The Bath Trilogy

by Amanda Scott

  “I know nothing of the kind, ma’am. Indeed, I do not doubt that he will cease to plague me the moment he discovers that I have sunk myself so low as to seek genteel employment.”

  Lady Flavia stiffened in her chair, and her right foot began to tap irritably upon the footstool, beating time to the cadence of her words as she said, “I take leave to remind you, Nell, that that is simply not to be thought of! What would people think?”

  “But surely, dear ma’am, they would think even less of a murderess,” Nell responded in a teasing tone.

  “They would never know,” her ladyship said tartly, “and goodness knows, ladies of quite the highest quality have been known to do such things before now—even queens, I believe—though they do not seek employment, Nell, genteel or otherwise. Oh, I know I have been talking nonsense, but if you should do such a thing, and in Bath, of all places, people will think perfectly dreadful things.”

  “Only that I have not got sixpence in my pocket, which is no more than the truth,” Nell said with a sigh. Then, seeing that her aunt was truly distressed and only too ready to continue the argument they had had over and over since Nell’s arrival in Bath four days before, she stepped impulsively toward the old lady, kneeling beside her chair and taking one of the thin hands firmly between her own. It trembled a little, but when she squeezed it, the squeeze was returned. “Aunt Flavia,” she said gently, “what can it matter what people think? If I do not care—”

  “Then I suppose I am not to care either,” Lady Flavia interjected. “Well, and perhaps I would not if I believed you will not. But you will, my dear, you will! Oh, and I would, too, if I were such a zany as to allow you to attempt to earn your living. You were not brought up to it, Nell, any more than I was. Your father was only a baron, of course, and began life as a younger son, for that matter, but your mother was from an excellent family, just as I am, and there is nothing really amiss with the Bradbournes that a little ambition could not cure. Ah, if only Robert and I had been blessed with children!” She lapsed into a brief reverie, but then, giving herself a shake, she added sharply, “To pretend you do not care what people say—What a farradiddle! If you did not care, then why did you come here? Why did you not simply stay at Highgate and let Jarvis frank you as he wished to do? Surely he never asked you to leave.”

  “Indeed, and you know he did not.” Nell bit her lower lip. “He was all consideration, as only he can be, but when he enters a room, one feels somehow as though a snake has slithered in. I do not know how it is, for to own the truth, he has treated me only with kindness, but even while he remained at Crosshill, one frequently felt his frustration that my papa and not his had inherited the seat of the Bradbournes. When he informed me of his intention of removing to Highgate, pretending to be doing so out of a sense of duty, I could not bear to remain there.”

  “I cannot think,” Lady Flavia said, “how, with his fine notions of propriety, he expected to move in with you without ruining your reputation. One must suppose he intended to force you to accept his hand.”

  “Well, of course he did, ma’am, but it would surprise you to hear how easily, when he sets his mind to do a thing, he is able to explain how it is really the only thing to do. In this case, however, he said only that it was his duty to protect me and also to be near at hand to restore Highgate to its former glory. He talks like that, Aunt Flavia. It quite shrivels one’s liver.”

  Lady Flavia smiled at hearing such an expression on Nell’s lips, but said, “You know, dear, I have been thinking about all this, and I cannot think why he waited nearly seven months.”

  “Well, he told me straight off that he had decided to marry me, as though he meant the news to comfort me, but he explained that he did not want to cause more talk than there was already by arranging our marriage while I was in deep mourning, so we would wait until I came of age. I daresay the truth was that he had realized there would be some difficulty about consent and supposed that with Papa dead and Nigel heaven-knows-where, the matter would arrange itself more neatly if he waited. And, too,” she added on a bitter note, “no doubt he thought to give me time to realize that no one else would step forward to protect me.”

  “He might have thought I would,” Lady Flavia said pensively.

  “If you will forgive me for saying so, ma’am, since you did not offer to bring me out when I turned eighteen, despite the fact that we had been corresponding for years, Jarvis might be excused for discounting you. Oh, you had never given me cause to expect such a thing of you, but Papa did,” she added when Lady Flavia frowned, “and I daresay Jarvis will guess that I have found sanctuary with you now, for there is no one else.”

  “Sanctuary, indeed,” the old lady snapped. “I am very glad you came to me, Nell, but how you can speak of sanctuary when you mean to cut up all my peace by going out to seek work as a housemaid, I cannot imagine!”

  “I have no intention of seeking such a lowly position. Indeed, I doubt I should be any good at it. However, I must say, ma’am, that while I will do nothing a-purpose to distress you, I have seen enough here since my arrival to know that a little extra money in this house would not come amiss.”

  “But you refuse to consider what people will say,” Lady Flavia repeated more urgently. “It simply is not to be thought of that the grand-niece of Lady Flavia Bradbourne should seek employment. Indeed, since you are known to be my heiress, Nell, we must thank heaven that your father’s passing renders my taking you about to parties quite ineligible, for otherwise people would be like to think I ought to be doing so.” She leaned forward a little in her chair and said earnestly, “We will sign your name in the Master of Ceremonies’ book, of course, for it would be thought extremely odd if we did not, but you must be sure to continue to wear your half-mourning, my dear.”

  “You may be sure that I shall, ma’am,” Nell said dryly, looking down at her pretty dove-gray-muslin afternoon frock, “for although Jarvis insisted that, as a Bradbourne, I be fully rigged out in mourning clothes cut according to the latest fashion, I fear my other dresses would not impress anyone in Bath.”

  “Oh, my poor dear,” Lady Flavia said, squeezing her hand again. “I am so sorry.”

  “Well, you need not be.” Nell’s eyes narrowed. “Look here, Aunt Flavia, though you have rather neatly turned the subject, I cannot allow you to put me off again. Even had I come here intending to hang on your sleeve, which I did not, I must very soon have begun to wonder if you could comfortably support me. To be sure, you live in this wonderful house, and the furnishings in this room and in the hall and dining room are as fine and elegant as any I have ever seen. But most of the other rooms are much more sparsely furnished, and several are as bare as can be. Moreover, although the first meal we shared was excellent, the ones we have had had since then … Well, not to put too fine a point on it, ma’am, they have been distressingly meager.”

  “You see, my dear,” Lady Flavia said in the tone of one making a confession, “I did not know at first how long you meant to stay, and it is one’s habit, of course, to feed one’s guests as lavishly as one reasonably can.”

  “Then it is as I had begun to suspect, and you are not nearly as wealthy as I had been given to believe. I did not quite like to ask you about it before, but why did you not tell us long ago how things have been with you?”

  “Goodness me, why should I? That one occasionally must eat soup instead of roast partridge is nothing, but to suffer the pity of one’s friends would be prodigiously uncomfortable, and to endure the contempt of those who are not one’s friends, utterly unbearable. Life is much more pleasant, I assure you, as the wealthy Lady Flavia Bradbourne than it would be for a common old woman living in genteel poverty. Moreover, if by ‘us,’ you mean I ought to have told your father, why, he had more than enough debts of his own without adding any of mine.”

  “Dear Aunt, what sort of debts have you got?”

  “Not debts precisely, or not in the way you mean them—only to the greengrocer, the butcher, th
e chandler, and others of their ilk. Nothing to signify.” An airy wave of Lady Flavia’s hand dismissed these trivialities even as she sighed and said, “’Tis only that the bills appear to increase, even when one sends a bit on account from time to time. It is beyond comprehension.”

  “But, surely, ma’am, this cannot go on.”

  “I do not know why it should not,” Lady Flavia replied placidly. “It has been going on for years, since prices began increasing so outrageously during the French war. One’s income does not increase, you know. Not, at all events, when one lives on a widow’s jointure. Indeed, it seems to decrease, for it does not buy near so much now as it did fifteen or twenty years ago.”

  “But how ever have you managed to fool everyone for so long?” Nell demanded.

  “Oh, really, it is not so difficult.” Lady Flavia pulled her shawl more tightly across her shoulders. “I am not destitute by any means, but only must take a certain care, and since one’s guests generally do not attempt to go beyond the hall or drawing room and no one thinks it odd that a woman of my years no longer invites friends to large dinner parties, it is not so bad.”

  “But, even so, people must have seen—”

  “People,” Lady Flavia said firmly, “generally see what they want to see and think what they want to think. Then, too, it gives them a certain cachet, don’t you know, to have wealthy friends. They do not wish to discover that one is not so wealthy as they believe one to be. ’Twould be to diminish themselves.”

  “But surely there must be outward signs of … of …”

  “Of decay?” Lady Flavia suggested. “A decayed gentlewoman—so descriptive a term, beloved of novelists, but rather hateful when it is fact. Fortunately, in Bath, elderly ladies are expected to behave and to dress in an eccentric way. Gentlemen, too. Indeed, there are several hereabouts who take eccentricity to its limit. One in particular, Sir Mortimer Manningford, has not set foot out of his own house these twenty-five years past. ’Tis said he leaves notes for his servants and sees his heir but once a year for twenty minutes, then shoves him off about his business again. His younger son he don’t see at all!”

  “Despite such examples as that, ma’am, I doubt your pretext can be so simple to maintain as you would have me believe.”

  “But it is, my dear. One dines out as frequently as one can do so, of course, and your coming to stay will prove a boon in that direction, for a good many people will wish to meet you. And no one will expect us to entertain either, not with your father dead less than a year. Quite providential, that is.”

  “Yes, you said so before,” Nell said, adding more grimly, “but it will remain providential, you know, only until one of the quizzes for which Bath is so famous discovers the rather untidy circumstances of his death.”

  “Very true, so we shan’t divulge them. To anyone so busy as to inquire, you must say you find the subject too painful to discuss. I, on the other hand, should anyone ask me, will look down my nose and demand in my haughtiest tone to know by what ill-bred impulse he or, more likely, she has dared to pry into a matter that cannot possibly concern anyone outside the Bradbourne family. That will silence the most brazen amongst them.”

  “No doubt it will, ma’am, but I am not good at dissembling, you know. The first time someone asks me directly, I shall most likely tell them the truth.”

  “Good God, Nell, you will never be such a goose! The next thing you will be doing is to admit that Jasper went aloft on a cloud of debt.”

  “Well, and ’tis true enough if, indeed, he went aloft at all. Considering the manner of his going, ’tis more likely—”

  “Don’t say it,” Lady Flavia snapped. “For goodness’ sake, Nell, promise me you will not let your wretched tongue run away with you. You are welcome to stay for quite as long as you like if only you will not cut up my peace by telling people you are seeking employment, or by confessing your father’s dreadful sins, or by speaking in an equally frank manner about that rapscallion brother of yours. Indeed, you must promise not to mention Nigel at all if you do not wish to see me suffer a severe spasm!”

  “But, ma’am, surely if Nigel shot Mr. Bygrave right here in Bath, either everyone knows all about it already or the situation must have been very different from what Jarvis described to us.”

  “Well, I cannot say about that, of course, but I do know that no one has ever mentioned the matter to me. Of course, if that dreadful duel took place in a gentlemen’s club, ’tis possible that no one would say anything to me.”

  “Well, but I am certain Jarvis had more to do with it than he admitted. Papa didn’t trust him, you know—said he was a make-mischief. For that matter,” she added with a quizzical look, “Papa told me that his uncle Robert was used to say the same of Jarvis’s papa, Reginald. Is that not true?”

  “Dear Robert,” Lady Flavia said fondly, her sharp features softening. “He was a fine husband to me, though that time of my life has begun to seem a trifle distant, you know. So difficult to look at oneself in the glass and imagine that same reflection wedded to a man in his twenties, which, of course, is the only way one can remember Robert. I have tried to imagine him older, but it does not answer. Jarvis was not even thought of when he passed on, of course, for Reginald was only a boy then, and I do not know what Robert thought of Reginald, but I never liked him. For some reason, he expected Robert to leave him this house, for it was not part of the entail, and he was most put out when he discovered it had been left to me. Whenever he visited us during that dreadful time of Robert’s illness, one could see the gleam of calculation in his eyes, so the contents of Robert’s will must have come as quite a shock to him.” She sighed. “One would think, since Reginald always seemed to have more money than any younger son ought to have, that he would have been glad to have seen me provided for, but he resented it quite as much as he resented your papa’s coming into the title and estate.”

  Nell frowned. “Did he resent Papa? I know Jarvis has long thought it wrong that Papa and now Nigel—both so extravagant—should hold the reins at Highgate, but I thought Reginald doted on Papa. They were always together, you know, for the few years separating their ages made them more like brothers than uncle and nephew. If there was resentment, surely it can have been only on Jarvis’s part. He makes no secret of the fact that he disliked Papa and believes Highgate ought to have been his.”

  “Like father, like son,” Lady Flavia said firmly. “Fate is capricious, is it not? To begin, there were three brothers, who by rights ought to have had long lives and dozens of children. Instead, dearest Robert, the eldest, died first, childless. Then the estate passed to your grandfather, who had only the one son—your father, Jasper. The third brother, Reginald, born a mere nine years before your father, produced only Jarvis.”

  “But where did Reginald get his money?” Nell demanded. “He was always very well to pass, you know.”

  “I am sure I cannot say,” Lady Flavia replied. “He married well, of course, for that is how he got Crosshill, so one must suppose that his wife’s fortune was larger than one was led to believe at the time, or else invested wisely. But money, you know, my dear, is not the same as land. And the Bradbourne barony is a very old and respected one. To be Lord Bradbourne of Highgate is no small thing for a man to covet.”

  Nell grimaced. “But why must Jarvis covet me as well? He does, you know, though he couched it in saintly terms, murmuring in a hushed tone that he had buried two wives already and never really believed he should brave the married state again.”

  “Don’t tease yourself over that. Died in childbed, the pair of them, and the babes with them. Indeed, I should not be at all amazed if Jarvis don’t fancy himself another Henry the Eighth.”

  Nell stared. “Henry the Eighth?”

  “He had six, did he not—wives? And only to get a son. If Katherine of Aragon had given him one, that would have been that. Not that he would not have enjoyed himself with Anne Boleyn all the same, but men will be men, after all, and kings even more so
, no doubt. No one would have objected very much.”

  Nell believed herself to be generally quick-witted, but there were times when her great aunt left her standing, when it took her a moment to catch up. Now, though she would have liked to avoid the tangent altogether, she found herself saying, “But his third wife gave him a son, and he still married three more.”

  “But she died, my dear, and the boy was feeble. And the next was Kat Howard—not at all suitable. She played him false, which he ought to have expected, for he was getting on by then, but men, you know, always believe themselves up to every—”

  “Aunt Flavia,” Nell said firmly, “whatever can Henry the Eighth’s wives have to do with the point at hand?”

  “Why, sons, Nell, to inherit. I thought you understood.”

  There was a moment of silence before Nell said, “Do you mean to say that Cousin Jarvis wants to marry me only for the purpose of begetting sons? But surely, any female of age and not utterly stricken in years would serve his purpose if that were the case.”

  “Highgate is still the case, I believe.”

  “But Nigel owns Highgate,” Nell protested. “Perhaps I did not make the matter clear when I explained it—indeed, it is all very confusing—but even though Papa lost the wager he made with Reginald, Jarvis made only the one attempt after Reginald’s accident to claim Highgate. Then, after the duel, when Nigel was forced to flee the country, he said no more about it.”

  “He will, my dear. Nigel is on the Continent, after all, and may even be dead by now for all you know. He does not write to you, does he?”

  “No, but—”

  “So few men do,” Lady Flavia said with a sigh.

  “He is still the owner of Highgate.”

  “If he should be found guilty of murder, he won’t be,” Lady Flavia said tartly, “and that is precisely what will happen if he has to stand his trial. It may become a matter for Parliament in the end—I know little about such things—but Jarvis Bradbourne stands next to inherit the barony, and his position in a Court of Chancery could only be strengthened if he were married to you. Like Henry the Seventh, that would be.”