An Unsuitable Heir Read online

  “What do people do?” he asked Clem, cutting across some family anecdote of the Georgian era.

  “Which people?”

  “Aristocratic people who might, uh, go to the Jack and Knave. What do they do?”

  “Goodness, I’ve no idea,” Clem said. “I don’t know any. Probably they have clubs of their own. To be honest, I imagine they do what they want, because they can.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “No.” Clem’s amiable, slightly worried features hardened, bringing the beaked nose and strong jaw clearly out. He looked, for a second, like someone who stood on battlements and led armies. “It isn’t fair. It’s what my father did, and left a trail of blood and tears that’s still flowing. I hope you’ll do better.”

  Chapter 9

  A week after their arrival at Crowmarsh, Pen had no more than a fair idea of the layout, a sense of permanent dread, and a place to tumble.

  He’d insisted on the third of those. He and Greta were used to exercise, and exercise in the country meant riding, which neither of them knew how to do, or walking, which was uninviting given that it was a bleak, wet winter, and the paths were ankle deep in mud. Pen had therefore asked to use a long, high-ceilinged room as a makeshift gymnasium. The conversation that had provoked had been deeply unpleasant, but then, all the conversations here were.

  Tim had suggested the Long Gallery, which was the portrait-lined hall, and since Ponsonby hadn’t responded to the request to move the four great and valuable china vases that stood at intervals along the wall, he had done it himself. Clem offered moral support but refused point-blank to touch anything fragile. Desmond and Phineas raged; Pen made himself not listen. He needed to ground himself in his body before his nerves wrenched him out, and this was how.

  He and Greta had both brought practice clothing of a thin and close-fitting knit that accommodated movement. He couldn’t paint, and he didn’t dare wear his hair up in pinned loops as he’d have liked, but he could at least dress as a Flying Starling, and that made him feel a little more himself. Not that there was any way to fly—Pen had found himself thinking, When this house is mine, I’ll have trapezes strung—but they tumbled. Handsprings and somersaults, slow and fast, stretching muscles, using the thundering oversized shoulders and too-large hands of which he felt more and more conscious in the borrowed, formal, relentlessly male clothing thrust upon him at all other times.

  Yesterday had been one step too far. It had been New Year’s Day, and the villages around Crowmarsh observed what Pen was informed was the old tradition of visiting, in which hordes of male neighbours descended to pay compliments of the season, leave cards, and drink. The door had stood wide, letting cold air blast in as the house filled up with Berkshire accents, tramping feet, the reek of cigars and spirits. Farmers and gentry and professional men, young and old, in apparently endless numbers. Phineas, Tim, and Clem had set out to “visit” in turn; Pen had refused to come with them, lurking upstairs with Greta. He’d said it was to avoid introducing himself as Mr. Starling if he’d later be there as Lord Moreton, but in truth he simply hadn’t been able to bear the idea. Every interaction in male guise here felt like a nail in the coffin against whose lid his true self was desperately hammering. He was used to the constant background noise of the world telling him what he ought to be, but here, without any relief or respite from judgemental eyes, the muttering had grown to a roar. At least when they tumbled Pen could wear the clothes that said neither man nor woman but acrobat.

  Tim and Clem were watching. Clem had asked permission with eager eyes, to which both twins assented since they could hardly deny the admirer they’d both admired. Tim sat with him, gazing openmouthed.

  He was watching Greta, Pen couldn’t help but notice, and he rather thought Greta was making more of her strength exercises than usual. She was a large-framed woman, not slender or ethereal, with the fluent grace that came from controlled muscle and long practice. She could, if she chose, be as light on her feet as any twinkling ballet dancer of the chorus, and utterly feminine in her way; instead she was now displaying speed, power, brute strength, all the things that a gentleman would be unlikely to look for in a decorative spouse. Pen, who knew his sister as he knew himself, drew his own conclusions.

  She currently had her feet on his shoulders as she moved slowly and carefully to invert herself, her hands on his own, all her weight on his arms. Pen could feel his muscles bulging under her weight, and relished the rightness of it. He wished they had a mirror in here. He tipped his head up, caught her eyes and smiled, and she smiled back, his twin, his living mirror, his partner.

  That afternoon, Clem and Pen had tea in the Small Drawing Room while Tim and Greta went for some fresh air, despite the mud. Pen would have liked some of that himself, but he’d decided to be tactful. It was evident that Tim admired Greta, and she seemed to be enjoying his company and his introduction to Crowmarsh. Tim had a deep love for the ancient house which Pen couldn’t share—to his mind it was old, cold, and lifeless—but which it seemed Greta understood, and even found contagious. Certainly they were spending enough time together to make Pen feel there must be more to the quiet clerk than met his eye. Well, there’d have to be.

  “So how are you getting on?” Clem asked. “Are you feeling any more at home?”

  Pen shrugged. He’d settled into a state of permanent sullen hostility with Phineas and Desmond. The old man had given him a number of excruciatingly dull lectures on the history of the Taillefer family, but since he’d done it with his eyes averted from Pen’s offensive appearance, and Pen had struggled not to yawn his way through, it hadn’t led to any thawing in their relations. Phineas had made it clear that he didn’t want Pen initiated into the running of the house or estates until the matter of parentage was settled for good. The whole thing had been a week of limbo, which nobody had enjoyed.

  Least of all Pen. He’d let himself be put in his father’s old clothes, and resented that they fit him; he resented more the clutch of the collar around his neck, the way the clothes defined him. He’d dreamed that he’d cut his hair without knowing, that he’d looked in the mirror and seen a middle-aged Taillefer, moustached and shorn and ready to take his place in the House of Lords, and had woken in a panicky tangle of sheets.

  When he was earl they’d move him to the master bedroom, and a four-poster bed, the one his father had slept in and his grandfather before him. His father, who’d betrayed both of his wives and condemned Pen’s mother to a life in misery and a death in poverty; his grandfather who’d started all this when he’d ignored his dying wife to father a bastard. If Pen had to be earl, his first act would be to have that bed cut up for firewood.

  “Ugh,” he said. “Not really. This isn’t my home.”

  “It’s better in summer,” Clem said. “Or when you have people you like here. You can make changes when you’re earl.”

  “You don’t have any doubt about that,” Pen said.

  Clem sipped his tea. “No, I don’t, and I don’t think anyone else does really. Not even Phineas and Desmond. They don’t want it to be true, of course; I dare say they’re hoping Mr. Hapgood will come back from Norfolk saying there’s no conclusive proof, or Mr. Conyers will discover evidence that you aren’t Emmeline’s son at all. But they won’t. Mark wrote to me about it.”

  “Did he?”

  “He says it looks like a dead cert, and that Mr. Conyers is asking hard questions, but Justin’s got an eye for dodgy practice, as you might expect, so not to worry.”

  That was so obviously a quotation from Mark that Pen could almost hear his voice, plain and practical and reassuring. Longing stabbed through him like a blade, straight to the heart.

  “Why has…Justin…got an eye for dodgy practice?” he asked, mostly to distract himself, and with just a touch of resentful curiosity about the partner whose safety Mark had placed over his.

  “Well he’s—um—he’s very…” Clem paused to search for a word. “Sharp. A bit, uh…But he’s de
termined to make a go of the work with Mark, Nathaniel says, and he’s awfully clever too, and he won’t let anyone cheat you. And Mr. Hapgood is honest,” he went on, apparently not noticing his own implication. “He’s been the family lawyer all his life, and he works in the family interest even if he finds the people disappointing.” That startled a laugh out of Pen. Clem lifted his hands. “It’s true, though. Mr. Hapgood will work for the legitimate heir, even if it’s you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean.” Clem put down his cup with a grimace. “They always make it so weak here. I want to go home and make my own tea.”

  “Are you going back soon?” Pen asked with a sinking feeling. He’d come to regard Clem as a vital part of the household; he didn’t want to lose him. Come to that, Tim must surely need to return to his job at Somerset House soon, leaving them alone here. The looming isolation felt like pressure in the air.

  “Well, I need to. I’ve left Polly, my housekeeper, in charge, but it’s my house to run. And I miss Rowley, and…to be honest, Pen, I hate it here. Tim and I agreed we’d both stay until Mr. Hapgood comes back, to help, but after that, if you’re the earl, you’ll have to start being the earl.” Clem gave a rueful grin. “And if you’re not we can all go back to London together and I’ll come and watch you perform. I don’t like to think I won’t see the Flying Starlings again.”

  “No, I don’t like that either. Uh, Clem? Did Mark say anything else?” Pen’s effort to be casual didn’t sound convincing even to himself.

  “Only that he hopes you’re managing,” Clem said. “Can I say something that’s none of my business?” He waited for Pen’s nod. “The fact is, if you told Mark you never wanted to hear from him again, you won’t. Not unless you tell him you’ve changed your mind.”

  “You mean, he deliberately went against my wishes, but I have to apologise?”

  “No, not that. I mean, if you want to hear from him again, you’ll need to say so because otherwise you won’t.”

  Pen discovered his shoulders were hunched. “Yes. That sounds like he isn’t going to make any effort unless I do.”

  Clem looked slightly harried. “What I’m trying to say is that he isn’t going to bother someone who said he didn’t want to be bothered. I used to have a bit of trouble with that sort of thing. I’m not always good at telling what people mean, and I wanted to make friends when I came to London and sometimes people would buy me a drink and it would turn out they’d actually been offering something else, and…” He gave a helpless shrug. Pen could well imagine Clem, all youthful uncertainty and startling good looks, finding himself in awkward situations. “And Mark turned out to have strong views on that. ‘Take—no—for an—answer!’ ” He mimed what looked like the action of banging someone’s head off the tea table, four sharp blows, and almost knocked over the teapot. Pen rescued it as it teetered. “I didn’t have much trouble after that. So I don’t mean he’s expecting you to say anything. I mean, you said what you wanted, and he’s taken your word for it. So if you change your mind you’ll need to tell him. Do you see?”

  “Uh. Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

  “I could pass on a message when I go back,” Clem added. “If you like.”

  Pen made a face. “I don’t know. If I’m going to be an earl—”

  “You’re going to be very rich, and the head of the family, and you can spend as much time as you like in London. I honestly don’t think it’ll be that bad.”

  This wasn’t a conversation Pen felt able to have. “Shall we get some fresh air?”

  They headed to the hall in silence, Pen chewing over thoughts. He recalled Mark saying, If you tell me to piss off, off I piss, the promises he’d given.

  He’d thrown Pen to the wolves. Surely Pen was owed an apology? Surely if Mark regretted his betrayal, he might offer a bit of persistence, put some more effort into making amends? A man wooing a woman wouldn’t take no for an answer, Pen thought. Greta’s rejected suitors often came back….

  Came back and were rejected again, brusquely, and Pen had marched a couple of them out under his sister’s raging eye, because there was nothing attractive in persistence unless you actually wanted the man in the first place. If Pen wanted Mark to be persistent, perhaps he should send some sort of message.

  Such as what? I haven’t forgiven you but you may speak to me simply meant I’ve forgiven you, and Pen hadn’t.

  They went into the main hall, where Phineas and his father were removing their coats. The old man insisted on a daily constitutional, covering perhaps a quarter of a mile in a quarter of an hour. It was the first time Pen had seen them all day. He and Greta and the others breakfasted a half hour later as a matter of course, and avoided the Large Drawing Room, where Desmond preferred to sit. He didn’t mind that exclusion. It was the best room in the house, he was informed, and the appropriate room for the earl, but it struck him as unwelcoming, and it reeked of Phineas’s cigars.

  Desmond gave his usual greeting of an irritable noise in the throat; Phineas and Pen exchanged stiff nods as the first footman carried coats back and forth. After a week, Pen was getting used to waiting for someone to fetch his things, and the footman, who everyone called James although his name was Henry, had accustomed himself to Pen’s hair in his turn. He now waited for Pen to arrange it without a blink.

  Pen let James, or Henry, put his coat over his arms, took his hat with a word of thanks, and waited another moment for Clem, who was taking ages with his buttons as usual. As the great door was swung open for them, he strolled out onto the bridge—

  He wasn’t sure what alerted him. Maybe a shadow, though the sky was grey; maybe a sound; maybe a life spent in circus tents and music halls where he was always aware of heavy things overhead. All he knew was that he walked out to take a breath of the fresh country air, and found himself leaping sideways like a startled cat a fraction of a second before the stone smashed onto the bridge and exploded in a shower of dust and fragments.

  Pen stood blinking as the dust billowed around his lower legs. Henry, Desmond, and Clem stood and stared through the doorway, frozen in shocked silence before Pen said, explosively, “What the hell?”

  “Sir, Mr. Starling. Are you all right?”

  “What the bloody hell was that?” Pen shouted, stepping back to look up. “What the—”

  “A coping stone?” Phineas had hurried out and was examining the bridge. “Good God, look at the damage to the stonework.” There was, indeed, a visible dent.

  “There was two fell in autumn, Mr. Phineas, after the storm. Mr. Ponsonby advised Mr. Hapgood to advise Lord Moreton,” Henry offered.

  “It must be dealt with,” Phineas said. “That could have caused a bad accident. I shall speak to Ponsonby. I suppose you’re not hurt,” he added to Pen, and returned to the house without waiting for a reply.

  —

  They discussed it that evening, in the Little Drawing Room upstairs.

  “The roof does need repairs,” Tim said. “Edmund was preoccupied this summer and autumn—for obvious reasons, I suppose—and failed to put the necessary works under way, or to authorise his steward to act.”

  Clem nodded. “It’s an old house. And in any case, Phineas and Desmond were there in the hall with us.”

  “That’s verging on what one might call a slanderous implication,” Tim remarked. “Even if they hadn’t been, I don’t see either of them nipping up the gatekeep stairs in time to drop a stone on Pen.”

  Someone would have had to run up from the ground floor to the roof between Pen’s arrival in the hall and his exit through the main door; that or to sit outside in the cold drizzle for goodness knew how long, waiting for him to emerge. It did seem unlikely.

  “It wouldn’t have to be Desmond or Phineas,” Greta said, not caring about scandalous implications. “There’s a hired killer out there!”

  “Yes, but not in here,” Tim said. “There are no new staff; everyone’s been here for years. There are no guests. We h
ave a moat.”

  “Is there another way in?”

  “No. That’s rather the point of the moat. I’m not denying it was a peculiar incident—”

  “It was damned close.” Pen hunched into his chair. His shoulder hadn’t been touched by more than a spray of chips from the fallen stone; it still felt oddly vulnerable, as though he were nursing an injury that hadn’t happened. The crash of stone on stone was still ringing in his ears; he could feel the dust from the impact dry on his skin, even though he’d washed and changed.

  If he’d waited for Clem just one second longer, he wouldn’t have had a chance. The blow from above hadn’t even happened, but it filled his mind as vividly as any memory.

  “It was a very close thing, and a very unlikely one.” Tim scrubbed at his hair. “But what’s the alternative to an accident? There’s nobody in the house except for ourselves, Desmond and Phineas, and the usual staff.”

  “Could Edmund have hired one of them to do his dirty work?” Greta asked. “A loyal retainer, like in the melodramas?”

  Clem and Tim exchanged looks. “Asked the footman to do a bit of murder and torture in between taking coats? I suppose it’s possible,” Clem said doubtfully. “But I can’t imagine it. They’re all just local people who work here, not murderers. The killer tricked Rowley and held him at knifepoint and threatened his life. That’s not how any of the staff are.”

  “No,” Tim said. “But it would be easy enough to discover if anyone has been absent recently. I could do that if it would reassure you, Pen.”

  “I’ll try to remember the dates when we know the killer was in London,” Clem said. “And the rest of us are all accounted for. So if none of the staff have been absent and we were all in sight of one another, then surely—”

  “Tim and I weren’t,” Greta said. “We were both changing after a muddy walk when all the noise started.”