Charity Begins at Home (5 page)

"An inflated reputation, I take it," Tristan said dryly, intrigued in spite of himself.

"Well, that's what she told me. Said he treated her only with the utmost respect." Calder's open face looked honestly confused. "It just goes to show. Don't the ladies always say they want to be treated like ladies? And then when we comply, they complain. It's a damned shame, for she'd be a fine wife. She's been too long raising my parent's children— we'd three younger brothers, you know. One's just twelve now, and he's been all Charity's doing."

Calder's sturdy bay was tied to a post near the portico, and they began walking that way. Calder cast him a speculative glance. "You're an artist, I hear. She likes art. She's got a stack of art books. My aunt said Charity would miss a picnic to spend an afternoon in the Royal Academy and look at the paintings."

Tristan couldn't help but wonder if she'd seen his own pictures, if she liked them. Then he realized he was being approached for another contribution, one considerably greater than the vicar's two hundred pounds. As politely as he could, Tristan said, "I'm not in the market for a wife."

"Wait till you meet our Charity. She's got a way of changing a fellow's mind. You know how you see some women and want to bed them?"

Tristan thought it prudent not to answer and was glad he hadn't when Calder continued, "Not my sister. You see her and want to wed her. You start thinking how well she'd entertain your guests and consult with your chef and raise your children. You think she'd keep your household in order and make your life peaceful— and she would. She's had a decade's worth of experience at it. I almost hate to lose her, for I can't imagine how my brothers and I'll do without her. But she deserves a home of her own, don't you think?"

Again Tristan thought it politic not to answer, and Calder nodded as he mounted his horse. "Just as well. I'd as soon not have her refuse another neighbor. She's turned down the squire's son and his nephew, too. So the squire's beginning to think we're too haughty a family— the Calders! Haughty!" He urged his horse down the avenue, calling over his shoulder, "I'll be back later with the crew."

Chapter Three

The brisk Calder soon had five plows working the nearby fields and four men preparing the seed for sowing. Tristan found himself very much in the way and took up Calder's polite suggestion to assemble the records of the last three seasons to determine if more seed had to be ordered. He disliked feeling so useless, but he had never turned over a spade in his life and wouldn't be much help now. He resolved to find some way to repay Sir Francis. Calder would be offended by a direct offer of cash, but perhaps a fine hunter wouldn't be taken amiss. Kenny had probably left a stableful at his lodge in Leicestershire.

Closeted in the balcony-level study with three volumes of agricultural notations, Tristan was almost relieved to hear childish screeches in the great hall below. He had left the boys in care of the sole surviving groom, but they had apparently escaped again. He emerged from the study to the sounds of running feet. Then he heard a crash and knew, somehow, that it was the Sevres vase he had given his sister on her twenty-fifth birthday. He strode to the railing, about to remonstrate with his nephews, when someone beat him to it.

"Lawrence, Jeremy! Did I break that when I opened the door?" The cheerful voice carried clearly on the lofty foyer. "No one answered my knock so I just walked in. I vow I don't know my own strength! I mean to say, I didn't fling the door or crash it against the wall. But look on it—shards all over the floor! What an Amazon I must be!"

"What's an Amazon?" Jeremy asked.

"A very strong woman. Stronger'n any man." Tristan could hear her voice lilting with pride. But unless he hung over the railing, which he wasn't about to do, he would catch no glimpse of the unknown Amazon below him, under the balcony.

Lawrence's scornful tones, however, were all too familiar. "You're not an Amazon, Charity. You didn't break the vase. I did."

So this was the estimable Miss Calder, taking a break from her festival planning. Braden wandered farther along the railing, hoping for an unobstructed view. But he could only see fragments of porcelain scattered on the muddy parquet floor around a discarded bouquet of flowers.

"Oh, Lawrence, are you the strong one then? Did you just open the door and see the vase crash to the floor from your enormous strength?"

"No, he pushed it," said Jeremy, a boy without the guile of his brother—or Miss Charity. "He was in a taking something terrible."

Braden expected the girl to respond with the awful voice of authority, as he himself was about to do. But instead he heard only amusement. "Well, I should hope it was a terrible taking! I hope just a minor pique wouldn't inspire this sort of destruction, or we're none of us safe from Lawrence the Terrible!"

Jeremy's giggle encouraged her, and she said, "What a shame! Your mother told me once that your uncle gave her that." Her sigh was a masterpiece of longing and regret. "I was always so thrilled to see the vase and know it was most probably criminally obtained. All my relatives are so tediously honest, you know, and you get to have a smuggler uncle."

Tristan had never precisely considered his act of packing the vase carefully in his luggage and walking off a ship a crime, but he supposed it was, at all that. And his credit with Lawrence immediately went up a notch or two. "Uncle Tristan smuggled that?"

"Well, it's of no account. The excise agents would have no use for the vase now. Look at it, all smashed to bits. Lawrence, you wild man, what were you thinking, smashing your mother's vase?" There was the slightest pause, then the gentle suggestion, "Were you angry at your mother, perhaps?"

Tristan, curiously moved by the girl's unconventional tactics, waited for the boy's answer. Finally Lawrence cried, "She wouldn't see me! She sent me away! She said she couldn't bear to see me today!" In an instant his sobs were muted, presumably by a feminine shoulder.

"Oh, you poor darlings. It's been awful for you, hasn't it? I just don't blame you a bit, Lawrence, in fact I can't, for I've been just as bad myself."

"You? Bad?" Lawrence's voice was raw but retained its scoffing note.

"You would never believe it to look at me, would you? But I was so wicked once. No, I can't tell you! It's too bad!"

Of course, the boys were begging at this point, and Tristan himself was in some suspense. Reluctantly Miss Calder said, "You must promise to tell no one. And promise you won't think too badly of me. You see—come here, Jeremy, sit with us."

Braden heard the swish of skirts on wood and imagined her sitting down on the floor and gathering the boys into her lap if she were telling them a bedtime story. "It was all because of preserves."

"Preserves?" Jeremy echoed.

"Yes, preserves. Strawberry, cherry, peach— my mother loved to put up preserves. It always embarrassed me to see her working like a scullery maid, and of course she made me help, too. Oh, she'd have the whole house steaming with the heat of a dozen kettles, and all the maids would be peeling grapes and plums. And I, naturally, had to stir the muck. You can imagine what that did to my elaborate coiffure."

"What's a coiffure?" Jeremy whispered.

"A hair arrangement. And I didn't have one, once preserving day was done. I never could understand why we had to put up so many pots every year, for we had shelves and shelves of them. Five brothers, I had, and we never made a dent in the supply. But still Mother had to put up more. Then she died."

"You poisoned one of the pots?" Lawrence breathed.

"I poisoned— Lawrence, where do you get these notions? Has someone been reading you gruesome German tales? No, I didn't poison anything. I wouldn't poison my mother, even if she made me put up preserves every day of the year."

"I didn't really think so," Lawrence's shame was mitigated only by his disappointment. "So what did you do that was so wicked?"

Miss Calder signed gustily. "I was so angry when she died. Oh, don't look so shocked at me! You promised you wouldn't think badly of me! I know it's shameful, but I really was angry that she died. I was sad, too, but first of all I was angry." There was a combative spark in her words now. What a voice she had, Tristan marveled, wishing he could see her expression. She could go on Drury Lane tomorrow. "And I don't think either of you can tell me I shouldn't have been."

Jeremy squeaked his demurral, and, in a bit of a huff, she went on. "So the day after the funeral, I went into the stillroom—" her voice lowered shamefully, or perhaps only conspiratorially— "and I took one of the jampots and—and I took it out to the pond and I heaved it. As far as I could. Apricot preserves. My favorite."

There was a moment of silence. "That's not very wicked."

"Well, Larry," she mimicked his scornful tone, "it's not a Sevres vase, to be sure. But then I'm not titled. I can't afford to go about destroying my valuable possessions. But valuable or no, it made me feel much better. I even went back into the stillroom and got another pot."

"Did you heave that one, too?" Jeremy, at least, was still innocent enough to be impressed.

"I was going to. But then I saw the label. It had an etching of the Grange on it, with the big oak tree in the front, and underneath it said 'From the kitchens of Calder Grange'. We have only one kitchen, actually, but Mother thought it more impressive in the plural. She used to give the jam to all our guests. She sometimes had to press it on them, for I imagine they had stillrooms full of preserves, too. You know, I'll wager we could end starvation entirely if we just gave away the contents of our stillrooms! But perhaps," her voice grew meditative, "perhaps even starving people would get weary of forever eating grape jam."

Tristan leaned back against the paneled wall, suppressing a laugh. Lawrence was not so amused at the digression. "You didn't heave it, did you?"

"No, I didn't. I meant to, but then I thought of how much my mother loved to make the preserves and how she always told me that good jam was just like love, sweet and nourishing— that isn't very appealing, is it? Jam is so sticky! So I put the pot down and sat there in the stillroom and just cried and cried there among the jampots Mother loved so."

"Mother loved her vase!" Lawrence suddenly wailed. "That's why I broke it! She was so cruel!"

"Oh, darling, I know! Even if she didn't mean to be, I know how hurt you must have been! And you couldn't tell her so, when she isn't well, could you? So you had to break the vase instead." The slightly ragged edge to her sigh touched Tristan as much as Lawrence's sobs, and he no longer cared very much about the vase. "But I haven't the slightest idea what to do now. Can we mend it?"

"Not likely," Jeremy replied with mournful pride. "It's in a thousand bits."

"And someone's sure to notice it's gone. That's why I chose a jampot. No one would notice it was gone, for there were a hundred others. But what are we to do?"

Lawrence said, "I suppose I must confess to Mama that I did it."

"Are you sure you can? I never confessed about the jampot, except to you, of course, for I knew you wouldn't spill the soup. I wasn't brave enough. Perhaps you aren't either."

His manhood questioned, Lawrence could only aver, "I am so brave enough. I'll even confess to Uncle Tristan."

"My word, Larry, you must be careful. After all, we know your uncle is, well, criminally inclined."

I? Tristan wanted to protest but held his tongue, for Lawrence, of all people, was defending him. "He's not so horrid as you might think, Charity. He said Jerry and I could be pagans if we liked."

"Pagans?" Miss Calder echoed faintly. "Aren't you afraid he's a pagan, too? Don't they boil people in oil?" Tristan didn't know whether to be amused or outraged that she was putting such thoughts in his nephews' heads. But Larry's reply reassured him. She knew what she was about, however labyrinthine her methods.

"That's cannibals. And I don't think he's a cannibal. I don't think he'd even beat me, as long as I apologized."

"Still, to be safe, I think you might offer to pay him back. That might pacify him. Do you get an allowance?"

"Not till I go away to school. And I wouldn't want to have to give it up. I could tell him I'll pay him when I come into my inheritance when I'm twenty-one. I'm seven now, so it's only—" He halted, such higher mathematics beyond his ken.

"A very long time. Well, you can put it to him. But I imagine an apology graciously extended will be graciously accepted, and you can let your solicitors haggle over the price."

"What's a solicitor?" said Jeremy, but Lawrence shushed him.

"I can make another vase. Not a— a whatever you said, but I have some modeling clay."

"That's a good idea. But isn't there something else you should do first?" The boys remained in a baffled silence until she prompted, "The mess here. I wager your downstairs maid has enough to do without this."

"She's the upstairs maid, too, and the cook." Lawrence gave a put-upon sigh, then said with an oddly adult resignation, "I'll clean it up."

"I'll help," Jeremy piped up, for he hated to be left out.

"Do ask the maid to watch you though, so you don't get cut. I wager she'll love sitting back and watching someone else work for a change! And I'll tell you what." The boys' silence was obviously expectant, and she did not disappoint. "If you do a good job sweeping up here, I'll see it you can help me with my Midsummer work! I must build, oh, booths and tables, and I will need some able confederates. I think you are old enough, but, well, we shall see. Now I'll go on up and see your mother. I've picked her some wildflowers from the copse, and they can't fail to perk her up."