Cousins of a Kind Read online

  The curricle, bumping over a deep rut in the road, jerked her back to her present situation. She peered over the top and saw the bright-yellow wheels skimming along perilously close to the edge of a deep ditch. She swallowed her unease, huddled into her heavy travelling cloak, and resolved thereafter to keep her eyes resolutely to the fore.

  ‘Cold?’ Her cousin’s dry query invaded her teeming thoughts.

  ‘A little,’ she conceded. ‘But I shall do well enough.’

  He caught the bleakness in her voice and looked aslant at her pinched face buried deep in the collar of her cloak, her nose glowing faintly pink in the fading light. ‘A curricle is hardly the ideal conveyance for a lady at this time of year ‒ however adequate her attire.’

  He did not add, ‘but you would come,’ though he might as well have done so. Theo resented the implied criticism, of both her behaviour and her dress, and her reply was in consequence stiffly formal.

  ‘The cloak belonged to my father, and I value it the more for that. It may not be of the first stare, but I assure you it has proved invaluable throughout the course of my journey!’

  ‘I do not doubt it,’ he said softly. ‘It seems exactly the thing for a sea-crossing.’

  But not for impressing one’s relations, his comment seemed to say. She wrapped it more closely around her in a gesture of defiance that went unnoticed, and fell to watching her cousin’s strong competent hands on the ribbons, wondering a trifle nervously what would happen if some obstacle were to rear out of the mist into their path. A glance at his absorbed profile convinced her that he would cope admirably.

  ‘We have spoken little about your father,’ he said suddenly without taking his eyes from the road. ‘You clearly loved him very much.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Still do, cried a small lost voice within her. Still miss him dreadfully.

  ‘Was his death unexpected? He can’t have been any great age …’

  ‘Two and forty,’ she said in a clipped unemotional voice. ‘And yes ‒ it was unexpected.’ Benedict took his eyes off the road for an instant, and she met his look, chin high. ‘You see, cousin ‒ he was shot.’

  ‘Was he, by God!’ The road claimed his attention once more, but he was clearly intrigued.

  ‘Do you mind if we don’t speak of it now?’ she said, her contained air of calm just failing to disguise an unconscious underlying pleading. ‘I would rather know about Grandfather. Is he really dying?’

  ‘So he would have us all believe, though like that famous monarch of yore, he is an unconscionable long time getting to the nub of the matter. It’s my belief he hasn’t the slightest intention of troubling the grim reaper this side of Christmas.’

  Theo thought him shockingly unfeeling ‒ and said so.

  ‘Yes, but I am right, as you will soon discover for yourself when ‒ or indeed if ‒ you get to meet him.’ His whip snaked forward to point his leaders, and he caught it again with a deft turn of the wrist. ‘You know, I have a notion that your visit is going to precipitate events, one way or another.’

  ‘That’s a horrible thing to say!’

  She thought he laughed softly to himself, and was about to remonstrate further when almost without warning a pair of massive stone gateposts loomed ahead. Upon seeing them, her cousin sent the whip whistling forward again and, with an audacity that made her gasp, executed a swirling right-hander which brought them around neatly between the open gates, the distance judged to a nicety.

  Her gasp had not gone unnoticed, and this time there was no mistaking that he laughed.

  ‘Fear not, sweet coz ‒ I shan’t overturn us!’

  ‘I am vastly relieved to hear it,’ she said tartly, annoyed to think that her nerve might have been tested and found wanting. ‘Nevertheless, in the present conditions it would surely be more prudent to proceed with caution.’

  ‘Yes, but then I am seldom given to prudence,’ he said with a grin. ‘As you will discover when you come to know me better.’

  This time Theo declined to be drawn, and an injured silence prevailed. They continued to gouge a path out of the mist until, with another abrupt right-hand turn, the curricle came to a halt in front of a short flight of stone steps leading up to a massive door built of weathered oak.

  ‘Welcome to Shallowford, Cousin Theo,’ Benedict said, securing the reins before jumping lightly to the ground and coming to lift her down.

  Theo glanced up with interest from the foot of the steps, but could see little other than the shadowy irregular mass of a large creeper-covered building. She heard the sound of bolts being drawn, the door swung silently inward, and a tall stooped man in a faded black coat moved stiff-limbed out the shadows, blinking a little to see the slight figure in the heavy frieze cloak being escorted up the steps.

  ‘Mr Benedict ‒ is that you?’

  The butler’s voice held an anxious quaver as he peered at the young gentleman’s companion, and taking account of his lordship’s dislike of strangers.

  ‘It’s me right enough, Purley. Have someone attend to the horses, will you? And there’s a small trunk and a carpet bag to be brought in from the curricle. Come along in, Cousin Theo.’ Benedict heard the butler’s involuntary exclamation, hastily choked back ‒ and he grinned. ‘Yes, Purley ‒ what do you say to this, eh? I have brought Mr John’s daughter back with me. Won’t that be a splendid surprise for everyone?’

  His voice rang round the great vaulted roof, sending back mischievous echoes.

  ‘Mr John’s daughter, did you say, sir?’ Purley repeated in a bewildered way. ‘But I thought … we all thought … oh, my!’ he said as the full impact of the words sank home, and it sounded rather like a cry for help. Theo’s heart sank. If this was the butler’s reaction … But then she saw he was looking at her more closely, staring eagerly into the strong youthful face as though peering back through more than twenty years of memory. ‘Oh, my!’ he said again, quite differently. ‘Yes, indeed, miss … there is a decided likeness about the eyes.’ He drew himself together with the dignity due to his privileged status. ‘What a very great pleasure it is to see you here, miss, if I may say so ‒ where you so rightly belong.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Purley!’ Theo smiled at him, deeply touched by the old butler’s obvious sincerity. ‘I’m sorry to have given you such a shock.’ A reproachful glance put the blame squarely where it belonged, on her cousin, though Purley murmured incoherently that she mustn’t be thinking any such thing. ‘My father often spoke about you with affection,’ she said. ‘He told me of the many times you had helped him and his brother out of scrapes.’

  ‘Did he say that? Well now!’ The old man seemed much moved. ‘They were such good boys … always funning …’

  Benedict stemmed Purley’s inevitable preamble towards maudlin reminiscence by asking if the family had yet gone in to dinner.

  ‘I was on the point of announcing it, sir, when you arrived.’

  ‘Good. So they will be in the library?’ He took Theo’s arm.

  ‘But, sir …’ Benedict shot him an impatient look. ‘Your outer garments, sir … and the young lady will surely wish to refresh herself …’

  ‘Later, Purley. We mustn’t keep the family waiting.’

  Theo resisted as he took her arm. He glanced down in surprise. ‘It would be nice to be consulted, Cousin Benedict.’

  ‘Why? You said you liked to get things over with.’ He took her short exasperated laugh for agreement, urged her across the flagged hall where suits of armour standing like sentinels seemed to come alive in the flickering light of the candle sconces along the wall.

  ‘It all seems delightfully Gothic,’ she observed pleasantly. ‘One is irresistibly reminded of one of Mrs Radcliffe’s romances. I own I shall be bitterly disappointed if there is not at the very least a walled-up nun to be heard moaning on stormy nights, to say nothing of a clanking chair or two.’

  He laughed. ‘I wasn’t aware that Mrs Radcliffe’s fame extended as far as America.’

  Sh
e gave him a prim look. ‘We are not quite savages, cousin, I daresay you would be amazed to know how civilised we can be!’

  ‘Touché!’ He grinned.

  They had by now left the hall and were walking down a wide and lofty corridor. Benedict came to a halt in front of a door and turned towards her, his eyes seeming to glitter with expectation. ‘Well, cousin ‒ are you ready to face the family?’

  It was as though, now that they were here, he could not wait for a confrontation, and for a moment Theo’s heart misgave her.

  The library at Shallowford commanded a westerly aspect, but Gothic windows set deep in the walls conspired with thick velour hangings to resist the least penetration of its gloom on even the sunniest of days. Now, with darkness closing in, candlelight picked out the faded grandeur of heavy furniture and much Jacobean oak panelling interspersed with shelf upon shelf of tooled leather books.

  From its position above the chimney-piece, a portrait dominated the room, the gentleman’s flowing Cavalier tresses and frivolously plumed hat seeming curiously at odds with the severity of his expression. Of the four people present, only three were obliged to incur his displeasure, the fourth being immured in an embrasure beyond the fireplace, her presence betrayed only occasionally by the glint of her needle as it passed in and out of her embroidery frame.

  A lanky youth of some eighteen summers stood immediately beneath the picture, one arm resting on the mantelshelf. He scowled into the fire, kicking pettishly at a smouldering log and sending sparks flying up the chimney. The gesture, though childish, was evocative of Mr Aubrey Fane’s general discontent as he turned to address himself to his mother, who reclined on a sofa near by, her fair frail beauty displayed to advantage by the floating draperies of her widow’s weeds.

  ‘I don’t see why we must needs wait on Benedict’s pleasure,’ he complained, in answer to her suggestion that dinner might be put back a little. ‘When it seems to me that he comes and goes very much as he pleases!’

  Selina Radlett gazed with troubled eyes upon her offspring, seeing his outburst as just one more demonstration of his frustration. And who could blame him, poor boy! At his age, Aubrey should be in London enjoying himself ‒ and she with him ‒ instead of kicking his heels in this desolate backwater, dependent upon the whim of a sick half-crazed old man.

  Not for the first time she railed inwardly against the cruel fate that had led her to take Geoffrey Radlett for a husband. He had seemed the ideal choice back in those mellow autumn days ‒ a jovial bachelor of mature years fresh home from a life in the army, with both title and fortune all but in his grasp. How could she have known that Boney would escape from Elba within weeks of their marriage, or that Geoffrey with quixotic stupidity would be off to fight him with hardly a thought for her feelings ‒ like a small boy playing at toy soldiers!

  ‘Must finish the bounder off for good this time, m’dear,’ he’d explained with sweet reason in answer to her protests. ‘Tell you what ‒ I’ll take you and Aubrey down to stay with m’father at Shallowford ‒ time you got acquainted!’ Dear God! What a fiasco that had been! The old man had taken against them on sight, but she had borne all without complaint, convinced that he was not long for this world ‒ everyone had said that he was dying ‒ and then she would be Lady Radlett. But it was Geoffrey who had died, and she was left in a worse case than before, with only the old man’s heir on whom to pin her hopes …

  Beau Radlett’s heavy eyelids masked his malicious observation of mother and son. He stood at a table near the window idly flicking through the pages of the Morning Post ‒ a slim middle-aged exquisite with ennui written large upon his lean, fastidious features. The country was not his milieu ‒ only his uncle’s relapse and an overpowering desire to see this puppy of an American, whose arrival was imminent, had kept him here thus far, but even such an inducement was apt to lose its appeal when weighed against present company. Poor Selina! Such a transparent creature with her china-blue eyes and that deceptive air of fragility ‒ all pale curls and pale complexion and a tight avaricious mouth. How like Geoffrey to fall prey to such a one!

  ‘There is time yet for Benedict to come,’ she was saying now, half hopeful, for though Benedict could be tiresomely sarcastic at times, he at least treated her like a woman. ‘And if Beau would not mind …?’ Her eyes lifted nervously in his direction.

  ‘But I do mind,’ he drawled. ‘For my part, I shall oppose any attempt of Purley’s to put dinner back. My uncle’s cook has little enough to commend him at the best of times …’ He broke off as the sound of voices penetrated the door.

  It opened to admit Benedict Radlett, still in his driving coat, and at his side a slight figure enveloped in a ridiculously large cloak and unremarkable bonnet.

  ‘My dear boy,’ began Beau in pained tones. But Benedict put up a hand to command attention ‒ and drew Theo forward.

  ‘Permit me,’ he said with undisguised relish, ‘the pleasure of presenting to you your long-awaited cousin, Theo Radlett.”

  Drat him! thought Theo, very nearly as disconcerted as they were by her cousin’s perverse partiality for high theatrical drama ‒ amounting now almost to farce. The silence hung palpably in the air while Beau (for it could be no other) lifted an ornate quizzing-glass to survey her, a flicker of something akin to exultation showing briefly in his narrowed eyes.

  Selina Radlett’s mouth opened in a soundless gasp. She half rose and then sank back against her cushions, and it was left to her son to voice the common thought.

  ‘A girl, egad!’ he stammered on a nervous giggle. ‘Oh, how p-priceless! I’d give a monkey to see the old man’s face when he learns of it. He’ll go off in an apoplexy this time for sure!’

  ‘The tone of your conversation is seldom elevating, Aubrey,’ Benedict informed him with cutting coldness. ‘In this instance I believe we can dispense with it entirely.’

  The boy blushed scarlet, more embarrassed by his own outburst than any of them, Theo suspected. She could not but feel for him and offered him a sympathetic smile, but he only glared and fell into a sulky silence.

  His mother had by now recovered her power of speech, and with it came an uncontrollable spurt of outrage born of disappointment. She had been cheated, for no one now stood between Beau and the title, and she could hope for nothing from him. She pressed a scrap of cambric convulsively to her mouth, her voice shrill, all her anger directed at Benedict.

  ‘Oh, how could you? I expect you have known this all along, and have only now revealed it as a cruel jest at my expense!’

  He looked down his nose at her. ‘My dear Selina, you are being rather absurd ‒ and not at all welcoming to Cousin Theo.’

  ‘If we are to speak of being welcoming, Benedict,’ said Beau, coming forward in his indolent way, ‘I fear our cousin must find you equally remiss. Do take the poor child’s cloak. She will feel much more the thing without it.’ There was a faint smile in the heavy eyes as he extended a slim white hand to Theo. ‘Our notions of civility leave much to be desired, my dear, but as family we need not be standing on ceremony. I am Vincent Radlett.’

  She did not in general care for dandies, but in this instance she was grateful for his display of kindness, motivated though it probably was by selfish relief. She returned his smile as his fingers touched hers. ‘I am pleased to meet you, sir. You are, I feel sure, the one they call Beau?’

  He inclined his head graciously.

  Theo undid the clasp at the neck of her cloak, and Benedict, waiting with ironic courtesy, lifted it from her shoulders. She loosed the ribbons of her bonnet and removed that also, handing it to him with an aplomb she was far from feeling, and smoothed her fingers over her sadly flattened bright chestnut hair.

  Selina had by now recovered herself sufficiently to say, a little sulkily, ‘You had better come close to the fire.’ Her glance encompassed the insignificant dark dress, and she used her most patronising tone, usually reserved for addressing members of the lower orders. ‘I daresay you will be find
ing things very strange ‒ wondering who we all are.’

  ‘Not in the least, ma’am.’ Theo drew herself up very straight, stung by the implication that she was probably simple-minded as well as dowdy. ‘You must be my Uncle Geoffrey’s widow.’ Her speech was direct and incisive, and Selina would have done well to take note of the dangerous spark in her eyes as her glance swung from mother to son, coolly assessing. ‘And you are Aubrey. How do you do?’ She met the boy’s hostile glance with equanimity and, unable to resist the temptation, added innocently, ‘It is an unexpected pleasure to find a ready made family awaiting me, and although I guess I’m not quite what you were expecting, I hope that some among you at least will not be displeased.’

  A little colour ran up under Beau’s pale skin, and behind her Benedict murmured irrepressibly: ‘Rolled up, horse, foot, and guns! Bravo, coz!’

  Far from reassuring her, this wry encomium and a growing coolness in the atmosphere convinced her that a very pardonable annoyance had led her to behave unhandsomely.

  She was wondering desperately how to put matters right when a joyous chuckle came from the corner near the fireplace, where a shadowy figure, overlooked in all the excitement, stirred and resolved itself into a tiny cherubic lady ‒ almost as round as she was tall, dressed all in black.

  ‘I’m delighted to see you’ve a true Radlett head on your shoulders, John’s child ‒ and a ready tongue withal. If my brother can only be brought to look beyond the unfortunate obstacle of your sex, he may eventually give up his notion of dying for the present and learn to appreciate you!’

  Her voice was surprisingly vigorous for one whose hair was snow-white and surmounted by a black lacy cap. Bright eyes cushioned in wrinkles twinkled with malicious amusement.

  ‘Aunt Minta!’ Selina exclaimed crossly. ‘I had quite forgot you were there.’

  ‘People frequently do, madam. But I do not repine. It has afforded me much enjoyment over the years!’ The old lady moved nimbly enough towards Theo until she stood quite close, looking up into her face. ‘Yes, you’ve a decided look of your father. John was a good boy. Stubborn, of course, but we’re all afflicted with that vice. Are you stubborn, miss?’