Amanda Scott (2 page)

“But how ever have you managed to fool everyone for so long?” Nell demanded.

“Oh, really, it is not so difficult.” Lady Flavia pulled her shawl more tightly across her shoulders. “I am not destitute by any means, but only must take a certain care, and since one’s guests generally do not attempt to go beyond the hall or drawing room and no one thinks it odd that a woman of my years no longer invites friends to large dinner parties, it is not so bad.”

“But, even so, people must have seen—”

“People,” Lady Flavia said firmly, “generally see what they want to see and think what they want to think. Then, too, it gives them a certain cachet, don’t you know, to have wealthy friends. They do not wish to discover that one is not so wealthy as they believe one to be. ’Twould be to diminish themselves.”

“But surely there must be outward signs of … of …”

“Of decay?” Lady Flavia suggested. “A decayed gentlewoman—so descriptive a term, beloved of novelists, but rather hateful when it is fact. Fortunately, in Bath, elderly ladies are expected to behave and to dress in an eccentric way. Gentlemen, too. Indeed, there are several hereabouts who take eccentricity to its limit. One in particular, Sir Mortimer Manningford, has not set foot out of his own house these twenty-five years past. ’Tis said he leaves notes for his servants and sees his heir but once a year for twenty minutes, then shoves him off about his business again. His younger son he don’t see at all!”

“Despite such examples as that, ma’am, I doubt your pretext can be so simple to maintain as you would have me believe.”

“But it is, my dear. One dines out as frequently as one can do so, of course, and your coming to stay will prove a boon in that direction, for a good many people will wish to meet you. And no one will expect us to entertain either, not with your father dead less than a year. Quite providential, that is.”

“Yes, you said so before,” Nell said, adding more grimly, “but it will remain providential, you know, only until one of the quizzes for which Bath is so famous discovers the rather untidy circumstances of his death.”

“Very true, so we shan’t divulge them. To anyone so busy as to inquire, you must say you find the subject too painful to discuss. I, on the other hand, should anyone ask me, will look down my nose and demand in my haughtiest tone to know by what ill-bred impulse he or, more likely, she has dared to pry into a matter that cannot possibly concern anyone outside the Bradbourne family. That will silence the most brazen amongst them.”

“No doubt it will, ma’am, but I am not good at dissembling, you know. The first time someone asks me directly, I shall most likely tell them the truth.”

“Good God, Nell, you will never be such a goose! The next thing you will be doing is to admit that Jasper went aloft on a cloud of debt.”

“Well, and ’tis true enough if, indeed, he went aloft at all. Considering the manner of his going, ’tis more likely—”

“Don’t say it,” Lady Flavia snapped. “For goodness’ sake, Nell, promise me you will not let your wretched tongue run away with you. You are welcome to stay for quite as long as you like if only you will not cut up my peace by telling people you are seeking employment, or by confessing your father’s dreadful sins, or by speaking in an equally frank manner about that rapscallion brother of yours. Indeed, you must promise not to mention Nigel at all if you do not wish to see me suffer a severe spasm!”

“But, ma’am, surely if Nigel shot Mr. Bygrave right here in Bath, either everyone knows all about it already or the situation must have been very different from what Jarvis described to us.”

“Well, I cannot say about that, of course, but I do know that no one has ever mentioned the matter to me. Of course, if that dreadful duel took place in a gentlemen’s club, ’tis possible that no one
would
say anything to me.”

“Well, but I am certain Jarvis had more to do with it than he admitted. Papa didn’t trust him, you know—said he was a make-mischief. For that matter,” she added with a quizzical look, “Papa told me that his uncle Robert was used to say the same of Jarvis’s papa, Reginald. Is that not true?”

“Dear Robert,” Lady Flavia said fondly, her sharp features softening. “He was a fine husband to me, though that time of my life has begun to seem a trifle distant, you know. So difficult to look at oneself in the glass and imagine that same reflection wedded to a man in his twenties, which, of course, is the only way one can remember Robert. I have tried to imagine him older, but it does not answer. Jarvis was not even thought of when he passed on, of course, for Reginald was only a boy then, and I do not know what Robert thought of Reginald, but I never liked him. For some reason, he expected Robert to leave him this house, for it was not part of the entail, and he was most put out when he discovered it had been left to me. Whenever he visited us during that dreadful time of Robert’s illness, one could see the gleam of calculation in his eyes, so the contents of Robert’s will must have come as quite a shock to him.” She sighed. “One would think, since Reginald always seemed to have more money than any younger son ought to have, that he would have been glad to have seen me provided for, but he resented it quite as much as he resented your papa’s coming into the title and estate.”

Nell frowned. “Did he resent Papa? I know Jarvis has long thought it wrong that Papa and now Nigel—both so extravagant—should hold the reins at Highgate, but I thought Reginald doted on Papa. They were always together, you know, for the few years separating their ages made them more like brothers than uncle and nephew. If there was resentment, surely it can have been only on Jarvis’s part. He makes no secret of the fact that he disliked Papa and believes Highgate ought to have been his.”

“Like father, like son,” Lady Flavia said firmly. “Fate is capricious, is it not? To begin, there were three brothers, who by rights ought to have had long lives and dozens of children. Instead, dearest Robert, the eldest, died first, childless. Then the estate passed to your grandfather, who had only the one son—your father, Jasper. The third brother, Reginald, born a mere nine years before your father, produced only Jarvis.”

“But where did Reginald get his money?” Nell demanded. “He was always very well to pass, you know.”

“I am sure I cannot say,” Lady Flavia replied. “He married well, of course, for that is how he got Crosshill, so one must suppose that his wife’s fortune was larger than one was led to believe at the time, or else invested wisely. But money, you know, my dear, is not the same as land. And the Bradbourne barony is a very old and respected one. To be Lord Bradbourne of Highgate is no small thing for a man to covet.”

Nell grimaced. “But why must Jarvis covet me as well? He does, you know, though he couched it in saintly terms, murmuring in a hushed tone that he had buried two wives already and never really believed he should brave the married state again.”

“Don’t tease yourself over that. Died in childbed, the pair of them, and the babes with them. Indeed, I should not be at all amazed if Jarvis don’t fancy himself another Henry the Eighth.”

Nell stared. “Henry the Eighth?”

“He had six, did he not—wives? And only to get a son. If Katherine of Aragon had given him one, that would have been that. Not that he would not have enjoyed himself with Anne Boleyn all the same, but men will be men, after all, and kings even more so, no doubt. No one would have objected very much.”

Nell believed herself to be generally quick-witted, but there were times when her great aunt left her standing, when it took her a moment to catch up. Now, though she would have liked to avoid the tangent altogether, she found herself saying, “But his third wife gave him a son, and he still married three more.”

“But she died, my dear, and the boy was feeble. And the next was Kat Howard—not at all suitable. She played him false, which he ought to have expected, for he was getting on by then, but men, you know, always believe themselves up to every—”

“Aunt Flavia,” Nell said firmly, “whatever can Henry the Eighth’s wives have to do with the point at hand?”

“Why, sons, Nell, to inherit. I thought you understood.”

There was a moment of silence before Nell said, “Do you mean to say that Cousin Jarvis wants to marry me only for the purpose of begetting sons? But surely, any female of age and not utterly stricken in years would serve his purpose if that were the case.”

“Highgate is still the case, I believe.”

“But Nigel owns Highgate,” Nell protested. “Perhaps I did not make the matter clear when I explained it—indeed, it is all very confusing—but even though Papa lost the wager he made with Reginald, Jarvis made only the one attempt after Reginald’s accident to claim Highgate. Then, after the duel, when Nigel was forced to flee the country, he said no more about it.”

“He will, my dear. Nigel is on the Continent, after all, and may even be dead by now for all you know. He does not write to you, does he?”

“No, but—”

“So few men do,” Lady Flavia said with a sigh.

“He is still the owner of Highgate.”

“If he should be found guilty of murder, he won’t be,” Lady Flavia said tartly, “and that is precisely what will happen if he has to stand his trial. It may become a matter for Parliament in the end—I know little about such things—but Jarvis Bradbourne stands next to inherit the barony, and his position in a Court of Chancery could only be strengthened if he were married to you. Like Henry the Seventh, that would be.”

“No more Tudors,” Nell said firmly.

“I meant only that your marriage to Jarvis would unite the two lines, much the same as when the seventh Henry married Elizabeth of York, and of course your son, if you had one—”

“I wouldn’t!” Nell exclaimed, revolted. “I would not marry Cousin Jarvis under any circumstance. Even if I liked him, which I do not, he is too old. I mean to marry a man my own age, not one who will precede me into senility by a dozen years. Jarvis simply must be brought to understand as much.”

“Men,” Lady Flavia said with an air of vast experience, “generally believe themselves to be not only infallible but irresistible. And, too, you know, he is a greedy man, so one must consider your inheritance.”

“But I have none,” Nell protested. “Papa meant me to have a proper dowry, of course, and I daresay that once the estate is running properly again there might be enough for a settlement of some sort or other, but—”

“I meant,” Lady Flavia interjected patiently, “the fortune that you will inherit from me, or—to put the matter more exactly—the fortune you are
expected
to inherit from me.”

“But you said there is no fortune.”

“I said nothing of the kind. To be sure, there is not nearly so much as people think, but my capital is intact, and at all events, Jarvis is no more aware of how matters stand with me than you were. Moreover, whatever else he may believe, you can depend upon it that his father will have told him that this house is a property worth owning, for indeed, my dear, it is.”

Nell smiled. “No doubt it is, ma’am, but I must tell you that since I never expected to inherit anything from you, I find it impossible to believe that Cousin Jarvis might expect me to do so. As to anyone else’s believing it, you must forgive me for telling you to your head that such a notion is absurd. No one could be sufficiently interested even to wonder about it.”

“Innocent, that’s what you are,” Lady Flavia said, shaking her head. “Only think, my dear, how quickly information flies about in a country village like Trowbridge. Then consider Bath.”

“I do not know what you mean, ma’am. To be sure, at home folk talk about their neighbors, but what else is there to talk about? And what can Bath know of me? ’Tis a very sleepy town, for all that it was used to be so fashionable. I know there are assemblies and concerts, and I should love to have the money to indulge myself in a visit to the shops in Milsom Street, for we have nothing like them at home, but that people should care—”

“That is just the point,” Lady Flavia said. “In Bath people live for gossip. No entertainment at the Pump Room or the Assembly Rooms can ever be as interesting as what one’s neighbor is doing, or means to do, or has had done to him. If, on any given day, there is not adequate grist for the rumor mill, people have been known to make things up, a fact that irritated the great Beau Nash fifty years ago, and would no doubt still irritate him today. Thankfully, with such a wealth of gossip as there is, such tactics are rarely necessary.”

Sighing, Nell said, “I do not doubt that what you say is true, ma’am, but it does not change my mind about what I must do. If I were a man, I would be working to prove Nigel innocent of the charge against him. Instead, as you say, I have run away from prattling tongues, knowing looks, and Jarvis, hoping to find sanctuary in Bath. If I cannot do that, at least I will not allow myself to become a burden upon you, and perhaps in time I will yet discover the truth about both Papa and Nigel.”

“The truth is already known,” Lady Flavia said in a gentler tone than any she had used before, “and you do no good, child, by deluding yourself to think otherwise. In Nigel’s case, there were witnesses, were there not? Indeed, there must have been.”

“All but Cousin Jarvis supposedly as drunk as Nigel,” Nell said bitterly. “And what with Jarvis’s having been the only reliable witness …” She shrugged and fell silent.

“’Tis as I said, then,” Lady Flavia declared, “and a pity it is that he was not the victim instead of that Mr. Bygrave, for no one would have caviled at that, and there would then have been no witness, so Nigel might have gone tamely home again. As it is, you can do nothing about his difficulty. Indeed, even if there might be more to the matter than we know, Nigel brought it on himself, for he is no pattern card, my dear, as well you know. And to be grieving over his problems instead of looking after yourself is quite foolish. You would be a great deal more sensible to be thinking of marriage.”

“Marriage! But I told you I would not even think—”

“Oh, not to Jarvis, for pity’s sake. And Bath, of course, is not precisely as full as it can hold of eligible young men,” she added, “though I suppose there must be some.”