Gunpowder Plot

by Carola Dunn

  A number of sharpish retorts raced through Daisy’s mind, but she reminded herself that Sir Harold was her host. “You got a son in the end,” she pointed out, and seeing a scathing comment about Jack on the tip of his tongue, she hurriedly added, “Not to mention two grandsons. Aren’t you going to have a cup of tea?”

  “Never touch the stuff. ‘Cat lap,’ my grandfather used to call it.” He raised his voice. “Dodie, where are the boys? Weren’t they up here today?”

  Lady Tyndall looked helplessly at Gwen, who said, “Addie took them home, Father. I think she decided they needed an early night. They were getting a bit . . . overexcited about the fireworks tomorrow.”

  Not to mention the fireworks today, Daisy thought. “You were going to tell me the history of your Bonfire Night celebration, Sir Harold,” she reminded him.

  That kept him happily occupied while she devoured the plateful of delicacies and sipped distastefully at the tea, which was far too sweet. Lady Tyndall wouldn’t have sugared it without asking, so perhaps Sir Harold was trying to feed her up. Kindly meant, no doubt.

  While listening to and taking mental notes on his lecture, she watched the others. Jack and Babs had their heads together, both with disgruntled expressions but eating with unimpaired appetites. Gwen and Miller sat on either side of Lady Tyndall. All three looked unhappy and their conversation appeared to be desultory.

  Gwen glanced over and happened to catch Daisy’s eye just as she took a sip of the syrupy tea. Perhaps Daisy’s nose wrinkled involuntarily. At any rate, Gwen said something to her mother, and a moment later Martin Miller came over.

  “Beg pardon for interrupting,” he said, “but Miss Gwen wondered if you’d like a fresh cup of tea, Mrs. Fletcher? Yours must be getting cold.”

  “Yes, please. A spot of milk, no sugar, thanks.”

  He grinned at her, his sober face lightening. Daisy wondered if Gwen had tried to stop her father oversweetening the first cup. “Right you are. Can I fetch you anything, sir?”

  “No, thank you,” Sir Harold said ungraciously. As Miller left, the baronet went on, quite loud enough for him to hear, “Running errands for Gwen! He needn’t think she’ll get a penny from me if she takes him. Dashed counter jumper!”

  “Whatever Mr. Miller’s origins,” Daisy ventured, “engineering is an altogether respectable and necessary profession.”

  “So is street sweeper. That doesn’t mean I’ll accept one as my son-in-law. Did Gwen invite you here to try to talk me round? Because, I warn you, you might as well try to drink the Severn dry.”

  “Certainly not. She invited me because she thought, quite rightly, that I’d be interested in writing about your Guy Fawkes fête. I am a journalist, after all. A profession of doubtful respectability and questionable necessity.”

  Sir Harold waved his hand dismissively. “An odd hobby for a young lady of your birth, to be sure, but there can hardly be any question of your respectability.”

  Daisy fumed. Not that she wished her respectability to be questioned—though she did wonder what Sir Harold would think if he knew her husband was a policeman—but writing was her profession, not a hobby, and she had made a living at it before she married. She fumed silently, however. Having come all this way, she was jolly well going to get her article. She was too professional to spoil it by quarrelling with her infuriating host.

  “You were telling me about when Prince Albert died,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, that was in 1861, in December. The following November, the Queen was still in mourning, so my grandfather was of two minds about holding the fête.” He blathered on about his grandfather’s quandary.

  Miller brought Daisy’s fresh cup of tea and deposited it on the table at her elbow. She thanked him with a smile. Sir Harold talked on, ignoring him as though he were a servant. The younger man’s answering smile died and his lips tightened.

  If it was just a question of Miller’s courting Gwen, Daisy rather doubted Sir Harold cared enough to be so rude to a guest. Should his daughter dare defy him, he would just wash his hands of her and write her out of his will. What really rankled with the baronet was what he saw as the engineer’s subversion of his son and heir’s duty to the land and the traditions of his ancestors.

  Miller obviously supported Jack’s enthusiasm for aeronautics, but Daisy had so far seen no sign that it had originated with him or would fade should he vanish from the face of the earth. Perhaps the uncertainty was all that had prevented Sir Harold from kicking Miller out of his house.

  Nor was Daisy convinced of any serious romantic tie between Miller and Gwen. A few hints, yes, but nothing Alec would consider to be evidence. With luck, Gwen would decide to confide in her.

  Sir Harold had run down at last, Daisy realized. She had missed the whole story between 1862 and the present, including the Great War, but she could always ask for a repeat later, with the excuse that she didn’t have her notebook to hand. He hadn’t noticed her inattention. His large face smug, he was watching Jack and Babs, who were still talking earnestly together.

  “Babs will change his mind for him,” he said with confidence, good humour restored. “She knows the worth of the land. All young men with any spirit rebel against their parents for a while. I don’t say I didn’t myself! Jack’ll soon see this tomfoolery of his in the proper perspective. By George, I’m thirsty after rattling away for so long. I hope I haven’t bored you, Mrs. Fletcher. I believe I’ll drink a cup of tea after all. Shall I have Dodie refill your cup?”

  “Yes, please. No sugar,” Daisy said firmly.

  Two and a half cups of tea made Daisy head for the downstairs cloakroom as soon as the tea party broke up. By the eighth month, she thought, she wasn’t going to dare to move more than a hundred yards from a lav. When she came out into the hall, no one was about. She decided to go up to her room and type up notes of what she could recall of Sir Harold’s discourse.

  She was halfway up the stairs when Lady Tyndall and Jack came out of the drawing room. They didn’t notice her.

  “Dearest,” Lady Tyndall was saying, “it’s not that I mind your being an engineer, if that will make you happy.” She turned and took his hands. “You know I only want you to be happy.”

  “I know, Mother.”

  “But I will hate your living so far away. I thought once you were finished with school and university, you’d come home for good.”

  “Coventry’s not far. Not much more than thirty miles. I’ll be able to buzz over at weekends.”

  “If your father will have you in the house. Oh Jack, I’ve never known him so angry!”

  “I’m still his only son. But if he does disown me, I can earn my living doing what I love instead of dying of boredom. You’ve no idea how I loathe the idea of spending my life worrying about pruning and late frosts and blossom rot and peach-leaf curl, if that’s what it’s called. If the worst comes to the worst, you can always come and visit me in Coventry. I say, doesn’t it strike you as rather funny?” Jack said gaily. “Instead of being sent to Coventry as a punishment, I’m being threatened with disinheritance if I go there.”

  Lady Tyndall burst into tears. “Jack, you’re such a child still,” she sobbed. “How can you know how you want to spend the rest of your life?”

  He hugged her. “Wait till I show you round the factory, Mother. You’ll see why I want to be part of it all. Maybe I’ll even be able to take you up in a ’plane!”

  Daisy, though greatly tempted to linger and listen, had continued to tiptoe up the stairs and across the landing. She turned up the three steps into the passage and heard no more.

  3

  After half an hour’s work, Daisy had enough historical background for her article, barring a sentence or two about the form of the celebration, if any, during the Great War. Though she hadn’t really listened, thinking back she heard an echo in her mind of Sir Harold saying they had dressed the guy as Kaiser Bill. She hoped so. It would be a nice touch.

  The article had to start with
an explanation of the Gunpowder Plot for her American readers. No, first she’d quote “Please to remember . . .” and then go into the explanation.

  The baby started doing acrobatics. Daisy put her hand on her abdomen and felt its head, then an elbow or knee. Girl or boy? she mused. She didn’t really mind, and Alec claimed he didn’t, either. Belinda, her stepdaughter, wanted a little sister. Daisy missed Bel, who had chosen to go to boarding school with her friends instead of staying at home and attending a day school in London.

  Daisy loved Belinda dearly, but she could understand now that it might be even more difficult to let go of one’s own child, a child once carried in one’s own body. Lady Tyndall, after suffering the separation of school and university, had had every reason to expect Jack to come back to Edge Manor and stay. His home and the home of his ancestors awaited him. Yet he chose to follow his own dream, even if it meant renouncing his inheritance.

  Could Sir Harold legally disinherit him? Since he had threatened to do so, presumably the land was not tied up in trusts or entails or whatever it was that had caused Daisy’s family estate to revert to a distant cousin when her father and brother both died. Though the baronetcy would no doubt go automatically to Jack, he would be Sir John Tyndall of nowhere in particular. But who would end up with those rich orchards and market gardens?

  Not Babs, the logical person, if Sir Harold’s tirade meant anything. Adelaide’s older boy, perhaps? Reggie was at least a direct male descendant, though through the distaff side. Might the baronet require him to change his name to Tyndall and conveniently ignore the intervening female generation?

  A knock on the door interrupted Daisy’s reflections. “Come in!”

  Gwen stuck her head around the door. “Oh, sorry, you’re working. I don’t want to interrupt.”

  “No, I’ve finished what I was doing.” Daisy moved over to the two easy chairs by the fireplace. “Come and sit down.”

  In the hearth, surrounded by blue-and-white Dutch tiles, a wood fire had burned down to glowing embers. Gwen took a log from the basket to one side and placed it on top, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. “One thing about owning orchards, we always have wood to burn.” Still looking into the fire, red-faced, she added, “I have to apologize. I’d never have suggested your coming down here now if I’d known my father was going to kick up such a dust.”

  “That’s all right. He’s not kicking it at me.”

  “Of course not. He’s really pleased that you’re writing about Guy Fawkes. The thing is, he’s always so cock-a-hoop over Bonfire Night that I assumed he’d let all this other business lie while you’re here. If I’d known Jack was going to invite Martin—Mr. Miller—I’d have told him to wait till next week. But he had the same idea, that Father would be easier to deal with now.”

  “It doesn’t seem to have worked.”

  “On the contrary. It’s reminded him that the annual celebration is another thing that’s been passed down from father to son for centuries. I walked out in the middle of yet another row about it. Father’s obsessed with not breaking the chain. He doesn’t realize how much the world has changed, that these days young men won’t allow themselves to be chained to family tradition.”

  “And young women won’t allow their parents to dictate whom they may marry?” Daisy said on a questioning note.

  Blushing, Gwen leant down to poke the fire. “It’s not a question of marriage. He hasn’t said anything.”

  “But you like him.”

  “I like him a lot. Babs thinks I’m being unfaithful to Larry’s memory. She was madly in love with Frank and I don’t think she’ll ever get over his death. I was very fond of Larry, but I want a home of my own, children. . . .” She sighed.

  “You were telling me how you met Mr. Miller.”

  “Oh, yes. I told you he gave a lecture at Cambridge to the engineering students. He invited any who were interested in going into the aeronautical industry to visit the factory during the Easter vac, and go up in an aeroplane.”

  “An irresistible invitation!”

  “Actually, very few accepted, but Jack went, on his way home. He stayed so late, Martin put him up for the night. Then next morning, his car wouldn’t start. It turned out to need a part that couldn’t be got till Monday—this was Saturday—and Jack had invited a friend here for the weekend. Martin would have flown him home if there were anywhere suitable to land. As it was, he drove him home, so of course Mother invited him to stay, and as Jack had to entertain his friend, I ended up entertaining Martin.”

  “I see.”

  “Of course Mother never dreamt I might fall for him. He’s quite a bit older, and . . . and of a different social class. But he’s every inch a gentleman,” Gwen said fiercely, “in the true sense of the word. And he’s frightfully clever, doing very well in his job. He can easily support a family.”

  So it wasn’t “a question of marriage,” Daisy thought, amused. “What does your mother think now of the . . . um . . . attraction between you?” she asked. “Obviously your father is very much against it.”

  “Poor Mother’s torn between disapproving of Martin’s background, worrying about Father’s disapproval, and wanting desperately to get a spinster daughter married at last. That generation’s shibboleths—well, you know. What did Lady Dalrymple think of your marrying a policeman?”

  “She was absolutely appalled. I sort of led her to believe Alec was a bobby, a uniformed constable.”

  “Oh, Daisy, you didn’t!” Gwen laughed.

  “So when she discovered he was no less than a Detective Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard, it came as quite a relief. Besides, she’d actually given up on me long before, when I chose to work for a living instead of joining her at the Dower House. Gosh, when I think what life would have been like if I’d given in! Either we’d have squabbled constantly or I’d have become a doormat.”

  “I can’t imagine that.”

  “No, more likely I’d have turned into a sour old cat. Just think, I’d never have met Alec. Lucy and I survived on eggs, sardines, and cheese for a couple of years, but we had a lot of fun.”

  “Have you seen much of Lucy since she married Lord Gerald?”

  “We’ve dined with them a couple of times, and we’ve been to the theatre. It’s difficult to arrange evening engagements—Alec works such unpredictable hours. I lunch with Lucy in town now and then. She’s still photographing away, but now that she doesn’t have to worry about making a living, she can choose her subjects. I think she’s very happy. It’s not always easy to tell with Lucy.”

  “I must admit, she used to rather terrify me at school, the way she mocked everything.”

  “Including herself. That’s Lucy.”

  They went on to talk about other school friends until it was time to dress for dinner.

  When Daisy went down to the drawing room, only Jack and Miller were there, standing beside a tray of drinks. She heard Miller say, “To tell the truth, I’d rather have a beer, but I hope I know better by now than to ask for one.”

  “Not at all, my dear chap. I’ll ring for Jennings. . . .”

  “Good Lord, no! I’d hate to be responsible for the old fellow taking a step more than he need.”

  In time, one might cease to notice the intrusive g, Daisy supposed.

  Jack laughed. “Right-oh, have a gin and It.”

  “No, thanks. Give me a sherry, a very small one.”

  “Here, but you needn’t drink it. We’ll stroll down to the Three Ravens after dinner for a pint or two.”

  “As a matter of fact, I was thinking of hopping it after dinner. I’m only making things worse, for both you and Miss Gwen.”

  “Miller, you can’t leave now!” Swinging round to confront his friend, Jack caught sight of Daisy, who had hesitated on the threshold. “Hullo, Mrs. Fletcher, what can I offer you? A cocktail? Don’t tell me you despise them, like my father and this old fuddy-duddy here.”

  “As a matter of fact, it’s sherry I dislike.�
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  “So do I. What’s it to be?” He turned back to eye the drinks tray with dissatisfaction. “Not that there’s a great deal of choice. Gin and It?”

  “Could you manage just a drop of It, with soda? Oh, you have Dubonnet. That would be nice, a small one.”

  “Coming up, one Dubonnet. By the way, I expect you heard us planning an excursion to the local pub after dinner. Would you care to pop down with us? It’s quite a nice inn actually, though most frightfully rural and full of yokels. But Babs is going down to meet a couple of our tenant farmers, and if you come, I’m sure Gwen will, too.”

  “I’d like to.” Daisy remembered the hill. “There’s a footpath to the village, isn’t there? We wouldn’t have to walk right round by the road. I’m sure I could make it down, but oh dear, I’m not sure about walking back up all those steps.”

  Jack blushed, his glance flashing involuntarily to her middle. “Oh, of course, sorry! But that’s all right; I’ll run you down and back in the old bus.” He looked at Miller, who gave a resigned shrug. “Good, we’ll all go down, then. Oh Lord, here’s Addie. I hope she doesn’t decide to come with us.”

  Adelaide, like her sisters, took after their mother, but she was plump—a condition with which Daisy entirely sympathized—and her mouth was set in a permanent pout of discontent. Her income might not run to a public school for her sons, but it apparently covered the latest in London fashion, if not Paris. Her pale green silk crepe frock was embroidered with gold and crystal beads from the scalloped hem at knee level to the spaghetti straps. The back was cut even lower than the front neckline, which barely came within hailing distance of Addie’s neck. Daisy felt cold just looking at her, in spite of her own long sleeves and high neck.

  “It’s freezing in here,” she said petulantly.

  “I’ll lend you a cardigan,” said Babs, following her from the front hall.

  “One of yours? No thanks! I wouldn’t be seen dead in any of your clothes. I’ll have a gin and ginger, Jack, and for pity’s sake, don’t overdo the ginger. Oh, hullo, Daisy. Mother Yarborough, my revered mama-in-law, was going to some dreary dinner party, so I thought I might as well come up and see you. I hate dining alone.”