A Corpse in Shining Armour
Page 32
He glanced to make sure that the doctor’s attention was on his bag, then raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, not in the exaggerated chivalrous way as Miles might have done, but quite simply.
‘I shall travel, I think, when I’m well,’ he said. ‘I’d appreciate it very much if you’d allow me to write to you.’
‘Yes. Yes, please.’
He was still holding my hand. A knock sounded on the door.
‘Her journal,’ I said. ‘I still have it.’
The door opened to let in a maid with a steaming bowl of gruel. He let go of my hand slowly.
‘Keep it. I think it’s safer with you than anybody. To our next meeting.’
‘To our next meeting.’
Tabby and I saw off Amos, riding the gelding and leading the mare, and later took our seats inside the coach back to London. I’d negotiated to buy garments from one of the maids at the inn, so that Tabby could be decently dressed. She’d been ungratefully reluctant to exchange her page’s costume for skirts and a mob cap, but was more cheerful by the time we arrived back in the city.
‘So what’s happening next?’ she asked, as we turned into Abel Yard.
‘I hope nothing for a week or two,’ I said.
She looked quite disappointed. Again, that dreadful feeling of responsibility struck me. As far as I’d had any plan for her, it was to give her a more orderly life. I’d done quite the reverse. All I’d achieved was to feed her voracious appetite for drama. When I watched her putting down our bags and looking round the untidy yard with the air of somebody coming home, I knew Tabby had added herself to my list of unsolved problems.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A few days later I paid another social call on Celia.
‘My dear, where have you been? Surely not another aunt? Country relatives are all very well, but one shouldn’t take them too seriously. Now, I want to know everything you’ve been doing.’
So for the next twenty minutes or so I savoured the taste of chocolate and the scent of roses without saying a word, while she prattled on happily about people I didn’t know. Then:
‘…and you must have heard the latest on the Brinkburns, even down in the country. It turns out that the old man wasn’t dead after all! I can’t think how that rumour started, but perhaps it was a mix-up at the asylum. And all that business about the mother was a mistake as well. It seems that she was writing a novel, poor woman, and there was this young bride in it who was on her own in a tower by a lake in a storm and well…you know. She talked to her friends about this novel and I suppose they were only half listening, as people do, and they got the idea into their heads that she was talking about herself, which I suppose should be a lesson to all of us. Anyway…’
She paused for breath and took a sip of chocolate.
‘…Stephen will inherit when the old man really does die at last, as everybody thought he would, and he and Miles have made up their quarrel. They were actually seen at a private dinner party together last night, though of course they can’t go to balls and things because of being in mourning for their mother. I must say, Stephen is being very gallant and forgiving about the whole thing, which is…’
I managed to break into the flow, though I had to raise my voice to do it.
‘What do you mean, Stephen’s being forgiving? Stephen’s the one who’s won, isn’t he? It should be Miles being forgiving.’
‘Oh, my dear, you have been out of things, haven’t you?’ She looked at me pityingly. ‘I thought everybody knew. In spite of Stephen being the heir, Rosa Fitzwilliam has decided to stay with Miles. Of course, Stephen is broken hearted, though now everybody knows the inheritance business is settled, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of girls just queuing up for a chance to console him. Of course, everybody’s saying Rosa could have done better, but she does love Miles, so I suppose it’s all very right and romantic.’
I sat there marvelling at how easily the social order seemed to repair its wounds, and wishing it were the same for people. Celia must have mistaken my expression for shame at being so far behind-hand with the news that mattered.
‘My dear, it really does puzzle me how you manage to know so little about what’s really happening in the world.’
‘I suppose I have a kind of talent for it,’ I said.
A CORPSE IN SHINING ARMOUR
Caro Peacock acquired the reading habit from her childhood growing up in a farmhouse. Later, she developed an interest in women in Victorian society and from this grew her character of Liberty Lane. She rides, climbs and trampolines as well as enjoying the study of wild flowers.
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Copyright Page
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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This edition published by Harper 2010
Copyright © Caro Peacock 2009
Caro Peacock asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
EPub Edition © MONTH 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-28348-4
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