Her Ladyship's Companion Page 7

  “It’s your conduct that concerns me,” Lady Dorothy retorted. “While you’re under my roof, you’ll behave with dove-gray propriety. You hear me, gel?”

  “Certainly I hear you,” Anna said with some hostility. “The devil knows I’ve no choice but to do what you say. For now. But lessons in propriety don’t fit very well into your mouth, dear Aunt.” With a vicious sweep of her hand Anna knocked a Chinese vase of yellow roses from the table in front of Lady Dorothy. Then, quite as appalled by her own behavior as anyone else, she burst into tears and ran from the room.

  “And people are always complaining how mealy-mouthed the younger generation has become.” Lady Dorothy closed her account book. “Ah, well, I’ll make something of the chit yet. If she doesn’t ruin herself in the meantime.” She reached down painfully to collect the fragments of the vase where it had fallen, now a heap of petals and leaves and leaf-thin china.

  Melissa was on her feet at once. “Here, let me.”

  “No, better ring for Bedford. Staff here eating its head off, might as well be useful.” Lady Dorothy sank back into her chair, a worried frown on her face.

  “I hope it wasn’t a valuable piece.”

  Lady Dorothy shook her head absently. “The vase? No, not particularly. Robbie will never miss it, in any case. Lord knows I’ve broken enough china in my time not to grudge Anna this vase. I’ve thrown ’em at dustmen and dukes and creditors. Rascals all.”

  Melissa fitted two of the pieces together sadly. “It’s beyond mending, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes.” Lady Dorothy scarcely seemed to hear her. “It’s far beyond mending at this point.”

  Melissa looked up, startled. “If I can be of any help ...?”

  “Help? No.” Lady Dorothy’s attention was finally caught, and she favored Melissa with her usual cynical amusement. “Bursting to give me advice, I suppose. Never knew a paid companion yet could keep tongue between teeth when it came to someone else’s family affairs. Going to tell me I’m too harsh with the girl. Young. Let her have her fun. Perfectly harmless. Natural infatuation that will pass of its own accord. And Harold? What would you say about Harold, Rivenwood?”

  “If asked, I would say that he appears to be an absolutely unobjectionable gentleman,” Melissa replied with composure.

  “And if not asked?”

  “I would keep my tongue between my teeth,” Melissa replied demurely, “and cultivate a suitably meek demeanor.”

  “Hmmm. Much you know about the world, missy. No more than Anna for all your advanced years. Heh-ho, if I need your advice, I’ll ask for it. You understand?”

  “Perfectly, my lady.” Melissa returned to the unfinished correspondence.

  There was silence in the room for perhaps the count of fifty.

  Lady Dorothy said in exasperation, “Very well. Out with it, gel. What do you think I should do?”

  “I wouldn’t dare venture an opinion.”

  “Of course not,” Lady Dorothy said sarcastically. “The housekeeper tells me she’s for packing the girl off to a strict finishing school. My dresser is all for love’s young dream. Let the silly fool elope with some man and she’d be well enough pleased. The cook, the cook, mind you, seeks me out to suggest that I send Mr. Harold away because he’s spoiling the young miss’s appetite. And my coachman wants to move the whole menagerie back to London so he can take Anna to the shops and sit and gossip with his cronies. But Rivenwood, Miss Rivenwood, the highly experienced London companion, the one who has for the first time in three years managed to get wine delivered to Vinton that wasn’t hopelessly bruised in shipping, who orders peach-colored brocade and actually gets peach and not apricot; Miss Rivenwood, who got the second housemaid married in the very nick of time before she disgraced us all with a new addition to the household—”

  “These unwarranted encomiums—”

  “Miss Rivenwood, as I said, does not even deign to possess an opinion on a matter that is rapidly turning my household into a bear garden.”

  Melissa couldn’t help laughing. “It’s not so bad as that, surely?”

  “You don’t have a dresser drooling April and May flowers down your neck,” Lady Dorothy said huffily.

  “Hardly,” Melissa concurred.

  “Or the responsibility, unwanted, I must admit, of producing this fresh young bud for the season, with all the petals unrumpled.”

  “No. Or that either.” Melissa laughed.

  “You might at least give me some advice to sneer at. Certainly I have few enough pleasures left to me in this life.”

  “I’m sure it’s my clear duty as your companion to make a fool of myself in front of you,” Melissa said, “but ...”

  “Out with it. Amuse me with some particularly outrageous impertinence. You do it often enough when I don’t ask you to.”

  Melissa leaned her elbows on the table and stared frankly back at the old woman. “It would be quite outside enough for me to tell you to apply a sturdy hairbrush to the end of Anna where it will do the most good.”

  “It would indeed,” Lady Dorothy agreed, amused. “Besides, foolish as it may seem, I’ve no wish to beat the girl into submissiveness. I’ll leave that enjoyable task for her husband-to-be.”

  “Moreover, in my position, I can’t possibly suggest that the whole thing is a tempest in a teacup and should be left alone to rain itself out.”

  The dowager’s eyebrows drew together sharply.

  “It can be no more than that, surely. After all, her fancy could have lighted on a far worse candidate, Mr. Bosworth is a man of sober age and discreet good sense. It can come to nothing. He’s hardly encouraging her. Putting up with an overeager puppy is more like.”

  “It has every appearance of that,” Lady Dorothy said slowly.

  Melissa gazed at her curiously. “There’s no reason to believe him seriously interested in the girl, is there? Heiress chasing is hardly an in-the-bosom-of-the-family amusement, so we must acquit him of that.”

  Lady Dorothy’s frown deepened. “It can’t be money. His expectations ...” She looked up at Melissa as if surprised to see her. “But what the devil am I thinking about, discussing family matters with a superannuated governess, heh? That’s enough of your encroaching ways.” She picked up the account book. “Back to your letters, gel, and leave the gossip to housemaids and countesses, who can get away with it.”

  “With great pleasure, my lady.” Melissa managed the almost impossible feat of bowing while seated. “Was there anything else you wished to enclose in the letter to Mr. Biddle?”

  Chapter 8

  ... at last found someone who’s more a help than a hindrance to me, not that we need another damned woman about the place. Still, she keeps Giles tolerably amused. I need not tell you how Adrian is behaving.

  Excerpt from the letter of Lady Dorothy Merringham, Countess of Harforth, to Augusta Bilburton, July 28, 1818

  Five people may travel very comfortably in a barouche, especially if one of them is a skinny boy. But no one, Melissa reflected, could travel comfortably for any length of time in company with Anna Merringham.

  “When you take me to London,” Anna persisted, “for the season next year, will you open up Keptford House for me? That would be very elegant. How many couples can stand up in the ballroom?’1

  Anna had fumed for the first five miles. Lady Amelia Edgewater and a mission of mercy found no favor in her eyes. Her last consolation, the company of Harold on the journey, was denied her despite some highly accomplished cajolery.

  The sulks lasted until Whitney. After making everyone as uncomfortable as possible, she at length allowed herself to be coaxed into such a bright mood that Melissa, for one, remembered the black silences with nostalgia.

  Giles was saying patiently, “I haven’t the faintest notion how to organize a dancing party, at Keptford House or anywhere else. Mostly we had fifty or sixty couples, I think. Aunt Dorothy could tell you, if you really want to know. But I certainly won’t be holding any ball there fo
r you. Your Merringham cousins are responsible for your come-out.” He didn’t quite say, “Thank God for that,” but he was so obviously thinking it that Edgar had to bite back a smile. More than once the secretary and the paid companion had exchanged knowing glances across Robbie’s head, greatly endangering their professional gravity.

  “And I don’t know how many people can squeeze into the Merringham town house, so don’t bother to ask. My clearest memory of the place is that there were too many altogether. You will enjoy it immensely.”

  “I think it’s pretty shabby of you not to have at least one tiny little party for me since you’re going to be in town anyway,” Anna said wheedlingly. “If you won’t give me a coming-out ball, I’ll have to share one with Cousin Sylvia.”

  “So? You think there won’t be enough lobster patties to go around?”

  “It isn’t the same,” Anna argued. “If you would just open up Keptford House ...”

  “Loath as I am to trouble your head with details, Anna, I must point out that Keptford House is not mine to dispose of. It belongs, in point of fact, to Robbie.”

  Robbie would not have been human if he had not nodded gravely and triumphantly.

  Anna adapted to this argument with alacrity. “Robbie won’t mind if I use his old house.”

  “His trustees, however, would take a dim view of the expenditure. I don’t foresee any festivities under the roof of Keptford House until Robbie takes a wife there at some unspecified but presumably distant date.”

  “But if you’re going to be in town anyway.”

  “I’ll be at my place in Portsmouth Square. A bachelor establishment, you’ll remember. Most ineligible. You can’t expect me to marry just to provide you with a hostess.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Dance with you at your coming out. But most definitely at Merringham expense, under a Merringham roof.”

  “You mean in a poky little hole in the wall with the most Gothic furnishings. Would you believe it, they’ve put an Egyptian sphinx sofa in the Chinese parlor!”

  “Have they?”

  “And my Cousin Sylvia wearing the most completely farouche clothes. Everything about them is utterly ...” She sought for a really damning invective. “Utterly season-before-last! And Keptford House is just crying out to have a ball held there.”

  “Then Keptford House must continue to cry, my child.”

  Anna dug in for a long fight. It was doubtful she truly expected to secure her objective, but no conversation could be more entertaining than that concerning her simple girlish aspiration for an expensive ball in her sole honor. Giles could not often be induced to discuss the issue. Anna began to see the advantages of a long coach journey.

  The barouche slowed its steady pace, then rolled to a stop. Melissa was curious. Why had they halted here? Birch, willow, and heather stretched to the empty horizon. Not a house was in sight.

  “Tree across the road,” the driver called down. “Have it out o’ the way in a couple o’ shakes.” His very junior partner, whose existence was justified by sparing the bones of old Darby just such mundane tasks, hopped to.

  Melissa was in the seat facing backward. She was the first to sight the two men on horseback, hidden behind a stand of brush.

  What the devil? she swore mentally, and on the thought they spurred forward. Thick woolen scarves were wrapped across their faces, despite the hot weather. Their intention was unmistakable.

  Melissa clamped her hand on Giles’s arm. “Robbers,” she said in an amazed voice. “Two of them. With guns. But it can’t be.”

  They could hear them clearly once the horses’ hooves left the bracken and fell on the dirt road. Still holding onto Giles, Melissa felt his body tense hard as iron springs. Suddenly she was piercingly afraid, not of the robbers but of this man. His face was hard and set. He had become altogether strange, with an aura of deadly violence about him. She remembered, suddenly, that he had been a soldier. Was this how the French had seen him?

  Her fear passed in an instant, and Giles’s face was suddenly blank and bland. From behind the seat he pulled his greatcoat. Melissa saw what no one else did—that his hand had possessed itself of a small dueling pistol from the pocket of the coat. When he settled the coat across his lap, his left hand was hidden casually in the folds, holding the pistol.

  Anna trilled with amusement, “Robbers? Don’t be silly. There aren’t any highwaymen in Cornwall. It’s just like you to dramatize yourself. The underbred—” Her expression changed abruptly from superiority to panic as she saw the approaching riders. She let out a cry and clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes goggling.

  “Sit down and shut up, Anna,” Giles ordered as she jumped up, sobbing with panic, rocking the carriage and trying to throw herself bodily into his arms—almost, in the process, setting off the firearm he held. Edgar took her by the shoulders and pulled her back to the seat. But Edgar’s arms were not the comfort she wanted, so she burrowed into the cushions, knuckling her eyes with closed fists, beginning to shake and cry.

  A cold serpent of fear coiled around Melissa’s stomach. After Anna’s display of hysterics she was too proud to make any similar show, but she was not above wishing to. She put an arm around Robbie and didn’t bother to fool herself that she was comforting him. She just wanted to hold onto somebody.

  Robbie was the one who would be most frightened.

  He was only a boy. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered to him, trying to sound reassuring. “We’re not going to be hurt. They just want money.”

  Robbie said, offended, “I’m not afraid.”

  The two men carried hunting rifles. They were old pieces that should, by rights, have hung, smoking slowly like hams, over some cottage fireplace. The two horses were square lumberers prodded into an unaccustomed trot. It was unfair to judge them as riding mounts. They no doubt plowed straight furrows.

  The pair of riders pulled up a few paces from the coach with something of a flourish but then could not agree upon how to proceed. There was an argument, carried on with much gesticulation and flashing of rifles, over which of the two should take up a guard position over old Darby and the stricken junior coachman and which should confront the five passengers, only three of whom were women and children.

  The larger robber, a man marginally more heavyset and coarse-grained than his companion, won. With a final admonitory “Get on wif it, fool.” he lifted his gun to terrorize the coachman. Darby, prudently, dropped the reins and put both hands on his head. The coachman’s boy mimicked him.

  The coach horses, feeling the reins slack upon their backs, not unnaturally took this as license to graze a bit on the flowery verge of the road. The coach rolled gently forward two yards. The robbers were forced to reposition themselves and renew their threatening stance, with some consequent loss of authority. Even old Darby was looking a bit askance at them across the backs of his placidly cropping animals by the time the traditional “Stand and deliver” had been shouted in thick Cornish accent.

  The subsidiary bandit, chivied into actually fleecing the passengers, approached the barouche gingerly. “Doan none of ye vhine gentry move,” he ordered nervously. He had chosen a bright red scarf to conceal his face and complement his rather garish green cotton smock-shirt. His hair was of the brick orange that occurred occasionally along the coast. This made crimson as a choice of color for apparel uncertain at the best of times and disastrous when his face, as now, was considerably flushed. Although his features were disguised, his prominent ears would prove sufficient for recognition. His profession, when he was not robbing coaches, appeared to be that of agricultural laborer. This was proclaimed not only to the eye by his clothing but also to the nose. In addition, he smelled distinctly of gin.

  His larger companion, by chance or choice, was more sedately attired. He sported a blue scarf across his face and wore shirt and trousers that before repeated, though insufficient, washings had been blue.

  Red Scarf, (so Melissa dubbed h
im in her mind,) rested the barrel of his gun on the flange of the coach door. He leaned menacingly. His horse sidled. The gun barrel scraped along the door and fell off. Red Scarf righted his rifle, kneed his horse, and replaced the gun. Melissa stared. The bandit’s horse swiveled its ungainly head to watch its fellows lunching by the roadside and whickered mournfully.

  Robbie watched avidly. Edgar had turned scarlet with anger. Melissa was nonplussed. Anna was having hysterics, the crying kind. The robber breathed heavily into his scarf.

  Only Giles seemed completely at ease. He leaned back calmly as if he were entertaining his cronies at a wild but amusing party.

  “Don’t hurt my man,” he said in a mild voice as the blue-scarved highwayman poked the hapless coachman violently in his belly. “It’s not necessary. We have no intention of resisting.”

  “Not goin’ to hurt ye, Guv’ner. Ner the leddies neither.” Red Scarf swallowed convulsively. His eyes, above the crossed cloths, darted back and forth. They rested on Robbie. The little boy leaned forward excitedly, his thin legs dangling above the coach floor.

  Very slowly, as if of its own will, the gun barrel followed the direction of the man’s fascinated gaze. It pointed at the boy. It centered directly on his face. Robbie stared back, shocked. From where he sat the black steel barrel must have appeared enormous. Robbie clasped Melissa’s hand very tightly. Imperceptibly he shrank back against the unyielding cushions as if some dreadful thought had suddenly occurred to him.

  For a long moment everyone stayed transfixed.

  Giles’s eyes flickered from the masked rider to the boy. His hand—the one that held the pistol—moved ever so slightly until it, in concealment, covered the robber.

  He broke the silence. “Come on now. I can hardly suppose you’ve stopped us to inquire directions. In these situations it’s customary to demand that the victims render you some small token of appreciation for the entertainment you provide: money, valuables, that sort of thing. Or have you taken to the high toby so recently that you haven’t learned this yet?”