Virtue's Reward (13 page)

Someone had just tried to kill Richard.

And Richard was going to cover it up.

The team of Suffolk horses leaned into their harness. Richard soothed Bayard as the charger shifted nervously at the movement beneath his hooves. The estate manager rounded up the men and equipment, and they moved off after the wagon.

Harry turned to Helena. “It’s left to me, sister-in-law, at Richard’s imperious request, to escort you back to Acton Mead, scene of all our boyhood rivalries.”

Helena glared at Harry as he saddled her horse and met a glance of pure astonishment in return. Did Harry think it was a prank to shoot a man in the arm, or send vicious darts into his horse on the edge of a cliff? If only she were a man, she would call him out!

Nevertheless, she allowed Harry to toss her up onto Bob’s kindly saddle.

Yet none of Harry’s nonsense or teasing on their way home would make her do other than ignore him.

* * *

Richard spent the afternoon with his horse in the stable. Harry assisted him. Bayard was stitched up here and there, and his injured legs packed in precious ice. A bran mash was received with elegant condescension and the charger deigned to accept a carrot or two, but he turned up his velvet nose at his hay.

“Not surprising he’s off his feed, after what he went through,” Harry said.

“I imagine I would be justified if I went off mine as well,” Richard answered with a dry grin. “Look at this.”

He held out his hand. Lying in the palm was the thin metal dart that had pierced Helena’s finger.

“What a nasty thing,” Harry said quietly.

“I don’t know that I mind for myself.” Richard turned the weapon in his hand. Sunlight ran up and down the slender shaft and struck bright colors in the feathering at the end. “Though I can think of ways in which I would prefer my enemies to make their point. But I mind a great deal for Bayard. Why the hell can’t you either be more efficient or stay out of my affairs altogether?”

He spun and threw the dart with deadly accuracy across the barn so that it pierced through the string holding up a bundle of haynets and hung quivering in the wall.

Harry was busy packing ice into a leather boot around Bayard’s inflamed tendon. His face was impossible to see. Richard had lost his temper for only a moment, but it was sufficient to prevent Harry from telling him something that he very much needed to hear.

* * *

It was not enough to prevent Harry from resuming his irrepressible good humor at dinner. Helena had spent the afternoon in considerable distress. So she was not to be allowed to interfere between the brothers, even when Richard’s life was at stake? Yet surely her position in the house as Richard’s wife brought her some rights?

Acton Mead, for better or for worse, was her home, and Richard had made it clear that he was giving her full rein over the running of the household. In which case, if people broke in during the night and scattered suits of armor about the hallway, it was her business. And if her husband was wounded by a bullet and then almost thrown to his death by his horse?

She would not mention the dart that had caused Bayard to panic, even if it had created a painful puncture in her own finger, but she was damned if she wasn’t going to let Harry know what she thought of him.

So as the soup plates were removed and the rack of lamb with mint sauce was set on the table, Helena primed her guns and delivered the first broadside.

“I have been in an agony of indecision, Harry, over whether you were trying to convince me of your venality by breaking up Sir Lionel in such a rude way last night, or if you just don’t know any better?”

Richard’s black eyes darkened into velvet. “We shared the same upbringing, Helena,” he said. “So if you find Harry’s manners wanting, you had better watch out for mine.”

He should not protect his brother! “In that case, since, as everybody knows, your manners are a model of perfection, Harry must just have been intent on turpitude.”

“Baseness, vileness, or an excess of wickedness?” Harry laughed. “Dear sister, I seem to have been basely, vilely, and excessively drunk. I plead guilty.”

“Do you?” Helena said, calmly watching as the maid served them with cauliflower. “In which case, I suppose you had no nefarious purpose in entering the house at midnight through a window instead of presenting yourself at the front door like a normal human being.”

Richard had leaned back in his chair and was casually studying his wineglass. There was the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth.

“Well, I don’t suppose I am a normal human being,” Harry said thoughtfully. “I’m an Acton, after all. We’re an odd breed, you know. Anyway, the front door is locked at night.”

“So your attack on poor Sir Lionel was innocent?”

“Oh, no! Of course I had a nefarious purpose.”

“Which was?”

“This,” Harry said dramatically, producing from his pocket a sheet of paper and waving it across the table. Richard laughed aloud.

“For God’s sake, Harry!” he said. “Helena will think you belong in Bedlam.”

“Well, if you would allow me to see that object,” Helena said quickly. “Perhaps I could judge for myself?”

“I brought it for that very purpose.”

Harry dropped the sheet into Helena’s hand. Garish colors and swirling print stared up at her.

“It’s an announcement,” she said.

“Indeed, sister! For a grand fair.”

“With jugglers, and acrobats, and—elephants?”

“I had to inform you both right away. The darn thing will be in Reading tomorrow. Elephants, indeed!”

“What on earth makes you think that I care to see elephants, Harry?” Richard said.

“Oh, you’re so damn jaded, even if Leviathan were to raise his ugly snout from the deep, or the Chimera to fly at this moment across the dining room, you would only raise an eyebrow and possibly sneeze in an elegant way.”

“I’m not sure a sneeze can be elegant,” Helena objected.

She was entirely out of her depth. If Harry had tried to murder his brother only this morning and Richard knew it, how on earth could they sit together at table and talk arrant nonsense to each other?

“Then you don’t know your own husband, sweet Helena,” Harry said instantly, which since it was true, left her with no possible response. “Nothing he does is without elegance.”

“There is also to be a lion.” Richard had picked up the bill where Helena had dropped it on the table. “
‘Most Magnificent King of Beasts from Barbary,’
” he read aloud. “
‘Trained to Leap through Hoops. Amazing Feats of Acrobatic Prowess’
I’m not sure if that’s referring to the lion or the jugglers—”

“Or the elephants?” Harry interrupted. “Helena, I am sure, has never seen an elephant.”

“Have you?” Richard asked, turning to her.

“I grew up in Cornwall,” Helena said. “Where even though we have unicorns behind each sand dune, and the giants Corineus and Goemot are reliably reported to have fought on Plymouth Hoe, we don’t grow elephants.”

“Then we shall go to Reading tomorrow and admire the menagerie,” Richard said.

“And the jugglers and the acrobats,” Harry added. “And the Learned Pig, and the dairymaids all in a row.”

“We don’t need to hire any dairymaids,” Richard said. “But no doubt there will be any number of stalls bearing entrancing merchandise. Helena, you must be waiting with wild impatience.”

“So that I may pursue the female pastime of spending money?” Helena asked.

“So that you may be entertained with the absurdity of human ingenuity, my dear.” Richard’s long fingers took up the wine and he refilled his brother’s glass. “And no doubt Harry will take part in the shooting competition.”

“I’ll do my best to bring away all the prizes for the sake of family honor, Dickon. Never fear!”

“I do not waste my time on fear,” Richard said. “I thought you would know that about me by now.”

Helena knew exactly the opposite feeling. She was very afraid and she picked instantly on the piece of the conversation that mattered.

“Don’t tell me you’re a good shot, Harry?” she asked innocently. “Can you do better than wing your bird and ruffle its feathers?”

Harry’s blue eyes narrowed in indignation. Richard threw back his bright head and laughed.

“Wherever did you get that idea, Helena?” he said. “My little brother is a crack shot. I’m sure he’ll be only too pleased to demonstrate his precision and his excellent eye for a target tomorrow.”

Which was exactly what Helena was afraid he would say.

The other thing she was afraid of happened that night.

Richard did not come to her bed. Was it only last night that she had awoken to the sound of his moan and he had let down the impenetrability of his defenses for a moment? She could still feel the sensation of his long fingers brushing through her hair and the caress of his lips on hers.

Helena buried her face in her hands. It was too short a time to have moved from the fear of a man’s desire to a longing for it. Yet she hungered for the feel of his strength and warmth beside her, and the rush of answering heat in her own limbs.

She looked up and caught sight of herself in the mirror.

“For heaven’s sake, dear girl,” she said aloud, and laughed at herself. “You are pining like a ninny.”

The footman had come in after dinner to announce that Richard’s presence was desired in the stable. Bayard had taken a turn for the worse and his lordship’s opinion was wanted.

Richard and Harry had immediately taken their coats and gone out. Helena knew nothing about horses other than that they were a convenient way to get about, but she knew what the charger meant to Richard. She could hardly resent it if he was going to spend the night in the stable and not in her bed. Bayard was surely a better rival than the beautiful Marie in London.

Nevertheless, she was aware of dismay, because it meant that the understanding she thought they had achieved for a moment had been lost. Who could say if it would ever happen again? She was cut out of his life and his concerns. Richard didn’t need her.

And she was very afraid of that.

* * *

They rode to the fair in the curricle. Bayard was declared out of immediate danger, but he would be laid up for ten weeks. So the matched grays Richard had purchased in Exeter trotted through the first falling leaves of October in the lanes, pulling the curricle with its three passengers and two servants.

The fair was laid out in a large field between Reading and Henley. Sound hit their ears long before their eyes were assailed by the brilliant variety of color and shape. The noise came not only from several thousand animal and human throats—the latter laughing and screeching and touting and singing—but from organ grinders and trumpets and gypsy violins. Underlying the whole disharmony, a band of fiddlers was manfully sawing out the popular tunes of the day.

The first sight to greet them as they jostled along the road with a cavalcade of other carriages and horsemen and sturdy walkers was an impromptu horse race. Several young bloods, considerably the worse for drink, were matching their steeds against one another to the accompaniment of serious wagers and even more serious boasting.

“If Bayard were not nursing the headache, he’d leave all those sorry jades in the dust,” Harry said.

“Very likely,” Richard replied dryly. “But he is sorely hung over, like a lord. There is the elephant.”

They had turned off the road with the procession of equipages. The fair was laid out before them like a feast. Booths of colored canvas, bravely sporting flags and bunting, were laid out in staggered rows in the sun. Sheep and cattle bawled and jostled in a network of pens as they waited to be judged or sold.

A gaggle of boys ran by after a hoop, followed by a ragged assortment of dogs. The entire pack instantly became entangled with a furious farmwife, who had brought her cow to the field and was selling fresh milk. The hoop bowled between the cow and her stool, and upset the pail over her skirts. The cow let out a kick and caught one of the boys in the knee to the accompaniment of much screeching, while the dogs barked.

At the end of the first row of tents stood a Punch and Judy show, where the ancient characters forever reenacted their domestic drama to the appreciative roar of a crowd. After that it seemed that anything and everything was for sale, as long as it was either colorful or savory.

Peddlers went up and down the ranks of booths, hawking ribbons and pins and hot mutton pies. Some booths were offering mysterious sights or a chance to shy at an apple for a farthing. One held nothing but gingerbread.

Helena saw it all in a blur. Her attention was riveted on the dusty gray back that rose like a mountain in the center of the confusion. A long, supple trunk rose like the neck of a swan and the elephant blew hay all over its back.

Richard handed the reins of the curricle to his tigers and helped Helena down onto the grass.

“We shall have to run the gauntlet of the entire affair in order to visit Behemoth. Stay between Harry and me.”

With a natural courtesy, Richard tucked her hand into his arm, and they set off. The crowd instantly swallowed them. Merchant and laborer, beggar and gentleman, even the occasional lord, were welcomed into the noise and clutter and confusion without discrimination. Helena clung to Richard’s arm as if it were a lifeline.

“Relax, dear heart,” he whispered in her ear. “Harry is right with us. He can hardly take a potshot at me when I have him in plain sight, can he?”

Helena looked up at his face. He was laughing.

“Then you concede everything?” she hissed back, astonished.

“I will tell you anything that will make you relax and enjoy yourself,” he replied. “Now, I beg you to do so.”

Helena looked away in confusion. If Harry were indeed yesterday’s assailant, then it was true he was unlikely to harm his brother when walking beside them in the crowd. If not, how could any enemy possibly reach them when they were buried in such a milling throng? Besides, the very nature of the occasion seemed to preclude the possibility of any dastardly act.

She glanced back at Richard and smiled.