Her Ladyship's Companion Read online

  Her fellow passengers craned their necks around the edges of the windows to see what was going on. “That tears it,” said the elderly man, some sort of clerk traveling to Bodmin on company business. “There’ll be no sleep for any of us tonight.”

  “What is it?” Melissa asked. “Has there been an accident, do you think?”

  “No, no, nothing of the sort.” He was amused by her naiveté. “It’s only some local affair. Bearbaiting, or a mill, or a horse race or something.” Leaning out the window, he called to one of the loiterers in the yard. “You there! Yes, you. What’s al! the excitement?”

  A cheeky voice flung back the answer “It’s a cockfight, Lord luv ya.” Further raucous comment followed, mercifully rendered unintelligible by the din and the thick local dialect.

  The clerk thudded back down onto the cushions as the coach lurched forward suddenly. “There you are, miss. Nothing to be concerned about,” he said genially.

  “Nothing to be concerned about, my eye.” This came from Melissa’s fellow female on the journey, a certain Miss Tagson, governess attached to the household of the Duke of Pemberly. She was making the long journey to the duke’s estates near Penzance. Delicacy of constitution and exquisite sensibility were to her the hallmarks of the upper crust, so she had exclaimed her possession of both for mile after weary mile in a voice of considerable energy and great power of penetration. “You, an unfeeling male, may find nothing to worry you with every pig driver and half-pay officer in the county drinking and fighting under your window all night long. It’s nothing to you. But you might have the courtesy to remember how a lady must feel about this. Bouncing about in this filthy coach all day, barely able to hold my head up by nightfall, and then you dare to say the prospect of lying awake all night, listening to these rustic debauches, is of no concern.” There was considerable relish in the way she said “debauches.” “We’ll be forced to rub shoulders with the very scaff-raff of the neighborhood.”

  She was interrupted by the coachman, swearing terribly, as he maneuvered the horses into an open area near the stable. An ostler, who had ducked out of sight too slowly, was bullied into unhitching the team, and the outside passengers scrambled down. Melissa, four days wiser in the chivalry to be expected of tired, hungry men at the end of a day in a swaying coach, waited for no assistance. She alighted and elbowed her way through a crush of gangling adolescent boys, all moving in the opposite direction and none of them overclean. No one hurried to hand down the luggage; there were fatter tips to be had from the gleaming private carriages coming in, and such work was far beneath the dignity of the driver, who was already picking his way toward the inn parlor.

  One of the outside passengers tossed the luggage into a heap on the ground, to the extreme peril of anyone inadvertently passing. Melissa waited in silence. It was useless to remonstrate with him. She couldn’t climb up herself to get her bags, so she must be grateful for having them down at all.

  Miss Tagson, less philosophic and possessed of a greater belief in the mutability of human behavior, passed the time shouting imprecations. When she recognized her own luggage going over the side, she let out an inarticulate howl that delighted the grinning spectators, then stalked off in high dudgeon with her bag.

  Melissa waited until both her bags had fallen with a thump—though significantly with less of a thump than had accompanied the disgruntled Miss Tagson’s luggage—and then, with a bag firmly gripped in each hand, she began to thread her way toward the entrance hall, where a welcoming light shone out into the growing darkness.

  Inside, the going was harder. Men of every class and condition were crowded together, drinking and laughing. She searched the room in vain for the innkeeper or a maidservant but could see no farther than the backs of the dozen closest men. How was she to find her room, or her dinner for that matter? Melissa made the practical decision that even if her room were not upstairs, that would be the least crowded place to begin looking for it. She pushed her way between the men by the simple process of banging her valises into their knees until they moved aside.

  She made some progress. A raucous bellow of coarse laughter rang out behind her, and she was jostled suddenly into the bulging waistcoat of a burly gentleman. With this assistance he spilled a mug of beer down the front of his jacket. “Damn the devil!” the man sputtered, pushing her away angrily. “Watch what you’re doing there.” When he got a clear view of his assailant, however, he began jiggling with laughter.

  “I’m most dreadfully sorry,” Melissa said placatingly, backing off.

  The man chuckled and carelessly threw the mug and the remains of his beer onto the floor. Now somebody will have to clean it up after him Melissa thought, watching the amber liquid disappear into the wood. She was startled and dismayed to find the drunken man advancing upon her, his arms outstretched.

  “It don’t matter at all, kitten. You just be a good girl and run and fetch me another,” he wheezed. He managed to trap her neatly between his outflung arms and the wall. Melissa lunged sideways but was cut off by a hammy hand. “No harm done, pretty little thing like you.” He exhaled heavily in her face. “Oh, yes, it’s a cute little chicken, you are.” His breath was an indescribable medley of beer and onions. With one hand supporting his bulk against the wall he clumsily grabbed Melissa’s shoulder with the other, attempting to pull her close to him. His grip was leaving bruises from her neck to her elbow, and her hair began to come down.

  “Stop that!” Melissa dropped her bags and tried to push him away. She kicked in the direction of his legs but did little more than scuff the polish on his boots. The noisy mob ignored them. She began to panic.

  The man took hold of a good handful of her hair and leaned on her heavily, glad of support in a spinning world. Melissa found it painful in the extreme. “Pretty, pretty little kitten. You just run back to the kitchen and get me another mug. Brim full up this time. Don’t give old Harvey no half measures. That’s the good girl.” He buried his face in her falling hair and breathed gustily.

  “Blast you!” Melissa snarled and slapped his face. But she made no impression on him at all. “Let me go, you fat oaf!” She tried to disentangle her hair from his greasy fingers. She was shocked, mortified, and furious, but the brainless sot was too heavy for her to push away. “I will not bring you another drink! No more drinks, do you hear me!” she shouted. She boxed his ears smartly, trying to penetrate the stupor. “I don’t work here, you idiot!” She was very much afraid somebody would run off with her bags if she didn’t retrieve them at once, but she was cornered effectively.

  Disregarding her scratches and blows, the man settled himself more comfortably against her, belching. Beer had made him oblivious to minor pain or major criticism. In fact, he was still mumbling indistinguishable words of approval into the general region of her forehead when he was abruptly and without ceremony hauled up bodily from behind.

  Melissa, with great relief, felt her accoster’s weight pulled away and saw him sent stumbling headlong out through the door, where he collided with two hefty carters, just entering, and tripped and fell, sprawling in the muck in the dooryard. She smiled in simple satisfaction.

  Melissa leaned back against the wall to catch her breath, wiping her face with the back of her hand. As her deliverer turned around, she looked up shyly to thank him. A tall gentleman, deeply tanned, with close-cropped brown hair, impeccably dressed in kerseymere pantaloons and a dun riding coat, scowled down at her angrily.

  “What the hell are you doing out of the kitchen, girl?” he demanded. “You must be mad to come through the hall tonight. Get back inside before you come to real trouble.”

  That was unkind. Melissa realized that in the dim light, with her tousled hair and rumpled, drab clothes, he’d taken her for one of the tavern wenches. She blushed furiously at the picture she must present. So she pulled herself up proudly to her full height—about level with his shoulder—and said in a dignified voice, “I am looking for my room, sir, not the kitchen. If yo
u’ll let me pass, I’ll go upstairs at once. I thank you for your intervention.” Her voice had a tendency to shake. Very annoying.

  “What’s that?” The man pulled her roughly into the light. Her well-bred accents were unmistakably not those of a menial at a country inn.

  “I do apologize,” he muttered, releasing her. “My mistake.” He moved closer and peered down at her. If the sight of the slender girl, shabbily dressed, her hair wild about her shoulders, affected him in any way, he showed it by no more than the flicker of an eyelid. Melissa, who knew she must look disreputable, was happily spared the knowledge that flushed and shaking, with her full lips trembling, she also looked extraordinarily desirable.

  The gentleman, brown as a yeoman farmer at face and hands, appeared to be of some thirty years. His air of authority, not to say arrogance, and his expensive clothing proclaimed him a man of some importance. The scowl of disapproval on his craggy, unhandsome face was quickly replaced by a mask of civil indifference which was scarcely reassuring.

  Another gentleman detached himself from the crowd and joined them. “I say, Giles,” he remarked plaintively, “whatever has poor Fotherington done to offend you?” The newcomer was not much taller than Melissa herself, rake-thin, dark of hair and complexion, and exquisitely turned out. He ran a glance casually from Melissa’s feet to the disheveled sweep of raven hair falling across her breast. Melissa, with a start, pulled her eyes from her unwitting fascination with her rescuer and distractedly began to loop her hair up behind her again. The two worn valises lay overturned where she’d dropped them.

  “I see,” the newcomer said thoughtfully. He added confidentially to Melissa, “Candidly, dear lady, he’s a bit of a swine when he’s bosky, our Fotherington. I’d like to say he improves when sober, but it’s not strictly true. Do let me render you his apology. Sir Adrian Hawkhurst, at your service.” He executed a perfect bow with feline grace and smiled in a way that would have been unforgivable impertinence in a man less elegant and not so darkly handsome.

  Melissa began to stammer something about its being a matter of no importance. He interrupted her gallantly. “Nonsense. A dreadful experience.” He lifted her hand as if it were made of glass and began to pat it soothingly. “Let me escort you to your room. Such a lovely lady shouldn’t be alone in this rowdy mob.”

  Her rescuer cut him off. “Go to Fotherington, Adrian,” the tall man ordered with some sternness. “I’m sure the poor chap needs you.” This was said without a glance toward the doorway, where the unfortunate Fotherington was reeling to his feet, assisted by the catcalls and whistles of a gang of small boys.

  Sir Adrian sighed deeply. “Really, Giles,” he expostulated, “too dog in the manger of you.”

  “Adrian, Fotherington,” Giles commanded, unmoved.

  “Oh, very well.” Sir Adrian’s magnificent self-confidence was not one whit diminished. He spotted the unsteady Fotherington as that worthy lurched toward the door. “The things I do for my friends,” he grumbled. Since he had Melissa’s hand still, so to speak, in hand, it was the most natural thing in the world for him to raise it to his lips and kiss it lingeringly. Then it was only reasonable that he should gaze up longingly from deeply fringed, melting brown eyes and whisper in an urgent undertone, “We may meet again, lovely lady. I shall dare to hope so, though the very devil should stand between.” He might have continued in this vein for some time but caught a fulminating stare from his companion and decided to take his leave.

  Giles picked up Melissa’s bags, ignoring her as she reached for them. “You’re one of the coach passengers,” he declared, somehow making it an order. “Your room will be upstairs.” Melissa could imagine his saying, “It’s a fine day,” in just such an indisputable tone and waiting for the sky to clear obligingly. Without a further word or a backward glance he carried her bags away.

  Since he’d possessed himself of all her belongings, Melissa had no choice but to follow. By some alchemy the crowd, so formidable before, melted away as he approached.

  Melissa walked behind him and seethed. Arrogant, critical, self-righteous, know-it-all! It would serve him right if her rooms weren’t upstairs at all. She resented his well-bred impersonal air, and she resented even further the calm efficiency with which he solved her problems. The knowledge that she was being completely unfair didn’t change her emotions in the least.

  She had just decided that his coat had a dandified look about it and had concluded (inaccurately) that the price of one of his cravats would pay her salary for a year when they reached the foot of the stairs. Confronted with his face, worn and lined by God only knew what unsavory experiences, she had to stop thinking of him, even in the privacy of her own mind, as a wealthy fop.

  He handed over her bags. Whereas Sir Adrian had courteously avoided dwelling on the poverty of her appearance, this man took it all in, she thought, and summed up her total worth to a shilling. No polite shifting of his eyes away from the darn they both knew perfectly well was on her skirt.

  “I don’t think you’ll be troubled again,” he said in a voice of boredom and indifference. “I suggest you remain locked in your room for the rest of the evening, unless you wish a repetition of the incident.”

  She could hear Sir Adrian’s laugh outside the inn, followed by the sound of a man being dunked protestingly into the icy water of the horse trough. The ghost of a smile crossed the tall man’s face. Before she could prevent herself, Melissa answered it with her own amusement. A sudden glint of laughter leaped between them as their eyes met. Then, just as suddenly, Melissa turned away brusquely, angry with herself, breaking the little thread of intimacy that had stretched between them.

  But an instant later, duty-bound, she had to face him again. She couldn’t in good conscience leave without expressing some gratitude. His actions had been above reproach. It was only her own stubborn pride that made her resentful. Blast the man anyway; he was entirely too acute. She had the distinct impression that he could read everything she was thinking and that it amused him.

  “Thank you very much for your kind assistance,” she said, like a naughty schoolgirl reciting a rehearsed apology. Then she spoiled it all by adding tartly, “There was no need to tell me to lock my door. I assure you I don’t want closer contact with anyone tonight.” The emphasis on “anyone” made it clear she included her rescuer. “Still, I’m sure your advice is kindly meant.” Her voice said she was sure of no such thing.

  “Honored to be of service to you,” he responded with perfect ease. “It was my pleasure.” The secret amusement in his eyes deepened.

  Melissa, knowing herself outclassed, reluctantly abandoned the unequal struggle and sought the sanctuary of her room in the upper story. There she spent the rest of the evening composing a list of the things she should have said to him.

  Chapter 3

  ... set on a cliff with an extensive wood between. There’s even a lake with an island and a ruined tiny summerhouse. In the walled rose garden ...

  Excerpt from the letter of Melissa Rivenwood to Cecilia Luffington, June 4, 1818

  Melissa was once again waiting for someone else to decide her destiny. She watched the pattern of sun from the long windows crawl slowly across the blue rug. Mostly she remembered the other times: waiting a day and a night and a day again while her beloved adoptive father died; her adoptive mother’s death in childbed, so long ago; the long wait while Uncle Gregory satisfied himself that an adopted child could be legally excluded from the terms of the will; an afternoon of waiting until Mrs. Brody saw fit to inform her of the oppressive terms of employment her uncle had agreed upon.

  She wanted desperately to stay here at Vinton Manor. The wide lawns and topiary trees, the soft-footed maids, even the sunny high bedroom she’d been given were different from anything she’d ever known. Nothing could be more remote from the bare attic on the noisy London street or, for that matter, from her small and cozy bedroom in the stone rectory. Even so, it felt like coming home. Vinton Manor seemed to c
all forth a deep response in her, as a violin will wring a note from fine crystal.

  So she sat in the corner bedroom that might be hers and watched the afternoon pass. Since her arrival the evening before, she had been rehearsing in her mind all the questions they were likely to ask her and forming answers to satisfy them. She reviewed her qualifications. She was calm. But absentmindedly she dug her fingers again and again into the soft stuffed arm of her chair.

  The summons came: “The master will see you now in the library.” She followed the maid through the halls, oblivious to the beauty of her surroundings or her own image, pale and straight-backed, reflected in the mirrors lining the long gallery.

  The library was a vast cavern of a room with long rows of books in glass cases. Heavy velvet-covered red chairs flanked low tables of mahogany. On the floor was a Turkey carpet of topaz and ruby. The far section of the room, where windows ran floor to ceiling, was raised a few feet and separated by a phalanx of walnut book cabinets and a long, ornately carved wood railing. In this wide alcove, partially screened from the rest of the room, was a sort of office. Her employer sat at a desk there. He moved papers from one pile to another and looked up. As he politely came to his feet, Melissa very distinctly felt her heart stop beating.

  Small disasters make us tear our hair and cry. At mere catastrophe we scream and moan. When all is lost beyond hope, it is very easy to proceed sensibly. Melissa did so, feeling numb.

  “Ah. Then you are Melissa Rivenwood. I thought as much. So you’re to be companion to my aunt.”