Baroness in Buckskin (2 page)

“Nonsense! You owe me nothing of the kind.”

“Perhaps not, but I should feel better if you allow me to make one all the same.”

She inclined her head in agreement. “Very well, then.”

He handed her the paper, and she spread the single sheet. It was a letter, as she had expected, but she was surprised to note that it was not the letter that had been delivered during dinner. This one was considerably older, bearing a date some three months earlier in the upper right-hand corner, a date written in a spidery, feminine hand. It had been folded and refolded so many times that the paper was worn quite thin along the creases; however unexpected his lordship’s announce-ment, the decision had apparently not been made without a great deal of consideration.

“The Right Honourable the Lord Ramsay,” it read, “I hope you will pardon my presumption in writing to you without a proper introduction, but I fear my Christian duty demands nothing less. I wish to bring to your attention the plight of my young friend and your distant kinswoman, Miss Susannah Ramsay. Miss Ramsay’s father, Mr. Gerald Ramsay, recently died after a lengthy illness, leaving Miss Ramsay alone in the world at the age of eighteen. Her situation is most uncomfortable—not that she is penniless (in fact, she is the sole heiress to a town house in Richmond as well as a large property in Kentucky), but she is sure to be the object of attentions with which I fear she is ill-prepared to cope. It would be an exaggeration to say that her father lost his wits after the death of his wife when Susannah was only two years old, but there is no denying the fact that he became quite eccentric, burying himself and his small daughter in the wilds of Kentucky. He certainly prospered there, but at the expense of Susannah’s upbringing. Although she is both intelligent and kindhearted, she is in no way fit to be presented to Richmond society, and I confess I fear for her future. If you can see your way to providing for her in some way, I am sure all who care for her must be eternally grateful. Yours most sincerely, Mrs. Charles Latham.”

Having reached the end of this extraordinary correspondence, Miss Hawthorne looked up at his lordship. “And so, discovering Miss Ramsay to be unsuited to Virginia society, you decided to inflict her on London society instead,” she observed with a hint of a smile.

“Hardly that,” protested Lord Ramsay. “I am uninterested in cutting a dash in London, so it matters little whether my wife is fashionable or not.”

“Has the girl no maternal relations who might take an interest in her welfare?”

He shook his head. “According to her lawyer—Mrs. Latham’s letter was enclosed with his—her mother’s people cut her grandmother off during the war, when she took up with one of the despised redcoats. So Miss Ramsay can look for no help from that quarter.”

“But marriage is so—so drastic. And so permanent. Can you not simply bring her here and make her an allowance instead?”

“I suppose I might,” he said with a sigh, “but truth to tell, I am reluctant to take responsibility for yet another dependent female.”

Miss Hawthorne flinched. “I beg your pardon, Richard. I did not know you felt that way. If you will give me a reference, I shall seek another position at once—”

“Jane!” he exclaimed in some consternation. “You cannot think I was speaking of you! No, I was thinking of Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Amelia. In fact, I am very grateful for your presence, for I have a particular favour to ask of you.”

“A favour, Richard? What is it?”

He gestured toward the letter in her hand. “If Mrs. Latham is correct, Miss Ramsay, however untutored, does not lack intelligence. Which is a very good thing, as I could not bring myself to take a stupid woman to wife, however dire her circumstances! I shall depend upon you to show her how to go on, to teach her what she must know to have charge of the running of a sizeable household.”

“And if she resents my meddling?”

“What meddling? You were companion to the last Lady Ramsay; why should you not be companion to the next? A suggestion here, a subtle hint there, and you will have her performing the rôle as if to the manner born. Please say you will, Jane, for I know of no other woman to whom I could entrust such a task.”

She could not deny the practicality of Lord Ramsay’s proposal. She had no desire to leave Ramsay Hall and seek employment elsewhere. Nor, for that matter, was anyone more qualified to instruct the next Lady Ramsay in the running of the household which Jane herself had overseen ever since the dowager’s health had failed.

“Very well, Richard. I accept.”

“Bless you!” he exclaimed, seizing her hand and raising it to his lips. “I knew I could depend on you, best of cousins!”

She would not disappoint him. She would take poor little Miss Ramsay under her wing and turn her into a comfortable wife for his lordship and a suitable mistress for Ramsay Hall.

And she would never give either of them reason to suspect that she had been deeply in love with Richard Ramsay for more than a decade.

She never told her love,

But . . . sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Twelfth Night

Looking back, Jane supposed it had been inevitable. She had been only eighteen when her father’s death had left her cast adrift on the world, much as Miss Susannah Ramsay had been after the death of her own father. But whereas the late Mr. Ramsay had been a wealthy eccentric, Mr. Hawthorne had been a charming wastrel, leaving nothing behind at his death but a mountain of debts, a bevy of disconsolate mistresses, and a daughter of marriageable age with no dowry to speak of. When she had first met her cousin Richard, he was twenty-one years old and in mourning for his father, having attained his majority and come into his title within the space of a month. Upon being informed of her existence, he had lost no time in making her acquaintance, and had no sooner straightened up from his introductory bow than he had dropped to one knee and made her a formal offer of marriage.

She had not accepted, of course. Never mind the fact that she was a Ramsay only on the distaff side—and one had to go back five generations to find the common ancestor—Richard’s determination to do his duty in spite of his own inclination had been so obvious that she could not have brought herself to (as he said) make him the happiest of men, no matter how dire her prospects for the future. In the end it had been Lady Ramsay, his mother, who had settled the matter by bringing Jane to Ramsay Hall as her companion. In fact, so adroit had been her ladyship’s handling of the situation that it had not been long before she and Richard were able to face one another without any of the awkwardness usually attending a rejected proposal of marriage. They had soon become friends, and eventually trusted confidantes. But the damage, if it might be so described, was done: to young Jane, whose only experience of men was a father who knew no obligation but the pursuit of his own pleasure, the kindness of the youthful Lord Ramsay was irresistible. She had fallen head over ears, and the intervening years had shown her nothing in Richard’s character to make her revise her girlish first impressions.

In the years that followed, she had made herself useful—some might say indispensable—to Lady Ramsay, and as that lady’s health had failed, Jane had taken over more and more the running of the household. And if her determination to make Richard as comfortable as possible sprang less from duty than from rather warmer sentiments, she had taken care that no one should suspect the state of her heart, for this would mean the end of her comfortable existence. The highest sticklers might suggest that there was something improper about her continued presence at Ramsay Hall two years after the death of her employer; kinder souls, however, would have pointed out that Miss Hawthorne
was
, after all, his lordship’s cousin, and if anything of, well, of an
amorous
nature were likely to happen between them, it surely would have taken place years ago under her ladyship’s watchful eye, and would have culminated at the altar. Jane sighed. There was no denying the fact that this attitude made her life easier, as it allowed her to continue at the house that had been her home for the last ten years; still, it would have been nice if
someone
had believed her capable of inspiring in Lord Ramsay an unseemly passion.

She had known, of course, that someday Richard would take a bride; after all, no man so conscious of his responsibilities as to propose marriage to a stranger would be so negligent as to ignore his primary obligation to provide for the succession. In the same manner, she had always understood that the new Lady Ramsay would not wish the former chatelaine to continue under her roof. She had supposed that, when the time came, she would retire to the Dower House with the Aunts, although she suspected Aunt Charlotte would not desire any interference with her own running of that establishment any more than Richard’s bride would with that of Ramsay Hall. To be sure, Richard’s request had postponed the dreaded day of her removal, but at what cost? Surely there could be few things more painful than to tutor the very one whose claim meant the end of hopes so long suppressed that she had believed them dead.

Such melancholy thoughts still haunted her the following morning, as she consulted with Mrs. Meeks, the housekeeper, concerning meals for the coming week and assuring that old retainer that there was no reason to suppose the new Lady Ramsay (really, how
did
the servants contrive to ferret out such events almost before the family knew of them?) would wish to replace her. At last, having dismissed Mrs. Meeks to her domain below stairs, Jane sought refuge in the garden, and it was here, a short time later, that Sir Matthew Pitney found her.

“Exquisite! A rose in its natural setting,” declared her longtime suitor, a well-built gentleman of forty who might have been accounted handsome, had it not been for a heaviness about his jowls. In truth, Jane found these unfortunate facial features less objectionable than his even heavier-handed gallantry.

“No rose, Sir Matthew, merely a hawthorn,” quipped Jane, offering her hand.

“I will allow no one to contradict me in this, Miss Hawthorne, not even your fair self. I said a rose, and I meant it.” So saying, he raised her hand to his lips.

“You are too kind,” she protested, gently but firmly withdrawing the hand he showed no signs of releasing. “Tell me, Sir Matthew, what brings you here this fine morning?”

“As if your own self were not enticement enough!” Seeing not pretty confusion but skeptical amusement reflected in her countenance, he abandoned (at least for the nonce) his unsuccessful attempt at flirtation. “Truth to tell, Miss Hawthorne, I have heard a piece of news so astonishing that I came at once for confirmation. Is it true that Lord Ramsay is to take a bride from America?”

“Gossiping with the servants, Sir Matthew? Fie on you!”

He neither confirmed nor denied the charge. “It is too bad, your nose being put out of joint by an interloper, and an American, at that.”

“Nonsense! I have always known that Richard would marry someday.”

Apparently she was more distressed than she let on, for somehow Sir Matthew contrived to possess himself of her hand again, and held it clasped between both of his own. As she berated herself for a moment’s inattention, he bent over her and addressed her in throbbing accents. “I’m sure I need not tell you that there is
one
place you might occupy secure in the knowledge that you would never be supplanted!”

“No, indeed, you need not tell me at all! And it is too kind of you, Sir Matthew, but quite unnecessary. I am not to be supplanted, as you suggest; in fact, quite the opposite, for my cousin has begged me to stay on and instruct Miss Ramsay in anything she might need to know about the running of a large household.”

She was pleased to note that there was no wobble or break in her voice as she said the words—nothing, in fact, that might suggest to her listener that she felt anything but pleasurable anticipation for the task set before her. Even so, she found it more than a little ironic that she, who had more reason than anyone to wish Miss Susannah Ramsay at perdition, should be compelled to act as the girl’s most outspoken advocate. But it appeared that her point had been made, for after making a few unobjectionable inquiries as to when young Miss Ramsay might be expected to arrive, as well as any plans made for her introduction to the neighborhood gentry, Sir Matthew abandoned the subject of Lord Ramsay’s approaching nuptials, and turned instead to the topic of flowers.

“I detect Miss Amelia’s hand at work amongst your roses,” he observed, stooping to smell one. Jane had a sudden mental image of a bumblebee stinging him on the nose, and strove to keep a straight face. His next words helped considerably in this regard. “I wish you will prevail upon her to give me a cutting. I am something of a horticulturist myself, you know, and I have not seen this particular color anywhere else.”

“No, for she cultivated it herself. She calls it Ramsay Red, but I should have said it was more purple than red, wouldn’t you?”

“By whatever name, it is certainly striking. Still, I have asked repeatedly for a cutting, but without success. Will you not speak to her in my behalf?”

She shook her head. “I fear yours is a hopeless cause, Sir Matthew. As I said, she calls it the Ramsay Red, and you are not a Ramsay, you know.”

“No, but I flatter myself the houses of Ramsay and Pitney may be joined very soon.”

“Will they? I was not aware of it.”

There was a distinct chill in her voice, but if Sir Matthew noticed, he was unfazed by it, wagging his finger at her in what he no doubt considered a playful manner.

“You say that now, Miss Hawthorne, but when you find yourself a pensioner in another woman’s domain—well, let us say I shall not give up hope just yet.”

“Oh, but I wish you would,” she sighed, after he had finally taken his leave. “I
do
wish you would!”

For the next six weeks, she moved about the great house like an automaton, doing by rote those chores in which she had once taken such pleasure, constantly aware that in a matter of weeks, she would surrender the house, as well as its master, to another. For his part, Lord Ramsay continued to go about his usual pursuits, riding about his estate, addressing his tenants’ concerns, attending Sunday services with the rest of the family, entertaining and being entertained by the neighborhood gentry. Jane was not sure which would have been worse: seeing him in a glow of anticipation, in dread of his bride’s arrival, or in this curious state of normality, just as if nothing had changed, when in fact his life—and hers—would never be the same.