Synopsis
Book by Hingston Sandy
Extrait
Jack was bloody freezing. There was snow on the roof, snow on the wheels, snow edged up in little shifting mountains along the carriage windows, snow in his beard, in his teeth, in his ears. Every time he moved on the frozen leather of the seat, his breeches crackled. They'd turned to ice in his effort--successful after God knew how many tries--to help the driver push the heavy coach out of a wayward drift.
He banged at the window to clear away the snow and stared out at the bleak, barren Lincolnshire winter he'd thought never to see again except in his uneasy dreams. "Almost there, m'lord!" the coachman called with unwelcome cheeriness. Jack pulled a flask of rum from his waistcoat and took a long swallow. The liquor tasted sweet and warm as the island sun.
God, what a misbegotten adventure. Two months' passage in the worst bloody weather, lacking only a hurricane to really brighten his mood. The awful rush and clamor of London after Castries' lovely, small felicity. The English winter, unspeakably drab, while in his mind lush tangles of jasmine and passionflower stretched and curled their tendrils over a balcony that now seemed only a dream. Was there a St. Lucia? Was there a Camille, fragrant as jasmine, more beautiful than the blossoms always set beside her bed? He might have been with her now, relishing the smooth curves of her body, feeling her open beneath him like the slow, sweet petals of a moonflower. . . . The force of the image was startling; he realized that his manhood was at stark attention just as the carriage lumbered through the pair of iron gates that led to his ancestral home.
They jolted to a stop. Jack braced himself against the sides of the coach. He was a tall man, more than six-foot-three; anyone shorter could not have spanned the two sides with his hands. He felt a sneeze coming on, and thought he'd conquered it until the footman flung the door open to the blinding cold. "Your Lordship!" he cried. "Welcome home!"
"Aaah--choo!" Jack said, and shuddered in his frozen clothes.
He climbed stiffly down the stairs and staggered toward Avenleigh House. The footman was babbling about how glad they all were to see him, how sorry they were the circumstances should be so unfortunate-- "Open the bloody damned doors!" Jack snapped, hands wrapped around his chest. The fellow did, and he entered, hacking and coughing. He felt for his handkerchief, blew an enormous blast, and cursed the folly of his return.
The butler had come forward. "Mrs. Gravesend awaits you in the green parlor, milord," he intoned with gloomy hauteur.
"God, Bellows, you antique. Are you still here? To hell with Mrs. Gravesend. I want a bed."
"Your Lordship's rooms have not yet been prepared. You must be aware, we had no notion when Your Lordship might be arriving, what with the inclement--"
"You listen to me, you bloody stuffed shirt. You show me to a bed now, immediately, or I'll--I'll--" Jack's threat was subsumed by another huge sneeze.
"As His Lordship wishes," the butler murmured, with a handsome bow. "Won't you come this way?"
The image of pillows, down quilts, blankets, was nearly as seductive as that of Camille. Jack stumbled forward in the butler's wake, heading for the stairs. He'd nearly reached them when a door off the entrance hall burst open and a plump, short woman with a tangle of brown hair shot with gray emerged, tripped toward him, and caught him in her arms.
"Cousin Jack!" she exclaimed.
Jack fell back, perplexed. "Aunt Bertrice?" he postulated.
"You silly thing! As if I ever could be! Don't you recognize me?"
"No," Jack said with utter honesty.
She giggled. "Oh, Jack, you always were a funner. It is I! Agnes!"
Agnes who? he wanted to say, but had a sense it wouldn't sit well. "Well, Agnes!" he said instead, heartily--and then erupted in another sneeze.
"Oh, you poor dear!" she cried worriedly. "You sound absolutely wretched! We must be terribly careful, mustn't we, that you don't suffer poor Robert's fate? Bellows, take His Lordship to his rooms. Light a fire, and see that a warm bath is sent up. Is there anything else you would like, Cousin?" she asked anxiously.
"A hot rum toddy would be highly welcome," Jack said between sniffles.
She looked at him askant. "Rum? Oh, we haven't got that."
"Just send up lemon and sugar and hot water, then," He was still searching his mind, trying to place her. Suddenly an image fixed itself. "Agnes! Aunt Bertrice's daughter Agnes! Of course! I pushed you into the millpond!"
"It was one of the highlights of my youth," she said with disconcerting sincerity. "But I must not keep you any longer from your bath. Mamma is very particular about having supper served at six, and it is almost five now!" She embraced him again; through his stuffed nose he caught a whiff of violets. "We are all so unspeakably grateful that you've come at last!"
"Ahhh--choo!" Jack said, and escaped after the butler, up the stairs.
The bath helped, though Jack was appalled by how suddenly the water turned frigid. Spurred from the tub by its chill, he dressed in his usual soft breeches and white shirt, waistcoat and jacket, combed out his hair and ran his fingers through his beard. The looking glass in his bedchamber showed an unfamiliar reflection: the beard had been an afterthought, born of his journey on ship, when shaving every morning seemed worse than extraneous. The dinner bell sounded just as he'd settled down in front of the fire with the toddy he'd concocted himself.
"Damn," he said, and seriously contemplated not responding. But the snow piling up outside the windows propelled him from his chair. The sooner all of this was done with, the sooner he'd be warm and safe at home. He headed down the stairs, still sniffling, noticing that the appointments of the ancestral manor appeared a good deal more shabby than he had recalled.
"His Lordship, the Earl of Avenleigh," the butler, Bellows, intoned as Jack reached the dining room. Already seated at the table were three women: Agnes, another no-longer-young lady, and the grimmest old hag he had ever seen. He recognized her by her eyes: little and black and gleaming with malice, just as he recalled from his boyhood days.
"Aunt Bertrice," he said, approaching the gnarled, glowering woman. "How absolutely splendid you are looking!"
"Don't you sweet-talk me, Jack Cantrell," she snapped, so vehemently that he took a step back. "I can't imagine what you were thinking of, to keep us waiting so long!"
"I came as soon as I heard the bell," Jack told her, bewildered.
"I believe," Agnes said delicately, "Mamma is making reference to the delay in your arrival here. But, Mamma, pray recall, Cousin Jack was thousands of miles away!"
"That's no excuse for such indecency toward Robert." Aunt Bertrice snarled. And all three women looked at him, Bertrice glaring, the still unidentified one goggling, and Agnes appearing very nervous indeed.
There was soup on the table. It had steam rising from it.
"A thousand pardons, " Jack said, "if I have somehow offended you, Aunt Bertrice. It was not easy to book a passage in the dead of winter. I have been these past two months in transit. I came the moment Mr. Shropley's messenger arrived."
"Pish,"said the nasty old woman. "I've spoken to Shropley. You didn't even leave St. Lucia for nearly a month after you were informed."
It was turtle soup, Jack's impaired nostrils told him, perhaps laced with sherry. "I had affairs to attend to. . . ."
The other spinster unexpectedly giggled. Aunt Bertrice shot her a withering look. "Nonetheless," she said very roundly, " the fact remains that your brother has been buried without the traditional handing-on of the family title."
"I haven't the least notion, Aunt Bertrice, what you mean."
The cousin who wasn't Agnes gave a heartfelt sigh. "Hand to hand," she said in a soft, wispy voice.
"Precisely, Sephrina," Aunt Bertrice snapped. "For five hundred years, the heir to the Avenleigh title has been present at his predecessor's deathbed. You, of course, could not be bothered."
"I didn't know he was dying," Jack said shortly. "And let me remind you, it was your brother, my father, who sent me to St. Lucia in the first place."
"You sent yourself there," she retorted, "with your dishonorable behavior."
Jack had had just about enough. He sat down in his chair. "Is that turtle soup?" he asked, hoping to distract his aunt.
"It should have been you that died."
"Mamma!" Agnes exclaimed in shock.
"Well, it's true, by heaven! Who would have mourned his passing?"
Jack had his mouth open to speak his mind, but the sight of the three haggard women in their outdated frocks and hopelessly unfashionable hair arrangements made him curb his tongue. Perhaps they were all genuinely grief-stricken by the loss of his brother. "I am sorry, Aunt Bertrice, that I was not here for Robert's death," he said contritely. "I hope I can make it up to you somehow."
"You can," Sephrina said suddenly. "At the memorial service." He glanced at her. Her eyes were blue, like his, but glassy, glazed, unfocused somehow.
"So there is to be a memorial service?" Somehow he'd feared there would.
"Naturally," said Aunt Bertrice. "We were only waiting for you to arrive. Now--at long last--I shall send word to Bishop Wilcox. He can arrange matters in the blink of an eye." Her tone implied the contrast to Jack's tardiness. "However steeped in grief his household may be."
Jack nearly choked on his first sip of soup. "Steeped in grief? A bishop? Over Robert's death?"
"Naturally," said Aunt Bertrice. "His only child was betrothed to your dear late brother. I'm sure Robert wrote you of it."
It was on the tip of Jack's tongue to say that Robert never wrote him, and with damned good reason. But the news his brother had been betrothed at all, much less to a bishop's daughter, distracted him. "My heart goes out to Bishop Wilcox at his daughter's loss," he said with suitable aplomb. "I say. A bit of sherry would go down very well with this soup."
"Avenleigh is a dry house," Aunt Bertrice noted darkly. "Liquor is, after all, the bane of the working class, just as Bishop Wilcox says. And it is up to us to set an example."
"Just as dear Cousin Robert did," Sephrina said with another odd giggle.
"Precisely," said her mother. "So long as I reside in Avenleigh House, there'll be no drinking here."
There was even less rum in the flask than he'd remembered. Jack, sprawled bootless in the hard horsehair chair in his bedchamber, was seriously contemplating trekking to the tavern in the village when a timid knock came at the door. "Cousin Jack?" It opened a crack, and Agnes peered in with anxious eyes, a mobcap covering her scattered curls. She had a bottle and a glass on a tray.
Jack abruptly sat up. "If that's lemonade--"
"Brandy," she whispered. "Amontillado."
He arched a brow. "I never would have guessed you for a secret tippler, Agnes!"
"Don't be absurd," she said, blushing. " 'Tis from Robert's store. Mamma knows nothing about it, of course. She doesn't approve of spirits. Bishop Wilcox's influence. But Robert had a secret closet in the cellar just filled with the stuff."
"Did he really," Jack said, trying to reconcile this information with his brother's betrothal to the bishop's daughter. It was all most confusing. She laid the tray at his elbow. He went to pour, then paused. "What is your opinion, Cousin Agnes, of the temperance movement?"
"Well." The blush deepened. "I apprehend, of course, the evil that spirits have wreaked among the working classes. In that respect, I support the bishop wholeheartedly."
"But?"
"But?" she echoed, flustered.
Jack hid a smile. "Would you care for a bit of brandy, Cousin Agnes?"
"Oh, I'd die for a drink!" she burst out--then clapped a hand to her mouth.
Jack let the smile show. "My sentiments exactly. Here, you take the snifter." He filled it liberally.
"But what will you do?" For answer, Jack winked and raised the bottle to his lips.
It was damned good brandy. Jack stood, offering her the chair, but she chose the ottoman instead, perching on its edge. "I--I really mustn't stay," she stammered. "It isn't at all fitting."
"On account of what a rake I am?" Jack inquired, feeling in his waistcoat, finding what he was seeking. "Care for a cigar?"
"Oh, really, Cousin Jack!"
"But you don't mind if I smoke?"
"No, no! Of course not!" Then she added, as an afterthought, "Though you'd best open the window. Mamma would have conniptions."
"We mustn't have that," Jack said gravely, getting up to do so, and she giggled again.
"Oh, you are just as terrible as everyone says!"
"As who says?" he asked, leaning back in his chair, inhaling brandy and cigar fumes.
"Well--Robert, for one. 'Devil Jack,' he told us they call you in that place you came from. Odd, isn't it, that you should look so alike and yet be so different?"
"What makes you think we are--were--different?"
"He would not have offered me brandy. And he never made me laugh." She took a delicate sip from the snifter, gave a gratified sigh, then took another. "Still, he was very good to Mamma and 'Phrina and me."
"Did you see a lot of him?" Jack inquired.
"Oh, no. Hardly ever. He was nearly always in London or someplace else, on business." Jack nodded. He'd had trouble picturing his brother making his home among these sad, aging ladies. "Though we looked forward to his visits with great pleasure," Agnes added defensively. "He brought us lovely gifts. Well, once he did, anyway. A box of Turkish delight for us to share, and a shawl for Mamma. A real Norwich shawl."
That reminded Jack of something. "I have gifts for you, too. No Norwich shawls, alas."
"I suppose," Agnes said timidly, "you have not much use for them in St. Lucia. It is very warm there, is it not?"
"Very." A frigid wind was howling through the open window. Jack stood up, going to his trunk, rummaging in its depths and bringing forth a paper-wrapped parcel. "This is for you."
"For me?" his cousin squealed, so excitedly that he felt a pang of shame.
"It is only a token. . . ." But she'd torn the wrappings off and was staring in amazement at the gift he'd brought.
"Oh, it is lovely, lovely!" She held it up in her hands. "What exactly is it?"
"A cowrie-shell necklace." He'd meant that for Aunt Bertrice, and the ear-drops for his cousins. But Aunt Bertrice hadn't brought him brandy.
"Cowrie shells," she breathed. "They are the loveliest things!"
"The natives on St. Lucia used them as money. Many years past, of course."
She was still contemplating the necklace with awe. "It is quite the prettiest gift I have ever been given. Oh, I shall wear it always!" And she fastened it around her throat as proudly as if it had been diamonds. Jack suddenly wished, somehow, that it had.
She glanced up at him, smiling, fingering the shells at her neck, and he realized with shock that she was a handsome woman, fine-boned and well-bosomed beneath the dowdy mourning clothes she wore. He wondered why she'd never married--then remembered her dragon of a mother. How old was she? He vaguely recalled her coming out when he was six or seven. So, not yet forty. What a crime that she should waste her life away here, attending to Aunt Bertrice's whims.
"I really am so very glad you've come," she said i...
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