The Silver Squire

He seemed unmoved by her complaint and gave her an impenitent smile as he made for the stairs and took them two at a time.

‘Come back! We have guests!’ was hissed in a furious undertone at his broad, dark-jacketed back.

‘And you’re a wonderful hostess, my dear,’ trailed back, bored, over his shoulder as he neared the top of the graceful sweep of mahogany bannisters.

‘If you’re not down these stairs and in the drawing room in ten…fifteen minutes,’ she generously amended, in an enraged choke, ‘well, I shall…I shall just…’

Sir Richard Du Quesne sauntered back to the top of the curving stairwell and looked past the priceless Austrian crystal chandelier, suspended low, at the top of his mother’s elegant coiffure. ‘You shall what?’ he jibed fondly. ‘Beat me? Shut me in my room? Make me go without my supper?’

‘Richard! This is no joke!’ his mother screeched, small fists scrunching her elegant lavender skirts in her rage. Aware that she was creasing the satin, she flung it away and tried desperately to smooth it. She resorted to stamping a small foot instead, while almost jigging on the creamy marble in exasperation. Abruptly changing tack, she stilled, gave him a bright smile and wheedled, ‘Please, dear, don’t keep us all waiting longer. Dinner has been on the warm since eight o’clock. It is now nine-thirty and we are all quite ravenous.’ A tinkly laugh preceded, ‘I’m quite wore out with finding conversation to amuse us all. Besides,’ gritted out through pearly teeth, ‘nothing much is audible over the growling of empty stomachs.’

Her son gave her a conciliatory smile. ‘I’ll be but a few minutes. I’ll just freshen up…’

‘Oh, you look well enough,’ she said irritably, gesturing him down the stairs. He did too, she realised as her blue eyes lingered on her tall, handsome son’s appearance. His sun-streaked blond hair was too long, but suited him that way, she grudgingly allowed. His charcoal-grey clothes were expensive and well-styled; nothing she said or slipped to his valet seemed to make him dress in brighter colours. The bronzed skin tone he had acquired abroad had at first horrified her but, she had to admit, gave him a wickedly foreign air, and those cool grey eyes…A delicious shiver raced through her for they so reminded her of her darling John.

Miriam focussed her far-away gaze back on the top of the stairs to note that, while daydreaming of her late husband, their son had disappeared. She pouted, flounced about and stalked back towards the drawing room with the welcome tidings for their graces the Duke and Duchess of Winstanley and their daughter, Lady Penelope, that dinner was now, indeed, very nearly served.

‘I know where you’ve been, you lucky, randy dog.’

Richard dried his face with the towel, lobbed it carelessly towards the grand four-poster on a raised dais and glanced at Stephen. ‘Where have I been?’ he asked as he fastened his diamond shirt studs and walked to the mirror to inspect his appearance.

‘Come on, this is your dribbling sibling you’re talking to. She must have a jolie amie for your best brother. Preferably blonde but I ain’t fussy.’

‘You’re married.’

‘I’m bored.’

Richard’s icy grey eyes swerved to the reflection of his younger brother’s shrewd, smiling face. ‘You’re married. You’ve got a lovely wife and two beautiful children. What more do you want, for God’s sake?’

Stephen Du Quesne shrugged himself irritably to the window and gazed into the dusk. The fluttering silver-leaved whitebeams that lined the mile-long drive to Silverdale swayed like sinuous, ghostly dancers in the light evening breeze. ‘A little excitement…that’s what I want. A little of what you’ve got…that’s what I want. You get risqué women and I get responsibility. It ain’t fair, I tell you. You’re seven years older than me.’

‘No one forced you to propose to Amelia when you were twenty-one. As I recall you wanted her and nothing was going to stand in your way. Not even her constant rebuffs. You finally won her over and the proof that you were lucky to get it so right is just along the corridor, asleep in the nursery. Grow up.’

‘That’s rich coming from you,’ Stephen moaned as he stalked his elder brother to the head of the stairs. ‘You’re thirty-three and still gadding around as though you’ve dropped a decade somewhere. Even that reprobate of a best friend of yours has been wed these past three years and is now as dangerous as a pussy-cat by all accounts.’

Richard turned a smile on him, knowing immediately to whom he referred. ‘That’s love for you, Stephen,’ he said. ‘It can creep up on you when you’re least expecting it…even when you’re twenty-one and nowhere near ready. There’s no shame in giving in to it.’

‘Such an eloquent expert on finer feelings, aren’t you?’ Stephen ribbed him with a grin. ‘Hard to believe most of your intercourse with the fairer sex is so basic and carried out while you’re horizontal.’

‘Shut up, Stephen, you are drooling,’ Richard said, with a clap on the back for his sulking brother.

As they hit the marble-flagged hallway, Richard swung his brother about by the shoulder and studied him gravely. ‘Look, if you’re desperate for a little illicit entertainment, go ahead. But don’t expect me to arrange it for you, or clear up the mess when it all goes horribly wrong. Amelia might just decide that what’s sauce for the gander…’ He trailed off with an explicit raising of dark brows.

‘She wouldn’t dare!’ Stephen exploded, his face draining of colour. ‘Besides,’ he blustered as his older brother choked a laugh at the terror on his face, ‘she’d never know…I’d be discreet.’

‘Of course she’d know, you fool,’ Richard scoffed. ‘There’d be plenty of concerned ladies just itching to break the news. For her own good, of course. If you want a mistress, go and stand in the Upper Assembly rooms and look available. In five minutes you’ll be knee-deep in frustrated wives, impoverished widows…’ His long fingers tightened emphatically on his brother’s shoulder. ‘You’re both envied, you know. You’ve a good marriage: you love your wife and she adores you and that’s not easily found. It makes for a lot of green eyes and spiteful intentions. If you want to know the truth, I envy you.’

‘Good,’ Stephen said with slightly malicious relish. ‘I think our dear mama is under the impression it’s definitely time you were jealous no more.’

Sir Richard Du Quesne stopped dead and spun on his heel. ‘God, she’s not matchmaking again! Who’s here? Not the Petershams?’

Stephen swayed his fair head, blue eyes alight with merriment. ‘But of course not. We’re aiming so much higher, dear one, now you’re so much richer. Now you’ve added another million to the Du Quesne coffers, dear Mama scents a ducal connection…and as they were visiting in the neighbourhood…’

Stephen’s drawling teasing came to an abrupt halt and the laughter in his eyes was replaced by horrified entreaty. For no more than a second he watched his brother striding towards the double oaken doorway, an exceedingly loud and awful curse flying in his wake.

Scooting after him, Stephen grabbed at his elbow and started dragging him backwards. ‘If you disappear, so do I. I’ll go and stand in the Upper Assembly rooms; you see if I don’t. Mother will kill me if I let you escape!’

‘I will kill you if you do not let go of my arm,’ his brother sweetly informed him.

Stephen removed his hand and made a show of straightening the crumpled charcoal material of Richard’s sleeve. ‘Come on, Dickie,’ he wheedled. ‘Just smile and make them swoon a little.’ Richard’s grim countenance was unaltered. ‘Well, just tell them about your money; that’ll make them swoon a little.’

Richard tried to suppress a smile. He gazed at the rust watered-silk wall then back at his brother’s anxious face. ‘If I wasn’t so damned hungry, I’d be out of here.’ A tanned hand settled amicably on Stephen’s shoulder as they turned towards the dining room. ‘I suppose I should suck up a bit to his grace: I want the old bastard to grant me a lease on the land just east of the Tamar. There’s a fortune in that clay-slate; I’ll stake my life on it.’

‘Better suck up to his daughter, then. You know the way to a fond father’s heart is through his darling spinster offspring. And she is sweet on you, you know. You also know the old goat’s concerned for his pheasants and won’t let you disturb them with your noisy mining.’

‘There’s a fortune in copper there and I will have it some day. But don’t tell Ross,’ Richard laughed. ‘He’s convinced it’s on the Cornish side in granite. Fool! Sometimes he lets his Celtic pride get in the way of his common sense.’

‘Rival adventurers!’ Stephen proclaimed. ‘You’ll bring him in on the deal, in any case. Me too, I hope! I’ve a growing family to support.’

‘Make sure it’s just the one legitimate family to support,’ Richard told his brother, ‘and perhaps I’ll do that.’

Richard scowled at the ceiling. It was time he thought of marrying and producing an heir. A duke’s daughter was soft on him. She was attractive enough to bed. The fact that she irritated the hell out of him with her vanity and her vacuous giggling was of little consequence: once she was breeding they need have little to do with one another other than on formal family occasions. Apart from exercising a little more subtlety, his licentious lifestyle need not alter. If Penelope found herself a beau it would not unduly worry him so long as she was reciprocally discreet. He could afford to be generous: her father was sitting, he was sure, on one of the richest copper lodes ever. And he was determined to mine the area.

The two brothers exchanged a rueful grimace before fixing smiles and entering the dining room. Richard’s grin sugared for his mother as he saw her glower at him. Then he looked at the brunette, her face coyly concealed behind a fluttering fan. Brown eyes peeked at him over the top of ivory sticks. His teeth met but he bowed gallantly.

Damn you, David! he inwardly groaned as he thought of his best friend and his wedded bliss. He’d set a vexing precedent by marrying for love and being so nauseatingly happy and faithful. And he and David were too close…too alike…always had been since childhood.

Richard knew that aching void deep within David that only Victoria could fill sometimes yawned wide in him too. And the restlessness, the emptiness just wouldn’t go away no matter how hard it was ignored or crammed full of commerce or self-indulgent lust.

Think of the copper…and beating Ross to it, he encouraged himself as he proceeded into the room, with a wry, private smile. He pulled a chair close and sat beside his grace the Duke of Winstanley. ‘How are the pheasants?’ he asked gravely.

Chapter Three

‘What is for dinner today, Mrs Keene? Not bacon and carrots again, surely?’ Emma frowned and sniffed delicately at the wafting salty aroma.

‘Not at all, my dear.’ Her landlady shuffled into her room, apparently unruffled by this aspersion on her unvarying menus.

Emma’s tawny eyes brightened and she let her novel drop. She had been perched on the window seat for the past hour, hoping that perhaps Matthew might call again today to take her for a walk or a drive into the countryside. But it was nearly six o’clock and unlikely he would come now.

‘What is for dinner, then, Mrs Keene?’ Emma asked, her mouth watering in anticipation of some tempting mutton later.

‘Er…it’s hashed pork, my dearie. With a little herb and stock ‘n so on.’

‘Is it cured pork, Mrs Keene?’ Emma asked on a sigh.

‘I believe it is at that, Miss Worthington,’ Mrs Keene admitted with a jovial smile. ‘Now, I’ve got some good news. An’ I expect, ‘cos it is such a piece o’ luck for you that a busy soul like meself’s managed to put herself out on account of a nice young lady, that you’ll be insistin’ on showing me a small consideration for me pains. Now, not that it’s none o’ my concern, o’ course, but I know for a fact you’ve been scourin’ that Gazette for a position as would suit. Well, now—’ chubby hands were planted on fat hips ‘—what did I hear today from a friend wot’s been speakin’ to a lady’s maid?’ She inclined forward from the waist and beady eyes rolled between fleshy folds.

After a silent moment when Emma realised either she guessed, enquired, or never learned, she obligingly said, ‘I’ve no idea, Mrs Keene. What did you hear?’