by M C Beaton
The Earl turned his thoughts to the more pleasant prospect of the present. He looked down the long table to where Penelope sat at the other end and could not help comparing her with her aunt. The girl radiated innocence and sweetness. Her manners were well-bred and refined and her voice, soft and gentle.
He considered himself very lucky indeed as he watched the soft candlelight playing on her delicate features, and he forgot all his worries about Charles and Augusta. London seemed very far away with its noise and bustle and dirt.
“My dear, do try this buttered crab,” Aunt Matilda was saying as she helped herself to another plateful. Penelope shook her head. Aunt Matilda seemed to be able to eat a vast amount of food for such a thin lady.
“As I was saying,” Aunt Matilda droned on, “it is most necessary to call on sick tenants in person. Of course one can go too far. Now, Lady Barbara Desmond over at Suthers carried it to extremes and would go even if they had the smallpox and, of course, she died. Not of smallpox, dear, cholera it was. An excess of zeal. An excess of zeal! Do have some more buttered crab. Oh, I have already asked you that. Then I had better finish it myself. It is too rich for the servants, you know, and might give them ideas above their station. And it is very bad for people to get ideas above their station. I trust, my dear, you would have escaped the contagion emanating from Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Holcroft, Thelwell, and the writers of that pestilential school. But then the servants do not read much—if they can read at all —and, believe me, buttered crab is famous for arousing radical notions in the palates of those unaccustomed to it!”
“Really,” teased Penelope, “it is the first time I have heard of anyone’s palate having radical notions.”
“But it sends the message to the brain,” said Aunt Matilda earnestly. “It says ‘Arise! Lead the aristos to the lanterne, bring out la guillotine, you too can dine on buttered crab!’ You do understand now, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Penelope faintly. A choked sound came from the Earl.
“Of course, there are other messages from food. Quite pleasant ones,” went on Aunt Matilda. “I was once in love, my dear. Hard to believe, when you look at me now,” she added sadly, tucking a wisp of gray hair under her lace cap. “But I was. Yes, indeed. And with the curate, too. Most unsuitable and of course Papa was quite right although naturally I did not think so at the time. When he came to tea, Mama always served macaroon cakes. Macaroon cakes and tea. Now every time I taste a macaroon, I still feel very young and lost and sort of trembly, you know.” Aunt Matilda fell silent as she stared back down the years.
Penelope looked down the table and found her gaze held by the Earl. She began to feel very young and lost and trembly as well. How long could the Earl, who was used to experienced liaisons with experienced women, be content with mere kisses? How long could she?
Penelope sighed and became aware that Aunt Matilda had roused herself from her reverie.
“What a monstrous amount of food I have consumed,” said that lady. “Now, shall we go into the drawing room, Penelope, and leave Roger to his port. And you shall play something for me.”
The Earl rose as well and grasped the decanter. “You are not having Penelope’s beautiful music all to yourself tonight, Aunt,” he said. “I shall join you.”
Soon the rippling notes of Vivaldi echoed round the drawing room, and the Earl stretched out his long legs and admired his fiancée and wished they could be married by special license that very night.
Suddenly a loud snore interrupted the music and Penelope stopped and swung round. Aunt Matilda had fallen fast asleep, her cap tipped over one eye and her mouth open.
The Earl moved slowly towards Penelope, his face lit with a mischievous smile. “Our chaperone has gone to sleep,” he whispered, “and I have been longing to kiss you all day.”
He drew Penelope to her feet and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her long and hard until they were both dizzy. “I can’t stand much more of this frustration,” muttered the Earl finally with his mouth against hers. “I….
“Roger!” Aunt Matilda was awake, her face suffused with a delicate pink. “You are to be married quite soon, dear boy, so you should curb your … well, till … well never mind. ‘Tis not genteel to talk of such things in company. Come, Penelope, I shall see you to your bedchamber and we shall have a comfortable coze.
“In fact, I think we should go now. It must have been the duckling!” she said triumphantly, pausing in the doorway. “Duckling is inflamatory! Very. Good night, Roger. Come, my dear, what was I saying. Dear me, I do forget things these days. A sad sign of getting old. Oh, yes, chaperone. Roger. Watch that step, my dear, it wobbles so and I have told the servants to fix it and they say they have, but there, it wobbles just the same and one could so easily get a turned ankle.
“As I was saying, has your aunt discussed the Delicate Side of Marriage with you? No? Then … ah here we are.” She sat down heavily on a chair. “Put my candle on the mantelpiece, my dear. Don’t ring for the maid yet. I must tell you, you see. There are certain things that are Right after marriage and Wrong before marriage. Now, ‘twas most embarrassing for the Wiltons over at Hadley Hall when Sally was married to young Brothers and her wedding gown stuck out in front in such a fashion. Of course, they claimed she was wearing a pad but no one has worn them since I was a girl when it was fashionable to look six months pregnant. And she was ! So there. I am glad we have had this little coze. You see, someone has to tell you, and I am so very fond of you.”
Penelope, who had been opening and shutting her mouth, trying to get a word in edgeways during this rather incoherent lecture, gave it up as a bad job and kissed Aunt Matilda’s withered cheek before that lady sailed from the room with a smug smile on her face, indicating that she felt she had just completed a distasteful task and had done it well.
But after the maid had prepared her for bed, Penelope stood for a long time, looking out of the window into the garden and leaning her hot forehead against the cool glass. Her body seemed to be trembling with unrealised, unknown, and unfulfilled passion.
Too much kissing, she thought. Too much sudden restraint on the Earl’s part. Too much of suddenly putting her away from him. They were soon to be married after all. Why was it then considered a sin to do more than kiss? Perhaps she, Penelope, was not a lady after all!
A glimmer of white in the garden below caught her eye. Her room was on the second floor and had a little wrought-iron balcony with long windows in the French manner. She pulled a wrap round her shoulders and drew open the windows. The iron of the balcony felt cold on her bare feet and a cool breeze sent her long nightdress billowing about her legs.
The Earl of Hestleton was walking backwards and forwards below her window. He was wearing a cambric shirt, open at the throat, leather breeches, and top boots.
A ripple of laughter escaped Penelope, and he quickly looked up. “You look like a pirate,” she said in a soft whisper which carried to his ears on the still night air.
He stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at her, his head thrown back. He did not say anything, only stood there, looking up at her very intently, his gray eyes gleaming silver in the bright moonlight.
Penelope stared back at him, her heart beginning to thud against her ribs. She knew what the look meant and the unspoken question in his eyes.
She gave a funny jerky little nod of her head and he moved deliberately forward and seized the creeper which grew against the wall and began to climb.
Penelope retreated to her room and sat very solemnly on the edge of the bed.
He climbed in at the window and then stood in front of her, looking down.
She rose to her feet and threw herself into his arms, her body trembling down the length of him. “Faith, I no longer know myself,” she whispered. “I love you, Roger.”
He lifted her gently in his arms and laid her on the bed and then lay down beside her, stroking her shaking body and muttering husky endearments and then kissing her an
d kissing her till the world went away.
At last he tried to move away, but she cling onto him desperately, her arms wound round his neck.
“Oh, dear heart,” said the Earl, “how on earth am I going to make love to you with all my clothes on?”
Penelope drew away from him and said with a shaky laugh, “It must have been the duckling.”
And, “Three cheers for the duckling!” said the Earl of Hestleton as his shirt and breeches followed his top boots onto the floor.
The stay at Wyndham Court was over and the Earl and Penelope drove slowly back into summer London in an ecstatic silence. Everything looked crystal clear and new, fresh minted in the sunlight.
Augusta Harvey had returned from France and the Earl did not want his perfect happiness to be marred by a social visit to Miss Harvey. He kissed Penelope’s hand as he left her on her doorstep and reminded her again that he would be calling on her on the following day to take her to the peace celebrations in Hyde Park.
He then drove to Grosvenor Square and whistling a jaunty tune, strode into his mansion.
“My lord,” said his butler who had let him into the hall, “I am very worried about Lord Charles.”
“Why, what’s he been up to now?” asked the Earl, stripping off his York tan gloves and handing his hat and cane to the butler.
“Lord Charles has been in the study, my lord. There was a strange report from the room and I tried the door, but it was locked.”
“He’s probably in his cups and falling over the furniture or writing love letters to some inamorato,” said the Earl cheerfully. He walked across the hall and rattled the study door, calling out, “Charles! Hey, Charles! It’s me, little brother. Let me in!”
Silence.
“Charles!” he cried again in a voice suddenly sharpened with anxiety.
The house suddenly seemed very still and quiet.
The Earl drew back and crashed his booted foot against the panels of the door and kicked, kicked again, until the door splintered and flew open.
What was left of Charles, Viscount Clairmont’s head was lying buried in his arms. He was slumped across a pretty little escritoire.
A broad shaft of sunlight lit up the scene with an unreal clarity. The room was absolutely quiet except for the steady drip, drip, drip of blood onto the floor.
Charles had thrown his last dice and turned his last card. But in all his wasted life of idleness and failure, he had at last made a thorough job of just one thing. With an unerring aim and steady hand, he had blown his brains out.
Chapter Nine
The regent had ordered great peace celebrations in Hyde Park, St. James’s Park, and Green Park which were decorated with Oriental temples, towers, pagodas, and bridges. There were balloon ascents, a miniature naval battle on the Serpentine, and a hundred-foot-high Castle of Discord “with all its horrors of fire and destruction” which finally thinned out in smoke to reveal a Temple of Concord.
Penelope saw nothing of this except great bursts of fireworks which sent their thousands of stars cascading over London and lit up her white face as she sat in the corner of the window seat. The Earl had not come. And since the servants had been allowed the day off to watch the celebrations, she had no one to send to ask the Earl what had happened.
At last she could bear it no longer. Wrapped in a long cloak, she slipped from the house and made her way through the deserted streets to Grosvenor Square. All the world and his wife seemed to have taken to the parks.
Penelope’s first awareness that something was badly wrong was when she approached the Earl’s great mansion and found that the pavement and the road had been thickly strewn with straw to muffle the wheels of the passing carriages.
Someone must be ill! Surely not the Earl.
Then with a lurch at her heart she saw that a grim lozenge-shaped board had been hammered up over the drawing room window.
A hatchment!
Death!
Standing still, with her feet in the straw, Penelope stared up at the board, trying to make out the coat of arms on the hatchment. Then she slowly dragged her way up the steps and rapped on the knocker.
Rourke, the Earl’s butler, answered the door, and Penelope’s frightened eyes flew to the black band on his arm.
“Roger,” she whispered. “What has happened to Roger?”
“It is not my master,” said Rourke coldly, his usually pleasant face like a mask. “My young lord, the Viscount Clairmont, is dead, Miss Vesey.”
“What happened?” asked Penelope, trying to suppress a guilty feeling of relief.
“A seizure of the heart, miss,” said Rourke. “And now if you will excuse me …”
“But Roger … where is Roger?” cried Penelope. “I must go to him.”
She made to cross the hall, but Rourke barred her way.
“I am very sorry, miss,” he said, “but I have instructions from the Earl that you are not to be admitted.”
Penelope stared at him, wide-eyed, and then raised a trembling hand to her mouth. “Roger? Not see me?” she said faintly. “You must be mistaken.”
“No, miss,” replied the butler with an impassive face. “My instructions are very clear.”
He politely held the street door wide open and inclined his head.
He then stood on the doorstep and watched as the slight figure of Penelope was swallowed up in the darkness of the empty square.
“Rourke!” The butler turned at the sound of his master’s voice and, shutting the street door, walked towards the drawing room.
The Earl sat slumped in a George Smith armchair in front of the fire, his long fingers grasping the brass sphinxes on the armrests so tightly that his knuckles showed white.
“That was Miss Vesey,” he said in a flat voice.
“What did she want?”
The butler cleared his throat. “Miss Vesey did not know of the death of Lord Charles, my lord. When I told her—as … er … per instructions—that my young lord had been taken of a seizure, she asked to see you, my lord. I informed her of your lordship’s instructions, and Miss Vesey left.”
“Who was with her?” demanded the Earl harshly.
“That great, fat, white spider, Augusta Harvey?”
“No, my lord. Miss Vesey was not even accompanied by a maid.”
The Earl stared for some moments into the empty fireplace and, as Rourke was about to retire, he turned in his chair and faced the butler squarely. Rourke was taken aback by the bitterness in his set, white face. “I trust you have obeyed my instructions,” said the Earl. “Only you and I, the undertaker and the doctor, Rourke, know of how Charles took his life—and only you and I know of the letter he left. I would not like you to forget …”
“Indeed, my lord,” said Rourke, “I am in no danger of ever forgetting.”
And indeed the butler thought that scene would be burned into his brain until the day he died. He could still see the shattered mess that had been Lord Charles slumped over the desk, and the Earl standing over him, reading a letter. The Earl had looked up as Rourke had entered the room and had silently handed him the letter. Rourke had been in his father’s employ and had known the Earl since he was a baby.
The handwriting had been very shaky but the reason Charles had taken his own life had been all too clear. “My dear Roger,” he had written. “I have been working as a Bonapartiste spy. Augusta Harvey found out, but said she would not tell anyone, provided I made sure you married her niece, Penelope. Augusta and Penelope planned to enter the social world via a good marriage. But Augusta will never let me go. This is the only way I can escape her and escape bringing disgrace on our name. Forgive me, Roger.” Here the writing had trailed away in a pathetic line of blots.
In a cold, metallic voice the Earl had rapped out his instructions. The manner of Charles’s death must be kept a secret—and Penelope Vesey must never again be allowed to cross the threshold. Rourke had been appalled at the idea of Augusta getting off Scot-free, but the Earl had point
ed out that to drag Augusta through the courts would only bring shame on Charles’s memory. “I am sure Charles did not pass on any information worth anything,” he had said. “He was always dropping in on Horseguards to visit old Witherspoon and Witherspoon knows no secrets at all but is excellent at making them up while he is in his cups.”
The Earl however had vowed to call on a certain Comte de Chernier, only to find that the Comte had mysteriously disappeared.
Now he wearily turned over in his mind the final arrangements for Charles’s funeral. The doctor, long in service to the family, had been persuaded to give a certificate of death from natural causes. The Earl would convey Charles’s body to Wyndham Court in the morning where it would be placed in the family vault. But before he departed, he had a letter to write, a letter that should shatter the social-climbing ambitions of Miss Harvey and her niece.
Rourke quietly left the room, softly closing the double doors while the Earl sat like a statue, remembering Penelope’s laughter and the feel of her young body in his arms. He realised with a shock that when she had sung that song, “The Harlot’s Progress,” on the first night they had met, she had not been trying to antagonise him but merely revealing herself in her true colors. She has the body of a virgin but the soul of a harlot, he thought savagely. The very thought of her filled him with complete and utter disgust.
He moved wearily over to a kneehole Chippendale writing table at the window and began to sharpen a quill. “My dear Penelope,” he began …
Penelope put down the letter the following day with trembling fingers and then picked it up again, although she already knew each bitter and acid word by heart.
“My dear Penelope,” she read. “Although I enjoyed our pastoral idyll, I feel, on reflection, that we should not suit. Our social backgrounds are too far apart and, although I much enjoyed your favors, my dear, I would much perfer a lady as my Countess. Please send a notice of the termination of our engagement to the Gazette. I am sure it would be too embarrassing for both of us should we meet again. To that end, I have told my butler to refuse you admittance. You will realise I have your best wishes at heart. I remain Yr. Most Humble and Devoted Servant, Roger, Earl of Hestleton.”
