The Darcy Connection (22 page)

Charlotte had never looked as lovely as she did that evening. Her complexion glowed, her expression held the serenity of a saint, as she sat in perfect tranquillity on a fat red sofa in the red drawing room, waiting for dinner to be announced.

“Montblaine cannot take his eyes off her,” Camilla whispered to her husband. “I declare, the man is besotted.”

Mr. Wytton was inclined to agree. “It is what happens when a middle-aged man falls for a young woman like Charlotte. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but don't you wonder what is going on inside that beautiful head?”

“Nothing,” said Camilla. “Charlotte has never been clever, and this late-developing beauty has taken over her life, in my opinion.”

“And what ails Eliza? There, she is trying to smile, but she is anxious. See how she keeps looking at Charlotte, as though her sister were ill or about to make a dreadful faux pas.”

“More interesting,” said Camilla, her eyes sparkling, “is how Charlotte ignores Warren. She looked at him just now as though he were a cockroach.”

“Odd that, for I held, you know, that she was more strongly attracted to him than might be suspected.”

“Whatever attraction there may have been no longer exists,” said Camilla, speaking with utter certainty. “On the other hand, look at Bartholomew Bruton!”

Mr. Wytton observed him through drooping eyelids. “You have something there. Well, why not? Except that Eliza has no fortune, no banking connections, nothing to recommend her to Mr. Bruton and Lady Sarah, besides Bartholomew's being all but promised to Miss Grainger.”

“Bartholomew's parents are looking at Eliza in no very friendly way,” said Camilla. “They are not blind, they see what is happening there.”

“While he is overflowing with admiration, can you say the same for her?”

Camilla frowned. “Ah, that is another matter. There are complications…”

Wytton smiled down at her with great fondness. “Don't tell me, I pray, I really would rather not know. While there should be no secrets between man and wife, I am more concerned that you honour your promises to your friends. Besides, I smell trouble, and I should prefer to keep well out of it. Heaven forbid we should have the bishop land on our doorstep!”

The dinner, and the long hours after it, were torture to Eliza. She did not know what to make of Charlotte, something had changed, had dramatically changed since their encounter, their quarrel, she must call it. Could her words have made any impression on her sister? She was very sure they had not.

She had little opportunity to be with Mr. Bruton, who was not tonight seated next to her. Instead, she found herself next to Mr. Portal, although still with the dreadful Mr. Pyke on her other side, and tired and dispirited, she found herself rather more cutting to the clergyman and rather more disjointed in her conversation with Mr. Portal than was quite right.

With huge relief, she finally went upstairs, and sat yawning at her dressing table while Annie put away her clothes. She jumped, midyawn, at a tap on the door, and then, without waiting for an answer, Charlotte entered the room. “Charlotte! Whatever is the matter? Sit down, you are so pale. Annie, a glass of water, directly.”

“Thank you.” Charlotte's voice high and strained. “I intend to sleep in this room, tonight. Your maid can find me a nightgown.”

“Charlotte, has something happened? Why do you look so strange, why are you here?”

“I shall tell you nothing, except that I do not care to sleep in that room tonight. It is too isolated. I am better here.” And then, with an effort, she said, “I would like Annie to go there, directly, and to sleep in my room, if she would.”

“I?” said Annie in astonishment. “Sleep in your room? Oh, Miss, I couldn't do that, I would be in such trouble for not keeping to my own place in the attics.”

“If I ask you to, Annie?” said Eliza, whose quick apprehension had come to something near the truth of why Charlotte was here. “And if someone should attempt to enter the room, Annie, should come upon you while you were lying in bed…”

“I should scream the place down,” said Annie frankly.

“That is just what you must do,” said Eliza. “Now, why ever should Annie be in there, and not in her part of the house?” she said to Charlotte. “There must be a reason, and one that does not reflect badly on Annie.”

“Well, Miss,” said Annie, “suppose Miss Collins had asked for me to spend the night in there, since she felt unwell.”

“Yes,” said Eliza. “You have the headache, Charlotte, and I asked Annie to be there with you, for you know how ill you can become. Only, why should not Hislop be there?”

“Annie would be better,” said Charlotte flatly. “Hislop will not come near me tonight, you will find.”

“Bribed?” said Eliza, too low for Annie to hear.

“Drugged, I expect,” said Charlotte, her voice sounding infinitely weary. “Lady Warren…” Her voice trailed into silence.

Eliza took her hand and pressed it. “I think you do have the headache, there will be no need for lies. Get into bed this instant, Annie will see to you before she takes herself off. Annie, I sent you to my sister with some special—oh, special something!”

“Pastilles, Miss?” said Annie, holding up a small box.

“Yes, that will do. I desired you to stay there until she was asleep, and meanwhile, you fell asleep in the chair. She awoke, and suffering greatly, came to find me.”

“No one who knew us would believe this touching story,” said Charlotte from the bed, where she lay, her face pale and wan against the pillows, her hand pressed to her closed eyes.

Yet it was true, Eliza thought, as she laid a cold cloth on Charlotte's brow. She had come to Eliza for help. What had happened? She would probably never know, but it was enough that Charlotte had turned against Warren.

She sat at the desk and scribbled a note. “Annie, can you find out which room Mr. Bruton, the young Mr. Bruton, is in, and slip this under his door? I want no violence tonight, yes, I know you can defend yourself against anything from a headless monk to a prowling ravisher”—and how close to the truth that was—“yet I should prefer for there to be a gentleman within reach should there be any trouble.”

Annie's eyes were full of conspiratorial zest. “Leave it to me, Miss Eliza. And if need be, I can set up a screeching to wake the whole castle, don't you worry!”

By the time the household had fallen quiet, Eliza had almost forgotten what might be going on in the turret room, for she was worried about Charlotte. Evidently in great pain, her sister was in considerable distress of mind as well as body, until Eliza crept out to find Lady Grandpoint to ask if she had any laudanum. No, there was no point in her coming to see Charlotte, she was sure the drops would lull her to sleep.

“She looked so well this evening,” Lady Grandpoint said. “How can she be ill now? We have not been travelling, how do you account for it?”

How horrified she would be if Eliza told her the truth, but of course there was no question of that. Perhaps some food she had eaten at the light nuncheon which was served to the ladies of the house in the middle of the day, strawberries could sometimes have an ill effect on her system.

“Then she should know better than to eat them. However, I do not wish to be unsympathetic. Take the drops. Do not give her too many, fifteen is the proper dose.”

Eliza had measured the fifteen drops into a glass of water, and then, looking at Charlotte, her face screwed up with pain, she added a few more, and had the satisfaction of seeing her, after a very few minutes, relax, and fall into a deep slumber.

Her visit to Lady Grandpoint and the request for laudanum, a perfectly genuine request for Charlotte's perfectly genuine indisposition, was no bad thing, she concluded; it added verisimilitude to her story. Would Warren venture to the turret room? Would the redoubtable Annie play her part?

The clock in the north tower struck the hour with two sonorous strokes. Outside the window an owl hooted, startling Eliza. She was wide-awake, ears straining for any sound that might come from Charlotte's room, although she knew she couldn't possibly hear anything at that distance.

Settling back in the chair by the window, listening to Charlotte's steady, even breathing, she wondered if she had been guilty of folly, letting Annie stay alone in that room. No, Warren was no violent rapist, keen on any prey. He was a seducer, intent on spending hours of darkness in the embraces of a woman who was passionate about him. Once he discovered Annie's identity, then what would he do but beat a quick retreat?

Yet might he not be so enraged by the failure of his scheme that he would lash out at the innocent Annie? He would know that to be discovered entering the bedchamber of a young lady, a guest of his uncle's, could only be interpreted in the worst possible way.

And now, as the moon rose above the grotesque outline of the abbey, sending its weird, draining light across the arches and spires, a flaw in the plan occurred to Eliza—why had she not thought of it? For if Warren were discovered in Charlotte's bedchamber, even though it was only inhabited by Annie, would not it naturally be assumed that he had expected to find Miss Collins there, and in that case, that she had invited him?

Annie must not scream. She must keep quiet, so that Warren could vanish as stealthily as he had come. Charlotte, in her desire to escape from Warren, had not considered this aspect of the matter.

With a final glance at Charlotte, Eliza took her candle, which was burning low, and glided out of the room. Her slippered feet made no sound on the stone floors, and yet she felt she could have clattered along in boots and spurs and no one would have noticed. It was not only that the household slept behind those solid wooden doors, but that the house itself was full of creaks and strange noises. Wind whistled in through ill-fitting window frames; where the stone flags gave way to wooden floors and stairs, they creaked and cracked as though an army were going up and down. There was a steady banging sound; it was ropes slapping against the flagpole, Eliza told herself, for Montblaine flew the family standard when he was in residence, a splendid affair of blue and gold, with a hawk emblazoned on it; the flag was raised each morning, and hauled down at dusk by a stout footman.

She concentrated on the known and rational, refusing to let herself be frightened by shadows in the moonlight, by the ancestral banners moving gently above her head, by the embers of a dying fire crackling into sudden life, by a log falling from a grate.

Her candle guttered and went out, and she caught her breath. Had she mistaken the way, was she in some other part of the house, far from Charlotte's lonely turret? Now the moonlight streaming through the mullioned windows, sending strange patterns across the floor, was her ally. She stood on tiptoe to look out. Yes, she recognised the yard below, she hadn't missed her way.

Here she was, finally, at the foot of the stone staircase that led to Charlotte's room. She ran up them, reached the landing at the top, and paused to get her breath back. In the corner, a shadow moved, and this time it was real, solid, not a figment of her imagination. She couldn't help herself, she opened her mouth to scream, and was silenced before so much as a gasp emerged, by a strong hand clamped over her mouth.

A voice whispered in her ear, “Be quiet, or we are lost.”

She felt limp with relief. Even in the dark, even with just a whisper, she knew it was Mr. Bruton who had emerged from the shadows. There was a sound from inside Charlotte's room. Had they disturbed Annie? He pulled her back into the darkness of the corner. The door opened, and Annie appeared, a silhouette against the moonlight that flooded the room behind her.

At that moment another figure came bounding up the stairs. It was the figure of a man, his face quite clear in the moonlight. Warren. He leapt forward and swept Annie into his arms, showering her with kisses.

Annie rose superbly to her part. She delivered a ringing slap to Warren's swarthy face, and then, evidently possessed of excellent lungs, let out a stream of ungenteel screeches that echoed round the abbey.

“Here you both are,” said Mrs. Rowan, as she and Mr. Portal came into Camilla's drawing room. “The very people we wanted to talk to, and such a mercy, no other callers, so you can be as indiscreet as you like.”

“Indiscreet?” said Camilla, raising her eyebrows. “Why, my dearest Henrietta, what can you be speaking of?”

“We want to hear the full account of the incident in the night at Montblaine,” said Mrs. Rowan. “I have never been so vexed as when I woke from a soundless night's sleep to find my maid agog with such stories of nocturnal goings-on.

“And Lord Montblaine nowhere to be seen, and Caroline Warren and her wicked son bowling away down the drive, and the servants all in an uproar, and no sense to be got out of anyone. You and Mr. Wytton left before I could speak to you in private, for I was sure you must know what had happened, and poor Miss Collins with a dreadful headache, that terrible sort that makes you sick, I understand, and so you”—nodding at Eliza—“looking after her, as was only right, and Lady Grandpoint in such a bad mood, sitting and sighing and talking in that high-and-mighty way she has with Lady Sarah. Mr. Bartholomew Bruton had returned to London, Miss Grainger in a pout, and Mrs. and Miss Chetwynd twittering like a pair of dim-witted sparrows!”

“You may imagine our frustration,” Mr. Portal said. “When we returned to London later in the day, we found the town already abuzz with rumours, all about Warren, although it is clear that Mr. Bruton is involved in some way. I feared for a moment that there might have been a run on the bank, and my fortune in danger; however, I realised it could not be so, Mr. Bruton himself would not be sitting there so complacently if that were the case.”

“Complacently!” said Mrs. Rowan. “When he looked for all the world as though he had a bad smell under his nose?”

Camilla asked the butler to arrange for refreshments to be brought, and gave instructions that she was not at home, should there be any other callers.

“It is simple,” she said. “George Warren assaulted Eliza's maid, there, that is the long and the short, the up and the down, the in and out of it.”

“Assaulted your maid?” said Mr. Portal. “No, no, this will not do, there is more to the story than that.”

Eliza by now had her story off pat, for she had had to explain to half the household why Annie was there in her sister's room, how she had ventured into the corridor, hearing a noise, and had there encountered Mr. Warren, clearly the worse for Lord Montblaine's excellent wine, there could be no other excuse for his behaviour.

“I cannot imagine how you failed to hear the noise,” Camilla said to Mrs. Rowan.

“We were in the East Wing, you know, and the walls must be several feet thick. What was Annie doing there, is she not your maid, why was she not in her bed, in the attics with the other maids?”

Eliza explained, and if it seemed to her that there were gaps in the glib story of Charlotte's headache, the indisposition of her maid, the presence of Warren in that part of the house, neither Mr. Portal nor Mrs. Rowan noticed, although she did feel Pagoda's shrewd eyes on her with an appraising look in them.

“How is your sister now?” asked Mrs. Rowan.

“Oh, perfectly well. She woke the next morning, like you unaware of the fracas in the night, heavy-eyed, but with her headache gone. We returned to London at a gentle pace, I was afraid that the motion of the carriage might bring her headache on again, but it did not.”

“Is she delicate?”

“Not at all. Some persons are subject to the headache, and she is one of them. In every other way, she is as healthy and strong as can be.”

“Does anyone know what has become of Warren?”

“He is gone to France,” said Camilla. “Mr. Wytton says the attempted rape of a servant is nothing for a man of his reputation, but it was under his uncle's roof, and the world is more censorious than it used to be on such matters.”

“That is very true,” cried Mr. Portal. “It is one of the few lasting benefits of the Revolution in France, that it made landowners in England aware that servants must have some rights, too, that if they could rise up and turn on their masters across the Channel, it could happen even here. So people of sense are taking a good deal more care about the well-being of those in their employ; Lord Montblaine has a good name as a landlord and master, and it will have annoyed him greatly that Annie should have been assaulted in this way.”

“Beside, George Warren spends a good deal of time in Paris, does he not?” said Henrietta. “He came back in a great hurry when there were rumours as to his uncle enjoying the company of a beautiful young woman. Now he has had to scamper back with his tail between his legs, he will not be in a good temper.”

“Nor will Lady Warren, it may be a long while before she acts as hostess for the marquis again,” said Camilla. “Your sister had better have him, Eliza, it would be a great match for her, and then the abbey will have a mistress again.”

“I cannot believe that Lord Montblaine has any serious intentions,” said Eliza rather crossly. “There is no hint of a proposal, and I do not think it would be a good match for Charlotte at all, except in the eyes of the world. He is not the man to make her happy.”

“George Warren seemed quite
épris
in that direction, did he not?” said Mr. Portal, at his driest. “There's one suitor seen off. Who else among the throng has serious intentions?”

“Lord Rosely,” said Eliza, as she rose to her feet. “Dearest cousin, I must take my leave.”

“Shall we see you at the Wintertons' dance this evening?” said Mrs. Rowan.

“Yes, I shall be there.”

Much as Eliza liked to dance, and agreeable as she found the Wintertons, who were noted for the gaiety and mixed company of their parties, she knew that they weren't part of the core of fashionable London although they were well connected. “You can never be sure whom you are going to meet there,” Lady Grandpoint had complained when the invitation arrived. “Last time there was the oddest Lithuanian, apparently a spy during the last war, and his wife, who came from Hungary, besides some strange, learned people from Germany and Holland, and a shockingly brazen woman from Spain who sang to the company.”

Charlotte was indifferent, she would just as soon stay at home, but Lady Grandpoint had too much sense to allow that. “It will be a big affair,” she said, “although there are those who will have nothing to do with them, many of our friends will be present. Besides, we have no other invitations for tonight, and it is essential that you are seen to be well and in your usual looks, Charlotte, for you may be sure all kinds of gossip is floating round about the affair at Montblaine.”

As Eliza dressed, she found her thoughts wandering to Mr. Bruton. Would he be there? He was friendly with the Wintertons, but on the other hand she knew he disliked the social round of London. Still, she took particular care over her appearance; she had expended some more of her guineas on a length of silk muslin which Annie had made up with great panache in a floating, classical style.

Lady Grandpoint did not approve. “It is cut low for a girl of your age, and it is hardly in the normal mode.”

“She looks like a dryad,” said the taciturn Lord Grandpoint, who was, for once, accompanying his wife and guests, since there were to be some people at the ball whom he wished to see.

It was a hot, fine night, and the Wintertons had had the happy thought of extending their already large ballroom into the garden, by means of a large tent draped over a central pole, charmingly striped on the outside in a mediaeval style, and made into a bower of flowers inside. So although there were above three hundred guests present, it could not be called a crush, and it was possible to move from the warmth of the ballroom to the cooler area outside, where a slight breeze ruffled the trees beyond the entrances to the tent.

Charlotte soon had her usual throng of admirers about her, pressing her to grant them a dance. Eliza moved away, trying not to look as though she were looking for anyone, but hoping that she would see the elegant figure of Mr. Bartholomew Bruton.

He was there, he saw her, and he began to move through the crowd towards her, when a voice spoke her name. “Eliza!”

She was transfixed, she was hearing voices, it must be the heat. And then they were beside her, full of smiles and words of greeting, of explanation: Maria Diggory and Anthony.