Annabelle (15 page)

Powdery snow came swirling into the hall, but Caroline could still make out the figure of Lord Varleigh with his dogs at his side, still some distance away.

The approaching sound of Mrs. O’Harold’s chattering voice spurred her to action.

Heedless of the damage to her thin silk slippers, Caroline plunged into the snow and ran towards Lord Varleigh.

There was a sudden report, awful to hear in all that white stillness.

The Honorable Caroline Dempsey stopped abruptly in her tracks and then dropped like a stone.

*   *   *

T
HE
house party was at an end. Caroline’s body had been removed for burial by her weeping parents, and searchers had combed the estate without success for signs of the marksman. It was at last decided by the local magistrate, who was tired of travelling in the wintry weather, that Caroline’s death had been the unfortunate result of a stray bullet fired by a poacher. Only Annabelle wondered if the shot had been meant for herself.

She did not know who to confide in or who to trust. Perhaps Lord Varleigh’s handsome face masked the brain of a madman. Perhaps one of her fellow guests was a murderer. The well-bred faces and high fluting voices began to seem sinister.

T
WO
days after Caroline’s funeral Annabelle was seated in the library, trying to read. Captain MacDonald came bustling in, suddenly seeming to Annabelle to appear comfortably normal with his fresh, handsome face and military side-whiskers.

“This place is giving me the Blues,” he said robustly, placing one booted foot on the high fender and staring at Annabelle with a worried look on his face. “I don’t like that ‘accident.’ I think there was something funny about it.”

“I am feeling blue-devilled myself,” said Annabelle. Her face was white, and she had large shadows under her eyes. She had a sudden longing to confide in somebody.

“Jimmy,” she said. “Do sit down. I am in need of help.”

The large Captain promptly sat down opposite her with his hands on his knees and stared at her with the affectionate expression of a large and devoted dog. “I’m the person to tell about it, Annabelle,” he said.

Faltering at first and then with her voice growing stronger, she told the Captain of Mad Meg’s warning, of her fears that the fire in the pimping shed had been deliberately set and that Caroline had been wearing her, Annabelle’s, pelisse and bonnet when she had been shot.

“Odd,” muttered the Captain, “Demned odd. Tell you what, Annabelle. I think it
might
just be coincidence, but why stay here, shaking in your shoes?”

“Emmeline is determined to stay,” said Annabelle.

“Oh, no she won’t. Not if I talk to her,” said Captain MacDonald. “You go up to your rooms and tell your maid to pack your things, and I’ll have us out of here in an hour. Get back to London, heh! Think of the theaters and the plays and you could come on some more drives with me if the weather ain’t too bad. What a monster you must think me, Annabelle. After my terrible behavior at Chiswick. Don’t really know why I did that. Must have been mad. Now come along…smile, that’s a girl. Jimmy will look after you!”

Annabelle gave him a watery smile. She gratefully took his arm as he ushered her out into the hall.

“I say,” said the Captain, “there ain’t any hope of you and me tying the knot, is there? I mean to say,” he added gruffly, shuffling his boots, “look after you, and all that. Very fond of you.”

“I’m sorry. I just don’t know,” said Annabelle, looking searchingly up into his face. “I’m so frightened and everything seems so strange. Give me more time.”

“All the time you want,” said the Captain enthusiastically. “Be a good girl and give me a kiss and go off and see to your packing.”

Annabelle shyly raised herself on tiptoe and kissed Captain Jimmy MacDonald on the cheek and scurried off upstairs.

Lord Varleigh slowly closed the study door on this
touching scene. He could not understand why he felt so unhappy.

E
VERYONE
seemed to revive in the sooty London air. Lady Emmeline seemed to have become her old self again, grotesquely dressed it is true, but no longer rambling and murmuring and praying for her soul. Annabelle flirted and danced with a great number of young men and felt that she was getting over that dangerous illness of being hopelessly in love with Lord Varleigh. If ever she found herself thinking about him, she resolutely concentrated on his inhuman “marriage mart” at Varleigh Court and the suspicious death of poor Caroline.

The Captain had not touched any liquor at all since his return, and his friends gloomily declared him to be a changed man and cast resentful glances at Annabelle.

As party and ridotto followed ball and breakfast, and the elegant figure of Lord Varleigh did not appear, Annabelle found the memory of him growing mercifully fainter. Her godmother had written to the rector praising the Captain in no uncertain terms, and the rector had written a pleading letter to Annabelle urging her not to throw over the love of a good man for some girlish romantic nonsense.

Annabelle became convinced that her own idea of love was wrong. Hurting and painful passion was no basis for a happy marriage, and what did one do when passion had fled? Mutual esteem and mutual interests were what mattered. And, indeed, the Captain did try. He even read books to please her and went so far as to remark that Miss Austen was a demned fine writer and Annabelle, who had caught him studying
Pride and Prejudice
forebore to point out that she had noticed the latest copy of the
Sporting Magazine
tucked between its gilt-edged pages.

One day Captain MacDonald turned up to take Annabelle out walking, wearing his full uniform. His fur cap was black with a red bag and a white bag over red plumes and gold cap lines ending in tassels and flounders. The jacket, dark blue with scarlet collar and cuffs, had silver cords on the front. The pelisse, dark blue like the jacket, was laced with silver in the same way with a black fur edging. White breeches and black Hessian boots edged with silver braid with silver tassels in front; a sword belt made of crimson leather and ornamented with silver embroidery completed the ensemble. Annabelle thought he looked magnificent and told him so, and the large Captain smiled at her almost shyly and twiddled his side-whiskers with one large hand.

As they walked along Piccadilly, Annabelle was pleasurably aware of the admiring glances cast in their direction, but she had almost bumped full into Lady Jane Cherle before she noticed her.

Lady Jane was all that was gracious. She greeted Annabelle like an old friend. Lady Jane explained she was sending out cards for a dinner party and Annabelle
must
come. Annabelle was about to give a polite-refusal when, to her dismay, she heard the Captain accepting the invitation for both of them.

“How
could
you, Jimmy?” demanded Annabelle when Lady Jane had left them. “Lady Jane is a
cat
.”

“Oh, she’s all right,” said the Captain amiably. “Bit
fast
I admit, but quite the thing for all that.”

For the umpteenth time Annabelle pondered over the vagaries of society. If she, Annabelle, had behaved even a tiny little bit as scandalously as Lady Jane, then all the doors of the top houses would be slammed in her face. But for some reason Lady Jane was accepted everywhere. “Almost as if society felt in need of a resident
whore,” thought Annabelle and then blushed painfully as she realised she had voiced her thought aloud.

“Here! I say!” said the Captain in alarm. “Shouldn’t talk like that, you know. Not the thing!”

Annabelle fell silent. She could only hope Lady Emmeline would forbid her to go.

But her godmother was depressingly enthusiastic. “If you were strictly a debutante, I wouldn’t let you,” explained the old lady. “But you’re going with Jimmy, and Jane’s careful of her reputation at her dinners. You’ll meet only the top people there.”

It certainly seemed a sedate enough gathering. Admittedly the Captain’s admirers were present in the shape of Major Timothy Wilks and George Louch, but apart from teasing the Captain over his sobriety, which was the talk of London, they seemed more subdued than usual.

Lady Jane’s house in Manchester Square was in the first style of elegance with Egyptian rooms and Etruscan rooms and powdered, liveried footmen.

Her fortune had been gathered from two late husbands who had had the good taste to die shortly after their marriages. It was rumored that although Lady Jane had more than enough money of her own, she greedily collected what she could from her current lovers. Society had watched with bated breath for the replacement to Lord Varleigh, but so far it seemed as if Lady Jane intended to remain heart free.

Annabelle was reluctantly forced to admit that Lady Jane was a good hostess. Her chef was excellent and her vintages of the best. She said she had heard Captain Jimmy was as sober as a judge these days and instructed a footman to serve him with lemonade.

Annabelle eyed the handsome Captain approvingly.
He had certainly been a model escort of late. He was a…well, a
comfortable
kind of man. He seemed to be relishing his lemonade as if it were the best vintage Burgundy.

“By Jove, this is good,” he said. “You chaps ought to try it. Not in the common way, you know. Faint taste of liquorice or something. Gives it a fresh taste.”

And Lady Jane, who had spiked the Captain’s lemonade with arrack, gave him her beautiful smile and relaxed in her high carved chair at the end of the table while she waited for the inevitable results.

Mr. Louch began to describe the expertise of a juggler he had seen at Vauxhall Gardens the previous summer. “Didn’t throw balls or clubs or anything like that in the air,” he said. “But everything else. Champagne bottles, knives, forks. He kept them all up in the air at the same time. The man’s a wizard! I thought you were good at that regimental dinner, Jimmy, but you ain’t a patch on this fellow.”

“Bet you I am,” said the Captain wrathfully, taking a long pull at his lemonade goblet. “Bet you anything you like!”

“Bet you a monkey,” tittered Mr. Louch.

“Done!” cried the Captain, shaking off Annabelle’s little hand from his sleeve.

“Can’t you
do
something,” cried Annabelle to her hostess as the Captain began to gather an assortment of objects in front of him.

Lady Jane said nothing, but she lay back in her chair and smiled like a cat.

Annabelle turned back wildly to the Captain. “Please, Jimmy,” she begged. “Don’t make a fool of yourself.”

“Leave me alone,” said Captain MacDonald huffily. “We ain’t married yet.”

Annabelle flushed crimson with mortification as he got to his feet. In his large hands he held a champagne bottle, a knife, a silver salt cellar, and a wine glass.

He began to throw them up in the air, deftly catching them and recirculating them as the guests cheered and laughed.

“Here,
catch
!” called Lady Jane—and threw an orange down the table in the direction of the Captain.

He saw it coming and took his eyes off the juggling objects for a split second in order to try and catch it. The champagne bottle crashed onto the silver epergne in the middle of the table and was followed by the wine glass. Both splintered into fragments. The silver salt cellar hurtled into the plate of syllabub in front of Annabelle and splashed the contents of the dessert over her dress, and the knife fell down and gashed the Captain on the cheek.

“That wasn’t playing fair,” howled the enraged Captain. “Bet’s off!”

Annabelle reached forward and slowly picked up the Captain’s lemonade glass.

She took a sip of its contents and put it down. She rose to her feet.

She turned and faced Lady Jane who sat laughing at the end of the table.

“You have put arrack in the Captain’s lemonade, Lady Jane.”

In a louder voice Annabelle repeated, “You put arrack in Captain MacDonald’s lemonade. A
shabby
trick.”

A silence fell on the rest of the guests and only the drunken Captain who was trying to balance a knife on his nose seemed unconcerned.

Now Lady Jane could flaunt her amours over half of London and still be good
ton
. But to spike a man’s drink was like cheating at cards.

“Don’t all look at me like that,” shrilled Lady Jane. “’Twas a joke, no more.”

Annabelle rose from the table and left without a backward glance. She was shortly followed by most of the guests. The Captain remained at his place with a silly smile on his face. “’Strordinarily good champagne, Lady Jane,” he said dreamily.

“Go to hell,” said Lady Jane, throwing a glass at him which missed and struck the opposite wall.

“Very well, ma’am,” said the Captain with awful dignity.

He tottered out into the hall and called for his carriage. He was politely informed that he had arrived with Miss Quennell in Lady Emmeline’s carriage and that Miss Quennell had already departed in it.

His good temper rapidly evaporating, the Captain hailed a hack and directed it to Berkeley Square. He was already seething in its evil-smelling interior by the time he arrived at Lady Emmeline’s house. He had every intention of giving Miss Annabelle Quennell a piece of his mind. She would have to learn to take a joke or he would take his riding crop to her—after they were married of course.

He strode heavily into the hall to see Annabelle mounting the stairs. He unceremoniously dragged her down again and gave her a shake.

“It’s time you learned what’s what, my girl,” he grated. “Do you think it fair to me that you prim up like a Methodist any time I’m having fun. Be demned to you, miss.” With that he dragged her into his arms and ruthlessly kissed her. He smelled overpoweringly of arrack and cigars and his lips were hot and wet.

Annabelle pushed him away. She was trembling with rage. “You make me sick,” she said in a shaking voice,
and turning on her heel, she mounted the steps, again trying not to run.

“I do, do I?” yelled the Captain. “Well, you’ll be sorry you said that, Miss Annabelle Quennell. You’ll be sorry.…”