Amanda Scott (2 page)

When the footman had helped Margaret to alight, her ladyship, who had been speaking to the two tirewomen who had descended from the baggage coach, turned back to him again, a slight frown of disapproval creasing her brow. “Quinlan,” she said, “do you run up to the door and give that knocker a good clanging. I cannot think what is keeping Moffatt. We’ve made enough din out here to wake the dead. Mayhap he grows deaf in his old age.”

Since Moffatt was, as clearly as Margaret could recall, easily ten or fifteen years younger than her ladyship, it was obvious that Lady Celeste was annoyed. That she had expected the door to be flung wide immediately upon her arrival and to find herself enveloped in a warm welcome by all and sundry was clear to the meanest intellect.

Margaret hid a smile. “Perhaps the servants are all in the kitchen having their supper, ma’am. ’Tis nearly nine o’clock, after all, and Timothy must be tucked up in the nursery by now.”

“Poor child,” said Lady Celeste, ascending the stone steps at her side. “Two months an orphan with only servants to look after him. How lonely he must be.”

“For all we know, ma’am,” Margaret replied, “Timothy is not even here but has been carried off to Abberley Hall instead. You know that his lordship had a great fondness for Michael. I should not be at all surprised to learn that he has taken Michael’s only child under his wing.”

“Well,” replied her ladyship tartly, straightening her hat, “for my part, I should be astonished to learn anything of the kind. Abberley taking notice of a six-year-old? I wish I may see it. From all I have heard from my friends who deign to include news of him in their letters, he has become little more than an irresponsible rake these past years, and is much more likely to be off gracing some duchess’s house party or shooting in Leicestershire. Timothy would be much better off in the Moffatt’s care than … Ah, Moffatt,” she said without skipping a beat when the door opened at last to reveal a tall, plump man in a black suit and snow-white linen, “we had begun to fear the place had been deserted.”

“No, my lady,” he replied in a quiet, well-modulated voice, affecting a slight bow. “Welcome home, my lady. And, miss, I’m sure ’tis good to have you back with us again. Young master … that is, Sir Timothy will be very pleased to see you both, I’m sure.” Moffatt stepped aside as he spoke, ushering them into a spacious, well-lit hall, the highly polished floor of which was dotted with colorful Oriental carpets, acquired by an early-eighteenth-century Caldecourt who had extended his grand tour to the Far East.

A small but cheerful fire crackled in the large marble fireplace opposite the front door and candles glowed from an overhead chandelier and numerous wall sconces. Margaret, remembering her brother’s habits of thrift, hoped the show was merely in honor of their arrival and not a habitual display. Lady Celeste, accepting the brilliance as her due, saw nothing amiss and paid no heed at all to the brightly lit room. She had matters of greater importance on her mind.

“Our people can dispose of our baggage, Moffatt,” she said, “but we are famished, so I trust Mrs. Moffatt can manage to prepare something nourishing for us. We are accustomed, you know, to large midnight suppers.”

“Yes, my lady,” replied the butler, his expression nearly concealing his opinion of habits in Foreign Parts. “In point of fact,” he added with a slight twist of his lips, “I was on the point of serving tea in the drawing room when you arrived, and as it has been thought unnecessary to engage more than one footman at present, and him not being one of us and off to the village besides, supposedly to attend to important business, though how he can have business of any sort in a village far from his own—”

“Serving tea to whom?” demanded her ladyship. “Surely, young Timothy has been in his bed these two hours past.”

“Indeed, yes, my lady, although not because he was wishful to go. Growing right stubborn is that lad,” he added in an undertone as they moved to the graceful stairway at the rear of the hall and began making their way to the first-floor gallery.

Margaret, hearing, grinned at him, but her curiosity was quite as avid as Lady Celeste’s. “Who is in the drawing room, Moffatt?”

The butler’s features arranged themselves into nonexpression, and he avoided the eyes of both women. “Her ladyship and Mr. Caldecourt, miss,” he said as he moved purposefully toward the drawing-room door.

“Her ladysh—Not Annis!” Lady Celeste quickly lowered her voice on the last word, for Moffatt—in self-defense, Margaret decided, hiding her own annoyance—had flung the doors to the elegant blue-and-white drawing room wide and was announcing their arrival to those within.

The scene upon which they intruded was a cozy one. The two persons now facing the door had obviously been indulging themselves in a generous tea. A silver tray reposed upon a low table near the plump, black-clad Lady Annis Caldecourt, and the platter beside the teapot, though a large one, bore but one lone sandwich and a dusting of crumbs. Jordan Caldecourt, a sleek, sandy-haired young gentleman sitting opposite his mother in a straight-backed blue-velvet chair near a fire larger than the one below in the hall, had been caught taking a generous bite of a heavily buttered muffin. He choked a little but rose to his feet with studied grace to greet Miss Caldecourt and Lady Celeste. His mother, unperturbed, set down the blue-and-white Sevres china cup and saucer she had been holding and nodded regally without making any effort to rise from her comfortable brocaded wing chair.

“So you are here at last, Celeste,” she said. “Now Moffatt can put out all the lights downstairs except for the porter’s lamp in the hall. Such a waste to have so many candles burning all at once.” Her tone was placid but marked by an incipient whine that grated on Margaret’s ears. She saw Lady Celeste’s slim shoulders tense, though whether at the younger woman’s words, tone, or use of her Christian name she was at a loss to say.

“We made excellent time,” Margaret said. “At least, from London we made excellent time. Six weeks’ journey from Vienna, even in winter, is scarcely noteworthy.”

“No, indeed,” put in Mr. Caldecourt, approaching her with both hands held out. “Why, one of my chums—Brevely, I believe it was—actually made the trip in half that time. Of course, it was summer then, and he hadn’t to worry about a coachload of baggage and servants.”

Margaret, fearing that he meant to embrace her, quickly held out one hand to fend him off, withdrawing it immediately when he showed a desire to retain it in his own. “How do you do, Jordan? I trust we see you well.”

“Indeed, coz, and anxiously awaiting your arrival, unexpected though it was.” He smiled at her.

“Unexpected? How could we be unexpected? Surely you must have known we would return as soon as we received word of Michael’s death.”

Jordan shrugged with a slanted, somewhat accusing glance at his mother, and Margaret found herself thinking he had not improved much in the three years she had been away. Two years her senior, he had been an irritating young fop who, whenever they met in London, had seemed to enjoy attaching himself to her in order to bask in the reflection of her popularity. Although Michael and Abberley had merely teased her about her conquest of the young man, she was certain that Frederick Culross would have soon sent him to the rightabout, once Michael had allowed an announcement of their betrothal to be posted in the
Gazette
. But it would not do to think of Frederick now. Resolutely, she pushed the memory into the nether reaches of her mind and regarded Mr. Caldecourt straightly, waiting for his response.

But it was not he who spoke. “You do not ask how I fare,” said Lady Annis plaintively. “Of course, you do not realize that Doctor Fennaday has positively insisted that I be in my bed at nine o’clock. My health is tenuous, you know. But I must not complain of my sufferings. There could be no question, once your courier had brought us news of your intended arrival, of my going to bed without knowing you were safely at home. It is my nature to worry,” she added with a sigh.

“But why on earth are you here?” demanded Lady Celeste, unbuttoning her gloves. She glanced pointedly at the interested Moffatt, who quickly effaced himself, before she looked back at Lady Annis. “I am sorry you worried, for there was no need. But surely you ought to be tucked up in your own bed in Little Hampstead.”

Lady Annis drew herself up, her impressive bosom swelling with righteous indignation. “And leave my poor dead husband’s little grandnephew to the mercies of mere common servants? Surely, you cannot think I should be so remiss in my duty as that. Why, as soon as I heard—”

“Just how did you hear?” Lady Celeste interjected impatiently.

“The vicar,” replied Jordan, “and once we was here and had got our blacks on, we couldn’t very well put them off again, so there seemed little point in going elsewhere.”

“I must say,” put in Lady Annis quickly, “that I am utterly shocked to see you both in colors. Though I have little right to speak on that head to you, Celeste, I should think that out of respect for your very own brother, Margaret, you might have seen fit to dress more conventionally.”

“Foolishness,” said Lady Celeste, moving now to warm her hands at the fire. “We’d no time for shopping before we left, let alone time to have anything proper made up, as anyone but a ninnyhammer might have realized without my having to explain the matter. Margaret can attend to such stuff now that she’s home. Not that she don’t look fine as she is.”

Mr. Caldecourt, lifting his quizzing glass to his eye, surveyed Margaret from head to toe and agreed. “Slap up to the echo,” he said, nodding. “Dashed if she ain’t, Mama. That sort of rig will be all the crack in London when the Season begins next month. I’m persuaded we shall see any number of fashionable ladies in just such a getup as that.”

Irritated to realize that he was making her self-conscious, Margaret smoothed the slim, slate-blue wool skirt of her traveling dress, then turned away from him to remove her bonnet and gloves. She was saved the necessity of making any reply to his observation by Lady Annis’s assurance that she, for one, would see nothing of the kind.

“We shall stay quietly in the country this year, my pet. I am certain that my poor nerves would never survive the excitement of a London Season so soon after the shock of poor Michael’s death. And we
are
in mourning, you know.”

“But dash it all,
we
ain’t dead,” objected her son. “Perhaps I shall have to live a bit more quietly, without the usual romp and rattle, but I needn’t avoid London altogether. A man must live, after all.”

“You will do well, my dear, to be guided by me,” Lady Annis said implacably, her dark brows beetling over her small dark eyes. “Do not forget that you have a duty to your little cousin.”

Jordan colored up to his side-whiskers, but Lady Celeste had become bored by their conversation. She cut in now firmly and in customarily brusque tones. “We should not wish to keep you longer from your bed, Annis. You are indeed looking peaked and must be longing to put off your stays. I’m persuaded they are much too tight. Pray run along if you have finished your tea. Margaret and I shall do very well on our own. Where,” she added, glaring at the double doors leading to the gallery, “do you suppose Moffatt has got to with our supper?”

Lady Annis protested mildly that she knew her duty, but she was easily routed by the stronger-minded Lady Celeste. Jordan likewise showed a tendency to linger, but he was no match for the old lady, who told him straight out to take himself off because she’d had quite enough of his airs and affectations for one evening.

Once they were alone Lady Celeste took the chair vacated by Lady Annis, removed her frothy bonnet, and tossed it inelegantly onto a nearby claw-footed settee, leaning back with a long sigh of relief.

Margaret, sitting upon a Kent chair with identical clawed feet, regarded her grandaunt fondly, waiting for her to recover her equanimity. Instead, to her surprise, Lady Celeste frowned.

“What is it, ma’am?”

“Why are they here?” The old lady lifted her pointed little chin and straightened, gazing directly at Margaret. “What keeps them about?”

“To be sure, ma’am, their being here is a nuisance, but perhaps if they came for the funeral and if her ladyship’s health is truly precarious—”

“Fustian. They complain most who suffer least. There is nothing wrong with Annis Caldecourt that a little less idleness wouldn’t cure. I wish I may see her doing her duty by young Timothy. If he’s so much as laid eyes upon her, I’ll wager it was none of her doing. And who asked her to interfere, anyway?”

“Mr. Maitland, according to Jordan,” Margaret reminded her.

“That seems odd, very odd, indeed.”

But Moffatt confirmed the information when he finally appeared, accompanied by Quinlan, carrying a tea service lavish enough to satisfy even Lady Celeste’s wishes. “Aye, Mr. Maitland saw fit to apprise her ladyship of the master’s death,” he said when asked. His features were once again expressionless, but there was that in his tone which told Margaret, at least, that Moffatt thought the vicar had been guilty of a great piece of impertinence.

“But why are they still here?” demanded Lady Celeste as she helped herself from a platter of cold roast beef.

“Her ladyship insisted that it was for young Master Timmy’s benefit,” Moffatt said, taking a basket of hot bran muffins from Quinlan’s tray and holding them out for Margaret’s examination. “She would have it that you and young Miss Margaret was fixed in Vienna and wouldn’t be able to come home.”

“Nonsense,” Lady Celeste said, waving Quinlan’s services on to Margaret. “That woman wants something. Mark my words. She’s a schemer, always has been, and though she may disguise herself, she will not deceive the wise.”

Margaret had been listening to her ladyship but watching Moffatt. Now she was certain he wanted to speak, but she knew he would not forget himself so far as to put forth his own ideas on any subject without having been requested to do so. “What is it, Moffatt?” she asked gently.

Lady Celeste’s head came up sharply and she directed her piercing gaze at the butler, who seemed for once to have lost some of his aplomb. “What is it, man? Out with it. That woman
is
up to something.”