Letters to a Lady (2 page)

John Groom had been instructed to keep a slow and steady pace. It was going on ninety minutes later that the carriage entered the old coaching town and proceeded past a smattering of picturesque houses to its destination. The Whitby residence proved to be more than genteel, a fine old stone mansion.

“We shall not accept tea, Diana, much as I would like a cup. We want to reach London before dark,” Peabody said.

They stepped up to the door and were admitted by a butler. Peabody was a little surprised an M.P.’s man didn’t wear livery, but a glance was enough to tell her the house was done up in the first style of elegance. Not a mote of dust to be detected by an eagle eye, which Miss Peabody’s certainly was. As she waited in the saloon, the words
nouveau riche
occurred to her. Nothing in the chamber had been sanctified by age, but it was all so pretty that she decided to overlook its lack of ton.

Before long, Mrs. Whitby herself wafted in, and all thoughts of the room were forgotten. The lady was fine enough to give ton to a hovel. Her age was hard to determine—Peabody pegged it in the vicinity of thirty. That rosy flush on the cheeks might be due to youth, but more likely to rouge. Hair as black and shiny as a raven’s wing glinted with iridescent peacock tints in the window light. Peabody’s experience with black dye in her younger years told her this fine color didn’t come from a bottle. Dye made the hair a flat, matte black. The hair grew low on an ivory forehead. Large, limpid blue eyes were heavily fringed in lashes. Her nose was small and retroussé, and her lips were like rosebuds.

Diana made a swifter examination of the face and soon passed on to the toilette. An enviable morning gown of pale violet sarcenet encased a figure that bordered on the voluptuous while still maintaining the litheness of youth. Any hint that Mrs. Whitby was in half-mourning, however, was obliterated by her radiant smile and her décolletage. The smile turned quizzical when Mrs. Whitby beheld two unfamiliar provincials in her saloon.

Soon the name Lord Harrup was in the air, and the mystery was cleared up. “So if you have the documents ready, we shall take them and be off,” Miss Peabody said.

“Ah, yes, the . . . documents,” Mrs. Whitby said with a quizzing little smile. Something caused a wicked gleam to enter her eyes. She took a parcel from the table and handed it to Miss Peabody. “Give my kindest regards to Harrup, and tell him I shall look forward to seeing him soon in London. I find the country does not suit me. I can’t sleep for the racket of the grass growing.”

“I shall be happy to tell him,” Miss Peabody answered, determined to be polite to any associate of Harrup’s. “You stay in London when Mr. Whitby is sitting in the House, do you, Mrs. Whitby?” she asked conversationally.

“Oh, I am not married,” Mrs. Whitby said. “I have been widowed forever. Are you visiting Harrup for long?”

Her eyes strayed to Diana, where they lingered, looking up and down for all the world like a forward gentleman.

“No, we are not visiting him at all, except to deliver these,” Miss Peabody replied.

Mrs. Whitby opened her lips and a silver peal of laughter tinkled forth. “You must also tell him for me that I think he mistreats his lady friends, using them for errand boys. But then, that is Harrup’s usual way, to abuse us ladies,
n’est-ce pas?”

Miss Peabody felt her spine curl. “I’m sure Lord Harrup has always treated me with the utmost kindness,” she answered firmly. “We are very happy to deliver these government documents for him.”

Mrs. Whitby’s lovely face looked blank. Then a look of understanding flashed in her eyes, and again she laughed, more merrily than before. “Of course. We are all eager to help Parliament—especially certain noble members thereof,” she replied in a strangely insinuating tone.

On this peculiar speech she turned and flounced from the room without so much as saying good day.

“Peculiar woman,” Miss Peabody exclaimed as soon as they were outside the door. “Why is she still in half-mourning if she has been widowed for eons? She hardly looks old enough to have been married long.”

“Wasn’t she beautiful?” Diana sighed. “I would kill for that gown. I’m sure she must have a French modiste. I liked her—a little brash, but lively.”

“Handsome is as handsome does. Not even the courtesy to say good-bye. I cannot think Harrup will be overjoyed to see that one in London. I wonder what she was doing with these documents.”

She settled into the carriage and glanced down at the packet of letters. They were held together with a pink satin ribbon. The scent of lavender was noticeable in the closed carriage. It was soon borne in on the Argus-eyed Peabody that she had seen the handwriting on the top envelope before, most recently yesterday when she received her letter from Harrup. She looked askance at Diana, who had already realized a pink satin ribbon sat uneasily on government documents. Neither did the envelopes look at all official. There were no seals on them but only Harrup’s frank. Her eyes moved to the handwritten address and she gasped.

“Peabody!”

Peabody stuffed the letters into her reticule and snapped it shut. “Yes, Diana?” she asked blandly.

Her charge looked her in the eye and laughed aloud. “Too late. The damage is done. I’ve already seen Chuggie’s handwriting. Good gracious, how shocking of you, taking me to visit a member of the muslin company.”

Blood suffused Peabody’s saturnine face, lending a livid hue to its usually sluggish complexion. She had leaped to the same conclusion a moment earlier and, for once in her life, was uncertain what posture to take. Rumors of Harrup’s affairs had reached her ears before this. She had been able to overlook intimations of a bachelor’s London peccadilloes, providing they remained rumors and remained based in London. To have pretty convincing evidence that the rumors were true and had strayed so close to Harrup Hall and the Willows was hard to digest. With no one else to take her ill humor out on, she turned on Miss Beecham.

“Fine talk for a lady! Muslin company, indeed! I think I know Harrup a little better than to believe he would give that trollop the time of day.”

“Nonsense, she was a very elegant trollop, and why else would Harrup have written her so many letters if he weren’t her lover? What I cannot understand is why he sent her to Hitchin to rusticate and listen to the grass grow. Peabody, let us see the letters.” A look of genuine outrage leaped to Peabody’s long face. “I don’t mean read them. Let us just see how many and how thick they are.”

“Certainly not,” Peabody said firmly. But before the carriage had gone ten yards, she decided she needed her handkerchief, which just happened to be under the letters so that she had to remove them. It wasn’t her fault if the pink satin ribbon was a trifle loose and came off as soon as she tugged it a little.

A cascade of white squares fell to the carriage floor. Diana picked them up and placed them one by one in Peabody’s lap. “Six,” she said when she had finished. “I wonder how long he’s been carrying on with her?”

Diana narrowed her eyes as she contemplated this puzzle. “I noticed he’s come home very often since winter. I wager that’s when he made this liaison, in late winter or early spring. And now she’s going to join him in London.”

“Harrup always comes home often in the springtime. He and his bailiff have many meetings to decide about rotating crops and things. You know Harrup likes to oversee the planting at the Hall.”

Undeceived, Diana continued this line of talk, which was so distasteful, yet exceedingly interesting, to Peabody. “No, he took up with her at the end of January. You remember he darted home one afternoon and left for London that same night. He spent that night with Mrs. Whitby,” Diana decided.

“He certainly did not. A courier arrived from Whitehall and called him back to an emergency meeting that weekend. It was the second week in March that it all started— that’s when it was. He did not come home at all, but the vicar mentioned seeing him in Hitchin. That’s when the hussy got her clutches into poor Harrup. That setup must have cost him an arm and a leg. Everything so expensive and brand new.”

“And now he’s taking her to London. I wonder if he’ll use the same furnishings. Who can she be, Peabody?”

“Nobody,” Peabody said angrily. She had finally found the villain in the piece. “You could tell by the bold eye in her head and the cut of that gown that she’s as common as dirt. An actress or some such thing—did you see the rouge smeared all over her cheeks? That one would as soon tie her garter in public as she’d sneeze. The very sort of creature that preys on innocent young men.”

“Harrup’s thirty-five,” Diana reminded her, and received a blistering stare for her foolishness. “I know all about his women, Peabody. His own mama complained to me last winter that she despaired of his ever marrying because he had his pick of all the prettiest lightskirts in town.”

Sixty-five years of Christian living prevented Peabody from opening the letters and reading them. Even sixty-five years couldn’t stop her from analyzing the handwriting, the franks, smelling the scent of lavender at close range, and conjecturing wildly as to the current state of affairs. “Why is Harrup so eager to get his billets-doux back that he couldn’t wait for his next visit?” she wondered aloud.

“This explains his wanting me to send one of the footmen from the Willows to Hitchin. He wished to keep the story away from his own home. There is something very odd here, Di.”

“Maybe he’s broken off with her,” Diana suggested, after a few moments’ consideration.

This was balm to Peabody’s spirit. “That’s it!” she exclaimed. “He has given the hussy her congé—and I thank God for it. I wonder…”

“What?” Diana asked, with only mild interest. She was not so keen on Harrup’s doings as her mentor. He was too highly placed to be a suitor to her, and too old to have featured as the hero of her girlish daydreams. As he never stirred a finger to introduce her to any of his eligible friends, he was out of mind as soon as he was out of sight. He had been a fully grown man for as long as she could remember, treating her as a mere youngster. When she thought of him, it was as a friend of her father’s and Peabody’s, and a neighbor who was more interesting than most by dint of his position as lord of Harrup Hall.

“Since he has had the sense to break off with that creature, I wonder if he is thinking of getting married. It is high time for it.”

“That’s probably it,” Diana agreed.

“Who can the lady be?”

With such intriguing material to conjecture, the first lap of the trip passed quickly. Lunch was taken at the Red Lion in Welwyn, and there the conversation continued in their private parlor.

“Harrup will be embarrassed—that might be of some help when Ronald speaks to him about a position,” Diana said. “I mean—well, he can hardly mount his high horse when he is looking so foolish, can he?”

“My dear, we must not let on we know a thing about these letters,” Peabody exclaimed.

“Then we shall have to pretend we’ve suddenly become blind and stupid,” Diana answered, laughing. “Now that we know what Mrs. Whitby is, I realize it was written all over her, and the love nest, too. Everything brand new, and good but not fine. Oh, you know what I mean.”

“He doesn’t know we were there.”

“He’ll know it the next time he speaks to Mrs. Whitby,” Diana pointed out.

“I trust he has seen the last of her. We shall say we sent our own footman. And I’ll wrap the letters in plain brown paper before I hand them over to him.”

“Lying, Peabody? Tch, tch. I, for one, have every intention of ringing a good peal over Harrup.”

Peabody pursed her lips and shook her head. “You are growing a little old to be still playing the hoyden with him, Di. It was all well and good to tease him and play off your tricks when you were a girl. Now he will expect better behavior from you.”

Diana’s smile showed that she did not mean to argue or to give in. “Are you ready to leave?” she asked, glancing at her watch.

“Just let me freshen up. You can go and have the carriage called while I do it.”

Diana went to the desk and sent for their carriage. Several clients were milling about the lobby, and servants carried dishes to and fro in the area of the private dining rooms. She glanced at the newspapers on the desk, waiting for Miss Peabody. The first notion she had that anything was wrong was a high-pitched scream from their parlor. She recognized her chaperon’s voice at once and darted forward. If she hadn’t known Peabody from her cradle days, she would scarcely have recognized the wraith holding on to the table for support. Peabody was as white as paper, wide-eyed and trembling.

Diana flew forward, calling, “Peabody! What’s the matter? Are you ill?”

“Somebody stop him! Stop that man!” Peabody begged in a quavering voice. A shaking finger pointed to the lobby.

“What man? I didn’t see anyone.”

The manager came pelting in to add to the confusion. Peabody had soon recovered sufficiently to enlighten him and Diana. “A thief! My reticule has been stolen. Somebody go after him. A tall, dark young fellow.”

“Which way did he go?” the manager asked.

“He didn’t go out the front door. He turned the other way,” Peabody said. “I watched him dart out. I was too overcome to give voice for a moment. One doesn’t expect to be robbed in a respectable inn,” she added blightingly.

They all ran into the hall. “The other way” wasn’t much help. The man might have gone into the taproom, upstairs, to the kitchen, or out the back door. All these possibilities were investigated during the next few minutes.

The other clients came forward to add their observations. One had seen a dark-haired young jackanapes peeking into the private parlor while Diana was glancing at the paper. He had inquired of the clerk if a Miss Peabody or Miss Beecham had hired a parlor and asked which one. This was deemed highly suspicious. Another had seen him hurry out but hadn’t seen the purse. Still another had thought the lad was fair, not dark. After a quarter of an hour it was clear that the thief had gotten clean away on a mount tethered just outside the inn door. While a rumpus was being raised within, he had mounted and pelted away like lightning. The only useful thing learned was that the man had headed off toward London.