Carola Dunn (2 page)

“Miranda, dear, what do you think?” she called anxiously. “Is the combination of stripes and sprigs too...? Peter!” With that joyful squeal—at least, her nephew hoped it was joyful—the old lady hastened her steps.

As Peter moved forward to greet her, another squeal of joy sounded. The pug dashed between his legs and galloped up the stairs to fawn at her feet. She narrowly contrived to avoid tripping over him, but then she stepped on the trailing leash. Down she tumbled.

Peter caught her in a big hug and kissed her on both cheeks. Swinging her around, he saw Miss Carmichael’s horrified face.

“Are you all right, Lady Wiston?” she cried.

“Quite all right, dear. Do put me down now, Peter, there’s a good boy.” Set on her feet, she patted her white curls, cut short and unadorned by a cap. “No, no, I have no need of smelling salts, Miranda. You know I abominate the stuff.”

“You might have been hurt,” Miss Carmichael said remorsefully. “How could I have been so careless as to let Mudge get away again?”

“It was not at all your fault, dear child. I should not have fallen had I not foolishly hurried. Wearing Inexpressibles gives one such a delightful freedom of movement, you see. Are you sure you do not care to have a pair made up?”

“I fear I am not quite brave enough, ma’am.”

“A pity. Well, Peter, so you are come home at last.” Aunt Artemis spoke as if he had returned a few hours later than expected after an absence of a day or two. “I daresay you would like some breakfast. Gentlemen always have such an appetite for breakfast.”

“I had best wash first, Aunt Artemis.”

“Yes, indeed!” said Miss Carmichael. “And I must see to your hand.”

“It’s nothing but a scratch.”

“You are injured, dear boy?” his aunt asked in alarm.

“Mudge bit him, Lady Wiston.”

“That dreadful dog!” She scowled down at the pug, who was planted directly in front of her scowling up. “I have a good mind not to give him any comfits today. He is growing by far too fat in any case.”

“If you stop spoiling him,” Miss Carmichael warned, “he will start to treat you just like the rest of the household, and you know what that means.”

“Nipped ankles.” With a sigh, Aunt Artemis delved into the pocket of the smock and produced a pink sugared comfit. Mudge actually sat up and begged, slavering. “But all my clothes smell permanently of aniseed.”

“Why on earth don’t you get rid of him?” Peter asked.

“How I wish I could, but he belonged to a dear friend, the late Lady Egbert, whose dying wish was that I should take care of him. I must say he always seemed perfectly amiable before. I believe losing her soured his temper. Fortunately he spends most of the day asleep or I should have no servants and no friends left.” Dropping another comfit, snapped up before it reached the floor, she went on, “Do go and wash, Peter. I am quite ready for my breakfast.”

“Don’t wait for me, Aunt. Perhaps I ought to change my clothes. I spent the night in the square so as not to disturb you, and one gets rather rumpled sleeping in the open, though I rather doubt the rest of my wardrobe is in much better case.”

“It does not signify in the least. Was it pleasant? I have often thought it must be excessively pleasant lying out under the stars. Indeed, I cannot imagine why I have not tried it. The back garden is quite private.” With a slightly mischievous look, she turned to her companion. “Miranda, if it is fine this evening, pray have Eustace and Ethan carry out the chaise-longue to the terrace, and a blanket or two.”

“And a large umbrella, Lady Wiston,” Miss Carmichael suggested calmly. “It rained last night.”

Aunt Artemis seemed disappointed, but undeterred. “Yes, an umbrella is an excellent idea. My dear, I see now that your dress is quite damp, and you must be damp too, Peter. Do both of you go up and change at once, before you take an inflammation of the lungs! Or should one say, two inflammations of the lungs, I wonder?”

Leaving her pondering this weighty question, Peter retrieved his valise and obediently followed Miss Carmichael up the winding stairs. She untied the ribbons of her bonnet as she went, and took it off, revealing a mass of dark, glossy hair woven in an intricate knot pinned up on the crown of her head. Peter resisted the temptation to reach up and pull out the pins.

At the top, she swung round, held out her bonnet, and hissed accusingly, “You squashed my hat!”

There was indeed a dent in the back of the crown. “My humble apologies,” he said, “but I expect it will steam out. Besides, I saved your gown from ruination in the dirt.”

“I would not have fallen if your feet had not been in the way.”

“You would not have fallen over my feet if you had stayed on the path. Let us not quarrel, when we can easily blame the whole incident on Mudge.”

Her lips twitched. “He is a handy scapegoat,” she agreed reluctantly, turning to the next flight of stairs, “though you can scarcely hold him responsible for...but no matter! Come, you shall have the blue chamber. Just ring for hot water. I expect Lady Wiston will invite you to stay for a few days. Shall you accept? If so, I must tell Mrs. Lowenstein to have the maids make up the bed.”

“Yes, I cannot rush away after being reunited at last with my only relative.”

On the tip of his tongue was a rueful admission that he had nowhere to rush to, nor any funds to procure lodging. He bit it back. That was a subject best saved for his aunt’s ears, not for the companion who already disapproved of him.

* * * *

Miranda went back down to her chamber on the first floor, next to Lady Wiston’s. Swiftly she changed into a rose-pink mull muslin—her employer refused to let her wear the browns and greys generally considered suitable for a hired companion.

“Those dull colours are dreadfully depressing to the spirits,” she had said adamantly when she offered Miranda the position. “Naturally I shall pay for new gowns. You cannot be expected to change your wardrobe at your own expense just to cater to an old lady’s whim.”

At first, her ladyship’s odd whims had surprised and dismayed Miranda. She soon grew so accustomed to eccentricity that her previous life, even the alarms and starts of life with her happy-go-lucky, debt-ridden father, seemed woefully dull in comparison. The future no longer stretched ahead as a bleak desert of fetching shawls, sorting embroidery silks, and retiring to her room when there was company unless needed to make up numbers.

Moreover, Lady Wiston’s kindness and generosity quickly won her affectionate regard. If such a lovable lady chose to wear unconventional clothes, hold unconventional views, and entertain unconventional acquaintances, her behaviour harmed no one. Not even herself, for she was as shrewd as any barrow-woman, by no means easy prey for leeches hoping to take advantage of her liberality.

Even Mudge was bearable, Miranda felt, since her employer, far from doting on him, loathed the little beast quite as much as she did.

She wished, though, that the pug’s escapade had not caused her to fall into Peter Daviot’s arms. All too aware of the dangerous charm allied with his frivolous manner, she was going to find it difficult to remain properly aloof after such an introduction. To have him staying in the house for several days as a welcome guest promised to be awkward, to say the least.

The less she saw of him the better. Nonetheless, she felt obliged to minister to his bitten hand. His teasing had confused her as to whether Mudge had actually inflicted a gash or a mere graze.

Pushing a hairpin more firmly into her topknot, she tidied the curls on her forehead and donned a lace-trimmed cap—when she insisted on wearing caps, as was only proper to her age and position, Lady Wiston had insisted on buying her pretty ones. With a final glance in the looking-glass, she went back up to the blue chamber.

She knocked.

“Come in,” called Mr. Daviot.

Miranda opened the door. He was standing by the washstand in his shirtsleeves, rolled up to the elbows, and stockinged feet, his face buried in a towel.

“Good gracious,” she exclaimed, hastily shutting the door again. How dare he ask her in when he was not decently clad! Was the wretched man quite determined to put her to the blush? From her brief acquaintance with him, she would not put it past him.

Before she could turn away, the door re-opened and he appeared before her, waistcoatless, his shirt open at the neck to display a triangle of tanned chest. Instantly dropping her gaze, she found herself staring at a big toe poking out through a hole in his hose. She covered her eyes.

“I thought you were the footman bringing back my boots.”

“I just came to look at your hand,” she said crossly.

“You can’t see it with your hands over your eyes.”

“You are not dressed!”

“The important bits are covered.” He sounded as if he was grinning. “I didn’t mean to shock you, though. You didn’t blink at Aunt Artemis’s costume.”

“That is different. Is your hand mangled or not?”

“I’m badly injured,” he said in a failing voice. “I claimed it was only a scratch so as not to distress my aunt.”

Not for a second did she believe him. “Wash it well,” she advised, “and come down to Sir Bernard’s study.”

She went down to the small room at the back of the house, its window opening onto a garden full of roses. The walls were sea-green, the coffered ceiling blue. Over the mantel hung a large painting of Nelson’s
Victory
at the Battle of Trafalgar, and on one wall a map of the world with Admiral Sir Bernard Wiston’s voyages traced upon it.

Furnished with a large roll-top desk, two comfortable chairs, and several bookshelves, the late Admiral’s study now served a multitude of purposes.

Beside each chair stood a workbasket, seldom used as neither Miranda nor Lady Wiston enjoyed needlework. Her ladyship justified her aversion by saying that stitchery, if one could afford to pay someone to sew for one, was taking bread from the mouths of the poor. She and Miranda were far more likely to pass a cosy evening with the backgammon set or a novel from Hookham’s Circulating Library. Both were to be found on a card table by the fireside.

One shelf held a small chest with a variety of common medicaments, court-plasters, and bandages. Lady Wiston required her companion rather than her housekeeper, as was more usual, to treat her servants’ minor ailments. On learning her duties, Miranda had sorted out the muddled contents of the chest, neatly relabelling the porcelain pots and coloured glass bottles and ranging them alphabetically.

She lifted down the chest, unlocked and opened it, pleased with the orderly array of jars and vials. There was the basilicum, in its place next to the Balm of Gilead.

Spreading a clean white napkin over an occasional table, she set the pot of basilicum on it. From their separate compartments in the chest she took a pair of scissors, a roll of pale pink silk impregnated with isinglass, and a small notebook.

As she fetched the ladderback, cane-seated chair from the desk, Mr. Daviot came in, shaven and respectably if not fashionably dressed.

“Let me do that,” he said, taking the chair from her. “Good gad, you’re all set up for a major operation. You’re not going to amputate, are you, doctor?”

“I like to do things properly in the first place, to avert the need for amputation. Did you wash the wound well, or shall I send for water?”

“Clean as a whistle,” he said meekly, placing a second chair opposite the first. As Miranda sat down, he glanced about the room. “By Jove, this is perfect!”

“It is a pleasant room,” she responded, surprised and a trifle suspicious of his enthusiasm. “The Admiral preferred to sit here in the evenings when they had no guests, and Lady Wiston has kept up the habit. Do take your seat, sir. I daresay you are as ready for your breakfast as I am for mine.”

“More so, I expect. I didn’t dine last night.”

He sat down and held out his hand, like himself long and lean but strong-looking, as sun-browned as his face. Across the back Mudge’s eyetooth had slashed a groove, less than a gash though more than a scratch. Miranda applied basilicum.

“Would you like a court-plaster?” she asked, picking up the pink silk and the scissors. “On the whole minor wounds heal as well without if they are kept clean. It should be covered if you decide to sleep in the garden again.”

“Not me! No, I’ll do without a plaster, thank you. Plaguey things, always falling off. What are you writing?”

She looked up from her notebook. “I keep a record of every medicine I dispense to see which are effective. I have already discarded James’s Powders and Hervey-Ward’s Pills from my pharmacopoeia, and Daffy’s Elixir is on the way out. I find the more varied ills they claim to cure, the less efficacious they prove for any.”

“Jove!” He took the book from her and studied it. “You ought to be a physician, bedamned if you oughtn’t. More sense than half the quacks with their favourite nostrums, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Miranda was torn between annoyance at his improper language and gratification at his compliment. “More sense, perhaps, but little learning,” she said. “I have not even such ladylike accomplishments as French and music and the use of the globes, or I should have sought employment as a governess, not a companion. All I can do is read and write and figure a little.”

“Damned...” Glancing up with a considering look, he caught her frown and changed the offending word. “Dashed neat hand you write, every letter clear as day. That’s a more useful accomplishment than any number of globes.”

Though she smiled, Miranda had a distinct feeling that he was buttering her up for his own purposes. His helpfulness in lifting the chest back onto its shelf did not alter by one whit her resolve to reserve judgement on Mr. Peter Daviot.

She led the way to the dining parlour.

Lady Wiston was spreading a hot muffin with strawberry jam. “I simply could not wait, my dears,” she said, waving them to the laden sideboard.

Miranda saw that cold meats, ale, and coffee had joined the usual eggs, muffins, tea, and chocolate. Mr. Daviot piled high his plate.

As they took their places at the table, Lady Wiston said, “Now, Peter, while you eat, I trust you will tell us what you have been doing all these years since you left to seek your fortune.”