Lady Lorna Page 4

  “I see they wasted no time letting it be known,” I sniffed.

  “You can’t keep such news as that quiet. It is the talk of the neighbourhood, There has not been such an uproar since the day Lady Lorna disappeared. I could say nothing with her there listening, but I wish you would give your mama the hint not to become too close to her. Just in case, you know. I mean to say, if she ain’t the real thing, she’s nothing but a scoundrel. I would dislike to see your mama used in that way.”

  “Don’t you think she is Lady Lorna, Squire? She remembered you, and your Ayreshires, and Ardleigh Hall.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard to find out, Kate. I am known hereabouts. Folks never called me anything but Squire. She called me Mr. Beamer.”

  “I didn’t notice. But she just arrived yesterday, so how could she have heard about Ardleigh Hall?”

  “She might have weaseled it out of your mama. It came out in our chat that Lucy had been speaking of me. As to arriving yesterday, you have only her word for when she got here. She says she arrived on the stage at Colchester at three o’clock in the afternoon. I mean to make a few enquiries and see if she did. You won’t tell your mama what I’m up to.”

  I looked him in the eye and said, “Are you afraid of displeasing Acton, Squire? Is that it?”

  “Now, Kate, you know me better than that,” he said, hurt at the imputation. “Acton can do me no harm. Unlike half the neighbourhood, I am not beholden to him in any way. I just have the feeling the woman don’t go flat all around, like a bad nag. She listens too hard for one thing, as if she’s trying to pick up things. And she don’t answer a straightforward question either. I don’t know. She might be Lady Lorna. She does look something like her, though not so pretty as I remember. Just keep your eyes and ears open. She might make a slip. We don’t want Lucy to be hurt.”

  “I’ll do that, Squire. Mama feels that Acton just doesn’t want to part with Lorna’s dowry. Would you know if he is in any sort of financial trouble?”

  “If he is, it’s not known hereabouts. He was always well to grass. He owns not only the Abbey but Willow Hall, and that smaller estate is not entailed, so he could sell it if he was is in dun territory. He don’t gamble for high stakes, and he’s a shrewd businessman. I know he is developing some cottages in St. John’s Wood, and that takes blunt.”

  “Perhaps he’s using Lady Lorna’s money to build those cottages,” I suggested.

  “If she can prove that, she’s a lucky lady. He’ll make a good penny on them. Just keep your eyes open, Kate. That’s all I ask.”

  I said I would to please him, though my belief in Lorna held firm. I kept going back to the old question — why were the Actons so dead set against her? No lack of money was visible at the Abbey. Everything was done on the grand scale. The house was not allowed to run down. Only last year the slate roof had been replaced, and that is an expensive undertaking.

  Acton was not cutting any of his oaks. The horses, carriages and the ladies’ gowns were as fine as ever. There was no rumour of unpaid wages, and that is the sort of thing one always hears. Yet they all said with absolute conviction that she was not Lorna.

  I considered Lady Mary’s reason for Mama’s eagerness to claim her old friend. Mama did speak fondly of “the old days” when her friendship with Lorna gave her and Papa the entree to all the finest houses. She sometimes spoke of grand house parties that lasted a week, mingling with fine lords and ladies, and once the Prime Minister. Why hadn’t that continued after Lorna was taken away?

  If Papa had enjoyed it so much he could have ingratiated himself enough not to be excluded entirely. I couldn’t recall his ever regretting the loss of high society. Had Lady Mary invented the whole thing, or at least exaggerated it? Mama had not seemed bored to flinders all those years, as if she were missing the excitement of society.

  If she had been, I must be the most self-centered creature alive for I had never detected anything of the sort. But I was just a babe when it happened, and many years had passed before I was old enough to notice such things. I was reluctant to return inside. I walked back towards the spinney, thinking, trying to remember.

  I did recall Mama’s complaining at my not being presented in London. Acton’s younger sister and my friend, Lady Susan, had been presented, of course. That is where she met her marquess. I remembered Mama saying that if Lorna were still here, she would see that I got my Season. Papa was ill that spring, and she could not take me herself. Then Papa died and we forgot such frivolities as debuts.

  As I entered the spinney I heard voices and stopped to see who was there. My first thought was that it was our bailiff, and I wondered if he had caught a poacher in broad daylight. I was surprised to see it was Lorna, talking to a man I soon recognized as Taylor, Acton’s half-brother. I was struck at once by the resemblance between them, especially the strong Acton nose, seen in profile as they faced each other. They both glanced up when they heard me. I had the feeling Taylor was unhappy to see me. He nodded curtly, said something to Lorna, and went on into the spinney. Lorna came forward and joined me.

  Before I could ask she said, “That was Taylor. He’s hardly changed at all. I recognized him at once.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “His dog got away from him and he’s chasing him.”

  “Did he recognize you?” I asked eagerly.

  “I’m sure he did, though he didn’t admit it. I thought I would give Lucy and Beamer some privacy and went out for a walk. He seems very fond of Lucy. I’m happy she’s found someone to love. When you have no one, you appreciate the importance of that.”

  “You have me and Mama, Lorna,” I said impulsively and gave her a hug to cheer her up. I was more determined than ever to prove her bona fides and re-establish her at the Abbey. I would keep my eyes and ears open, but I would be looking for ways of proving she was indeed Lady Lorna. I felt in my bones she was who I thought she was — a brave, inspiring lady who was willing to take on the whole county to recover her status.

  Chapter Five

  We had no callers that evening. Mama and Lady Lorna sat with their heads together in the salon talking, and I did as Squire Beamer asked and listened. Lorna certainly seemed familiar with all the inhabitants of the Abbey. She mentioned Wilson by name, and referred to some bygone contretemps when he had caught her climbing down a trellis from her bedroom to meet some fellow. Her papa had locked her in her room for two days. Effie, her personal maid, had smuggled food up to her.

  “Robbie Allison — that’s who you were meeting!” Mama said, laughing like a giddy girl.

  “Papa disliked that he was a Papist.”

  “But he was awfully handsome,” Mama said daringly.

  “Whatever happened to him, Lucy?”

  “He married a rich widow from Ireland and went to live there.”

  “Pity. I wager he would have remembered me,” Lorna said with a chuckle.

  When the tea tray was brought in, I took advantage of Mama’s being busy pouring to ask Lorna about her schooling. It seemed she had not attended a ladies’ academy but had been tutored at the Abbey by an old fellow who would be dead by now. I persisted, asking if she had any birthmarks or scars that might convince the Actons of her identity.

  “Nothing they would remember. I have a scar on my lower leg from a bad tumble in France,” Lorna said, shaking her head. “Nothing from the old days that would leave a scar.”

  “What about that time you cut your hand with the butcher-knife, when we were gathering mistletoe boughs for your Christmas party?” Mama reminded her. “That must have left a scar. On your index finger, wasn’t it? It bled dreadfully. I remember it had snowed, and the blood in the snow ...” Mama shivered at the memory.

  “Yes, I remember trying to hide it from mama so she wouldn’t make me go and lie down. But everyone has a little scar on her hand,” Lorna said dismissingly, and raised her right hand to examine it. “There it is, on my index finger.”

  Mama put down the pot and ex
amined it excitedly. “Why, surely this proves you’re yourself.”

  “How did it happen, Lorna?” I asked, going to see the scar, a little raised white welt half an inch long. I had a similar one on my left hand, where I had cut myself with a broken glass some years before.

  “The knife slipped and gashed my finger. It bled a good deal, but it wasn’t serious. It would take more than that to convince Acton when there is forty or fifty thousand pounds at stake.”

  I told them about Acton developing the cottages in St. John’s Wood. Lorna said angrily that no doubt he was doing it with her money, but at least it sounded like a good investment.

  It wasn’t till Mama was cutting the gingerbread that something occurred to me. If the knife had slipped out of Lorna’s right hand, it would be the finger on her left hand holding the mistletoe that was cut. Lorna was right-handed, but it was the right hand that had the scar. I considered it a moment, but decided the knife must have slipped out of her hand and she had made a lunge with her right hand to grab it.

  I continued listening closely, but could not believe Lorna was pumping Mama for details. Lorna certainly knew a good deal about the people and happenings of the past. Too much to have learned even if she had been in the neighbourhood a month — small things that would not have been known beyond her own little circle. She spoke of times long past, and it was herself more often than Mama who brought the subjects up. No, she must be Lady Lorna.

  Her bedroom was across the hall from mine. When we went upstairs to bed that night, Lorna stopped at my door and peeked into my room. “Mind if I come in for a little chat?” she asked. “I’m not used to retiring so early.”

  “Do come in,” I said, thrilled and honoured to get her to myself for a while.

  “Your room is lovely, charming,” she said, looking around at the canopied bed, the rose silk window hangings and carpet patterned with roses. Her roving glance moved to my vanity table, where I had a few mementoes — invitations to parties, dance cards, dried corsages — stuck around the mirror.

  “I’m surprised a pretty girl like you isn’t married, Katie. You’re one and twenty. Now don’t tell me you don’t have a beau. I haven’t heard you mention him.”

  “I have a few young gentlemen callers. Mr. Melville, the owner of a small estate outside Kelvedon seems interested. And Sir Henry Tisdale, a very successful solicitor.”

  She lifted an eyebrow at me. “Not exactly the top of the trees, considering who you are. As the only child, you must have a large dowry, and so pretty along with it.”

  I blushed at the compliment to my looks, and my lack of suitors. “I’m not serious about either of them. There aren’t many eligible gentlemen hereabouts. I’m kept too busy to think of beaux. I pretty well run the house and more or less look after the estate — with our bailiff, of course. I handle the family bills and that sort of thing for Mama as well. Mama has no head for business.”

  “She never did have, but you don’t want to let your youth get away from you, Katie. Lucy was married when she was your age. Let Beamer take care of her. It’s pretty clear he wants to. You’re only young once, my dear. The pleasures of my youth could have been cut short when I was taken by the gypsies, but I didn’t let that stop me from enjoying myself as best I could.”

  “You’ve had wonderful adventures, just like a novel.” I sat on the edge of the bed and Lorna sat on the desk chair.

  “My adventures are not over yet!” she said, and laughed. “I haven’t told you the half of them. What do you say we bring up a bottle of wine and have a little private party, just you and I?”

  “I’ll get it,” I said at once, and slipped down to the kitchen where Balky keeps a few bottles in readiness for family use and guests. I opened the bottle and brought up wineglasses to do the thing in style. I poured us each a glass and said, “Let us make a toast. To living life to the fullest,” I said, and we touched glasses.

  “And friendship,” Lorna added, and we drank.

  “Now, what adventures have you not told Mama?” I asked.

  “I had an offer — not of marriage, you understand — from a lecherous old conte I met in a chateau in France where I was working,” she said. “He was old enough to be my papa. I didn’t let him have his way with me, but I accepted money from him and ran off. I didn’t want to shock Lucy, and I shan’t scandalise you either, my girl, by telling you what I did with the money.”

  “Tell me! You must. I know you didn’t do anything horrid.”

  “Horribly foolish. I wanted to get enough to come home, so I played cards — and lost every penny.”

  “Oh Lorna! What a pity.”

  “Oh, I have many regrets, Katie. My life has been a litany of mistakes and missed opportunities. I’m not sorry I missed marrying that dull old stick, Lord Edward, but I do regret losing the Abbey as my home. There’s a deal to be said for the proper background, Katie. People don’t treat you like the dirt under their feet when you have family behind you. When I’m back at the Abbey, I’ll see you meet better partis than Sir Henry Tisdale and Mr. Melville. Why not throw your bonnet at my brother? We’d be sisters-in-law.”

  “Oh, Acton and I were never anything more than friends,” I said at once, and felt a flush suffuse my cheeks.

  She smiled the kind of smile that showed her disbelief, and her understanding of the reason for my disclaimer. “Acton must be blind,” she murmured. Seeing my discomfort, she immediately went on to other matters. “Do you hunt, Katie?”

  “No, though I’ve always wanted to. It made Papa nervous, after Mama had her accident. I don’t have a hunter, just my hacker, Jezebel.”

  “Our fathers treat us like chattels,” she said angrily, no doubt thinking of the unwanted marriage to Lord Edward. “They don’t treat their sons that way.”

  “Mama doesn’t like the idea any better.”

  “Some superstition, I expect. I’ve always done what I wanted and take the consequences. Why not? It’s my life.”

  I admired her bravery and her indomitable courage. Papa had been dead four years. Why had I let Mama’s fears and superstitions — and I seemed to recall there was some superstition — stop me? “You’re right, Lorna! I’ll do it.”

  “Good for you. Let us drink to it.” She refilled our glasses. “You’ll see Lucy accepts it when the time comes. In fact, she’ll be proud of you. We’ll find some superstition to talk her around,” she said, with an impish, conspiratorial grin. “When we’re sisters-in-law, we’ll both get decent — no, prime mounts and join the hunt. It would be great fun to go back to France too, now that the war is over.”

  “It would be wonderful,” I sighed.

  “Why haven’t you done it then?”

  “Mama doesn’t care for travel. I can hardly get her to London once a year.”

  “Pity. She has certainly changed. I daresay marriage and a family settled her down. Now that the war’s over I’d love to go back to Paris with a decent gown on my back and my purse full. We’ll do it! Let us make a bargain.”

  We talked for an hour. It was like having my old friend Sukey back. I missed having a bosom beau to talk to about the things one doesn’t discuss with her mama. Lorna was nearly as old as Mama, of course, but she seemed younger, because of her exciting life, and perhaps because she had never married. She asked about Sukey and I told her about her marriage. “You are the reason I never had a Season,” I told her in jest. “Mama says if you had been here, you would have arranged it.”

  “So I would too. I wish I had been here!” After a while she said with a sad smile, “Just imagine, little Sukey a married lady and a mother. I’ve missed so much. Do you think she’ll accept me, Katie?”

  “They all will,” I said firmly. “We’ll make them.”

  “Oh, I never give up. Let us drink a toast to it.”

  I was surprised to see the bottle was nearly empty. I refilled Lorna’s glass as mine was still half full and we drank. I felt I had made a friend, a dashing, good friend, who would prod me ou
t of the rut I had allowed myself to sink into. An exciting future shone before me — Paris, hunting. But first we had to prove Lorna’s claim.

  “We should hide the evidence,” Lorna said, when we had finished our wine. “Shall I pitch it out the window?”

  As it was Mama’s crystal glasses we had used, I said, “I’ll take the bottle and glasses downstairs.”

  I took the evidence to the kitchen and went to bed. I had no trouble sleeping that night. I do not usually consume so much wine.

  Chapter Six

  After breakfast the next morning Mama called the carriage. “You can pick up your little necessities in Kelvedon and put them on my account,” she said to Lorna.

  “Kelvedon? Oh, I thought we were going to Colchester,” Lorna said, disappointed. “The poky little shops in Kelvedon won’t have anything nice. We always bought our muslin in Colchester. We are practically halfway between the two. Can we not go to Colchester?”

  Actually Kelvedon is only half as far as Colchester, though to be sure neither one is very far from Oak Hill. It was also true that Colchester’s shops were superior, and I understood that Lorna would want only the best. Unfortunately it was unlikely anyone in the larger city would recognize her, whereas the Actons were well known in Kelvedon. It is where they and we have always gone for our small, everyday purchases.

  Mama didn’t want to disappoint Lady Lorna, and as she enjoys rooting about the shops in Colchester herself, she easily agreed. “Colchester it is,” she said. “I have plenty of household cash. I have had my eye on a bonnet in Miss Langford’s shop. You know the one, Kate, with the three curled feathers on the side.”

  As I had watched her try it on the last two times we were in Colchester, I did indeed know the one. She often said how much she liked it, but it was too impractical. She had no place to wear such a dashing bonnet. Was she envisaging a return to the glamorous life to be opened up by Lady Lorna? Perhaps she was not as settled into comfortable middle age as I thought. Lorna was prodding both of us out of our dusty old ruts.