Lady Silence (3 page)

Yesterday, she had been afraid to put herself
forward, afraid to join the homecoming celebration for fear that
when Colonel Damon Farr remembered how she came there—when he
recalled the careless largess that had resulted in her elevation so
far above the waif rescued from a cold winter night, he would have
her dismissed on the instant. In the light of a fine August day,
she had gathered her courage and had decided to brave the lion in
the privacy of his den. And all she was gaining was the knowledge
that her savior, whom she had worshipped through all these years,
was far harder and more implacable than she had ever dreamed.

“
Who are you?” he repeated. Far more
ominously.

If you think I’m going to tell you, you are
quite mistaken!

The blasted girl stuck up her chin and stared
straight back at him. Blond . . . green eyes. A memory flickered to
life. A child with matted hair and a borrowed gown. Something odd
about her . . . ah, yes, he’d been told she didn’t talk. “Ring the
bell,” he ordered. Silently, she glided across the thick Persian
carpet and did as she was told. “Stay!” he added sharply, as the
girl continued on toward the door. She skidded to a halt, folded
her hands demurely in front of her. She stayed.

“
Mapes,” the colonel demanded as the
butler entered the room, “tell me about her.”

“
Ah . . .” The butler cleared his
throat. “You may recall, sir, the little miss we took in the night
before you left, the one that came to the kitchen door during a
snowstorm?”

“
I recall a waif, Mapes, one not even
fit to be a tweeny.”

“
You said we could keep her,
sir.”

“
Yes . . . and I wasn’t myself at the
time, as I recollect.”

“
A bit askew, as I recall, Mr. Farr,
colonel, sir, but you never was one to turn a child out into the
snow.”

Damon drummed his fingers on the mahogany
desk top. “And what would you say we have now, Mapes?” He waved a
hand toward the girl who was standing regally straight, taking it
all in. “Who, pray tell, is this? Lady Silence?”

“’
Tis Katy Snow, sir,” the butler
declared, happy to have a solid fact to grasp. “You see, Mrs. Tyner
said she looked like something the cat dragged in, so we decided to
call her Kate or Katy. And since she came to us in the snow . . .”
Mapes allowed his voice to trail off, casting a hopeful look at his
master, who used to be such a gay, charming, and generous
lad.

“
And she still doesn’t talk,” said the
colonel flatly.

“
No, sir, not a single
word.”

“
Yet, if I am not mistaken—and, pray,
do not fail to enlighten me if I am wrong—this is Katy, the
companion my mother has frequently mentioned in her
letters?”

“
It is, sir.”

“
I see.” Though he certainly did not.
“And how is it possible for a girl who cannot talk to be anyone’s
companion, let alone companion to the Dowager Countess of
Moretaine?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Damon saw
the girl bristle. Interesting. The chit was quivering with rage
when
she
was the jumped-up
scullery maid or orphan or whatever the hell she was. She ought to
be quivering because she was shaking with fright, but he had dealt
with too many young men her age not to be able to tell the
difference between fright and rage.

“
She fetches and carries, colonel. Runs
errands to the village. She helps the countess with her embroidery,
arranges flowers a real treat.” Mapes broke off, coughed behind his
hand at this digression from his customary stately presentation.
“You see, colonel,” he added, “it did not take long for us to see
she could not tell a feather duster from a carpet beater. Didn’t
even know the proper way to wash a dish or hang up laundry. Not
that she didn’t try—she surely did—but ’twas clear she’d had no
training in service, sir. When Lady Moretaine came to us, she took
to Katy right off, and it was a blessing to see the child blossom
when she was put to chores she understood.”

“
Good God!” the colonel growled, as the
implications began to dawn, for he had not become a colonel solely
because of his ability to purchase his exalted rank.

While his mind wandered over a problem that
might be more serious than anyone had thought, he continued his
conversation with Mapes. “Are companions not supposed to read to
their employers?” he inquired with more than a touch of
sarcasm.

Mapes straightened his shoulders, stretched
his considerable height half an inch taller. With eyes fixed
somewhere over his employer’s shoulder, he replied, “Fortunately,
colonel, Lady Moretaine seems to enjoy reading to Katy.”

“
Indeed. How odd of me not to think of
that.”

“
She takes baskets to the sick and
infirm, colonel, and helped make lint bandages during the war,
and—”

“
Enough!” the colonel roared. “But she
never talks?” he added more softly. “Not even a squeak at sight of
a mouse?”

“
Never, Mr. Farr. Not once.”

“
You may go, both of you. But, ah—Katy
. . . do not think you have heard the last of this. I shall have
much more to say on this subject after I have spoken with my
mother.”

When the door closed behind his two
employees, Colonel Farr ran a hand through his dark brown hair,
clutching a handful and tugging ‘til it hurt.
Damn and blast!
Home not yet a full day, and he
had a mystery on his hands. Either he was giving houseroom to a
shockingly adept adventuress or else he was harboring a sprig of
the
ton
, an underage runaway
for whose disappearance he could be charged with
kidnapping.

Not to mention the fact that the girl aroused
feelings he could only term lust. If he had ever had the capacity
for love, it had died long since. He lusted. She was a girl of no
background, no family protection. Although honor forbade her
seduction, he rather thought he’d left that on the battlefield as
well.

Katy Snow. A common name for a most uncommon
girl.

Katy Snow. Who did not talk.

Katy Snow, who was likely a brass-faced
hussy, who had honed herself a place at Farr Park through the soft
hearts of his staff and his mama’s gullibility.

His body was dazzled. His mind had taken her
in dislike.

And she dared be furious with
him
. Yes, she was, he knew
it.

Who did she think she was? Ah, but that was
the problem, was it not? She, and only she, knew the answer. And
did not tell. For years she had made fools of them all. But he was
home now. And nobody made a fool of Colonel Damon Farr.

Katy, whose attic room had long since given
way to a fine chamber not far from the countess’s own, slipped down
from her high bed, and settled on a seat beneath an open window. A
soft night breeze wafted the scent of the garden from two stories
below. A three-quarter moon cast a pale glow over the irregular
shapes of hedges, flower borders, fountains, and winding paths. A
fantasy garden in silver, as fleeting, as ephemeral, as her
life.

She’d been so happy at Farr Park. The
months, the years, of her growing up, had drifted from one day to
the next on a haze of contentment. Of course there had been a few
moments . . . Katy’s lips curled softly in remembrance of broken
plates, unstarched shirts, Mrs. Tyner’s frown as she found dust
where Katy had never thought to run a duster, Mapes’s haughty and
terrifying scowl when he had found her charging down the
front
family
stairs at what
he later described as “full tilt.” But they had all been kind, even
as they threw up their hands and wondered whatever would they do
with Katy Snow.

And then Lady Moretaine had arrived. And ever
so gradually, the youngest member of Farr Park’s staff—the
not-quite-child with patrician features and proud bearing—had
become, if not a lady, then certainly a gentlewoman. Her ability to
read had been revealed even before the dowager countess came to
Farr Park, when any search for the rescued waif always ended in the
library. So perhaps it should not have been such a surprise to
discover Katy could not only sort silks, but was capable of setting
as neat an embroidery stitch as Lady Moretaine herself. The mystery
child wrote in a flowing, well-formed script. She could arrange
flowers, as if to the manor born. She could drive a pony cart, ride
a horse. And on one well-remembered day the entire household had
come to halt when notes were heard from behind the closed door of
the music room. The pianoforte. Someone was playing the
pianoforte.

Katy Snow.

Katy supposed she should not have been so
bold. Yet pride was a terrible thing. Combined with childish
bravado, it was lethal. When Lady Moretaine decided to set her to
stitching a sampler, she had stayed up half the night decorating
the small piece of cloth with every embroidery stitch she knew. The
dowager had blinked, exclaimed, rung for Mrs. Tyner, who had echoed
Lady Moretaine’s surprise and praise. And, after that, Katy had
succumbed to the temptation of revealing the skills of a young lady
of quality. So many disasters those first few years, so many
scolds—surely it would have been inhuman to continue to keep her
light under a bushel.

And now, at eighteen, she was a respected
member of the household, a well-known figure in the village, the
only wrinkle in her smooth path the occasional necessity of
demonstrating to overeager males that her inability to talk did not
mean they could do as they would with her. But, today, she had
looked into Colonel Damon Farr’s eyes and seen doubt, suspicion,
and something far worse. For years now, the household at Farr Park
had awaited his letters with bated breath, poured over every word,
sought his name in the military despatches printed in the
newspapers. He was a hero, their darling, the wonder of his mama’s
life. The object of Katy Snow’s devotion. She had filled her head
with daydreams of the tousle-haired drunken boy staggering off to
war, with thoughts of soothing his brow, satisfying his every whim,
as she did for his mother.

But there her dreams had stopped, for
her mind would allow her to go no further. Not from naivety but
from horror, for Katy Snow well knew that men were not always what
they seemed. And what she had seen in the eyes of Colonel Damon
Farr was not only suspicion, but lust.
Why, why, why
, when she had been so
happy?

No . . . she had been content.
Comfortable, well-fed, accustomed to her routine. But happy?
Perhaps not. She was eighteen, an age to be wed. Yet before her
stretched only endless years of fetching and carrying. No husband,
no children, no home of her own. By chance, augmented by her own
wits, she had found shelter, a place to grow up. But now she could
almost see the walls beginning to crumble around her. She recalled
the carelessness with which the boy had allowed her to stay,
recognized his generosity for the indifferent exercise of
noblesse oblige
that it was. She had
mistakenly idolized a man who, instead of a hero, had become a
sharp-eyed, lecherous old man who was going to be a problem. Lust
was bad enough, but what if he should make inquiries?

What to do, what to do, what to do?

To Lady Moretaine, she was almost like a
daughter. To her son, she was a nobody, a possession. Someone to be
used as he chose. She had read of men and wars in the books of the
vast library compiled by Damon Farr’s uncle. And of the fate of
women at the hands of soldiers. No, she did not at all like the
flare of appreciation in the colonel’s eyes, no more than the scorn
and anger that swiftly followed.

Perhaps it was time . . .

Impossible!
She’d guarded her secret too long to give it up now. In the
twinkling of an eye she’d find herself back in the nest of vipers
she had successfully eluded.

Slowly, sadly, Katy returned to her bed. For
the first time since she was twelve years old, she dreaded what
tomorrow would bring.

On the following morning Colonel Farr, not
yet adjusted to a non-military life, almost made the disastrous
error of sending for his mother. He had already barked out Mapes’s
name when he recalled that he might be at his own desk in his own
bookroom, but no gentleman would summon his mama to him as if she
were a naughty schoolgirl, particularly a mama who was not only
Dowager Countess of Moretaine but daughter of a duke.

But when he found his mother, reclining on a
rose brocade chaise longue in a sunny room on the east side of the
house, she was not alone. She was holding up a book, reading aloud
to a young woman whose gaze was fixed on the countess in what
appeared to be breathless anticipation. “Snow,” the colonel
snapped, “you may leave us.”

Katy jumped to her feet, standing poised like
a small animal mesmerized by a poacher’s lantern, before bolting
from the room so fast he could swear he felt the breeze as she
passed by.

The silence lengthened as Damon seated
himself across from his mother, noting that the countess was now
gripping her book as if she longed to throw it at him. He leaned
forward, attempting to force his countenance into something less
stern than the face he had seen in the mirror that morning. This
was his mother, and, truth be told, he loved her dearly. Enough to
give her shelter when his brother Ashby would not, or could not,
protect her from that witch of a woman he had been foolish enough
to marry.