Constant Heart (13 page)

In that new world of mine, I was their lady and they were sworn to uphold my interests and be my constant companions. But when looking into their eyes upon introduction, I found a cool reception. Who was I but a knight’s daughter, who had taken from their ranks a position to which they might have aspired?

From the first, I tired of their presence. If I found it difficult to amuse myself in such great quarters, then how was I to find amusement for them? If it was daunting to find my place among such splendor, it became doubly difficult to do so under the eyes of those who either assumed I knew my way or hoped that I would fail. Each new morn was an exercise in discipline as I forced myself from bed with a smile and a greeting for those who waited upon me.

I had become a reluctant Queen at my own court.

After I had dressed and broken my fast one morning several weeks into my time at Brustleigh, I stepped into my outer chamber to find my own small court gathered before me, waiting upon me for some indication of what we might do. Flustered, I cast glances about the room, looking for that which might occupy. I seized upon the idea of embroidery and started for my canvas.

Before I could take two steps, Joan stayed my arm.

“Your handiwork, my lady? I shall retrieve it for you.” If I could not respect my position, she was determined to.

My maids quickly busied themselves with their own work and we sat together, all of us on chairs, one luxury which, if truth be told, I enjoyed. A stool made hard work, after some hours, at remaining upright. But by the time dinner was announced, I had tired of handiwork and had caught my head nodding over my hands.

After dinner, there loomed nearly an entire afternoon. Aside from seeing to the household accounts, I had no idea with what to occupy myself. And my maids. In truth, I knew what I would have liked to have done. I had a new book,
Rosalynde
, unread in my chamber, though I could not neglect my duties for solitary pleasure. However, Joan, bless her soul, had a diversion.

“ ’Tis a fine afternoon for a walk, my lady.”

“Is it?” I had not thought upon it. I walked to a window, and indeed, the sun had gilded the hill before me. Though it was still winter, the day was mild.

And so I marched my maids around the gardens, such as they were, once, twice, before Joan reached out to touch my arm. Turning, I saw her gesture as if to stay a pony.

Slow your pace
.

In turning my head, I could see that, indeed, apples had risen on my maids’ cheeks. I moderated my pace while chastising myself. I was no longer some country knight’s daughter who had to hurry about her business. I was a woman of nobility with naught but time. And if I sped through that leisure, I would only force myself to think up another. Haste was no virtue here.

I went to my sleep satisfied that night, for I had happened upon a pattern for my days: handiwork in the morn, followed by the accounts, and then a walk in the afternoon. And if I should let my assigned companions retire early to their beds, what of it?

But the rains of the next day, and the next, and the one thereafter scuttled all of my plans. By the third day, after having spent hours devoted to embroidery, my thumb and my fingers were pricking as if stuck with pins. And glances at the work of the others told me I would soon have to find other amusement, for their work was almost completed. As was my own.

In desperation, I asked Joan to retrieve the new book from my room. I commended it into the hands of one of the maids with the instruction that she commence reading.

She stared at it as she might have looked upon a serpent.

“Pray, begin.”

She looked up from it and then offered it back to Joan. “I am most sorry, Lady Lytham, but I cannot.”

I could not help but sigh. “Does your taste not run to romance?

Would you prefer
The Book of Martyrs
, then? I have no favorites.”

“I would prefer no book at all.”

No book at all? Such presumption! I forced my lips into a curve.

“I wished only to offer some diversion from the needle, but no matter. Perhaps one of the others will be kind enough to read for us.”

Since she, so plainly, was not.

The next maid blushed and refused the book even as Joan pressed it upon her.

“Sweet heaven! If you do not wish to acknowledge me as your mistress, then please go and be a blight upon some other house! I have never witnessed such condescension from a maid so young. I give you leave and make you free!”

“It is not that, your ladyship. It is only that I cannot.”

“Cannot what? Cannot be kind? Cannot be agreeable? Cannot be gracious?”

“Cannot read.” The words were spoke so faint I scarcely heard them.

“Nor I.” The second maid added her confession so quickly it might have been one and the same.

“Cannot?—but surely . . .”

The one shook her head as did the other.

“Cannot read? But how do you hope to manage accounts? How do you hope to correspond with your own family?”

“We—” The first maid glanced at the others. “I read enough to do that, of course, but not sufficiently to . . .”

“Read aloud?”

“Nay, your lady.”

“And the rest of you?”

They shook their heads with wide eyes and none of the shame they ought to have felt.

Well. If I could not be predominant by birth, I found myself to be preeminent by education. I commanded Nicholas to find my maids a tutor. And I made it known that until they could read in my presence, I would not have them. For what good were attendants if they could not fulfill my wishes?

I ordered the door of my chamber shut withal and then I fell upon my bed, fully clothed. Sweet relief! It felt as if a millstone had been loosed from my shoulders.

But the maids were the least of my problems. The windows of Brustleigh had continued to haunt me. To their number had been added still more. In order to suffer such luxury, those of us living on the inside were obliged to cover them from wandering eyes and pretend they did not exist. I was happy to do so until winter’s chills began to seep in earnest around their panes. And then, I scarce could stand them.

The cold was constant and so chill that I could stand three paces from a fire and still see my breath. I wore all the clothes I could, adding a waistcoat under my bodice, wool stockings, thicker shifts, and several old coarse wool petticoats. And still I felt the cold. I would have given my feather bed in exchange for a closet of a room with a fireplace and no windows, exactly the sort of room Joan had, but it would not have been seemly. And I could hardly have fit all my maids within it.

By February it was too chill to do my needlework, and I was too numbed by the cold to care. Quite simply, I lived through each day only for the pleasure of retiring to the warmth of my bed. Supper proved to be the worst part of my day. It might have been borne had we kept a large table, but with only me, the maids, and on occasion the earl, there were not bodies enough to heat the vastness of the room. And the table, in the middle of that great hall, was too far from the warmth of any of the fires. The food, as always, was cold by the time it reached our plate, but that winter I was grieved by that common offense. To counter the trembling of my limbs, I drank ale in abundance.

I had just wiped my nose with my sodden handkerchief one forenoon when the earl and his steward entered the chamber.

“You have the rheum?”

“Nay. Why?”

“Your nose drips.”

“My nose drips constant. If I rubbed it every time there was a drop, I would soon have no nose left.” I was too cold to give any care to my words. The chill had embittered me.

“You are ill then?”

“I am
cold
.”

The earl glanced toward the fire. The flames blazed as high as the mantel.

“Shall I find a physician to attend you?”

“Nay. I only ask that every window of this place be dashed to pieces and brick put up in their place. I might as well move in with a crofter, for they already live little better than out of doors.”

“You cannot mean it. This is the grandest estate in all of England!”

“And the coldest! I would sacrifice finery for warmth in an instant.”

“Get up, walk the gallery. Walks are what it is meant for.”

“I am so frigid that the thought of moving makes me colder still.

Leave me in peace. I shall thaw in the spring with the fields.”

“Why have you not asked for a warming box?”

I lifted my skirts enough to allow him to view the box upon which my feet rested.

“And still you complain?”

“Have you a box for my nose?”

The earl rolled his eyes and then knelt beside me. He took one of my hands between his own. “ ’Tis ice!”

“As I have said.”

He reached out a finger and touched my nose with it. “How can it not fall off your head? It is not a nose, ’tis an icicle. Get you to bed!”

“I shall stay there until March.”

“Do what you must.”

I bring the girl to the finest estate in all of England and what does she do? Complain! She complains of the cold, she complains of the maids, she complains of the windows. Was she not, of late, but a knight’s daughter? Should she not be . . . grateful? Thankful?

Pleased? Should she not at the very least be content?

I was down the hall and on the way to the covered gallery before I thought to throw a cloak around myself.

The cloak be hanged!

I took several turns of the gallery before I could force my thoughts from the girl’s pallid face and blue-tinged lips. She looked like some wretched urchin!

I stopped my pacing and leaned out over the rail to get a better view of the work being conducted below. The work yard had long ago been churned into a field of mud. But as I watched carts move back and forth across its length, I realized the mud had frozen; yesterday’s cart tracks and footprints had been pushed up from the morass by frost.

I cupped my hands to my mouth and blew on them to persuade feeling back into my fingertips.

By summer the construction would be finished. And then the decorating could commence. This year, the next, and then finally Brustleigh would be ready. Two years.
If
I were lucky. Two years of great effort, and even greater expense, but then years of great reward would follow.

I took one last look at the work and then hastened back inside to my chambers. Nicholas met me with my cloak.

As I hesitated in taking it from him, he moved forward to place it around my shoulders. I noticed, with surprise, that he wore one as well.

“You feel the cold, then?”

“As do we all, my lord.”

“One expects such weather in February.”

“Aye, my lord, though to feel such weather, and feel it so acutely inside, is not as commonly expected.”

I frowned and shrugged the cloak from my shoulders as I took to the chair at my desk. Some minutes later, however, I asked Nicholas to retrieve it for me. “And Nicholas?”

“Aye, my lord?”

“Make certain the girl’s hearth is well supplied with wood.”

Joan and I, and my maids when they rejoined us, kept our feet fixed to the warming boxes and our tongues loosed in conversation those long, chill weeks while around us rang the sounds of a building under renovation.

Sitting in the countryside in Berkshire, I observed the rhythm of the year to have been altered. And with it my assurance of what I knew the world to be. For though I was no longer a knight’s daughter, I did not yet feel like an earl’s wife. I was living and moving in a world with unknown boundaries. A world operating according to rules of which I seemingly had no knowledge, despite my lengthy training.

At Brustleigh we went to church, but it was not the same. I did not know the people. I did not know the rector. There was no one to talk to save those of my own household, so there was no reason to stay and linger. And so, we never did. Church became a function to attend rather than an event to take part in. I was a countess. And since I was in the country, outside of court, I had no real peers.

But I had no sooner settled into the rhythms of life at Brustleigh when the earl announced we were to move back to Lytham House.