Mary Nichols - The Westmere Legacy

‘Then he may go hungry,’ his lordship said. ‘We have nearly finished. Put him in the drawing room to wait for us there.’

‘My lord, he is…’ Jolliffe paused. ‘He is somewhat dishevelled. I believe he has met with an accident.’

Bella gasped and even Elizabeth looked startled. Edward put down his cutlery and rose. ‘Is he hurt? Where is he?’

Robert himself appeared in the doorway behind Jolliffe. His beautiful cloth coat was torn and muddied, his cravat askew and he had lost his hat. What was worse, he had a bad cut over one eye which was encrusted with dried blood and a great purple bruise below it. He bowed to Elizabeth at the same time as he managed a quirky smile for Bella, who would have rushed forward to help him if the look he gave her had not halted her in her tracks. It warned her to be silent and not invite her grandfather’s close questioning. ‘A thousand apologies, ladies. I will take my leave until I am more presentable. Excuse me, my lord.’ To Edward he said, ‘Help me to my room, Teddy. Need a bath.’ He limped out of the room on the arm of his brother.

‘Well!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘Been brawling like a prize-fighter and dares to show his face in the dining room. What is the world coming to? No manners any more, no respect. Is it any wonder the lower classes defy their betters when they have no good example to live by.’

‘I am sure Robert has not been brawling,’ Bella said, wondering just what had happened. ‘No doubt he will enlighten us when he is feeling more the thing.’

‘Then let us retire to the drawing room, you and I,’ the Comtesse went on. ‘We shall have a comfortable coze, while his lordship and Louis talk business.’ And with that she took Bella’s arm in a very firm grip, curtsied to the Earl without relaxing it and almost dragged the girl to the drawing room.

‘Now,’ she said when they were seated and the teatray had been brought in, ‘tell me what has brought on this curious humour in my uncle. Have you noticed him behaving strangely lately? Not quite himself, eh?’

‘He has been perfectly at ease with himself, except for his gout. It troubles him a great deal but he will not take the doctor’s advice and refrain from drinking. He says gout has nothing to do with the claret and burgundy he consumes, but is caused by the wet weather we have been having. And he may be right. It has been the wettest spring anyone can remember and many of the fields are inundated, which does not make the labourers’ plight any easier. Farmers like James are in sad straits themselves and cannot pay their men who have to apply to the parish…’

‘Are you being purposely obtuse, Isabella? I care not a fig for the farmers, so long as they pay their rents on time. I am talking about this insane notion to marry you off for a legacy. I do believe old Hanson has put the old man up to it.’

Mr George Hanson was the Earl’s legal man. ‘Why should he do that?’

‘To try and disinherit Louis. He has never looked on my son with any favour. He sees him as a Frenchman and therefore to be viewed with suspicion, which is very hard on my poor boy who has spent almost his entire life in England and renounced his lands in France.’

‘Renounced them?’ Bella queried, dragging her mind from what was happening upstairs to pay attention. ‘I thought they had been taken from him by the Revolutionaries.’

‘They were, but there are moves afoot to restore them. They will be ruined and worthless by now, of course, and I do not wish to go back.’ She shuddered. ‘And if we are not careful the contagion will spread and we shall have revolution here, on our doorstep.’

‘Oh, no, surely not?’

‘I saw evidence on our journey here—ricks burned, barns pulled down and posters pinned to empty shops. “Bread or blood,” they say. It is how it started in France. We need steadfast people like Louis at the helm to prevent it. That is why it is so important his legacy should not be put up to auction.’

Bella would not have described Louis as steadfast, but she let that go. She smiled crookedly. ‘Is the notion of your son being married to me so distasteful, my lady?’

‘Oh, you are a pleasant enough chit but, tell me, what have you to recommend you to a man of the world like Louis? Tucked away in the country, the companion of an old man who has forgotten what it is like to be in Society, how can you possibly know how to go on? Louis needs someone from the ton, someone with presence, not a timid little mouse. The court is full of beautiful women and Colette has the ear of the Regent, who will advise us.’

It was not only the Regent’s ear Elizabeth’s daughter had, Bella thought irreverently. By all accounts she had been possessed of other parts of his anatomy on occasion. And Louis must be a poor apology for a man to allow his mother and sister to choose his bride for him. ‘I would not dream of coming between Louis and his aspirations at court,’ she said.

‘Good. Then we are agreed. You will refute this strange idea of the Earl’s and not choose any of them. I can promise you, on Louis’s behalf, that you will not be let starve.’

Bella supposed she was meant to be grateful for that, but before she could find a suitable reply his lordship and Louis had come into the room and she was obliged to busy herself, pouring tea for them. It was only when no one spoke that she realised both men looked furious. Louis was decidedly pink about the ears and the Earl’s face was almost purple. Bella was afraid he was going to have a fit of apoplexy.

‘Grandpapa, I do believe you have overtaxed yourself,’ she said. ‘Should you not go and lie down for a while?’

‘I will go when I am ready. Where are Edward and Robert?’

‘They have not come down again.’

He rang the bell furiously and sent the footman scurrying upstairs to summon the two young men. When they appeared, Robert had bathed and changed his clothes and was wearing a green frockcoat, pale brown pantaloons and tasselled Hessians, with a fresh shirt and a new cravat, though there was no disguising the injury to his face.

‘Well, what have you to say for yourself?’ his lordship asked when the young man had made his apologies for his earlier appearance.

‘I was on my way here when I was set upon by a mob,’ he said, seating himself and taking a cup of tea from Bella, who found her hand shaking so much the cup rattled in the saucer. ‘They were the equal of any bloodthirsty French soldiers I met on the battlefield. And I had no weapon, not that a gun would have availed me, there were too many of them. They pulled me from my horse and demanded my money.’

‘Where was this?’ Bella asked.

He turned to look at her, surveying her slowly, taking in the homely grey dress and heightened colour and deciding that her obvious effort to appear unattractive had had the opposite effect. She was lovely. ‘At the crossroads between here and Eastmere. They were marching and filling the whole road. I could not avoid them.’

‘I should hope you did not give in to them,’ Elizabeth said.

‘I would not be sitting here if I had not, but I did not submit without a protest, which is why one hothead dealt me a blow with the club he carried.’

‘Rabble,’ the Comtesse said. ‘Call out the militia. Hang the lot of them or we shall end up with our heads in a basket, just as it happened in France.’

‘Oh, I do not think so,’ Robert said mildly. ‘The cases are very different. These are simple men driven to excess. When I expressed my sympathy with them, they took the money I proffered and bade me proceed very civilly. They did not take other valuables, or my luggage, which is a blessing or I would have had nothing to wear but what I stood up in.’

‘Did you see Mr Trenchard?’ Bella asked.