Daisy stared into the pretty little round face, the girl’s kindness warming her. ‘I’m here about the position of nurse companion,’ she whispered back. ‘Sir Augustus sent me.’
‘Did he?’ Kitty Murray tried to hide her surprise, not wishing to offend this lovely but lost-looking lass who she didn’t doubt had been treated like muck by the mistress’s nieces. The airs and graces them two put on you’d think they never had to visit the privy like everyone else. But this lass
did
look church-mouse poor, and young with it. Anyone less like a nurse companion she’d never seen. Still, it was none of her business. And then contradicting her last thought - something Kitty did fairly frequently - she said, ‘You done anything like that before then?’
‘No . . . no, I haven’t.’
So why had Sir Augustus sent her here with those two? And then, as voices rose in the drawing room, Kitty said quickly, ‘Sounds like the parson’s going, I’d better take the trolley along. ’Bye, lass.’ And she scooted off with a nimbleness that belied her very nearly pear-shaped body, her roundness of girth tapering towards the top of her head where a precarious bun of thick curly brown hair wobbled.
She was nice. Daisy stared after the departing figure with the feeling her last friend in the world had just deserted her, and then turned her head back towards the drawing room as the door opened.
A man came out, obviously the parson from his dress, and said to someone within the room, ‘Don’t be silly, I am more than capable of seeing myself out. This is my home from home after all,’ before he closed the door behind him. It was a precise action, and his footsteps were precise likewise as he crossed the hall, stopping in front of Daisy to say, ‘So you are the valiant young person who rescued Miss Fraser’s nephew from the sea? How do you do, young lady?’
This kindness was unexpected, and the courtesy more so. Daisy found herself struggling for words, which was unusual, but managed to say, ‘How do you do, sir?’ fairly coherently.
‘Oh, how remiss of me. I am Parson Lyndon, a friend of Miss Fraser’s. And you are . . . ?’
‘Daisy. Daisy Appleby, sir.’
‘Well, you have done the Frasers a great service, but of course you know that.’ The parson smiled.
Daisy made no answer to this but smiled back into the pleasant young face in front of her.
She had always somehow imagined that parsons and such were getting on in years, but this one seemed nowhere near as old as her brother George, and he was tall and good-looking to boot. His hair was dark and so were his eyes, his features fine - it could all have appeared severe on someone else, but the kindly expression in his deep brown gaze didn’t allow this.
‘I must be going.’ Hector Lyndon gazed down at the fishergirl who, it seemed, had turned the Fraser household on its head, and had to admit to a feeling of surprise. This fresh young face, obvious shyness and patent innocence were not at all what he’d expected after what had been said in the drawing room, but then he should have known better than to form an opinion from anything Wilhelmina’s nieces said. He wasn’t so naive as to believe the sun of social harmony set bright in an unclouded heaven over England, and although he’d only met Sir Augustus once had thought the gentleman very like his daughters in his chilly self-satisfaction and absolute conviction that he belonged at the top of the heap.
The clergyman became aware of the girl in front of him shifting her feet uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry, I was daydreaming.’ He smiled again, but this time her answering smile was uncertain.
He had disturbed her. Oh, dear, dear. She must be finding this visit overwhelming to say the least and he hadn’t exactly helped matters. What could he say to put her at her ease? This would never do.
But the opportunity was gone when, in the next instant, the door to the drawing room opened and Felicity’s voice said coolly, ‘Appleby? My aunt will see you now,’ her cold gaze moving over the two of them in such a way that Hector found himself hastily taking his leave.
When Daisy stepped into the drawing room her overall impression was of its richness of colour, followed almost immediately by a renewed churning in her stomach when she found herself facing the mistress of Evenley House. Wilhelmina Fraser had the family colouring and strong features, her black hair - in which no grey was apparent - piled high on her head in intricate curls which would have done credit to a woman half her age. Her eyes had the dark lustre of polished ebony, but the sickly-pale quality to her lined skin and the blue tinge to her lips betrayed her ill health. The main impact of her appearance, however, was an impression of indomitable authority and steely determination. It was this determination which had kept Wilhelmina alive for the last ten years since the heart condition first diagnosed in her as a young child had worsened.
The grand lady stared at the fishergirl, and when one of William’s sisters opened her mouth to speak Wilhelmina forestalled her niece with a pre-emptive, ‘So you want to work for me, do you?’ directly to Daisy.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Daisy hadn’t expected it to be put quite so bluntly.
‘Why?’ Those black eyes were fixed on her face and were full of animation, their brightness only serving to emphasise the dull, parchment-like quality to skin drawn tight over the bones beneath.
‘Ma’am?’
‘It’s a simple enough question, child. I asked you why you wish to take up employment as a nurse companion to an old lady, work which will involve seeing to all my needs and dancing to my whims on occasion, because the elderly can be difficult. Were you aware of that?’ The piercing eyes flashed towards her nieces for an instant but Wilhelmina continued speaking with scarcely a pause. ‘Is it because you feel you have a vocation or a leaning towards such a position, or is the inordinate amount of money my brother is offering the chief inducement?’
Daisy’s eyes narrowed. In spite of her obvious ill health and age, this was not a woman in her dotage. Although they were poles apart in station, Sir Augustus’s autocratic sister reminded her of her own granny, and her granny had never been one for blathering but preferred to call a spade a spade. And she didn’t like being humoured either. Daisy continued looking straight into the obsidian gaze even though her heart was pounding so hard it was threatening to choke her as she said, ‘It’s the money, ma’am.’
She heard a quick intake of breath behind her, and one of the sisters murmuring, ‘Well, really!’ But Wilhelmina Fraser’s face had not moved a muscle.
‘And for the sum of six pounds a month you will endure working for a crabby old woman who is perverse, trying and vexatious, and enjoys being that way?’ she asked.
‘For six pounds a month, I’d endure much more than that, ma’am.’
‘Really, this is too much! You can’t let this . . . this
person
speak to you in such a way, Aunt.’ Cecilia’s long face was suffused with angry colour, her thin nose fairly quivering as she stepped round Daisy to stand in front of her aunt. ‘Surely you can see now that this whole scheme is utterly preposterous?’
Wilhelmina considered the girl’s shrewish face for a moment. Her nieces were as plain as pikestaffs, and with as little shape too. Their private tutors had taught them a smattering of French, and impressed on them that the ability to sketch and paint in watercolour was an essential part of their education, along with accomplishments like playing the piano and fine stitchery. But it wasn’t their placid acceptance of the constrictions their father had placed on their minds and bodies since birth that made her dislike them so intensely, and not even their unshakeable belief in their own aristocratic supremacy. No, it was their meanness of mind, their spitefulness, and she was seeing these attributes in full measure today over the matter of this fishergirl.
Wilhelmina reached for the small brass bell on the polished table at the side of her chair without answering Cecilia, and it seemed to Daisy that no sooner had it been rung than the door opened to reveal the maid. ‘My nieces are leaving.’ Her voice was glacial.
‘But, Aunt--’
‘And when you have shown Miss Felicity and Miss Cecilia out, you may inform Cook we have a guest for luncheon, a guest to whom the Frasers are deeply indebted incidentally. This is the young person who pulled my nephew out of the sea when he was foolish enough almost to drown himself, Kitty.’
‘Pleased to meet you, miss.’ The maid bobbed her head at Daisy, lowering it again quickly but not before Daisy had noticed the twinkle in her eyes. Kitty had caught the message her mistress had sent her and was relishing the bristling outrage evident on the faces of the two younger Frasers. So was Wilhelmina, if the gleefully vituperative expression on her face was anything to go by.
‘Have you a message for Father?’ Cecilia had swept over to the door with Felicity at her heels.
‘Only that I am delighted to avail myself of his kind offer.’
‘Very well. Good afternoon, Aunt Wilhelmina.’
‘Good afternoon, Cecilia. Felicity.’
Once the door had closed Daisy was conscious of a feeling of relief which made her want to sag, and it was with some effort she kept her back straight and her chin up.
‘Don’t stand there as though you’re on parade, child.’ It was irritably spoken. ‘Sit down and tell me about yourself. And as you may have gathered there is no excess formality in this household, but that does not mean I am a soft touch. I might look old and decrepit, but it would be a brave man or woman who’d attempt to pull the wool over my eyes. Do we understand each other? You will doubtless rue the day you walked through that door. Everyone else seems to.’
Daisy sat down on the small upholstered chair her new mistress had indicated and looked full into the tired old face in front of her. Her voice was soft when she replied, ‘Not everyone surely, ma’am. Your maid seems very happy.’
‘Kitty? Oh, Kitty is a good girl,’ Wilhelmina acknowledged drily, before adding, ‘Bright as a button, aren’t we, miss? I hope that continues when you’re called in the middle of the night to attend me when this wretched heart of mine disturbs me. And I need help to bathe and walk on bad days, and insist on a tour of the garden every day which means, whatever the weather, you will be assisting me while I take the air. But enough of that. Tell me about yourself.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Daisy paused, not knowing where to start or how much Sir Augustus’s sister expected her to say.
‘Start at the beginning, child.’
Startled, Daisy raised her head to meet those bright black eyes again - eyes that seemed anomalous in the rest of the lined face and emaciated body. It was as though Miss Fraser had read her mind and that was a little unnerving.
Obediently she began to speak and continued for some time. When at last she was silent it was a few moments before Wilhelmina said, ‘I can see now why the six pounds a month is so important. Will it be enough?’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am?’
‘Will six pounds provide for all the needs you have to meet?’
It was a simple enough question, but spoken as it was, in a deeply moved voice which was soft and kind and quite at variance to anything which had gone before, it nearly proved Daisy’s undoing. She had to gulp several times before she could say, ‘Aye . . . yes, ma’am. Yes, it will be enough.’
Which words heralded the beginning of her life at Evenley House.
Part 2
The Green Baize Door
Chapter Eight
It was five days after Tom’s funeral, and the first day of the month of May, when Daisy presented herself early one morning on the doorstep of Evenley House.
The two-mile walk to her new abode had been a very pleasant one. She had passed dew-spangled gossamer spider webs in the hedgerows of the country lanes, and in the last few days spring had announced itself with a vengeance, as though to make up for lost time. Although it was still cold, bright sunshine had lit the morning, and the banks to either side of the lanes had been starred with daisies, buttercups and dandelions. It was a day for cuckoo song, for flowering laburnum, lilac and larch, and in spite of her sadness Daisy had felt her spirits lifting a little once she had left the fishing village behind her. For the moment the sight and sound of the sea was a constant reminder of the father and brothers she had lost, and she was not sorry to be removed from it.
The funeral had been harrowing, but the grief and heartache had been tempered slightly by the fact that Tilly and her bairns would not now be separated but could all live under one roof along with Nellie and Margery. Tilly in particular had been overcome with gratitude when Daisy had put forward her plan for the future to her family, and each one of Daisy’s brothers had privately expressed their own thanks to her for the huge weight she had lifted off their shoulders.