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“When last I saw friend Hugo here, for that is his name,” Alastair continued, “he was amusing himself chasing a painted lady.”
“I beg your pardon,” the female said crushingly. “I have not insulted you, sirrah! Just because I am on the beach without a chaperone is no reason to—”
Alastair hastened to correct her misinterpretation. “A painted lady is but another name for a butterfly, madam—the two-winged variety, that is,” he said, rising to his knees as Hugo put a hand under each of his arms and hauled his master ungainly to his feet. “Ah, there we are, almost as good as new. Thank you, Hugo,” he said, having been righted satisfactorily. “Now, perhaps we might try to make some sense out of these past few minutes.”
“I knew that,” the woman said in a small voice.
“You knew what?” he asked, bemused by the slight blush that had crept, unwanted, onto her cheeks.
“I knew about painted ladies—that is, about butterflies,” she stammered, looking at him as if she had never seen a man up close before. “Are you sure you are quite all right? That was quite a blow you took.” Her voice trailed off as a humanizing grin softened her features. “You—you must have bounced at least three times,” she added, belatedly trying to disguise the grin with one gloved hand. “Oh, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t see any levity in this, should I?”
Alastair made to push the kneeling, still-quavering Hugo—who reminded him of an elephant cowering in fear of a mouse—away from his leg. “Oh, I don’t know, madam. If we can’t discover the levity in this scene, I should think we are beyond redemption.” He held out his hand. “I am John Bates, by the way.”
She looked at his outstretched hand, then pointedly ignored it, all her starch back in her posture. “I am Elinor Dalrymple, sister of Leslie Dalrymple, Earl of Hythe—on whose lands you, Mr. Bates, are trespassing. May I ask your business at Seashadow?”
“Aargg, ummff, aaah!”
“Yes, yes, Hugo, I quite agree with you. I shall tell the lady. Don’t excite yourself,” Alastair soothed, patting the giant’s head as he tried desperately to gather his thoughts, and control his anger. Who was this unlovely chit to dare ask his business upon his own land?
Why, the only reason she was still here rather than rotting in some damp jail—her and her miserable, conniving brother—was due to his charity in not demanding they be arrested the moment he’d first learned of their usurpation of his lands and title. No, he corrected himself, that wasn’t quite true. It had been Geoffrey Wiggins’s idea (conveyed in a hurried meeting between the two men) to continue the deception Alastair had first planned while still recuperating in Hugo’s hovel—and the romance of the thing was fast losing its allure.
“You know what he’s saying?” Elly asked, clearly surprised, as she peeped around Alastair to get a better look at Hugo.
“By and large, Miss Dalrymple, by and large. Hugo doesn’t plague one with a lot of idle chitchat, having lost his tongue in some way too terrible to tell. However, if you should wish for him to show you the wound, I’m sure he would be delighted to satisfy your—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Elly cut in quickly. “But you—you understand him, poor fellow?”
“Now who are you calling a poor fellow, I wonder? But never mind. I shall answer your question the best I can. Yes, Hugo and I have, by way of his most articulate grunts and some acting out of intent, learned some basic communication. For instance, I am sure Hugo is devastated at having frightened you—nearly as devastated as he is by his fear of you. Please wave and smile to him, if you will. I should like for him to feel secure enough to leave go his death grip on my leg, for it is just regaining its strength from the wound it lately suffered on the Peninsula.”
“You were on the Peninsula?” Elly asked, dutifully smiling and waving to Hugo before returning her gaze to Alastair. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“And how should you, madam?” Alastair asked, intrigued by her quick about-face. She seemed almost caring. “Tell me, is your brother the Earl in residence? I wished to thank him for renting me the cottage, but all I have seen thus far, other than your delightful presence, of course, was a slightly vacuous-looking youth walking the beach earlier, collecting seaweed for only the good Lord knows what purpose.”
He watched as Miss Dalrymple blushed yet again, and had the uncomfortable feeling that he had just struck a nerve. “That vacuous-looking youth, as you termed him, Mr. Bates” —she shot at him in some heat— “is the Earl of Hythe—and I should thank you to have the goodness to keep your boorish opinions to yourself.” So saying, she turned on her heels, about to flounce off, he was sure, in high dudgeon.
She had taken only three steps when—again, as he was sure she would—she turned back, her slightly pointed chin thrust out, to exclaim, “What do you mean, sir—you wish to thank my brother for the use of the cottage? What cottage? Where?”
As Hugo had been distracted by another gaily colored painted lady and was lumbering down the beach in pursuit of the gracefully gliding butterfly, Alastair felt free to spew the remainder of his lies just as he and Wiggins had practiced them. “Why, madam, I thought you knew. After all, it was your brother who agreed to lend me the cottage on the estate while I recuperate from my wounds. It’s the cottage just to the east of here—slightly inland, and with a lovely thatched roof. Hugo and I have been quite comfortable there for over a month now, although this is my first venture so far from my bed. But you still appear confused, Miss Dalrymple—and you shouldn’t frown so, it will cause lines in your forehead.”
“Never mind my forehead, if you please!” Elly shot back, bending down to retrieve her ruined parasol. “Wait a minute!” she said as she straightened. “Over a month ago, you say? Why, that must have been the late Earl. Of course! You rented the cottage from the late Earl! That’s why Leslie and I weren’t aware of it.”
“The Earl is dead? I have been out of touch, haven’t I?” Alastair bowed deeply from the waist. “My condolences on your loss, madam.”
“None are required, Mr. Bates,” Elly answered distractedly, clearly still trying to absorb his news. “I never knew the horrible man, I’m happy to say.”
Alastair longed to take Elinor Dalrymple’s slim throat in his hands and crush the life out of her. Smiling through gritted teeth, he responded, “Then may I offer my congratulations to your brother and yourself, for surely the two of you have fallen into one of the deepest gravy boats in all England. The late Earl was known, after all, for his great wealth.”
“That’s not all the late Earl was known for,” Elly said, sniffing. “He was a profligate, useless drain on society, if half the stories I have heard are to be believed. If you wish to talk about painted ladies, you should have been here for his memorial service. There were more butterflies at Seashadow that day than this, if you take my meaning.”
This time Alastair could not suppress a grin. “Lots of weeping and gnashing of teeth, was there? There’s many a man who would relish such a send-off. Was there a redhead among them? I’d heard the late Earl had quite a ravishing redhead in keeping.”
Elly’s spine stiffened once more, most probably, Alastair supposed, more in self-censure at her own loose tongue than at his daring response to her indiscreet chatter. “Be that as it may be, if he leased a returning veteran a cottage in which to recuperate, he did at least one good deed in his wasted lifetime, and I shall not take this one vestige of goodness from his memory by refusing to honor his wishes.”
“You are kindness itself, Miss Dalrymple,” Alastair cooed, longing to throttle her.
“The sea air will doubtless be salutary to your wounds,” she continued. “As a matter of fact—as a small way of showing you Seashadow’s hospitality—may I tell my brother that you are to join us this evening for dinner?”
Alastair smiled, succeeding in splitting the three-week growth of beard so that his even white teeth sparkled in the sunlight. “Madam,” he said sincerely, “I should be delighted!”
THE EVENING WAS comfortably cool, with a slight breeze coming off the sea as Elly stood just outside the French doors watching the sea birds as they circled the beach. Raising a hand to her throat, she adjusted the cameo that hung from a thin ivory ribbon, wondering if jewelry—even such simple jewelry—was proper during her supposed time of mourning for her cousin, the late Earl.
“Oh, pooh,” she said, allowing her hand to drop to her side, where it found occupation smoothing the skirt of her silver-grey gown. “What does it matter anyway, now that you’ve been so stupid as to express your true feelings about the man to a relative stranger—a relative stranger you have invited to dinner, and then dressed yourself up like some man-hungry spinster at her last prayers?”
She should have invited Lieutenant Fishbourne to join them as well, considering the fact that his warning to her was the main reason she had invited John Bates to dine. “Report any strangers to the area and any goings-on that appear peculiar,” the Lieutenant had cautioned her, and Elly had every intention of reporting John Bates and Hugo to the Lieutenant just as soon as she was sure if they were smugglers or spies. She only needed to squeeze a bit more pertinent information from Mr. John Bates so that she wouldn’t disgrace herself by turning in an innocent man.
“John Bates couldn’t be innocent,” she told herself reassuringly, hearing the brass door knocker bang loudly in the foyer, announcing her dinner guest’s arrival. “Nobody that handsome—or forward—could possibly be innocent.”
Stepping into the drawing room, she looked around to see that Leslie, who had been dutifully sitting in the blue satin striped chair when she had left the room, was nowhere to be found. “Leslie?” she hissed, looking about desperately as she heard footsteps approaching the room. “Leslie! You promised! Where are you?”
“Lose something?” a voice inquired from behind her just as she was peeking through the fronds of a towering fern in hopes of discovering her brother hiding behind it.
Straightening, Elly pasted on a deliberate smile and turned to greet her guest. “Lose something?” she repeated blankly. “Why, yes, I seem to have misplaced, um, my knitting. Mrs. Biggs, our housekeeper, appears to delight in hiding it from me.”
“You don’t knit, Elly. Never could, without making a botch of the thing.”
Elly swung about, to see Leslie down on all fours behind the settee. “Leslie!” she gritted under her breath. “Get up at once. What are you doing down there?”
Leslie Dalrymple, Earl of Hythe, rose clumsily to his feet, his pale blonde hair falling forward over his high forehead, his knees and hands dusty. “I was sitting quite nicely, just as you instructed, Elly, when a breeze from the doorway sent the loveliest dust bunny scurrying across the floor. See!” he demanded, holding up a greyish round ball of dust. “I think it’s just the thing to complete my arrangement of Everyday Things, don’t you?”
Elly didn’t know whether to hit her brother or hug him. He looked so dear, standing there holding his dust bunny as if it were the greatest treasure on God’s green earth, yet he was making the worst possible impression on John Bates. John Bates! Elly whirled to face her handsome guest, daring him with her eyes to say one word—one single, solitary word against her beloved brother.
Her fears, at least for the moment, proved groundless. John Bates, who had indeed witnessed all that had just transpired, only advanced across the width of the Aubusson carpet, his golden hair and beard glinting in the candlelight, his cane in his left hand as he favored his left leg, his right hand outstretched in greeting.
“My Lord Hythe, it is a distinct pleasure to meet you,” he said, his tone earnest even to Elly’s doubting ears. “I wish to thank you for agreeing to honor the rental arrangement made between the late Earl and myself. And, oh yes, please allow me to offer you condolences on your loss.”
Leslie looked down on the dust bunny. “But I didn’t lose it. See, I have it right here.”
“Mr. Bates is referring to our libertine cousin Alastair’s untimely death,” Elly corrected sweetly even as she glared at John Bates. He already knew how she felt about her late cousin. Why was he persisting in bringing it up again and again? Anyone would think they had killed the stupid man, for pity’s sake!
The dust bunny disappeared into Leslie’s coat pocket as he took John’s hand, wincing at the older man’s firm grip. “A strong one, aren’t you? Oh, you meant m’cousin, of course. Please excuse Elly. M’sister’s taken a pet against him for some reason, ever since his mourners wouldn’t stay to tea after the service, as a matter of fact. Rather poor sporting of her to my way of thinking, as the fellow’s dead, ain’t he—leaving the two of us as rich as Croesus into the bargain.”
“Leslie, please,” Elly begged quietly, steering the two men toward the settee and seating herself in the blue satin chair.
But Leslie was oblivious to his sister’s pleading. Seating himself comfortably, one long, skinny leg crossed over the other, he informed his guest, “I have been considering composing a picture to honor the late Earl and his accomplishments—only, I can’t seem to find that he actually accomplished anything, except a few things best not remembered. I’m an artist, you understand.”
“You wish to do a portrait?” Alastair asked, to Elly’s mind, a bit intensely.
Leslie waved his thin, artistic hands dismissingly. “No, no. Never a portrait. That’s so mundane—so ordinary. No, I wish to execute a chronicle of Alastair’s life, with symbols. For instance,” he expanded, thrilled to have found a new audience for his ideas, “if I were to do Henry the Eighth, I should include a bloody ax, a joint of meat, weeping angels, a view of the Tower—you understand?”
“What a unique concept, my lord,” Alastair complimented, his eyes shifting so that he was looking straight at Elly, who shivered under his penetrating, assessing grey gaze.
What was he looking at? she wondered. And why did she have the uncomfortable feeling that John Bates could prove to be a very dangerous man?
CHAPTER TWO
HE WAS STARING at Elinor Dalrymple; he knew he was, but he couldn’t help himself. Alastair had come to Seashadow to unmask the new Earl as his attacker. It had seemed so simple, so straight-forward—in a backhanded sort of way. But Leslie Dalrymple, bless his paper skull, wouldn’t harm a fly—even if he knew how. Alastair wasn’t so bent on revenge that he couldn’t see that.
Unfortunately, he told himself as Mrs. Biggs called them to the dinner table, that left only the sister, Elinor, to take Leslie’s place as suspect. Offering Elinor his arm to escort her in to dinner, and throwing a stern look at Mrs. Biggs, who so forgot herself as to begin a clumsy curtsey as he moved past (after she had done so well earlier when he had first arrived at the door), Alastair knew he had to rethink his deductions.
A man, after all, did not accuse another man of attempted murder without a wheelbarrow full of irrefutable evidence. Wasn’t the desire to accumulate evidence what had brought him, under an assumed identity, to Seashadow in the first place? But a man—at least any man who considered himself to be a gentleman—never accused a lady of anything.
Once he had helped Elinor to her seat and taken his own chair across from her, Alastair resumed staring at her, knowing he was dangerously close to being indiscreet, but unable to help himself. A woman! It had never occurred to him that his attacker could be a woman. Oh, certainly she had employed someone to actually perform the dirty deed—to conk him on the head and send him to a watery grave—but that didn’t make her any less guilty, did it?
This was going to take some getting used to, Alastair decided, deliberately smiling at Elinor Dalrymple, as if enchanted by her spinsterish charms and idly wondering if her small, shell-like ears really fit so snugly against the sides of her head or if her ruthlessly pulled-back hair had anything to do with it. He watched her spine straighten as it had on the beach and this time recognized the action as the proud, stiff-necked posture of one who has had more than a nodding acquaintance with poverty.
And with a brother like Leslie to support her, he considered thoughtfully, is it any wonder the two of them had been purse-pinched? He doubted he had to look much further for a motive.
“Do I have a smut on my nose?”
Alastair blinked, his attention caught by the question in Elinor’s voice, although he hadn’t quite comprehended what she had said, his attention still concentrated on her blonde hair as he tried to imagine her as she would look with it soft and loose against her high-cheeked face. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re staring, Mr. Bates,” she pointed out needlessly. “I wondered if there was something wrong with me that has put you off your food. You haven’t even touched your meal, and Big George has really outdone himself with the veal.”
“Yes, indeed, I have—” Alastair had always relished Big George’s way with veal—so much so that he nearly gave himself away, only catching himself in time to amend his conversation by ending, “always enjoyed a veal. Big George, you say? Is there also, perchance, a Little George running about somewhere?”
Leslie Dalrymple, his mouth full of veal, answered. “Little Georgie, actually, even though he’s past eighteen and fully grown. He doesn’t cook, though—big George won’t let him, at least, according to Mrs. Biggs, not since he set the capons on fire. Little Georgie just helps. Biggs is their name. You already met Mrs. Biggs, our housekeeper. Big George is her husband.”
“Making Little Georgie their son,” Elinor completed hastily. “It is as logical as it is boring, Leslie, my dear, and before you launch into a dissertation on all the other little Biggses running tame about Seashadow, I suggest a change of subject. Perhaps our guest would rather discuss something more worldly than our servant situation.” Leaning forward slightly, she went on encouragingly, “You served with Wellington perhaps, Mr. Bates? What battles were you in, exactly—and when?”
Alastair was amazed at the obvious intensity of her interest. He suddenly felt like a prisoner in the dock, undergoing a detailed cross-examination bent on exposing his guilt in some heinous crime. “Well, actually, madam, I didn’t see much action before—”
Leslie stuck out his bottom lip petulantly and interrupted, “Who cares, Elly? I wanted to tell Mr. Bates about Rosie.” He brightened slightly, looking to his sister. “I’m going to paint her, you know.”
“Yes, dearest, I do know,” Elinor said, reaching over to pat her brother’s hand. “Rosie will be a wonderful subject, once she cuts her second teeth. Now, why don’t you try some of those lovely peas?”
Alastair watched, bemused, as Leslie obediently picked up his fork and began to eat. Oh yes, there was no question as to just who was in charge here. Elinor Dalrymple of the flat ears, scraped-back hair, and miserable disposition—sitting at her brother’s right hand—was the real Earl of Hythe in all but name. Wait until he ran this one past Wiggins!
“Mr. Bates?”
Alastair looked across the table at Elinor, his grey eyes deliberately wide, his expression purposely guileless. If he had decided nothing else, he had decided that this woman was intelligent—which also made her dangerous. “Yes, Miss Dalrymple?”
“You were telling us about your time with Wellington,” she prompted, accepting a small serving of candied yams from the hovering Mrs. Biggs. “From the left, Mrs. Biggs. You serve from the left.”
“Do yer wants ’em or not, missy?” Mrs. Biggs challenged, glaring at Alastair as if begging his permission to dump the bowl on Elinor’s head. “Right, left. What does it matter? I’ve got Baby Willie crying in the kitchen, afraid of that horsey-faced brute, Hugo, and that lazy, good-for-nothin’ Lily nowheres ter be found.”
“Baby Willie’s crying?” Leslie exclaimed, hopping from his seat so quickly, the chair nearly toppled behind him. “We can’t have that, Elly, now can we?” He reached up to pull the large linen serviette from his shirt collar, where he had obediently tucked it after dripping soup on his neckcloth. “I know. I’ll make him a crow from this serviette—of course, it will be white rather than black, but then, that just adds to the romance of the thing, doesn’t it? I can use these peas for eyes,” he went on excitedly, filling his hand with the green vegetable before heading for the kitchens. “It will be famous, I vow it will! Here I come, Baby Willie! Caw! Caw!”
“Leslie, come back here—” Elinor began as Alastair hid a grin behind his own serviette. “Oh, what’s the use? It’s like speaking to the wind.”
His sense of the ridiculous overcoming his good manners, Alastair threw back his head and laughed aloud for a moment before sobering and apologizing almost meekly, “I’m sorry, Miss Dalrymple. I am but a lowly soldier sitting at an Earl’s table. I really shall have to cultivate more elegance of mind. But you have to own it, Miss Dalrymple—your brother is most amusing.”
Her brown eyes turned as black and forbidding as an angry sea. “You think he’s an utter addlepate, don’t you, Mr. Bates?” she accused hotly. “Well, perhaps he is, but Leslie is my addlepate, and I’ll thank you to keep your thoughts to yourself!”
Alastair waved his hands in front of his face, as if to ward off her accusations. “No, no, Miss Dalrymple, please don’t fly into the treetops. I meant nothing by it, really I didn’t. Besides, you are wrong. Your brother is not an addlepate. He’s rich, madam, which makes him a delightful eccentric. Only a poor man is an addlepate.”
There was a commotion in the kitchens that reached into the dining room, turning the heads of both its occupants toward the baize door just as Hugo exploded into the room, Leslie on his arm. “Elly, look! A giant. A Titan! Isn’t it above everything famous!”
Leslie turned delighted eyes to Alastair, who felt himself rapidly wilting beneath Elinor’s white-hot glare. He had brought Hugo along with him because he couldn’t feel right leaving him alone in the cottage. He’d had no idea the man’s presence would cause either Baby Willie’s tears or Leslie’s euphoria.
“Is he really yours?” Leslie went on in accents of rapture. “Mrs. Biggs says he is. Do you think I could borrow him? I’ve just had the happy notion of painting him—for comparison, you understand—alongside of Baby Willie, if that poor dear will ever stop crying. Hugo’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“Aaahh,” Hugo crooned softly, accepting the compliment most graciously by picking Leslie up by the coat collar with one hand and placing a smacking wet kiss on his lordship’s thin cheek.
Elinor leapt to her feet. “You brute! You put my brother down this instant!”
“Aaarrrggh!”
Feeling as if he had just stepped unawares into a Covent Garden farce, Alastair rose as well, ordering, “Don’t growl, Hugo. It isn’t polite. And put his lordship down; I think he’s having a spot of trouble getting his breath.”
“Dear me!” Leslie gulped, nervously smoothing his neckcloth as he gazed up at the giant. “He is a strong fellow, isn’t he? But not to worry, Elly, I’m convinced that Hugo and I will become fast friends. Won’t we, Hugo?”
The giant grinned, showing the gap between his teeth—the sight of which immediately transported Leslie into another bout of ecstasy—and gently patted the young man’s blonde head. “Glugg, glugg,” he crooned affectionately.
“That is it!” Elinor exclaimed, the high pitch of her voice clearly indicating that she was about to fly into the boughs. Alastair privately commended her restraint, for he should surely have exploded long ago had he been so pressed. “Leslie, excuse yourself,” she ordered in a voice that brooked no opposition, and her brother meekly left the room, turning only once, to wave goodbye to Hugo.
She then turned to Alastair and said coldly, “Mr. Bates, as you are living on the estate, we shall doubtless be forced to deal with each other from time to time—at least until I can have my brother’s solicitor make other arrangements for you. But for the moment, sir, I ask nothing from you other than that you retrieve your cane, whistle this brute to heel, and remove yourself from these premises at once!”