Читать книгу: «The Captain's Return»

Chapter One

July 1812

It was what he had anticipated. But the confirmation did not make the news any more acceptable to Captain Henry Colton. There had been little hope of finding Annabel’s circumstances to be otherwise. But to hear her spoken of as Mrs Lett!

The Captain took a hasty turn about the bare room. It seemed large in its barren state, empty of all furnishings. But Hal Colton’s six-foot frame dwarfed the place.

Even in civilian clothes he was impressive, the green frock-coat of plain cut moulding across broad shoulders, and the muscle in his thigh evident under the buckskin breeches. His cravat was simply tied, and his boots decently polished. An air of command belied his six-and-twenty years, and from his bearing no one could mistake his calling, even without the dashing military moustache. Like his hair it was red-gold, in keeping, so his elder brother Edward maintained, with his temper.

He came to a halt in front of his informant. “You’re sure of this, Weem? She is indeed married?”

His batman, a stunted individual upon whose enterprise and cunning Hal had relied heavily in the past, nodded vigorously. But there was a glint of mischief in his sharp eyes, and the Captain’s blood quickened.

“What is it? Tell me at once, lunkhead, or I’ll have your guts for garters!”

Weem grinned cheekily, arms akimbo over the rough serge coat he had donned by way of disguise, together with a slouch hat now crushed in one hand.

“Lunkhead, is it? And me an intelligence agent of the highest order!”

Captain Colton started threateningly across the room, and his batman threw up a hand in surrender.

“Keep yer hair on, guv’nor. I mean to tell you it all, yer know that.”

“Then cut line! I’m in no mood for your funning.”

From the window opposite, the Captain’s brother broke in. “Have patience, Hal. After all, you’ve waited three years and more. A couple of minutes can’t make much difference.”

It made a deal of difference to Hal. And it had been by no wish of his that the intervening years had furnished no news of Annabel Howes. Ever since that appalling night, when their last hideous quarrel had culminated in his losing all claim to call himself a gentleman, the Captain had spared no pains to try to make all right. Despite being recalled to Spain, and leaving with his regiment the very next morning.

Annabel had resisted his every attempt to contact her. His letters had been returned unopened. Twice he had spent his hard-earned leave of absence in fruitless searching. Twice he had been turned away by old Benjamin Howes—first in London, and again at the family estates. No surprise there. Howes had been against him almost from the start, causing Annabel to break off their engagement.

Then had come this windfall, an estate bequeathed to him by his godfather. It was a modest place, but with a decent enough income derived from rents to encourage Captain Colton to sell out. He and his brother had driven across to look it over, travelling in the old-fashioned phaeton he had left at the family home during his long absence. It was, he averred, in good enough condition for general use.

“I’m not wasting my blunt on a new one yet a while.”

But horses were another matter. He had brought his own and Weem’s mounts back from the Peninsula, but a pair had to be purchased to go between the shafts of the phaeton. He had chosen to try their paces on this journey, rather than make it in his brother’s flashy new curricle.

Weem had followed his master on horseback from the Colton estates some fifty miles distant. His batman had known full well how important was this news to him!

“Well, Weem?”

The batman glinted up at him engagingly. “It ain’t so bad as you think, guv’nor. The lady was married, but seemingly she’s a widow.”

A huge weight rolled off Hal’s chest. He gave Weem a light buffet. “Rascal! I ought to darken your daylights!”

“Then you wouldn’t nowise hear the rest of it, guv’nor.”

Edward Colton strolled over to his brother’s side. In bearing, no two men could be more dissimilar. His frock-coat of mulberry was cut rather for comfort than for elegance. His boots were serviceable, his cravat neat, and he was as countrified as the Captain was military.

“What is the rest of it, Weem? You’re being damned mysterious!”

The Captain turned his head, and the June sun, slanting in from the window, glinted off his bright curling locks. “It’s his stock in trade, Ned. The fellow’s a sly trickster and should have been locked up years ago. I don’t know why I bear with him.”

“’Acos I gets results, that’s why, guv’nor. Does yer want to hear what I’ve got to say, or not?”

He neatly dodged a large avenging hand, and slid out of reach, cackling. But upon the Captain’s promising signal vengeance presently, he desisted and gave forth his tale.

Hal listened with growing dismay as he heard that Annabel was living in a quiet style, in a rural backwater somewhere in Northamptonshire. The village, Steep Ride, was apparently tiny, and the cottage Annabel was inhabiting was one of only three houses of any size in the immediate neighbourhood.

“She lives in a cottage? What the devil was this fellow she married—a pauper?”

“It’s by way of being on the large side for a cottage, guv’nor, judging by those o’ the labouring men roundabouts. But the lady’s place goes by the name of End Cottage.”

“Cottage!” reiterated Hal disgustedly. “In the back of beyond, too!”

“No such thing, guv’nor,” protested the batman. “Plenty o’ what you might call society round about. Only this here Steep Ride is the smallest o’ the villages. Though there’s the big house, in an estate owned by a nob by the name o’ Tenison. And o’ course in the middle there’s this Abbey what everyone talks of where that there markiss were murdered.”

“Murdered?” A sudden, if irrational, fear for Annabel caught at Hal’s chest.

“Happened only a week or two back. Not that no one round there is cryin’ over him. A bad ’un he were, they say, be he never so much a markiss.”

“Lord, is he talking of Sywell?” cut in Mr Colton.

“What do you mean, Ned?”

“What’s the name you said, Weem? Steep something?”

“Steep Ride, sir.”

“Then it must be the same. Steepwood Abbey was Sywell’s seat. Lord, Hal, it’s the most appalling scandal! The whole town was talking of it. Not that it’s anything new. The fellow has been notorious for years.”

Captain Colton frowned deeply. “I’ve never heard of him.”

His brother waved this aside. “You’ve been more or less out of the country for the last seven years. I’m telling you, there’s been the devil’s own work in Steepwood. First Sywell’s wife ran away. That was a few months back. Disappeared without trace, and had half the tabbies rumouring that he’d killed her. Then it was found there was gold missing. And now the fellow’s been slashed to pieces in his own bedchamber!”

Hal breathed somewhat heavily. “And this is where Annabel is living! What in Hades was the fellow about to bring her to such a hole?”

“What fellow?”

“This fellow she married. Lett, or whatever his name is.” The Captain paused, arrested by a sudden thought. “Wait a minute. Why does that name ring a bell?”

“Does it?”

“There’s something about it.” He pondered it in his mind. Had he heard it before? Was it possible he had known Annabel’s husband? “Who was Lett, Weem? Did you find out anything about him?”

“Seemingly he was of our cut, guv’nor.”

“You mean he was a soldier?”

“Aye. Nor he ain’t chose Steep Ride for his missus.”

Edward Colton leaned back against the wall, where clung remnants of a brocaded paper, faded and peeling. “What in the world is he talking about, Hal? And if Lett was an army man, you might well have met him.”

Hal shook his head, intent upon his batman. “What do you mean, he didn’t choose Steep Ride?”

Weem shrugged. “Seemingly the lady and the babe come there after he was killed.”

“Babe?”

A sudden dread premonition seized Captain Colton. He reached out an unsteady hand to grasp at his brother’s shoulder, but his blue-grey eyes were fixed on his batman.

Weem was looking smug. “Ah. Wondered as how you’d take that bit of it, guv’nor. Nor you won’t like it when I tells you that this here babe has a noddle o’ red hair.”

“Good God!”

Hal hardly heard Ned’s comment. A heavy pulsing entered his chest and his brain felt as if it were going to explode. His throat tightened, and his voice seemed not to wish to obey him.

“How—how old? The babe. How old is it?”

Weem considered the question, trouble gathering in his sharp-featured face. “Just a toddler, guv’nor. I’d say not much more’n two—three at most.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” groaned Ned.

Captain Colton could not speak. What havoc had he wrought that fateful night? Had he not dreaded this very outcome, lying sleepless night after night in a crude cot in cantonments in Spain? Or bivouacking by an impromptu fire, supping on stewed rabbit, augmented by a potato or two filched from a nearby field? Weem had always been expert at ferreting for food to eke out the most meagre of rations. Would he had long ago had the sense to send him ferreting after this.

The nightmare of his worst fears realised! Yet when Annabel had so steadfastly refused to answer his letters, he had at length supposed that fortune had favoured them. But it had not been so. Had Annabel turned to him in the extremity of this unlucky accident? No, she had not. Hurt rose up, as sharp and bitter as when she had first rejected him.

“Well, that explains the locality,” said his brother musingly, recovering from his first astonishment. “I wonder if it was Howes who set her up at Steep Ride.”

“Who else?” said Hal bitingly. “Why the devil couldn’t the old curmudgeon have come down off his high ropes? If he’d only sent me word—”

He broke off, becoming aware of his batman’s steady regard. Useless to suppose that Weem had not already guessed the sum of it. But there was no need to bandy words in his presence that must necessarily wreck Annabel’s reputation.

“You’ve done well, Weem. I’ll want every last detail, mind, but that can wait.”

Dismissed, the batman withdrew, leaving Hal confronting the accusing eyes of his senior. He threw up a hand.

“You need not look like that, Ned! I did everything I could to make it right. I promise you, I have a stack of letters to prove it.”

“Returned unopened,” agreed Mr Colton. “I know. You told me. What you didn’t tell me—”

“I know. Devil take it, do you think I meant to do it?”

He crossed the parlour, as if he must avoid his brother’s gaze, and went to stare out of the window upon the unkempt lawns. Only a short time ago he had been agreeing with Ned upon the number of gardeners required to return them to a semblance of order. His godfather had been old and ailing for some time, and the place had been allowed to deteriorate. How little he now cared!

“It was at a ball that it happened,” he disclosed, without turning round. “We had not met since she broke off our betrothal. We quarrelled mightily. We were both too much empassioned to have any rationality left. Inevitable, I suppose. So much hot air.” He turned suddenly, the blue-grey eyes afire. “And she did love me, Ned. I swear she still loved me!”

“Then, perhaps,” agreed his brother meaningfully.

An obstruction lodged in Hal’s chest. “You need not say it. What woman could continue to love the man who ruined her?”

Mr Colton came across the room. He was not near as tall, nor as broad in the chest as his brother, and his hair was less vibrant, tending more to gold. But he had the advantage of him in both years and temperament. Hal’s tempestuous personality had ever been his undoing.

“You can’t be absolutely sure, Hal, that she was ruined.”

Hal’s tone was bleak. “Can’t I?”

“She is not precisely living in obscurity. Weem says there is some society there. Evidently she has acquired respectability.”

“Respectability!”

“It’s not lightly won, Hal. It is possible that Annabel did marry. Even if the child is yours, Annabel may have taken refuge under another’s name.”

“The devil she did!” Something clicked in the Captain’s brain. He slammed a fist into his open hand. “No. Annabel didn’t marry a man called Lett. There is no such man.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’ve remembered why it sounded familiar.” Grimness settled in his chest. “Lett was the maiden name of Annabel’s mother.”

His brother was silent for a moment. But Hal’s first shock was fading. Not for nothing was he a soldier. He was a captain, in command, given to swift decisions. What was needed now was not regret, but action. He stiffened his shoulders.

“What will you do?” asked Ned frowningly.

“Oh, I know what to do!”

His brother began to look alarmed. “Now, Hal—for the Lord’s sake, think before you act!”

“I’ve thought for three years. I’m done with thinking.”

“Oh, dear Lord! Hal!’

But Captain Colton was already on the move. Before he reached the door, his brother caught his arm. “Wait, Hal!”

He turned. Removing the hand that imprisoned him, he grasped it strongly. “Ned, I’m coming home with you, so you’ll have every opportunity to argue. But let me advise you not to waste your breath. You can say what you like, but you won’t change my mind.”

Mr Colton grinned. “You always were a headstrong devil.”

Hal’s smile was twisted. “So I may be. But in this case, Ned, there’s a matter of honour at stake. I have no choice.”

The kitchen bench and two of the dining chairs had been brought out and set under the shade of a great chestnut. It was situated just upon the boundary, but it obligingly spread its branches to encompass a good part of Annabel Lett’s garden. A circumstance that enabled her to receive her two visitors in a much pleasanter setting on a hot Saturday in early July than was to be had in the tiny formal parlour within the cottage.

The visitors occupied the chairs, while Annabel took the bench. She was dressed in a sprigged gown of a soft green lawn that brought out the colour of her eyes, although its cut and style were far from fashionable. Its modest neckline, round and plain, and its three-quarter sleeves, together with the frilly cap that covered much of Annabel’s dark hair, gave her an air of respectability.

It was a pose that Mrs Lett had cultivated with care and diligence. And if she had not entirely succeeded in subduing the restless spirit that lurked deep within—which now and then broke out, to her regret, in hasty words—she flattered herself that she had fooled most of her acquaintances in their reading of her character.

But the two ladies present were such particular friends that Annabel felt able to relax her strict guard. She would not have hesitated to entertain them in the larger family room, where Rebecca was permitted to run wild and all was generally at sixes and sevens. But this arrangement allowed little Becky to dash about the garden under her mother’s eye, leaving Janet free to pursue her numerous chores.

Which was as well, for Annabel thought her visitors would have burst with frustration if they had felt themselves obliged to hold their tongues in the presence of the maid. The subject under discussion was far too interesting. Especially since it concerned the man most people had settled upon as having done away with the dissolute Marquis of Sywell up at the Abbey.

“Can it be true, do you think?” asked Charlotte Filmer.

Jane Emerson, a slim brunette with little countenance except a pair of soft brown eyes, gave her characteristic gurgling laugh.

“I should think it all too likely, Mrs Filmer. Have we not all been puzzled as to why Solomon Burneck should have remained loyal to that wretched man? Nothing could more surely explain it than if he had indeed been Sywell’s own son. Don’t you think so, Annabel?”

“Yes, if only it had come out before the Marquis was murdered,” agreed Annabel, accepting with a word of thanks the pebble pressed into her palm by her daughter, who ran off again to find another. “To put it about only when Burneck himself has fallen under suspicion seems to me in itself suspicious.”

“Very true,” agreed Charlotte, and a little shudder ran through her. “I have always found him sinister.”

Mrs Filmer was a gentle female, a great many years Annabel’s senior, but they shared a common bond in the isolation of an existence without the support of a husband. Charlotte’s daughter was grown up now, and had last season gone to London as companion to the Tenison chit—a piece of good fortune for which Mrs Filmer was still thanking Providence.

“Oh, I am perfectly happy to have Solomon for the villain,” said Jane merrily. “Why, he looks a very devil, with that hooked nose, and his horrid black clothes. Thin lips are a sign of meanness, you know, and he has the horridest eyes of anyone I’ve ever met. Set so narrow and close.”

Annabel could not help laughing as she placed the pebble among the growing pile beside her on the bench. “Jane, you are outrageous. What appalling prejudice! I pity your pupils, who are obliged to look to you for example.”

“Fiddle! I am responsible only for their deportment and their performance in the dance. I have nothing to do with the formation of their minds.’

In fact, as Annabel knew, Miss Emerson was one of the more popular teachers at the Guarding Academy in nearby Steep Abbot. Jane had a deceptively demure manner in social situations, but among friends—which term wholly encompassed her students—she exhibited a liveliness of mind, and an endearing warmth that made Annabel sorry for her circumstances. But Jane would have none of it.

“Don’t waste your pity on me, Annabel, for I am perfectly content with my lot,” she had said gaily. “I learned early to be so. I was ever a “plain Jane”, and it is unlikely I should have caught myself a husband, even had it been possible for me to make a come-out.”

Annabel might doubt this privately, but she had said no more on the subject, feeling the more thankful for their friendship that permitted Jane these small respites on her one free Saturday each month. Her company was a boon to Annabel, who could only admire the generosity of heart that left Jane with neither malice nor envy towards others, in particular the more flamboyant and adventurous of the Guarding teachers—like Desirée Nash, who had broken away earlier this year and ended by marrying Lord Buckworth.

“But don’t you think, if Solomon Burneck had been Sywell’s son,” asked Mrs Filmer, bringing the conversation back to the point at issue, “that the Marquis would have got rid of him?”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Jane, setting one graceful leg over the other so that the soft white muslin slithered, “if Sywell knew. You don’t suppose he counted up his by-blows, do you, Mrs Filmer? They must be all over the countryside!”

“Jane, you shocking creature!” protested Annabel. “Pay no heed to her, Charlotte.”

But Mrs Filmer was plainly amused, though she tutted in a fretful way, too. “She is right, of course. Oh, dear, how wretched it is that that dreadful man should be able to scandalize everyone even from beyond the grave!”

“What I want to know,” said Jane more seriously, reaching absently for one of Becky’s pebbles and playing it between her fingers, “is whether you had this from your usual source, Annabel. You get all the news before the rest of us only because Aggie Binns tells it to your Janet. It is too bad!”

Aggie Binns was a wizened diminutive creature who lived a short way from Annabel in a cottage near the village pump. Aggie had been taking in laundry for around thirty-five years, and was the main source of all the gossip emanating from the Abbey. This was because she had for years now been the only female willing to set foot in the place.

“It is not Janet. Janet would scorn to listen to Aggie’s gossip. It comes to me through Young Nat’s mother. You know she helps Aggie with the laundry.”

Young Nat, who inhabited with his mother one of the little workman’s cottages across the green, was by way of being Annabel’s handyman, although he spent a part of each day working the smithy at Farmer Buller’s place at Steep Abbot.

“Yes, but if Aggie had known a tidbit like this,” pursued Jane, “she would not have kept it to herself for so long.”

“Very true,” agreed Charlotte. “The wretched woman does nothing but spread evil everywhere she goes, dragging that little laundry cart.”

The conversation was suspended for a moment as the diminutive Miss Lett, coming up with another treasure, spied the theft perpetrated by Jane Emerson and set up a protest.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Becky,” uttered the culprit contritely, holding out the errant pebble.

“Say thank you,” reproved Annabel as her daughter snatched it away.

A pair of big blue eyes peeped defiantly up at Miss Emerson under the red-gold mop of hair, which young Miss Lett invariably refused to allow to be confined under the mob cap suited to her years.

“I don’t think Becky feels that I deserve to be thanked,” commented Jane on a tiny laugh, “and I’m sure I don’t blame her. It is a pretty pebble, Becky, and I am very sorry for taking it away without asking you.”

Rebecca cast a doubtful glance up at her mother’s face.

“There now,” said Annabel. “Miss Jane didn’t mean it, you see. Now say thank you politely.”

Instead, Becky’s gaze came back to “Miss Jane”. With a sudden bright smile, she offered her the pebble to hold. It was accepted with becoming gratitude. Matters now being settled to everyone’s satisfaction, little Miss Lett thought proper to return to her labours, leaving the ladies free to pursue their interrupted discussion.

Jane was vehement in her suspicions of Solomon Burneck. “If Aggie Binns had it from Solomon that he is Sywell’s by-blow, it is certain that he intended for it to be repeated.”

“Yes, but she didn’t have it from Solomon,” objected Annabel. “She got it from his cousin.”

“What cousin? I didn’t know he had a cousin.”

“Had you not heard? Apparently this female cousin came to the Abbey in a panic, having heard that Solomon had fallen under suspicion of the Marquis’s murder. It was she who let it out to Aggie.”

“How foolish! Or doesn’t she know what Aggie is like?”

“That’s just what makes me think Solomon intended for it to be spread abroad,” said Annabel.

Charlotte was instantly convinced. She nodded wisely under the frill of her cap that rippled with the movement. “Yes, I see what you mean, Annabel.”

“No, I think we must vindicate Solomon,” decided Jane, in an abrupt about-face, dropping Becky’s pebble back among its fellows. “Unless his cousin has a reason to lie for him, it must be true. And one can scarce blame him for concealing it before this. I mean, if one had a father whose conduct was so excessively shocking, one would be at pains to hush it up. And Solomon Burneck has always condemned the Marquis. He has forever been quoting that piece from the Bible which instructs us that every dog must have his day. Yes, Solomon is certainly innocent.”

Annabel could not help laughing. “You are readily convinced, Jane. I only hope you may not be made to look nohow by yet more dreadful revelations that prove him guilty beyond doubt.”

Before either of her visitors could answer this, a call from the kitchen interrupted them. A woman of dour aspect, tall but sturdy of figure and clad in the grey low-waisted gown of a servant, came hurrying towards the group under the tree.

“What is it, Janet?”

“It’s the reverend from Abbot Giles, ma’am. He’s got a gentleman with him.”

Annabel rose. “Mr Hartwell? Here in Steep Ride? I wonder what he wants with me?”

The other two ladies were looking equally puzzled. Beyond one welcoming visit, when Annabel first came into the neighbourhood, she had usually seen the Reverend Mr Edward Hartwell only on Sundays. And that at his church in Abbot Giles, when she attended the service. Indeed, she had the intention of going there tomorrow. Otherwise, Mr Hartwell had called upon her only on the occasion of Rebecca’s birthday, bringing a gift—a most kind attention—but she would not celebrate her third until November. Yet here he was.

“I had better go in to him. Is he in the parlour, Janet?”

“He said not to disturb yourself, for he’s coming out.”

And indeed, the vicar was to be seen coming around the corner of the house at that moment. He was a man in his forties, dark-clad as befit his calling, who walked with an energetic step and had usually a cheerful air about him. But as he approached, Annabel thought he was looking a trifle solemn, and a shaft of dismay shot through her.

It was evident that his demeanour had struck her guests just as oddly. Charlotte sounded fretful.

“What can have happened?”

“Lord, is someone dead?” muttered Jane.

Annabel’s instant thought was of her daughter. But that was ridiculous. Becky had been with them throughout. Besides, she was still happily engaged in locating pebbles to add to the trove on the bench.

Then it must be Papa. Heaven forbid it was his untimely demise! They had been at outs, but she could not cease to love him. Only surely it would be Mr Maperton who came to break such news. The lawyer was in her father’s employ. Or was it indeed Mr Maperton who had asked Mr Hartwell to break the news? Had not Janet said that the vicar had a gentleman with him? Only there was no gentleman in sight at this present.

These rapid thoughts had barely passed through her mind when the reverend gentleman was upon her, bowing to the other two ladies, and then fixing Annabel with a gaze of gentle austerity as he took hold of both her hands.

“I had hoped to find you alone, Mrs Lett.”

Instantly, both Jane and Charlotte were up.

“Shall we—?”

“I am perfectly ready to—”

“No, no,” said Mr Hartwell, turning briefly in their direction. “On second thoughts, it may be as well for her friends to be at hand in such a situation as this.”

Annabel was silent, unable to think beyond the impending horror of what she was going to be told. The vicar’s eyes came back to hers, and then passed on to Janet.

“Ah. Perhaps it would be sensible for your maid to remove the infant? Your attention, my dear, cannot be upon her well-being in this extremity.”

“Extremity?” It was both sharp and low.

Mr Hartwell smiled his reassurance. “There is no cause for alarm, Mrs Lett. I am the bearer of tidings more shocking than distressing.”

These words did nothing to allay Annabel’s fears. She turned with that automatic action which drives one through emergencies.

“Janet, take Becky into the house.”

She watched her maid walk across the grass and scoop up her daughter. Rebecca protested, and a slight delay was occasioned by her insistence on Janet’s gathering up the carefully selected store of pebbles from the bench. When the maid had slipped them into the pocket of her apron, there was yet recalcitrance. But Janet murmured soothingly—of cake, Annabel suspected—at which her daughter’s protests ceased abruptly and she allowed herself to be borne away.

“Sit down, Mrs Lett.”

Annabel sat down, vaguely aware that her two friends did likewise. She stared up into the vicar’s face, noting that his air of solemnity had been replaced with an edge of excitement.

“Pray tell me quickly,” she uttered rapidly. “This suspense is more than I can endure.”

He dropped back a pace, letting go her hands. “Mrs Lett, I have been requested to break to you a piece of news which may, in its production of joy, prove overwhelming.”