The Captain's Return. Elizabeth Bailey

      An obstruction lodged in Hal’s chest. “You need not say it. What woman could continue to love the man who ruined her?”

      Mr Colton came across the room. He was not near as tall, nor as broad in the chest as his brother, and his hair was less vibrant, tending more to gold. But he had the advantage of him in both years and temperament. Hal’s tempestuous personality had ever been his undoing.

      “You can’t be absolutely sure, Hal, that she was ruined.”

      Hal’s tone was bleak. “Can’t I?”

      “She is not precisely living in obscurity. Weem says there is some society there. Evidently she has acquired respectability.”

      “Respectability!”

      “It’s not lightly won, Hal. It is possible that Annabel did marry. Even if the child is yours, Annabel may have taken refuge under another’s name.”

      “The devil she did!” Something clicked in the Captain’s brain. He slammed a fist into his open hand. “No. Annabel didn’t marry a man called Lett. There is no such man.”

      “How can you be sure?”

      “I’ve remembered why it sounded familiar.” Grimness settled in his chest. “Lett was the maiden name of Annabel’s mother.”

      His brother was silent for a moment. But Hal’s first shock was fading. Not for nothing was he a soldier. He was a captain, in command, given to swift decisions. What was needed now was not regret, but action. He stiffened his shoulders.

      “What will you do?” asked Ned frowningly.

      “Oh, I know what to do!”

      His brother began to look alarmed. “Now, Hal—for the Lord’s sake, think before you act!”

      “I’ve thought for three years. I’m done with thinking.”

      “Oh, dear Lord! Hal!’

      But Captain Colton was already on the move. Before he reached the door, his brother caught his arm. “Wait, Hal!”

      He turned. Removing the hand that imprisoned him, he grasped it strongly. “Ned, I’m coming home with you, so you’ll have every opportunity to argue. But let me advise you not to waste your breath. You can say what you like, but you won’t change my mind.”

      Mr Colton grinned. “You always were a headstrong devil.”

      Hal’s smile was twisted. “So I may be. But in this case, Ned, there’s a matter of honour at stake. I have no choice.”

      The kitchen bench and two of the dining chairs had been brought out and set under the shade of a great chestnut. It was situated just upon the boundary, but it obligingly spread its branches to encompass a good part of Annabel Lett’s garden. A circumstance that enabled her to receive her two visitors in a much pleasanter setting on a hot Saturday in early July than was to be had in the tiny formal parlour within the cottage.

      The visitors occupied the chairs, while Annabel took the bench. She was dressed in a sprigged gown of a soft green lawn that brought out the colour of her eyes, although its cut and style were far from fashionable. Its modest neckline, round and plain, and its three-quarter sleeves, together with the frilly cap that covered much of Annabel’s dark hair, gave her an air of respectability.

      It was a pose that Mrs Lett had cultivated with care and diligence. And if she had not entirely succeeded in subduing the restless spirit that lurked deep within—which now and then broke out, to her regret, in hasty words—she flattered herself that she had fooled most of her acquaintances in their reading of her character.

      But the two ladies present were such particular friends that Annabel felt able to relax her strict guard. She would not have hesitated to entertain them in the larger family room, where Rebecca was permitted to run wild and all was generally at sixes and sevens. But this arrangement allowed little Becky to dash about the garden under her mother’s eye, leaving Janet free to pursue her numerous chores.

      Which was as well, for Annabel thought her visitors would have burst with frustration if they had felt themselves obliged to hold their tongues in the presence of the maid. The subject under discussion was far too interesting. Especially since it concerned the man most people had settled upon as having done away with the dissolute Marquis of Sywell up at the Abbey.

      “Can it be true, do you think?” asked Charlotte Filmer.

      Jane Emerson, a slim brunette with little countenance except a pair of soft brown eyes, gave her characteristic gurgling laugh.

      “I should think it all too likely, Mrs Filmer. Have we not all been puzzled as to why Solomon Burneck should have remained loyal to that wretched man? Nothing could more surely explain it than if he had indeed been Sywell’s own son. Don’t you think so, Annabel?”

      “Yes, if only it had come out before the Marquis was murdered,” agreed Annabel, accepting with a word of thanks the pebble pressed into her palm by her daughter, who ran off again to find another. “To put it about only when Burneck himself has fallen under suspicion seems to me in itself suspicious.”

      “Very true,” agreed Charlotte, and a little shudder ran through her. “I have always found him sinister.”

      Mrs Filmer was a gentle female, a great many years Annabel’s senior, but they shared a common bond in the isolation of an existence without the support of a husband. Charlotte’s daughter was grown up now, and had last season gone to London as companion to the Tenison chit—a piece of good fortune for which Mrs Filmer was still thanking Providence.

      “Oh, I am perfectly happy to have Solomon for the villain,” said Jane merrily. “Why, he looks a very devil, with that hooked nose, and his horrid black clothes. Thin lips are a sign of meanness, you know, and he has the horridest eyes of anyone I’ve ever met. Set so narrow and close.”

      Annabel could not help laughing as she placed the pebble among the growing pile beside her on the bench. “Jane, you are outrageous. What appalling prejudice! I pity your pupils, who are obliged to look to you for example.”

      “Fiddle! I am responsible only for their deportment and their performance in the dance. I have nothing to do with the formation of their minds.’

      In fact, as Annabel knew, Miss Emerson was one of the more popular teachers at the Guarding Academy in nearby Steep Abbot. Jane had a deceptively demure manner in social situations, but among friends—which term wholly encompassed her students—she exhibited a liveliness of mind, and an endearing warmth that made Annabel sorry for her circumstances. But Jane would have none of it.

      “Don’t waste your pity on me, Annabel, for I am perfectly content with my lot,” she had said gaily. “I learned early to be so. I was ever a “plain Jane”, and it is unlikely I should have caught myself a husband, even had it been possible for me to make a come-out.”

      Annabel might doubt this privately, but she had said no more on the subject, feeling the more thankful for their friendship that permitted Jane these small respites on her one free Saturday each month. Her company was a boon to Annabel, who could only admire the generosity of heart that left Jane with neither malice nor envy towards others, in particular the more flamboyant and adventurous of the Guarding teachers—like Desirée Nash, who had broken away earlier this year and ended by marrying Lord Buckworth.

      “But don’t you think, if Solomon Burneck had been Sywell’s son,” asked Mrs Filmer, bringing the conversation back to the point at issue, “that the Marquis would have got rid of him?”

      “Oh, yes,” agreed Jane, setting one graceful leg over the other so that the soft white muslin slithered, “if Sywell knew. You don’t suppose he counted up his by-blows, do you, Mrs Filmer? They must be all over the countryside!”

      “Jane, you shocking creature!” protested Annabel. “Pay no heed to her, Charlotte.”

      But Mrs Filmer was plainly amused, though she tutted in a fretful