Diana the Huntress (22 page)

‘Who is the lady, Papa?”

‘Well, hah, don’t you see,’ said the vicar shuffling his feet. ‘It’s Sarah.’

‘
Sarah!
The
maid
!’

‘Don’t come those hoity-toity airs with me, miss. Sarah will do very well. Ain’t you going to
congratulate
me?’

‘Congratulations, Papa,’ said Frederica faintly.

‘A fine thing for you to have a mama, heh?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

‘Don’t look so miserable then.’

‘It is only that I sorely miss Diana. What will she think about Sarah?’

‘Don’t matter what she thinks.’

‘Minerva?’

‘See here, miss, I ain’t told Minerva or the others. They won’t be living with us but you will. So not a word until I’m ready to announce the wedding.’

After her father had left, Frederica ran to her room and lay face down on the bed. The world had fallen apart. She
would not
live at the vicarage with Sarah. She would run away from school.

Lord Dantrey left Lady Godolphin’s feeling angry and wretched. There seemed no doubt that Diana had sailed. All the way to London he had hoped to find her still there. He returned to the lodgings in Jermyn Street which he was sharing with Mr Fane. His post lay on the table just inside the door. There was a large parcel of letters which had been tied up and forwarded from Hopeminster.

He sifted through them, finally carrying the packet from Hopeminster into the living room and slitting it open. One letter addressed to him in a round feminine hand seemed to leap out at him from all the others. She had written to him after all.

He opened it quickly and scanned the contents. It was not from Diana. Frederica! That was the youngest
who was at school. He read it again carefully. Frederica had written to tell him that Diana had called at the school and was on her way to stay with Lady Godolphin. Frederica begged him to help ‘because I am sure she loves you,’ she had written in a round schoolgirlish hand.

‘Too late,’ thought Lord Dantrey ruefully.

Lady Godolphin ran screeching and whooping through her mansion like a Red Indian. She erupted into the library where the colonel was sitting beside the fire. ‘Arthur!’ she shrieked. ‘I just had a letter from Charles Armitage. It’s all right and tight. Dantrey made Emberton tell everyone he made the whole thing up so Diana can go home and she don’t need to go to ’Merica.’

‘That is wonderful news. Come and kiss me, my love.’

‘In a minute, Arthur. I must find Diana and tell her the news.’

‘Kiss me first.’

‘Oh, very well. Oh,
Arthur
…’

‘I wouldn’t go in there if I were you, Mr Armitage,’ said Mice as Diana stood with her hand on the handle of the library door.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Diana, retreating. It was very awkward living with such a pair of elderly and energetic lovebirds, she thought. ‘Will you tell Lady Godolphin when you can, Mice, that I am going out for a walk.’

‘It is not my place, sir, to wonder what is going on,’
said Mice severely, ‘but I do know you is not supposed to go out of the house.’

‘I am only going around the square,’ said Diana coldly. ‘Please let me past.’

Mice hesitated and then decided there was nothing he could do. He was not going into that library until summoned. There were some sights a man of his delicate sensibility could not stomach. If Mr Armitage wanted to walk around the square there was nothing he, Mice, could do about it.

Diana had only meant to take a short stroll but the sun was shining high above the chimney pots. It was the first real spring day after such a long winter. It had been dreadful being cooped up for so long. Her heart ached for Lord Dantrey but she thought that ache would disappear as soon as she set sail and put as many miles between them as possible. Often she thought he was haunting her. Her mind was full of him. She could hear his voice in her head, feel the touch of his lips on her mouth. She decided to take a walk in the Park.

It was almost like being back in the country again, she thought wistfully. Did Father still hunt? Or had the weight of the disgrace she had brought on the family sent him into seclusion?

‘I hate these men’s clothes,’ she thought suddenly, as she watched all the pretty debutantes in the carriage promenading along Rotten Row. ‘When I get to America I will
burn
them.’

Colonel Brian had obtained a passage for her on the
Mary Jane
which was to sail from Bristol in two weeks’ time. Two more weeks of waiting.

Lord Dantrey drove his phaeton down the Row, occasionally nodding to various acquaintances. Beside him sat Mr Fane. ‘So that is that,’ said Lord Dantrey. ‘That letter from Frederica Armitage only made matters worse. I should never have left Diana alone for a moment. I should have followed her from that wretched
salon
and proposed marriage on the spot.’

‘She has not fallen off the edge of the world, you know,’ said Mr Fane. ‘It ain’t flat. Nothing to stop you going to America. You won’t be that much behind her. Can’t expect her to marry the minute she steps off the boat.’

‘She might marry
on
the boat,’ said Lord Dantrey gloomily. ‘If she could find a horror like Emberton attractive, then it stands to reason …
Hey, you
!’

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mr Fane. A slim young man had nearly jumped a foot in the air as Lord Dantrey had shouted and then had started to run away through the trees.

‘Hold my horses,’ yelled Lord Dantrey, leaping down.

Diana had not seen him. She had only heard his shout. She dared not turn around. It could be Mr Emberton. She heard someone pounding after her and ran harder. Her hat fell off her head and rolled away unheeded across the grass.

Lord Dantrey put on a great spurt of speed and then dived and brought her down with a flying tackle and they both rolled into the centre of a clump of bushes with a great snapping and splintering of twigs.

Diana struggled and rolled over. ‘You,’ she gasped.

‘Yes, me,’ said Lord Dantrey passionately, if
ungrammatically
. ‘Kiss me.’

And Diana did, so fiercely and so well that neither of them heard the crowd who had been searching for ‘the two coves chasing each other’ pass by, leaving them unnoticed.

‘I thought you had gone,’ said Lord Dantrey at last. ‘I thought you were on your way to America. I was about to follow you.’

‘You love me,’ said Diana in a wondering voice.

‘Of course I do, you widgeon.’

‘But you can’t marry me now,’ wailed Diana. ‘Everyone will say you had to.’

‘All is well. Mr Emberton apologized to everyone and said he had made the whole thing up.’

‘Well, I must admit that is very handsome of him. I would not have expected him to … Ah, you persuaded him.’

‘With my fists. Kiss me again.’

‘Someone will see us.’

‘No one can see us. We’re right in the middle of these bushes. Kiss me.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Diana meekly.

‘Mark.’

‘Mark what?’

‘My name is Mark and are you going to kiss me or not?’

‘Yes, Mark.’

After a few moments he asked, ‘Why did you promise to marry that villain, Emberton?’

‘Because you kissed me and did not say you loved me.’

‘Fool. Me, not you.’

He kissed her passionately over and over again until they were both hot and dizzy. ‘What is this?’ he asked, his hand under her coat.

‘An old sheet,’ giggled Diana. ‘I had to bind my breasts.’

‘You will wear the best gowns from now on and you will let that poor shorn head of yours grow a proper crop of hair.’

‘You are going to bully me. You are going to tell me what to do and what to wear.’

‘Exactly. I am going to indulge in a positive orgy of kissing and
you
are going to indulge
me
.’

An hour later the shaky, dazed couple emerged from the bushes and strolled back to Lady Godolphin’s, arm in arm.

Her ladyship fell upon them as soon as they came through the door, gasping, ‘Where have you been? How
could
you? I have just had a letter from your father and there is
no
scandal and …’

‘It is all right, Lady Godolphin,’ smiled Lord Dantrey. ‘Everything is wonderful. We are to be married.’

‘God be thanked!’ said Lady Godolphin.

Lord Dantrey took Diana in his arms and kissed her.

Mice had felt, after almost a lifetime in service in Lady Godolphin’s household, that he was inured to shock. But the sight of two men passionately kissing each other right in Lady Godolphin’s hall was too much for him. He reeled down to his pantry and drank a massive measure of brandy before his hands stopped shaking.

They were all gathered at Lady Godolphin’s the next week to celebrate Diana’s engagement; all the sisters, the in-laws, the vicar and Squire Radford, Colonel Brian and Mr Fane.

Frederica could only be glad that her father had shown some good taste in not producing Sarah. That bombshell had still to be dropped.

She had given up her plans for running away from school once she had heard of Diana’s engagement and the end of the scandal. Diana would know what to do about Sarah.

But Diana seemed to have passed into another world where no one existed for her but Lord Dantrey. Frederica decided gloomily she would have to run away after all. She could not bear the idea of having Sarah as a stepmother.

‘I’ve done very well,’ said the vicar, much puffed up in his own conceit. ‘No one can say I did not do the best for my daughters. Why, I bet you I could marry Frederica off to a duke!’

Everyone laughed, except Frederica. ‘With Sarah as stepmother,’ she thought sadly, ‘I will be lucky if anyone wants to marry me!’

Diana looked out of her rosy world and saw the shadow on Frederica’s face. ‘I do not think Freddie is happy,’ she whispered to Lord Dantrey.

‘That will never do,’ he said. ‘Do you know she wrote to me and told me you loved me?’

‘As I do … so very much,’ said Diana, and, as he smiled down into her eyes, she forgot about Frederica
and everything else except the man standing beside her.

‘What are we doing in
York
of all places?’ grumbled Mr Peter Flanders.

‘We’re keeping out of the road until the storm dies down,’ said Mr Emberton. ‘A pox on that Armitage girl. I’ll get even with her one day, see if I don’t.’

‘Look out!’ cried Mr Flanders. ‘You’re about to walk under a ladder. That’s unlucky, you know.’

‘Don’t be silly. You sound just like Diana Armitage with her curst cats and her damned gypsies.’

Mr Emberton shouldered his way roughly under the lamplighter’s ladder. The lamplighter let out a hoarse cry of warning.

Too late.

His can of whale oil upended and cascaded down on Mr Emberton’s head.

And as he staggered along the street, wiping his eyes, and cursing Mr Flanders who was dancing beside him, chattering with laughter, a black cat slunk out of a doorway and crept across his path.

M. C. Beaton
is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries
featuring
heroine Lady Rose Summer, the Travelling Matchmaker Regency romance series and a
stand-alone
murder mystery,
The Skeleton in the Closet
– all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit www.agatharaisin.com for more.

The Six Sisters

Minerva • The Taming of Annabelle • Deirdre and Desire
Daphne • Diana the Huntress • Frederica in Fashion

The Edwardian Murder Mystery series

Snobbery with Violence • Hasty Death • Sick of Shadows
Our Lady of Pain

The Travelling Matchmaker series

Emily Goes to Exeter • Belinda Goes to Bath • Penelope Goes to Portsmouth
Beatrice Goes to Brighton • Deborah Goes to Dover • Yvonne Goes to York

The Agatha Raisin series

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Vicious
Vet Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener • Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage • Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death • Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam • Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate • Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance • Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon
Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor
Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye
Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison • Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride
Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body • Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns

The Hamish Macbeth series

Death of a Gossip • Death of a Cad • Death of an Outsider
Death of a Perfect Wife • Death of a Hussy • Death of a Snob
Death of a Prankster • Death of a Glutton • Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Charming Man • Death of a Nag • Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Dentist • Death of a Scriptwriter • Death of an Addict
A Highland Christmas • Death of a Dustman • Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Village • Death of a Poison Pen • Death of a Bore
Death of a Dreamer • Death of a Maid • Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Witch • Death of a Valentine • Death of a Sweep
Death of a Kingfisher

The Skeleton in the Closet