by M C Beaton
“Why don’t you try some of this excellent claret, Miss Lindsay, and tell me how you came to write your uncle’s sermon?”
Blushing and embarrassed, Jean lifted her glass and under His Lordship’s astonished gaze, drained it in one gulp. Goodness, it tasted like vinegar. But as a warm glow of confidence began to seep through her, she realized why it must be that people drank the stuff.
“Please do not talk about that awful sermon,” she begged. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“My word as a gentleman,” said the marquess solemnly. “No one shall hear of it from me. I confess I landed myself in disgrace by laughing so loudly in church.
“Lady Cynthia tells me you have recently come into a great deal of money.”
The marquess knew that he was being ill-bred but his curiosity was immense. “Oh, yes,” said Jean blithely. “I have one hundred guineas of my late mother.”
“My dear girl, that very fetching gown you are wearing cost a good portion of that alone,” said the marquess, running an expert eye over Cynthia’s gift.
Jean laughed gaily and knocked back another glass of wine without pausing for breath. It did not taste as bad as the first. He was only funning. Men naturally did not know the price of gowns, she thought, blissfully unaware that there were quite a few ladies of the demi-monde who had enjoyed the marquess’s protection and would have told her that he was able to price everything on her to a penny.
Several glasses of wine later and Jean was dead to the proprieties. An excellent mimic, her sketches of the characters in her home village had Sir Edward and the marquess helpless with laughter and a startled silence fell over the rest of the company as roars of masculine mirth shook the tapestries and set the crystals of the Waterford chandelier tinkling.
Lady Cynthia rose to her feet with a determined glint in her eye. “Shall we leave the gentlemen to their wine?” and without waiting for a reply, sailed from the room. Jean rose to her feet confused and lightheaded. She staggered slightly, and were it not for the marquess’s restraining arm, would have fallen into the remains of an excellent syllabub in front of her. She paused for a moment looking down at the marquess’s long fingers on her arm and felt as if she were suddenly on fire. This wine was strange stuff indeed!
The atmosphere in the drawing room was decidedly chilly at first but as the cause of it all sat staring at the fire completely unconcerned, the ladies’ manner thawed. The girl was young and unsophisticated and the rich must be allowed their foibles.
“I have some of the latest editions of the Ladies Magazine should you care to peruse them, Miss Lindsay,” said Lady Cynthia. “They have many of the latest fashions.”
Jean kept on staring into the fire with an idiotic expression on her face, so Miss Taylor bravely spoke up from the corner to try to cover up for her pupil’s social gaffe.
“It is very good of you, Lady Cynthia,” said the governess. “It is difficult to keep abreast of the modes in a place like Dunwearie although we do have a little woman in the village who runs up very good gowns.”
“Indeed! She must be small,” remarked Cynthia acidly.
“But very good—ver’ good little woman since she only runs up very good gowns,” said Jean beginning with a giggle and ending with a hiccup.
The stony silence which greeted this inanity was fortunately soon broken by the arrival of the gentlemen. The marquess looked as if he were going to join Jean but Lady Cynthia waylaid him and drew him down to sit beside her on the sofa. Although the marquess considered Cynthia a bored and boring sophisticate, she was, after all, his host’s wife and also very beautiful. He forgot about Jean, and basking in the afterglow of Sir Edward’s brandy, settled down to enjoy the sort of light flirtation at which he was adept.
They made a handsome couple, reflected Jean wryly. Never in all her fantasies had she envisaged the marquess so much as looking at another woman and, being unpracticed in the art of masking her feelings and more than a little tipsy, she sat staring across at them, looking the picture of misery.
The marquess writhed inwardly under her gaze and cursed himself for having paid her too much attention. This is what became of giving little rustics ideas above their station. Good Heavens, the gauche child might even now be regarding him in the light of a suitor.
Miss Taylor felt that things had gone far enough and rose to her feet. “Miss Lindsay is still feeling the effects of the journey. Come, my dear. Let us retire.”
She had not seen Jean drinking wine at dinner and put her odd behavior down to shyness and travel fatigue.
In the morning, Jean kept to her bed with the clothes over her head, trying to block out memories of the evening before. By eleven o’clock, she judged the rest of the company would already have breakfasted and gone about their amusements, and feeling very fragile, crept down the stairs to the breakfast room.
To her embarrassment, the marquess and his two friends got to their feet as she entered. It transpired that the ladies were breakfasting in their rooms and that the gentlemen had only just preceded her to the breakfast table.
She started to chatter nervously and brightly about the fine day and stopped in mid-sentence as Lord Freddie stared at her like a piked cod, the marquess put a hand to his brow and Mr. Fairchild let out a groan.
“We are all feeling rather under-par at the moment, Miss Lindsay,” explained the marquess, “but we shall come about presently.”
“Wilkins!” Lord Freddie let out a sudden roar that made Jean jump as he pointed with a shaking hand to the apple wood fire which burned merrily on the hearth.
“Do something with that demned thing. Demned hissing and popping and banging away like curst artillery. Oh, my head! Breakfast? Get me anything at all, man.”
Wilkins, inured to the delicate heads and nerves of Sir Edward’s guests, deftly slid a plate under Freddie’s pallid face and backed off at another explosion of wrath.
“What the… beg pardon, Miss Lindsay… is this?”
“Grilled kidneys, my lord.”
“Well, it looks to me like a demned great pile of…”
“Lady present, y’know,” interjected Mr. Fairchild hurriedly.
“Sorry,” blushed Freddie. “Anyway, take the demned thing away. Take everything away in fact and bring us some hock and seltzer.”
It was Jean’s first sight of the pink of the ton as they habitually appeared at the breakfast table. Although the sun shone brightly outside, the blinds were drawn so that not a chink of offending light could penetrate. In the half gloom, three pale faces watched Jean devour a hearty breakfast and three elegantly tailored pairs of shoulders shuddered in awe.
“Tell you what,” said Lord Freddie, revived by two large glasses of hock and seltzer. “I’ll race you to the nearest inn. Landlord’s daughter’s got the biggest pair of…”
The marquess kicked him under the table.
“… ale glasses in all Scotland,” he finished lamely.
The other two agreed enthusiastically to the expedition and hastened off leaving Jean feeling very small and unwanted.
The day seemed long and boring and Jean could not help looking forward to the evening ahead when she would see the marquess again. But at dinner, the seating had been rearranged. She was placed next to Miss Taylor with the marquess far away from her, next to Lady Cynthia. Again, as the gentlemen entered the drawing room, the marquess joined Lady Cynthia on the sofa.
Jean was left to help the Duchess of Glenrandall card her wool. The duchess was an avid knitter of intricately stitched garters which she bestowed on the poor of the village, blissfully unaware that they had no stockings to hold up. As the wool slid between her fingers, a dream began to form in Jean’s head.
She could see it all. During the night, she would leave her room to… to… get a book from the library downstairs. Holding her flickering candle high, she would collide with the marquess who was in the act of stealing from Lady Cynthia’s bedchamber.
“Oh, my lord!” she would g
asp.
“Alas!” he would say on a choking sob. “Can you in your sweetness and innocence ever forgive me for the terrible thing I have just done? Philandering with mine host’s wife! What I have lacked all my life is the love of a pure girl.” With that, he would seize her in his arms. But she was not to be so easily won. With one sweeping motion, she would repel him…
The occasional table next to her went flying across the room, scattering objets d’art into the far corners. Jean flushed to the roots of her hair as she realized that she had indeed diverted the marquess’s thoughts from Cynthia.
Again, Miss Taylor made hasty excuses for her charge, and in the middle of an awesome silence, Jean was led from the room.
As they ascended the stairs, Lord Freddie’s voice followed after them like a clarion call. “Foxed again, is she?”
The governess followed Jean into her bedchamber. “What on earth came over you girl,” she snapped, sorely tempted to shake the elegant creature in front of her. “You were daydreaming again, that’s it.
“Now, look here. We all daydream but you go too far. In fact, Miss Lindsay, any more scenes like the one you enacted this evening and you will end your days in Bedlam. Try to enjoy things as they are and look for a husband but not above your station. For,” she added shrewdly, “if you are to imagine yourself at the altar with every lord we meet, you will be considered worse than mad. You will be considered fast and that means social ruin. I beg of you, cease this nonsense.”
“I will, I will,” vowed Jean. “I will do anything rather than return to Uncle Hamish. I would rather end my days in a convent.”
“There you go again!” screamed the much-tried Miss Taylor. “A convent indeed. And your uncle a minister. He would see you in hell first.”
She slammed her way out of the room, wondering if a retired life as the duchess’s pensioner might not be infinitely preferable to her present situation.
Perhaps Jean might not have attended to Miss Taylor’s strictures had it not been for the events of the night.
For an hour, she tossed and turned on her pillow, reliving the embarrassment of the evening. Suddenly, she swept back the covers and reached for her wrapper. She would creep down to the library and find something to read to take her mind off her troubles.
Holding her candle aloft, she tiptoed along the long passage—and nearly bumped into the marquess, who was emerging from a room. Lady Cynthia’s mocking voice followed him into the corridor, “I am sorry to break up your evening’s entertainment but I am indeed fatigued.”
For one second, Jean took in the glory of the marquess’s resplendent dressing gown.
He was a rake!
Pressing her hand against her mouth to stifle a sob, Jean dropped her candle and fled back down the passage to her room where she buried her head under the bedclothes and cried herself to sleep.
“What’s all the commotion?” said Sir Edward, stepping into the passage. The marquess shrugged. “The Lindsay girl wandering around. Must have given her a scare.”
“Look at that candle,” said Sir Edward angrily. “Could have set the place on fire. Touched in her upper works that’s what she is.”
“Oh, come to bed,” snapped Lady Cynthia peevishly. She joined them in the corridor. “You have both kept me awake prosing on about hunting until my head aches.”
She had reason to feel cross. The handsome marquess had been more interested in her husband’s horses than in his wife.
The marquess, who had just spent a pleasant hour in Sir Edward’s private sitting room, sighed and ambled off to bed. He thought momentarily of Jean as she had looked at the dinner table with her hair like a flame and her green eyes sparkling.
“’Tis a pity,” he murmured to himself. “So pretty but so Gothic.”
The morning of their departure for London was sunny and clear. Miss Taylor was pleased to see that her lecture of the previous night had obviously had some effect on her charge. Jean was heavy-eyed but pleasant and modestly behaved. She made her adieu’s prettily and as soon as the heavy coach had lumbered down the driveway, put her head in a book and to all intents and purposes appeared oblivious of her surroundings.
Chapter Three
It was several months before the marquess was to see Jean again. His estates lay in the north of England and there was much to keep him fully occupied. It was not until the Season had been started a full week that he headed for London to take up his place in Society.
After staying with friends in Bath on his journey south and having made a start late in the day, he bowled along in his sporting curricle at a smart pace enjoying the late spring evening and the scent of May from the country fields. He decided to rack up for the night at one of the many excellent posting houses along the road and turned smartly into the courtyard of the Pelican, throwing his reins to the ostler and striding into the taproom, ignoring the bowing and scraping of the landlord.
There was only one other person in the low-raftered room, a pleasant-looking young man whose dress marked him as one of the gentry. Tired of his own company, the marquess made a passing reference to the countryside, and detecting a slight Scotch burr in the other’s voice, asked him if he had traveled far.
“From Edinburgh,” replied the traveler. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Colqhoun, James Colqhoun. I am a lawyer traveling eventually to London on business but I am going to stay with friends in Chelmsford first.”
“Why I believe I know your father if it be the same Colqhoun. My name is Fleetwater.”
“Ah, yes. We did handle some business to do with Your Lordship’s Scottish properties,” said Colqhoun sketching a bow. “My father is dead, my lord, and I am now head of the firm.”
“You business is certainly widespread if you must travel all the way to London to see your clients.”
“Well, now,” said James Colqhoun, shaking his head. “I hardly ever have to travel so far afield but this is a very odd case indeed. Why, it’s like something out of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels.”
His curiosity piqued, the marquess said, “Join me for supper. I have bespoke a private parlor. If you can, tell me about it, for I would dearly love some other company this evening than my own.”
James looked flustered but gratified. “I shall indeed be honored,” he stammered, “and I am sure anything I tell you will go no further.” He followed the marquess up the inn stairs to the parlor above.
The marquess kept the conversation on easy social topics but as the covers were removed and the brandy brought in, he lit a cheroot and settled back in his chair. “Now let us hear your Gothic story.”
Putting the tips of his long, bony fingers together and clearing his throat, James started to tell his story in a dry, precise voice.
“It concerns a young lady called Miss Jean Lindsay who lives in a village called…”
“Called Dunwearie!” exclaimed the marquess. “I know the lady. This is coincidence indeed.”
“Then perhaps you have met the lady’s uncle? Ah, well—just so. According to the will of the girl’s uncle, Joseph Lindsay, who made his pile with the East India Company after many adventures, her uncle Hamish was to receive one thousand pounds per annum, all the money to go to turning her into a gentlewoman and taking her place in society. On her eighteenth birthday in two months’ time, she will receive the full bulk of his fortune worth about 100,000 pounds sterling, not to count an annual income from properties in Glasgow and Ayr. Seeing that the event was so close, I decided to travel to Dunwearie to find out what arrangements had been made for the handling of her estate.
“It was late when I arrived at the manse. At first the reverend refused to see me. When he did, he kept arguing that the fortune was too immense for a silly girl to handle on her own and that Miss Lindsay had gone to London to dissipate all the money that he had carefully saved for her. He refused to bed me for the night and I was forced to stay at the primitive bothy they call an inn in the village.
“It was there that the
housekeeper from the manse found me. She told me the girl had been kept on poverty rations since she was a babe, and what Hamish had done with the thousand a year, she did not know. The girl had been packed off to her godmother in London because of some disgrace and now, she said, the reverend was ranting and raving around the manse saying the money was rightly his and the girl shouldn’t see a penny of it.
“The housekeeper seemed very attached to the girl and begged that I apprise her of her good fortune since it seemed that Hamish was hell-bent on traveling to London in an effort to keep her in ignorance. Evidently, he had not realized that Miss Lindsay would inherit and thought that he would have a cozy income for life.
“Since I had long planned a visit to Chelmsford, I decided to convey the glad tidings of her inheritance to Miss Lindsay personally. And that is my story.”
The marquess thoughtfully rolled the amber liquid around in his goblet to catch the light from the fire. A chill wind had sprung up outside and was tugging fretfully at the latticed windows and howling in the chimney. The candles guttered in their sockets and the marquess—a young man not given to fancies—felt as if a sly, menacing presence had joined them at the table. Abruptly, he rang for fresh candles.
“The girl has already the reputation of being a great heiress,” said the marquess, “but I believe it’s all a hum started by a lot of gossiping servants. Does the old fool mean her harm, think you?”
“I should think not,” replied James severely. “He is a man of the cloth.”
“He is an evil old miser. I would not be too sure of him.”
“Perhaps I should go direct to London, unless, of course, Your Lordship…?”
“In that case, my dear Colqhoun, I shall take care of Miss Lindsay until you arrive. I will not tell her anything of her good fortune because it would please me to catch the villainous uncle if he makes his move.”
The new candles brought in by the landlord shone out cheerfully, sending the shadows flying to the corners of the room.
