by M C Beaton
‘Miss Trumble says it is because of the prejudice against the Scottish people,’ said Belinda. ‘I have never met one Scottish person with red hair. But people will have it they are all redhaired.’
‘What do you think will happen to Mannerling now?’ asked Lizzie. ‘I mean, I doubt very much if the Deverses will continue to live there.’
‘I do not care,’ said Abigail. ‘The very thought of the place frightens me now. I think it tricks us all, offering peace and tranquillity and supplying instead obsession and danger and shame. I never want to see it again. Do you . . . Lizzie? Lizzie?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Lizzie hurriedly, too hurriedly, thought Jessica worriedly, remembering her own terrible obsession with the place, which had nearly lost her the love of Robert Sommerville, now her husband.
‘I wonder if we shall ever see Isabella again,’ she went on. ‘But we all seem to wed so hurriedly that there is never time for her to make arrangements to come over from Ireland. But all her letters are so happy. I hope you will be as happy as I am and as Isabella is, Abigail.’
Abigail longed to ask this elder married sister about the mysteries of the marriage bed, but in an age when young misses were not even supposed to mention dreadful words like ‘legs,’ she found she could not bring herself to say anything.
They all helped the maid to prepare her for this unknown journey. Lizzie began to become tearful. One after one, her sisters were leaving home, and soon she would be left alone.
Lady Beverley came in and aimed a kiss somewhere in the air above Abigail’s cheek. ‘Be good, my child,’ she said sententiously, ‘and obey your husband in all matters. Ah, if only your dear papa could have been alive this day.’
A guilty silence fell on her daughters. The late Sir William Beverley had become a shadowy figure in their minds. They had all been so bitter about the loss of Mannerling, had blamed him for that loss, that they had not mourned his passing very much.
‘You must remember, Abigail, to tell your husband his duty towards the impoverished Beverleys,’ said Lady Beverley.
Abigail surveyed her mother with cynical eyes. ‘You mean, I am to ask him to send you money?’
‘You were always too blunt, my child. Remind him of his duty.’
‘He has no duty to you,’ said Abigail with a flash of anger.
Miss Trumble entered the room and said quietly. ‘Are you ready, Abigail? Lord Burfield is waiting for you.’
The sisters crowded around Abigail, hugging her and kissing her. Then, as she was leaving the room, Abigail kissed Miss Trumble on the cheek and whispered, ‘Keep them safe from Mannerling.’
Then, followed by them all, Abigail went downstairs to where the guests were gathered around Lord Burfield’s travelling-carriage. Her hurriedly packed trunks were brought down by the footmen and put in the rumble. Lord Burfield was driving himself. He leaned over from the box and held out his hand. ‘Come and join me.’
Abigail grasped his hand and was lifted up. The carriage began to move slowly away. ‘Goodbye,’ called Abigail’s sisters, clustered around Miss Trumble.
Tommy Cartwright, overcome by fame and champagne, began to cry noisily, and that started everyone else off. The sound of sobs died away in the distance as the carriage turned the corner of the street.
To Abigail’s relief, her husband did not talk, merely drove his team competently along the Great West Road, the wheels sending up spurts of gravel. The countryside swam in the golden evening light. Abigail’s eyes began to close. She leaned her head against Lord Burfield’s shoulder and fell asleep.
I wonder if she realizes how nervous I am about this night ahead, he thought ruefully. Unlike my peers, I do not find the idea of bedding a virgin exciting. What a responsibility, particularly after all she has been through.
Abigail awoke as the carriage rolled under the arch of a posting-house in Richmond. Underneath them the carriage door opened and Barry emerged and ran into the posting-house. He returned after a few minutes, followed by the landlord.
‘A room has been prepared for you, my lord,’ said Barry.
‘Why Barry?’ asked Abigail, sleepily as he lifted her down from the box. ‘He is not one of your servants.’
‘I thought you would be more comfortable with a familiar face. This is the one time in our life when we do not wish to be surrounded by servants.’
Abigail stifled a giggle as a whole retinue of servants rushed from the inn to bow and scrape and carry their bags.
They followed the landlord upstairs. He threw open the door of a bedchamber. There was a great four-poster bed, its curtains looped back. The casement windows were open to show a vista of the slowly moving river.
Maids appeared to unpack their bags. Abigail rested her elbows on the window-sill and watched the river turning gold in the setting sun.
And then she heard the door close quietly. The servants had left. She straightened up and gripped the window-sill with nervous fingers. He would surely leave her to wash and undress and so delay that terrifying moment when she would face the unknown.
He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I am very frightened I will hurt you, my love, or give you a disgust of me. And you are frightened as well, are you not? Let us be frightened together.’
He turned her round to face him and then kissed her gently on each cheek and then softly on her mouth. For a long time all she felt was his lips moving against her own, his body pressed against her, and all she heard was the sleepy bedtime chatter of the birds outside the window and the soft lapping of the water. Her lips began to move against his own in response and she buried her hands in his thick fair hair. How she had fretted over that terrible embarrassment of undressing! And yet, as his hands began to move over her body, unfastening the long row of buttons at the front of her gown, loosening the tapes at the back, it all felt so natural. And when she was finally lying naked in his arms, she lost her virginity in such a surge of red passion that she barely noticed the pain, writhing under his busy body and moaning against him.
She awoke at dawn and lay and stretched. She heard a noise from outside and climbed stiffly from the high bed, pulled on a wrapper and went to the still-open window and looked down. Barry was standing directly below the window on a strand of shingle, throwing stones into the river like a schoolboy. As if conscious of her gaze, he turned and looked up. Abigail’s radiant face looked down at him.
‘Happy, miss?’ he called up softly.
‘Oh, yes, Barry, so happy.’
He bowed and moved quickly away.
Abigail climbed back into bed, and leaning on one elbow, studied her lord’s face and then tenderly brushed a lock of hair back from his forehead. He awoke and pulled her across his chest. ‘Where were we?’ he murmured.
Miss Trumble awoke with a scratching at the door. ‘Come,’ she called sleepily. She looked at the clock on the mantel. Nine o’clock. She had slept later than usual because, no matter how late she stayed up the night before, the governess usually awoke early.
Barry came in, a sheepish smile on his face.
She sat up and exclaimed, ‘Barry! What are you doing here? You are supposed to be with them.’
‘They are at Richmond and they will not miss me. I hired a horse on Lord Burfield’s account and rode straight here to tell you all is well.’
‘Now how can you know that, Barry?’
‘I was down at the river as the sun came up, and I was below their bedroom window. I looked up and there was Miss Abigail, I mean Lady Burfield. I asked her if she was happy and she said yes, she was, and she looked so beautiful.’
‘And you rode straight to tell me. How good of you, Barry. How very good. Three gone and three more to go. Surely we cannot expect more success.’
‘We’ll see, miss. Will you be staying on? It is not as if you need to.’
‘On the contrary. I need the employment very much.’
Barry looked at her shrewdly. ‘But not for the money, I reckon.’
‘Really, Barry, what odd ideas you do have. I am an impoverished governess,’ said Miss Trumble severely, settling her night-cap of fine old Brussels lace more firmly on her head.
Barry grinned ruefully and bowed and left. There was some mystery about Miss Trumble, but whatever it was, she was certainly not going to tell him.
Rachel, Belinda, and Lizzie were gathered in Rachel’s bedroom that morning. ‘We are staying here for two more weeks,’ said Rachel. ‘I think it is decidedly odd to stay on in Lord Burfield’s house when he is not here, but you know Mama, she is counting the saving on food and candles. I feel empty without Abigail, and yet I feel she is very happy.’
‘What will happen to us now?’ asked Lizzie in a small voice. ‘We will soon go back to the country and we cannot expect to find handsome gentlemen falling for us.’
‘I feel as long as we have our Miss Trumble, then things will happen to us,’ said Rachel.
‘Miss Trumble cannot do everything. She did not conjure up Lord Burfield for Abigail or make him fall in love with her,’ pointed out Belinda.
‘But she mysteriously organized invitations for us,’ said Rachel. ‘Did you hear that Prudence Makepeace was behind the plot to make Abigail miss her wedding, and she has escaped the law? Her parents have taken her abroad. They fled last night. Miss Trumble said she was relieved because a court case would have meant a dreadful scandal.’
Lizzie gave a little shiver. ‘I hope she never comes back to England. Think of the malice behind her actions. I assume it was she who wrote that letter?’
Rachel nodded.
Belinda said, ‘I, for one, am never going to think of Mannerling again. Isabella, Jessica, and Abigail need never have suffered anything at all had they let go of that dreadful place. It was our home and we loved it, and yet everything to do with the house brings misery.’
‘It’s only a house,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s our obsession with the place that has caused all the trouble. We have all earned a bad reputation because of it. I was dancing at a ball with an attractive young man, Sir Peregrine Darcy. He was very charming and he seemed pleased with my company. He took me in for supper and soon we were chatting away like old friends. Then he suddenly looked at me and exclaimed, “Beverley! Of course! I knew I had heard that name.” He grew very guarded and rather remote and soon he turned to speak to the lady on his other side and did not turn back to me. It was all very lowering.’ She added in low voice, ‘Perhaps we will never marry now.’
‘Spinsters!’ said Lizzie in hollow tones. ‘Spinsters all. The Beverley spinsters.’
They looked at each other and then Belinda said bracingly, ‘Miss Trumble will think of something. She always does.’
But she looked as if she did not believe what she had just said.
Harry Devers was buried at Mannerling. There was a private chapel not far from the house. It had not been used by Sir William or Lady Beverley or Mr and Mrs Devers, who preferred to attend the village church. But it had a small quiet graveyard, full of the Beverley ancestors. The chapel was opened for the funeral and Mr Stoddart, the vicar, conducted the service.
Mrs Devers, supported by her husband, stood by the graveside, hearing the words of the burial service tolling in her head.
‘ “The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong, that they come to fourscore years: yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.
‘ “But who regardeth the power of thy wrath: for even thereafter as man feareth, so is thy displeasure.” ’
Had God been displeased with Harry? wondered Mrs Devers. She was past crying, and was in a state of half-numb bewilderment. A dank drizzle was falling from a leaden sky. A willow tree had been planted beside the grave, a whole willow tree, specially put there for the sad occasion. Water dripped from its leaves onto the coffin.
Memories of Harry flitted through Mrs Devers’s brain – Harry as a child, smashing his toys, Harry punching his tutor, Harry getting that maidservant pregnant, the girl crying rape and having to be paid to keep silent. And now Harry was gone, and with him all the worry and trouble and turmoil. Harry was quiet at last and buried near the home he had stayed in for such a short time and which he had loved so much.
Mr Devers had bought a handsome house by the sea at Brighton. There would be fresh breezes, fashionable company, and a whole change of life, away from Mannerling and all its unhappy memories. Mrs Devers found her mind was slipping away from her dead son towards the pleasures of this change of scene and she felt guilty.
Prudence Makepeace stood on the deck of the Bella Ann as the ship sailed through the blue waters of the Mediterranean bound for Naples. She had put all the scandal behind her, would not even think about it. Nothing, after all, had been her fault, as she had told her parents over and over again. Harry had meant to play a little joke on the Beverleys, that she had believed. She would not have dreamt of going through with it had she known he had any deep plot in mind.
She was uneasily aware that, for the first time in their well-ordered lives, her parents no longer believed a word she said. She gave a little shrug. There was a handsome officer on board who was much taken with her, and that had done much to restore her amour propre. She would make a dazzling marriage in Naples, so dazzling that London society would soon forget about her little trouble and welcome her back. She would cut the Beverleys, of course. She drifted off into a dream of arriving at Almack’s on the arm of some Italian prince. The Beverley sisters would be there, the three unwed ones. In her mind’s eye, they had grown old and withered, and they looked at her with hungry, envious eyes, jealous of her good fortune.
Abigail and her husband had been travelling from posting-house to posting-house wrapped up in love, lost in each other, until at last, when they were having breakfast one morning, Lord Burfield said, ‘I think it is time we returned to London. With any luck, your family will have left for the country.’
‘Why do you say that in just that tone of voice, my love?’ asked Abigail, her blue eyes narrowing. ‘I was looking forward to seeing them.’
‘To be frank,’ he said, ‘I am not looking forward to meeting your mama again. She must be the most unnatural and mercenary mother it has been my illluck to come across.’
The fact that this was exactly what Abigail herself thought of her mother did not stop her temper from flaring.
‘How can you be so unkind?’ she cried. ‘Yes, Mama does count the pennies, but she has had much to bear since Papa died.’
‘Many people have much to bear in this life. It’s Clarence House to a Charlie’s shelter that she has asked you to ask me to send her money.’
‘She never did!’ lied Abigail, her face turning red with mortification. ‘Why are you jeering at me in that horrible way?’
He smiled. ‘There! I am sorry. But my anger against your mother is on your behalf. Had you been better brought up, you would not have concocted that silly plot to wed Harry Devers.’
‘I was trying to save Rachel, you . . . you pompous fool!’ shouted Abigail.
‘Do control yourself,’ said her husband evenly and buttered a piece of toast.
‘You are horrid, horrid and I hate you! I am going out for some fresh air.’
‘Don’t slam the door after you.’ The crash of the door as Abigail departed drowned out his words.
Now as cold with anger as she had been hot, Abigail went up to their room and changed into a walking dress and half-boots, put on a bonnet, and then went back downstairs and out of the inn and through the bustle of the yard.
Two young misses were descending from a carriage. I should warn them about marriage, thought Abigail tearfully. I have married a monster!
She walked into the market town, suddenly wishing she could go home and join her sisters and forget she had ever been married. They would play battledore and shuttlecock in the garden and then gather in the cosy parlour in the evening and sew and read. She missed her twin.<
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Stall-holders and entertainers were busy in the main square, setting up for a fair. Momentarily diverted, she watched the arrangements and then walked on through the town and so out the other side. Walking was soothing her. The early morning mist was beginning to burn off the fields and all the countryside appeared to be coming to life.
It had been raining heavily the day before, and the deep ruts and holes in the road gleamed with water.
She heard some vehicle approaching and drew to the side of the road. A curricle driven by some local country buck came hurtling around the corner. As the carriage passed Abigail it went straight through a puddle and sent a wave of muddy water up over her before disappearing around a bend.
Abigail cried out in dismay. She was soaked with muddy water from head to foot.
‘There, now,’ said a woman’s voice from behind her. ‘Them young bucks pay no heed to nothing or no one.’
Abigail swung round, scrubbing at her muddy face with an ineffectual wisp of handkerchief. A stout countrywoman was leaning over the garden gate of her cottage, surveying Abigail with concern. ‘You’d best step inside and I’ll dry you off, miss,’ she said. ‘Come along. You can’t go walking about in that state.’
Abigail meekly followed her in to a country parlour which doubled as a kitchen. ‘You just go to the fire and get out of those clothes. I’m Mrs Plumb.’
Abigail held out her hand. ‘Lady Burfield,’ she said shyly.
‘A lady! And you walking the roads without so much as a maid. Dearie me. Well, let’s clean you up, my lady. There’s no one here but me. My husband and son are out in the fields. I’ll get you something to put on.’
Abigail took off her bonnet and carriage dress and was standing by the fire in her shift when Mrs Plumb returned with a patchwork quilt which she wrapped around Abigail. Then she swung the kettle on the idlejack over the fire. ‘I do rough cleaning twice a week for squire’s lady,’ said Mrs Plumb, ‘and her gave me a twist of tea.’
‘Oh, you must not waste it on me,’ said Abigail, knowing that the tea was probably being saved for an occasion.
