by M C Beaton
“There is no reason to pay me anything,” he said, almost angrily. “But I am glad you have such a powerful friend. You will be in sore need of her. Here is my card with my London address. Call on me should you need anything.”
“You are very kind,” said Annabelle stiffly.
“I am only doing my duty,” he replied and then felt as if Annabelle had retreated from him to the other side of a great gulf.
“I shall leave you now,” he said. “All my best wishes for your future.”
Annabelle sat looking straight ahead as he left the room.
As soon as the door had closed behind him, she slowly opened the parcel. There was Guy’s gold watch, which he had miraculously not pawned, sold, or gambled away, and one hundred pounds in notes. Annabelle turned them over. Notes, again! Men usually gambled in sovereigns. The owner of White’s Club in St. James’s would stay all night to clear up after the gamblers, for they often left gold spilled on the floor. The mysterious Mr. Temple must have had something to do with the money Guy had received. There was also a snuffbox and a handkerchief and a lucky rabbit’s foot and a lucky penny. Then there was a small leather notebook, its pages stained and curled and smelling of brandy. She opened it. It was a diary of various bets. The last entry puzzled her. “Shall restore fortunes tonight thanks to T.,” it said. “But he shall soon learn I will not betray m…” The rest was lost in a great stain. There was also her husband’s clothes. The smell of brandy was dreadful, as if Guy had poured bottles of the stuff over himself.
All the ruin of Guy’s life seemed to be there in that parcel of effects. She put them all away and tied up the parcel again, keeping the money back, for it would be used to pay her fare to London.
London!
Matilda would be there, and Matilda’s sharp common sense would be like a breath of fresh air.
Matilda, Duchess of Hadshire, sat up in bed three days later and read a letter from Annabelle. So Guy was dead, she mused, and good riddance, too. Matilda longed to see Annabelle again. Annabelle was the only remaining person she could talk to about her disastrous marriage to the duke. Ladies normally did not talk of such things. It was a woman’s place to be loyal to her husband at all times in speech and action. Matilda knew that she was a sore disappointment to her husband. He had married her because Matilda, with her delicate Dresden looks, was something he longed to add to his collection of objets d’art. Her forthright manner and honest speech had come as a shock to the fastidious duke. But one can hardly put a wife away in the cellar along with the other mistakes, vases that did not quite please the eye, paintings that no longer excited the aesthetic senses, and so Matilda was allowed a tolerable life so long as she wore the clothes he chose for her and spoke as little as possible. She would need to find some way to see Annabelle without her husband knowing about it, for he had forbidden her to visit the Carrutherses, claiming it was rumored that Carruthers had had a hand in the abduction of Emma, Comtesse Saint Juste. She could not defy him for he would set his valet, Rougement, on her; the brutal Rougement, who followed his master like a shadow and obeyed him as willingly as a dog. Matilda often thought Rougement was jealous of her.
She looked at the letter again. Annabelle planned to arrive the following week. Matilda bit her lip in vexation. Her husband held the purse strings and took a weekly inventory of her jewelry. Annabelle, Matilda knew, would be coming to a house without servants or food.
But the main thing was to get to see Annabelle. It should be quite simple. All she had to do was say she was making calls or driving in the park.
Annabelle arrived in London on a warm gray day. A thin drizzle was falling. She felt buffeted by the sounds of the streets, the rumble of the brewers’ sledges, the clarion call of the coaches’ horns, the postmen’s bells, and all the street cries of London—“Fresh watercress”—“Fresh mackerels, ha’ you maids”—“Bellows to mend”—and all the other multifarious cries of the great city. Guy’s town house was tucked in a corner of Clarence Square, a thin dark building, looking crushed by its larger and more aristocratic neighbors.
Her unpacking did not take long; Cressida had given her clothes along with several bales of cloth to make new gowns. Annabelle looked bleakly around the dusty, unaired house. She threw back the shutters in all the rooms and then, before she started cleaning, she went to Guy’s bedroom to look for papers. There was a desk in the corner. To her horror, it seemed to be packed with unpaid bills. She kept on searching and then, to her amazement, she found that Guy had actually made a will leaving everything to her. She took a note of the lawyer’s address, planning to visit him as soon as possible to find out where she stood.
She looked at his clothes in the wardrobe. She would have to steel herself to sell them and to sell everything possible so that she might be able to exist for a short time. She would need to pay hard cash for food. No more credit.
By the end of the weary day, she felt more at peace than she had for a long time. She had worked hard, and the house was cleaned and aired. She had bought some mackerel from a street vendor for her supper and a loaf of bread from the bakers. She would not starve. She tried to think about her husband. She tried to mourn him, but all she could think of was that she would never hear his staggering footsteps on the stairs at night again, dread his fumbling hand on her bedroom door, or fear his rages.
The first week in London passed quickly. She managed to engage the services of a cleaning woman to do the “rough,” but shrank from engaging proper servants who would have to be paid and fed. In the evenings she stitched diligently, transforming the bales of cloth that Cressida had given her into fashionable gowns and pelisses, all in dark colors, suitable for mourning. She gradually learned to do without servants, experiencing a feeling of triumph when she managed to heat water for a bath and fill it. The benefit of living alone was that she did not need to carry the coffin-like bath up to the bedroom, but could bathe by the kitchen fire.
Matilda arrived on a sunny afternoon and looked startled when Annabelle answered the door herself, her hair covered by a chintz cap and with a cotton apron over her gown.
Annabelle hugged her warmly and led her upstairs to the drawing room. As they sat down, Annabelle was acutely conscious of the contrast in their appearance. She was wearing what amounted to a servant’s dress, but Matilda was wearing a dainty striped gown and had a chip straw bonnet on her head ornamented with silk flowers.
“I fear for you,” said Matilda. “You cannot continue to live in the middle of fashionable London like some impoverished recluse. Oh, if only I could give you money. But Hadshire takes note of every jewel I have and every gown I wear. Tiresome man. You are lucky, Annabelle. A dead husband is a wondrous thing.”
“Poor Guy,” sighed Annabelle. “I still grieve, Matilda, and feel guilty for I did wish him dead so many times. Sometimes, I feel as if I had murdered him.” She covered her face with her hands and began to cry. In a flurry of silks, Matilda darted across the room and knelt at her feet. “Hush, now,” she said. “I did not mean to be so blunt. We will think of something. Never fear. Of course you did not murder your husband. He probably knocked over the bed candle. You know he had done that before.”
Captain Jamieson and the Earl of Darkwood poked about the smoldering ruins of the Manor. “A mess, isn’t it?” said the captain. “Demme, I wish I had never taken it on.”
The earl peered out of a smoke-blackened window. “Fair piece of land,” he said. “You have not done so badly. Is it safe to go upstairs?”
“I suppose so,” said the captain doubtfully. “Keep to the left, though. The right side’s nearly burnt away.”
They climbed up cautiously. Some rooms above were blackened holes, the roof open to the sky, others were surprisingly intact.
“And here’s where it all happened,” said the earl, standing on the threshold of Guy’s bedchamber.
“How can you tell?” asked the captain. “Looks like a great burnt-out shell to me.”
“The smell
, man, the smell. It still reeks of brandy.” The earl poked at several empty blackened bottles with his stick. “Now how could anyone stay awake long enough to drink five whole bottles of brandy?”
“Probably didn’t,” said the captain laconically. “Probably evaporated in the fire.”
“I think not. The seals on the bottles are broken. Do not walk on the floor. It is not safe!”
The earl continued to poke about with his cane but without venturing too far into the room. He lifted up a piece of charred bed hanging and lifted it to his nose. “Brandy, again,” he said quietly. And then in a louder voice, “I’ll take this ruin off your hands, if you like. The land adjoins mine, and I could run the two estates together.”
Captain Jamieson looked at him with relief. “I say, that would be a great scheme. I’ve just been wondering what on earth to do with the place. Let’s go back to Delaney and discuss it over a bottle.”
“So long as it is not brandy,” said the earl. “I don’t think I want to smell brandy again.”
He half listened to his friend’s chatter as they walked home. He kept thinking about all that brandy. The room had been doused in brandy. Carruthers’s clothes had reeked of brandy. He had a sudden vision of Mrs. Carruthers moving quickly about her husband’s bedchamber as he lay in a drunken sleep, pouring brandy everywhere, even pouring it over her husband’s body. And then what? Stand by the door with a lighted candle in her hand. Throw the candle into the room and walk quietly away. But why climb perilously down the wall in her nightgown when she could have pretended to have still been fully dressed when the fire started? Well, maybe that was clever of her. Very clever. She had not shed a tear at the funeral.
“We shall be back in town tomorrow,” he realized the captain was saying. “Need a bit of life after the country, hey?”
“Yes,” said the earl slowly, trying to banish that picture of Annabelle setting out to kill her husband.
Annabelle read in the social columns that the Earl of Darkwood was in residence in his town house. She had felt guilty wasting money on a newspaper, but persuaded herself it was good for her to keep abreast of the news, although she had turned immediately to the social column. Would he marry Rosamund, she wondered. Or would some other heiress snatch him up before Rosamund arrived?
There came a thunderous knocking at the door. She threw down the newspaper and went to answer it. A squat, oily man stood there, flanked by two burly henchmen.
“Where is your mistress?” he asked.
“I am Mrs. Carruthers,” said Annabelle coldly.
He handed her a grimy card. “And I am Silas Gadshaw, moneylender,” he said. He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a sheaf of papers. “This here’s the title deeds to this house. Your husband gave them to me against money he borrowed. Just learned he’s dead so I come to take possession.”
Annabelle looked at him in a dazed way.
“It cannot be true,” she whispered.
“True enough.”
“But you must give me time. I have nowhere to live.”
“Sorry, madam, but I am taking possession now. The house and everything in it belongs to me.” He leered at her. “I’ll give you time to pack your belongings.”
There was nothing Annabelle could do except obey. If she refused, he would take possession of the house by force. She let them into the hall and then went to her room and began to pack her trunks. There was the parcel of Guy’s effects still reeking of brandy. She threw the parcel in the bottom of one of the trunks. The packing seemed to take an age. Her fingers were stiff as if with cold.
At last she was ready. One of the henchmen who seemed to have a softer heart than his master ran out into the street to fetch her a hack.
“Grosvenor Square,” said Annabelle as she climbed into the carriage. There was only Matilda to go to now.
But at the Duke of Hadshire’s imposing mansion, Annabelle began to realize that there was nowhere to go at all. The butler who opened the door surveyed her and her shabby trunks as if regarding an insect. She handed him her card and asked to see the duchess. He inclined his head and retreated into the house, leaving her standing on the steps. He went straight to the duke, who was dressing.
“What is it?” asked the duke, his pale eyes fastened on the intricacies of his cravat.
“A Mrs. Carruthers has turned up with her trunks asking for Her Grace.”
“Then we need not trouble Her Grace with such a person. Tell this Mrs. Carruthers to go away. Her Grace is not available now or at any other time.”
With great relish, the butler repeated the message word for word, except as if it came from the duchess and not the duke. He then slammed the door in Annabelle’s face.
She stood there, shaking. No one wanted her. She could not even return to the vicarage, for Cressida had written to say that she and her father had gone to visit relatives in Bath.
Then she thought of the earl. He had asked her to come to him should she need help. So he would help her for he considered that his duty. And then what? She had no claim on the Darkwood family. She could not expect to be their pensioner for life. He was a man with the reputation of a rake. Perhaps she could offer herself. She was not a virgin. After her marriage to Guy, she should surely be able to tolerate the familiarities of the bedroom in return for food and lodging. She would lose her reputation, but one could not eat reputation or warm one’s hands at it. If he took her as mistress, then it would give her a breathing space to find some sort of work.
A hack was clopping toward her around the square. She raised a hand and hailed it and gave the driver the Earl of Darkwood’s address.
Chapter Five
The Earl of Darkwood was feeling like the very devil he was often reputed to be. His head was hot and heavy, and he was sure he was in for another bout of the fever that had plagued him on and off since his army days. The fact that he had been drinking heavily with his friends all afternoon had not helped.
He wondered what on earth had possessed him to return so easily to his earlier life of drinking and roistering. His time spent recently at Delaney now seemed, in retrospect, to be a haven of peace. He had agreed to meet his friends again that evening for a midnight curricle race to Box Hill.
Well, he would go and be damned to this fever. He stubbornly thought that if he ignored his illness, it would miraculously go away.
His butler, an ex-army servant who still looked like a veteran despite his expensive livery, appeared in the library and surveyed his master gloomily.
“There’s a female and her traps a-standing on your lordship’s doorstep, demanding to see you on a private matter.”
The earl put a hand to his hot forehead and groaned. What had he been doing that afternoon? It came and went in flashes. Had he picked up some doxy and invited her to his home?
“I think I can leave the matter to you, Barnstable. Send the doxy packing and say I made a mistake.”
“Doesn’t look to me like a doxy,” said Barnstable. “Got a card. Name of Mrs. Carruthers.”
“What?”
“You heard,” said the butler with the easy informality born long ago on the battlefield between master and servant.
“The deuce. Show her in here. Has she got a maid with her or any other female?”
“Not as I could see.”
“Then keep quiet about this and tell the other servants she never called and they’ve never seen her. Bring negus and some biscuits.”
Barnstable returned downstairs to the doorstep. “Leave your bags there, mum,” he said, “and come in quick before anyone sees you.”
Annabelle followed him into the hall, a hall she noticed had not been swept for some time, and then up an uncarpeted staircase with unpolished steps. The banister was greasy under her hand.
She stood in the doorway of the library as Barnstable announced her. It was a large shadowy room with serried ranks of calf-bound books rising from floor to ceiling. The floor was covered in a jumble of books and magazines, ri
ding crops, guns, cartridges, old game bags, and a few discarded clothes. A fire was struggling gamely to stay alight in a hearth nearly choked with ash.
Her heart misgave her as she surveyed the earl. He looked satanic. His eyes were glittering, his black hair was disheveled, and he was wearing a gaudy dressing gown over breeches and a shirt open at the neck.
“Sit down, Mrs. Carruthers,” he ordered, “and keep quiet until Barnstable has brought you something to drink.”
“It must seem very odd to you…” began Annabelle.
But he snapped, “Be quiet,” and turned away from her, leaning his arm on the mantel and moodily kicking a smoldering log in the fireplace.
Barnstable returned with the negus and biscuits on a tray. He looked at the small console table beside Annabelle that was covered in magazines and newspapers and then swept them to the floor with one hand and placed the tray on it with the other.
The earl remained motionless until he had left and closed the door behind him. Then he turned and thrust his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown and looked at Annabelle.
“Well?” he demanded.
Annabelle half raised her glass to her lips and then put it down again. “I… I am come to put a proposition to you,” she said. She felt sick with fright. The man she had known in the country had been more approachable, almost kind, not this wild and cruel-looking stranger. But he was a rake, she reminded herself, and she would hardly have dared to offer herself to a respectable gentleman.
“What have you to offer?” he asked, his green eyes insolently raking over her. He noticed she was wearing a fashionable gown of pink muslin with a pelisse of darker rose pink silk over it. Her eyes seemed enormous in her face, great, dark fathomless pools.
Annabelle grasped her hands tightly together.
“Myself.”
There was a long silence.
“In what capacity, may I ask?”
“As your mistress,” said Annabelle desperately. “You see, I have nowhere else to go. Mr. Carruthers had drawn money from a moneylender and left the title deeds of the town house as security. The moneylender came this day to take possession.”