Cut to the Quick by Kate Ross

with Uncle Robert’s. Those are the only things that matter to Aunt Catherine. Of course the match was a disaster. She drove him out of England in the end, with her carping and her fits of temper. He lives on the Continent, and I’m told he’s in mortal dread of her coming after him some day. But she doesn't seem to care a fig if she never lays eyes on him again. She’d rather live at Bellegarde and queen it over Aunt Cecily and give her opinion of everything that goes on, whether people want it or not. She ought to have married the kind of man who'd beat her whenever she opened her mouth out of turn. If you ask me, one reason she can’t stomach Craddock is that he stands up to her, which is more than poor old Tarleton could ever do."
    “Perhaps that’s why she wanted him dismissed from Sir Robert’s service."
    “Could be. But there’s no knowing, worse luck. There’s hardly anybody left at Bellegarde who was here in those days—only Travis,
    the butler, and he’s as close as a clam. Of course Uncle Robert and Aunt Catherine won’t talk. The colonel was away in the army at the time Craddock got the bag, and he says he doesn’t know anything about it. I’m not sure I believe him—the fact is, he won’t tell me anything anymore. I’ve been pumping him for weeks about what’s behind Hugh’s marriage, and will he breathe a word to me? Not a bit of it!”
    “Perhaps he doesn’t know.”
    “Oh, he knows, all right! He’s been in the thick of this whole business from the beginning. It all started this past April, when Hugh came of age. Of course Uncle Robert put on a bang-up show: a feast for the servants, dancing—the whole feudal rigmarole. Next morning—it was raining, I remember, and I was stumping around with a monstrous headache, and the women were looking sort of peaked and tired out, and we were all moping about in the library, thinking how to keep amused till the rain stopped. And all of a sudden Travis comes in, looking as if he’d just taken a flush-hit on the nob, and says Mark Craddock is here to see Uncle Robert. We were all pretty taken aback—we knew Craddock was plump in the pocket now and had long since shaken the dust of Bellegarde from his feet, and why he should come calling on us was more than we could make out. But, Lord, you should have seen Aunt Catherine! Her legs fairly buckled under her—the colonel, had to hold her up. You know, sometimes I think Aunt Catherine’s a little mad. But that’s by the way.
    “Aunt Catherine started blathering about Craddock’s impudence in coming here. She said Uncle Robert mustn’t see him—said he ought to be thrown out, just as he had been twenty years ago. But Uncle Robert wanted to see what Craddock wanted, so he told Travis to show him in. In comes Craddock, with his steely-eyed look, and that way he has of making any room look too small to hold him. He doesn’t waste any time on civilities—just says he’s got business with Uncle Robert, Aunt Cecily, Aunt Catherine, and the colonel, and will they see him somewhere alone. Uncle Robert didn’t like the sound of that, I could tell, but he agreed, and so all the old people went off together, and Hugh and Isabelle and I were left racking our brains to think what it was all about.
    "They were gone a long time—a couple of hours at least—and I was so bored with the whole thing by then that when the rain stopped, I went out riding. I came back in the afternoon, and, by God, you’d think someone had died in the house—it was so still, and everyone looked so solemn. Craddock was gone, Hugh was shut up somewhere with his parents, and the colonel took me aside and said it would be best if I went back to London. Well, I kicked up a dust, naturally. I wanted to know what was in the wind. But I went in the end. It was clear no one was going to tell me a bloody thing, and who wants to stay in a house that’s turned into a mausoleum? Besides,” he added more quietly, "the colonel was really