by M C Beaton
As if to contradict him, there was the sound of muffled hooves on the street outside and the jingle of a harness.
A carriage came to a stop in front of the house.
Then the doorbell clanged.
“You had better answer it, Dr. Burke,” said his wife. “Probably one of your patients. It’s Rosie’s night off.” Rosie was the parlormaid.
“How dare they!” grumbled the doctor. “Everyone knows I do not practice on the holy day.”
“Even Christian principles?” asked Susie wickedly. “What about the Good Samaritan?”
“Watch your tongue, miss,” said her father, too startled at his daughter’s impertinence to be anything other than amazed. “Had it been a Sunday, then let me tell you, Susie, the Good Samaritan would have done nothing about it.”
The bell clanged again.
Dr. Burke opened the door.
Two liveried servants stood on the already whitening step, supporting a heavy middle-aged man who appeared to be unconscious.
“Carriage overturned, Doctor,” said one. “Think he’s broke his leg.”
“I cannot do anything about it on a Sunday,” said Dr. Burke testily. “You have your carriage I see. You will just have to convey him to the nearest hospital.”
“Come along, Charlie,” groaned one of the servants. “Let’s do as he says and get my lord back in the carriage.”
The swirling snowflakes momentarily thinned, and in the light of the streetlamp Dr. Burke’s widening eyes made out the gold of a crest on the side of the carriage.
“My lord?” he queried, suddenly flushed and excited. “My lord?”
“That’s right, Doctor,” said the servant called Charlie. “This here is the Earl of Blackhall. Carriage got rammed by a coal cart and overturned.”
Dr. Burke took a deep breath. “My dear,” he called to his wife. “Prepare a bedchamber immediately. We have a patient.
“The Earl of Blackhall, my dear! The Earl of Blackhall!”
Chapter Two
There was no homely, pleasant reporter marooned with Susie during the blizzard. Instead there was a middle-aged lecher by the name of Peter, Earl of Blackhall.
Lord Blackhall proved to be suffering from a sprained ankle rather than a broken leg. He passed his days between the best bedroom and the front parlor, running up an enormous wine merchant’s bill, which Dr. and Mrs. Burke gladly paid. They would have served him with fricassee of larks’ tongues had he asked.
The vicar, Mr. Pontifax, when he called, had taken an instant dislike to my lord. He was shocked at the way the Burkes waited on him hand and foot. But Mrs. Burke would not listen to the vicar. Mr. Pontifax, after all, could not be trusted. Had he not said only the other day that Amy Bennet would sit on the right hand of God?
She informed Mr. Pontifax stiffly that she at least knew the honor due to her betters. Mr. Pontifax countered by saying that one’s betters need not necessarily be the members of the aristocracy, at which Mrs. Burke became somewhat hysterical and accused the vicar of being a Bolshevist.
The irksome Mr. Pontifax being thus routed, Mrs. Burke had the leisure to fawn on her noble guest and nurse her dreams. The earl was not exactly in the first bloom of youth. In fact, he was fifty-five and had seen three wives into their graves.
In her fantasies Mrs. Burke imagined the earl dying peacefully in the best bedroom. His soul would naturally receive a royal welcome at the pearly gates, and she could hear the earl telling St. Peter that he owed the comfort of his last moments to none other than Mrs. Christina Burke.
But on the third day of the earl’s stay, Mrs. Burke’s dreams took a more realistic direction. For there was no denying that his lordship had formed a tendre for Susie.
Now, had Lord Blackhall been a greengrocer, Mrs. Burke would have been the first to be shocked at the idea of fifty-five matched with sweet seventeen. But the more the bloated lord ogled her daughter, the more she thought him a remarkably young-looking man for his years.
At last she plucked up courage to confide her ambitions to her husband.
“Well, well,” said Dr. Burke, taking off his reading spectacles and polishing them carefully. “I cannot say I am surprised at your ambitions, Mrs. Burke. I cannot say I am surprised at all. My own thoughts have been running along those lines somewhat. ‘It is better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s warling,’ as the Good Book says.”
The Good Book had said nothing of the kind, but Dr. Burke assumed all quotations came from the Bible.
He suddenly frowned as he felt an uneasy feeling somewhere in the region of his waistcoat. Dr. Burke was actually suffering from a guilty conscience, but he put it down to a twinge of indigestion.
His wife saw the frown and hastened to put her point across.
“It is not as if Susie will ever make up her own mind. She is so very shy. She needs an older man to take care of her. Just think, Dr. Burke, our Susie a countess!”
The word “countess” banished the last of Dr. Burke’s twinges. “I do not know how long Lord Blackhall is staying,” he said. “But we will not say anything to Susie about this. We shall just throw them together a little bit more.”
And so it was that when Susie entered the front parlor for afternoon tea, she was to find the earl alone. She shrank back, but the earl had already seen her.
“Come forward, my pet,” he said, leering awfully. “Nobody here but me.”
Susie wanted more than anything to run away. His lordship was a thick, heavy, coarse man with a bulbous nose, a waxed mustache, and protruding, red-veined eyes. He was wearing a smoking jacket and clutching a fat cigar between his fingers. The backs of his red hands were covered with coarse black hair.
Susie sat down on the edge of a chair next to the tea table. The earl sprawled in an armchair opposite, with his sprained foot up on a small tapestry stool.
Susie was frightened of him. She was frightened because he belonged to that mysterious top class. She was frightened to offend him and watched her table manners carefully. She felt guilty because she longed for the day when he would drive off. She hated the way his eyes slid over her body but put it down to a peculiar mannerism of the aristocracy.
“The snow has stopped,” observed the earl, fingering the waxed ends of his mustache.
“Indeed yes,” said Susie, staring down at the tea table while the earl admired the shadow of her long lashes on her cheeks.
“So,” went on his lordship, accepting a cup of tea, “I feel I must be on my way, although I’ll be sorry to leave. I didn’t know people like you lived in such style.”
“We don’t normally,” said Susie quietly. “My parents are very generous to their guests.” She plucked up her courage. “When are you leaving, my lord?”
“Ah, can’t bear to lose me, my pretty puss.” He leaned forward and grasped her hand. Susie let her hand lie in his while her large eyes flew to left and right, looking for a means of escape, and a barely hidden look of repugnance crossed her face.
Lord Blackhall noticed the expression of distaste on her face and felt the way her hand trembled in his own. He felt an almost heady excitement. He liked them when they shrank before him. It added a certain piquancy to the conquest.
He squeezed her hand tightly. “I think I shall take you with me when I leave.”
“I beg you, my lord,” quavered Susie, tugging her hand away. Her eyes flew to the window. “Oh, goodness. There is Mr. Bryant.”
Never had Susie been so grateful to see Basil Bryant. The parlor maid ushered him in. He presented Susie with a bunch of flowers and the earl with a bottle of vintage claret.
He blinked slightly at Susie’s radiant smile and pulled a chair up to the table and sat down.
“Well, I suppose you’ll soon be on your way, my lord,” he said cheerfully (stab-stab-stab). “I have it on the best authority that the roads are clear. Your estate, I believe, lies on the Essex coast.”
“Don’t point. It’s rude,” said the earl, stubbing his
cigar out on the cake plate and ravishing a meringue in the process. Basil blushed and hitched his thumbs in his waistcoat.
“I say, my lord,” pursued Basil. “I saw a picture of Blackhall Castle. It looks very grand.”
The earl to all intents and purposes fell deaf.
“Sun’s beginning to shine, my lord,” said Basil in a very loud voice. The earl suddenly hauled himself to his feet and, without another word, limped from the room.
“He’s a rum sort of cove,” commented Basil anxiously. “Did I say something to offend him?”
Susie shook her head. “He’s not very easy to get along with,” she confided shyly.
Basil hitched his chair closer.
“I say, Miss Burke,” he said, taking his thumbs from his waistcoat, and his finger, like a spring released, immediately began its stabbing motions in the air. “I think your noble guest is sweet on you.”
“He’s old enough to be my grandfather!” exclaimed Susie.
“Quite,” agreed Basil. “But it’s brought you to my notice, Miss Burke. You’re very pretty.” And for the second time that day, Susie found her hand being held.
“Mr. Bryant!”
Mrs. Burke stood at the double doors that separated the back parlor from the front, holding on to the red plush portiere with one thin, trembling hand. “How dare you make overtures to my daughter! And unchaperoned, too.”
Basil leapt to his feet and immediately began to state his case for the defense.
“When I entered this room, Mrs. Burke,” he exclaimed hotly, “Lord Blackhall was already here with Miss Burke, unchaperoned.”
“That is not the same. Lord Blackhall is a gentleman, a member of the aristocracy, and old enough to be Susie’s grandfather!” retorted Mrs. Burke, and then bit her lip, for that was not what she had intended to say at all. His lordship was closeted in the study with Dr. Burke, and already she saw her daughter as a countess.
“You led me to believe that any intentions of mine toward Miss Burke would be more than welcome,” said Basil, beginning to pace up and down the room.
“Please stand still and listen to me, Mr. Bryant,” said Mrs. Burke, trying to control her anger. “You have obviously misinterpreted my husband’s kindness toward a young man. He has honored you with his hospitality, and that hospitality you have abused. You are a masher, sir!”
She tugged the bell impatiently.
Basil opened his mouth to reply but the fight had gone out of him. He began to feel that perhaps Mrs. Burke was right. Susie did not help a bit either, sitting quietly at the table with her head lowered.
After what seemed an age, Rosie, the parlormaid, eventually answered the summons, hobbling slowly into the room and complaining bitterly about her “haricot veins,” which she said were bothering her something awful.
Basil tried to stumble out something in the way of an apology, but Mrs. Burke merely clutched the portiere with one hand and pointed toward the door with the other in a gesture worthy of Sarah Bernhardt.
Basil made a last try. He turned and looked down at Susie. “I’m jolly sorry if I offended you, Miss Burke. After all—” He broke off in confusion, for Susie had raised her head and had stared straight at him with such a world of pain and bewilderment in her eyes that he recoiled before a depth of emotion utterly and completely alien to him.
There was a long silence in the room after he had left. “Mrs. Burke!” suddenly came the voice of her husband from the study. “Mrs. Burke!”
Mrs. Burke fled, and Susie sat by the table, very still. She had a feeling that something awful was about to happen, something so awful that her mind shrank from trying to sort out what it could be.
All too soon she was to know.
Rosie of the haricot veins appeared with the information that Miss Burke was wanted in the study immediately.
Now, the Burkes lived in quite a large villa built in the middle of the last century. It had enough room to comfortably house three Burkes and three servants and, in a pinch, three guests. But that day, Susie felt as if the ground floor stretched for acres and acres as she slowly made her way to the study.
Step by slow step she crossed the shadowy hall with its diamonded squares of colored light from the stained-glass door. Past the umbrella stand, where the silver knob of her father’s cane shone dully in the gloom; past the large brass pot of ornamental grass; past the framed steel engravings and the colored prints of The Laughing Cavalier, The Blue Boy, and The Boyhood of Raleigh. She stood with her hand on the knob of the study door, looking back in her mind on her life of uneventful days and quiet nights, and knew somehow that the minute she crossed the threshold of the study, she would be leaving them all behind.
She opened the door and went in.
Her parents had been sitting on either side of the small coal fire and rose as Susie entered. Dr. Burke looked smug, and Mrs. Burke was trembling with excitement as she had been trembling with rage such a short time ago.
“Come here, my child,” said Mrs. Burke. “You are the luckiest girl in England. Lord Blackhall has asked Papa’s permission to pay his addresses to you.”
“Addresses?” said Susie numbly.
“You are to be married, my dear!” cried Mrs. Burke. “Our little Susie is to be a countess. I am ready to faint with excitement. And my lord was so understanding. He wants to be married very soon and very quietly, for, although the age difference means nothing to him, as I am sure it means nothing to you, he is frightened one of those trashy scandal sheets of Northcliffe’s might not see it in the same way. You shall not have a white wedding, Susie, but think! You will live in a great castle, and you will be very, very rich.”
Susie burst into tears.
Both parents surveyed her with extreme irritation. After all, what they were doing was no worse than the behavior of many parents in this year of 1908. Did not the little sons of wealthy merchants sob their hearts out at prestigious schools so that Papa could brag in the countinghouse about “my boy at Eton” or “my boy at Harrow”? Were not young girls, daily sacrificed at the altar of St. George’s, Hanover Square, forced by their ambitious parents into unwelcome marriages? Like most of their kind, Dr. and Mrs. Burke viewed Susie as a sort of extension of themselves, as yet unformed, to be guided by them. They were dizzy at the thought of their daughter marrying a title. The minute the earl had asked for Susie’s hand in marriage, even Dr. Burke’s qualms of conscience had fled.
He had no son to provide for him in his old age, therefore it was up to his daughter to provide a wealthy son-in-law. Ambition made him cruel, although he was normally a kind, if silly, man.
“Leave her to me, Mrs. Burke,” he said, jerking his head toward the door. “She must have her position made clear to her.”
Mrs. Burke smiled mistily and left, wondering how soon she could decently put on her hat and coat and go and tell the neighbors.
And Dr. Burke proceeded to make the matter very plain to his weeping daughter. She had no alternative. There was no room in his household for an undutiful daughter. If she did not accept the earl, then she would be turned out into the streets without a penny. She would no longer be his daughter. The earl was a trifle old, that he was prepared to admit. But the advice and loving care of an older man was just the thing a silly goose like Susie needed. She need not trouble to give the earl her reply that day. She should sleep on it, and that would restore her to a more intelligent frame of mind.
Now, Dr. Burke would certainly not have turned his daughter out into the streets, but Susie did not know this. Nonetheless she tried to beg and plead. The earl frightened her, she said through sobs. But her father was adamant.
“I am shocked. Utterly and completely shocked at your attitude, Susie. Go to your room and do not show your face downstairs until you are in a more reasonable frame of mind.”
Still weeping, Susie trailed miserably up to her room. The earl was waiting at the top of the stairs. She averted her head, but not before she had seen the cold malice in his eyes.
In her room, she flung herself on the bed and cried until she could cry no more. She would need to marry the earl. There was simply nothing else she could do. She was not trained to work, and her shy and delicate soul shrank from the thought of trying to find work in the cruel and unknown world outside. She was to be sacrificed at the altar as if Christianity had never existed and she were living in older, darker, more pagan times where they seemed to have endless nasty rituals thought out for virgins.
The earl smiled to himself as he heard the muffled sound of sobs echoing along the corridor. She’d soon get over her grief. Women were all the same. He was very happy with the day’s work. He was suffering from venereal disease, and all the chaps at the club, including himself, knew the one way to get rid of it was by sleeping with a virgin. Of course, he could have bought a virgin. But when he had seen Susie, he had known that no other girl would do. It would have to be marriage, so marriage it would be. Her childish features, combined with the unconsciously sensual movements of her immature body, excited him as he felt he had never been excited before. The fact that she would probably scream the place down on her wedding night and would not enjoy the experience one bit added spice to the situation. For the noble earl came from a long and ancient line of rapists, and the Blackhall features were to be seen spread over most of the countryside around his castle.
He did not plan to invite any of his relatives to the wedding. One of the chaps from the club could stand in as best man. The girl must not wear white. It would make him look too old. That mother of hers knew what was what. He had to get her to kit the girl out in something that made her look older.
He then dwelt long and pleasurably on what he believed would be the utter consternation of his present heir, his nephew, the Honorable Giles Warden. He, the earl, would have that little filly in foal as soon as possible. Giles was, however, irritatingly rich, having made a fortune on the Stock Exchange out of practically nothing. But he would not inherit the title, and it would be rich to see his damned arrogant face when he heard the news of the new Blackhall heir.
