by M C Beaton
“Anyone as rich as she can always get a man,” said the footman cynically, and the pair set off arm in arm.
Once they were gone, the dowager countess went down to the kitchens and took out two large cans of oil that were kept for the lamps. They were very heavy and she wondered whether she would have the strength to take them upstairs. She drank some more champagne and poured the oil off into various bottles and then carried the oil upstairs, two bottles at a time.
Back in the drawing room, she poured the oil over the chairs and around the fireplace, and also soaked the floorboards near the fireplace.
Then she poured herself a tankard of champagne and sat down to wait.
The knocking on the street door at ten in the evening startled her. It could not be Sunningburgh. She sat unmoving, waiting for whoever it was to go away.
The knocking grew louder and more insistent. Reluctantly, she rose to her feet. It might be some friend who, alarmed not to get a response, might assume she was ill.
She swung open the street door and received a push on the face that sent her reeling backwards. Mr. Harry Webster and Sir Percival Magnus walked into the hall and slammed the door behind them.
“Get her up,” commanded Mr. Webster, “and take her into that room over there.” That room was the drawing room. The countess struggled to her feet and picked up her fallen cane. “I am quite able to manage by myself,” she said.
Mr. Webster leveled a large pistol at her. “Scream or cry out and it will be the worse for you,” he said. “Where are your servants?”
“Gone to the country.”
“You kept two.”
“Yes, I sent them away for the night.”
Sir Percival found himself becoming unnerved by the old lady’s calm. He and Mr. Webster followed her into the drawing room. She sat down in a chair by the window. Mr. Webster took up a position by the fireplace and Sir Percival by the door.
“Where’s Lady Lucinda?” demanded Mr. Webster.
The countess hesitated. She felt sure if she said Lucinda was in the country, then they would shoot her so that she would not interfere with any further plans. It was all at once obvious to the countess why they had come to the house. If Lucinda were constrained to marry Sir Percival, then Mr. Webster would get the Sotheran money. The countess was bitterly ashamed of her own judgment. To think she had once considered Sir Percival a suitable husband for her darling Lucinda!
“She is upstairs,” she said, rising to her feet and picking up a branch of candles. “I will fetch her.”
“No, you won’t,” said Mr. Webster. “Percy’ll do that. Go to it, Percy!”
“I must take a restorative,” said Sir Percival through white lips. He pulled out the small bottle he had got from the apothecary’s, put it to his lips, and drained the contents in one gulp. “It tastes rather pleasant,” he said in tones of surprise. As last words, they were not very memorable, but then Sir Percival was not a very memorable gentleman. His look of surprise was replaced by one of shock. He fell on the floor, his heels drummed frantically against the carpet, and then he lay still.
“The fool!” hissed Harry Webster. He forgot about the gun in his hand. He went and knelt down by the dead Sir Percival and shook him frantically.
The countess gave a long sigh. She went to the door and turned around.
“You are,” she said, “Mr. Webster, I presume. Then good-bye, Mr. Webster.” She tossed the branch of candles onto the floor and nipped out of the drawing room and locked the stout mahogany door behind her. The last glimpse she had of Mr. Webster was his horrified face as it disappeared behind a sheet of flame.
The countess walked out of the house. Had it been Sunningburgh who had called, she had meant to perish with him. She felt very tired. She hailed a passing hack and told the jehu to take her to Westminster Bridge. Tears rolled down her withered cheeks as the carriage creaked its way from Berkeley Square. “I can’t seem to do anything right,” she mourned. “I meant to protect Lucinda from Sunningburgh, never knowing that a greater peril faced her.”
When the hack reached the middle of Westminster Bridge, she opened the trap with her long cane and called to the driver to stop. She paid him and waited until he had driven off.
A thin fog was starting to rise from the river.
“Once more I must make an effort,” she said aloud. “I only hope my dear Lucinda will understand and forgive me. I was mistaken in my dislike of Sunningburgh. She would have been better with him than Percival.”
She looked about her. The bridge was temporarily deserted. She went over and stood in one of the bays. The lights of an approaching carriage appeared at the south end of the bridge.
With a herculean effort, she mounted to the top of the parapet and stood there for a moment, a glittering, fantastic figure in her jewels and old-fashioned gown.
A cry of alarm came from somewhere. There was the sound of running feet and a voice cried, “Don’t do it!”
The countess jumped.
Chapter Eleven
Lady Lucinda Esmond was preparing for her wedding. It was six months since the house in Berkeley Square had burned to the ground. The two horribly charred remains found in what was once the drawing room had been identified as those of two men, but no one connected the bodies with the missing Sir Percival and the missing Mr. Webster.
The news had reached the marquess and Lucinda two days afterward, shattering their country idyll. They had returned to town immediately. The delay in searching for the Dowager Countess of Lemmington had been caused by the time it took the authorities to turn in a report on the sex of the charred bodies. Once it was known that the old lady had not perished in the fire, the hunt was on. Advertisements were put in all of the newspapers, and it was then that a coachman and a young man had come forward to say they had seen an old lady answering the description of the dowager countess leaping to her death from Westminster Bridge.
There was no doubt that the Countess of Lemmington had committed suicide. She had left a letter with her lawyers to be given to Lucinda in the event of her death, but all it contained was a short statement wishing Lucinda every happiness.
Only the Marquess of Sunningburgh knew definitely why the countess had taken her own life. He was sure the fire had been meant to burn him to death. He had not told Lucinda of the note he had received from the countess. He had not told her of his findings about Alexander. One day he might tell her all about it, but only when time had healed the scars inflicted on her mind by the brutal Earl of Sotheran. Lucinda had remained abnormally calm until a month after her grandmother’s suicide, a month during which the army and volunteers had combed the banks of the Thames, trying to find the countess’s body, and then she had broken down completely. Her aunt and uncle, Lord and Lady Lemmington, who had come to stay with her at the new town house in Hanover Square, were frightened to see her going to completely to pieces. They sent for the marquess, who commanded that he be left alone with Lucinda. Then he had taken her in his arms and rocked her and let her cry her heart out.
After that, Lucinda had been more normal and was even able to laugh. The marquess did not know she was plagued with one last fear—her wedding night. She was frightened that the intimacies of sex would make her repulse him, that they would disgust her as the stories of the doxies had done.
But the fear of losing him was even greater. It was, however, a fear that did not show. Yvonne, the lady’s maid, pinned a lace veil on Lucinda’s head and remarked it was a pity Madame, the countess, was not alive to see how beautiful her granddaughter looked on her wedding day.
Lucinda thought of her grandmother, that remarkable old lady, as she stood obediently while the maid added the last touches to her wedding gown. She had obviously been unable to bear the weight of guilt caused by the killing of Gotobed, thought Lucinda. At least at her great age, the fall from the bridge would have made death instantaneous. Lucinda had received a comforting letter from Mr. Venables in which he said he was convinced that her years ha
d turned the countess’s brain and she was not to be judged harshly for her actions. He meant suicide, but Lucinda thought he meant murder and was absolving her grandmother of her sins, for Mr. Venables had said the countess had made her confession the day before she died.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Venables,” said old Mrs. Hammond, a widow fallen on hard times, as the curate handed her a supply of groceries. “I would have died of starvation if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Do not thank me,” said Mr. Venables. “The one you have to thank is the late Dowager Countess of Lemmington. I should be obliged if you would mention that lady’s name in your prayers.”
Mr. Venables had shown the ring to his vicar. His vicar, a wordly man, had sold the ring at a good price and had given his curate the money, suggesting he might speculate a little on the stock exchange and perhaps increase his income. Mr. Venables turned out to be a financial wizard. As his money increased, so did the welfare and health of his parishioners. He sometimes felt frightened of his good fortune, which allowed him to give away so many useful gifts of warm clothes and food, but he reassured himself with the thought that the old countess had been one of the Lord’s angels.
The old lady who lived in a villa above the village of Santa Maria in Tuscany was regarded with awe and respect by the villagers. Despite her modish appearance—she wore the latest in high-waisted gowns, dyed her hair black, and painted her face with blanc—she was considered a deeply religious woman. She attended mass regularly and was generous with gifts of money to their little church.
Occasionally even the priest was overcome by curiosity as to what went on at that villa and what had brought such a grand English lady to their little village. But he did not get any further with the old lady’s close-mouthed English manservant than any of his flock.
He wondered how she passed her days when she was not at mass. Probably in prayer, he reflected.
High up on the hill on the terrace of her villa, the old lady stretched like a cat in the weak sunlight and called, “More champagne, John.”
“Coming, my lady.” Her squat and swarthy manservant came out with a bottle on a silver tray, opened it, and refilled her glass.
He bowed and withdrew.
The Dowager Countess of Lemmington watched him go, an affectionate smile on her face. Dear John. She owed her life to him.
She sat in the sun and sipped her champagne and once more remembered her escape from death.
Her wide skirts had slowed her fall to the water. She had sunk slowly and then something had made her start to fight to the surface. She had been taught to swim as a young girl, all those years ago when fashionable Brighton was still a little fishing village called Brightelmstone. The tide in the Thames was strong. She turned over on her back and floated downstream.
John Dwyer made his living by fishing dead bodies out of the Thames along with any other flotsam and jetsam he could manage to pick up. If the body proved to have grateful relatives, then he received a small reward. If no one turned up to claim it, he sold the body to the anatomists.
He saw the movement in the water and rowed steadily toward it, although he was sure it would prove to be a bundle of rags. He came up alongside it and found himself looking down at the calm features of a very old woman. He thought she was dead and was greedily eyeing the jewels about her neck when she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Can you get me out, fellow?” she said. “I do not wish to die after all.”
With a lot of difficulty, he managed to heave her into the boat. He wrapped her in sacking and rowed for the shore.
“If you do not turn me over to the authorities,” she said, “I will reward you well.”
He grunted assent, but he was sure she would not live till morning. He took her to the dirty hut he lived in on the water’s edge, gave her a glass of rum, and put her to bed.
To his amazement, she awoke late the next day, still very much alive, demanding food.
After she had eaten, it was then she had offered him employment. She had enough jewels in a bag at her waist, she said, to keep both of them in comfort. John often wondered why she did not think he might kill her there and then, now knowing the countess had recognized kindness in his eyes.
He was sick of his ghoulish life on the river and only too ready to jump at the chance. The countess taught him how to dress and how to speak so that he might sell her jewels without arousing suspicion. They had traveled through France and had ended up at the villa in Italy, both content with the beauty of the place.
The countess learned of Lucinda’s approaching nuptials from an English paper that had been left in the village by a traveler. It was two months old. So Sunningburgh was to have Lucinda after all. And her wedding was to take place that very day. The countess raised her glass.
“To you, Lucinda,” she said. “If you ever find out the whole truth, do not blame me. I did it all for you.”
To Lucinda, it seemed as if her wedding passed in a blur and confusion of happy guests, ringing bells, congratulations, and toasts. And then she was on the road to Partletts with her husband at her side, dreading the night ahead. The marquess had suggested they spend their first night together at a posting house. Lucinda had not managed to convince him that her home would not conjure up old, unhappy memories in her mind.
The posting house he had chosen was one of the most expensive in England. It catered only to the quality. It was furnished in the best of taste and its rooms were high-ceiling, delicately painted, and comfortable.
They ate a silent supper in their private parlor. The marquess had given up trying to make conversation after Lucinda answered all of his sallies in monosyllables.
The covers were at last removed and the wine decanters and nuts and fruit placed on the shining wood of the table.
Lucinda rose to her feet. “I shall leave you to your wine, my lord,” she said formally.
She walked past him, her eyes averted, her back as stiff as a ramrod.
He swung around and caught her arm, dragged her to him, and pulled her onto his knee.
“Afraid?” he asked.
“Very,” whispered Lucinda.
“Because of the stories told you by your father’s women?”
“Yes.”
“You do not need any lessons in the facts of life,” he said tenderly, “you need lessons in love.”
“But I do love you so,” said Lucinda brokenly. “I am only afraid that what we will do will give me a disgust of you.”
“You have only to cry ‘stop.’ That is all you have to do. Come.” He lifted her up in his arms and carried her through to their bedroom. A fire was burning brightly on the hearth. Outside the windows, snow was fluttering down.
He put her down on her feet. He closed the curtains and then came and took her face gently between his hands. “Lesson one,” he said, “is this.”
He began to kiss her: her mouth, her eyes, her chin, and then the hollow of her neck. He took his time until he could hear her breathing coming quick and fast.
He slid her gown down from her shoulders to bare her breasts. “Lesson two is this,” he said, bending to kiss them. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed and undressed her. Then he undressed himself.
“Now,” he said softly, “to continue with your education.”
He had reached as far as lesson ten when he suddenly drew back slightly. “Did you say ‘stop’?” he asked.
“No,” gasped Lucinda. “I said, don’t stop. Oh, Mark, don’t stop.”
The snow ceased to fall outside and a full moon arose, shining across the sparkling landscape. Inside the bedroom, the naked figures twisted and turned. “Lesson twenty-two …” murmured the marquess.
The late-winter dawn turned the snow to rubies. The remains of a log on the fire shuddered into ash.
Lucinda stirred with her head against her husband’s chest. “I was thinking of Grandmama,” she said. “We will never know now what happened to Alexander.”
H
e gathered her close again, running one appreciative hand down the silky length of her body.
“No, my love,” he said. “Where was I? Lesson fifty-six, I think. Are you disgusted yet?”
The new Marchioness of Sunningburgh stretched like a cat in shameless abandon. “Not yet.” She smiled. “But do go on. I have such a lot to learn!”
