The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  Susie felt she had left the modern world behind to enter an Old English world where the brutish face of her husband seemed entirely in place.

  The earl stamped the snow from his boots and led the way into a great dark hall hung with ancient banners and tapestries. A great fire, big enough to roast an ox in, blazed and crackled in an enormous stone fireplace.

  The servants were lined up in the hall to greet their new mistress. Susie kept her head down and murmured, “Pleased to meet you,” in a timid whisper that earned her the contempt of the servants.

  “That’s enough of that,” said the earl, pushing her away from the last servant. “Bring us something to drink. We’ll have it in the rose chamber. Is my mother there?”

  Susie felt a little breath of relief. His mother! She pictured a kindly white-haired lady who would look after her and perhaps talk gently to her in the evenings.

  The rose chamber bore witness to the Blackhall’s former allegiance to the Tudors, having faded red roses painted on its plastered walls. A stained-glass window set high up into the wall portrayed a particularly violent martyrdom in which a tanned saint in a bright blue robe was being burned to death at the stake amid a welter of crimson-red glass flames.

  What furniture there was belonged to the red plush, overstuffed variety, rather like the furniture in Susie’s home in Camberwell, and it looked very awkward in these austere surroundings, somewhat like a plump suburban family who had come on a sightseeing tour and had found themselves locked in for the night.

  A tall, gaunt, leathery woman who seemed to have been made out of whipcord and leather got to her feet at their entrance, and Susie was pushed forward and introduced. A pair of cold gray eyes stared down at Susie. This, then, was the earl’s mother, the Dowager Countess of Blackhall.

  She was wearing a mannish riding dress with a white stock. Her gray hair was pulled severely back, and her thin lips opened to reveal surprisingly bad teeth.

  “So you’re Susie,” said the senior Lady Blackhall.

  Susie dropped a curtsy. “I’m ever so pleased to meet you,” she whispered.

  “What’s this?” Her ladyship’s voice was like a whiplash. “This girl is common, Peter. Common as dirt. At least the other ones were all of your own class.” She waved her hand toward the wall behind her, and Susie found herself staring at the portraits of three young women.

  “Are they all dead?” she asked, surprise and fright making her bold.

  “Every single one of them,” said her ladyship with a certain amount of satisfaction. “I told ’em I’d outlive them all, and I did. Well, I shall just have to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Susie. When you have settled in, I shall begin your training and turn you into a lady if it takes all night and all day.”

  “Hey, not all night,” said the earl, leering.

  His mother killed him with a glance. “I hope you made it clear to this girl’s relatives, Peter, that she has got to have absolutely nothing to do with them from now on. Nip the suburban influence in the bud. You may call me Felicity, and I shall call you Susie, since I am as young in spirit as yourself. In fact, probably younger. Take off your wraps, girl, and warm yourself at the fire.”

  “Yes, Felicity,” said Susie meekly. This was going to be worse than school! She felt tears welling up behind her eyes and fought to keep them back.

  “It’s a very nice castle,” she ventured.

  “I suppose you mean ‘nice’ in the common way,” remarked Felicity. “Don’t use it again unless you mean precise, punctilious, or scrupulous. But since I gather you are trying to say that the castle is agreeable and delightful, then I take leave to inform you that you are wrong. It is damp, cold, drafty, and damned inconvenient. It is cold in winter and cold in summer. Fortunately, I am in excellent health and able to cope with its rigors. Many are not, which is probably why Peter’s last wives are now lying six feet under.”

  Susie fell silent. A burgeoning anger against the awful old autocrat was drying her tears.

  A servant entered, carrying a tray laden with bottles and glasses. “I suppose you drink port,” barked Felicity, motioning the servant to hand Susie a glass. Susie did not in fact drink anything stronger than lemonade but was frightened to say so.

  Peter, Earl of Blackhall, and his mother fell to talking about people that Susie did not know, and she was left peacefully to sip her wine and study her three predecessors, who seemed to look down on her sadly from their heavy gilt frames.

  Felicity finally turned her attention back to Susie. “You had better go to your rooms and change for dinner. The housekeeper will show you the way.” She rang the bell, tugging at a frayed bell rope on the wall.

  Susie followed the housekeeper up the long, winding stone stair and felt alamost out of breath by the time they finally came to a halt. The bedrooms were obviously at the top of the keep.

  The housekeeper, a plump, motherly snob called Mrs. Wight, pushed open a stout oak door. Susie was ushered in and then left to examine her new quarters. She was to learn that, apart from the hall, the rose chamber was about the biggest room in the castle. She found herself standing in a small, stuffy sitting room that led to a larger, freezing bedroom. In the bedroom a fairly big window had been let into the wall and was wide open, showing the snow drifting past outside. Susie crossed over and looked out, hoping for a glimpse of the sea, but found herself looking straight down into the bleak square of the inner courtyard. She shivered and tried to pull the window closed, but it would not budge. What on earth happens when the wind is on this side of the keep? she wondered.

  A door from the bedroom led to a small suite of rooms belonging to her husband. She retreated back to her sitting room, closing the door between it and the bedroom to shut off the blast of freezing air from the open window. She wanted to wash her face and hands, but the washstand and water cans were in the bedroom, and the water was probably frozen solid. Suddenly the fact that her husband had his own suite of rooms seemed to her infinitely heartening. Her parents shared a bed, that she knew. But now it seemed as if she would have her privacy. A cheerful coal fire crackled on the hearth, and a rose-shaded oil lamp gave the room an illusion of femininity and friendliness. There were old piles of romances on the shelves, unfinished embroidery in the workbox, and an old doll lying abandoned in the corner.

  Who had owned the doll? No child, surely. Perhaps one of the wives who had brought this comfort from her childhood days to this bleak castle.

  Susie shivered and decided to change for dinner. Her clothes had already all been put away, no doubt by the efficient Mrs. Wight and her maids.

  There was a scratching at the door, and a severe-looking, angular woman in a black silk dress entered. Susie arose and dropped her a curtsy, which brought a thin smile to this lady’s lips.

  “I am the Dowager Lady Blackhall’s lady’s maid, my lady,” she said. “She has instructed me to aid you with your toilette. My name is Carter.”

  Susie summoned up her small stock of courage. The thought of having this disapproving woman brushing her hair and helping her into her clothes was too much to bear.

  “I am quite used to looking after myself, Carter.”

  “I can see that,” remarked Carter.

  “Please leave,” said Susie. Susie was so shocked by the maid’s impertinence that it showed on her expressive face.

  Carter retreated quickly after choking out a reluctant apology.

  Susie gave a sigh of relief when the door closed behind Carter. Then she realized she did not know the time. The sky was now very dark outside. She supposed they would ring some bell or gong for dinner. But then how would she hear it up here at the top of the keep? She plucked up her courage and decided to change quickly and make her own way downstairs.

  She chose a golden-brown velvet dinner gown trimmed with bands of sable. It was not fashionable for such a young girl, married or not, to wear fur, but Mrs. Burke had obeyed the earl’s request and had tried to age her daughter.

  The
neckline was cut low over her bosom. She fastened a string of pearls around her neck and secured a few more pins in her hair, which was piled up on top of her head. Susie had been allowed to wear her hair up at last.

  She opened the door to the passage and looked out. It was pitch-black. She walked back and opened the door of her bedroom, steeling herself against the icy blast from the open window, and picked up the candle from beside the bed. She lit it from the fire in her sitting room and, holding it high, ventured out into the stone passage again.

  Susie could not remember from which direction she had come. She picked her way slowly along to the left and, after what seemed like ages, felt her way around a corner. A shaft of white moonlight cut across this new passage. She edged toward it.

  An embrasure had been cut into the great thickness of the castle wall, ending in a long, thin arrow slit that overlooked the raging, pounding, heaving, battling freedom of the sea.

  The keep was perched on the top of a tall cliff. A small winter moon raced through the storm clouds over the glittering, turning water, and Susie stood fascinated, the flame of her candle flaring and streaming in the chill wind. She slowly put it down on a stone niche and moved closer to the arrow slit.

  Susie had never seen the sea before, and this first glimpse took her breath away. It was exhilarating. She wanted to shout and sing and dance, but seventeen years of social restrictions would not let her.

  She stood there for a very long time, staring at the tumbling water. Something seemed to loosen inside her, and she said aloud, “I hate him. I hate my husband, and I wish he were dead.”

  “Don’t you want to be a countess?” asked a mocking voice behind her, and she swung around in fright with her hand to her mouth.

  A young man stood looking at her in the moonlight. He was wearing evening dress, which hugged his slim, muscular figure. The moonlight washed the color from his eyes and face, but Susie noticed that his eyes were very long and slightly tilted and his hair was a close cap of tight silver curls. He had a firm but sensuous mouth, which at that moment was curved in a half smile. He looked like something out of Greek mythology, reflected Susie wildly. One of the beautiful, incalculable gods, forever mocking, forever cruel.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” he said.

  “I was quoting something,” lied Susie. “A line from a school play, that is all.”

  “You would make a good actress,” he said in a light, amused voice. “You put so much passion and fire into your lines, I really thought you meant them.”

  Susie picked up her candle. “You are blocking my way, sir. I am going downstairs to join my husband.”

  “You won’t find him this way,” he teased. “I had better escort you. Allow me to introduce myself. Giles Warden at your service, ma’am. And you, I gather, are Henry the Eighth’s latest.”

  “Henry the…?”

  “My Uncle Peter. We call him Henry the Eighth, but don’t worry, he doesn’t behead his wives.”

  “I don’t think this conversation is in very good taste,” remarked Susie, relieved to find they had reached the top of the stairs, where a lamp was burning on a small side table.

  He took her candle from her and blew it out. “No, you are quite right,” he said. “Very bad taste. But you see, you are so very young. I was impertinent. Forgive me?”

  Susie looked up at him, seeing him properly for the first time in the lamplight. His hair was gold, not silver, and his eyes were a light blue. His heavy eyelids curved upward at the corners. He was extremely good-looking in a sensuous sort of Greek god way—that is if you like sensuous Greek gods, which Susie decided she most definitely did not. Witness what had happened to her breathing. It was quite ragged, and surely only people you didn’t like had that sort of effect on your emotions.

  “I forgive you,” she said in a chilly little voice as she allowed him to lead her downstairs, wishing he would take his hand from under her arm, since it seemed to make it go numb and her knees go wobbly.

  “Has Felicity been bullying you?” he asked pleasantly as they finally reached the hall.

  Susie thought for a minute. Felicity had been unpleasant and patronizing, but in Susie’s experience, so were most grown-up people. Susie did not yet feel grown-up herself and regarded everyone over twenty as being a potential parent. “No,” she replied, stealing another look at her companion and trying to decide his age. Around thirty, she guessed, and sighed. That put him definitely in the parent class. He would no doubt start giving her orders along with the rest of them.

  The earl was standing in front of the fireplace in the rose chamber. He had somehow managed to change into evening dress, probably when Susie had been standing watching the sea, for she certainly had not heard him moving about his rooms.

  The earl glared at his nephew. “Trying to poach on my land already, what?”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” drawled Giles, and Susie looked from one to the other, wondering what they were talking about.

  Felicity was dressed from head to foot in black velvet ornamented with jet. Although she was a tall woman, the skirt of her dress trailed along the ground behind her, making her look like a singularly healthy ghoul. The reason for this was that Felicity never threw any of her clothes away, and the dress had been designed in her youth to cover a wide crinoline hoop. She had simply closeted the hoop and kept the dress.

  “Why did you invite me here?” asked Giles as he accepted a glass of sherry from a footman.

  “To put your stuck-up nose out of joint, that’s why,” said the earl, hitching up the tails of his evening coat. “Thought I was too old to marry, heh? Well, I ain’t, and I ain’t too old to father an heir either.”

  Giles swung around and studied Susie’s face. Her eyes were wide and innocent. He felt a sudden qualm. Why, I believe she still thinks that babies are found under gooseberry bushes, he thought. Well, she’s in for a nasty awakening.

  “It doesn’t matter to me who your heir is,” he rejoined calmly. “I only wish I’d known that that was the so-called urgent reason for hailing me down to this drafty old dump. I’m not mad on titles, old boy, and I don’t need your money, so why am I supposed to get upset?”

  The earl stared at him in a temper, his red-veined eyes bulging out of his head.

  “You damned sneering pup. I’ve always hated you and that dreary father of yours. Him and his books and manuscripts. Never brought him any money, did it?”

  “No,” agreed Giles, “but then I have all the financial genius of the family. I’m really sickeningly rich, Uncle. Why, how funny and red your dear old face has gone, and I swear the wax is melting on your mustache.”

  “That’s enough!” snapped Felicity. “I’ll have my hands full enough with Susie without you two quarreling.”

  “What’s Susie got to do with it?” asked Giles in surprise.

  “She’s got to be turned into a lady,” said Felicity.

  “Strange,” murmured Giles, “she looks exactly like one to me.”

  Susie threw him a shy look of gratitude. Perhaps that perpetually mocking glint in Giles Warden’s eyes was misleading. Perhaps he was kind.

  She had expected the dining room to be a vast place with a mile-long table, but it was, in fact, rather small, almost as small as the dining room at Camberwell. It was one of the keep’s prettier rooms, having a rose-patterned carpet to cover the stone floor and exquisite gold and green tapestries to cover the stone walls. Candles blazed everywhere, and the liveried footmen outnumbered the diners.

  The food was reassuringly simple, the earl confining his gourmand taste to someone else’s table. Susie was urged to drink up her wine by her husband but Felicity mercifully put a stop to that.

  “What is the point in pouring good vintage wine down the throat of an untutored girl,” she declared. “It’s wasted on her.”

  It was to be one of Felicity’s few maxims with which Susie found herself in total agreement. She thought the wine tasted like vinegar and had preferre
d the sweet taste of the port she had had earlier in the day.

  Felicity turned her tormenting, restless attention to Giles. “And what about you?” she demanded. “When are you getting married again?”

  Susie flinched. Married again? Were they all bluebeards?

  “I’m not,” said Giles calmly. “Once was enough.”

  “Did she die?” asked Susie sympathetically.

  “No,” said Giles. “She ran away to the South of France with an elderly colonel, who, I believe, beats her soundly every day.”

  “How horrible!”

  “Not really,” said Giles, looking amused. “I must have driven her mad. I treated her like spun glass and wrote poetry to her and brought her flowers and told her she was an angel from Heaven.”

  “But any woman would adore that,” said Susie wonderingly.

  “Not really,” said Giles, helping himself to potatoes from a dish held by a footman. “She said I made her sick, so she rushed from my extreme to the colonel’s extreme. She is happy in her way. Do not be sorry for her.”

  “I was feeling sorry for you,” said Susie boldly.

  He smiled into her eyes in a slow, caressing way. “There is no need, I assure you. It was a good lesson. I look at all women with the eyes of reality now. Even very pretty girls like yourself.”

  “You’re all stupid,” said Felicity. “A woman should be a companion to a man. Your father and I, Peter, used to hunt together and discuss the problems of the estate together. He had no secrets from me. We were pals.”

  “What about Flossie Hagger down in the village,” said the earl cruelly. “You mean he didn’t even keep her a secret?”

  Felicity turned red. “I knew about that, but it is a lady’s first duty to turn a blind eye to her husband’s peccadilloes.”

  “Here that, Susie?” said her husband, laughing.

  But Susie did not know what they were talking about.

  At last it came time for the ladies to retire to the rose chamber and leave the gentlemen to their port.