Joan Smith Read online

  “Alice was accusing whom, of what?” I asked, when she had run to a stop.

  “The green giraffes of singing when they should have been silent,” she replied with a conning smile. She might as well have been a giraffe herself for any information I could ever wring out of her.

  It was not anticipated that Welland Sinclair would visit us that evening, but at about nine-thirty he came up, complaining of tired eyes from all his reading. This conveyed to me something quite different from what it conveyed to my aunt. “You work too hard on your treatise, Welland,” she scolded, quite like a fond aunt, which was not her customary manner of dealing with him.

  “I am eager to finish up and return home,” he answered.

  “You must be, with your wedding getting closer all the time. July the tenth I think you mentioned as the date?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Will you and Mary live at Tanglewood, or does she have a place of her own?” my aunt asked.

  Sinclair twitched in his chair, disliking this line of talk before my disapproving presence. “That has all been arranged long ago. We have the dower house at Tanglewood,” he replied stiffly.

  “St. Regis is very generous to you. Do you find him usually a generous, understanding man?” was her next hopeful question.

  “Extremely generous, yes.”

  “He must have changed a great deal. I find he never gives an inch on anything.”

  “He has been kind to me. Is Peter here? I came to see him actually.”

  “He is having a cold tub. Valerie recommended it, he tells me. Why did you do that, Valerie? A cold tub is more uncomfortable than anything, even in summer,” my aunt chided.

  “He was overheated,” I answered briefly. “I shall have him called, if Mr. Sinclair only came to see him.” There was a bellcord in the room, but I was so incensed at the conversation that I went myself to call him. He was still following my instructions abovestairs, so we had to wait a few minutes for him.

  “I hope it will be a nice day tomorrow,” Aunt Loo was saying when I returned.

  “Yes, with your friend, Dr. Hill, making his trip, it would be a pity if it rained,” Welland answered, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

  “Dr. Hill? Oh, no, I referred to Valerie’s plan.”

  “What plan is that? You spoke of no plan to me,” he said, turning his head quickly in my direction. “Are you going somewhere too?”

  “No, I plan to ride. That is all my aunt meant.”

  “It is the jump I referred to,” Auntie said, fearing I was trying to shab off on her again.

  “What jump is this?” he asked.

  “The tollbooth,” Loo blurted out, before it occurred to her that our visitor was supposedly unaware of her novel writing, and the purpose for my feat of daring.

  “What!” he shouted, rising up on his feet.

  Then, when the damage was done, she collected her wits and dumped the whole idea in my dish. “Dr. Hill has told us the previous owner jumped Nancy over the tollbooth, and Valerie is eager to try it,” she explained, with never a mention of her own involvement.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s impossible. You’ll fall and kill yourself.”

  “I am not quite set on doing it,” I capitulated, looking to see if Loo was deterred by this objective opinion.

  “There is no danger in it. It has been done once already,” Aunt Loo assured him.

  “Not by a woman,” was his immediate, instinctive response.

  I had been long wavering between mortal terror and a creeping urge to give it a go. The creeping urge leapt forward at this slur on womanhood. “I can jump as well as any man,” I said calmly.

  “No sane man would try it,” he pointed out. “It is the greatest foolishness I ever heard of. I forbid it.”

  Aunt Loo began poohing in her ineffectual way, while I, like our caller, jumped to my feet to glare at his spectacles. “Forbid it? Forbid it?!!” I demanded, my voice rising alarmingly at his impertinence. “I’ll have you know, sir, my own father has not forbidden me to do anything in three years.”

  “It is patently clear you have been allowed to get out of hand. You must forbid this folly, Lady Sinclair,” he said, turning his attack to her.

  There was more poohing, but no mention of an injunction against the act by Lady Sinclair. “Valerie is strong as an ox. A great walloping monster of a girl. She can do it if any woman can.”

  It is one thing to be called Junoesque; even Amazonian I can tolerate, but to be called an ox, and in front of a young gentleman too, was coming it a bit strong for me. I opened my mouth to object to these descriptions.

  Welland opened his faster and beat me to it. “No woman can do it!” he declared.

  I knew at that moment that one strapping monster of a girl was going to try. “Would you care to place a wager, Mr. Sinclair?” I asked, my spirit kindling. “The five pounds your patron sent you for being a good, docile puppet, perhaps?”

  “You are not making the attempt,” he stated flatly.

  Pierre came waddling in at his customary, leisurely gait. His hair was slicked down from his recent dunking. “I have had the cold bath,” he reported to me with a bow. “It do not moisten down the ardors like you are suggesting, Valerie.”

  “Dampen, Peter. Dampen the ardor,” I said, happy for the interruption. There was a sound remarkably like a snort from Sinclair’s direction. “I think Mr. Sinclair could benefit from one as well.”

  “But no, absolutely,” Pierre warned his cousin. “It is very much unpleasant. I am taking the rheum, I think. You shall be nurse for me if I am becoming ill, Valerie.”

  “It is Valerie who will require nursing if she tackles the jump she plans,” Welland retorted. “It is her intention to jump Nancy over the tollbooth,” he informed Pierre.

  “Very excellent,” Peter replied. “I have heard before these story of jumping Nancy high. I wish you bonne chance. That means the good luck, as we English say,” he explained, rectifying his lapse into his mother tongue.

  “Are you all out of your minds?” Welland demanded of the room at large. There was no actual oral reply, but only looks and stares of various sorts.

  “Why you are wanting to see me for, Cousin?” Peter asked into the silence.

  Sinclair shook himself to attention, straightened his shoulders and said, “I wanted you to accompany me on a ride tomorrow. I am going to Winchester, and thought you might enjoy to see the cathedral.”

  “Ah, the famous old church,” Pierre said, in a bored tone. “I know much of its histories, how the old Saxon kings were put in the ground there.”

  “Many other famous persons as well,” Welland added. “The son of William the Conqueror. The place is well worth seeing. The choir is the longest in England, and the windows too quite fine. Will you come?”

  “Absolutely. I like always to be looking at monuments. Many of these gothic churches I had to see also at home.”

  This lukewarm enthusiasm was deemed enough encouragement for Sinclair. It occurred to me I might be invited to join them, to keep me away from the tollbooth, but no mention was made of my going, even by Pierre. It was not till Mr. Sinclair’s visit was ending that this possibility occurred to either of them. “Would you care to come with us, Miss Ford?” Welland inquired.

  “No, thank you. I have other plans for tomorrow, you will recall.”

  He stood, glaring, for several seconds, then turned to Aunt Loo. “Will you excuse us for a moment,” he said, bold as brass, then took my hand and drew me out the door. I never saw such a brazen display of bad manners in my entire life. My aunt was too shocked to object, and Pierre too confused to know what to do.

  “Let us hope Pierre does not decide to copy your manners, mistaking them for those of a gentleman,” I said, when we were standing alone in the cavernous hallway.

  He consigned Pierre to hell’s flames, and continued walking till we were in a dark room occasionally used by the butler to rest his bones at visiting hour, when
he wishes to be near the door. He took up a brace of candles from a hall table into the room. “I want you to promise me you will not attempt this jump while I am away,” he said, under the misapprehension that he had anything to say to my behavior.

  I laughed in his face. “I can promise you I shall attempt it, God willing.”

  “Very well, if that is the way you feel, I have done what I feel compelled by conscience to do. Let it be on your own head. I should think your concern for a borrowed mount, if not your own limbs, would show you the wisdom of reconsidering, but I come to realize wisdom forms no part of your makeup.”

  “Neither has interfering in what does not concern me, Mr. Sinclair. I shall say good-evening to you, before I say something less polite.”

  I made a sweeping curtsy, and arose to see him standing with his arms crossed, leaning against the edge of the table. He appeared to be regarding his boots. When his head came up, his face wore a new expression. It was a conning smile.

  “Wait till the next day. I’ll jump with you,” was his offer, or his manner of delaying the feat at least. “If Nancy really made that jump, Diablo could do it off his hocks. I remember hearing some tale of William Pitt doing it. If a Cornish tin dredger could do it, a St. Regis certainly can.”

  “Very likely, but I don’t suppose St. Regis would approve of your risking the mount he gave you—or is it borrowed? He does mount you, if I understand aright?”

  “That’s true. He’d have my head in a basket if I crippled Diablo,” he backtracked at once. “It’s not worth the risk. A mad idea; I must have been mad to have considered it for a second. You intend to go through with it?”

  “Would you like me to put it in black and white, so you can reassure yourself every minute, instead of repeating the question? I am going through with it. And I shall be at your party tomorrow night, sir, with my two legs intact.”

  “If you survive,” he said, in a tone of the utmost indifference, “I would like you to do something for me in the afternoon.”

  “Gladly, since you express your desire as a wish, and not a command.”

  “See what you can find out from your aunt about the first Lady Sinclair. Alice Sedgely, I mean, not the first ancestor ever recorded by history.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. What, specifically, do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  “Hill might be of some help. You can ask him tomorrow evening. Alice was some kin or connection to Hill’s wife, he tells me.”

  “Really? I never heard that.”

  “You have played the role of recluse too strenuously. You don’t discover much about folks by standing off from everyone.”

  “That is precisely why I decided to go social, tossing these little soirees. I never knew Hill was connected to the Sinclairs by marriage. That figures though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that he has been around here for eons, a close friend of Sir Edward in the old days. It stands to reason he would come in contact with the mistress’s kin, and if he were ambitious at all, it was a way for him to advance himself. His wife, you mentioned, was the original possessor of the decent pieces in his cottage. She would have been a step above him socially. Where else would he meet the high and mighty, but at Troy Fenners?”

  “He had a fashionable practice on Harley Street in London.”

  “Ladies don’t marry their doctors and tooth drawers, Miss Ford.”

  I exercised great self-control in not mentioning that some ladies married clerks and errand boys for the aristocracy. I know he appreciated my restraint, for he added, “And he did not have a noble cousin to set up a good match for him, like some lucky fellows. He must have retired rather young from that Harley Street practice you mention. I wonder why he did so?”

  “He did not like the city.”

  “He must have made a good bundle all the same. He does not do much in the way of medical work hereabouts. I believe Loo is his sole patient, and she is not really ill. My housekeeper was at the local modiste the other day, and heard from her a Dr. Bellanger is the local sawbones, the one everyone goes to. Mrs. Harper had a strained back.”

  “She must have been doing some housecleaning, lifting heavy boxes out from under beds.”

  “She is privy to all my dark secrets. She comes from Tanglewood, you see.”

  When he was about to leave, he wished me luck on my coming jump.

  “Say a prayer for me. You will be at the cathedral, you know.”

  “Cathedral? Oh—Winchester, yes,” he added quickly, but his first question made me wonder if he had any notion of going to the cathedral at all. “Will you wish Lady Sinclair and Peter good-night for me? I am feeling very tired, all of a sudden.”

  “It would be the strain of holding your head and shoulders up straight for a whole ten minutes. Your voice too was hardly whining this evening. You must be careful not to overdo it, Welland.”

  “The salubrious country air is having the desired effect.”

  “What did he want?” was my aunt’s first question when I rejoined her.

  “He wanted to badger me not to jump tomorrow.”

  “He takes a great deal on himself to forbid it,” she said, allowing herself to become angry, now that he had gone. “He reminded me quite forcibly of old St. Regis. They are like that, the whole family. Top-lofty. Sir Edward the same. He would not take no for an answer either.”

  “He forced you to have him, did he?” I asked, knowing it was not the case. Louise was considered to have done very well for herself to have got him.

  “He forced the wedding on faster than Mama liked. So close after Alice’s death, you know.”

  I found that, in fact, I knew little about either Alice’s death or her life. As Pierre had taken to his bed to recover from the chills, this was a good private opportunity to quiz Loo on those matters Welland had mentioned to me.

  “Was he not heartbroken when she died?”

  “It was not a love match, my dear. Parents had a good deal to say about making matches in those days. His cousin, St. Regis, arranged it. That is, the late St. Regis, not the present one. Actually, it was the one before the late one, if you follow me. The present St. Regis’s grandfather. Alice Sedgely was an heiress, some connection to the family, like Mary Milne in the present case. St. Regis is foisting that match on to Welland. He admitted as much today, poor fellow. One cannot but feel a little sorry for him. Anyway, there was not an atom of love lost between the pair of them, Edward and Alice. I think she meant to desert him, was running away to America with Arundel, and not going to visit Cornwall at all. Why would she go by ship to Cornwall? Though the Princess Frederica was certainly stopping there. It was named after the king’s eldest daughter, you know, the ship.”

  “Could you tell me that again, Auntie?”

  “It is just as I have explained, Valerie. The young don’t bother to listen today. Alice and Edward were not getting along well. She was seeing more than she should have of James Arundel, a distant cousin of her own, and no relation to Edward. They had some relations living at Cornwall, who invited her to visit them. Arundel decided to go at the same time to accompany her, along with an older relative, you know, to act as chaperone, but who is to say Aunt Gertrude was not in on it? She was the chaperone, if I recall aright. Edward and Alice were at Bath at the time, with Edward’s mama. They went every spring, and that is how I came to meet them. Bath was fashionable in those days, not the dreary spot it is now.”

  “The Fords never lived at Bath, did they? I don’t remember hearing Papa mention it.”

  “Your great-grandmother made her home there for several seasons. She retired there for the waters and because she hated her son’s wife. That is my mama, who was an angel really, but Grandmama did not rub along with her. It had to do with raising the children like savages, which is not at all true, but only what Grandma said. Edward was trying to set up a flirtation with me the first year I met him, but Grandma was a Tartar. She would have none o
f it. He used to visit us every spring, however, despite her glowering and snapping at him.”

  “Did Alice visit you too?”

  “No, she never did, which is why Grandma disliked it so. Then Alice announced she was going to visit Cornwall, letting on she did not care for Bath. Arundel popped up out of nowhere with his Aunt Gertrude to go with her, and they took the decision to go on the Princess Frederica, since it was leaving just at that time for America, but stopping at St. Agnes in Cornwall to pick up something or other. The ship ran into a dreadful storm just off Trevose Head and sank. Nearly everyone on board was drowned, but a few sailors made it to shore, and told the tale. They could swim, you see. I believe you told me you swim, Valerie? I wonder if Gloria could ...”

  This was no time for Tenebrous Shadows. “Alice did not make it to shore?”

  “None of the passengers did. It was from one of the sailors Edward got the hint that Alice had no notion of getting off at St. Agnes, or Arundel or Gertrude either. There were no passengers aboard for Cornwall. The shipping company did not hire space out for such short jaunts. They wanted customers paying the full fare to America. And that is why Edward refused to keep up two years of mourning in the regular way, but married me out of hand, as soon as he was sure Alice was dead. Grandma raised a wicked row. Called me an ungrateful girl, and a wanton and conniver and I don’t know what all else, but I never was making up to Edward while Alice was alive. He was the one who did the flirting. He told Grandma he meant to marry me at once, with or without her approval, so she did not disallow it, but she would not come to the wedding. Was not that spiteful of her? She knew as well as I that if I let him get away, I’d never land him, for there was mention of some lady around the village here he had in his eye too. But I do not mean to imply he was a womanizer exactly. It is only that he appreciated women a little more than most gentlemen. I see you smiling out of the corner of your lips, sly puss! I know what you are thinking!”

  “What am I thinking?”