The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  Then she noticed that the sun was sinking in the sky and unless she hurried, she would be late for dinner.

  Putting on her stockings and boots, picking up her reticule, and carrying her splendid dream with her, she hurried back to the castle.

  Giles looked curiously at Susie across the dinner table. She was eating her food in a silent, absorbed kind of way. Lady Matilda had finished her plateful very quickly as usual and was engaged in knitting some peculiar lumpy wool garment in violent magenta. The fresh air and sunshine had given Susie’s face a healthy glow. Her hair, thanks to Carter, was exquisitely dressed, and she was wearing a lavender gown of half-mourning, which was cut low on the bosom.

  She has a pretty neck as well as a good pair of ankles, he noticed with some surprise. In fact, she’s a deuced pretty girl all round.

  “You are looking very beautiful this evening, Lady Susie,” he said in a light, charming voice.

  “Oh, what? Did you speak to me?” said Susie, trying to focus on him and hold onto her dream at the same time.

  “I said that you were looking very beautiful,” Giles repeated patiently.

  “Thank you,” said Susie with a marked lack of interest.

  “Do you like the improvements to the castle?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, DO YOU LIKE THE IMPROVEMENTS TO THE CASTLE?”

  Susie twisted in her chair, noticing as if for the first time the pretty paper on the walls, the charming framed landscapes, the fresh curtains at the windows, and the new glittering Waterford chandelier, the crystals of which were reflected in the mahogany table.

  “Oh, yes,” replied Susie, half in and half out of the dream. “I was thinking of turning my old rooms into a nursery.”

  Giles dropped his fork with a clatter. “You don’t mean…I mean you aren’t…you can’t be…?”

  “I mean I shall no doubt marry again,” said Susie dreamily, briefly resurrecting her husband from his Indian grave, burying him again, and accepting the Victoria Cross. “The heir to Blackhall Castle must have fitting accommodation.”

  “The heir—Have you gone mad?” said Giles wrathfully. “If there is to be an heir, then I shall produce it, not you.”

  “How can you?” asked Susie as Lady Matilda’s needles click-click-clicked. “Only women can produce children, or so I believe.”

  “Exactly,” said Giles grimly. “I hope my future wife will do the job for me.”

  “Oh!” said Susie, wrinkling her brow. “But what if you die?”

  Behind her, two footmen collided, and Thomson nervously dropped a wineglass.

  “And just what is supposed to happen to me?” asked Giles in silky tones.

  “I don’t know,” said Susie placidly. “I haven’t thought of anything yet.”

  “More wine, my lord?” said Thomson in a quavering voice.

  “Please, I need it,” said Giles, still staring at Susie.

  “You sound as if you are planning my death,” he remarked, raising his glass.

  Susie jerked her whole mind into the real world. “It’s just my silly dreaming,” she explained. “Pay no attention to me.”

  But Giles felt that the future of his direct line had been threatened. If he did not marry, and Susie did, then it would indeed mean that her son would inherit. This Camberwell miss’s child would inherit all this, the home of his ancestors, his own name. Had he slaved and worked for a full year in order to supply some middle-class brat with a stately home? He had never before contemplated marrying again. Now he began to think he should get started on the project as soon as possible.

  “I am going to give a ball,” he said abruptly.

  “Aren’t all the rooms too small?” asked Susie.

  “Yes, but I shall have marquees erected on the grounds.”

  “It will be an awful lot of work,” said Susie doubtfully. “I suppose I had better hire extra servants.”

  “What has it got to do with you?” asked Giles rudely. “This castle runs itself.”

  “Oh, no it doesn’t,” said Lady Matilda, emerging from her knitting and surprising them both by springing to Susie’s defense.

  “There’s no one to beat Susie at housekeeping, except perhaps the late Duchess of Strawn,” said Lady Matilda. “Place runs like clockwork; happy servants, good meals. Hadn’t you noticed, you silly boy?”

  “I am sorry. I was not aware you had done so much,” said Giles stiffly. “But employ extra servants if you wish.”

  Susie looked at him shyly. “Will I be allowed to dance? I mean, am I out of mourning?”

  “Yes,” said Giles coldly. “That is, if you were ever in it.”

  Susie gave him a hurt look. Was another bully about to rear its ugly head? All of a sudden she remembered how he had kissed her, and looked down at the table. She had not looked at him fully since that night, and she had forgotten how very handsome he was. She had forgotten how the strange tilt of his light-blue eyes gave his face a look of lazy sensuality. She turned to flee back into her dreams, but they would not let her in.

  There was a long silence.

  Giles studied Susie’s bent head. He wanted to hurt her, to make her look fully at him, to be aware of him. He decided the only way to do that was to spite her by getting married. He had also better go very carefully, just in case another accidental death should happen at Blackhall Castle!

  The days leading up to the ball passed very quickly indeed, the inhabitants being secure and happily tucked away from the gossip of London society.

  It quickly got about the fashionable drawing rooms that Giles, Earl of Blackhall, was looking for a wife. Anxious debutantes scanned the morning’s post, looking for the coveted invitation. Matchmaking mamas desperately cultivated Blackhall relatives, only to find to their disappointment that the relatives did not wish to have anything to do with Blackhall Castle since the old earl had insulted them all into a fury many years ago. At last the guest list was out and members of London’s prestigious clubs settled over their betting books to decide the favorite. Odds of seven to one were laid on Lady Sally Dukann, fourteen to one on Miss Cecily Winthrope, and twenty to one on Miss Harriet Blane-Tyre.

  Susie’s days passed in a bustle of activity. Extra linen, extra towels, extra everything had to be ordered, which she did with an unfashionable eye for a bargain, using the shops in the local town and thereby creating a lot of goodwill and saving herself a lot of money. Susie had naively instructed the shops to send the bills to her man of business, instead of turning them all over to Giles.

  Giles was busy as well, commanding his squads of workmen to prodigious efforts. There were so many guests to be housed. The large bailey in the outer courtyard had already been modernized and turned into suites of guest rooms, and now additional rooms were made in the large gatehouse.

  Susie carefully wrote out cards in neat copperplate, with each guest’s name to be pinned to respective bedroom doors “so that they don’t creep into the wrong bed by mistake,” as Carter informed her grimly. But Susie did not know of country-house affairs, where the sprightly guests crept along the corridors at night, deliberately looking for every bedroom but the right one.

  Flowers had to be arranged in all the rooms, and flowering plants and bushes had to be planted in the new flower beds, which cut their elegant way across a former tract of grazing land. Stands of trees had to be planted along the edge of an already existing lake, and lanterns had to be slung through the new trees and strung through the courtyards between the grim old walls.

  In the middle of all this fuss and activity, Carter, who had become Susie’s lady’s maid, reminded her mistress that she ought to think about purchasing a ball gown, and since only the best would do, my lady would be advised to make a visit to London. Susie shrank from leaving the enclosed world of the castle, but she was young and feminine enough to want to look her best for Giles’s ball.

  That was how she found herself back in London one hot spring day with the grim Carter in attendance.
Carter knew all the best dressmakers and advised her young mistress to put herself in the hands of the famous Madame Henrietta. Madame Henrietta, despite her name, was not French but a middle-aged German Jewess with a clever eye. She leapt at the chance of outfitting the beautiful widowed countess, particularly when Susie murmured in her dreamy way that she didn’t care how much it cost.

  So in the hot little salon in Conduit Street, Susie was treated to her first fashion show. She was very startled and amused to find that the models wore severe long black dresses when showing evening gowns or underwear. One particularly haughty mannequin looked quite ridiculous modeling a frivolous French corset over her black gown.

  Madame Henrietta finally talked her into purchasing a gown of gold-colored peau de soie. It was daringly low at the front and very low at the back. The bodice was ornamented with an exquisite fall of fine black lace, and the full skirt of the dress was cut open above the hem to reveal a dashing black lace petticoat. Susie demurred. The gown looked very French and rather naughty. Ah, but the touches of black lace showed a delicacy, a reminder of milady’s recent bereavements, cooed Madame Henrietta in her mock French accent. Carter gave a sour nod of approval. Carter had taken one of her dislikes to Giles and privately thought the combination of Susie and the dress would “knock that young man in the eye. Him and his wanting to get married.”

  Carter, like the rest of the servants, thought that Giles should marry Susie. That way their smuggling activities would go undisturbed.

  Carter then took Susie off to several other shops. It was a new London to Susie, a London she had never seen before. Expensive shops with soft lights and soft carpets, obsequious sales people, glorious clothes, and exotic scents, and all to be charged and taken away.

  Susie’s day was spoiled by a small twinge of guilt. She felt she really should go and pay a visit to her parents. But when it came down to it, she simply could not. She was anxious to get back to the familiar world of the castle.

  She wondered what Giles was doing, and then wondered why she cared.

  Giles was lying on the floor at the top of the gatehouse, sweating hard.

  He had been leaning over the battlemented parapet to watch the workmen below when the seemingly solid stone had given way under the pressure of his fingers. He had fortunately thrown himself back and away from the gaping hole that had appeared as a large lump of masonry had hurtled to the ground below.

  A footman came running breathlessly up the stairs, two at a time. He helped Giles to his feet and dusted him down. “It’s mercy you’re all right, my lord,” he cried. “Just to think, it could have happened to my lady. She was up here yesterday, looking over, and she wouldn’t have had the wit to throw herself back.”

  “But what if you die?” Susie’s childish voice resounded in his brain. Could she have arranged this accident? It was impossible and yet…

  All of a sudden he decided to pay a call on Inspector Disher. The inspector was not to be found at the police station but working in his shirt-sleeves in his little patch of garden. The inspector’s home was very like the cottage of Susie’s dreams. It had a heavy thatched roof, and tangled honeysuckle hung over a trellis around the low doorway.

  “My lord!” exclaimed the inspector, delighted and gratified. “If you’ll just stop in, I’ll get my Mary to make us a cup of tea.”

  “This is not a social call,” said Giles grimly. The inspector gave him a quick look and then said, “Well, whatever it is, my lord, a cup of tea will come welcome on this hot day. Did you ever see the like, my lord? Downright un-English this weather is.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you on your day off,” remarked Giles, bending his head and entering a pretty little parlor, where the policeman’s wife stood bobbing and blushing. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  “We do our best,” said the inspector. “Now, Mary, run along to the kitchen and make his lordship a pot of tea, and bring some nice hot scones and some of your strawberry jam.”

  When his wife had gone, he adopted his official voice and manner. “Well, now, my lord, what can I do for you?”

  The inspector settled his plump figure in a rocker and prepared himself to listen to some tale of poaching.

  “It’s about Lady Felicity’s death,” said Giles abruptly. “Are you quite sure it was an accident?”

  The inspector straightened up slowly and stared at his noble guest in surprise. “I’m sure as sure, my lord. Of course, it was just a token investigation, you might say. Riding accidents are very common, and that there horse was a regular devil.”

  “Is,” corrected Giles gently. “Is, Inspector. Lady Susie refused to have the beast shot.”

  “Did she now? Some ladies, of course, are very sentimental about animals. But let’s get this straight, my lord. Can it be you suspect foul play?”

  Giles smiled reluctantly. “I never knew policemen actually said that, but, yes, I am suspicious. First there was the accidental death of my uncle. Look, I’d better tell you the truth. The night of my uncle’s death, Susie was standing at an upstairs window, looking out at the sea and saying aloud that she wished him dead. Shortly before Felicity died, the servants say that Susie shouted at her in the dining room and said she wished her dead. Recently Lady Susie was talking about her son inheriting the castle. I pointed out that I am the heir, and she said, ‘Oh! But what if you die?’” Giles went on to tell the inspector about his accident of the afternoon.

  “Therefore,” he ended, “I decided that there were too many coincidences, too many accidents. I decided it might do no harm to reopen an investigation into Lady Felicity’s death.”

  “Do you want an official investigation?” asked the inspector.

  “No,” said Giles slowly. “I wondered if you could take up the case in your spare time. Go over the ground again. Talk to my head groom. I’ll tell him to be discreet. Find out if there was anyone in the vicinity, a tramp or a shepherd or a child. I’ll pay you well.”

  The inspector rubbed his forehead in a puzzled way. “I don’t mind saying, a bit of extra money would come in handy, my lord, and I’ve got a bit of leave due to me. But I’ve a feeling Lady Blackhall is innocent. You now tell me you heard her saying she wanted her husband dead—which you really ought to have told me at the time, you know. But I can tell you this, my lord. That accident to the old earl happened the way she said it did. Couldn’t be any other way. How could a slip of a thing like Lady Susie push a great, hulking man like the earl out of the window?”

  “She must be stronger than she looks,” said Giles stubbornly. “She’s the only person who’s ever been able to master that brute Dobbin.” Now that he had started, Giles was strangely determined to find Susie guilty.

  “Very well, my lord,” said Inspector Disher. “But don’t be disappointed if I don’t find out anything. You’d better take that foreman, Sam Cobbett, up to the gatehouse and get him to examine the masonry. If anyone’s been tampering with it, he’ll know. Ah, here’s Mary with tea. Try one of these scones, my lord.”

  Giles left as soon as he politely could. As soon as he returned to the castle, he took Sam Cobbett up to the roof of the gatehouse. “I’ve already seen it, me lord,” grumbled Sam, “and it’s only that there bit that was weak. The rest’s as strong as anything.”

  “Had it been weakened deliberately?” asked Giles.

  “Oh, no,” said Sam in surprise. “Reckon a cannon ball or rocks or somethink hit that bit back in the old days, like. See here. It’s all crumbled and broke. My men’ll have it fixed in a trice. I’ve got the best bricklayer in Essex down there.”

  Giles went thoughtfully back to the keep. He now felt a bit of a fool for having set the inspector to investigate Lady Felicity’s death. But there was, after all, something rather strange about Susie. He would study her more closely in the days to come.

  But Giles had little time to study Susie, for the very next day the first of the house guests began to arrive.

  The three hopeful debutantes were r
ather taken aback to find a very pretty young widow already in residence in the castle. Jealousy made them treat Susie very badly. Susie was locked away in her dreams and hardly noticed, but Giles did and obscurely blamed Susie for lowering his three hopeful candidates in his eyes. All the guest rooms in the keep, the bailey, and the gatehouse were soon full, and Giles found another thorn sticking in his flesh. He had invited several of his bachelor friends down for the ball, and every one of them seemed to be trailing around after Susie, with their tongues hanging out. They openly envied him for having such a lovely girl right under his nose, so to speak.

  The elder guests, the ones without marriageable daughters, that is, all obviously found Susie charming and congratulated Giles on having such a delightful chatelaine.

  The servants had all but forgotten their suspicions and fears of Susie until the head groom, Clifton, dropped his bombshell. The inspector had asked him some very searching questions about the day of Lady Felicity’s death and had said that he was looking for a witness. The inspector had sworn Mr. Clifton to secrecy, and Mr. Clifton had told no one but his friend the housekeeper, Mrs. Wight. Mrs. Wight had confided this tantalizing piece of gossip to Thomson over a bottle of the best smuggled port, and Thomson, feeling the secret too heavy to bear, had drunk more than was good for him and had confided in Henry, the footman, who was engaged to one of the upstairs maids, and Henry told her. And so it went on until the whole servants’ hall seethed with gossip.

  “Master Giles’ll be the next to go,” they said gloomily. Hadn’t Lady Susie said he might die?

  Unaware of all this activity, Susie competently handled the management of the large household and enjoyed the novelty of being courted by several dashing young men all at the same time.

  But it was one late arrival who almost made her heart stop. Here was the pleasant, homely young man of her dreams! He was not a friend of Giles’s but turned out to be Miss Cecily Winthrope’s brother, Arthur. Arthur had never had any success with the ladies, being accounted a prize bore by both sexes. But his sister, Cecily, was quick to notice Susie’s interest and went all out to encourage her brother. Susie was a very wealthy widow, she pointed out. And with Susie out of the way, she, Cecily, could have a clear field with Giles, for although Giles pretended not to be interested in the young countess, Cecily’s eyes, sharpened by jealousy, had noticed that Giles watched Susie more than was necessary.