CHAPTER ONE ~ 1819-2
2012 Words
“What is she like now?” the Marquis enquired.
“I have not heard of her for some years,” Charlie replied. “My father used to talk about her simply because he admired the old Duke. He said that power had gone to her head and she was that most frightening of creatures, a completely ruthless woman without a heart.”
“Strong words,” the Marquis said mockingly.
“The way my father talked made her seem to me to be somewhere between Lady Macbeth and the Queen of the Amazons.”
The Marquis laughed again.
“After all you have said I shall most certainly accept the Duchess’s invitation.”
“I think it would be a mistake.”
“A mistake?” the Marquis echoed. “Why?”
“Because some years ago when her beauty began to fade she withdrew from the Social world and lived exclusively down here at Grimstone House.”
“That is why I suppose I have never heard about her,” the Marquis commented.
“We did not have much chance during the War to hear about anybody!”
“That is true,” the Marquis agreed. “At the same time what you have told me intrigues me.”
“I thought it would,” Charlie replied, “but I have lately heard rumours of some very unpleasant happenings that take place at Grimstone, which make me think that you would be wiser to stay away and express your complaints by letter rather than in person.”
“You have already succeeded in making me more curious than I was before,” the Marquis said, “so I shall look forward to meeting this Gorgon, if that is what she is.”
“I am trying to remember all I have heard about her,” Charlie continued, wrinkling his brow. “But you know what it is when you have not met the person being talked about. Everything goes in one ear and out of the other.”
“You certainly do that with the things I tell you,” the Marquis teased him.
“No, seriously,” Charlie said, “from all I remember, she is shunned by all the decent people in this neighbourhood and there are tales, unless I am mistaken, of orgies at Grimstone House, which have shocked even those who took part in them.”
“Who has been there whom we know?” the Marquis asked.
“I have a feeling, although I may be wrong, that Dagenham has been one of her guests.”
“Good God! That old roué!” the Marquis exclaimed.
“Exactly. His reputation stinks, as you are well aware.”
They were both thinking of a dissolute Peer who frequented the lowest and most unsavoury brothels in London, especially those that catered for ‘exotic pleasures’ that sickened any decent man.
The Marquis was staring down at the letter again and Charlie urged him,
“Do as I suggest, Mervyn, and write to the woman for explanations of what is going on. Do not accept her invitation.”
“I am not as chicken-hearted as that,” the Marquis said. “In fact everything you have told me makes me sure that the only sensible thing to do is to spy out the land for myself. What is more, if she is really as bad as you have painted her, I will not have her upsetting my tenants.”
Charlie shrugged his shoulders.
“Be it on your own head,” he said. “But if you have to spend an evening with Dagenham and the likes of him, don’t blame me afterwards.”
The Marquis walked to his desk.
“I will send a groom over right away to tell Her Grace that I will be with her at about six o’clock this afternoon. Don’t go back to London, Charlie. Wait for me here and tomorrow I will regale you with my experiences, which I only hope are as dramatic as you suspect they will be.”
The Marquis sat down at the desk as he spoke and, as he took a quill pen in his hand, he said,
“As I have no wish for you to be bored in my absence, you had better ask a few friends to dinner. The chef will get lazy if we don’t give him enough to do.”
“I will certainly give a dinner party,” Charlie replied. “While you are drinking a bad claret, because no woman can choose a good wine, and conversing with Dagenham or watching some peculiar vice that will make your stomach turn, remember that I will be imbibing your best champagne.”
The Marquis did not answer. He merely signed his name with a flourish and having read what he had written rang the silver bell that stood on his desk.
He handed the note to a footman who answered it telling him to send a groom immediately to Grimstone House.
As he spoke he thought, although he was not sure, there was a somewhat startled expression in the man’s eyes.
Then he told himself that he was being imaginative and, as the door closed, he said to Charlie,
“By the way, how old is the Duchess now?”
“She must be getting on a bit,” Charlie answered, “forty-five or more, but still, I expect, playing ‘hard to get’. There are always fortune-hunters, whatever a woman’s age, if she is rich enough.”
“I have always known you to be truthful, at least to me,” the Marquis said, “but I think your whole tale is a lot of moonshine. The thing however that astonishes me is that not only you speak of her as if she was a Dragon incarnate, but so does Jackson.”
Charlie laughed.
“It will certainly be an anti-climax if she turns out to be a quiet little woman with greying hair who has taken to knitting. After all it can hardly be her fault that a girl of fifteen has disappeared.”
“Bad Masters make bad servants,” the Marquis said quietly, “and what Jackson tells me makes me think that she has become a bogey who frightens everyone on my estate.”
“Well, set off on your voyage of discovery and I will certainly keep the house warm until you return. Meanwhile, may I write notes to the friends I intend to invite here this evening?”
“Of course,” the Marquis agreed, “and I presume it will be an all-male party?”
“If I had known that you were going to leave me like this,” Charlie replied, “I might have brought a pretty Cyprian down with me from London. I cannot believe that there is much to choose from in Newmarket.”
“Most of the women I have seen so far,” the Marquis said dryly, “would make quite good-looking horses!”
Charlie laughed.
“They always say one grows like one’s pets, but for a woman to look like a horse is a disaster!”
“From your description of the Duchess she should look like a snake.”
“Any sort of monster will do,” Charlie laughed, “but remember she was, according to reports, very beautiful when she was young.”
“I must polish up my compliments,” the Marquis smiled, “and seriously, Charlie, I believe in living amicably with one’s neighbours. A feud between two neighbouring landlords is, I am certain, a great mistake.”
“Of course it is,” Charlie agreed. “That is the sort of thing my father thought.”
He paused before he added mischievously,
“You know, Mervyn, I am beginning to think you are ageing rather rapidly. I shall miss the daredevil Officer who was always prepared to crawl round the enemy’s defences and take him by surprise.”
“The way you are speaking makes it sound extremely foolhardy,” the Marquis remarked, “but if you remember, we discussed every move, planned every step and the reason why we were successful when we captured those guns was that we had left nothing to chance.”
“You are right,” Charlie agreed, “but what you are doing now is walking straight into the enemy’s hands and I have a feeling, although I may be wrong, that you will find it a hornet’s nest.”
“If it is, I shall withdraw in the face of superior odds!” the Marquis shrugged his shoulders.
*
The Reverend Theophilus Stanton rose from the breakfast table and, closing carefully the book he had been reading so as not to lose his place, walked towards the door.
As he reached it, his niece called after him,
“Uncle Theophilus, you have forgotten to open your letter.”
“It’s sure to be a bill,” her uncle replied, “but I have not the time nor the money for it at the moment.”
He left the room closing the door behind him and Aspasia looked across the table at her twin brother and laughed.
“That is just like Uncle Theophilus. He always avoids unpleasantness, if he possibly can.”
“He is very wise,” Jerome Stanton replied.
He was always called ‘Jerry’ by everybody who knew him and was an extremely good-looking young man, tall broad-shouldered with fair hair and blue eyes.
He had a broad forehead, which not only denoted brains but also gave him a frank and open look that made people he met like and trust him.
“You are as irresponsible as he is!” Aspasia teased.
Although they were twins, she was very unlike her brother. She was small, slim and very lovely, but instead of fair hair, hers had a touch of fire in it that made it almost red and her eyes were a far darker blue so that looking at them together it would have been difficult to guess they had been born at the same time.
“Will you have some more coffee?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” her brother replied. “But you had better open Uncle’s letter and learn the worst. I hope it is not for a very large amount.”
His sister looked at him sharply.
“You are not hard up again, Jerry?”
“Of course I am,” he replied. “You have no idea how expensive Oxford University is.”
“You knew when you went there that you would have to economise in every way because the money Mama had left us has almost run out.”
“I know! I know,” Jerry exclaimed. “But it is difficult when I am with a lot of fellows who are richer than I am to keep accepting hospitality without giving any.”
Aspasia was silent.
Then their uncle who they lived with had only a very small stipend and, as she had just said to her brother, the money that her mother had left them when she died five years ago had been spent over the years on their education until there was practically nothing left in the Bank.
As Jerry knew the position as well as she did, there was no point in saying anything more and Aspasia reached out her hand towards the letter and picked it up.
To her surprise it did not look like a bill and was written on a thick white parchment that was so expensive that Aspasia stared at it before she turned it over.
Then she gave a little cry of sheer astonishment.
“What is it?” Jerry asked her at once.
“This letter is from the Duchess,” she said. “Look! Here is her coronet on the back.”
Brother and sister looked at each other meaningfully before Aspasia said in a frightened voice almost beneath her breath,
“Why should she be – writing to – Uncle Theophilus?”
“Open it and find out,” Jerry proposed. “It is a good thing, if you ask me, that he did not notice who the letter was from. It would have upset him.”
“Yes, of course,” Aspasia agreed.
For a moment she sat staring at the letter as if she could not force herself to learn its contents.
Then meaningfully with a silver butter knife she slit open the top of the envelope.
As she drew out the thick sheet of paper inside, she felt perceptively that it was bad news and it was almost as if there was a vibration of evil coming from the paper itself.
She did not speak, but she was aware that Jerry was watching her as she opened the letter.
She read what was written without speaking until Jerry was unable to contain his curiosity any longer and demanded,
“What does it say? Read it to me.”
“I cannot believe it! It cannot be true,” Aspasia cried.
“What does it say?” Jerry asked again.
Aspasia drew in her breath and in a voice that trembled she read,
“To the Reverend Theophilus Stanton.
On the instructions of Her Grace the Duchess of Grimstone, now that you have reached the age of sixty-five, you are retired from your Living and you will vacate the Vicarage within a month of this date.
Yours faithfully,
Erasmus Carstairs,
Secretary to Her Grace.”
As Aspasia finished reading, her voice broke and her eyes were filled with tears, while Jerry brought his fist down violently on the table so that the plates and cups rattled.
“Curse her!” he exclaimed. “How can she do a thing like this to Uncle Theophilus? It’s inhumane! Brutal!”
“How can he leave here?” Aspasia asked. “The people in the village love him and he loves them. Besides, where can we go?”
She stared across the table at her twin as she asked the question, seeing her brother through her tears and knowing that he was as perturbed as she was.
“Uncle Theophilus has been here all his life,” Jerry pointed out as if he spoke to himself. “Just as we have.”
They were both thinking that the Vicarage was so much their home that they had never thought of it as belonging to anybody else.
- Writer
