Read Online The Dead Queen's Garden by Nicola Slade - Free Book Online Page B

to the bay horse, so much more elegant and sleek than the fat pony she and Lady Frampton were accustomed to when they used the pony chaise. They set off at a sedate pace, skirting the green of Finchbourne village, and down Pot Kiln Lane opposite. It seemed highly unlikely that the murderer would be lurking around the village when surely he would have made off towards Southampton, say, to disappear into the busy alleyways near the docks, but she could not give Lady Frampton an anxious hour or two by disobeying her. Having reluctantly accepted the old lady’s dictum that Charlotte must uphold the honour ofFinchbourne Manor and the Richmond family, she was arrayed in her second-best winter dress, a becoming golden-brown, silk and merino blend.
    Charlotte’s plain gowns were the despair of Lily Richmond. ‘I’m tall and skinny,’ she tried to explain to her sister-in-law. ‘Although, if you insist, I’ll admit to being just passable, I’m far too lanky to look well in feminine fripperies. It’s all right for you, Lily, you’re little; frills and flounces become you. I’d look like the village maypole decked out in that pink dress you wanted me to have.’
    Gran approved today’s outfit, the high neck trimmed with a ruched satin-ribbon which, like yesterday’s dress, was pinned with Lady Meg’s gold acanthus leaf brooch. To keep out the cold, Charlotte wore a warm coat and carried a shawl offered by Lady Frampton. ‘My ’usband’s second cousin’s daughter sent it, silly wench, as if I ’aven’t worn naught but black this thirty years. You take it, young Char, it’ll go with that dress of yours.’ The brown and yellow paisley swirls were not really to Charlotte’s taste but she was glad of the warmth, and Gran was right: it did go with the brown merino.
    If only Will and Ma could see me, she sighed, picturing their astonishment at her prosperous appearance.
‘As fine as five-pence,’
Will would have exclaimed, and followed it by circling round her, amused and admiring, and pointing out that Char
‘was a proper lady now, and no mistake.’
Ladylike, she corrected that laughing ghost. I am swathed in fur rugs against the cold and dressed as a lady should be, with due decorum and no vulgar outward display, but I’m not sure I’m really a lady, not yet. Her eyes danced at the memory of a younger, coltish Charlotte running barefoot along a deserted southern shore, scantily clad in a faded muslin dress that had seen better days. The amusement waned as she recalled herself to the present.
    No more blissful, childish ignorance, she scolded herself; no more looking backwards and sighing for the moon, yearning for those who were dead and gone this many a day. This afternoon I am the young, respectable, widowed Mrs Richmond from Rowan Lodge, kin to the Squire at Finchbourne Manor, with a wardrobe full of becoming dresses, and I am off to visit a real, live lady. Aladyship, no less and, according to Lily Richmond, a lady who was descended from a long line of impeccably-connected but impoverished nobles, hence her marriage to the wealthy but undistinguished Lord Granville. (Lily had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the ins and outs of the nobility and enjoyed nothing more than poring over the London papers to discover who was engaged to whom and whether or not some long-awaited heir had yet made his appearance. As Barnard, with bewildered pride, had told Charlotte, ‘Lily knows all about everyone in the stud book.’)
    When the carriage turned into the drive, Charlotte felt a slight shiver of apprehension but dismissed it at once, irritated at her silliness . Her eyes opened wide in astonishment as the brougham drew up before the front door of Brambrook Abbey. Someone in the not too distant past had manifestly fallen prey to an architect who favoured the Gothic style in country houses. Barnard Richmond had mentioned that the Abbey was a relatively new establishment, dating back a mere sixty or so years, so Charlotte