The Disdainful Marquis (5 page)

“You didn't expect me to get the post!” Catherine accused.

“No, I didn't, and to tell the entire truth I still don't know why you did. One”—and here Arthur raised his plump fingers—“you haven't the experience. Two: You are far too young to companion a dowager in her dotage. Three: No matter how well born you are, you have never had traffic with the nobility. Why hasn't a duchess a whole slew of acquaintances and relatives who could recommend a companion to her?”

Seeing the momentary hit he had made, Arthur went on, “Four: You don't know London. And Five: It is dangerous to travel abroad to Paris, even if Napoleon is mewed up on Elba now and the hostilities have ceased, with a female whom you and your family do not know.”

“One,” said Catherine in a hot whisper, “she doesn't care about work experience. Two: I am twenty-one, old enough to be able to be good company for any female. Three—oh, dash it, Arthur, I do want this post. She is a duchess and wealthy so I won't suffer any privation; truly, I can't see how I would. And perhaps it is just that she is lonely. And, after all, dear Arthur, it won't be forever. She said just for the season, to see how we will suit. It is October now; by summer I should be home again. And if I am not happy with her, I shall come home to you and Jane and the baby, and be a good devoted auntie and never stray again. Only I'll have earned the wages to buy the baby a present all on my own, at last. That is, if you will have me back?” Arthur patted her hand in embarrassment. She looked so woebegone. Her bright blue eyes were brighter with unshed tears, and a little crease had appeared on her white forehead. He felt like a beast.

“Of course, we'll have you back. We want you back so much we don't want to see you go.” He laughed, and she laughed with him at his unfamiliar excursion into humor.

“But I do worry about you. You are such a bright girl, Catherine, but you haven't any experience of the world. I worry about you over there across the channel with a strange female in charge of your destiny.”

“Oh I make no doubt,” Catherine laughed, “that she will sell me into bondage, and have me locked into a dank rat-ridden cell if I don't do her bidding. Arthur, do understand, it's not that I love you and Jane less that I wish to be independent; it's that I love you the more.”

“But if you feel that way, no matter what we say, why come so far, to London, to be a menial? Why not contemplate marriage? You are a fine-looking girl, Catherine.” Arthur was a little shocked by his presumption, but he was earnestly trying to counsel her, and was casting all inhibition to the winds.

“Oh, I do contemplate it,” Catherine said ruefully, creasing her gamine face into a parody of sorrow and causing Arthur to chuckle. “But who is there to contemplate me? With all of two shillings as dowry. Arthur, there is no one for me at home. Perhaps there might be someone for me in London, or Paris.”

“Your head's been turned by those two dandies I saw you asking the duchess's direction of when you got out of the coach,” Arthur accused.

“No,” she said, “they were way above my touch. And one doesn't meet one's future husband in the street.”

She rose and shook out her skirt.

“Now, Arthur, shall we cry off this battle? You know, and I know, that the thing is done. Or are you trying to starve me into submission? I haven't eaten in so long, I shall forget whether to use a fork or my fingers. Come, let's have a lovely reconciliation over dinner.”

Arthur sighed and rose, conceding defeat, and heeding the insistent clamor his stomach had been setting up for past hours.

They sat in the hotel's dining area and chatted amiably through all the courses. And by the time evening came Arthur bade Catherine good night at her door without one further premonition of doom about her future employment.

In the morning they breakfasted in solemn silence, and then Arthur collected his bags and Catherine's. She wanted to accompany him to the stage to say good-bye, but he insisted on loading her case into the hackney to drop her off first. “You must never go unaccompanied, Catherine,” he said sternly. “You must write us your address in Paris,” he cautioned, “and be quick to come home immediately if anything goes awry.”

It was a bright morning, and the hackney found the duchess's house with no trouble. As Catherine made to leave, Arthur stayed her. “Here,” he said gruffly, reaching into his pocket, “no young woman should go without funds,” and he pressed a small purse filled with coins into her hand.

“But I shall be earning money,” she said, returning the purse. Then she bent swiftly and pressed a quick kiss on Arthur's cheek, which made him color up. “I do love you and Jane,” she said in a shaky voice. “And I do thank you for all your concern.” And then quickly, before she should embarrass herself and Arthur again, she stepped out of the coach. Her trunk was handed down to her, and she stood on the curb, in front of her new home, and waved farewell to Arthur. The last look she had of him was of his worried face at the window.

Then she turned and went to mount the stairs to the Duchess of Crewe's house. There was no fog this morning and no mysterious gentlemen to unsettle her by saying that it was exactly the right place for her. But it was, and she went up the stairs.

Chapter III

As soon as the maid had left her, Catherine went to the window of her new room. And when she saw that she was safely two floors above the street level, and that there was no way any eyes but pigeons' could peer into her room, she turned and went directly to her bed. And sat there, bouncing up and down, giggling softly to herself just like a child. For if this is what Miss Parkinson had meant about a companion's life being a difficult one, she did not think she could have borne an easy one. The luxury would have flattened her completely.

She had, late in the night, when all of London had lain sleeping, been too afraid and too apprehensive to sleep. For once she had realized the position was indeed truly hers, she had at last the leisure to be anxious about her future and the opportunity to have all the second thoughts Arthur would have wished her to have. It had taken all her courage to be confident and lighthearted when she had taken leave of Arthur.

But once she had presented herself at the door, the butler had signaled to a footman, who invisibly signaled to a maid, and she had been, with no further comment, taken to her new room. And such a room! Catherine thought that no cosseted daughter of an earl could have been housed so extravagantly.

The room was large and airy, with windows overlooking the street. It was furnished with graceful taste in hues of green and white, picked out with pale yellow. After a few minutes of dazed delight, Catherine shook herself mentally and went to the wash pitcher. After only a few seconds of admiring its graceful gold t
rimming
s, she poured water into a bowl and resolutely scrubbed her face and hands. It was time for work. Later she might have earned the leisure to simply sit and admire her room. She braced herself and went downstairs to begin her duties as companion to the Dowager Duchess of Crewe.

All her fine resolve was wasted. The butler informed her impassively that Her Grace was still abed, and, further, that she had left no message for her new companion. So Catherine spent her first full day of gainful employment too wrought up to properly luxuriate in her new quarters. Instead, she paced the room awaiting her employer's summons.

It did not come that day, nor the next, nor even the next. Catherine had time and to spare to memorize every detail of her delightful room. She was informed, each time she asked, that the duchess was variously occupied: at her mantua maker's, with her man of business, or dining out with friends. And, no, she was answered blightingly each time she inquired, there were no shawls to be mended, nor was there any knitting to unravel, nor even letters to copy out. In short, there was nothing for her to do but to wait upon Her Grace's pleasure. The members of the duchess's staff were uniformly polite to Catherine, but all those she encountered as she drifted through the house in search of occupation seemed in some indefinable fashion to look down upon the new female in their midst. Contemptuous, and rightly so, Catherine felt, of a female who was clearly not earning her way.

As the week wore on, Catherine began to wonder why the duchess had bothered to employ a companion at all. And once, in a small hour of the night, she sat straight up in bed in horrified alarm as she wondered whether the duchess was so advanced in years as to have forgotten the existence of her new companion altogether.

However, in the sixth day of her employment, while she was reading through a volume of poetry, Catherine received a summons to be present at her employer's side. She put down the volume with slightly trembling hands, smoothed down her wayward hair, and pinned a smile to her lips. At last, she would begin.

The duchess was sitting up in bed when Catherine was shown into her chamber. Even in bedclothes, she looked imperious and dramatic. She squinted up at Catherine and then motioned her to sit down. She seemed to be consulting a list she had on her lap, along with the dregs of her morning chocolate.

“There you are. Been settling yourself in, gel?” she boomed at Catherine.

“Yes, Your Grace. I have been waiting for your summons, and ready to be of whatever assistance you require.”

“Why would I require your assistance here, in my own house?” the duchess asked with amazement. “I have everything I need here. Got Gracie—she's a lady's maid who knows her business.” And here Gracie, who'd been picking up about the room, sniffed disdainfully, met Catherine's eye for one bleak moment, and then went back to work. “And that old stick of a butler, Griddon, to see to the running of things, and Mrs. Johnson to order up the house. No, I don't need you yet, gel. Can't keep calling you gel, neither; Robin's the name, ain't it?”

“No, Your Grace. It's Catherine.”

“Catherine then. I'm getting all my plans in train for our little jaunt. Paris! It's been years, and now we can go again. Parties and folderol, and good fun. I can't wait. I called you here to see if you're ready.”

“I'll be ready to leave whenever you are, ma'am,” Catherine said. “At a day's notice.”

“A day's notice.” The older woman guffawed. “Not likely. Not with what all I've got to get readied. What are you wearing?” she demanded suddenly, staring at Catherine fixedly.

Catherine glimpsed down at herself in horror, wondering whether she'd spilt something on her gown. But no, it was the neat pristine gray one she'd worn the first morning. It had been nearly a week since she'd arrived and she'd worn each of her gowns in succession, so if it was Thursday, it would have to have been her gray.

“It's ghastly,” the duchess went on. “Ain't you got something livelier?”

“I do have one gayer frock,” Catherine heard herself say,
thinking
of her simple sprigged tea gown, the prize of her wardrobe, that she kept for visiting at home, and that she had worn to a house party with much favorable comment.

“It won't do. I don't know what your game is, and I don't care. Maybe there's some that like a gel that looks like a nun, maybe there's a few that will find it amusing, but it won't do. You've got to dress with some dash. I can't have a little mouse, no matter how saucy a mouse, trailing through Europe with me. You've got to be togged out right.”

Catherine thought with panic of how she could dress up her meager wardrobe with dash, for in truth, she realized, a companion couldn't look shabby. Although her dress was considered proper by Kendal standards, this was, after all London.

“Good thing I took a good look,” the dowager grumbled. “Get me my paper, and some ink, and a pen, gel.”

Catherine hastened to obey the duchess's command, and brought her writing implements from her inlaid desk. The dowager mumbled to herself as she scrawled a note, pushing aside coffee cups and napery as she did so.

“There, good as gold. Go to Madame Bertrand, she's the one Violet used to go to, and she looked fine as fivepence. Even Rose gave up her modiste when she saw what an eyeful Violet looked when Madame Bertrand got through with her. She'll set you up.”

“But,” Catherine protested, accepting the note the dowager thrust at her, “I haven't received wages as yet, and I don't think I can order a new gown as yet.”

“I'll stand the nonsense, gel, and I don't want you ordering one gown. Give me that note back. I thought you was up to the mark. Why did that demned Rose have to go and get herself tied up?” the duchess complained as she scrawled another line on the bottom of her note. “Go out today and get yourself suited up in style. Got looks, but no style.”

The maid who suffered to accompany Catherine to Madame Bertrand's sat opposite her and looked everywhere but at her. She was a plump downstairs maid, and found getting into the carriage a treat, and had even vouchsafed as much to Catherine. But when Catherine had agreed eagerly, and tried to begin a lively conversation, the girl had recalled herself and shrunk back into silence. The duchess, Catherine thought, must be a high stickler for the social order of her servants.

They rode in stately silence through the streets of town till the coach stopped in front of a plain shop window on one of the busier business streets. One dress was artfully arranged in the window, and a great deal of drapery covered up the rest of it. But as there was no name or even number visible, Catherine hesitated to alight. The coachman, a jolly-looking young freckled fellow, held the horses and sent a footman to lower the steps.