Protection (19 page)

Not that she cares one whit, Nicholas thought, smiling as Martha put away her slate and tidied up her bookshelf. She feels no rancor toward the other servants; they are beneath her notice. She worships at the altar of Knowledge, as do I. And female though she is, she may be even better fitted to the discipline.

Nicholas knew something about rancor. Newcomers to Maidenstone Village were surprised to find the master of Grantley so short-tempered, wrathful and steadfast of grudge. They approached the ancient manor house brimming with confidence, expecting advice, a loan or permission to hunt in his woods. Such smiling supplicants assumed Nicholas would acquiesce to any demand, pleased to be asked—to be treated like a man. Nicholas delighted in teaching them otherwise.

Even his beard, which didn’t much suit his face, had been grown to mystify and perplex. Once, down in the village an old woman had contrived to pull on it, expecting the dark brown fur to peel away like an actor’s disguise. When it didn’t, she was left awkwardly patting his cheek and clucking over how handsome he was. As if Nicholas were seventeen years old, beloved by all of Maidenstone and loving it back with all his heart. The dashing boy he’d once been instead of whatever he was now.

“Nicholas,” Martha said.

His head jerked up. It was an unfortunate habit, slipping away like that. Yet he caught himself doing it more and more often.

The girl had donned her white apron and thin muslin cap. “You will come to the bonfire tomorrow night, will you not?”

He laughed. “No one has asked me to play monster. I understand the Forster brothers have that honor. They shall drape themselves in sackcloth and leap out of the shadows.”

“Not to play monster. To open the festivities. It’s the Grantley Bonfire, after all,” Martha said in her slow, serious way. “That makes it yours. Since Mrs. Robinson is too ill to open it herself.”

“And I’m sure all of Maidenstone is suitably bereft.” Nicholas, who’d sat long enough to grow quite stiff, gripped the edge of the tea table and hauled himself to his feet.

“No, they hardly seem to think of Mrs. Robinson now,” Martha replied with the same feckless honesty that would have already earned her a beating at the butler’s hands, had Nicholas not intervened. “I think they’re waiting for her to die. As for you, and as for whether the villagers want you to open the festivities … I doubt it. They want games and ale and bonfires. Whilst I thought only of myself and my pleasure in your company.”

“Is that so?” Nicholas covered his surprise with false heartiness. “And what can I offer a young woman at a harvest dance? Shall I scramble up a tree to impress you? Compete in the horserace? Whirl you ’round beneath the stars?”

Martha’s dark eyes narrowed. “You mock me.”

Nicholas was startled all over again. Until that moment, he’d believed Martha possessed only the most rudimentary self-consciousness. He’d never seen her respond to even overt teasing with anything but cool disdain.

“Of course not,” he said, limping closer to the girl. He nearly put a hand on her arm, then thought better of it. “I mock myself. No female would judge me fit company for such an occasion.”

“I did not mean you would be fit.” Martha twisted her torso, swirling her skirts in a way that made her seem far younger than fourteen. “But I enjoy talking to you. Without you to keep me company, I shall be forced to sit with Mrs. Parker and Nanny Cooper. And I like bonfires. I like music. I like dancing, too!” Martha tossed out this last as if declaring something outrageously defiant, like believing in Father Christmas or Spring-Heeled Jack.

“Dancing? Really? And you call yourself a scientist.” Nicholas found himself smiling at the girl. He was thirty-one years old. How old and dour he must seem to such a fresh young creature.

“I assure you,” he intoned with what he hoped was appropriate gravity. “There was a time in my life when I, too, adored bonfires and music and took enormous pleasure in both. You are free to do the same. With people your own age, preferably, or with Mrs. Parker and Nanny Cooper. But not with me.”

Martha sighed. “You could at least consider it.”

“Very well,” Nicholas lied, tired of the topic and tired of standing, too. Perhaps if he sold Grantley, they’d remove themselves to Bath. Then he could soak his lower half in medicinal hot springs every day. He’d heard Bath held all sorts of cures, some imported from the Far East, not only for weak limbs but for other sorts of weakness…

“I shall consider it,” Nicholas said. “Now. Downstairs. Get about your tasks before Mrs. Parker has occasion to complain of you.”

***

A
fter Martha left, Nicholas checked on his experiments again. His log required just one more entry before bed. Otherwise the processes would unfold unattended, leaving Nicholas free until Grantley’s prospective buyer, Mr. Ulwin, turned up.

Six o’clock was a ludicrous hour for such a meeting. But in his letters, Mr. Ulwin had pleaded for a dinner meeting quite eloquently. He was responsible for his ailing father, and could not abandon the elderly man any earlier. Nicholas had agreed, though it was transparently a lie. He suspected Mr. Ulwin’s true design was to be invited to dinner—how better to manage a first-hand inventory of the silver, the china, the house linens, etc.? As Grantley was half farm, perhaps Mr. Ulwin also wished to see what sort of harvest table the Robinsons set.

Nicholas didn’t despise such trickery. It proved Mr. Ulwin an able negotiator. Yet the man would receive no invitation to dine at Grantley. And if that insulted Mr. Ulwin, made him withdraw his offer and storm out, well …

Nicholas smiled. Since his accident, he was condemned to accept such small pleasures as life afforded.

He was drinking port in his study when Mr. Ulwin arrived. The wretched man turned up almost precisely on time, just as the church tower finished tolling six o’clock. The study’s coal fire was burning merrily. It was the perfect temperature for Nicholas, warm enough to coax his bones into relative bliss. He was reading something ridiculous from the family library, an old theosophical paper professing to conjure God out of a two-variable equation. But his sardonic pleasure in its circular logic was interrupted when his old butler, Hart, announced, “Mr. Ulwin.”

Nicholas nodded as his visitor entered, but didn’t rise. He could have done so; his cane was close at hand. But it was a cripple’s prerogative to remain seated. Nicholas often exercised that right simply to render a newcomer ill at ease. Besides, the port was having an effect. He’d begun his nightly drinking a shade too early.

“Mr. Robinson.” Mr. Ulwin inclined his head as Hart closed the study’s double doors behind him with a soft
whick.

“As you see,” Nicholas muttered. It was also a cripple’s prerogative to be rude, one that he utilized to excess.

Mr. Ulwin removed his hat. It was an excessively fashionable thing, tall and black and much too wide, decorated with a ridiculous silver buckle. In Maidenstone, gentlemen had the grace to be ashamed of something without function, existing only as an object of dubious beauty. But Mr. Ulwin strode forth oblivious, grinning as if he and Nicholas were old school chums. Tall and spare, Mr. Ulwin was black-haired and startlingly handsome. He had all the accoutrements of gracious living—the silver-tipped walking stick, the finely tailored coat and waistcoat, rings flashing on either hand. And beyond those peripheral recommendations, beyond his tall, slim figure and handsome face, Mr. Ulwin thrummed with vitality from top to toe. Nicholas despised him.

It would have been polite to make a little welcoming speech, or at least nod, greeting the other man by name. Instead Nicholas said nothing, pointedly glancing at his glass as if contemplating just how much port he would require to endure the interview.

If Mr. Ulwin took offense, he gave no sign. Crossing the study with walking stick in his left hand and hat in his right, he stopped directly before Nicholas’s chair, clicked his boot heels together and bowed deeply from the waist.

Nicholas frowned. There was a faintly un-English air about this man. A slight dissonance that Nicholas, who’d ventured no further than France, found distasteful. Either his visitor was not, in fact, an Englishman, or he’d been contaminated by too much travel to maintain the title.

“Mr. Robinson. Thank you for welcoming me into your home,” Mr. Ulwin said in perfect unaccented English, and without apparent irony. “Again I apologize for this odd hour and express gratitude for your indulgence. Alas, I am the devoted son of an ailing father. Presently he requires my close assistance. Yet he has read of Maidenstone and his fondest hope is to make the village his final home. As for the splendor you call Grantley…” Theatrically, Mr. Ulwin halted in midsentence, regarding Nicholas’s study as if the smoke-stained wallpaper and worn furnishings were unutterably grand. “It is no exaggeration to say this house will be the answer to my father’s prayers.”

Nicholas took a sip of port. “Indeed. I fear his prayers are poor indeed, if a heap of stone and an ancient farm are sufficient answer.”

Mr. Ulwin kept on smiling, dark eyes trained on Nicholas. His stare, like his bow, was distinctly un-English—bold, demanding, intrusive. For a moment, Nicholas thought the man was trying to intimidate him. Then he had the sudden impression Mr. Ulwin sought to—well,
ingratiate
himself. Render himself agreeable beyond his good looks and pretty speech…

“You have a queer stare, sir.”

Mr. Ulwin smiled, but his dark eyes widened slightly. Whatever he’d expected, Nicholas’s response had been wide of the mark.

“So I have been told. Forgive me; no doubt I have spent too much time on the Continent, and their curious ways have infected my own. I intend no offense, Mr. Robinson. And please believe me when I assure you my father’s prayers are humble, yet genuine. As are mine. We are but simple folk, touched by fortune rather than true gentility.”

It cost Nicholas some effort to puzzle out what the smiling fool meant by that statement. He took another sip of port. Was it a stab at the Robinson pedigree, which included a duke and an Italian countess by marriage? Did Mr. Ulwin mean to imply that he and his father were, by comparison, men of the people? Salt of the earth, or some other such nonsense?

“I know selling Grantley can come as no easy decision for you,” Mr. Ulwin continued. “The people of Maidenstone will grieve to lose their ancestral lord.” As he spoke, Mr. Ulwin took another step forward, putting himself almost within reach. It was inexcusably close, Continental manners or no. While the queer stare grew ever darker, more insistent, more penetrating…

Nicholas yawned pointedly. This time Mr. Ulwin blinked rapidly, disbelief plain on his face. Was he such an inveterate charmer that such simple trickery never failed?

“As for the people of Maidenstone…” Nicholas took another sip of port. Dimly, he registered that he sounded tipsy, but he didn’t care. “Have they confided their grief in you? Expressed what the putative loss of one Mr. Nicholas Robinson will mean to them?”

For the first time, Mr. Ulwin looked uncomfortable. Either he didn’t like the question, or he was frustrated by his own inability to inspire goodwill.

“The villagers have … spoken of you,” he said carefully. “Of your heroism. And your suffering.”

“Indeed? Tell me. What did they say?” Nicholas no long felt pleasantly inebriated. He felt metallic, sharp-edged, dangerous.

Mr. Ulwin looked back, transmitting an unspoken message.
I could answer, but you would not wish it.

“Speak,” Nicholas snapped. “If you want this interview to continue, pray, please go on. I have the right to know what stories my own people carry to strangers.”

“They said you went out one morning with a riding party,” Mr. Ulwin said. “Your friend, I believe he was called Peyton, took the point. His horse was a bad-tempered stallion, new to him and much prized. Some evil humor seized the beast. It reared and bolted, and a low tree branch swept Peyton out of the saddle. Then he was dragged, one boot caught in the stirrup as the stallion galloped away.”

It was true. Nicholas could still see it, clear as yesterday. John’s head bobbing obscenely as it struck the turf, the two-lane track, the shrubbery…

Nicholas had grown up with John Peyton, taking supper with John countless times, spending many a boyish night in the Peyton house. Brave, daring John had always purchased the most spirited horses, seeing their resistance as a sign of worth. But the stallion called Storm-Born had been far from worthy. He’d fought the saddle, cut his mouth to ribbons on the bit and reared one day over nothing—no rabbit hole, no snake, not even a wasp beneath the saddle—unseating John by racing under that branch. John’s tall brown hat had landed in a thicket. His boot heel had twisted in the stirrup, transforming a dangerous predicament into a potentially deadly one …