The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  Then she stood stock still. Lady Mary was laughing fit to burst.

  “Do stop laughing, Mary, and listen,” Jimmy could be heard saying in a pleading voice. “It was the most bloody awful thing to happen. Touched in her head with the heat, she was. Babbling on about how we would live in a country cottage with a dog called Rover.”

  “Oh, my poor lamb!” gasped Lady Mary. “How on earth am I going to keep my face straight this evening? We’d better leave at once.”

  “And I thought she was such a nice little thing,” grumbled Jimmy.

  “Hidden fires, my dear. Hidden fires,” said Mary, laughing. “It’s that comfortable tweedy look of yours, Jimmy. It gets all the girls.”

  “Aren’t you a bit jealous?” complained Jimmy.

  “Of a silly little girl? Nonsense! I’m sorry for Giles all the same. He could do with something with a bit more flesh and blood.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking your nasty hot shirt off to soothe the savage breast.”

  “Oh, darling. No, don’t stop. Do that again.”

  Susie walked along the corridor with her face flaming and her legs shaking. Her dreams lay around her feet in tinsel ruins, and she was left shivering and alone with the horrid reality of the present world.

  Chapter 11

  Giles walked along beside the lake in a worried frame of mind. Jimmy and Mary had just made a very abrupt and strange departure. Mary had been inclined to giggle a lot and look sly, and Jimmy had looked as embarrassed as a man could be.

  Susie was nowhere to be found.

  He didn’t know what to do about Susie. All his flirting with Mary had left her unmoved, and he hadn’t liked the way she had looked at Jimmy. Now, why had Jimmy looked so embarrassed? His heart began to hammer. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t…

  Suddenly, to his rage, he saw Dobbin strolling along the path toward him. Susie let that bloody animal roam at will like a pet dog.

  Giles glared at Dobbin, and Dobbin flattened his ears and glared back.

  “You mangy lump of catsmeat,” grated Giles. “Why don’t you stay in the stables or run in the pasture or just be somewhere where a horse is supposed to be?”

  Dobbin sneered down his long nose, cropped a lilac blossom, and stood glowering at Giles with the blossom hanging nonchalantly from his mouth. He looked remarkably like a sulky gigolo.

  “Well, I am going to find your mistress, and from now on you are to be locked in the stables when you are not being exercised. Look at you! You’re the nastiest-looking thing on four legs I’ve ever seen.”

  He turned his back on Dobbin and stared across the lake.

  Now, Dobbin was a thoroughly spoiled horse. He turned to go, looking back at Giles over his plump, overfed shoulder. Giles’s well-tailored back irritated Dobbin’s small, mean brain more than Giles’s face had done.

  He lashed out with his hoof and kicked Giles smartly in the seat of the pants. Giles went sailing off into the lake, and Dobbin cantered off with a whicker that sounded remarkably like a laugh.

  Gasping and spluttering, Giles hauled himself to the shore. He looked wildly around, but there was no sign of Dobbin. He returned to the castle and changed his clothes and then, jerking a riding crop out of the stand in the hall, he went in search of Dobbin. The wretched animal was nowhere to be found.

  Gradually his temper cooled and he began to worry about Susie. He hadn’t seen her all day. And why, why, why had Jimmy looked so embarrassed?

  Then Giles remembered the bluebell wood that sloped down to the sea about half a mile from the castle.

  He found Susie sitting on the springy grass at the top of the cliff. She was sitting with her feet stretched out in front of her and looking down at her hands.

  He went up quietly and sat down beside her.

  She turned and looked into his eyes. He stared at the pain and bewilderment there, and then his heart began to quicken. For all her distress, he felt that Susie was really looking at him for the first time.

  Giles was about to ask her if he could shoot her horse, and in the same breath he was about to accuse her of having an affair with Jimmy.

  But he took a deep breath and put a companionable arm around her shoulders.

  “Mary and Jimmy have gone,” he said at last.

  “You will miss Mary,” said Susie in a small voice.

  “And you will miss Jimmy,” said Giles.

  Susie blushed painfully. “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps it will be pleasant to have the place to ourselves for a change.”

  Giles felt instinctively that the time had come to make one last effort.

  “I only flirted with Mary to make you jealous, Susie. And I suppose that’s why you flirted with Jimmy?”

  “Oh, yes,” lied Susie thankfully. “Yes, that must have been it.”

  He pulled her head gently back until it rested on his shoulder and began to stroke her hair. The long bitter winter might never have existed.

  Susie was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude for Giles—for being so gentle, for letting her save face. Giles was so much more worldly and sophisticated than she that surely he must have guessed at her mad fiasco with Jimmy. Susie would have been very surprised indeed had she known that he hadn’t the faintest idea of what had actually happened and would have been in quite a vicious rage had he known that she had declared her love for another man.

  He bent his fair head and dropped a kiss on her nose, and she stared up into those strangely tilted eyes. Susie all of a sudden wanted to make up to him for all her snubs and days of neglect. She twisted and wound her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. His lips burned and clung to hers, and he felt the answering passion in her body with a dawning surprise. This time, he was determined not to frighten her, so he contented himself with kissing her passionately on the mouth, over and over again.

  Susie’s body began to feel hot, and she was aching and trembling with a sort of terrible sweetness, and suddenly kissing was not enough.

  She shyly unbuttoned Giles’s shirt and kissed his chest, and for Giles, all the world went mad. “Let’s move out of sight,” he gasped when he could.

  It may seem impossible to make love to an elegantly dressed young lady on a sloping cliff in the middle of a lot of bluebells, but Giles managed superbly. For Susie, the love-making that had begun as a way of making amends ended in ecstasy as she answered all his passion with new-minted passions of her own, oblivious of sharp pebbles digging into her back and blissfully unaware that all her multiple layers of clothing were now spread far and wide among the bluebells.

  The sun had long set over the sea by the time they made their slow and exhausted way back to the castle, dreamily hanging on to one another.

  As they approached the castle walls a great, hulking black shape detached itself from the deeper blackness of the walls and loomed over them.

  Susie gave a little scream and then laughed. “Oh, it’s only poor old Dobbin. Dear, dear precious. I shall find you some sugar as soon as I get home. Did poor Dobbin miss me?”

  The silly horse bent his head and nuzzled her hand.

  A full moon rose over the castle and shone down on Susie’s face as she looked up at Giles.

  “Don’t you just adore Dobbin?” she asked.

  Giles looked down at her radiant face and into her eyes, which were alight with love and remembered pleasure.

  “Oh, yes,” he lied stoutly. “Splendid beast!”

  Love is a wonderful thing.

  Part V

  Daisy

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter
16

  For Harry Scott Gibbons

  And Charles David Bravos Gibbons,

  with all my love.

  Chapter 1

  The very leaves out here seem to be different, thought Daisy Jenkins, clutching hold of her friend’s arm. They spread out on the ground before them, sparkling red and gold in the autumn sunshine. Not like the rusty plebeian kind that carpeted the town of Upper Featherington, now uncomfortably a long way behind.

  “We shouldn’t ought to be doing this,” said Daisy for the hundredth time. Her friend Amy tossed her blonde curls. “Nobody’s going to find out. We’re just going to take a peek.”

  Daisy looked enviously at her friend. Amy Pomfret had a careless, sunny nature and, having made up her mind to play truant from school to spy on the Earl of Nottenstone’s house party, she had plunged into the adventure with gay abandon, seemingly free from the dark fears of retribution that haunted Daisy’s sensitive mind.

  A shy and retiring girl, Daisy had never quite got over being chosen by Miss Amy Pomfret—the most popular girl in the school—to be her best friend. So when Amy had suggested the adventure, Daisy had not had the courage to refuse.

  “I think about here will do,” said Amy, stopping in front of a curve of moss-covered wall. “Nobody’s about. Come along, Daisy, over you go!”

  Daisy timidly hitched up her faded tartan skirts to reveal an expanse of cotton petticoat, bleached yellow with age, and a pair of cracked and worn button boots. She nimbly scaled the wall and dropped down on the other side with her heart beating fast. With an energetic thump, her friend joined her.

  “Now don’t be such a scaredy-cat,” whispered Amy. “All we’re going to do is creep through the woods to the edge of the garden and have a look at them.”

  “What if they’re not outside?” whispered Daisy.

  “Bound to be,” said Amy. “Clarrie Johnson’s mum has been hired special for the day and she told Clarrie that they takes their tea on the lawn ’round about now.”

  Daisy’s heart jumped into her throat with every popping twig and every crackling movement of their starched petticoats. She almost wished they would be discovered so that the punishment would be swift and fast, for Daisy had been firmly taught by the methodist chapel that the sinner never escaped judgment. And what could be a worse sin than to be found trespassing on the hallowed aristocratic ground of Marsden Castle?

  The battlements of the castle suddenly seemed to lean over the trees above them and they could hear the faint sound of voices and laughter. They edged closer and found themselves on the edge of the woods with a vast expanse of lawn rolling out in front of them.

  “There they are!” hissed Amy, crouching down behind a bush and pulling Daisy with her.

  Daisy drew in her breath in a sharp gasp.

  The house party was spread out over the lawn, engaged in a game of croquet. Everyone was dressed in white. The ladies in cascades of white lace, with tiny waists and voluminous hats, and the gentlemen in white flannels and blazers.

  Amy put her lips close to Daisy’s ear. “That’s the Earl and Countess… over there.”

  The handsomest couple Daisy had ever seen stood at the edge of the lawn. The Earl was a tall young man with fair hair the color of ripe corn. His classical features were almost effeminate in their perfection and his eyes, a startling, piercing blue. In complete contrast was the Countess, her masses of heavy black hair almost hidden by an elaborate picture hat of swirling white tulle and artificial flowers. She moved her small body with easy, catlike grace in all the stiff formality of white lace that cascaded in structured layers from throat to hem. She had entangled her croquet mallet in her heavy rope of pearls and was playfully insisting that all the young men of the party should help her.

  The rest of the world fled from Daisy’s mind as she stared at the enchanted picture… at the world of gods and goddesses to which she could never belong. Just for this little while, she, Daisy Jenkins, would imagine that she was part of it. She would dream that she was one of the guests and that in a minute, one of those splendid young men would come searching for her.

  The Countess was calling everyone to tea in her high, clear voice when one of the young men gave the croquet ball an energetic swipe with his mallet. It flew toward them, right into the bushes and struck Amy on the leg. Amy sprang to her feet with an undignified shriek and started to hop about.

  Daisy got slowly to her feet and then stood frozen with terror. “Flushed two of ’em,” yelled the young man. “Hey, Bo, Cecil, Jerry, everybody…nymphs in the woods!”

  With insolent, languid steps the members of the house party formed a half circle in front of the two girls.

  The Countess’s enormous brown eyes flicked over the two girls in their shabby tartan dresses. “Schoolgirls,” she remarked as if identifying a common type of garden pest. And then without even turning her head, “Curzon…take them away.”

  Daisy’s heart sank to her worn boots and she hung her head. Curzon was a leading light of the methodist chapel. Her aunt would hear of it. There was no escape now.

  “Oh, do they have to go?” cried a young man with a weak chin, horrendous acne, and an insane giggle. “The blonde one’s quite pretty, you know.”

  Amy gave him a dazzling smile. “Daisy and me just wanted to get a look at you. We didn’t mean no harm.”

  The Earl turned lazily to his wife. “There you are. They didn’t mean no harm, my dear.”

  “They just wanted to see the aristocrats at play,” roared a horsey girl. “We’ve even got a real live Duke for you to gawk at, ain’t we? Your Grace, The Most Noble Duke of Oxenden, please present yourself for inspection.”

  A tall dark man moved to the front of the crowd. Daisy raised her eyes timidly and then lowered them hurriedly. The newcomer had cold, harsh features and eyes of a peculiar, almost yellow, shade. They seemed to bore right into her. “What is your name? You…with the brown hair.”

  “Daisy Jenkins… an’ please Your Grace.” The voice whispered faintly, like the leaves drifting over the immaculate lawns.

  The Countess’s voice cut across. “Escort these persons off the estate immediately, Curzon. And send Bill from the lodge to report them to their headmistress.”

  There was a short, shocked silence, punctuated by a few sympathetic murmurs of “I say!” and “Bit hard cheese that,” as the two girls were led off by the stern Curzon.

  Even the ebullient Amy seemed unnaturally subdued. At last she burst out. “Oh, Mr. Curzon, do you really have to tell old Meekers about this?” Old Meekers was Miss Margaret Meaken, their headmistress.

  Curzon looked down at the two girls from his lofty height, gave a slight cough, and then became surprisingly human.

  “I think you have been punished enough, miss, but I’ve got to do what her ladyship says. She’ll check up. She’s that sort.”

  “But she is so beautiful,” said Daisy in a subdued voice. She could not believe that such a fairy-tale creature as the Countess would be deliberately malicious.

  “Well, it’s not for me to discuss my betters,” said Curzon repressively. “Let’s just leave it that I’ve got my orders to send Bill from the lodge and that’s that.” He turned to Daisy. “You’re the one that’s going to come off the worst. Your aunt isn’t going to like this a bit. She worships my lord and lady almost as much as her Maker.”

  Daisy shuddered. Her aunt, Miss Sarah Jenkins, was a deeply religious spinster who felt that she had been put on earth to go about finding fault with everyone in general and Daisy in particular.

  The two girls said good-bye to Curzon and walked off down the road with lagging footsteps and drooping heads. “I’m sorry,” said Amy. “It’s not so bad for me. My mum will scream and clip me over the ear and then she’ll invite all the neighbors in so’s I can tell them all about the frocks the nobs were wearing. Will you tell your auntie when you get home?”

  Daisy shook her head. “I haven’t got the courage. She’ll find out soon enough.”
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  She fell silent and the two girls moved slowly through the golden afternoon, each with her own thoughts. A little breeze had sprung up sending cascades of brilliant colored leaves falling across the winding country road. Woodsmoke twisted up lazily from bonfires in the gardens and rooks circled and swirled over the brown, ploughed fields. But Daisy had a nagging feeling that she had been shut out from a fairyland world and that life would never be the same again.

  The only way to enter that magic world again would be as a servant. Her aunt, she knew, had been a housemaid. But Sarah Jenkins moralized so much on the sins of the aristocracy and was so reticent about the family for whom she had worked, that Daisy could only assume she had not enjoyed one bit of it.

  Her aunt was also peculiarly reticent on the subject of Daisy’s parents. Daisy herself could not remember them, and all questions were parried by her aunt’s infuriating sniff, followed by a long homily about how she ought to thank God for having a respectable body to take care of her.

  When they reached the outskirts of the town, the lamplighter was already making his rounds, leaving pools of gaslight behind him to disperse the evening shadows as he moved slowly down the main street.

  The girls came to a halt in front of a forbidding Victorian villa which rejoiced in the name of The Pines. There were no pine trees, only a weather-beaten monkey puzzel and some sooty laurels, but Sarah Jenkins had been in service in Scotland and considered the name to have an appropriate Highland flavor, redolent of grouse shoots and large sprawling picnics on the moors.

  Amy opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. After all, what was there to say? Daisy needs a bit more spirit. Ought to tell that old harridan where to get off. Amy pressed her friend’s shoulder sympathetically, and marched off to cope with her own battles.