Tea and Scandal Read online

  Lady Sykes had never quite managed to trace his relation to herself, but as they were both connected to Pargeter, she claimed kinship, and made the most of it.

  “Fenwick! What a delightful surprise!” she gushed. “Do come in. Should you not be in London, enjoying the Season?”

  Fenwick advanced gracefully across the room and made his bows all around. Then he lifted Phoebe’s hand and bestowed a kiss above it. “I followed my heart—to you, dear Cousin Phoebe. What should the ton be discussing but your absence?”

  She lapped it up like a hungry cat taking cream. “Flatterer! Who would miss poor old me?”

  “I not only missed you, my dear, but was so upset I asked Nigel where you were sequestering yourself, and came darting, ventre à terre, at once to find you.”

  “Chasing after a filly, in other words,” Scawen said.

  “Au contraire, Cousin.”

  “Eh? What do you mean?”

  “He means a filly is chasing after him, ninnyhammer,” Lady Sykes translated.

  Fenwick smiled a bland smile. “Actually, I am on my way to my hunting box. It is no matter. I am here. Let the revels begin.” He took a seat beside Phoebe. “What brings you to the wilds of Wildercliffe, Phoebe? Taking up hunting, are you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. How should I pay for a hunter?”

  “With money, like the rest of us. You have plenty of it.”

  As Lady Sykes had been flaunting her imaginary poverty as a pretext for challenging Pargeter’s will, she replied nobly, “I am poor as a church mouse, Fenwick.”

  “Ah, lost it all upon ‘Change, did you? Pity,” he said, with an air of utter indifference.

  “Call for the good wine, Scawen,” she said.

  “You make me feel as if I were at a wedding at Cana,” Fenwick murmured. “Actually, I would prefer tea, if it is not too much trouble.”

  “Coming right up,” Scawen said, and pulled the bell cord.

  Nothing was ever too much trouble for Scawen Swann. He was built low to the ground, like a badger. His sandy hair grew in a cowlick that no amount of brushing or water or oil could subdue. Jackets had a way of turning to wrinkles and spots as soon as they touched his back. He looked like a tramp, but his undemanding nature and generosity made him the most popular gentleman in the county.

  “Can you stay a day or two?” Scawen asked.

  It suited Lord Fenwick very well to remain incommunicado for a few days. A certain Lady Alice Merton was hot on his trail. He had claimed urgent business in Bath to escape her. His mama had retired there for the water. But as Lady Alice knew his mama, he had stopped at Bath only long enough to tell Lady Fenwick what he was up to.

  “Go to your hunting lodge,” his mama had suggested. “She will not be brass-faced enough to follow you there uninvited.”

  He felt Mama was a little optimistic in the matter. Lady Alice had followed him from London to Brighton, and had spoken of visiting cousins in Bath when he told her where he was going. She might very well show up at his lodge, but she could not ferret him out here as he had suppressed Swann’s name.

  “Of course, Fenwick will remain a few days,” Lady Sykes informed her host. “Give him the Gold Suite next to mine, Scawen. The south end of the house is less drafty.”

  Fenwick gave a mischievous smile. “Take care, Phoebe, or our little secret will be out.”

  She responded with a coy smirk. If any of her friends had made such a suggestive comment, she would have given him a sharp rebuke. As Fenwick was a wealthy marquess, the remark was not only tolerated but would be repeated to her friends, and especially her many enemies, when she returned to civilization.

  “Nigel tells me your visit has to do with old Pargeter’s death,” Fenwick said. “Made you his heir, has he? I made sure Soames would be his beneficiary.”

  It was like a spark to tinder. “What need has Harold Soames of money, I should like to know? He’s rich as Croesus. Pargeter did not leave myself or Nigel a single sou!” she announced, eyes flashing. “Within months of poor Lizzie’s death, he married his housekeeper under extremely odd circumstances and left her the lot—Wildercliffe, a fortune of at least fifty thousand, to say nothing of Lizzie’s jewelry. I should say the housekeeper claims Harold married her. No one has seen the marriage certificate. The local vicar did not marry them, for I asked him.”

  Scawen said, “Special license, justice of the peace.” No one paid him any attention.

  A frown pleated Fenwick’s brow. “This wants looking into,” he said. “You ought to hire a lawyer.”

  “I have already hired a fellow called Belton.”

  “What does he say?”

  “He is looking into it,” she said unhappily. “The whole neighborhood is up in arms against the woman. Lord Malton does not visit her, and he, you must know, was Pargeter’s bosom bow. She is invited nowhere. She must be talking to the walls, for she sees no one but the servants.”

  Scawen cleared his throat and said, “Did I mention she has a visitor? I saw Pargeter’s traveling carriage coming from the direction of Bath this afternoon. A young lady got out at Wildercliffe. Had some trunks with her.”

  Lady Sykes turned pale. “You never told me so!”

  “You never asked."

  “You know I am keenly interested in everything that goes forth at Wildercliffe. What was she like, this so-called lady?”

  “She was youngish,” Scawen said.

  There followed a ten-minute futile discussion about who the visitor could be. In the end, Lord Fenwick suggested they should call on the soi-disant Lady Pargeter the next morning to discover it for themselves.

  “I shall send Belton. We do not call on the housekeeper,” Lady Sykes said haughtily.

  “The more fool you,” Fenwick said. “Assuming the housekeeper did marry Pargeter, it is clear as glass that she coerced him in some manner. He was past seventy. I wonder if he was compos mentis at the time of the wedding.”

  “The very fact that he married his housekeeper is enough to tell you his brain was addled,” she said angrily.

  “Has Belton looked into this possibility?”

  “The devil of it is that Pargeter seldom left home after Lizzie’s death, so no one saw him. The servants are sticking by the housekeeper—one of their own, you see. They are all in it together, and living like kings on Pargeter’s money.”

  “If Pargeter had reverted to childhood in his last year, there might be some indication of it about the place,” Fenwick said. “Toys in his room, or scribbling on the walls ...”

  “She has got rid of any such evidence. Belton says they put on a good show when he calls. She suggested he go ahead and lay charges, and she would hire her own lawyer. Meanwhile, she would answer no more questions. The last time he called, she refused to see him. The impertinence of the creature!”

  “It certainly wants looking into,” Fenwick said. “I shall call on Lady Pargeter tomorrow. Will you come with me, Phoebe?”

  “That I will not! I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction, but you go by all means, dear Fenwick. You are sharp as a bodkin. You will see if anything is amiss. I am curious, as well, to hear a report on her new cohort. If you can discover her name, Belton will look into her background.”

  Fenwick was concerned at what he had heard. He was aware of Lady Sykes’s habit of exaggerating matters and imagining wrongs, but it did seem suspicious that the exceedingly wealthy and toplofty Lord Pargeter had married his housekeeper. If there had been any havey-cavey business about it, it should be cleared up. It would enliven his visit to look into the matter.

  One did not retire at Swann Hall without inquiring of the host for his swans. Some men took pride in their families, or their cattle, some in their horses. For Scawen, swans were his reason for existence.

  “How do the swans go on, Scawen?” he asked.

  Scawen shook his head. “Terrible. We are down to two pairs—and of course, their cygnets. And of the two pairs, Darby and Joan are old as the hills. That leave
s only Wilkie and Minerva. We lost our black swans, Diablo and Dorothy. Black swans were to be my contribution to Swann Hall. Papa built the conservatory; Grandpapa built the belvedere. I can’t think of anything else to build.” Swann Hall was a huge, rambling house built in a variety of styles, all managing to cohere into one interesting, if not beautiful, whole.

  “What happened to the other swans?” Fenwick asked.

  “I suspect the poachers took a couple of pairs. Henri and Rita died of old age. Bertie was used to sleep on the road—for the warmth in the paving stones, you know. A carriage got him one night. And some of ‘em flew away. When Darby and Joan go, I am down to a pair. What is Swann Hall without swans?”

  They discussed the securing of the remaining swans for half an hour. Scawen had run off the poachers, but why the swans were leaving was still to be determined.

  “We shall have a look tomorrow,” Fenwick said.

  “I wish you would, Fen, for you know the old legend. When the swans die out, the Swanns die out as well.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Scawen,” Lady Sykes snapped. “Of course, if the swans die, the swans die.”

  “No, but I mean the Swanns,” Scawen said.

  “With a capital S, Phoebe,” Fenwick translated. “And a double n at the ending.”

  “Rubbish, you are thinking of the swans at Longleat,” she declared.

  “There have never been Swanns at Longleat,” Scawen said, becoming annoyed.

  “No swans at Longleat? Why, they’re famous.”

  “Again, Swanns with a capital S,” Lord Fenwick informed Phoebe.

  “And furthermore,” Scawen added, for he was becoming testy at Lady Sykes’s overbearing manner, “if Pargeter left his blunt to anyone, it’s more likely he would leave it to me than Nigel, for I was like a son to him. He didn’t care for me in the least. Always told me I was a fool—just like Papa.”

  A raucous snort from the far sofa told them Gurney had fallen asleep. His sister looked at him with loathing. “Dear Horace—he has fallen asleep,” she said, smiling at Fenwick. “I should retire as well. And you must be fagged after your trip, Fenwick. I shall speak to Morton about the Gold Suite.”

  She left, and the gentlemen settled in for some masculine conversation about horses and boxing matches and politics.

  Chapter Three

  At Wildercliffe, Jane awoke to see sunlight filtering through the rose window hangings. She leapt up with a gasp of alarm and reached for her watch. Eight-thirty! She would be late for class! Then she shook herself fully awake and lay back against the soft down pillow, smiling at her great fortune. She could sleep in this beautiful, soft, warm bed in this marvelous bedchamber until noon if she chose. Yet she was eager to be up and doing.

  There was so much to explore and so much to discuss with her aunt that she rose at once. What luxury to pull a cord and have hot water delivered to your room. Meg, one of the young maids, brought her tea. “To get you going,” she said. “And if you want a girl to help you dress, ma’am, you’ve only to say so.”

  Jane declined the offer and made her own modest toilette. At school she wore dark gowns, but the sunlight streaming through the window told her it was spring, and she reached for her blue mulled muslin. It was too wrinkled to wear, however, so she put it and a few other items aside for pressing and wore the dark blue serge gown she wore at school, adding her Sunday fichu of lace at the throat and her late mama’s sardonyx cameo brooch.

  As her aunt was still in bed, she ate alone in the breakfast room, which looked out on a formal rose garden. After a quarter of an hour, the silence began to close in on her. She could understand what Fay meant by the thorns in this rose bower she had inherited. It was the thorn of lonesomeness. Even the servants didn’t speak. They crept up on silent feet, to appear suddenly at your elbow, holding a coffeepot or a rack of toast.

  * * * *

  A much noisier breakfast was going forth at Swann Hall. After breakfast, it was only Lord Fenwick and Swann who headed out for Wildercliffe, Fenwick mounted on his chestnut hacker and Swann on a large, docile gray mare that just suited his temperament. Lady Sykes was eager to get into the house, but insisted she would not give the housekeeper the satisfaction of a call. What “satisfaction” a call from the termagant could bring required a deal of imagination. There was no question of Horace Gurney visiting Wildercliffe. He never went anywhere unless under duress, and seldom left his bedchamber before noon.

  Swann Hall and Wildercliffe sat on opposite ends of a long, crescent-shaped lake. Fenwick had been to Wildercliffe a few times in the past, but as he visited dozens of stately homes, he had no sharp memory of it. Like Jane, he was surprised anew at its magnificence. His keen eyes observed that, whatever the character of the new Lady Pargeter, she had not let the estate deteriorate. The crops and flock were prospering; the fences were maintained, the tenant farms in good repair. Pargeter would have had a good bailiff, of course.

  “Lady Pargeter ain’t as bad as Phoebe says,” Scawen mentioned, as they rode along.

  “One always takes Phoebe’s tendency to exaggerate into account,” Fenwick said, “but it’s deuced odd that Pargeter married an underbred woman, and so soon after his wife’s death. And left one of the finest estates in the country to his housekeeper, who had been his wife for only a few months. You don’t suspect foul play?”

  “Eh?”

  “Do you think it possible this Rampling woman was involved in Pargeter’s death?”

  “It never ever entered my head. Why would she do that?”

  “To hasten along her inheritance. Why else would she marry a man in his seventies?”

  “Maybe she liked him. Seems hard to believe, but there’s no accounting for taste. Sykes married Phoebe. Lizzie liked Pargeter. Lizzie liked Miss Rampling, too. Bosom bows.”

  “Was Rampling at the house long?”

  “A decade, give or take a year.”

  “Where did she come from?”

  “She never said, but she seemed genteel whenever I had anything to do with her. Lizzie always said she didn’t know how she could get along without Rampling. I daresay Pargeter felt the same.”

  Miss Rampling sounded like a cunning rogue to Fenwick. The manipulative sort of woman who knew how to make herself essential to an aging couple. A woman who came from nowhere and ended up queen of the castle in a decade had to be uncommonly sly, to say the least.

  * * * *

  At Wildercliffe, Lady Pargeter had joined Jane in the morning parlor. It was she who spotted the callers from the breakfast room as they approached through the meadow.

  “Scawen Swann is coming!” she exclaimed in some excitement. “He used to be a regular visitor when Lizzie and Pargeter were alive, but he has not come since Lady Sykes battened herself on him. I wonder what mischief he is up to. There’s someone with him. Could it be—no, it’s not Belton.”

  Jane hastened to the window to get a preview of the callers. Fay pointed out Swann, but it was at the other rider that Jane looked. He was every inch a gentleman and looked very dashing mounted on a prime piece of horseflesh, with his curled beaver tilted jauntily over one eye. The straight shoulders and head held high gave him an uncommonly proud air.

  “Who is the other gentleman?” she asked, as the pair drew closer.

  “Would it be Nigel Sykes, all grown up, I wonder? I’ve not seen him for five years. Let us greet them in the Blue Saloon, Jane. There’s not time to clear away our breakfast here.”

  The ladies rushed into the grand chamber, to be found idly thumbing through magazines when Broome announced, “Lord Fenwick and Mr. Swann.”

  “Show them in, Broome,” Lady Pargeter said in a haughty voice, with a wink at Jane. “It’s not Nigel, thank God,” she added aside.

  Jane was nervous at the prospect of meeting a lord. She knew from her days at Miss Prism’s that lords could cause no end of bother. When the gentlemen were shown in, her vague concern crystallized to alarm. She scarcely looked at Swann; one glance at hi
s rather simple, smiling face told her he was harmless.

  It was Lord Fenwick who caught her attention. First she observed that he was taller than average, and wearing an exquisitely tailored jacket of blue Bath cloth. She had never seen a cravat arranged so impeccably, nor top boots gleam so brightly. But she had been right that he was proud. Pride and suspicion marred what was otherwise a handsome face. She knew by his sharp expression and his darting, clever eyes that he was bent on mischief.

  After a cursory examination of her aunt, those steel-hard eyes turned to examine her. She had been raked from head to toe by men before, most recently by Fortini. Lord Fenwick’s examination was not of that sort. It was cold, insolent. She felt her spine stiffen, and her dutiful smile of welcome dwindle to annoyance.

  Scawen Swann introduced his houseguest. Fenwick had been expecting the “housekeeper” would be a common sort of woman, overdressed and underbred. He was surprised to encounter a modest-looking lady. She was not dripping in diamonds, or sitting with her legs crossed, or drinking brandy. When his eyes turned to her cohort, he found an even more interesting female.

  It was only the wary, angry expression on Miss Lonsdale’s face that gave him any cause for suspicion, for her appearance was unexceptionable. Her blue eyes gazed at him from beneath long lashes. She wore her soft brown hair bundled neatly back from her face. Her complexion was of a ladylike pallor, and her demeanor was modest. Her dark blue gown was almost excessively so. She looked like a typical poor relation, or a governess. In fact, the whole scene was so genteel, it might have been set up to impress a caller. They would have seen him and Swann coming through the meadow.