The Westerby Sisters (Changing Fortunes Series)

by M C Beaton

  "Where are we going?" she asked breathlessly. "Mrs. Bentley is expecting you."

  "We are going for a walk around London town," he laughed, "to celebrate our freedom from want."

  "In this weather?" asked Miss Armitage, but her eyes were shining. He looked so handsome and debonair, now that he was barbered and richly dressed. She was sure she must be the envy of every woman in London.

  Peter de Brus' mind worked busily. He would take her to one of those bays on the new Westminster Bridge and simply tip her over. He did not expect anyone to stop him or raise a hand to help her. Provided the watch was not about, he should not find any obstacle to the murder. He had an infinite contempt for the mob, for the red-eyed, dirty, gin-sodden, ragged multitude, and did not credit them with one spark of humanity, which was quite a natural point of view, since he had none himself.

  At one point in their rather long walk, Miss Armitage suggested timidly that they might take a hack, but he pressed her arm warmly and said that he had this mad fancy to take her to the center of Westminster Bridge and from there look down the river to St. Paul's. She must forgive him. It was a silly and romantic idea and perhaps they had better return to Mrs. Bentley.

  Miss Armitage found that the last thing she wanted on this earth was to return to Mrs. Bentley. Although that dragon must be faced sooner or later, she would rather it were later. Love closed down around her, enclosing her in a warm glow which shielded her from the discomforts of the thickening fog round about and the thick brown mud underfoot.

  Peter de Brus was becoming anxious. The bridge was almost in sight and already a fickle breeze had sprung up and the fog was beginning to swirl and stream in long ribbons and take on a tinge of pale gold, showing the sun was trying to break through.

  "Oh, Peter," cried Miss Armitage, clutching his hand hard, "the fog is lifting. We are going to be lucky."

  Ah, the bridge at last. Peter quickened his footsteps, hurrying across to the center of the bridge where one of the bays jutted out. Against his cheek, he could feel the freshening wind. There was a great deal of traffic on the bridge, but the drivers seemed too intent on lashing their horses and cursing the weather to notice what was going on.

  "Stop here," he said in a husky voice. "Let us look down the river."

  "We can hardly see anything," giggled Miss Armitage, "although it does seem to be getting lighter."

  He swung her round to face him and said, "Kiss me."

  She felt his lips, hot and passionate, pressing hard against her mouth and went limp in his arms. He was pressing her back and back until she could feel the stone parapet against her waist.

  He freed his lips. "I shall always remember you like this," he said, "with the river behind you. Stay just like that, I have dropped my handkerchief."

  Peter bent ostensibly to retrieve his handkerchief. He grasped her firmly by the ankles and before she had time to guess what he was about, he jerked her up and back and with one loud horrified scream, she toppled headlong down into the swirling brown depths of the river.

  Just in time, thought Peter, as a strengthening wind began to blow the fog to rags and ribbons.

  He straightened his coat and started to stroll back across the bridge.

  "Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!"

  He twisted and turned in alarm. Faces were glaring at him out of the thinning fog, cudgels and sticks raised.

  Peter had offended the sensibilities of the mob. One killed in the dark places, in the alleys, in the rotting back rooms of tenements, in the long reaches of the night. That the mob knew.

  One simply did not put on one's finest clothes and commit murder in broad daylight, however foggy.

  "Murderer!"

  Peter began to run, twisting and turning as sticks and whips lashed out at him and feet stuck out to trip him. He ran like the wind, up from the river, along the Strand with the mob in full pursuit.

  "Murderer!"

  Mixed with his desperate fear was a burning feeling of injustice. Who were this rabble to condemn him? Why were they so suddenly nice in their morality? Now the rattle of the watch was joined in the howl of the crowd.

  "Murderer!"

  Two men grabbed his coat and he shrugged himself free, leaving his coat in their hands.

  The rumors and tales grew and swelled and out of the narrow, verminous alleys running down to the Strand, more people flowed to join the chase. "What is it? What is it? A two-headed baby? A bull? What is it?" cried the newcomers and there was always the wild cry of "Murderer!" to tell them all.

  Peter was losing his cool nerve and blind red-eyed panic was taking over. There seemed to be grasping hands and glaring faces everywhere. The fog had lifted completely and a cruel blinding sun shone down on the filth of the streets and on the vengeful rabble he so despised, that he had so underestimated.

  "Murderer!"

  He now had an agonizing pain in his side as he sprinted past Somerset House and on toward the City gates at Temple Bar where the hideous heads of the dead stuck on the top of the gates grinned horribly in the sunlight.

  He started to pray for forgiveness, he would do anything, anything, should God let him escape.

  "Murderer!"

  A scrawny old apple woman, seated on the pavement beside her basket of apples, stuck out a scrawny ankle and he sprawled headlong as the mob closed around him.

  They literally tore him to pieces. Not a pleasant death, but then, he had never been a very pleasant young man, anyway.

  If hearts break, which is often in doubt, then Miss Armitage was quite sure her heart broke before she even hit the water and, being resigned to her fate, she died very quickly.

  Colorless in life and equally colorless in death, she drifted slowly down the rolling Thames to the sea, her hair floating out around her white face like seaweed while the swooping and diving gulls sang her requiem.

  Chapter Ten

  As March drew to a close and the days grew lighter, Betty became convinced that Simon was dead. The Duke had set their wedding date for June and seemed disappointed that she was not expecting his child since he would have preferred an earlier, quieter wedding. But the usually docile Betty had proved unexpectedly stubborn on this point. She wanted Hester to be at the wedding and Hester had written saying she hoped to return as soon as they could find a ship and that Jimmy had miraculously survived the taking of Quebec.

  All hope of tracing Simon had fled when de Brus' violent death had been reported in the newspapers. Miss Armitage's body had not been found and Betty could only guess at the identity of the woman that de Brus was said to have murdered before his own death.

  Bella was losing weight with worry, her formerly plump cheeks crumpled and drawn. She wandered through the rooms and passages of Eppington Chase, a sad ghost, searching, always searching, as if expecting to find the missing child playing with his toys.

  Unknown to any of them, Simon's life still hung in the balance. Mrs. Bentley could not bring herself to kill the child and was frightened of employing a new wastrel for fear of attracting attention.

  Her servants were all loyal to her, having been recruited from the semi-criminal class, but she did not trust any one of them to commit murder for her or to keep quiet about it. Her hatred for the Westerbys was again abated by the thought of Frederica's social triumph. The fact that Fanny was shortly to marry Mr. Beauly meant nothing to her now. She had refused to attend the wedding and so Fanny was to be married quietly at the church in Westerby village by Mr. Syms, Philadelphia's father.

  Frederica had pleased her mother by refusing to go as well, saying that it was monstrous un-genteel in Fanny to marry so low.

  Let the Westerbys arrange and finance the wedding and good luck to them!

  Outside number ten Huggets Square, Mr. Osborne was returning slowly home on foot, for although he was a wealthy man, he often preferred to walk. He was an avid collector of china and had just succeeded in purchasing a very fine piece of Dresden at an auction. The day was misty and cool and all at once
he found himself remembering the days when little Jane Lovelace had lived across the square and when he often would look up and see her face at the window.

  What a romantic evening that had been when Jane with old Bella had come to his musicale and she and Lord Charles Welbourne had looked at each other as if there were not another soul in the room.

  He gave a little sigh. Charles Welbourne had been an intelligent man and a worthy husband for little Jane. Now they were gone and it seemed by all reports as if little Simon were dead as well. Mr. Osborne shivered in the chill air. He hardly ever looked across the square now. He detested Mrs. Bentley and his own servants told him alarming stories of the kind of staff that she employed.

  But his mind was full of memories and despite himself he looked up at the house opposite before turning into his own. He dropped his precious parcel and just managed to retrieve it before it hit the pavement. For he could have sworn that high up in a barred attic of Number Ten, Jane Lovelace had been looking sadly down at him. He forced himself to look again. Where the face had been, there was now nothing but a drawn blind. He shook his head. He really must be getting old.

  He meant to tell his wife about his strange imaginings but she was full of the invitation to Fanny Bentley's wedding which had just arrived, accompanied by a note from Lady Betty begging them to stay at Eppington Chase and saying that neither Mrs. Bentley nor Frederica would be present. It was only later that he remembered that face at the window and shook his head and decided not to tell his wife. For now it seemed as strange as a dream and he put the whole thing down to a combination of his imagination and the misty air.

  Rough winds were shaking the darling buds of May as the Duke of Collingham was carried swiftly back to the south of England. He had been visiting his estates in Yorkshire to sort out several problems there and now he was anxious to join Betty again. Sometimes he seriously wondered whether he had been right to insist on marriage until absolutely all hope of finding Simon had disappeared.

  For Betty continued to hope and this hope, combined as it was with longing, fear and loss, was eating away at her. They had not made love since that first night and sometimes he wanted her so badly he felt like shaking her. Always the face of the lost child seemed to rise up between them and he wondered if marriage would solve the problem. The countryside stretched out calm and beautiful on either side of the road and the air was heavy with the smells of blossom and grass. A stream ran beside the road, twinkling and sparkling in the sun, and he admired its beauty while his mind worried and fretted over the problem of Betty. At times he looked back on his great pride which had once told him he was too good to wed a blacksmith's daughter. Now he wondered how he could ever have imagined living without her. But he had no wish to drag an unwilling girl to bed.

  He felt so sure that Maria Bentley was behind the abduction. There were unsavory suspicions associated with her name which seemed to always drift about her like a pale smoke but no one had ever managed to find exact proof of anything remotely sinister.

  She was an unpleasant woman who hated the Westerbys and blamed them for her husband's suicide but nothing more could be proved against her.

  All at once, he realized it was five o'clock and that he had not had dinner. Although dinners in London were becoming fashionably late, some even dining at the extraordinary hour of six, country hours were still around three o'clock in the afternoon. They were approaching Chester and he called to his coachman to tell him to stop at the Eagle where they would stay the night.

  He bespoke a private parlor and bedroom at the Eagle and ordered dinner. He was just about to do justice to a green goose served with oyster sauce when the landlord entered and said a young gentleman had recognized the crest on His Grace's coach and begged a few words with him.

  "Which young man?" demanded the Duke crossly.

  "A Lord Chuffield, Your Grace."

  The Duke put down his knife and fork and looked thoughtfully at the landlord. Chuffield was engaged to that Bentley girl—what was her name? Frederica. That was it. All his old suspicions of Maria Bentley were suddenly sharpened afresh. The Duke remembered Chuffield was a rather weak young man.

  He nodded to the landlord. "Tell Lord Chuffield to step up and lay another cover for him."

  After a few minutes, Lord Henry Chuffield sidled apologetically into the room. He was very finely if foppishly dressed in green and gold brocade and a fine Cadogan wig. At first glance, he looked somewhat like a West Indian, having stained his face and the back of his hands with walnut juice.

  Half his teeth had fallen out, leaving regular spaces in between and making him look rather like a gat-toothed schoolboy caught out in some misdemeanor. He spent quite an age in the doorway, between bowing and apologizing for the intrusion and bowing again and waving a scented handkerchief and getting his long, spindly legs caught in his tall cane.

  "Oh, do sit down," said the Duke impatiently, "and if you have not yet dined, do, and then tell me why you want to see me."

  Lord Chuffield meekly did as he was bid and ate a surprisingly large quantity of food. He began to visibly relax over two bottles of wine and a bumper of claret and when the Duke filled his glass again and suggested he get his troubles off his chest, Lord Chuffield began to talk and, it seemed, once started, was prepared to go on all night.

  "I'm about to be married to Miss Frederica Bentley," he said. "I thought she was the most charming creature on earth, 'pon rep, and I worshipped the ground she trod on. Winsome, that's how I would describe her, winsome. Then at some ball or rout or drum, oh, I forget, some friend said, 'Who's that gel who looks like a Chinee?' and bedamned if he wasn't pointing at my Frederica.

  "Well, you know how 'tis, her eyes do have a rather oriental look, so I said so and he laughed and said she looked sly like a fox and, 'bedemned to you sirrah,' says I, 'that's my intended,' to which he pologised like a gentleman and said now he came to think of it, she was a strondinarily fine gel and I accepted his apology since it was sincerely meant, but ever after that I got to looking at Frederica and, bedemned, if she didn't always look as if she was plotting something. Well, she was always talking prettily about the jewels and presents she would buy when she was married and I didn't mind, cos I'm rich and she could have all the money she wanted and it seemed natural-like." He paused for breath and the Duke refilled his glass.

  "So," went on Lord Chuffield, taking a gulp of brandy and then a deep breath, "that still didn't trouble me, but one day I turned up at a party and Frederica wasn't expecting me, nor Mrs. Bentley neither. I couldn't see them at first and I thought they had decided not to come when I suddenly saw them out walking in the garden and I thought it would be sort of saucy if I crept up behind Frederica and put my hands over her eyes and said, Guess who?'

  "Well, I was pulled up short by her voice. She was giggling and demme hissing, and then I heard her say that I was a weak-chinned coxcomb and she didn't know how she was to going to abide me between the sheets and her mother said as cool as cucumbers, 'Give him an heir, my dear, and then you may pleasure yourself where you may. And if he cannot father one, why then, he need never know the name of the real father.' And then they both laughed while I tiptoed away, feeling like a woman with the vapors. I ran away to stay with some relatives near here and I'm due to return for the wedding, and I don't want to go but I'm frightened to flinders of Maria Bentley, so what should I do?"

  "Simply send her your note of hand saying you overheard the conversation and do not wish to wed Frederica. Send a notice to the newspapers to the effect that the wedding is cancelled and then take yourself off to Italy," said the Duke languidly.

  Lord Chuffield stared at the Duke in amazement. "Well, if that isn't the cleverest, mostest, sharpest thing I ever did hear."

  "Why don't you go and do it now, there's a good chap," said the Duke, already heartily weary of Lord Chuffield.

  And that is exactly what Lord Chuffield did, except that he also told Mrs. Bentley that he had consulted the Duke of Colling-
ham on the matter and he was grateful to the Duke for his sound advice.

  The Duke awoke early the next morning, determined to be back in Betty's arms as soon as possible. He was some miles out of Chester when his carriage, rounding a sharp bend in the road, collided with a farm cart which was slewed across the way. The yokel in charge of the donkey and cart appeared to be half-witted, so, saving his breath, the Duke, after finding that one of the wheels of his carriage had been broken, sent a servant off to a nearby farmhouse to find help.

  After some hesitation, he strode after his servant and soon presented himself at the farmhouse door. The half-wit turned out to be one of the farmer's sons and the farmer was profuse in his apologies, sending one of his own men to fetch the wheelwright and calling on his wife to bring out the best elderberry wine.

  "My Sam do be a bit touched in his upper works," said the farmer, setting wine and cakes on the table, "but he's a good lad for all that and clever with his hands."

  The Duke's anger at the delay had melted before the farmer's genuine concern and he settled back in the small, dark, farm parlor to wait patiently until he could resume his journey.

  It was some time before he could manage to soothe the anguished feelings of the farmer and his wife and convince them that he was not in the least angry with Sam. The farmer, a Mr. Armstrong, at last began to relax and, warmed by his wife's elderberry wine, began to discourse on crops and cattle.

  An old clock ticked sonorously in the gloom and a fly buzzed against the window. It was all very peaceful and the Duke only listened with half an ear, his eyes roving around the little room.

  His eyes came to rest on a carved figure on the mantel and he gave an exclamation and got to his feet to examine it more closely. It was a small wooden statuette of Mr. Armstrong in his smock and gaiters and wide-brimmed hat. It was beautifully executed.