Chapter Three

The gentleman was dressed from head to foot in black. The only exception was a carelessly tied cravat at which he tugged from time to time as if it bothered him. His feet were propped on a leather footstool as he lounged in an armchair with crude abandon. His housekeeper drew in a breath as she placed before him a decanter of brandy. He sneered at the woman. “Where is Hopkins?”

“In bed, my lord. ’Tis past three o’clock in the morning, and Hopkins is an old man.”

“Curse all old men. But I’d rather have him than your Friday face around me. Get him out of bed. I have need of him.”

****

Josh Yardley was as good as his word. He made inquiries at the Horse Guards regarding one Robert Marshfield, and wished he hadn’t.

“His company was in the thick of it at Astorga. It sounds as though Marshfield was wounded at Lugo on the retreat to Corunna. Paget’s division had the job of fighting a rearguard action including blowing up bridges. There’s no record of what happened to Marshfield after that. He probably made it to Corunna because he was aide de camp to General Edward Paget, and the General looks after his staff. But where he is now, we have no idea.” Ned Yardley’s contact at the Horse Guards was a pragmatic man and not given to hyperbole. If Robert Marshfield could not be found, he could not be found. Josh Yardley dreaded reporting this to Miss Marshfield.

But when he reached home there was a surprise awaiting him. Miss Marshfield had apparently received a letter from General Edward Paget himself, so his wife informed him. Ned Yardley decided he would not go out to any of his clubs that evening; he joined his ladies for dinner in order to find out more about the mysterious letter.

But he was doomed to disappointment. Miss Marshfield did not appear for dinner at the usual time and did not send down an apology. When dinner had been twice deferred, Caroline was deputized to hurry upstairs and knock on the door of Miss Marshfield’s bedchamber to inquire if all was well. To Caroline’s consternation she heard muffled sobbing coming from within.

“Miss Marshfield! May I come in?”

No answer.

Pushing open the door, Caroline found Helena face down on the bed, desperately trying to stifle her sobs with a pillow. Caroline was horrified. She had never once seen her efficient, collected governess in such a state.

“Miss Marshfield! Oh no…is your brother…? I mean…dear Miss Marshfield, tell me.”

Helena struggled to control herself. She sat up. “No, Caroline. Not dead. But the poor boy may well wish he were. He was badly wounded on the retreat to Corunna. It is his kind general, Sir Henry Paget, who writes to me. Not Robert himself. So I can only deduce how ill poor Robert must be. Here, read it for yourself.”

“Oh no, pray…’tis your letter Miss Marshfield. I could not.”

“Please, Caroline…I cannot think clearly at present.”

Deeply concerned, Caroline took the letter and quickly scanned it. “Poor Sir Robert,” she whispered. “The shoulder and the leg.” She raised her head. “It says he is returning. Where will he recuperate?”

“When the letter was written, the wounded were waiting to evacuate. I don’t know when he will arrive, and I don’t know what we shall do. I cannot think of anywhere he could recuperate. Perhaps when my mind clears I will be able to come up with a solution. Would you make my apologies to your parents, Caroline?” Her face twisted. “I could not possibly eat anything at this moment.”

Caroline laid a gentle hand on Helena’s arm. “No, of course not.”

But Caroline had Betsy bring up some tea and bread and butter just the same.

Mr. Yardley, as soon as the news was told him, bade Betsy take a glass of brandy to Miss Marshfield, saying that would be more acceptable.

****

Helena sipped the brandy gingerly. It had finally come. The letter she had been dreading for the past year. She picked up the general’s letter again. How she missed her brother. They had always been very close, she and Robert. Twenty months ago he had unexpectedly come to see her at Bath, where she taught the senior classes at Miss Fichton’s Academy for Young Ladies. He had not seen her for many months and was concerned that she seemed to feel no joy in life—that she had no expectations of a happy future.

“Dear Ellie, the army life suits me well. But I am not convinced that teaching is your forté. You seem depressed.”

“No, Robert. It is just that I have the cold. Miss Fichton is very kind to me. Now tell me all your news.” And that way she had managed to fob him off. In spite of his regular letters, she hardly knew him from the boy she had farewelled as she left for Miss Fichton’s Academy. He had then been bowed down by the weight of their father’s deception. He was now upright, strong and self-possessed whereas she felt diminished in stature and had lost her self-confidence. She was proud of Robert. His unexpected advent at the Fichton Academy had evinced sighs and murmurs of approval from a handful of young ladies who had the good fortune to see him as he strode in his striking red uniform down the hallway to Miss Fichton’s drawing-room.

Helena had been well aware of the titters and giggles emanating from the corridor, but to her he was just Robert, her big brother. She did not see him as the answer to a maiden’s prayer. But for several weeks after his visit she was amazingly popular with her charges.

She had made it easy for him because she knew his visit could mean only one thing. “Have you come to say that you are off adventuring overseas?”

She instilled enthusiasm where there was none. She knew that his regiment would be sent to Portugal to assist in the routing of the enemy, Bonaparte.

“We sail next week, Ellie. I am to be aide de camp to Sir Henry Paget. I trust I shall distinguish myself.”

“Of course you will, Robert.” Helena was quite sure he would acquit himself favorably. And every day since, she had watched and waited, fearful of receiving a letter like the one she held in her hand.

She composed herself and went downstairs to thank the Yardleys for their kind thoughts. She attempted a smile although she could feel it wavering. “Thank you, Mr. Yardley. There are not many employers who would care about the sensibilities of a governess, sir.”

“Tosh, Miss Marshfield. You are well aware we regard you more in the light of a friend than a governess. When we persuaded you to leave Miss Fichton’s Academy we saw you as a positive influence over our daughters. Now, I am firm in my resolve that Sir Robert must recuperate with us, isn’t that so, my dear?”

Mrs. Yardley was equally effusive.

Preparing to disclaim, Helena hesitated when she realized that not only regard for their plight ruled the Yardleys’ feelings. Mr. Yardley was positively avuncular with the prospect of entertaining ‘Sir Robert’ in his household. It was churlish to point out that Robert’s title was no longer of use without any estates or holdings to sustain it. And more to the point, Robert’s wounds could well be of a long-lasting nature. Even the most indulgent employer would tire of endless philanthropy involving a relative of one of his employees.

But she would know more when Robert arrived. They would just have to deal with any setbacks as best they could. They had coped with horribly disheartening difficulties after their father’s death. No doubt they would manage again this time. There was a good prospect that Robert could sell out and they could invest the proceeds. It might be possible to subsist on the income from that for a short time. Perhaps. It took all her resolve to maintain a tranquil façade.

The topic of conversation in the drawing-room changed to discussing plans for Caroline’s dress-party. Unlike Ariadne, Caroline was not excited at the prospect of attending her own coming-out party. The Yardleys’ townhouse boasted a small ballroom, and although his daughters were not of the haut ton, Mr. Yardley felt he could “show the world a thing or two when it came to entertaining.”

Caroline cringed. “Oh, Papa! Need we invite such a large number of people? Why not just a few close friends?”

“Now, my dear, we will invite just as many as will fit in the house and then some. We must not be seen to be ungenerous. Remember, the more people we invite, the more chances you and Ariadne have of making useful acquaintances.”

Helena flinched slightly at his use of the word “useful.” Of course he was no more at fault than his social superiors—those members of the ton whom he sought to emulate. Usefulness was often their prime motivation for cultivating certain acquaintances. Helena didn’t know which was worse—Mr. Yardley’s attitude or the attitudes of the ton whose morés she had long left behind. She knew who she’d far rather deal with however. Mr. Yardley’s pound dealing was preferable to the unctuous mannerisms of some of her erstwhile friends.

Poor Caroline dreaded meeting so many people all at once. But she was overridden, as had been many a young lady in similar circumstances.

“Caroline!” her mother expostulated. “We must have all your papa’s particular friends and Ariadne’s new friends she has made since her coming-out. We could not possibly have ‘just a few friends’ to celebrate your coming-out.”

Caroline shrank back in her seat. She pinned a nervous smile on her face. Helena sympathized and thought that they might just as well put poor Caroline on a block at the meat market and have done. At least in Helena’s own circumstances her father had had the taste to leave all the details to his socially polished sister.

“Just enjoy your first Season, my dear. There’s no need to make any lasting commitments,” he had advised her at the outset. “Of course, if you meet someone you are sure you cannot possibly live without…” and he had laughed at her, twitting her affectionately in the way he often did. Had she known what was in store for her future, she might have behaved differently. Perhaps she would have seen marriage as a career as most young women did, rather than merely an alternative to a pleasant spinsterhood in her father’s home.

Her father’s advice and her own natural reticence were responsible for her present circumstances. She had whistled two perfectly respectable suitors down the wind. Now when she thought of those two suitors, although she could not possibly imagine herself married to either of them, she still felt betrayed by her father. Had he been more honest about their circumstances she would have behaved less light-heartedly.

Helena smothered a smile as she thought of herself as Mrs. Bonhaven. Her most ardent suitor had gone by the unfortunate name of Beresford Bonhaven. He had been a kind youth with, unfortunately, nothing except his kindness to recommend him. Robert and several of his friends had twitted her mercilessly about her tongue-tied, extremely overweight suitor, saying that she would certainly find a very big ‘haven’ in his arms. Out of pity for him she had not dissuaded him as strongly as she might have. It had taken a frosty set-down from her aunt to finally dampen his ardor, and although Helena regretted the manner in which it was done, she was grateful not to have ended up as Mrs. Beresford Bonhaven.

Her father’s sister had, as a matter of fact, routed nearly all the gentlemen who had shown the slightest interest in Helena. She presumed her father had told his sister the same thing he’d told Helena—that she need not make any major decisions in her first Season. But every now and again Helena wondered if perhaps her father had planned a very different future for her and that he had instructed his sister to warn off any serious suitors. For when Giles Foxhyth, third Lord Elverton had visited Marshfield Manor, her father had gone to considerable trouble to leave them alone together, not something a loving father would normally do. She suspected that he wished her to see Lord Elverton in the light of a suitor, but Helena had been terrified of Elverton. He purposely brushed up against her as he walked past, rather like an offensive tomcat. Or he would take her hand to greet her, then retain a firm grasp so she could not free herself. The more she struggled, the tighter he held her, grinning all the while. She had learned not to struggle, just to let her hand lie quiescent in his, fighting to quell the shudders that rippled down her spine. His behavior indicated that Elverton was a cruel man to whom it was best not so show any fear, in order to discourage his predatory instincts. He affected to dress always in black and often behaved in a very uncivil manner. Sometimes he had ignored her father completely. One moment Helena suspected that he held some sort of power over her father, and the next moment she decided that she was too fanciful. Sometimes Elverton and Papa had discussed the war results amicably, then the next minute Elverton would rant about how England didn’t understand what Bonaparte was trying to achieve. Elverton’s mother was French, and the man had spent several years being educated in France until his English father had requested his presence at their country seat. Elverton had said with a sneer, “Father wished me to learn how to behave liked a ‘civilized’ Englishman. Pah!”

Robert had been away most of the time and had no idea of the many shifts she had been put to in order to avoid Lord Elverton. When Foxhyth entered a room she left it on the pretext of “checking with Cook about the meals” or “to see the gardener about the flowers.” She had rarely used the same excuse twice, so she did not think he was suspicious. But he said acidly to her one day, “Such a busy little lady as you are, Miss Marshfield. Never still.”

She had quickly responded, “I hate to be still, sir. All my friends will tell you so.” With a convincing laugh she had made her escape, but after that she found it more difficult to elude him. He had redoubled his efforts to accost her till she asked her father outright if he had given his permission for Elverton to court her. Her father had hemmed and hawed and finally said, “If you do not wish it, my dear, then it shall not be so.”

“Father, he frightens me. He treats the Manor as if he owns it. He neglects to have himself announced by Peebles, and I unexpectedly find him all over the house. Yesterday he was in the conservatory. Today I found him looking up the stairs to the maids’ quarters. Please don’t make me stay here whilst he is visiting. May I go back to town to be with Aunt Tinsley?”

Her father had finally realized the force of her fear and after that Elverton had disappeared for a while.

But just before Robert joined the army, long after all their father’s debts had been cleared up, she came upon a promissory note in the shape of a carelessly penned message stuffed into a drawer in her father’s escritoire. It was written in such an obscure fashion that its meaning was unclear. Neither Robert nor their steward understood the details of the debt. It was a vowel scrawled on a scrap of notepaper and said, “We two only are cognizant of the details of this debt. Value decided. To be collected at will.” The only signature was an indecipherable letter, presumably an initial. It could be an E, or possibly a G. It looked as if it had been scribbled hastily in a gaming hell. The penmanship was not that of John Marshfield.

“Don’t worry about it,” Robert had advised his sister. “It is indecipherable, and the writer has not approached us so…” He had shrugged, and their steward had agreed.

But that unclaimed debt kept Helena awake at nights. She had her suspicions. There were many nights in her little sanctuary above-stairs when she found it necessary to count the proverbial sheep. She was almost certain that a deal had been struck between her father and Lord Elverton and that she had been the bargaining chip. But something must have gone wrong.

Now, in a deep bond of fellow feeling with Caroline, also to be a sacrifice to parental ambition, she ventured to intervene. “Perhaps sir, a smaller gathering might assist Caroline to become used to—”

But Mr. Yardley knew what was due his daughters. “No, Miss Marshfield. If my girls don’t catch good husbands, it will not be for want of effort on my part. I trust I am a good father?”

“Of course you are, sir. I have said often that your daughters are very fortunate.” Helena hastily soothed his ruffled feathers for Mr. Yardley undoubtedly had his daughters’ best interests at heart. Indeed, unlike many members of the ton who had titles to consider, never once had Helena seen Josh Yardley express a wish to have had sons instead.

Ariadne was unimpressed to hear that Caroline’s coming-out dress-party would take place earlier than originally planned. “But I have only had one Season! ’Tis unfair! Caroline is only seventeen. She can wait another year, can’t she, Mama?” Ariadne’s lovely voice held a distinct whine.

Miss Marshfield felt rather like whining herself. Struggling to exert a semblance of quality on the Yardley household whilst keeping various warring factions apart—Poppy the Cook and Stalley the butler were constantly at loggerheads—Caroline’s dress-party was an added responsibility. She, too, felt that this event could well wait a twelvemonth.

Caroline, seeking to smooth troubled waters, hastily intervened. “Yes, Papa. Ariadne is right. I can delay my coming-out. Truly, I am not sure how to behave just yet. I have to rely on Miss Marshfield.”

“No, my dear. Your mama and I have decided.” So that was that.

Ariadne, unable for once to twist her parents around her little finger, knew when she was beaten. With insufferable condescension she informed Caroline, “I shall guide you. After the initial greeting of the guests and the first dance with Papa, you may then do as you wish.”

“Now, my pet,” Mrs. Yardley hastily interrupted. “Miss Marshfield will see to it that Caroline understands her obligations.”

“Yes, young lady,” Mr. Yardley agreed. “We’ll concede to Miss Marshfield on all matters of social usage.”

A pouting session looked imminent, and Helena hastened to divert attention. “That’s settled then. Now who would like a game of lottery tickets?”

Mrs. Yardley nodded in approval, and the ladies became engrossed in their game whilst Mr. Yardley sat quietly by the fire, watching them. Helena’s concentration was fractured. She was easily beaten by both Caroline and Ariadne and even once by Mrs. Yardley. Her brother was foremost in her thoughts. She was anxious to get to her room to re-read her letter. When Caroline began to look tired, Helena was finally able to excuse them both. Lord, she could not endure another hour of the Yardleys en famille. Even Caroline’s wistful sympathy grated, for she was one to lick her wounds alone.

In her room she re-read the General’s letter, trying to read between the lines. Just how ill was her brother? Would it be possible for him to take up some genteel occupation in the future?

Oh, how she resented Papa! Thanks to him she was forced to live a featureless, cloistered existence, and now poor Robert was severely injured. Damn their irresponsible father for consigning Robert and herself to the membership of an overcrowded, penniless, minor aristocracy.

They had had such a wonderful childhood. Their father had denied them nothing. Perhaps it might have been better had he done so. It would at least have prepared them for the difficult times ahead.

On her father’s death, Helena had been heartlessly deserted and crushed underfoot by people she had considered to be her friends and acquaintances. She particularly remembered the measured, sarcastic tones of Lord Elverton. “Perhaps now you will learn to behave with the humility that befits one of your station.”

How his tone had smarted! For months he had treated Marshfield Manor as if he owned it, yet suddenly he had turned on her, vindictive and haughty, so sure of his own worth and so scathing about her lineage. She was thankful that Robert had not heard that conversation.

She should not cling to the past. She knew that. It was a form of self-indulgence. Yet her father’s betrayal was the one shattering incident that had shaped her life for the past few years. She well knew the ways of the ton. She knew that they latched on to tidbits of news such as the misfortune of others with the tenacity of bulldogs. Many of them had very little to do except discuss each other. They fed on any piece of juicy gossip they could unearth.

But more important than the shame she bore, she missed her brother. Fortunately, both she and Robert were assiduous letter writers. His letters, penned amidst the noise and dirt of war, were redolent of the warmth of the Iberian Peninsula. In his last letter he had written, “You would love the countryside here, Ellie. Vast tracts of arable but empty land broken only by cork trees. And the people! They have had a terrible time, but they still have their stiff-necked pride. Far more prideful than any Englishman. The French swept through, appropriating food, stealing horses and, well…you can guess the rest. And that has not encouraged them to trust anyone, even their ‘allies.’ As a result, the Portuguese are not above betraying us. It is common for local bandits to sweep down from the hills and attack English and French alike.”

Robert had asked Helena to retain his letters so he could formulate a travel diary on his return. She had faithfully followed his instructions and wrapped his letters in a square of fine cambric. A few tears had been shed over the letters, and some of the ink was smudged.

She smiled now, thinking of Robert’s cleverness with a pen. If it weren’t for their father’s mistakes, Robert might have held a position in the diplomatic corps. He had been fortunate to purchase a commission in General Edward Paget’s cavalry division. She suspected some influence at work there, possibly from their uncle. Even when the aunt who had supervised her coming-out had shown no interest in the fate of her niece and nephew after their father’s death, she suspected that her kind uncle-by-marriage had maintained a watching brief. Once, on her birthday, she had received a small parcel from him. He had made no pretense that her aunt had co-signed the pleasantries on the attached note. He was very much under the cow’s thumb in that household.

She sighed. Thanks to their father, all of Robert’s education, charm, and bright intelligence had been put to use parlaying instructions back and forth between the English and Portuguese armies in a hot country far away, pursuing the ever-acquisitive French.

She had shown Caroline one of Robert’s letters, and Caroline was astounded at the penmanship. “One can almost see the horses and the mud!” she had cried. “You are so lucky to have a brother, Miss Marshfield.”

But now Helena wondered whether she did indeed still have a brother. “Please, God,” she prayed, “spare Robert.”