Wicked by Design Page 4

  ‘How I do love my merchantmen to waste their time ferrying spoilt young officers up and down the coast,’ Crow said, obviously prepared to concede nothing. ‘Go on, I’m listening.’

  ‘I found them on the beach – all the women from St Erth. They’re starving, and they were making a mull of recovering the cargo; they’d have been caught with it if I hadn’t helped them. What should I have done – leave them to be captured and to hang?’

  With absent-minded expertise and his usual complete and total disregard for any justification of one’s actions, Crow loaded one of his pistols, tipping powder down the barrel from the ox-horn that hung around his neck, followed by a wadded ball and a deft shove with the ramrod. ‘Thank you, I’m conversant with the current miserable state of affairs in my own county, thanks to the constant efforts of the English. Did I miss the moment when you told me why you’re here a month late? And don’t tell me your leave was postponed, because I know it was not. I had a letter from Wellington wishing me a merry Christmas with my heroic young brother.’

  ‘I went to Paris,’ Captain Helford said, defiance emerging from eye-watering mortification. ‘There was a girl. You know how it is.’

  ‘England is still at war with France and you’re a commissioned officer in the British army, but never mind, Kitto.’

  It was a very long time since anyone had called the captain by his childhood name, and although Crow smiled only rarely, when he did, it was almost impossible to remain angry with him. The blow struck Kitto’s shoulder from behind with stunning force. It was not for a long time that he knew he had been shot. First, he heard Crow swear – a tangle of Cornish and French obscenity – and dropped to his knees at his brother’s side in the shelter of a long-fallen horse chestnut tree overgrown with ivy. It was hard to breathe, and a queer, cold wave swept through him. Expressionless, Crow handed him one of the two pistols, and Kitto closed his fingers around the polished cherry-wood stock, feeling by the weight of it that the pistol was already loaded. He didn’t understand why his hands were wet, his fingers slipping against polished steel, against wood.

  ‘Show yourselves!’ The voice rang out beneath the silent tangle of branches overhead with a slight north-country tilt: not all the 11th Northumbrians had ridden down to the cove, then, and Kitto knew he had led English soldiers straight to where the goods were hidden, so very illegally, on his traitorous brother’s land. Beside him, Crow was quite still, crouching behind the fallen tree. They waited, watching. The cavalry officer appeared through the trees, picking his way quietly through the mess of bracken and dead leaves, the silver gorget on his chest glinting in the darkness. His face was open and unremarkable. He looked like the type of fellow one might drink with all night back in Petersburg, if not precisely the sort one might have been at Eton with. Except that he was clearly afraid, not knowing who or what he was going to face out here in the woods. Kitto’s head spun, and thick warm liquid seeped beneath his shirt and jacket.

  The cavalry officer sang out again. ‘Declare yourselves!’

  Beside him, pistol aimed, Crow touched the trigger. The soldier crashed to the ground on his back, stirring up a dance of dead leaves. Without a word, Crow got to his feet and walked over to look at him as though he had just shot a pheasant overhead, not a man on the ground. Breathing the tang of smoke, Kitto forced himself to his feet. Crow really had just killed an English soldier. Crow, who had once been a lieutenant colonel in Kitto’s own regiment, and aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington himself. Crow, whom everyone called King of Cornwall when there was still no King of England. Kitto tried to follow his brother to the dead man’s side, but after a few steps he dropped to his knees, unable to feel his feet. Why would his body not obey? What was the matter with him? Kitto had never seen anyone move so quickly or so quietly as Crow did then, picking his way back through the undergrowth to crouch at his side.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but with one brief gesture Crow signalled for silence. ‘Not now, my boy,’ he said, in Cornish, A-der lebmyn, boya, and then pain exploded through Kitto’s shoulder with catastrophic force. He’d taken a hit. The agony was now overwhelming; it was like being at the centre of a dark whirlwind, trees and the night spinning around him. Crow took his hand, and the one constant at the centre of it all was the hard grasp of Crow’s fingers gripping his own. Kitto knew the wooded valley might still be seeded with English soldiers running towards the sound of the gunshot, the smell of the smoke, and that for Crow to talk his way out of this as only he could do they must get to Nansmornow alive, and in silence, entirely unobserved, and so he held the pain inside himself and made no sound, as he had seen the village women do in childbed, and using all his strength he managed not to cry out.

  6

  At Nansmornow, Hester sat up in bed, alone once more. Her breasts were heavy with milk that had dampened the front of her fine lawn nightgown, but that wasn’t why she’d woken. Leaning back against the pillows, she glanced at the shaft of moonlight pouring in through the lead-latticed window, right on to the unoccupied acreage of linen beside her. Crow had come with her to bed after a sombre supper, but now he was out roaming at night again: restless, unable to sleep, haunted by the catastrophic loss of life in the bay. It was long past midnight. What had woken her with that peculiar muffled thud? Someone stumbling up the stairs, perhaps, or dropping a candle-dish? Old Lord Vansittart had been exchanging yet more incendiary glances with Dorothea Lieven over the veal with olives and nutmeg tarts. And yet Hester couldn’t shake off the certainty that she must get out of bed and investigate – that this was more than just her guests swapping bedchambers late at night. Crow always moved in silence: it could not be him, she knew.

  Hester gasped at the cold as she groped for the heavy brocaded dressing gown Lizzy had left folded across the end of her bed, praying that she wouldn’t come face to face with a pair of her guests in the middle of an indiscretion. She stepped out into the hallway, the old Turkey rug hard beneath her bare feet, her eyes growing used to the dark. The door to the master bedroom was open, and without even going in she could see that her husband had not uncharacteristically chosen to sleep without her – the bed-curtains were undrawn, the coverlet smooth and untouched. Surely he had not gone out? Surely it was quite clear to Crow that roaming the cliff-tops and moorlands in darkness was only going to make the English more suspicious of him?

  ‘Damn your eyes, Lord Lamorna.’ Trying to ignore rising unease, Hester trod silently towards the far end of the hallway. At the top of the stairs, she came face to face with her housekeeper and just managed not to scream. Catlin Rescorla wore a patchwork bedspread wrapped around her nightgown, hair hanging over her shoulder in a thick braid. Without discussion, they moved as one, and Hester followed Catlin downstairs, clutching the bannister. The great hall was silent and dark, lit only by odd, silvery shapes cast on to ancient flagstones by the light of a sickle moon trickling through mullioned windows. Together, they froze at the sound of footsteps.

  ‘Lady Lamorna? Up so late? I thought the entire household had retired.’

  Hester bristled at Lord Castlereagh’s prying inflection as he stepped into the hall from the drawing-room, holding a candle in a pewter dish. In his fifties now, the prime minister was tall, fair and well made, and it was true that his wife Emily still had many frustrated rivals, but Hester felt a chill of disgust as he looked her up and down, near enough to touch her. He smiled, as though he could see through both dressing gown and scant linen.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my lord,’ Hester said mildly. ‘Have you rung, only to find no servant? I’m afraid that my housekeeper and I were only just roused by hearing you move about. How may we help?’

  Catlin smoothed the dressing gown around Hester’s shoulders.

  Castlereagh inclined his head in imitation of a bow. ‘Allow me to escort you to the library, Lady Lamorna. After yesterday’s tragedy I can quite understand why your nerves are overset. A shipwreck is a dreadful thing – a reminder of the ocean’s wrath, and
God’s judgement.’ He nodded curtly in Catlin’s direction. ‘I’m sure your servant will accompany us if you feel it necessary to observe the niceties.’

  Hester had no choice in the matter, regardless of how deeply improper it was for Castlereagh even to have issued the invitation. Ignoring her panic, she followed him across the cavernous hall towards the library. Castlereagh was plainly waiting for Catlin to open the door, in the absence of a butler to do it for him.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Catlin said, ‘her ladyship would prefer to go back to bed?’

  Castlereagh stared at her with as much surprise as if the stair carpet had addressed him, and Hester felt a shiver of fear slide down her back. He knew they couldn’t afford to antagonise him: not with the delicate nature of negotiations between Crow and the Cabinet.

  ‘Mrs Rescorla,’ she said to Catlin, carefully not looking at her, ‘do bring tea and make up the fire. I’ll wait with Lord Castlereagh for my husband.’

  Catlin left, exuding silent disapproval, and Hester had no choice but to lead Castlereagh into the library. The candles in the chandelier had not yet been put out, and warm light glanced from the gilded spines of row after row of leather-bound volumes. He settled himself in Crow’s father’s old armchair by the still-glowing fire, light from the embers burnishing his fair hair, watching as Hester took her seat on the leather-upholstered fire surround. It was in truth one of her favourite places to perch, leafing through calf-bound Aeschylus or the works of Thomas Malory, but she knew Castlereagh should have offered her the chair. He didn’t.

  ‘Your housekeeper seems to enjoy a remarkable amount of authority in this house,’ he commented. ‘I wonder Lord Lamorna allows it.’

  With the ease born of life-long practice, Hester smiled, forcing herself to suppress her annoyance. ‘Mrs Rescorla’s mother was my wet-nurse, in fact. Lord Lamorna has servants here at Nansmornow who have known him equally as long – I’m sure you know how it is with such people. They obey, of course, but they never quite forget the sight of one as an undignified toddler. You live so far away from Ireland, Lord Castlereagh. Perhaps you have no servants at home who have been with your family so long a time.’ Mention of his birth country was as close as Hester dared get to the barbed rejoinder she longed to make. It was in Ireland that he’d earned the sobriquet Bloody Castlereagh for the insurrection he had so brutally suppressed; even a bishop had been hanged, still in his vestments.

  Castlereagh smiled. ‘Let’s not play foolish games. Securing the house is so inarguably the preserve of a master, not a mistress. Surely there is no possible reason to investigate footsteps in the darkness unless you believe Lord Lamorna is not here? Does your husband often wander abroad at night? How odd that he should retire to bed, and then go out.’ With one well-shaped finger, he outlined circular patterns on the brocade arm of his chair, never taking his eyes from Hester’s face. ‘Jack always did have an odd kick to his gallop. I was the last one up – even Lord Vansittart had gone to bed. How lowering to discover my conversation is really that unedifying.’

  What was it that Crow had taught Kitto, time and again, much to her disapproval? She’d been reared in conditions of far stricter propriety than her husband and his young brother. If you must lie, stay close to the truth.

  She chose her words with care. ‘I confess, I’m rather worried myself.’

  Castlereagh reached out as if to touch her hair, which was unbraided, a light cloud of spirals loose about her shoulders. ‘You confess? Surely you have nothing to confess. Such pretty tresses you have, my lady. So unusual.’

  Confess. Why had she said that? It sounded so guilty. She refrained from remarking that her hair was far from unusual, as he called it. How dared he touch her?

  ‘Indeed I’m a goose, and I’m ashamed of myself. Lord Lamorna is a fitful sleeper. He fairly regularly walks outside at night. It’s often so with men who’ve been at war: many of them do sleep very badly. And, as you say, the shipwreck has distressed him beyond measure. I believe that men who have been at sea themselves find such things particularly harrowing.’

  ‘How terrible, then, that both you and your housekeeper should be moved to get out of bed at the merest noise downstairs. Is it really so unusual that you should hear something with a house full of guests, and so many valets and ladies’ maids unfamiliar with their surroundings?’ Castlereagh smiled again. His eyes were extremely blue, stark against his weatherworn, hawkish face; not days before, he had ridden to hounds with Crow in the winter sun. ‘Really, Lady Lamorna, it’s almost as if you were expectant of some intrusion or other unlawful activity. Were you?’ He leaned so close that she felt the heat of his body.

  ‘Hardly, sir. We should grow used to shipwreck, living on such a coast as this,’ Hester said, ‘but I must admit that one never does. The loss of the Deliverance was a dreadful tragedy, was it not? When I think of those poor men lying dead in our chapel it’s impossible to be sanguine. All those children in St Erth who will never see their fathers alive again. I’m not surprised Lord Lamorna has found it hard to rest.’

  ‘Oh, naturally it’s all very unsettling.’ She caught the scent of clove pastilles in the warmth of his breath as he spoke. ‘Could it be, perhaps, that your husband has gone to the Methodist meeting? I believe there is a large one nearby, and that such affairs take all night to reach a conclusion. So devout. One wonders how adherents to the Methodist faith attend to their work the following day.’

  She knew quite well that he was toying with her, leading the conversation off at tangent after tangent. He was waiting for her to trip: to betray something she would rather have kept to herself.

  ‘My husband pays lip service only to religious proprieties, and of course when he worships, it’s in the Church of England,’ Hester said lightly.

  ‘Methodism does seem to attract such large crowds among the mining and fishing communities,’ Lord Castlereagh went on, crossing his legs. ‘I wonder that your husband allows these meetings on his land. Unless of course he actually sympathises with dissenters. I don’t know about you, Lady Lamorna, but I find large crowds so unnerving.’

  ‘I thought as much, my lord, considering that just two weeks ago a Methodist leader was hanged at your command in Exeter for sedition, and a crowd protesting the price of bread trampled by yeomanry. How unfortunate that so many children were also killed.’

  Hester knew she had made a terrible mistake in losing her temper. Lord Castlereagh simply sat and watched her, that slight smile lingering. ‘Ah, but you have so much spirit,’ he said. ‘Just like Lord Lamorna’s mother. You know, Claire de la Saint-Maure had a delicious frankness of manner, too. Alas, Lamorna only had to crook his finger and she came running. But I can see why their son desired you so much that he took the quite extraordinary step of making you his lawful wife – Hester.’

  In silent and furious dismay, she could hardly believe his sheer insolence, entirely trapped as she sat on that fireside surround. The silence between them stretched on again, and her eyes rested on a tall, highly polished grandfather clock recessed between two abutting bookshelves. It was half past two: they were well beyond social nicety. This was an interrogation, and Hester wished beyond anything that she had the means in her power to make this man pay for his brutality. Instead, he was prime minister.

  He smiled. ‘So, Lady Lamorna, since we’re in a position to exchange confidences, what do you make of all these rumours about your husband? So many that he invited us here to quell them – although one does find that an invitation from Jack so often carries the air of a summons. But all these remarkable tales of a king in Cornwall? I should wonder that you don’t laugh.’

  He had moved in for the kill. ‘My lord,’ she said, forcing her voice not to shake, ‘how could we do anything but laugh? Cornwall is not Scotland. We are a mere county in England, no more a nation in our own right than Hampshire.’

  ‘And yet,’ Lord Castlereagh went on, ‘I have sources who tell me that at those Methodist meetings which wear on through the nig
ht hours, a Cornish king is all they speak of. Lord Lamorna is the rightful King of Cornwall, they say. So I think it rather strange and unsettling that your husband has apparently left the house after claiming the need for a good night’s sleep, and on precisely the evening such a meeting takes place. What do you say, Lady Lamorna? Hester – if I may.’ He smiled. ‘Queen Hester. Now that would be a thing. An African queen, no less.’

  Hester returned the smile, even though she felt quite sick with fear. ‘I think it’s more than possible your sources don’t understand how much our country people here enjoy telling old stories and folk tales.’

  Castlereagh took his chance and stood, leaning over her, crooking his forefinger beneath her chin, tilting her face up towards his so that she could not look away. ‘Oh, don’t show me that false modesty, Lady Lamorna – you’re hot for it, with all that African blood.’ He stood back, turning her face from side to side even as she was too terrified to move, admiring the swell of her breasts. ‘I fancy I might admire you just as much I once did the previous Lady Lamorna. You know, my dear, it would be easy for you to make me forget all these difficulties about your husband’s questionable loyalty to England. It must be so very frightening, wondering every moment when and if your husband will be accused of high treason and sent to London to die on the scaffold, as we both know he deserves.’ With one swift, shocking movement he released her and as though unwrapping a parcel he flung aside the heavy silk folds of her wrap, and with a jerk of his finger tugged down the front of her nightgown so that the dark brown bud of her nipple was revealed. ‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘Let me possess you, Hester, and all this fear and suspicion might just go away.’

  Hester sat frozen with horror and waves of cold shame, unable to move, to speak. The door swung open, and Catlin came in again with a tea-tray: Hester could have wept with relief. Lord Castlereagh stepped away, quite unconcerned by her state of undress, as though he had just been interrupted by a concubine’s footman. Steam issued gently from the spout of the pot, and Hester tugged up her nightgown and stood to take the tray, suppressing another wild surge of terror. Catlin’s face was an impassive mask, but when Hester glanced down at the two porcelain teacups arrayed on the gilded tray, she saw a faint slick of shimmering, oily liquid in the bottom of one. She poured a golden stream of tea into it, and handed the cup to Castlereagh.