I awoke in the night to the alarming sensation that I had wandered out of my life into someone else’s disordered world. I had read enough books about time travel to make this seem perilously possible, if in this particular instance undesirable. Yes, it would be intriguing to discover oneself back in a past century, but what as? Certainly not someone compelled to sleep in a nasty chill on a lumpy bed the width of a plank in a room which in the shifting moonlight resembled a cell.
Fortunately, before clutching my throat in terror and watching my eyes roll down my cheeks, I spied the charcoal-edged shape of my suitcase, which Ben had brought into the room. Memory shifted its way out of the murky morass. Before his return to the lower regions to find himself something to eat, he had watched me dutifully swallow the tablets sent up by Tommy Rowley and instructed me tenderly to get off to sleep as quickly as possible. A likely prospect, I had thought, given his evasions when I tried to get him to talk further about Mrs. Malloy’s determination to throw herself into the matrimonial fray. After a brief excursion to a bathroom that belonged in the Dark Ages, I returned to the room, inspected Ben’s cubbyhole where he had deposited his own case, took grateful note that it was blessed with a window, albeit one not much bigger than a table napkin, got out my nightdress, and decided on also wearing my flannel dressing gown into bed. The water bottle was by then cold, but I was suddenly too sleepy to toss it onto the floor. What exactly were those tablets Tommy had given me?
My dreams thrust me into an episodic chaos fraught with impending doom. Up one flight of turret steps and down the next, through mazes and tunnels stripped of color I fled, hampered by feet that wanted to go the other way, knowing that beyond every locked door waited something even more unspeakable than that which padded silently behind me. At the moment of waking, I realized that the fog had liquefied and was spreading in puddles with hideously distorted human faces around my ankles.
Now, having somewhat regained my bearings, I discovered what had prompted that specific. My feet and legs were chillily damp. The cause didn’t take prolonged pondering. The hot-water bottle had leaked. The cause? Either it was so ancient the rubber had perished or (more likely in my opinion) Mrs. Foot had failed to tighten the stopper. Shivering as much from aggravation as cold, I wiggled my way to the top of the bed to sit with my knees drawn up to my chin and try to find a bright spot.
Begrudgingly, I admitted there was one. My headache was gone. Tommy’s tablets had done their work. If Mother Nature had made her contribution, I wasn’t about to thank her. But for her fun and games I wouldn’t be currently incarcerated at Mucklesfeld. That Wisteria Whitworth had endured far worse did nothing to mellow my feelings. I was done with Gothic novels. The former wife who wasn’t quite as dead as the master had hoped-having reinvented herself as the vicar’s repressed spinster sister. The portrait of the cavalier in the ancestral gallery that came to life on the anniversary of Charles I’s beheading. The… the-my insides buckled-the evil black dog that came hurtling through the window to land on the bed of a woman who was already suffering all the emotional and physical trauma of a leaked hot-water bottle! The mattress bounced, once, twice, thrice, before flopping back like a dead flounder.
I must be imagining the animal’s thunderous leap onto a bed that had only been designed for half a person, not one full one and a dog. This appalling visitation was a delayed reaction to Tommy’s tablets. The black dog with the yellow eyes and stalactite teeth was standard in the Gothic genre. I remembered how the ambience of Mucklesfeld had summoned up the image of one earlier. If any of this were real, Ben would have heard the commotion along with my scream… I was almost sure I had screamed, although in my panic I might have forgotten to do so. I wrapped my arms tighter around my drawn-up knees in a pathetic attempt to squeeze myself into invisibility.
“You do not exist,” I informed the beast sternly. “You are a medicinal complication, for which I intend to sue Dr. Tommy Rowley if he hasn’t fled the country. I am going to close my eyes and when I open them on the count of three you will be gone. One… two… ready for the magic number?”
My children would have been horribly embarrassed by this pathetic performance. Either the moonlight had grown stronger or we were closing on morning, but I could see with painful clarity that he still was there, eyeing me as if for him it was a case of love at first sight. Well, I was far from charmed.
“You did not,” I chanted, “thrust that window free of its faulty latch. What would any real live dog be doing prowling around on a rooftop? I would summon my husband to get rid of you if there were any possible chance that he could see you.”
The look on his face was nothing short of soppy. Head to one side, ears lolling, he began a cheerful pant as though eager to inhale every sweet inflection of my voice. His tail stirred into a wag that increased in enthususiastic speed to that of an orchestra conductor’s baton. I had to blink to keep from becoming dizzy. His eyes, I realized, were not yellow but a melting brown, and I was forced to acknowledge that he actually looked more like a Labrador who lived to fetch slippers and newspapers than the hound from hell. He was wearing a collar, but there were no tags. Reaching out a hand as he inched forward, I stroked his velvet head.
“Okay,” I said, “you are real, but that makes it worse because obviously you’re a housebreaker, probably one with a record a mile long, and if I had any public spirit I would notify the police at once. But let’s pretend the phone isn’t back on, which it may not be.”
He continued to regard me with unstinting devotion. I told him he was shallow and I much preferred cats, they being creatures who preferred to be wooed than woo. What on earth was I to do with him? Should I let him stay as a replacement hot-water bottle until Ben woke and we could escort him downstairs and inquire if he was a member of the household? Surely that had to be the case. Out one window, in through another. And Mucklesfeld, like many ancient houses, must have a good-sized walkway around its roofline. I could have laughed at my silliness had my teeth not begun to chatter. With the window hanging open, I was chilled through despite my dressing gown. But closing the wretched thing, I remembered, would require standing on something and I had earlier decided that the chair was too risky. The only alternative was to drag the bed across the room.
I didn’t see any problem there, but it proved unbudgeable even with the dog off it. Had it been nailed to the floor to prevent the kitchen maid from taking it with her when she ran off with the bootboy? Much as I disliked the idea of waking Ben prematurely-and my watch showed that it was only a little after five-I wasn’t noble enough to climb back and freeze. I was on the point of going to rouse him when I looked again at the wide-open face of the window and came fully back to my senses (such as they are) and faced the truth. No dog that wasn’t foaming at the mouth, mad from being bitten by a rabid wolf, and inclined to leap through fire if it stood in his way, would have hurtled itself off a roof ledge at a pane of glass with sufficient force to release the faulty latch. Besides which, the window opened outward.
There was only one reasonable possibility. The wind. There wasn’t any now, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been a raging gale earlier. Those tablets would have kept me from waking until… as must have happened… the chill was too much even for my subconscious.
“I maligned you,” I informed the dog. “You are not guilty of breaking and entering. The window was open when you came trotting along the roof as any reasonably sane dog might do in the middle of the night. Your reasons are your own.” He accepted my apology with a besottedly rapturous expression and a vast thumping of the tail. Sensing he was about to hurl himself into my arms and lick my face off, I raised a warning finger. “Kindly stay seated. This in no way excuses your leap onto my bed. And don’t go trying to turn the tables and suggest I opened it in a half-sleeping state, because even your fur brain must recognize that I don’t have the reach. Neither does my husband, a man of medium height. Even a six-footer like Lord Belfrey would need a pole hook to open the window.”
The dog cocked his black head, intent on lapping up every nuance. Clearly I could have read off the instructions on a box of scouring pads and he would have been enthralled.
“Even if he could have done so, Ben would not have opened the window without asking me if I wanted to freeze to death. Someone’s wacky idea of a practical joke? Now there’s a merry thought. I’m inclined to think that no one in this house, other than his lordship, is entirely right in the head, which explains you if you live here, but this isn’t quite the same as Mrs. Foot dropping that lamp shade on Mrs. Malloy’s head. There would be maliciousness to anyone creeping in here while I slept…” I was brought to a halt by the memory of the Metal Knight reaching its glinting hands toward my throat. “But let me not dismiss Mrs. Foot’s prosaic explanation for that.
“There is Boris, who looks as though he was apprenticed to Dracula,” I conceded to my devoted listener. “Seemingly he takes pleasure in bringing inanimate objects to life. We all have our little hobbies, don’t we? And bear in mind the suit of armor is in the hall, where the full effects of its gyrations can be appreciated by anyone unlucky enough to pass through. Not tucked away in a bedroom not normally in use. Okay! So here I am tonight. But why would Boris make me the specific target of his tricks? It’s Mrs. Malloy, not I, who’s intent on marrying Lord Belfrey and might decide with good reason-should she get the ring on her finger-to sack the staff of three in one fell swoop. As could be the decision of any of the other contestants, given the chance.”
I paused to wonder in all seriousness if this possibility was a cause of hand-wringing concern to Mr. Plunket, Mrs. Foot, and Boris. If I were they, I wouldn’t be counting my chickens, unless Lord Belfrey had made them a sworn promise to stand firm on their remaining at Mucklesfeld. Shame, not the dog, leaped up at me. Glibly I had dismissed them as an odd trio, but suddenly I was thinking of them as people trudging through life, hanging on to survival by a thumbhold, with no place to go if cast out of Mucklesfeld. If Mrs. Foot had got the idea that Mrs. Malloy and I were early arriving contestants, I could understand the irresistible urge to drop a lamp shade-for want of something heavier-on one of our heads.
“Let us be sensible and agree it was the wind that rattled the half-caught latch and blew open the window,” I told the dog. “Mrs. Foot did say that spooky things happened at Mucklesfeld, but much as I’d like to I don’t believe in poltergeists or other wayward spirits.”
No disagreement from him. His melting expression and thumping tail assured me that every word I said was fact. I was as infallible as the Pope and he worshipped every inch of me.
“Let me remind you that I am a happily married woman and as such I am now going to take a peek into the cubbyhole,” I pointed at the door, “and see if Ben’s awake, so he can move that bed under the window. I’m rather surprised that being an early riser, especially when traveling, he hasn’t already emerged to find me talking to you. Knowing me as he does, he normally wouldn’t find that odd, but he’s worried about me at the moment. Did I tell you that I slid into a faint on the hall floor?”
He raised a gentle paw and pressed it against my knee.
“Oh, cheese crackers!” I said. “I’m going to fall in love with you, which is wrong in every way. You’re someone else’s dog, and my cat would threaten to throw himself under a bus if he got wind that something was going on. And you know how cats have a sixth sense about these things.”
He blinked as though squeezing back impending tears, before getting to his paws and following me to the cubbyhole door. It was now quite light, albeit with gray overtones, and I saw immediately that the narrow bed compressed against the right wall was unoccupied. Indeed, it didn’t look as though it had been slept in. The eiderdown, as flat and faded as the one I’d slept under, was unrumpled, no impression that would suggest Ben had even sat down on it while removing his shoes for the night. His suitcase stood upright against the opposite wall. No sign of pajamas or dressing gown. Certain that he had not taken them out, I fought back a ridiculous feeling of abandonment. But mustn’t let the dog see I was upset. He looked young and was bound to be impressionable.
As was I. It didn’t have to be something as drastic as a dog leaping through the window in the middle of the night to startle me witless. An unknown face contorted by emotion suddenly peering at me through the glass was generally enough for my undoing. Which (violent start!) was now the case. I forgot the dog and the possibility of creating a neurosis that would keep him in canine therapy for years. I let out a yelp. The cubbyhole window was very small, making the face appear abnormally large.
The dog emitted a rumble deep in its throat before giving vent to a nice-sized bark. Not vicious-that would be overstating it-but certainly manfully assertive. The face vanished from the window, which was beside the bed across from the door.
“Good boy!”
He sat down with an attitude of pleased accomplishment, tail thumping wildly. But whoever was out there hadn’t vanished in alarm. A hand appeared at the window and a tentative tapping followed.
Another deep-throated rumble. But this one struck me as of the inquiring sort. Was my furry companion wondering if we should let the person in? Had he perhaps realized that both face and hand belonged to someone of his acquaintance? His owner, in fact, out on the roof eager to rescue him after searching fruitlessly for a half hour?
“If you’re wrong about this and you’re forcing me into an acquaintance with a violent intruder, you’d better bare those fangs of yours and if necessary eat him or her.” The dirty glass had made it impossible to tell whether the face was that of a man or a woman, let alone recognize it. Having at least made myself clear to the dog, I stared impotently at the window. A cardboard silhouette of a person couldn’t get through it without being folded to the size of an envelope. I would have to return to the other room and pray like Samson for the blessing of brute strength in hope of shoving the bed under the window. Of course there was no saying that the person outside wouldn’t have given up by that time and gone in search of another entry, such as a strategically placed door. Speaking of which, I suddenly spotted one halfway behind the bed, its dirty whitewash merging it almost imperceptibly into the wall. Even in my relief, the thought crossed my mind that there might also be an outside staircase that served as a fire escape. Also, as I raised the iron latch, why hadn’t our visitor knocked on the door?
The dog stood close as I inched the door open as far as it would go, given the protrusion of the bed. It was a relief to behold a flat ledge of at least six feet that was barricaded by a waist-high railing. The only opening in sight provided access to a fire escape in direct line with the cubbyhole window. Pressed tightly against this, hands squeezing the wall, was a woman with dark hair in a suit the color of last night’s fog. She was also wearing court shoes, which despite their sensibly sturdy heels did not look best suited to climbing to dizzy heights. Judging from her compressed profile, I had never seen her before. It was still misty and she was shivering badly from cold, fright, or both.
“Hello,” I said ineptly as the dog inched his nose forward.
“Oh, thank God!” came the whispered reply.
“Would you like to come in?”
The dog added an encouraging woof to this idiotic question but did not rush forward to offer a helpful paw. If she were his owner, he had an inadequate way of showing it.
“I haven’t been able to move, not even to turn my head since reaching the top of the fire escape.”
This explained her not noticing the door no more than three feet away.
“It took everything I had to force my fingers to tap at the glass when I thought I saw movement in the room.”
“I understand; I’m not particularly fond of heights myself,” I said, stepping cautiously toward her after ordering the dog back inside; it would be dreadful if she backed up in panic and went tumbling down the metal staircase. Tommy Rowley might then find himself confronted with a severe head injury and multiple broken limbs if, I shivered, she weren’t killed outright. Two fatal accidents at Mucklesfeld in the space of hours would lead to stories for years-centuries-to come of the ghosts of two women being glimpsed, one emerging behind the other to drift toward the house on nights when it seemed likely the hovering mist would turn into a full-fledged fog.
I felt clammy thinking about it. But anything was better than looking down. Murmuring encouragement, I reached her, succeeded in unclamping her from the wall, and got her into the cubbyhole one inching step at a time, whereupon I speedily closed the door and sat her down on the bed. The dog then proceeded to greet me with ecstatic wagging, but mercifully did not leap up at me. Someone must have trained him not to bowl people over, I thought. And he had been obedient about going inside when told.
The woman looked in need of a stiff drink, but Lord Belfrey had said that he didn’t keep liquor in the house. Anyway, her prim seating-feet together, hands folded in her lap-caused me to sense that she wouldn’t have accepted one if offered. I’m not much of a drinker, but after standing on a roof I would have swigged an entire bottle of brandy. Why on earth had she come up that fire escape?
“I’m Ellie Haskell.” I smiled encouragingly.
“Livonia Mayberry.”
“Feeling any better?” I asked her.
“It’ll take a minute. I just need to breathe.”
“Of course. I’ll go along to the bathroom and bring you a beaker of water.”
“Oh, no! Don’t leave me! I’ll fall apart if left alone.” She had a small, fluting voice that reminded me poignantly of my nine-year-old Abbey.
“Then I won’t budge an inch.” This statement caused the dog to eye me as if witnessing a halo forming around my head. His interest in our visitor appeared only politely social. After a few moments of silence, I was relieved to see that her color looked better. She was rather pretty in the manner of a woman from the 1950s-the perm that was intended to last. No eye shadow or mascara, minimal lipstick, and a powdered nose. Her light wool gray suit, the cream blouse with the Peter Pan collar, and the navy court shoes all spoke of that era.
“Is he yours?” She looked startled at the sound of her own voice.
“The dog? He came in through the window of the room next door where I was sleeping. I thought when I saw you peering in here that you’d come to claim him.”
“I never saw him before tonight… this morning. But I did follow him up the fire escape. It was madness, but I had to-there was no choice. He’d made off with my…”
“My goodness!” Horror prevented my allowing her to continue. “How long were you out on that ledge?”
“I don’t know.” She twisted her hands together. “It seemed forever. Hours, days… weeks.”
“Why didn’t you go back down?” I knew it was a heartless question even as it left my mouth.
“I froze… shut down completely; I even blanked out about my reason for being up there”-she unknotted her hands to point a finger that looked as if it had been permanently bent in the process at the dog. “I don’t think I would have seen him or my gloves if they’d both been right next to me.”
“Your gloves?”
“He didn’t bring them in with him, I suppose?” Despair mingled with pitiful hope showed in her blue eyes. “He made off with them when I got out of the car.”
The dog put his head down on his paws.
I nipped back to my bedroom and checked. “No sign of them,” I said on returning.
A pathetic, whispering sigh. “Mrs. Knox-she’s my next-door neighbor-was right when she said I would be punished for getting mixed up in such a mad scheme. She said only a fool would consider entering in a marriage contest, especially when there was dear Harold waiting so patiently in the wings. He gave me those gloves, and despite everything I can’t bear the thought of losing them. Without them, I’m not sure I exist.” A sharp intake of breath. “I’m so sorry… I’m still not thinking straight. You’ll be one of them… of us, I mean. A contestant.”
“Oh, no!” Not wanting Livonia Mayberry to think I disapproved of her involvement, as the neighbor had done, I explained-hopefully in not too bragging a voice-that I was married. I was about to add that a friend of mine had just been added to the list, but this would have required me to break the news that death had put one of the other contestants out of the running. “My husband and I and our traveling companion ended up here by accident during the fog and Lord Belfrey kindly allowed us to spend the night.”
“Is he… did he seem nice?”
“Very.”
“That’s a relief.”
“And very handsome. The reincarnation of Cary Grant.”
“Really?” She reacted as if she had just heard that the date of her execution had been moved up to this morning and she had been denied the right to choose hanging versus beheading. “I’d hoped he would be quite ordinary. Good-looking men scare me, I always feel so intimidated around them. Harold is short and going bald and he wears glasses with very thick lenses. But don’t get me wrong. I like his looks. He’s my type; my mother said he was and so does Mrs. Knox. Do you think he will be annoyed that I arrived hours ahead of time and have created such a silly disturbance?”
“Harold?”
“No… well, he’s already upset. He told me not to count on his overlooking my wanton behavior when I came crawling back, but I meant Lord Belfrey.”
“Look,” I said, “your showing up on the roof hasn’t upset me. And if you would like to talk your situation through, I’ll be glad to listen.”
“Are you sure,” she was knitting her fingers back together, “that you aren’t dying to get rid me? I won’t stay long, I promise. You will think me a coward, because that’s what I am. All the sense of adventure has been shaken out of me. As soon as I feel steadier, I’m going to get in my car and drive home to Hillsbury.”
I sat down beside her on the bed, and the dog, catching my warning look, lay down next to it. “How did you decide to be a contestant in Here Comes the Bride over Harold’s objections?” It wasn’t hard to picture him and the interfering Mrs. Knox.
“From meeting a woman who had already been accepted. On a day trip to London I ran into an acquaintance from a few years back. She and I had got to know each other a little when my father and hers were in the same nursing home. Mine died first. Hers must have had a difficult time of it at the end because she said she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it when we recognized each other coming out Selfridges. She remembered my speaking about Harold and I told her we were still together after courting for ten years.”
“Most married people don’t stay together anywhere near that long.”
“That’s awfully nice of you to say.”
Ben and I had been lucky, I thought gratefully.
“But lately it had begun to seem as though there’d always be a reason why Harold didn’t think it was the right time for us to get married. All very sensible, but I was forty-one on my last birthday and the other women at the bank where I’m a teller have stopped asking me when we’re going to set a date.” The blue eyes searched mine in appeal. “At the beginning-for the first seven years or so-I was in agreement that we shouldn’t rush into things. It wasn’t as though children would be an option. Harold had made it clear he wouldn’t agree to them. A needless expense is how he put it.”
“Really!”
“He feels the same way about pets. And I have always wanted a cat. But Mummy was allergic to them.”
“Oh dear!”
“But I don’t want to give you the wrong idea about Harold. He’s practical, which is a good thing, and I suppose I’m a dreamer.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said, to which the dog responded with a look of rapt approval.
Livonia Mayberry stared wistfully into space. “Mrs. Knox says that in this day and age I should be glad of a steady man. And I did truly appreciate Harold accepting that with my being an only child I had a responsibility to stay at home and take care of my parents. But they’ve both been gone for over five years.” Her voice cracked. “And after Mummy passed away, Daddy insisted on going into a residential facility. He said it was never his idea to keep me corraled-that was his word-with a couple of fogies, but he’d never been able to go against Mummy.”
“Oh!”
“I didn’t press him on that; but he couldn’t have meant he was afraid of her. She was so sweet. Everyone, including Mrs. Knox next door, thought her absolutely wonderful.”
Don’t we all look better from a distance?
“It was just that she wasn’t strong, and if either Daddy or I were ever a little thoughtless with her she would get terribly worked up and talk about being a nuisance and how it would be better for everyone if she ended it all.”
“How awful!”
“Nothing I said could dissuade Daddy from going into Shady Oaks.”
“And that was where you first met the woman you met again outside Selfridges, who told you about Here Comes the Bride?”
Livonia Mayberry stopped twisting her hands and sat motionless, her expression blank, her lips moving stiffly. “Yes. She said she had heard about it from a friend of hers who had come across it. She said the friend was a lot more adventurous than she was, but she was lonely after the breakup of a long relationship and sufficiently intrigued that she looked up the site on her computer and decided there was nothing to lose. It was a surprise, she said, to be notified that she had been accepted.”
“What made you decide to give Here Comes the Bride a try?”
“Harold and I had an upset that evening. I was late with his dinner due to missing the train I’d hoped to catch coming back from London. He’s in the habit of coming to my house for his evening meals three times a week as well as Sunday lunch. And really-I know this sounds boastful-I’m quite a good cook and always try to provide something tasty and nutritious with plenty of roughage. Harold is adamant about roughage.”
He would be! I mentally conveyed this snide thought to the dog.
“But that evening he complained that the runner beans were undercooked-I’d had to hurry them because he gets upset if we don’t eat promptly at six thirty, especially if he has to go back to the office afterwards. Which has happened more frequently over the years as he’s gone up in his job.”
A high-rise window cleaner or a crane operator? I’d concede their claim to the dizzy heights, but somehow I didn’t picture Harold as the fearless outdoor type.
Livonia Mayberry returned my look of inquiry. “He works as an accounts supervisor for a firm that manufactures hardware for doors. Sometimes he accuses me of not understanding the pressure he’s under… the responsibility, having to constantly check that those under him are doing what they are supposed to do.”
“Being a bank teller must bring its headaches, too.”
“Thank you. It does. But Harold is a worrier; he’ll talk for hours about someone having moved a paperclip on his desk and what could have been behind it. Sometimes, disloyally, I’ve wanted to tell him he might be just a little bit neurotic. And that particular night when he went on and on about the undercooked green beans and that there wasn’t a proper pudding-just some jam tarts from Sainsbury’s-I felt ready to…”
“Throw a paperclip at him.”
The dog grinned up at me, but Livonia Mayberry did not crack a smile “… tell him what I’d heard the girls at the bank saying.”
“Which was?”
“That I must be blind as a bat not to realize that he was stringing me along because of the free meals and all the other things I did for him-taking his clothes to the cleaners, mending and altering, doing the shopping for when he ate at his flat, to which I was rarely invited. That all those evenings when he said he had to go back to the office he was really seeing someone else… possibly several different women. But I couldn’t get any of it out. I knew I would go to pieces if I tried. After he had gone, I just sat wishing desperately that I had a dear little cat so I could hold on to it and cry all over its fur. And the next morning I went on the Internet at work, during my lunch break, of course, and found the site for Here Comes the Bride. I felt I had to do something… anything to force Harold into a decision about our relationship.”
“How did he take the news when you were accepted?”
“At first he thought it was a joke-a very bad joke-and I was about to cave in and say that was all it was and that I was sorry, when he called me a tart… a repressed tart of the Victorian spinster variety, incapable of a normal sexual relationship, and he shouldn’t be surprised that this was what he got for his patience in allowing me to keep him at arm’s length all those years.”
“Brutal.”
“And unfair. He’d never given any indication that he was… eager to get me into bed.” She blushed at the three letter word. “Sometimes I did wonder at his restraint. Never more than a kiss goodnight. I know the girls at the bank think it all very peculiar, but I always assumed he had old-fashioned morals and… perhaps a low libido. Mummy always said that men set the pace. And I would never have dreamed of broaching the subject and making us both uncomfortable.”
“Did he break things off?”
“Not exactly. He said he’d have to think long and hard about giving me a second chance when I wasn’t the selected bride, which I wouldn’t be because no lord of the realm-however desperate to find an unpaid housekeeper-would pick me.”
Why commit himself to giving up all those free meals and other entitlements? I placed a hand on her arm. “Oh, Livonia! I wish I could have been there to punch him in the nose for you. But,” thinking it best to wrench the subject away from that cruel scene, “back to those gloves that my doggy friend made off with; you said Harold gave them to you.”
“A couple of years ago at Christmas.” Her face unfroze and tears melted her blue eyes. “It was such a lovely surprise; usually he gave me a wall calendar. Mrs. Knox said she couldn’t think of anything more thoughtful, but the gloves-navy blue leather-I just couldn’t believe he’d got the fit so right. I’ve always been a little vain about my hands.” She held them out-nicely shaped, with slim fingers and oval nails coated with clear varnish. “Mummy said once that they were the prettiest thing about me.”
How flush with the compliments!
“I know it sounds silly,” Livonia looked more directly into my eyes than she had yet done, “but sometimes on nights when I was feeling down about how things were going with Harold I would take the gloves to bed with me and sleep with them under my cheek. When I set off in the car at a little after two this morning, I wore them not just because my hands were cold but because they made me feel that I hadn’t completely burned my boats. What perhaps I haven’t made clear is that even if by the longest of chances Lord Belfrey chose me for his bride, I wouldn’t agree to marry him. I’d thank him, then tell him he’d be much better off with the runner-up. I just had to-and call it spite, that’s what Mrs. Knox did-show Harold that I’d been his doormat long enough.”
“And quite right, too!” The dog added applause by thumping the floor with his tail.
“But as soon as I set off, all the courage I’d squeezed up by talking to myself for hours began to seep away. I couldn’t believe I was doing something so completely out of character. Yet I kept on driving.” She paused. “I expect you’re wondering why I allowed myself so long to get here, arriving hours before the appointed time, but I was afraid of getting lost-my sense of direction isn’t good and I’m a nervous driver.”
“Did you run into last night’s fog?”
“A few patches of mist, but not enough to terrify me, and there wasn’t a horrible amount of traffic. For once in my life I didn’t make one wrong turn, so there I was parked outside the gates with the sun not yet up. I knew I’d have to take off again before someone looked out a window and came down to investigate and I’d come across as a pitiful idiot. But my legs were shaking and I was afraid I was going to faint.”
“I’ve been there,” I said in heartfelt tones.
“So I got out of the car to breathe in the fresh air, and after a moment took off my gloves to feel if my face was perspiring. I had them in one hand when he,” pointing at the dog, “was suddenly there… racing around me in circles. My head started spinning and I dropped the gloves and he grabbed them up. I tried to tell him to put them down, but nothing came out, and the next second he’d raced off down the drive with them. I suppose I flipped. I was never a runner-Mummy said nice little girls shouldn’t run and even when I had to be in a race at school I walked.”
“Same here,” I said. “I’d have been last either way.”
Livonia Mayberry inched her hand toward mine to touch my fingertips. “But this morning I did run, if you could call it that, and every few yards or so he’d turn back and look at me and I had this mad thought that he was laughing at me-the way I knew some of the girls at the bank did-and I actually screamed at him to stop. Which of course made him take off faster than ever.”
“Bad boy!” I told the miscreant, who abjectly licked my foot, causing Livonia to back up on the bed. “You’re sure he still had the gloves in his mouth at that point?”
She nodded. “We reached the end of the drive, which seemed a mile long, and came to a low wall; he went through an opening and started to go down the slope. It looked steep even in the early morning light, and I could see that there were a lot of stones and rocks among the undergrowth, but didn’t think about wrenching my ankle. All I thought was that if he dropped the gloves down there, I might not be able to find them. The thicket at the bottom looked like a wilderness.”
I was momentarily distracted by the sober realization that this was probably the place where Suzanne Varney’s car had taken its fatal plunge.
“Fortunately, he turned back and bounded off across the lawn. There was no way I could have got near to catching up with him, even if the ground had been level; besides, it was like an obstacle course, with overgrown flowerbeds popping up in front of me. He stopped close to the building, and when I came panting up, I saw the fire escape. He gave a bark that sounded like”-she winced at the memory-“a ghoulish chuckle, and up he went.”
“But wait a minute,” I said slowly. “If he barked, he must by then have dropped the gloves.”
The blue eyes stared at me in stunned amazement. “I didn’t think! I… you know the rest. Harold would say this proves that I shouldn’t be let loose a mile from home.”
“Rubbish!” I said, rising from the bed. “I’m getting dressed and we’re going down that fire escape to find those gloves. I think you do need them for the time being, as a reminder of just how little you got out of your relationship with Harold and how much more is waiting for you now you’ve escaped his clutches.”
“But I can’t stay here. When Lord Belfrey finds out about my foolish antics, he wouldn’t want me as one of the contestants. He’s in search of a sensible woman, capable of keeping her head at all times.”
“I don’t believe he’d blame you an iota for going after your property.” His lordship’s charming… captivating image rose before me. “If this is his dog, he’d be the one making the apologies. Anyway, how’s he to know anything about it if you don’t want him to? I’m not going to tell him and neither, I’m sure, will our naughty friend.”
The dog appeared to take this designation as a compliment.
“You’ve been so kind.” Livonia’s voice trembled. “But I’m still so shaken, I think I’ll have to go back home.”
“Is that what your father would think best? You’ve told me how important it was to him that you make a new life for yourself. Maybe he thought that would mean marriage to Harold, but are you sure of that? What if he hoped you would spread your wings in an entirely new direction?”
She stared at me, her face solemn. “Mrs. Knox says that both Mummy and Daddy would be aghast by my present behavior. But I have the feeling that Daddy always wished that he’d had it in him to take more chances in life. And I don’t think he liked Harold all that much.”
“Then stay for him.”
“Perhaps if you were going to be here for the week.”
The imploring look got to me. If ever anyone needed someone in her corner, it was this woman. Yet even if I were to think about staying on, I couldn’t imagine Ben going for the idea. True, his parents would be more than willing to continue holding the fort at Merlin’s Court and the children would delight in the additional time with their grandparents. My cousin Freddy would cope at Abigail’s on his own. But Ben would not wish to impose any longer than necessary on his lordship’s hospitality. And why would Lord Belfrey want two extra people hanging around during the filming of Here Comes the Bride?
“You won’t be alone with strangers,” I said gently. “Your friend will arrive in a few hours with the other contestants.”
“But she isn’t a friend,” replied Livonia. “Suzanne Varney is no more than an acquaintance. Very pleasant but…” She stared at me, obviously seeing the shock in my eyes. “What is it? What have I said?”
There was no getting round it. I had to tell her.
“Dead!” she whispered. “I can’t believe it!”
“But it’s true.” I put my arms around her and felt no resistance. “A terrible tragedy. You, on the other hand, are here with the promise of a future ready to unfold.”
So glib in giving advice! Did the restless spirits of Mucklesfeld Manor already have me in their clutches?