madhouse bride 4

 

Chapter 4

 

The morning mail brought a letter for Julian, which was signed simply, ‘Blackman.’ It was an expensive letter, being three full sheets, not crossed at all, and Julian paid for it without hesitation.

He smiled in satisfaction.

The cook and butler were the only servants in continuous service with the Denvers; the cook rarely left his own domain and was oblivious to there even having been a niece living there; and the butler was a long-time crony of Thomas Denver’s. Other servants came and went, the entire complement having been fired on one pretext or another after the death of Henri Bonnet, and replaced with those who might be expected to be entirely disinterested. A maidservant who had expressed concerns had found herself arrested for theft, which she swore she had not committed; but jewellery was found in her room. The poor girl had been hanged.

“Another life for the greed of those bastards,” growled Julian.

It seemed that the servant turnover remained high, since working for the Denver family was not pleasant. Well, he would see who might be introduced to the household. Robbie would never pass as a footman; Jem would, if Julian could do without him for a while.

Julian intended to see the lie of the land first.

“Robbie! Job for you,” he said, as he went out to the stables. “I’m visiting the Denvers, and I want you to gossip with the grooms.”

“I can do that,” said Robbie.

Julian drove into town, to Thomas Denver’s house, and dismounted, leaving Robbie to take the curricle round to the mews.  The house was not in a prestigious part of town, nor was it as large as some, but it spoke of a degree of wealth. The stormcrow look touched Julian’s face. A family who had sufficient, and who had still intended to steal everything from their harmless young relative.

Julian smiled. The smile was predatory. He ran up the steps to the door, and knocked.  It was only a few seconds before it was opened by a butler in livery.

“Pardon me, but is this the house off Mr. Thomas Denver?” asked Julian.

“Yes, sir,” said the butler.

“Brother of the late Julia Bonnet, née Denver?” asked Julian.

“Yes, sir,” said the butler.

“Ah, excellent, I have found the right place,” said Julian. “Please tell Mr. Denver that I am here about the betrothal arrangement.”

“Betrothal arrangement? What betrothal arrangement?” stammered the butler.

“Hardly any of your business, my man,” said Julian, frowning at such impudence. “Now, you are surely not going to keep me hanging about on the doorstep, are you?”

“N… no, sir, of course not, come right in and take a seat… I’ll take your card in.”

Julian followed the butler on noiseless feet to the parlour, and heard him say, “There’s a Viscount Ravenscar here, he says it’s about the betrothal arrangement.”

“What betrothal arrangement?” said a man’s voice,

“I asked, and he put me in my place, sir,” said the butler.

“The hell! We can’t refuse to see a viscount,” said Denver. “You’d better show him in.”

Julian walked in the door.

“I thought I’d see myself in, now that Mossyface here has had time to explain,” said Julian, offensively. “You can go now,” he said to the butler, who hesitated. Julian whipped out his quizzing glass and stared at him, and the man beat a hasty retreat.

“I… I had no idea you had met our daughter,” said Denver.

“That harridan? Wouldn’t marry her if she was the last person on earth,” said Julian. “I’ve seen her once, that was enough. She won’t be a bridesmaid for my betrothed bride. I’m talking about the arrangement I had with Henri for his girl. Anne, that is. All signed and sealed, and I do apologise that it’s taken me so long to get around it, obviously I will be assuming control of all her finances and properties as Henri asked me to; I’ll need to organise some repairs to her house and take that out of the estate if we are going to use it as a honeymoon venue; I thought we could marry on her eighteenth birthday.”

“B…but you can’t!” squealed Denver.

Julian gave him a frosty look and a scowl.

“You are mistaken; it is all arranged,” he said. “Henri signed her and her estate over to me, with the proviso that her mother, if still alive, should have a home with us for life and an allowance of not less than six hundred a year; however, I understand that Madame Bonnet entered immortality at the same time as her husband.”

“Er, yes, Anne was orphaned completely,” said Denver, mopping his brow with a bird’s eye wipe handkerchief which looked out of place with his sober city garb.

“Well, you may summon my bride, so I may meet her,” said Julian.

“She… she isn’t here at the moment,” said Denver.

“Oh? Where is she?” demanded Julian.

“Switzerland,” said Denver, hastily. “A finishing school.”

“Ah? You can furnish me with the address and I will go and fetch her. Obviously with her duenna, for form’s sake until we are married. I am not sure I can be bothered to wait until her birthday.”

“I… I… the school is a secure place for disturbed girls!” squealed Denver.

“Nevertheless, I have every authority as her lord and master to remove her from it,” said Julian, enjoying himself no end as Denver wriggled like the maggot his white sweating face resembled.

“She may not wish to marry you,” said Denver.

“What has that got to do with it?” said Julian. “Her father and I decided upon it.”

“Is that not rather old-fashioned nowadays?”

“Perhaps,” said Julian. “But it is very French, and the vicomte was French after all. It suits me very well, so I will need nothing but the address from which to fetch her.”

“They… they said she was ill; she will not be able to travel. Indeed, she might have died since we last heard.”

“That would be annoying I want Anne as well as her money; and if this school has been negligent, I will sue them if all I have from it is her money.”

“But… but that goes to her next of kin!”

“Which is me, as her affianced husband. Henri tied it all up quite tightly,” said Julian. “The address.”

“I… er, I do not know it offhand.”

“Then look it up; surely you write to her?”

Denver went and rifled through his papers and wrote something down.

“Here you are,” he passed it over.

Julian looked at it, frowning.

“I am surprised any of your mail reached her,” he said. “For putting the street in English must have puzzled them; Princes Street, it would be something like Kronprinzstrasse, I think,” Julian said. He doubted there even was a street named Princes Street in Bern. Still, one had to give Denver credit for trying. “I will send my man of affairs to get her, so that if she is ill, I do not want to be hanging about waiting for her to recover.  I will go and see her solicitor to assume control of her finances.”

“I… I will contest such a move! My wife and I are Anne’s carers, her family!” said Denver. “There have been expenses….”

“Of course, of course,” said Julian, cheerfully. “My accountant will be auditing everything, for your protection, of course, old boy, we don’t want any nasty or malicious rumours, do we?” he added, with his best smirk. “You have nothing to contest, I’m afraid, Henri’s intentions are clear in the betrothal and prenuptial document.  Well, well, I can’t stay, if Anne isn’t here for me. I’ll be seeing to dressing her and so on from now on as well. Must have her dressed appropriately for a Vicountess; and your wife has no taste if what your daughter wears is anything to go on.”

Denver gobbled.

“Do you think that you can insult me in my own home?” he demanded.

“Well, obviously,” said Julian. “I don’t much like you, and I shall look forward to my bride being under my own roof.  I’ll see myself out.”

He opened the door, and the butler almost stumbled in.

“If you were one of my servants, you’d be out on your ear,” said Julian. “Don’t bother to see me out; you can explain to your master why you were eavesdropping.”

He went to the front door and opened it, and as the butler went into the parlour, he banged it, and slipped back on silent feet.

“Master he says! How dare he speak to me like that!” growled the butler.

“Hush, Wilcox, someone might hear,” said Denver. “What are we going to do? Dr. Clement said the girl has escaped. His man will find there is no school in Switzerland. Does she know about this betrothal?”

“She can’t have done so. She would have presented it to you as an escape if she had known,” said Wilcox, the nominal butler. “Look, she can’t survive on her own. Even if she’s still alive, she must be living on the streets, or stealing and living in barns  outside the metropolis near the asylum. How is she going to go anywhere much? She has no money. If she becomes a whore, that’s just one more whore, and Mister High-and-mighty Viscount Ravenscar won’t touch her then. Tell him you had word that she died and they buried her in Switzerland.”

“But you heard what he said! He inherits her money!”

“It can’t be legal! You’re a blood relative.  But even so, better to lose it than to be caught out defrauding her.”

“It’s a good job I hadn’t found a buyer for the house,” said Denver. “What the hell are we going to do?”

“Insist that she is in Switzerland. And that she died there. Sit tight. Don’t panic, you idiot.”

“It’s all very well for you to talk, everyone thinks you’re just a servant. I’m the one who will be blamed for your scheme.”

“How sad,” said Wilcox. “You jumped at it when I suggested it. And nobody else will take your daughter off your hands.  But that’s now dependent on you contesting that this viscount should get his hands on your brother-in-law’s fortune.”

“Damn you!”

“Better men than you have said that,” said Wilcox.

Julian smiled, grimly, slipped past the parlour door, partly open still, and down the back stairs to the domain of the servants. Here he slipped out of the back door by the servants’ hall, and down the garden towards the mews at the back.  There was a service passageway between the back garden and the mews, and Julian let himself out of the back gate.  A few passages led through to the street on which the mews stood, and he slid through, and wandered into the mews where Robbie was enjoying a heavy wet with the grooms.

“Ah, Hobson, I’m ready to leave,” said Julian.

“Right-o, milord,” said Robbie, draining his glass, wiping his mouth, and setting to work to harness Julian’s bays to his curricle. Julian leaped up, and Robbie got up beside him, arms folded and knees apart as grooms were supposed to sit when not driving. Julian negotiated the narrow street, and headed out for his own house.

“Anything interesting?” he asked.

“Gossipy as old women,” said Robbie. “Miss Anne never got to ride out, or drive, seemingly she was delicate, or so they were told. None of them likes the butler who is too familiar with the master. One of them suggested they were too close in an illegal sort of way, if you take my meaning, so the butler has something on Himself.”

“I fancy it’s more of a business partnership than a, er, romantic one,” said Julian. “I suspect that Denver may be in the habit of animadverting about his brother-in-law’s wealth in front of servants; and that Wilcox, the butler, made a proposal to him, and does all the dirty work.”

“Do you suppose he killed Monsewer Ongri?” asked Robbie, rendering the Frenchman’s name to the best of his midlands ability.

“I don’t know, Robbie; but do you know what? I wouldn’t like to bet that he did not,” said Julian, thoughtfully.

 

Julian asked Robbie in to eat with himself, Anne, Jem, and Meggie.

“Would it give Uncle Thomas the horrors if he received letters from Switzerland?” said Anne. “I know it is impractical to go there, but perhaps we could fake something?”

“I don’t know what the Swiss customs seals look like,” said Julian.

“And do you suppose Uncle Thomas does?” asked Anne.

“That’s a very good point,” said Julian. “Robbie, if you slipped over to France, and put a letter into the mails which had come from Switzerland…”

“If necessary with the ‘Hey, Monsewer, you droppay-vou’d this,” said Robbie.  “I can do that.”

“And now to compose a masterpiece,” said Anne. “As if I’ve been there all this time, and have not a care in the world. They speak French and German there, don’t they?”

“They do,” said Julian.

Anne beamed, and busied herself on a sheet of paper, working out what she was going to say.

“Dear Uncle Thomas and Aunt Amelia,

You may imagine my astonishment when I was called to Mme DuQuensne’s office to be told that my betrothed husband’s man was there. Fancy Papa having managed to make a betrothal with someone as distinguished as Ravenscar!  I am all agog to meet him, and those of my English classmates are just green with jealousy. I am to set out for England within the week, and I am to sail on his lordship’s private yacht! How exciting it all is.

Now, as to general news, Mlle Lebrun still has a permanent sniffle, and it is still irritating, but I am better able to ignore it to study history. We are studying the Plantagenets at the moment, on both sides of the German Sea, and it is extraordinary the amount of betrayal and backstabbing that can go on in any family. Herr Weiner is still as snuffy as ever, but he gives me reason to believe that I am not entirely devoid of musical ability though he suggests I should play only French airs and not to attempt to sully German music with my antics.

I was not responsible for the mouse incident, so do not believe Mme DuQuesne if she says I am. It was not me, and I do not know who it was.

Your niece,

Anne Bonnet.”

“I don’t have a private yacht,” said Julian.

“He doesn’t know that,” said Anne.

“Mouse incident?” he queried.

“I left it to his imagination; I am sure if I was at school with some irritating people, I could find something amusing to do with mice,” said Anne, airily.

Julian laughed.

“Yes, I am sure you could. Now, we need to devise some kind of seal which looks Swiss to add to this, for Robbie to take. What do we know about Switzerland?”

“William Tell, cuckoo clocks, and bears,” said Anne.

“A bear, that’s a good idea, and their flag has a cross,” said Julian. “Robbie! Some carving for you.”

“I can do that,” said Robbie, happily.