Paying Guests (44 page)

The pause was so long this time that she prompted him. ‘What do you see now, Duff?’

‘I see that I was a dupe, that is what I see!’ he said with sudden rage, and she was glad to see it. It was infinitely less distressing than the sodden misery he had been displaying, and into which he lapsed again almost at once. ‘I think it was because his papa liked Sophie and fussed over her so much that Patrick tried to – decided to try to – that he chose to cut his father out. I was so stupid. I thought the duke was just being – well, like a father to Sophie. She is much the same age as his own youngest daughter, Lady
Genevieve, after all, but I know now he had much more wicked ideas. And Patrick chose to – to thwart him to amuse himself. To start with. That’s why he told me all that stuff about being the agent.’

Tears had gathered in his eyes and they threatened to spill as he went on in a low voice, almost piteously. ‘At first I agreed only in order to give myself a – a future, you know, and a chance to obtain a house and an income so that I could wed Sophie and we would be happy for always. But then I learned to like the work itself. I liked the animals and the fields and the – well, it was all so comforting, you know. And all the time Patrick was lying to me, because he just wanted to keep me out of the way while he spent all his time with Sophie, when he could get her away from his father. I thought it was just his younger sisters who took her to parties and on morning visits and so forth but Patrick used to take them, and I did not know. I thought he was about other business on the estate.’

‘How do you know he wasn’t?’ Tilly said, wanting to comfort him if she could.

‘Euphonia told me, when it all came out – oh, I was so easily led by the nose, I should be shot!’

‘No, Duff, don’t you speak so! That is so – if you did not recognize villainy when you saw it, it is because you have a sweet and honest soul yourself. It is a credit to you that he could dupe you as he did, not to your discredit.’ She sounded as passionate as he had, kneeling in front of him now and holding both his hands tightly. ‘If you have been duped by Patrick Paton, then it speaks ill of him, not you.’

‘Thank you, Mamma.’ He managed, amazingly, a sort of grin. ‘It is sweet of you to try to comfort me, but I know what I know.’

‘You do not,’ she said stoutly. ‘You know only that you set yourself high standards and they do not. So this hateful Patrick wooed Sophie, I take it.’

‘Yes.’

‘To – to annoy his father? It seems a childish thing to do.’

‘Childish?’ Duff opened his eyes wide at that. ‘How can it be childish to make love to a beautiful girl who is spoken for by someone else? I know of no child who would behave so.’

‘Trying to score over your parents sounds childish to me,’ Tilly said. ‘The duke sounds childish in himself, dangling after a girl as young as Sophie. I am sure she scorned him.’ She was sure of nothing of the sort but she knew Duff needed to hear kind words about his beloved. Or thought he did. But she was wrong, for he reddened with anger and snapped at her.

‘Of course she did not! I should have seen more clearly from the start. She loved it! She thinks a man who is a duke is wonderful for all he is so disgustingly old, and has a face like a – like – a – so red and veined as to make one quite sick, and yellow teeth and a breath you can smell for half a mile!’

Tilly couldn’t help it. She laughed at that. ‘Oh, Duff, is he really so dreadful?’

‘And worse!’ Duff said passionately. ‘And I hope his son looks the same in less than a twelvemonth and that she has to watch it happen and remember what might have been. For whatever else I am not – like a lord or a duke – I am not smelly and red-faced and disgusting.’

‘Oh, of course you are not, darling Duff,’ Tilly cried and hugged him again and wanted to laugh once more for in fact he himself had clearly not washed since his long journey home.

She leaned back then and stared at him. ‘I am not sure,’ she said carefully, although she was, almost, ‘quite what happened. Are you telling me that Sophie and – and Patrick –’

‘Yes,’ Duff said and his voice was grim. ‘They have run away together. Left a set of letters as cool as you please, telling everyone that they have eloped to Paris and will be wed, and when the old duke dies, Patrick says, that will be soon enough to return to Paton, and then he writes to me that – that it is a pity he had no more intention of sending Abner Oakburton away when he succeeds to the title than flying to the moon, for he is an excellent agent who knows all there is to know about the estate, but that I might be able to find a berth as agent elsewhere for I seem to have some small aptitude for the work and might learn how to be an assistant in a few more years if I set my mind to it.’ He clenched his fists then. ‘If I could reach him now, I swear I would kill him!’ he cried and looked at Tilly with tragic eyes.

‘So that is why she did not answer my letters,’ she said slowly. ‘She had already decided she was never returning here –’

‘What is that?’ he said sharply, and she explained her offer to Sophie. He listened, dully, and then shook his head.

‘Patrick made a better offer,’ he said simply. ‘I hate him – I will hate him till I die –’

She was trying very hard to think sensibly of what to say next; but it was not easy. She was filled – and she had to hide it very carefully – with elation. Sophie, gone out of her darling Duff’s life in a way that must surely mean she would never come back. If she did change her mind and not marry this Lord Patrick – which was clearly highly unlikely, for there could be no question that Sophie would find the prospect of one day becoming a duchess deeply gratifying – even if she did return he would spurn her. He was unhappy now, her secret voice was telling her, almost delirious with joy at the back of her mind, but he would forget that horrid minx soon and be glad he had escaped from her clutches. She felt almost giddy with relief.

‘I know what you are thinking, Ma,’ he said with a prescience that made her flush with embarrassment. ‘That you are glad and that we were too young and that Sophie is a bad person. But she is not bad. She is a little silly, I grant you. But I knew that. She is greedy, but I knew that too, and at least she is very honest about it. I prefer her clear delight in things and clothes and money and titles to the pretence some people make of being above such things. In time I would have taught her to be happy enough with what I had to offer. But Patrick has stolen my time from me and it is that which makes me so angry. But one day – you will see, Mamma. One day she’ll come back to me. She’ll have to. She belongs to me, you see. She has done since we were children.’

He said it with a simplicity that made Tilly’s face burn hotly and she touched his cheek with one hand and said as carefully as she could, ‘I am sorry, dear one. Sorry that you are unhappy. I will not lie to you and say that I am sorry that – that there can be no wedding at present. I still believe that you are much too young to have made so important a decision, and have to find your way in
the world first. But I am wretched to see you so sad and will do all I can to help you be happier.’

‘All I ask of you is that you do not – do not force me, Mamma. I will decide in my own time what career I wish to follow. In the meantime I ask only that you let me live here and help you in whatever way I may, and not to speak of what has passed. I will heal my own heart in my own way. I cannot – could not – bear a great deal of prosing in the matter.’

He looked at her sternly and she wanted to laugh again for he looked so like his infant self, so much the four-year-old Duff telling her solemnly of his plans to make a lake in the garden which she must not on any account prevent.

‘Not a word, dear one. I shall have to explain to the others that Sophie will not be returning, but I dare say we shall think of some tale to satisfy them and keep them quiet.’

‘Say she has gone away to join a new dance company somewhere, and that I am lonely and so they must not speak to me of her,’ he said. ‘That much I can tolerate. But after that, I beg you, do not speak of me or of her to anyone here. They are but your customers after all.’

She sat back on her heels again, a little chilled. ‘Customers? That sounds very – that does not sound at all agreeable.’

‘It’s what they are, though, isn’t it? Customers? We are in the trade of providing board and lodging here, are we not?’ He spoke harshly and some of her satisfaction evaporated. Clearly he had picked up more than pain at Paton. He had entrenched his notion of their own lowliness. And that would have to be put right, indeed it would. But all she said now, as she got to her feet and shook out her sadly creased gown, was, ‘Well, to me they will always be my guests. Paying guests, undeniably, but my guests all the same. I think I shall see where the maids are and arrange for a bath to be fetched up to your room. When you are washed and shaved and changed you will feel much more agreeable.’

‘Yes,’ he said wearily, ‘I dropped my baggage in the hall, and came straight here in search of you, since you were not in your morning room, and got no further.’ But he made no move to get up,
still sitting staring at the flames. It was as though the spirit of him had suddenly left the room, leaving only his body behind. She looked down at him for a long moment and then went to the stairs.

In the hall there was clear evidence that Polly had been hard at work, for the bannisters on the staircase shone particularly brightly and she thought inconsequentially, Oh dear! I promised to take her to the country again this week to see her brothers. We stayed so short a time when we last went, and this time it must be for the whole day that we go, and now Duff is home and I wish I did not have to go.

I’ll take him with me, she thought then. Yes, that will serve very well – give him something to think of; he can look after us on the train. And she reached for the bell to ring it.

She heard it peal above stairs, on the maids’ floor high in the attics as well as down in the kitchen and waited and after a few moments there was a rattling of footsteps on the stairs and Polly peered down at her.

‘Oh, Missus,’ she said. ‘I di’n’t know you was back. Mrs Horace, she said to tell you as she wasn’t feeling the ticket and was havin’ a lie down and all was in hand for dinner and not to fret none.’

‘Eliza, not well?’ Tilly was immediately anxious. ‘She is in her room?’

‘Yes, Missus.’

‘I shall go and see her. But now, you go up to Lucy or Rosie, I don’t care which, and tell them Mr Duff has come home and wants a bath in his room and they are to help him unpack. At once – away with you now.’

‘Yes, Missus,’ Polly said and her head vanished and Tilly called, as an afterthought, ‘And we shall ask Mr Duff to come with us to see your brothers.’

The rumpled head reappeared, the face this time split into a huge grin. ‘Cor!’ said Polly. That’ll be ‘andsome, that will!’ And vanished again.

Tilly, still in a turmoil over her son, was now filled up with even more anxiety as she hurried back to Eliza’s room alongside the kitchen to see what was wrong with her. She was past the time of
her pregnancy when there was any risk to her or to her child, surely? Tilly’s memory was hazy on such matters, but she seemed to recall that the first three months were the hazardous ones, and once past that no one need fret unduly, unless the mother got severely enlarged or had fits, in which case there was very good cause for anxiety. Had Eliza had a fit? Certainly she had been looking more and more enlarged for some time now.

And she scratched on Eliza’s door and waited anxiously, her ear to the panels, for an answer.

IT CAME SLOWLY. She had to scratch on the panels twice more and then at last heard a drowsy ‘Mmm?’ and, waiting no longer, turned the door handle and walked in.

Eliza was lying on her bed fully dressed, but for her boots which were on the floor beside her. She looked blowzy and heavy-eyed as she stared at Tilly, clearly still befuddled with sleep, and then seemed to come to her senses fully and almost leapt off the bed.

‘Oh, bless my soul, what time is it? I only laid my head down for a minute or so and then – oh.’ She stood for a moment swaying, and then sat down hard again on her bed, and stared at Tilly with an expression of surprise on her face.

‘My dear Eliza, what is it?’ Tilly cried, thoroughly alarmed, and Eliza shook her head as if to clear it and then did so again before speaking carefully.

‘I’m all right, Mum, I think. I just felt a bit light-headed there for a moment or two. Stood up too fast, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Then lie down again at once!’ Tilly instructed, but Eliza waved a hand in refusal.

‘I’ll get over it the sooner if I sit up, Mum. Give me just a second or two.’

Tilly came further into the room, leaving the door open behind her. The kitchen was empty, for Duff had obediently gone upstairs to his room, and there was just the two of them.

‘Are you all right, Eliza?’ Tilly said sharply. ‘You are not suffering from any bleeding or anything that might make us fear?’

Eliza, still sitting with her head held in the awkward manner of one who perceives the world as spinning round her, managed a smile. ‘No need to fear for the baby, Mum,’ she said and managed to set one hand protectively on her belly. ‘That’s as firm as a rock. It’s my own fault really –’ She took a deep breath, seeming to begin to regain her balance. ‘I been worryin’ too much, and lyin’ awake o’ nights in consequence. I should have more sense –’