LITMIR.BIZ

       9

      ‘Elliot, damn you, where are you?’

      Clementina Sutton took the stairs two at a time, shaking with fury, cursing the stays and petticoats and folds of skirt that impeded her undignified haste. First Mrs Mounteagle, and now her sister-in-law, and all because of Elliot and his stupidity!

      ‘Where are you, boy!’ For two pins she would tan his hide as he deserved. She could do much worse for the shame he had heaped upon her! She would be an outcast, the laughing-stock of local society, and far, far worse, she would have to endure the ill-disguised sniggers of her servants who would glory in her humiliation. ‘Get out of that bed!’

      She opened the door with a force that sent it crashing back on its hinges, then, pulling at the bed-covers, she grasped her son’s nightshirt, pulling him, startled, to face her.

      ‘Mama! What the hell …’

      ‘Dear God!’ She beheld a bloodstained pillow, a face bruised and battered, and a left eye no more than a swollen slit. ‘Oh, you fool! You – you –’ She flung herself at him, fists pummelling, rage and mortification giving strength to her blows. In that moment of blind fury she hated him, hated herself, and hated the girl who was the cause of it all. But most of all she hated Helen Sutton and her smug superiority. ‘Oh, what has happened to you?’ She collapsed, all at once exhausted, over his bed, sobbing, shaking, moaning pitifully. ‘What is happening to me?’

      Arms grasped her, pulled her to her feet. Not knowing where she was, unable almost, to place one foot before the other, she allowed her husband to lead her to the door.

      ‘You, boy! Get out of that bed and clean yourself up! Then come to the library.’ Edward Sutton’s voice was icy with contempt. ‘At once!’

      Guiding his wife to the third door along, he pushed it wide with his foot, supporting her as she slumped against him for fear she would fall in a faint. ‘Clemmy, calm yourself …’

      ‘Madam!’ Feet pounded the landing, the stairs, the passage. ‘Oh, madam …’

      The housekeeper and two agitated housemaids came running, and, in the hall below, glimpsed over the banister rail, the butler gazed up, enjoyment evident upon his face.

      ‘Please take care of Mrs Sutton.’ Thankfully her husband stood aside. ‘She is not well.’

      ‘There, there, madam. Let me send for Monique to help you to bed?’ In an agitation of skirts, the wide-eyed housekeeper whisked out of the room. ‘And shall I have Doctor James sent for, sir?’

      But Edward was gone, slamming down the stairs white-faced, jaws clenched hard on his fury.

      What had his son been up to? Set upon by a debt collector’s thugs; brawling in some alehouse? He’d taken the motor last night; been absent from dinner without excuse or apology, so where had it happened? Leeds again, or had a vengeful butcher caught up with him – or any irate father of a daughter?

      Opening the door of the safe, cloister-like room that was his peace and haven, he made for the table where decanters of brandy and sherry stood on a silver tray. Edward Sutton rarely drank before evening, but this morning he downed a measure of brandy with sacrilegious haste, as if it were physic to be gulped of necessity rather than with pleasure.

      Damn the stupid youth! He hadn’t crashed the motor, that was certain, or he’d have made great play of his injuries and not slunk into his room. Oh, no. Retribution had caught up with him at last. His son was in trouble of his own making; trouble with a nasty stink to it.

      ‘Father?’ Elliot stood in the doorway, a robe over his nightshirt, his hair uncombed, defiance in his eyes and in the half-smile that tilted his lips.

      ‘I asked you to make yourself respectable! How dare you show yourself in that disgusting state? And do not smoke. I will not have the stink of your cigarettes in my room!’

      ‘Your room, father?’ He opened the gold case, selecting a cigarette with studied defiance. ‘Your anything in this house?’

      ‘Damn you!’ Edward Sutton covered the space between them, white-hot rage at his heels. Grabbing the silkquilted lapels, he dragged his son to the chair beside the desk, flinging him into it, sending the cigarette case flying. ‘My room, my house, and never from this moment forget it! And I want an explanation of the state you’re in or by God I’ll beat it out of you!’ Knock, pummel, punch him until years of frustration were gone; do what he had longed to do for longer than he could remember – what, as a responsible father, he should have done at the first surfacing of the rottenness in his firstborn. ‘And I want the truth. This is not your mother you are dealing with now!’

      ‘Then at least allow me to close the door.’ Elliot Sutton brushed an imaginary speck from his robe. ‘I do so dislike washing dirty linen in public.’

      ‘You’re admitting it then – dirt? Because you didn’t get that face in church on your knees! Where were you last evening and what were you about?’

      ‘I took the motor, father, and ran out of fuel, and two or maybe three thugs set about me. It was dark – how could I know …’

      ‘Liar! Don’t insult my intelligence. Those are scratch marks on your face. Which woman did it, and where? Up to your tricks again in Creesby, were you?’ Fist clenched, he thumped the desktop. ‘Well, you have upset your mother for the last time. From now on you answer to me, and when Doctor James arrives, you’ll have him disinfect your face before it goes septic.

      ‘Then you will shave as best you can and remain out of sight until I get to the bottom of this. For the truth I will have, Elliot, no matter how unsavoury. And restitution you will make, of that be very sure. And now get out of here, for the sight of you sickens me. Indeed, there have been times, lately, when I have looked at you and wondered how I got you.’

      ‘Ha! So that’s it! I’m not your saintly Nathan; I’m not Sutton-fair, like Albert! I’m dark, aren’t I, a throwback from the Pendennis woman? I could have been Mary Anne’s, couldn’t I – the son of a herring-wench?’

      ‘That herring-woman you so despise was honest and hard-working. It was she who laid the foundations for what you take for granted, by gutting fish and taking in washing. Would you had more of her in you!’

      ‘You say that easily, Father, when your own breeding is flawless; when you were born a Sutton. But none of your friends act as if I were. And I am a Sutton – every bit as much as Nathan and Albert.’

      ‘You’ll be a Sutton when you have earned the right to be one; earned the right to be treated with respect in society. Servants despise you, as do your equals. There are times I think you are not fit to bear the name!’

      ‘Well, I am yours – me and Albert both.’ The pouting lips

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