Elisabeth Fairchild (12 page)

“Not at all, and yet you will not deny your hesitation could not be deemed flattering.”

Her gaze fell. “It is not my duty to flatter or fawn.”

“True enough, my Deering,” he drawled. “But are you sure we are your cup of tea?”

Her lips curved, might almost be deemed a smile, an expression that hinted of more, of unspoken layers of meaning. Intriguing. The mere ghost of mischief wafted across her features, thin as the heat that wafted white from her lips, “How could I leave, my lord, when you would give me Darjeeling in a dragon teapot?”

He smiled.
How indeed?

In that moment, in witnessing that drift of emotion, feeling stirred in Valentine.
I know now why Palmer wanted her.
Like the breath of the dragon, the knowing warmed him.

H
ow intense his gaze. How direct. It sent a chill down Elaine’s back, a strange biting chill that, quite perversely, turned her insides liquid and warm. His eyes made her long to say yes to him, no matter the question. Thus Felicity’s mother must have fallen prey to the heaven of blue eyes and quirking lip.

“Pemberton’s Parlour,” he said. “That’s what they call this tower.”

From above, Felicity waved, hands urgent. “Come up. Come up,” she called.

“Coming,” they responded in perfect unison, intimacy in the exact timing of their response.

Valentine laughed, his laughter completely devastating, all flashing white teeth and boyish mischief. Elaine smiled self-consciously and looked toward the tower’s dark entrance.

“Who is Pemberton? And why a parlor?”

He laughed again.

He captivates me. Does he know? Has he any idea how much he moves me with his humor?

His voice echoed as they stepped through the archway. “Originally the tower was bigger. So large it straddled the wall, and anyone who passed this way must walk through it. Goblin’s Tower they called it.”

“Oh?” His arm formed an arch as he held the door. She must step beneath it to enter.

Is he Goblin tower? Or Pembleton parlor?

“Goblin was taller. More imposing.” He seemed to read her mind.

They stood almost face to face when she asked, “You know this story, how?”

His smile widened, his expression as impishly youthful as the sound of his laughter. The door, released, allowed darkness to close in on them.

“My father told me. His father told him.”

“I see.” She climbed, listening for the sounds of his following, imagining the lad this man had been. She could hear the change in his breathing as he climbed.

“Pemberton was the mayor of Chester at the time. He could not afford to rebuild the tower to its former glory, and so the Cestrians named this paltry little replacement his parlor in jest.”

“Was he amused?”

He laughed, voice echoing, the noise surrounding her. Her knees went weak. “I’ve no idea,” he said. “I only know that three generations of Wharton’s found it funny.”

“Four.” She pointed.

At the top of the stairs Felicity stood laughing, arms akimbo.

And so we find towers to talk about, my daughter and I. Miss Deering’s doing. She makes it so easy.

She stepped back from them when they reached the top, allowed him and his daughter an illusion of space, of privacy.

“What is the name of the next tower?” Felicity asked.

“Bonewaldesthorne’s,” he said, surprised he remembered, surprised to hear his father’s voice in his memory. They had chuckled at the name. “A fairy book sort of name. A troll’s name.”

Felicity nodded, pleased he should say so. “Or a wizard.”

“Yes, a wizard.” They stood a moment in companionable silence.

Unwilling to allow their conversation to die, he asked, “Would it surprise you to hear this tower once stood at river’s edge?”

Really?” She stared over the edge of the wall at the tower’s foot, and then toward the river, grown distant.

“The river shied away. A second tower had to be built.” He pointed down the curtain wall that connected the two.

“Why did the river move?” she wanted to know.

“Perhaps it grew bored with one bed and decided to sleep elsewhere.”

She laughed.

He glanced in Miss Deering’s direction. The governess gave no sign of having heard his remark. Perhaps best. It was, on second thought, too risqué a remark for a young girl’s ears.

“I know the real reason the river moved,” his daughter said confidently, unaware either of his regret, or any need for it. “Miss Deering taught me.”

“Did she?”

“Yes. The river stirs the mud, which it can carry when it runs, and which it drops where it grows tired.”

He laughed. “And so it was weary rather than bored, was it?”

“Silt,” she said. It is called silt.” She looked pleased to know the answer.

“Very good,” he said, the praise meant for Miss Deering as much as for his daughter. “And now I am grown tired and would silt.” He perched on the wall overlooking the river.

 Miss Deering laughed, a choked off stifled laugh, as if she were afraid he would disapprove.

Silted up, that laugh. She has been listening all along, pretending not to hear. He wanted to urge her to let her laughter flow, let it babble like the river as the locks were opened. He refrained, cautious where Miss Deering was concerned.

Must not alarm the rabbit. Must not allow her to suspect I am drawn to her. She will hop away.
He focused on Felicity, slid wayward glances at the governess. He must remember she was only the governess. A bad habit. To long for a rabbit--forbidden game. He wanted to laugh.

“Who’s in the mood for a cup of tea?” he asked, and was met with enthusiasm from both of the damsels at the top of what was left of Goblin Tower.

Darjeeling in a dragon pot.
He could not repress a smile.

H
e avoided them on the following day, or so it seemed to Elaine. As if he had allowed himself to get too close, and now must withdraw.
Perhaps I imagine it. It is his habit to ride horseback.

And yet he seemed averse to so much as look in their direction, rode with a fierce intensity, he and the horse breathing plumes of white when they stopped to eat a bite in Wrexham beneath the glory of the church’s fine, soaring, pinnacled steeple. He made little conversation, even less eye contact.
A curious creature. He lives in a tea cup. And as much as it confuses me, it confuses his daughter more.

Elaine set to work with a slate and a row of sums, and turned math into a game using the numbers of hills before them, and in them a certain number of quarries and mines, and into those mines a certain number of colliers must climb. In Wrexham they counted smoking chimneys, and brick workers and tile makers, and before the sun began to wane Felicity claimed the sums rather simple to figure rather than the insurmountable obstacles she had earlier declared them.

As they topped a hill Lord Wharton called halt in a spot where the road looked down upon the silver ribbon of a river in a valley where the pale, drum towers of a castle encircled a boxy courtyard. A lovely prospect.

“We will be putting up for the night at the home of old family friends,” he called from horseback, the bay gone golden in the light of a setting sun.

“Friends, papa? Who?”

“The Biddington sisters. The eldest, Charlotte, has a son named Robert. Close to your age.”

“Do you see the castle, papa?” Felicity pointed out of the window.

Taller than the trees that backed its haunches, a castle’s crenelated towers caught the setting sun, the stone bleached bone-colored, six, squat towers accentuated, tall walls boxing them. An emerald slope of sheep-dotted pasturage led to a grove of elm, and beyond the park and gardens that hugged the house, a wooded area. Like a lace apron on an overbearing stone fortress, a magnificent, gleaming, wrought-iron gateway beckoned.

“Caxton. Where the Biddington’s live.”

Felicity’s eyes went round. “We shall spend the night there?”

“Indeed. If they will have us.”

“Are your friends princesses, Papa?”

“No, my dear. Sisters to a baronet, heiresses to a great fortune.”

Marital prospects,
Elaine thought, and for the first time that day understood why Lord Wharton did not so much as glance her way.

T
he rumbling carriage scattered sheep, dusting oaks and elms flanking the road. An avenue of lime led to the great gates. They slowed. Ornate cast-iron dogs sat atop tall, square metal columns. The gates themselves were far less weighty, a gleaming froth of vinework, flowers and birds. The family coat of arms crowned the arch opening onto neatly groomed lawns, graveled walks, rows of trees and shrubbery, evidence of an age-old fortune.

Caxton loomed large. The potential housed within, loomed larger. Here sat wealth and prosperity on a scale Elaine had never before been privileged to observe closely. Past a bowling green they rattled, neat kitchen gardens boxed by yew, a sunken deer fence. The remains of what had been a moat led them into a pointed archway piercing the north curtain wall beneath the slitted eye of an ancient lancet window. Within the castle’s encircling stone arms they rolled, into the manicured green of a vast courtyard.

Honeysuckle draped the inner walls. Windows gleamed in waning sunlight. Arches at one end of the quadrangle offered a covered walkway. A blue-faced, diamond-shaped clock on a tower marked their arrival. An inscription chiseled in stone over a smaller doorway read

THIS      :      NEW      :      BVILDING     :

AND  :   THE  :   TOVER  :   WAS  :   BVILT :

ALL    :   IN    :    ONE    :   YEARE    :   BY :

THOMAS       BIDDINGTON       KNIGHT

1636

Neat in matching uniforms, crisp white aprons and collars, a line of servants awaited them in front of a columned, porticoed doorway.

The footmen and Mrs. Olive were led away at once to the servant’s quarters, across the echoing length of cobbles. Lord Wharton was directed past the gauntlet of servants.

Elaine hesitated, uncertain of her direction.
The servant’s entrance. Will I ever grow accustomed?

Felicity clung to her fingers with the urgency of fear. “You will stay with me?” she begged.

Elaine gazed down at the neat part in the child’s hair.
Caught between worlds. Both of us. Poor child.

Taking a deep breath, she drew her charge into step behind Lord Wharton, past the row of curtsy-bobbing, forelock-pulling servants. The illegitimate child and the governess. Who were they to be bowed to? The fallen in birth and means. And yet, she would not sink to the servant’s entrance.
Not unless he orders me to.

The Biddington sisters greeted Lord Wharton warmly, with obvious affection: touching his arm, kissing his cheek with unquestionable delight. Three slender sylphs in flowing gowns,  ashen brown hair fine and curling, their eyes the same bewitching blue grey, their arms long, and slender and grasping.

Cool, distanced curiosity they cast upon his daughter and Elaine, in the background, their warmth reserved for their world and hierarchy. Voices cultured and cordial, with visible changes in demeanor they regarded Felicity, walking evidence of boundaries breached.

“This is the child you have only recently discovered, is it not?” one sister asked.

Felicity squeezed Elaine’s hand.

Valentine turned, with a fleeting look of surprise, as if he had not considered how Felicity might be received. Emotions veiled, a vein worked in his temple. His chin took on a harder line than usual, but he spoke with deceptive ease, as if to make such introductions was nothing out of the ordinary, as if Felicity were welcomed wherever he went. “My daughter, Felicity. And her governess, Miss Deering.”

“You keep a governess?” Surprise in the question, their very hair seemed to twitch and stir in unspoken agitation. “Such an indulgent papa.”

Over indulgent, tone seemed to imply.

“Indeed, a most fortunate little girl.” Soft, well-groomed hands reached out to Felicity, to hold her at arm’s length for inspection. With removed curiosity they observed the beautiful curls, touched the sweet curve of her cheek.

Head high, Felicity shrank back against Elaine’s skirt.

“What a pretty thing.”

“Blessed with her father’s eyes.”
Cursed with her mother’s shame.

Thoughts hung unspoken. An awkward silence bloomed, and then, curls bouncing, their heads seemingly alive, as if with snakes or fast growing vine instead of hair, they led the way through echoing columns, the floors black marble diamonds in Portland stone. The sister spoke all at once, echoing their polite attempts to banish all awkwardness, a three-headed Gorgon of babble.

Hot water was called for, the order resounding in the stairwell.

“You will want to freshen yourself.”

“Or do you care to partake of the bathhouse in the lower garden?”

“We have a whiskey to carry you down.”

“But perhaps a change of clothes will do.”

“You will want food to take the edge off your appetite.”

Accomplished hostesses, they made their guests comfortable, leading them up the grand, modern, cantilevered staircase crowned by enormous, green marble columns, topped with gilded swags and a painted frieze of ceiling roundels. Chinese porcelain decorated the stairwell, flanked by a carved lion and a unicorn. A case clock chimed on the landing.

“We’ve a bottle or two of the burgundy that pleased you the last time you were here.”

“I shall just ring the bell.”

“Summon my footman,” Valentine Wharton charmed them with his heart-stopping smile. “I would share a cup of a wonderfully rich
Assam Souchong
I stumbled upon at a surprising little shop in Chester.”

They were surprised. Silenced.

“How lovely.”

“I understand tea is fast becoming the vogue in London.”

“Perhaps the child would like some milk and poppy seed cakes.”