by M C Beaton
Totally oblivious to the startled eyes watching them, the pair walked off together.
“It was like this,” said Sir Charles. “Our duchess was very unhappily married…”
“Yes, I know that,” said Letitia, who had heard all the local gossip about the wicked duke.
“But you see, Torridon was unhappily married as well.”
“Did you know the countess?” asked Letitia eagerly.
“Yes, quite well. Very beautiful in a cold, stately way that belied the fact that she had a rotten temper. It seemed to all and sundry that she cordially loathed her husband, but she was very possessive of him at the same time. So it seemed she was with child. I met her at the Courtneys’ ball and, to my horror, she all but commanded me to dance the quadrille with her. You see, her husband had been dancing with your duchess, and they appeared enchanted with each other. I took the countess to the floor. She was leaping about like a graceful dervish performing all those weird and wonderful ballet steps that you ladies pay a fortune to learn when a cushion rolled out from under her gown for all to see, and, lo, we had not a pregnant—I beg your pardon—not a lady increased with a future happy event, but a slim woman minus one cushion. I near had hysterics, I can tell you. Torridon looked like the very devil. The countess ran out and reports said she went straight home and dismissed her maid and then took arsenic. Torridon had oft been heard to say he would like to kill her or wished her dead or some such stuff that is hurled about in the usual unhappy marriage, but in view of the death, it all began to seem most odd. Then the lady’s maid who had been swearing blind her mistress would not take her own life ups and says in about the next breath that, au contraire, my lady was all but pulling her own hair out with mortification.”
“And where would she get the arsenic?” asked Letitia.
“Where would she…? My dear and beautiful lady, anywhere in a London house. It is polluted with the stuff. Why, last year, I felt I was dying. Terrible mess, aches and pains and a hoarse cough. Decided if I must die, then I would do it in style. Ordered a grand bed and new hangings and chose a beautiful paper for the walls. The workmen were hovering over the paste with arsenic, and I said I didn’t want any of that poisonous stuff around. New paper up. New me. I had been suffering from arsenical poisoning. It’s all over the place. I became quite neurotic about it. I threw out a glass case of pretty hummingbirds because I found the creatures were full of the stuff.”
“Here come the guests,” said Letitia. “How pale my duchess looks.”
“And behind her the earl, dark and brooding. Quite like an Elizabethan tragedy.”
“No, do not say that,” said Letitia quickly. “She has been so gay and happy of late and we all thought she had finally recovered from her terrible marriage.”
“We must find our places at table,” he said.
“I wonder where I am sitting?” Letitia looked down the long tables in a bewildered way.
Sir Charles bowed. “Next to me. Or I hope so, for I begged and pleaded for the honor.”
“I do not think you are a man of fashion at all,” said Letitia.
Sir Charles stiffened. “How so?”
Again that slow, warm maternal smile. “Because you are so very charitable, sir. You know I am a gauche country girl and much too tall and you have taken it upon yourself to be kind to me.”
“Oh, my heart,” said Sir Charles weakly.
“Are you ill?” Letitia’s voice was sharp with anxiety.
“No, no. Bewildered and dumbfounded.” He raised his quizzing glass and studied the cards. “Here we are, together as I had hoped.” He drew out a chair for her.
Letitia was relieved to notice that the earl and her duchess were seated far apart. Matilda was looking more at ease.
Sir Charles was on Letitia’s right and there was an army captain on her left. The captain asked her what she thought of London, and she entertained him with a description of her visits to the Tower and all the other places no fashionable member of society would confess to having even been near.
While she talked happily, Sir Charles cast them sidelong looks. The captain was almost as tall as Letitia. What could his fair Letitia ever hope to see in a little runt like himself? He felt quite dark and miserable and small and insignificant.
But when she turned and smiled at him and began to talk to him, he could feel himself growing like a plant in the sun.
Matilda, when she found herself left alone by the gentlemen on either side of her for a few moments, studied Letitia and Sir Charles. Could she have been mistaken? Sir Charles was looking radiant and Letitia was very much at ease in his company. She had not dropped her napkin or spilled her wine or done one of the many clumsy things she usually did at table. Not only that, she seemed unaware that the very handsome captain on her other side was vainly trying to get her attention.
Her height does not matter, thought Matilda, amazed. It’s all that glorious hair and those huge eyes of hers and that kind smile. Why! I may have her married after all.
But then she saw the Earl of Torridon looking at her. If only he would get out of my mind and body and thoughts and soul, thought Matilda wearily. The sun was hot and her head began to ache and she could only take comfort in the fact that her protégée was obviously enjoying herself.
After the lengthy meal was over, the guests split up into pairs and groups to promenade around the garden and admire the flowers.
Letitia had been swept off by the captain, much to her disappointment. She eventually excused herself and went in search of Matilda.
She saw the top of the Earl of Torridon’s head. He was standing in a far corner of the garden, behind a stand of bushes, talking earnestly to someone, and Letitia felt sure that someone was Matilda. The earl seemed angry and Letitia walked forward to rescue the duchess.
But the sound of Matilda’s voice stopped her short. “I cannot marry you,” she was saying. “I cannot believe your wife killed herself.”
“Are you trying to say that I killed her?” The earl sounded at the end of his tether. Letitia stayed where she was, listening.
“No, but someone did,” said Matilda. “If only the mystery of her death were cleared up, I would feel not so guilty and sad and worried.”
“I have tried to forget you,” said the earl, “but I found I could not. You are constantly in my thoughts, Matilda. I yearn for you.”
Letitia drew back, suddenly embarrassed. She almost collided with Sir Charles. “There you are, fair lady,” he said cheerfully.
“Oh, come with me,” cried Letitia. “I need your help.”
Happy but bewildered, Sir Charles trotted after her, trying to keep up with her long strides.
“Good, the guests are starting to go indoors,” said Letitia. “What I have to say to you is private.”
“And what is that, my heart of hearts?” said Sir Charles, but Letitia was too worried to notice the endearment.
“We simply must find out who killed the Countess of Torridon.”
“Sir Charles blinked up at her in the sunlight. “We?” he asked faintly.
“I cannot do such a thing myself,” said Letitia. “But you are a man of fashion, and intelligent and kind.” She smiled at him suddenly, and he blushed with happiness under his rouge. All in that moment, he would have done anything for her. Sir Charles had a large and domineering mother and was usually apt to find himself pulled helplessly into the orbit of large and domineering women. But never before had he been so smitten, and with one who was obviously pure and good-hearted. She made him feel like one of the knights of the Round Table.
“Tish,” he said, airily waving a scented handkerchief. “Should be no great matter. But why is it so important?”
“He, the earl, wishes to marry my duchess, and she him, but she says she cannot while his wife’s death remains a mystery.”
“Could she not,” said Sir Charles, cautiously and suddenly aware of the magnitude of the task she was about to set him, “just go ahead and marry him?
Oh, I know there was that piece of tittle-tattle in the newspapers. But society has such a short memory,” he added hopefully.
“But it is what she feels that matters,” said Letitia. “I know where we could start.”
“Where?” asked Sir Charles, feeling relieved, for he could not possibly think of any plan of action.
“Her maid. The Countess of Torridon’s maid is now working for a certain Mrs. Trumpington. We could call on Mrs. Trumpington and ask her if we might speak to her maid!”
“But how are we to effect that?” asked Sir Charles. “I have called at Bolton Street on innumerable occasions to see you and the dowager duchess would not admit me.”
“Perhaps she thought you were amusing yourself. Whereas I now know you are a very kind and elegant gentleman who is indulging a silly girl.”
“Not at all,” he protested, but that word “girl” gave him pause. He was thirty-two, a great age, and she was surely only about seventeen or eighteen. He felt old and withered. It was obvious she looked on him as a sort of father.
“I will speak to the duchess,” he said after a little pause, “and arrange to take you driving tomorrow. Tell her we are going to call on Mrs. Trumpington briefly for you have taken a fondness for the old horro… old lady.”
“Oh, thank you,” breathed Letitia.
“I think your chaperone is still out in the shrubbery. We should go indoors and have a cool glass of champagne and talk further.”
“I should go to see what Letitia is doing,” Matilda was saying.
“That tall Amazon? I should say Sir Charles is minding her very carefully,” replied the earl.
“That is what upsets me. Sir Charles is such a fribble. He cannot really be interested in a green girl. She is so young and fresh and he is comparatively old and painted and primped.”
“He has a good heart, I believe. And talking of hearts…”
Matilda held up a little hand. “No, we will not talk of hearts. Let us talk of something else. We could be friends.”
“Dearest duchess, I have many friends, but I do not burn and ache to hold them in my arms.”
Matilda looked at him sadly. “You are incorrigible, sir.”
He looked around quickly and then jerked her roughly into his arms. From far away came the chatter of the voices of the guests and the jaunty strains of a country dance. “Oh, Matilda,” he said with a break in his voice. He bent his head and kissed her, not the hard, punishing kiss she had been expecting, but firm and gentle and warm. But she moved in his embrace and he could feel her breasts pressed against him. He held her even more tightly and buried his mouth in her own until she let out a muffled groan of passion. She had once seen a dry gorse bush set on fire, and it had burned up with a white-hot flame. That, thought Matilda dizzily, was what was happening to her body. He freed her lips at last and said huskily, “I could get a special license. We could be married quietly.”
She gave him a drowned look. “I will keep you in this garden and kiss you and kiss you until you say yes,” he whispered. “Think of it. No one need know, not for a little. We could go away together, be together.” His mouth caressed hers and one hand stroked her breast. “All night long, my love.”
Matilda’s experience of the marriage bed had been nasty, to say the least. And yet he was stroking her breast and she was powerless to stop him. Instead her body craved more intimacies. The sun was hot, beating down on them, putting into both fevered minds thoughts of cool flesh against cool flesh in some darkened bedchamber.
“Let me think,” said Matilda urgently. “I cannot think clearly when you hold me.”
He released her but took her hand in his. “The only way we can ever think clearly is when we can burn some of this frustrated passion away, and yet you must be my wife. I cannot take you, else.”
“Now you see,” whispered Letitia as the couple walked in from the garden, “why we must do something quickly. They are so very much in love.”
Sir Charles thought in a bewildered way that only a short time ago he would have been maliciously titillated by the earl and dowager duchess and would probably have made up a poem about them to amuse society. Now he was so dazed, so happy, he wished all the world well.
Matilda was wrenched between happiness and worry. The effect Torridon had on her body and mind was frightening her. If she married him, news of that marriage would leak out sooner or later, and then gossips would say it was proof the earl had murdered his late wife. Then Mrs. Hammond swept up, demanding that the earl dance with one of the wallflowers, and Matilda found Sir Charles at her elbow.
“I crave your leave to take Miss Plumtree driving on the morrow,” he said.
Matilda studied him. “I will be direct,” she said in her rather deep voice, and Sir Charles groaned inwardly. “Miss Plumtree is but turned eighteen and unaccustomed to the ways of the world. She is a trifle large for a lady and I do not wish her to be the butt of one of your silly jokes or poems. Do I make myself clear?”
“Since frank talking appears to be the order of the day,” said Sir Charles, “I shall state my intentions bluntly. I wish your permission to pay my addresses to Miss Plumtree.”
“Good heavens!” Matilda was startled. “I do not know what to say, Sir Charles.”
“Try saying yes,” he remarked waspishly.
“It is all very sudden, sir.” Matilda frowned. “I will not discourage you from seeing her, but I beg you to get to know each other a little better before declaring yourself.” She looked at him curiously. “Does Mrs. Follett know of your marriage plans?” Everyone knew of Sir Charles’s battle-ax of a mother. She lived in a villa in Hampstead but occasionally came to Town and could be seen looming behind her son like a grim wardress.
A cloud crossed Sir Charles’s eyes. But then he said, “Miss Plumtree appears to have conceived a fondness for Mrs. Trumpington and wishes to call on her tomorrow. My mother will be in residence at Bright’s Hotel. With your permission, I would like to take Miss Plumtree to meet her.”
“By all means,” said Matilda, her face clearing. The matter was solved. Mrs. Follett would soon put to rout any ideas her son might have of marriage, and at least it would do Letitia’s reputation no harm to be seen being courted by one of London’s gilded butterflies.
“I will grant you two hours tomorrow afternoon,” said Matilda. “We go to Vauxhall in the evening. Make sure Letitia is home by five o’clock.”
Sir Charles made an elaborate bow and backed away with many flourishes of a scented handkerchief as if retreating before royalty.
Matilda felt she should now turn her mind to her own problems. She had surely disgraced herself enough for one day. She had been painfully aware of all eyes turned in their direction when she had walked into the room with the earl. She would ignore him for the rest of the day and make up her mind what to do when she was back at home and had peace to examine her thoughts. He was dancing with quite a pretty girl. When he smiled down at her, Matilda suddenly felt torn with jealousy. Of what use were her scruples if it meant he was going to be snatched up by some female who did not give a rap?
The following dance was a waltz, but before the earl could reach her, her hand was claimed by the captain who had sat next to Letitia at dinner. His name was Captain Emsley and it turned out his sole purpose in soliciting the duchess to dance was to talk about Letitia. “I feel it my duty to point out, ma’am,” he said, “that Miss Plumtree should be warned against Sir Charles. We all know he has nothing in his head other than the designs for a new embroidered waistcoat, and yet he is monopolizing Miss Plumtree. I wanted her to go driving with me tomorrow and Miss Plumtree told me she was already engaged to go driving with Sir Charles!”
“Yes, Sir Charles did ask my permission,” said Matilda.
The captain trod angrily on her foot. “It ought to be stopped,” he muttered.
“If I find the prospect of a drive displeases Letitia, then I shall tell Sir Charles she cannot go. I really cannot do anything further,” s
aid Matilda, feeling it was all very aging being treated like the girl’s mother.
“I’ve a good mind to call him out,” said the captain angrily, and trod on the hem of her gown this time. There was a ripping sound and Matilda exclaimed in dismay.
“You have torn my gown, Captain,” she said, “and now you must excuse me while I effect some repairs.”
Stammering and blushing miserably, the captain made his apologies.
Matilda approached Mrs. Hammond and explained her predicament. Mrs. Hammond led her to a small morning room and said she would send a maid along but Matilda protested. She was well able to mend a tear in a gown. A needle and thread would suffice. So Mrs. Hammond found her a work basket and left her to it.
Matilda sat down on a small sofa covered in gold satin and began to stitch at the rip in one of the flounces of her gown.
The door opened and the earl walked in. She stayed frozen, looking at him, the needle poised in one hand. He knelt at her feet and, with a little sigh, buried his head in her lap.
She put down the needle and thread and stroked his thick black hair with a trembling hand. They stayed like that for a long time, only dimly aware of the far-off music and of the birds singing in the twilight of the garden outside. The window of the morning room was open and the heavy scent of lilac from a tree laden with purple blossoms just outside the window crept into the room.
Letitia quietly opened the door. She had been searching for Matilda. She stood transfixed. Matilda raised her eyes and saw her, but she did not move. Letitia went out and quietly closed the door.
Sir Charles met her as she was making her way back to the long room where the dancing was being held. He noticed tears in her large pansy-brown eyes and he caught her hand.
“What is it?” he asked quickly. “What has happened?”
“I think we must find out who murdered the Countess of Torridon and very quickly,” said Letitia.
Sir Charles’s eyes were suddenly shrewd but kind. He fished in his pocket and handed her a large handkerchief edged in priceless lace. Letitia gave her nose a hearty blow and gave him a dizzying smile, saying she would have it laundered.
