Carola Dunn (9 page)

A gentleman rose from a chair by the farther fire. To her relief, Nerissa saw it was Miles. In a black coat, cream waistcoat, and buff pantaloons, his cravat tied in an elaborate knot, he looked alarmingly elegant. She rather thought she preferred him in buckskins, boots, and a driving coat.

His smile made her momentary shyness vanish. “I expected you to be here sooner, since you dressed for dinner earlier,” he said.

“I was writing to my parents. This is a very pleasant room, is it not?”

“Comfortable enough. Is your hair dry yet? Come and sit down by the fire. I’ve been wanting to ask you how you got on with Hibby.”

“Amazingly well. Too well, in fact. She cannot be aware that my grandfather believed me an actress and... and not respectable. When she discovers....”

“Don’t vex yourself, she knows already. One thing you will learn about a large staff of servants is that they always know everything.”

“You are sure? But she was so affable in the end.”

“I told her it was all Sir Barnabas’s fancy and a load of twaddle,” he said smugly.

Nerissa was taken aback. “Oh, I see. Thank you.”

“You don’t object? I’d not have opened the subject, I promise you, but since it came up, it seemed a good idea to clear up any little misunderstanding.”

“Yes, I do thank you. I was going to ask your advice,” she confided, “and I hoped you might offer to speak to her for me.”

“I thought it would be dashed difficult for you to do it. Oh, by the way, that’s another thing I wanted to mention to you.” He hesitated, looking a trifle embarrassed.

“What?”

“Well, there’s no harm in ‘dashed,’ but earlier I... hm... called upon Old Nick, shall we say, and you didn’t bat an eyelid. A lady of refinement would have frozen me with her disapproval and I’d have humbly apologized for not minding my tongue in her presence.”

Nerissa raised her hands to her hot cheeks. “Oh dear! Mama taught me never to use such expressions, but to show one’s displeasure at every improper word used in the theatre would be impossible, and dreadfully unpopular. I suppose I have grown so used to it I simply don’t notice.”

“So I guessed.” He grinned. “However, let me here and now proffer my apologies for my slip and promise you I shall endeavour in future not to say anything that ought to shock you.”

“I shall endeavour, in future, to be shocked if you do,” she said primly.

At that he laughed, but he quickly sobered and asked, “You don’t mind my mentioning it? It was disgracefully impertinent in me.”

“Oh no. I have a great deal to learn and if you don’t help me, who will? Besides, I am persuaded your intentions were good, for Cousin Sophie assured me that you were ‘such a nice little boy.’“

“How sadly lowering! There I was trying to impress you as a fine fellow, a man of the world, an out-and-outer, and Miss Sophie has destroyed my pretensions with a phrase. Might I enquire when this devastating blow was delivered?”

Nerissa told him about her very distant cousin’s fleeting visit to the library. “You may imagine I am delighted to find at least one of my relatives well-disposed towards me. She’s a dear, but she seems to be completely under Mrs Chidwell’s thumb.”

“She always was, as long as I can remember. I have a vague recollection of hearing that she served as companion to her sister before Chidwell died and they moved to Addlescombe.”

“That was after Mama was married, I think. Do you happen to know...” She fell silent as Sir Neville and his wife entered the room.

Miles rose in deference to Lady Philpott. Nerissa wondered whether she should follow suit. As if he read her mind, Miles laid his hand briefly but firmly on her shoulder. His warm touch through the thin silk sent a rippling thrill through her.

Blame her grandfather for making her so much aware of Miles’s vigorous masculinity, she thought angrily.

But no, she was letting Sir Barnabas’s meddling make her over-sensitive. A certain perturbation was entirely natural in the circumstances, for she was about to come face to face with her great-uncle, and the new baronet had by far the best excuse for resentment. He had had every reason to expect to inherit Addlescombe along with the title.

She raised her chin. The Will was not her fault and she refused to apologize for it. She echoed Miles’s unconcerned “Good evening.”

Sir Neville looked disconcerted. For a moment Nerissa was sure he would not respond. Then Lady Philpott mumbled “Good evening,” and her husband sheepishly did likewise.

However, Lady Philpott took a seat by the other fireplace. From a workbox on a stand beside her chair she extracted some needlework, and bent her head over it. Sir Neville stood with his hands clasped behind his back, apparently studying with extraordinary diligence a portrait of a rather scrawny bag-wigged gentleman carrying a shot-gun.

“Your grandfather,” Miles informed Nerissa. “‘An unforgiving eye and a damned disinheriting countenance.’ Scarcely worthy of such concentrated attention.”

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “We cannot live six months with the house divided between Montagues and Capulets refusing to speak to each other.”

“Cheer up, m’dear--Nerissa, I mean. I wager it won’t last long.”

“Really?”

“Sooner or later one of them will realize they had best turn us up sweet lest we win,” he said with a look of cynical amusement. “I’d put a monkey on it’s being the parson who first comes to his senses.”

“Why?”

“Because he cannot remove from the vicinity without losing his living. The clergyman who cold-shoulders his patron hasn’t been born yet. He’d quickly learn which side his bread is buttered. Yes, a monkey on your cousin Raymond to be first past the post, but the others will complete the course in the end.”

Nerissa sighed. “I suppose that will be better than being sent to Coventry, though I had rather have their honest friendship.”

“Little hope of that, I fear, except from Miss Sophie. But don’t despair. Anything is possible.”

“If they will not be friends, it shall not be for want of trying on my part, but tonight I’m still too weary to make the effort.”

Mr Harwood came in and, after a few words with the Philpotts, joined Miles and Nerissa. Chatting with him, she scarcely noticed that the others, as they entered, all stayed at the far end of the room.

As the clock in the hall began to strike the hour, the lawyer said, “You two will take the head and foot of the table of course. Fortunately we are close to the dining-room door.” He indicated a door in the wall opposite the fireplace, beside the beam dividing their half of the room from the other.

Miles grinned. “I take it you fear I shall have to battle Sir Neville for my rightful place.”

“Oh no,” said Nerissa in dismay. “Surely it cannot be proper in me to come to pulling caps with Lady Philpott over who sits where.”

“I doubt you’ll have any trouble with her ladyship,” Miles reassured her, then spoiled his reassurance by adding dryly, “It’s Euphemia you’ll have to watch out for.”

“Mrs Chidwell does have an inflated notion of her position in the household,” Mr Harwood acknowledged. His gaze remained fixed on the door and when, at that moment, it began to open, he quickly offered Nerissa his arm. “Come, Miss Wingate. I hope you will allow me the pleasure of taking you in.”

“Please do, sir. When you said Miles--Mr Courtenay--and I must sit at either end, I was afraid I should be isolated and left to eat my dinner in silence.”

He smiled at her in a fatherly way and patted her hand.

“Dinner is served,” Snodgrass announced.

Mrs Chidwell, who had not sat down on entering the drawing room, surged forward, but Nerissa, Mr Harwood, and Miles reached the door first. The lawyer escorted her to one end of the table, held her chair for her, and took his place beside her. To avoid the indignant eyes of Lady Philpott and Mrs Chidwell, she surveyed the room.

White walls, the same cheerful red curtains, and a painting over the mantel of a dog with a dead duck drooping in its mouth. More appropriate than the fish in the library, but she could not care for it.

“May I change things around in the house?” she asked Mr Harwood.

“You will have a free hand after six months, ma’am, but until then I fear I cannot authorise any major expenditures for furnishings.”

“I don’t wish to buy anything, just to move a few pictures about. Otherwise I like the way the house is decorated and furnished, what I have seen of it.”

“Sir Barnabas believed in quality but refused to pay extra for what he described as frivolous fal-lals. You see the china is sturdy blue-and-white Spode. You will find the same with your dinner, good English food in season, well-cooked but without fancy sauces, which he abominated.”

Nerissa became aware that Cousin Sophie had taken the seat on her other side and was nodding vigorously. “Bad for the digestion, he said,” she whispered after a swift glance to see if Euphemia was watching her.

With friends on either side, Nerissa enjoyed the meal. She was perfectly content without fancy sauces, never having tasted any, though she missed Yorkshire pudding with the roast beef. She mentioned the lack to Mr Harwood, who advised her to consult Cook. They chatted about the city of York and its superb minster, which the lawyer had once visited and admired. Cousin Sophie ventured an occasional murmur when her sister was particularly absorbed in her food.

Only one course was served, but with several removes. Nerissa finished with a slice of apple tart. Swallowing the last morsel, she dabbed her lips with her napkin, and commented to Mr Harwood on the excellence of the pastry. Tessa, her mother’s maid, had a heavy hand with pastry, she was explaining when she realized that everyone was watching her. Even Miles seemed to be trying to convey a silent message from the other end of the table.

The dreadful, familiar paralysis struck. She was unable to think, unable even to begin to consider what she might have done wrong. Their combined gazes, curious, expectant, avid, pressed upon her like a physical mass, crushing her chest so she could not breath, could not stir.

And then, despite Euphemia’s scrutiny, Cousin Sophie risked touching Nerissa’s hand. “Shall we leave the gentlemen to their port, dear?” she enquired gently.

The bonds of inertia snapped. Fiery-cheeked, Nerissa led the ladies back to the drawing room.

Nothing on earth could have persuaded her to stay, to await the gentlemen and the tea-tray. Tonight Lady Philpott and Euphemia Chidwell were welcome to fight over who was to do the honours. Nerissa didn’t even want to see Miles, who had failed to warn her. No doubt he was as shocked as anyone that she, who had staked her claim to be hostess, had not known she was expected to give the signal to depart from the dining room.

Humiliated, she fled to her chamber.

Chapter 7

If Nerissa expected to lie long awake, agonizing over the impossibility of mastering every detail of ladylike conduct she was mistaken. She fell asleep the moment her head touched the soft, feather-filled pillow. Thus, given her nap the previous day, it was not surprising that she should waken early on the morrow.

A pale light filtered round and through the flowery curtains. For a few minutes she enjoyed the warm comfort of her bed, then she reached for the navy serge dressing-gown Maud had draped over the chair beside her. There was too much exploring to be done to entice her to lie in this morning. Besides, she wanted to be abroad before she had to face anyone who had witnessed her stupidity last night.

The fire in the small grate--a fire in her bedchamber!--had burnt out but its warmth lingered, taking the chill off the early October air. Bare-footed, Nerissa pattered across to the window and parted the curtains.

She had been too tired yesterday to notice that her room had a splendid view westward over the valley. Now much of it was invisible, hidden by floating patches of autumn mist with the crowns of trees protruding here and there. Her breath on the window-pane did not help, so she raised the lower sash and leaned out, her loosely plaited hair falling forward over her shoulder.

The far hills rose above the mists, their crests gilded by the rising sun. She took a deep breath of deliciously crisp air, scented not with the dank miasmas of a town but the mysterious, enticing, unknown smells of the countryside.

Unknown except for one. Her nostrils twitched as the unmistakable aroma of new-baked bread reached her.

In the wardrobe she found the olive-green dress she had travelled in, already washed and pressed for her by her new maid. It had ribbon drawstrings at the neck and beneath her breasts, so it was easy to put on without help. She scrambled into it, grabbed her grey cloak, and sped down to the kitchens.

As she entered the high-ceilinged room with its huge hearth and walls hung with copper pots, the cook was turning a loaf out of its tin and knocking on its bottom crust to test it. A tall, brawny, red-faced woman enveloped in a vast white apron, she turned a look of suspicious disapproval on Nerissa.

She had done it wrong again. Real ladies obviously did not pop into the kitchen before breakfast.

Too bad, she thought crossly. It was her kitchen, or at least, half of it soon would be. She, in some obscure, convoluted way, paid Cook’s wages.

“Good morning,” she said with a smile. “I’m Miss Wingate. Can you spare a slice of your bread before I go out for a walk? The smell is simply irresistible.”

Slightly mollified, Cook bobbed a sort of clumsy curtsy. “Oh aye, miss, there’s plenty. Will tha help thysen?” She gestured at a rack of cooling loaves with a bread-board and knife beside it. “Lil,” she called, turning to remove another pair of golden-crusted loaves from the built-in oven beside the fire, “bring t’best bootter fro’ t’larder.”

“You’re from Yorkshire!” Nerissa exclaimed, carving herself a crusty doorstep as a skinny little maid scurried in with an earthen pot of butter. “I’ve just come from York. I’ve lived there for years.”

Cook thawed still further. “‘Twas in York I started in service, miss. T’kettle’s on t’boil. Will tha take a cup o’ tea? ‘Twon’t take but a minute to mash.”