Paying Guests (15 page)

The person on the stairs came forward and began to walk down; a tall, slender figure, which moved with considerable grace, and wearing one of the newest of tight tied-back skirts and close-fitting bodices, all in a tasteful shade of deep gold, trimmed with copper-coloured braid. She was wearing a Leghorn bonnet, very like Eliza’s Dolly Varden but infinitely more chic, in a golden straw that matched the gown exactly and which showed off to perfect advantage the hair beneath it.

Dark red hair, thick, curly, twisted into the most handsome of coiled tresses and plaits to form a great chignon above the back of the slender neck. The face beneath was small and pointed and the skin was the colour of fresh cream.

‘Sophie,’ Tilly heard herself say, a mere breath of a word and the vision on the stairs arrived in front of her, tucked under her arm the lacy cream-coloured parasol she was carrying and extended both hands towards her.

‘How clever of you to recognize me, Aunt Tilly! And after so long, too! How are you?’

TO SAY THAT Miss Sophie Oliver was self-composed was to put it at its very least. She sat at her ease on the kitchen chair beside the table as though it were a satin
chaise longue
in the most handsome of salons, her thread gloved hands, small and very neat, crossed comfortably over each other on the crook of her parasol and smiling at Tilly with what seemed to be practised charm.

Now that Tilly could see her properly, she realized how much the child she had known had changed. However, she did remember the colour of her hair, which really was remarkable, and the timbre of her voice. It was similar to that of her mother, Dorcas, with the same faint twang of an accent, but in Sophie’s case it was greatly disguised. She had, Tilly thought fleetingly, gone to a lot of trouble to cultivate a sweeter voice with thrilling low tones as well as a silvery laugh, which she had already demonstrated when she had observed how amazed Tilly was to see her.

But the rest was very different. The small pointed chin was still there, admittedly, but with a more pronounced cleft in it than Tilly remembered and the dark eyes seemed to have enlarged amazingly. The lashes were long and swept over the cheeks most appealingly and the nose, small, straight and surmounting a charmingly short upper lip that kept her mouth slightly open to reveal perfect little white teeth, was the sort that most girls yearn to have. She was altogether bewitching to look at, and the more she looked, the more Tilly felt her heart sink. What had she done in asking Jem to seek out this girl? What
had
she done?

‘You have not asked me why I am here, Aunt Tilly!’ Sophie said at length. ‘I may so address you still, I trust? I remember I used to.’

‘Do you remember so much?’ Tilly said. ‘You were very small when you left this house.’

The perfect little mouth curved, so that the cleft in the chin became a mere dimple, though still a pretty one. ‘I have an excellent memory, Aunt Tilly. I can recall so much! That sad man in the basket chair, for example, when we were at the seaside, you know, and the way you and Mamma –’

‘Yes,’ Tilly said hastily, not wanting at all to discuss Freddy, who had been so ill when they had met him on a summer visit to Brighton, and certainly not wishing to discuss Dorcas. ‘I have heard that sometimes people have great recall of their childhoods. My own is less –’

‘Well, you would not recall as much as I do of the times when I was here,’ Sophie said kindly. ‘After all, you were already a grown up lady and I was but a child.’

Tilly blinked, suddenly feeling extremely old compared to this vision of lovely youth, and then straightened her shoulders.

‘I have always had much to think about,’ she said tartly.

‘Yes, of course,’ Sophie said soothingly, and she looked around the room with a faint smile on her lips. ‘How charming it is to see the old kitchen again. I can recall sitting here with darling Duff, eating our bread and milk for supper, and dear Eliza bustling about – is she still with you?’

‘Indeed she is,’ Tilly said, watching her carefully. What was the girl up to?

‘She was so kind to us. And I remember how excited she was when the new range was put in – we watched the men do it and she was so – well, cock-a-hoop is all I can say. And there the range still is, and there have been no changes. It is so comforting to find all is the same as I remember it.’

‘Not quite,’ said Tilly, stung. ‘We have much more that is modern. New taps and sinks in the scullery and the great chopping board is there as well as a cold larder to supplement the ordinary
one.’ The girl was reminding her, and clearly deliberately, that the cooking range that had been put in the kitchen all that time ago had been paid for not by Tilly, but by Dorcas. It was not a comfortable reminder; those had been the days when Dorcas had been plump in the pocket, with a tendency to try to exert some control over Tilly in consequence.

‘How exciting,’ Sophie said, stretching her eyes and smiling again. ‘And what else, Aunt Tilly? I saw when I came in that the house looks quite different. Where there was a small hall there now seems to be a vast one and the stairs are wider.’

Tilly let her shoulders loosen. ‘Yes, that is so. We – the two houses were knocked together. The hallway is double width, therefore, and the drawing room doubled in size upstairs. The dining room too.’

Sophie looked at her sharply and this time her admiration seemed genuine. ‘Then you have a considerable establishment, have you not? It must be – why, I cannot guess how many bedrooms – a dozen and a half, I imagine?’

Tilly’s brows tightened. This girl had a shrewd ability to assess space. ‘Twenty,’ she said a little stiffly. ‘Not including the family’s rooms of course.’

‘Well, that is indeed a considerable establishment,’ Sophie said. ‘It is almost as big as a provincial hotel – bigger in fact.’

‘It is not an hotel,’ Tilly said shortly. ‘I offer my guests the comfort of home on a – on a more permanent basis than an hotel does. I prefer it that way.’

‘Oh yes, paying guests,’ Sophie murmured. ‘It is so much more genteel, is it not? One cannot be sure who will come into an hotel and demand accommodation, but if they are regarded as guests –’

‘Precisely. I am able to be very selective about whom I will accept to join our – well, we regard our guests as a large family. We are all on excellent terms.’ She suppressed awareness of the occasional irritations she had with Mr Cumming, and the way Mrs Grayling’s chatter made her sometimes want to snap at her, and looked directly at Sophie. ‘We prefer it that way.’

‘I am sure you do,’ Sophie said heartily. ‘And so should I! Now, before we say any more, do please tell me how Duff is. I remember him with such delight. My dearest little playmate –’

‘He is well enough,’ Tilly said and then looked at her closely. ‘You haven’t yet said why you are here.’

Sophie raised her brows. ‘Why, you make that sound as though you would prefer I was not! And I am so happy to see you again and to see the dear old house. It is, I have to say, like coming home to me – that is why I begged we might stay here in the kitchen rather than repair upstairs. Just yet.’

Tilly let the last words go by her, and went on looking closely at Sophie. ‘But why now? Did you – well, why now?’

Sophie shrugged. ‘I cannot say – was it an impulse? Perhaps. It was just that my carriage was going along the Brompton Road, where I have not been for such a long time, and I saw Mr Harrod’s shop and how enlarged it was and thought – surely I have a recollection of that shop as being much less grand? And I got down to look around in there. He was about to close but he remembered me and stayed open to show me all his new departments! So charming – and of course asked if I were to come and visit you and I said it was a splendid idea. So, here I am!’

Tilly shook her head. ‘And no one told you that – no one else asked you to come and see me?’

Sophie set her head to one side and looked at her for a long moment and then slowly smiled. ‘Now, what a strange question, dear Aunt Tilly! Why should such a thing happen? Unless you set out to find someone who could ask me? Someone who knew where I might be found?’

‘Uh – not at all. I mean – not precisely – I mean –’ Tilly floundered, furious with herself. Why on earth had she asked so stupid a question? This might be just what Sophie had said it was, a minor coincidence. But by asking the question she had alerted the girl.

Sophie was still gazing at her with that wide, limpid look and now she laughed, ‘Oh dear Aunt Tilly, I do remember you so well! So gentle and kind and so – well, to be truthful I could always tell
what you were thinking by looking at your face. You are not at all as I am, naturally given to hiding your inner thoughts, are you?’

‘As to that,’ Tilly said bravely, trying to salvage some of her composure, ‘I really cannot say.’

‘Well, never mind. Let me just confess that I had perhaps heard a distant murmur that you had asked after my welfare. There! Is that better? I will not pretend it was a coincidence that I took my carriage down the Brompton Road. To tell the truth, I had not thought about Brompton or the time I lived here for – well, for such a long time. If I ever did think of it at all, in fact. I am not one who looks back over her shoulder, you know.’ She looked down at her hands and smoothed her gloves thoughtfully. ‘No, I am one who enjoys the present and looks to the future always. And I had not thought about the old days at all – until I heard from a friend that enquiries had been made for me, and I thought – now, I wonder why? And it suited me well enough at present to retreat a little from – well –’

She smiled delightfully. ‘Let me take a leaf from your book, Aunt, and speak frankly. It will suit me very well at present to withdraw a little from public view. So hearing that someone in Brompton – and who could it be but you? – had an interest in seeing me again – well, here I am!’

Tilly sat and looked at her. The light of the sun was coming in long, low beams now through the area window as the afternoon slid away into evening and it lit Sophie to an almost unbelievable gold; her gown, her bonnet, her gloves and, above all, her hair. The tips of the curls and the tresses and plaits were outlined in gold dust and the effect was totally beguiling. Tilly almost gawped at her. And was only brought out of her state of bemusement by the sound of footsteps overhead and then a clatter at the top of the stairs.

‘Tilly, are you there? May I come down, if you please?’ a voice called and Silas came down, taking two steps at a time, and then stopped as he reached the bottom one. ‘Oh, I am so sorry – I did not know you were occupied.’

Sophie had lifted her head at the sound of his voice and now
turned her head so that she looked at him over her shoulder, and Tilly could not help but notice what a smooth and careful move it was. Not the half turn that most people would have made to ensure a clear view behind them, but a sweet and somewhat coquettish turn of the chin that left her peeping up at Silas, who was just behind her. She must have presented a charming picture, for Tilly saw his eyes widen as he looked down at her and his jaw seemed to slacken slightly. And suddenly she was angry.

‘I really do not intend to entertain in the kitchen any longer,’ she said firmly and got to her feet. ‘We shall repair upstairs, if you please. To the drawing room. Come along.’ And she swept past them to the stairs, not looking round to see if they were following her.

But they did. She went surging up the stairs, holding her skirts well clear, and suddenly was absurdly glad that she was wearing her lilac sarsenet in which she had always looked very fine, having put it on specially to bid Duff goodbye, and even more glad that she had managed not to cover it with specks from boiling raspberry jam, and went straight into her drawing room.

She noted at once with relief that Rosie and Lucy had been in and tidied all for the evening. The cushions had been plumped up and the tables checked for dust and the fern arrangement in the dead fireplace carefully fanned out. There were flowers in the big glass bowls on the low tables and it all looked very welcoming and charming. That will show her, she thought absurdly as she swept to her favourite seat and with a rustle of her skirts, sank into it.

Silas and Sophie came to stand in front of her and she looked up at them, feeling very much in command of the situation.

‘Do sit down,’ she said graciously to Silas, who bobbed his head, looked round at Sophie and then with some ceremony indicated a chair for her. She bent her head and accepted it with the air of a queen allowing a commoner to pay her his obeisance and also sank into it but without any flurry of skirts. In her case the needs of her tied-back tight skirt demanded a sinuous movement when she sat down that she executed with a practised ease, much to Silas’s
obvious pleasure. He took a chair close beside her, but between her and Tilly.

‘You wanted me, Mr Geddes?’ Tilly said and he looked at her, a little puzzled.

‘Mr – why are you so – oh.’

‘Miss Oliver, may I present Mr Silas Geddes,’ Tilly said frostily. ‘Mr Geddes, Miss Sophie Oliver.’

Sophie held out her hand. Silas touched her fingers and honour was satisfied. He turned back to Tilly.