The Scandals Of An Innocent

she said briskly. “And you need not fear that we will have to stay in this ghastly ruin-” she cast the baronial room a look of profound dislike “-for we have arranged to visit your cousin Laura Anstruther at the Old Palace in Fortune’s Folly. I only had the luggage brought in because the carriage is so ancient that it leaks and the weather in the North is so appalling.”

“You are staying with Laura?” Miles asked. That was bad news, he thought, for it meant that Lady Vickery would be established in Fortune’s Folly for at least a month, possibly longer. He groaned inwardly. That would give her ample time to interfere in his courtship of Alice and cause all sorts of problems.

“I am so looking forward to getting to know Laura’s new husband better,” his mother was saying. “The Home Secretary speaks most highly of him. I hear he is one of the Hertfordshire Anstruthers. He is vastly handsome, is he not?”

“Dexter isn’t my type,” Miles said grimly, making a mental note to ask his friend what the hell he was playing at to allow Laura to invite his entire family to stay.

Celia Vickery came up to him and offered a cool cheek for him to kiss. “How are you, Miles?” she said, appraising him with her sharp hazel gaze. “Still alive, I see. The Curse of Drum has not yet carried you off.”

“Give it time,” Miles said. “Could you not have dissuaded Mama from coming, Celia?” he added, scarcely bothering to lower his voice. “You know I don’t want any of you here.”

His sister, the eldest of the family and unmarried at thirty-three, gave him an old-fashioned look. In appearance Celia was like their mother, with the same oval face, dark brown hair and winged eyebrows that had once proclaimed Lady Vickery a beauty. Yet it was odd, Miles thought, that the looks that had made Dorothea Vickery a diamond of the first water were somehow muted in her daughter. Celia could probably be described as well to a pass but she was no incomparable. Nor was she remotely like their mother in temperament but more like Miles himself, cool, cynical and direct.

“Of course I could not put her off,” Celia said. “You know mother is as persuadable as a Nile crocodile! Do you think I wanted to traipse all the way up here to see you, Miles?” she added. “It is the most damnable nuisance.” Her expression softened slightly as she looked at Philip, who was admiring a huge, dusty suit of armor that stood in a dark corner. “Actually I think Philip wanted to come. He enjoyed the travel and the new scenes, and he wanted to see you, Miles-”

Miles turned away from the appeal in her eyes. Philip, a late child and the apple of his mother’s eye, had been five years old when Miles had quarreled so dreadfully with their father and had left home to join the army. The boy was a stranger to him and that was the way Miles intended to leave it. It was far, far too late for him to establish a relationship with his family and he did not even want to try.

“There are no servants to make any refreshments, I fear,” he said pointedly as his mother sat down on an ancient chaise longue and raised a cloud of dust that almost choked them. “Why do you not repair to Fortune’s Folly now whilst Mr. Churchward and I conduct our business, Mama? I could join you all later for dinner.”

The dowager turned her expressive hazel eyes on him. “But, Miles, darling, we have only just arrived,” she protested. She settled back more comfortably, gestured Philip to sit beside her, and it was clear that she was going absolutely nowhere.

Miles sighed. He drove his hands into the pockets of his well-cut jacket of green superfine-fourteen pounds from Mr. Welbeck, the premier men’s outfitter in York, who was never likely to see the cash for it-and strolled over to the window. Outside, the early February day was already closing in; a gray mist hung over the Yorkshire fells, and the sleet spattered the window. The wind whistled in the chimneys and sent the cobwebs scurrying across the floor. The last thing that Miles wanted was his family with him in Yorkshire at such a time. They had already been obliged to sit by when he had sold Vickery House out from under them two years before, and before that Vickery Place, the sprawling country house in Berkshire where Miles and his brother and sisters had grown up. Now he would be selling Drum, as well, or at least the bits of the estate that were not entailed, plus all furnishings, fixtures and fittings. The Ton would soon be calling him the Merchant Marquis, or some such cutting sobriquet, for he was the man who had put his entire birthright on the market. He did not care, but he knew his mother would. The financial ruin of the Vickery barony and her consequent loss of status had hit her hard.

“I appreciate your concern for me, Mama,” Miles said carefully, without turning back to look at his mother, “and I realize that it is distressing for you to know that I am even more deeply in debt now than I was before I inherited Drum-”

“Oh, I am not worried about the debt!” Lady Vickery declared. She had always had a rather tenuous grasp of finance. “You can always find an heiress to wed, Miles! No, I am here because of the Curse of Drum! It is the most lamentable piece of bad luck to befall our family in years! You are doomed, Miles, positively doomed!”

Miles remembered Nat Waterhouse commenting on his mother’s superstitious nature and tried to smother his annoyance. “The only doom that is waiting for me, Mama,” he said, “is a sojourn in the Fleet if I cannot find myself an heiress in short order. You know I don’t believe in all that superstitious twaddle about the Curse of Drum.”

“You should do,” the dowager said crossly. “Look at your cousin Freddie! Dead in a bawdy house fire and he had only been Marquis of Drummond for a twelvemonth!”

“Miles is more likely to die worn out by one of his mistresses, like Cousin William,” Celia put in waspishly.

“Thank you, Celia,” Miles said as Lady Vickery covered Philip’s ears. “I am duly warned and can only hope that I have more stamina or perhaps more discrimination in my amorous adventures than Cousin Billy had.” He sighed irritably. The family curse was something that he treated with absolute contempt. He had not been a soldier for eleven years in order to develop a superstitious fear of death. As far as he was concerned the Curse of Drum only related to the fact that his cousins had been profligate to a man and had left thousands of pounds owing to the moneylenders.

“Miles, you are a disgrace,” his mother said reproachfully. “I am sure that your poor papa would be turning in his grave to hear you speak thus.”

“Papa did not have to be dead to disapprove of me,” Miles said evenly. “He would probably feel that the inheritance of Drum was my just deserts for a misspent life. No doubt he would say it was a judgment on me.”

Lady Celia stifled a laugh. “Papa was very keen on hellfire and damnation,” she said.

“As was appropriate for so eminent a man of the cloth,” Lady Vickery pointed out, smoothing the widow’s weeds she had worn for the past five years, since her husband had died. In the pale winter light she looked delicate and artfully pale, the epitome of the grieving widow. Miles’s father had been a younger son who had gone into the church, had unexpectedly inherited his brother’s barony and had risen to become Bishop of Rochester. The presence of the beautiful, high-born, gracious Dorothea at his side had done much to ensure his preferment and it was frequently said that His Grace would have reached the dizzy heights of the See of York or even Canterbury if only he had not died relatively young.

“Oh, we all know that Papa was all that was appropriate for a bishop,” Lady Celia said, with an edge to her voice that made Miles look at her closely. She did not meet his eyes but fidgeted with the stitching on her cuff. “He was an example to us all.”

“Celia, a little respect, if you please,” Lady Vickery said in a fading voice. “I know that you and your father had your differences, but Aloysius is dead.”

Celia made a small sound of disgust. Looking at her, Miles could see pity as well as impatience in her eyes as they dwelled on their mother’s tragic, piquant face.

“Mama,” Celia said, “it is Papa’s fault that Miles is in such desperate financial straits. Had he not been so extravagant, Miles would not have two cursed inheritances to contend with rather than one-”

Lady Vickery gave a little cry of distress and her daughter fell silent as the lacy handkerchief was applied again.

“Your papa was a good man.” Lady Vickery sniffed. “I will not hear another word against him, Celia! Do you hear me? He did his best for us all.”

There was an awkward little silence in the room. It was generally known within the Ton as well as within the Vickery family that the late bishop had been a deplorable spendthrift, just as Celia had said. He had entertained on a lavish scale and had not understood the meaning of the word retrench even when the bailiffs were at his door. Lady Vickery, Miles knew, tried to forget this regrettable aspect of her late husband’s character and had unofficially canonized him. As for the rest of the late Lord Vickery’s sins, they had been hidden so deep that no one would ever uncover them. Miles was aware that he was the only person who knew of his father’s transgressions.