Chapter 35

35

A few minutes later, Rafe reappeared with two of the footmen, and a gardener pushing a large wheelbarrow. Sophie was not astonished to see Lady Wyverne following them, in a state of some dishevelment, as though she had not finished dressing when the shocking news of her husband’s collapse had reached her. As she hovered around the footmen, utterly ignoring Rafe and Sophie and berating the young men shrilly for carelessness, Lord Wyverne, groaning, was loaded into the wheelbarrow. It was surely the most undignified form of transport he had ever experienced in his life, but there was no alternative, and at last the strange little procession headed down the hill towards the house. The Marquess showed no signs of fully regaining his senses.

Kemp was waiting at the foot of the steps, and supervised William and James as they carried their master up into the house. ‘I will make sure they dispose His Lordship suitably in his bedchamber,’ he told Rafe, his face perfectly expressionless. ‘The doctor has been sent for, my lord.’

‘Thank you, Kemp.’ They were like a pair of automata, and Sophie could barely wait for the cortege to make its stately way up the stairs to hiss urgently, ‘What if he comes to his senses and tells anyone – tells her? You could still be in danger if he reveals that you had any part in the theft.’

‘ We could be in danger, you mean. I’ll face him down, Sophie, and I am not anxious about the outcome, but I think you should temporarily rid yourself of the Stella as soon as possible, hide it somewhere secure. I intend to say, if Wyverne tries to implicate us, that he is delirious and talking nonsense. He’s suffered a blow to the head, that much is plain. Who but he would believe I had anything to do with robbing him? It’s a crazy idea. And everyone knows he is obsessed beyond all reason with the theft; I’ll imply it’s turned his brain.’

‘I hope you’re right, and yes, I’ll do that now,’ she said. ‘Better the doctor does not set eyes on me. I’ll go and see your grandmother afterwards, tell her what’s happened.’

‘The truth?’

‘I don’t see why not. The jewels are gone now. I’ll ask her if she wants to know, and tell her everything if she says she does. It’s her affair too, after all.’

‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, regarding her with a dark, steady gaze. ‘Thank you for staying, my dear.’

‘It’s not the time to talk about it, Rafe, and you know I will have to go soon enough. But I’ll be here tonight. I promise I won’t leave you without saying goodbye.’

Lord Drake nodded silently and went to wait in the library, and Sophie made her way slowly upstairs to the Dowager’s chamber. She found the old lady sitting alone, gazing into space, and the expression on Sophie’s face must have alerted her to the fact that something extraordinary had occurred, for she said, ‘ Enfin ! I perceive matters have come to a point, and I need no longer pretend that everything is as usual. Tell me, child, quickly, what has occurred. Is my grandson safe and unharmed?’

‘He is,’ Sophie told her quickly. ‘There is no need to be the least concerned for him. Lord Wyverne is unwell – has fallen – but the doctor has been sent for. I don’t believe it can be anything terribly serious, but I do not know for a certainty.’

‘Fallen?’ repeated Delphine sceptically. ‘I insist that you tell me everything.’

‘You’re quite sure you want to know? If your son should ask you…’

The old lady made a rude noise. ‘I’ve been lying to men for more than eighty years; I should be reasonably proficient at it by now. Everything!’

So Sophie told her – the meeting with Nate, the handover of the jewels, Lord Wyverne’s sudden appearance and their confrontation with him, Fred’s attack on him. Everything. When she was done, the Dowager murmured, ‘My God, Nathaniel Smith – I never thought to hear that name again. You know him well, I collect?’

‘He saved me,’ Sophie said. ‘When I was at my lowest ebb, after my mother and my brother died and I could see only one way to keep myself alive, he rescued me from making that choice, or a worse one. He didn’t do it out of compassion, or at any rate compassion was only a small part of it – he thought I could be of use to him. And I have been. But I must still be grateful for what he did. I hate to think where I would be if he hadn’t come to see me. Dead, in all likelihood.’

‘My dear child, then I can only be very glad he did. Do you think the whole scheme of using you against Wyverne sprang fully formed into his mind when he first met you and realised who you were and what had been taken from you?’

‘I have been wondering that. It’s possible. But that was eight years ago – it’s a long time to wait for a plan to mature.’

‘Not if you’ve already waited more than half a lifetime for revenge, I suppose. And Wyverne was excessively cruel to him when Nathaniel was a boy. Tormented him, really. I can’t say he doesn’t deserve what’s happened to him.’

‘You knew the identities of your husband’s natural children?’ Sophie asked hesitantly, remembering that Rafe had said there were many of them.

‘It was impossible not to know. He flaunted them in my face, in this very house. It was very hurtful at first, when I came here as a bride, before I hardened my heart against him and decided that I could also amuse myself. What is the expression in English about the goose and the gander? It is the same in French: sauce bonne pour l’oie, est bonne pour le jars . But all that is ancient history. How distressed I was to know him constantly unfaithful, long ago, and how little it matters now! And Nathaniel was always the cleverest of his brats, and the one he was closest to as a result, which is no doubt why my son loathed him so much. I’m not surprised that he has made a success of his life, albeit in a rather unorthodox manner.’ She fixed Sophie with a beady eye, and said, ‘Rafael is nothing like that, you know. Nothing like his father, and nothing like his grandfather. If that is a worry for you, you may dismiss it from your mind. You will say I am partial, and no doubt I am, but nonetheless what I say is true. He is very far from being a rake. The woman who marries him will not suffer as I suffered, nor will his children, for that matter.’

Sophie said in a constricted voice, ‘His friends must be glad to know it. But it’s no concern of mine.’

‘My dear child!’ said the old lady, laughing. ‘I may be old, but I still have eyes!’

‘Perhaps I’m a female rake,’ Sophie persisted. ‘A rakess, a jade. Perhaps I’ve coupled with half the men in London. Perhaps I was Nate’s mistress, and still am. I might have half a dozen of his baseborn children by now. Have you thought of that? You think you know me, but perhaps you don’t.’

‘Nathaniel must have changed a great deal from the young man who left here nigh on forty years ago, in that case,’ said the Dowager with a smile. ‘If you wish to shock me, you will have to find a more effective way. And I am not so easily deceived, in any case. I dare say you have had a lover or two, before now – but why should you not, when your life was wrenched so violently from its course and you must have thought there was no going back? I am not the woman to deny a person comfort in their sorrow. I would not be such a hypocrite.’

‘There is no going back,’ said Sophie. ‘You are so far right, madame.’

‘No,’ said Delphine. ‘But there is going forward.’

Sophie had no answer for that.