by M C Beaton
“You need a proper landscape gardener,” Jean said. “He would know exactly which trees and plants to use and how to create vistas.”
“Good idea. I’ll get Stewart, if he’ll come. His reputation is now almost as high as that of Capability Brown. But the men can begin clearing the mess tomorrow.” He talked on about his plans while Jean slowly relaxed. At last he said, “You may retire, Miss Morrison.”
“And will you give me some time to improve the girls?”
“Yes, if you must. But do not let them out of your sight, or, rather, when you are not with them, make sure someone is guarding them.”
He walked around and drew Jean’s chair back as she stood up. She smelled of rosewater and soap. He kissed her hand and felt it tremble in his own. He straightened up and looked down into her green eyes, his own suddenly watchful, as if searching for something. Then his gaze fell to her lips.
Jean stared up at him, trapped helplessly in that blue gaze. To her horror, large tears welled up in her eyes.
He drew back immediately. “I had forgotten your recent ordeal,” he said gently, “and I am a beast to tease you so. Old habits die hard, Miss Morrison. Forgive me.”
Jean curtsied and left. She trailed up the stairs, thinking sadly that he had certainly explained his behavior. She was the only woman present, and he had automatically flirted with her.
Betty was sitting guard outside the girls’ door. “Lock them in and leave them for the night,” Jean said wearily.
Inside, Amanda heard the click of the key in the lock and nudged Clarissa. “Remember,” she whispered. “Good as gold and I’ll have her forgetting to lock that door in no time at all!”
The next few weeks were for Jean the happiest she had ever experienced. The twins worked hard. Their rough voices were being transformed, they began to read well and to write proper English. She rode or walked with them in the afternoons, and although they did not talk to her very much, Amanda would sometimes take her hand and even on one occasion gave her an impulsive hug. The viscount was impressed at the improvement and said so. It was an Indian summer of the kind so rarely seen in England, long, mellow days and cold, starry nights.
Although Jean did not dine with the viscount again, he often joined her in the drawing room after dinner and sat and listened while she read to the girls or played the piano.
And then one evening he announced he was going to London. Jean’s heart sank. London and Nancy. London and his friends. London and parties and routs and dances. What if he came back with a bride?
With a heavy feeling in her breast she stood outside a few mornings later and watched him drive off, experiencing a numbing sensation of loss.
That evening she visited the girls as usual, but was startled when she was leaving to hear Amanda cry plaintively, “You don’t trust us. We try so hard, but you don’t love us. Nobody has ever loved us.”
“But you are doing so well and I am proud of you both!” Jean cried.
“Then why do you lock us in like prisoners?”
Jean hesitated. But she thought Amanda was in the right. She must become their friend, and she could not do that while they still regarded her as their jailer. “Very well,” she said. “I trust you. You will not be locked in again.”
“And that settles that,” Amanda crowed when Jean had left. “Now for Basil Devenham.”
A week later Basil rode along the coast toward Trelawney Castle, wondering why on earth the Misses Courtney had summoned him. He was to meet them on the beach below the castle. The grooms slept over the stables, and Amanda and Clarissa had decided it would be too risky to take out horses during the night. In order to deliver the letter to Basil they had previously walked all the way to the Pembertons’ mansion and did not want to make such a walk again.
Basil, until he had received their letter, had given up hoping that Hunterdon might slip up in some way. He had tried to court one of the Pemberton girls, but without success, and now Lord Pemberton was hinting broadly that it was time he took his leave.
He hoped against hope that the Courtneys were going to complain to him about their treatment.
He saw them down on the beach, dismounted, tethered his horse, and made his way down the steep slope to where the two little figures stood side by side on the sand.
“I am come in answer to your letter,” he said. There was half a moon shedding only a little light. Their faces were round disks pierced with the black holes of their eyes.
“We have a proposition to put to you,” Amanda said.
“Which is?”
“How would you like half of the Courtney fortune? That is, half of the money and half of what the castle, estates, and farms are worth?”
“Well, of course I would,” he said indulgently. “But I cannot gain any of the inheritance unless you complain of your treatment or are neglected in any way.” He looked at them sharply. “Well … are you?”
“No.”
“Why am I here, then?”
“Listen, fool,” Amanda said. “It is of no use us complaining about our lot, for the lawyer would come from London and find that not to be the case. Hunterdon is the model guardian and the model landowner. So … you kidnap us and hold us for ransom.”
“Monstrous!” Basil exclaimed. “Run home, little girls, and do not plague me again with your fantasies.”
“Don’t come hoity-toity with me,” Amanda snapped. “Think on’t. Without us Hunterdon cannot keep the estate. He loves the place. He would pay you half of everything in order to try to keep it. He don’t like us, but he’ll do his duty, particularly if you threaten to kill us.”
“You must be mad. All Hunterdon would do would be to shoot me.”
Amanda groaned. “Listen hard. Hunterdon wouldn’t know it’s you. He’s in London just now and due back next week. We disappear, you find a place to look after us, a place no one can find. You write a letter demanding the ransom. We’ll find a place for him to leave it.”
“There’s something wrong here.” Basil tilted back his hat and scratched his head. “Do you mean I get this fortune and then you return? What do you get out of it?”
“Five percent’s enough for us,” Amanda said. “But that governess will lose her post and be in disgrace, and Hunterdon will have a hard time of it trying to run those estates with little capital, so he might give them up finally. He’s to be punished as well, d’ye see?”
“No, I don’t. What’s he done to you?”
“That’s our business. But think on our plan—for what can go wrong? Who will suspect you?”
Basil shifted restlessly. He thought of all that money. That was the trouble. Money. He received only a small allowance from a family trust. He was sure that was why the Pemberton girl had snubbed him. With money he could get any woman he wanted. With money he could cut a dash in Town. Besides, what could go wrong? If nothing happened to his ransom demand—yes, he found he was beginning to think of it already as his ransom demand—he could simply tell the girls to go.
“When does this take place?”
“Within a few days. Find a secluded place first. This is Monday. Be at this spot at this time on Friday.”
“Leave it all to me,” Basil said, making up his mind.
By the time he returned to the Pembertons, he had more or less convinced himself that it had mostly been his planning. It was not as if he were being ordered and manipulated by a couple of little girls.
The following day Jean received a letter from the viscount. In it he said he would be arriving the following Monday with the lawyer who wished to make sure the Courtney girls were well cared for. He asked her if she would act as his secretary in the meantime, open all letters, and deal with his bills.
Jean decided not to tell the twins about the lawyer’s forthcoming visit. They might become too nervous, she thought indulgently. She was proud of them as they were and did not want them overacting or showing off because of nervousness. Amanda had confided in Jean that the viscount’s threat to send
them both away still haunted them.
She set them some lessons, and leaving Betty in charge of the schoolroom she went down to the desk in the library and started to go through the viscount’s correspondence. There were a few invitations to balls and parties to be held locally the following month. She put these separately in a neat pile. He would need to decide himself which to accept. There were no urgent or pressing bills, and so she decided these, too, could await his return, but she wrote down on a sheet of paper the sums demanded and to whom they were to be paid. There were two letters from friends, both male. She skimmed through the first few lines to make sure they were only social letters and not in need of any urgent reply. Then there was a heavily scented one with an ornate seal. She opened it. She read the first few lines and blushed scarlet before glancing at the signature at the bottom. Nancy! Nancy reminding the viscount of the pleasures of the bed and saying she was weary of her current lover.
Jean picked it up by one corner, carried it over to the fireplace, and dropped it in the grate. Then she lit it, watched it burn, and then pounded the blackened paper up with the poker.
Immediately afterward she felt miserable with guilt. He would have met Nancy in London, Nancy would tell him about the letter, and he would wonder where it was. Guilt seemed to grow as the day wore on, and even the exemplary behavior of Amanda and Clarissa did nothing to lessen it.
By Saturday morning Jean awoke in a calmer frame of mind. Challenged by him, she would lie. She had committed a sin in burning that letter, so what did one lie matter now? She would say that it must have been lost in the post.
She glanced at the clock. It was nine o’clock, later than the twins usually slept, but she had promised them not to disturb them until ten because it was Saturday.
She had just finished dressing, when Betty burst into the room, crying, “They’re gone!”
Cold fear clutched Jean’s heart and then she steadied herself. “How naughty of them,” she said lightly. “I shall find them, never fear.”
But after an hour of searching the grounds she began to panic. She told Dredwort to gather all the servants and tenants together in the hall. It took ages to get them all assembled. Jean, striving for calm, stood up on the stairs and addressed them. She told them the Misses Courtney were missing. She told them the terms of the will, that if there was any fault in the care of the girls, any sign of negligence, the house and estates would go to Lord Hunterdon’s cousin, Basil Devenham, who, she believed, would ruin the estates as effectively as Mr. Courtney had ruined them. Therefore, they must all help in the search, but they were to make sure that no word of the girls’ disappearance reached the ears of the Pembertons, where she believed Basil Devenham was still staying.
They all searched desperately through the day and far into the night without success. The tenants saw the shadow of the poorhouse looming and were every bit as terrified as Jean. By Sunday evening there was still no trace of them.
Jean called them all together again. “We are ruined,” she said flatly, “and may as well call the constable and magistrate and alert the militia. For the lawyer is coming with my lord tomorrow and there is no way we can keep this quiet.”
There was a dismal silence, and then Farmer Tulley called, “I think there might be a way. My twin daughters, Bertha and Jane. They be fourteen but tall for their age, and they’ve got ladylike ways. Can play the piano and draw and suchlike. I’ll bring ’em up to the castle and you present them to the lawyer as Miss Amanda and Miss Clarissa. Get his lordship aside and warn him not to Took surprised and tell him what has happened and try to get rid of the lawyer sharpish.”
There was a murmur of approval. No one was frightened for the welfare of the girls, who were generally detested, and all believed they were hiding somewhere just in order to create mischief.
“Of all the stupid ideas,” Amanda said for what seemed like the hundredth time, and Basil glared at her balefully.
He himself thought he had been very clever. He had paid a gypsy a handsome sum for the use of his caravan for a few weeks. It was hidden in the glades of Chomley Wood, which lay some twenty miles to the east of the castle. He had always romantically fancied himself in gypsy clothes. He had thought the girls would enjoy the setting. But Amanda and Clarissa had cried out at the lack of servants, at the cramped accommodation, at the boredom of being stuck in the center of the woods. They expected him therefore to be their servant, cooking all the meals and doing all the chores. They treated him with open contempt, and Basil could only pray that the reply to the ransom demand which Hunterdon would receive on Monday morning in his post bag would be quick.
The girls seemed to demand a great deal of food, and he was tired of the long journey to St. Giles to fetch even more provisions. Dressing as a gypsy he found was not romantic at all, and some people spat on him in the street. With all the business of cooking over an open fire, he was rapidly becoming as smelly and dirty as the gypsy he was supposed to be, and his white hands were callused with chopping wood.
Also, Amanda and Clarissa, who had been used to their well-structured days under Jean Morrison’s rule, found time lying heavy on their hands and tried to enliven it by playing tricks on him, like putting grass snakes in his bunk bed, or climbing trees and dropping things on his head when he walked underneath. The last object had been a sharp stone that had gashed his forehead.
The viscount arrived in the middle of the morning on Monday. He was glad the lawyer could see how popular he was as a landlord when he drove through the estates, for people kept running toward the carriage, waving frantically. The viscount could not know that everyone was trying to warn him about the situation. So he waved back merrily as the carriage bowled rapidly in the direction of the castle.
His butler met him at the door and said urgently, “A word in private, my lord.”
“Later, Dredwort. Show Mr. Broome to his quarters.”
“As a matter of fact,” Mr. Broome said, “I would like to see the Misses Courtney before anything else.”
“Very well. Where are they, Dredwort?”
“In the drawing room, my lord, but …”
“Come along, Mr. Broome,” the viscount said. “Stop hovering, Dredwort, and see that Mr. Broome’s bags are carried upstairs.”
A footman stood in front of the double doors of the drawing room. “My lord,” he said in anguished tones, “if I might have a word?”
“Stand aside, James. When I have attended to Mr. Broome’s affairs, you may have all the time you want.”
The footman slowly opened the doors and moved aside.
The viscount stood on the threshold. Jean Morrison was there with two young ladies whom he recognized as the Tulley girls. He opened his mouth to speak, but Jean forestalled him firmly by saying, “This must be Mr. Broome. Amanda! Clarissa! Make your curtsies.”
The dandy was often compared to the American Indian for his capacity to maintain a perfectly blank face during times of stress and pain. So with every appearance of complacent calm, the viscount watched the Tulley girls make their curtsies.
“Good day, ladies,” Mr. Broome said. “Now, Miss Amanda …?”
Bertha Tulley stepped forward.
“How is your schooling progressing?”
“Very well, zurr,” Bertha said. “We do have a goodly knowledge of mathematics as well as English and French.”
“Very good, very good. A bit of a country accent there, hey, Miss Morrison?” Mr. Broome had already been told the name of this governess of distinction.
“Yes, that will soon be eradicated,” Jean said. “The poor girls were barely literate when I arrived, and so I decided to leave the problem of speech until later.”
“Quite right, quite right,” Mr. Broome agreed, growing more indulgent by the minute. He thought Jean Morrison looked all a governess should be with her hair scraped up into a cap and wearing a severe gown, and the Tulley girls were very pretty with rosy cheeks and thick blond hair, not at all what he had expected.
/> “And Miss Clarissa?” Jane stepped forward. “Do you play the pianoforte yet?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Broome. Miss Morrison do be ever such a good teacher.”
She sat down at the piano and played a simple piece of music very competently.
“Well, well,” Mr. Broome said, “I am most pleased, most pleased. Now, if I may retire to my room for a nap, my lord? I am an old man, and long journeys tire me, and as you know, I must travel on to Poole on the morrow to see my niece.”
Jean put her head in her hands when the lawyer had left with the viscount. Then she said, “You did splendidly, both of you. You may do as you please to amuse yourselves, but stay within call in case you are needed again.”
When the Tulley girls had left, Jean sat and waited. She did not have long to wait.
The door crashed open and the viscount strode in, followed by a babbling Dredwort and a crying Mrs. Moody. “You tell me,” he said, towering over Jean.
In a dull, flat voice she told him of how they were missing, how she had found them gone on Saturday morning, of the frantic search, of how they had decided to have the Tulley girls impersonate Amanda and Clarissa for the lawyer’s visit.
“And how did they manage to leave?” he asked, his voice loaded with sarcasm. “Did brigands come in the night and drag them away? I found the spare key to their room which they had hidden and confiscated it. How?”
Jean hung her head. “I had not been locking them in.”
“Why?”
“Amanda said it showed a lack of trust.” Jean raised heavy eyes. “I thought they were fond of me.”
“You silly widgeon. You nincompoop. Oh, let me think. I shall be in the library if that curst lawyer wants me.”
But in the library he found the letter. It was lying on top of the morning’s post, and something about it and the fact it had only a plain seal made him open it. It demanded half the Courtney inheritance for the safe return of the Misses Courtney. He swore under his breath.
He marched back up to the drawing room, but it was empty. He went to Jean’s room and there she was, facedown on the bed, sobbing.
