The Westerby Inheritance (21 page)

“Well, fellow by the name of Garfield—you know, Tony Garfield, cavalry man who squints-well, him, he called on Westerby t’other day and says he’s having a wing built on the
other
side. But he’s gone in for gothic, and he plans to have spires and curlicues and gargoyles and whatnot. Also, he’s turned religious, so maybe it accounts for his ecclesiastical taste in architecture. Old Westerby doesn’t touch a drop now, not a drop, and he’s mortal happy about everything to the point of lunacy. Tony was thrown from his horse and demn near broke his neck on a wall, and Westerby sits up on
his
horse, laughing fit to bust. ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Garfield. ‘Why,
you
are!’ howls old Westerby, holding his sides. ‘It is to laugh to see a man so close to his Maker.’ Westerby is definitely all about in his upper chambers. Have some wine, and stop looking so blue-deviled.”

“I think,” said Lord Charles in measured tones as he helped himself to a glass of wine, “that I do not wish to hear any news ever again of that family.”

“Oh!” said Sir Anthony, looking at him sharply. “Feel like telling me why? No? Well, it isn’t that Lovelace chit, for you didn’t go near her at the assembly. Now what will we do on this damp day?”

Lord Charles seemed to sit for a long time in a brooding silence. Then he looked at his friend and said lightly, “Why, we shall go to the opera. I hear they have at least two new dancers who are accounted remarkably pretty.”

“Ill toast that!” cried Sir Anthony, refilling his glass. The weather and only the weather had been affecting his friend’s temper. For a moment there, he had thought it might have been something to do with the Lovelace chit. But then, Lord Charles Welbourne had never really been in love and was not likely to be stricken by the plague at this late date!

Friday arrived, the day Jane was to have her second meeting with Lord Charles, and the rain still fell, turning the London streets into channels of mud.

Jane pleaded the headache so that Hetty and her daughters would leave for the Courtneys’ drum without her. Miss Armitage, the girls’ governess, was delighted to receive yet another day off, and only Bella remained. Jane assumed his lordship would call for her at the same time as he had done on Wednesday—at two o’clock in the afternoon.

She sent for Bella and told that surprised maid that she, Jane, was urgently in need of mauve ribbons to trim a gown, and handed her a piece of silk so that she would be able to match the color. Bella stared from the silk to the downpouring rain and wondered at her mistress’s sudden callousness.

“It’s powerful wet, my lady,” said Bella at last.

“I can see that,” said Jane testily. “But I wish the ribbons urgently. We are all going to Vauxhall tomorrow, you know.”

“Happen if I wait, the chapman’ll come around,” said Bella stubbornly.

“Bella!” admonished Jane. “I am giving you a direct order. I do not wish ribbons from the chapman. I want good silk from Carter’s in Oxford Street, and nowhere else will do. You are to go
now
. You may take a chair.”

Bella went out, grumbling, to put on her calash and pattens. She was feeling very martyred. Very well, she would go to Carter’s—on foot. And then she would catch her death, and then my lady would be sorry for her hardheartedness in sending her old Bella out in weather like this.

Jane heard the iron ring on Bella’s pattens clattering out of Huggets Square, and heaved a sigh of relief. Now all she had to do was make ready and go out to join my lord in his carriage, and that way neither butler nor footman would guess that there was no chaperon to attend her.

The rain dripped from Bella’s calash in front of her face and was beginning to seep through her cloak as she passed the end of Hessel Street on her way to Oxford Street. She nearly collided with a small, trim figure. “Why, Mr. Anderson!” cried Bella, recognizing Lord Charles’s butler. “You did give me a start.”

Mr. Anderson was accompanied by a stocky figure he introduced as my lord’s coachman, Bryant. “At least I ain’t the only servant sent out in this—hem—weather,” said Bella cheerfully.

“We’ve been at the coffee house,” said Anderson. “Bryant here has to take his lordship out. They don’t think we might catch our deaths.”

“It ain’t you that’s got to go, Mr. Anderson,” grumbled Bryant. “It’s me what’s got to take his lordship out to Hampstead, asettin’ up on that box like I was driving along the bed of a river.”

“Hampstead!” Bella turned a shrewd eye on the coachman. “What’s to do in Hampstead?”

“Nothing,” said the coachman quickly, remembering his vow of secrecy. “His lordship’s got a house there, that’s all.”

“I know it,” lied Bella, a suspicion forming in her mind. “Near Highgate on the Heath Road, ain’t it?”

“Naw!” jeered Bryant. “It’s Fresham Grove, it is. Near the Spaniards. Taking a young lady with him.”

Bryant bit his lip and then relaxed. No harm in this old maid knowing the house. He hadn’t said anything about the name of the lady.

“Oddso!” said Bella thoughtfully. “Well, best be on my way. Good day to you gentlemen!” And then she suddenly thought she knew why my lady had wanted ribbons in the middle of a downpour.

It was another silent journey to Hampstead for Jane and Lord Charles. Each sat wrapped in bitter thoughts about the folly of being in love with someone who did not like you one bit.

“I’ll have her,” thought Lord Charles grimly, “and this time my curst conscience shan’t stop me. Since I cannot have her in love, I shall have her without it.”

“If only he loved me,” thought poor Jane’s busy mind. “But he does not. He does not even think I am pretty. I hope I do not betray myself. He must never guess my feelings, as he is not worthy of this love of mine.”

“There’s one consolation,” mused Lord Charles, leaning his head wearily back against the velvet upholstery. “She’ll never guess how I feel about her. I would die first!”

At that moment each caught the other’s eyes; they exchanged twisted little smiles and turned their heads away.

The wind rose again as they climbed up over the heath. Lord Charles drew a pistol from his pocket and began to prime it.

“In case of highwaymen,” he said, noticing Jane’s shocked expression. “We do not have grooms or outriders, you know. Do not look so scared, my dear. Since you are about to endure a fate worse than death, the possibility of a highwayman’s bullet should not alarm you.”

“True,” agreed Jane in a reasonable voice, which she hoped would enrage him as much as he had just enraged her. “Put that way, it makes the existence of highwaymen seem quite exciting.”

“Or, of course,” replied his lordship, equally calmly, “you could shoot yourself and pass through the gates of Paradise.”

“I am not yet prepared for death,” said Jane with a small shrug.

“By the time I am finished with you, madam,” he said grimly, “you will be.”

“Tol rol!” said Jane, with a laugh which she desperately hoped sounded natural. “Are you indeed as vile as you think yourself?”

There was no answer to this, and, had there been, Lord Charles was saved from replying by the stopping of the coach.

Lord Charles suddenly remembered James Bentley’s frantic accusation that Jane was like her late mother, using men heartlessly for her own ends. He felt consumed with a sick disgust at his own weakness in falling for such a girl.

He opened the door of the house, standing back to allow Jane to precede him.

She stopped abruptly in the doorway, and he bumped into her, sending her catapulting forward into the hall.

“Bella!” screamed Jane.

That worthy maid was seated in the settle in the hall, looking as if she had been there forever.

Bella rose to her feet and dropped a curtsy. “I’m surprised to see you, my lady,” she said severely. “I understood this to be the residence of Lord Charles Welbourne.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” snapped his lordship, and in an undertone, “You arranged this, my lady.”

“Indeed I did not,” whispered Jane desperately. And then aloud, “You are supposed to be in Oxford Street, Bella.”

“And so I was,” lied Bella cheerfully; she had hired a carriage and gone straight to Hampstead as soon as she had left Mr. Anderson. “And Carter’s didn’t have the silk, so I returned home, and there was a message from my poor cousin what lives in Highgate, asaying she was poorly. I hadn’t no money for a hack, so I traveled outside on the coach as far as the top o’ the heath. I starts walking to Highgate, and it was so dark and I was afeared o’ footpads, and then I remembered how Cousin Amy was always asetting up such a scare about her health, and it was probably all a hum, and here was me about to be murdered or worse, and then I ’members how your coachman, my lord, says as how you has a house in Fresham Grove. I’ll throw meself on his lordship’s mercy, I thinks. There weren’t no reply to the knocker, but the doors falls open and there isn’t nobody at home, so I decides to set a while till I’m dry, so here I am,” she ended, quite out of breath.

With a face like thunder, Lord Charles walked back outside and slammed the door behind him. He could be heard shortly afterward haranguing his coachman.

Jane walked across the hall past Bella and pushed open a door that led into a small drawing room with a fire burning on the hearth and a tray of refreshments laid out on a table in front of it.

Bella bustled in after her, rubbing her hands. “Well, there’s a mercy, my lady,” she cried. “I wonder where his lordship’s servants are, for it’s like a fairy house to be sure.”

“Bella!” exclaimed Jane, almost screaming with exasperation. “I do not believe you have a cousin in Highgate.”

Bella threw her apron over her head and began to sob noisily, howling, “As if I would lie to you, my lady. How was I to guess you would be here? Oh, was ever a body misjudged!”

She suddenly dropped her apron, revealing a suspiciously dry face. “Well, I’ll just drop my curtsy to your chaperon, and then I’ll be on my way.”

Jane stood silent, looking at the floor.

“Was it that aunt of his lordship’s like the last time?” pursued Bella.

“My aunt is awaiting us in the carriage,” said Lord Charles severely from the doorway. “You take advantage of your mistress’s youth, Bella. You must remember to use her title when addressing her, and refrain from asking questions.”

“I shall introduce myself,” came a high, shrill voice somewhere behind Lord Charles.

“Good God!” muttered Lord Charles. “This is all we need. That sounds like the voice of London’s worst gossip.”

He stood aside to reveal a lady handsomely dressed in blond taffeta. She was in her middle years, with a thin, sharp face, beady eyes, and very large teeth. She was followed by a younger replica of herself, who was attired in pink satin and tittered quite awfully.

“Mrs. Campford,” said Lord Charles in a flat voice.

“Charles!” cried Mrs. Campford, sweeping him a curtsy. “My daughter, Belinda, who quite dotes on you. I was passing and was sore in need of refreshment and espied your crest on the panel of your coach. I did not know you had a house here.”

“I do now,” said Lord Charles shortly. “Allow me to present Lady Jane Lovelace.”

Mrs. Campford gave Jane a toothy smile and then turned back to Lord Charles. “I heard you say your aunt is in the carriage. Which aunt?”

Lord Charles raked through the branches of his family tree. “My Aunt Mary,” he said at last.

“Not Mary
Wortley!
” cried Mrs. Campford.

Lord Charles was about to change his mind and think up another aunt, but he reflected that Mrs. Campford probably knew the names of all his relatives better than he did himself, and decided to stick to the original lie.

“The same,” he said. “Now if you will excuse—”

“Mary Wortley!” cried Mrs. Campford. “We used to play together as children. I have not seen her in years and years. I shall step outside and pay my respects.”

“Pray do not,” said Lord Charles. “Let me first ascertain whether she is well enough to receive company.”

Before Mrs. Campford could reply, he strode from the room.

Mrs. Campford eyed Jane with a gimlet eye. “Have you been acquainted with his lordship for long?” she demanded.

“No,” replied Jane.

“Then,” said Mrs. Campford in a stage whisper, “I must warn you he is
not
the kind of man—”

“I must go, my lady,” said Bella, deliberately interrupting whatever malicious remark Mrs. Campford had been about to make. Bella was feeling ashamed of herself. Obviously the aunt was very much in existence. She should have trusted her young mistress. Now she had been proved in the wrong, and perhaps my lady would be angry with her and dismiss her. “I shall proceed to my cousin’s,” went on Bella. “I only dropped in by chance,” she added to Mrs. Campford, her garrulous tongue causing her to say too much.

“Oddso!” exclaimed Mrs. Campford, staring from Jane to Bella avidly. “Then it is as well his lordship’s aunt is here as chaperon, or this would be quite a scandal.”

“If anyone were to hear of it,” said Bella grimly, sitting down again.

“Oh, indeed,” laughed Mrs. Campford shrilly. “I would not say a word, but my little puss here is such a tattletale.” Belinda changed her titter to a snigger.

“Where is Mrs. Wortley?” went on Mrs. Campford. “I suppose she
is
here.”

“I have sent my aunt back to London,” said Lord Charles from the doorway. “She is feeling exceeding poorly. After you have had some refreshments, Mrs. Campford, perhaps you can find room for us all in your carriage?”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Campford eagerly. She ran a pale tongue over her lips. That Lovelace girl was looking quite peaked. The maid had come only by chance. Mrs. Campford began to doubt the presence of Mary Wortley.

“Where is Mrs. Wortley residing?” she asked.

“With me. At my town house,” replied Lord Charles.

“Then I insist,
absolutely
insist, that I call on her directly we return to town,” said Mrs. Campford. “No, my lord, I know you are going to say that she does not feel at all the thing to receive anyone, but young men such as yourself can have no conception of the humors that do plague us ladies, and I am accounted a wonder at the sickbed. You shall not say me nay.”