“Of sorts.” Nicholas stood, and helped himself from the wine flagon. “Do you need to know all this?”
Emma stared up at him. “I need to know the truth.”
Nicholas took her cup from her fidgeting fingers, refilled it, and drained his own. “There are no doubts, my dear. Those living nearby confirm he was there fairly often, and the woman was his mistress for at least three years – a Gloucester woman, widowed, with a twelve year son, though her son remained elsewhere. Your father evidently bought the house for her. Someone slaughtered them both and then set fire, presumably to hide his crime. Several houses in the same street burned and honest folk with them. Whoever hated your father enough, cared little for other deaths.”
She shivered. “He was – hated?”
“Few commit murder for benevolent reasons.” Nicholas came back to sit beside her. “There’s no guess as to who did this, nor why. But the sheriff will investigate, and because of your father’s title, someone will eventually be found to stand trial, guilty or not.”
“Why say it like that?”
Nicholas shrugged. “I know a thing or two about local justice. Should I make it sound sweeter, to please you?’
He sat close but did not hold or comfort her. She whispered, “I don’t want lies. But kindness –”
“It would be the same thing.” Nicholas stood again abruptly and wandered over to the little table below the shuttered window. Again he reached for the wine jug. “There are things I can’t tell you yet, my dear. But I’ll tell you this. After the funeral I’ve three men to see. That may be where the adventure comes in after all.”
Emeline slumped again, staring down miserably at her feet. “So I won’t see you for another month or more?” she gulped. “And I’m to be abandoned again?”
“What small faith,” Nicholas smiled. “I’ve promised you adventure. So I’ll take you with me, if that’s what you want. But you have the choice – to accept or refuse. And remember, if you choose to stay with your mother, then you abandon me.”
“I’ll come with you, if you want me. But I can’t leave my mother yet. She needs – comfort.” She looked up at him again. Her lashes were moist. “And so do I.”
“If you hope for sympathy, my love, then you’d better stay at Wrotham. I’m likely to disappoint you.”
“What’s wrong with sympathy?” She straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath and glared as he yet again filled his cup. Now the flagon was empty. “All you do is drink. Do you try to get drunk? Is that what comforts you?” she demanded. “I know you didn’t like my father and perhaps you don’t like me either. But once you promised to be kind. I don’t want adventure. My father’s dead, and how it happened was horrible, and I’m trying not to think about what he’s done and how he was found and what it all means. All my life I was frightened of him. I don’t even know if I loved him. But I respected him. Now all the respect seems muddled up. I just want –” sniff “– a little comfort.”
She had disguised the sniff but Nicholas came back to her at once and took her hand, rubbing his thumb across her small cold palm. “Silly puss. I like you well enough. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be inviting you to come with me when I leave. And I’ll wait until you’re ready – a week perhaps, or more if I must. But comfort isn’t something I’m used to giving, except to a lame horse or a bitch birthing pups. There’s not a soul taught me the meaning of comfort once my mother died, and I’ve managed without it. Now it seems like an awkward thing – more patronising than kind. Perhaps it’s something else I’ll need to learn.”
Emeline stared down at her hand, and his fingers wrapped gently around it. She mumbled, “Pretend I’m just a bitch then – birthing – whimpering. Is that so hard?”
He laughed, which didn’t help. “I’d rub your stomach and scratch behind your ears and tell you you’re a good dog. Then I’d take the pups, each one, and lay them at your teats. So not something I plan on doing with you, little one. A fine Burgundy eases pain much more, I promise.”
“The jug’s empty. You drank it all.”
Nicholas put his arm warm around her shoulders, relenting, bringing her head down against his cheek, his other hand still clasping hers. “Listen, my sweet,” and he murmured softly to her as indeed he might have to a suffering bitch by his hearth. “There’s things I’m good at, more or less. Others, I’m unpractised at best.” His arm tightened around her, and he caressed her neck, smoothing the hair from her wet cheeks. “Oh, I remember yearning for comfort when my mother died,” he told her gently, “and when I helped lay my infant brother and sister in their coffins, I was helpless with tears. No comfort was given, for there was no one to give it, but I remember what I craved, and will try and offer that now. Even when Peter died – but that’s another story best forgotten. So forgive me for being inept, while I try to improve.” He kissed her ear, a damp tickle as he smiled again. “But adventure, pissed or sober, is the surest way to forget misery, and there I’m skilled enough. If you stay with me, then it’s adventure we’ll have. For now I can’t explain more, except for starting with the three men I need to see.”
“Which men?” she asked, peeping up as he once again drained his cup.
“First my father. You say your father went to London to see him. Did he arrive? Or not? I should know if anything is to be discovered. And my father is about to leave for Spain. I’ve questions of my own before he goes, since I doubt he’ll return before autumn.”
“But hardly adventurous.”
“You don’t yet know my father,” Nicholas smiled. “But it’s once I leave him I expect the fun to start.”
“So then?”
“Then I want to talk to my cousin. Adrian offered to help find me too, I gather. Most obliging of him. And perhaps more interesting than I’d previously realised.”
She was suddenly intrigued. “And the third man?”
“A very different creature,” said Nicholas. “Name of Harry. I recently took his brother Rob into my service. Now I need them both. But that’s not where the adventure comes in. It will start later.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
He blew in like a thunderbolt with his retinue almost outpaced and his feathers windblown flat to the velvet, nose pink, teeth clamped, horse foaming, and all the fury and pride of the Chatwyns in righteously indignant bloom.
The local boys from the village, sent to warn the Lady Wrotham that some fine and noble gentleman and his party were on the road under Wychwood, arrived too late. The gentleman himself was first to the stables.
“I won’t be staying.” The Earl of Chatwyn dismounted, threw his reins and his gloves to the stable boy, and strode the cobbles to the main doorway, already thrown wide. “But I’ve a deal to say and I’m as parched as a prune in aspic. Where’s your wine and where’s your mistress?”
Baroness Wrotham hurried out into the pale sunshine and curtsied. “My lord, I had not expected –”
“Well, of course you didn’t,” dismissed the earl. “I presume my son’s here?”
Nicholas sauntered across the cobbles. “What a clatter and calamity,” he observed. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“Follow me,” said the earl.
Everybody did, with the lady of the house scuttling behind her guest, while Nicholas, nodding to his wife who stood bemused, ushered her inside with him and then closed the door firmly behind them all. The steward was immediately ordered away, and the small group entered the main hall as pages were sent for candles, wine and spiced biscuit. The earl did not take the chair he was offered, but took the wine cup in both hands. “Not some wretched diluted hippocras for the gullible, I hope? No, good. A thirsty ride,” he explained. “Damned roads. Ice and snow in winter. Mud and swollen rivers in spring. Now it’s wellnigh summer, and there’s more dust than in the jousting lists.” He signalled and his son obligingly refilled the cup, meanwhile refilling his own.