Margarita and the Earl Page 5

  “Yes. And lost it, along with his life.” She nudged the gelding with her heel, and obediently he started forward again. After a moment Nicholas followed.

  They did not speak again until they were almost at Whitethorn. “Is he married, this Mr. Frost?” she asked then.

  “Yes.” There was a pause and then he said, an odd note in his voice, “His wife is a superior woman, I believe. I think you’ll like her.”

  *

  He was right about Margarita’s liking Emma Frost. The two men soon disappeared to look at a drainage ditch, and Margarita was left alone in the cozy farm kitchen with the friendly, surprisingly well-spoken farmer’s wife. Mrs. Frost was a lawyer’s daughter who had married beneath herself, according to her family. In fact she had been perfectly happy for thirty years married to her soft-spoken, slow-moving George, to whom she had born six children. The youngest child, a girl of eleven, was in the kitchen with her on this particular afternoon.

  By the time Nicholas came back to collect Margarita, the two women were chatting away comfortably, with young Susan looking on in solemn interest. As Nicholas walked in through the door, the sound of a baby crying came from upstairs. Margarita came instantly alert. “Do you have a baby in the house, Mrs. Frost?”

  “My son Ross’s baby,” the farmer’s wife responded comfortably. “She’s been sleeping this past hour and more.”

  Margarita was on her feet. “May I see her?” she asked with unaccustomed eagerness.

  “Take her ladyship upstairs, Susan, and see what the baby wants,” Mrs. Frost said deliberately after a moment, and Susan obediently led the way out of the room, with Margarita close behind her.

  This left Nicholas alone in the kitchen with Emma Frost, a position he had taken care not to be in for many years. “Do you ever hear from your mother, my lord?” she asked, immediately taking advantage of this rare opportunity.

  His eyes looked as bleak as the sea on a dark, winter day. “No,” he said tightly.

  She ignored the warning implicit in his eyes and voice. “I have been worried about her for a long time. I saw in the paper a few years ago that her husband had died. I’ve wondered if she had enough money.”

  He looked at her through a long hard moment’s silence, then said, with obvious reluctance, “I saw the notice as well. She is all right. I have been sending her money.”

  “But you won’t see her?” She spoke softly, persuasively. “You don’t know what her life was like in that castle, my lord. She only stayed as long as she did because of you.”

  He felt as if the air in the room had become thick and hard to breathe. His nostrils dilated and when he spoke, his voice had a note of such savage bitterness that it startled her. “This is not a subject I am prepared to discuss, Mrs. Frost.”

  As she hesitated, looking worriedly at his white, set face, there was the sound of feet on the stairs. The door opened and Margarita came in, holding a baby in her arms. “She’s hungry, I think,” she said to Mrs. Frost.

  “My daughter-in-law should be here soon,” the woman returned. “She’ll have to wait until then.”

  Margarita bent her head and crooned something to the baby, who responded with a long cooing sound. Margarita looked perfectly delighted and Nicholas said abruptly, “We have to be leaving, Margarita.”

  “All right.” She carried the baby over to Mrs. Frost, talking to it softly all the time. As she handed it to the standing woman, it reached out its arms toward Margarita. She laughed, a clear, joyous sound, and raised a glowing face to Mrs. Frost. “I love babies,” she said with the simplicity of absolute truth.

  “Well, your ladyship, I hope you soon will have one of your own,” replied the other woman placidly.

  Margarita’s large eyes became even larger and turned, involuntarily, to where Nicholas was standing. He could almost see the shock of a new idea registering in her mind. “Come along,” he said, but not impatiently, and she nodded and walked to the door. Susan gave her her hat, which she fitted on over her smoothly-drawn-back hair.

  “Goodbye Mrs. Frost,” she said from the doorway. “Thank you for the tea.”

  “It was my pleasure, Lady Winslow,” the older woman replied formally. “Please feel free to stop by for a cup any time you are near Whitethorn.”

  Margarita nodded gravely. “I will. Goodbye Susan.” She went out the door with Nicholas close behind her. Mrs. Frost watched them exit, a small frown between her brows. Whatever their physical proximity, it was clear they were not together. She wondered if history was going to repeat itself in this new young bride at Winslow.

  Mrs. Frost had been a bride herself when Charlotte Beauchamp had come to Winslow. Over the years the two women had gotten to know each other well, Charlotte finding in Emma a refuge from the icy disapproval of the castle. Christopher, even when he was home, had not been a good husband, and the earl and countess resented Charlotte’s very existence, resented her presence when their own daughter had chosen to flee, resented her for bearing a son when they had been unable to produce an heir. When Charlotte eloped with John Hamilton, Emma Frost had been glad.

  She sat now at her kitchen table, absently rocking the baby and thinking back. It had been five years since she saw John Hamilton’s death announced. She felt deep surprise that it had been so long. Five years. She frowned. It was five years ago that Nicholas had gotten expelled from Oxford and come home to run Winslow. Mrs. Frost rocked slowly, wondering if there could be any connection between the two events.

  *

  Margarita was silent on the ride home. Nicholas was right when he thought that a new idea had taken seed in her mind. She had not thought about having a baby.

  She knew, of course, that one did have babies when one was married, but she had not yet applied that knowledge to herself. Nicholas’s possession of her had seemed only that, an act of possession which she must allow because she was his wife. She had not thought of it as having consequences beyond herself.

  A baby. She sat before the fire in her sitting room and thought. Once she would have thought it nothing but bliss—to have a baby of her own. But now she was afraid. A baby would draw her back to life and she did not want to come. It was this she feared most in Nicholas, the force of life within him. Life was too painful, too full of anguish and fear. She wanted to stay in this winter world of blessed numbness, where she was free to bend her mind to abstract things, like philosophy and political theory. A baby was not abstract at all. A baby was real. She both dreaded and longed to have one.

  *

  That night she had a nightmare. It was the first time since she left South America that she remembered having one. All the pain and terror and loss that she had been so successfully repressing broke through into her sleep, and she was once again searching for Fernando among the dead at Aragua de Barcelona. The llaneros were coming closer, and she could hear the hoofbeats of their horses, but she had to find Fernando. At last she did, and looking up from his blood-streaked dead face, she saw a half-naked man grinning down at her. He reached for her and she screamed. And screamed, again and again.

  Nicholas was standing in front of the fire in his bedroom taking off his shirt when he heard Margarita’s scream. The sound was high and sharp with pure terror, and he flung his neckcloth aside and leaped for the door that led directly from his bedroom into hers.

  She was sitting up in bed when he crashed into the room. She had stopped screaming, but he could hear the harshness of her breathing. Her hands were pressed to her mouth as if she were trying to stop the sounds by force. There was no one else in the room. He crossed the floor more quietly until he stood next to the bed. “Margarita! What happened? Are you all right?”

  She stared at him for a moment with enormous fear-dilated eyes in which there was no recognition. What happened next was pure instinct on Margarita’s part. She heard the deep, male voice, heard the concern in it, and threw herself into his arms, clutching him hysterically as she was swept by convulsive shuddering.

  He sa
t down on the bed, holding her close. “Sh, now. It’s all over. Everything is all right. You had a nightmare.” His lips were against her hair.

  After a long moment, she raised her head and her eyes flickered with recognition as she saw who it was who held her. “My lord,” she whispered.

  “Yes. It’s me. What happened, Margarita? You frightened the life out of me, screaming like that.”

  “A dream. A terrible dream. The llaneros…” She broke off. “I cannot find the English.”

  “Never mind.” He raised a gentle hand to smooth back her hair from her brow. “It is all right now.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her eyes clinging to his face. She was still shivering violently.

  He kicked his shoes off and swung himself into bed next to her. “Lie down here next to me,” he ordered. “You’re freezing.”

  Obediently she lay back down and very tentatively rested her head against his shoulder. Under her cheek his heartbeat was calm and unhurried and steady. He held her close. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart,” he said softly. “It’s all over with. You are perfectly safe now.”

  Slowly, very slowly, the convulsive shuddering stopped, and her eyes begin to close. Nicholas was so warm. At last she relaxed into the reassuring calm and strength of his body and slept.

  Chapter Eight

  But a sea rolls between us—

  Our different past!

  —Matthew Arnold

  Nicholas heard four days later from Mr. Sheridan that everything was set for the sale of the paintings. “I’ll be leaving for London in the morning,” he told Margarita after dinner that evening. “Is there any errand I can do for you while I’m there?”

  They were in the drawing room, both standing before the fire. She raised her face to him. “Yes,” she said hesitantly. “If it would not be too much trouble, would you go to see Andrés Bello for me?”

  He gestured her to a sofa and sat beside her. “Who is Andrés Bello?”

  “He is the Venezuelan representative in London.” She gave him the address. “If there is any news from home, he will have it.”

  He repeated the address. “I will call on him,” he said decisively. “Is that all? Is there nothing else you need?”

  “No, that is all.”

  “Are you quite certain? You don’t want some books? Some music?” Nicholas was beginning to be concerned about the amount of time she spent alone in her room.

  A light gleamed in the darkness of her eyes. “Music.”

  “Yes. May I get you some sheet music? Do you play the piano? I have never heard you.”

  “No. I play the guitar.”

  “Splendid. I’ll get you a guitar.”

  She looked mischievous. “You don’t know anything about guitars, my lord. Ask Andrés. He will get one for you.”

  Nicholas was conscious of a flash of annoyance. She called this South American fellow Andrés, yet she had never addressed him as anything but “my lord.”

  “I have a name, Margarita,” he said, and she looked at him, soberly attentive, trying to read his mood. For once his nearness did not intimidate her.

  “Nicholas,” she said at last, experimentally. She spoke the word as she did all her English, pronouncing each syllable distinctly and slightly emphasizing the last.

  His face flashed open into a genuine smile, one of the first she had ever had from him. He looked suddenly much younger. “Nick-o-las,” he repeated, teasingly.

  A dimple flickered in her grave young cheek. “You make fun of my accent,” she said reproachfully.

  “I find your accent entirely admirable,” he said solemnly, again mimicking her intonation, and after a moment she laughed.

  *

  He stayed in London for three weeks. Mr. Sheridan had good news for him. “I have received a very generous offer from Lord Audley for the Dutch landscapes, my lord. I strongly suggest that you take it. I doubt if you would get as much at an auction or a public sale.”

  Nicholas’s eyes glinted at the sum. “Audley?” he said.

  “The Earl of Wymondham’s son.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember now.” Nicholas grinned. “Well, he can have the Dutch with my good will. That sum will buy all new farm equipment for Winslow as well as a great deal of much-needed livestock.”

  “May I suggest, my lord, that you single out the pictures you don’t wish to let go? I doubt it will be necessary to sell them all.”

  “It seems not.” Nicholas rose and held out his hand. “My thanks, Mr. Sheridan. I will be in touch with you in a few days.”

  *

  As he was technically mourning for his uncle, Nicholas did not grace any social events during this particular London visit. He did, however, spend a fair amount of time with Lady Eleanor Rushton.

  Lady Eleanor, tall, fair, and statuesque, had had time to recover from the shock of Nicholas’s marriage. She had never intended to marry him herself, being already equipped with a satisfactorily complaisant husband of her own, but she had been afraid she was going to lose him. His three-week stay in London put to flight that particular worry. They spent a very considerable amount of time in bed together.

  As Nicholas and Lady Eleanor’s liaison had always been unabashedly sexual, Nicholas was genuinely delighted to see her again. He had scrupulously refrained from touching Margarita since his discovery in the library at Winslow, and Catherine Alnwick of Sothington, his mistress for five years, had not been in Worcestershire for weeks as she was visiting relatives in Kent. His consequent reaction to Lady Eleanor’s charms pleased that lady mightily.

  Nicholas also spent some satisfactory evenings touring London’s various gambling and drinking clubs with Lord James Tyrrell. The new Lord Winslow got quite smashingly drunk one night and walked off with a beautiful actress who happened to be under the protection of Lord Avesbury. It took all the exertions of Lord James, who mercifully happened to be relatively sober, to avoid a duel.

  Nicholas’s occasional descents upon the capital tended to follow this particular pattern. It was not a pattern unfamiliar to London eyes, which were accustomed to scenes of flamboyant gambling, heavy drinking, and undisguised promiscuity. But there was a difference in the way Nicholas did things. Unlike so many of his peers, there was no aura of decadence about Nicholas, no sense that he was trying desperately to keep boredom at bay. He was, quite simply, enjoying himself. He needed to raise a little hell now and then. He was, after all, only twenty-five years old.

  The big difference was that Nicholas’s sojourns in London were just that, temporary vacations from his real life, which was back at Winslow. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Nicholas was not cut off from the mainstream of life. His wildness, his drinking, his occasionally reckless exploits with horses, were mere diversions which did not disguise the fact that he was a man with a purpose in life. It was that purpose that gave him an authority far beyond his years and singled him out in the company of his peers. He was also a man who, ultimately, was most comfortable alone. In a society of people who desperately needed others to mirror back their own esteem and superiority, Nicholas needed nobody. It made him most damnably attractive.

  *

  Two days before he left London to return to Winslow, Nicholas called on his wife’s countryman. Andrés Bello, scholar, poet, author, political leader, was at this time thirty-six years of age. He had been in London since 1810, when he had come with Simón Bolivar to try to raise English support for Venezuelan independence. After a few months, Bolivar had returned to South America, bringing with him Francisco Miranda to head up the disastrous First Republic, and Andrés Bello had remained in London to continue to represent Venezuelan interests.

  He greeted Nicholas with gentle courtesy. When they were seated in the shabby but comfortable study, the South American looked at Nicholas closely, his brown eyes searching. “So you are the husband of our little Margarita,” he said softly. His English was perfectly fluent, lightly accented. “I hope she is well?”

  “She is well,”
Nicholas answered. He stared back, unsmiling, at the Spanish American. “She asked me to call on you for the latest news from Venezuela.”

  “Ah.” Andrés Bello shifted a little in his chair. “It is not good, Lord Winslow. The only positive thing you can tell Margarita is that Boves is dead. But so, alas, is Ribas. The only remaining Republican stronghold is Margarita Island. The Royalists hold the entire mainland.”

  Nicholas frowned. “I know very little about the Venezuelan war, Senor Bello, and I don’t like to upset my wife by asking her. Who, for instance, is Boves?”

  “Who is Tomás Boves?” Andrés Bello repeated, impassive. His voice had lost its gentle note. “You are right not to ask Margarita about Tomás Boves, my lord. Among other things, he killed her father.”

  Nicholas made no answer, sitting quietly, waiting for the American to continue. After a moment he did, looking tired and tense, and speaking with obvious restraint. “Tomás Boves was a smuggler who led the Royalist forces against the Republic. He was a man of unparalleled brutality. He loved cruelty. One of his favorite pastimes was to skin the feet of his captives and force them to walk on broken glass.”

  “He was a smuggler?” Nicholas asked in a hard voice, after the other man had paused for a moment.

  “Yes. He was jailed by the Republic for smuggling, and when he was released, he turned into its greatest enemy. It was he who raised the llaneros.”

  Nicholas’s brows snapped together. He recognized the word. “What are the llaneros?” he asked.

  “Men who live on the llanos.” At Nicholas’s puzzled look he went on to explain further. “The llanos are the plains of the Orinoco valley. They are like the pampa of the La Plata: limitless grass steppes unbroken by trees. For thousands of square miles nothing grows except tough grass, as high as a man. It is one of the greatest pastures of the world and home of Venezuela’s great cattle ranches.

  “The men who live in the llanos are tough, savage, warlike, barely human. It is a hard land to live by, baked by the sun for six months and flooded by hundreds of rain-gorged streams for the other six. Its inhabitants are jaguars, crocodiles, snakes, pumas, lethal insects, and the llaneros.