Her Ladyship's Companion Read online

  “Please. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Certainly. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry, only to help.” He looked absurdly like a puppy that had been scolded. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  And Melissa immediately felt like a villainess. “I’m not offended. You’re being kind. I just can’t think,” she said, feeling helpless. “It’s been a wretched day. I’m not myself.” She smiled weakly. “I really do have that headache I was talking about.”

  “I understand, Miss Rivenwood. You don’t want to talk to me. And here I am, keeping you here when you’d much rather be alone. I am a fool. You’ve certainly been through enough today. That robbery and then Anna behaving as badly as she possibly can, which is very bad indeed.”

  “You heard, then, when she was shouting at me?” Melissa asked miserably and answered her own question. “Of course you heard. Half the household must have heard.”

  “Anna is very young,” he said comfortingly. “She says things she doesn’t mean. And Lady Dorothy encourages her. But she’s not a bad girl. Really, her heart is good.”

  “If you believe that, then I can see why she’s infatuated with you.” Melissa had wondered long and hard what pretty, petulant Anna found in this gentle, vague man more than twice her age. Now she understood. Despite the foolish mannerisms, the overprecise, dandified clothes, he was a deep well of sympathy. He was the perfect friend and confidant. She could see him, always at the right hand of some member of this turbulent family, offering comfort when they said wounding, hateful things to each other, offering the perpetual excuses for the inexcusable.

  “You’re a good champion for Anna,” Melissa said. “You almost make me feel sorry for her. Almost.”

  “She’s very young. She’s an heiress. She’s a little spoiled.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Try to forgive her a little bit. I know she was insulting. I couldn’t help overhearing.”

  Melissa shrugged. “You must defend her, I know. She’s your relative, and all that.”

  His thin, almost delicate face took on an expression of melancholy. “In a way, I wish we were related. Officially, I mean. That would give me some rights in her upbringing. I could try to save her before Sarah and Lady Dorothy quite spoil her between them.”

  “I thought you were a connection. I’m sorry. I’ve never gotten the relationship straight.”

  Harold made an intricate gesture. The rings he habitually wore made their distracting glimmer. “Not your fault,” he said. “Everyone’s been purposely vague. The story is that I’m a son of one of the more obscure Merringham cousins. Actually I’m that most unfortunate of complications, a family bastard.”

  “Oh.” Melissa was completely at a loss. What does one say? “I’m sorry.”

  But he was expert at putting people at ease. The uncomfortable minute passed as if it had never been. Harold smiled with genuine amusement. “Nothing to be sorry about. I have a tidy fortune. And I’ve been well treated. Most women in the same position would have, so to speak, swept me under a rug and forgotten about it. Lady Dorothy saw to my education, made me a part of the family, even gave me a respectable background if you don’t investigate it too closely.”

  “Lady Dorothy!” Melissa gasped. She held her aching head and pressed it with both hands. “I don’t understand. Do you mean that Lady Dorothy is ...?”

  “Yes.” Harold looked at Melissa mildly. “Don’t worry. I’m not entrusting you with well-guarded family secrets. At the time, everyone knew about it. It was two years after her first husband had died. Then she married Harforth about six months later. The standards in society were notoriously lax in those days. She passed me off as an orphaned relative. She moved in a wild set. There were whispers, of course, but she faced them all down. And after she had become Countess of Harforth, there weren’t even whispers.”

  He made it sound so commonplace. Melissa’s head whirled. Lady Dorothy! She’d never dreamed. It seemed Melissa was every inch a clergyman’s daughter after all. The ways of high society were beyond her entirely. “I don’t know what to say,” she offered at length.

  “Have I shocked you?” Harold’s kind, smooth face puckered in concern. “I didn’t mean to. I’m so used to the idea I forget strangers might still be shocked.”

  “I’m not shocked exactly,” Melissa said, not wanting to appear totally without sophistication. “But I never imagined. Lady Dorothy never appeared to ...”

  “Treat me with affection?” Harold asked. “You couldn’t expect that. She’s not that kind of woman. We get along tolerably well. Ours is a strange relationship. Don’t look for affection between us.” He laughed self-consciously. “I certainly did not intend to come begging for pity from you. In fact, I was trying to comfort you. Truly, my situation rankles only at times like this, when Anna has behaved badly and I ache to have some control over her. But I’ve no rights there, none at all.”

  Something in his voice made a conviction crystallize in Melissa’s mind. “You love her, don’t you?” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud. The strain of the whole day would have to be her excuse. It was something she shouldn’t have said.

  “Anna? Yes, I do. Foolish, isn’t it? In a man my age, for a young thing like that? I see everything she is, and yet it doesn’t change things. I want only to help her, be with her.” There was pure resignation in his tone. His face was serene with it. “It’s hopeless; that goes without saying. I doubt if anyone else even suspects. I won’t burden her with it. For a very little time I’ll be here, an old friend of somewhat nebulous relationship. Then she’ll have her season, meet some young man. I’ll be somebody she remembers from time to time. With kindness, I hope.”

  It was tragic. He really loved the girl. It was not some picture or idea of Anna he cared for, but the very person, Anna herself. Melissa could only think that Anna scarcely deserved it.

  How dreadful it must be for Harold, to love like that and get a shallow shadow of love, a schoolgirl’s infatuation, in return.

  And as he said, it was quite hopeless.

  “I’m more sorry than I can say,” Melissa said, anguished. She felt as if every drop of emotion in her body were being wrung out of her. Compared to her life here at Vinton Manor, the school in London had been an island of peace and sanity, a cool and tranquil pond. Where was numbness? Where was the end to caring? Why couldn’t she recapture the calm she’d always cultivated?

  Melissa wished her head would stop aching.

  “You’re another person I never intended to burden with my troubles,” Harold said gently. “Go upstairs and get into bed. I’ll send a maid.” Carefully he tucked a strand of hair that had fallen across her face back up over her ear. It was a touching gesture because it was devoid of all intrusiveness. He was as simple and direct about it as a child.

  As if she were also a child, he kissed her neatly on the forehead and pointed her toward the stairs. “Go up to bed,” he repeated. “I’ll make your excuses to Lady Dorothy. Good night.”

  Melissa nodded absently and went obediently up the stairs. She was thinking: It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. I don’t have to figure this all out because I can’t stand to stay here anymore. I’m going to leave.

  Chapter 13

  I can’t write about it, not while I’m still so confused. We never really know ourselves, do we?

  Excerpt from the journal of Melissa Rivenwood, August 2, 1818

  The rain beat steadily on the windowpanes, and the wind howled in from the sea. The whole house was damp and chilled, and Melissa was glad of the relative comfort of the little parlor she shared with Lady Dorothy that afternoon. Her head was heavy; her eyes were bleary. She’d scarcely slept the night before, tossing and turning, as she tried to bring some order to the chaos of her feelings. Toward dawn she made a final, immutable decision to leave Vinton. It remained only to find just the right time and right words to resign her position. Lady Dorothy’s gruff friendliness on this afternoon didn’t make it a
ny easier.

  “Handle these the usual way, Miss Rivenwood,” Lady Dorothy said, laying a stack of trade correspondence on the table before her. “You’d best do it this afternoon while I’m busy in the stillroom. How are the arrangements with Berry Brothers going?”

  Melissa was in the midst of an involved correspondence with Berry Brothers of North King Street, the firm that supplied the house with coffee, tea, and spices. By delicately hinting at the merits of a rival firm, she hoped to halt the steady deterioration of quality in the merchandise received. Lady Dorothy, conservative to the backbone, desired to trade where her father had and wouldn’t countenance a change. But Berry’s didn’t have to know that.

  “I think I’ve got them worried,” Melissa replied.

  “Good. Get ’em on their toes again. Firm hasn’t been the same since old Mr. Berry died.” Lady Dorothy continued to sort through the stack on her desk. “Better send that fool Sophy another letter. Write something, and I’ll sign it for you. I’m sure she’s convinced I’m too feeble to pick up a pen. Must cheer her up no end.”

  Lady Dorothy gave her one of her searching, eagle-like looks, and Melissa realized that she’d been staring at the old lady. She immediately became very concerned with mending her pen. It was very difficult not to stare at Lady Dorothy, now that she knew what sort of checkered past she’d had. She kept searching for some betrayal of self-indulgence or weakness that would explain her behavior all those years ago. But there was nothing. The woman looked and felt and acted as if she were pure steel clear through, solid as an anvil and tempered as a rapier. Could she ever have been wild and heedless enough to birth a bastard?

  But Melissa didn’t doubt for a minute that Harold was indeed her son. Now that she looked at them with new knowledge, the resemblance was unmistakable. They had the same chin, the same jutting and raptor-like nose, so unfortunate on Lady Dorothy.

  Melissa just didn’t know what to think. Her instinctive respect and liking for the dowager were undiminished by all of Harold’s revelations. Perhaps that was the strangest thing of all.

  Melissa sighed deeply and never noticed that she sighed. She tried to deal with the tea and spice merchants.

  Lady Dorothy sneered at the social correspondence, selected one cream-colored envelope from the pile, and favored it with a special curl of the lip. “Here’s Lady Pickton. Writes me angling for an invitation to Calyburn House over Christmas. Thinks to marry Giles to that horsy-faced daughter of hers. Failed with the fat one and the freckled one but never gives up. She’s in for a surprise, I think. She’s yet another of the things we’ll have to contend with in London. My husband’s cousin had the poor taste to marry her sister. Encroaching. I never pay any attention to her.” She flipped the envelope dexterously into the fire. That disposed of Lady Pickton.

  Surely this was the time to tell Lady Dorothy that she wouldn’t be going to London with her. Melissa cleared her throat.

  “If this rain doesn’t stop soon, I shall go mad!” Anna declared, flinging the door open and striding into the room, clutching her disordered yellow curls. Melissa reflected that according to Anna’s own predictions, she should have been clapped into a bedlam long ago. She leaned over her writing to hide her expression.

  “It’s only weather, child. Try to distract yourself,” Lady Dorothy suggested bracingly. “Come here and sit next to the fire and help me review this list of linen.”

  “What do I care about bed sheets?” Anna said fiercely. She put a hand up and dragged dangerously at the heavy draperies at the window. “I’m bored, bored, bored with this whole house! Even Harold isn’t here to talk to me. Giles told me to get out of the library. Sir Adrian’s in with him, talking secrets. What do they expect me to do with myself anyway?” She groaned loudly. “It’s all your fault, Aunt Dorothy. You should have presented me this season. I’m not too young, no matter what anybody says.”

  That was unanswerable. Lady Dorothy wisely made no attempt to do so. “Why don’t you go up and see Robbie?” she suggested reasonably. She added a statement more placating than strictly factual: “He’s always glad to see you.”

  “I did.” The girl’s thin lips twisted. “Nanny’s in such an uproar over Robbie she didn’t even pay any attention to me, silly old biddy. He’s gone off on one of his sulks again, and nobody knows where to find him. Just like Little Bo Peep’s sheep. Silly old hen practically drove me out of my skin. I can’t think why you keep her on. She can’t control him in the least, the poisonous little brat.”

  Thunder crashed, and Anna pulled the drape protectively around her. With the curtain drawn back the view in the gray half-light was depressing. “All she does is sit and complain. Not much of a nanny in my book,” Anna favored Melissa with a look of acute dislike. “Shouldn’t you be upstairs, giving Robbie his lessons or something, instead of frittering your time away here?”

  Melissa, with a three-inch stack of letters before her and her head pounding from the storm and a sleepless night, answered caustically, “I can hardly be expected to teach Robbie French if he’s vanished and Nanny Babcock is weeping in the schoolroom, now can I?”

  Lady Dorothy intervened before Anna could reply. “You only got as good as you gave, child, so don’t fuss. Why don’t you go upstairs and see Mrs. Ballantyne? She’s being fitted for a dress this afternoon. That’s slow work at best. Go take a cup of tea with her, and have a nice comfortable coze. I know it’s dull for you out here in the country. But Mrs. Ballantyne is excellent company, and there’s nothing about running this house she doesn’t know.”

  “It may be dull here, but I’m not yet reduced to seeking that old fossil for company. A housekeeper! And her brother’s just an estate agent,” Anna said contemptuously. “I’m sure my own dear papa wouldn’t have wished me to associate with such.” She studied Melissa frankly. “He always said you could tell the lowbred from the gentle just by looking at them, no matter how they tried to disguise it.”

  Melissa ignored her.

  Lady Dorothy frowned. “I had the privilege of knowing your father, Anna. I’m sure he never said any such thing.”

  Anna whirled around, stamping her foot. “He did, too. You know exactly what I mean. Why do all of you always defend her? Nobody cares what happens to me anymore.” Her voice cracked on a high note. When no one responded, she left in a fury.

  Lady Dorothy tapped her fingertips on the tabletop. “It never ceases to amaze me how little control some people exercise over their emotions.” She added prosaically, “If you intend to send those letters rather than use them to light fires, I suggest you cease crumpling them in that careless manner.”

  Melissa glanced down in surprise to find that she’d almost demolished the letter she’d been writing, crushing it in her fist. “I’ll have to rewrite it, I’m afraid,” she said shakily. She smoothed it out flat on the table. “Lady Dorothy,” she began desperately, “there’s something I have to tell you. I don’t know quite how to begin.”

  “Hush, child,” Lady Dorothy said admonishingly. “Do your work, and we’ll talk about all that later. This isn’t the time or place. We’re all too much upset by this rain. Giles has spoken to me already, so I know what you’re going to say. But let it wait. We’ll work it out later. Now, about this reply to Berry’s.” She changed the subject firmly.

  Melissa wondered what Giles had been saying. Not the truth, obviously, or she’d find herself out in the driveway with her satchels under her arm.

  The country people say that when you mention the devil by name, you invite him into the parlor. Giles evidently shared at least one trait with the devil. Hearing himself mentioned, he poked his head in the door.

  “You called?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Lady Dorothy said positively. “Go away and leave us alone. I have work to do yet today, and I don’t think Miss Rivenwood is in any mood to be bothered by you.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of bothering anyone,” Giles said meekly, and came into the parlor. “I’d tackle either of y
ou alone, but I won’t take you on as a team. Do you mind if I join you for tea?”

  “If you promise to behave yourself.” Some unspoken message passed between aunt and nephew.

  The sound of heavy feet in the hallway cut off further conversation. Nanny Babcock, her usually placid face distorted by distress, stumbled into the room.

  “My lady!” she gasped. “Oh, Mr. Tarsin.” She was distraught. Lady Dorothy was on her feet at once and put an arm around her in concern. “I’m dreadfully worried.” The nanny was wringing her hands. “I didn’t know whether to come down or not. He didn’t come in for tea. Something’s terribly wrong.”

  “What is it?” Melissa felt sickening apprehension. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Robbie, of course,” Giles said furiously. “Damn the boy. I told him to stay inside today. If this is another one of his japes, I’ll flay the skin right off him.”

  Nanny Babcock became, if anything, even more agitated. “No, not that, please don’t punish the boy. I’m foolish to worry. It’s just that I’m so afraid something might have happened to him. All this dreadful thunder.” Even as she spoke, there was another crash, and the nanny clapped her hands over her ears.

  “Robbie will be fine,” Giles said, laying a hand soothingly on Nanny Babcock’s shoulder. “Come now, don’t cry, Nanny. I’ll fetch him back to you.”

  “Oh, Master Giles, promise not to beat him, please!” she pleaded piteously. “I’d hate to think I brought it on him.”

  “He’s brought it on himself. A beating won’t hurt the boy. It’d take more than that,” Giles said grimly. “Quickly, Nanny, tell me where you think he’s gone.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” the nanny wailed. “I thought he was with Jamie Hobson mucking about in the stables, and I sent Becky down to bring him back for tea. But she says Jamie’s been inside all day, scrubbing the pantry. And Robbie’s been gone since early, before the rain. He missed breakfast, lunch, and now he’s not here for tea. He’s never done that before.”