Annabelle

by Beaton, M. C.

  Varleigh! That was it. He should revenge her. He would see justice done. Lady Emmeline directed her carriage to Lord Varleigh’s town house and then leaned her head back against the squabs, feeling as if she would die from humiliation.

  She was to receive another blow. Lord Varleigh had left for Varleigh Court only that morning. She gave a groan and the footman looked at her anxiously and asked her if she would care to leave a message.

  “Message, that’s it,” said Lady Emmeline faintly. “Show me to a room; bring me brandy and writing marterials—in that order.”

  The footman went off to fetch them, shaking his powdered head. He was new to service which was why he had been left in London with a skeleton staff while his more important colleagues journeyed to Varleigh Court. His name was John Ferguson, a Scot of almost ridiculously handsome looks. He returned with the brandy decanter and paper and ink to find Lady Emmeline standing over at the fireplace of Lord Varleigh’s study, looking at herself in the looking glass and scrubbing the paint from her withered features with a dirty pocket handkerchief.

  “I look an old fright,” sobbed Lady Emmeline.

  John Ferguson stood on one foot and then the other. He did not know what to say.

  He had already been warned several times about his free and easy speech. But the old girl seemed to be in such distress that she looked ill. Also she looked more approachable with the muck off her face. But he stood silent, waiting for his orders.

  Lady Emmeline sat down at a desk and began to write. “I want you to see that this is sent express to Lord Varleigh,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Yes, my lady,” said John Ferguson dutifully.

  Lady Emmeline finished at last and sanded the parchment and sealed it. She turned to hand it to the footman and once again the tears poured from her eyes.

  John looked at her helplessly. “Oh, don’t take on so,” he said at last. “A charming and elegant lady like yourself should not cry.”

  Lady Emmeline blinked and brought him into focus for the first time. Brilliant blue eyes fringed with thick, almost feminine black lashes looked down into her own. “Thank you,” she said faintly. “May I have some of that brandy? I have had the most terrible shock.”

  She admired the footman’s tall figure as he deftly poured the spirits into a goblet. Lady Emmeline drained it at one gulp. “A terrible shock,” she repealed, looking at him more hopefully this time.

  John carefully took his cue. “It is not my place to question my betters, my lady,” he said cautiously. “But sometimes it makes the heart easier if you talk about it— even if the listener is only a servant like myself.”

  Lady Emmeline needed no further encouragement. She burst out into a long garbled tale of the Captain’s iniquities while the footman tut-tutted and refilled her glass in a most reassuring manner.

  She finally paused and looked coyly up at the footman from under the meager spikes of her wet eyelashes. “You must think me an incredible old fool,” she said.

  It was then that John Ferguson, with one bold stroke of Gaelic genius, secured his own future.

  “It seems to me,” he said, “as if Captain MacDonald was secretly in love with you himself, my lady, and your trying to marry him off to someone else fair turned his mind.”

  What an intelligent young man! How acute—how sharp of him to have hit upon the truth.

  An hour of delicious conversation later and John Ferguson had agreed to move to Lady Emmeline’s employ. Lady Emmeline gave a fleeting thought to her parrot, but what could a bird do with money anyway. Of Annabelle Quennell she thought not at all.

  * * *

  ANNABELLE was promenading her grieving heart past the elegant shop windows of Bond Street. Her life had taken on the unreal quality of a nightmare. It slowly dawned on her that Lord Varleigh was not going to call and that he had actually forgiven Captain Jimmy MacDonald for outright murder. Perhaps he hadn’t understood. Did he not realise that Jimmy would try again? Annabelle remembered what the Captain had said about Lady Emmeline’s will. She would have a quiet talk with her godmother when she returned and beg the old lady to cut her out of her will or she, Annabelle, would never know a day’s rest again. Annabelle shuddered despite the warmth of the spring day as she recalled several on-dits of the previous Season. Lord Jarston’s wife had been unfaithful to him, and he had taken her off to his country estate where she had mysteriously died. The pretty heiress, Belinda Thompson, who had appeared to have a tremendous love of life, had inexplicably thrown herself to her death from her bedroom window leaving an impoverished distant cousin of questionable morals to inherit her wealth. Of course society said and believed the worst, but nothing was ever done about it. Every time Annabelle saw a figure in uniform, she shied nervously.

  She bought presents for her family, silks and ribbons for the girls, a jar of fine snuff for her father, and a silver vinaigrette and a box of Indian muslin handkerchiefs for her mother.

  Then she walked slowly back to Berkeley Square, bracing herself for the interview with her godmother.

  But Lady Emmeline had dismissed Captain Jimmy MacDonald entirely from her mind. The old lady felt she had been fooled and that had hurt more than the Captain’s criminal behavior. She remarked rather testily that she had no longer any intention of leaving Annabelle any money since the girl had shown herself unwilling to be wed and added blithely that she hoped Annabelle would have a safe and speedy journey North.

  Her indifference and uncaring cruelty hurt the gentle and sensitive Annabelle who had begun to grow fond of the old lady.

  With the fine spring weather it was now safe to travel. There was nothing left for Annabelle to do but to start on her long journey home. She would never wed. She would remain a spinster until the end of her days, mourning over her foolish misplaced sense of duty which had made her tolerate the Captain’s attentions and her inexperience which had made her encourage the amorous uncaring advances of a heartless rake.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Spring came late to the Yorkshire moors. April had been a cold and stormy month with great gray clouds trailing across the hills and icy winds blasting through every crack and cranny of the rectory.

  Once Annabelle’s welcome home—if it could be called a welcome—had passed, life had almost gone back to its old familiar pattern of housework and calls on her father’s parishoners.

  Annabelle’s tale of the iniquities of Captain MacDonald and the eccentricity of Lady Emmeline had been met by sullen jealous silence on the part of her sisters who felt sure they would not have made a mess of such opportunities and by unconcealed impatience on the part of Mrs. Quennell who felt that Annabelle had imagined the whole thing and said so in no uncertain terms. Only her gentle father had been horrified in the extreme, and despite his wife’s acid tongue, he had written a very severe letter to Lady Emmeline.

  Annabelle’s fine new wardrobe had been turned over to her sisters. Mary and Susan would soon be making their come-out at the Harrogate assemblies and such finery was wasted on Annabelle who had proved to be such a disappointment.

  * * *

  ONE day when the scrubby grass of the meadows round the rectory was blooming with purple clover and the wild garlic was just beginning to break through its green sheaths, Annabelle found that the warm air of spring had brought memory flooding back.

  She suddenly began to think of Sylvester Varleigh and once her treacherous mind had started on that dangerous course, it could not seem to stop. One side of her brain cried reason and the other languished at the thought of his kisses until she felt that her mind was split in two.

  She was returning to the rectory along the winding country road, only half aware of the chattering of the fledglings in the hedgerows and the large fleecy clouds scudding across the sky above. She was wearing an old blue wool dress and thought ruefully of her sisters who had pounced on her finery, squabbling and quarrelling over it like jackdaws, never once stopping to wonder if their elder sister would wish to retain any o
f it.

  A horse rounded a distant bend of the road; on its back was a figure in a scarlet and blue uniform. Annabelle stood stock still in the middle of the road, white with terror, her heart beating fast. The clip-clop of the horse’s hooves came nearer—and stopped.

  “Is this the road to York?” asked a light, masculine voice.

  Annabelle had closed her eyes tight with fear. She looked up.

  A complete stranger stared down at her, looking curiously at the frightened girl. Annabelle babbled and stammered as she gave him the right directions. When he had ridden off, she had to sink into the hedgerow and sit down on the grassy bank until her legs had stopped trembling.

  When the shock had subsided and she had risen rather shakily to her feet and walked towards the rectory, that wretched Lord Varleigh was once again in her thoughts.

  What would he have thought of her home had he wished to marry her, thought Annabelle, trying to see the rectory through a stranger’s eyes. All looked trim and prosperous enough from the outside, but its small dark rooms bore all the marks of straightened circumstances—the shabby furniture, the carefully darned and mended curtains, the bare scrubbed and sanded floors, and the pianoforte with a third of its tinny keys jammed with the damp. And the smell! No matter how much Annabelle decorated the dark rooms with wild flowers, there was always a prevailing smell of stewed mutton and cabbage water.

  What a fright that strange soldier had given her. She wondered with a shudder what Captain Jimmy MacDonald was doing at that moment. Probably enjoying himself immensely, she thought bitterly. Justice had indeed fled to brutish beasts, and men like Lord Varleigh had certainly lost their reason.

  THE Captain was, in fact, having a simply marvellous time. Flushed with wine and the thought of the battles to come, he was leaping through a waltz at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels.

  The principal officers of the British and Allied armies were present, including the Duke of Wellington and the leader of the Netherland forces, the Prince of Orange. Several times Wellington was interrupted with messages, and the atmosphere grew tense, but the Captain was sure that battle was still far away. There was not, after all, a state of war. That upstart Napoleon had been declared an outlaw, and the combined might of the Allied forces would invade France in July and put an end to his pretensions. Meanwhile the wine flowed as if it would never stop, and the women were deuced pretty—particularly the one in his arms.

  Colonel Ward-Price had married a dashing and pretty lady much younger than himself the previous year. She had saucy red-gold curls and large melting eyes and a curvaceous figure. She reminded the Captain in a vague way of Annabelle, and that and the fact that he was flirting with the Colonel’s wife made him feel heady with excitement. He had several times held her much closer than the proprieties allowed, and she had dimpled up at him very prettily indeed.

  The Captain felt a touch on his arm and turned with some impatience which changed into alarm when he saw the worried features of Colonel Ward-Price. He was afraid the Colonel had noticed his overwarm attentions to his wife.

  But the Colonel had greater things to worry about. Napoleon had crossed the Sambre, said the Colonel. The incredible had happened. With 124,000 men Napoleon had driven a wedge between Blucher’s 113,000 Prussians and Wellington’s 83,000, his object being to defeat one or the other before they had time to concentrate. They must prepare to march. Jimmy was to take care of his wife and escort her to their lodgings and then join his regiment. The Colonel himself would be away most of the night.

  Captain Jimmy returned to the waltz. He was intoxicated already by the wine he had drunk and was now elated at the thought of the battle being so near. And Mrs. Ward-Price was using the news as an excuse to clutch him quite closely to her delicious bosom and say with well-simulated fear that she would do anything to help him prepare for battle.

  “Anything?” said the Captain, drawing her behind a convenient potted palm and deftly plunging a hot wet tongue between her already parted lips.

  “Anything,” she whispered.

  AN hour later Captain Jimmy MacDonald rolled on his naked back and clasped his hands behind his head and listened to the gentle snoring of Mrs. Ward-Price who lay beside him on the Colonel’s bed. It had all been very fine, but women were all sluts, really. He realised with some surprise that he didn’t like them at all. Hot, messy, clinging things!

  There was a soft footfall on the stairs and he stiffened and then relaxed. Mrs. Ward-Price had told him that the servants were all very loyal to her, by which he gathered she had been unfaithful to her husband before.

  He was about to climb out of bed and find his clothes when the bedroom door opened and, holding an oil lamp above his head, Colonel Ward-Price stood staring into the room. His shortsighted eyes dimly made out the figure of a man in his bed. Without pausing for thought, he raised his pistol and despite his weak eyesight neatly shot Captain Jimmy MacDonald between the eyes.

  Mrs. Ward-Price screamed and screamed as the Colonel, moving slowly and carefully like a very old man, carefully locked the door against intrusion by the servants.

  He moved to the bed and slapped his wife across the mouth to calm her hysterics, and as she hiccupped and sobbed, he went back for the lamp and carried it over to the bed and looked down on the wreck of the face on the pillow.

  “Jimmy,” he said. “Jimmy MacDonald. Bedamned to you, madame. That was one of my best officers. Could you not have picked a civilian to cuckold me with? Damn, damn all women. They never know when there’s a war on.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mrs. Quennell was in a towering rage. She had just finished the household accounts and the results horrified her. The cost of a genteel evening “at home” in order to lure beaux for Mary and Susan had dissipated all the money that Annabelle had saved and also dug a large hole in the household budget. Carried away by the sight of her daughters in Annabelle’s London finery, the usually cautious Mrs. Quennell had actually begun to believe they were richer than was the case.

  Now she was faced with months of the old familiar penny-pinching. It was all Annabelle’s fault. This was what came of turning a girl bookish and so she had told her husband. There was none of that nonsense about Mary and Susan—or little Lisbeth for that matter. Mary was now seventeen and Susan nearly sixteen whereas the ancient Annabelle was all of nineteen.

  Annabelle had too much of her father in her. Now Mary and Susan were always happy to return from their visit to the village with delicious little pieces of gossip for their mother’s ears. Lord, how they had laughed at Mary’s news that Becky Blanchard’s new ball gown was a hand-me-down of her sister which Mary’s sharp eyes had spotted through its new refurbishing. And how Becky with all her claims to gentility—she was a schoolmaster’ s daughter, nothing more—had blushed such a red when Mary had sweetly complimented her on her sister’s dress.

  Had Annabelle joined in the fun? Not she! That uppity miss had said quietly that Mary was very cruel and had pointed out that Mary herself was wearing Annabelle’s hand-me-downs and that had immediately spoiled a delicious gossip.

  If Annabelle had not been so high and mighty, she could have been wed even now to the Squire’s son, Tommy. But not Annabelle, thought Mrs. Quennell savagely, looking out to where her eldest daughter was weeding the kitchen garden.

  She would give Annabelle extra household chores to cool her pride. It would also leave Mary and Susan with fashionable white hands.

  She would have been surprised to know that Annabelle welcomed all extra work. All Annabelle craved was to fall exhausted into bed at night and sleep so heavily that no dreams of Lord Varleigh should have a chance to torment her brain.

  She looked ruefully down at her hands as she paused in her weeding. They were rough and red and her nails were cut very short. An old yellow cotton dress of Mary’s was hitched up round her shabby boots, and a straw hat that had seen better days shaded her head from the sun.

  A familiar gray head bobbed along
beside the hedge, and Annabelle drew in her breath with a sharp hiss of superstitious alarm. Mad Meg!

  The gypsy woman came ambling up the path, smiling with delight at seeing Annabelle again and smelling quite frightfully. Annabelle’s instinctive recoil as Meg approached did not disturb the old gypsy one bit. She was used to ladies recoiling from her and put it down to some kind of genteel attitude rather than a normal reaction to her overpowering odor.

  “I don’t want my hand read, Meg. Not now,” pleaded Annabelle. “I’ll give you something just the same.”

  “’T won’t do, missie,” said Mad Meg, shaking her filthy locks. “Meg never took money from a lady for nothing.” Her old eyes suddenly looked sharply at Annabelle. “Here! What did I say last time, missie, when I was come over all funny?”

  “I c-can’t remember,” lied Annabelle.

  I really am a very weak character, thought Annabelle as Meg firmly grasped her hand and began her eye rolling and twitching act. I can’t seem to be able to get people to take no for an answer.

  “I see a tall, handsome military gentleman,” crooned Meg. “He is going to enter your life soon. He is coming closer and closer…”

  At that moment a smart travelling carriage came to a stop outside the entrance to the rectory gates. Annabelle cast it one terrified glance, wrenched her hand from Meg’s, and fled in a flurry of yellow faded skirts over the stile at the far side of the garden and across the fields.

  Meg sulkily watched her go. “Now what did I say?” she muttered. “They say old Meg’s touched in her upper works but I think that there Miss Quennell’s the one who’s mad!

  SOME ten minutes later Lord Sylvester Varleigh was feeling that he had never suffered from such an excess of gentility in his life. He was seated on a stiff upright chair in the rectory parlor and was warding off an onslaught of cress sandwiches, Bath buns, jellies, cold ham sandwiches, and fruit cake which Mrs. Quennell, Mary, Susan, and Lisbeth kept circulating in front of him while he held onto a cup of tasteless tea and wondered what on earth had happened to Annabelle.