“They’m comin’ now, Mister Ferguson!”
Ferguson stood up and took a deep breath.
“I won’t be long.”
Allday said, “We done a lot worse together, Bryan, remember?”
Ferguson opened the door, and smiled for the first time.
“That was then, old friend.”
He walked across the yard, so familiar underfoot that he would have known every cobble in the dark.
He considered Allday’s question. Has she changed much? He saw her now, on the broad steps leading up to the entrance, elegant in a dark red gown, a hat which he guessed was fashionable in London shading her face. In her late forties, with the same autumn-coloured hair, like the young wife she had replaced when Cheney Bolitho had been killed in a carriage accident. It was hard to believe that he himself, with only one arm, had carried her, seeking help, when she and her unborn child were already dead.
It was one of fate’s cruellest ironies that Richard Bolitho and his “oak” had found Belinda in almost exactly the same circumstances after an accident on the road.
Her face was unsmiling, the mouth tighter than he remembered it. He tried not to think of Allday’s pungent summing-up. High and mighty.
She was speaking to the lawyer, a watchful, bird-like man, while Grace waited to one side, her bunch of keys in her hand.
Ferguson saw her expression, and felt his own anger rising again. Grace, the finest housekeeper anyone could wish for, and a wife who had nursed him through pain and depression after losing his arm at the Saintes, hovering like a nobody.
“There you are, Ferguson. I shall be leaving now. But I expect to return on Monday, weather permitting.” She walked across the yard, and paused. “And I should like to see a little more discipline among the servants.”
Her eyes were amused, contemptuous. Ferguson said, “They are all trained and trustworthy, m’ lady. Local people.”
She laughed softly. “Not foreigners like me, you mean? I think that quaint.”
He could smell her, too. Heady, not what he might have expected. He thought of the delicate scent of jasmine in his estate office.
She said, “Are all the horses accounted for among the other livestock?”
Ferguson saw her eyes move to the nearest stall, where the big mare Tamara was tossing her head in the warm sunlight.
He said, “That one was a gift from Sir Richard.”
She tapped his arm very gently. “I am aware of it. She will need exercise, then.”
Ferguson was suddenly aware of the hurt, like that which he had seen in Grace’s eyes.
“No, m’ lady, she was ridden regularly, until…”
She smiled again; she had perfect teeth. “That has an amusing ring, don’t you think?” She glanced towards the carriage, as though impatient. “I might take her for a ride myself on Monday.” She was looking at the house again, the windows where the room faced the sea. “You have a suitable saddle, I trust?”
Ferguson felt that she knew, that she was enjoying it, mocking him.
“I can get one if you intend…”
She nodded slowly. “She used a saddle like a man, I believe? How apt!”
She turned away abruptly and was assisted into the carriage. They watched it until it was out on the narrow road, and then walked together to their cottage.
Ferguson said, “I’ll take John back to Fallowfield presently.”
Grace took his arm and turned him towards her. She had seen his face when they had been in the room with the three portraits, and the admiral’s bed. Lady Bolitho had got rid of Cheney’s portrait before; it had been Catherine who had found and restored it. Bryan was a good man in every way, but he would never understand women, especially the Belindas of this world. Catherine would always be an enemy to Belinda, but Cheney’s love she could never usurp.
Allday made to rise from his chair as they entered, but Grace waved him down.
“Bad?” was all he said.
Ferguson answered sharply, “We shall have no say in things, that’s certain.”
Grace put down another glass. “Here, my love. You deserve it.” She looked from them to the empty hearth, the old cat curled up in one corner. Home. It was everything; it was all they had.
She remembered how Bryan had described those moments of Adam’s first visit here after his uncle’s death, when he had picked up the old sword and read the letter Catherine had left for him.
Like rolling back the years, he had said, like seeing the young Captain Bolitho again. Surely nothing could destroy all that.
She said with soft determination, “I must lock up,” and looked at them both, saddened rather than angered by one woman’s petty spite. “God will have His say. I shall have a word with Him.”
It was Tom, the coastguard, who found her body. A year or so ago, he would have done so earlier. He had been riding loosely in the saddle, his chin tucked into his neckcloth, his mind only half aware. Like his horse, he was so familiar with every track and footpath along this wild coastline that he had always taken it for granted. Behind him, his young companion was careful not to disturb him or annoy him with unnecessary questions and observations; he was a good fellow, inexperienced though he was, and should make a competent coastguard. He had been thinking, and he is replacing me next week. It had been hard to accept, even though he had known to the day when his service was to be ended, and he had already been offered employment with the mail at Truro. But after all he had seen and done on these lonely and often dangerous patrols, it would be something unknown, and perhaps lacking in a certain savour.
He had heard all about the comings and goings at the old grey house, the Bolitho home for generations. Lawyers and clerks, officials, all Londoners and strangers to him. What did they know of the man and the memory? Tom had been there at the harbour when news of the admiral’s death had arrived. He had been at the old church for the memorial service, when the flags had been dipped to half-mast, and young Captain Adam Bolitho had taken his place with Lady Somervell. He had thought of the times he had met her along this same coast, walking or riding, or just watching for a ship. His ship, which would never come any more.
And at first he had thought that it was her, that patch of colour, a piece of clothing moving occasionally in the breeze off Falmouth Bay. It was one of her favourite places.
Like that other time when she had joined him in the cove below Trystan’s Leap and had cradled the small, broken body of the girl named Zenoria. All those times.
He had found himself dropping from the saddle, running the last few yards down the slope where the old broken wall stood half-buried in gorse and wild roses.
And then he had seen her horse, Tamara, another familiar sight on his lonely patrols above the sea.
But it had not been Catherine Somervell. He had thrust his hand into her clothing, cupping her breast, aware of her eyes watching him through the veil over her hat. But the heart, like the eyes, had been still.
He should have known; the angle of the head told him some of it, the riding crop on its lanyard around the gloved, clenched hand and the bloody weals on the mare’s flank told the rest.
Tamara would have known. Would have pulled back, even if beaten, from jumping the old wall. She would have known…
“What is it, Tom?”
He had forgotten his companion. He stared up at the dark outline of the old house, just visible above the hillside.
“Fetch help. I’ll stay here.” He glanced at the side-saddle, which had slipped when the woman had been thrown.
“It’s got a lot to answer for.” He had been describing the house. But his companion was already riding hard down the slope, and there was no sound but the wind off the bay.
13. Envy
