Miss Eleanora had chosen to oversee the dusting of the dower house rather than break bread with her brother-in-law. I soon understood why.
Cousin Nax was as tall, fit, and broad-shouldered as a dragoon. Like many members of the heavy cavalry, he used his size to intimidate.
Lizzie, Banter, and I had been in the breakfast parlor awaiting Silforth when I’d heard him coming up the corridor. His tread was heavy, his heels delivering palpable blows to the carpeted floors. A faint jingle told me he’d neglected to remove his spurs. Either arrogance—only the head of the household could ignore the rules of hospitality with impunity—or rudeness could explain such an oversight.
In any case, a mummer’s parade could have approached making less racket.
“You must be Lord Julian.” He tossed me a toothy smile and bowed with a casual flourish.
“At your service, Silforth, and my compliments on your lovely family. I haven’t met the entire nursery brigade, but Hera and William are delightful.”
“William is the pick of the litter,” Silforth said, running a hand through wavy blond hair. “We do what we can with the rest of them, but like me, they aren’t the most bookish lot. Fortunately, summer is for fresh air and long gallops, don’t you think? The foundation mare and I disagree on many matters, but in this we are in accord.”
He had just referred to his wife in polite company as a broodmare. He followed up that affectionate atrocity by bussing the foundation mare’s cheek. Lizzie seemed to take the reference all in good fun and kissed him back.
“You must be famished,” she said. “All three of you have been out on horseback for hours, and I gather your efforts have been to no avail.”
I was spared any recitations about new saddles or glorious runs in the Midlands, because Lizzie had set the foundation stud—what else would he be?—on the scent of his present difficulties. Over a cold soup that put me in mind of the gazpacho of Andalusia, ham roast, green beans, and mashed potatoes, I was regaled with tales of Thales’s wondrous abilities.
Thanks to his nose, speed, and stamina, by spring, nary a fox would dare set paw upon the Silforth Hounds’s fixture. Not the Bloomfield Hounds, but rather, the Silforth Hounds.
The bunnies, hedgehogs, mice, and rats would doubtless rejoice without limit, but goodness me, what would the hounds do for quarry without any foxes to chase? I kept that conundrum to myself.
“You’ve never met a hound like Thales, my lord,” Silforth said, with obvious fondness. “He’s as well mannered as any royal pet and as fierce in the field as any mastiff. You shall find him for us, or I’ll know the reason why.”
Banter studied his wine, and Lizzie pushed the last of her potatoes around on her plate.
I chose to hear Silforth’s threat as a plea. “I will do my best, and your knowledge will be integral to my success. I gather you took a personal interest in Thales’s training. Did he prefer any one part of the estate on your rambles? Was he always keen to visit any particular stumps or rabbit holes?”
“If you’re up to an afternoon hack, I’ll show you.”
Was Silforth trying to insult me? True, my stamina wasn’t what it had been in Spain, but my outing on Owen had hardly been taxing. And I honestly did not think that Thales’s captor would allow the hound to frequent familiar terrain.
I nonetheless wanted to take Silforth’s measure without an audience. “In such pleasant weather, another outing will be a delight.”
“We’ll put you on Belt,” Banter said. “He’s Waltham’s preferred mount when His Grace visits. Up to your weight and a keen jumper.”
“Nax,” Lizzie said sternly, “you are not to turn a hack into a steeplechase.”
He beamed at her, all blond, masculine innocence. “Of course not, my love. Of course not.”
Oh, splendid. At least Lizzie had given me warning of the challenge I’d face. In the name of showing me Thales’s favored haunts, Silforth galloped me over hill and dale, and when a swift pace proved within my grasp, he commenced a course of jumps.
I had enjoyed an extremely privileged rural English boyhood. Did Silforth think I wasn’t up to hopping stiles, ditches, and ha-has? Belt—Orion’s Belt—was Arthur’s preferred mount, and Arthur was a superb horseman. We cleared all obstacles in foot-perfect rhythm, and Silforth finally brought his gelding down to the walk.
“I guess you did some riding in Spain?” he asked, holding a flask out to me while his gelding fidgeted and propped.
“Thanks,” I said, brandishing my own, “but this will suffice.” I took a generous portion of lemonade, put away my flask, and patted my horse. I could see why Arthur enjoyed him. Belt was all business, all the time. The next fence, the next hedge, the next bank… He took his job seriously, much as His Grace did.
“Riding in Spain wasn’t for enjoyment,” I said. “Horsemanship became a matter of life or death, on the battlefield, on maneuvers among hostile civilians, and certainly riding dispatch.” The dispatch riders, like my friend Devlin St. Just, were a species unto themselves, and the horses they rode were famous for heart and courage.
Not for conformation, fancy training, elegant gaits, or good manners—for heart and courage.
“You’re one of those,” Silforth said, putting his flask away, then jerking his reins hard enough to bring his fretful horse to a standstill. “You think foxhunting is so much foolishness. A tradition that goes back to antiquity, honored by royalty, and famous throughout the realm for its camaraderie. I’ve heard that Wellington’s best officers would organize hunts to pass the time.”
Even in winter quarters, the typical officer had found it hard to overindulge in drink or pester women every hour of the day and night.
“About Thales,” I said, rather than allow Silforth to air his grievances as a member of a reviled and oppressed wealthy minority valiantly upholding the only worthy English tradition. “You said he enjoyed his rambles along the river, but did you ever cut through the woods with him? Did he have friends among the tenants’ dogs?”
“A hound doesn’t have friends, my lord. He has his pack and his master.”
“My mistake.” Though for a man who professed to be wild with worry about said hound, Silforth was unforthcoming in response to most of my questions. “Where would you look for him, if you had unlimited resources?”
“I’ve looked everywhere he’s likely to be, and nobody knows that hound better than I do.”
Ah, well, then. Silforth’s objective on this outing had been the same as mine: to take the measure of an unknown and possibly hostile quantity. Or perhaps—I recalled Lizzie’s warning—he’d wanted to humiliate me, hoping I’d make a poor showing in the saddle.
“Very well, then.” I settled my hat more firmly upon my head. “Let’s return to the manor, shall we? I have a few letters to write and some ideas I’d like to put before Banter.”
“You won’t find my Thales with your letter writing.”
“I will inform interested parties of my lack of progress, then. I believe the manor is in that direction?” I nodded to the north, though the manor lay to the west.
“And to think you were a reconnaissance officer. Follow me.”
When and why had Silforth bothered to learn of my wartime responsibilities? I sank my weight into my heels and prepared for another steeplechase, and Silforth did not disappoint.
He did succeed in nearly killing me and my horse, though.
We had graduated from hopping stiles to jumping gates, some of which were better than four feet in height. In good footing, with a competent rider and a clear approach to the obstacle, most fit hunters could clear that height safely. Silforth knew the course, though, while I did not.
He led us over a fairly tall gate and onto a lane. I anticipated that the challenge would be to swerve quickly onto the thoroughfare without losing my seat or careening into the fence on the opposite side of the lane.
Silforth was more cunning than that. He cleared the first gate, charged across the lane, and took his horse over an even higher gate on the far side. Such a jump—two obstacles in close succession—was sometimes called an in-and-out, and it presented two challenges to the horse and rider.
The most common problem arose when the horse, focusing on the initial obstacle, neglected to even notice the second obstacle behind it and, in his surprise, refused the second fence. The rider might lose his seat, pitch over the horse’s head, and find himself hurled into that unexpected fence.
Such a fall could result in a broken neck or a cracked skull.
The more complicated problem arose from the fixed distance between the two jumps. The horse’s natural gait at the canter or gallop covered a regular distance per stride, which the rider could adjust with a well-trained mount. Had I not seen Silforth shortening his horse’s stride and had I not anticipated a quick change of direction upon landing the first jump, I might well have put Belt in a place upon landing the first gate such that he could not manage a clean takeoff for the second obstacle.
He might have taken the long spot and, with a tremendous effort from his quarters, just managed to clear the second gate, though he risked getting a hind leg caught.
In the alternative, Belt might have crammed himself close to the second jump, taken off from the short spot, and risked catching the gate with his front legs.
In either case, the outcome might have been a fatally injured horse, or—again—a fatally injured ducal heir. To be fair, Silforth had gauged my abilities before putting me to the test, and he well knew Belt’s skills.
Still, the in-and-out had been a damned silly and dangerous thing to do.
“Well done!” Silforth called, bringing his horse down to the trot. “Nothing like a good gallop, is there?”
I could think of several things. A game of chess with my dear Hyperia, a good translation of naughty old Catullus, the first sip of new cider on a chilly autumn morning, the feel of Hyperia’s hands winnowing through my hair…
“You put us through our paces,” I said, “but I’m honestly not in condition for much more.” Then too, Belt needed to catch his breath, for pity’s sake. “Shall we let them walk back to the stable?”
Silforth took another pull from his flask, while his winded horse stood, head down, sides heaving.
“Suppose we should. The grooms have pointed ideas about how horses are to be treated, as do I. Banter permits too much insubordination in the stable. I understand that menials must have their comforts, and grumbling numbers among those comforts, but Bloomfield could be much more than Banter allows it to be.”
He prosed on, about the ideal placement for water obstacles—no self-respecting hunter was permitted to be shy of water—and how much a good, well-seasoned hunter brought at Tatts and why children should be put up on ponies as soon as they could walk without assistance.
“And does Mrs. Silforth agree with that notion?” I asked as the stables came into view.
“Hell no. Lizzie would kill me if she knew I’d put the boys in the saddle that soon. She thought we were off to the stable to pet noses, which we did do. With the girls, I defer to my wife, but my sons mustn’t be coddled.”
Silforth was a typical English papa in this regard. A father’s job in the eyes of many was to make men of his sons. The greatest boon of my childhood wasn’t that I’d been born to rank and wealth, it was that Claudius, his late Grace of Waltham, had thought it more imperative that his sons be gentlemen rather than miniature officers.
Honor had counted for a lot with His Grace, as had a thorough education, leavened with significant leisure in the fresh country air. He had not expected great stoicism or self-discipline from mere children, but he had demanded honesty, responsibility within the limits of childhood, and kindness. The man had not been my father in anything but a legal sense, and yet, his benevolence had inspired my respect and love.
I did not know, or particularly care, who my mother’s diversion had been, and she had not seen fit to inform me. I did wonder, though, if George, “the third boy” in the nursery, might not prefer to know for a certainty if his father was a witty, urbane gentleman or the boot-thumping, spur-jingling squire.
“I suppose we’ll see you at supper,” Silforth said as a groom took his horse, ran the stirrups up their leathers, and loosened the girth.
I had tended to those courtesies with Belt, and the groom who took him rolled his eyes at Silforth, shook his head, and departed without a word. Because Silforth was once again consulting his flask, the disrespect from the groom had likely gone unnoticed.
Or so I hoped. A man who’d risk the life of a good horse—much less the life of a guest—for the sake of puerile pride was a man who’d retaliate without hesitation against an opinionated groom. Silforth went jingling and thumping on his way—"off to consult the doddering steward about moving a herd of heifers or some such rot”—and I let him go.
Banter had mentioned to O’Keefe earlier that day the need to move the fall heifers, and by nightfall, they would doubtless be subduing the overgrown pasture handily.
I wanted Silforth out from underfoot when I confronted Banter about the foolishness with the in-and-out. Either Silforth had been trying to injure the person best equipped to find the missing wonder-hound, or Silforth was so shallow, backward, and stupid that he thought that ploy simply manly good fun.
In either case, Silforth was a disastrous choice to take over management of Bloomfield. If I could not make Banter see reason, perhaps Arthur could.
Eleanora stood quietly at my side as we admired the ceiling fresco in the library. Athena, goddess of wisdom, occupied the eastern end, her owl on her shoulder. The late afternoon sun threw her into brilliant relief and made the gilding on the molding near her glow. Her sibling Apollo, god of truth, music, poetry, and dance, occupied the shadowed western end, where he plied his celestial lyre. A handy olive branch obscured his manly parts.
The artistry was comparable to any on display at Caldicott Hall, though of smaller dimensions than our murals. The whole spotless, elegant, airy house, in fact, could have passed muster as some princeling’s rural retreat.
I had asked for this tour only after sending several missives, one of them by groom to Caldicott Hall. From there, my message would be forwarded by pigeon to Arthur in Town. He’d read my tiny epistle before he sat down to his evening meal, such were the wonders of the avian post.
“Bloomfield is all of a piece, isn’t it?” I asked, ambling across the room to study a shelf of titles. “Was the whole structure built in one go?” The house had a gracious unity of style interrupted only where Lizzie’s decorative touches had intruded. In those rooms, Bloomfield descended from a stately home to a well-lived-in family manor.
“The whole was designed and built by the same hand,” Eleanora said, “the present owner’s great-great-grandfather. Orville Banter was discreetly loyal to the crown during the Protectorate. King Charles offered him a choice between a peerage and a bank charter, and Orville chose the bank.”
“I didn’t know the Banters were bankers.” The shelf I’d chosen was full of French philosophers, all bound in red leather and imprinted with the family crest.
“They are bankers no longer,” Eleanora said. “Orville was shrewd. He built up the bank, trained his sons as financiers, and told them to sell when the time was right. They sold most of their interest in the bank at a lucrative moment, while remaining on the board of directors. With their proceeds, they invested wisely. Orville’s wealth went into building the family seat, and he did a proper job of it.”
“While his sons started the march from the City to the shires socially,” I murmured. “Orville must have made a tidy sum himself if he built Bloomfield from the ground up.”
I perused the shelves, finding the French philosophers succeeded by their German brethren, some medieval luminaries, and on back to Marcus Aurelius and his Greek predecessors.
Eleanora joined my perambulations. “Orville plied the coastal trade, though we don’t say that too loudly. He was wise enough to bring to the exiled princes comforting reminders of home and to take back to England the best French vintages.”
At a time when religious zealots would have demanded that the library fresco be destroyed. “Daring fellow.”
“Dashing, and smart enough to hire the best when it came time to build a house.”
“What of Mrs. Orville Banter?” I asked, moving on to Greek plays. “Did she have a hand in the family myths?”
“Lady Roberta Culver was an earl’s daughter, well dowered, and lovely, and the marriage was reportedly a love match. They had eleven children, all of whom survived to adulthood, though nine were daughters.”
We fetched up beside a sizable pink marble fireplace, the mantel done in white marble. The portrait above was of a smiling lady in Restoration finery. Her ornately embroidered attire exposed her pale shoulders, her forearms, and a considerable expanse of bosom. Ribbons, bows, and flounces added to the whimsical extravagance.
Fashion, like most other walks of life, had rejoiced at the ouster of Cromwell’s bellicose and regicidal Puritans.
“Lady Roberta?” I asked.
“The same. That’s Orville.”
The courtier held pride of place over the opposite hearth, and I could see a resemblance to Osgood about the smile. Clearly, old Orville had been a charmer.
“I cannot envision Anaximander Silforth as even a temporary custodian of these premises,” I said, gesturing to a pair of reading chairs. “What can you tell me about him and his missing dog?”
Eleanora took a seat, allowing me to do likewise. She had been a chatty and cheerful escort on my tour of the manor, providing just the right amount of entertaining commentary. This is the staircase where young Master Osgood claimed to be conducting an experiment in Newtonian physics by timing his sisters’ descents on the banister. All three sisters disrespected the dignity of the house at the same rate of speed, regardless of differing sizes. Nobody was punished on that occasion.
Despite her good humor, she struck me as more serious than Lizzie, less willing to shrug off vexatious details. She also lacked Lizzie’s air of being harried in her soul, but then, Eleanora had neither husband nor children.
“I don’t know Silforth well,” she said, “and that is by my choice. I saw more clearly than Lizzie the sort of man she was marrying. When she offered me a place in the household after Hera’s birth, I came willingly. I knew by then that marriage for me was unlikely, and I do so love the children.”
I’d put her age at about thirty, not ancient, but old enough to decide she preferred spinsterhood and to make the decision stick. She was classically pretty—blond, blue-eyed, curved in all the right places. If she remained unmarried, that was clearly her wish.
“What sort of man did Lizzie marry?”
Eleanora glowered at the youthful Apollo strumming his lyre. “Nax is morally flimsy, for all his physical substance and muscle. He lacks… savoir faire.”
Literally, knowing how or what to do, how to go on. “He seems…” I wanted to say something true but positive about Nax, but nothing came to mind. He was loud, arrogant, physically robust, and… handsome?
“He wants badly to be the squire,” Eleanora said, “the important man in the village. If the aldermen are foolish enough to admit him to their numbers, he’ll doubtless be standing for the hustings within five years. Maybe that’s what he should do, because he’s no sort of farmer, still less of a husband, and not much of a father.”
If she’d kicked Silforth in the cods, she could not have rendered a more damning judgment on his masculinity.
“Is he lazy?”
“Nax has ambition, but he’s fundamentally lazy otherwise. He will move heaven and earth to find that hound, but he can’t be bothered to keep his own books. When I confront him with the cold, hard facts of his own lack of coin, he pats my shoulder and says all the best families live on credit. One cannot maintain an estate on credit forever, my lord, and the Silforths are hardly from the top ranks of society.”
“He seems fond of his children.” And of his foundation mare. Hyperia would do much more than kick him in the cods for such an endearment.
“He likes the boys,” Eleanora said, “because he can make them into Papa’s little toadies. He has no time for the girls. Doesn’t know what to do with them and grumbles because they must be dowered.”
And worse yet, Silforth had done his grumbling where an unmarried aunt with means of her own had overheard him. Not the shrewdest of fellows, certainly.
“Does Silforth expect you to dower the girls?”
“He’ll lean on Osgood first. Silforth tolerates me for Lizzie’s sake, but behaves as if I’m another undeserved burden. Lizzie couldn’t keep her nursery staffed until I came along.”
Nurserymaids were usually young, female, and not that well educated. “Silforth bothered the staff?”
“Only the pretty ones.” Venom lay behind those four words. Perhaps Silforth had tried to bother his sister-by-marriage? Or was Eleanora a sister-by-marriage scorned?
“Does Lizzie know you hold her spouse in such contempt?”
“Oh, probably. She’s a better person than I am, and any esteem she had for Nax has shifted to pity. She says he’s doing the best he can, and I agree, if she means the best he can to avoid growing up. Not an attractive quality in any of us. He can’t stand to lose, can’t stand to be made fun of, can’t abide the notion that he’s not the equal of any man and all challenges.”
“So stealing his dog might be somebody’s attempt to twit him?” But who would benefit from making Silforth look stupid in that peculiar regard? Dogs ran off, cats strayed, horses got loose, and cattle wandered from their pastures. A missing dog struck me as more of a mean prank than an insult.
Eleanora studied the fresco of Athena on the eastern end of the ceiling. “Nax Silforth is such a swaggering fool that if he thought Thales couldn’t acquit himself properly at the hound trials, he might steal his own dog rather than see Sir Rupert’s beagles triumph over Thales.”
“But Thales is an incomparable hound, the stuff of legends, the apex of all houndly virtues, is he not?”
Eleanora rose, her features once more arranged into the slight smile of the assistant-hostess. “He’s just a dog, my lord. As prone to licking himself in public, scratching behind his ear, or having a bad day as any other canine, despite all the care and attention Silforth has lavished on him. If you could see what that man has spent on his wretched pack… Some of Silforth’s tenants don’t enjoy in a season as much red meat as those beasts consume in a week.”
And now this paragon of rural self-indulgence was set to take over Bloomfield? “You keep his books?”
“I try my humble best, but all I can do is document the looming disaster.”
“Might I see those books?”
She appeared to weigh my question, which had been impertinent in the extreme. I had posited my query because after considering cui bono—who benefits?—the axiom follow the money figured most prominently in solving many vexatious human puzzles.
“I have wanted to show the books to Osgood,” Eleanora said, “but the notion of prying into another fellow’s affairs would appall him. Silforth’s irresponsibility appalls me, on behalf of his children and his wife. Even a bit on behalf of his hounds and hunters, who will go on the auction block if Nax can’t be made to see reason.”
I was on my feet and not willing to let Eleanora return to the nursery just yet. “Everything you’ve said suggests to me that Banter would be well advised to put off traveling. Leaving Bloomfield in the hands of an unpopular, self-indulgent spendthrift strikes me as folly.”
“Nothing will stop Banter from leaving the country, my lord. Perhaps you might have a rather pointed discussion with your brother regarding the topic of a delayed departure?”
Ah, well, then. We’d reached the purpose behind all of Eleanora’s gracious family lore and good cheer.
“His Grace well deserves his holiday.” Which would be no holiday at all without Banter. “When Lord Harry and I bought our colors, we weren’t thinking of duty or danger. We were thinking of adventure, glory, possibly even some spoils of war. I blush to admit that, as a younger man, I might have aspired to make a name for myself among the officer corps.” An aspiration that fell into the be-careful-what-you-wish-for category now. “Waltham was left to mind his acres, hand out baskets on Boxing Day, and preside over sack races at the village fete.”
Eleanora looked singularly unimpressed. “Your guilty conscience demands that His Grace make this tour immediately?”
I wasn’t about to explain to her that, from a pragmatic perspective, I wanted my brother someplace safe if he and Banter were intent on frolicking, someplace where the law wouldn’t judge them to death for their proclivities. Banter’s plan to set up housekeeping in France wasn’t daft, but neither did I see it as feasible, given the present situation at Bloomfield.
“You have doubtless heard that my wartime experiences were far from jolly,” I said, “but Harry and I took pride in doing our bit to defeat Napoleon. We dined at Wellington’s table, we knew the sweet taste of victory and the despair of a battle lost. We lived, while His Grace put up with interminable speechifying in the Lords and prayed for our safety. I could no more ask my brother to remain in England than I would willingly free the Corsican from his island prison.”
“Men.” Eleanora spat the word as she marched for the door. “Putting off a journey for a few months is not surrendering all liberty for the rest of eternity. Lizzie and the children are happy here at Bloomfield, as am I, after my fashion, but putting the reins in Silforth’s hands is a serious mistake.”
She quit the room, leaving me with much to think about and only Athena and Apollo for company.
Eleanora, secure in her spinsterhood, her ledgers, and her personal wealth, had no sympathy for Silforth. His wife apparently regarded him as a handsome bumbler, though Silforth wasn’t a complete fool. He’d sense that he wasn’t respected by the adult women in his household. He might see that lack of respect in his daughters’ eyes as well.
But was he truly so unworthy? Many a landowner was becoming insolvent. Three harvests had failed in the past twenty years alone. The country as a whole was deeply in debt, and the widely reviled Corn Laws were the only protection the landed class could cling to.
The very monarch perched upon the British throne was incompetent to order his own affairs. Why was Nax Silforth, of all men, required to make his land profitable, his neighbors happy, and his behavior that of a paragon?
And wasn’t his ambition for Thales an indication that he was trying to pay his debts? Trying to create new sources of revenue?
“I am arguing for the defense,” I muttered, and Athena’s owl seemed to mock me for it. “I know too well what it’s like to be found wanting and unable to protest the injustice.”
I grabbed a French play at random—to blazes with the philosophers—and left the library, intent on enjoying the privacy of my rooms for an hour while the sun sank closer to the horizon. I was looking for some good in Silforth, but just a few hours earlier, that same fellow had put my very life at risk.
All other considerations aside, I agreed with Eleanora: Putting Bloomfield’s reins in Silforth’s hands would be a vast and costly mistake. I was also, however, plagued by the notion that if Arthur and Banter didn’t sail away together on the packet scheduled a few weeks hence, they’d never sail away at all.
And I did not want that sorrow on my conscience—that sorrow too.