The House Of Allerbrook. Valerie Anand

Will he think it was my fault? That I haven’t watched over the two of you as I ought?”

      “But you have,” said Jane unhappily. “You can’t be everywhere, all the time.”

      “No, I can’t! God’s teeth, Sybil is the silliest little girl in Christendom! I’ll go down and meet him…oh, I don’t know how to tell him!”

      Pale with anxiety, she descended the spiral stairs to the hall. Madame La Plage had long since left to go back to Minehead, and Sybil had been locked in her chamber. Francis, stepping into the hall, pulling off his red velvet hat and stripping off his gloves, greeted her and asked if his sister’s gowns had come. “I’ll have something to say to Madame La Plage if they haven’t!”

      “They’re here,” said Eleanor, “but…”

      “Good. I hope they’re suitable,” Francis said. “Where’s Sybil now? I want to see her in her new finery.” Then he saw Peggy looking at him from the kitchen door, and must have recognized the fear in her face and Eleanor’s. “God’s death, what’s the matter?”

      “Please come up to the parlour, Francis,” Eleanor said. “I have terrible news. Peggy, bring wine. Your master will need it.”

      “For the love of heaven, what’s happened? Is Sybil all right?”

      “It’s worse than that. We must be private when I explain. Not that we can keep it secret for long—well, it isn’t now. All the household knows, and Madame La Plage. Jane is in the parlour, but she knows, too. She was there when…”

      “Will you stop dithering, woman!” shouted Francis as Eleanor turned and led the way back up the staircase. “Tell me!”

      In the parlour she turned to face him, and while Jane sat shivering in her seat by the window, Eleanor said the words that had to be said. “Sybil can’t go to court. She is expecting a child. Probably in August.”

      Francis collapsed onto the nearest settle. “What was that? Repeat it, if you please.”

      “Sybil can’t take up her post at court. She’s with child.”

      Francis bore the name of Sweetwater, but another family, the Cornish Lanyons, also formed part of his ancestry. His blue eyes were inherited from his mother but otherwise he was a Lanyon—tall, handsome, strongly made and dark haired. He also possessed what was known as the Lanyon temperament. This was thoroughly Celtic, as passionate and explosive as gunpowder. Eleanor and Jane, observing Francis now, could almost hear the fuse fizzing toward the barrel, almost see the travelling flame.

      The explosion came. Francis shot to his feet and crashed a fist on the back of the settle. “This is beyond belief! Who’s the man? Who did it? And where’s Sybil now?”

      “She’s locked in her chamber. I have the key,” said Eleanor. “The man is Andrew Shearer.”

      “Andrew Shearer? Of Shearers Farm? My tenant? He’s married!”

      “Yes. We all went to the christening of his little son last November, if you recall,” said Eleanor, keeping her voice steady with an effort. “That’s when it happened, it seems. We went to Shearers for the celebration dinner, and stayed on after dark—do you remember? There was dancing, by candlelight. Sybil and Andrew danced together. I never noticed that they disappeared for a while, but it seems that they did. He somehow enticed her into another part of the house and…she says she hasn’t seen him since, but that he’d paid her compliments before, when they met during the harvesting. We sent her out with cider for the harvesters. She says she didn’t mind when he…I mean, she wasn’t forced. She admits that.”

      “He’s married. I can’t make him wed her. I can order the Shearers off my land, of course, though they’ll only get a tenancy somewhere else, and thumb their noses at me, I suppose. I can think of three Exmoor farms straightaway in need of new tenants, since we had that outbreak of smallpox last year. The trouble that brought us! Killed our chaplain and two of our farmhands! But it’ll no doubt make life easier for the Shearers. I’ll be throwing them out on principle, that’s all. But…dear God!” shouted Francis. “Sybil’s farewell dinner is tomorrow! It’s too late to cancel it! The Carews have probably set off from Devon already!”

      The fury in his voice was so intense that Eleanor visibly trembled and Jane began to cry. Francis swept on.

      “The Stones from Clicket Hall are coming, and bringing their girl Dorothy—they want to get her to court in a year or two, when she’s older! Owen Lanyon and his wife from Lynmouth, they’re coming…”

      His voice faded somewhat. The one branch of the family that still bore the name of Lanyon wasn’t actually entitled to it. Many years ago there had been another unsanctioned baby in the clan. That child’s descendants, though, still called themselves Lanyons. Francis resumed, however, as the enormity of the present situation grew larger and larger in his mind.

      “Luke and Ralph Palmer are coming! They’re very likely on their way by now, too. Bideford’s only twenty-five miles off, but Luke’s at least sixty and they’ll have to take it slowly.” Francis was literally clutching at his hair. “They’re only distant connections but, God’s elbow, it was their wealthy London cousin who pulled the strings to get Sybil her place at court! And now this! What am I to say to them? I…we’ll say Sybil’s ill! And I’ll give her such a beating that with luck she’ll miscarry and then she can go to court after all! Yes, that’s the best thing to do. I’ll—”

      “No!” sobbed Jane. “No, you can’t! Francis, you mustn’t! It could kill her. She’s past four months gone.”

      “And no one noticed anything?” Francis spluttered. “She never told anyone?”

      “She said—” Eleanor gulped “—that she kept hoping it wasn’t true. She’s just gone on from day to day, hoping …there are so many women in this house, Sybil and Jane and me, and the maids…no one noticed that she hasn’t been using her usual cloths. She didn’t have much sickness, it seems. Oh, Sybil can be so silly!”

      “She certainly can,” said Francis. “A fault I propose to cure. Give me her key, Eleanor. At once!”

      “Francis, no, you mustn’t.” Jane was frightened but determined. “If you hurt Sybil too much, yes, she might lose the child, but if that happened she really could die! You can’t want that!”

      “I don’t need to be told my business by a little girl of sixteen!”

      “She might not lose the child,” Eleanor pointed out. “And if she did, and survived and went to court, how could we trust her, after this! She might create a scandal there, and what good would that do us?”

      “It’s a complete disaster!” Francis groaned. “It’s been trouble enough, planning for portions for my sisters. We were well-off when I was a boy, but that was before Father sold our stone quarry so as to rebuild the east wing. We’ve lost income without it. Letting Clicket Hall doesn’t make up for it. I’ve worried! Getting one of the girls to court would help—there’d be all sorts of opportunities. Good contacts are worth having in a dozen ways and they can smooth the path to marriage even for a girl with a modest dowry.”

      “We have good contacts already,” said Eleanor weakly.

      “I want to do better! But now…! We can’t keep it secret. You said yourself, the whole household knows—Peggy, the maidservants… Susie’s courting Tim Snowe and I saw them as I came in, talking in the yard. By tomorrow all the farmhands will know and the whole lot of them have families roundabout. And Madame La Plage will have taken the news back to Minehead!”

      “Yes,” agreed Eleanor dismally.

      There was a dreadful silence.

      “Well,” said Eleanor, “all we can do is face it out, and I’m sorry, Francis, but even if she is only sixteen, Jane is right.