A Sense of Purpose

by Soliman, Wendy

  ‘I can see that my grandmother has more than met her match in you.’

  ‘She certainly keeps me on my toes.’

  ‘We are all devoted to her.’ Luke allowed a pause. ‘We missed you at dinner. You should have come down.’

  ‘My place is with the countess.’

  ‘You have to eat.’

  His concern for her wellbeing tested her resolve to remain immune to his physical presence. ‘I regret that I had no opportunity to speak privately with Miranda earlier before Charlie whipped her away, but I hear that she and Evita bonded.’

  ‘I came to enquire after Grandmamma because I am worried about her, but also in the hope of finding you here so that we could discuss Miranda.’

  ‘Then by all means.’

  Flora took a seat and listened, frowning as Luke related all that Charlie had learned from her.

  ‘You think she’s in danger?’ Flora asked breathlessly, trying to ignore his distracting presence as he prowled restlessly around the countess’s commodious sitting room. Flora allowed his earthy aroma to pervade her senses as she followed his progress. ‘We have to help her!’

  ‘I think the Coopers have been playing a waiting game. Charlie has got that much right. If they did have a hand in Defoe’s demise, Christina being excluded from his will must have come as a severe blow to their plans.’

  Flora sent him a considering look. ‘Yet she didn’t challenge it?’

  Luke shrugged. ‘Charlie plans to visit Miranda’s solicitor. She has given her permission for him to ask a few questions and we hope Fenchurch will be more forthcoming with Charlie than with a young girl who’d recently lost her father. His goddaughter, moreover, whom he probably felt an instinctive desire to protect from the unsavoury particulars.’

  ‘If he and Mr Defoe were friends, then he will probably welcome the opportunity to speak with someone who has Miranda’s interests at heart.’ She paused, her expression reflective. ‘You imagine, I suppose, that Christina did speak with Mr Fenchurch, but whatever he told her discouraged her from pursuing a claim.’

  ‘I do, and as I say, that knowledge would have severely disrupted Cooper’s plans. He had been counting on Christina inheriting so that he could use her wealth to resurrect his father’s business. That seems to be vitally important to him.’

  ‘So they had to revise their thinking.’

  ‘It appears so. Miranda was already dependent upon Christina, so it made sense for Cooper and his brothers to move in and act in loco parentis.’

  ‘To gain her trust and have her turn to them for advice and guidance, you mean?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘She has no control over her fortune. Mr Fenchurch manages it for her.’

  ‘Unless she marries.’

  Flora nodded. ‘In which case, it will pass into her husband’s hands.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Luke’s expression was uncompromisingly grim. ‘I shouldn’t be troubling you with all this.’

  ‘Nonsense! You want my help and are assured of receiving it. Please don’t worry about my sensibilities. I am stronger than I look. I have had to be,’ she added, sotto voce.

  ‘You seem so very capable, I sometimes forget how young you actually are. And unmarried. There are some aspects of this sad business to which you ought not to be exposed.’

  She sent him a dazzling smile. ‘Now I really am intrigued.’

  ‘Infuriatingly contrary woman!’ Luke shook his head. ‘Cooper appears to be a man willing to bide his time. How difficult could he have imagined it would be to bend an impressionable young girl to his will?’

  Flora blinked up at him, wishing he would stop prowling about in such a disruptive fashion, but glad that he had decided not to sit beside her. The chairs in the countess’s sitting room were closely grouped together. Too close to allow for rational thought if Luke took possession of one of them, dominating her mind and her senses with his distracting proximity.

  ‘Which is why they took her away from everything that was familiar to her,’ she said softly. ‘The better to control her and make her reliant upon them.’

  ‘That is my interpretation.’

  Flora nibbled at her index finger as she pondered the situation. ‘I fear for her wellbeing,’ she said, glancing up at Luke, who had stopped moving about and now watched her with an unfathomable expression clouding his intelligent eyes. ‘She could insist that Matthew and Theo leave her house. Well, if Theo is appointed to the position he has applied for, I dare say he will leave anyway. Matthew is the difficulty.’ She straightened her spine and lifted her chin. ‘I know you do not believe in my premonitions, but Matthew Cooper set deafening warning bells clanging in my head the moment he walked into your drawing room. The man is an idle wastrel who assumes entitlements to which he has no claim.’ She shook her head. ‘And now Miranda is alone with him to all intents and purposes,’ she added in a softer tone.

  ‘I cannot argue with your assessment of Matthew Cooper,’ he replied with a smile, ‘even if we agree to disagree on your reasons for reaching it. I don’t have the least doubt that Matthew will propose to Miranda sooner rather than later and will expect to be accepted. He is too arrogant to suppose himself resistible.’

  ‘I agree.’ Flora tapped her fingers against her knee in agitation. ‘I wish I knew how he will react when she rejects him.’

  ‘Don’t worry, my sweet.’ He finally sat beside her; far too close. And then he took her hand. ‘I think Philip deliberately went to London at the same time as Theo in order to leave the field clear for Matthew.’

  She glanced at him through anxious eyes. ‘So he will propose tonight, you imagine?’

  ‘Possibly, but he won’t resort to violence immediately. Instead he will give her time to consider his proposal, if necessary getting Christina to support his cause. They have seen changes in her. She is more assertive now that she’s back in England, but they still believe that they can influence her, just so long as they do it quickly. Anyway, Miranda is spending the day here tomorrow and dining with us, so she will be safe enough.’

  ‘And Charlie will be in London talking to her solicitor.’

  ‘He will. And Paul will be delving into Cooper’s business affairs, such as they are.’ To her relief and regret, he released her hand and stood again. ‘The more we can discover about their affairs, the happier I shall be. I have a very bad feeling about Philip Cooper. Behind that façade of charm lies a calculating brain and mountain of resentment.’

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘Be Miranda’s friend tomorrow. If she is here for the entire day and Charlie isn’t, she will need a confidante, and I would prefer it if the particulars of her difficulties are kept from my sisters.’

  ‘Willingly. I like her very much and feel great sympathy for her circumstances.’ She looked up at him expectantly. ‘But there is more, I sense. Tell me.’

  Luke ran his fingers through his hair; a habit that Flora had come to recognise when he felt disadvantaged. ‘I badly want to prove that Defoe was murdered, but I have no notion how it could have been done.’

  ‘Poison, almost certainly,’ Flora replied briskly. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I cannot help on that score. I have knowledge of herbs but know next to nothing about poisons.’

  ‘Not in fact, I am sure, but I’ll wager you know something of the theory.’

  ‘Well yes, I suppose…Poisoning is not nearly so easy to get away with nowadays,’ Flora mused. ‘But if a person were to attempt it, arsenic would be the best method. It’s not so readily obtainable since the Arsenic Act was passed thirty years ago, but it’s still out there in anything from flypaper to cosmetics. It’s tasteless, odourless and difficult to detect. I assume a doctor was called to Mr Defoe, and he probably wrote the symptoms off as a side effect of influenza.’

  ‘You make a good point about the doctor. If you get an opportunity, be so good as to ask Miranda if she recalls which physician attended her father and whether there was a post mor
tem.’

  ‘I will, but if there was a post mortem and he was poisoned, there would still have been traces of that poison in his organs.’

  ‘Most probably there wasn’t one then, which means the doctor would not have been suspicious.’

  ‘If arsenic had been fed to him over a period of time, he would have weakened gradually, but if he really had contracted influenza then it would have been used to explain away the weakness.’

  Luke scowled as he absorbed that hypothesis. ‘Wouldn’t Miranda have noticed the decline in his health?’

  ‘Probably not.’ Flora shook her head. ‘He was fiercely protective of his only child; that much we do know. He didn’t allow her to see his growing dissatisfaction with his marriage, always supposing it existed, and wouldn’t have wanted to worry her with concerns about his failing health, either.’

  ‘No, I would imagine not.’

  Flora stood. ‘Well, if that’s all, perhaps you will excuse me. I should return to the countess in case she wakes and needs anything.’

  ‘Of course. I have kept you from your duties for too long. Please send word if there is any change in Grandmamma’s condition.’ He returned to that lady’s bedchamber and bent over her to kiss her brow. ‘Good night,’ he said, hesitating in the doorway and glancing at Flora for too long.

  ‘Good night,’ she replied softly.

  She returned to her seat and could have sworn that she saw the old lady hastily closing her eyes. There was definitely a half-smile on her lips.

  *

  It was late in the afternoon by the time Miranda returned to Ashton Lodge. Christina called to her the moment she walked into the house.

  ‘There you are at last,’ she said, smiling when Miranda put her head around the drawing room door. ‘I was starting to worry that the horse had thrown you. What kept you for so long?’

  ‘The horse is a delight. I am going to buy her.’

  ‘Oh, very well. But you cannot have been riding all this time, surely.’

  ‘No. I’ve had a lovely day. Sorry if you’ve felt lonely, although you had Matthew here to entertain you.’

  ‘Oh, he’s out somewhere, but he said he would be back for dinner.’

  Miranda rang the bell and ask for tea to be brought. Then she sat down and took off her hat and gloves. She sensed that Christina was in an unsettled mood, presumably because Philip was away. She hated being parted from him. Miranda suspected that she didn’t entirely trust him when left to his own devices, but would never admit it, or attempt to cling. She had once told Miranda that men generally despised needy females and tended to lose all respect for them.

  The tea arrived and Miranda poured for them both. It was funny, she reflected, as she handed a cup to Christina, but ever since returning to England she had assumed the role of mistress of the house as a matter of course. She hadn’t done so whilst abroad, ceding that responsibility to Christina. If her stepmother had noticed the subtle change she made no mention of it.

  ‘I shall be back at Beranger Court for another fitting tomorrow and have been invited to remain for dinner, so don’t make plans that include me,’ she remarked.

  ‘Again?’ Christina frowned.

  ‘It’s a comfort for me to have friends of my own age readily to hand again. I sometimes felt lonely when we were abroad.’

  ‘Oh my dear, you didn’t say,’ Christina looked genuinely concerned. ‘I wish I had known.’

  ‘There was nothing you could have done if you had. Your husband is rightly your first concern.’

  ‘The boys could have put more effort into entertaining you.’

  ‘Hardly. They look upon me as a child.’

  ‘Not any more. Matthew remarked to me earlier that you have matured.’

  ‘My maturity or otherwise is no business of his.’

  Christina smiled in a reflective fashion. ‘He is concerned for your wellbeing, as are we all.’

  ‘He needn’t worry himself on my account. Anyway, we are back now and I am no longer lonely and confused. I enjoyed the experience of living abroad and feel more…well, worldly, I suppose, as a consequence.’

  Before Christina could respond, the door opened and Matthew breezed into the room, smelling of the outdoors and horses. An impossibly handsome man, Miranda felt nothing for him other than a mild distaste for his idleness. He threw himself into the chair beside Miranda, who poured tea for him and handed him the cup.

  ‘Miranda was just now telling me that she sometimes felt neglected during the course of our travels,’ Christina said.

  ‘I did not say neglected,’ Miranda replied. ‘And even if I had, it no longer signifies. We are back in England and I have plenty of friends upon whom I can depend.’

  Matthew took in her attire with a sweep of his eyes. ‘You’ve been riding.’

  ‘How very observant of you. I purchased a horse, as a matter of fact. A pretty Arabian mare with whom I have formed an immediate bond.’

  ‘You should have let me advise you,’ Matthew said laconically.

  ‘Why? I know as much about horseflesh as you do. And I know what I like.’

  ‘Quite the independent young woman since our return, aren’t you?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Miranda beamed, choosing to take his remark as the compliment she knew it had not been intended as. ‘Anyway,’ she added, putting aside her empty cup. ‘If you will excuse me, I’d best get cleaned up and change for dinner.’

  She swept from the room, conscious of Christina and Matthew both watching her leave. They entered into intense, muted conversation the moment she had gone, but even with her ear pressed against the door, she couldn’t make out their words. Perhaps it was better that way.

  She made her way up to her room, Charlie’s warnings sounding in her ears about Matthew’s intentions. She rang for her maid who helped her to wash and change.

  ‘Did you have a pleasant day, miss?’ Bertha asked as she styled Miranda’s hair with dexterous fingers.

  ‘Very pleasant, thank you.’

  Miranda said nothing more about her activities, despite several probing questions from Bertha. Christina had appointed the older woman to attend her shortly after Papa’s death, deeming her to have reached an age at which she required a maid of her own. Miranda didn’t like her much, and now suspected that she reported everything Miranda did and said to Christina.

  Miranda had been heartbroken when her governess, Miss Daley, had given notice and left Ashton Lodge shortly after Christina married Philip. She had been the one constant in Miranda’s life for as long as she could recall—the mother she had never known—her educator, confidante and friend. They had embraced, both in tears, when Miss Daley left. She said something about a relation being in dire need of her services. The excuse had never rung true and Miranda had recently begun to suspect Christina of deliberately separating her from her one source of comfort.

  Miranda still corresponded with Miss Daley. She knew that her former governess resided in Swindon and wondered about going to see her. As an adult, Miss Daley might be willing to tell her the truth about her conflicts with Christina. She recalled overhearing the occasional heated exchange between them, so she knew that they had clashed.

  Miranda went down to dinner and found Christina and Matthew waiting for her. They made pleasant conversation throughout the meal, reminiscing about the places they had visited whilst abroad. Miranda began to relax, hoping that Charlie had misinterpreted Matthew’s intentions and that she was seeing shadows on a cloudy day.

  Her doubts resurfaced when Matthew eschewed the port, saying he disliked imbibing alone and would prefer to join the ladies in the drawing room. Coffee had barely been taken before Christina excused herself on the pretext of having a letter to write. Since she’d had the entire day to herself in which to write it, Miranda wasn’t taken in. She briefly considered leaving the room as well. Charlie had advised her to prevaricate. However, she was no coward. She could handle Matthew’s clumsy attempts to manipulate her now that she was wis
e to him, and was curious to see how much effort he was prepared to invest in pretending an affection for her.

  She picked up the book she had been reading the previous day and opened it at the page she had reached. She ignored Matthew and pretended to be absorbed with it, even though she didn’t take in a word that she read.

  ‘You look different,’ Matthew remarked speculatively. He had arranged himself in a casual pose in a comfortable chair. Despite his disinclination for solo imbibing, he held a glass brimming with whisky in his hand.

  ‘Different how?’ Miranda asked, keeping her attention focused on her book.

  ‘More mature.’

  ‘Charming.’ She looked up and rolled her eyes at him. ‘You make me sound like a cheese.’

  ‘Maturity is a compliment.’

  ‘I shall take your word for it,’ she replied, returning her attention to her novel.

  ‘Were you really lonely while we travelled?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you think?’

  She glanced at Matthew and could see that her terse response had disturbed him.

  ‘My, but we’re snappy this evening,’ he remarked in a languid tone. ‘What have I done to offend you?’

  ‘Nothing, as far as I am aware,’ she replied, equally offhandedly. ‘Your behaviour doesn’t affect me in any way at all.’

  ‘Ouch! You know how to wound a man’s pride, Miranda.’

  ‘Oh, do stop thinking about yourself for once,’ she cried impatiently, ‘and leave me to enjoy my book.’

  She let out a little shriek when he levered himself from his chair and snatched the book from her hands. ‘I’m trying to talk to you,’ he said, an edge to his voice as he loomed over her—a child on the edge of a tantrum because he wasn’t getting his way.

  She grabbed her book back and placed it in her lap, clutching it with both hands to disguise the fact that they were shaking. Matthew was always charming and invariably good company. But tonight she was seeing a different side to him. A hard edge that he kept hidden from the world as a general rule.