Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

  "I see. Then you must realize what you must do. If a bailiff comes in the morning, you must tell him that Christopher has been with us since yesterday afternoon."

  "I am sure a bailiff will be here in the morning. But I won't see him. I intend to stay in my room, indisposed." She had made up her mind to that within the last few minutes. "You and Hawkins can tell the bailiff whatever you like. If he has a warrant, it will make no difference."

  Thin-lipped, her mother looked at her. "And later on, if your brother has to stand trial? What will you do then?"

  "It depends upon what Mrs. Frazier-Fitzsimmons tells me tomorrow. I shall walk to the village in the morning and take the stagecoach to London."

  She paused, half-expecting her mother to protest that no respectable woman could dream of entering Mrs. Frazier-Fitzsimmons' house. But evidently right now her mother had no room for concern about anything except her son.

  Elizabeth went on, "If that woman confirms Christopher's story, I'll be willing to swear that he has been here with us since yesterday afternoon. Because he's quite right about her, you know. No jury would believe the testimony of a bawd, even one who has been kept by a duke."

  Mrs. Montlow flinched slightly at the word "bawd," but all she said was, "And if she tells you that Christopher was not with her last night?"

  "I don't know what I will do then."

  "You would accept that woman's word against your own brother's?"

  "I don't know. I just know that a girl is dead. I just know that I have to learn more about this before I can bring myself to... to stand up in court and swear before God that Christopher could have had nothing to do with her death."

  Mrs. Montlow got to her feet. "You have been a fine daughter to me, Elizabeth, and I love you. But I must tell you that sometimes you lack human feeling."

  Elizabeth made no reply to that. "Shall I get a tray of food for Christopher and take it up to him?"

  "I think he would prefer that I brought it to him. Hawkins will help me prepare a tray. I must wake her up and talk to her, anyway."

  She left the room. After a few minutes, staring into the fire, Elizabeth knew that her mother must have aroused the cook from her slumbers in the room off the kitchen, because she could hear the distant, agitated sound of their voices. Elizabeth had no doubt that Hawkins would swear to anything Christopher wanted her to. Like Mrs. Montlow, like Elizabeth herself—at least, until a few hours ago—Mary Hawkins had been his adoring slave ever since he was an infant.

  From the back of the chair her mother had occupied she picked up a knitted red shawl and wrapped it around her. Quietly she went down the hall and out the front door. Through cold moonlight so bright that she could have read large print by it, she went down the brick walk, still damp from the early-evening rainstorm. At the gate she turned and started back toward the house.

  From somewhere not far away came the whinny of a horse.

  Instantly she thought of the dark-cloaked rider, revealed by a lightning flash as he fought to control his mount. Had he been a bailiff? Was he still somewhere nearby? Her eyes swept the hillside to the west of the house. Nothing but a copse of leafless oaks and maples, rising from dead brown grass bleached almost white by the moonlight.

  After a moment she realized that the man could not have been a bailiff. The bailiff, when he arrived, would be in a coach, so that he could take his prisoner away with him.

  Probably that whinny had come from farther away, in the fields beyond the hill's crest. And probably it was one of the Weymouth horses she had heard. Often Weymouth animals strayed onto Montlow land.

  To comfort herself, she pictured Donald Weymouth. His light brown hair, his thin, sensitive face with its steady hazel eyes and warm smile. No matter what happened, Donald's loyalty and love would not waver. It was impossible to think of a circumstance that could deprive her of that love.

  And then suddenly she shivered. Something colder than the chill air had touched her. It was a return of that dark presentiment that had assailed her earlier, a presentiment of herself alone and helpless under the onslaught of some sort of violence.

  The moment passed. Clutching the shawl close around her, she hurried the rest of the way up the walk and into the house.

  CHAPTER 6

  It had been a good meal. Cold chicken, bread, plum tart, and tea scalding hot, the way he liked it. Christopher laid the chicken bone on the tray, resting on the stand beside his bed, and then snuggled deeper under the eiderdown.

  He was home. He was safe. Even if the girl was dead by now—and he felt sure she must be—he was safe. The worst that could happen to him would be a few months' imprisonment until the next General Sessions at Old Bailey. There was not a more respected name in the kingdom than the Montlows', and not a more irreproachable matron than his mother. What jury would fail to take her word, backed up by Liza's and Hawkins', especially since all that was involved was the death of a servant girl?

  Certainly they had thought she was a servant girl when they saw her hurrying along the sidewalk. Who but a harlot or a servant girl, sent on some errand by her employers, would be out alone on the London streets after dark? And no harlot would show herself in that respectable neighborhood.

  Certainly, too, she had appeared to be a servant girl when they got her into the house and had a good look at her. An Irish servant girl, with the carroty hair many of the Irish have, and light blue eyes. And she had sounded like a servant girl. "Oh, please, sirs!" she kept saying, as they held her down on the bed's dusty counterpane. And every once in a while she would call upon the Blessed Virgin, the way the Papists do, and Blessed St. Anne. From the way she kept calling upon St. Anne, Christopher felt that must be her name saint.

  They had not meant for her to die. They had meant to take her afterward to the mews behind the house, pay her enough money to buy her silence and to compensate her for damages to her clothing, and then send her on her way. There would have been little risk in that. Few servant girls would accuse young men of their class with rape. They could always say that she had solicited them, and gone willingly with them into the house.

  But unfortunately, while they still had her upstairs in that long-unused back bedroom, it had occurred to him that it would be fun to let her think for a moment that she could get away from them. They had all stepped back from her, and she, after lying there for a moment like a rabbit surrounded by hounds, had gotten up and dashed out of the room. With two of them carrying the candles, they had run after her. But she hadn't turned toward the rear staircase, as he had expected. Instead the silly wench had turned in the other direction. With them pounding after her, she had raced toward the long front window at the end of the hall. His outstretched hands had almost grasped her, when she plunged through the glass and fell, screaming, through the darkness.

  But at least he'd kept his nerve, and his head. He'd told the others to wait inside the rear entrance to the house. He'd gone back to that bedroom for his hat. Then he'd gone down two flights of stairs to the kitchen and out into the areaway.

  The girl had been lying there on the flagstones, a still white shape in the darkness. Quickly he had averted his eyes from her. Wadding his cloak around his fist, he had struck the kitchen's windowpane several times, and heard the glass tinkle to the floor inside. When he was sure the opening was wide enough to admit a supposed housebreaker, he had slipped back inside the kitchen, and locked the door with the same key with which he had unlocked it earlier that night. Then, as rapidly as he could manage, he made his way through the darkness back to where his friends waited, huddled in an anxious knot just inside the house's rear entrance. He had told them to scatter as quickly as possible, and to of course say nothing to anyone. With another key he had unlocked the back door, followed his friends out, and relocked the door.

  Yes, he had managed everything quite nicely. Still, because that silly girl had thrown herself out of the window, there would be an investigation. That was why he needed to have his mother and Liza and Hawkins t
estify that he had been here at the Hedges, fifteen miles from London, when a person or persons unknown had broken into the house on Kingman Street

  One recurring thought made him uneasy. What if the girl had not been a servant? Her clothes had struck him as being of rather good quality. What if she had someone of importance to be concerned about her, someone other than an illiterate parent or two steeping themselves in gin in a London slum or scratching a living out of the soil somewhere miles away in the country?

  Who, for instance, was Patrick? Just before she had plunged through that window, she had not called upon the Blessed Virgin, or one of those popish saints. Instead she called out, in a strangled voice, "Patrick! Oh, Patrick!"

  He shoved the worry aside. Patrick was probably some fellow servant some stableboy she had fancied.

  Light footsteps passed the closed door of his room. His sister, on her way to bed. His sister, with those eyes that tonight had seemed to look right through him. Thank God he had foreseen that Elizabeth might be a problem. That was why he had resisted the impulse last night to get out of London as fast as he could. Instead he had first paid a brief visit to Peggy Frazier-Fitzsimmons.

  Before she would agree to perjure herself, Liza would go to Peggy. He had seen that resolution forming in his sister's face tonight, down there in the side parlor. Well, let her go to old Peggy. God, the woman must be almost thirty-five!

  Regretfully he rubbed his fight thumb over his ringless second finger. Well, better a ring missing from his hand than a rope tightening around his neck.

  ***

  In her room, Elizabeth undressed and put on her night-shift. Then, too tense to go to bed just yet, she moved to the window. Even with a three-branched candelabrum burning on the dressing table behind her, the moonlight appeared to her extraordinarily brilliant. Striking some of the glossy ilex leaves at just the right angle, it made the hedge appear to be hung with tiny silver-blue lights.

  She must stop asking herself questions she could not answer, such as who was the girl, and had Christopher been in any way responsible for her death. She would have the answer to both questions by this time tomorrow night

  And if she were forced to conclude that Christopher was responsible? Would she still swear to a lie, in order to save him? She thought of her mother, that frail woman who probably would not live—would not even want to live—if her son was carried, hands bound behind him, in a jolting cart to the gallows at Newgate, and there, before an excited, jeering crowd...

  Stop thinking, she told herself. Try to get some sleep. She turned, blew out the candelabrum's flames, and moved to her bed.

  ***

  Standing there in the hillside copse beside his tethered gray horse, Patrick Stanford went on looking at that upstairs window. It was dark now, but only a moment ago Elizabeth Montlow had been standing there, chestnut hair like a cloak around her shoulders, slim body dimly visible through the thin stuff of her shift.

  He knew that her brother also was in the house. Two hours earlier he had seen a male figure, hat in hand, pale hair gleaming in the moonlight, leave the carriage house and move swiftly to that side terrace. Patrick was resolved to make sure that Montlow did not leave the house until a bailiff arrived in the morning to take him away.

  He knew that a bailiff would arrive. In fact, in the past sixteen hours he had learned quite a lot about Christopher Montlow's recent past, and about what Patrick grimly hoped would be the youth's short, inescapable future. Arriving at the gatehouse of young Montlow's college before daybreak, he had interviewed first the porter and then two of the dons. Patrick had learned that Montlow had been the ringleader in a prank played upon an aged college servant, an episode that had caused Montlow and four other students to be sent down.

  Because by then both he and his hired mount needed rest, Patrick had gone to an inn for three hours' sleep, and then returned to London. At Sir John Fielding's office in Bow Street, he learned that a warrant was out for young Montlow's arrest. It had been issued because of additional evidence, furnished only that morning, by an eyewitness across the street from the Montlows' town house. Since then Bow Street Runners had been searching London for the young man. If he was not found in the city, a bailiff would be dispatched early tomorrow morning to the Montlow country house near the village of Parnley.

  Pausing only long enough to hire a fresh mount, Patrick had ridden to Parnley and asked the way to the Montlow house. Through a brief but violent rainstorm, he had ridden to this hillside copse, with its excellent view of the house.

  Young Montlow was a ringleader, those Oxford dons had said. And everything, including the fact that she had been carried into the Montlow house, indicated that he had been the ringleader in the assault upon Anne.

  That sister of Montlow's. In the past, Patrick had thought of her, not just with desire, but with something he could only call respect How could she have such a vicious degenerate as a brother? But it happened sometimes. In almost any family a moral monster could appear, outwardly normal, even brilliant and charming, but with an essential quality missing from his nature, that quality called conscience.

  For not the first time during the past two hours, he had to fight down an impulse to stride into that house and choke the truth out of Christopher Montlow. But no, he must not take the law into his own hands. He must not draw unfavorable official attention to himself, lest he jeopardize his purpose, a purpose even more important to him than avenging Anne's death. Let the law see that Christopher Montlow paid for that, dangling from a rope at Newgate.

  But if, by one means or another, he escaped the gallows? In that case, no matter where he went, Patrick would track him down and take his life in payment for Anne Reardon's.

  He sat down, leaned his back against a tree trunk, and prepared to wait until daylight

  CHAPTER 7

  Around ten the next morning, standing at the front window of the upstairs hall, Elizabeth watched Christopher and two bailiffs go down the path toward a waiting carriage. Christopher carried a small leather portmanteau, which she knew must contain shirts and underclothing. She waited until the carriage had driven away through the misty sunlight. Then she went downstairs.

  Mrs. Montlow was standing in the lower hall. With relief, Elizabeth saw that her mother, despite the aggrieved look on her fine-featured face, seemed fairly calm.

  "Well, miss! So you have decided to make your appearance, now that they have taken your poor brother away."

  "What did you tell them?"

  "That he had been here with us since Wednesday, day before yesterday, of course! Hawkins told them that, too. But it did no good."

  "Christopher and I both told you that if bailiffs came with a warrant—"

  "I know, I know. Well, Elizabeth, what do you plan to do now?"

  "Have breakfast, walk to the village, take the stagecoach to London."

  "To see that Mrs. Frazier-Fitzsimmons?"

  "Yes."

  "Elizabeth, I will never understand you. You won't take Christopher's word for where he spent the night before last, but you seem ready to take the word of that... strumpet. Why on earth, if it wasn't true, would the boy have confessed to us that he was at her house?"

  To keep us from dunking he had been doing something much worse, Elizabeth wanted to say. But she could see that her mother was in no mood for logic, and so she kept silent.

  "If you insist upon going into London, will you take some money from the safe for Christopher, and make sure that he gets it? He'll need a few small comforts in that place." She meant his room at Newgate Prison. "It may be days before they admit they have made a mistake and let him go. In the meantime he'll need writing paper, and candles, and decent food sent in. He'll have to send his shirts and underlinen to a laundress...."

  "Of course I'll see that he gets some money." She would also see their family solicitor, Mr. Fairchild, in his rooms at the Inns of Court, to arrange for her brother's defense. But there was no point now in trying to make her mother realize that in
all probability Christopher would have to stand trial. Obviously Mrs. Montlow chose to believe that in a few days he would be released.

  "And you'll wear a veil? Someone who knows you might see you going into that dreadful creature's house."

  "I'll wear a veil. I had better have breakfast now, Mother, so that I can walk to the village in plenty of time."

  "There is no need to hurry. Hawkins went to the village early this morning, and told the stage master there that you would pay extra if the stage called for you at our house."

  She went on, with dignity, "There are some things, Elizabeth, that I cannot save you from. I cannot prevent your doubting your own brother's word. I cannot keep you from going to that notorious woman's house. But at least I can save you from appearing in London with muddy slippers."

  Peggy Frazier-Fitzsimmons was at the window of her private upstairs sitting-room when she saw the carriage stop in front of her house. For the last ten minutes she had been admiring her newly acquired ruby ring, turning it this way and that so that the sunlight awoke fire in the gem's depths. Now she crossed hastily to her dressing table, dropped the ring into her jewel box, and returned to the window. A heavily veiled woman, slender and obviously young, was descending from the carriage.

  Kit Montlow's sister? She must be.

  Again Peggy flew to her dressing table, and inspected her face in its frame of blond ringlets. It was quite an attractive face, despite fine lines bracketing her mouth, and even finer ones radiating from the corners of her brown eyes. From downstairs came the sound of the front door's knocker.

  She adjusted one of the ringlets on her forehead. A touch of rouge? No, better not.

  Her maid-of-all-work, Lucia, appeared in the doorway. Like her husband, Peggy's coachman, Lucia was of southern Italian descent. She said, olive-complexioned face impassive, "A Miss Montlow to see you."

  "Tell her I will be down immediately."