Regency Rumours/A Scandalous Mistress/Dishonour And Desire (20 page)

Their hour spent at the Royal Stud Farm gave the three women a glimpse of the responsibility that Lord Elyot himself would one day take over from his father, the palatial stables with name plates and gleaming brass, polished wood and leather, the liveried grooms, the glossy manes and tails and polished rumps. Stallions and yearlings were paraded by their proud keepers, papers checked, plans discussed, and all the time they were obliged to endure the advice of Tam Elwick, who had no hesitation in contradicting his brother-in-law on any point, however small. When Lord Elyot found Tam lecturing one of the senior grooms about the treatment of an injured hock, he thought it was time to intervene.

‘Tam,’ he said, interrupting the homily, ‘we shall be taking a light lunch at the Chequers on the green next to the Royal Mews. I would be obliged if you would escort the ladies there. Seton and I will catch you up in a few moments.’

‘Oh … er, well … yes. But can’t Seton go with them?’ He caught Lord Elyot’s frosty eye. ‘Well, if you insist.’

‘I need Seton here, and I
do
insist.
Now
, if you please.’

There was no possibility of Tam mistaking the command, for the captaincy still lingered in the deep strong voice, and Tam’s perception was not deficient in every respect. Nodding his carefully tousled head the colour of hazelnuts, he strode away towards Amelie, Caterina and Hannah who were admiring a herd of frisky colts in a paddock. ‘We’ve been dismissed,’ he called to them, laughing. ‘Apparently we’re getting under the exalted feet of the son of the assistant Master of the King’s Horse. Come, ladies, we must retire gracefully to the Chequers to sit and drink cordial until his supreme lordship is ready to receive us once more.’

Amelie was not amused. ‘Mr Elwick,’ she said, quietly, ‘will you try to remember that I am engaged to Lord Elyot, please? If he wants us to go on to the Chequers I’m sure his reasons need not be questioned. I am quite happy to wait there with a glass of cordial, to rest my legs a while.’

‘Lord, m’lady,’ said Tam, helping her up into the barouche, ‘I mean no offence, believe me. I dare say my brother-in-law can talk about his mares till the cows come home, eh?’ He kept the schoolboy grin across his face until all three occupants of the carriage were seated, but, although Caterina and Hannah saw nothing untoward in the remark, Amelie’s frown lasted until they had reached their destination.

The green at Hampton was a long field that ran alongside the river between the palace and the village. Converted from one of the royal stables, the Chequers stood on the south side of the green adjoining the Queen’s Coach House while further on, the King’s Coach House was now the barracks for a troop
of cavalry. Within a railed compound, conical tents and splendid marquees crowded across the parched grass and, at one end, soldiers drilled to the bark of commands. Others in red-and-white uniforms stood in groups or lounged upon the grass, openly staring at the barouche, its cargo of females and its dandified escort.

No sooner had they alighted outside the inn than Caterina took Hannah’s hand, intending to stand near a group of red-coated officers whose eyes they had caught. Tam, however, who saw himself as being outnumbered by at least five to one, redirected the two very firmly and properly towards a table and bench outside, ordering ale and cordial from the landlord, earning Amelie’s approval. But this did not prevent the determined officers from occupying the next table to theirs, introducing themselves, smiling and flirting, while Tam looked helplessly on, unable to apply any brakes to the silly but harmless chatter, the toasts to bright eyes and the request for names, which were withheld. It was only when the two brothers arrived and, dismounting, signalled with the merest tip of the head for the men to clear off, that the intrusion suddenly stopped and the soldiers dispersed silently towards the barracks in a matter of seconds.

Sitting down beside Amelie, Lord Elyot took her hand in his. ‘You all right, sweetheart?’ he whispered, adding a droll wink for good measure.

The laughter in her eyes belied the otherwise solemn expression that swept past Tam’s vexed face and Hannah’s blushes. ‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ she whispered.

‘He’ll survive. I’m more concerned about you.’

‘I’ll survive too,’ she said, returning the squeeze of his hand.

The alfresco refreshment at the Chequers, augmented by pasties, pickles, cold ham, salads and plum cake, became a
lunch enlivened by a pageant of uniforms and strolling sightseers, the coming and going of carriages and the grooming of the cavalry officers’ horses. But the tensions that had been steadily growing between Tam and Lord Rayne did not relax as Amelie had hoped, for now the thwarted young man was keener than ever to restore his credibility as the ladies’ entertaining escort. And because he was using every device he knew to keep them in a state of constant amusement, Caterina at least felt that he deserved some recognition for his efforts while wishing that Lord Rayne would bestir himself half as much for her sake.

Tam’s insistence on taking Caterina and Hannah into the palace maze was ostensibly to show them how good he was at finding the centre and back again in record time, though it had not escaped the notice of three others that their tiresome chaperonage of Caterina was irksome to him. Despite all their efforts and with so many differing opinions about which turn to take, with them all in single file, with the meeting and sidling past of bewildered strangers, with the confusing blind alleys and the worn hedge that looked the same everywhere, they managed somehow to become separated except by calls of, ‘Where are you?
Here
… Where?’

Amelie waited beside Hannah, thinking that Seton was near them too, but he was striding back the way they had come, disappearing round a corner. There were shrieks and shouts, and so many people calling and squealing with frustration that Caterina’s voice could not be identified.

‘I don’t care much for labyrinths,’ said Hannah. ‘Where has Lord Elyot gone?’

‘He’ll find us. I think we should wait,’ Amelie replied, having doubts about both statements. ‘Caterina! Where are you?’

It was not Caterina who replied, but a man’s deep bark of anger, unmistakably that of Lord Elyot, followed by a shout, a scream, and the sound of crashing branches. A well-dressed young man in brown fell heavily backwards through the ragged hornbeam hedge further up the path, thrashing and struggling, held fast in the tangle and shouting with fury.

Recognising her brother’s wild brown hair and his voice, Hannah ran, dodging round surprised onlookers whose helplessness had not so far led them into violence. ‘Tam … Tam, my dear … ah, no! Are you hurt?’ She could not reach him, and his threats were not directed at her.

‘Damn you, sir! I shall call you out for this … this
insult
! How dare you … get away from me … name your seconds. My man will—’

‘Get up, you stupid fool!’ came Lord Rayne’s voice. ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. Here, take my hand or you’ll be there for hours.’

‘I don’t need your help. I shall thrash you both for this.’

‘And I shall see that your father hears of
your
behaviour,’ said Lord Elyot. ‘Time somebody knocked some sense into you, lad. Get up or stay there, but you’ll apologise to Miss Chester for your insolence immediately.’

‘Tam … Tam dearest,’ Hannah whimpered, trying to reach him from her side through the untidy hole in the hedge. ‘What have they done to you?’

Amelie held her back, keeping her out of the way of the astonished passers-by who lingered and walked on with pitying looks and giggles. Hushing her, comforting her, Amelie felt her sobs of distress, then a warm patch of dampness seep into the fabric on her shoulder. ‘It’s nothing,’ she whispered. ‘Only men. Only a bump. Nothing broken.’
And while she comforted Hannah for Tam’s indignity, she would prefer to have known what Tam must apologise to Caterina for, and which of the brothers had taken him in hand.

Neither she nor Hannah were kept waiting long, for through the press of curious men and shocked women came Caterina, close to tears and with one hand to her face, hiding her blushes. Though she was blameless, it was the first time men had come to blows over her, and the first time she had ever seen a man knocked down. She was not the kind to fall into hysterics, but neither was she insensitive to Tam’s humiliation.

Mortification, not pride, was deeply etched on Caterina’s very pink face. ‘It was nothing,’ she whispered to Amelie, with downcast eyes. ‘I’ll tell you later. I’m sure he meant nothing by it. Oh, I was never so embarrassed in my life.’

The incident put a damper on what had begun as a pleasant day’s outing, and now no attempt was successful in lightening the mood that hung over their cheerless journey home. There were, in fact, few attempts except by Hannah whose third observation of the deer herds ended in a muffled squeak as the sight of her bedraggled brother hove into view. No one in the carriage dared to speculate on whether his distress was mostly for his swollen face, his ruined neckcloth and torn coat, or for the curious stares of strangers who would be drawing their own conclusions from his distance some way behind the others.

Without any explanation from either Lord Elyot or his brother, Amelie could draw no such conclusions about their handling of Tam apart from no one deriving any satisfaction from the disgraceful public fracas except, perhaps, those spectators who were glad of a diversion. Hannah was very upset by her brother’s treatment at the hands of her hero. Caterina
was deeply confused by the vehemence of Lord Rayne’s reaction, and sorry for it. And Amelie blamed herself for not keeping Caterina more firmly by her side. She was, after all, the one person most responsible for her, and she had been warned. What the two brothers thought of the matter she could hazard a guess from their inscrutable expressions and their unremitting cold-shouldering of their brother-in-law.

Nor was the earlier mood of goodwill restored on Amelie and Caterina’s return to Paradise Road, Lord Elyot and his brother being so keen to make an immediate call on Tam’s father before his son’s version of the incident became the only one. There was just time for Amelie to hear a brief statement of regret that the outing should have been marred, though no apportioning of blame was suggested before the two escorts left them with thanks for their company and a hope that Miss Chester would not be too distressed by her experience.

Miss Chester
was
distressed, though apparently not for the reasons Lord Elyot might have expected. She sat on the piano stool, twisting a damp handkerchief into a rope while trying to stem her tears of anger with the back of one hand. ‘I
thought
,’ she sobbed, ‘that he was holding me away from a group of elderly people who were … well, very
wide
, and he … kind of … swung me away from them against the hedge.’

‘With his arms around you,’ said Amelie.

‘Yes, there was so little space for them to pass, and I suppose he held me for just a mite longer. Oh, this is so
silly
, Aunt Amelie. He meant no harm.’

‘But you should not have been alone with him, my dear. He should not have—’

‘I’ve been alone with him many times, Aunt. You know I
have. His conduct has never been such as to give me cause for alarm. I would not continue to call him my friend, had it ever been otherwise.’

‘So he’s never attempted to kiss you? Is that what …?’

‘What Lord Rayne thought he was doing? Yes, I expect he did, but then, Lord Rayne has been looking daggers at him all day as if he was waiting for a chance to … well,
hit
him.’

‘And
did
Tam try to kiss you?’

‘If he did, I didn’t realise it. I really don’t know. His face
was
very close to mine and I suppose it may have looked a bit like that. He flirts, you know. Nobody takes it seriously. I certainly don’t. Oh, I wish it had been anybody but those two who interfered. I’m sure there was no need for it.’

‘They know Tam better than you do, my dear. We have little choice but to trust their judgement. I take it that Lord Rayne does not flirt with you?’ She knew she need hardly ask, but one must be sure.

‘No.’ Caterina’s voice dropped an octave. ‘He’s shown his annoyance with Tam before, remember, but now he’ll be more than ever annoyed with me, for I’m sure he’ll think I was encouraging him, which I most certainly was not. But I couldn’t snub Tam after all he was doing to please us, and I
so
wanted to reach the middle of the labyrinth before the rest of you. Tam told me that if you place your left hand on the hedge wall and keep it there all the way through, you’re sure to get to the centre no matter where it leads you. Then, when you leave the centre, you do the same with your right hand, and you’ll come to the entrance again. He’s tried it before and it’s foolproof.’

At that point, the full weight of Tam’s disgrace fell upon her once more. Instead of winning the race to the centre of the maze, she was now lost in a maze of recriminations for
which she herself, somehow, was responsible. And for the second time that afternoon, the shoulder of Aunt Amelie’s pretty blue pelisse-gown was dampened by tears.

Disappointed, angry, and plagued by conscience, Amelie found it impossible not to sympathise with her niece, her version sounding plausible enough, her truthfulness never in question. Though Caterina was an innocent, she was not so whey-faced that she would not have given Tam a very clear indication of his impertinence, had any been intended. Bearing Lord Elyot’s warnings in mind, Amelie could not help thinking yet again that the two brothers had perhaps been waiting for a chance to discipline Tam, overreacting when they thought they had found one.

There was no singing practice for Caterina that day.

The next morning, reminded by a note from Lord Elyot about the ball Lady Sergeant was to give for her daughter that evening, Amelie and Caterina agreed that it would serve no good purpose to cry off without a better reason than disinclination.

Theodosia Sergeant had been a latecomer to her parents’ marriage, and despite her widowed mother’s best efforts to find her a husband, she had remained on the shelf, looking more and more unlikely to be rescued. The balls, routs, parties and picnics meant to entice the local talent had not had the desired effect, her prime target—and his brother too—having escaped her net once and for all. Lady Sergeant had met Lord Elyot’s final choice of wife at the Castle Inn asssembly and had been satisfyingly rude to her. Lord Rayne was, by all accounts, about to receive his papers any day now, so he was also out of the running.