The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  Amy carried the tray out onto the terrace and pushed the trembling Daisy into a chair. “Now just look at that pretty view, Daisy, and try to relax. If you ask me, it’s a good thing we left our bags at that nice hotel in Toulon and the sooner we get back there the better.”

  “Now, now, Amy,” admonished Bertie. “Daisy’s come all this way to see her father and she may as well wait until she does.”

  The coffee was excellent, accompanied as it was by a large imported Dundee cake. The view was peaceful, showing glimpses of the blue Mediterranean through the pines. Everyone but themselves seemed to have gone to sleep on this hot, somnolent afternoon.

  Exuding an aroma of sweat, powder, and cheap cologne, their hostess joined them. She had changed into a tightly fitting gown of green and white striped silk, which plunged in a low décolletage showing the pointed, birdlike bones of her thin chest.

  “You can call me Rose,” she said, sitting down at the table. “You can all stay if you like. We’ve got plenty of rooms.”

  “How did you meet my father?” asked Daisy nervously.

  “Oh, that was a lark,” said Rose, waving a motheaten ostrich-feather fan. “It was on the Channel crossing. I felt so sick, I was puking all over the place. Then your Dad comes up with ’is—his—flask of brandy and that puts me right in no time. Well, he says like he’s going to live down here and why don’t I come along. ’Course I didn’t know then that he’d been kicked out the country for cheating at cards,” she chattered on, blissfully unaware of Daisy’s face which had become set and white. “Don’t know that it’d have made all that much difference. Quite a way your Dad had with him then.”

  A cruel shaft of sunlight suddenly shone full on her face, highlighting wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and at the side of her mouth. Amy realized that Rose was probably in her late thirties.

  “And when do you expect Lord Chatterton to return?” asked Bertie.

  “I dunno,” said Rose with blithe unconcern. “If he gets a winning streak, he often stays all night.”

  There was a sound of voices in the driveway but, as Daisy jumped to her feet, a couple came into view and neither of them could possibly be Lord Chatterton.

  Both men wore hard high collars, black suits, and black bowler hats, and seemed impervious to the heat.

  “Duns,” said Rose bitterly. “Wot’s he done now?”

  They watched in silence as the two men mounted the terrace, their quick eyes taking in every detail. Ignoring the party on the terrace, they moved past into the living room where they began turning the chairs upside down and studying them intently. They had just started knocking on the walls when Daisy cried to Rose, “Aren’t you going to do something?”

  Rose shrugged a thin shoulder. “Why should I? Neddie’s gone and sold the house again. He’s always managed to save it at the last minute, but we ain’t got anything left to sell.”

  “B-but,” stammered Daisy. “My father sends me a very generous allowance each month…”

  “I don’t know who’s paying you money, but it ain’t your; dad,” said Rose. “I know every penny that man hasn’t got. If he’d anything to spare, he’d put it on the tables. Cheer up. Maybe you’ve got a rich admirer.”

  “I think you’re making all this up,” said Daisy, her voice trembling. “How dare you speak of my father in such terms…”

  But Rose had turned an indifferent shoulder and her averted face spoke volumes to Bertie and Amy. Rose had heard it all before. She then got to her feet and berated the two men in her cockney French, finally driving them off with a torrent of abuse that no English primer could possibly translate.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Bertie was beginning to plead when they all heard the faint sound of a motorcar in the distance.

  “The traveler returns,” said Rose. “I’d better get the decanter.”

  Amy, Bertie, and Daisy sat as if turned to stone, as the sound of the motorcar came nearer. The sky turned a milky gray through which the sun still blazed, diffusing a yellow light over the landscape. The motor rolled to a stop outside the terrace. Lord Chatterton gave a hunted look at the three figures on the terrace and bolted around the side of the house and disappeared.

  Then sounds of an angry altercation assailed the ears of the three. For a time the words were mercifully indistinct until Lord Chatterton’s voice resounded through the house with painful clarity. “Tell her I’ve left. Tell her anything. I don’t want any daughter sponging off me.”

  White-faced, Daisy got to her feet as the door opened. Lord Chatterton stood on the threshold. He looked Daisy up and down and then sat in an armchair with his back to the terrace.

  He was a thin, dapper man dressed in a checkered suit and spats. He had a surprisingly youthful face and a thick head of soft brown hair, very like Daisy’s own.

  “I’m leaving, Father,” said Daisy, addressing the back of the armchair.

  “It ain’t that I’m not glad to see you,” remarked Lord Chatterton. “But I just haven’t got any money to support you and that’s a fact.”

  He suddenly twisted around and surveyed his daughter. “You’re as pretty as your mother. Thought Angela and David would have married you off by now.”

  “I do not wish to marry for money,” said Daisy coldly. It all seemed like a nightmare. She couldn’t possibly be carrying on this sort of conversation with her own father.

  He got to his feet and surveyed her with a sort of leisurely insolence. “Well, now, that’s a pretty penny you’ve got on your back. I must say the Nottenstones have been surprisingly generous.”

  Daisy faltered, “B—but you have been sending me a very handsome allowance.”

  He looked at her and began to laugh, “Not me, my dear. I haven’t a penny. Your fairy godmother ain’t me.”

  “But Mr. Curzon—the Nottenstones’ butler—told me that you…”

  “Curzon, eh. Used to work for me. Crafty fellow. Some masher’s probably got his eye on you and Curzon’s setting you up.”

  For the first time Daisy passionately wished the grim figure of Sara Jenkins back from the grave. Bullying and stern though she may have been, she had been respectability personified.

  In one moment Daisy Chatterton finally grew up. Her childish face seemed to harden and mature as she faced her father in the darkening room. Bertie and Amy, who had expected her to break down, stared at her in surprise.

  “Mr. Curzon,” began Daisy in a cold icy voice, “has been like a father to me. So much so that I had always dreamed you would be something the same. But now,” her eyes raked him up and down, “I find you. I did not look for perfection, believe me, but it is rather a shock to find myself confronted by a—an elderly roué.”

  Lord Chatterton gave a short bark of laughter.

  “There ain’t nothing you can say that ain’t been said to me before.”

  “I am going to leave. Please convey my apologies to Miss Wellington-Jones-Smythe.”

  “Who the hell’s she? Oh, Rose. What a name. She’s plain Rose Smith of Stepney.”

  “You couldn’t leave poor Rose her little bit of social pretense, could you,” Daisy spat at him.

  “Arrrch! Just like your mother,” sneered his lordship. “Always nagging and preaching and…”

  That was as far as he got, however, because Bertie Burke punched him in the mouth and then stood looking at his own fist as if he couldn’t believe it.

  Lord Chatterton stood laughing at them, the blood running in two rivulets down his chin. He looked like a middle-aged and very English Count Dracula.

  “Look at your faces,” he crowed. “What did you expect me to do, gather my daughter to my bosom? Bah! Get back to the Haymarket Theater where you all belong.”

  Rose had appeared in time to hear the last sentence. “Nobody’s going anywhere, Neddie,” she snapped. “There’s a storm coming up. Me bunion says so and it’s never wrong. I’ve got you ever such a nice room ready, Daisy. Don’t mind ’is nibs. Like a bleedin’ child, ain’t y
ou, Neddie. Now come along o’ me, Daisy.”

  Daisy and Amy followed her from the room, glad of any escape from Lord Chatterton’s presence. Rose led them upstairs and into a large whitewashed room. She flung open the shutters and they could hear the faraway rumble of thunder and the sudden hiss of rain. A cool piney breeze wafted into the room like a blessing.

  Rose turned with her back to the window. “Don’t take it too hard, Daisy. He feels guilty about you so that’s why he wants you to leave.” When Daisy did not reply, she left, taking Amy with her to show her her room.

  Daisy sat for a long time listening to the storm outside. Somehow she found she was beginning to have a feeling of relief. The dreaded meeting with her father was over. There! She had admitted it. Dreaded.

  There had been too many odd looks, too many whispers in London society about him for Daisy not to have realized that her father was not exactly popular. Disappointed in love, she had clung to another love only to find it as empty as all the others. But she had to admit that deep within her, she had been expecting it all along.

  The rain had stopped beating down and far away in the distance, the thunder rolled its retreat. She rested her head on the windowsill and gazed out over the moonlit Mediterranean. The dingy, sooty London streets seemed very far away.

  She began to wonder if she would ever see the Duke of Oxenden again.

  True love, she had found, did exist. Because she loved the Duke. But she knew now that she would never find a love like hers that was returned. In her newfound maturity she realized—sadly and undramatically—that she would probably love the handsome Duke until the day she died.

  There was a small, beautiful escritoire over by the far wall. She sat down and began to write a letter to Curzon, demanding to know the name of her benefactor. After she had finished, she sat looking at the letter for a few moments and then quickly, taking a small pair of scissors from her reticule, cut off a lock of her hair. She added a P.S.: Please give this to the Duke of Oxenden, and then sealed the letter before she could change her mind.

  A few days later, the Duke’s high-sprung brougham clattered up the long driveway to Marsden Castle. The Duke’s gloved hands held the reins lightly and he looked almost wistfully around the surrounding woods as if expecting a demure schoolgirl with her hair in braids to emerge.

  He should never have let her go off to France. Never. God knows what she was experiencing now. Daisy Chatterton had no more guards against the sophisticated cruelties of society than… dammit, than a kitten. Every time he thought of her, he experienced a small aching pang of loss. Why, for all he knew, she could be safely in the arms of some handsome Comte!

  Curzon opened the door. He took the Duke’s hat and gloves and looked as if he were about to speak, but Angela came floating into the hallway and bore the Duke off to the garden.

  The Earl was reading the morning paper. He put it down at the Duke’s approach and gave him an unwelcoming glare.

  “What brings you here, Oxenden?”

  The Duke sat down at the other side of the table and helped himself to toast. “I came to find out if you have had any news of Miss Chatterton.”

  “Not a word,” said Angela with a giggle, “but you’ll never guess what!”

  “What?” asked the Duke coldly.

  “Well… Anne Samson was visiting Cannes with some friends and she thought she would drop in on Neddie on the road. You’ll never believe it, but he is living in the most awful squalor with some cockney child who smells. And he hasn’t changed a bit. He insisted on making up a four at bridge before they left and he took an awful lot of money from them and Anne swears the deck was marked.”

  “Why didn’t you try to stop Daisy from going?”

  “She didn’t ask us, did she, Davy?” said Angela simply. “It was after that awful storm in Brinton. The servants say she came in dripping with water and looking like a ghost. Davy says she didn’t even wait for him after the theater.”

  The Duke looked at the Earl and the Earl unmistakably blushed. The Duke felt he should have stopped her himself, but he had been so jealous of her infatuation for that posturing actor. That was it, he realized. He had at last admitted it. He had been jealous!

  The Earl was saying something, Angela was exclaiming, but the Duke sat as if turned to stone. He loved the girl. He actually was in love with Daisy Chatterton. His host and hostess were beginning to throw the breakfast things at each other, but the Duke sat on bemused, until a plate of kippers narrowly missed his head. He decided to go in search of Curzon.

  The butler drew him into the comparative privacy of the pantry. “I have something for you, Your Grace,” said Curzon. He mutely held out a lock of soft brown hair. The Duke’s heart gave a painful lurch.

  “And that’s not all,” went on the butler. “Her father did tell her that it was not he who was paying the allowance and suggested that I might be in the pay of some masher to… er… set Miss Chatterton up.”

  “How cruel we all are,” murmured the Duke. “How thoughtlessly cruel. Poor child.”

  With a weary grimace he said, “You’d better write and tell her the truth… about the money.”

  Curzon hesitated. “Your Grace, I do not wish to be considered impertinent, but I am very fond of Miss Chatterton, very fond indeed. I always considered myself to be a sort of father to her and now that her own father has proved so useless, I feel it my duty to ask Your Grace your intentions.”

  “Entirely honorable—I mean marriage.” And seeing the look on Curzon’s face, he added, “I have only just realized that myself, Curzon, or I would never have let her go.”

  Curzon stood with his head bowed, fingering the edge of the table.

  “Now what’s the matter?” asked the Duke.

  “Well, Your Grace, I have heard it rumored that your butler is considering retiring and…”

  “The job is yours, Curzon, any time you like. In fact old Hennessey would probably like you to start right away. He was butler to my father before me, you know—of course, I forgot, you used to work for him—anyway, he’d be very glad of a helping hand.”

  “Quite, Your Grace.”

  “Now what?” asked the Duke as Curzon started to stare at the table again.

  “If I was to leave this employ promptly, Your Grace, I would then be free to accompany Your Grace to the South of France.”

  “So you would,” said His Grace, with a sudden boyish grin. Then a shadow crossed his face, “What if she has left?”

  “We will just need to try,” said Curzon. “And now if you will forgive me, Your Grace, I will attend to my immediate packing and endeavor to give notice.

  “Oh, a further moment of your time, Your Grace. I should not tell Miss Chatterton that it is you who have been paying her allowance. I could… er… manufacture a late rich aunt on her mother’s side who had pledged me to secrecy before she died, and inform her that the allowance is to cease on the day of Miss Chatterton’s marriage.”

  “She’d never fall for all that Gothic nonsense!”

  Curzon gave a discreet cough. “If things work out as happily as I anticipate between yourself and Miss Chatterton, then… I believe… she will listen to anything.”

  Tendering his resignation proved harder for Curzon than he had anticipated. The battle between the Earl and Countess showed no signs of abating as they screamed from one end of the castle to the other. By the time Angela had thrown the Earl’s prize collection of electroplated statuary—his father’s mementos of the Great Exhibition—into the lake, the Earl was baying for divorce.

  When Curzon finally managed to speak his piece during a silence between the angry pair, they immediately fell to again, blaming each other’s bad temper for “causing the whole staff to walk out” as Angela put it.

  It was with a great feeling of relief that the butler finally found himself in the Duke’s carriage and leaving Marsden Castle forever.

  They were to travel to Cowes to board the Duke’s yacht, the Seabird, and set s
ail for France.

  Curzon began to have second thoughts about the whole expedition. Surely Daisy would not stay long with her father. Even now, she could be traveling back through France.

  Chapter 15

  Daisy had not left after all. By the morning, her father was in a milder mood and apologized with professional and much-used charm for his behavior. It had been the shock of seeing her, he explained. If she and her friends would care to stay a few days, she could have an opportunity to go through some of her mother’s old letters and belongings.

  Daisy decided to stay. There was not much to go back for in any case. Bertie and Amy loyally elected to stay as well and Bertie hired more servants for the villa for, as he put it, “I may be an easygoing chap, but I do like my comfort… so long as I can afford it, that is.” He and Amy were not sure how Mr. Burke senior would take the news of their marriage, but Bertie pointed out that as he had agreed to a marriage with Daisy, he would probably be delighted it was someone like Amy with respectable parents.

  Amy had not informed her parents either of her marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Pomfret held very strong views about “marrying outside one’s class.”

  After a week of trying to lure his guests into a card game and failing, Lord Chatterton left for the local casino in disgust. It was situated a few miles along the coast at the small unfashionable resort of Anribes. But the fashionable casinos at places like Cannes had long since ceased to welcome the English milord.

  He arrived back very late in the evening on foot. He had been having such a splendid run of luck, he had drunkenly explained, but then fortune had turned against him and he had to wager his car and had lost that as well. Now he could get it all back if only someone would just lend him a trifling sum. Rose yawned and his guests refused to part with so much as a guinea, so he retired to bed cursing them all fluently.