Louise Allen Historical Collection (28 page)

‘Then what’s she about, capering in the scroff?’

‘Swimming, apparently. She’ll not do it again.’

‘Huh.’ Billy slung his shotgun over his shoulder and snapped his fingers. The black-and-white dog slid out of the undergrowth and came to heel. ‘If you’ve finished giving me a slice of tongue pie, you can come and have some rabbit stew and tell me about this here courting you’re doing.’

‘Who says I’m courting?’ Ross fell into step beside him.

‘I see them carriages and all those fancy pieces getting out of them. Some people can’t see behind the end of their nose, if you ask me.’

‘I should get a wife. And an heir.’ Ross said it with outward confidence, wondering at the hollow feeling in his stomach. It was almost like apprehension, or the sensation that he had done something wrong, but couldn’t work out what. He shrugged. Not enough sleep, obviously.

‘That you should,’ Billy agreed. ‘Just get on with it, boy, and try to think with your head for once.’

Meg stood with Damaris in the middle of Ross’s bedchamber and sighed.

‘I know, ma’am. It’s enough to make you fall into a melancholy, isn’t it? It’s that dark and sort of quietlike.’

‘That’s because of all the curtains.’ Meg turned slowly round, avoiding looking at the bed. ‘The dark mulberry velvet is dignified, but with the dark blue walls and all this heavy furniture, and those paintings, it is just depressing.’ She turned again. ‘These windows match the big room on the other side of the stairs, don’t they? Come along, Damaris, I have an idea.’

An hour later she left the maids exchanging the pale blue silk hangings from the main guest chamber for the mulberry velvet in Ross’s room and went to see what she could find to substitute for the collection of disapproving seventeenth-century portraits on the walls. She was sure there were some seascapes somewhere. She found that her cheeks were growing warm at the thought of the sea. It was going to be impossible if everything she thought about made her recollect Ross and last night. She was still smiling as she passed the door to the library.

‘Ow!’ There was a thud and a muffled curse from inside. Not Ross, he was out and that was not his voice. The maids had finished this part of the house for the day and the footmen were all up ladders wrestling with curtain poles.

Meg pushed open the door with some caution. A young man was crouched, gathering up a pile of fallen books. As he heard her he straightened: six foot of gangling, black-haired, strong-jawed young male Brandon—Ross’s portrait come to life.

They stared at each other. ‘They aren’t damaged,’ the youth said and at the sound of the Cornish burr in his voice the spell was broken.

‘I can see it was an accident.’
But who is he?
Then she saw his eyes were an unusual amber and realised. ‘You are Billy’s grandson, aren’t you?’
And Ross’s brother.

‘Yes, ma’am. William. His lordship…Ross, I mean, said I could borrow books.’

‘You may call me Mrs Halgate,’ Meg said. ‘I am housekeeper here.’ He was family, and should be treated as such. But did Ross mean to acknowledge him? ‘Can I help you find something?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen so many books all in one place.’

‘What do you like to read?’ Meg asked, wondering how well he had mastered his letters. Had he been to school?

‘Anything,’ he said with a smile, so very like Ross that she smiled back. ‘Newspapers, the Bible… Anything.’

‘I know.’ She took
Gulliver’s Travels
from the shelf. ‘Your brother likes this one.’ He showed no surprise at her description of Ross. ‘And I looked at this the other day, it is Cornish legends, the engravings are fascinating.’ She put them on the table and gestured to the seat next to her. ‘Come and see.’

One book led to another. Soon the table was littered with open volumes as they delved into the collection, reading snatches to each other. ‘Look at this, Mrs Halgate,’ William said and she came to look over his shoulder at an illustration of a whale, just as there was a sound behind them.

Meg turned. It was Ross, one hand on the window frame he had just stepped through, staring at the pair of them as though he had seen a ghost.

‘Good afternoon, my lord,’ Meg said, summoning up all her composure. ‘I will clear up directly.’ Beside her William scrambled to his feet.

‘That is all right,’ Ross said. ‘I told my brother he may use the library.’

‘But you did not tell me I could turn out half the bookshelves.’ Meg cast a rueful look at the table.

‘I’ll put them away,’ William said. ‘Mrs Halgate was helping me.’ She could feel his tension in case Ross was angry.

‘I know.’ Ross smiled at her. Meg felt light-headed. There was so much meaning in that smile, so much warmth in the caress of his eyes.

‘I will just go and see whether they have finished in your bed…bed chamber.’ She stumbled over the word. ‘We changed the curtains for something lighter. But I haven’t found the seas capes I was going to replace the portraits with yet. Excuse me.’

Ross watched as Meg whisked out of the door, her cheeks pink. He had never seen her so flurried before and it was both charming and, he was amused to discover, flattering, that he could put her in such a state.

But she was not the only one feeling disconcerted. He had stood at the window watching them—the woman who was his lover, the boy who could pass as his son—and had felt a shock of recognition, a premonition almost. They had looked right together, companionable, sharing and enjoying the books without the need to say very much. She must have known who William was, but she accepted him.

‘I like her,’ William said as Ross continued to stand looking at the closed door. ‘Mrs Halgate. I like her a lot.’

‘Yes.’ Ross turned back to the table and picked up
Gulliver’s Travels
, running his fingers over the leather binding as he pictured Meg sitting on the trunk in the cabin with it open in her hands. ‘So do I.’

P
atrick Jago’s letter was short and brutally clear.

Dear Mrs Halgate,

I regret that I have been unable to find any clues as to the whereabouts of your sisters. I can be clear on only three points: the facts that I communicated to you in my last letter, the fact that nothing is recorded under their names in any parish register for ten miles around and the certainty that they are nowhere in the vicarage or its adjoining buildings, which I must confess to entering and searching on Sunday last during morning service.

I am in London now. I enquired at all the coaching inns receiving passengers from East Anglia, in case one or both went to London. However, at such a distance in time I have not been surprised to find no one remembers two young ladies amongst so many.

I find myself detained by another, personal, matter, and will remain here at the
Belle Sauvage
on Ludgate Hill, where any correspondence will find me, for the foreseeable future.

Yours etc…

‘Et cetera, et cetera,’ Meg murmured, refolding the letter.

‘Not good news?’ Mrs Harris topped up Meg’s tea cup.

‘No. Not bad, either.’ She knew what Jago had meant by that reference to parish registers. He had been searching for burials.

‘Bless your heart.’ The cook’s homely face creased with concern. ‘And on top of the fright you had last night with those wicked smugglers, too. What a mercy you were on your way back to the house before they landed.’

‘I should never have gone swimming,’ Meg confessed. ‘I was feeling a trifle…agitated and thought it would be calming.’

‘And no wonder you were,’ Mrs Harris said comfortably. ‘All that worry about your sisters and then that big party to prepare for. Not that his lordship found anyone he likes the look of, not that I can see. I’d have heard if he’d gone calling on the ladies afterwards. We’ll be having another dinner party soon with another selection, mark my words.’

‘You can’t be wondering at it, Mrs Harris,’ Heneage observed. ‘He’s a man in his prime and he needs to be settling down and starting a family.’

‘Got more of one than I realised.’ Perrott piled clotted cream on one of Mrs Harris’s scones. ‘There’s a brother, I hear, and a serving of scandal with him.’

‘Half-brother,’ Mrs Harris corrected. ‘William Gillan, and a nice lad he is too, even if that old rogue Billy’s his grandfather. Lily, his ma, is a good woman and brought him up decent—no shame to her what his late lordship did, poor lass.’

‘Still, there’s not a lot of gentlemen who would acknowledge the family by-blows like that,’ Perrott observed, the jam and cream-laden scone halfway to his lips. ‘Getting a tutor for him and setting him up for the law and giving him the run of the house.’

‘Might make difficulties with a new wife,’ Heneage said. ‘What if she disapproves, which many might? Or thinks the boy’s his? He was wild enough as a lad, as I recall.’

‘Then his lordship would be better off without her.’ Meg replaced her cup in the saucer with a clatter and got to her feet. ‘If she puts appearance over family affection and doing the right thing and if she cannot take his word, she does not deserve him, whoever she is. Excuse me, I must go and think about Mr Jago’s letter.’

She was out into the passage, the door almost closed, when Perrott’s low whistle made her pause, hand on the knob. ‘That was a trifle vehement! You don’t think—’

‘I try very hard not to think, Perrott,’ Heneage said repressively. ‘It just leads to imaginings, and I don’t hold with that. Not about the family.’

Meg eased the door closed and walked blindly away from the kitchen. When she pulled herself together she was sitting in the shelter of the rustic arbour looking out over the rose garden. A light drizzle had begun to drift in from the sea, darkening the flagstones at her feet. Meg curled up on the seat and thought grimly that it provided an counterpoint to her mood that had slipped, in less than an hour, from confused happiness into miserable uncertainty.

It was easy to fall in love again, it seemed. Or had what she felt for James ever been real love? Was that why it had been so quick to turn into affectionate exasperation? She had been very young, besotted, romantic. And the man she had left her sisters for had always been younger than her in every way except years. It was easy to see that now, when she loved a man, not a handsome, gallant, heedless boy.

So, where am I now?
Meg broke off a pink rosebud and fretted at the tight petals with her fingernail, peeling them back with painful concentration. She loved Ross and she had made love with him and now, soon, she must leave him. Sooner than she had hoped, if she was to avoid bringing gossip down on the household. She had betrayed herself to the upper servants, it seemed. They would be loyal and discreet, but it would only take a whisper and the local families would think twice about their precious daughters. It was bad enough, the less charitable would think, that Ross acknowledged his half-brother, but an
affaire
with his housekeeper really would put the cat amongst the pigeons.

And what of Bella and Lina? She had carried out her plan and now the unthinkable had happened: her agent had not found them. Perhaps if she went to London, found some occupation there, she could advertise for them. If she could only think straight, work out how much money she had left, how long she dare remain here. Meg shivered; she was becoming cold, but it was hard to move. The rosebud, ruined, lay in her palm, the fragments of petal scattered over her dark skirts, clinging as the sea fret dampened the fabric. But the golden heart of the flower was revealed in all its complex beauty and when she lifted it to her lips the rich perfume still filled her nostrils with sensual delight.

She would go to Ross tonight and every night that he wanted her for one week. That was all she could permit herself, the gift of loving him for seven nights. Then she would go before she harmed him, go and devote herself to finding her sisters and making her own life.

The clock on the landing, five minutes out of time with the others in the house, struck one. Meg started, her fingertips sliding across the oak panel of Ross’s bedchamber door. Every sensation, the smell of the beeswax polish, the faint graining in the wood, the creak of the clock settling down again, was magnified by the sensual tension that had been gripping her ever since she had come in, damp and shivering, from the rose garden.

She had made a decision, set a limit, now she had only these days to create the memories that had to sustain her for all the years without Ross. Meg turned the handle and slipped inside, uncertain what to expect.