Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus (67 page)

The marquess slapped his marchioness full across the face.

Tilly’s anguish fled before an overmastering burst of rage.

“You cad, sir!” she cried. “You unutterable
bounder
.”

And with that she punched the marquess full on the end of his aristocratic nose.

Before he could recover from that attack, Tilly had flown to the marble washstand and, picking up the copper jug, emptied the contents over his head.

He turned abruptly on his heel and slammed his way out of the room.

Tilly threw herself facedown on the bed and cried her eyes out.

Only when the birds began to stir in the ivy outside and a bright sun rose over the horizon, heralding the beginning of a beautiful day, did she fall into an exhausted sleep.

The first thought she had on awakening some hours later was that Francine had gone too far. Tilly was in no doubt that the lady’s maid had somehow known about the contents of the will and had placed the copy under her pillow. The marchioness sat up in bed and grimly rang the bell.

But Francine’s surprise and dismay were all too genuine. The other servants were called in and questioned and all were vehement in their denials. It was then that Tilly remembered Cyril Nettleford and his hints about the will.

“Let me see the will,” said Francine. She bent her head and read it carefully. “But it is evident, my lady,” she cried. “It says here quite plainly that if my lord does not produce an heir, then Cyril Nettleford will inherit. And furthermore, my lady, I watched his lordship last night and he looked to me like a man very much in love, and I said to myself that I have made the mistake regarding him.”

“I told him I was in love with Toby,” wailed Tilly. “But it was his own fault. Why didn’t he tell me about the will?”

“I think he would have done—eventually,” said Francine. “After all, he seemed to feel guilty about his behavior after the wedding, so it follows that he could not immediately come home and ask you coldly to fulfill the terms of his father’s will, now could he?”

“I suppose not,” said Tilly reluctantly. “Oh, he won’t want to
look
at me again after last night. I—I punched him on the nose and threw water over him.”

Francine bit her lip to suppress a smile.

“You must go on as if nothing has happened. Visit your tenants. It is your duty to see them.”

“I don’t think they’d really like that,” said Tilly, remembering Mrs. Pomfret. “I was always poking my nose in at Jeebles and keeping them off their work.”

“But you shall only drop in, say, for a few minutes. Just to shake the hand,
non?
” said Francine. “And we will get rid of our house guests.”

But the house guests proved to be hard to dislodge. The more sensitive souls admittedly took the well-worn hint presented to them in the form of the railway timetable laid on their bedside tables, with the fastest and soonest train underlined in red ink, but the ducal family Glenstraight clung on, as did Toby Bassett and Cyril Nettleford. During the next three days, the marquess was mostly absent, only returning very late at night. He did not look at or talk to Tilly. He certainly snubbed his friend Toby on every occasion, which went completely unnoticed by that gentleman, since he was now in his usual state of semioblivion.

It was only during one of his rare periods of sobriety that it finally penetrated Mr. Bassett’s well-soaked hide that his friend, Philip, was looking daggers at him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” asked Toby plaintively.

“I’m looking at you like ‘that’ because you’re a bloody snake in the grass,” snapped the marquess. “And I wish you’d toddle off home and stop philandering with my wife.”

“Philandering with—I say, you’re talking rubbish. What about a drink, Philip? The sun’s over the yardarm.”

“The sun’s barely over the anchor chain, you unmitigated twit. Leave my wife alone or I’ll knock your head off.”

“I haven’t touched her,” complained Toby, trying to concentrate on what the marquess was saying. “Look, old man, we’ve been friends for years. Explain the whole thing, but slowly. My head’s in not too good a shape.”

“Very well,” said the marquess coldly, finally reciting what Tilly had said after the finding of the will.

“Who put it there?” asked Toby simply.

“What?”

“I said, ‘Who put it there?’” repeated Toby patiently. “Someone put it there to make trouble.”

The marquess stared at his friend for a long minute. Then he said slowly, “Of course,
she
could have put it there to pick a fight with me. Dear God, d’you know what she said? She, Tilly, my wife, said that she was in love with you and that the only way she could endure my lovemaking was to pretend I was
you
.”

“Tell you what,” said Toby wildly, “I’m not asking you for a drink, I’m ordering one!”

“I’ll join you,” said the marquess gloomily.

Toby ordered brandy, “for shock, you know” and poured a sizable amount down his throat. Another few thousand brain cells hit the dust, but the survivors were galvanized into feverish action.

“It’s all very strange,” said Toby, frowning horribly under the pressure of all this unaccustomed thought. “I made Tilly promise not to tell you, because I felt such an ass, but here goes.”

He told the amazed marquess of hiding under the bed with the duchess and Lady Aileen. “For heaven’s sake!” cried the marquess, “you’re all turning my marriage into some sort of French farce.”

“I thought you were doing that pretty well yourself,” said Toby with rare nastiness, and before his friend could reply, he hurriedly went on. “Has it dawned on you that we haven’t thought of Cyril Nettleford?
He’s
the one who stands to inherit if you don’t produce an heir.”

“Of course!” The marquess put down his glass. “That’s it! He always was a nasty piece of work. You remember that scandal with the Quennell’s footman? But, laddie, that still does not explain my wife’s sudden passion for you. Tilly’s a good girl, for all her nonsense, and she wouldn’t say anything like that if it weren’t true.”

“I had a bit of a crush on Tilly,” said Toby while his friend scowled horribly, “but I got over it. And I’ll tell you how I got over it, apart from drinking whisky under your bed. I saw that Tilly was head over heels in love with you.”

“Then why would she…?”

“Hurt,” said Toby, who like most habitual drunks was an expert on the subject. “Thought you were only romanticating her cos you needed an heir. So she says the first thing she can think of to hurt you. But she ain’t in love with me. Wish she were.”

“I thought you were over it?”

“I am. I am. But, I mean, compare Tilly with my fiancée. Not in the same league. Tilly’s all fire, and Aileen’s all milk and water and bitchiness. Pity. She looks like an angel.”

“So,” said the marquess, ticking the points off on his fingers. “Tilly is in love with me. She said those things about you to hurt me. Nettleford put the will under her pillow because he had found out somehow that she didn’t know the terms. Fine. Now we come to the other unanswered question. What were Her Grace and your fiancée doing under my bed? If that alarm bell hadn’t rung, you’d all have been there listening…. It doesn’t bear thinking of.”

But Toby’s powers of concentration had worn out. Nonetheless, he made one last effort. “If you want to know what the duchess was doing under your bed,” he said, in a lazy, slurred voice, “then you’d better ask her.”

The marquess, whistling, went off in search of Her Grace.

He felt immeasurably more cheerful. The duchess, when he questioned her, was sulky and defiant. She had been about to talk to him for his own good and had waited in his rooms, not dreaming
for a minute
that he would… er… visit his wife so soon after that Paris episode. Anyway, Aileen had come to warn her and she and her daughter had hidden under the bed.

Why?

The duchess turned puce. Well, if Lord Philip would face facts, she was still… harrumph… an attractive woman and Tilly might have suspected the worst.

The marquess stared at Her Grace in amazement, reflecting that many supposed do-gooders seemed to have absolute sewers for minds.

“Anyway,” pursued Her Grace, “I may as well tell you now what I meant to tell you then. You’ve got to tell that wife of yours to lay off Toby. She’s a bad influence, and the poor chap has taken to the bottle again. She even tried to throw me off the track by setting me on that repulsive Nettleford fellah.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Tilly has been making advances to Mr. Bassett?” asked the marquess stiffly.

“Well, no,” said the duchess fairly. “But she’s getting herself up like a tart, encouraged by that brassy maid, Francine. She took Francine away from my fairy and now she’s going to take her fiancé away as well.”

“Piffle,” said the marquess rudely. “You got Toby when he was drunk, the pair of you. You don’t want it spread around London that Lady Aileen can’t get married unless she tricks some poor chap into it.”

“And who would spread about such a malicious and
untrue
piece of gossip?”

“Me,” said the marquess cheerfully and ungrammatically. He was not in the least afraid of the formidable duchess.

“I should never have brought my fairy to this sink of iniquity,” raged the duchess. “You can tell that Bassett fellah the engagement is
off!
”

As if on cue, Aileen sailed in to be told the news, which she received with surprising calm. “I am glad you have settled this for me. I know the news will break poor Toby’s heart,” she said, “but I cannot spend the rest of my life with a drunk.”

“I shall tell the servants you are leaving immediately,” said the marquess coldly. He had a sudden feeling of compassion for his wife. How on earth had she endured this terrible couple?

Tilly was gladdened some two hours later by the sight of the Glenstraith’s traveling carriage lumbering off down the drive with a mountain of luggage balanced precariously on the roof.

Toby Bassett also watched the departure. He was glad he would not have to endure any more lectures from the duchess.

The sun was blazing down on the heavy summer green of the countryside. The lawns stretched out to the lake like fields of green glass and each heavy rose hanging in the still hot air seemed to have been formed from the finest porcelain. Tilly stretched up her arms in relief. Now if only Cyril Nettleford would leave.

Tilly sat under the cool trees of the vicarage garden and looked about her with pleasure. Variegated lupins blazed against the old red brick of the garden wall and a moss-covered sundial at the edge of the shaggy lawn marked off the passage of the sunny hours with one long, shadowy finger.

She was making the first of her social calls, accompanied by the ever-correct Francine. She had not seen her husband and had felt too nervous and shy after the scene of
that night
to go in search of him.

The vicar was a small, plump, scholarly man called Mr. Waring. His tight-fitting clericals were shiny with age, but his round, gentle face gave him a pleasing dignity. His wife was younger than he and pretty, in a faded-blond way, with silver threads in her fair hair and faded-blue eyes. Witness to what must have once been her undoubted beauty was there in the presence of her daughter, Emily, a pretty, lively girl with rosy country cheeks and thick fair hair piled up over a wide forehead.

Mr. Waring was mourning the death of one of his parishioners,”… a wild fellow and as strong as an ox until the drink got to him.”

Tilly remembered Toby’s family failing. “Is there no cure?” she asked. “Surely it is a matter of willpower. Can’t one just stop? It is a moral weakness, after all.”

“I do not understand it, my dear,” said the vicar gently. “Sometimes a strong belief in God effects a cure. That is my department. Sometimes just a belief in something or someone
outside
themselves. I have seen rips of fellows cured after they’ve fallen in love with pretty girls.”

Tilly glanced speculatively at the pretty face of Emily Waring. But did Toby ever sober up enough to notice a pretty face?

The vicar and his wife began to talk of parish matters, while Emily played with a shaggy puppy in the grass. Tilly watched her.
She must be only a year younger than me
, she thought,
and yet she romps away there without looking like a tomboy. Perhaps one day I can work backward from all these rigid social manners and social conventions
.

Suddenly a picture of her husband’s lean, hard naked body danced before her eyes, and she felt quite dizzy and faint. This could not be love, thought Tilly angrily. It was more like a sickness.

Then a shadow fell across her and she looked up into the blue eyes of the cause of her sickness and her heart did several somersaults.

He did not look at all angry, she noticed when she could. He was smiling at her, actually smiling.

The marquess drew up a garden chair next to the vicar and began to chat in his light, pleasant voice.

“Who is that gorgeously romantic man?” whispered Emily.

“My husband,” said Tilly, with pride.

“No,” whispered Emily shyly, “not his lordship. That young man over there.”

Tilly turned her head. Toby Bassett was standing at the garden gate. His face was as pale as marble and his eyes smoldered as he looked across at the group.
Really
, thought Tilly,
if one didn’t know Toby was drunk, one would think he was in the throes of composing an epic
. But she merely said, “It is my husband’s friend Mr. Bassett.”

Toby ambled lazily over and dropped down on the grass beside Emily. He was wearing a striped rowing blazer with white flannels. He looked like an illustration of something called
My Oxford Days
.

Tilly introduced Emily to him. Toby stared at Emily vaguely and Emily stared wonderingly back. Then the puppy romped in between them, jumping up to lick Toby’s face, and then rolled on its back and waved its fat little paws in ecstacy.

“He’s called Towzer,” said Emily shyly. “It’s not a very original name, but he seems to like it.” She chattered happily on and Toby seemed content to lie in the sun and listen, his straw boater tilted over his eyes.