An Unnatural Daughter: A Dark Regency Mystery (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

Mrs Raynor

It was a two hour drive from my Father’s house to my new home. I wondered that Mr Raynor, or Gabriel as I must now call him, had lived so close to us all these years, and had known my father for so long, yet had never called on us before. We sat opposite one another, my new husband and I, in silence as the carriage rocked and juddered over stones and potholes in the rough country roads. I wasn’t sure how to act. Father had said I must remain quiet and inoffensive. I looked down at my hands folded neatly in my lap and tried to stay as still as possible.

‘How old are you?’ He sounded bored. I had displeased him already, somehow. I had done something wrong, I must have, but I didn’t know what. Perhaps this was what other men were like. Perhaps they all found me as irritating as Father had often seemed to.

‘Seventeen, sir.’ I raised my eyes slightly and peeked at the man who now owned me, body and soul.

‘Humph.’ He curled his lip slightly, and winced as though in pain. ‘Then you have started your courses?’

I blushed furiously and nodded. In a flash he had leaned across the carriage and held my chin tightly between hard fingers.

‘Speak,’ he demanded.

‘Yes. Yes, sir.’ I tried to look away but couldn’t. His face was so close to mine that he filled my vision. I didn’t dare close my eyes in case the tears that threatened spilled out.

‘And are you on your courses now?’

I paused, and he tightened his grip on my chin.

‘Yes sir.’

He pushed my face away in disgust and leaned back against the seat.

‘How many days left?’

I tried to think, fighting the mortification and embarrassment to answer as quickly as possible.

‘Two, maybe three. I don’t-’

‘Tell me when it’s over. Or Peregrine. You’ll meet him at the house. You must tell someone. I’ll know if you don’t. Your maids will tell me. You must get used to everyone in the house knowing every detail of your life. Know this, Fleur, if you lie to me, I’ll know. If you defy me, I’ll know.’

‘I will never lie to you, sir.’

For the first time since he had lifted my veil, Gabriel looked pleased. He was handsome, I thought. In a dark, slightly cruel way. He was impeccably groomed too, to the point where even in my wedding finery, I had felt gauche and underdressed.

‘Then perhaps our marriage will be a success.’ Within a moment, a shadow had dropped over his face again. ‘But that depends on you. Women are consummate liars, so I doubt it.’

He didn’t speak to me again for the rest of the journey. Eventually the fields gave way to dotted cottages, before we came to a village with a few shops and a church spire. Being from a small cottage myself, I was surprised when we turned into a large pair of wrought iron gates. The drive was edged with trees, and it wasn’t until we came to a bend that I saw the house.  I had known my husband was rich, at least, richer than my father, but I hadn’t known how rich. The house looked palatial to me. It was a low, modern building of pale stone with Grecian style columns at the door. The windows were spaced with carvings of women in robes holding cornucopias or sheep in one hand, and appearing to hold up the building with the other. I stared and stared, my mouth agape. That I was to be living in such splendour was almost beyond my comprehension.

‘Humph.’ My husband had noticed my reaction and seemed almost pleased. ‘I trust you will be grateful. You are to be the mistress of this place.’

‘Oh, yes sir,’ I said, but even as I said it I worried that I would be entirely lost. I did not know how to manage staff, or order meals, or even behave in company. My joy at my surroundings quickly dissipated in a rush of panic.  

At the sound of the carriage approaching, the doors of the house had swung open and a man in black livery with red piping and silver buttons now stood at the bottom of the steps. Boys in the same livery, of much the same age as me, raced round from the back of the house and stood ready to see to the horses. Already there were five members of staff. I was sure there couldn’t be all that many more.

My husband handed me out of the carriage and the man hurried forward with a bow.

‘Peregrine.’

So this was the man I was supposed to tell about the end of my courses. A tall, sturdy man with an implacable face and his dark hair fastened in a queue at the back of his neck. I felt myself go red at merely the thought of it.

‘This is my valet, Fleur. You neglected to pack any tobacco, Peregrine, yet still I was not lost without you. Perhaps now you will endeavour to make yourself more useful.’

Peregrine paled and bowed his head.

‘This is the new Mrs Raynor. Where is the old one?’

Momentarily, I wondered if I had married a bigamist. Visions of other wives, alive or dead, filled my mind as we followed the berated Peregrine up the steps and into the house.

The hall was almost as deep as the house, with black and white marble floor tiles that stretched back to a great staircase. Like pieces on a chessboard, the staff had assembled in two rows at the walls. So many I couldn’t count them. I went cold – that I was to be the mistress of this – of all these people. I couldn’t imagine who they all were, or what they all did.

‘Mother.’

A figure had appeared at the top of the stairs, garbed entirely in black. Gabriel swept me forward. The staff bobbed and bowed as I passed, but I was not to be introduced to them. I tried to smile but there were so many of them, all dressed alike. They just blurred together.

‘So you found her. Frail little thing, isn’t she?’ The older Mrs Raynor looked at me dispassionately before embracing her son.

The last of my hopes for a happy home died with the look she gave me over her son’s shoulder. She was small and pale, a diminutive figure with a face wreathed in wrinkles, but there was steel in her eyes. She appeared to have taken a dislike to me on sight.

‘Mother, this is Fleur.’

She stood up straight, and looked down her nose at me. It was a strange sensation as I was taller than her, but she carried it off and I felt all of six inches tall.

‘French?’ she asked sharply.

Gabriel prodded me hard in the ribs.

‘No. No Ma’am.’

‘Humph. Flower, of all things, Gabriel. Welcome to my house.’ Her voice was devoid of warmth, just like her son’s. ‘You shall call me Mrs Raynor. You shall be known as Fleur. To everyone,’ she added pointedly, although I did not understand the significance then. ‘I shall speak to you later. You will want to know your duties.’

‘Th- thank you, Mrs Raynor,’ I stuttered.

Gabriel turned to the assembled staff and gestured in the direction of a pair of girls. ‘You two, take Fleur to her rooms. The rest of you, back to work.’

He took his mother’s arm and together they made their way down the hall and into one of the rooms. The staff who hurried off to work swarmed around them, yet they glided through effortlessly and without impediment, like Moses parting the waves. I stared after them until the hall was empty but for the two silent maids who waited for me. I smiled at them nervously, and they bobbed into half-hearted curtseys before leading me up the stairs.

Mrs Raynor, who I assumed had overseen the decoration of what was to be my suite, appeared to be fond of deep, dark, rich colours, and the burgundy walls were complimented with heavy, dark wooden pieces of furniture. Despite the bedroom being large, it felt close and overbearing. The bed was a hulking monstrosity, and must have been at least six times wider than the little truckle bed I had slept in at home. It was a four-poster, carved on every visible surface with imps and dragons and satyrs. I tried to suppress the shiver they caused.

The girls who had brought me in didn’t speak to me, and I didn’t know what to say to them. They unpacked my case, which had appeared at the foot of the bed with the sort of ruthless efficiency I would come to expect from this household. I hadn’t brought much. None of my dresses had been deemed suitable for a married woman of my elevated station.

I washed my face in the ewer, tidied my hair in the mirror and stood for a moment looking out of the window. The garden stretched away below, and I counted four men of varying ages working in the borders. I felt a pang of longing for the little garden I had left behind. I had worked hard to keep it tidy, but next to the perfect symmetry of the lawn and borders here, it paled into unkempt insignificance. There was topiary here, too. No animal shapes, like I had seen in plates in one of the books Father had given me for a birthday a few years ago, but spheres and cones. More identical and symmetrical than the wings of Father’s pinned butterflies.

A throat was cleared behind me, and I turned to see the two maids waiting.

‘You’ll be wanting to change your dress,’ one of them said. I stared at them blankly, and the one who hadn’t spoken gave me a slight smile.

‘Erm, yes. I suppose I ought to.’

After a split-second of hesitation, they approached me. I hadn’t thought of this, even when Gabriel had said I would have no privacy. I had always dressed and undressed myself. With every layer they stripped away my face grew hotter and hotter. I was left naked, and after exchanging a glance, they brought me clean rags. I chose not to dwell on them taking the soiled ones away.

When they dressed me, my stays were tighter than I had ever had them myself, and I was surprised and still further embarrassed by the swell of bosom they produced. Layer by layer, I became decent again. They stepped back, surveyed me critically, then the friendlier one gave me a little smile again.

‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling not in the least bit thankful, but wanting some sort of friendly interaction.

‘You’re to follow me to see the mistress,’ the sullen one said with a scowl.

CHAPTER 5

Stranger Things

Edwina left me much to my own devices the following morning. Although my feet were still tender, I could hobble from room to room using the cane she had lent me. She rebuffed my offers of help as she went over the household accounts with Jane, and saw to the beginnings of what would be one of the largest roast joints of pork I had ever seen. I had read in one of Father’s books that pork was as close to human flesh as it was possible to eat without eating another person. I had struggled to cook with it since, and had no wish to take part in the preparation now. I could eat it, but to cut and season the raw mass of flesh was more than I could handle. When I saw what she would be doing, I was glad she had refused me.

Edwina told me to just sit quietly and enjoy the peace – to see if by quiet contemplation I could remember anything more of my past.

The sitting room was a pretty pastel affair, unquestionably decorated in Edwina’s taste, and filled with ornaments, doyleys and lace throws. I reclined in an unladylike fashion on one of the plump sofas, my feet hanging over one of the arms as I lay back against the other, staring at the walls. It wasn’t so quiet. I could hear the murmur of Edwina and Jane’s voices as they chatted over the accounts, and the thudding footsteps of Tristan as he worked upstairs. I welcomed the distractions. It was in the silence, like at night, that bad things happened.

The gash on my forehead had closed to a bumpy, scabby mess, but I was assured that the scar that formed beneath would be clean. Besides that, my face was still marred by purple bruises that were only just beginning to fade to grey and yellow.

The night before I had been taken off the laudanum in the hope, Edwina said, that I would sleep soundly without it. To my surprise, I did, but my dreams were more vivid than ever.

I had seen my husband, of course, and relived his death a hundred ways. Or rather, his murder. I couldn’t kid myself I was anything other than guilty. In the daytime I had managed to distance myself. I could pretend that in running away and being knocked down, the part of me I never knew I had, the part capable of ending the life of another, had been knocked out of me. That the previous two weeks, nay, the previous seventeen years of my life had never happened. I could pretend with an ease that astonished me and made me feel guilty, at the same time as liberating me, that I had been born when I woke with Edwina sitting beside me. But at night, in the dark, there was nowhere to hide.

I also had flashes of memory, vignettes of my life as it had been before Gabriel visited. It was as though my whole life was trying to bring itself to my attention, to remind me that I hadn’t really lost my memory and was lying to everyone.

I felt guilty. So guilty at what I had done and the lies I was telling, but I managed somehow to shut it all out when I was awake. Then there was the guilt I felt that I wasn’t feeling guilty enough.

The strangest thing, although perhaps it ought not to have been so, was that I had seen the stranger again, the man who I saw as my saviour in the night. In the dreams about my past or my husband I knew, although I was still sad, disgusted and afraid, that they were only dreams. The stranger seemed so real.

I had walked in my sleep, like I used to do as a child. I had woken in the sitting room where I now sat, staring at the large tapestry that hung across the whole width of the wall. It was old, of no particular scene, but rather a rambling array of flowers. Threadbare in places, I fancied that it was almost as old as the house – that once built, that wall had never looked other than it did now. I had stared at it, awake or asleep, I didn’t know, and the vines and stems had rippled and undulated before my eyes. I had watched, mesmerised, as the leaves quivered and shook, like fish in a barrel. Then he was beside me, my face level with the base of his neck. So close I could smell his skin.

In the grey light I reached up and ran my hand along the length of his shoulder, wondering that he seemed so solid and real. I could barely make out his features in the darkness, but his shirt seemed to glow slightly. He murmured something, and then his arms were around me. He lifted me up, carrying me almost like a baby, curled up in his arms. I nestled there, and felt the hard muscle of his chest against my face, warm against my cheek. He carried me up the rickety staircase without making a sound, and before I knew where I was, he had set me down on the bed and pulled the blankets over me.

I remember resisting slightly, perhaps reaching out to him, but it was so comfortable, and I felt his warm hand smoothing the hair off my forehead, and that was it. It was the last of my dreams before I woke that morning to Edwina gently tapping on the door.

I stared at the tapestry with a sense of unease. I had never been in this room before today, yet it looked exactly as it had in my dream. Those fat cabbage roses, the blush of sweet williams – I knew it all. It stood to reason that I would remember it – I never forgot anything to do with flowers. I reached up and clasped my locket, running my fingers over the smooth surface. It always made me feel at least a little better.

A gentle breeze blew through the casement window and lifted the corner of the hanging slightly, sending ripples spreading across the wall. My heart pounded. As quietly as I was able, I eased myself up from the sofa, leaning heavily on the cane. I looked over my shoulder, but I was alone. Approaching the hanging, I looked at it for several seconds and gathered my courage, before reaching down and lifting the bottom corner.

It was heavy, as I had imagined it would be, for all that it moved freely in the breeze. I pulled the corner up and out as far as I could, but there was nothing behind but wooden panelling. I realised I had been holding my breath and that my heart was racing. There was nothing there. It was just a dream, and probably the effects of the last of the laudanum working its way through my body.

Part of me wished it hadn’t been. I didn’t dare question myself too deeply as to why, fearful of uncovering more evidence of my bad heart, and told myself that I merely longed for comfort and safety, whatever form it took. But I couldn’t convince myself that I wasn’t excited by the thought of a mysterious stranger to look after me, and perhaps even love me. It would make my life seem like a story, and then perhaps all the awful things I had done would be less evil, and reduced instead to mere melodrama.

With one more look across the panelling, I let the hanging fall back into place. It dropped against the wood with a dull thud, and I hobbled back to the sofa quickly, suddenly embarrassed that I might be caught snooping.

Even so little activity as that had worn me out. I reasoned that it would have surely been impossible for me to sleepwalk so far from my bed, and consigned the whole thing to one of those strange incidences where something you saw only in passing and had forgotten seemed to take on a special significance.

I sat back and contemplated the hanging through half-closed eyes. It was foolish, but I felt some ownership of it now. We had shared something, this tapestry and I, and nobody else knew of it. I felt safe in its presence, as though when near it, I would also be near the strong, caring stranger. I was probably going mad, but I didn’t care. I smiled, and allowed myself to doze.

Edwina woke me. She hadn’t meant to, God bless her, but in an old house such as hers, creaking floorboards were a constant peril. The squeaking had ripped through my head and I had sat up with a sharp jolt, then clutched my forehead as the jarring reached my wound, and cursed as the movement knocked my ankle.

‘Oh, dear me.’ Edwina had rushed into the room and eased me back down onto the sofa, carefully arranging my ankle and skirt and smoothing my forehead with cool and gentle hands.

‘I’m sorry, I-’ I still hadn’t become used to her motherly care of me, and still determined that she should have no cause to think ill of me on that score, even if the truth came out.

‘Now you just settle down, Alice. I tell you, these floorboards will be the death of me – I swear, a new one squeaks every day!’

I smiled and watched her as she bustled about the room, straightening antimacassars and the odd ornament here and there, and tweaked the edge of the hanging so it hung straight. Fear rose in me for a second as I wondered if she could tell I had moved it.

‘Would you like me to sit with you, dear?’

I protested, sure she must have more important things to do.

‘Well now, I’ve been running around like a headless chicken all morning, so there’s nothing I fancy more than a sit down and a chat.’

I smiled, and she made herself comfortable on a chair near my head. Every time I saw Edwina I found I had forgotten how small and fine-boned she was. There was a sort of sadness that hung about her, as though she was disappointed to find herself as a beautiful young girl in an aged and shrunken body. She was still beautiful though, and I wondered if she had any plans to remarry. I knew so little about her and Tristan, only marginally more than I pretended to know of myself.

‘Dear me,’ Edwina craned her neck towards the ceiling and shook her head. ‘He makes so much noise up there, doesn’t he?’

As if in agreement, Tristan plodded across the floor and rattled the windows above us. I giggled.

‘I never notice it until I’m trying to sit quietly. Or until he’s not here, and then I find I miss the sound terribly. There’s nothing like being alone in the house to make you realise how much you need company. People aren’t meant to be solitary creatures, I don’t think. Some people are, mind you. But for the most part, we like to be together, don’t we?’

I thought about my father for a moment, and his joy at having me leave the house. I decided that it would serve him right if he regretted it, and didn’t revel in his loneliness. But knowing him and how he had cloistered himself away for the seventeen years I had known him, I found that hard to believe.

‘I miss him when he goes to town, or down to London, and that’s only for a few weeks at most. Heaven only knows what I’ll do when he decides to marry.’

‘Is he planning to marry?’ The words came out as a whisper. If his previous fiancée had inspired so much jealousy on my part, how should I fare if he fell in love again? But I would not be there to find out, and it was none of my business. I strengthened my resolve to leave as soon as I was better. God knew I didn’t want to kill again, but who knew what I was capable of now?

‘Oh no, not at the moment, but one never knows, does one? He doesn’t need to marry, really, but it’s the way of things. Young people should marry, don’t you think? I don’t want him to be alone when I’ve gone, just because I was too selfish to let him go.’

A cold feeling gripped my stomach.

‘He was to marry, once, you know?’

I nodded.

‘Yes, he mentioned it.’

‘Did he now?’ Edwina looked impressed. ‘He doesn’t talk of it much. Not to me, but I suppose I know all about it so there’s nothing to talk about. And we don’t get many visitors, so who would he tell? I wonder- but it’s none of my business. Poor boy, it hit him so hard, especially when she passed away.’

‘She died?’

‘He didn’t tell you?’ Edwina looked pained. ‘Oh dear, I hope I’m not overstepping the mark. It’s just that everyone round here knows already. It’s so rare to have a stranger in our midst. Still, I suppose there’s no harm in you knowing.’

She glanced again at the ceiling, as Tristan dragged something across the floor above us.

‘They were inseparable, you know. The three of them – she had a brother Tristan was close to as well. I remember, when he was ten he came in one day and said he was going to marry her. It was the sweetest thing, but then he’s always been a sensitive boy. Then they were engaged officially once she turned sixteen. Such a pretty girl. Red hair, you know.

‘We told them they should wait – her parents as well as me. We thought they should have some time as adults first, just to make sure they knew what they really wanted. Only two years, but I know that seems like ever such a long time when you’re young. Cassandra – that was her name – she was so disappointed, but you know how young girls are, so impetuous, and they think they know everything! But Tristan always wanted to travel, and he was raring to join the army. Just like most young men are at that age.’

Edwina stopped and looked down at her hands.

‘I wonder how it would have been different if we’d have let them marry. If they’d be as happy now as they thought they would be then. But while he was away, she married someone else.’

‘But why? If she loved him, why didn’t she wait?’

Edwina looked pained, and I immediately regretted my question.

‘I don’t think it’s my place to say. One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead. But she did marry, and Tristan only found out when he was back, and the war was all over. I couldn’t bring myself to write to him and tell him while he was out there. You hear stories of jilted young men offering themselves up to enemy fire – and he’s so sensitive, I couldn’t take that risk. In the end it was Damien – her brother – who told him.

‘I think he saw her once after, and he said she’d changed completely. I never saw her again. Then we heard she’d died, and it was such a terrible shame. I thought he’d never get over it. He blamed himself for leaving her, just as we blamed ourselves for not letting them marry. But what’s to do? We can’t spend our lives blaming ourselves for the past, but still, I often wish we’d acted differently.’