‘Yes.’ He unbuckled the saddlebags and began to unpack a flask, two horn beakers and a packet wrapped in waxed paper. ‘Just a little something to keep us from collapse.’ They shared out the bread and cheese, poured the water, which turned out to be wine and Sophie settled to admire the view.
‘This is what my ancestor coveted.’ Cal echoed her words, his own voice grim. ‘I think the time has come to tell you why I left England. When my father died I was seven years old. A healthy, fit child. My uncle, my father’s younger brother, my only adult male relative, became my guardian. The estate could not have had a better master, nor could all the parts of the ducal empire – because that it what it is – if it had all been his. Which of course it would be if I died.’
The cheese fell from Sophie’s hand, rolled down the stone and vanished into the gorse below the rock. ‘You don’t mean… no, of course you don’t…’
‘I began to fall ill with vicious attacks of sickness and fever that left me exhausted. I lost weight after every bout so each subsequent one hit me harder. And then I started to have accidents when I was fit enough to get about. A stone fell from the parapet, missing me by a foot, about the distance that a shot missed me in the woods. A poacher, no doubt, and failing mortar that no-one had noticed, perhaps. An over-polished top step on the stairs – there was a broken arm that time. Or the worn girth that broke. That fall broke my leg.’
‘Cal, young boys, youths, have accidents.’
‘True. That is what I believed. Ralph would take tumbles too, although oddly stones never fell near him, nor did shots almost take his ear off. The doctors lamented my poor health: some weakness of the constitution, they said, some incurable illness that perhaps I would grow out of as inexplicably as I had developed it. None of them knew what it was. My aunt encouraged whatever lunacy they came up with for treatment. Lord knows how much blood they drained off me.
‘I came up to London, joined in the Season when I was just twenty, found myself much better. It was almost as though the air of Calderbrook did not agree with me, I thought. Then Ralph joined me. Two days later I was attacked by footpads in an alleyway off St James’s Street and left for dead. Ralph had me carted home and then the sickness came again. I had fought the footpads, done them some serious damage. I could not fight this.’
Sophie felt dizzy. She could guess where this was leading but she could not bring herself to believe it.
‘I overheard the doctor in the next room talking to his assistant. They must have thought I was asleep,’ Cal went on. ‘They were circumspect, but what they said made me wonder and then, the more I thought, the more suspicious it all seemed. Someone was poisoning me, systematically. Someone was arranging accidents. And who could that be but my heirs? My uncle or my cousin. Or both of them.’
‘And so you left?’
‘It felt like running away, but I could do nothing else. I was so weak and I could prove nothing. Courageously staying put and dying didn’t seem like a very sensible approach. And who would believe me? I began to make preparations, found Prescott and made arrangements for him to take over as my agent while I was away, took Jared into my confidence and found he shared my suspicions. It began as an experiment, but my health improved halfway across the Atlantic and I have never had another bout of that sickness and fever since.’
‘And accidents?’
‘Some.’ He shrugged. ‘Many. But all of them I can account for by my own recklessness, or the dangers of the situation I was in – avalanches, footpads, raging rivers, falls from horses. Once I had regained my strength and health I could have turned around, come back to England, confronted the situation.’
‘But how? How do you prove their innocence?’ Or guilt.
Cal shrugged. ‘That was partly why I did not come back, I had no idea how to tackle this. And in the event I found I was enjoying myself, that I loved travel. I was healthy and young and in control of my life and I could manage everything at home at arm’s length. Before long I had a wife and child. Then Madeleine died and I knew I had to come back. I couldn’t drag Isobel around the world, I couldn’t leave my responsibilities at a distance any longer. Seven years were almost up. I needed an heir. So I came home to see what reaction that would provoke.’
He shook his head and lobbed a crust off into the bushes, making a blackbird erupt with cries of panic and fly away down the hill. Sophie could feel the frustration coming off him in waves like the heat from a fire. ‘And I am no further forward. My uncle and cousin reacted when they saw me in ways that could be perfectly innocent. My health is fine. I have suffered no accidents.’ He pushed his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. ‘I have either spent years abroad having abandoned England for nothing more than a fevered imagining, or there is real danger and I am drawing you into it. I had to tell you, although I cannot believe you would be in any danger until – ’
‘I was known to be carrying a child?’
‘Exactly.’ In the silence that followed Sophie could almost hear the cogs of Cal’s brain working. ‘I could not go any further without telling you, but I did not feel able to say anything before – ’ He stopped, sent her a sideways look.
‘Before you knew you could trust me,’ she stated for him. The whole situation was appallin
g, but beneath that was the warm glow that he could trust her with this, believe that she would support him and not laugh in his face, or reject him, or gossip.
‘It is a lot to ask you to deal with. I would not blame you if you found that we were… incompatible.’
‘I think we are very compatible.’ Somehow she had shifted and was sitting close beside him, her arm linked though his, her head on his shoulder. Cal tipped his to meet hers and they sat, silent, sharing thoughts until her memory threw up something disconcerting that she had kept from him.
‘Cal, I told you that Ralph was in love and wanted to marry a woman he knew his father would disapprove of?’ Cal nodded. ‘He said he would have married her long ago but that his father expected him to do his duty by the dukedom, that he was an heir and must marry well and suitably.’ Cal sat up straight and swivelled to look at her. ‘Ralph is of age, he is older than you. He has independent means and his own lands. There is nothing to stop him marrying where he wishes and yet his father put enough pressure on him to marry as if he was the actual heir apparent. It was his father’s wish that he marry me, or someone like me. It is Lord Peter who is treating this inheritance with deadly seriousness.’ Cal’s face was bleak and she remembered that this was the man who had been like a father to him. The sense of betrayal must be like a stab wound. ‘Your aunt is not happy to see you wed, either.’
‘No,’ he agreed flatly.
‘Cal – could it have been her, all along? Who better than a woman to poison your food, or however it was that made you ill?’
‘And the accidents?’
‘Anyone with money can employ criminals to do anything, I imagine.’
‘Oh, hell.’ He flashed her an apologetic look for his language and she smiled back at him, both forgiving it and, she realised with a jolt, happy to be this close to him, sharing his secrets, even if they were so grim. ‘I thought there were just two of them to investigate.’
‘It is almost impossible to prove a negative,’ Sophie mused. ‘If nothing ever happens again that you cannot clearly account for, then you will always be left suspecting them. So, you are going to have to leave yourself open to attack and investigate from there while the evidence is fresh.’
‘You are determined to thrust your future husband into danger I see.’ He looked amused.