Midnight at Mallyncourt by Jennifer Wilde Read Free Book Online

lonely, disappointed old man who craved attention. I know how to handle him, always have. Unlike Lyman. They’re constantly at each other’s throats.”
    â€œLyman?”
    â€œMy cousin. He lives at Mallyncourt with his wife and daughter, acts as Uncle James’ chief bailiff, manages the estate now that the old man is no longer able to do so himself.”
    â€œI—I know so little about these people I’m about to meet.”
    â€œI suppose I should give you a bit of background,” he replied. “After all, a wife would have learned something about the family. Frederick and James had two sisters, Clarissa and Jane. Jane had a grand debut in London. She could have had her pick of the most eligible bachelors of the day. She promptly came back to Mallyncourt and scandalized the countryside by marrying Angus Robb, the son of a tenant farmer, an uncouth lad with whom she had been having an affair prior to her debut. Lyman was the outcome of the match. His parents are both dead now. Uncle James took him in when he was thirteen.”
    â€œYou were living there at the time?”
    â€œMy mother, Clarissa, made a more suitable match. She married a young lieutenant, Jeffery Baker, the wealthy scion of a prominent London family. I was born a year later. My mother died bearing me. My father went away to India where he quickly succumbed to cholera. I was raised at Mallyncourt.” He paused, shoving a dark blond lock from his brow. “My uncle never had any legitimate children, but he was saddled with two young nephews early on. He loved to pit us against one another. Still does. That’s why he’s being so obstinate about the will.”
    â€œYou and Lyman obviously don’t get along,” I observed.
    â€œThat’s an understatement,” he replied. His voice was icy. “Lyman is an uncivil brute, churlish, disrespectful, the upstart son of a tenant farmer and a dizzy-headed young trollop who had neither sense nor morals in spite of her family name and respectable upbringing. Lyman and I have always been at odds.”
    â€œIs he your age?”
    â€œThree years older. He’s thirty-four.”
    â€œYou mentioned a wife and child—”
    â€œVanessa is one of the most beautiful women in England,” he informed me, “and undoubtedly one of the most depraved. At eighteen she was a professional beauty, the delight of London society, her portrait painted by Whistler, by Millais, by Holman-Hunt. Her background was impeccable, and she could have made a spectacular marriage. She didn’t. My cousin went up to London on estate business. They met, and she promptly cast aside all her eligible suitors. Aristocratic women, you’ll observe, are frequently attracted to the brusque, brutal type of male. Lyman is as virile and rough as his father was before him, and, like my Aunt Jane, Vanessa considered the world of polite society well lost for such a rugged specimen. They eloped. Lyman brought her back to Mallyncourt, and Lettice was born seven months later. That was ten years ago. Vanessa is twenty-nine now, more beautiful than ever.”
    â€œIs the marriage a happy one?”
    A thin, sardonic smile curled on his lips. “Hardly that,” he said in an emotionless voice. “Her elopement with Lyman was an adventure, a madcap escapade worthy of a spoiled, pampered young beauty, but unfortunately it backfired. She tired of him quickly—that was inevitable—and found herself a prisoner in the country, isolated from the society she had reigned over at one time, with a masterful, dominating husband who refused to let her have her way. Vanessa has been taking her revenge on him for a number of years now—”
    He didn’t elaborate. It wasn’t necessary.
    â€œAnd the child?” I inquired.
    â€œLettice is a thin, pale, bitter little thing, prickly and thoroughly antisocial. She keeps to herself, preferring the company of