Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus (71 page)

“And Mr. Bassett?”

“He’s gone to the vicarage and from there he said he was going to London,” said Mr. Masters. “His lordship said to tell you to rest, my lady, and that he would be back this evening.”

“And Francine?” asked Tilly quietly. “Where is Francine?”

Three heads shook and three faces looked at her with sympathy. “We don’t know,” said Mrs. Judd. “Leastways she said nothing to nobody here about leaving. You never can tell with them Frenchies, you know. Flighty, that’s what.”

“I suppose I had better hire a lady’s maid,” said Tilly.

“If I might make a suggestion, my lady,” said Mrs. Judd, “I happen for to know that Lady Archison’s lady’s maid is not happy in her position, and she’s a wonder with hair.”

Tilly smiled faintly. “I need someone to do something with my hair. I’ve been spoiled by Francine. I look like a schoolgirl again.”

Mrs. Comfrey shook her head slowly. “No, my lady, that you never will again, if you’ll forgive my speaking so plain. You look more natural-like. You don’t want to look old before your time, my lady.”

But Tilly could not believe her. It was Francine’s creation that Philip had fallen in love with and she was frightened of losing him.

During the long afternoon of his absence, she worked and slaved on her appearance with the help of one of the housemaids.

By early evening, when the dressing gong rang, she was already primped and curled and painted and corseted and thoroughly miserable. She dismissed the housemaid and looked at herself in the long glass.

An enameled, fussy stranger stared back at her. The dress the housemaid had chosen for her was one that Francine had refused to let her wear. It was in Tilly’s favorite color, pink, and had a long row of ruffles and velvet bows from throat to hem.

Why on earth did I ever think pink was a good color for me?
thought Tilly wonderingly.
This will never do
.

She rang the bell and ordered the surprised housemaid to unfasten the long rows of buttons on the back and to help her out of her dress. Then she demanded cans of hot water and washed and scrubbed the enamel from her face and shampooed the frizz vigorously from her hair. “Oh, my lady,” breathed the anguished housemaid, “whatever will Mrs. Judd say to me?”

“Don’t care,” came Tilly’s voice, muffled by her wet hair as it hung in a heavy curtain in front of her face as she knelt before the fire, trying to dry it quickly. Tilly straightened up. “Simply tell Mrs. Judd that you are following my orders.”

“Shall we wear the black velvet, my lady?”

“No, we will not,” said Tilly. “We will wear that lawn thing Francine gave me.”

The housemaid bit her lip in disapproval. Fancy having all these gorgeous silks and satins and settling for lawn. For dinner too!

Tilly finally descended the stairs to wait for her lord, and hearing, with a quickening heartbeat, the sound of carriage wheels on the gravel outside, she rushed quickly into the drawing room and looked anxiously at her reflection in the glass. The lawn dress was of a pale leaf green with a high ruched neckline. It was cut in simple, yet almost severe, lines with long tight sleeves and a straight skirt that just revealed the long, pointed toes of a pair of green openwork high-heeled shoes. Her hair flamed above the high neckline in an unruly mass of shining curls and was secured at the back of her neck by a black velvet ribbon.
Just like a schoolgirl
, thought Tilly, miserably, who knew that a lady, once she had made her coming out,
never
wore her hair down except in the privacy of her bedchamber.

A soft step at the door made her swing around. The marquess stood in the doorway, watching her. His dark-gray suit was impeccably tailored and his waistcoat was a miracle of the embroiderer’s art. His tanned, high-nosed face above the hard white of his collar looked unbearably handsome.

“You look…” he began. Tilly hung her head. “You look very beautiful,” he said with a husky note in his voice that made her heart turn over.

“Come and kiss me, Tilly. It’s been too long.”

Twenty minutes later Mr. Masters lifted the covers off the dishes on the sideboard in the dining room and then bent to adjust the flame of the spirit lamp under the chafing dish. “Go and ring the gong again, James,” he said without turning around. “They can’t have heard it.”

“Maybe they’ve got better things to do,” said the footman, grinning.

“That’s enough from you, young man,” said Mr. Masters severely. “Do as you’re told!”

Upstairs, my lady’s dress whispered from her shoulders to fall at her feet. “God, but you’re beautiful,” said my lord.

The imperative summons of the gong rang through the house.

“Philip! They’re ringing the gong.”

“Let them,” said the marquess, his voice slightly choked as Tilly’s heavy corsets fell to the floor. “I don’t think either of us wants a long courtship.”

Down in the kitchen, Mrs. Comfrey wrung her hands as the
soufflé de cailles au riz
began to sink in its pottery dish.

“Ring the gong again, James,” said the perturbed Mr. Masters.

“Blimey,” said the footman to himself, striding into the hall and picking up the small hammer. “Mr. Masters isn’t using his imagination tonight!”

Tilly wound her arms tightly around her husband’s neck as he carried her to the bed. “Don’t stop kissing me,” she whispered. “I’m frightened.”

“There’s nothing to be frightened of,” whispered her husband with his lips against her hair as he lowered her gently onto the bed.

The long row of footmen stood to attention, although the junior members showed an embarrassing tendency to giggle and shuffle. The
boeuf flamande
sizzled impatiently in its chafing dish. Somewhere behind Mr. Master’s back, someone sniggered.

“Ring the gong again, James,” said Masters.

“But, Mr. Masters,
sir!
”

Mr. Masters swung around. “Do as you’re told! If my lord did not wish dinner, then he would have said so!”

The butler and the other footmen waited in silence as the boom, boom of the gong echoed through the house.

“
Philip!
”

“What is it, my heart?”

“I can hear the dinner gong. The servants…”

“Damn and blast. I forgot. Wait a minute.”

James, in the hall, heard the bell ringing from my lady’s rooms and leapt to the summons. He got as far as the turn of the corridor and was stopped by the sight of my lord’s head sticking around the door at the end. “Oh, James,” said the marquess, “we shall not be dining.”

“But the food, my lord. Mrs. Comfrey made a special banquet.”

“Eat it yourselves and tell Masters you’re to wash it down with some bottles of the best.”

“Very good, my lord.
Thank you
, my lord.”

The marquess slammed and locked the door and returned to more important matters. “Where was I?” he demanded, settling into bed with a sigh of satisfaction. “Ah, yes, I was kissing your left breast. But we must not neglect the right….”

One by one the footmen carried all the splendid dishes back to the kitchen. Mr. Masters unbent enough to order that the table in the servants’ hall be laid out with their best china and then went down to the cellars himself to fetch the wine.

Mrs. Judd rushed to put on her best silk dress, and Mrs. Comfrey decided to make another soufflé.

Soon the happy servants were seated around the table. Mr. Masters rose solemnly from his place at the head.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, raising his glass. “A toast to my lord and my lady.”

And James, carried away by the glory of the occasion, so far forgot himself as to cry out, “Three cheers for Lady Tilly, God bless ’er. Hip! Hip!”

“Hooray!” roared the assembled staff of Chennington.

And so it was that the exultant cries abovestairs, which heralded Lady Tilly’s loss of virginity in the great bed, went mercifully unheard.

A small steamer called
The Alligator
chugged peacefully through the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Cyril Nettleford stretched himself out more comfortably in his long cane deck chair and reflected that things could be worse—much worse. Thank heavens for Heppleford’s antique ideas of what was due to his family name. All he could do was hope and pray that Tilly either proved barren or died in childbirth. He, Cyril, could not return to England, of course, since the marquess held his written confession and had promised to use it if he so much as put a foot on English soil again. Cyril blamed himself only for the theatricality of his murder attempt. The mask and the black clothes had given him no end of a sinister thrill.
I should just have pushed her down the stairs
, he thought gloomily.
I always was overly elaborate
.

The sound of shrill female voices approaching made him wince. A certain Miss Cecilia Wendover had been pursuing him from the start of the voyage. Cyril had been unbearably rude to her until the thick-skinned Miss Wendover had casually dropped a remark that Daddy was a rich Singapore merchant, one of the original crusty Scotch settlers who had made a fortune in the opium trade. Cecilia was long-nosed and sandy-haired and unbearably arch, but from that moment Cyril began to find her imbued with a mysterious charm.

She prattled on about the “little fishies” and the “sweet natives,” and Cyril only heard the music of falling gold coins in her father’s counting house. Like Richard III, he had decided to marry her, but not to keep her long.

It would be ideal if he could marry her on board ship and stage an accident before they even reached Singapore. But that way there was no guarantee that he would inherit any money. Father must be met first. Meanwhile, life held promise, his bruises had healed, and the warm sun had reddened his face to match the color of his spots so that they hardly showed….

Lady Aileen had snared yet another catch of London society in the shape of the Earl of Morningham. It was an Irish peerage, admittedly, but a title for all that, and the earl was undoubtedly handsome and all her friends were envious.

Aileen was entertaining the earl in the Art Nouveau drawing room that had so depressed Tilly. Since she was entertaining her fiancé to tea, she had the luxury of being alone with him. She smiled at him lovingly and he gave her a weak smile back.

“I say, Aileen, old girl,” said the earl in a hesitant manner. “It’s awfully jolly being alone with you, what… I mean not being paraded about in front of your friends like a prize bull.”

Aileen stiffened. She poured the Earl Grey into a paper-thin Spode cup with deliberate care. Then she turned a rather steely gaze on her beloved.

“I object to your choice of words, Henry,” she said evenly. “I don’t parade you about.”

“It’s not that I blame you,” said Henry earnestly. “I mean, after all, what with Bassett disappearing and then there was Heppleford falling for that gorgeous companion of yours… well, it stands to reason.”

“What stands to reason?” Lady Aileen proceeded to pick little pieces of watercress from her sandwich.

“Well, I mean, after all, jilted twice, what. I mean, got to show the girls you’ve made it this time.”

“Do you think I’m so hard up that I should have to settle for a drip like you?” shrilled Aileen.

“As a matter of fact… yes.”

“Oh!” Aileen stared at him balefully. The insult was gross. There was only one thing she could do and that was to tell this handsome cad to march. But what would her friends say? Henry looked at her almost hopefully.

“You do not know how cruel and rude you are being,” said Aileen at last. “I forgive you.”

Henry took a deep breath. “Nothing to forgive,” he remarked casually. “Only spoke the truth. May as well make the most of it, old girl, cos you ain’t seeing any of those friends of yours after we’re married.”

“
What
?”

“Can’t stand all this London nonsense,” pursued Henry. “Got the place in Ireland, you know. Bit run down and all that, but I like a nice, quiet life.”

Aileen made a desperate last stand. She slid along the sofa and wound her arms about his neck. “You can’t mean it. You wouldn’t take poor little fairy away from London.”

“Oh, yes, I would,” said Henry calmly. “And another thing. Shouldn’t call yourself fairy. Sickening enough when your mother says it.”

Aileen gritted her teeth and released him. “Are you trying to force me to break our engagement, Henry?”

“No. But I mean to be master. That’s what women are for. You do what I say from now on.”

Lady Aileen threw the contents of the teapot at him.

Two days later, London society learned that Lady Aileen was no longer engaged to the Earl of Morningham.

Four days later, Lady Aileen Dunbar appeared at Marlborough Street Magistrates Court, charged with breaking shop windows in Bond Street with her umbrella. Her defense lawyer pointed out that Lady Aileen had just joined the suffragettes movement and was protesting against women not having the vote. She looked very beautiful as she stood in the dock, and did a great deal to further the women’s movement. But she was still unwed….

A miserable, chill autumn descended on London, but for some inexplicable reason, Paris was still gilded with sunshine. The Marquess and Marchioness of Heppleford strolled along under the rust-colored leaves of the plane trees on the Champs Élysées.

“Are you sure?” asked the marquess for the umpteenth time.

“Perfectly,” said Tilly lazily. “The doctor’s sure as well. Oh, won’t Cyril be furious. After all his trouble. I hope he doesn’t turn up at the christening like a bad fairy.”

The marquess stopped at a neighboring news vendor and bought the English papers.

“You are not going to read them in the middle of the street,” said Tilly severely. “We shall go to that nice café over there and I can watch the crowds.”

The marquess grinned and took her arm and led her toward the nearest café table. Tilly settled back with a sigh of pure contentment.

Then her attention was drawn from the smart boulevardiers and the glossy carriages by an exclamation from her husband.

“Cyril’s dead!” he exclaimed, raising his head from a copy of the
Daily Mail
.