The Spinster's Secret (11 page)

Mattie’s anger died away. In its place was mortification.

“I apologize,” she said again, ashamed.

She should never have said such things to a man who she barely knew.

“Not at all, Miss Chapple. I meant what I said. Everyone should have someone that they can talk to without guarding their tongue.”

Her throat tightened. For a horrible moment she thought that she was going to burst into tears in front of him. How could someone that she’d known only a few days seem so much like her friend?

…

The elderly groom, Hoby, was shoveling up a fresh pile of horse droppings in the stable yard. “Who’s arrived, Hoby?” Miss Chapple asked. “Not Mr. Quartley already?”

“Don’t know “is name,” Hoby said, leaning on the shovel. “The chap with one arm.”

“Sir Gareth Locke,” Miss Chapple said. “He was a friend of Toby’s.”

“Thought ‘e likely was,” Hoby said, and returned to his shoveling.

They scraped their boots and entered Creed Hall through a side door. Edward followed Miss Chapple down the gloomy corridor. The sound of voices came faintly to his ears. Gareth’s and a light female voice.

“Oh, good,” Miss Chapple said, pulling off her gloves. “Cecy’s with him.”

Gareth and Mrs. Dunn were in the library. Edward stood in the doorway for a moment to watch. Mrs. Dunn sat with her back to them, but Gareth’s face was clearly visible. His expression, intent, focused, gave Edward a twinge of foreboding.

Gareth noticed them and stood. “Miss Chapple.”

Miss Chapple advanced into the library, taking off her bonnet. “Sir Gareth. How lovely to have you visit us! Mrs. Dunn has been looking after you, I see.”

Gareth smiled at Mrs. Dunn.

“She has,” he said.

Edward’s foreboding intensified.

Miss Chapple rang for a fresh pot of tea. Edward, even though he’d drunk more than enough tea at Miss Eccles’s, accepted a cup. He sat across from Mrs. Dunn and regarded her as he sipped.

There was nothing flirtatious about Mrs. Dunn’s manner. She was everything that was demure and modest, and yet Edward’s uneasiness grew with every laughing comment Gareth made to her, each blushing sideways glance she sent him.

To Mrs. Dunn, Gareth must seem like a gift from the gods, well-heeled, lonely, and clearly entranced by her looks.
Don’t you dare try to ensnare him
, he warned her silently.

“Shall we see you tonight at dinner, Sir Gareth?” Miss Chapple asked.

Gareth’s gaze returned to Mrs. Dunn.

“You shall,” he said.

Edward had had enough. “Let’s go for a ride before it rains again. I’ll show you the lake.”

“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Dunn said. “You should, Sir Gareth. Who knows how long the rain will hold off for?”

She stood and smoothed her gown. “If you will excuse me, I must wake Lady Marchbank from her nap.”

Gareth watched her leave the library, then turned to Edward with a sigh. With the smile gone from his face, the lines of recent pain and illness were easily seen. “A lake, you say?”

…

Mattie should have spent the rest of the day sewing her new grey gown. Instead, she went back to work on Chérie’s wedding night. Cecy’s words,
awkward, uncomfortable, messy
, kept repeating in her head, stifling her imagination. Where, amid awkwardness and discomfort and mess, was there room for pleasure?

At four o’clock, the clatter of carriage wheels told her that Mr. Quartley had arrived. Peering out the window, she saw a yellow-wheeled post chaise. The post boys must have detoured through Gripton to bypass the washed-out bridge. If Mr. Quartley was as economical as her uncle, he wouldn’t be pleased by the extra expense.

Mattie closed the shutters and lit a candle. She bent her concentration even more fiercely to the problem of Chérie’s wedding night, while the mutton reek of melting tallow filled her bedchamber.
The novelty of the moment was mixed with awkwardness, and when Joseph breached that innermost sanctum of my body, I experienced pleasure and pain in equal measure.

No. There was absolutely nothing titillating about so plain a description. Mattie crossed out the sentence and tried again.
Joseph took me to transports of pleasure, made more piquant by the seasoning of pain.

No, that was even worse. It sounded like a recipe.

Mattie crumpled up the page and started again.
In my innocence, I knew not what to expect when Joseph plucked my virgin flower. Both the agony and the attendant rapture were beyond my expectation. It felt as if I was being crucified and raised to Heaven at the same moment, and I nearly swooned . . .

No. That was more ridiculous even than
Fanny Hill
. Mattie rubbed her eyes.

“Think!” She said aloud.

But no inspiration came. Finally, Mattie threw down the quill, burned the pages that she’d written in the fireplace, and dressed for dinner. She surveyed herself in the spotted mirror. A cow for breeding.

She grimaced at her reflection, blew out the candle, and went downstairs.

…

Edward made Mr. Quartley’s acquaintance in the parlor. He was a short, stout squab of a man, with a florid face, meaty jowls, and a broad, snubbed nose.
He looks like a pig
.
Fattened up and ready for the spit
. He glanced at Miss Chapple.

Miss Chapple’s face betrayed no emotion as she watched Mr. Quartley advance into the room. She curtseyed and greeted him politely, her manner as dull and drab as her grey gown.

Quartley looked at Miss Chapple’s face dismissively but took a more thorough survey of her figure. His eyes rested on her hips and then rose to her breasts, where they lingered long enough for Edward to feel a surge of outrage.

Arthur Strickland didn’t notice.

He completed the introductions, naming Gareth and Edward. “Friends of my late son.”

Mr. Quartley bowed, a movement accompanied by the creak of a whalebone corset. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Edward smiled tightly.

They moved into the dining room. For the third time, Edward heard Strickland explain the tenet of silence. “To aid our digestion.”

It was all so awful—the food, the silence—that for a moment Edward was almost overcome by laughter. He clenched his jaw to hold it back. The clink of cutlery echoed in the room as the other diners began to eat. Edward forced himself to concentrate on his food. He speared a piece of boiled mutton on his fork and looked across the table.

Mr. Quartley was examining Miss Chapple.
To see whether she’s a cow worth breeding with
. The urge to laugh vanished. There was absolutely nothing amusing about the thought of Quartley marrying Miss Chapple.

After the ladies had withdrawn, the port was brought out. During the time it took to drink one glass, Strickland and Quartley discussed the poor state of the nation’s coaching inns, the laziness of postilions, and the general insolence of ostlers. On each of these subjects, they were in complete accord. Gareth rolled his eyes.

Finally, it was time to remove to the drawing room. Strickland led the way, thumping his cane. Quartley followed, wheezing as he walked.

“My niece reads to us each evening,” Strickland said as he ushered his most recent guest into the drawing room.

“How delightful,” Quartley said, his eyes finding Miss Chapple.

Once again, he ignored her face. His gaze fastened on her breasts.

Edward suppressed a snarl.

They settled themselves with cups of tea. Miss Chapple rose and opened Fordyce’s
Sermons
.

“Sermon Six,” she said. “On Female Virtue, with Domestic and Elegant Accomplishments.”

Edward let his thoughts drift as he listened to her voice. He went over the three names that he had gotten from Miss Eccles. With luck he could visit them all tomorrow.

And then I can get the hell out of here.

He’d bundle Gareth into his curricle and take them both back to London. Creed Hall and Soddy Morton and husband-hunting widows would soon be forgotten.

“How often do we see them disfigured by affectation and caprice?” Miss Chapple read aloud. “How often disgraced and ruined by imprudence? What shameful inattention to the culture of their minds, in numberless instances.”

Quartley sat in his chair, with his hands clasped over his belly, his eyes on Miss Chapple.

Edward followed his gaze, trying to see Miss Chapple as Quartley might. Her youthfulness, her evident good health, her bountiful figure, must make her extremely tempting. She looked fruitful. The sort of woman who would easily produce a healthy heir.

An image flashed into his head. Quartley untrussed from his corset, naked, straining over Miss Chapple as he tried to impregnate her.

The image was so nauseating that bile actually rose in Edward’s throat. He hastily gulped the last of his tea and placed his cup down. It tipped over in its saucer with a loud clatter. Miss Chapple paused in her reading.

“I beg your pardon,” Edward said, righting the cup.

Her eyes smiled at him for a brief second, before she resumed reading. “…frequently occasioned by vacancy of thought and want of occupation which expose the mind to every snare.”

Edward fixed his eyes on the fireplace. If Quartley was staring at Miss Chapple’s breasts, he didn’t want to know.

After an interminable hour, the sermon came to its end. Edward made a grateful escape from the drawing room, climbing the stairs to his bedchamber. The room was frigid.

“I had ‘em put a warm brick in yer bed,” Tigh said, as he collected Edward’s discarded clothes.

“And one for yourself, I hope.”

Tigh grunted. “You can believe it.”

Edward washed his face and brushed his teeth. Shivering, he climbed into bed and discovered that Tigh had spoken the truth. There was indeed a warm brick tucked beneath the covers.

With Tigh gone, he set himself to the agreeable task of reading the remaining confessions that Gareth had brought from London. The first, a tale of Chérie’s involvement with a dashing young Grenadier of
splendid proportions
, should have held him rapt, but when the Grenadier stripped off Chérie’s clothes and ardently fondled her breasts, all Edward could think of was Mr. Quartley’s scrutiny of Miss Chapple.

He shook his head to dispel the image and read further, to where Chérie and her lover sported in bed, but in his mind’s eye Mr. Quartley replaced the young Grenadier, corpulent and wheezing, and Miss Chapple became Chérie, not enjoying her swain’s attentions but enduring them.

His hands clenched, crumpling the confession. If Quartley married Miss Chapple, if he bedded her . . .

It would be legal, but it would also be little better than rape.
She deserves so much better
.

…

My beloved Joseph was gentle, but his possession of my body wasn’t without pain. I cried out as he plucked my virgin flower, and blood flowed onto the sheets, but with the pain came a quickening of pleasure. My body began to glory in his possession of me.

Mattie stared down at what she’d written. It sounded extremely unrealistic. How could there be pain and blood
and
pleasure?

She kneaded her forehead. A headache was building in her temples.

Finally, she gave up, hid the draft in the secret cupboard, and went to bed.

Chapter Nine

In the morning, a light drizzle fell. Edward rode into Soddy Morton and visited a farmer two miles east of the village, who, according to Miss Eccles, had recently been flush in the pocket. But neither the farmer nor his wife could read or write.

The drizzle became rain. Edward looked at the addresses that he had. One three miles west of the village, one two miles south, and decided to call it a day.

Back at the Hall he changed into dry clothes and went downstairs, four slices of gingerbread wrapped in a handkerchief in one pocket. As he passed Strickland’s study, he heard the murmur of male voices behind the closed door. Were Strickland and Quartley discussing Miss Chapple’s suitability as a bride?

Edward grimaced.

He looked in the library, the drawing room, and the parlor. Miss Chapple was nowhere to be found. As he passed Strickland’s study again, the door opened.

“Have you seen my niece?”

“No, sir,” Edward said. “Perhaps she went for a walk?”

“It’s raining.”

Edward shrugged. “Perhaps she’s in her room.”

“She’s not!”

Edward didn’t offer another suggestion. He stood politely while Strickland scowled at him.

“Stupid girl,” the old man muttered. “Disappearing now of all times!”

He shut the door with something approaching a slam.

If Quartley is about to offer for her, she’s picked the perfect time to disappear.

Edward headed for the stable yard. Hoby was in the stables, rubbing down Trojan.

“Miss Chapple in the hayloft?” Edward asked.

The elderly groom looked up from his task and nodded.

Edward climbed the ladder to the loft, and there, in the cozy dimness, he found Miss Chapple lying on her stomach on the hay.

“The irresistible lure of kittens?” he said, as he stood with his elbows resting on the top rung.

“Yes,” Miss Chapple said, and then she added with frank honesty, “and a desire to avoid Mr. Quartley.”

Edward crawled up into the loft, breathing in the dusty, familiar scent. “Your uncle’s looking for you.”

“Do you know why?”

“Quartley, at a guess.”

Miss Chapple pulled a face and returned her attention to the kittens.

Edward decided to be as frank as Miss Chapple. “Will you refuse his offer?”

“Yes,” she said. “If he should offer.”

Edward recalled the way Quartley had gazed at her breasts. “He’ll offer.”

Miss Chapple sighed.

One of the kittens climbed up Edward’s arm, its claws digging into the green superfine. He carefully detached the tiny creature and stroked it.

Miss Chapple cupped her chin in her hand and frowned at the other two kittens, rolling together in the hay. “If you were me, would you marry Mr. Quartley?”

“No.”

She transferred the frown to him. “Why not? He has money.”

“He’s too old. Too…” The only word he could think of was
grotesque
, and he groped for another description. “Too portly.”

“Portly.” Miss Chapple snapped a stalk of hay in half. “Yes, he is that.”

Then she grinned. “Portly Quartley.”

Edward was surprised into a laugh.

Miss Chapple’s grin faded. She sighed.

“I suppose I’d better go.” She crawled over to the ladder.

“Oh,” Edward said. “I forgot. I have this for you.”

He pulled the gingerbread from his pocket and held it out to her.

A smile lit Miss Chapple’s face. “Gingerbread?”

Edward stared at her. In the dusky light, she looked like Venus. It was the abundant curves of her body, the lush and smiling mouth, the half-seen dimples.

The muscles in his throat and groin tightened. He wanted to reach for her, to kiss her, to tumble her in the hay.

Edward nodded.

Miss Chapple hesitated. She glanced in the direction of the Hall.

“I think…if you don’t mind, I’ll deal with my uncle and Mr. Quartley first.”

“Of course,” Edward said. He cleared his throat. “I’ll put it behind Herodotus for you.”

“Thank you.”

She disappeared from sight.

Edward stayed where he was, a kitten cupped in one hand. Above his head, rain pattered on the roof tiles.

Venus. Ripe and beautiful.

“I’m going mad,” he told the kitten.

Then commonsense reasserted itself. It wasn’t madness, merely the natural urges of his body, dormant for so many months and now flaring to life again. A physical hunger for sex, combined with a shared moment of laughter and friendship, and a trick of the light. That was all it had been. Nothing more.

…

Mattie tapped on the door to her uncle’s study. “Mr. Kane said that you wished to see me, Uncle Arthur?”

Her uncle looked up from the letter he was writing. “Where have you been?”

“In the stables, sir.”

Her uncle sniffed. “The stable is no place for a lady. Come in, come in! Shut the door.”

He placed his quill in its holder and gestured to a chair. “Sit.”

Mattie sat and folded her hands on her lap. She sent up a silent prayer.
Please let Quartley have decided that I’m not suitable.

“You will be pleased to know that Mr. Quartley has found you acceptable,” her uncle said. “I have given him my permission to marry you.”

Mattie’s heart sank. “Thank you, uncle, but…”

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “But I don’t wish to marry him.”

Her uncle’s sparse eyebrows snapped together. “I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t wish to marry Mr. Quartley.”

“What?” Disbelief and indignation warred on her uncle’s face. Indignation won. “You refuse him?”

“Yes, uncle.”

The air around Uncle Arthur seemed to bristle. He made a choking sound, as if rage had strangled his voice.

“I’m sorry, uncle.”

The apology didn’t placate her uncle. If anything, it enraged him further. Color flushed his pallid face. “After all the effort I’ve gone to? After Mr. Quartley has travelled all this way to see you?”

“I’m sor . . .”

“After everything I’ve done for you, you repay me with this…this
insolence
! This stupidity!”

Mattie bowed her head. She was aware just how much she owed her uncle.

“Look at you! You’ll never get a better offer!”

I know
. Mattie looked up.

“I’m sorry, uncle. But I can’t marry him.”

“Not can’t,
won’t
.” Fury vibrated in his voice.

“I’m sorry, uncle,” she said again.

“Sorry!” Uncle Arthur cried. “Get out!”

He threw his quill at her. It missed.

“Get out, you ungrateful girl! Get out!”

Mattie retreated upstairs to her bedroom. Her uncle’s words rang in her ears.
Look at you! You’ll never get a better offer!

“I don’t want a better offer,” she said in a low, fierce voice as she laid her writing materials out on the little escritoire. “I don’t want a husband. I just want to be
free
.”

She sat down to finish the memoir, but it was impossible to concentrate. Her thoughts were too agitated. The words Uncle Arthur had thrown at her echoed in her head.
After all that I’ve done for you!

Mattie closed her eyes. She bowed her head into her hands.
He’s right. I am ungrateful
. She might hate Creed Hall, might long to be free of it, but it was a thousand times better than a poorhouse. She owed Uncle Arthur for the roof over her head, for every bite of food that she’d eaten in the past ten years, every stitch of clothing. It was a huge debt. One that she’d never be able to repay.

Mattie stared at the blank piece of paper. Stupid. Insolent. Ungrateful. Yes, she was all those things.

Mattie sighed. She picked up the quill, dipped it in ink, and bent her thoughts to her most pressing problem, Chérie’s wedding night.

…

In the afternoon, the clatter of carriage wheels heralded the arrival of a post chaise. Ten minutes later the carriage left, presumably taking Mr. Quartley with it. Not long afterward, someone knocked softly on Mattie’s door.

Mattie hastily covered her writing. “Yes?”

The door opened a crack.

“It’s me,” Cecy said, peeping inside. “May I come in?”

“Of course.”

Cecy closed the door quietly. She came and sat on the end of the bed. Her expression was sober.

“I heard about Mr. Quartley. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Your uncle’s very angry.” Cecy pulled a face. “Did he shout at you?”

Mattie nodded.
Ungrateful, insolent, stupid.

“Cecy…do you believe it’s better to be married to a man one dislikes than to be a spinster?”

Cecy frowned. “No,” she said, after a moment. “I believe it’s better to be married to a man one dislikes than to be a
penniless
spinster.”

Her gaze was steady. “But you won’t be penniless, will you, Mattie?”

“No,” Mattie said.
I hope not
.

Cecy smiled. “Then it doesn’t matter, does it?” She stood. “I’d better get back to your aunt.”

“What about Sir Gareth?” Mattie asked.

Cecy flushed. She straightened one of her cuffs. “What about him?”

“He seems to like you.”

Cecy’s blush deepened. She devoted all her attention to straightening her other cuff.

“Does he know he has Mr. Humphries for a rival?” Mattie said, unable to resist a little gentle teasing. “And Mr. Kane?”

Cecy looked up. “Mr. Kane doesn’t like me.”

“What? Of course he does!”

Cecy shook her head. “The way he looks at me…I think he disapproves of me.”

“Nonsense!” Mattie said. “Why ever should he?”

“Perhaps he thinks I’m not good enough for Sir Gareth.”

“Any man would be lucky to marry you,” Mattie said emphatically. “You would be the perfect wife!”

Cecy sighed. “I should try to be.” Her expression grew wistful. “I like Sir Gareth.”

…

My beloved Joseph laid siege to my body, and when he at last broke through the barrier of my maidenhood, I cried out at the pain of that invasion. But battered and bleeding though I was, I gloried in his possession of me.

Mattie grimaced and crossed out what she’d written. She dipped the quill in ink and tried again.
My beloved Joseph laid siege to my body, and like Joshua at Jericho, he carried all before him. My innocence was torn most absolutely from me, just as Jericho’s walls fell most absolutely.

No, that was even worse.

Mattie sighed. She rubbed her face and looked out the window again. The distant roofs of the houses in the village reminded her of the gingerbread that Mr. Kane had brought back for her.

Mattie placed the quill in the holder and went downstairs. The library was dark and empty. In the distance she heard the thump of her uncle’s cane.

She crossed to Herodotus’s
Histories
and pulled out the first volume.

The thumping became louder. Mattie thrust the book back into place and turned to face the doorway.

Her uncle stamped into the library, a scowl on his face.

Mattie was conscious of a craven desire to stay hidden in the shadows.

Instead, she drew in a breath and stepped forward. “Good afternoon, Uncle.”

Her uncle’s head lifted.

His scowl deepened. “You.”

Mattie dipped a curtsey. “Yes, Uncle. I…I’ll just leave you in peace.”

She started toward the door.

“Peace!” Uncle Arthur said. “Peace! As if one can have a moment’s peace when one encounters such insolence and such ingratitude in one’s household!”

…

Edward strode across the stable yard, scraped the worst of the mud from his boots, and entered Creed Hall through a side door. He paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Strickland’s voice came loudly from the library, punctuated by thumps from his cane.

“You will never get a better offer! Never!” The old man’s voice echoed down the corridor. “Look at you!”

Edward frowned. He walked quietly toward the library.

“You have nothing to recommend you.” Thump. “Nothing at all!”

Edward stood to one side of the doorway. Strickland wasn’t visible from this angle, but he could see Miss Chapple. She stood with her hands clasped and her head bowed, weathering the diatribe.

“Your age, your lack of fortune, your appearance must all count against you!”

Anger kindled in Edward’s chest. How dare Strickland say such things?

“Get out of here!” Strickland said, waving his cane at her. “Out of my sight!”

Edward backed away from the doorway. Seconds later, Miss Chapple emerged. She didn’t see him, but hurried down the corridor in the direction of the entrance hall and staircase.

After a moment Edward followed, slowly stripping off his gloves. He climbed the stairs and hesitated at the top. Part of him wanted to find her.

It’s none of your business
, he told himself.
If she needs a friend, she’ll turn to Mrs. Dunn
.

…

That evening, her uncle requested the sermon on female meekness. Mattie read it, aware of him glowering at her across the drawing room. His comments afterwards were particularly pointed.