Carla Kelly (6 page)

David Wiggins took off his boots inside the back door, put his finger to his lips, and took her hand. He led her up the stairs and paused outside a door. “I’ll have your trunk here by noon,” he whispered as he opened the door, “provided you’re of a mind to stay.”

She stood up straighter and glanced over his shoulder at the welcome bed beyond. “I have to stay, Mr. Wiggins,” she said, not bothering to pull hairs with this man. “I don’t have a penny to return to London on.”

“So we’re stuck with you?” he asked, and it didn’t sound unkind. But how was she to know, with her mind already telling her how good the pillow was going to feel, if only she could get to it?

“I think so, Mr. Wiggins. Do forgive me for being rag-mannered, but you stand between me and that bed right now, and I wish you would move.”

He gave another of his oblique smiles, stepped out of her way, and closed the door after him. She didn’t hear him on the stairs, but as she sat in the window seat to remove her boots, she watched him head across the barnyard again. She could see a modest two-story house beyond the barn, but he made for a long building that looked like a succession house. She watched closely; in another moment, a lamp began to glow.

Don’t you sleep? she thought as she let her dress fall to the floor, and crawled beneath the comforting weight of heavy blankets. The only reflections of any coherence that crossed her tired brain before sleep took over was the odd notion that David Wiggins had been her last thought the night before, too, as he was now.

Chapter Five

To her continuing amazement, she woke to the thought of David Wiggins. She wiggled her chemise down around her knees where it belonged, wished for the comfort of her flannel nightgown in the trunk beside the inn, and wondered if the bailiff had slept beyond his usual waking, too.

She looked at the clock, and sat up quickly. “This will never do, Susan,” she said out loud as she looked around her. Lady Bushnell will think I am a dreadful slug-a-bed. She allowed herself to lean back against the headboard, considering whether Lady Bushnell would seriously have a spare thought for her newest lady’s companion.

Apparently I am only one of many, Susan thought, hugging her knees to her. She stared into the small but sturdy fire in the grate which some kind soul must have lit for her earlier. Lady Bushnell will likely ignore me and wait for me to go away. I shall not. I cannot, for I have no place else to go.

It was an uncomfortable thought, as soon followed by another one. I have to convince Lady Bushnell that she needs me, and I haven’t the slightest notion how to go about doing that, she reflected as she got out of bed and rummaged around in the mound of clothes she had stepped out of last night as soon as David Wiggins had closed the door. She shook out her petticoat and wrapped it around her shoulders.

The room was warm enough, so she moved to the window seat, tucking herself into its compact recess and grateful for her own small size. She gazed out the window at a white world clenched tight in the fist of winter. This was no London brown snow, but a white so intense that she had to look away after a minute’s observation. The sky was the cold blue of the bottom of a pond, and the trees skeletal, but overshadowing all was the smooth undulation of low hills that protected the valley. No traffic moved on the road they had traveled last night. They might have been the only manor on the planet, so complete was the isolation.

But I am warm, she thought, fingering the hem of the petticoat about her shoulders. Whatever her reluctance about a lady’s companion, Lady Bushnell did not allow anyone to stint on coal in her household. It was a pleasant room, too, low-ceilinged, with two chairs drawn up companionably by the fireplace, and a footstool. A sampler hung by the door that must lead into a dressing room. Her eyes still dazzled by the snow, she squinted at the writing.

“For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways,” she read, wondering what young daughter or granddaughter had labored over the work, and remembering her own purgatory with thread and needle. Susan rested her chin on her knees. “I could use an angel,” she said. Someone knocked on the door and she smiled. My angel, she thought as she called “Come” from her window seat perch.

If the young woman who came into the room carrying a brass can was an angel, then the Lord had a good eye for competence. She was round and solid like the buildings on the holding itself, firmly planted to remain. She set the can by the washstand and placed the dress draped over her arm on the bed.

“I’m Cora,” she said and took a deep breath. “Mr. Wiggins isn’t so sure that he can get through to Quilling to fetch your trunk, what with the new snow, and he told my mum to find you a dress for a day or two. My mum’s the housekeeper,” she finished in a rush of words. She looked at the dress doubtfully. “But I don’t think it will fit. Mr. Wiggins said he thought you had a waist small enough to span with his hands, and begging your pardon, ma’am, there’s nobody but Lady Bushnell who has a waist that size, and she isn’t loaning out clothes to any lady’s companion.”

“I shouldn’t imagine,” Susan murmured, coming out of the window seat and wondering what else Mr. Wiggins thought. She held up the dress. “I’m certain it will do, if you can find me a sash of some sort.” She smiled then, and held out her hand. “I’m Susan Hampton, the
final
lady’s companion.”

Cora giggled. “No one’s ever said that before!”

“Perhaps it’s time someone did.” Oh, brave words, she thought, and here I stand with my knees practically knocking. “How many have there been?”

“Lots,” Cora replied, ticking them off her fingers. “There was the one who cried all the time because she was homesick, the one who ran off with the tinkers, the one who put Bible verses about hell and brimstone all around the place, the one who stole the spoons, the one . . .”

“Goodness, I think that’s enough,” Susan said. She sat down on the bed. “Stole spoons?”

“Lady Bushnell’s very own apostle spoons,” Cora said, and giggled again. “Tucked them right up her sleeves and in other places Mum says I shouldn’t mention.”

“Heavens!”

“I haven’t even told you about the others. There was . . .”

“Perhaps it can wait,” Susan broke in, eager to change the subject. “Cora, am I too late for breakfast? I really didn’t mean to sleep so long.”

“We keep early hours here, but Mr. Wiggins told Mum you needed to sleep and not to wake you.”

“And I suppose he’s been up for hours.”

“Mum doesn’t think he sleeps ever. But when you’re dressed, follow your nose to the kitchen. Mum saved some breakfast for you.” Cora went to the door. “There’s lavender soap by the basin, and if you’re needing it, I can find you a hairbrush.”

“I have one, thank you.”

“I can brush it sometime, if you like,” she offered, her face shy with the suggestion, her eyes bright to please. “I disremember when I’ve seen hair so black before, and thick.”

It
is
nice hair, Susan told herself after Cora left. She hadn’t taken the time to braid it last night, and it was all tangled around her shoulders. Mama used to brush it until it crackled, she remembered. I would sit between her knees. . . . Oh, that was nice. She took her hairbrush from her reticule and began to brush her hair in front of the mirror. Truth, I would have liked a little daughter with long black hair to brush. Damn you, Papa, for spending away my husband, sons, and daughters.

But I am not to think of Papa, she told herself as she braided her hair and twisted it into a low knot on the back of her neck. It hung heavy that way, but did wonders for her posture. She thought briefly of Emily and her constant parading about the drawing room with a book on her head, and all for the purpose of snaring some vicar or second son who needed a bride’s portion, no matter how poor her carriage. And Aunt Louisa? “Well, I have likely exchanged one tyranny for another, but it is my own choice,” she told the mirror.

Cora’s dress hung many times too large on her slender frame, so she stepped out of it, and tried to shake out the worst of the wrinkles from her traveling dress. The material had the virtue of being well cut, but there wasn’t much she could do about it, not after trudging through mud and snow at midnight. She resigned herself to Cora’s dress. The sash Cora brought helped, but couldn’t shrink it four sizes. She tucked and pleated the extra fabric under the sash, her hands lingering for a moment at her waist. So you think you could span my waist with your hands, Mr. Wiggins, she considered. I’d like to see you try.

She couldn’t find her boots, so she went downstairs in her stockinged feet, treading quietly on the stairs and looking around her with some pleasure. I wonder how old this house is, she thought, warm with pleasure from inside out at seeing it in daylight. The ceilings were low and the walls wainscoted, the oak mellowing and darkening through the years. Mullioned windows on the first floor sparkled with the snow’s reflection, each little pane rubbed and cleaned and soberly outlined in its lead frame. She looked up at the open beams and decided that Queen Elizabeth would have been quite at home here. Two hundred years of wind, storm, and winter, she marveled, and hopes and dreams. “What is it you hope for, Lady Bushnell?” she whispered as she glided down the hall, following her nose. “Or are all your dreams done?” She stood still a moment, hugging her arms about her. “Mine are,” she said. “Now I must please others.”

The kitchen was at the back of the house, instead of belowstairs, and unaccountably her spirits began to rise. It was a small matter, but a fact that cheered her, all out of proportion to its relative importance. She opened the door and breathed deep of kitchen smells that must have been trapped in the overhead beams for two centuries. Bunches of dried spices hung in orderly clumps from ceiling hooks, conveniently at hand. Her eyes went to the huge fireplace at the end of the kitchen, then she smiled to see that it had been bricked over and replaced by a Rumford stove. And there were her boots, polished to a shine that reflected the lamplight overhead. Everything gleamed of order, well-being, and stability, and it was balm to Susan’s soul. Cora, she thought, I believe your mother is a force to be reckoned with.

The force to be reckoned with was watching her from the depths of an overstuffed chair, a cat in her lap, and a cup of tea close to her hand. She was on her feet as soon as Susan looked her way, pouring the cat down her dress and holding out her hand. There was no disguising the look of surprise on her face.

“Lord love us, and I thought Davey Wiggins was joking, except that he seldom jokes,” she said as she came closer to Susan. “You
are
scarcely more than a babe! But welcome and let us clap hands. I am Kate Skerlong, the housekeeper. Susan Hampton?”

Susan stepped forward gladly and shook hands. “Yes, ma’am, and thank you for letting me sleep.”

Mrs. Skerlong nodded. “Davey insisted. He said he hauled you up and down hills and through snow half the night, and it wouldn’t do to send you back to London in a box.” She went to the stove and lifted a saucepan from the warming shelf. “That’s the one thing that hasn’t happened to our lady’s companions yet.”

Susan smiled at her, fascinated. “I’m sure it’s not because some have not wished it!” she said.

Mrs. Skerlong only smiled. “Come now, sit and have some porridge.” She chuckled behind her hand. “You’ll have to eat a prodigious amount to fill out that dress!”

They laughed together, and Susan tucked into the porridge, marveling as she ate and trying not to exclaim like an idiot over the tastiness of it, just how it was that something familiar should taste better in these surroundings.

“That was so good I must have some more,” she said when she finished, and held out her bowl.

“You’ll still never fill out that dress, no matter how much you eat.”

Susan glanced around. David Wiggins stood in the doorway, blinking his eyes after the amazing brightness of the snow outside. He nodded to Mrs. Skerlong—who reached for another bowl—shook the snow off his coat, and tossed it expertly over the coat tree. He sat down at the table across from Susan and watched her face in silence until she wanted to look away.

“What, sir?” she asked finally, hoping the exasperation didn’t show in her voice, but half hoping that it would. For all that he was across the table from her, he seemed uncomfortably close.

“Thank you, Mrs. Skerlong,” he said as she set a bowl of porridge already thick with cream in front of him. “You look a little fragile in the morning light, Miss Hampton. I was just wondering what I would have done if you had pegged out last night during our walk.”

Silly man, she thought as she smiled at Mrs. Skerlong and picked up her spoon again. “Well, if I had broken my leg, you could have shot me,” she said, her tone conversational.

He grinned down into his bowl, but didn’t say anything.

“Looks are sometimes deceiving, sir,” she continued after a few mouthfuls more of porridge. “I could probably eat you under the table and outlast you on any march.”

“We’ll try it sometime,” he said when he finished, and he reached for the coffee cup that Mrs. Skerlong handed him. “Coffee, Miss Hampton?” he offered.

She indicated her cup. “I prefer tea.”

“Of course you do. Coffee’s for old campaigners.” He regarded her another moment, then turned his attention to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Skerlong, there’s yet another new calf in the byre and another threatening. Tell me what possesses cows to drop their calves when it’s colder than a well digger’s arse outside?”

Susan choked over her tea and resisted the urge to laugh. I must have left the land of well-bred, boring conversationalists, she thought. The bailiff is a genuine article. She regarded Wiggins with more interest, admiring his face in profile as he looked at the housekeeper. Nose a trifle long, she thought, but straight. Chins like that usually mean stubbornness. Aunt Louisa’s modiste would say that cheekbones so prominent show character, but that can’t be, because he’s a dark Welshman. I wonder how he came by a name like Wiggins?

Mrs. Skerlong was obviously no stranger to the bailiff’s kitchen chat. “It’s the same logic that compels women to reach their confinement in the middle of the night,” she said. “All my babies came at night.”

“I call it damned inconsiderate,” he said frankly. He leaned back in the chair and the exhaustion seemed to ooze off him. He pushed the coffee cup toward the housekeeper. “Another of those, if you please, and I might stay awake for a few hours longer.” He directed his attention to Susan again. “Well, now that you’ve scrutinized me, are there any questions about myself that need answers?”

“My, but you’re blunt,” Susan said before she thought. “How on earth does your wife manage?”

He did laugh then, with a sidelong glance at Mrs. Skerlong. “That’s easy, Miss Hampton. I’m not married. Wives take time and money; I have neither.”

She blushed and returned her attention to her teacup.

“Reading the leaves?” he inquired, the amusement showing in his dark eyes.

“No!” She finished her tea thoughtfully, then decided it would do no harm to speak. “Tell me this, Mr. Wiggins: what do you reckon are my chances of remaining here as a lady’s companion?”

He considered the question. “Small, I would think.” Elbows on the table, he rested his chin in his hands, regarded her with that unwavering gaze. “Nobody really needs you here, Miss Hampton, and that’s the hard and cold of it. If you could make yourself indispensable, now, that might be a different wedge of cheese.”

“And how do I do that?” she asked, returning him gaze for gaze, amazed at her own boldness. “I like it here, and I want to stay.”