He said nothing. There were no words.
Eventually there was a gentle tap on the door, and Marlow’s voice. Unreal.
“Is there anything I can do, m’ lord?”
She answered for him. “Tell William to put away the carriage, please. It will not be required again today.”
It was done.
Bryan Ferguson hurried into the kitchen and all but slammed the door behind him.
He looked at his friend, seated in the chair he always occupied when he visited them, the familiar stone bottle on the table.
“Sorry to have left you so long, old friend. I’m bad company today.” He shook his head as Allday pushed the bottle towards him. “I think not, John. Her ladyship might think badly of the ‘servants’ having a wet!”
Allday watched him thoughtfully.
“She changed much?”
Ferguson walked to the window and stared at the stable yard, giving himself time to consider it. The smart carriage was as before, and Young Matthew was talking to the coachman. He smiled sadly. Young Matthew, the Bolitho household’s senior coachman. Filling out now, and a little stooped. But he had always been called “young,” even after his father had died.
He said, “Yes. More than I thought.” It stuck in his throat. Like a betrayal.
Allday said it for him. “High an’ mighty, is she? Thought so, when I last seen her.”
Ferguson said, “She walks from room to room with that damned lawyer, making notes, asking questions, treating my Grace like she’s a kitchen maid! Can’t understand it!”
Allday sipped the rum. It, at least, was good. “I can remember when Lady Bolitho was no more’n a paid companion to the wife of some bloody-minded old judge! She may have looked like Sir Richard’s wife, but it went no deeper. That’s it an’ all about it!”
Ferguson only partly heard. “As if she owns the place!”
Allday said, “Young Cap’n Adam’s away, Bryan, an’ there’s only the lawyers to fight over it. It’s nothin’ to them.”
Ferguson touched his empty sleeve, as he often did when he was upset, although he was not aware of it.
“She asked about the sword.” He could not stop himself now. “When I told her that Lady Catherine had given it to Captain Adam, like Sir Richard had intended, all she said was, she had no right!” He looked at his oldest friend. “Who had any better right, eh? God damn them, I wish she was back in the house where she belongs!”
Allday waited. It was worse than he thought, worse than Unis had warned him it might be. “She done the right thing to stay away while this is goin’ on, an’ you knows it. How would it look, that’s what a lot of people would say. A sailor’s woman, but she got pride too, an’ that’s no error! Look what happened to Lady Hamilton. All the promises and the smiles came to naught. Our Lady Catherine’s not like any of ’em. I know, I seen her in that damned boat after the wreck, an’ other times, the two o’ them laughin’ and walkin’ together, just like you have. We’ll not see the likes o’ them again, you mark me well!”
Ferguson felt the empty sleeve again. “Seemed to think I was getting past my duties here. That’s how it sounded to me anyway. God damn it, John, I don’t know anything else!”
“It’s all written down. Your position here is safe. Sir Richard took care o’ that, like he did for everyone else.” He looked away suddenly. “’Cept for himself, God rest him.”
Ferguson sat at the table. Sir Richard had always called Allday his oak, and suddenly he understood, and was grateful for it.
He said in a calmer voice, “An’ then she went into the big room, their room.” He gestured towards the house. “She told the lawyer that Sir Richard’s picture should be down with all the others of the family. The ones of Cheney and Catherine she said could be removed as far as she was concerned.”
Allday asked, “She stayin’ overnight?”
“No. Plymouth. With Vice-Admiral Keen.”
Allday nodded sagely, his head shaggy in the reflected sunshine. He enjoyed his visits here. One of the family, he had always described it, until good fortune had offered him Unis, and the little inn in Fallowfield.
“I hopes that one’ll be on the lookout for squalls!”
A stable boy thrust his head around the door, but hesitated when he saw Allday, who had become something of a legend around Falmouth since Sir Richard Bolitho’s last battle.
Ferguson said, “What is it, Seth?”
“They’m comin’ now, Mister Ferguson!”
Ferguson stood up and took a deep breath.
“I won’t be long.”
Allday said, “We done a lot worse together, Bryan, remember?”
Ferguson opened the door, and smiled for the first time.
“That was then, old friend.”
He walked across the yard, so familiar underfoot that he would have known every cobble in the dark.
He considered Allday’s question. Has she changed much? He saw her now, on the broad steps leading up to the entrance, elegant in a dark red gown, a hat which he guessed was fashionable in London shading her face. In her late forties, with the same autumn-coloured hair, like the young wife she had replaced when Cheney Bolitho had been killed in a carriage accident. It was hard to believe that he himself, with only one arm, had carried her, seeking help, when she and her unborn child were already dead.
It was one of fate’s cruellest ironies that Richard Bolitho and his “oak” had found Belinda in almost exactly the same circumstances after an accident on the road.
Her face was unsmiling, the mouth tighter than he remembered it. He tried not to think of Allday’s pungent summing-up. High and mighty.
She was speaking to the lawyer, a watchful, bird-like man, while Grace waited to one side, her bunch of keys in her hand.
Ferguson saw her expression, and felt his own anger rising again. Grace, the finest housekeeper anyone could wish for, and a wife who had nursed him through pain and depression after losing his arm at the Saintes, hovering like a nobody.
“There you are, Ferguson. I shall be leaving now. But I expect to return on Monday, weather permitting.” She walked across the yard, and paused. “And I should like to see a little more discipline among the servants.”
Her eyes were amused, contemptuous. Ferguson said, “They are all trained and trustworthy, m’ lady. Local people.”
She laughed softly. “Not foreigners like me, you mean? I think that quaint.”
He could smell her, too. Heady, not what he might have expected. He thought of the delicate scent of jasmine in his estate office.
She said, “Are all the horses accounted for among the other livestock?”
Ferguson saw her eyes move to the nearest stall, where the big mare Tamara was tossing her head in the warm sunlight.
He said, “That one was a gift from Sir Richard.”
She tapped his arm very gently. “I am aware of it. She will need exercise, then.”
Ferguson was suddenly aware of the hurt, like that which he had seen in Grace’s eyes.
“No, m’ lady, she was ridden regularly, until…”
She smiled again; she had perfect teeth. “That has an amusing ring, don’t you think?” She glanced towards the carriage, as though impatient. “I might take her for a ride myself on Monday.” She was looking at the house again, the windows where the room faced the sea. “You have a suitable saddle, I trust?”
Ferguson felt that she knew, that she was enjoying it, mocking him.
“I can get one if you intend…”
She nodded slowly. “She used a saddle like a man, I believe? How apt!”
She turned away abruptly and was assisted into the carriage. They watched it until it was out on the narrow road, and then walked together to their cottage.
Ferguson said, “I’ll take John back to Fallowfield presently.”
Grace took his arm and turned him towards her. She had seen his face when they had been in the room with the three portraits, and the admiral’s bed. Lady Bolitho had got rid of Cheney’s portrait before; it had been Catherine who had found and restored it. Bryan was a good man in every way, but he would never understand women, especially the Belindas of this world. Catherine would always be an enemy to Belinda, but Cheney’s love she could never usurp.
Allday made to rise from his chair as they entered, but Grace waved him down.