Lady violet goes for a g.., p.3
Lady Violet Goes for a Gallop, page 3
Had she learned of his wealth? Realized he might well be building a future with me? There was much I did not know about Ann St. Sevier.
“Juries,” Pamela said, taking a considering sip of her drink, “can usually be trusted to find that the condemned felon has no property of value. They strike back against a profligate monarch that way, and they’ve been doing it for decades. You believe St. Sevier’s innocent?”
“You’ve met him. What do you think?” Even from halfway across the room, I could detect the subtle fragrance of good brandy.
“St. Sevier is a complicated man from a foreign culture. He’s been to war, seen endless violence, and the French are not known for their self-restraint. The situation does not bode well for him.”
A list of coincidences held together with bigotry. “St. Sevier was raised in England and educated in Scotland. His record under Wellington was spotless if not heroic. Stop baiting me.”
Once upon a time, I had done Pamela a courtesy, preventing others from discovering her in an awkward situation. I presumed on that favor by rebuking my hostess.
Her retort was a faint smile. “I am trying to warn you, my lady. You are in the shires, and if the gentry are united in one cause, it is their absolute authority over all matters rural. The magistrate has detained St. Sevier, but he has not yet arrested him. One blundering inquiry on your part, and you could well seal St. Sevier’s fate.”
I seized on the only relevant fact in that recitation, for I had been raised in the shires and well knew how rural prejudice worked. “Why not arrest him?”
Pamela finished her drink. “Lack of a body. Well, there was a body, but then it disappeared. Some say that ought to add another charge against St. Sevier—interfering with a corpse, which physicians have been known to do. Others say that without a body, there can be no inquest, and thus no charges have been brought. St. Sevier needs a good solicitor, and instead, you turn up. You will cause talk, and that cannot aid his situation.”
“No body?” And had Ann sent for a solicitor?
“There was a body,” Pamela said, gaze on the lovely rolling countryside that fell away from the terrace beyond the parlor. “But somebody made off with it, or so we are to believe.”
How very convenient for whoever was trying to put a noose around St. Sevier’s neck. “Who found the supposed body?”
She brushed a glance over me, pitying, I suspected. “Giles Bellamy. You can ask him all about it when you ride out with him tomorrow. He will regale you with the tale at exhaustive length, but don’t be fooled by his handsome-bumbler routine. He is shrewd in his way, and you underestimate him at your peril. You will want to change into your habit now.”
I had the sense Pamela wasn’t dismissing me so much as she had reached the end of some emotional tether. The shrewd Mr. Bellamy had vexed her, and now was not the time to inquire as to how.
“I hope to return before supper,” I said.
She shook her head. “We keep country hours at The Gauges, my lady. Supper is served before dark here. Take your time with Mrs. St. Sevier, and if she doesn’t feed you properly, Mrs. Weaver will have a supper tray sent up when you return.”
“I need not ring for a tray?”
Another head shake, almost resigned. “Before you have walked up from the stable, Mrs. Weaver will know where you went, how long you stayed, what you did while making your call, and whether you walked, trotted, or cantered the distance home.”
Another warning? “Fast work, even for a housekeeper whose cousin is employed at Belle Terre.”
I liked being able to fire off proof that I could do some fast work of my own.
Pamela collected her little hat from the low table and opened the parlor door. “I am begging you to proceed with utmost caution, Lady Violet. St. Sevier will not want you poking your nose into accusations of murder, not even to clear his name. I saw how he looked at you, and he would rather die than involve you in scandal. Your family has little influence here, and you don’t know these people. They will turn on you in an instant, and you will be the next person charged with a crime you did not commit.”
Lucy’s words, about interfering with the lawful duties of the king’s man, came to mind. “I will be careful. Would you prefer I find somewhere else to stay?”
She hesitated before speaking. “You have a knack for solving puzzles, and St. Sevier has no other allies. Just be discreet.”
Unless I prevailed on Hugh’s wife, I had nowhere else to stay. “I will be careful and discreet.”
“Then I will see you at breakfast, and you may ask me any questions you please then, though I doubt I’ll have any answers.”
She parted from me at the foot of the steps that led to my apartment. As Lucy helped me into my riding habit, I wrestled with lingering unease.
Pamela had guessed exactly why I was in the neighborhood, and yet, she had welcomed me. I was nonetheless convinced that she would not be forthcoming at breakfast. She had answers, and I would be hard-pressed to get them out of her.
“Lady Violet.” Ann St. Sevier offered me a proper curtsey.
I returned the gesture. For a woman whose husband had been accused of murder, Madame St. Sevier was looking well. I resented her for that. I resented her for having gorgeous red hair and a beautiful complexion, and I resented her for breathing. She was probably none too keen on my existence either.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, closing the parlor door behind her. “Shall we walk on the terrace?” That suggestion all but announced that my hostess did not trust her staff to protect her privacy.
“I would enjoy that. How is your daughter?”
“Bearing up, thank you for asking.”
The child, Fiona by name, was perhaps seven years old—I was not good at judging such things—and she had Hugh’s luminous brown eyes. More than her mother had, that child had cost me a future with Hugh, but I, who had suffered two disappointments while married to Freddie, could not resent an innocent child.
“How are you?” I asked.
Ann gestured to the door and escorted me through a series of parlors. The approach to Belle Terre was such that the visitor was given a nearly 360-degree view of the property, which had clearly been designed to embroider on the theme of the Parthenon.
From a distance, the effect of all those massive columns and friezes was majestic, but up close, the house more nearly resembled a single, monolithic block of yellow stone. No ivy softened that impression. No flowers adorned the steps and terraces. No fountain provided the cheerful sound of splashing water.
Not so much as a strutting pigeon dared intrude on Belle Terre’s architectural consequence.
The interior held up to the promise of the façade, both in terms of grandeur—ceilings of at least twelve feet complete with swirling celestial frescoes—and coldness. The house was literally chilly, and also gloomy. On an overcast winter day, St. Sevier’s palace would be beyond oppressive.
Ann must have noticed my perusal of the gods and nymphs cavorting on the ceilings. “A St. Sevier lady from days gone by married an Englishman,” she said, “and she used her settlements to turn this place into her personal Versailles.” Ann crossed the corridor with me and led me into a smaller, less ornate parlor. “A hundred years later, the English line died out, and the property reverted to the French side of the family, to the horror of all, including St. Sevier.”
“Belle Terre is… magnificent.” Also entirely wrong for Monsieur.
“Hugh wants to sell it.” Ann pushed open a French door and led me out onto a terrace. The afternoon sunshine in contrast to the house’s shadows was nearly blinding. “He brought me here only because he felt it would be a good place for a fresh start. He’s never lived at Belle Terre, only visited occasionally to consult with stewards and such. The other properties…”
She turned away from me, and I beheld the vista before us.
The roof of The Gauges peeked from above what was probably the home wood, but between the terrace and the trees, somebody had fashioned a French formal garden. A miniature canal stretched from east to west, and statues of Ariadne and Acis, exact copies of their counterparts at the French palace, graced the corners of the terrace. The grass-and-walkway patterns of the parterres echoed the curving fancies of Louis’s Orangerie, right down to potted citrus trees ringing the perimeter.
“Quite… French,” I said.
“Quite expensive,” Ann retorted, “and the locals hate it. They take Hugh’s coin to work here, but delight in grumbling about the place. Belle Terre is just a drafty old house, but French money built it, a French mind designed it, and a French woman left her mark here.”
The English commoner had been given a choice by those in charge of the realm: John Bull could continue to rail against a profligate monarch and a greedy peerage, or he could instead hate the French people for making war on their neighbors and trying to destroy a social order supposedly ordained by God.
That France’s neighbors—the Austrians—had started the hostilities was somehow not relevant. That warfare between England and France was practically a tradition between their respective monarchies was of no moment.
That the French people had suffered terribly before, during, and after their revolution mattered not at all. That hatred of the French was merely a convenient tool for managing the taxpaying English citizenry escaped the notice of that citizenry, even as bread prices remained exorbitant, and wages were pitiful, the better to line the pockets of the squires and lords.
Those subtleties of history and politics were known to me only because my late husband had been keenly interested in the workings of government and the marketplace, and astutely—and discreetly—critical of the peerage. St. Sevier himself had added to my political understanding on our long coach journeys, and even my father—a somewhat enlightened Tory—could be prompted to discourse knowledgeably about Parliament’s machinations.
Rather than lament entrenched prejudice, I asked the most pertinent question. “Is Hugh guilty?”
Ann sent me an unreadable look. “You call him Hugh.”
I’d hoped to call him husband. “When Monsieur no longer has a noose dangling over his head, we can hiss and swipe at each other like a pair of stable cats, if you insist, though I honestly wish you well. For now, I’d rather focus on clearing his name.”
Ann took a seat on a stone bench, the afternoon sun striking her full in the face. She was, blast and perdition, a lovely woman. She’d followed the drum at sixteen and been widowed at seventeen or eighteen. I realized with some consternation that she and I were likely of an age. Her red hair would not be considered fashionable, but her complexion was flawless and her features delicate.
No wonder the officers and gentlemen of the regiment had been dicing to see which of them would have the privilege of raping her upon the loss of her first spouse, the louts.
“I got hold of the casualty reports,” she said, “once I was back with a Scottish regiment. A Hugh St. Sevier was listed among the dead. That was a mistake. My husband had suffered a minor injury, apparently, or a different Hugh St. Sevier died. Nobody corrected the error. I did not mean to upend my husband’s pretty life, but we have a daughter…”
She did not owe me that explanation either, but I was grateful for it. I settled beside her, and the bench at least had been warmed by the sun.
“And there he was,” I said, “walking down a street in Perth one day, and abruptly, you and he had no good options. Neither of you could marry another, because years hence, somebody could declare those subsequent marriages invalid. As a mother, you could not deprive your daughter of the security her father could afford her, and St. Sevier would never turn his back on a child.”
While part of me wanted to cover this old ground later, another part of me needed to understand why the idyll I’d enjoyed with Hugh had been shattered and must remain so.
“I want—I need—to hate you,” Ann said tiredly. “I can’t seem to manage even that.”
“Likewise, I’m sure.” But I loved Hugh, and part of me always would. “Might we move on to more pressing matters?”
“He was happy with you,” Ann said. “He was never happy with me. I knew that. Even as a grieving girl, I knew he and I could not suit. And now…”
Now he never would be happy with her? Much to my surprise, I did not want endless misery for Hugh or for Ann—and certainly not for myself.
“Now we must clear his name. Tell me what you know.”
“Precious little. Hugh is in the habit of riding out early on fine days, primarily to meet with his tenants. Sometimes the steward accompanies him, but mostly he’s on his own. He was trying to become better acquainted with the property, trying to take it in hand instead of simply keeping it from sliding into debt.”
“So he was frequently alone on horseback for long stretches of time?” Not good, but then, most conscientious rural landowners were in the habit of hacking out over their acres.
“Alone on horseback for hours. Because St. Sevier is not entirely familiar with the surrounds, he usually travels by the lanes, and that takes longer. The locals know the shortcuts and game trails, know where to hop a stile or ford a stream. Hugh meanders about, and he’s too stubborn to simply take a groom to show him the way.”
Too stubborn, or too much in need of solitude? “St. Sevier was off on one of these reconnaissance missions when the crime took place?”
“Apparently so. We knew nothing about it until we sat down to a late breakfast this morning, and our meal was disturbed by the magistrate and four constables—if you can call them that—who insisted Hugh accompany them to the magistrate’s house for questioning. About the crime itself, I know only what my maid has been able to glean from the staff, and that’s not much.”
As Ann spoke, her speech became more heavily accented with the sound of her native Perthshire.
“Tell me what you’ve learned,” I said. “And leave nothing out, no matter how insignificant you believe it to be.”
“The deceased is—was—Miss Holly Faraday, daughter of a squire whose land joins Belle Terre to the west. She was well liked and comported herself as if she were an heiress of some sort by local standards. I think we met her once or twice in the churchyard. A nod and greeting, not introductions and you-must-come-to-call. Nobody pays calls on Belle Terre, and I didn’t feel… That is…”
“They are English, and you are Scottish, and you and St. Sevier do not intend to dwell here permanently.”
“Aye. Before those men took him away, Hugh was allowed a parting embrace with his wife. He told me to get back to Scotland, and the solicitors would look after me and Fiona. I am to put as much distance between myself and this farce as possible.”
And Hugh, being Hugh, would likely have conveyed that warning in French and thus created even more suspicion about his character.
“And yet, you are not only still here, you have also sent for the most expedient of reinforcements.” For which I admired her. English justice was often violent and wrongheaded, and it was also notoriously swift. “Has anybody fabricated a motive for St. Sevier’s supposed murder of this young woman?”
Ann’s smile was bitter. “Physicians are always on the lookout for a handy dead body—that explains not only his guilt, but also why the body disappeared. My very own housekeeper came up with that logic, according to my maid. Giles Bellamy happened upon Miss Faraday’s remains on Belle Terre land and went back to the village to seek aid. When he returned with the magistrate, the body was gone. Miss Faraday has not been seen since yesterday morning.”
“Does the magistrate claim that because the body was reportedly on Belle Terre property, Hugh is the only suspect?”
“I do not know what the magistrate is claiming, my lady, though I’m sure my housekeeper does.”
I did not care very much for this housekeeper. “St. Sevier has not, apparently, been arrested. My hostess told me that much. He’s only been detained. That little business of there being no corpse on hand has likely confused the proceedings, but if a charge of murder is unavailable, somebody will eventually get around to suggesting Miss Faraday was abducted. Who benefits from attacking St. Sevier’s character?”
Ann looked at me as if I’d sprouted snakes for hair. “How can you do this? How can you make your mind work? I cannot think. I don’t know what to tell my daughter. I don’t want to eat, but I know I must. I feel as if, all over again, I am eighteen years old and being told that my choices are to whore for the regiment or to marry the big, silent Frenchman who always smells of bloodshed and death.”
I did not want to like, pity, or sympathize with this woman, but she spoke as a widow would speak, of the unrelenting pull that a time of sorrow and pain exerted over the rest of one’s life.
“I had to learn to think,” I said slowly. “I went straight from the schoolroom, where I sought the approval of teachers and governesses, to a fussy little come out, where I sought the approval of the insular beau monde nincompoops whom I believed were my entire world. From there, I married, hoping to gain my father’s approval at long last and to secure my husband’s as well. I was to contemplate nothing besides keeping others around me happy. Thinking of anything else—myself, for example—was a habit trained out of me from infancy.”
“You’ve acquired the knack,” Ann said.
“In defense of my wits, but first I nearly lost those wits. We can discuss that sad chapter some other time. Who benefits from ruining St. Sevier?”
Ann was quiet for a moment, then she sat up a little straighter. “I did wonder about that as I was pacing in the garden. It’s known that we want to sell this place. If somebody wants to buy it, then seeing Hugh hanged would likely result in a bargain price.”
“Who wants to buy it?”
“The house? Nobody in particular, but half the shire would love to see the acreage broken up. Hugh owns everything from mature timber to good fishing to fenced pasture and cultivated fields. The house is a mausoleum, but the land is among the best in Kent.”
