The Heiress Companion (12 page)

“Miss Cherwood, you are —”

“Being sensible, Mr. Greavesey. I do not wish to marry you —
I am certain that I would make you as miserable as...” Courtesy, even now, kept
her from admitting just how odious he was to her. “Well, I simply do not think
we should suit.”

“Miss Cherwood.” Greavesey’s tone turned ominous. “Do I
understand that your affections are already engaged?”

Lyndon Bradwell’s image flashed briefly into Rowena’s mind.
She banished it sternly. “You may think that if you like, sir. Whatever you
think, I am flattered by your proposal, and regret to give you pain, but: no.”

“I beg you will recall your position, Miss Cherwood. Can you
wish to dwindle into old age as a companion, even to so pleasant a mistress as
Lady Bradwell?” His tone had become menacing, and he bent his body forward to
punctuate each sentence with a thrust from his bony chin.

“Mr. Greavesey.” The words were forced out from between
tightly clenched teeth. “If you have anything to say to me on the subject of
Lady Bradwell’s health or my cousin’s, I beg you will say it. But if you
continue to refuse to believe my most serious replies to your — your question,
I shall throw you out bodily, myself. And if I find that I am not equal to the
task myself, I shall enlist the aid of the stable boy.”

Greavesey sat back in his chair, blanching.

“Further, sir, I would advise you, if you ever make
proposals of marriage to a lady again,
not
to use insults and threats as your main points of persuasion. Good afternoon.”

The words were as final as words could be. Miss Cherwood
shifted her attention to some papers on the desk (they were inventories of the
linen closets, and under normal circumstances would not have held a particular
fascination for her), and so obviously ignored Greavesey’s further presence
that he was unable, by the wildest sophistry, to persuade himself that she was
being coy. Huffily he took up his cane and satchel and left the room.

“Good God!” Rowena sighed to herself, and laid her head down
on her arms in a weak, half-hysterical fit of laughter. “O, good lord!”

o0o

Greavesey swept out of the house in a manner more suited to
a Byronic hero than a balding doctor’s assistant. He had left the horse by the
front door, and was thus forced to walk clear around the house to reach the
stable and his horse. Jane Ambercot, sitting on a bench in the garden, called
out a civil good afternoon to him as he passed, and more from habit than
anything else, he stopped to exchange a greeting with her.

“Are Lady Bradwell and Miss Margaret Cherwood doing well,
sir?”

“Why, of course, ma’am,” he answered blankly, looking into
her friendly blue eyes and seeing only Rowena’s angry brown ones.

“Well, I did hear you tell Miss Cherwood that you had
matters to discuss with her, and I assumed —”

“O, yes, well...” Greavesey hummed uncomfortably. “And how
do you do, Miss Ambercot? Hands quite mended?”

“Very nearly so, sir,” she said matter-of-factly, and pulled
at one of her mitts to show the wisp of gauze which was all the bandage she now
required. “The salve you and the doctor gave us has worked miracles! I only
wish I had such efficacious remedies to hand in the stables at Wilesby House.”

Greavesey had taken the hand proffered him and, examining
it, found it in a fair way to mending without a scar, but also found it warm,
squarish, a little plump, and pleasing. He kept it in his own for another
moment or two.

“Well, sir,” Jane began uncomfortably, wishing that the man
would release her hand and leave her. “I suppose that you must be anxious to
return to your work, rather than sitting and chatting with me.”

“O, no, dear lady.” W. Greavesey’s sycophantic tone was
tinged with the romantic melodrama he had enacted five minutes before. “It is a
positive refreshment to the soul to stand in this beautiful garden and talk
with one so charming as yourself “

“Yes’ well, sir, I thank you for the compliment, but...” She
tried to pull her hand away. Greavesey seemed to be retaining hold of it less
on purpose than because his attention was fixed elsewhere. Jane, thinking to
bring him back to himself, gave the hand a gentle tug. His own hand closed
tighter around it. “Mr. Greavesey?”

No answer was vouchsafed.

“Mr. Greavesey?” She tried again.

Again, no answer. His gaze appeared to be focused on the
corner of her marble bench, and whatever he was thinking, he had tightened his
grasp painfully.

“Sir?” Jane’s voice was a little more imperative now. “Mr.
Greavesey, I think I should be going into the house now.”

“O, yes.” He agreed morosely, but made no sign of
relinquishing his prize. “Everyone has other things to attend to.
I
have other things to attend to. O yes, well, we
mustn’t mind about poor old John Greavesey; there are more important things to
give our thoughts to, ain’t there?”

His hand closed tighter still, and Jane cried out in pain. “Sir,
you’re hurting me!” He didn’t seem to notice. “Mr. Greavesey! You’re obviously
upset about something, perhaps a cup of tea would —”

“Tea, dear lady? Tea? What’s that to the purpose, I ask you?
No, no one has time to spare a thought for John Greavesey, I tell you.” Still
the hand was clasped in his, although his grip had loosened somewhat now. Jane,
still seated on the bench, stared up at him in uneasy dislike.

“Now, nothing of the sort, sir. If you will but release my
hand and follow me indoors, we shall be pleased to give you —”

Whatever it was that Miss Ambercot was to have offered Mr.
Greavesey, the words were lost as Lord Bradwell, come upon the scene, charged,
rather like a bull, and with one solid left knocked the older man down.

“Take your hands off her, you — you —” Words, as usual, did
not come easily to Lord Bradwell.

“Why, Jack!” Jane rose, her face reflecting a little
surprise and much gratitude. She put out a hand, the one just relinquished by
the now flattened Greavesey, only to have it quite rudely pushed away.

“Don’t you ‘Why Jack’ me, ma’am! Sitting in the garden
beguiling yourself by getting up flirtations with a half-witted sawbones, is
it? When I consider how once, long ago, I let myself be made ashamed for a
little dalliance, and now I come on you in the garden with this bag of bones,
and obviously enticing him by —”

“Jack Bradwell, what on earth are you talking about?” Jane
appeared roused to a fury to equal his. On the ground beneath their notice,
Greavesey lay and stared directly upward at this new melodrama.

“You know very well what I’m talking about,” Lord Bradwell
insisted. “And I don’t mean to make a guy of myself by attending on a woman who
would sit holding hands with that — that — that —”

But Jane, holding her hands in front of her face, did not
stay to hear herself or Mr. Greavesey reviled further, and Lord Bradwell and
his victim were left to stare blackly at each other.

By the time Miss Cherwood sufficiently recovered herself
from Mr. Greavesey’s proposals to emerge from the office, Jane Ambercot had
retired noisily to her room, announcing in an uncharacteristically melodramatic
way that she would not see
anyone
. Jane’s
maid, much disgruntled at being included in this ban, confided in Rowena that
she thought she had heard the sound of crying from her lady’s room once the
door was closed. Little as she liked the situation, Rowena could not suppose
that any purpose would be served in storming Jane’s room, so she contented
herself in sending up a light supper and hoping that a chance would come to
talk to her friend.

Lord Bradwell, on the other hand, was very much in evidence
at dinner and afterward. He stalked about the drawing room with a distempered
sneer for anyone who approached him. The effect would have been ludicrous,
except that he was so much in earnest that it was impossible to laugh at him. “For
all the world like Young Werther!” his unhappy mother confided in her
companion. “My dearest Rowena, what could have brought my sunny Jack to such a
pass?”

“I imagine it must have to do with Jane, ma’am, but as to
what the particulars are, I cannot tell you more than you know.”

“Just when things were looking particularly promising. Well,
had you managed to pull them through, I was hoping to delegate responsibility
for Lyn to you as well.”

Rowena started slightly. “I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

“I was going to ask you to try your matchmaking on Lyndon,
dear. But with this experiment gone so awry...”

“I agree completely,” Rowena said with alacrity. “After all,
ma’am, I never claimed to be better than a very amateur at this game.”

“I know it. But you seemed to show such promise! In any
case, I’m sure that these silly fools have brought themselves to whatever pass
it is they’ve found, and I am minded to let them resolve it themselves,” Lady
Bradwell said disgruntledly. “After all, I have waited years for Jack to come
to his senses, and just when he appears to be doing so — Faugh! And look you
there at Lyn, talking with Ulysses Ambercot quite as if nothing in the world
were the matter! And his brother walking about like a bear!” The older woman
sniffed disparagingly. “Rowena, I warn you now, in case you ever consider
marriage: Men are fools. They have their good points, and all in all I cannot
regret having married Bradwell —” A soft smile lit on her lips for a moment and
was rigorously erased. “But by and large, they are the most contrary breed
imaginable!”

“Until you need them, ma’am?” Rowena suggested.

“Certainly, child. Until you need them. I didn’t say they
were useless altogether,” Lady Bradwell replied with dignity, and applied
herself to her teacup.

Whatever his appearance, Lyndon Bradwell was not in the
least unaware of his brother’s novel behavior. His good-natured attempts at
conversation had been rebuffed with a violence he would have thought impossible
in his brother, and somewhat later in the evening he talked to Miss Cherwood,
hoping that she, at least, might have a clue to the mystery.

“After all, Miss Cherwood, you seem to be the confidante of
most of the household; now what the devil has come over my brother?”

“And Miss Ambercot. I wish I knew, Mr. Bradwell. I should
certainly like to find out.”

“I wish you will; having Jack stomping around the house in a
cross between a brown study and the rage of a bear —”

“A brown bear?” Rowena interjected amiably.

“If you like,” he replied absently. “It’s distracting. I’ve
never seen Jack act like this.”

“I think it may be love. I only wish I knew for certain — at
least that would set your mamma’s mind at ease.”

“Is everyone in this household privy to everyone else’s
affaires de coeur
?”

“I hope not.” Miss Cherwood cast him a look of dismay. “But
I mean to find out what’s afoot, and right it if I can. I’m sure that sounds
abominably nosy of me, but if I’ve the reputation for it, I may as well get
some good of it as well. I dislike seeing people so miserable. As you say, it
is highly — um — distracting.”

“So far from being nosy, Miss Cherwood, I for one would
regard your intervention as a kindly gesture toward the rest of us. Damme, at
least your cousin and Ambercot accomplished their wooing in a sensible manner.”

“With that license, I shall go to see what I can do, sir.”
Rowena rose and made him a schoolgirl curtsey, then turned to take her leave of
her mistress.

Margaret was almost asleep when Rowena reached her room, but
roused herself enough to sit up, smile drowsily, and enjoy five minutes
conversation with her cousin. Formerly all her discourse had been on books,
family, clothes, and schoolroom topics. Now, every other phrase seemed to begin
with the words “Lully thinks...” or “Ulysses told me...” The time when she was
not quoting Ulysses Ambercot’s views on everything was filled with fretting
about her parents’ answer to Ulysses’ formal request for her hand. “What shall
I do if Papa says no, Renna?”

“Why on earth should he, love?” Rowena smiled at her cousin’s
distracted happiness and prayed that the letters from London would come soon,
before Meg worked herself into a frenzy or bored everyone in the household.

It was asking too much to hope that perhaps Jane had
confided in her fellow-invalid, and Rowena found no answers to that mystery
with Margaret. At length she bid her kinswoman good rest, made a quick
inspection of her wounds and, taking her leave, gathered her strength to
approach Jane.

At first she was denied entry to the room unequivocally.
Upon receiving Miss Cherwood’s announcement that she would enter the room in
any case, Jane rose up and let her in.

Tears are not becoming to any but the most ravishingly
pretty, and Jane Ambercot was, at her best moments, no more than rather
handsome. Now, with her face flushed, her hair in entire disarray, her eyes
red-rimmed and her mouth trembling, she looked quite dreadful. Add to this that
she was sitting bolt upright in her chair, hands clenched and face cold and
withdrawn, and Rowena was sorely tempted to turn about-face and leave Miss
Ambercot and Lord Bradwell to solve their own problems. Only the loneliness and
despair in Jane’s eyes persuaded her to stay. She went to her friend’s side,
knelt, and put an arm about her waist.

“Jane dear, what on earth has made you look so miserable?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? That’s the greatest plumper I ever heard! When
this afternoon we were all so cheery, and you so well? Tell me to mind my own
business if you like — I shan’t, of course — but don’t try to bam me with such
nonsense as that. I am not so green as I’m cabbage-looking, my girl, and though
I be a veritable monster of inconsideration, I shall not sit by and see my
friends miserable.”

The concern under Miss Cherwood’s rallying tone reached Jane
as nothing else would have. The first of a new flood of tears stood in her eyes
and she choked out: “I
hate
men. They’re
all stupid and selfish, and — and
men
.”
This was apparently the worst imprecation she could summon, and having spewed
it forth she burst splendidly into tears and found herself weeping noisily on
Rowena’s shoulders.