He strode through the open doors of the drawing room onto the long stone terrace. Perhaps that was it, and he'd fallen into the trap through greed… through need, he amended, sitting on the low stone wall separating the terrace from the sweep of green lawn.
And it wasn't just the need for money. He needed a purpose, a function, in the world, and managing an estate the size of Stoneridge would take all his skills. He'd joined the army at the beginning of the war – or rather the first Revolutionary war. The present battle against Napoleon was a different matter from those early skirmishes with the untried ragtag French revolutionaries. For fifteen years the army had been his life. There'd been women… some passionate affairs… but they'd been part of the heady excitement of the war, the deprivations, the terrors, the fierce exultations of victory. He'd felt no urge to marry, to set up his nursery. For the last twelve years, after the death of Kit Belmont, he'd known he would come into the Stoneridge title and inheritance, and he'd been content to wait for that time before committing himself to marriage, children, and new responsibilities.
And then Vimiera had happened – twelve months in a stinking French jail in Toulouse. And then the court-martial.
He stood up abruptly, beginning to pace the length of the terrace. He'd been acquitted of cowardice. But not in the hearts and minds of his peers. He'd resigned his commission, ostensibly because of the lingering effects of his head wound, but everyone knew the real reason. He couldn't endure the turned shoulders. He would have returned to the Peninsula a marked man, the story flying ahead of him. There would be endless humiliations, some small, some large. And he didn't have the courage to face them down.
Not when he didn't know what had happened. How could he defend himself when he didn't know exactly what had happened?
Gerard had said he was on his way with reinforcements… that he hadn't delayed. But, goddammit, if there'd been no delay, how the hell had he been cut off so completely? He'd been hanging on for support as his men fell around him… He could remember thinking…
Sylvester pressed his fingers into his temples, feeling the ominous tightening in the skin. Thinking what? He could remember nothing clearly of that afternoon, and yet something was there, a shadow of knowledge.
"Is something wrong, Lord Stoneridge?"
Elinor's soft voice broke into the spiraling confusion of his thoughts. He looked up, his expression dazed, his fingers still massaging his temples.
"You don't look well," she said, coming swiftly toward him. She reached up to lay a cool hand on his brow. His skin was clammy, and he was as pale as a ghost, his eyes no longer cool and penetrating, but shadowed with that pain she'd sensed in him from the beginning.
He shook his head, trying to calm his rioting thoughts and the desperate struggle for memory. Elinor's concerned expression penetrated the confusion, and her hand was cool on his brow. Mercifully, he felt the tension behind his temples ease, and he knew that this time he was going to be spared the agony.
"I'm quite well, thank you, ma'am," he said, forcing a smile. "A troublesome memory, that's all."
Elinor didn't press it. "Has Theo introduced you to Mr. Beaumont, the bailiff, as yet?"
"Your daughter, ma'am, has not seen fit to address a civil word to me in the last three days," he said caustically. "Let alone offer me any assistance in learning about the estate. I should tell you that I begin to lose patience."
"Well, perhaps that's for the best," Elinor said in a musing tone. "Something needs to shock her out of her present frame of mind." She bent down and pulled an errant weed from between the flagstones.
"I don't think I understand you, Lady Belmont."
Elinor straightened, examining the weed with a frowning concentration that it hardly warranted. "Theo hasn't grieved properly for her grandfather yet, Lord Stoneridge. I suspect she won't be herself again until she's able to do so. Perhaps we've indulged her sufficiently and it's time to provoke that grieving."
"I'm still not sure I understand you." Sylvester knew he was being given some valuable advice but wasn't quite sure what he was to do with it.
Elinor smiled slightly. "Follow your instincts, Lord Stoneridge, and see where they take you."
"Mama, the seamstress is here." Emily appeared round the corner of the terrace. "She has the samples for the new curtains, and there's one I particularly… Oh, good morning, Lord Stoneridge. I beg your pardon for interrupting." Her tone lost much of its exuberance as she offered him a small bow. "I didn't realize you were talking with Mama."
"Please don't apologize, cousin," he said, returning her bow. "Your mother and I were simply passing the time of day."
Elinor linked her arm in her daughter's, offering his lordship a half smile and a little nod, as if to say, You know what to do now. "We'll meet at nuncheon, Lord Stoneridge."
Sylvester watched them go off arm in arm. Lady Belmont seemed to think she'd been perfectly clear, but for the life of him, he couldn't interpret her words.
He strolled across the lawn, intending to walk to the cliff top, hoping that the sea air and fresh breeze would bring enlightenment. He hadn't gone more than twenty feet before he tripped over a pair of sturdy stockinged legs sticking out from beneath a bush.
"Ouch! You made me drop it!" An indignant Rosie crawled backward out of the bush and glared up at him, the sun glinting off her lenses. "You made me drop it," she repeated.
"Drop what?"
"A grasshopper. It was sawing its back legs together… that's how they make that noise. I most particularly wanted it for my museum. Theo was going to help me mount it."
Sylvester frowned at this other member of the Belmont family who held him in scant regard. "Well, I beg your pardon, but your feet were sticking out like a booby trap."
"Well, only a booby wouldn't have been looking where he was going," the child said, diving headlong back beneath the bush.
Sylvester raised his eyes heavenward. How was it that two daughters had tongues like razors and the other two were apparently as sweet-natured and malleable as a man could wish? And why, oh why, couldn't fate have offered him one of the sweet ones?
"There's no call to be uncivil," he said to the stockinged legs.
"I wasn't," came the muffled response. "But booby traps catch boobies, don't they? Otherwise they wouldn't be called that, would they?"
"There is a certain inexorable logic in that," he said with a twitch of his lips. "Nevertheless, child, you could find a more courteous way to make your point."
Shaking his head, Sylvester continued on his way.
Theo didn't appear at nuncheon, but no one seemed troubled by her absence. "I expect she's been offered hospitality with one of the tenant farmers, my lord," Clarissa said in answer to the earl's question. Her voice was a little cool, as if he had no right to question her sister's whereabouts. They had a way of closing ranks, these Belmonts.
"Theo's at home in every kitchen on the estate, sir," Emily said. "She always has been… since she was a little girl."
"I see." Frowning, Sylvester turned his attention to the ham in front of him. "May I carve you some ham, Lady Belmont?"
While he was sitting around the table making polite small talk and carving ham like some ancient paterfamilias, his energetic, managing young cousin was dealing with the business that kept the establishment going. It wasn't to be tolerated another day.
Elinor accepted a wafer-thin slice of ham, noticing the tautness of his mouth, the jumping muscle in his drawn cheek. She could guess the direction of his thoughts. Whether Theo agreed to marry the Earl of Stoneridge or not, Stoneridge Manor was no longer hers, and Elinor suspected that its lord was soon going to make that clear to her daughter in no uncertain terms.