Jason, Veronica Read online

Pompous ass, Patrick thought, and stopped listening. A few seconds later they stopped beside one of the cubicles.

  Except for the reddish-blond curls, she was unrecognizable. One light-blue eye was open, the other swollen shut in her puffed and lacerated face. Her right arm, miraculously undamaged, lay outside the coarse sheet. With despair he saw that already her arm had taken on the waxy look of death.

  He bent over her. "Anne. Anne, my dear child."

  A spark of expression lit that one open eye. "Patrick!" It was a bare whisper, little more than a stirring of her swollen lips. But there was an urgency in that one blue eye that made him bend closer.

  "... can say it... now. I love you."

  He felt as if a metal band had tightened around his throat. There was no mistaking her meaning. To him, she had been at most like a young sister, and he had believed her feeling for him to be of the same order. Now, for the first time, he realized what impossible longings had swelled her young heart, perhaps even as she said, "It is kind of you, Patrick, to speak of me to fine people like the Cobbins," and, "Yes, Patrick, I think Thomas Cobbin is a very seemly young man."

  Again the swollen lips stirred. "I... did wrong. But I did not want to shame you before the Cobbins by being late. That is why..."

  The whispering voice ceased. The blue eye turned vacant. He reached a hand to the thin wrist. No beat of life against his fingertips. He put his hand down under the sheet and rested it just below the small left breast. No sign of breathing or of heartbeat.

  The doctor said stiffly, "Perhaps it would be better that I, a physician, ascertain..."

  Not answering, Patrick turned away from the cubicle and stared at the floor. After a moment the doctor said, "This young woman is dead." Patrick was aware of the man's movements as he drew the sheet up over Anne's face.

  "You say, Sir Patrick, that she was your ward?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you intend to make arrangements..."

  "I will pay for the coffin. Her aunt will accompany the body to Ireland for burial."

  He himself would not be standing in the churchyard in her native village when Anne's body was lowered into the ground. Now he had urgent business here. He strode back through the wards. You won't go unavenged, Anne, he promised silently. Someone will pay for your death.

  In the hospital courtyard he entered the waiting carriage. "Where is the nearest place to hire a mount?"

  "That would be Gorman's, sir, just off the Strand."

  "Take me to my lodgings first." He would have to tell Maude Reardon the news. "Then take me to Gorman's."

  It would mean riding half the night. But by morning he would know the first thing he had to find out—whether or not young Montlow was still at Oxford.

  CHAPTER 4

  The small side parlor at the Hedges was warm and peaceful, its silence broken only by small domestic sounds—the snapping of the fire in the grate, a faint rustle as Elizabeth Montlow turned the pages of her book, and now and then, whenever the embroidery thread knotted, an annoyed exclamation from Mrs. Montlow.

  Now and then Elizabeth glanced up from the page to enjoy the dim reflection of firelight and candle flame in the long glass doors opposite. Beyond them she could see, bathed in the blue light of early evening, the brick terrace with its rose trellis. The espaliered rose vine was bare now, but no matter. Just as she enjoyed the other seasons here in the country, she enjoyed the winter months. In leafless winter you could see the basic shape of things, the low rock walls hemming in brown fields, and the inverted-heart shape of beeches against the sky, and the meandering branches of that rose vine out there.

  Sighing, Mrs. Montlow laid her embroidery hoop on the rosewood stand beside her wing chair. She was a slender, pretty woman of forty-odd, with graying blond hair, blue eyes, and almost doll-like features. "Three more weeks," she said.

  Even if her mother's gaze had not gone to the portrait above the fireplace, Elizabeth would have known what she meant. Three more weeks until Christopher came home for the Christmas holidays.

  Elizabeth too looked up at the portrait. Christopher had been eleven when John Montlow, as one of his last extravagant acts, had commissioned Sir Joshua Reynolds to paint his son. In the portrait, Christopher, wearing a red velvet suit, stood with one hand resting on the head of a half-grown mastiff. His other hand held his plumed red hat. His seraphically handsome face, framed in pale shoulder-length curls, looked at the viewer with a smile that would have melted the stoniest heart, let alone the proudly fond ones of his mother and sister.

  "I'm afraid last Christmas was dull for him," Mrs. Montlow said. "This year we must bid our neighbors to a party." She added discontentedly, "Those few who are here, anyway."

  Recognizing one of her mother's almost daily complaints over the fact that they had not gone into town for the season, Elizabeth said nothing.

  "We'll hang greenery in the large parlor, and hire a small orchestra."

  "Not an orchestra, Mother. Perhaps we could hire Mrs. Wells to play the spinet for dancing." Mrs. Wells, an impoverished gentlewoman, lived in the nearby village of Parnley, and supported herself by giving lessons in music and drawing.

  "There you go, Elizabeth! I realize we must economize. But sometimes it seems to me you are actually tight-fisted."

  Elizabeth kept silent. It was best, Dr. Farnsworth had warned her, to allow her mother these occasional explosions of discontent. Opposition might bring on one of those terrifying times when Mrs. Montlow, lips turning blue, gasped for breath.

  "Things were so different when your father was alive. We kept two carriages then, and four horses. Every time I see the carriage house standing empty out there, I feel like weeping."

  Elizabeth ventured mildly, "Father left debts. They had to be paid." It was only after his death that they had learned it was borrowed money that had supported his family's style of living. Even now a small indebtedness remained. From quarterly interest earned by the twenty thousand pounds left in trust for her, Elizabeth had gradually reduced that debt.

  At least her father had never borrowed against that twenty thousand pounds. Sometimes Elizabeth wondered about that. Had he foreseen that someday his daughter would be responsible for making sure that his widow lived in modest comfort, and that his son received an education?

  Perhaps, too, that was why he had provided her with more than the usual female education. From her tenth year until her seventeenth, when her father had died, private tutors had taught her history and mathematics.

  Mrs. Montlow sighed. "Yes, the debts. I've never understood how that happened. But then, I'm not clever like you."

  If she was "clever," Elizabeth thought somewhat grimly, perhaps it was because she'd had to be.

  With one of lightninglike changes of mood, Mrs. Montlow said, "And, Liza, I'm grateful that you're clever. What would Christopher and I do if you were not? And I do understand about not going into town this winter. Christopher's college expenses come first. Who would have dreamed they would be so high?"

  They were high indeed. By almost every other post, he requested money. Always the reason he gave seemed legitimate. A spark from the grate in his room had set a small fire, which, before it was extinguished, had destroyed not only expensive books but also his best greatcoat, left drying before the hearth. Someone—he suspected a charwoman—had stolen his last allowance. His good friend, Lord Stanley's son Geoffrey, leader of the "smartest set" in Christopher's college, had suggested that each of his friends contribute a pound toward a party at an inn in Oxford village. He was sorry to ask for money so soon again, but he knew that darling Mama and dearest Liza appreciated how much the friendship of people like Lord Stanley's son might mean to his future....

  Mrs. Montlow never doubted her son's letter. Elizabeth sometimes did. True, she adored the brother, almost six years younger than she. From his infancy onward, no one in the household had been able to resist his beauty, his winsome smile, his way of clambering on laps to demand kisses. But there were other things
she could remember, like that kitten, when Christopher was eight....

  It had been a shock to fourteen-year-old Elizabeth to come into her small brother's empty room and see the golden kitten dangling from a table by a length of cord. She had removed the looped end of the cord from around a paperweight and taken the kitten's still-warm body onto her lap. She had just finished untying the other end of the cord from around the tiny animal's neck when she looked up, to see Christopher standing in the doorway.

  He had rushed toward her, tears welling in the great blue eyes, and asked what had happened to Marigold. When told his kitten was dead, he buried his face on Elizabeth's lap, his pale curls mingling with his pet's golden fur, and sobbed out that he'd been trying to teach Marigold to walk on a leash. After he left the room, the kitten must have gotten up on the table and then jumped off, with the loop in the cord catching around that paperweight.

  He had raised his tear-wet face. "You won't tell Father or Mama, will you, Liza? I don't want them to know what a bad, careless boy I was. Promise me, darling Liza. We'll just say we don't know how Marigold died."

  She had promised.

  Now she brushed the thought of the kitten aside. There was no point in dwelling upon that, or on the other things, such as the print of an engraving she had found, crumpled up on the floor of his clothespress after his last visit home. It had been a print of a naked woman cowering on a floor with a man standing over her, cat-o'-nine-tails in hand. As she crumpled the print and carried it downstairs to toss it on the side-parlor fire, Elizabeth had tried to tell herself that perhaps many young men passed such pictures around among themselves.

  Mrs. Montlow was again complaining of their lost season in town. "It is just that the country in winter is so dull for me."

  Elizabeth realized that. Her mother did not ride, took little pleasure in reading, and regarded with puzzled dismay her daughter's habit of taking walks over the muddy countryside in all but the worst weather. Little wonder that she wished herself in London, whirling from "morning coffees" to afternoon whist parties to evening balls, where, even though her weak heart no longer permitted her to dance, she could enjoy the music and the sight of richly dressed people moving gracefully beneath blazing crystal chandeliers.

  Elizabeth did not miss at all the morning coffees, exclusively feminine gatherings where the talk was of clothes, approaching marriages, and rumored adulteries of those not present. Because she often won, she found the whist parties less unpalatable. But she disliked seeing the feverish look on the face of some player trying to recoup a heavy loss. And sometimes there were repellent episodes, such as that of one afternoon last season, when she had suddenly realized that a dowager duchess at her table had been cheating. Elizabeth had said nothing. The duchess was almost three times her age, as well as the party's hostess. But apparently the duchess had seen knowledge of her cheating in those clear gray eyes, because, to Elizabeth's relief, she received no more invitations to whist parties at that particular house.

  Elizabeth did enjoy the balls, though, because she loved dancing. No matter that she found most of her partners, from callow youths to grandfathers, laughably artificial with their languid airs, their drawled compliments, their often rouged faces. There was still the joy of moving through the figures of the dance.

  Once in a while at those London balls she had met a man that attracted her. Notably, there had been that tall, dark-haired man, Sir Patrick Stanford, whom she had met at Lord and Lady Armitage's house last season. He had not been handsome in the conventional sense. His dark face, with its high cheekbones, strong nose, and square jaw, had been too rugged for that. Nor had their brief conversation over glasses of punch been anything of consequence. He had commented on her complexion, if she remembered rightly. But she had liked the way he had moved, not with the languid saunter now fashionable in London, but with an outdoorsman's easy grace. She had liked his coat and breeches of dark green velvet—rich enough, but less flamboyant than the pink and blue and silver brocades worn by the other men. And she had liked an impression she had somehow gained, a sense of some sort of depth and seriousness in him.

  There had been something else, too. As they chatted, his dark gaze had traveled from her face to the curve of her breasts, revealed by her square-necked ball gown. She was used to such glances. A woman who followed the current mode in dress of course expected that men would look at her almost bare bosom. But she was not used to the odd thrill his gaze sent along her nerves.

  Even though she had already given her affections elsewhere, she had hoped for almost three days that he would call at their Kingman Street house. Then, over a whist table, she learned something she had not known before. He was an Irish baronet, with lands on the southeast coast near Cork. After that, convinced she had been wrong in her impression of him, she no longer wanted him to call. She had heard how the titled Anglo-Irish obtained the money with which they tried to outdo their English counterparts each London season, buying rich clothes and throwing away vast sums at the gaming tables. More avaricious than English landlords, they kept subdividing their lands into smaller and smaller strips, so as to obtain rents from more and more tenants. Left with little land to cultivate, the average Irish peasant and his family lived off the potatoes he grew. All other crops had to be sold to meet the rent.

  Picking up her embroidery, Mrs. Montlow said with a sigh, "I suppose I should be thankful that you too don't find the country dull. Perhaps if you could not see Donald almost every day, you would find it so."

  Elizabeth smiled, and picked up her book, a copy of Fielding's Tom Jones. Donald had given it to her two days ago, just before he left to visit his uncle in Bath. "Perhaps you're right, Mother."

  She could not remember a time when Donald Weymouth had not been an important part of her life. The Weymouths, whose land adjoined that of the Montlows, were not an "old" family. Of yeoman stock, they had only in the past two generations been considered gentry. (But then, as Donald had once said to her with his winning smile, "It's odd that we should speak of old families. If every human being is descended from Adam and Eve, then all families are equally old.")

  Like the Montlows, the Weymouths were far from rich. But Donald, two years older than Elizabeth, and educated for the church, had an assured future. A well-to-do and childless brother of Mrs. Weymouth's controlled the living in the local parish. As soon as the present vicar retired, the post would be Donald's.

  Unlike many of England's hard-drinking, fox-hunting parsons, Donald was prepared to take his vocation seriously. Perhaps a little too seriously. He read, and discussed with Elizabeth the works of Calvin and other Dissenters. But then, as he once said to her, probably he was just sowing his "intellectual wild oats." In time he would find no difficulty in abiding by the tenets of the Church of England.

  As soon as he became vicar, they would announce their engagement Not long afterward, his church salary would be supplemented by Elizabeth's inheritance and one from Donald's uncle. There would be more than enough money to keep themselves and their children and Elizabeth's mother in comfort As for Christopher's future, no one need worry about that. He would have not only this country estate and the house in town. With his looks and charm and ancient though untitled name, with the influential friendships he was making at Oxford, he could go about as far in the world as he liked, either by means of some high political appointment or by marriage to some great heiress.

  She realized that both she and Donald, too, might be able to make more "advantageous" marriages elsewhere. But to them their union would offer every advantage worth having—shared tastes for books and riding and country life in general, and a warm, serene love with roots in their childhoods.

  Mrs. Montlow said, "Are you sure we couldn't have at least a small orchestra for Christopher's Christmas party? A violin and a flute, as well as the spinet?"

  Elizabeth laughed. "All right I'll see if it can be managed."

  Several seconds passed in silence. Then Mary Hawkins, the cook who had co
me to the Hedges as an upstairs maid the year before Elizabeth's birth, spoke from the doorway. "Could I see you in the kitchen for a moment, miss?"

  Elizabeth felt a stab of anxiety. The woman's face was pale, and her voice held scarcely controlled tension. "Of course," Elizabeth said quickly.

  Neither of them spoke until they had gone down the hall to the large and very clean kitchen, with its rows of copper pans gleaming in the light of the tallow lamp, and supper's chicken browning on the fireplace spit

  "What is it, Hawkins?"

  "Mr. Tabor was just here. He brought Sunday's joint." Henry Tabor was the village butcher.

  "And?"

  "There's a story in the village that the house in town was broke into last night by... by some young persons."

  "Our house?" Hawkins nodded. "Was much stolen?"

  "As to that, I don't know, miss. But, oh, miss! There was a woman, a young girl."

  "Girl? What girl?"

  "I don't know. But she's dead, miss. She jumped out a window, or they pushed her. She was found in the area-way, dead and naked."

  CHAPTER 5

  Shocked and sickened, Elizabeth said, "My mother must not learn of this, not until I've decided how to break the news to her."

  Mary Hawkins' broad, lined face looked reproachful. "Can you believe I would say anything to upset the dear lady?"

  "I know you wouldn't. After supper I'll tell her myself."

  She moved back along the hall. Thank God there were no longer young housemaids to whisper excitedly among themselves and thus betray to Mrs. Montlow that something was being kept from her. These days, household tasks other than cooking were performed by Elizabeth herself, with the help of a charwoman from the village twice a week.

  Mrs. Montlow looked up as Elizabeth appeared in the sitting-room doorway. "What is it? Black beetles again?"

  "No. Hawkins was afraid the butcher had overcharged for Sunday's joint of mutton. But I put it on the kitchen scale, and it weighs exactly what he'd told her." Lest her mother have time to realize that Mary Hawkins herself could have weighed the joint, Elizabeth added swiftly, "I think I will take a short walk. I feel the need of exercise." Always she found that she could think better out-of-doors.