by Eliza Casey
He smiled shyly. “I hope so. Now, Lady Cecilia, can I help with anything else here? Do let me bring you an ice cream later. I can imagine it’s hard work to get people to buy, er, porcupines.”
Cecilia thought of the Moffats’ lovely strawberry ices and sighed. Work first; bliss later. She rubbed at her sore shoulder. “That would be so kind, Mr. Brown. I think I can manage here for now. Jane, Miss Clarke’s maid, is coming to help me soon. I daresay someone will take a fancy to the porcupine.”
“Well, do just call if I can do anything at all. I am always at your service, Lady Cecilia.” He actually gave her a little bow, so chivalrous. As he left the tent, the three ladies he had been talking to all sighed.
Cecilia turned back to the tables and rearranged some of the knitted scarves so the pretty colors could be seen. Mrs. Havelock must have made some of them, she thought; the colonel’s wife always had such an eye for color, while Mrs. Mabry just used horrid old grays and muddy greens. A few browsers came in, and as she turned to greet them she noticed a new package at the end of the table, about the size of a small hatbox and wrapped in brown paper. She picked it up to unwrap and arrange.
The note attached indicated it was a donation in kind thanks for all the “lovely village” had done for his family, signed “Montgomery Winter.” She started to untie the string, but something about it caught her attention. A whiff of scent carried on the breeze, citrus-green and sharp.
Suspicious, she took another deep sniff. Yes, she was sure it was that same smell. Not Mary’s white-flower scent or Amelia Price’s roses; a man’s cologne. Just like those bits of paper at Primrose Cottage. Her stomach knotted, and she snatched the note off the package to study the handwriting more carefully. Dark and backward slanting. Also like the torn notes. Not like Mary’s looping hand.
Unsure what to do, Cecilia spun around to run out of the tent to find the inspector. But then what would she tell him? That the handwriting on the package looked like that on a scrap of paper at Primrose Cottage—the cottage where Mrs. Winter’s mother had lived, and thus might have received letters from her family there? Threatening letters from her son-in-law? It all sounded silly when she put it like that. But Mary’s perfume was flowery and feminine, distinctive, and surely when she wrote her mother letters, they would smell like that and would have her girlish handwriting.
Could it be Monty Winter who wrote them, then? Monty, angry about his job loss, angry that women might want rights. Angry that his influential in-laws could no longer help him?
Before Cecilia could decide what to do, Lord Elphin appeared in the tent entrance. His face was still red and florid, his suit ill fitting, as if he didn’t dress for public occasions often, but he held his hat in his hand and looked almost shy as he nodded at her. He held a flat package in his other hand, and held it up awkwardly. Cecilia noticed that everyone else in the tent stopped to gawk at him, so rare a sight was he. She couldn’t just run away from him.
“Lady Cecilia,” he said, with a cough and a shuffle of his feet. “I did promise you and Miss Clarke a donation for the church roof. I—well, here it is, then.”
“How kind, Lord Elphin,” Cecilia answered, feeling almost as at a loss as he was. “I’m sure we’re all quite glad to see you here at Danby today. I hope it’s the start of many such visits.” She opened the wrappings and saw a small portrait of a woman dressed in the low neckline of decades ago, her dark hair in elaborate curls. Her hand rested against her cheek, showing a ruby ring on her finger. Cecilia recognized her from the larger painting over Lord Elphin’s fireplace. “Your mother?”
“Indeed. She was the donor of the St. Barbara window at St. Swithin’s and is buried in the vault there. She would be happy to be of more assistance now. The artist was quite well-known, I think, which might be of some interest to a collector, or maybe the church might want it. Unless you think it’s too worthless?”
“Not at all. If Lady Elphin was a church patroness, I am sure Mr. Brown would like to buy it himself. It was terribly kind of you to bring it.” She studied the ring closer. “Lord Elphin, I know this is most impertinent, but is this the same ring Mrs. Price wore?”
His face turned even redder. “I—well, yes, I daresay.”
Cecilia felt suddenly bold. Maybe it was her suspicions of the notes, maybe it was Lord Elphin’s new polite demeanor, but she dared ask, “And you wanted the ring back? After all these years? Why?”
“I hadn’t seen Amelia for a very long time. Just read about her in the newspapers. It never sounded like the same lovely girl I knew then at all. So angry, so—unwomanly.” He scowled, as if upset at the memory that a young debutante might grow into a lady with ambitions and ideas of her own. “Then she showed up here, wearing that ring after all this time, bold as brass! I asked for it to be returned. It was my mother’s, after all, and the girl I gave it to no longer existed anyway.”
He suddenly looked so confused that Cecilia couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for him, as crude and foolish as he was. “And yet you let her keep it after she jilted you back then?”
“Her father lost his money! We couldn’t marry then; I understood that. I admit I might have . . .” He half turned away, as if he didn’t want Cecilia to see his emotions at old memories. “I didn’t expect her to marry that Henry Price so fast, or that I would never see her again. But I suppose life does that sometimes, doesn’t it? We have our duties.”
“Yes,” Cecilia murmured. “Duties.” Duties to family, to home, to the past. But what of the future? Was there really no choice?
“I thought of her sometimes. She was a sweet, lovely girl back then, always laughing.” He looked quite far away for an instant, maybe a young man in a London ballroom again, enchanted by a pretty girl. “And I did want to give that ring to my wife, rest her soul. But I never dreamed Amelia would go around flaunting it, bold as can be!”
“And so you sent Mr. Guff after her?”
Lord Elphin’s jaw set pugnaciously. “I had heard of him once, from one of my tenants. He seemed reliable enough, for that sort of thing. I just wanted back what was mine after all these years.”
And Guff had found Amelia dead and callously taken the ring from her finger? Or had it been more than that? She had fought to keep it and fallen? But it seemed in Cecilia’s memory that the ring was gone before that. And Cecilia had been so sure it was Mary Winter . . . “I am quite sure Inspector Hennesy would like to hear about all this, Lord Elphin.”
His expression turned from stubbornness to shock. “I had nothing to do with anything else but the ring! Nor, does Guff assure me, did he, and surely there is some honor among thieves? I had nothing to do with murder, or even with stealing anything else. Just my ring.”
For a moment, he seemed so thunderous she was sure he would snatch back his painting and storm away. But slowly, gradually, the angry redness leeched from his face, and he seemed to crumple. He was just an old, pitiful recluse, who had wasted years in recriminations for a long-ago romance. “She used to be so lovely.”
“Did she have other suitors back then, too?” Cecilia asked, wondering if maybe Amelia Price’s colorful past had come back to haunt her in the present in some way not yet apparent.
“Of course she did. She was quite the prettiest girl in London then. Such a waste, eh, thrown away on a man like Price.”
“Because he is a lawyer?”
“Because his business practices were never honest! Everyone knew it then. No one could understand why the queen would ever trust him, but she did and now he is prosperous.” Lord Elphin glanced down wistfully at the painting. “Ah well. Water under the bridge now, isn’t it? Guff’s in stir for his thefts, and I’ll have my ring back soon. But poor Amelia.” He put on his hat and started to turn away. “You see if the vicar might want that painting, Lady Cecilia. Mother would have liked to see it in the church.”
Cecilia felt a bit sorry for him as she wa
tched him shuffle away, but she reminded herself sternly that he had set the theft in motion, and had bullied Mrs. Price at her rally. Even if he hadn’t harmed her himself, one of his underlings could have. But she didn’t have long to ponder his misdeeds, as a crowd of shoppers came swarming into the tent, eager to buy the knitted scarves and painted figurines. She tucked the painting away beneath one of the tables and set about her job of selling. Her head was quite whirling with it all when Jane and Jack came hurrying in.
“Oh, my lady, you’ll never believe who just arrived!” Jane whispered. “Lord Eversham! Lady Avebury is quite beside herself.”
“Really?” Cecilia gasped. “A marquess, here at Danby for the church fete?” She felt a sudden tangle of emotions, excitement, trepidation, worry. What was he doing here, a man like that so obviously of Town? And what would her always-matchmaking mother make of it? She quickly followed Jane to the entrance and peeked outside.
It was indeed Lord Eversham, dressed impeccably for the country in his brown suit, his golden hair shimmering in the sunlight, laughing with her mother and Annabel as they strolled with him between the booths. Sebastian dashed past with a chicken leg in his mouth, which he had clearly purloined from the tea tent, and Jack set off in pursuit. After only an instant, he trotted back with the prize, victorious.
“Surely, he’s come courting?” Jane whispered delightedly. Jack gave a disgusted “mrow.”
“I am quite sure he has not. There are plenty of ladies more eligible than me.” Ladies with beauty and money. Ladies like Annabel herself, who laughed and laid her elegantly gloved hand lightly on his arm.
Cecilia glimpsed Jesse, strolling past with a tray of glasses, and he raised his brows toward Eversham, as if asking if such an elegant toff could really be there at Danby. Cecilia almost giggled.
“I am sure there aren’t lots of earl’s daughters,” Jane said doubtfully.
“There are lots of heiresses,” Cecilia answered.
A sudden cry rang out, breaking the idyllic day, and Cecilia spun around to see Mary Winter collapse to the ground nearby, half-hidden by the tent, her lilac-colored dress spreading like a broken flower on the grass. Cecilia and Jane ran to her.
“Mrs. Winter!” Cecilia cried. She knelt down beside Mary and saw that the woman was chalky pale, her forehead clammy. She couldn’t see Monty Winter anywhere near, but she remembered the threatening notes it seemed he had sent his mother-in-law, and she felt terribly afraid for Mary. “What’s amiss? Are you ill?”
“I—just my stomach, I’m afraid,” Mary whispered, clutching her hand over the crumpled silk of her bodice. Her wide-brimmed hat had come half-unpinned, and Cecilia helped her remove it. A bruise, which she had tried to powder away, was blue on her cheekbone.
“She was quite well only a moment ago,” Monty said, and Cecilia twisted around to see him striding toward them. He was smiling pleasantly, but there was a look in his eyes she did not quite like. Something hard, steely.
“It is a warm day, Mrs. Winter,” Cecilia said. “Let us find you a shady place to sit down. Perhaps Mr. Winter will fetch you some lemonade?”
His smile twisted. “Yes, of course. I am sure it is all just a tempest in a teapot, though, as usual with my dear wife. Her nerves are not strong, you know.” To Cecilia’s relief, he turned and left, walking toward the tea tent.
Cecilia glanced around and saw Rose carrying a fresh tray of Mrs. Frazer’s cakes. “Rose, could you watch the bring-and-buy tent for a few moments while I find someplace for Mrs. Winter to rest?”
“Of course, my lady,” Rose said, and handed off her tray to Bridget before she took her place at the bring-and-buy table, just in time to sell one of the Misses Moffat’s tea cozies.
Cecilia and Jane helped Mary to her feet, and Cecilia realized they were quite near the old medieval tower. The rest of the garden was swarming with people, and her grandmother held court on the terrace, where Lady Avebury was leading Lord Eversham. No place to find peace there. “Let’s just go sit down in the tower for a moment, Mrs. Winter. It’s a little eerie, I admit, as it was a place to watch for enemies back in medieval days, but it is quite cool and quiet.”
“You are so kind, Lady Cecilia. I am such a bother, I’m afraid,” Mary said fretfully.
“Not at all.” Cecilia called back to Rose where they were going and where Mr. Winter might find them when he returned. As they made their way toward the tower, Jack joined them, his prized chicken seemingly gone. The small, round room at the foot of the tower was dusty and filled with drying leaves, so Cecilia led them up the winding, narrow staircase to the first landing. They found a bench there and sat down to watch the color and movement of the bazaar far below.
“I am always so stupidly ill,” Mary said. She took a handkerchief from her embroidered purse and dabbed at her eyes. Cecilia caught a whiff of that strange perfume on the dusty air of the tower. “I had so hoped that this time there might be a—well, forgive my indelicacy, but a child. But your kind Dr. Mitchell says it is just grief for poor Mother.”
“Perfectly understandable,” Cecilia said gently. She took Mary’s soaked handkerchief and handed her one of Jane’s own. Cecilia saw that Mary’s square of linen was embroidered with a masculine border of dark green, a small, plain M in the corner. Was it her own, or her husband’s, soaked in that scent?
“Had you—hoped for long, then, Mrs. Winter?” Cecilia asked.
“I have always hoped, ever since I married,” Mary said wistfully, trying to smile. “To tell you a great secret, it was why I married Mr. Winter in the first place. There was this dance one night, you see, and I drank a great deal of the champagne punch. He was so handsome in the moonlight, there in the summerhouse! In the end, I was quite mistaken, but we were already married by then. My die was cast, as they say.”
So the Winters had been forced to marry. Could one of them be so angry at being stuck with each other that the rage would find a new, strange target in Mary’s mother? “It must have been a wretched disappointment,” Cecilia said.
“Horribly so. But I thought we would just try again. Monty was ever so furious. He—he said I had trapped him, you see. I think he might really have loved Anne back then, not that she would ever have him. She’s only interested in her suffrage nonsense, not a true woman at all. And then when Monty’s job at Bird and Wither came to nothing . . .” She broke into a fresh storm of tears. “It was all over then! Father wouldn’t help him anymore.”
She snatched her handkerchief from Jane’s hand and blew her nose into it loudly.
“Mary,” Cecilia asked carefully, “is that your own handkerchief?”
Mary glanced down at the now quite crumpled linen as if she had never seen it before. “Oh no,” she moaned. “I must have taken Monty’s by mistake! He’ll be ever so angry when he finds out; he has them made specially by the dozen, infused with his cologne. I am never supposed to use his things.” She glanced out the old, narrow window behind them, the swirl of the leaves on the stone ledge, the sound of the party below. “He is taking a rather long time, isn’t he?”
“I’ll just go see where he might be, my lady,” Jane said. She and Jack dashed out of the tower, their footsteps echoing on the worn, ancient stone steps.
“So you believe your husband wanted to marry your sister?” Cecilia asked. She had a hard time imagining Monty Winter and Anne Price together at all.
“Oh, I know it. Anne is much cleverer than I am, you see, an asset to any business ambitions, and she’s older, too. I’ve always just been the little featherhead.”
Cecilia still couldn’t quite believe it. “He was in love with Anne?”
Mary laughed. “Oh no. Not her herself. Not Monty. He doesn’t really know the meaning of the word, if I must be honest. He’s ambitious. He wanted an alliance with Henry Price. One sister would do as well as the other for that. And I was so silly. I see that now. I thought he wa
s handsome, charming, that he could love me better than he ever could Anne. That we could have a proper marriage, not like my parents. So there was that summerhouse . . .”
“What was their marriage like? Your parents’?”
Mary frowned. “Argumentative. Before Mother moved away. Always shouting, things being thrown around.” Now that she had started, Mary was obviously in a confiding mood. Maybe she had just kept it all bottled up for too long. “They both had affairs, you see. We all knew it. I was sure Monty and I would be different, that once we were married, he would know I was the right wife for him. But we aren’t different at all. I hardly see him, and when we do, he’s always angry with me for doing something wrong. And I do so many things wrong, Lady Cecilia! It’s become quite worse since he lost his position, and Father refuses to help him any longer. Monty says it’s all my fault, and I must fix it with Father. That’s why we came here to Danby.”
Cecilia was confused. Was Mary supposed to secure her husband the job with Mr. Jermyn? “How are you to fix it?”
“By reconciling with my mother, getting her to return to Father. By convincing Father to take her back and force her to become a proper wife who can’t ruin a gentleman’s business prospects. That would never have worked, of course. Father would never have taken her back. But Monty is sure her notoriety is to blame for losing his position. No reputable firm wants to be associated with suffragettes. She’s stolen his rightful place.”
Cecilia thought of the scraps of threatening letters at Primrose Cottage, the handwriting that seemed not quite right. “He made you write to her here?”
Mary blew her nose into her hopelessly mangled handkerchief. “I told him it would do no good. Mother seldom answers any letters, she says she’s too busy, and Father refuses to help us anymore.”