Her Ladyship's Companion Page 4

  “Giles described me to you, I suppose.” He had an odd, appealing smile, almost shy, a fine-boned face, and smooth, almost translucently pale skin. At first glance Melissa placed him at about thirty years. Then little things, like the network of fine creases around his eyes, made her realize with a start that he must be nearly ten years beyond that. His straight pale blond hair was worn longer than the common fashion.

  Melissa smiled and shook her head. At least one member of the household was less than formidable. “Mr. Tarsin didn’t describe anyone. He just gave names and, ah, places, so to speak.”

  “Then my secrets are still safe.” Harold, apparently a gentleman in deed as well as dress, was obviously trying to put her at ease with light conversation. “That’s like Giles, to throw you all unprepared into the den of lions.”

  “Hardly lions,” Melissa protested.

  “Can you say that after being so thoroughly clawed by our chief lioness?” Harold chuckled and glanced toward Lady Dorothy.

  “You yourself just assured me she doesn’t mean half what she says!”

  Harold’s curious little smile came again. “That’s the thing, you see. There’s half of it she does mean.’“

  “Oh.” Melissa was a bit at a loss.

  “The rest of the pride is here tonight. ‘Pride’ is not a bad word to describe the Tarsins, by the way. Giles, of course, is our king lion. Over there is Edgar,” he indicated the gangling redheaded secretary, who was shifting uneasily from foot to foot, “our eager but clumsy young hunter.” Harold’s smile took any sting from the gibe. “Our young lioness in training, little Anna.” He waved casually toward a young lady, resplendent in primrose satin and no more than seventeen. Her low-cut, very sheer gown perversely emphasized her extreme youth. “The cub, Robbie, is missing. Just as well. He deserves an introduction all on his own. And finally, we have another ravenous carnivore, no lion he, but a highly changeable leopard, Sir Adrian. He is, by the way, directing a most hungry pair of eyes toward you.”

  He was. Though politeness held him beside Anna Merringham, Sir Adrian was managing to convey the length of the parlor a message more suitably expressed over the space of a few feet, preferably in a bedroom.

  “Sir Adrian and I have met before,” Melissa explained uneasily. Sir Adrian was certainly implying a degree of acquaintance between them. “Briefly, in Cockleford, on my way here.”

  “No excuse, not the slightest, is necessary, Miss Rivenwood,” Harold assured her. “Adrian, as we all know, needs none where a personable young lady is involved. Still, if you can, bring yourself not to snub him too severely. He’s doing me a great favor by diverting Anna.”

  Melissa looked discreetly inquiring.

  “You won’t be in this house long before you discover that Anna has conceived a very inconvenient …” he looked about helplessly as though seeking the word, “passion, I suppose I must call it, for a most unsuitable person. Me, in short.”

  “How embarrassing for you.” Melissa studied the young Merringham. It was all there. Under the multitude of golden curls she recognized a mulish mouth and restless, overbright eyes. If six years of school-teaching had done nothing else, they had taught Melissa the signs of a spoiled, bored young minx. “You have my sympathy,” she said, amused.

  “Calf love, of course. Most natural thing in the world. We all ignore it. It’s a dashed nuisance, I can tell you.” He was rueful. “But here I am, exposing all the family skeletons to you. I can’t imagine why.”

  “You are very kindly enlightening the ignorance of a poor stranger so she does not make quite a fool of herself. Are there any other notable skeletons?”

  Harold considered the question with arch carefulness. “None that I can think of right offhand. Oh, Robbie thinks someone wants to murder him, but other than that—”

  “What?” Melissa exclaimed.

  The dowager countess raised an eyebrow in her direction, and Anna, whose glances were growing increasingly angry, glared.

  “I should say, whatever do you mean?” Melissa said more quietly.

  Harold smiled gently, then composed his features into serious lines. “It’s not totally a joke. In fact, it isn’t one at all, now that the poor woman’s dead.”

  “That would be Miss Coburn, the governess?”

  “Yes. Almost two weeks ago. Most tragic. Is this really the first you’ve heard of this?”

  “Mr. Tarsin just mentioned it.”

  “I thought as much. Giles is a closemouthed devil. I’d best tell you the whole thing before one of the maids frightens you with some exaggerated tale.” His blue eyes showed extreme shrewdness. And worry, too. “The fire itself was no great thing. As much happens every few years in an old house like this. A lamp turned over and burned up most of a very threadbare carpet in the nursery. Total damage: one lost rug, a pair of overworn drapes, and a panic-stricken boy who couldn’t get the door open.”

  “And Miss Coburn?” Melissa asked, inadvertently adding the governess to the list of damages.

  “It was all her fault. You see, Nanny Babcock was away that night. A friend of hers was ill in Wheatcross, and she’d taken a few days’ leave. When we discovered the fire, Miss Coburn wasn’t even in the house. No possible explanation, so everyone assumed the worst. Some man, you know. Poor Robbie was making hysterical accusations about the door’s being locked. It all must have been very hard on her.”

  “And then she fell over a cliff,” Melissa said softly.

  “It was an accident,” Harold said earnestly. “It must have been. These cliffs can be so treacherous. Helena Coburn was a London woman. She didn’t know the grounds well. The weather had been bad. A misstep in the dark ...”

  Melissa shuddered. She’d seen the cliffs below the manor upon her arrival. Nothing would induce her to walk them at night. “A terrible accident.”

  “Yes, exactly. But you know how people talk, and it was only two days after the fire. She was under notice as well. I believe there was some financial difficulty. Dorothy can be ... outspoken ... when she’s enraged. There was the matter of references. It was nothing that wouldn’t have been cleared up in time. But there was Robbie going about talking wildly. The last day Helena—Miss Coburn—was most distraught.”

  “You believe she may have taken her own life?” Melissa whispered.

  “It was an accident,” Harold said firmly. “Just as the fire was an accident.” Something in his voice didn’t ring true. Melissa looked at him in dismay.

  Harold dropped his eyes to the back of the mahogany chair before him. As if they had a life of their own, his hands tapped to and fro on the carved surface. “I shouldn’t, that is, I don’t know why I’m talking this way,” he confided, “to a complete stranger. I suppose I have been unsettled by it all.” His hands moved restlessly again, red light flashing from the ruby. “You see, we never did find out who knocked over the lamp in the nursery. Robbie was in bed asleep. That’s the only thing we have to wonder about. He thought that the door was locked, but it obviously wasn’t, since Giles was able to get it open almost at once ... though it was badly stuck. And with Robbie choking inside, it was very tense for a while there. I couldn’t get the door to move at all.” He dropped his hands and gave a slightly forced laugh, shrugging. “I can only say I’m glad we got to Robbie when we did. A little more smoke, and Giles would have become eighth earl. It’s no wonder ... But there,” he said genially, “that’s Bedford to announce dinner. You’ll enjoy the meal tonight, I think. Mrs. Carver is a genius with duckling.”

  Chapter 5

  ... rather nasty little lake. I haven’t seen the island because the bridge is boarded off. The ocean is a very different body of water.

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

  Melissa woke before dawn in the darkened bedroom. She padded across to the ruins of the fire. The chill of the morning had condensed droplets of moisture on the tiles around the hearth. Kneeling, she poked at the coals and found a
live spark buried under the bed of soft gray ashes. With shavings and a few pine cones she soon had a merry little blaze going. Then she danced across the room to throw open the window, defeating any warmth from the fire. Gusts of cold air blew in, smelling of roses and the sea.

  In the halls she could hear faint clinking sounds. Though it was still dark, the servants were awake and at work. In an hour they’d be banished with their pails and brooms from the main part of the house for the rest of the day, lest the sight of a maid at work offend the delicate sensibilities of one of the family. Now, however, they were out and working like demons in the early-morning gloom.

  Vinton Manor was an L-shaped building. The new wing had been added at right angles from the north end of the main Elizabethan structure. Melissa’s room was in the new part of the house, midway along the inner side. Below her window in the sheltered inner courtyard fancy had placed a walled Tudor rose garden and, a little farther away, practicality had added the kitchen garden, since carrots like blasts of salt wind from the sea no better than roses do. As Melissa watched, a maid in a white apron rose from picking herbs in one of the leafy beds under the pantry windows and carried her cuttings through the kitchen door. A boy emerged from the kitchen a heartbeat after with a bucket of water, which he proceeded to bestow upon a row of vegetables. When he looked up at her with a cheeky grin, Melissa remembered that she was still in nightdress and might soon be required for her own tasks.

  She dressed quickly. Somewhere within the bowels of the house breakfast awaited her. She’d had little to eat the evening before. What remained of her appetite after the very disturbing conversation with Harold Bosworth had been destroyed by Lady Dorothy over the dinner table. Giles and Lady Dorothy had thoroughly enjoyed the heated political discussion, she was sure. If she had been merely a spectator, she might have enjoyed it herself. It was no surprise to find Lady Dorothy in favor of the corn laws (“No reason to starve English reapers just to feed the ones in France”). More interesting to discover that Giles Tarsin discounted any possibility of Bennet’s bill for the protection of climbing boys becoming law (“Bennet’s made too many enemies. They’ll laugh the bill to death in the Lords, even if we get it through Commons again. Damn the man!”). But the countess had a frightening habit of turning suddenly and demanding, “What do you think of that, Miss Rivenwood?” It was calculated to reduce the average companion to a mass of quivering jelly. Melissa was not brought so low, but she’d risen from the table not much more greatly nourished than when she had sat down. Breakfast was, therefore, a matter of more than academic interest.

  Ten minutes later in a long, vaguely familiar gallery, confronted by three different doors, she wished she’d paid more attention to the geography of the house when the housekeeper, Mrs. Ballantyne, had given her the grand tour. She’d made a wrong turn somewhere. This was the old, unused section of the manor. The halls were spotless, slick with cleanliness, the rooms smelled of beeswax and violet pastilles, but every door she opened showed only great hulking ghosts of furniture hiding under holland covers. She wished someone would come along and give her directions.

  A moment later she noticed a very curious noise emanating from one of the rooms farther down the hall. Scuffling and thumps, as if some animal were trapped in the brush. Disconcerted, she drew closer. Suddenly a pair of boys burst out of one of the wood-paneled rooms and came tumbling down the hall. The door of the room swung back and cracked against the wall with a report like gunfire. The leading boy almost ran Melissa down, but at the last instant he swerved instead and collided with the wall. The second boy, not so fortunate, wrapped himself intimately around a spindle-shanked Queen Anne chair, which fell over with a crash.

  While his unlucky companion sorted out his arms and legs from those of the chair, the boy who had collided with the wall straightened and stared at Melissa. In the process he thumped up against an indifferent landscape hanging above him, but he ignored this. “Now we’ve done it,” he muttered.

  The young earl—for so he obviously was, despite some minor damage to his clothes—brushed himself off and sketched a bow. “Robert Tarsin, at your service, ma’am,” he said with dignity. His companion, evidently of considerably lower social status, looked frankly scared but had managed to disentangle himself from the furniture.

  Melissa curtsied deeply, as was suitable to a peer of the realm. “Miss Melissa Rivenwood at yours, Lord Keptford. And your associate?” she queried delicately.

  He introduced the silently stocky boy at his side. “Jamie Hobson,” he said. “You must be Lady Dorothy’s new companion. We’re pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Pleased as plague, Melissa thought.

  Jamie shuffled his feet on the shining floor and looked singularly guilty. The young earl’s gaze was frankly assessing and had an unconscious arrogance which at nearly seven, was still appealing. A very self-possessed young man, Melissa decided, looking in vain for any sign of the hysteria Harold Bosworth had mentioned.

  Under an unruly red mop of hair the gray eyes of the Tarsin family looked her up and down coolly. Melissa was irresistibly reminded of his uncle, Giles Tarsin.

  “It’s certainly a lovely morning,” he contributed at last.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Melissa agreed. She didn’t know what the house policy for the training of earls was, but she strongly suspected it did not include roaming the halls of the empty wing at the crack of dawn. “I hope you didn’t hurt yourself when I startled you just now.”

  “Not at all,” he replied politely.

  Jamie was looking increasingly uncomfortable. His feet were trying to edge away while the rest of his body stayed loyally at his friend’s side. Melissa suspected that Jamie, who smelled strongly of the stables, was also in forbidden territory.

  Silence fell. The small talk seemed to have been exhausted. “I’ll take my leave of you then,” Melissa said. “I may see you later this morning. Your uncle mentioned something about my giving you French lessons.” She turned to leave.

  “Miss Rivenwood,” the boy began cautiously. “I’m not actually supposed to be here, you know.”

  Or playing with stableboys either, Melissa thought, but she schooled her face to interested attention.

  He looked at her hopefully. “If you could just not tell my uncle about it. Nanny won’t be missing me for a long time yet. I haven’t any lessons, so it’s not as if I were doing anything wrong, exactly. Nobody has actually told me I can’t go out today. But Uncle Giles might not see it that way.”

  “If your uncle asks me, of course, I must tell the truth,” Melissa said scrupulously. His face fell. “On the other hand,” she continued gravely, “I don’t think he’s going to ask me, Lord Keptford.”

  The boy grinned widely, showing a gap between two teeth. “My friends,” he said, “call me Robbie.” Then he bowed deeply. He had been well trained by somebody. The two boys left, running, on the same incomprehensible and probably forbidden errand.

  Melissa grimaced in exasperation. There. She’d let them go without even asking the way out.

  The long hallway led to a gallery and from there to the top of a flight of stairs. Melissa put a hand on the newel-post and took a deep breath. Lovely to be in the country again. London smelled of cabbages and coal smoke. Vinton smelled of roses.

  So here she was, her first day on the job, lost and behaving reprehensibly, already deep in a pact of silence with a disobedient, undoubtedly spoiled scrap of a boy. She searched her conscience carefully for the least sign of compunction and found none.

  “You seem thoughtful, Miss Rivenwood,” said a deep voice behind her. “Are you lost?”

  Melissa gave a guilty start and spun about. Giles had come up behind her so softly she’d been oblivious to his presence. He was dressed for riding in a coat of drab olive with French sleeves, leather breeches and Wellington boots, highly polished. His hair was still damped down from the morning’s wash. An expression of cordial interest hovered on his face.

  “I
’ve lost my way,” she admitted. “I was admiring the architecture of the house.” She improvised rapidly. If this was an uncle in righteous wrath pursuing his errant nephew, Melissa had no desire to meet awkward questions. She fingered the newel-post nervously. “This carving. It’s Flemish, isn’t it?”

  Giles nodded. “There’s some beautiful workmanship here. As you’ve already discovered, this is the old wing of the house. Damp, of course. Aunt Dorothy burns a man-high stack of wood a week during the spring to keep the mold out of the tapestries.” He accompanied her down the stairs. “This is the shortcut. No need to stop and admire the pictures.” He propelled her along. “All Tarsins. A depressingly plain lot. They look like a bunch of rascally pirates. Not surprising; they were. Any picture with an ounce of artistic merit is in the main body of the house. Not even Aunt Dorothy’s mania for the family makes her bring these monstrosities over.” He stopped abruptly and pulled back one of the window curtains. “Excellent view of the classical grotto from here, if you’re foolish enough to want one.”

  “I noticed it on the way in,” Melissa responded, frantically trying to capture a polite adjective or at least a noncommittal one. “It’s a bit ...”

  “Incongruous?” Giles finished for her. “Is that the word you’re searching for?” Melissa started to deny it, but Giles was already saying, “All that unclothed marble and the long lawn were put in by the fifth earl, my grandfather’s cousin. He made the grand tour and never fully recovered from the experience. What he wanted with that wasteland of grass on this coast is beyond my comprehension. In the winter the winds sweep in from the Atlantic and rattle the hinges off the eastern windows, the reason why the front rooms are now courteously reserved for guests. Sir Adrian will tell you what he thinks of the draft. Would you believe they uprooted a three-hundred-year-old grove of oaks to put in that sheep field?” He ended with the pungent condemnation “Vandals.”

  Giles guided Melissa down the hall and flung open a door. “This will be more to your taste. The Queen’s Room,” he announced. The room was a gem of its kind, paneled in carved dark oak, beautifully proportioned. A picture of Elizabeth hung over the mantelpiece, the painting suffused with the gold brown of great age.