by M C Beaton
M. C. Beaton is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, several Regency romance series and a stand-alone murder mystery, The Skeleton in the Closet – all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit www.mcbeatonbooks.co.uk for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter: @mc_beaton.
Titles by M. C. Beaton
The Poor Relation
Lady Fortescue Steps Out • Miss Tonks Turns to Crime • Mrs Budley Falls from Grace
Sir Philip’s Folly • Colonel Sandhurst to the Rescue • Back in Society
A House for the Season
The Miser of Mayfair • Plain Jane • The Wicked Godmother
Rake’s Progress • The Adventuress • Rainbird’s Revenge
The Six Sisters
Minerva • The Taming of Annabelle • Deirdre and Desire
Daphne • Diana the Huntress • Frederica in Fashion
Edwardian Murder Mysteries
Snobbery with Violence • Hasty Death • Sick of Shadows
Our Lady of Pain
The Travelling Matchmaker
Emily Goes to Exeter • Belinda Goes to Bath • Penelope Goes to Portsmouth
Beatrice Goes to Brighton • Deborah Goes to Dover • Yvonne Goes to York
Edwardian Candlelight
Polly • Molly • Ginny • Tilly • Susie • Kitty • Daisy • Sally • Maggie • Poppy • Pretty Polly • Lucy • My Lords, Ladies and Marjorie
Regency Candlelight
Annabelle • Henrietta • Penelope
Regency Royal
The Westerby Inheritance • The Marquis Takes a Bride • Lady Anne’s Deception • Lady Margery’s Intrigue • The Savage Marquess • My Dear Duchess • The Highland Countess • Lady Lucy’s Lover • The Ghost and Lady Alice • Love and Lady Lovelace • Duke’s Diamonds • The Viscount’s Revenge • The Paper Princess • The Desirable Duchess • The Sins of Lady Dacey • The Dreadful Debutante • The Chocolate Debutante • The Loves of Lord Granton • Milady in Love • The Scandalous Marriage
Regency Scandal
His Lordship’s Pleasure • Her Grace’s Passion • The Scandalous Lady Wright
Regency Flame
Those Endearing Young Charms • The Flirt • Lessons in Love • Regency Gold • Miss Fiona’s Fancy • The French Affair • To Dream of Love • A Marriage of Inconvenience • A Governess of Distinction • The Glitter of Gold
Regency Season
The Original Miss Honeyford • The Education of Miss Paterson • At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple • Sweet Masquerade ?The Constant Companion • Quadrille • The Perfect Gentleman • Dancing on the Wind • Ms. Davenport’s Christmas
The Waverly Women
The First Rebellion • Silken Bonds • The Love Match
Agatha Raisin
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener • Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage • Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam • Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate • Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance • Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon
Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor
Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye
Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison • Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride
Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body • Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns
Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers • Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble
Hamish Macbeth
Death of a Gossip • Death of a Cad • Death of an Outsider
Death of a Perfect Wife • Death of a Hussy • Death of a Snob
Death of a Prankster • Death of a Glutton • Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Charming Man • Death of a Nag • Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Dentist • Death of a Scriptwriter • Death of an Addict
A Highland Christmas • Death of a Dustman • Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Village • Death of a Poison Pen • Death of a Bore
Death of a Dreamer • Death of a Maid • Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Witch • Death of a Valentine • Death of a Sweep
Death of a Kingfisher • Death of Yesterday
The Skeleton in the Closet
Also available
The Agatha Raisin Companion
Lady Lucy’s Lover
M. C. Beaton
Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First electronic edition published 2011
by RosettaBooks LLC, New York
This edition published in the UK by Canvas,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013
Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1984
The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-47210-138-9 (ebook)
Cover copyright © Constable & Robinson
TO MARION AND JOHN LESLEY
WITH LOVE
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter One
“But I don’t want a lover. I am in love with my husband,” said Lady Lucy, turning around from her escritoire and looking in amazement at her friend, Mrs. Ann Hartford.
“I find the suggestion outrageous,” added Lucy, Marchioness of Standish, “coming as it does from a respectable matron like yourself!”
Mrs. Hartford fanned herself lazily and looked at her friend with amusement. “You are upset and distressed and jealous, Lucy,” she said. “I would like to see that feckless husband of yours made to feel the same.”
“Guy is not feckless,” snapped Lady Lucy, beginning to sharpen a quill pen with unnecessary vigor, “and… and… furthermore, I do not discuss my husband with anyone. Even you, Ann.”
She turned back to the desk so that Mrs. Hartford should not see the tears in her eyes, and said in a light voice, “We are going to the Courtlands’ ball tonight. Will you be there?”
Ann gave a wry smile, answered in the affirmative, and then began to talk lightly of the latest on-dits and the latest fas
hions while Lady Lucy regained control of her emotions and was able to turn and face her friend once more.
All the while she was talking, Mrs. Hartford was studying her friend’s pretty face. She and Lucy had grown up together on neighboring estates in Sussex. Ann, thin and gawky, and four years older than Lucy, had blossomed into a fashionable young lady and had soon become wed to Mr. Giles Hartford, a rich member of the untitled aristocracy. Lucy had married the year after when she had reached only her eighteenth birthday. Her choice had been the handsome Marquess of Standish. Worldly wise Ann had cautioned her friend that the Marquess had a reputation as a rake and gambler. But in the first flush of love, Lucy would not hear a word against her paragon.
The Marquess and Lucy had been married a little under a year and rumor had it that the wild Marquess was wilder then ever and had returned to the experienced arms of one of London’s leading courtesans, Harriet Comfort. Lady Lucy, a sparkling sunny beauty with golden hair and wide blue eyes, had gradually changed.
The innocent candor of her expression had turned to one of hurt wariness. Her former carefree laughter was hardly ever heard and she increasingly made her appearance at the opera, the rout, or in the Park at the fashionable hour on her own.
But Lady Lucy had comforted herself and her pride with the thought that the world still probably viewed herself and her husband as a happily married couple, and Ann’s remark about taking a lover had shocked her to the core. Was the disaster of her marriage so obvious? Had she become an object of pity?
She forced herself to chat as easily and lightly as she could, feeling all the while a lump rising in her throat. She had never before had any secrets from Ann, but Lucy would not gossip about her husband. To admit, even to Ann, that the marriage was on the rocks would somehow kill all hope.
At last, to Lucy’s relief, Ann rose to take her leave. She impulsively kissed Lucy on the cheek and said, “You are a good girl, Lucy, and I love you dearly. You will always have a home with me and Giles, should you wish.”
“La! I have a home in town here, a home in the country, a barn of a place in Yorkshire, and a hunting box in Leicester. I think I am well supplied with homes,” said Lucy, trying to laugh but ending up on a pathetic little croak.
“I think you know what I mean,” said Ann, suddenly serious. And with that, she moved from the room with all the lithe grace which had turned her angular body and bony face into that of a much-admired leader of London society.
With her departure, the house suddenly seemed very quiet.
Dust motes floated in the shafts of sunlight from the long windows overlooking Clarence Square. Lady Lucy stood for a moment studying her face in the greenish looking glass hung in a corner of the room. She could no longer tell whether she was pretty or not. At one time, she had delighted in her own beauty because it had brought her to the attention of Guy, the most dashing and handsome young man on the London scene. She had met him during her first Season and had been married before the Season was over.
Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hyde-Benton, had been delighted with the match… too delighted to counsel their daughter against marrying a young man with such a wild reputation. Mr. Hyde-Benton had been plain Mr. Hyde in his youth, and a struggling young barrister with very little money. It was whispered he had made his fortune gambling. Now he craved a foothold in the ranks of the aristocracy which simple money could not buy him. His wife shared his ambitions. Lucy had tried to hint only a bare month before that all was not well with her marriage, but her parents had looked so outraged at the very suggestion that an aristocrat could do any wrong that Lucy had given up the attempt.
Now Lucy wondered how she had failed her husband. What had driven him back to the arms of his mistress? In the early days, their lovemaking had been tumultuous and quick, the Marquess rolling over on his side and dropping off to sleep as soon as it was over. Lucy had been vaguely disappointed, but young enough to enjoy the affectionate attention of her young husband at balls and parties when they went out together.
On public occasions, he showed all the tenderness and sweetness towards her that mysteriously evaporated as soon as they were alone.
But she had been sure of his love.
And then little by little he had begun to slip away from her. The house and estates in the country were left neglected. Now another Season was about to begin and they had not left town, even for a day.
Lucy had seen the famous Harriet Comfort. Ann had pointed out that lady when she and Lucy were driving in the Park. The courtesan had looked more like a respectable mondaine matron than a member of the Fashionable Impure and that made it all seem harder to bear. An absolutely stunning beauty would have made matters easier to understand. But Harriet—with her correct clothes and her patrician nose and large, liquid, slightly protruding eyes—hardly seemed to have the face or figure to launch a thousand ships, let alone drive one young lord from his marriage bed.
Then there were the increasing amounts of unpaid bills which were stuffed carelessly into the pigeonholes of her husband’s desk. Any suggestion that they might be paid was greeted with scorn by her husband, who was in the habit of pointing out that only common people paid their tradesmen’s bills.
Their townhouse was beautifully furnished in the latest fashion. Thin spindly chairs straddled their rosewood legs across the pale blues and creams of oriental carpets. The upholstery was mostly of striped silk and the curtains at the windows were of heavy striped silk also. Every sofa was backless and striped. It was sometimes like living in an elegant silk cage, thought Lucy, who missed the unfashionable clutter of her Sussex family home.
And then there were the clocks. Everyone who had attended the wedding had given them a clock, it seemed, and they ticked busily away in the silence of the house.
Although the butler faithfully wound them every day, they never seemed to chime at the same time. The tall case clocks boomed sonorously, the little gilt ones tinkled, and the grim marble ones emitted silvery chimes. Yet all the chattering, ticking and tocking and whispering of the clocks seemed to intensify the silence, as if underlining the fact that time was flying, flying, flying and the master was always from home.
London was bewildering to a young matron who was not yet old enough to have acquired a protective veneer of town bronze. In this the new nineteenth century, the dissipations of the last seemed to be intensified, with many of the members of the ton being driven by boredom into eccentricity. Snobbery and exclusiveness were increasing. Almack’s, those famous assembly rooms, was paramount, ruled by its ten great patronesses with a rod of iron. The round of fun, fighting, cock fights, bets, routs, operas, assemblies, and tarts was trodden industriously and lampooned ferociously by Rowlandson in his cartoons, and in other cartoons, notably “The Adventures of Tom and Jerry.”
The clubs and the great political houses focused the intellectual, political, and fashionable worlds; Devonshire House for the Tories, Holland House for the Whigs.
The only sin was to be Found Out. Liaisons and affairs were permissible only if they were never brought to the notice of society or the press. Complaisant husbands often accepted their wives’ illegitimate offspring as their own. Very few men were considerate enough to use contraceptives, the Marquess going so far as to tell his blushing bride that he supposed she would breed quite soon and those fine kid leather sheaths were disgusting and making love with one of them on was like taking a bath in your stockings.
But Lucy had not become pregnant. She longed for a child with all her heart, hoping that the birth of a boy and heir to the Marquess would surely make him settle down and become accustomed to the responsibilities of marriage.
The rattling of carriage wheels on the cobbles outside made Lucy fly to the window. Her husband had arrived home. But in what a condition!
He was being supported up the steps by two friends who were scarcely more sober than the Marquess himself. Lucy ran into the hall just as the butler opened the door.
The Marquess’s friends wer
e sober enough to register the outrage on the Marchioness’s pretty face and unceremoniously dropped their bundle onto the tiles of the hall floor, making a stumbling, hasty departure. The butler snapped his fingers and two footmen came running forward to lift my lord from the floor and carry him to bed. Feet trailing on the ground, the Marquess was dragged across the hall, his arms around the shoulders of the footmen. He let out an inane giggle and looked slyly at his wife. “Bit foxed, my sweeting,” he mumbled.
The footmen stood irresolute. “Take my lord upstairs and put him to bed,” snapped Lucy, and, turning on her heel, she walked back into the drawing room and slammed the door.
Of course, he had come home drunk many times before, but never in the middle of the afternoon. After a while, Lucy began to chide herself for being missish. Her husband was behaving like any other man. Somehow, she, Lucy, had failed him as a wife, which was why he found it necessary to seek his pleasures elsewhere. She must make one tremendous effort to look as beautiful as possible at the Courtlands’ ball. She would be loving and affectionate. She would charm him as she had done in the past, and their married life would become the way she had always dreamed it should be.
Lucy decided to take a nap to fortify herself for the social rigors of the night to come and by the time she fell asleep she had thoroughly made up her mind that she was a very hardhearted and selfish wife indeed.
Did not all men drink to excess and gamble to excess? Only the other day, it was said that a man had collapsed in front of White’s Club in St. James’s and the members had crowded to the window and had immediately begun laying bets as to whether he would live or die. A passerby had suggested bleeding the poor man but had been howled down by the gamblers who protested that this would affect the fairness of the betting.
She remembered the Marquess as he had been during the brief period of their engagement—warm and loving and tender. And so with the resilient optimism of youth, Lady Lucy fell asleep, convinced she would awake to a different world and a different marriage.
It was very hard to accept the reality of the situation when she was at last dressed in a gown of sheerest muslin, embroidered with seed pearls and worn over a slip of white satin.