Dorothy Eden (10 page)

‘He went away because he quarrelled so deadly with his father,’ Tom Mercer went on. ‘The two of them were too much alike, two hotheads. But now all’s well, eh? And the little lad’s the dead spit of him, only more delicate like. Well, it’s a happy day for Mallow Hall. Except that Mr Ambrose can’t be too pleased. But I mustn’t gossip, ma’am. Anything more you want you just let me know.’

So that was another thing, Sarah reflected. Tom Mercer had not liked young Blane Mallow. He had been an arrogant spoilt lawless young rascal. This, however, did not constitute evidence, merely a point of interest.

She ate and enjoyed her meal, thankful to have a little time alone. The day had been a great strain. But it was not yet quite over, for when she returned upstairs Lady Malvina was standing at her half-open door. She grabbed Sarah’s arm and pulled her to her.

‘Are those two downstairs or in their room?’ she whispered.

‘In their room, I imagine.’

For some reason, Lady Malvina gave her deep chuckle. Her cheeks were darkly flushed and she smelled of wine.

‘That’ll please her ladyship. At last, eh? Don’t be shocked, Miss Mildmay. You’ll find that’s how the Mallows are, and my son the worst of them all. A drunkard and a lecher at sixteen. But he’s learned to behave like a gentleman now. Outwardly, at least. So you need have no fears, Miss Mildmay.’

The outrageous old woman pinched Sarah’s cheek and retreated into her room. The door banged. Stiff with indignation, Sarah stood controlling her impulse to march in after the old woman and slap her soundly. In that moment the door of the double room at the head of the stairs opened and Blane came out. He was still dressed in his travelling clothes. He began going downstairs with a purposeful air. At the last moment he lifted his head and saw Sarah. She was standing directly beneath the hanging lamp, and he could not fail to notice her hot cheeks and angry eyes.

‘What is it, Miss Mildmay? Has my mother been indiscreet, as usual?’

Sarah collected herself.

‘Nothing’s the matter, thank you.’

He remained staring at her for a long moment. His own eyes were over-bright from some emotion. Then he gave the faintest shrug.

‘Women!’ he said under his breath, and went on down the stairs.

Titus awoke early in the morning. He said he was hungry, which was not to be wondered at, since he had fallen asleep supperless. It was only six o’clock, but Sarah could hear stirring downstairs. She decided to go down and find someone who would give her some milk and some bread and butter for Titus.

Putting a wrap on and leaving her hair loose, for she would encounter no one but a servant, she slipped quietly down the stairs. The parlour was empty, and so was the dining-room. The clattering came from behind some other door. She tentatively tried one or two, seeking a way to the kitchen. But one led to the bar parlour, and the other to a kind of office. In this was a long leather couch, and stretched out on it, sound asleep, lay the new Lord Mallow.

Was he drunk? Too drunk to have climbed the stairs? Or had Amalie this time been the one who locked the door in revenge?

Sarah closed the door softly and tiptoed away. She was stumbling on the wrong secrets. This was not amusing at all.

T
HE SERVANTS WERE LINED
up in the hall. Blane with Amalie clinging to his arm acknowledged their bobs and curtseys with an offhand ease. He was the master come home. Standing a little behind them in the arched doorway of the old house Sarah’s blood was hot with resentment and indignation.

Ambrose had planned to dedicate himself to Mallow Hall, even at the expense of getting rid of the extravagant town house. She should have arrived here for the first time as his bride. The deferential bobbing of the servants would have been to her, not to that haughty sallow wife of Blane’s who looked sulky and tired this morning, as if she hadn’t slept well.

Instead she was forced to stand meekly in the background, taking precedence only over the stout elderly Bessie.

‘Ah, Betsey!’ she suddenly heard Blane exclaiming, and an elderly woman smiled with gratification. ‘At last one face I know.’

No one had prompted him. Lady Malvina was a little distance away. Yet it was simple enough, for the woman he had spoken to was definitely the oldest servant present. He had had only to be warned that there was one elderly woman he should recognise.

But when she was inside the hall her cool and calculated reasoning left her. For at the foot of the stairs hung the controversial portrait. It had had a great deal of significance at the hearing of the case, and Sarah’s heart sank as she looked at it. It was quite baffling. For the child in the picture was so remarkably similar to Titus that there was no explaining it away. Could such a likeness be a coincidence, one of those strange freaks of nature? And was there anything of that painted face left in the face of the man who was so confidently surveying his surroundings? The set of the eyes, the beginnings of the strong nose, the merry insolent look?

Who could say this child had not been him?

She must have stood too long gazing at the portrait, for she had attracted Blane’s attention. He came to stand beside her.

‘Is there any hope for Titus, do you think, Miss Mildmay?’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Lord Mallow.’

‘Starting from those beginnings,’ he waved towards the painting, ‘will he grow up to look like me?’

He was challenging her, she realised. Suddenly contempt filled her and all her confidence came back. Did he feel so guilty that he even had to test the reactions of a servant?

‘I am not good at predictions, Lord Mallow.’

‘One doesn’t wonder without surmising. You, if I’m not mistaken, have been busily surmising ever since you arrived in my house.’

Sarah had a flash of alarm. She must be careful. She couldn’t risk being dismissed.

‘The case was a
cause célèbre,’
she murmured.

‘Yes, it was.’ He began to laugh. ‘And worth winning, eh?’

Sarah followed his glance round their surroundings. Mallow Hall was not large, but it had been built with taste and discrimination. The proportions of the hall and the curving staircase were perfect. But the furnishings were shabby and it was evident that a great many repairs were needed. This was what Ambrose had been longing to do, and she would have adored helping him. But now everything was spoilt, for she would never be able to come into the house without seeing Amalie wandering about looking at this acquisitively, and hearing Blane’s confident voice.

‘You will have more knowledge of current taste in England than my wife who comes from a country where something to keep out the sun is the most important furnishing. Perhaps you’ll be able to make some suggestions about new colours and designs.’

Had he found out about Cousin Laura at Balmoral with the Queen? Sarah had her second flash of alarm, realising that just as she might succeed in unmasking him, so might he her.

But if he noticed her involuntary look of guilt there was no time to comment on it, for Amalie had come up to say, ‘Let’s go over the house room by room, my love. I long for you to show it to me.’

‘Certainly. Perhaps we could take Titus and Miss Mildmay to the nursery first. On the second floor. That’s one direction I couldn’t forget. I don’t suppose a single thing has been changed in the nursery. Has it, Mamma? Although I remember being rather destructive.’

Lady Malvina came bustling up beaming with happiness. She was letting no private doubts mar her pleasure in coming home to a house which she must have thought she had lost.

‘You were very destructive, indeed. We had to have new wallpapers after you went to school. Don’t you remember? We put up the new varnished ones.’

‘I remember. A beautiful glossy brown. A hotel I stayed at in San Francisco reminded me of my old nursery. I wondered why I felt so depressed!’ He laughed and took his mother’s arm. ‘Don’t be hurt, Mamma. I can’t pretend I was particularly happy with my father hating me most of the time.’

‘Don’t be foolish, Blane. He didn’t hate you. He only found you disobedient and wilful.’

‘We were too much alike. He probably saw all his own faults in me. Of course he hated me. But let’s go and look at the brown nursery, and decide what colour Titus shall have instead. It’s most important, after all. One day he may have to tell a jury what colour his nursery was.’

‘Don’t be absurd!’ Amalie said sharply.

‘Life is full of uncertainties and surprises,’ her husband returned airily.

But he had forgotten the new paper in the nursery until Lady Malvina had prompted him. And then common sense had told him that the fashionable and practical colour was brown. It was another lucky guess, as so many of his answers had been.

Amalie insisted on going over the entire house with Blane. Getting Titus settled and settling herself in her own room next door to the nursery, Sarah heard their footsteps and occasionally the loud voice of Lady Malvina as she threw out apparently casual remarks that Blane’s crafty brain would seize on as vital information. Amalie had not cared for Blane’s suggestion that Sarah might be useful with ideas for redecoration. If anything was done during the duration of their stay at Mallow, it would be done under Amalie’s instructions. That was evident at once.

‘Ambrose and I can re-do it,’ Sarah said aloud, to comfort herself.

Her room looked out over the garden towards the lake. Early in November this view was melancholy, and the sea-wind pressed against the window. Halfway through her unpacking she felt intensely lonely and homesick. Her sisters, Amelia and Charlotte, envied her, thinking she would have some drama with this queer family resurrected from the past. They didn’t know she was grieving for Ambrose, already separated by three days’ sailing, and wondering how she could endure months of meekness and self-effacement in a house that should be her own.

Ambrose, with his elegant pale good looks, would look so right in this house. She, too, she thought, glimpsing her face in the oval age-dimmed mirror, would not look amiss. Better than Amalie, at least, with her over-dressing and her sulks. What was wrong between Amalie and Blane? Who had started the quarrel and who was continuing it? Though Amalie had too much sense to let the servants notice anything. She was the devoted wife, clinging to her husband’s arm, making herself familiar with her new domain. But one would see at dinner that night who was winning the argument.

Thinking of dinner, her first meal to be shared with her employers, Sarah half-heartedly shook out her modest dinner dress, a green taffeta from which she had reluctantly removed the expensive lace trimming. She had to look like a governess, not a fashionable young lady. Her turn would come.

A gauche eager country girl called Eliza Matthews had been employed to help in the nursery. She had just come to work at the Hall and was very nervous. As a source of information she would be useless, but her nervousness proved a good thing for Titus. It gave him confidence. For the first time Sarah heard him laugh.

‘Miss Mildmay, Eliza doesn’t know how to do anything. She’s funny.’

Eliza blushed and hung her head. She was a plump healthy creature with bright cheeks and chilblains on her fingers. Her mental age was probably not greatly in advance of Titus’s, but she was obviously good-natured and eager to learn.

‘Have you any brothers and sisters, Eliza?’

‘Yes’m. Seven.’

‘Then Titus is a child just like diem, so don’t be afraid.’

‘It’s the old lady, ma’am,’ Eliza confessed in a rush. ‘I’m frit of her.’

‘That’s Grandmamma,’ Titus explained. ‘But she’s only playing games, isn’t she, Miss Mildmay? Eliza doesn’t need to be afraid.’

Already they were allies, the thin little boy and the awkward country girl. Titus seemed to have grown up several years already. For him, at least, Mallow Hall was going to be good.

Later when Lady Malvina came sweeping in to play her favourite game of grizzly bears it was Eliza who crouched in a corner, all eyes, while Titus shouted hysterically and allowed himself to be hugged to Lady Malvina’s vast bosom, and grumbled and growled at.

‘Look at that, Miss Mildmay! No tears tonight. He’s growing tough already. It’s the sea air. He’ll soon be strong and bold like his father used to be. What’s that girl goggling at?’

‘That’s Eliza, Grandmamma,’ Titus explained. ‘She’s frightened of you.’

Lady Malvina gave her alarming stare. She must have put on more petticoats against the cold, for she looked enormous. Jewels flashed on her fingers. Her grey hair had been done in an alarming erection of curls that nodded beneath her cap.

‘They’re all frightened of me. Silly creatures. But you’ll have to put up with me, my girl, because I’ll be in and out of the nursery a great deal with my grandson. He has to get used to vigorous games. Well, Miss Mildmay, which room have they put you in? May I see it?’

‘By all means. It’s just next door.’

Sarah took Lady Malvina into her room, and the old lady poked about inquisitively observing everything.

‘You haven’t got a lot of things, have you? But there’s good material in that gown. That didn’t cost sixpence. I thought governesses were poor.’

‘It was given to me, Lady Malvina.’

‘No! By your last employer? Well, I’m afraid you won’t be getting presents like that here. Not from the new Lady Mallow.’

Lady Malvina gave a short laugh and went on, ‘What do you think of Mallow?’

‘It’s a beautiful house.’

‘Falling to bits. Everything needs repairs, the roof, the drains, the chimneys, the floors. After all, it’s a hundred years old, and even if they built well in those days, there’s still damp and woodworm. But my daughter-in-law intends to ignore the dull necessities and spend a fortune on furnishings. Carpets, curtains, pictures. All outward show. She’ll find the house falls down about her treasures.’

‘Does your son agree to this, Lady Malvina?’

‘Of course he doesn’t. He’s thinking quite rightly of Titus’s inheritance. There’s money, but not that much. His silly wife will ruin him.’ Lady Malvina fiddled with the rings on her fingers. ‘And she forgets about me. I have requirements also. It’s preposterous how little jewellery I have for a woman in my position. Amalie forgets, or chooses to forget, how I had to sacrifice most of it. Well, Miss Mildmay, you’ll be dining with us tonight and you’ll be treated to an edifying conversation on Italian brocades and carpets from Turkey. I advise you to keep your mouth shut. You may think it wicked to see the Mallow fortune being disposed of like this—what’s left of it after my husband’s love affair with that house in Kensington—but my daughter-in-law doesn’t enjoy either advice or opposition. She wants to cut a dash. Her first opportunity, if you ask me. She can’t hold her own without expensive trappings. Strip her and you’d find a straw figure blowing in the wind. Where did she come from anyway? A shack that would collapse in a hurricane, I’ll be bound. Ask my son. He won’t tell me. He’s loyal to his wife. But there’s the new Lady Mallow for you. She can scarcely wait to get her hands on everything she can.’