Laura Matthews (24 page)

Now, Glenna thought, comes the other parting. It really is too much to bear in one day. And there was no hope for a word alone; Mary stuck to her like glue.

Although they were not leaving until the next morning, there was no reason for Pontley to return now that the play was past. Glenna stood almost frozen as she watched the couple from Lockwood begin to take leave of the vicar, and she knew a moment’s exasperation when she heard Pontley invite Kilbane to stay at Lockwood for a few days’ shooting, an offer which was gladly accepted.

For God’s sake, she thought, why must he be so sure of himself? Has he not eyes to see what has been going on around him this last week? No, Pontley thought Kilbane had been disillusioned by Jennifer’s temper and had been lulled into deceiving himself by the lack of flirtation between the two younger people. Glenna felt like shaking him for playing so fast and loose with his own future peace of mind, and her eyes flashed with her vexation when he approached her.

"I will have a footman pick up your harp tomorrow, Miss Forbes, and bring it to Lockwood at the same time they remove the props from the schoolhouse. You need only send word where it is to be shipped and I will have it dispatched immediately.” The corners of his mouth twitched at her lingering glare. “You are upset, and no wonder, when you have shared Miss Thomas’s companionship for so many months. I have no doubt you will enjoy your stay with your cousin, though,” he remarked pleasantly, with a smile in Mary’s direction.

"Oh, yes,” Mary volunteered. “Glenna is bringing her mare, and while she rides I intend to start another play. So gratifying to have one’s work appreciated.”

“Indeed,” Glenna said dryly. "Thank you for all your help with the play, Lord Pontley, and of course Jennifer’s.” She offered him her hand as she said, “I...give you both my best wishes.”

Pontley shook her hand and held it a moment. “Thank you. And thank you for all your endeavors at Manner Hall. I have a tenant there now, did I tell you? Glover is pleased with the family, and they didn’t even mind providing their own draperies.”

Although she attempted to smile at his teasing, her lip trembled and for one awful moment she was afraid she was going to disgrace herself. But he still had her hand and his grip on it became almost painfully tight, so she steadied herself and murmured, “I am so glad. Good-bye, Lord Pontley. Please say what is proper to the dowager."

The amused light in his eyes was the last thing she saw before he turned away, and she was faced with Jennifer, whom it very nearly choked her to wish well.

When they were gone she retired to the room she had shared with Phoebe, claiming a headache which would give her an hour’s peace. No longer could she restrain the tears which had threatened to engulf her, and she lay on the bed for some time, sobbing and desolate. Never to see him again, to have the warmth in his eyes fill her with pleasure, to feel his hand press hers. What a fool she had been! If he was autocratic, he was also thoughtful and kind. Lucky Phoebe to have one of his water colors...

Glenna sat upright on the bed, a bemused expression on her face. The backdrop with its two scenes would merely be discarded now; why should she not take it? Well, the whole thing would be too bulky, of course, but she could cut out the seascape and the ludicrous portrait, perhaps part of the arbor and the deer park. They would not last forever, of course, but perhaps long enough to see her through this aching despair. And she would have something of his with her when she left, no matter where she went.

From her sewing box she extracted a pair of scissors and dropped them in her reticule before she stole from the house so that no one would see her. The walk to the schoolhouse was bitterly cold but she encountered no one. Even the empty room with its atmosphere of make-believe comforted her when she remembered the hours she had spent there working on the backdrop with Pontley.

Glenna had to stand on a chair to awkwardly lower the scene, but she worked quickly and neatly in removing the sections she wished to take with her. The gaping holes in the cloth alarmed her somehow, as though they were witness to her folly, so she crumpled the whole and stuffed it into a wastebasket used for a prop until it overflowed. No one would give any thought to discarding it with the trash. Tucking the precious pieces she had chosen under her arm, she left without a backward glance.

Chapter 19

Mrs. Stokes was as indolent as her brother, Glenna’s father, had been industrious, and her daughter Mary took after her. Her son Stuart did not, however, and he was always willing to ride with Glenna at The Oaks. She found him good company, and would rather canter over the frozen ground, the wind whipping at her face and hair, than sit in the overheated parlor with Mary, who wished to have an audience for each line of the new play she was writing.

There was too much time in the parlor for Glenna to think about her sadness, something which she attempted to push out of her mind during the days, if she was not able to do so at night. Then she would draw out the water colors and scold herself for her sentimentality in doing so.

Since neither Mrs. Stokes nor her daughter was inclined to make the necessary visits to ailing tenants or injured farmhands and their families, Glenna gladly took their place, and filled her days with these visits and reading, riding and writing letters to Phoebe or her old friends in Hastings. The time was coming when she must decide where to go and what to do, but she felt strangely lethargic about her future. Three weeks had passed since she left the vicarage, and without Phoebe there to send her word of the viscount’s marriage she did not even know when it had happened.

Riding one day with Stuart she was detailing her experiences at Manner Hall. “I enjoyed it, you know, having charge of the redecoration and the household. If I could do such a thing again, I would.”

Stuart Stokes was a rather short, fair-haired young man of serious demeanor and mind. “You should marry, Glenna. Then you’d have a household to run and you could choose all the new draperies you wanted.”

“Do you see me so frivolous as that, Stuart?” she chided him. “I never even got to choose draperies for Manner Hall. It was the fun of starting new projects to pay for the repairs that I enjoyed. Except keeping bees. That was disastrous.” She regaled him with the episode, cherishing in her own mind the more private aspects.

He regarded her solemnly for a moment when she had finished. “Don’t you want to marry, Glenna?”

She threw up a hand in despair. “Stuart, you aren’t listening to me. We have not been talking about marriage but about housekeeping. Marriage has nothing to do with it.”

“Yes, but if you marry you can be a housekeeper, can’t you?” he asked practically.

“I suppose so,” she sighed. “It seems hardly worth it, though. I mean, I could be paid to be a housekeeper. As a wife I would be giving my services free.”

“You’d get an allowance.”

“Ah, yes, an allowance, which would probably be my inheritance doled out to me over a period of years. What a charming thought!”

 "So you don’t want to marry.”

“No, not like that.” There was no use explaining to him. With the usual male mentality of his class he saw marriage as the only proper role for a woman. Probably he saw it as a woman’s protection, too, rather than her captivity. And of course he would be right.

Paradoxically, she would be more free in some ways if she were not a spinster.

“Then I have a suggestion,” Stuart proclaimed seriously, recalling her attention.

“You do?”

“Yes. I would not suggest it if you were looking to be shackled, because he would hate such a person in his household.”

“Who would hate it?”

“Richard Banfield. He’s a distant cousin on my father’s side. You have never met him, I dare say, but he’s an M.P. and has his aunt living with him as his housekeeper-hostess, only she’s become rather dotty these last two years. He can’t very well turn her off, of course, as she has nowhere to go, but he needs someone capable of managing for him. He’s in London a lot, of course, but he likes to entertain when he’s at home and he has mentioned that he wants someone who could be a successful hostess. But he wants no one around who is looking to snare him into marriage.”

“He sounds a delightful person,” Glenna retorted.

“Well, I should not make him out as a misogynist, but his wife ran away with a fellow when they had only been married two years and he has not come around to wishing to repeat the experience. Divorced her, of course, but he remains very bitter.”

“I cannot think I would like living in the same household with him.” Glenna gazed meditatively at the coppice they were approaching as they rode, and changed her mind. “On the other hand, Stuart, you may have hit on the perfect thing. His aunt would provide an excellent chaperone, and as there is a connection with my family there could be no gabble about such an arrangement. Could I meet him?”

“Tell you what, Glenna, I’ll write him and suggest it. If he’s interested he can come over to interview you. How would that be?”

Four days later a gentleman in a drab driving coat with several capes drove up to the house in an elegant curricle. Mary’s attention was drawn by the noise of the arrival, and she peered eagerly out the window. Her London suitor was due any day, and who knew, he might come early in his eagerness. “It’s only Banfield,” she declared, disappointed. “I wonder why he should be calling.”

“Stuart has arranged for me to meet him, with an eye to becoming his housekeeper and hostess,” Glenna explained.

Mary was horrified. “Glenna, you wouldn’t do such a thing! In the first place, you have no need to take such a position, and in the second, you have no idea what he’s like. Why, he sneers at women, thinking them all like his wife. I didn’t know him before he was married, but if he was like he is now I don’t blame her for running away from him.”

“Stuart seemed to think that he became embittered
because
of his wife, Mary. It can do no harm for me to meet him, surely. If being his housekeeper seems unappealing, I shan’t take the job. In any case, he may not want me.”

“I certainly hope not,” her cousin sniffed as a servant came to ask Miss Forbes if she would join Mr. Stuart in the library. “Just don’t be surprised when he looks at you like a beetle,” Mary warned as a parting shot.

Mr. Banfield did indeed treat her to a rather lowering scrutiny when she presented herself, but she met his gaze frankly and took the opportunity to get a clear impression of him as well. Of middle height, with black hair graying at the temples, he appeared to be between thirty-five and forty, with rather sharp features and thick brows that grew almost straight across in a perpetual scowl. His eyes were alarmingly black and unreadable, his lips pressed into a thin line. He was dressed in casual country attire, well tailored, and wore topboots.

His cold survey over, he turned to Stuart after nodding to her and remarked bluntly, “I thought she said she was twenty-six."

“She is,” he protested, turning to Glenna for confirmation.

“Yes, I am. Is that pertinent?”

“You look younger, which can only be a disadvantage, Miss Forbes. Please sit down.” When she had done so, he remained standing. “Have you any experience in being a housekeeper-hostess?”

“I managed my father’s home for many years, Mr. Banfield, in both capacities. More recently I spent several months at Manner Hall in Somerset overseeing the renovation of the house for Viscount Pontley.”

“What made you leave that position?”

“The work was finished and the house in condition to receive a tenant. I am sure Lord Pontley would provide me with a letter of recommendation.”

Stuart thought she was not puffing herself off well enough and added his own contribution. “Glenna did a great deal more than oversee the renovations there, Richard. She instigated several projects to produce income to cover the expenses of the repairs and decorating. I should think she turned the estate right around from a dilapidated ruin to a rentable property single-handed.”

“Hardly single-handed,” Glenna protested, “but I was proud of what I accomplished.”

Banfield did not have a high opinion of what any woman could accomplish except to bring about chaos and disaster, and his expression clearly said so. His hard black eyes raked her open face and he muttered, “Indeed. Why do you want a position as a housekeeper, Miss Forbes?”

Glenna considered the question and her answer carefully. “I wish to have something useful to do, and I find I have a taste for managing a household. Then, too, I would prefer to be in the country than in town. I have a mare of my own and I have come to enjoy riding. Is your home in the country? Would you expect me to be in London when you were there?”

It was obvious that Banfield did not like to be questioned, but he answered her questions coolly. “I have an estate the size of The Oaks some twenty miles from here and when I go to London I stay in simple lodgings. No one from my household accompanies me except my valet. Any other staff I require is hired there.”

“I see. And what would my duties be in your household, sir?”

“When I am in residence I have frequent dinner parties for which I need a hostess. My aunt is no longer able to undertake that responsibility, nor the running of the household. There are tenants to be visited, projects such as the village school and various committees to be managed, occasionally constituents to be seen, though I have a man in the nearest town who handles the majority of them. Some with complaints come directly to the house rather than to his office, however, and it is my policy to turn no one away without a hearing. I take my responsibilities as a member of Parliament seriously, and I need no young chit ruining things for me.”

"I cannot think I would, you know. Dealing with people is a source of pleasure to me and I have always been considered level-headed. Do you stand as a Tory or a Whig?”

“A Tory, of course.”

Glenna tapped a finger on the chair arm thoughtfully. “And are you an admirer of Mr. Pitt?”

“I think him the greatest statesman for the last century. Have you some objection to him?” he asked sarcastically.