“We forgive you, Cousin Nicholas,” they said in unison, reminding him, rather horribly of the verse from the Gospel of Mark: “My name is Legion, for we are many.”
“You see, Nicholas?” said Lady Anne. “They are good girls.”
“I hope we are not inconveniencing your sister too much, Lord Hugh,” said Nicholas, after a short pause. “It is very late. Why, it must be past midnight.”
“But Harriet is a spinster,” Lord Hugh said, dismissing Nicholas’s concerns.
The drive from the gate to the house was surprisingly long. From time to time, Nicholas caught glimpses of shadowy figures outside, men with broken guns moving in the torchlight, men holding back huge, vicious-looking mastiffs. Their breath hanging in visible clouds around their muzzles.
At last the carriage came to a stop.
A sleepy footman opened the door and let down the steps. Lord Hugh climbed out first. “This is not how I wanted to show Warwick to you,” he told Nicholas, as the young ladies left the carriage. “But you can get an idea of the size and the grandeur of the place. I will give you the grand tour tomorrow personally.”
Nicholas did not reply. Lady Anne remained in the carriage, and he was shocked to see how little her family respected her. Her daughters seemed to think no more of her than the carriage rug they had left lying on the seat. When he was not bullying her, her husband ignored her completely. Nicholas’s protective instincts were aroused. Climbing out of the carriage, he offered Lady Anne his arm.
The door was opened briefly to admit them. Nicholas guided his aunt into the hall. Two footmen were lighting candles, but the room still seemed vast and dark. The sharp, fresh scent of balsam hung in the cool air.
“There was no one outside to greet us, Sister,” Lord Hugh was complaining to a tall, elderly lady in a nightgown and lace cap.
“Everyone is asleep, Hugh,” Lady Harriet told her younger brother. “I was asleep.”
“A poor excuse!” said Hugh, sneezing. “What is that smell?” he demanded, sneezing again. “It stinks of the outdoors.”
“It’s balsam,” Nicholas said happily, “and holly. It’s all over the room. It smells like a forest. It smells like Christmas.”
Holding aloft a branch of candles, Lady Harriet looked at Nicholas curiously. He was a good-looking young man with brown skin and bright blue eyes. His features were strong and clear-cut. His sun-bleached hair grew in a good line. He wore it long, but tied back neatly in a queue.
Lord Hugh, meanwhile, glared around him, squinting into the dimly lit corners of the great hall. The beautiful wreaths and garlands ornamented with gilded fruits and velvet ribbon that had been hung about the room did not meet with his approval. “By God, you’re right! It does smell like a bloody forest in here. What is the meaning of this, Harriet?” he demanded, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to block another sneeze. “Have you run mad in your old age? Are the servants conducting pagan rites in the small hours? Have all this damned shrubbery cleared off at once!”
“It was the duchess’s doing, not mine,” Lady Harriet replied evenly. “It is the custom in her mother’s native Germany. You will have to bring your complaint to her, I’m afraid.”
Lord Hugh grunted. “She’s here, is she? Good. I will deal with her tomorrow. In the meantime, clear this rubbish away. ’Tis pagan nonsense, and ’twas confined to the nursery when her husband was alive. I’m sorry you had to see this, Nicholas.”
“But I think it’s charming,” Nicholas protested.
Lord Hugh blinked at him. “You do?”
“Yes. It reminds me of the Christmases I had in Portsmouth when I was a child, when my parents were still alive. But, of course,” Nicholas added sheepishly, “our little cottage was nothing at all compared to this place, and we only had bits of holly and mistletoe. No balsam.”
“I suppose, if it does not offend you, it can stay,” Lord Hugh said reluctantly. Covering his nose and mouth with his handkerchief, he hurried upstairs.
Lady Harriet smiled at Nicholas. “I am Lady Harriet Fitzroy. You must be Lord Camford,” she said pleasantly, “the very fortunate young man who recently inherited the title and estates of Lady Anne’s brother.”
Nicholas blushed. “That is what everyone keeps telling me, ma’am,” he said. “I have yet to believe it.”
Lady Harriet’s eyebrows went up. “Indeed? But I read all about it in the London Times.”
Nicholas smiled. “In that case, it must be true.”
“I think we must accept that it is.”
Lord Hugh stopped at the top of the stairs to bellow at Lady Anne. “Madam wife! Take the girls up to their rooms at once. Octavia looks a fright, and Augusta is jumping up and down as though her bladder is fit to burst.”
“Oh!” cried Lady Anne. “But Nicholas—”
“Harriet will look after my nephew,” he told her. “Step lively, woman! How will you ever find husbands for these wretched girls if you let them go about looking like a pack of wet hens? What kind of mother are you?”
Lady Anne jumped. “Come, girls,” she cried breathlessly, hurrying her daughters from the room.
“Now, then,” said Lady Harriet, holding her candlestick up to get a better look at the young man in front of her. “Let’s have a look at you. My goodness! You are a beauty, aren’t you?”
Nicholas gaped at the old lady in astonishment.
“You must take after your mother,” she stated. “As a rule, the St. Austells are small, ugly, tedious creatures. But you’re like a big, bronzed Nordic god, aren’t you?”
“I—I don’t think so,” he said, blushing. “But thank you, ma’am.”
Her dark eyes twinkled at him. “Come, my lord, I will show you to your room.”
“I wish you would call me Nicholas,” he said. “I don’t feel like a lord. Any moment now, I feel like I’m going to wake up from a dream and find myself back in the navy,” he confessed.
Lady Harriet glanced back at him in surprise. “Since I am old enough to be your grandmother, I don’t see why not. And you may call me Aunt Harriet, if you like. That’s what the young people call me.”
Nicholas followed her through a maze of corridors to a large, beautifully appointed chamber. A cheerful fire crackled in the fireplace.
“Well, Nicholas! I hope you will be comfortable here in Westphalia,” Lady Harriet said. “It is not one of our best rooms, I’m sorry to say, but that is what happens when you are late. All the good rooms are taken.”
The young man looked at the huge, four-poster bed in amusement. “I was put to sea, ma’am, when I was but nine years old,” he told her.
“That explains it, then,” said Lady Harriet.
“Explains what, ma’am?”
“Why you seem to have absolutely no idea just how attractive you are,” said the old lady. “But, if you were put to sea when you were nine; if you have been in the company of men, for the most part, since that age, that would explain this strange case of modesty. Most young men with your good looks are vainglorious, insufferable peacocks.”
“I hope I am not a peacock,” said Nicholas. “I was going to say, ma’am, that, in the Royal Navy, we are used to sleeping in our own coffins. When one of us dies at sea, he is simply nailed inside his bed and lowered overboard into Davy Jones’s Locker.”
“Good God,” said Lady Harriet.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “That is not fit conversation for delicate ladies.”