As they made their way towards the housekeeper’s room, Constantia was struck by a dismaying possibility. Suppose Fanny proposed that the two of them share a chamber? She would never be able to keep her scar hidden. Fanny might mention it to Felix, from whom Constantia had so carefully guarded her secret all these years.
Nor could she ask Fanny not to tell Felix. Fanny would want to know why, and loving Felix as she did, it would distress her to think he considered himself responsible for that long-ago accident.
“You will take Anita into your bedchamber, I expect?” Constantia suggested hastily.
“I meant to do that anyway, even were we not about to be invaded. Her room is too far from mine, and she is so sad to lose your sister and Miss Bannister, she needs a little extra cosseting.”
“Her room is quite small. If I remove thither, we shall be able to fit two into the chamber I have now.”
“If you truly don’t mind, that will help. I wish we hadn’t given the room which will be Frank’s to the duke. It’s quite the largest, and with the dressing-room connected, too, but I’m too craven to ask him to move or to share with Lord Mentham.”
“Heavens, so am I! I own I am curious to meet the unfortunate young man who has the duke for a father.”
“Since the late duke was as quarrelsome as his son, no doubt his grandson is a chip off the same block. Can you imagine what it will be like having two of them in the house? Oh, Connie, if you decide to leave I’ll quite understand.”
“I shall not desert you,” Constantia promised.
So she was not among the unwilling passengers borne away by the Westwood carriage. Vickie leaned from the window waving madly, her sorrows only slightly mitigated by the five golden guineas Felix had pressed into her hand. On the porch, Anita waved her little hand until the carriage disappeared from sight.
Later, Constantia took the child down to the bridge to play. She hoped Frank might go with them, but he had to interview a couple of ex-artillerymen who had turned up looking for work.
Though sad to lose her friends, Anita was philosophical, for her short life had been full of partings.
“Aunt Fanny’s the only one who never goes away,” she explained to Constantia, holding her hand and walking sedately at her side down the elm avenue. “Even Uncle Frank goes away sometimes, when Duty calls, but then he comes back. He says you have to go away one day.”
Constantia read a question in her grave, dark eyes. “Yes, I shall, sweetheart. I hope to visit you often at Heathcote when Aunt Fanny and Uncle Felix are married.”
Anita smiled and gave a little skip. “They’ll be my mama and papa then. Amos already has a mama and papa. Aunt Miriam and Uncle Isaac. He has a sister, too, only she’s just a baby so she can’t play prop’ly with him. D’you think I’ll have a sister one day?”
“I should not be a bit surprised.” She quelled a blush, recalling one or two warm embraces she had observed when chancing unexpectedly upon her brother and Fanny. What was it like to be held in the arms of the man you loved, knowing he desired you? She would never find out, for she must never let Frank come close enough...let
any
man come close enough. She shivered.
“Are you cold, Aunt Connie?”
“No, love. It is another beautiful day, is it not?”
“I like it when the sun shines. Can I...Please may I pick up that stick? Aunt Vickie teached me a game.”
As they continued down the hill to the sparkling, rush-edged brook, Anita collected a bundle of twigs in her pinafore pocket. She set them in a careful pile on the bridge’s deck. The heavy timbers were in good repair, which was more than could be said for the wooden railings. Constantia vowed to herself not to take her eyes off the child for a moment.
Anita chose two twigs and gave her one. “Yours has a fork, see? You gots to remember it. Then we drop them in the water on this side and see which one comes out first, mine or yours.”
Hopping with excitement, Anita tugged Constantia to the upstream side of the bridge. They dropped their twigs into the clear water, every pebble in its gravel bed visible, and hurried to the other side. Anita flung herself on her stomach, the better to see her stick amidst a school of darting minnows a few feet below.
“It’s mine. Mine’s first. P’raps you’ll win next time, Aunt Connie.” She scrambled up, her white pinafore already grubby.
The little girl was far too absorbed in the game, and Constantia in keeping her from falling in, to notice the duke’s approach until he hallooed.
Stumping onto the bridge, cane in hand, he tipped his hat. “A fine morning, ladies. Now do you know, ma’am, no one has explained to me who is this pretty little thing. Come here, my dear.” He held out his hand as if to a suspicious dog.
Anita stood her ground, hands behind her back, eyeing him warily.
“Why, you are not afraid of me, are you?”
“No. My daddy was a so’jer. He was artirelly, like Uncle Frank.”
“Artillery, eh? A fine body of men, I make no doubt.”
Constantia trusted his geniality no more than did Anita, but she decided his request for an explanation was reasonable. “Anita’s father was a fellow-officer of Captain Ingram’s,” she told him. “When she was orphaned, he and Miss Ingram took responsibility for bringing her up.”
“So she is no legal connexion?”
“I believe not. However, when my brother and Miss Ingram marry, they will adopt her.”
“I wonder whether my dear niece and nephew have thought to make their wills in the child’s favour?”
She did not for a moment suppose that he was concerned for Anita’s future. In her opinion, his last question was not reasonable but inquisitive. Yet she had no wish to antagonize him--in fact, she had to admit to herself she was a little afraid to be virtually alone with him at some distance from the house. If he were to start shouting at her, she might display her cowardice by picking up Anita and running away.
“I think it most unlikely that they have made wills at all,” she said, “since until very recently they had no possessions to bequeath. Now I daresay it is hardly worth the trouble until Felix and Fanny are wed.”
“Excellent, excellent.” The duke rubbed his hands together. “Well, child, are you going to catch a fish for dinner?”
He moved towards Anita, and she took an involuntary step backwards. However, he merely gazed down into the water, leaning against the rail.
“Take care!” Constantia exclaimed, too late.
The rotten wood did not crack and snap, it simply disintegrated. With a surprised squawk, his grace splashed paunch first into the brook. His hat floated serenely downstream, twirling in an eddy of the current.
Anita giggled. Constantia raised a warning finger to her lips, though she could not suppress a broad smile. The Duke of Oxshott appeared to be unusually prone to accidents.
Her eyes sparkling with excited delight, Anita ran to Constantia and tugged on her arm until she leaned down.
“Will the ogre drown?” she demanded in a whisper.
“Ogre!”
“Aunt Vickie did tell me he’s an ogre, like in
Jack and the Beanstalk
. That ogre went tumbling down, too.”
“The duke is not an ogre,” Constantia reluctantly disillusioned her. “And the stream is too shallow to drown a grown man, I fear...I am sure.”
Indeed, his grace had already turned himself over. Spluttering, he sat there submerged to where his waist would be if he had one. A strand of bright green waterweed draped across his chest like the sash of some foreign order. From his draggled locks and whiskers, rivulets ran down his stormy, burgundy-red face.
Cautiously Constantia approached the edge of the bridge. “Are you hurt, Duke?”
“Devil take it, get me out of here!” The duke had recovered his breath, though not his temper.
“Anita, run up to the house and...Oh, thank heaven, here comes your uncle.”
Frank increased his pace from a stroll to a stride as Constantia hurried to meet him. “What’s happened? What has he done now? If he’s insulted you again, I’ll make him sorry he ever heard of Upfield Grange!”
He held out his hands to her and she gave him her own. For a timeless moment their gazes locked, and it seemed to Constantia his yearning matched her own. Then Anita pulled at his sleeve.
“Uncle Frank, the ogre fell in the water but Aunt Connie says she fears he won’t drown.”
Constantia gave a breathless gasp of irrepressible laughter. “Oxshott leant on the fence and it gave way.”
“Dash it, I missed the show. I must have been behind one of the trees when he went over. Hoskins told me he had come down after you and I thought I’d better join you.”
“He’s sitting in the stream yelling for help.”
“I hear him.”
The duke’s imprecations floated up to them. “Damn your eyes, you buttock-broker, where in frigging hell have you taken yourself off to?”
Frank winced. “Somehow you don’t expect a duke to have a mouth as foul as a trooper’s. I can’t say how sorry I am to expose you to such unpleasantness, Lady Constantia.”
“I cannot hold you responsible, unless you hold me responsible because my parents were not precisely all amiability to you and Fanny? Gracious!” she exclaimed as a further flood of Billingsgate reached her ears.
“What’s he talking about, Uncle Frank?” Anita enquired with interest. “I can’t understand all the words.”
“Nor can I, I am happy to admit,” Constantia told her. “You must never, under any circumstances, repeat what his grace is saying.”
“Never! Will you take her up to the house? I’ll see what I can do for my beloved uncle.”
“You will not try to pull him out?” said Constantia anxiously.
He flexed his shoulders. “No, perhaps not. Luckily I’ve just hired a couple of brawny gunners. Tell Hoskins to send them down.”
“‘Fore Gad, I’ll have your gizzards for garters! I’ll flay you alive, stap me if I don’t!”
“Something tells me he’s not going to be pleased when I tell him I can’t help him,” said Frank with a grimace.
“We shall make haste. Come, Anita.”
She glanced back from further up the slope. Frank was seated on the edge of the bridge, his legs dangling. The duke’s clamour reached her, but fortunately distance muffled the words.
Whatever names he was called, Frank survived them without injury. To everyone’s relief, the duke retired to his bed to ward off a chill. By the time he reappeared at noon the following day, he had recovered his composure and his dubious cordiality. He even proposed taking Fanny and Constantia into Winchester in his carriage one day soon to purchase much needed household effects.
“I’ll be damned if I’ll go on swigging the Pig and Piper’s swill any longer,” he added, somewhat detracting from the generosity of his offer. “There’s bound to be a respectable wine merchant in Winchester with all those clergymen swarming around the cathedral.”
“Still,” Fanny said optimistically to Constantia later, “he might just as well have gone without us. Perhaps he really has resigned himself to our inheriting and wishes to make up for his rudeness. Only I wish he had not invited all our relatives to stay!”
The trip to Winchester was set for four days hence. In the meantime, the first of the relatives arrived.
Thomas ushered him into the drawing-room, where Fanny and Constantia were entertaining the vicar and his wife to tea. Adolphus Kerridge, Marquis of Mentham, heir to the Duke of Oxshott, was a small, scrawny young man. His clothes were of the first stare, superbly tailored, but he was oddly dishevelled, a button unfastened, a collar turned up on one side and down on the other, a loose end of his neckcloth dangling.
As Fanny rose and crossed the room to greet him, he peered around with a hunted air. “M’father here?” he blurted out.
“I’m not sure where the duke is, Lord Mentham, but Thomas will find him and inform him of your arrival.”
“Oh no! Mean to say, thank you, ma’am. Came as quick as I could. You’ll tell him I came as quick as I could?” the marquis entreated.
“Certainly,” said Fanny, surprised but sympathetic. “Will you take tea with us, or would you prefer to go to your chamber first?”
He glanced down at himself in a helpless way and muttered something about “travel dirt.”
“Pray don’t consider it. After all, we are cousins and I hope you’ll make yourself at home here. Mrs Watchett,” she addressed the vicar’s wife, “you don’t object?”
Mrs Watchett was only too pleased to meet a marquis, the duke having so far eluded her. Constantia poured him a cup of tea. He sat down beside her and drank thirstily.
“Didn’t dare stop on the way,” he confided. “M’father’s a regular Tartar when he’s crossed.”
“So we have noticed,” she murmured, refilling the cup. She pitied the unhappy son of such a father. Lord Mentham was clearly no match for the duke. “Would you care for a madeleine?”
She passed the plate of small, rich cakes, one of Henriette’s specialities.
Quietly contented, he consumed three and was reaching for a fourth when Oxshott came in. At once he jumped to his feet, his face resuming its timorous expression.
“So, Mentham, you’re here at last and already making up to the ladies,” boomed the duke.
“Yes, sir. Mean to say, no, sir. Wouldn’t do that, sir. Cousins,” he squeaked.
“Lady Constantia is not your cousin, looby.”
“Not my cousin? Could have sworn you told me to come to stay with my cousins.” He stared at Constantia in puzzlement, then turned to Fanny. “Didn’t you say so too, ma’am? Cousins, you said. Make yourself at home.”
“I did indeed, Lord Mentham. I should have made plain that while I am your cousin, Lady Constantia is not.”
“So that’s it,” he said, relieved. “Mean to say, deuced confusing. Not that I don’t wish you was my cousin, ma’am,” he added politely to Constantia. “More the merrier. Hope you’ll call me Dolph. Everyone does.”
“Mooncalf,” snorted his sire.
His low opinion of his offspring, while regrettable, was undeniable. Lord Mentham was possessed of more hair than wit.
“Poor Dolph’s understanding is not powerful, but he is perfectly amiable, is he not, Fanny?” Constantia said kindly when she and her brother and the Ingrams met in the drawing-room before dinner. On her way down, passing the duke’s chamber, she had heard Dolph say in anguished tones, “But I don’t want to. I like Cousin Fanny.” To which the duke had replied in the hectoring voice she had come to hate, “What the devil has that to say to the matter, you noodle?” She had hurried on.