Red Sky at Night, Lovers' Delight Read online

  “No!”

  “She keeps talking about him. Hoping to meet him again.” Kate laughed. “If she only knew! Oh, well.” She straightened her severe white collar. “Back to the governess’s treadmill. I fear I must admit to being cured, don’t you think?” She had, inevitably, had to feign illness the day before, while she masqueraded as Kit Warrender.

  “My poor darling, do you hate it so?”

  “Of course I don’t.” She gave her mother a quick hug. “I love the children. They’re so quick, and bright, and funny. Besides,” one last rueful glance in the glass, “they see me.” And then: “Don’t you think it is time we moved to the Dower House, mamma? You heard what our lord, and master had to say about George Warren and Lucy Penfold. We hardly want him talking about us in similar terms.”

  “I should rather think not.” Mrs. Warrender bridled like a furious kitten. “I will give the orders at once. Thank you for putting it in my mind, dear.”

  “His lordship will then be able to give free rein to his bachelor habits again, which must have been sadly curtailed by our presence. Do you think he will invite George Warren to bring Lucy Penfold to dine?”

  “Kate!” But Kate had given a rather bitter little laugh and left her.

  It was good to be welcomed with such glee, on her “recovery,” by the children, and to find how painstakingly they had done the work she had set for them to do while she was “ill” the day before. Only Sue seemed quieter than usual, and Kate’s suspicions as to the reason for this were confirmed when Giles began to tease her. “Sue’s cross,” he said. “She thinks Kit Warrender should come visiting us as well as papa. As if he would trouble about a parcel of children. A man like him who goes and faces the crowd at Tidemills.”

  The frank admiration in his tone was balm to Kate, but she must do her best about the complication of Sue. “I believe my Cousin Kit has gone away for a while,” she told her. “No doubt he had a great deal on his mind when he came to see your father yesterday.”

  “Of course he did,” said Giles. “They might have torn him limb from limb, James says. He was scared silly for his own skin. He told me so himself. And Kit Warrender up on the hustings, bold as brass, lecturing that crowd. I just wish I could have seen him, Miss Warrender.”

  “It’s high time we got on with our lessons,” said Kate. Listening to his recitation of the Latin verbs she had set him to learn, she worked away at the puzzle his words had summed up for her. After her own stormy reception by the Tidemills crowd the day before, Lord Hawth’s walkover seemed altogether too easy. It was both puzzling and a little frightening, almost as if someone behind the scenes could manipulate the Tidemills crowd at will. But that was absurd.

  She and her mother moved to the Dower House next day, and she was grateful for the freedom to be herself, instead of the stiff governess figure she had invented and now found so constricting. And there was one major advantage about the Dower House. Lying as it did on the far side of the stable yard, it made excursions as Kit Warrender possible without the hazard of the secret passage. At first, since the lodge gates were locked at night, she was compelled to confine her rides to moonlight explorations of Hawth Park itself, but on one of these she found a place not far from the sea gate where the wall had collapsed for several yards and been repaired with hurdles. Quite sufficient to keep sheep in and Tidemills children out of the park, they were nothing to Boney, and she was free of the marsh and the downs once more.

  Once or twice, taking Boney over the hurdles, it struck her that they had been moved, and she wondered whether she should mention this to Lord Hawth or to Knowles, the bailiff. But Hawth was off on one of his long visits to the Prince Regent’s lively court at Brighton, and she did not much like Knowles. He had been, in her opinion, altogether too obliging over the arrangements for the Dower House, and had made it rather uncomfortably clear that it was her taste and convenience rather than her mother’s that he consulted. If Lord Hawth did not see her at all, she was afraid his bailiff saw her very clearly as a possible step up in the social scale. He missed no chance of hinting at what a warm man he was, and even went so far, one fine September Saturday, as to invite Kate and her mother to call and see the improvements he was making on his own house at the other side of Glinde.

  “It will make an outing for you two ladies, and my sister will be only too happy to receive you.” He had found them in their little paved garden, cutting late roses for pot pourri, and now managed a languishing glance for Kate. “Will you favour me with one of your roses, Miss Warrender?”

  “I am afraid we have none to spare,” Mrs. Warrender answered for her daughter, “and as for visiting, it is kind of you to suggest it, but we are far too busy getting things in train here before the winter sets in.”

  “Jams and jellies.” There was the hint of a sneer in his voice. “It must make quite a change from the social life you have been used to enjoy. That’s why I thought Miss Kate might fancy a little holiday.”

  “Miss Warrender is occupied with the children.”

  “Oh, bring the brats, too, if you like,” he said carelessly. “There are plenty of trees for Giles to fall out of, and we might even find a young spark for Sue.”

  “That will do, Mr. Knowles.” Mrs. Warrender put down her basket. “Come, Kate. How Mr. Knowles chooses to speak of his employer’s children is his own affair, but I see no reason why we should listen to him. Good day, Mr. Knowles.”

  Safe indoors, Kate kissed her mother warmly. “Bless you for that setdown. I was afraid if I tried to speak, I would say too much.”

  “So was I. Poor man, if looks could petrify, he’d be stone by now.”

  “Yes, but he takes no notice,” said Kate furiously. “I’ve tried every way I can to depress his unspeakable pretensions, and he seems to take my snubs for compliments.”

  “I expect he doesn’t know any better,” said her mother.

  “Or doesn’t choose to.” Kate sighed. “And the infuriating thing is that he is right in so much of what he says. We’re a proper pair of social outcasts, aren’t we? I met Lady Beston who used to toady you so when I took the children into Glinde the other day, and she looked right through me as if I’d been a chimera.”

  “Well,” said her mother, “a governess is just as bad. And as for housekeeper… ‘Jams and jellies,’ indeed!” “And very good they are, too!” At this sign of gloom on her mother’s part, Kate rallied gallantly. “I’m sorry, mamma! Who am I to grumble? It was my idea in the first place.”

  “And you were quite right,” said her mother. “Let’s never forget that, Kate. When I got that dismissive letter from your great uncle, the only relative we have in the world, I cannot tell you how glad I was to be able to write back and say we need not to be a trouble to him.”

  “Which he didn’t intend anyway,” agreed Kate. “You’re quite right. We have chosen our bed, and really it could be a great deal less comfortable.” She laughed, a little wryly. “But Great Uncle Frank isn’t in fact our only relative. How do you think Cousin George Warren is getting on in his den of iniquity?”

  “The less said about that,” said her mother, “the better.”

  * * *

  Busy from morning to night in trying to settle the chaotic affairs of his dead relative, George Warren had no idea of the gossip about himself and Lucy Penfold. Characteristically, Charles Warrender had left no will, but he seemed to have left no legitimate relatives either, except, of course, for his wife and daughter, and this made the settling of his estate a good deal easier than it might have been. While creditors came forward in swarms, there were no unexpected claimants to the estate. After several visits to a London solicitor recommended by Futherby, George Warren returned to Warren House one fine September evening with a waggon-load of luggage and good news for Futherby, there by appointment to greet him.

  “I think we are out of the wood at last.” He had poured wine for them both. “I’m grateful to you for recommending James Martin, Futherby. I’d not have t
hought we could have brushed through the intestacy so well.”

  “And the debts?” An honest man, Futherby had done his best to persuade George Warren that he was under no obligation to settle these, but had yielded with relief to his angry retort that if he did not do so, the creditors were bound to come down on Mrs. Warrender.

  “Oh, those debts!” George Warren laughed a shade grimly and refilled his glass. “What a muddle of a man, Futherby! Do you know, what irked me most of all as they came streaming in, with their claims for this hunter and that high perch phaeton, was that there was not so much as a fiver spent at Rundell and Bridge on trinkets for his wife and daughter.”

  “That,” said Futherby, “I can well believe.”

  “How are they?” asked Warren.

  “Well enough. I thought Miss Kate a shade blue-devilled when I last called, but that’s understandable. It’s a dull life for a high spirited girl like her.”

  “High spirited? That’s hardly how she struck me. Why, one of our Philadelphia Quaker young ladies would have more looks and more conversation. Perhaps she’s just bored from her own lack of resources. Now the mother’s something else again. I warrant you she’s carrying out a root and branch shakeup up at the hall, just the way Mrs. Penfold is here, God bless her.”

  “Yes,” said Futherby. “The Penfolds. There was something I was wishing to say to you …”

  But as he searched for the tactful phrase, his employer interrupted him. “I’ve a commission for you, Futherby. One I hope you will enjoy. You are to call on Mrs. Warrender and tell her that a small part of her dowry escaped her husband’s creditors. A mere £500 a year in the funds, but it should make a considerable difference to their situation.”

  “It should indeed.” Futherby gave him a very straight look. “If I can just convince them they are entitled to it. They’re not fools, you know.”

  “But nor are you, and I think you owe it to them—if you will forgive my saying so—to make a good job of it. You’ve no idea how hard Martin and I worked to make it all water-tight for you.”

  “It’s very generous.”

  “Generous! When I am living in their house, using their carriage, enjoying what should be theirs! I only wish I could make it more, but Martin thought it the most we could get away with. I hate to think of them dependent on that cross-tempered, bad-mannered earl of theirs. Do you know I ran slap into him in St. James’s and received the nearest thing to the cut direct I ever hope to suffer? A kind of raising of those black brows and the slightest tilt of that artistocratic head of his and he was safe away without so much as pausing in his conversation.”

  “Talking, was he? You don’t chance to know with whom?”

  “Why, yes. Mr. Perceval, the first minister. I’d have liked to have met him. There is a thing or two I think he should know about our feelings over in America. What are you laughing at?”

  “Forgive me!” They had become very good friends In the course of the summer. “But the idea of Lord Hawth—a Whig and a member of the Prince Regent’s set—the very thought of him presenting a young American revolutionary to the Tory first minister!” He took snuff and laughed some more. Then, more seriously: “In fact, I find it odd enough that you should have seen them together. Lord Hawth does not often move in government circles.”

  “Oh, your English politics.” Impatiently. “I’ll never understand them. Whig or Tory, what’s the difference? All they care about is their own comfort, their hunting and shooting, their parties of pleasure. And not an honest day’s work done among the lot of them. What do they care if the crops fail and the poor starve? They’re riding for a fall, I tell you. I heard some stories about doings in the north when I was in town would fair make your blood curdle. Mr. Madison’s non-importation act has hit them hard up there in the cotton trade. Mass unemployment and starvation wages there, and the rich manufacturers sitting tight and doing nothing. Or cutting costs and throwing more men out of work. Starvation breeds revolution, Futherby, and I’ve heard tales as an American might make some of your care-for-nothing artistocrats shake in their shoes.”

  “My dear Mr. Warren!” The lawyer’s protesting hand stopped him in full spate. “To me, if you must, but for God’s sake be careful what you say!”

  “You think I’ll be clapped in the Tower for treason, like Sir Francis Burdett.”

  “Not exactly treason. But I do think, Mr. Warren, that you should remember your somewhat awkward position as an American. Specially here, on the invasion coast. There’s talk that Bonaparte is making a tour of inspection of his army in the Netherlands this autumn. It might mean anything. You don’t know what it was like in 1804, when we expected to be invaded hourly. And now this talk of war with America—with your country, Mr. Warren—it might just give Bonaparte the chance he needs.”

  “You think so, too? I thought I was the only one.”

  “I do indeed. I’ll be glad when winter really comes and the crossing is impossible for the small boats Bonaparte still has ready on the other side. By spring, let us hope things will be better.”

  Warren shrugged. “Or at least not worse. In the meantime, what do I do, as a possible enemy alien? Join the Volunteers, do you think?”

  “I doubt they’d have you. No, I’d just keep quiet if I were you, Mr. Warren. Things are—one must face it—they really are a trifle awkward. Have you had any callers, if I may ask?”

  “You can ask anything. And the answer is, no. Should I have?”

  “It’s an unusual situation.” Mr. Futherby hedged. “In the normal way, I would have expected it, but you have been in town a great deal. And then, things were so oddly left. …”

  “You mean, I am to be ostracised.”

  “I do” hope not.

  “We had better put it to the test, had we not? What do you suggest? A dinner party for the county? Now that Mrs. Penfold has the household so well in hand, I reckon she would positively enjoy that.”

  “Speaking of the Penfolds—” once again Mr. Futherby began his warning, and once again was interrupted.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” exclaimed George Warren. “I’ll invite my cousins to dinner. Mrs. Warrender and that frumpish daughter of hers. I’m sure Mrs. Warrender can give me excellent advice as to how I am to go on in the district, if she only will.”

  “Yes, except …”

  “Except what?”

  “Well.” Futherby looked miserable. “I’m sorry to have to say it, but from what I hear their social life has changed sadly now that they are housekeeper and governess up at the hall.”

  “Jehosaphat!” said George Warren. “I begin to think I don’t want to know much more of your English society! Will it sink them beyond recall, do you think, if I invite them to dinner? Because I most certainly propose to do so.”

  After Futherby had finished his wine and ridden away, George Warren found himself, almost for the first time, wretchedly at a loose end in his new existence. So far, there had been almost too much to do. He had enjoyed doing battle with his head relative’s creditors, and seeing to it that they got not a penny more than was their due. He had been equally entertained by the chicanery by which he and his new London friend, James Martin, had arranged to blind Mrs. Warrender with legal science and convince her that she was entitled to £ 500 a year of what should have been her own money. And then there had been the novelty of life in London and the challenge of trying to turn himself into a reasonable replica of an English gentleman. Until he had done so, more or less to his own satisfaction, he had not much wanted to try his luck in English society.

  Now, he told himself bitterly, he was beginning to see the other side of the coin. The trouble with English gentlemen was that they had not nearly enough to do. He had earned his own living since he had been orphaned at fourteen and his uncle had given him a chance on one of his merchantmen. Taking it with both hands, he had made a fortune by the time he was twenty-one, lost interest in the mere business of making money, and been looking about for a new occ
upation when he had received the unexpected summons to England.

  At first, he had thought he had found one. He had ridden the complete rounds of his estate by now, had ordered new roofs, new fences, new barns and been heartily thanked by a surprised and grateful tenantry. Busy with all this, he had not, until Lord Hawth cut him in the street and Futherby asked his question, much cared about the lack of social life, or if he had, had assumed that this was just part of the English pattern which he was not yet in a position to understand. Doubtless, he had thought, the calling season, like the grouse and hunting ones, had its definite opening date.

  Was he really to be ostracised? Would even Mrs. Warrender and her daughter refuse his invitation? Resolved to put it to the test at once, he rang to order out his horse, then strode angrily upstairs to change into riding dress. He found Lucy Penfold in his room, very busy polishing shining brass andirons.

  “Ooh, sir!” She dropped him a flurried curtsy. “You didn’t half give me a turn. I was afraid you was one of the men!”

  She really was quite remarkably pretty, with that apple blossom complection and the golden curls that never would quite stay under her cap. And today, doubtless warm with her work, she had loosened the lacing of her tight bodice, to reveal white skin never touched by the sun. “Ooh, sir!” She saw where his eyes were directed “Whatever will you think!” She began to tighten the laces with trembling little hands. “Ooh dear, there’s a knot!”

  “Let me help you, child.” She was tiny, and he smiled reassuringly, down at her as his large hands joined her small ones at work on the knot

  “Ooh, you are so kind, sir. And clever!” Her clumsy hands pulled against his, and suddenly the whole bodice was open, revealing two perfect little white breasts, the nipples alert for his touch.

  “You’re very lovely, my dear.” Had he really meant to help fasten that provocative bodice? If so, what were his hands doing now, and how did it happen that they were falling together onto the wide, soft bed?