Lady Anne's Deception (The Changing Fortunes Series Book 4) (13 page)

After she had been waiting for ten minutes, she began to feel impatient. Part of her hurting mind wondered how she could even feel such a normal sensation as impatience when her heart was breaking and her temperature rising by the minute.

She rose to her feet, feeling a little giddy, and opened the door. The shadowy entrance hall was gloomy and deserted. She opened several doors but only found herself looking into dark, empty rooms. Then she heard a murmur of voices coming from downstairs.

Annie pushed open the green baize door that led to the kitchen quarters and walked down the stone steps.

The servants’ dining room was lit by one lamp. Ahead of her, the kitchen door was closed. The voices were coming from there and, through the frosted glass of the upper part of the door, she could see the thin, predatory shadow of Mr. Shaw-Bufford confronting the squat shadow of the butler, Hodder.

She was just about to walk forward when she realized that the men were quarrelling, and hesitated, irresolute.

Then Hodder’s gruff voice struck a chill into her heart. “Look here, guv’nor,” he was saying. “This ain’t goin’ to be like gettin’ rid o’ that crazy woman, Hammond. I can’t bump off a marchioness wiffout bringin’ all the rozzers in London about me ears.”

“Now, now, Hodder,” came Mr. Shaw-Bufford’s voice. “Haven’t I explained that we will not be suspected? No one saw us leave except that fool Bellamy, and he can’t remember anything from one minute to the next. I shall return to the ball as soon as possible. That drug you gave her should have taken immediate effect. All you have to do is wrap her up in a blanket, tie those chains there around the body, and tip her into the Thames. Her marriage is unhappy. If by any chance the body is found—which it should not be, if you do your job properly—then it will be assumed that she committed suicide. Arrange the chains in such a way so that she could have put them around her herself.”

“I dunno,” said Hodder, doubtfully. “Member o’ the peerage and all, and bein’ connected, as you might say, wiff the Hammond murder… bound to smell somethin’ awful.”

“Nonsense, my good man. Did you get found out after the Hammond business? No. Did I? No. You are well paid, so go to it, man, and don’t dither about.”

“Very well, sir.”

“And when you’ve finished your little chore, don’t lock up. I shall be late. It’s a pity we’ll have to let Macleod live. I would dearly have liked to be prime minister. Women get equality, indeed! Why, you can’t even trust one of them to carry out a simple shooting.”

Somehow, Annie found herself turning and stumbling out of the kitchen. She thrust open the door into the hall and blundered toward the street door, knocking over a hat stand that hit the tiles with a tremendous crash.

All she wanted to do was find a policeman.

There was an alarmed shout from belowstairs.

The rain had stopped and a thin, ghostly mist wreathed the London streets. Annie kicked off her shoes with their Louis heels and ran for her life. Before she had turned the corner of the street, she heard Hodder’s heavy feet pounding in pursuit.

Along Bradley Street, through Smith Square, fled Annie, too panic-stricken to stop and scream for help. She was desperate to reach the Houses of Parliament where she felt sure there would be a policeman on duty. She could hear Hodder’s harsh breathing like that of some monster or wild animal.

Along Lord North Street ran Annie, down Peter Street, along Millbank and Abingdon.

Panic lending her wings, her shadow flying in front of her and then racing behind her as she passed under each gas lamp, Annie hurtled through St. Margaret’s Square. Ahead lay Parliament Square and sanctuary in the shape of a possible constable on duty.

She had just reached the edge of Parliament Square when Hodder caught up with her and swung her around.

She kicked and scratched as Hodder fastened his huge hands around her neck.

Annie screamed for all she was worth. And then her voice was cut off by the murderously tightening fingers.

A red mist swam before her eyes. I will die and he’ll never know how much I loved him, she thought as she clawed at the hands at her throat.

Then all at once there came the sound of horses’ hooves, then a man’s shouts. Hodder released her and she crumpled to the ground.

The Marquess of Torrance came hurtling toward the butler, who turned to face him. Hodder swung his fists wildly, but the marquess dodged and feinted and then slammed a vicious right straight to Hodder’s chin. Hodder rocked on his heels, shook his head like a bull goaded by flies, and then rushed at the marquess, head down.

The marquess moved so fast that he seemed like a blur of black and white evening dress. One minute the butler was rushing toward him, and the next Hodder was hurtling through the misty air to land with a sickening thump against a lamp post. A police whistle shrilled through the damp cold.

The marquess poked Hodder’s body with his foot to make sure that he was really unconscious, and then walked back and tenderly helped his wife to her feet, cradling her in his arms.

“Are you all right, Annie?” he whispered. “I was worried sick about you. Harry Bellamy said that you had left the supper room with Shaw-Bufford, and Dolly Bangor said that you looked ill. You weren’t at home, so I decided you might have gone mad and gone to Shaw-Bufford’s place, and, thank God, I came looking for you. Where is the chancellor? Who is that man who attacked you?”

“I’m surprised,” said the Marchioness of Torrance, in a thin voice, “that you had time to think of me at all.”

“Don’t be silly….”

“Philandering with my sister…”

“Wot’s all this then?” came the voice of the law.

“Philandering with… you little idiot!”

“Don’t call me an idiot. Mr. Shaw-Bufford quite distinctly said that…”

“I must ask you to explain…” said the policeman, trying to interrupt.

“Oh, Jasper,” wailed Annie, turning white as the full horror of the evening suddenly flooded over her. “Shaw-Bufford murdered Miss Hammond. Well, he didn’t, but that’s his butler, Hodder, and he did. And they were trying to kill me.”

The policeman’s whistle was answered as several more officers of the law came pounding up.

“Wait there, Annie,” said the marquess firmly. He drew the policemen a little way away and began to talk in a rapid voice. Two policemen went to put handcuffs on the still unconscious butler, and one more ran off for reinforcements.

There was a great deal of comings and goings. More constables arrived, headed by a squad of plainclothes detectives. Annie recognized Mr. Carton.

“Now, Annie,” said the marquess. “Take the carriage and go home.”

“No,” said Annie stubbornly. “I must be there to accuse him. Otherwise he’ll try to wriggle out of it.”

“Let her ladyship come along,” urged Mr. Carton. “When the chancellor sees her, he’s bound to give himself up.”

In silence they walked back along the way of Annie’s flight. She picking up her discarded shoes as they turned the comer of Mr. Shaw-Bufford’s street. Annie put her hand to her mouth. “I just remembered,” she wailed. “He said he was going back to the ball.”

“He may still be here,” said Mr. Carton. “Let’s try the house first.”

A constable, who had gone ahead, came back and said quietly, “The front door’s open, sir.”

“Good. Come along. Keep well behind us, your ladyship.”

Back into the hall, into the dead quiet of the house.

“There’s a light in the drawing room,” whispered Annie.

“The room I was in.”

“Stand back,” said Mr. Carton. He pushed open the door.

The chancellor was sitting at a desk in the corner. What was left of his head was lying on the blotter. A pearl-handled revolver lay beside him on the desk.

“That saves us some trouble,” said Mr. Carton. “Mr. Shaw-Bufford has done the decent thing.”

It was then that Annie succumbed to a strong fit of hysterics. “The decent thing!” she shrieked, looking at the mess of blood and brains.

“
Men!
”

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

It was jam for the newspapers. Murder in high places. Even the stately London
Times
blossomed forth with the headline: “The Butler Did It.”

In the ensuing weeks before and after the trial, Annie felt that she was under a sort of house arrest. Reporters and cameramen lurked around every corner and she could not venture from the house without a magnesium flash going off in her face.

Marigold was furious and postponed the wedding, saying that she could not possibly get married while one of the family was disgracing herself by becoming embroiled in a murder trial.

Scotland Yard had unearthed Mr. Shaw-Bufford’s past and had found that, at one time, the late chancellor had been confined to a mental asylum in Yorkshire. They kept this tidbit from the press since it would have started a tremendous scandal over the lack of national security.

As it was, Mr. Shaw-Bufford had unwittingly taken the prime minister down with him. Mr. Macleod was forced to resign. A prime minister who had had a murderer and a madman in his cabinet was not to be trusted.

Then the tactless Harry Bellamy had sparked an enormous row by proclaiming that Annie had been “tremendously brave.” Marigold had called him a fool. Mr. Bellamy had called his beloved a shrew and before Marigold had time to collect her wits, the engagement was off, and the wedding presents were being returned.

Marigold, the Earl and Countess of Crammarth, and their retinue of servants departed for Scotland.

Annie found that you could be married to a man and live in the same house with him, yet hardly ever see him. Sometimes she saw him at the breakfast table, but his sunny good humor seemed to have disappeared completely, and when she tried to talk to him, he appeared to be too engrossed in the morning papers even to speak to her.

Becoming more and more depressed and insecure, Annie stopped worrying about her dress or her hair. She spent long hours reading novels as she used to do at Crammarth, hiding in a fantasy world, escaping from reality.

When she had thought that she was about to die, she had realized in one blinding flash how much she loved her husband. And that seemed to make things worse than ever before.

It was only when she realized that it was nearly Christmas that she decided to venture out with her maid and do some shopping. The air was crisp and clear, and the sooty buildings were edged with white from a light snowfall the night before.

She poked about among the jewelry and objets d’art in Asprey’s in Bond Street, trying to find something that would please her husband.

There were a number of fashionably dressed women in the shop talking in high, brittle voices.

All at once, Annie saw Dolly Bangor and turned quickly away, not wanting to be recognized.

She found herself looking at her own reflection in a pretty, gilt-framed looking glass.

Annie stared in amazement at her tired, drawn face and puffy eyelids. A lifeless strand of red hair had escaped from under her drab hat and was falling over her forehead.

“Lady Torrance!” came Dolly Bangor’s voice, and Annie instinctively put a hand in front of her face—to hide herself from Dolly or to hide herself from herself, she wasn’t quite sure.

Mrs. Bangor’s glowing, dimpled face appeared in the looking glass behind Annie’s shoulder as Annie slowly drew her hand away.

“Ooooh!” trilled Dolly. “Have you been ill? Silly me. It must have been all the strain of that terrible murder. Are you free? I’m simply dying to hear all the gory details!”

“I must go,” said Annie abruptly. “Excuse me, Mrs. Bangor, I really must go.”

She blundered from the shop and out into the street, leaving Dolly Bangor staring after her.

How crystal clear, how
alive
everything looked. A clerk walked by with his Christmas goose slung over his arm. The air smelled of smoke and roasting chestnuts and hot bread and coffee.

“Where to, my lady?” asked Barton timidly. She thought her mistress looked very strange.

“Home,” said Annie. “Home, Barton, and you must put your genius to work on my appearance. I look like a frump. You might have told me.”

“It wasn’t my place to say anything of that nature, my lady,” said Barton righteously. “Although I did keep offering to arrange your ladyship’s hair, but my lady kept saying she would just ‘shove it up on top of her head.’”

“I did, didn’t I?” said Annie in a wondering voice. “I haven’t even worked at
anything.
I don’t think I’ve even
tried
to talk to him. I’ve only glared or whined.”

“Who, my lady? Who? Him?” queried Barton, scurrying along the narrow pavement to try to keep up with her mistress.

But Annie had the awful realization that her husband had once loved her and that she had done everything she could to push him away.

Annie worked on her appearance the rest of the day.

By dinnertime, she was seated hopefully in the dining room. She was wearing a Merveilleuse dress, a revival of the fashion of the Empire period.

It bore little resemblance to the transparent, nymphlike creations of the Regency period, although it did consist of a chemise dress with a highish waistline, which gave a narrow look to the hips. A corset was worn underneath, as well as pantaloons trimmed with lace and petticoats of a soft, lightweight cotton called nainsook. It was in Annie’s favorite color, pale leaf green. Once more her hair was burnished and shining. Her skin was delicately rouged, and she had daringly darkened her long lashes with lamp black.

But the marquess showed no signs of turning up to see all of this transformation.

He had not told the servants that he would not be home, so Annie waited dinner an hour for him, feeling her heart thud against her ribs every time a carriage rattled along the street outside. At last she had dinner on her own.

But there was still hope.

She sat in the drawing room, waiting, ever hopeful, trying not to run to the window every time she thought she heard him coming.

At last, with a little sigh, she trailed up to bed, all her newfound determination and courage gone.

Sadly, she allowed Barton to brush out the new hairstyle and prepare her for bed. She sat warming her toes at the bedroom fire and drinking the milk her maid had brought her.

Barton turned down the bed and said a quiet “Good night,” and Annie was once more left alone.

But somehow she could not go back to that hopeless state. She found herself waiting and listening again. Waiting for her husband’s return home.

At last she heard soft footsteps on the stairs and then they retreated along the corridor. It was either John, the second footman, making his late-night rounds or her husband going to bed.

Silence.

Annie could not bear it a minute longer. She must, simply must, find out what her husband felt for her. And if he felt nothing, well, then, they could get a divorce.

She opened her bedroom door and peeped out. A light was shining from the bathroom adjoining her husband’s suite. The door to his suite was open, as was the bathroom door.

Wearing only a frivolous lilac nightdress, she walked along the corridor making as much noise as possible, not wanting to catch him undressing.

As she reached the bathroom door, her husband called out, “I say, John, I’ve dropped the sponge. Be a good fellow and get it for me.”

Without pausing for thought, Annie walked into the bathroom. It was full of steam, and both the bath and her husband were hidden by a screen. The sponge was lying in the middle of the floor in a pool of water.

She picked it up and held it around the comer of the screen. The marquess stopped splashing in the bath.

Suddenly a strong hand clasped Annie’s wrist and a strong arm pulled Annie around the screen.

“Well, my love,” said the Marquess of Torrance.

“And to what do I owe this sudden rush of, er, wifely intimacy?”

His hard-muscled body was glistening with water, and droplets of water clung to the black hairs on his chest. He was sitting in the bath, the sponge in one hand and Annie’s wrist still held in the other.

Annie modestly averted her eyes. “I c-came to apologize, Jasper,” she said in a low voice.

“Indeed! And what are you apologizing for?” His eyes were very blue and very bright, and fixed on her face.

Annie searched for words to describe her own feelings of inadequacy. To explain how she could never really feel that he had married her because of any feelings of affection. To explain that she feared that what Marigold had said about him might turn out to be true. Once a rake, always a rake.

Then she found herself saying, “For never having told you I love you.”

“Oh, my love.” He laughed. “You have been torturing and tormenting me for months. I thought you didn’t care a rap for me! Oh,
Annie…
”

He gave her a hard pull so that she toppled over into the bath on top of him.

Annie’s mouth was imprisoned in a soapy kiss as he slid down on his side in the water and held her against him.

“Jasper,” said Annie, desperately, “I must know why you married me.”

“I don’t know,” he said, his face alive with love and laughter. “I think it must have been because of the way your forehead wrinkles when you are worried.”

“Oh,
Jasper
,” wailed Annie.

“Of course, I also love you to distraction, if love is wanting to wring your neck most of the time.” His voice suddenly became serious, intense. “But I wanted love in return, Annie. I did not want a woman who had taken me only to compete with her sister. Look at me! Let me see your eyes!”

He gazed down at her for a long moment and what he saw in her eyes made him crush her to him.

“Jasper,” protested Annie, “you are drowning me!”

“Shut up! I’m loving you,” said the Marquess of Torrance.

John, the second footman, saw the open bathroom door and the wet towels lying on the floor, went in, and bent to pick them up. Suddenly he looked at the bath and turned as red as a lobster and hurriedly backed out and fled to the kitchens.

“What’s the matter, lad?” said Perkins, the butler. “Seen a ghost?”

“No, Mr. Perkins, sir. I went into the bathroom ’cos I saw all them wet towels lying on the floor. I was picking them up and then I saw
them
.”

“Who’s them?” asked the cook, pouring herself another glass of gin and water.

“My lord and my lady,” said the footman. “There they was in the bath, going at it like a couple o’ seals. T’ain’t natural. What they got good beds for, that’s what I want to know.”

Perkins drew himself up and straightened his striped waistcoat.

“Bed
for you
, young man,” he said sternly to the footman. “And don’t let me hear you again, questioning the ways of your betters.”

John went off to look for a more sympathetic audience. “Can’t blame ’im,” sniffed Mrs. Barnes, the cook. “’E ain’t used to the ways of the quality. ’Member Lord and Lady Chisholm, Mr. Perkins? Did it out in the shrubbery, back o’ the house. But they never ’ad no children. I’ll say one thing, though, it’s ’igh time the master and mistress got together. And when you look at it, open-minded like, a bath’s a nice, clean place!”