Banishment (Daughters of Mannerling 1) (6 page)

Isabella went in search of Barry and found him working in the small vegetable garden at the back of the house. She sat down on an upturned box and surveyed him gravely.

‘Where do you come from, Barry?’

He leaned on his hoe. ‘Do you mean, miss, what was I doing afore I come here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, all sorts of things, but I was in the military for ten years, which is why I get along just great with Joshua in the kitchen. I came out three years ago and worked at bits o’ this and bits o’ that. I was always knacky at repairing things and got enough work to augment my pension. Not much of a drinking or baccy man, nor do I gamble, and so I was comfortable enough. Then Mr Ducket was applying for servants for here and so I got the job. Free lodgings and my pension. I am a lucky man, Miss Isabella.’

‘How do you find us?’

‘That’s not for me to say, miss.’

‘Do you not sometimes think of us as peculiarly useless specimens of humanity?’

‘Miss Isabella! I have never criticized my betters and don’t intend to start now. A Tory, me, and proud o’ it. Who’s been putting Whig notions into your pretty head, miss?’

‘No one. Straitened circumstances are making me look at the world a new way. It is as if Mannerling cast a spell on all of us.’

‘It did that,’ he said quietly. ‘If I may be so bold as to speak plain, miss, Brookfield may seem a come-down in the world, but it’s a solid house and can be made comfortable. You will forget Mannerling in time.’

Isabella shook her head. How could such as Barry understand that every part of Mannerling, every stick and stone seemed part of her?

The following day, when she was seated with her sisters in the drawing room at Perival, Isabella wondered whether this journey might prove to be a failure. She was anxious to begin her ‘lessons,’ namely, learning to flirt, rather than dressmaking. But soon she became as absorbed as the others in learning how to place neat stitches, in how a few new coloured ribbons could decorate and change the appearance of an old gown. Most ladies when they felt their gowns were out of fashion, or had been seen too much, sold them, but the Beverleys had given them to the poor, who should have therefore been the most elegantly attired paupers in England, but they had sold the clothes for much-needed money and kept their rags. How profligate she and her sisters had been, thought Isabella as she stitched away. She remembered several pretty gowns which she had given away after they had been worn only a few times. Her mind worked away busily over the problem of the new owner of Mannerling. Was he in residence? She should have asked the maid, Betty. But surely Mrs Kennedy would know.

‘Is Mr Judd at Mannerling?’ she asked.

‘I believe so,’ replied Mrs Kennedy. ‘He arrived yesterday. There is a great fuss among the servants. He said he did not need so many, and of course, being a single man, he has no need of all those lady’s-maids. Goodness knows where the females will find employment in the country! You will probably find several of your old servants on your doorstep looking for employ.’

‘Oh, really!’ Jessica sniffed. ‘Too late. They were not loyal to us, so why should we be loyal to them?’

‘Fortunately our changed circumstances have made the decision for us,’ said Lizzie quietly. ‘We cannot afford any more servants.’

Jessica looked at her impatiently and then realized to her horror that she had almost been on the point of blurting out that when Isabella was mistress of Mannerling, she could employ as many servants as she wanted.

‘Has anyone seen Mr Judd?’ Isabella was asking.

‘There, now,’ said Mrs Kennedy, waxing the end of a thread, ‘I do believe the Stoppards called the minute Mr Judd was in residence.’

‘The Stoppards have not called on us,’ said Isabella, thinking again that surely the vicar might have at least paid a visit to ask how they went on.

‘He’s a poor sort of cratur, that vicar, and so I am thinking,’ said Mrs Kennedy. ‘And I don’t trust that Mary Stoppard either. Watching, always watching with those black eyes of hers while compliments, as false as anything, pour from her lips.’

Isabella felt uncomfortable. She had always taken the Stoppards’s oily blandishments as the Beverleys’s due. It looked as if no one at all had really cared for them.

It was at that moment that the viscount walked into the room. He stood for a moment in the doorway, his expression serious as he noticed the distress on Isabella’s face.

‘Why, ’tis Guy, come to join the ladies,’ cried Mrs Kennedy.

‘I wondered if Miss Isabella would care to take a turn in the gardens with me.’

‘Gladly.’ Isabella rose, pleased that she was wearing one of her prettiest morning gowns of white muslin with an overdress of white lace. She would have been amazed had she been able to read Mrs Kennedy’s thoughts. Mrs Kennedy privately thought Isabella looked sadly overdressed. All her gowns were obviously expensive but lacked the style they should have had considering what the Beverleys had probably paid for them.

In the gardens, the viscount drew Isabella’s arm through his own and glanced down at her in amusement. ‘I feel I should be leading you down the aisle.’

Isabella looked up at him in alarm. Was this a proposal of marriage?’

‘Your gown,’ he said gently. ‘All that white lace.’

‘Oh!’ Isabella blushed in confusion. ‘It does not please you, my lord?’

‘You please me, but you could enhance your looks further with something less . . . fussy.’

‘And you the arbiter of high fashion!’

‘Not I. My aunt, however, has a keen eye.’

‘Mrs Kennedy!’

‘She was once a dasher but now dresses for comfort.’

‘And she has been criticizing my gowns to you?’

‘She has a maternal concern for you, that is all. You and your sisters have provided her with a new lease of life. She does not mean to interfere or criticize. All her actions are prompted by kindness and concern.’

‘I agree about the kindness and concern. But you should leave any strictures on fashion to your aunt instead of repeating them to me. What if I were to say to you that my father disapproved of the cut of your coat?’

‘My coat is an excellent cut and I would disagree with him. Now if you were to tell me that Sir William disapproved of my Irishness, that I would believe.’

‘You must consider us too high in the instep.’

‘A trifle.’

‘And I must take you to task, my lord. When you called on us at Mannerling during our last week and I did not wish to see you, it was because I was angry with you.’

‘Oh, my poor heart! What had I done?’

‘I feel you knew of my father’s gambling and that we were shortly to be ruined and were hinting such. Why did you not come out and speak to me direct about it? Perhaps we could have stopped him before he lost all.’

‘I had only heard rumours that he was playing deep at the tables of St James’s. And I have seen many men lose all they had. But I did not know for certain. It seemed an impertinence to tell you about your father without actual knowledge.’

Isabella practised a flirtatious look at him. ‘You are forgiven.’

Then she wondered if her look had been too bold because it was answered with a quizzical look of his own.

‘You have not looked at the gardens,’ he chided.

They were in a walled garden now. Peach trees were espaliered against the walls. The neat beds were full of herbs and vegetables. Isabella bent down and plucked a sprig of lavender from a bordering hedge. ‘The smell of the herbs is delicious.’

‘Most of the gardening here might depress you. At the moment we are concentrating on vegetables rather than flowers, but even here we have things like lavender. No grand vistas or temples, Miss Isabella.’

She gave a little sigh. ‘I took so very much for granted. I thought life would go on, undemanding and pleasant, like a well-oiled machine.’

‘But you had a Season in London, and a Season usually means a husband, particularly for someone as beautiful as you are and as rich as you were until recently. That would have meant change.’

Isabella gave him a puzzled look.

He laughed. ‘I swear you did not even consider the prospect of change a husband would bring. Was he a shadowy figure in your mind who would come and live somewhere in Mannerling and not disturb the even tenor of your days?’

This was exactly what Isabella had thought.

‘Did you not think a husband might even mean love, passion, and children to follow?’ he asked.

Isabella coloured up angrily. ‘Shall we talk of something else?’

‘As you will.’ He led her out of the walled garden. ‘Now here,’ he went on, waving a hand towards the shaggy lawns, ‘there is much to be done. As you can see, very few flowers or trees, and I am anxious to see some trees while I am still alive. To that end I have ordered some pretty ones to be transported fully grown and planted here next week. Then I think an ornamental lake over there.’

Isabella recollected that she was supposed to be learning to flirt, but she grew interested in his plans for the gardens and made several suggestions which were so warmly accepted that her enthusiasm grew. He then proposed they should return to join the others for tea and he would show her the plans he had drawn up.

Jessica watched carefully as Isabella and the viscount stood at a desk in the corner of the drawing room, poring over plans. Isabella was not flirting, but in her dealings with the viscount there was an easy friendliness. Jessica thought Isabella must be a very good actress indeed, not realizing that her sister found the viscount pleasant company and in her enthusiasm over his plans for his gardens had forgotten his uncomfortable remarks about marriage and about her dress, although she did remember the latter when she finally joined her sisters for tea.

‘I believe,’ she said to Mrs Kennedy, ‘that you find my style of dress a trifle fussy.’

Mrs Kennedy looked furiously at her nephew. ‘And aren’t we the blabbermouth now,’ she said wrathfully. She turned contritely to Isabella. ‘Faith, my chuck, all I did remark, and it was not meant for your pretty ears, was that your grand London dressmaker used the finest materials but had a poor eye for line.’

Jessica’s cynical eye raked Mrs Kennedy’s squat figure and old-fashioned gown. ‘You’re looking at me, Miss Jessica,’ said Mrs Kennedy, ‘as if wondering what an old body like me can know of style. But I dress now in me old age for comfort. I can still turn out a good line if I put me mind to it. I can see you don’t believe me. Well, I tell you, when you send back the carridge, send that gown back along with it and you’ll never believe the difference.’

Isabella calmly agreed. Everything must be done to keep close to Perival, where she could practise on this viscount.

On the road home, the sisters decided to call at the vicarage to see what news of the new tenant could be gleaned from Mary, but they learned from the vicarage servant that Mr and Miss Stoppard were both at Mannerling.

‘Creeping toads,’ commented Jessica as they drove off. ‘Do you realize, Isabella, that we are going to have to force Papa to go and see this Mr Judd, else we shall perhaps never get an invitation to Mannerling?’

‘I do not think he will be able to even bear to think of that idea,’ said Isabella.

But she was proved wrong. Sir William had learned little from his financial disaster and still had the gambler’s superstitious mind. He had seen two magpies that morning and that surely meant Isabella would marry Mr Judd and reclaim Mannerling, and so Barry was sent to Hedgefield to rent a carriage and Sir William set out the next day.

On his return he said bleakly that they were all expected for tea the next day and then took himself off to his study, emerging to join them for dinner and show them all that he was quite drunk again.

Mrs Kennedy had sent a footman over to collect Isabella’s gown and also a note to say she had caught a summer cold and would not be visiting them for a few days. Isabella was relieved. She did not want Mrs Kennedy around when they prepared to set off for Mannerling in case that lady overheard anything and guessed their plans.

Another rented carriage. Isabella for the first time began to wonder just how much money was left, if any. She privately thought this Mr Judd should have been thoughtful enough to send a carriage for them.

Perhaps she was the only unhappy member of the party as they all set out, although Lizzie was very quiet. The others were elated, confident that Isabella would win the prize.

But they all fell silent as the carriage rolled up the long drive of Mannerling. The butler met them at the door, his face wooden and unsmiling, just as if he had never worked for them. He led the way upstairs to the Green Saloon and Isabella began to feel increasingly nervous.

But Mannerling was crying to her to come home. The elegant staircase, the painted ceilings, the cool rooms – all belonged to the Beverleys, not to this interloper.

She stiffened her spine and followed her parents into the Green Saloon.

She received two shocks. The first was the appearance of Mr Judd. She had been imagining a man somewhat like the viscount, but this Mr Judd was tall and thin with sandy hair, light-green eyes, and a foxy face. The second shock was the presence of the Stoppards, Mary in particular, both looking very much at home, and Mary was acting as hostess, directing the servants as to where to lay the tea-things, and making the tea herself.

Isabella’s eyes ranged round the room. Some of their beautiful and elegant furniture had been replaced by nasty Jacobean stuff, heavily carved and sombre. She quickly averted her eyes and met those of Mary Stoppard, black, unfathomable.

‘Well, now,’ said Mr Judd when they were all seated, ‘this is indeed a bevy of beauties.’

Isabella pretended he was the viscount and gave him a warm smile. ‘You will turn our heads, sir.’

‘And you, Miss Isabella, must turn the heads of all who set eyes on you,’ replied Mr Judd, and gave a high cackle of laughter.

‘We all expect our Miss Isabella to be snatched up by some lucky gentleman soon,’ said Mary. ‘Of course, after last Season . . .’ Her voice trailed away. She signalled to a footman. ‘John, take the caraway cake to Lady Beverley. Lady Beverley was always fond of Mannerling caraway cake.’