by M C Beaton
And it was a long time since his lordship could remember having been so intrigued about anything.
He would call on her in the morning. Lord Reckford went to bed with a pleasurable feeling of anticipation.
Henrietta was in a thoughtful mood. She reviewed her triumph at the ball with mixed feelings. Beau Reckford liked her very much indeed but that in itself seemed to raise a barrier against his feelings becoming anything stronger. She suddenly felt weak and very feminine and wished she had a pair of strong masculine arms wrapped round her to make the uncertainties and worries of the world go away.
Chapter Seven
Two weeks of the Season had passed and Henrietta was still alive. That was a comfort, she reflected, although little else was. Lord Reckford was more fascinated by the mystery than by Miss Henrietta Sandford. At his earnest request, she had been obliged to endure the company of the people she liked least. In that way, said his lordship, he would have an opportunity to study the characters concerned and keep watch for anyone with murderous intentions.
The only person here today with murderous intentions, thought Henrietta, is myself. Lord Reckford had made up a party to visit his aunt, Lady Haddington, who lived in Streatham. Lady Belding and Alice had headed the guest list followed by none other than the elegant Mr. Ralston and his mother, a thin, faded lady who said the nastiest things in the sweetest voice and with such a charming smile that people were inclined to charitably believe that she had said something or other entirely different. Brother Henry came too, vastly honored by the Beau’s invitation. Lord Reckford’s friend, Mr. Jeremy Holmes was there, paying ardent court to Alice Belding. Miss Scattersworth enlivened the party by disposing of her wraps when it was too late for anyone to order her to go and change to show her scrawny figure coyly revealed through the near-transparent muslin of a clinging summer gown. Miss Scattersworth had transferred her affections from the curate to the rotund and overdressed person of a retired admiral, Sir Percival Jenkins.
Sir Percival was a very roguish man, fond of saying that he liked a gal with a bit of spirit, what!… dresses up to the mark, what! He ogled the bedazzled Miss Scattersworth shamelessly and Henrietta was the one who blushed.
For the hundredth time, Henrietta reverently and disloyally wished she were chaperoned by a less… well, eccentric and embarrassing lady than this late-blossoming flower of spinsterhood.
Lady Haddington had retired after luncheon for an afternoon nap, being a frail elderly lady, but she urged her guests to explore the gardens. Henrietta had taken the opportunity to escape from the company. Alice Belding had once again changed her tactics and had adopted a frank, open and friendly manner. Mr. Holmes was quite besotted and even the Beau, thought Henrietta bitterly, smiled his approval.
Henrietta saw the willowy form of Mr. Ralston approaching and glided quickly behind a yew hedge. The sun was very hot and she sank down gratefully onto a stone seat and surveyed her surroundings.
The lawns sloped down to a ha-ha and beyond the ha-ha lay an uncultivated stretch of woodland. The shade under the trees looked cool and inviting. Hearing approaching voices, Henrietta got to her feet and ran lightly over the lawns. She nimbly jumped over the ha-ha and plunged recklessly into the woods.
It was suddenly very quiet. Bars of sunlight struck down through the trees onto the mossy carpet underneath. The air was heavy with the damp woodland scents of herbs and flowers. It was pleasant to relax and leave the social world behind. Lord Reckford had indeed brought Miss. Henrietta Sandford into fashion. The past fortnight had been crowded with social events and the house in Brook Street seemed to be filled from morning to night with callers.
All London talked about was of the ‘romance’ between Henrietta and Beau Reckford. He was constantly in her company and assiduous in his attentions. But always, the eyes that met hers were open and friendly. In desperation Henrietta had tried to flirt in an awkward amateurish way but all her sallies were immediately countered by Lord Reckford’s practised gallantry. He even applauded her efforts seeming to assume that she was using him to cultivate a flirtatious social manner.
Henrietta’s appetite was beginning to fail and most of her dresses had had to be returned to the dressmaker to be taken in. The willowy figure she had long dreamed of was slowly taking shape.
Troubled by her thoughts, she wandered on through the woods, until she came to a small glade, carpeted thickly with bluebells. They spread away from her feet across the little glade and through the trees on the other side like some enchanted blue mist. She gave a sigh of sheer delight and sat down on a fallen tree trunk to enjoy the view.
Somewhere up in the dark green of the branches, a thrush began to pour out his liquid, tumbling rhapsody and Henrietta sat very still. Then under and over the glory of the bird’s song came a thin, unearthly voice, sexless and eerie. “You are going mad, Henrietta, mad, mad ma… a… d.” Henrietta gave a sob of fright and jumped to her feet looking round wildly.
The bird fell silent. “Who is there!” shouted Henrietta. A thin voice like the wind whispered in reply, “If you want to see me, look up. Look up!”
Henrietta stared up into the branches of the tree above her head and gave a scream of horror. A thin greenish mist was coiling round the upper limbs of the tree and red-eyed and horned, the face of Satan himself stared down at her with an awful smile.
As in a nightmare, Henrietta opened and shut her mouth but no sound came out. She could feel her heart beating faster and faster against her ribs and a suffocating constriction in her throat. She suddenly found her voice and the use of her legs at the same time. Screaming and sobbing, her dress torn with briars, she hurtled from the wood, leapt over the ha-ha and headlong up the lawns to the house. She threw herself into Lord Reckford’s arms, gasping and crying, “Satan! The devil is in the woods. He… he… spoke to me!”
Lord Reckford handed her over to Miss Scattersworth and he and Mr. Holmes raced off in the direction of the woods leaving Henrietta to face a circle of disbelieving eyes. “Devil, indeed!” snorted Lady Belding.
“Probably lads playing tricks.” (Sir Percival)
“Too much sun on top of all that wine.” (Alice)
“Hysterical women are always… how shall I say… exhausting.” (Mrs. Ralston)
“My dear Henrietta… such want of conduct.” (Henry)
Only Miss Scattersworth was sympathetic and, for once, Henrietta could have done without her voluble defence.
The frail figure of Lady Haddington appeared and was helped to a chaise-longue by the window. Several voices told her of Henrietta’s adventure. “How very odd,” commented her ladyship in a thin, faint voice. “I had a housemaid once who thought she saw a monk walking round the house and had us all quite frightened. But it turned out that the girl had been helping herself liberally from the cellars. She saw snakes… finally, that is….”
Lady Haddington, like many lonely elderly people had developed a habit of talking to herself and she went on as if she were alone.
“Yes, yes, that must be it,” she murmured, her head nodding under the weight of an elaborate starched and embroidered cap. “The girl drinks. Obviously, obviously. I must tell the servants to lock the cellars.”
There was an embarrassed silence and Lord Reckford arrived back with Jeremy Holmes and Mr. Ralston. The latter had helped them to search, explained Lord Reckford in a sardonic voice. Mr. Ralston had in fact stood at the edge of the woods composing a sonnet entitled “To Henrietta in Her Hour of Peril.” He had got as far as “Behold! She stands like some frightened fawn!” but had not been able to find a suitable rhyme for fawn.
“My dear, dear Henrietta,” gasped Miss Mattie, trying to pull Henrietta’s head down to her withered bosom in an attempt to copy the “Mother and Daughter” pose in a very affecting picture in the Academy. “How terrified you must have been. To be pursued by the Evil One himself. Did you smell brimstone?”
Her nonsense, however, had the effect of calming Henrietta’s fears. “I
am sure it was not the Devil. But in the first shock, you know…” She broke off in some confusion as she caught the admiral looking at her and slowly tapping his head. “Too much sun, Miss Sandford. Too much sun. Bosun got that way off Gibraltar and jumped over the side, poor fellow. ’Course, it could have been the rum.”
“Do you drink, my dear?” asked Mrs. Ralston with such a warm look of sympathy that no one could possibly believe she meant to be malicious. “I saw you empty several glasses at luncheon.” She wagged a finger at Henrietta and the admiral wagged a finger as well and Henrietta felt as if she were taking part in some strange play.
“Nothing there! Nothing at all,” sighed the Beau.
“Sure it wasn’t the heat?” asked Mr. Holmes, “or… or… you know…”
“Yes, I do know and no, I was not foxed,” said the much tried Henrietta, bursting into tears and escaping to the rooms assigned to her.
Lady Belding sniffed, “I am sure my dear Alice would never use such a cant expression.”
Alice smiled and lowered her eyelashes. “You are too hard on Henrietta, mother. I find her a truly lady-like girl.” This had the effect of making the Beau smile on her and Mr. Holmes to fall even deeper in love… which was exactly what Alice intended.
Henrietta sat at her bedroom window feeling bewildered and miserable. Everyone thought she was mad or bosky or both. She had had as much wine as the other ladies at luncheon, no more, no less. Here, in the safety of the house, with the reassuring murmur of voices rising up the stairwell, it began to seem as if she had imagined the whole thing. The face hanging, disembodied in the trees, the wreaths of smoke, seemed more like a dream than something that had actually happened. She wished they did not have to stay the night.
There was a gentle knock at her door and she wearily got to her feet to answer it. It was Lord Reckford, smiling down at her. As usual, Henrietta’s poor heart gave a painful lurch. “If I did not know I was in love,” thought Henrietta, “I would swear I had the symptoms of some terrible illness.” Well, Donne had thought it a severe malady. “Who’ll believe me if I swear, that I have had the plague a year.”
Lord Reckford followed her into the room, punctiliously leaving the door ajar.
“Perhaps it would be a good idea if I slept in your bed tonight, Miss Sandford.” As Henrietta blushed furiously, he hastened to explain. “I do believe your story of the face in the woods, Miss Sandford. But I think you have been the victim of a nasty, practical joke. Now, if you could remove to Miss Scattersworth’s room, say, at midnight, I will take your place. Then the joker will have me to deal with.”
Henrietta looked at him shyly from under her lashes. They were alone in her bedroom after all. But his lordship’s handsome face only showed interest in catching her tormenter. “Are you sure you will be awake at midnight in order to change your room?” he asked.
“Of course,” replied Henrietta. “I shall not sleep a wink in any case, I can assure you!”
“That’s my girl!” said the elegant Beau with a fond smile and, to her dismay, he gave her an affectionate slap on the back before he left the room.
“It’s too bad,” thought the much mortified Henrietta. “He would never dare slap Alice on the back. I feel like his pet hound!”
She planned to eat very little dinner but her beloved seemed to be drinking rather a great deal and was flirting lightly with Alice. Dismally Henrietta threw her churning stomach down great lumps of food as if trying to quiet a savage dog. By the time the ladies retired to leave the gentlemen to their wine, Henrietta’s dress, which had recently been taken in, was uncomfortably tight at the seams. She felt round and placid and dull like… a… suet dumpling beside the glittering Alice. Certainly Alice switched off the glitter when the gentlemen were not present but on the other hand neither did she feel it necessary to be sweet to Henrietta.
“I hear your son means to wed Miss Sandford,” remarked Alice to Mrs. Ralston in a conversational voice.
“So he tells me,” snapped Mrs. Ralston and then suddenly a smile of great beauty illuminated her thin features. “But I think that he should carefully reconsider. Money can be little comfort when one’s wife is mad.”
“Are you, by any chance, referring to me?” gasped Henrietta. Mrs. Ralston’s smile had been worthy of a madonna and it seemed incredible that she had actually meant what she had just said.
Mrs. Ralston did not reply. She merely gave another of her beautiful smiles and then shook her head sadly.
“Who is mad?” queried the faint voice of their hostess. “Is it that gel who drinks too much?”
There was a silence broken by an audible snigger from Alice. Lady Belding felt that Henrietta had had enough attention and launched forth at great length on the presumption of a young man who had called at the Belding town house and claimed to be a distant relation.
“But he could not possibly be,” said Lady Belding. “You see, he had not the Nose. And so I told him. He had a nose like a squashed cabbage leaf. Now, the Nose…” here Lady Belding turned her profile to the company… “The Nose has visited the field at Crecy. The Nose was wounded at Agincourt. The Nose…” her voice dropped dramatically… “rode to England in Norman the Conqueror’s rearguard.”
Please God, let me not laugh, prayed Henrietta desperately. Her throat hurt with the effort and the tears stood out in her eyes. The gentlemen were arriving to join them. She must not laugh.
“How wonderful,” breathed Miss Scattersworth… “to think of such an aristocratic piece of anatomy woven into history’s tapestry. The nose at the signing of the Magna Carta. The nose with Richard the Third when he cried, ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse,’” roared Miss Mattie.
It was too much. Henrietta howled with laughter till the tears rolled down her cheeks. Everyone stared at her and then exchanged significant looks. The gentlemen had entered the room and Henry moved forward to take his sister’s arm. “Go to your room, Henrietta,” he ordered. “You are completely overwrought. Go and lie down, my dear.”
Henrietta began to feel as if she might be a little mad. Had none of the other ladies found Lady Belding’s discourse funny? But there they all sat, as solemnly as owls.
She sighed and moved to leave the room. A soft whisper of “midnight” from Lord Reckford caught her ear and she nodded briefly to show him that she had heard.
She undressed and climbed into the huge fourposter bed and blew out the candle. It was only two hours to wait until midnight. She would creep into Mattie’s room and leave the coast clear for his lordship. She doubted if she would manage to sleep at all.
But the great amount of food she had consumed at dinner hit her like a drug and she fell instantly asleep.
At precisely midnight, Lord Reckford crept into Henrietta’s room. He was fully dressed, not having wanted to encounter anyone in the passage dressed in his night shirt. He settled himself in a chair by the window and prepared to wait. But the chair was hard and uncomfortable. There could be no harm in going to bed and stretching out. He might fall asleep but he would certainly awaken before the servants. And if anyone wanted to frighten or attack Henrietta, they would certainly have something planned that would awaken her.
Accordingly, he stripped off his clothes, placed them neatly on the chair, and with a sigh of relief, climbed into bed.
The sheets smelled faintly of lavender and he stretched himself out and prepared to wait. Suddenly, a small answering sigh caught his ear. He abruptly sat up and, fumbling around for the tinder box, lit the candle beside the bed. He turned and looked down at the sleeping figure of Miss Henrietta Sandford and swore roundly.
For one dreadful minute, he thought that she might have stayed in her bed deliberately in order to coerce him into marriage. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“Miss Sandford!” he whispered, shaking her shoulder.
Grumbling like a sleepy child, Henrietta slowly came awake… and then sat bolt upright with a gasp of alarm. She stared into Lord
Reckford’s enigmatic face. The tawny eyes were inscrutable. Her bewildered gaze finally registered that, as much as she could see of his lordship, was stark naked and she gave another gasp and cowered back against the pillows.
“There is no need to be so shocked, Miss Sandford,” said the Beau dryly. “This has only come about because you fell asleep instead of removing to Miss Scattersworth’s room.”
Henrietta blinked to drive the last remnants of sleep from her wide eyes and then began to blush. She could feel herself blush from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. “I… I… am t-truly s-sorry, my lord,” she stammered. “I will leave immediately.”
“Wait a bit,” said Lord Reckford. “Since we are alone, we can take this opportunity to discuss the business and see if we can imagine which of the guests would wish to harm you.”
Henrietta nodded weakly. The Beau put his hands behind his head and settled himself comfortably against the pillows. “I am inclined to favor Ralston. What do you think?”
His companion was practically incapable of thought. Waves of violent emotion roused by the close proximity of this naked man were threatening to tear her apart. And underneath it all, was a faint cold feeling of pique that his lordship should be so absolutely and completely unaware of her as a woman.
Incurably honest, Henrietta replied with a certain edge to her trembling voice. “You must forgive me, my lord, if I seem somewhat distraught but I am not in the habit of sharing my bed with a member of the opposite sex. It may be an everyday matter for you….”
Lord Reckford burst out laughing and a mocking light began to dance in his eyes. “Poor Henrietta, how I must be shocking you! I declare I am so intrigued by the mystery of your tormentor that I had quite forgot the conventions. I suppose you feel compromised and wonder why I do not propose.”
“Fustian!” said Henrietta, anger driving away her embarrassment. “If and when I get married, it will be to some gentleman who is in love with me.” Henrietta’s hand started to pluck nervously at the bedspread and then she found it covered by Lord Reckford’s long fingers.