‘None here would believe her, Miss Mardham.’
‘Not even with a whisper of doubt, sir?’
‘Not even a whisper.’ He looked at her, trusting him to find the best resolution to her problem, and thought it not an imposition but a privilege. ‘We have two possibilities, as I see it. Either we ensure she and her maid are not in her room, and replace the pendant, which, incidentally, is quite revolting, in her own chamber, or I “find it” somewhere where she might have dropped it. She will have to accept it as truth, for she cannot easily accuse me of wanting it, and she will know also that it was really found here. She cannot declare it, which will frustrate her.’
‘Leaving it with her is safer, yes?’
‘Not really, Miss Mardham, because she can continue to pretend it is missing. If I perform a conjuring act before dinner, in front of everyone …’
‘Yes, I see, but it makes things difficult for you, sir. You have to … lie.’ Celia looked so innocent he could have hugged her.
‘Think of it this way, ma’am. The truth is that one of your guests secreted this item among your belongings to cast doubt upon your honesty. One can only guess the reason.’
‘Yes, why should she do it?’
‘Because, forgive me sounding vain, she has been throwing herself at my head this past two weeks, and sees your having driving lessons as a block to her success.’
Celia blushed.
‘Oh, but …’ She was going to ask why she had not placed the pendant rather among Marianne’s jewels, but then realised the reason. ‘And she could not do so with Marianne, because Marianne has much better pieces and everyone knows she can have everything she wants.’ Just for a moment, Celia was not thinking of worldly goods, and her voice was sad rather than bitter.
Lord Levedale thought it rather that Miss Darwen could not face being less admired than a girl she would dismiss as ‘substandard’, but did not reveal the thought.
‘We are countering a lie, a dangerous one, with a lie that will be known to the liar, but in all other ways appear a consoling truth, for there will have been no theft, no problem. All we need to decide now is where it might have been dropped, and yet not found this morning by the maids.’
‘But surely, my lord, if she had dropped it in innocence, she, or her maid, would have noticed when she came to disrobe?’
‘A fair point, Miss Mardham, but did she not wear it last evening, with an assortment of jangling bangles?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then there is the answer. She was hysterical, remember. When she calmed down she would not have been thinking clearly, and the maid would have been distracted by the alarm and excitement.’
‘I did not sleep a wink before two of the clock, Miss Celia, I was that upset’, added the maid.
‘That settles it. She lost it when she was coming upstairs. Perhaps she had been fingering it nervously, which unhooked the clasp.’ Lord Levedale was warming to his theme. ‘Yes, that was it, and so where did it slip to the floor?’
‘My lord, there is one of them big plant stands, a “jardineer”, next to her chamber door. The stand is not quite solid to the floor. If it fell, and slipped out of view there, I doubt the maid would brush under the stand every day, not unless she thought Mrs Howsell was a-watching her.’
‘Well done.’ Lord Levedale smiled, and Horley blushed for the second time in ten minutes. He pocketed the pendant. ‘Now, if you will be so good as to check that the, er, coast is clear …’
The maid bobbed a curtsey and went to peer out of the door. He glanced at Celia, and then could not resist it. He winked.
*
Lord Levedale went down to dinner feeling rather pleased with himself. What he was about to do would certainly put Miss Darwen off him for life, and he was doing it to assist Miss Mardham. He entered the room to find everyone but Sir Marcus Cotgrave already present. It was a pity, but delaying revealing his ‘discovery’ would be suspicious. There was also the very unexpected presence of the Dowager Lady Mardham, not so much seated as enthroned near to the fire, and clearly assessing the company for signs of weakness. Hoping she would not be a complication, he took a breath, and beamed at the assembly.
‘I have to say I feel like the wizard in a children’s fable, but … Miss Darwen, I have wonderful news for you.’ He pulled the pendant from his pocket, and let it dangle, catching the light, from his little finger.
‘Where did you find it?’ gasped Miss Darwen, in an almost accusatory manner.
‘And why did you not put it straight back?’ murmured the Dowager, gazing at it through her lorgnettes with undisguised revulsion.
Lord Levedale kept his composure.
‘It was concealed under the foot of a jardinière, next to your chamber, Miss Darwen. You see, I thought about it while changing for dinner. It could not have been stolen. Ergo, it was lost. Now, you wore this last night, as I recall, and last night was very … distracting for you. In fact I am sure you handled the pendant just as you are touching the necklace at your throat right now. If you observe, the clasp has been slightly deformed, no doubt by pulling upon the chain.’ He had forced the clasp with his nail scissors, which he thought a good added touch. ‘When you went upstairs you were too upset to notice the pendant slip off, and it lay where it was not obvious. I retraced the steps you must have taken to your chamber, and the plant stand was the only object that hid anything at floor level.’
‘I say, what an amazingly clever thought, Levedale,’ declared Lord Pocklington. ‘You ought to give lectures to those Bow Street Runner fellows.’
Levedale smiled, but was looking at Miss Darwen, who had turned a slightly sickly shade.
‘So here is your property, restored to you, undamaged.’ He stepped forward and dropped it into her hand. She thanked him, without enthusiasm, and without looking him in the eye. ‘And I think perhaps you also owe Miss Mardham an apology, for having implied she might be involved in its loss.’
She looked at him then, her eyes narrowed. He knew all, she could tell, and in that moment she hated him.
‘Of course,’ she said, dully. ‘But it was a natural assumption to make.’
‘Only to someone, ma’am, of your nature.’ His words were said very quietly, but they stung.
Old Lady Mardham pursed her lips, but her eyes glittered with a smile. As for Lord Deben, he had not smiled in nearly two days. He smiled now.
Lavinia Darwen’s plan had been, she thought, quite elegant. Since Celia rarely came up to her room once downstairs, and was always very easy to hear from the clumping sound of her stick, it would be easy to place the pendant in her trinket box. She, the victim, would then raise a hue and cry and demand that rooms were searched. The pendant would be found and Celia be dumbfounded as to how it got in her room, denying all knowledge. She would say, quite sensibly, that she was a most unlikely thief, being so slow and obvious, but that was the really clever part of The Plan. The accusation would be that she had got her maid to steal it, on her behalf. Since calling in the constable to arrest The Cripple was never going to happen, putting her maid under threat of transportation, or even death, would be far more real and upsetting. Lord Levedale would be disgusted at the deception and putting a servant under pressure to commit a possibly capital crime. There would be no need to actually call in the constable of course. The damage would be done without that.
However, somewhere along the line, it had all gone very wrong. The rooms had not been searched, through the ‘weakness’ of Lord Mardham. She would have had no compunction in searching the rooms of her guests in such a case. His annoying daughter must have found the pendant, and persuaded Levedale of her innocence by looking pitiful, she supposed. He had now clearly proved himself unworthy of her own attentions. It was at least a blessing she had found out now, before she had accepted him.
*
Even though the ‘theft’ had been solved, the afternoon’s unpleasantness hung over the dinner table like a pall of heavy cloud. The conversation was in
general desultory, although the Dowager, seated at the end of the table so that she could watch everybody, cast lightning bolts of a scathing nature at whomsoever she chose. Sarah Clandon, seated next to Lord Deben, quizzed him gently upon his meagre knowledge of ornithology, in an attempt to drive the look of discontent from his pleasant features. Lord Deben did not enjoy being treated like an idiot by the likes of Miss Darwen. Engaging in friendly joshing banter with his friends was one thing, but her attitude had been genuinely dismissive, and it rankled, hours later.
‘I see no reason why a gentleman ought to know about birds, other than being able to identify the ones he shoots,’ interjected the Dowager. ‘My nephew Gerald once shot a peacock whilst staying at Woburn, and was never invited again. Foolish boy. It is not as though a peacock looks anything like a pheasant.’ Her glance around the table challenged anyone to disagree with her.
Miss Darwen was in a first rate huff, and thus did the unthinkable: she took on the Dowager. Lord Mardham, for all he was angered by her earlier behaviour, regarded her with awe.
‘A female peacock, or to be exact, a peahen, might be mistaken for a pheasant at some distance.’
The Dowager fixed her with an icy stare.
‘Which is why I said he shot a peacock, miss, and a peacock would no more be mistaken for a pheasant, of either gender, than cheap trumpery be mistaken for a piece of decent jewellery.’
The younger Lady Mardham winced.
‘My Papa bought me my pendant, ma’am.’ Miss Darwen did not reveal that he had done so to stop her making a scene in a Bath jeweller’s shop.
‘That only goes to show that men will do anything for a quiet life.’ The Dowager made a highly educated guess that was remarkably accurate. The despised pendant was not the sort of piece a man would buy, being far too fussy, but would appeal to an immature girl. Without waiting to see if Miss Darwen could make a response, her ladyship turned her attention upon Sir Marcus Cotgrave, who was seated on one side of her. Sir Marcus, who had arrived late, and heard of the pendant’s discovery second-hand from Lord Corfemullen, had limited himself to recommending that the ladies all check the repair of their jewellery at frequent intervals. Upon finding himself sat next to the Dowager, he was so intimidated that he had said not a word to her and focused upon working his way through several tartlets, the parsnip soup, a raised pie, a dish of salsify and a summer pudding. This marked him down in the Dowager’s view as ‘a human rug’, and she therefore proceeded to tread all over him.
‘Tell me, Sir Marcus, has your cook died?’
‘My cook, ma’am?’ Sir Marcus blinked in consternation.
‘Yes, your cook.’
‘Er, no. When I left she was in perfect health, as far as I know, Lady Mardham.’
‘Oh.’ The Dowager appeared perplexed, and Sir Marcus, unused to the ways of wily old ladies, walked straight into the waiting trap.
‘Why did you think otherwise, ma’am?’
‘Because, sir, you have paid almost undue attention to most of the dishes on this table, without paying attention to either myself or Miss Button to your left.’ Marianne looked across at Celia, but very wisely, said nothing. ‘Remaining silent at dinner is ungentlemanly. A gentleman’s dinner table is a social place for conversation interspersed with eating. We are not the starving poor who have to grab what they can before anyone else takes it. I assumed you had been denied suitable sustenance before you came here.’
‘Er …’ Sir Marcus shrank in his seat, and the Dowager delivered the coup de grâce.
‘And if you as much as look at another helping of potted crab you will regret it all night. Nothing is more inclined to bring on colicky disorders than an excess of crustaceans.’ She paused for one moment. ‘But there. Who am I to tell you what to do?’
The Dowager had not raised her voice, and yet everyone was attending to her. They remained silent, except for Miss Darwen, who tittered discordantly.
‘I do not see what there is to amuse you, Miss Darwen. I rarely make jests, and should I be about to do so, I would inform you of it.’ Lady Mardham looked down the table towards her son. ‘I see your father’s cellar still has wine worth drinking in it, Mardham.’ She glanced at Lord Corfemullen, to her right. ‘My late husband was, at the least, a good judge of vintage.’
‘He and your Papa would have got on famously,’ Lavinia Darwen murmured, looking across the table at Marianne, who blushed.
The Dowager, who had heard her daughter-in-law’s ‘confession’ about Miss Burton’s origin before the young lady had appeared for dinner, was not going to give Miss Darwen pleasure by asking why. She had made her own assessment of the ‘Button’ girl, and found her manners as good as her looks, but she was lacking in spark. Putting the worried Lady Mardham at ease, she had described her as prettily behaved, but the sort to bore a man of sense before the bride visits were completed. However, she added, ‘she will do well, since men of sense are a rarity.’
‘You know, I think he would, my dear,’ The senior Lady Mardham gave Marianne one of her less intimidating smiles, and ignored Miss Darwen. ‘Gentlemen need but a common interest to put them on the best of terms, and your Papa is a man of discernment, as one can see from your pearls. I would have given my eye teeth for a string as fine when I was young, although we wore them longer.’
Marianne blushed furiously, but was not as red as Miss Darwen. In one fell swoop the ghastly old woman at the end of the table had elevated Sir Thomas Burton to being a gentleman, when he was but a jumped-up wine merchant, and had praised his daughter’s jewels, clearly in contrast to her opinion of the ruby pendant. Miss Darwen thought she had also overheard the phrase ‘tawdry bangles’ before dinner, and she was the only lady wearing more than one bracelet. She opened her mouth, but could think of nothing to say, and thereafter sat in morose silence for the rest of the meal.
Lord Levedale was seated next to Celia, and was enjoying the Dowager’s masterly assertion of her superiority over everyone. It was a useful distraction, for he wanted to say so much to Celia that he dared say little. For her part she was intensely aware of him, and felt such a co-conspirator that an added bond existed between them. She felt an odd mixture of elation and disquiet. If he felt as she felt, he would have spoken by now, and for all his kindness, his laughter and his looks, he had not once spoken of his feelings about her. Time was also running out.
*
The ladies withdrew, with an admonition from old Lady Mardham for the gentlemen not to linger over their port, since she would be wanting the tea tray brought in early so that she might go home to her bed. She made it sound as if she was present at great personal cost to her health and well-being, though the truth of the matter was that she was enjoying herself immensely. She ignored her daughter-in-law’s proffered arm to lean upon, and pointed her stick at the most prepossessing of the footmen, indicating that she would prefer his support. William did not know whether to feel proud or petrified. Once ensconced in the chair of her choice, she dismissed him with a smile, which he later admitted to be even more frightening. She then commanded Mrs Wombwell and Lady Corfemullen to sit by her.
Lady Corfemullen, being a relation, had known Lady Mardham since girlhood, and had long ago learned that the best way to deal with her was to hold one’s own but never pick a fight with her upon any topic. Mrs Wombwell clasped her hands together tightly, and perched so close to the edge of her chair that her knees trembled.
‘Your son has a very good tailor, Mrs Wombwell.’
Maria Wombwell looked even more worried. This might be a compliment, or it might be a cutting remark indicating that it took a good tailor to make her beloved son look as he did.
‘I believe he patronises Stultz, ma’am.’
‘I don’t need the man’s name.’ Lady Mardham sniffed. ‘Is he dyspeptic?’
‘His tailor, ma’am?’
‘No, of course not his tailor. Him. Your son.’
‘Oh. No, no, he is not of a dyspeptic nature, although prone to he
adaches, poor boy.’
‘He looked dyspeptic throughout dinner. Either that, or he was sulking.’ The Dowager had no doubt which was true.
‘He has had a very enervating few days, what with the thunderstorm and the fire.’
‘From which he seems to have sustained no visible injury.’ Lady Mardham had recommended to her grandson that he ‘stop playing upon roofs’, with a wry smile and a comment that it was good to see he had a care to his inheritance. She was proud of the boy, and had noted the healing abrasions upon the other young gentlemen. She admired physical courage in a man, and made no comment upon their temporarily impaired looks. Mr Wombwell’s flawless complexion set him apart, and damned him.
‘Thank the Almighty, no,’ declared Mrs Wombwell, reverently, failing to notice her ladyship’s less than admiring tone. ‘I was so afraid for him.’
‘Needlessly so, no doubt.’
Celia, knowing her grandmother so well, caught the inflexion, and choked, even as she was describing her new ponies to Sarah. Mrs Wombwell simply looked uncomprehending, and the Dowager gave up poor sport.
Chapter 17
The next morning Lord Levedale felt he ought to at least try and finish the letter to his Father, though it risked being illegible and would undoubtedly be painful. There was a noticeable change in the forming of the letters when he recommenced, and he grimaced frequently. He had read through as far as he had managed before his accident, and liked it as little as he had before, but they were the right words.
Sir,
I have endeavoured to find it within me to make Miss Burton an offer, but, despite the pressures upon the Family to find Funds in short order, I am not prepared to make either her or myself unhappy by an act of foolish obedience to Duty. She is, as you said, a young lady of beauty, and is neither vain nor coquettish, which is common among her sort, but there is no spark at all between us and both would very soon find themselves most miserable with the other.
Bless Thine Inheritance Page 19