Barbara Metzger (2 page)

Lady Neville wiped at her eyes with a delicate scrap of lace. “Nanny Murtagh? Never.”

“Hah! That’s how much attention you pay to your household. I could smell Blue Ruin on her breath the instant I arrived.”

Since Lady Neville would not have recognized Blue Ruin from a blue moon, she could only sniff some more.

“And what’s she teaching the chit, that’s what I want to know,” Alfred ranted on. “Dash it, the gel could snabble a duke if she’s reared properly. My girl’s younger, and she’s had a governess for two years, not a cloth-headed nanny. Of course Nigel has a tutor, but that’s irrelevant. Watercolors, your girl needs, and pianoforte lessons, dance instruction. She should be sewing samplers instead of wandering around in haunted woods.”

Lady Neville did not think this was the time to inform her brother that Lisanne had already read every book in the nursery and was starting on her father’s library, Greek and Latin volumes included. Not when they’d all had to suffer through an hour the previous afternoon watching Esmé blot her way through signing her name, and listen to Nigel stutter over a short paragraph in his primer. Perhaps Alfred was right, though, that parts of Lisanne’s education were being neglected. Heaven knew Elizabeth had endured hours with a backboard, and she’d won herself a baron. Lady Neville promised to consider hiring a governess for her daughter.

“What, some down-at-heels parson’s daughter from the next village? Your gel’s a hoyden, a dreamer, a scheming liar, if she’s not knocked-in-the-cradle altogether. Are you sure that Murtagh woman didn’t drop her on her head? For certain she filled Lisanne’s mind with all that fairy-tale tripe. What the little baggage needs now is a firm hand on the reins. Someone who’s up to every rig and row, and knows her way around the
ton
besides. I’ll look into it on my way through London. The chit has to be ready to take her place where she belongs, in Town, not in a benighted blueberry patch.”

Someone had to plan for the girl’s glorious future, Alfred told himself. A well-bred, titled heiress would have the eligibles buzzing around her like flies on fruit. And he meant for his Esméralda to be at Lisanne’s side, and his Nigel at her feet. “It’s never too early to start,” Alfred told his sister as he climbed into the baron’s luxurious coach for the ride back to his own pawky property. Alfred lovingly rubbed his hand over the bright lacquerwork of the carriage door. No, it was never too early to start.

*

“Nice holiday, what?” Lord Neville asked his wife, putting his arm around her thin shoulders as the coach pulled away. “Just the way I like visits from your family. Short.”

The
new governess arrived. Sir Alfred had done his job well. Miss Armbruster was the most widely recommended instructress of young females in all of London. Her blood was the bluest, with an earl for an uncle, albeit said earl was currently languishing in the Fleet debtors’ prison. Miss Armbruster was also intelligent, reliable, and the highest paid governess currently on the market, which iced Sir Alfred’s cake, since her wages were coming out of Lord Neville’s deep pockets, not his own.

Miss Armbruster was a female of a certain age who was certain in her notions. When Sir Alfred cautiously mentioned that the nearby woods were said to be haunted, Miss Armbruster replied, “Bosh. There is no such thing.” Warned that her charge was considered fey in the neighborhood, she answered, “Nonsense. The child simply needs discipline.” A difficult charge? Miss Armbruster hadn’t met one yet.

Nanny Murtagh was pensioned off to a cottage back in Lostwithiel, and Miss Armbruster took over Lisanne’s education. She tried, anyway.

Lessons. That was the key, Miss Armbruster declared to Lady Neville. Prayers before breakfast, then grammar, composition, and mathematics, with history and geography on alternate days. After luncheon, healthful exercise: nature walks in the formal gardens on pleasant days, to be combined with science and sketching, or laps around the portrait gallery on inclement afternoons for more history and heritage. French before tea, etiquette and elocution during. The interval between tea and supper would be reserved for music instruction, voice and instrument, with dance to be added later. Needlework could be accomplished after the meal, in the hour before the child’s bedtime. If not, they could rise earlier in the mornings.

Sunday afternoons, Miss Armbruster continued, were to be her half days, and she had one full-day holiday per month; but, the governess assured Lady Neville, she would leave enough assignments behind that Lady Lisanne would not have a moment free to get into any trouble.

Lady Neville took to her bed.

Lisanne took to the new regime the way a crocodile waltzes, which is to say not at all. No time for her friends? No time for her books? No time for the wonders of Sevrin Woods? No way. Being a polite, obedient, cheerful child, Lisanne did not throw herself on the floor in a tantrum, run away from home, or hold her breath until she turned blue. She merely cried. She didn’t even cry on her papa’s waistcoat or, worse, on his translation of Ovid. She simply sobbed in her bed at night and came to breakfast with red, swollen eyes. Then she silently wept through luncheon. If ever there was a doting father who could see his little girl’s misery and not be moved to re-hang the moon for her, it was not Lord Neville. He took another look at the new governess.

Sir Alfred had outsmarted himself in finding such an intelligent, competent, expensive female to bear-lead his peculiar niece onto a more conventional path. Miss Armbruster was intelligent enough to see which way the wind blew. She was most definitely competent to recognize precisely who it was who paid that exorbitant salary—the same quiet and bookish gentleman who wouldn’t hesitate to throw her out on her aristocratic ear if his little darling was unhappy.

So there was a compromise. In the mornings Lisanne was expected in the schoolroom with completed assignments. In the afternoons, well, in the afternoons Miss Armbruster suddenly found it necessary to work on the reference book she was compiling for the education of young females. Lisanne was to return for tea, dinner at the very latest, having practiced at least one ladylike skill to show off to her proud parents. And she was never, not in public, not in private, to mention fairies, little people, pixies, or elves.

Miss Armbruster was happy. This was the easiest position she had ever held, and the child was bright, inquisitive, and quite endearing, so long as one didn’t inquire too closely as to where she went of an afternoon. Since that involved forbidden topics, Miss Armbruster was able to ignore what she considered the odd kick in Lisanne’s gallop. Over the years of her tenure, she was able to complete three volumes of her textbook, which were very well received in academic circles.

Lisanne was happy. She had friends, freedom, her parents’ affection, and her governess’s approval.

Lord Neville was happy, too, until he died.

*

The doctors would not let Lisanne near the sickroom. They wouldn’t listen to her rantings about willow bark tea and foxglove infusions. The Honorable Lisanne Neville had all of twelve years in her dish by now. She had no business with possets and potions.

What did a child, a feebleminded one at that, if rumor was to be believed, know about the healing arts? the consulting London surgeons asked each other. Herbal quackery, that was all she proposed, likely from some ancient crone who lived in a hollow tree stump and stole pennies from the poor with a handful of dried weeds. Next the chit would be bringing the learned physicians eye of newt or some such thing from an old household book of simples.

The medical scientists cupped the baron, bled the baron, and purged the baron. They killed the baron.

Lady Neville could not survive on her own. The grief, the details of the estate, the uncertainty of her future were too much for the baroness. She never had been strong in will or in body, but without the baron, Lady Neville was too weak to get out of bed. Then she was too weak to keep waking up in the morning. One morning she didn’t.

No one was going to see Lisanne’s tears and make things right. Not even her friends in the woods could make this right. What did they know of death? They lived forever. So Lisanne stopped crying. Miss Armbruster was concerned: a child needed to grieve instead of wandering alone through the corridors of an empty manor house. But nothing in all of the governess’s book learning or learning books could change matters, either.

And then Lisanne wasn’t quite so alone. Uncle Alfred and his family came. To stay.

Since the nearest Neville relation was so distant that the baron had never met the chap, Lord Neville had reluctantly named his wife’s brother as guardian for his daughter and heiress. Alfred Findley might be family, but the baron made sure to appoint his own London solicitor as trustee of Lisanne’s vast estate.

Sometimes no family was better than the family one had. Uncle Alfred’s first order of business, after moving himself and his vaporish wife, Cherise, into the master suite, was to get rid of Miss Armbruster. Now that Sir Alfred was paying the household bills—and pocketing what he could scrape off the accountings—he saw no need to keep the pricey dragoness. Esmé’s governess was good enough for Annie, too. Mrs. Graybow wouldn’t stand for any of this wandering off alone, playing in forbidden woods like some savage or grubbing about in the dirt for roots and stuff. Widow of an infantry sergeant, built like a cavalry horse, Mrs. Graybow would shape the new baroness into a proper lady, one way or another.

Miss Armbruster had amassed a tidy sum from her years at Neville Hall, both from her generous salary, frequent bonuses, and profits from her books. She had enough money put by that she could either live quietly at a respectable boardinghouse for the rest of her days, or she could use her savings to found a school for young ladies. One look at Sir Alfred’s unprepossessing daughter convinced her on the boardinghouse. Too bad they couldn’t all be like Lisanne.

Lisanne didn’t cry when Miss Armbruster left, promising frequent letters. Nor did she weep when her uncle and Mrs. Graybow forbade her the woods. There were no more tears in her. Lisanne simply disobeyed and disappeared into her beloved woods for hours on end. So Mrs. Graybow boxed her ears. Then she rapped her knuckles with a ruler. Then she whipped her with a switch.

Lisanne wouldn’t cry, and she wouldn’t promise not to go off again.

So Uncle Alfred beat her. Years of bitter rancor went into every stroke: anger at his dead sister’s elevating marriage, anger at the terms of the dead baron’s will, and anger at fate, that put such a fortune into the hands of a city shyster instead of the much worthier ones of the brat’s uncle. The exercise might have relieved some of the baronet’s ingrained resentment, but it had no effect on Annie, as the family now called her, beyond the obvious. As soon as she recovered, Lisanne left the house and stayed away for two days and a night.

When she returned, Sir Alfred had Mrs. Graybow lock her in her bedroom. Lisanne climbed out the window onto the trellised vines. They locked her in the butler’s pantry. The Hall’s old butler would never have stood for seeing his mistress so abused, but the Findleys’ own major domo held sway now. Sir Alfred had given all the Neville staff the sack, saying he preferred his own loyal retainers. These servants just happened to be used to more niggardly wages—not that Alfred needed to mention that fact to Lisanne’s London solicitor. Alfred rented out his own small property near London, preferring to put up at a hotel when visiting the City on his niece’s business—and on her expense account.

No one, therefore, protested as Lisanne spent hour after hour in the small dark room. She was hauled out three times a day for meals, Mrs. Graybow deeming tea unnecessary for a disobedient child. At those meals Lisanne was given the chance to swear on her honor not to leave the property. Now she not only stopped crying, she stopped talking, and stopped eating.

Rescue came from an unexpected source. Aunt Cherise was having palpitations. Not only was she forced into the country away from the shops and entertainments of the City, but she was too embarrassed to venture into local society. “The child is going to die if you keep this up, Alfred. Look at her, she’s skin and bones already.” And bruises, but Aunt Cherise turned her eyes. “I cannot accept invitations because we are in mourning, but what will people say?”

Sir Alfred didn’t care what a parcel of country nobodies said. He did care what that blasted will said. If she died, the little baroness, that distant Neville cousin inherited everything, all those trust-fund earnings, all those rent rolls. Findley wasn’t about to let his meal ticket waste away over a bit of hoydenish behavior the chit would likely outgrow anyway.

The baronet rubbed his weak chin. After all, there was no chance his own daughter would be contaminated with Annie’s disobedience. Esmé treated her cousin as a
grande dame
would a noxious puddle, pulling her skirts aside and ignoring the mess. Esméralda would never set foot in those bothersome woods again if her life depended on it, even if she was assured her slippers wouldn’t get soiled. Nigel tried once when they first arrived, taking his gun into the woods after a deer. He got lost again, which had to have been Annie’s fault, he swore, since she eventually came to lead him home.

Although he never mentioned it to anyone, Sir Alfred went into the forest one day, determined to drag Annie back by her hair if necessary. But under the great trees he found a dark, forbidding atmosphere with odd, earthy scents. The baronet even thought he heard voices laughing at him where no one was. He’d turned around while he could still see the chimneys of Neville Hall.

“It’s not as if any of the neighbors are going to spot her outside without an escort or a bonnet,” Aunt Cherise urged, to get the impossible child out of the house.

No, none of the neighbors were about to spy on his niece whatever the brat did in those woods. Annie could take her clothes off and dance naked in a Black Sabbath. No one would know, because no one ever ventured a toe into Sevrin Woods. And she was still only a little girl.