The Hired Wife (29 page)

Cecil hurried
into the house, his ears drumming with the sound of his blood
pumping through his heart. He exhaled in relief as he dropped the
dead woman on the nearest sofa. Her left arm immediately slid off
the side and swung there defying him. He gingerly picked it up and
wedged it against her side and pulled her skirts down over her
calves. He didn’t have time to put the head at a more natural angle
before Emily burst away from Buckingham and wrapped her arms around
her sister’s head. Cecil noted Buckingham’s look of mortification.
Cecil could understand the man being upset; he wouldn’t want his
sweetheart hugging a corpse, even if it was her dead twin.”

His brother
George leaned over and whispered, “I think Bucky’s upset because
all this death will put back the wedding. I overheard the servants
saying he’s proposed.”

Cecil pursed
his lips. “Bucky won’t wait and I wouldn’t either…”

“They’ll have
to, to mourn. People will think they’re unseemly. I’d be in agony
if I was Bucky.”

“Who cares what
other people think? Alyce is dead; she isn’t going to care if they
wear black for a year though she’d enjoy knowing she forced them to
wait. If she wasn’t dead I’d suspect her of plotting to ruin
Bucky’s life. The woman was a bi… Ouch! Watch where you swing your
feet! That was my shin and it isn’t made of steel. If I was Lord
Raynham I’d order them to elope out of kindness.”

George shoved
his hands in his trouser pockets, “I’ll wager you a guinea of
Christmas money that Emily will make him wait; poor Bucky…”

“Done! You
won’t have any Christmas money come Christmas Day at this rate.
Bucky?” The large protruding front teeth turned in his direction.
“Shall I order tea? We’ve missed lunch; a sandwich might help take
Emily mind off death and I’m starving.”

Bucky’s nose
twitched in disbelief causing his upper lip to rise and fall over
his front teeth. “How can you think of food after finding
Morley…?”

“Clearly I’m
not the only thing that can think of food after seeing Morley naked
and Papa will have been riding for hours…”

Lord
Buckingham’s disproving expression faded into agreement. “True, a
man can’t ride all day and expect to be starved on arrival. Have a
servant tell Mrs Cooper to serve tea in the breakfast room; we
can’t stand around Alyce eating cake.”

Cecil glanced
at the dead woman. “Why not? We can pretend she’s sleeping with her
eyes open…” Buckingham appeared unhappy with the idea. “…but we
don’t have to eat in here Bucky…George; stay here with Romeo…”

Lady Emily
dragged her wet swollen eyes off her sister and turned a furious
glare at Cecil. “Have you no feelings? My sister is dead!”

“Yes, and I
feel very sad for you, but if I’d drunk that cursed bottle and your
sister was alive she’d be elated at my demise…”

“It doesn’t
matter what she might have felt; she’s dead.”

“Exactly, she’s
dead and I’m hungry. She’d be demanding a feast to celebrate my
death. I merely wish a cup of tea and a sandwich. Do you think Mrs
Cooper has made another one of those sponge cakes?”

“My sister is
lying there dead. I don’t want to hear about food…not after seeing
Morley. Bucky…”

Cecil nodded in
understand. “You’re probably faint from hunger. I’ll fetch you a
cup of hot tea and you can eulogise Alyce while we eat. She’ll be
the center of attention; she’d like that.”

“Bucky, make
him go away!”

Bucky’s top lip
twitched unhappily over his front teeth. “Cecil…”

“I didn’t mean
to upset her; we don’t have to eat in here.”

Lady Emily’s
head jerked back in Cecil’s direction. “You can’t eat in the same
room as a corpse…she’s not some stuffed deer head mounted on the
wall for decoration! She’s a dead person…she’s my…dead sister…” The
young woman burst into tears as she reached a hand towards her
future husband. “Bucky!” The man jumped to her side and picked her
up and carried her away from the sofa murmuring unintelligible
words of comfort into her hair leaving Alyce lying with her neck
contorted at an uncomfortable looking angle.

Cecil eyed the
reclining Alyce as he approached the sofa. The awful woman was
probably on her way to hell, but that didn’t mean her family had to
remember her as a contorted corpse. He gently turned her head so
she was facing upwards and then tidied her hair. “She doesn’t look
dead. She looks mesmerised…”

“Cecil!”
Buckingham’s voice held a note of command. “Go order tea for the
breakfast room and see if your Papa needs a room for the
night.”

Cecil’s search
for a servant was a protracted effort, but having placed the order
for tea, sandwiches and cake he headed back to the drawing room.
Pausing in the doorway he was pleased to see his father and the
rest of his brothers standing among the mourners. Lord Raynham
looked despondent as he stood with his arm around Lady Mary glaring
down at his dead sister as if waiting for her to sit up and confess
it was all a bad joke. Cecil crossed to his father and slapped him
on the back producing a cloud of dust and a steely look as Peter
Smirke turned his full attention to his eldest child. “My Lord?”
That look told Cecil he was in trouble, though he didn’t yet know
why. Feeling his father’s firm hand on his shoulder he willingly
turned towards the door. The sooner his father gave him the lecture
the sooner it would be over and he could eat.

After half a
dozen steps Cecil felt his father’s hand grip telling him to stop.
Lady Morley could be heard imperiously demanding a servant if
they’d seen her son. The servant’s answer couldn’t be heard, but a
loud thump and the servant’s yelp of pain clearly illustrated the
old woman’s displeasure in the answer. “Where is everyone? Lord
Buckingham?” She sailed into the room, her walking stick in one
hand, her lorgnette in the other.

Cecil couldn’t
help wondering what the ugly dragon had looked like in her youth.
His grandmother had once told him that Lady Morley had possessed a
rare beauty that had entranced numerous men, but it was difficult
to imagine what his grandfather had ever seen in the woman; the
lines in her face seemed to spell out the words ‘vicious harpy’.
“Where is that bucktoothed man? Ah…there you are. Your impertinent
servants are imbeciles. None of them will even tell me if they’ve
seen Morley…” The old woman’s eyes fixated on the sofa. “Alyce!
Where’s Morley?”

The woman lying
on the sofa serenely ignored her command, but Lady Mary turned to
look at the old woman dragging her husband’s glare towards the
door. “Raynham, make that impertinent hussy get off her backside
and tell me if she’s seen my son. I wish to leave and I can’t find
Morley. I don’t know what he was thinking to drag me here. I hate
the countryside. Well? Where’s my son?” An uncomfortable silence
settled over the room like a suffocating white dust sheet heralding
a change of residence.

Lady Catherine
Fitzalan, the Marchioness of Morley sneered at the large blurry
human shaped blobs of colour dotting the Drawing room. As soon as
she found her son she’d order her carriage and depart. She had to
put distance between Morley and the dubious temptation of Mary
Godfrey. Morley must be ill; the woman didn’t even have beauty or
conversation to recommend her. Lady Catherine wouldn’t have
believed her son capable of such a demeaning passion, but he’d
freely admitted the desire. He fobbed off her concern by saying
Mary Godfrey was a passing fancy, but there’d been a look in his
eyes that gave cause for alarm. She’d persuaded him to discard the
slut Alyce; she’d persuade him the plain Mary was unfit to be his
Marchioness. If he insisted on marrying the ugly woman a small
amount of inheritance powder in Mary’s tea would ensure it didn’t
last long.

Lady Catherine
thumped her walking stick against the ground, “Where’s my son?” The
silence had an eerie quality. Scowling at silent blurry shapes, her
eyes were drawn to the odd giant patch of black. Buckingham had a
new guest. Lifting her lorgnette, her stomach dropped as Peter
Smirke came into focus. “When did Lord of the Smirkes arrive?” Her
sneer caused nothing more than a blink as if he’d resigned himself
to a life of insults. His father would have demanded a public
apology with a steely look that made her knees tremble in
delight.

Her heart still
burned with hatred and longing for the man who’d jilted her.
Gripping her walking stick, she reluctantly turned away from Peter
Smirke with a look of disgust and struck the floor with angry force
as she approached the sofa where her illegal daughter-in-law was
resting. “Alyce! Stop lying there like a lump and tell me when you
last saw Morley.” Quiet sobs were quickly muffled on the other side
of the room.

“Madam…” She
ignored Lord Beast’s booming reproof and struck the lying woman on
the leg with her stick, but there was no flinching or cry of pain.
“…you can’t hurt my sister.”

Lady Morley
scrunched her face in displeasure at having to converse with the
deaf man. “Oh can’t I? Your sister is a brazen hussy. She’s unfit
to marry my son.” The man couldn’t hear her and his hired wife
didn’t repeat the insult. Lady Catherine had long advised her son
to end the obnoxious childhood friendship, but her silly boy had
merely insisted that Lord Beast had his uses. What use could a deaf
brute be? With the blood of kings in his veins it was only right
that Morley count the Regent as an acquaintance. Everyone knew the
Fitzalans descended from Charlemagne. Marshall Godfrey should have
kissed her son’s feet for deigning to marry one of his sisters. “I
wouldn’t allow that hussy to be the Marchioness of Morley after
what my son told me. The day before she was to marry Morley, Alyce
was seen in the conservatory kissing that Smirke child.” She
gestured in the direction of Charles, assuming because he looked
like his evil uncle he’d debauch an innocent. “He looks old enough
to do more than kiss and I dare say he did.”

The burly Lord
Beast appeared to be able to read lips. “Shut up you old witch. We
all know she was a hussy, but she won’t be making any more mistakes
because she’s dead and I don’t want Emily to hear another sneering
ill-word about her sister.”

“Dead?” Lady
Catherine pushed past Lord Raynham and leaned over to see the woman
on the sofa. “Alyce…?” The young woman’s eyes were staring
unblinking at the ceiling as if entranced by the unfashionable
fresco of naked Gods and Goddesses frolicking in fluffy white
clouds. She picked up the girls arm and dropped it. It thumped the
sofa and slid over the side hanging there without resistance
dripping water onto the carpet. Lady Catherine sighed in relief;
the hussy wouldn’t be able to force her way back into Morley’s life
or make unpleasant scenes. “What happened?”

Lord Beast
picked up his sister’s arm with trembling hands and carefully laid
it next to her on the sofa. “She was poisoned.”

“Typical
hysteric…” Lady Catherine nodded in understanding as she looked at
the half wet corpse. “…she killed herself. Well if the silly chit
couldn’t face life without Morley who can blame her? What? Why are
you looking at me like that? It’s not my fault she’s dead.”

“Madam…” Lord
Adderbury’s authoritative tone dragged her eyes back to the
towering figure in dusty black. “…Lord Raynham’s sister
d-d-didn’t…”

“What do you
have to do with this?”

“Nothing…b-b-but she d-didn’t…”

“Then don’t
make me listen to your irritating stutter. Save it for Lord Beast
who couldn’t hear a brick land on his head.”

“Madam…” Her
knees trembled as she leaned heavily on her stick. Peter Smirke was
giving her that steely look his father used to give her when she
was rude in his hearing. “…brace yourself. Something awful has
happened.”

“Obviously,
that stupid girl drank poison and then stuck her head in the
lake.”

“She was
murdered.”

“Nonsense, no
one would dare be murdered at a house party I was attending. It
would be scandalous.”

“Prepare to
become the t-t-talk of the t-town Madam; she was murdered.”

“Who killed
her? Did Lord Beast hope to bury the fact his sister could lift her
skirts faster than a ballet dancer?” Lady Catherine was pleased to
hear Mary repeating the accusation into the man’s ear.

The brute
turned furious blue sapphires in her direction and shouted, “My
sister is dead because of your vile son. Look at her! She’s dead
because she drank the bottle of wine your son sent her; the bottle
he’d poisoned with hemlock. The servant who stole the second bottle
meant for Alyce lies dead in his lover’s dead arms.”

“Morley didn’t
need to kill her…”

Lord Beast
leaned over to listen to his wife and then roared, “Henry didn’t
need an excuse to kill people; I dare say it gave him
pleasure.”

Lady Catherine
sucked in her breath at the monstrous accusation and looked around
the room for support, bemused by the pity on George Smirke’s face.
“When Morley hears this slander you’ll be the one who ends up in a
coffin.”

Lord Beast’s
cynical bark of amusement sent a shiver of dread down her spine.
“What have you done to my son? Where’s Morley?”

Sapphire eyes
gleamed with satisfaction, “Henry’s dead!”

Lady
Catherine’s knees trembled as white spots of intense light dazzled
her vision. “You’re lying…Morley can’t be dead…”

“He’s as dead
as Alyce. Shall I now follow your lead and tell you that Henry was
a lecherous villain who tried to rape my wife? If the Smirkes
hadn’t followed him to my wife’s door… My only regret is that I
didn’t get another chance to pummel his sneering face.”

The white
lights quickened as an odd piercing pain shot up her arm and lodged
in her chest. “Morley can’t be dead…he’s all I have left…”

“That’s because
he killed the rest of your family. Didn’t you think it rather odd
that Henry was always the one to find the bodies?”