As soon as Lady Constantia had served herself and sat down at the table, Felix rose from his place beside Fanny. “Mama, Father, Vickie, it gives me the greatest pleasure to acquaint you with capital news.”
The earl frowned. The countess’s pale, chilly eyes grew icy. Evidently they expected to hear of a betrothal between their only son and an insignificant nobody.
Lady Victoria clapped her hands. “Do tell, Felix.”
“First,” he continued, “Mr Mackintyre has been kind enough to come down from London--” He paused, and Frank guessed he was enjoying his mother and father’s bafflement at the lawyer’s part in the affair. Thank heaven he’d decided to make that report first. “--from London, to confirm that my dear friends, Captain and Miss Ingram, are the grandchildren of the late Duke of Oxshott.”
“A duke!” Lady Victoria squealed, drawing all eyes. “Oh, splendid!”
Lord Westwood appeared frankly flabbergasted. If Lady Westwood had lost her countenance, she had already recovered enough to reprimand her younger daughter.
“Victoria, pray restrain your enthusiasm.” She turned to Frank and Fanny. Her own enthusiasm, if any, was so restrained as to be undetectable, but though there was no warmth in her look or tone, the iciness had thawed to mere hauteur. “Captain, Miss Ingram, allow me to felicitate you on this singular discovery.”
Frank and Fanny murmured their acknowledgement of her condescension.
“Oxshott, hey?” said Lord Westwood, almost genial. “The present duke is your uncle?”
“He is, sir.” Frank wondered whether Felix was going to disclose their inheritance, or if he himself should. Perhaps money was not an acceptable topic. He foresaw an unexpected need to learn the complexities of fully-fledged gentlemanhood.
“The Ingrams are Lady Frances Kerridge’s children,” Mr Mackintyre informed the earl. “His late grace left them two estates and a pretty penny besides,” he added.
Lord Westwood ignored all but his first words, thus proving to Frank that lawyers, like artillery officers, dwelled on the fringes of gentlemandom. “Lady Frances Kerridge,” he mused. “I recall...”
Felix, probably for the first time in his life, interrupted his father. “I beg your pardon, sir, but I have a further announcement, to me infinitely more important.” He looked down at Fanny with a smile of such warmth and tenderness that Frank had to close his eyes and fight down his envy of their love. “Miss Fanny Ingram has done me the inexpressible honour of agreeing to be my wife.”
Lady Victoria thrust back her chair, jumped up, and ran round the table to hug her brother and kiss Fanny. “Splendiferous!” she crowed. “Anita will be my sister.”
“Near enough,” said Felix indulgently.
The Westwoods offered their more temperate good wishes, and Felix called for the champagne. He prevailed upon his mother to allow Vickie a taste and Constantia a glass of the sparkling wine. The earl forestalled Frank in calling for a toast, and they all drank to the health, happiness, and prosperity of the betrothed couple. Felix and Fanny, arms entwined, drank to each other.
Constantia blinked away tears, blaming them on the champagne bubbles. Frank was regarding her with concern. She smiled at him, raised her glass, and silently mouthed, “Your health!”
“Your happiness,” he silently replied, and they both sipped their wine.
She was a peagoose to fear losing a friend. Whatever happened, she could not expect to go on seeing him daily for ever. Without his inheritance, without his sister’s engagement to her brother, she might never have seen him again once he left Westwood. Now he was going to be part of the family. She would seize any chance she was offered to visit Fanny and Felix in their new home.
As everyone returned to their luncheons, Felix said, “We have decided to leave the day after tomorrow to inspect the estates Fanny and Ingram have inherited.” He explained the situation to his parents.
So soon! Constantia thought, dismayed.
“Miss Ingram has no chaperon,” Lady Westwood pointed out. “Not even so much as an abigail, I collect.”
“I have always managed very well without, ma’am,” said Fanny.
“Indeed! But now you are connected with one of the first families of the realm and betrothed to my son.”
“Fanny is under my protection,” Frank said firmly.
“In her present circumstances a brother is insufficient,” the countess rebuked him with a frigid glance all too familiar to Constantia. “Miss Ingram requires a female companion.”
Fanny turned eagerly to Constantia. “Connie, will you come? I have been wishing for your company, though I didn’t like to invite you until we have set the houses in order.”
“A splendid notion,” said Felix.
“Please, do come, Lady Constantia.” The captain’s voice was quiet but his sincerity decided her.
“I should love to go with you,” she said.
“You most certainly shall not,” her mother at once forbade her. “It is out of the question.”
Perhaps emboldened by the champagne, Constantia argued. “I shall take Joan, Mama, and Felix will be there.”
“I’ll go, too, Connie.” Vickie entered the lists, unabashed by the lack of an invitation. “I can help to look after Anita.”
“Then Miss Bannister shall go with us, to chaperon us all,” said Constantia triumphantly--and quickly, before her mother could squash the proposal so thoroughly it was beyond reviving.
Lady Westwood’s next protest suggested a weakening resistance. “I hardly suppose, Constantia, that having invited you the Ingrams will be eager to accommodate your sister and a retinue.”
“They will be most welcome,” Fanny assured her, “if there is sufficient room at Upfield Grange.” She looked an enquiry at Mr Mackintyre.
“Plenty of room, Miss Ingram, plenty of room.”
“Lady Westwood,” Frank added his plea, “I shall be most grateful if you will permit your daughters to accompany Fanny. Quite apart from the need of a chaperon, I know my sister will be glad of feminine company.”
The countess looked from him to Constantia, then exchanged a significant glance with her husband. “Very well, you may both go for a short visit, until it is time to prepare for the Little Season.”
Even as she rejoiced, Constantia had qualms. She was sure her mother hoped that the captain, now well-connected and wealthy, might offer to take her recalcitrant daughter off her hands. Constantia had no reason to suppose he liked her well enough to want to marry her. She prayed he would not propose, for if he did she would have to refuse and she could not bear to hurt him.
* * * *
Grey rain pattered on the roof of the Westwoods’ landau as it turned, squelching, from the muddy lane into the equally muddy drive of Upfield Grange. An avenue of elms dripped on either side. One had fallen, doubtless some time past for no leaves showed green on the bare branches of its crown and the exposed roots were washed clean of soil.
“I’m surprised no one has used that for timber,” said Frank, peering out into the gloom, “or at least for firewood.”
Constantia smiled at him, glad that the evidence of neglect did not depress his spirits. He had borne the journey very well, sitting up rather than reclining on the seat, which was fortunate as Vickie and Miss Bannister shared the carriage. Anita spent half her time with them, too, alternating with Felix’s new phaeton.
“I daresay the duke would have had anyone transported who was so bold as to appropriate his wood,” Constantia suggested, “even if he did not want it himself.”
“Or hanged, drawn, and quartered,” Vickie proposed with relish, bringing a faint protest from her governess. Travel disagreed with Miss Bannister; she was out of curl though they had taken two leisurely days to cover the eighty miles.
“Bloodthirsty wench,” Frank said with a grin. “My grandfather may have been a tyrant, but things are going to change now that I’m master here. I hope there’s good fishing,” he added as they crossed a bridge over a murky stream.
“You have definitely decided that you shall have Upfield Grange, and Fanny Heathcote?” Constantia asked.
“Simply because your mama insists it’s not proper for Fanny to play hostess to her betrothed, and the Grange is in better repair for immediate occupancy. So I shall be your host.”
“I wager Mama didn’t like that much either,” Vickie observed.
“She didn’t, but apparently it’s acceptable since Fanny, your brother, and Miss Bannister will be in residence. I don’t believe I’ll ever really understand the ins and outs of propriety.”
“It sometimes seems a great deal of fuss over nothing,” Constantia agreed. “Thank heaven she gave her permission before she realized precisely what is involved. Oh, look, here is the house. Good gracious!”
The landau jolted to a halt before a large house in the most fantastical Gothic style. Towers and turrets, battlements and buttresses, arched windows and oriel windows, even gargoyles leering down from the roof parapet, nothing was missing.
Heedless of the rain, Vickie jumped down from the carriage, not waiting for the footman to descend from his damp perch to let down the step. “Oh!” she breathed in an ecstasy, “isn’t it heavenly? Does it not bring to mind mad monks and persecuted maidens? I’m sure you must have a ghost, Captain, or even two!”
Frank went off into peals of helpless laughter. Constantia eyed him uncertainly, wondering if he were more tired than she had supposed and growing hysterical.
With a gasp, he stopped laughing and said, “To think I expected to retire to an unobtrusive life in a modest country manor! Anyone residing in that must surely be destined to figure as either an ogre or a sorcerer--or possibly a mad monk.”
“Or an enchanted prince, or an Arthurian knight,” Constantia proposed. “It is certainly neither unobtrusive nor modest. Vickie, you will be soaked to the skin. Run to the porch at once. I cannot wait to see inside.”
Vickie scampered across the potholed, weed-grown gravel to the shelter of the porch, the open-arched ground floor of a tower superimposed on the façade of the central block. There she seized in both hands a massive iron door-knocker in the form of a dragon’s head. With it, she beat a zestful tattoo.
By the time Thomas had escorted the rest of the travellers under his black umbrella to the porch, the iron-studded and banded door was slowly creaking open. A small, balding man in a rusty black coat peered at them myopically.
“Us wasn’t expecting so many,” he quavered in a voice full of doubt.
Frank looked as if he was about to dissolve in laughter again, so Constantia took charge.
“I am Lady Constantia Roworth,” she said briskly, moving forward so that the butler--if such he claimed to be--was forced to retreat. “You must have received the letters regarding our coming, and in any case I am sure my brother and Miss Ingram have arrived already. They were well ahead of us upon the highway.”
“They’m come,” he conceded grudgingly.
“Are there dungeons?” Vickie demanded.
“For heaven’s sake, Vickie, the dungeons can wait. Miss Bannister is unwell, and I for one want nothing so much as a cup of tea.”
“And tea you shall have,” Fanny promised, emerging from an archway, “if you don’t mind drinking it in the kitchen. The drawing-room is all in holland covers, and goodness knows what is under them. Frank, are you...yes, you look well but you ought to sit down. My dear Miss Bannister, pray come and see if a cup of tea will not revive you. The kettle is on the hob.”
Before following the others through the archway, Constantia threw a glance around the chamber they had entered from the porch. To her delight, it was a Tudor Great Hall, smaller than Westwood’s had been, but with all the proper appurtenances: elaborately carved panelling, chimneypiece, and staircase; high, vaulted ceiling; and a gallery around three sides. On either side of the entrance tower, tall, leaded windows under pointed arches admitted a minimum of dull daylight through their grimy diamond panes. The woodwork was dingy, sadly in need of polish, and cobwebs hung from the gallery and ceiling beams, but that could be put to rights.
Frank was waiting for her by the archway under the gallery at one end of the hall. “I’m sorry,” he said, chagrined, as they proceeded along a dusty corridor. “I’d not have dragged you here for the world had I known what a shocking state the place is in.”
“I’d not have missed it for the world. The Gothic façade must be a quite recent addition since the hall is undoubtedly sixteenth-century, and just what I particularly like.”
“Is it, truly?” he asked, gratified. “It looks deuced--dashed--grim to me. Not that I haven’t been in some odd lodgings in my time, but I daresay Westwood and Nettledene have raised my expectations! To have to invite you to take tea in the kitchen is mortifying, to say the least.”
She touched his arm consolingly. “You will need to hire servants, that is all. There are bound to be women in the village who will like to earn extra money by coming in to help put everything in order to start with.”
“Mackintyre did warn us there is no one but an elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Biddle, as caretakers. I had not realized, though, just how much care a house needs. I’m glad you are come, for Fanny won’t have the least notion how to go about hiring servants.”
Constantia was pleased that he took it for granted she would assist his sister, but she said doubtfully, “I will do what I can. Our housekeeper and butler hire most of our indoor servants. Though Mama had me attend several interviews, some years ago, so that I would know how to go about it, the only servant I have ever chosen myself is my abigail, Joan.”
“That’s more than Fanny’s ever done. Where does one start?”
“With the vicar’s wife. She will know of respectable people in need of work.”
“Let’s hope the vicar is married, then. Oh Lord, I’ve just thought: if Mackintyre judges this place habitable, what condition do you suppose the house at Heathcote is in?”
At that moment they reached the kitchen. The spotless cosiness of the large room suggested that the Biddles spent most of their time there, but just now they seemed to have vanished. Miss Bannister was already seated at the well-scrubbed whitewood table, where Anita knelt on a chair with bread-and-jam in her hand and jam on her face. Vickie wandered about exclaiming over bright copper pans, wooden spoons, and other kitchen equipment unfamiliar to the daughter of an earl. At the wide fireplace, Fanny was swinging a hook bearing a steaming kettle off the fire.