Deception (Daughters of Mannerling 3) (21 page)

‘We’ll see, miss. Will you be staying on? It is not as if you need to.’

‘On the contrary. I need the employment very much.’

Barry looked at her shrewdly. ‘But not for the money, I reckon.’

‘Really, Barry, what odd ideas you do have. I am an impoverished governess,’ said Miss Trumble severely, settling her night-cap of fine old Brussels lace more firmly on her head.

Barry grinned ruefully and bowed and left. There was some mystery about Miss Trumble, but whatever it was, she was certainly not going to tell him.

Rachel, Belinda, and Lizzie were gathered in Rachel’s bedroom that morning. ‘We are staying here for two more weeks,’ said Rachel. ‘I think it is decidedly odd to stay on in Lord Burfield’s house when he is not here, but you know Mama, she is counting the saving on food and candles. I feel empty without Abigail, and yet I feel she is very happy.’

‘What will happen to us now?’ asked Lizzie in a small voice. ‘We will soon go back to the country and we cannot expect to find handsome gentlemen falling for us.’

‘I feel as long as we have our Miss Trumble, then things will happen to us,’ said Rachel.

‘Miss Trumble cannot do everything. She did not conjure up Lord Burfield for Abigail or make him fall in love with her,’ pointed out Belinda.

‘But she mysteriously organized invitations for us,’ said Rachel. ‘Did you hear that Prudence Makepeace was behind the plot to make Abigail miss her wedding, and she has escaped the law? Her parents have taken her abroad. They fled last night. Miss Trumble said she was relieved because a court case would have meant a dreadful scandal.’

Lizzie gave a little shiver. ‘I hope she never comes back to England. Think of the malice behind her actions. I assume it was she who wrote that letter?’

Rachel nodded.

Belinda said, ‘I, for one, am never going to think of Mannerling again. Isabella, Jessica, and Abigail need never have suffered anything at all had they let go of that dreadful place. It was our home and we loved it, and yet everything to do with the house brings misery.’

‘It’s only a house,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s our obsession with the place that has caused all the trouble. We have all earned a bad reputation because of it. I was dancing at a ball with an attractive young man, Sir Peregrine Darcy. He was very charming and he seemed pleased with my company. He took me in for supper and soon we were chatting away like old friends. Then he suddenly looked at me and exclaimed, “Beverley! Of course! I knew I had heard that name.” He grew very guarded and rather remote and soon he turned to speak to the lady on his other side and did not turn back to me. It was all very lowering.’ She added in low voice, ‘Perhaps we will never marry now.’

‘Spinsters!’ said Lizzie in hollow tones. ‘Spinsters all. The Beverley spinsters.’

They looked at each other and then Belinda said bracingly, ‘Miss Trumble will think of something. She always does.’

But she looked as if she did not believe what she had just said.

Harry Devers was buried at Mannerling. There was a private chapel not far from the house. It had not been used by Sir William or Lady Beverley or Mr and Mrs Devers, who preferred to attend the village church. But it had a small quiet graveyard, full of the Beverley ancestors. The chapel was opened for the funeral and Mr Stoddart, the vicar, conducted the service.

Mrs Devers, supported by her husband, stood by the graveside, hearing the words of the burial service tolling in her head.

‘ “The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong, that they come to fourscore years: yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.

‘ “But who regardeth the power of thy wrath: for even thereafter as man feareth, so is thy displeasure.” ’

Had God been displeased with Harry? wondered Mrs Devers. She was past crying, and was in a state of half-numb bewilderment. A dank drizzle was falling from a leaden sky. A willow tree had been planted beside the grave, a whole willow tree, specially put there for the sad occasion. Water dripped from its leaves onto the coffin.

Memories of Harry flitted through Mrs Devers’s brain – Harry as a child, smashing his toys, Harry punching his tutor, Harry getting that maidservant pregnant, the girl crying rape and having to be paid to keep silent. And now Harry was gone, and with him all the worry and trouble and turmoil. Harry was quiet at last and buried near the home he had stayed in for such a short time and which he had loved so much.

Mr Devers had bought a handsome house by the sea at Brighton. There would be fresh breezes, fashionable company, and a whole change of life, away from Mannerling and all its unhappy memories. Mrs Devers found her mind was slipping away from her dead son towards the pleasures of this change of scene and she felt guilty.

Prudence Makepeace stood on the deck of the
Bella Ann
as the ship sailed through the blue waters of the Mediterranean bound for Naples. She had put all the scandal behind her, would not even think about it. Nothing, after all, had been her fault, as she had told her parents over and over again. Harry had meant to play a little joke on the Beverleys, that she had believed. She would not have
dreamt
of going through with it had she known he had any deep plot in mind.

She was uneasily aware that, for the first time in their well-ordered lives, her parents no longer believed a word she said. She gave a little shrug. There was a handsome officer on board who was much taken with her, and that had done much to restore her
amour propre.
She would make a dazzling marriage in Naples, so dazzling that London society would soon forget about her little trouble and welcome her back. She would cut the Beverleys, of course. She drifted off into a dream of arriving at Almack’s on the arm of some Italian prince. The Beverley sisters would be there, the three unwed ones. In her mind’s eye, they had grown old and withered, and they looked at her with hungry, envious eyes, jealous of her good fortune.

Abigail and her husband had been travelling from posting-house to posting-house wrapped up in love, lost in each other, until at last, when they were having breakfast one morning, Lord Burfield said, ‘I think it is time we returned to London. With any luck, your family will have left for the country.’

‘Why do you say that in just that tone of voice, my love?’ asked Abigail, her blue eyes narrowing. ‘I was looking forward to seeing them.’

‘To be frank,’ he said, ‘I am not looking forward to meeting your mama again. She must be the most unnatural and mercenary mother it has been my illluck to come across.’

The fact that this was exactly what Abigail herself thought of her mother did not stop her temper from flaring.

‘How can you be so unkind?’ she cried. ‘Yes, Mama does count the pennies, but she has had much to bear since Papa died.’

‘Many people have much to bear in this life. It’s Clarence House to a Charlie’s shelter that she has asked you to ask me to send her money.’

‘She never did!’ lied Abigail, her face turning red with mortification. ‘Why are you jeering at me in that horrible way?’

He smiled. ‘There! I am sorry. But my anger against your mother is on your behalf. Had you been better brought up, you would not have concocted that silly plot to wed Harry Devers.’

‘I was trying to save Rachel, you . . . you pompous fool!’ shouted Abigail.

‘Do control yourself,’ said her husband evenly and buttered a piece of toast.

‘You are horrid, horrid and I
hate
you! I am going out for some fresh air.’

‘Don’t slam the door after you.’ The crash of the door as Abigail departed drowned out his words.

Now as cold with anger as she had been hot, Abigail went up to their room and changed into a walking dress and half-boots, put on a bonnet, and then went back downstairs and out of the inn and through the bustle of the yard.

Two young misses were descending from a carriage. I should warn them about marriage, thought Abigail tearfully. I have married a monster!

She walked into the market town, suddenly wishing she could go home and join her sisters and forget she had ever been married. They would play battledore and shuttlecock in the garden and then gather in the cosy parlour in the evening and sew and read. She missed her twin.

Stall-holders and entertainers were busy in the main square, setting up for a fair. Momentarily diverted, she watched the arrangements and then walked on through the town and so out the other side. Walking was soothing her. The early morning mist was beginning to burn off the fields and all the countryside appeared to be coming to life.

It had been raining heavily the day before, and the deep ruts and holes in the road gleamed with water.

She heard some vehicle approaching and drew to the side of the road. A curricle driven by some local country buck came hurtling around the corner. As the carriage passed Abigail it went straight through a puddle and sent a wave of muddy water up over her before disappearing around a bend.

Abigail cried out in dismay. She was soaked with muddy water from head to foot.

‘There, now,’ said a woman’s voice from behind her. ‘Them young bucks pay no heed to nothing or no one.’

Abigail swung round, scrubbing at her muddy face with an ineffectual wisp of handkerchief. A stout countrywoman was leaning over the garden gate of her cottage, surveying Abigail with concern. ‘You’d best step inside and I’ll dry you off, miss,’ she said. ‘Come along. You can’t go walking about in that state.’

Abigail meekly followed her in to a country parlour which doubled as a kitchen. ‘You just go to the fire and get out of those clothes. I’m Mrs Plumb.’

Abigail held out her hand. ‘Lady Burfield,’ she said shyly.

‘A lady! And you walking the roads without so much as a maid. Dearie me. Well, let’s clean you up, my lady. There’s no one here but me. My husband and son are out in the fields. I’ll get you something to put on.’

Abigail took off her bonnet and carriage dress and was standing by the fire in her shift when Mrs Plumb returned with a patchwork quilt which she wrapped around Abigail. Then she swung the kettle on the idlejack over the fire. ‘I do rough cleaning twice a week for squire’s lady,’ said Mrs Plumb, ‘and her gave me a twist of tea.’

‘Oh, you must not waste it on me,’ said Abigail, knowing that the tea was probably being saved for an occasion.

‘I’ll be able to tell everyone how I entertained a real lady, so t’won’t be wasted. Now sit down in that chair and keep warm.’ She picked up Abigail’s muddy clothes and bustled off. After some time, she came back, lifted the now boiling kettle off the fire and proceeded to make a pot of tea, shaking the leaves into the pot from a little twist of tissue paper.

‘Now what was you doing of, walking on your own like that, my lady?’

The desire to confide in someone was too much for Abigail. ‘I am newly wed, on my honeymoon,’ she said. ‘I had a row with my husband.’ And she burst into tears.

‘There, now. Mercy me. Did he beat you?’

‘No, no, nothing like that,’ said Abigail, scrubbing at her tears with a corner of the quilt. ‘He criticized my mother.’

‘Oh, you’ll need to get used to things like that, my lady. They never likes the mother-in-law. Did he have reason?’

‘He said she was a miser.’

‘That be cruel. Not as if it’s true, now is it?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, it is. I think . . . I think I grew angry because I owe him so much. I had little dowry to offer and had created such a scandal that I thought no one would want to marry me.’

‘I tell you, my lady, gratitude do cause a mort of rows. But you must get used to rows. They’re part and parcel of marriage.’

‘But he said he loved me,’ wailed Abigail. ‘He should not be nasty to me if he loves me.’

‘Oh, well, it is a pity they’re human just like us. I tell you, if your good lord don’t know where you are, he’ll be worried sick. The sun’s hot now and I sponged down your gown and hung it over the bushes. ‘Twill be dry in a trice. I can’t do anything about your bonnet. You finish your tea and get dressed again and I’ll walk you back. Where are you staying?’

‘The Eagle.’

‘That’s where we’ll go and as fast as possible.’

Abigail, as she hurriedly dressed, was beginning to become alarmed. What if Rupert had decided he had made a mistake and had gone off and left her? From hating him and wishing she had never married him, she was now back in love, and more deeply than before.

When she left the cottage with Mrs Plumb, she was hard put not to take to her heels and run. Mrs Plumb, a plump, comfortable sort of woman, walked with a slow, rolling gait. Abigail was increasingly alarmed to find out how far she had walked from the town. As they approached it, the noise of the fair reached their ears.

And then, with a lurch of her heart, Abigail saw Lord Burfield striding out along the road towards her, his face grim. She flew towards him and straight into his arms, crying, ‘Oh, Rupert, I am so sorry . . . so sorry.’

‘You minx,’ he said, giving her a little shake. ‘You frightened me to death.’

Abigail told him breathlessly of the carriage which had soaked her and of Mrs Plumb’s kindness, ending with, ‘And I drank her precious tea and I know she must have been saving it for something special.’

‘Mrs Plumb can have a whole case of the finest tea,’ he said, holding her close. He bent his head and kissed her passionately. Mrs Plumb heaved a romantic sigh and turned and walked back home. She knew they had forgotten her very existence. But she was to learn that such forgetting was only temporary when a whole tea chest of tea was delivered to her the following day, along with what seemed to her dazzled eyes like a twoyears’ supply of groceries, with goods such as white flour, sugar, salted hams, and every imaginable delicacy.

Barry was pleased to see them return together and disappear up to their room. He was even more pleased to learn later that they were to return to London, which meant he could leave for the country.

‘We will never, ever quarrel again, Rupert,’ said Abigail passionately as she lay in his arms that night.

‘No, never,’ he agreed.