Louise Allen Historical Collection (16 page)

The path led her down to a stream, over a plank bridge, over a fence, up and into a wilder, denser patch of trees. The path became narrow and steeper—any moment now she would be out on to the low cliff top, surely?

Just when Meg decided she must have lost him, that her vague uneasiness was foolish and that any prudent woman would turn round and go back to her bed, she saw a light through the trees and realised there must be a cottage ahead.

Taking great care where she trod, Meg crept forwards and found herself on the edge of a small clearing with a tumbledown dwelling in the centre that resembled nothing so much as some large woodland creature’s nest. Its owner was outside, and must have been sitting by the fire that blazed halfway between the cottage and the edge of the wood. But he was on his feet now, turned to face Ross who had stopped, perhaps four feet from him, as though uncertain of his welcome. Meg could see clearly in the firelight that he was a small man, whiplash thin with a brown, wrinkled face and grey hair that straggled from under a battered felt hat.

He must be Ross’s poacher, she guessed, as the two stood there, silent.

Then the old man spoke, his accent so broad that Meg had to strain to understand him. ‘You’ve been gone a powerful long time, boy.’

‘Aye, Billy. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. It’s made a fine man of you.’ And the poacher stepped forwards and pulled Ross’s head down to kiss him on both cheeks.

The prodigal son
, Meg thought, tears blurring her vision for a moment, then Ross straightened up and she saw his face and realised that he could smile, could be happy, and that there was still one person on this earth that he loved.

That’s all right, then.
She swallowed hard, then turned to creep away as the baron hunkered down beside the poacher and began to talk. While that old man lived, Ross had someone to live for. But there had to be more to root him here and take the darkness out of his soul.

Ross buried his face in his hands, then raked his fingers through his hair, muttering obscenities in Spanish under his breath. Two solid hours of studying the estate books that had been deposited on his desk by Tremayne, his steward, had done nothing but make his head spin and the man’s stolid explanations were not much help.

Livestock prices, feed prices, manuring schedules, stone-walling repairs—it might as well be in Russian. One thing was sure—he was never going to get a grip on this by staring at books.

‘There is really no need for you to trouble yourself with it, my lord,’ the steward ventured. When Ross began to curse he had wormed his way back into the deep wing chair like a rabbit into its burrow. ‘Your man of business audits the books every quarter day and your late father did, if I may be so bold, give me his complete confidence.’

‘I am certain you are most capable, Tremayne.’ Ross shut the ledger and leaned back. He had ordered the desk moved so he was looking out over the rose garden and set the gardeners to bring it back into order. ‘And that my father’s confidence in you was well placed. But I have been an officer; I need to know what is going on under my command. Understand it. And I am not going to do that from ledgers. Tomorrow I’ll ride out with you and I’ll do so every day until I know this estate and its business at least as well as I knew my regiment and our strategy and tactics.’

There was a tap at the door, then a stranger was standing there. Ross stared and discovered it was Meg clad in a dark blue gown of plain cut but with a rich sheen. Her hands, crossed at her waist, were highlighted by crisp white cuffs, a white scarf was pinned precisely around her shoulders and on her head was an endearingly prim white cap. She had asked him for money first thing that morning and permission to take the carriage into Penryn—it seemed she was a rapid and effective shopper.

‘My lord. Excuse me for interrupting, but the tea tray has been set out in the Chinese Salon.’

Ross looked at the clock. Three o’clock—he had been in here precisely two hours. His self-appointed nurse obviously thought it time he exercised his leg. ‘We have not yet finished our business, Mrs Halgate.’

‘I have put out two cups, my lord,’ she countered, meeting his glare with an expression of bland incomprehension. She was attempting to manipulate him in some way, he was sure of it.

But Tremayne looked in need of tea, if not something stronger. Ross decided to humour them both, although why she had decided on the Chinese Salon, the most cluttered and uncomfortable room in the entire house, he had no idea. His great-grandfather had secured some lovely Chinese wallpaper and his wife had proceeded to ruin the effect by packing the room with every piece of Oriental ornament she could lay her hands on. He was going to be like a bull in a china shop in there.

Ross flung open the door and stopped dead. The jade-green curtains had been drawn back further than he had ever seen them and the salon was flooded with light. All the bronzes had gone and with them virtually all the tiny tables that had been covered in a jumble of porcelain. The exquisite wallpaper with its flowing patterns of birds and flowers and insects filled the room with colour and beauty and the only ornaments were a collection of white-and-green jade bowls. From the chimney breast the full-length portrait of his mother surveyed the scene in elegant approval.

‘My God,’ Ross murmured, walking in. ‘What have you done with it all?’ He found himself relaxing just standing there.

‘It is in the large dining room. I thought I had better see if you approved before I had it packed away. The portrait seemed to fit so well here.’ She hesitated, sending him a glance that seemed to assess his temper and the distance to the door. ‘But we can put it back on the stairs if you prefer.’

‘Leave it. Have all the rest sent up to the attics; there’s enough room up there to billet a regiment and I might want to hold a dinner party for fifty next week.’ There was that flickering glance again. Meg had not decided whether that was humour, sarcasm or if he truly was threatening to begin large-scale entertaining at the Court.

‘I suggest you postpone that until your leg is somewhat more healed, my lord. Standing around being pleasant to so many guests would be quite exhausting,’ she said, perfectly straight-faced, and Ross realised that she knew he had been teasing and was answering him in kind. He was not used to being teased by a woman. It was curiously pleasant to feel that other mind touching his, picking up the threads of his thoughts for a second and then passing them back again, twisted into another shape. Giles had done that, he recalled, and he had missed that.

But this was also arousing, he realised, watching Meg as she poured the tea and moved a dish of small cakes into the centre of the tea table with fussy precision.
She is nervous because she wants to please me.
It was somehow rather touching, and he found that he was interested in how her mind worked, why she was acting as she was. It was something he seemed to have lost a long time ago, this caring about someone else’s feelings, not just how they performed what he required of them.

‘Please ring if you require more hot water, my lord,’ she said, and was gone, leaving Ross frowning after her. For some reason he had thought she might stay for tea. But of course, Meg was his housekeeper now. Only his housekeeper.

‘Settling in all right, Mrs Halgate?’ Perrott looked up from brushing the breeches spread on the flat table and smiled at Meg.

‘After three and a half days?’ Meg paused in the doorway, shopping list in hand, and thought about it. She supposed that she was already developing a routine. ‘Yes, I am, and very comfortably.’

Certainly, from the practical point of view she could hardly hope for more pleasant employment. She breakfasted in her rooms, then walked around the house inspecting the maids’ work and issuing orders for the day. Then she would discuss housekeeping matters with Mrs Harris and Heneage and make lists. A housekeeper’s life appeared to revolve around lists: things to do, things to buy, things to mend, things to make.

‘And you, Mr Perrott?’

The valet grimaced. ‘If his lordship would be more predictable, life would be easier. And a smile wouldn’t come amiss, not that he isn’t pleasant enough. Please, thank you, makes his mind up and sticks to it. But as for persuading him in the direction of a tailor—I despair. And he’s hardly the size for ready-made. I’ve had to get out some of his late lordship’s clothes.’

‘I appear to have the easier task in making changes,’ Meg admitted. The chilly, overstuffed formality of the house did not suit Ross and could hardly help him come to terms with his new life. He had given her
carte blanche
to make changes, and after his positive response to the Chinese salon she was determined to carry on. After luncheon in her room she would direct the maids in attacking whichever room was next on her list: the Chinese Salon the first day, the Great Hall the second. She was wary of making anything too pretty, too feminine. Ross’s house needed to be a fit setting for a very masculine man, but she could see no need for it to be depressing.

By dint of borrowing two footmen she had removed the moth-eaten animal heads from the hall walls and had the displays of antique weapons polished until they shone. Some dark tapestries depicting the gloomier episodes in the Old Testament came down and a set of vivid, if rather bloodthirsty, hunting scenes were hung in their place. Bowls of ferns and red roses set the finishing touch and the old oak furniture seemed to glow in response. If Ross noticed, he said nothing, but she would not be downhearted. She was resolved to tackle his study next.

‘Will he be entertaining soon, do you know?’ Perrott shook out the breeches and folded them over his arm.

‘He has said nothing to me.’ There had been that remark about dinner parties for fifty, but presumably that was him teasing her.

Some visitors would make more work, but might lift Ross’s spirits, she supposed. For herself she was content with her quiet evenings. After dinner in the servants’ hall she read
Gulliver’s Travels
to Ross for an hour, then took tea in the kitchen before retiring to bed to read to distract herself from her worries about all the things that she did not know she should be doing and the things that she had probably done wrong.

She had found a battered copy of
The New Town and Country Housekeepers’ Guide
on the shelves and was working her way through a daunting agenda of matters that had never occurred to her to think about before, like taking ink stains out of mahogany.

There were moments when she felt something like a stab of fear at how easy it was to slip into the fiction that she really was a housekeeper, that she would be working here, not for weeks, but for years. When she was seeing Ross at a distance it was tempting to simply enjoy being near him, to probe the bittersweet ache of desire as one might a sore tooth. But when she had to act the housekeeper to his face, take his orders, behave as a servant, she could not deceive herself that this was anything but a painful charade. He did not want her as a housekeeper, she did not want him as an employer, in any capacity.

She was here for one thing only, she reminded herself: to earn enough to find Bella and Lina. Ross had promised to do something about an enquiry agent for her, and she tried to be patient about that, so now at night she drew the curtains tight across her window and read until she was too tired to lie drowsily, wishing for a big warm man to take up three-quarters of her chaste bed. If Ross went out at night poaching in his own coverts, she did not know.

On the morning of her fifth day at the Court Meg made a discovery in the shadowy recesses of a long corridor on the second floor. It was the portrait of a young man, a youth, and at first she did not recognise him, for he was smiling, the humour and the life simply shining out of his dark eyes.

Ross?
Meg stared at it. ‘Damaris, come and help me lift this down and carry it into the light.’

‘Lifts your spirits just looking at that smile, doesn’t it, Mrs Halgate?’ They propped it on a window seat with the sun full on it. ‘Who do you think it is?’ She flicked her feather duster at the heavy frame.

To Meg the subject was quite plain—it was Ross at perhaps sixteen, long limbed, rangy, his hair over his eyes, his nose and chin too dominant in his young face.
Where has all that joy gone?
she wondered. Had his brother’s accident killed every trace of it?

‘It is his lordship.’ What it would it feel like to have those eyes smiling at her? ‘Come along, Damaris, we are going to take this downstairs.’

‘Hell’s teeth.’

The maids had finished their work in the study and departed, leaving Meg to hang the last of the charming amateur watercolours of the estate that she had found in the attic. At the sound of the voice behind her she jumped, bit her tongue and swung round, aware of a certain degree of apprehension. She was moving into Ross’s own rooms now and she was not at all sure how tolerant of interference he would prove to be in practice, whatever he said about change.

It was sunny enough to make energetic polishing warm work and Meg had pushed up the full-length windows on the west side of the study. Ross had entered simply by stepping over the sill from the terrace. He stood there, hands on hips, rifle slung over one shoulder, looking round.

The inner set of curtains had been removed from the windows to let in as much light as possible; the dark etchings had gone, replaced by the watercolours; a big vase of greenery stood on the hearthstone and old roses, dark red and crumpled like velvet, stood between reading lamp and standish on the desk.