“What would you like?” his lordship asked.
“I wish you would stop asking me what I would like; it is the most horrid burden to be constantly required to choose something.”
“Of course – perfectly understandable. I will ask Crabb to arrange for the preparation of a variety of comestibles and have them laid out in the dining room. We will all go there together to eat a late supper. I am sure you must be hungry again by this time, Mrs Ripley?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” she agreed at once.
Thus it was that half an hour later they sat down in the dining room once more and were served a late – hot – supper. Aspasia was not very hungry, having put away a good dinner, his lordship seemed able and indeed keen to eat again and Letty ate as only the young can - ravenously.
Afterwards, no cross words having passed between them, they withdrew once more to the drawing room where they played cards until the tea was brought in.
It was not until well after midnight that Aspasia suggested retiring for the night.
The next day dawned bright and warm so that, assisted by their maids, Aspasia and Letty dressed and descended for breakfast in an optimistic mood. Aspasia had told her niece the glad news that Major Fielding and Captain Sharpthorne had called the previous day and were to be invited to stay in the Castle.
The Earl was already in the small dining room eating a substantial breakfast but rose as soon as the women came in.
“I have heard from your admirers this morning,” he said. “They should be with us within the next hour or so.”
This was clearly the wrong way to describe the soldiers for Letty flushed uncomfortably and demanded to know what precisely he meant.
“I suppose,” he said mildly, “that you have so many admirers that such a description leaves you uncertain as to which ones will turn up. I mean Major Fielding and Captain Sharpthorne.”
“Oh?” Letty said, frowning in an apparent effort to recollect anybody bearing those names.
“I daresay you will remember them when you see their faces,” her aunt said kindly, adding to the Earl, “The gentlemen’s names seem to have slipped from my niece’s mind between our rising and our arrival downstairs.”
“Oh, how can you?” Letty asked.
“I suppose that, if one can play silly games, so can two,” Aspasia retorted. “If you mean, by feigning ignorance, to save his lordship’s face, I can only tell you that you are being absurd. Do not forget that Major Fielding is an old school friend of his so that their coming to stay is not necessarily on account of either of them having conceived an admiration for either of us.”
“I think it grossly unfair for you to take his part,” Letty said, pouting. “Indeed, I see it as a betrayal.”
“I am not prepared to engage in such idiotic behaviour,” Aspasia said. “His lordship is quite old enough to be unsurprised that a young man might consider you a pretty enough girl to amuse him for an hour or two – indeed, I don’t doubt that an old one would feel the same. Let us have no more of this nonsense.”
“The old one likes you!” Letty retorted, determined to embarrass her aunt.
“And I like him,” Aspasia said. “There is really nothing to make a cake of oneself about over liking a gentleman – old or young. Have you heard whether Lord Archibald is joining us today?” she asked, turning to the Earl, who was trying not to smile.
“I have not heard from him today, but he seemed to think he might yesterday.”
“And Lady Stonegate? Shall we have the pleasure of her company today?” Letty asked pertly.
“Again, I am not certain.”
When they had finished their breakfast, his lordship guided them into the garden, which was a small piece of land at the back of the castle bounded by a high wall between it and the moat beneath. It was prettily planted with roses and lavender, both of which were still in bud, as well as some large, blowsy flowers which his lordship informed them were peonies.
“They look good enough to eat,” Aspasia said, much taken with them.
“I would not advise it,” Stonegate said, “but, if you like them, I will have a bunch picked and put in a vase in your chamber.”
“I would be enchanted,” she responded at once, her face breaking into a smile.
Chairs had been arranged upon the grass and the three of them sat down after the Earl had pointed out the way the moat fed into the river which meandered away to the south.
“Is that the river which passes Amberstone?” Letty asked.
“Yes. Shall I fetch a bottle and you can write a note to put inside? If Archibald is not already on his way here but is instead sitting by the river, he will no doubt see it and get someone to take it out of the water.”
Letty, for once looking innocently enthusiastic and forgetting to find fault with this plan, the Earl went inside again, returning shortly with a bottle, its cork, a piece of paper and a pen. He waited while Letty wrote something, then, without reading it, rolled it up tightly and pushed it inside the bottle before inserting the cork.
“Throw it in,” he told her, handing it back.
She took it, wished it ‘God speed’ and threw it into the moat, where for a moment it disappeared beneath the surface before bobbing up again, swirling around a little and then beginning to make its way towards the river.
“Does the moat flow all the way round?” Aspasia asked.
“More or less. It was designed with the idea that the Castle would sit in the middle like an island but, unless one keeps to a strict programme of clearing the mud, it is inclined to silt up on one side. On the whole, it’s an excellent design because it doesn’t become stagnant.”
“So that anything you threw in from anywhere would end up going off as that bottle is?” Aspasia asked, watching as Letty’s message caught the current, speeded up and disappeared out of the moat.
“Indeed – and sometimes things which have entered the river higher up travel round before going on their way. We have had some odd objects floating past on occasion.”
“Dear me! Pray do not tell us about them for I swear it might give me nightmares. Does the oubliette open into the moat?”
“Yes.”
“So, if you were to fall into it, you would find yourself in water. Could you not swim to safety?”
“No, not unless the gate at the bottom was opened. It is nothing more than a dungeon really which you can enter by a somewhat precipitous method – although you can also reach it from the network of cellars and passages beneath the Castle. You are unlikely to survive the initial fall, but it is not flooded at the bottom. There is a gate – or I suppose a false floor would be a more accurate description – which can be levered back to propel the prisoner into the water.”
“Very convenient!” Aspasia shuddered.
“Is the moat full of corpses?” Letty asked, wrinkling her nose.
“No, I don’t think so. In any event, the oubliette has not been used for centuries so that anybody who had been disposed of in that manner would by now be nothing more than a few bones.”
“Is it very deep?” Letty asked.
“Oh, yes, very. It goes down twenty or thirty feet and the water in the moat is deeper – surprisingly deep when you think that the river is not particularly wide. When we swam here as boys, Archibald and I used to pretend we had reached the sea when we came to the place where it widens – just before it gets to Amberstone.”
Chapter 22
There had been no sign of either the Countess or Lord Archibald by the time the soldiers arrived. They were announced by Crabb while the party was sitting in the garden.
Stonegate rose at once, made his excuses and went inside. It was not long before he brought his new guests out and, saying that he believed they needed no introduction, watched with an indulgent smile as the four who had met on the road greeted each other with every appearance of pleasure.
“A delightful spot you have here,” Major Fielding said when he had sat down and been provided with a gla
ss of wine.
“Yes,” the Earl agreed, “although the garden is a little small. I thought at one time that I might cultivate some of the land on the other side of the moat, but in the end I felt it would be inconvenient to be obliged to cross the drawbridge every time one wanted to spend half an hour amongst the flowers.”
“Indeed; I suppose much of the land round about is yours?”
“Yes, but, unless I were to divert the river away from the moat, fill it in and have the whole landscaped, I don’t think it’s possible to expand much. The Castle is quite small and the piece of ground on which it sits not much larger.”
“No, but so very charming,” the Major said. “And then, if people you dislike come to call, you can always refuse to lower the drawbridge.”
“As a matter of fact I wondered if I should do so for you,” the Earl said, smiling, “as I am a little afraid you may have come to take these ladies away!”
This remark was greeted with much jocularity and denials by the soldiers together with polite simpering from the women.
The Earl seemed pleased to see his old school friend again and was soon deep in reminiscence about their time at Eton, while Letty brightened so much in Lord Sharpthorne’s presence that Aspasia began to think that a match between the pair might be the best anyone could hope for – and the answer to at least one of the Earl’s dilemmas.
They went inside to eat their luncheon where they were joined by the Countess who, at least at the start of the meal, appeared to be on her best behaviour. She opened like a flower to the Major’s flattery and show of interest and was so taken up with him that she appeared hardly to notice how close Letty and Captain Sharpthorne grew.
This left the Earl free to speak to Aspasia.
“I own I am more pleased than I expected to see my old friend again,” he confided.
“He has learned more in the army than how to defeat a foreign enemy,” she observed with a smile.
“Indeed; his skill in managing my mama is prodigious. Do you suppose he is singing Archibald’s praises?”
“Oh, no, I should not imagine so for, if he were, she would be bound to disagree with him. No, I should think he is, rather, singing her praises. I am persuaded she will find nothing to argue about on that subject.”
“I suppose I should try that approach myself. I had forgot, momentarily, how well it answers with females.”
“Oh, yes, it never fails, but you would be unlikely to be successful with her because you have known her far too long and she is in any event your stepmother. I expect he is flirting gently and you can hardly do that.”
“No; what a perspicacious woman you are, Mrs Ripley!”
“Oh, pray do not practise your skills on me, my lord! I am too old to be flattered by such a line!”
“On the contrary, Ma’am, I think you are not old enough to respond particularly well to praise of either your character or your intelligence. If I am not much mistaken, you are young enough to want to hear praise of your looks. But where do I begin?”
“Oh, pray do not for it will seem horridly false now! Perhaps you could think of something flattering to say this evening when I may have forgotten our discussion.”
“It is not a question of having to think and, no, I will not refrain from telling you that I think you a dazzlingly beautiful woman. I have kept my lips closed on the subject until now because I am only too aware that I should be saying such things to Letitia, and that you might accuse me of inappropriate conduct if I tell you that your beauty is beyond compare!”
“Lud! Now you have gone to such extremes that I know you are lying! In any event, Letty is very like me – I suppose you do find her beautiful?”
“Yes, I do not see that anyone could argue with such a description; nevertheless, I believe her to be too young to find happiness with me and her extreme prickliness makes dealing with her like trying to pick a rose without either scissors or gloves!”
“Captain Sharpthorne, who seems in spite of his name to be a gentle person, seems to be managing her quite well,” Aspasia murmured, watching the pair, who were both very animated.
“She has been starved of the sort of amusement most young people take for granted,” the Earl said.
Letty was enjoying Captain Sharpthorne’s company hugely for he clearly admired her and seemed to find her every utterance both witty and pertinent. He told her stories of the campaigns on which he had been fighting so that she began to conceive a good deal of admiration for him. He had evidently been in some tight spots but had neither despaired nor complained.
“I suppose that’s partly why I joined up,” he said when she voiced this opinion. “I mean it would be no good expecting to be comfortable all the time.”
“No, indeed, but it must have been frightening all the same. I always think I would love to have an adventure of some sort but at the same time I know I would hate the discomforts and – and I am by no means certain I could endure the anxiety!”
“I should think you’d be bound to find you could when it came to the point,” the Captain replied. “I daresay you’d be surprised. I know I was because, to tell you the truth, my greatest fear was that I would turn out to be a coward!”
“Do you think,” she asked when she had digested this remark, “that sometimes people who are afraid of being a coward rush into the heat of battle to prove they’re not – if you see what I mean?”
“Yes,” he replied at once. “The first time I went into battle I certainly did that and was lucky not to be killed. Some poor fellows do get cut down that way – the very first time they’re in an engagement! It does seem a bit unfair,” he added with a little childish twist of his lips.
“Do you think that might have been how Lord Archibald got wounded?”
“Running into the thick of it in order to prove he wasn’t a coward? No, I’m sure he didn’t. By the time he was wounded, he’d been in plenty of battles and everyone thought the world of him. He’s Lord Stonegate’s brother, isn’t he? Do you know where we can find him because we’d both like to see him again?”
“Yes; he lives in a house called Amberstone about ten miles from here; the same river feeds this moat and runs past his house. We visited him yesterday.”
“Did you, by Jupiter? How is he?”
The pleasure with which Lord Sharpthorne greeted this intelligence convinced Letty that her former love was held in high regard by his colleagues, although she rather wished she hadn’t mentioned him for the very thought of Archie was enough to cast a black cloud over an afternoon that had, until this moment, been filled with sunshine.
“He has been very badly hurt,” she said.
The Captain looked so sympathetic that she found herself wanting to throw herself upon his manly bosom and weep for all she had lost – and perhaps even a little for what Archie had lost.
“I was rather afraid he had but I suppose he will recover, will he?”
“I think he will live,” she answered cautiously.
“I’m so sorry,” the Captain said awkwardly for it was a difficult situation. He knew, from what had passed between them on the road, that she had once been in love with Lord Archibald, but was on her way to marry his brother.
“I found, when I saw him again, that I didn’t love him any more,” she said, raising huge blue eyes to the young soldier’s face and, finding there the uncomplicated sympathy that had somehow been wanting elsewhere, burst into tears and did cast herself upon his breast.
Lord Sharpthorne, a well brought-up young man of a kindly disposition, was somewhat flummoxed by this. He ought to have been flattered to become a repository for such a pretty young woman’s confidence and he ought to have been delighted to hold such an altogether charming creature in his arms, but he was aware of her fiancé looking on with a degree of sympathy, which seemed to be directed more at him than at the weeping young woman. He was also a little disappointed in what he had previously perceived to be her character: the undimmed love which she had expressed for
his friend a few days ago seemed to have been extinguished the moment she laid eyes upon him and he could see no rational explanation for this.
He patted her back perfunctorily and wished that she would sit up straight and stop weeping into his coat.
“That girl has no restraint!” the Countess said in the sort of whisper that carries further than many a more loudly uttered remark.
“She is very young,” the Major murmured. Like his nephew, he was conscious of increasing tension between the members of the party they had just joined. He assumed that the Countess, to whose stepson the lachrymose girl was betrothed, was taking exception to her casting herself into the wrong man’s arms.
“Indeed she is – and seems to have no conception of the proper way to behave. She is Hankham’s daughter, you know, so there is nothing wrong with her breeding, but there does seem to have been a sad want of upbringing.”
“I understand she lost her mother very young,” the Major murmured by way of explanation.
“Nonsense! She was seventeen but they’re a helter-skelter family; why, her aunt ran away and married a rogue when she was barely sixteen only to be abandoned by him less than a year later!”
The Major, rendered even more uncomfortable by this confidence – for he had already conceived a strong admiration for the aunt – thought about his own family and said, “Young people today expect to have their own way in matters of the heart.”
This innocuous observation found fertile ground in his listener. “Ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “Nobody should take any notice of young people’s declared affections – they last little more than five minutes. I understand the niece ran off too when she was not much more than a child. You see what I mean about a helter-skelter family? There is clearly no affection on her part for Stonegate – nor much that I can see on his for her!”
Letitia Or The Convalescent Heart Page 19