Midnight at Mallyncourt (5 page)

I felt, instead, a curious exhilaration.

At one forty-five the next afternoon my bags were packed. I left them with the hotel clerk, telling him I would send for them before the day was over. Wearing my best maroon and black striped frock, pulling on a pair of black silk gloves, I stepped out into the bright afternoon sunlight. I was filled with a sense of adventure. Laverne had burst into tears when I told her what I had done. Thoroughly crushed, she had sobbed and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, claiming she'd never see me again, predicting I would starve. I promised her I would write. I assured her that I had no intentions of starving. I knew what I had to do, and any reservations I might have would simply have to be thrust aside.

I walked briskly down the promenade. The water sparkled with silvery spangles of light, washing over the shingles in glittering waves. Gulls circled overhead, filling the air with their raucous cries. Fine carriages clattered down the street. The ornate white brick hotels with their marble porticoes rose along the front in majestic splendor. I turned up the side street. Ahead, I could see the turrets and domes of the pavilion rising above the emerald green treetops. I saw the small park. He was standing in front of the rhododendrons, wearing a trim gray suit and a white satin waistcoat embroidered in black. A tall gray top hat was on his head, and one hand gripped a pair of white gloves. He looked cool and aloof. When he turned, he didn't seem at all surprised to see me approaching.

Chapter Three

T
HE JOURNEY
by train had been long and tiresome, but Edward Baker showed no signs of exhaustion. He was as composed, as distant and polite as he had been when we boarded the train in London early in the morning. When we finally alighted at the station at Mallyn Green, a shiny black phaeton upholstered in padded blue velvet had been waiting for us, a servant wearing the dark blue Mallyn livery perched up on the high front seat, ready to drive us to the great house two miles from the village proper. A cart bearing all our luggage had gone on ahead, and we were on our way to Mallyncourt now, the two sleek, muscular grays spanking along at a steady pace down the wide dirt road. My “husband” sat back with a remote expression, engrossed in his thoughts, ignoring me. He might have been alone in the carriage.

We had been together for almost two weeks now, and he was as much of an enigma as ever. We had left Brighton for London immediately, moving in to a grand, imposing hotel as man and wife. We had a plush suite, and I was rather alarmed when I saw the master bedroom. Edward put my fears to rest immediately, cooly informing me that he would sleep in the tiny room ordinarily assigned to milady's abigail. He had done so, taking breakfast with me every morning in the richly appointed sitting room. He sent word of his marriage to his relatives as soon as we were installed in the hotel. I had assumed we would be departing in a day or so, but that wasn't the case. Edward had business to attend to in the city, and I must have a complete new wardrobe. Jenny Randall's clothes were all very well for an actress in a fourth-rate touring company, but they would never do for the wife of Edward Baker.

My days were spent in shops and at dressmaking establishments, and our suite was soon a chaos of boxes and tissue paper, bolts of material, pins, tape measures, ribbons. Madame DuBois, the Parisian dressmaker, came to fit me herself, marveling at my slender form, my titian red hair, exclaiming that it was a joy to dress such an unusual beauty, declaring she would outdo herself. I was amazed at the quantity of things Edward felt I should have, amazed at their splendor, too. When I mentioned how frightfully expensive all this must be, he told me that the clothes were a necessary investment and added in a bored voice that I would naturally keep everything after our charade was over.

Although he came to pass approval on everything purchased, I saw very little of him during the day, and my evenings were usually spent alone in the suite, admiring my new clothes, reading, writing letters to Laverne. Edward did take me to dine at a few fine restaurants, and one night he took me to see the great Richard Mansfield perform at the Drury Lane, but for the most part he left me to my own devices, apparently bored by my company. He was always polite, true, but that icy reserve was always maintained. I should have been relieved. I wasn't. I wondered if he would be as remote and unfeeling once we arrived at Mallyncourt.

The phaeton rumbled over a particularly nasty rut, and I was thrown against Edward. He put out a hand to steady me. I murmured an apology and settled back on my own side of the seat. Behind the low gray stone walls on either side of the road were rich farmlands, each field enclosed in its own gray wall, making a brilliant patchwork over the rolling hills of emerald, brown, red-brown, gold. I saw small, tidy farmhouses with thatched roofs, chickens scratching in front of the barns, black and white cattle roaming about in the fields beyond. This was a rich agricultural area, I knew, and the Mallyn dairy products were famous all over England.

“Tenant farms,” Edward said, observing my interest. “All part of my uncle's estate.”

“He must be extremely wealthy.”

“Filthy rich,” he retorted. “My uncle was the second son, seventeen when his brother inherited Mallyncourt. He shipped out for the orient. He was ambitious and unscrupulous and greedy, worked for the East India Company for a while, went into business for himself at the age of twenty-three. Import-export. By the time he was forty, he was one of the ten wealthiest men in England. His brother, my Uncle Frederick, died without children, and the old rascal inherited Mallyncourt. The place was in a shambles when he took over, the house tumbling down over his head, the farms a steady drain on the estate. He spent almost half his money improving conditions, renovating the house, revitalizing the farms, setting up the dairy. That was twenty years ago. He's more than doubled in income what he sank into it in the beginning. Shrewd old codger, my uncle.”

“Is he a bachelor, too?”

“A widower. My Aunt Sarah died when I was a child, and he never remarried. Never had any legitimate heirs, although there're a dozen or more bastards roaming the countryside who bear an embarrassing resemblance to my uncle. He was a randy one in his day, a real hell raiser. Hasn't changed much, either.”

The liveried servant clicked the reins, his back ramrod straight. He couldn't have helped but overhear Edward's remarks, but Edward didn't seem to care. To him, I realized, servants were like so many objects, there to wait on him when needed, to be completely ignored the rest of the time. I had noticed this attitude in London. The people who served us there might as well have been invisible so far as Edward was concerned. I supposed it was the way he had been brought up. No matey chats with the stable boys for him, no friendly words to the parlor maids.

“You make your uncle sound formidable,” I remarked.

“He is,” Edward replied calmly. “Sly, devious, wily, hot-tempered, headstrong, as vindictive and sharp-tongued as a fish wife. He's seventy now, still a tyrant, still delights in terrorizing the household from his sick bed.”

“I don't imagine he terrorizes you.”

“Not at all. I caught on to his tricks before I put on my first pair of long trousers. Others might cringe and tremble, but I realized that he was nothing but a lonely, disappointed old man who craved attention. I know how to handle him, always have. Unlike Lyman. They're constantly at each other's throats.”

“Lyman?”

“My cousin. He lives at Mallyncourt with his wife and daughter, acts as Uncle James' chief bailiff, manages the estate now that the old man is no longer able to do so himself.”

“I—I know so little about these people I'm about to meet.”

“I suppose I should give you a bit of background,” he replied. “After all, a wife would have learned something about the family. Frederick and James had two sisters, Clarissa and Jane. Jane had a grand debut in London. She could have had her pick of the most eligible bachelors of the day. She promptly came back to Mallyncourt and scandalized the countryside by marrying Angus Robb, the son of a tenant farmer, an uncouth lad with whom she had been having an affair prior to her debut. Lyman was the outcome of the match. His parents are both dead now. Uncle James took him in when he was thirteen.”

“You were living there at the time?”

“My mother, Clarissa, made a more suitable match. She married a young lieutenant, Jeffery Baker, the wealthy scion of a prominent London family. I was born a year later. My mother died bearing me. My father went away to India where he quickly succumbed to cholera. I was raised at Mallyncourt.” He paused, shoving a dark blond lock from his brow. “My uncle never had any legitimate children, but he was saddled with two young nephews early on. He loved to pit us against one another. Still does. That's why he's being so obstinate about the will.”

“You and Lyman obviously don't get along,” I observed.

“That's an understatement,” he replied. His voice was icy. “Lyman is an uncivil brute, churlish, disrespectful, the upstart son of a tenant farmer and a dizzy-headed young trollop who had neither sense nor morals in spite of her family name and respectable upbringing. Lyman and I have always been at odds.”

“Is he your age?”

“Three years older. He's thirty-four.”

“You mentioned a wife and child—”

“Vanessa is one of the most beautiful women in England,” he informed me, “and undoubtedly one of the most depraved. At eighteen she was a professional beauty, the delight of London society, her portrait painted by Whistler, by Millais, by Holman-Hunt. Her background was impeccable, and she could have made a spectacular marriage. She didn't. My cousin went up to London on estate business. They met, and she promptly cast aside all her eligible suitors. Aristocratic women, you'll observe, are frequently attracted to the brusque, brutal type of male. Lyman is as virile and rough as his father was before him, and, like my Aunt Jane, Vanessa considered the world of polite society well lost for such a rugged specimen. They eloped. Lyman brought her back to Mallyncourt, and Lettice was born seven months later. That was ten years ago. Vanessa is twenty-nine now, more beautiful than ever.”

“Is the marriage a happy one?”

A thin, sardonic smile curled on his lips. “Hardly that,” he said in an emotionless voice. “Her elopement with Lyman was an adventure, a madcap escapade worthy of a spoiled, pampered young beauty, but unfortunately it backfired. She tired of him quickly—that was inevitable—and found herself a prisoner in the country, isolated from the society she had reigned over at one time, with a masterful, dominating husband who refused to let her have her way. Vanessa has been taking her revenge on him for a number of years now—”

He didn't elaborate. It wasn't necessary.

“And the child?” I inquired.

“Lettice is a thin, pale, bitter little thing, prickly and thoroughly antisocial. She keeps to herself, preferring the company of her dolls to that of real people.”

“That's terribly sad,” I said quietly.

“Don't waste any sympathy on Lettice, my dear. At ten she's already an accomplished shrew. On the rare occasions when she's forced to abandon her dolls and join company she can be utterly scathing. She has no friends, naturally. The other children in the neighborhood detest her.”

I was silent, thinking about this strange assortment of people I would soon be acquainted with. We had left the farmlands behind and were now passing through a wooded area, branches joining overhead to make a leafy green canopy through which only a few thin rays of sunlight sifted. Edward's face was in shadow. He sat stiff and erect beside me as the wheels of the phaeton whirled over the hard uneven dirt road, the sound of the horses' hooves echoing with the dense woods on either side.

“It's a rather unusual ménage,” Edward remarked, almost as though he were reading my mind, “but you needn't feel intimidated. I'm sure you'll be able to hold your own.”

“I wonder about that,” I said nervously.

“You're no vapid, timorous maiden, Jennifer. You've got spirit. That's one of the reasons I—er—selected you—” Although he couldn't have cared less what the servants thought, he was careful to avoid saying anything that might have given away our game. The coachman might have been some mechanical robot perched up on the high front seat, but he could hear every word we said.

“I hardly know what's expected of me,” I said.

“You're to be a well-bred, obedient wife, and you're to charm my uncle.”

“From the way you've described him, that hardly seems possible.”

“The old man still has an eye for the ladies,” he replied. “He may be on his death bed, but he still appreciates a beautiful woman.”

“Does he appreciate Vanessa?” I asked.

“He finds her amusing,” Edward said idly.

“I see.”

The woods were behind us now. We passed through two tall, weathered brownstone portals, a wrought-iron arch spanning across them with a large, ornate M worked into the center of the design. The road wound around splendid green lawns with tall, majestic trees spreading their boughs, and a few minutes later we passed under the archway of the weathered brown gatehouse elaborately decorated with pinnacles and strapwork. Ahead, beyond the deliberately untidy and multicolored walled front gardens, I could see the house itself. It was a magnificent sight, making a proud silhouette against the darkening sky. The rooftops were adorned with the same pinnacles and elaborate strapwork I had observed on the gatehouse, and the walls, once a soft tan, were now a streaked, mellow brown, the dozens and dozens of windows a gleaming silvery blue that reflected the last rays of light in brilliant sunbursts. I was amazed at its size, its imposing yet strangely unassuming grandeur.

“Queen Elizabeth once stayed here,” Edward told me, “and Mary Queen of Scots was, briefly, a prisoner in the west wing, but I shan't bore you with the history of the place. There are a number of books in the library you may consult if you're interested. It's a draughty pile, impossible to heat properly, an aged dinosaur of a house incredibly surviving the centuries and totally incongruous in this day and age.”