A Grand Design Part 14

"Oh, I won't be there," Gramble called after him. "The Jermyn house party is this weekend. I a.s.sumed, of course, that you would not have been invited-Do pardon me. That you would not be attending."

"And you were so thoughtful as to look out for me in the absence of that choice entertainment." Tregaron maintained his cool smile, hard as it was. No, he had not been invited to that renowned event. Not in eight years-since he had . . . Belinda had . . . How typical of this meritless creature to raise that specter. "You are a generous soul, Gramble. I daresay you could advisee me in any number of matters."

The man's small eyes glittered. Disappointed at the lack of response, no doubt. "Your servant, sir.

Should you ever wish to discuss the matter of women . . ."

Tregaron felt himself stiffen.

"Curious creatures, are they not?" Gramble continued. "Seldom what they seem on viewing. And of course there are always the addled papas to add to the mix. Or uncles, of course."

"Of course." Tregaron had had more than enough. Had he wanted a full afternoon of headaches, he could have stayed at MacDougal's. "Uncles. Good-bye, Gramble. Edgar." Best bored-to-the-teeth expression in place, he toed Gramble's stick out of the way.

The truth of the matter was that he had just amended his plans slightly. Instead of heading toward Piccadilly, he turned north. With the departure of the drunken Vaer and apoplectic Earith, the street had cleared of most of its gawkers. Tregaron actually managed to get a few yards along his way before a lithe figure levered itself away from a hat shop window.

"Hurrying home, Tregaron?" Fremont asked with nearly convincing affability. "And how is the house coming along? I have thought several times to drop in and have a look. I am acquainted with your architects, you know."

"I am aware you have previously met Miss Buchanan." Curiosity warred with distaste and gained a narrow advantage. "It was through her uncles, was it?"

"Not at all." Fremont studied the cuff of his coat with apparent interest. "Are you pleased with their work?"

"I am. I don't suppose you are looking for me to recommend them, since you have known them longer than I."

The other man gave a sharp smile. He owned little property that he could not carry on his person. "A recommendation? Perish the thought. No, no. I am merely making a friendly inquiry into your opinion of the Buchanans."

Friendly as a serpent, Tregaron thought. And he was beginning to get the feeling that, short of throttling it out of the man, he wasn't going to get any more answers about Cate than she herself had given.

"I will certainly discuss my experience with my architects with any who should ask."

"Yes, well, I am sure that would be quite a fascinating conversation. So many nuances." Fremont acknowledged someone behind Tregaron's back with a short wave. "Just take care you receive only what you expect."

"What an appalling thought, the contrary," was Tregaron's dry reply. "I have been fortunate in my life to have very few persons cross me. I believe they deem it unwise."

"Yes, I would imagine that is true. But the world is full of such unscrupulous sorts these days." With that, Fremont flicked his fingers at his hat brim. "Good day, sir."

He collected his unpleasant little band and the lot of them strolled away toward Bond Street. Tregaron, with the disconcerting feeling that he had quite missed something in that exchange, went the opposite way. He was going to visit his house and make certain it had not tumbled down around someone's ears. He would chat with the Misters Buchanan who, odd though they might have been, had yet to displease him. Then he was going back to his rooms. Gryffydd's walk would have to wait. The master required a stiff drink.

As it happened, the drink would come even sooner than planned. The architects were nowhere to be found.

"Will they be back this afternoon?" he demanded of the ever surly MacGoun.

"I've no idea, m'lord."

"Have they been here today?"

"To be sure. One of the Buchanans has a head-to-head with me each day."

Tregaron tapped his stick against the opposite palm as he glanced around the bedchamber. He'd had to walk all the way up as MacGoun had clearly not been about to come down. He didn't think he had ever been inside this particular room before. It was one Belinda had always kept ready for guests- who never seemed to arrive while he was in residence. He had come to ignore the chamber, just as he had so much else about his wife.

There were no holes in the walls, but all of the gla.s.s had been removed from the windows, letting in a brisk afternoon breeze and, unless Tregaron was very much mistaken in the scattering of small feathers on the floor and stuck to the foreman's rough trousers, a bird or two as well.

He must have been scowling, for MacGoun scowled right back and explained, "We'll have a good tarp over the windows tonight and new gla.s.s in tomorrow. Miss Cate . . ." He grunted and fell silent.

"Miss Cate did what? I hardly think she broke all three windows. One, perhaps, with that grand wingspan of hers, but certainly not three."

"She didn't break anything," MacGoun snapped. Then, more calmly, " 'Twas Miss Cate who noticed the caulking was rotted away. One more good storm and you'd have had shattered gla.s.s on the floor and a pond under the bed."

Tregaron suddenly felt more defeated than he had sitting on the boxing salon floor. Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair and scratched at the back of his head. "You know, MacGoun," he said wearily, "I have had the d.a.m.nedest day. I am beginning to wonder if perhaps I ought not go back to bed and start it all over again."

To his great astonishment, the glowering foreman dropped a heavy hand onto his shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze. "Try whiskey, lad. And lots of it." Then, with one of his familiar sharp grunts that could mean anything at all, he spun on his heel and clomped out of the room.

Chapter 11.

Cate was beginning to see the end. There came a point in every job when all the details suddenly came together, when she could see less to do than what had already been done. She was there.

True, some of the floors still needed finis.h.i.+ng; a few walls and ceilings still required plaster details and paint or paper. The new grates needed to be installed in the fireplaces. The masons had only just begun filling the c.h.i.n.ks in the exterior stonework. Uncle Ambrose was painting his baccha.n.a.l with all the speed of mola.s.ses. But Cate's work was nearly done.

It was so tempting, to wander through rooms smelling of paint and varnish, to imagine small details she would never get to see there. The south wall of the drawing room had the perfect s.p.a.ces for a little pair of marble-topped commodes; the hearth wanted nothing but an embroidered cheval firescreen in autumnal colors. The dining room, with its rich, leaf-patterned topaz paper, needed a Chinese vase or two on the mantel. And the north-facing sitting room of the master bedchamber suite positively cried out for a brocade chaise with a mohair throw and plump silk pillows for reading.

Cate would come, perhaps once, when the upholsterers were completing their tasks. But she had already seen Henry Gordon's-no, she corrected herself with a smile- Henri desJardin's designs, had in fact worked with him to create a palette of subtle autumn colors and lush, heaven-to-the-touch fabrics to complement the paints and wallpapers. MacQuarrie's chandeliers would be ready for mounting the instant the last drop of paint had dried. Rugs, both new and carried from the attics for cleaning, were rolled and waiting to grace the glossy floors. A devout disciple of Capability Brown had already dug up half the rear garden.

He swore he would put something back in well before the end of the Season.

It had always been a good house, one full of promise. Now it was on the verge of being a truly wonderful place.

Gordie appeared in the dining room doorway. "Sorry to disturb you, miss, but we've just gotten the bricks from Suss.e.x."

"Well, thank heaven, and it's dashed well about time," Cate muttered as she followed him out the door. "Are they the correct ones?"

"Salt-glazed black, miss. Fine enough for the facade of the Prince's next folly."

Cate smiled as she descended the stairs. Fine enough for the front of the next Carlton House or Brighton Pavilion indeed, but these bricks were destined for the kitchen and to line the fireplaces of Tregaron House. It was an extravagance, to be sure, but what a delight it would be, flames and heat reflecting off the glossy black.

MacGoun was muttering over the loaded hods when Cate and Gordie reached the ground floor. "b.l.o.o.d.y piracy," he grumbled, the bill clutched in his th.o.r.n.y fist.

It was an argument they'd had before, and one Cate was in no mood for now. "Are they all here? I need them installed before Jamie moves the grates in."

"Aye, aye. They're all here. But look at this, Miss Cate." MacGoun waved the bill in her face. "Just you look at the tax."

She didn't need to look. If she did, she knew she would wince, and MacGoun needed no further fuel for his ire. "Would you rather have to learn French, Mac?"

"As if Boney has a chance," he shot back. "Our lads would shove him right back into the sea should he even get a toe on British soil."

"Yes, well, someone has to pay those lads and purchase their various shoving and shooting implements. So our bricks have this tax and we pay it. Or rather, Lord Tregaron pays it."

The foreman had never quite been satisfied with that explanation in the past. He wasn't now. "b.l.o.o.d.y piracy, I say," he muttered, then stomped off to find a few strong backs to lift the hods.

Cate needed to find Jamie. Bricks and grates would have to go into the selected fireplaces before the final touches were put on the floors. There was wallpapering to be supervised, paint to be approved, an endless array of small tasks. Well begun, half done, she reminded herself, and headed again for the stairs.

A gentle baritone flowed from the ballroom, rich and melodious and perfectly suited for the stage. It was singing of the ma.s.sacre at Culloden field. At that moment, the bulk of the Clan Fraser was meeting a gruesome death, in explicit detail.

Cate stuck her head in the doorway. Uncle Ambrose was atop his miniature painter's scaffold, cheerfully detailing a centaur's head as an unfortunate Fraser lost his to a Borderer's sword. "Looks marvelous!" she called.

Ambrose stopped singing and grinned at her over his shoulder. He was wearing enough paint from head to toe to resemble a casualty of war himself. "Not bad. Not bad at all if I do say so myself. Recognize him?" He extended his brush toward a ma.s.sive, cheerful Dionysus, arms spread benevolently to his guests, cup running over.

"I do, and a handsome fellow he is there as well as in life."

As Ambrose's face graced the G.o.d of wine and revelry, other familiar visages looked out from the picture. There was Angus as goat-bodied Pan, a representation he would not appreciate and which was, Cate a.s.sumed, retribution for his having sculpted Ambrose as the lumbering Goliath in a ma.s.sive marble garden statue the year before. It was a good-natured artistic wrestling match, one that Cate expected would go on for a great many years to come.

She found Lucy's fair face s.h.i.+ning out as beautiful Nyaiad, a baccha.n.a.lian nymph. She located herself, flatteringly lithe and lovely, armored as an attendant to Artemis. "Thank you, O Dionysus," she murmured, blowing her uncle a kiss.

Wellington the Centaur was there, looming over a roast boar that bore a distinct resemblance to the Bonaparte. Among the satyrs, the horned and hairy, oafish and lascivious creatures who served Dionysus, Cate saw a subtle Prince of Wales, a not so subtle Duke of Argyll, and the last three men who had commissioned garden follies from the Buchanans.

The face most notably absent was that of the man paying for this pictorial extravaganza. By all rights, Tregaron should have been the center of the piece, but he was so far from the jovial, gregarious Dionysus that Cate understood her uncle's decision there-his own narcissism notwithstanding. And he couldn't very well have put his employer's face on a satyr.

"Are you not including the marquess?"

Ambrose, back to singing and dabbing at the wall, pointed briefly to the top corner of the picture. It was an area sketched in but yet to be painted, and Cate had to stand on her toes to see.

"Zeus?" she asked, studying the strong, somber profile observing the party from a cloudy clime.

"Do you approve, Catey la.s.s? I'm rather proud of it, myself."

"It's perfect."

And it was. Only, something niggled at Cate as she stood beneath the image. It was proud, aristocratic, grand, and .. . Alone, she realized suddenly. Lonely. While other denizens of Olympus made merry below, this figure remained apart, watching.

The last of the ballad's n.o.ble Scotsmen fell. Ambrose ended the song with a bellowed flourish, then made a last dramatic sweep of his paintbrush. "That's it, then. I'm calling it a day."

Cate pulled her mother's little gold watch from her pocket. Half-three. "Already?" she asked, more in irony than in expectation of an answer.

Irony, as always, was quite lost on Ambrose. "I'm to meet Angus at the p-at the museum."

"And what museum would that be?"

"Just a little one, la.s.s. Just a little one, but filled to the brim with inspiration."

He clambered down from his scaffold, absently wiping his brush on the smock that didn't quite cover his sleeves. Cate knew he would take the time to care fully for his supplies, far less for himself. But the denizens of whatever tavern he and Angus were to frequent were unlikely to object to a bit of paint.

"You don't mind if I go, Catey. Do you?"

As if it mattered. Cate leaned up and gingerly kissed her uncle's paint-smeared, sandpapery cheek. "Off with you. Everything here is well under control."

She heard him leave some ten minutes later, the door thumping shut behind him. From the master bedchamber window, Cate watched him disappear down the street. His step was light, his hat at a c.o.c.ky angle. She opened the window to hear him whistling.

He never said so, but Cate knew he wanted to be away from other people's houses and tucked up inside his own studio, where he was lord and master. With luck and a bit of increased effort, he would finish the mural soon and wouldn't need to come by the site at all. Cate imagined he would be a happy man on that day.

A brisk breeze brushed by her shoulder. Behind her, there was a loud clatter and m.u.f.fled curse. She turned to see a young bricklayer hopping on one foot while glaring at a toppled pile of glazed bricks. "Sorry, miss," he offered for the curse, blus.h.i.+ng slightly.

Cate waved off the apology, then one of the feathers that forever seemed to be decorating the floors. "Well?"

"We can have them all in by Wednesday. Grates can go in the next Monday."

"Good. They're lovely, aren't they? The grates."

The young man scratched his head. "Can't say as I would ever have thought of them that way, but if you say so, miss."

So far, only the man who sold the iron Rumford grates had shared Cate's enthusiasm. Well, she would be vindicated when the things started turning up in every house in Mayfair and further afield. "Never mind. Have the rest of the bricks been put in the right rooms?"

"All but the closed room downstairs. Jamie said to check with you first."

"Ah, yes, the library."

Cate had not set foot in the library since that very first day when Tregaron had been so very rude and arrogant. Nor, to her knowledge, had anyone else. And she fully intended to obey his mighty lords.h.i.+p's decree that nothing be altered. Nothing, that was, except the fireplace. He could rot away, alone in there with his books, if that's what he wanted. In fact, Cate supposed she would be helping. Once the new grate was in, he would never be either frozen or smoked out of his cave. He could stay there forever.

The outside of the library door had been refinished many days back with the rest of the doors on its hall. There was no reason its newly glossy surface should look any darker than the rest, nor that the quirked beads carved into the frame above it should resemble teeth. They did. Scolding herself for fancy, Cate strode briskly down the hallway.

She could not, however, push her way so casually into the room. She took a breath, grasped the handle and, when the door resisted, used her shoulder. The door gave with a sound that was half grunt, half sigh. It would seem the workmen hadn't wanted to disturb what lay beyond, either, and had closed off the room before the varnish was dry.

Cate stood on the threshold for a full minute. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom inside. The heavy drapes were closed. Not that there was much light to let in. London's skies had been sullen all day, grey and heavy, threatening rain that had yet to come.

Needing whatever light she could muster, Cate wove her way around the shrouded furniture and cluttered floor. Her booted foot struck a hard, round object that rolled off the musty-smelling rug and onto the wood floor with a clatter. When she nearly stumbled over an ornate floor pedestal a moment later, Cate decided the ball had been a globe. Before she reached the window, she had avoided, kicked, or nearly tripped over countless books, the individual parts of a writing set, a cut gla.s.s decanter, and a squis.h.i.+ly soft object that her first horrified thought told her had once been a living thing until she realized it was a wad of loose stuffing that had come from a nearby broken and gutted footstool.

She had not noticed the full pattern of destruction on her first visit to this room, but now it appeared that some sort of small war had been fought within these walls. Once she got the heavy curtains open and had recovered from a vigorous sneezing fit brought on by a fall of dust, she took a good look around. The shattered remains of a second decanter were scattered dully in the fireplace, too dusty to glint as broken gla.s.s should. The sphere she had kicked, which did indeed turn out to be a carefully carved and painted globe, rested now between the cobwebby rails of a bookshelf ladder. The globe's sh.e.l.l, its interior painted to depict the heavens, lay in two pieces beneath the ma.s.sive desk.

The dropcloth had come half off that piece of furniture. Or, perhaps, had never been fully in place. There was certainly the feeling of sudden and complete abandonment in the dusty air. Cate took a peek beneath the canvas. She saw an elaborately gold-embossed leather blotter, a tarnished letter opener that was clearly the work of a master silversmith, an overturned but intact crystal gla.s.s whose glory still shone through despite what had probably been years in its present spot, and the majestic lines of the desk itself.

Turning, Cate identified the painting over the mantel with complete certainty as a Gainsborough. If she was not mistaken, the square tapestry on the opposite wall was Flemish and quite probably dated from three hundred years before. The statue of Mars resting on its side on the mantel looked Roman and about a millennium old. Years of living among artists had given Cate a fairly accurate eye for such things. She wasn't quite sure what to make of the pair of rough-hewn wooden spoons next to Mars, but could only a.s.sume they were aged and valuable, too. This was a room full of very precious objects, one that, anywhere else, would have been the pride and haven of its owner.

Then, of course, there was the one full wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the second with its shelves flanking the fireplace, mantel, and Gainsborough. There were plenty of empty s.p.a.ces, some large, their former occupants clearly scattered over the floor. Everywhere else, rich leather bindings stood against one another. Dust had dulled many of the tomes, but could not obliterate their fineness.