by May Burnett
“Thank you, Mother. Miss Milding is all alone in the world. Except for an unpleasant uncle who has wrested her fortune under his control during her minority, she has no family left.”
“That must be terrible,” Mrs. Seymour said sympathetically.
“We met recently, by chance. I have tried in vain – so far – to convince Miss Milding to become engaged to me. She very sensibly claims that we do not know each other well enough, and that she needs to order her affairs before she can think of marriage.”
There was a startled silence.
“Order her affairs?” Amelia repeated after two heartbeats. “Are they very disordered?”
“Indeed they are. It is not my story to tell, but Miss Milding faces the prospect of an expensive lawsuit, if she is to reclaim her inheritance. Until recently she has been working in a school, supporting herself.”
“Lawsuits are chancy and expensive,” Mrs. Seymour said. “I do not envy you, Miss Milding, if you have to fight for your rights at law; you will need good luck, as well as a good barrister.”
“Am I to understand,” Amelia said, “that you brought Miss Milding here so she could learn to know you better, Thomas, and thus be more inclined to accept your proposal? Travelling all alone with you, without even a maid?”
“There were reasons that I cannot explain just now,” Thomas said evasively. “But that is it, in a nutshell.”
All three ladies looked very thoughtful indeed. Nell straightened her back and raised her chin. They probably thought her a fortune-hunting adventuress.
“If my visit is an imposition in any way,” Nell began, “I can leave at any time; perhaps travel on to Scotland, as we are close. I have long wanted to see Edinburgh.”
“Oh, no!” Charlotte exclaimed. “You would go away just when the plot thickens?”
“After what Thomas told us, I would prefer that you stay for a time,” Mrs. Seymour said mildly. “At least until you make up your mind one way or the other.”
Amelia smiled. “I agree. You really should stay and enjoy our hospitality and see what you would let yourself in for, if you accept my brother.”
“Then you will also be staying, Thomas?” Mrs. Seymour asked her son. “I thought you had your heart set on that position in London? Is that all over now?”
“Nell is more important by far,” Thomas said firmly, but added, “The devil of it is, I have to return to London for a few days, right away. Miss Milding can stay here and you have my leave to tell her the worst about me, even the time I tried to ride the peacock.”
“What is so important that you have to go to London again at such a time?” Amelia asked. Her eyes fell on Nell. “Ah, I think I see.”
“Please be careful,” Nell begged. They had discussed this plan earlier, and she could not like sending him off alone – though he was safer far away from her.
“I will, and I shall hurry back to your side,” he promised. His sisters exchanged wondering glances.
“So at least potentially, Miss Milding really is a family connection,” Charlotte said. “Why did you claim so, earlier?”
“To minimise talk about our arrival together, of course. I would request that you not discuss Nell’s presence here, and her family situation, with any outsiders. She needs a place where she can stay discreetly and quietly, just for a while.”
“Say no more,” Amelia assured him, “we are so quiet here, we could hide away her entire school class. She can have the yellow room.”
“Thank you all,” Nell said. “Will your husband raise any objections to my staying, Mrs. Seymour?”
“He leaves such decisions to us,” Amelia explained in her mother’s stead. “He is so busy he will hardly notice your presence. The Clinic occupies most of his attention.”
“He will certainly notice a pretty young lady at dinner,” Charlotte said. “Mother, Miss Milding is of middling height, a little shorter than I, very pretty, and has dark brown eyes and unusual brown hair, with lighter and darker strands. She is dressed severely, like the schoolteacher she says she was until recently. That should help prevent gossip among the servants.”
Nell felt a blush creep into her cheeks at hearing this description. She had always considered herself somewhat above middling height, but these tall young ladies would have different standards.
“Never mind these details, Charlotte,” Mrs. Seymour said, “I can tell from the voice that she is a lady. The rest hardly matters.”
“Thomas claimed she was a distant relative, when Charlotte asked who she was,” Amelia added. “Under the circumstances, we had better uphold this fiction. She can be a cousin of Lord Amberley.”
“Amberley?” Nell asked. “There actually might be a connection some generations back. I was not aware you are related to the Earl.”
“He is my first cousin,” Mrs. Seymour explained, “and a good friend. Thomas is his godson, and Amelia is the Countess’s goddaughter.”
Nell remembered that Mrs. Seymour’s mother had been the daughter of a Viscount. Noble connections were not surprising on her side of the family.
“What of your background?” Charlotte asked. “Thomas told us your family is all gone except for that uncle, but who were they?”
As she had been presented as a possible sister-in-law, the question was inevitable. “Just like you I have well-born connections. The uncle who has seized my inheritance is titled and influential, which does not make my prospects any easier.”
“Maybe George – Amberley – can help,” Mrs. Seymour suggested. “At least with good advice.”
“Just my thought,” Thomas said. “And Uncle James too. That reminds me that I wanted to talk to father about dead bodies. Is he going to be late for dinner?”
“Who knows?” his mother said. “He had a new and difficult patient arriving in the morning, and you know how involved he gets.”
“Dead bodies?” Charlotte repeated, regarding her brother and Nell with speculation in her dark blue eyes. “How interesting. Do you know what this is about, Miss Milding?”
“I would rather not say, on such a distasteful subject, Miss Charlotte.”
“Surely you are tired from the long journey, and will want to rest before dinner,” Amelia said, rescuing Nell from her sister’s inquisition. “Let me conduct you to the yellow room, Miss Milding.”
***
Chattering geese and other vocal fowl woke Nell up an hour earlier than she had been accustomed to rise in the boarding school. At least here she was not expected to supervise a group of little fiends – some were rather endearing, of course. But on the whole she was happy that this period of her life was at an end. It had been a hard existence, but she had learned that she could live on her own efforts, and work again as teacher or governess, if fate fell out that way. Once she had children of her own the experience would come in very usefully. Years of constant dealing with the young had taught her a trick or two.
She enjoyed the unaccustomed lack of duties. The featherbed was soft and warm, the most comfortable bed she had enjoyed since her flight from Colville Hall. A far cry from the hard, narrow bunk in the school, even after she had become a teacher. Presently a maid would come in to open the curtains and bring her morning tea. It was pleasant to return to the amenities of a well-run household. She would never again take them for granted.
Thomas would be leaving after breakfast. Though she had only known him for such a short while, she would miss him. He was so steady, and fun to have around; the kind of companion who would last and wear well throughout the years. His splendid height and good looks were the least of it.
As the eldest son he would presumably inherit this estate, and the Seymour family did not seem poor by any means. Had her parents still been alive, and she dowered as one of several siblings, it would have been a reasonable but hardly brilliant match.
If she could regain her fortune and courtesy title she might look as high as she pleased – but could she do better? Thomas was a gentleman, and she was a lady. He w
as accustomed to moving among the nobility, and had not been intimidated by her situation. More importantly, if she did not recover her wealth, he would still want her. Any man she met as the rich Lady Marian might be after her fortune rather than her person.
The highest aristocrats were not necessarily the most desirable spouses. Her father’s conduct towards her family, and her uncle’s, did not inspire much confidence. Other lords, like this Lord Amberley of whom Mrs. Seymour spoke fondly, might be more admirable and happy family men. Yet from everything she had ever heard and observed, the majority of aristocratic males considered themselves entitled to mistresses, affairs, and whatever vices took their fancy. Thomas would not be like that. Of course if she married him, he would expect her to be loyal too; the traditional freedom of the aristocratic matron, to indulge in affairs after birthing an heir and a spare, would not apply to his wife.
It might be the influence of years among the bourgeoisie, but Nell felt only distaste for the licentious way of life her parents and forebears had practiced. There was no law that said she had to follow in their footsteps, that her standards should not be higher. Queen Victoria was setting an example of virtuous domesticity, although her royal father and uncles had been amongst the worst examples of privileged excess and debauchery. Times changed; people could behave better than their ancestors, with a little effort.
And anyway, why would the wife of a man as handsome as Thomas ever want to stray?
But there was no need to decide immediately. He would not return from London for a week or more. Spending this time with his family would show Nell if she had any chance of fitting in. She hoped so; it was a lively, busy household, much more comfortable than Colville Hall had been even at the best of times.
Chapter 12
Unlike the last time, when he had been kept kicking his heels for upwards of a half-hour, Thomas had to wait only for a few minutes in a frigid, sparsely furnished vestibule of the Home Office.
He would only tell Lord Ormesby his conclusions about the crime and the letter, and not breathe a word about the present whereabouts of the ‘drowned’ heiress. Surely his information would impel Ormesby to order an official investigation, as he should have done from the outset.
As before the Undersecretary received Thomas alone. He gestured him to a chair upholstered in burgundy leather, without pretending this time that he could not remember his visitor’s identity. “Seymour, am I to understand from your request for an appointment that you have made progress with the little task I set before you? I trust you did not alert Lord Colville to your enquiries?”
“Indeed, my lord, I have some answers at least. You wanted to know whether the letter in your files came from Lady Marian Colville. Though I cannot disclose my source, I have discovered that despite appearances, the letter was genuine after all.”
“You sound very certain,” Ormesby challenged, staring at Thomas. “Sources who don’t want to be named can be misleading.”
Thomas ignored this. “Lady Marian had good reason to fear for her fortune, and possibly her life. She decided to disappear until she attained her majority, and was no longer subject to a guardian she rightly distrusted. Despite her young age, she did so successfully from the time she sent the letter, in the spring of 1838. Lord Colville did not raise any hue and cry after his ward, and pretended to all and sundry that she was an invalid, or unbalanced, living in some sanatorium. One must assume that nobody ever asked him to produce her.”
“An earl’s daughter would not be so bold as to leave her home like that. It would ruin her socially. And how can you know that she escaped?” Ormesby’s brows contracted sceptically. “There must have been other relations and acquaintances who saw her during those years.”
“It seems not. There were no relatives left, and Colville could have put off any queries with the excuse of his ward’s ill-health. If the Home Office did not bother to inquire about her despite that letter, why should other people do so, with no reason to suspect that anything was amiss? When Lady Marian turned eighteen the Earl should have presented her to her Majesty and given her a Season, in the normal course of things. But she never made her curtsy, as would have been expected for a lady of her rank.”
“True,” the Undersecretary conceded. “The one time I heard someone ask Lord Colville after his niece, he quickly turned the subject, implying somehow that it was painful to him to discuss it. The acquaintance did not insist.”
And neither had Ormesby himself, Thomas did not fail to notice, with inward irritation.
“If she had disappeared, then where was she all this time before she drowned?”
“That brings me to the main point, my lord – I do not believe that Lady Marian drowned at all. From the first that story seemed unlikely. Why would she have stayed in that tiny seaside village, in a shabby-genteel boarding house? If Lady Marian was well enough to travel there without any family in attendance, she must have been well enough to attend a few London parties, or at least take the waters in Bath.”
“Not drowned? What nonsense is this?” Ormesby was shaking his head. “You must be joking. It sounds like something out of a Drury Lane melodrama.”
“Not at all, Sir. Just consider. With Lady Marian out of his grasp, and the date of her majority rapidly approaching, Lord Colville must have been worried what would happen when she resurfaced. He probably regards her estates and income as his by now, and would be loath to give them up. By staging his niece’s dramatic death, reported in the papers, he has cleared the way towards seizing her inheritance. The supposed drowning also went a long way towards spiking Lady Marian’s guns if she does try to claim her estates and funds. Lord Colville kept well away from the scene, so it will be hard to prove his complicity; but he was the only one who stood to gain.”
“Supposing any part of this fairy tale was true – who drowned, then? You cannot easily recruit somebody for their own murder.”
“It is my belief – though I have no proof yet – that Lord Colville hired several actresses to stage the drowning, through a trusted intermediary, and likewise bribed the local coroner. Once the accidental drowning had been accepted as fact and published in the papers, it would not be very hard to discreetly obtain a female body to inter in the family chapel. Medical institutions buy them all the time, often from poorhouses.”
Lord Ormesby stared at Thomas. Well, it was an elaborate plot, and had taken him too some time to uncover, even with Nell’s help. He had to make allowances for the rigidity of an older mind mired in bureaucratic concerns.
“That whole theory is so outlandish and unlikely that I can only wonder you dared to expound it to me, Seymour. You would not know, at your age, but successful conspiracies are difficult to carry off. Do you have the slightest proof that would stand up in Court – in the House of Lords, since we are talking of a peer?”
“I imagine it will be in the Chancery Court, my lord, that Lady Marian will lodge her claim. She actually thought ahead to this time; that letter on parchment was intended to be used as evidence for just this eventuality.”
“What!”
“Why else use such an unusual material and a seal unique to her family?”
The Undersecretary rubbed his chin, still looking vexed. Well, if he was slow to catch the significance of this information, it was not Thomas’ fault. He wanted to be done with this interview, with the whole conversation. Why was he wasting his time trying to convince this man, anyway?
An elaborately gold-plated clock mounted on the office wall struck three, so noisily that they had to wait until the mechanism was done.
As soon as silence returned to the office, Thomas took a deep breath. “I am merely reporting my conclusions, as you requested, my lord. It makes no difference if you believe them or not. When Lady Marian sues Lord Colville for her fortune, and her lawyers request the letter in evidence, you will see that I have been right. In the meantime I would not wish to take up any more of your valuable time, my lord.” He bowed briefly.
“Wait.” The Undersecretary regarded him for several long seconds from under his bushy white brows. “If any part of your theory is correct, Seymour, this might be useful information after all. Tell me this – if Lady Marian is still alive, where is she now?”
“I cannot say,” Thomas stated firmly.
“Cannot or will not?”
“Even if I knew, my lord, I would never want to endanger a lady.”
An unpleasant smile appeared on Lord Ormesby’s lips. “No doubt your memory will improve if I offer you that position we discussed earlier?”
Thomas rocked back on his heels, physically repelled by this suggestion. He stared hard at Lord Ormesby, who stopped smiling after a second. “I thank you for remembering the matter, but I have changed my mind, and no longer aspire to working under you.” His voice sounded gruff to his own ears.
“Come, boy, no need to get your feathers ruffled. Producing Lady Marian in person would be the best proof of the fantastical story you have served me this morning. I suppose a talk with Lord Colville will soon reveal how much of it was real, and how much mere invention.”
Thomas stiffened in alarm. “My lord, talking to Lord Colville about this matter – a criminal matter, even if there was no actual murder, – would undoubtedly prejudice the outcome.” Surely the man must know himself how improper that would be? “If the Earl swindled his ward out of her fortune, would you want to warn him, and allow him to cover his tracks more securely?”
“Come, Seymour, don’t be naïve. If your story is true, he will be grateful for a heads-up.”
The blood shot up to Thomas’ head, and his teeth ground against each other. “I really must be naïve, my lord, since at our last meeting I took your pretended concern for Lady Marian’s fate at face value.” Thomas could barely hide his sudden disgust and contempt. Ormesby had merely used Thomas to ferret out scandal, to use in some intrigue of his own. “I feel unwell in this stale air, my lord. Farewell.” He turned on his heels, and left without looking back.