Letters to a Lady Read Free Page A

turned on Miss Beecham.
    “Fine talk for a lady! Muslin company, indeed! I think I know Harrup a little better than to believe he would give that trollop the time of day.”
    “Nonsense, she was a very elegant trollop, and why else would Harrup have written her so many letters if he weren’t her lover? What I cannot understand is why he sent her to Hitchin to rusticate and listen to the grass grow. Peabody, let us see the letters.” A look of genuine outrage leaped to Peabody’s long face. “I don’t mean read them. Let us just see how many and how thick they are.”
    “Certainly not,” Peabody said firmly. But before the carriage had gone ten yards, she decided she needed her handkerchief, which just happened to be under the letters so that she had to remove them. It wasn’t her fault if the pink satin ribbon was a trifle loose and came off as soon as she tugged it a little.
    A cascade of white squares fell to the carriage floor. Diana picked them up and placed them one by one in Peabody’s lap. “Six,” she said when she had finished. “I wonder how long he’s been carrying on with her?”
    Diana narrowed her eyes as she contemplated this puzzle. “I noticed he’s come home very often since winter. I wager that’s when he made this liaison, in late winter or early spring. And now she’s going to join him in London.”
    “Harrup always comes home often in the springtime. He and his bailiff have many meetings to decide about rotating crops and things. You know Harrup likes to oversee the planting at the Hall.”
    Undeceived, Diana continued this line of talk, which was so distasteful, yet exceedingly interesting, to Peabody. “No, he took up with her at the end of January. You remember he darted home one afternoon and left for London that same night. He spent that night with Mrs. Whitby,” Diana decided.
    “He certainly did not. A courier arrived from Whitehall and called him back to an emergency meeting that weekend. It was the second week in March that it all started— that’s when it was. He did not come home at all, but the vicar mentioned seeing him in Hitchin. That’s when the hussy got her clutches into poor Harrup. That setup must have cost him an arm and a leg. Everything so expensive and brand new.”
    “And now he’s taking her to London. I wonder if he’ll use the same furnishings. Who can she be, Peabody?”
    “Nobody,” Peabody said angrily. She had finally found the villain in the piece. “You could tell by the bold eye in her head and the cut of that gown that she’s as common as dirt. An actress or some such thing—did you see the rouge smeared all over her cheeks? That one would as soon tie her garter in public as she’d sneeze. The very sort of creature that preys on innocent young men.”
    “Harrup’s thirty-five,” Diana reminded her, and received a blistering stare for her foolishness. “I know all about his women, Peabody. His own mama complained to me last winter that she despaired of his ever marrying because he had his pick of all the prettiest lightskirts in town.”
    Sixty-five years of Christian living prevented Peabody from opening the letters and reading them. Even sixty-five years couldn’t stop her from analyzing the handwriting, the franks, smelling the scent of lavender at close range, and conjecturing wildly as to the current state of affairs. “Why is Harrup so eager to get his billets-doux back that he couldn’t wait for his next visit?” she wondered aloud.
    “This explains his wanting me to send one of the footmen from the Willows to Hitchin. He wished to keep the story away from his own home. There is something very odd here, Di.”
    “Maybe he’s broken off with her,” Diana suggested, after a few moments’ consideration.
    This was balm to Peabody’s spirit. “That’s it!” she exclaimed. “He has given the hussy her congé—and I thank God for it. I wonder…”
    “What?” Diana asked, with only mild interest. She was not so keen