Amanda Scott (6 page)

He smiled at her. “In the entire history of England since the late eleventh century, there has been no invasion to speak of. Usurping kings have landed, to be sure, but their armies were here already, so they don’t count.”

“But one reads in the papers daily that Bonaparte is preparing a huge fleet at Boulogne and means to invade the south coast.” She had scoffed at such rumors in the safety of London, but here they did not seem so laughable.

“Well, if he does,” Joshua said comfortably, “we shall surely be the first to know. The coastline from the beach below Thunderhill to the mouth of the Rother at Rye provides the best landfall for his ships. There are no steep cliffs to hinder him, and until they get the Military Canal dug, the road across the South Downs remains clear all the way to London.”

“You don’t sound concerned.”

“I’m not, and you needn’t be. Aunt Hetta will insist that you stand to be murdered in your bed, but you needn’t heed her. She likes to be occupied, and preparing for the invasion is her present object in life.”

“What is she like?”

“You’ll see.” He said no more, and though the castle had disappeared from sight behind a grove of hornbeam and oak as they began the uphill climb, it soon appeared again, its enclosure wall looming above them. The north-lodge gates were open, and it was not long before the chaise rattled across an ancient wooden drawbridge spanning a grassy moat, passed through an equally ancient but well-kept barbican, and emerged in the grassy quadrangle around which the castle was built.

Chalford explained that Thunderhill, like Windsor and Arundel, consisted of two wards or enclosures that were separated by a central mound, dominated by its huge stone keep. West of the quadrangle and its oval gravel drive was the old tilting yard, now a peaceful rose garden. As he finished speaking, the chaise drew up before the main entrance and the sun disappeared behind roiling black clouds.

“Looks like we’re here none too soon,” he said, eyeing the sky. “By the look of those clouds, it’s going to come down pretty heavily.”

“It’s summer,” Adriana protested.

“Only July,” he said. “Our best weather comes in August. We’ll have some more good thunderstorms before then.” Leaning forward to push open the chaise door, he glanced at her searchingly. “I hope you aren’t afraid of thunder or lightning.”

“Oh, no, of course not,” she replied airily. Then, to forestall other such questions, she turned her attention pointedly to the entrance, a tall portico flanked by long colonnades, where a footman could be seen hurrying to meet them. In the shadows behind him, she could see the shapes of other persons moving in his wake.

Chalford ordered the footman to see to the trunks strapped to the chaise, then held out his hands to assist Adriana. By the time she stood firmly upon the ground, they were surrounded by people, but only a moment’s glance was necessary to inform her that there were but five persons, three females and two males. One of the men was the second footman, who hastened to help with the trunks. The other was an imposing personage whom she knew must be the butler, Benstead. No nobleman stood with such dignity or bowed with so stately an air.

Before she met Benstead, however, or the housekeeper, Mrs. Motley, she was presented to Lady Adelaide Corbett, a majestic, gray-haired dame of sixty, who was nearly as stately in manner as the butler, and to Lady Adelaide’s sister, the Lady Henrietta Blackburn. This lady—smaller, much thinner, and fifteen years younger than Lady Adelaide—had dancing blue eyes and soft brown hair lightly sprinkled with gray. Her unfashionably full skirts arustle, she bubbled up to greet them, smiling and chattering like a child.

“Oh, Joshua, how pretty she is! Lady Chalford, you simply must not stand upon ceremony with us, for we are family, don’t you know, and have lived here all our lives, except for my sister’s living in Yorkshire when Corbett was alive, of course, and I just expect we are going to get on famously. Will we not, Adelaide?” The last was added with a quick look over her shoulder at the woman standing so erectly behind her.

“Indeed,” was the gracious reply.

“Oh, I just know we shall,” Lady Henrietta rattled on, “and you will be the greatest help to us, my dear, for there is so much to be done and so little time and so few hands to do it. Do you know, Joshua,” she added, turning quickly to confront her nephew, “that absolutely nothing has been done about storage for all the grain and potatoes, let alone for the meat? Goodness knows the free traders can always find storage spaces. You must look into the matter at once.”

Adriana pricked up her ears at the casual mention of free traders, but Chalford said only, “Surely I may first step inside, Aunt Hetta. It is beginning to rain.”

A flash of lightning lit the quadrangle as though to underscore his statement, and Adriana braced herself, but the thunder did not come immediately, and when it did, it came in muted, distant rolls.

Chalford smiled down at her. “We’d best get you inside, sweetheart, before you get soaked.”

They hurried up the steps, across the deep porch, and into the entry hall. This chamber, with its black-and-white-checkered floor and arras-draped walls, was modest compared to what Adriana had expected, its only magnificence provided by the two central columns that appeared to hold up the high, painted ceiling.

“Come in here,” Chalford said, taking her elbow and guiding her through a pair of tall, heavily carved doors in the center of the right-hand wall. “I don’t know that it will be a great deal warmer, but there will be a fire.”

Adriana looked about her wide-eyed, for they had entered the great hall, a huge room with a fan-vaulted ceiling rising two stories above them. There were two fireplaces, set at right angles to each other, one in the north wall, opposite the entrance, and the other in the center of the west wall. Both were large enough for her to stand upright in, had she wished to do so, and both contained huge, roaring fires; however, she quickly discovered that it was necessary to move right into the northwest corner before the heat from either could be felt. Even then she shivered, rubbing her arms through her woolen sleeves.

“Benstead, fetch her ladyship a pot of hot tea,” Lady Adelaide ordered, settling her wide skirts as she took her place in a high-backed chair near the north fire.

“Indeed, we should all be grateful for some refreshment. Won’t you sit on that green brocade sofa, Lady Chalford?” she added with graceful hauteur. “It is quite the most comfortable seat of the lot.”

“Please, call me Adriana, ma’am,” Adriana said, striving to sound as sure of herself as Lady Adelaide did and convinced that she had failed miserably. Remembering suddenly that Chalford had expected her to wrest the reins of management from this woman, she felt goose bumps dancing upon her arms.

Lady Adelaide’s only response was a regal nod, but Lady Henrietta exclaimed, “How delightful your name is, my dear.
The Comedy of Errors
is quite my favorite of Mr. Shakespeare’s plays. So humorous, is it not? But now, Joshua, you simply must attend to me. We shall soon have a crisis if you do not. Adelaide says the matter is not urgent, but pray tell me, if you will, just what we are to do with all that food if we have no proper place in which to store it when the time comes to do so?”

“Let the man sit down, Hetta,” commanded Lady Adelaide sternly, signing to a footman to move the fire screen so that it shielded her somewhat from the heat of the leaping flames. Once she was satisfied as to its placement, she looked at Adriana and said, “I am persuaded you must be wondering what all the fuss is about. My sister is deeply concerned lest that Bonaparte fellow send his little ships to land upon our beaches. He won’t, of course,” she added, as though to do such a thing would be a social solecism. “The French never have done so, and I daresay they never will. A disorganized people, the lot of them.”

“Well, I must say,” protested Lady Hetta. “And what about the Conqueror, if one might ask?”

“I daresay one need not consider a deed that took place over seven hundred years ago,” replied Lady Adelaide placidly. “Now, pray, do not interrupt again, Hetta. Such a habit is unbecoming. As I was explaining, Adriana, there are some who believe that if the French do land here, the way to confound them is to remove all the foodstuffs from their path. The first plan was to burn everything, but of course few people would tolerate such foolish waste, so now the plan is to harvest every seed and grain stalk, kill every sheep and cow, and to store the food in secret places. Only, of course, no one thought about where those secret places might be. So they are at a standstill, which, of course, was to be expected,” she added with a basilisk eye upon her sister.

“You may scoff, Adelaide,” said Lady Henrietta bravely, “but you cannot deny that French ships have been seen nearly every day off their coast. Dozens of them,” she added dramatically.

“Not off our coast, however,” retorted Lady Adelaide, “and they certainly dare not land here. Where is your home, Adriana?”

This diversionary tactic proved successful, and both ladies listened with interest as Adriana told them about Wryde and the Wiltshire countryside in which it lay. She did not mention such crass topics as gaming debts or incapacity due to port, of course, and the conversation went smoothly. Lady Adelaide acknowledged previous awareness of Lord Wryde’s title, but admitted that she did not know the Barrington family. “That you come from Wiltshire accounts for it,” she said grandly. “From some odd cause or other, I know very few persons in Wiltshire.”

They finished their tea, and Lady Adelaide offered to show Adriana to her rooms, but Chalford shook his head, saying, “I reserve that privilege unto myself, ma’am, if you please.”

He took Adriana’s hand as she arose from the little sofa, and led her across the entry hall, through the lavender-and-white dining room with its long, highly polished table, and into the principal stair hall. At the top of the wide, winding stairs he turned right, into a comfortably appointed drawing room, its tall, arched, leaded windows facing east to the Channel.

“This is the marchioness’s sitting room,” he said as Adriana hurried to look out the nearest window. “Your bedchamber is through that door yonder, and your dressing room, too. There is no door to the bedchamber from the long gallery, but there is one to the dressing room, so you have access to the rest of this floor without always having to pass through the stair hall.”

She had just realized that, thanks to the curve of the hill atop which the castle sat, she could now see over the enclosure walls. Jagged flashes of lightning lit the dark-gray sky above the Channel, and she could see that the tide was running high, that whitecaps glistened on the waves. Still, she heard every word Chalford said to her, and when he was silent, she turned.

“Where is your bedchamber, sir?”

He smiled. “Across the stair hall, the door opposite this one. Would you like to see it?”

She nodded, then easily interpreting the gleam that leapt to his eyes, she repressed her own stirring desire and added firmly, “I would also like to see the rest of this place, if you please.”

His sigh was melancholy. “Very well, but you won’t see it all today, I’m afraid. There are over a hundred rooms, including chambers and halls that are little more than ancient ruins, particularly those nearest the keep.”

“Is the keep habitable?”

“A portion of the lower section could be, I suppose, but for the most part, it’s inhabited by owls. My sister suggested turning the whole place into quarters for guests, but we couldn’t think of what to do with Sir Francis and his friends.”

“Sir Francis?”

“Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lady Jersey, Lord North, Norfolk, and other such notables live there—in fact, the owls. My grandfather and grandmother named the first of them after famous and infamous Englishmen, and the tradition has continued. The latest is his highness the Prince of Wales.”

She chuckled. “I want to see them one day.”

“Of course, but for now, I suggest you satisfy yourself by exploring the hall block. Most of the rooms we use are here and on the ground floor. There is a central block and two flanking wings. My aunts’ chambers are on this floor in the south wing, above the state apartments. My bedchamber is in the northeast tower, and the library is in the north wing on this floor with an outside stairway. Once you get those landmarks firmly fixed in your memory, you will have no difficulty finding your way about.”

“Where are the kitchens and the housekeeper’s rooms?”

“Below my bedchamber and the library. Actually, the kitchen proper is in the basement, but there is an upper chamber, which includes the butler’s pantry just north of the dining room, by the stair hall.” He laughed at her look of bewilderment. “Never mind, you’ll learn. For now, let us look at the long gallery.”

They passed out of the drawing room, back into the stair hall, and turned left, emerging through a pair of carved doors upon a gallery fully two hundred feet long, its length punctuated on the west side by a series of tall, narrow windows that overlooked the quadrangle. Adriana realized then that the long gallery was directly above the colonnade. The east wall was hung with portraits of the Blackburn and de Tonnere families dating, Chalford told her, to the thirteenth century. He pointed out portraits of his parents, but when she asked him to tell her about them, he said only that, since they had both died when he was young, he scarcely remembered them.

When their tour was done, Adriana was more confused than ever. Out of a wealth of information, she remembered little more than that the southeast-tower room off the long gallery, which had served the ladies of the family as a morning room for many years, had recently been turned into a breakfast parlor. Chalford had laughingly explained to her that, although the change meant the servants, at great inconvenience to themselves, had to carry the breakfast dishes the full length of the hall block and up the second stair, the change provided a more convenient location for the aunts to break their fast.

“And that, I need not tell you, is what counts with Aunt Adelaide,” he added, his eyes atwinkle.