“WE WERE AFRAID YOU would not be able to get home again, Meri!” Davy exclaimed, dancing beside her and trying to hug her at the same time as she straightened beside the chaise.
She put her arm around the boy’s thin shoulders and gave him a hearty squeeze, saying quietly, “Well, we did get home, Davy.” She had not taken her eyes from her older brother, and although she had not seen him in so many years, the set of Jocelyn’s jaw and the tension in his powerful shoulders were as familiar to her as though he had never gone away. She knew without even considering the matter that he struggled to keep his volatile temper in check.
His gaze shifted from her to the big man beside her, then to Carruthers, who dismounted with easy grace and gave his horse’s reins into the keeping of a liveried servant. When Jocelyn began to descend the broad, shallow steps, Meriel saw that he had changed from the young man she remembered. Never before had she seen him walk with such dignity. It was as though he were profoundly aware of eleven and more generations of Trahernes at his back. Indeed, he put her forcibly in mind of her father.
He did not speak until he reached the flagway. Then, meeting her steady gaze with a stern one of his own, he said. “Welcome home, Meriel. Will you have the goodness to introduce me to your friends?”
With difficulty she wrenched her gaze away and glanced first at Sir Antony and then at Carruthers, rather as though she were surprised to find them still there. Then, quickly, she said, “Of course. I’m sorry to be standing like a post, Joss, but your appearance, you know, comes as something of a shock after all this time.” When he said nothing, merely waited pointedly, she hurried on, “This is Sir Antony Davies, and that gentleman is Mr. Roger Carruthers. They very kindly helped to get Gladys Peat and me out of France.”
“Where you had no business to be in the first place,” muttered her brother in an angry undertone. Then, recollecting himself, he turned toward Sir Antony. “Forgive my surliness, Davies. You must realize we have been sick with worry.”
“Indeed, my lord,” replied Sir Antony in his calm drawl, “I can think of no more normal reaction than yours to the danger her ladyship has been in. I can only be thankful that we are able to restore her to you undamaged.”
When Meriel drew a breath of angry indignation, his hand tightened at the small of her back imperatively, making her swallow the words that sprang to her lips.
“You must come in for refreshment,” Jocelyn said, including Carruthers in a gesture. “My late father’s cellars here contain some outstanding vintages.”
Shooting a rueful glance at Meriel, Mr. Carruthers opened his mouth as though to excuse himself, but before he could speak, Sir Antony said, “We’d be most grateful for a glass of something wet just now, Tallyn, thank you.” There was nothing for it then but for all of them to repair inside.
The exterior appearance of the house scarcely prepared visitors for the grandeur within, so Meriel was not surprised when both her traveling companions expressed astonishment at what they saw. The house had been designed some seventy years before by William Kent in a determined and highly successful effort to arrange the interior of a London terrace house in a palatial fashion. Into its square core he had fitted, with extraordinary ingenuity, a spectacular staircase which rose in a single flight to an apse, forming a landing from which two gracefully curving arms returned upward to the first floor.
As they climbed the first flight, Carruthers looked from the ornate ironwork railings by Benjamin Holmes to the high, domed stained-glass skylight and said, “By gad, Lady Meriel, considering the small space which confines it, this is as beautiful a piece of art as can be imagined.”
She smiled at him over her shoulder as her brother said proudly, “We believe the stairway is very fine, thank you.” Privately Meriel thought the staircase, and indeed most of the public areas of the house, to be theatrical and over complex. She preferred the vast, rustic spaciousness of Plas Tallyn.
They emerged upon the first floor, turned right, past a screen of Ionic columns concealing another flight of stairs that wound against the apse’s rear wall to an open gallery on the second floor, and entered the front drawing room through an ornate pillared and pedimented doorway. A spectacular chamber by any standard, the drawing room rose one and a half stories to a coved, tunnel-vaulted ceiling, coffered, gilded, and boasting small inset paintings designed by Kent himself in such a way as to produce a three-dimensional effect. His subjects had been the Greek gods and goddesses, whose figures were repeated in a collection of marble sculptures decking every chest and table in the room. Rich dark colors had been used throughout, and the plasterwork by Robert Dawson was as ornate as everything else.
As Mr. Carruthers expressed his pleasure at the grandeur and the three occupants of the drawing room exclaimed their delight to see Meriel, she shot an oblique look toward Sir Antony to see what his reaction would be to a chamber that had always made her feel as though she had entered an anteroom in a king’s palace. His expression was as bland as always, but she was sure a twinkle lurked in the hazel eyes. Satisfied, she turned quickly to greet her aunt and sisters. After hugging them all, she suggested that perhaps Jocelyn would like to entertain the gentlemen while she went upstairs with the ladies to refresh herself. She was promptly overruled.
“We shall certainly excuse you if you have personal matters to attend to,” her brother said, “but you will want to return immediately to see to our guests’ comfort.” He turned away then to present the two men to his aunt, leaving Meriel with nothing to say.
Eliza, having watched the exchange silently, now moved a step closer to Meriel. “Joss has been in a rare taking,” she said quietly, “even before war was resumed.”
“How long has he been here?” Meriel asked in an undertone, as her brother gave orders to a footman to see to the serving of refreshments at once.
“Two weeks,” Eliza murmured swiftly. “Auntie Wynne would have mentioned his arrival in her last letter to you, only that he wished to surprise you and thought you must return soon.”
Observing that Jocelyn was waiting for them to take their seats, Meriel moved with her sister farther into the drawing room, where a magnificent Oriental carpet and the upholstery of the comfortable chairs and glove-leather sofa echoed the rich dark colors of the paintings overhead. She stepped past the pair of tall, narrow, dark-red-velvet-draped windows overlooking the square to stand before the marble fireplace in the wall opposite the door. Though cold now, it was large enough to bring cheer and warmth to the chilliest day, but it was not the fireplace that drew Meriel’s attention. It was the painting above the chimneypiece, a haunting picture of the great house at Plas Tallyn, seen through a light mist and set against the magnificent peaks of Cader Idris. Staring mesmerized into the picture, she felt a sudden strong longing for the mountain.
“Meriel, do you intend to keep everyone standing indefinitely?” her brother asked sharply.
She looked around at the others vaguely to see that although Gwenyth, Eliza, and Lady Cadogan were already seated, the gentlemen and Davy were not. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t realize—”
“Come, sit by me,” recommended her aunt, patting the place beside her on the wide claw-footed sofa. “I wish to hear all about your adventures.”
“Tell us first how you managed to escape from Boney,” said Davy. “I’ll wager that was something like.”
“Yes,” agreed Jocelyn, casting an enigmatic glance at Sir Antony, who stood patiently beside a wing chair near the empty fireplace. “Do tell us about that.”
Meriel moved to sit beside her aunt, her thoughts speeding as she tried to think how best to describe her escape, but once again, before she could speak, Sir Antony forestalled her.
“’Twas nothing very alarming, you know,” he said blandly, sitting and arranging his coattails to his satisfaction as he spoke. “The Lady Meriel was fortunate enough to have made the acquaintance, through your sister, the Comtesse de Prévenu, of one of Napoleon’s ministers of state. Monsieur Deguise appeared to have a fondness for both your sisters, my lord, and was kind enough to warn Lady Meriel of her impending danger and to provide identity papers to see her safely to the coast.”
“I see,” said Jocelyn, looking at him searchingly. “Then just how did you figure in her escape, sir?”
Davy and Gwenyth, who had clearly thought Sir Antony’s explanation rather flat, stirred excitedly, and Davy said, “Yes, there must have been something else. Meriel said you got her out.”
Sir Antony shrugged gently. “Mr. Carruthers and I, not being fortunate enough to have been granted safe conduct by the French ministry, took a rather more circuitous route to the coast, but once there, we encountered Lady Meriel and her maidservant, who would no doubt have experienced a certain amount of difficulty, despite their papers, in finding a boat to bring them to England. As my yacht was awaiting me offshore, I was able to accommodate them.”
While Jocelyn was digesting this glib explanation, Meriel cast Sir Antony a look of gratitude. She did not understand why he was attempting to protect her from her brother’s displeasure, but she had no doubt that that was precisely the case. Why else had he not mentioned that the magic papers he described so casually had been entirely false and might well have resulted in arrest rather than escape? Considering that he had been incensed with her himself and had scolded her fiercely for what he had callously described as idiotic behavior, he ought by rights to be siding with Jocelyn, not intervening on her behalf. She glanced at Mr. Carruthers and discovered a gleam of amusement in that gentleman’s eyes. She hoped Jocelyn would not see it. Her brother was no slowtop.
He was speaking now. “I must assume that my sister Nest decided to remain with her husband’s family. Is she reasonably safe, do you think?”
“Entirely safe,” Meriel replied, seeing no reason why Sir Antony should answer this question as well. “André is home again, and the Depuissant family has taken her entirely under its wing. She has the full protection of their power.”
“Power is a sometime thing,” said Jocelyn, frowning.
“Well, that hasn’t been so with them. Monsieur Deguise said the Depuissants are like cats, always landing on their feet.”
He nodded, then seemed about to say something else when Carruthers said mildly, “Our adventures must seem tame beside your own, my lord. The Lady Meriel has told us that you have been for some time in America. Indeed, she said she had been unable to reach you through the medium of the post, so you must have traveled well into the interior, unless of course you were captured by those wild savages we hear so much about and rendered incapable of communicating with your family.”
“Yes,” said Meriel, straightening as she favored her older brother with a glare, “just where have you been, Joss, and why did you not have the goodness to respond to any of my letters?”
To her surprise, his expression changed to a rueful one, but he did not respond immediately, for the butler chose that moment to usher in a footman and a maid with a selection of excellent wines from the late earl’s cellar for the gentlemen, tea and lemonade for the ladies, and platters of tiny sandwiches and iced cakes for all.
“Gracious,” Meriel said appreciatively, “’tis a prodigious fine spread, Marwyn, thank you.” But the moment the servants had departed, she turned to her brother again. “Now, Joss, tell us. And your tale had best be a good one, sir.”
He smiled then, and the expression altered the planes of his face, showing him to be a ruggedly handsome young man, rather than the harsh disciplinarian he had looked before. The smile reached his blue-gray eyes, lighting them, softening his entire demeanor. “I knew when I saw the dates on the letters I did receive that I’d be giving my head to you for washing. You sent them to Philadelphia, Meri, and I had not been there since the first year. Mr. Carruthers is right. I went into the interior at the first opportunity, to a place called Kaskaskia, in point of fact, in a part of the country then known as the Northwest Territory. Now, of course, it has been divided into what they call the Indiana and Illinois territories, and indeed, what with negotiations being in train when I left to acquire a much larger block of land from France, the interior of that great continent will no doubt soon be entirely in American hands. ’Tis vastly exciting, I can tell you, and I suffered more than one qualm at leaving it all behind.”
“When do you mean to return?” Meriel asked with a grimace.
“He doesn’t,” said Gwenyth brightly.
To Meriel’s astonishment, Jocelyn flushed like a guilty child and would not meet her gaze. “As to that,” he said, “I haven’t precisely decided.” Then, straightening and unconsciously smoothing the sleeve of his well-cut coat, he said in a rather more lofty tone, “I believe my duty lies here for the moment, certainly.”
“It took you a precious good time to remember that,” she said tartly.
He shot her a warning look from under this thick brows. “Less of that, my girl, if you please. I tell you I learned only five months ago of Papa and Mama’s deaths, and crossing the Atlantic in winter is no easy thing to arrange. For all that, getting to the east coast wasn’t simple. I was back in Kaskaskia, after nearly three years of exploring unmapped territory to the north with a Welsh expedition, and found your letters awaiting me. They’d been brought to Kaskaskia by a fellow who’d picked them up in Kentucky. That won’t mean much to you, I daresay, but I can tell you he’d brought them the devil of a distance. When I left Philadelphia, I traveled south to Virginia and through the Cumberland Gap. Then, one way and another, I made my way up the Mississippi River until I got taken up by the French as a spy, of all devilish things.”
“How perfectly thrilling for you, dear,” said Lady Cadogan placidly, “but I thought you were quite friendly toward the French. Seems to me that’s what all the fuss was about between you and your dear father, unless I’ve got my facts mixed. Surely they must have been kind to you.”
He snorted. “They took me for a damned Englishman, of course, no matter that I told them I was Welsh and that even if I weren’t, no person of quality would involve himself in something so underhanded as spying. But of course, thanks to that fellow Fouché having sent spies all over the place like he did before Bonaparte got rid of him, the French don’t see the matter as we do. It was all quite beyond their understanding.” He glanced at Meriel then, and the irritation she had seen earlier was back in his eyes. “That’s why I was in such a taking when I learned you were in France, my girl. With the political situation in such a turmoil, as it was, I should have thought you’d have had better sense than to go flitting across the Channel. The French don’t seem to recognize their allies when they fall over them.”
“I cannot say I was ever a particular ally of theirs, you know,” Meriel said thoughtlessly.
Sir Antony spoke rather more quickly than usual. “How did you manage to convince your captors of your good faith, my lord? I confess to a quite unbecoming curiosity on that point.”
Jocelyn, glaring at his sister, turned to him and said curtly, “Oh, I didn’t do anything. A lawyer in Kaskaskia, name of John Rice Jones—fellow Welshman from Merioneth, in point of fact—spoke to the commandant on my behalf. Being just across the river, they had come to know one another, and the commandant was perfectly willing to take Mr. Jones’s word that I was the deuce of a fine fellow. It was Jones who kept your letters for me, too, Meriel.”
“He sounds to be a kind gentleman,” said Lady Cadogan. “Do have some more of these little cakes, Mr. Carruthers.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” As he leaned forward to help himself, Carruthers caught her ladyship’s shrewd, somewhat thoughtful gaze and smiled mischievously at her. Meriel, intercepting that smile, grimaced, thinking the last thing she needed to have added to her dish was to see her aunt succumb to the man’s fateful charm.
Sir Antony asked another pointed question just then, turning the conversation back to Jocelyn’s sojourn in America and adroitly keeping it there for the next twenty minutes, at which time Marwyn opened the tall double doors to the drawing room and announced, “Captain Halldorson, my lord.”
A fair, wedge-shaped young man in the bright red-and-blue jacket and pale gray trousers of the King’s Dragoon Guards entered the room, carrying his brass-trimmed black helmet under his arm. His gaze swept over Meriel and the others to come to rest upon Eliza, who sat blushing in a chair beside her elder brother. With a dazzling smile the gentleman turned to make his bow to Lady Cadogan and Lord Tallyn.
“Good day,” he said. “I see that I am interrupting a family party. Your man ought to have denied me.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Eliza before either her aunt or brother might speak. “Marwyn knows he must never do such a thing as that, Freddie … that is, Captain Halldorson,” she added hastily with an oblique glance at Meriel. “You must come in and meet my sister, the Lady Meriel, and … and her friends.” These last words faltered when she encountered her sister’s frowning gaze.
Jocelyn had arisen, however, and began to make Captain Halldorson known to everyone. Meriel realized from her brother’s cheerful demeanor that he welcomed the newcomer and thought highly of him, so she nodded graciously when Captain Halldorson bowed to her, and continued to regard him thoughtfully from beneath her dark lashes.
He was certainly a handsome young man, and by the grace of his manners she was certain that he had had a decent education. When she learned that he was a member of the Dragoon’s’ second foot, that famous regiment known popularly as the Coldstream Guards, she was sure his antecedents must be excellent and thought for a brief time that at last her capricious sister had discovered a suitable young man. She was disabused of this notion some moments later when Sir Antony commented casually that he rather thought he knew Captain Halldorson’s oldest brother.
“Oh, do you, sir?” inquired that young man politely. “He’s years older than I am, so I daresay you might.”
Sir Antony blinked as though he had felt a twinge of pain, but he replied calmly, “He is Ribblesdale, is he not?”
The captain nodded his fair head. “Yes, sir, and he’s grown dashed proper since he inherited the title. Use to cut his capers with the best, so they say.”
“A dashed fribble is what I’d say,” murmured Mr. Carruthers under his breath.
Hearing him, Meriel favored him with a quelling glance, but he grinned back, quite unabashed, confirming her opinion of him as one who would take advantage of his betters at the least encouragement. She turned her attention pointedly back to the conversation between Sir Antony and Young Halldorson.
Sir Antony was saying, “You come from a large family, do you not, captain?”
“Don’t I just,” agreed that young man with a droll look. “Twelve others between Ribblesdale and yours most sincerely, and two-thirds of them males, all clamoring for post and position. ’Twas a fortunate circumstance for me that my mama chose her great-uncle Frederick for my godpapa. He purchased my colors for me and set me on the road to success.”
The conversation became general after that, and when the visitors had departed, Jocelyn informed his sisters and aunt that he had business to attend to in his library. Before taking himself off, he said briskly to Meriel, “I know you must be wishing to rest after your journey, but make no plans to go out tonight, my girl, for I’ve several things to say to you.”
When he had gone, Eliza let out a long sigh, but Gwenyth said angrily, “He takes too much upon himself, Meri, coming back like he has and assuming he can tell everyone what they can and cannot do, just as though he had never gone away and left the whole to you to manage.”
“Well, I for one,” said Lady Cadogan, rising from her chair and gathering her fancywork, “was prodigiously glad to see him, and so I do not scruple to tell you.” She bent a stern eye upon Gwenyth. “And you should not be speaking so of your brother and the head of your family, for if he does not have the right to order things as he likes them in his own house, then I should like to know who has. I am persuaded, moreover, that he would not like to hear you speaking of him in such an uncivil fashion.”
Gwenyth flushed deeply at the reprimand, astonishing her eldest sister, who had expected to have to take Lady Cadogan’s side in the matter. In the past, Gwenyth might well have been stirred to impertinence by such a rebuke. Instead, she now offered a swift apology, which Lady Cadogan accepted graciously before suggesting that she take her younger brother up to the schoolroom.
“No doubt Mr. Scott has been wondering this age where you have disappeared to. For you must know,” her ladyship added in an aside to Meriel when the two younger children had taken themselves off, “that Davy’s very excellent tutor has agreed to teach Gwenyth as well, until it can be decided where she shall go to school. For now that the French have so unfortunately taken up arms against England again, we can scarcely send her to Mademoiselle Lecolier.”
“No, ma’am,” responded Meriel, hiding a smile, “but how is this? Am I to understand that you have succeeded already in finding a proper tutor for my brother? I was persuaded that you would rely upon Mr. Glendower’s services until my return and that my first duty would be to interview a number of intimidatingly brilliant young men in an attempt to find someone suitable.”
“Oh, I had little to do with it, my dear. No sooner did dearest Jocelyn return than he saw that dear Mr. Glendower was no longer able to cope with young Davy’s mischievous ways. Indeed,” she added with a small, sad grimace, “I fear that both Davy and Gwenyth had got distressingly out of hand.”
“They behaved dreadfully, Meri,” Eliza interposed, taking pity on her aunt, who was beginning to wring her hands at the memories now assailing her. “’Tis a wonder there’s a servant left in the entire house, for what must they do first but lock one of the between maids into the wine cellar, where she had no business to be in the first place.”
“She told Mrs. Peabody—your brother’s housekeeper, you know—that that young limb of Satan told her Marwyn had given orders that she was to dust all the wine bottles.”
“God have mercy,” breathed Meriel, hardly daring to think what her brother must have said when he discovered that his father’s precious wine collection had been disturbed.
“Just so,” responded her aunt, nodding wisely. “Most fortunately, Davy slammed and locked the cellar door before she had so much as reached the bottom step, thereby frightening the poor girl so much that she never dusted so much as a single bottle but went into a screaming fit instead, a fact which Marwyn seemed to greet as a heaven-sent miracle when he discovered what had occurred.”
“And the very day Joss arrived,” Eliza continued wryly, “both those young scamps gave Mr. Glendower the slip and took themselves off to view the circus riders at Astley’s Amphitheater. Marwyn was on the point of sending several of the footmen in search of them when he opened the front door to see Joss stepping out of a hired chaise. His shock was nothing, though, to what Gwen and Davy must have felt when Joss was there to greet them upon their return.”
“Oh, such a scene as there was!” said Lady Cadogan, shaking her head. “But I must say that both those young’uns have behaved themselves a deal more circumspectly since his return.”
“Well, I should think so,” said Eliza, shooting a look brimful of amusement at Meriel. “When one considers the alternative to good behavior, I daresay anyone might take care to behave circumspectly—anyone with experience of Joss’s temper, at any rate. Isn’t that right, Meri?”
Meriel grinned at her. “From your superior tone, I take it that you at least have managed to deal happily with our brother.”
“Oh, Joss is not difficult to manage if one but makes the effort, you know, although he does not properly understand the difference between prices here in London and those in backwoods America, I might say.”
Lady Cadogan chuckled. “That he don’t. Why, how he thinks Eliza can be rigged out for an evening’s entertainment for any less than what she is and not be looked down upon for a dowdy is more than I can tell you, Meriel. But he has been perfectly reasonable about it, for all that. Indeed, he has been a great deal too forbearing in some areas, more’s the pity.”
Eliza lifted her chin. “You are only saying that because he likes Freddie and you do not. Oh, Meri,” she went on, turning impulsively toward her sister, “do you not think that Freddie—Captain Halldorson, you know—is the handsomest, most charming of gentlemen? Please, please say that you have not taken him in dislike, for I must tell you that I have fallen quite madly in love with him, and even if you do not quite like it, there is nothing to be done, for Joss says he is the very man for me, and Joss is my guardian, after all, so there is no more to be said, is there?”