by M C Beaton
How inadequate poor Miss Wilkins felt! She would have given anything to take her mistress’s hurt on herself. But there was nothing she could do but listen and murmur and console as Amaryllis raved against the world, and the indifferent snow whispered against the windows.
Harry Bagshot was in seventh heaven. The weather had been too bad to allow them to travel further than the outskirts of Oxford. By many little whispers, many little warm pressures of the hand Agatha had let him know that the night to come was going to be wonderful.
It seemed to him immeasurably exciting that this beautiful widow, whom he had not even kissed, was shortly to be all his for the taking. From the heights of his love, he found it possible to pity his poor friend Philip. Look where marrying for vulgar money got you! Now he, Harry Bagshot, prided himself that having been burnt in the fire of Priscilla Armitage, he was now as good a judge of women as he was of horseflesh.
Agatha had recovered her lisp and her kittenish ways as the miles from Beaton Malden fell away beneath the wheels of Harry’s traveling coach.
They were lucky in managing to engage rooms at the Five Jolly Porters, a hostelry famed for its food and comfort. It was a Tudor inn, all cunning beams and brasses and chintz.
There were many other travelers forced to put up for the night before they could reach Oxford. The roads were rapidly becoming completely blocked.
When Agatha and Harry were sitting over an excellent dinner in the huge dining room of the inn, the landlord approached them and said he wondered if they could possibly give up one of their rooms to an old man and his daughter. He obviously took Harry and Agatha for husband and wife. Harry hesitated in a gentlemanly way, but Agatha, with a winsome smile, said they would be only too happy to oblige the old gentleman and his daughter.
Harry could hardly eat, he was in such a state of ecstasy. How kittenish, how suggestive, was his fair partner. The way she ate oysters, sliding them into her mouth and running her tongue over her lips, was fit to drive a man mad. By the time they arose to mount to their bedchamber, he could hardly walk.
No sooner had he closed and locked the bedroom door behind them than Harry seized the fair Agatha in his arms and began to kiss her passionately.
It was then he received his first setback. For Agatha had the most simply apalling bad breath. It was as if some small animal had died inside her and was slowly decomposing. Well, that could be taken care of. He fished a tin of musk pastilles from his pocket and laughingly popped one in her mouth and fell to kissing her again before she could get a chance to ask him what he was doing.
The sad fact is that quite a lot of women who wriggle and pout and lisp and do wonders to suggest the delights of sex in store are really remarkably tepid when you get them in the feathers. The same can, of course, be said for quite a lot of Don Juans.
For such a glowing, beautiful woman, she seemed strangely flabby under the covers. His passion was over quickly and Agatha immediately fell asleep, obviously quite satisfied.
Harry found he could not sleep. He lit the bed-candle and began to pace up and down the room.
It was then he noticed that her reticule had fallen on the floor and all the things were spilling out of it. He automatically bent to pick it up and replace the objects.
That was when he found a small note addressed to Lady Lovelace. The seal, although it had been broken, he recognized as Lord Philip’s.
Taking it around to the candlelight, he sat down and read. It was a passionate declaration of love. Lord Philip ended by saying he was taking her paste jewels to London to replace them with real ones and to see the lawyers about his inheritance and that he hoped to be in her arms again as soon as possible.
Harry shivered. He shook Agatha roughly by the shoulder. “Why have you got a letter to Amaryllis Lovelace in your reticule?”
“Oh, that,” mumbled Agatha sleepily. “Thought it’d be fun to let her think her lord had gone off without a word.” And with that she fell asleep again.
Harry slowly began to get dressed. All he could do was to head back to Beaton Malden as soon as the weather allowed and deliver this letter to its rightful owner.
His heart was heavy. As the pale dawn light arose over the fantastic Tudor chimneys of the inn, he crept from the room, his boots in his hand.
He had to arouse the landlord so as to pay his shot and then awaken the sleepy hostlers to have his carriage brought around.
It was raining heavily and the thick snow was already turning to slush. If they picked their way slowly and carefully, they could perhaps make the journey to another inn where he could hide from Agatha. He never wanted to see her again.
The roads were still atrocious and he was forced to put up at a hedge tavern a few miles distant for several days until the weather cleared and a false spring began to smile on the sodden countryside. He had had nothing to do during the time but commune with his soul.
As soon as he was ready, he told his coachman to make speedy tracks for Beaton Malden. The roads were rutted and bumpy, and they had not gone very far when there was a sudden sickening lurch and the carriage heeled over on its side.
He climbed out, shaken but unhurt. One of the nearside wheels had broken. There was nothing for it but to tell his groom to unhitch one of the horses and ride for help.
He sat on a milestone beside the road, hoping against hope that Agatha would not come by and spot him.
He was aroused from his meditations by the sound of a carriage approaching along the road. He was about to hide behind a hedge when he saw that it was a gentleman’s traveling carriage.
Agatha would hire a post chaise.
The carriage came alongside and stopped.
“Why, Mr. Bagshot!” cried Belinda Fang.
How glad he was to see the Fangs! How tremendously pleased he was that they were not Agatha! How sweet and innocent Belinda looked!
He forgot all about going to Beaton Malden. He cheerfully accepted their offer of a lift to London.
And Lord Philip’s letter to Amaryllis lay forgotten in his pocket.
Back at the Five Jolly Porters, Agatha Jordan was making arrangements for the journey to London. She was furious with Harry Bagshot. It had been a disgusting episode.
Not only that, but the elderly gentleman and his daughter who had taken one of their rooms had turned out to be the Earl of Harrisfield and Priscilla, and they had quarrelled and shouted and fought about who had compromised whom until the roads were clear enough to allow Agatha to escape.
Eight
Two weeks had passed since Lord Philip’s departure. The false spring had not lasted long and hard frost had closed down upon the land.
Amaryllis entered upon a period of listless inactivity. She found she could neither sew nor read nor concentrate upon anything. She could not think about Lord Philip and damn him and get him out of her mind. No sooner did his face arise before her mind’s eye than she flinched from it and tried to force herself to think about something else, anything else.
With all the guests gone—Freddie Jackson had removed himself to Sir Peregrine’s—rigid economies were brought into force again. Meals were plain and meager and fires were confined to the morning room, the servant’s hall, and Mr. Worthy’s office.
Amaryllis and Miss Wilkins practically lived in the morning room, taking all their meals there.
Miss Wilkins had tried and tried to talk Amaryllis into a happier frame of mind until she realized that all her efforts were only making Lady Lovelace more miserable.
The only excitement in the long dark winter days was when the Malden and Daxtead Hunt had pursued the fox across the Beaton Malden gardens. Sir Peregrine had leapt the wall of the kitchen garden in fine style and had ended up in the melon frame, and both horse and rider had to be bandaged and sent home.
Amaryllis felt lonely and depressed. There seemed nothing to look forward to, nothing to dream about, nothing to hope for.
One evening just after the candles had been lit, she heard the sound of a c
arriage in the drive.
She did not bother rising to her feet, merely assuming it was some of the country house visitors who had slipped by the lodge.
She heard Foster’s voice in the hall. “I will see if her ladyship is at home, my lord.”
“I’ll see for myself, Foster,” said that heart-wrenching, mocking voice. “In the morning room, heh? I’ll announce myself.”
Amaryllis looked wildly around. Miss Wilkins was lying down with one of her headaches in her room. Before she could think what to do, the door opened and there he was. His face looked even more handsome and devilish than she had remembered. He was wearing a many-caped driving coat and carried a curly-brimmed beaver in his hand.
“This place is like an icehouse, my love,” he said cheerfully, divesting himself of his coat and throwing it on a chair. He turned and held out his arms.
“Come kiss me, Amaryllis. I have dreamt of nothing else.”
“My jewels, please,” said Amaryllis, backing away from him.
He gave a little frown. “Do your jewels come before me, madam?”
“Oh, yes,” said Amaryllis sweetly.
The love on his face ebbed, to be replaced with cold contempt.
He rang the bell. “Foster,” he said, never taking his hard gaze from Amaryllis’s face. “Bring in that jewel box in the hall.”
Foster inclined his head and went to order one of the footmen to perform the task.
“Open it,” said Lord Philip when the servants had gone.
“I don’t need to,” said Amaryllis wearily.
“Then be damned to you!” said Lord Philip, picking up his coat and hat. “You are the most mercenary baggage…”
“I? Mercenary? You, sirrah, only returned the jewels because you found they were paste!”
He had marched to the door as she spoke. Suddenly he stopped. “You received my letter?”
“I received no letter. You left none.”
“Oh, yes, I did. I left you a letter explaining I was taking your paste to London to replace it with the real thing.”
“Oh, Philip! Oh, you are only saying that to make me feel awful.”
Foster was summoned again.
Yes, he confirmed, his lordship had left a letter for my lady. Mrs. Jordan had offered to take it to my lady.
Amaryllis dismissed the butler. “She must have hidden it, Philip. I thought you did not know my jewels were paste and that you had stolen them. Don’t look so angry. Look at it from my point of view. Oh, Philip, I have been so wretched!”
“Well, they’re as real as real can be. The jeweler did a beautiful job. Do you want to see them?”
“No.”
“Do you want to kiss me?”
Amaryllis blushed by way of reply and held out her arms.
Foster took his ear from the other side of the door. He scuttled off to the servants’ quarters to relate the good news that Lord Philip must have come into a fortune because he had been able to change my lady’s paste jewels for the real thing.
Sometime later, Amaryllis stirred sleepily in Lord Philip’s arms as they lay in front of the morning room fire.
“I hear singing,” she said.
He moved his mouth lazily against hers. “You must be hearing angels.”
“No. Listen!”
Lord Philip sat up and cocked his head on one side.
From somewhere in the servants’ quarters, a voice was raised in song.
A captain bold of Halifax
Who lived in country quarters
Seduced a maid who hanged herself
One Monday in her garters….
Oh, Miss Bailey, unfortunate Miss Bailey.
“Dear me,” said Amaryllis. “That sounds like Foster. Why is he singing vulgar songs?”
“Celebrating,” said Lord Philip. “They’re celebrating my wealth.”
“How do they know?”
“I don’t know,” he yawned. “Probably been listening at the door. My love, what a marvelous blush! It starts at your toes and goes right up to your forehead. Forget Foster. I shall give you something to blush about….”
Down in the servants’ hall, Miss Wilkins was being regaled with the glad news. She had gone in search of Foster after finding the door of the morning room locked.
Smiling with relief, Miss Wilkins graciously agreed to take the top of the servants’ table and join them in the toasts. Amaryllis was happy and that was all that mattered.
Miss Wilkins sipped champagne and smiled dreamily. Now she would have time to worry about herself. The vicar had been so charming at the hunt ball….
