Her Ladyship's Companion (6 page)

“I’ve lost my way,” she admitted. “I was admiring the architecture of the house.” She improvised rapidly. If this was an uncle in righteous wrath pursuing his errant nephew, Melissa had no desire to meet awkward questions. She fingered the newel-post nervously. “This carving. It’s Flemish, isn’t it?”

Giles nodded. “There’s some beautiful workmanship here. As you’ve already discovered, this is the old wing of the house. Damp, of course. Aunt Dorothy burns a man-high stack of wood a week during the spring to keep the mold out of the tapestries.” He accompanied her down the stairs. “This is the shortcut. No need to stop and admire the pictures.” He propelled her along. “All Tarsins. A depressingly plain lot. They look like a bunch of rascally pirates. Not surprising; they were. Any picture with an ounce of artistic merit is in the main body of the house. Not even Aunt Dorothy’s mania for the family makes her bring these monstrosities over.” He stopped abruptly and pulled back one of the window curtains. “Excellent view of the classical grotto from here, if you’re foolish enough to want one.”

“I noticed it on the way in,” Melissa responded, frantically trying to capture a polite adjective or at least a noncommittal one. “It’s a bit ...”

“Incongruous?” Giles finished for her. “Is that the word you’re searching for?” Melissa started to deny it, but Giles was already saying, “All that unclothed marble and the long lawn were put in by the fifth earl, my grandfather’s cousin. He made the grand tour and never fully recovered from the experience. What he wanted with that wasteland of grass on this coast is beyond my comprehension. In the winter the winds sweep in from the Atlantic and rattle the hinges off the eastern windows, the reason why the front rooms are now courteously reserved for guests. Sir Adrian will tell you what he thinks of the draft. Would you believe they uprooted a three-hundred-year-old grove of oaks to put in that sheep field?” He ended with the pungent condemnation “Vandals.”

Giles guided Melissa down the hall and flung open a door. “This will be more to your taste. The Queen’s Room,” he announced. The room was a gem of its kind, paneled in carved dark oak, beautifully proportioned. A picture of Elizabeth hung over the mantelpiece, the painting suffused with the gold brown of great age.

“Lady Dorothy will at some time or another inform you that Queen Elizabeth slept here. Actually this room is a beautiful fake, constructed in about 1750 by one of the more batty Tarsins of the period. You may deal with Dorothy’s delusion as you see fit. She’s quite rational really, except where family is involved. And she’s only following an ancient family tradition that says Queen Elizabeth once stayed under the roof for one night on her way to some place or another. It’s not true. My esteemed ancestors were a group of inveterate liars.”

He was a cheerful gentleman this morning, Melissa thought.

“The bed is Elizabethan at any rate. Carved oak.” Giles patted the coverlet fondly. He managed to resist the temptation to suggest they try the bed out together to see if it still worked. The slight wrinkle of disapproval on her forehead put him in rollicking spirits. Absurd that such a child should be playing schoolteacher. Giles sat down on the edge of the bed. “It’s deuced uncomfortable,” he noted in some surprise. “But pretty. The hangings—lovely things, aren’t they?—were repaired by my aunt. Get her to show you around the place. She knows all those delightful and unlikely tales that have accumulated about this place. I believe there are no less than three ghosts, one canine. None has been sighted in a generation or two, by the way, so you may rest easy. Probably the rising damp discourages them.”

“You make light of your heritage, Mr. Tarsin,” Melissa said a little severely. Did he think to roast her with ghost stories? She was not so credulous.

“Never that. And unless Robbie should meet an untimely end in one of his harebrained escapades, it’s not, strictly speaking, my heritage at all.” Giles continued genially. “I inherited Calyburn House in Somerset from my mother’s people. One-quarter this size, with a nice set of tenant farms and no ghosts on the premises. It is there, to tell the truth, that I’d rather be, especially in haying season. If you want a true worshiper of the Tarsin heritage, you’ll have to go to Aunt Dorothy. Married twice, but never, to my knowledge, anything but every inch a Tarsin.”

Still speaking such nonsense, he reached out and captured her hand. Idly he drew her closer to the bed until he saw a spark, just the faintest beginning of uneasiness, in her eyes. Then he released her. “But enough of this gabble. Breakfast is waiting for you. And Aunt Dorothy. She’ll be pleased to see you up so early. She disapproves of people who sleep late. In fact, she disapproves of most people.”

As she would most certainly disapprove of my taking defenseless young girls into bedrooms in the empty wing, Giles thought, following Melissa out to the hall. As well she should, evil-minded old woman that she is.

“To tell the truth.” Melissa hesitated. “Lady Dorothy didn’t seem exactly enamored of me last evening.”

“On the contrary. She was highly pleased. You should see her meet someone she dislikes.” They passed through another picture gallery and turned down yet another hall. “The insults were nothing personal. She doesn’t appreciate the idea of having a companion, that’s all.”

“In that case—”

“She must have one. Her doctor in London recommends it. She has a heart condition, he says. She’s good for a great many more years if we can keep her from exerting herself too much. With a little subtlety you should be able to relieve her of a lot of trivial concerns. You’ll have no trouble handling her. All it calls for is a little tact.”

Melissa had the feeling that subtlety would break like thrown water on the rock of Lady Dorothy’s indomitable nature. “I’ll do what I can,” she promised doubtfully.

Chapter 6

...
rather face Napoleon and all his generals than plan another such party. Cissy, my
very fingernails ache.

Excerpt
from the letter of Melissa Rivenwood to Cecilia Luffington, June 17, 1818

A plump matron in tight purple satin sailed across the room in the quadrille figure
le pantalon.
In one giant mirror she approached her purple reflection as in two others she magnificently receded from it. Melissa could think, in a dazzled way, only of damson plums sliding about on a silver tray.

The young girls wore white or flower colors—rose pink, jonquil yellow, forget-me-not blue. The older women had jewelry like colored stars. This might be only Cornwall, but there was money in Cornwall. Even some of the men were brilliant as gaudy birds. Beau Brummell’s dictum, that evening dress for men should be sober and the linen spotless, had not yet crossed the Tarnar.

“The mistake, Lavinia,” Lady Dorothy was saying, “lies not in importing this gaggle of Hanoverian balloons for monarchs. The mistake was teaching them English. The first George, in my father’s time, made a perfectly adequate king and never understood a tenth of what was going on around him.”

Mrs. Armitage grunted in reply. “Neither does the regent, and I can’t see it improves him.”

Melissa shifted from foot to foot behind the sofa and hoped none of the dancers was close enough to overhear these remarks.

The lady in purple satin had somehow become lost in the complexities of the dance. She wandered uncertainly through the figure and was at last reunited with her long-suffering partner.

Lavinia Armitage lifted a quizzing glass from its resting place upon her plentiful bosom to watch. “Isn’t it wonderful how Selina has managed to maintain such dreadful taste in clothing all these years? Season after season. Such consistency.”

“Does she still cheat at cards, I wonder?” Lady Dorothy said, in what Melissa could only feel was far too penetrating a voice.

Melissa wished the musicians would play more loudly.

It was Lady Dorothy’s infamous annual birthday party. The invitation, a sine qua non for entry into local society, was for forty miles around as eagerly schemed for as was a voucher to Almack’s in the wider fields of London. The entertainment was religiously attended and, if survived without a blighting comment from the dowager, recovered from with well-earned relief.

The birthday party was held this year, as it was every year, in the long Mirror Salon overlooking the sea. On either side, running the full length of the room, were the tall mirrors that gave the gallery its name. In dozens of images they reflected the musicians, the dancers, the lucky guests who had taken possession of one of the Chippendale chairs along the walls, and the unlucky guests who were standing. Nine Bavarian crystal chandeliers glowed with candlelight. The candles in the wall sconces wouldn’t be lit until the sunset died off the sea and the crimson drapes were closed.

Lady Dorothy and Lavinia Armitage shared a sofa at the head of the room, from which vantage point they could review the progress of each pair of dancers. From time to time they made observations.

Giles Tarsin, in the first set, partnered past them a sprightly dark-haired girl in pale pink silk. She was all laughter and modesty in her simple dress. It fell in long, lovely lines that had been crafted by no village seamstress. The girl’s step was light, her dancing faultless, and she flashed rows of white teeth when Giles spoke to her. It appeared he was very witty that evening.

“Who’s that? The one with Giles?” Mrs. Armitage asked.

“Oldest Polwist gel. Name escapes me.”

“Forty thousand pounds is what I hear.”

“Probably. Very warm in the pocket, Polwist. There’s the tin mine, too.”

“Pretty child. Are you thinking of her for Giles?” “Giles will consult his own convenience.” “Oh, la-di-da! What’s wrong with the chit? Grandfather in trade, I suppose. Too much the smell of the shop for you?”

“My dear Lavinia, if Giles wants the girl, he’ll have her if she smells of smoked pilchard. But Tarsins,” Lady Dorothy said austerely, “do not marry for money.”

“Tarsins have no need to,” Mrs. Armitage pointed out.

“That may be part of it.”

Lavinia Armitage remained unimpressed. “Tarsins or not, you’d be fools to let forty thousand pounds slip away if you’ve a chance for it.”

“You always did have a vulgar mind, Lavinia.”

“Yes, don’t I?” The other woman concurred amiably.

Melissa gathered that this great and good old friend of the dowager’s—they were remarkably rude to each other—was a widow in distressed circumstances. If her circumstances distressed her, it was apparent little else did. Immensely fat, she wore her excess bulk with flair, disposing it comfortably along the graceful lines of the Adam sofa. In motion, she had the massive impact of a triple-masted frigate under full sail. The two old women in conference put Melissa in mind of two of the less attractive of the Fates. Say, Clotho and Atropos.

Mr. Penwaithe sweated past their review. One of the substantial Penwaithes, not the laboring, good-for-nothing Penwaithes. The vicar’s daughter, with him, wore the face of an early Christian martyr. Mr. Penwaithe had chosen to grace the proceedings with a green long-tailed coat and a bulging cream waistcoat. The choice of colors increased his already unfortunate resemblance to a giant frog. But he’d greeted Melissa most amiably when they were introduced, and she was feeling kindly toward him. She thought he looked like a very distinguished frog.

A Mr. Albert Humber, who took the opposite side of their set, was accompanied by a nervous, unhappy little girl Melissa had at first taken for his daughter, but who turned out to be his wife. Melissa decided she did not like Mr. Humber.

“Since when have you courted the mushroom gentry, Dorothy?” Mrs. Armitage commented.

“If I don’t lend him countenance now, I can’t withdraw it later,” Lady Dorothy responded. “Do you imagine he’s the only weasel in the room tonight?” So Melissa was not alone in her dislike.

Perhaps it was such small talk as this, Melissa thought, that the three witches exchanged while waiting for Macbeth to show up.

“There’s another Polwist girl out, isn’t there?” Mrs. Armitage was employing the quizzing glass again. “Ah, there she is, over there with Adrian. Hmmm.
Not
as pretty as her sister.”

“And doesn’t her sister know it,” Lady Dorothy agreed wearily. “Kind of Adrian to take the girl up.”

“She’ll go off. No lack of money.”

“Perhaps Adrian will try his luck. He
says,
” there was skepticism, “he’s in Cornwall hunting a tin heiress. Maybe he’s serious.”

“Adrian? Hanging out for an heiress? That’s a new start. I thought he was comfortably off. And a natural polygamist. Not that that stands in the way of marriage.” Lavinia Armitage appeared to be calculating some abstruse mathematical problem. Her lips moved silently. “He won’t do for Anna, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Lavinia, I can imagine nothing more unlikely.”

Melissa’s attention was caught by pink silk figured delicately with pink flowerettes. Giles whirled by once again, and the dark-haired heiress was still laughing.

Melissa shifted feet. This was her first real party in six years. She’d thought it would be a little different. Oh, there was a certain satisfaction that everything was going smoothly. The preparations had fallen so completely into her unprepared lap, and she seemed to have managed everything satisfactorily. But she’d thought ... Her dress was seasons old, and only plain dark green satin. It wasn’t equal to what the other women were wearing. It was her “Mrs. Brody says take the girls to the municipal concert” dress. But she wouldn’t have been ashamed to dance in it.

Unfortunately, when Sir Adrian had asked her for the first dance, he’d been brusquely rebuffed by Lady Dorothy. No one else had ventured.

It wasn’t that she’d expected to dance. There was nothing shameful in being an employee after all. And she was tired after tending to every detail of the party. And her feet hurt.

Melissa stared resolutely out the window. The lip of the sea turned silver in the twilight and then steel sheen. The footmen began to light the candles, unobtrusively, the way Bedford had drilled them that morning.