Carola Dunn (10 page)

“Thank you, not just now. I want to be out and about. Have you any fresh milk?”

“Aye, miss, t’lad brought up t’ can an hour since. Lil, fetch a jug o’ milk for miss. Mind how tha goes, now.”

The wide-eyed kitchen maid scurried off again, to return with a blue-and-white striped jug. When Nerissa thanked her, she turned crimson and curtsied. Nerissa suspected neither Lady Philpott nor Mrs Chidwell, and certainly not Sir Barnabas, had ever so much as noticed the child’s presence, let alone thanked her.

The milk was richly yellow with cream, an altogether different liquid from the thin, bluish stuff purchased from street-sellers in York. Between sips, Nerissa asked Cook why, as a Yorkshirewoman, she had not served Yorkshire pudding at dinner.

“T’master--t’auld master--didn’t fancy it, miss, and nowt were served but what he fancied.”

“Well, I fancy it. Will you make it next time we have roast beef? And parkin for tea?”

“Wi’ pleasure, miss,” said Cook, beaming.

Nerissa went off with a hunk of bread and butter in her hand and a satisfying feeling that she had found another ally.

Though she wanted to see the gardens, among other things, she didn’t care to go straight from her confrontation with Cook to another with a gardener. She followed a faint path across the park towards the upper end of the valley. As she strolled, she kept a wary eye on the grazing cows, hoping that the beasts who had so generously supplied her with milk and butter would not take it into their heads to approach too close.

With relief she reached a stile and climbed over into a lane. The hedgerows were wreathed with orange and scarlet garlands of bryony berries and silvery old-man’s-beard. Nerissa’s mother had taught her the names on riverside walks in York, but she had never seen them growing in such profusion. Pretty as they were, she found her attention concentrated mostly on her feet as she picked her way between the muddy ruts. She was about to give up and turn back when another stile beckoned her onward.

The sun had risen above the brow of the hill behind the house to disperse the mists and sparkle on the dew. Climbing the stile she discovered the other side of the hedgerow to be overgrown with brambles, still bearing late blackberries. She stuffed her gloves in her pocket and stopped to taste them.

Amidst the tangle of prickly stems and yellowing leaves, countless spiders lurked in their dew-spangled webs. Admittedly the webs had a delicate beauty of their own, but Nerissa did not care for the eight-legged occupants. The better to reach between both spiders and thorns in her quest for the few unshrivelled berries, she took off her cloak, folded it, and set it on the stile.

She was reaching up with purple-stained fingers for a bunch dangling overhead when she heard the sound of approaching hooves. A rider on a roan gelding cantered across the field towards her.

“Halloo, Nerissa!” he called.

Recognizing Miles, she waved. On horseback, sitting tall in the saddle, handling his spirited mount with practised ease, he looked less than ever like a debauched wastrel.

As Miles drew rein, Sir Barnabas ventured to open his eyes. Whisked along through the air hanging on like grim death to a single tail-hair, he didn’t know what would have happened had he let go in mid-flight. He didn’t want to know.

His insubstantial feet drifted down to meet substantial ground and he sighed in relief. He wasn’t going to travel that way again!

“Good morning,” said Nerissa. Sir Barnabas almost answered before he remembered she could not see him.

“Good morning.” Miles swung down from the saddle and doffed his hat with a smile. “You are the very picture of a country lass.”

“And you of a country gentleman.”

Sir Barnabas snorted at this exchange of inane compliments between the Bond Street beau and the piece of Haymarket-ware. Still, compliments might lead to more significant exchanges, though the season was hardly conducive to a tumble in the hay. What could he do to help? He cast about for ideas.

“I want to apologize for last night,” said Miles soberly, “for not warning you. I hadn’t thought about our being host and hostess, and when Harwood sprang it on us, it was too late to consider all the pitfalls.”

“I cannot hold you responsible for my own stupidity.”

“Ignorance, not stupidity. Quite different, and I had offered to guide you. I’m a little surprised that you didn’t guess what was needed when all the ladies turned to you at the end of the meal.”

“That was the trouble!” The girl actually blushed. She really was an excellent actress, Sir Barnabas thought absently. He had spotted a spider dangling from a glistening thread just above her head and it had given him a splendid notion.

“Everyone was staring at me,” Nerissa continued. “It was like being on stage, before an audience. I suffer so dreadfully from stage-fright that I cannot move or think.”

“I see! That explains a good deal.”

“It explains why I am not an actress,” she confessed. “I daresay I would be otherwise, perfectly respectable of course, like Mama. Not that being an actress, respectable or not, could change the likelihood of my committing the most dreadful
faux pas
.”

“Not dreadful,” said Miles. “Not last night at least, though I can’t speak for the future. I’ve been to more than one formal dinner given by a fashionable newly-wed bride who has made just the same mistake. No one would have thought twice about it if you had not been surrounded by people hoping you’d do something wrong.”

While they talked, Sir Barnabas was concentrating on a delicate manoeuvre. The spider’s gossamer thread was so flimsy, he had no difficulty swinging it aside till the creature hung above Nerissa’s shoulder.

Alarmed, the spider dropped the last few inches. It sat on the greenish-brown woollen cloth for a moment, planning its next move. Sir Barnabas’s cold, once-bony finger poked it towards Nerissa’s neck.

As its eight feet scampered onto her bare skin, Nerissa clapped her hand to her neck. Too late. Urged on by Sir Barnabas, it had already dived for cover down the high but loose front of her bodice.

“Something went down my dress,” she cried, clutching her bosom.

And that bosom now claimed all Miles’s attention, just as the late baronet had intended.

“A leaf?”

“Something with legs.” Twitching, Nerissa pulled at the neckline of gown and tried to peer down it. “It’s scuttling about.”

“I’ll help you get it out,” Miles offered, a gleam in his eye.

She played the outraged maiden well, too. “Certainly not,” she snapped. “Please go over to the stile and make sure no one comes. And keep your back turned. And hurry.”

Grinning he obeyed. Led by the reins, his mount followed, tossing its head as it passed Nerissa.

The moment Miles’s back was towards her, Nerissa turned her back on him, untied the bow at her neck, and pulled down the front of her dress. Her chemise was cut lower. As she held it away from her body and squinted down it, Sir Barnabas saw the white globes of two small but softly rounded breasts.

“I can’t find it,” she wailed.

“Do, pray, permit me to be of assistance, ma’am,” said Miles, the formality of his words belied by his laughing voice.

“No!”

“Then might I suggest that if you cannot find it from above, you try to shake it downwards, to the ground.”

“Oh yes, I will,” Nerissa said gratefully. She loosened the ribbon at the high waist of her gown.

Sir Barnabas watched every gyration of her slim body. There was no harm in it, for after all he was her grandfather, and dead, besides. He just wanted to see how far his shameless granddaughter would dare to disrobe in the open air.

She twisted and jiggled and jumped up and down. Perhaps she was an opera dancer rather than an actress? The gelding caught sight of her and rolled its eyes nervously. What a pity Miles, in a most unexpectedly well-behaved manner, was observing her orders rather than her undulating quivers.

Nerissa stopped and stood still with an intent expression. “I can’t feel the horrid thing moving now. I do believe it’s gone.”

“Congratulations. Shall I....”

“Keep your back turned!” She retied the ribbons, straightened her bodice, smoothed her skirts. “There, I’m decent. Oh, bother, my plait has come undone. I knew I should have pinned it up.”

About her shoulders flowed a rippling cape of light brown hair, touched with shimmers of pure gold by the rising sun. Miles’s eyes widened in admiration.

Self-conscious, she gathered it back from her face with both hands. As she raised her arms, her breasts pressed against the fabric of her gown and Miles’s admiring gaze slipped down from the cloud of sunlit hair.

On the whole, Sir Barnabas was satisfied with the effects of his spider ploy.

Nerissa let her hair drop. “I haven’t anything to tie it up with,” she said helplessly. “I cannot walk into the manor with it hanging loose. Everyone will be about by now.”

“Your cloak will hide it.” Looping the reins over his arm, he held out the drab grey garment for her to don.

“Of course. I’d forgot I had it with me.”

An excellent disguise, thought Sir Barnabas as she pulled it around her shoulders and raised the hood. No one seeing that dingy drapery would guess it concealed a Bird of Paradise. He’d be interested to see what sort of indecent, vulgarly garish apparel she appeared in when Harwood gave her a free hand to purchase whatever she wished. She’d never have the strength to resist, he was sure, even for the sake of keeping up the image she wished to convey.

Miles’s thoughts were also on a new wardrobe for Nerissa. He had taken an intense dislike to the shabby cloak, which seemed to eclipse her personality as well as her figure. Not that her gowns were much better. Those he had seen hung on her like sacks. Assuming she had made them herself, her sewing might be appropriate for theatrical costumes but she’d never make a living as a fashionable modiste.

She had said she hated sewing, he recalled. He hoped she’d find life at Addlescombe more to her liking, despite her unpleasant relatives.

“Are you going on,” he asked, “or has your encounter with the wildlife given you a disgust of the country?”

“Not at all.” She smiled. “At least it didn’t bite me, and the blackberries were some compensation. I should like to explore farther, but I’m unaccustomed to walking far so I had best turn back now. I mean to walk every day until I can go all the way to the tops of the hills without difficulty. There must be marvellous views.”

“There are. That’s where I’m headed. But you could go much farther afield if you rode. I daresay we can find a mount to suit you in the stables--or did you not bring a riding habit with you?”

“I’ve never had one. I’ve never had a chance to learn to ride,” she said wistfully.

“What a shocking deficiency in your education!” he teased. “It’s time it was remedied. Your lessons will begin as soon as you can have a habit made.”

“Really?” Her face glowed, her wonderful eyes bright as stars. “You will teach me? You are doing so much for me already.”

“Since I am your grandfather’s godson, I consider myself your god-uncle, or something of the sort. I’ve no idea what are the duties of a god-uncle, so I am at liberty to invent them as I go along.”

Nerissa laughed. “Thus far, your invention meets with my unqualified approval,” she said. “Well, I must not keep you any longer from your ride, uncle.”

“Don’t call me uncle or I’ll abdicate the rôle,” he threatened with a grin. “I’ll be on my way, then. I look forward to the time when you will accompany me.”

Mounting, he waved a salute and turned the roan’s head towards the far side of the field.

A trot, a canter, a gallop, and they sailed over the five-barred gate. He leaned forward to pat his mount’s neck. A prime bit of blood he was, one of Matilda Philpott’s two hunters, though belonging to the estate, not to her personally, or he’d not have brought him out. There was a fine hack, too, which she rode, and an ambling prad used by Raymond Reece about his parish duties.

None of the others rode, and the only other saddle-horse was an elderly mare put out to grass when Sir Barnabas had to give up riding. She would do admirably for Nerissa’s lessons.

He was glad Nerissa wanted to ride, and that the creature falling down her gown had not made her take the countryside in aversion. How he had managed to refrain from turning his head when she was disposing of it, he wasn’t at all sure! He’d been rewarded, when she held back her hair, by a glimpse of a figure far more shapely than the hideous cut of her gowns had hitherto revealed. Her hair, too, had been a revelation, the sun’s touch transforming the ordinary brown into sunshine.

Yet what he recalled most clearly was a slim hand stained reddish-purple with blackberry juice, and the guilty way she had hidden it behind her when she saw him. He smiled to himself.

Sir Barnabas was also glad Nerissa wanted to ride. Miles would be helping her to mount, lifting her down, picking her up when she fell. Nothing could be more conducive to intimacy, he thought, drifting homeward behind her.

Later they would ride together, though, beyond his reach, for he wasn’t going to try to keep up with a horse ever again. Still, winter was coming. They’d not get up to much mischief out of doors. He congratulated himself on being clever enough to die in the autumn.

He blinked as his vision blurred. A lingering patch of mist? No, he could see quite well to either side.

He recalled his sight blurring as he died, before he reopened his eyes on his new existence. Never say he was going to leave this spectral state before he saw his last wishes carried out! He blinked again, hard.

Something dangled just before his face. Squinting, he focussed on it. A spider? The ghost of a spider! The reproachful gaze of eight eyes told him as clearly as words that the unfortunate arachnid blamed him for its demise, squashed to death somewhere in Nerissa’s undergarments.

Being haunted by a spider was peculiarly disconcerting, especially as he was a ghost himself. He hit out at it.

His hand went right through it. Though, with an effort, he was able to move material objects, it seemed to be impossible for a ghost to move a ghost. He turned his head to one side. The spider, its palps twitching, still hung two inches in front of his nose.