The Lonely Earl (10 page)

Crisply the earl did. “My team will be driven only by me, Miss Astley. I quite agree that they would be too much for a lady to handle.”

It was not quite what she had hoped for, but it would have to do. “But you have always thought, Faustina, that you could handle any animal,” she pursued. “What went wrong?”

Faustina hesitated. She had not been driving, it was true, but it was her decision to let Julia try her hand. “I don’t know. I believe I lost my head for a moment,” said Faustina, crisply enough to keep Helen’s interest at bay. She was not helped by Vincent’s standing agape. He clearly did not believe that she had driven badly on such a straight piece of road. He well knew she was almost as good a whip as her father. He opened his mouth to protest, but Faustina’s quelling eye influenced him to close his lips.

In a short time, all was sorted out. Julia mounted again, helped this time by Aubrey Talbot. Samuel, who had not said a word since the curricle had left the Green Man, maintained his silence on the step.

The vehicles moved apart. The earl’s phaeton renewed its direction, disappearing in the distance on its journey to the far reaches of the earl’s farms. Faustina looked behind her once, to see the vicar’s coach lumbering behind them.

“Nothing stops that man,” she murmured. “I have no doubt that the story will be in my father’s ears before half an hour has passed.”

But Julia paid no heed. Faustina glanced at her, and then, consolingly, laid one hand upon Julia’s gloved hand. “Don’t worry, Julia,” she said. “The accident was my fault. Not yours.”

Surprisingly, Julia turned a calm face to her cousin. The counsel not to worry was superfluous, Faustina recognized. And Julia said, “He has the bluest eyes. Did you notice, Faustina?”

Faustina in fact had been struck by the deep blue of the earl’s eyes. “I didn’t think you even looked at the earl,” she said in surprise.

“The earl?” Julia said, puzzled. “Does he have blue eyes too?” 

Faustina’s mystification exploded. “
Tool
”

“Oh, Faustina. I mean Mr. Talbot, of course.”

Faustina said not a word until they reached home. But her thoughts were noisy, chaotic, and, at length, troubled.

Chapter 8

By the next day Faustina had recovered from the jolting when she had landed.in the grassy ditch. It was easy enough to overlook strained muscles, she knew, but not quite the same thing when it came to enduring Aunt Louisa’s stifling remarks upon the subject of setting her dear daughter’s life at hazard. Julia’s protests went unheeded, and Faustina had finally sworn the girl to secrecy.

“After all, Papa will be sorely distressed,” she said, “if he thought I was so addle-headed as to let someone else drive my pair, so if you do not wish me to sustain my father’s disapproval…”

The argument was sufficient.

Aunt Louisa’s attention was at last diverted by the thought of a new recipe for a small frosted cake for the ball’s refreshments.

“I have the recipe for it from the prince regent’s chef — never mind how I got it, because
I’m
not going to tell you. I’ll just slip down and tell cook — what is her name… Cotter? — how to do it.”

Faustina interposed smoothly, and after learning all the intricacies of just how to cream the butter — Aunt Louisa parroting the instructions, which she understood not at all — she set off for the kitchen.

“I’ll take care of this for you, Aunt Louisa,” she said. “You shouldn’t be bothered with such details.” The irony slid off Lady Waverly without trace.

Silently Faustina pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, and stopped short. The sight that met her eyes was one that she had never seen in the kitchen of Kennett Chase before.

The big worktable in the middle of the room was covered with baking sheets of black iron. Each sheet bore a series of familiar light brown objects, and the aroma that filled the room allowed for no mistake. Mrs. Cotter was baking gingerbread men.

At a time like this? Faustina was overcome with dismay. The entire kitchen should now be in an uproar over the cakes and the fancy dishes to be served at the ball supper, only two nights hence. Mrs. Cotter herself had complained about having too much to do: “And how I’m going to serve two dressed meats and five side dishes at every meal between now and then, I
don’t
know, Miss Kennett, and that’s a fact!”

And yet here, taking up all the table room and certainly all of Mrs. Cotter’s attention, were at least three dozen gingerbread men, ready to go into the oven.

Almost ready, Faustina amended. For, strangest sight of all, a small girl was standing on a chair at the table, intent upon her absorbing task — putting raisin eyes in the gingerbread men.

Faustina gave a gulp of recognition. Swathed in cook’s starched white apron, and entranced by her work, stood the Lady Althea Crale.

“All these men,” said the Lady Althea, unwittingly forestalling Faustina’s remarks, “look like my Papa. Just like him — staring!”

Faustina’s sense of humor threatened her composure. How the earl would like to think he looked like a gingerbread man! But Althea was not finished. She put in the raisins with a firm twist of her small fingers. “But I am not afraid of
these
!” she said defiantly. “These baked men stare and stare, but I am not afraid.”

One by one the staff in the kitchen became aware of their mistress standing straight and quite astonished in the doorway. The silence grew as one by one the kitchen maids, the footboy, the cook’s assistant, dropped into appalled silence. And at last Mrs. Cotter saw Faustina.

Faustina advanced into the room and spoke gently. “How comes this? Althea, I am surprised that you came to see me and I did not know it.” 

“I didn’t,” said Althea stoutly. “I didn’t even come here to see anybody.”

Mrs. Cotter intervened. “It’s a strange thing, Miss Faustina, how it was—”

“I got lost. I finished the eyes, please.” She slid down from the chair, the apron bundling in starchy folds around her ears.

“Lost?” said Faustina quietly.

“Daphne, put these in the oven. Miss Faustina—”

“Not really lost,” said Althea. “Not to start with. To start with,” she continued, anxious to set the record as straight as possible in such a tangled affair, “I’scaped.’Scaped from Zelle. That was first”

She struggled with the apron, until Maria relieved her of it. Then the child came to Faustina and looked beseechingly up at her. “First I’scaped.
Then
I got lost.”

The explanation seemed to satisfy the narrator, at least, for she abruptly turned away to watch Daphne as she deftly slid the baking sheets into the vast maw of the oven.

Mrs. Cotter’s indulgent approval was clear. “The poor wee one,” she said in an undertone to Faustina. “Lost she was, and fairly. In the brambles, so young Jugg says.”

Blankly Faustina echoed, “Young Jugg? How does he figure in this?”

“Bless you, miss, he found her up in Miser’s Woods, crying she was, though she won’t admit it. Proper proud she is. Caught in the brambles and crying, that’s just the way young Jugg told it. And he brought her here.”

“Did he know who she was?”

“Aye.” Mrs. Cotter was curt. “All know that Frenchy that is supposed to take care of the lass.”

Zelle, judging from Mrs. Cotter’s tight, disapproving lips, was not highly regarded. Betsy Kyd was not alone in her distrust of the woman. But that was another problem. Just now the child Althea must be returned to the tender care of Zelle, who must be worried about her charge.

However, Althea, acutely following the processes of Faustina’s thoughts, remarked forcefully, “I am not going back.” 

Faustina said, “Come now, Zelle must be worried about you. Don’t you think so? Don’t shake your head at me. That is not the way a young lady does.”

The thought struck Althea. “No? Then what does a young lady do?”

Snatching at phrases from her own nursery days, she said, “A young lady always answers in words. ‘No, ma’am.’ Or ‘Yes, ma’am.’ No shaking of the head.”

“All right, then,” said Althea cheerfully. “I say ‘No, ma’am’ instead.”

“But—”

“I say, ‘No, ma’am, I am not going back. Not to Zelle.’” She looked anxiously at Faustina. “There, I said it right, did I not? Then why are you still looking so cloudy?”

“Because you must go home. Perhaps, if you are quiet, Mrs. Cotter will let you stay until the gingerbread men are out of the oven.”

But even that respite was not enough. Faustina consulted with Mrs. Cotter about Aunt Louisa’s new recipe, and time passed quickly. Faustina noticed from the comer of her eye that Althea moved about the kitchen with grace, and she remembered that her mother had been, according to rumor, and among other things, a dancer. The legacy was clear.

Came the time when the gingerbread men were out of the oven, cool enough to parcel up for Althea to take home, to add to those already filling her small stomach.

Althea regarded the parceling with misgivings. “I distinctly said, ‘No ma’am.’ ”

“But, Althea, you must go home. You have your” — she did not think it wise to mention father, or nurse, and cast about wildly — “your own pets. Do you have a puppy?”

“He is a small thing,” said Althea with scorn. “I do not have him. I have the horses.”

“Land sakes, what a child!” muttered Mrs. Cotter. “Horses!”

Faustina coaxed. Where was Bucky, she wondered, when she needed her?

Word had been sent to Crale Hall, Faustina had learned, so that the household there might know she was safe. “Doesn’t Mrs. Robbins let you make gingerbread men?”

“Never has she done this.”

At length, weary of coaxing, Faustina nearly gave up. One last thing she thought of: “A picnic. Did you ever have a picnic?”

The child’s interest was caught. She sidled closer. “A pic… nic? What is this thing?”

“We pack our lunches in big hampers — that is, baskets, you know — and we take them down to the seashore. And then we spread out blankets and sit on them, and we have our lunch.”

“What is it to eat?”

“Oh, we have chicken, and ham, and little rolls and cakes, and lemonade…”

“I will go.”

“Home,” agreed Faustina with relief, rising to her feet “No, ma’am. I will go on the pic… nic.”

At length compromise was reached. Faustina would take Althea home, and the next day there would occur a picnic on the beach.

“And you will be my great friend,” pronounced Althea, “and we can go… can we go in the pony cart?”

Faustina looked meaningfully at Mrs. Cotter. “I see why you did not take her home.”

“We did not wish to send her home on our own,” said Mrs. Cotter.

Besides, thought Faustina rightly, the child would not have gone. But Faustina still had her promise to keep to Betsy, and this seemed an appropriate time to take care of that. She could take Althea home, and the subject of Zelle would naturally arise…

‘I’ll just send Woods to get my bonnet,” said Faustina. “And she can go with us.”

“Little cakes,” enumerated Althea, “and we will have the good bread, and we will go in the pony cart…”

The childish voice trailed behind Faustina as she gave instructions to her maid. She turned to the library, where she was sure of finding her father. 

He looked up, his face creasing into a smile when he saw her. “Drat this ball,” he said. “It keeps me from seeing much of you.”

“I regret it,” agreed Faustina cordially. “But we have to get it over with. I should tell you how we are going on.” She gave him a brief account of the arrangements that she thought he should know about. That done, he merely nodded.

“You are a competent manager,” he conceded. “But you have one fault, my dear. That is to think you can hoax me.”

“Hoax you? My dear sir, I would not try.”

“You were not driving that curricle yesterday. You didn’t put yourself into a ditch.”

He waited expectantly, and she told him the truth of it. “It was my fault, after all. I should not have let her drive. Or, at least, I should have kept a closer eye on her. As it was…” She did not think she wished to tell her father that it was her sudden outcry against the earl that had startled both horses and Julia.

He frowned. “I don’t like you taking the blame.”

“Julia already felt mortified enough, Papa. And in front of the visitors, too, I simply could not.”

He nodded. “She’s a good girl. She listens to me as though she were interested. Gets me to tell tales of my youth that, by George, I’d forgotten. Gets me to talk too much.” But he smiled, his smile much like Faustina’s, crinkling at the comers in genuine amusement. “A good girl.”

Then she told him about Althea’s advent in the kitchen. “She’scaped, she says.” Faustina laughed. “And young Jugg found her and brought her here. I had the devil’s own time trying to get her to agree to go home.”

“She’s still here?”

“Oh, yes. Probably eating more gingerbread.”

He cocked his head slightly. “Then what can be the commotion in the hall?”

The hall when they reached it was vibrating with hubbub. The immediate cause seemed to lie beyond the half-open door to the service part of the house. But the front door too stood open, and framed in it stood, with every sign of towering impatience, the Earl of Pendarvis.

Bowing to Faustina briefly, he said to Lord Egmont, “I must apologize for the trouble my daughter seems to have caused you.”

“No trouble at all,” said Faustina brightly.

The earl ignored her. “I confess to being a little apprehensive of the turmoil that is coming from your kitchen. I believe I detect a familiar voice.”

They all listened. Althea’s voice indeed was rising high, and words could be distinguished. “My kitten. I wish to have that kitten. I shall ask my good friend Faustina for it.”

She burst into the hall. At first, seeing only Faustina, she launched herself upon her, and only then, after a frenzied plea to own the dearest little kitten, she saw her father.

“Oh, Papa, the most wonderful thing has happened! My great friend Faustina has promised me a pic… nic. Tomorrow, we go. We eat by the shore — the shore of the sea, that is…”

Her voice trailed away as she looked carefully at her father for the first time. Visibly, she shrank away.

Faustina, gasping, saw the earl’s formidable frown. He said, “Miss Kennett does not have it in her power to give you a picnic.”

“But, Papa, it is a promise. And I do want it so.”

“It seems a reasonable diversion,” said Faustina, her voice cool and unemotional, but her father glanced warily at her.

“That may be, Miss Kennett,” the earl said frostily, “yet the diversion is not yours to bestow. I am sure you will realize that, when you have given it thought.”

The desolate look on Althea’s face, combined with the arrogant way in which the earl divested her of her pride, thrust Faustina forward as though with a physical shove. She was really angry now, the prey of a consuming rage the like of which she had not experienced within her memory. 

“My lord,” she said in a voice she could not keep from quivering, “pray follow me.”

She opened the library door and entered. Somewhat to her surprise, the earl did as he was bade, and followed her. Althea and Louisa were directly on Egmont’s heels, but he turned sharply and closed the door, and leaned against the door on the inside. It was a scene that he thought it proper to attend. Something like two ammunition ships, fully loaded, drifting against each other in a gale, he thought. Beset by strong misgivings, none showed on his bland face.