Louise Allen Historical Collection (11 page)

Sailors were beginning to bring baggage up on deck, deploying the nets that would swing it ashore. Ross drew Meg out of the way of the men who came to the sides to lower sail and throw ropes as the harbour wall loomed larger.

‘I hope the
signora
has a firm hold on young José,’ Meg said, and he realised she was eyeing the narrowing strip of water between the ship and the dock apprehensively. ‘That was so brave of you.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘The tide was ripping out so fast—’

‘I have seen enough death, too much to leave a child to drown,’ Ross said starkly. But the memory still troubled Meg, he could tell. How much courage had it taken to climb down that ladder into the swirling water and hang on to an unconscious stranger for the time it took to get him out? A stab of remorse told him that afterwards he had been unthinking and probably unkind. His own exhaustion, pain and depression were no excuse; if it had been one of his men he would have spoken to him, shown he understood what guts it had taken, made sure he was all right.

Too late now to go back. ‘What will you do when we land?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Where will you stay?’

‘I will find a decent inn while I find out about stagecoach routes, plan my journey.’

‘It is quite some distance. You have adequate funds?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She held up her reticule. ‘Doctor Ferguson insisted on paying me. It isn’t much, but enough.’ She opened the bag and reached inside. ‘See…’ The blood left her cheeks and she began to rummage. ‘It has gone! The roll of notes!’

‘Are you certain? Did you not notice before?’

‘Yes, I am certain.’ Meg stared at the bag, upended on a barrel, its contents spread out. ‘The coins are heavy, I never noticed the difference. And I have had no cause to open it since I came on board. I have not needed money.’ She pressed her hand to her lips, visibly fighting for composure. ‘I dropped it with all my things when José fell in the water. Someone must have taken the notes then.’

‘Let me.’ Ross reached for his wallet.

‘No. Thank you, but, no. I have no idea when I could pay it back.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Meg! A gift—I probably owe you my life.’

She shook her head and he could see his persistence was upsetting her. ‘I will find some work for a week or so. I will find an employment office, register my name with them. Someone will want practical help, I am certain.’

‘As what?’ Ross turned his back on the dockside and studied Meg properly for the first time that day. She was wearing a gown he had not seen before, one she must have been saving for the occasion. Her hair was neatly braided under her plain straw bonnet and she looked both subdued and compliant, not at all like the managing, competent, arousing woman who had been saving his leg and wrecking his sleep. ‘A governess?’

‘Goodness, no!’ There was the spark of the Meg he was used to. ‘My own education was sadly lacking in everything except sewing, accounts and Bible studies. I speak Spanish and Portuguese—and much of that not repeatable in polite society—and very poor French. I could assist a housekeeper or perhaps be a nurse-companion to an invalid or elderly person.’

Mrs Fogarty, the housekeeper at the Court—he could not think the word
home
in connection to the place where he had grown up—was a sour-faced, bitter woman. His younger brother, Giles, had been her favourite and she had always disapproved of Ross, for some reason he had never been able to understand. Perhaps it was simply because she didn’t like most boys and he had been a fairly wild example and not an attractive, handsome specimen like his brother. Looking back, Ross could not count the times she had sent tales of his various misdeeds to his father, but she had earned him a goodly number of thrashings. After Giles’s accident her antipathy had changed to outright hostility, and that he could understand.

Her name had still been on the list of staff the lawyers had sent him. She must be in her early sixties now and probably looking forward to seeing him with about as much pleasure as he felt at the prospect of the reunion. It would be like having a dark spirit lurking in the corner, knowing Agnes Fogarty still controlled the household.

‘You do not look like any housekeeper I have ever met,’ he told Meg as the mooring lines were heaved over the side and the ship nudged up to the quayside.

‘No?’ She managed a half-smile and Ross felt something twist inside him.

He did not return the smile. ‘No. You look too young,’ he said flatly. She would be all right, surely? She was practical and hardworking and sensible and she did not want his help. ‘They have let the gangplank down. Come, I will help you find your luggage.’ He limped away before she could reply, or tell him to slow down. At least he would not be fussed over any more, he told himself, crooking a finger to a reliable-looking porter with a barrow as his feet hit solid land.

‘That bag there,’ he said, pointing. ‘You will go with this lady, wait while she makes some visits and then be sure she gets safely to a respectable inn. Do you understand?’ He passed the man a coin as he spoke. ‘Make sure you find her something suitable.’

‘Aye, sir.’ The man tugged his forelock, pitching Ross back years to his childhood with just two words in the soft Cornish burr.

‘Thank you, Major. That is most thoughtful of you.’ Meg spoke formally, as though they had not spent nights together in the same bed, as though she had not flown into his arms for comfort, lifted her lips for his kisses. ‘I trust your leg heals well and you find your way home safely.’ She turned to the porter and then swung back, her face animated with concern. ‘Do take care of that wound. And please—give yourself time to adjust. It will all be well, you will see.’

And then she was gone before he could answer her, walking away over the cobbles, talking as she went with the porter, who was nodding and steering his barrow towards the steep street to the town.

Ross stood and stared at her slender back, the brave set of her shoulders as she walked off into the unknown. Courage and humour when surely she had as much to dread from this landfall as he had. More, for he knew what he was going to. She was adrift in her own country with only a few guineas to her name.

‘Porter, sir?’

‘Yes.’ He looked at the man. ‘Take my luggage to the Red Lion Hotel.’ When he had left, that had been the most exclusive inn in the town. ‘I’ll follow you.’ He glanced back and saw that Meg had vanished. As though she had never been there. Off to a new life as a drudge to some invalid or to a post as a housekeeper before she set off, not knowing what awaited her when she got to what had once been her home. ‘No, wait.’ The man stopped, resigned to the whims of the gentry. ‘Wait one moment.’

‘This one along here’s where my sister got her post as a cook,’ the porter said, trundling his barrow along in the roadway while Meg walked on the flagged pavement. ‘She said it was a fine, smart place. Made her nervous to go in, because they only serve the real gentry there. No shop assistants or maids of all work.’

‘Thank you. I’ll try it first, then.’ Meg stopped outside the office and studied the shiny dark-green front door with its brass knocker. The plate read, Empson’s Employment Bureau. She struggled for calm composure, despite her anger and panic over the stolen money.
Just a few weeks
, she promised herself.
I won’t need so very much, I can earn enough for the stage.
‘It looks very—’

‘Genteel, that’s what our Kate said,’ the man confided. ‘She got a smart lawyer to cook for. An Honourable, she says he is. And
they
don’t grow on trees.’

‘No, indeed,’ Meg agreed gravely, turned the handle and went into a square room with a row of upright chairs along one wall and a desk set across the far corner. An odd assortment of people waited in silence on the chairs. The man sitting behind the desk raised his head from a ledger and placed eyeglasses on his nose as she crossed the boards, conscious of every squeak of her shoes on the surface.
Genteel. How on earth am I going to learn to look genteel? I must not look too desperate, however I feel.

A wiry young man with highly polished shoes glanced up at her from the book he was reading, then politely looked away, but the plump woman with a vast bonnet stared openly and the neat woman in black next to her watched her from the corner of her eye.

Valet, cook, governess
, Meg guessed.

‘Yes?’

‘Good morning. I am seeking a position as an assistant to a housekeeper or as a nurse-companion.’ Meg placed herself before the desk. A sign on it read Eustace Empson, Proprietor.

‘I see.’ Mr Empson opened a ledger, picked up a pen, dipped it in the standish, peered at the page, then sharply up at her. ‘Name? Experience?’

Meg set herself to make the very best of her somewhat chequered past, editing the details heavily. ‘…and I am told I read aloud to invalids most effectively,’ she finished. ‘Oh, yes, and I speak Portuguese and Spanish fluently.’ Behind her the doorbell tinkled.

‘Hah! Not a lot of call for Portuguese housekeepers in Falmouth,’ Empson said sourly. He scribbled on a form, handed it to Meg and gestured at the chairs. ‘Wait your turn there. Mrs Empson may have some nurse-companion positions. You have your references, I trust?’

‘Of course,’ Meg lied, inwardly cursing. She had never thought of that. References? Where was she to get those from? ‘At my lodgings.’

‘Did you say Portuguese-speaking housekeeper?’ a deep voice enquired.

Meg dropped the note and her reticule and scrabbled for them on the floor.
It cannot be…
But it was. Her gaze, ascending from her crouched position, travelled up scuffed boots, salt and smoke-stained uniform trousers to a broad chest and a very familiar, very forbidding face.

‘Indeed, sir.’ From Empson’s voice he was a trifle uncertain as to the status of this latest arrival. Ross Brandon sounded like an officer and a gentleman; he hardly looked like one as he loomed over the desk with her crouched at his feet. ‘A Mrs—’ he glanced at his ledger ‘—Halgate who has just registered is so qualified. You seek such a person?’

‘Yes,’ Ross said, standing in the middle of the immaculate, prim office like a prize fighter in a vestry.

‘Er…I see.’ Mr Empson, in the absence of any further explanation, patently did not see. ‘I believe you are not registered with us as seeking staff, Mr, er—?’

‘Lord Brandon,’ Ross said and Meg stood up so abruptly that she banged her elbow on the edge of the desk.
Lord
Brandon? ‘Very well, I will register if that is required. Brandon, Trevarras Court. Do you need anything else?’

‘No, my lord. Indeed not.’ Mr Empson was on his feet, washing his hands together in an ecstasy of delight at having secured a titled client. ‘May I offer my condolences on your recent loss? A great man, hereabouts, your late father.’

‘Thank you,’ Ross said, his voice frigid enough to stop Empson’s gushing dead. ‘And the housekeeper in question is where, exactly?’ He gazed past Meg, who stood rubbing her elbow and trying not to gape.

‘Here, my lord. Mrs Halgate stands before you, my lord.’

The black eyes travelled up and down as though assessing her plain gown and modest bonnet. As though he had never seen her before. A perfect example of an arrogant lord, the clever man. Or perhaps it was not pretence. Perhaps this really
was
Ross. ‘Very well. She will do.’

‘We have not yet seen Mrs Halgate’s references, my lord,’ Mr Empson blurted, prudence finally overcoming his desire to offer his noble client immediate gratification of his needs. ‘We cannot guarantee… The reputation of the agency requires—’

‘If she turns out to be inadequate or dishonest, or her Portuguese grammar is faulty, I will return her to you.’ Ross sounded profoundly uninterested in Empson’s worries. ‘Mrs Halgate? We may discuss terms later.’

‘I believe you also require a valet, my lord.’ Ross, Empson and Meg all stared at the wiry young man who had got to his feet and was addressing Ross.

‘I do?’

The young man blinked in the face of Ross’s full, intimidating, attention, but stood his ground.
Brave man
, Meg thought. ‘If your lordship has a valet at present, may I make so bold as to observe that he is not doing his job.’

‘And you can do better?’

‘Most certainly, my lord.’

‘Your name?’

‘Perrott, my lord.’

‘Perrott was with the late Mr Worthington,’ Empson hurried to intervene. ‘A local gentleman of the dandy persuasion, if I might be so bold. A follower of Mr Brummell in his own way.’

‘And you think you can make a dandy of me, do you, Perrott?’ Not a line of Ross’s face indicated the slightest amusement at the prospect.

‘I would venture, my lord, that you would suit the severity of style advocated by Mr Brummell. That or uniform.’

‘I’ll take them both.’ Ross might have been referring to two new pairs of gloves. ‘They can come with me now to the Red Lion Hotel. We will travel to the Court this afternoon. Good day to you, Empson.’

Meg stared at the young valet, who looked back with a decided twinkle in his eye. What on earth was Ross about? He knew she needed employment: proper, paid employment. He might indeed require a valet, but his home, the name of which she had only half-heard, must be fully staffed already, surely? She was
not
going to take his charity.

And
Lord
Brandon? Why had he not told her that?