Surrender to Sin Page 14

  She ran up the stairs to see Paggles. There was no clock in the nursery, but, as Abigail was accustomed to having her mid-afternoon tea at the same time each day, she felt she could gauge when she might safely go back down again and not risk being alone with her “guests.”

  Polly came up with Paggles’s tea a short time later.

  “The master do be looking for you, Miss,” she said, surprised to see Abigail.

  “The master,” Abigail repeated. “You mean Mr. Wayborn?” She picked up her book, kissed Paggles’s pleated cheek, and ran downstairs. As she closed the door that blended into the hall wall, Cary Wayborn stepped out of her room. They confronted each other at almost the exact spot where he had kissed her that morning.

  “What were you doing in my room?” she demanded angrily.

  “Looking for you, Cousin,” he replied so cheerfully she almost felt ashamed of her bad temper. “Have a look at this,” he added, pulling a miniature in an oval frame from his pocket. “Found it in the Dower House. Could this be our missing Catherine, do you think?”

  Abigail took it from him, but was obliged to go into her room and stand at the window to see it properly, and he followed her. “Sophia, Electress of Hanover,” she said, handing it back to him. “When you do find Catherine of Aragon, there will be no shoulders on display, I promise. That wasn’t here before,” she added suddenly, noticing a little silver-gilt clock on the mantel.

  “No, I brought it from the Dower House for you. You needn’t thank me.”

  Abigail frowned. “I wasn’t going to,” she said. “I was going to ask you to stay out of my room. Just because we are cousins—sort of—doesn’t mean you can run tame in my room.”

  “And I might ask you not to leave people lying about my house like discards,” he retorted. “Your guests downstairs seem to think you’re coming back. Shall I tell them you are hiding with your old nurse until they take themselves off? Does Paggles know her young lady is in the habit of leaving her guests unattended?”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” Abigail said untruthfully. “I’ve been looking for the book I promised to show Mr. Temple.”

  He snatched the volume from her, then sat on the windowsill and opened it. “The Blake?” he said incredulously. “You bought it? You don’t even like Blake,” he complained. “You’re not allowed to buy things you don’t like.”

  “As I explained to Mr. Temple,” she said primly, “sometimes I make a purchase, not for pleasure, but as an investment. I don’t like Mr. Blake, but other people do. In a few years, it may be possible for me to sell it at a handsome profit.”

  He stared at her. “Sell it? At a profit? That’s downright cold-blooded. If Mr. Blake were here, he’d fling you out the window for talking such rot. The man don’t pour his heart and soul into his art so that you can turn a profit, madam!”

  “I daresay Mr. Blake is glad of the money I paid for his work!”

  “Are you always so mercenary?”

  “I am practical,” she said indignantly. “There’s nothing wrong with being practical.”

  “How very odd,” he said quietly, returning her book to her. “In general I feel a keen animosity for people like you. There are some remarkably practical people downstairs, as a matter of fact, whom I dislike rather a lot. Shall we join them?”

  Abigail was puzzled. No one she had left downstairs seemed to meet the description. “To whom do you refer?” she asked, as they began making their way down to the first floor.

  “Why, to your devoted admirers, of course. Hector Mickleby, Mr. Buttocks, and even poor Mr. Pimple. In your absence they have been fighting over you like a gang of thieves; more so since you cannot be equally divided among them. Miss Rhoda is quite put out.”

  “You needn’t mock me,” she said angrily. “Mr. Maddox is devoted to Miss Mickleby, Hector is a menace, and Mr. Temple only stopped by to see my rare combined volume.”

  Cary burst out laughing. “I’ll bet you my head that Mr. Pimple asks you whether or no the paper of your rare combined volume comes from your father’s mill!”

  Abigail gasped. “Are you saying Mr. Pim—Mr. Temple is a fortune hunter?”

  “Well, he ain’t a paper mill hunter!”

  “Mr. Temple is a curate,” she protested.

  “I can see how that might add to a young man’s desperation,” he replied. “Poor Mr. Pimple—he’d marry anybody, and for considerably less than your ten thousand pounds.”

  “Thank you very much,” Abigail said tartly, outstripping him to the end of the hall.

  To her relief, Mrs. Spurgeon, golden turban in place, was in possession of the teapot. More chairs had been brought into the room, and Abigail slipped quietly into hers. Rhoda instantly attempted to enlist Mr. Wayborn in her cause. “I don’t see the harm,” she cried passionately, “if Miss Smith will go down with Hector, Mama couldn’t possibly object if I go down with Mr. Maddox. Or I might go down with you, sir,” she added treacherously.

  “I say!” Mr. Maddox protested.

  “My dear Rhoda,” Cary said lightly, “while I regard you almost as an infant relation, I am not, in fact, your relative. It would be unthinkable for me to go down the Cascades with you on a platter. Nor should you go with Mr. Maddox. As for Miss Smith going down with Hector—frankly, Abigail, I am astonished you would even consider such a sad breach of conduct. You are becoming an unmanageable hoyden. I shall have to write to Sir William and tell him so.”

  “What?” said Abigail, infuriated. “I never! I didn’t.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” said Cary. “It would be exceedingly improper.”

  “But Hector says he won’t take me, Mr. Wayborn!” cried the unfortunate Rhoda.

  “I won’t,” her heartless brother confirmed.

  “My advice to you, young Rhoda,” said Cary, “if that is your real name, is that you find yourself a cousin. Then you will never walk alone. Abigail and I are nearly inseparable, and yet our intimacy is entirely above reproach, because we are cousins. Why, I am in and out of her room ten times a day.”

  Abigail glared at him helplessly.

  “I knew it,” said Hector, bitterly. “No one else has a chance.”

  “I have got a cousin,” said Rhoda, artless in her resentment. “But he isn’t handsome like you, Mr. Wayborn. I wouldn’t be caught dead on a platter with him.”

  “Is this the rare combined volume you promised to show me, Miss Smith?” Mr. Temple interrupted quietly, drawing his chair a little closer to hers.

  “Yes, of course.” Once again Abigail was grateful to the curate, and of all the gentlemen present, she decided she liked him the best. He gave her such a calm, quiet feeling. There was never any confusion of emotions with him. He was really quite safe and confidential.

  “Such lovely paper,” he murmured in his soothing voice as he turned the pages. “I daresay it comes from your father’s mill?”

  Abigail did not dare look at Cary. She knew the gray eyes would be laughing at her.

  Discreet for once, Cary made no comment, but turned instead to Mrs. Spurgeon. “You don’t mind, do you, Mrs. Spurgeon, if I house a few objets from the Dower House in the banqueting hall here? You’re not planning any large parties, are you?”

  She purred at him. “Of course you may put your objets anywhere you like.”

  “What sort of objets?” Abigail couldn’t resist asking Cary.

  He turned to her, pleased. “I was hoping you’d be interested, Cousin. The truth is, I need your help. There’s an awful lot of stuff in that house. Trash, mainly, I fear. And, of course, the house itself will have to be pulled down.”

  Abigail was startled. “But surely you mean to rebuild?” she cried.

  He shook his head. “What do I need a dower house for? My children will just have to refrain from turning their mama out of doors the moment I am dead. To be perfectly honest, the place is a nuisance. No one wants to rent it; it can’t be sold unless I sell some land with it too, which idea I hate. It sits in the middle of
my estate gathering dust and no money. I’m glad a tree fell on it. I only hope to find one or two things worth selling amid the rubble. That’s where you come in, Cousin. You know all about old things.”

  She looked at him, wanting to say no, but knowing that she wouldn’t. She absolutely adored looking through lots of old things in the hopes of finding a real treasure.

  “You will help me, won’t you?” he said, employing the power of a direct appeal.

  Abigail bit her lower lip. “If you really don’t mean to rebuild, I suppose you might sell it off bit by bit. I’d say you might fetch as much as eight hundred pounds, depending on how much can be salvaged.”

  “But you haven’t even seen the stuff,” Cary said, puzzled. “Are you clairvoyant? Most of it’s trash, I’m telling you.”

  “No, I mean the house itself,” Abigail explained. “The doors and the fireplaces and so forth. The bricks, the stones, the paneling, the roofing slates. All that sort of thing.”

  “Are you actually proposing that I sell my bricks? To whom, may I ask?”

  “To builders, of course,” said Abigail. “Don’t you know the housing market in London is exploding? The brickyards and the stone-cutters simply can’t keep up. When we did our house in Kensington, we got almost all our stone shipped to us from Ireland, from houses they’d pulled down over there, and it was still more economical than having new stone cut—not to mention quicker. I can put you on to our builder in London, if you like.”

  “You’re quite serious?” said Cary. “Someone will buy my old slates and my bricks?”

  “And your windows, if the tree left any intact. I’m telling you, they can’t put houses up fast enough for London. The population is going to double in the next ten years.”

  “I wish I had an old house I could pull down,” Hector muttered fervently.

  “Don’t you dare pull down Gooseneck Hall!” cried Rhoda.

  “Why, that rascal Osborne,” Cary cried indignantly. “I bet he knows all about the game. Small wonder he offered to pull it down for a pittance—he means to sell it off, doorknob by doorknob, to the highest bidder. Excuse me, ladies,” he said, getting to his feet. “I have some urgent business to attend to.”

  He paused on his way out, and returned suddenly to where Abigail was seated. “You,” he said warmly, “are worth your weight in gold.” He kissed her softly on the forehead.

  Hector groaned and rolled his eyes.

  Abigail flushed with pleasure, quite forgetting that Cary had ever done anything to annoy her, and quite forgetting that Mr. Temple was her favorite.

  The first of the salvaged furnishings from the Dower House began to arrive at Tanglewood the next morning after breakfast. Right away, Abigail spotted a pair of Famille Rose jars. Sadly, one was cracked, but it was enough to make her put off her own plan to paint that afternoon, and instead she directed the rest of the deliveries. There were oil paintings and hip baths, garden implements and chairs, mirrors, and curtains, all jumbled together in interesting confusion. Vera Nashe looked into the room once or twice while Abigail was sorting, but was forced to withdraw each time by fits of sneezing. Abigail worked quietly and efficiently all afternoon, grouping smaller objects on the huge sixteenth-century banquet table of blackened oak, and making careful lists. Cary himself did not put in an appearance until late afternoon. Abigail pounced on him instantly, showing him a crate in which a jumble of kitchen crockery had been thrown with very little packing straw. “Look! Half of it’s broken,” she complained. “These things must be packed with greater care if they are to be sold.”

  Cary was unaffected. “It can’t be worth much,” he said, poking through the bits with a contemptuous finger. “It’s only brown crockery.”

  “You might have sold this slipware jug for ten pounds,” she said fiercely. “If the handle hadn’t broken off. It all adds up, you know.”

  “What, this hideously ugly thing? Who’d buy it?”

  “Some people collect early English pottery,” Abigail explained. “In good condition, a jug like that can be quite valuable because, you see, most of them have had their handles broken off.”

  “And the furniture? Worth anything?”

  Abigail was doubtful. “It seems to be mainly Restoration era, which is not exactly in fashion at the moment.”

  “Worthless then. I suspected as much.”

  “No, not worthless,” she said. “But you wouldn’t be able to sell it in London. You might try to sell it in a local auction. People do need tables and chairs, whatever the fashion. But I should advise you to store it. If it ever comes into vogue again, it might be worth quite a bit.”

  “The thing is,” he said awkwardly, “I need money rather quickly. There’s the new fencing, and I promised the tenants I’d put staircases in all their cottages, and then there’s this drafty old pile, and I haven’t yet paid for the improvements I made to the stables. How’s it going to look if I don’t put staircases in all the cottages, after making over the stables? They’ll say I treat my horses better than my people.”

  “But you should get eight hundred pounds from the salvage of the Dower House,” Abigail pointed out. “Possibly as much as a thousand.”

  “Osborne agreed to pay me five hundred; he’s going to haul it all away and sell it.”

  “Mr. Wayborn! It’s worth much more than that.”

  “I think I did well,” he argued. “I need the money quicker, and I can’t be bothered selling bricks and roofing slates. I’m a gentleman, after all. Besides, Osborne was expecting to sell the stuff. I couldn’t very well cheat him.”

  “He was going to cheat you,” Abigail pointed out. “He was going to make you pay to haul it away, and then sell it at a tidy profit.”

  “Well, I’m not vindictive,” said Cary. “And it’s worth something to me for him to haul it away and see to the business end of things. I wouldn’t know how to sell a brick.”

  Abigail shook her head. “Is it worth three hundred pounds to you, sir?”

  “Well, yes,” he said carelessly, “I suppose it must be. But I shall have five hundred pounds in hand by the end of the week, and that’s the material thing.”

  “Will that cover all your debts?” Abigail asked curiously.

  “Lord, no,” he answered, with a laugh. “I should be ashamed if a mere five hundred pounds could cover my debts. No, I live on a much grander scale than that, Cousin. But it should be enough to cover my debts in Hertfordshire, and that is all I care about.”

  “Not your London debts?” she murmured in dismay.

  “You’re not worried about that bloody Red Ritchie fellow, are you?” he asked, smiling. “I say, that’s rather good, isn’t it? Bloody Red Ritchie.”

  To her own surprise, Abigail was not angered by the insult to her father. Chiefly she was distressed by Cary’s cavalier attitude. “He has threatened to put you in debtor’s prison,” she reminded him.

  “I’ll settle bloody Red Ritchie, you’ll see,” he said.

  “What do you mean? Will you pay him?”

  “Not a penny.” His smile flickered, and his voiced became low and caressing. “Are you worried about me, Cousin?”

  “Certainly not,” she said as convincingly as she could. He reached for her, but this time she was ready for him. “Don’t you dare kiss me!” she said, putting her hand up between his mouth and her own.

  He seemed surprised. “Kiss you? What on earth made you think I was going to kiss you? I gave you my word I wouldn’t, and I always keep my word.”

  Abigail pulled together the pieces of her shattered dignity. “I see,” she said coldly. “That promise is in effect now, is it? Because I seem to recall a time when it was not.”

  “It’s most definitely in effect now,” he assured her. “My lips will never again touch yours. You have my word. However, I am not constrained from brushing cobwebs from your shoulder.”

  To her consternation, he did so, then proceeded to brush them from her skirts as well. “It’s no good,” h
e said, after a moment. “Go upstairs and change. I’ve invited someone to tea, and I want you looking presentable.”

  “Is it time for tea already?” said Abigail, suddenly aware of the little headache she always felt when she was late getting her tea.

  “Yes. You need a clock in here. Or would you like to borrow my pocket watch?”

  “That reminds me,” she said suddenly. “I found a box full of old clock keys. Perhaps one of them will fit the standing clock in the hall. I’ll try them after tea, shall I?”

  He propelled her towards the door. “And, for heaven’s sake, change out of those noisy boots,” he commanded her. “You sound like the infantry on the march. You had a pair of slippers last night at dinner. Can’t you wear them?”

  “I shall have to borrow—” Abigail began without thinking.

  “Borrow what?” he demanded.

  “I shall need to go to the village,” she said quickly.

  “Are you trying to be mysterious?” he said crossly. “Girls with freckles shouldn’t try to be mysterious, you know. Out with it. What would you like to borrow? If it’s mine to give, you shall have it.”

  Abigail giggled. “I doubt you have any lady’s stockings, sir!”

  “Stockings?”

  “I must have forgotten to pack mine,” Abigail hurriedly explained.

  “Can’t you borrow from Mrs. Nashe?”

  “I did,” she said ruefully. “But then I tore great ladders in them. I can’t ask her for another pair. They’re rather expensive.”

  To her surprise, Cary seemed to be giving the matter serious thought. If he was at all embarrassed by the nature of her problem he showed no sign of it. “I’ve got some hosiery, of course, but I shall have to ask my man where he keeps it.”