The Stanforth Secrets (13 page)

He shrugged. “Do we all not flinch under the knife?” He looked at the dancing flames in the fireplace. “War leaves its scars, my dear. I recommend, when you choose another husband, that you not choose a soldier.”

Chloe swallowed and summoned up a smile. “You will have to take that up with the Duchess. She recommends a soldier, or a naval man. She thinks I’d do better with an absentee Lord and Master.”

A trace of humor lightened his expression. “It would be a damned waste.”

It was as if a power had been born in the room, leapt between them, drew her. . . . Then Chloe remembered, with relief, her main reason for coming to the study. Any suspicion of Justin seemed ridiculous but still must be pursued.

“It would be a damned waste, as you put it, for my husband to be around all the time,” she said. “For then I would never have the opportunity to employ my management skills. Do you find everything in order?”

Seemingly at ease, passion fled, he strolled over to stand beside her. She could sense him there, like the heat of a fire.

“I thought it was your hand,” he remarked, “making all those notes on Scarthwait’s records. You have worked hard, my dear. Should I pay you a salary?”

Chloe moved away a few steps. “Stephen provided for me handsomely, thank you, and I would have died of boredom without occupation. Besides which, I find I cannot tolerate seeing things in disorder. Have you really looked through all these?” she asked, indicating a pile of papers. If he had, he surely must have spent the morning hard at work.

He made no attempt to pursue her. “Yes. I haven’t fine-combed them, but I am willing to trust you and Scarthwait on the whole. I am merely trying to familiarize myself with the estate.”

Chloe spotted one thin ledger in the pile he had not yet touched. “Did you see the figures on the goats we started as an experiment?” she asked. “I think it is going famously.”

“Goats?” he frowned.

“Yes. Over at Hest Bank. Oh, I’m sorry. It will be in the gray stock book over there. You will come to it shortly.”

If he had only pretended to go through that pile of documents, surely he might have pretended to have seen something on the goats. Chloe felt relief, but did not want to give him time to think about her question, and perhaps perceive her ruse. She turned the subject to a letter atop a small pile of papers.

“Have you decided what to do about Humphrey Macy?”

“No. I don’t think I know the man. Tell me about him.”

“He was an old friend of Uncle George’s, though what they had in common was hard to tell, unless it was the Prince of Wales. Macy is one of the Carlton House set, and Uncle George was too when he had the funds. I suspect it was one of those friendships where the smart one has a slow-top hanging on who can be depended upon to always laugh at his jokes.”

“Macy’s a smart one, is he?”

“I would say so, though anyone would look clever next to Uncle George. Macy would be a good match for Belinda, though. He’s a real top-of-the-trees. He has a comfortable amount of money as one of the Oxfordshire Macys, and a government position. Customs, I think. It certainly can’t be arduous, for he is to be found everywhere, and he spent months up here when George succeeded.”

“So I heard. Why was that, do you think?”

Chloe frowned slightly. “To keep George company, I suppose, but I never did decide why Uncle George stayed at Delamere. He’d come down in August, obviously rusticating. I expected as soon as he was the viscount and the estate probated, he’d be back to London. I was quite concerned. It seemed likely some Captain Sharp would relieve him of the fortune and Delamere in short order.”

“I must confess, I was pretty well resigned to that notion myself.”

“Perhaps it was the weather. He stayed a while for the legalities, of course, and then he married Belinda. By that time it was Christmas. I suppose it didn’t seem a good season to be traveling the length of England. Uncle George liked his comforts. Macy acted the good friend and came up to bear him company. They spent their time drinking, gossiping, and rolling dice. I’m not surprised Uncle George wanted Macy to stay, alone as he was in a house of women, but I think it very noble of Macy to agree. He did seem to be genuinely fond of George, though. He was truly upset when he died. In shock, trembling.”

The viscount seemed lost in thought.

“Justin?”

He shook himself out of his deliberations. “Macy. I can put him off if you wish, but I can see no reason to forbid him to visit. And, I confess, if he can win the hand and heart of the fair Belinda, that would be one less problem in my life.”

“Yes, but I doubt she’ll have him. He would be a fine catch. He’s well-connected, comfortably off, and in a reasonable state of repair for one his age. Now, however, I think she’s got notions, as Katy Stack would say. If she doesn’t entrap you, she’ll be off to try her luck in one of the fashionable towns.”

Justin laughed. “I assure you, Chloe, I am completely safe from Belinda. Perhaps you should warn Randal, however.”

Chloe frowned at his levity. “I’ll warn Randal, all right. I’ll warn him not to tease her. It’s just possible she’ll take him seriously, and I don’t think she deserves to be hurt. Do you need to ask me any questions about the estate just now, Justin? Today has been a bit disorganized, but tomorrow I will spend some time with you if you wish.”

There was a distinctly mischievous light in his eyes as he said, “What gallant man could refuse such an offer?”

“Time pouring over dusty ledgers, milk yields, crop rotations, and cottage repairs, Lord Stanforth!”

“The mere thought of your presence turns even the slaughtering records into poetry, Lady Stanforth.” He made an extravagant bow.

Chloe tried to frown but burst out laughing. “Love among the compost piles? Really, Justin.”

She thought he might come to her then, but he didn’t.

“No,” he said seriously. “You are definitely worthy of a bed of rose petals, my dear.”

Chloe could not mistake the hint of passion in his eyes. Discretion being the better part of valor, she left.

 

 

After she had gone, Justin stared at the door with more attention than that piece of oak warranted. In fact, he was seeing Chloe. She was so easily alarmed, so quick to retreat. The temptation to pressure her was enormous, but he knew it would be a mistake. He knew also he should be focusing his attention on the missing papers.

A few simple questions had established that no apples were left in stock from the previous autumn. Moreover, there were no ornamental apples in the house. The dining room had one bowl of wax fruit, sometimes used as a centerpiece, but Mrs. Pickering had told him that the two apples belonging there had been found cut into pieces last Christmas. She credited George with that meaningless destruction but Justin wondered. Who could have been searching Delamere then? The only outsider in residence at the time was Humphrey Macy.

Macy could have been sent to Delamere as a government agent. If so, Justin should have been informed. He quickly wrote to Lord Liverpool for clarification. He sealed the letter, franked it, and placed it ready for the next day’s post.

If George had received the package, it would seem he hid the apple very well, or took the papers from it. Would he do that? With George, one never knew. Justin had spent part of the morning in a cursory search of the study, which seemed the most likely place for papers to be concealed. He had found nothing.

The whole matter would be much simpler if he could enlist the assistance of everyone in the house. That was against orders, however, and there was the distinct possibility that someone here was working for Napoleon. More imperatively, any hint that the British believed the lists to be inside Delamere could easily lead to its callous destruction.

He realized he had only minutes to prepare for dinner and quickly tidied his work. He had been constantly distracted by Chloe. Her hand was obvious everywhere among these papers; there even seemed to be traces of her soft, flowery perfume here. Love among the compost piles . . .

Anywhere. Anywhere with you, my darling.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY brought pouring rain and confined everyone to the house. There had been quick acceptances from all the parties invited to dine on Thursday, and Chloe spent the first part of her day in conference with Mrs. Pickering, who was delighted at the thought of entertaining. A suitable menu was soon agreed on, as Chloe had no intention of debating the merits of veal over pork, and tench over barbel. She requested, however, a Walpole pudding. It was the only food she could remember Justin expressing a preference for, on that long-ago journey to Scotland. Next, Chloe took Matthew to the cellars and chose a number of wines for him to prepare. She smiled to see the young man nearly burst with pride at being made a temporary butler.

By midmorning, Chloe thought the plans to be well in hand and returned to the main part of the house, where she was surprised to see Belinda coming down the stairs in a heavy cloak.

“Do you intend to go out, Belinda?” she asked. “You’ll be drenched.”

“Just as far as the herb garden. I need some thyme.”

Chloe couldn’t help but regard this as peculiar. Belinda, who was normally rather stolid, seemed almost disturbed. Was it grief? Or guilt? For some reason, these niggling suspicions of Belinda would not be quieted by logic.

“Surely it can wait, Belinda,” Chloe said. “The ground is a sea of mud. By this afternoon or tomorrow, it will have cleared. You know the weather hereabouts.”

“Better than you,” snapped Belinda, then collected herself. “You’re right, though. I wanted to get something finished but it will wait.” With that she turned and went back upstairs.

Chloe was thoughtful as she went into the Sea Room. The sluicing rain obscured the view, so she went to sit by the fire. She couldn’t help leaping to the obvious conclusion. Belinda pushed Frank off the cliff and had remembered some clue which needed to be retrieved. What could it be? Surely a clue would be washed away in this torrential rain? Perhaps that is what Belinda had decided, and that was why she had returned to her rooms.

But Belinda
couldn’t
have pushed Frank off the cliff. She had not been alone. . . .

Chloe was interrupted at that moment by Justin, who came in with a sheaf of papers in his hands. He was without his jacket, and his hair looked as if he had pushed his fingers through it repeatedly.

Chloe held back a smile.

“Is there any reason, Chloe,” he demanded with asperity, “that we have stored in the files long letters from an Italian nun?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, as he came to sit across the fire from her. “Do you not read Italian?”

“Very little,” he replied. “What with Latin and Spanish, I can piece together some of it. But the woman writes a damnably ornate hand.”

“I think Donna Ilena’s calligraphy rather beautiful,” said Chloe, taking one of the letters and admiring the flourishing italic. “And she isn’t a nun, you know. She’s a Venetian lady of high birth. I rather suspect she was once your uncle’s lover.”

“Uncle Henry?”

“Well, hardly George.”

“I always thought he was devoted to Aunt Sophronia.”

Chloe looked pensively into the dancing flames. “I’m sure he was, but as her illness progressed and she no longer traveled with him, perhaps . . . I might be wrong in my assumptions.” She smiled at him. “Whatever the truth of that, I am sure Donna Ilena loved your uncle. It is like a harmony in the letters, though they deal only with a convent there of which they both are patrons.”

He looked at her a moment before answering and she felt he might have addressed a quite different subject. Then he frowned. “Why was my uncle a patron of a convent? He wasn’t even Catholic.”

“He kept a journal,” said Chloe, flustered. Why was it that they could not be together for a moment, even talking of purely business matters, without her nerves trembling. . . . “You should read it one day,” she continued hurriedly. “He was in Venice shortly before he died, and this particular convent, which cares for orphans, came to his attention. Perhaps Donna Ilena brought it to his attention—it doesn’t say. He was very much one for giving charity to clearly defined objects. All his projects continued under Stephen and George. It is for you to say what happens now.”

Again a pause and he looked at her. Then a sudden movement, as he dragged his mind back to business. “And the lady still writes?”

“Yes,” she said, speaking a little too fast. “She tells of the work they do there, the little success stories. The letters are often delayed, but they arrive eventually. They are quite charming. You will have to brush up on your Italian.”

“Si,
mi amori
,” he said with a lazy smile.

“
Amore mio
,” she corrected.

“Am I?” he asked, delighted. Chloe felt her skin tingle as it colored.