On my lengthy list of reasons for avoiding the Caldicott family seat, Harry’s ghost took top honors. My oldest sibling, Arthur (still extant), came third, and Lady Clarissa Valmond (lively indeed) occupied the spot between them.
Harry haunted me even when I wasn’t at Caldicott Hall, appearing in my daydreams and nightmares. Like the good brother he’d been, he did not stand on ceremony in death any more than he had in life. I’d nonetheless been relieved to quit the Hall months ago to finish recuperating at my London town house, though I’d yet to achieve a full return to health.
After parting ways with the military following Waterloo, I’d come home from the Continent in poor health. My eyes still objected to prolonged bright light, my stamina wasn’t what it had been on campaign, my hair was nearly white, and my memory…
My memory had been a problem before I’d bought my commission.
And yet, I knew every tree of the lime alley that led to the Hall, forty-eight in all, though two were relative saplings, having been planted in my great-grandfather’s day. The other forty-six were nearly four hundred years old, but for a few new recruits necessitated by lightning strikes, Channel storms, and other random misfortunes.
Atlas, my horse, knew the path to the Hall as well as I did and picked up his pace as we turned through the ornate main gate.
“You would not be so eager to complete this journey if His Grace had summoned you,” I muttered.
Arthur had signed his summons with an A, meaning as a brother, not as the Duke of Waltham and head of the family. He was six years my senior and possessed of worlds more consequence, not merely by virtue of his title. Arthur carried the dignity of his station as naturally as a gunnery sergeant carried a spare powder bag.
He had been born to be a duke, just as Harry had been a natural fit with the role of charming spare. Our father had assured me many times that my lot in life was to be the despair of his waning years.
Atlas marched on, his horsey imagination doubtless filled with visions of lush summer grass and long naps in sunny paddocks. Harry and I had raced up the lime alley more times than I could count, on foot and on horseback and, once when slightly inebriated, running backward.
In earliest boyhood, I’d routinely lost. Harry had had two years on me, and for much of my youth, that had meant size and reach. Then Harry attained his full height, and I kept growing. Had he lived to be an old, old man, I’d have delighted in reminding him that I was the tallest Caldicott son, having an inch on Harry and a half inch on Arthur.
What I would not give to gloat over that inch to him in person.
Harry had been taken captive by the French, and I had followed him into French hands, thinking the two of us could somehow win free where one could not. I am not the smartest of the Caldicotts, clearly. Harry had expired without yielding any information to his captors, while my experience as a prisoner was complicated by…
Many factors.
I’d survived and escaped, and I’d do the same again if need be, but now that I was back in Merry Olde, public opinion castigated me for having the effrontery to outlive my brother. At least one faction of the military gossip brigade concluded that I’d bought my life through dishonorable means—betraying my commission—though the military itself had cleared me of such allegations.
Arthur had welcomed me home with the reserve of a duke. Not until we had been private had he informed me that acts of self-harm on my part would reflect poorly on the family honor. I was not to indulge in foolish histrionics simply because I’d been labeled a traitor, much less because I could barely see, my memory was worse than ever, and I never slept more than two hours at a stretch.
Petty annoyances were no justification for imbecilic stunts, according to Arthur. He’d delivered that scold with characteristic sternness, though I’d never wanted so badly to hug him.
One did not presume on ducal dignity. My time among the French had also left me with a peculiar reluctance to be touched. With few exceptions, I kept my hands to myself and hoped others would do likewise concerning my person.
I emerged from the lime alley to behold the Hall, sitting uphill on the opposite bank of William’s Creek. That placid stream was named for a multiple-great-grandfather, who’d no doubt played in its shallows as Harry and I had. Aided by juvenile imagination, that waterway had been the English Channel, where we’d defeated the great Spanish Armada; the Thames; the raging North Atlantic; and the South China Sea.
As Atlas clip-clopped over the arched stone bridge, a pang of longing assailed me, for Harry’s voice, for his presence, for even his relentless teasing and boasting. Why did Harry have to die? Why had he left camp that night? Why hadn’t the French taken my life as they’d taken his?
I’d asked those questions a thousand times, though I posed them now with more sadness than despair.
Caldicott Hall was sometimes referred to as Chatsworth in miniature, meaning the Hall was merely huge as opposed to gargantuan. Like the Duke of Devonshire’s seat up in Derbyshire, the Hall was built around a central open quadrangle. All four exterior approaches presented dignified, symmetric façades of golden limestone, with obligatory pilasters and entablatures adding an appearance of staid antiquity.
I drew Atlas to a halt, giving myself a moment to appreciate my family home and to gather my courage. My mother was off at some seaside gossip fest, thank the merciful powers, but Harry’s ghost was doubtless in residence, as was my father’s. And if that wasn’t enough to give a fellow pause, my godmother, Lady Ophelia Oliphant, had threatened to follow me to the Hall once she’d tended to some social obligations.
Atlas rooted at the reins, suggesting a dutiful steed deserved his bucket of oats sooner rather than later. A slight movement from the window at the corner of the second floor caught my eye.
“We’ve been sighted,” I muttered, letting the beast shuffle forward. “The advance guard should be out in less time than it takes Prinny to down a glass of port.”
Half a minute later, a groom jogged up from the direction of the stable and stood at attention by the gents’ mounting block. As Atlas plodded on, I nearly fell out of the saddle.
A footman coming forth to take charge of my saddlebags would not have been unusual.
The butler, Cheadle, might have welcomed me home in a fit of sentimentality, or one of my sisters might have bestirred herself to greet me if she were calling on Arthur.
Arthur himself sauntered out of the house, checked the time on his watch—which had been Papa’s watch—and surveyed the clouds as if a perfectly benign summer sky required minute inspection. He was to all appearances the epitome of the reserved country gentleman. Tall, athletic, his wavy dark hair neatly combed, his aquiline profile the envy of portraitists and sculptors.
To the educated fraternal eye, though, the duke was in the next thing to a panic. His Grace set very great store by decorum. When I had returned from France after escaping from captivity and before the Hundred Days, Arthur had received me in the library and offered me a brandy in Harry’s memory.
All quite civilized, though at the time, I’d been barely able to remain upright, my hands had shaken like an old man’s, and I’d managed a mere sip of libation. When I’d come home from Waterloo, Arthur had merely greeted me at supper as if I’d been up to Town for a few fittings.
Before my wondering eyes, he came down the terrace steps and joined the groom at the mounting block. I swung from the saddle, taking care to have my balance before I turned loose of Atlas’s mane. I’d fallen on my arse a time or two after a hard ride, but I refused to give Arthur the satisfaction of witnessing my humiliation.
“You are a welcome sight, Demming,” I said to the towheaded groom as I untied my saddlebags. “Don’t bother too much brushing Atlas out. A stop at the water trough, a quick currying, and a shady paddock once he’s finished cooling out will be the answer to his prayers. Then he will roll in the first dusty patch he can find.”
“Aye, milord,” Demming replied. “Does himself get oats for his trouble?”
“A mash tonight wouldn’t go amiss, but no oats until tomorrow if there’s grass to be had.”
“We’ve plenty of that. Come along, beastie.”
Arthur was an accomplished horseman and would not begrudge Atlas good care, but impatience rolled off the ducal person as Demming led Atlas away. Now would come an interrogation. Had my journey been uneventful? How was Lady Ophelia? Was there any particular news from Town, and what did the physicians say about my dodgy eyesight? What exactly had happened at the Makepeace house party, and where were my valet, footman, groom, and coach?
“She’s driving me mad,” Arthur said, striding off toward the terrace steps. “The damned Valmond woman leaves me no peace, and it’s well past time you took a bride.”
I was supposed to march along beside my older brother like a good little soldier, but that way apparently led straight to the altar.
I would sooner go back to France. “Waltham, get hold of yourself. Harry was not engaged to marry Lady Clarissa, and neither am I. I nominate you to assuage the lady’s matrimonial inclinations.”
I barely had time to duck. For the first time in living memory, Arthur Beresford Cedric DeVere Caldicott took a swing at a family member.
“You missed on purpose,” I said, resisting the urge to stick out my tongue. “Offer me something cool to drink, and let’s discuss this like gentlemen.”
Arthur regarded me as if I’d spouted an arcane proverb in French, which had been our first language. “I’d rather beat the stuffing out of you.”
“Maybe you’re in love.” I trotted up the steps, though I well knew Arthur wasn’t in love with Clarissa. Harry hadn’t been either, and my own sentiments regarding Lady Clarissa’s suitability as a wife made the vote unanimous.
I did not, in fact, even like her ladyship.
As I climbed the steps, I felt the toll taken by every dusty mile I’d traveled. I was not yet thirty years old, but war and captivity had aged me. My hair had turned white in France, though I had reason to hope some color was returning to the new growth. More to the point, I lacked the toughness I’d had as a reconnaissance officer.
My joints ached, my muscles burned, I was parched and exhausted. In short, I had overtaxed myself and had need of a hot bath followed by lengthy communion with a soft bed.
“God save me,” Arthur muttered as a coach and four clattered up the drive. “She’s posted spies, I tell you. Somebody doubtless recognized you riding through the village. I vow the damned woman will drive me to Bedlam.”
“Waltham,” I said, more than a little unnerved to see my brother, who never raised his voice much less his hand, muttering and cursing. “You sent for reinforcements, and I have come. Lady Ophelia will join me shortly if you ask her to—and even if you don’t. Lady Clarissa can lay siege to the Hall all she pleases, but this citadel shall not crumble. Word of a Caldicott.”
“Word of a blethering…” Arthur watched as the matched grays halted at the foot of the steps. Clarissa’s auntie descended first on the arm of the liveried footman, and Enola Aimes was a fine-looking woman barely ten years Clarissa’s senior.
I knew this little pantomime, having witnessed it many times. Mrs. Aimes was the advance party whose handsome figure drew appreciative glances, such that when Clarissa emerged, all eyes were already focused in the desired direction.
“Your Grace, my lord.” Mrs. Aimes smiled up at us. “Clarissa, do come along. Our timing has been most fortunate, most fortunate indeed. Lord Julian is home, and you must greet him properly.”
Lady Clarissa treated us to the expected performance. First, a dainty boot emerged from the coach, frothy skirts raised enough to provide just a peek at a slender ankle before the top of a fashionable bit of millinery, a slim gloved hand, and then the lady herself emerged from the coach.
She hesitated predictably on the steps—our moment to bask in her smile—then shaded her eyes because the pert little collection of silk and feathers on her head could not in any sense be called a bonnet. She next half turned, presenting us the near occasion of a hip to appreciate, gathered her skirts, and floated gracefully onto terra firma in a cloud of shimmery bronze silk.
The footman stepped back, and Clarissa remained beside the coach, beaming up at us. “Oh, Julian! How marvelous! I had no idea you were paying us a visit. We are simply delighted, aren’t we, Enola?”
Her ladyship waited at the foot of the stairs, the most beautiful and least helpless woman I’d ever had the misfortune to know. Before guilt and manners got the better of Arthur, I moved down the steps and offered the lady a bow.
“Lady Clarissa. Good day. I have truly just this moment arrived, and thus I beg your pardon for greeting you in all my dirt. Let’s go into the house, shall we, and you can tell me what you’ve been up to since last we met.”
She simpered, I smiled, and I did not offer my dusty arm.
“I’d rather hear about what you’ve been up to, Julian.” She gave me a look that suggested she’d worried about me, missed me, dreamed of me, and kept me in her nightly prayers.
Clarissa’s features were on the dramatic side of perfection. Her hair was sable rather than the preferred blond. Her brows were a trifle heavy and swooping, her nose and chin a bit strong.
Her smile, though, was magical, full of warmth and mischief and suggesting all manner of quiet yearnings and unspoken wishes. What she said didn’t matter half so much as what she smiled. Another man might have been enchanted by that smile.
“Do come along,” Mrs. Aimes said, taking Arthur’s arm. “I’m sure Lord Julian has all the latest on dits, and I vow I am absolutely parched for a cup of tea.”
I waited for Lady Clarissa to gather up her skirts, gestured for one of her lapdogs to take her arm, and accompanied her into the house. Not for all the smiles in Sussex would I touch a woman I had trouble respecting, and certainly not when she was scheming to get her mitts on my only surviving brother.
As a prisoner of war, I’d been held in a cell that lacked windows. Candles had been denied me, and thus I had learned how time could expand or contract, bend back on itself, or stop. The thirty minutes of Lady Clarissa’s visit reminded me of those dark, smothering times when I’d strain my ears to hear the scurry of a rat just to reassure myself that I was not dead.
Or deranged.
“We really must be going,” Clarissa said, making no move to rise. “Julian, seeing you has been such a delight, not that Waltham isn’t a delight, too, of course.” She fired off a smile in Arthur’s direction.
Arthur, enthroned in the wing chair closest to the parlor window, lazily stirred. “But you and Lord Julian haven’t had a chance to catch up in any detail. We’ve been too busy hearing all about Lord Reardon’s exhibition and Mrs. Aimes’s missing puppy. Perhaps you two should share a hack tomorrow morning.”
“Alas,” I said, judging the distance between my brother’s lap and the teapot, “I will need some time to recover from my travels, as will my poor horse. I will call at Valmond House when I am rested.” Or when Prinny became a temperance advocate, whichever came last.
“You absolutely must,” Clarissa said, as if her happiness depended on my visit. “We’re much absorbed with preparing for Lord Reardon’s exhibition, but we always have time for old and dear friends.”
Who exactly was this we encompassed by Clarissa’s regal pronoun?
“Lord Julian,” Mrs. Aimes said, “before Lady Clarissa whisks me away, please tell us of the Makepeace house party. One heard of some lively goings-on.”
“Just the usual bachelors and belles getting up to harmless mischief,” I said, topping up my own tea cup. “A few little misunderstandings, a tiff and a spat, though all was well when I decamped.” Not from me would she hear the juicy details, though I’d been in the thick of attempted kidnapping, slander, intrigue, and thievery.
“You men,” Clarissa said. “You chatter amongst yourselves like schoolgirls at a quilting, but you never share the best bits outside your clubs.”
And may God be thanked for that inviolable law. “Truly,” I said, “the gathering was uneventful, though my reduced energies were taxed by even the tame entertainments typical of such functions.”
Mrs. Aimes took the hint, getting to her feet. “We must leave you to recover from the journey, then,” she said, offering Arthur a curtsey.
He was on his feet, too, of course, as was I. The last to rise—give the woman credit for dedication to her role at least—was Lady Clarissa.
“Waltham, we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Clarissa said, presenting him her hand to bow over. “I’m sure Julian can see us out, can’t you, my lord?”
She used my honorific strategically, sometimes flattering me with it—or so she doubtless believed—and sometimes brushing it aside to assume the familiarity of long acquaintance. Provided her coach was shortly tooling down the drive with her inside it, I did not care how she addressed me. Did she but know it, I was a legitimate bastard, in addition to my other shortcomings, and my title was more an irony than a courtesy.
“I’d be happy to see the ladies out.” I headed for the door before Clarissa could take my arm. “Doesn’t do to sit for too long following a long ride. Ladies, it has been a pleasure.” I held the door for them, shot Arthur a glower, and left him to finish off the tea cakes in solitudinous splendor.
“You are looking well, Julian,” Lady Clarissa said as we made our way toward the north portico. “One worried for you.”
Her tone implied that one staggered forward under many burdens, but that anxiety over my wellbeing had figured most prominently among them. One’s feminine fortitude was impeded by a gale-force headwind and blinding snow and probably a few brigands and witches too.
What tripe. “Thank you for your kind thoughts, my lady, but your concern would have been better spent on Harry.” I preceded the ladies into the Hall’s soaring marble foyer with a feeling of relief. Out damned spots, and all that.
“I pray for Harry’s soul,” Clarissa said, her tone reserved rather than wounded. “I worry for you. We hear things, Julian, even in the provinces.”
Sussex was hardly the Outer Hebrides. Of course they’d heard the basics: I’d been a recluse in plain sight in London, I was not good ton, I still wore tinted spectacles, and my name was unflatteringly mentioned in the betting books.
Then too, when Arthur had needed my aid, I’d come hotfoot. Let’s not forget that detail.
“Your prayers for Lord Harry are appreciated,” I said, opening the front door before Cheadle could rouse himself to his station. “Though my brother died a hero’s death and is doubtless enjoying eternity in the Anglican equivalent of Valhalla. Harry deserves to swill the best mead served by the comeliest Valkyries.” I wished at least that for him.
“How fanciful you are. Lord Reardon shares your vivid imagination.”
“Please give your brother my regards, and thank both of you ladies for making my homecoming more memorable.” Not more pleasant, not more joyous. Memorable was as far as I would go.
The coach sat at the foot of the steps, the leaders stomping the gravel as if impatient to be away.
“The pleasure was ours.” Mrs. Aimes gestured for a footman to escort her down the steps. “I am glad to see you looking recovered, my lord. Waltham seems to be feeling a bit more the thing too.”
Oh ho? What had Arthur been up to while I’d been reading Etruscan poetry and battling nightmares in London?
“You must come see us tomorrow,” Clarissa said, making no move to follow her aunt into the coach. “Reardon will want to show you his paintings. He’s thinking of including a few battle scenes in the exhibition, and your opinion would mean much to him.”
Viscount Reardon, Clarissa’s younger brother, had not joined up, not even in the local militia, claiming weak lungs prohibited him from serving. Perhaps his lungs had been weakened in futile attempts to argue with his sister.
When Mrs. Aimes was unavailable, Lord Reardon was Clarissa’s escort of choice, and Clarissa would guard his services jealously. As an unmarried female whose parents were frequently off taking the waters, she needed somebody’s chaperonage if the proprieties were to be preserved.
“I am no sort of art critic, my lady, but I can tell you that your offside wheeler is favoring his outside hind leg. John Coachman should set the grooms to soaking that hoof as soon as you return to Valmond House.”
I waved for the footman to get his handsome arse back up the steps. They were not the most noticing fellows ever to don summer livery.
“Don’t be like this,” Clarissa muttered. “I know we’ve had our differences, my lord, but that’s all behind us. For Harry’s sake, can’t you let go of the past?”
“I have no inclination to hang on to the past, my lady, but I intend to keep a firm hold of my manners and what remains of my honor. I wish you good day.”
Clarissa chose to cease fire, and I was supposed to think I’d won the war. I’d merely fought a skirmish to a stalemate.
I waited at the top of the steps until the coach disappeared into the shadows of the lime alley, and then waited a few more minutes, trying to parse what Clarissa had been up to this time.
“They’ll be back,” Arthur said, emerging from the house. “Lady Clarissa will want to look in on you as if you were still an invalid. You aren’t, are you? That house party in Kent did you good.”
“Leaving London, wielding some old reconnaissance skills, facing down talk, and making myself useful did me good. You are not to tell Lady Ophelia I said so. Does Clarissa seek to become your duchess?”
“One shudders to contemplate the possibility. I rather hoped she’d swivel her cannon in your direction.”
Arthur had gone off to Eton when I’d still been in shortcoats. He’d been at university before I’d turned ten. Though we were only six years apart in age, he had been the heir, set apart from birth, and in truth, I did not know him all that well.
“She has you worried,” I said. “Clarissa can’t marry you without your consent, Your Grace.”
Arthur took up a lean against a fluted Corinthian column. “Women wield weapons men know little about. Stealth, innuendo, opinion, guilt, appearances… One cannot blame them for using what’s to hand, but I do not trust Lady Clarissa farther than I can throw Mama’s pianoforte.”
He made a lovely picture at his ease amid the Greek Revival splendor of the family seat, but his sentiments were less than gentlemanly.
“So you thought to distract her by parading me in her vicinity? Not well done of you.”
“I thought to consult you regarding her schemes, but I also got word you might have been in difficulties at the Makepeace gathering. If you needed an excuse to decamp, I provided that and gave myself a chance to benefit from your insights regarding Lady Clarissa.”
Like some old dowager arriving at the spa town, I needed a bath, some real sustenance, and a nap, particularly if Arthur expected me to revisit the past.
“I will happily join you for port after supper,” I said, “but my wisdom regarding Lady Clarissa can be conveyed in summary: Avoid her like a plague ship full of sirens. Harry had a use for her, and she for him, but I want nothing to do with her, ever, on any terms, and that’s final.”
I tried for a grand exit, but Arthur merely followed me into the house.
“Does this have to do with Hyperia West crossing paths with you at that house party?”
Miss Hyperia West and I had had an understanding before I’d bought my commission. We had a different sort of understanding now. I wished her the best, we were friends, and not for the world would I tolerate Arthur casting any sort of aspersion in her direction.
“I esteem Miss West above all other women, save our mother and sisters,” I said, “and you insult her at your peril. My regard for Hyperia has nothing to do with my enmity toward Lady Clarissa.”
For a terrifying instant, I wondered if Arthur harbored designs on Hyperia. She was a treasure, having both common sense and compassion to an uncommon degree, as well as a fine sense of humor balanced by ladylike dignity. I had been fond of her before I went for a soldier. My feelings for her now were sadder, sweeter, and more complicated.
Hyperia deserved better than I could offer her, and in my estimation, even my ducal brother wasn’t good enough for her.
“So you and Miss West did not embark on a courtship?” Arthur asked.
“We did not, but I refuse to solve your problem with Lady Clarissa by sacrificing myself on the matrimonial altar. Remain on your dignity—you do that exceedingly well—and she will eventually pursue a different quarry.”
I started up the steps—why did this house have so many damned stairways?—and Arthur remained in the foyer.
“It won’t be that simple,” he called after me. “Foiling that woman won’t be as simple as waiting her out.”
“Of course it will. I’ll see you at supper.” I pulled our late father’s trick and exited the conversation by the simple expedient of retreat.
Arthur, though, was correct. Foiling Clarissa, and the plots and schemes she embroiled us in, required much more than simple patience.