Carla Kelly (12 page)

She considered Joel Steinman’s letter, and the possible governess position, and played another chord. If I can get that job, I had better be able to verify my claim to teach piano to children, she told herself as she ruffled through a stack of music and appropriated a Bach invention that looked promising, if played at a glacier’s speed.

“I disremember this many notes,” she muttered, her eyes on the music as she poised her fingers over the keys. “Forward and easy does it, Susan. How bad can one person be?”

I could have been worse, but I’m not sure how, she had to admit when she concluded with a chord that, while not triumphant, was at least three parts right. Thank goodness I do not have an audience. I’m sure they would be throwing things or making rude noises. She turned the page and poised her hands over the keys again.

“Don’t even think it, Miss Hampton!”

Susan gasped and put her hands behind her back as Lady Bushnell uttered each word with emphatic precision. The bailiff laughed from the doorway as the widow, moving slowly but deliberately with the aid of a cane, bore down upon her. After one terrified look around, Susan closed her eyes and sat very still. To her horror, Lady Bushnell ordered the bailiff to pull up a chair. Susan just barely stifled a gasp when the widow thumped down her cane on a spot by the piano stool and the bailiff positioned the chair. He helped her sit down, then stood behind the chair. Susan knew that she did not have the courage to look at either of them, so she kept her eyes resolutely trained upon the Bach.

Her courage fled when Lady Bushnell thumped the music with her cane. “Begin again, Miss Hampton. From the top.”

Susan turned back to the previous page, where the notes appeared to have multiplied at an alarming rate. She stared at the page, opened her mouth to beg off, then closed it. I would only babble, she told herself. I wonder if Lady Bushnell can smell fear. Susan took a deep breath and began to play, wincing at the notes and grateful, at the same time, that Bach would never know what atrocities she was committing on his music.

She struggled to the end, and held her breath after the final chord. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the bailiff go to the window, where he stood, shoulders shaking, and stared out at the snow. She was too afraid to glance at Lady Bushnell. The widow cleared her throat and Susan winced again.

“Miss Hampton, if my pianoforte were a living thing, we would have to shoot it to put it out of its misery.”

David Wiggins exploded into laughter, which he quickly stifled when the dowager glared at him. “You, sir, are less than useful at moments like these,” Lady Bushnell pronounced. “Surely you can find something to do!”

“Without question, ma’am,” he replied promptly, his voice a trifle unsteady. “Do be kind to Miss Hampton, my lady. After all, she did weed the Waterloo strain to perfection while I was gone.”

“I suspected as much,” rejoined the widow, clearing her throat in a decisive manner that must have terrified a generation of her husband’s lieutenants. “I can still see dirt under her nails! Really, Miss Hampton!”

Susan blushed and stared at her hands as though they were someone else’s picked up by mistake. “It was late last night, my lady,” she mumbled, “and some of it must surely be silver polish.”

“Miss Hampton, you are a ragamuffin! I wonder that Hamptons ever had any pretensions to society, if you are a representative sample! Begin at the top, Miss Hampton, and take it more slowly this time. David, busy yourself!”

Two hours later, Susan was still beginning at the top. I will remember these two lines when I am old and gumming my porridge, she thought as perspiration trickled down her back in the cool room. But she was playing those two lines better, she knew she was, even if the tempo was as lugubrious as Lady Bushnell’s demeanor was glacial. She sighed and stopped at the end of the second line when the widow began the ominous tapping of her cane on the floor, the signal to pause and face the music. She looked at her employer.

You are so impeccable, she thought in grudging admiration, knowing that the pins were coming out of her hair as she nodded in time with the music. Of course, I am doing the work here, Susan considered as she dragged her eyes to the top of the page again and poised her fingers—nicely arched now, thanks to Lady B’s admonition—over the keys.

“That will do for now, Miss Hampton,” Lady Bushnell said.

Susan winced at the “for now,” but closed the music book with relief. She glanced at the furniture polish on the windowsill and wondered why she had ever thought polishing silver in the kitchen was a chore. Her stomach growled, and she blushed.

“I will release you now, Miss Hampton,” Lady Bushnell said as she began to rise from the chair.

Susan leaped to her feet to assist her, marveling at the lightness of the old woman’s bones. “You have taught me a great deal this morning, my lady,” she said as she stood with her hands at the widow’s elbow.

“It is only the beginning, Miss Hampton,” came the reply, and Susan tried not to make a face.

“Oh, Lady Bushnell, I do not mean to take up so much of your time! Surely you have oodles of things more valuable . . .” she began, and was silenced by an emphatic tap of the cane as the widow stopped her stately progression to the door and turned to stare at her companion.

“Don’t babble, child! My dear Miss Hampton, it is I who should thank you!” she said, and Susan dreaded the glitter in her magnificent green eyes.

“Wh . . . whatever for, my lady?” Susan stammered.

“Of all that endless parade of lady’s companions, you and you alone have given me something to do!” she continued in triumph. “When you are not helping David in the succession house—although why he needs such assistance I cannot imagine. He’s managed well enough alone before—I expect you to be in here, practicing diligently.”

“Y . . . yes, ma’am,” Susan replied.

They continued to the door, where Lady Bushnell stopped when Susan opened it. “Tell Mrs. Skerlong to bring my luncheon into the breakfast room this time, instead of my room. I feel positively energized, Miss Hampton. And I expect you in my room for another four or five chapters this afternoon. Emma Woodhouse is such a flibbertigibbet that I wonder what Jane Austen was thinking! Spare me from maiden ladies in parsonages! Modern writers are such a trial.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Susan said. She dropped a curtsy and stepped into the hall. I have been sentenced to hard labor at the piano, she thought. Joel Steinman, perhaps I will consider your latest offer.

“Oh, and Miss Hampton . . .”

“Yes, Lady Bushnell?”

“That rose pink becomes you better than it did my daughter.”

My goodness, Susan thought as she smiled at Lady Bushnell and escaped to the safety of the kitchen. The Skerlongs and David looked up from the table, where they were eating. She delivered Lady Bushnell’s luncheon request, and the housekeeper’s eyes widened in surprise.

“She never eats in the breakfast room anymore,” Mrs. Skerlong said, getting up to prepare Lady Bushnell’s luncheon.

Susan sank down at the table, leaning on her elbows in a way that would have sent Aunt Louisa up into the boughs. “She says I have positively energized her,” she confided in a mournful tone. “We are to practice every morning.” She remembered herself then and straightened up, smoothing her hair back into its customary lines and replacing the pins. “David, Lady Bushnell has made me her project!” she wailed.

He laughed and pushed a bowl of stew in front of her. “Whatever possessed you to start playing in the first place?” he asked, handing her a spoon.

“The silliest thing!” she admitted. “My letter from Mr. Steinman told me of a possible opening as a governess to young girls that he thought I might be suited for, if it should develop. I thought to practice to see if I had enough proficiency to teach children.” She ate a few bites then put down the spoon. “I am an idiot.”

“No, you’re not,” David disagreed, his smile replaced by a frown. “A new position, eh?”

She nodded. “He said it may come to nothing, but he wanted to see if I was interested. And I am, of course, considering how little headway I have been making with Lady Bushnell. Until now!” She sighed and began to eat again.

“You’ve written him?” David asked after Mrs. Skerlong left with the luncheon tray and Cora followed with a teapot. His tone was casual, with just enough of an edge to it to make her look at him in surprise, and then hope he hadn’t noticed.

“Actually, no, I haven’t,” she replied, surprised at herself all over again. “And I really don’t know why not. Perhaps I would miss the Waterloo strain too much, and dirt under my nails.” Impulsively, she reached out to touch his arm as it lay on the table, but stopped herself in time. “I think your succession house is the sanest place in England.”

He nodded, his eyes bright. “It is. I sit there at the drafting table and dream about covering England with the Waterloo strain and other seed improvements of my engineering.” He looked embarrassed. “Pretty ambitious for a lying Welsh sneak thief.”

She thought of her own moments at the drafting table, watching the wheat in parallel rows in front of her. “Anything’s possible, I think, if one sits at that table long enough,” she said mildly, then frowned at him. “See here, sir, you are not a sneak thief! Those days are long over.”

“But I am a liar, eh, Susan?” he murmured.

She returned his steady gaze, and thought, unaccountably, of her father. “I wonder if anyone really ever tells the truth, sir,” she said, matching his calmness.

“I am sure I would not dare,” he said enigmatically. He stood up, then reached across the table suddenly to touch her cheek. “Come with me this afternoon to choir practice, Susan,” he said, and it didn’t sound like a mere suggestion. “We’ll deliver Joel’s glove afterward and you’ll see me in action again.” He grinned. “Joel is such a war hero in this part of the Cotswolds!”

And you, sir, what are you? she asked herself as he picked up his coat from the rack and left the kitchen. And most of all, she thought as her hand went to her cheek, why do I care what the bailiff does?

Chapter Ten

“You probably think I am missish in the extreme to be mournful about no tea again with Lady Bushnell this afternoon,” she told the bailiff after he handed her into the gig, climbed in after her, and settled a blanket around them.

He spoke to the horse in Welsh, and they started in the direction of Quilling. “She’s never offered me tea, and I’ve known her over twelve years,” he observed, amusement evident in the crinkles around his eyes. “Of course, I am not a gentleman and never expected such attention.” He stared straight ahead at the road between the horse’s ears. “It couldn’t be that you worry too much about inconsequentials, could it, Miss Hampton?” His expression was blank, his tone neutral, and she wondered suspiciously just how much experience he had around women.

She let out an unladylike protest. “Oh, worse and worse! Now I am Miss Hampton again!” She tucked her hands under the blanket. “Perhaps I do borrow Monday’s trouble from Tuesday,” she admitted grudgingly, then hesitated until he glanced at her. “I am being bold, indeed, Mr. Wiggins, but have you ever been married? You remind me of my Aunt Louisa’s husband, rest his soul, with that placating tone that could only come from the hard usage of experience,” she accused, humor high in her voice. “I know when I am being condescended to.”

He chuckled and made himself more comfortable as he overlapped into her space on the narrow seat. “I thought you would. And the answer is yes, or sort of, I suppose. I had a woman in Spain.”

He did not say anything for a considerable distance. “Oh,” Susan said finally. “I’m prying, aren’t I?” she asked when the silence stretched some more.

“Not really,” he replied. “I opened the subject, I think, in a sideways kind of fashion. Sometimes I forget that you have quite excellent powers of observation, Susan.”

“Where is she?” Susan asked.

“She died giving birth to our son during the withdrawal from Burgos. We couldn’t stop for anything. Our son died, too.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, contrite right down to her toes. “I wish I had not asked in such a flippant way.”

“No matter. It was a long time ago,” he said, his voice wistful for a moment, “Sometimes it seems to have happened to someone I hardly know anymore. But to the case in point: Jesusa didn’t speak any English, or not much, and I have discovered that women are mostly the same in any language.” The subject didn’t seem to make him sad, and she wondered at his resilience. “I learned pretty early that a bland tone in Spanish let me get away with any amount of reproof.”

“And so you reprove me about my worries?”

“A little,” he agreed, “but only a little. Are you so sure that your aunt or your father wouldn’t have exerted themselves to find you a husband, had you remained in London?”

“I have no money,” she reminded him simply. “What man would be tempted?”

He stared straight ahead again. “I cannot imagine that there was no one of your class who wouldn’t rejoice in a wife with high looks and some considerable intelligence, even if she were as poor as Job’s turkey.”

I am at least smart enough to know when I am being complimented, Susan thought, and, sir, you take my breath away. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me,” she told him frankly, also staring straight ahead.

“Well, then, tell me ‘thank you’ prettily,” he said, amused. “The problem is your father, then, that man you won’t write to,” he surmised, nudging her shoulder. “I gather he is a walking debt machine and scares off sensible suitors. I remember little lords like that in Wellington’s army.”

She nodded, too embarrassed to speak, and marveled, as the village came gradually into view, at just how many emotions she could feel in such a short drive.

“Then if you can’t find a rich man with sense, you’ll have to marry a poor man, after all,” he concluded, turning the gig into the churchyard. He gestured toward the church. “And since you won’t marry me, let me introduce you to our poor
and
single curate.” He grinned at her.

“Are you so determined to find me a husband?” she whispered, blushing fiercely and surprised to find herself balanced so delicately between irritation and high good humor. “And must you bring up that proposal? I thought we agreed you were impulsive and feeling sorry for me.”

“Did we?” he asked, his face bland again. “If you say so, it must be true. I forgot.”

She let him help her from the gig. “Did Jesusa find you exasperating?” she asked.

“Of course she did,” he replied with equanimity. “She loved me.”

I think I have just learned an interesting lesson, if I am to believe the bailiff, Susan told herself as she walked beside him into the vestry. The man who exasperates me even more than the bailiff is my father, but I do not feel inclined to forgive him, and I am certain I do not love him. In this, as in other matters I could tell, I suspect I am very much the bailiff’s inferior, she considered honestly. And yet Lady Bushnell, who knows David Wiggins well, will never offer him tea because he is not a gentleman, and Aunt Louisa would lock me up for a lunatic if I brought him home to dinner. Not that I ever would, she amended hastily. It’s the idea that counts here. Perhaps it’s time I stopped being a snob, considering that I have little to be arrogant about these days.

“We’re redding up some special music for the Easter service,” he explained as he showed her to a pew at the back of the church.

“Heavens, Lent hasn’t even begun yet!” she said with a smile.

“We need all the practice we can get,” David said. “And I am late. Well, if we become too much of a torment to ears accustomed to better singing in London churches, wander out among the gravestones, or count daffodils. We won’t be much above an hour.”

She was content to listen and agree with the bailiff’s assessment of the choir’s abilities. Still, she reasoned, what they lack in competence, they make up for in enthusiasm. And it was hard to overlook the magic of a Welsh bass among the underendowed English. She decided that a few more Welshmen in the lower registers would make this a choir worth listening to. I imagine the curate longs to recruit beyond these borders, she thought, but I doubt that recruitment was a subject addressed during his study for holy orders.

And speaking of the curate, that could only be he, leading the music. Susan watched with amusement at first, and then interest, as the curate in his rusty black led his little choir through a somewhat labyrinthine Bach cantata. From her viewpoint, she could regard only his shoulders, which were rather narrow, and the back of his head, which at least contained abundant hair of an auburn shade. Come to think of it, he appeared to be all narrow planes and elbows. She was forcibly reminded of a marsh bird.

But an earnest one, she had to allow as the curate sang along with his choir, his enthusiasm wholehearted. How intently they follow him, she observed. Well, almost all, she amended, turning her attention to Cora Skerlong in the contralto section, who was trading lingering glances with a tenor. Susan smiled at the bailiff, who intercepted her glance at the young lovers, and returned a grin between rests. Good for you, Cora, she thought. It looks as though our bailiff will be casting about for another milkmaid and girl of all work before long. She sighed. Perhaps I should volunteer. I don’t seem to be doing Lady Bushnell much good as a lady’s companion, beyond affording her some amusement with my execrable piano playing.

I wonder that no one gives the bailiff looks like that, she thought idly, not that it’s a concern of mine. He isn’t beyond his early thirties, and so what if he lived a little harder during those years than most men? Heaven knows it makes him an interesting conversationalist, and after all, one cannot make love all the time. She sat up a little straighter. Susan, mind your thoughts.

She noticed a mouse scooting from the wall to the pew in front of her and hurriedly raised her feet to the prayer bench. He has all his hair—such a rich, dark color—and appears to have all his teeth, which is more than Cora’s tenor can boast, from the look of him. And while the bailiff is only a little taller than many Welshmen, he does not have that lightness of frame, she considered. He’s built to stay, and perhaps that does not appeal to some. Of course, if a young woman, or even one his age, could sit with him before a fire, or watch him measure and regard his precious wheat, she might be inclined . . .

The mouse moved again and Susan tucked her feet under her. And I had better stop worrying about tea and bailiffs and diligently apply myself to the pianoforte. A letter to Joel Steinman would be in order, too, although I have been threatening that for a week. Why didn’t I just give up and stay in London? Perhaps the bailiff is right about someone wanting me; stranger things have happened.

She turned her attention to the choir, willing the mouse away by ignoring it, and resolving to suggest that the bailiff offer the curate a kitten when they are born. One cat could do the job. It wasn’t a large church, such as she was used to in London. Sheepfold, manor, church, or inn, it is all the same in the Cotswolds, Susan decided after a thoughtful look around. The centuries sit lightly on stone. These buildings will be here long after I have stuck my spoon in the wall. She smiled, intrigued that while morbid, the thought was far from unpleasant. The bailiff could be right; maybe what I consider large issues really aren’t so important. I must remember to ask him sometime if he felt that way before Waterloo or only after. Or it could be that I am a slow learner in the school of life?

Choir practice was over. She looked up in surprise at the silence, and then the voices blended now in idle chatter as singers hunted for cloaks, scarves, and mittens, and considered dinner and chores. Sitting in this chapel, one could become a philosopher, she thought as the bailiff came down the aisle with the curate. She looked around for the mouse, decided it was gone, and put her feet on the stone floor again.

“Miss Hampton, this is our curate, Mr. Hepworth,” David Wiggins said.

She held out her hand to the cleric, discovering to her amusement that his front was all planes and angles, too. He had a kind face, though, and light eyes that held a welcome, even while his face blushed a fiery red. Only the charitable would call him handsome.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” she said as they shook hands. She twinkled her eyes at the bailiff for a brief moment. “Mr. Hepworth, perhaps the bailiff will give you a kitten in a few weeks. Your church mice could use a challenge, I think.”

The curate blushed more vividly, then recovered himself, even as he still clung to her fingers. “I trust it will be a benevolent kitten, Mr. Wiggins.” He released her hand. “This is a sobering consideration, Miss Hampton. Here I had been thinking that the various squeals and exclamations from the congregation during my sermons were raptures over my scholarly doctrine and sophisticated wit.”

She laughed, delighted to know that somewhere far down in the church’s hierarchy there was a curate with a sense of humor. “You know them better than I, sir,” she replied, giving him the full benefit of her eyes. “But I do recommend a mouser.”

“Anything you wish, Miss Hampton,” Hepworth replied, his voice fervent. He extended his arm to her as the three of them walked toward the door.

She took it, and caught a glance from the bailiff just before he looked away for one of his oblique smiles. You are a matchmaker, sir, she thought as she walked into the late-afternoon sun with the curate. He handed her into the gig as though she were made of cobwebs and eggshells, then took her hand again as the bailiff walked around the horse and climbed up beside her.

“Please give my regards to Lady Bushnell and tell her that I will pay her a parish call next week. It’s long overdue, more shame to me,” he said as he released her hand a finger at a time.

“I will, sir,” she said.

She could feel the bailiff chuckling beside her as they turned toward Quilling Manor again. “I wonder why the sudden clerical interest in Lady Bushnell?” he mused. “Lady B won’t have anything to do with him. I think she’s irritated with God and His staff of well-wishers and do-gooders.”

Susan laughed. “That relieves my mind, sir! Here I had thought I was the only thorn in her side. If she doesn’t care much for the Almighty, either, then at least I am rubbing along in good company!” She leaned toward the bailiff. “Who
does
she like?”

He inclined his head her way. “Keep this under your bonnet, Susan, but I doubt that any of us measure up.”

She looked at him then up close, admiring his brown eyes and grateful that she was in no danger from the power of them or the comfort of his presence alone. “Then it will fall to me to offer the curate tea and address some innocuous conversation his way?”

“I am certain of it, Susan.” He straightened up, assuming that bland tone that made her giggle. “Mr. Hepworth has a nice parsonage, with a housekeeper and a maid, I believe. He is a third son with two livings that I know of, so you could probably afford new shoes every year,” he teased.

“More than you could have offered me?” she teased back.

He smiled. “Jesusa went barefoot. It’s a good thing you already turned me down.”

They laughed together at the absurdity of it, but the bailiff offered no more suggestions as he turned off the main road to the manor and toward the stone buildings in the shelter of the low hills. “Ben Rich,” he said when she looked at him. He pulled out Joel Steinman’s glove. “You can present it to him.”

She took the glove, enjoying the buttery feel of the tanned kidskin as she removed her mitten and ran her finger across it. “My father used to spend more on gloves than I am to earn from a year with Lady Bushnell,” she said as she replaced her mitten. “I think that is one of the reasons I am so out of sorts with him.”

The bailiff whistled. “That
is
a lot,” he agreed, then put his head close to hers again and whispered. “Maybe you should hate him for ever and ever for that, and then some. Silly blighter. What is his excuse for living?”

“Wait, now, you’re speaking of my . . .” she began, then stopped. “You’re making fun of me,” she said firmly.