The Second Lady Emily Read online

  “It matters not,” said the secretary, breaking into her memories. He pulled out another sheaf of forms and began filling in blanks.

  “What are you doing?” She had tried to understand what was happening, but everyone she met today left her with new questions. She hadn’t dared ask anything of the Queen, and Carstairs seemed to have disappeared, but perhaps this secretary, whose name she hadn’t caught, would help.

  He glanced up, sympathy softening his eyes. “Her Majesty requires just cause for bestowing a hereditary title. Even though this is a transfer of existing honors, protocol must be observed. But rewarding government service has long been done.”

  “Even if the government is not Britain’s?” she had to ask.

  “America is an ally. It is not entirely without precedent.”

  “I don’t understand.” She sighed in frustration. “I thought title sales raised money but conferred no legal status on the buyer.”

  “That is generally the case,” he agreed, “but both Harold Villiers and Her Majesty preferred to divest him of everything – honors, privileges, and duties. Parliament concurred.”

  She wanted to ask why, but his words raised a more pressing question. “Duties?”

  “You must take your seat in Parliament, my lady. And you must revise your will, designating an heir until such time as you produce one – or do you already have children?”

  “No,” she said weakly, blinking away tears as the full tragedy of the last year swept over her.

  “How about siblings, cousins, or other relatives?”

  “None,” she confirmed, again swept by loneliness.

  “Unfortunate, but time will rectify that,” he murmured. For some reason, his words sounded false, though he couldn’t know that the doctors put her chances of conceiving again at practically zero. “The title is hereditary, entailed to your oldest child. Parliament modified the articles of patent to include daughters in the succession and to permit a deed of transfer to a designated heir should you fail to produce one naturally.”

  He continued to outline the duties of a peer of England, but Cherlynn was no longer listening. All this talk of heirs was unsettling. Those icy fingers were again parading down her spine. It sounded like she needed a lawyer. At this rate, her ten-pound purchase was likely to eat up her entire divorce settlement.

  “Who will you name as your heir?” he finally asked.

  “I must think,” she said with a sigh. “I know no one here. Unless I designate Her Majesty.”

  Horror flashed across his face. “That is the one thing you cannot do,” he said firmly. “The letters of patent require that you formally designate an heir, but that heir cannot be a member of the royal family.”

  “How about you?”

  “I must respectfully decline. Surely there is someone you can name. He or she need not be a British citizen. The patent confers full citizenship on any title holder.”

  “Very well.” His voice was fading in and out. She should have eaten breakfast, but a sleepless night spent mulling unanswerable questions had destroyed her appetite. Now her empty stomach churned and low blood sugar left her lightheaded. “Will you need a copy of the will once it is complete?”

  “You misunderstand, my lady. You will be signing your will before you leave this room. You may, of course, modify it in the future.” He pressed a buzzer. A sober gentleman of vast age entered. “May I present Sir Anthony Wiggins? He is a noted solicitor who will assist you in every way possible.” Before she could respond, he had slipped out.

  * * * *

  Five hours later, Cherlynn fled to the safety of her hotel room and shuddered. What had she gotten herself into? Sir Anthony had answered no questions and volunteered no information. He listed her assets – the principal one being her new array of titles – and demanded she name an heir. He didn’t care who, as long as she could provide enough identification to allow contact if necessary. She finally named an aide to the Committee on the Environment, and stipulated that everything but the titles go to her alma mater. The exercise was morbid in the extreme, but even that could not explain her growing uneasiness.

  Fishy odors emanated from every aspect of this case. Her Majesty had seemed almost jovial, welcoming an insignificant American into the British peerage with the enthusiasm a new saint would receive at the Pearly Gates. And not just any American, but a female who had failed at everything she had attempted in twenty-six years. Why? Even at the close of the twentieth century, when high taxes had reduced most lords to genteel poverty, when ancestral homes had been turned over to the National Trust, and when political power rested solely in the House of Commons, the peerage remained aristocratic to the bone, clinging to the arrogance and protocol of past centuries and disdaining their social inferiors. Yet the Queen and a marquess had conspired to elevate a foreign nobody to those exalted ranks, apparently with the full connivance of the British government.

  For God’s sake, why?

  Word of her new rank had spread like wildfire. Sir Anthony had spirited her out of the palace via a rear entrance, but reporters accosted the car as it left the grounds. More waited at her hotel. Feeling like a combination rock star and celebrity criminal, she ran the gauntlet as quickly as possible, shielding her face and responding to none of their shouted questions. Upon reaching her room, she snapped several orders into the phone, then collapsed.

  What now? Reporters never gave up. If anything, her evasions would encourage them to new heights. Any hope of sightseeing or research was out of the question. Even returning to the States would change nothing. Perhaps she could invert her itinerary and tour the countryside, but even that would require a bodyguard to keep reporters at bay. Granting interviews to the press was impossible. She could not explain why she had purchased the title. She had not the slightest idea what she would do next. And she had no wish to see her face blazing from millions of television screens where Willard could see how ridiculous she was.

  “Damn!” Her brows snapped together. He was still influencing her behavior. If not for him, she wouldn’t be in this fix.

  “Room service,” a voice murmured from the hall, accompanied by a discreet knock.

  She hesitated. She had ordered dinner and several newspapers, but had not expected such speedy delivery. Leaving the chain in position, she peered outside. The white-jacketed man appeared to be genuine.

  “Dinner, my lady,” he intoned when she opened the door. His deference stood in sharp contrast to the slow and sullen service she had received for the past week. Rank still commanded privilege, she decided as he bowed himself out, leaving a three-course meal and eleven newspapers on the table.

  Shock riveted her eyes to the lead story.

  AMERICAN BUYS CURSED TITLE

  (London) A daring young American today tempted fate in a magnanimous bid to save the monarchy from extinction. Miss Cherlynn Cardington of Cambridge, Massachusetts agreed to take on the curse that for two centuries has exterminated branch after branch of the once-powerful Villiers family. Seventy-eight-year-old Harold Villiers, last survivor of the clan, expressed appreciation for the selfless act that will prevent the title from reverting to the crown when he passes on.

  “Oh, my God!” Cherlynn scrabbled through her briefcase for the packet of letters she had purchased three days earlier. No wonder they had seemed familiar. She had forgotten her silly bid long before she found them, but all fifteen mentioned the Marquess of Broadbanks. Each was addressed to Lady Debenham and signed by Lady Travis. Cherlynn had recognized the recipient’s name. Lady Debenham had been an influential society hostess for much of the early nineteenth century – and a well-informed gossip.

  She carefully unfolded the last one, dated March 1818, and scrutinized the faded writing on the recrossed page.

  It is with Great Sadness that I must report the Death of the seventh Marquess of Broadbanks, who slipped unobserved from the cliffs near Broadbanks Hall at sunset yesterday evening, coming to Grief on the rocks below. His parting revives th
e old Scandals, as must be expected. To die in one’s Prime always causes Talk. And more. Each new Tragedy adds Credence to tales of the Gypsy’s Curse which have circulated these six years past. It would seem quite Potent, having already carried off Four Victims – miscarriage by the sixth marchioness only two days after she called the Curse onto the House; death by Suicide of the sixth marquess; miscarriage by the seventh marchioness two days later, despite having earlier produced a healthy boy and two girls; and now the death of the seventh marquess. Young Franklin is but four years old, an Endearing Boy already quite solemn over his new duties. Will he live to secure the Succession? One must hope that the sixth marchioness suffers Greatly in her Banishment, for she has brought Unmeasured Grief to a Noble House.

  Her skin crawling, Cherlynn returned to the newspaper. It was a tabloid, which cast doubt on its wilder conjectures, but even the bare facts were chilling enough. Since 1812, no Marquess of Broadbanks had sired a child. The five marchionesses who were increasing when their husbands acceded to the title had all miscarried. No marquess had died of natural causes. None had lived more than three years after achieving the title, though many were young when it passed into their hands. In 186 years, 71 men had held the title. Harold Villiers, 76th Marquess of Broadbanks, was the last Villiers, his branch having split from the family tree over four hundred years earlier. Few in Britain scoffed at the Broadbanks Curse. No aristocrat claimed disbelief. Until this morning, Broadbanks’s death would have transferred the title to the crown. With the monarchy already on shaky ground, the Queen didn’t want it.

  And so they had found a pigeon willing to bid without doing a moment of research, a pigeon who was now the seventy-seventh Broadbanks.

  “Damn!” She had just bought herself a death sentence. Hurling the paper across the room, she succumbed to icy tremors. But she had only herself to blame. Christie’s catalog had mentioned all eight titles as well as the startling information that the purchase would include full privileges and citizenship. Yet she had not read it – undoubtedly the only potential bidder in the entire world who had not. Why else had she won?

  There had to be a way out. Pacing intensified her restlessness, so she sprawled across the bed, burrowing under a quilt to counteract her continued shivering. She would have to draft a new will, of course. Foisting a curse onto Beth was unfair. Willard would make a better heir.

  But that was no solution. She wouldn’t be around to see him suffer, and nothing would induce her to meekly accept an early demise. Thus she must find a way to break the curse.

  Morning brought more rational thinking – along with a new stack of newspapers that were not tabloids. Allowing yesterday’s sensationalists to stampede her was ridiculous. The Times did not mention any curse, though its story referred to the many tragedies that had beset the Villiers family. Surely she was intelligent enough to accept death without needing a villain to shoulder the blame. She had been taught to believe only in what she could see. Paranormal manifestations were fine in books and movies, but they did not exist in the real world. Nor did curses. Accidents and disease had claimed many people in earlier centuries. Losing entire families was not unusual. But the credulous could easily terrify themselves into believing some supernatural phenomena was at work.

  She studied the summary of the Marquesses of Broadbanks that had accompanied one of the stories. The family was patriotic, but unlucky. Four lords had died childless only because their sons had earlier perished at Waterloo. A later marquess lost both sons in the Crimea. Other heirs had died in China, South Africa, India, Ireland, both world wars, the Falklands, and the Persian Gulf. In fact, the only military man in two hundred years who had returned alive was the sixth marquess, who shot himself a week later.

  She removed the military from her list of potential employers, then chided herself for foolishness.

  There was no pattern to the accidents, though she suspected that many of them proved fatal only because of the deplorable state of medicine in earlier times. She had nearly convinced herself that the curse was no more than media hysteria when she noticed the dates.

  Seventy-one dead marquesses, five miscarriages, plus the death by accident or in war of twenty-nine heirs. Every fatality took place on March 15, June 15, September 15, or December 28.

  * * * *

  Cherlynn slipped through a staff entrance, escaping into the early dawn. She had spent the rest of yesterday and last night formulating plans. Somehow she had to neutralize the curse. Given the current publicity, selling the title was out of the question, and she suspected that giving it away would do no good unless the recipient was willing to take it on. Fat chance! CNN had carried the story, so virtually everyone on the planet would have heard the details by now. She had no idea how to proceed, but learning about the family seemed an obvious first step. Thus she purchased a railroad ticket to Dover where she joined an afternoon bus tour to Broadbanks Hall, former seat of the Marquesses of Broadbanks.

  An enterprising reporter had caught her on videotape as she exited Buckingham Palace, but the image had featured her ratty flyaway hair. Today she’d pulled it into a neat coil. Sunglasses, baggy jeans, and her assumed name of Heddy Anderson allowed her to pass unrecognized.

  Little remained of the estate that had once stretched along several miles of the English Channel and included some of the richest grazing and agricultural land in the county. Even the park had shrunk until the four follies that used to offer grand vistas of lake, wood, and shore, now marked the corners of the property. All were in ruins. All were surrounded by overgrown thickets, for the National Trust only maintained the house and formal gardens. But the Regency wing and grounds were renowned, which had placed Broadbanks high on her itinerary when she had planned this trip. Little had changed since the sixth marquess commissioned Repton to redesign the park in 1812. That marquess had also redecorated the house, scandalizing the neighbors, according to Lady Travis, by refusing to allow his wife any say in the results – which suggested good judgment on his part; another letter had condemned the marchioness for her utter lack of style. Cherlynn would soon decide for herself. The only redecorating since the sixth marquess had been the addition of plumbing and electricity.

  She stayed at the back of the tour group when they entered Broadbanks Hall, so she could absorb as much as possible without drawing attention to herself. Yet room after room offered no insight into the people who had lived there. Not that Broadbanks was dull. It had grown from an Elizabethan core, one wall of which had belonged to an earlier fortified manor. By the time the last addition was built in the late eighteenth century, the Hall sprawled across twenty acres, boasting two hundred rooms in a dozen wings. Courtyards, sheltered gardens, and terraces filled odd corners. Only the Regency wing and the Elizabethan core – which held the great hall and state apartments – were open for the tour.

  At first, Broadbanks Hall seemed much like other English great houses. The elaborate railings on the main staircase took her breath away, as did the ornate stuccoed ceilings and intricate marble fireplace surrounds. Faded fabrics graced furniture and windows. Painted paneling glowed in the study and library. Threadbare carpets and patched wallcoverings tried to remain unobtrusive.

  But the gallery triggered uneasiness. Forty-eight portraits lined its walls. The last had been completed barely a month before the forty-ninth marquess relinquished the estate to the National Trust in 1916. The marquesses represented every manner of man – thin to stocky, short to tall, light to dark, homely to handsome. The guide explained that every picture had been commissioned the day its subject acquired the title. The first four men looked stern. Number five was arrogant. The suicidal sixth was missing. But beginning with the seventh marquess, who acceded in 1815, every subject observed the gallery through haunted eyes.

  “Your first visit, dearie?” asked an elderly lady.

  Cherlynn jumped. “Yes. And you?”

  “Oh, no. I come here often. Broadbanks is fascinating. You should try one of the October tours. T
hey focus on the ghosts instead of babbling about the curse like Mrs. Tibbins is doing today,” she said, naming the guide. “Inevitable, of course, with poor Lord Broadbanks selling the title and all.”

  “Don’t you believe in the curse?”

  “Go on with ye!” cackled the woman. “It’s real enough. An’ powerful strong. My great-grandmama had the tale from her grandmama who married one of the Broadbanks grooms. He heard the gypsy utter the fateful words himself. But no one knows if it truly attaches to the title or to the head of the Villiers family.”

  “You mean selling the title may make no difference?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But curses are dull things. Ghosts are more interesting. Broadbanks is the most haunted manor in England – all those horrid deaths, you know. The best-known ghost is the sixth marquess, who haunts the library where he shot himself. Any number of people have seen him. He first appeared the day his wife died in Scotland, leading many to conclude he had previously been haunting her. A more enigmatic ghost occasionally appears on the cliff path, but he has never been positively identified. At least nine family members perished out there, and we can’t see him clearly enough to identify his clothing. The most elusive one lives in the great hall. It is probably female, but even that is uncertain. All anyone’s ever seen is a flash of blue. Theories range from a servant to the fifth marchioness, who was said to fancy blue. Of course the most frightening ghost is the gypsy, but only the marquesses see her. She is not confined to the estate, and her appearance always presages a death. None has survived the sight by more than forty-eight hours. At least one – the sixtieth, I believe – died on the spot.”

  “Mabel Hardesty, if you’re cackling on about ghosts again, why don’t you come up here so everyone can hear you,” chided the guide, but it was clear she had a soft spot for the old lady. Mabel happily complied.