Susie Read online

  “I am going abroad, that’s what.” said Giles, stamping on his conscience. “And I shall not return home until those middle-class morons have taken their leave. When I return, I shall suggest that dear Susie should set up residence elsewhere, preferably as far away as possible, where she can sit out her widowhood and eventually marry some young fool who likes colorless little girls.”

  Then he wondered why he felt so depressed.

  Upstairs, Susie pretended to fall asleep so that she could escape from the attentions of her parents. She was glad her mother was bullying the servants—both deserved the other. Over her seemingly sleeping body, the Burkes sat at either side of the bed and congratulated each other on how clever they had been. To hear them, one would think they had planned the earl’s death and subsequent will.

  “Our dear little girl—a widowed countess,” sighed Mrs. Burke.

  “Every cloud has a silver lining,” agreed Dr. Burke. “You know, my dear, I feel it is our duty to stay with Susie as long as possible, until she gets over her shock.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed,” said his wife complacently. “Just think! Susie is so rich. She will be able to travel, give balls and parties, be presented to His Majesty. Thus does God reward His followers.”

  Rich? thought Susie, turning this news over in her brain. Money!

  “We shall go everywhere with her, of course,” said Dr. Burke. “After all, it’s thanks to us that she has had this good fortune.”

  Good fortune! thought Susie dismally. To have been frightened out of my wits. To have been sick with fear. To know that I cannot face society with such parents. Don’t they know what these people are like? Giles, who kisses and mocks and torments and insults. Felicity, who bullies. I cannot trust my parents. If there is an ugly, senile, old lord somewhere, they will have me married as soon as ever I’m out of my widow’s weeds.

  The ordeal she had just gone through might have given a more wordly girl brain fever. But to Susie’s still-immature mind, they were all actors in some strange gothic play from which she might awake if she could escape them all. The tragedy of the earl’s death and the subsequent investigation by the police had left her brain and feelings singularly untouched.

  She was young and strong and healthy, and tomorrow was another day. She had forgotten her strange passion when Giles had kissed her. It had been wiped from her memory by his subsequent insult. She would be glad if she never saw him again.

  “Tomorrow’s another day,” said Dr. Burke, rising to his feet and unconsciously echoing his daughter’s thoughts. “Yes, I think we shall be at Blackhall Castle for quite a long time, my dear. Yes, yes, quite a long time.”

  But the doctor and his wife had reckoned without Felicity. She had arrived back late after visiting a neighbor who lived a mere thousand or so acres away. She was informed by Thomson of the arrival of Susie’s parents, and learned that they were not low blackmailers but a respectable doctor and his overly religious wife.

  She moved into battle first thing in the morning, and the poor Burkes fell before her first attack. For although Dr. and Mrs. Burke were snobs, Lady Felicity was an archsnob and had honed the art of snubbing and cutting in the best drawing rooms in London, where competition was fierce. After all, being at the top of the social tree does not stop one from being a frightful snob. There is, after all, no fun in being at the top if you cannot make sure that no one else gets there, especially a pushing couple of Camberwell suburbanites.

  The Burkes pleaded that their daughter needed them. Lady Felicity pointed out that Susie’s manners were deplorably common, and that it was for her own good that she be severed from her parents’ low-class influence.

  Mrs. Burke hinted at hellfire. Felicity retorted with a word that Mrs. Burke had up till then only seen written on walls and had often wondered about, but now she felt she knew what it meant.

  Routed at last, chivied and hounded and humiliated, the Burkes were driven to the station after a mere three days visit.

  Giles could have eased their humiliation, for he was not in the least afraid of Felicity and had always had a soft spot for the underdog. But Giles had left for France after persuading himself to take a well-earned holiday.

  Had he stayed, Felicity and Susie would not have been left together, and the shocking tragedy would not have occurred.

  But he was not clairvoyant. He was merely a handsome young man with a guilty conscience, who wanted to put as much mileage between himself and Susie as possible.

  Chapter Five

  Winter held a firm grip on the south of England. A brief thaw in February had melted the snow. Then the wind had turned, hurling icy gales in from the sea; dry, frozen gales that whistled and sang through the hard, dry grass.

  Like a sleeping princess, Susie remained immured in the strong walls of the keep, escaping occasionally from Felicity’s harsh social training to lie on her bed and weave endless fantasies about that homely young man who would one day ride up to the castle walls to rescue her.

  Dominated by Felicity’s iron will, Susie never contemplated escaping by herself. Her late husband’s man of business had paid her a visit and had taught her how to write checks for “pin money,” and had advised her to charge everything else and have the bills sent to him.

  Susie longed to buy some pretty dresses, but it was unthinkable that she should wear anything but black until at least a year of mourning had passed. She had been allowed to visit the local town of Barminster, draped in a heavy black crepe veil and accompanied by Felicity. She had been allowed to draw a small sum of money from the bank but had been unable to spend any of it, since Felicity found all her choices, such as a pretty fan or a smart black plush hat, “utterly common and frivolous.”

  Everything seems to be damned as “utterly common,” thought poor Susie. Oh, that I had stayed in Camberwell and maybe had married someone comfortable like the grocer’s boy.

  But she hadn’t, and she had therefore gained Lady Felicity as a mother-in-law.

  Little did Susie know that Felicity had reluctantly to admit that Susie was coming along very nicely indeed. She still said “theeter” instead of theater, “blouse” instead of bloose, and “chariot” instead of charrot. But she had stopped saying “ever so” and pronouncing really, “reelly.” Obscurely alarmed that she might no longer have anything to bully Susie about, Felicity started on about the servants one cold, bleak day when both women were warming their feet at the fire in the rose chamber.

  “I could order them to treat you with respect, of course,” said Felicity grimly. “But respect from servants is something that must be earned.”

  “Perhaps,” replied Susie hesitantly, “they feel they are following your example.”

  “What do you mean, girl?”

  “I—I m-mean,” stuttered Susie, “I know you have my best interests at heart, b-but the s-servants hear you ordering me about, and therefore—just perhaps, you know—that makes them think that I am not a person to be treated with respect.”

  “Balderdash!” said Lady Felicity vehemently, and then quickly changed the subject, for she privately felt that there might be some truth in what Susie had said. “We will continue your education in good vintages,” said Felicity. “Go down to the cellar and bring back a bottle of good vintage claret.”

  “Very well,” said Susie meekly, all the fight going out of her.

  She left the room only to return some minutes later.

  “The cellar door is locked,” she said, “and I can’t find the key anywhere. I can’t find Thomson or any of the servants.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Felicity, striding over to an old escritoire in the corner and jerking open the drawer. “I keep a few spare keys here. Ah, this is the one. Don’t lose it.”

  Susie took the huge key, which weighed a ton, and wondered how anyone could be supposed to lose a monster like that.

  She then went back through the hall and along a stone passage leading off the far corner until she came to the cellar door. It took a
ll her strength to turn the huge key in the lock, but at last the door swung silently open on well-oiled hinges.

  Susie went silently down the stairs and paused in amazement halfway down. The cellar was ablaze with candles burning in various empty bottles. On the far wall a wine rack had been pushed aside to reveal an open door with steps leading downward. The cellar was full of the thud and boom of the sea. It was also full of every servant of Blackhall Castle and five rough-looking seamen who were rolling barrels into the center of the floor while Thomson, the butler, ticked off various items in a notebook.

  Now, to a more sophisticated young lady, Thomson would simply have been checking a consignment of brandy from the wine merchants, which was being delivered by a hitherto-unsuspected door.

  But to Susie, who lived more between the pages of romances and in her own fantasies these days than she did in the real world, the explanation was simple.

  “Smugglers!” she cried, clapping her hands in childish delight.

  The servants stood frozen with shock. Thomson’s face was ashen.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Thomson,” said Susie, “but perhaps you could find me a good bottle of vintage claret. I’m supposed to pick it myself, but perhaps, this once, you could do it for me and not tell Lady Felicity.”

  “No, indeed, my lady,” said Thomson, galvanized into action. He seized a bottle of Chateau Lafite less tenderly than he should and presented it to Susie.

  “My lady,” he said desperately. “My lady, please…that is…I mean to say…we should be most grateful if you did not mention this to Lady Felicity.”

  “Oh, no,” said Susie innocently. “Smuggling is so very secret, is it not? I shall say nothing to anyone.”

  She tripped lightly up the stairs, swinging the bottle by the neck as if it were lemon squash.

  The servants and smugglers waited in silence until she had gone.

  “Well, I never,” said Mrs. Wight, the housekeeper, collapsing onto a barrel.

  “That was a close one,” said Thomson, mopping his brow.

  “Think she’ll keep mum?” grated one of the smugglers.

  “Yes, God bless ’er,” said Thomson fervently. “She won’t tell. She’s no more than a babe who thinks we’re playing games.

  “We’ve been a bit rough on her,” he added slowly. “Reckon as how us ought to be extra polite to her. For she’s not always going to think smuggling’s a game like Hunt the Slipper or Forfeits.”

  And so it was that a very gratified Susie and a much-surprised Lady Felicity noticed the servants’ change of demeanor. Lady Felicity’s grim lady’s maid, Carter, knocked at Susie’s door before dinner and begged most humbly to be allowed to arrange Susie’s hair and help her with her dress. Susie duly presented herself in the dining room, looking as elegant as a fashion plate and as beautiful as a spring day. Lady Felicity felt quite ill just looking at her. But it was the behavior of the servants that really made Lady Felicity jealous—a jealousy that was indirectly to lead to her death.

  The servants were simply fawning on Susie, she thought sourly, so Felicity tried to think of some new way to make Susie feel inferior.

  At last she hit on it.

  “Do you ride?” she asked casually.

  “No, not really,” said Susie.

  “Every lady should learn to ride,” said Felicity grimly. “I shall teach you myself. We will begin your lessons tomorrow. I shall personally choose a mount for you.”

  “Very good of you, I’m sure,” said Susie meekly.

  “Good God!” said Felicity waspishly. “Have I not yet cured you of speaking like a scullery maid? Don’t say ‘I’m sure’ at the end of a sentence like that.”

  “Very well, Felicity.”

  “I don’t know why you never seem to listen to me,” Felicity went on. “That dreary, common little face and that voice of yours get on my nerves.”

  Felicity intercepted a sympathetic look that Thomson threw at Susie, and this championship from a most unexpected quarter drove her to further lengths of bitchiness.

  “I suppose a silly goose like you thinks a lady can be made overnight. But she can’t! In fact, anyone from your class can only hope for a veneer of refinement. Underneath, they’ll always be the same. Common as dirt. Just like your parents.”

  Now, there is just so much that even a girl like Susie can take.

  She rose to her feet and threw her napkin down on the table.

  “Oh, shut up!” she said distinctly.

  Felicity rose to her feet in a rage. “How dare—”

  “Yes, I dare,” shouted Susie, feeling all the rage and satisfaction of the turning worm. “Furthermore, I’m tired of your lectures. I wish you were dead, do you hear? Dead! Dead! Dead!”

  “Go to your room,” said Felicity, suddenly as cold as she had been hot. “I shall expect your apology in the morning.”

  Susie’s fit of rebellion fizzled and died. She felt small and insecure and thoroughly ashamed of herself.

  She trailed miserably up to her room.

  She knew she would apologize to Felicity in the morning. She had not the courage left to do anything else.

  Two footmen and a housemaid kindly brought the rest of her dinner up to her small sitting room. They banked up the fire, laid out her slippers, brought her up piping-hot cans of washing water, and Susie gave them a grateful, timid smile, which, as the housemaid, Gladys, told the rest of the servants later, “went right to ’er heart.”

  I can’t go on like this, thought Susie miserably. I wish I were dead.

  Then as she thought about dying she began to weave a romantic funeral for herself while a small smile began to play about her mouth. The service would be held at the village church. All the servants would cry. Lady Felicity would tear her hair and beat her bosom with remorse. She would throw herself on Susie’s coffin and cry with grief. The vicar who would perform the service would be a homely young man with an honest, tanned face and blue eyes. “Weep, oh unfortunate woman!” he would admonish Felicity as he removed the pipe from between his manly teeth. “You and you alone are responsible for driving this child into the decline from which she died.” A ray of sun would strike her coffin, and the manly vicar would begin to cry as well. “So young and so beautiful,” he would sob. “Had she not been so far above me in social station, why, I might have married her and helped her escape from her dreadful life.”

  Nursing her fantasy and taking it carefully to bed, as a child would a favorite teddy bear, Susie soon fell into a dreamless sleep. She never once thought about Giles, Lord Blackhall.

  Why should she?

  She had nearly forgotten that he existed.

  Giles, Earl of Blackhall, had, on the other hand, not forgotten Susie. He had stayed with friends in Paris for a month and then had slowly drifted southward toward the sunny Mediterranean shore. The farther away from Blackhall Castle he traveled, the more it seemed to pull him back. It was his now, and there was so much to be done, so much land that could be farmed and was, at present, lying fallow. The moat could be drained, the keep modernized, made warmer, more comfortable. It was something to still have a castle to live in these days.

  But still he traveled aimlessly on until one night in the garden of a villa in Nice, he kissed a very beautiful, very sophisticated, very passionate, and very willing lady and was deeply surprised that he should be unable to conjure up any answering response. While he pressed his lips against the warm face beneath his own, he remembered vividly the passion one kiss from Susie had aroused in him. He wondered urgently how she was and if she had forgiven him, realizing thoroughly and for the first time that she did have something to forgive.

  He led the lady in his arms to a convenient summer house and performed his part with athletic expertise, while all the time his thoughts roamed homeward to the bleak castle on top of the steep cliffs above the roaring sea.

  “Use your whip, you ninny! Use your whip!” But Susie would not.

  It was her fifth riding lesson,
and she was so bruised and battered, she could hardly stay on the vicious mount that Lady Felicity had deliberately chosen for her. The horse was called Dobbin and was anything but the docile animal that its pedestrian name conjured up. He had a nasty temper and a rolling eye. He did not want Susie on his back; he did not want any human on his back, and only endured Susie for brief stretches at a time because she fed him sugar lumps and spoke to him in a soft, pleading voice that somewhere in the back of his bad-tempered brain he rather liked.

  Lady Felicity was herself a hard-bitten horsewoman, and prided herself on the fact that there wasn’t a horse alive she couldn’t ride.

  During this, the fifth lesson, she and Susie were riding toward the steep edge of a gravel pit. The sky still lowered above them, and a dry, cold wind whipped across the rock-strewn moor. Felicity had become bored with Susie’s torture and turned her attention instead to Susie’s horse.

  Suddenly she reined in her own mount. “It’s time I showed you and that animal of yours how a horse should be mastered,” she said. “Dismount and take my horse, and I’ll take yours.”

  Susie gladly complied, climbing awkwardly up onto the back of Lady Felicity’s more docile horse.

  Felicity leapt nimbly into the sidesaddle on Dobbin’s back, wrenched his mouth, and then lashed the animal viciously across the rump with her whip so that a thin trickle of blood ran down his flanks.

  She then dug a wicked-looking spur hard into his side. “Gee-up!” she said.

  And Dobbin did.

  Right to the edge of the gravel pit he flew like an arrow from a bow, and right at the edge he dug in all four hooves and stopped short.

  Lady Felicity went sailing over his head. Her astonished voice sailed back in the wind as she seemed to hang suspended for a moment over the gravel pit.

  “Deary me…!” cried Lady Felicity.

  And then she crashed down and down and down and died instantly as her neck snapped on a convenient rock.