Lessons in Love

M. C. Beaton/ Marion Chesney

Copyright

Lessons in Love
Copyright ©1987 by Marion Chesney
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.
ISBN Mobipocket edition: 9780795319969

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

For
Jane Wibberley

Chapter One

Lady Lucinda Esmond was described by the servants as “an old-fashioned child.” They all believed she would not live long. She was mature beyond her years, which showed that God intended to package that biblical lifespan of three score years and ten into a short space of time.

There was little doubt about it. The angels would call for her very shortly.

Lady Lucinda’s father was the Earl of Sotheran. His remaining friends and relatives also believed that Lucinda was not long for this world—but for less romantic reasons. They were sure that the earl would drive his ten-year-old daughter to an early grave with his choleric bad temper, in the way that he had bullied his young bride, Lucinda’s mother, into her deathbed.

He did not like children and so he preferred his daughter to look as grown-up as possible. Lucinda was attired like an adult and wore her hair up. It was glossy black hair, coiffeured in one of the latest Grecian fashions. She had a high-cheekboned white face and large greenish-gold eyes. She was very thin and her arms were like sticks.

A governess had once stayed long enough, before the earl had seduced her, to teach the child how to read and write. The governess had been bought a seminary in Bath by the earl so that she could continue to earn her living at a distance. Once she was gone, the earl forgot about her very existence.

He was a gross, vulgar man who drank heavily and was given to choleric outbursts of rage.

The first women in a long line of mistresses he had brought home to Partletts, his country seat, had been relatively genteel. Of late, they belonged to the Fashionable Impure: highly painted, smelly ladies who often whiled the time away when the earl was sleeping off yet another drinking bout by chatting to his young daughter as if she were the same age and of the same social standing. Lucinda amassed a peculiar knowledge of what gentlemen did after the lights were out.

She resolved never to marry.

Lucinda was a dreamy, sensitive girl. She had no friends, even among the servants. Few of the servants were women, and those who did belong to the gentle sex were old and plain, since any young girl in the neighborhood wisely shunned the perils of taking up employment under the earl’s roof. The menservants changed with amazing regularity, some of the toughest giving up the post shortly after their arrival. The earl was a bad master and a worse father. In all, he was a thoroughly nasty man.

Lucinda had learned how to disappear when his rage became violent. She was able to melt into the shadows of the old house when she knew he was looking for her.

The house was old. A long line of profligate ancestors had ensured that no money was ever spared from their rounds of dissipated pleasures to redecorate it. It had been built in the sixteenth century and nothing much had been added to it since then, either inside or out. Lucinda’s father was very rich. He gambled frequently and, unlike his ancestors, often won large sums. It was rumored he cheated at cards.

One hot June evening while her father was safely in London trying his luck at the gambling tables of St. James’s, Lucinda walked in the gardens, quite unaware that the events of the night to come would change her life.

She was wearing a modish gown of the finest India muslin, and the delicate material fluttered around her thin body as she walked across the shaggy lawns.

Rosebushes that had not been pruned for a long time rioted about her in a glory of red, white, and pink. Birds cheeped sleepily from the bushes and trees, and the ivy on the south wall of the house turned and rustled and stirred in the breeze. All of the shifting busy movement made the house look strangely like one of those cumbersome Spanish ships setting out to sea. Lucinda was just old enough to begin to dream romantic dreams, but she did not. She did not read romances, for romances involved thinking about men and Lucinda knew that all men were disgusting lechers who sometimes covered their brutality with a thin veneer of sophistication and elegance.

Instead she talked to her dream friend, Mary. Lucinda had created this friend for herself to while away the long, empty days. Over the past year, she knew what Mary looked like. Mary was not like herself. Mary had hair as golden as the sun and laughing blue eyes, and was afraid of nothing.

“I hope Papa does not cheat at cards this time,” said Lucinda to her dream friend. “He will be found out. Instead of rumors, someone will find facts one of these days. His last mistress told me that everyone in London has begun to be suspicious of him.”

“If he gets found out,” pointed out the imaginary Mary, “he will be sent to prison and you will be free.”

Lucinda thought about this. “No,” she said at last. “I will never be free. All of the Esmond men live for a very long time. And he would not be sent to prison. He would flee the country and take me with him and then we should be together the whole time.” She sighed. “I wish I could remember what Mama was like …”

“She got windmills in her head?” asked John, the second footman. “She’s moping and mowing and talking to herself.”

Black, the butler, joined the footman at the dining-room window, which overlooked the garden. Both men were preparing the room for Lucinda’s solitary evening meal.

“No,” he said. “Poor little thing. Never sees nobody ‘cept my lord and his doxies. Got no one to talk to, see. So she talks to herself.”

“Been with his lordship long, Mr. Black, sir?” asked John, who had only been in the earl’s household a week.

“A whole year,” said Black proudly. “But I’m leaving soon. If you stay on here, you’ll end up like poor little Lady Lucinda—talking to yourself.”

“She’s like a little woman,” marveled John. “ ‘Tain’t natural.”

“Won’t live long,” said Black gloomily. “Them old-fashioned ones never do. Here she comes. Get to your post.”

Lucinda picked her way through ten courses, eating a tiny amount of each dish. She knew the servants sent up these enormous stately meals knowing she would not eat them, and they would therefore be able to have a luxurious dinner themselves. Dinner in the country was usually around four o’clock. But Lucinda’s father made her keep fashionable London hours and so she had become used to dining at seven.

Her dinner finished, she went up to her bedroom, read a Latin grammar for a couple of hours, carefully memorizing the genitive case, which was as far as she had got with her verbs, and then decided to go to bed.

She lay for a long time, talking to her imaginary friend, then she blew out the candle beside the bed, leaving the rushlight in its pierced cannister alight, and fell asleep.

A summer gale started to blow outside, racing around the old mansion, scattering rose petals over the untended lawns and lifting the heavy damask curtains at the open windows of Lucinda’s bedroom. The tumult of the wind also covered the stealthy approach of the dark figure of a man who skulked through the bushes toward the house.

Once in sight of the windows, he crouched behind a rosebush and lit a dark lantern, peering at a rough map of the sleeping quarters of the mansion by its feeble rays.

Then he crept toward the house and, with a brief look around, began to climb nimbly up the ivy. Having reached the outside of Lucinda’s bedroom window, he swung himself inside as lightly as a cat.

The bed curtains were drawn back, and by the faint glow from the rushlight, he could see the face of the sleeping girl.

She looked very frail and innocent. He hesitated, half turned toward the window, and then appeared to change his mind. He took out a small cudgel and raised it to bring it down on Lucinda’s head, but stopped with a sigh, as if he had just realized the impossibility of his harming so weak and defenseless a prey.

Instead, he sat at the end of the bed, drew out a small pistol, leveled it at Lucinda’s head, and said in an urgent whisper, “Wake up!”

Lucinda stirred uneasily but did not wake.

He shook the bedclothes roughly. “Wake!” he said again.

Lucinda opened her eyes.

“Don’t scream,” he said softly. “I have a gun.”

Lucinda wriggled up against the pillows and looked at the shadowy figure of the man on the end of her bed. “Is Papa home?” she asked, looking not in the slightest afraid. Lucinda was sure it was one of her father’s drunken friends.

To his amazement, she calmly lit the bed candle from the rushlight and then held it up.

She saw a tall, handsome young man with a rakish face. He was dressed in black and had buttoned up his coat to hide any gleam of white linen. He did not look in the least like one of her father’s friends. For one thing, he appeared sober, and for another, he was much too young. Lucinda judged him to be around twenty.

She looked at the gun that he held in his hand and asked mildly, “Are you going to shoot me?”

“Not if you do as you are told.”

It was then that a look of sheer terror filled Lucinda’s large eyes. She had heard from her father’s doxies of the child prostitutes in the brothels of Covent Garden and knew her age to be no protection.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked in a thin, little voice.

“I am kidnapping you and holding you for ransom,” he said. “You must get dressed and come with me.”

The look of relief on the child’s face was almost ludicrous.

“Yes,” she said meekly. “You have not introduced yourself, sir.”

“I am Captain Peter Charteris. I played your father at cards—and won. Unfortunately, there were no witnesses to the game. He refuses to pay me, denying the game ever took place. He owes me one thousand guineas—a trifle to him, but a great deal to me. You should not have to endure my company for very long.”

“He may not want me back,” Lucinda pointed out. “Papa gambles a lot, but he is very fond of money.”

“Get dressed,” said the captain curtly.

Lucinda obediently climbed down from the bed, took out some clothes, and went behind a screen. Although now outwardly calm, her mind was racing. She believed the captain’s story. It was just the sort of thing her father would do. But this Captain Charteris was a man, and all men were fools. If she stayed calm and obeyed his orders, he might not tie her up. She would bide her time and find a way to escape.

“Hurry up!” came an urgent whisper from the other side of the screen.

“I’m coming,” said Lucinda quietly. She emerged with her hair up and wearing one of her modish gowns.

“Do you always dress like that?” asked the captain.

“Yes,” said Lucinda. “Papa does not like children and prefers me to appear as grown-up as possible.”

It was then that Captain Charteris thought he would be much better to swear her to silence and then disappear into the night. She had said her father might not want her back. But he desperately needed the money.

“Is it possible to leave here in the ordinary way,” he asked, “or do I have to carry you down from the window?”

“No one is awake,” said Lucinda. “We can leave by the main door.”

“You are sure? I do not wish to be obliged to shoot some innocent servant.”

“Quite sure.”

“Then let us go.”

He kept the gun pressed against her shoulder, expecting her to make some sort of bid for freedom. But she walked daintily down the huge shadowy staircase, lit by great shafts of moonlight, like gauze curtains.

To his surprise, the great door of the house was unlocked. His informant had not told him that.

He hurried her across the grounds until they came to a stand of fir trees where a horse was tethered. He tossed her up into the saddle and then sprang up lightly behind her.

Lucinda wondered why she was not afraid of this man. Perhaps life with her father had made even a kidnapper seem like a reasonable human being.

He made a clicking noise and the horse began to move soundlessly over the thick turf. At last they came to the outer wall of the earl’s estate. There was a broken bit in the wall that formed a gap. The thoroughbred horse picked its way as cautiously as an old lady over the tumbled stones of the fallen piece of wall, and then they were out on the road.

The captain put one hand firmly on Lucinda’s waist as he urged his mount to a gallop. Trees and fields flew past as they thundered along the road.

Lucinda, in all her ten years, had never left the grounds of her home before. Her father never made calls on the local aristocracy or gentry, most of his dissolute friends traveling down from London to stay with him. She wondered where the captain was taking her. To his home? Or to some remote cottage?

They rode on and on until dawn began to turn the sky to the east a pale pink. Lucinda was beginning to get a stitch in her side from the effort of riding without a sidesaddle.

At last, across the flat fields she saw the black bulk of houses and buildings. They appeared to be approaching a sizable town.

He slowed the horse’s pace as they clattered over the cobbles between quiet, shuttered houses until he reined in before a building in what appeared to be a main street.

“I have taken lodgings here,” he said quietly. “You can contrive to be comfortable if you do as you are told and do not cry out or attract attention to yourself in any way. Do you understand?”

Lucinda nodded gravely and he looked down at her with sharp suspicion. This odd child was behaving in too docile a manner.

He swung himself down and then lifted Lucinda down from the saddle, supporting her as she staggered slightly from weariness. Keeping a sharp eye on her, he tethered his horse and then said, “I shall take you abovestairs before I stable this beast.”

He took out a key and opened the street door. Ahead stretched a wooden staircase.

“Up,” he urged. “The door on the right on the first landing.”

Lucinda climbed the stairs and pushed open the door to a sparsely furnished but pleasant sitting room. He walked past her and opened a door at the far side of it.

“Your bedroom, madam,” he said. “I suggest you get some sleep. I shall make us some breakfast first. I am going to lock you in while I stable my horse. Do not make a sound or it will be the worse for you.”

Lucinda sat down primly on a high-backed chair, her feet dangling.

She looked so very young and frail and lost that the captain began to regret the whole plan. He decided to make up his mind later as to what to do with her after the child had had some sleep. He went out and locked the door.

“Well, here we are, Mary,” said Lucinda to her imaginary golden-haired friend. “And what’s to do? It is all very strange. I feel somewhat nervous but not shattered or terrified.”

“You should be,” said Mary tartly. “He has a gun.”

“Perhaps he would not use it even if I did try to escape,” said Lucinda. “Come to the window, Mary, and let us see what the world looks like.”

It crossed Lucinda’s mind that if she managed to open the window, she could easily cry for help. But she could not raise the sash. The window was tightly varnished shut and, on closer inspection, she discovered two nails had also been driven into the frame.

She turned her attention to the view of the street below.

Shopkeepers were taking down their shutters; a farm cart laden with vegetables, driven by a grog-faced man, creaked slowly past; a sweep went by with his brushes, followed by a tattered little climbing boy who scurried at his master’s heels like a beaten dog. The first of the morning street cries sounded on the air. “Watercress. Fresh watercress. Come buy.”

The wind had died, and smoke from the jumbled chimneys climbed up in thin gray threads to a pale blue sky. The shutters at a window opposite swung open and a slatternly looking girl hung a linnet in its wicker cage on a bracket outside. The bird shook its wings and began to sing.

Lucinda waved frantically, but the girl yawned, stretched, scratched herself lazily, and disappeared into the darkness of the room.

“So many people around, Mary,” marveled Lucinda. “ ‘Twill only be a matter of time before I can attract attention to myself. I am quite dreadfully hungry. I would rather be rescued after breakfast.”

“Who are you talking to?” came Captain Charteris’s voice from the doorway.

“No one,” said Lucinda, turning pink. “I was talking to myself.”

He eyed her suspiciously, locked the door behind him, and went over to the iron stove and filled it with logs. He took down a parcel from a shelf and unwrapped it, took out a piece of ham and cut several slices. “Ham, eggs, bread, and small beer,” he said over his shoulder. “Do you think you will be able to eat any?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Lucinda politely.

“You are a very self-possessed child,” he said. “Are you not frightened?”

“Not at the moment, sir,” said Lucinda candidly. “I shall probably be very frightened when the novelty wears off.”

“I should think being kidnapped is a novelty,” he said, sounding amused.

“Not so much the kidnapping, sir,” said Lucinda cautiously. “It is only that being out in the world for the first time is interesting and exciting.”

“Do you mean you have never left home before?”

“No, I have never been farther than the boundaries of the estate.”

“But that gown of yours is of the first stare. Surely you go to London for your clothes!”

“My measurements are sent to London,” said Lucinda, “and a dressmaker known to Papa sends the clothes by the carrier.”

“A lonely life.”

“Perhaps. Are you not afraid of being hanged?”

“No. Your father will not know which of the many men he has cheated in his lifetime has taken his daughter. I left the ransom note, unsigned, at White’s. He was due to play cards there just about the time I entered your room. He has been instructed to leave one thousand guineas in a hollow oak at the junction of the London and Baxtable roads if he wants to see you again.”

“Captain Charteris,” mused Lucinda. “Why are you not fighting for your country?”

“I was invalided home from the Low Countries with a raging fever,” he said, as the smell of frying ham began to fill the little room. “I am clever at cards and decided to earn myself some money before rejoining my regiment. I met your father at White’s, not knowing his reputation. He said he was tired of playing in clubs and suggested we repair to his town house for our game. Like a fool, I went. Had I insisted on staying in the club, then he would have been obliged to pay me. The reason for this revenge is because he not only refused to pay me, but had his servants throw me out.”

“I hope you get your money, sir,” said Lucinda. “But what if you do not?”

“He cannot be that unnatural a father.”

“Oh, he is, I assure you,” said Lucinda.

“Even if he does not appear to care for you, he could not tolerate the scandal of it being known that he had failed to make any push to rescue his only daughter.”

“But it may not become known! All he has to do is read the note, burn it, and not tell anyone.”

“My dear child, I refuse to believe that! You are prodigious cynical for your years. Take a chair at the table and I shall serve you.”

Lucinda studied him covertly as she ate her breakfast. He had very thick, curling black hair, white skin, and heavy-lidded black eyes. In the light of day, Lucinda thought he might be even older than she had first imagined. Perhaps even as old as twenty-two!

“How did you manage to find my bedroom?” she asked.

“One of your father’s former grooms, one of the ones he had horsewhipped, was happy to draw me a plan. I found him by discreetly asking questions in the neighborhood of Partletts. No one likes your father, I can assure you. Have you no female relative to keep you company?”

Lucinda shook her small head. “He routed them all. I have an aunt who bravely calls from time to time, but she is not allowed to stay above a quarter hour. The only one who ever gave back to Papa as good as she got was Grandmama.”

“That must be the late Countess of Sotheran’s mother.”

“Oh, no. She is Papa’s mother.”

“She must be very old. Your father is in his fifties. Who is she?”

“Grandmama is the Dowager Countess of Lemmington.”

“Then why is your father not the Earl of Lemmington?”

“It is all very complicated. The earldom went to Uncle Charles, Papa’s elder brother, on Grandpapa’s death. Papa was made an earl by King George.”

“And why was such an honor conferred upon him?”

Lucinda wrinkled her brow. “Grandmama said it was because His Majesty was raving mad at the time, but perhaps I should not say things like that.”

“Not these days,” he said, suppressing a smile. “Not with so many being arrested for sedition. But tell me about the dowager countess. Does she not call anymore?”

“Alas, no. I have not seen her for three years. She has since sent me presents on my birthday, but Papa had them returned. You see, she told him he was a disgusting creature when Papa was in his cups and he tried to hit her. She took her stick and brought it down on his head with such force that she knocked him unconscious. Since that day, she has been forbidden the house. I hope she sends me something on my next birthday, even though Papa will return it. It is a sign she is still alive, you see, and I am most fond of her.”

“Quite,” he said gruffly. “If you have finished, you may go to bed.”

“I have not any nightclothes.”

“I bought you some things,” he said, and then was annoyed to find himself turning red with embarrassment under her clear gaze. “I did not realize you were quite so small and thin. They will all be a trifle large for you, but as you will not be leaving this apartment until the ransom is paid, it does not matter.”

“I feel rather like that bird over there,” said Lucinda, rising and going to the window. “Except, of course, I am accustomed to a much larger cage.”

“Go to sleep,” he said gently. “I shall not harm you.”

“Unless I try to escape?”

“Unless you try to escape.”

Chapter Two

Lucinda awoke early in the afternoon after sleeping heavily. At first she did not know where she was, and then, as she looked about the narrow bedchamber, she suddenly remembered. She was the prisoner of Captain Peter Charteris.

She crossed to a rickety toilet table in the corner and splashed her face with cold water from a china jug. She opened a closet in the corner and studied the three dresses hanging there, finally choosing a blue cotton gown with a frilled yoke. She gazed down at herself, pleased with the childish dress, and decided to wear her hair down. Having completed her toilet, she tried to open the bedroom door. It gave a little, and then stuck.

She tried harder. There came the sounds of movement from the other side followed by the sound of a piece of furniture being dragged away, and then the door opened and the captain stood blinking down at her.

It was evident to Lucinda that her captor had been sleeping in an armchair against her bedroom door. He was coat-less and his thin cambric shirt was open at the neck to reveal the powerful column of his neck. He was wearing the black breeches of the night before tied with strings at the knee. He was in his stockinged-feet.

He looked at Lucinda and found himself wishing she were once more the quaintly adult figure of the morning. With the childish blue dress on and her black hair brushed down on her shoulders, she looked small and vulnerable. He felt like a monster.

“When will you know when the ransom has been delivered?” asked Lucinda.

“Tomorrow,” he said curtly. “I told him to leave it in the oak by two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

Sounds came from the apartment above.

“Who else lives here?” asked Lucinda.

“My accomplices,” he lied.

“You will not have much of the thousand guineas left,” said Lucinda, “if you have to pay all these people.”

“I assure you, madam, they are cutthroats who would kill for much less than one guinea.”

Lucinda shuddered. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her he had been lying, and yet he dared not. If she called for help, then he would be tried and hanged. He wished heartily he had never thought of this mad revenge. Better to have kidnapped the horrible earl himself and kept him until he paid up.

“How do I pass the time?” asked Lucinda. “There is nothing to do.”

“What would you like?”

“Perhaps you could purchase me a Latin grammar. I am learning my verbs.”

“Very well. There is a bookseller close by.”

“And paper and ink?” added Lucinda eagerly.

He shook his head. She might not have believed his tale about accomplices and he did not want her sliding notes under the door.

Lucinda sat by the fire while he shaved and tied his cravat, shrugged on his coat and pulled on his boots. She waited until he had gone out and locked her in and then she ran to the window and gazed hopefully at the building opposite. The linnet was silent in its cage. The window opposite was open but there was no sign of life.

Lucinda’s ever-present imaginary friend, Mary, said, “If you could find a way to get rid of him early this evening, that might be the time when that girl takes the bird in for the night. Perhaps you could attract her attention.”

“I will try, Mary,” said Lucinda. “But I must not make it seem as if I am trying to get rid of him.”

But there turned out to be no reason to find a way to get rid of the captain. After Lucinda and the captain had eaten an early dinner at four o’clock, Captain Charteris was only too eager to leave his captive and seek solace in a tavern. She barely spoke during the meal, and her fragile youth and silence fairly screamed reproaches at him. He decided that if the ransom were not in the oak tree on the morrow, he would take her under cover of darkness back to her home and consider he had had a very lucky escape.

By six o’clock, he had had enough of his own guilty conscience and said he was going out. He warned her to stay quietly by the fire and study her Latin.

Lucinda nodded obediently, and as soon as he had gone she took up her position by the window. The glass was dirty, so she found a cloth and polished the panes till they shone.

She had just finished when the girl appeared at the window opposite. She reached out and lifted the cage. Lucinda jumped up and down and waved and waved. The movement caught the girl’s eye. She smiled and waved back. Lucinda waved even more frantically. The girl hesitated, the cage in her hand.

Then a man appeared behind her, a rough, uncouth-looking fellow. He kissed the back of the girl’s neck. One large, hairy hand crept round and fondled her bosom. The slatternly looking girl giggled, pushed him away, lifted the bird onto a table in the room, and then pressed herself against the man. The couple exchanged a long, lascivious kiss.

Lucinda walked away and sat down by the fire, her legs trembling.

Disgusting!

The whole world was disgusting, full of sweating, groping human bodies. She remembered the stories told her by her father’s mistresses and shuddered. All at once, she was very much afraid of Captain Charteris. Up until that point, she had looked forward to her escape, confident she could manage it, strangely sure the captain would not harm her. But he was a man! A fact that she had almost forgotten. If only she had ink and paper, she could write a note and drop it down into the street.

She miserably turned the pages of the Latin grammar he had bought her. The end papers of the book were blank. An idea began to form in Lucinda’s brain.

Forcing herself to become calm, she took a deep breath and went into the bedroom. She pulled back the sheet and tore a small hole in the thin mattress covering. Searching around with her fingers, she extracted the largest feather she could find. Now for that sharp knife he had used to cut the ham.

As she lifted the knife from the kitchen table, she considered for only a moment hiding behind the door and stabbing him on his return. But she quickly realized she would not have the courage to do it.

She sharpened the end of the feather into a miniature quill pen. Now for some ink.

She found an onion and cut a slice and pounded it in a cup and then dipped her “pen” into the juice and began to write. “I am Lady Lucinda Esmond,” she wrote. “I am being held Prisoner in the Building opposite the …” She went to the window and looked down, and then returned to her writing. “… Mason, the butcher. Captain Peter Charteris has Kidnapped me. HELP!”

The white onion juice did not show on the paper, but her grandmother had taught her this invisible writing trick, so she knew what to do. She held the page in front of the fire until brown letters began to appear on the page as the onion juice “cooked.”

She went back to the bedroom and pulled a piece of wool from the knitted cover on the bed. Back to the kitchen, where she rummaged feverishly in a drawer. She did not want to tie the note to something too heavy for fear of injuring a passerby. At last, she chose a wooden spoon and bound the note to it.

If she broke a pane of glass in the living-room window, the captain would be sure to notice it. She went into the bedroom and looked down from the window there. It overlooked a side street. There was a large pane of glass in the lower half of the window and four smaller panes at the top. She fetched the poker from the living-room fireplace and carried a chair into the bedroom and stood on it. She gently rapped at the upper left-hand pane until it cracked. Covering her hand with a handkerchief, she gently pushed. A small section of glass gave way and fell into the street below. She stood, shivering, waiting for someone to cry out and alert the captain’s accomplices. She stayed by the window for what seemed to her a very long time, but there was no shout from the street below. She tapped the rest of the glass and carefully began to pull the broken pieces, bit by bit, into the room.

When the hole in the glass was large enough, she sent up a prayer and pushed the wooden spoon with the note attached through it just as two women were passing on the other side of the street.

One gave an exclamation, and she and her companion crossed the street until they were out of sight below the window.

“What’s this, then?” Lucinda heard one say.

“It’s a spoon” came the other voice.

“Do me fine,” said the first. “There’s a bit o’ paper tied to it.”

“Funny thing,” said the other voice. “Tied wi’ a bit of wool what’s come loose. Throw it away.”

“I’ll throw the paper away and keep the spoon.”

The voices grew fainter as the two women moved down the street.

Lucinda felt depressed and sick. All that effort for nothing! She should have tied the note to a large cinder or something equally useless.

She drew the curtains to conceal the broken glass. Perhaps she might try again in the morning.

She put the pieces of glass under the bed and carried the chair back to the kitchen. Just in time. A moment later, she heard the sound of the key in the lock as Captain Charteris returned.

He looked at the small figure huddled in the chair. She turned wide, terrified eyes up to his.

“What has happened?” he demanded. “I swear you were not afraid of me before.”

“I am now,” said Lucinda, through chattering teeth.

“Oh, the devil with it!” he said “Why now?”

“Even if you get the money,” said Lucinda, “you can never let me go home. I know who you are. You will kill me.”

“I shall not kill you, Lucinda. In fact, the whole thing is madness. I am not going to wait for the ransom. When night falls, I shall take you home if you give me your word you will not give anyone a description of your kidnapper.”

“I promise,” said Lucinda shakily.

He bent suddenly and kissed her on the cheek. She sat very still. That kiss had been strangely reassuring. Her fear left her.

“Do you really mean it, sir?” she said. “Do you really mean to take me home?”

“Yes, on my honor.”

“Well, I call that handsome of you,” said Lucinda.

“I have some things to think about and do not wish to talk any longer. We have only a few hours to wait until darkness falls.”

Lucinda sighed with relief. But after an hour of waiting, she began to remember what her home life was like. Her brutish father would rail at her and question her for hours on end about her kidnapper. Lucinda’s lips folded in a firm line. She would give the captain another name and describe another man. That gross-looking fellow who had been making love to the girl opposite would do splendidly for a description of the kidnapper. For the moment, she had forgotten all about the note.

In another part of the town, the illiterate woman who had found Lucinda’s note had not thrown it away but had left it on her kitchen table. Chance had it that, as neither she nor her large family had been attending church, shortly after her arrival home, the curate came to call. The woman was called Mrs. Battersby and was a coarse, noisy female. The curate was timid but conscientious. He said his piece about church attendance, and as he talked, he fiddled nervously with Lucinda’s note, then finally opened it and glanced down at the contents.

“Where did you get this, Mrs. Battersby?” he exclaimed.

Mrs. Battersby explained with many cries to God to be her witness that she was an honest woman and that the spoon and the bit of paper had been thrown away.

The curate said nothing further but took his leave, and took the note with him. He carried it straight to the nearest magistrate who called in the parish constable and the captain of the local militia. They debated whether to wait until they managed to contact the Earl of Sotheran who, by dint of looking in the peerage, they discovered to be Lady Lucinda’s father. But the curate, Mr. Venables, had not had such excitement in all his life. He suggested he should question people in the buildings around Mason, the butcher, and see if they had seen a man with a young lady.

So it was that he came to the small apartment where the slattern dwelled. Her lover had left and she was half asleep, but she said there had been a little miss waving to her and pointed to the apartment window opposite her own.

The owner of the building was contacted and revealed he had rented rooms for a month to a certain Captain Peter Charteris. The captain was a gentleman and had paid his shot in advance. He had told the landlord he would be living there for a short time with his little sister who was poorly and who would be mostly confined to her bedchamber.

As Lucinda tried to read her grammar and her kidnapper turned over ways in which he might still get his revenge on the earl, soldiers began to gather in the street outside.

There was a shuffling on the staircase, but the captain was too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice and Lucinda wondered if the noises came from his accomplices and whether the captain had told them of his plans to take her home.

Then there came an almighty crash as the lock was splintered. The captain sprang to his feet and looked wildly about for his gun.

The door was thrust open and the little room was full of armed men. Lucinda scampered to a corner of the room for safety as the captain was fettered and manacled.

The captain of the militia approached Lucinda and made a stately bow. “Do I have the honor of addressing Lady Lucinda Esmond?”

“Yes,” whispered Lucinda through white lips.

“Mr. Venables here, the curate of St. Edmund’s, found your note. You are safe, my lady.” He turned to Lucinda’s kidnapper.

“Your name, sir?”

Peter Charteris folded his lips into a mutinous line and remained silent.

“A touch of the lash will get it out of you,” said the captain of the militia.

“Did he tell you his name?” asked Mr. Venables eagerly.

“No,” said Lucinda. At least she could keep one bit of her promise.

“We will convey you to a hotel,” said Mr. Venables, “and a respectable lady will look after you until morning. Should we not be able to find your father by then, you will be conveyed by post chaise to your home.”

“Thank you,” said Lucinda. “Shall I see him again?”

“Only in court, my lady.”

Two days later, Lucinda could only be glad that Mr. Venables was obviously a devout Christian. A less religious man might have either struck her father or burst into tears.

Lucinda had been accompanied to her home, Partletts, on the following day by her companion, provided by the magistrate, a Mrs. Worthy, widow of Squire Worthy, and Mr. Venables. She invited them both to stay. Both agreed, Mrs. Worthy because she was sorry for little Lady Lucinda and Mr. Venables because he felt it to be his duty, although he could not quench a lurking hope that a grateful Earl of Sotheran would grant him a living.

The earl arrived home in a bad temper and immediately demanded to know if his daughter had taken leave of her wits. What did she mean, hey, by asking a milksop of a curate and a shabby-genteel frump to stay in his home?

Putting her thin figure between her father and her new friends, Lucinda told him that if it had not been for Mr. Venables, she would not have been rescued. And Mrs. Worthy had been sent as her companion by the magistrate.

“What in hell’s name are you talking about, you stupid wench?” roared the earl.

“My lord,” said Mr. Venables timidly, “you naturally must be concerned over the kidnapping of your daughter, but Lady Lucinda has come to no harm, I can assure—”

“What!”

“Papa,” said Lucinda firmly, but keeping an eye on the heavy brass poker on the hearth. She had always promised herself she would find courage to emulate her grandmother should her father try to strike her. “Please listen and do not use bad language in front of Mrs. Worthy, who has been kindness itself. Did you know I was kidnapped?”

“No. Where’s that fool, Black? Can’t a man get a drink in his own home?” The earl tugged the bellrope savagely.

“But my kidnapper sent a note to you at White’s.”

“Get lots of notes from doxies. Throw ‘em on the fire. Never read them.”

Mrs. Worthy pushed forward. She was a kindly, motherly woman, but never before in her life had she felt so outraged.

“You are an unnatural parent,” she said. “Mr. Jenkins, the magistrate, expects you to travel to Baxtable prison to see if you can identify Lady Lucinda’s kidnapper, who refuses to give his name.”

The earl pushed his heavy face forward into Mrs. Worthy’s. “Are you telling me what to do?”

Mrs. Worthy stood her ground. “Yes, my lord. It is high time someone told you what to do. Have you no feelings? Do you not care that your daughter has been in deadly peril?”

Black, the butler, entered the room.

“Throw these people out and bring me a bottle of canary,” growled the earl.

“Very good, my lord.”

Mr. Venables made a feeble movement of protest.

“You had better go,” said Lucinda quietly. “He is apt to turn violent.”

They both cast fulminating looks at the uncaring earl. Lucinda followed them into the hall. “It is better if you collect your belongings from your rooms,” she said softly. “Do not worry about me. I am used to Papa. He will become curious after a while and will no doubt go to Baxtable to see Cap—I mean, the kidnapper on the morrow.”

In vain did they protest. Lucinda ordered the maids to help pack their small trunks and then saw them out to the post chaise in which they had brought her home.

“Thank you both,” said Lucinda. “I shall never forget your kindness.”

The post chaise moved off. Mrs. Worthy twisted around and waved to the stately little figure standing in front of the great mansion.

“Poor little thing,” she said. “It is so unnatural to see a child behave in that quiet, grown-up way. It may seem unchristian, Mr. Venables, but I do think that Lady Lucinda might have been better off with that ruffian who kidnapped her!”

Lucinda walked back into the large yellow saloon and stood in the doorway, looking at her father. He was a thickset, bull-necked man wearing an old-fashioned nut-brown wig. His nose was swollen with drink and his lips were wet and loose. There were stains of snuff and wine on his coat and he smelled uncomfortably like overripe Stilton cheese.

“Don’t stand there glaring at me, you poxy trollop,” he said, putting down his glass. “What was all that about?”

Lucinda walked forward and sat primly on the edge of the chair facing him. She told him an edited story of the abduction, leaving out the captain’s name and his story of being cheated at cards.

“I think, Papa,” ended Lucinda, “that it would be better not to bring charges against him. I am unhurt, as you see.”

No sooner were the words out when she realized it was the worst thing she could possibly have said.

“Drop it! On the contrary, I’ll see that fellow hung, drawn, and quartered. Get your bonnet. We’re going to Baxtable!”

Mr. Jenkins, the magistrate, had never been more sympathetic to a criminal as he was toward the young kidnapper or more out of charity with a wronged parent. Instead of showing rage or concern over the abduction of his daughter, the earl had whiled the time away, while the prisoner was being brought over to the town hall from the prison, by telling several very long and very coarse stories.

Lucinda sat up very straight and looked anxiously at the door. She could hear the sound of people ascending the stone staircase outside.

Mr. Jenkins surveyed her with a worried frown. He thought it disgraceful that a girl of such tender years should be forced to see her former captor so soon. Surely there was no need for her to see him before the court case.

The door opened and Lucinda’s kidnapper was dragged in. His shirt was torn and stained with blood, and he was unshaven.

“Well, well, well,” said the Earl of Sotheran with a slow smile. “If it ain’t Captain Mark Chamfrey.”

“His name is Captain Peter Charteris!” cried Lucinda, and then colored painfully.

“Only a widgeon like you would expect the man to give you his real name,” jeered the earl. “Well, well, well.”

He relapsed into silence and appeared to be thinking deeply. Mr. Jenkins looked at him in irritation.

The Earl of Sotheran knew more about the financial prospects of many young men than they did themselves. With the cunning of a moneylender, he ferreted out who was due to inherit what. If he fleeced a young man and he knew that young man was likely to come into a good deal of money, he would smile on his victim and tell him to take his time in paying, knowing that his grateful prey would stump up handsomely and with interest as soon as he had the ready.

This Mark Chamfrey had very little money but good connections. He was distantly related to the Marques of Sunningburgh. The marquess was reported to be in poor health. His son, the Earl of Charrington, was an unmarried cripple and had been at death’s door for the past six months. After him, the nearest in line was Captain Chamfrey. He had delicately sounded the captain on the matter of prospects when they had played cards and had discovered the captain had no idea of inheriting anything, considering himself too far removed from the Marquess of Sunningburgh ever to profit from the relationship.

The earl turned a bucolic eye on his daughter. She was a pasty-faced little thing and not likely to grow up into a beauty. It would be an expensive bore to launch her. But there might be a way to tie up her future and at the same time to get some of the Sunningburgh wealth for himself….

“Well, I’ve identified this man,” said the earl suddenly and loudly. “That’s that, then. I see no reason to bring this matter to court. Don’t want a scandal.”

“That is very humane of your lordship,” exclaimed Mr. Jenkins, “considering this is a hanging matter.”

“Yes, but there is one condition,” said the earl.

“I thought there would be,” said Mark Chamfrey bitterly. “You disgusting old toad. I won that money from you fair and square.”

“Control yourself,” snapped the magistrate. “I see the whippings you have received have not taught you to curb your tongue.”

“As I was saying,” said the earl cheerfully, “you have ruined my daughter’s reputation, so you must make amends.”

“Ruined her reputation!” exclaimed the captain. “Good gad, man. She is a child.”

“Lots of men are interested in children, hey!” sneered the earl.

“I must say I fear it is you, my lord, who is ruining your innocent daughter’s reputation,” said Mr. Jenkins. He turned to Lucinda and smiled at her. “Tell me, Lady Lucinda, did Captain Chamfrey, er, touch you in any way?”

There was a pause.

“He kissed me,” said Lucinda finally.

Mr. Jenkins turned red. “What have you to say to that, Captain Chamfrey?”

“I kissed her on the cheek, as a grown-up kisses a child,” said the captain wearily.

“We have only your word for that,” said the earl, “and it ain’t no use asking this idiot child o’ mine to elaborate, ‘cause she’s too young to know what’s what.”

“I do know what’s what, Papa,” said Lucinda. “Your doxies have seen to that.”

The earl swung his fist at her, but with the dexterity of long practice, Lucinda dodged the blow and then moved her chair out of his range.

“You poisonous, dirty old man,” raged the captain.

“Any more of your curses, young Chamfrey, and you’ll find yourself dangling at the rope’s end,” said the earl.

“My lord,” said Mr. Jenkins, “would you please state what you have in mind so we may put an end to this distressing scene.”

“As I was saying when I was rudely interrupted,” said the earl, recovering his good humor, “as Chamfrey has ruined my girl’s reputation, he can sign documents before a lawyer saying he will marry my daughter on her nineteenth birthday.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Jenkins.

“Thank you,” said the earl blandly, taking his exclamation as a compliment.

“Never!” shouted Mark Chamfrey. “I’ll see you in hell first.”

“You may have to wait a long time,” pointed out the earl, his good humor increasing.

“I wish to have a few words in private with the prisoner,” said Mr. Jenkins.

“As you will.” The Earl of Sotheran shrugged. “Come along, Lucinda.”

“You may leave the prisoner alone with me,” said the magistrate to the jailers.

In an anteroom, the earl relapsed into silence, leaving Lucinda with racing thoughts. She did not want the captain to hang. She did not want anyone to hang. But she had vowed never to marry. The captain had seemed kind, but she did not know what he was really like. Lucinda looked at her gross father and hated him from the bottom of her soul.

Once alone with the prisoner, the magistrate surveyed Mark Chamfrey with an expression of pity in his eyes. “What you did,” he said, “was rash and foolish. But do not let pride make you forfeit your life.”

“That child is probably as evil and cunning as her father!” raged Mark Chamfrey.

“I do not think so. Sign the papers, man! Walk free from here and live to fight another day.”

“Yes,” said the captain slowly. “If I live, I can still get my revenge.”

And so it was that Lady Lucinda Esmond found herself betrothed to a soldier. To a man who reluctantly signed the necessary papers and, that being done, turned and looked down at her with such an expression of intense dislike in his eyes that Lucinda felt sick and faint.

Chapter Three

Had the years following the kidnapping passed pleasantly for Lady Lucinda and Captain Mark Chamfrey, they might not have had such a stormy future ahead of them.

As it was, the captain plunged back into the hells of war, the temporary truce with Napoleon being over. The hardship of his life made his desire for revenge against the Earl of Sotheran burn deep.

The Earl of Sotheran grew more gross, more profligate, and more bullying. As his moral fiber deteriorated, so did his physical appearance. Such servants as they were able to keep at Partletts were sloppy and cunning and content to suffer the earl’s brutality while stealing what they could from the mansion.

Lucinda had abandoned her dream friend. She had a new dream. She dreamed that Partletts was hers and hers alone. She would invite Mrs. Worthy and Mr. Venables to stay. She would surround herself with safe, decent, middle-aged people.

But on her eighteenth birthday, part of her dream was shattered. She received a letter from Mrs. Worthy’s lawyers. That good lady was dead. But she had left a letter with her lawyers to be delivered to Lady Lucinda on the event of her death.

Lucinda read the kindly words of wisdom and sympathy through a blur of tears. The letter ended:

And so, Lady Lucinda, I am told I have not long to live. I often worry about your situation. No lady of your Tender Years should bear such a burden alone. Never be afraid to ask for Help. There must be Someone, some friend or relative who is not afraid of your Father, and who would come to your Aid.

Lucinda thought for a long time about the end of that letter.

Finally, she sat down and wrote a plea for help to her grandmother, the Dowager Countess of Lemmington, not knowing whether the old lady was alive or not. A present had certainly arrived for her birthday the previous October, but so much could have happened in the intervening months.

One blustery late-spring day when the daffodils were blowing on the lawns and the twittering birds were building nests in the ivy, an antiquated traveling carriage creaked up the drive of Partletts. Lady Lucinda, watching from the window, recognized the carriage and the livery of the outriders.

She ran to the main door of the mansion, tears of relief running down her face. “Grandmama!” she cried.

A tall footman sprang from the backstrap and went round to the carriage door and let down the steps. Then he held open the door.

A very old lady climbed down and stood blinking in the sunlight. She had a wizened brown face and washed-out blue eyes. She wore a dress that had been fashionable in her youth—embroidered panniered gown, tall beribboned cane, enormous feathered hat over a powdered wig. She looked for all the world like a little, old, dressed-up monkey.

She peered at Lucinda, who was curtsying low.

“La! How you have grown,” exclaimed the countess. “Come closer, my child.”

Smiling shyly, Lucinda went up to her.

The old countess was pleased and relieved by what she saw. Little Lucinda had grown into a beauty. Her thin face had filled out a little and her thick black hair was glossy and beautifully coiffeured. Her arms were no longer sticklike but softly rounded.

“You have become pretty, i, faith,” said the countess. Her voice was light and charming, a queer contrast to her incredibly wrinkled face. “You are smiling and do not look afraid. I assume my disgusting son is gone from home?”

“Yes, Grandmama,” said Lucinda. “But I fear I have exposed you to danger. He is expected back this evening and will be monstrous incensed to find you here.”

“He will be even more incensed when he finds out I plan to take you away,” said the countess.

“Oh, Grandmama, if only you could! But he will not let you. These servants are new since he gave the order you were to be forbidden the house. But they will obey his bidding. He will order them to throw you out. I fear, Grandmama, he is not quite sane.”

“Syphilitic old lecher,” said the countess with all of the coarseness that had been fashionable in her youth. “The man addled his wits long ago. That I should have to tolerate such a monster! But he is like his father.”

Lucinda looked at her with wide, questioning eyes, for she remembered the Earl of Lemmington as being a courteous and kindly old gentleman.

The countess shook out her skirts. “Take me in, child. Take me in. No matter what Giles says, I intend to rest for at least a night before I take you with me.” Giles was the Earl of Sotheran.

When they were seated over the tea tray in the morning room, the countess pressed Lucinda for details of what had been happening during the long years since they had last met. And so it was she heard for the first time of Lucinda’s betrothal.

“Ignore it,” she said. “If this captain turns up to claim your hand, I shall send him to the rightabout. You shall marry whom you choose.”

Lucinda gave the old lady a shaky smile. But in her heart she was sure her brutal father would be more than a match for his mother. If only he stays away at least just one more day, she prayed. If only her grandmother would take her away that very moment. After some time of chatting, she shyly suggested it might not be wise to wait for the earl’s return.

“Fiddle,” said the little countess. “He would rant about the countryside and create a scandal. On the other hand, if I ask him civilly—something I should have done this age—he has no reason to refuse. He has never hid the fact he is not overfond of children. Although you are grown, I am sure his paternal affections have not strengthened in the least. I shall tell him that I shall arrange your come-out next year. He is mercenary. He will be glad to be spared the expense.”

“I think,” said Lucinda cautiously, “that he already considers he has spared himself any expense by having me betrothed to that captain.”

“That piece of folly was eight years ago!” exclaimed the countess. “Has anyone heard from this captain since?”

“No. But I can remember it all so vividly. Captain Chamfrey looked at me with such hate and dislike in his eyes.”

“As would any young man who had just been cheated at cards, then humiliated, then lashed, and then ordered to become betrothed to a little girl. I warrant you the brave captain thinks little of it, and when he does, he shrugs it off as some youthful folly.”

“Perhaps. Papa appears to rouse deep hatred in many people. We cannot keep servants. Did you mark our butler? Have you ever seen such an evil-looking creature? He has no experience, you know. He was a pig farmer, and I believe he blames Papa for ruining him in some way. His name is Gotobed.”

“If he is in the way of dealing with pigs, then I think he does have the necessary experience required for working with the Earl of Sotheran.”

“Now, now, Grandmama. Pigs are rather pleasant animals,” said Lucinda with a giggle. “How horrid I am being! And how wonderful to be able to be horrid about Papa out loud. One cannot discuss him with the servants. I suppose he really is my father?”

“Of course. Your poor mother did not have a chance to play him false, even if she was capable of dreaming of such a thing.”

The countess held up her hand. “Listen! I hear a carriage approaching.”

“There is going to be such a scene,” said Lucinda, turning a little pale. “I always arm myself with the poker. Papa is violent when he is aroused.”

“Have you ever had need to strike him?”

“Not as yet,” said Lucinda. “I have become very quick on my feet. I can escape from him very easily. But you cannot.”

“Leave me, my child, to face him alone. No, run along. I am not afraid. We will get this matter better settled without you around. Go!”

After she had heard Lucinda’s light footsteps running up the staircase, the old countess rose to her feet, grasped her tall cane in one hand, and, tossing back a froth of lace from her wrist, held on to the marble mantelpiece with the other hand, squared her thin shoulders, and faced the door.

There came the sound of a raised voice from the hall. Then the door swung open and the Earl of Sotheran stood swaying on the threshold.

“So it is you, you bag of decayed old bones,” he said. “Gotobed, throw her out.”

The apelike butler stood stolidly behind his master. He appeared to have been suddenly struck deaf.

“Stop enacting Hay market tragedies, Giles,” said the countess firmly. “I have a proposition to put to you, one to your advantage.”

“Out with it, then.”

The earl walked into the room and stood with his back to the fire. The countess raised a scented handkerchief fastidiously to her nose. The earl never washed and only changed his linen once a month.

In her light, clear voice, the countess outlined her plans for Lucinda.

A look of unholy glee filled the earl’s red-veined eyes. “She don’t need a Season,” he crowed. “She’s already betrothed.”

“Gads, ‘oons!” said the countess. “It is surely not your plan to hold the girl to that ridiculous betrothal.”

“It is.”

“You are a cruel and unnatural monster. To tie such a beauty down to a mere captain.”

“He is no longer a mere captain,” jeered the earl triumphantly. “I knew what I was doing at the time. That captain has just been made the Marquess of Sunningburgh. The old marquess died six weeks ago and his son only lived to succeed him by a few days. So the new marquess—and my future son-in-law—is as rich as Croesus.”

“Why do this? I can guarantee to find a good husband for her, one to her liking.”

“She’s a female, ain’t she? Females don’t have choices. They do as they are told. So you ain’t taking her anywhere. Go and get your traps and get out. Out!” screamed the earl, blasting fetid breath into the countess’s face.

“And if I refuse to go? If I insist on taking Lucinda with me?”

“Then she will be stripped naked and lashed in front of the servants. She’s my property and I can do what I like with her.”

“You have not long to live,” said the countess. “I can see it in your face. When you die, I shall fetch Lucinda.”

“Go on. Go!” shouted the earl.

The countess made her slow and stately exit from the room, but he followed her, jeering and catcalling. “Is that as fast as you can move, you old harridan? Show a leg!”

The countess took a firm hold of her tall cane and turned on the staircase to face her tormentor. “Leave me in peace,” she said. “My bags have been taken upstairs and I wish to oversee the repacking of them. There is no need to follow me.”

She turned and marched ahead, but still he pressed close behind. “She’ll be married to the marquess and you ain’t coming to the wedding” came his hateful voice from behind her.

The countess made one last try. She turned at the top of the grand staircase and faced the Earl of Sotheran.

“Have you considered what sort of marriage you are giving Lucinda? She does not wish to wed a man who has proved to be a conscienceless ruffian. He will not wish to be forced to wed her when he could now marry any woman he wants.”

“That’s the joke of it!” cried the earl. “Lord, I can’t wait to see his face. And Lucinda needs taking down a peg. Too wishy-washy and don’t-dare-touch-me-sir. High time she had a man’s leg over her!”

The broad oaken stairs seemed to swirl and swim before the countess’s eyes.

The earl’s face leered up at her like the face of a gargoyle.He gave a hearty laugh terminating in a loud belch. He turned, staggering slightly, for he had been drinking in the carriage on the road home.

“Giles,” pleaded the countess. “I am your mother. I have let you go your own way. I have never asked you for anything before. Do not do this thing, I beg of you. I cannot be answerable for my actions. I will stop you. I must stop you.”

The earl hesitated and then shrugged. He did not turn around. “Bad cess to you!” he growled. “I’ll do as I please.”

Like a puppet, as if some force were controlling her actions, the countess seized her long cane, and as he made to go down the stairs, she thrust it between his thick bowed legs and twisted hard.

He lost his balance and fell heavily against the worm-eaten bannisters, hanging backward over them. There was a sickening crack as the bannisters began to give way. The earl clawed at the air, desperately trying to regain his balance. The countess watched, her face like a death mask.

With one final massive crack, the bannister and posts gave way, and with a loud animal scream, the Earl of Sotheran plummeted down onto the tile floor of the hall below and lay still, his head twisted at a grotesque angle.

The countess slowly began to descend the stairs as the servants came running. Behind her on the landing above, she heard Lucinda cry, “What happened? I heard a terrible scream.”

The little countess turned round and looked up at Lucinda. “Your poor father has fallen to his death, child. Do not look. ‘Tis an ugly sight.”

Mark Chamfrey, now promoted to major, made his triumphal entry into Madrid some two months later with Wellington’s victorious army. After the long years of fighting, it was bewildering to be so surrounded by flowers and wine, lemonade, songs, and dancing. There were so many waving palm branches that one Scottish private remarked that it looked like a moving forest—”a sort o’ peacefu’ Dunsinane.” The city was hung with gold and silver draperies, lighted with tall wax candles, rang with bells, and resounded with loud “vivas.” The bewitching beauty of the Spanish ladies fascinated eyes tired by the bloodiness of war.

“We’ll be in Paris soon, Mark,” said Captain Tommy Flanders.

“Let’s not look so far ahead,” said Major Chamfrey to his friend. “Tonight we celebrate. I want to find me a pretty Spanish lady.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Captain Flanders with a laugh. “For a long time I’d thought you had turned monk.”

“How could one remain a monk with such charmers around?” said the major.

A ballet of young ladies was pirouetting alongside the marching redcoats with offerings of grapes, sticky sweets, and laurel leaves.

At the front of the triumphal column rode Wellington, high-nosed and silent, wild brunettes covering his hands, his sword, his boots, and even his horse with Spanish kisses.

An equerry came riding along the column, obviously searching for someone. Then his eyes lighted on Major Chamfrey and he reined in alongside him. “You are to present yourself at the palace, Major,” he said. “The commander has some intelligence for you.”

“Lord Wellington!” exclaimed the major. Wellington had recently been made an earl, and rumor had it he would soon climb higher in the peerage.

“Yes, sir.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible. Follow me.”

“Good luck, Mark!” called Captain Flanders. “Hope Nosey don’t eat you alive!”

Major Chamfrey swung his horse out of the column and rode after the equerry toward the royal palace. Wellington and his staff had just disappeared inside.

The major was told to wait and then moved from the small anteroom to a larger, grander one, and then through a succession of ornate rooms until he at last came face-to-face with the commander in chief.

Lord Wellington glanced up as the major was ushered in. The commander was seated behind a desk with papers and documents spread out in front of him.

“Sit down, Chamfrey,” he said. He waited until the major was seated and then shuffled among the papers until he found the one he was looking for.

“I am sorry this news has taken so long to reach us, Chamfrey. The Marquess of Sunningburgh is dead.”

“I am sorry to hear that, my lord,” said the major. “But I hardly knew him. A distant relative, that is all.”

“Perhaps closer than you think. His son and heir followed him to the grave shortly afterward. That makes you the new Marquess of Sunningburgh.”

“My lord! I had no expectation …”

“Evidently not, to judge from your surprise. I am sorry to lose a brave officer. You must return to take up your civilian duties. Support me in the House of Lords, hey?”

“Of course, my lord. But it is hard to leave Spain when we have really begun to rout Napoleon’s troops.”

“A pleasant reason, nonetheless. You outrank me now, Chamfrey.”

“Not for long, sir. It is rumored you will be created marquess soon, or even duke.”

“Pah, I have no need of titles. They do not help me win this war, and this demmed title of yours is taking one of my best men away.”

“I shall return, my lord,” said the new Marquess of Sunningburgh firmly.

“Don’t be in too much of a hurry. You have never had

any leave in all this long time, nor asked for it. Take a year and then see how you feel. Some pretty wench waiting all this time for you? Betrothed?”

“Yes,” said the Marquess of Sunningburgh. “But it was a betrothal forced on me. I shall not be tied to it.”

“Get yourself some good lawyers, then. You are very rich now as well as titled. The lady might not give up a marquess as easily as she would a major.”

The marquess found the palms of his hands damp. Did that old villain, the Earl of Sotheran, know of the possibility of his inheriting the title?

“That’s all,” he heard Lord Wellington saying. “Got more to do. Run along.”

The marquess stood up.

“My lord,” he said in a strained voice, “I see you have received many newspapers and letters. Is there any news among them all of a certain Earl of Sotheran?”

“Yes. He died last spring. Relative?”

“No, my lord.”

“Friend?”

“No, my lord.”

“Get along then and don’t stand there wasting my time asking about people you don’t seem to care a rap about.”

The new Marquess of Sunningburgh walked out through the painted rooms and then stood in the great entrance hall of the palace. From outside came the cheers and bells and shouts of the city’s welcome.

Soldiers and officers were walking backward and forward. The marquess saw a chair in a dark corner and went and sat down to sort out his jumbled thoughts.

Lucinda! That was the girl’s name. An odd, quaint child with long black hair, greenish-gold eyes, and amazing courage. It was now too late to get his revenge on the earl. He certainly did not mean to revenge himself on a mere child.

He had carried uncomfortable thoughts of revenge around for too long. It was time to say good-bye to the past.

The Marquess of Sunningburgh stood up and walked out into the sunlight. He half turned and looked back. He had the oddest feeling he had left his old self behind, and that in the palace entrance hall, on that chair in the dark corner, sat young Captain Mark Chamfrey, bitterly vowing revenge.

Chapter Four

Lady Lucinda Esmond had passed the occasion of her nineteenth birthday before she went to London for the first time to prepare for her debut. By coincidence, it was to be the Marquess of Sunningburgh’s first visit to the metropolis since that fateful evening he had played at cards with the Earl of Sotheran.

On his return to England, he had gone immediately to the Sunningburgh estates and had taken up his duties. Peace with France and the defeat of Napoleon had put to rout any thoughts of returning to the army.

Lucinda had at last agreed to a Season. She still did not wish to marry, but she did wish to escape the bulk of her relatives and well-wishers who had descended on Partletts en masse immediately after the death of her father. Where she once had to hide and dodge to escape curses and blows, where she once had to say her prayers and read nothing but improving books to protect her mind from the tales of the doxies, she found she had to escape from smothering love and kindness. There were aunts and uncles and cousins—all resident at Partletts and all prepared to do all in their power to wipe out the misery of the years of her father’s bullying.

New, efficient servants were hired and the Countess of Lemmington surprisingly bought Gotobed, the surly butler, his pig farm back—surprising since Gotobed had only been at Partletts a few months before the earl’s death and such generosity was usually reserved for old and valued servants. Admittedly Gotobed’s tale of being cheated out of his farm by the earl was probably true, but surely he came at the end of a long list of other people who had suffered from the earl’s greed.

Lucinda found herself in possession not only of Partletts, but of a vast fortune. She was eager to begin redecorating the old house, but her uncle, Lord Lemmington, told her that young ladies should not trouble their minds with such tedious details. It was time Lucinda had some frivolity, he said. In vain did Lucinda protest. Uncle Charles sent his steward to take over the running of the estates. The house, he said, had waited for redecoration for a considerably long time and could wait a little longer. Lucinda’s future husband would handle all such matters.

And among all this cocooning, Lucinda had a nagging worry always at the back of her mind about the dowager countess. The old lady had grown frail and listless since the death of her son. This made Lucinda feel guilty. She found it hard to mourn her father and credited the countess with strong maternal feelings, hitherto unsuspected.

One week, when there was a temporary lull in the stream of visitors and Lucinda and the old countess were left alone in the mansion, Lucinda racked her brain for ways to cheer her grandmother. She read to her, suggested drives, suggested visits to neighboring beauty spots, but all to no avail.

She looked up impatiently when the new butler, Alexander, entered the room to announce a caller. Alexander was the very stateliest of butlers and in marked contrast to the late earl’s brand of servant.

“Who is it?” asked Lucinda wearily. Her grandmother had not yet put in an appearance that morning, but Lucinda still had hopes of reviving the old lady’s spirits and did not want to be distracted by any caller.

“A person by the name of Venables,” said the butler, presenting a shabby, much-used card.

Lucinda’s face lit up as she remembered the curate who had once been so kind to her.

“Send him in, Alexander,” she cried.

Mr. Venables looked much the same: thin, nervous, and timid. He relaxed visibly under the warmth of Lady Lucinda’s welcome.

After some general conversation, Lucinda found herself confiding in him. She explained her worries about her grandmother.

“Mothers grieve over the death of even the worst of sons,” said Mr. Venables. ‘Often love has little to do with liking. May I be so bold as to suggest, my lady, that were you to show signs of becoming interested in finding a marriage partner, that might rouse the countess to some interest. For example, you could appeal to her for help in chaperoning you during the Season.”

“But I do not wish to marry!”

“Her ladyship does not need to know that. A change of scene would do her good. You do have a town house?”

“Yes, in Berkeley Square. I have never seen it. I have never been to London at all.”

“Oh, then you should go. I went to London once as a young man,” said Mr. Venables dreamily. “It was like a fairy tale. All the colors and lights and theaters.”

Lucinda was very tempted to offer to take Mr. Venables with her, should she decide to go to London. But Uncle Charles would exclaim in horror. What! Disgrace yourself by entertaining a shabby country curate! Perhaps she might find some excuse to send for him.

They talked further about general things and all the while Lucinda thought of London, and the more she thought about it, the better the idea seemed.

*  *  *

The Marquess of Sunningburgh was drawn to London, not to find a bride during the Season but to please his friend, Captain Tommy Flanders. Peace had brought the captain to London and he was looking forward to cutting a dash. The marquess promptly wrote to invite the captain, now plain Mr. Tommy Flanders, to stay at the Sunningburgh town house in Park Lane, and then set out for London himself.

Wealth and the enjoyment of putting the Sunningburgh estates back into good heart had relaxed the harsh lines of the marquess’s face, lines that had been stamped there by eight years of war and bloodshed. His Spanish tan had long faded. His black eyes once more held the old devil-may-care sparkle of his early youth. He was now thirty-two years of age but had never felt better in his life. He looked forward to having some fun in Tommy’s lively and undemanding company. Somewhere, always at the back of his mind, that forced betrothal nagged, but Lady Lucinda had shown no signs of keeping him to it and so it remained tucked away.

It was a memorable spring—memorable because it had come at last after one of the hardest winters England could remember. The Great Frost, which had frozen the Thames into a solid sheet of ice, had finally let go of its grip on the land. Six weeks of heavy snow had followed, and over on the Continent, beyond that curtain of snow, Napoleon’s empire lay in ruins. Then the sun shone down and it promised to be the Season to end all Seasons. London was already mad with celebrations. Everyone wanted to cheer the end of winter, to cheer the peace, to cheer the victors, and to cheer the new French king, Louis XVIII—dubbed Louis the Gouty by one and all—who was resident in London.

The marquess, comfortably installed in Park Lane, might never again have thought bitterly of his forced betrothal to Lady Lucinda Esmond had not Mr. Tommy Flanders insisted they attend a masquerade ball….

*  *  *

“I do not approve of masquerade balls,” said the Dowager Countess of Lemmington severely.

“Oh, but we must go!” exclaimed Lucinda. “This invitation is from the Prince Regent himself.”

“Pah. Young jackanapes.” The countess sniffed. She had never come to terms with the fact that the Prince Regent was now fat and middle-aged and was no longer the dashing Prince Florizel of her youth.

The change to London had worked wonders for the countess. They had arrived two months before the Season, and despite Lucinda’s protests that she did not wish to marry, the countess had been successful in introducing her to a suitable young man and—wonder upon wonder!—Lady Lucinda had not only accepted the young man’s proposal of marriage but was to wed him in a mere four weeks’ time!

The old lady was satisfied, for she had never believed any of Lucinda’s protests against marriage. All girls wanted to get married and have babies.

She did not know that Lucinda had fallen in love with her fiancé, Sir Percival Magnus, because she wished to escape to a home of her own and Sir Percival was the first fop she had ever met.

He was the opposite of everything Lucinda feared in men. There was no hint of brutish masculinity about his exquisite manners and studied speech. He had golden hair and blue eyes and was hardly ever serious. He was, although Lucinda did not know it, a sort of male version of Lucinda’s former dream friend, Mary. As yet sexually unawakened, Lucinda was sure she was deeply in love, not knowing it was Sir Percival’s very sexlessness that was the attraction. To her, it was an awakening, a realization that she could get married and escape from all her well-wishing relatives—for before, she had naively expected in this new nineteenth century that a mere female would be allowed to run her estates and had only recently begun to understand that marriage allowed a woman all the freedom a single virgin was not allowed to have.

The old countess might wish that Lucinda had chosen someone less effete, but she was delighted her granddaughter was happy, and delighted to be able to crow over her younger relatives who had vowed that such an old lady could not effect any proper introductions for a young girl. Despite the drawback of his effeminacy, Sir Percival was of good family and had all the mannered comfortable elegance of a house-trained cat.

The countess had also become accustomed to Lucinda’s beauty, although her love for her granddaughter burned fiercer than ever before, and she now saw her as the pale little girl she had been before her father died. Although she did not know it, her own eagerness to see Lucinda settled was because of her terrible guilt over having caused the death of the earl. Sometimes, on good days, the guilt almost faded and the old lady could persuade herself that the earl had fallen by accident. But most nights she was tortured and wracked by dreams of divine retribution. Never before particularly religious, the countess was now plagued with all the horrors of hellfire.

She protested again, but weakly, over the visit to the masked ball, and then finally agreed to take Lucinda on the condition that she, the dowager countess, should not have to wear fancy dress.

Lucinda summoned her fashionable dressmaker to discuss possible costumes. It was during one of these consultations that Sir Percival Magnus came to call. Although he was a slim young man, he worried about his waistline and could never thin it down to a small enough size to suit his fastidious eye. He had just bought himself a new Apollo corset and had only discovered on the road to Berkeley Square that it creaked abominably. The sight of the splendid and richly appointed town house that would soon be his failed to work its usual magic. Sir Percival’s beautiful brow furrowed as he wondered how to eliminate the creak.

The shoulders of his bottle-green morning coat were padded, as was his chest. His cravat was a miracle of starch and his shirt points were quite the highest in London. His Hessian boots shone like black glass and his canary-yellow pantaloons were molded to his rather thin legs. His face was quite beautiful and his skin very fine and white. His brow was broad, and his wide blue eyes, fringed with thick lashes, looked out on the world with an amiable expression of fashionable stupidity. Intelligence was frowned on. His guinea-gold hair fell across his marblelike brow in sculptured waves. He was a very clean young man, faintly scented with rosewater. He did not use paint except on the palms of his hands, which were tinted pink with cochineal.

Due to his encouragement, Lucinda had already bought a great deal of very fine jewelry. When he was ushered into the drawing room, most of this jewelry was lying at Lucinda’s feet, spilling out of a large box like Aladdin’s treasure, while she discussed with the dressmaker the best pieces to go with the costume they had planned.

“Do come and look at these ravishing sketches Madame Boulet has made,” cried Lucinda. The sight of all the jewels had taken Sir Percival’s mind off his creaking corset and he eagerly studied the sketches. His face fell.

“Vastly stately,” he said. “But I would have thought some sort of Turkish costume would be more the thing.”

“Lady Caroline Lamb is to wear such a costume and so will several other ladies,” said Lucinda. “Grandmama is amazing at finding out all the gossip. She says it is because everyone talks more in front of a very old lady, as if she were already in her grave, than they do in front of their contemporaries.”

“But why go dressed as Queen Elizabeth? She had red hair, you know, and her teeth were all black. You don’t look like her at all.”

“I am only going as an Elizabethan lady, not as the queen. It is because I have all these marvelous jewels. It is not quite correct for a modern miss to wear so many. But the Elizabethan ladies wore such a lot. I shall glitter like a fireworks display and be deliciously vulgar.”

“But we shall not match! I am going as a pasha.”

“So is Lord Byron.”

“Oh, fiddle-de-dee. What a monstrous bore. Now I shall have to think of something else. ‘Pon rep, I am weary with thought already.”

“Why not go as an Elizabethan gentleman?”

“I do not like the costume. ‘Twould not flatter my better points.”

“I am sure you will think of something,” said Lucinda warmly. “You are so clever about clothes.”

And I shall be even cleverer when I get my hands on your fortune, thought Sir Percival dreamily. “We are to be masked,” he said aloud. “I do not like that. I prefer everyone to see my face.”

Lucinda jumped up, spilling the sketches from her lap. “What is that squeaking sound? It sounds like a mouse!”

“Nothing,” said Sir Percival hurriedly, cursing his squeaking corset.

“I do not think I want to attend a masquerade,” said the Marquess of Sunningburgh, “even one held at Carlton House. Or should I say, particularly one held at Carlton House. The very act of putting on a mask makes people behave quite disgracefully.”

“I want to behave disgracefully,” said Mr. Flanders cheerfully. “I have been so good of late. I have been genteelly paying court to all sorts of respectable misses. You must join me when I pay calls.”

“I admire your energy.” The marquess yawned. “Who is this Season’s beauty?”

“I cannot remember her name. Evidently there is some creature so romantically beautiful that strong men faint at her feet. But she is to wed, and shortly, Sir Percival Magnus, who is almost as beautiful as she.”

“I have not seen any female as yet I would describe as a raving beauty,” said the marquess reflectively.

“How do you expect to?” countered his friend. “You are hardly likely to see any in the clubs of St. James’s or in Gentlemen Jackson’s boxing saloon!”

“Perhaps you have the right of it. I find myself peculiarly disinterested in women. But I would like heirs, and I cannot do that alone. I will go to this wretched masquerade with you. What costume are you going to wear?”

“I am going as a Turk.”

“A very fair Turk.” The marquess smiled, looking at his friend’s ingenuous face and mop of blond curls.

“Oh, I shall darken my skin and wear a wig. What of you?”

“I shall find something or other.”

“There is not much time. I know you. You will leave it to the last minute and then go in ordinary dress.”

“Not I. You will not recognize me.”

“You might find your heart’s desire at this masquerade.”

The marquess wondered whether to tell his friend of that odd betrothal but decided against it. It had all happened so long ago. He remembered all the marvelous revenge he had plotted under the hot Spanish sun. But the Earl of Sotheran was dead, and no doubt that pale, odd child had forgotten the whole episode. The marquess had quite forgotten that in the intervening years that child had grown up to a marriageable age.

The evening of the masquerade found Lady Lucinda pacing up and down on the Chinese carpet in her drawing room wondering what could have possibly happened to her fiancé. It was now nine o’clock and he had promised to arrive at eight to escort both Lucinda and the dowager countess.

The countess, attired in her usual old-fashioned panniered gown and blazing with diamonds, sat in a chair deep in thought, her little, wrinkled brown face dwarfed by a huge white wig.

“I think we should go ahead without him,” said Lucinda at last.

“Very well,” said the little countess indifferently. It was one of her bad days. She had been out to take the air in the park earlier and had seen someone who looked remarkably like the earl. But she roused herself enough to summon extra footmen to accompany them as bodyguards because Lucinda appeared to be bedecked in the entire contents of her jewel box.

Lucinda was wearing an Elizabethan gown, its wide skirts embroidered with emeralds, diamonds, rubies, and seed pearls. The neckline of her gown was cut low at the front and ornamented with a high, stand-up lace collar at the back. Around her neck she wore necklaces of jewels and a long rope of magnificent pearls. On her black hair, which was curled tightly for the occasion and piled up on her small head, she wore a little tiara made of diamonds of the finest water, which sparkled and blazed with prisms of light. She looked magnificent, but there was no one to tell her so, for the countess was too immersed in her own gloomy thoughts, her fiancé was unaccountably absent, and her correct French lady’s maid did not consider it her place to say anything.

As their carriage moved forward slowly in the line of other carriages toward Carlton House, Lucinda took out her black and gold mask and put it on. With the mask covering her face, she began to feel less insecure, less vulnerable, and totally different.

It was a warm, mild evening. There was a hectic air of festivity and celebration all about. Lucinda began to feel excited. Her life in London had hitherto been very quiet and correct. She had not gone about very much. Her grandmother, by dint of bullying various friends, had amassed a collection of suitable young men at a quiet rout shortly after their arrival in town. It was at this rout that Lucinda had first met Sir Percival. Her speedy engagement to him had cut her off from noticing any other men. Although she had been granted vouchers to the famous Almack’s Assembly Rooms, she had so far failed to put in an appearance. She went instead to the opera with her grandmother and Sir Percival but never stayed for the ball afterward, being content to go home early to bed.

A carriage drew abreast of theirs. In it were three debutantes, giggling and laughing. Lucinda suddenly envied them. They looked so very young and carefree, they made her feel older than her years.

But her life with her father had made her long for quiet security, safe from scenes and upsets and difficulties. It was pleasant, she reminded herself firmly, to be engaged so soon to such a perfect gentleman and to be safe from the hot clutches of a noisy buck.

Carlton House was a blaze of lights. The fashionable may have damned it as vulgar—”too much gold on gold”—but to Lucinda’s country eyes it looked like a palace in a fairy tale.

A supper was to start off the festivities and it was held in the conservatory. The Prince Regent made his entrance, not in fancy dress, though some could be excused for thinking it so, but in the uniform of a field marshal that he was entitled to wear, having just created himself field marshal. Even the seams of his coat were heavily embroidered with gold thread, and the gossip went around the room as the guests waited for him to be seated first that his coat cost as much as it weighed—two hundred pounds.

He was joined by the Bourbons, the French royal family.The main supper table filled the two-hundred-foot length of the Gothic conservatory. In front of the Regent’s seat was a large circular basin that fed a stream that meandered among banks of flowers down to the end of the table, and Lucinda was amazed to notice live gold and silver fish swimming in these artificial rivers. All of the dishes were solid silver.

It must have been the biggest display of jewelry in London. No matter what the costume, the wearer appeared to have emptied their jewel box all over it. One duchess was so weighted down with jewelry that she had to be carried to her chair by two footmen. There were so many people in Turkish dress that at times the gathering looked as if it might be taking place in Constantinople rather than London.

Mr. Tommy Flanders muttered that he felt quite shoddy since his only jewelry consisted of several diamond and sapphire stickpins that he had stuck about his costume.

“I am glad I am a rich man,” said the marquess. “For I swear if I were still a poor captain I would be tempted xxx thief.”

But he was enjoying the spectacle and his black eyes glinted through the slits in his mask. He was dressed as Sir Walter Raleigh. He had a heavy chain of white gold and rubies decorating his doublet of black and gold velvet and one perfect pearl earring hung from one ear. With his rakish good looks and thick, curling black hair, he looked as if he had stepped out of a sixteenth-century painting.

“There is your counterpart,” said Mr. Flanders.

“Where?”

Mr. Flanders, never a slave to etiquette, pointed with his fork in Lucinda’s direction. The marquess looked curiously at the heavily bejeweled and masked young lady in the Elizabethan dress. He felt a queer surge of excitement mixed with one of recognition.

“ ‘Fore George,” he muttered. “I know her. I must know her.”

“Talk to her afterward and find out,” said Mr. Flanders, raising his quizzing glass to take a better look at Lucinda. “What jewels! What hair! And that white skin of hers owes nothing to blanc.”

Lucinda looked down the table and saw for the first time the dashing man in the Elizabethan dress. He saw her look and smiled, a mischievous, tantalizing smile, and she looked quickly down at her plate, very much shaken.

Where was safe and orderly Sir Percival whose eyes did not burn like coals behind his mask in the way the handsome stranger’s black eyes had shone as he looked at her? Sir Percival did not have a sensual mouth, nor did he exude any uncomfortable air of masculinity. Where on earth was he?

Alas for Sir Percival. In the hope of catching the Prince Regent’s eye—for the Prince was known to be romantical about the Scotch—he had attired himself in Highland dress. But the deep prejudice against the Scottish people, particularly the Highlanders, still burned deep in the English breast. On leaving his house, he had been set upon by a gang of bloods who had threatened to tear him limb from limb and it had taken all of Sir Percival’s servants’ strength and energies to rescue him.

Bloodied and battered, Sir Percival had sought comfort for his humiliation in a draft of opium and had promptly fallen into a deep sleep. His servants had carried him to his bedchamber and had laid him tenderly on the bed, where he continued to snore blissfully, his kilt rucked up about his thin shanks and his mouth hanging open.

Lucinda picked at her food, her appetite unaccountably gone, and listened to the talk of the dandies. She was seated between two gentlemen who, on failing to rouse much conversation from her, began to talk across her. For quite half an hour, they discussed the shape of cravats without a glint of humor to enliven the intensity of their conversation. Not yet accustomed to the mock solemnity of the true dandy, who affected to be interested in nothing but clothes, Lucinda was shocked by the triviality of their discussion. Sir Percival admittedly never said anything to strain the brain, but he did try to entertain her with light gossip and by discussing the latest plays or operatic diva.

There was a great deal of iced champagne served. Lucinda drank it thirstily, never having had champagne before and unaware of how heady it could be.

It was only when they finally rose from the table that she realized she felt inclined to giggle at everything and that her legs were strangely wobbly.

The waltz, although not yet sanctioned by Almack’s, was a favorite dance of the Prince Regent. Lucinda had already had dancing lessons while in the country, her grandmother at least rousing herself enough from her guilty state to prepare the girl for a London Season.

Tipsy as she was, Lucinda did realize her first partner was holding her closer than the conventions allowed. His eyes behind his mask were piglike and reminded her uncomfortably of her father. Her whole body shrank from him, and as soon as the dance was over, she refused to promenade with him and, being too upset to start searching for her grandmother, fled into the garden.

The Marquess of Sunningburgh watched her go. He felt almost as if he were being pulled along after her, as if they were tied to each other by an invisible cord.

The moon was shining down through the trees. The moonlight fell on the jewels on Lucinda’s gown and neck and sent glittering flashes of white light out into the darkness of the garden around her.

She was sitting on an iron bench well away from the revelers, who were becoming increasingly bold and noisy.

She did not look up as the marquess approached her but sat very still, looking down at her hands.

He sat down beside her. She gave a little start, half rose to flee, and then sat down again. The champagne bubbled in her veins, making everything seem unreal.

“It’s you,” she said softly.

“Yes,” he agreed. “It is as I thought when I saw you at supper. We have met.”

“I do not think it likely, sir,” said Lucinda. “I have not been in town very long and I do not know very many people.”

“Is this your first Season?”

“Yes.”

“And do you hope to marry?” he teased.

“I am fortunate,” she said in a low voice. “I am engaged and I shall be married in a month.”

He felt a queer little pain at his heart.

“If you were affianced to me,” he said, “I should not allow you to come to a masquerade unaccompanied. I assume your fiancé is absent or he would surely have pursued you into the garden by now.”

“I am worried about him. He was supposed to escort me.”

He drew a little closer to her on the bench. Lucinda felt she ought to leave. But the champagne she had drunk made the whole scene appear dreamlike.

There was a loud fanfare of trumpets and then a hush. Some foreign royalty had probably arrived. The other guests scampered from the garden into the ballroom. A faint breeze rustled the leaves of the bushes and trees and whispered across the grass.

They were alone.

“I am sorry I found you too late,” the marquess heard himself saying.

“You are flirting with an unknown in a mask, sir,” said Lucinda. “You do not know what I am like.”

“And yet there is this odd feeling of recognition—as if we had been close at one time. What is your name?”

“Lady Lucinda Esmond.”

He drew a sharp breath, glad that he was masked. So this was his betrothed. The pale, thin child had become a rich and desirable woman. He remembered vividly the last time he had seen her, when he had signed the betrothal papers, and remembered all the hatred he had felt for her. But she had been only ten. She must be all of nineteen now. But at least she had forgotten the betrothal or did not intend to do anything about it.

“And you are …?” he heard her asking softly.

“Sunningburgh.”

“Lord Sunningburgh?”

“The tenth marquess of that name. Is it a name that is familiar to you?”

Lucinda thought hard. It did have a familiar ring. “I may have heard it somewhere,” she said cautiously.

“And your affianced?”

“Sir Percival Magnus.”

“I wish you well.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

An odd companionable silence fell between them. From the ballroom came the faint sound of some pompous voice making a speech. The marquess felt as if a great weight had been lifted from him. The past would no longer haunt him. His humiliation at the Earl of Sotheran’s hands disappeared completely. The old man was dead and this daughter of his had no interest in the betrothal that had been forced upon her at a young age.

Lucinda felt pleased she was so at ease with this marquess. She was sure now that her engagement had given her confidence with men. He was not the sort of man she would normally have felt comfortable with. He was too tall, too handsome, too masculine. But he appeared to be a gentleman, one who would never dream of pressing any advances on a lady already promised to another.

“And what are you doing sitting out here alone?” he asked. “You are safe in my company, but I am sure many of the others here might make life embarrassing for you if they found you out here alone.”

“It was the champagne,” said Lucinda with a giggle. “I drank much too much of it, and then the first waltz was very unpleasant. A fat man with piggy eyes held me much too close. I was frightened. Men often frighten me.”

“Odso! You must learn to keep them at arm’s length. Why do we frighten you?”

Lucinda looked up at the moon. How odd. There were two moons in the sky, she thought drunkenly.

“I think men are cheats,” she said, her soft voice slurred. “They talk about romance and everlasting love when all they want is a way to satisfy their lusts.”

“You have had too much champagne,” he said, beginning to laugh. “Or are you always so beautifully frank?”

“I should not have said that,” said Lucinda, looking bewildered.

“Obviously all men do not frighten you or you would not be engaged.”

“Sir Percival is different,” said Lucinda warmly. “He has never even kissed me and I admire such gentlemanly restraint. He is not concerned with, er, that side of things.”

“You are very young. Such lack of passion may not always be enough.”

“Passions of any kind are disgusting,” said Lucinda coolly. “Our restraint on them is the only thing that raises us above the beasts of the field.”

“And yet if one wants children …”

“I have thought of that,” said Lucinda with owllike drunken solemnity. “I shall not have them in the usual way.”

He put his hand to his mouth to hide a smile.

“Dear me. What is the unusual way?”

“I shall adopt them. There are plenty of orphans about in need of a comfortable home.”

“This Sir Percival is indeed a model of all the virtues if he shares your views.”

“I have not yet told him.”

“I would tell the man before you marry him,” said the marquess cautiously.

“But the care of children is women’s business. Men do not care for children, surely?”

“Certain evil and dissolute ones do not,” he said, suddenly angry, remembering her father. “But they are the exceptions.”

“Oh, you are all evil and dissolute,” Lucinda said laughing, with an airy wave of one arm.

“One of us might surprise you one day,” he said dryly. “You are obviously very fond of jewelry, Lady Lucinda.”

“Yes, very,” she agreed. “I have so very much money. I could not believe Papa had amassed so much. Uncle Charles said that even after he had paid off all the people Papa had cheated—that is, all the people he could find,” said Lucinda, remembering the captain and wondering for the first time whether he had been paid, “there was an amazing amount left. Perhaps I am too extravagant. But I like pretty baubles. I never had any toys as a child and these jewels are simply like just so many sparkling toys to me. I do not know why I am telling you all this. Most strange. Please do not tell anyone I told you about Papa cheating.”

“On my honor. But was he never found out?”

“No. He never cheated anyone with as much power as he had. So when it came to his word against theirs, well, his word was the one that was taken. But there were whispers and rumors. Before the end, he was banned from every club in St. James’s.”

The faint tinkling strains of a waltz danced into the garden on the warm air.

The marquess rose to his feet. “May I have the honor of this dance, Lady Lucinda?”

“I do not want to go back in … just yet.”

“Then let us dance here!” he cried, feeling a heady, bubbling excitement and wondering if, like Lady Lucinda, he had drunk far too much at supper.

She laughed and stood up and took his hand. He stood looking down at her for moment, his eyes glinting through his mask, and then he drew her gently into his arms.

They circled sedately over the grass.

He held her formally, correctly, but he was holding one hand, and that hand of Lucinda’s began to tingle and burn. His other hand was at her waist, and the pressure of it against the small of her back was doing odd things to her body. She felt heavy and lethargic, a drugged sweetness making her lean toward him and slowing her steps.

She turned her face up to his, her eyes large and bewildered.

“Lucinda!” he said, his voice husky with surprise.

Her soft mouth trembled.

He bent his head to kiss her. She saw his lips approaching, oh, so slowly, and his dark head blotting out the tipsy moons and the black night lace of the trees in the garden.

His lips were soft and warm and caressing.

He was at first amused by the freshness and innocence of her lips, amused at his own boldness, knowing he would shortly have to apologize to her. But he had been celibate for a long time. All of his energies had been channeled into defeating Napoleon’s troops on the high sierras of Spain. He felt as if his lips and body were catching fire. His senses reeled and he became deaf and blind to everything and anything and began to kiss her with all of the savagery of a man starved for years of love and passion.

At first her response was almost as violent as his. But then she began to shake with fear. He mistook her trembling for passion and swept her up into his arms and gently removed her mask. It was if she were wearing another mask underneath, a grief-stricken mask of horror and disgust as the moonlight shone full on her face.

Alarmed and appalled, he set her on her feet.

“Lucinda!” called a voice, sharp with anxiety.

“Grandmama,” said Lucinda. “I must go. Do not speak to me again, my lord. My behavior was at fault, I admit. I am very drunk, drunker than I had thought. But … faugh! … you disgust me!”

He stood with his arms hanging helplessly at his sides as she moved quickly away from him across the grass, her jewels winking and blazing, to where the tiny figure of a little old lady stood on the steps of the garden, peering into the blackness.

Chapter Five

“Are you happy, Lucinda?” asked the Countess of Lemmington sharply as their carriage bore them home to Berkeley Square.

“Yes, Grandmama. Only I am worried about Sir Percival, and I am a little tired.”

“Was there anyone with you in the garden? I thought I saw the figure of a man behind you in the darkness.”

“It was the Marquess of Sunningburgh. I had a short conversation with him.”

“Sunningburgh! Gad!”

“You know him, Grandmama?”

“And so do you. Sunningburgh inherited the title recently. Before that he was Captain Mark Chamfrey.”

Lucinda put her hands up to her hot cheeks. “I am betrothed to him,” she whispered.

“He ain’t done nothing about it and he won’t now. Don’t fret. Didn’t I tell you about him getting the title and that Giles knew he had prospects, which is why he tried to tie him to you?”

“No,” whispered Lucinda.

“Don’t bother your head about it. Did you tell him you was engaged to Magnus?”

“Yes.”“And what did he say?”

“He wished me well … I think.”

“And did he mention the kidnapping?”

“No.”

“Well, then, there’s nothing to worry about,” said the countess comfortably. “Didn’t you recognize him when everyone unmasked?”

“I looked for him, but I think he had left by then.”

“Never mind. Saved you from getting a shock, though you’d probably not have recognized him, anyway.”

Lucinda sat very still. She was sure she would have recognized him and knew that in a queer way she already had. She felt the pressure of his lips again and her body burned and throbbed as if it no longer belonged to her, as if she no longer had any control over it.

Alexander, the butler, was waiting for them in the hall when they arrived home.

“Good of you, Alexander,” said the countess as the butler relieved her of her cloak, “but I told you not to wait up.”

“You did indeed, my lady. But a certain person called and insists on seeing you. I tried to put him out, but he said you would be most angry. I allowed him to wait in the kitchens. He is a low fellow and I am sure you will immediately give me permission to send him away when you hear his name.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Gotobed.”

“What on earth is he doing in London?” asked Lucinda.

“I am sure I could not say, my lady,” said Alexander, looking woodenly over her shoulder. “Sir Percival Magnus’s servant arrived some time after you had left to convey Sir Magnus’s apologies. Sir Magnus, dressed as a Scotchman, was set upon on leaving his house.”

“How dreadful! Is he badly hurt?”

“I gather not, my lady. He said he would call on you at three tomorrow—I mean today,” said the butler as the clock in the corner of the hall began to chime four in the morning.

“I shall see this Gotobed,” said the countess firmly. “It must be something important to cause him to wait up half the night for me. Send him to me in the drawing room in ten minutes, Alexander, and bring some rum, which is the sort of thing these low creatures drink.”

“Tell him to come back some other time,” urged Lucinda. “You must be very tired, Grandmama.”

“Not I. Never felt better. Run along, child.”

When Gotobed was finally ushered into the pretty drawing room with its green-and-gold-striped paper and delicate furniture upholstered in gold, the countess was waiting for him. She had had the fire lit and was sitting beside it warming her wrinkled hands at the blaze.

She eyed the former butler with disfavor. “Sit down, Gotobed,” she commanded. “No, not there. There.” She pointed to the one sturdy chair in the room, which was a high-backed one on castors.

Gotobed slouched forward, grinning and tugging his forelock. He was dressed in a satin coat and knee breeches that were covered with the stains of his own meals as well as all the stains from the meals of the suit’s previous three owners, Gotobed having bought the aristocratic relics in the old clothes market in Leather Lane.

The little countess eyed him sharply. Gotobed bore a marked resemblance to the late Earl of Sotheran. This did not rouse any warm feelings in the little countess’s breast. On the contrary, she was consumed with burning hatred.

“You have come for money,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. “Why? I dealt fairly by you. I bought you your pig farm.”

“Ah, well, pigs ain’t too great, and it ain’t the life for the likes o’ me,” said Gotobed.

“Pour yourself a drink, man. There’s rum in that decanter.”

“Thankee,” said Gotobed, pouring himself a huge measure. “No heel taps.”

The countess nodded and then said, “I assume you have come to blackmail me.”

“Nasty word,” he said waggishly. “But I have a mind to be a gennelman. I saw you.”

“You saw me what?”

“I saw you trip up your own son and watch him die.”

The countess sighed, a long sigh. She looked immensely old and frail. Only her pale eyes seemed alive, burning in her wrinkled face as she surveyed the pig farmer.

“It’s your word against mine,” she said at last. “Who’ll believe you?”

“Some won’t. Some will. Upset Lady Lucinda, that it will.”

“Yes,” said the countess, settling back in her chair. “I am glad you said that. It makes what I have to do all the easier. Lucinda must not be upset. Lucinda is more my child than Giles ever was. No. I shall do everything in my power to make sure Lucinda never suffers again. Pour yourself another drink.”

“I knew you’d see sense,” said Gotobed. He reached forward for the decanter. A surprised look crossed his face. He put a hand up to his brow. He half rose to his feet and then fell with a crash back into the chair. His head lolled back, his mouth fell open, and he began to snore.

The countess sat watching him dispassionately for some time. Then she rose to her feet and picked up the decanter with the remains of the rum and tipped the contents onto the fire, standing back as the rum went up with a roar.

“Just in case anyone else drinks it and finds it full of laudanum,” she said aloud.

She got to her feet and went behind the chair that Gotobed was sleeping on. She wheeled it over the carpet to where a large carved chest stood in a corner. She threw back the lid, took out several pairs of curtains, and put them on the floor.

Then summoning up all of her energies, she pulled the pig farmer’s limp body until it slumped out of the chair into the chest. His legs were dangling over the side. She lifted them in and then slammed down the lid. She went to the bellrope at the corner of the fireplace and gave it a tug.

“Ah, Alexander,” she said when the butler entered, “that Gotobed fellow has left. A former servant fallen on hard times. I sent him on his way. Remove the decanter and have it washed carefully. I cannot abide the smell of rum. You may retire. I shall wait here for a little. Tell Yvonne not to wait up for me.” Yvonne was her lady’s maid.

“Very good, my lady.”

The countess sat for a long time, lost in thought, remembering old days and old friends now dead. Outside the watch hoarsely called the hour. Six o’clock and a fine morn.

The countess rose and pulled back the curtains, raised the Venetian blinds, and opened the shutters. The birds were singing in the young plane trees in Berkeley Square. She remembered seeing them planted. 1789, that was.

She walked slowly across the room and picked up her reticule and drew out a small, pearl-handled pistol. She checked to see that it was loaded and then, holding the pistol in one hand, she went over to the chest and, with the other hand, raised the lid.

Gotobed slept on.

“I am doing this for you, Lucinda,” said the countess. She took careful aim and shot Gotobed neatly through the heart, then dropped the lid.

Picking up her cane, she made her way with surprising rapidity out into the hall.

Alexander came hurtling up the back stairs in his nightgown. “I heard a shot, my lady!” he cried.

“And so you did,” said the countess, leaning on her tall beribboned cane. “Some young fools out in the square trying to massacre the pigeons.”

“Oh, my lady, I had such a fright. It sounded as if it were right here in the house.”

“Yes, sounds are strange. Sometimes when the clock in the hall chimes, I could swear it was in the corner of my bedroom. Good night, Alexander.”

“Good night, my lady.”

Sir Percival did not put in an appearance as promised but sent another note to say he was still indisposed. Lucinda received her other callers. It was the fashion for gentlemen to call on ladies they had danced with the night before and present their compliments. She dreaded the arrival of the Marquess of Sunningburgh. But he did not arrive, nor did he send his servants. Obviously the marquess considered that episode in the garden best forgotten. Lucinda told herself she was glad. That kiss had infected her body like some disease. She looked forward to seeing her fiancé again. He had said in his note he would take her driving on the following afternoon.

The next day, she canceled all calls and outings. Once she saw her fiancé again, she was sure the world would be put to rights and all this ugly, aching physical yearning would leave her body.

But at four o’clock only Sir Percival’s servant arrived with yet another note. Sir Percival had discovered a bruise on his cheekbone and could not possibly appear again in public until it had faded.

Milksop! said a traitorous voice in Lucinda’s head. The day was hot and oppressive. She changed out of her carriage dress and put on a cool white muslin gown. The countess was asleep in her bedchamber. She had risen that morning but complained of fatigue.

Lucinda went down to the drawing room carrying her workbasket and set up her tambor frame by the window. She was inserting the first stitch in the tapestry when Alexander announced the arrival of the Marquess of Sunningburgh.

Lucinda carefully put down her needle, noticing with a sort of wonder that her hand did not shake.

She rose and faced the door as the marquess entered the room.

Hot color flooded her cheeks. Maturity had added strength to his face and had given him a piratical appearance. He was exquisitely tailored. His cravat was as intricate as a Chinese ivory chess piece. He was dressed for riding and his leather breeches were molded to a splendid pair of muscular thighs. His top boots shone. But his strong air of masculinity, of sensuality, hit her like a blow.

“I must ask you to leave,” she said quietly. “I am unchaperoned. “

“The door is open,” he said, “so we are observing the conventions.”

“Nonetheless, I think you should leave.”

She turned away and began to pace up and down the room.

He had tried to stay away. He had tried to persuade himself that, without moonlight, she would prove plain and uninteresting. But the combination of midnight hair, large green and gold eyes in a perfect oval of a face, and the filminess of her white muslin gown, which revealed tantalizing promises of a seductive figure underneath, all told him he was facing perhaps one of the most beautiful women London society had ever seen.

And she was all his—legally. That struck him forcibly almost at the same moment as he realized he could not possibly keep her to that ridiculous contract. She had been as much a victim of her brutal father’s machinations as he had been himself.

“I shall not keep you long,” he said. “I am curious. Have you forgotten our betrothal?”

“No. I did not know that night that the Marquees of

Sunningburgh was once Captain Chamfrey. I assume you have forgotten that rubbishy business. It was monstrous of Papa to force you to sign such an agreement.”

“How agitated you are!” he said. “Pray calm yourself, Lady Lucinda. Come! I apologize for my behavior the other night. I have no intention of repeating it. Nor have I any intention of holding you to the betrothal. Can we not be friends?”

He came up to her and smiled down at her. He looked so wickedly charming, so devastatingly attractive that she began to stammer, “Of—of c-course. I-I t-too behaved b-badly the other night. I was d-drunk.”

“You did not tell your grandmother about it?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then only we two know about it and if we forget it, we can be comfortable. Come, shake hands on it.”

Lucinda smiled tremulously and held out her hand. He took it in a warm clasp, and then they both gazed at each other helplessly. The current of emotion running between them was so strong that for one moment the same look of bewilderment was stamped on both their faces.

“Lady Lucinda,” he said, holding her hand more tightly, “I fear I have just discovered a strength of feeling that—”

“No, you must not,” whispered Lucinda, snatching her hand away. “If we are to be friends, we must behave sociably. How hot this room is! Why, there is the most terrible smell coming from somewhere.”

“Probably the drains.”

“Perhaps,” said Lucinda, glad to have a safe topic to pursue. “And yet it seems to be in this very room.”

“May I sit down?” he asked plaintively.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Lucinda, searching about under cushions and behind chairs. She straightened up and rang the bell, and when Alexander promptly appeared, she asked him to bring wine and cakes.

“Lady Lucinda,” said the marquess, “the whole of London is very smelly at the moment due to the hot weather. I suggest you have the room sprinkled with rosewater.”

But Lucinda, glad of something to do, continued her search. She raised the lid of the chest. Alexander brought in a tray with a decanter and a plate of small cakes and set it down on a table beside the marquess. “You may pour me a glass as well, Alexander,” said Lucinda over her shoulder. She then looked down into the chest.

She stood frozen, her mind racing, staring down at the dead body of Gotobed, staring at the congealed patch of blood across his chest.

Grandmama! was her first thought. Something happened. He has been hidden here. If I say anything, Grandmama will be suspected of murder.

She dropped the lid with a crash. Alexander had just left the room.

Lucinda’s face was paper-white and the pupils of her eyes were dilated.

“What is the matter?” cried the marquess. “Did you find a dead rat?”

“Yes, in the chest,” said Lucinda.

He got to his feet. “Then I suggest you let me remove it for you and throw it outside into the kennel.”

“No!” screamed Lucinda.

“Don’t be a silly girl. Stand aside. If the rat is scaring you so much, then the rat must go!”

“It is not the rat!” shouted Lucinda, at her wits’ end. “It is you, my lord.”

“I? What have I done?”

Lucinda threw herself into his arms and pressed a brief, inexpert kiss on his mouth.

“You feel the same as I do, my love,” he said. He folded his arms about her and kissed her cold mouth, and then kissed her cheeks and her eyes.

She struggled free, feeling as if she were going mad with fear and emotion.

“Get out!” yelled Lucinda.

Alexander came running in.

“His lordship is just leaving,” said Lucinda.

“You, my lady,” said the marquess, his voice dripping icicles, “are stark, raving mad!”

He strode from the room.

Lucinda sank weakly into a chair. “That will be all, Alexander,” she whispered to the curious butler.

“Shall I fetch Madam, the countess?” asked the butler.

“No! I mean, no, thank you. I shall see her myself.”

Lucinda ran up the stairs and entered her grandmother’s bedroom. The old lady was awake and propped up on her pillows, reading a newspaper, her quizzing glass, the size of a soup plate, held close to it.

“Oh, Grandmother,” cried Lucinda, flinging herself on the bed. “I found him.”

“Who, my love?”

“Gotobed. Dead. In the chest. In the drawing room.”

“Nonsense. I saw the fellow out myself. You are imagining things.”

“Grandmama, I saw him.”

“Quietly, my child. Hand me my wrapper and I shall go and see for myself. Go to your room and wait for me.”

Lucinda protested but was overridden by her grandmother’s orders. She was to go and lie down.

Waiting in her room, Lucinda sat by the window, dreading to hear a loud scream as the body was discovered. When her bedroom door opened, she leaped with fright, but it was only Alexander with a glass of wine.

“The countess asked me to bring you this,” he said. “Madam says it will soothe your nerves.”

He bowed and then retired. Lucinda drank the glass of wine thirstily. The silence of the house was oppressive.

She began to feel desperately drowsy. She dragged herself over to the bed, fell across it, and plunged into a deep sleep.

“Did you take it to her?” demanded the countess as the butler reentered the drawing room.

“Yes, my lady.”

“There won’t be a drop of laudanum left in London if I go on at this rate,” muttered the old countess.

She sat down in her customary chair by the fire, leaned on her cane, and surveyed Alexander.

“Do you enjoy working here?” she asked.

“Yes, my lady. I trust I have done nothing to—”

“No, no, no. Where was it you were before?”

“Lord Hammersmith, my lady.”

“Ah, yes, Charles employed you. Hard taskmaster, Lord Hammersmith, I hear.”

“Very, my lady.”

“You will find me a very generous employer. You would like some extra money to put by for your old age, would you not?”

“Indeed, yes, my lady.”

“Good, good. I want you to perform a little service for me. Go and open that chest.”

The butler crossed the room with his slow, stately walk. He raised the lid of the chest and then looked around at the countess, his eyes bulging out of his head.

“Beg pardon, my lady. But there is a dead body in here.”

“Just so, Alexander. And it is beginning to smell. I want you to bring a sack, pop it in, take my carriage, and dump it somewhere in the countryside where it won’t be discovered.”

“My lady!”

“I am sure you would welcome five hundred pounds toward your retirement savings.”

Alexander gulped. “Yes, my lady.”

“Very well. See to it. Now!”

The countess rose to her feet and walked to the door. “And when you return,” she said, “put the curtains that are lying on the floor over there back in the chest. In the attic, you will find a carnival mask. Drop it on top of the curtains, first bundling the material up to look vaguely like a body.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Lady Lucinda should sleep for some time. Keep this door locked in case she should come in here before you are ready. If the other servants ask you what is in the sack, say it is a dead pig sent me by Lord Lemmington which unfortunately became, er, overripe on the journey.”

“Very good, my lady,” said Alexander in hollow accents. “When may I expect payment?”

“Just as soon as you are finished.”

Lucinda awoke with a dry mouth and a headache at seven in the evening. She could not believe she had slept so long. Then she remembered the dead body and ran toward her grandmother’s room, nearly colliding with the old lady, who was heading for the top of the staircase.

“The body, Grandmama!” whispered Lucinda.

“My poor child. Your nerves must be overset. There is no body in the chest. Alexander tells me that Sunningburgh called and upset you. That is obviously what caused your eyes to play tricks.”

“But is was there!”

“Come, Lucinda. Come with me and let us put an end to this nonsense.”

Shivering with fright, Lucinda followed her grandmother down the stairs and into the drawing room.

“Go and look,” urged the countess.

Lucinda slowly crossed over to the chest. She stood, trembling, and then threw back the lid.

She put her hands to her mouth as a hideous face stared up at her.

“Look closer, child. It is only an old carnival mask and a pile of curtains.”

“So it is!” cried Lucinda. She began to laugh with relief and then her laughter quickly died.

“But that is not what I saw,” she said slowly. “It was that man, Gotobed, with a bloodstain on his chest.”

“Come here, child, and sit by me,” said the countess. She began to talk gently about the death of the Earl of Sotheran and how such a dramatic death could prey on the nerves of the young. She talked and talked until she saw the color returning to Lucinda’s cheeks.

“You are right, Grandmama,” said Lucinda. “Do you know the real reason for my fright? I thought you had killed him.”

“I! Look at me. How could such as I kill anyone?”

Lucinda looked affectionately at the frail little figure of her grandmother and then gave her a hug.

“I am a fool,” she said.

“Run and prepare yourself for the opera, or we will be late.”

Chapter Six

The Marquess of Sunningburgh was attending the opera with Mr. Tommy Flanders. He had spent the rest of the day trying to persuade himself that he was better putting Lady Lucinda firmly from his mind.

“There she is!” said Mr. Flanders suddenly. “That’s the beauty I was telling you about!”

The marquess looked across the theater to the side boxes directly opposite. There was Lucinda, attired in green sarcenet and with a collar of emeralds blazing around her neck. A circlet of gold and emeralds encircled her black hair. He felt quite sick with longing. Was he never to be free of that folly of his youth? She was not for him. She was deranged. That, she had shown only this afternoon. It was understandable that any girl brought up by the Earl of Sotheran should turn out to be quite mad.

As if aware of his gaze, Lucinda looked up and saw him. She blushed and raised her fan to cover her face. She hated the effect the very sight of the man had on her. Her skin felt hot and prickly under her clothes. Again, she felt angry with Sir Percival for keeping himself absent with such a trivial excuse.

“Well, what do you think?”

The marquess realized his friend was demanding an answer. “Think of what?”

“The beauty.”

“She is very well in a way. I spoke to her at the ball. She was the Elizabethan lady you pointed out to me at supper.”

“You are more fortunate than I! I tried to get a dance, but she was always surrounded by courtiers.”

“She is engaged, I believe.”

“Yes, I told you. Sir Percival Magnus. I have heard talk about him. He is evidently a Bond Street fribble of the most dandified sort.”

“Is he rich?”

“Barely got a feather to fly with. They say the duns were talking of building a house outside his, they’ve become so tired of sitting out on the pavement. Of course, the jackals backed off the minute they heard of his engagement.”

The marquess felt depressed and wished he had never come to London. Everyone was so stupid and empty. Everything was a glittering, frantic waste of time. He could not even enjoy the opera in peace. Catalini was unaccountably indisposed, and her stand-in, a timid lady, was being teased and mocked by the disappointed audience who had paid to see the great diva. During the substitute’s aria, one buck leapt down from the side boxes and crept up behind her and did something that caused the opera singer to leap about two feet into the air.

When the interval at last arrived, Mr. Flanders said, “Since you have spoken to the beauty, that means you can introduce me.”

“Must I?”

“Of course. I don’t care whether she’s engaged or not. It would be enough just to get close to her.”

The marquess resigned himself. “Come along,” he said, getting to his feet.

Lucinda’s box was crowded with men and it took at least five minutes before he could shoulder some of them aside and introduce Mr. Flanders.

He then stood at the back of the box and waited patiently for Mr. Flanders to finish paying Lucinda compliments.

The marquess soon noticed that disappointed gentlemen were leaving the box—and leaving the field to Tommy Flanders, who was now sitting next to Lucinda and talking earnestly.

At last, Mr. Flanders stood up. “I told Lady Lucinda we were to attend Lord Barnstable’s fête champêtre tomorrow, and my lady expressed a wish to go but had thought to stay home because of the indisposition of Sir Percival. I have offered my services as an escort and my lady has been gracious enough to accept and the Countess of Lemmington has given her permission.” The old countess nodded sleepily and smiled.

“How on earth did you arrange that?” demanded the marquess crossly as they made their way through the throngs of prostitutes back to the marquess’s box.

“Clever, wasn’t I? It came to me as we were walking along to her box. Women always trust me. They see me as a sort of surrogate brother. And she ain’t married yet!”

It was, in fact, Mr. Tommy Flanders who produced the first real crack in the porcelain surface of Lucinda’s love for Sir Percival.

Compared to her idea of men—lustful, hot, grasping, panting satyrs—Sir Percival’s foppery was like a cool drink in a hot desert. But Mr. Flanders, with his boyish ease and friendliness, with his harmless conversation devoid of the double entendre or the hot raking look, had given Lucinda a new idea. Perhaps men and women could actually be friends! The Marquess of Sunningburgh had offered friendship, but how could one be friends with a man who produced such an odd physical effect on one’s body?

Her grandmother was also pleased with Mr. Flanders’s offer of companionship. The old countess had liked him on sight. Mr. Flanders had tactfully made it clear that he was only standing in for Sir Percival for the day. And it would give her an excuse to stay at home in bed. The last murder had fatigued her, but her conscience no longer bothered her. She was grateful to that scoundrel Gotobed. To have murdered again—and got away with it—gave her a heady feeling of power. She felt justified in what she had done because it had protected Lucinda from distress. It had also made the murder of the earl unreal. She was quite convinced now that he would have fallen to his death, anyway. A little helping push on the way did not count as murder.

Lucinda, as usual, said she did not wish to stay for the opera ball, and so they returned home without seeing the marquess or Mr. Flanders again that evening. Mr. Flanders was to call for Lucinda at noon. Barges were to take the party up the Thames to Richmond where the fête champêtre was to be held on the lawns of Lord Barnstable’s mansion.

Alexander, the butler, opened the door for them when they arrived in Berkeley Square. Lucinda looked at him curiously. There was a nervous tic in his left eyelid and his fat, white face was covered with a thin sheen of perspiration.

“I wish to speak to you, my lady,” he said to the countess, “about a certain matter.”

The countess leaned heavily on her cane. She looked so very old and so very tired that Lucinda said sharply, “I do not think Lady Lemmington wishes to be troubled this evening, Alexander. If you have anything to discuss, discuss it with me.”

The countess waved her hand, the heavy lace at her wrist falling back. “Leave us, my pet.” she said wearily. “It will, I am sure, only take a few minutes. Follow me, Alexander.”

The butler followed the slowly moving figure of the countess into the drawing room.

“Go and get me brandy before you begin,” said the countess.

He nodded and went down to the pantry belowstairs, his mind racing. The fact that he had just disposed of a dead body and only been paid five hundred pounds for his pains had struck him as soon as the countess and Lucinda had departed for the opera.

His brain might not have been so active had he not found himself in trouble. He had forced his attentions some time ago on one of the scullery maids. She had become pregnant and he had supplied her with some quack medicine that had killed her. The other servants suspected, but did not know, the reason for her death. One of them had written anonymously to the girl’s father, who had arrived that evening threatening to kill the butler and had to be forcibly ejected. But Alexander feared the man would return. It was time to disappear for a bit and he now knew he could probably bleed the countess for as much as he wanted. He never for a moment thought she had killed Gotobed herself but had assumed she had hired a cutthroat who had hidden in the room. He was not a very intelligent man and believed the countess had prepared for Gotobed’s visit by having this paid accomplice hide somewhere in the house while she was at the masquerade. That he had any reason to be afraid of being alone with her never crossed his mind. She was so wizened and so very old.

The countess studied him when he came into the room carrying the decanter of brandy and a glass on a tray.

“I suppose I should be glad you have not—at least not yet—the insolence to bring a glass for yourself,” she said.

He poured her a glass of brandy and waited silently while she tossed it off. The way she first held the glass at arm’s length and then brought it forward to her lips, somehow flicking back the lace at her wrist as she did so, without spilling a drop, brought back a faint memory of an earlier, more liberal age.

The countess set down her glass on the tray with a little click. “Go on, Alexander,” she said. “What is it?”

“My lady, I performed a service for you this afternoon and you were good enough to pay me the sum of five hundred pounds. But on calm consideration, I feel I have risked my life for an insufficient sum. My nerves are bad. Every sound outside makes me jump. I think the Runners are coming for me. And so …”

“And so,” said the countess in her surprisingly youthful voice, “you want more.”

“Exactly, my lady.”

“And if I give you more, you will take yourself off and I shall never hear from you again?”

“Just so, my lady.”

“How much?”

“Two thousand pounds.”

“You are out of your wits. I could get the king murdered for that!”

“Perhaps. But it is my neck that is now at risk, my lady, and I consider two thousand pounds a fair price.”

But you will be back, thought the countess. And back. I know your sort. You will take to drink, and drink will loosen your tongue.

Aloud she said, “Let me think.”

Alexander stood there for what seemed to him a very long time, indeed. At last, he cleared his throat as the countess continued to sit very still with her eyes closed. He feared she had gone to sleep.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him, her pale gaze very steady.

“I do not have that sum of money by me,” she said. “I shall send a servant to my bank in the morning. I do not see why your demands should interfere with my pleasures. I have a mind to go to a fête champêtre tomorrow. You will accompany me. We leave by boat from Westminster.I shall give you the money sometime during the day.”

Alexander let out a slow breath of relief. “Thank you, my lady.”

Sir Percival Magnus sauntered along to Berkeley Square at noon the following day. He was much put out to find Mr. Tommy Flanders and the Marquess of Sunningburgh waiting for Lucinda.

Mr. Flanders cheerfully explained that he was a substitute escort.

“No need for that,” said Sir Percival huffily. He flicked a scented handkerchief pettishly in Mr. Flanders’s direction. “I am here now and my fiancée needs no other escort.”

At the moment, Lucinda entered the room with her grandmother behind her. The three gentlemen rose to their feet.

She was wearing a pink muslin gown that was tied under her bust with pink silk ribbons. The skirt of the dress ended in three deep flounces. She wore rose-colored kid gloves, and on her head she wore a shepherdess straw hat decorated with silk roses.

“My love!” cried Sir Percival. “Here’s a pretty kettle of fish. This fellow says he is to escort you, but I am now here, so there is no need for his presence.”

“Fiddle,” said the countess crossly. “The more the merrier. Don’t fuss!”

Lucinda could only be glad her grandmother had answered for her. She was much too taken aback by the sight of Sir Percival Magnus. A lifetime of emotion seemed to have passed since she had last seen him. Her wondering gaze roamed from Sir Percival’s beautiful face, to the Marquess of Sunningburgh’s virile and challenging looks, to the open, ingenuous friendliness of chubby Mr. Tommy Flanders.

Sir Percival’s clothes, set against the marquess’s under-studied elegance, looked ridiculous to Lucinda’s eyes for the first time. Did he have to wear a waistcoat emblazoned with pink silk stripes on scarlet wool? He had recovered his aplomb and was asking the marquess his opinion on the waistcoat, Sir Percival claiming it had been made to his own design.

The marquess leveled his quizzing glass at it and then smiled. “I am beyond words, Magnus,” he said.

The insult was obvious to everyone but Sir Percival, who preened while Lucinda flushed with annoyance.

Outside in the street, an argument started up about who would travel with whom.

Normally easygoing, Mr. Tommy Flanders dug in his heels and insisted loudly that Lady Lucinda should travel in his carriage since she had accepted his escort. He had taken Sir Percival in dislike, and that dislike had added fire to his usually easygoing manner.

Lucinda, bewildered by her feelings and by the loud argument, found herself being handed up into the Marquess of Sunningburgh’s open carriage. She went unresistingly. “Much better this way,” he said cheerfully. “The only way to cope with embarrassing situations is to drive away from them as quickly as possible.”

When they were threading their way through the traffic, the marquess asked curiously, “How is it you have anytime to go on these jaunts? I would have thought, with your wedding imminent, that life would be full of fittings for your bride’s gown, and writing endless letters thanking members of society for their presents.”

“I rise very early,” said Lucinda. “The rest of society sleeps until two in the afternoon. I have plenty of time during the mornings to have my fittings, go shopping, and write letters. It is to be a very quiet wedding, only immediate family. But one thing is troubling me greatly. I have received so many presents from people I have never even met.”

“It is the way of the world,” he said easily. “You are London’s new beauty and an heiress. Many hope to ‘buy’ an invitation to the wedding by sending you a present.”

“What should I do, my lord?”

“When writing to accept a gift from someone you do not know, sound gratified and say that it is to be a very quiet wedding but you hope to have the pleasure of entertaining them after your honeymoon. Then I suggest you have a rout and cram them all in and get it all over with in one evening. You are having a honeymoon?”

“Of course,” lied Lucinda, wondering why Sir Percival had not mentioned any such arrangements.

“And where do you go?”

“It is a secret.”

“Probably Paris,” he teased. “There must be about ten thousand British visitors in that city at the moment. I am surprised there are so many of us still left in London to attend these ridiculous outings.”

“If you think this outing ridiculous, why do you go?”

“To be near you,” he said lightly.

“I must remind you, sir, I am to be married.”

“And I must remind you that you are betrothed to me.”

“You do not mean to try to hold me to that ridiculous agreement?”

“Hardly, with you so soon to be wed to another. I must say, if I may be so bold, that your choice surprises me.”

“You may not be so bold, my lord. Pray talk of something else, or I shall have to ask you to set me down!”

The marquess good-humoredly began to talk about the opera. He felt elated by her company. She did not seem at all mad or deranged. He was determined to enjoy what he could of her presence and to forget about her wretched wedding.

Lord Barnstable had two huge ornate and highly decorated barges waiting at the pier for his guests. An orchestra was already playing on each. Both boats were draped with hangings of black and gold. Lucinda thought the drapings made the barges look like something in a description of a Venetian funeral she had once read about.

Sir Percival Magnus joined her before they went on board. He looked hot and angry. The very fact he was showing any emotion whatsoever warmed Lucinda toward him again.

The marquess and Mr. Flanders, observing the way Lucinda smiled up at Sir Percival and how she took his arm, decided, with different degrees of disappointment, that Lady Lucinda was well satisfied with her Bond Street fribble.

“I do wish Grandmama had not, for some odd reason, brought our butler, Alexander,” said Lucinda when they were seated on board. “I never did like that man. And why, pray, bring one’s butler when there are footmen?”

“I do not know,” said Sir Percival amiably, his ruffled feathers smoothed by Lucinda’s unwavering attention to him. “Old ladies sometimes have strange fancies. You will meet some of my elderly relations at our wedding. None of them is, however, as old as the Countess of Lemmington. In fact,” he said, “I do not think I know anyone as old as your grandmother. How old is she, exactly?”

“I do not know,” said Lucinda. “My father was in his late fifties when he died. My poor mama was considerably younger than he, I believe. I have never asked you this, Sir Percival, but are we going anywhere on our honeymoon?”

Sir Percival frowned. He had not planned to take Lucinda anywhere at all because he would have to pay for it. All he looked forward to was the joy of staying in town and settling with a few of his more pressing creditors before throwing a series of magnificent parties. Arrangements for a honeymoon would entail a certain amount of money paid out in advance.

“I thought we would stay in town, my sweeting,” he said. “There are to be the grand victory celebrations in Hyde Park in August. You would not want to miss those.”

“But my home, Partletts … you have never seen it. I had thought we might go there and begin alterations.”

“It’s an old place, ain’t it?” demanded Sir Percival, his normally well-modulated accents becoming almost vulgar. “Don’t want to go sporting the blunt on a ruin.”

Lucinda clasped her hands and looked at him beseechingly. “Oh, Partletts could look so beautiful with just a little effort,” she said. “I have always dreamed of making it a real home.”

“But no one who is anyone is going to be in the country,” he said, appalled. “And as my wife, you’ll have to do what suits me. I say, is this demmed barge never going to start? We’re bouncing and rocking, and my stomach is a delicate organ.”

“I think we are waiting for someone,” said Lucinda. She felt shocked at his high-handed attitude. Could it be that Sir Percival was not going to be the beautiful and amiable husband she had imagined? She had dreamed of them having a pleasant life together at Partletts. She had envisaged the old mansion refurbished with fresh paint and colorful hangings while they entertained safe, ordinary people from the local county.

“Do you think we are waiting for Prinny?” asked Sir Percival anxiously. “That would make this rocking motion bearable. He might notice my waistcoat.”

Lucinda turned to her grandmother, who was seated next to her with Alexander standing at attention behind her chair. “Do you know why we are waiting?” she asked.

“I think we are waiting for Mr. Brummell.”

Sir Percival began to turn a delicate shade of green. Beau Brummell, that famous arbiter of fashion, had often amused himself and his friends by making game of Sir Percival’s coats and cravats.

Although the day was sunny and warm, it was very windy, and nasty, choppy, little waves rocked the barge up and down.

The arrival of the famous beau coincided with the rebellion of Sir Percival’s delicate organ. He was dismally sick over the side of the barge. He was given sal volatile; he was given brandy. Lucinda bathed his temples with eau de cologne. But nothing could rally him. Before the boat set off, Sir Percival decided that since he was not going to live, he would rather die in the comfort of his own bed. He was carried ashore and placed tenderly in his swan-necked phaeton while his tiger took the reins and slowly moved away from the pier with Sir Percival moaning and retching beside him.

Mr. Flanders saw the vacant seat beside Lucinda and hurried to claim it. But the barge moved away from the pier at that very moment and gave a dip and a lurch. He clutched a lady next to him to save himself, and by the time he had apologized profusely to her and looked across, it was to see the more surefooted marquess already seated next to Lucinda.

Mr. Flanders was still determined to join them, but the lady he had clutched was laughing up at him and complaining about the blustery wind. He looked at her impatiently and realized she had dark curls under a fetching bonnet and a pair of sparkling brown eyes in a dimpled little face. What made her suddenly appear enchanting was the fact that she was actually smaller in size than Mr. Flanders, who found the novelty of looking down at a young miss very refreshing. He began to laugh as well and signaled a footman to bring them champagne. Several glasses later, he had discovered her to be a Miss Jessop, the daughter of a rich city merchant. Several more glasses, and he had forgotten about Lucinda.

Lucinda was reflecting that if anyone had told her that the mere proximity of a man could cause such distressing physical reactions, she would not have believed it. She was ashamed of her own body. It felt swollen and heavy, and yet, when she looked down, it was to find her figure as slim as ever.

“It’s too windy here,” she heard her grandmother say. “Help me to the back of the boat, Alexander.”

No one, except the countess, appeared to want to move. The barge was still bucketing up the Thames and most of the company had decided to stay safely where they were until quieter waters were reached. And so Lucinda, who would normally have been besieged by admirers, was left alone with the Marquess of Sunningburgh.

He tried to say something, but she shook her head helplessly. The orchestra was gamely sawing its way through Handel’s Water Music, trying to make up in volume what it lacked in style. The awnings were cracking and flapping, and chilly champagne lurched and spilled in glasses.

Lucinda began to feel almost as sick as Sir Percival had been. She felt that the physical discomfort of her body would be eased if she could speak to the marquess or even—but that was almost unthinkable—lay her hand on his arm. Some contact, she felt, as she put a hand to her brow, might channel some of this raging mixture of feelings away from her body, as electricity was said to be channeled through a galvanizing machine.

His lips were moving, saying something, but she could not hear the words and shook her head and shrugged, looking at the noisy orchestra.

He leaned toward her. He meant to put his lips close to her ear and ask her if she were feeling ill, but the treacherous boat lurched and so his lips ended up pressed hard against her ear. She jumped in fright and shrank away. But the barge rolled in the wash from a passing boat and threw her back against him. No one noticed. There were shrieks of dismay and protests from the other guests who had been thrown about as well.

“Don’t struggle,” he said loudly, holding her tightly against him. “We will be in calm water soon.”

She subsided weakly against him, turned toward him, her hot face buried in his chest. The confused jumble of feelings in her body settled slowly down to one of languorous sweetness and peace. The heavy barge slid around a long bend of the river into smooth water. Tall trees on either side sheltered the party from the wind. Lucinda still lay heavily against him.

People were beginning to move about. The marquess knew that their odd embrace would soon occasion comment and put her gently away from him. She sat with her head bowed, her face shadowed by the brim of her hat. Then she fumbled behind her, trying to find her stole. It had fallen onto the deck. He picked it up and arranged it about her shoulders and then spread the ends of it over her lap. It was a rich, heavy stole made of rose velvet and embroidered with silver filigree.

One end of the stole covered her gloved hand. He slid his hand across and took her own in a firm clasp. No one would notice that they were holding hands because of the covering of the stole.

For one moment her eyes flashed and her face flamed. She gave a slight tug at his hand, which imprisoned hers so tightly. But his black eyes looked searchingly down into her own and her gaze fell before his, and she sat still and quiet. Gentlemen began to approach to flirt with her and to pay her compliments. She answered them woodenly, the marquess glared at them haughtily, and one by one they all went away again, leaving the two figures of Lucinda and the Marquess of Sunningburgh sitting side by side. It was assumed that the odd couple had quarreled, for they did not exchange a word.

Both were lost in a world created by the simple touch of one gloved hand holding another gloved hand. At one point the marquess thought with some surprise that a man was supposed to experience raptures like this when he was naked and in bed with a woman, not simply by holding her gloved hand. And Lucinda sat in a rosy glow, finally refusing to let her mind think anything at all.

Everything was now very green. Green trees and bushes, heavy with foliage, crowded the banks and turned the narrow stretch of the river green as well. There were no flowers here, no splashes of color on either side to relieve the luxuriant green of the leaves and the slow-moving green water of the River Thames.

At the stern of the boat, the countess stood looking down at the water. Alexander, the butler, stood beside her. He was growing more and more impatient. What was she waiting for? They seemed to have been standing there in silence for an age.

“My lady,” he ventured. “You said you would give me the money.”

The old countess leaned on her cane. Green silk ribbons fluttered gaily from the top of it. She let out a long sigh.

“What is that in the water?” she demanded sharply. “Look! There!”

Alexander leaned over. “I cannot see anything, my lady,” he said.

“It’s something trailing in the wake of the boat,” said the countess excitedly. “Something gold and silver.”

Momentarily excited by curiosity, the butler leaned farther over the edge. There was no rail on this flat piece at the side of the stern. Underneath them, the oars plied rhythmically, hypnotically, dipping and rising in the hands of the unseen rowers, sending out splashes of green and gold water.

The countess edged back behind Alexander. She looked around quickly. Some young buck was balancing champagne glasses, one on top of the other, on his nose. Everyone was looking at him and cheering encouragement.

She raised her cane and drove it, with all the strength of a temporary burst of madness, straight into the butler’s back. With an anguished cry, he toppled over into the water and disappeared. She wrenched at the drawstrings of her reticule. Pound notes fluttered out from the boat, dancing along in the breeze created by the movement and then landing like huge exotic butterflies on the green water.

“Help! I can’t swim!” spluttered Alexander, his voice already made faint by the distance as the boat plowed steadily ahead.

“Help!” screamed the countess, her shrill voice drowning out the voice of the drowning butler. People came running.

“Grandmama!” cried Lucinda, returning to this planet and snatching her hand away from the marquess.

She ran toward the stern of the boat, followed by the marquess. When they reached her, the countess was already surrounded by a small crowd. As they came up to her, she cried, “Oh, Lucinda, my child, Alexander attacked me. He snatched my reticule. I had a hundred pounds in it. I never carry guineas. So heavy. And—and … he overbalanced and struck out for the shore.”

Lord Barnstable, who had also arrived in time to hear this, exclaimed, “Who is this Alexander?”

“My butler!”

“I’ll stop the barge and send the men back to look for him,” said Lord Barnstable.

“No,” said the countess firmly. “It would ruin the day. He will be far away by the time we reach the point where he fell overboard. He did not get any money, but he tore at the opening of my bag and it all spilled out.”

It was at last decided to report Alexander to the authorities. Everyone agreed that the Countess of Lemmington was a remarkable old lady. She rallied amazingly. She called for wine and music and even flirted with Lord Barnstable.

Lucinda was plagued with a feeling of unease. She could not help wondering why Alexander, so stately and correct, should do such a silly thing for one hundred pounds.

The dramatic event had interrupted her idyll. She could not now believe she had allowed the marquess to hold her hand for so long. She was inclined to shrink from him, but his manner was so formal and correct toward her for the rest of the day that by the time they set sail in the evening after several hours of drinking and dancing on the lawns of Lord Barnstable’s mansion, she was half sure she had imagined the whole thing.

Darkness had fallen, and sleepy and intoxicated people lay about on the carpeted decks, chatting idly in the soft glow of oil lamps. Lucinda wandered off into the darkness to be alone, to think about her forthcoming wedding.

She had been mistaken in her love for Sir Percival. He was not only a fop, but he had evinced signs that he might prove to be a bully as well.

But there was nothing she could do about it. She had made the best of her life with a drunken, bullying father. She must make the best of her future life tied to Sir Percival. Women were slaves, married or unmarried. Freedom for women was an illusion. All they could pray for was an indifferent husband who preferred his club to his home.

A soft touch on her shoulder made her turn around. Although it was very dark, there was a faint metallic sheen on the water, as if the River Thames had trapped some of the light of the sunny day. She saw the strong planes of the marquess’s face and the glint of his black eyes.

“We must talk, Lady Lucinda,” he said quietly. “You must not go ahead with this marriage.”

“Why not, my lord?”

“Because we have fallen in love.”

She stood, looking up at him, amazed. This could not be love, this sickening yearning. Surely love was a quiet flowering, a content.

“What is love?” she asked faintly, so faintly that he had to bend his dark head to hear her.

“It is a perpetual longing for someone that gets into your blood. That someone lives inside your head, haunting you, filling your soul with dreams—dreams that could well turn to tragedy were they never to be fulfilled,” he replied, his voice made husky by emotion.

Thoughts piled one on top of the other in Lucinda’s head. Sir Percival … her promise to him … all of the presents and arrangements … Grandmama … all those whispering, sticky, crawlly voices of the doxies … a man like the marquess would expect a response as passionate and as wholehearted as his own would be.

Terror seized her by the throat. All at once it was not the Marquess of Sunningburgh standing before her but her gross and bullying father.

“Leave me alone!” she cried. “I do not know what you are talking about. I do not know. I love Sir Percival with all my heart. For pity’s sake, leave me alone.”

Tears poured down her cheeks, glinting silver in the moonlight.

He felt as humiliated as he had been all those years before when he had been forced to sign those betrothal papers. She had led him on, had let him hold her hand, had sent him soft glances, and now she had repulsed him.

He turned and walked away toward the lights and music, leaving her standing alone with the tears glinting on her cheeks and the rising moon striking fire from the diamond brooch she wore at her breast.

Chapter Seven

In the short time before her wedding, Lucinda felt as isolated from the world as she had done when her father had been alive.

As she went for correct drives with Sir Percival, as she received callers, she felt a busy, carefree London was going on somewhere out there oblivious of her very existence.

She had not seen the Marquess of Sunningburgh since Lord Barnstable’s fête. At first, she had rehearsed how she would behave should she see him again, at the opera, say, or in the park, but at neither places did she see even a glimpse of his dark head. Mr. Flanders was very much in evidence, mostly squiring a pretty little girl, but he did not go near Lucinda, so she didn’t know whether the marquess was still in town or had gone back to the country.

London continued to celebrate the victory over Napoleon. There were military parades on warm evenings. In Rotten Row or in Kensington Gardens at the fashionable hour, hundreds of beautiful horses passed and repassed, carrying behind them or on their backs a whole world of silk and lace, smart bonnets and curving top hats. Musical parties were all the rage, and it was a Season when the whole of the top ten thousand seemed to revolve to the strains of the waltz. Glittering jewels and smiling, evasive faces passed and repassed before Lucinda’s tired eyes as Sir Percival indefatigably squired her to rout and ball.

And then, all at once, it was her wedding morn. Lord Lemmington, her uncle, was to give her away. He was a thin, stooped man, ascetic and fastidious. It was incredible to think that Giles, Earl of Sotheran, had been his brother.

Lucinda was wearing a white satin gown trimmed with lace. Around the high waist of the gown was a belt of diamonds. She had insisted on wearing a veil, although her aunt, Lady Lemmington, had protested that it was a sadly antiquated fashion. Her veil was of the finest lace worked in a design of violets. Little silk violets made a coronet for her head, a real amethyst ornamenting the center of each flower. She had also refused to wear the heel-less slippers that were all the rage, choosing instead a pair of white satin shoes with louis heels. She felt that a little extra height might give her confidence.

It was another remorselessly sunny day. The old countess was resplendent in a panniered gown of pink watered silk, with pink and silver ribbons decorating her tall cane. A frivolous little straw hat, the kind the Macaronis used to wear, was perched saucily on her white wig.

The Dowager Countess of Lemmington no longer sat awake at nights brooding about murder. She found by dint of telling herself that Giles had fallen to his death because he had been drunk, that Gotobed had been a figment of her imagination, and that Alexander had never existed, she could contrive to enjoy Lucinda’s happiness. For the countess was sure her granddaughter was happy. She privately thought Sir Percival a poor sort of man, but he appeared kind and attentive to Lucinda, and kind and attentive husbands were hard to find. It was a pity he was not blessed with more money, but then Lucinda was so rich that she had more than enough to keep several husbands, let alone one young fribble.

The wedding was to take place in a dark church in the Strand. It was not fashionable, like St. George’s, Hanover Square, but the old countess had been married there herself and considered it highly suitable for a quiet wedding.

When Lucinda entered on Lord Lemmington’s arm, she noticed bleakly that Sir Percival’s side of the church was not very full. His relations appeared to consist of a bevy of elderly ladies who smelled strongly of camphor, as if they had been brought out of mothballs for the occasion.

On her own side of the church were aunts, uncles, nieces, and cousins, many of whom she had never seen before. She assumed all those people were related to her because Lady Lemmington had said only relatives had been invited and had spurned Lucinda’s tentative suggestion that Mr. Venables should receive an invitation.

Sir Percival heard the organ beginning to play and knew that Lucinda was approaching up the aisle. His brideman, a club acquaintance, the Honorable Patrick Lock, swayed slightly beside him in all the glory of a pink satin coat. Sir Percival hated that coat. It was too showy and fine for a quiet wedding. He himself was more soberly dressed than usual in the stiff black coat he reserved for funerals. But soon it would be over and Lucinda’s money would be his to command. Lucinda’s lawyers had struck him a nasty blow when they had demanded a marriage settlement of five thousand guineas, but he had found the moneylenders only too eager to oblige him. His prospects were good.

He did not turn to look at Lucinda as she came and stood beside him. He was admittedly glad that she was so very beautiful, but it was her money that was of prime importance.

Lucinda stood, feeling trapped. She did not know it, but if the Marquess of Sunningburgh had made any further efforts to pursue her, then she might have canceled this marriage. His description of love echoed in her brain. Had he meant it? If he had meant it, then why had he been so easily rebuffed? Large tears glittered in her eyes and she was glad of the veil that hid her face.

The dean of St. Botolph’s was droning on through the beginning of the marriage ceremony in the voice of one who has intoned the same words time out of number and has forgotten their meaning.

He was saying that marriage was not to be taken lightly “or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts …” His voice came and went in Lucinda’s brain…. “It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication …”

Well, this was one marriage free from lusts or passion, thought Lucinda. Get it over with quickly, she silently urged the dean. Let it be over soon.

Then she realized the reverend had raised his voice and was looking around the dim church. “Therefore if any man can show any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.”

This is the moment, thought Lucinda wildly, when young Lochinvar should ride out of the west, when some knight at arms should rescue me from the consequences of my own folly. But it is too late.

“I can show just cause,” said a loud, clear voice.

Sir Percival leaped in the air like a startled rabbit.

Lucinda stayed calmly where she was without turning. She thought she had imagined the interruption.

But there was a shocked mumbling and rustling in the church and then the sound of firm, booted steps up the aisle.

“This marriage cannot take place,” said a voice that Lucinda now recognized as that of the Marquess of Sunningburgh.

The-Reverend Hereward Bright-Palfrey looked surprised and delighted. Nothing very out of the way or strange had enlivened his days for quite a long time. He had taken an instant dislike to Sir Percival Magnus. He looked approvingly at the tall, handsome figure of the marquess.

“Dear me,” he said, trying to sound as distressed as possible, but inwardly as gleeful as a schoolboy presented with an unexpected disruption in the tedium of lessons. “I suggest, sir, that you and the wedding party follow me to the vestry where this matter may be discussed.”

The marquess turned and summoned a dried-up, little elderly gentleman from behind a pillar. Then, without looking at Lucinda, he followed the dean to the vestry.

Lucinda’s bridesmaid, a cousin Lucinda had met for the first time at the wedding rehearsal, felt the whole situation was being taken too calmly by all parties, so she screamed and fell to the ground and went into strong hysterics.

The rest of the wedding party stepped around her and made their way to the vestry. Sir Percival was too stunned and, like his brideman, was suffering from the effects of having drunk a great many bottles of wine the night before.

Lucinda had already led too dramatic a life to cry or to faint. She put back her veil and looked at the marquess with interest, amazed that she felt so calm, not knowing she was suffering from a mixture of shock combined with relief.

The Marquess of Sunningburgh waited until the Dowager Countess of Lemmington was seated on the only comfortable chair in the vestry. Then he began.

“This,” he said, indicating the elderly gentleman beside him, “is Mr. Poulett of Poulett, Humphries, Jackson, and Poulett, a firm of solicitors in Baxtable. He will confirm that Lady Lucinda was betrothed to me some nine years ago.”

The Reverend Bright-Palfrey looked at Lucinda with bright-eyed interest. “Is this true?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Lucinda. “But the Marquess of Sunningburgh said he would not hold me to such a ridiculous agreement.”

“Nor shall he,” said the countess. “My lawyers will soon make a rubbish of any papers Lucinda may have signed.”

“I am afraid it will be difficult to break this betrothal, if at all,” said the lawyer. “You see, there is a codicil. If Lady Lucinda Esmond does not marry the Marquess of Sunningburgh, then she must remain a spinster, or such lands and money she has inherited from her father will go to Mr. Henry Webster.”

“Webster!” exclaimed Lord Lemmington. “But he’s such a distant connection. He can hardly be called a relation. He used to come toadying round Giles and encouraging him in the worst behavior, but nothing has been heard of him this age. Do you remember him, Lucinda? He must be in his forties by now.”

Lucinda shook her head. She could remember many coarse, loud-voiced men who had encouraged her father to drink deep and to get up to various unmentionable romps with the members of the Fashionable Impure who had frequented Partletts.

The enormity of what was happening to him finally struck Sir Percival like a hammer blow. He thought of his bills and the duns waiting for settlement. “You cannot do this!” he screamed. “I shall sue for breach of promise.”

Lucinda, still unnaturally calm and sedate, reminded the marquess of the self-contained child he had kidnapped.

“Tell me, my lord,” she asked, “why did you leave this until the very last minute?”

“It took time to find the lawyers,” said the marquess, turning away, unable to tell her of the days and nights he had dreamed of her until at last he knew he could not bear to see her married to anyone other than himself.

The old countess rose to her feet and walked slowly forward. “Let me see the papers,” she said.

She took her huge quizzing glass out of her capacious reticule and studied them carefully.

Then she looked at her granddaughter. “What do you want, Lucinda?” she asked. Her pale eyes raked around the group, settling at last on the Marquess of Sunningburgh with a look of peculiar malevolence.

“I shall never marry,” said Lucinda. “I shall enjoy this one Season and then I shall return to Partletts and make all the changes I wish. I insist on having the freedom of a mature married woman although I am a spinster. No, I shall never marry. Uncle Charles, please take me home, sir. Reverend, I will leave you to tell our guests the news. I suggest they follow us and enjoy the wedding breakfast. Some of them have traveled far.”

“Lucinda!” pleaded Sir Percival. “Have you no thought for me?”

Lucinda looked at him, seeing him clearly for what he was for the first time, realizing he had never loved her, that he only loved her money.

“I agree you have been hard done by,” she said. “You may submit all outstanding bills you may have to me. When my lawyers have settled them, I think it would be best if we never saw each other again.”

She took her uncle’s arm and walked to the door. Then she hesitated, turned, and addressed the Marquess of Sunningburgh.

“I owe you a great debt, my lord,” she said. “You have made me realize I do not need any man—least of all you. “

On her uncle’s arm she walked back down the aisle of the church. The organist, unaware of what had been going on, began to play a triumphal march, and high in the steeple, the bells began to ring.

Stooped and elderly, Lord Lemmington was the envy of every man in the waiting crowd outside. How could such an old stick have gotten himself such a young, radiant, and beautiful bride? they wondered.

One week later, the marquess paced up and down in the library of his town house. His friend, Mr. Tommy Flanders watched him sympathetically. By some miracle, the scandal of Lucinda’s nonmarriage had escaped the newspapers, but the marquess had finally told his friend all about it.

“So,” ended the marquess, “the best thing I can do is take myself off to the country and forget about her.”

“That doesn’t sound like the gallant major I knew,” said Mr. Flanders.

The marquess gave him a rueful smile. “This is love, not war, Tommy.”

“It’s the same thing,” said Mr. Flanders earnestly. “Attack! That’s the thing. Make her fall in love with you.”

“Don’t be silly. She doesn’t want me near her.”

“You know,” said Mr. Flanders eagerly, “they talk about morals and conventions, but I find it remarkably easy to have words in private with a young lady if I put my mind to it. Now, that grandmother of hers is always falling asleep. You had a chance—two chances—of being alone with her before. Put your mind to it and you’ll have another chance. Ask her to forgive you. It ain’t your fault about that stupid betrothal or that that old horror said Webster could have his moneybags if she married anyone but you. Anyway, his will left everything to her, so it stands to reason the will canceled out anything in the betrothal papers.”

“Not so. I was too clever by half. When the will was read out to the family, Lord Lemmington, the Earl of Sotheran’s brother, had learned of the betrothal from the dowager countess. She got him to instruct the lawyer to leave ‘all that nonsense’ out in case it distressed Lucinda, but I assure you that bit about Webster was in the will and Lord Lemmington didn’t even know about it because the lawyer took him at his word and left out everything relating to marriage. The lawyer who read the will wasn’t Mr. Poulett but a doddering old fool nearly in his grave. Of course, it was I who had to go and ferret the whole thing out. But, by George, I’m glad I did. I swear she looked like a reprieved prisoner!”

“Then she has reason to be grateful to you.”

“I doubt if she will see it that way.”

“You’ll never know until you try.”

“But what if she has such a disgust of me that she screams at the very sight of me?”

“An odd sort of girl,” said Mr. Flanders slowly. “I don’t think after the sort of upbringing you say she’s had that there’s much that would make her scream. Perhaps you could get the old countess on your side.”

“Now, there’s a lady who frightens me. I think she flies about London on her broomstick at night.”

“Fustian. These old ladies are as simple and innocent as children.”

The marquess’s butler quietly entered the room and handed him a huge box of chocolates.

“Who sent me these?” demanded the marquess.

“There is no letter or card, my lord.”

“Very well, leave them on the table.”

The butler put the box of chocolates on a table by the open window and left.

“Perhaps you have an admirer,” said Mr. Flanders.

The marquess shrugged. “Probably meant for someone else,” he said. “Let us go for a ride in the Row. I need some exercise to clear maudlin thoughts about Lady Lucinda from my brain.”

One hour later, Mr. Toby Pollock, murderer, rapist, and thief, strolled past. He had made a daring escape from Newgate prison a year before and had gone into hiding. Now, dressed soberly and correctly and with his hair dyed black, he was sure he was safe from the clutches of the law. He had decided to stroll through the fashionable West End to see what pickings he might find. The Runners would not be looking for such a one as himself in Mayfair.

He was passing the marquess’s town house when his sharp eye saw the large box of chocolates lying on the table by the open window.

He looked quickly up and down the street. No one was in sight, not even a butler standing on the steps to take the air. The window, fortunately for him, was right on the street, the front windows on the other side of the entrance being protected by the area steps.

He reached in and seized the large box and slid it inside his capacious coat.

His mouth watered. He loved sweet things and, as a mere boy, had once stabbed to death a cook who had caught him in the act of stealing a cake.

He made his way to Green Park and settled down on the grass behind a huge tree. Greedily, he opened the box and stared at the contents.

On the following day, the Marquess of Sunningburgh read, with little interest, that a common thief and murderer had been found dead in Green Park. He noted idly that the authorities said the notorious escaped murderer appeared to have been poisoned. They did not mention anything about an expensive box of chocolates that had been found beside him on the grass, half of it eaten. The marquess had quite forgotten about that mysterious present. In any case, he detested sweets.

Chapter Eight

Miss Jessop, the young lady who had taken Mr. Flanders’s fancy, had the honor of being driven by the marquess in the park while Mr. Flanders attended his tailor.

The marquess was well pleased by her friendly and cheerful company and thought she and his friend were well suited.

Lucinda, driving out with her grandmother, saw the marquess for the first time since the wedding. In all her dreams of seeing him again, she had never thought of him being with another lady. She thought Miss Jessop looked a rowdy, vulgar sort of girl. She told her grandmother that the park was too hot and dusty and that she wished to go home.

But that sight of the marquess had started up all of the old longings in her treacherous body. She began to fret that she had inherited all of her father’s lust. She despised herself and alarmed her grandmother by calling for a bath to be prepared as soon as they got home.

The countess, like many members of London society, frowned on cleanliness as being a dangerous habit. It was enough to wipe the face and hands with clean linen each morning. Washing the face in water made it too sensitive to cold and sunburn. As for the body, once or twice a year was enough. One royal duke was heard to remark crossly that it was sweat, damn it, that kept a man most clean. But there were rebels. William Cobbett, that dangerous radical, held that cleanliness was a “capital ingredient” and advised the lover to look behind the lady’s ears before he started any serious courting. But by and large, baths were considered useful for subduing inmates of the madhouse but not of any use in polite society.

But Lucinda was adamant. She had paid a great deal of money to have a bath installed in her bedroom and she meant to use it as much as possible.

It was an ornate piece of furniture in the shape of a chaise longue. There was a copper heater at the head of it; the heater ran on spirit and it took almost an hour to heat the water.

She was to attend a ball that evening. Perhaps the marquess might be there. She had not wanted to go, pointing out to her grandmother that as she no longer had any desire to marry, she would rather confine her social engagements to the opera or the playhouse. The old countess had said pettishly that there was not a female alive who did not want to marry. Lucinda had received a shock, said the old lady. She bitterly blamed the marquess. He had had no right to ruin Lucinda’s happiness. He had no right to be alive! What a waste of good arsenic and expensive chocolates.

Lucinda felt drowsy after her bath and told her maid to let her sleep for an hour before beginning preparations for the ball.

But her sleep was racked by nightmares. Her father fell down a long, winding staircase to hell, tumbling and falling, shouting pathetically, “Help me, Lucinda.” Then that dream faded to be replaced by a horrible one where Gotobed had come to life and was stalking the house with a meat cleaver.

She awoke with a cry of distress and sat up. Almost as part of her dream, she once again saw Gotobed’s body in the chest. The first twitching, clutching symptoms of fear began to assail Lady Lucinda Esmond.

For she at last knew that she had seen the dead body of Gotobed. She had been thrown off balance by her emotional reaction to the Marquess of Sunningburgh. She had wanted to believe her grandmother. But now she knew her grandmother had lied.

The Marquess of Sunningburgh noticed Lucinda’s pallor. Anxiety made him pluck up his courage and approach the Countess of Lemmington, who sat at the ball, a little apart from the other chaperones, behind a bank of flowers.

Lucinda was dancing with Sir Percival Magnus. It was a country dance, affording little opportunity for conversation, but Sir Percival was making the most of it, whispering intensely in Lucinda’s ear when the figure of the dance brought them together.

The old countess did not look up when the marquess approached. She was, as usual, attired in the style of the 1750s. The square neck of her panniered gown was cut low to display a heavy sapphire necklace. Long sapphire and diamond earrings dangled almost to her shoulders. Her shoes, peeping out from beneath the stiff skirts of her gown, had high red heels.

Her white wig had been dressed very high and decorated with ropes of pearls. In fact, she was so small and wizened that her body seemed only a little larger than her enormous wig. Her cane had silver ribbons on the top.

The marquess came up to her. She ignored him and produced a small enameled snuffbox and helped herself to a delicate pinch with all the finesse of Lord Petersham.

“My lady,” ventured the marquess, “I am worried about Lady Lucinda. Her pallor this evening is unnatural.”

The countess leaned on her cane and stared straight ahead. “It is all your fault,” she said. “You stopped the wedding. She would have been happy.”

“Come, my lady, we both know she had a lucky escape.Sir Percival Magnus is a popinjay. His only interest in her was her money.”

“He would have suited,” said the countess stubbornly. Her pale eyes fastened on him and he repressed a shudder. There was something malignant in her gaze. “See here, my fine buck,” the countess went on, “she won’t have you, so she can’t have anyone else. She needs a milksop. My son, Giles, paraded his doxies about Partletts when Lucinda was a child. So she fears men. What girl would not, after such an upbringing? Sir Percival would have done his part. I would have seen to that. She’ll never settle for a proper man, don’t you see? It’ll have to be a fribble.”

“At least, under the terms of the will, it will have to be a fribble with money. That way Lucinda can be sure of securing a man who loves her,” said the marquess.

“Love. Pooh! Moonshine and cobwebs. Marriages should be arranged. Plenty of opportunity for love after one is married.”

“If I may say so, that attitude will hardly stop her from fearing men.”

“No, you may not say so,” mocked the countess. “Anyway, I am sure you will not live long, so she will be able to do as she pleases.”

“I beg you …”

“Say no more. Lady Lucinda is not your concern. She is mine. She is the only person I have ever loved. I will do anything to ensure her happiness.”

“It is of no use talking to you, ma’am. You have obviously taken me in dislike.”

“And why not? You—a man who kidnaps little girls!”

He bowed stiffly and turned away.

“Do you like chocolates, my lord?” came her voice from behind him.

“No, my lady,” he said.

“Pity,” she said with a chuckle.

As he walked away, he suddenly remembered that box of chocolates, which had disappeared so strangely. Had the countess sent them? And if so, why?

He settled down to watch Lucinda like a hawk, waiting for an opportunity to get her alone. If he simply went up to her and asked her to dance, she might refuse.

The ball was being held in a mansion in Cavendish Square. The theme was a “rose” ball. There were roses everywhere, in great vases, growing in pots, and climbing trellises.

Lucinda was wearing a white muslin gown with a silver overdress, the clasps of which were made of silver filigree and diamonds. A collar of diamonds shone at her neck and a thin gold chain of diamonds had been threaded through her hair.

Even had she been plain, thought the marquess cynically, such a display of fine jewels would have drawn the men to her like moths. There was something outrageous about Lucinda’s display of jewels, a flaunting of the social law that no unmarried miss should appear in anything other than modest pearls, garnets, or coral. Also, her jewels all had modern settings, a flagrant show of wealth. Every female in the room seemed to evince some signs of jealousy as they looked at Lucinda. Perhaps they felt it was surely enough to have such great beauty without having to gild it with some of the finest stones London society had ever seen.

Then he remembered her saying that to her the jewels were simply the toys she had never had. Perhaps her horrible upbringing had flawed her for life. Perhaps she would always shrink from men and end up an elderly eccentric surrounded by posturing and mincing fops.

Her dance had ended. He watched her partner offer his arm to promenade with her before the next dance, as was the custom. Lucinda said something and shook her head. She moved across the ballroom floor and the marquess set out after her. She crossed the hall and went into a room reserved for ladies who wished to repair their paint or their dress.

The strains of a Scottish reel danced jauntily out from the ballroom. He stood in a shadowy recess in the hall and settled himself to wait.

A long time passed. He began to wonder whether she had been taken ill. Behind him in the ballroom, a voice announced that supper was being served upstairs. He drew back even more as the guests surged out, chattering and laughing.

Still he waited until the last guest had disappeared into the supper room, which was off the first landing of the main staircase.

He was about to summon one of the footmen and tell him to send a maid to find out what had happened to Lady Lucinda when she at last emerged. She was whiter than ever and her large eyes glittered with tears.

He took a deep breath and approached her.

“Lady Lucinda,” he said. “May I escort you to supper?”

“No,” said Lucinda in a distracted voice. “I am not hungry.”

“Walk with me a little and tell me what distresses you.”

“Nothing distresses me,” said Lucinda in a low voice. But she listlessly took his arm and let him guide her back through the now empty ballroom and out the long windows onto a deserted terrace.

The orchestra had gone upstairs to serenade the guests in the supper room and the strains of a sad little waltz drifted down to their ears.

“Now,” said the marquess. “Now, my child, you had better tell me all about it.”

Lucinda looked up at him, longing to find the courage to tell him to go away and yet feeling that if she humiliated and rejected him one more time, he would never come back, and she did not think she could bear that.

“I think …” she said slowly. She stopped and half turned her face away.

He waited, feeling that if he said anything or tried to touch her or comfort her that she would not go on.

“I think,” she began again, “that Grandmama has killed our former butler, Gotobed.”

He was about to exclaim that she was talking nonsense and then he remembered that look of peculiar malignancy in the countess’s eyes and said instead, “Go on.”

“Gotobed was an unsavory fellow who was our butler at Partletts when my father was alive. We found it hard to keep servants. My father is said to have ruined Gotobed, which is why the man had to work for us. After the masquerade ball, when I returned to Berkeley Square with Grandmama, Gotobed was waiting. It was four in the morning, but instead of telling Alexander—the butler then, the one who tried to rob Grandmama and fell in the river—to send Gotobed away, for it was a ridiculous time to see anyone, Grandmama sent me away and told Alexander to tell Gotobed to await her in the drawing room.

“Two days later when you called, I was … upset … by your presence and there was a peculiar smell in the room. I raised the lid of the chest and saw Gotobed … dead … with a great wound in his chest. That is—that is why I kissed you. I did not want you to see the body. I feared it had something to do with Grandmama.

“I went to her room after you had left and she said it was all nonsense. She told me to go and lie down. Alexander brought me a glass of wine. I drank it and immediately fell asleep. When I awoke, Grandmama told me to go to the drawing room and look in the chest. I would find, she said, that I had been imagining the whole thing. There was nothing in the chest but a heap of curtains and a carnival mask. Grandmama told me that the upsetting nature of my father’s death, combined with the brutality of my upbringing, must have overset my mind. I believed her. I fell asleep this afternoon and had terrible dreams. When I awoke, it was to the realization that I had actually seen what I first thought I saw. I did see the dead body of Gotobed.”

“If his body had been in the chest,” said the marquess carefully, “then it would have to have been removed and the mask and curtains substituted. Your grandmother, Lady Lemmington, has not the strength to lift the body of a man and take it anywhere. She would need help.”

“Yes,” said Lucinda quietly. “And there was Alexander—Alexander who so mysteriously tried to attack Grandmama for one hundred pounds. One of the footmen told me that Grandmama had sent him to the bank to draw two thousand pounds, but that she sent another footman after him to say that the sum had to be changed to one hundred pounds. Do you see what worries me? Two thousand pounds might be sufficient to enroll Alexander as an accomplice to murder. But not one hundred pounds. You see, if she had decided to get rid of Alexander and make it look like theft, she would not need two thousand pounds. It was most odd to ask a butler to accompany us instead of one of the footmen.”

“If Gotobed was killed and put in that chest, there may still be bloodstains,” said the marquess. “What I suggest is this. Send a note upstairs to your grandmother saying you are ill and have gone home. That will give us time to examine the chest before she returns.”

“I must be mistaken,” whispered Lucinda.

“Probably,” he agreed. “But if you found the chest clean, and if you also found there were no signs of it having been recently scrubbed, it would put your mind at rest.”

“Oh, yes,” said Lucinda fervently. “And I would so much like my mind to be at rest.”

Upstairs in the supper room, Sir Percival was talking earnestly to an odd companion. The man facing him across the small table in the corner of the room was heavyset, boorish, middle-aged, and plainly dressed.

“So you see, Mr. Webster,” complained Sir Percival, “I have done my best, but I fear she will have none of me.”

Mr. Harry Webster picked at his teeth with a goose quill and said nastily, “Don’t surprise me a bit.”

“But if she does not marry me—or anyone else,” said Sir Percival, “you won’t get the Sotheran money.”

“And you won’t get the half of it as arranged,” said Mr. Webster. “You’ll need to force her to marry you.”

“I cannot see how I can achieve that,” said Sir Percival.

“No, I don’t suppose you can,” said Mr. Harry Webster brutally. “Look, we’ll do something like this. We’ll call on them latish one evening. I’ll drug the old girl’s drink. You force Lucinda up to her bedroom at gunpoint and do what’s necessary. I suppose you do know how to go about it? Then she’ll be glad to marry you.”

“But violence!” exclaimed Sir Percival. “I detest violence.”

“But you like money,” Mr. Webster pointed out. “If you have a better idea, let me know.”

They put their heads together and began to talk long and seriously as the orchestra moved back downstairs and the dance commenced again.

Lucinda had addressed her note to the Countess of Lemmington instead of to the Dowager Countess of Lemmington. The footman, therefore, handed her letter to Lady Lemmington. Her aunt read the note, murmured, “Poor Lucinda,” and resolved to call at Berkeley Square the following afternoon. In a corner of the supper room, the dowager countess slept on. She had fallen asleep directly after eating a heavy meal. She had not been worried about Lucinda. There was one thing about Lucinda’s fear of men, thought the old lady, as her eyes had begun to close, it made the life of a chaperone easy.

*  *  *

Lucinda and the marquess entered the house in Berkeley Square and went into the drawing room. Whitaker, who had been first footman until the disappearance of Alexander and who had been elevated to butler, asked them if he could bring them anything. Lucinda said they did not desire anything and wished to be left alone.

Whitaker was too new to the job and too proud of his position to put it in jeopardy by giving Lady Lucinda a lecture on the folly of being unchaperoned. He bowed and withdrew.

“Now,” said the marquess, taking down a branch of candles from the mantel. Lucinda shivered and looked anxiously toward the chest. He threw back the lid and, setting the candelabrum on the floor, lifted out the carnival mask and then the curtains. He raised the flaring candles again and knelt down.

“Come here,” he said.

Lucinda approached slowly. There would be no signs of violence, she thought. He would consider her a hysterical female who had read too many Gothic romances.

She stood behind him and looked down. He pointed a long finger at the side of the chest where there was a dark brown stain.

“Blood, if I am not mistaken,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. He straightened up and looked down at her compassionately. “If Lady Lemmington had any hand in this,” he said, “she must have been very frightened. Do you think that Gotobed knew something about her and was trying to extort money?”

Lucinda shook her head miserably.

“How did your father die?” he asked.

“He fell through the bannisters of the main staircase at Partletts,” said Lucinda. “The wood was rotten.”

“And where was Lady Lemmington?”

“I heard my father scream and came running. When I arrived, Grandmama was making her way down the stairs. I called out. She turned and told me not to look—but I looked just the same.”

“And where was Gotobed?”

“When I came down he was in the hall bending over the body.”

“Do you know if your grandmother had given him any money?”

“I know she bought him a pig farm. He claimed to have lost his because of something my father did.”

“But was it not the Earl of Lemmington’s, your uncle Charles’s, business to make any reparation?”

“I thought it odd at the time,” said Lucinda. “I mean, Gotobed had not been with us very long. In fact, none of the servants had. I would have thought it more normal to have investigated his claim before giving him any money. He might have been lying. He might have been a bad pig farmer. But if you are suggesting that Grandmama killed my father, her own son, I cannot believe that.”

“I spoke to her this evening. She was very odd. She said she did not think I would live long.”

The marquess rang the bell. “What are you going to do?” asked Lucinda.

“Question the butler.”

“But Grandmama might return!”

“If she is innocent, she has nothing to fear.”

Lucinda looked at him helplessly as Whitaker came into the room.

“When the previous butler was here—Alexander,” said the marquess, “and you were first footman, can you remember if Lady Lemmington sent you to the bank?”

“Yes, my lord, for it was on the day Alexander disappeared. She sent me with a letter to draw two thousand pounds. I remember Alexander asking me where I was going and how much I was to bring back. Then when I was at the bank, the second footman, James, arrived with another letter canceling the first. I was to draw only one hundred pounds. I came back with the money and gave it to her just before she left with Alexander.”

“Tell me, did Alexander have any pressing need of money?”

“Not that I know of, my lord.”

“Was he in any trouble?”

“Well, I don’t suppose there’s any harm talking now that he’s gone. He was rumored to have got one of the kitchen maids in the family way and to have given her some medicine to get rid of the baby. The girl died and her father came around the day before Alexander disappeared, threatening to kill him, and it took four of us to throw him out.”

The marquess took out a guinea and handed it to the butler. “Please do not repeat this conversation. You may go.”

“Not a word shall pass my lips,” said Whitaker, bowing his way out backwards as if before a royal presence.

When he had gone, the marquess said to Lucinda, “Do not look so stricken, nothing has been proved.”

“But if it is proved,” said Lucinda shakily, “what sort of monster does that make me? A murderess for a grandmother and a brute for a father.”

“It leaves you exactly as you are. A beautiful young woman. Many of us have even had parents who died raving mad, but we do not stop to think that makes us mad ourselves.”

“Did your parents die mad?”

“No, they both died of the typhus.”

“Then, there you are!” said Lucinda, exasperated. “You do not know what you are talking about.”

“I have friends with rotten parents. Mr. Flanders’s father is an evil, brutish sot, and yet Tommy Flanders is the soul of kindness. Oh, Lucinda, marry me, and then I can protect you from whatever is going on here.”

“I do not know you, my lord. I do not understand you. You upset me.”“As you upset me, Lucinda. Come kiss me.”

“Sir, how can you even consider love when I am in this frightful coil?”

“I could consider making love to you in the bowels of hell itself. Come here!”

“Grandmama!” said Lucinda as there came the rumble of a carriage’s wheels outside. “She must not find you here.”

“On the contrary, I am going to stand my ground and ask her leave to pay my addresses to you.”

“No!” shrieked Lucinda, clawing at his sleeve. “I must hide you. Come with me.”

So great was her terror that he let her drag him out into the hall and up the stairs. He tried to protest, but all she would gasp was “Quickly. Oh, quickly.”

She pulled him into the bedroom, then slammed and locked the door just as they heard the hall door opening downstairs.

Lucinda motioned him to silence and pressed her ear against the bedroom door. Faintly, she heard her grandmother asking, “Is Lady Lucinda home, Whitaker?”

“Yes, my lady” came the butler’s voice. “I think she has gone to her room. Can I bring you anything?”

“No, Whitaker. Is Yvonne still visiting those Frenchie relatives of hers in Soho?”

“Yes, my lady. I can send one of the housemaids to prepare you for bed.”

“I can take care of myself. Good night, Whitaker.”

“Good night, my lady.”

“It is a good thing her lady’s maid is not at home,” whispered Lucinda. “I had forgotten about her and she would have felt it her duty to tell Grandmama about your visit. Oh, she will surely try to see me and she will be suspicious if she finds my door locked.”

She looked about frantically and then jerked open the double doors of a large William and Mary wardrobe. “In here,” said Lucinda urgently.

“I suppose I must, now that I am really in a compromising position,” he said.

He climbed into the wardrobe among the scented dresses and Lucinda closed the doors on him.

She scrambled out of her clothes and into her nightgown. She unlocked her bedroom door and then dived into bed and shut her eyes tightly.

Inside the wardrobe, the marquess could hear the old countess mounting the stairs.

She swung open Lucinda’s door and stood silhouetted on the threshold, leaning on her cane, a fantastic figure in her antique clothes.

“Lucinda,” she said softly.

Lucinda lay very still, forcing herself to breathe rhythmically. Lady Lemmington approached the bed. It creaked slightly as she sat down on the edge and bent over her granddaughter. “Sleep well,” Lucinda heard her murmur, “and no harm will come to you. Grandmama will see to that. Someone said you left with Sunningburgh. That will never do. He is not to be trusted. He must go.”

She gave a little laugh, and inside the wardrobe the marquess felt his flesh creep.

There was another little creak as the old lady rose from the bed and then her slow, measured footsteps punctuated with the tapping of her cane could be heard as she made her way out. The bedroom door closed and he could hear her tapping her way along the corridor to her own bedroom.

Gently, he opened the wardrobe door and stepped down. Lucinda was sitting up in bed, her face a pale disk in the gloom of the bedroom.

The marquess lit the candle beside her bed and looked down at her. “I think, Lucinda,” he said, “your grandmother means to kill me.”

“She cannot have meant that,” whispered Lucinda. “She only said ‘He must go.’ She could have meant you must go out of my life.”

“I do not think I was meant to go out of your life,” he said, sitting down beside her and gathering her into his arms. “How you shake and tremble. I shall not hurt you.”

“Men hurt women,” said Lucinda. “My father’s doxies told me of what they do in the brothels.”

“Men do many things in love and war. Men of a low type will degrade other men as well as women. Men will torture other men. But there are men like myself who fall in love, and that is another business entirely. I not only want to hold you and make love to you, but to look after you and cherish you as well.”

“I want to believe you,” said Lucinda.

He bent and kissed her, sinking his mouth deep into her own, pressing her back against the pillows, feeling her young breasts pressing against his chest. She lay passive in his arms until, with a little moan in the back of her throat, she wound her arms tightly about him and kissed him back. All at once it seemed safe and warm and secure, a steady world, a world of passion, but peculiarly free from shame.

The very innocence of her passion made her bolder than she might have been had she been more experienced. His breath became ragged and his roving hands above and then below the blankets met with no rejection.

He made a move to his cravat to wrench it off. But he suddenly drew back. “No, Lucinda,” he said softly. “You must marry me first.”

Lucinda drew a deep breath. “Yes,” she said.

“When?”

“I do not know. Grandmama …”

“I am afraid we might have to elope.”

“Yes,” said Lucinda sadly. “I suppose that would be the safest way.”

“Could you tell Lady Lemmington you wish to go to Partletts for a few days? You could tell her the journey would be too fatiguing for her to accompany you.”

“I could try,” said Lucinda cautiously. “I think, you know, I would like to ask Mr. Venables, the curate who was so kind when you kidnapped me.”

“To our wedding?”

“No, here. There is great evil in this house. I feel the need of a clergyman.”

“I shall drive to Baxtable tomorrow and fetch him for you. But I think you should make your escape to Partletts in a week’s time. It might be dangerous to leave it longer. Now, I must go before I forget myself.”

He rose and Lucinda struggled out of bed. “I am coming downstairs with you,” she said. “I want to make sure you leave this house safely.”

She pulled a wrapper about her shoulders. He kissed her long and hard.

Then, with his arm about her waist, they went downstairs together.

The old countess was a light sleeper. She heard the soft steps in the corridor and then the creak of the stairs.

Immediately alert, she climbed out of bed, and, attired in her voluminous nightgown, she crept out of her room. She went softly to the head of the stairs. There was the murmur of voices in the hall and then the sound of the street door opening.

Whoever it was would be out in the street before the countess got a glimpse of him or her unless she could get there quickly.

She swung one spindly shank over the bannister and slid silently and quickly down its long, shining mahogany rail, appearing to fly through the air like a ghost with her nightgown billowing out about her.

She slid to a stop and fell soundlessly down on the bottom stair, crouched in the darkness, staring at the open doorway.

Lucinda was standing there clasped in the Marquess of Sunningburgh’s arms. His hawklike profile was outlined against the gray light of dawn from the square outside. He said something softly and kissed her, then he went out and Lucinda gently closed the door behind him.

While she was closing the door, the countess crept down into the hall on her hands and knees and scurried crablike behind a chair.

Humming a waltz tune, Lucinda went back up the stairs.

‘Fore George, he’s had her, thought the countess bitterly. The wolf, the sneak. He did it to spite me. Well, my fine buck, enjoy your triumph. You will not live long to enjoy it.

Chapter Nine

Unaware that the countess had seen them, Lucinda and the marquess made matters worse in the old lady’s eyes by studiously avoiding each other when they met at various functions later that week.

The countess was also puzzled by the presence of Mr. Venables, who had arrived two days after the marquess had—as far as the countess knew—spent the night with Lucinda. Lucinda would only say quietly that she was in need of spiritual guidance. With her calm air and solemn, stately manners, Lucinda once more looked like the old-fashioned child she used to be.

Lady Lucinda Esmond was used to living in unusual circumstances. She had been brought up to protect herself from her father’s drunkenness and, as she got older, from sexual attack by his friends. Having a grandmother who was a possible murderess was not a pleasant situation, but then Lucinda had not been used to pleasant situations.

She had a chance to speak to the marquess at the opera. Seeing the countess had fallen asleep, the marquess made his way quietly to her box during the performance and signaled to Lucinda to step outside.

“Have you spoken to her yet about going to Partletts?” asked the marquess.

“Not yet,” said Lucinda. “She watches me so strangely the whole time now. I am afraid she might suspect something.”

“Where is your curate?”

“He is visiting some clerical friends. Besides, Grandmama considers him too socially low to bring to the opera.”

“Have you told him anything?”

“No, but his presence in the house is a great comfort.”

“Lucinda, I think what you should do is this. You must tell your grandmother you wish to go to the country for a few days and dissuade her from coming with you. Once at Partletts, we shall seek out the vicar and we will be married by special license. Write to Lady Lemmington to say that you have delayed your return. She will not wish to follow you to the country unless she suspects you are up to something.”

“Do you love me?” asked Lucinda, looking at him gravely.

“With all my heart.”

“Lucinda!”

The Countess of Lemmington stood at the entrance to the box. Fire burned in her pale eyes as she looked at the marquess.

“On your way, sirrah!” she said haughtily. “Lucinda, come here.”

Lucinda followed her grandmother into the box.

“Now,” said the countess, “what were you doing talking to Sunningburgh?”

“He called to apologize once more for stopping my wedding,” said Lucinda.

“Does that man mean to force you to marry him?”

“No, Grandmama.”

“And yet, while he lives, you cannot marry anyone else.”

“I do not wish to marry an—” Lucinda bit her lip. She had been about to say “anyone else.”

“I have not been a strict chaperone,” said the countess. “Now, I tell you this. You will avoid the Marquess of Sunningburgh on all occasions. You must trust me. I shall see you wed to some suitable gentleman. Have you really taken Sir Percival in dislike?”

“Yes, Grandmama.”

“A pity. I knew he was after your money, but that is the way things are conducted in society. You need a tender and complacent husband, one who will be commanded by you. Your upbringing has not left you the type of woman who could cope with a strong man.”

“I now do not think that is true.”

The countess sighed. “Be guided by me, Lucinda. I have not had a happy experience of the male sex.”

“But I can just remember Grandpapa,” said Lucinda, “and I remember him as being a kind and courteous gentleman.”

“I was not talking about your grandfather,” said the countess. “Enough! You shall not speak to Sunningburgh again.”

Mr. Tommy Flanders looked anxiously at his friend when the marquess returned to his box. He was entertaining Miss Jessop and her parents and their presence stopped him from asking any questions. The marquess had not spoken of Lucinda of late and had put a damper on Tommy’s curiosity in that direction.

On the road home from the opera, Lucinda wondered how to put the proposed visit to Partletts to her grandmother without rousing the old lady’s suspicions.

As their carriage swung around in front of the Bow Street magistrates court, a torn poster with a picture of Alexander’s face fluttered in the wind. The drawing was not a good likeness, but Alexander’s name was there under a WANTED sign in heavy black type.

Lucinda shivered although the night was warm. She looked sideways at her grandmother. What did she really know about the old lady? She sat there, looking so delicate and fragile, that it seem impossible she had ever committed murder.

But Lucinda felt if she delayed matters for very much longer, something terrible might happen to the marquess.

She clasped her hands tightly together and said in as light a voice as she could manage, “I miss Partletts, Grandmama, and have it in mind to go to the country for a few days next week.”

She looked straight ahead, sensing her grandmother’s pale gaze fastening on her face.

“Why this sudden desire for country air, my child?”

“I miss my home,” said Lucinda in a low voice. “You need not accompany me, Grandmama. It would be too fatiguing for you to travel that distance for only a few days.”

There was a long silence.

“Grandmama?” prompted Lucinda.

“When do you propose to travel?”

“Next Wednesday.”

“Hmph.”

Another long silence. Lucinda fidgeted nervously. What was the old lady thinking about?

The countess was thinking hard. She had been seriously disturbed to find the marquess with Lucinda. The Marquess of Sunningburgh had upset the wedding plans and had caused Lucinda distress. Without the marquess on this earth, Lucinda would be free to do as she pleased. Remove the marquess and that would take away the last horror of Lucinda’s peculiar upbringing.

If, mused the countess, Lucinda were safe in the country, then she, Lady Lemmington, could ask the Marquess of Sunningburgh to call. She would give the servants the night off and once she had the marquess to herself, she would think of something. She saw nothing strange in Lucinda’s desire to go to the country. She had always considered Lucinda’s affection for that rotting Tudor pile, Partletts, most odd.

“Are you taking Venables with you?”

“No, Grandmama. There is no need. But if you dislike him so very much, I shall send him away.”

“He’s harmless. He don’t bother me,” said the countess. “For some things, it’s handy to have a priest about the place.”

“What things?”

“The last rites. I am very old, you know, and shall not live long.”

Lucinda’s eyes filled with tears. If only her grandmother could be proved innocent. But how could she go about asking questions and investigating without putting the countess at risk?

“So I may go,” she said quietly.

“Yes, and I shall send most of the servants back with you. They do nothing but sit about eating their heads off. I have no need of the lot of them.”

“But you will need some servants!”

“A footman and one of the maids will be sufficient for my needs.”

The next day, the marquess rode along beside the upper reaches of the Thames. He was confident he would find the place where Alexander had gone over. He, the marquess, had been holding hands with Lucinda in such a state of rapture that every bit of the scenery had become etched on his brain.

He came to the quiet stretch of water where the butler had fallen off the barge and stood looking down at the sluggishly moving river. The day was close and warm and gray. All color seemed to have been bleached out of the landscape. There was no wind and the trees with their heavy summer foliage hung over the river, their reflections moving and shifting in the green water, the only moving thing in the unnaturally still landscape.

He wheeled his horse about and rode to the nearest town.

The parish constable was a fat, beefy man like a farmer. Yes, he said, he remembered the search for the butler. Not a trace had been found of him.

“But did they search the water for his body?” asked the marquess impatiently.

The constable, Mr. Meyer, scratched his round, shaved head. His grandfather had been one of the Hanoverian soldiers brought over by King George II—the king loudly and vehemently distrusting everything British, including the army—and Mr. Meyer had inherited the Teutonic features of his German ancestors.

“Well, there didn’t seem no cause,” he said. “We was told that Lady Lemmington swore she had seen him striking out for the bank. ‘Twas only a little way to swim, I reckon.”

“I want you to round up some men and search for the body,” said the marquess.

The subsequent posse was as lethargic and slow-moving as the constable. At last, the marquess loudly promised a generous reward to whomsoever should find the body and free beer for everyone who took part in the search. With that, the whole town turned out.

It did not take long to find the butler’s body. It had become lodged in the shallows under the sweeping branches of a weeping willow

He was an ugly sight. The marquess forced himself to examine the body, but it appeared that Alexander had died by drowning.

He thanked everyone, paid the man who had found the body first, and then left a sum at one of the largest inns with instructions to give free beer to the rest.

Then he swung himself back into the saddle, listening to the sounds of merriment coming from the pub and thinking that it was only a small consolation that it was such a small town. He would gladly have supplied the whole of a city with free beer to find some definite proof of how Alexander died.

His horse was clopping wearily out into the country, and the marquess, drooping in the saddle, was thinking longingly of Lucinda when he heard himself being hailed in a high, treble voice.

He reined in his horse and twisted about. A small boy was running down the road after him.

He came to a stop by the horse’s head and looked up at the marquess. He had a round head, a shock of blond hair, and very blue eyes. He looked as Germanic as most of the townspeople, showing that many of King George’s German soldiery had made their homes there during the last century.

“Are you a real marquess?” asked the boy.

“Yes,” said the marquess impatiently.

“Why haven’t you got a crown?”

“I have one at home on the shelf, a coronet. Have you stopped me simply to ask me impertinent questions about dress?”

“You was asking questions about that butler what was found yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“I saw what happened, but I told my ma and she said she’d whip me if I told anyone.”

The marquess dismounted. “Tell me,” he said.

A look of cunning crossed the boy’s face. “I’m a poor boy, my lord,” he whined.

The marquess fished in his pocket and produced a seven-shilling piece and held it up. The boy made a grab for it, but the marquess held it above his head, out of reach. “Talk,” he commanded.

“It won’t get back to my ma? You won’t tell nobody, me lord?”

“No.”

“I saw her,” said the boy.

“Who?”

“The old lady in the funny clothes and with the long cane. I stood on the bank to listen to the music and watch all the grand people. She said something to a big chap with a fat, white face and he bent and looked over the side of the boat at the back. She said something else and he leaned farther. Then—my, she was the spry one!—she nips round behind him and drives that cane of hers into his back. Over he goes. Splash!”

“And then?”

“And then she takes her reticule and rips it open and all them pound notes flutter out on the water. I catched as many as I could. I’m a good swimmer.”

“But the butler, Alexander, did he not cry for help?”

“I heard him shouting, but I was that busy getting the money. Then I ran home and got whipped by my ma, who said I’d stole it, and when I told her, she whipped me again for lying. When the news came around about the butler, then she believed me, but she told me to keep quiet ‘cause you can’t go around accusing grand folks of murder, she says, or you end up in the dock yourself. And then she kep’ the money, see.”

The marquess silently handed the boy the seven shilling piece. He snatched it and ran off down the road toward the town as fast as he could.

Wearily, the Marquess of Sunningburgh mounted his horse. He felt sure the boy had been telling the truth. But what if he brought the evidence before the law? The boy would deny it, the authorities would pooh-pooh the idea of so great and old a lady committing murder. He must first get Lucinda out of London.

On his return, he consulted his cards and invitations, trying to guess which event Lucinda would be most likely to attend.

He then changed into his evening clothes and stuffed all the invitations for that evening into his pocket. He would drop in at all of them in the hope of finding her.

Lucinda was not at Lady Berry’s ball; she was not at Almack’s; neither was she at the opera. But at last he ran her to earth at a musicale at the Earl of Queensford’s mansion, next door to his own, in Park Lane.

Because of the sultriness of the weather, the musicale was being held in the Queensfords’ large garden at the front of the house. He exchanged a few greetings with friends and then stood in the darkness at the back of the audience, waiting for a chance to talk to Lucinda.

She was wearing a gown of gold tissue and her hair was dressed in a coronet on top of her head. She wore no ornament in her hair, but a heavy necklace of gold and rubies blazed at her neck. As if conscious of his presence, she turned her head.

He moved forward into the light and raised his hand.

She gave a jerky little nod of assent, a signal that she would try to be private with him.

A soprano was murdering Mozart, her shrill voice slicing through the warm, pleasant air and setting two disrespectful cats to start up in competition. The Earl of Queensford saw his guests growing bored and restless and put an end to the caterwauling by walking forward and saying testily, “Enough of that. Be quiet, woman.”

The soprano stopped in midshriek and stared at him haughtily. She had been engaged by Lady Queensford and did not recognize the earl. Her chest swelled and she nodded to the pianist to continue. The earl summoned two footmen who lifted the outraged soprano and carried her off.

But the concert continued. The soprano was replaced by a young Pole. He was extremely handsome in a white-faced, tortured, romantic way. “Byronic,” murmured the ladies, brightening perceptibly.

Only Lucinda fidgeted with her fan and prayed his performance would not last very long.

He played several pieces with verve and skill. The ladies applauded loudly and demanded more. The gentlemen yawned. Three more lengthy encores and finally he was finished.

Supper was announced. The guests rose, prepared to move indoors, but Lord Queensford said proudly that they would dine al fresco. A whole army of servants and caterers descended on the garden while the guests shuffled to one side. In very little time, the staff had carried out tables and chairs and hung lanterns in the trees. Chattering and laughing with delight, the guests took their places.

Lucinda hoped her grandmother would eat her usual hearty meal, for the old lady always fell asleep after a good supper.

At first, the countess picked at her food, her eyes constantly raking the guests. At last, she appeared to be satisfied that the one face she feared might be present was not and tucked into a large helping of buttered crab and washed it down with a bottle of champagne. The old countess found that French champagne activated the brain wonderfully and kept the ghosts at bay. She called for more. A plan for getting rid of the Marquess of Sunningburgh was beginning to form in her brain.

Lucinda, as the gargantuan meal plowed on, covertly observed her grandmother’s sparkling eyes and began to lose hope of getting a chance of seeing the marquess alone.

But quantities of champagne at last made it necessary for the countess to find somewhere to relieve herself. This involved a great deal of preparation, for the countess was, as ever, attired in her antique, cumbersome dress. Closed stools and chamber pots had been placed in discreet corners of the garden, but the countess knew the Queensfords’s mansion boasted a water closet and asked her footman to escort her there. Although belonging to a coarser generation, the old countess thought the modern practice of putting funny rhymes at the bottom of chamber pots in bad taste. She had, only the other day, sent two new ones back to the manufacturer because one bore the legend:

Use me well and keep me clean,
And I’ll not tell what I have seen.

And the other was emblazoned with:

It never yet was deem’d a wonder
To see that rain should follow thunder.

Lucinda waited until her grandmother had disappeared into the house and got to her feet. Several of the other guests had finished their meal and were strolling about. She neatly sidestepped various gallants until she met the marquess. Silently they moved off together around the side of the house, away from the lights and from the chatter of the guests.

“Well?” he demanded. “Did you ask her?”

“Yes,” said Lucinda softly. “All is well. She seems quite pleased that I am going and has asked me to take most of the servants with me.”

“When?”

“Next Wednesday.”

“Set out at ten in the morning,” said the marquess. “I shall catch up with you on the road and we can travel together.”

Lucinda fell silent, staring at her feet.

“What is the matter, my sweet?” he asked.

Lucinda looked up. “I am worried,” she said. “I do want to marry you, but I am so afraid.”

He took her in his arms and she leaned her head against him. “You have no reason to be afraid of me.”

“I am not afraid of you any longer,” she said, her voice muffled. “I am afraid of myself. What if I have inherited some traits of madness? What if we have a son and he turns out like my father? Oh, if only I knew Grandmama had not killed anyone, then I feel I could be at peace.”

He had meant to tell her about his findings. Now, he thought it would be folly. She would feel obliged to stay unmarried. He would marry her first and cope with her murdering grandmother afterward.

“It will be all right,” he said soothingly. “The love between us is precious and rare and sane. Kiss me. We are the only people who matter.”

She shyly raised her lips to his, feeling his passion for her, feeling her own swelling to meet it. Behind them in the garden, the noise died briefly and the countess could be heard loudly demanding the presence of her granddaughter.

“Go,” he said softly. “You will soon be my wife and all our troubles will be over. Try not to think of anything else.”

Chapter Ten

Sir Percival Magnus was feeling frightened and unwell. Mr. Webster had taken him in hand, saying he needed “toughening.”

The toughening process involved conducting the nervous fop to every brothel and den in London. In vain did Sir Percival protest. For a man about to rape a girl, he lacked the necessary guts, said Mr. Webster crudely. A few more lessons and he would be fit for the job.

It certainly was a degrading education. The chief haunts to which Sir Percival was taken were the hells of Jermyn Street and the taverns of Covent Garden, frequented by the flash coves of the sporting world. Other rendezvous were the Royal Saloon in Piccadilly, the lobby of Drury Lane Theatre, and the Round Room of Covent Garden Theatre.

The Royal Saloon’s busiest hours were between midnight and dawn. It was decorated in an eastern style. There was a main room, and along either side were curtained recesses for private parties. The balcony, decorated with trelliswork and palms, also had a series of these semiprivate boudoirs, and at the back were a billiard room and card rooms. The company included two parsons, one who owned a gaming room on the side. The other was a horse dealer. A large part of the peerage was present every night, taking lobster and inspecting the demireps and cyprians who were given the free use of the saloon. The general features of the place were drunkenness, “indecent caressing,” card sharping, dicing, and rooking of all kinds by the sharks and the women.

But Sir Percival’s pet horror was the Brydges Street Saloon in Covent Garden. It was a similar type of place to the Royal Saloon but without the fine clothes and the glamor of fashion, and with a lower depth to the iniquities practiced in its private rooms. Ex-convicts were among the regulars, and fights were common. Mostly the fights started over competitions for the latest child prostitute, seducing female children being considered a good way to avoid the pox. The saloon served elaborate suppers and fine wines at excessive prices, and had private rooms for all purposes and tastes. It was run by an elderly madam with the assistance of her thugs and was variously dubbed The Hall of Infamy and Old Mother Damnable’s.

It was after another evening at the Brydges Street Saloon that Sir Percival cried out that he had stood enough. He would rape Lucinda, he would rape a whole harem, anything, just so long as he did not have to visit another sink of vice.

Harry Webster, feeling he had pushed him just far enough, then set about bribing the Countess of Lemmington’s servants to try to find the best time to attack.

He reported to Sir Percival that the news was better than they could have hoped for. The servants, perhaps with a dim feeling that Alexander had met his fate by crossing the countess in some way, perhaps because they were genuinely honest, had refused Mr. Webster’s, bribes. But they had let fall that they were all, with the exception of one footman and one maid, to leave for the country. “What!” Mr. Webster had exclaimed. “Not even a cook left?”

They had replied no, that my lady had said she would be dining out and the maid could prepare the tea.

So Mr. Webster found they were all leaving on Wednesday. He did not know Lucinda was going with them.

“Here’s what we’ll do, Percy,” he said. Sir Percival winced. “We’ll call round and force our way in. Easy to overpower one footman and one maid. No need to drug the old girl to keep things quiet. I’ll keep her downstairs at gunpoint and you force the maid upstairs and get her to show you Lucinda’s bedroom.”

“After all the hell you have put me through,” said Sir Percival wearily, “I would have thought that raping the girl under her grandmother’s nose would be a small matter.”

“No, you have to persuade her after the deed is done that she must tell her grandmother she’s marrying you willingly. Then no one will cut up nasty.”

“What if the old countess takes us to court?”

“They all hate scandal. She won’t. And if she tried, she wouldn’t live long enough to testify.”

Sir Percival shuddered but felt he was now too steeped in sin to draw back. Furthermore, he was sure Mr. Webster would kill him in the nastiest way possible if he tried.

Wednesday, which had seemed a comfortable way away, now rushed headlong upon him. Lucinda had settled his debts. He had a fairly generous income by ordinary standards, but a pittance in the eyes of the fashionable. He could have fled to the Continent and lived fairly comfortably. But greed was his master. He was as vain as a peacock. Any time he thought of backing out, visions of jewels and carriages rose before his eyes. He tried to convince himself that the whole affair was a little like going to the dentist. He never once stopped to think what life would be like married to an unwilling bride who was well endowed with caring relatives.

For his part, Mr. Webster simply wanted the Sotheran money. His contempt for women was bottomless. What could one old lady and one naïve girl have to say in their defense? Should rumors of rape ever start circulating, most men in society would say the girl had been begging for it—and, in this, Mr. Webster was probably right.

The bluestockings and other ladies of independent means could preach about the rights of women, but everyone with any sense knew they had no rights whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the old countess was laying her own plans. Having discovered that champagne was a delightful stimulant and also effective at depressing any nasty little voices of conscience, she ordered it by the crate. Since her capacity for alcohol was enormous, Lucinda was only grateful that her grandmother seemed to have been endowed with a new lease of life. It was hard to entertain thoughts of murder when the old lady was so bright and affectionate.

Lucinda thought resolutely of the marquess. Somehow, he would know what to do.

Mr. Venables, hearing of the imminent departure of his “protector” and anxious not to be alone with the countess, who scared him, announced he would be leaving as well.

The countess made no objections but surprised Lucinda by saying she wished to see Mr. Venables in private over “a religious matter.”

Mr. Venables was middle-aged but had the trusting, ingenuous eyes of a child. He dressed soberly and combed his sparse gray hair neatly over his bald patch. He had a thin, weak face that belied a great deal of courage and strength of character.

He gloomily attended the countess in her boudoir one day before Lucinda was due to depart for the country. Lucinda had gone out driving with Mr. Tommy Flanders. Mr. Flanders had been ordered by the marquess to take Lucinda out. Flanders did not know of the proposed elopement but gathered that his friend wished him to keep an eye on Lucinda.

When Mr. Venables entered the countess’s boudoir, the old lady was sitting by the fire wearing an enormous cap. Despite the warmth of the day, the fire was crackling busily and the room was overwarm.

“Sit down, Mr. Venables,” said the countess. “I wish to make my confession.”

“Dear lady,” exclaimed Mr. Venables, “you should have warned me. I must change my dress.”

“I have no need of the trappings of the church,” said the countess. “Sit down.”

Sending up a silent prayer for courage, Mr. Venables sat down opposite her.

“I have not long to live,” said the countess, “and I must talk to someone. What I tell you must never be repeated.”

“Of course not, my lady,” said Mr. Venables firmly. “What is heard in the confessional remains between the priest and the confessor.”

“Just so. Perhaps if I explain my ways to you, then God in heaven may understand. I killed the Earl of Sotheran.”

Mr. Venables’s hands trembled and he clasped them firmly together. “Yes, my lady,” he said quietly. “Go on.”

“And yet that is not the crime that weighs most heavily on my soul. I am ashamed because I feel I was instrumental in bringing about the death of Lucinda’s mother. The Earl of Sotheran was not my son. One of my kitchen maids died giving birth to an illegitimate baby. I knew it was unlikely I should have any more children, although I had presented my husband with the heir. He agreed we should take the baby and bring it up as our own. Giles was always an ill-favored child, but he was quick and courageous and even as a young man found favor at court. There was always a streak of madness in him that touched a chord in the heart of poor King George. He was made an earl when he was still quite a young man. My husband and I felt our care of the boy had been justified. Giles never knew he was not our son. At the last, before I killed him, I appealed to him as his mother. I tried my best. In any case, after receiving his peerage, he took to drinking deep, gambling, and wenching. His health and his brains began to deteriorate.

“A friend of mine had a daughter, Sarah, who had been in love with a young redcoat. Before she and her soldier could get married, he was killed in battle. It was discovered Sarah was pregnant. A husband had to be found for her. Sarah was a gentle, beautiful, sensitive girl. But I thought that Giles would reform were he married. I approached him and suggested Sarah. To my surprise, he agreed. I did not know until later that he had immediately gone to her parents and exacted a vast sum of money from them. So they were wed, and a brutal time poor Sarah had of it. She might have lived, for she had her soldier’s child inside her to comfort her, but her short life with Giles was such hell, I am sure she was glad to escape into death. She did not live very long. Lucinda asked me if Giles were really her father, and I replied that of course he was. She must never know she is illegitimate. If I had left Sarah alone, she would have survived her shame. But there you are. Something broke in my head that day I went to Partletts, meaning to take Lucinda away. And so I killed him.”

Mr. Venables forced himself to say nothing although his mind was reeling. The heat of the room and the dominating force of the old countess’s personality combined with her terrible confession were all making him feel faint.

“I had an idea the butler, Gotobed, had seen me and so I bought him a pig farm, hoping—had he seen me—he would understand I was paying for his silence. But he was greedy.” The countess sighed. “He came here and I killed him, then got Alexander, our new butler, to dispose of the body.”

She reached beside her chair, picked up a bottle of champagne, and filled a pewter tankard to the brim. Then she drained it off, sighed, and dabbed at her withered lips with a wisp of lace handkerchief.

“That’s better,” she said. “Where was I? Ah, yes. Alexander. Well, he came to me for more money and I knew that was only the beginning, and at all costs Lucinda must not be upset. So I killed him. We were out in Lord Barnstable’s barge, and I pushed him over.”

Mr. Venables could feel a delicious sensation of relief spreading throughout his whole body. And to think he had believed one word of this fantastic story. This very old lady had barely the strength to cross the road unaided. She most certainly could not have killed anyone.

Patiently, he settled back in his chair to hear her out. For Lady Lucinda’s sake, he would keep the old lady quiet and not disturb her with any protests.

“I have nearly cleared up everything,” the countess was saying. “There is only one outstanding problem. Sunningburgh. He must die. You do understand that, Mr. Venables, do you not?”

“Oh, yes, my lady.”

“Sensible man. Ah, yes, you see under the terms of the Earl of Sotheran’s will, Lucinda can only marry the Marquess of Sunningburgh. If she marries anyone else, the money goes immediately to a distant relative, Harry Webster. Webster is a lecher and a fool. He is remarkably like Giles. I do not like Sunningburgh. You remember he kidnapped Lucinda?”

“That was a Captain Mark Chamfrey.”

“He is now the Marquess of Sunningburgh. The wicked flourish like the green bay tree. But he must go. I shall kill him tomorrow night.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Now, there are a few minor sins I should like to clear up. Have some champagne.”

“Thank you, my lady,” said Mr. Venables, who was beginning to enjoy himself. He had heard confessions from the senile before and could only marvel at their powers of invention.

The countess talked for about another hour, stopping from time to time to ring for more champagne.

At last she finished and looked affectionately at the curate. She took a large diamond ring from her finger and handed it to him.

“I could not accept anything so valuable,” gasped Mr. Venables.

“Oh, take it, man.”

Mr. Venables looked in awe at the large sparkling ring. Then he thought of all the clothes and food it would buy for the poor of the parish. He thanked her and tucked it away in his pocket. He would say prayers that very day for this poor, demented old lady.

Feeling very spry and refreshed, the old countess called for her carriage and asked to be driven to her bank where she drew out a huge sum of money. Then she went to the jewelers and bought all of the finest stones she could see, had them put in a large wash leather bag, and fastened it under her skirts and petticoats to a belt around her waist. From there, she went to her lawyers and added a codicil to her will to say that any jewels found on her body after her death should go to Lady Lucinda Esmond.

Sir Percival was busy as well. He was determined to make every preparation to ensure he could rise to the occasion. It was not every day one actually planned to rape someone. There was a firm belief that the breath of young girls did much to prolong life and to stiffen up the sinews and every other flagging part of the anatomy that needed stiffening.

So the worried fop hung about the environs of a young ladies’ seminary, breathing deeply. The principal of the seminary, alarmed to see an exquisite young man gasping outside her academy, suspected all sorts of dark and terrible things and called the constable. Fortunately for Sir Percival, the constable also believed in the efficacy of a maiden’s breath and so he joined Sir Percival in his deep-breathing exercises. The constable said he was sure it was doing him a power of good, but Sir Percival only felt weaker and more worried then ever.

He took himself over to the City. A bottle of Balsamic Corroborant, that well-known aphrodisiac, would no doubt do the trick.

He turned into a dark apothecary’s shop, grateful to find it deserted except for a scruffy young man who was cleaning the shelves.

Sir Percival asked for the aphrodisiac in a hushed whisper. His manner was so deferential and so respectful that Jerry Biggs, the shop boy, felt his chest swell with pride. His master, the apothecary, had stepped out to the local tavern, the George and Vulture, telling his boy to inform any customers that he would be back within the hour. Jerry knew nothing of his master’s work, being employed to clean the shop, take down and put up the heavy shutters, and make the deliveries. But he had watched his master at work many times. His master, Mr. Bundle, was a sour man who often said his clients would take any muck, and that any muck would work, too, provided said client believed in it.

On the spur of the moment, Jerry decided to make himself some money in Mr. Bundle’s absence.

“Certainly, my lord,” he said, elevating Sir Percival up the ranks of the peerage.

He dived into the back shop, found a clean bottle, and proceeded to fill it with a mixture of all the prettiest-colored potions he could see. Then he took it out to Sir Percival and demanded a guinea.

“A guinea!” exclaimed Sir Percival. “Your advertisement in the Morning Post says five shillings.”

Jerry thought quickly. “Ah, but the price has gone up because it’s now”—he winked horribly—”double the strength.”

“Oh, in that case,” said Sir Percival, reluctantly producing two seven-shilling pieces, a crown, and a florin, “I suppose it’s worth it.”

“May the Good Lord strike me dead if it ain’t.” said Jerry, and Sir Percival took the bottle and left, feeling more confident that he had done for some time.

On the following morning, the Marquess of Sunningburgh was preparing to leave. It would have been pleasant, he reflected, to have taken Tommy along to be brideman, but it was safer to leave his friend in ignorance. The Dowager Countess of Lemmington might yet decide on mass murder after she learned of the wedding. He could not think of how to stop her but decided to marry Lucinda first and then tackle the old lady with what he knew in private afterward.

His butler came in and delivered a letter. The marquess broke the seal and crackled open the parchment, frightened that Lucinda might have had second thoughts. It was from the Dowager Countess of Lemmington.

“My lord,” she had written, “I wish you to present yourself at our home in Berkeley Square at eleven o’clock this evening. You will learn something to your advantage.”

He heaved a sigh of relief. She had obviously no suspicion he meant to follow Lucinda to the country. He wrote a reply, accepting her invitation. That way, she would remain convinced, if she had any lingering doubt, that he was still in town.

He set out in his racing curricle at quarter past ten, hoping that Lucinda’s carriage was already in the lead, not daring to call at Berkeley Square to make sure in case the old countess should see him and become suspicious.

He caught up with the old countess’s cumbersome traveling carriage, in which Lucinda was traveling, on the outskirts of London. Despite the exclamations of surprise and protests from her lady’s maid, Lucinda joined the marquess in his carriage.

Lucinda welcomed the marquess as if this meeting were the most ordinary thing in the world. She remarked calmly that it was another fine day as she settled down beside him in his carriage. He looked at her placid face and felt a qualm of unease. Lucinda, he felt, had refused to absorb any of the horror in which she had been living, keeping it at bay by assuring herself it all did not matter. Soon the horror would break like a wave in her mind, of that he was sure.

He could only thank God they had got away safely and that when Lucinda faced reality, he would be on hand to comfort her.

The Countess of Lemmington was beginning to feel tired. She fortified herself with more champagne, called the remaining footman and maid, and told the gratified pair to take themselves off to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and to stay there all night. She answered their unspoken questions by dropping one withered eyelid and saying she was going to entertain a beau. She then gave them a pound each. The maid and footman argued a little outside as to whether to go or not. It was not often they each had a whole pound to spend and to save it seemed the more prudent policy. But James, the footman, said to Martha, the maid, he was sure the old lady was a witch and would surely find out if they didn’t go and do exactly as instructed. The maid agreed but remarked it was marvelous that such an old lady could still attract a man.

“Anyone as rich as she can always get a man,” said the footman cynically, and the pair set off arm in arm.

Once they were gone, the dowager countess went down to the kitchens and took out two large cans of oil that were kept for the lamps. They were very heavy and she wondered whether she would have the strength to take them upstairs. She drank some more champagne and poured the oil off into various bottles and then carried the oil upstairs, two bottles at a time.

Back in the drawing room, she poured the oil over the chairs and around the fireplace, and also soaked the floorboards near the fireplace.

Then she poured herself a tankard of champagne and sat down to wait.

The knocking on the street door at ten in the evening startled her. It could not be Sunningburgh. She sat unmoving, waiting for whoever it was to go away.

The knocking grew louder and more insistent. Reluctantly, she rose to her feet. It might be some friend who, alarmed not to get a response, might assume she was ill.

She swung open the street door and received a push on the face that sent her reeling backwards. Mr. Harry Webster and Sir Percival Magnus walked into the hall and slammed the door behind them.

“Get her up,” commanded Mr. Webster, “and take her into that room over there.” That room was the drawing room. The countess struggled to her feet and picked up her fallen cane. “I am quite able to manage by myself,” she said.

Mr. Webster leveled a large pistol at her. “Scream or cry out and it will be the worse for you,” he said. “Where are your servants?”

“Gone to the country.”

“You kept two.”

“Yes, I sent them away for the night.”

Sir Percival found himself becoming unnerved by the old lady’s calm. He and Mr. Webster followed her into the drawing room. She sat down in a chair by the window. Mr. Webster took up a position by the fireplace and Sir Percival by the door.

“Where’s Lady Lucinda?” demanded Mr. Webster.

The countess hesitated. She felt sure if she said Lucinda was in the country, then they would shoot her so that she would not interfere with any further plans. It was all at once obvious to the countess why they had come to the house. If Lucinda were constrained to marry Sir Percival, then Mr. Webster would get the Sotheran money. The countess was bitterly ashamed of her own judgment. To think she had once considered Sir Percival a suitable husband for her darling Lucinda!

“She is upstairs,” she said, rising to her feet and picking up a branch of candles. “I will fetch her.”

“No, you won’t,” said Mr. Webster. “Percy’ll do that. Go to it, Percy!”

“I must take a restorative,” said Sir Percival through white lips. He pulled out the small bottle he had got from the apothecary’s, put it to his lips, and drained the contents in one gulp. “It tastes rather pleasant,” he said in tones of surprise. As last words, they were not very memorable, but then Sir Percival was not a very memorable gentleman. His look of surprise was replaced by one of shock. He fell on the floor, his heels drummed frantically against the carpet, and then he lay still.

“The fool!” hissed Harry Webster. He forgot about the gun in his hand. He went and knelt down by the dead Sir Percival and shook him frantically.

The countess gave a long sigh. She went to the door and turned around.

“You are,” she said, “Mr. Webster, I presume. Then good-bye, Mr. Webster.” She tossed the branch of candles onto the floor and nipped out of the drawing room and locked the stout mahogany door behind her. The last glimpse she had of Mr. Webster was his horrified face as it disappeared behind a sheet of flame.

The countess walked out of the house. Had it been Sunningburgh who had called, she had meant to perish with him. She felt very tired. She hailed a passing hack and told the jehu to take her to Westminster Bridge. Tears rolled down her withered cheeks as the carriage creaked its way from Berkeley Square. “I can’t seem to do anything right,” she mourned. “I meant to protect Lucinda from Sunningburgh, never knowing that a greater peril faced her.”

When the hack reached the middle of Westminster Bridge, she opened the trap with her long cane and called to the driver to stop. She paid him and waited until he had driven off.

A thin fog was starting to rise from the river.

“Once more I must make an effort,” she said aloud. “I only hope my dear Lucinda will understand and forgive me. I was mistaken in my dislike of Sunningburgh. She would have been better with him than Percival.”

She looked about her. The bridge was temporarily deserted. She went over and stood in one of the bays. The lights of an approaching carriage appeared at the south end of the bridge.

With a herculean effort, she mounted to the top of the parapet and stood there for a moment, a glittering, fantastic figure in her jewels and old-fashioned gown.

A cry of alarm came from somewhere. There was the sound of running feet and a voice cried, “Don’t do it!”

The countess jumped.

Chapter Eleven

Lady Lucinda Esmond was preparing for her wedding. It was six months since the house in Berkeley Square had burned to the ground. The two horribly charred remains found in what was once the drawing room had been identified as those of two men, but no one connected the bodies with the missing Sir Percival and the missing Mr. Webster.

The news had reached the marquess and Lucinda two days afterward, shattering their country idyll. They had returned to town immediately. The delay in searching for the Dowager Countess of Lemmington had been caused by the time it took the authorities to turn in a report on the sex of the charred bodies. Once it was known that the old lady had not perished in the fire, the hunt was on. Advertisements were put in all of the newspapers, and it was then that a coachman and a young man had come forward to say they had seen an old lady answering the description of the dowager countess leaping to her death from Westminster Bridge.

There was no doubt that the Countess of Lemmington had committed suicide. She had left a letter with her lawyers to be given to Lucinda in the event of her death, but all it contained was a short statement wishing Lucinda every happiness.

Only the Marquess of Sunningburgh knew definitely why the countess had taken her own life. He was sure the fire had been meant to burn him to death. He had not told Lucinda of the note he had received from the countess. He had not told her of his findings about Alexander. One day he might tell her all about it, but only when time had healed the scars inflicted on her mind by the brutal Earl of Sotheran. Lucinda had remained abnormally calm until a month after her grandmother’s suicide, a month during which the army and volunteers had combed the banks of the Thames, trying to find the countess’s body, and then she had broken down completely. Her aunt and uncle, Lord and Lady Lemmington, who had come to stay with her at the new town house in Hanover Square, were frightened to see her going to completely to pieces. They sent for the marquess, who commanded that he be left alone with Lucinda. Then he had taken her in his arms and rocked her and let her cry her heart out.

After that, Lucinda had been more normal and was even able to laugh. The marquess did not know she was plagued with one last fear—her wedding night. She was frightened that the intimacies of sex would make her repulse him, that they would disgust her as the stories of the doxies had done.

But the fear of losing him was even greater. It was, however, a fear that did not show. Yvonne, the lady’s maid, pinned a lace veil on Lucinda’s head and remarked it was a pity Madame, the countess, was not alive to see how beautiful her granddaughter looked on her wedding day.

Lucinda thought of her grandmother, that remarkable old lady, as she stood obediently while the maid added the last touches to her wedding gown. She had obviously been unable to bear the weight of guilt caused by the killing of Gotobed, thought Lucinda. At least at her great age, the fall from the bridge would have made death instantaneous. Lucinda had received a comforting letter from Mr. Venables in which he said he was convinced that her years had turned the countess’s brain and she was not to be judged harshly for her actions. He meant suicide, but Lucinda thought he meant murder and was absolving her grandmother of her sins, for Mr. Venables had said the countess had made her confession the day before she died.

“I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Venables,” said old Mrs. Hammond, a widow fallen on hard times, as the curate handed her a supply of groceries. “I would have died of starvation if it hadn’t been for you.”

“Do not thank me,” said Mr. Venables. “The one you have to thank is the late Dowager Countess of Lemmington. I should be obliged if you would mention that lady’s name in your prayers.”

Mr. Venables had shown the ring to his vicar. His vicar, a wordly man, had sold the ring at a good price and had given his curate the money, suggesting he might speculate a little on the stock exchange and perhaps increase his income. Mr. Venables turned out to be a financial wizard. As his money increased, so did the welfare and health of his parishioners. He sometimes felt frightened of his good fortune, which allowed him to give away so many useful gifts of warm clothes and food, but he reassured himself with the thought that the old countess had been one of the Lord’s angels.

The old lady who lived in a villa above the village of Santa Maria in Tuscany was regarded with awe and respect by the villagers. Despite her modish appearance—she wore the latest in high-waisted gowns, dyed her hair black, and painted her face with blanc—she was considered a deeply religious woman. She attended mass regularly and was generous with gifts of money to their little church.

Occasionally even the priest was overcome by curiosity as to what went on at that villa and what had brought such a grand English lady to their little village. But he did not get any further with the old lady’s close-mouthed English manservant than any of his flock.

He wondered how she passed her days when she was not at mass. Probably in prayer, he reflected.

High up on the hill on the terrace of her villa, the old lady stretched like a cat in the weak sunlight and called, “More champagne, John.”

“Coming, my lady.” Her squat and swarthy manservant came out with a bottle on a silver tray, opened it, and refilled her glass.

He bowed and withdrew.

The Dowager Countess of Lemmington watched him go, an affectionate smile on her face. Dear John. She owed her life to him.

She sat in the sun and sipped her champagne and once more remembered her escape from death.

Her wide skirts had slowed her fall to the water. She had sunk slowly and then something had made her start to fight to the surface. She had been taught to swim as a young girl, all those years ago when fashionable Brighton was still a little fishing village called Brightelmstone. The tide in the Thames was strong. She turned over on her back and floated downstream.

John Dwyer made his living by fishing dead bodies out of the Thames along with any other flotsam and jetsam he could manage to pick up. If the body proved to have grateful relatives, then he received a small reward. If no one turned up to claim it, he sold the body to the anatomists.

He saw the movement in the water and rowed steadily toward it, although he was sure it would prove to be a bundle of rags. He came up alongside it and found himself looking down at the calm features of a very old woman. He thought she was dead and was greedily eyeing the jewels about her neck when she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Can you get me out, fellow?” she said. “I do not wish to die after all.”

With a lot of difficulty, he managed to heave her into the boat. He wrapped her in sacking and rowed for the shore.

“If you do not turn me over to the authorities,” she said, “I will reward you well.”

He grunted assent, but he was sure she would not live till morning. He took her to the dirty hut he lived in on the water’s edge, gave her a glass of rum, and put her to bed.

To his amazement, she awoke late the next day, still very much alive, demanding food.

After she had eaten, it was then she had offered him employment. She had enough jewels in a bag at her waist, she said, to keep both of them in comfort. John often wondered why she did not think he might kill her there and then, now knowing the countess had recognized kindness in his eyes.

He was sick of his ghoulish life on the river and only too ready to jump at the chance. The countess taught him how to dress and how to speak so that he might sell her jewels without arousing suspicion. They had traveled through France and had ended up at the villa in Italy, both content with the beauty of the place.

The countess learned of Lucinda’s approaching nuptials from an English paper that had been left in the village by a traveler. It was two months old. So Sunningburgh was to have Lucinda after all. And her wedding was to take place that very day. The countess raised her glass.

“To you, Lucinda,” she said. “If you ever find out the whole truth, do not blame me. I did it all for you.”

To Lucinda, it seemed as if her wedding passed in a blur and confusion of happy guests, ringing bells, congratulations, and toasts. And then she was on the road to Partletts with her husband at her side, dreading the night ahead. The marquess had suggested they spend their first night together at a posting house. Lucinda had not managed to convince him that her home would not conjure up old, unhappy memories in her mind.

The posting house he had chosen was one of the most expensive in England. It catered only to the quality. It was furnished in the best of taste and its rooms were high-ceiling, delicately painted, and comfortable.

They ate a silent supper in their private parlor. The marquess had given up trying to make conversation after Lucinda answered all of his sallies in monosyllables.

The covers were at last removed and the wine decanters and nuts and fruit placed on the shining wood of the table.

Lucinda rose to her feet. “I shall leave you to your wine, my lord,” she said formally.

She walked past him, her eyes averted, her back as stiff as a ramrod.

He swung around and caught her arm, dragged her to him, and pulled her onto his knee.

“Afraid?” he asked.

“Very,” whispered Lucinda.

“Because of the stories told you by your father’s women?”

“Yes.”

“You do not need any lessons in the facts of life,” he said tenderly, “you need lessons in love.”

“But I do love you so,” said Lucinda brokenly. “I am only afraid that what we will do will give me a disgust of you.”

“You have only to cry ‘stop.’ That is all you have to do. Come.” He lifted her up in his arms and carried her through to their bedroom. A fire was burning brightly on the hearth. Outside the windows, snow was fluttering down.

He put her down on her feet. He closed the curtains and then came and took her face gently between his hands. “Lesson one,” he said, “is this.”

He began to kiss her: her mouth, her eyes, her chin, and then the hollow of her neck. He took his time until he could hear her breathing coming quick and fast.

He slid her gown down from her shoulders to bare her breasts. “Lesson two is this,” he said, bending to kiss them. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed and undressed her. Then he undressed himself.

“Now,” he said softly, “to continue with your education.”

He had reached as far as lesson ten when he suddenly drew back slightly. “Did you say ‘stop’?” he asked.

“No,” gasped Lucinda. “I said, don’t stop. Oh, Mark, don’t stop.”

The snow ceased to fall outside and a full moon arose, shining across the sparkling landscape. Inside the bedroom, the naked figures twisted and turned. “Lesson twenty-two …” murmured the marquess.

The late-winter dawn turned the snow to rubies. The remains of a log on the fire shuddered into ash.

Lucinda stirred with her head against her husband’s chest. “I was thinking of Grandmama,” she said. “We will never know now what happened to Alexander.”

He gathered her close again, running one appreciative hand down the silky length of her body.

“No, my love,” he said. “Where was I? Lesson fifty-six, I think. Are you disgusted yet?”

The new Marchioness of Sunningburgh stretched like a cat in shameless abandon. “Not yet.” She smiled. “But do go on. I have such a lot to learn!”