‘Are you being purposely obtuse, Isabella? I care not a fig for the farmers, so long as they pay their rents on time. I am talking about this insane notion to marry you off for a legacy. I do believe old Hanson has put the old man up to it.’
Mr George Hanson was the Earl’s legal man. ‘Why should he do that?’
‘To try and disinherit Louis. He has never looked on my son with any favour. He sees him as a Frenchman and therefore to be viewed with suspicion, which is very hard on my poor boy who has spent almost his entire life in England and renounced his lands in France.’
‘Renounced them?’ Bella queried, dragging her mind from what was happening upstairs to pay attention. ‘I thought they had been taken from him by the Revolutionaries.’
‘They were, but there are moves afoot to restore them. They will be ruined and worthless by now, of course, and I do not wish to go back.’ She shuddered. ‘And if we are not careful the contagion will spread and we shall have revolution here, on our doorstep.’
‘Oh, no, surely not?’
‘I saw evidence on our journey here—ricks burned, barns pulled down and posters pinned to empty shops. “Bread or blood,” they say. It is how it started in France. We need steadfast people like Louis at the helm to prevent it. That is why it is so important his legacy should not be put up to auction.’
Bella would not have described Louis as steadfast, but she let that go. She smiled crookedly. ‘Is the notion of your son being married to me so distasteful, my lady?’
‘Oh, you are a pleasant enough chit but, tell me, what have you to recommend you to a man of the world like Louis? Tucked away in the country, the companion of an old man who has forgotten what it is like to be in Society, how can you possibly know how to go on? Louis needs someone from the ton, someone with presence, not a timid little mouse. The court is full of beautiful women and Colette has the ear of the Regent, who will advise us.’
It was not only the Regent’s ear Elizabeth’s daughter had, Bella thought irreverently. By all accounts she had been possessed of other parts of his anatomy on occasion. And Louis must be a poor apology for a man to allow his mother and sister to choose his bride for him. ‘I would not dream of coming between Louis and his aspirations at court,’ she said.
‘Good. Then we are agreed. You will refute this strange idea of the Earl’s and not choose any of them. I can promise you, on Louis’s behalf, that you will not be let starve.’
Bella supposed she was meant to be grateful for that, but before she could find a suitable reply his lordship and Louis had come into the room and she was obliged to busy herself, pouring tea for them. It was only when no one spoke that she realised both men looked furious. Louis was decidedly pink about the ears and the Earl’s face was almost purple. Bella was afraid he was going to have a fit of apoplexy.
‘Grandpapa, I do believe you have overtaxed yourself,’ she said. ‘Should you not go and lie down for a while?’
‘I will go when I am ready. Where are Edward and Robert?’
‘They have not come down again.’
He rang the bell furiously and sent the footman scurrying upstairs to summon the two young men. When they appeared, Robert had bathed and changed his clothes and was wearing a green frockcoat, pale brown pantaloons and tasselled Hessians, with a fresh shirt and a new cravat, though there was no disguising the injury to his face.
‘Well, what have you to say for yourself?’ his lordship asked when the young man had made his apologies for his earlier appearance.
‘I was on my way here when I was set upon by a mob,’ he said, seating himself and taking a cup of tea from Bella, who found her hand shaking so much the cup rattled in the saucer. ‘They were the equal of any bloodthirsty French soldiers I met on the battlefield. And I had no weapon, not that a gun would have availed me, there were too many of them. They pulled me from my horse and demanded my money.’
‘Where was this?’ Bella asked.
He turned to look at her, surveying her slowly, taking in the homely grey dress and heightened colour and deciding that her obvious effort to appear unattractive had had the opposite effect. She was lovely. ‘At the crossroads between here and Eastmere. They were marching and filling the whole road. I could not avoid them.’
‘I should hope you did not give in to them,’ Elizabeth said.
‘I would not be sitting here if I had not, but I did not submit without a protest, which is why one hothead dealt me a blow with the club he carried.’
‘Rabble,’ the Comtesse said. ‘Call out the militia. Hang the lot of them or we shall end up with our heads in a basket, just as it happened in France.’
‘Oh, I do not think so,’ Robert said mildly. ‘The cases are very different. These are simple men driven to excess. When I expressed my sympathy with them, they took the money I proffered and bade me proceed very civilly. They did not take other valuables, or my luggage, which is a blessing or I would have had nothing to wear but what I stood up in.’
‘Did you see Mr Trenchard?’ Bella asked.
‘No, should I have?’
‘He was sent for to go home. His servant said the labourers were threatening to pull his barn down and wreck his house.’
‘No, I did not see him. But he is not the only one to suffer—the mob I saw had been on the rampage for some time, most of ’em pot valiant. It will take the militia to make them return to their homes.’
‘Oh, dear, I hope there will no blood shed,’ she said. ‘The poor have been sorely tried, what with the price of flour and bread rising so high and wages so low.’
‘Your sympathy does you credit, Bella,’ Edward said. ‘But it does not give them the right to take the law into their own hands. Destroying the property of those they depend on will not serve.’
‘Did you demand their names?’ the Earl asked Robert. ‘I can send for the constable to have them taken up and charged.’
‘No, I did not. It is unlikely they would have furnished them if I had.’ He put down his cup and stood up. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I am devilish hungry and as Edward has been so obliging as to replace the contents of my purse, I will repair to the local hostelry and bespeak me a meal.’
‘Oh, dear, how thoughtless of me,’ Bella said. ‘Robert, please, be seated again and I will ask Cook to find something for you…’
‘No need, my dear, no need at all. I shall do very well at the tavern.’
‘But do you not wish to know why his lordship has called us all together?’ Louis asked.
‘Oh, as to that, Edward has acquainted me with the facts of the matter. I am sorry to say it, but I think the whole thing is a fudge and I wish I had saved myself the expense of the journey to hear it. I might still be in possession of my purse. And this…’ He pointed to his eye. ‘This might be its proper size and colour.’
Bella was delighted by his answer and found herself smiling. He swept her an elegant leg and then moved forward to take her hand and raise it to his lips. His brown eyes, looking into hers above the hand he held, were full of merriment. She was glad someone could find humour in the situation. ‘My apologies, dear Bella. I do not mean to disparage you, but you must see that any marriage based on coercion will not serve. Besides, however much I might wish to, I cannot enter a contest against my brother. He has a right, I do not.’
‘Right!’ Louis exploded furiously. ‘If anyone has a right—’
‘Oh, please, do not quarrel,’ Bella intervened. ‘I cannot bear it. Grandpapa, please say something…’
He simply smiled and rang for Sylvester