Tea was already begun, all of the gentlemen being well into their biscuits and cakes when Darcy strode through the drawing room doors. A brisk survey of the room revealed that all save one of Sayre’s guests and relatives were present; even the timorous Miss Avery was in attendance. The only member of the party missing was Lady Sylvanie, and her absence at this time Darcy could not but count as a blessing. The gentlemen greeted him with enthusiasm and the ladies hardly less so. Lady Sayre cast him a languid smile as he approached the tea table, but when he extended his hand for his cup, a graceful feminine one intervened.
“Lady Felicia.” Darcy acknowledged her with a grimace that he transformed into the slightest of polite smiles.
“Mr. Darcy, allow me,” she said, taking his cup and amending it with sugar and cream. “No one has seen you for an age today, sir.” She smiled archly as she offered him his tea. “Last night’s gaming or Sayre’s fine spirits?”
“Neither, my lady,” Darcy replied tersely to her assumption of intemperance. Then, with a satirical lift of a brow, “I have been exploring the castle. Lady Sylvanie was so kind as to offer herself and her companion as guides.”
The shadow of pique that he knew would appear did so in a brief flash, but the lady swiftly regained her composure. “Ah, Lady Sylvanie and her companion? Surely Lord Sayre or Trenholme would be a more informative guide. Lord Sayre!” she called over Darcy’s shoulder.
“My lady?” Sayre joined them.
“Mr. Darcy has been on tour!”
“On tour? Of the castle?” Sayre regarded him warily. “I would not wander far, Darcy. This place is a veritable rabbit warren, and one can get turned about very easily. Bev or I would be glad to show you round.” His face suddenly brightened. “In fact, that is a capital idea!” He turned to the rest of the room. “Shall we make a party tomorrow afternoon before tea? What say you?” The agreement with his plan was general, if lacking in enthusiasm, but enough was expressed to set the event into motion.
“Where did you go, may I ask?” Sayre turned back to Darcy.
“Everywhere, it seemed: the ballroom, the gallery…Lady Sylvanie was an admirable guide for one so long separated from her home,” Darcy replied lightly as he waited for his host’s reaction.
“Yes, well…her mother, you see. Irish woman.” Sayre stumbled through his explanation. “When my father passed on, she wanted nothing more than to return to her own people. Couldn’t abide England, she said, without my father.”
“I see,” Darcy replied meditatively. “It may well be my lamentable memory,” he returned, availing himself of one of Dy’s disarming expressions, “but I cannot recall the merest mention of a stepmama or sister while we were at school or University. How came that to be, do you suppose?”
“Been wondering about that myself,” Monmouth broke in on his way back from the plates of cake. “The lady is a beauty, Sayre, nothing to be ashamed of, surely! Beauty is an asset to any man, sister or wife, is what I always say. Unless you’ve been hiding her on purpose, Sayre!” He looked at him curiously. “Big trout on the line, old man? Don’t want any little ’uns snatching the bait, is that it?” Lady Felicia laughed nervously at Monmouth’s witticism, her eyes examining Darcy with trepidation.
“Monmouth!” Sayre growled, his face growing red, “I’d forgotten how vulgar you can be! Really, my Lord!”
Monmouth took no offense but merely grinned at Darcy. “I am right, you see, Darcy. Wouldn’t be at all surprised that the big trout is you! Although,” he tossed back to Sayre, “I might do in a pinch. Title, you see. But the ready is better, and Darcy is a surer card than yours truly.” Monmouth sketched them a bow. “My Lady, Sayre.” He then winked at Darcy. “Beware, Darcy, unless you have determined to have the lady. And if you have not, send her my way, there’s a good fellow.” Stuffing another piece of cake into his grinning mouth, the Viscount moved on.
Darcy smiled thoughtfully at Sayre before excusing himself to the table of biscuits. After securing a nice selection of the confections, he ignored Lady Felicia’s look of invitation and took instead a seat beside the lately recovered Miss Avery. Here, at least, was safety, for the shy girl offered him no more conversation than a grateful smile and a soft greeting. Unfortunately, they were not to be left alone. He had barely consumed one biscuit and enjoyed one sip of tea when Miss Farnsworth and Mr. Poole approached them.
“Darcy, Miss Avery.” Poole bowed. “So glad to see you recovered, Miss Avery. It must have been a terrible fright….” He let the sentence dangle, a hopeful gleam in his eye.
Miss Avery drew back and looked in confusion to Darcy who, with a severe look answered on her behalf. “Yes, it was, Poole; and very ungentlemanly of you to bring it up.”
“But, Darcy,” Poole protested, his voice rising, “no one will tell what happened! I call it a damned scurvy affair when a man’s friends won’t tell him what caused a lady in their company to fall into blind hysterics and three of them to look like they’d seen the Devil!”
Hearing Poole’s outburst, Manning came swiftly to his sister’s side and, taking her hand, turned to Poole. “It is not a fit subject for the ladies, Poole.” He glared at him.
“How can that be, as it all began with a lady?” interposed Miss Farnsworth. Her chin came up with unbecoming stubbornness, her eyes glittering with an eager curiosity. “Miss Avery survived the sight; may not we survive the hearing?”
“Miss Farnsworth, I hardly think—”
“That may be so, Baron,” she interrupted haughtily, “but I am not alone among the ladies in desiring an explanation of what happened at the Stones. Come, we are sensible women all,” she cajoled, “and have heard any number of ghost stories since childhood. We are not so easily frightened.” She looked about the room and focused on the house’s younger son. “Mr. Trenholme!” Trenholme returned her regard cautiously. “You began the excursion with the story of the Whispering Knights. Will you end your tale with the truth of what occurred at the King’s Stone?”
Trenholme cleared his throat. “I would prefer not, Miss Farnsworth. A tale is one thing; what was out there was quite another.”
Lady Felicia, shivering delicately at his words, linked arms with her cousin. “My dear Judith, I find I am all the greater intrigued! Mr. Trenholme refuses to give satisfaction. That leaves only Manning and Darcy to relieve our curiosity.” They turned together toward the two men. “How shall we persuade them?” Lady Chelmsford and Lady Beatrice then added their requests to those of the younger women, but Darcy noticed that Lady Sayre did not join them. Instead, she, Trenholme, and Sayre exchanged furtive glances.
“No!” The word rang out in the drawing room and the insistence of the two men ceased. In amazement the room turned to the speaker and waited. “I-I will t-tell what hap-happened.” Miss Avery was pale, but a tenacity akin to her brother’s seemed to animate her before their eyes.
“Bella, it is not wise,” Manning declared.
“I l-left my brother’s side in some distress,” Miss Avery began, placing her hand on Manning’s arm for support, “and ran to the b-big stone so that no one could observe my discomposure. I ran…p-past the stone but stumbled a few feet away. As I recovered my b-balance, I turned and saw it.” Miss Avery stopped and closed her eyes. A great, tremulous sigh escaped her. “On the g-ground…at the foot of the stone lay a b-bloody bundle of swaddling that looked, for all the world, like an in-infant…a babe!” She looked up at her listeners. “It had been offered up, like in the Bible, like those horrible Philistines! Oh, George!” She turned then, shaking violently, into her brother’s embrace.
Horrified cries from the ladies rent the air as Miss Avery’s allusion was finally understood. Darcy leaned forward, alert to the various reactions to the young woman’s tale, as even the confident Miss Farnsworth turned pale and, abandoning her cousin, leaned on Poole, who himself was visibly shaken. “Good God,” he swore in a strangled voice, “you don’t mean a human sacrifice!” The room was quickly in an uproar at his voicing of what was in all their minds. Monmouth no longer grinned but wore instead a very solemn, shocked expression. Poole set Miss Farnsworth in a chair and rounded on his object. “Trenholme,” he demanded, his voice rising, “what is the meaning of this! You knew the danger and yet would not say!”
“Get ahold of yourself, Poole,” Trenholme hissed. “You always were a hen-hearted little cawker! What good would telling you have done? D’you think someone’s going to creep into the castle and gut you in your bed, man?” When Poole burbled his attempt to respond, Trenholme shook him off. “Besides, as Darcy will testify, it weren’t a babe. It was a piglet from the farms. It only looked like an infant.”
“A piglet?” Monmouth entered the fray. “A piglet in swaddling, Trenholme? A rather gruesome trick.”
Trenholme’s face darkened. “Trick! How dare you, sir!”
“Bev!” Lord Sayre addressed his brother with a firm and, Darcy suspected, restraining hold upon his shoulder.
“Damn me, Sayre, if I’ll take the blame for this!” Trenholme twisted from his grasp and stalked to the fire.
“I’ve begun inquiries in the villages surrounding Chipping Norton.” Sayre looked first at Poole and Monmouth before turning to address the entire company. “But unfortunately, the weather has impeded those efforts, and I expect that nothing will be known for several days. So distressing were the details of this horrific discovery that I determined nothing should be said about it. Beverly was merely obeying my wishes in the matter. It is my doing entirely that you were not apprised of the particulars.”
Mollified by Sayre’s apology, Monmouth inclined his head and lifted his tea to his lips, but Poole was not appeased. “My lord, your inquiries aside, what does it mean? It was not done for nothing!”
“How should I know, Poole?” Sayre answered, more than a hint of affront in his voice. “I know nothing of the Old Ways, so my opinion would be no more than a guess. In all probability, it is the work of some poor, desperate creature and for a reason to be found only in a deranged mind. But I can assure you, sir, you are safe at Norwycke Castle.” Sayre’s assurances, though thin, were eagerly seized upon by the majority for the sake of the evening if not for their own merits, and the company broke once more into conversational groups. Trenholme, though, remained at the fire and nursed his tea, a grim expression upon his face.
They know! Darcy was certain of it. Sayre, Trenholme, perhaps even Lady Sayre. They know who did it and probably why. The story about making inquiries was a tale, invented to fob off just such objections as were raised while protecting their interests. Which were what, exactly? As he worked on his tea and cake, Darcy sifted through the pieces of information he’d acquired and came up with only one answer, the perpetual one—money! But the answer did nothing to paste the pieces together into a recognizable image.
Miss Avery sat down once again beside him, shunning the false sympathy of the ladies for a quiet corner and another cup of tea. Manning stood by her like a guard dog, daring anyone to press his sister further on the matter. “I am indebted to you, again, Darcy,” he offered quietly. Their eyes met in silent understanding over the top of Miss Avery’s braided hair. “Since you’ve had the tour,” Manning continued disinterestedly, “perhaps you would fancy another round of billiards. Allow me the opportunity to even the score, so to speak.” Manning’s choice of words and the lift of brow at the last clearly signaled his desire for private conversation.
“I am most obliged, Manning,” Darcy replied to his curious offer.
“As soon as my sister joins Sayre’s tour tomorrow, then?”
Darcy nodded. “I shall meet you in the billiard room.”
“Excellent!” Manning replied evenly. Speaking low to Miss Avery, he helped her to rise; and after making their apologies to Sayre, he escorted her from the room.
“Pardon me, sir, but you must remain quite still, with your head held so.” Fletcher nudged Darcy’s chin a degree higher and, taking the ends of the neckcloth once more in hand, began the first intricate fold of his masterpiece. Darcy rolled his eyes in frustrated submission but did not dare to reply for fear doing so would necessitate that the torturous procedure begin again with another fresh cloth. He had promised Fletcher, he reminded himself grimly, and tonight, his valet had declared, was the night that The Roquet should make its appearance.
He glanced quickly at the man before training his eyes once more upon the ceiling. Although Fletcher’s hands were going through the motions of tying his victorious white linen creation, Darcy could see that the valet’s mind was absorbed with Darcy’s account of his interview with Manning around the billiard table.
Lord Sayre had not been best pleased when Darcy had quietly informed him the next day that he would not be accompanying the party on the tour of the castle. His Lordship’s forehead had creased in irritation as Darcy gave his reasons and offered his apologies, but it cleared considerably when he mentioned billiards with Manning.
“Well, if you are to entertain Manning, that is all right and tight,” Sayre acquiesced with a forced smile. “We shall return from our little ramble just in time for the ladies to change for tea. Then we shall have a short round of cards with them, some music, supper, and later it will be off to the library.” Tapping a finger against his nose, he warned with a smirk, “I hope you will not bleed too freely around Manning at billiards, Darcy, for I believe you shall have an opportunity to raise quite a breeze tomorrow night.”
“Does His Lordship mean to put up the Spanish sword tonight then, sir?” Fletcher had interrupted.
“Quite possibly,” Darcy replied before looking him askance. “You know about—?” Fletcher’s raised brow gave answer to his question. “Of course you do! Why am I surprised?”
“I have no notion, sir,” the valet replied.
Darcy had waited until such time as he could decently expect Manning to be in the billiard room and then made his own way to their assignation. When he arrived, it was to the solid thwack of ball hitting ball as Manning sent the spheres speeding across the green baize.
“Manning,” he greeted him as he unbuttoned his coat and shrugged it off.
“Darcy.” Manning straightened and put aside his cue stick. The Baron advanced toward him and then, to Darcy’s surprise, passed him, proceeding on to the door, and looked carefully up and down the hall before closing it. “I find myself doubly indebted to you, Darcy,” Manning began when he turned back to him, “and I loathe being in anyone’s debt. I wish to settle, here and now!” Manning waited briefly for him to reply but then plowed ahead before he’d uttered any of the appropriate phrases. “Something is not right, Darcy, and has not been right ever since those women arrived.”
“Those women?” he repeated.
“Sylvanie and that serving woman she brought with her! This whole business is too smoky by half.” Manning scowled. “Yet Sayre will hear nothing to the contrary, do nothing to settle the matter, save continue his reckless gambling. Soon he’ll not have a feather to fly with.”
“Unfortunate, no doubt,” Darcy replied, “but what does Sayre’s imprudence have to do—”
“With you, Darcy?” Manning shook his head. “Monmouth was right on the mark. You are the ‘big trout’ Sayre hopes will snatch the bait and solve his problems for him!” He leaned across the table and fixed him with a solemn regard. “Darcy, you should know that with the leaving of Sylvanie from his house for yours, a heretofore unknown piece of property in Ireland belonging to the late Dowager Sayre will be sold and seventy-five percent of the proceeds will fall into Sayre’s profligate palm. That is what it has to do with you.”
“If I am satisfied with the lady, what is Sayre’s windfall to me?” Darcy returned, taking another page from Dy’s book and feigning boredom. “I have no need of any property in Ireland.”
Manning’s scowl deepened. “But Sayre does, or rather the money from it, and desperately. So desperately that he will not look into the circumstances surrounding the affair, which are more than strange.” He walked back to his cue stick and, picking it up, began sliding it back and forth between his fingers. “Earlier, you asked Sayre about his stepmother, and he told you that she had left England for grief of his father, did he not? That was a lie!”
“Continue.” Darcy nodded and picked up the other cue stick.
“Sayre and Trenholme hated the woman and her child. As soon as Sayre succeeded to the title and control of his father’s estate, he drove them out, sent them packing to Ireland with no more an allowance than would feed a mouse.” Manning pounded the end of his cue into the floor. “Yet, eleven years later, that same woman has, on her death, left the man who dispossessed her a tidy property on the condition that his half sister is brought back to England and married advantageously.”
“An admirably canny lady.” Darcy shrugged as he examined the disposition of the balls upon the table. “She played her cards well and secured for her daughter a chance for a future.”
“Rather too well, I should say,” Manning returned. “Think on it, Darcy! Ten years after ridding himself of his stepmama and sister, Sayre has succeeded in running his estate nearly into the ground and is in dire need of cash. Meanwhile, the cast-off sister has come of marriageable age. Then an unheard-of case in Chancery Court is decided, awarding the dowager a piece of land, and not long thereafter, the woman dies!” His eyes narrowed. “Everything is so very damned convenient.”
“Not for the dowager,” Darcy remarked, snapping the tip of his cue against the ball and sinking his call.
“Perhaps, even for her.” Manning looked at him sharply. “Darcy, Sayre has no real proof that his stepmama is truly dead or that the property even exists!”
“What! You are joking!” Darcy dropped the cue upon the table and faced Manning. “On what basis was Lady Sylvanie recalled from Ireland, then?”
“A copy of the dowager’s will and the testimony of her solicitor—a cousin of some sort, I believe.”
“And Sayre has sent no one to Ireland to secure the matter?”
“Oh, one was sent to deliver Sayre’s invitation and send Lady Sylvanie home to Norwycke,” Manning replied with a mirthless laugh, “but during his first two months in Ireland, he wrote only of delays and difficulties with the cousin and the Irish courts. The dowager’s family lands are particularly remote, it seems, making travel difficult and correspondence almost impossible. Then, all communication stopped. Sayre hasn’t heard from the man in weeks, nor will he send another to find what has become of the first.”
“Are you saying, Manning, that Lady Sylvanie has perpetrated an elaborate fraud upon Sayre, and he refuses either to see it or to do anything more to acquire the truth of the matter?” Darcy demanded incredulously. “It is beyond belief!”
“Is it, Darcy?” Manning met his skepticism with steely certainty. “It is what Trenholme suspects; although he, too, would rather believe that all will come right in the end and this phantasmal property will prevent his brother from ruining them both.”
Darcy took a breath to reply but held it instead while he searched the Baron’s countenance for any intimation of deceit. Manning had known exactly what he was about and had steadily returned his regard.
“I have not yet convinced you, I see.” Manning sighed. He laid down his cue and, clasping his hands behind his back, had stepped away from Darcy to one of the few paintings that still remained upon the billiard room’s walls. It was of the typical sort, a spaniel bitch serenely gazing out at the viewer as her litter gamboled about her. “What I tell you now, Darcy, I tell you only because of the exceeding debt your kindness to my younger sister has laid upon me. But in discharging it, I lay my other sister open to your derision and must have your word as a gentleman that no hint of what I will reveal to you will reach her ears.”
“You have it,” Darcy replied, extending his hand.
Manning took it in a crushing but brief grasp before looking away from him and establishing some distance between them once more. Then, he took a deep breath and began, “You know, of course, that Sayre and my sister have been married for six years now; and, as is very obvious, she has given him no heirs.” His jaw worked in grim designs. “Nor has she had even the cold comfort afforded by the tragedy of a miscarriage. In short, nothing has come of the union, and although it is not apparent, my sister grows despondent—despondent enough to turn to other means.”
“Mr. Darcy! Good heavens, sir! He must mean…”
“What can you mean, Manning?” Darcy demanded. “Speak plainly, man!”
“In plain speech, then!” Manning made no attempt to hide the anger that the necessity for this confession suffused in him. “My sister believes that Sylvanie or that hag of hers can work some sort of miracle which will allow her to conceive. I do not know in what manner she convinced her or what promises were exchanged, but Letitia has put herself entirely in Sylvanie’s hands in this. I think Sayre half-believes her as well. For Letty’s sake, for the coin he hopes to realize from the sale of the Irish property, and for the outside possibility of producing an heir, Sayre will do nothing to gainsay his sister or appear to delve too closely into her affairs until he can safely dispose of her in marriage.” Manning’s gaze had swung back then to meet Darcy’s, piercing the guard he’d thrown up at such an incredible tale. “Believe what I have told you, Darcy, or dismiss it; I consider my debt to you repaid, sir, in toto!” And with a curt bow, Manning had left the room.
“Almost finished, sir.” Darcy could feel the whole construction draw his collar tightly around his throat as Fletcher made the anchoring knot. He swallowed largely a few times to prevent the knot’s creator from drawing it so that he could not breathe or converse and devoutly wished that he could see the man’s face.
“Done, Mr. Darcy. You may look down—slowly, slowly, there! Perfect!” This time when he rolled his eyes, Darcy made sure Fletcher saw him. The valet allowed himself a fleeting smile before turning to retrieve his master’s frock coat.
“Well, Fletcher?” Darcy asked as he pulled down the corners of the coat and began buttoning it up. Fletcher had dressed him all in black, as he’d done for the Melbourne triumph, and as Darcy examined himself in the mirror, he found the entire effect as imposing as he could wish for such an evening as he anticipated.
“Commanding, sir, and elegant. Just what is needed this evening, if I may be so bold, sir.”
Darcy snorted and shook his head. “You are most likely right, but I was more interested in the opinion you have reached concerning Manning’s story. I believe he was telling the truth, at least as far as he knows it.”
“I agree, sir. Such intimate details of one’s family are not tossed about lightly, and Lord Manning is particularly close about his affairs. His man is quite free about His Lordship’s female conquests, but on any other matter he is strictly silent.”
Darcy strolled over to the dresser in search of his jewel case. The emerald stickpin that matched his waistcoat would do nicely. “You know what that means, then?”
“A great deal, sir. At the least it establishes that Lady Sylvanie, or more likely her maid, was the one who came into your rooms to discover something with which to fashion a charm. And it was, as I suspected, a love charm, sir. Given Her Ladyship’s advances yesterday and”—Fletcher cleared his throat as his master winced—“ahem, your response, sir, I’ve no doubt she puts some store in its power.”
“Yes, that…at the least,” Darcy agreed as he retrieved the case from the drawer and laid it atop the dresser. “But more to the point, it goes a far distance in explaining Sayre’s and Trenholme’s very peculiar behavior and their present treatment of Lady Sylvanie. Sayre will do anything to see her married according to the terms of the will. Meanwhile, Trenholme chafes at Sayre’s restraint of his animosity at being beholden to a woman he has always despised.”
“And fears, sir,” Fletcher interjected. “Mr. Trenholme fears the lady, the maid, or both as he fears that His Lordship will gamble their patrimony out from under him. It is a wicked fearfulness, Mr. Darcy, that seems everywhere in the castle.”
Darcy opened the case. The emerald stickpin lay glinting in the candlelight atop the carefully wound silk threads of Elizabeth’s bookmark. He retrieved the pin and, looking into the small mirror to one side, thoughtfully positioned it in The Roquet’s folds. “You have not mentioned the most ghastly aspect of this shocking state of affairs.” He looked over his shoulder.
“The Stones, sir?” It was more a statement than a question.
“Yes,” Darcy affirmed quietly as he turned to his valet, “the Stones.”
Biting down on his lower lip, Fletcher slowly shook his head. “Such a bloody, evil deed, sir! Could a woman…pretending that it was a babe…?” Fletcher looked up at him, his face stricken by the implications his thoughts were forming. “I can hardly credit it, Mr. Darcy.”
“Nor can I.” Darcy sighed. “Yet all our information points in that direction. Lady Sylvanie or her companion.”
“Or both,” Fletcher added. “Could it not be, perhaps, that someone else…an agent of one of them…did the deed at the Stones?”
Darcy frowned. “Unlikely. The sacrifice was either a demonstration of power or a bid to gain it. The one who hoped to acquire something from it was the one who performed the deed.” He turned back to the jewel case, his gaze fixed on its contents. “Remember that first night we were here, Fletcher, and we saw a figure in the garden? Could it have been Lady Sylvanie?”
Fletcher drew out his response. “Y-yes, Mr. Darcy, it could have been a woman.”
“I believe you are right, and I also believe that things cannot continue long as they are.” Darcy reached out his hand and lightly brushed the bookmark; then, coming to a decision, he plucked the silken threads from their resting place. Fletcher’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“A good-luck charm, Mr. Darcy?” he asked in disbelief.
“Neither do I believe in charms, Fletcher,” he returned, “but in this maelstrom we have stumbled upon, I find myself in need of an anchor, some still place of goodness and good sense.” He held out the strands in his palm. “These slender threads remind me that there is such a place in the world.”
“And so there is, sir.” Fletcher nodded gravely.
“Stay within call tonight, Fletcher. No rambles.” He headed for the door. “And I shall require your attendance in the library tonight.”
“In the library, Mr. Darcy? Like Lord——’s valet?” Fletcher’s face was a study of pleasure and surprise. “Very good, sir!”
Supper was a lighthearted affair, an incongruous bark of frivolity which rode lightly on the wake left by the uneasy tide of revulsion that had arisen from the discovery two days before. As he looked down Sayre’s massive table, Darcy was struck once more by the shallow nature of his companions. Once they had recovered from the shock of what had been found at the Stones, they dismissed it from their minds so easily, as one more on dit to add to their store. Sayre and Trenholme he could understand. Neither wished anyone to think on the incident further; both set themselves to the distraction of their guests with a rare commonality of purpose. Manning remained somewhat taciturn, but for all his dark warnings, he was not averse to exchanging razor-edged quips with the others at table. Evidently, he had also decided to renew his flirtation with Lady Felicia, for he was often to be seen whispering at her ear and receiving pretty encouragements to continue doing so. Even timid Miss Avery smiled, almost flirting with Poole, who also enjoyed the attention of Miss Farnsworth on his other hand. Only Lady Sylvanie showed herself subdued.
Darcy watched her covertly through the course of the meal. At every story or sharp jest, with every lift of his wineglass, his glance would flicker in her direction, only to see the same look of regal serenity, touched now and then with a faint, cool smile. Despite his knowledge, he began to waver. Later, he watched her openly as she delighted them once more with her harp. The sweet lull of her music caused him to question his own memory. Was this the woman who had challenged him so intently in the gallery and then offered herself to him in the next breath? Could he really believe that the slim, supple fingers which charmed such music from drawn strings were also capable of performing dark, violent acts on a night-swept hill? The images were irreconcilable, but in what other direction could his information lead?
“I say, could we not have some dancing, my lord?” Monmouth queried when Lady Sylvanie had laid aside her harp. “Surely there is someone among our company who could play a reel tolerable enough for dancing.” Darcy need not have stifled his groan, for it would never have been noted above the ladies’ exclamations approving Monmouth’s plan. Lady Chelmsford was immediately petitioned to furnish the needed music. Assured of her compliance with the scheme, Lord Sayre rang for more servants to come clear the middle of the room and roll up the carpets.
Darcy rose from his seat and moved apart from the excited fluttering of the ladies as they went giddily about smoothing their skirts and adjusting one another’s plumes. Finding Monmouth and Trenholme lounging near the hearth, he made no effort to disguise his dismay at his former roommate’s suggestion.
“I’d forgotten your dislike of dancing”—Monmouth laughed—“but my friend, see how it has stirred up the ladies.” He paused, and they all looked over to the other end of the room. “Such animation! Such flash and dash! Like a flock of exotic birds all aquiver with anticipation, eager to try their wings with us.”
“Ladybirds, ready to tease and pout.” Trenholme smirked. “Glad to oblige them.”
“Oblige them we must and still remain gentlemen,” Monmouth agreed, his eyes glittering with expectancy as he surveyed the field. “Which means, Darcy, that you are required to uphold the honor of the breed and dance and flirt outrageously, or we shall all be put down as very dull dogs indeed!”
“I am certain worse things could happen,” Darcy snapped back at him, but Monmouth only laughed.
“Then what are you about, sporting that knot of yours, if you don’t intend to fascinate the ladies!” he retorted and left him for the other side of the room. Trenholme followed lazily.
Dancing! Darcy sighed, dismissing for the moment Monmouth’s comment on Fletcher’s knot. Well, perhaps it was a fortunate turn after all. Intelligent conversation was sadly lacking, the company being in no way distinguished by their interests or expertise. Such a glaring lack was not faulted on the dance floor, but a failure to engage in flirtation most certainly was. The ladies, he knew, would expect gallantry and a hint of naughtiness in his address as they met and parted throughout the sets. Just the thought of putting himself forward so with the collection of ladies present made him tired. Another sigh escaped him as he warily surveyed the room. Truth be told, the only partner who appealed to him was the very one he suspected of masterminding a vast and cruel fraud. A thought struck him. Would not her wall more likely be breached by his attentions than by his suspicious distance? If he appeared to fall into Sayre’s hopes for him, might not something slip out, something that would help him unravel this iniquitous tangle of pain, avarice, and fear?
He looked again to the ladies, now beginning to pair off with the gentlemen. It was not hard to discover Lady Sylvanie on the edge of the lively circle, standing aloof from its excited currents. Her companion had appeared during his inattention and was now engaged in setting her mistress to advantage. The hunched old woman reached up awkwardly and unpinned a single, lush curl of her mistress’s ebony tresses. It fell down seductively over one white shoulder, twining past her bosom and brushing her waist. It was wantonly beautiful, and if it had not been for the coolness of the gray eyes she turned upon the room, Darcy knew that Poole, Monmouth, and even Manning would have been immediately paying her court. They could not have helped themselves, he judged, had she turned upon them the look she now directed at him. She held him intimately with those eyes, and he nodded his acceptance of her invitation. Only briefly was the contact broken when her maid distracted her with a tug at her sleeve, passing her something from her pocket, which Sylvanie smoothly tucked into the recesses of her neckline.
Steady on, he warned himself as Doyle made her final adjustments to her mistress’s toilette. His right hand went inside his coat to the pocket, his fingers making immediate contact with what he had deposited there in advance of just such a need. He took a deep breath, and in his mind’s eye he saw her. Oddly, it was not the Elizabeth of the Netherfield ball whose stillness enveloped him. Rather, it was the one whose shoulder had grazed his arm as they shared his prayer book and whose curls he’d set into joyful dance by the breath of his singing that Sunday morning that now seemed so long ago. Goodness and good sense. He moved forward, no longer mesmerized or, he vowed, deceived by ebony glory, soft white shoulders, or fairy gray eyes.
“May I have the honor?” He bowed and was rewarded with a rare, true smile as Lady Sylvanie extended her hand. He grasped it lightly and turned her out into the middle of the room, joining the others who had already formed lines, and awaited the opening measures of a country dance. The reel was lively, affording Darcy no more opportunity for communication with his partner than could be had by a knowing glance and a lingering brush of fingertips, but he concluded that the lady appeared more confident of him at its end than she had been at its beginning. It was enough, in all events, to dispose her to accept the offer of his hand in the next, which was of the more stately, intricate sort and, therefore, more suited to his purposes. Seating her decorously, he went in search of refreshment for them both and encountered a beaming, expansive Sayre near the table.
“Darcy, my good friend, what a picture you and Sylvanie present!” Sayre nudged him with his elbow. “And I have never seen her in such looks, so it must be your doing.” Darcy murmured something polite, but Sayre would not have it. “No, sir! You complement each other perfectly in every way; that is easy enough to see.”
“Smooth as cream with you.” Trenholme came up from behind them and nodded in Lady Sylvanie’s direction.
Darcy feigned a study of the selection of refreshments. “Cream, Trenholme? Not precisely your description of the other evening.”
Trenholme’s countenance froze for a moment and then relaxed into a self-deprecating grin. “Foxed, Darcy! You saw me. Drunk as a lord. Don’t know what fool thing I’m saying when in my cups. Ask Sayre.” He looked meaningfully at his brother.
Sayre laughed uneasily. “You know Bev, Darcy! It’s not called Blue Ruin for nothing!” He went back to his former subject. “But Sylvanie is a beautiful woman, is she not? Accomplished, intelligent…carries herself like a queen.”
“She is beautiful,” Darcy granted him, knowing what would come next. Sayre’s smile grew wider.
“Private, as well,” he continued. “Doesn’t plague a man with demands for gewgaws or entertainments, I promise you. Quite content on her own at home. And in her own home,” he suggested slyly, “she’d keep everything in good order and her husband satisfied…in every way.”
Darcy’s grip convulsed upon the sharp edges of the cut-crystal stems of the glasses he held, barely containing an impulse to throw their contents into Sayre’s leering face. It never varied in content, this jostling for position and connections through the ironbound conventions of matrimony, only in its vulgarity. Had Elizabeth’s mother in Hertfordshire exhibited any more brass, after all, than had Sayre? He bent his will to the assumption of a casual interest in the game. “Her dowry? What could her husband expect from the marriage?”
“Five thousand clear, after the sale of some property.” Sayre had the grace to look apologetic. “I am a bit at sea at the moment, you must understand, and cannot promise more until my ship makes port. Incompetent business manager. Fired him! You know how it is, Darcy.”
He nodded. Yes, he knew exactly how it was! “Interesting.” He gave Sayre to interpret that however he wished. “But the lady awaits.” They all looked to Lady Sylvanie, who was in the midst of an exchange with her companion. “You will excuse me, Sayre…Trenholme?”
“Certainly, certainly, old man.” Sayre waved him away jovially, as if permitting him a rare treat in allowing his attentions to his sister. Trenholme’s feelings about their exchange were less discernible.
As Darcy approached them, Lady Sylvanie’s companion retreated to a dark corner of the room. Darcy offered her a polite nod and received a curtsy from her in response before extending a glass to her mistress. “My Lady,” he addressed her softly.
Lady Sylvanie’s smile was slow; he could have traced its progress from her lips and through her cheeks until it came to rest in her brightened eyes. “You honor my companion, sir,” she commented approvingly as she took the offered refreshment. “In all the time since I have returned home and of all the guests Sayre has entertained, only you have treated her in a civil, gracious manner.”
“Why should I not?” he inquired as he took the seat beside her.
Lady Sylvanie’s smile hesitated. “Indeed! But that is not the custom of Sayre or anyone else I have encountered. To them, servants are so many hands and feet, and nothing more.” She peered at him intently. “With you, I gather, it is not so.”
“How so, my lady?” Darcy wondered, caution racing coldly through his limbs. Of course! What a fool, to forget that she would have set about gathering information about him, just as he had done concerning her! The hair and bloodstained cloth in his dressing room were not the sum of what could be found out about him in a surreptitious visit. What had she discovered?
“Your valet, sir,” she returned. “In a word, a singular man.”
“‘Singular’ is an apt description for Fletcher, I grant you.” He tilted his face down to her as he brushed the edges of The Roquet. “He is somewhat of an artist in his profession, but sadly, I am a very unwilling canvas. I do not know why he stays with me.” What did she want with Fletcher? Had she or her companion discovered his other abilities, or had his interruption in the gallery merely raised their ire?
“You do not?” Lady Sylvanie’s smile returned. “The mystery is easily solved. Either you pay him a very handsome wage or he stays for love of you. I suspect that if you treat Doyle, who is nothing to you, with such care, you treat your own servants with even better courtesy.” She sipped lightly at her punch. “You have their loyalty and their love. A rare thing in this world, Mr. Darcy.”
“I suppose it is,” he answered, uncomfortable with the perspicacity of her words.
“You suppose! Ah, your reply reveals much, my dear sir.” Her intensity of manner increased. “You are so accustomed to it that you give it no thought. You do not question why your valet has taken up residence in your dressing room, for example.”
“Fletcher has his reasons.” Darcy’s mind raced for a likely excuse. “He is very particular, an artist—as I said—and found the distance between his accommodations and mine to be injurious to his standard of attendance upon me.”
“I see.” Lady Sylvanie tilted her face up to his, her lower lip caught delicately. “Do you suppose his loyalty and love will make way for your wife, should that happy lady come into being, or will he always be that close by you?”
“My wife, my lady, will have no cause to complain of Fletcher’s attention to his duty,” he replied stiffly, “nor will my valet’s wife suffer neglect for cause of his duty to me.”
“I am glad to hear it for your future wife’s sake. The jealousy of servants against their master’s new wife is a formidable obstacle to a woman’s happiness. In the end, one or the other must lose.”
Sayre’s call to the floor prevented Darcy from responding, and he did not regret the intrusion. The lady’s words were not lost on him, and he fervently hoped that his disavowal of Fletcher’s propensity for interference in his personal life had convinced her.
Darcy rose and offered Lady Sylvanie his hand, escorting her to their place in the set. Her countenance and carriage were austere as she faced him across the correct distance, but the emotions her bearing hid had unwittingly communicated themselves to him through the fingers she had laid upon his arm. She seemed inordinately excited and pleased with his partnership, more like a debutante than a practiced woman of four and twenty, and he wondered how she contained the energy that he felt pulsing through her fingertips.
Lady Chelmsford struck the first chord, and the couples bowed to each other. Darcy stretched out his hand for the petite promenade and once again was impressed by the strength of the lady’s hold upon it and the tremors of nervous energy that betrayed her outward poise at each instance of contact between them.
“I daresay you find country dances more to your taste,” he opened as they met and then circled each other back to back.
“True,” she answered. “The stiffness of the patterns is so confining. Do you not agree?”
“Confining?” he returned as he rose from a bow and took her hand. They both turned to the head of the room. “I had never regarded them so. Rather, I would call them orderly and precise, even mathematical.”
The lady smiled, a beguiling light suffusing her face. “Mathematical dancing! How droll you are, sir!” It was now her turn to pass behind and around him. Darcy could feel the air between them stir with her amusement as she performed the passé and faced him once more. “Dancing is not for the mind, Mr. Darcy; it is for the body and the expression of emotion. Do you never wish to kick over the traces, live outside of order and precision? Or is mathematics sufficient for you?”
“Do you accuse me of having no feelings, my lady?” He returned her question in a bantering tone.
“Oh, no, sir!” she hastened to correct him. “I am convinced that you are possessed of feelings—all those of the orderly and precise variety!”
“A very dull dog, then,” he concluded for her.
The lady laughed. “No, I did not say it!” She looked at him speculatively and then murmured when next they faced each other, “I think that you would very much enjoy what lies beyond the conventions, Mr. Darcy. The exhilaration, the power of riding the crest of passion, is life worth the living.”
The fierceness of her words, in combination with his suspicions of her, set the fine hairs at the back of his neck on end as cold caution seized him again. With effort he continued to draw her out. “Power, my lady?”
A low chuckle escaped her. “Yes, power.” Her demeanor changed suddenly, as if she had come to a decision. She looked up at him intently. “Is there something you wish, Mr. Darcy, that as yet you have not been able to obtain?”
His alarm increased. “My lady, I do not have the pleasure of taking your meaning.”
“Something you desire but is denied you. Something that—The sword!” Lady Sylvanie exclaimed triumphantly. “The Spanish sword in Sayre’s gun room!” The smile that caressed her lips was one of poetic satisfaction. “He baits you with it, does he not? Yes, that is perfect.” The steps of the pattern separated them briefly, giving Darcy a little time to formulate a response. Should he encourage her or take steps now to end her mischief? The first did not appear to present any danger. Her choice of a test was innocuous enough. How could she possibly determine the turn of a card? His second option was more problematical. What did he have to present to Sayre but her wild assertions in the gallery and now these?
The pattern brought them together for a final promenade, and as Darcy took her proffered hand in his, her slender fingers gripped his tightly. “You shall have the sword,” she pronounced with icy firmness. “I so will it.”
Darcy bowed to her in the final step, but the curl of the brow he affected upon his rising expressed his skeptical reception of her pronouncement. “My Lady, if you think to prevail upon Sayre to relinquish the prize of his collection merely upon your desire of it, I beg you will abandon such a course,” he drawled. “Whatever your ‘will’ in the matter, he will not, I assure you!”
Raising her chin to his challenge, Lady Sylvanie laid her hand upon his arm and regarded him with a brilliant eye. “I will ask nothing of Sayre,” she whispered, her ebony curl brushing his sleeve. “You shall see; he is easily bound.” She turned to him as they neared her chair and signaled that she did not wish to rest. Instead, her hand caressed his arm. “His fortune at play tonight will force him to put it on the table.” She looked up at him from beneath elegant, dark brows. “And when it is yours, we shall hold a private celebration and speak, perhaps, of future possibilities.”
Both Darcy’s brows rose briefly at her suggestion, but he delivered a smooth “As you wish” in reply before bowing and making a strategic remove. Availing himself of another glass of punch, he slowly navigated his way past a very smug-looking Sayre and through the rest of the company, retreating to a quiet place in the shadow of a window. Raising the glass to his lips, he turned to the moonless dark and swallowed half of the concoction of sweet liqueurs as his mind reeled.
Good Lord, not only was the lady very likely guilty of perpetrating a far-reaching fraud upon her stepfamily but she truly believed she had the power to bend events to her will! The bundle at the foot of the King’s Stone sprang unbidden to his mind, its ghastly purpose now clear. It had been a calling forth, a bid for the bestowal of power from a cast-down prince, and the supplicant was acting, sure of her answer. That such a thing were possible Darcy could not accept, but neither could he completely banish it from consideration. For, if Sylvanie believed herself so empowered, the influence of that belief alone was capable of wreaking untold havoc. What should be his course? A short, bitter laugh escaped from him as he considered the coils of intrigue his simple matrimonial search had woven.
Sweet are the uses of adversity. Again, it appeared, he was confronted with the mysterious workings of Providence. Well, my dear Mrs. Annesley, explain this to me once more, if you please! Darcy almost wished he had her in front of him to make an answer, but he would, it seemed, have to muddle through on reason and common decency alone.
