transparent than I had hoped! But how do you come to understand Maria Carrisbrook? That is beyond my comprehension.’
‘Oh well, it was her accomplishments that I first wondered at,’ said Dido.
‘Her accomplishments?’
‘Yes. You see I watched her very carefully during our day at Brooke and I concluded that hers had been a very strange education indeed! Maria Carrisbrook plays and sings; she knows French; she knows how to charm and put people at their ease; she is able to enter into pleasant conversation upon any subject. In all these things she is remarkably accomplished. But there are odd deficiencies. Why, I wondered should she be so very anxious about a cold collation? And why did she not know what entertainments were usual at a summer garden party? Why had she never been instructed in these little matters – or observed how they were done by others?’
Mary was now watching her talk with unabashed wonder. Dido smiled and shook her head. ‘In short, Miss Bevan, I concluded that, although she had been taught how to captivate and delight a man, she had not been taught the business of being a wife.’ Colour rose in Dido’s cheeks. She looked down. ‘Marriage,’ she finished quietly, ‘was not the purpose of her education.’
‘No,’ said Mary. ‘It was not.’
Now the coach passengers were beginning to come out of the inn parlour and the guard with the broken tooth was reminding Mary that they would ‘be off in just two minutes, miss.’
‘And then, of course,’ Dido hurried on, ‘there was the way in which Sir Joshua behaved when I asked him about Mr Henderson. He became very uncomfortable indeed at the sound of the name. As he ought to be! For he knew his own guilt! He knew very well that the establishment the butler had had the audacity to form in Knaresborough House was…a disreputable one.’
‘So,’ said Mary, taking up her cloak, ‘you did not need me to point out the meaning of my letter in Dr Johnson’s essay?’
‘Ah yes! That is what confirmed everything! The use to which the good doctor puts those lines explains everything!’ They stood up. For now the other passengers had all taken their seats and the coachman was picking up his whip, the outriders mounting their horses. The bustle around them helped to overcome the awkwardness of finishing her story. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘it is not lovers, nor apothecaries, to whom he claims the world and its laws are no friend. It is prostitutes.’
As she spoke the word, they both stopped and for a moment looked one another in the eye. Two very respectable young women in their plain morning gowns and simple bonnets, standing amid all the loud busyness of the coach’s departure. Dido held out her hand in farewell; Mary took it and held it fast a moment. ‘You will not expose her, will you?’ she said.
Dido shook her head.
Mary smiled gratefully and turned towards the coach. But, just as she was about to step into it, Dido took her arm. They might never meet again. She must ask the question. ‘Do you really believe,’ she said urgently, ‘that you and Maria Carrisbrook are so very alike?’
Mary pulled the travelling cloak about her; she looked up at the coach and seemed to see in it everything that lay before her: the journey; Yorkshire; her future of laborious duty and mortification. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘After all, Maria and I are not so very alike – we have made different choices.’
‘But if you had chosen differently? If you had married Mr Lansdale?’
Mary said nothing. She turned away and climbed up into the coach. Dido pressed forward to the window, hoping still for an answer. But now the door was being closed, the horn was blowing, the harness creaking as the horses strained against it. Mary’s pale face at the window only smiled; she raised her hand in farewell and Dido was forced to step back as the great vehicle lumbered into motion.
When the coach had rumbled and clattered out of Richmond, Dido walked slowly to her seat beside the lime-walk. And there she was soon engrossed so deep in contemplation of all that had happened in the last few weeks as to leave her insensible of time and of everything passing around her.
The true cause of Mrs Lansdale’s death must create a deep impression upon any thinking mind. For though no one was guilty of her murder, here were four people to be blamed with neglecting her and wishing her out of the way – four people who had each gone a little way towards that terrible extremity of selfishness which is murder. And, besides all this, was that other shameful crime which had been carrying on in the very heart of respectable society.
Here was more than enough to occupy her thoughts! But, as she sat there in the breezy sunshine, her mind was less occupied with such moralising than with the extraordinary behaviour of Miss Bevan – and with the belief which had prompted that behaviour: the belief that there was an affinity, a fellowship, even, subsisting between herself and the Misses Henderson. Her silence at the final moment of parting – what had it signified?
Did Mary Bevan truly believe that if she had married Mr Lansdale she would have been as guilty as those women…? And guilty of the same crime? Was this not principle run mad? Dido remembered how, when they had talked in Mrs Midgely’s parlour, she had been troubled by the extreme delicacy of Miss Bevan’s feelings. She had worried then that such refinement would not make the girl happy. And so it had proved…
But… But she found she could not dismiss the matter so easily. For phrases that Mary had spoken would recur. ‘I do not believe I could ever confide in a man again,’ and, ‘I would have nothing to give but a pretence of affection.’
…And there was truth in her words. If one could not confide in one’s partner in life – if there was no trust, no honesty, how could there be genuine attachment? What could there be but a pretence of affection?
And what was it but a pretence of affection which the young ladies had offered to the gentlemen who visited the establishment in Knaresborough House?
When her thoughts had reached such a point as this it was not to be wondered at that Dido’s cheeks should first become red and then turn pale, nor that she should hurriedly put her hand to her brow in an effort to still the raging of her brain.
But to the man who was now standing beside her, knowing nothing of the ideas passing in her head, her appearance was that of a woman upon the point of swooning.
‘Good God! Miss Kent, are you unwell?’
She looked up to see William Lomax bending over her: his expression all tenderness and concern.
‘Yes, yes, I thank you. I am quite well. Just…’ One did not, after all, like to dispel such pleasing concern entirely, ‘just a little faint.’
He sat down beside her and spoke with considerably more gentleness than might have been expected from their parting upon the terrace at Brooke. ‘I came in search of you,’ he said. ‘I did not like to leave Surrey without first bidding you farewell.’
‘That is very kind of you.’ She lowered her eyes, unable to meet his solemn gaze from an apprehension that her recent shocking thoughts might somehow be discernable in her face. ‘And I am very glad to have this opportunity of saying goodbye – and, of course, of thanking you for the service you did me in talking with Mr Vane.’
He assumed his gravest, most dignified look. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was a distasteful business; but it had the desired outcome. It would certainly seem that you were right in suspecting him.’
Dido said nothing.
He studied her face a while. ‘Miss Kent,’ he began gently, ‘two nights ago – at Brooke – I believe I may have spoken…with more force than perhaps I should. I have been considering the matter and, upon reflection, I recognise that your behaviour…had I seen it in someone else…well, I would still have thought it wrong, but I doubt I would have condemned it so violently. It would not have roused such anger. I beg you to understand that it was only because I was so very concerned for your safety, your well-being…’
‘Please,’ she cried. ‘There is no need to continue. I do not doubt the benevolence of your motives in trying to prevent my investigations; as, I hope, you do not doubt mine in making them. As far as good intentions go, we have
