‘You certainly do not sit at home stitching samplers,’ he agreed with a grin. ‘But that’s not the sort of wife I’m hanging out for, love.’
‘I’m not very pretty,’ she said, pressing home her point.
‘You’re not a beauty,’ he agreed, not being one to pay empty compliments. ‘But I’m no Adonis either. I like your face. It suits me.’
‘I think I should cry off.’ She sighed, not at all offended by his honesty. ‘After all, we do not yet know what my father will say.’
‘It does not matter what he says,’ John replied with cheerful ruthlessness. ‘Unless you want to be branded a fast female and a jilt, you must marry me.’
‘I think,’ she said a little wistfully, ‘that it might be rather pleasant to be considered a fast female.’
‘Not at all the thing,’ he corrected her. ‘You wouldn’t like it at all.’
‘You may be right.’
‘Of course I am.’
The following day, Aunt Camilla felt well enough to come downstairs and have some toast and a little weak tea. She still did not feel strong enough to venture out of doors, and Lydia was beginning to think that the evil moment might be put off indefinitely - but it was not to be.
The two women had not been downstairs together for more than a quarter of an hour before they were forced to receive a visitor: Mrs Wardle-Penfield. She protruded into the room rather like the bow of a ship jutting out over a dock. In this case, it would have been a naval vessel engaged in battle, for her words fell like cannon balls into the placid waters of her aunt’s sitting-room, throwing up a splash and unsettling everyone.
It did not take her long to fire the first shot, proclaiming that Monsieur d’Almain had been questioned by Mr Savidge the previous day and had practically confessed to murdering poor Kate Eccles! Shameless, she called it: positively shameless. To be killing people when his good neighbors were all at their prayers! Those monstrous French ... good for nothing but revolution and rebellion. Well, he should have a taste of English justice now. It was a pity, though, that the English did not at least allow the use of the guillotine.
To Lydia’s surprise, her aunt sat through this swelling diatribe in complete silence and apparently in full command of her faculties. So stiff and straight she was that Lydia presently began to wonder if she had not died and her body stiffened with rigor mortis.
At length Mrs Wardle-Penfield concluded her speech and relieved them of her presence, saying that she must be off to the inn to find out whether or not the Frenchman had yet been arrested.
After seeing her to the door, Lydia returned to the room to find Camilla gone. She dashed up the stairs to her aunt’s bedchamber. The door was open, and her aunt was plainly visible as she struggled to put on a bottle green spencer and a neat round bonnet.
‘Where are you going, aunt?’ Lydia asked in some consternation. Never had she seen the older woman so active and vigorous.
‘I must go to him, Lydia,’ Camilla stated, her voice strong and sure, though her hands trembled as she tied the ribbons under her chin in a lop-sided bow. ‘He is my love, my life! He needs me, and I shall not fail him.’
Lydia blinked. She could only be referring to Monsieur d’Almain.
‘I shall go with you,’ she said.
‘Do as you please.’
Within minutes they were walking down the high street on their way to the Frenchman’s lodgings. Lydia almost had to run to keep pace with her relative, who was progressing much faster than usual. She passed by several of her acquaintance without even acknowledging their presence, and it was left to Lydia to attempt a polite bow as they flitted away. They were attracting considerable attention, for it was clear even to the most disinterested observer that this was no mere afternoon stroll.
At last they reached the door of the gentleman’s humble house, and Aunt Camilla knocked loudly. It was a matter only of seconds before the occupant opened it and stared at them both with a look of astonishment on his handsome countenance.
* * * *
‘Miss Denton ... Miss Bramwell,’ d’Almain began formally, but his speech was forestalled.
‘I came as soon as I heard,’ Aunt Camilla began, going forward impetuously and leaving her niece to close the door behind them. ‘Oh Monsieur d’Almain, tell me that it is not so!’
‘I assure you, ma’am, that I am innocent of any misdeed with which they seek to charge me.’
‘Oh sir,’ Camilla choked out the words, ‘never could I believe any such wicked slander against you! But if anything were to happen to you—’
Here she put them both completely out of countenance by succumbing to a sudden bout of weeping which prohibited further speech. Lydia would have rushed forward to help her, but she perceived at once that d’Almain already had the situation - along with her aunt - firmly in hand.
‘Oh, my dearest love,’ he said most improperly, clasping her in his manly arms, ‘I would have done anything to spare you this pain and distress.’
‘I could not bear it,’ Camilla sobbed into his chest, ‘if I should lose you.’
‘My beautiful angel,’ he cried, ‘how I have dreamed of holding you in my arms! But not like this.’
Lydia felt as if she were at a stage play. Louisa could not witness a more tender love scene at Drury Lane! She found a convenient chair in a corner of the room and settled back to enjoy the spectacle before her.
‘Am I truly your dearest love, Monsieur?’ Camilla whispered, looking up at him through tear-studded lashes. ‘Do you care for me, sir?’
‘You are more to me than all the jewels in all the crowns of Europe!’ he said. ‘You are my life, my soul!’
‘Oh, Monsieur d’Almain!’ her aunt sighed appropriately, and her lips parted for the expected kiss. However, in this she was disappointed.
With a cry of anguish, the gentleman thrust her unceremoniously away from him.
‘What a worm am I!’ he said. ‘How can I declare my love at such a moment? How can I offer for you when such a cloud hangs over my head?’
‘If you love me, nothing else matters.’
‘If
I love you!’ He seemed somewhat offended at the suggestion that he might not. ‘From the first moment I saw you, you are all I have dreamed of, all I have longed for.
Mon coeur, mon amour
!’
With the culmination of this effluvia of passion, he finally screwed up the courage - or decided that the timing was perfect - to kiss her. It was a long, deep kiss which might have lasted even longer had not Camilla chosen that moment to swoon quietly away.
With a cry of anguish, Monsieur d’Almain lifted her in his arms and placed her gently on a shabby sofa near the front window. Lydia, somewhat annoyed with her aunt for ending such an interesting moment of high drama, plucked the hartshorn from Camilla’s reticule. In less than a minute, the lady had revived enough to continue her discussion with the gentleman who could at last be officially designated as her lover.
‘Voici!’
he cried, kneeling beside her makeshift bed. ‘You are better,
n’est-ce pas?
’
His beloved would doubtless have reassured him on this point, but she was prevented by a loud banging upon the door of the humble cot.
‘Who can that be?’ Lydia wondered aloud.
‘Henri d’Almain,’ a harsh voice penetrated clearly through the thick wood, ‘we demand that you open to us at once!’
Lydia recognized the voice: it was Thomas Savidge. The others knew it also.
‘No!’ Aunt Camilla cried hysterically, clutching at Monsieur d’Almain’s hand as he would have risen to honor Mr Savidge’s request. ‘They will take you away from me, Henri! They will kill you.’
‘It is useless to resist,’ the Frenchman replied with noble resignation. He gently removed her hand and turned to admit his persecutors, while Camilla fainted away for the second time.
* * * *
It had been a most exhilarating day, Lydia reflected later that evening after coming down from Aunt Camilla’s bedchamber. That poor lady was, quite naturally, prostrate upon her bed and only managed to sleep after being administered a strong dose of tea and a sedative draught.
‘I do not know what to do, John,’ she admitted when she joined him in the parlor below.
‘How is she?’ he asked, referring to her aunt.
‘As well as may be expected, given her nature and the present circumstances.’
‘I understand that he practically proposed to her?’ John enquired.
‘He did indeed.’
‘Damnfool thing to do.’
‘So I thought.’ She nodded. ‘But he is clearly as romantic as she is. They should deal famously together.’
‘Let us hope that the wedding ceremony is not performed beneath a hangman’s noose,’ John commented drily.
‘Oh no!’ Lydia shook her head decisively. ‘We cannot allow that.’
‘The only way to prevent it, I’m afraid, is to find the real killer.’
‘But how?’
‘I think I had better pay another visit to Bellefleur,’ he said soberly. ‘Although I wish I knew what I was looking for.’
They both sat silent for several minutes, each engrossed in their separate attempts to review what they had learned so far, to try and make some sense of it all. It was in this silence that they suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of an approaching carriage. At first they paid little heed to it. They were close enough to the high street that this was not an unusual noise. But their attention was truly captured when the sounds seemed to halt directly outside. There were voices raised, followed by the sound of someone at the front door.
‘Who can that be?’ Lydia asked for the second time that day. There was only one way to discover the truth.
She hurried to the door, John in her wake, and cautiously opened it. After all, the way things stood now, one never could tell what one might find.
The gentleman who stood outside, looking somewhat tired and harassed, was a stranger to John and certainly the last person Lydia had ever expected to see.
‘Papa!’ she cried, feeling an illogical sense not merely of happiness but also of immediate optimism. Everything would be all right now that her father was here.
‘It seems,’ Mr Bramwell declared, returning his daughter’s embrace, ‘that you have been having a much more interesting time here in the country than we have in London.’
Nothing could have been better timed than Mr Bramwell’s unexpected visit. It was as good as a tonic. Lydia’s flagging spirits revived at once. Her aunt, immediately informed of his arrival, managed to rouse herself from her former stupor to come downstairs. Perhaps only John greeted him with emotions which were not entirely positive in nature. He was well aware that the older man would be judging the suitability of Master John Savidge as a future son-in-law.
Amidst the noise of introductions and assorted exclamations, Lydia managed to introduce the two men. They exchanged a polite handshake while surreptitiously inspecting each other. What either of them concluded at this point was a matter of conjecture, but it was some consolation to note that neither displayed any notable distaste. In appearance, at least, they both seemed satisfied.
There was quite a contrast between them, Lydia thought to herself. Her father was of middling height, slender but strong, with thinning brown hair, but always very neat and almost dandified in appearance. John, of course, was a giant of a man who dressed with a carelessness which did not quite disguise the excellent cut of his attire.
They settled themselves in the same drawing-room which inevitably hosted any gathering in Camilla Denton’s cottage. Before they could proceed to topics of more substantial importance, the usual preliminary trivialities must be got through.
‘How did you come here, Papa?’ Lydia could not refrain from asking.
‘A hired chaise,’ Mr Bramwell replied with a slight smile.
‘How ruinously expensive!’ Aunt Camilla exclaimed, almost forgetting her broken heart and shattered nerves in the contemplation of so rash an action.
‘A trifle extravagant, perhaps,’ he conceded, ‘but I felt that the occasion warranted the expense.’
‘I would be happy,’ John interjected awkwardly but sincerely, ‘to defray the cost....’
‘Nonsense, Mr Savidge.’ The older man could not resist a twinkle. ‘I could not so importune one who is soon to become a son to me.’
‘If you will give us your blessing, sir,’ John replied less stiffly, beginning to comprehend Mr Bramwell and immediately warming to him.
‘I do not know that I dare object.’
‘Do be serious, Papa,’ his daughter admonished him.
‘I shall try,’ he answered doubtfully.
‘All here is chaos and disorder!’ Camilla warned him. ‘Such goings-on as were never seen in Diddlington, brother. I do not know that I shall ever recover from it.’
‘Murder and smuggling in the woods ...’ Mr Bramwell looked around on them all, his brows raised. ‘What more could one wish for, indeed?’
‘It has certainly not been dull,’ Lydia agreed.
‘And now your betrothal, my dear,’ he added, bestowing a smile upon her.
‘Nay, sir,’ she corrected him, glancing at her aunt. ‘Not one but two betrothals!’
‘How is this?’ He laughed outright at this. ‘Perhaps I never explained to you that you cannot marry two gentlemen at once. A foolish law, I warrant you, but there it is.’
‘Not I, but my aunt. She is to marry a felon who is even now in the Diddlington gaol.’
‘My dear Camilla,’ Mr Bramwell leaned over to take the hand of his sister-in-law, ‘I felicitate you! A felon, you say? It quite eclipses Lydia’s achievement.’
‘Oh!’ Camilla buried her face in her handkerchief, the tears beginning to flow once more. ‘How can you jest about something so terrible?’
‘I fear the Bramwells are not noted for their sensibility, ma’am,’ he confessed charmingly. ‘Is the gentleman in question one of the smugglers so lately apprehended?’
‘Oh no, sir.’ John was eager to disabuse him of this mistaken conjecture. ‘He is charged with murder.’
‘The murder of the gentleman who shared the stage with my daughter?’