by Joan Smith
“That enjoyment soon faded. No, it was the shame of it, you see, the blot on the family escutcheon. Papa had convinced me no one must ever know, but I realize I owe you an explanation.”
“You Actons take your family honour too seriously. It’s no shame to be kidnapped by the gypsies. A great misfortune, of course, but — “
The way he was biting his lower lip and his frown told me there was more to it than that. “I was right, wasn’t I? She wasn’t kidnapped, she ran away with them of her own free will. And with Lorna, that can only mean a lover. She ran off with a gypsy lover as I thought, and you scoffed at the idea.”
“You’re half right. She did run off voluntarily with a lover, not a gypsy but a married man, Jim Turcotte, a small time horse trader from Colchester. She had bought a hunter from him a while before. Aunt Mary thinks she had been carrying on with him for a few months. The kind of carrying on that resulted in her becoming enceinte. Rather than facing society’s and particularly the family’s wrath, she ran away with her lover. The family used the kidnapping story to cover her shame as the gypsies had just left the neighbourhood. Papa was careful not to find them, of course. At the time the family knew only that she had run off with Turcotte, they didn’t know about her condition.
“Did she leave a note, tell you what she was doing?”
“She just said she was in love and Papa would not approve of her choice so she was eloping — no mention of the man’s name, or where they were going. It was Aunt Mary who put us on to Turcotte. She had seen him in town a few times on days when Lorna was late coming home from some outing. Papa followed up on it and learned Turcotte had disappeared the same night as Lorna. He tried, without success to follow them but it was too late by then. A few months later he received a letter from Turcotte, postmarked Paris, claiming they were living in dire poverty and demanding Lorna’s dowry. We knew by then that they were not actually married, you see, so naturally Papa refused, but did begin sending Lorna the interest on her estate. It was enough to live on comfortably. He felt the liaison would not last, and Lorna would need her money when her lover abandoned her.
“Half a year later, Turcotte wrote to him from Paris saying Lorna was ill, dying. Papa dashed to Paris. By the time he arrived it was too late, again. She died the night he arrived. Died in childbirth. The child, a girl, survived two days. Papa arranged the burial and brought home the death certificates.”
“Ah, what a sad story.”
“A tragedy,” he said with a shake of his head. “The aunts tell me Lorna was always headstrong, too easily led by a flattering tongue and a wide pair of shoulders. The scoundrel was only after her dowry. The only little consolation is that she told Papa Turcotte had treated her well. The idiot thought he would get the whole sum on her death, till Papa pointed out that he was not legally her husband. Papa threatened to sic the law on him. He soon disappeared. All we know for certain is that he didn’t go back to his wife in Colchester.”
“It is certainly a tragic tale, but I think you might have told us. Surely you didn’t think we would broadcast it.”
“Not you, but your mama ...” He shrugged his shoulders and said with an air of apology, “Not that she would do it on purpose, but she can be — indiscreet.”
I had to accept that. “And Myrna — Effie tells me she is your uncle’s by-blow.”
“Yes, so it seems. That explains the family resemblance.”
“Lord Nicholas suffered no ill effect from his indiscretion. Society is more lenient to a gentleman than to a lady.”
“You’ve been reading Mary Wollstonecraft,” he said, surprised but not disapproving. I didn’t deny it, though I hadn’t actually read her book. The local lending library didn’t have a copy. I meant to order it after reading an essay about her work which greatly incensed me at the time. Somehow I never got around to it.
“I can understand Myrna’s feeling cheated,” I said.
“So can I,” he admitted, “which is why I sent her off in my carriage with a thousand pounds in her pocket.”
“I’m glad you did. She wanted that money very badly. And I’m sure she really has had a hard time, Acton. The stories she told ...” Those stories of stealing food and clothes may not have taken place in France or Germany, but I felt sure they had happened. No one could make up that story about dying the cat fur green.
“She was happier with the crested carriage than with the money,” he said. “I might have done it sooner, but the possibility she was working with Turcotte enraged us all so that we hardly knew what we were doing.”
“It couldn’t be Turcotte. He would know Lorna was dead.”
“True, but he also knew how anxious the family was to hide it. He gouged a few thousand out of Papa to keep it quiet when Lorna died in Paris, and a few times over the years. We’ve been living with the possibility that he might try his hand at getting more money from us by some ruse. An ultimatum — accept Myrna as Lady Lorna, or I reveal all.”
“That’s why you were so vicious in your condemnation of Myrna.”
“We didn’t know she was penniless and starving that night, Kate. I told you that.”
“I don’t mean that. You wouldn’t even enter the house when she was there.”
“I was afraid I might lose control and do her bodily harm.”
“Because you thought she was working with Turcotte. Have you heard from him lately? Myrna wasn’t working with him?”
“We haven’t heard from him for years. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s either in prison or dead by now. I still wanted to get a look at Myrna’s accomplice, just to be sure. Walters, the fellow at the inn calling himself Chalmers, didn’t sound like Turcotte, but after twenty years he would no longer be a big, handsome, common fellow, which is how Aunt Mary described Turcotte.”
“How do you know it wasn’t him? You wouldn’t recognize him.”
“I made enquiries in London, visiting places I don’t usually frequent. Gaming hells and so on. Walters was well known in certain quarters. He was ten years too young to be Turcotte and six inches too short. I just hope he doesn’t weasel the money out of Myrna. She’ll squander it on some foolishness, of course, but it helped ease my conscience.”
I felt, and hoped, she would use it to buy herself some pretty clothes as they had seemed important to her. Whatever her sins, I could not really despise her. Fate had not been kind to her, and she had kicked back at Fate. A dozen, a hundred questions were churning around in my head. I chose the one that bothered me most. “But if you didn’t shoot at her in the spinney, who did?”
“You thought I shot at her! You’re accusing me of attempted murder! No, really Kate.”
“You made no secret of the fact that you despised her.”
“I never planned to kill her!”
“Were you just trying to frighten her?”
“I didn’t shoot at her at all! How can you think it?”
“What was I to think? If you’d trusted me, given me just a hint what was going on ...”
“You were enamoured of her. I was afraid you’d tell her. I wanted to find out if she was working with Turcotte. I didn’t shoot at anyone, Kate, and no one shot at Myrna. It was her conspirator, Walters, who accidentally fired the shot. The fellow she met at Colchester, according to Beamer. Odd you told him about that, but not me.”
“I would have told you if you’d told me the truth. I didn’t realize Myrna even knew him. Effie just told me about Walters. I thought Lorna had arranged a meeting with Taylor in the spinney that night. I’d seen them together a few times.”
“She had been trying her wiles on him. As he is a family by-blow like herself, she thought he might be as vengeful as she is, and help her. She claimed to be the real Lady Lorna, and offered to share the spoils with him if he would help her establish herself. Papa had told Taylor the true story, however, so he wasn’t taken in. He was fond of Lorna and despised Myrna as much as I did. He has always been treated better than Myrna, and seems to like us, the f
amily I mean. He will be treated better in future. Myrna has made me acutely aware of the invidious position of noble by-blows. He came to me the day Myrna first approached him. We agreed he should pretend to go along with her to find out just what she had in mind.
“When I went to London, Walters followed me. I spotted him dogging my tail. I think he realized from the people I was seeing that I had found out he was working with Myrna but I managed to lose him before I got to Effie. He must have feared or known I was looking for her, but not that I had found her. I wanted to bring her back with me at once, but one of the children she was looking after was ill and her mistress felt she couldn’t do without her, so we arranged that Effie would come as soon as possible, in a day or two.
“Walters rushed back from London to warn Myrna that I was up to some vague ‘something.’ ‘Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind,’ as Shakespeare said. Myrna says he was likely jealous of Taylor, afraid she meant to double cross him. When he saw Myrna and Taylor together in the spinney, he took a shot at him, missed and they bolted. Someone else was there. I heard someone running out of the spinney after Myrna, but it wasn’t Walters. Taylor saw him run deeper into the woods. Probably just a poacher.”
“Oh, that would be me and Balky you heard,” I said.
“You! You were there! I assumed Myrna had told you what had happened — her version, that is.”
“No, Balky and I were spying on her.”
“Good God! You might have been killed.”
“I thought it was you trying to kill her, which is why we had Beamer hiding behind the rose bush today to stop Taylor from shooting her. I mean you couldn’t do it yourself, since you would be in the library with us.”
“Good lord,” he said, caught between laughter and disbelief and chagrin. “What a tangled web we weave. Taylor is not even at the Abbey today. He’s at Willow Hall. I’m putting him in charge of running that smaller estate, and when my old bailiff retires in a few years, he’ll come home and help me run the Abbey.”
“Well, it’s over now, Myrna’s gone and I daresay no real permanent harm has been done, except that your aunt hates me and I shall never be allowed to darken the door of the Abbey again.”
He patted my hand. “Now there, my foolish pet, you are completely mistaken — again.”
I glared. “I’ll never hear the end of this, will I? If you had only told us what was going on — “
He tossed up his hands. “I’ve told you now. Whether you wish to darken the door of such a disreputable house is a moot point, but you will be more than welcome if you do. Aunt Mary approved of your sneaking into the Abbey, and standing up to her. She has been looking about for a suitable lady to take over the onerous chore of running the Abbey and me, and feels she has found her victim in you. She likes what she calls ‘bottom.’
“If she was on her high horse, she was just afraid you might have found something giving a hint of what had really become of Lorna. Not her diary, of course. That’s been keeping her death certificate company in the safe. For posterity, you know. We made a thorough search of Lorna’s room looking for clues after she ran off, and found it. It tells of the affair with Turcotte but doesn’t name him. My Romeo she calls him. Effie didn’t know the truth, but she was hustled off home post haste in case she began asking questions. As Myrna got her information from Effie, she went with the well-known gypsy story. After a few generations the sins of the past become an acceptable ornament to liven up the family tree. Lorna will join a pirate and a few royal mistresses on the Acton tree.”
“Lady Mary certainly didn’t seem to approve of my behaviour. She threatened to call the constable that night.”
“She was just trying to frighten you. She most particularly ordered me to invite you and your Mama to dinner this evening to patch things up, if you would deign to enter a house of such ill repute. To judge by the disgraceful way your mama and Beamer were carrying on when I passed the salon, I think Auntie might be mistaken in her notions of your family’s propriety. I daresay if he’s come to the sticking point with your mama, I must include Beamer in the invitation.”
“You don’t mean they were — “
“Certainly they were, most enthusiastically. Lady Simmons may be a peagoose, but she knows a good thing when she sees it and wasn’t wasting any time. Her daughter, on the other hand, has a not overly ugly Abbey-owning lord dangling after her, and rather than throwing her bonnet at him, she chooses to carp on irrelevant details like his concealing the family’s dirty linen.”
I smiled wanly. “I can’t imagine how I was so taken in by a scoundrel like Myrna. I put all her little lapses down to her two decades of scrounging around Europe. She seemed so romantic and exotic, and lively, so interesting and different from everybody here. It is just the way Mama always described Lorna.”
“You like romance? I’m surprised — and delighted — to hear it. You have kept it under wraps. I could be romantic, if you’d let me, Kate. I’m no Byron in the exoticism line, but have been called lively upon occasion. I sing a little, know a few card tricks, can jig it with the best of them.”
I smiled and looked a question at him, waiting for the magic words. Acton, however, was a man of action. He reached out and drew me, unresisting, into his arms. “Enough talk. Kiss me, Kate,” he said.
It was a wonderful, romantic engagement, even without many words. The sweet scent of roses wafted around us as he squeezed the life out of me and the kiss deepened to passion. A strange fever invaded me, like a fire raging deep inside me. I felt lost in some strange, enchanting world.
The tighter he held me, the more my heart swelled till I felt it would explode into a million fiery stars. Oh yes, it was romantic. I forgot my worries about who would run Oak Hill and what I would do when Mama married Beamer and just reveled in the glory of the moment.
When he stopped and held me back to look at me, he smiled at whatever he saw in my face. “That romantic enough for you, or must I get down on my knees and soil my buckskins?”
“Not necessary,” I gasped. “I never cared for grovelers.”
“You haven’t said yes.”
“You haven’t asked me.”
“You know the question. Is it a bargain? You’ll have me?”
“Spoken like a true romantic. Clap hands on a bargain.” I offered him my hand.
He ignored it and pulled me back into his arms. “Kiss me again, Kate.”
“I didn’t kiss you. You kissed me.”
“You kissed me back.”
To settle the childish argument, we met halfway by kissing each other.
Chapter Twenty-three
After I had accepted Acton’s bargain and we had sealed it with a few kisses, we went, rather belatedly, to ask Mama for permission. She looked at us as if he had said he wanted to kill me.
“Kate?” she said, turning to look a question at me before continuing her questions to Acton. “You mean marry her?”
“Yes, that is my meaning, Lady Simmons,” he said with remarkable restraint.
“I never would have — But why are you asking me? Kate always does what she wants.”
He flashed a quick glance at me. I tried not to laugh. “Kate has agreed to marry me,” he said.
“Good gracious.” She looked to her new protector for guidance. Beamer nodded and she said, “Well, if that is what everyone wants. You may say goodbye to your myrtle, Kate. Only spinsters can grow myrtle successfully, and it was doing so well too.”
“I shall give it to Sally,” I told her.
Beamer congratulated Acton and wished me well. “We have a little announcement as well,” he said with a roguish grin. “Your Mama has this day accepted me.”
She gave him a reproving glance. “I told you I must speak to Kate first, Bernie.”
“I approve,” I said at once.
Mama shook her head in confusion. “My, what a day. I thought it was just Lorna being Myrna Coons Signora Rossini meant when she said this would be a day of marvels.”
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I nudged Acton. “Didn’t you say something about champagne, Acton?”
Balky, obviously at his usual listening post at the door, marched in with the champagne and four glasses. We all toasted each other and after a while Acton and Beamer moved a little apart from the ladies, no doubt to discuss arrangements about running Oak Hill. I didn’t care what arrangement they made. I was no longer in charge of Mama’s estate. It was Beamer’s job now. I knew he was never in favour of selling any property, and felt they would probably rent it to someone.
Mama said to me, “We must settle on dates, Kate. Not till May is over, of course. May is fatal to weddings, especially with widows and virgins. Whatever date we choose must be the right one, for it is awful luck to postpone it. And of course there must be a waxing moon.”
“Which of us should go first, Mama? As you are the older, you have the preference.”
“I cannot leave you alone in the house for weeks. Bernie wants to go to the Lake District for our honeymoon and that will take an age.”
“Then Acton and I shall be married first.”
“And leave me all alone?” she cried, as if we were speaking of a desert island, not a comfortable home with plenty of servants.
“Well, one of us must go first, Mama.”
“Why? We could have a double wedding. There is no ill luck attached to that.”
I wondered what Acton would think of that. When he and Beamer considered the necessity of a waxing moon and avoiding a May wedding, and avoiding postponement and some other superstitions having to do with not having any white flowers, they agreed to the double wedding, though none of us quite liked it.
“It will save on the cost of the spread,” Beamer said, but with little enthusiasm. We got out a calendar and after hearing the evils of various dates and checking the phases of the moon, settled on the fifteenth of June as safe.
“Where were you thinking of going for the treacle moon?” Acton asked Beamer, his aim, I knew, being to choose the other end of the country, or even a different country entirely.