out to speak to me in private.

There was a celebration in progress in the saloon, to which no one had bothered to invite me. That Nora had brought wine up from the cellar in lieu of serving either her home-made cordial or our ale informed me it was a major celebration. To see Emily smiling so comfortably made me think it was perhaps a betrothal that was being drunk.

Edward, looking towards the doorway, was the first to see me. “Chloe, come and congratulate me,” he beamed. I noticed some new look about him. To put it more clearly than that would be difficult, but he no longer wore the air of a country squire. He looked more dignified. Even in the midst of his celebrating there was a stern, older expression on his face. Had the role of groom descended on him with such force? I would have expected a little more gallantry, more romance, to be in evidence.