Tilly (18 page)

After what seemed like ages of pounding on the door and ringing the bell, a footman, half in and half out of his livery, answered the door. He was just protesting that he would not dare disturb his master at such a late hour of the night when a candle flickered on the staircase behind him and the majestic figure of Sir Charles Ponte could be seen descending, despite his attire of long flannel nightshirt, red wooly nightcap, and morocco slippers.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Sir Charles…” began the marquess.

“So I should damn well think,” roared Sir Charles. “That you, Heppleford? Well, I must say this is too much by half. I’m a good sort. I like party games and all that twaddle myself and I’m willing to play along, but not if it means I’m to be rousted from my bed in the middle of the deuced night. Is that right, or isn’t it right?” demanded Sir Charles, betraying a surprising knowledge of the current small talk, where repeating questions was all the rage.

“It isn’t a party game,” said the marquess patiently. “And I certainly wouldn’t get you out of bed on such a trivial matter. I simply
want to know if Cyril Nettleford was here this evening.”

“Well, isn’t that just what I’ve been saying?” roared Sir Charles. “Course he was here.”

Three hearts sank.

“And I must say,” went on the enraged Sir Charles, “I would have thought at your age, Heppleford, you would have got over these schoolboyish pranks. Murder, indeed! Pah!” he added, with true Palmerstonian vehemence.

The marquess stiffened. “Look, Sir Charles,” he said in a quiet, tense voice. “I am not playing silly buggers. I am in deadly earnest. Someone attacked Lady Tilly tonight and I believe that person to have been Cyril Nettleford. But he claims he spent the evening with you and now you confirm it. And what’s this about murder?”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” exclaimed Sir Charles, scratching his gray hair and knocking his nightcap to the side of his head in the process. “You’d better come in. Bassett’s with you, I see. Dear, dear, dear. Lady Tilly? Oh, my stars and garters! Here, Henry, fetch my dressing gown. Here’s a how-de-do,” he remarked, unconsciously Gilbertian. “Come in! Come in!”

They followed him into a small salon and waited impatiently, for Sir Charles would not talk until his nightshirt was hidden from the modest gaze of Lady Tilly in the enveloping folds of a huge brown dressing gown.

“Now,” he barked. “This is what happened. That creature Nettleford turns up here. Don’t like the fellow. Never have. But he’s a relative of yours, Heppleford. He says you’re all playing a game of Murder and he’s the murderer and part of the game is to establish an alibi. He says you will phone me late in the evening and ask me if he’s been here and I’m to say yes. That’s all. I was so relieved the bounder wasn’t staying, I agreed. Anything to get rid of him, don’t you know, or don’t you? What a business. I’ll call the magistrate right away.”

“No,” said the marquess slowly. “I’ll handle this myself. And I would be deeply indebted to you, Sir Charles, if you would forget about the whole thing. We don’t want to stand in court and suffer the consequent publicity for a worm like Cyril.”

“That’s the stuff, my lad!” said Sir Charles enthusiastically. “Horsewhip the cur!”

They rose to take their leave, Tilly shaken, relieved, and disappointed all at once. She was glad the mystery of her attacker was
solved, but she would have loved to have seen Cyril in the dock at the Old Bailey.

When the threesome reached home again, Tilly was told firmly to go to bed and stay there and to put the pillow over her ears if necessary. The marquess and Toby Bassett went off to Cyril’s rooms.

Tilly lay awake for a long time, wincing as sinister thumps and bangs echoed through the silent house.
I’ll never sleep again,
she thought.
Never!
And on that thought she plunged far down into a long and dreamless sleep, while at the other end of the corridor the honor of the Hepplefords was being well and truly avenged.

Tilly descended the stairs on a bright, sunny morning to find the house still and quiet. She felt very cold and slightly sick, a reaction to her experience of the night before.

Mr. Masters, Mrs. Judd, and Mrs. Comfrey were waiting for Tilly in the morning room, bursting with news. His lordship, they said, had gone to pack Mr. Cyril off to Singapore and had even said he was going to buy him a forty-four pound first-class ticket, whereas, in the opinion of the three upper servants, Master Cyril should have been sent steerage. His lordship had also sent his aunts packing
and told them not to show their faces at Chennington again until they could show a proper respect for his wife. Mrs. Plumb had also left.

“But is that
all
that’s going to happen to Cyril?” asked Tilly, amazed.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Comfrey. “You don’t want no scandal, my lady. It’s always the best thing. Send ’em to the Colonies and let ’em try their evil tricks on the heathens. I don’t hold with all them courts and newspapers and things. Best to do things in the good old way.”

Mr. Masters coughed delicately. “I may add, my lady,” he said, “that Mr. Cyril had two of the most lovely black eyes you ever did see.”

“And Mr. Bassett?”

“He’s gone to the vicarage and from there he said he was going to London,” said Mr. Masters. “His lordship said to tell you to rest, my lady, and that he would be back this evening.”

“And Francine?” asked Tilly quietly. “Where is Francine?”

Three heads shook and three faces looked at her with sympathy. “We don’t know,” said Mrs. Judd. “Leastways she said nothing to nobody here about leaving. You never can
tell with them Frenchies, you know. Flighty, that’s what.”

“I suppose I had better hire a lady’s maid,” said Tilly.

“If I might make a suggestion, my lady,” said Mrs. Judd, “I happen for to know that Lady Archison’s lady’s maid is not happy in her position, and she’s a wonder with hair.”

Tilly smiled faintly. “I need someone to do something with my hair. I’ve been spoiled by Francine. I look like a schoolgirl again.”

Mrs. Comfrey shook her head slowly. “No, my lady, that you never will again, if you’ll forgive my speaking so plain. You look more natural-like. You don’t want to look old before your time, my lady.”

But Tilly could not believe her. It was Francine’s creation that Philip had fallen in love with and she was frightened of losing him.

During the long afternoon of his absence, she worked and slaved on her appearance with the help of one of the housemaids.

By early evening, when the dressing gong rang, she was already primped and curled and painted and corseted and thoroughly miserable. She dismissed the housemaid and looked at herself in the long glass.

An enameled, fussy stranger stared back at
her. The dress the housemaid had chosen for her was one that Francine had refused to let her wear. It was in Tilly’s favorite color, pink, and had a long row of ruffles and velvet bows from throat to hem.

Why on earth did I ever think pink was a good color for me?
thought Tilly wonderingly.
This will never do.

She rang the bell and ordered the surprised housemaid to unfasten the long rows of buttons on the back and to help her out of her dress. Then she demanded cans of hot water and washed and scrubbed the enamel from her face and shampooed the frizz vigorously from her hair. “Oh, my lady,” breathed the anguished housemaid, “whatever will Mrs. Judd say to me?”

“Don’t care,” came Tilly’s voice, muffled by her wet hair as it hung in a heavy curtain in front of her face as she knelt before the fire, trying to dry it quickly. Tilly straightened up. “Simply tell Mrs. Judd that you are following my orders.”

“Shall we wear the black velvet, my lady?”

“No, we will not,” said Tilly. “We will wear that lawn thing Francine gave me.”

The housemaid bit her lip in disapproval. Fancy having all these gorgeous silks and satins and settling for lawn. For dinner too!

Tilly finally descended the stairs to wait for her lord, and hearing, with a quickening heartbeat, the sound of carriage wheels on the gravel outside, she rushed quickly into the drawing room and looked anxiously at her reflection in the glass. The lawn dress was of a pale leaf green with a high ruched neckline. It was cut in simple, yet almost severe, lines with long tight sleeves and a straight skirt that just revealed the long, pointed toes of a pair of green openwork high-heeled shoes. Her hair flamed above the high neckline in an unruly mass of shining curls and was secured at the back of her neck by a black velvet ribbon.
Just like a schoolgirl,
thought Tilly, miserably, who knew that a lady, once she had made her coming out,
never
wore her hair down except in the privacy of her bedchamber.

A soft step at the door made her swing around. The marquess stood in the doorway, watching her. His dark-gray suit was impeccably tailored and his waistcoat was a miracle of the embroiderer’s art. His tanned, high-nosed face above the hard white of his collar looked unbearably handsome.

“You look…” he began. Tilly hung her head. “You look very beautiful,” he said with
a husky note in his voice that made her heart turn over.

“Come and kiss me, Tilly. It’s been too long.”

Twenty minutes later Mr. Masters lifted the covers off the dishes on the sideboard in the dining room and then bent to adjust the flame of the spirit lamp under the chafing dish. “Go and ring the gong again, James,” he said without turning around. “They can’t have heard it.”

“Maybe they’ve got better things to do,” said the footman, grinning.

“That’s enough from you, young man,” said Mr. Masters severely. “Do as you’re told!”

Upstairs, my lady’s dress whispered from her shoulders to fall at her feet. “God, but you’re beautiful,” said my lord.

The imperative summons of the gong rang through the house.

“Philip! They’re ringing the gong.”

“Let them,” said the marquess, his voice slightly choked as Tilly’s heavy corsets fell to the floor. “I don’t think either of us wants a long courtship.”

Down in the kitchen, Mrs. Comfrey wrung
her hands as the
soufflé de cailles au riz
began to sink in its pottery dish.

“Ring the gong again, James,” said the perturbed Mr. Masters.

“Blimey,” said the footman to himself, striding into the hall and picking up the small hammer. “Mr. Masters isn’t using his imagination tonight!”

Tilly wound her arms tightly around her husband’s neck as he carried her to the bed. “Don’t stop kissing me,” she whispered. “I’m frightened.”

“There’s nothing to be frightened of,” whispered her husband with his lips against her hair as he lowered her gently onto the bed.

The long row of footmen stood to attention, although the junior members showed an embarrassing tendency to giggle and shuffle. The
boeuf flamande
sizzled impatiently in its chafing dish. Somewhere behind Mr. Master’s back, someone sniggered.

“Ring the gong again, James,” said Masters.

“But, Mr. Masters,
sir!
”

Mr. Masters swung around. “Do as you’re told! If my lord did not wish dinner, then he would have said so!”

The butler and the other footmen waited
in silence as the boom, boom of the gong echoed through the house.

“
Philip!
”

“What is it, my heart?”

“I can hear the dinner gong. The servants…”

“Damn and blast. I forgot. Wait a minute.”

James, in the hall, heard the bell ringing from my lady’s rooms and leapt to the summons. He got as far as the turn of the corridor and was stopped by the sight of my lord’s head sticking around the door at the end. “Oh, James,” said the marquess, “we shall not be dining.”

“But the food, my lord. Mrs. Comfrey made a special banquet.”

“Eat it yourselves and tell Masters you’re to wash it down with some bottles of the best.”

“Very good, my lord.
Thank you,
my lord.”

The marquess slammed and locked the door and returned to more important matters. “Where was I?” he demanded, settling into bed with a sigh of satisfaction. “Ah, yes, I was kissing your left breast. But we must not neglect the right….”

One by one the footmen carried all the splendid dishes back to the kitchen. Mr. Masters
unbent enough to order that the table in the servants’ hall be laid out with their best china and then went down to the cellars himself to fetch the wine.

Mrs. Judd rushed to put on her best silk dress, and Mrs. Comfrey decided to make another soufflé.

Soon the happy servants were seated around the table. Mr. Masters rose solemnly from his place at the head.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, raising his glass. “A toast to my lord and my lady.”

And James, carried away by the glory of the occasion, so far forgot himself as to cry out, “Three cheers for Lady Tilly, God bless ’er. Hip! Hip!”

“Hooray!” roared the assembled staff of Chennington.

And so it was that the exultant cries abovestairs, which heralded Lady Tilly’s loss of virginity in the great bed, went mercifully unheard.

A small steamer called
The Alligator
chugged peacefully through the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Cyril Nettleford stretched himself out more comfortably in his long cane deck chair and reflected that things could be worse—much worse. Thank heavens for Heppleford’s antique ideas of what was due to his family name. All he could do was hope and pray that Tilly either proved barren or died in childbirth. He, Cyril, could not return to England, of course, since the marquess held his written confession and had promised to use it if he so much as put a foot on English soil again. Cyril blamed himself only for the theatricality of his murder attempt. The mask and the black clothes had given him no end of a sinister thrill.
I should just have pushed her down the stairs,
he
thought gloomily.
I always was overly elaborate.

The sound of shrill female voices approaching made him wince. A certain Miss Cecilia Wendover had been pursuing him from the start of the voyage. Cyril had been unbearably rude to her until the thick-skinned Miss Wendover had casually dropped a remark that Daddy was a rich Singapore merchant, one of the original crusty Scotch settlers who had made a fortune in the opium trade. Cecilia was long-nosed and sandy-haired and unbearably arch, but from that moment Cyril began to find her imbued with a mysterious charm.