A Yuletide Treasure (8 page)

Merridew brought up the tub, grumbling away. Mavis and another younger girl, who never opened her lips or looked her way, brought up the cans of hot water, making several trips.

Clean, warm and dry, Camilla didn’t trouble anyone to help her dress. Her hair was not so bad as she feared. The dress Lady LaCorte had lent her was simple in design, with a crossover front that meant all the ties and fastenings were within Camilla’s reach. Of a lightweight green wool, embroidered on bodice and down the seams with white-work leaves and flowers, it was too old for her. The high starched ruffle at the neck forced her to keep her head up while the sleeves tumbling to her knuckles made her wonder if the dining room was very drafty.

She paused in Nanny Mallow’s chamber for an instant. Nanny was asleep, and Mrs. Duke would brook not the slightest chance of waking her. She all but pushed Camilla out of the room by continuing to advance, hissing all the while in a hoarse whisper, until Camilla had either to become nose-to-nose with her or back away. She chose discretion.

“It’s bad enough that doctor had to come in, disturbing her just when she’d nodded off, without you doing the same, miss. All she needs now is a mite of sleep, and that she’ll have or my name’s not Portia Duke.”

“Is it?” Camilla asked, finding it hard to believe. But no one was responsible for their name, only what it stood for. “How pretty,” she added quickly.

“M’father was fond of a word of poetry in the evenings, poor man.”

“ ‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’ ” Camilla began.

“That’s right.” Mrs. Duke seemed puzzled that anyone besides her father should know it. “Mortal fond of poems and such like. Don’t know where he took a taste for such stuff, him being no better than a coachman.” She sniffed. “No sense to it, mostly.”

‘Your father must have been a remarkable man.”

“He was a good provider. My mother says you can’t expect more from a man than that.”

“My mother says the same thing,” Camilla noted. Of course, Mrs. Twainsbury masked her meaning rather more than Mrs. Duke’s mother. She talked about the duty a girl owed to her family not to marry beneath herself. Though the daughter of a general might equal the second son of an earl, Camilla had always wondered secretly if her mother had felt herself to have married up or down on the social scale.

Mrs. Duke seemed suddenly to remember that she disliked Camilla. All the same, she grudgingly promised to offer her good wishes to Nanny Mallow, should she awaken. Then she slipped back into the sickroom and shut the door quietly but firmly.

At almost the same instant, Camilla heard a door open on the floor above. She frankly listened, hoping for some clue to her reception at the Manor.

Though she had not expected to be received with open arms and a military band playing “See the Conquering Hero,” the cool unfriendliness of the inhabitants, even if tempered by charity, was starting to make her doubt herself. Was her breath somehow offensive? Did she remind them all of some acquaintance better forgot?

A quite young and rather loud voice sounded from above. “But I don’t see why you should be allowed to eat with the grown-ups while we have to take our tea up here.”

“It’s not fair,” another voice chimed in, younger, yet somehow deeper. ‘You’ve got your cameo on. We’re not even allowed to look at ours.”

“That’s because you’re children,” Tinarose said. Camilla could imagine the young girl’s nose tilted in the air. “A lady like me needs a little touch of jewelry to set me apart from the governesses and companions.” Her sisters greeted this attempt at pretension with hoots of laughter, then a scream as a sudden swift thud of a charge took place. Lighter feet skipped away over Camilla’s head.

Camilla dipped two fingers into the high lace collar that scratched so abominably at her neck. She caught hold of and dragged out her gold locket on a thin chain. With a wry smile, she laid it to repose on her bosom. It had been made on the Continent and was said to be quite fine. She, at least, would not be relegated to the status of governess or lady’s companion, two fates which she prayed she need never attempt.

She waited patiently on the landing until Tinarose stopped chasing after her sisters. When Tinarose caught sight of her as she came down a level, her steps grew slower and more deliberate on the uncarpeted stairs to the third floor.

“Are you lost?” she asked, the tone friendly.

“I don’t know the way to the dining room.”

“Oh, my uncle isn’t there.”

“I wasn’t looking for him. Your mother said I might join the family for dinner if I didn’t feel like taking a tray in my room. I would like company, so here I am.”

“You saw Mother?”

“Yes. She lent me a few things for the night.”

Tinarose nodded as if Camilla had confirmed something for her. “I thought I recognized the dress.”

“It’s very pretty. I’m very grateful to her.”

“Mother doesn’t like it. Of course, she couldn’t wear it anyway. Not now.”

“I was sorry to hear of your father’s death,” Camilla said with compassion. “He must have been a most gallant officer.”

“He was,” Tinarose said, gazing off into the distant view afforded by the upper-landing window. “Two of his crew nearly drowned trying to save him.” Then the girl turned her head and gave Camilla a slight, sweet smile. “Come on. I’ll show you where the drawing room is. We always meet there first.”

As they went down together, Camilla became aware of a kind of suppressed excitement simmering in the girl beside her. Her cheeks held a tinge of color, and her eyes were bright. She’d also obviously taken some extra pains with her abundant dark hair, creating several large springing curls at either side of her head. It was becoming to her but far too elaborate for a quiet family party. Camilla wished she knew Tinarose a little better so that she might have dropped a gentle hint.

“I am intrigued, Miss LaCorte, by your name. Tinarose. Does it have some significance?”

“I was named for both my grandmothers,” she said with a smile that indicated she’d often been asked. “My father was afraid that one name or the other would drop away, so he linked them into one so that neither would have preference.”

“A very fair decision.”

“What about you?”

“Oh, I was named for some Roman heroine. Or perhaps she wasn’t Roman. All I recall is that she ran so lightly that she could run over a field of growing crops without bending a stalk. Sir Philip would probably know more.”

“Does your mother admire that kind of person?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Camilla saw the girl having trouble answering this rhetorical question. “Now, my sister has a charming name. Linnet. Named for the birds that sang during my parents’ honeymoon.”

“How romantic,” Tinarose said, turning toward her. “Is your sister older or younger?”

“Older, by two years.”

“Oh.”

She sounded so disappointed that Camilla laughed. “Why, did you want her to be younger?”

“No, it’s only... Well, I have two sisters, both younger than I. They’re the bane of my life, they tease me so. I thought if you were in the same case, you could offer me some advice.”

“You’re fond of them?”

“They can be such dears,” Tinarose conceded. “But I’m sixteen and Nelly is ten and Grace is only six. They don’t understand what it is to be a woman.”

Camilla, hardly twenty-one herself, did not smile at the mingled pride and resignation in Tinarose’s voice. She had not yet entirely outgrown the feeling that no one could understand her. “It’s difficult,” she said. “I remember my sister at your age. I thought she was impossible. She’d been a darling before that; we shared so much since there was only the two of us. It’s hard to watch a beloved sister go through the door to womanhood, leaving you behind.”

“Are you close again now?”

Camilla shook her head. “Not yet. But I hope to be again, once I catch up to her. She’s married now. I’m only here because my mother has gone to be with her through her first confinement.”

Tinarose’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, how you must miss being with her!”

‘Yes, yes, I do. But my mother thought it wisest for me not to go just now.” Camilla realized that they’d been standing together for some few minutes outside a pair of closed double doors. “Is this the drawing room?” she asked.

Tinarose repressed a giggle.
“Yes,
it is. Oh, do I... Is my hair all right?”

“Charming,” Camilla said. “I meant to compliment you upon it.” There was no point in lessening the girl’s confidence by saying anything less than positive about the confection now. “And what a lovely cameo.”

Tinarose touched the carved red and white piece at her throat. The profile was that of a young man, his hair dressed in the Roman fashion now aped by
au courant
gentlemen, his cheeks chiseled and firm chin held high. “My father brought us each one,” she said, “I think he bought them in Naples.”

“It’s sardonyx, isn’t it?”

“Yes
,
but how did you know? Most people think it’s made of carnelian.” Tinarose opened the doors.

“I read a great deal,” Camilla said and noticed that everyone in the drawing room had turned at their entrance and therefore, they’d all heard her.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Sir Philip said, putting down his glass. “I tell my nieces that knowledge becomes a woman just as much as her fair face.”

Camilla shook hands with him. “That looks a little as if you were hoping for the best of both worlds, Sir Philip.”

“And why not? I always take the best that I am offered. Sherry?”

“Thank you.”

He led her to a corner of one of the straw yellow sofas that framed the room. The whole of the drawing room was decorated in warm tones of amber, a spring-like contrast to the bitterness of the season. A large fire burned in the white marble fireplace not far from the sofas, but the heat was tempered by two hand-painted fire screens. She admired the pattern while Sir Philip brought her a glass.

“Miss Twainsbury, may I present Dr. Evelyn March?”

Camilla had already noticed him. No woman alive could have failed to notice him. In profile, he might have posed for Tinarose’s cameo head. But this Roman figure was alive, the black coat and white stock of the medical man encasing his broad shoulders and strong neck, the beautifully molded mouth smiling as he shook hands. So good looking a man must cause many maidenly hearts to flutter. She wondered how many of his female patients were truly ill, then reproved herself for the cattiness of the idea.

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Twainsbury. Nanny Mallow cannot sing your praises enough.”

“It is she who was brave,” Camilla said, finding her voice. “I faced nothing worse than a little chill and some inconvenience.
I
cannot bear to think what she must have suffered before my appearance on the scene.”

“We must thank Providence that she only wrenched her knee. These elderly ladies can be surprisingly fragile.”

“And surprisingly resilient, too,” Sir Philip said. “I’ve seen them carry half their households on their backs and still make supper for a village.”

“Where was that, Uncle Philip?” Tinarose asked.

“Greece. Pennsylvania. St. Kitts. It’s the same story the world over.”

“I had no notion you were so widely traveled, Sir Philip,” Camilla said.

Tinarose answered for him. “Oh, yes. Uncle Philip has been
everywhere.”

“Not quite everywhere. But it’s a very interesting place, our world. I think it behooves a man to see as much of it as he can. My brother preferred to see it from the deck of a ship, but I always liked tramping around on my own two feet.”

“Better your own two feet than on a horse’s four,” Dr. March said, giving Philip a rueful glance.

“You did very well,” he answered. “The journey home will be easier yet.” The doctor gave a little groan.

“Isn’t Dr. March staying here?” Tinarose asked. Camilla glanced at her curiously. Her tone was a trifle too artless to be true. She felt that Tinarose not only knew the doctor would be staying, but she was more than a little pleased by the notion.

This undercurrent of feeling seemed to go unnoticed by the gentlemen.

“I’m afraid I cannot, Miss LaCorte. My father is unwell. I must return tonight.”

Sir Philip offered Camilla a glass of sherry. Since his guest could not dress for dinner, he had not done so either, merely changing his coat from the rough brown fustian he’d worn during the day to a more civilized blue superfine. His cravat was more
a
la mode
than his other, carelessly knotted, one. He, like his niece, had evidently taken some care to arrange his dark hair, since the tracks of the comb were still visible in the dampened strands.

Though not as jaw-droppingly handsome as the doctor, he looked even more like someone she’d like to know well than the man she’d met in the coach. Then, he’d been someone to ignore or even to snub in accordance with her mother’s imperatives. Now, since fate or Providence had thrown them into acquaintanceship, she wished to further it.

Not merely, she told herself, because he was both attractive and pleasantly spoken, but because he’d seen things that she wished to see, had been places that she would like to go, and, undoubtedly, had experienced many adventures that would thrill her as well. Since it was exceedingly unlikely that she’d have any future chance to leave her mother, let alone England, Camilla thought that achieving these ambitions secondhand would be better than not achieving them at all.

Seeing that Dr. March had gone on to regale Tinarose with the tale of his attempts to ride, Camilla smiled encouragingly at Sir Philip. “You must have enjoyed your opportunities to travel, sir. Is it only restiveness that has taken you to these far corners of the world? Or do you have some end in view?”

“I wish I could fascinate you with my noble reasons for undertaking my journeys,” he said, seating himself beside her. “My brother had the excuse of his duty. I, on the other hand, had only what the Germans call
wanderlust.
I simply set out one morning from this front door and walked away.”

“Just like that?”