Rake in the Regency Ballroom. Bronwyn Scott

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 30 December 1829

      An icy wind blew steadily through the poorly sealed post chaise, keeping its two occupants chilled in spite of their caped greatcoats and the hot bricks they’d installed at the posting inn. But it had been the best they could do at the time. The west country was not known for its luxuries. The newly returned Viscount St Just didn’t mind. He’d been in far less comfortable situations over the past nine years and he was simply glad to be home.

      ‘What are you smiling about?’ Beldon Stratten, the young Baron Pendennys, groused, stamping his feet in a futile attempt to generate some body heat.

      ‘Am I smiling?’Valerian asked. ‘I was unaware of it.’

      ‘You’ve been smiling since the inn at St Austell. I can’t imagine what about.’

      Beldon was right. There wasn’t much to smile about. Their journey had become a comedy of errors. Nothing had gone right since they’d left London after celebrating the Christmas holidays in town. They’d hoped to sail down the Cornish coast to St Just-in-Roseland, Valerian’s home on the peninsula, and avoid the roads. But foul weather on the Channel had scotched those plans. So they’d set out on horseback, hoping to make better time than a lumbering coach. Valerian had a yen to be settled in his home by New Year. But weather again played them false, turning too cold for safe passage on horseback. They’d abandoned the horses at St Austell and hired the only post chaise available.

      It went unspoken between them that they’d get no farther than Truro today. If they wanted to try for St Just-in-Roseland by New Year, it would have to wait until tomorrow.

      ‘Do you believe in serendipity, Val?’ Beldon asked, stretching his long legs out across the small space between the seats.

      Valerian looked at him queerly. ‘I am not exactly sure what you mean.’

      ‘You know, making valuable discoveries by accident.’

      ‘Ah, coincidence,’ Valerian corrected. ‘You think it is merely a fortuitous happening that I ran into you in London.’

      ‘Definitely luck since you’d sent no word ahead of your return.’ There was a censorious note in Beldon’s voice. Valerian did not miss it. He had not said goodbye to Beldon properly when he’d left London so abruptly years ago and he had not written over the long years with the exception of one short letter early on. It was a credit to the depth of their friendship that Beldon had felt his absence so keenly and forgiven him so readily.

      Beldon’s tone softened. ‘Perhaps you will explain to me some day why you all but vanished into your uncle’s household overnight. I am your friend. I would understand, whatever your reasons. We all missed you, even Philippa. I think she had always admired you from afar.’

      Valerian started at that. Had Philippa kept their secret all these years? He’d expected her to blurt it all out. He’d imagined her crying on Beldon’s shoulder in the garden that last night, sobbing out how her heart had been broken by her brother’s cad of a best friend.

      He’d known this moment was inevitable. Hearing her name would be just the first of many such moments. He knew in his heart that was why he hadn’t written ahead to Beldon to tell him of his return. Of course, he hadn’t known until the last moment that he would be assigned to the team of negotiators sent to London to pound out a peace treaty to end the latest conflict between the Turks and Russia. Even when he’d known with a certainty he’d be coming back, he still hadn’t sent advance notice of his return. It was a stalling mechanism and a desperate one at that, designed to put off any encounter with Philippa until the very last.

      His tenure on the Continent had not outlasted his own broken heart. He had stayed on in Europe as long as he could, volunteering for myriad diplomatic assignments that lingered in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon’s efforts had left their mark on old and new regimes alike and Valerian had quickly learned that there was always someone to fight.

      Treaties may have been signed, but Europe, particularly the Balkans, was not at peace. There was still plenty for Britain to worry over as countries fought to define themselves and empires sought to expand in the power vacuum left by Napoleon’s defeat.

      Valerian had watched modern history play out before his very eyes as Britain and the rest of Europe fought to corner the fledgling Balkan markets.

      After years of pointless victories and disappointments, Valerian found he had no stomach for a fight motivated by greed and avarice, thinly cloaked in a facade of ideals, and he could not stay away from home indefinitely. He had gardens and an estate to manage. He could not rely on his steward for ever.

      While a broken-hearted young man of twenty-one could be forgiven for impetuously leaving his inheritance, a grown man of thirty years, who knew his duty, could not continue to shirk it. Yet it was difficult turning for home when he knew it would mean facing Philippa and Cam-bourne. But duty and honour beckoned, two ideals he had always held dear even when his country hadn’t.

      ‘How is your sister?’ Valerian inquired, hoping to sound casual.

      Beldon nodded. ‘She’s doing well. I see her often. You just missed her in London. She spent the holidays with a friend in Richmond before heading out here. If I had known you were coming, I could have persuaded her to stay in town.’ Beldon paused, seeming to consider his next words before speaking them. ‘It’s hard to believe she’s twenty-seven and already through her first husband. Here I am at thirty and I haven’t been married, not even close. It makes me feel “behind” somehow.’

      Valerian felt his body tense. ‘Through her first husband?’

      ‘Yes, didn’t you know? It was in all the papers, quite a newsworthy death.’

      ‘I wasn’t exactly holed up in Vienna the entire time,’ Valerian said wryly, thinking of the rugged Balkan territories he’d journeyed through with their mountains and sparse populations. There were places in Europe the mails didn’t reach, places with names like Voden and Negush. Places that didn’t appear on a map unless you were a Turkish Pasha charged with keeping the Christian millet in line.

      ‘Cambourne died three years ago in a mining accident. There was a cave-in while he was touring one of his tin mines. It was a freak incident. A shaft support gave way. The miners pulled him out, but he died of his injuries three days later at home.’

      Philippa was a widow. The implications were not lost on him. Valerian’s emotions ricocheted from a morbid elation that Philippa was free to a sadness that she’d had to bear the loss of a husband, set adrift in society as a dowager so early in life.

      ‘I hope Cambourne left her well provided for,’he said quietly, knowing that the Pendennys’s fortunes had rested so completely on Cambourne’s welfare. Valerian didn’t like to think that her marriage had come to naught.

      ‘Absolutely. He had a cousin who inherited the title and the other estates, but Philippa has all she needs or wants. Of course, the principal estate went to his heir, but Philippa has the house in Cornwall where they spent their marriage. To my mind, she got the better end of the deal. Coppercrest is a much more hospitable dwelling. Even Cambourne himself preferred it.

      ‘“The heir” isn’t much on going up to town, so Philippa has free run of the town house. Cambourne also bequeathed her a substantial interest in the mines and the associate businesses. He owned a tin smelter and a small gunpowder works.’

      Valerian only half-listened СКАЧАТЬ