by M C Beaton
“My lord, my God!” cried Mr. Brodie distractedly. “See what you have done.”
Lord Charles turned on his heel and strode from the coffee house.
“I’ll walk,” he said abruptly to Sir Anthony. “No! Don’t fuss over me like a mother hen. I do not want company. You may use my chair.”
Anthony opened his mouth to protest, but Lord Charles was already striding off down the street.
A pale dawn was smearing the sky, and a chill little wind rippled over the puddles in the cobbles. It had been raining during the night, and the glistening empty streets echoed to the rap of Lord Charles’s heels.
He walked and walked, his head bent, his hand ever on his sword hilt in case he were attacked. He walked until a small red sun bathed the cobbles blood-red. He walked and walked, as if to try to leave the turmoil in his brain somewhere behind. Yes, he had killed two men, but those had been a case of kill or be killed. His heart burned with an ice-cold fury against Lady Jane Lovelace, who had coldbloodedly manipulated him into this affair. He had had no quarrel with Bentley himself.
At last, tired and weary, he reached his house, brushing aside the shocked exclamations of Anderson, who cried out at the sight of his master’s haggard face.
“Come into my study, Anderson,” said Lord Charles in a quiet, flat voice. He walked to his desk and pulled out some parchment. After staring at the blank pages in silence for a few moments, he pulled them toward him and began to write. Finally he sanded and sealed the letter and handed it to Anderson, along with the Westerby papers.
“Take all this to Lady Jane Lovelace,” he said, still in that emotionless voice, “and make sure it is given directly into her hands. On your return, give orders to the servants to make ready. We leave for the country in the morning. As for today, I am not at home to anyone—that includes the magistrates. If they wish to question me over the death of a certain James Bentley, you will tell them that there were enough witnesses to testify that Mr. Bentley died by his own hand and I have nothing to say on the matter. Don’t stand there with your mouth open. Bustle about, man!”
Anderson bowed and withdrew. He decided to execute the commission himself, instead of trusting it to a footman, and if he passed the time on the road home in a certain tavern, well then, he would tell his lordship that Lady Jane had kept him waiting.
He hoped to find Lady Jane at home, so that he would have more time to spend in the tavern.
Bella frowned awfully on him when she heard him stating his business to Lady Comfrey’s butler. Lady Jane had been white-faced and twitty all morning. But Anderson was not going to waste any time that might be spent in the tavern standing in Lady Comfrey’s hall being harangued by Lady Comfrey’s maid. He stood his ground, pointing out that he was sure Lady Jane would be incensed an she did not hear of his visit.
With much grumbling, Bella consented to inform Lady Jane of his presence and stumped up the stairs.
Jane turned white and then red when she heard who was waiting for her. Hope sprang anew in her breast. He had not really been angry with her. And she had wronged him.
She hurried nervously down the stairs, to find that Anderson had been put in the morning room to await her. Shutting the door firmly on Bella’s curious face, Jane asked Anderson his business. But the tavern beckoned, and Anderson did not want to stay and be questioned about his master. He put the papers and the letter into Jane’s hands and with a quick, jerky bow nipped speedily from the room.
Jane sank down into the nearest chair, holding the papers. The name Eppington Chase seemed to leap out at her from the pile of manuscript. Then she turned over the draft to James Bentley’s bank, flinching at the staggering sum of money. She had finally achieved her ambition, and she wanted none of it.
Then, with shaking fingers, she broke open the heavy seal and read his lordship’s letter. “Dear Lady Jane Lovelace,” she read, “Here is your heart’s desire. It will further gratify you to learn that Mr. Bentley blew his brains out, so your revenge is complete. It disgusts me to have allowed myself to be used as your instrument. Save your maiden tremblings. I shall not be calling on you. I would sooner bed with the filthiest whore from Seven Dials than touch one inch of your cold, heartless, and bloodless body. I remain, Yrs, Welbourne.”
It was like a hammer blow over the heart. Jane felt a great, wrenching pain, and then nothing. Absolutely nothing. She picked up the papers and walked out, past the staring Bella, across the hall to the drawing room. Lady Comfrey was entertaining her beau of the opera, Mr. Braintree. Their conversation seemed to consist of shrieking with laughter at each other’s comments.
Mr. Braintree rose at her entrance, with a great swishing of silken skirts. His coat was so boned and stiffened it was nearly as wide as Lady Comfrey’s hoop. “Ecod!” he cried, kissing the tips of his fingers. “Here’s loveliness. The senses are overaffected. You are pretty, Lady Jane, but a rosebud set against the fullblown beauty of my Lady Comfrey. Ah, Lady Comfrey,” he cried, seizing her hand, “I am content to worship at your feet.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and Lady Comfrey rapped him with her fan and cackled with delighted laughter.
“I am going home,” said Jane in a flat voice.
“Going home?” repeated Lady Comfrey in surprise. “This is your home, my child!”
“I mean home to Westerby,” said Jane. “I must see my father. I shall not be returning.”
“What!” cried Lady Comfrey wrathfully. “Have I not been good to you beyond belief? Have I not given you gowns and jewels? Is this how you reward my generosity?”
“But, Godmama…” protested Jane, but Lady Comfrey was busy lashing herself into a fury for Mr. Braintree’s benefit. Now she had this new companion, she did not very much care whether Jane left or no. But she did hope that Mr. Braintree would notice the swish of her skirts as she marched up and down, and the majestic gleam of her angry eye.
“Get from my sight, you ungrateful girl. You have no heart. Alas! I am overcome!” With that she collapsed back into her chair and sobbed noisily.
Jane hurried forward to comfort her, but Mr. Braintree barred the way. “Begone!” he shrieked, his eyes filled with venom and looking directly at Jane for the first time. “Leave dear Harriet in the tender care of those who appreciate her. Oh, my darling!” He sank down on one knee and began feverishly to kiss the hand which Lady Comfrey had outstretched in the hope that he would.
Jane turned and ran from the room, nearly colliding with Bella, who had been listening at the door.
Bella followed Jane up the stairs and watched her packing one small bandbox. “Silly chit,” said Bella, bustling forward and taking the bandbox from Jane’s hands. “So you’re off to your pa and you’re hurt by what she said so you ain’t going to take any of the fine gowns and jewels she gave you. Take ’em all, my lady, and your old Bella will help you pack. She ain’t angry with you! Her’s showing off for that creaky beau, who wants her money, that’s for sure.”
“I don’t understand anyone,” said Jane, too numb to cry.
“There now. And who is asking you?” soothed Bella. “Sit yourself over there while I call up one of them lazy housemaids, and we’ll have all this packed in a trice. My lady will come around soon as she’s found the true nature of that fop belowstairs. He’s after her money, and he’s never been enamored of woman yet, and that she’ll find out to her cost. Seems odd, don’t it, a lady of her years twittering and sighing like a schoolgirl over a… over a—well, I shall not soil my lips or your ears with the word. It puts in mind young Lady Emily, her what was wed to Lord Alfred Damson. Innocent as lambs, she was, and thought her husband monstrous clever to keep such an elegant house and carriage, and she bragged they had the handsomest footmen in the whole of England. Well, one day my lord thinks she’s going to be at the opera, and he tips the wink to his first footman. But my lady had the megrims and decides to stay at home with her lord. She pushed open the door of the bedchamber, and…”
Mercifully, Jane had ceased
to listen as Bella prattled on about what Lady Emily saw in the bedchamber. Deaf and dumb with misery, she only wished to be gone. She roused herself at one point to beg Bella to ask the kitchen to furnish her with some sugarplums for her stepsisters. Bella promised a whole hamper of goodies.
Bella never stopped talking until Jane was ensconced in the traveling carriage. “And don’t forget your old Bella,” shouted the maid as the coachman cracked his whip.
Jane smiled stiffly and waved as the coach rambled deafeningly over the cobbles of Huggets Square and out into the hurly-burly of the streets.
Jane was blind and deaf to all sights and sounds, to the cries of the street venders, to the violence of the streets, to the terrible rotting bodies stuck up on the Temple Gate, to the creaking and groaning of the iron shop signs as they swung and rattled in the rising wind.
A squall of rain hit the carriage windows as they crossed through the houses on London Bridge, and ran down the glass like tears.
People and houses floated past Jane’s fixed stare like objects in a dream. By the time the carriage was out into the lanes of Surrey, the rain had changed to sleet, whipping savagely across the bare fields, where crows wheeled and turned against the rushing clouds.
Night began to fall, and one by one the firefly lights of candles began to twinkle in cottage windows. Then at last, in the gathering gloom, loomed Westerby church. Not very far to go.
Jane felt no quickening of her heart as the carriage with its outriders, their flambeaux crackling and flaming, swung into the narrow rutted lane that led to her home.
Hetty came running out at the sound of the carriage, her gown more frayed than usual and her hair like a bird’s nest. In a more normal state of mind, Jane would have wondered nervously what Lady Comfrey’s grand if aged servants made of her stepmama, but her very soul seemed to have died.
With hands like ice, she embraced Hetty as the servants unloaded her trunks and the large wicker hamper with goodies from Lady Comfrey’s kitchen. The servants haughtily declined Lady Hetty’s offer of refreshment. The coach swung round in the narrow courtyard and rumbled off down the road.
“Come in! Come in! You’re froze to death!” cried Hetty, tugging at Jane, who was standing very still, staring after the vanishing coach.
“Yes, Hetty,” said Jane with a little shiver. “Let us go inside.”
“Everyone’s in the kitchen,” chattered Hetty. “What a load of things you do have! Why are you home? Why did you leave? The old lady ha’n’t taken you in dislike?”
“Later, Hetty,” said Jane through stiff lips. “Not now.”
The Marquess of Westerby was at his usual place at the kitchen table, with his usual glass in front of him. He seemed to have grown considerably older and smaller, somehow, shrunk inside the tawdry grandeur of his frayed silks.
Jane walked forward and placed the Westerby documents on the table in front of him.
“What’s this, heh?” he slurred, pulling out his glass and polishing it on his cuff. He glanced idly at the papers and then looked up at Jane in a dazed kind of way. Then he looked at the papers again.
With a great cry, he sprang to his feet and rushed out into the yard and put his head under the pump. They waited in silence, Hetty and the girls wondering, and Jane tired and ill, until he appeared, grasping the doorjamb and staring at the kitchen table with eyes that were fever-bright.
He walked forward and picked up his glass and hurled it into the fire. “Demme,” he cried, “if I touch a drop of the stuff again! How did you manage this, Jane? It is a miracle! Hetty, my love, see what Jane has brought me. My clever puss of a daughter has brought back Eppington Chase, my lands and my fortune. Oh, Hetty, Hetty! You will be a fine lady yet!”
Hetty suddenly went as still and silent as Jane, her face very white. Betty and Sally had opened the hamper of goodies and were shouting and prancing with delight, tugging at their mother’s skirts and holding up sugarplums and cakes in front of her unseeing eyes.
“Jane, my love,” cried the Marquess. “Sit down by me, girl, and tell me all.”
“Later,” whispered Jane. “Pray forgive me, Papa. I must rest.”
The Marquess made a move to stop her, but caught his wife’s quick shake of the head and sank back into his chair, clutching the papers and staring down at them with glittering eyes.
Jane escaped quickly and climbed up the stairs to the old familiar bedroom. She pulled a hard chair up to the window and stared with unseeing eyes out at the windy darkness.
The door softly opened and Hetty came in, carrying a candle, which she placed on the mantelshelf. She walked over and stood behind Jane and placed her hands gently on the girl’s shoulders.
“Who is he, love?” she asked softly. “Tell old Hetty all about it. Who is he?”
Jane began to tremble under her strong hands, and then she stood up and turned round and buried her small head in Hetty’s generous bosom and cried as if her heart would break.
“There now, there now,” soothed Hetty, patting her shaking shoulders awkwardly. “You shall have your cry, and then you shall tell Hetty.”
And so Jane went on crying out the hurt and shame and lost love, while Hetty stared over her head and felt her heart cringe at the thought of being mistress of Eppington Chase.
“Damn that house,” thought Hetty fiercely. “It takes people, body and soul. But it shan’t get old Hetty. I’ll burn it first!”
Chapter Ten
Autumn passed into winter, and winter changed into spring, and the Marquess of Westerby was once more ensconced at Eppington Chase. He was as good as his word and had not drunk a drop since the night of Jane’s homecoming. He had put on a great deal of weight and had adopted a rather jovial, muscular brand of Christianity, riding around to his tenants’ homes with a large Bible under his arm. His tenants suffered his noisy preaching gladly, for at least he proved to be an exceptional landlord. Roofs were repaired and fences mended. He was a good man, despite his foibles, they said. It was a pity his lady had become so high in the instep.
For the Marquess was the only happy member of Eppington Chase. Hetty had changed overnight into a stiff clothes horse, a very model of propriety and bon ton. Her voice had lost a lot of its old vigor, although it kept its bad grammar.
Jane had tried to tease her out of this new role. She could not believe that she, Jane, had longed for Hetty to forsake her rough-and-ready manners. And despite her grand airs, Hetty appeared to have taken up drinking where her husband had left off, and sometimes her social mask would be cracked by noisy bouts of frenzied weeping. Sally and Betty fretted under the rigid tuition of a governess and longed for their old freedom.
James Bentley’s ghost seemed to walk the corridors and stairways of the Chase—a feeling aggravated by the real-life flesh-and-blood presence of his family.
Stricken with remorse, Jane had offered them a home, which, to Hetty’s horror, they had eagerly accepted. Although they were given a wing of their own and tacitly expected to live apart, they always seemed to materialize at mealtimes, heavily robed in black and staring at Jane with accusing eyes.
And Jane? She went quietly about her duties in the stillroom and the estates, trying to forget Lord Charles. Shortly after she had moved to the Chase, the carrier had arrived bearing the Westerby portraits, with a line from Lord Charles’s secretary. Jane had written an impassioned letter, begging his forgiveness and pathetically vowing her love for him. The letter was never opened. His lordship, hearing from the carrier whom it was from, had consigned it to the flames of his drawing-room fire.
Philadelphia was often a guest at the Chase, marveling at the good fortune of the Syms family, in that Mr. Bentley had taken his life before he had had time to remove Mr. Syms from the living, for Papa had not wanted to leave and it was such fun now that Jane was a wealthy lady. Philadelphia went so far as to see the hand of Providence in the affair and sulked when Jane called her heartless and then burst into tears—Jane suddenly remembering Lord Char
les’s voice as he had called her heartless that terrible evening so long ago.
But as Jane began to emerge from her numb suffering, she became increasingly concerned over Hetty. She tried to speak to her father, but he robustly pooh-poohed the idea of anything being up with his wife, saying that she looked remarkably fine.
Then Mrs. Bentley began gradually to recover both her spirits and her malicious tongue. Her sly, tittering barbs made the sensitive Hetty wince and run to her bottle for solace the more.
Jane was at her wit’s end when she received a visit from Bella.
The old lady’s maid was ushered into the main saloon on the first floor of the new wing, which still boasted its chinoiserie, Jane having not had the heart to make any alterations. Jane rose to meet her. “Why, Bella!” she exclaimed. “What brings you to the country? Not bad news, I trust. Lady Comfrey…?”
Bella shook her large head mournfully. “Dead,” she said. “Dead as a doornail. Gone. Departed. Left her mortal body. Passed on. Dead.”
“What…?”
“Apoplexy,” said Bella with gloomy relish, “and all on account of that Mr. Braintree.”
“How…?”
“I told her. I warned her,” went on Bella with a monumental sniff. “But she would not listen to me, not her! ‘You’re jealous, Bella,’ she said. ‘Me, my lady!’ I says, says I. ‘Me! Jealous of that fop!’ ‘You may leave my employ, Bella,’ says she. ‘I am nourishing a viper in my drawing room,’ says she, not knowing her Bible that well, for she never was a one for going to church, and I hope the good Lord will pity her and forgive her, for she took care of you, my lady, ’fore she died.”
“Bella…?”
“You want to know how it all come about? That Mr. Braintree was always around akissing her hand till he was like to wear the skin away. So my lady decides he’s going to marry her, and so she makes a will. Didn’t leave me a penny in it, neither. ‘You’re an ungrateful wretch,’ she says, ‘and I don’t know why you stop here, seeing as how I told you to go.’ ‘I’m stopping here, my lady,’ says I, ‘to pick up the pieces.’ But she wouldn’t listen.