The Heiress Companion (2 page)

Miss Cherwood permitted herself a rueful smile. “If you
mean, is she a great bean pole like me, ma’am, no she isn’t. If you can picture
me, at nineteen rather than seven-and-twenty, with my hair in short curls, and
less seven inches of height, there you have Margaret.”

“I begin to think that I may enjoy myself with your young
cousin, Rowena. Does she ever laugh at you?”

“Would she dare? I could crush her with a look, and she’s
not got your presence, ma’am,” Rowena replied delightedly, cheered by her
mistress’s good spirits.

“You mean my bad-temperedness,” Lady Bradwell corrected
sweetly. “I shall teach her not to be in awe of you. And she and I will sit and
laugh at you while you are busy with my errands.” Her voice changed to a
mixture of eagerness and ill temper. “Renna, there hasn’t been any word, has
there? No, I was afraid not. That abominable boy.” Lady Bradwell’s tone was
carefully devoid of all but amused exasperation, but Rowena could have
cheerfully strangled Lyndon Bradwell on the spot for the look she saw in his
mother’s eyes. “I know you would inform me immediately had there been, yet I continue
to be a plaguey old woman.”

“Absolutely impossible,” Rowena agreed solemnly.

“But you’re paid to put up with my whims, you poor child.
Well, perhaps your cousin and I can amuse each other, and if Lyndon does not
arrive in time for the party we shall simply enjoy it ourselves. Perhaps I will
even proclaim your cousin — what was her name? — to be the guest of honor.”

“She would probably be so honored she would blush herself
into extinction.”

“Likely enough,” Lady Bradwell agreed, and settled the hated
spectacles on her nose, leaning back into her pillows and searching for her
knitting. “Well, if you won’t take my wretched John, perhaps your cousin will.
A good woman would be his making, but I don’t think I could saddle you with
John in good conscience.”

“Nor saddle Lord Bradwell with me, ma’am. But I warn you
that just now Margaret don’t seem too keen on the idea of marriage; nothing is
so daunting to the spirit as to be badgered to wed.”

“If we were to propose the proper party to her, I imagine
her delicacy would disappear very quickly. It generally does,” Lady Bradwell
observed to her knitting.

“It might at that. In which case I can only suppose that no
one has ever proposed the proper party to me.”

“No, only toadish baronets like that Slyppe fellow, and
foolish barons like John.” Lady Bradwell sighed. “Well, go along, child, and
don’t worry about me. I shall be a paragon of invalid virtue. Word of a
Bradwell, I shall not read, I shall not stir; I shall sit here and very likely
bore myself to death over this shabby genteel knitting.”

“You are a wonderful woman,” Rowena assured her dryly. “I
shall be up again in a little while.”

Miss Cherwood departed to give her cousin the good news,
then returned to her desk in the office to face again the cards of acceptance,
the lists from Cook, the bills from various merchants in the village, and the
baffling intricacies of who to seat with whom at dinner.

o0o

At the evening meal Lady Bradwell and her eldest son John,
Lord Bradwell, were introduced to Miss Margaret Cherwood and expressed much
delight in the acquaintance. Margaret, having a hazy romantic notion that as
the cousin of Lady Bradwell’s companion she should strive to appear as humble
as possible, carried only a gauze shawl over her peach-colored evening dress,
and shivered quietly in the chill of the dining room until Rowena arrived to
send a maid after something more substantial. Lady Bradwell was charmed with
the girl’s open, affectionate manner and her obvious respect and admiration for
her older cousin. Lord Bradwell, on his part, swore that the two young ladies
were first-raters, that he could see no difference between Miss Cherwood, in
pomona-green crepe, and Miss Margaret in her peach gauze.

“Devilish hard put to say which one of you ladies is the
handsomest,” he protested, this fulsome compliment rolling awkwardly enough
from his usually inarticulate lips to convince all of his sincerity.

“The choice is obvious, my lord.” Rowena returned easily. “Your
mamma, as always, outshines all of us.”

Lady Bradwell, demure and fragile in blue and gray, her hair
hidden beneath a charmingly frivolous lace cap, stared down her nose with
dignity at her companion, and denounced her for the basest sort of liar.

The company, thus, was in the best of spirits as they sat to
dine.

Margaret, whose knowledge of the behavior of ladies and
their companions came only from watching her mother’s friends, and from the
pages of novels, was surprised by the free and easy, unaffected relationship
between Lady Bradwell and her cousin. Since Lord Bradwell seemed to find
nothing extraordinary in their manner toward each other, Margaret was prepared
to accept things as they were. It did occur to her, however, that Lord Bradwell
was not, in his own phrase, one of the downy ones, and that while his temper
was sweet and his manners gentlemanly, his considered opinions on matters
beyond the home farm and the stables were not to be relied upon.

Shortly after, when they had each had tea and a few
biscuits, Miss Cherwood announced that it was far too late for Lady Bradwell to
be downstairs. “If you wish to attend the party, ma’am, you must conserve your
strength.”

“You, miss, are an abominable bully.” Lady Bradwell turned
to Margaret, protesting, “You see how ill I am used in my own home, child?
Well, all right, I suppose I shall never hear the last of it if I do not retire
gracefully. Good night, dearest.” She offered a cheek to her son to kiss. “Good
night, Miss Margaret. I shall enjoy having you here, I think.” She smiled again
at the girl, then gave her arm to Rowena. “Lead on, tyrant.”

“O no, ma’am!” Meg could hear Rowena explaining patiently as
she led Lady Bradwell from the room. “You have the cases mixed.
You
are the tyrant and
I
am the tyrannized. I
do
wish you will strive to recall...”

“Wonderful woman, your cousin.” Lord Bradwell observed to
Margaret. “Keeps Mamma in line with barely a word at it. More than I could ever
do, I assure you. Game of backgammon?” Margaret mutely assented, and they were
finishing the third game when Rowena reappeared to suggest that perhaps they
too should retire early. Lord Bradwell said all that was awkward and cordial in
his good night, and retired to the library, where he was obviously much more at
home. The Misses Cherwood were able to make their way to Rowena’s rooms for a
comfortable coze.

“But still no sign of the plaguey, prodigal Mr. Bradwell,”
she mused as they climbed the stairs.

Rowena had every intention of leaving Margaret with Lady
Bradwell the next day, so that she could retire once more to the office and
finish with details for the party. She had calculated that one more day’s work
would do it, which meant that the next day could be spent in frivolities such
as mending a dress, writing letters to a number of long-neglected friends, and
considering what to wear in the evening for the party. But Lady Bradwell,
although she took no exception either to Margaret’s company or the general
whole of Miss Cherwood’s schedule for the day, ordered her companion to spend
some part of the afternoon out of doors.

“You look dreadful,” she said flatly. “Everyone in the
county will say that I have worked you to the bone-certainly I have, but not
with an eye to making you lose your looks. This afternoon,
all
afternoon, I want you to ride, or sketch, or
walk. Do something in the sun, my dear, and get some of the color back in your
face.”

“I had no idea I was that pasty-faced, ma’am,” Rowena
answered, rapidly figuring in her mind what she could displace in order to
comply with her mistress’s orders and complete her own work. “Well, I shall
certainly try to get some time out of doors. But will you —”

“Never mind about me. I shall abuse your cousin’s good
nature and keep her by me all day — you won’t mind too dreadfully, will you,
child? — and you may rest assured that she will not let me transgress even one
of the doctor’s odious rules.”

“Well, in that case...” Rowena had visions of the time
between three and six, the hour when the dressing bell was rung, spent in
sketching the prospect of Broak Hall from the north, at the site of the Diana
temple and the rill beside it.

In actuality, it was closer to four than three when Miss
Cherwood established herself and her paints by the little brook. “And a wonder
I am here before midnight!” she thought, amused. The morning had included a
visit by Mr. Greavesey, Dr. Cribbatt’s obsequious assistant, as well as a
tantrum by Cook, who was in a
mood
again
but seemed incapable of explaining exactly what had so upset her. Still, aside
from these minor alarums her work had progressed more smoothly than she had
expected, and she was able to see the end of her arrangements and list-making
in sight.

“Now, if only the prodigal were to decide to stay away!” she
hummed under her breath. “I suppose I ought not to be so ready to dislike that
man, but his inconsideration surpasses everything, and if his absence throws my
lady into a relapse I shall murder him with — with a paintbrush to the heart,
if need be!” She added a stroke of green with a vengeful swipe at the paper. It
was not so much the extra work that Miss Cherwood objected to: She had been for
a long time so used to running her parents’ establishments on the continent
that the running of a Devonshire country seat was a relatively small matter to
her. “Only because I have become an incurable manager,” she admitted readily. Lyndon
Bradwell’s behavior endangered his mother’s peace of mind, and thus her health.
After the patient nursing that Miss Cherwood and Taylor, Lady Bradwell’s maid,
had done over the past six months, Rowena was not prepared to brook any
setback.

“Not that Lady B has asked me to shield her from her son!”
she admitted. But years of trailing in the wake of her adventurous and travel-mad
parents, included as an adult member of their haphazard entourage, attending
fetes and tending to the management of their household, had given her a
protective attitude toward those she loved which Rowena found difficult to
shed. In fourteen years the Cherwoods had lived in India, in the American
states, and practically all over Europe (subject, of course, to which countries
were under the thumb of the Corsican Monster at any time). Her acquaintance
included officers of the staff in Brussels, nabobs in China, and a highly
ornamental Marquis in Spain, and Rowena’s education had been as original as her
upbringing. This idyllic, if original, existence had continued until Waterloo
year, when Mr. Cherwood had taken the typhus while helping the wounded that
poured into Brussels after the great battle, and had died. Stunned, Rowena and
her mother had returned to London, where Mrs. Cherwood, declining gently for
almost a year, had followed her husband at last. And Miss Cherwood, left
without her beloved and impractical parent to manage for, had gone to the house
of her father’s brother, Margaret’s father. Despite all her best attempts,
Rowena was forced to admit at the end of a year that she and her aunt were
utterly inimical, and she had begun, over Dorothea Cherwood’s outraged
protests, to look for employment.

And now: What are we to do with Meggy? she thought absently,
washing the page in pale pink. The best, of course, would be to marry her off
so that she needn’t return home at all, but I doubt that Lord Bradwell is up to
her weight.

Who else is there in the neighborhood? Perhaps she could
marry the prodigal! The idea made Rowena snort in a very unladylike manner. But
not if he’s as chuckleheaded as his brother. Or as inconsiderate as he seems to
be. What a wretched man. So the subject came full circle back to the irritating
Lyndon Bradwell.

“Damnation,” she said aloud. Then looked about her from
habit, to see if anyone had overheard her unbecoming comment. A blotch of green
had dripped from her suspended brush onto the sketch, precisely on the north
wall of Broak, over which she had labored for some time. With a soft rag she
set about repairing the damage, which work absorbed all her attention for some
minutes and thus kept her from ruminating on the shortcomings of Mr. Bradwell.
She was not aware of the man strolling toward the house until he was almost
beside her.

“Good afternoon,” he said, in tones of mild curiosity.

Miss Cherwood jumped, spoiling her picture irredeemably with
a startled brush stroke. “Da — do you always creep up on people in that
fashion, sir?” she demanded a little breathlessly.

“I hardly crept up on you, Miss —” He paused, but she was
too irritated to oblige by supplying her name. “I thought I made rather a great
deal of racket, stalking up on the house this way. You
were
rather deep in your work, you know.” He
gestured toward the ruined paper. “Quite a nice sketch, except for that streak
of brown across it — you have captured the color of the light at that corner
exactly.”

“The streak,” Rowena informed him icily, “was not
intentional. But it’s of no import now.”

“Was that my fault? Truly, I am sorry.” He spoke with lazy
sincerity. Rowena, glaring up at him, felt her gaze drop again. The stranger
was tall — tall enough so that even had she been standing, Miss Cherwood would
have been forced to tilt her head up to observe his face. He was nicely if not
exquisitely dressed, in a coat of blue superfine, buff pantaloons, and well-polished
Hessian boots, and his light hair was tossed by the wind — or brushed to give
that effect. His eyes, which she thought were blue or gray, were his most
remarkable feature, displaying intelligence, humor, and kindliness. It was the
kindliness which both won Rowena and infuriated her. Who
was
this man?