Place of Confinement (39 page)

‘Oh! But Miss Kent, do you love him? Do anything rather than marry without affection!’

Dido smiled sadly at the commonplace saying, considering what the ‘anything’ was in her case. She said nothing, but Miss Gibbs seemed to catch at her expression.

‘You think me foolish and romantic, I know,’ she said, reddening. ‘You think me taken in by Mr Lomax. But you know, I am not so very stupid. I have been thinking a great deal these last two days, and it seems to me that a woman can only be safe if she is poor.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Dido looked at her companion with sudden interest. Something in her words had struck a chord …

Martha’s face was flushed but calm, her pale eyes solemn as she gazed down at the ham rind and bread crust on her plate. ‘I believe a woman can only really be
sure
that a man loves her if she is poor. Else you know she will always wonder whether his motives are unworthy. Or,’ she glanced up, ‘or else
other people
will always be doubting him and that, you know, must make a woman uneasy. Lord, Miss Kent, I’m sure no one can be happy when there is suspicion.’

‘Why,’ said Dido with increasing respect. ‘I believe you are in the right!’

‘And so,’ Martha continued hurriedly, ‘I mean – just as soon as we are sure Tish is safe – I mean to write the whole truth to Mr Lomax and release him from our engagement.’ She paused, and put her hand to a little constriction in her throat, but continued with determination. ‘Then, you know, if he really loves me, he will seek me out and…’

Her words faltered and stopped; but Dido was busy with her own thoughts. ‘Your reasoning is very sound indeed, Miss Gibbs,’ she cried. ‘In point of fact, it is so sound that I cannot help but wonder whether someone else has found her way to exactly the same conclusion!’

‘Someone else?’ Martha looked bewildered. ‘Who?’

Dido was pretty well bewildered herself. ‘Someone,’ she replied with a shake of her head, ‘that I had certainly not set down as “romantic”. In fact, the last person among my acquaintance who I would ever suspect of making a disinterested gesture.’ She jumped to her feet. ‘But I believe you may have explained the reason for my aunt’s extraordinary behaviour! Please excuse me. I must talk to her directly.’ She turned towards the laden picnic table where Mrs Manners sat in state – then hesitated.

She turned quickly back to Martha, whose eyes were once more downcast as she bit at her lip, lost in her own thoughts. ‘And remember, Miss Gibbs,’ she said gently, ‘if, when he knows that you are poor, Mr Tom Lomax does not seek to revive the engagement, then he is unworthy of your love. You may forget him and find a more deserving man.’

She laid her hand in brief encouragement on Martha’s shoulder, then made her way towards the dignified black figure beside the fluttering white cloth.

*   *   *

Mrs Manners sat alone beside the picnic table under a large parasol. The rest of Mrs Bailey’s intrepid exploring party was seated at ease on rugs spread about among the gorse and sheep. But Mrs Manners held to her chair – as erect as if she had been at a court banquet.

A little exploring party of wasps had already established itself about the cold meat and the cakes on the table and the footman was constantly employed in walking up and down flapping his hands at them. They rose each time at his approach – and settled again when he was past. Except for one particularly angry wasp which had become trapped in a wine glass and kept up a constant drone of fury.

Dido took a seat opposite Mrs Manners who looked upon her suspiciously. ‘Well, miss,’ she began, ‘and what have you to say for yourself?’

‘Just this: why do you wish to give away your fortune?’

‘That, miss, is my own affair.’ Mrs Manners folded her hands about the fan in her lap and turned her face away to the sea.

Dido waited a while, hoping for more. She watched her aunt in silence across the crumbling pies and melting jellies. The wasp in the wine glass droned furiously. Mrs Manners’ face was shaded by the vast brim of a sun hat which obscured her eyes entirely – leaving visible only lips drawn tight and a chin lifted in determined silence.

‘It is a test, is it not?’ said Dido at last. ‘A test of Mr Sutherland. That has been your plan from the beginning. You came to Charcombe to find him out; to give him the opportunity of a reunion – if he chooses it. But the fortune might be a barrier between you. A village doctor might well hesitate to approach such a very wealthy widow.’

Mrs Manners continued to watch the distant waves.

‘You do not deny it?’

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I do not deny it.’

‘Well!’ Dido sat for several moments in astonishment. ‘I am all amazement!’ she said at last. ‘You, who have always spoken so firmly of duty … of family obligation … That you should make such a gesture of affection! Here is greater inconsistency of character than I would have supposed possible!’

Mrs Manners turned slowly to face her. Her eyes, still heavily shaded by the hat, were difficult to read, but they fixed themselves in a steady stare. ‘No, Miss Dido! I do not recant a single word I ever spoke. I only advocate the need for duty in the
young.
But I,’ she struck the table with her fan, ‘I am no longer young.
I,
miss, have done my duty for thirty years. I have earned the right to act for myself – to think only of my own interest.’

‘And you will act like an impulsive girl of sixteen!’

‘That is no concern of yours! I shall act as I please – for the first time in my life. I think you had better consider how you are to act yourself.’

Dido’s thoughts turned abruptly from wonder at her aunt’s romantic gesture, to her own danger. ‘You consider that I am yet young enough to be constrained by duty?’

‘Oh yes,’ pronounced Mrs Manners firmly. ‘But I do not need to tell you that. You know your duty. That is why I have chosen you from among all my husband’s nieces. I know that every little attention you pay to me is done for the sake of duty; you do not court me for selfish motives, it is all done for the sake of your family, is it not?’

Dido coloured. ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘that my behaviour has never seemed grudging or reluctant.’

‘Oh, it has seemed very grudging and reluctant indeed!’ cried Aunt Manners. ‘And I honour you for it! But,’ she folded her fan with a sharp snap and pointed it at her niece, ‘what I wish to know – what I have set out to discover – is how dutiful you will be in greater matters. I knew from the beginning that you might need a little persuasion. When your sister-in-law told me you were determined to refuse the widowed clergyman, I wondered about you, Miss Dido. How unexceptionable would an offer of marriage have to be to overcome your romantic scruples? I was, I confess, surprised to hear that you had hesitated over the proposal of such a very eligible man as the master of Charcombe Manor. But then,’ she reached across the fruit and broken loaves on the table and tapped her fan against Dido’s wrist, ‘Lancelot told me of your attachment to Mr William Lomax – and I began to think that perhaps you must know the whole truth before you would do your duty.’

‘And,’ said Dido in a rather unsteady voice, ‘you would claim it is my duty to marry Mr Fenstanton?’

‘But of course it is your duty. Just as it was my duty to marry your uncle. Think, Miss Dido!’ she smiled knowingly. ‘You would be a rich woman – able to assist your brothers, able to save your sister from poverty. You could reward the family who have supported you. Think how they would all cry out against your refusing so advantageous a match.’

‘No!’ answered Dido immediately. ‘My sister would never speak a word against my refusal. Eliza would teach in a school before she would let me marry a man I do not love! And as for my brothers…’ she hesitated a moment here. ‘I cannot believe … I
will
not believe that my brothers are as selfish and unprincipled as yours proved themselves to be. And if they are so corrupted as to sell their sister’s person for worldly advantage … then their disapprobation can be of no consequence to me. I care not what they think!’

Mrs Manners narrowed her eyes in disbelief and studied her niece. Dido endeavoured to meet her stare calmly, but her heart was beating so hard it was difficult to keep her hands still upon the table. The brilliance of the sun-spangled sea hurt her eyes and the picnic smell of sweet jellies, vinegar and bruised grass seemed oppressive; her breath caught and ached in her breast.

‘Do you mean to refuse Lancelot?’ asked Mrs Manners at last – and it was spoken in much the same way as she might have asked whether Dido intended to cease breathing, or place her hand into the fire.

The stark question threw Dido’s mind into turmoil. She swallowed back the instinctive ‘yes’ which had risen to her lips. She thought of the damning letter now in Mr Lancelot’s possession; the relentless reasoning which had brought her to the conclusion that she
must
accept Mr Fenstanton’s offer; the call of a higher, more compelling duty which her aunt could not even suspect. ‘I do not know,’ she stammered. ‘I have not yet reached my decision.’

‘Ah!’ cried Mrs Manners with great satisfaction. ‘I did not think your pretty notions would stand out long against the claims of hard cash. Did I not tell you yesterday that in four and twenty hours you would have changed your mind? Now that my fortune is in your hands, I doubt you are so very anxious to publish an old story which would throw doubt upon my claims!’

With a great effort of will Dido kept silent. She must be cautious. She looked beyond the table spread with it’s fine linen and glass and broken pies, to the town of Charcombe lying in the great, white-laced curve of the bay; but most particularly she looked to the sandy track which led up from the town to the cliffs. She fixed her eyes upon that road with a longing so intense it might almost manufacture the sight she wished for – the approaching figure of Mr Lomax. Surely, she thought, he must soon come to her. Soon she would know whether he had secured the document which could free her from Lancelot Fenstanton’s claim upon her future …

And these thoughts brought Dido abruptly back to all her doubts over her solution of the mystery; and she was able to turn from feeling to reason.

She looked at her aunt’s gloating face. ‘Before I can say yes or no to Mr Fenstanton’s offer,’ she said, ‘I feel I must know a little more about his character. In particular I would like to know whether he has taken any part in Mr George Fenstanton’s scheme to get money from you?’

‘No!’ cried Mrs Manners indignantly. ‘Of course he has not taken any part in it! He knows of it. I have told him myself. But he would never be a party to such an outrage. Why do you ask such a ridiculous question?’

‘Because, Aunt, I believe I have made a mistake. When I spoke to you in the east wing, I said that Mr George and Mr Lancelot had been overheard in discussion by Miss Verney. But I realise now that that cannot have been the case.’ She explained her reasons for believing that Mr George Fenstanton could not have detected Miss Verney in the library, that it must have been Mr Lancelot himself who had been so discomposed by her presence as to write the threatening note to Miss Gibbs.

Mrs Manners flicked open her fan with a frown of disdain. ‘This is nonsense,’ she exclaimed when the account was finished. ‘Complete nonsense.’

‘No—’

‘Oh, but it is! You think yourself so clever, Miss Dido, but a child could see the weakness in your argument! If George was gone away to take his dip in the sea, then Lancelot was
alone
in the hall. He could not have been talking to anyone, so there was nothing for Letitia to overhear.’

‘I cannot quite make it out,’ conceded Dido. ‘But I am sure
something
must have occurred while he was alone in the hall and Miss Verney was making her way back through the library … And,’ she continued thoughtfully, ‘there can have been no meeting – no confrontation – for he did not know that it was her; he thought it was Miss Gibbs.’ She shook her head, determined to puzzle it out. ‘It
must
have been an overhearing. I can think of no other explanation.’

‘Nonsense! I have told you, there was nothing to hear! Gentlemen do not talk to themselves.’

‘Oh!’ cried Dido in great excitement. The words had called forth a memory. A memory of her first day at Charcombe, the arrival of the messenger with Tom Lomax’s letter. She remembered sitting in the darkness of the hall and watching Mr Lancelot on the sunny step
talking to himself.
‘This gentleman does,’ she said through lips rendered almost immovable by shock. ‘Under one particular circumstance, Mr Lancelot Fenstanton does talk when he thinks no one is listening.’

Her companion continued to look disdainful.

‘Mr Lancelot reads aloud,’ Dido explained. ‘He reads his letters aloud, even when he believes himself alone.’ Her mind was racing now, all manner of ideas sliding into place – and forming a very alarming picture indeed.

‘You believe he received a letter?’

‘But of course he did! I remember now that Mr Tom told us the letters were coming from the post as he set off upon his walk with Miss Verney.’ Dido jumped to her feet. ‘I believe I know who that letter was from,’ she cried as she began to pace about. ‘And I know why its contents made Miss Verney run away!’

Chapter Forty-One

Dido was on her feet because she could sit still no longer. She must move. With her, exercise of the body and of the brain were all but the same thing. She walked away from her aunt to the edge of the cliff, where bushes of gorse and juniper grew so thickly as to form a hedge, and a steep narrow set of steps led down to a rocky little beach. She stood here for several minutes watching the green glass walls of the waves shatter into shards of foam on the rocks below; and she thought about Lancelot Fenstanton. She considered everything that had passed between them since her first coming to Charcombe. Then she turned back and looked again with longing towards the town.

She felt quite unequal to continuing without Mr Lomax. The whole business had taken such a turn as made her doubt she should proceed alone. She kept her eyes upon the track and willed him to appear. He must come soon. It was almost a prayer in her head …