Being staunch Yorkshire, Mrs. Gould had respected and applauded Miss Copland’s unwillingness to take a boon for which she could not offer payment, and had been her most vocal admirer ever since. And so she questioned Sir David minutely, until she recognized his name and remembered him as a lad, and his father, the respected Mr. Arthur Chappell.
Her round face lit in a genuine smile of pleasure. Wiping her hands on the snowy cloth tied around her waist, she said, “Aye, nouw I do ’member ye! An’ yer pa. Nobbut more honorable than yer pa, nouw, was there? ’E were the grandest gentleman, an’ well I remember ye nouw as the sprig whut would foller Lady Bee ’round.”
Lady Bournaud’s name, being so “frenchy” and awkward to pronounce, had been shortened for years in the village to just Lady Bee.
“That’s right, Mrs. Gould. Only, if I remember right, you were not Mrs. Gould then?” Sir David looked up at her from his seat by the window and smiled.
“Aye, you’ve a sharp mem’ry,” she said. “I were just Gladys then, sir. I were a maid here afore Mr. Gould started wooin’ me.”
His antecedents gave him the right to be bearing her favorite, Miss Copland, company, and Mrs. Gould plied them with her best cookery, which was superior country food. Finally, he sat back, satisfied, as Beatrice finished her meal with a cup of tea. “I do not remember when I have eaten that much in one sitting,” he said, as a young girl—from the plump looks of her, a Gould sprig—cleared their dishes.
Beatrice, content for the moment, watched out the window. The village green, opposite, was the site of considerable activity, since the scene of nativity was to be played out there in a makeshift byre being constructed by Mr. Gould’s livery stable man, who happened to be handy with a hammer. The lady school had released its students early, there being no sense to be gotten from children with such important things on their minds as sugarplums and holidays and the whiff of snow in the air, and so there was an abundance of warmly dressed children dancing about the man, making his task impossible.
“Miss Copland, I feel that you are far away.”
Beatrice, with a start, looked across the table at the man who sat there, a man she had never thought to share space with again. When he had visited four years before she had managed to be “ill” for the four days of his visit, but she was happy that she had not been able to impose the same deception on her employer this time. It had been a salutary lesson in her own unimportance to find that Sir David did not even remember her, and she had been worrying for nothing. He had assumed such a major part of her own thoughts and memories that she had completely lost sight of how little she must have mattered to him twenty years before. And yet their last confrontation had been so dramatic and so unpleasant.
How time had changed things! He had been drunk and spewing vile accusations that held too much truth for her to be comfortable even now, looking back on them. But here and now he smiled over at her, waiting for her acknowledgment.
“I suppose my mind was just wandering.” She indicated the scene out the window. “I was remembering my own childhood in Dorset and how the villagers would celebrate this season.”
He frowned. “Dorset. How strange. I feel like I knew you were from Dorset.”
Her stomach clenched into a tight knot. Had she, with that simple slip, unveiled her past to him? But he merely shook his head, his brows furrowed.
Then his expression cleared, and he said, “Ah, well, likely just one of those strange things, like knowing what someone is going to say next or do. And so, how did the people of Dorsetshire celebrate?”
They talked generally for a while, but then the conversation turned to his own childhood in Yorkshire. “Those were marvelous days. Lady Bournaud made sure every day of the twelve brought a new wonder. I can never adequately thank her for all she has done for me in my life. She is a rare and wonderful woman.”
“I think you have repaid her by becoming the man you are,” Beatrice said softly, wiping a crumb off the table. “She talks about you often. She is very proud of you.”
“And yet there was a time when I thought I was going to become something very different.” The lines in his face, lines that had only been hinted at twenty years before, deepened. “This . . . this time of year did not always hold pleasant associations for me. The greatest tragedy of my life happened twenty years ago this week.”
It was coming. The moment she had been dreading was coming. Beatrice could not answer, but neither would she flinch from hearing him tell the tale she knew only too well.
“But I will not dwell on tragedy,” he said with a sudden smile that lit his handsome face and his crystal blue eyes. “It is in the past, and I do my best not to dredge it up to suffer again.”
“Have you recovered from the . . . the tragedy?” Beatrice asked.
He was silent, staring absently out the window as he fingered the brim of his hat, which sat on the table. “I don’t know if one ever fully recovers from tragedy.” He looked back into her eyes. “Look at Lady Bournaud. She has never been the same since that awful winter when her husband died.”
“I did not know her before that, so to me she is unchanged.”
“Ah, but she was a smiling, happy woman, the Lady Bournaud of my youth. Still stern, still with that inexorable will, but cheerful and bright. Energetic.”
“I would have liked to have known her.”
Sir David stood and picked up his hat. “Miss Copland, if you will excuse me I have a private errand or two to run while I am in the village. I would leave you in the excellent care of our hostess, Mrs. Gould, while I do my tasks. May I return to you here in a half hour?”
Beatrice said all of the necessary things, and then he was gone, striding away and out the door. She followed his progress down the street until he was out of sight.
It was just a few days to Christmas Eve. Twenty years ago this very day she had been a flighty young girl staying with an ancient relative in London, enjoying her first taste of freedom. At nineteen she had not a serious thought in her head but a desire for more gaudy finery, a yen for admiration, and a thoughtless belief that she somehow deserved better than the modest circumstances of her life.
Her family had never been wealthy, but had enough money to afford the doted-upon daughter of the house one Season, one chance to find a husband, to attract and capture a man of means. Had she taken seriously her quest? Had she acknowledged that her attractions were modest, and if she wanted to attract the notice of a man of quality who would overlook her modest dowry, she must refine her behavior, take from society the best it had to offer, make connections that would further her objective?
No. Flighty and headstrong, she had fluttered through the list of acquaintances her mother had sent with her, despising all of the elderly women who could have been an invaluable help to a husband-hunting chit. Only one name had caught her notice, and that was Mrs. Melanie Chappell, a young matron, newly delivered of a son, who matched the girl Beatrice had been then for flightiness and thoughtless pleasure-seeking.
Coming from a village where she had been among the premiere families had spoiled her. London was a shock for Beatrice when she realized that she was on the bottom rung, where every girl was pretty and most were better dowered, better bred, more accomplished and with prettier manners. As a result, she acted even worse, took more chances with her reputation, was sillier, more vain, more full of her own importance. She couldn’t look back on the girl she was with anything less than shame at the chances she let slip away, the decent young men she snubbed just because Melanie told her they were beneath her. Melanie discouraged her from marriage to a man of modest means. “Don’t get married,” she had said, “because you will only get fat and ugly and your husband won’t like you anymore and won’t take you to gay parties, but will expect you to stay home with the baby. If you do get married, at least make it worth your while. Marry into money.” And so, urged to aim higher, every vanity encouraged and every vice approved, Beatrice had stayed in London to become even m
ore vain, flighty and heedless. Melanie Chappell had been a boost to her self-esteem, a valuable ally who gave her nothing but compliments and expected nothing but approval.
Beatrice gazed out the window of the tavern, watching the stable man build his makeshift byre, but her vision was clouded with that long-ago time, as the Little Season dwindled into late autumn, and then winter. She should have gone home. Her modest allotment of money was gone, and her mother’s letters were becoming increasingly frantic, but Beatrice had ample reason to stay, or so she thought.
She was in love with her best friend’s husband.
Mr. David Chappell. Then he was a young man of about twenty-seven years, but to her eyes he had been mature, attractive, vital, vigorous, with an intensity that sparkled in his crystalline eyes and shot darts directly into her heart, silly chit that she was. She envied Melanie fiercely, envied the casual caresses the young woman clearly abhorred, was jealous of every endearment David gave his beautiful wife.
And yet she had, on occasion, seen another side to David Chappell than loving husband. He was, then, a hardworking aide in the employ of a government official. He was entirely caught up in his work, so much so that really, looking back on it, Beatrice remembered seeing him only very occasionally, though she spent much of her time with Melanie, whole days sometimes, staying overnight on occasion in the modest Chappell townhome. With the wisdom of years, she could see now that he was working so very hard, sometimes not arriving home until midnight, because he knew that to rise from his lowly position would require long hours and dedication. He was doing so for his family, for their future.
But Melanie was bitter, claiming that her husband preferred his work to his family, even though she, herself, seldom spent time with her new son Alexander, preferring to let the nanny and his wet nurse care for him almost completely. One night when she was staying over, Beatrice had heard David Chappell come home, and almost immediately he and Melanie had launched into a ferocious argument. Beatrice had been shocked at the bitterness between them.
And so she was torn. It was clear to her then that there was a rift between David Chappell and his young and beautiful wife. As a friend, she heard much more intimate details than she should have; Melanie was not shy about telling her new friend everything. And yet still, seeing the agony between them, and sympathizing with Melanie, she was certain that she was hopelessly in love with David Chappell.
What did that love amount to? Once he had given her a careless compliment, had told her that she was a pretty girl, or something mild to that affect, and she had felt sure that he was in love with her too, though of course as an honorable married man he could not admit it. She had floated through several days not knowing even when people addressed her directly, so full of love and hope was she.
How Melanie could have remained unaware of her friend’s infatuation Beatrice would never know, for she blushed every time the man entered the room—seldom, since she only saw him once in a very long while—and she even stole a stickpin that was his and kept it pinned inside the bodice of her dress, just to feel him close to her heart.
From the distance of twenty years she could see that it was girlish infatuation, a sign that she should have been safely married with a suitable object for her questing affections, but that was not to be. Everything changed that Christmas season.
The first step on the irrevocable road to ruin came when Melanie and she were at a Christmas ball given by a well-known hostess, who though of good ton had a certain reputation for entertaining very “loose fish,” gentlemen no one else would acknowledge. They were soon beset with admirers, Melanie particularly because she was so very beautiful, with the added attraction of being safely married.
One in particular, Viscount Oliphant, made a great fuss over both of them, swearing to anyone who would listen that he could not decide which of the two friends was prettier. Beatrice thought him everything a gentleman should be. She was not alarmed at all when she saw the man whispering in Melanie’s ear, because she was used to the attentions of Melanie’s cavaliers. And she didn’t think anything of it when she could not find Melanie for an hour during the night. Her friend had likely just retired to the ladies’ withdrawing room or to the card room, she thought.
And so Melanie’s confession a few days later came as a complete surprise.
Beatrice was staying at the Chappells’ townhome for a couple of days in the middle of that December, and she and Melanie were having tea while they went through some invitations. But Melanie laid them aside and gazed at Beatrice earnestly.
“I have to tell you something, Betty,” she said.
Beatrice, Betty as she was known then, had looked up, alarmed by the agitation in Melanie’s voice. “What is it, Mel?”
“I am in love,” Melanie said, her voice low and trembling.
Beatrice was silent. She didn’t think she quite understood. Of course Melanie was in love; who should not love David Chappell if not his own wife?
“I am in love with Ollie . . . Lord Oliphant.”
Beatrice was silent because she was stunned. The look on her face must have told the story, for Melanie grabbed her hand and held it to her bosom, and there were tears in her eyes. “Oh, Betty, I do not know what I am going to do! Ollie says he will kill himself if I do not give him some sign that I love him too, for he is so deeply in love with me that he is desperate!”
“Kill himself?” Beatrice had been appalled. “Mel, you must tell him that you are married, that nothing can—”
“But he knows I am married.” Melanie dropped Beatrice’s hand and said, with a good deal of self-consciousness, “Married woman have friends . . . lovers . . . all around us; you know they do, Betty. So why should I not enjoy Lord Oliphant’s attentions?”
Beatrice had been appalled, but so enmeshed was she in Melanie’s life, so sure that anything Melanie did or said was “bang up to the mark,” that she was soon persuaded to think that there was nothing so wrong in Melanie’s being a little in love with her Ollie.
But then had come the first request of what would become, over the weeks, an avalanche. Her eyes glowing, Melanie had leaned over and said, “Betty, he wants me to spend the night at his house in Cheapside! Can you imagine anything so deliciously wicked?”
“Spend the night? But you can’t. How would you explain it to your hus—”
“Shhh!” Melanie had glanced toward the door of the parlor in which they sat and lowered her voice. “It could be easy. All I would have to say is that I was going to spend the night with you at your aunt’s house.”
“But what if David found out?”
Beatrice had refused, but in the end her fear of losing Melanie’s friendship, and thus all hope of seeing David Chappell occasionally, had weighed more heavily than her internal conviction, not admitted then but acknowledged since, that she was a shill in an evil game of deception. It was wrong and she had known it, and yet knowing it, had still participated.
If it had ended at a few nights of passion shared illicitly by Melanie and her viscount, then guilt would have been the only price. But there was much worse to come, and Beatrice could not see herself as anything but culpable in Melanie Chappell’s tragic death on Boxing Day of seventeen-ninety-six.
“Shall we go on with our mission, Miss Copland?”
The words, spoken so close, made her jump, startled back into the present by Sir David Chappell’s more mature voice in her ear.
Chapter Fourteen
And so the day continued.
The greengrocer’s store was filled with good things to eat, shiny red apples, fragrant Seville oranges, carrots, cabbages and onions, with bunches of herbs, rosemary and thyme hanging in drying bunches from the time-darkened ceiling beams. Beatrice had a long conversation with the owner about the wishes of Lady Bournaud, since initially the fellow evinced some skepticism of the generous, indeed ample, provisions the comtesse wanted to make for the people of Harnthwaite over the coming winter. Eventually she prevailed, once Sir David ca
me forcefully to Beatrice’s assistance, demanding that he take the lady at her word once and for all.
They descended the step to the walkway outside of the shop.
“I didn’t think he would ever admit that perhaps you might know what Lady Bournaud’s wishes were!” Chappell shook his head in bemused frustration.
“You cannot blame him. Lady Bournaud has been so insular for most of the last twenty years, I gather, and folks have gotten used to not much notice from the great house.” Beatrice, buffeted by the strengthening wind, tucked her hands in her muff and glanced up at the sky, which was beginning to darken with clouds. It looked like snow, she thought. Smelled like snow, too, in that inimitable north country fashion.
“Where to next, Miss Copland?” the knight said, taking her arm.
Oh, if only she were who he thought, Beatrice mused, looking up at the man next to her as they walked down the stone path along the line of shops that huddled together like cats in a rainstorm. He seemed to enjoy her company, and she had found, to her surprise and dismay, that the infatuation she had for him those many years before had not abated as it should have, and was even now strengthening, turning into a more mature esteem and respect, with that old tremor of attraction.
But she would think of that another time, alone at night, when it would not show on her expression.
“We shall first stop at the post office, which has, I believe, some packages that Lady Bournaud ordered from London, and then on to see the vicar. Every child of the parish is to receive a gift from Father Christmas, and every family a goose.”
“Lady Bournaud has at last gone mad,” Chappell laughed.
“I think so,” Beatrice chuckled. Comfortably, like old friends, they walked and talked. “You must miss your son this time of year.”
Sir David nodded, squinting off into the distance at the bare limbs of the trees that lined the village green and stretched up into the sky. “Very much. This will be the first year we are not together for Christmas. But he will barely miss me, I think. Life in Paris will be lively for a handsome young man like Alex.”
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