by M C Beaton
"I could have told you her reaction," said Betty wearily. "She would be amused and tell you that there is madness in this family and that Betty and Hester are only the daughters of a blacksmith and that it is their duty to atone for the death of James Bentley."
"Has Mrs. Bentley no money of her own?"
"I believe she has a great deal," said Betty. "But we have become accustomed to supplying a home for the Bentleys and, in truth, we are not yet over the shock of Jane's death and have been accustomed to running things the way she did. All the deaths in our family can easily be explained away as accidents. My stepfather died of apoplexy brought on by his belief that he saw James Bentley's ghost. My mother and Jane swore they saw it as well. At one time, Lord Charles believed that there had been a real live person in the room, masquerading as James Bentley. He found some old blueprints of the Chase which showed that there was a secret room, leading to the Marquess's bedroom. He voiced just such an opinion, I remember."
"When was that?"
"It was a week before he died. We had company, I remember. There were a great number of people present."
"Including Mrs. Bentley?"
"Yes."
"And what of the deaths of Lord Charles and his wife? I remember Lord Charles well. He was a famous horseman and could drive a four-in-hand to an inch."
"Again, it seemed like an accident," said Betty. "There was no reason to believe otherwise. Charles and Jane were alone. Charles was driving. They did not even have a groom or footman with them. It was well known that Charles drove very fast, recklessly almost."
"And then there is the rocking horse . . ."
Betty twisted her hands in her lap. "Again, that seems to be some sort of coincidence," she said. "Anderson, our butler, found that James—the footman, you know—had been poorly for some time and given to shivering attacks. There are so many illnesses in town, it is not strange that the authorities should fail to find the cause of James's death."
"I do not want to alarm you, Lady Betty," said the Duke, "but the toy did arrive without any card or message and that in itself is suspicious. It would be well to guard Simon carefully."
"Is he safe here?" cried Betty. "What if . . . ?"
"He is safe here. Of that I am sure," said the Duke. "If Mrs. Bentley has in some way been responsible for the attempt on his life, she will have been alarmed by Lady Hester's accusation and will stay her hand for the moment."
"For the moment," echoed Betty. "I think we have suffered the guardianship of the Bentleys for overlong. After this Season, they may find somewhere else to live. I am sure Hester will agree."
"Allow me to help you protect Simon," said the Duke, taking her hand in his. Ah, now those blue eyes lit up with love and affection and he felt as if something strange were happening to his heart.
"I would be most grateful . . . so very grateful," said Betty.
He bent his head and kissed her hand while Betty stared at his lowered head in something like awe that such a great personage as the Duke of Collingham should be kissing the hand of a blacksmith's daughter, and that awe was followed by an intense yearning to be taken in his arms and held against his breast while the rest of the busy world beyond the library door went away, leaving them alone among the smells of calf-bound volumes and the ticking clocks and the faint sounds of nightbirds from the garden. He raised his head and looked seriously into her eyes, as if searching for something.
The opening of the door brought the world rushing back as sounds of music, sounds of laughter, sounds of noisy society at play flooded into the room.
"There you are, Lady Betty," said Bella.
As usual, she seemed slightly out of breath. "Not but what you ain't in the best company," bobbing a curtsy to the Duke, "but you shouldn't ought to be alone with any gentleman in a room with the door closed and even your old Bella knows that."
Behind her, Hester swung in, wide panniered skirts swinging. She glared at the Duke.
"Was that your carriage? That yellow one that passed us on the road? Don't tug at my skirts, Simon. We're just leaving." For Simon was trying to crane his neck over the barrier of Hester's wide skirt.
"As a matter of fact, it was," replied the Duke who had risen punctiliously to his feet at Hester's entrance.
"Sodding bugger," said Simon gleefully.
"What!" said the Duke wrathfully.
Hester turned and smacked Simon on the side of the head and Simon began to wail, "You shouldn't hit me, Aunt Hester. That was what you shouted after the Duke's coach."
Hester turned pink with mortification. She had been about to deliver herself of a long speech about thoughtless gentlemen who did not pay enough attention to what was on the road, but the look of sheer outrage on the Duke's face was enough to silence even Hester.
Captain Jimmy had been bragging about the Duke's prowess with a four-in-hand and that was how Hester had found out the name of the driver of that yellow carriage.
Sweeping the Duke a low curtsy, Hester left quickly, pushing Simon in front of her and calling over her shoulder, "We're leaving, Betty."
Vulgar, common, stupid people! thought the Duke wrathfully. A pox on all Westerbys. Let them go to the deuce before I consider poisoning the lot of them like Mrs. Bentley or whoever it may be who wants to do so. And to think I was almost considering bestowing my name on one of 'em. I am not too high in the instep. This simply bears out what I have always believed, that breeding will out, whether it be horses or humans. Hester has the language of the stables and no doubt the same character lurks under Lady Betty's more sophisticated image. 'Fore George! She is like the Chudleigh's water garden, all charm and carefully landscaped grace on top of a cesspool! He was so pleased at this thought that a rather nasty expression enlivened his austere features.
Silly, pompous, old man, thought gentle Betty, having the first really angry and hate-filled thoughts in her quiet life. He must be forty at least. (The Duke was thirty-five.) No wonder he is not married. Who could bear to live with such a sneering iceberg? And to think I was on the point of apologising for Simon's remark. You would think he had never heard his own grooms talk, not to mention certain members of the haut ton. How I hate hypocrisy. And to think a bare moment ago I was longing to be held in his arms. Fool, that I am!
She swept him a curtsy, her large blue eyes blazing with disdain.
"Good night, my lord duke," said Betty, making her adieu sound like an insult.
The Duke stared at her haughtily and then bowed. How dare she look at me like that! he thought wrathfully.
The Duke was accustomed to looking disdainfully at other people. Never before in his life had he been at the receiving end.
Betty marched from the room, her head held high. Impertinent baggage, he thought, looking after her. He wanted to call her back, to tell her what he thought of her, to shake her until her teeth rattled, to hear her cry for mercy, to see her burst into tears, to kiss her until she melted in his arms. . . .
Dear God, he thought, sitting down suddenly. Is this what they mean when they call love a sickness?
It was a silent carriage full of people that made its way back to London as a pale dawn mist spread over the fields from the river. Hester had asked Betty whether the Duke had been very angry and Betty had answered coldly that she did not care what that starched coxcomb thought and Hester had been accordingly miserable. Her wretched tongue! What would her stepsister, Jane, have said, had she been alive—little Jane who had worked so hard to turn them into ladies. But Lady Jane Lovelace had been the real daughter of the Marquess, not a stepchild fathered by a rough and brutal blacksmith.
Captain Jimmy had begged her to go riding with him the next day and Hester had refused. The Captain was charming and, yes, he was attractive. But Hester stood five foot eleven inches in her stocking soles and the Captain only about five foot six. And while Captain Jimmy was around, she, Hester, did not seem to notice other men. And Hester wished to be married and have a home of her own far from Eppington Chase whic
h she had grown to hate.
Bella was sadly wishing she had not interrupted what had looked to be a very promising tête-à-tête. She was so proud of having risen to be a chaperone, just like a dowager, and not just a lady's maid. Finding the present too upsetting, Bella retreated into the past and once again she was sitting in the evenings with her sewing basket, talking to her old mistress, Lady Harriet Comfrey, in the stillness and quiet of Number Ten Huggets Square, in the days when no one came to call and there were no balls or parties.
Simon, too, was troubled. James and Lucy had charmingly accepted his apology. In fact, his apology had impressed them very much. And so Simon accordingly revered the Duke as a fount of wisdom. He had not meant to be so bad, repeating Aunt Hester's awful words. It had seemed funny at the time. But the Duke's face had looked so. Simon was tired and close to tears.
In a carriage following them, the atmosphere was just as unhappy. Sir Anthony Blake was gloomily congratulating himself on having behaved impeccably. He had eaten sparingly and drunk little. He had exchanged a few civil words with Fanny, nothing more. Philadelphia had been at his side for most of the evening, something which would have delighted him in the early days of his marriage but now made him feel as if he were leg-shackled to a particularly beautiful keeper. He realized that he had been hoping for a few words with Fanny in private.
Nothing intimate. Perhaps just something to laugh about for a change, like how it felt the next day after their stupendous supper together and things like that.
But not only had Philadelphia kept a close watch on him but Mrs. Bentley as well. And that horrible sister of Fanny's, Frederica, had looked at him, her eyes bright with malice. Sir Anthony moved restlessly on the carriage seat and his stomach gave a protesting growl. It was answered by a gentle snore from his partner. Philadelphia had fallen asleep, her pretty mouth agape.
He looked at her sourly, at her face faintly illumined in the flickering lights of the carriage lamps and by the outriders' torches. All at once, a new idea struck him. He did not like her! He did not like his wife one little bit. He found himself wishing heartily she would die. People died every day, from cholera and influenza and smallpox and typhoid. Why not Philadelphia? Then he could eat and drink as much as he liked and gamble and wench as he used to in the golden days before his marriage. You could even court Fanny Bentley, nagged a little voice in his brain.
Engrossed in fantasy, he began to feel almost happy.
"I have not been a good wife to you," said the dying Philadelphia. By George, he could even see her white face against the lace of the pillows of her death bed. "Forget me and marry soon," said a softened and altered—and dying—Philadelphia. Pleasurable tears formed in his eyes and cut channels down the paint on his face and dislodged a patch near his mouth.
"Forgive me," gasped the dream Philadelphia as she fought for her last breath.
"Of course I do, darling," he said. Her head lolled to the side and, for the benefit of the servants, he threw himself on the bed and cried.
His happy mind jumped to the funeral. The coffin lowered to the grave, the earth falling on the coffin, and across the grave of his mind, his eyes met and held those of Fanny Bentley.
"What are you blubbering about?" snapped Philadelphia and he turned and looked at her with something like horror, for his dream had been so real, so vivid, it was as if his wife had risen from the grave.
"Nothing," he mumbled. "Got a cold."
Behind their carriage bobbed the lights of the Bentley coach. "You did very well this evening," Mrs. Bentley was saying to her youngest daughter, Frederica. "I saw you successfully engaged the interest of Lord Felix Nelson on two occasions. A good fortune there. As for you, Fanny," she went on, rounding on her elder daughter, "I do not know what came over you. You let Collingham walk off with Betty without raising a finger to detain him."
"How was I to do that?" said Fanny wearily. "Since he was determined to go?"
"I should not need to tell you," snapped Mrs. Bentley. "You could have stumbled or fainted or something."
"Collingham is no longer interested in Betty, at any rate," sniggered Frederica. "I overheard him telling that Captain Dunbray that the Lovelace girls were as common as the barber's chair."
"And did Betty or Hester hear that remark?" asked Mrs. Bentley, her eyes, like carriage lamps rounding a corner, turning to her youngest daughter.
"No, 'twas just after they left. The Duke was coming out of the library and bumped into Captain Dunbray and the Captain said wasn't Hester charming and the Duke made that remark. La! But I wish Hester and Betty had been there to hear him."
"Oh, they'll hear of it," said Mrs. Bentley, her small, curved smile at its deepest. "Fanny shall have her chance with the Duke yet."
"I would not have any chance with Collingham even if he is disaffected with Betty," said Fanny in a low voice.
"What ails you, girl?" demanded her mother sharply. "You have always wanted revenge of the Westerbys as much as I."
"Nothing," said Fanny. "My head aches. That is all."
And indeed her head did ache. She also felt mentally weary. She had thought and thought and thought all night, wondering why she no longer wished revenge, no longer wished evil on the Westerbys. Yes, she had been drunk when she had been laughing and joking with Sir Anthony. But ever since then, something had been telling her that life could be very simple. Indeed, thought Fanny, marriage could be very simple if one simply wanted love and affection and someone to joke with. Not this perpetual fortune-hunting and power-hunting, mixed with revenge. But frightening to Fanny was the fact that with the loss of her desire for revenge, nasty niggling worries had crept in from the corner of her brain, starting with doubts about her mother's wisdom in matters to doubts about her mother's sanity.
The pale mist turned to gold as the sun rose above the fields, moving gently and beginning to disperse in the dawn breeze, shifting golden wreaths of mist that floated gently around the great bowls of the trees. Tears ran down Fanny's face. She did not know why she was so sad. Perhaps it was because the morning was so beautiful and so many things in her life were not. . . .
Chapter Four
The day did not fulfill its early promise and by the afternoon when most of them arose from their beds, a steady, greasy drizzle was falling from a leaden sky.
Betty was being passionately kissed by the Duke of Collingham. She was wrapped in his arms and his hard mouth was against her own and his hard body pressed against the length of her own and never had she known such a turmoil of emotion and if Hester would only stop shaking her by the shoulder and go away she could experience all these novel, dizzying feelings to the full.
"Wake up!" said Hester imperatively, and Betty groaned in protest and surfaced from her delicious dream and then blushed guiltily as if her sister had, in reality, caught her in the arms of the Duke.
"You never was such a sluggard in the country," said Hester, plumping herself down on the bed, unconcerned that her nightgown had ridden up her leg, exposing one bony ankle and muscular calf.
"At Eppington," pointed out Betty sleepily, "there are always things to do, worthwhile things. Here, there is nothing but empty frivolity."
"Turned Methodist!" teased Hester. "Look'ee, sis. This Season, as it is called, is the only time in our lives us females are going to see anything of the men. Outside the Season, they go back to their coffee houses, and sporting and gambling and cock fights and prize fights and we'll be left alone with the babies and the tattle of other women. So bustle about!"
Betty struggled up against the pillows. Through the windows facing the end of her bed, she could see sad trickles of rain running down the glass. What's to do?" said Betty. "Lud! I promised to take Simon to the Park but even Simon will not want to venture out in this weather."
"It is about Simon that I want to speak," said Hester. "He has some totty-headed notions about his importance and I believe they have been put into his head by Miss Armitage and he is become in a fair way to gro
wing up a Court Calendar bigot. He needs a man to tutor him. I spoke to Miss Armitage on the subject and you know how infuriatingly vague and colourless she is and she burst into tears and said she had been only trying to teach the boy what was due to his rank and all that fustian. I surmised her distress was not due to my reprimand but due to fear of lack of employment, so I suggested that she should drop teaching and take up the reins of social secretary. Lord knows, we have need of someone to deal with our invitations. Miss Armitage is delighted with the notion and has wept many vague and colourless tears of gratitude. Pah! I never could stomach that woman."
"You are too harsh," said Betty. "Miss Armitage had a very difficult job training us to be ladies and that is why she was employed. She was instructed to see that we behaved according to our position in life. She is only trying to do the same thing with Simon."
"Oh, well, it's settled anyway. Collingham sent his servant," said Hester, twisting a pleat of her nightdress between her fingers.
"I did not dance with him," said Betty quietly, "so he had no need to call." Both girls were silent for a moment. Gentlemen were supposed to call on the ladies they had danced with the night before, but it was not necessary for them to call in person and if the gentlemen were not overly interested in his fair partner, he would merely send his servant with his regards.
"It's all my fault!" burst out Hester miserably. "Until Simon repeated those awful words I said, Collingham seemed quite épris."
"If a gentleman holds me in proper regard," said Betty, "then he will not fly up into the boughs at a chance vulgarity."
"Chance obscenity," said Hester. "Oh, my poor, unguarded tongue. I'm worse than Ma ever was."
"It's done, it's over and I have completely put the incident out of my mind—along with the Duke of Collingham," lied Betty. "Let us call Simon and tell him about his tutor."
The door opened and Bella came in. "That there Miss Fanny is downstairs asking for you ladies," she said, "along o' that Captain Dunbray whose called for to pay his regards to Lady Hester."
