Page 68 of A Baron's Disguised Lady
They talked like this for a while longer. Lavinia was not offered tea or any other refreshment, and after an hour or so, she rose to her feet, thanking Penelope for her time.
“You mustn’t keep blaming yourself. It won’t help, and it won’t bring Gwendolene back. As for Lord Bath, well… perhaps it wasn’t meant to be,” Lavinia said.
She had said nothing of her own involvement with the errant aristocrat. It seemed Lord Bath was the sort of man to seek whatever advantage he could, and whether he had really loved Gwendolene or not was a question only he could answer. The diary entries spoke of what seemed a sincere and genuine affection, but given her own dealings with him, Lavinia was cautious to believe anything she learned about him.
“Perhaps not… oh, I don’t know! Am I doomed to be an eternal spinster?” Penelope asked, as Lavinia rose to her feet to leave.
“I don’t think anyone’s doomed to such a fate; there’s always someone who’s the right person,” Lavinia replied.
Penelope looked up at her with a forlorn expression on her face.
“And have you found that person, Lavinia?” she asked.
Lavinia blushed. She thought immediately of Archie, but she was not ready to share such intimacies with Penelope, and instead, she simply shook her head.
“I haven’t told you anything of my story yet…” she said, but Penelope shook her head.
“I know you were once a maid. It’s quite all right, Lavinia, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. You don’t have to explain. But I’m sure love won’t elude you as it’s eluded me,” she replied, with a forlorn look on her face.
Lavinia took her leave. She felt terribly sorry for Penelope, but one thing was certain. Penelope was not Gwendolene’s murderer. Had she been, Lavinia felt certain she would already have confessed.
That, or she’s the most remarkable of actresses.
Lavinia walked back along the drive toward Sarum Lacy House. But as she did so, Lavinia found her thoughts distracted, not by the memory of Penelope’s own dilemma, rather by the question Penelope herself had posed. Had she found the right person? The answer was obvious, or so it seemed. Archie was that person, and despite the barriers still lying ahead, Lavinia could only hope the answer was the same for him.
Chapter 24
Does this man never grow tired of expressing his love for Gwendolene?Archie thought to himself, shaking his head at the sheer volume of letters in the draw of his sister’s dressing table.
Lord Bath’s romantic pursual of Gwendolene appeared to know no bounds. According to the dates, the letters had been arriving daily, and it seemed each one had been answered.
Pursuant to your letter… with grateful thanks for your letter… in delight in receiving your kind words… with loving affection…Archie read, soon growing tired of the in exhaustive stream of platitudes Lord Bath had for describing his love for Gwendolene.
But the letters gave the same impression as the diary. There was, it seemed, no question of the mutual love between Gwendolene and Lord Bath, as much as it astonished Archie to think it. He could simply not understand why his sister should feel this way about a man as odious as the Earl of Bath.
“I suppose she had every right to keep such things from me. It was none of my business,”Archie muttered, sighing as he replaced the bundle of letters in the drawer.
It seemed somehow wrong to destroy them, even as Archie had no intention of reading them again. A second bundle contained much the same, and a third, too. But at the back of thedrawer, Archie discovered another bundle of letters, addressed to Gwendolene, in a different hand from that of Lord Bath. It was one he thought he recognized, though he was uncertain why he knew it, even as now he unfolded the first and began to read.
I had to write to you, Gwendolene. You’re the only one who understands… though at times, I wonder… your brother doesn’t even notice me. Why not? Why won’t he notice me, Gwendolene? Takinganother letter, Archie unfolded it and began to read further.
I did it for him. She wasn’t right for him… a silly little slip of a girl. She deserved it… the look on her face. I’m not doing anything wrong, am I? I’m just ensuring… well, that he notices me. I thought it was for the best… she was a fool… Claudia Byfield… I can’t bear to think of the two of them together…
He shook his head in astonishment. Claudia Byfield had been a woman he had taken to the theater on several occasions; the daughter of the local member of parliament. But she had broken off their courtship with the poor excuse of not being ready to marry. It had seemed strange at the time, but Archie had accepted it with chivalrous resolve. But this…
Gwendolene, you have to understand… I’m doing this for his own good. All those foolish women. They’re not right for him. They’re always fawning over him—for his money, for his title. They don’t love him as I do. It wasn’t wrong, what I did. I just… persuaded… and I’ll go on. Gwendolene… I can’t stop protecting him. I have to protect him.
Archie shook his head in astonishment.
Some of the letters were unsigned, but others bore a familiar signature. They had come from Wilhelmina, and it shocked Archie to read the things she had written, discovering an obsession he had not, for a moment, imagine existed.
“She’s completely mad,” he exclaimed aloud, shaking his head as he examined letter after letter, in a correspondence stretching back several years.
It seemed Wilhelmina had mounted a persistent campaign against any woman who dared show an interest in Archie, and she had sought Gwendolene’s help in securing a match with him. At first, her letters had seemed reasonable; the request for an invitation to tea, or to a soiree held at Sarum Lacy House. Wilhelmina wrote of her attraction to Archie, and her sorrow at her own failing to attract him.
Am I so plain as to be unnoticeable to him? What can I do to make him realize I exist?
But as dates on the letters grew nearer to the day of Gwendolene’s death, their contents took on a more sinister tone.
