The Westerby Inheritance Page 4

  “It is unfortunate that Lady Hetty should have encouraged the pretensions of Mr. Plumb,” said the vicar. “You see, when your papa married beneath him, it was considered no great matter. Men such as your father are allowed such—how shall I put it?—social lapses. But when Lady Hetty entertained the idea of Mr. Plumb as suitor for you, it somehow reduced you socially to the level of the villagers. We are all equal in the eyes of the Lord, but not, unfortunately, in the eyes of village society. Lady Hetty should have realized what she was doing before she encouraged such presumption.”

  “We are sometimes hungry,” said Jane in a low voice. “Hetty has never known the elegances of life. We had little enough when she married Father.”

  “I have asked your father to appeal to his relatives, but it seems that, since his unfortunate marriage, they refuse to have aught to do with him.”

  Jane felt compelled to defend Hetty. “Lady Hetty does her best for us,” she said, banishing a stabbing thought of poached game. “She is kind and warmhearted, and surely these virtues are above consideration of social niceties.”

  “Indeed they are,” said Mr. Syms cautiously, “but I cannot forget your mother. Such a proud and elegant woman! So commanding! So intelligent! Your father would still have his estates, were she alive. The Bentleys are bad landlords. They pour money into the Chase while the tenants’ houses are left to go to rack and ruin. I think the time has come to discuss your future, Lady Jane. You will be reduced to the standard of a peasant should you continue here. You must seriously consider finding employment—say, as a companion or governess. Some merchant’s family would gladly employ you for your title alone. Your way would not be easy, but you would be protected from the rigors of your present life.”

  “I wish to marry a rich man,” cried Jane, stopping suddenly and swinging round to stare up at him.

  The vicar’s eyes were filled with compassion as he looked at the small figure of Lady Jane Lovelace in her patched undress, the minute darns on her fichu highlighted by the spring sun.

  “Money marries money, Lady Jane,” he said sadly, “except in very rare cases.” Jane bristled, thinking the vicar less unworldly than she had imagined. He should be offering her hope, not commonsense!

  “Nonetheless,” went on Mr. Syms, “I will have a word with your father. Fie, Lady Jane! It is too fine a day to concern ourselves with such sad troubles.”

  They walked in silence through the mellow gold of the early afternoon. The hedgerows were filled with birdsong, and a delicate green tracery of spring leaves arched over their heads.

  The first Marquess of Westerby had fallen from grace—or rather, he was proceeding to do so.

  He was attired in a greasy flannel nightgown and a once richly embroidered dressing gown, which retained only a few gold threads of its former magnificence. His newly shaven head was covered by a leather skullcap, and with half-closed eyes he was savoring his first pint of Lisbon.

  “Zooks!” he cried, widening his eyes at the unusual sight of the vicar in his home. “The clergy’s come a-calling. Sit down, Mr. Syms, and let us discourse on the ways of perdition.”

  The vicar dusted a kitchen chair fastidiously with his lace handkerchief and sat down. “Lady Jane, please leave me with your father,” he said.

  Jane reluctantly left the room. Should she have told Mr. Syms about that letter to Lady Comfrey? Philadelphia had told Jane it was better not to tell parents anything if you had any doubts of their approval. And certainly the clever Philadelphia managed her autocratic mother and her clergyman father to perfection.

  “I wish to discuss the future of your daughter, Jane,” Mr. Syms said.

  The Marquess surveyed the vicar with some surprise and then said slowly, “Odds fish, I think Jane has decided on her future, don’t you see. She has already turned down an offer of marriage, so it seems to me she is settled in her mind that she will rest at home.”

  “You surely did not countenance the idea of Jane’s marrying Mr. Plumb?” exclaimed the vicar.

  “Why not?” shrugged the Marquess. “He runs a prosperous farm. It is not like you, Mr. Syms, to be so high in the instep. Faith, you’re the only one who hasn’t looked down his nose at my poor Hetty.”

  “By suffering Mr. Plumb’s proposal and by encouraging his presumption,” said the vicar, “you have sorely reduced your daughter’s social status in the eyes of the village.”

  The Marquess fumbled in his clothes for his eyeglass and, finding it, raised it and stared through it with some hauteur at the vicar. “Talking of presumption,” he said awfully, “I find you guilty of that, vicar. Our family affairs are no concern of yours. ’Fore Gad! When did a Westerby pay mind to common gossip? Get back to your Bible, man. You are supposed to give spiritual guidance. I often wondered where that snippety daughter of yours came by her worldly ideas, and now I think I know. Return to your scriptures, sirrah!”

  Mr. Syms sighed. He tried again. “Is there no relative, my lord, who would sponsor the girl?”

  The Marquess’s steady blue gaze fastened on the nearly full bottle of Lisbon with single-minded intensity. He wanted the vicar gone. “Those that I have not borrowed money from,” he replied in measured tones, “became disaffected when I married Hetty.”

  The kitchen door opened, and Hetty, Marchioness of Westerby, swung in. She was in her undress, and the vicar reflected that, in an age where women and men certainly wore their sleaziest in their undress and even had gone so far as to give up the wearing of masks, the ladies contenting themselves when they went abroad with only a small parasol to cover their faces, Hetty surpassed them all for sheer tawdriness. She was wearing an old tattered silk gown which, to judge from the bloodstains on the front, had been worn on many occasions when she had been cleaning game. Her coarse mane of hair was confined at the back with a worn garter, and her thin brown face was alive with warmth and welcome.

  “Good day, Reverend!” she cried cheerfully, swinging one hip onto the edge of the kitchen table. “What brings you?”

  The Marquess put down his glass with a smart click and stared coldly at the vicar. “Mr. Syms was just leaving, my love. He thought we were in need of spiritual guidance.”

  “And so we are,” said Hetty with great good humor. “Try as I will, Mr. Syms, I cannot get those imps o’ mine to church of a Sunday.”

  The Marquess still stared threateningly at the vicar, and Mr. Syms realized that further talk of Jane was forbidden. He sadly took his leave, determined to put the problem before his wife.

  Jane was a sweet and biddable girl, he explained some hours later to his wife. She would make an excellent companion for Philadelphia.

  “Charity begins at home, Mr. Syms,” snapped his wife. “I will not have Philadelphia’s chances of a good marriage ruined by contact with the Westerbys. Lady Hetty would be slouching around my drawing room every minute of the day.”

  “But I would make it a provision—” began the poor vicar.

  “You will make nothing, say nothing,” declaimed his wife in a quiet hiss. “Jane Lovelace is not coming to live here, and that is that!”

  Philadelphia glided silently away from the other side of the door. She gave a little sigh of relief. Her affection for Jane was wholly selfish. Philadelphia envied Jane her title but enjoyed the contrast of her own blond beauty and fine gowns set against the drab spectacle of poverty presented by Lady Jane Lovelace.

  Of course, should Jane’s godmother invite Jane to London—ah, that was a different kettle of fish. Jane would them become useful. Philadelphia ran over the contents of the letter to Lady Comfrey, Jane’s godmother. Perhaps the old lady would reply quite soon.

  But the weeks passed into high summer.

  And Lady Comfrey did not reply.

  Chapter Four

  Lady Harriet Comfrey lived in Huggets Square in St. James’s. It was a tiny square, consisting of a few narrow brick houses surrounding a tiny patch of sooty garden, where the stunted trees seemed bent under the very weight of so
ot which fell constantly like the gentle rain from heaven upon the earth beneath.

  Huggets Square—which must have had an apostrophe at some time in its history, though it had long been dropped, like the aspirates of Lady Comfrey’s butler—crouched under the blazing sun of August, which diffused its yellow glare through a haze of smoke.

  Inside Number Ten Huggets Square, residence of Lady Comfrey, all was silent as the grave, except for the wheezing of her pug, Wong, and the asthmatic ticking of various old clocks. Dust motes floated in shafts of yellow sunlight, and the air was heavy with the sweet and sour smell of vinegar and sugar from the gallipots, placed strategically to tempt any common upstart fly that dared to invade the aristocratic, tomblike calm of the house.

  Lady Comfrey sat so still on her hoop-backed Windsor chair in the shadow of the room that she appeared stuffed. Not a breath of air stirred the lappets of her lace cap or disturbed the powder in the many crevices and wrinkles of her face. The Watteau pleats of her sac gown lay in geometric folds across the wide panniers of her skirt. Indifferent to the heat engendered by the weather, a canvas petticoat, and a leather corset, Lady Comfrey stared unseeingly ahead of her.

  Since the death of her lord some ten years before, my lady had enjoyed her solitude. Invitations had long since ceased to arrive with her post, and no fashionable carriage pranced to a halt in front of the steps of Number Ten. She had been supremely uninterested in society and the world at large. Even the arrival of a pleading letter and the gift of a shawl from her almost forgotten goddaughter had failed to rouse a flicker of interest.

  But only the day before, fate had wielded a heavy hammer and with one smart blow had shattered Lady Comfrey’s frozen state.

  For the first time in ages, she had decided to exercise Wong herself, instead of relegating that duty to her maid or to a footman.

  She had unlocked the rusty gate to the sooty garden in the square and had followed the pug, Wong, in his perambulations among the bushes.

  Then, with dreadful clarity, a masculine voice from outside the railings assailed her ears. “And that” said the voice, “is the home of Lady Harriet Comfrey.”

  “Was,” corrected a female voice with a slight titter. “Was. She’s surely been dead for years.”

  “Demme, if you ain’t probably right,” replied the man cheerfully. “Nobody’s seen the old quiz in goodness don’t know when.”

  What his lady companion replied, Lady Comfrey did not hear, for they had moved away out of the square. She stood under the hot sun, very still, very rigid. Should she care what some Bartholomew baby-beau thought of her? Never!

  But now, a day later, the voice continued to nag and nag at her brain.

  Lady Comfrey had often wondered what society thought of her absence from its glittering scene. She fondly imagined comments such as “Poor Lady Comfrey. How we miss her wit! We would call, but one must, of course, respect her mourning. How beautiful she was as a girl.” Never until yesterday had she considered that the world and his wife might simply consider her long dead! Her vanity was wounded. She was not dead. Far from it! She was only sixty-five and had all her teeth, which is more than most of society could claim. But the idea that she had been thought dead seemed to bring Death himself a little closer, and she shivered in the stuffy room.

  With a sudden impatient movement, she rang a little silver bell that was lying on a table beside her. Her lady’s maid, Bella, came bustling in with a quick sideways motion, since even the servants’ hoops these days had become so uncommonly large that no one could walk straight through a doorway.

  “It’s cold,” said Lady Comfrey. “Fetch me my shawl.”

  Bella hurried out and shortly returned with the shawl which the enterprising Philadelphia had sent Lady Comfrey on Jane’s behalf. The maid arranged the shawl delicately around her mistress’s bony shoulders.

  Lady Comfrey twisted her thin neck and stared down at the long thread fringes of the shawl. “What is this, Bella?” she demanded. “Since when do I possess any shawl with thread fringes?” For Philadelphia, unknown to Jane, could not bear to part with one of her good shawls with silk fringe, and so had sent an unwanted one, which had been a present to Philadelphia from one of her poor relations.

  “It is the shawl that your goddaughter, Lady Jane Lovelace, sent you,” explained Bella, “and it was the first that came to hand.”

  “Then take it away. What if someone should come calling?”

  Bella had been in her ladyship’s service for twenty years and, with all the familiarity of the old servant, she snorted, “Lud, my lady, who was you expecting?”

  “Death!” said a grim voice in Lady Comfrey’s ear, and she shuddered. Her thoughts turned to her goddaughter. She had not seen Jane since the girl was four years of age—a funny, undersized little imp she had been then, with no promise of beauty. The girl had begged to come on a visit, she remembered. Lady Comfrey stared sourly at Bella. She was perpetually surrounded by old people, that was the trouble. Perhaps some youth and life around the place might not be such a bad idea.

  While her fate swung in the balance of her godmother’s creaking, elderly mind, Lady Jane Lovelace was walking back through the country lanes to her home, under the scorching heat of the August sun. She was wearing a wide straw hat that had seen better days. It had once carried a whole garden of silk flowers, but now only one lonely peony bounced bravely on its battered crown. Despite all her careful precautions and despite various complicated washes for the face composed for her by Philadelphia, Jane’s little face was becoming slightly sunburned. But what did it matter now? she thought gloomily. Godmother had not written. All hope was gone. Father was barely sober from one day’s end to the next, and his Marchioness still enlivened the night hours with her poaching activities. Sally and Betty were as brown as gypsies and just as wild, and Sally had started to flirt with the village youths.

  Jane no longer felt she had any energy left to cope with her stepsisters’ manners, and let them do as they pleased. Her visits to Philadelphia were becoming a rare luxury. Mrs. Syms always seemed to put in an appearance for the sole purpose of freezing Jane out. Jane wondered why Philadelphia did not send her a note to inform her of the times when Mrs. Syms was likely to be absent from the vicarage. She could not guess that the astute Philadelphia was using Jane’s visits to try to force Mrs. Syms to send her, Philadelphia, to London for the Little Season. Mrs. Syms viewed her daughter’s friendship with the increasingly shabby and brown Lady Jane with dismay. Philadelphia was well aware of this and was using the situation for her own ends.

  The air was hot and still. Jane turned a bend in the lane, where the road dipped down under a thick canopy of arched trees, but even in this shade it was suffocatingly hot and still.

  Suddenly she thought she heard a furtive scuttle behind her and swung round.

  Nothing.

  Nothing but the hot stillness of the empty lane.

  She walked on a few paces. There was a sudden crackling of twigs, and she whipped round again. Mr. Josiah Plumb came lurching out of the undergrowth at the side of the road.

  With surprising speed for so heavy a man, he was upon her before she had time to gather her wits. One beefy arm pinioned her against him, and one beefy red hand clamped over her mouth.

  “Now, Jane,” he muttered thickly, “we’ll see if we can have you this way. You’ll be right glad to marry me when this is over.”

  He stank of brandy and sweat. Jane was terrified. She struggled, trying to get her mouth free to scream for help. But he was too strong for her and too drunk to care about what he was doing.

  “Let her go!” A clear feminine voice sounded down the lane.

  Mr. Plumb abruptly released his hold on Jane and stared.

  Hetty, Marchioness of Westerby, stood some yards off down the road, her gun leveled straight at the farmer.

  Hetty was lavishly powdered and patched and painted, having returned from a rare visit to a neighboring village with her husband. After leaving
the drunken Marquess snoring in bed, she had decided to walk down the lane to meet Jane on her way home, taking her gun with her in case she saw anything for the pot. Only Hetty could bag game in the middle of a hot afternoon in August.

  Mr. Plumb recovered from his initial fright. “’Ere now, my lady,” he grinned. “You’d better let me ’ave that there piece.” He began to move toward her.

  “Back!” said Hetty coolly.

  Mr. Plumb sniggered horribly and walked boldly forward. There was a sharp report, and a ball zipped through his three-cornered hat.

  In a dumb, shocked way, he removed his hat from his head and stared at the hole, while the Marchioness of Westerby calmly reloaded her gun.

  “I’m agoin,’” he yelled as Hetty raised the gun again. Another ball drummed into the dust at his feet.

  It was too much for Mr. Plumb. With a great, unprintable oath, he turned on his heel and fled in the direction of the village.

  White and shaken, Jane walked toward Hetty. But it was Hetty who burst into tears, not Jane. “It’s all my fault,” sobbed Hetty, leaning on her gun while her tears formed a sort of paste with the powder on her face, making her look like a miserable clown. “I don’t know the ways o’ the quality, and that’s a fact, Jane. How come I was to guess that letting Plumb propose would lower you? Your pa ought to have told me, but he’s that drunk half the time, his wits are addled.”

  Jane put her arms round her tall stepmother and hugged her closely. “If you were a lady with fine manners, Hetty,” she said earnestly, “we would have had no food to eat this winter, and Mr. Plumb would have had his way. Please don’t cry, Hetty.”

  “You’re ashamed of me. I disgust you!” wailed Hetty, sobbing harder.

  Jane bit her lip. This she knew to be true. At least, it had been true. But she felt as if all her contempt and dislike of Hetty’s coarse ways had fled in her present burst of affection and gratitude.