Amanda Scott (8 page)

She blushed, for until he reminded her, she had not remembered calling him by name. Indeed, she had not thought at all about what she had shouted, not at the time, nor afterward. She did not doubt his word, however, and there being nothing she could say in her own defense, she yielded gracefully. “Very well, sir, if you wish it.” She tugged at her hand again, and this time he released it.

“So now we are friends,” he said, “and you will allow me to attend to my business here at Staithes without interference.”

She stiffened. “If we are friends, sir, you ought to be willing to hear my opinions.”

He frowned, but he did not answer her immediately. Instead he stood looking down at her with a probing expression in his eyes that made her wonder at first if she had smut on her chin or a button undone. It was all she could do to keep her hands at her sides and her tongue behind her teeth. Finally he said, “From what I have learned about you, I doubt that I can force you to keep your opinions to yourself, but I believe I must warn you to have a care for the manner in which you express them. You see,” he added, smiling in a way that sent tremors rippling through her body in a most unfamiliar manner, “I know myself, and I know for a fact that I don’t respond well to criticism or to uninformed interference in my affairs.”

“Then you must exert yourself a trifle to be more receptive, must you not?” Emily said, giving herself a shake, as though by doing so she could rid her body of the disturbing sensations. “Tell me something,” she added sweetly. “Do you recognize arrogance when you encounter it in others, sir?”

He chuckled. “That shaft flies wide, Emmy … ah, Emily. You must take care never to ask questions that may then be asked of you in return. ’Tis the mark of an amateur squabbler to give one’s opponent use of one’s own best ammunition.” When she flushed, he chuckled again. “’Twould be best I see you safe back to the house now, I think, as I have pledged to escort you all to Scopwick’s chapel after you have broken your fast. Do we cry truce?”

She smiled up at him. “I believe we must, sir, for the present at least.”

The rest of the day passed without incident if one discounted Emily’s astonishment at Vicar Scopwick’s prodigious size and energetically bellowed sermon; and, surprisingly, her truce with Meriden lasted for a little more than a week. During that time, she exerted herself to make friends with her sister’s children and learned that the earl was capable of patience when he chose to exercise it. Young Oliver, having evidently decided to attempt to act upon her advice, had approached him on several occasions, asking shyly to have this or that matter explained to him. Since the young man’s interest was peripatetic at best, his approach was not methodical, but Meriden bore up well.

Dolly, encouraged by her aunt to join the others when they paid duty calls at Enderby Hall and Bennett Manor and to examine the monthly ladies’ magazines with her when they arrived, began to show signs of behaving more civilly too. And when she discovered that Emily did not despise her more romantic choice of reading material, she became more approachable. Emily could not but wish, however, that her elder niece would begin to think occasionally of someone other than herself.

With Melanie she made no headway whatever. Indeed, she rarely saw the little girl, and when she did, their conversations were distressingly one-sided. Emily persevered, giving the child a blue silk ribbon for her hair and inviting her to walk in the garden with her whenever the opportunity arose. After one of these occasions, upon meeting Meriden in the hall afterward, she described her walk to him.

“I prattled like a magpie, I promise you, but I never got more than a single word at a time out of her.”

“She just needs more time,” he said.

“Well, she seems to enjoy hearing stories about my family, about my childhood, you know. Indeed, today—once—I am very nearly sure I almost made her laugh.”

“Telling about one of your many childish scrapes, no doubt.”

“How did you know?”

He smiled. “I have no doubt that your childhood was filled with such incidents. Will you tell me it was not?”

“No, for I was certainly a mischievous child. Fortunately, with so many brothers and sisters to look out for me, I rarely came to grief.”

“And you spent most of your time winding them all round your little thumb, I make no doubt.”

She favored him with a look of wide-eyed innocence. “I cannot think what gave you such a notion.”

“Merely the fact that you seem so confident, even here and now, of being always able to make everyone march to your drumming. Take care that you do not stumble up against something or someone who will not leap to your command.”

Fortunately for the state of their truce, Emily chose not to take offense, thinking only that he must have been indulged a good deal himself as a child. He was the last of eight children, Sabrina had told her, with his two elder brothers and one sister dying in an epidemic before his birth. How his parents and elder sisters must have doted on and cherished the precious heir to Meriden, she thought. No doubt, even now, his lordship believed he had only to decide upon a course of action and those about him would follow obediently along behind him.

Matters went smoothly between them for a time, however, and the arrival of Oliver’s friends, Alban Saint Just and Harry Enderby, at the end of the week, provided diversion without causing ructions. Ted Bennett had left their company at Helmsley, but Enderby, who stopped at Staithes only long enough to deliver Saint Just before continuing to his own home, proved to be a cheerful young man with a snub nose, rounded cheeks, twinkling blue eyes, and an unprepossessing demeanor. He dressed fashionably but conservatively and earned Emily’s respect from the outset with his open countenance and excellent manners.

Saint Just, with his reddish-blond hair, brown eyes, long-oval face, and excellent figure, proved to be handsome, charming, even witty. He was welcomed by everyone, particularly by Oliver and Dolly. He was taller than Oliver, two years older, and though he claimed to be one of the dandy set, Emily privately thought him a fop, for his clothing was as colorful as Oliver’s. He prided himself, he said, on being unafraid to experiment with hue and tint. Not for Mr. Saint Just were the pale yellow pantaloons, dark coats, and snow-white, well-starched linens that were currently enjoying favor among the London dandy set.

“Unenterprising and dull,” he pronounced flatly when asked about that fashion over dinner the evening of his arrival.

Dolly giggled. “Oh, Mr. Saint Just,” she said, “you must know so very much about London. Do tell us.”

Mr. Saint Just airily admitted having spent some weeks in the capital, acquiring polish. “Town bronze, they call it,” he said, and willingly went on to describe various sights to his audience, two of whom were particularly fascinated. But since his descriptions included only such clubs, gaming hells, and sporting events as he had visited, Emily soon found herself looking to the earl, also present at the table that evening, in expectation of having the conversation directed into more acceptable channels.

Meriden only grinned at her. It was Miss Lavinia who squelched Saint Just. “Didn’t encourage you to spout stuff about cockfights to ladies in the metropolis, did they, young man? Learnt that much all on your ownsome, I daresay.”

Impaled upon the basilisk stare emanating from behind Miss Lavinia’s wire-rimmed spectacles, Saint Just flushed deeply, having clearly been so caught up in his narrative that he had forgotten his audience. “Beg pardon, ma’am. Meant no offense. ’Twas an amusing story, was all.”

“I daresay,” said Miss Lavinia, unimpressed. “You one of the Saint Just lot out of Norfolkshire?”

“I have that honor, ma’am.”

“Thought so.” Miss Lavinia returned her attention to her dinner.

The rest of the meal and the two days that followed passed uneventfully except for Emily’s second experience of a Sunday service at Mr. Scopwick’s little church, where the very rafters vibrated with the vicar’s extensive periods. It amused her, as it had the week before, to watch her sister sitting in rapt concentration, her brow furrowed as she tried to follow the sense of what was being bellowed at them. Emily, who considered devotion to be a private matter and who had never had the least desire to bellow at God, was rather startled to discover that her uppermost emotion was amusement.

The ladies’ escort that morning had been provided by Oliver and Mr. Saint Just, but the Meriden pew was directly across the aisle from the Staithes’, and the gates were low enough for her to see that it was occupied. The single occupant looked up just then and she saw her amusement reflected in his gray eyes. Blushing, she turned her gaze virtuously to her prayer book.

Mr. Scopwick was holding forth at that moment on the wicked treatment suffered by the French prisoners of war in England, and Emily’s attention was soon drawn by his words. She was shocked, not amused at all, to learn that there were upwards of twelve thousand such prisoners in camps throughout the country.

“So distressing,” Sabrina said on the way back to the Priory. “One cannot help but feel for them, but I cannot agree that we should look to their needs before those of our own, try as I might.”

“Of course not,” agreed Emily, walking at her side along the path that led from the chapel and vicarage to the road through the home wood. Miss Lavinia walked ahead of them, while Oliver, Dolly, and Mr. Saint Just, enjoying their own conversation, followed some distance behind. After a moment’s pause, Emily added, “By all accounts, the French treat our people much worse than we treat theirs.”

Miss Lavinia, clicking her tongue, said over her shoulder, “Saw in the
Times
last week that they wouldn’t let poor Lady Lavice enter France to visit her husband in that detention camp at Verdun. Foolishness, that’s what it is.”

“Well, but we don’t let Frenchwomen into England either,” Emily pointed out.

“Spies,” declared Miss Lavinia flatly. “We couldn’t trust one among the lot of them. A proper English lady wouldn’t stoop to such nasty deeds.”

“On Wednesday evening it was the deserving poor,” Sabrina said musingly, wrapped in her own thoughts. “Do you know, I have never known how to tell the difference between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Unless it’s children, of course. Perhaps that is what he meant.”

Emily smiled. “Was Mr. Scopwick so fierce about our obligation to the poor?”

“Oh, dear me, yes,” Sabrina replied. “He is always fierce.”

“Always has been,” put in Miss Lavinia. “Takes things to heart, Eustace does.”

“Well, his heart must be a large one if it matches the rest of him,” said Emily, thinking her sister’s description of the man as a Goliath had hit the mark. He didn’t dwarf Meriden, but the earl did look somewhat reduced in size standing next to the massive dark-haired, fiery-eyed vicar.

They didn’t see any more of Meriden that day, but he was on hand Monday afternoon when a large, lumbering traveling carriage drew up at the front entrance of Staithes Priory to deposit a burly man of medium height and a sturdy boy of thirteen with tousled light-brown curls and a surly look of defiance in his light-blue eyes.

Emily and Sabrina, observing the arrival from the drawing-room window, hurried down to greet them, joining Meriden, who saluted Giles’s companion with smiling affability. “Well done, Harbottle. I knew I might depend upon you. Any trouble?”

Emily noted the quick, challenging look in the boy’s eyes and the reassuring wink from Harbottle.

“Naught to mention, m’lord,” said the latter. “We changed teams often enough to make good time, think on, and I’ll warrant the lad and me rubbed along tolerable well, all told.”

“Good man. Well, Giles?”

“How do you do, sir?”

“Very well, thank you,” replied the earl, favoring him with a look of sardonic amusement. “You and I will talk later. You may make your bow now, if you please, to your mama and your Aunt Emily.”

Giles obliged with more grace than might, under the circumstances, have been expected of him. The look in his eyes when his gaze encountered Emily’s was shy and mischievous at one and the same time. “How do you do, ma’am?” he said. “You didn’t half give me fits with that letter, you know. I didn’t realize females could read Latin.”

“I can’t, you wretched brat, but my brother Ned translated the whole, and when we discovered what you had done, we decided to serve you up some of your own sauce.”

“Served is right,” Giles said, grimacing. “My tutor saw the thing and made me translate every word. It took me two full evenings and made me muck up some of my other work, besides.”

“Poor boy,” said Emily, grinning at him. “No wonder you never deigned to reply.”

Giles grinned back, unabashed. “I should say not.”

Meriden had been listening to the exchange with interest. He said, “The letter must have been a very long one to have occupied two evenings in translation.”

Giles favored him with a chilly look. “I daresay you could have done the thing in a trice, sir, but Latin is not my favorite subject.”

“Nor is any other, by the look of your school reports,” the earl observed evenly. “Get your traps inside, lad, and take some time to get your bearings. I will see you in the library at three o’clock. I have a number of things to say to you.”

Giles did not look as though he expected to enjoy their interview, but he went obediently into the house with Sabrina on his heels, and Emily soon found herself alone on the front drive with Meriden. He had lingered to issue orders to his servant and to the coachman, and she had lingered, hoping to make his forthcoming interview with Giles a little easier on the boy.

When the coach had gone, Meriden looked down at her with the same touch of sardonic amusement she had noted earlier. “You would do better to spare your breath,” he said gently.

“I wanted only to remind you, sir, that Giles is merely a little boy and deserves—”

“We won’t discuss what he deserves,” Meriden said, cutting her off abruptly. “You have not been privileged to see the very impertinent letter he wrote to me, so you can have little understanding—”