Page 46 of The Trials of Alaric
Papa pressed his lips together as if he was swallowing the first words he came to mind. Bea would love to know the retort he was refusing to vocalize.
“Oh, Dorothy,” Mama said to her sister. “Don’t take on so.”
“Your daughter will die an old maid, Mary,” Aunt Lewiston insisted. “You mark my words.” She marched off after her son.
“Oh dear,” said Mama, looking between Bea and her father. “Now look what you have done.” And she ran off after her sister.
“Are you sorry to lose your cousin as a suitor, daughter?” Papa asked.
“No, Papa. But did Lord Stavely really accuse Mr. Redhaven of…that?”
Papa said that Lord Stavely had accepted he was mistaken, but he must have had a reason for the terrible accusation, must he not? Bea had trouble believing that Alaric would leave with his brother if such a matter still lay between them. What had really happened?
Papa was not minded to be helpful. “You can apply to Mr. Redhaven for further information. For now, we must move on to the bull herding.” He pointed to the chief cattle herd, who was waiting quietly in the corner. “Gentlemen, you will go withMylechreest, here. He will tell you what you need to do.” He went to follow the gentleman from the room, but Bea placed a hand on his arm.
“Papa, Mrs. Gorry is anxious to separate herself from Gorry. By law, and with the children given into her custody, and into the guardianship of a man she trusts. Will you help?”
Papa nodded. “The young men will be at least half an hour sorting themselves out, and perhaps another half hour doing the moving. I have a few minutes, Bea. I shall ride down into town on my way to the bull pens, and see what Gorry has to say for himself.”
But when the constables went to fetch Gorry from the cells, he was gone. How he had escaped, no one knew, but the constables soon found that he’d taken his former employer’s fishing smack from the harbor, and that he had a passenger. People who had been on the harbor walls at the time swore that the passenger was Lord Beverley.
*
Tarquin, Alaric, andLuke decided to leave the footmen with the carriage rather than precipitate a fight by arriving in strength. Perhaps Bebbington would be sensible about the matter, though they doubted it, since their approach to the estate had been interrupted when a young woman had stepped out in front of the horses calling, “Lord Stavely!”
It was Eloise’s maid. She told them she had been turned out of the house and told her mistress would no longer require her. Certain her master would return for his wife she had been waiting in the bushes since late morning.
Bebbington would not see them, and his butler tried to shut the door in their faces.
When they were refused entry, Tarquin pushed past the butler and stood in the entry hall, calling for Eloise. His shouts brought Bebbington out of his study. “She is not returning with you, Stavely. Get off my lands before I have you thrown off.”
Alaric and Luke moved up beside Tarquin. Bebbington’s eyes widened and then narrowed. “Redhaven. You are not welcome here. Nor is your friend. Watts! Summon footmen to have these intruders removed.”
The butler looked alarmed but left through an unobtrusive door.
“You have no legal right to keep Eloise from her husband,” Alaric told Bebbington, “and if your footmen lay hands upon me and Versey, here, we shall sue you for assault.”
“Eloise!” Tarquin shouted at the top of his voice. He was rewarded by a loud clatter and the sound of screaming. No. Not screaming. Words, in a high-pitched voice.
“Help! Tarquin! Help!”
Just that, and then silence, but Tarquin was already leaping up the stairs, two at a time. Alaric and Luke followed. Bebbington did not—presumably he was waiting for reinforcements.
At the second-floor landing, Tarquin stopped, looking at the doors that led from the stairwell on three sides. “This floor, or the next?” he asked.
Alaric shook his head. He didn’t know. They would have to search each floor and fight off the footmen he could hear muttering down in the entry hall.
“Eloise!” Tarquin shouted again and had his reply. Another large crash and the sound of a voice swearing mingled with a shriek of pain.
“This way.” Tarquin pulled open the door between them and the source of sound, into a passage with closed doors on both sides. Behind them, on the stairs, the thump of feet indicatedthat the footmen had overcome their reluctance to tangle with three members of the aristocracy.
As Tarquin hurried down the passage, listening at each door, Alaric removed a pike from a display on the wall. Luke must have guessed his intention, for he pulled the ties that held back the drapes on either side of an alcove. They worked together to tie the handles of the door leading to the stairwell to the pike, which was long enough to stretch the width of the door frame.
Just in time. They had no sooner finished tying and tightening the rope than someone began pulling on the door on the other side.
“There will be other stairs,” Alaric said to Luke.
Tarquin had heard something at one of the doors, for he was kicking at it with his booted foot. Alaric came up beside him, and at the count of three, they both hit the door at the same time. It burst open. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Alaric felt a surge of joy at working in unison once more with his twin.
