Death at Daisy's Folly (8 page)

Miss Ardleigh grew concerned. “You look as if you've been crying, Amelia. Is something wrong?”

Mutely, Amelia shook her head.

Miss Ardleigh held out her hand. “Oh, come now,” she said. “You're not one to cry without a reason. What's happened?”

Prompted by this sympathy, Amelia said, “It's Lawrence, miss,” and burst into a flood of tears. In a moment, she had told the little she knew and the more she imagined, and Miss Ardleigh was holding her and patting her back while she wept.

“I am sure,” Miss Ardleigh said gently, when the tears had somewhat subsided, “that it is not as bad as it seems. This Winnie person—is she as lovely as you?”

Amelia frowned, wanting to be accurate. “She's ... much larger.”

“Larger, but not lovelier, then. And her age?”

“Oh,
much
older, miss,” Amelia replied, from the youthful perspective of seventeen. “All of twenty-five, I should reckon. An' she's quite brazen.”

“Well, then,” Miss Ardleigh (who was twenty-seven herself, and a spinster) said briskly. “What are we crying for? You have the advantage of beauty and youth. All you need is a little more courage, and perhaps a bit of brazenness on your own account. Let Lawrence know that you care for him, Amelia. His heart is with you, I'm sure of it.”

Amelia felt herself blushing furiously. “It's not ‘is 'eart I'm worried about, miss,” she said in a low voice. “It's th' ... other thing.” She felt quite brave in bringing the subject up, but of course she would not have spoken so openly if Miss Ardleigh had not encouraged her, or if she were not an American. American women, as she knew from her clandestine reading of Beryl Bardwell's fictions, were much more open about physical intimacies than were English women.

A smile tweaked at Miss Ardleigh's lips. “Yes, well,” she said, and cleared her throat. “‘The other thing' is a bit of a problem, to be sure, and I am not suggesting that you violate your principles. But where Lawrence is concerned, you might want to practice a stratagem or two.”

“A stratagem, miss?” Amelia was puzzled.

“It might not hurt to let him see that you have the power to attract other men. Is there a party belowstairs this evening?”

“Yes, miss,” Amelia said. Although house party weekends meant a great deal more work for the servants, they also presented opportunities for socializing. The kitchen maids would still be doing up the pots and pans after tonight's dinner and the house steward would be supervising the washing up of the gold plate in the pantry, but those who could would steal away to dance and trade gossip and play cards around the fire in the servants' hall.

The dressing bell clanged loudly, reminding them both that it was time to change for dinner. “Well, a party should be a fine opportunity to let Lawrence see that other men find you attractive,” Miss Ardleigh said, and began to unfasten her dressing gown. “You must take a ribbon from the drawer to dress your hair, Amelia, and some of my scent, if you like. I shall dispense with your services at bedtime, so go and enjoy yourself.”

A ribbon, and scent! Well, that put an entirely different face on things. Winnie Wospottle was indeed quite brazen, and Amelia was not so blinded by love that she imagined Lawrence braver than he was. If she were to rescue him from that woman's clutches, she would have to resort to strategy. She straightened her shoulders, determined.

“Yes, thank you, miss,” she said. “I shall.” She went to the wardrobe where her mistress's gowns were hung. “You wanted t' wear th' gray tonight?”

Miss Ardleigh had stripped to her chemise. “No, Amelia, I've changed my mind. I shall wear the green silk with the matching gloves, and Aunt Sabrina's emerald pendant. And I have taken the peacock feathers from my hat—I shall want them in my hair.”

Amelia's eyebrows went up. The green silk was cut low and more daring than the dresses Miss Ardleigh usually wore; she had purchased it chiefly because Mrs. Farley thought she ought to have at least one such gown. And she had never worn her aunt's emerald pendant, which was quite a lovely jewel, the richest Amelia had ever seen.

Taking the green gown from the wardrobe, she changed the subject. “Wud ye know, miss, why ‘er ladyship wud be takin' 'Is Royal ‘Ighness t' th' work'ouse termorrer?”

Miss Ardleigh had just sat down before the mirror. She glanced up, startled, the hairbrush in her hand. “To the
workhouse?”

“Yes,” Amelia said. She laid the gown on the bed, smoothing the skirts. “T' th' very place where my dear Jenny died,” she added sadly. Jenny had been wayward, and when she was discovered to be pregnant, had been turned out of her place at Bishop's Keep (this was in the days before the young miss, of course) and ended up in the Chelmsford Workhouse, where both she and the babe had died. It was a common enough story, but no less sad for that, and sadly unfair. The man who betrayed Jenny had most certainly not suffered as she had. But that was the way of it, Amelia thought, and her sadness became colored by anger. Men used women, and then abandoned them. She must be sure that such a thing never happened to her.

“The workhouse,” Miss Ardleigh repeated thoughtfully. “Well, well. It appears that her ladyship has a stratagem or two up her sleeve.”

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.

—ELLEN STURGIS HOOPER “
Beauty and Duty,
” 1840

I cannot charge myself with neglecting any of the duties that rightly fall to an English country gentleman, as those duties were carried out and taught to me by my own father. If a new standard or conception of duty has sprung up since my day, I can only say that I know nothing of it, and have not seen or heard of its advantages.

—FRANCIS GREVILLE BROOKE, LORD WARWICK
Memories of Sixty Years

 

 

I
t was the hour after tea, when the guests had retired for a rest before dinner and the evening's entertainment. Sir Charles sat at the writing table in his bedroom, staring at his mother's letter. He did not need to read it again, for every word was engraved on his heart.

 

My Dearest Son,

 

The dressing bell rang as Charles refolded the letter. He pitied his poor brother (whom he did not know well) and his brother's wife Alice (whom he knew even less well), and pitied himself because Robert and Alice had no children. That his brother would die childless meant that he was about to inherit the title of Lord Sheridan, the fifth Baron of Somersworth. He would also inherit the management of the estates and the family's seat in the House of Lords, and would have to give thought to producing an heir who would in his turn be chained to his feudal obligations.

Charles placed the letter in his writing case and closed it. As a younger son with a modest but adequate income of his own, he had enjoyed the freedom to pursue his interests as he wished, while his elder brother Robert did the work of maintaining the family's estates and social obligations. When Robert died, he would no longer be free to do as he chose, or to marry as he chose. Since it was now a question of the furtherance of the line, his mother would insist on having some say in his choice and would urge him to choose a wife whose family she knew. Independent and unconventional, Kate was not a woman who would appeal to his mother, or whom the Dowager Baroness would consider a suitable wife for her son. And for her part, Kate preferred to live removed from Society. The kind of life the barons of Somersworth had always led would be distasteful to her.

And to Charles. At thirty-four, his interests were many and far-flung. At Eton and later at Oxford (where he had prepared for a career in the Foreign Service), he had acquainted himself with archaeology, paleontology, botany, geology, zoology. In the interval between Eton and Oxford, during a brief posting with Her Majesty's forces, he had pursued technical studies. Having avoided a diplomatic career by fortuitously inheriting his maternal grandmother's small fortune, he was able to follow his diverse interests as they presented themselves, without regard to profit or outcome. In the tradition of the English gentleman scientist, he had conducted a study of Cenozoic invertebrates in the fossil record of West Essex and investigated several rare species of bats. But he was also intrigued by many of the new branches of technology and science—photography, toxicology, serology, dactyloscopy, anthropometry—and their application to the study of criminal activity. He had even enjoyed several successes in the solution of crimes—two, with Kate's help.

But his current inquiry, unfortunately, did not look like being a success. It was his considered opinion that the Prince's horse had nothing to do with the death of the young groom, and that the boy had been the victim of foul play. But the only evidence lay in the circumstances, and unless someone had caught a glimpse of the killer and came forward to offer evidence, a solution was not likely to be found. While Charles was confident that the new sciences would one day make it possible to identify a perpetrator whether or not he had been observed in the commission of his crime, eyewitness testimony was still the only testimony most jurors would accept, and even the police were trained only to deal with the most obvious kinds of physical evidence.

Hence, Charles was left with the awkward task of reporting to His Royal Highness that the matter remained in question. The report would not be well received, for HRH did not easily tolerate ambiguities, relativities, or approximations. But Charles knew his duty and would satisfy the Prince as well as he could.

There was a discreet knock at the door. Charles opened it and told the inquiring valet (a loan from Daisy) that his services were not required. He could perfectly well dress himself. He opened the wardrobe, found his evening clothes where some servant had hung them, and began to put on his shirt, turning his thoughts to other matters. Daisy's plan to take HRH to the Chelmsford Workhouse, for one. Members of the Prince's circle were happy to amuse themselves with such minor naughtiness as adultery and could accept a minor scandal if it did not attract too much attention in the press. They could not bring themselves to tolerate Socialist leanings, however frivolously expressed. Daisy's interests—her needlework school, her campaign for Poor Law Guardian, her interest in Poor Law reform—smacked of Socialism, and were no doubt already seen as supporting the unrest that periodically flared among the people.

Not that Charles himself did not applaud such efforts. He had cheered Keir Hardie, the Scottish miner elected to Parliament three years ago, who had arrived at the House of Commons wearing a cloth cap and accompanied by a brass band. He admired Robert Blatchford's Socialist journal, The Clarion, which had advanced a number of progressive (and, in Charles's view, necessary) reforms. But if Daisy intended to influence the Prince in the direction of Socialism, she should prepare herself for trouble, because trouble was what she would get.

After some searching, Charles found cuff links and studs in the tray on top of the dresser, donned his white waistcoat, and slipped his tie around his rigid chimney pot collar, which he hated fiercely, for it chafed his neck. Glancing in the mirror, he combed back his unruly brown hair and surveyed his reflection with a resigned sigh. He was prepared for dinner and the evening's entertainment, although he did not expect to enjoy it. And at all costs, he should have to avoid the attentions of Lillian Forsythe, who had accosted him at tea with some sort of unintelligible remarks about bats. Not even Duty required that he endure such women.

But as he stared at himself in the mirror, his reflection seemed to speak to him. What
did
Duty require, after all? Did it demand that the fifth Baron of Somersworth live and marry as the first four barons had lived and married, always in the front rank and the public eye of Society?

Could he not perform his duty to the title, the estate, and the family—
and
to himself?

And if that were true for him, might it not be true for Kate, if she loved him? Perhaps he should open the subject with her tonight, sound her out on her feelings about himself and about the change in his situation. He might even raise the subject of marriage. He wasn't entirely sure how he might do this, for he had done nothing of the sort before, but perhaps during dinner he could think of a logical way to open the topic.

Charles nodded at his reflection and ran his finger around the inside of the infernal collar. And as he left the room and walked down the hall toward the stairs, he felt more cheerful than he had since the letter arrived.

The chief folly of those who belonged to the Marlborough
House set was to imagine that pleasure and happiness were
identical.