The Stanforth Secrets (5 page)

Perhaps following the same train of thought, Lord Randal said, “Hal Marlowe avoided old age at Cintra didn’t he, and Grantly Sterries at Corunna? I understand it was a close thing for you there too, Justin.”

The viscount nodded. “Leg. If I hadn’t taken my mother’s advice and taken along my own barber-surgeon, I’d have lost it. Rees was a treasure. I lent him to all my friends. There’s no real medical care, Randal. . . .” He recollected himself and looked up with a smile. “I’m sorry. It must be the weather. Damned dismal.”

“I’ll give you damned dismal,” retorted Lord Randal sharply, “if you think I’m too fragile a plant to hear the truth about the war. Anyone of sense knows things are bad at times. I tell you, though, I’d have been there alongside you if my father would allow it.”

Justin nodded understandingly. He knew all about the Duke of Tyne’s poor health, his obsession with the succession, and Randal’s older brother’s disinclination to marry. “Chelmly’ll have to marry one day,” Justin assured his friend.

“By then the war will be over,” said Lord Randal glumly, then smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Justin, but I hate wasting time here when I could be doing something.”

“I understand, and it is the most . . . I can’t really describe it. Ordinary life seems very dull by comparison. Safer, more comfortable, but dull. I tell you though, Randal, and you’re likely to be the only one I ever tell, even if I hadn’t inherited Delamere and a pile of problems, I’d have sold out anyway. I’d just seen one too many gutted horse, one too many severed limb, one too many corpse.”

“You’d done your part,” said Randal, meeting the other man’s brown eyes. “And what’s this about problems? Is the estate encumbered?”

Justin realized he wasn’t sure how much he could reveal. Probably nothing, even though he’d trust Randal with his life and, as a grandson of the Dowager Duchess of Tyne, he was perhaps officially approved. But then, he was also a cousin of the suspect Chloe.

“No. In fact, it’s in surprisingly good heart for property which passed through both Stephen’s hands and Uncle George’s. It’s just in a bit of a muddle. I don’t know if you followed the saga?”

“Of course. Poor Stephen died in September of last year and your fat Uncle George succeeded him. Knowing George, I assume the reason he didn’t fritter away the whole fortune was he only lived till February and chose to spend that time at Delamere. Must have been the charms of his bucolic beauty, Belinda.”

Justin choked on his Madeira at the tone of his friend’s voice. “Have you seen her then? Chloe has mentioned her in letters, but never with a description. I assume she must be a raving beauty to have got Uncle George to marry her.”

“Well,” said Randal with amusement, “I don’t know about that. Henry Staines says he saw them in Lancaster at Christmas and she’s an ordinary sort of girl with gingerish hair. The County were a little put out at having to entertain her, I gather, though he did admit her manners to be acceptable and her accent only slight.”

Justin looked blank. “Why the hell did Uncle George marry her, I wonder? Oh well. Love is a strange business. What about you, Randal? Cupid’s arrow found you yet? If you were to get married and set up your nursery, you’d be free to rush off to the wars eventually.”

Lord Randal looked down at his glass. “Rather a long-term project, ain’t it? Actually, I don’t think I’m the marrying kind. What of you? You’re the last of the Stanforths. You’ll have to do your duty.”

“I suppose so,” said Justin casually. “But not for a while. First I must go up to Delamere and see how things are fixed.”

“Tell you what, Justin. How would it be if I came with you? Town’s devilish dull. Verderan killed Brightly Carstock in August, good riddance. Ver’s in Ireland to let the heat die down. David became Lord Wraybourne a few months back and he’s off in deep mourning, being a proper Lord and Master. Besides, Grandmama may want to return to the Towers now, and I could escort her. Chloe too, if she wanted to come.”

Justin looked up quickly. “Chloe will be welcome to consider Delamere her home. I was of the impression your family didn’t accept her.”

“No.
Her
family ain’t too hot for her, my Uncle William and my horrible Aunt Susan, that is. I know the Ashbys come either starched or saucy, but they’re an extreme case of the starched, and Chloe’s an extreme case of the saucy, along with yours truly. Chloe and I have always been good friends. That’s the only reason I didn’t blow Stephen’s brains out for running off with her. Anyone who got her out of that house was doing her a favor, but I won’t say I didn’t reconsider a few times. There was no malice in him, but he made a damned poor husband, Justin.”

The viscount swirled the last of his wine in the crystal glass. “I know. It probably wouldn’t have come to anything, Randal—his mad passion for Chloe—if I hadn’t lent a hand. You knew Stephen. He would have forgotten all about it in weeks. He appeared to be madly in love though, and she was, as you say, so out of place in that house. . . .” He sighed. “One of the reasons I bought my commission was so I didn’t have to watch what I had wrought.”

Lord Randal’s eyes sharpened a little, and a smile twitched his well-shaped lips. “Well. Chloe has turned out to be a more balanced Ashby than you might expect. I look forward to seeing her again. Am I invited?”

Justin considered. He could see no harm in taking Randal along, and no plausible reason to refuse the request. The company would be welcome, and if matters turned nasty at Delamere, Justin could imagine no one he’d rather have at his side than Lord Randal Ashby.

W
ITH A SENSE OF PREMONITION, Chloe heard the sound of wheels and hooves on the coast road behind her. She allowed herself to hope, however, that they would sweep past and be on their way to the vicarage or Troughton House, anywhere but Delamere. After all, fate could not be so cruel as to have her meet Justin again for the first time in four years when she was covered in mud. Half an hour before, a silly young horse had unceremoniously dumped her onto the damp sands of Half-Moon Bay and then taken off for the stables.

There was a clear word of command, however, and the vehicle stopped. With resignation Chloe turned to confront not one but two smart equipages with grooms already at the horses’ heads and two equally smart young gentlemen laughing at her as they leapt down from their seats. Hands on hips, Chloe glared at her cousin Randal, looking beautiful as always, and her cousin-in-law, Justin, thinner, darker, tougher-looking, but still handsome. Still heart-tuggingly like her dead husband.

“Chloe?” Justin said in surprise. More surprise than just at seeing her trudging along the road. Had she perhaps changed too?

With some notion of showing him she was no longer a hoyden, she dropped a curtsy. “Welcome home, Lord Stanforth.”

His brows went up and he grinned as he bowed. “Thank you, Lady Stanforth.”

This appealed to Chloe’s sense of the ridiculous and she burst out laughing. “I warn you there’s a plenitude of Lady Stanforths these days. Two a penny, we are.” Chloe wanted to use his name. Once he’d been Justin to her, but now she felt . . . shy? Surely not.

She turned quickly to her cousin, and Randal swept her up for a hearty kiss. “You’re looking very fetching, Chloe. It must be the smears of mud which are the finishing touch.”

“Regulation wear in Lancashire,” she remarked and rubbed her dirty gloved finger down his elegant nose. “Can one of you take me up back to the Hall?”

As she was standing by his side, it should surely have been Randal who made the offer, and yet somehow she found herself handed up into Justin’s curricle. She caught a glint of familiar amusement in her cousin’s bright blue eyes. What was Randal up to now?

Justin took up the reins and sent his groom to ride behind the other vehicle. “I do hope you’re going to tell me how you came to take a toss, Chloe. It must be an unheard-of event.”

“Very nearly,” she agreed as she arranged the skirts of her ruby-red habit and took control of her agitated nerves. “But everyone gets thrown now and again. I was on a young horse and woolgathering when a seagull chose to fly at us. That is the sum of it.”

“Is the horse likely to be hereabouts? Perhaps Corrigan could find it.”

“Oh, Mercury will be home by now, I’m sure, the discourteous beast.”

“How is everything at the Hall?” Justin asked. “I find it difficult to think of it as my home, even though I spent many happy times here as a boy.”

He spoke so casually, thought Chloe. As if it wasn’t four years since they had last met, since that moment . . . They had never spoken of it, that flash of awareness, and so she couldn’t be certain he had felt it as much as she. She had told herself over and over it had been imagined, and yet here she was, within moments of meeting him, her senses disordered.

It would not do. She had meant every word when she said she would not bind herself again to a Dashing Delamere.

She sternly controlled her thoughts and addressed the businesslike subject. “Everything is running smoothly. Scarthwait, who was Stephen’s manager, has carried on, and he is very efficient. You’ll find the land in good heart.”

“I was a little surprised to find how well-to-do I am. After the estate had been through Stephen’s hands, and then Uncle George’s, I expected to inherit nothing but debts.”

“That is unfair,” said Chloe sharply. “Stephen may not have been organized, but he left everything to Scarthwait. And he was not terribly expensive. He didn’t gamble, you know.”

“Except with his life,” said Justin quietly and drew the horses up again, waving Randal to pass them and go ahead. He turned to Chloe. “My wits and manners must have both gone begging. I’m very sorry, Chloe, for speaking like that. I wrote, after I had the news, but I’ll say again how sorry I was to hear of Stephen’s death. It has been a year, so I suppose the first pain must have faded but . . .”

“Oh please don’t, Justin,” said Chloe, looking away, for he was bringing tears to her eyes. “As you say, it is so long ago now. My mourning is past, and there’s no point in going over the ground again.”

He covered one of her hands with his for a moment. Chloe felt the warmth of it through two gloves, a warmth which swept through her. Her breath caught. Then he clicked the horses to a walk. They drove in silence a little way.

How would he feel if he knew her hypocrisy? That the tears had come from sadness at not feeling more bereft?

“How long have you been in England, Justin?” she asked, to break the silence. It was only then she realized she had used his name twice without the heavens falling in.

“Three weeks. I wrote as soon as I reached London.”

“Yes, I received it,” said Chloe, summoning up a lighter tone. “With relief and prayers to the Lord, I assure you. I cannot wait to drop the responsibility for Delamere in your lap and flee to a more comfortable place. What with the Dowager wandering the place scaring the servants, and the problem of quite how to treat Belinda, particularly when there was a chance she would be the mother of the next viscount. . . . I have been disturbed in the night by ghosts, and have had to handle a stream of tenants complaining about the sudden influx of soldiers. Some imbecile in London sent them because of rumors of smugglers hereabout. Smugglers! In Lancashire! If it wasn’t for Grandmama, I think I would have gone mad.”

Justin had tried to interrupt at various points in this tirade but now he only said, with a frown, “Ghosts? Delamere Hall has never been haunted to my knowledge.”

“Or to mine,” said Chloe, her mood lightened by having released some of her annoyance. “But there have been strange noises in the night. Disturbances to furniture and particularly to the cellars. As the chimney of my room passes down by the storage rooms, I have been awakened sometimes by noises. It isn’t only I who hear them, either. I usually find Grandmama, who is a light sleeper, there ahead of me. Twice the pantries were found in disarray and,” she said forcefully, “I assure you we do not have rats.”

He looked sharply at her, but his voice was casual as he said, “I didn’t know ghosts were interested in turnips and potatoes.”

“Nor did I. This one seems mainly interested in apples. Shades of Adam and Eve?”

“I think I would be more likely to look for a dishonest servant than a spirit,” he suggested. “Are any of the servants new?”

“No,” said Chloe. Then added, “Well, Matthew, the footman, has not been with us long. Delamere had been without a footman for a while, since Stephen was so rarely in residence and never entertained here. Uncle George hired him. I think Matthew was recommended by George’s old friend, Humphrey Macy. Macy spent a lot of time at Delamere after George inherited. I was very grateful for it. For one thing he has a normal share of sense, and George would listen to him.”

The road had swung away from the coast, and ran now between hedges. Soon it would pass the driveway to the Hall.