A Yuletide Treasure (7 page)

“Thank you. I am rather tired.”

“Not surprisingly so,” he said, leading her toward the kitchen door. A frown contracted his brows. “Pardon the personal suggestion, but... Have you shrunk, Miss Twainsbury?”

“In the wet?” she asked, laughing. “No, I don’t think so.”

He glanced down at her bare toes. Foolish to blush but she couldn’t help it. The hot blood washed into her cheeks. “I... ?”

Without a word or any sign of effort, he bent and swept her up to settle high against his chest. A yip of surprise escaped her. “Sir...”

“I carried you in from the snow,” he said. “What’s the difference now except it’s easier if you’re awake. Arms around my neck, please. It helps redistribute the weight.”

She obeyed, her eyes still wide. His coat collar and cravat were still slightly damp as were the sides and back of his hair. She’d never been so close to a man before. She could see that his eyes were not all dark gray as she’d supposed. A rich brown ringed each pupil in an unusual and attractive combination. His eyebrows came rather far down his face, so that they ran from the bridge of his nose quite to the outside corner of his eye. She felt, now that she looked closely, that this partially accounted for his expression of good humor.

He noticed that she was looking at him curiously. “No doubt you are wondering about our circumstances,” he asked.

“I hope I’m not so impertinent.” She tried to forget about the strength of the arms under her body and the support of his hand on her back. Though she felt every instant that she should fall, she could not recall being so comfortable before.

“Nothing impertinent about it. You find yourself, willy-nilly, involved with us.” With her silence, he continued, seeming to have no trouble with his breathing. “I inherited the property from my elder brother, Myron. He was captain aboard His Majesty’s three-decker,
Gauntlet.
Six months ago, sailing in Philippine waters during a hurricane, he was washed overboard.”

“How dreadful,” she said. The usual formula, she feared, but she hoped he realized her sincerity. “One expects to hear of the loss of gallant men during wartime, but now with peace....”

“I believe that the men who sail in our ships are always at war, if not with other nations, then with the sea herself. All too often, the victories go to the waters.”

“It must have been a great shock to his wife, I’m sure.”

“All the more so since he’d been home on leave for more than a year. They had hardly ever been together so long in all their married life, so of course she came to rely on his strength very greatly. To have that prop taken away was bitter, but to know now that it can never be renewed is almost too much for her strength of mind, Beulah is rather delicate at the best of times, and now, in her present state ... That is ...”

The door behind him swung open, and instantly Camilla saw what Sir Philip had hinted. The woman in the doorway had a figure that noticeably swelled in the center. Not tall, she had impeccable posture that dared one to notice her pregnancy.

“And who is this?”

It was impossible for Camilla not to feel yet again the implacable hostility that she’d met everywhere in this house, save from Sir Philip and Tinarose. She felt the puppyish Mavis hardly counted.

She couldn’t really see the woman’s eyes with the light coming from within the room, but the note of severe dislike sounded even more clearly than in the voices of the servants.

Camilla couldn’t understand it. She’d done nothing; she didn’t even know these people. Could they be mistaking her for someone else? But why, then, wouldn’t they call her by some other name so she might correct their misapprehension?

“How do you do, Lady LaCorte?” she said, acutely aware that her position in Sir Philip’s arms demanded explanation, yet determined not to be the one to offer it. “I’m Camilla Twainsbury.”

“Camilla,” Sir Philip said softly in her ear. Perforce, she glanced at him and found him smiling. “I’d wondered,” he said. “All you said to me was ‘Miss Twainsbury.’ “

“I hope I didn’t say it like that,” Camilla said, objecting to his rather sniffy imitation.

A tapping reminded them that they were not alone. Camilla looked down and saw that Lady LaCorte’s foot was twitching impatiently beneath the hem of her day dress. “I understand from my daughter that you have been instrumental in rescuing Mrs. Mallow from some misadventure or other.”

Camilla responded to this challenging statement with nothing more than a nod. It seemed safest somehow.

Lady LaCorte came out of the doorway. Her mourning clothes were profoundly black, made of some dull, heavy silk that didn’t even glimmer, nor did it rustic. “Let me see if we’ve made you sufficiently comfortable.”

She swept along before them. Camilla glanced with half a frown into Sir Philip’s face. At first, he seemed slightly perturbed, watching the slow gliding figure of his sister-in-law. Then, feeling Camilla’s gaze upon him perhaps, he met her eyes and threw her a quick wink.

Lady LaCorte was hardly as tall as Camilla herself, but she bore herself with that effortless posture that Mrs. Twainsbury had never managed to inculcate completely in her daughter. Camilla did her best, but when she was tired, her back would touch the back of a chair. She felt that Lady LaCorte could never unbend so far.

Whatever hair she had was stuffed out of sight under a black cap with the merest hint of lavender frill. She must have been very pretty once. Camilla could see that the lines of her face were very good. But the whole expression was so taut with some emotion that she could not guess that Lady LaCorte looked older than her years. Perhaps her widowhood was enough explanation.

For that reason, Camilla fought her instinctive wish to be equally cold in reply. Pride wouldn’t help her now; while Nanny Mallow was incapacitated, she herself really had nowhere else to go. She must remain at the Manor on sufferance. She would bite her tongue if necessary and make herself useful.

Inside the room, Sir Philip swung her down to stand barefoot on the hearth rug. “Here, now,” he said. “That’s not much of a fire.” Going down onto one knee, he groped for the poker. “I’ll soon have this more lively.”

Lady LaCorte lit the candles. ‘You have baggage, I presume.”

“It’s at the inn in the village.”

“Indeed? I shall lend you some of my things from last year.” The offer was coldly made, but Camilla accepted eagerly.

“I should be glad to see the last of this dress for a while.” She turned toward the fire, putting out her hands to the cheerful blaze, smiling thanks to Sir Philip.

He sat back on his heels, the firelight calling forth the deeper highlights in his hair. “Nothing like plenty of wood for the fire. Traipsing around in all this snow makes one appreciate the smaller luxuries.”

“I certainly appreciated the ones your cook offered. She was kindness itself. But I must ask: where did she learn to make such wonderful hot chocolate?”

“It’s my mother’s receipt, handed down from the sixteenth century,” Lady LaCorte said. “A family secret.”

“A luxury, indeed, even a treasure, my lady,” Camilla said. “You should never divulge it to a soul.”

“I won’t. Except to my children.”

“I imagine they adore it.” Perhaps her children were the subject that warmed her heart. Certainly the mention of them seemed to soften her hard dislike.

Sir Philip rose to his feet. Letting his hand rest for an instant on her shoulder, he looked with friendliness into her eyes. “I’ll leave you to make your arrangements with Beulah. We’re not very formal here, but dinner is usually served at approximately half-past six. Don’t feel you must come down if you’d rather not.”

“It will be no trouble to bring you a tray,” Lady LaCorte said in a tone which contradicted her own statement. “Mrs. Mallow will be having one, I’m sure.”

“May I answer later?” Camilla said. “I’m not really tired now, but it has been a long day.”

Once again, Sir Philip flicked an eyelid. Camilla wasn’t quite sure that a wink was proper between an unmarried gentleman and a spinster, but somehow this little gesture left her feeling more confident. Though the rest of the household confused her, Sir Philip seemed relatively uncomplicated, a true gentleman. She was sorry to see him leave, though it certainly would not have been proper for him to stay. But his going left her alone with Lady LaCorte.

Lady LaCorte’s anger was cold. Her charity was colder still. But the dress and stockings she brought were warm. She laid the things out on the bed. “There is a nightdress there as well,” she said, never looking directly at Camilla. “I’m sure you must be tired after your strenuous exertions.”

“It wouldn’t have been so hard but for the snow.”

“A woman must be prepared for difficulties when she sets herself a task,” Lady LaCorte said, sounding very much like Camilla’s mother.

“I suppose you are right. Especially when the task is so urgent. It seems, though, that emergencies happen when the elements are against one. Otherwise, they’d hardly be emergencies, would they?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Well,” Camilla said, wishing she’d not begun. “If the weather were ideal, someone would have come to Nanny Mallow’s aid sooner, and there wouldn’t have been an emergency. Or at least not so great a one. Tinarose said she sometimes goes to Nanny Mallow’s, when you permit it.”

“Mrs. Mallow is an ignorant old woman. Only fools and children heed her.”

“She was my mother’s nurse,” Camilla said. “Mother still takes her advice, and I can assure you, Lady LaCorte, she is neither a child nor a fool.”

“Ah, yes,” she said as if reminded of something she’d meant to say. “Your family. You are not related to anyone living here in Bishop’s Halt, are you?”

“I have little family, Lady LaCorte. A mother and a sister only.”

“Your father is deceased?”

Camilla nodded.

“Who was he?”

She didn’t like to be questioned in such a way, but she felt Lady LaCorte had the right to do so. After all, she could be anyone, a fast woman or a fallen angel, and Lady LaCorte needs must think of her daughters. Camilla only hoped Lady LaCorte would be satisfied with her answers.

“His father was the Earl of Pentrithe, in Scotland. Under attainder, I’m afraid, after the ‘45.”

“Rebels?” Lady LaCorte gave her a glance at that, even more scornful than her previous unwillingness to look at her.

“Not my father. He wasn’t born until long after. But his father knew about it. Father said he’d heard his father talk about the men coming to the muster, barefooted and dirty, but the finest fighting men in the world. Of course, my grandfather was only a sixteen-year-old boy at the time.”

“You’re Scots, then,” she said as if that explained everything.

“I suppose one could say that. I’ve never been there. My father grew up in France.”

“French?” Lady LaCorte seemed even more horrified by this than by the notion of rebellion, odd in light of her name.

“Oh, he came back to England before the Revolution. It was quite safe after so long. His older brother had paid to have the title reinstated by then. It’s a pity he has no male heirs.” She remembered too late that this might be a tender subject for the highly pregnant lady before her.

“So you are the daughter of the second son of an earl,” Lady LaCorte summed up, her tone even more barbed. “Who is your mother, then? The natural daughter of the Empress of China?”

“No, the legitimate daughter of a general who thought that marrying my father would be one long romantic story. I don’t know how she feels about it now. It always seemed romantic to me. They traveled a great deal. My sister was born in Portsmouth, and I was born in York, which only goes to prove—”

“What? What does it prove?”

“That my father had wandering feet, I suppose. Until his death, we never lived two years in the same town.”

“How peculiar.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I loved it. Always something new to see, strange people to meet, never-walked byways waiting for exploration....” As she spoke, she recalled her father saying something very much like this once as she rode beside him on the roof of a carriage. She couldn’t have been more than six or eight. She remembered that Linny, never a good traveler, had been sick and had ridden inside with Mother. She’d been more than glad to get out in the fresh air.

“Difficult for your mother, however. When I came to the Manor—” She stopped suddenly as if remembering that she was speaking to a stranger not deserving of confidence.

“I suppose it must have been. Mother doesn’t talk much about such things.”

“Where is she now? Staying in the village, perhaps?”

“No,” Camilla said, now thoroughly lost. “She’s traveling to give aid to my sister, who finds herself in the same condition as you yourself, ma’am,”

The white hand, decorated only with the thinnest of golden wedding bands, lifted to smooth unconsciously over the mound of her abdomen. “Is she married?”

Camilla drew herself up, giving Lady LaCorte a glance in which anger was mixed with disappointment. She’d hoped for better of a woman of greater age and rank than herself. “Of course. Married three years or more to John Armistead of Leeds, a rising attorney of the city. I take leave to tell you that your insinuation is insulting, ma’am, not only to my mother and my sister, but to myself.”

‘Tempestuous creature, aren’t you?” her ladyship said, seeming pleased rather than angered by Camilla’s outburst. For the first time, she looked fully into her eyes. “You may be the thoroughly nice girl you seem, or you may prove a conniver. Perhaps you are no more than as impetuous as my own girls. Whatever the reason you have come to the Manor, I hope you’ll be comfortable here until you find other accommodation. Dinner has been moved back until seven o’clock. Join us if you wish.”

Lady LaCorte swept out of the room in her heavy gleamless dress. Even her shoes and stockings, glimpsed under her very long dress as she lifted the hem, were black as the bottom of a well.

Camilla sank down on the bed, another trespass against her mother’s sacred rules. She pursed her lips and blew hard, just evading a whistle. Twice, at least, Camilla had heard in Lady LaCorte’s voice such an air of miserable despair that she’d forgiven her on the spot for her sharpness. But it seemed as though the older woman had wanted to make her disdain very clear as almost every word she’d said, by content or by tone, had been reviling and rude. Camilla could not begin to explain it. Unfortunately, Lady LaCorte had been too harsh to permit Camilla to indulge in any of the whys that crowded her mouth.