The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries) (28 page)

“You didn’t give me time enough, last year, to win you over,” Matthew said. “A little longer and I think you would not have been able to tear yourself away. Am I right?”

Again, I was silent. He was perfectly right. Even those few short days of marriage had almost undermined me. I had come so near to yielding myself and staying with him.

When I didn’t speak, Matthew said, “I felt it last night. Was I mistaken?”

“No. You were not mistaken. Matthew . . .”

It was as though I were standing in a river, in a
strong torrent which roared with a loud voice and pressed against me and in a moment would carry me off my feet. I fought to keep them. I put aside a momentary, unwise urge to confide in Matthew. He had not conspired with Wylie or Mew to abduct me, but nevertheless, he had come here with Wilkins,
Wilkins.
What if this unfinished business of his
was
something to do with the unknown plot at Lockhill?

And where
—where—
was Roger Brockley?

I had said to Dale that he might have stopped somewhere to sleep. Or his horse might have gone lame, or he might have missed his way. Arrows flying out of a wood, and a poisoned posset said otherwise, but the thunder of the river drowned their voices.

He’d be back soon, quite safe. At the last moment before I left England with Matthew and Meg, I would send word to Cecil, telling him all that I knew or guessed. When Brockley returned, he might have information which I could add. I would then have discharged my duty to Cecil and the Queen. The plotters, whatever the nature of their plot, would be apprehended, but not Matthew. If he were one of them, he would escape. And I would go with him.

I said, “Go and deal with your unfinished business about cows and draught horses, then return for me. I will come with you.”

“You mean it?”

“I mean it.”

We sealed it in the time-honoured way, with a long kiss. Then Matthew went back into the house and I went to sit with Dale in Brockley’s lodging. Presently, I saw two saddled horses being led to the front of the
house, and slipping downstairs again, I ran to the arch which gave on to the courtyard, to watch Matthew and Wilkins ride away. Then I returned to keep Dale company and wait for Brockley.

Two hours later, there was still no sign of him.

Dale, though still obviously weak, was too worried to stay in bed. She insisted on getting up and dressing. “Something’s gone wrong with him, ma’am. I’ve got to be up and doing.”

That was when I realised that in agreeing to go with Matthew, while my own business was still incomplete, I had behaved like a lunatic. I had been optimistic past the bounds of reason.

Brockley had gone off to search the premises of Barnabas Mew, and Mew might well be a very dangerous man. How could I blandly have assumed that Brockley would be back any moment? I had behaved like a reckless innkeeper in a bad comedy, who says “yes, sir, of course, sir” to a guest who wants gryphon steak for supper, and a unicorn saddled ready at six o’clock tomorrow morning. While Brockley was still missing, I could not possibly set out for France, and that was that.

Well, if love had made me mad, then I must stay mad. I must hold on to my insanity and attempt the impossible. Brockley was missing, so I must find him. Once before, a man had gone on an errand for me and died for it. I would not stand idle while history repeated itself. I would be back by the time Matthew returned, I told myself, or else I would not be back at all.

“Dale,” I said, “I’m going to Windsor. I’m going to find out what’s happened.”

“But you can’t go alone, ma’am!”

“I can and I must. I owe it to Brockley. There’s no time to ask advice or send for help,” I said. “Although . . . Dale, if I saddle Bay Star, could you ride behind me as far as the village and then deliver a note for me? To Dr. Forrest at the vicarage? I think he’d let you rest there until you felt well enough to make your way back.”

“You think he’d help me, ma’am?”

“Well, he’s an Anglican vicar. It’s a reasonable hope.”

“Why don’t you just go to him yourself and ask him to do . . . whatever needs to be done?”

“Because then he might try to stop me from going, and I can’t tolerate delay. Can you do it, Dale?”

“Yes, ma’am. For you and for Brockley, yes I can.”

“Then,” I said, “I’ll get my cloak and put a few things together for the saddlebag, and we’re off. Wait for me here. I’ll find your husband and bring him back to you, Dale. If it’s possible at all, I’ll do it.”

On which note of valiant optimism, I hastened down the wooden steps to the stableyard, called to a stableboy to saddle Bay Star for me and have her standing ready, and then hurried back to the house and headfirst into unforeseen disaster.

I
went straight to my room. I changed my clothes, selecting my sturdiest pair of shoes and donning an old kirtle and open-fronted gown with a very small ruff. Once dressed, I sat down to pen a rapid note to Dr. Forrest. Folding it, I pushed it into my hidden pocket, added a purse of money, my lock-picks and my small dagger in its sheath, caught up a cloak and sped down the main stairs.

At the foot, I was accosted by Mr. and Mrs. Mason together.

“Ah, Mrs. Blanchard.” Leonard Mason’s long face was cold and his voice unfriendly. “I have been looking for you.” He noticed my cloak. “Were you going out?”

“I am going across to sit with Dale. The stableyard is chilly.”

“Dale must wait, I’m afraid. I wish to speak to you in the study. Ann, will you fetch Tilly and Redman?”

I looked at Ann in astonishment. We had after all met at breakfast, and I had seen no sign of this extreme hostility then.

Ann looked back at me with anguish in her eyes. “I
can’t believe it. I’m sure there is some explanation . . .”

“Explanation of what?”

“Ann,” said her husband on a warning note.

“Oh
dear!
” Ann, muttering in a desperate fashion, hurried away.

“What is all this?” I asked Leonard. “Must it be now? I really should get back to Dale. I must apologise that I can’t teach the girls this morning but—”

“I think it extremely unlikely,” said Leonard Mason “that you will ever even speak to my girls again, let alone teach them. I should never have let you come here. I did so only to please my wife, who was so certain . . . well, never mind. Come, Mrs. Blanchard. At once!”

He motioned me to go back up the stairs ahead of him. I went, perforce, furious at being interrupted now, and bewildered too. In the study, Leonard sat down at his desk, leaving me to stand. Taking care not to look towards the cupboard which held such embarrassing memories, I took up a position facing the desk, hands clasped before me.

“Mr. Mason, will you please explain what this is about?”

“Wait.”

And wait we did, in a simmering silence, until footsteps came through the gallery and the anteroom, and Ann arrived with the butler and Tilly. Redman, stocky and muscular as ever, wore the apron he used when scouring silver; Tilly was all in black, relieved only by the little white ruff at her neck, although even that had black edging.

Tilly did not go in for farthingales, and her dark
skirts hung limply round her bony form. Her face was gaunt and white, the skin about the faded blue eyes almost transparent, and a violet vein pulsed on one temple as though a parasitic worm were embedded there. She was a sick woman, by the look of her. She came to stand a few feet away from me, and her washed-out eyes regarded me with that incomprehensible loathing of hers.

Ann, her sweet face unhappy, went to perch on the window seat, taking the few spare inches not already occupied by books.

“Very well,” said Mason. “Let us take all this in order. This morning, Tilly, you came to me and told me of things you had recently observed. You also said that there was talk in the household because of something Redman had seen. I have since spoken to Redman, and since his part of the story comes first, in terms of time, I’ll begin with him. Redman?”

Redman hadn’t looked at me at all. Solidly, he said, “It wasn’t long after Mrs. Blanchard came here—not as much as a week after, if I remember aright. I came upstairs one afternoon to light the gallery fire, and I saw her and her groom Brockley come out of the schoolroom door. It seemed a bit odd to me that she should have her groom in the house at all. And there had been talk, sir, before she came. Talk that in London she had a certain reputation . . .”

“I have
not!
” I burst out.

“I did not ask you to speak,” said Leonard. “Redman, continue.”

“Well, sir, when she saw me, Mrs. Blanchard went scarlet. It looked funny to me.”

“I have been aware for some time,” I said, breaking in again, “that before I came here, someone had slandered me. May I know precisely who it was?”

“Slander? Your behaviour bears out what was said! Mr. Mew gave us warning. He had been in London and heard you talked about.”

So it had been Mew’s idea. Clever! I thought in fury.

“My wife,” said Mason, “did not believe it. She had a good impression of you on your first visit, as indeed had I. I agreed to give you the benefit of the doubt and now regret it. We have heard Redman—”

“We have heard Redman talk nonsense! Brockley undertakes many tasks for me.”

“That I can believe,” said Redman, and grinned.

“Be silent,” said Mason, to me, not to Redman. He turned to Tilly. “Now, Tilly, will you repeat your part of the tale?”

“I don’t feel well enough to get about much these days,” Tilly said, “but now and then I take a turn in the house, and if I go through the gallery, I mostly rest awhile in one of the window bays. From the bay nearest the schoolroom, you can see down into the stableyard.” She had a thin, quivery voice, but part of the quiver at least was banked-up outrage. “One morning, I saw her and Thomas, your own groom, sir, kissing. And that’s not all, not by a long way.”

She paused for effect and my stomach turned over. Oh no, it couldn’t be, she couldn’t have. How on earth . . . ?

It was. She had. Matthew had been careless.

“It was last night, when this person’s maid took ill.”
This person
was me. In Tilly’s eyes, I had lost the right to the courtesy of my own name. “I got up to see what the uproar was, same as everyone else, but I was slow. Everyone else was off down the stairs by the time I got near them and near where her room is.” She pointed at me. “But there was a cresset in a wall-bracket, so I could see well enough. I saw Mr. Lenoir, him that’s gone now, and good riddance.”

“Tilly,” said Ann from the window, “that is not the way to speak of the master’s guests.”

“Isn’t it, ma’am? When this guest was seen coming out of a young woman’s bedchamber at dead of night? Because that’s what I saw: Mr. Lenoir putting his head out of
her
door—” again she pointed at me—“and looking round furtive like, and then coming out and going away, back towards his guest room. They’d been together, and he’d kept hidden till he thought he could come out and no one would see him, that’s what.”

“What was he wearing? Was he dressed?” Ann asked suddenly.

“Shirt and breeches, ma’am, but they looked as if they’d been pulled on fast.”

“Well,” said Leonard. “There you have it. What have you to say, Mrs. Blanchard? You may speak now.”

“Thank you,” I said ironically.

I was so angry that I was lightheaded. I should by now be mounting Bay Star, getting Dale down to Dr. Forrest and myself on the way to Windsor. My time was being wasted, my energies diverted, and for what? Because of a snooping butler and a prurient lady’s maid, and because the whole world laboured under the
delusion that if a man and a woman were alone together it had to have something to do with sex, and if a man kissed a woman it was always with her approval, and even if it wasn’t, it was still her fault somehow.

“I speak to my manservant Brockley where and when I choose,” I said furiously. “He is the husband of my maid, Dale. I regard them both as my friends.
Friends.
That and nothing else.” I glared at Redman. “Yes, I saw you putting the wrong construction on it. If I looked embarrassed, it was because I hated what you thought, not because you were right. And because of the lying gossip that someone put about before I set foot in Lockhill, Thomas thought I would be easy meat, so one day, in the stableyard, yes, he pounced on me. If you were looking as avidly as you seem to have been,” I added, turning on Tilly, “you would also have seen me stamp on his foot and break away!”

“And last night?” said Leonard cynically. “Did you stamp on Mr. Lenoir’s foot?”

“I had no need to. Mr. Lenoir did not come to my room for purposes of illicit lovemaking.” This was literally true. Lovemaking between a married couple is not illicit. What I said next was less truthful, however. “I saw him this morning,” I said. “He spoke to me. He was asleep when the alarm was raised about Dale, and he, too, was slow to reach the stairs. Tilly wasn’t the only one! He had heard people shouting and heard my name and he thought I must be still in my room, asleep.” I didn’t sound very convincing and their expressions proved it, but I ploughed on. I hadn’t much alternative, after all.

“He knew where my room was, as it chanced. He
banged on the door, and when there was no answer, went in to wake me, if I were there. I was not, so he left the room again. He left cautiously in case he were seen and someone thought ill of him and me. As has apparently happened!”

I didn’t invent all that on the spur of the moment. It had worried me all along, that someone might have seen Matthew come out of my room. During the ghastly night hours, while I dosed Dale and held her head and kept her awake, I had worked out what to say if I were challenged. However, although it was the best story I could think of, I knew how feeble it was.

Ann was crying, but more in sorrow at my perfidy than grief for a victim of injustice, and Leonard Mason was staring at me, his lip curling scornfully. “Do you expect anyone to believe this . . . this tarradiddle?”

“Of course she doesn’t. How could she?” Tilly’s scorn was searing. “And tarradiddle’s the right word! I saw them again this morning. They were kissing in the stableyard!”