Reluctant Bride (6 page)

“What would you like to eat?” I asked him.

“Beefsteak and ale.”

“Anything else?”

“That is all I ever eat. Have it three times a day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

“How very unimaginative!” I exclaimed, meaning no offense, but only blurting out the truth. He made some monosyllabic comment, which I did not quite hear, nor did I ask him to repeat it, for he looked cross.

His spirits had improved when he returned. “I have borrowed a prime pair of grays from a friend I met at the stable. They have not gone above two miles, fresh as rain. He planned to leave them here overnight. We’ll have a comfortable drive the rest of the way.”

The ale too was to his liking. He became so sociable while we awaited our food I thought for a moment he was going to smile. “Paying a family visit to Fareham, are you, ladies?”

“Partly visit, partly business,” I answered. “I was taking my necklace to sell to my uncle. They are interesting antiques, having come to my family directly from Queen Elizabeth hundreds of years ago.”

“Show him the box,” Maisie suggested, which I did.

He was mildly interested in the story. “Why on earth would you
sell
such a rare family treasure?” he asked. “These must be priceless to you, for sentimental, historical reasons alone.”

“Uncle Weston is the real historian of the family,” I answered, not wishing to stress our financial position. “He has been after them any time these twenty years.”

“He likes them so well he had a copy made up a decade ago,” Maisie rattled on. “He has all manner of artifact from those ancient times. In fact, his whole house is an antique. So is he. The windows in the place are of such old glass you can’t see a thing through them—everything is blurred and uneven. The lawn looks like a pitching green lake.”

“I prefer modern architecture myself. So you capitulated, Miss Braden, and decided to sell him the diamonds. I hope you got a good price out of him.

“Of
course,” I said briefly.

“She would have got better had she sold them three years ago, when he offered. Now that we need the money, he is only offering thirty-five hundred,” Maisie detailed.

“Four thousand,” I corrected, quoting my own price.

“He said thirty-five hundred.”

“What was the original offer?” Blount asked.

“Five thousand,” Maisie replied.

“Antiques usually appreciate with age, not depreciate,” he pointed out.

“They depreciate with the need of the seller,” Maisie said bluntly. She was impervious to my quelling glances. I saw no reason to burden a stranger with our intimate family problems.

“I would not conclude the sale at this time, if I were you,” he advised.

“Till we recover the diamonds, it is academic,” I reminded them, hoping to quit this topic.

Maisie, having a keen listener, chose to go into the whole exposition of our situation: the prematurely cut forest, the cattle fever, the mortgage, right down to shillings and pence.

“I was wondering if you were
those
Bradens,” he said in a thin voice. Our infamy had risen as far north as Gloucester, as I feared.

“Yes, the unlucky ones,” Maisie told him, with something that sounded like perverse pride. Of course she was a Belmont, and was proffering all the gloom as my story. “It is the lack of a man about the estate that accounts for our woes,” she ran on. “Jeremy is only a young fellow, with no interest in anything but books. We got one bad steward after another. The one her Uncle Weston hired for us last has proven the worst of the lot. He
really
bankrupted us.”

“Weston Braden hired the spoiler, you mean?” he asked, one black brow rising in suspicion. “The same Weston who wishes to acquire the diamonds at a reduced price?”

“Yes, the same, and there is no cause and effect between the two events, if that is what you are thinking, Sir Edmund,” I answered quickly, before Maisie turned inventive and made our case even more melodramatic than it already was. “He is like Jeremy, interested in history and studies, not in farming. He certainly did not send Berrigan to us to relieve us of our money so we would sell him the necklace cheaply. He is not a scoundrel after all, my father’s own brother.”

“I never liked him, nor his grinning stepson either,” Maisie averred.

I was happy to see the steaming plates being carried to the table. I hoped the two of them would eat heartily and forget the misfortunes of Lizzie Braden.

Blount wore a greedy smile as his eyes surveyed five or ten pounds of beef, sitting in a pool of pan gravy. His knife went into it easily, indicating a pleasing tenderness. I could not account for the frown he suddenly put on. He cut deeper, pulled the meat apart with his knife and fork and bellowed for the servant, who was just leaving the room.

“This meat is burned black!” he said angrily, yet my eyes told me the delicious-looking morsel was pale pink inside, just turning to beige round the edges.

“It looks perfect,” I told him.

“I particularly asked for
rare
meat. Did you tell the waiter I wanted it rare?” he asked me.

“I didn’t hear you say rare.” I had a memory of some unheard word, just as he was leaving.

“Take it away. No one could eat this charred stuff. Bring me a
rare
piece of beef,” he ordered. “Just seared on the outside. I want it to bleed when I cut it.”

An involuntary shiver went through me. You remember, perhaps, my aversion to blood? The servant took the plate away. “At least we won’t have to wait long for a replacement. How long do you like your beefsteak to be cooked? Two seconds?”

“Closer to sixty. Thirty on either side—just seared, to hold in the juices. Pray do not wait for me, ladies. There is no need for you to eat cold food because they choose to serve burned leather in this place. Though how anyone can eat dead bird is beyond me,” he added, with a look of distaste at our fowl, which tasted suddenly very like dead bird.

“You have a lively manner of describing, Sir Edmund,” I complimented, pushing my plate away.

“I’ll order you a nice beefsteak when the man comes back,” he tempted.

“No, really, wounded cow is no more appetizing to me than dead bird. I shall have some bread and butter. At least it never crowed or mooed.”

“The butter did,” he felt called upon to remind me.

“As I was saying about Weston Braden’s stepson, Sir Edmund,” Maisie went on, undismayed by our host’s atrocious manners, “he is a handsome ne’er-do-well. Weston up and married the lad’s mother, a widow young enough to be his daughter, some seven years ago.”

“You don’t have to convince Sir Edmund of the folly of marriage, Auntie,” I pointed out.

They both ignored me. “We all thought she would bury him in jig time and inherit his money, but it was no such a thing,” she continued. “‘T was himself who buried her two years ago, and who will get his fortune? Her lad, Glandower Cummings, that is who, cutting our poor Jeremy out entirely.”

“It seems Jeremy is unable to handle
one
estate, let alone two,” Blount said. He was back into his vile mood, due to the lateness of his meal.

“Glandower will get everything else, too,” she went on, undaunted. “He’ll end up with all the Elizabethan things. Lizzie’s diamonds will sit around the neck of God only knows who—some cit’s daughter, or worse. There is
one
marriage I have no sympathy with at least—Weston Braden’s and Mrs. Cummings’s. It was bad news for us.”

“What age is this Glandower fellow?” Blount asked.

“Twenty-five or thereabouts, wouldn’t you say, Lizzie?”

“About that, yes.”

“He sounds a good match for you, Miss Braden,” he suggested.

“Ah, well, when she turned down
Lord
Beattie, it is not likely she would be taking up with a grinner like Cummings,” Maisie told him.

“You are truly devoted to the monastic life, to have rejected
Lord
Beattie,” he congratulated me. “Is this the same Lord Beattie who resides at Eastgate?” he asked, with a suspicious twitching of the lips.

“That’s the one. Do you know him?” she asked.

“Very slightly. He was a good friend of my grandfather. I am more closely acquainted with his son.”

“I shall take Mitzi for a walk while you two finish your carrion,” I said, arising on an impulse.

“Finish
it? I wish I might
start
it! Here is the servant, at last,” he exclaimed.

I was vexed with Maisie for being so forthcoming with Sir Edmund. She is usually close-lipped with the neighbors, but there is often less constraint in our conversation when we are amongst strangers. I suppose it is knowing that we will not have to see them again that accounts for it. We need not care for the opinion of those who are nothing to us, still I disliked her readiness to gossip. I would speak to her about it, in a polite way.

I put Mitzi on her leash and took her for a walk along the main street of Andover, while I awaited for the two carnivores to finish their meal. It occurred to me I might encounter my dashing colonel, as he was also headed to Winchester, but I saw nothing of him. The afternoon was wearing well along when we remounted the carriage, but with the new team of grays, we made good time. It was our hope to arrive at Winchester in time to meet the coach, and apprehend the walleyed person in the green jacket as he descended. Sir Edmund felt that with the new team, there would be no difficulty in doing it as the stage stops so often, and sets such a sluggish pace.

Perhaps he was correct. If Maisie’s ankle had not begun “pulsating,” as she described its condition, we might have made it. She started twitching restlessly in her seat, then leaning down to  massage the ankle, or to try to loosen the bandage. I don’t know what she was doing down there, but I knew she must be in discomfort.

“Let’s have a look at it,” Blount said, after glancing at her gyrations a few times.

Maisie has her fair share of maidenly modesty. “You take a look, Lizzie,” she said, with a little blush.

“Shall I don a blindfold, or will you be satisfied if I just look out the window, Maisie?” he teased. The two of them had achieved a first-name basis back at the inn while I walked Mitzi. God only knows what other family secrets she told him.

“Promise you won’t peek,” she answered, in accents worthy of a coquette. He turned obediently to look out the window as I lifted her leg up, to see the ankle mushrooming to an enormous size, with the bandage put on at Devizes cutting into the swelling.

“Good God! This has got to come off! Sir Edmund, look at this!” I was too worried to honor her wish for modesty.

He looked around. His eyes grew wider as he reached down to touch the swelling with an exploratory finger. “We have got to get you to a sawbones, Maisie,” he said at once.

“What about the Winchester stage? We don’t want to miss it. If we don’t overtake the walleyed fellow there, we won’t know where to look for him. Though it
does
hurt. It pulses, like a heart, you know.”

“It must be the bandage that causes it. It can’t be infection. There is no open wound. I’ll loosen it for you.” He pulled off the plaster that held the bandage on, and unwound the cotton. The discoloration was visible through her silk stocking. It looked as if she had a red cabbage stuffed down her leg.

“Forget the Winchester stage and the diamonds for the moment, Maisie. We shall stop at the first signs of civilization and look for a doctor,” I said. Sir Edmund nodded his agreement.

We were not very far from a village called Testley. We pulled in at the inn there, hired a room and sent off for the local doctor. While awaiting him, we made her as comfortable as possible by propping her sore ankle up on a footstool, opening windows, getting wine and so on. Before long the doctor entered, a bald little man with glasses and a speckled skull.

He did not immediately see Maisie, reclining in the corner, and mistook me for the patient, as I wore the patch on my temple. “What seems to be the trouble, young lady?” he asked with abominable cheer. “A migraine, I wager.”

“No, my aunt has a wrenched ankle,” I informed him, pointing out her chair.

Sir Edmund and I went to the other side of the largish chamber to await his verdict. “You should have him take a look at your bruise while he is here,” he suggested.

“Nature is the best healer. The less I have doctors tampering with me, the better I like it. I shall get some headache drops from him before he leaves though.”

“Is it bothering you?” he asked, with a little show of concern.

“Of course it is. You do not sustain such a blow without suffering.”

“That would account for your irritable temper. I fear what I am about to say will exacerbate it.”

“Don’t say it then,” I advised, but he spoke on. “Has it occurred to you this fellow with the walleye that we are chasing is wending his way very close to Fareham?”

“Yes, and I am very happy for it. He is not taking us much out of our way. After we have overtaken him, we can go along to Fareham, will be practically there. Maisie and I can go on, I mean.”

“You see no significance in the coincidence?”

“I do not see that Weston put him up to stealing it, if
that
is the meaning of your questions.”

“Your aunt does not share your good opinion of him.”

“My aunt and I often disagree as to what constitutes a pleasing character. She is only unhappy that he married Mrs. Cummings. My family does not harbor any criminals, Sir Edmund. Weston will be horrified when he hears what has happened to us.”

“Very well, if you say so. I felt obliged to mention it. Forgive me if I have offended you.”

“That is quite all right. I am under no illusion as to who put this idea in your head.”

“I have another suggestion which will be more pleasing than my last,” he continued. “I recommend you remain here with your aunt, while I go on and meet the stage at Winchester, have the thief arrested and return your necklace to you.”

“You would not recognize my necklace to see it,” I answered, finding him totally wrong in his opinion that I would like this second suggestion. I was disappointed to see our adventure be cut off so abruptly.

“It is not likely the man will have more than one set of diamonds in his pocket.”