Stranger at the Dower House (Strangers Book 1)

by Mary Kingswood

  “Her?”

  “Louisa Middlehope,” she said, with the sort of patient tone one might employ with a child. “Do you imagine we know nothing about it? Vi has been writing agonised letters for weeks now, but Vi is… well, she is Vi, and I do not regard her word as totally reliable in such a matter. I should love to hear all about it from your own lips, but that is up to you. I shall work on my tapestry and you may drink your Madeira, and we can just as easily talk about the weather, if you wish.”

  Laurence laughed. “Whatever has Vi said about Louisa?”

  “Only that she is a widow and she fears of the more predatory kind, but I cannot tell whether she most fears that you will marry her or that you will not.”

  “Vi has been telling me to marry again for years, yet now when a woman comes along whose company I enjoy, she is set against it. I cannot make her out at all.”

  “Oh, Laurence! She is terrified of being displaced, of course. If you marry, she will have to leave, and where does she have to go now except here, or with Selena? She wants you to be happy, as we all do, but she is a spinster of six and forty and her options are limited. Do you truly enjoy Mrs Middlehope’s company? She does not sound at all like the sort of woman you would like. She is nothing like Catherine, from Vi’s account.”

  “She is nothing like Catherine,” he said, with sudden vehemence. Then, seeing the surprise in Ursula’s eyes, he went on, “Did you like Catherine, sister? Answer me honestly.”

  Ursula laid down her tapestry frame and removed her spectacles. When had she started wearing those? Lord, how old they were all getting!

  For a moment she looked at him, her expression clouded. “She was… very lovely, very calm. A restful person to be with,” she said eventually.

  “But?”

  “She was cold, Laurence. I always thought her cold. With you, with the children… there was no true warmth. That was how I felt, anyway. No doubt she was different in private but—”

  “No,” he said quickly. “She was always cold. Even in our most private moments, there was no warmth in her… no affection. I…” He stopped. How much should he say? Even now, with all that he knew of Catherine, it felt like a betrayal to speak so openly of her. Yet he needed to say it, to tell someone of his grief. “I read her diaries, and she never loved me, not when we married, nor later, when we knew each other better. She never even loved her own children. What kind of mother feels nothing for the child she carried inside her, Ursula?”

  She reached across and laid her hand on his. “Oh Laurence, I am so sorry, so very sorry. We often wondered… but you always seemed so happy with her, and you grieved so much after she died that naturally we said nothing. And is this widow warmer?”

  He smiled just thinking of Louisa. Warmer? Yes, she was all warmth, all humanity, her nature all generosity. And her kisses… Lord, her kisses! “Yes, she is warmer.”

  “Oh, Laurence! You are in love with her! I can see it in your face. Oh, how wonderful!”

  “Am I? How does one know? That is to say, with Catherine, I felt something instantly and I was in no doubt that I wanted to marry her, but with Louisa… it feels just like friendship. I feel comfortable with her.”

  Ursula chuckled. “There is no better start for a marriage than friendship, my dear. Better than falling head over heels for a beautiful face and an empty head. Is she beautiful, your Louisa?”

  He pondered that, recalling that he had described her to Viola as neither beautiful nor plain, merely ordinary. How long ago that seemed, and how much his view of her had changed. “I think her beautiful,” he answered cautiously.

  “Ah. And does your heart beat faster when you see her?”

  That was a difficult question. “I am always glad to see her.”

  “Do you dream of spending your life with her? Does she fill your thoughts?”

  More difficult questions. He frowned as he considered. “I do think about her, but… spending my life with her? Marriage? I enjoy her friendship, very much so, but do I want to go beyond friendship? That is precisely what I cannot decide.”

  “Well, then, think of it another way, Laurence. If she disappeared from your life, if you could never see her again, how would you feel about that?”

  The cold chill that assailed him was like a blow, sudden and acutely painful. Bath! If she were to go to Bath— “I should hate it!” he said fiercely. “More than anyone else, I can talk to her. No matter how low I feel or how stupidly I behave, she always makes me feel better. I should be wretched without her company… her understanding… her unquestioning fellowship. Good God, I should be so miserable if she were to go away. I could not imagine my life without her.” He gave a shaky laugh. “I suppose I have my answer, do I not?”

  “I suppose you do, brother dear. May I be the first to wish you joy?”

  “Ah, well, do not be too hasty, for there is just a tiny difficulty. Even if my mind is made up, I have yet to convince the lady. She relishes her freedom and is in no hurry to surrender herself to another man. The first time I mentioned the subject, in the most roundabout way, she told me not to be so silly.”

  “Then you will just have to change her mind about it,” Ursula said with a throaty laugh.

  “How on earth am I to do that?”

  “By convincing her that she cannot live without you, of course,” she said triumphantly. “When you go home, you will discover just how much she has missed you, and I daresay she will fall into your arms.”

  If only it could be so simple!

  ~~~~~

  Louisa had so much enjoyed her first dinner at the Dower House that she immediately sat down to plan the second. Laurence must come, of course, and Miss Gage, and she would invite Henrietta, too. It would be good for her to enjoy an evening out amongst good friends. She would include Mr Willerton-Forbes, Captain Edgerton and Mr Chandry if they had returned by then, and the Beasleys. The Drinkwaters and the Andersons? She supposed she owed them the courtesy, although they were dull company. That would be thirteen, so she would add Miss Cokely to the list. That should do it. She would tell Chambers to start preparing a menu. He could go to Shrewsbury, if need be, to obtain the ingredients, and as soon as Laurence returned, she would send out her cards.

  Jeffrey Rycroft called promptly to discuss plans for the garden, which seemed to involve tearing up the orchard and most of the shrubbery, and a vast amount of earthmoving to create what he grandly described as topography. He walked about with her, the dogs bouncing excitedly around them, his arms windmilling as he tried to explain the splendour of his vision.

  “This is a garden of modest proportions, not a great estate, Mr Rycroft,” Louisa said in amusement. “This all seems a little ambitious.”

  “Oh.” He deflated at once. “Is it too dramatic? Something a little more restrained, perhaps? More formal, like the house or— Oh. Is it too expensive? I should have enquired as to your budget.”

  “It is not a question of money,” she said firmly, “although I should want everything properly priced up before I agree to anything. Why do you not draw up two different plans, one dramatic and one restrained, with a rough estimate of costs, and then we will discuss it further.”

  He nodded but his face was troubled.

  “What is it?” she said. “You cannot expect me to agree to anything after an hour of walking round the garden and coming up with ideas on the spot.”

  “No, no, but… may I be frank with you, Mrs Middlehope? When Lord Saxby died in January, he left my brother and me with a dilemma. We were only his step-sons and had no claim on him, but when he married our mother he agreed to pay for our education and raise us as gentlemen. However, that was all he promised. We have had no help to find a career, or do anything useful and now… now we must. This would be a useful start for me, if… if…”

  “If you are paid? And you will be, Mr Rycroft. When I had work done on a new shrubbery and dell at Roseacre, the garden designer produced a series of drawings of his proposals from different angle
s, showing how the finished work would look. He would bill me for the hours spent on the designs plus his materials and other expenses. Sometimes I would ask for changes, and he would make fresh drawings, again charging me for the work. If I liked the design, I could either commission him to execute it or engage local labour to work from the drawings. That would be paid for separately, but everything he did, he charged me for. I will let you have his direction and you may write to him for his advice, or go to see him in London, if you wish. That would be a legitimate expense for which you could bill me.”

  “Oh.” His eyes were wide at this glimpse of another world. Then he laughed. “Go to London at your expense? That would be beyond the pale!”

  “Research, Mr Rycroft, research,” she said, smiling. “A perfectly reasonable expense.”

  Later that day, when she was just returning from a long walk with the dogs, she met Captain Edgerton walking up her drive.

  “I was just coming to call upon you to report on our successful mission,” the captain said, according her one of his flamboyant bows.

  “You found the three ladies who wrote the references for Miss Labett?”

  “Well… not all of them admittedly, and the servants were less helpful than I had supposed. It is astonishing how often some people contrive to lose all their servants. As for their mistresses, one lady had died and all her papers had been burned, so there was nothing to be discovered there. Another was still alive, but her house had burnt down, so all her records had gone up in smoke, too. But the third… ah, the third was a great deal more successful.” He grinned at her happily.

  “Come inside and tell me all about it,” Louisa said, smiling at his excitement.

  William poured Madeira without being asked, and then the captain, practically bouncing with enthusiasm in his chair, told her the story.

  “Mrs Harker is a very old lady now, but her memory is as clear as a bell. She remembers Miss Labett perfectly, and even sketched us a drawing of her. There now, what do you think of that?”

  She gazed at the paper he gave her, the face of a woman dead for a quarter of a century. She was not a beauty, and not even pretty, if she were being honest, despite the curls carefully massed around her face and the feminine froth of lace at her throat. It was a hard face, filled with determination. Or was that ambition?

  “What did Mrs Harker say about her?” Louisa said.

  “That she was no better than she should be,” he said at once. “She was not in the least surprised to hear that she was with child when she died. She seduced the Harker son and heir, a boy of only seventeen, and had him on the point of a proposal before his parents got wind of the affair. Very persistent about it she was too, and had to be paid quite a substantial sum to go away.”

  Louisa sipped her Madeira thoughtfully. “She was an ambitious little madam, by the sound of it. And so she has moved from one post to another, looking for an opportunity… or a man too honourable or stupid to see what she is about. But the man she met here was neither stupid nor honourable. Have you made any progress towards finding her lover, Captain?”

  “Not yet. So far, we have been more concerned with tracing Miss Labett’s history. She came from Chester, the daughter of some kind of clerk, although she claimed her mother’s family was gentry. It is probably a wild goose chase, but we must try to find anyone there who remembers her before we start stirring the ants’ nest to find a murderer.”

  “Lord, yes! What a to-do, once you start interviewing likely suspects! But you must have a list, surely?”

  “Not yet. It is rather a difficult undertaking. One would need to know everyone who was in the village at the time.”

  Louisa pondered that. “You are the expert, Captain, but I should have thought there would not be terribly many single men about.”

  “You would exclude the married men? And the jealous wives?”

  “Miss Labett— What was her Christian name?”

  “Dorothea.”

  “Oh. Such a pretty name. She does not look a bit like a Dorothea. That is nothing to the point, however. Dorothea wanted a husband, so she would not waste her efforts on a married man. By the same token, there would be no jealous wife in the case, even if one supposed one could be found with the strength or ingenuity to kill the poor girl and drag her into the wine cellar. That seems like a job for a man, do you not think?”

  The captain smiled, and said, “I agree with you, but one does not quite like to eliminate all but the most obvious possibility. But let us suppose we restrict ourselves to single men. How would one find them all out after all this time?”

  “Oh, that is easy,” Louisa said, laughing. “One asks the single women, of course. Miss Gage and Miss Beasley would have been here at the time and would have known all the eligible young men. Should you like me to ask them?”

  “That would be most helpful, Mrs Middlehope. Such an enquiry would be much better coming from another lady. Then, when we return from Chester, we shall have our list of possible murderers ready and waiting.”

  Louisa sent notes to Miss Gage and Miss Beasley at once, and they entered into the spirit of the exercise with enthusiasm. Sitting either side of Louisa’s davenport with cups of tea and plates of delicate strawberry tarts and almond biscuits, they rattled off names while Louisa copied them down.

  “Thomas Saxby was the most eligible young man in those days,” Miss Gage said. “Not that he was handsome or particularly good-natured — he had such a temper when he was thwarted. Do you remember the time he smashed that beautiful ormolu clock because it had stopped again and he said what was the point of a clock that never worked? And he broke a window in one of his own glass houses when the gardener did something to upset him and he made the fellow pay for it, too. He was always careful with his money. Oh, but wait… what year was this? No, he was firmly betrothed by then, so that is no good. John Winslade… he was not married until the following year. He was much handsomer, and had prettier manners, too. His father was squire in those days, of course. Who else? Oh, Luke Winslade. Now there is a likely murderer, if you want. Always in trouble, always.”

  “He was in India, Viola,” Miss Beasley whispered.

  “Was he? No, that was later… no, I do believe you are right, Phyllida, so cross him off, Mrs Middlehope. Roland, of course.”

  Miss Beasley started violently, and made inarticulate noises of protest.

  “Well, naturally he is not a murderer, but his name must go on the list. Write down ‘Roland Beasley’, Mrs Middlehope. There was no one else from our class that I can recall. Can you think of anyone, Phyllida? No, I am sure there is no one.”

  “Great-uncle Zachariah,” Miss Beasley said, almost under her breath.

  “Oh, good grief, Phyllida! He could not possibly— No, you are right, we must have every one who was unmarried at the time. Zachariah Gage, Mrs Middlehope, who must have been sixty or more at the time. He has only just died, if you can believe it. Eighty-seven, and not stirred from his house for twenty years, but he was living at the Grove when Miss Labett was here. Oh, and his son! Illegitimate, you know,” she added in a semi-whisper, her lips pursed in distaste. “Kenneth Gage, another ne’er-do-well if ever there was one. He was here.”

  Miss Beasley shook her head. “In prison.”

  “Was that then? Yes, it must have been. Oh, well, take him off the list, Mrs Middlehope. Who else? John Brownsmith from the Boar’s Head. He would have been about one and twenty then. Several of the Vale boys from the Home Farm. Oh, and the smith… such a well-looking man, so tall and all that black hair. Do you remember him, Phyllida?” Miss Beasley nodded, a little smile on her lips. “This was before those no-good Preeces came, of course. What was his name?”

  “Harry Smallwood,” Miss Beasley whispered, with a tiny sigh.

  “And that is all, I believe. Can you think of anyone else, Phyllida? No? It is not a very long list, is it, Mrs Middlehope?”

  It was depressingly short, and the worst of it was that the most likely candi
date, the most obvious target for an ambitious governess looking to trick her way to a husband, was John Winslade. The squire.

  27: Considerations Of Matrimony

  When Louisa entered the Grove on Tuesday evening, she was pleased to find that Laurence had returned and was beaming at her from the far side of the drawing room.

  “Was your journey successful?” she said, when he came to greet her.

  He bowed over her hand with unusual formality. “Very. I have left Mr Willerton-Forbes busy on my behalf in Bath. You will also be pleased to hear that I am less muddled than I was when we last met. I visited my sister in Gloucester and have got a great deal straightened out in my mind. I should like to talk to you about it, if I may? Tomorrow, perhaps?”

  There was an eagerness in him that she had not seen before. But how sweet that he wished to tell her of all his thoughts! “I shall be at leisure all day,” she said, immediately cancelling her plans to drive to Astley Cloverstone.

  She was still at breakfast the next morning when the door knocker sounded. William returned with a note on the silver salver.

  ‘I shall await you in the little arbour in the shrubbery. Laurence.’

  Abandoning her breakfast with a laugh, she gathered the dogs and went out through the drawing room door. Crossing the lawn to the shrubbery, she made her way to the secret arbour hidden amidst the greenery. He was there, sitting with his arms folded and legs stretched out in front of him, neatly crossed at the ankles, looking as if he belonged there. He jumped up and bowed as she approached, and there was that eagerness again that made her smile.

  “What is it you wanted to say to me?” she said, positioning a cushion on the stone bench and sitting down.

  His lips quirked ruefully as he sat beside her. “I am afraid I am going to annoy you by asking you to marry me. I am sorry for it, but it cannot be helped. And now you will give me a score of reasons why you should not.”