“A spy! Good God! And you want me to take her into the bosom of my family?”
“Not a spy precisely. Though if she was, I am sure she would be on our side, for you know how patriotic Luke is. But she is by far too well bred to be a vulgar spy. Do you not think that she is of gentle birth?”
“On the wrong side of the blanket, most like. She does resemble someone I know, though I cannot bring to mind just who. But all this is beside the point. She has no fortune, I take it? Luke cannot afford to marry for love.”
Knowing well how much he blamed himself for the situation, she kissed his furrowed brow and gently stroked his clenched fist until it relaxed in her warm clasp.
"Henry," she said, “I have always respected your decision not to inform my parents about our difficulties. But if it is a matter of Luke’s future, if it would make the difference between his losing or gaining the hand of the woman he loves, then I will not let pride stand in the way. Neither mine nor yours.”
Bowing his head, he gripped her hands fiercely in both his, then slowly nodded.
“As you will.”
He picked her up and carried her in still-strong arms into their bedchamber.
* * * *
In the morning, Lord Everett sent a groom with a note to Gabrielle, asking whether it would be convenient for him to call for her at noon to ride about the estate. She dressed with care in her only riding habit, of deep red Circassian cloth. The red-dyed feather in her hat had broken on the journey, but Marie managed to trim it so that it was at least respectable. Remembering his lordship’s speculative gaze, scarcely less piercing than his son’s, she was determined to appear immaculate.
On the dot of twelve, the doorbell rang. Lord Everett’s courtesy extended to punctuality, it seemed. Gabrielle pulled on her gloves while Tombaugh opened the front door. Facing the bright sunshine, she made out only the silhouette of the gentleman standing on the step. It was not the baron, whose figure, though admirable for his age, had undeniably lost its youthful leanness.
“Are you ready, Miss Darcy?”
“Luke! I mean, Mr Everett!”
“Luke will do very well.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
“I thought you were not coming back.” Her fingers trembled as she laid them on his sleeve.
“There was no urgent news at Dover to send me hurrying back to London, so I yielded to inclination. I cannot stay longer than a day or two, though, so I trust you will not object if I join you and my father on your ride?”
She suddenly realised that Lord Everett was waiting, mounted on a black horse and holding the reins of two more.
“Good morning, sir. Is that mare for me? How pretty she is!”
“Not as pretty as her rider,” said his lordship promptly. “I apologise for my son’s presence. He arrived early and has been chafing at the bit this hour and more. It was more than I could do to persuade him that we do not wish for company.”
Blushing, she allowed Luke to help her mount. He whispered in her ear something provocative about knowing she preferred to ride astride, which she pretended not to hear.
The mare was as easy-mannered as she was good-looking, and Gabrielle was soon comfortable enough to spare her attention for the guided tour. Why, then, did she find when she reached home that she retained only the vaguest impression of acres of plum trees and endless plantations of hazel bushes, laden with still-green nuts?
‘The only thing she recalled clearly was Luke’s smiling eyes when he asked whether she cared to drive with him next day to Ightham, to see the moated manor house and the prehistoric hill fort.
“Prehistoric?” she murmured vaguely. “It sounds fascinating.”
Lord Everett was much inclined to believe that his wife was right!
* * * *
Lady Cecilia raised her eyebrows when the proposed outing was revealed to her,
“You will take your man, I suppose,” she said, “or one of the grooms.”
“Is that really necessary?” asked Luke, frowning. “It is an open carriage and it is no more than three miles.” He remembered the midnight escapade to Lincoln’s Inn, where their only chaperon had been a burglar, but that was not something he could describe to his stepmother!
“Yes,” she answered flatly. “You know how people talk, and I am sure you will not wish to give them reason to talk about Miss Darcy.”
“Of course not. But to have Baxter up behind! I know, I’ll see if Dorrie and Rolf, oh, and Gerard will go with us. Rolf may drive the gig. Will that satisfy your notions of propriety, ma’am?”
“That will be unexceptionable,” she said, lips twitching. A second carriage full of young people would allow Luke and Gabrielle far more privacy than a servant in the same carriage. “Just do not forget that it is Sunday. If you miss the early service you must be back for evensong.”
Pulling a face, Luke agreed. In London his churchgoing was sporadic, to say the least, but here in the country one was expected to set a good example.
Informed of the treat in store for him, Rolf grumbled that if he was expected to squire his sister about, he had rather have stayed in Cambridge.
“I’ve seen that devilish moat a thousand times if I’ve seen it once,” he said indignantly.
“Sorry,” said his brother, grinning. “But we shall go up to the hill fort also, and you and Gerard may re-fight all the putative battles of the Stone Age.”
Rolf's face lightened. “By Jove, you’re right! I’ll go and tell Cook to put up a couple of hampers for lunch.”
To his sister, Luke presented an invitation rather than an order. Dorothea accepted listlessly. She supposed she might as well do that as anything else.
Luke took her hand. “You are unhappy,” he said. “Do you miss the gaiety of London?”
“Not in the least.” She pulled her hand away. “I do not care for parties. Pray leave me alone, Luke. I have the headache.”
Gerard, basking in the pleasure of having a friend of his own age with whom he had no need be on guard, as he had in Switzerland, made no demur.
Only the weather could now upset Luke’s plans.
The weather cooperated. A few high mare’s-tails wisped in the western sky, but the sun shone bright and the cooling breeze was welcome.
The family at the Mote, the medieval manor in Ightham, were at home, delighted to see the Everetts and happy to show off their house to the Darcys. The two young ladies thought a picnic on Oldbury Hill the best idea in the world, could not imagine why they had not thought of it themselves. Their brother, who was preparing for the ministry, was persuaded that it was not unthinkably wicked to eat alfresco on the Lord’s Day, and they joined the party.
With the group thus enlarged, Luke could not in common politeness monopolise Gabrielle. He was amused to see that the future churchman was greatly taken with her. How shocked he would be if he knew the half of her adventures!
A thin haze of clouds spread gradually over the sky, and the ladies, in their thin muslins, began to shiver as the breeze grew stronger. Two hours exploring the grass-grown ruins proved enough even for Gerard and Rolf, and the hampers had long since been emptied of all but crumbs and ants.
They walked down the hill to the carriages, and farewells were said. Gabrielle and Dorothea donned the wraps they had brought with them, Luke and Rolf took up the reins, and. they set out for Wrotham.
A mile or two beyond Ightham they came to a crossroads. The gig, in the lead, went straight across.
“Are you warm enough?” asked Luke, turning to Gabrielle. “Then we will turn left here and go home a different way. It is a little longer but very pretty.”
Since he forgot to watch where he was going, it turned out to be considerably longer.
“How on earth did we get here?” he said in surprise as they drove into a small town.
“The horses brought us,” said Gabrielle. “Are we not where we are supposed to be?”
“No! This is Sevenoaks. I must have missed the turn. Lord, look at the time!” He pointed at the church clock. “I promised to be back by evensong and we shall never make it.
“I got up early and went to the eight o’clock service,” said Gabrielle, putting on a saintly face. “We could stay here, look about the town, and then go to evensong here.”
“I must not keep you out so long. Gerard will be wondering where you are.”
“Fustian! Gerard knows better than to worry over me.”
“Lady Harrison, then. I expect she and my stepmother will ring a peal over me for endangering your reputation.”
“Have you endangered my reputation?”
"Not in the least. But you know how elderly ladies fuss.”
“You cannot call Lady Cecilia elderly! I daresay she is not many years older than you are. And madame is of an age with my father, I believe, though she looks older because of what she refers to as her embonpoint.”
He laughed. “All the same, we will go home now.” Driving round the town square, he directed his team back down the lane by which they had arrived. “Have you not heard from your father yet?” he asked seriously.
“No, not a word.”
Hearing the tremor in her voice, he said, “Communications with the continent are particularly difficult at present, as I have reason to know. You must not think that because you have received no news, he has sent none.”
“If we were only expecting a message! But he told us he would follow us here if we decided to come without him. He should have arrived by now, I am sure.”
“What is his business? What might have delayed him? Wait, here is the turn and I nearly missed it again.” They entered a narrow lane so overhung by huge oaks that it formed a long, dark tunnel. "You have a shocking effect on my driving, Miss Darcy.”
“How fortunate that the evenings are so light at this season, in spite of the clouds, or I daresay we should be hopelessly lost. I wish you will call me Gabrielle, since you have said that I may call you Luke.”
"May I?”
“You may, as long as you promise never to shorten it to Gaby, as Gerard does. He used to call me Gabby, when he was little. I don’t know which is worse—to be named a simpleton or a chatterbox!”
“Since you are neither, Gabrielle, I have no difficulty in promising. Yours is a beautiful name that does not deserve abbreviation. Mine is different. I have always been called Luke, except when I was in a scrape as a child. I beg that you will never call me Lucius!”
“Unless I am excessively displeased with you,” she said, laughing. “I make no promises; I shall hold it in reserve.”
They drove out of the tunnel of oak trees. The sky was by now dark grey and threatening, and Luke urged the horses to a trot. They reached Wrotham village as the church clock struck seven, and a few minutes later pulled up outside the Dower House.
Tombaugh came out to hold the horses while Luke helped Gabrielle down from the tilbury.
“There’s a visitor, miss,” he said. “Come to stay a couple o’ days, my lady says.”
“Oh? Who is it, Tombaugh?”
“A Monser Derveenar, miss. A Frenchie, I reckon.”
“Alain! How delightful! You know Alain de Vignard, don’t you, Luke? Will you come in?”
“Thank you, no. I had better get on home, for I must leave early tomorrow. Goodbye, Miss Darcy.”
As he climbed back into the carriage, a few drops of rain fell.
Chapter 16
“I don’t like to bear tales, miss,” said Tombaugh ominously.
Luke called me “Miss Darcy!" thought Gabrielle. What is amiss?
“But the wife says as it’s me clear, bounden dooty.” Perhaps he does not like it that Alain has come to visit? “And I couldn’t tell her la’ship, being as she’s so almighty fond o’ the woman.”
He could not suppose that she was responsible!
“But I seen it wi’ me own eyes. Swear to it in a court o’ law, I would.”
She had not invited him, after all. He was far more Madame’s friend than hers.
“Right there, they was, under them elm trees: Mam’selle Marie hobnobbling wi’ Master Luke’s man Baxter.”
No, he was just being discreet, observing strict propriety in the presence of Tombaugh.
“What did you say, Tombaugh?”
“Her la’ship’s abigail, out there right early this morning she were, hobnobbling wi’ Baxter.”
“Hobnobbing with Baxter! You must be mistaken.”
“Wi’ me own eyes I seen it,” he repeated obstinately.
“Called the missus, didn’t I, and she’ll say the same. ‘Tain’t right, she says, and miss ought to be tol’.”
“How odd!” Gabrielle remembered how Marie and Mrs Tombaugh had nearly come to cuffs over the raspberry tarts. Any tattle from that quarter must be taken with a pinch of salt. “I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation,” she soothed. “It may be that Baxter was bearing a message for Lady Harrison from Lady Cecilia.”
Tombaugh snorted.
“Up to no good,” he muttered. “That Baxter’s allus been a queer nabs, if you was to ask me. Neither groom nor gentleman’s gentleman, not properly.”
“That’s enough!” said Gabrielle sharply. “I do not care to hear you criticising either Mr Everett’s or her ladyship’s choice of servants. You will not refine upon this incident, if you please. I wish to hear no more about it.”
Baxter, she knew, was far more than groom or valet to Luke. If spiteful minds had not invented the whole story, it was possible that he was engaged upon some investigation for the Foreign Office. Rumours floating about the countryside could only hinder him.
“You will not speak of this again,” she repeated firmly, and went on into the drawing room.
Alain was alone there, looking out of the window as he had been the first time she had seen him, in Russell Square. When he turned, she thought he looked as handsome as ever but thinner, his face almost haggard.
“Are you unwell?” she asked, stepping forward with hands outstretched. “You do not look at all the thing.”
He took both hands and raised one to his lips.
“Right as a trivet,” he said with an effortful smile, “if I have that extraordinary English phrase correct. How do you go on, Miss Darcy?”
“Very well. Is madame gone up already?”
“Yes, and Gerard is not home yet. She vows that if he is late for dinner again, he shall not eat.”