Lovers and Ladies

by Jo Beverley

  “I’m not sure,” said Chart. “We rode over, and when we spotted the beautiful Amy in the kitchen garden Harry went over to do a spot of wooing while I went up to the house. The other ladies fussed and prepared tea, but when Harry and his beloved didn’t come in we all went to find them. We came upon them on the path in a grand heat. He called her a bitch. She hit him and ordered him off the estate. He seemed to be in a taking because her name’s Amethyst. I don’t know why.”

  “Amethyst,” said Emily. “I only ever heard her called Amy, but it makes sense. They’re all named for stones.”

  “‘Beautiful, cold, hard, and for sale to the highest bidder,’” said Chart. “That’s a quotation.”

  “Harry?” queried Randal in amazement.

  “Harry.”

  Everyone in the room took time to ponder this. They all knew Harry Crisp to be an equable young man with beautiful manners.

  Kevin Renfrew said, “There speaks a man in love.” He appeared completely serious and everyone took it that way. Renfrew had a gift of seeing the best and the truth in everyone.

  “In that case,” said Verderan dryly, “I think we should give him a few pointers on a more subtle wooing technique.”

  “Ha!” scoffed Emily. “Who’s claiming to be an expert? As I understand it, Sophie had to woo Randal, and you just teased me to death.”

  “At least you never hit me,” he responded with a smile.

  “I tried at least once. You were just too quick for me.”

  “Then perhaps we should teach Harry that, too.” He kissed her hand and sobered. “I think someone should go up and make sure he isn’t putting a pistol to his head. Volunteers?”

  “He wouldn’t,” protested Chart. “Over a woman?”

  Randal got to his feet. “You obviously lack all sympathy with pangs of the heart. And it should be kept in the family. I’ll go.”

  Randal knocked on the door. When there was no answer, he opened it and walked in. Harry was sitting by the window, staring out. The crash had obviously been the decanter, which lay shattered in a corner. From the size of the puddle and the strength of the fumes, very little if any had been drunk.

  “You prefer to inhale your solace, do you?” said Randal.

  Harry didn’t turn. “It’s all right. I’m neither going to drink myself to death nor shoot myself. Not over a heartless, deceiving bitch.”

  Randal closed the door. “I’m more concerned that you might walk out and offer for the first woman you see, just to prove how little this one means to you.”

  Harry did turn at that, sharply. “She means nothing. We only met two days ago.”

  Randal went to lounge in a chair. “There seems a remarkable amount of heat for such a brief acquaintance. As a senior member of the family, I have to ask. Did you dishonor her?”

  “No,” said Harry sharply, color returning to his cheeks.

  “But today you asked her to marry you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she said no.”

  “Yes.”

  Randal steepled his fingers and considered his cousin. “How did such a simple discussion come to blows?”

  Harry got to his feet. “That’s none of your damn business. There’s no cause for concern. I’m not a danger to myself or anyone else. I will doubtless never set eyes on the alluring Amethyst again, for which I am immensely grateful.” He flung open the window. “Best get rid of these fumes before night, or we’ll go to bed sober and rise drunk.”

  Randal shrugged and got to his feet. “What are your plans, then?”

  “Hunting’s just about over,” Harry said. “I suppose I’ll visit my parents, then settle myself in Town. Run my eye over the latest crop of fillies,” he said callously, “and pick the one that takes my fancy most. Might as well go for a handsome portion while I’m at it, I suppose. Any younger children will thank me.” He looked at Randal with a slight, humorless smile. “That’s how it’s done, ain’t it?”

  “Oh, surely,” said Randal dryly. “And be sure to check the soundness of her teeth and the width of her hips.” He went to the door. “Are you leaving tomorrow, then?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not indeed.” With that Randal left and went thoughtfully downstairs. There he related most of the conversation to the others.

  Chart groaned. “That means I’ll have to do all that social nonsense, too.”

  “Excellent idea,” said Randal. “He needs a close eye kept on him. In fact,” he said with a smile at his wife, “I think the Season calls us too.”

  “Oh good,” said Sophie with a brilliant smile. “I’ll be able to show off my prize.”

  “My thought entirely,” said Randal and wound one of her auburn curls around his finger.

  Verderan said, “Tempting though it is, I think we will give this circus a miss.” He took Emily’s hand and kissed it. “I have yet to show Emily my principal estate and we intend to live quietly for a while. It is near London, however, on the river near Putney. You will be welcome if you decide you need some country air.” He smiled around. “If you wonder why we are settled on bucolic idleness, it is because by next year, there will be three Verderans in the family.”

  The meeting turned to celebratory drinks.

  Chart found the claret soothing, and he began to take a brighter view of the future. He’d always had a bad feeling about Amy de Lacy, and Harry was well rid of her. When he bethought himself that the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte was likely to turn the Season of 1814 into a gala affair, Chart was actually beginning to look forward to the adventure. Until Randal took him apart.

  “Chart, since you’re likely to be the man on the spot, keep a close eye on him.”

  “He won’t do anything silly,” said Chart. “He’s seen that woman for what she is.”

  “Perhaps. There may, however, be a natural tendency to offer for the first tolerable woman he sets eyes on. Not a good idea.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “And I’m supposed to stop him?”

  “I’m sure you’re up to the task.”

  On the whole, Chart thought, the next few months were going to be hell.

  If Amy had known of these sentiments, she would have echoed them.

  Her family were horrified with her. Not only had she been intolerably vulgar, she also had summarily disposed of two handsome, comfortably circumstanced young bachelors.

  “And after all, dear Amethyst,” said Aunt Lizzie at the end of one of her daily laments, “even in the tediously mercenary standards you seem to have espoused, you might have thought that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and kept him dangling. Then, if it turned out that you did not want him, Beryl and Jassy would have had a chance.”

  The Prettys were the only ones who seemed to approve. “You can do better than a stripling like that, Miss Amy,” mumbled Mrs. Pretty around a mouthful of loose teeth. “You go after that Mr. Staverley again. He’s a warm man and no mistake, and in control of his own.”

  Amy, desperate to prove to her family that she could rescue something from the debacle, set out to do just this. She pondered a number of fanciful plans, but the fact was that she couldn’t take to haunting a spot five miles away from Stonycourt without causing talk.

  The first trip to get the layers had in fact been plausible, and Amy repeated it two days after her disgrace. She lacked the nerve to stage some kind of accident as she passed the gates of Prior’s Grange on the way to Hetty Cranby’s. She told herself she would think of a good excuse on the way back. Perhaps she could fray the reins again.

  But Hetty Cranby made it clear the whole area knew of her misadventure—the edited version, at least—courtesy of the Coneybears. Another identical accident so close by would be bound to set people thinking. Any accident at all would be suspicious. Amy drove back past the solid, prosperous, newly painted gates of the Grange and gave a wistful sigh.

  She had to pass Coppice Farm both coming and going, but she encouraged h
erself with the knowledge that the inhabitants were far away. As she passed it on the return journey, however, she remembered that she had left her ruined shift there. It was presumably just lying in the kitchen, since the three young men no longer had a servant and were hardly likely to tidy the place themselves.

  She pulled Zephyr up. What she ought to do was go in and retrieve it before someone else came across it. With her story buzzing around the area, and A de L embroidered upon it, someone would be sure to put two and two together.

  It was the last thing she wanted to do, but she pulled into the yard. She sat there, listening, wondering what she would do if, by some terrible mischance, Harry Crisp came out to see who the visitor was. The local grapevine had been definite that all three young men had left the area the day after that horrible meeting, but the grapevine could be wrong.

  She found she was actually shivering with nerves.

  The place was clearly deserted, however. It was silent, and there was no smoke rising from the chimney.

  Amy climbed down and went to knock timidly at the door. Then she knocked more firmly. When there was no answer, she lifted the latch and went in.

  The building had the dead feel of a house left empty for some time and it was as she had thought—little attempt had been made to clean up. The trail of mud down the passageway and into the kitchen was still there like a ghostly memory of her adventure. There was the tub in which she’d washed the dress. There was the dried mark of the muddy puddle they’d made when wringing it.

  Realizing she was just standing here, where she would hate to be discovered, Amy hurried to the hearth where she had dropped the garment. There was no sign of it. She checked all around the room but it simply was not there. Growing frantic, she searched the scullery and the yard outside the scullery door, in case it had been thrown away.

  It was nowhere to be found.

  Amy took a deep, steadying breath. Could she hope that he’d burned it?

  Why would he do that?

  She checked the cold ashes in the grate but they could tell her nothing. She hunted through the room again, hopelessly but driven.

  What if he’d taken it?

  What could he do with it?

  She’d heard tales of young rascals laying bets on a lady’s dishonor and producing an intimate garment as proof. Despite the warm sunshine, she shivered and hugged herself. Surely Harry Crisp wouldn’t do such a thing.

  From their first meeting, she would never have thought so, but now…she’d hurt and offended him. She shuddered when she remembered the way he’d said, “You bitch.” How those warm brown eyes had turned hard and cold. She’d never imagined a man saying such a terrible thing to her, but he was right. She was the lowest of the low, a fortune hunter.

  She looked at the plain, bare table and saw an oily stain where the automaton had stood.

  Lady Jane was gone, of course. Amy remembered his long, sensitive fingers trying to mend the doll. Remembered the way he had made her feel as he ran his hands up the doll’s fragile leg. How he had made her feel when he had touched her skin.

  That man would never unjustly ruin a lady any more than he would smash that delicate toy. But the man she had made with her cruel words might.

  With a last, sad look around at the dismal remnants of the magical afternoon, Amy left Coppice Farm.

  It was Pretty who dug up the information which enabled Amy to make her next foray after Staverley.

  He came sidling up one day as Amy was scrubbing the family wash in the huge tub. “Don’t do that, don’t,” he said. “Ruin your hands, that will.”

  “Volunteering?” asked Amy wearily. Her patience with everyone was wearing thin.

  “Rheumatics,” he said by the way of excuse. “Got some news of that Staverley gent.”

  Amy looked up and brushed her hair back from her brow with a wet hand. At this moment, she felt too weary to become excited about her prey but she said, “What?”

  “Grounds of Prior’s Grange have some sort of old stone building. Everyone thought it was a croft or such like. Yon Mr. Staverley’s taken it into his head it’s part of the old monastery. He’s setting to have it cleaned up so as to have his own real Gothic ruin. Very excited about it, he be. Probably like to share his interest.”

  Amy looked at the old man thoughtfully, then nodded. She left the clothes to soak and went in search of Beryl.

  “We have developed a passionate interest in the Gothic,” Amy told her.

  “We have?” Beryl was engaged in making new slippers for Jassy.

  “Yes, and you are going to write to Mr. Owen Staverley and ask his permission to visit the ruin on his estate and sketch it. We still have some sketching pads, do we not?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “And I will come with you.”

  Beryl put aside her work. “I don’t know, Amy…”

  “Come on, Beryl. You used to love sketching romantic ruins!”

  Beryl smiled. “Well actually, I would like to see it, and before Mr. Staverley ‘improves’ it. He’ll probably put a tower on it, or the like.”

  “Doubtless. It’s as well you do have a genuine interest in such things. You’ll have to prime me with clever questions and be prepared to interrupt if I run out of things to say. But after all,” she said grimly, “I will only have to smile and look beautiful, won’t I?”

  She returned to the washing. Beryl considered her thoughtfully, slippers forgotten in her hands.

  Thus it was that one morning in May, Amy and Beryl drove past Coppice Farm on their way to the Grange. Amy was intensely grateful that Beryl didn’t realize the significance of the place.

  Beryl had written a note and Mr. Staverley had responded quite warmly, encouraging them to visit and promising to show them the building himself. Amy wished she felt more uplifted now the moment was at hand, but at least she would be grateful to have it all done with.

  Beryl was dressed in a very pleasing cream muslin, which looked as fine as could be because it was far too impractical to have been worn for housework. Amy had insisted on wearing the refurbished blue. If any mischance occurred, she didn’t want to ruin another of Beryl’s small stock of pretty gowns. In fact the blue cambric had turned out remarkably well dyed a deeper shade and with a striped flounce to hide the stains around the hem.

  It was unfortunate that it held indelible memories.

  On consideration, Amy had decided that she had overdone things last time, and so both she and Beryl wore their warm, red, hooded cloaks, universal everyday wear of ladies in the country. The cloaks lessened any impression that they might be dressed for effect.

  When Zephyr plodded through the handsome gates and up the well-groomed drive to Prior’s Grange, Beryl looked around at the smooth meadows and well-tended flowerbeds and said, “Oh, how pretty it is.”

  “Yes,” said Amy sourly, for she was keyed up with nerves. “But that was never the Prior’s Grange.”

  Beryl looked ahead at the house and chuckled. “Assuredly not.” It was a slightly shrunken Palladian mansion, all white stone and pillars. “There was a monastery here, though, Amy, so presumably there was a grange. And as Mr. Staverley has just bought the place, he cannot be held responsible for the misnomer.”

  “He bought it,” said Amy as they pulled up.

  Beryl looked at her in concern. “If you have taken the place in dislike, you will not want to live here, love.”

  Amy forced a smile and laughed. “I haven’t taken it in dislike. It is actually a pleasing house, with a slightly strange name. I promise, if this gentleman offers his hand and his heart, I won’t hit him for his impudence.”

  Beryl looked worried, but Amy stalked up to the door and applied the gleaming knocker. This brought a footman, and Mr. Staverley hot on his heels.

  He was not a prepossessing man. He was rather short in stature, but with a heavy chest and a head a little too large. His hair was a thinning brown, muted by gray, and his eyes were a very ordinary blue. His skin was darkly sa
llow, doubtless due to his years in a hot climate.

  “You must be the Misses de Lacy,” he said abruptly, not looking too pleased at the discovery.

  As Beryl confirmed this and made a few conversational comments, Amy decided this plan wouldn’t work either. Owen Staverley wasn’t interested in them. He’d hand them over to a servant and that would be the end of it.

  She couldn’t be altogether sorry. She didn’t want to marry this monkey of a man, but she remembered her task and steeled herself to do her best. When Beryl introduced her, she fixed on her face what she hoped was a demure smile and watched for any warmth or admiration in his eye.

  He looked at her fixedly, blinked, then turned away without reaction or comment. “Come along, ladies. Let me show you the building in question. As you have an interest in these things, I’ll welcome your opinion.”

  Amy sighed. So much for her reputation as a slayer of men. Even as a fortune hunter she was a sorry specimen.

  Two hours later Amy was counting over all the useful things she could have done with this afternoon. She could have weeded the vegetable garden, mucked out Zephyr, washed some windows, taken down the winter curtains to put up the summer ones, patched her gray merino.

  Heavens, she could have curled up by a window in the sun and read a book—a rare luxury these days.

  Instead, she wandered around on Mr. Staverley’s left as he conversed at length with Beryl on his right about monastic architecture. True, she had been given the opportunity to sketch the small stone hut, which was the center of interest, but though she was tolerably skilled at art she could make nothing inspiring of it. If it was a monastery chapel, she’d eat the drawing pad, board and all.

  It was Beryl who somewhat hesitantly expressed these doubts, causing their surly host to frown even more.

  “But I do think it may be an acolyte’s cell, Mr. Staverley,” Beryl quickly added. “That would be much more interesting, and could mean the building is older than you think. I am no authority, but it may even date as far back as the twelfth century.”

  “Twelfth century, eh?” he barked, and marched about a bit. “Hmm. Come back and drink some tea, ladies. We must discuss this further!”