Her Ladyship's Companion Read online

  Melissa crossed the room silently, climbed the short flight of stairs, and stood before his desk. She nodded. Her employer was the man from the inn at Cockleford, of course, the one called Giles. There was a certain fatality about it all, she saw.

  “Sit down,” he said abruptly. “You don’t look twenty-five.”

  The non sequitur made Melissa blink. Without thinking she replied indignantly, “I am.”

  “I don’t doubt it. It was merely an observation. I wondered last night if you might be the new addition to our household. It seemed too much to hope.”

  Melissa assumed he was being sarcastic. “As to what happened in Cockleford, I assure you, my lord, that it is not my usual practice to—”

  “I know all that. Think no more of it. Or, if anything, blame me. It never occurred to me that my employees would travel post. Young ladies unprotected in a public inn will be exposed to insult.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Melissa snapped irritably. The position was obviously a lost cause, so she put no guard on her tongue. “I was grateful for your help. But really, it was hardly, necessary. I’m very capable of taking care of myself. My lord, if I was impolite to you it was merely—”

  “A sensible precaution upon meeting strange men in the public room of a common inn. I would have expected nothing else.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way, my lord.”

  “This continued elevation to the peerage, Miss Rivenwood, while flattering—”

  Melissa’s eyebrows flew up. “You mean you’re not an earl?”

  “Alas no. Is there any reason I should be?”

  “I beg your pardon. It’s just that Mr. Biddle told me I was to be employed by the Earl of Keptford.” Formless suspicions began to curl around her mind. “This is the seat of the Earl of Keptford, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is,” Giles informed her. “Technically, as it happens, you’re hired by the earl. But for business purposes you have to come to me. I handle all the earl’s affairs.”

  “May I inquire why?” asked Melissa. Was the earl out of the country, or incapable in some way, or even ... mad perhaps?

  “The earl has not yet attained his seventh birthday, Miss Rivenwood.”

  “Oh!” After an instant of surprise Melissa felt a strong desire to giggle, which she managed to control. So the nobleman she was destined to bowl over with her surpassing loveliness was still in the nursery.

  “Robert, seventh earl, is my nephew. You were brought here to be companion to his great-aunt, the dowager Countess of Harforth, the Lady Dorothy, who also happens to be my aunt. I am Giles Tarsin, late of the army and more particularly lately seconded to Wellington’s staff, brother of the last earl, uncle of the present one, and also his guardian and manager of this estate. Several prominent members of the Whig party will vouch for me. Do you find my credentials to be in order, Miss Rivenwood?”

  “Quite.” All this verbiage was unnecessary. Let him send her away and be done with it.

  “Mr. Biddle’s discretion is very nearly absolute, but he could well have granted you a little more background on the ménage here. Of course, he may have assumed no one would come if given the full story.” Giles’s eyes rested on the girl’s face thoughtfully for a minute. “Regarding your own credentials ...”

  Melissa folded her hands in her lap. This was more what she’d anticipated. But was this serious consideration, or was the infuriating man only amusing himself?

  Giles unearthed a folded letter from the pile of papers on the desk. He smoothed out the creases against the wood and studied it a bit. “According to this, you have been a junior mistress in London for the last six years.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you taught?”

  “The French language.”

  “Hmm. Biddle says you’re fluent, so we’ll take his word for that. Why did you leave?”

  Melissa thought: Bad food, a hard, cold bed, and that vulgar penny-pinching old tyrant, carping at me night and noon. What she said was: “I received but three pounds six a year, sir. And it was not a pleasant position.”

  “You obtained no letter of recommendation?”

  Melissa’s stomach, which had been cautiously un-tensing, did a sick little flip-flop at this. “I believe I made that clear to Mr. Biddle. Mrs. Brody, the headmistress, had such trouble keeping staff that she never gave recommendations. It was her method of holding her employees.”

  “Yes. I see. Biddle does say that here. Why did you take work in such a place?”

  “I was a student there from the age of fifteen onward, and upon completion of my courses Mrs. Brody offered to take me on as junior mistress. It’s not so easy to find a position at nineteen, especially if your school won’t speak for you,” Melissa concluded with some bitterness.

  Giles aligned the corners of a stack of papers on the desk. Biddle had included some pungent comments on the school that made “not a pleasant position” sound like understatement. Unobtrusively he gave Melissa a lengthy inspection. Very nervous, he thought, and hiding it well. He watched a pulse beating rapidly under the curve of her throat. She had poise. That would please Dorothy. Dorothy liked to disconcert people, but only if there was a challenge to it. He folded and refolded the letter idly. “You have no relatives?”

  In the dim light of the inn he’d been impressed. In the rich slanting light of the library he was sure of it. The girl was a real beauty. What on earth was such a woman doing going out as companion? Madness multiplied. Madness that any relative had allowed such a child to seek her living this way. And madness that no man had married her, penniless though she must be, for that black mane alone or for the line of her jaw. He experienced an impulse to reach out and caress her cheek very gently, just as one will touch a beautiful statue. None of this showed on his face.

  “I have no relatives,” Melissa replied in a low voice. None at all, she thought despairingly, except two little adoptive sisters she’d reared from birth and a hatchet-faced uncle who would never let her see them again. From long practice she shut the thought away and buried it again in the back of her mind.

  “An orphan?” Giles inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “Your parents were ...?” he waited. Melissa hesitated, not certain whether to lie or not. Giles tapped the letter before him. “My agent indicates that your father was rector in the village of, let me see, Fittsdean, in Sussex. Your mother was one of the Somerset Westons.”

  How simple just to nod and agree. She could put the whole awkward, shameful business behind her, and no one need ever know.

  On the other hand, she probably wouldn’t get the job anyway. “They were my adoptive parents.”

  “And your real parents?”

  “I was abandoned on the steps of the rectory. No one was ever found to claim me.”

  “In a small country district like that, surely someone—”

  “No one local. You’re right. They would have known. There was a story.” Melissa wondered why she bothered to tell him all this and then decided he might as well hear it all. “There was a story that smugglers had brought a woman with a baby over from France. They were bribed with jewelry. I was perhaps a year old, not an infant. I even spoke a few words. In French.”

  “Thus a teacher of the French language.”

  “My father—my adoptive father—made sure I learned French. He said I should know my native language.” Absurdly she felt as if she were defending her father from some unspoken criticism. Recklessly she plunged on. “He said,” she spoke distinctly, “that I have no more to be ashamed of in my birth than many who bear great names in this country.”

  Giles’s lips twitched almost imperceptibly. He creased and recreased the papers he held, drawing them between his fingers. He was pleased, on the whole. Biddle, investigating the background of this new companion, had, of course, discovered all that Melissa just told him. The fact that she was honest enough to make a complete disclosure of these discreditable facts stood very much in her favor. />
  While Melissa waited apprehensively for some response, Giles templed his hands and leaned forward across the desk, studying her intently. A little agitation, he decided, became her well. Her bone structure was excellent. It was the source of the curious, elusive beauty he saw in her. Her eyes were spectacular. Anyone must notice them. But it was the contrast that attracted his attention. Her lips, a minute ago, had been too tightly controlled for beauty. Then, when she was speaking of her father, he’d seen them soften. It made an interesting face, ascetic and sensual at the same time.

  What shaped a face like that: a stuffy girls’ school and a country rectory? She would have been abandoned in... It would have been ‘93. The Terror in France had been at its height then. A hundred aristocratic families had been separated, wiped out root and branch. She could have been the daughter of respectable French parents, even noble parents, smuggled across the narrow sea to safety. Hard to believe there wasn’t good blood in her. Certainly that upswept grace of feature was no guarantee. The most aristocratically haughty face he’d ever beheld had graced a Covent Garden doxy.

  “Well?” Melissa prompted after the silence had grown uncomfortably long.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you have any other questions to ask me?”

  “No. I think that will be sufficient.”

  Melissa started to rise. “If that is all …”

  “Sit down.” Giles was annoyed that she’d broken his mood of pleasant repose. That was the trouble with these lovely women; they were unrestful creatures. “I haven’t finished with you yet. Lady Dorothy will tell you your specific duties, but I want to give you a few guidelines before you meet her.”

  Melissa sank back into the chair, bewildered. “You mean, you’re going to hire me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Yes?”

  “If you can’t think of any reasons not to employ me I’m certainly not going to remind you of them,” she said tartly, and then stopped, aghast.

  “My dear Miss Rivenwood, I’m not looking for a hired flunky. When I asked Biddle to find me a young lady with a perfect French accent, I specifically demanded that he exclude ninnies, milksops, and nincompoops. So if he sends me a sharp-tongued orphan, I have no complaints.” With something that might have been well-concealed kindness he added, “I asked for impeccable French, not an impeccable pedigree.” If it was kindness, it was quickly gone. He continued with the detached aloofness that characterized his usual conversation. “I’m not in the habit of paying coach fare from London to Cornwall just to conduct unsuccessful interviews.”

  “I see.” Could she possibly have the job after all?

  “I’m satisfied with your credentials, Miss Rivenwood. It remains for Lady Dorothy to make the final decision, but I’ll use what influence I have to convince her to accept you.”

  Melissa considered the hard and arrogant man across from her. It was improbable that anyone’s aunt would have much to say once he’d made up his mind. “Thank you,” she said simply.

  “I hope you’ll thank me a few months from now,” Giles said cryptically. “As to your duties, I haven’t the faintest idea what a companion is supposed to do. Something along the lines of winding knitting thread and petting lapdogs. There’s not a lot of that here. But Lady Dorothy does need someone to read French to her and help with correspondence … and ‘manage’ her a bit.”

  Melissa nodded. She was building a certain picture in her mind of the dowager countess.

  “It needs a certain amount of tact. She’s not frail, precisely, but she’s not as strong as she thinks she is. She has the running of the entire household on her shoulders. I’ll expect you to spare her any exertion you can.”

  She was an elderly lady, Melissa realized, gray-haired, dressed in black, just a little stooped. She was probably a little vague, poor thing, after having been bullied for years by this coolly efficient nephew. Melissa could hope only that Lady Dorothy wouldn’t take her frustrations out in small, malicious ways on a paid companion. However, for the salary offered here she would have acted as companion to Grendel’s mother.

  The library clock chimed the hour. Giles rose swiftly. “That’s dinner,”

  He rapidly assessed Melissa’s perfectly correct and perfectly drab clothes. In politeness he should set dinner back an hour and give her a chance to change. But he doubted strongly she had anything more presentable to change into. Best not to shame her with the offer and force that admission. Dreadful clothes, of course. Pity. She’d be better for dressing. The gentle movement of her breasts against the fabric of her bodice brought the logical conclusion to that train of thought: or even better for undressing.

  Giles sighed regretfully and suppressed the thought. The woman was, after all, a dependent and, therefore, untouchable.

  “We’ll go straight in to dinner. You’ll meet the others there. Lady Dorothy has a young relative staying with her, Miss Anna Merringham. Then there’s my secretary, Edgar Pangborn. Oh, and Harold Bosworth is also here for the summer. He’s a connection of my aunt. Sir Adrian you’ve already met.”

  “He’s staying with you?”

  “He is indeed. He will be delighted to find you’re to be an inhabitant of the house. The entertainment we provide here at Vinton Manor meets with his constant criticism.”

  “And the young earl’s governess eats in the schoolroom, I suppose?” Melissa ventured.

  Her employer’s face took on a closed look, not inviting further questions. “Just at present there isn’t any governess.”

  “She left?” something prompted Melissa to ask, even in the face of that forbidding disapproval.

  “In a way. She fell off a cliff ten days ago and was killed. May I?” He offered her his arm, effectively terminating their conversation, and they went in to dinner.

  Chapter 4

  ... only to inform you of my new direction. I have kept my promise not to communicate with my sisters, so please be kind enough to send me news of them.

  Excerpt from the letter of Melissa Rivenwood

  to the Reverend Gregory Rivenwood, June 6, 1818

  Dinner was something of an ordeal. Lady Dorothy, far from being the browbeaten little nonentity Melissa expected, turned out to be a stiff-backed martinet. Steel gray hair, unrelentingly confined in a coronet of braids; steel gray eyes that obviously had never dropped before any other pair; a tightly corseted thin figure (bound in steel as well, for all I know, Melissa thought)—that was Lady Dorothy. This was a woman who had never possessed the least vestige of beauty. In old age, when the remnants of prettiness are long stripped away, she fared better than most, composed all of dignity and iron. Despite herself, Melissa quailed a bit at the prospect of “managing” this woman “tactfully.”

  On introduction the dowager countess carefully examined Melissa (rather as if I were a chicken at market, and a scrawny one at that, was Melissa’s amused notion) and, granting her no direct comment, turned instead to Giles. Everyone else in the little parlor found business elsewhere.

  “Delightful. A Botticelli of my very own. Whose bright idea was this—yours or that fool Biddle? Or is she one of Adrian’s discards?”

  “Biddle,” Giles answered briefly.

  Lady Dorothy made a dismissive gesture. “The man’s a well-intentioned numskull. His father was just such another. Every year I live I see a new crop of idiots, all making the same mistakes. Discouraging, that’s what it is.”

  “Stupidity often is,” Giles conceded.

  “It’s the lack of originality that discourages me,” was the lady’s uncompromising answer. Then, surprisingly, to Melissa: “I can hardly suspect Biddle of dalliance with you, girl. Why did he choose to send you instead of a respectable middle-aged frump?”

  “Following your instructions, my lady,” Melissa replied levelly, “I’m sure.”

  “Mmmmm. So he was. Trust a Methodist to send a surprise package like you to a household full of randy bachelors.”

  Th
ere was no possible reply. Melissa preserved a woodenly impassive countenance.

  “What do you want the position for, anyway, gel? This is just some stupid make-work I put up with for my nephew’s peace of mind.”

  The lady’s eyes were hard. But they were not the eyes of a bully, not Mrs. Brody’s eyes. Melissa said simply, “I need the money.”

  “Hah. That has the merit of being the truth anyway.” Lady Dorothy sounded pleased. “If you have any brains at all behind those blue eyes, we may deal well enough together. Anyone’s better than that dainty darling, the Coburn chit.”

  Giles started to speak.

  “Hold your tongue. The woman may be dead, but that doesn’t make me like her one whit better. Dying has never yet improved any of my acquaintances. If I liked them, it takes them away from me, and if I hated them, it puts them beyond reach of my tongue. That Coburn woman, face like a pancake and supposed to be such a bang-up governess. Didn’t stop her from creeping out to meet some man at night. No other possible reason she wasn’t there when the fire started. If she didn’t start it herself and then lie about the whole thing, as I suspect. Then, to crown it all, she decides to fall off a cliff at the most inconvenient time imaginable. One could almost believe she did it on purpose.”

  The rest of the dinner conversation was bound to be something of an anticlimax.

  “She doesn’t mean half of what she says, you know.” A whisper came over Melissa’s shoulder. The man next to her smiled reassuringly and drew her apart from Lady Dorothy’s little court, now that the interrogation of the new employee seemed to be over. There were two men unknown to her in the room, the secretary and Harold Bosworth. By no stretch of the imagination could the man beside her be mistaken for a secretary. The perfection of his cravat, the drape of his coat, the dazzling whiteness of his linen, and the almost finical placement of seals—all proclaimed the exquisite, if not the dandy. He made a slight bow, and the candlelight glinted on a massive ruby set in a silver ring on his right hand.

  “You must be Mr. Bosworth,” she said, not brilliantly.