by M C Beaton
‘We wanted an adventure,’ said Deborah in a little voice. She had no intention of telling the earl about the huntsman and that mysterious bottle, but the reflection had been dim and now she was sure her strung-up nerves had been making her imagine things.
‘I think the best thing both of you can do,’ snapped the earl, ‘is go and sit in the inn and I will cancel your tickets, hire a chaise, and take you both home.’
‘Very good,’ said William meekly.
The earl stared at them in surprise, not expecting acquiescence.
William and Deborah, with heads bowed, went back to the inn dining-room.
‘Where is the huntsman?’ asked Deborah.
‘Gone out to the necessary house,’ said the large woman. ‘Feeling poorly.’
‘Back in a minute,’ muttered William. He ran out of the back of the inn and into the garden where the necessary house, or privy, stood at the end. From it came the terrible noise of retching.
He wrenched open the door. Mr Fotheringay was kneeling in front of the wooden seat, making himself sick. William waited until the next spasm had passed and said coolly, ‘That’ll teach you to try to drug us, you villain.’
Mr Fotheringay turned a sweating, green face up to him. The poison had been an overdose of chloral, but he had managed to get rid of most of it. ‘I knew what you’d done,’ he whispered, ‘when I began to get dizzy.’ William was standing with his slouch hat in his hand, his guinea gold curls gleaming faintly in the gloom. ‘You’re not Benjamin,’ cried Mr Fotheringay.
‘No,’ said William, ‘and my sister ain’t Miss Pym either.’
‘Don’t tell her I’ve failed,’ begged Mr Fotheringay.
The light dawned. ‘Lady Carsey?’ asked William.
He nodded.
‘I should turn you over to the nearest magistrate,’ pointed out William.
Mr Fotheringay rallied slightly. ‘What good would that do? I would swear you was fantasizing and I’d simply been taken ill. No proof.’
William stood for a long moment. Mr Fotheringay was desperately ill again.
‘Who are you?’ demanded William.
‘Mind your own business.’
William seized him by his neckcloth and jerked him upright, thrust a hand into his pocket and pulled out some letters, all addressed to Mr Fotheringay.
‘So now I know who you are,’ said William fiercely. ‘I don’t want any scandal.’ He thought quickly. This Fotheringay must have got rid of the bottle of poison somewhere. There was, as he had said, no proof. It would come out in court that he, William, and his sister had been travelling on the stage because they thought Miss Pym and her footman were going to be attacked by Lady Carsey’s henchmen. It would all sound mad. It would get in the newspapers and Clarissa would read about it.
He let go of Mr Fotheringay, who slumped to the earthen floor. William bent down and said fiercely, ‘Do not come near Miss Pym again. If I see you anywhere in her vicinity, I will kill you. Understood?’
Mr Fotheringay nodded weakly.
William stalked off and Mr Fotheringay remained where he was on the floor of the privy and began to cry. After a while, he heard someone calling, ‘Mr Crank. Coach leaving.’ He remembered his pseudonym, struggled out and said to the landlord’s wife, who was looking for him, ‘I am feeling too poorly to continue my journey. I need a room and a bed.’
Soon he was safely tucked up in bed in an inn bedchamber with a hot brick at his feet. He was beginning to feel quite light-hearted. It was not the first time he had narrowly escaped death. The half-world of criminals and seedy young men he usually inhabited was full of violence.
And why should his aunt, Lady Carsey, know he had failed? If that horrible young man and his sister told her anything, then it was too bad, but he intended to keep away from her anyway. But if they did not, and she believed him to have committed the deed, then she might send him the money. He rang for pen, ink and paper and wrote her a letter saying he had successfully done what she had commanded and would she forward the money she had promised to the Bear Inn in Sittingbourne. He sealed it, handed it to a waiter and told him to put it on the next up mail coach.
Meanwhile, Deborah and William were being driven back toward Rochester by the Earl of Ashton in a comfortable post-chaise. Deborah was feeling very low. She wondered what had happened to the mysterious Mr Crank, but could not say anything in front of the earl.
The earl, for his part, had received such a humble apology from William that he was feeling indulgent towards the pair of them. They were little more than children, he reflected. He thought uneasily of the violent feelings he had experienced when he had kissed Lady Deborah, but then gave a mental shrug and decided he had been celibate too long. He talked to them lightly, but rather like an uncle. Deborah felt very depressed and removed her ugly bonnet and took off her wig and ran her fingers through her thick blonde curls, one of the first feminine gestures William had ever seen her make.
At Downs Abbey, the earl refused to enter the house, saying he must return home and see how his guests were faring. ‘And I had better go and see Langford,’ he added, ‘and warn him about Lady Carsey. She should not be allowed to remain under his roof.’
He ruffled Deborah’s curls just as if she were a child and smiled in a kindly way. ‘You are a dreadful scamp,’ he said with a grin, ‘and the sooner your father is home to take care of you, the easier I shall feel.’
The twins waited until he had left and went indoors. William seized Deborah’s arm and dragged her into the morning-room. ‘What happened?’ demanded Deborah.
William told her while Deborah’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘I could have killed him, William, and how could I ever have lived with that?’
‘Well, you didn’t,’ said William crossly. ‘But you see, Deb, I couldn’t make a scandal and what proof do we have?’ He did not know Mr Fotheringay was Lady Carsey’s nephew, assuming from Mr Fotheringay’s dreadful dress that he was some thug she had hired. ‘He seemed more frightened of Lady Carsey than the law and swore he would simply say he had been taken unwell. And what guys we would look! And what would Clarissa think if she saw it in the newspapers?’
‘A pox on Clarissa!’ shouted the overwrought Deborah.
‘Watch your trap,’ snapped William. Deborah turned her face away to hide the sudden rush of tears. When had she and William ever quarrelled before?
‘Hey, Deb!’ cried William suddenly. ‘I have a plan.’
She turned to face him, glad the brief row was over.
‘What plan?’
‘This Lady Carsey is at Langford’s. He’ll send her packing, but she’ll probably be there tonight. You remember Langford’s place and how the cook used to spoil us, you know, that door at the side where we’d creep in and find our way down to the kitchens?’
‘Yes, what of it?’
‘We’ll go over tonight and haunt her, you as Miss Pym and me as Benjamin. Woo! Hoooo! Wooo!’ cried William, waving his arms and jumping up and down.
But somewhere on the road back from Sittingbourne, under the earl’s tolerant, avuncular eye, Lady Deborah had left the last remnant of her childhood behind.
She sat down wearily. ‘Don’t be tiresome, William. It’s a stupid idea.’
‘It’s a first-rate idea,’ raged William. ‘I’ll go myself, if you’ve turned coward.’
‘I have not turned coward,’ said Deborah hotly. ‘But what if it goes wrong and Ashton learns of it? He’ll write to the embassy in Turkey and tell Papa to come home.’
‘How would he find out about it? What has happened to you, Deb? You used to be fun.’
‘Oh, I’ll go, I’ll go,’ said Deborah, terrified of losing her beloved brother’s affection.
‘Good, that’s more like you,’ said William with satisfaction. ‘Why should that horrible, horrible woman come out of this without even a fright?’
The Earl of Ashton was aware of a difference in his home as soon as he walked into the hall. A fire was burnin
g brightly in the huge hall fireplace, for the day had turned chilly, although he could not, now he came to think of it, remember having seen a welcoming fire in the hall before. Then, on a side-table, was an exquisite arrangement of flowers.
Hannah Pym had taken over. He did not yet know that, only that the great mansion seemed less drab and dingy than usual.
He changed out of his riding-clothes and went down to the drawing-room. Again, there were flowers everywhere and the pleasant scent of wax candles. Hannah was reading, Mrs Conningham was sewing, Abigail was playing the piano, and the captain was standing beside her, turning the pages.
‘I am sorry I had to leave you,’ said the earl, sitting down on a chair next to Hannah. ‘That wretched pair, Lord William and Lady Deborah, went off in the coach, masquerading as you and your footman. It was Sittingbourne before I caught up with them and brought them back.’
‘How could they do such a thing?’ demanded Hannah, very cross that Lady Deborah should continue to behave like a tomboy. For a short while it had looked to Hannah’s matchmaking eye as if there might be a chance that the earl would become romantically interested in Lady Deborah.
‘They are little more than children,’ said the earl with an indulgent laugh. ‘Now I must leave you again, Miss Pym, for I feel it my duty to ride over and tell Langford about Lady Carsey. He should not have such a creature under his roof.’
His journey, had he but known it, was not really necessary. Lady Carsey had already been told to leave, Sir Paul Langford and his lady giving the usual excuse to speed the unwanted guest by saying that they were leaving on a visit elsewhere. Lady Carsey had fallen victim to the lady’s-maid grapevine.
When it came to relating gossip abovestairs, the lady’s-maids were quite a power. Lady Carsey had a new lady’s maid, Francine, a flighty creature who had taken a dislike to her mistress shortly after she was engaged. But she was clever and sly and pretended to dote on her. From Lady Carsey’s other servants, particularly the ones she had dismissed, she had quickly learned all the scandals connected with her mistress and, by flirting with the estate agent, had found out about Lady Carsey’s ruin.
But an impoverished mistress was something to be kept quiet about, as any of Lady Carsey’s servants would lose consequence as a result of it, and so Francine had kept all she knew to herself. But that morning, Lady Carsey had been in a foul temper. She had taken to drinking heavily but concealed it well. She vaguely remembered sending John Fotheringay off to murder Miss Pym and Benjamin, and, in the cold light of day and with a pounding headache, she wondered if she had run mad. Great wealth was a good protection against the law of the land. England, unlike France, refused to countenance a police force, and so the law was carried out by Bow Street Runners, who were more like thieves themselves, and parish constables who did their duty for only a month before handing over to someone else who equally resented the duty, and the elderly men of the watch, who were often too old and infirm to be interested in anything other than staying alive.
So when Francine clumsily dropped a scent bottle and the smell of the spilt contents crept around the room, making Lady Carsey feel even more ill, she unleashed the worst of her temper on the lady’s-maid for the first time.
Francine sponged up the mess, opened the windows, and then went down to the servants’ hall and proceeded to murder her mistress’s reputation. She told of the attempt to have Benjamin tried and hanged for a theft he did not commit, of his subsequent abduction, and ended with saying that Lady Carsey had left to visit the Langfords to get away from the duns on her doorstep.
Lady Langford’s lady’s-maid, Betty, told her mistress the whole while dressing her head with flowers and feathers. Appalled, Lady Langford sent for her husband, who gave her the usual lecture about listening to servants’ gossip, and then proceeded to discuss with his wife the best way of speeding the parting guest.
‘Tell her we’re off to stay with the Chawleys tomorrow,’ said Lady Langford, ‘and she’ll need to leave first thing in the morning.’
Lady Carsey was feeling much restored by the time she descended to the drawing-room to pass that tedious country-house time before dinner. One of the other guests, aMr Frederick Jolly, was sitting on a sofa staring into space.
Lady Carsey sat down next to him. He was a fish-faced young dandy who looked as if he had been blown into his clothes, they were so very tight and so very shiny. He was corseted and padded and nip-waisted and painted, and so dead-faced, he looked like a dummy.
‘The weather has been unseasonably cold,’ essayed Lady Carsey.
‘Yaas,’ he said, staring straight ahead. ‘The weather has been unseasonably cold.’
‘Do you live in this county?’ pursued Lady Carsey.
‘No, I do not live in this county,’ replied Mr Jolly.
Lady Carsey gave a sigh and rose and went to join old Lord Rothers, who was stooped over the fire. He was a short, square, ugly man like John Bull. ‘How have you passed your day?’ asked Lady Carsey gaily.
He gave her a terrified look, straightened up and bundled his great red hands into fists.
‘Well … ahem … rumph! … don’t you know … ahem … garrumph!’
‘Quite,’ said Lady Carsey faintly.
The door opened and Sir Paul and Lady Langford walked in. They stood on the threshold, very close together. ‘Lady Carsey,’ yelled Sir Paul, and then flushed and lowered his voice. ‘Lady Carsey, we are going on a visit to the Chawleys in the morning. I am afraid you will have to leave first thing.’
‘What a pity,’ said Lady Carsey lightly.
Mr Jolly and Lord Rothers looked startled, recognizing the time-honoured way of getting rid of the unwanted and each wondering feverishly what they had done to offend. The Langfords had decided to sacrifice both of them in the good cause of getting shot of Lady Carsey.
The footmen came in with the before-dinner drinks. Now Lady Carsey was aware of an atmosphere of contempt, of unease. The footmen looked at her with bold curiosity instead of lowering their eyes as they were supposed to do before their betters, and Sir Paul and his lady were sitting as far away from Lady Carsey as they could get. There is nothing more abhorrent to the British aristocracy than the sight of someone in financial difficulties. Lady Carsey could have been rumoured to have been guilty of all sorts of skulduggery without raising the same disgust in the Langford soul.
Dinner was a poor affair, the Langfords having told their cook not to go to any special effort. Lady Carsey proceeded to drink too much. The two other guests were incapable of conversation and the Langfords seemed determined not to offer any. The butler came in with the bleached old mail-bag and began to hand out letters, saying the mail had just come up from Rochester.
Lady Carsey murmured an excuse and broke open the seal containing her nephew’s letter. She could feel a clammy sweat breaking out on her brow. Miss Pym, she remembered, had powerful friends. Now she wanted the evening to end. But the butler reappeared to announce the arrival of the Earl of Ashton. Lady Carsey brightened, but her face fell when the butler added that Lord Ashton wished to see the master privately.
Sir Paul departed and returned half an hour later, looking grim. He told the gentlemen that they were welcome to sit up over their port but he himself had the headache and meant to lie down.
Soon Lady Carsey, fortified with a bottle of brandy, was back in her room again. She told Francine that they would leave in the morning and told that young lady to report for duty at six o’clock and begin to pack. Francine sulkily prepared her for bed and then flounced out, leaving her mistress to her thoughts and her brandy.
The more brandy Lady Carsey drank, the more she became convinced she could trap the Earl of Ashton. Instead of returning to Esher direct, she would call at his home on some pretext.
She had almost forgotten about Miss Pym and that footman. With a smile on her lips, she drifted off to sleep.
William and Deborah were down below in the Langfords’ kitchens, sitting at the scrubbed
deal table eating hot biscuits, baked for them by the old cook, who treated both the twins as if they were still the tousle-headed scamps who used to ride over to see her.
They were regaled with all the gossip about Lady Carsey and how she had been sent packing, and so William was able to find out that she was in the Blue Room, which was just off the back stairs.
Deborah, looking at her brother’s flushed and happy face as he munched biscuits and teased the cook, thought that he appeared now like her younger brother. She did not want to go ahead with the masquerade, which stuck her now as horrible, while William appeared to think it was a jape. What would Ashton think if he found out? She had an impatient longing to see the earl treat her like an adult, a woman. She remembered the careless way he had ruffled her curls. That sweet and passionate kiss must have been sweet and passionate only on her side. He has probably kissed scores of women, thought Deborah, miserably crumbling a biscuit and wishing the night’s escapade were over.
At last William rose to leave, with many promises to come again. They went quietly out into the grounds, but only as far as a gazebo a little way away from the house, where they had hidden their disguises.
Normally they would have talked and joked to pass the time, but Deborah kept falling silent. Perhaps, she thought guiltily, someone like Clarissa was just what her brother needed to make him grow up.
One by one, the candles and oil-lamps in the mansion were put out. The twins waited an hour longer, beginning to shiver with nerves and cold.
‘Now,’ said William, lighting a dark lantern, ‘on with our disguises.’
Soon he was dressed in livery and with the slouched hat pulled down to hide his face. Deborah put on the sandy wig and a plain grey gown. ‘We’ll put the grease-paint on in the servants’ hall. There’s a mirror there,’ said William.
They crept towards the house and in by the little-used door at the side which the butler always forgot to lock and made their way to the servants’ hall. Fortunately for William and Deborah, the Langfords treated their servants well and there was no one sleeping on the floor.
