by M. C. Beaton
The handsome young bachelors were amazed and then angry to find the pretty Susie quite happy to spend her free time in the boring Arthur Winthrope’s company and gloomily turned their attentions elsewhere.
Susie was obviously enchanted with Arthur. All his conversational grunts and monosyllables she put down to manly reticence, and in her dreamy innocence she did not notice the rather nasty wet gleam that was beginning to appear in his eyes, or the way his eyes were roving freely over her body.
Giles became violently jealous of Arthur. But Giles did not know he was jealous. He merely thought Susie was a dangerous, scheming murderess, and he wanted to do all sorts of nasty things to her, like crushing her in his arms and forcing a confession from her.
Arthur meant to propose to Susie on the night of the ball and, had he waited until then, she would have certainly accepted him.
But he did not.
Susie, convinced that they were soul mates, decided to take Arthur to her favorite spot down below the bluebell wood, which she had shown to no one else. While Arthur plodded stolidly beside her in his natty blazer and white flannels and straw boater, Susie had a long conversation with him in her mind.
“This is my favorite place, darling,” she said to the dream Arthur.
“Gosh, it’s pesky hot,” said the real Arthur. “Where is this place?”
“Not far,” said Susie, smiling, and went back to the dream Arthur, who was saying, “It’s beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Those bluebells are the color of your eyes.”
“Silly,” teased dream Susie. “My eyes are brown.”
“You expect me to go down there?” complained the real Arthur as they stood at last on top of the small cliff above the bluebell wood. “My trousers will be ruined.”
“We can go down by that little gully,” said Susie. “Come along. We shall be quite alone. Just the two of us.”
“I say,” said Arthur, turning brick-red with lust and excitement. “I say, by Jove, eh what.”
He followed her gleefully down the slope, staring eagerly about him to make sure the spot was as secluded as Susie had told him.
Susie sat down on the boulder with a sigh of satisfaction. “Come and sit by me, darling,” she thought she said to the dream Arthur, but she said it out loud.
“By Jove, yes, what, eh,” said Arthur, plumping himself eagerly beside her. “Hot stuff, what?”
Susie’s dream was rudely shattered as Arthur seized her in a surprisingly strong grip, forced her mouth up to his, and shoved a hot, wet tongue between her lips. Having effectively gagged her, he clamped a leg over her body and began to rock himself up and down, making nasty noises in the back of his throat.
Giles had been right about one thing: Susie was stronger than she looked, and she was driven nearly mad with fear and disgust. She gave one terror-inspired heave and thrust, and tongue and legs and groping hands all suddenly disappeared in a loud splash as Arthur went hurtling back into the water.
His straw hat bobbed away on the waves, and his greased head popped above the water. “Help!” he cried. “I can’t swim!”
He was very near the boulder, which was covered by stringy seaweed at its base. He grabbed hold of it and tried to pull himself out of the water. Susie turned to flee. Her boot slipped on a patch of slime and she accidentally stamped on Arthur’s hand. He gave a cry and went under again.
“Are you trying to kill him?” demanded an icy voice behind Susie’s left shoulder, and she screamed in fright. Giles was standing behind her. He had been walking along the top of the cliff, looking for her, because he had heard from Lady Matilda that Susie had gone off walking with Arthur without a chaperon. He had been sure he would find her at her favorite place, and he was right. He had been annoyed and sickened to find the couple at the foot of the cliff clutched in what looked like an extremely torrid embrace and had been about to turn away when he had suddenly seen Susie throw Arthur into the water. Now, as he hurried down the hill, it looked to him as if she had deliberately stamped on Arthur’s hand as he was trying to climb out.
He stretched down and jerked Arthur out of the water. Arthur lay in the prickly grass beside the boulder and gasped like a landed cod.
Giles expected Arthur to accuse Susie of murder, but to his surprise it was Susie who began the accusations. “How dare you?” she shouted down at the gasping Arthur. “How dare you maul me and touch me?”
Arthur found his breath and sat up wrathfully. “Well, what do you expect?” he cried. “Listen, Giles. She says to me, she’s going to take me to a place where we can be all alone. What was I to think, eh? I ask you, as a man of the world, what was I to think? So I try to kiss her, and she pushes me in the drink. I mean, she’s a married woman—”
“Go back to the castle and get changed, Arthur,” said Giles quietly. “I’ll escort Lady Susie home.” His sympathies had abruptly switched to Susie. Arthur was a repulsive, caddish beast.
Arthur stood up and gave the couple a slow grin. “So it’s like that, is it?” He leered. “Well, well, well. By Jove, eh what? What?” The last “what” was because Giles had kicked him in the seat of the pants as he had turned around. “Pack your bags when you get back, Arthur,” said Giles sweetly, “or I’ll drown you personally.”
Arthur took one look at Giles’s cold blue eyes and scrambled up the slope with the agility of a mountain goat.
Giles turned a look at Susie. Either she was a consummate actress, or she had indeed had a bad shock. Her face was white, and her eyes for the first time since the death of her husband had a wide-awake, alive stare, as if she had newly found herself in this present world of reality and didn’t like it one bit.
“Is it always going to be like that?” she sobbed wildly. “Messy and hot and groping? Oh, it makes me sick. It’s not what I’d dreamed it would be. Not at all.”
Giles led her gently up the slope while all the time she cried bitterly. At last, when they reached the top of the cliff, he spread his jacket on the grass and urged her to sit down and compose herself before returning to the castle. He handed her a large pocket handkerchief to dry her tears and then settled back to wait for her to recover. He stared at the slim shoulders, bent in front of him, shaking with sobs, and he longed to put his arms around her and comfort her, but he had not yet made up his mind. No human being could cause so many accidents, if accidents they were. A long strand of hair had escaped from its moorings and hung down over the high-boned collar of her blouse. He absentmindedly reached out and picked it up, watching the sun glint through its silky threads.
The sun was scorching his back, and he impatiently loosened his collar stud, took off his collar and his tie, and threw them on the grass. He opened the neck of his shirt, feeling the cool breeze against the two inches of naked skin at his throat. Then he realized that Susie had stopped crying and was staring at his state of undress with shock and dismay.
“Don’t look so shocked,” he teased her gently. “You have seen me in my bathrobe and pajamas, you know.” This was true, as they shared the one and only bathroom at the top of the keep.
“But you look more dressed in your bathrobe,” said Susie timidly, gazing fascinatedly at the faint gold hairs curling above the edge of his shirt. She wondered how far the hairs went and blushed painfully.
All Giles’s suspicions of her fled. No actress could have conjured up that blush. He felt a sudden wave of protective tenderness for her. He felt like the veriest cad. As soon as he got back to the castle, he would use the newly installed telephone and call off Inspector Disher.
The air was heavy with the hot smells of the late spring countryside. Lazy bees bumbled through a clump of bramble flowers nearby, and the sea hissed and whispered at the foot of the cliff. Over the rise, and standing proudly above its gray walls in the dazzling sunlight, stood Blackhall Castle, with its standard flying bravely from the top of the keep. Giles felt suddenly exhilarated and happy.
He reached forward and took her hand gently in his while she sat with he
r head turned a little away from him, the sun and the wind playing in the floating tendrils of her hair. She let her hand lie passively in his, held prisoner by the strange current of emotion that seemed to be passing between them.
A sea gull sailed lazily overhead, glaringly white against the pale-blue sky. The breeze sent a blue wave rippling through the bluebells down to the water.
There was an apologetic cough from behind them, and both stared and turned around. Giles began to laugh. A large jersey cow stood staring down at them like an outraged dowager. He reluctantly helped Susie to her feet. “Let’s go back,” he said. “It’s nearly teatime. Arthur will have left by now, and we had better attend to our guests.”
Dazed by the sun and the heat and the mixture of strange emotions in her body, Susie walked a little away from him, and they made their way side by side toward the castle. So strong was the electric emotion between them, they could have been wrapped in one another’s arms.
To the guests seated around the dinner table that evening, there was no doubt about the name of Giles’s future bride. They did not sit together. They hardly exchanged a word; but there was something in the atmosphere between Susie and Giles that fairly charged the air. Miss Cecily Winthrope privately and viciously blamed her brother, who had played his cards so badly. Harriet Blane-Tyre, a jolly Scotch redhead, gave a mental shrug and turned her roving eye to one of the other available bachelors. Lady Sally Dukann sat and openly sulked.
Giles was so immersed in his new feelings of warmth and tenderness toward Susie that he forgot to telephone the inspector. Susie let herself become absorbed in this new and very real enchantment and forgot to dream.
Lady Matilda, who was as sharp as her needles, smiled at both benignly and dropped a great variety of magenta stitches.
But not one person in the elegant dining room, with its newly enlarged table and its pretty paintings, could ever begin to imagine on this beautiful evening just what a terrible disaster Giles’s ball was going to prove to be.
Chapter 7
The day of the ball dawned beautiful, clear, and sunny, with that same light breeze drifting in from the sea.
Carriages rattled to and from the station all day, bringing the remainder of the guests. Maids rushed between the rooms, carrying armfuls of silks and laces. The orchestra was already rehearsing in a large striped marquee in the courtyard, and in another marquee against the other wall, servants were setting up long buffet tables and an improvised bar.
Susie had hired such a generous contingent of extra staff that the servants of the castle felt that they might perhaps be able to enjoy some of the festivities as well. Outside the castle walls, huge stands were being erected for a firework display. Giles meant to throw the party of the season.
At one point in the afternoon, he went in search of Susie and found her at last with an ink stain on her nose, bent over the housekeeping ledgers.
“Leave all that,” he said gaily, “and let’s go for a walk. You’ve got an ink blot on your pretty little nose. Go and take it off first.”
Susie gave him a radiant smile and slammed the books shut. In a trice she had changed into a pretty, cool linen skirt and cotton blouse and had scrubbed her face and was running back down the stairs to join him.
They strolled away from the castle through the brand-new gardens and down to the edge of the lake. Susie unfurled her lace parasol and strolled along by the water’s edge with Giles, feeling as if she were moving in the sunny landscape of a dream.
“You never really told me how you came to marry my uncle,” said Giles. “Do you feel you could tell me now?”
Susie did. She explained about her parents’ ambitions, and how they had threatened to turn her out in the street if she did not obey them. For the first time she began to describe her fear of the old earl and of his coarse manners.
“Is love always like that?” she asked shyly. “Always so brutal? First your uncle, and then Arthur.”
“No,” said Giles, catching hold of her hand and pulling her down to sit beside him on a stone bench. “It is something very rare and precious. I’m only beginning to realize it now. I thought I loved my wife, but now I realize I did not know the meaning of the word. I was angry when I divorced her; angry because she had left me for someone else. But it’s been a long time since I’ve even thought of her.
“Poor Susie. I thought you were a wicked, scheming girl. How can you forgive me?”
“Easily,” said Susie with an enchanting laugh, looking up at him from under the shadow of her straw hat.
It flashed through Giles’s mind that he had not yet called off the inspector, but her mouth was now turned up toward his, soft and inviting.
He kissed her very tenderly and chastely on the lips, not wanting to frighten her at this early stage with an excessive show of passion. Susie kissed him gently back. For the present, they were both happy to exchange soft, lingering kisses as the sun sparkled on the water and the swallows swooped and dived over their busy reflections. Giles sat bareheaded, his hand resting lightly on Susie’s waist, feeling her heart beat through the heavy armor of stays. There was very little of Susie left bare to kiss, apart from her face. A high-boned collar covered her neck, and long leg-of-mutton sleeves covered her arms. She wore a little pair of white kid gloves fastened with pearl buttons. Her linen skirt was very long and only showed the long points of her openwork shoes.
He slowly unfastened the little buttons at the wrist of her glove and then turned the leather back to expose her white wrist, with its delicate network of pale-blue veins.
He bent his head and kissed her there, pressing his lips harder against the tiny throbbing veins and then moving his tongue gently against the skin. Susie began to shiver. She wanted him to do more. She wanted him to stop. She could not bear the churning turmoil of her feelings.
Passion reared its good old ugly head, and the peace of the afternoon was broken. Susie did not understand these strange fluttering pains in the pit of her stomach, and Giles was frightened of scaring her. He quietly buttoned up her glove and, smiling down at her tenderly, he kissed her gently on the nose.
“Let’s get back, poppet,” he said. “I might forget myself, and after all, we have all the time in the world.”
“We must talk more,” said Susie with a feeling of apprehension. “You do not really know me. I don’t know much about you.”
“Tonight,” he said. “Spare me as many dances as you can.”
“But people will talk if I dance with you more than once!” protested Susie.
“Let them talk!” he cried, catching hold of her by the waist and swinging her around. “Everyone must be able to see I’m in love with you.”
“Oh, Giles,” cried Susie, her eyes misting over with happy tears. “Did you say you loved me?”
But Giles’s attention had been caught by a small party of men who were heading toward the castle gate. “The Customs men,” he said with surprise. “I wonder what they want? Maybe they think the castle’s a smugglers’ hideout.” He threw back his head and laughed. But when he had finished laughing at his own joke, he was to find that Susie had gone.
“Susie!” he called out in surprise and set out after her at a run, amazed at how swiftly the girl could move. Her white skirt flickered over the drawbridge and under the portcullis. As the Customs men approached over the drawbridge the portcullis fell with a tremendous crash, making them jump back in alarm.
They turned and looked at Giles in amazement as he came running up. “Sorry about that,” gasped Giles. “Faulty machinery.”
But in his heart he knew that Susie had operated the lever on the other side to lower the portcullis and so keep the excisemen out—and he wondered why.
“Someone will be along to open it in a minute,” he said, turning to the leader of the party. “Meanwhile, what’s all this about?”
“Smuggling wine and brandy, my lord,” said the chief officer, who introduced himself as Mr. Pottifer. “There’s been French fishi
ng boats seen lying off below the castle at night. Just a routine check of your cellars, my lord.”
“Of course,” said Giles mechanically while his mind raced. “Hey you!” he called to Henry, the footman, who was hurrying across the courtyard on the other side of the portcullis. “Hurry and open this thing up.”
Henry walked toward the portcullis with very slow, stately steps, and Giles watched him with growing suspicion. The servants were so well trained, he was used to their jumping to his bidding. Something was wrong, and Susie knew about that something. Oh, God, not another woman who was other than she seemed! All his darkest suspicions about Susie came tumbling back.
At last the portcullis creaked reluctantly upward. Giles and the Customs men hurried through. He took them straight to the cellars. The door was standing open, and the bland figure of Thomson was just emerging with a couple of bottles of champagne in his hand. “Just taking some extra up to put on ice, my lord,” he said and then gave a start that Giles thought was decidedly theatrical. “Why, who are these gentlemen, my lord?”
“As you can see, these are excisemen, Thomson,” snapped Giles. “Stand aside and let them examine the cellars.”
Thomson gave his master a hurt look and then stepped out into the hall. Mr. Pottifer hurried down the stone steps of the cellar and Giles followed.
At last Mr. Pottifer looked up from his inspection of a rack of claret. “I owe you an apology, my lord,” he said heavily. “Everything’s in order here.”