Miss Hartwell's Dilemma (7 page)

Miss Hartwell set off across the fields with five energetic young ladies. The hedgerows were laden with scarlet rosehips, crimson haws and the pink and orange fruit of the spindle tree; a hare darted through the stubble fields at their approach, chased by the shadows of puffy clouds racing across the sky. She returned to the house two hours later tousled and pink-cheeked, the gusty wind having blown away her megrims.

Daisy met her at the door with the news that Lord Daniel and Miss Winterborne had returned and were awaiting her in the office. Miss Hartwell was delighted. She put off her bonnet and pelisse and with no thought for her appearance went straight to see them. Lord Daniel was sitting in a chair with Isabel perched on the arm. She smiled at the charming picture they made. He rose to greet her, smiling in return.

“I hope I have not kept you waiting long,” she said, suddenly breathless.

“Not at all, ma’am. A few minutes. I see you have been out walking. The exercise suits you.”

“Oh dear, am I so windswept?” She consulted a mirror and patted uselessly at her copper locks. “Heavens, positively dishevelled! I do beg your pardon, my lord. Still, I daresay you will not wish me to go away now and tidy myself. Isabel has decided to stay with us?”

“If you please, ma’am,” Isabel confirmed anxiously.

“Of course you shall. We are very happy to have you.”

“Now come and kiss me good-bye, love, for I must have a few words with Miss Hartwell. I shall come again next Sunday, without fail.”

She put her arms round his neck, kissed him on both cheeks, and whispered, “I love you, Papa, and I do miss you, but it is such fun here and very interesting besides.”

He hugged her with one arm and kissed her forehead. She curtsied to Miss Hartwell, her curtsy already much improved, before closing the door carefully behind her.

“I miss her abominably,” confessed Lord Daniel, “but I gather she already has a new friend. You will not object to telling me a little about this Louise, whom she quotes endlessly?”

“Louise is the daughter of Lord Carfax. It is a perfectly unexceptionable friendship and I believe it is doing Isabel a great deal of good. She is a somewhat retiring child, as I am sure you have realised, while Louise is a merry, outgoing creature.”

“Thank you, you have set my mind at rest. All that remains, then, is to give you this.” He handed her a piece of paper.

It was a bank draught, drawn in the amount of one term’s school fees.

“Oh no, my lord,” she exclaimed, “you have already paid in full.”

“I told you I should double the sum if Isabel decided to stay.”

“That was not why I decided to accept her. I hope you do not think that you could buy my compliance with your conditions!”

“It has been my experience that most things can be bought. I shall leave it with you to do with as you please,” he said with utter indifference, then turned on his heel and walked out.

That odious wretch, fumed Miss Hartwell. Just when she was at last feeling in charity with him he chose to insult her. She nearly ran after him to force the draught on him, but that would certainly lead to a public and undignified scene. She was about to tear it into little pieces. Instead she locked it in her drawer.

She would return it next time she saw him. Otherwise, he might never notice that it had not been cashed, and he would continue to suppose her a mercenary female just like his unfortunate lightskirts. For that, she felt sure, was what he had meant, and it was unthinkable that she should not disabuse him of the notion.

Shortly thereafter, Lord Pomeroy brought his niece back to school. It was a little after five o’clock, so Miss Hartwell told Louise to run upstairs and change for dinner.

“I will,” she answered gaily, “but I shall not eat a thing. Uncle Bertram gave me tea at the Falcon and he has promised to treat us all in Colchester on Wednesday so I shall study very hard to be sure of going!”

“I see she can twist you round her little finger,” Amaryllis told his lordship.

“Like you, she is difficult to refuse. But she did not have to tease very hard, for I wager it will be the only opportunity I shall have to see you before next Sunday,” he said ruefully.

“I am sorry, Bertram, truly I am. I wish you will not kick your heels in Halstead all week. Have you no friends nearby whom you might visit?”

“I know Ashurst Majendie of Hedingham Castle, but not well. Certainly not well enough to drive up and tell him I’ve come to stay indefinitely because I am courting the village schoolmistress. Besides, I doubt he is there at present, and I am not acquainted with his father.”

“What of the friends you stayed with near Braintree?”

“Friends of Caroline’s. I daresay I could spend a couple of days there. At least I could take a gun out for partridge.”

“An excellent idea. Much better than sitting around the inn.”

“That reminds me. At the inn here in the village, where I took Louise—what was it called?”

“The Falcon. It is on the site where the castle mews stood in mediaeval times.”

“Never mind that. There was a fellow in there—a dark, swarthy young man with an accent I would wager to be Spanish. He was asking all sorts of questions about the school.”

Amaryllis frowned. “A gentleman?”

“Of sorts. Dressed like a popinjay, jewels everywhere, and a shocking waistcoat.” His lordship looked down with complacency at his own neat blue and grey striped waistcoat with its single fob. “Wearing a sword, too. But there, I expect fashions are different in Spain as they are in most of Europe. Foppish bunch, foreigners.”

“Bertram, you do not suppose he could be connected with...with the Spanish Ambassador’s daughter? I mean a brother or something come for revenge?”

“Dash it, Amaryllis, after six years? Not but what those hidalgos have long memories and they do go in for family feuds, I believe.”

“Hidalgos?”

“The petty nobility. Complicated code of honour, great pride of family, and not much common sense. I met a few in Vienna.”

“You are most reassuring! Still, I expect he is merely interested in providing his daughter with an English education. I must go and change my dress now,” she added as the clock struck the quarter. “I shall see you on Wednesday.”

“Dash it, Amaryllis, you were used to be quite the most restful female of my acquaintance and now you will not stand still for more than five minutes before you mush dash off hither and thither.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I am a working woman, my dear. Now I really must run.”

He watched her until she reached the top of the stairs, then turned to leave, muttering disgustedly, “If ever I received a brotherly kiss, that was one.”

He might have been cheered had he known that, as she changed, Amaryllis was comparing him with Lord Daniel Winterborne. The comparison could only be in his favour. His excellent style, easy manners, and superior address threw Lord Daniel’s brusqueness into strong relief. Yet for quite thirty seconds Lord Daniel had been almost charming, and how that smile had changed his appearance. He could not be much older than thirty, especially as his brother George must be no more than five or six and thirty by now. Isabel was eleven, though. Had he married so young?

Or was Isabel a love-child?

That would certainly explain the lack of a respectable female in the household. On the other hand, Lord Daniel had said that his sister advised him to send Isabel to school, and surely his sister would not care a fig for the upbringing of a love-child. Isabel had told her that her father had quarrelled with his relations. Yet he was in communication with at least one and took her advice. Thoroughly intrigued by her speculations, Miss Hartwell hurried down to dinner.

After dinner on Sundays, the older girls were left in charge of the younger. The three ladies retired to their private drawing room, taking it in turns to check the common-room occasionally. Sipping tea from the best Crown Derby porcelain cups, half a dozen of which Mrs. Vaux had saved when the Hartwell possessions were sold up, they discussed the past week and made plans for the coming week.

Amaryllis found herself avoiding all mention of Bertram’s visit, and her aunt and governess tactfully made no enquiries. She was no more willing to talk about Lord Daniel, though she did tell them that Isabel would be staying. Also, she felt obliged to pass on Mr. Raeburn’s warning about his rakish reputation, which had Mrs. Vaux in a tizzy until Tizzy pointed out calmly that he was unlikely to make any attempt on the virtue of his daughter’s companions.

Mrs. Vaux waited until her niece had left the room before she confided that she was afraid his lordship might attempt to make Amaryllis the object of his affections.

“She has no male relative to protect her,” she said. “I daresay by the time we could get a reply from Philadelphia it would be too late.”

“She has a great deal of common sense to protect her,” soothed Miss Tisdale. “Nor do I suppose that Lord Daniel is any more likely to seduce his daughter’s teacher than her friends. Besides, I cannot but think that Lord Pomeroy would have something to say to that.”

Mrs. Vaux was reassured. Miss Tisdale was more dubious of her own reasoning. She had a low opinion of men, always excepting Mr. Raeburn, and she doubted that a gentleman already known as a libertine would be given pause by his daughter’s situation if his fancy should happen to alight upon her preceptress.

Amaryllis returned to report that all was quiet and decorous in the common-room. The conversation turned to the possible hiring of a chambermaid to assist the housemaids so that one of the housemaids might assist Daisy, who was run off her feet now that there were twenty-four young ladies in residence.

“We are sufficiently beforehand with the world to afford it,” Amaryllis assured her aunt after some discussion. “One of the housemaids will be able to help Daisy serve at table. Do you have someone in mind already? If you could hire her tomorrow we might impress the vicar when he dines here tomorrow evening.”

“He mentioned that you had invited him when I spoke to him after church,” said Miss Tisdale, slightly flushed. “Of course he will not be able to come if Miss Raeburn is unwell. Ah, it is nine o’clock, and my turn to see the children to bed, is it not? ‘I will both lay me down in peace and sleep.’ Psalms 4, verse 8.”

There was silence until she had closed the door behind her, then Amaryllis said, “I believe I shall make it a standing invitation for every Monday. Then he can tell his sister that it is part of his clerical duties to ensure that his pupils say grace and behave with propriety at table.”

“An excellent notion. Augusta interferes only with his pleasures, not with his duties,” approved Mrs. Vaux.

“Augusta?”

“Yes, we are on Christian-name terms! I called in this afternoon after my walk and stayed quite half an hour.”

“Splendid! I see you are a first-rate fellow conspirator.”

“I have already discovered that she does indeed have a brother in London, and that he lives in Chapel Street, which is an excessively fashionable address,” said Mrs. Vaux with pardonable pride. “Perhaps it is not quite fair to pretend to seek her friendship, but for Miss Tisdale’s sake I will do it.”

“Yet you always address Tizzy so formally. You are not on Christian-name terms with her after all these years.”

“I asked Miss Tisdale several years ago to call me Eugenia, but she maintained that she would not be comfortable addressing thus the sister of her ex-employer. I would not for the world so demean her as to call her Melpomene if she will not reciprocate.”

Amaryllis giggled. “If my name were Melpomene,” she admitted, “I should prefer that no one used it. It is bad enough to be called after a Greek shepherdess. I cannot think what her parents were about to name her for the muse of Tragedy.”

“I hope you have a plan in mind,” her aunt went on. “It is prodigious unpleasant to have to listen to Augusta complaining for thirty minutes at a time, I vow.”

“I need more information before I can contrive a successful scheme. Try to find out why she does not choose to live with the tonnish brother, and as many things that give her the vapours as you can.”

Preparing for bed later that evening, Amaryllis realised she had not told her aunt or Tizzy of the inquisitive Spaniard. Still, there was no need to alarm them. No doubt he would turn up in a day or two to enroll a daughter in the school, or perhaps he wanted to give Spanish lessons. As Bertram had said, it was not likely that some relative of the Spanish Ambassador should have tracked her down with revenge in mind after all these years. All the same, it was not only the chilly sheets that made her shiver as she climbed into bed.

Chapter 6

Monday morning brought rain, blowing in wintry drifts across the village and dashing against the windowpanes with a rattle like a snare drum. September or no, Mrs. Vaux ordered fires lit in every room that would be used during the day.

Mr. Raeburn arrived at the school with his greatcoat soaked through, his umbrella having turned inside out within a few steps of the vicarage. One of the housemaids hurried the dripping garment to the kitchen, while Daisy ushered the vicar into the small, cosy parlour where he would spend the day attempting to inculcate the tenets of Christianity into four or five young ladies at a time.

Patient and genial, Mr. Raeburn had no opinion of preachers of hellfire. He had the greatest difficulty in checking his tendency to expatiate upon charity and compassion at the expense of more abstract virtues. His greatest joy was when, as happened not infrequently, one of the girls would bashfully hand him a portion of her pin money with a request to see to the comfort of some parishioner whose troubles he had mentioned. They all loved him, and not a few considered the inexplicable peppermint scent that imbued his presence to be synonymous with the “odour of sanctity.”

It was still pouring with rain at four o’clock when he had finished his lessons. Miss Hartwell asked him to rake Louise Carfax over the coals for her behaviour in church, and then to explain the service to Isabel Winterborne so that she would be less confused next Sunday.