Wyrde and Wayward

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Upon the morrow, after the sad duty of answering Lady Maundevyle’s invitation in the negative, Gussie busied herself with the myriad duties attendant upon so large a gathering of Werths. It was a pleasure to see Nell, whose residence some distance away with her husband and four children kept her too busy for regular visiting.

Gussie found her in the garden pavilion, enjoying the late morning sun. She was alone; Mr. Thannibour had elected not to attend Lizzie’s Great Event, and her children remained at home with their nanny.

In Gussie’s private opinion, Nell was hugely enjoying the respite.

‘Gus,’ said she upon her sister’s approach, looking up from the book spread open in her lap.

Gussie sank into the pretty cane chair opposite, her glance falling briefly upon the Wyrding Throne. The servants had not yet removed it, and it loomed still, all the more terrible for its emptiness. Gussie would never admit to having taken a seat there herself, on more than one occasion since her own, failed Wyrding. As a three-year-old, she had proved herself the only Werth in living memory passed over by the Wyrde. At ten, she had proved it again; and at fifteen, and one-and-twenty…

‘I came looking for my shawl,’ said Gussie. ‘And also, my sister.’

‘The pink? I believe I left it in the cloakroom.’ Her own gaze wandered to the throne. ‘You’re lucky, you know,’ she said. ‘Though I am sure you don’t feel it at the Towers. The Wyrde is… troublesome.’

Gussie recognised the book she was reading. It was a book of spectres, penned by a long-ago Werth, and added to by later generations — including Nell.

‘Perhaps I am better suited to a life outside the Towers,’ Gussie agreed. ‘But that, it seems, I am not to have.’ That piece of fortune had fallen, instead, to her sister. She had found in Mr. Thannibour a man who did not mind what she did in the night, and who was unruffled by the shades that wandered into Fothingale Manor, bent on having a comfortable cose with his wife. Such men were not often to be met with.

‘Your chance will come, Gus,’ said Nell, with a look of sympathy.

‘Oh?’ said Gussie. ‘When?’

Nell shrugged, and closed her book.

‘Do you know why my aunt and uncle are so set against my going?’

‘They think it unsuitable, did they not say that?’ said Nell, frowning.

‘An explanation not much to the purpose.’

Nell’s frown deepened, and she turned upon her sister a troubled gaze. ‘Gussie. Have you not sometimes wondered…’

‘Wondered what?’

‘Have you never noticed?’ said Nell.

‘Noticed? What am I to have noticed?’

But Nell would not be drawn. ‘No,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘How could you have? And perhaps they are right, after all.’

‘Nell! If you, too, are keeping secrets from me, I swear I shall — why, I’ll tell Great-Aunt Honoria what became of the fur tippet she left to Mother.’

Nell gasped. ‘You would not!’

Gussie subsided with a sigh. ‘Probably I would not. I am nowhere near evil enough.’

‘She was delighted about Lizzie,’ Nell offered.

‘Well she might have been. You should stay here to keep her in line, or she’ll be haunting the poor child quite until she is grown.’

‘I cannot,’ said Nell, not without regret. ‘I must leave tomorrow, as planned, or heaven knows in what state I shall find Arthur and the children.’

‘They can manage very well without you, I am sure.’

‘They may, perhaps. The spectres, I am persuaded, are most unlikely to leave them alone.’

Perhaps that was what Nell meant, when she called the Wyrde troublesome. And a fair observation at that.

A flicker of movement caught Gussie’s eye. She looked up, and beheld the distant figure of Cousin Theo, recognisable by the shock of red hair blowing in the wind. He was red elsewhere about himself, too, in places he rather ought not, and Gussie averted her eyes.

‘Oh, is that Theo?’ Nell sighed. ‘Someone ought to break him of those habits, or he will never find a wife.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t want one.’

Nell’s brows rose. ‘That can hardly be permissible.’

‘Whyever not?’

‘Well — look at him, Gus. Did you ever see a more total figure of helplessness?’

Theo was, at that moment, engaged in stalking across the distant grass, a book tucked under one arm and something red and glistening clutched in the other hand.

Gussie began to laugh. ‘I doubt the woman exists who could make Theo respectable.’

‘I would settle for tolerable,’ said Nell.

‘Well, and from tomorrow,’ said Gussie lightly, rising from her chair, ‘you, at least, will not have to tolerate him at all.’

Nell waved this away. ‘I love Theo,’ she said. ‘Even with all his… quirks. And I love you, Gus, even if you are boring and ordinary—’ She squeaked as Gussie swatted at her hair, and ran away, laughing. ‘The Towers may be as mad as it gets,’ she called back, ‘but I miss it, all the same.’

Gussie was left to ponder her own and her sister’s very different fates: in being trapped at the seat of the Werths, Gussie had learned to resent it; and in having left it, Nell took every opportunity to return.

The scent of an impending storm reached Gussie’s senses, and a chill wind swirled about her feet.

Thunder growled as Aunt Wheldrake wafted by.

‘Oh, Lord,’ said Nell, coming up again. ‘Is she going Theo’s way? I believe she is.’

‘Better stop her,’ said Gussie, and away ran Nell again.

Great-Aunt Honoria’s head appeared. ‘And how is my darling grand-child— oh! Was not Lucretia here? I quite thought she was.’

The head was uncomfortably solid-looking, complete with a bloom of health across the thin cheeks. Her hair was piled high in the fashion of some decades before, and bristling with ornaments. Honoria might still have been alive, were it not for the fact of having mislaid everything of herself below the neck.

Gussie merely pointed.

Great-Aunt Honoria gave a sigh, and disappeared.

Gussie took the opportunity quietly to withdraw, and return to the tranquillity of her own, spectre-free house.

A haphazard, rambling place some centuries old, Werth Towers covered a great deal of ground. Many successive generations of Werths had altered it, and added to it, until it sprawled across the parkland as though thrown there by a careless child, gables and chambers and chimneys scattered every which way. The main house had originally been built in Elizabeth’s time; a later Werth had added a set of towers, and accordingly changing the name; another had expanded the stables, and the coach-houses. Yet another had indulged a passion for architectural symmetry by building a new wing in the modern style, a confection of chalky limestone and pilasters far out of step with the rest of the pile.

Gussie thought its eccentricities charming — from the outside. Inside, the house was a perfect maze of passageways, staircases, towers and garrets, halls and parlours, bedchambers and salons. Many years’ residence there had been insufficient to make her acquainted with all its nooks and crannies; moreover, she suspected the Towers — or its spectral occupants — of occasionally changing things. A door removed; a staircase turned about; a window shifted or a trapdoor barred; such minor alterations might never occasion any remark, but could nonetheless cause considerable inconvenience. Indeed, no one could claim to have seen the south-west tower in several years.

‘It will come back,’ was Lady Werth’s comfortable prediction, and Lord Werth seemed hardly to regard the matter at all.

An unladylike curse or two might escape Gussie, however, as she navigated her way from the rear entrance adjacent to the kitchens, through the utility rooms and the servants’ halls, up past the drawing-rooms and the best bedchambers, up again past the second-best bedchambers, around a winding mess of corridors and at last into the east tower, presently termed Theo’s. The door to his private chambers was, as usual, firmly shut.

Gussie tapped upon it. ‘Theo?’

No answer.

‘Theo,’ she called, knocking again. ‘It’s Gussie, and I have need of you. Will you let me in?’

The silence continued, and Gussie wondered if she had calculated wrongly. Theo’s schedule tended to be regular: he had his hours in the library, his prowlings in the gardens, and his (typically reluctant) presence at family meals. The rest of his time was spent closeted in his rooms, where he did not like to be disturbed.

Gussie had only once ventured to seek him there, and did not lightly do so again. A small part of her felt relieved at her mistiming, for it meant that she need not—

The door swung open, yanked with some force from the other side.

There stood Theo, pale and frowning. ‘If this is about the rabbits again—’

‘It is not.’ Gussie smiled, and endeavoured to look like a person come on no excessively troublesome errand. ‘May I come in?’

Theo’s frown relaxed, and he stood back to let Gussie pass. She swept into the airy, well-lit room, took up a station upon a crimson carpet in the centre of it, and mentally prepared her speech.

Theo did not encourage her by any word or gesture. He merely waited. A tall man a year or two younger than Gussie herself, Theo had inherited none of his mother’s delicate, fair prettiness; he was his father’s son through and through, lean of figure, with that wild rust-coloured hair and remarkably white skin.

A spray of blood had discoloured his carelessly-tied cravat, a diamond pin making an incongruous ornament in the midst of such a mess.

Gussie averted her eyes from it.

‘You see, cousin, it is like this,’ she began. ‘You have heard, I imagine, about my invitation to Starminster?’

Theo looked blank.

‘Seat of the Viscounts Maundevyle,’ Gussie supplied. ‘In Somerset. The Dowager Viscountess begs the honour of my company.’

‘Maundevyle,’ said Theo. ‘Right.’

‘And, well, my aunt and uncle will not give me leave to go.’

Theo said nothing.

‘They say it is inappropriate in some fashion, though I do not know why, for I cannot feel that it is. And — and this is where I was hoping you might help me, Theo. For it cannot be inappropriate if I take Miss Frostell with me, and — and you. Now, can it?’

‘Me?’ blurted Theo. ‘Somerset?’

‘Your being Lord Bedgberry, I mean, and quite able to go wherever you please. Your father and mother would not interfere so in what you chose to do, would they?’

‘But I don’t choose,’ said Theo.

‘It would only be for a week or two,’ said Gussie. ‘And I am sure there are rabbits aplenty on the Starminster estate.’

Theo folded his arms. ‘Cousin,’ he said. ‘Being among the least intolerable members of my family, there are numerous ways I would gladly contribute to your comfort. But this is not one of them.’

‘But—’

‘I cannot leave the Towers. Certainly not to spend a week or more as the guest of a perfect stranger, who is not expecting me, and could hardly want me.’ He punctuated this depressing speech with a gesture at the drying blood upon his cravat, which was eloquent enough.

Gussie, deflated, had nothing to add. She had known it to be a gamble, approaching Theo. And she knew he was right in his objections. An hour ago, pacing about the parlour of her little cottage alone, she had persuaded herself that Theo could contain his odder qualities for a week or two, and pass for a respectable gentleman; that the viscountess who was so eager for her company must be flattered to receive that of the much more important Lord Bedgberry, also; and that a possible future lay before her in which Theo himself might be amenable to it.

Even as she had toiled up the stairs into the east tower, her certainty on all these points had been declining. Now she saw all the folly of it, and wondered that she had ever thought it likely at all.

‘You are right,’ she sighed. ‘Your cousin is a pot-bound fool of a Gussie, so desperate for novelty as to importune a poor Theo over it.’

Theo, arms still folded, subjected her to a hard, cold-eyed stare.

Gussie’s spirit rose under this ungracious treatment. ‘Well, but was it so bothersome a request as all that?’

‘Maundevyle,’ said Theo again. ‘Is that the Selwyn family?’

‘I do not know what the family name might be.’

‘I knew a Selwyn,’ said Theo. ‘School-fellow.’

Gussie wondered if this might be the Henry who had since succeeded to the Maundevyle title, but before she could enquire Theo added, ‘Charles was the name.’

‘Edifying,’ said Gussie.

‘Hated him,’ said Theo.

Gussie blinked.

‘But I think it odd,’ said Theo next, ‘that Mama should object. Especially if you are to have Miss Frostell with you.’

‘Yes!’ said Gussie. ‘And when she and Lady Maundevyle are such old friends, at that.’

‘Are they?’ said Theo, visibly losing interest in so insoluble a problem. His gaze wandered; Gussie knew he would be looking for the book he had doubtless placed down but lately, somewhere easily to hand, where he would in no wise be unable to find it again half an hour later.

‘It is on the window-sill,’ she said with a sigh, pointing to where a large folio lay, drenched in morning sunshine.

‘Hard luck, cousin,’ said Theo, drifting that way. ‘But there is no persuading Mama, when she is fixed upon something.’

Gussie only sighed, and withdrew.

She wandered slowly downstairs again, all the way down and around and down, until she emerged into the sunlight, blinking in the sudden glare. Instead of returning by way of the kitchen-adjacent entrance, as had been her intention, she had, in the abstraction of her thoughts, wandered out of the great front door instead.

In the driveway stood a carriage. Gussie, regarding it in confusion, noted firstly that it was not one of her uncle’s equipages; secondly that it was a great, lumbering travel-coach, a little out of date, but excessively handsome; and thirdly, that the driver sat still upon the box, as though only just arrived.

She had not known that her aunt and uncle were expecting any visitors, and she had passed nobody on her way to the door. Her curiosity piqued, she went around the side of it, to see if she could catch a glimpse of any arms emblazoned upon the gleaming black paint.

The side-door opened in a rush, and somebody barrelled out.

‘Oh!’ said Gussie, and jumped back.

‘Beg pardon,’ said the visitor; a gentleman, by his attire, but the voice was light and melodic.

‘There is no earthly need,’ said Gussie. ‘For if I will blunder into the way of the door, it is quite my own affair if—’

This speech was destined never to be concluded, for to Gussie’s stupefied surprise, she was seized by a pair of thin, but strong arms, lifted off her feet, and borne in the direction of the waiting coach.

‘What in the—’ Gussie spluttered, and recovered from her surprise so far as to writhe like an animal in an attempt to free herself.

‘Oh, but don’t spoil it!’ said her attacker, in tones of exasperation. ‘Otherwise I shall be obliged to call Charles, and that would be very tiresome, for he said I could never manage it alone. You do not want to prove him right, do you?’

Gussie spread out her arms and legs, making each limb an obstacle to her being stuffed through the beckoning doors of the coach. ‘It is the outside of enough,’ she gasped, ‘to be expected to collude in one’s own abduction, for the sake of proving a gentleman wrong!’

‘Don’t think of it as an abduction, then,’ said her abductor, whom Gussie was now quite sure was in fact a woman. ‘Call it a pressing invitation, if you will.’ By some agility beyond Gussie’s comprehension, the insufferable woman contrived to thrust Gussie’s arms into the coach one by one, and soon afterwards she fell all the way in, landing face-first upon somebody’s booted feet.

‘Steady on,’ said another voice, certainly male, and Gussie looked up into a man’s face, young and sharp-featured, with chestnut-coloured curls and vividly green eyes.

Without troubling herself to venture any reply, Gussie picked herself up, thrust her head in the way of the rapidly closing door, and drew in a great breath. Her mouth opened; and in a vast scream borne of fright and indignation both, she cried: ‘Great-Uncle Silvesteeeer!’

The door then colliding smartly with her face, Gussie fell in a senseless heap upon the coach’s floor.