The Paper Princess

by M C Beaton

  Felicity looked up after her defiant statement of independence and saw the footman, Giles, hurrying toward her.

  “He wants me back for a further argument,” she said gloomily. But as soon as she heard it was her mother who wished to see her, she ran like the wind. Felicity had not seen her mother alone for some time, Mr. Palfrey having forestalled any efforts in that direction.

  It had been many years since Mrs. Palfrey had shared a bedchamber with her husband. But her own bedchamber had not escaped her husband’s reorganizing zeal. The floor was slippery with beeswax and ornamented with an Oriental rug placed with geometric precision exactly in the center of the floor. Her bed was of the newfangled kind that Felicity detested, having neither posts nor curtains, but shell-shaped and draped with a cover of chilly white lace.

  “Come in, my dear,” said Mrs. Palfrey faintly. “I do not have much time.”

  Mrs. Palfrey was now sure she was dying, but Felicity thought her mother meant that she had not much time before her husband came back.

  “Now, don’t interrupt me,” said Mrs. Palfrey feebly. “Sit down on the end of the bed and listen. I have not been a good mother. No! You must not interrupt. I allowed Mr. Palfrey to arrange marriages for my other girls. It seemed as if he had good sense, for Penelope and Emily appear to be content, and I can only pray that Maria will find the same happiness. But from what I have heard of the baron, he is not the man for you, or indeed for any woman. You must have your independence, Felicity. Mr. Palfrey does not, I believe, know of the Channing jewels. I did not tell him about them. I knew he loved beautiful things, and I had planned to dazzle him with a display of them after we were married. I did not then know how greedy he was—but I soon found out.

  “Before I fell ill, I hid the box with the jewels. It may surprise you to know there is a priest’s hole in this castle.”

  “But I do know,” said Felicity, wondering. “I have been in it.”

  “There is a ledge up at the top of it. You probably never looked up there. It is hard to see in the blackness. You will find an iron box there. That is your dowry. I shall leave them to you in my will, and you must point out to Mr. Palfrey that with such an enormous dowry, you may marry whom you please. In the meantime, appear as if you have decided to accept the baron. I do not wish to die without having made some provision for you.”

  “Mama! You will live a long time. Perhaps another physician should be called.”

  “Perhaps I shall live longer than I expect,” said Mrs. Palfrey with a weak smile, “but we shall try for a stay of execution. I shall tell Mr. Palfrey I do not wish you to be married until I am well enough to attend the ceremony. The Channing money is still mine, and at least I have that hold over him, though I have never used it before.

  “Now, I wish to add a codicil to my will, leaving you the jewels. I need two servants to be witnesses, but I must have two who are trustworthy and who will not talk to Mr. Palfrey or to anyone else.”

  “There is John Tremayne, the head groom,” said Felicity slowly, “and he will know of another who is as loyal to the Channings.”

  “Fetch him quickly. Now.”

  “But, Mama. You are making me afraid with this talk of death.”

  “I have no time at the moment to talk to you further, my child. Go!”

  Felicity longed to take her mother into her arms, to try to beg her to leave the castle and perhaps go to London where a physician might be better qualified to diagnose her illness. But fright and agitation were making Mrs. Palfrey’s breath come in ragged gasps. Felicity left to go in search of John Tremayne.

  After a short time, John Tremayne appeared with a housemaid, Bessie Redhill. The head groom was half in love with Bessie, who was plump and motherly.

  Mrs. Palfrey asked Bessie to help her over to her writing desk. She pulled forward a sheet of parchment and then hesitated. She was suddenly consumed with hatred for this husband of hers who had only pretended to love her and whose greed and spiteful bullying character had become evident right after the wedding. Up until this moment, she had kept such feelings at bay, thinking them sinful. She had sworn in church before God to love and obey her husband, and she had tried so very hard to abide by the promise. But the fear that time was running out for her sparked the first strong feeling of rebellion Mrs. Palfrey had ever had. Why not leave everything she possessed to Felicity? It would only mean writing a very short will. Felicity could be trusted to share the money with her sisters and look after any servants who might have to be pensioned off.

  She began to write quickly, while John and Bessie stood by, trying to mask their curiosity. At last she was finished, and she asked them both to sign. John Tremayne was illiterate and made his mark. Bessie had been educated at a dame school, and her bold, quick eyes traveled rapidly down the page before she signed.

  Then she helped Mrs. Palfrey back to bed and left the room with John Tremayne.

  When the servants had reached the stair landing, John asked, “What was that all about, Bessie? Was it her will?”

  Bessie hesitated. It was a great secret, that will; a rare secret. She decided to hug the knowledge to herself. The housekeeper, Mrs. Jessop, was always sneering at her. It would be nice after Madam died to startle the servants hall by saying that she, Bessie, had been witness to the will that was driving Mr. Palfrey mad with rage.

  “Dunno,” she said laconically. “Warn’t time. I just signed my name without reading it.”

  “Well, I hope there’s something in there for Miss Felicity,” said John. “Give us a kiss, Bessie. No one’s around.”

  Bessie giggled and kissed him on the lips, privately thinking that John Tremayne was a bit of an old goat. Then the servants went downstairs together.

  At the time the servants were signing the new will, Lord Arthur Bessamy was strolling into his club, Boodle’s, in St. James’s. Boodle’s was not a club for the politically-minded, like White’s, which favored the Tories, or Brooks’s, which had a membership of Whigs. It was a more comfortable place with the convenience of a “dirty room” in which members who had failed to dress for dinner were segregated.

  Lord Arthur made his way to the coffee room, and there, sitting by the fireplace under the Abraham Hondius painting, Stag Hunt, he recognized the wilting figure of his friend, Charles Godolphin.

  “You look,” said Lord Arthur pleasantly, “about the sickest thing in London, Dolph. There is an inn in Devon called The Green Dolphin that would suit your complexion perfectly.”

  “Been drinking Blue Ruin,” groaned Mr. Godolphin. “Don’t tower over me, there’s a good chap. Sit down, do. Craning up at you makes my head ache.”

  Lord Arthur sat down and surveyed his friend. Dolph was a tubby man, so small that his plump legs, encased in black Inexpressibles, did not reach the floor. His starched cravat supported two chins, and his short-sighted green eyes were crisscrossed that day with little red veins. He had teased his thick head of fair hair into the Windswept that morning, only to see it spring back into its normal style which resembled the thatched roof of a Tudor cottage. In despair, he had told his man to set it by using a mixture of sugar and water. That had seemed to do the trick, although it had given his hair a rigid, stand-up appearance that made him look as if he had been struck by lightning. The sugar and water mixture had dried on the road to the club, and the little crystals of sugar now decorated the shoulders of his coat like some exotic type of dandruff. A pair of new corsets was playing merry hell with his swollen liver. In all, Dolph felt terrible.

  “Did you mention The Green Dolphin?” he asked, as Lord Arthur sat down in a chair opposite him.

  Lord Arthur nodded. “I was thinking of an inn of that name down in Cornwall, near Tregarthan Castle.”

  “I know it,” said Dolph. “Deuced good food. I had to escape there from the claws of a grasping relative.”

  “Which one?”

  “My Uncle Frank. He’s Lord St. Dawdy. You know I’m always short of the ready, and I’ve been dipping d
eep. It occurred to me that the old boy might look at me in a kindly way in his declining years. He jaunters to the Continent a lot—had just got back when I arrived on his doorstep. We had an abominable supper, everything put in a pie, Cornish-style, but with great heaps of pastry to make up for the absence of meat.

  “Still, I thought my digestion might be able to stand it—just. I asked tenderly after his health and said he must be curst lonely. Lives in a drafty, miserable place which looks as if it had been built by gnomes on an off-day—you know, low, low roofs, beams that bang even such a small chap as myself on the head, and sloping floors. He grinned and winked at me—he’s a gross, vulgar, brutish man—and said he would not be alone for very much longer. ‘Why not?’ I asked, hoping he meant that he would soon be among heavenly company. He said he was getting married to a fine, lusty girl who would bear him sons. Well, after a rocket like that, there didn’t seem much point in staying. I murmured something about urgent business and fled to the nearest hostelry—The Green Dolphin.”

  Lord Arthur took out a lace-edged cambric handkerchief and flicked a piece of dust from one glossy hessian boot. “When you were at The Green Dolphin,” he said, “did you by any chance notice a weird couple of fellows in the tap—a big, heavyset man and a slim, pretty youth?”

  “No one like that.”

  “And what is the name of the lady your uncle is going to inflict himself on?”

  “Felicity Channing.”

  “Ah, that name again,” murmured Lord Arthur. “Is this Felicity indeed a girl—or only a girl to someone of your uncle’s age?”

  “You may be sure I asked, hoping the marriage would not come to anything, you know. But it seems that even if Miss Channing does not want the baron, she will be forced to marry him nonetheless.”

  “I have heard of a Bartholomew Channing of Tregarthan Castle, although that was when I was in short coats. My father said he was an admirable gentleman.”

  “Ah, but he died, and the widow married a Mr. Palfrey, a man-milliner sort of fellow, much despised by the locals. He arranged marriages for the elder three of the widow’s daughters—not bad marriages as it turned out, but he has settled on my uncle for the youngest, and what he says goes.”

  “How very gothic. Do you attend the wedding?”

  “Have to. He may yet leave me something.”

  Lord Arthur sighed and stretched. “Take me along with you, Dolph,” he said finally. “I have a whim to see that part of England again.”

  Mr. Palfrey sat back in the carriage that was bearing him back to Tregarthan Castle and beamed with satisfaction. He had forced the baron to agree to only a very small dowry, explaining that Felicity’s youth and beauty were dowry enough. He had had miniatures of all the girls painted as they reached the age of seventeen, but instead of showing the baron Felicity’s miniature—for Mr. Palfrey privately thought Felicity a very poor sort of female in the looks department—he had shown him instead a miniature of Maria; Maria who had all the formal beauty of the Channings.

  That had settled the matter, and the baron had almost drooled over that miniature and had agreed to the tiny dowry. Then Mr. Palfrey frowned. He did hope his wife was not going to make trouble over this marriage. But she had never made any trouble before. Still, she obviously doted on the odd little Felicity. Better to have a stern word with her.

  But Mrs. Palfrey was beyond listening to any stern words. When he arrived in her bedchamber, it was to find her lying serene and tranquil in the endless sleep of death.

  Before summoning the servants, Mr. Palfrey sat down at her desk so that he could prepare himself to act the part of grief-stricken husband. It was all his now, he thought in a sort of wonder. Tregarthan Castle, the Channing fortune, and the Channing estates. All his. It was tiresome that Felicity’s marriage would have to be delayed while a decent period of mourning was observed.

  He half rose from the desk. And then he saw his wife’s Last Will and Testament. He lit more candles and sat down to read it with a fast-beating heart.

  The spasm of fury that consumed him was so intense that he thought his heart would burst through his chest. He looked at Bessie Redhill’s signature and then at John Tremayne’s mark. The head groom was illiterate, and perhaps the maid had not read what she was signing. And what was this about the Channing jewels? What jewels?

  The earlier will, leaving everything to him, reposed downstairs in his desk in the library.

  He must burn this one, and then see if he could quiet those servants. He picked up the will and carried it over to the fire. But the fire had burned very low. He threw on some coal and eagerly waited for it to burst into a blaze.

  The door opened and Benson, the lady’s maid, walked in.

  Mr. Palfrey thrust the will into the pocket in his coattails.

  Benson was staring in anguish at the still figure on the bed.

  “My beloved wife is dead,” said Mr. Palfrey. He thought again of that will, and tears of rage spurted out of his eyes. Benson said afterward she had never until that moment realized how very much Mr. Palfrey had loved his wife.

  Chapter Three

  Felicity’s courage appeared to vanish with the death of her mother. She was crushed down under a load of grief.

  Her stepfather cried a great deal as well, but Felicity had noticed the strong smell of onion coming from his handkerchiefs and knew he was acting, but she did not even have the strength to become angry.

  There was some comfort for her in the arrival of her sisters for the funeral. She was able to share her mourning and found a great deal of solace in noticing that not only Penelope and Emily appeared happy with their husbands, but that Maria was content with her bishop. He was a large man with a hectoring manner and a booming voice, but Maria appeared to hang on his every word. There was something to be said for arranged marriages after all, thought Felicity. Marriage to Lord St. Dawdy would at least mean having a home of her own.

  Despite her grief, she could not help hoping the baron might ride over to attend the funeral, but Mr. Palfrey said Lord St. Dawdy detested funerals, and Felicity thought the baron must be a very odd man indeed to stay away from his intended bride’s family mourning.

  All too soon, Mr. Palfrey managed to fuss the sisters and their husbands out of the castle, which settled back into its usual deadly glacial quiet.

  Felicity and Miss Chubb decided to go out riding the day after the Channing sisters had left, although the sky was darkening and there was a metallic smell of snow on the wind.

  John Tremayne saw to the saddling of their horses himself. After he had helped Felicity up, he stood with his hand on her stirrup and looked up anxiously into her face.

  “I do not wish to distress you, Miss Felicity,” he said, “but has the will been read?”

  “Yes,” said Felicity curtly, putting a hand down to pat her little mare’s neck, for the animal had sensed her sudden rush of anger and had begun to fidget. “It is as I expected. Everything goes to Mr. Palfrey.”

  “But, miss, you remember when you came for me the day Mrs. Palfrey died? You told me to find another loyal servant because Madam wanted two witnesses? I took the maid, Bessie Redhill, with me. Madam gave us a piece of paper with writing on it to sign. I can’t read nor write and though Bessie can, she said she didn’t have time to see what was on the paper.”

  “So, Mama did write that codicil,” said Felicity slowly.

  “What… what was it, that thing you just said?”

  “Look, John. I shall tell you and Miss Chubb, but you must keep it to yourselves and not ever tell anyone, not even Bessie. Tell her only that the piece of paper was nothing important. You see, I believe my stepfather found that codicil which left Mama’s jewels to me, and burned it. But I know where they are hidden, and I am not going to tell him!”

  “I promise, miss. I’ll never tell a soul, and if Bessie mentions that piece of paper, I’ll deny it, that I will. It’ll be her word against mine, and I think master’ll be more inclined to believe
an old servant.”

  At that moment, a groom came running up and said John was wanted in the castle by Mr. Palfrey.

  “He probably wants to ask you where I am,” said Felicity. “Stand clear, John. Come along, Miss Chubb. Off we go!”

  John made his way slowly toward the castle.

  Bessie, who had also been summoned, arrived outside the library before him. She had hugged the knowledge of that other will to herself. Surely Mr. Palfrey would pay, and pay well, to have it kept a secret.

  Mr. Palfrey had an extensive wardrobe. He had changed into the coat he had been wearing on the day of his wife’s death. It was the first time he had worn it since then. He was sitting down at his desk in the library when he heard the crackle of parchment from the pocket in his tails. He drew out his wife’s last will, cursing that he had not destroyed it before this. When he found the coat that morning, it had been folded in a chest with some papers in his bedchamber, and he had forgotten why he had thrust it there. It was as well he had not put the coat with his others, or his valet would have found the will when he cleaned out the pockets. Why on earth had he been convinced he had already destroyed the will? He had drunk long and deep on the night of his wife’s death. His memory of thrusting that plaguey will between the bars of the library fire must have been a drunken dream. It must be got rid of at once! He bent over the library fire.

  Then he heard Bessie’s heavy footsteps approaching across the hall and crammed the will back into his pocket.

  He eyed Bessie carefully as she walked in. She seemed a pleasant, motherly woman. Probably there would be no difficulty in dealing with her.

  “I am afraid I must give you your notice, Bessie,” said Mr. Palfrey. “With the ladies married and my poor wife in her grave, there is no longer any need to maintain such a large staff.”