Amanda Scott (21 page)

“My dear Nell,” he said calmly, “that law pertains only to such matters as are placed in dispute, and there can be none in this case, since the wager is properly noted in a well-respected betting book, signed by both principals and a witness. Moreover, Nigel is not present to dispute my claim, and you have no cause.”

She believed him and, thus, could content herself only with the knowledge that, for a brief moment, she had put him out of countenance. She must trust to luck, not to the law, to find a means of stopping him before his plan could succeed. On the good side, matters of Chancery, as she had heard often enough, were not concluded in a day or a week. There would be plenty of time to think of a rub to put in his way before the wheels of the law had begun to turn against Highgate.

When they returned to the others, a look brought Manningford to her side. “He is certainly a paltry fellow,” he said quietly.

“Well, stop looking daggers at him,” she said, drawing him a little away from the others. “You cannot want him for an enemy.”

“By the look of him just now, it seems I shall be given no choice in the matter. Your cousin does not like me, my dear.”

“Never mind about that; he is going to London to learn what he can expect from a Court of Chancery,” she said, determined to keep to the point but undeniably warmed by the casual endearment.

Manningford frowned. “Is he? I confess, I found nothing at the club last night to stop him—that bet was recorded just as he said—but I should still think he was being a trifle premature if he truly has heard nothing yet from your brother.”

“He still maintains that he has no wish to flaunt the wager before a public eye but says it may be necessary for him to do so, whether he likes it or not.”

“In other words, he goes to test the water.”

His tone was pensive, and Nell looked into his eyes. What she saw there eased the tension that had taken hold of her from the moment Jarvis had joined the party. Though she had once thought Manningford irresponsible, she knew now that she could count him as her friend, to stand by her and help her with whatever came her way. Had anyone asked how she knew, she could not have told them, but she knew. She said quietly, “Nothing can happen quickly, can it, sir?”

His hands came gently to rest upon her shoulders, and he gazed into her eyes in much the same way she remembered his having done once in her dreams. “Some things happen quickly, Nell, but not the business of a Chancery Court. We have time on our side.” His gaze held hers, and she waited hopefully, but a moment later one of the others spoke, and the spell was broken.

That there was not so much time as they had thought was brought home to her the next day. Lady Flavia having gone to visit Mrs. Prudham, she was working at the escritoire when Sudbury entered to announce a caller.

“Deny me, if you please,” she said without turning. “I cannot come just now, so ask whoever it is to leave a card, Sudbury, and extend my excuses. Or tell them that Lady Flavia will be at home after one o’clock.”

Sudbury cleared his throat and said gently, “The gentleman is not an ordinary morning caller, Miss Nell.”

Hearing a familiar chuckle, she turned sharply to see her brother’s laughing face just beyond the butler’s shoulder.

“Nigel! Oh, Nigel, my dear, how delightful! That is,” she amended as she leapt to her feet, “it is not delightful at all! What are you doing here? Are you out of your senses?”

Lord Bradbourne, a slender young gentleman of medium height, whose auburn locks and dark blue eyes gave him to look so much like his sister that people who knew one were frequently able to recognize the other, stepped past the fondly smiling butler and gathered Nell into his arms, giving her a crushing hug. “Nellie, Nellie,” he said when she burst into tears, clutching at his lapels, “gently, my sweet. This coat was made for me in Paris, and I’ll not have you crushing it to bits.”

She gave a watery chuckle. “You sound very much like a gentleman I met only last evening,” she said. “Paris has turned you foppish, my dear.”

“The deuce you say! It’s done no such thing. I’m a Corinthian perhaps, my sweet, but never a fop.”

“I do not suppose there can be any difference. They are all the same to me.”

“Good God! To you, perhaps, but to no one else.” He held her away and looked at her searchingly. “You’re looking hagged, Nellie. Been going the pace too much, I’d say.”

“Then you’d say wrong,” she retorted. “We are still in mourning, though you don’t look as if you’d remembered the fact.”

He shrugged. “’Tis a hard thing to recall in Paris, where the music is so lively and the young ladies so beautiful.”

“You do not change,” she said with a tolerant sigh. “I had thought you would play least-in-sight, and avoid anyone who might know you, but I daresay I ought to have known better.”

“Yes, sweet Nell, you ought.”

“Well, this past week is the first I can claim to have done anything out of the way. Which is not to say that I have had no cause for apprehension, and do not have more now, you wretched creature. What can you mean by coming to Bath, of all places? You will turn my hair white with worry!”

He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder to be sure Sudbury had gone and had shut the door behind him. “I hope he brings me something to wet my whistle, Nellie, but he can take his time if he likes. Now, smile, for I’ve done nothing to put you in such a pelter. Indeed, I begin to think I never have done.”

She gripped his arm. “I know you did not. You could not! Oh, but Jarvis told us that you had fired before time, and no one has denied it, Nigel, so I do not see how you can hope to clear your name. The risk! If you fail, you will be hanged!”

“Perhaps I deserve hanging,” he said, his expression heavy. “I killed my own father, after all. I cannot tell you what it was like to learn of his death, and to be so far away, but I dared not return. Not then, in any case.”

“I understand. But, Nigel, you are not to say such a thing.” She grabbed both his arms and gave him as much of a shake as she was able. “Papa killed himself. His is the blame.”

“Had I not—”

“No, hush, I’ll not hear it. You went to try what you could do to straighten out a tangle of his making. He ought to have gone himself. And however that man Bygrave died, I will never believe that you turned and fired before the signal.”

“You know, Nellie,” he said as he gently disengaged himself and moved to lean against the mantelpiece, “in all the confusion there was nothing else to believe but what Jarvis told me.”

“He said you were inebriated, Nigel. How came you to drink so much at such a time as that?”

“Well, I did not go there to fight a duel, after all! Bygrave was not there when we arrived, so we had a glass or two while we waited. I must have had more than I thought, for I was dashed muzzy by the time Bygrave came in. I know I asked him to tell Jarvis the truth about the wager, and he said flat out that Jarvis had the right of it. Showed me that damned book and said he remembered as if it was yesterday that Papa staked Highgate against that damned brewery. Jarvis said later that I called the man a liar, and I must have done, but I’d never have been so cork-brained as to fight him on the spot if he hadn’t insisted. I ask you! It might have done well enough for our grandfathers, but the law frowns heavily on such doings nowadays.”

“When did you come to see the matter differently?”

“I thought about it often, and bits kept coming back to me. Something dashed havey-cavey about Bygrave. I can see that now.”

“Someone else said the same thing about the whole affair,” Nell said. “I think Jarvis had a hand in it.”

“What, him?” Nigel shook his head. “I never much liked him, but I don’t see how he could have done, you know. There’s no making any sense of it.”

“Well, don’t try. Tell me instead how you managed to get into England without being taken in charge, and how you mean to look into the matter without being hanged.”

Grinning at her matter-of-fact tone, he said, “I met a marquess in Paris and attached myself to his entourage. The whole group travels under his passport, you know, so there was no difficulty about it at all once he vouched for me with Customs.”

“A marquess?” Nell looked at him. “Not Axbridge!”

“The same,” Nigel said. “But how did you guess? You cannot know him, though I daresay you will before this is done, for he’s here in Bath, as a matter of fact.”

She nodded. “At Manningford House in Royal Crescent. I visit the house nearly every day. You will not like to hear this, Nigel, but I have been reduced to working for my living.”

“To what?” The look of astonishment on his face was all that she might have expected it to be, but he seemed to accept her glib explanation of her work, and did not ask any awkward questions about how she had come to discover such a position.

T
O NELL’S AMUSEMENT, LADY FLAVIA
accepted the arrival of her grandnephew with her customary composure, merely expressing at the dinner table that evening her hope that he would not be too uncomfortable in the bedchamber that had been allotted to him, just as though, Nell thought, there were nothing at all out of the way in his return to Bath. Her ladyship’s reception of the information that the Marquess and Marchioness of Axbridge were presently in residence in Royal Crescent was a different matter.

“We must lose no time in paying our respects,” she informed Nell with a decided nod. “Sybilla is quite a favorite of mine, for I knew her best of all Sir Mortimer’s children. I shall be pleased to see her and to renew my acquaintance with Axbridge. We will call tomorrow.”

Declining to serve herself from a dish of scalloped oysters that Sudbury offered her, Nell said, “I had thought to wait a few days before returning, ma’am. I doubt Sir Mortimer will want to see me while Lady Axbridge is visiting him.”

“If you think he will let such a small matter as that weigh with him, then you cannot have learned much about the man,” her great-aunt said. “If he has so much as communicated with her since her arrival in Bath, I will own myself surprised. Do you not recall, my dear, that until Mr. Manningford forced him to accept you as his scribe, he had refused to see anyone but his manservant for nearly a quarter of a century?”

“But he has allowed me to visit him nearly every day,” Nell protested. “Surely he will no longer insist upon keeping himself to himself, for I have seen for myself how lonely he has become, particularly since he can no longer occupy his hours with his work. Indeed, I think his circumstance quite pitiful.”

“He would not thank you for saying so,” Lady Flavia said, accepting a serving of stewed celery. “Only think of the blow it would be to his dignity to have to beg for company now. He will not do it. He might be lonely, my dear, but after all this time, he would not know how to accept kindness, or even to recognize when only kindness is meant. Mortimer is a proud man. ’Tis bad enough that he has been forced to admit Mr. Manningford, the doctor, and you to his chamber. He must not be forced to admit any more persons, so don’t get to thinking that all you have to do is to encourage Sybilla to ignore his orders and barge into his room to effect a more normal relationship between them.”

After a moment’s reflection, Nell said slowly, “You are right. Until his first attack, he controlled his own life and the lives of his dependents with no help from anyone. Now that he is dependent and must look to others to help him, it must be dreadful for him.”

“So much so,” Lady Flavia said, “that one actually wants to help him, and ’tis the oddest thing, for I am certain that such a notion has never entered my head before. But, now that it has, I suppose I must speak to Sybilla before she takes the matter into her own hands, and it will not do to be putting off the business out of nonsensical scruples or misguided notions of propriety, for she might attempt to beard him at once, thinking to do him good. The excellent Borland will be unable to prevent her, of course, and although it is possible that Mr. Manningford may do so, one must not leave the matter to chance.”

“Goodness, ma’am, do you think Mr. Manningford would even think to attempt such a thing?”

Lady Flavia’s eyes twinkled. “I do not know for certain, of course, but I do not believe that at this point he will encourage his sister to take the reins from him.”

“But, until quite recently, he has been in the habit of letting others manage things for him, has he not? And I think, from all that he has said of her, that Lady Axbridge must be something of a managing woman, Aunt Flavia.”

Lady Flavia chuckled. “Sybilla has always been one to think that, if a thing needed doing, there was no one so capable as herself to do it. As the eldest of Sir Mortimer’s motherless children, she quite naturally assumed leadership over the others, particularly since Charles, though heir to Sir Mortimer’s title and estates, has not got a forceful character. When Sybilla married Axbridge—Earl of Ramsbury he was then—for a time, she tried to rule over two households, her own and her father’s. It did not answer, of course. Such arrangements never do. One heard rumors of some rather exciting fireworks between Axbridge and Sybilla before that business was settled, but now that she has got children of her own—four of them—she has little time to spare for the household in Royal Crescent. Nigel dear,” she added briskly, “pray, do not eat all the mushroom fricassee. Your sister is partial to that dish.”

Nigel grinned. “She’s partial to anything with nutmeg in it, or hadn’t you tumbled to that fact, ma’am. But I’ve left a bit, for I mean to have another helping of the roast chicken; and you needn’t think I mean to eat you out of pocket, either, for Nell told me how things are, so I slipped Sudbury a few sovereigns to pass along to the missus.”

“That was kind of you, dear, but truly, not necessary. Thanks to dear Nell’s wages—most generous—and Jarvis’s entirely unexpected contributions, we do very well now. You ought to have kept your money, for I cannot doubt you will need it.”

Nell looked up at him in surprise as she helped herself from the dish of mushroom fricassee. “You had sovereigns in your pocket, Nigel? I must say, I didn’t expect that.”