“Nice is an uninformative word. Could you be more specific?”
“Surely it indicates approbation of some sort.”
“Yes, but of
what?
Do you like the pose, the expression, the style?”
“Yes, yes, and yes—satisfied with all three.”
“Good, then if you have no constructive criticism, perhaps you will be kind enough to get off my shoulder and let me proceed with it.”
“One would take
me
for the governess,” he said with ill humor, but he left us alone.
We—Abigail and I, worked on French in the mornings, did some readings of a broadening nature in English (we interpreted the term broadly, to include any novel in which we were interested), and occasionally took a turn at the pianoforte. She was the teacher here. She had exceeded my slender accomplishments and laughed quite openly when I sat down to hammer out my three tunes. Her brother’s suggestion that I ought to knock a little something off my fifty guineas per annum due to this lack in my skills was met with the rejoinder that I doubted very much I would ever see a penny.
“So do I doubt it. You’re into me for twenty guineas already, and you’ve only been with us five days. At this rate you’ll have run through something in the neighborhood of fifteen hundred pounds by the end of a twelvemonth. Pass the ham, Abbie.” We were having this discussion over dinner one evening.
“Your brother is a keen accountant,” I complimented Abigail. “Do you suppose he might give me lessons? I never can remember whether two and two are four, or four and four are two. I’m quite sure he is cheating me, and want to check out my interest when he has calculated it.”
Abbie handed me the ham for passing along without any comment on my jibe. She delighted to have me tackle her brother, but gave me little support. I set the meat down without offering it to Kessler, in a subtle effort to curb his appetite.
“Ludwig wants the ham, Rose,” Annie reminded me.
“Oh, excuse me! I thought Sir Ludwig had already had some ham.” I had to either give it to him then or make an issue of it. As he was regarding me with a challenging eye, I passed it.
“We’ll strike a bargain,” he said with a sardonic smile. “I
won’t
eat another slice if you
will.
That way we will both be improving our figures.”
I felt completely foolish, but also completely full. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”
“Rose is not too thin. Why do you say so, Lud?” Annie asked. She had allowed me to be just right in size as soon as I fell back into the habit of taking a little sugar in my tea again. “And neither are you too fat. What the devil is this nonsense? Both of you have some,” she ordered. In fact, neither of us had. My hints were beginning to sink in. The night before, Sir Ludwig had refused dessert.
With such good success in all their eating, I felt the time had come to begin varying the fare offered at the table. In five days we had eaten only roast meat, always with the same pan gravy, if there was a sauce served at all. Some clever Frenchman said the English have a hundred religions and only one sauce. He was right, but the Germans have been known to do better. I had had initially some hope of tasting a meal done in the
nach Jägerart
style, served with mushrooms sautéed in a wine sauce along with other vegetables. The cook’s name was Feilotter, but her way with a piece of meat was dreadfully English. Nor did she ever give us a ragoût. However, we were spared both wiener schnitzel and sauerkraut, to do her justice.
“I’m a little tired of ham myself,” Abbie remarked, giving me an excellent cue.
“One does tire of the same old things. Does Mrs. Feilotter never make you up a ragoût?” I asked.
They all three stared at me as though I had suggested we eat roast rat. “We had a rabbit stew last month,” Ludwig thought.
“Last month! You have the memory of an elephant,” I told him.
“Elephants have need of a long memory.”
“Why?” Abbie asked him.
“Well, for one thing, the gestation period is something over twenty months.”
This right at table, and with three ladies for company! I scowled up the board, to see him regarding me with a lazy smile, trying to get a rise out of me. “I hadn’t realized you were interested in such things, as you are still a bachelor.”
“Gentlemen are always interested in the matter of begetting offspring.”
“Ludwig!” Abbie howled. “Upon my word, what will Rose think of you! And you are usually so nice in these matters too.”
“If I have offended your sense of modesty, Sister, I apologize.”
“You had better apologize to Rose.”
“I don’t believe I have offended hers.”
I tried hard to look offended. “Shocked would be more like it!” Abbie said. With my honor thus gallantly defended, I said nothing.
That interlude was fairly typical of the sort of conversations we had over dinner. There seemed little hope of bringing this crew to a sense of propriety, or of elegance, either. The meals were not changed.
The newspapers arrived at the office of the stage, and were eagerly perused by Sir Ludwig and myself when he brought them home. He became quite excited when he read a black-edge notice proclaiming that a Miss Grafton was missing from her home in Gillingham. I must say the name sent a little shiver of something through me. I snatched the paper from him and read the item through carefully. Miss Lorraine Grafton, it said, had been missing from her home since December 1, having disappeared without a trace while out for a trip to do some shopping. She was the daughter and sole offspring of Sir Rodney Grafton, heiress apparently to an estate worth close to fifty thousand pounds. Her uncle, Mr. Morley, lived with her and was her guardian, as she was an orphan. The next item nearly threw me into an apoplexy. Her late father was well known in the world of art as a collector, famed particularly for his knowledge of Italian works. “It’s me! It’s got to be me!” I shouted, pointing this bit out to Sir Ludwig.
He grabbed the paper back, and with our heads together we read on. Mr. Grafton had traveled extensively on the Continent amassing his storehouse of paintings. “No doubt about it!” Kessler agreed.
There was very little doubt in my own mind that I read of myself. My eyes traveled back to the first part, with the mention of fifty thousand pounds. What a happy discovery to make! I was rich! Ludwig jumped up in his excitement and ran for maps to locate Gillingham. “That place is very close to here,” he told me. “Here we have been neighbors all these years and never met.”
“Do you know the family at all?”
“Never heard of them. Here we are,” he said, fingering a dot on the map. “Why, it’s within a stone’s throw of Shaftesbury! That is where the driver of the stage said you might have got on.”
“The date too is just right! December 1. It was December the second when I straggled into Wickey. Imagine! I have been within forty or fifty miles of home all this time and no one has come for me!”
“The storm held up traffic for days. I knew it was nonsense you were in any trouble. A simple case of loss of memory. You had some accident, and in this state boarded a stage to Shaftesbury, then on towards Wickey.”
“I wonder why I got off in the middle of the road, though?”
“Oh—in that state of confusion you didn’t know what you were about. Miss Wickey told me you were completely distracted when you arrived at the rectory door.”
“I had an awful feeling, though, that I didn’t want to be found. With fifty thousand pounds to lure me back, wouldn’t you think . . .”
“Fell says it is not at all uncommon to have these unexplained fears in such cases as yours. Sometimes too the victim doesn’t want to remember. We’ll find out exactly how the situation stands in Gillingham with this Morley before we let you go back. If he is trying to hustle you into doing something you dislike . . .”
I had to smile a little at this. I had no recollection of Mr. Morley, but no feeling either that I was the sort to bolt only because an uncle was trying to bearlead me—into some undesired marriage, I suppose was what he meant. “I am not a child, you know. I doubt my uncle is the reason I left.”
“A young lady might well be pressured by an older relative. Fell says . . .”
“When did you discuss me with Fell and Miss Wickey?”
“What has that to say to anything?” he asked impatiently.
It indicated to me a greater concern in the affairs of a stranger than seemed likely. “Let’s see what else the article has to say.”
It was fairly long. We read it to the end in silence, my own silence due to a sinking sensation that it was not me written about at all. I didn’t
feel
I was Miss Grafton. Surely one’s own name would be instantly recognized. There was a little familiarity with the name, but it was not a strong enough association somehow. Miss Grafton had been educated at a ladies’ seminary in Bath. It mentioned nothing of any travels. The last line pretty well clinched my decision. She was seventeen years old. Looking to my companion, I noticed he was regarding me in a speculative way.
“I would have taken you for a few years older,” he admitted, for he knew by my face I had decided against Miss Grafton.
“I would have taken myself for
several
years older.”
“Travel is broadening. Your air of sophistication makes you seem a little older than you are.”
“No mention is made of any traveling. Miss Grafton has been cooped up in a seminary in Bath, which I am convinced would be the most narrowing existence possible.”
“There were the summers. You might have been taken abroad with your father.”
I looked back to the article for more details. “And it mentions here she is five feet four inches, too,” I pointed out. I was taller.
“Approximately,” he countered. “The coloring is right. Brown hair and brown eyes.”
“I’m more than seventeen.”
“Dammit, you’re not
old!
It’s impossible
two
young ladies disappeared on the same day, both mixed up in art, both from around Gillingham or Shaftesbury.”
“She was an heiress. How should I be wearing this old dress if I were she?”
“It doesn’t mention she was a stylish dresser.”
“Oh really! As though anyone with a better gown would wear this
thing!”
I replied irritably. My anger was not really with Sir Ludwig, but due to disappointment that I was not this genteel, wealthy orphan.
“
You
are obviously a lady of some consequence, whoever you are, and you were wearing it when you strolled into Wickey.”
“Who says I am a lady of some consequence? As no one has advertised for me, I am probably a governess, turned off for insolence or something of the sort.”
“No, no. Governesses do not lip their employers in the manner you use with me. They do not travel around the world, laugh when they destroy a good length of silk material. They would not automatically stroll down late to the family breakfast table the first day in their new position. You have never behaved in any way to indicate being a servant. Much more like a spoiled heiress. You are a lady.”
“Upon my word, you make it sound like the worst sort of insult! I’m sorry if I have
lipped
you, and I did not
laugh
when I ruined the green silk. I laughed when Annie snatched it up for a shawl.”
“I didn’t mean to be offensive. The fact is, governesses are mousey, self-effacing women without a word to say but please and thank you. I don’t know why they should behave so when they work hard and are poorly paid, and are generally well bred enough, but so it is. You have always behaved in a perfectly natural manner, to the extent that anyone can in this disordered household. I think very likely you are this Miss Grafton. We shall drive over to Gillingham and see Mr. Morley tomorrow. Don’t fear we mean to quite desert you. It is fairly close—I shall return within a few days to discover how you are going on, and if there is anything amiss . . .”
“It’s a waste of time. I’m not, I
know
I’m not Miss Grafton.”
“No, you don’t, Miss Grafton,” was his answer. “In the meanwhile, I have just had another idea.”
“If you mean to point out a governess would not buy oil paints . . .”
“Not that. It’s Gwynne. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he knows this Grafton girl.”
“He would surely have mentioned it when I was there!”
“Oh—of course. I forgot that in the excitement of finding out who you are. He would almost certainly know her father, have known him I mean, and likely know Morley as well. It’s worth a visit. I’m going to see him this instant.”
He didn’t invite me to go with him, and I didn’t suggest it. “You’ll want to tell Abigail and Annie,” he said before leaving.
I did nothing of the sort. Annie was resting, and I did the same. I went to my room and lay on the bed, to think about this latest turn in the case. How nice if I could be a perfectly respectable heiress who lived within visiting distance of Granhurst. I had come to like the place, the people. I liked even better the fifty thousand pounds. Who in her right mind wouldn’t?
He was back an hour later, full of excitement. “Mr. Morley is visiting Gwynne tomorrow,” he said, smiling as broadly as could be. “We’ll drop over while he’s there and let him see if you’re his niece. Gwynne has never seen the girl at all. Knew her father as I thought, and knew he had a daughter at school, but has never met her.”
“Did you think to enquire whether her father was in the habit of taking her abroad with him?”
“He wasn’t. The girl has never been out of England.” I leveled a look at him. “That means nothing,” he explained. He must have been thinking about it on his way home, for he had the explanation ready. “Your father would have spoken of his travels—told you vivid tales of them, no doubt. With your fertile imagination, you conjured them up into living pictures.”
“Did I conjure up a rain storm outside of Schloss Ludwigsburg?”
“Why not? Oh, by the way, it’s that little Italian madonna Morley is coming to see.”
“I thought it was a Mr. Uxbridge who was interested in it.”
“I guess Morley is interested too. Everyone seems interested in the Fra Lippi madonna.”
Till it could be positively proven I was not Miss Grafton, Sir Ludwig continued to use the name to address me, and when the others were told the exciting news, they too tried to remember to address me as Miss Grafton. Abbie did not quite buy his story.