The Viscount Reardon who presented himself in Traffault’s sunny garden bore little resemblance to the titled sprig I’d encountered at Valmond House. His lordship had learned some hard truths about fatigue, sadness, and perhaps even bitterness since he’d so eagerly shown me his work.
The evidence of maturation was mostly in his eyes, but also in his posture, which had lost the coltish energy of youth and gained something of a gentleman’s self-possession.
Or perhaps something of a prisoner’s dignity, about which I knew more than I should.
“I’m not going back,” he said, settling into the chair Traffault had vacated. “I will fight you over that, my lord, and I am younger and fitter than you.”
He lacked my reach, he’d had no older brothers to hone his reflexes or his strategy, and—may all the angels keep it so—he had no idea what wartime experiences could do to a man’s capacity for ruthlessness.
“My fitness is improving,” I said, taking one of the three remaining croissants before the birds became too bold. “A slow process, but haring all over the countryside tracking you down has been good exercise.” Exhausting, but oddly restorative too.
He sat forward, put his head in his hands, and swept his fingers through hair that no longer bore any hint of fashionable styling. Then he straightened and attempted to glower at me.
“I’m pleased to have provided you some entertainment, my lord.”
“Summer maneuvers are hardly entertainment. Have a croissant, or I’ll finish them off.”
A faint purring of thunder from the south disturbed the morning quiet. The Channel was prone to such grumblings, though Traffault’s garden would doubtless be glad of some rain—as would I.
“I don’t want another damned croissant, thank you just the same. Were you telling Jean the truth? Eunice is… expecting?”
If he was to ask me only one question, that was the one a gentleman should pose. “Eunice is very concerned for you, and she has reason to suspect she carries your child. Early days don’t always tell the tale, but she hopes to marry you.”
Reardon shoved out of the chair. “She was having you on, my lord. She never wants to see me again. She’s getting back at me because…”
“Because you frolicked with Mrs. Probinger, and you took advantage of the trust both women showed you to sketch them in the altogether without their knowledge or permission.”
He charged at me. The simple expedient of tangling my boot between his feet sent him stumbling against the table.
Truly, I owed my older brothers, and Harry in particular, for salient aspects of my education. “Bad form,” I said, “to attempt to assault a seated man who has done nothing but recite a few facts. If you want the benefit of my opinions, I will happily provide those, too, and we can go best out of three falls.”
I really should not have baited him, but he wasn’t the victim here, and I was due some diversion for the past several days’ charging about in the heat and dust. Though as to that, a tempting breeze stirred the boughs of the cherry tree and riffled Atlas’s mane as he grazed along the garden wall.
“You’ve violated my privacy if you’ve seen those sketches, my lord,” Reardon said, whipping his hair out of his eyes. “Bad form.”
“And you violated Mrs. Probinger’s privacy and her trust by creating those drawings.” I took another bite of Celeste’s excellent baking, while Reardon had the grace to look nonplussed. “If you are furious at my presumption, my lord, she’s angrier still—and with much better cause—at yours.
“Besides,” I went on, “when a peer’s only heir of the body disappears, with no clue as to reasons or plans, you should expect the missing man’s effects will be thoroughly searched. Clarissa explained that you were supposed to go absent without leave, then turn up in London in time for the exhibition. A stunt to get tongues wagging. Harebrained, though tongues are indeed wagging, I’m sure.”
I helped myself to the second croissant. Let the viscount sustain himself on pride and artistic ambitions.
“Aunt Enola promised me that a hint of intrigue would do more to advertise the exhibition than would a notice in the Times. Clarissa agreed, though by then, Clarissa was desperate. She would have paraded naked through Hyde Park to draw notice to my art.”
He shifted his chair to avoid the rays of the sun as it climbed into the sky, then resumed his seat.
“All you want to do is paint,” I suggested, “but the world intrudes on your desires.” Paint and swive, apparently. “You hope to make art to your heart’s content in America.”
He shuddered. “Not America. They have wolves and bears and worse in America, though I asked Jean to tell you that. I’m for Rome. Two years should be enough to learn to paint frescoes. Nip over to Greece, maybe jaunt about in Albania for a time.”
Byron had made such journeys into a romantic ideal. War had denied him the traditional grand Continental tour, so—Byron-fashion—he’d made other and more exotic plans.
“They have wolves and bears in Albania, too, Reardon, but the wolves and bears here at home sent you on this flight. Your mother’s health is failing.”
He took the last croissant as the stiffening breeze twirled little funnels of dust across the garden. “Mama’s health has been failing since I was in leading strings. I saw her in the autumn at Lyme Regis or one of the spa towns. She’s not young, Papa would exasperate anybody, and her illnesses are her way of going on.”
“That’s not what Dr. Heller says, and he’s a competent physician.”
This earned me a peevish look. “Heller never said anything to me, and I’m supposedly the man of the house when Papa’s off dodging creditors or chasing butterflies.”
Clarissa had doubtless been the man of the house since before her come out. “Your mother is dying. A young lady you walked out with could be carrying your child. Your sister is relying on you to host an exhibition that could be the salvation of your family’s fortune, and now you decide to pike off to Rome?”
Another rumble of thunder punctuated my question, though I didn’t hold out much hope of rain. The morning air was hot, but not with the oppressive, leaden quality that came on as evening approached.
Reardon had spilled crumbs onto his cravat. He brushed them away with a hand that shook slightly. “Mama isn’t dying, Eunice wants no part of me—though she wouldn’t mind becoming Lady Valloise—and Clarissa is equal to any challenge. I’ve just disappeared a little more thoroughly than Clarissa planned—or I had until you showed up.”
“Shame upon me, but letting Clarissa fear you’d taken your own life shames you, and I wasn’t about to let her suffer such uncertainty. Why did you send Touchstone home?”
Reardon crossed his legs at the knee, straightened an imaginary crease in his breeches, and fluffed his limp cravat again.
“Touch is too old for a sea journey. No longer the tireless hound of his youth. For every mile I hiked, he used to cover five. Lately, I’ve had to plan our routes so he has rest, water, and shade.”
Credible, but a prevarication, and a theory had formed in the back of my mind as Reardon had been snorting and pawing his way through this discussion.
“How good are you?” I asked. “As a painter?”
“Competent. I’ve improved with time. I’m not in Traffault’s league. Jean should be the president of the Royal Academy, but they aren’t keen on Frenchmen at the moment.”
That bit of modesty on Reardon’s part encouraged me. “Do you know what the hardest part of war was for the average soldier?”
Reardon sent me a curious look as the wind further disordered his hair. “I imagine marching for days on bad rations held no appeal. Sweating and freezing mile after mile on the Spanish plain. Facing the French over fixed bayonets had to be a bit daunting.”
I did not want to explain this to Reardon, though somebody had to, or he’d never win the war with his own insecurities.
“You are correct that those ordeals were challenging, but worse yet was the night before battle. The soldiers who were literate wrote letters home and tucked them into their effects. We knew to search for such letters if a fellow didn’t survive and to send them on to his loved ones.
“The message was always the same: ‘If you are reading this, I’ve died an honorable death. Please take comfort from that, and remember me fondly.’ I wrote hundreds of those letters for men who could not wield a pen themselves. Then I’d cut off a lock of the fellow’s hair to include with what might be his final words. A terrible ritual.”
I could see Reardon seize on my recitation as inspiration for a painting. A young lady clutching a glossy curl, a single-page missive discarded in her lap.
“Why doesn’t anybody speak of this?”
“Too painful, when we can instead speak of victories and adventures. The nights before battle were the worst. We had nothing to do but wait, worry, pray, and write those damned letters. Then we’d tend to our weapons and gear, as if a tidy uniform would make us harder to kill. Very few of us got drunk. We knew we’d need the oblivion if we survived the next day.”
Reardon took to studying his boots. “An art exhibition is not a battle to the death.”
My faith in his lordship was modestly vindicated. “If the exhibition is not well received, it’s the death of your ambitions and the death of Clarissa’s hopes. She is not well liked, Reardon, and she has missed the opportunity to make an advantageous match.” She was also deuced pretty and damned determined, which had a lot to do with the not-well-liked part.
Some old honorable who’d already buried a wife or two might take a fancy to her, or she might charm a wealthy’s cit’s son into offering for her, but such terrain would be rough going, given the family’s situation, particularly if Reardon scarpered.
And finding a safe harbor for Clarissa would do little to pump the bilges of the family’s sinking financial ship.
“The exhibition will be well received.” Reardon spoke as if reciting a family motto, not a dearly held conviction. “I’m good enough. Not brilliant, but I chose the subjects that would appeal to those who claim to have refined taste in art. The sort with something to prove and the money to prove it. The paintings will sell.”
He probably believed that, and I hoped he was right. Nonetheless, Reardon had gone to neither university nor public school, and he was too young to have frolicked much in Mayfair’s matchmaking waters.
A possibility other than success had doubtless occupied his imagination.
“In the alternative,” I said, “your exhibition will be an opportunity for polite society to gloat without spending a shilling. They will come to see a portrait of a titled family in ruins, a likeness of an earl’s daughter who disdained marriage when it was offered to her and who’s on the shelf now.
“The same daughter,” I went on, “who failed to bring a ducal spare up to scratch and couldn’t win the time of day from the duke himself. As for the son, he’s a courtesy lord who avoided military service—even in the militia—just so he, claiming to have weak lungs, could hike all over the shire for hours on end. This is a rendering of scandal many will be eager to see, and half the spectators will have lent your father or your mother money.”
Reardon was back to glowering at me. “No, they will not. Papa and Mama are too proud to beg or borrow. If you believe nothing else, believe that.”
“But you are not too proud to turn your back on your family in their darkest hour and make a run for the coast.”
“Damned right, and that’s all there is to say to it. I’m leaving for Rome next week, and I will not be in evidence at the London exhibition. I don’t expect you to understand, so please just leave me in peace and…”
“And?”
“And tell Clarissa I’ll write.”
“She’ll return your letters unopened.”
This observation earned me a slight, crooked smile. “I know, and I will write them anyway, but I really must be about my life, my lord. You needn’t attempt any further persuasion. My mind is made up.”
That was my cue to rise and make a few doleful parting comments echoing Lady Ophelia on the subject of Young Men Today.
Though I myself was still a youngish man, and I had a few more questions for his lordship.
Torrential rain prevented my immediate return to Caldicott Hall, but then, I owed Atlas a day of rest. My own health benefited from a respite under Traffault’s roof as well. He would not allow me to return to lodgings in Arundel, and he seemed to delight in conversing with another man in his native tongue.
Reardon eluded further questioning in the garden by stomping off into the house, repairing to his room, and shutting the door. He appeared for supper—any schoolboy would choose good food over a protracted sulk—and deigned to join Traffault and me on the front porch for a brandy.
I’d spent the day watching raindrops trickle down windowpanes while I pondered what I knew, what I suspected, and what questions continued to confound me.
By evening, the rain had moderated from a useless downpour to the soft patter that gave the ground a good, nourishing soak. By morning, the clouds would move on, and cooler temperatures would prevail. Good traveling weather when I, for once, wasn’t ready to move on.
We took seats around a small wooden table beneath the dripping eaves, Celeste’s singing from within the house serenading us as Traffault served the drinks. She’d chosen an old French lullaby about a fellow whose candle had gone out and who could barely see by the light of the moon.
Probably the first lullaby ever sung to me, though as a child I’d never really understood what all that searching about in the darkness with the neighbor lady had been in aid of.
“To peace,” Traffault said, lifting his glass.
Reardon and I joined the toast. The brandy was exquisite—also probably illegal.
“My brother would adore a case of this,” I said, savoring the nose. Ripe, sweet oranges, a hint of honey, sunshine on old oak, a note of caramel…
“A cousin in Bordeaux provides for my cellar,” Traffault said. “Your brother must apply to Chateau Fournier and hope for a favorable reply, for which even a duke will have to be patient.”
“I’ll apply, and one day I might have the great satisfaction of gifting my brother with a superior vintage.”
Reardon remained silent, but then, he was a fellow with much to contemplate. I would leave on the morrow and had reached the forlorn-hope stage of my attempts to return him to his family.
“What shall I tell Lady Clarissa?” I asked Reardon. “In my experience, family can forgive us much if they know why we make the choices we do.” I had no idea why Harry had left camp on that fatal night, and the question plagued me without mercy.
“Tell her I want to paint.”
“You’ve been painting,” I retorted. “For years, you’ve done nothing but paint.”
“Honing my skill,” he muttered. “Creating inventory. If Clarissa can sell half what I left behind…” He tossed back his brandy—an offense against manners and good taste—and shoved to his feet. “I bid you good night. If I’m not up to see you off in the morning, my lord, safe journey, and thanks for your efforts.”
He was hanging on to the plan to go to Rome by his fingernails. I delivered one last tromp on his knuckles.
“How can you afford this journey?” I asked, rising, because this was the loosest of the loose ends I’d spent the day pondering. “How could you afford a fresh horse every ten or twelve miles as you’ve journeyed all over the Home Counties? A sovereign for The King’s Man when you’ll need lodgings and lessons in Italy—lessons in Italian, if not painting. Passage to Rome isn’t cheap, and yet, Valmond House is hoarding sugar, and Clarissa hasn’t had a new bonnet in years. Even so, you can apparently afford to buy yourself a new wardrobe on the Continent.”
The viscount stopped mid-retreat toward the door, as if I’d jabbed him between the shoulder blades with my bayonet.
“Everything is cheaper on the Continent,” he said, turning slowly. “That’s why all the remittance men racket about the Mediterranean. I’ll manage, and in a couple of years, I will come back with skills nobody in England is teaching. I’ll have money and commissions, and by then…”
“Your parents will be dead? Eunice will have been sent away in disgrace to live with an aunt in Derbyshire? Clarissa will marry some gouty old baron in need of a few extra sons? Your own child will be toddling about with a lifetime of whispers and disgrace awaiting him?”
An unkind thrust, but my words had Reardon clutching at a porch post and gazing out into the sodden night. “Eunice would have told me. You have to be making that bit up.”
“Eunice only confided in me,” I said, “because she needed for me to grasp the seriousness of her situation. You could marry her and take her to Rome with you, but instead, you leave her to face the consequences of your actions alone.”
“Listen to him,” Traffault said. “Money is important, but the respect of your children should matter more.”
“My son can’t respect me if I’m rotting with consumption in debtors’ prison.” A flash of lightning illuminated Reardon’s expression of bleak certainty.
Reardon was not expressing a fanciful fear, but rather, a contemplated fate. Debtors’ prison was so rife with disease that it amounted to a death sentence for many, and corruption ensured that few who went in ever found the means to earn their way out. The earl could not be jailed for debt, but Reardon, a commoner despite the courtesy title, could.
“You were unable to pay Huber the penny stakes racked up over chess games, but you parted with a sovereign to guarantee Touchstone’s safe passage back to Valmond House.” The hound had worried me, and the old dog’s fate also apparently worried Reardon.
The viscount pressed his forehead against the porch post. “Just leave it, please.”
Mrs. Probinger hadn’t given him that sovereign. Eunice hadn’t given it to him. He hadn’t found it stashed under a rock either. I mentally retraced his rambles, from the Valmond House stable yard to the foot of the mill’s lane…
“You met Huber on your rambles. Your plan was to meet Eunice, but Huber ambushed you first.”
“Please stop,” Reardon said, straightening. “Nothing can come of your speculations. The day has been long and—”
And finally the puzzle pieces were forming into a logical pattern. “Huber has threatened you with an action for debt collection if you don’t quit the country, and he sweetened the pot by paying your travel expenses—or he dug you a bigger hole. Did you sign anything?”
Traffault swore softly in French.
Reardon stared at me, and I could not say whether I saw raindrops or tears on his cheeks. “My lord, you are guessing and I must ask you to stop.”
“I am applying reason to facts. The Valmond family’s problem is money. Therefore, anybody seeking to control you would do it through money. How much did Huber offer?”
Reardon returned to the table and tossed himself into a chair. Traffault poured him more brandy, though he merely stared at the glass. “This doesn’t concern you.”
I wanted to smack him, but he was just possibly trying to be honorable. Allowances must be made for young men in the throes of attempted heroics. Though why did nobody make allowances for my attempted heroics where Harry was concerned?
“Huber is a bitter man,” I said, propping a hip on the damp porch railing. “The one bright light in his life is Eunice, who appears devoted to him.”
“She loves her father, would do anything for him.”
“She loves you,” I said, though since when was I an expert on women’s sentiments? “Huber told you she was only interested in your title, trying to trap you into marriage?”
“Or preparing to make a fool of me. Said I was reading too much into flirtation, and Eunice isn’t old enough to marry without her father’s permission anyway. She’s friendly by nature, but the Huber family has learned never to trust a title in matters of the heart. She was having a lark with me, Huber said, though I don’t think he grasped how passionate that larking had become. Huber made sense. When he’s not grumbling, he can make a great deal of sense.”
“He suggested you merely wait until she’s of age?” Another two years, of course.
“More or less. Reminded me that she was his youngest, the best of the lot, and so forth, didn’t know her own mind, and needed another couple of years to appreciate what I offered. Then he started talking about debts, implying threats, dangling solutions…”
The squire had doubtless segued smoothly from matrimony to money, though supposedly it was the nobs who took a mercenary view of marriage.
“You accepted a loan?”
Reardon nodded. “Fifty pounds, enough to get set up in Rome. Another fifty pounds. He loaned me the first fifty so I could buy the canvases and whatnot for the exhibition. Clarissa doesn’t know that. She thinks canvases and gesso, frames and pigments can all be had for a song. If she knew what a decent set of brushes costs…”
“So you owe him a hundred pounds?” A modest country household could make that much cash last a year.
“It’s worse than that. Huber will clear my debts in Town if I remain out of the country for one year. He’ll consent to my marrying Eunice if I remain out of the country for two. I will still owe him the hundred pounds, though.”
In two years, Huber would have no legal say in who his daughter married. “I thought Eunice didn’t truly care for you?”
Reardon sat up a little straighter. “I’ll be an earl someday. Huber won’t mind having a daughter who’s a countess.”
Huber could have that pleasure within a fortnight, but he’d decided on another course. Why? Because he was a doting father who truly wanted his daughter’s company for another two years? Because he realized that Reardon needed to get out from behind Clarissa’s skirts and do some growing up?
I could not attribute such avuncular goodwill to the squire, try though I might. “Will your paintings earn enough to pay off Huber?” I asked.
Reardon merely stared at his brandy, but Traffault answered my question with a shrug. “Any painting earns more if the artist is on hand to flatter the patrons, to accept commissions, to heed suggestions for further works. Who knows what the public will think of the work of a ghost?”
“They will pay more,” Reardon said fiercely.
“You are not Gainsborough or Reynolds,” Traffault shot back. “I have told you this. You are nobody, another penniless aristo, and I am less than nobody. Yes, you have talent, but anybody with talent has enemies. They will flock to this exhibition and murmur against you, all the little minds from the big Academy. Damn you with faint praise, mutter about talent needing time to mature. You listen to your sister, your aunt, your stupid neighbor, but you do not listen to me.”
“Reardon disdains to listen to the woman who may be carrying his child,” I said. “Eunice personally implored me to find you, to ensure your safety.”
The viscount took another sip of brandy. “When was this?”
“Two days after you turned up missing. She went to pains to talk to me privately, and why would she lie about facts that could see her ruined?”
“Because you will never make those supposed facts public.”
Reardon’s faith in my discretion was touching, also a bit alarming. “I am a ducal heir,” I pointed out. “I could well end up residing for decades at Caldicott Hall. Every Sunday, Eunice will have to face me in the churchyard, knowing that I hold her confidences. She might suspect her father of scheming to get rid of you, though I doubt she’d admit those fears aloud.”
“She loves the old boot. Sees the good in him, says he’s terribly lonely, but that man… He can have me jailed, my lord. Don’t think he won’t.”
“His daughter won’t allow that.”
Reardon shook his head. “Eunice won’t know her father had anything to do with it. He’ll simply round up my London creditors, whisper to them of passage booked for Italy, and turn them loose on me. To the rest of the world, Huber will be the kindly neighbor who tried to prevent my ruin and who hopes I can muddle on somehow.”
I listened to that credible prognostication, and at the same time, I recalled Huber threatening Arthur with considerable scandal if Reardon wasn’t found.
“Does Huber know how you were getting to Rome?” I asked. “From which port you meant to sail?”
“Dover is fashionable,” Reardon said. “London closer. I wanted to see Jean before I left my homeland, though. Huber told me I needed to leave evidence of my possible death—no notes, no directions to loved ones, just enough to raise suspicions, but nothing conclusive—and simply disappear.”
“You are not going to Rome,” I said. “Not just yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because Huber has changed his mind. He wanted to be rid of you, but Eunice apparently put her father wise to a few facts. If she learns of his scheme to hound you out of the country, he will lose the regard of the one person who seems to matter to him. Huber will become the butt of such scandal that he won’t be able to show his face in public, much less hold a magistrate’s duties again. I would go so far as to hazard that Huber will forgive you those hundred pounds if you just come home.”
Reardon finished his drink. “It won’t be you tossed into prison if you’re wrong, my lord.”
“I have been in the worst prison imaginable, you ignorant puppy. I survived to rejoin my regiment and do my bit at Waterloo.” Traffault’s brows shot up, and I moderated my tone. “It won’t be my child stigmatized with illegitimacy and dependent on Huber’s indifferent charity. It won’t be my first born who could by rights have someday been an earl or a lady, but for my pigheadedness.”
Reardon peered at me owlishly, as if I’d suggested that a proper artist would paint the Yorkshire hills pink and the sheep orange.
“I saw a way to take my debts out of the family equation,” he said, “to leave Clarissa with an inventory to sell, to start over without a woman I care for leading me a dance before the whole shire. Forgive me for following my conscience.”
Such righteousness and such youth. I would have howled with laughter at Reardon’s self-serving summary of events, except the same hubris had sent me trailing after Harry into the night. I’d honestly believed that I alone could keep Harry safe. I alone had the wit to outfox a whole French garrison.
So noble of me. So arrogant and so bloody stupid.
Though I had, let it be said, meant well. “You’ll leave with me in the morning?” I asked.
“Go with him,” Traffault said. “You shall explain to your sister and your Eunice that you needed to pay your respects to me and gather some courage. A debut exhibition would try the nerves of any artist. I cannot return to France. I’m wanted there for crimes I did not commit. Go home while you still have a home to go to, mon ami. If you do not, I fear for your welcome at Celeste’s table.”
Traffault rose, bowed to me, and slipped into the house.
“He means that,” Reardon said, jamming the cork back into the bottle. “Celeste’s table is his table. Jean cannot be reasonable once he makes up his mind, and Celeste… Celeste’s stubbornness could stop a moving mountain.”
I collected my drink. “How fortunate that you are fashioned of more reasonable cloth. I’ll want more of Celeste’s good cooking before I leave in the morning, but I won’t tarry if you’re inclined to dither.”
I saluted him with my drink and went for a ramble in the damp and darkness. Reardon had much to ponder and half a bottle of excellent spirits for a digestif.
I wanted to say good night to my horse and review the day’s events in private. The viscount’s revelations had answered many questions, but I still had a few more queries to put to the good Squire Huber.
And if he tried to lie again, I had the means to make him regret any dissembling—any further dissembling.