Winthrop Trilogy Box Set

by Burnett, May

  “Oh, beauty is not my most important asset,” Milla said carelessly.

  Once the Major had taken his leave, with a few more perfunctory compliments, Milla sank onto the settee and erupted in unladylike giggles.

  “It is too absurd,” she said. Veronique shook her head at her, and Louis emerged from behind the screen. “A smooth rogue.”

  “As long as he does not suspect that I am toying with him, he won’t turn dangerous,” Milla said. “No need to come to that ball with me, Veronique, he’ll feel more secure if I come alone. I suppose I can stand to listen to more of his insipid compliments. Is there any way we can have him clapped in prison?”

  Louis looked doubtful. “That will take some doing… we’d need to identify some influential former victim and prove what he was up to, not easy at all. He considers you firmly hooked, at any rate. I have never seen you so compliant.”

  “I can play a role when I have to,” Milla said. “Not as well as you two, but as you keep telling me, people see and hear what they expect. Major Kepler expects me to be a foolish puppet. Until it is time to strike back, that is exactly what I shall appear.”

  Chapter 8

  On Thursday afternoon, Milla met some ladies of her acquaintance for a sedate walk in the spa’s famous Rose Garden. They wound up, as usual, on the wrought-iron, white-painted chairs of the patisserie Lindenhof. The shady old linden trees from which the establishment derived its name perfumed the warm air, vying with the thousands of rose bushes in the adjoining park.

  “I always like to try out the most recent pastries,” Frau von Mehlwurm said. She was the widow of a rich industrialist, who had made his money by supplying the Austrian army in the late wars, and bought his title shortly before expiring from a stroke. “Last time I had the Cake Schullenberg, a completely new invention.”

  “I might try that,” Milla said, “and tea, of course.” The other two ladies in their party made their own selections, and the waiter hurried to do their bidding.

  “How did you like the Mental Water Treatment, Lady Fenton?” Miss Rogers, an angular Englishwoman, asked. “The price is so outrageous that it must be very special. Should I try it, too?”

  Milla shook her head. “Better not,” she advised, “I only did it because I like to try anything once, but I cannot honestly recommend the procedure.”

  “How so?” Frau von Mehlwurm leaned forward. “I have heard only good reports of Doktor Rabenstein. Madame Rossignol said he has done wonders for her delicate stomach.”

  “He may be better at stomachs,” Milla said carelessly, “but since you ask me, the Mental Water Treatment is not worth the price of admission. I was encased in a sort of metal sarcophagus of overly hot, scented water, and made to fall asleep. When I woke up I was all alone in a dank, dark basement room with only one candle. And from there I was taken to the normal massage treatment.”

  “That was all?” Komtesse Kornau, the fourth in their round, looked disappointed.

  “I hope so,” Milla said. “Because ever since, I have been plagued by bad dreams. One night I dreamed that I was a fish caught in a slimy net, and the other night, that I was all alone in the dark, unable to move, and some cold big hand touched my, ah, my wet naked bosom. I hope and pray that it is only imagination, and not a memory of that time when I was asleep. I have determined not to put myself into such a vulnerable position again, not without a wide-awake female companion at my side to protect my modesty.”

  The three ladies were staring at her with open mouths.

  “It may just be bad dreams from too many pastries, mind,” Milla said blithely. “Ah, there the waiter is coming now.”

  Cake Schullenberg proved to have a faint rancid under taste, imperfectly masked by the coffee cream. Likely the walnuts had not been fresh. Milla pushed it aside after a single bite, and ordered strawberry ice instead. She bore her disappointment with calm. When you made a point out of trying new things whenever possible, you had to expect a large percentage of let-downs.

  “Can it be? That would be too terrible for words, if someone were to have taken liberties while you were asleep,” Miss Rogers returned to their previous subject. “But would you not have woken up, if anything like that had happened?”

  “Remember that it is called the Mental Water Treatment,” Milla said. “The Doktor employed mesmerism, I believe. In such a state, he could have commanded me to run naked across the park, or to kiss his toes. He could have made me forget all about it afterwards.”

  “I do believe he used mesmerism for Madame Rossignol’s case,” Frau von Mehlwurm said slowly. “He commanded her not to eat meats, fruit or condiments, and for the first time in years she was able to keep to her diet.”

  “If there is the slightest chance that your fears are well-founded,” the Komtesse said in a resolute voice, “we have to alert the Doktor’s employers, the owners of the spa facilities. Such a scandal could give Regensbad a bad name.”

  “Unfortunately, I have no proof,” Milla said. “I wanted my companion, Madame Rallien, to come with me, but was told that the treatment depended on strict privacy, and that she was not allowed.”

  “Most suspicious.” Frau von Mehlwurm looked grave.

  Milla’s ice was delivered, and she savoured a sweet spoonful while the other ladies debated her revelations. Miss Rogers and the Komtesse favoured alerting the authorities, while the older Frau von Mehlwurm sensibly argued that this would be pointless without proof, and might lead to unfortunate gossip about Milla. Finally they decided that nothing should be done, except to warn unwary female guests away from the procedure. Milla whole-heartedly agreed with this conclusion. Since the Komtesse and Miss Rogers were permanent residents of the spa, and knew everyone, this should make it harder for the trio of crooks to ensnare new victims. It would not help their past or male targets, but it was a first step.

  There was a chance that word would get back to Rabenstein and Kepler, but who was to know what kind of dreams Milla had, or why? Perhaps the Doktor would try to mesmerize her again, and order her to forget those dreams. He would not be given the opportunity, if she could help it.

  “You do not take milk in your tea, Lady Fenton?” Miss Rogers asked.

  “I find I prefer it plain, or with lemon,” she said. “Travelling on the Continent has led me to adopt a great many un-English attitudes and tastes.”

  “You certainly are more adventurous and dashing than the average English lady, almost French,” the Komtesse said. “Of course, at your age, and with such vivid colouring, you have a distinct advantage.”

  “I am still learning style,” Milla confessed, “mostly from my companion, Madame Rallien, who seems to have imbibed an instinct for elegance with her mother’s milk. I was not much interested at first, and I hate long fittings, but I have gradually learned to enjoy fashion.”

  “You are fortunate to be rich enough to indulge your taste,” Frau von Mehlwurm said, “as are we all. What about another round of cakes? I could fancy a Cremeschnitte.”

  “Perhaps an apple strudel,” Miss Rogers said. Milla had nearly finished her ice, but declined further sweets. “My riding costume will not fit if I continue to indulge,” she claimed, though in fact her weight remained constant whatever she ate. “I am riding out tomorrow morning, with Major Kepler.”

  “He accompanied you to the ball yesterday night,” Miss Rogers said, “are you not concerned you’ll raise false hopes, spending so much time in his company? He seems pleasant enough, but his rank is hardly equal to yours, and we don’t know his family or fortune.”

  “I certainly do not plan to marry the man,” Milla disclaimed. “He is amusing, that is all.”

  “Is he?” the Komtesse asked. “I had not noticed.”

  “Prussians rarely are,” Frau von Mehlwurm agreed. “It stands to reason he would exert himself more for you, Lady Fenton, but believe me, you can do far better.”

  “That red-haired young Graf was ready to put his heart at your feet,” Miss Rogers said, “
yet you danced with Kepler instead. Well, they say there is no accounting for tastes.”

  “I always avoid men who are too quick to lay their hearts at my feet,” Milla explained. “I cannot take up more than one, after all, and do not wish to cause disappointment or pain. Unless I feel strongly drawn, I keep my distance from overly sentimental types. Men like the Major are not in danger of heartache, and neither am I when I accept their escort.”

  “But how will you learn to love anyone, if you keep your distance from the better prospects? It makes no sense to me.” Frau von Mehlwurm shook her grey head. “But to each her own; when you fall in love you’ll forget all those odd notions. You are not in love with Kepler, then?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Well, if you’ll excuse an old woman’s well-meant advice, I would send him about his business sooner rather than later. There is something about him that I cannot like, though I don’t know exactly what it is.”

  “I’ll keep your advice in mind,” Milla promised. “In any case, I have decided to travel for the next week, to Munich. By the time I return, people will have stopped talking of the Major in connection with me. He may even have found a new lady to court.”

  “Not likely,” the Komtesse said drily. “Your fortune, combined with your face and figure, are not easily forgotten. Most rich ladies who come to take the Regensbad waters are long beyond childbearing age.”

  “You never had children?” Frau von Mehlwurm asked Milla. “I imagine that your marriage did not last long, so there may yet be hope.”

  “It is not something I think about very often.”

  The three older ladies fixed her with astonishment. “You don’t want to be a mother, to hold your own babe in your arms?” the Komtesse asked. “I could imagine nothing that would have made me happier, had fate allowed it. Bearing a child is a woman’s natural, highest purpose.”

  “It’s not that I have anything against the prospect,” Milla said, “I just feel that there is no particular urgency. And it has to be with the right man, of course.” Preferably Barnaby Winthrop. His children would be adorable, if they inherited that earnest look, the quick grin, his chivalrous nature.

  “Your first husband was not the right man?” Miss Rogers asked. The Komtesse threw her a reproving look for such tactlessness.

  Milla nearly shuddered at the notion of bearing a child to that brute. “No, and perhaps it was for the best. The cousin to whom the title passed is a most estimable young man. But I cannot agree that motherhood is necessarily a woman’s highest purpose.”

  “What, then?” Miss Rogers challenged. “What is your highest purpose, Lady Fenton?”

  She was silent. Fun sounded too frivolous and superficial, independence somehow selfish.

  “I’m still trying to find that out,” she said at last.

  Chapter 9

  Milla’s eight-day journey to Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen was in the nature of a temporary tactical retreat. Major Kepler had become so very particular in his attentions, that she was hard-pressed to maintain her outward compliance without allowing him unwanted liberties. The two kisses she had so far granted had not given Milla any desire for deeper intimacy with the Major. She wanted her first time to be with somebody she could actually like and trust.

  Already he was getting suspicious, because she resisted his attempts to have Veronique dismissed. Yet without her companion’s constant vigilance he would have progressed much faster.

  It was time to expose Kepler and his confederates, to end this game, but for once their investigations had hit a snag. They could not discover the connection between Kepler and Rabenstein. To all outward appearances, the two had never met. Louis had watched them pass each other on the promenade without as much as a glance or nod.

  They had written to the medical faculty of Vienna University, to enquire about Doktor Karl Meinfried under the guise of a prospective employer, but no answer had yet arrived. In any case, the men’s past was less interesting than their present and future. What did they do with the money they milked out of their victims? How did they share it?

  As she climbed up the path to an Alpine meadow, a path more suited to a goat than a lady that put her in mind of the cliffs in her native Cornwall, Milla’s mind drifted away from the battle of wits with Kepler, and towards England, where her few relatives and friends lived. She had a nephew and a niece there, whom she had never seen. Would they look like her brother North, or their mother Susan? The Winthrops were all blond and blue-eyed, while the Northcotes tended to darker colouring.

  Perhaps it was time to forgive her brother for his long absence in the army, and his sudden marriage, to which she had not been invited. He had done what he saw as his duty, and it had been unfair of Milla to conflate him in her mind with her hateful half-brother Edward. Her life had certainly improved greatly since Edward put a period to his useless existence, after losing the last of the family fortune to his gambling addiction. North might be stodgy, but he was working hard to restore the family to prosperity, through careful management and successful mining investments.

  She no longer felt resentful of Susan either. Distance and time had put her childish resentment of her sister-in-law into perspective. Susan must have been glad to get rid of her, when she considered her own behaviour at the time. Yet Milla refused to feel any guilt. Compared to Edward’s crimes she was a saint, and, in any case, had never aspired to perfection. She was, nonetheless, glad that she had learned better from Abigail, and lately, Veronique. A lady had subtler means to get her way than childish stubbornness and ill-temper.

  Was she even still that girl of four years ago? The two years in Dorset with Abigail, when she had learned the rudiments of life as a civilised lady, had effected some change; but she had still been unsure of herself, of her place in the world, when she came to London and lost Abigail to Jeremy Winthrop. That had been a turbulent, fraught period, culminating in her kidnapping and rescue. She had last seen her brother and Susan at Abigail’s wedding, but she had left London so quickly that she had not even inspected her tiny nephew. Babes were of little interest to Milla.

  “You are very silent,” Veronique said. “Admiring the view?”

  “Thinking,” Milla said. “About babes. I don’t particularly like them, do you? I was wondering if I would feel differently about my own child.”

  Veronique’s expression turned sad for a moment. “Almost all women are fond of their own children, it is nature’s way to ensure their survival. I would fight to the death to defend any child of my body.”

  “So would I,” Milla said, “but it is not the same as liking to be around them, is it? Putting up with their mewling and tantrums, changing their nappies and making sure they are clean? Nobly fighting some enemy for their sake sounds attractive by comparison.”

  Veronique smiled. “It does, I admit. But as a rich lady you would leave those duties to a nurse. I suspect that you would love your children as much as any other mother, Milla. If you’d had younger siblings, rather than being the last child of your parents, you would feel more at ease at the notion.”

  “You were an only child yourself. Did you ever long for brothers and sisters?”

  “Now and then. In my youth, I sometimes dreamed of having a twin sister who looked exactly like me. As for babes, it was my choice not to have any because of my husband’s dangerous profession, and my own occasional participation. If you risk your life so often, it would be irresponsible to leave orphaned children behind.” Her voice turned bitter. “Of course, in the end we were defeated and it was all in vain. Had I foreseen that when I married, I would have chosen a very different path in life.”

  “You are not yet forty. It may not be too late,” Milla suggested.

  “What a scandal that would be, the widowed Madame Rallien being with child.” But there was a speculative look in her eyes.

  “You could always change names again, and become someone else.”

  “I know, and don’t think I have not conside
red it,” Veronique said. “But when I received word that all who had gone to Russia with the Emperor were dead of hunger and freezing, I made a kind of bargain with fate – or God, as you want to call it – that I was done with subterfuge and false names and deception, if only…” her voice trailed off.

  Milla thought this over. “How binding are such promises, if there is no other party to enforce them?”

  “It is not a question of having another person to answer to; your conscience will be enough.”

  Milla was unconvinced. In her experience and observation, consciences were highly flexible, changeable organs. “Then you’ll simply have to find a way to combine your vow with your desires. We are too clever, Veronique, to be foiled by social convention and past regrets. We should decide what we want most in life, and grasp it firmly, devil take the consequences.”

  “Oho, you are what? Not yet twenty-two? You could almost be my daughter, and presume to advise me on how to regulate my life?”

  Milla was not abashed. “Somebody has to. If you ask me, the end of the war and defeat of your side put you in such a funk that you have not been thinking clearly ever since. Your current position with me seems more a penance than the kind of life you should lead. What does Louis think? He cannot wish to go on indefinitely as a mere servant, unable to claim you publicly.”

  “Louis wants us to go to the New World, and start anew under a different name, as a married couple.”

  Milla was unsurprised. Everyone she became close to left her sooner or later. “That makes sense. I shall miss both of you, of course. Why have you not gone yet?”

  “Because we don’t have the capital to do it right. The property in France has been seized, and without resorting to my father’s methods, it will take us a few years to save enough. Arriving on another continent as paupers is not the path to happiness.”

  “I could help.”

  “Thank you for the offer, but you already pay us very generous wages. We are saving what we can. In another four years we should have enough.”