CHAPTER SEVEN
When they had returned to Woodend Hall and changed, Mr Gilmorton and Major Barkby adjourned to the library until luncheon. Lord Barkby rarely left his room these days, and it had quickly become the major’s bolt hole, since his mother regarded it as very much a male sanctum.
Mr Gilmorton sipped his sherry and crossed one booted foot over the other. ‘So, how long have you been wooing the widow?’
‘I am not “wooing” her.’ Barkby coloured, and turned away to look out of the window.
‘Looked very like wooing to me, my dear fellow. Not that I am an expert in the petticoat line, but a couple of times it was as if there was nobody else in the room for the pair of you. Mind you, she turned prickly after that. Lovely-looking woman, of course.’
‘She is in mourning.’
‘By convention, yes, but you would have to be a sapskull not to see she has not been going about wringing her hands. I mean, that was when she turned all icy, when I suggested otherwise.’
97‘I have no reason to assume that her marriage was … one of unalloyed happiness.’
‘No, I suppose not. Mind you, better for you for that she is not the widow with the broken heart, eh?’
‘I tell you, I am not wooing her, Gil.’
‘You can tell me whatever you like, my dear fellow, but I have eyes to see and ears to hear, and I have known you longer than either of us would care to recall. When she puts off her blacks, I hope to be wishing you well.’ He sounded very positive.
Major Barkby did not share that optimism, and was trying to be objective, which was very hard when his whole being was thinking subjectively.
He had felt it the moment he turned and saw her: something more than the beauty of her, and to him she was supremely beautiful, from the rich gold of her hair with its glint of copper, to her large grey-green eyes and long, delicate fingers.
Yet to permit oneself to fall enamoured merely of looks was foolish beyond measure, and he was not generally thought a fool.
The first gaze had been at her form, but what had truly captivated him was what he saw within.
She was quick witted, and had shown there was humour in her; he saw courage, and a fierce defensive pride to her.
The prickliness that Henry Gilmorton had noted was a warning to keep off, and thus avoid touching her still raw wounds.
Whatever Dembleby had been like, it was perfectly clear that her marriage had hurt her deeply, and she had channelled all her affection into her daughter.
There, said his objectivity, you have the added complication.
Are you thinking you want to marry her 98because you want to be ‘papa’ to an endearing infant?
Then think again. In a very few years she will be a neat little schoolroom miss with a governess, who appears to recite her catechism, and show off her watercolours.
You have simply encountered the child when most appealing, like a small puppy.
He acknowledged the truth of that, and yet …
There were those who shied from widows with children.
Who, they would say, would want to bring up another man’s child, and be not the sole object of affection for a bride?
As he saw it, Emily Henley had probably not possessed a father, other than as a man who sired her, and he had enough wit to see that mother-love need not mean that a woman had less love available for a spouse.
No, Emily’s existence was enhancing, not off-putting, but he did not seek to be husband to the woman in order to be father to the child.
He was pretty sure he was in love, even after but a handful of meetings, but he was very doubtful that she thought of him in any other way than a friend, and he had an unpleasant suspicion that the last thing she wanted was a new wedding band upon her finger.
If marriage had been so bad, why would she choose it again?
If he offered her his heart would she not, metaphorically speaking, throw it back in his face?
He would have been slightly less gloomy if he had been privy to the widow’s own thoughts.
Louisa Dembleby was in fact torn several ways at once.
She had made it very plain to her parents that she would never remarry, and this had been totally sincere.
What 99madness was it, then, to find the company of Major Barkby so appealing?
He exuded so much trustworthiness, kindness and dependability that she ought to doubt him on principle.
No man could possess such qualities to such a degree.
She was not little Emily, to be won by a kind smile and a caring manner. It must be deep duplicity.
She recalled the weeks of her wooing by Dembleby. He had seemed eager, attentive, always there at her elbow, though with hindsight, was that not as much the dog with the bone warning others off? He had flattered, adored even, and it was all just words, meaningless words.
It was true that the major had not lavished flattery upon her, but he had got under her guard with Emily.
It must be a trick. Yet when their eyes met and that strange feeling of mutual connection was made, he was not adoring.
He was just at one with her, which was strangely unsettling.
It was closer, more intimate, than the physicality of marriage as she had experienced it, which made it indecent. How dare he be so close to her.
Of course, she must be sensible. Elliston Court was not a particularly large estate, but no doubt the farms abutted Barkby land, and they had looked good pasture and soil to her, admittedly inexperienced, eye.
If he was trying to make her succumb to him, it was for her property, and that was Emily’s inheritance.
She ignored the voice that said she could put that in trust for her before entering the married state again.
All in all, she was in a jumble. He was not interested, but was trying to seduce her; he was just being a friend, 100but he got inside her head, and was close to getting into her heart; he was kind, and honest, but deceiving her for his own ends.
She was angry, nervous, frightened and just a tiny bit exhilarated.
Perhaps fortunately for both parties, local gossip had more important things to consider than vague intimations of putative romance.
Lady Simmondley’s house was burgled, a casement window was forced, and her silver candlesticks, two silver trays and an ormolu clock stolen.
She thereafter suffered a severe nervous spasm, considering it pure Providence that had saved her from being murdered in her bed, or, she said darkly, worse.
The local constable, who was more used to intervening when a brawl began in the tavern, or a dispute arose over the ownership of a fowl, was totally out of his depth.
It was Major Barkby who obtained a description of the stolen goods and had it circulated in Frome, although it was far more likely that the goods had gone to unscrupulous dealers in Bath or Bristol.
For one whole week it was the only topic of discussion, and thereafter looked likely to become merely the chance for Lady Simmondley to ‘out-act Siddons’, as Lady Holdenby caustically remarked.
However, ten days later, her own home suffered a similar fate, and this time her footman, who had been woken by the sound of breaking glass, was hit over the head and rendered senseless, being found some time later within a ‘great puddle of blood’, as Mrs Cheddleton reported it.
Since both residences had been those of widowed ladies, she was fervently hoping that the fact that Mr Cheddleton, howsoever mild of temperament 101and short sighted, was still living, would protect her from a similar fate.
Lady Holdenby lost no important silverware, thanks to the criminals being disturbed, though they made off with a bracket clock that did not work and smashed a Meissen figurine that her ladyship said she had long detested.
Her only concern was for the footman, lest his brains be permanently addled.
Once it was ascertained that his concussion and the wound were not going to do irreparable harm, she shrugged off the matter, which other ladies thought showed a sad lack of sensibility.
Lady Barkby, wife of a known invalid, was kept from palpitations by the knowledge that it was equally widely known that her son, a man used to fighting with sabre and pistol, was resident in the family home.
She regarded him as a talisman. For his part, he was trying to work out what other factors might be involved in the selection of victims. He swiftly came to the conclusion that it was not the actual marital state of the house owner, but how many men would be within the house.
Both ladies had elderly butlers, and only one footman.
This eased his mind just a little, since Leece, whilst not looking bellicose, was a young man, and there were technically two footmen at Elliston Court, even if deeper enquiry would show that one was barely seventeen and built like a pea stick.
He spoke with the parish constables, and got them in turn to visit every ale house in their parish, and warn about strangers, strangers who listened, and strangers who asked odd questions, those who had been seen, and those who might appear in the near future.
He told them any reports were to be brought to him.
The constables, 102only too glad to feel responsibility was being taken at a higher level, dutifully came and stood nervously in the library at Woodend Hall, and recited what they had learnt, while the major wrote it down, except for the details of a man whose odd question was why it should be that he was being followed by hedgehogs.