The Lonely Earl
Authors: Vanessa Gray
The soft April sunshine, welcome after a long winter of bitter cold, unusual in Devon, spread like melted butter over the land.
It touched the far reaches of the Tamar River into pewter, shimmered green over the awakening fields, and touched the village of Trevan into life. The Green Man, the substantial and highly respectable travelers’ inn on the main road from Exeter to Plymouth, still slumbered, although its landlady, Mistress Betsy Kyd, was astir in the kitchen, cheerfully grumbling with fine impartiality against husband Ben and hulking son Joseph, both still abed.
A side road, well kept but not much traveled, branched to the southeast at right angles to the main road, just beyond the Green Man. The road neatly divided the broad lands of the two greatest families in the region. Not far from the bounds of Trevan, on the left hand, stood, behind massive iron gates, the seat of the earls of Pendarvis, the home of the great family of Crale. At this moment in April 1804, Robbins, a portly man of near seventy years, stood alone in the flagstoned yard at the rear of Crale Hall, his thoughts an unaccustomed jumble. His routine, carefully planned so as to involve a minimum of effort in serving his late master, was headed for disaster. He turned over in his mind the news he had had only yesterday, as a farmer turns over straw toward the sun. A ramshackle business at best, he thought sourly, and just like the boy to pounce down without a moment’s warning! Not that he should call him a boy — not Hugh Crale, Earl of Pendarvis, a man grown before he had left for parts unknown. Now the earl was coming back with who knew how many Frenchy notions, besides a half-French child!
There was a plenty of work to be done before the earl arrived. From where Robbins stood, lifting his old lined face to the muted sunshine, he heard behind him, singing in the kitchen, his spouse. Little
she
cared that he must hurry the footmen all day to get the house in order, and the maids to get the upstairs rooms ready for the Lady Althea Crale, the earl’s small daughter, and her maid, and who knew how many others! All Mrs. Robbins cared for — and her husband still called her, usually, Mrs. Robbins — was that her beloved young Hugh was coming home again. Well, if she had somebody to cosset besides that young Mr. Vincent Crale, she would not be so prone to point out Robbins’ own failings.
He turned and went inside again, the grim light in his eyes promising a hard day for the servants of the earl.
*
At that moment, the earl himself was nearing Honiton, on the highway that would eventually bring him to the village of Trevan. He was driving the matched pair of blacks newly bought in London, as he tarried in his journey from Harwich. He was finding them remarkably responsive, and he almost found pleasure in driving again. He had left London some days before, having sent the rest of his household on ahead. All his servants except Dawson traveled with the lumbering coach carrying his six-year-old daughter. Arming the menservants against the danger of footpads and other outlaws, he felt little concern for their safety. As a matter of course, he hardly thought of the Lady Althea Crale at any time, leaving her well-being to those whom he paid well for such service.
He himself was probably in more danger, he reflected, and a wry twist in his mind pointed out that for six years of his marriage to Renée, he had wished indeed that he were dead. Instead, it was his wife who died, and it had taken much of the year since that melancholy event to pull together the tatters of his existence and decide that if he could not expect happiness in his life, at least he could follow his clear duty and return to the estates of the Crale family.
Beside the earl sat his groom. Dawson, stealing a glance at his master’s dark face, took comfort from the fact that the earl had slept the night before in Yeovil without the help of a bottle, and this morning had been springing them right along, almost as though he were anxious to be home.
Dawson, remembering his own opinion of young Master Vincent, thought that if Providence could be persuaded to intervene in the matter of restoring the earl to his old sweetness of temper — long absent from his master — that same Providence would see to it that that abomination, young Vincent Crale, was removed from Crale Hall before the earl arrived. Dawson would not have cared overmuch if that removal were forcible, or even painful. His master had gone through dark years enough, in Dawson’s opinion, and it would be too much if young Vincent got above himself. But there were ways, Dawson ruminated, and they’d just have to wait and see. He allowed his thoughts to leap ahead to Crale Hall, which neither he nor his master, the Earl of Pendarvis, had seen for eight years.
*
Across the road from the home of the earls of Pendarvis ran the substantial acres of James Kennett, the fifth Baron Egmont. On this April morning, the balminess of the warm breeze lured the baron out onto the sheltered terrace on the southeast side of the mellow brick house, built by the third baron in the fashion of his time.
The sunlight flooded the terrace cheerfully, but Lord Egmont’s thoughts, as he lowered his rangy frame into the most comfortable chair, were cloudy and dark. He was usually considered by his daughter and his servants as amiability itself, and the frown on his florid face now reflected the contents of his morning’s mail. A widower for some years, he had fallen into peaceable habits, and he asked nothing more than to be left alone to enjoy his bucolic quiet.
Now the aggrieved baron’s thoughts, turning from the morning’s mail, ran along the lines of flight — Jamaica, Madras, even Australia.
He settled deeper into his chair, and did not hear the footsteps approaching behind him.
Kennett Chase was a remarkably comfortable house, and easy to live in, thought Amy Bucknell as she followed dear Faustina out to the terrace. Bucky sat down the tray she was carrying on a small table next to Faustina’s father.
Miss Bucknell knew Lord Egmont well. She had come first to Kennett Chase at the late Lady Egmont’s request, to tutor the young Faustina. When Faustina’s schooldays were done, Bucky bade her charge an affectionate farewell. When Faustina returned home from two London seasons, three years before, she had begged her dear Bucky to leave retirement and come to serve as her companion.
Amy Bucknell was not sufficiently enamored of her boardinghouse life in a shabby house at the edge of Winchester to prevent her from packing her possessions and taking the next stage to Trevan.
Now, she was able to judge Lord Egmont’s querulous mood to a turn, and, smiling in a gentle, conspiratorial fashion at Faustina, she tiptoed away, leaving Faustina to deal with her father.
“Papa?” said Faustina. “Asleep? Here is some tea that has just arrived from Bristol. Bucky had Mrs. Cotter steep it at once so that it would be at its freshest.”
“Tea’s lost all its flavor,” grumbled Egmont, but he straightened in his chair and favored his only daughter with a knowing but approving glare. “Come to beguile me, I suppose? Trying to cheer me up? Heaven knows, there’s little enough in the mail to make me easy in my mind.”
Knowing very well that her father kept all political news off his mind, and his understanding of economics stretched only as far as the quarterly reports of Windhook, his factor, she dismissed the journals piled at his side to the oblivion they deserved. “Come now, Papa,” she said, in mock astonishment, “can it be that you are not looking forward to my aunt’s visit?”
“Read my mail, hey?”
“Not at all, my dear sir. I must tell you that my aunt also wrote to me — at least, it was Julia who wrote, by my aunt’s direction.”
“Wonder what she wants?” speculated the baron, eyeing with suspicion the dark liquid in his Wedgwood cup. “Never writes unless she wants something, and never in her life did she ask whether it might be convenient.”
Faustina eyed her father with great affection. She knew him well, and counted him one of her great friends. But she also knew his mind. “If I could think of some reason to fob her off,” she offered, “I would. Do you suppose she would take it amiss if I were to tell her I had the pox? Or do you think that is coming too strong?”
Egmont smiled briefly. “She sent Sanders to nurse you through the pox when you were nine. She won’t forget that — worse luck.”
“Nor will I.” Faustina smiled reminiscently. “Sanders hated every minute of it. She feared that my aunt Louisa would fall prey to the wiles of some new maid who had ambitions above her station, so Sanders said.” Faustina gave a warm chuckle. “Well, I see that won’t do. What do you think, sir? Do you know why Aunt Louisa is traveling all the way into Devon?”
“She says, to see her dear niece again,” snorted Lord Egmont. “Not for three years has she so much as noticed you.” Then an unhappy thought struck him, and he added gruffly, “Sorry, m’dear, didn’t mean to brine it up.”
“Oh, do not fret about it,” said Faustina brightly. “I have long forgotten the incident.”
“No sense, your aunt Louisa,” he muttered. “Can’t understand how your mother could be related to her — different as day and night.” He paused a moment, in tribute to his dead wife. “But depend upon it, she won’t be teasing you to come back to London.”
“If she did, it would be of little use,” remarked Faustina. “Nothing could persuade me to go back to such an uncomfortable whirlwind. And my aunt’s moods are too changeable for me to endure. I’m too old for such nonsense.”
“Too old?” rallied her father. “At twenty-four?”
He glared sideways at his daughter. She reminded him forcefully of his own mother — the same softly waving hair, the color of amber in the sunlight. The same cheerful, pleasant face — not classically beautiful, but with a wide, generous mouth and speaking hazel eyes. And still unmarried, for reasons that escaped him. He sighed unconsciously.
“Now, Papa,” she said gently. “Maybe I should put on a spinster’s cap. That would send Aunt into a spin, I daresay.” Succumbing to her ready sense of merriment, she added hopefully, “Perhaps that would shorten her stay?”
“Not a chance,” he said. “Besides, I won’t have it You’re just a girl, and I’ll not have any spinster calling
me
father.”
Wisely, Faustina took this injunction as the brave encouragement it was intended to be, and smiled at her father with a rush of affection. How dear he was to her, and how happy she was, simply to live here in the house she had grown up in, and forget the two seasons in London, where she had been an acknowledged success. The incident Egmont had mentioned occurred the day Faustina turned down her fifth offer of marriage, and Louisa Waverly, incensed by what she termed Faustina’s stubbornness, had thrown one of the hysterical spasms renowned in her family. Faustina still shuddered when she remembered certain forceful details of her aunt’s accusations, and while she believed they were products of an excitable fancy, she could not help but wonder, guiltily, if some of them were true. She had never told her father the whole of that scene, but she had an idea he had a shrewd notion of the essentials.
He roused himself now, and moved his chair to follow the sun. “How about it, m’dear? Can we take her in?”
“We have to,” she said calmly. “I understand that Julia will come with her — I wonder how she is doing now, she was still in the schoolroom when I saw her last.”
“Knowing Louisa,” said her father morosely, “Julia will still be in the schoolroom.”
Flashing an amused glance at her parent, Faustina consulted her own letter again. “Sanders, of course, and coachman and two grooms. Not a word about Ned.”
Sir Edward Waverly, Aunt Louisa’s only son, had succeeded to the baronetcy two years before. He had previously found a place for himself in the government — something to do with customs, Faustina thought vaguely — and his new title nearly lost him his position. But Ned had stuck doggedly to his guns, and had weathered the storm from the others in his department, his superiors, and his loving family. “Nothing is below my dignity,” he had declared often, with some pomposity, “that I choose to do. I like my work, and I’m good at it.” And because that was the simple truth, he was allowed at last to stay.
“Probably too busy,” pronounced Faustina.
“Too relieved at his mother’s departure to follow her,” offered Lord Egmont.
“There’s nothing down here to amuse my aunt,” fretted Faustina. “I can’t imagine why she wants to visit.”
“That’s her lookout,” said Lord Egmont. “My dear, I do not wish you to put yourself out over this. She was not invited, and we are not obligated to do more than feed and lodge her. Now, stop worrying. It will all come out, I suppose, when she arrives.”
Although neither Faustina nor her father recognized it, the bearer of the clue to Lady Waverly’s unexpected visit was just now riding at his usual breakneck speed through a shortcut from Crale Hall to Kennett Chase, avoiding the graveled drives.
Dismounting and tossing the reins to a stable boy, Vincent Crale followed around the side of the building and approached the pair on the terrace.
Faustina looked up from her third reading of her aunt’s letter, trying to extract the last possible nuance of meaning from it, and greeted him with the ease of long acquaintance. “Vincent! My goodness, I thought you must have returned to London by now. It has been all of three days since we’ve seen you.”
Young Vincent Crale’s fair, open face wore just now a smile that promised candor and a sort of boyish appeal. He was a heavily built young man of nineteen, looking more, so Egmont said, like that woman who had captured his old friend the late Earl of Pendarvis in a foolish moment, than a true Crale. There were lines of sulkiness developing around his full lips, but when he smiled, his appearance was good-natured in the extreme.