Amanda Scott (3 page)

“Those poor children,” Anne said. “How dreadful for them to have lost both parents in such a short period of time. Papa told me that your brother and his wife were taken within weeks of each other. Was it some sort of illness that killed them?”

“No.”

When he did not elaborate, she felt it would be unwise to press him, so she tried another tack. “How old are the children, sir? What are they like?”

“Andrew is fourteen, Sylvia nine,” he said, and though his manner was still brusque, she found nonetheless that his voice continued to stir that curious sensation deep within her. “As to what they are like,” he added, “I cannot imagine that my opinion of them will aid you much in dealing with them. You are sure to form your own opinions once you meet them, and you will meet Andrew at once, since he is at the house. Sylvia is presently residing in Staffordshire with my sister, Lady Harlow, but she can return to the Priory whenever you like.”

He looked out the window at the passing countryside again, and Anne fell silent. The day having turned blustery, the grass along the roadside was flattened by gusts. Nearby trees bent and swayed as if to unheard music, and the sun had been playing “all-hide” with errant white clouds since shortly after the ceremony. But Anne had no wish to talk about the weather, and since Lord Michael clearly did not intend either to volunteer information about his family or to encourage questions about Upminster Priory, she was at a loss. The thought of spending the next few hours in close proximity with a man who did not want to talk was daunting but not nearly so daunting as the thought of spending the rest of her life with him.

The chaise moved rapidly now, but it was well sprung, and did not sway much, for which she was grateful. She was a good traveler, but despite the increasing wind, the day was still warm and the road dusty. She knew that had the chaise been the sort to rattle her bones, she would have fallen victim to one of her annoying headaches long before they reached their destination.

She made no further effort to engage him in conversation, entertaining herself instead by watching the passing scenery, anticipating the moment when she would begin to see landscape and villages that were unfamiliar to her. The clouds grew grayer and more ominous, but the fields were green with new growth and the hedges alive with chirping birds and new color. She loved the springtime. They passed through thick woodlands of oak and silver birch, heavily populated with red deer and grouse, and traveled across lovely open moorland carpeted with bright new grass and bushy, dark green heather.

They traveled as swiftly as the condition of the roads allowed, and at Matlock, the red marls, gravel, and sandstone of south Derbyshire began to give way to limestone and gritstone, quickly noticeable because the road itself turned from reddish brown and tan to gray and pebbly white. As the lovely midland moors were replaced by steeper stone-walled hills and dales, lush, waist-high, emerging cornfields fell behind, giving way to harsher, higher grass country. The air was cooler now, and the wind-ravaged sky grew darker. Thunder muttered from glowering dark gray clouds roiling up behind the peaks to the north. At first the sound was barely discernible above hoof-beats and rattling wheels, but then the thunder groaned louder, belched, and roared to a crescendo, its echoes buffeting from rock to rock down the narrow valley through which they drove. Anne became aware that the carpetbag at her feet was moving.

The first plaintive cry, she hoped, reached only her ears. Surreptitiously, she moved her foot, gently caressing the side of the bag. The resulting silence reassured her, but that silence continued only while she moved her foot. When she stopped, there was instant complaint.

“What was that?” her companion asked.

Anne hesitated, unsure of how he would react to learning that the chaise contained a third occupant. Before she could think how to phrase the information, there came another clap of thunder, a yowl from the carpetbag, and Lord Michael leaned down and picked it up. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he opened the bag and peered inside. To her astonishment, when the kitten’s furry black head popped up, he laughed, and the stern expression vanished. He said, “What have we here?”

Juliette looked at him, wide-eyed and trembling, but another sharp crack of thunder galvanized the kitten. With a cry of terror, it turned and leapt toward Anne. Catching the lace trim of her low-cut gown, it clawed its way to the bodice edge, then tried to bury itself headfirst in the space between her breasts.

Embarrassed, Anne grabbed Juliette and said guiltily, “I had to bring her, sir. She—” Juliette’s sharp claws turned the last word into a gasp of pain.

Lord Michael reached for the kitten. “Here, let me.”

“Oh, no—That is,” she added, leaning away, “I-I’m sure she will not go to you. Juliette, no!” The kitten’s sharp claws dug painfully into her breast. Others were caught in the lace, and when Anne tried to free herself, she seemed only to make matters worse.

“Let me get her,” Lord Michael said firmly. “Come here, cat.”

Ignoring Anne’s gasp of indignation and rigid embarrassment, he reached right into her bodice and grasped the kitten. For the second time that day, she felt his warm hands on her bare skin. To her astonishment, the little cat allowed him to remove it without another murmur.

“Juliette doesn’t really like strangers,” she said stiffly, taking the kitten from him and settling it in her lap. “I feared they would send her out to live in the stables if I did not take her away, so I hope you are not vexed.”

“Good Lord, of course I’m not. She’s a little beauty.” He tickled Juliette under the chin, on the spot where the only white hairs on the cat’s body formed a lopsided triangle. The pointed chin went up obligingly, and Juliette began to purr. “She
will
come to me on her own, you know,” he said confidently, moving his finger along one side of the furry jaw toward an ear.

Doubting him, Anne watched, fascinated, as the kitten, ignoring the thunder now, pressed its head hard against the stroking finger, purring, clearly enjoying the attention. When Lord Michael stopped, Juliette looked at him in indignation.

He wiggled the finger enticingly on his knee, then stopped. Juliette watched alertly. When he wiggled it again, the kitten put out a paw, halting it in midair when his finger again stopped wiggling. When the finger moved, the paw jabbed, and when the finger disappeared suddenly between his legs, Juliette leapt from Anne’s lap to Lord Michael’s knee, reaching between his legs to attack. The two played for some time before, chuckling, Lord Michael gathered the kitten up in one large hand and began to stroke it with the other. Purring, apparently perfectly at home, it tucked its front paws neatly beneath its pointed chin, and a moment later, when he lifted it to his shoulder, near Anne, the kitten blinked twice at her, then curled into a ball and settled down, purring contentedly until it went to sleep.

Watching Lord Michael with Juliette, Anne began to revise her first impression of him. He might not be a talkative man, but he was not made of stone. When he turned suddenly and smiled at her, clearly delighted by the kitten’s acceptance of his friendship, she smiled back and, aware of the strange tingling again, decided that marriage to him might prove to be a good deal more interesting than she had expected.

T
HE THREATENING STORM STILL
had not broken when the carriage left the public road and the west front of Upminster Priory came into view. Built in the Ionic style, the enormous house stood on the east bank of the River Derwent near the bottom of a steep, rocky, thickly wooded hill. Black clouds, now laced with frequent flashes of lightning, and still grumbling and crashing with thunder, rose ominously above the Peaks to the north and roiled over the hilltop beyond the house. Slanting rays from the setting sun, now about to slip from view behind the great English Apennines bordering the valley to the west and north, lit the stone walls of the house, turning them to glittering gold.

The carriage rattled over an elegant triple-arched stone bridge, passed through a high arched gateway in the stone wall that surrounded the grounds, rolled past the low stone lodge, and continued at a smart pace through a wooded park and up a tree-lined drive, slowing only when it entered the gravel carriage sweep moments before Lord Michael’s postillions drew their horses to a halt before the splendid entryway.

Engaged Ionic columns supported the pediment over the entry, approached by wide, sweeping white marble steps. The effect was stately, but Anne had eyes only for the gardens surrounding the house. The formal patterns of the low hedged borders were visible to her experienced gaze, and she could see a lake, at least one folly, and even a ragged maze. Clearly the gardens had once been splendid, but now her fingers twitched to pull the weeds she detected in the borders, to clip straggling bushes and shrubs, and to pick dead heads from rhododendrons, azaleas, and the few spring rosebushes already in bloom. She pressed her lips tightly together, wishing she had the nerve to tell the man beside her what she thought of allowing such magnificence to fall into ruin through what appeared to be simple neglect.

Lord Michael did not seem to notice the gardens. He handed Juliette back to Anne and reached impatiently to push open the carriage door and let down the steps just as the heavy white front door of the house was flung wide and two liveried, bewigged footmen hurried to meet them, supported by a much more stately personage who remained behind in the open doorway.

The two young footmen were tall and well formed, filling out their green-and-gold livery to perfection. Lord Michael nodded to them and said as he handed Anne down from the carriage himself, “Our things are all in the second coach. Be sure to send Lady Michael’s maid to her as soon as it arrives.”

“Yes, my lord,” both footmen said together, bowing ceremoniously to their new mistress when, remembering his duty, Lord Michael presented them to her as Elbert and John.

Smiling, holding Juliette as she handed the carpetbag to the first one to reach her, Anne looked them over carefully, aware that the largest part of her duties as Lady Michael St. Ledgers would be to oversee the household and its servants. This pair looked almost like twins at first, since they were dressed exactly alike and wore powdered tie-wigs, but she quickly observed that one of them had blue eyes and the other brown, and that the first had a friendlier face while the second seemed to have more pride. Quietly, she said, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I am sure you will both be very helpful to me.

The friendly-looking one, John, blushed and bobbed another bow, while Elbert said rather more stiffly, “Yes, indeed, your ladyship. We look forward to serving you.”

Sensing Lord Michael’s increasing impatience, she looked swiftly at him, stroked the kitten beginning to tremble in her arms, and said, “I daresay it will take me some time to learn everyone’s name, you know.”

The impatient look softened, and he nodded, then put a hand under her elbow and urged her up the wide marble steps to the entrance and the stately person awaiting them there.

“This is Bagshaw, my dear. He looks after the house.”

Anne nearly curtsied, for Bagshaw was surely one of the most imposing men she had ever met. As tall as Lord Michael and nearly as broad-shouldered, the man carried himself like a king. He did not wear livery. Instead, he wore an elegant, well-fitted black suit of clothes with snowy white linen, highly polished shoes, and his own hair neatly clipped into a fashionable style. Had she not known the sixth Duke of Upminster to be deceased, she might easily have mistaken Bagshaw for His Grace. She had met other servants who behaved with more dignity than their noble masters, but Bagshaw seemed to have turned the knack into an art form. His bow was little more than a relaxation of his stiff posture. His demeanor was stonelike, his gaze cool and polite.

“How do you do, Bagshaw?” she said gravely. “You are the house steward, no doubt.”

“We have no present need for a house steward at the Priory, madam,” he said with grave dignity. “I am merely the butler.”

Merely
did not seem to suit him in any way or fashion, but Anne nodded pleasantly, saying as she had said to the two younger men moments before, “I am sure you will be very helpful to me.”

“Indeed, madam. We are all quite pleased to welcome you to the Priory. You need only make your requirements known, and they will be instantly attended to.”

Lord Michael said, “Bagshaw took over everything to do with the house when my brother’s steward retired, and so efficient is he that, although he keeps but a skeleton staff these days, we’ve seen no need to hire a new man, or even an under-butler. The house runs quite smoothly without them.”

“Do you manage all the accounts then, too, Bagshaw?” Anne asked with a friendly smile. “I must confess, it was the one part of running my father’s house that I most disliked, for he became enraged whenever one made the least error in arithmetic.”

“Mr. Bacon, His Grace’s land steward, attends to the estate’s accounts, madam.”

“All of them? But that must be—”

Speaking at the same time, Lord Michael said dryly, “Her ladyship does not really intend to acquaint herself with every detail this instant, Bagshaw. Pray, tell Mrs. Burdekin to be prepared to present the rest of the staff just before we dine, which”—he drew a watch from his waistcoat pocket and opened it—“I should like to do in precisely one hour. Where is His Grace?”

“His Grace went out shooting in the home wood, my lord. I should perhaps inform your lordship that the household is somewhat more reduced than before your departure. Mr. Appleby has left us.”

Lord Michael grimaced, but all he said was, “Very well. I shall send a notice to the London papers in the morning. If His Grace returns to the house before we dine, inform him that I wish to speak with him in my dressing room. If he does not, he can dine when he does come in. We shan’t wait dinner for him. Oh, and be sure to tell Lord Ashby that we dine in an hour.”

“Yes, my lord. His lordship is in his sitting room if you should wish to make your arrival known to him.”