The Captain's Return

“Good God!”

Hal hardly heard Ned’s comment. A heavy pulsing entered his chest and his brain felt as if it were going to explode. His throat tightened, and his voice seemed not to wish to obey him.

“How—how old? The babe. How old is it?”

Weem considered the question, trouble gathering in his sharp-featured face. “Just a toddler, guv’nor. I’d say not much more’n two—three at most.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” groaned Ned.

Captain Colton could not speak. What havoc had he wrought that fateful night? Had he not dreaded this very outcome, lying sleepless night after night in a crude cot in cantonments in Spain? Or bivouacking by an impromptu fire, supping on stewed rabbit, augmented by a potato or two filched from a nearby field? Weem had always been expert at ferreting for food to eke out the most meagre of rations. Would he had long ago had the sense to send him ferreting after this.

The nightmare of his worst fears realised! Yet when Annabel had so steadfastly refused to answer his letters, he had at length supposed that fortune had favoured them. But it had not been so. Had Annabel turned to him in the extremity of this unlucky accident? No, she had not. Hurt rose up, as sharp and bitter as when she had first rejected him.

“Well, that explains the locality,” said his brother musingly, recovering from his first astonishment. “I wonder if it was Howes who set her up at Steep Ride.”

“Who else?” said Hal bitingly. “Why the devil couldn’t the old curmudgeon have come down off his high ropes? If he’d only sent me word—”

He broke off, becoming aware of his batman’s steady regard. Useless to suppose that Weem had not already guessed the sum of it. But there was no need to bandy words in his presence that must necessarily wreck Annabel’s reputation.

“You’ve done well, Weem. I’ll want every last detail, mind, but that can wait.”

Dismissed, the batman withdrew, leaving Hal confronting the accusing eyes of his senior. He threw up a hand.

“You need not look like that, Ned! I did everything I could to make it right. I promise you, I have a stack of letters to prove it.”

“Returned unopened,” agreed Mr Colton. “I know. You told me. What you didn’t tell me—”

“I know. Devil take it, do you think I meant to do it?”

He crossed the parlour, as if he must avoid his brother’s gaze, and went to stare out of the window upon the unkempt lawns. Only a short time ago he had been agreeing with Ned upon the number of gardeners required to return them to a semblance of order. His godfather had been old and ailing for some time, and the place had been allowed to deteriorate. How little he now cared!

“It was at a ball that it happened,” he disclosed, without turning round. “We had not met since she broke off our betrothal. We quarrelled mightily. We were both too much empassioned to have any rationality left. Inevitable, I suppose. So much hot air.” He turned suddenly, the blue-grey eyes afire. “And she did love me, Ned. I swear she still loved me!”

“Then, perhaps,” agreed his brother meaningfully.

An obstruction lodged in Hal’s chest. “You need not say it. What woman could continue to love the man who ruined her?”

Mr Colton came across the room. He was not near as tall, nor as broad in the chest as his brother, and his hair was less vibrant, tending more to gold. But he had the advantage of him in both years and temperament. Hal’s tempestuous personality had ever been his undoing.

“You can’t be absolutely sure, Hal, that she was ruined.”

Hal’s tone was bleak. “Can’t I?”

“She is not precisely living in obscurity. Weem says there is some society there. Evidently she has acquired respectability.”

“Respectability!”

“It’s not lightly won, Hal. It is possible that Annabel did marry. Even if the child is yours, Annabel may have taken refuge under another’s name.”

“The devil she did!” Something clicked in the Captain’s brain. He slammed a fist into his open hand. “No. Annabel didn’t marry a man called Lett. There is no such man.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’ve remembered why it sounded familiar.” Grimness settled in his chest. “Lett was the maiden name of Annabel’s mother.”

His brother was silent for a moment. But Hal’s first shock was fading. Not for nothing was he a soldier. He was a captain, in command, given to swift decisions. What was needed now was not regret, but action. He stiffened his shoulders.

“What will you do?” asked Ned frowningly.

“Oh, I know what to do!”

His brother began to look alarmed. “Now, Hal—for the Lord’s sake, think before you act!”

“I’ve thought for three years. I’m done with thinking.”

“Oh, dear Lord! Hal!’

But Captain Colton was already on the move. Before he reached the door, his brother caught his arm. “Wait, Hal!”

He turned. Removing the hand that imprisoned him, he grasped it strongly. “Ned, I’m coming home with you, so you’ll have every opportunity to argue. But let me advise you not to waste your breath. You can say what you like, but you won’t change my mind.”

Mr Colton grinned. “You always were a headstrong devil.”

Hal’s smile was twisted. “So I may be. But in this case, Ned, there’s a matter of honour at stake. I have no choice.”

The kitchen bench and two of the dining chairs had been brought out and set under the shade of a great chestnut. It was situated just upon the boundary, but it obligingly spread its branches to encompass a good part of Annabel Lett’s garden. A circumstance that enabled her to receive her two visitors in a much pleasanter setting on a hot Saturday in early July than was to be had in the tiny formal parlour within the cottage.

The visitors occupied the chairs, while Annabel took the bench. She was dressed in a sprigged gown of a soft green lawn that brought out the colour of her eyes, although its cut and style were far from fashionable. Its modest neckline, round and plain, and its three-quarter sleeves, together with the frilly cap that covered much of Annabel’s dark hair, gave her an air of respectability.

It was a pose that Mrs Lett had cultivated with care and diligence. And if she had not entirely succeeded in subduing the restless spirit that lurked deep within—which now and then broke out, to her regret, in hasty words—she flattered herself that she had fooled most of her acquaintances in their reading of her character.

But the two ladies present were such particular friends that Annabel felt able to relax her strict guard. She would not have hesitated to entertain them in the larger family room, where Rebecca was permitted to run wild and all was generally at sixes and sevens. But this arrangement allowed little Becky to dash about the garden under her mother’s eye, leaving Janet free to pursue her numerous chores.

Which was as well, for Annabel thought her visitors would have burst with frustration if they had felt themselves obliged to hold their tongues in the presence of the maid. The subject under discussion was far too interesting. Especially since it concerned the man most people had settled upon as having done away with the dissolute Marquis of Sywell up at the Abbey.

“Can it be true, do you think?” asked Charlotte Filmer.

Jane Emerson, a slim brunette with little countenance except a pair of soft brown eyes, gave her characteristic gurgling laugh.

“I should think it all too likely, Mrs Filmer. Have we not all been puzzled as to why Solomon Burneck should have remained loyal to that wretched man? Nothing could more surely explain it than if he had indeed been Sywell’s own son. Don’t you think so, Annabel?”

“Yes, if only it had come out before the Marquis was murdered,” agreed Annabel, accepting with a word of thanks the pebble pressed into her palm by her daughter, who ran off again to find another. “To put it about only when Burneck himself has fallen under suspicion seems to me in itself suspicious.”

“Very true,” agreed Charlotte, and a little shudder ran through her. “I have always found him sinister.”

Mrs Filmer was a gentle female, a great many years Annabel’s senior, but they shared a common bond in the isolation of an existence without the support of a husband. Charlotte’s daughter was grown up now, and had last season gone to London as companion to the Tenison chit—a piece of good fortune for which Mrs Filmer was still thanking Providence.

“Oh, I am perfectly happy to have Solomon for the villain,” said Jane merrily. “Why, he looks a very devil, with that hooked nose, and his horrid black clothes. Thin lips are a sign of meanness, you know, and he has the horridest eyes of anyone I’ve ever met. Set so narrow and close.”