"That's very kind of you, Blythe, but I would like Miss Lambourne to be introduced to our mother immediately."
For a moment Lady Blythe pursed her lips, her fine, pale skin suffusing with bright spots of color. “I find this offensive, Ransom,” she said in a low voice. “Pray remember there are servants present."
"Exactly,” Ransom said. “I wish for everyone to understand fully Miss Lambourne's position as an honored guest at Mount Falcon."
Blythe looked Merlin up and down, her mouth curled and her nostrils flaring as if she scented some unpleasant odor. “At least make her decent before you take her in to Duchess May."
"Tactics, my dear sister. I quite know what I'm doing. Come along, Wiz. They'll have raised the ducal standard at the gate as soon as we came through. My mother keeps a sharp eye out for that. She'll be waiting."
Happy to escape the withering stare of Lady Blythe, Merlin tagged at Ransom's side through the door and into the Great Hall. She stopped, craning her neck to follow the tiered arches upward three stories to the ceiling, where frescoed angels battled red-eyed demons for possession of a golden coronet held out by a man in a Roman toga.
"Painted by Antonio Verrio,” Ransom said. “A nice comment on my illustrious forebear's politics, I think."
"Oh.” Merlin wondered if his forebears had been Italian orators. Before she could ask, he was guiding her up the steps through the largest arch and down a long vaulted-stone corridor where the echo of his boots mixed with the scuff of her slippers. She looked back and forth at the pairs of marble busts that stared at one another across the corridor in endless procession. More forebears, she guessed, all draped in their togas.
A footman stepped forward and bowed, holding open a tall door. Sunlight poured through into the chilly hall, and Ransom urged her ahead of him into the pool of light.
"Mamá,” Ransom said, and strode to take the hand of the lady who rose from her chair. As he leaned to greet her, both of them became silhouettes against the sun streaming through the great windows. Merlin lingered near the door, not at all anxious to face another freezing perusal.
"Good afternoon, Damerell.” The lady's voice was firm and pleasant, very like Ransom's own. “You've brought us a guest."
The silhouetted duchess held out her hand toward Merlin. Miserably aware of her frayed dressing gown and tumbled hair, Merlin clenched her fists and bobbed in place, wishing she could duck behind the huge door and hide.
The dowager duchess moved forward out of the sunlight. Merlin squinted against the contrast. She stood helplessly and tried to smile while Ransom's mother looked her up and down.
As her eyes adjusted, Merlin saw the duchess's serene face change—not to a frown, but to delight. “I have it!” she exclaimed, reaching for Merlin's hands. “Claresta's daughter. My very dear! Oh, my very dear. You are the image of her when you smile."
Merlin found herself smothered in a sweet-smelling embrace—as smothered as she could be by a lady so much smaller than herself. The duchess gripped Merlin's hand and drew her imperiously back to Ransom.
"Wherever have you found her, Damerell?"
He smiled. “You've guessed who she is. Shall I take all the pleasure out of your life by telling you the rest?"
"Of course not.” The duchess's voice rang with indignation. “It was a rhetorical question. I shall put my mind first to determining why she has arrived in her dressing gown and slippers, and then to why you have brought her. You look the veriest waif, my dear. Come, will you sit here?"
She guided Merlin to a gilded chair upholstered in flowery needlepoint. Merlin sat perched in the middle of it, afraid she might smudge the creamy armrests with the leftover laboratory grime on her fingers. She could see the rest of the saloon now that she wasn't looking into the light. The scale of it daunted her. The sitting room was larger than the great-hall at home, dominated by a life-sized painting of an Arab horse and faded tapestries of hunts and battles. A crystal chandelier sent red and blue and yellow rainbows spinning across the rich carpet.
The duchess startled Merlin out of her openmouthed study of the grandeur. “Oh, Damerell—tell me the poor child doesn't suffer as her mother did!"
"Not at all,” Ransom said cheerfully. “I'm sure she'll speak quite lucidly, now that she's decided not to catch flies on her tongue."
Merlin shifted and blinked under their combined looks. There was a lengthy silence. “I believe frogs are quite good for controlling flies,” she offered, since they seemed to expect some comment from her on the subject.
Ransom got a peculiar pucker around his mouth. The dowager duchess looked from Merlin to him and back again.
"What is your name, my dear?” the duchess asked.
"Merlin Lambourne, ma'am. I'm named after John Joseph Merlin."
"The Ingenious Mechanick,” Ransom supplied, when his mother looked blank. “I believe we have one of his ingenious clocks hereabouts someplace."
"Do you, indeed?” Merlin sat up eagerly. “May I see it?"
"Of course you may. Not just now,” he added, as Merlin leaped to her feet. “You're taking a holiday from mechanics, remember?"
Merlin's protest was lost in the duchess's exclamation. “I have it! I have guessed it. You are engaged to be married."
Merlin turned in astonishment. Ransom inclined his head toward his mother, but did not look so pleased as he had at her earlier successful conjecture. “A very near miss, Mamá,” he said quietly. “I have asked her."
The duchess frowned, her eyelashes fluttering in concentration. She looked back and forth between Ransom and Merlin. Her son started to speak, but the duchess waved him into silence. “No, don't tell me anything. I shall consult my cards.” She stood and took Merlin by the elbows, brushing her dry, smooth cheek against Merlin's. “Welcome, my dear. Do go and settle in. I'm sure your baggage will be following you shortly. Damerell never forgets that sort of thing.” She smiled mischievously. “Not even in the midst of capturing French spies and rescuing young ladies out of their beds in the wee hours of the night."
Merlin found herself ushered out the door, along with Ransom.
"How does she know about that?” she asked. “How does she know my mother's name?"
He shrugged. “She claims it's feminine intuition.” There was a tinge of annoyance in his voice. “It's rather her hobby. She loves to prove that while we benighted men must muddle along on nothing but our own reason, she can guess anything on the slightest of evidence.” He stopped at the foot of a spiraled staircase where a maid waited to escort Merlin up. “She's a bit too bloody good at it sometimes, too."
Chapter 5
Ransom took secret pleasure in the timeless rhythm of being dressed by his valet. It was not something he mentioned, to his valet or anyone else, any more than he would have explained publicly why he used the state apartments of his huge ancestral home as his living quarters. When everyone else had removed to the fashionably, and luxuriously, redecorated bedrooms upstairs, Ransom had stayed in the drafty state chambers below. Not because he particularly reveled in the chill grandeur, or because he had shared the ducal quarters with his grandfather from the age of eight, or even because he was now, in fact, the duke himself.
No, he preferred the state bedchamber because it was on the ground floor. Not something which could be admitted. Ever. To anyone. Better to be ridiculed in the papers and teased for having a pompous mind than to reveal his fear of heights. It was his one unconquerable weakness, the hidden source of every mysterious eccentricity that had made the rounds of gleeful gossips. No one had guessed, and no one would. Weaknesses were not a thing the Duke of Damerell allowed himself. Besides, after meeting Merlin Lambourne, Ransom was beginning to suspect that perhaps he did have a pompous mind.
An hour after he had sent her upstairs, he sat back looking up at the gilded plasterwork on the ceiling, relaxing under the even stroke of his valet's razor. It was Ransom's only real leisure, this half-hour period that occurred three times a day. Riding, b
reakfast, luncheon, dinner—top boots, trousers, frock coat, silks; they followed one another with comforting regularity. In town or in the country, the nature of his business might change, but the procession of clothing stayed the same.
Ransom allowed his eyes to ease closed. Miss Lambourne had caused a rift in the daily routine. It felt good to settle back into it, taking this chance to go blessedly blank. A man needed such times to relax without thinking, to have a moment without responsibility, a moment of self-indulgence, without the weight of politics and decision pressed on him—
"'Pon my honor, big brother, here you are snoring away while the country goes to rack and rain!"
Ransom tilted his chin so his valet could reach beneath his jaw. Footsteps and a laugh drifted closer to his chair.
"The French have landed! The King's made Fox his prime minister. Wake up, Damerell. I've been elected MP for Cork-in-the-Cowbyre."
Ransom opened one eye. “Good God,” he murmured. “We're in it now."
"'Tis a respectably rotten borough.” His brother Shelby cast himself into a chair. “Only myself and a herd of prize Jerseys to please."
Ransom sat up, glancing in the mirror and indicating a fleck of foam beneath his ear that the valet had missed. “I suppose now you'll forever be urging the dairy cause."
"Jerseys are dun cows.” Shelby looked struck. “Be-gad, a seat for dun territory!” His shout of laughter over his own pun rang in the huge room.
Ransom ran his thumb across his jaw and stood up, nodding to the valet, who whisked away the towels and basin. “How deep in debt are you this time?"
"No worse than usual.” Shelby began a restless prowl of the room. “Where've you been, you scurvy fellow? I've been hearing dark tales from Blythe."
Ransom shrugged into his shirt and began buttoning it.
"Hah!” Shelby said. “I know that black-hearted smile. Who is she, brother? Is she pretty?"
"Very."
"Unmarried?"
"Presently."
"Rich?"
Ransom sat down to pull on his boots. “Is this interrogation leading somewhere?"
"Certainly it is. You know what excellent use of a pretty, unmarried heiress I might make."
"Only too well. Miss Lambourne is strictly out-of-bounds."
"Too good for me, eh?” Shelby lounged against the window frame with the afternoon sun turning his hair to molten gold. “Well, I don't doubt that. I'm a damned paltry fellow."
"You're a damned wastrel,” Ransom said, accepting his cravat from the valet. “Beyond that, you're sharp-witted and pluck to the backbone and the handsomest devil on two legs, and it's my heart's wish that you'll quit the gaming tables and make a man of yourself."
Shelby drew in a breath. His ready grin faded to a bitter, lopsided smile. “As I said, a damned paltry fellow."
Ransom paused in the motion of folding. He looked toward his brother. “Shelby—"
"No, don't!” Shelby exclaimed. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “One of these days you'll tempt me too far, and I'll take your infernal gift money and make you promises I never mean to keep."
For a long moment, Ransom frowned at his younger brother. Daily, he asked himself what demon it was that inhabited Shelby, that forced him to spend all that brilliance and wit on deep play, instead of using the limitless prospects with which he'd been born. He might have made an extraordinary military man—a master of tactics—or a shrewd and charming diplomat. He could have been a dazzling speaker in the House of Commons or at the bar. He might have managed Mount Falcon—a responsibility Ransom would have been only too glad to share—and brought it to a peak of production, instead of gambling away four of the five estates that had comprised his generous inheritance. That he had an income at all was because their grandfather had seen the handwriting on the wall and left the fifth and richest property wrapped up in a neatly entailed trust with Ransom as the trustee. Ransom doled out a small allowance to Shelby and then did his damnedest to hold what was left in prime condition for the benefit of Shelby's three children.
But the waste, Ransom thought. The things that might have been. It drove him to distraction, the bloody waste of a life...
"Stop looking as if you don't know where to bury me,” Shelby said. “Do I stink so much?"
Ransom set his jaw against the rash of love and frustration. “Foully,” he said, resuming the task of folding his cravat.
Shelby's mouth tightened. “Must everyone march to your lockstep, big brother? Be satisfied I let you bully poor Woodrow into trying to match your stride."
"I'd rather have you. To better it."
"Well.” Shelby tilted his head back against the wall, stretching with elaborate casualness. “Well, well. Haven't given up on the black sheep yet? Will you never learn, Ransom?"
Ransom turned a level gaze on his brother. “Never,” he said softly. “Shelby. Not ever."
Something came into Shelby's face, blunting the sharp edge of insolence. His lips quirked as he stared at the toe of his polished boot. “Damn you, Ransom. I said don't."
Ransom kept his look steady. Sometimes he came so close, it seemed, so near to the key. Thirty-four years old, Shelby was, with his son Woodrow and two daughters and a future. There was still a future there. Ransom would not allow it to be otherwise.
Shelby frowned at the floor for half a minute before his handsome face slipped into a lazy sneer. He looked up into Ransom's waiting gaze. “Watch yourself, my lord. You'll drive me back to London's card tables tonight."
"Touché.” Ransom turned back to the mirror. “Consider the topic closed."
Shelby made an inelegant sound and turned to the window. Ransom continued dressing in silence. Just as the valet gave his midnight-blue frock coat a final brash, his brother straightened up and said, “What the devil..."
Shelby leaned toward the window, staring outside. Ransom moved forward, looking through the transparent ripples of the window glass into the formal garden. Among the roses and lavender a knot of houseguests and servants was gathering. He could hear the nervous laughter and shouts of warning, could see that the pointing fingers were focused on a spot somewhere on the roof above his head.
He swore. Ignoring the watch fob that the valet held ready, he strode for the door. The servant lunged after him, just reaching the knob in time to throw the portal open. Ransom burst through at a violent pace with Shelby on his heels.
It was really quite easy to reach the wind vane. After being sent to her room—until her clothes arrived, Ransom had said—Merlin had quickly grown tired of examining the elegant furniture. She negotiated the scaffolding outside the window and carved balustrade, and only paused. a few moments to puzzle over the identity of the row of sculpted figures which looked down in majestic stone-silence over the courtyard. More forebears, she decided. Ransom seemed to have a quantity of them.
The ten feet from the balustrade to the attic story was no difficulty—she stood on an enormous stone thistle topped by a gilded crown to climb that—but the steep slope of the pediment roof required some ingenuity. She finally dragged herself up the slippery leaded surface by hanging on to the ankle of the posturing Atlas who held up a golden globe.
The dragon-shaped wind vane that had attracted her attention stood a few feet away. Merlin straddled the peak of the roof and slid along, eager to investigate the mechanism that registered not only wind direction, but the temperature as well, on a compass and thermometer in the wall of the Great Hall so far below. She reached for her pocket, intending to locate pliers, but her hand met only the bare skin of her leg.
She looked down, remembering for the first time that she was still in her nightgown. “Oooh ... botheration,” she said. And then, because she had climbed so far for nothing, and because it sounded like something Ransom would say, she added, “Curses."
As if the word had conjured him, she heard his voice, faint and strained on the light wind. She looked around.
Far below, like figures in the wrong end of a
telescope, a group of people huddled together among the garden walkways. Two ran to join the group, turning tiny faces up to the heights of the house. Merlin smiled, thinking she recognized Ransom. She grabbed the wind vane and hauled herself to her feet, tottering on the peak of the roof as she waved and hulloed back.
The Ransom figure stopped stock-still. He raised an arm. Merlin answered with another vigorous wave, but the distant man only pressed his forearm over his face and did not move again. The other latecomer gestured wildly, seeming to shout at him. Merlin dropped her hand, puzzled to see the second man tear off his coat and come running back toward the house. She caught a flash of his golden hair just as he disappeared from her view beneath the edge of the balustrade.
Standing there with everyone looking up at her, Merlin began to feel a flush of shyness. They certainly did seem to think she was something extraordinary. More and more people gathered, and as each one arrived, several others would point and they would all stare, clustering in smaller groups and breaking up again. Only the one she thought to be Ransom stood still, his head bent and his hand still covering his eyes.
Merlin sank onto the roof, dangling both legs over one side of the peak. She did not want to climb down now, not with everyone watching her. It was better to sit and feel the breeze and think of how fine and high she was. Perhaps they would grow bored and forget about her. The view was quite remarkable, out over the flat-roofed wings of the house, studded with ornamental parapets and towers, across the elegant gardens to the fields and the village and the high Sussex downs in the distance. In a far break between the hills, she fancied that a gleam of silver was the Channel. If she had a flying machine, she mused, she could be there in moments, sailing high above the waves.
"Miss,” someone said. “Miss—"
Merlin scrambled to her feet, startled by a voice so close.
"Don't jump!” he cried, just as Merlin spotted his blond head peering up from behind the, gilded crown that topped the giant stone thistle.