Carola Dunn (17 page)

 “Well, naturally people wanted to know, and everyone was so kind when Jackie and Melinda... But there, we will not speak of that. I am afraid you will have a great many callers in the next few days. If you do not feel up to seeing them, we shall say you have a great deal of business to take care of after your long absence.”

 “As I shall have.” Damian saw an opening. “I am sure many things have changed since last I was at home. Jack’s new scheme for draining the west pasture, new tenants... Oh, by the way, you did not happen to call at Merriman’s Cottage while you were out, did you?”

 “I stopped at the gate and spoke to Miss Duckworth.”

 “Is she too vulgar for words?”

 “Not at all. If her gentility is assumed, I could not detect the imposture. I thought her altogether a lady. Charming, in fact.”

 “You did not go into the cottage, though,” he noted. “Did she invite you?”

 Mrs Perrincourt smiled and shook her head. “She said, quite rightly, that she was much too untidy to entertain a caller within.”

 “She does not sound at all like a desirable tenant.” Wrong word, Damian thought. His brief glimpse of her had shown her all too desirable, despite her greying hair and her dishabille. Odd, that. He was not accustomed to feeling such an instant attraction towards any female. “Not at all satisfactory,” he hastily amended. “I wonder what sort of lease she has, and whether it can be broken.”

 “Pray do not try, Damian! She was untidy because she was clearing blackberries from the back garden. Old Foster neglected the place terribly. Surely you cannot ask for a better tenant than one who improves the property?”

 “Yes, but—”

 “Besides, I like her. And I confess that I am dying of curiosity to learn her history, and what brought her to live alone in Wycherlea.”

 Damian sighed. “Very well, Mama. Miss Duckworth shall stay, at least for the present.”

 “Thank you, darling.” A trifle guiltily, Mrs Perrincourt added, “By the way, I have invited her to drink tea.”

 “When?”

 “Just ‘soon.’ I did not specify. I shall send a note, so tell me if one day or another suits you better.”

 Damian was not sure whether he wanted to avoid her or to meet her and judge her for himself. “Tuesday,” he said at random. “You must promise to tell me if you discover that her past is less than respectable. Or her present, come to that!”

 If he found her alluring, so might other men. The notion was oddly disturbing.

Chapter 5

 Mariana’s situation in life had not been such that she was accustomed to—or indeed comfortable—talking about herself. On the contrary, she had not infrequently found herself in the role of confidante, not always by choice. She was master of the sympathetic murmur, the encouraging exclamation, the general appearance of interest, sometimes feigned, sometimes altogether sincere.

 Thus she was not at all surprised when Mrs Perrincourt, after a few minutes of polite chit-chat, started to talk about her recent sad loss.

 Chilled after walking up to the house in a bitterly cold east wind, Mariana was by then warmed by a kindly welcome, a blazing fire and an excellent cup of tea in a snug sitting room. She listened with genuine sympathy and interest.

 Allowing for a mother’s pardonable partiality, Jack and Melinda Perrincourt sounded like a pleasant couple. Only a heart of stone, which Mariana did not possess, could fail to feel for their orphaned children. She had seen enough of the world, though, not to underestimate the benefits of a comfortable home with a doting grandmother.

 She wondered how Master Thomas and Miss Lucinda got on with their unbending uncle...and whether he would put in an appearance at the tea table.

 “Mr John Perrincourt was your younger son, I think you mentioned?” she said questioningly, hoping she did not sound too inquisitive, but eager to change the subject to his elder brother. “Yet he managed the estate?”

 “Damian was always mad to go for a soldier,” said Mrs Perrincourt with a sigh, “since he was a little boy. His papa made him stay at home and learn to run the place, as he was to inherit it, but Damian still wanted to join the army. In the end, my husband gave in and purchased a commission for him.”

 “He has done well, has he not? If I am not mistaken, his insignia denotes a lieutenant-colonel.”

 “Yes, though he has had to sell out now, what with—”

 “Gran’mama?” A small, fair-haired boy peeked around the door. “We don’t mean to disturb you,” he said virtuously, “but we just came to see if we can come in. We went to Nurse first and got all washed and tidy,” he added with still more conscious virtue.

 “And Pirate,” urged a loud whisper from behind him.

 “And Pirate. Please, ma’am.”

 “Miss Duckworth, should you mind very much...?” said Mrs Perrincourt hopefully. “Pirate is a kitten.”

 “A good kitten,” said the whisperer aloud.

 Laughing, Mariana assured her, “I do not mind a bit. I happen to like kittens.”

 “And children?” enquired the little girl who entered behind her brother, kitten in arms.

 “Good children,” Mariana teased.

 “Make your curtsy, Lucy!” hissed the boy, himself performing a creditable bow.

 “Miss Duckworth, let me present my grandchildren, Thomas and Lucinda.”

 “How do you do, ma’am,” said Thomas.

 “Mostly good!” said Lucinda, wobbling a little as she curtsied. “It’s difficult, holding Pirate.”

 “Lucy, darling, you are not lisping! Have your teeth grown back already?”

 “No, Gran’mama, but Tommy’s been teaching me to put my tongue in the right place so’s I can say ssss. I’ve been practising and practising.”

 “Lithening to Luthy lithp was driving me mad,” her brother said frankly.

 Mrs Perrincourt and Mariana laughed.

 Damian heard laughter as he came down the passage. He hesitated. Though he was just outside his mother’s sitting room, he still had not decided whether he wanted to meet Miss Duckworth.

 It was his duty, he decided. Not only was he her landlord, and therefore bound to make her acquaintance sooner or later, but he ought to find out whether she was imposing upon his mother. Mama, always determined to think well of people, might be taken in by a clever assumption of ladylike manners. He, Damian vowed, would not.

 He wished he could wait until his back allowed him to move more easily, but his mother had forced the pace. Ruefully he acknowledged that in any case the staff of Wych Court, most of his tenants, all the villagers, and half the neighbours knew of his disability.

 Still, he would have preferred to keep it from Miss Duckworth--only because she might seek to take advantage of his weakness.

 The pain and stiffness had already diminished considerably in the few days since his arrival. Here at home he was able to move, to sit, to lie down when and where the spirit moved him. If one position started to hurt, there was nothing to stop him changing to another. He was beginning to believe the doctors who prophesied almost full recovery.

 He was fit enough to deal with Miss Duckworth. He pushed open the door and went in.

 “Mama, can you spare me a cup of tea?”

 “Of course, darling. Miss Duckworth, pray let me make my son known to you.”

 His bow was little more than a nod, and of necessity stiff.

 Miss Duckworth rose and performed a slight—a very slight—curtsy. “How do you do, Mr Perrincourt.”

 Her eyes were the deep, translucent green of Atlantic rollers passing beneath a ship’s keel. Small lines radiated at the corners, the only sign of her age since most of her hair was decorously hidden by a frilly white cap with green ribbons. Damian guessed she was about his own age, somewhere between forty and forty-five.

 Before he hastily averted his eyes from her full but shapely bosom, he noticed that her gown was green, clean, high at the neck and long-sleeved, all neatness and decorum.

 “I trust you have no complaints about your cottage, ma’am?” he asked, taking a seat on a straight chair and accepting a cup of tea from his mother.

 “None, thank you, sir.” Was that amusement in her voice? “It is perfectly comfortable. The roof does not leak; the chimneys draw well; and the draughts are no worse than one must expect in an older building, of no significance, I do assure you.”

 “You have draughts?” Damian queried, concluding that her mealy-mouthed acquiescence was nothing but cover for a backhanded reproach.

 Dammit, he would have the estate carpenter down at the cottage tomorrow. She must not have any justification for going about spreading tales of his inadequacy as a landlord.

 At that moment, a gust of wind rattled the window-panes and made the fire flare up.

 “No worse than you have here,” said Miss Duckworth tranquilly.

 Now Damian was sure she was teasing him. He shifted uneasily. Something small and white dashed from a corner and pounced upon the swinging tassel of his military boot.

 “Pirate, come back!”

 He batted the little creature away with a firm but gentle hand, while he spoke sharply to the children, whose unobtrusive, silent presence he had not noticed before. “Did you ask permission of your grandmother and her guest to bring your pet in here?”

 “Of course, sir!”

 “He’s good, really,” Lucinda anxiously assured her uncle as she scooped up the kitten. “It’s just that he’s been quite quiet and still for simply ages, and now he wants to play.”

 Damian had seen little of his niece and nephew in the past few days. When he chanced to come across them, always in his mother’s presence, they were distinctly subdued. When he entered the sitting room just now, they must have made themselves small in the corner to avoid his censorious eye.

 That was not the relationship he wanted with them, he realised. After all, they were still in the nursery. As their uncle, he would have a role in Thomas’s upbringing when the boy was older. At present their nurse and the governess he was going to hire were responsible for teaching them to conduct themselves with propriety.

 Besides, he was excessively conscious of Miss Duckworth’s green, critical gaze upon him.

 “Then we must find something for him to play with,” he said, “other than the tassels on my only decent pair of boots. I have had no opportunity to have shoes made since I came home, you see. Mama, perhaps you have some suitable scrap of ribbon?”

 Mrs Perrincourt dug into her work basket. Miss Duckworth regarded Damian with friendly approval, which he immediately resented. It was none of her affair how he treated his brother’s children.

 She rose gracefully, forcing him to the effort of standing up.

 “It is time I was on my way, Mrs Perrincourt,” she said, and expressed her appreciation for the tea with unimpeachable gentility.

 If her courtesy did not come naturally, she had indisputably learnt her lesson well. But who was she? What had brought a woman, a spinster, of her years to Wycherlea, to live with no relative or companion, and to do her own gardening?

 Though she had departed, the answers would have to wait until the children also left. They were having such fun, with the kitten gamboling after a length of ribbon trailed across the floor, that he could not help but smile.

 At once Lucy came to him and leaned against his knee. Looking up at him earnestly, she said, “You see, Pirate is good, isn’t he?”

 “Better than his name suggests,” Damian said, laughing.

 “That’s because of the black patch over his eye,” Tommy explained.

 Eventually Pirate tired of the game. To everyone’s surprise, he sprang up onto Damian’s lap and settled there, kneading his thigh with tiny paws. His eyes closed, while a rumbling purr arose, astonishingly loud for such a little beast.

 Tommy hurried over. “Sorry, sir, I’ll take him.”

 “No, you can leave him.” Damian stroked the soft white fur with one finger. “He is not using his claws on me, I am happy to say.”

 “I taught him to keep them sheathed, and he’s pretty good about it, but I can’t promise he won’t scratch.”

 “He doesn’t mean to hurt you,” Lucy put in anxiously. “He’s just a baby, he doesn’t understand.”

 “I promise not to be angry with him if his angelic behaviour fails to hold. I shall bring him up to you in the nursery later.”

 Correctly interpreting this as dismissal, Thomas removed himself and his sister from the room.

 “Well, Mama,” said Damian, “what have you learnt of the mysterious Miss Duckworth?”

 Mrs Perrincourt reflected for a moment, then said with some slight perplexity, “Why, nothing, dearest, although we talked for quite a while before the children came in. That is, only that she is sympathetic and truly well-bred, and that when she is not gardening, she dresses well and modestly.”

 “She dresses well?” Damian enquired. “I know nothing of women’s fashions.”

 “Oh, not in the height of fashion, or tricked out with frills and laces, but her gown was excellently cut and of good material.”

 “She did not speak of her past, or her family, or her situation?”

 “Not a word. But you must not jump to the conclusion she was deliberately hiding something disgraceful, Damian. Now I come to think on it, I talked a great deal myself! I fear Miss Duckworth had little chance to put in her twopennyworth. If I had not chattered so, I daresay I should be able to satisfy your curiosity.”

 “I am not in the least curious about the wretched female,” Damian hurried to deny. “I should just like to know a little more about the tenant of Merriman’s Cottage. Without jumping to unwarranted conclusions, I do believe there is something havey-cavey about her. A respectable unmarried woman ought not to be living alone without any sort of chaperon.”

 “Come now, my dear, you are too exacting!” Mrs Perrincourt exclaimed. “Miss Duckworth is certainly of an age not to need a chaperon.”

 “She is not so very old,” Damian growled.

 His mother looked at him with raised eyebrows, but did not comment. He quickly turned the subject.

Chapter 6

 “Squire said as you’ve got some nasty draughts about the house, miss.”