Carla Kelly (4 page)

“
Oy gevalt,
Mamele, here’s another one from Lady Bushnell.” Forgetting her presence for a moment, he made a face at it, then took the envelope in his teeth and carefully slit it open with the letter opener. He took out the letter and shook it open, looking over it at Susan again. “You’d appreciate this lady, Miss Hampton. I think she is almost as persistent as you.”

He was about to toss it into a wire basket when he stopped and read it through again, looking over the letter at her when he finished. He put it down then with scarcely concealed excitement, and glanced at his mother. “Mamele, I have an idea,” he said finally, triumph in his voice as he looked at Susan. “Miss Hampton, I have an offer for you.”

“Joel! You can’t be thinking . . .”

He swiveled in his chair to watch his mother. “And why not, Mamele? Everyone we’ve sent, she’s rejected. ‘Too old, too slow, too stupid, too vulgar, too this, too that’ until I want to smack her!”

Susan grinned in spite of herself. Joel Steinman, you are irresistible, she thought. “She sounds like a dragon.”

“Most certainly. And Lady Bushnell is only the dog guarding the entrance to the underworld. What
was
his name?”

“Cerberus,” she said automatically, wondering what he would say next.

“Ah ha!” he exclaimed, kissing his long fingers at her. “Exactly. I have here a letter from Lady Bushnell, widow of Lord Bushnell, late colonel of the Fifth Regiment of Foot, the Cotswolds Guards. I have been trying for months to please her with a lady’s companion for her mother-in-law, the dowager Lady Bushnell.” He leaned across the table until he was quite close to her face. “Miss Hampton, do you have any objection to old ladies?”

Captivated by him, she shook her head.

“Strong-willed, stubborn, drive-you-crazy martinets?”

Again she shook her head. “I’ve been living with them for years, sir,” she said.

His smile was beatific. She thought for one amazed moment that he was going to kiss her, but he sat down again, slapped the desk in triumph, and nodded to his mother. “Miss Hampton is going to put us all out of our misery.”

Mrs. Steinman considered the matter a while longer, then slowly nodded her head. “There’s no one there beyond the bailiff ever to be tempted by Miss Hampton,” she considered, working through the matter out loud. “Not that he isn’t a nice man, but after all, a bailiff. We needn’t worry about her there, Joel.”

“Done, then,” Steinman exclaimed. He leaped to his feet and grabbed for his overcoat on the rack behind him, shrugging one-handed into it, and then reaching for his muffler. “Don’t just sit there,” he insisted. “I’m going to see you employed before the morning is over.”

“Not until your muffler is wound tighter,” Susan said. She stood before him, and he stooped obligingly for her to perform this little service. She tucked the ends inside his overcoat. “Very well, sir, lead on.”

He took her hand in the street, hurrying along sidewalks empty of pedestrians, but full of drifting snow. After several blocks of concentrated walking, he slowed down when he noticed that she was breathing heavily and almost skipping to keep up with him.

“I’m sorry, Miss Hampton,” he said, smiling at her in such a way that she could never be out of sorts with him. “It will be such a treat to lift this burden from my shoulders and put it on yours!”

She laughed, and he joined in, standing still for a moment while she tucked in his muffler again. “Lady Bushnell—widowed since Waterloo—is about to remarry the colonel of her late husband’s regiment. She has been wanting to find a lady’s companion for her old mother-in-law, but she is a high stickler, indeed.”

“The old woman, too?”

Joel made a face, and managed to look contrite, all in the same expression. “If you survive the younger Lady Bushnell’s interview, that’s your second hurdle. Old Lady Bushnell insists that she wants nothing to do with a companion. She insists that between her and David Wiggins . . .”

“David Wiggins?”

“. . . the bailiff . . . they can get along quite fine,” he concluded, taking her arm more firmly and pulling her back as a carter splashed through the intersection. He sighed. “She declares that companions are only for old ladies with one foot in the grave.” He raised his hand and made a spitting sound onto his mittens. He looked sideways at her, apologetic. “Never tempt the devil with death, Miss Hampton,” he said solemnly as he started her across the street.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, wondering with a smile on her face what kind of Hebrew charm Joel Steinman was working on her.

“So it stands. She tried other agencies without success, then turned to us. One or two of our companions got beyond the first scrutiny, but failed after a week in the Cotswolds with the dowager.” He paused to consider the matter, and she had to tug him out of the street. “Sorry.”

“Since then, Lady B the Younger has found fault with everyone we’ve brought over,” he said as they turned onto a quieter street off St. James Park. “It may be that you’ll do. Our other potential employees have been capable, but not particularly genteel. That you are, Miss Hampton.”

“Why, thank you,” she said, trying to keep the amusement from her voice.

He chuckled. “I do sound a bit managing, don’t I, Miss Hampton?”

“You do, sir. I will overlook it, if this gets me a job.”

They paused in front of an elegant town house not two blocks from Aunt Louisa’s residence. “Oh, I know this place,” she exclaimed. “And I do remember the windows draped in black and the black wreath on the door after Waterloo. And straw on the street to muffle the passing traffic.”

“Ah, yes. No, no, Miss Hampton!”

She had started up the front steps, but he tugged her back. “We use the servants’ entrance.” He indicated the flight of steps behind an iron grating. When she did not move, he touched her elbow lightly and spoke closer into her ear, his voice sympathetic. “Miss Hampton, I think that only the first step down is difficult. I’ll help you.”

So it is, she thought as she swallowed the lump in her throat and allowed him to help her down the shallow flight to the servants’ door. Her eyes filled with tears, and she wanted him to wait a moment before knocking. He did, fumbling inside his overcoat to draw out a handkerchief and dab at her eyes, his own eyes kind.

“Forward, Miss Hampton,” he said as he raised his hand to the door. “If Daniel can survive a discussion with lions, you can stare down Lady Bushnell.”

He was well known belowstairs, everyone from the scullery maid to the footman greeting him as they made their way to the butler’s parlor, where they left their coats. The butler led them upstairs to a small parlor, where he suggested they make themselves comfortable.

It wasn’t a long wait. While her heart may have sunk to her boots during that longest journey down the servants’ stairs, it bounced back into her throat when the door opened. Joel was on his feet at once, shifting his feet to compensate for the overbalance of his missing arm. She rose, too, her hands clasped behind her to keep them from shaking in plain view.

Lady Bushnell nodded to them both, seated herself, and indicated that they sit, too. Joel accepted her offer of tea, but Susan declined politely, imagining the disaster that would occur if she dropped the cup in her nervousness. The maid withdrew for the tea.

There was silence for the longest moment, then Lady Bushnell directed her clear, unblinking gaze at Susan, even as she spoke to the employment agent. “Mr. Steinman, I do believe you are bringing me the infantry now,” she protested, her voice cultured but tinged faintly with resignation.

“My lady, I am quite twenty-five,” Susan said, her voice steadier than her hands.

To her relief, Lady Bushnell smiled at her. “I wish I were,” she said, the humor subdued but evident in her voice. Susan relaxed slightly and began, unaccountably, to hope. “It’s obvious that you have more breeding than the usual scaff and raff Mr. Steinman brings to me,” she continued. “Who are your parents?”

“My mother was Maria Endicott of the Marling, Kent, Endicotts, and my father is Sir Rodney Hampton.” Susan looked Lady Bushnell in the eye and politely dared her to make something of it.

“Oh.” It was concise and said “I know who you are” as loudly as if Lady Bushnell had spoken it. She hadn’t needed to; Sir Rodney’s tattered reputation hung between them like a flag of surrender.

“You will understand why I need a position, my lady,” Susan continued.

“Is it that bad with him?” Lady Bushnell asked, her inquiry still polite, but not withdrawn.

Susan nodded, and gave herself a moment to reply. “There is very little between me and ruin, my lady,” she managed finally. “My father may mean well, but he cannot provide.”

“You have an aunt, I believe?”

“I do. She would like me to be available to fetch and carry for her.”

“That’s what you will be doing for my mother-in-law, if I select you,” Lady Bushnell said, her words reasonable. “Why not stay under the protection of your family?”

It was a good question, quietly put and extremely apt. In a way that no words could express, Susan knew that her acceptance hinged on her answer. Joel Steinman felt it, too, and she was grateful. He stirred in his chair, his leg touching her dress briefly. She felt the movement of the material and took heart. It was as though he had taken her hand for support.

“I could, of course, my lady,” she said. “I am sure there are those who say I should, but it wouldn’t be any time at all before I vanished.”

Lady Bushnell cocked her head to one side, intrigued, but she did not interrupt. She only nodded when the maid entered quietly with the tea.

“She means well,” Susan went on when the door closed again, “but I would become Aunt Louisa’s unfortunate niece, and not a person in my own right.” She managed a smile with no mirth in it. “I am already Sir Rodney’s daughter, my lady, and that is difficult enough to bear.”

“Running away to the Cotswolds won’t change that,” Lady Bushnell interjected, her voice mild.

“It might,” Susan disagreed. “There I would be Susan Hampton, and I might discover that that is a nice thing.”

“My mother-in-law does not want a companion, and has told me this on numerous occasions. She is sixty-five and has buried a husband, a daughter, and a son. She was a follower of the drum through India and the Peninsula, and a legend in the army.” Lady Bushnell paused for the briefest moment, then continued in her masterfully calm voice. “She is independent, stubborn, and dear to me beyond all reckoning. I want great care to be taken of her without her knowing it. Do you think you could do that? Her bailiff does it, but he is busy with the estate. She will try you and exasperate you.” Lady Bushnell sighed. “I fear she does not wish to give up even one inch of her independence.” She regarded Susan. “Something in your face tells me that you sympathize,” she said in amusement. Her voice turned serious again. “Still, it will be difficult. Are you equal to it?”

I must be, Susan thought. This is all the chance I have. “I do not fold easily, my lady.”

Lady Bushnell smiled. “Susan Hampton, I do not think you fold at all. Pour tea for us, won’t you?”

Susan eyed the teapot. “I think my hands are shaking too badly, my lady.”

“And you are an honest body, Miss Hampton,” Lady Bushnell noted. “That will suit Lady B’s bailiff. Pour it anyway.”

She did, picking up cup and saucer, and taking a firm grip on the teapot. She kept her back straight, as Mama had taught her, and even managed an artful splash at the end that sent a little geyser of tea evenly creating its cultured wave to the edge of the cup. Head high, she held out the cup to Lady Bushnell, who accepted it with a twinkle in her eye.

“You are made of sterner stuff.”

Sterner than what was unspoken. I will spend a lifetime living down my father, she thought as she poured a cup for Joel Steinman.

“The position is yours, if you want it,” Lady Bushnell offered after a sip of tea. “Can you leave right away?”

“Tomorrow, if that’s soon enough.” Heaven knows Aunt Louisa will wash her hands of me.

Lady Bushnell smiled. “I think that will be soon enough, my dear! Now you have to see if you can please a woman who doesn’t need you and a bailiff who feels the same. I don’t know which will be more difficult.”

Chapter Four

The job was Susan’s, but even Lady Bushnell was hard put to explain why. “I have tried many,” she said companionably over tea, and smiled when Joel Steinman nodded in agreement. “You’re forty years her junior, and I can think of little you might have in common. And yet . . . oh, well. Only take good care of her.”

“If she will allow me,” Susan interjected.

“Yes, if she will allow you.” Lady Bushnell hesitated then, as though she wondered if what she requested would be agreeable to Susan. “Miss Hampton, I wish to do all I can to give my mother-in-law a free hand, but if she falls ill, or suffers an injury, I expect you to tell me. I will spare no effort to see that she is removed from that remote valley and cared for, no matter what my other responsibilities.”

“I will do as you ask, my lady,” Susan said.

“I hope you will,” Lady Bushnell replied.

It was a sobering reflection, Susan decided as they left the mansion in early afternoon. I am setting out for a place I have never been, to do something I have never done before, and among people who probably don’t want me. More than typically silent, she allowed Joel Steinman to walk her home the few blocks from the Bushnell residence.

“I will see that a message to Quilling Manor goes on the mail coach tonight,” he promised. “There’ll be someone waiting for you in Quilling tomorrow night.”

They paused in front of Aunt Louisa’s town house. Steinman stood, hand in pocket, observing the impeccably swept front steps and the door knocker. “You know, if you change your mind about leaving all this, I will certainly understand,” he commented.

She shook her head. “Don’t give me any outs, Mr. Steinman,” she said. “For all that this is an impressive house, it has a way of absorbing one.”

He chuckled. “Well, I am certain many of your friends will wonder if you have taken total leave of your senses.”

“Do you think I have?” she asked frankly.

He shrugged. “Who of us really knows anything about the lives of others?”

“That’s no answer,” she said, amused.

“It’s a very good answer,” he declared, then winked at her. “Besides all that, Miss Hampton, a good Jew always answers a question with a question. Good day.” He looked up at the house again. “And good luck?”

“Do I need it?” she questioned back, quizzing him with her eyes. He laughed out loud and started back toward the employment agency, head down against the wind that was picking up again as the afternoon lengthened.

I will tell them over dinner, she decided, so I will only have to tell the news once. She wanted to begin packing, but that would have required her trunk from the attic, and she did not wish to alert the servants to her plans. Instead, she spent the little time until dinner sorting through her clothing, searching for the serviceable, winnowing out the frivolous. There was soon a respectable pile of sober clothing ready to be folded and packed into her trunk. She sighed and put her evening dresses and ball gowns in cloves and a sturdy box. She hesitated over her silk drawers and chemises, then added them to the pile. No sense in abandoning all pleasure for duty. When I am frumpily proper in serge and wool, she decided, I will enjoy my silk all the more.

It was a small victory in an afternoon of reflection and was swallowed up totally by the sound of the dinner bell. “I cannot face them,” she said out loud, clutching a shawl of Norwich silk to her like a breastplate of steel. What had seemed so sensible and realistic before the dinner bell now felt foolish and desperate. If I say nothing at dinner, I can send round a note to the Steinmans in the morning, she thought as she prinked at her hair in the mirror and tried to squeeze a little color back into her cheeks. I can stay here and let Aunt Louisa throw me the occasional bone.

She stared at her own anxious face, closing her eyes against her own eyes so wide and frightened in the glass. Everyone knew that Sir Rodney Hampton had never kept a promise in his life; why should his daughter? “But I have promised I would go tomorrow,” she said and opened her eyes cautiously. The fright was still there in her reflection, but something more, too, a curious kind of resolution more felt than visible, but real all the same. “I promised,” she repeated. “I promised.”

Susan saved her news until after the fish course had been removed by the breast of mutton. At least they cannot accuse me of springing horrible news on an empty stomach, she thought as she speared a slice of mutton with more intensity than usual. And I do not much care for mutton in the first place. She put down her fork.

“I have something to tell you.”

They looked at her, and some instinct told her that even years from now, these would be the faces she remembered—Emily, her air of vague distraction made more pronounced by the burden of being a violet female in a daffodil year; Aunt Louisa, faintly annoyed to be disturbed from her mutton’s path from fork to mouth; and Papa, wary and eager-eyed at the same time, desperate for good news from some source. And what had Susan ever been to him but pleasant company?

“I have accepted a position as companion to an elderly lady living in the Cotswolds. I leave tomorrow morning.”

It sounded bald, even to her. The silence that followed her quiet pronouncement was the silence of disapproval so profound that there were no words. “I will be paid thirty pounds a year, plus my room and board,” she added, wanting to fill that enormous silence, even if it was only with puny words that sounded like chicken peeps.

Papa spoke first, and this startled her. She glanced at Aunt Louisa, wondering if the news had rendered her speechless, and angry at her father for throwing her off balance.

“I spent more than that on gloves last year,” he said, his tone oddly placating, which only brought her own anger to a high boil.

“I know, Papa!” she said, her voice big in the room. It was almost a relief to shout at him, to cow him in his chair and watch him shrink before her eyes. “I am tired of your endless, silly promises and your spendthrift ways! They have quite ruined me!”

He winced at her words as though she had lashed him with a whip. “Hamptons don’t behave like this, daughter . . .” he began, but she would not let him continue.

“Oh, I know that,” she raged. “They smile and simper and look big-eyed at the world, and hope for charm to help them over life’s little trials! No, I am not like you,” she finished, each word a slap in his face. “And I thank God for that!”

“That is quite enough, Susan.”

Aunt Louisa was on her feet now, the fork with its bit of mutton still in her hand. “You will apologize to your father.”

Susan leaped to her feet and flung down her napkin like a guantlet. “I will not! You cannot make me!”

Aunt Louisa seemed to tower over her, a patient expression on her face that made Susan grit her teeth. “You will apologize to your father, and we will forget this conversation ever took place.”

“I will not revoke a word of it,” Susan said with a calm now to match her aunt’s. “It is enough that I have to earn my bread and spend a lifetime living down my father’s sorry reputation.”

Sir Rodney closed his eyes as if she had slapped him. Susan looked at him, suddenly aghast at herself because she felt nothing, no pity, no sorrow, no remorse. Pathetic man, she thought. Why should a body feel anything for you? She looked up from her contemplation of her father. Aunt Louisa was speaking again.

“You will apologize or you will not return to this house, once having left it.”

“If that is your choice, Aunt,” Susan said as she started from the dining room.

“No, Susan. It is yours.”

***

She lay awake long after her trunk was packed, corded, and downstairs waiting for the carter who would take it, and her, to the Hound and Hare to catch the morning coach. Don’t they understand what they have done to me? she asked herself over and over, until the words lost any sense or meaning. And when she had ground that subject down to hash, she thought about David Wiggins. Oh, I hope you are of a mind to be helpful, she thought. I am so weary of difficult men.

Before sunrise, she let herself out of a quiet house, permitted the carter to hand her up onto the high seat, and congratulated herself on saving the cost of a hackney. The morning was bitter cold, the air still and heartless. This is a discouraging time of day, she thought as she settled her chin into her muffler. She thought she would turn around for a last look at the town house, but she did not. If someone is looking out a window, she told herself grimly, they will not have the pleasure of thinking that I cared enough to glance around.

Muffled by snow, the streets were oddly silent. The further they drove toward the city, the more carts she saw, until there was the Hound and Hare, brightly lit, with a queue of passengers already waiting to scramble for the best seats.

To her relief, Joel Steinman stood in the inn door, stamping his feet to keep the cold at bay. He nodded to her and indicated a bench in front of the inn where two mugs of tea waited for them. She took one gratefully, holding the cup to her cheek.

“I won’t have you laboring under the fiction that the Steinman Employment Agency sees off all its clients,” he said as he took her ticket from her and handed it to the coachman. “It’s just that I suspect this is your first ride on the mail coach.”

She nodded. “You know it is. Do you have any good advice?”

“What do you think?” he asked, a smile on his face. “Although I fear you are out of luck for this first stage of the journey, when you get back on after the first rest stop, try to get a seat facing the coachman.”

“That’s it?” she asked after a moment watching the ostler stow her trunk on top and knot it down.

“That’s it. Let’s get you in line, Miss Hampton.”

She set down her tea and took the arm he offered, clutching it rather tighter than she meant to. He looked down at the pressure on his arm.

“Steinman has another service I forgot to mention,” he said as they shuffled closer to the coach. “We let our clients know of other openings more suited to them, if some come our way. And we also don’t mind getting letters from clients, if they get lonely.”

She didn’t have any more time than to give him a grateful smile, before the coachman was helping her inside the conveyance. Steinman leaned in after her. “One thing more: get on David Wiggins’s good side and he will be your ally. He has a most excellent side.”

Intrigued, Susan leaned across the clergyman squashed in next to her. “Excuse me, sir. Mr. Steinman, do you know him? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Joel Steinman only grinned and waved his empty coat sleeve at her as the coachman blew his horn to warn bystanders. Susan sat back, her elbows close into her sides, warned from further exhibition by the
harumph
of the vicar on one side of her, and the warning stare of an overfleshed woman mashed next to her. They left London as the sky lightened.

***

Nightfall found Susan only just beyond Oxford, and with a huge headache. I have learned so much today, she thought as she leaned her forehead against the cool glass, smudged from a day of travel through snow three parts mud. I can jostle for a window seat with the best of them, eat standing up, and entertain three-year-olds with the oddest bits of things from my reticule. I have listened to Waterloo stories and Trafalgar stories and grievances of master and worker, and traded recipes. I know remedies for morning sickness and how to keep fleas off cats. Travel by post chaise was never this enlightening.

She longed for her bed, ached for the comfort of a familiar mattress, and a maid to bring her a tisane. I suppose I will be fetching those for someone else, she reflected as she rubbed her temple. Oh, I wonder what a lady’s companion does?

A nursemaid dozed beside her. Her head tilted farther and farther forward, then snapped up when the coach hit icy patches and slid sideways. I could ask her, Susan thought, then reconsidered. She would only wonder what planet I had dropped down from, that I was so ill-equipped.

The headache was a stubborn one, and she knew it would not go away without a good night’s sleep and something to eat. Food was out, no matter how many more times the weather forced them to stop tonight. She had spent her last few pennies on tea and a hard roll at the inn before Oxford, and even that was hard to come by, with the crush of travelers. Her stomach growled, and she could only chafe at her own pride that refused to ask a penny beyond the coach fare from Lady Bushnell, or a modest loan from Joel Steinman. Her reflection in the coach window hardened. She would starve the length and breadth of England before asking Aunt Louisa or Papa for a groat.

No, what we must do is arrive at Quilling, and I must figure out how to charm David Wiggins. Lady Bushnell had said he was one of her late husband’s regimental sergeants, and before that, her father-in-law’s sergeant, too. Susan tried to picture him in her tired brain, but all she came up with was someone old and forbidding, and used to strict obedience. Perhaps his wife is more easily worked upon, she considered. I can ask her advice on domestic matters, and work my flattery on her husband that way. And if he is convinced of my worth and value, perhaps he will convey it to Lady Bushnell.

About her future employer, she had no clue. “I only know that I simply must succeed,” she said out loud.

“Wot, miss? Begging your pardon.”

Susan glanced at the nursemaid, who was sitting up, wide awake now, trying to pull down the bow of her bonnet from under her nose, where it had ridden up and curled like a mustache. She hesitated. Aunt Louisa would no more speak to this inferior than pack snuff in her lip. Susan looked at her seatmate—the coach was nearly empty now—and was struck with the fact that talking to her was going to be like taking that first step down to the servants’ entrance.

“I am to be lady’s companion to Lady Bushnell at Quilling Manor,” she confided, her unease overcoming her scruples after all these miles. “And I must tell you, it frightens me.”

The nursemaid had wrestled herself out of her bonnet. She turned big eyes on Susan. “Coo, love, it would worrit me some, too. I hear she’s a high stickler.” She leaned closer, her voice low and confidential, even though the sailor sitting across from them snored. “I hear she sleepwalks and prowls about the place at all hours and ends up outside the family mausoleum, joost sittin’ there. Keep your door locked, miss.”