The Trials of Alaric (Twist Upon a Regency Tale #8)

Chapter Eleven

I n the next two runs, Beverley fought back with vicious roquets aimed simply at disrupting one or the other of the two who had declared against them. They responded, and Bea ignored all three of them and simply played on.

At the end of the set, Beverley stormed out of the alley, and was not seen again for the rest of the day. The other seven players came up to the benches. Alaric and the others playing the second set made their way down the steps at the side of the slope to take their places in the alley.

There were three pairs in this set rather than four, and so the runs went more quickly. It took Alaric most of the first run to relearn how to hit the ball at the right spot and with the right amount of force to send it where he wanted it to go. After that, he made three tries at strikes that would lift the ball through the hoop.

In the next three runs, he improved by leaps and bounds. He finished the third run in fourth place, and the fourth in second, behind Miss Bryant, his partner.

In the fifth, he was blocked in. He had one more strike before he was within range of the ring, but Dashwood’s turn came after Alaric’s, and his ball landed just a few inches from Alaric’s and between Alaric and the ring. Alaric would have to jump his ball over Dashwood’s, and would not make the ground he needed to finish in two strikes.

He needn’t have worried, since Miss Bryant, when it came to her turn, roqueted Dashwood’s ball from Alaric’s path, leaving her own ball neatly positioned for a second strike which took her through the ring. “Well played, Miss Bryant!” he commended her as he took his turn. “I’m thankful Lady Claddagh paired us together.”

Miss Bryant and Alaric finished the fifth run first and second. They waited and watched while the others finished and then waited some more while Lord Lewiston and Lord Claddach consulted with the servants who had been counting strikes. The other players came down from the benches to listen to the verdict.

Alaric and Miss Bryant were the third of the top four pairs, so they were up again. Alaric was dry, though, after the previous set. He was pleased to see footmen with jugs of cider and glasses.

Bea was playing, too, but not with Beverley. Their partnership had come in fourth equal with another pair, and the highest scoring partner in each pair went through into the third set.

It was a hard-fought but fast-paced set. Each pair worked as a team, clearing way for the other when necessary. Nobody bothered with revenge roquets, focusing their effort instead on getting their balls through the rings in as few strikes as possible.

Alaric had one horrid moment when Miss Bryant needed him to clear Bea’s ball from her way. He met Bea’s eyes but could read nothing in her face. With a gulp, he accepted that the game required him to honor his partnership with Miss Bryant. He knocked Bea’s ball to the side of the alley and cast Bea an anguished glance. She smiled in return.

To his astonishment, when the winners were announced, Alaric and Miss Bryant had the lowest point count. They had won.

*

Bea hoped that partnering Beverley for one set would satisfy her father. She certainly did not need any more time to confirm her opinion that Beverley would make a terrible husband for her and a dreadful lord for Claddach.

She decided she had had quite enough of suitors for the afternoon. A quiet voice inside her suggested that she’d make an exception for Alaric, but since her agreement with her father made time with him impossible, she would check the ballroom.

Her mother and father were hosting a dinner party after the fête, and dinner would be followed by dancing. Bea was in charge of the preparations.

In the ballroom, a team of servants was cleaning under the direction of the housekeeper. She saw Bea arrive and came to report. “The flowers and greenery are in buckets in the corner, my lady. We shall put them out in pots at the last minute. We have set the green withdrawing room up for cards, and the cupid room for supper. The musician’s gallery is furnished with chairs and music stands. As soon as we have finished cleaning this room, we shall put up the cloth drops and set out the furniture—chairs and small tables in conversation groups at this end of the room, as you requested, and chairs around the space left for dancing at the other end.”

The drop cloths, which Bea and the other lady guests had painted during the first week of the house party, showed garden scenes. There would be one behind each conversation group, with large tubs of flowers and greenery framing the base of each cloth.

Bea looked along the room to the musician’s gallery at the far end. And froze. Didn’t the carving around the gallery include roses? She would have to wait to confirm her memory. The housekeeper was keen to show her the preparations so far, and Bea allowed herself to be conducted through the games and supper room and the ladies’ withdrawing room, which was being set up in a parlor a few doors away from the ballroom.

Once she had expressed her appreciation and thanks, she said, “I will just, if you have no objection, walk around a little more. If that will not disturb the preparations?” The housekeeper waved away her concern and Bea was free to check her supposition.

They had finished the cleaning while she had been busy with the housekeeper and were now putting up the first of the painted drops. Bea drifted to the far end of the ballroom, trying to look as if she had no particular destination. The musician’s gallery was lit by only a single small window, and the ceiling was lost in shadow. But she had a clear view of the wooden paneling that rose the full height of the ballroom at this end of the room.

From the other end of the ballroom, she had not been able to clearly see the ornately carved pillars that rose from the ballroom floor on both sides of the gallery, but here they were. Roses. A beautifully carved climbing rose, leaves, vine, and flowers winding up the pillar to arch across the top of the gallery.

Better, if she did not mistake the matter, the ceiling of the gallery was painted with a moon and stars—a silver moon and golden stars.

She would check, but first she would examine the carved panels that fronted the gallery’s balustrade. The sun was setting, and soon there would not be enough light to make them out.

There were four of them, and the rose appeared on them all. A man and a woman—both very young. In the first, they were dancing. The second showed the same couple in an embrace on a balcony. The next scene was one of farewell. The girl was waving from the balcony on one side of the panel, and in the distance, someone rode away. In the final panel, the girl lay apparently dead, surrounded by roses. After a few moments’ thought, she identified the Shakespearean play from which they came. Romeo and Juliet .

It remained only to check the ceiling up in the gallery, which was reached by a set of steps off a small passage she accessed through a door hidden in the paneling.

Yes. She had been correct. Moon and stars looked down on roses, for a tendril of the vine reached into the gallery on both sides.

She needed to tell Alaric. Bother. She could not take him aside somewhere they’d not be overheard without sending her mother into spasms nor go for a walk with him without breaking her promise to her father. In any case, it was nearly time to dress for dinner.

She’d have to send her information through her maid to his valet, and hope Alaric got the message.

*

When Colyn came to help Alaric dress for dinner, he also brought a message. “Lady Beatrice said to tell you, you should look at the minstrels’ gallery in the ballroom,” he said.

Alaric wanted to rush off and look straight away. The answer to the second clue. It had to be. He allowed Colyn to tie his cravat just so. “It would be better with a tie pin,” Colyn commented.

“Perhaps,” Alaric agreed. “But I am still very much beholden to my host for everything I wear.” Would he hear from his father soon? It had been more than a week since he’d written. He would dearly love to have even a few pounds to give vails to Colyn and the footmen who brought the water for his bath.

Best of all would be if his father sent the trunks he had stored in the family attics when he left for Brazil. Alaric had sent a second letter, once he decided to enter the trials, explaining about the trials—and the prize—and asking for his trunks. But that letter had only gone five days ago.

“There, sir. You are ready,” Colyn declared. “You have thirty minutes. Do you wish me to show you where the ballroom is?”

“Thank you,” Alaric replied. It was not a place he had been to in his clock hunt, so he needed assistance finding the room expeditiously.

Colyn left him at the door to the ballroom, which was a hive of activity, with servants hanging cloths to drape from the wall, setting out chairs, and attending to two enormous chandeliers that had been dropped to floor level. They were setting new candles in the sconces and polishing each individual crystal.

The woman who was housekeeper came to meet him. “Mr. Redhaven? Is there something I can do for you? Shall I direct you to the drawing room?”

“I am here to see the minstrel gallery,” Alaric explained. “I trust I shall not be in your way?”

The housekeeper looked dubious, but she said, “Of course not, sir. We are nearly finished here for the night.” She stepped out of his path.

The climbing roses that framed the gallery certainly fitted the rhyme. But what of the moon and the stars? He borrowed a lamp from a nearby group of servants who had finished hanging their drape, which proved to be a cloth painted with a semblance of a garden.

One of the servants directed him to the stairs he needed, and he soon found the ceiling up in the gallery was painted with a night sky. The silver moon and golden stars shone on roses. Back downstairs again, he tried to make out the panels along the front of the gallery. He would have to return in daylight, for the details were too shadowed for him to determine their subject.

As he stood there, the servant who had given him the lamp came to retrieve it. “Did you find what you were looking for, sir?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you. Except I cannot make out what the panels are about,” he replied.

“The Romeo and Juliet panels?” the woman said. “They are very beautiful. They were carved for this ballroom, you know. My great uncle was the carver.”

She pointed up at the first panel. “They meet and dance.” Then to the second. “He climbs to her balcony.” The third. “He is forced to leave.” And finally, the fourth. “She lies, apparently dead. Of course, after that, he kills himself and then so does she.” She sighed. “Such a tragedy. We had players here the year before last. They acted the play in this very ballroom, and Lord Claddach allowed the household staff to watch. We all cried.” This time, her sigh was redolent with the satisfaction of a treasured memory.

“Thank you,” Alaric said, sincerely, handing over the lamp. He had his answer. Did he have time to give it to Lord Claddach? He thanked the housekeeper, too, and went looking for the earl.

His lordship was already in the drawing room, talking to the Earl of Lewiston and Mr. Howard, the father of Arthur Howard the suitor. Alaric was frustrated, but interrupting would be rude, and would also draw too much attention. He didn’t want to find himself followed by suitors who were less successful than he had been, with Bea’s help, at unraveling the clues.

His chance came after dinner, when the men finished their glass of port and began to make their way to the drawing room to join the ladies. “My lord,” he said to Lord Claddach, “May I have a quick word?”

“Go along without me,” Claddach told the other gentlemen. “Very well, Redhaven. You have my attention.”

“I believe I know the answer to the second clue, my lord,” Alaric told him. Claddach inclined his head, and Alaric continued. “It is the minstrel gallery in the ballroom, my lord. The climbing rose. The moon and the stars. Romeo and Juliet , in fact.”

Claddach raised his eyebrows. “Well done. I did not expect anyone to discover the answer until tomorrow’s dancing. Come to my study after we have done the pretty with the ladies, and I shall give you the next clue.”

Which meant Alaric slept that night with the third clue drifting ominously through his mind:

“A victim, he, of beauty’s snare

Lost at a glimpse. Young man, beware.

Elude the trap of waters still

And ne’er forget that love can kill.”