Aunt Dimity and the Duke (19 page)

Emma waited, then looked slowly around the room. There was Crowley, sitting quietly, his head tilted attentively toward the duke; Hallard, gazing absently into the middle distance; Nanny Cole, knitting a sweater in cobalt blue; Newland, keeping watch from the doorway; Kate, gazing gravely at Grayson; Tom Trevoy, stroking his mustache; Gash, leaning against the foot of the bed, his hands folded serenely across his round belly. Emma looked up at Derek, saw that his confusion mirrored her own, then turned back to the duke. “Excuse me?” she said.

Derek was more severe. “Don’t like charades, Grayson,” he said bluntly. “Never have. If you’ve got something to say for yourself, you’d best come out with it.”

The duke sighed. “That’s what I thought you’d say. Well, all right, then ... Pour yourselves another cup of tea, everyone. This may take some time.”

20

The rain came then, pounding down without preamble. It swept in from the sea and dashed against the bedroom windows, driven by gusts that would leave the rose bushes in tatters, flood the great lawn, and flatten every one of Madama’s vegetables. Emma thought of the freshly turned topsoil in the chapel garden and wondered if it would all be washed away by morning.

Newland, monitoring the storm’s progress through the earphone of a shortwave radio, confirmed that gale warnings had been sounded all up and down the coast and that residents had been advised to sit tight.

Chief Constable Trevoy placed a quick call to the village, where Mrs. Tharby cheerfully informed him that all was well, the boats were safe at harbor, and the only casualty so far had been Mr. Minion, the butcher, who’d slipped on a slick cobblestone and sprained his left wrist. Dr. Singh had seen to the injury and Mr. Minion had recovered sufficiently to hoist a few by candlelight at the Bright Lady.

Gash had long ago wired the hall’s windows with sensors. If a pane was broken, the beeper in his pocket would sound and its digital readout would give him a rough idea of the window’s location. The staff as a whole seemed remarkably nonchalant about the storm.

“We’re part of the headland,” Gash explained. “Whole bloody rock’d have to blow away afore any harm’d come to Penford Hall.”

Hallard added wood to the fire, Crowley refilled cups, and Nanny Cole ate a few more sandwiches, while Derek fidgeted impatiently, and Emma peered worriedly at the driving rain. Very gradually, activity slowed, and a deep stillness fell over the room. Tearing her gaze from the windows, Emma saw that everyone was seated, and that all faces were turned to Grayson.

He was standing near the bedside table, staring down at a photograph in a brown leather frame. Gently, he picked it up, dusted it lightly with his sleeve, and returned with it to his chair, where he sat gazing at it for a few more silent moments before handing it to Emma.

Emma looked down at a portrait of a British army officer. The background was smoky and indistinct, the uniform unrelieved by gleaming brass or bright ribbons. Slender and fine-featured, light-haired and sporting a pencil-thin mustache, the man bore a striking resemblance to the duke, save for the great sadness in his eyes. In his right hand he gripped a riding crop, but his left sleeve was folded back on itself and pinned at the shoulder.

“My father.” The duke sat with his face turned toward the fire, and his animated hands lay becalmed on the arms of his chair. “The thirteenth duke of Penford was an unhappy man. I leave it to you to decide if it was due to his unfortunate place in the succession, but I’m rather more inclined to blame it on his unfortunate place in history.

“He lost his own father and all of his uncles in the Great War. He lost his first wife in a daylight raid on the Plymouth dockyards, his arm in the Ardennes, and his second wife, my mother, shortly after I was born.” He glanced at Derek, then lowered his eyes. “To pneumonia. Not even a healthy son and heir could put paid to all of those losses, and he became something of a recluse.”

Derek stirred restlessly. “Look, Grayson, I’m very sorry, but—”

“Patience, dear boy,” said the duke.

Nanny Cole glared at Derek. “It’s your fault we’ve been dragged out of our beds in the middle of the night, so you just keep still or I’ll box your bloody ears.”

Chastened, Derek fell silent.

“My father,” the duke continued, “left much of my upbringing to my grandmother, who saw to it that I was educated at home by a governess who has since passed on. My grandmother was a wonderful woman in many ways, but she was ... selectively attentive. If I was neatly dressed and well behaved, she would spend hours with me. When I was bad-tempered—”

“Never had a bad-tempered day in your life,” Nanny Cole stated firmly, and the others murmured their agreement.

“Let us say, then, that I was, at times, overly energetic,” the duke conceded.

“Bouncing off the walls, more like,” muttered Gash.

“At such times,” the duke continued doggedly, “which occurred far too often in my grandmother’s estimation, I was banished from her presence.”

“And dumped in our laps,” huffed Nanny Cole.

“Not that we minded,” Gash put in.

“Didn’t say we
minded,
did I?” retorted Nanny Cole.

“As a result,” Grayson went on, “I spent most of my formative years under the watchful eyes of Nanny Cole and the rest of the staff. I adored my grandmother, but these good people ...” He let his gaze travel slowly around the room. “These good people, I loved.”

“Mawkish nonsense,” muttered Nanny Cole. “Get a grip, Grayson, or you’ll have Kate blubbering.”

“Mother,”
said an obviously exasperated Kate, “will you please allow Grayson to speak?”

“Never been able to stop him, have I?” Nanny Cole scowled at her daughter, but remained silent as Grayson continued.

“My father’s decision to withdraw from the world had a catastrophic effect on both the hall and the village. New tax laws encouraged him to dabble in speculation, but he’d neither the skill nor the patience to succeed at that game. He was forced to sell our land in Kent and Somerset, and to dismiss the underservants, all of whom came from Penford Harbor. When they sought employment elsewhere, their houses were left vacant and the village began a slow and painful decline.

“As for the hall ... Well, I’m sure you’ve heard the story many times before, Derek. Routine repairs were neglected, and the place began to fall apart. My father closed off room after room, until we were all living cheek by jowl in the central block.”

“It were a bad time,” Gash murmured, and the others nodded solemnly.

“I’d no idea how bad,” Grayson commented. “The staff shielded me from every hardship and made it seem like jolly good fun to be bunched together like that. After my grandmother died, however, Father dismissed the staff and began selling off the contents of Penford Hall.”

“Was he allowed to do that?” Emma asked, with a timid glance at Nanny Cole.

“He wasn’t, actually,” replied the duke. “The hall and all that it contained were entailed to me and should’ve been handed down intact. But with Grandmother gone, there was no one to stop him.” The duke’s gaze roved over the walls, taking in every painting, every priceless ornament, while his hands caressed the rich fabric on the arms of his chair, as though reassuring himself that it was real. “I’m so proud of Grandmother for hiding her emeralds,” he said softly.

From the comer of her eye, Emma saw Nanny Cole raise her eyes to Kate, who looked quickly away.

“We think she must have done the same thing with the lantern,” Grayson went on, “and for the same reason. Unfortunately, she neglected to inform anyone of the hiding place. By then, you see, there was hardly anyone left to tell.” The duke folded his hands and tapped the tips of his thumbs together. “Imagine waking up each day to the loss of a beloved sister or brother, uncle or aunt, and you will begin to comprehend the distress I felt when my father began to dismiss the staff. Soon only Nanny Cole remained, and I refused to believe that Father would send her away. With Grandmother gone, Nanny Cole was the only mother I had.”

“I was the only one left to make your blasted bed, you mean,” Nanny Cole put in. Her knitting needles had stopped moving and she peered fondly at the duke. A faint pink flush rose in the old woman’s cheeks as she sensed that the attention of the room was on her, and she pulled her needles back into action, growling, “You just get on with the story, my lad.”

“Where was I? Ah, yes ...” The duke sighed wearily. “Father then informed me that I was to be sent away to school. That was bad enough, but on the afternoon of the very same day, not a month after my grandmother’s death, I saw her harp being loaded into a van and taken away. You must understand that the harp was her prize possession. Its removal forced me to face the awful fact that nothing and no one was safe.

“Father and I had a terrific set-to that evening, at the conclusion of which I ran away. I was a mere boy at the time—Peter’s age—and the weather was as rough as it is tonight, so I didn’t run very far. I went to the lady chapel, in fact, to have a good, self-pitying weep. Much to my amazement, Aunt Dimity was there when I arrived—”

“Dimity Westwood?” Derek asked.

“There’s only one Aunt Dimity,” Grayson replied.

“But how did she know—” Emma left the sentence unfinished.

The duke smiled and shook his head. “I have no idea. She’d learned of Grandmother’s death, of course—”

“And she may have heard rumors about the sale of the harp,” Kate put in.

“Perhaps,” said the duke. “But ...” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

A tingle crept down Emma’s back. Dimity Westwood was beginning to sound vaguely supernatural. She returned long-lost teddy bears to bereft little girls, and she just happened to appear out of nowhere to soothe tormented little boys. And the mysterious woman might have had a hand in bringing Emma to Penford Hall, as well. Emma glanced up at Derek’s sapphire eyes and broad shoulders, wondering how far Aunt Dimity’s powers extended, then shook her head and gave her full attention to the duke.

“Aunt Dimity listened to my woes,” he was saying, “then told me, flat out, that I would think of a way to save the hall. I don’t remember what happened next, but when I awoke the following morning, I felt as though I’d been reborn. I saw clearly that an enormous task lay ahead of me—but not an impossible one. That made all the difference.”

As though galvanized by the memory, the duke pushed himself out of his chair and stood before the fire. Thrusting one hand into a trouser pocket and clutching a tweedy lapel with the other, he struck a professorial pose. “Now,” he said, “if one asks an adult how to raise an enormous amount of capital in a relatively brief period of time, the adult will invariably reply ... ?” He raised an eyebrow and stared expectantly at Emma.

“ ‘Rob a bank’?” Emma ventured.

“Bravo, Miss Porter.” The duke nodded his approval. “If, however, one asks a child the same question, one will receive two dozen different answers, each one more outrageous than the last. I speak as an authority on the matter. I came up with a dozen dozen different schemes over the next few years, but dismissed them all as too time-consuming and/or dangerously illegal.

“Then, one night at school, Pogger Pratt-Evans was listening to some particularly noisome rock music. When I asked him to turn it down, Pogger replied with the immortal words ...” The duke turned his face to the ceiling and enunciated each word carefully, as though he were reciting Shakespearean verse. “ ‘Fat lot you know about music. These guys must be good—they’ve made millions.’ ”

The duke closed his eyes for a moment, as though savoring the words, then began to pace excitedly before the fire. “I couldn’t sleep a wink that night, not with ‘they’ve made millions’ ringing in my ears, and by morning I had put together a plan—an outrageous, ridiculous, impossible plan, which I knew in the depths of my twelve-year-old heart would save the hall. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that it was at that moment that Lex Rex was born.”

Derek frowned. “Are you saying that
you’re
—”

“I am not,” the duke declared. He came to a halt squarely in front of the fire, his hands in his pockets, his hair a golden halo above his shadowed face, looking as though he’d never quite left his twelve-year-old self behind. “I’m saying only that an idea was born.” He spread his arms wide. “It was this distinguished collection of geniuses who nurtured that idea until it became the loathsome creature we know as Lex Rex.”

“You mean, you’re all—?” Emma touched a hand to her glasses and looked from one wrinkled face to another. “You’re all Lex Rex?”

“Our star pupil triumphs again,” proclaimed the duke. He gave them no time to digest this startling news, turning quickly to ask Kate to go on with the story.

Kate Cole cleared her throat. “As you know, Mother and I had moved to Bournemouth after the old duke gave Mother the—after Mother left Penford Hall.”

“Broke her heart to leave,” said Nanny Cole, eyeing her daughter with unexpected gentleness. “But we couldn’t go back to the village. Bloody place was deserted. No school, no children to play with ...”

“So we went to Bournemouth, where Mother worked as a seamstress.”

“Kate was never happy there,” Nanny Cole went on. “Only time she perked up was when she got Grayson’s letters. So, when she came to me with his crack-brained scheme, I thought, Bugger it, I’ll jolly them along. Anything to get Kate up and punching again.” Nanny Cole sighed and looked down at her cobalt-blue yarn. “Hated to see her in such a funk.”

“Mother was wonderful,” said Kate. “She drew all sorts of costumes and I sent the drawings on to Grayson. We wrote to each other three or four times a week. His plan didn’t sound preposterous to me.”

Nanny Cole snorted. “None of Grayson’s plans ever sounded preposterous to you, my girl.” She glanced at Crowley with a devilish grin. “Remember the two of ’em tunneling under the arbor, looking for pirate gold?”

“I do indeed, Nanny,” Crowley replied. “Quite a time we had, pulling them out. I believe it was Miss Kate who christened Lex Rex. Isn’t that right, Nanny?”