Elizabeth Mansfield (15 page)

Sandy was still comfortably in residence when another carriage bearing guests arrived at their door. It was Eunice and her daughters. Kittridge, just returning from an outing with his land agent, was the first to greet them. “What a delightful surprise,” he welcomed, picking up both his nieces in his arms.

“The girls insisted on seeing their Uncle Robbie before winter would make the trip north quite impossible,” Eunice babbled, kissing her brother with warm affection. “Besides,” she added, whispering with naughty malice in his ear, “I thought you would be dying of boredom by this time, stuck away here with no one to talk to but your mousy wife, so I came to save you.”

But Kittridge was too engrossed in the children’s happy chatter to pay her any heed.

The hallway was in veritable chaos by the time Cassie and Sandy came down from the third floor (where they’d been happily engaged in refinishing a fine old Henry Holland pier table) to see what was causing the commotion. The scene they came upon made them blink in astonishment. Mr. Whitlock and the two new footmen were running in and out, bringing in a mountain of boxes; the little girls were squealing with delight as their uncle tossed them, one after the other, in the air; the maids were scurrying about trying to help the new arrivals remove their outer garments; Miss Roffey, the governess, was attempting to calm the children’s excitement; and Mrs. Whitlock was following Loesby (who himself was directing the footmen’s placement of the luggage) about the hallway, attempting to discover how many mouths she would be expected to feed and when she would be expected to feed them.

Cassie hastily removed the soiled smock she was wearing and, acutely embarrassed by her stained fingers and general dishabille (especially in comparison to Eunice, who was resplendent in purple half-mourning), came slowly forward to welcome her guests. “Lady Yarrow,” she said, flushing, “what a lovely surprise!”

“Ah, there you are, my dear,” Eunice said, touching her sister-in-law’s cheek with her own. “I was wondering where you were hiding. And
Sandy
! I had no idea you were still—” At that moment, her eye fell on the Constable painting on the south wall. “Good God, Robbie, what have you
done
?” she
shrieked. “You’ve taken away the
portrait
!”

Cassie whitened. “The … portrait?” she gasped.

Kittridge set little Greta on her feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Eunice. What portrait?”

“I think she means the p-painting that used to hang there … on the south w-wall,” Cassie stammered, trembling in guilt and shame.

“Of course that’s what I mean. The portrait of our great-grandfather, Algernon Arthur Rossiter!”

“Oh, that,” Kittridge said carelessly. “It must be somewhere about. Why all the fuss?”

Eunice stamped her foot petulantly. “But he belongs
here
! He’s
always
been here. Really, Robbie, how
can
you have been so heedless of family tradition as to have taken him down?”

“
I
t-took him down, your ladyship,” Cassie admitted miserably. “I didn’t think … I’m sorry. I’ll restore him to his rightful place this v-very day, I promise.”

“There, you see? Nothing to fly into alt over,” Kittridge said calmly, picking Greta up again and taking Della by the hand. “Cassie will set things to rights. Meanwhile, come upstairs, everyone, and let’s sort out where you will all stay.”

Eunice, satisfied by Cassie’s promise, dropped the subject and followed her brother and the children up the stairs. Miss Roffey, Loesby and the servants trooped up after them. Cassie, shaken, just stood and watched. Sandy came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t take it so hard, Cassie,” he said consolingly. “Eunice can be overbearing sometimes, but she’s a good sort, really.”

Cassie, who’d been hurt at school by just such “good sorts,” was not consoled. “Is she?” she muttered dejectedly.

“Yes, she really is. I’ve known her for years, and I swear she can be the sweetest, most generous—”

Cassie, who’d been snubbed by her sister-in-law at their first meeting at the wedding, was not convinced. “I’m afraid you’re blinded, Sandy—either by your natural optimism or by infatuation.”

“
Infatuation?
” He drew himself up in real offense. “That’s a jingle-brained thing to say.”

Cassie was startled by the vehemence of his reaction. She turned to him in astonishment. “Heavens, Sandy, have I hit on something?”

Sandy began to utter a loud protest, but, too honest to maintain a pretense, stopped himself and shrugged. “I’ve always had a secret fancy for her,” he admitted, his moon face reddening. “But that doesn’t mean I condone her behavior when she acts so deucedly high-handed. She had no right to order you about. Robbie should have put her in her place. I’ll have a word with him.”

“No, please, Sandy,” Cassie begged, a look of alarm leaping into her eyes. “Don’t say anything to him. Robert is right. It is nothing to make a fuss over. You must promise not to devil Robert with this matter.”

Sandy, not one who liked to indulge in arguments, promised. “But you must make me a promise, too,” he bargained. “You must stop looking so Friday-faced. One would think, looking at you, that you’ve been bested in battle.”

“I
have
been bested,” she pointed out.

“Not on your life,” Sandy declared. “The battle’s not over yet.”

Cassie smiled at him wanly. “I hope you’re right. Meanwhile, for your sake, I’m glad we have Lady Yarrow’s company.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “If you’re getting matchmaking ideas, Cassie, put them out of your mind. Eunice doesn’t give me a passing thought. I’m not particularly delighted that she’s here. But the children will be an entertaining addition to our circle.”

“Yes, they will.” She gave him a real smile at last and took his arm. “Come upstairs with me,
Sandy, and let’s see if we can find a suitable place for a nursery.”

* * *

Sandy’s promise prevented him from giving his friend Robbie a good scold. Loesby, however, was under no such constraints. “Yer sister likes t’ rule the roost, don’t she, Cap’n?” he remarked while laying out Lord Kittridge’s evening clothes. “If I was yer wife, me nose’d be out o’ joint.”

“Would it indeed?” Kittridge asked absently as he buttoned his shirtsleeve. “And why is that?”

“‘Cause yer sister ’ad no right to order ’er t’ replace the damn portrait, that’s why. Me an’ yer missus, ’er ladyship I mean, took real pains t’ fix up the entryway. Lady Yarrow ’ad no right t’ spoil it.”

Kittridge made a dismissive gesture. “Confound it, Loesby, it’s only a portrait. It doesn’t spoil anything. Come, man, help me with this damnable neckerchief instead of moping about over female foolishness.”

By dinner time the forbidding portrait of the first viscount had been restored to its original place. Unfortunately for Cassie, however, Eunice’s desire for restoration did not stop there. No sooner had her bags been unpacked than Eunice ordered that her bedroom be returned to its original solemnity (requiring Cassie to search for hours to find where she had stored the dismal paintings she’d taken from the room). Eunice also rejected Cassie’s suggestion to locate the nursery in a bright suite of rooms with south-facing windows. She preferred instead to use the old nursery where she’d spent summers as a child. Ignoring Cassie’s shyly offered observation that the north-facing nursery might have been pleasant in the summer but might be hard to keep warm in this season, Eunice insisted not only on using those rooms, but on keeping everything in them just as they were when she was a child. Cassie, not able to bring herself to argue, felt as if she’d lost another skirmish.

During the days that followed, Eunice steadily usurped Cassie’s place as mistress of the house. Having long been accustomed to running a household (her own with Yarrow and her mother’s as well) without opposition, she took over the reins of household management at Highlands without giving a second thought to Cassie’s superior claim to the position. Cassie, on the other hand, gave over those reins without a struggle. She had suffered humiliation at the hands of just such strong personalities at school and hadn’t learned any means of survival except complete withdrawal. She thought about what Sandy had said about a battle, but she was no soldier. She didn’t know the first thing about fighting. So, reverting to her earlier habits, she retired into her shell and became just what Eunice expected her to be—a mouse.

Chapter Eighteen

Within a week, Eunice had enlarged the staff by six: she’d hired a seamstress, a children’s nurse, a butler, an abigail and dresser for her own use, and a drawing master for little Della. She also had taken over the selection of the daily menus, the arranging of the household staff’s work schedule, and the choice of activities for the day for everyone in the household but her brother. Although there was an undercurrent of discontent in the household with this new arrangement, little was said aloud. Everyone felt that, since Lady Yarrow was only visiting for a few weeks, things would soon return to normal.

But, as Kittridge had long ago suggested, two women heading one household leads to strife. And strife was about to burst forth.

It came about when Eunice decided that the drawing room had to be made immediately habitable. She didn’t see how they could exist without it. Using the little sitting room as a drawing room, as the family had been doing before she arrived, was, she declared, vulgar and gauche. She therefore ordered the footmen to take the chairs and furnishings that Cassie had removed from the drawing room for furnishing the sitting room and restore them to their original positions in the drawing room.

Cassie endured the denuding of her sitting room without a word. Sandy, appalled at Eunice’s arrogance, asked Cassie why on earth she’d permitted it, but Cassie only said it didn’t matter.

The work was completed in midafternoon of the very day Eunice instigated it, and she promptly put the room to use. She informed everyone that tea would be served, today and every day hence, in the drawing room.

Kittridge, engrossed in studying the intricacies of sheep breeding, was not aware of any of this. But on the day of the opening of the drawing room, he ceased his labors early and decided to go up to the nursery to spend an hour playing with his nieces. He found Miss Roffey there all alone. “Sir Philip came up and invited the children down to tea,” she informed him.

He quickly ran down the stairs again. At the bottom he was accosted by a rotund stranger, who bowed with pompous formality and said, “Lady Yarrow is awaiting you in the drawing room, my lord.”

“And who might you be?” his lordship demanded.

“I’m Dickie, my lord. The new butler.”

“Oh? Lady Kittridge didn’t tell me she’d engaged a butler,” Kittridge muttered, puzzled.

“It was Lady Yarrow who engaged me,” Dickle said.

“She did, did she? Seems to me I heard that she engaged a nursemaid and an abigail, too.” His brows drew together in annoyance. “I think I’ll have a word with Lady Yarrow,” he said ominously.

“Yes, my lord,” said the butler, who, though he guessed that his lordship seemed not to approve of his being hired, did not show a sign of distress in his impassive face. “You’ll find her in the drawing room.”

Kittridge wondered why his sister wanted him in the unused, overly large and draughty drawing room, but he set off down the hall. Before reaching his destination, however, he heard the sound of a child’s laughter from the little sitting room and looked inside. He gaped in dismay at the sight that met
his eyes. The room was empty of all furniture except a small table near the window. The large carpet that Cassie had installed was gone, and only a small four-by-six rug had been placed near the fire to replace it. Sandy was sitting on the rug, a teacup and saucer on the floor beside him, playing spillikins with Della, while Cassie was seated on the hearth with little Greta in her lap. She was feeding the child some hot tea with a spoon. “Good God!” Kittridge gasped. “What’s
happened
here?”

“Uncew Wobit! Uncew Wobit!” Greta cried, trying to leap from Cassie’s lap.

“Ah, Robbie,” Sandy greeted, grinning up at him, “here you are at last! If you hadn’t buried yourself away in your study all day, you’d have discovered that the drawing room’s been restored. Your tea awaits you there.”

“I’m winning, Uncle Robert,” Della bragged, indicating the pieces scattered on the rug.

But her uncle scarcely heard her. “I don’t understand,” he said in confusion. “I thought, Cassie, that you prefer using this room.”

Cassie threw him a nervous glance. “Eunice feels strongly that a small sitting room like this is a poor substitute for a proper drawing room.”

“
Eunice
feels so? And you
agree
with her?” He ran a bewildered hand through his hair. “Then why aren’t you there, taking your tea?”

“The room was too cold for the children,” Sandy said, “so we took our cups and came here.”

“Little Greta was shivering,” Cassie added apologetically.

“I was shivewing, Uncew Wobit,” Greta grinned, proud of being talked about.

Kittridge stepped over the threshold, still confused and dismayed. “Knowing that the drawing room is a draughty barn, why on earth, Cassie, did you permit Eunice to do this? I thought we were all agreed that we were more comfortable here.”

Cassie didn’t know what to say. “Well, you see, I … I …”

Sandy came to her aid. “When does your sister Eunice ever ask permission?” he asked sardonically.

As the situation began to become clear to him, his lordship’s expression hardened. “Are you suggesting, Sandy, that Eunice took it upon herself, without asking Cassie, to rearrange this house?”

“So it seems,” Sandy responded carelessly, turning back to his game.

“Is this true, Cassie?”

Cassie’s eyes met his, wavered and dropped. “I don’t blame her for wishing to keep the house as it was, Robert. I understand the feeling one has about the places of one’s childhood. There is a tradition in houses, you know. Tradition is not something to be despised. It is, after all, one of the few links that we have to the past.”