The Dowager's Daughter (3 page)

Althea suffered a tiny jolt in the pit of her stomach and struggled to catch her breath.

“You look awfully pale, miss. I think you should sit down until you feel better.”

Without waiting for a reply, he took her arm and led her to a bench. Althea complied without a murmur. The man then removed his jacket and placed it around her shoulders and sat down beside her.

“Really,” she remonstrated, “this is quite unnecessary.”

“I cannot agree. I rather think I should see you home. Where do you live?”

See her home, indeed. The man overstepped himself.
Althea pointed to a large house on the esplanade. It belonged to a family named Swann. The Swanns had five lively boys whom Althea invited to picnics by the river at Camberly Hall from time to time.

“I take it you are the governess?”

Althea fought back the urge to wince. She looked down at her drab coat, vowing to give it to her abigail. As George had so succinctly stated, one would not take her for a lady of tide and great fortune.

“I fit the mold, plain and nondescript, would you not agree?”

He gave her a sharp look. “No, I would not. I rather suspect you go out of your way not to bring attention upon yourself, but with your extraordinary eyes and your marvelous bone structure, you have a beauty that transcends both time and fashion.”

Althea stiffened. The presumptuous fellow! Such patronizing flattery would not be welcomed if it came from the lips of a gentleman of the
ton,
much less from one who was obviously a social inferior. She gave him what she hoped was a forbidding look.

“Sir, your outrageous remarks were neither sought nor welcomed. Such a tarradiddle does not recommend you.”

To add weight to her disapproval, she rose from the bench, removed his jacket from her shoulders, and handed it to him.

He stood up to receive it. His lips parted momentarily as if to voice protest, but he evidently thought better of it and gave Althea a rueful smile instead.

“Please accept my apologies, miss. My words were most untoward, I grant you, but I stand by their veracity.”

“Perhaps. But it would be most improper for me to stay and continue this conversation. I bid you good day, sir.”

This time, Althea took great pains not to trip while making her departure. When she reached the end of the pier, she turned around and discovered he was standing exactly where she had left him, resolutely staring in her direction.

With a sigh of resignation, Althea crossed the road and made her way to the Swann residence. Before raising the door-knocker, she looked over her shoulder. It was, as she feared. The man had not budged an inch.

It was not until Mary Swann dispatched a footman to Hansford’s to inform the older Lady Camberly of the whereabouts of her daughter that it dawned on Althea that she did not even know the impudent stranger’s name.

John Ridley watched the young woman retrace her steps along the pier, highly intrigued by the imperious manner of her bearing.

She is angry enough to have my guts for garters. I cannot imagine what prompted me to say them, but who would have thought a few complimentary words would transform the little mouse into a raging tiger? I must remember to be more circumspect in the future.

It occurred to John that a further encounter with the governess was hardly likely. He was surprised at the sense of loss this thought seemed to invoke.

As soon as he saw that she was safely admitted into the large white house, he also left the pier and, turning right, proceeded to walk the length of the esplanade.

He noticed a pony-and-trap tethered to a hitching post outside of Hansford’s and glanced through the window. A lady with fiery red curls peeking below the brim of a very becoming ivory colored bonnet held a swathe of yellow silk to her cheek. She caught his glance and with a slight smile, turned her back on him.

John grinned. It occurred to him one was scarcely likely to find
that
particular beauty wearing brown, at least not the drab, nondescript shade favored by the governess who had so hastily beat a retreat into the large white house across from the pier.

He took three more steps and stopped short. Why in thunder did the governess constantly come to mind? Then it dawned on him that she had never really left, but rather flitted in and out of his consciousness like a persistent gnat.

With an impatient shrug, he strode past Hansford’s and towards his destination, an inn a hundred yards farther down the road. A sign above the door bearing the legend The Boar’s Head, with the appropriate tusked head painted on it, creaked back and forth in the wind.

The innkeeper had once told John that the inn dated back to the reign of Henry VIII, a respite for travelers thirty years before his daughter Elizabeth bestowed the earldom of Camberly upon Walter Markham. “A handsome devil, by all accounts,” the publican had added. The esplanade was a more recent addition to Camberly.

Once inside, John scanned the room to find it was empty. Marcus was supposed to have met him there five minutes ago. It was highly unlikely that his brother would not allow him a few minutes’ grace; therefore, he concluded, Marcus must be late.

John felt a rising irritation. True, he was also late, but in his view, he was putting up with all the discomfort their arrangement afforded, and as far as
he
was concerned, Marcus could at least be on time once in a while.

There was nothing for it but to sit down and wait for him. At least, he thought, they have excellent ale here.

He chose a table by the window. The small bull’s-eye panes of glass obscured the identities of those who did so from any who chanced to pass by.

Without being asked, a serving girl brought him a tankard of ale. She was a winsome young thing, pleasingly plump with dark drown curls framing rosy cheeks and sparkling brown eyes.

John smiled at her. “Thank you, Betsy.”

Betsy responded with a slight bob. “Would you like something to eat, sir? Cook has made a very tasty lamb stew.”

John shook his head. “Not today. Some bread and cheese would be more to my liking, thank you.”

He had sampled “Cook’s” lamb stew on a previous occasion. Its flavor had owed more to a sheep of mature years than any lamb he had ever tasted. He had no desire to repeat the experience.

Betsy bobbed once more and left to do his bidding, her hips swaying a good deal more than was necessary to get her to the kitchen. John was the only patron in the room, although he could hear the boisterous laughter of local fishermen in the adjoining taproom. Her performance had to be for his benefit.

John shook his head. In spite of a ripe figure, Betsy’s features proclaimed her to be no more than fourteen at most. He dreaded to think what kind of a future she was choosing for herself. Girls of that age could be so vulnerable, and unfortunately, such behavior was not confined to the lower classes.

He recalled the lovesick young chit of the same age who had somehow managed to secrete herself in his brother Marcus’s chambers the previous summer. Upon ascertaining that the viscount had no intention of entering into a forced marriage with their wayward offspring, her parents abruptly ceased their cries of outrage and quickly bundled her into their carriage and took their leave.

According to Marcus, the girl’s parents managed to keep the incident a secret, for not a breath of scandal circulated among the
ton.
The following year, at the tender age of fifteen and without the benefit of a “come-out,” the girl was married off to a country squire. “Her parents are undoubtedly relieved to be rid of such a handful,” Marcus had added.

John’s life had taken a far different turn. While his brother Marcus had been dodging traps set for him by every predatory lady of tire
ton,
on their own behalf or that of their daughters, he had spent the three years in Jamaica, diligently managing Marydene, the family’s sugar plantation.

It was there that he had met and fallen in love with Belinda Vickery, a young lady visiting her uncle on the adjoining plantation. John was surprised to notice that the memory of Belinda, the turquoise shallows of the Caribbean echoing the extraordinary color of her eyes and the sun transforming her hair to a golden fire, did not seem to evoke as sharp a pain as it once had. Although he doubted he would ever forget her final words when she had broken off their betrothal.

“Of course I love you, darling, but it just will not do. You should have made it
clear
that Marydene is not yours.” She punctuated the following words with what he used to think was an adorable little moue. “After all, you cannot expect me to scrape by on the expectations of a second son.”

He had been so shocked by the bluntness of her delivery and the calculating coldness that had inspired it that he omitted to tell her that he was heir to a considerable fortune from a maternal aunt.

A week later, Belinda became engaged to a Mr. Ralph Portman, a houseguest of her uncle’s whose lack of pedigree, apparently, was amply compensated by the considerable size of his fortune. For some reason, this news only filled John with profound pity for the prospective groom.

John was sensible enough to realize that he had not fallen in love with the real Belinda—indeed, he had found nothing desirable about the person lurking behind the pretty facade. Nevertheless, the revelation had been a nasty shock and he doubted he would trust a member of the fair sex ever again.

Overnight, the island he deemed to be a paradise on earth struck him as being more like a prison. One from which he could not wait to escape. Six months later he turned over the management of Marydene to a competent man of impeccable reputation and returned to England to what he hoped would be the comforting bosom of his family.

John drained his tankard of the final drop of ale and slammed it down on the table and growled under his breath, “I must have been mad to harbor such illusions.”

That had been over a year ago and without so much as a commiserating word, Marcus had said, “Good. Now you are home you can help me, but most importantly, you can help your country.”

At the time John had considered it the perfect solution to deal with what he perceived to be the aimlessness and loneliness that had taken over his life, so before he could catch his breath he agreed to a role that encompassed becoming both a spy and a fomenter of unrest against the French.

It did not take him long to discover that the new path he had chosen for himself only compounded his problems. He found out what it was like to be cut off from the comforts of life as the son of the Earl of Fairfax and consigned to the discomfort of plying the channel between England and France carrying information to both shores. The cramped quarters he was given in the small boat did nothing to improve his humor.

He found his loss of social status the greater indignity. Even the second son of an earl is used to being treated with deference. In the guise of a mariner of questionable rank on a boat of no great consequence, he was lucky to enjoy the respect of a tavern wench, much less his equals. Even the little governess had treated him like some creature a cat had left on the doorstep.

“There I go again,” he muttered. “Will she never leave my mind? It’s like jiggling a loose tooth.”

Realizing he was talking out loud, he snapped his mouth closed, thinking that his predicament was caused by the loneliness of the task he had chosen. He had pointed out to Marcus that his was the more onerous position. The spy business had not changed Marcus’s life one whit, except, perhaps, to color it with a little excitement.

Marcus had put a sympathetic arm around his shoulder. “I realize that old chap. I would give my right arm to trade places with you, but with you being out of the country for so long, and being such a recluse, an occasional person might run into you and see a resemblance to our family. However, with the awful cut of that sailor’s garb you are forced to wear, they will hardly think it
is
you. At worst you will probably be taken for a by-blow of father’s.”

“I say,” John remonstrated, “that is a bit thick.”

“Nonsense.” Marcus gave a dismissive shrug. “See it all the time. Many a village is dotted with the indiscretions of its local gentry.”

John’s reverie was interrupted by the return of Betsy with his platter of cheese and bread, which was accompanied by a crock of butter, another tankard of ale, and a coy fluttering of eyelashes.

“Will that be all, sir?”

He found the sultry manner in which she posed the question somewhat disconcerting. “For the time being,” he responded, taking care to make his tone as impersonal as possible.

Betsy’s flouncing exit made it perfectly clear that his snub had been duly noted and resented. John shook his head, slathered some butter on a crusty chunk of bread, then broke off a piece of the local cheese from the generous wedge he had been given. He knew from past experience that it had a nutlike flavor blended with a sharp pungency that was sheer bliss to the palate and lost no time in tucking in to it.

After savoring the last crumb, he settled back to enjoy his ale. It wasn’t until his tankard was half empty that it occurred to him that by now, his brother was not only outrageously late, but it was doubtful he would show up at all. That meant a moonlight liaison with his go-between.

“Damned inconvenient,” he muttered. “I had hoped to leave for Calais with the evening tide.”

John gave his brother another half-hour, then paid for his meal and left the inn. He did not retrace his steps but turned left and continued to walk until the buildings came to an abrupt end.

Here, John veered onto a dirt lane leading to a cluster of fishermen’s cottages situated on the beach. He approached them with a determined stride, not stopping until he had reached one which was set apart from the others.

He stopped to inspect a small dory beached out front, then entered the cottage, the humblest pile in a row of five. All the houses were constructed of stones the local people gathered on the beach at the mouth of the River Camber.

Presently, a plume of smoke curled out of the chimney stack, indicating that the man the local fishermen knew as John Soames intended to stay for a while.

It was as Althea had supposed. On opening her packages from Hansford’s, she discovered that her mother had chosen far different materials for her dresses than she would have.

She fingered a dotted muslin in a pale green meant for a morning dress, then held up the yards of beautiful lace intended for its trim.
Mother is an extravagant creature,
she thought, then gasped at the fine shot silk she discovered next. This was an admixture of pale green and lavender that seemed to dance in the light streaming in from her bedroom window.

Yesterday she would have rejected such colors as “too unserviceable,” but that was before she had met an outspoken young seafarer who, having mistaken her for a governess, had yet found something to admire in her.

There were several other lengths of material of diverse color and texture. Twice as many as she had requested. Althea held each in turn to her face before the mirror, fascinated how every one seemed to enhance her delicate coloring—especially the green-and-lavender silk.

Althea draped it around her shoulders and studied the results once more, marveling at how the colors seemed to work magic on the green of her eyes—until self-doubt colored her judgment. The sparkle left her eyes and she discarded the shimmering material in a ruck on top of the rest of the materials covering her counterpane like a spring flowerbed.

“What was Mama thinking?” she murmured.

She walked over to her bedroom window, a tall, square-paned opening taking up the better part of a wall, and stared pensively at the garden below. Her bedroom faced the rear of the house, overlooking a pleasant garden laid out with flowerbeds and tree-lined paths. A large pond filled with carp and water lilies and shaded by a graceful weeping willow reminded Althea of the willow pattern on the blue-and-white china used in the morning room at breakfast time. In the distance, flashes of the River Camber gleamed through the trees growing along the riverbank.

Althea usually found solace, and even delight, in this vista, depending on her mood; but now, her gaze was unseeing, her shoulders slumped. She was still standing there, silhouetted against the glow of twilight, when Lizzie came to help her dress for dinner.