Love's Tangle (2 page)

The duke waited for silence to fall before he spoke, all the while looking blankly into the distance. “My apologies for interrupting your meal,” he began in a voice devoid of expression, “but I will not keep you long. There are few occasions when I can speak to you all and I believe it is sometimes important to do so.”

He paused and cleared his throat. He seemed almost nervous, she thought, but that was ridiculous. “We have several servants amongst us who have lately come to Allingham,” he began again.

The butler was looking perplexed and one or two of the maids began to whisper behind their hands. The duke was no longer gazing into the distance but straight at Elinor, his blue eyes unfathomable. Surely he could not be talking to her.

“Several new people have come among us,” the duke continued awkwardly. “I trust that those of you who are well-established here will do all you can to make them welcome.”

Mr. Jarvis was looking even more perplexed, for it was his duty as butler to ensure the smooth running of the household. There was another long silence while feet began to fidget and a few fingers tapped on the table.

“I have no more to say,” the duke finished abruptly, “other than to wish you well in your work. Please return to your meal.”

In an instant he had disappeared through the doorway and the room erupted into a buzz of speculation. It needed Mr. Jarvis to clap his hands very loudly before the babble subsided. Nobody, it seemed, had any idea what to make of their master’s unusual visit. Elinor had her suspicions—the duke had looked at
her
. She was sure that he had been speaking directly to her. Did he regret the unpleasantness she’d suffered this morning and wish to make some kind of apology? The only kind he could make without involving his horrible friends? But an apology hardly fitted with the man she’d met, for she had felt him to be proud and indifferent. But now was not the time to solve the puzzle—she was already late for Martha and the dairy.

****

Last night she had noticed little of her surroundings, other than the dark shape of the building hunched over a landscape which appeared to stretch for miles, for she had been intent on concocting a believable history for herself before she reached the servants’ quarters. And this morning she had been too tired to open her eyes, but now as she walked back to the creamery, she could see the house was immense. The central mass resembled nothing less than a crenelated fortress with two wings of equally forbidding stature marching right and left. The creamery lay at the end of the furthest wing and along a pathway of grey slabs. It was an attractive building. A row of double windows washed sunlight through its large, airy space and everywhere a sense of order prevailed, from the freshly washed cream and blue tiled walls to the storage tables dotted with jugs and cups of various sizes to the long shelf of white-veined marble lying bare and ready for butter-making.

“About time, too!”

Martha, perspiring and red-faced, was already laboring at one of two huge cylindrical butter churns positioned in the middle of the open space. She was well into middle age, her face and body strongly marked by years of heavy labor. Elinor felt scorched by the unfamiliar rudeness but she was a servant now, she reminded herself, and must learn to endure discourtesy.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Martha.”

The woman sniffed, evidently unimpressed by her new
protégée
. “What did yer say yer name wuz again?”

“Nell, Nell Milford.”

“Well, Nell Milford, if yer to last longer than Letty, be ’ere on time. I needs to eat too. Now you are ’ere, get goin’ on the turnin’. The Prince Regent brings fifty servants with ’im and all of ’em ’ave to be fed.”

Elinor gaped. “The Prince Regent is staying at Allingham Hall?”

“Often stays with ’is Grace. Don’t stand there gawpin’, girl—get goin’!” And she indicated the second churn standing close by.

That explained the soldiers. If the Prince Regent himself were staying, an armed guard would be thought necessary. Allingham Hall and its inhabitants were far from what she’d imagined and she had been a fool to come. But what had been the alternative? Without her mother’s paintings to sell, an already meager life had declined into one of abject poverty. She had tried and failed to find work. Her singular education had left her unfit to be a governess and she was too well known in the town to become a servant. The ladies of Bath would never employ an obviously genteel girl, no matter how poor, for it would remind them too sharply of the fragile boundary between success and failure.

At first it had been easy to dismiss her mother’s dying words as delirium but then as her situation grew more and more desperate, they had begun to haunt her. “Go to Allingham…go to the Hall,” her mother had whispered. Then, tortured breaths later, “Rich, powerful—will look after you.” Allingham she could find easily enough but who was rich and powerful? Who would look after her and why? For days she had pondered that question. Whoever it was, Grainne had trusted him to save her daughter from the poor house, else she would not have willed Elinor to make this journey. But why, then, had there been such long years of silence between them? Perhaps he was elderly, she’d speculated, unable to travel or reclusive, wanting no communication. Or perhaps—and the thought caught at her—he had some connection to the dead father of whom her mother refused to speak. Whatever she’d imagined had proved a mirage. There was no elderly gentleman in need of company, no recluse to be won over. The owner of this rambling pile was a duke, a man not yet thirty, who entertained the premier prince of the land.

****

At last the day came to its close. Exhausted by the unfamiliar hard labor, Elinor trudged back along the path which led to the servants’ quarters. The light was already fading and she had to pick her way carefully along the narrow track. She was just rounding the last bend, her mind empty with fatigue, when she found herself walking straight into the duke. It seemed he had been riding for he was dressed still in breeches and top boots and carried a whip. But what was he doing here? The stables lay at the other side of the house and this path led only to the dairy.

She stepped hastily to one side to allow him to pass. “I beg pardon, Your Grace, I did not see you.” Already she was beginning to adopt a servant’s cringe, she thought.

“Nor I you, Mistress Milford. Dusk has come early tonight.”

They stood for a moment, caught in each other’s gaze, unable or unwilling to move forward.

Then he glanced back along the path he had come. “I must not keep you. You will be wishing to rest.”

That was her cue. She should have scurried away but something stayed her footsteps. “Do you wish to see Martha? You should catch her if you go now, for I left her only minutes ago putting away the last of the jugs.”

For a moment he seemed discomfited. “Then I should not interrupt her. It is a long day in the dairy, is it not?”

“It is, Your Grace, particularly if you are unused to the work—though I’m sure I shall soon become accustomed.”

“I imagine you will, but what was your former occupation?”

He was interesting himself beyond the call of duty but it was for courtesy’s sake only, she told herself.

“I sold goods.” She was deliberately vague. “And that was certainly less tiring than making butter and cream.”

“So why do you no longer sell goods?”

“There is a simple answer, Your Grace. In these difficult times, there are fewer people to buy.”

She hoped that would put a stop to further questions, but she had underestimated him.

“But why choose a dairy?”

“I have had some experience,” she was quick to say, “and if I satisfy, it will be secure work.”

“I’m sure you will—satisfy, I mean.” He was standing very close to her, as close as he had been this morning, and there was the same imperious tone to his voice. Imperious but with a hint of devilry. The apologetic duke had vanished; this was one to be wary of again. Had he in fact been going to the dairy to see her, she wondered, rather than Martha? She turned pink at the notion. The sooner this uncomfortable interview ended, the better.

“I must not keep you, sir,” she prompted.

“I think you mean that
I
must not keep
you
,” he returned. “Go then, Nell Milford, go.”

She gave a swift curtsy and hurried along the path, aware of his gaze following her. This morning he had looked at her in the same intense fashion and her skin had prickled beneath his gaze. No doubt that was a duke’s privilege, to look his fill at female servants. She dreaded to think what other privileges he might claim if he liked what he saw. But his interest in her was simple curiosity, she was sure, for she was not to the duke’s taste. Most definitely she was not to his taste. She had earlier caught a glimpse of several of his women guests. One in particular—Lady Letitia Vine, Martha had told her with a snort of contempt—wore a painted face and the most outrageously revealing dress. She could never rival such a woman and she thanked heaven it was so.

Chapter Two

“I dunno where they found yer, but it weren’t from no dairy.”

Elinor had hoped to make a better impression on her second day but Martha was standing watching her, arms akimbo and brow creased with suspicion, while the younger woman clumsily squeezed excess buttermilk from the mixture.

She picked up the heavy wooden pats and with difficulty began wielding them to shape the butter. Martha’s frown deepened.

“I’m not used to these particular pats,” Elinor excused herself.

She had been at work several hours and already her limbs were screaming with pain. She was discovering that making the occasional block of butter for two was a very different prospect to supplying a vast household.

“And my arms are still tired from carrying a heavy valise from Steyning. The stage put me down at the White Horse and it is a good five mile walk from there.”

Her mentor merely snorted and bid her work more quickly.

It was not until they were scouring pails, pats and molds some hours later that Elinor ventured to speak again. “The duke is very young to have succeeded to his title.”

The head dairymaid had been at Allingham her entire working life and it was possible, Elinor thought, that she rather than the duke might hold the answers she sought.

“Put more salt in the water,” was all Martha would offer. “Else we’ll ’ave the butter stickin’.”

“I’ve always thought of dukes as old men,” she pursued, hoping her obvious stupidity would unleash her companion’s tongue. It did.

“Dukes is young, old, ugly, ’ansome. This ’un is young and ’ansome. And reckliss.” A rough noise escaped Martha which Elinor took to be a laugh.

“Aren’t all young men reckless?” she asked guilelessly.

“Mebbe, but this ’un has the devil ridin’ ’im and that’s a fact.”

“In what way?” Martha’s willingness to talk was unusual and Elinor seized the moment.

“Drinkin’ and gamblin’ and carousin’ with that no good crowd.” The older woman shook her head irritably. “It ain’t right, not for a duke it ain’t.”

“How long has he been duke?”

“Two year—that were when ’is uncle took a toss. Tried to jump too ’igh and broke ’is neck,” she finished in answer to Elinor’s unspoken question.

“That must have been felt a great tragedy on the estate.”

“Nah. A bit of a tartar ’e were, though my mum allus said ’e were different as a boy.”

“Your mother worked here?”

“Nigh on thirty year,” Martha said proudly, “right ’ere in this dairy. Taught me everythin’ I know’d. She ’ad the sharpest pair of ’ands, fair box yer ears if yer didn’t mind ’er, but she were the neatest butter maker in all Sussex.”

“The old duke sounds very different from his nephew.”

“Mebbe, mebbe not. ’E weren’t none too pure as a young ’un either.”

Elinor looked questioningly at her mentor. “Stories,” Martha said in a harsh whisper.

“There’s always gossip.”

“Not gossip,” she said firmly. “Scandal. Big scandal—a woman, o’course. Some furriner or other. But it were ’ushed up. So don’t you go talkin’.”

“I won’t,” Elinor made haste to reassure her.

“Yer better not. It’d be more than me job’s worth. Claremonts own most o’ the county and nobody tangles with ’em.”

It was the longest conversation Elinor had had with her fellow servant and the effort seemed temporarily to exhaust them both. Silence spread except for the clattering of pans and pails. Martha’s testimony raised more questions than it answered but the wall of silence she’d painted was intriguing—Allingham appeared to be a place of secrets. The reference to a foreign woman hung tantalizingly in the air for though she knew little of her mother’s past, Grainne had once confided that as a young girl she had fled her family in Ireland. Would not an Irish woman seem foreign to one who had never ventured further than her birth place?

She was clinging to straws. She knew nothing of her family’s history and Grainne, who had kept silent for so long, could not now fill the gaps. She must try to fill them for herself. She must withstand whatever mocking insolence these so-called noblemen could fling until she had searched for some trace of herself, of her mother, in this place. She had no idea where to start and thought it unlikely she would succeed. But she must try. Tonight, though, she was bone weary. Two long days in the dairy had succeeded the hardships of a difficult journey; tonight she would seek her bed the minute she had eaten.

****

Supper was over and she made for the small bedroom she shared with the kitchen maid. Once out of the servants’ hall, she took a right turn, imagining she was walking towards the back staircase which led directly to the top floor of the house. But she was mistaken and instead found herself in the Great Hall. It was immense. Dark oak paneling might have given it a somber look but for a cupola of colored glass at the very top of the building, three floors up, which allowed the evening light to flood the space, glinting off the suits of armor stationed around its walls and creating pools of golden light here and there on the flagstones. She was entranced and instead of turning back, she walked slowly around the enormous space. Portraits lined the walls, dead Claremonts, she assumed. She came to rest at the two largest paintings. They were of a Charles and Louisa Claremont and the severity of the faces startled her. From out of a dark backdrop two pairs of black eyes stared coldly beneath two pairs of black brows. The white curls of their wigs, oddly old-fashioned now, seemed the sole relief from the portrait’s unremitting gloom. Even their rich clothes were muted in hue. She looked at the line of writing beneath their names:
Painted on the occasion of their marriage, November 1794.
If that was how they looked on their wedding day, how did their marriage ever prosper?