The Westerby Inheritance (23 page)

But strange as it was, everyone seemed to fall under a spell the minute he crossed the threshold; everyone seemed to be overcome with a desire to live there, to possess it. Even the new west wing, with all its Bentley chinoiserie, held this odd feeling. So it was nothing to do with antiquity. It must be something in the land, in the very ground underneath.…

“There are two gentlemen staring at you,” said Sir Felix. “’Fore George! ’Tis Welbourne and Sir Anthony!”

Jane brought up her fan to hide her sudden blush. “Do not look at them,” she whispered, feeling unable to face Lord Charles so soon. But Sir Felix was bubbling over with enthusiasm, very rare indeed in one so self-centered. It seemed he had long been an admirer of the wicked Lord Charles and had had the honor of being presented to him only a week ago.

Lord Charles strode over to Jane’s box with a lithe elegance. Sir Felix begged him to join them, and felt almost ashamed of having Lady Jane for a companion. She had seemed so elegant, so composed, and now she was trembling and shaking like a blancmange. With all the enthusiasm of the rabbit facing the weasel, Jane was staring at Sir Anthony Blake.

The aunt! And he had kissed her! She stared from Sir Anthony to Lord Charles, who returned her gaze with a mocking look.

Sir Felix was offering rack punch all around. Bella too was glaring down at Sir Anthony, who was already well to go, having sampled the gardens’ famous rack punch in several other boxes, and was now leaning back in his chair, perilously near the edge of the box, singing cheerfully some song that seemed to be composed of fol-rol-rols and toodle-oodle-iddle-ums. Bella knew it was not her place to butt into the conversation, and so she contented herself by standing behind Jane’s chair and talking to herself.

“Bella is wondering if her poor old eyes are failing her,” said Bella to Bella. “For the gentlemen and ladies that she meets seem to be getting like twins, and there are certain gentlemen not far off who look like aunts.”

“Cease your whining, woman,” said Lord Charles. “Sir Anthony bears a marked resemblance to my aunt, which is not surprising, since our families are connected.”

Both Bella and Jane relaxed, like puppets with their strings cut. Jane became aware that Sir Felix was introducing her to Lord Charles and Sir Anthony, who were murmuring politely that they had already had that pleasure.

“Yes, indeed, tol roll Great pleasure,” said Sir Anthony overenthusiastically, rousing Jane’s suspicions again.

Sir Felix wondered what was wrong. The atmosphere seemed pregnant with tension. He exerted himself to please.

“I confess I am lucky, Lord Charles,” he said, “to have secured the privilege of escorting Lady Jane. She has so many admirers.”

“Indeed!” said Lord Charles in such arctic tones that poor Felix wondered what he had done to offend. Suddenly the clamor of a bell rang across the warm, scented air of the gardens.

“The fireworks!” said Sir Anthony, heaving himself to his feet. “Can’t miss that. Never tire of fireworks.”

Sir Felix was very impressed by Lord Charles’s elegance and world-weary air, which he hoped to emulate. He raised a scented handkerchief to his prim mouth and dabbed his lips fastidiously. “I confess I am weary of such childish displays,” said Sir Felix in what he hoped was a fair copy of his lordship’s languid drawl.

“In that case,” said Lord Charles, his sophisticated lethargy leaving him abruptly, “I shall relieve you of the task of escorting Lady Jane to see them. No, Bella. You do not need to come either. It is not necessary to be chaperoned at Vauxhall, as well you know.”

It seemed to Jane that he had managed to lead her from the box before Sir Felix had gathered his wits enough to reply.

Bella subsided with a snort. She distrusted Vauxhall, where all classes mixed freely and God knows what went on in the darkness of the shrubbery. It was one of the few places where a young lady could dispense with a chaperon.

Lord Charles walked in the direction of the fireworks display, with Jane on his arm. Sir Anthony tried to take Jane’s other arm, but Lord Charles looked at him and gave a quick jerk of his head, and Sir Anthony gave a reluctant grin and melted away into the crowd of revelers streaming in the same direction.

Jane was painfully aware of Lord Charles’s tall figure moving beside her through the patches of darkness between the lamps. The air was heavy and warm with the smell of fresh-cut grass and shrubbery and flowers, wet from the rains of the previous days.

Her hand on his arm seemed to be on fire, and she made a move to remove it, which he quickly countered by covering her hand with his own.

He felt her hand tremble beneath his and gave a wry smile. At least he had roused some passion in her cold bosom, but he wanted this love of his returned with love—not lust.

And then the black night sky was lit by cascades of Golden Drops and Bengal Lights. Jane gasped and exclaimed, clapping her hands, her eyes wide with wonder and delight. He looked down at her, experiencing a strange tenderness and regret. She was little more than a child and so innocent in her pleasure at the sparkling fireworks. He felt immeasurably older and immeasurably wicked. He had to remind himself firmly that she was cold and calculating.

But it was very hard. When the fireworks finished, she gave a happy little sigh and put her hand confidingly in his. “I have never seen anything so pretty!”

He smiled down at her, leading her back along the shadow of the walk. “Even Mr. Addison was impressed by Vauxhall,” he said. “He said that ‘with the choirs of birds that sung upon the trees and the loose tribe of people that walked under their shades I could not but look on the place as a kind of Mahometan paradise.’”

A pair of ladies of the town flirted roguish eyes at his lordship, and Jane’s hand instinctively tightened on his own.

He abruptly pulled her into his arms and kissed her quite savagely. Jane closed her eyes tight, and fireworks seemed to blaze in a dark sky of passion.

They clung together, their bodies fused with longing and heat and desire, their mouths exploring each other, while noisy revelers passed and repassed without giving them a second glance. It was a very common sight at Vauxhall. Why else did one go there?

He finally drew his face away and looked impatiently around. There was a small trellised arbor set back from the walk, away from the lights. He pulled her roughly toward it, pulled her down on the rustic seat beside him, feeling the warm, scented, leafy darkness enclosing them both; feeling those willing, fresh lips moving under his own as he covered her mouth once more.

She let his long, sensitive fingers move where they wished—“license my roving hands and let them go…” who had said that?—feeling them move from her face over her neck and slide down inside her dress to cup her breasts.

His lips followed the course of his hands as her gown slid down from her shoulders, his warm mouth covering the tip of one breast, his exploring tongue arousing the nipple, while she threaded her fingers tightly in his hair, dying from love, a small voice somewhere in a corner of her brain crying out, “Oh, say you love me! Please love me!”

But his lovemaking was silent and intense, and when at last he drew back and gently pulled her gown back up over her breast, he still did not speak, merely looking down at her. She could not read his expression in the darkness of the arbor, could only sense a return of his anger.

She put a hand up to his cheek and opened her mouth to say she loved him, but he gave her an impatient little shake and said harshly, “Monday. I shall call for you on Monday,” and her heart seemed to die within her. The contract. Always the contract. Revenge and counter-revenge.

But he did not release her hand as they walked back to the box, and that at least was a comfort. “If only he would be kind,” she thought miserably.

Mrs. Bentley turned and said something meaningless to her gentleman friend. Her sharp eyes had noticed the passionate couple and identified them as Lord Charles and Lady Jane.

All at once, she felt she would die from hate. That little doxy had added two fortunes and the death of James Bentley to her name. Now it seemed as if she were about to add a third fortune, that of Lord Charles Welbourne. The Welbourne fortune! That should have been James’s, along with his own and the Westerby lands. Somehow, her husband must be revenged. Somehow, Eppington Chase that he loved so dearly must return to the Bentleys. And it would.

If she had to kill the whole lot of them to get it!

Of course, she was a lady of great sensibility, and these ideas of murder were merely an intellectual pursuit to assuage her thirst for revenge. But then, there is such a thin line between the idea and the action…

And now she had to smile and smile and entertain that vicar’s chit. Mrs. Bentley had ample money to set up a London establishment of her own. But she had no intention of spending her own money. Not as long as she could manage to spend the Westerby money. And it would take more than the chaperonage of a milk-and-water miss like Philadelphia Syms to stop her from doing that!

Monday came. Another gray day, the sort of gray London day you know is going to stay exactly the same until dusk, with neither rain nor shine nor wind.

Jane was racking her brains for some way to get rid of Bella before the arrival of Lord Charles, when an express arrived from Hetty, which seemed to have been written as soon as that lady had arrived.

“Deer Jane,” she read, “Cum quick. Your pa is dangerus in his hed. Hetty.”

Jane felt a spasm of pure fear. Hetty would never have written in a hundred years unless it was something very serious indeed. Without a thought of Lord Charles, she hustled together the girls and the governess and Bella, after a hurried packing, and set out for the Chase.

It was only as the carriage was bowling down Fleet Street that she remembered with a great shock that she had forgotten to leave a note for Lord Charles. Well, Sanders would tell him of the urgency of their departure, and the reason for it.

Philadelphia would already have departed for London. Jane was sure she had had all her trunks packed and was only awaiting Jane’s letter. Jane had sent a note to Mrs. Bentley, explaining that she had to return to the Chase urgently and begging Mrs. Bentley to take care of Philadelphia until Jane’s return.

Now there was nothing to do but endure the journey and hope that everything would be as normal as it could ever be on her arrival.

The world rattled by beyond the glass of the carriage windows, and Jane had a sudden longing to stay thus, isolated from the rest of the world and its troubles. To see people in the streets and wonder about them, secure in the knowledge that one would never have to meet them, never have to be hurt by them.

But all too soon she was back among the leafy lanes of Surrey, and all too soon Westerby church rose above the long strips of fields.

Nearly home.

At first sight, it looked as if an army had invaded the Chase. Workmen seemed to be swarming everywhere. Some were digging an ornamental lake, others at work on the new wing, still others digging great pits to plant fully grown trees.

As the carriage turned into the courtyard in front of the mansion, a little band of workmen were wrestling to erect a heavy marble statue of Niobe, all stone tears, onto her tall plinth.

Jane sent Bella off with the girls and quickly mounted the stairs to her father’s bedroom.

The room was in darkness, the shutters being tightly closed over the window. Hetty, who had been sitting beside the bed, arose as Jane entered and drew her into a corner of the room. The great bulk of the Marquess of Westerby lay motionless under the covers.

“Doctor’s just been and given him some chloral,” whispered Hetty, twisting a handkerchief nervously between her long brown fingers.

“What happened?” asked Jane anxiously. Her father’s face looked waxen and lifeless.

“I dunno,” said Hetty. “He keeps rambling how he’s sinned, but nobody’s seen him consorting with a wench, that’s for sure. Then he keeps starting up and saying he sees Mr. Bentley astanding in the corner of the room. The only sound that seems to quiet him is when he hears the workmen outside. Damn this house, Jane! It’s got his very soul.”

“Shhh!” said Jane as the figure on the bed suddenly moved restlessly. “Let us go below stairs, Hetty. ’Tis easier to talk.”

Hetty led the way down through the shadowy hall, where tattered banners of long-forgotten battles hung from the old beamed ceiling. They went to the morning room in the west wing, a cheerful room decorated in primrose-yellow.

No sooner were they seated than Mr. Syms, the vicar, arrived. He looked startled to see Jane, explaining that Philadelphia had departed for town that morning with her mother.

“I called to see his lordship,” went on Mr. Syms. “How is he?”

“Not right,” said Hetty, shaking her head. “Not right at all. He rambles on terrible. Goes on and on about the sins of the flesh and that God will punish him.”

“I do not know what can ail him,” said Mr. Syms. “He was moving about the parish in his usual way until a few days ago. I have certainly tried to remonstrate with him over the surely horrendous expense of these alterations, but I have had to desist, since that seemed to make him very angry indeed.”

“It’s this house! It’s haunted,” cried Hetty and gave a superstitious shiver.

“Now, my lady,” said Mr. Syms severely, “provided one has led a Christian and God-fearing life, then there is no shade or spirit that can harm one.”

“Well, I ha’n’t,” said Hetty gloomily. Then her face brightened. “Maybe Simon will confess to you.”

It was strange to hear the Marquess’s Christian name on Hetty’s lips. She usually referred to him, when speaking to Jane, as “your pa.”

“If you will recollect, Lady Hetty, I called yesterday to that end, but it was to no avail. He rambled on about it being a secret between himself and the devil.”

“Oh, dear,” said Hetty weakly and burst into noisy tears, while Jane sat silent, frozen with worry, envying Hetty her noisy release.

It was a long and tedious day. At last dusk fell, and the owls cried from the woods and the workmen and overseers departed, and a chill mist crept over the fields and pressed against the windows of Eppington Chase.