Valentine

Chapter Five

The door to the earl's bedroom stood open. Theo paused in the corridor outside. She'd been in that room many times, particularly in the weeks leading up to her grandfather's death. She knew the elaborate carving of the bedposts, could trace in her mind's eye the whorls and twists that her hand had played over during the interminable vigils she had kept by the bedside. She knew the rich serpentine designs on the embroidered canopy, matching the patterns in the Chinese carpet. She thought she knew every knot in the paneling, every thin fissure in the plaster ceiling.

The room was empty, and she stepped through the doorway, looking round. The furnishings hadn't changed, and yet the room felt different. Her grandfather's spirit no longer inhabited it, the faint musty smell of sickness and old age was gone. The new earl's possessions were scattered round, his silver-backed hairbrushes on the dresser, his boot jack beside the armoire, unfamiliar books in the bookshelves.

Her eye fell on the portrait of her father in his dress uniform. It hung above the fireplace, opposite the bed, where her grandfather could see it whenever he was awake. He'd had it hung there, he'd told her once, so that it was the first thing he saw in the morning and the last thing at night. And it hung there now for the indifferent eyes of a Gilbraith.

The anger and frustration – inextricable with her grief and never far from the surface these days – rose anew, closing her throat, contracting her scalp, filling her eyes with bitter tears. She stepped farther into the room, drawing close to the portrait. Viscount Belmont smiled out at her, his hand on his sword, his blue eyes as clear as rainwashed pools. She tried to conjure up her own memories of that face, of his voice, of his scent. She could remember his arms round her when he lifted her onto her pony. She thought she could remember his voice, deep and warm, calling her his madcap Theo…

"Can I help you, cousin?"

She spun round at the earl's slightly ironic voice behind her. She had no right to be in this room… not anymore…not without an invitation from its present owner. She looked at him blindly, seeing not Sylvester Gilbraith but the embodiment and cause of her grief and the deep rage that accompanied it.

She flung out a hand as if to ward him off and moved to push past him.

"Hey, not so fast!" He caught her arm, turning her sharply to face him. "What are you doing in my room, Theo?"

"What do you think I'm doing, my lord?" she demanded. "Stealing something? Spying on you, perhaps?"

"Don't be foolish," he said brusquely. "Were you looking for me?"

"Why ever would I want to do that?" she demanded, her voice heavy with scorn and the tears she wouldn't shed. "If I never laid eyes on you again, I'd be very happy, Lord Stoneridge."

Sylvester's quick indrawn breath told her she'd gone too far, but she didn't care, blindly wanting to wound the man who was standing where her father should be standing. She pulled her arm free and pushed him aside.

Sylvester seized her plait, preventing further progress. "No, you don't," he said furiously. "I am sick to death of this incivility. What the hell have I done to deserve it?"

"You don't have to do anything… you just have to be," she exclaimed in a low voice. "And if you're too insensitive to understand that, sir, let me tell you that that's my father's portrait hanging on your wall!"

Startled, he turned to look behind him, dropping her braid. Theo took advantage of her release and left him, almost running in her anxiety to get away before she was overcome by her tears.

Sylvester swore softly, but he made no attempt to go after her. He examined the portrait, wishing he'd noticed it early enough to avert that scene. He hadn't realized who it was. The house was full of family portraits.

He went in search of Foster. "Have the portrait of Viscount Belmont moved into Lady Theo's room, Foster. Unless Lady Belmont would prefer it."

"Lady Belmont has her own pictures of the late viscount, my lord," Foster informed him gravely. "But I'm sure Lady Theo will appreciate the gesture."

"Yes… good," the earl muttered.

That done, he turned his thoughts to dealing with Theo. He'd been in the house two days, and whenever Theo couldn't manage to avoid him, she was abominably rude to him. So far, he'd failed to persuade her even to ride round the estate with him. It was hardly a promising courtship. Perhaps that devious old devil had known he'd be on a fool's quest and had relished the thought of making a laughingstock of his unknown but detested heir.

He strode through the open doors of the drawing room onto the long stone terrace. Perhaps that was it, and he'd fallen into the trap through greed… through need, he amended, sitting on the low stone wall separating the terrace from the sweep of green lawn.

And it wasn't just the need for money. He needed a purpose, a function, in the world, and managing an estate the size of Stoneridge would take all his skills. He'd joined the army at the beginning of the war – or rather the first Revolutionary war. The present battle against Napoleon was a different matter from those early skirmishes with the untried ragtag French revolutionaries. For fifteen years the army had been his life. There'd been women… some passionate affairs… but they'd been part of the heady excitement of the war, the deprivations, the terrors, the fierce exultations of victory. He'd felt no urge to marry, to set up his nursery. For the last twelve years, after the death of Kit Belmont, he'd known he would come into the Stoneridge title and inheritance, and he'd been content to wait for that time before committing himself to marriage, children, and new responsibilities.

And then Vimiera had happened – twelve months in a stinking French jail in Toulouse. And then the court-martial.

He stood up abruptly, beginning to pace the length of the terrace. He'd been acquitted of cowardice. But not in the hearts and minds of his peers. He'd resigned his commission, ostensibly because of the lingering effects of his head wound, but everyone knew the real reason. He couldn't endure the turned shoulders. He would have returned to the Peninsula a marked man, the story flying ahead of him. There would be endless humiliations, some small, some large. And he didn't have the courage to face them down.

Not when he didn't know what had happened. How could he defend himself when he didn't know exactly what had happened?

Gerard had said he was on his way with reinforcements… that he hadn't delayed. But, goddammit, if there'd been no delay, how the hell had he been cut off so completely? He'd been hanging on for support as his men fell around him… He could remember thinking…

Sylvester pressed his fingers into his temples, feeling the ominous tightening in the skin. Thinking what? He could remember nothing clearly of that afternoon, and yet something was there, a shadow of knowledge.

"Is something wrong, Lord Stoneridge?"

Elinor's soft voice broke into the spiraling confusion of his thoughts. He looked up, his expression dazed, his fingers still massaging his temples.

"You don't look well," she said, coming swiftly toward him. She reached up to lay a cool hand on his brow. His skin was clammy, and he was as pale as a ghost, his eyes no longer cool and penetrating, but shadowed with that pain she'd sensed in him from the beginning.

He shook his head, trying to calm his rioting thoughts and the desperate struggle for memory. Elinor's concerned expression penetrated the confusion, and her hand was cool on his brow. Mercifully, he felt the tension behind his temples ease, and he knew that this time he was going to be spared the agony.

"I'm quite well, thank you, ma'am," he said, forcing a smile. "A troublesome memory, that's all."

Elinor didn't press it. "Has Theo introduced you to Mr. Beaumont, the bailiff, as yet?"

"Your daughter, ma'am, has not seen fit to address a civil word to me in the last three days," he said caustically. "Let alone offer me any assistance in learning about the estate. I should tell you that I begin to lose patience."

"Well, perhaps that's for the best," Elinor said in a musing tone. "Something needs to shock her out of her present frame of mind." She bent down and pulled an errant weed from between the flagstones.

"I don't think I understand you, Lady Belmont."

Elinor straightened, examining the weed with a frowning concentration that it hardly warranted. "Theo hasn't grieved properly for her grandfather yet, Lord Stoneridge. I suspect she won't be herself again until she's able to do so. Perhaps we've indulged her sufficiently and it's time to provoke that grieving."

"I'm still not sure I understand you." Sylvester knew he was being given some valuable advice but wasn't quite sure what he was to do with it.

Elinor smiled slightly. "Follow your instincts, Lord Stoneridge, and see where they take you."

"Mama, the seamstress is here." Emily appeared round the corner of the terrace. "She has the samples for the new curtains, and there's one I particularly… Oh, good morning, Lord Stoneridge. I beg your pardon for interrupting." Her tone lost much of its exuberance as she offered him a small bow. "I didn't realize you were talking with Mama."

"Please don't apologize, cousin," he said, returning her bow. "Your mother and I were simply passing the time of day."

Elinor linked her arm in her daughter's, offering his lordship a half smile and a little nod, as if to say, You know what to do now. "We'll meet at nuncheon, Lord Stoneridge."

Sylvester watched them go off arm in arm. Lady Belmont seemed to think she'd been perfectly clear, but for the life of him, he couldn't interpret her words.

He strolled across the lawn, intending to walk to the cliff top, hoping that the sea air and fresh breeze would bring enlightenment. He hadn't gone more than twenty feet before he tripped over a pair of sturdy stockinged legs sticking out from beneath a bush.

"Ouch! You made me drop it!" An indignant Rosie crawled backward out of the bush and glared up at him, the sun glinting off her lenses. "You made me drop it," she repeated.

"Drop what?"

"A grasshopper. It was sawing its back legs together… that's how they make that noise. I most particularly wanted it for my museum. Theo was going to help me mount it."

Sylvester frowned at this other member of the Belmont family who held him in scant regard. "Well, I beg your pardon, but your feet were sticking out like a booby trap."

"Well, only a booby wouldn't have been looking where he was going," the child said, diving headlong back beneath the bush.

Sylvester raised his eyes heavenward. How was it that two daughters had tongues like razors and the other two were apparently as sweet-natured and malleable as a man could wish? And why, oh why, couldn't fate have offered him one of the sweet ones?

"There's no call to be uncivil," he said to the stockinged legs.

"I wasn't," came the muffled response. "But booby traps catch boobies, don't they? Otherwise they wouldn't be called that, would they?"

"There is a certain inexorable logic in that," he said with a twitch of his lips. "Nevertheless, child, you could find a more courteous way to make your point."

Shaking his head, Sylvester continued on his way.

Theo didn't appear at nuncheon, but no one seemed troubled by her absence. "I expect she's been offered hospitality with one of the tenant farmers, my lord," Clarissa said in answer to the earl's question. Her voice was a little cool, as if he had no right to question her sister's whereabouts. They had a way of closing ranks, these Belmonts.

"Theo's at home in every kitchen on the estate, sir," Emily said. "She always has been… since she was a little girl."

"I see." Frowning, Sylvester turned his attention to the ham in front of him. "May I carve you some ham, Lady Belmont?"

While he was sitting around the table making polite small talk and carving ham like some ancient paterfamilias, his energetic, managing young cousin was dealing with the business that kept the establishment going. It wasn't to be tolerated another day.

Elinor accepted a wafer-thin slice of ham, noticing the tautness of his mouth, the jumping muscle in his drawn cheek. She could guess the direction of his thoughts. Whether Theo agreed to marry the Earl of Stoneridge or not, Stoneridge Manor was no longer hers, and Elinor suspected that its lord was soon going to make that clear to her daughter in no uncertain terms.

Theo hadn't returned when it was time to dress for dinner, and Elinor felt the first stirrings of anxiety. "Did Lady Theo mention where she was going this morning, Foster?" she asked as she crossed the hall on her way upstairs.

"I don't believe so, my lady." Foster lit the branched candelabra on the long table by the front door.

"Are you concerned, ma'am?" Sylvester had overheard the question as he left the library, a ledger under his arm.

"No… no, of course not." Elinor spoke with an assurance that didn't convince Sylvester, or the butler. "Theo often goes out all day. It's just that usually…" She shook her head. "She does usually send a message if she's going to be particularly late." Sylvester waited until she was out of earshot on the first landing; then he said, "Is there cause for concern, Foster? Should we send some people in search?"

"I don't believe so, my lord. Everyone knows Lady Theo." If an accident had befallen her, someone would have sent word." "But she could have had a fall in a field somewhere," he suggested.

"Possibly, my lord, but unlikely." Foster turned toward the baize door leading to the kitchen regions. Sylvester sighed. The message had been clear: The butler didn't share his family concerns with an outsider.

The butler didn't, the bailiff didn't, the housekeeper didn't. And as for the tenants and villagers, he might as well be a fly-by-night visitor for all the attention they paid him.

He stalked upstairs to his own room, where Henry was laying out his clothes for the evening.

Henry cast his lordship a quick glance and decided this was not a good evening for chat. When Major Gilbraith wore that particular look, a wise man kept a low profile. He poured hot water into the basin and busied himself brushing down a dark-blue coat and cream pantaloons while the earl washed the day's dust from face and hands and put on a clean shirt.

"Henry, how do you find the people in these parts?" the earl asked abruptly, stepping into his pantaloons. "Find 'em… not sure what you mean, sir." Henry passed his lordship a starched square of snowy linen. "Will you be wanting the diamond stud, sir?"

"Thank you." Sylvester fastened the folds of his cravat with the diamond stud and peered critically at his reflection before turning for his coat. "Do you find them friendly?"

"In the taproom of the inn, sir, folks are friendly enough," Henry said, wondering where this was leading.

"And in the house?"

"A bit wary, like," Henry admitted, smoothing the coat over his lordship's shoulders with a pat and a twitch. "Weston has a good cut, m'lord. Better for you than Stultz."

Henry had been a gentleman's gentleman before joining the army and finding himself in a French prison with the sorely wounded, fever-racked Major Gilbraith. He was more than happy now to have resumed his previous profession and, after the long months of nursing the major back to health, was a more than competent nurse when the crippling headaches struck. Indeed, he was the only person Sylvester could bear to have around him, to witness the hideous degradation of that nauseating, intolerable agony.

"Do they say much about the new earl?" Sylvester asked with a wryly quirked eyebrow.

"Not too much… leastways not in my hearing, m'lord."

"No, I suppose they wouldn't. What about Lady Theo?"

"Oh, she's everyone's darlin', m'lord," Henry said. "Can't do a thing wrong. The apple of his late lordship's eye."

"Mmm." Sylvester picked up his hairbrushes and tidied his close-cropped curls. "Spoiled, to put it another way."

"As I understand it, sir, she's suffering something powerful over her grandfather's death," Henry said. "Leastways that's what folks say. She's not herself, they say."

"I sincerely hope not," Sylvester murmured, slipping a lacquered snuffbox into his coat pocket before going down to the drawing room, bracing himself for another strained evening with Theo.

Emily and Clarissa were standing at the open window when he entered the drawing room. They were gazing out intently across the lawn where the evening shadows were lengthening.

"I don't imagine she'd come back this way," Clarissa said, turning back to the room with a sigh. "Not from the stables."

"No sign of the truant, then?" Stoneridge asked, trying to sound cheerfully casual. He crossed to the pier table. "Sherry, ma'am? Or would you prefer madeira?"

"Sherry, thank you. No, Theo's not back yet." Elinor's smile was tight as she accepted the glass he brought her.

"Foster seemed convinced that if there'd been some mishap, one of the tenants would have brought news."

"Yes, that's true… but…" She bent to her embroidery. "The estate is very large and there are many areas that are off the beaten track."

"Perhaps we should send…" Emily's soft voice faded as Theo's energetic tones came from the hall.

"They're not already at dinner, are they, Foster? I can't believe how late it is… Oh, Mama, I'm so sorry…" The drawing room door flew open and Theo ran across the room, holding out her hands. "I had no idea how far I'd ridden. Were you dreadfully worried?" She bent to kiss her mother, seizing her hands in a fierce grip.

"I was about to become so," Elinor said calmly, but the relief in her eyes was clear as the tension left her shoulders.

"Well, I'm back, and absolutely starved." Theo threw her hat, gloves, and whip onto a side table. "And I'm truly, truly sorry for frightening you all." She offered her mother and sisters a conciliatory smile. "Am I forgiven?"

"I'd prefer it didn't happen again," Elinor said, sipping her sherry.

"It won't." Theo poured herself a glass of sherry, ignoring the earl, who was standing by the fireplace, resting one arm on the mantel shelf, his own glass in his other hand. "It must be dinnertime," she said hungrily. "The most wonderful smells are coming from the kitchen."

Her boots were mud splattered, the skirts of her riding habit white with dust, the collar of her shirt creased and limp, her hair escaping from its pins in a blue-black cloud around her face. She looked tired, but healthily so, and thoroughly disheveled.

Abruptly, Sylvester realized that he'd reached the end of his patience. He glanced at Lady Elinor, expecting her to say something about her daughter's unceremonious entrance and appearance. Elinor merely sipped her sherry. What had she said earlier that morning about having indulged Theo's unspoken grief long enough… that it was time to shock her out of her present frame of mind? Elinor had told him to follow his instincts, and right now his instincts told him it was time to make a stand.

"Forgive me, Cousin Theo," he said crisply, "but I don't consider riding dress to be appropriate at the dinner table."

Theo whirled on him, her eyes dark. "And what business is it of yours, pray?"

"It happens to be my dinner table, cousin; therefore, I consider it to be very much my business."

Theo went white beneath the gold of the sun's bronzing. "Yours?"

"Mine," he affirmed quietly. "And I don't accept riding dress at my dinner table." Stretching his arm, he pulled the bell rope hanging beside the fireplace.

Foster appeared immediately in the stunned silence. "Would you ask Cook to put dinner back for fifteen minutes?" the earl requested politely.

He turned back to Theo as Foster left. "You have fifteen minutes, cousin… unless, of course, you'd prefer to have a tray in your room."

"Mama?" Theo swung round on her mother, her eyes both enraged and appealing.

Elinor didn't look up from her embroidery. "Lord Stoneridge is entitled to set his own rules in his own house, Theo."

How could her mother betray her in this fashion? Stunned, Theo stared at Elinor's bent head.

Lord Stoneridge glanced pointedly at the clock.

Clarissa came swiftly across the room. "Come, Theo, I'll help you change. It won't take a minute."

Theo shook herself free of her numbed daze. Her eyes focused, flitting across the earl's impassive countenance before she turned to her sister. Her voice was distant but even. "No, it's all right, Clarry. I find I'm not in the least hungry." Turning on her heel, she left the drawing room, her skirts swishing with her long, impatient stride.

Hotheaded gypsy! He hadn't intended to deprive her of her dinner, but it damn well was his house. Sylvester refilled his glass as Elinor calmly instructed Clarissa to pull the bell for Foster again.

"Foster, you may serve dinner immediately," she said when the butler appeared. "Lady Theo won't be joining us."

"I hope she's not indisposed, my lady." Foster looked concerned.

"I don't believe so," Elinor said, laying down her embroidery. "Shall we go in, Lord Stoneridge?"

Sylvester offered his arm, following her lead.