The Heiress Companion (15 page)

A light kindled in his eye. “Why don’t we go awaken the old
girl, wish her joy, and give her our news right now.”

“Because,” Miss Cherwood answered crisply, smoothing the
somewhat disturbed folds of his neckcloth, “your mamma needs her sleep, and
I
need my tea, and Drummey will be back here in a
moment, and I should like to be kissed once more before I resume the mask of
propriety.”

Lyn complied not once but several times, holding her very
closely and murmuring appropriate comments between kisses. Only a tactful
rattle at the door latch gave them any warning that Drummey was about to enter
with the tea water, and when he entered he found Mr. Bradwell in the process of
seating Miss Cherwood at table.

“I wonder how much Drummey knows, or suspects, of us?” Lyn
said wryly when the butler was gone again.

“Considerably more than you’d think, I reckon. We had a maid
in Vienna who I could have sworn was a mind reader, and Drummey strikes me as
another such. Clara and Mamma would have fearsome discussions, neither
understanding the other, since Clara spoke no English and Mama not a word of German.
But when something was to be done, or the time when we were harboring a fellow
from the authorities — Lord, that was a story, Lyn! Clara was the only one of
the staff who knew, although no one had told her. And very properly did she
act, when pressed to it, too.”

“Will you be content to settle yourself with a poor
politician after all your adventures, sweetheart?”

“When it has always been my ambition to run a salon with my
hair in Recamier ringlets and to lounge upon a sofa being witty and charming? Why,
I’d marry you for the chance of that even if you were bandy-legged and
cross-eyed and spoke with a stutter.”

‘If those are your requirements...” He helped her to a slice
of beef. “I shall try to bandy my legs and cross my eyes. The stutter will take
a little more work, but I’m certain I can acquire one in due course. Seriously,
Renna, you know it will be some time before there can be any questions of a
salon.”

“Well of course, I should dislike to appear to be a mushroom
or a cit. If you say the salon must wait then wait it shall.”

“Several things will have to wait until I can establish
myself, love. I have sent out letters to Castlereagh and Sidmouth, and I’m
hoping to hear something good from them, with Uncle Kelvin’s support. But for a
while I shan’t be able to do more than feed you and clothe you.” She looked at
him in dismay. “No, not quite that bad, my dear, but as a second son, you
know... Well, if we do marry soon, and I hope we shall marry
very
soon” — his look warmed her — “we shall
simply have to be a little careful, is all.”

“I’m used to that, Lyn. I cannot begin to tell you what a
luxury it is to live in a place where I needn’t constantly translate for
myself, or worry because the messenger with funds for Mamma or Papa has
disappeared and we’re down to the last pullet in the yard, or because soldiers
— any soldiers at all, English, French, Spanish, German, whatever! — have been
sighted a few miles from the house and all the maids have run to hide
themselves under the beds crying
‘¡Aiii, Santa Maria
ayudame!’
I don’t mind being careful, as you call it.”

“I just don’t want you to form one idea of what our life
will have to be at first and then —” he began, deliberately ignoring her
teasing.

“Well,” she interrupted diplomatically. “I do have a little
money of my own.”

“Do you think I’d touch whatever independence you have? That
will be tied up properly for you and the children.” He flushed slightly. “I
shall see to that.”

Rowena returned his look warmly, but continued. “But Lyn,
love, we could tie up a great deal for the children and myself and still live
comfortably — not elegantly, but comfortably — on what is left, at least until
you catch the eye of someone in the government.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, certainly I don’t think you would want to run for a
seat from my pocket, and I doubt I should care for it either. But —”

“Rowena, just what do you mean by a little money?” Lyn asked
quietly. She looked at him in surprise, a little guiltily.

“Your mamma hasn’t talked to you? No, I suppose she wouldn’t.
I was funning you a little, Lyn. My parents left me some money is all. You had
no idea?”

“I know nothing of how your parents left you. I had assumed
that you were — forgive me, but — quite impoverished. Else why would you be
here working for my mother?”

“Because, given the choice of living respectably and
properly and boringly with my aunt, taking part in the innumerable skirmishes
that seem to develop between her and me, and hiring myself out as a companion
to someone who really needed me, there
was
no choice. I’m not eccentric enough to set myself up in an establishment with
hired chaperones, and I couldn’t live with my aunt any longer. I’ve been a
grown woman, responsible for the management of my life and an establishment for
too long to be reduced comfortably to unmarried-niece status and married off to
the first convenient peer who offered for me. That was what I faced at Aunt
Doro’s, Lyn. Do you wonder that I chose as I did? Your mamma knows the whole of
the story, and didn’t object to the fact that I have an easy competence — well,
perhaps a little better than that.”

“Just how much better?” he asked sternly.

“Lyn?” She looked at him, uneasy at the tone in his voice.

“Rowena, just how easy a competence is it? I have a right to
know, don’t I?”

She steeled herself to meet his gaze. Suddenly everything
felt wrong, strained. But she owed him an honest answer. “There’s forty
thousand invested in the Navy Fives, and another — I don’t know, perhaps twelve
hundred a year from the revenues at Styles — that was Papa’s estate — and the
rent of the house and grounds, too, since we haven’t lived there in above seven
years. A little less than four thousand a year, I suppose.” She tried to say it
nonchalantly.

Lyn had put his fork and knife down and was studying his coffee
cup with interest. “You couldn’t have told me all this before, I suppose?”

“Good God, Lyndon Bradwell, what was I supposed to do?
Inform you, when you stumbled upon me at the duck pond that afternoon, that I
was worth four thousand a year to the lucky man who could snag me? Lord, I can
see it now: ‘Good Afternoon, sir. Bradwell, d’you say? How d’you do? I’m Rowena
Cherwood, heiress, companion to your mamma.’ Would it have made that much of a
difference?”

“To my loving you? No.” Her heart skipped a beat and she
looked up, but his face was still closed and remote. “To my speaking of it — I
don’t know. It ought to. Rowena, suddenly you’re Cophetua and I the beggar. It
won’t — damn it, it won’t fadge. I can’t set myself up on your money, and it
don’t seem fair to drag you along in careful poverty until I’ve found my place.”

“Even if I wish to be dragged? Lyn, what are you saying? Don’t
I get a say in the matter?”

“Of course you do. But suddenly — I’m not sure if I should
do this to either of us, Renna. No more than I think I can stand to let you go.
Suppose you were to wake up one morning and realize that you resented me for
marrying you and living off your money?”

“Then hang the money!” she cried impatiently. “For heaven’s
sake, Lyn.”

“All right, suppose we do ‘hang the money’ as you say. Then,
what if you wake one morning to realize that you might have had your salon and
Recamier ringlets and a place in society by marrying differently?”

“O, Lyn.” She pursed her lips together, trying to rally
arguments. “What doth it profit me if I gain my ringlets and lose
you
? You wouldn’t — after all this muddlesome
business, you wouldn’t jilt me because I’m an heiress, would you?”

He only looked uncomfortable.

“Lyn, for heaven’s sake, I’ll give my money to the first
beggar I meet, and follow you barefoot if need be.” She stared at him, unable
to believe the stranger he had become in minutes. “Before God, love, I never
thought I’d think my money a curse! It’s been inconvenient sometimes, but now I
thought that it would be a godsend to us. Instead —”

He broke in bitterly. “Did you think that you could set
yourself up in your salon, and me in a pocket borough? We’d be grand
acquisitions for the party, wouldn’t we, love. Bradwell and his wealthy wife.”

“Lyndon Bradwell,” Rowena said quietly. “You would have
married me practically from the gutter and made me the wife of a rising
politico —” He made a motion to deny her theatrical words. “No, damn it, if you
intend to sound like a Covent Garden melodrama I shall certainly oblige you
with all the fustian I can muster.
You
can
bring what you will to this marriage, but
I
cannot? And you will let your stupid male pride get in the way of —” Her voice
broke.

“Rowena!”

She regained her control. “Don’t say anything. I’m not
finished yet. I have practically thrown myself at you this morning, not once
but twice. Three is reported to be the charm. Do you want
me
, Lyn, and do you want me enough to disregard
my fortune, or my lack of fortune, or your lack of fortune? You’ve said we
would not starve if I married you — which is all I ask. I can consign my money
to the devil happily if need be. But if you cannot accept that, I will not
trouble to humble myself further.”

“Rowena? God, don’t you understand what I’m afraid of? If I
were to come to feel that I’d taken advantage of you — I couldn’t — damn it, I
don’t know what to tell you.”

“Remains only for me to act then,” she said with a lightness
she was far from feeling. The tea in her cup was cold and very bitter. “I’m
sorry, Lyn. I could have married you and forgotten about the tiresome money
entirely. I was quite serious. I’d have lived in a cottage, on broth and bread
for the rest of my days, if you’d offered them to me. That’s how foolish I am.
But if you cannot do the same, forget that I mentioned it. Forget I — forget I
ever came down to breakfast with you. I could have married you with or without
the money, but I will not marry you against your will, and certainly not if you’re
afraid to become some sort of villain by it.”

She rose from the table and walked deliberately from the
room.

For a moment Bradwell simply sat, watching, unable to
believe what he and she and they together had done. Then, “Rowena!” He sprang
from his chair and went to peer out into the hallway. She had vanished. He
returned to the table to sit among the wreckage of his forgotten breakfast,
head in hands, damning himself for every kind of fool imaginable.

o0o

Rowena had not retired to her room to be haunted there by
the sight of that brief note — his first and last love letter to her — and her
dreams of the night before. Instead, she went into the office and made herself
ferociously busy with accounts and inventories. When she heard the door to the
breakfast room open and close, and the sound of boot heels vanishing toward the
courtyard door, she breathed a little easier and relaxed her grip on the pen
between her fingers, feeling the blood flow again. She was too angry to cry,
too shattered to do anything but play at toting up rows of figures. In a flash
of humor she thought wryly, I shall have to redo all this work tomorrow in any
case. But the thought of tomorrow was unpleasant enough to be relegated to the
same blackness as the thought of Lyn and the scant day of happiness they had
shared.

After a while — perhaps an hour or more, although Rowena’s
sense of time had seemingly deserted her entirely — there was a timid knock on
the door and Drummey appeared.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Cherwood, but there is a woman — a
lady at the door, who says that she is
Mrs
.
Cherwood.” His tone betokened utter bafflement, and his slight stress on the word
lady
said worlds for Drummey’s opinion of
the visitor, whatever her birth.

“Mrs. Cherwood? O no, it couldn’t be!” Rowena collected
herself. “Thank you, Drummey. I shall join her directly in the green saloon.
And will you send to see if Miss Margaret has arisen yet?”

“I had taken the liberty to do so, miss,” he assured her,
his tone implying a sympathy he could not openly offer.

“Thank you, then.” Rowena stood to collect herself. In her
own mind she imagined she looked a harridan, but the mirror returned the image
of a tall, handsome woman, quietly but elegantly dressed in green servant, her
dark hair in an informal classical knot atop her head. Her expression was
sober, but only her eyes betrayed her inner turmoil and shock. “I shall have to
do,” she admonished her reflection, and left for the green saloon.

A woman was waiting for her there, examining a Chinese vase
and, by the look of her, appraising it for every sixpence of its worth. She was
short, stocky, with grizzled hair under an elaborate poke-bonnet, and a ruddy
complexion fought unsuccessfully with her puce traveling gown. Even that
garment’s exquisite tailoring could not hide the defects of a stubby figure and
short neck, and Rowena, taking in the sight of the lady, spared a moment to be
thankful for Ulysses Ambercot’s sake that Margaret resembled the Cherwoods
rather than her mother’s family.

“Good morning, Aunt Dorothea,” she said quietly. The woman
turned.

“Rowena, my dear!” she said in enthusiastic accents. “But
how very poorly you look!”

The welcome accorded Mrs. Dorothea Cherwood on her arrival
at Broak could best be described as cordially distasteful. Lady Bradwell and
her sons, as well as Anne Ambercot and her children, had heard enough of the
new arrival’s past antics to be guarded, at least, in their welcoming.
Margaret, for all she tried to act the dutiful daughter, was stopped from
slipping quietly into the role by Ulysses, who took matters in hand with a tact
Rowena would have thought above his touch, and made it clear to Mrs. Cherwood
with words unspoken that her daughter was now
his
fiancée, and not to be ill used, even by her mother. After a quick appraisal of
a situation that necessitated her arising earlier than she had in years, Lady
Bradwell decided that it was safe at least to leave Meggy to Lully’s devoted
care. It was Rowena for whom the lady was truly concerned.