Hidden in the Heart Page 2

  She hoped that Aunt Camilla was already there to meet her. The inn was respectable-looking, but she did not relish the thought of waiting about like a servant.

  She could hear the cries of the hostlers as they hurried to change horses, and the general hubbub of activity as passengers scrambled for a bite of food before the coach departed once more. Fortunately, she had not been there five minutes before an elderly man came up to her, bowed hesitantly, and asked, ‘Be you Miss Bramwell?’

  Lydia nodded, eyeing him appraisingly.

  ‘My name’s Flitt, miss. Come this way, if you please,’ he instructed her, turning toward the inn yard once more. ‘I’ll take you to your aunt.’

  * * * *

  Timidity was foreign to Lydia’s nature, but she did own to a slight frisson of apprehension as they approached the antiquated carriage which stood to one side, away from the frantic bustle surrounding the Mail.

  As she drew nearer, the carriage door, with its faded paint, opened and out stepped a lady who was as different from the aged termagant of Lydia’s imagination as a rose is from a thistle.

  She had supposed that Aunt Camilla would look much like Mama. She was mistaken. Where her mother was short and plump, this lady was tall and willow-thin. Though her clothes were not in the latest fashion, she wore them with an air which lent a touch of elegance. Her face was a pale oval, with dark hair peeping from beneath her poke bonnet and large blue eyes that looked fearfully out at the world. Her lips were caught between her pearl-white teeth at the moment, but Lydia did not doubt that they were as delightful as the rest of her countenance. She was, in fact a beauty. Who would have thought it?

  ‘Aunt Camilla?’ Lydia spoke tentatively, considering that this might, in fact, be someone else who had been sent to collect her.

  ‘Dearest Lydia!’ the lady cried, stepping down to embrace her. ‘Well! This is a happy occasion.’

  ‘You are much prettier than I expected,’ Lydia said with her usual candor.

  Her aunt blushed and looked away. It seemed she was not accustomed to receiving compliments, even from her relations.

  ‘But where is your maid?’ she stammered, casting her gaze around the inn yard.

  ‘I have none.’

  The big blue eyes grew even larger.

  ‘No maid!’ Aunt Camilla was scandalized. ‘What can your mother have been thinking? You are far too young to travel alone! I am astonished.’

  In vain did Lydia attempt to explain that it was impossible for her parents to afford to pay the expense of sending a maid with their daughter. Her protests that she was a sensible girl fell on ears which refused to hear. It simply was inconceivable to the older woman that any girl of seventeen could be let loose on her own to traipse about the English countryside without doing irreparable damage to her reputation and very likely producing a national calamity.

  ‘It is difficult to imagine,’ Lydia said at last, ‘what harm was likely to come to me on the common stage between London and Lewes.’

  ‘You do not know the wickedness in this world, dear child,’ Aunt Camilla commented.

  Her dramatic utterance led Lydia to believe that she had been reading Mr Walpole or Mrs Radcliffe. Further conversation only confirmed this suspicion. Her aunt had a strong romantic tendency which her niece did not possess. At the same time, it seemed to Lydia that she was inordinately shy and retiring. After her initial homily on the danger which travel posed to innocent young females, she subsided into an uncomfortable silence, apparently at a loss for anything else to say.

  ‘This is a very fine carriage,’ Lydia said at last.

  ‘Oh yes!’ Camilla seemed relieved to find some topic of conversation. ‘Mrs Wardle-Penfield was very generous to suggest that I might have the use of it.’

  ‘It is not your own, then?’ Lydia was surprised.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Her aunt was shocked at the suggestion. ‘I cannot afford the expense of keeping a carriage. Besides, there is no purpose in keeping one. I live at the edge of the village, and everything needful is easily got to on foot.’

  ‘Mrs Wardle-Penfield is a friend of yours?’ Lydia enquired.

  ‘Well...’ Aunt Camilla chose her words carefully. ‘She is a neighbor, and one of the - the pillars of Diddlington society.’

  A little more coaxing and Lydia deduced that the lady in question was a managing female who had practically bullied her aunt into using her carriage so that the generous bounty of Mrs Wardle-Penfield could be trumpeted with perfect truth to all the surrounding countryside.

  ‘It was most kind of her,’ Lydia commented.

  ‘Oh, she is always ready to offer help to those in need,’ Camilla said, rather too quickly.

  ‘No doubt she is well known in the village.’

  ‘Indeed she is,’ Camilla said emphatically, giving the impression that the woman could empty the high street by her mere presence there.

  * * * *

  By the time they reached her aunt’s house, Lydia’s imagination had formed a fair portrait of her aunt’s world. Her acquaintance comprised perhaps two dozen families. Beyond that, there were the servants and tradesmen, the vicar and the apothecary, and their attendant children and relations. London was a place which everyone knew of, but few had actually seen. All was quiet and uneventful.

  Still, Lydia looked forward to meeting these various inhabitants of Diddlington, and felt perfectly satisfied with her lot. Louisa’s giddy round of parties and her determined efforts to climb the Jacob’s Ladder of society would not have pleased her half as well, nor would a rented house in London have been so inviting.

  Aunt Camilla’s cottage, while not precisely a commodious residence, was more than adequate for a spinster and her niece, with three very comfortable bedchambers. Two of these, of course, were scarcely ever occupied. There was a large parlor, which received plenty of light through two south-facing windows, and a small but neat kitchen. Her aunt boasted only two servants: a nearsighted housekeeper, Mrs Plumpton, and Charity, a maid of all work who did not live in but divided her duties between Aunt Camilla and Mrs Isherwood on the next street.

  Lydia’s bed was soft and warm, and most conducive to a night of uninterrupted sleep. She was certainly much better off where she was. If it offered no excitement, at least her memories of her brief season here were likely to be pleasant ones. No tread of violence could disturb this tranquil English idyll.

  Chapter Three

  COUNTRY PLEASURES

  Lydia was one who generally arose early in the morning. This was just as well, as she soon found that country hours were different from those in town and in the village of Shepperton, just on the edge of London, where her family resided. ‘Early to bed and early to rise’ was the maxim here.

  By nine o’clock the next morning, she had breakfasted and dressed with the help of her aunt’s maid. She then accompanied Aunt Camilla on a promenade along the high street. This, it seemed, was a ritual which all the most prominent citizens followed.

  Lydia counted some twenty pedestrians as they made their way toward the haberdashery where her aunt meant to purchase some ribbons to trim a hat which wanted that special something to make it stand out among the chapeaux of her acquaintance. Twenty persons could be considered a crowd on the streets of Diddlington, Lydia supposed.

  However, her aunt was eager to assure her that the town was rising in prominence these days. This was due to its favorable location on the banks of the Ouse between Piddinghoe and Tarring Neville. With easy access to both Lewes and Brighton for the popular races, the Golden Cockerel Inn had become quite the fashionable place for gentlemen to deposit those ladybirds whose plumage might be too colorful and attract unwanted attention in the larger towns. Aunt Camilla did not, of course, put things quite so crudely to her young charge. Unfortunately, Lydia was perfectly capable of gleaning as much with very little effort.

  Still, on this occasion, the only persons they encountered were all very well known to Camilla. Jeremiah Berwick, the farrier, nodded and
smiled a greeting, and several other gentlemen doffed their hats and gave an appreciative glance at her aunt’s trim figure.

  They entered the haberdasher’s, which was actually quite large and well stocked for a country establishment, and soon found the ribbons which they sought - in a shade of blue to match her aunt’s eyes. Lydia was more interested in a small display of powders and salves used to polish riding boots.

  They had just concluded their purchase when the sound of the door opening and a distinctive voice hallooing attracted their attention.

  The new patron was, in fact, Mrs Wardle-Penfield herself. She was a woman with a definite presence. Her personality was so strong as to be almost palpable, and she did not merely enter a room but seemed rather to invade it and take its inhabitants captive at once.

  Poor Aunt Camilla was quite overcome, stammering out her eternal gratitude for the unparalleled kindness and condescension of her would-be patroness in permitting the use of her carriage. Lydia, upon being introduced, added her own more quiet thanks.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Mrs Wardle-Penfield barked at them. ‘What use have I for the carriage in this town? If I didn’t need it to visit my brother in Hampshire now and again, I’d have sold it years ago. Not that my precious brother ever puts himself to the trouble of visiting me, mind you.’

  ‘Oh, indeed—’ Camilla began, apparently feeling the necessity for some comment. She need not have bothered, however, for the lady paid not the least heed to her.

  ‘How many times,’ she cried, her voice resounding through the shop as if she were singing an aria at Covent Garden, ‘I have told my husband that the carriage is a ruinous waste of money, I do not know. After all, one can hire very fine vehicles at reasonable rates for the occasional jaunt. But the poor dear is so old-fashioned. He insists that our standards should not be lowered to that of cits and assorted mushrooms.’

  ‘I think you are very wise, ma’am,’ Lydia said sweetly, ‘to draw attention to your superior station. If you did not, who would ever know of it?’

  Mrs Wardle-Penfield frowned, not certain whether or not she should construe this as a compliment. In the end she evidently decided that it could be nothing else, and continued with her soliloquy.

  ‘I am sure, my dear Miss Denton,’ she said with a pointed look, ‘that you will want your niece to become acquainted with the most unexceptionable members of our little community. You shall both attend my card party on Friday next.’

  This was not an invitation, but a command. The lady proceeded to enumerate the pleasures which awaited them at her residence. By the time she had passed from the quality of her refreshments to the weave of the carpet in her drawing room, Lydia was quite exhausted and Aunt Camilla no longer even bothered to nod her assent at every word, but merely stared stupidly at her tormentor, abandoning the struggle.

  From this social purgatory they were rescued by the arrival of a large and rather awkward young gentleman, who seemed curiously impervious to the mesmerizing power of the older woman. This was a trait which endeared him to Lydia at once.

  ‘Good morning, ma’am!’ he called jovially to Mrs Wardle-Penfield. ‘How d’ye do, Miss Denton?’

  ‘You are very cheerful this fine morning, my lad!’

  ‘Nothing to mope about, Mrs P,’ he answered the old lady, who seemed none too pleased at being thus addressed.

  ‘Have you been introduced to Miss Denton’s niece?’ Mrs Wardle-Penfield enquired.

  ‘No,’ he answered, ‘but I don’t mind if I do now.’

  Aunt Camilla performed this necessary office, and Lydia received a hearty handshake from the gentleman, whose name was John Savidge. She judged him to be about her own age, with sandy hair cropped fashionably short and wide-open brown eyes. His suit was well-cut, though probably not by a London tailor. It was just a trifle too comfortable-looking for that.

  ‘How does your grandmother get on?’ Aunt Camilla asked him. ‘She still lives in Piddinghoe, does she not?’

  ‘Yes indeed, ma’am.’ He gave a devilish grin. ‘Not a day goes by that she doesn’t threaten to cock up her toes, but I tell her she’ll live to dance on all our graves.’

  The young man’s irreverent manner clearly did not suit Mrs Wardle-Penfield, who soon spied another victim passing outside the shop window and took herself off in pursuit of fresh sport.

  Lydia and her aunt followed her outside, but mercifully their path led in the opposite direction. They were soon joined by Mr Savidge, who had concluded his own purchase and whose long strides easily bridged the short distance between them.

  Almost as soon as he came up beside them, Lydia caught sight of a very distinctive physiognomy across the street from them.

  ‘It’s Nose!’ The words came out before she could stop to consider.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Aunt Camilla turned to her with a look of wonder.

  ‘Whose nose?’ Mr Savidge asked, equally surprised, but apparently not so apprehensive of her sanity as her aunt clearly was.

  Despite herself, Lydia blushed.

  ‘The gentleman across the street,’ she confessed, being careful not to point or stare.

  The other two directed their gaze to the opposite side of the high road. Nose was engaged in a conversation with another man who was certainly much better-looking and quite a few years younger.

  ‘It is Monsieur d’Almain!’ Her aunt seemed suddenly rather breathless, the color rising to her cheeks.

  ‘I think, ma’am,’ Mr Savidge said with a smile, ‘that she is referring to the other gentleman.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He was in the seat opposite me on the Mail,’ Lydia informed them hastily. ‘I - well, I could not forget his face.’

  ‘I should think not, indeed!’ John Savidge agreed. ‘With that great big thing stuck in the middle of it.’

  Lydia found it difficult to suppress a fit of giggles at his words, which so exactly corresponded with her own impression. However, while she struggled to retain command of herself, Nose bowed to the other gentleman - Monsieur d’Almain, it would seem - and proceeded along the pavement. At that moment, d’Almain became aware of their presence, doffed his own hat and bowed toward them. He did not attempt to join them, but turned and walked away.

  ‘Not a bad fellow, for a Frenchman,’ Mr Savidge commented. ‘Keeps to himself most of the time, but a real gentleman.’

  ‘Indeed he is,’ Aunt Camilla said, with what Lydia deemed a degree of fervor quite disproportionate to the subject.

  ‘Well, I must be off,’ John said gaily. ‘Good day, ladies.’

  So saying, he entered the inn by which they were passing.

  ‘Who is he?’ Lydia asked when he had left them.

  ‘John?’ Aunt Camilla asked, somewhat distracted.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘His father owns the inn,’ her aunt explained.

  ‘He seems very pleasant.’

  ‘Most good-natured,’ she agreed, glancing behind them and to the left, where the two gentlemen had so recently been standing. ‘Quite wealthy too. It’s a pity that his family’s fortune is acquired from trade.’

  ‘What fustian!’ Lydia dismissed this social blemish in two disdainful words.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Lydia eyed her aunt curiously. She was hardly attending to what was being said, lost in a strange reverie. It was not difficult to connect this with the appearance of Monsieur d’Almain.

  Smiling to herself, Lydia considered that her morning had been far more eventful than she had anticipated. She had received an invitation to a card party (even though it was issued by an old harridan), been introduced to an attractive young gentleman, and discovered what appeared to be a budding romance between her aunt and a mysterious Frenchman. It could not be more promising!

  The countryside was plainly more entertaining than most people guessed. Her visit might be many things, but it would not be dull.

  Chapter Four

  BLOODY MURDER

  It was the unanimous opinion of
all who attended Mrs Wardle-Penfield’s card party that the occasion was a resounding success. Not that Mrs Wardle-Penfield would have tolerated anything else, but this time she did not need to bully anyone into expressing unqualified approval.

  It was not the indifferent skills of the various players which produced such a favorable verdict. Neither whist nor speculation could animate the guests who had anticipated having to endure what could not be cured. The stakes were low, though not so low as the expectations of the select company which gathered in the large drawing-room of Fielding Place on that memorable evening.

  What ensured that nobody departed dissatisfied with their lot was a rumor so incredible and so horrifying that several games were suspended altogether in the recounting of its manifold details. These became so elaborate and were related with such conviction that it was not very long before the truth was lost beneath an avalanche of fancy. For this was no ordinary on-dit involving pilfering by a servant nor the latest escapades of the Carlton House set. Neither was it the far-off rumblings of fear that Bonaparte might have escaped from St Helena to once again wreak havoc on the Continent. This was closer to home - indeed, on their very doorstep. And this was no light matter. It was murder.

  Lydia and Aunt Camilla had no inkling of what awaited them as they prepared for the party. Lydia derived some amusement from her aunt, whose nerves were quite overset at the thought that she might commit some dreadful faux pas in the presence of her illustrious hostess. She tweaked every curl in her simple coiffure, smoothed every wrinkle in her wheat-colored satin gown at least a dozen times, and murmured dire prognostications about the weather. It seemed a grim inevitability that the heavens must open at the very moment that they were making their way on foot to their appointed destination. The deluge would cover them with mud from head to foot, making them the laughing stock of the other guests.

  No such terrors dampened the spirits of her niece. Lydia surveyed herself practically in the mirror above the small mantel in the parlor. Her hair curled naturally, so she had little recourse to hot irons. Aside from this boon, there was little remarkable about her appearance. The creamy muslin of her gown made her skin appear rather sallow, and her gloves were a trifle worn, but she was satisfied that most would not notice these defects and, if they did, there was nothing to be done about it in any case. One must be philosophical, after all. It was not as if she were a beauty.