Amanda Scott (10 page)

“Cook is still there,” he told her. “The others have gone, but Borland—my father’s manservant—has promised to hire more. The difficulty is that my father frequently sacks them; however, he has said he means to turn such affairs over to my management, so I ought to prevent any future fits of such capriciousness.”

“Then the answer is not so difficult. I shall simply become one of your new servants. No, no, Aunt,” she said, laughing. “Such a ruse will answer perfectly, for I am persuaded, Mr. Manningford, that your maids do not live on the premises.”

“No, they come to the house daily, and have done since my elder sister married and went to live in London.”

“Excellent. I shall simply arrive each morning at the same time the maids do and leave when they leave.”

“Nell,” exclaimed Lady Flavia, “you cannot think of doing such a thing! Why, how will you get there? Royal Crescent is clear the other side of town!”

“Fiddle,” Nell said. “Even at that, it cannot be more than a mile from here. I am country bred, ma’am, so such a distance is as nothing to me.”

“The crescent’s atop a mighty steep hill,” Mr. Lasenby informed her anxiously.

“I can manage a hill,” she told him. Then, looking at Manningford, she lifted her eyebrows. “Will it answer, sir?”

“No.”

“No? But I thought—”

“The maidservants arrive very early, Miss Bradbourne.”

Nell smiled at him. “Do you think me a layabout, sir?”

“No, but I do think you ought not to be out at such an hour and certainly not alone. I shall send a carriage for you.”

“Nonsense. Even in my short time here, I have seen that practically no one takes a carriage. You would draw too much attention to me if a one were sent to collect me each day.”

Lady Flavia had been listening with more than usual patience to this dialogue and now said thoughtfully, “You could take my chair, Nell. Of course, there must be chairmen, but I daresay Sudbury will know a pair of lads glad to make an extra shilling or two, and who will keep still tongues in their heads. You might then find use for them during the day, Mr. Manningford, or they can simply return for her each afternoon.”

“But that will be almost as bad, ma’am,” Nell protested. “It will be much better if I walk than if a chair is seen—”

“It needn’t be seen,” Manningford said abruptly. “The stables are in Julian Street, behind the crescent. Your people can take you there, and you will enter the house through the garden. Our people will know who you are, though, and as for the proprieties, Lady Flavia, I can arrange for a maidservant—once we have some—to remain on the upper-floor landing the whole time Miss Bradbourne is with my father. Will that satisfy you?”

Lady Flavia smiled at him. “As to that, young man, I am more concerned with the appearance than with the reality, for I daresay Nell can look after herself. However, if she is truly going to insist upon this dreadful course, your plan is certainly more acceptable to me than any she has suggested.”

Mr. Lasenby murmured, “Dash it, take her pistol. Safe as houses then, I daresay.”

Lady Flavia looked surprised. “You have a pistol, Nell?”

“Yes, ma’am, does that shock you?”

“Not at all, my dear. I should have fretted less about your walking alone in the gardens, had I known you had it. ’Tis rather odd, of course, but I daresay your father taught you.”

“No, Nigel did. He was bored one day. But I believe that we are now agreed, Mr. Manningford, are we not?”

He nodded and said, “But I do think I ought to take you now to meet my father. You’ll not want to ride three in the phaeton again, so we’ll get some men to carry your chair, then meet you in Julian Street to show you the way from there. ’Tis better, even now, I daresay, that you avoid the front of the house.”

She consented, agreeing with a perfectly straight face that for her to be driven in a sporting carriage through the most fashionable streets of Bath would be unsuitable. Mr. Lasenby, in complete accord with that judgment, volunteered to walk by her chair, but Manningford, with a sardonic glint in his eyes, vetoed the notion, suggesting that it might be as well if neither of them were seen in her company just yet. Sudbury, called in to confer, said he would arrange at once for the men and suggested that if Manningford was on the point of leaving, he might tell the lad holding his horses that Sudbury had need of him.

“Oh, dear,” Lady Flavia said with a frown. “That means Botten will be further delayed in getting to her sister’s house, which certainly means she will be cast into the sullens. But Nell’s needs must come first. Good day, gentlemen.”

When they were gone, Nell turned a laughing face to her great-aunt and said, “Is it not the most ridiculous coil, ma’am? Imagine me working for an author of such books. They are so silly and unbelievable, but everyone reads them, even when they claim they do not. Only think of the Regent’s reading them!”

“Oh, I believe some of the newer tales are quite superior, my dear. I had one out of Baldwin’s Circulating Library that I found to be quite amusing. You may read it before I return it. Much of the tale takes place right here in Bath.”

Agreeing that she would enjoy such a book, Nell excused herself to change her plain gray stuff gown for something more suitable to visit an invalid. Passing her great-aunt’s room, some minutes later, she opened the door to find Botten within, stitching the pale green crepe.

The dresser, a woman of some fifty summers, with faded blond hair and a soft complexion, professed herself glad to help Nell with her change, and Nell was soon ready to depart, looking very becoming in a dove-gray half-dress with white thread-lace trim, a simple gray bonnet that set off her flaming curls to admiration, her black gloves and gray knitted reticule, the latter much lighter now than earlier.

Lady Flavia’s chair being kept beneath the swooping stair in the front hall, the two muscular chairmen hailed in and given the direction by Sudbury waited until that worthy had assisted Nell to enter it, then picked it up with ease and bore her out into the street. She had never ridden in such state before and found it an unusual, albeit generally pleasant, way of traveling, once she became accustomed to the sensation of tilting forward caused by the fact that the taller of the two men had taken the rear of the chair. That sensation ended abruptly once they began to climb, however, and since the streets were not crowded, the men made good time, arriving in Julian Street twenty minutes later to find Manningford waiting alone, except for the dog like a toffee-colored shadow at his side. He helped her out of the chair.

“Where is Mr. Lasenby?” she asked, shaking out her skirt and adjusting the light shawl she wore draped across her elbows.

“Inside, writing to tell his grandfather he means to remain for a time in Bath,” Manningford said, firmly shutting the door of her chair before telling the chairmen to carry it into the nearby stable and wait there until they were needed again.

Placing a firm hand beneath Nell’s left elbow, he guided her toward a tall iron-and-wood gate, pushing it open to reveal a large shaggy garden ablaze with the colors of late spring.

“Oh, how lovely!” Nell exclaimed. “But why has no one trimmed those hedges, or removed the dead flowers and leaves?”

Manningford glanced around as though seeing the garden for the first time, shrugged, and said, “My father undoubtedly sacked the gardeners as well.”

“Well, that will not do,” Nell said with a minatory look. “It would be one thing if there were no money, but since you assure me there is plenty, this is but simple neglect.”

“Tell him so,” Manningford recommended, reaching past her to open a door into the house.

She lifted her chin. “I am not so impertinent, sir.”

He grinned at her. “Are you not, Miss Bradbourne? I should have thought you equal to anything. There are times when you put me forcibly in mind of my sister.”

“I doubt that that is a compliment,” she said thoughtfully, “for I must tell you, sir, that whenever you have put me in mind of my brother, it has not been because of anything particularly admirable in your behavior.”

“Then shall we consign our relatives to perdition? Talking of one’s family can only be boring to anyone else.”

“But families are important, sir.”

“Are they?” He smiled at her. “I cannot agree, but in any case, I did mean what I said to you for a compliment.”

She could not resist returning his smile wishing she were worthy of such praise. It must, she thought, be an excellent thing to be equal to all the challenges one encountered. She had already discovered, however, that quite frequently she was not.

They passed along a narrow, whitewashed corridor to a door leading into the stair hall, and there Nell paused to gaze about her, astonished by the faux-marble walls and the would-be stone steps. The house was very quiet.

“Are there truly no servants, sir?”

“Only the cook and a scullery maid. Shall I send for one of them? Are you nervous, ma’am?”

“No, not at all. I was not raised to be missish, you know. My mother died when I was quite young, and my father went through a flock of housekeepers before I took the reins myself. For some reason, any number of them seemed to think he might marry them. I could never understand such misplaced optimism.”

“Could you not?” he asked.

His tone was cynical again, and she laughed. “If you mean to imply that he gave them cause to believe such a thing, you really ought not to say such things to me.”

“I made a point of not saying any such thing to you.”

“Well, yes, but …” She chuckled again. “You are quite abominable, sir. In point of fact, although I have no good reason to believe that my father’s actions raised false hopes in his housekeepers’ breasts, the possibility does exist. Still, they must have been daft if they believed him.”

“No doubt, but people do believe the oddest things.”

She agreed, gazing at the pictures on the stair wall, where hunting scenes and sketches of Bath hung cheek by jowl with ponderous family portraits. It was as if someone had simply stuck every picture in the house up there without order or reason. Oddly, the effect was both interesting and decorative.

Manningford was watching her. “My sister Sybilla decided that the stair hall was tiresome, and since my father never sees it, she saw no reason not to alter it. I like the result. We go up this second flight now. His rooms are on the top floor.” He paused on the landing and looked at her searchingly. “I hope you are not having second thoughts, Miss Bradbourne. He will not be grateful to you, nor pleased to see you, I might add.”

She smiled at him. “He will not frighten me, sir.”

He looked long at her, then said slowly, “No, I begin to think nothing does frighten you, though I cannot help but think that one or two events in your past might well have frightened a person of less resolution.”

“Goodness, sir,” Nell said, striving for a lightness in her tone that she could not feel, “You will put me to the blush.”

“You must forgive me.” He gestured for her to precede him, adding gently, “When one has racketed about as much as I have, ma’am, one learns to pay as much heed to the things people don’t say as to those they do. You flout convention by walking alone in a public garden, but you carry a pistol in your reticule. You behave like a lady of quality, yet you agree without a blush to a scheme that would mortify many other young women. You laugh easily; yet I sense sadness and tension beneath the laughter.”

There was nothing Nell wished to say to that, least of all to tell him that she had hardly laughed at all for months before meeting him, so she held her tongue and gave her attention to the narrow wooden stairs. At the top she paused, waiting for him to come up beside her, wondering if he would say any more.

He did not. He smiled at her again and gestured toward a door just inside the corridor leading off the landing. “That is his bedchamber,” he said. “I should like to spring you on him before he has a chance to say he won’t see you, but I daresay that would only send him off into another fit. I don’t mind if he has one, of course—”

“Sir!” Nell exclaimed, truly shocked.

Manningford drew a deep breath and let it out again before he said, “Look here, Miss Bradbourne, you might as well know from the outset that I don’t care a damn for my father. He has never given me the least cause even to feel that ordinary consideration one feels for the common man in the street. He has ignored me all my life, exerting himself only to forbid me to do anything of which he does not approve, frequently threatening to cut off my allowance when word of any outrageous behavior reached his ears, but consistently forbidding me to seek gentlemanly occupation.”

“But surely,” Nell said, looking at the closed door ahead of them, “there must have been something you could have done. Perhaps your brother would have helped you.”

The glint of sardonic amusement in Manningford’s eyes deepened and he shrugged. “My brother makes few decisions on his own, ma’am, and his wife does not approve of me. To her credit, I must point out that I am just as irresponsible, selfish, and heedless as ever she has accused me of being. Indeed, my myriad faults have been described to me by many others in addition to Clarissa, and with equal regularity. So many who say so very much the same thing must certainly be right.”

“Goodness,” Nell said, shaking her head with an expression of extreme sympathy on her lively face, “you poor, poor man.”

The look in his eyes sharpened, then relaxed, and his lips began to twitch. He said in a carefully even tone, “Someone recently told me that you are never impertinent, Miss Bradbourne. I wonder who that can have been.”

“Why, sir,” she said with wide-eyed innocence, “it was I who told you, but no doubt such adversity has impaired your memory.”

Taking her arm in a firm grip, he drew her to a padded bench against the wall on the landing and plumped her down upon it. “You deserve that I should take you straight in,” he said, “but I have at least some notion of civility left to me. Moreover, Borland is as likely as my father to have a fit if I simply open the door and present you to their notice. I’d not miss my father, but the entire household would sink without Borland, so you will await me here.” He went to the door of the bedchamber and scratched softly.