by M C Beaton
“From footpads?”
“No, my lord, from the Courtney girls.”
“But didn’t old Mr. Courtney know what was going on?”
“He was a bit senile, my lord, and wouldn’t hear a word against his daughters. Don’t think they was his, but you couldn’t tell him that.” Mrs. Moody leaned one of her broad hips against a table and prepared for a comfortable gossip.
“No, I don’t see how they could be unless he was able to father them at the age of seventy-one, although that is not beyond the bounds of possibility. But we must go to look for Miss Morrison.”
He hurried down the stairs and out onto the grounds. And then he saw the twins walking slowly toward the house. They were arm in arm and highly pleased about something.
He ran toward them. “Where is Miss Morrison?”
Amanda gave him a slow smile. “Reckon as how her’s gone for a swim.”
Dread clutched at his throat. “Where?”
“Peter’s Tarn,” Clarissa volunteered.
He looked at their fat white faces in horror. “You pushed her in!”
“Her fell,” Clarissa protested while Amanda stifled a snort of laughter.
“If you have killed her, then you will both hang and I shall see to it personally,” the viscount said. He was by now surrounded by a ring of listening servants.
“Take these girls to the schoolroom and lock them in,” he ordered. “You men, come with me and show me where this tarn is.”
The viscount and a group of servants set off at a run. “Please God she is still alive,” the viscount prayed. “This is too much. Damn the money and damn the inheritance. Basil is welcome to it.”
And then, in the distance, he saw a small figure, striding along, the sun glinting on her red hair.
He let out a long sigh of pure relief. Jean Morrison!
She came up to him and smiled in a composed way, although her face was very white and her clothes dripping wet. “Thank God you were able to swim,” he said.
Jean half closed her eyes as she remembered those terrifying few moments when she thought she would drown. “No,” she said evenly, “I am not able to swim. I was able to grasp the branches of a willow tree overhanging the water and pull myself out. But the so-charming Misses Courtney were not to know that.”
“No, they were not. I will send for the magistrate if you wish and have them charged with attempted murder.”
Jean had planned, as she walked back, to tell him that she was leaving. But he stood there before her, his hat in his hand, his blue eyes full of concern, and the sunlight glinting in his thick fair curls, and her heart turned over.
“We will see,” she said quietly. “I am on trial, but they are on trial with me. Something may yet be done with them.”
He courteously held out his arm and she gratefully took it. The servants following, they made their way back to the castle. “Furthermore,” the viscount said, “they ruined your dresses. Oh, yes, Mrs. Moody told me. You will be paid handsomely for them.”
“Thank you, my lord. Has Mrs. Delmar-Richardson sent my belongings?”
“Yes, and sent me a stern note. She is to call.”
“Oh, dear, I have had enough to face today,” Jean mourned. “As to dresses, perhaps it would be a good idea to hire a seamstress. I will take the girls to the nearest town tomorrow and choose material for myself and for them. Pretty dresses are such a civilizing influence.”
“As you will. But take two of the strongest servants with you.”
“Perhaps the young ladies might find their appearance improved by the services of a lady’s maid … a very strong and muscular lady’s maid.”
“That they shall have. You know, Miss Morrison, I do not need to be troubled with the Misses Courtney or the castle and lands. I can tell the lawyers I don’t want any of it and it will all go to Toad Basil!”
“And who is Toad Basil?”
“Basil Devenham, my cousin.”
“And would Basil Devenham do something for these poor servants and for tenants such as the lodgekeeper and his family who were driven off to the workhouse?”
“No, he’d probably find a few more to impoverish.”
“Well, then, it is not as if it is too onerous a task. You have me to take care of the twins, you need a good agent to cope with everything else. A good agent would leave you free to do as you wished.”
“You have the right of it. I miss the fun of London. I miss—” He bit his lip. He had been about to mention Nancy. He could never mention his mistress to such a lady as Miss Morrison, or, indeed, he thought ruefully, to any lady.
“There is, however, something else.”
“Yes, Miss Morrison?”
“The Misses Courtney do not seem to have been taught the difference between right and wrong. I think the vicar should call on them and give them some religious instruction. In pushing me into the water, they acted on spiteful impulse, but they did not mean to murder me, of that I am sure.”
“I will try, but I cannot help feeling a prison chaplain might be more in their line. The only thing to lighten my gloom is that I find Mr. Courtney has built up an excellent cellar. When you have changed, join me for a glass of claret.”
Jean’s heart rose and then fell again. He was treating her with the same easy camaraderie as he probably treated his masculine friends.
Before she parted from him in the hall, he said, “Those brats are locked in the schoolroom. Leave them there until I think what best to say to them and join me in the drawing room … no, make it the library. The drawing room is depressing.”
Jean went upstairs, realizing she had not eaten all day. She dressed and changed and then, before she went downstairs, she asked to be taken to the twins’ bedchamber. In it she discovered boxes of chocolates, sweet biscuits, and sugarplums. She told the servants to take them all down to the kitchens and share them among the rest of the staff.
Then with a final pat to her hair she went down to the library.
The viscount poured her a glass of claret. He had a vague feeling that he should not be on such familiar terms with a governess, but he felt the need of someone to talk to. “The agent, a Josiah Peterman, is calling shortly. I have been glancing through the estate books. The rents are too high. I want to know what this bloodsucker was about.”
Jean sipped her claret. “Perhaps he was simply acting under Mr. Courtney’s instructions.”
“Mr. Peterman,” Dredwort announced.
A small, old white-haired man came into the room.
“Well, Peterman,” the viscount said, “what have you to say for yourself? I’ve been going through the books, and I don’t like the look of the rents at all.”
“My lord,” the old man said miserably, “I cannot think it possible to extract any more.”
“I am not telling you to extract more, man, I’m telling you to extract less.”
“But Mr. Courtney was most insistent, most insistent. He said I would lose my job if I did not go on raising the rents.”
The viscount clutched his fair curls. “Listen, I am not Courtney. We will ride out tomorrow and see the tenants. Repairs must be made where repairs are needed. No more rent to be paid until they come about. Any more apart from the lodgekeeper in the workhouse?”
“Oh, yes, my lord.”
“Then get them all out and put them back. I was going to fire you, Peterman, but I see you have been simply saving your own skin. Be here at nine in the morning and we will start making reparation.”
“Oh, my lord, this is a happy day. I call down the blessings of all the angels on—”
“Don’t start preaching at me. You make my head ache. Off with you, and we will arrange everything in the morning. And then hire painters and builders and decorators and let us put some life into this mausoleum!”
Jean, who had been thinking her master was a saint, quickly changed her mind when the agent had left and he said, “How all this bores me! I’ll be glad when it’s over and I can get back
to Town and kick up my heels.”
“Mrs. Delmar-Richardson,” Dredwort intoned.
Jean’s aunt sailed in. Her cold glance at the two, sitting companionably drinking claret, seemed to realize her worst fears.
“So!” she said.
Jean found to her fury that she was blushing. She admired the viscount, who got to his feet, made a brief bow, and then politely waited for more.
“I am come!” Mrs. Delmar-Richardson declared.
“Do you usually stand in doorways making obvious statements?” asked the viscount with interest.
Mrs. Delmar-Richardson threw back her head. “I am come to remove my niece from a den of iniquity.”
Suddenly the viscount’s merry, easygoing manner changed. “Explain your impertinence, madam,” he said frostily.
“I find my niece has fled a respectable home to join the demimonde.”
“I never did like all this country living,” the viscount said with a sigh. He sat down again and took up his glass. “Inbreeding, bad drainage, damp houses—all makes people totty-headed.”
Jean found her voice. “Go away, Aunt.”
“And leave you to bring shame on the family? Never!”
“Dredwort!” the viscount shouted, and when the bald butler oiled into the room, he added, “This lady is leaving, and very quickly, too, if you take my meaning.”
“Certainly, my lord. This way, madam.”
“You have not heard the last from me,” Mrs. Delmar-Richardson declared.
“I do sincerely hope so,” the viscount said equably. “Close the door, Dredwort, there is a dreadful draft.”
“Oh, dear,” Jean said when the door was closed firmly behind her enraged aunt, “now I have really burnt my boats.”
The viscount looked at her in consternation. “You mean I am all you have got now?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I should have thought of that before I sent her packing,” he said ruefully. “As if those hellcats upstairs weren’t enough.”
Jean winced.
He rose to his feet. “Time I had a talk to them. Go and change for dinner. We eat in an hour.”
The viscount went up the stairs to the schoolroom followed by Dredwort, who produced a key and unlocked the door.
“Now, look here, you two,” the viscount said, eyeing the twins with disfavor, “I haven’t sent for the magistrate … yet. But if you do not behave, if you do not do everything Miss Morrison tells you to do, then I will see you are both charged with attempted murder.”
“You wouldn’t,” Amanda gasped.
“Yes, I would, and gladly. You mean nothing to me. I find you both coarse, common, and dangerous. Nonetheless, you will present yourself at dinner.” He wrinkled his nose fastidiously. “Dredwort, two baths up to their bedchamber and the stoutest housemaids to wash them. If they try to abuse or hit or molest the servants in any way, the servants have my permission to hit back.”
Amanda and Clarissa began to realize their reign of terror was over. Their father had not allowed any of his servants even to complain about them.
Soon both were being ruthlessly scrubbed by womenservants from top to toe.
Jean heard the screams and put her hands quickly over her ears. She assumed the girls were being beaten. She should have been glad of it, but she was not. She herself had been beaten regularly in her youth and she knew it did nothing to improve the spirit.
She was glad when the sounds of shouting and weeping died away. With shaking fingers she opened her trunks, which had arrived from her aunt’s house, took out a plain gray silk gown, and looked at it ruefully. Jean had always longed for more fashionable clothes. She wondered whether she could bring herself to face the twins again that day and then decided against it. She and the viscount would be alone at dinner, for the twins would surely take their meals in the schoolroom.
She went down to the library.
She stopped in the doorway in consternation. Clarissa and Amanda were there, both wearing clean muslin gowns. Their black hair was still damp from the bath. The twins rose and curtsied to her and said meekly in chorus, “Good evening, Miss Morrison.”
“Good evening,” Jean replied faintly as she walked into the room. Amanda said, “We are both mortal sorry we pushed you in. We never thought for a moment you’d any chance o’ being drownded. We’re oh so very sorry and may God strike us dead if we ain’t telling the truth.”
Clarissa thought of that humiliating bath, and tears of rage coursed down her fat cheeks.
“There now,” Jean said, mollified, relieved, and surprised all at once, “we will say no more about it.”
“Unless,” the viscount added sotto voce, “you give me reason to remember it.”
Dinner was a surprisingly pleasant affair, although the dining room proved to be like the other rooms in the house, dark and dismal. The food was plain but well cooked. The viscount talked of plays and parties and balls in London, and the only thing that marred the evening for Jean was the trace of wistfulness in his voice.
“Do you have many friends in London?” Amanda asked suddenly.
“Yes, I am fortunate. I have three in particular, bachelor friends. There’s Mr. John Trump, Mr. Paul Jolly, and Lord Charnworth. We usually meet up at White’s. Oh, that I were there now.”
Jean felt sad. But why should such an elegant aristocrat enjoy being immured in the country and in such company?
All were tired, and Jean was relieved when she was allowed to retire immediately after dinner. The viscount had promised her a generous sum of money to take the girls shopping in St. Giles, the nearest town. Two grooms were to accompany her, and also the underhousekeeper, a thin, wiry woman called Mrs. Pewsey. Jean thought it quite mad that the first thing she did when introduced to Mrs. Pewsey was to check that lady’s figure for signs of physical strength. But someone strong was needed to control the girls in case they got into mischief.
Amanda and Clarissa went up to their bedchamber and held a council of war. “I have an idea,” Amanda said. “Get rid o’ him, and it’ll be easy to deal with her.”
“How?”
“He’s bored. He’s a dilly … dilly … you know, a sort of fop, pining for the pleasures of London. We can write to those friends o’ his, supposed to be from him, and invite them down. He’ll be too taken up with them to keep an eye on us.”
“Fool,” Clarissa sneered. “How can we write such a letter?”
“Gully Thomson,” Amanda retorted triumphantly.
Clarissa let out a long, slow breath of admiration. Gully Thomson lived in St. Giles. He was usually drunk and was reported to be a gentleman who had come down in the world. He gained money for drink by writing letters for the illiterate section of the town’s population.
“We’ll never get a chance to get away from her tomorrow,” Clarissa pointed out.
“So we’ll go tonight.”
It was a six-mile walk to St. Giles, but there was a bright moon and the girls were buoyed up by a feeling that they were about to get even with their persecutors.
They found Gully Thomson in his usual spot, the corner of the taproom of The Eagle. The tavern on the outskirts of the town was a low place, full of smugglers and other criminals. The twins were well known. They often called on Gully and so nobody even bothered to turn and look at them as they would have done in a more respectable inn if two young ladies had walked into the tap.
Amanda was delighted to find that Gully was sober enough to understand what was being asked. “There’s a sovereign in it if you do it right,” she said. “This Lord Hunterdon, Viscount Hunterdon, has three friends who go to White’s. We wants a letter to them gentlemen, telling them that he’s pining for a bit of fun and inviting them all down, and ask them to bring some women. That’ll put that Scotch whore’s nose out o’ joint.”
Gully lifted his traveling writing desk onto the table. He always had it with him in the hope of earning money.
He had done work for Amanda only six months bef
ore. Amanda had been smitten by a handsome young gentleman staying at The Crown, a respectable posting house in St. Giles. Gully had written a beautiful letter for her, asking this gentleman to meet her. The letter had been so good that the gentleman had turned up. But unfortunately, one look at little fat Amanda and her beetling eyebrows had made him take to his heels.
“I haven’t got paper of good enough quality,” he said. The enterprising Amanda opened a newspaper she was carrying, which held several sheets of parchment, a seal, a draft copy of that advertisement for a governess that the viscount had sent to the newspaper, and a copy of his signature. “I took these from the library,” she said. “I can put them back tonight.”
“Names of friends?” Gully asked. He was a tall, thin man with sparse brown hair that hung in greasy locks about his face. His clothes were shabby and stained with snuff and wine, but his voice was mellow and pleasant, the voice of the gentleman he used to be.
“Lord Charnworth, Mr. Paul Jolly, and Mr. John Trump,” Clarissa said promptly. She had the better memory of the two. “That will be the Honorable John Trump,” Gully said knowledgeably, for he read the social columns.
He bent his head and got to work, beginning, “My dear friends.” In it, he wrote on behalf of the viscount that he, the viscount, was dying of boredom and longing for some jolly female company as well as the pleasure of seeing his friends again.
Amanda scrutinized the letter carefully when he had finished, asking him to read out and explain the words she could not understand.
“I hear you’ve got a new governess,” Gully said. “Why don’t you both learn to read and write properly? You’re supposed to be ladies, and yet your dress and manner is that of peasants.”
“Watch your tongue or you don’t get paid,” Amanda snapped.
“Watch your own or you don’t get this letter,” Gully said.
It was finally agreed that Gully, given some extra money, should send the letter express by the mail coach in the morning. Then the sisters walked off.
“What’ll we do to her tomorrow?” Clarissa asked.
“Nothing. Hunterdon is quite likely to get us sent to prison. We do what she asks. We behave like model misses and then we wait and we watch. Come on! Race you home!”
