by M C Beaton
The swing was hung on two ropes from the branch of an oak tree. Lucy sat on the swing and gave a gasp as she seemed to fly up in the branches, her hat falling to the ground and her golden hair tumbling about her shoulders. “Not so hard, Simon.” She laughed. “Please stop. I would rather deal with any admirers sitting on a secure and unmoving sofa!”
He let the swing go and watched as Lucy swung lower and lower, the thin muslin of her dress molded against her body, her rioting tumbling hair, falling about her face, shining in the sunlight.
All of a sudden he caught the ropes of the swing and she tossed back her hair and turned a laughing face up to his.
“Oh, God help me,” he said with such force that her face paled. “You enchant me.”
He bent and kissed her passionately as if his whole mind and body and soul were behind that one kiss, and her mounting passion rose to her lips and answered his. And so they stayed, held by passion, fused by passion. Two still figures on a sunny landscape.
And that is how Guy, Marquess of Standish, found them.
Chapter Seven
The Marquess of Standish had ridden out from London feeling like a new man and with all his good and shining resolutions to keep him company. But as the miles fell behind, the murder of Wilkins seemed like a bad dream. And, after all, he, the Marquess, had not actually committed it.
Li and Harriet Comfort and Mr. Barrington seemed unreal on this lovely sunny day. He had meant to reach Mullford Hall by nightfall, but all of a sudden a charming ale house with a pretty garden seemed to beckon. The tavern wench was as attractive as the inn. It was not as if he had to hurry, he told himself. Barrington’s sneer about losing his wife was ridiculous. Lucy had been upset, of course, and had no right to run to Habard at that shocking time of the day. But Habard had done the correct thing by taking her to his mother. Poor old Lucy, thought the Marquess with a return of some of his old malice.
She probably hoped to take Habard as a lover to make me jealous, but she picked someone too high in the instep. Poor Lucy! he thought again. The Duke would never form a tendre for such a schoolgirl as she. Silly little thing.
And with these comfortable thoughts, the Marquess settled down to dally at the inn and dally with the tavern maid, and so the sun was high in the sky next day when he swung himself up onto his horse and set out once more.
Now he regretted having only brought a single change of clothes, since, at the outset, he had meant to borrow the Duke’s traveling carriage and take Lucy straight home. That way he could enjoy the ride out without encumbering himself with excessive baggage and servants.
But as he approached the magnificence of Mullford Hall, he began to wish he had arrived in style. To cover up for this, he ordered the Duke’s servants about very haughtily, commanding that his dusty saddlebags be unstrapped and put in his wife’s rooms.
Being informed that the Duke and Lady Standish were “somewhere about the grounds,” he fortified himself with two brimmers of canary and decided to find his wife before he changed. It would look more loverlike to appear before her in all his travel stains—and besides, he had only the one change of clothes and should reserve those for dinner.
He heard Lucy’s voice coming from the west, borne on the breeze. She was laughing and shouting something.
He turned a corner of the west wing… and stopped, frozen, rooted to the spot.
As still as china figurines, the Duke and Guy’s wife were locked in an embrace so passionate, so still, that not a fold of Lucy’s gown moved.
All hell broke loose in the Marquess’s head. This was his wife, his possession, as much as his lands and houses and horses. Rather than surrender an inch of his lands, he had conspired to kill the Prime Minister. To him, Lucy was in line with his other possessions.
Without pausing for thought, he strode forward. The couple broke apart; Lucy startled and white, the Duke grim.
The Marquess pulled off one of his gloves and struck the Duke across the face.
“I am returning to London with my wife,” he spat out. “Your seconds may find me in town where I will furnish them with the name of my seconds. Come, Lucy.”
“This is madness,” said Lucy.
“Madness! To be cuckolded, madam?” He seized Lucy by the wrist and dragged her from the swing.
“I won’t go,” she said wildly. “Simon! Help me!”
“You must go,” said the Duke gravely. “You are his wife and it is a matter of honor.”
Lucy tore herself away from Guy and ran towards the house, tears streaming down her face. He did not love her. He did not want her. What was this thing about honor? She did not understand.
But Guy did, and he smiled slowly at the Duke before he turned away. He knew, by all the laws of society, that the Duke was in the wrong. He knew himself to be one of the best shots in England. His anger had evaporated as quickly as it had blown up and he felt elated and cocky. It would do his social prestige no harm at all to drop a hint here and there that he was dueling with the great Duke of Habard.
The old Guy was back.
The Duke stayed for a long time. The swing moved gently to and fro until he put out an impatient hand to still it.
Men may philander, women may not. They did, of course, and no one minded—that is, until they were found out.
By the laws of society, he was in the wrong and the profligate Marquess was in the right. He thought ruefully of the Marquess’s renowned expertise with firearms.
Standish was insufferable. But he had been married to Lucy in church and before the eyes of God and the top ten thousand; she was his wife to do with as he pleased.
On the road back to London, Guy, seated comfortably in a corner of the Duke’s well-sprung traveling carriage, berated his wife on her disgraceful behavior. It had been easy to extract the truth from Lucy that there had been no serious affair.
Feeling righteous was a new and heady experience for the Marquess and he was making the most of it.
They passed the night at an inn on the road, the Marquess, to Lucy’s relief, reserving separate bedchambers.
The next day his tirade continued. When they reached the house in Clarence Square by noon, Lucy’s nerves were in shreds.
Heedless of the listening servants, she rounded on him in the hall.
“I am leaving you, my lord,” she said coldly. “I have endured enough of your pompous behavior.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” he sneered. He grabbed her arm and twisted it painfully behind her back. “You will stay locked in your room,” he said, forcing her up the stairs. “And mere you will wait until tonight to pleasure me like a good wife should.”
“No!” spat Lucy. “Never again will you touch me!”
“There ain’t nothing you can do about it, my lady.” He grinned. He threw her into her room and locked the door and pocketed the key.
Lucy hammered furiously on the door. “You will not touch me,” she screamed through the panels. “I will shoot you first. Do you hear me, Guy? I will shoot you first.”
The Marquess laughed and sauntered down the stairs. He gave instructions to the wide-eyed servants that my lady was to be kept under lock and key. And then he left to brag around the clubs of his forthcoming duel until a friend pointed out that every one of the eight Bow Street Runners in London must have heard about it and would surely put a stop to it.
Gone, however, were all the Marquess’s good resolutions. He drank and gambled and gambled and drank; until he was feeling in a fit mood to take just revenge on his wife. He stood on the steps of Watier’s, pulling on his gloves and waiting for his carriage, when he espied the other four conspirators making their way along the street: Jerry Carruthers, Harry Chalmers, the Earl of Oxtead, and Sir Percival Burke.
His eyes gleaming with malice, the Marquess hailed them.
“We meet again, gentlemen,” he crowed. “And if it isn’t Mr. Carruthers. Well, well, well. Enter first murderer.”
“Stow your gab,” hissed Harry Chalmers, look
ing over his shoulder.
“Y’know,” said the Marquess cheerfully. “We were fools to let Barrington get away with it. We could still take him.”
The deed is done, Standish,” said Sir Percival. “Keep silent or it will be the worse for you.”
“Are you threatening me?” demanded the Marquess truculantly. “Well, it’s all right for you weasels to run scurrying when Barrington snaps his fingers. But we Standishes are made of different stuff. I will tell if I feel like it or keep quiet. But it will be whichever suits me.” He waved to his coachman. “I shall not need the carriage, John. I have decided to walk.”
He grinned again at the conspirators, crammed his bicorne at a drunken angle on his fair curls, and sauntered off whistling. The four watched him go.
Ann Hartford called on Lucy Standish that evening and refused to listen to Wilson the butler’s stately announcement that “my lady is not home.”
“Stuff,” said Ann rudely. “I saw her face at the window as I was getting down from the carriage.”
“One of the chambermaids perhaps…?”
“Fiddle. What is going on, Wilson?”
There came a furious banging at a door upstairs and Lucy’s voice screamed, “Ann! Help me!”
Ann gave the butler a startled look and ran past him and up the stairs.
“Lucy!” she called, rattling the handle. “This door is locked.”
“I know it’s locked,” called Lucy. “Guy has taken the key. Oh, you must get me out.”
“Have the servants a duplicate?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, what about the door to your sitting room?”
“Anne, it’s locked as well. Of course I tried it.”
“He may have forgotten to take that key as well,” said Ann. Lucy’s sitting room adjoined her bedroom.
Ann ran along the corridor and smiled triumphantly as she saw the key in the lock. Lucy almost fell into her arms as she opened the door.
“Now, now,” said Ann Hartford soothingly. “What is all this I hear? Guy is babbling in the clubs about you and the Duke and that he is to fight a duel with Habard. It’s too nonsensical!”
“Oh, Ann it’s true,” wailed Lucy. “And I love him so.”
“Guy is not worth your love.”
“Not Guy. Simon!”
“Oh, dear,” said Ann, sitting down suddenly. “This is terrible. You must not, Lucy. Habard is a charming man, but a heartbreaker. He has been philandering, that is all.”
“No,” said Lucy fiercely. “No.”
“He said he loved you, I suppose.”
“Well, n-no he didn’t, Ann, but I could see.…”
“And he encouraged you to get a divorce?”
“Oh, no, he is much too respectable to do that.”
“Really! So he kisses and hugs you or, for all I know, introduces you to the delights of his bed, and yet he is in love with you!”
“Stop! Stop!” said Lucy with her hands over her ears. “You make it sound so grubby.”
“Enough of this. Are you frightened of Guy?”
“Yes, so very frightened. He is… he is going to force me to pleasure him as… as… revenge.”
“Then you will come home with me immediately,” said Ann briskly. “No, don’t ring for your maid. Leave everything. My servants can fetch your trunks in the morning and you shall stay with me until this ridiculous duel is over.”
“There will be no duel,” said Lucy. “For I am going to inform Bow Street.”
“Nonsense. If either Habard or Guy found out then neither of them would look at you again. You do not understand gentlemen and the emphasis they put on these affairs of honor.”
“Well, never mind,” said Lucy. “I must leave, and quickly.”
The two women crept down the stairs. The servants were all out of sight. Wilson, the butler, who had been listening at the door, had scurried away. If my lady left, it must appear to be without his knowledge.
Ann and Lucy emerged on the doorstep and were halted by an enraged shout from across the square.
The Marquess of Standish had seen them. His eyes gleaming dangerously in the flickering light of the parish lamps, he lurched toward them.
Lucy let out a little scream and clutched Ann.
And then a shot rang out. The Marquess felt a teriffic blow in his back and staggered forward. Lucy’s white face seemed startlingly near and clear and then it began to blur and fade.
Making a superhuman effort, he lurched forward and fell by the steps at her feet, clutching a fold of her dress in his hand.
The house was in an uproar as servants tumbled out, shouting, “Hey, watch! Watch! Murder! Murder!” And then came the rickety clatter of the watchman’s rattle at the end of the square.
Lucy knelt and pillowed Guy’s head in her lap. For a moment his mind and his vision cleared. He knew he was dying, dying and leaving Lucy to Habard. He looked solemnly up into her eyes and whispered, “I love you, Lucy. D-don’t m-marry anyone else.”
“Oh, I won’t, Guy,” said Lucy with tears streaming down her face. “Of course I won’t.”
The Marquess gave a little smile, a little cough, and died with his head in her lap. Ann Hartford, who had caught his last words, thought bitterly that it was like the man to be as self-centered in his last gasp as he had been in his life.
For a time it seemed as if Lucy would be suspected for the murder of her husband. Had not the servants heard her shouting that she would shoot him?
But when the furor died down and the servants realized that the Marchioness had inherited everything belonging to the Marquess, and after grumbling that it sounded like a very “Scotch arrangement” since they had been sure they and the property would go to a nephew, they made a turn-about and calmed down to present the true facts of the case—namely that the Marchioness had been locked in her room all day and had been on the point of leaving with Mrs. Hartford when the Marquess had been shot.
But ugly rumors still circulated. The Marquess had said he was to fight a duel with the Duke of Habard. The Marquess was an expert shot. The Duke of Habard was in love with the Marchioness. Therefore it followed that the couple had conspired to rid themselves of the unwanted husband.
Scandal sheets appeared in the booksellers’ shops with cartoons of a painted and voluptuous-looking Lucy handing the Duke a gun, and, like Lady Macbeth saying, “If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”
A mob began to gather in Clarence Square daily—not so many weeks after the funeral was over—to jeer the little Marchioness every time she emerged from seclusion.
Lucy had not heard from the Duke of Habard. She herself had no intention of communicating with him ever again. Guilt had struck her like a hammer blow when the dying Guy had said he loved her. As time passed and the ugly rumors persisted, Lucy began to think that the Duke might possibly have done the deed. She did not realize that she was so anxious to expunge all thoughts of him from her mind that she was ripe to believe the worst.
At last, becoming increasingly afraid of the anger of the mob, Lucy decided to retreat to Standish, the Marquess’s country home that she had only seen once before.
It was when she was driving through the village of Standish that the cure to all her miseries began to take place.
Her wide eyes noticed barefoot, shabby children playing in the dust outside rundown cottage doors.
Lucy’s parents, for all their social climbing, had instilled in her the basic grounding for running a country estate.
“See the land is in good heart and the tenants are clothed and fed,” her father had said, “and you will have no fear of riots.”
Standish itself was an old Tudor mansion which was fortunately in better repair than the village, the old Marquess having put a great deal of money into the restoration. Lucy settled down to her new role with a will, interviewing the steward and then the tenant farmers, the vicar, and the tenants themselves, and beginning to feel an easi
ng of the pain and worry over her husband’s death as she lost herself in all this activity.
The money the Marquess had milked out of the estate had been quite amazing, and with this new shattering proof of her late husband’s sheer self-interest, a little of the guilt she felt over his death began to disappear.
Although the Marquess had left staggering debts, the steward, a very sensible man called Mr. Joseph Berry, pointed out that without the immense drain on the estate caused by his lordship’s bills, they should very shortly come about. Lucy gave instructions that the hunting box in Leicester was to be sold and the townhouse in Clarence Square. The proceeds from these sales were to be ploughed into the Standish estate and the estate in the north. The steward reflected there was a lot to be said for her ladyship coming from the more practical-minded middle class rather than the aristocracy. She seemed to have no interest in keeping up appearances and promptly put all her jewels up for sale.
She gave instructions that the furniture from the townhouse should be sent to Standish with the exception of the clocks. She did not think she could bear the sound of all that ticking and tocking again.
Ann Hartford arrived after Lucy had been in residence for some months, bringing her husband with her, and the intelligence that the authorities had decided the Marquess’s death was the result of an attack by some footpad. She did not mention the Duke of Habard. She did, however, bring some disquieting news. Ann had agreed to supervise the carting of the furniture from Clarence Square. She said she had found that the Marquess’s study had been ransacked. Papers were lying all over the floor and furniture had been overturned. It was assumed the burglars had been surprised and had not had time to take anything of value.
Two days after her arrival, Ann was seated in the cheerful, sunny morning room, helping Lucy repair curtains for the drawing room, when she suddenly put down her sewing and said, “Lucy. I did not like to speak of this so soon after Guy’s death but it has been preying on my mind. You are young and pretty—too young and pretty to be burdened with the cares of the estate.”