Little Coquette (2 page)

“How strange!” she cried, staring at Beaumont as a shiver scuttled up her spine. She was familiar with all the stylish bonnets in the parish. She had never seen this one before. Beaumont was frowning at it and still reeling as hard as he could. The bonnet moved sluggishly, then slowly turned over. Beneath the gliding water, a ghastly white face appeared, with its eyes open and its mouth wide, as if frozen in a cry of anguish.

“Oh my God!” she gasped, and turned as pale as the face in the water. She quickly averted her gaze, then slowly turned back to see if she recognized the woman. She had never seen her before. Beaumont waded into the water up to the edges of his top boots to haul the body out by the shoulders. The head fell back like a rag doll’s. He laid the corpse carefully on the grass and arranged the dripping skirts around the black kid slippers.

“Do you know her?” he asked, staring in bewilderment at the awful spectacle on the ground.

Lydia was determined not to display any feminine weakness. Beaumont was behaving just as he ought, and she could do no less. She willed down a fit of nausea and forced herself to study the face. In a tightly controlled voice she said, “No, I have never seen her before. She is not from these parts. She hasn’t been in the water long. Who could she be?”

“I have no idea.”

Water dripped from the woman’s eyelashes and rolled down her cheeks, giving a ghoulish semblance of life, as if she were crying. “For goodness’ sake, can’t you cover her face?” Lydia said.

He drew out his handkerchief and placed it over the woman’s face. “I’ll stay here. You’d best go for help, Miss Trevelyn. My place is closer.”

She took one last look at the covered face and the bonnet, noticing the limp red hair that hung out beneath it in sodden clumps, before running up the hill on trembling legs.

Beaumont remained behind, wondering how a lightskirt had ended up in his river. When Lydia was gone, he lifted the handkerchief and studied the pale face. He didn’t recognize this woman, but he knew her calling by her clothes and the faint patches of rouge still visible on her pallid cheeks. Ladies did not wear red bonnets with such a superfluity of gaudy feathers. They did not wear such low-cut gowns in the daytime, and it was a muslin afternoon frock the woman wore. The bonnet and slippers, all her toilette suggested she was dressed for afternoon. He guessed her age to be in the thirties. Not in the first blush of youth, but not hagged either. Her face was a pretty heart shape with a slightly retroussé nose. She must have been pretty when she was alive. The state of the remains suggested she had not been in the water for more than a day.

How had she come here? At least there was no sign of foul play. She had not been strangled or stabbed or beaten. She could not have come in a carriage or her driver would have reported her missing. The outfit, those kid slippers, said she had not ridden. Had she walked, stopped to look at the river, and slid down the bank? But the water was not deep enough to drown her. It was not over her head. Perhaps she had bumped her head? He hadn’t the stomach to remove her bonnet and examine her scalp. Let the sawbones do it. It was odd that her body had been so firmly lodged beneath the water. Almost as if someone had tried to wedge her under a rock or submerged tree.

He looked down at the slippers and noticed the left one was badly scraped, the silk stocking torn. How was it possible, if she had accidentally fallen in? Perhaps she had not died here at all, but her body may have been brought here to conceal it. But why? If he had not happened to catch his hook in her jacket, she might have remained there for weeks or months, even years, until any hope of identifying her was gone.

He was sorry Miss Trevelyn had been exposed to such a horrific discovery. Not that she had seemed very upset. Any normal lady would have pitched herself into his arms, sobbing and swooning, but not that cold wench. “She hasn’t been in the water long,” she had said, as if it were a dead fish she was looking at and not a woman. Who could she be?

His gaze drifted across the river, to the soaring walls of Trevelyn Hall. Sir John’s mistress was said to be a redhead. No, it was impossible. The poor girl was some transient who had met with a mishap. It was ridiculous to think for a minute that this was his neighbor’s mistress. What the devil would she be doing here? Although it was odd that Sir John had been home for a week....

The body found in the river caused a great commotion in the neighborhood. Everybody except Sir John was speaking of it. Lady Trevelyn felt the death might upset him when he was ill and had ordered Lydia and the servants not to mention it. Lydia had been seeking an outlet for her energies and felt she had now found something worthwhile to do. She would drive into Kesterly and see what the constable had discovered. She would then undertake to notify the drowned woman’s family in some kind and thoughtful manner. There might be something she could do for them. The woman’s toilette had not suggested poverty to be sure, but it was not quite the toilette of a lady either. A milliner, perhaps, to judge by that gaudy bonnet. She would see that the woman had a proper burial.

This was the sort of good work Lady Trevelyn could approve of, especially when it cast Lydia in Lord Beaumont’s path. Naturally he would be taking an interest, as the body had been found in his river. He would see how kind Lydia was, how concerned for the less fortunate.

“I shall go with you, Lydia,” she said at once, and called for the carriage to be driven the two miles through pleasantly undulating farmland to Kesterly, the village where they bought life’s small necessities. For more important purchases such as bonnets, they went the extra few miles to Watford.

John Groom let the ladies out at the Rose and Crown and stabled the carriage. Lydia did not share her mama’s enthusiasm to see Lord Beaumont striding down the High Street toward them. She feared he was bent on the same errand as herself.

To show him she had not got the idea from him, she said at once, “We are just on our way to the constable to find out what we can of that unfortunate woman we found this morning, Beaumont. I want to discover if there is anything we can do for her family.”

She was not imagining the look of consternation that seized his handsome face. “Oh, I would not do that if I were you, Miss Trevelyn. I have already been there. The constable has assured me he will notify her family. No doubt they will be taking her home for burial soon.”

Her chin lifted instinctively at this blatant example of gentlemen thinking they ruled the world. “I shall speak to him all the same,” she said.

Her mama adopted a simpering smile. “I am sure there is no need if Beaumont is handling the matter, dear. So kind of him.”

“I should like to go, Mama,” Lydia insisted in the steely voice that her mama could see was displeasing Beaumont.

“It is really not necessary,” he said firmly.

“There might be something a lady can do that a gentleman cannot,” Lydia said. “Who is the woman? What is her name?”

Beaumont saw the mulish set of her chin and realized he had to protect Lady Trevelyn from the truth whatever Lydia said. He was not yet sure what the truth was, but his first idea had taken root and grown.

A pretty redhead found dead in the river adjacent to Sir John’s property, Sir John missing from London for a week when he virtually never missed a day in the House, and the woman not only dead, not drowned, but shot. The doctor who had written the death certificate had found a bullet had gone straight through her heart. Beaumont had not spotted the bullet hole in her gown. The water had washed away the blood. No identification had been found on her, but when word of the death got about, the constable had heard a rumor that she had been putting up at the Rose and Crown.

Beaumont was on his way there to examine her room in hope of learning her name and where she was from. Once he established her identity, he wanted to get Lydia away from her mama long enough to give her some notion of his fears. As her papa’s lightskirt was common knowledge, he assumed Lydia knew about her. If, as he thought, the woman had been Trevelyn’s mistress, he would visit Sir John and discuss with him how this awful thing had happened, and how they might protect Sir John and his family— and the Tory party. He did not think for a moment that Sir John had killed her, but he might have an idea who had done it. A jealous lover or husband, perhaps. It would not be unusual for a lightskirt to be mixed up in some dangerous illegal business either. Selling confidential government information was one possibility, blackmail another.

“I don’t know her name. I am just on my way into the Rose and Crown now to ask if they know anything of her there,” he said. Then he turned a smiling face to Lady Trevelyn. “I am convinced you would not wish to involve yourself in such an unpleasant affair, ma’am. Why do you not let Miss Trevelyn and me make the enquiries while you enjoy a drive or call on a friend. I shall undertake to see that your daughter comes to no harm and deliver her home.”

Lady Trevelyn was not likely to object to any scheme that threw Lydia in Beaumont’s path. “So very thoughtful. Is that not thoughtful of Beaumont, dear? You two run along and I shall drop in and beg a cup of tea from Mrs. Clarke.”

Lydia directed a suspicious glance at Beaumont before accepting the offer. “Thank you, Beaumont,” she said. “I shall see you at home, Mama.”

“Enjoy yourself,” her mama said, as gaily as if it were a social outing.

“What have you learned that you don’t want Mama to hear?” Lydia asked as soon as they were alone. “The woman means nothing special to Mama. They were not friends or even acquaintances.”

“No, I would hardly call Sir John’s bit of muslin a friend of your mama. Not that I am sure, but the coincidence of a redheaded lightskirt turning up dead on his doorstep looks suspicious, you must own.”

She stared at him in horror, as if he had struck her. “Papa’s bit of muslin!” she gasped. “You’re mad. Papa doesn’t have a mistress. How dare you say such a thing! That is slander, Beaumont. If you repeat that filthy lie, he’ll take you to court.”

He blinked in astonishment. “Didn’t you know? Why the devil do you think he spends so much time in town?”

“For his work, of course. He is very busy in the House. He is on half a dozen committees.”

Beaumont realized his error and wished with all his heart he could unsay the fateful words already spoken. He cleared his throat, blushed, and said, “My mistake, Miss Trevelyn. Sorry. Forget I spoke.”

“But where did you hear such a thing?”

He waved his hands as if batting away a gnat. “London is a hotbed of gossip. No doubt it was some other Sir John. Or perhaps it was Lord John. It is a common enough name after all.”

Strangely, it was his immediate retraction that half convinced her he was telling the truth. Such an idea had never entered Lydia’s head. She knew that plenty of other gentlemen entertained themselves with a mistress, but that her papa, whom she looked up to as a demigod, should sink so low knocked the wind out of her. Then an even worse notion seized her.

“Are you suggesting that Papa killed the woman?” she asked. Her eyes were like wild things, staring at him. “That she came pestering him at home and he drowned her?”

“Of course not. She wasn’t drowned anyway. She was shot.”

“You think Papa shot her!”

“I don’t think anything of the sort!” he replied angrily. “I am not even sure she was his mistress. I heard the woman was putting up at the Rose and Crown. I mean to discover her name and ask Sir John if she was his woman. That’s all. It would be a great scandal for the Tory party if it were true.”

Scowling like a gargoyle, he took a rough grip on her elbow and led her into the Rose and Crown. Lydia was too shaken to argue. She stood a few feet away while Beaumont spoke to the clerk. As the first shock of his accusation was digested, she began to accept what now seemed almost inevitable.

Her papa had a mistress. That was why he had not encouraged her to make her debut last April. He didn’t want Mama and her to find out. He had complained of the expense, and Mama had agreed that money was a little tight lately. He was squandering his money on a lightskirt. That was why he spent so much time in London, even in summer when the House was not sitting.

Lydia remembered going into his room only last evening to ask him to explain exactly what function the Chancellor of the Exchequer filled. Her papa had been writing something. She assumed it had to do with government business, and had been a little offended that he pushed the paper under the covers so hastily, as if he could not trust his own daughter. She had seen a corner of violet-colored stationery protruding from under the blanket and wondered at it. It had been a billet-doux from her, his mistress.

But surely his mistress was not that creature in the vulgar red bonnet with all the feathers? Her papa was a gentleman of refined taste. His own toilette was a matter of pride with him. No one for jackets but Weston. His boots must be by Hoby, of St. James’s Street, who shod the royal family and the Duke of Wellington, and his curled beavers by Baxter. No, if he had a mistress, it was not that woman found in the river. And even if, in the worst case, Papa had gone mad and taken up with such a creature, he could not have killed her, for he had been in bed with gout. He did have gout, didn’t he? It was odd, though, that he would not let Mama ask for Dr. Fraser to attend him as he usually did.

“I know the treatment well enough by now,” he had said. “Bed rest will cure me.”

But he didn’t spend all his time in bed. Late one night when everyone had retired she had heard him coming upstairs and had gone to investigate. He was walking without much limping and without his walking stick. She had taken his arm to help him back to his bedchamber.

“Papa! Surely you have not been downstairs! Why did you not call a servant if you needed something?”

“I mustn’t let my legs atrophy,” he had said. “Truth to tell, I was after a nip of brandy and didn’t want anyone to know. No need to tell your mama. I am feeling a little better this evening.”

“Don’t get better too quickly, Papa,” she had said, tucking him in. “We want you home a little longer.” He hadn’t been carrying the brandy bottle with him. His breath hadn’t smelled of brandy either, had it?