It Takes Two to Tumble Page 3
“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded of the men.
“I caught these two poaching,” said one of the men in a broad local accent. “And they said they live here. Liars as well as thieves, I s’pose.”
“They’re Captain Dacre’s children,” Ben gritted out, leaving off the implied you idiot. “Not poachers. And you may let them go.”
“Then what were they doing with this?” The man held up a snare.
“We were getting our dog out of it, you stupid lout!” cried Peggy, who evidently had none of Ben’s reservations about calling a spade a spade. “And now Jack’s had to walk this whole way on a bleeding leg. If he falls ill I’ll take a knife to your leg and I’ll like it, you shovel-faced horse’s arse.”
There was a moment of stunned quiet that was only interrupted by the injured dog’s enthusiastic bark, as if agreeing with his mistress.
“You’re saying this young, ah, lady is Captain Dacre’s daughter,” said the other man, who had thus far been silent. At the sound of this well-bred, sarcastic voice, very much out of place in this tableau, Ben looked more carefully at the man’s face, and felt his heart sink.
“Mart—Sir Martin,” Ben said. “I’m afraid I didn’t recognize you.” Ben hadn’t seen Martin Easterbrook in five or six years, when Martin had been a boy of fifteen and Ben had been hardly twenty. That had been before Martin’s father died, leaving no inheritance except encumbered properties and outrageous debts. Old Sir Humphrey had spent lavishly during his lifetime, including arranging the Sedgwick children’s school fees and Ben’s living. Ben might have felt bad for the fellow, if he hadn’t spent the months since attaining his majority trying to make his tenants pay for his father’s excesses. Indeed, the church poor fund was stretched to its limits due to his efforts to wring everything he could out of his estate.
“I ought to have known that you’d be mixed up in this,” Easterbrook spat, with much more venom than Ben thought he had ever merited in his life. “Where there’s rank thievery, you don’t have to look far to find a Sedgwick.”
Ben opened his mouth to ask what Easterbrook could possibly mean by that, but he was interrupted by a loud, clear voice.
“Take your hands off my children.” The captain stood on the stairs that led up to the front door. “I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing, but you’ll remove yourselves from my property and you will do it with alacrity.”
Ben wasn’t surprised that Easterbrook’s henchman immediately complied with Dacre’s command. When a man like Captain Dacre laced his voice with that touch of iron, it took a strong man to resist doing as he was told.
“I’ll believe they weren’t poaching this time,” Easterbrook said. “But tell your brats to keep away from Lindley Priory.”
The captain didn’t answer, only lifting his eyebrows and making an impatient shooing gesture with one hand.
As the two men retreated down the drive, Ben knelt beside the twins. “Are you both all right?”
“Of course we are,” Jamie answered. He cradled the injured dog in his arms as Peggy wound a handkerchief around the animal’s leg. “But Jack ran off and we chased after him and when we found him he was caught in that awful trap.” Jack, the result of a hound’s liaison with a rat terrier, was small, fast, and lamentably fond of exploration. He and the twins were thick as thieves.
By then the door had filled with servants. “If he doesn’t want traps set out all over his wood, he might want to stop starving his tenants out of house and home,” grumbled one of them. Ben was inclined to agree.
“Let me look at that wound before you wrap it up,” Ben said. He pulled back the corner of the handkerchief and saw a relatively clean cut on the dog’s hind leg. “Go see Cook for some salve,” he suggested. “Then put him to bed with you in the nursery.” That, at least, would ensure that the children spent the night in their beds rather than heaven knew where. He watched the twins carry the dog into the house.
“As for the rest of you,” the captain said in that clear, commanding tone that brooked no disobedience, “be gone.”
Just those two words and the dooryard cleared out. It was utterly empty except for Ben and the captain. Ben stepped towards the house as if he could slip away from the captain’s notice.
“Not you,” the captain said in a clipped tone. “You stay.”
Ben stayed. Even if he had wanted to, he didn’t know how to resist.
“I take it this is your idea of how to manage children?” Dacre asked in about as chilly a voice as Ben had ever heard.
“They didn’t do anything wrong,” he said mildly. He had nearly let his temper get the better of him earlier, but now he was determined to do right by the Dacre children, which meant helping their father. “I’m afraid I can’t say the same for Easterbrook.”
“Be that as it may, if there are villains living next door, I do expect my children to stay far away from them.” The captain’s voice managed to achieve another layer of frost across the top. Ben held back a sigh. He wasn’t the kind of person who inspired overt rudeness or provoked much in the way of anger; he was affable, good-natured, kind. Those qualities were very much his stock in trade. And he couldn’t help but be a little hurt that the captain seemed intent to make an enemy of him.
But as he watched, the anger and stiffness drained from Captain Dacre’s face, and Ben remembered that he was a man who had been away at war, lost a wife, and returned to a home that must seem alien. Earlier today, Ben had seen that Dacre was handsome, but Ben could ignore beauty. Now, lit only by the setting sun, Dacre was warm and human and a little bit sad. Ben wanted to reach out to him. Instead he clasped his hands behind his back so he wouldn’t be tempted.
“There was a dormouse in my pocket,” the captain said at length. “And salt in my sugar bowl. I don’t know how they’re managing it.”
Ben felt something inside him sag with relief that they were now conversing like two ordinary people. He could manage conversation. He did not know how to manage the other thing, the heat in his stomach that straddled anger and something else. “Oh, that is naughty. The cook won’t like that.”
“I think she’s in on it.” Dacre sighed. “I went down to the kitchen myself to give orders for the children not to be brought supper, and she said I could give all the orders I wanted but the devil takes care of his own.”
Ben bit back a laugh. “I believe that what they’re doing is called guerilla warfare. You’ll never catch them at it. I’m afraid they’re giving you the same treatment they gave their tutors. I’d definitely check my sheets before getting in bed, if I were you,” he advised. “Oh, and shake out your linens before dressing. Spiders in the clothes press.” Ben feared his playful tone was quite wasted on Dacre. “Look,” he said seriously. “Everyone in the house and the village wants your children to keep out of mischief.” On any given Sunday, Ben reckoned half the prayers offered up in St. Aelred’s were for the Dacre children to stop wreaking havoc. “But if you make yourself even more disagreeable than your children, they’ll pick the devil they know.”
“Disagreeable!” Dacre turned to face Ben fully, his arms once again folded across his chest. “All I’m trying to do is make my children understand that they must behave for their tutors or schoolmasters. That’s the bare minimum of what’s required of me as their only parent.”
“You do seem determined to be disagreeable,” Ben said, resolutely mild.
“What would you have me do? Let them run wild?”
“Not precisely. Right now what they need is . . .” How to put it so he didn’t sound like a sapskull? There were things he could easily say to women and the elderly but which made him feel self-conscious when talking to a man like Dacre. “Love. Affection.” The words came out foreign and stupid, syllables no more meaningful than the bleating of sheep. “They’ve been alone for too long with nobody but one another and I think they’ve forgotten what it’s like for someone else to have their best interests at heart. I agree wi
th you that they’ve been shameless little miscreants, but—”
“There isn’t any but, Mr. Sedgwick. Children need to learn discipline. It’s the only way they can survive in the world. It’s the only way anyone can survive, unless they have someone running before them, smoothing their paths.” He paused, as if daring Ben to contradict him. “Believe me,” he added in a lower, sadder tone. “I know.”
A cloud must have drifted away from the setting sun, because suddenly Captain Dacre’s eyes were lit by a shaft of sunlight. “Oh!” Ben said. “Your eyes are blue. I hadn’t noticed earlier.”
“Excuse me?” The captain was plainly disconcerted. Well, that was fine because so was Ben. He had never remarked on another man’s eyes before in his life, nor had he planned to, and the fact that the observation slipped out of his mouth without his mind giving leave was somewhat troubling.
“They’re black in your portrait,” Ben said, as if academic attention to detail would somehow save the situation from awkwardness. But there was no escaping the fact: Captain Dacre’s eyes were a pretty blue, and Ben rather wished they weren’t.
He stammered out a barely civil good night, thinking he ought to make an exit before his thoughts proceeded further in a dangerous direction.
Chapter Four
The next day brought Ben a pair of letters. One had been hand delivered from Lindley Priory. It wasn’t from Sir Martin Easterbrook himself; Ben had never merited direct communication with Easterbrook, but after last night he was probably lucky to have this missive from Easterbrook’s man of business. The contents were simple: there was no money for a village school, no money to fix the church roof, no money for the widows’ fund. Ben gathered that after yesterday’s encounter, there might never again be money for any project of Ben’s.
He sighed and threw the crumpled letter into the breakfast room grate.
“It’s June,” said a voice from the door. “There’s no fire. If you’re in the habit of receiving the sort of correspondence that requires burning, you’ll have to do better than that.”
Ben watched in dismay as the captain pulled out a seat at the breakfast table. He had been looking forward to a peaceful breakfast, the children being busy mucking out the stables under the watchful eye of the head groom. “I don’t require my correspondence to be burnt,” Ben protested. “I was upset with it. So I crumpled it up and threw it.” He mimed a throwing gesture, and then felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment.
The captain blinked. “I see.”
Ben could feel the man’s chilly gaze on him. With fumbling fingers, he tore open the other letter, which was from Will, one of his younger brothers. He could barely manage to read it, knowing the captain was watching him intently.
Will had been lurking at the back of his mind these past two days. Years ago, for lack of any better prospects in the world, Will had joined the navy. He had been assigned to a ship with a brutal captain and had narrowly escaped a court martial. Ben didn’t know the details; Will was exceedingly cagey about everything and Ben, out of a possibly misguided attempt to respect Will’s privacy, hadn’t read the official reports. Now Will scraped together a living in London somehow.
“Your correspondence stinks of gin,” the captain pointed out. The infernal man didn’t even have the decency to read a paper during breakfast. Instead he was watching Ben as if Ben were performing in a music hall.
Unfortunately the letter did indeed smell of gin, which could mean that Will was drinking heavily, or could mean that his bedmate was drinking heavily, or could simply mean that the innkeeper at the place where he left his letters had a moment of clumsiness. With Will, one never knew, and one would never find out.
“My correspondent is a testament to the corruptive influence of the navy,” Ben said with as much dignity as he could muster.
The captain chewed a piece of toast. When he swallowed his throat worked in a horribly distracting way. “So now you’re receiving corrupt correspondence. Busy morning, parson.”
“No! I—” Ben shook his head, his face flaming. “Oh, never mind.”
When Ben met the captain, he had thought of Will, had considered the violence of his captain and the way a sweet, absentminded boy had been turned into a jumpy, nervous man who kept his back to the wall and sent incoherent letters that stank of gin. Ben’s instinct had been to do whatever it took to keep that fate from befalling any of the Dacre children.
But now he heard Captain Dacre’s words about discipline and responsibility echoing in his ears. Because what had happened to Will wasn’t entirely the fault of the navy. Some of the blame rightly belonged to their father, who hadn’t raised them so much as turned them loose. The Sedgwick children had been allowed to run wild—or free, as Ben’s father would have put it. All of them had been woefully ill-equipped for any of the usual professions, as Alton Sedgwick’s mind was fit for loftier matters than arranging for his children’s futures. That burden had fallen to his practical, eldest son, and Ben generally feared he had made a hash of the whole thing.
Thus, he had to concede that there might be some merit to Captain Dacre’s insistence on discipline and order. The captain’s methods were rubbish, but his goals weren’t so bad, and if Ben could help him instill order in less muttonheaded ways, then he had to think it was his duty.
He was glad to find a thread of duty in the strange tangle his thoughts had knotted themselves into. It was nothing less than relief to find that and cling to it, a relief to know that no matter how unclear his feelings, at least he could resolve on the correct course of action.
That evening, after ensuring that the children were tucked into bed with the convalescent dog, Ben slipped out the garden door and made for the village. The sun had set, but with the full moon reflecting off the lake, Ben could make his way plainly to the Crawfords’ house.
He found them all in the drawing room, arranged the way they always were: Mr. Crawford in the wing chair by the fire, Alice propped up on the sofa, and Mrs. Crawford between them so as to easily refill both their teacups. When Ben walked into the room, all three faces turned gladly towards him and he heard three sets of happy greetings.
From the first time he had set foot in the Crawfords’ parlor, dirty and gangly, with uncombed hair and frayed shirt cuffs, he had made it his life’s ambition to have a home as comfortable and safe and normal as theirs, and to do everything in his power to make sure his brothers had the same. A place where food appeared on the table at predictable intervals and regularly paid servants laid fires in the hearth. A home where he had his own bed and well-stocked cupboards. It was, he thought, not too much to ask. The Crawfords seemed to agree.
“You’re alive!” Alice called, her face bright with a smile.
“Cook made your favorite biscuits,” Mrs. Crawford said, handing him a plate.
“Haven’t heard a peep from those hellions since you went there,” Mr. Crawford mumbled sleepily, his eyes barely open. “Job well done, my lad.” With that easy praise, Ben swelled with pride. He had long since stopped resenting the man for insisting that he go to Barton Hall, but now any lingering unease from their last conversation was swept into a hidden corner of Ben’s mind.
Ben pulled a chair in between Alice and her mother, drank good strong tea prepared precisely the way he liked it, and ate the lemon biscuits that were indeed his favorite. It was comfortable here. He belonged.
“We had word Mr. Farleigh is still doing poorly,” Alice said, looking at Ben with concern.
Old Mr. Farleigh was doing poorly indeed, and was all too likely to continue to do even more poorly still, right up until the moment he died. He was old, he was sick, and, well, everyone died in the end. It was only a question of time, and Mr. Farleigh had rather less than Ben might have liked.
“I sat with him and Mrs. Farleigh for a bit this morning,” Ben said. The Dacre children had fed scraps of stale bread to a gaggle of half-feral hens they had found in one of the Farleighs’ disused outbuildings, and the sounds of laughter an
d squawking had been louder than the prayer Ben whispered.
He knew that he didn’t need to tell Alice anything as commonplace as the fact that he didn’t want Mr. Farleigh to die. It was a small village, and people didn’t tend to come or go except through birth and death; he had lived in this corner of the world for long enough that nearly everyone he buried was someone he knew, someone whose presence he would miss. He glanced at Alice and lifted one shoulder in a minute, helpless shrug. She raised a corner of her mouth in sympathy. That was all she had to do. This was friendship, and he was grateful for it.
At least, some small and vicious part of him whispered, it won’t be Alice. God, he had thought it would be, for an endless succession of hours that spring. He had thought, I will bury her; I will bury my best friend.
The Crawfords were his second family, had been from the time Ben realized his own family was decidedly inadequate, and what was worse, not normal. The Crawfords had been fantastically normal: there was a sensible number of parents (two), a reasonable number of children (one), and, best of all, the desired number of those artistic hangers-on who seemed to colonize his father’s home (zero). The Crawfords were solid and predictable and they had folded Ben into their family as if he belonged. Ben had craved regularity, and the Crawfords had regularity to spare.
It had been only natural and normal that he and Alice should marry. Of course they would. Alice was beautiful and kind; Ben was hardworking and had a modest living at St. Aelred’s. It all made sense. Coming here tonight and seeing the friendly faces of people who loved him ought to feel warm and cozy after his hostile encounters with the captain. It ought to feel like stepping before a blazing fire after being out in the cold.
Why didn’t it, then?
“What’s that look for?” Alice asked him.
Ben realized he must have let some of his thoughts show on his face. “I think that after two weeks with the young Dacres, I hardly know how to conduct myself in civilized company. I’m waiting for turnips to be launched at me. Honestly, Alice, I’m a little hurt that you didn’t greet me with a volley of French profanity and by setting something on fire.”