by M. C. Beaton
At last she hit on it.
“Do you ride?” she asked casually.
“No, not really,” said Susie.
“Every lady should learn to ride,” said Felicity grimly. “I shall teach you myself. We will begin your lessons tomorrow. I shall personally choose a mount for you.”
“Very good of you, I’m sure,” said Susie meekly.
“Good God!” said Felicity waspishly. “Have I not yet cured you of speaking like a scullery maid? Don’t say ‘I’m sure’ at the end of a sentence like that.”
“Very well, Felicity.”
“I don’t know why you never seem to listen to me,” Felicity went on. “That dreary, common little face and that voice of yours get on my nerves.”
Felicity intercepted a sympathetic look that Thomson threw at Susie, and this championship from a most unexpected quarter drove her to further lengths of bitchiness.
“I suppose a silly goose like you thinks a lady can be made overnight. But she can’t! In fact, anyone from your class can only hope for a veneer of refinement. Underneath, they’ll always be the same. Common as dirt. Just like your parents.”
Now, there is just so much that even a girl like Susie can take.
She rose to her feet and threw her napkin down on the table.
“Oh, shut up!” she said distinctly.
Felicity rose to her feet in a rage. “How dare—”
“Yes, I dare,” shouted Susie, feeling all the rage and satisfaction of the turning worm. “Furthermore, I’m tired of your lectures. I wish you were dead, do you hear? Dead! Dead! Dead!”
“Go to your room,” said Felicity, suddenly as cold as she had been hot. “I shall expect your apology in the morning.”
Susie’s fit of rebellion fizzled and died. She felt small and insecure and thoroughly ashamed of herself.
She trailed miserably up to her room.
She knew she would apologize to Felicity in the morning. She had not the courage left to do anything else.
Two footmen and a housemaid kindly brought the rest of her dinner up to her small sitting room. They banked up the fire, laid out her slippers, brought her up piping-hot cans of washing water, and Susie gave them a grateful, timid smile, which, as the housemaid, Gladys, told the rest of the servants later, “went right to ’er heart.”
I can’t go on like this, thought Susie miserably. I wish I were dead.
Then as she thought about dying she began to weave a romantic funeral for herself while a small smile began to play about her mouth. The service would be held at the village church. All the servants would cry. Lady Felicity would tear her hair and beat her bosom with remorse. She would throw herself on Susie’s coffin and cry with grief. The vicar who would perform the service would be a homely young man with an honest, tanned face and blue eyes. “Weep, oh unfortunate woman!” he would admonish Felicity as he removed the pipe from between his manly teeth. “You and you alone are responsible for driving this child into the decline from which she died.” A ray of sun would strike her coffin, and the manly vicar would begin to cry as well. “So young and so beautiful,” he would sob. “Had she not been so far above me in social station, why, I might have married her and helped her escape from her dreadful life.”
Nursing her fantasy and taking it carefully to bed, as a child would a favorite teddy bear, Susie soon fell into a dreamless sleep. She never once thought about Giles, Lord Blackhall.
Why should she?
She had nearly forgotten that he existed.
Giles, Earl of Blackhall, had, on the other hand, not forgotten Susie. He had stayed with friends in Paris for a month and then had slowly drifted southward toward the sunny Mediterranean shore. The farther away from Blackhall Castle he traveled, the more it seemed to pull him back. It was his now, and there was so much to be done, so much land that could be farmed and was, at present, lying fallow. The moat could be drained, the keep modernized, made warmer, more comfortable. It was something to still have a castle to live in these days.
But still he traveled aimlessly on until one night in the garden of a villa in Nice, he kissed a very beautiful, very sophisticated, very passionate, and very willing lady and was deeply surprised that he should be unable to conjure up any answering response. While he pressed his lips against the warm face beneath his own, he remembered vividly the passion one kiss from Susie had aroused in him. He wondered urgently how she was and if she had forgiven him, realizing thoroughly and for the first time that she did have something to forgive.
He led the lady in his arms to a convenient summer house and performed his part with athletic expertise, while all the time his thoughts roamed homeward to the bleak castle on top of the steep cliffs above the roaring sea.
“Use your whip, you ninny! Use your whip!” But Susie would not.
It was her fifth riding lesson, and she was so bruised and battered, she could hardly stay on the vicious mount that Lady Felicity had deliberately chosen for her. The horse was called Dobbin and was anything but the docile animal that its pedestrian name conjured up. He had a nasty temper and a rolling eye. He did not want Susie on his back; he did not want any human on his back, and only endured Susie for brief stretches at a time because she fed him sugar lumps and spoke to him in a soft, pleading voice that somewhere in the back of his bad-tempered brain he rather liked.
Lady Felicity was herself a hard-bitten horsewoman, and prided herself on the fact that there wasn’t a horse alive she couldn’t ride.
During this, the fifth lesson, she and Susie were riding toward the steep edge of a gravel pit. The sky still lowered above them, and a dry, cold wind whipped across the rock-strewn moor. Felicity had become bored with Susie’s torture and turned her attention instead to Susie’s horse.
Suddenly she reined in her own mount. “It’s time I showed you and that animal of yours how a horse should be mastered,” she said. “Dismount and take my horse, and I’ll take yours.”
Susie gladly complied, climbing awkwardly up onto the back of Lady Felicity’s more docile horse.
Felicity leapt nimbly into the sidesaddle on Dobbin’s back, wrenched his mouth, and then lashed the animal viciously across the rump with her whip so that a thin trickle of blood ran down his flanks.
She then dug a wicked-looking spur hard into his side. “Gee-up!” she said.
And Dobbin did.
Right to the edge of the gravel pit he flew like an arrow from a bow, and right at the edge he dug in all four hooves and stopped short.
Lady Felicity went sailing over his head. Her astonished voice sailed back in the wind as she seemed to hang suspended for a moment over the gravel pit.
“Deary me…!” cried Lady Felicity.
And then she crashed down and down and down and died instantly as her neck snapped on a convenient rock.
There was a great silence. Then a sea gull screamed overhead, and Susie began to shiver uncontrollably, climbing down from her horse and falling onto the ground, because her trembling legs could not support her.
After a time she gritted her teeth and, rising, made her way slowly and painfully down the steep sides of the gravel pit, her long skirts bunched over her arm.
There was no doubt about it—Lady Felicity was very much dead.
Susie began to laugh hysterically. Then she burst into stormy tears while a startled rabbit fled in fear from this peculiar human.
Susie sat down beside the still body and cried and cried, wrapping her head in her arms and rocking to and fro. This un-English manifestation of shock, this lack of stiff upper lip, was what kept her from having a complete breakdown.
Finally, after a long time she made her way slowly back to the castle on foot while Dobbin, now lazy and placid, strolled after her, accompanied by the other horse.
Chapter 6
A year had passed since the death of Lady Felicity. Susie had recovered a long time ago from her shock, but still remained much the same dreamy, immature girl as ever.
Giles had thro
wn himself into plans for modernizing the castle, and workmen seemed to be hammering upstairs and downstairs morning, noon, and night. He had not had the energy or the inclination to find a home for Susie and had, instead, invited an elderly aunt to stay as a kind of chaperon. His aunt, Lady Matilda Warden, was a fanatical knitter, tatter, and stitcher, and trailed cheerfully from room to room of the keep with long, different-colored threads and skeins of wool hanging from her workbasket. She was extremely kind to Susie; that is, when she happened to notice her, which was about once a month, and Susie, in return, was very fond of the old lady.
The servants now treated Susie with nervous respect. They had not forgotten that Lady Felicity had died mysteriously, just shortly after Lady Susie Blackhall had wished her dead. The servants had, of course, conveyed their suspicions to Giles’s valet, who in turn had told his master. But Giles had shrugged it off as gossip. He was too busy with his plans for the castle, and he did not mind Susie in the least so long as she did not get in his way.
Sometimes, however, he could not help wondering what there had been about Susie that had so attracted him and so repelled him at the same time on the night he had kissed her. Now, to him, she seemed like an ordinary girl—a bit vague and dreamy—but inoffensive for all that.
He had not even noticed that Susie, for all her vagueness, had taken on much of the direction that had once belonged to Lady Felicity. Susie must have been one of the few ladies of England in charge of a large staff who was not cheated in any way by the servants. They were too frightened of her to fiddle the books, and furthermore, she continued to turn a blind eye to their smuggling activities, at which they made a comfortable profit, Thomson taking the largest share, the housekeeper the next, and so on down to the little knife-boy, who had his meager wage augmented by a weekly smuggling bonus of three shillings.
Giles did not know anything of this. After all, he never went down to the cellars, and if he sometimes marveled at the excellence of the castle’s vintages and rare brandies, he gave full credit to Thomson for having secured an excellent wine merchant.
He only saw Susie infrequently and then usually at dinner. He was too absorbed in his plans and alterations to pay her much attention, and Susie was usually lost in one of her rambling dreams. Susie was, in fact, happier than she had ever been in her life. Her housekeeping duties kept her occupied, and there was no one to bully her or make her feel small, and no scheming parents around to try to marry her off.
Dr. and Mrs. Burke had made a few brief visits to the castle but had not stayed long. The servants had not forgiven Mrs. Burke for her first visit’s bullying and made life as uncomfortable for the Camberwell couple as they possibly could. Giles was always anxious to be rid of them as soon as possible, which he did by redesigning their rooms almost as soon as they had arrived, and Mrs. Burke’s sermons and Dr. Burke’s jolly platitudes and proverbs withered and died under a rain of plaster dust and an overwhelming odor of new paint.
Things might have drifted comfortably on like this for quite a long time, but that year, an early spring came to the Essex countryside. The air was full of birdsong, and the rich green of the fields was starred with wild flowers. Clumps of primroses shone in the dark shade of the hedgerows, and white and pink and red flowers foamed across the prickly hawthorn trees. On the gentler cliff slopes about half a mile from the castle, the soft haze of bluebells glowed gently under the tangled trees and bushes that scrambled their way down the rough surface of the cliffs to the edge of the sea.
The sea!
Susie stood one perfect day at a window high in the keep and looked wonderingly out at the infinity of blue and sparkling water. It turned and foamed and sparkled at the foot of the cliffs, and she suddenly felt as restless as the water such a long way beneath.
She went to her room and changed into an old skirt and a blouse and a pair of serviceable boots. She brushed out her long brown hair and then looked at the silk pads and bone pins and all the other impedimenta that she should put on her head and, instead, tied her hair back with a cherry-colored ribbon.
Hatless and feeling strangely free, she walked out of the shadowy hall of the keep and into the blazing sunshine of the inner courtyard. Then she went over the drawbridge, through the first portcullis—now never used—through the second courtyard, past the bailey, past the gatehouse, over the second drawbridge, where gardeners were working in the now-drained moat, spreading grass seed, and out over the green, green fields, where sheep placidly cropped the new grass and young lambs tottered and frolicked on legs as unsteady and as immature as Susie’s dreamy mind.
She walked and walked until she came to the dark, tangled bluebell wood, which sloped precipitously down to the foaming sea. Heedless of the thorns and briars tugging at her long skirts, she scrambled down until she was standing on a smooth boulder at the edge of the water.
Her feet were hot and sore in their heavy boots, and the cool water looked very inviting. Susie took a quick look around, but there was no one to be seen, and who else would want to come to this lonely spot? she thought.
She opened her reticule and, taking out a button hook, proceeded to unfasten her boots. She unclipped her stockings from their suspenders; then, pinning up her skirt and layers of petticoats above her ankles, she sat down on the rock and slowly let her naked feet slide into the cool water.
She sat there for a long time, the sun reddening her white face to an unfashionably healthy, rosy glow and placing gold highlights in the streaming masses of nut-brown hair, which blew and tugged at the confinement of the frivolous scarlet ribbon.
After awhile her feet began to feel cold, so she raised them out of the water and stuck them out in front of her to dry.
That is how Giles, reining in his horse at the top of the cliff and looking straight down a sort of gulley that formed a channel through the trees and undergrowth, became aware for the first time that Susie, Countess of Blackhall, was possessed of a very neat pair of ankles indeed.
Now, Giles had seen quite a number of naked women, but like most healthy young Englishmen, he had to admit to himself that there was nothing more seductive than the glimpse of a well-turned ankle. Susie raised her arms high above her head and stretched with a fluid, catlike motion.
He began to wonder what she thought about, whether she was happy, what she thought of him. He was not used to being completely ignored by women, particularly pretty young girls, and for the first time, he felt a certain twinge of pique at Susie’s undoubted lack of interest in him.
He debated whether to dismount and climb down the bank to join her. But then she would surely be embarrassed at being found in such a state of undress. He rode thoughtfully back toward the stables, beginning to wonder also about that rumor of murder. It was ridiculous, of course. But then two fatal accidents! It’s just as well she doesn’t covet the castle, he thought grimly, or I should begin to worry about my welfare.
He rubbed down his horse and was about to leave the cool darkness of the stables when a whinny from one of the loose boxes made him turn around. A horse with a long and unlovely face and a wicked eye was staring straight at him out of the gloom at the far end of the stables.
He called to the head groom. “Clifton! I say, Clifton!”
The bandy-legged figure of the groom came hurrying up. “What is that?” demanded Giles, pointing at the evil-looking horse.
The head groom shuffled his boots in the straw and then said reluctantly, “That be Dobbin, my lord.”
“Dobbin! Dobbin? You mean the horse that threw Lady Felicity? I thought he would have been shot as a matter of course!”
“Well, my lord,” said Clifton, “it be like this. Your lordship didn’t come back until three days after the death, just in time for the funeral. We had already asked Lady Susie what was to be done about the horse. My lady says, she says, ‘Don’t touch that there horse, Clifton. It ain’t his fault,’ she says. My lady do ride the beast often as she can, and I’ll say one thing for my lady, there ain’t a m
an or boy hereabouts could sit on that beast’s back. We was going to get rid of him long ago, but Lady Felicity says with that laugh of hers that Dobbin was perfect for Lady Susie.”
Giles stood frowning. First he was shocked that Lady Felicity should have put an untrained girl up on the back of a notoriously wicked horse; secondly he was shocked that Susie should keep an animal that had been instrumental in the death of his great-aunt; and thirdly he experienced a reluctant feeling of admiration for Susie from Camberwell, who should have learned how to ride such a mount.
“Very well, Clifton,” he said, giving the groom a curt nod.
As Giles strode from the stables he wondered more and more about Susie. Surely that dreamy innocence must be a facade. Only a very tough girl could master a horse like that. He did not know that Susie had tamed Dobbin by kindness alone. Carrots and lump sugar and soft words and a soft hand caressing his nose had done what the lash of the whip, the curb of the bit, and the dig of the spur could not. Dobbin had been broken in by sentimental, middle-class kindness. He was, after all, a very common horse.
Thank goodness, thought Giles again, she does not covet the castle.
“One day this will all be yours, my son,” said Susie to the golden-haired dream child who was sitting beside her on the rock. She had given birth to the child five years ago, she decided, but her homely and manly young husband had not lived to see his child’s first birthday. He had died of—here Susie wrinkled her brow—typhoid. No, too humdrum. Blindness—“You are my eyes, Susie.” No, one didn’t die from blindness. Killed in action on the North-West Frontier! That was it! Yes, killed in action and awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously. TO HIS WEEPING WIDOW, said the dream headlines. Poor Harold—that was her late husband’s name—poor Harold, lying in a foreign grave under harsh blue skies while the vultures wheeled above, and his brave sepoys—were they sepoys? Must check Rudyard Kipling again—mourned his death. Now she was alone in the world with this beautiful child, who was sole heir to Blackhall Castle. Susie’s pretty brow wrinkled again. But Giles was the heir. And what if he should marry? “I shall just have to kill him off,” she said to herself.