Lady Anne's Deception (The Changing Fortunes Series Book 4) (10 page)

Annie turned a glowing face up to his. “Oh, Mr. Bellamy.” She sighed. “How clever you are. How
diplomatic!
Marigold is such a lucky girl.”

“Well, I say, that’s dashed decent of you. I thought it was the right move m’self, but Marigold called me a fool.”

“She must be joking,” said Annie, bringing her long eyelashes into play. “No one could ever take you for a fool, Mr. Bellamy.
Oh
!”

“What’s the matter?” said Harry Bellamy, anxiously, as Annie stumbled and clung to him.

“My ankle,” said Annie, with a brave smile. “I twisted my ankle.”

“I shall fetch your husband…”

“Oh, no, don’t do that. If you could lead me to some anteroom where I could rest for a moment… I don’t think it’s too bad. And I would like an opportunity to ask your advice.”

“I say,” said Mr. Bellamy, fingering his moustache, “if you’re sure it’s all right…”

He placed an arm around her waist and led her from the ballroom. Marigold danced by with her partner and watched them leave, a look of shock on her face.

There was a small morning room on the ground floor, and it was there that Mr. Bellamy led Annie. He seemed to know the Wintons’ house quite well.

Annie, who had not hurt her ankle at all, of course, tried to remember to limp on the same foot but found herself alternating from the left to the right. As they reached the door of the morning room, Annie heard someone calling her name and bit her lip in vexation. Miss Mary Hammond came sailing up. Her large face looked very white.

“Have you seen Mr. Shaw-Bufford, Annie?” she panted.

“No, I have not,” said Annie crossly. “If he is anywhere, it will be in the ballroom with the rest of the guests.”

“I’ll look again,” said Miss Hammond. “Annie, I wonder if I could speak to you for a moment. I… well, I’m most awfully frightened and worried, and I don’t know what to do.”

Annie could not think of anyone as large as Miss Hammond being frightened. All she saw was an end to her plan to revenge on Marigold and her husband if she stayed to chat.

“I can’t,” she said. “Mary, I have wrenched my ankle and must rest it. Also I want to speak to Mr. Bellamy. I shall see you as soon as I can.”

There was a step somewhere on the landing above, and Miss Hammond turned even whiter. She threw an anguished look at Annie, hesitated, and then hurried off.

“You know, I think that woman’s mad,” said Mr. Bellamy.

“Yes,” agreed Annie, allowing him to lead her into the morning room.

Fog lay in long bands across the room. The air was musty and chilly.

They sat down on a small gilt sofa in front of the empty fireplace.

Annie, with well-feigned impulsiveness, took Mr. Bellamy’s hands in her own and gazed intently up into his face while trying to think of a problem urgent enough to justify taking him away from the ballroom. All at once she thought she had it.

“I feel this ball is a sham, Mr. Bellamy,” she said.

“Oh, I say,” said Mr. Bellamy, fingering his waxed moustache.

“Yes. They say it’s to raise funds for Women of the World, but it’s really to raise funds for a society called Women’s Rights, The Vote, and Feminine Equality.”

“What! That’s disgraceful,” said Mr. Bellamy, roused to rare animation. “I say, the whole pack of ’em ought to be arrested. Particularly after nearly killing poor Macleod. Women get the vote. Ridiculous!”

Annie felt like striking him, felt like howling that there was absolutely nothing wrong in women getting a say in the running of the country, but instead she said meekly, “What should I do?”

She gazed up at him with shining eyes, leaning very close to him. She was wearing the perfume her husband had given her, being unable to keep the bottle stoppered any longer. Its exotic scent curled about Mr. Bellamy’s pink ears. He looked down at her and grasped her hands more tightly, his rather prominent eyes beginning to bulge.

“Leave it to me,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll have a little word in Tommy Winton’s ear. I mean, we shouldn’t encourage these women. This could lead to anarchy. Anarchy! Little ladies like yourself should leave it to us strong men to handle things for you. You were very right to come to me. By Jove, I say, your eyes are awfully beautiful…”

He suddenly seized her in his arms and planted a wet kiss on her mouth just as the door opened.

The guilty couple released each other and swung around.

The marquess and Marigold stood on the threshold. The marquess looked calm and amused. But Marigold’s eyes were wide with a mixture of fear and anger. She looked much younger than Annie at that moment, younger and lost and vulnerable. All at once, Annie realized how very badly she was behaving.

Marigold would have rushed forward, but the marquess held her back with a gentle hand on her arm.

“We were looking all over for you,” he said lightly.

“Your partners are languishing upstairs, my love.”

“I—I sprained my ankle,” said Annie wildly. “Mr. Bellamy brought me here so that I could rest it.”

“How very kind of him,” said the marquess. “But you really must not neglect your fiancée, Bellamy. My wife has me to look after her, you know. I shall have a little talk with you about that afterwards.” Mr. Bellamy visibly cringed although the marquess’s voice was as good-natured as ever. “Run along with Lady Marigold. You’re missing all the fun.”

For once Marigold was speechless. Harry Bellamy went over and took her arm, and she looked up at him with an odd, beseeching look.

The door closed behind them, leaving Annie and the marquess alone.

“We will give them a few moments to get back to the ballroom and then we will talk,” said the marquess.

“I had better get back as well…”

“Oh, but you can’t, my love. Not with your poor sprained ankle. Come with me!”

Annie opened her mouth to protest, shut it again, and took the arm he was holding out to her.

“I wish you would make up your mind which ankle it was you sprained,” he said as he led her across the vast, deserted entrance hall. “You are limping on one foot and then the other.”

“I think I sprained both,” said Annie wretchedly, wondering why it was that one lie always led to a whole regiment of lies.

“I think you have sprained your brain. In here.”

He pushed open the door of the Wintons’ library. A fire was burning brightly in the hearth. Gaslight hissed quietly in the brackets over the mantel. Books that looked as if they had never been opened stood in serried ranks behind the glass fronts of the cases.

“Now,” said her husband, turning to face her. His smiling mask had dropped and he looked very grim indeed. “Explain yourself!”

“I did,” said Annie miserably. “I sprained my ankle… ankles… and Harry Bellamy took me away to rest a little. I saw nothing wrong in it. He is soon to be my brother-in-law.”

“It seemed to me as if you were trying to make sure he would never be your brother-in-law but your lover instead.”

“Why should you care?” Annie flashed back. “You and your fancy women!”

“Yes, me and my fancy women. Well, my dear, I manage not to disgrace you by kissing them in public. You simply got that poor sap, Bellamy, all roused up in order to make Marigold jealous. Is there no end to
your
jealousy? Or perhaps you would rather have married an idiot like Bellamy?”

“At least he would have been faithful to me.”

“I think we should get one thing clear,” said the marquess, coming to stand over her. “I, my dear, have certainly not led a celibate life. But I have at least been faithful to you since the day I married you.”

“Pooh! Balderdash and tommyrot! What about the seductive Miss S.?”

“An old love. I met her in Paris and walked her down the Champs Elysées where I was photographed by a society photographer. We had an aperitif in a café and then I delivered her into the arms of her latest protector.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

He looked at her curiously. “Tell me, Annie,” he asked, “are you so wrapped up in yourself that you never stop to think that other people have feelings, that other people get hurt? It’s time you grew up and stopped behaving like a child thumbing her nose at adults. What you did this evening was childish and thoughtless and cruel.”

“Nothing,” said Annie, fiercely, “nothing I could ever do to you would be as cruel as your treatment of me. To go away and leave me alone for months. To cancel our honeymoon.”

“A honeymoon is for lovers, Annie. It is not for a girl who has simply married me to compete with her sister.”

“Will you
never
forget that?” said Annie bitterly.

“Make me.” He stood looking down at her. “Make me, Annie. Make me forget your words.”

She looked at him, trying to summon up the courage to take a step toward him, to throw herself into his arms and beg his forgiveness. She looked beyond him to the window, where the curtains were drawn back, trying to forget all the hurt.

The fog outside the window swirled in a rising wind. Through the curling, swirling fog, in the square of light cast on the garden outside by the gaslight in the room, a horrible, distorted, bloated face turned and danced.

It was much like one of the faces of the South Sea carvings back at Crammarth Castle with its mouth protruding from lips drawn back in a ghastly sort of grin.

Annie turned paper white.

She opened her mouth, but it was like one of those horrible dreams where you try to scream and no sound comes out, where you try to run, but your feet won’t move.

The marquess turned around and looked at the window.

He gave a muttered exclamation and rang the bell by the fireplace.

“Sit down!” he said to Annie. “And put your head between your knees.”

The door opened and a liveried footman came in.

The marquess waved his hand at the window. “There is a body out there, hanging,” he said. “Be a good fellow and inform the police, the local hospital, and Mr. Winton, in that order.”

The footman stared at the horror that was turning slowly outside the window. The thinning fog revealed that it was the body of Miss Hammond hanging from the rope.

From the open door came the laughter and chatter from the ballroom upstairs. The orchestra was playing a polka.

“Very good, my lord,” said the footman.

“I never turned an ’air,” he told the kitchen proudly afterwards. “I went up to Mr. Winton and I said: ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘the Marquess of Torrance presents ’is compliments and says to tell you that there is a body a-hanging from a rope outside the ’ouse. I ’ave informed the Yard, sir, as per ’is lordship’s instructions.’”

“Come along,” said the marquess to Annie. “What a bloody, sickening sort of evening. The police will know where to find me if they want me.”

Annie silently allowed him to help her out of the house. She could not get the memory of that dreadful face out of her mind. Somewhere at the back of her mind was a growing fear. Somewhere, somehow, someone had said something. She knew something quite dreadful and yet she could not think of what it was.

The silence of her rooms at home weighed down on her. After Barton had made her mistress ready for bed, Annie sat in front of her dressing table, brushing her long red hair with automatic strokes of the brush. Barton had told her in a hushed whisper that two gentlemen from Scotland Yard had called to see the master.

The little gilt clock on the mantel chimed a silvery two in the morning.

The door opened and her husband stood there. His face was set in harsh, stern lines as he studied her reflection in the glass.

“They’ve gone,” he said curtly. “Go to bed.”

Now was the time to say she was sorry, but a dreadful, stubborn pride held her back.

Almost as if he knew what was going through her head, he said, “Oh, go to bed and dream of ruining Marigold’s life—and pray for the wisdom to realize you are ruining your own.”

The door slammed. Annie stared miserably at her reflection. Why did she always feel like a naughty child? Couldn’t he understand? He ought to
know.

“But he’s not psychic,” said the cynical voice of her conscience. “And he’ll never know unless you tell him.”

But it was too late, tonight anyway, thought cowardly Annie. And—and she had seen a dead body. And—and he should have realized her feminine feelings were lacerated and have been proud of her, yes
proud.
For she had not screamed or fainted.

All at once, she remembered the feel of Harry Bellamy’s soft, hot mouth and writhed with shame. Then there was that lost, hurt look in Marigold’s eyes.

Oh, why couldn’t life be black and white?

Annie trailed miserably to bed.

But sleep would not come.

Every time she closed her eyes, the bloated, dead face of Miss Hammond rose before her inner vision.

Like a sleepwalker, Annie swung her legs out of bed and walked slowly out of her room and along to her husband’s door. She gave the door a jerk to open it and went inside.

Light was shining from the bedroom beyond his sitting room. Annie hesitated, longing to turn back and yet frightened of the nightmares that lay in wait for her, frightened of her own guilty conscience.

He was lying propped up on the pillows reading a book. As she entered, he put the book down on the covers and looked at her, his face rigid, his eyes cold.

Annie couldn’t help remembering his former lazy good humor, his smiling eyes, as she looked at the stem, handsome face against the whiteness of the pillows.

“What is it?” he said.

“I’m frightened,” whispered Annie.

“No doubt,” he said in a flat voice. “It is not every day one sees a dead body. I suggest you wake Barton and ask her to sleep in your room for the night.”

Annie dimly realized that he must have once had some feeling, some affection for her. Why else would she now notice the sudden lack of it?

“I want to sleep with you,” said Annie, trembling with the cold and nerves.

“Very well. So long as you don’t mind if I go on reading.”

Annie removed her dressing gown and placed it on a chair. She was wearing a white satin nightgown chosen for her by her mother. It covered more of her body than a ball gown. She walked around to the far side of the bed and pulled back the covers, noticing before she climbed in that her husband was naked.