Joan Wolf (9 page)

“Hutchins.” I told him what Georgie had told me about the head groom’s reaction to my unmasking, and he found it as funny as I had.

“Hutchins has a very low opinion of females,” he said when he had finished laughing.

“Do you know, I really think that girls could do most of the things boys do if they were given the chance.”

A small smile lingered on his mouth. “I don’t know about that, Valentine.”

“The problem is,” I said forcefully, “men have all the fun and they don’t want to share it.”

He looked at me curiously. “Did you have fun, being a boy?”

“Yes, I did. I learned how to throw dice and how to play cards and—”

He was shouting with laughter. “All the good things in life.”

“Well, they are fun. Better than sewing samplers and learning embroidery, which is what girls have to do.”

“I can’t picture you sewing a sampler.”

“Actually, I never did,” I confessed. “It wasn’t my style.”

“No, I can see that.”

“I’m afraid I’m a very undisciplined person.” I sighed.

“I wouldn’t say that at all.” He sounded very serious now. “I would say you were courageous and generous and independent. Too independent, perhaps. You’re a bit too fond of your own way.”

My jaw dropped.
“I’m
fond of my own way.” I stared at his profile in astonished indignation.

He shook his head sadly. “Willful. That’s what you are.”

“Do you know what you are?” I asked sweetly.

“No.” He looked at me. “Tell me,” he invited.

We had never spoken on such a personal level before. There was a new note to this conversation and I knew it was dangerous. He thought my feelings for him were simple hero worship. I did not want to betray anything further.

‘ ‘I wouldn’t dream of venturing into such complicated territory,” I said flatly. “Are you going to try to race Saladin or just use him at stud?”

There was a moment of quiet. “Stud, I think,” he said then, and our conversation fell into a more ordinary path. I kept it there, with some difficulty, throughout the remainder of our drive.

Chapter 12

I joined Lord Leyburn and his cousin for dinner that evening. It was my first experience sitting down in the huge dining room, and I felt very strange as Lord Leyburn took his seat at the head of the table across from me. The table had all its leaves removed, but there was still quite a large expanse of mahogany between us.

I looked up to find both men watching me. “Such lovely weather we’ve been having lately,” I said.

Mr. Fitzallan looked startled.

“A little too dry, perhaps,” his lordship murmured.

“Indeed?” Robert put a bowl of soup in front of me. “I didn’t think the English weather could ever be too dry.”

“Oh, there have been droughts upon occasion,” Lord Leyburn returned.

I looked up from my soup and caught his eye. Quite suddenly my sense of strangeness disappeared. “If I asked you the dates, would you give them to me?”

“Of course.”

I grinned. “Then I won’t ask.”

“Thank heavens.” It was Mr. Fitzallan and we both laughed.

“Eat your soup, Valentine,” his lordship said exactly as if I had been ten years old.

I gave him a look but obediently picked up my spoon. It was oxtail soup, one of my favorites.

“You can leave for York tomorrow,” his lordship said, and at his words my appetite fled.

“York?” said Mr. Fitzallan.

“Valentine has informed me that she refuses to be married in a gown that makes her look like a famine victim.”

Robert was standing directly behind Lord Leyburn, and I could see quite clearly the look of shock on his face. It was evidently the first time he had heard of my proposed marriage. It was a look that stayed with me, and when the main course had been served and the servants left the room, I brought the subject up.

“Robert looked as if he were going to have apoplexy when you mentioned our marriage, my lord. How can I possibly run the house when I’ve played cards with half the footmen?”

“Not to mention dicing with the grooms,” he murmured.

“Valentine,” said Mr. Fitzallan reproachfully, “you didn’t.”

“She did.” His lordship drank some wine and looked at me. “Who usually won?” he asked.

“I did.”

He grinned. “I knew it.” He turned to Mr. Fitzallan. “Did you enjoy the soup, Ned?”

Mr. Fitzallan looked surprised by the change of topic. “Well, it was not my favorite,” he said doubtfully.

“It’s my favorite,” I put in stoutly. “And I think Mrs. Scone makes it excellently.”

“Is stuffed capon another favorite of yours?” his lordship asked.

“Yes,
it is.”

His dark eyes were filled with the light of the candles. “You’re running the house already,” he told me. “All you need to do is flash that amazing smile of yours and they’ll run like slaves to do whatever you want.”

I stared at him in utter astonishment.

“Those big blue eyes don’t hurt either,” commented Mr. Fitzallan.

I turned said eyes on his face. He was smiling.

“You’re teasing me,” I said reproachfully.

“Only a little,” said his lordship. “You were never regarded as one of them by the servants and you know it.”

I looked at him across the candles. “I suppose so,” I whispered. For a long moment we looked at each other and then my eyes fell. I was grateful when Mr. Fitzallan changed the topic.

I did not sleep well that night, and by the time Lord Leyburn handed me into the coach in the morning I was so exhausted and so concerned with keeping my face expressionless that I scarcely took in the fact that I was saying goodbye to him forever. I could not even let down my guard after the coach had driven away from the door because Mrs. Emerson was there, chatting comfortably about all the nice things we were going to buy.

I had never been to York before, and under any other circumstances I would have been delighted with the walled city that still retained a distinct air of the Middle Ages.

“York was a capital city while London was still a village,” Lord Leyburn had said to me, but now, instead of drinking in the sight of the magnificent minster and the ancient walls and gates, all I was concerned with was how to find the stagecoach office and how I was going to slip away from Mrs. Emerson.

Lord Leyburn had given me a handsome sum of money to spend over and above whatever bills I ran up at the dressmaker, so I was not short of blunt. Mrs. Emerson and I settled quite comfortably into the Fitzallan town residence with plans to begin our shopping in the morning.

In the morning I told Mrs. Emerson that I was not feeling well. She wanted to summon a doctor, but I said it was only a headache and begged her to leave me alone to sleep it away.

“I’m sure I shall feel better this afternoon,” I assured her. “Please, do go out yourself. I shall be so upset if I think I’ve kept you from enjoying your visit.”

In the end she did go out. I stuffed my few dresses in a bag and sat down to compose a note to Lord Leyburn
.
When I had finished it, I read it over before propping it on the mantel with a note to Mrs. Emerson to deliver it to his lordship personally.

Dear Lord Leyburn:

I am afraid I have run away again and this time to the people I should have gone to in the first place. I have gone to my grandparents. I have no intention of telling them where I have been for the last few months so no one need know of our association.

My dearest lord, you know you don’t want to marry me. Nor do I want to serve you such a trick after all your kindness to me. We were friends, I think, and I should like to go on thinking of you in that light.

Please do not come after me. If you do, you will ruin everything. If I find things do not fall out as I expect, I promise most faithfully to let you know. I’m quite certain my grandparents will take me in, however. What choice will they have when I arrive bag and baggage on their doorstep?

Valentine

P.S. I’m afraid you won’t see your money again. I need it for the coach.

That should do it, I thought. Mrs. Emerson wouldn’t open a letter addressed to Lord Leyburn
,
and by the time she got back to Carlton to deliver it, I would be at Ardsley. I took one last look around and then sneaked out of my room and down the stairs. There was no one in the front hall, so I was able to make at least a partially dignified exit from the Earl of Leyburn’s town house.

I had decided to go to an inn in the hopes of being able to get a seat on either a stagecoach or the mail. As it happened, luck was with me, for the mail came thundering into the White Boar only fifteen minutes after my arrival, and it was going through Lincoln on its way to London. I got the last seat.

It wasn’t until I was bouncing along in the safety of the crowded coach, that I put my mind to what I was going to tell my grandparents.

****

  In Lincoln I hired a coach to take me to Stainfield, where I knew my grandparents resided.  Their house proved to be very different from the great and ancient castle inhabited by the Earl of Leyburn.  Ardsley was a Palladian mansion, is style classical and dignified.  I got out of the coach and looked with some misgivings at the austere and symmetrical pillars of the front entry.  I was terribly conscious of my cropped head and my baggy dressed.  I squared my shoulders.

"Are you sure this is where you want to go, miss?" the driver asked me.

"Yes," I said dismally.

"You sure you don't want me to wait for you?"

"Yes."  I looked at him ruefully.  "They'll have to take me in, you see.  I'm a relation."

"Hmph.  That don't mean nothin', Miss.  They know you're coming?"

"No."

"I'll wait awhile," he said, and settled back on his seat and crossed his arms.

I had to smile.  "That is very kind of you," I said, and began to walk up the front stairs.  I really didn’t have too many doubts that I would be turned away. Papa had told me to come and I was quite certain Papa had made previous arrangements. I rapped the knocker.

A very proper-looking butler answered.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “I have come to see Lord and Lady Ardsley. I am Valentine Langley, their granddaughter.”

The starchy look on the butler’s face altered. He held the door open.

“Come in, miss. I will inform my lady that you have arrived.” I turned and waved to my faithful coachman before I followed the butler into the house.

Chapter 13

I was ushered into a very elegant, silk-covered room, and the butler disappeared. I sat down on a fragile-looking chair, very different from the massive carved furniture that was so in evidence at Carlton Castle, and stared into space.

The door opened and an elegantly dressed and coiffed silver-haired lady came in. I stood up.

“Valentine?” she said, and looked at me as if I were an extremely unsatisfactory footman.

“Yes.” I looked her over as well. “You are Lady Ardsley?”

“I am your grandmother.” She came across the room to stand in front of me. Up close she looked much older. She was several inches shorter than I. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “We received notice of your father’s death months ago.”

She was every bit as bad as I thought she would be. I smiled. “Please don’t exhaust yourself with condolences, Grandmother.”

She gave me an icy stare. “Don’t be impertinent. I never liked your father. You must know that. He ruined my daughter’s life. Now,
where have you been these last months?
Your father’s colonel was very upset by your disappearance. As were your grandfather and I.”

“My father did not ruin Mama’s life,” I said flatly. “I have been staying with my old nurse and trying to get a job as governess.”

“What?”

Oh, lord, I thought. If she’s upset by the thought of my being a governess, I can imagine what she’d say if she knew the truth.

“That’s right. But no one would hire me. I’m too young.”

“Sit down, Valentine.” We both seated ourselves and regarded each other warily. ‘Did your father not tell you that in the event of his death you were to come to Ardsley?”

“You never even wrote to my mother,” I said woodenly. “Not once. She told me.”

The old face in front of me became exceedingly stern. “I told Elizabeth how it would be if she went against our wishes and married that boy. She chose her bed. It seems she came to regret her choice.”

“She did not,” I said fiercely.

We stared at each other and then my grandmother said, “Am I to understand, then, that having failed to find employment on your own, you have humbled your pride and come to us?”

The old harridan. She thought she had the upper hand, and was she loving it.

“Was my father mistaken?” I asked. “Are you unwilling to have me?”

“I did not say that.”

We were back to staring at each other. If she thought I was going to crawl, she was much mistaken.

“What would you do if I said we did not want you here?” she asked at last.

“Get another kind of job,” I replied promptly.

She looked scornful. “What kind of job is open to a girl like you, Valentine?”

I gave her my nicest, my most charming smile. “I could always sell my body,” I said.

I thought she was going to choke. When she had got her breath back, she glared at me. “You ill-bred impudent hussy. Don’t you dare to speak to me like that.”

“I don’t like blackmail,” I said. “If you wish me to stay, I will endeavor to do my best to be a satisfactory granddaughter to you. I don’t promise miracles, mind. I’m only human. But I will try. On the other hand, I will not tolerate unkind remarks about either of my parents, nor will I tolerate being made to feel like a poor relation here on sufferance
.
If that is to be the situation, I’d prefer to work for my keep.”

I folded my hands in my lap and looked at her calmly. “Well, Grandmama, which is it to be? Am I to stay or to go?”

She didn’t deign to answer but rose majestically from her chair. “Come along and I’ll show you your room. Your grandfather went into Lincoln this morning, so you will not be able to meet him until dinner.”