“He found a card game or a cockfight or some such thing,” he said.
“Or a woman.” She spoke with great bitterness.
“I say, Stell, Aunt Jane would have a fit of the vapors if she could hear you say that,” he said.
Her eyes were swimming with tears when she lifted her face to his. “I think it was a woman,” she said.
“Are you thinking what I am thinking?” he asked after they had stared at each other glumly for a few moments. His nostrils flared with a sudden anger to match hers.
“Yes, I certainly am,” she said. “It is time we went to find him. And bring him home. He is not going to ruin the only party I have ever planned. He is simply not. I have had enough.”
“That’s the spirit, Stell,” he said, clapping a hand on her shoulder and squeezing. “We are not children any longer. It is time we asserted ourselves. Let’s go find Uncle André again. He was in the billiard room five minutes ago.”
He still was.
“He could be anywhere by now,” André told them, chalking the end of his cue as though hopeful he was going to be able to resume his solitary game. “I really cannot imagine him staying in that village for longer than a day or two at most. The Lord knows where he went after leaving there or where he is now. There is never any knowing with your father.”
But they went anyway. They set off the following day on a journey they were fully aware might very well prove fruitless. Four of them. Estelle and Bertrand had insisted that their uncle go with them in order to lead them to the village where he had left their father, since he could not remember the name of it. To be fair, he went without any great protest. Redcliffe did not offer much by way of entertainment or congenial company, but he could not go off anywhere alone, since his pockets were sadly to let and creditors might pounce if he went to his rooms in London or to any of his usual haunts. And it was in his own interest as well as that of his niece and nephew to find his brother and persuade him to come home and make good on his promise to lend the money to pay the more pressing of André’s debts. The fourth in their company was Jane Morrow, who went after the failure of all her attempts to dissuade, command, wheedle, and threaten two young people who had never before in their lives given her a moment’s trouble.
“I cannot think what has got into them,” she had complained to her husband when he too had failed to talk sense into his wife’s niece and nephew. “Unless it is bad blood showing itself at last. I shall do all in my power to prevent that from prevailing, however, for Adeline’s sake. Oh, I could cheerfully wring that man’s neck, and I may do it too if we find him, which is very unlikely. It would be easier to find a needle in a haystack, I daresay.”
She was more annoyed than she could remember being since Adeline had insisted upon marrying a young man whose only claim to fame apart from extraordinary good looks had been his wildness. On this occasion she had even threatened to wash her hands of the twins if they defied her wishes. But she went. Duty was too strongly ingrained in her to be ignored. Oh, and affection too, though she did not like to admit to any gentle feelings for such disobedient children.
But she would have a word or two to say to her brother- in-law the very next time she saw him, even though she was very well aware that he would merely look at her in that way he had and finger the handle of his quizzing glass and make her feel like a worm crawling across the dirt before his feet.
How dared he disappoint his children?
Nine
The Marquess of Dorchester employed a man of business to manage his investments and numerous properties, among them the cottage in Devonshire. He considered the man upright, honest, and trustworthy, and therefore did not bother his own head too much with details. However, he did seem to recall that the Devonshire property was tended and maintained by a resident housekeeper and a handyman, conveniently husband and wife, who had stayed on after his great-aunt’s death. He could not remember their name when he sent a letter notifying them of his imminent arrival with a guest and of his intent to remain there for a couple of weeks or so. He addressed the letter simply to the housekeeper. As far as he remembered from a few boyhood visits, there were no other dwellings close by, and the nearest town was several miles to the west. Reaching it entailed either a lengthy and tedious journey northward by carriage to a ford and a sturdy bridge across the river, or a more direct descent of the steep hillside below the cottage by foot or on horseback to a narrow stone bridge and a steep ascent of the hill on the other side.
In either case, one did not simply dash into town to purchase an item or two whenever the whim took one. It would not seem wise, then, to arrive unannounced to the discovery that there was virtually no food in the house or other essential supplies.
They arrived on a warm, sunny afternoon, though there had been a hint of autumn in the air earlier. It was much as Marcel remembered it, though he had forgotten the small village on the eastern side of the valley, closer to the house than the town on the other side. The village was really little more than a church and a tavern and a cluster of houses, however, in a slight dip of land with a view out to sea. What the people who lived there did for a living and for entertainment was anyone’s guess. His guess was that the tavern did a roaring trade, and perhaps the church too.
The valley itself was obscured for the beholder by a slight rise and a few clusters of trees until one came upon it suddenly, a wide swath of greenery sliced into the land with a river flowing through the bottom of it. Its long slopes were carpeted in rich green ferns and shaded by trees, some of which were beginning to show signs of autumn. The cottage, just as he remembered it, was on the near hillside, far enough down the slope to be invisible until one could see the whole valley plunging beneath one’s feet. It had no private garden, though its stone walls were festooned with ivy and other climbing plants. The valley was its garden.
There was a way down to it even for the carriage. A wide dirt laneway approached it from some distance to the north rather than from directly above, in order to minimize the slope. It really was quite impressive if one favored remote rural living. Or if one were seeking out a cozy love nest where one was unlikely to be distracted or disturbed.
For his purposes it was perfection itself.
“Oh my goodness.” Viola sat forward in her seat as the carriage topped the rise and began its careful descent to the house. “This is magnificent, Marcel.” She was looking from side to side through the windows, trying to see everything at once.
And it really was. Calling the house a cottage was somewhat misleading, for it was no hovel. Neither was it a mansion, however. There were six—or was it eight?—bedchambers abovestairs and an equivalent number of rooms downstairs, variously designated in his great-aunt’s time by names like parlor, sewing room, morning room, and writing room. It was built of yellowish stone with a tile roof, in which there were dormer windows, presumably belonging to the servants’ quarters. The plants that grew on the walls looked well tended. A thread of smoke rose straight into the sky from a wide chimney. There was a stable block off to one side and a chicken coop.
“What a beautiful house,” she said. “But it must surely have been built originally by a recluse. There is no other building in sight.”
“Or by a romantic,” he said. “Perhaps by a man who wished to escape the bothers of life with a woman of his choosing.”