The Constant Companion (2 page)

An incessant drizzle fell across the scraggly garden, soaking into the spongy ground and moss-covered trees. Everything was soaked in moisture, the hearths in the house were black and empty and new damp patches had added their stains to the old brown ones on the walls.

Miss Constance Lamberton picked up the letter again. Her aunt, Miss Maria Lamberton, for whom the letter was obviously intended although it was merely addressed to “Miss Lamberton,” lay six feet under the wet clay soil of the local churchyard where she had been deposited a week before.

For one precious minute Constance had thought the letter an answer to all her troubles. Her aunt had left no will, so after a long and legal hassle the heavily mortgaged house with its bleak grounds and worm-eaten furniture would go to a distant male relative. Constance had already been searching the newspapers for a position as governess. She had sent off three applications but, so far, had received no replies.

She turned her attention to the letter again. “You would be furnished with all the comforts of an elegant home and all the enjoyment of the balls and parties of the Season,” Lady Amelia had written. “All I ask in return is that you accept the post as my companion. I am sure we should suit admirably…”

A Season! Constance clasped her hands, crumpling the letter in the process. She had not dreamt of a Season since her twelfth birthday. She had been brought up in a haphazard manner by her wild and feckless father, Sir Edward Lamberton. Her mother had died of consumption when Constance was only a baby. She had adored her boyish father, had been petted and fussed over by his sporting friends, and had enjoyed when their shabby home, Courtleigh, had been full of male guests who would descend on them
en masse
for a long session of hunting and gambling. But Sir Edward had broken his neck on the hunting field, leaving his daughter nothing but a vast pile of debts, and sad memories of the glittering Season her father had promised her she should have when she came of age.

His sister, Maria Lamberton, had appeared at the funeral and announced it to be her Christian duty to care for the orphaned Constance. She had taken the girl back to Berry House and had proceeded to subject Constance to a rigorous religious training. Miss Lamberton felt she had snatched a brand from the burning. No more pretty dresses and jewelry for young Constance. Only dowdy alpacas and serge to be worn while she passed her leisure time reading the only two books allowed to her—the Bible and Mr. Porteous’s sermons.

Miss Maria had been considerably older than her wild brother and had died of one of these mysterious ailments of old age.

Now, a week after her death, Constance was again left homeless. It seemed that Miss Lamberton had been, in her way, as much of a gambler as her brother, always spending money on wild farming ventures in the hope that her meager acres would produce a fortune, but instead, every blight and animal pest seemed to find a home at Berry House. Miss Lamberton had also been so preoccupied in preparing herself and Constance for the afterlife that it had never dawned on her that she might reach that happy place sooner than she expected, and so she had not troubled to make a will.

Berry House was quite isolated, the nearest village being some ten miles away. Miss Lamberton had had few callers. Although she said her thoughts were constantly in heaven, her speech dwelled only too often on the tortures of hell-fire, and even the vicar called as infrequently as possible. The house was, indeed, as small as Lady Amelia had heard it to be, being a sort of redbrick box with small, dark rooms. It had been many years since Miss Lamberton had had any servants, and such work as there was was done by herself and Constance.

When her father had died, Constance had been a merry, happy little twelve-year-old. Now, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday she was still very small but thin and bony. Her hands were deformed and scarred with the winter’s crop of chilblains and her skin was stretched tight over her high cheekbones. Her black hair was screwed up in a knot on the top of her small head and was greasy and dirty, Miss Lamberton having considered that cleanliness was an over preoccupation with vanity, rather than being next to godliness. Constance was very small in stature, being a mere five feet, two inches. The only thing that lent any color to her otherwise drab appearance was a pair of large and unusually beautiful eyes which were of a light, golden brown flecked with gold and fringed with heavy black lashes.

Under the influence of her aunt, she had almost come to believe that dreams of balls and parties were sinful. But now, without the overbearing presence of her aunt, her imagination seemed to have run riot.

As she sat holding Lady Amelia’s letter, she could almost
see
the ballroom of her dreams and smell the scent from the expensively gowned ladies. And if she closed her eyes very tightly, she could feel
his
arms about her, that forbidden dream lover, that young man with the boyish face and curly hair who had long haunted her thoughts. She had never actually seen such a man but over the years she had invented one—a man who would be the perfect companion and husband. Someone to laugh and have fun with. Someone gay and debonair who would stand between her and the rest of the forbidding world which stretched beyond Berry House.

What else had Lady Amelia said in her letter? “I want some respectable lady of good birth to be my chaperone.”

“Why couldn’t it be me?” thought Constance. “I’m a respectable lady of good birth!”

It was then that a mad idea, born of insecurity and despair, began to take shape in her mind.

The letter had been addressed to Miss Lamberton. “I am Miss Lamberton,” thought Constance. “Could I not just go to London and apply for the post? I am, after all, a relative of Lady Amelia. Surely she would not turn me away if I explain the situation.”

The evening sky was turning black outside and a faint wind had begun to moan through the trees. Constance lit the foul-smelling tallow candles and went to look into the flyblown looking glass over the fireplace.

Her thin, white face stared back at her, the eyes looking enormous in the flickering gloom. “You haven’t
said
you’ll do it,” she muttered. “But at least you could wash your hair.”

With quick nervous steps, she descended to the kitchen and then began to pile wood into the fire. When the flames began to leap up, she hung the great kettle on the idle back, a long sort of hook with an ingenious contrivance by which it could be tipped to pour out boiling water.

Then taking a sharp knife, she shaved fine pieces from a bar of soap into a cup, and adding a little water, mashed them into a paste. When the kettle began to boil, she first infused a jug of camomile tea and let it stand to cool so that she could use it for a rinse.

She washed and washed her hair until her arms ached. Then she took down the tin bath from its hook on the wall and waited for more water to heat.

By the time she had bathed, she decided to indulge in the extravagance of washing her clothes. Clothes at Berry House had only been washed every five weeks, in the same way as the laundry was done in almost every other genteel house in England.

After two hours of hard work, she stood shivering in her wrapper in her bedroom, staring at the glossy tresses of black hair which fell almost to her waist.

“I shall keep my hair like this, just for tonight and all of tomorrow morning. Then when I travel to London, I must make myself look as old and staid as possible.”

Constance nearly dropped the hairbrush as she realized that somehow she
was
going to London.

Her mind began to race. There was the house to close up. She would need to leave the keys with the vicar, ready for the arrival of Aunt Maria’s heir who, it was believed, lived somewhere in Hertfordshire.

Constance suddenly wondered if she were being too precipitate. Might it not be better to remain where she was and rely on the charity of the heir?

But the lure of London was strong. She had an overwhelming desire to escape from this dark house with its grim memories of harsh religious training. She wished to flee from an overpowering feeling of guilt caused by the fact she could not mourn for the dead Miss Lamberton.

As she brushed and brushed her long black hair, the great shining toy of the London Season beckoned.

She put down the brush and knelt at her prayer stool through force of habit. But this time she found herself praying for security, for love and for a home of her own.

Constance finally arose and climbed into bed with the feeling she had left her childhood with all its miseries behind.

“Traveling post,” she thought dreamily as she watched the patterns thrown by the rushlight on the ceiling, “is too expensive—eighteen pence a mile. But there is enough left from the year’s sale of eggs to pay for a seat on the mail coach. I wonder if the egg money really belongs to the heir? If it does, I shall just have to pay him back when I am a rich and married lady.”

And lulled by rosy dreams of security, Constance fell sound asleep.

Lady Amelia’s butler did not look like a butler at all. Friends of her ladyship were wont to murmur behind her back that her butler, Bergen, looked more like a jailbird. Butlers were meant to be quiet, discreet individuals, but there was something about Bergen that was
too
quiet. Where other butlers moved with a slow and stately tread, Bergen scuttled softly from room to room with an odd, bent, crablike walk. His long, lugubrious face was also tilted to one side, giving him an air of constant enquiry. His bony wrists protruded from the sleeves of his uniform, and his hair was never sufficiently powdered and black patches always seemed to be showing through.

Mrs. Mary Besant eyed this individual with disfavor as she entered the hall of Lady Amelia’s mansion late one afternoon, a full two weeks after her previous visit. Her sharp eyes fell on the morning’s post, still lying unopened on the marble top of a pretty mahogany side table.

“I see her ladyship has not yet perused her mail,” she said to Bergen. “I shall take it up to her.”

“My lady said she had no time to read her mail at present,” said Bergen, with his head tilted to one side like a raven at the Tower.

“Nonetheless, I shall take it up to her,” said Mrs. Besant, gathering up the little pile of letters and cards. She stood and stared coldly at the butler. “That will be all, Bergen.”

“I shall announce you, madam,” said the infuriating Bergen, staring at the correspondence in Mrs. Besant’s pink-gloved hands.

Mrs. Besant had no intention of letting Bergen announce her. In the first place, she delighted in surprising her friends at their toilette. Had she not, just the other day, discovered that Lady Jessington wore a wig by just such a ruse? In the second, she planned to extract one or two of the invitations and hide them in her reticule so that dear Amelia would smart with humiliation, thinking she had been slighted.

“I shall announce myself,” she said waspishly. “Bustle about, man. I am sure you have other duties.”

Bergen gave her a low bow and retreated.

Mrs. Besant walked up the wide shallow stairs and gleefully flicked through the letters. Ah, she recognized that seal. Lord Philip Cautry’s sister, Lady Eleanor Rider, was giving a
musicale
, that much she knew, having received an invitation herself. How furious Amelia would be if she thought she had been excluded from the guest list! Quick as lightning, Mrs. Besant slipped the invitation in her reticule, and feeling very pleased with herself, walked into Lady Amelia’s private sitting room.

To her disappointment, Amelia was fully dressed and looking more beautiful than ever.

“I brought your post, my dear,” said Mrs. Besant with a great display of strong, yellow teeth. “Don’t you want to see if you have received any billets-doux?”

“I probably have,” said Amelia, stretching out her hand for the letters. “That wretched Comte Duval is always writing some sort of rubbish to me!”

“Many ladies would be delighted to receive such letters from the comte!” exclaimed Mrs. Besant. The Comte Duval was a rare bird among the French emigrés who haunted London. Unlike most of his compatriots, he was extremely rich.

Amelia paid her no attention. She scrabbled through the letters and invitations, a small frown beginning to crease her beautiful brow. “I had thought the Riders’ invitation would have arrived by now,” she said.

Mrs. Besant gave a little titter. “Oh, poor Amelia. I have had my own invitation for
ages
. Never say the Cautry family has turned against you!”

She watched in delight as the storm clouds began to gather in Amelia’s blue eyes, and then jumped nervously as a hollow cough sounded directly behind her. She swung round and found herself looking into the pale gooseberry eyes of Bergen, the butler.

“My lady,” he began, “there is a young person waiting below to see you. A Miss Lamberton. I have put her in the library.”

“A
young
person? You must be mistaken, Bergen. Miss Lamberton is old.”

“No, my lady. Definitely young,” said Bergen.

Amelia stared at him for a few minutes and then shrugged. “Well, whoever this Miss Lamberton is, I had better see her. Oh, and Bergen, could you check carefully in the hall and make sure that
all
my post has been delivered to me? I am missing a most important invitation.”

“Perhaps it is the one that madam put into her reticule—for safekeeping I am sure,” said Bergen, his head on one side, looking carefully at the floor.

“What is this?” cried Amelia.

“I-I don’t know what he is talking about,” said Mrs. Besant turning an unlovely shade of puce. “My good man, are you accusing me of stealing my lady’s correspondence? Why, I…”

But that was as far as she got. Amelia wrenched the reticule from Mrs. Besant’s shaking fingers and tore it open. She pulled out the Rider invitation and waved it to and fro slowly in front of Mrs. Besant’s patrician nose.

“Think of some excuse, dear Mary,” she said softly, “I shall be back as soon as I have seen this Lamberton woman.”