Her Ladyship's Companion Read online

  “Lady Dorothy will at some time or another inform you that Queen Elizabeth slept here. Actually this room is a beautiful fake, constructed in about 1750 by one of the more batty Tarsins of the period. You may deal with Dorothy’s delusion as you see fit. She’s quite rational really, except where family is involved. And she’s only following an ancient family tradition that says Queen Elizabeth once stayed under the roof for one night on her way to some place or another. It’s not true. My esteemed ancestors were a group of inveterate liars.”

  He was a cheerful gentleman this morning, Melissa thought.

  “The bed is Elizabethan at any rate. Carved oak.” Giles patted the coverlet fondly. He managed to resist the temptation to suggest they try the bed out together to see if it still worked. The slight wrinkle of disapproval on her forehead put him in rollicking spirits. Absurd that such a child should be playing schoolteacher. Giles sat down on the edge of the bed. “It’s deuced uncomfortable,” he noted in some surprise. “But pretty. The hangings—lovely things, aren’t they?—were repaired by my aunt. Get her to show you around the place. She knows all those delightful and unlikely tales that have accumulated about this place. I believe there are no less than three ghosts, one canine. None has been sighted in a generation or two, by the way, so you may rest easy. Probably the rising damp discourages them.”

  “You make light of your heritage, Mr. Tarsin,” Melissa said a little severely. Did he think to roast her with ghost stories? She was not so credulous.

  “Never that. And unless Robbie should meet an untimely end in one of his harebrained escapades, it’s not, strictly speaking, my heritage at all.” Giles continued genially. “I inherited Calyburn House in Somerset from my mother’s people. One-quarter this size, with a nice set of tenant farms and no ghosts on the premises. It is there, to tell the truth, that I’d rather be, especially in haying season. If you want a true worshiper of the Tarsin heritage, you’ll have to go to Aunt Dorothy. Married twice, but never, to my knowledge, anything but every inch a Tarsin.”

  Still speaking such nonsense, he reached out and captured her hand. Idly he drew her closer to the bed until he saw a spark, just the faintest beginning of uneasiness, in her eyes. Then he released her. “But enough of this gabble. Breakfast is waiting for you. And Aunt Dorothy. She’ll be pleased to see you up so early. She disapproves of people who sleep late. In fact, she disapproves of most people.”

  As she would most certainly disapprove of my taking defenseless young girls into bedrooms in the empty wing, Giles thought, following Melissa out to the hall. As well she should, evil-minded old woman that she is.

  “To tell the truth.” Melissa hesitated. “Lady Dorothy didn’t seem exactly enamored of me last evening.”

  “On the contrary. She was highly pleased. You should see her meet someone she dislikes.” They passed through another picture gallery and turned down yet another hall. “The insults were nothing personal. She doesn’t appreciate the idea of having a companion, that’s all.”

  “In that case—”

  “She must have one. Her doctor in London recommends it. She has a heart condition, he says. She’s good for a great many more years if we can keep her from exerting herself too much. With a little subtlety you should be able to relieve her of a lot of trivial concerns. You’ll have no trouble handling her. All it calls for is a little tact.”

  Melissa had the feeling that subtlety would break like thrown water on the rock of Lady Dorothy’s indomitable nature. “I’ll do what I can,” she promised doubtfully.

  Chapter 6

  ... rather face Napoleon and all his generals than plan another such party. Cissy, my very fingernails ache.

  Excerpt from the letter of Melissa Rivenwood to Cecilia Luffington, June 17, 1818

  A plump matron in tight purple satin sailed across the room in the quadrille figure le pantalon. In one giant mirror she approached her purple reflection as in two others she magnificently receded from it. Melissa could think, in a dazzled way, only of damson plums sliding about on a silver tray.

  The young girls wore white or flower colors—rose pink, jonquil yellow, forget-me-not blue. The older women had jewelry like colored stars. This might be only Cornwall, but there was money in Cornwall. Even some of the men were brilliant as gaudy birds. Beau Brummell’s dictum, that evening dress for men should be sober and the linen spotless, had not yet crossed the Tarnar.

  “The mistake, Lavinia,” Lady Dorothy was saying, “lies not in importing this gaggle of Hanoverian balloons for monarchs. The mistake was teaching them English. The first George, in my father’s time, made a perfectly adequate king and never understood a tenth of what was going on around him.”

  Mrs. Armitage grunted in reply. “Neither does the regent, and I can’t see it improves him.”

  Melissa shifted from foot to foot behind the sofa and hoped none of the dancers was close enough to overhear these remarks.

  The lady in purple satin had somehow become lost in the complexities of the dance. She wandered uncertainly through the figure and was at last reunited with her long-suffering partner.

  Lavinia Armitage lifted a quizzing glass from its resting place upon her plentiful bosom to watch. “Isn’t it wonderful how Selina has managed to maintain such dreadful taste in clothing all these years? Season after season. Such consistency.”

  “Does she still cheat at cards, I wonder?” Lady Dorothy said, in what Melissa could only feel was far too penetrating a voice.

  Melissa wished the musicians would play more loudly.

  It was Lady Dorothy’s infamous annual birthday party. The invitation, a sine qua non for entry into local society, was for forty miles around as eagerly schemed for as was a voucher to Almack’s in the wider fields of London. The entertainment was religiously attended and, if survived without a blighting comment from the dowager, recovered from with well-earned relief.

  The birthday party was held this year, as it was every year, in the long Mirror Salon overlooking the sea. On either side, running the full length of the room, were the tall mirrors that gave the gallery its name. In dozens of images they reflected the musicians, the dancers, the lucky guests who had taken possession of one of the Chippendale chairs along the walls, and the unlucky guests who were standing. Nine Bavarian crystal chandeliers glowed with candlelight. The candles in the wall sconces wouldn’t be lit until the sunset died off the sea and the crimson drapes were closed.

  Lady Dorothy and Lavinia Armitage shared a sofa at the head of the room, from which vantage point they could review the progress of each pair of dancers. From time to time they made observations.

  Giles Tarsin, in the first set, partnered past them a sprightly dark-haired girl in pale pink silk. She was all laughter and modesty in her simple dress. It fell in long, lovely lines that had been crafted by no village seamstress. The girl’s step was light, her dancing faultless, and she flashed rows of white teeth when Giles spoke to her. It appeared he was very witty that evening.

  “Who’s that? The one with Giles?” Mrs. Armitage asked.

  “Oldest Polwist gel. Name escapes me.”

  “Forty thousand pounds is what I hear.”

  “Probably. Very warm in the pocket, Polwist. There’s the tin mine, too.”

  “Pretty child. Are you thinking of her for Giles?” “Giles will consult his own convenience.” “Oh, la-di-da! What’s wrong with the chit? Grandfather in trade, I suppose. Too much the smell of the shop for you?”

  “My dear Lavinia, if Giles wants the girl, he’ll have her if she smells of smoked pilchard. But Tarsins,” Lady Dorothy said austerely, “do not marry for money.”

  “Tarsins have no need to,” Mrs. Armitage pointed out.

  “That may be part of it.”

  Lavinia Armitage remained unimpressed. “Tarsins or not, you’d be fools to let forty thousand pounds slip away if you’ve a chance for it.”

  “You always did have a vulgar mind, Lavinia.”

  “Yes, don’t I?” T
he other woman concurred amiably.

  Melissa gathered that this great and good old friend of the dowager’s—they were remarkably rude to each other—was a widow in distressed circumstances. If her circumstances distressed her, it was apparent little else did. Immensely fat, she wore her excess bulk with flair, disposing it comfortably along the graceful lines of the Adam sofa. In motion, she had the massive impact of a triple-masted frigate under full sail. The two old women in conference put Melissa in mind of two of the less attractive of the Fates. Say, Clotho and Atropos.

  Mr. Penwaithe sweated past their review. One of the substantial Penwaithes, not the laboring, good-for-nothing Penwaithes. The vicar’s daughter, with him, wore the face of an early Christian martyr. Mr. Penwaithe had chosen to grace the proceedings with a green long-tailed coat and a bulging cream waistcoat. The choice of colors increased his already unfortunate resemblance to a giant frog. But he’d greeted Melissa most amiably when they were introduced, and she was feeling kindly toward him. She thought he looked like a very distinguished frog.

  A Mr. Albert Humber, who took the opposite side of their set, was accompanied by a nervous, unhappy little girl Melissa had at first taken for his daughter, but who turned out to be his wife. Melissa decided she did not like Mr. Humber.

  “Since when have you courted the mushroom gentry, Dorothy?” Mrs. Armitage commented.

  “If I don’t lend him countenance now, I can’t withdraw it later,” Lady Dorothy responded. “Do you imagine he’s the only weasel in the room tonight?” So Melissa was not alone in her dislike.

  Perhaps it was such small talk as this, Melissa thought, that the three witches exchanged while waiting for Macbeth to show up.

  “There’s another Polwist girl out, isn’t there?” Mrs. Armitage was employing the quizzing glass again. “Ah, there she is, over there with Adrian. Hmmm. Not as pretty as her sister.”

  “And doesn’t her sister know it,” Lady Dorothy agreed wearily. “Kind of Adrian to take the girl up.”

  “She’ll go off. No lack of money.”

  “Perhaps Adrian will try his luck. He says,” there was skepticism, “he’s in Cornwall hunting a tin heiress. Maybe he’s serious.”

  “Adrian? Hanging out for an heiress? That’s a new start. I thought he was comfortably off. And a natural polygamist. Not that that stands in the way of marriage.” Lavinia Armitage appeared to be calculating some abstruse mathematical problem. Her lips moved silently. “He won’t do for Anna, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Lavinia, I can imagine nothing more unlikely.”

  Melissa’s attention was caught by pink silk figured delicately with pink flowerettes. Giles whirled by once again, and the dark-haired heiress was still laughing.

  Melissa shifted feet. This was her first real party in six years. She’d thought it would be a little different. Oh, there was a certain satisfaction that everything was going smoothly. The preparations had fallen so completely into her unprepared lap, and she seemed to have managed everything satisfactorily. But she’d thought ... Her dress was seasons old, and only plain dark green satin. It wasn’t equal to what the other women were wearing. It was her “Mrs. Brody says take the girls to the municipal concert” dress. But she wouldn’t have been ashamed to dance in it.

  Unfortunately, when Sir Adrian had asked her for the first dance, he’d been brusquely rebuffed by Lady Dorothy. No one else had ventured.

  It wasn’t that she’d expected to dance. There was nothing shameful in being an employee after all. And she was tired after tending to every detail of the party. And her feet hurt.

  Melissa stared resolutely out the window. The lip of the sea turned silver in the twilight and then steel sheen. The footmen began to light the candles, unobtrusively, the way Bedford had drilled them that morning.

  There was a wide view from the windows of the Mirror Salon: the lawn, the cliffs, the broad arms of the bay, then the ocean. Vinton Manor had been placed—perhaps unwisely considering the number of storms that had blasted it in the last four or five centuries—at the height of a great headland. There were those who pointed out that its original site had been chosen less for aesthetic reasons than for a clear sight of ships breaking up on the Shark’s Jaw, the ragged rocks that scraped the water deceptively at the horizon and accounted for the ancient foundation of Tarsin wealth. The Tarsins always replied, tongue in cheek, that their ancestors had built there for the view. Considering the strength of the sullen fortress that occupied the heights, there had always been few who cared to argue with them.

  The original ugly stone pile had been wholly replaced in Elizabeth’s time by a long brick building, paid for, some said, by booty from the Spaniards. Ralph Tarsin, setting up as a respectable gentleman, had preferred to claim that his fortune arose from “clipping the backs of sheep.” That was one way of putting it.

  The new north wing had not been added until a more civilized generation of Tarsins, listening to the complaints of their guests and the occasional bewildered and freezing Tarsin bride, decided that there was something to be said for snug little rooms that would need less than a score of candles to dispel the gloom and would have fireplaces that were not necessarily suitable for the preparation of entire oxen. The Tudor wing had rapidly emptied. Not even the servants could be induced to crouch in picturesque cubbyhole attics or descend into the great cavelike basement, inexplicably preferring the air and light of their mundane quarters on the ground floor of the new section.

  As the candles were being lit, footmen decorously closed out the ocean and the twilight from the crowded glittering room. The mirrors glowed more brilliantly than ever, catching the light of a sapphire bracelet here and a diamond parure there.

  Anna and her partner danced into sight. Melissa sighed. At least for the duration of the party there was no trouble the girl could get into.

  “I see Anna has condescended to dance with the Bellingham boy,” Mrs. Armitage remarked.

  “I spoke to her about it beforehand, of course. She may yet acquire manners,” the dowager said, but not with confidence.

  Lady Dorothy had chosen the Mirror Salon for her party, she’d told Melissa the day before, because “when your partner gets too tedious, you can always look over his shoulder at your own reflection. People like to look at themselves.” To her annoyance, Melissa found herself scanning the room and noticing dancer after dancer doing just that.

  Anna, for instance, all too obviously had her attention riveted on her own pale blue image. She’d been ordered at last into pretty azure sarcenet with the bodice cut gently en coeur and plunging no farther than would interest a young man without turning his mother pale with apprehension. Perhaps, Melissa conceded as she watched, Anna was merely checking that everything was firmly anchored aloft.

  Mrs. Armitage was also watching her. The quizzing glass was busy.

  “Anna also seems to have acquired bosoms since I last met her,” she commented mildly.

  Melissa gulped and raised a hand to cover her twitching mouth.

  “From your gloating, Lavinia, I can only assume Anna has done something more than usually asinine. Drat these eyes of mine anyway. What is it this time, Miss Rivenwood?”

  Melissa choked, trying to conceal her laughter.

  Lady Dorothy poked her furled fan into Melissa’s ribs. “Stop screwing up your face, Miss Rivenwood. You’ll get wrinkles. Tell me what Lavinia is croaking about. What is my infinitely annoying niece up to this time?”

  “I’m very much afraid Anna has taken the opportunity to ... ah ... improve on the bounty of nature a bit. She’s stuffed something into the bodice of her dress since we last saw her. Two somethings. Probably handkerchiefs. That’s what the girls at school used. Though you can buy—”

  “I’m well aware of the versatility of the London market, Miss Rivenwood.”

  “But I think it’s handkerchiefs.”

  Lady Dorothy expelled breath in annoyance and slapped the folded fan hard against her palm. Lavinia
Armitage shook with laughter, which was rather in the nature of jiggling a set pudding.

  “What are you so jolly about, you halfwit?” Lady Dorothy demanded. “Damn girl’s made a fool of herself again. Why I ever appointed myself nursemaid to this—”

  “Oh, Dorothy.” The fat woman was unrepentant and not the least cowed. “Oh, Dorothy. It’s just like ... Do you remember? That time at Bath? With Susan Rushsteader—”

  “I do not!” Lady Dorothy snapped.

  “And that very handsome dragoon. The one with the mustaches. Do you remember? What was his name? Ferguson? MacPhearson? No, that wasn’t it. The one Susan walked away with. I haven’t thought of that evening in years. Do you remember?”

  “I don’t remember in the least. Miss Rivenwood, when this set is over, you will take Anna to the powder room and see that any extraneous material is removed from her upper story. I will not have the girl cut a figure of fun.”

  Mrs. Armitage was still chortling. “Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Dorothy. After all, however odd it may look at the moment, imagine how it would appear if she came back without ’em.” A gargantuan laugh. “People would wonder if it was something in the punch.”

  “Lavinia, you are a coarse old bat,” was Lady Dorothy’s response. But she made no more suggestions for correcting the situation. There was even a very reluctant twitch of the lips that might have been a suppressed smile. “Thank God we’re not in London at least,” she added fervently.

  “Aye, who cares what a bunch of provincial nobodies thinks? Eh, Dorothy?”

  “Exactly. It was Macclesfield.”

  “What?”

  “The dragoon’s name. It was Macclesfield.”

  Lavinia Armitage stretched both legs out full in front of herself, leaned back on the sofa, raised her face to the heavens, and laughed till tears came into her eyes. The dowager watched her with a surprising lack of censure.