Susie

by M C Beaton

  The members of the house party—who were a surprisingly middle-aged lot, Giles not wanting any masculine competition—passed the time pleasantly enough, walking and picnicking, gossiping, and playing parlor games and practical jokes. Finally, one by one, they left, but Lady Mary and her husband stayed on.

  Susie received an anxious letter from her parents, which had been forwarded from her London address. They had heard rumors that Susie was married again. Surely that could not be the case, since she would have asked her beloved parents to the wedding. Lady Matilda had been quite furtive and had said that Susie was traveling abroad. Now, didn’t Susie ever stop to think of how her parents longed to travel? And so on.

  Susie felt a pang of guilt. She did not want her parents to know she was married, for they might then be spared the horror of ever finding out that she had become divorced. For the more Giles flirted with the all-too-willing Lady Mary, the more Susie wound Jimmy into her dreams and thought her life would be perfect if only she could be married to him.

  Susie and Jimmy went for long companionable walks together, Susie for once in her life doing most of the talking while Jimmy puffed amiably on his pipe and put in an odd word or two.

  Giles kept a cynical eye on Susie. He was shrewd enough to know that Jimmy was too much of a gentleman to contemplate even flirting with Susie, but he could not help feeling fiercely jealous. She was his property, after all.

  Susie would not even admit to herself that she was bitterly hurt by Giles’s light flirtation with the gorgeous Lady Mary. Every time Lady Mary would lay a caressing hand on Giles’s arm, Susie would wince and burrow deeper into her dreams, until she saw the outside world through a vague haze.

  She desperately wanted security. She wanted a strong man to look after her. As the seductive, warm spring days slipped by, she became more than ever convinced that that man was Jimmy.

  The two couples dined and played cards together, Lady Mary and her husband joking and laughing, and Giles and Susie subdued and quiet.

  Lady Mary was quick to notice that Giles only flirted with her when Susie was around, and settled down to enjoy the game. The fact that Susie might be getting hurt by this byplay did not trouble Mary in the least. Although she was not a cruel woman, she was shallow and thrived on the jealousy of other women.

  There is nothing like long, drawn-out adolescence for causing mild insanity—the type of insanity where one thinks one is terribly sane.

  And so Susie decided that Jimmy loved her. He needed encouragement. He was only waiting for a word from her.

  She started to plan to get him to herself for the day.

  She knew he was in the habit of riding early and strolling about the garden. She went in search of him one dazzling morning while the dew was still heavy on the grass.

  Jimmy was strolling down by the lake. He paused to admire the heavy purple blossoms on the lilac tree and noticed the stone bench next to it. He sat down and was just beginning to light his pipe when he heard the patter of footsteps on the path and looked up in surprise.

  Susie came tripping toward him, looking very much part of the spring morning in a pale-green organza dress, which fluttered around her ankles as she walked.

  “Hey, Susie,” said Jimmy amiably, getting to his feet. “Early riser, just like me.”

  “Yes,” said Susie. “We have a lot in common.”

  She peeped up at Jimmy through her lashes to see if the point had struck home, but he was gazing placidly at a family of ducks paddling across the smooth surface of the lake.

  He searched in his pocket, took out a tin of tobacco, and rattled it ruefully. “Empty,” he said. “Better drive into Barminster and get myself some more.”

  “I thought of going into town myself,” said Susie casually and waited for him to invite her to come along.

  “Good,” he said, “that’ll save me a trip. That is, if you wouldn’t mind picking up a quarter pound of Embassy for me. It costs two shillings, and you should be able to get it at Hadden’s in the High Street.”

  Susie’s face fell. “I thought perhaps you might drive me into town.”

  “Glad to.” He looked at her in some surprise. “Tell you what, you fetch Giles, and I’ll get Mary, and we’ll make an outing of it. I’ll stand you all lunch at the Crown.”

  Emboldened by her dreams, Susie plunged in. “Couldn’t we just go together?” she asked. “I think Giles is still asleep, and Mary doesn’t ever get up before noon, as you know.”

  “All right,” said Jimmy equably. “We’ll take the motor, and that way we’ll be back before they even wake up.”

  Susie turned her head to hide a frown. Once Jimmy found out she loved him, then he would surely be in no mood to hurry back.

  They pottered amicably enough down the High Street under the flapping blinds of the little shops. Susie was thinking of some way she could get Jimmy to herself and away from the crowds for a little bit. She wished she knew something about motor engines, so that she could sabotage the motor, but even if she could, Jimmy would probably go in search of a mechanic.

  Jimmy bought his tobacco, and Susie bought ribbons and laces and a length of material she did not really want.

  While the shopkeeper was wrapping up her purchases, Susie sat on a hard wooden chair beside the counter and racked her brains for somewhere quiet to take Jimmy.

  “There you are, my lady,” said the shopkeeper breezily. “Gorgeous day. I’ll be taking the missus out in the carriage for a bit of air like this evening, if the weather stays fine. There’s a lovely little spot down by the River Bar near an old ruined folly. Used to be part of Lord Humfry’s estate, but now it belongs to Farmer Briggs, and he don’t mind people strolling around. Really lovely it is this time of year, my lady.”

  “I would like to see it,” said Susie with such urgency that the shopkeeper stared at her in surprise. “We have a motor. Which route do we take?”

  “Well, my lady, you go to the end of the High Street and turn along Minster Road till you gets to Hackett’s Crossing. Take Parson’s Lane about a mile or so and you’ll come to a big pair of stone gateposts with sort of eagles on top. There’s a track through there, broad enough for a motor, which’ll take you down to the river.”

  “What do you say?” asked Susie, looking up at Jimmy with shining eyes.

  “I suppose it wouldn’t take too long. Perhaps I’d better telephone Mary and—”

  “Oh, no, that won’t be necessary,” said Susie hurriedly. “We’ll just take a quick look.”

  “Righty-ho,” replied Jimmy with his usual amiability.

  Outside, Susie sat back in the shocking pink car while Jimmy took the wheel and steeled herself for the scene to come. Of course, at first he would probably feel he had to say he was fond of Mary, but after that—well, love would conquer all. Then all they had to do was escape to that cottage where the birds always sang in the thatch and the dog, Rover, was waiting at the gate.

  They found the road to the River Bar easily enough, turning in through the stone gateposts and bumping along a rutted track to the folly by the river. Jimmy switched off the engine.

  It was indeed a beautiful spot.

  A moss-covered ruin of a folly stood on a little knoll above the river, which foamed and sparkled over its bed of silver pebbles. The sun slanted in great shafts through the translucent spring leaves of the trees, and the warm air was heavy with the smells of flowers and grass.

  Susie was content to sit drinking in the silence and the nearness of Jimmy, warm, friendly, and reassuring from the homely smell of his tobacco to the rough hair of his tweeds.

  “There’s your river,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “Now you’ve seen it, and very pretty it looks. Better be getting back.”

  He made a move as if to start the car, but Susie put her little gloved hand over his.

  “Please, Jimmy,” she said softly. “Walk with me for a little. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Righty-ho,” said Jimmy. “But better ma
ke it quick.”

  They climbed down from the car. Susie walked around and linked her arm in Jimmy’s, and they strolled down to the edge of the river. She was wearing a dashing white straw bonnet lined with green silk, which she knew became her.

  “Now,” said Jimmy questioningly, turning to look down at her.

  Susie took a deep breath. “Jimmy, I feel that the regard I have for you is deepening into something stronger.”

  “Oh, I say,” bleated Jimmy, but Susie had the bit between her teeth and could not be checked. She went on in a rush, looking up into his bewildered brown eyes and hanging onto his arm.

  “We both want to live in the country. We’re not socialites like Giles and Mary. We could easily get divorces. People do quite a lot these days. We could buy a cottage like the one I told you about. Oh, Jimmy darling, I can see it now! You can smoke your pipe in the evenings in the garden, and I will lean on the back of your chair. I saw some lovely chintz for curtains just the other day. And I could have a dog, a dog called Rover. I know you said you didn’t like dogs, but I feel you were only chaffing me. We were made for each other, Jimmy. Jimmy?”

  Jimmy stared down at her with his mouth open. Then he gently disengaged himself from her grasp and, taking out a large handkerchief from his cuff, proceeded to mop his face.

  Suddenly a look of comprehension dawned on his pleasant face. “I say, old girl, it’s the damned sun plus an open motorcar. Hat’s not enough in this weather. Same thing happened to Mary once at Antibes. Got very tetchy, she did, and started babbling the most awful nonsense. Now, not another word until I get you back home.”

  “But, J-Jimmy—”

  “Sun, that’s what it is,” he said soothingly, leading her firmly back to the Lanchester and all but shoving her into the seat. “Sun’s very strong this time of year. Dear me.”

  He set the motor in motion, and they lurched off back down the path.

  Susie sat as far away from him as she could, hunched up and miserable. He hadn’t understood her! He must.

  The noise of the engine made conversation impossible. Jimmy broke the speed record all the way back to the castle, hurtling round the bends at a dizzying forty miles an hour.

  He pulled up at the entrance to the keep and, before Susie could open her mouth, he had sent a footman to fetch Carter, and in the next breath had gone bounding upstairs, calling for his wife.

  Susie dismissed Carter as soon as she got to her sitting room and sat down by the window and put her head in her hands.

  What had gone wrong?

  Suddenly through the open window she could hear the chatter of voices coming from Jimmy’s rooms.

  Susie was a well-brought-up girl. She knew that to eavesdrop was wrong. But perhaps, just perhaps what she had said to Jimmy had finally struck him and he was, even now, asking his wife for a divorce.

  She crept out into the corridor and along toward their rooms, the voices becoming louder as she turned the bend in the stone corridor.

  Then she stood stock still. Lady Mary was laughing fit to burst.

  “Do stop laughing, Mary, and listen,” Jimmy could be heard saying in a pleading voice. “It was the most bloody awful thing to happen. Touched in her head with the heat, she was. Babbling on about how we would live in a country cottage with a dog called Rover.”

  “Oh, my poor lamb!” gasped Lady Mary. “How on earth am I going to keep my face straight this evening? We’d better leave at once.”

  “And I thought she was such a nice little thing,” grumbled Jimmy.

  “Hidden fires, my dear. Hidden fires,” said Mary, laughing. “It’s that comfortable tweedy look of yours, Jimmy. It gets all the girls.”

  “Aren’t you a bit jealous?” complained Jimmy.

  “Of a silly little girl? Nonsense! I’m sorry for Giles all the same. He could do with something with a bit more flesh and blood.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking your nasty hot shirt off to soothe the savage breast.”

  “Oh, darling. No, don’t stop. Do that again.”

  Susie walked along the corridor with her face flaming and her legs shaking. Her dreams lay around her feet in tinsel ruins, and she was left shivering and alone with the horrid reality of the present world.

  Chapter Eleven

  Giles walked along beside the lake in a worried frame of mind. Jimmy and Mary had just made a very abrupt and strange departure. Mary had been inclined to giggle a lot and look sly, and Jimmy had looked as embarrassed as a man could be.

  Susie was nowhere to be found.

  He didn’t know what to do about Susie. All his flirting with Mary had left her unmoved, and he hadn’t liked the way she had looked at Jimmy. Now, why had Jimmy looked so embarrassed? His heart began to hammer. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t…

  Suddenly, to his rage, he saw Dobbin strolling along the path toward him. Susie let that bloody animal roam at will like a pet dog.

  Giles glared at Dobbin, and Dobbin flattened his ears and glared back.

  “You mangy lump of catsmeat,” grated Giles. “Why don’t you stay in the stables or run in the pasture or just be somewhere where a horse is supposed to be?”

  Dobbin sneered down his long nose, cropped a lilac blossom, and stood glowering at Giles with the blossom hanging nonchalantly from his mouth. He looked remarkably like a sulky gigolo.

  “Well, I am going to find your mistress, and from now on you are to be locked in the stables when you are not being exercised. Look at you! You’re the nastiest-looking thing on four legs I’ve ever seen.”

  He turned his back on Dobbin and stared across the lake.

  Now, Dobbin was a thoroughly spoiled horse. He turned to go, looking back at Giles over his plump, overfed shoulder. Giles’s well-tailored back irritated Dobbin’s small, mean brain more than Giles’s face had done.

  He lashed out with his hoof and kicked Giles smartly in the seat of the pants. Giles went sailing off into the lake, and Dobbin cantered off with a whicker that sounded remarkably like a laugh.

  Gasping and spluttering, Giles hauled himself to the shore. He looked wildly around, but there was no sign of Dobbin. He returned to the castle and changed his clothes and then, jerking a riding crop out of the stand in the hall, he went in search of Dobbin. The wretched animal was nowhere to be found.

  Gradually his temper cooled and he began to worry about Susie. He hadn’t seen her all day. And why, why, why had Jimmy looked so embarrassed?

  Then Giles remembered the bluebell wood that sloped down to the sea about half a mile from the castle.

  He found Susie sitting on the springy grass at the top of the cliff. She was sitting with her feet stretched out in front of her and looking down at her hands.

  He went up quietly and sat down beside her.

  She turned and looked into his eyes. He stared at the pain and bewilderment there, and then his heart began to quicken. For all her distress, he felt that Susie was really looking at him for the first time.

  Giles was about to ask her if he could shoot her horse, and in the same breath he was about to accuse her of having an affair with Jimmy.

  But he took a deep breath and put a companionable arm around her shoulders.

  “Mary and Jimmy have gone,” he said at last.

  “You will miss Mary,” said Susie in a small voice.

  “And you will miss Jimmy,” said Giles.

  Susie blushed painfully. “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps it will be pleasant to have the place to ourselves for a change.”

  Giles felt instinctively that the time had come to make one last effort.

  “I only flirted with Mary to make you jealous, Susie. And I suppose that’s why you flirted with Jimmy?”

  “Oh, yes,” lied Susie thankfully. “Yes, that must have been it.”

  He pulled her head gently back until it rested on his shoulder and began to stroke her hair. The long bitter winter might never have existed.

  Susie was suddenly over
whelmed with gratitude for Giles—for being so gentle, for letting her save face. Giles was so much more worldly and sophisticated than she that surely he must have guessed at her mad fiasco with Jimmy. Susie would have been very surprised indeed had she known that he hadn’t the faintest idea of what had actually happened and would have been in quite a vicious rage had he known that she had declared her love for another man.

  He bent his fair head and dropped a kiss on her nose, and she stared up into those strangely tilted eyes. Susie all of a sudden wanted to make up to him for all her snubs and days of neglect. She twisted and wound her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. His lips burned and clung to hers, and he felt the answering passion in her body with a dawning surprise. This time, he was determined not to frighten her, so he contented himself with kissing her passionately on the mouth, over and over again.

  Susie’s body began to feel hot, and she was aching and trembling with a sort of terrible sweetness, and suddenly kissing was not enough.

  She shyly unbuttoned Giles’s shirt and kissed his chest, and for Giles, all the world went mad. “Let’s move out of sight,” he gasped when he could.

  It may seem impossible to make love to an elegantly dressed young lady on a sloping cliff in the middle of a lot of bluebells, but Giles managed superbly. For Susie, the love-making that had begun as a way of making amends ended in ecstasy as she answered all his passion with new-minted passions of her own, oblivious of sharp pebbles digging into her back and blissfully unaware that all her multiple layers of clothing were now spread far and wide among the bluebells.

  The sun had long set over the sea by the time they made their slow and exhausted way back to the castle, dreamily hanging on to one another.

  As they approached the castle walls a great, hulking black shape detached itself from the deeper blackness of the walls and loomed over them.

  Susie gave a little scream and then laughed. “Oh, it’s only poor old Dobbin. Dear, dear precious. I shall find you some sugar as soon as I get home. Did poor Dobbin miss me?”