The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  “Yes, very much.”

  “Ha! Ha! You will have your little joke,” said Sniffy heartily. “Congrats on your engagement, old boy. Just got back from Essex. Y’know, most ’strordinary thing happened.”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” said the duke. “Do make a noise like a hoop and bowl off.”

  “Most ’strordinary thing, but technology explains everything,” said Sniffy wisely.

  The duke half rose from his chair to escape.

  “I mean, I thought it was that Plummett woman’s ghost.”

  The duke sat down again and stared at Sniffy.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  But Sniffy, in the infuriating way of his kind of club bore, seemed anxious to go once he had an interested audience.

  “Tell you another time.” He yawned. “Golly, I’m tired.”

  “You’ll be dead if you don’t tell me,” said the duke wrathfully. “God, you’ve been boring me for years, and you finally come up with something of interest—”

  “Oh, if you’re going to be like that…” said Sniffy huffily.

  “Sniffy,” said the duke ominously. “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to choke it out of you?”

  “Well, may as well,” said Sniffy. “I was staying with old Boofie. You know Boofie. Splendid chap. We were in Poona together. I remember that joke we played on the adjutant’s wife. Did I ever tell you—”

  “Tell me about Mrs. Plummett, you unmitigated ass!” roared the duke. Tortoiselike heads poked around the wings of armchairs, and several elderly voices called “Shush,” and then subsided with an angry rattling of ironed newspapers.

  “For the love of God, Sniffy,” said the duke in a lower voice.

  “Oh, well,” said Sniffy reluctantly. “Boofie and Boodles and myself were out riding on the Essex marshes, and we got lost. Miles from anywhere, it was. And we reined in beside this sort of rundown house, and all at once we heard her sing, you know, Poppy. Gave me a turn. Thought we was hearing a ghost. Boodles, he came right out and said it, plain as day. Said, ‘I say, you don’t think it’s her ghost, do you?’ But Boofie, he’s sharp, mind you. Good old Boofie. Don’t grind your teeth like that. I’m going to tell you. So Boofie, he says—he says, ‘Those phonograph things are absolutely marvelous.’”

  With that, Sniffy went off into a great bellow of laughter.

  “Shut up!” snapped the duke. “Where was this?”

  “Somewhere in Essex—near Chelswater. Took us about a couple of miles straight across the fields from the house to reach it.”

  “And didn’t you go to the house to ask?”

  “What about?” said Sniffy stupidly. “You don’t ask about a phonograph!”

  But the duke was off and running.

  “Strange chap,” mused Sniffy. “Don’t think I want to see him again for a while.”

  But Sniffy was to see the duke again all too soon. He was dragged, protesting, from his bed in the small hours of the morning and carted off to the milk train by the constabulary. The hunt for Poppy was on again. The duke had alerted Scotland Yard and had given them Sniffy’s address before traveling down to Essex himself.

  By morning, Boofie Posthwaite-Hans-Bellamy’s estate was overrun with police, tracker dogs, reporters, and photographers, while Boofie racked his dim brain to remember in which direction he had ridden with his friends the day they had heard Poppy sing.

  After a lot of discussion with Sniffy the fellows decided they had ridden off to the south, when in fact they had ridden to the north, and so it was that the police did not find the house until evening.

  The duke fortunately understood German, and so Greta was able to sob out her tale. Which way had Mrs. Plummett gone? “East,” wailed Greta, who did not know at all but wanted to appear helpful, and so the hunt was off and running in the wrong direction again.

  Apart from the constables left to guard Greta, only the duke remained behind. He could not believe that Poppy would have fled from the back of the house, as Greta had said she had done, for the back was fenced in by a high thorn hedge.

  If I were Poppy, thought the duke, I would run straight across those fields in front of me, and I wouldn’t stop running until I got far enough away.

  He mounted on the raw-boned hunter he had borrowed from Boofie’s stables and set off from the house in a straight line across the marshes. The ground was fortunately hard enough because of the long spell of hot weather, and soon he saw the town stretched out before him as night fell over the marshes. He spurred his horse to a gallop as he heard the faraway whistle of an approaching train. For some reason he could not fathom, he knew Poppy was going to take that train, that she had not called at a house for help; that she had not even called at the police station.

  Late walkers turned in amazement as he sped hell-for-leather through the streets. He tethered the horse in the station yard and rushed to the ticket office. How damnably slow was the elderly clerk! The duke gave him a pound and shouted at him to tell Mr. Posthwaite-Hans-Bellamy that his horse was in the station yard. The train was already steaming out of the station, and the ticket collector held up his hand to stop the duke.

  “You’ll never make it,” he said. But the duke hurtled past him and, running alongside the train, seized the handle of a compartment door, wrenched it open, and nearly fell on the floor at the feet of an alarmed-looking spinster.

  “Sir!” she cried, outraged, thumping a sign on the window with her umbrella. “This is a ‘Ladies Only’ compartment.”

  The duke gave her a look of cold distaste, brushed off his jacket, pulled down his waistcoat, and marched out into the corridor.

  He walked along the corridor from compartment to compartment, searching feverishly, gradually losing hope as one strange face after another looked out at him.

  And then all at once she was there, and he took a deep breath. There was no one in the first-class compartment but Poppy, and she was sitting staring out into the rushing night.

  She was hatless, and her skirt and blouse were sadly creased and crumpled.

  He slid open the compartment door and went in. Still she did not look around.

  “Hallo, Poppy,” he said, sitting down opposite her.

  To his surprise, she turned paper-white and cringed back in her seat, her eyes flying up to the communication cord.

  “It’s me, Hugo,” he said. “Poppy, the police and I have been searching all day. We were too late to save you. I gather you saved yourself.”

  Poppy stared at him in a dazed manner. You and the police…” she said faintly. “But I thought you were responsible for me being taken away.”

  “Good God,” said the duke in blank amazement. “Do you never listen to a word I say? I want to marry you. I love you. So why on earth would you think—”

  “They let me see the newspaper with your engagement announcement,” said Poppy.

  “It was Freda. Freda all the time,” he said intensely. “She said that if I did not marry her, then she would kill you, that she had you hidden away. My darling, I’ve been going mad searching.”

  “Oh,” said Poppy faintly, suddenly feeling drained of all emotion. “Why did I never think of Freda? Emily?” she abruptly asked. “Emily and Josie?”

  “Safe,” he said. “Safe and well-looked-after. But worried about you. Terribly worried. Don’t worry, we’ll be home soon.”

  “Home…” echoed Poppy, thinking longingly of the peace of the villa.

  “I can’t go on and on asking,” he said with a faint attempt at humor. “Will you marry me?”

  Poppy looked at him. She could not quite take it all in. He was dressed in a hacking jacket and jodhpurs, reminding her of how he had looked at Everton. Everton. Herself as the Duchess of Guildham. Impossible.

  “It’s impossible,” she said. “I can’t be a duchess. You’ll always think the worst of me. Cutler’s Fields will always be between us.”

  “Only if you let it,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t
want to marry you,” said Poppy harshly. “I just want to get home and go to bed.”

  “Very well,” he said, so hurt that he could have struck her.

  An uncomfortable silence fell between them. The train pulled into a small country station and stood puffing and panting like an overheated dog.

  The duke looked drearily out at the platform, at the name of the station spelled out in flowers on a flower bed on the platform: CRUMM. Impossible. There couldn’t be such a place. He had a longing to open the carriage door and climb out and watch the train depart, taking with it all the cause of his hurt and anguish.

  Was this what all the loving and longing and waiting came to—sitting silently in a dusty carriage in a station called Crumm?

  He looked across angrily at Poppy, and in the light from the station lamps saw a tear gather in her eye and roll slowly down her cheek. He moved across to sit next to her and took her in his arms and kissed her long and hard. She tried to protest, tried to speak, but he kept on kissing her, until she went limp and pliant in his arms.

  He raised his mouth at last, a fraction from her own. “I should never have asked you to marry me, Poppy,” he said. “You’re going to marry me, and that’s that, and you have absolutely no say in the matter.”

  With that he rose to his feet and jerked down all the blinds over the sooty railway-compartment windows.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he drew her back into his arms and covered her mouth with his own. After several minutes he raised his head cautiously. “You’re not going to be allowed to say anything, Poppy, except ‘I love you, Hugo.’”

  “I love you, Hugo,” said Poppy with a faint gurgle of laughter.

  “Now that,” said the Duke of Guildham, “is more like it.” He got to his feet and turned down the lamp, which swung in a crazy arc as the train lurched forward.

  Chapter 15

  It was two weeks since Poppy Plummett’s return to London, where she had been photographed and interviewed and besieged.

  Freda had fled the country, and no one knew of her whereabouts. The Duchess of Guildham removed herself once again to the South of France, to escape from all the publicity surrounding the family name.

  Poppy, with Emily and Josie and her staff, including Miss Villiers, had moved to the seclusion of Everton, where the press was kept firmly beyond the gates.

  Which was just as well. For no sooner was Poppy safely behind the gates of Everton, when another bombshell hit the press. The engagement of Mrs. Poppy Plummett and the Duke of Guildham was announced.

  Once again the newspapers raked up all the old stories, chewed them up, and spat them back out again. Steamers laden with the papers chugged off to far-flung points of the British Empire to comfort the English exiles.

  There were many English residents in the South of France who sympathized with the poor Dowager Duchess of Guildham. This last shock would kill her, they said. But shock can work in peculiar ways, and it affected the duchess strangely. She had all her teeth fixed for the first time in her life, lost fifty pounds in weight, and thereafter could be seen strolling along the Promenade des Anglais with a quite delightful young man. It was believed she would not return to England.

  Brazil was not part of the British Empire, although this sad fact still startled many a traveling Englishman. In Manaus, that rubber boom town far up the Amazon River, where the residents swore the mosquitoes had a class system, the older and tougher members being reserved for the opera house, Freda von Dierksen enlivened the torpor of the stultifying midday heat by screaming out loud in the center of the Plaza and ripping the London Times to shreds with her long nails.

  Cyril Mundy was perhaps the only one who was not terribly surprised. He had grown rather fat and rather pompous, but nonetheless, as he told his wife Annabelle, he had seen it coming all along.

  “Dear Poppy,” sighed Annabelle romantically. “I hope she will be as happy as I am.” And Annabelle was indeed happy, she reflected, looking fondly across the breakfast table at her husband of only a few weeks. She had not had to endure any of that pawing and clutching that had distressed her so. She had bought a very pretty country house, where she and Cyril could entertain their friends.

  “More tea?” asked Annabelle in a wifely manner. “Is dear Jeremy coming to stay with us?”

  “Oh, yes, I think so,” said Cyril, lowering his long eyelashes. “For quite a long time, I expect.”

  “Oh, goody!” cried Mrs. Annabelle Mundy.

  As for Hetty, she had almost forgotten about Poppy, and hardly ever thought of Cyril. She had a nice little part in a touring company that was playing the end of the pier at Hadsea. There was a delightful young male dancer in the show, who was as fair as Cyril had been dark, and she loved him madly, although he never seemed to notice her. His name was Brian Fern.

  “Ooooh!” cried Hetty as she leaned on the rehearsal piano. “Me old friend Poppy’s going to be a duchess!”

  And then, miracle of miracles, Brian was beside her and gazing down into her eyes. “Hetty dear,” he cooed. “Do you think she’ll invite you? And if she does, can you take me along?”

  “Of course,” said Hetty, her eyes like stars. How could she have been such a fool to break her heart over Cyril Mundy?

  For once Lord Archibald felt that he ought to have paid more attention to his wife. “I told you!” said Lady Mary, triumphantly rustling a newspaper. “I told you that girl was a low, cunning wretch. Now you won’t be Guildham’s heir, for mark my words that low type of female breeds like a rabbit!”

  “Quite, my dear,” said Lord Archibald gloomily, helping himself to a huge plateful of pudding.

  Poppy was already a legend in Cutler’s Fields, and they toasted her health at a large street party given in her honor. Poppy had sent her friends money for the celebration, and better than that, Ma Barker had been invited to the wedding.

  Mr. Lewis and Mr. Pettifor sent Poppy a handsome engagement present, started rehearsals for the next show, and promptly forgot about her.

  Ian Barchester was too worried about himself to feel angry over Poppy’s leap into the aristocracy. He had married a wealthy girl who was built like a coal heaver and fanatically addicted to hunting. And she never seemed to sleep at nights either. She loved him with a blind passion, which was exhausting and frightening, and he felt he was being forced to earn every penny of her vast fortune.

  Boofie Posthwaite-Hans-Bellamy, Sniffy Vere-Smythe, and Boodles Hunter cleared the club in St. James’s Street on the day of Poppy’s engagement. No one could bear to hear that story about the singing and what Boofie had said to Boodles and what Boodles had said to Sniffy, one more time.

  And so at last Poppy and her duke were married, not quietly as everyone had expected them to, but with great pomp and circumstance and the strangest assortment of wedding guests fashionable London had ever seen.

  Poppy floated on a sea of happiness. They were to spend their wedding night at the villa in St. John’s Wood, while Emily and Josie were to travel on to Everton to await them.

  Since the night in the railway carriage, they had never seemed to be alone for a minute, and it was bliss for Poppy to drive off with her new husband and leave all the friends and relatives.

  And there at last was the villa, and there was Mrs. Abberley, flushed with excitement, bobbing a low curtsy on the doorstep as she had done so many times before when Poppy used to come home from the theater.

  “Welcome home, Your Grace,” said Mrs. Abberley.

  “She means you, you know,” said the duke, looking at his bride with love and affection. “You’re a duchess now.”

  “Blimey!” said the Duchess of Guildham. “So I am!”

  Part VII

  Amaryllis

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  For Margaret Donnell
y

  with love

  Chapter 1

  Amaryllis Duvane stood patiently amid the noise and bustle of Exeter Exchange in London’s Strand and waited for Miss Agatha Warburton and Miss Cissie Warburton to complete their purchases.

  A small bright memory fluttered through her head; a memory of coming here with her father in happier days, gazing in wonder at the beefeaters in their gaudy livery, at the bats, balls, kites, and hoops of the toyshop; sniffing the sugary smells from piles of Bath buns, blancmanges, jellies, tartlets, and sponge cakes; deafened by the roars and screeches from the famous Royal Menagerie of lions, tigers, monkeys, panthers, and birds.

  And then the memory was gone as Amaryllis Duvane, a drab figure against all the kaleidoscope of color about her, dragged her mind firmly back to the present.

  Over the past eight years, since her father’s death and sadly reduced circumstances had forced her to live as a poor relation with her aunt, Lady Warburton, Amaryllis had found that happy memories only led to discontent and sadness.

  She took the place of lady’s maid when the Warburton sisters, Agatha and Cissie, went shopping. The Warburtons had a whole army of servants, but these little duties were inflicted on Amaryllis to remind her of her place. Once she had been hailed as the most beautiful girl of the London Season and had become engaged to the Marquess of Merechester. Amaryllis had terminated her engagement after her father’s death, feeling sure the handsome and proud Marquess would not wish a penniless bride, but the Warburtons would have it that the Marquess had merely taken her in dislike.

  Agatha and Cissie were aged nineteen years and twenty years respectively. They were extremely beautiful with their flaxen ringlets and wide blue eyes and plump little figures.