Midnight at Mallyncourt

by Jennifer Wilde

  We had been together for almost two weeks now, and he was as much of an enigma as ever. We had left Brighton for London immediately, moving in to a grand, imposing hotel as man and wife. We had a plush suite, and I was rather alarmed when I saw the master bedroom. Edward put my fears to rest immediately, cooly informing me that he would sleep in the tiny room ordinarily assigned to milady’s abigail. He had done so, taking breakfast with me every morning in the richly appointed sitting room. He sent word of his marriage to his relatives as soon as we were installed in the hotel. I had assumed we would be departing in a day or so, but that wasn’t the case. Edward had business to attend to in the city, and I must have a complete new wardrobe. Jenny Randall’s clothes were all very well for an actress in a fourth-rate touring company, but they would never do for the wife of Edward Baker.

  My days were spent in shops and at dressmaking establishments, and our suite was soon a chaos of boxes and tissue paper, bolts of material, pins, tape measures, ribbons. Madame DuBois, the Parisian dressmaker, came to fit me herself, marveling at my slender form, my titian red hair, exclaiming that it was a joy to dress such an unusual beauty, declaring she would outdo herself. I was amazed at the quantity of things Edward felt I should have, amazed at their splendor, too. When I mentioned how frightfully expensive all this must be, he told me that the clothes were a necessary investment and added in a bored voice that I would naturally keep everything after our charade was over.

  Although he came to pass approval on everything purchased, I saw very little of him during the day, and my evenings were usually spent alone in the suite, admiring my new clothes, reading, writing letters to Laverne. Edward did take me to dine at a few fine restaurants, and one night he took me to see the great Richard Mansfield perform at the Drury Lane, but for the most part he left me to my own devices, apparently bored by my company. He was always polite, true, but that icy reserve was always maintained. I should have been relieved. I wasn’t. I wondered if he would be as remote and unfeeling once we arrived at Mallyncourt.

  The phaeton rumbled over a particularly nasty rut, and I was thrown against Edward. He put out a hand to steady me. I murmured an apology and settled back on my own side of the seat. Behind the low gray stone walls on either side of the road were rich farmlands, each field enclosed in its own gray wall, making a brilliant patchwork over the rolling hills of emerald, brown, red-brown, gold. I saw small, tidy farmhouses with thatched roofs, chickens scratching in front of the barns, black and white cattle roaming about in the fields beyond. This was a rich agricultural area, I knew, and the Mallyn dairy products were famous all over England.

  “Tenant farms,” Edward said, observing my interest. “All part of my uncle’s estate.”

  “He must be extremely wealthy.”

  “Filthy rich,” he retorted. “My uncle was the second son, seventeen when his brother inherited Mallyncourt. He shipped out for the orient. He was ambitious and unscrupulous and greedy, worked for the East India Company for a while, went into business for himself at the age of twenty-three. Import-export. By the time he was forty, he was one of the ten wealthiest men in England. His brother, my Uncle Frederick, died without children, and the old rascal inherited Mallyncourt. The place was in a shambles when he took over, the house tumbling down over his head, the farms a steady drain on the estate. He spent almost half his money improving conditions, renovating the house, revitalizing the farms, setting up the dairy. That was twenty years ago. He’s more than doubled in income what he sank into it in the beginning. Shrewd old codger, my uncle.”

  “Is he a bachelor, too?”

  “A widower. My Aunt Sarah died when I was a child, and he never remarried. Never had any legitimate heirs, although there’re a dozen or more bastards roaming the countryside who bear an embarrassing resemblance to my uncle. He was a randy one in his day, a real hell raiser. Hasn’t changed much, either.”

  The liveried servant clicked the reins, his back ramrod straight. He couldn’t have helped but overhear Edward’s remarks, but Edward didn’t seem to care. To him, I realized, servants were like so many objects, there to wait on him when needed, to be completely ignored the rest of the time. I had noticed this attitude in London. The people who served us there might as well have been invisible so far as Edward was concerned. I supposed it was the way he had been brought up. No matey chats with the stable boys for him, no friendly words to the parlor maids.

  “You make your uncle sound formidable,” I remarked.

  “He is,” Edward replied calmly. “Sly, devious, wily, hot-tempered, headstrong, as vindictive and sharp-tongued as a fish wife. He’s seventy now, still a tyrant, still delights in terrorizing the household from his sick bed.”

  “I don’t imagine he terrorizes you.”

  “Not at all. I caught on to his tricks before I put on my first pair of long trousers. Others might cringe and tremble, but I realized that he was nothing but a lonely, disappointed old man who craved attention. I know how to handle him, always have. Unlike Lyman. They’re constantly at each other’s throats.”

  “Lyman?”

  “My cousin. He lives at Mallyncourt with his wife and daughter, acts as Uncle James’ chief bailiff, manages the estate now that the old man is no longer able to do so himself.”

  “I—I know so little about these people I’m about to meet.”

  “I suppose I should give you a bit of background,” he replied. “After all, a wife would have learned something about the family. Frederick and James had two sisters, Clarissa and Jane. Jane had a grand debut in London. She could have had her pick of the most eligible bachelors of the day. She promptly came back to Mallyncourt and scandalized the countryside by marrying Angus Robb, the son of a tenant farmer, an uncouth lad with whom she had been having an affair prior to her debut. Lyman was the outcome of the match. His parents are both dead now. Uncle James took him in when he was thirteen.”

  “You were living there at the time?”

  “My mother, Clarissa, made a more suitable match. She married a young lieutenant, Jeffery Baker, the wealthy scion of a prominent London family. I was born a year later. My mother died bearing me. My father went away to India where he quickly succumbed to cholera. I was raised at Mallyncourt.” He paused, shoving a dark blond lock from his brow. “My uncle never had any legitimate children, but he was saddled with two young nephews early on. He loved to pit us against one another. Still does. That’s why he’s being so obstinate about the will.”

  “You and Lyman obviously don’t get along,” I observed.

  “That’s an understatement,” he replied. His voice was icy. “Lyman is an uncivil brute, churlish, disrespectful, the upstart son of a tenant farmer and a dizzy-headed young trollop who had neither sense nor morals in spite of her family name and respectable upbringing. Lyman and I have always been at odds.”

  “Is he your age?”

  “Three years older. He’s thirty-four.”

  “You mentioned a wife and child—”

  “Vanessa is one of the most beautiful women in England,” he informed me, “and undoubtedly one of the most depraved. At eighteen she was a professional beauty, the delight of London society, her portrait painted by Whistler, by Millais, by Holman-Hunt. Her background was impeccable, and she could have made a spectacular marriage. She didn’t. My cousin went up to London on estate business. They met, and she promptly cast aside all her eligible suitors. Aristocratic women, you’ll observe, are frequently attracted to the brusque, brutal type of male. Lyman is as virile and rough as his father was before him, and, like my Aunt Jane, Vanessa considered the world of polite society well lost for such a rugged specimen. They eloped. Lyman brought her back to Mallyncourt, and Lettice was born seven months later. That was ten years ago. Vanessa is twenty-nine now, more beautiful than ever.”

  “Is the marriage a happy one?”

  A thin, sardonic smile curled on his lips. “Hardly that,” he said in an emotionless voice. “Her elopement with Lyman was an advent
ure, a madcap escapade worthy of a spoiled, pampered young beauty, but unfortunately it backfired. She tired of him quickly—that was inevitable—and found herself a prisoner in the country, isolated from the society she had reigned over at one time, with a masterful, dominating husband who refused to let her have her way. Vanessa has been taking her revenge on him for a number of years now—”

  He didn’t elaborate. It wasn’t necessary.

  “And the child?” I inquired.

  “Lettice is a thin, pale, bitter little thing, prickly and thoroughly antisocial. She keeps to herself, preferring the company of her dolls to that of real people.”

  “That’s terribly sad,” I said quietly.

  “Don’t waste any sympathy on Lettice, my dear. At ten she’s already an accomplished shrew. On the rare occasions when she’s forced to abandon her dolls and join company she can be utterly scathing. She has no friends, naturally. The other children in the neighborhood detest her.”

  I was silent, thinking about this strange assortment of people I would soon be acquainted with. We had left the farmlands behind and were now passing through a wooded area, branches joining overhead to make a leafy green canopy through which only a few thin rays of sunlight sifted. Edward’s face was in shadow. He sat stiff and erect beside me as the wheels of the phaeton whirled over the hard uneven dirt road, the sound of the horses’ hooves echoing with the dense woods on either side.

  “It’s a rather unusual ménage,” Edward remarked, almost as though he were reading my mind, “but you needn’t feel intimidated. I’m sure you’ll be able to hold your own.”

  “I wonder about that,” I said nervously.

  “You’re no vapid, timorous maiden, Jennifer. You’ve got spirit. That’s one of the reasons I—er—selected you—” Although he couldn’t have cared less what the servants thought, he was careful to avoid saying anything that might have given away our game. The coachman might have been some mechanical robot perched up on the high front seat, but he could hear every word we said.

  “I hardly know what’s expected of me,” I said.

  “You’re to be a well-bred, obedient wife, and you’re to charm my uncle.”

  “From the way you’ve described him, that hardly seems possible.”

  “The old man still has an eye for the ladies,” he replied. “He may be on his death bed, but he still appreciates a beautiful woman.”

  “Does he appreciate Vanessa?” I asked.

  “He finds her amusing,” Edward said idly.

  “I see.”

  The woods were behind us now. We passed through two tall, weathered brownstone portals, a wrought-iron arch spanning across them with a large, ornate M worked into the center of the design. The road wound around splendid green lawns with tall, majestic trees spreading their boughs, and a few minutes later we passed under the archway of the weathered brown gatehouse elaborately decorated with pinnacles and strapwork. Ahead, beyond the deliberately untidy and multicolored walled front gardens, I could see the house itself. It was a magnificent sight, making a proud silhouette against the darkening sky. The rooftops were adorned with the same pinnacles and elaborate strapwork I had observed on the gatehouse, and the walls, once a soft tan, were now a streaked, mellow brown, the dozens and dozens of windows a gleaming silvery blue that reflected the last rays of light in brilliant sunbursts. I was amazed at its size, its imposing yet strangely unassuming grandeur.

  “Queen Elizabeth once stayed here,” Edward told me, “and Mary Queen of Scots was, briefly, a prisoner in the west wing, but I shan’t bore you with the history of the place. There are a number of books in the library you may consult if you’re interested. It’s a draughty pile, impossible to heat properly, an aged dinosaur of a house incredibly surviving the centuries and totally incongruous in this day and age.”

  “It’s—beautiful,” I said in an awed voice.

  “It has beauty, yes, but it’s highly impractical.”

  “You don’t love Mallyncourt?”

  “I have no love whatsoever for it,” he said, bored. “If I inherit, I’ll sell. There are any number of wealthy Americans who’d snap it up without a moment’s hesitation.”

  I found this attitude incredible, but it was in keeping with his character. Family tradition would mean nothing to a man like Edward Baker, nor would he be moved by the historic splendor represented by a house like Mallyncourt. I wondered idly what would move him. He couldn’t be as unfeeling as he seemed.

  “Your uncle must require a whole fleet of servants,” I remarked.

  He nodded grimly. “There is a butler, a housekeeper, a governess for Lettice, a personal valet for my uncle, a cook, six footmen, a gaggle of maids, two gardeners, a coachman, half a dozen or so stable boys, all of whom are fed and maintained by the Mallyn estate. The butler and housekeeper have quarters in the basement, as does the cook, the governess has a room in the nursery, and the other house servants have rooms in the attics. The rest of them sleep over the stables.”

  Circling around the exotic, wildly beautiful gardens, the phaeton drew up in front of the wide, flat steps. Six slender brown columns supported the ornate portico, and there were pots of red geraniums on the posts of the graceful balustrade. Edward alighted and helped me down, his face impassive as the coachman drove away toward the stables. The two of us stood in front of the great house, momentarily alone. I was extremely nervous, a prey to all sorts of apprehensions, and Edward noticed it. Some of his remoteness vanished. My nervousness amused him.

  “From this moment on, you’re my wife,” he told me.

  “It’s not a role I fancy,” I said acidly.

  “My loving wife, I might add.”

  “That will be the most difficult part to simulate, I assure you.”

  “Oh? You find me unlovable?”

  “Distinctly!”

  “That’s because you don’t know me,” he said lightly. “I’ve no doubt you’ll warm to me in time.”

  “I shouldn’t count on it, Mr. Baker.”

  “Edward,” he reminded me. “You’ll play your role nicely.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You’ll do more than try, my dear. Five hundred pounds are at stake, remember. There will be no slipups. Not only would you lose the five hundred, but you would also incur my wrath. You wouldn’t want to do that, Jennifer.”

  “You don’t intimidate me.”

  “No?”

  “Not at all!”

  “Try to curtail your venom, Jenny dear. You’re in love with me. We had a whirlwind courtship, a simple, private wedding and have just returned from an ecstatic honeymoon. An occasional lovers’ quarrel might be in keeping, but certainly not the animosity I currently detect in your eyes.” He took my arm, tucked it under his and escorted me up the steps. “You’re an actress, luv. The curtain is about to go up.”

  The great doors opened as if by magic. Two footmen in the Mallyn livery stood back, and the butler approached. Severely dressed in black, he was tall and thin and extremely grand, more aristocratic than the bluest of blue bloods.

  “Afternoon, Jeffers,” Edward said crisply.

  The imposing Jeffers nodded, barely glancing at me. The footmen stood rigidly against the wall, as motionless as statues. I glanced around at the great hall, trying to conceal my awe. It was square in shape, two stories high, and although a gallery ran around three sides on the first story, I saw no staircase. The enormous fireplace was of gray marble, the Mallyn coat of arms worked in moulded and gilt plaster above the mantlepiece. Faded Brussels tapestries depicting hunt scenes in shades of tan, gray, green and indigo hung along three of the stone walls, and the fourth was paneled in dark wood, displaying a collection of pikes, enameled shields and ancient weapons. A huge brass chandelier hung from the ceiling, and though the room was sparsely furnished, the furniture remaining was both lovely and majestic. There was a great chest which, I knew, would have been used as a safe for money and jewels during previous ages. Henry VIII might have dined at
that long, narrow table. Ladies in farthingales might have sat on those immense, elaborately carved chairs with their high backs and threadbare crimson velvet seats. The black and white marble floor gleamed.

  “My letter arrived?” Edward inquired.

  “It arrived two weeks ago,” Jeffers replied, showing neither interest nor surprise. “The west wing apartment has been readied for you and your wife, Master Edward. Your luggage arrived some time ago. Everything has been arranged—satisfactorily, I trust.”

  “And my uncle?”

  “Still in a poor condition, though, I might add, as easily riled as ever—if you’ll pardon my saying so. The doctors are quite alarmed. Lord Mallyn will demand his bottle of port every night.”

  Edward smiled, pleased. “I’ve been away two months, and the old devil hasn’t changed a bit. Still hanging on. What did he have to say about my marriage, Jeffers?”

  “I shouldn’t care to repeat that, sir.”

  As Edward chuckled to himself, I had the strong and unmistakable impression that someone was staring at me. Looking up, I saw two small hands gripping the railing of the gallery. A thin, childish face peered down at me, the eyes dark and hostile. There was a faint rustle of skirts and then the slender form disappeared through one of the doorways opening onto the gallery. That would be Lettice, I thought.

  “Shall I show you to the apartment?” Jeffers inquired.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Edward retorted, suddenly curt. “Come, my dear. I’ll take you up. You must be fatigued.”

  We moved down a long, low-ceilinged hallway with rooms opening off on either side, affording me brief glimpses of more splendor, and eventually arrived at a much wider hallway that extended along the length of the house in back. It was stark, with only a few benches and chairs, and the tapestries here were even older, less splendid, patched in several places. Tall windows looked out over a rolled, emerald green back lawn enclosed by neatly trimmed hedges, and an extremely wide staircase of flat stone steps led up to the first story.