Summer of Discontent Read online

  The Summer of Discontent

  M.C. Beaton

  The Summer of Discontent

  Copyright © 1992 by Marion Chesney

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Electronic edition published 2016 by RosettaBooks

  Cover design by Brehanna Ramirez

  ISBN (EPUB): 9780795348501

  ISBN (Kindle): 9780795348518

  www.RosettaBooks.com

  Contents

  The Summer of Discontent

  Other Books by M.C. Beaton

  The Summer of Discontent

  At first it looked as if it was going to be the usual English summer, chill winds and driving rain. But then, at the end of June, the sun shone down and one lazy hot day began to follow the next.

  Bramfield Park, home of the Earl of Wychhaven and his family, should therefore have been a place of sunshine and calm, undisturbed by any ripple of the realities of life that plagued most of the rest of Regency England. After all, the earl was armored in great wealth and lineage, and he had one of the most beautiful daughters in England.

  But discontent prowled the cool, handsome rooms of his stately home and added lines to the face of his countess. For the beauty of the family, Sophia, had appeared in London at yet another Season, and, horror of horrors, she had not “taken.” In other words, she was back at Bramfield Park without one single proposal of marriage.

  Her parents could not understand it. They were a fastidious couple, both elegant and mannered. Their home reflected their exquisite taste, and, to them, Sophia was everything that pleased the eye: tall and statuesque, graceful, thick glossy brown hair, a darling of a straight nose, a rosebud of a mouth, and versed in all the arts to entrap a man from the flutter of a fan to white arms plucking the harp in the drawing room.

  Perhaps if it had just been the London Season that had been the theater of Sophia’s failure, they could have borne it. But they had taken her to Brighton in the wake of the Prince Regent. Sophia had even danced at the Royal Pavilion. But no suitors had arrived at the Wychhavens’ expensively rented house on the Steyne.

  Uncle Wilbur, the earl’s brother, had said that they might try puffing off their other daughter, Cassandra, but this was treated as yet another sign of old Wilbur’s dotage.

  If Sophia had failed so miserably, how could such as Cassandra succeed?

  Cassandra—Cassie to her friends and family—was a sad disappointment to her stylish parents. She was small and slight in stature, clumsy and coltish, and worst of all, she had red hair. Not auburn, pure flaming, unadulterated red. Red hair was associated with the Scotch race and therefore unfashionable. Had not the great Duke of Wellington shaved his son’s eyebrows because they were red?

  So as the days passed and the heat increased and the various relatives and houseguests of the Wychhavens began to wilt, Cassie escaped more and more into the countryside. She disliked her sister, Sophia, and occasionally felt quite guilty about that dislike even though Sophia had earned it. Sophia could be very cruel and was always taunting Cassie about her lack of looks.

  Then one day a stone dropped into the stagnant pond of Bramfield Park.

  The earl had received a letter from Lord Peter Courtney. Lord Peter, like the earl, was a great art collector, and he was returning to England from the Grand Tour. He had gone on the tour immediately after leaving the army and had not graced society for many years. He was reported to be thirty-two.

  In his letter Lord Peter had expressed a wish to see the earl’s collection. The earl promptly wrote back, saying they would be delighted to receive him, and then he and his countess fell into an orgy of plans for making a match for Sophia with Lord Peter.

  Into the animated discussion of those plans cut the dry voice of one of their guests, Mr. Jensen. “I have heard Courtney is a cold fish,” he declared. “Got ice water running in his veins.”

  “Nonsense,” said the earl. “He has written a charming letter. I understand him to be a fastidious man of great intelligence.”

  Mr. Jensen stifled a yawn. “Wasn’t that just what I was saying? A cold fish.”

  Cassie dreaded Lord Peter’s arrival. She felt she had enough chilly, fastidious people in her life without a possible brother-in-law joining their ranks.

  So on the day when Lord Peter was due to arrive, Cassie went down to the kitchens and persuaded the French chef to give her a basket of cakes to take to Miss Stevens.

  Miss Tabitha Stevens was a spinster who lived in a neat cottage outside the village of Bramfield. She had a tiny little income from a family trust and lived in genteel poverty. She had never adjusted to her true financial state, and thus pretended to have a whole cottage full of servants by shouting orders to imaginary footmen and maids. All she had left was her dignity. An odd friendship had been formed between the hoydenish Cassie and the genteel spinster. Cassie knew what it was to be unloved. She was sorry for Miss Stevens and supported that lady’s fiction that she, Miss Stevens, was in fact a great lady who was merely staying in a little country cottage for amusement.

  Cassie with her basket over her arm wandered slowly along the green lanes that led down to the village. In some places the hedges were so high that they arched over the road, forming green tunnels of welcome gloom from the heat of the sun. As no one bothered about Cassie, no one had warned her to carry a parasol on all occasions, and so her face was lightly tanned. She was wearing a high-waisted muslin gown, cut down to fit from one of Sophia’s rejects—her parents employing all the parsimonious ways of the aristocracy—and a wide-brimmed straw hat. She walked out of the coolness of one particular tunnel and into the fierce heat of the sun. A cornfield stretched away to one side, and to the other lay a field of flax, the tiny blue flowers interspersed with the scarlet of poppies. She stopped for a long while, gazing at that carpet of blue and red flowers in delight. It seemed a finer sight to her than any painting or piece of statuary in her home.

  She paused until the thought that the cakes might spoil in the heat made her hurry on at last.

  Miss Stevens’s cottage was a Tudor one: pretty from the outside and yet so dark and inconvenient to live in.

  The garden was a riot of all the flowers Miss Stevens loved. Roses hung heavy with scent over the low doorway. In the little pocket-size garden delphiniums like blue sentinels stood guard over snapdragons, asters, dahlias, and tobacco flowers.

  Cassie knocked at the door. “James!” came the sharp voice of Miss Stevens from within. “Answer that!”

  Cassie waited patiently for her friend to cease calling to a nonexistent footman.

  Finally the door swung open and Miss Stevens stood there. “Why, Cassie!” Usually Miss Stevens was a stickler for the formalities, but somehow Cassie had always been just Cassie to her. “I do not know where that lazy footman of mine has got to. Come in, my dear.”

  She led the way into a small, dark, low-beamed parlor. The furniture was of the locally made cottage variety. Chintz curtains fluttered at the open windows. There were no carpets on the floor apart from a brightly colored hearthrug that Miss Stevens had hooked herself, but the old boards were polished to a high shine. Cassie appreciatively breathed in the familiar scent of roses and beeswax and lavender and settled down in a comfortable chair after handing over the basket.

  Miss Stevens tried not to show how truly grateful she was, for she loved cakes and could hardly ever afford even to make any. She called, “Lucy, take this to the kitchen.” But of course, the maid, Lucy, never appeared.

  “Drat the lazy gi
rl,” said Miss Stevens. “I shall get her to bring us some tea.”

  She bustled out.

  Cassie sighed with pleasure and took off her hat and dropped it on the floor. The cottage was cool and pleasant. From behind the cottage came the lazy clucking of Miss Stevens’s six hens. Miss Stevens came in, carrying a tray with a pot of tea, two old-fashioned cups without handles, and some of the cakes.

  She was a small, middle-aged woman with a face like an anxious sheep. Her white hair was tightly curled on her head. She was wearing a very pretty, rather girlish muslin gown, Cassie having filched it for her out of Sophia’s extensive wardrobe, knowing that the spinster did not have suitable clothes for such unusually warm weather.

  “So,” said Miss Stevens, pouring tea, “tell me what is happening.”

  “Hope rises again for Sophia. A certain Lord Peter Courtney is arriving.”

  Miss Stevens frowned in concentration. “Courtney? Courtney? Ah, youngest son of the Duke of Cadshire.” Miss Stevens studied the social columns in newspapers given to her by Cassie. “Returned from the Grand Tour. Unmarried. Was a major in the forty-fifth.”

  “And I gather,” said Cassie, “a cold, prissy fish of a man.”

  “Oh, dear, but he was a soldier brave, Cassie, riding into battle in the teeth of danger. I can see him now. His horse rearing and plunging as the cannonballs tear past him. ‘Onward!’ he cries!”

  “Alas, Miss Stevens, he is a collector like Papa, and that is the reason for his visit. Papa hopes he will add Sophia to his collection.” She made a face. “She would do very well, you must admit, if she kept her nasty mouth closed.”

  “Cassie!”

  “Well, she was being catty again today about my hair. Besides, why should the army make a difference? Old Lord Todhampton came to stay last year, and he spent years and years in battles, yet he wears stays and a tremendous amount of paint and clatters about everywhere on his high heels. I can picture this Lord Peter, sort of cold and grayish, quite small and very fussy.”

  The older woman refused to listen. “Perhaps he will be dashing and handsome. Perhaps this is your beau at last, Cassie. I think it so odd of your parents not to give you a Season.”

  I think they will … next year,” she said hopefully, not really believing her words. “Mama was talking about either Bath or Tunbridge Wells, and Papa said it might be an idea to ship me out to old Aunt Philadelphia in Calcutta. He said army men far from home always fall in love with anything in a skirt.”

  “Monstrous!” exclaimed Miss Stevens, in between nibbles at a cake. “Mmmm. This is so divine. Gives me an unusual feeling of sin. Yes, I think your parents are quite unnatural. Have you still got that governess? The clever one?”

  “Miss Jamieson? No. Sophia took against her, so off she went. That was our fourth and last governess.”

  “What was up with her?”

  “She liked me,” said Cassie seriously. “I tried to warn her, you know, that Sophia must have all the attention. But she did not listen, so off went Miss Jamieson and was promptly snapped up by Lady Cheam, who had been trying to lure her away this age.”

  There came the sound of carriage wheels and horses’ hooves in the distance. “Who will that be?” asked Cassie. “The baker?”

  “No, he makes his rounds on Thursday morning. The fish man?” Miss Stevens tilted her head on one side. “More than one horse. I wonder … Oh, dear, whoever it is, they are stopping here.”

  Miss Stevens ran to the window. A traveling coach stood outside with a crest on the door panel. A tall man was climbing out. He called up to the coachman, “It is damnably hot and I need some fresh air. I shall ask here for directions.” And the coachman answered, “Yes, my lord.”

  “My lord!” screeched Miss Stevens. “And he is coming here! I cannot answer the door myself like a peasant.”

  Cassie grinned. “I’ll do it for you. Where’s the stuff?”

  “Upstairs. In the chest of drawers in my bedroom.”

  The year before when Miss Stevens had received a visit from a haughty relative, Cassie had acted as her maid. The “stuff” was a maid’s cap and apron and a brown wig.

  Cassie put everything on at lightning speed and ran down and opened the door. A tall handsome man with eyes as cold as ice stood looking down at her. “Is your mistress at home?”

  Cassie silently held out her hand. He took out a card case, extracted an embossed card, and held it out to her. Cassie curtsied and took it into Miss Stevens. “Oh, Lor—” squeaked Cassie, reading the card. “It’s him. Courtney.” There was no time to say any more, for Lord Peter appeared in the doorway.

  “Lord Peter Courtney,” announced Cassie in a shaky voice.

  Miss Stevens rose to her feet. “So charmed,” she lilted. “Pray accept some refreshment. I am Miss Stevens of the Surrey Stevens.”

  He bowed. “You are most kind, but I simply want directions to Bramfield Park.”

  “Oh, dear, you won’t stay? Bramfield Park is two miles along the road. You will come to the West Lodge. It has a red-tiled roof, most unusual in these parts. Of course, my little cottage orné has thatch. A quaint sophistry, do you not think?”

  He gave a frosty smile.

  “But if you must be on your way …” With a certain air of pride, Miss Stevens rang a small brass bell on the table.

  Cassie promptly reappeared. Miss Stevens said grandly, “Show Lord Peter out, Lucy.”

  Lord Peter turned as he entered the garden and looked at the maid. “What is Bramfield Park like?” he asked and then immediately wondered why he had chosen to question the maid and not the mistress.

  “Terribly boring,” said Cassie cheerfully. “Like a museum.” She decided all in that moment that even such a horror as her sister did not deserve to be allied to this cold and intimidating man. He was holding his hat in his hand, and his thick black hair gleamed in the sunshine. He had black eyebrows as well, thin and supercilious. His eyes were winter-gray and hooded by heavy lids. He was slim but powerfully built with a small waist, well-muscled thighs, and broad shoulders. The thighs on whom Cassie’s wide-eyed gaze fell were shown in all their strength by a pair of thin leather breeches, which fitted him like a second skin. Of course,” went on Cassie, as he had not moved, “they are expecting you to propose to Lady Sophia.”

  “Why should I do that, you impertinent baggage?”

  “Because you are a collector, like the earl, and they do so hope you will collect Sophia, for she did not take at her last Season. You are their Last Hope.”

  He looked at her narrowly, his eyes scanning the thin, tanned face and the clever hazel eyes. “Are you usually so forward?” he demanded.

  Cassie blushed and hung her head. He drew out a sovereign and handed it to her. “Buy yourself a new wig, my chuck.”

  “Why?” demanded Cassie, stepping back a pace.

  “Because the monstrosity you are wearing is too small and your red hair is showing under it. Why hide it? I like red hair.”

  Cassie felt so hot with mortification, she thought she would collapse in a puddle at his feet.

  He gave a laugh and jerked her into his arms and kissed her full on the mouth. And then he released her, and still laughing, he walked away.

  Cassie turned and ran back into the cottage, scrubbing her mouth with her apron.

  “I was watching from the window!” exclaimed Miss Stevens. “He kissed you!” She clasped her hands together and gazed at Cassie earnestly. “And so handsome, too. He has fallen in love with you. I can see it all. And when he realizes that you are not a lowly maid but the daughter of the house, he will cry, ‘Be mine!’”

  “No, he will not,” said Cassie, wondering whether to laugh or cry. He thought he was bussing a pert maid. Anyway, he gave me a whole sovereign.” She put it on the table. “You had best share it out among your real servants.”

  Miss Stevens wanted to be honest, to cry out that she had no servants. But a whole sovereign! She thought of all the food and coals that would buy
and kept silent.

  ***

  Cassie crept back into Bramfield Park by the servants’ entrance and made her way up the back stairs to her room. She rang the bell and told the maid that she was feeling unwell and would like a tray in her room, rather than joining the family for dinner.

  Then she pulled a chair up to the open window and settled down with a book.

  At half past six the door to her room opened and Sophia walked in. “Why are you sitting there in that terrible old gown?” she demanded.

  “Because I am sick unto death, sister dear,” said Cassie calmly. “You will need to enchant Lord Peter all on your own.”

  “You are not ill,” Sophia said disdainfully. “You cannot bear once more to be cast in the shade by my beauty.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” said Cassie. “Go away, Sophia, you give me the headache. What’s Lord Peter like?”

  “I have not seen him yet. Mama decided I should be presented in the drawing room before dinner. I have a new Attitude. Do you know that statue by the console table?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Mama says I am to stand beside it in the same attitude.” Sophia threw back her head, put one hand out as if to ward off something, and put an arm across her forehead.

  “Vastly fetching,” commented Cassie. “Do you know whom that statue is supposed to represent?”

  “Yes,” lied Sophia.

  “Brave you.” Cassie picked up her book and began to read.

  But no sooner had the stately Sophia stalked out than Cassie’s eyes began to dance. The statue represented the rape of Leda by Zeus, who had transformed himself into a swan. The swan bit had been broken off in transit and only the horrified Leda remained.

  This she had to see.

  She went down the back stairs and then through a door on the first landing to a passage that ran behind the walls of the drawing room. It was supposed to have been used by the Cavaliers escaping from the Roundheads during the Civil War. But two years before, Cassie had placed a ladder at a point behind the wall of the drawing room, for she had discovered that a painting of an ancestor high over the fireplace had a device where the painted eyes of the portrait could be drawn back on threads, allowing a good view of what was happening in the room below. She assumed some Cavalier had thought up the device to be able to hide and yet get an idea of what was going on in the house.