SEVEN

P atricia awoke the next day to sunshine streaming into her room. She was in bed, a large antique wooden affair with four posts carved in various shapes that looked like gargoyles and nymphs and trolls. She was in her nightdress. She didn’t remember changing out of her ruined clothing and hoped, or at least assumed, there were maids or whatever they were called in England—like Bertie Wooster’s Gentleman’s Gentleman, Jeeves, except for women, but the term escaped her—who had helped her undress and change and get into bed. The thought of more strangers groping and touching her was disconcerting—she didn’t want to be touched—but presumably such a servant could be expected to be professional about it.

The curtains at the tall French windows had been drawn and daylight poured in. She sat up in bed and looked around the room. It was Elizabethan, with rough carved wooden chests, drawers, and settees. Tapestries and paintings hung on the walls. A large gilt-edged mirror, taller and wider than Patricia, was mounted on the wall opposite her bed. The room had two doors, probably leading to the corridor and the bathroom. Patricia assumed the room had been modernized in that respect, at least.

She noticed her bags had been set in a corner under a wall hanging, and this drew her attention back to the tapestries and paintings, or rather what they depicted. Satyrs and nymphs, devils and damsels, griffins and gargoyles, naked, in various positions. The figures wrestled in an apocalyptic orgy of torture and sex, fire and brimstone.

This couldn’t possibly be the room’s original décor. Or, she amended, most of the furniture and even the depraved artwork may have been part and parcel of the great house’s original inhabitants, William and Bess d’Arcy, when the first wing of the manor house was constructed in the mid-1500s. But certainly by the 1790s, when Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet had lived here, such furnishings would not have been tolerated. (Patricia was sure of this; she had first read Pride and Prejudice when she was a young girl, and reread it on the airplane to London after being contacted by Mr. Newell about the Pemberley legacy.)

It didn’t bode well that the house’s current inhabitants seemed to take after the debauched and corrupt sixteenth-century d’Arcys, rather than their more refined descendants. One of Patricia’s first acts as the new matriarch of Pemberley House would be to restore this room, and any others, to their rightful state.

She heard footsteps in the hallway outside her room, and for some reason she didn’t want anyone to know she was up and investigating her room. Besides, her nightgown was sheer and the pinks of her nipples showed through. She climbed back into the wooden bed and pulled the covers up to her neck.

A rap came at the door.

“Come in,” Patricia called, but the door opened before she was finished speaking. So much for privacy, she thought. I’ll have to take a look at how, or if, that door locks.

Doctor Moran came in, followed by Richard and Carla Deguy. The doctor was in his mid-sixties, with greying hair, a paunch, and an old-fashioned walrus mustache. His nose and cheeks were red with broken blood vessels. He smiled at her, showing a mouthful of bad teeth.

“Good morning, Miss Wildman,” the doctor said and he reintroduced himself. They had met the previous night but it had been hectic with the police there.

“Good morning,” Patricia said. “This is quite a welcoming committee.”

“Just wanted to make sure you were all right after that beastly night. We were all terribly worried, coz,” Richard said. His manner, however, was offhand and belied his words of concern. She noticed his rather reptilian gaze lingering on her generous cleavage, and tugged the covers up higher.

Then Richard pulled chairs around the bed and took Carla’s hand and guided her to the seat closest to Patricia.

“This is my sister, Carla.”

Carla extended her hand and Patricia grasped it. A feathery tingle started in Patricia’s fingertips, up her arms and shoulders, and raised the tiny hairs at the back of her neck. Carla wore a wraparound gauzy white blouse, a plaid miniskirt, and white stockings and thigh-high white go-go boots with thick heels. Unlike Patricia, she cared little if anyone realized she didn’t wear a bra. Patricia noticed Carla’s dark nipples under the blouse, which did little to keep her magnificent breasts in check. She also noticed that as Richard seated his sister in the chair by Patricia, his hand brushed and lingered on her backside before it grazed up her back and came to rest on her shoulder at the base of the neck.

Patricia did not have any siblings; perhaps Richard displayed what he considered normal brotherly affection. Carla did not seem to mind. Then Patricia noticed the telltale bulge in Richard’s pants. She told herself to let it go, she wouldn’t have to deal with him for very long.

“I’m very pleased to meet you at last, Patricia.” Carla’s voice was smooth and rich, like a cello. She held onto Patricia’s hand and maintained eye contact for a long time, so long that Patricia became somewhat uncomfortable. “Your eyes are very beautiful. The gold flecks are unique. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“Thank you. And I’m pleased to meet you as well. I recognize you from your picture,” Patricia said.

Richard and Doctor Moran also seated themselves, in a semicircle around Patricia’s bed. “I’m sorry,” Patricia said, “I guess I must be a late riser. Am I late for breakfast? You all didn’t have to come and greet me, though. I’ll wash up and come downstairs.”

Doctor Moran grinned. “Not at all, my dear, not at all. You’ve had a terrible time of it. Rest here as long as you wish.”

“Yes, do. Breakfast, or lunch, or whatever, is whenever you want it,” Carla said.

“Then...”

“The thing is, Patricia,” Richard said, “we wanted to speak with you before you came down.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, about the Dowager. You see,” Moran said, “she mustn’t be told about last night, about the attack on you and Richard. We fear the excitement will be too much for her heart. She is 103 years old, you know.”

“Yes, of course I know and of course I won’t say anything. I would never want to upset her. But didn’t she hear the commotion, the police here in the house, and ask about it?”

“No, the old lady sleeps through anything. Except she stays up all night, can’t sleep she says, on the nights old Bess is supposed to come—”

“Richard, would you stop prattling on, please?” Carla said. But there was a tone of command in her voice. “Our cousin isn’t interested in silly local superstitions, are you dear? Now, Patricia understands she isn’t to mention the attack to the Duchess, so let’s leave her now and let her get dressed.” Carla began to shoo the men out.

“Do you need a tranquilizer, my dear?” the doctor asked.

“What? No, of course not, I’m fine.”

Doctor Moran continued to gaze at her with a kind, yet penetrating expression.

“Really. I’m fine, thank you. I don’t want any drugs.”

“Our coz Patricia is a tough one, eh? Nothing from Boots for her. Well, I’m off to find a tall glass, some ice, and four fingers. You coming, doc?”

“Richard, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning.”

“Yes, sis, and after last night, eleven o’clock seems like just the right time for a tall glass of bourbon. You want one too?” he called back as he and Doctor Moran exited Patricia’s room, but clearly he didn’t expect a reply.

Carla returned the chairs to their proper places. In the doorway, she looked back at Patricia in bed. “I can show you my closet later, maybe you’ll see something you like. Do you want any help unpacking or picking out something to wear? I can help you dress, if you like.”

“No, thank you. Was it you who got me out of my clothes and into bed?”

“Oh no, that was Miss Neston, the maid. I wouldn’t have complained, mind you.” Carla grinned, like a wolf. She cocked her hip sidewise in the doorway, which tugged the hem of the short skirt above the tops of her stockings, showing a couple inches of her white thighs.

Patricia realized then that Carla’s lack of undergarments extended below the belt as well as above.

“It would have made me very happy to help you get situated last night. But I had another engagement. Maybe tonight?” Carla asked.

Patricia reddened at the proposition, and her voice caught.

Carla laughed.

“Patricia, you’re very beautiful. Maybe you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Your parents must have been exquisite. Anyway, I was just kidding with you. You mustn’t take me seriously. You mustn’t take any of us seriously. Now, enjoy a hot bath—I’ll send Miss Neston up to draw it for you—and then get dressed and we’ll see you downstairs.” Carla waved and closed the door behind her.

Patricia bounded up out of bed, found the ancient lock, and secured it. The maid did come a few minutes later to prepare the bath and Patricia peeked out of the keyhole before letting her in. After Miss Neston left, Patricia luxuriated in the hot water; she felt an urgent need to clean off, both literally and figuratively, the filth from the previous night. She thought about the three inhabitants of Pemberley House she had met so far.

Richard Deguy was a lush. Although she still found him very handsome, in his resemblance to the actor Richard Greene, he was craven. She hadn’t been impressed with his drunkenness when he picked her up at the train station, his carrying on with the barmaid Rosamond, and his cowardice at running away after the car crash. She doubted his claims that he had searched for her and her attackers. Yes, it was a pounding storm, but in retrospect Mary’s Tower was an obvious place to look.

Patricia was fairly sure Richard would make a play for her soon, despite already having gotten Rosamond pregnant. Whereas Patricia had previously been attracted to him—or at least the picture of him she had seen before she met him, with its revealing bulge at the crotch—now he repelled her.

Doctor Moran seemed harmless, and she wondered how much medicine he actually practiced, living here as the Dowager’s personal physician. She knew he had given her a sedative the previous night, but she wouldn’t let him prescribe anything else for her. Her father had been one of the world’s leading medical men and she had no intention of allowing anyone less qualified than him, or her late husband Denis, or Doctor Miller, near her.

At least not near her in the medical sense.

And then there was Carla. While it was obvious Richard would sooner or later make an unwelcome advance, the sister had already done so. Or was it unwelcome? Patricia asked herself as she soaked in the foamy water. Well, it was, at least right now. Carla’s timing was bad. Wasn’t there something off, Patricia thought, about a woman who made a lesbian pass at another woman who had just been victimized and assaulted by a lesbian the night before? Or maybe the men hadn’t told Carla about that part. Maybe they didn’t think it was rape if it wasn’t man-on-woman.

She decided to give Carla the benefit of the doubt, for now. And if she felt like it, maybe take her up on her offer. She had had one lesbian experience, with a friend, when she was younger. Actually, no thanks to Ernie, she had now had two such encounters. The thought soured her. Carla was attractive, more than attractive, in fact. But perhaps that wasn’t enough, right now, to overcome the trauma of last night’s attack. Patricia was confused, and still upset at her helplessness the previous night. She wasn’t accustomed to helplessness, to being a victim. She didn’t like it.

Maybe she wouldn’t take Carla up on her proposal, after all.

Patricia gave up thinking about it, got out of the tub, dried off, dressed, and left her room to see Pemberley House.