A Place For Repentance (The Underwood Mysteries Book 6) Page 10

  “Cressida, Matty, I have something to tell you, but I beg you will wait until I have finished explaining before you interrupt.”

  The ladies exchanged a coy smile, so sure were they that Rutherford was about to announce his intention of asking for the hand of one of several young ladies to whom he had been introduced since his return from Australia, no longer a black sheep, but once more the heir to a very considerable estate and fortune.

  “I want you to know that I have tried so very hard to fit back into life here. You can have no conception of the daily struggle it has been, but I have to tell you that I have utterly failed. In short, my dears, I am so very unhappy here that I have decided to return to the country that made a man of me.”

  Cressida looked confused, as well she might. In her opinion it was the war in the Peninsular that had taken a boy and sent back a man. Could he possibly mean that he wanted to live on the Continent? But where and why?

  “Do you mean to go to Spain, perhaps, or Portugal? What on earth do you expect to find there to occupy you?” Even as she spoke, she was reassuring herself. This was not the end of the world. Europe was accessible, with some difficulty, it must be admitted, but visits would be possible.

  Then he exploded her illusions as surely as if he had fired a cannon in their midst.

  “No, I mean to go back to Australia.”

  The words were spoken, but it was a good few seconds before they were fully assimilated. When the truth became apparent, he could expect no quarter to be given.

  He had been relying on good manners to force Cressida and Miss Fettiplace to accept his pronouncement with equanimity, but he had entirely overlooked the fact that they both felt quite at ease in Underwood’s company after the trials and tribulations of the year before. He had seen them at their most vulnerable and distraught back then, and had been aided by them in his covert activities to catch Ormond Luckhurst and his dastardly cohorts in trying to defraud Rutherford and Cressida out of their rightful inheritance. In these circumstances it was hardly likely that they would baulk at showing their displeasure when the man they had fought so hard to redeem now appeared to throw all their love and dedication back in their faces.

  As Rutherford closed his prepared speech, Miss Fettiplace simply burst into noisy sobs, but Cressida, though pale, was icily calm, “Do you mean to tell me that after all we have been through, after all the heartache, the frantic worry, the miserable loneliness, that you intend to leave us here alone and unprotected so that you can go back to that awful country and have another silly school-boy adventure?”

  She could not comprehend his attitude. She had heard nothing all these months but of privation, starvation, cruelty and horror. Had he not told of slaving in the burning sun, prey to dreadful stinging creatures of all kinds? Of the constant peril from deadly snakes and spiders that hid in clothing or shoes and whose bite meant an agonizing death? Of food contaminated with ants, cockroaches and flies, so that to eat it meant sickness and the flux? Strange animals of all sorts, from the bounding kangaroos that could kill a man with a vicious kick, and gigantic bats, the size of domestic cats, that swooped in the night, their faces like foxes, with sharp, needle-like teeth. What of the forest fires that swept across great swathes of the country, destroying everything in its path, sparing nothing and impossible to stop?

  Had her brother taken leave of his senses, to want to return to that satanic place, when he could remain here, loved, safe and rich?

  Rutherford, for his part, immediately took offence at her reference to a ‘silly, schoolboy adventure’. The girl had no notion of the challenges he had faced and overcome. She could never understand how the very thought of returning to that life made the blood pump through his veins, making him feel alive, energized in a way that he could never feel in safe and boring Wimpleford.

  “Now, see here, Cressy, I won’t have you talk to me that way. It’s my life, after all, and if I want to spend it somewhere that I love instead of in this dead and alive hole ...”

  “Dead and alive hole!” she gasped, infuriated by his cavalier dismissal of the place she loved best in the world, “You unspeakable little toad! I wish we had left you in Australia. Ormond might have been a viper, but at least he loved Pershore. You do not deserve this place, or the devotion Matty and I have lavished upon you.”

  If Rutherford had taken exception to being called a ‘schoolboy’ it was nothing to the fury he felt at being compared to his cousin Luckhurst, whom he had always despised, but never more so than when he had learned of his perfidious attempt to get their Great Aunt Greenhowe to change her will in his favour and have Rutherford exiled to the ends of the earth for the rest of his life. It mattered not that Rutherford fully intended to now exile himself to the very same place.

  Verity had listened to all this, horrified to be at the centre of a family dispute, but resolutely silent. It had nothing to do with her where Rutherford wanted to live, nor was it her concern that Cressida did not care for his life choices. However, when Rutherford, white-faced and furious, rose to his feet and looked set to walk out of the house, she felt she must intervene. If the stupid boy walked out now, he might never come back – and then how would his sister ever forgive herself?

  “That is quite enough, children,” she said deliberately using the voice she would have employed with her own offspring. “Can you not see how much distress you are causing poor Miss Fettiplace? And how you have discommoded Mr Underwood? This is not the way to behave before guests. I require you to cease this conduct at once.”

  Her tone reduced them at once to the schoolroom and they both subsided, ashamed to have been caught in such an unmannerly display.

  “I do apologize, Mrs Underwood,” said Rutherford. “That was unforgivable. But Cressida should take fair warning that I mean every word I say.”

  “I too am very sorry,” returned Cressida, casting a darkling glance at her brother, “but Rutherford should also take fair warning that I intend to do everything in my power to make him change his mind about this ridiculous scheme – even if it means going to law to remove his allowance from him – let us see how far you get without a penny to your name, Rutherford Petch!”

  The two glared at each other and Underwood thought this might be the moment to take their leave. He bowed over the shaking hand of poor Miss Fettiplace, but avoided doing the same to Cressida, who looked ready to kill any man who ventured too close to her.

  Verity thanked them sweetly for the evening, then added, with what Underwood considered to be a degree of levity which had no place in the current situation, “And of course, we shall see you again very soon in Hanbury, for Jeremy James Thornycroft’s birthday party.”

  It was a very subdued pair who saw them into their carriage and waved them away from the front step of Pershore House.

  Underwood sank gratefully against the squabs, glad for once to be inside a carriage, instead of dreading the journey, “Whew! I thought those two were going to come to blows.”

  “They may yet do so,” said Verity, “and I can quite see why. Rutherford is a selfish creature and I do not blame Cressida in the least for being cross with him.”

  Underwood hardly thought the word ‘cross’ adequately described the volcanic fury which Cressida had directed at her sibling, but he chose not to argue the point with his wife – there had been quite enough dissent for one evening.

  “I must say that it has been a most unexpectedly eventful time. So much for your idea that I should rest and recuperate! I may not have tracked down the ‘widow’ but we have, between us, rescued a damsel in distress, found her employment, aided our friends to consider beginning a new life and witnessed a family rift which will probably echo down the ages.”

  Verity sighed happily at his summing up of their adventures, “I would like to think that I also helped Lindell with his school and all his other endeavours.”

  “I’m very sure that you have. Well, my dear, we are bound for home tomorrow. Have you enjoyed our holiday?”


  Verity turned to him, her gloved hands clasped together in ecstasy, “Oh, my dearest Cadmus, I cannot tell you how much! Of course I have missed everyone at home, especially the girls, but it has done me so much good to have a short break from domestic cares. I only hope that you too have benefitted from it.”

  “You know, my love, I rather think I have.”

  Verity was so delighted to hear him say so that she quite forgot herself and kissed him, long and lingering, despite the fact that the Pershore coachman could, at any moment, turn and observe her unseemly, not to say hoydenish, behaviour.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘De Duobus malis, Minus Est Semper Eligendum’ – Of two evils, the lesser one is always to be chosen

  The journey back to Hanbury was, thankfully, uneventful. The Underwoods were tacitly relieved to hear that Mrs Jebson was not yet ready to travel with them and would follow in a few days. Will had insisted that she remain at home until Violette had settled in to their routine with the two little girls.

  Unbeknownst to the couple, he had also tried his very hardest to dissuade his wife from her madcap plan to relocate their business. It was not now a reluctance to move that was his prime objective, but a small, almost unacknowledged, premonition of disaster. Under any other circumstances he knew that Martha would never have been prevailed upon to leave him alone in a house with a young and very attractive woman, albeit chaperoned by the sulky Lucy.

  It was not that he feared that either he or Violette would in any way misbehave themselves. It would not have occurred to him to even consider being untrue to his wife and he was very sure that Violette must view him as far too old to be anything other than a father figure, but he was very worried that the situation was going to cause gossip and scandal and that his relationship with his customers would suffer. It was vital that they saw him as trustworthy, otherwise how could they confide their medical secrets to him?

  Martha, however, was not to be deterred and Will finally gave in with as much good grace as he could muster, whilst silently praying that his highly critical wife would hate the little town on sight and take the first stagecoach home.

  Underwood, once he was sure Martha Jebson would not be his travelling companion, had only one other moment of discomfort when he had cause to realize that he had been far more badly affected by his previous sojourn than he had supposed. When the coach suddenly swerved and he heard the shouts of the driver and terrified neighing of the horses, he felt the blood drain from his face. For a few horrified seconds he thought that they had been held up by highwaymen again and his relief was palpable when it turned out merely to have been a large and bemused badger that had wandered onto the highway on its twilit evening ramble, which just happened to coincide with the last leg of the journey.

  Verity could not help but notice his distress and she asked solicitously, “How do you go on, Cadmus? Did the lurching of the coach exacerbate your travel sickness?”

  “A little,” he said, grateful that she had put her own interpretation upon his odd reaction to what should have been a minor annoyance. He could hardly admit he had experienced an appalling and graphic surge of memory when he saw once more a man fall backwards with a bullet-hole between his eyes and the back of his head a bloody mess of matted hair, torn skin, smashed skull and splattered brain. If he had been asked immediately after the event, he would have said that he had turned away the moment the shot was fired, but it appeared he had witnessed far more of the incident than he knew. Or perhaps it was an over-active imagination which had filled in the gory details which he had never actually seen. He neither knew nor cared, but wanted to put the images forever from his mind. It took all his concentration to drag his mind back to the present and listen to his wife as she, all unknowing, offered a platitude.

  “Well, take comfort, my love, we are very nearly home. I wrote and told Toby when we were due to arrive in Hanbury and he will be there to meet us and drive the last mile or two.”

  “I must admit that I am ready for home, much as I have enjoyed our little holiday,” he replied, pleased that he had managed to sound almost normal in his response. Now was not the time to give himself away, after so many months of being able to bite his tongue.

  “I feel the same way. I have only just realized quite how much I have missed Horry and Clarissa.”

  He patted her hand, “I never thought I would ever say so, but I have missed them too, even the unmitigated horror of mealtimes!”

  Verity laughed, “My dear, it will not be so horrid forever. They are growing apace. Soon you will be looking back and wishing we had these childish messes once again.”

  “I very much doubt it,” he said earnestly, shuddering slightly at the memory of scattered food, sticky fingers and dirty faces, but at least that banished the other memory, at least for the present.

  Toby, ever reliable, was there to meet the coach as it trundled into the yard of the inn. Underwood was immensely fond of the large black man, but there was a special feeling of joy to see the huge grin after so many weeks away. Of course one would never have known it, for they exchanged a firm handshake and a polite greeting, nothing more. Verity was not so circumspect and she lifted her face for Toby to place a chaste kiss upon each cheek. Had they not been in a public place she would have hugged him, but even warm-hearted Verity knew the rules of society and such displays of affection were for the privacy of home, nowhere else.

  “Please tell me that everything at Windward is just as it should be,” she said, a little breathlessly, as they hoisted their luggage from the stage and transferred it into the gig. Toby took the heaviest bags, of course, but there were still smaller valises for Underwood and Verity to carry. They had brought so many gifts for the girls and the rest of the family that Underwood feared there would not be enough room for them in the small carriage.

  Toby laughed, “Of course. Nothing untoward has happened. Not a glimmer of a drama of any kind in the house or with the family – but of course, there would not be any adventures – Underwood was away!”

  Verity laughed but Underwood huffed in pretended offence, “Are you trying to say that it is I who cause any trouble at home? I, who likes nothing more than to sit by the fire with a book, serene and causing not a ripple on the pond of life?” he asked, hoisting himself into the gig, having already handed his wife up. This was his usual defence when accused of stirring up discord or causing vexation, but it had little effect upon his companions.

  Toby and Verity fell against each other in helpless merriment, “Oh, bless the dear man, he actually believes that,” said Verity, when she had recovered herself, “Even knowing that we had incidents aplenty whilst we were away. Tell me, Underwood, who was it who introduced a French actress into our midst? Who encouraged Mrs Jebson to come and live in Hanbury and caused a family rift between the Petch siblings?”

  Underwood opened his mouth to protest, but Toby was too interested in what Verity had to say to heed him. He insisted on a full report of all that had happened in Dacorum-in-the-Marsh and West Wimpleford, which Underwood felt his wife deliberately skewed in order to show him in the very worst light possible.

  The telling of the tale made the final few miles pass swiftly and before they knew it, Underwood and Verity were walking into their own hallway, and being nearly bowled over by the entire family, for Cara had stayed at Windward House with her boys in order to care for Horatia and Clarissa and Gil had joined her as soon as he knew brother and sister-in-law were due home.

  Verity was weeping tears of joy as she clasped her little girls to her breast, Gil was shaking Underwood heartily by the hand, Cara was breathlessly recounting all that the girls had achieved to assure their mother that she had not neglected her duties, and the two youngest boys, William and Edward were running and yelling in excitement. Their older brother Alistair was standing shyly to one side, smiling broadly at the lovely family chaos, waiting for his turn for a kiss from his Aunt Verity and a handshake from his Uncle Cadmus. Toby quietly got o
n with fetching in the luggage then went to the kitchen to make sure the kettle was on the boil. Tea would be the first request of the weary travellers.

  Once the maelstrom had calmed a little, then youngsters went off to play, with Alistair happily taking charge, and the adults gathered in the drawing room to enjoy some peace and a hot drink. Verity and Cara barely drew breath as they caught up with each other and the gentlemen exchanged an indulgent smile at their fond chatter.

  “Toby tells me that nothing of any note has occurred during my absence,” said Underwood, once he had taken a few reviving sips of Gil’s special brew, “That surely cannot be true.”

  “True enough.” answered Gil, “More than anything else, the whole place is abuzz with the preparations for Jeremy James’ party and no one can speak of anything else. It is turning into a gala day of gigantic proportions. The original idea was that it should be a select gathering to take place at his and Adeline’s house. Then, of course, we discovered that Jeremy’s closest friend from his army days had been transported, so the ensuing delay whilst we waited for you to prove his innocence simply gave Adeline more time to think of people she wanted to invite. Once that happened, their house was nowhere near large enough. Lady Hartley-Wells has stepped in and offered her ball-room. However, it seems even that will not hold the numbers predicted to attend and a marquee is to be erected in the garden!”

  “Good gad! I trust it doesn’t rain. I cannot conceive of anything worse than tramping about knee-deep in mud in a glorified tent.”

  Gil laughed, “They have planned the event for late July, so we are all hoping for good weather. I have been personally charged with praying for a dry spell by that impertinent rogue, Jeremy!”

  “Well, if your prayers can control an English summer, Gil, you might find you have converted me into a believer.”