Read Online Gather Ye Rosebuds by Joan Smith - Free Book Online

she was a stout matron—stylish to be sure, but with little left of her beauty. I was sorry I had let Weylin walk off with the glass beads in his pocket. They might jar someone’s memory at Tunbridge Wells.
    I jumped up to go after him, and noticed that he was still in the hallway, talking to Steptoe. They had their heads together like conspirators.
    “Is there something amiss, Lord Weylin?” I asked, stepping toward them.
    “I shall see myself out, Steptoe,” he said to the butler. Steptoe darted off.
    “I was just quizzing him a little,” Lord Weylin explained. “As I suspected, he saw nothing at Tunbridge Wells. He knew my aunt used to go there, and was trying to frighten you. I fear there is nothing to be learned at Tunbridge.” He gave the sort of measured look a cat gives, just before leaping on a mouse.
    “Indeed, there is no point in going all the way to Tunbridge,” I agreed. He was the last person I wanted to go there.
    We exchanged good days, and he left. After he was gone, I remembered I had not gotten the necklace back from him.
     

Chapter Seven
     
    Mama and I set out for Tunbridge Wells at nine the next morning, despite an early shower that promised to destroy our trip. She was not hard to convince once I had related the gist of Lord Weylin’s visit, and held out the lure of recovering her brother’s five thousand pounds. She was firmly convinced that Lady Margaret had taken advantage of Barry’s susceptibilities.
    “He was always putty in the hands of a lady,” she said, as the carriage rumbled through the mist.
    “I never saw any evidence of weakness for ladies, Mama. He scarcely looked at them.”
    “He used to, when he was younger. A leopard does not change his spots. She fed him some tale of woe that she needed the money, and he, like a regular green-head, handed over every penny he had in the world. And to think—”
    To divert the story of her paying for his coffin, I said, “Lord Weylin says no such sum appeared in Lady Margaret’s bank statements. Surely Uncle Barry was not such a gudgeon.”
    We were back to the unanswerable question. “Where did the money go, then?” she demanded.
    These thoughts had been running around in my head for hours, and when the rain let up, I put them aside and enjoyed the scenery. The carriage progressed through pretty countryside, all gleaming from the recent downpour that left the leaves dripping with crystal pendants of rain. The sun came out, striking each droplet and broadcasting tiny prisms. Borsini would have enjoyed it. He could turn his brush with equal effect to either landscape or the human form. I regretted missing my lesson.
    With a longish luncheon stop to rest Mama’s aching bones, our trip took seven hours. It was four in the afternoon when we entered that picturesque, hilly moorland where Sussex turns into Kent, with Tunbridge Wells nestled in its folds. We hired a room at Bishop’s Down Hotel, behind the Pantiles and facing the Common. It was late in the day to begin making inquiries, but we strolled out to see something of the town before darkness descended. At Tunbridge, one goes to the promenade called the Pantiles, where all society struts to see and be seen.
    The height of the season is from July to September, but already in early June there was no shortage of tourists. The serious-minded folks who came for their health were not of much interest to me, even “at my age.” An air of propriety hangs over the town, encouraged by such biblical names as the Mount Ephraim Hotel, and even Zion. Despite all this, there was a smattering of lightskirts, come to prey on the elderly gents.
    We went to the Pantiles and duly admired the beauty of a colonnade on one side, a row of lime trees on the other. I had some hope of getting into the shops, but Mama felt the need of the chalybeate waters for her aching joints, so we went to the Pump Room, and paid one farthing each for a glass of impotable mineral water, which left us longing for