The Bottom Line (14 page)

‘Well,' said Thwaite, ‘I used to rub some witch-hazel in when you were little and you'd had a spanking. Would you like me to try that again? It may help and it'll probably reduce the bruising.'

Lucy nodded and Thwaite produced from the recesses of her tunic a jar of the magical cream. For the next twenty minutes she worked it slowly, gently and thoroughly into the wounded flesh, careful never to press too hard, and each time Lucinda winced when a particularly tender spot was being creamed, moved around to try to salve the wound without pressing on it directly. It seemed to work because Lucinda allowed her skirt to be pulled back down, and turned over so that she was lying on her side.

‘Do you think Holwick really would have left?' Lucinda asked. ‘Or was he just trying to get me into trouble.'

‘Oh no, miss,' Thwaite replied. ‘He'd never try to do that. He's really very fond of you, you know. I've always thought there was some kind of understanding between you, only he really was very hurt when you told him to... well, you know what you said, don't you? But for all that he's much closer to you than he realises.'

Lucinda nodded. ‘Yes,' she agreed, ‘but it was only meant as a sort of joke really. I've been kidding him along for months now, and this time it sort of got out of hand. He annoyed me, but I didn't really want to upset him.' There was a pause. ‘When I go to see him, will he still be cross with me?' she asked.

‘I'm not sure, miss,' Thwaite answered. ‘He really was very cut up and he's a strange man, you know. Perhaps I shouldn't be saying this about my own husband, but in private he's not a bit like the butler, you know. He's really quite an emotional man at times, and I know he'd be very upset if we ever had to leave.'

‘Oh well,' said Lucinda, as she registered this opinion, ‘I'm sure you won't have to leave on my behalf. I'll go and grovel to Holwick tonight if that's what it takes.' She changed position as she spoke, inadvertently putting weight on the part of her body then most sensitive to weight, and winced as she readjusted. ‘I say,' she went on, ‘mummy really did give me what for, didn't she? She's never beaten me like that before, as far as I can remember, anyhow. I know I've had a few spankings, but they used to wear off quite quickly. Have you ever seen her like that before?'

‘No,' admitted Thwaite, ‘not like that, but I know she can be quite severe if she thinks it's necessary. She once gave Julian a spanking.' Julian was Lucinda's elder brother, currently at university studying Land Management with a view to taking over the estate. ‘He didn't seem to be taking much notice so she took a wooden ruler to him and you could see the marks for days.'

‘Hm,' mused Lucinda, apparently digesting this intelligence. ‘What will she be like tomorrow? Ought I to keep out of the way?'

‘Oh no,' Thwaite replied quickly, ‘not a bit of it. You're confined to your room today, apart from going to make your peace with Holwick, but tomorrow her ladyship will treat you as though it never happened, as long as Holwick withdraws his notice.'

Lucinda gave some thought to this without saying anything further. She had already half decided that she would be very conciliatory towards Holwick, throwing herself on his mercy and hinting at further dire consequences for her if he didn't agree to stay. She spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening wrapped up in her own thoughts, brought down to earth every time she tried to move without remembering the punishment she'd received. She wondered how Julian would have taken it. Although she had forgotten about the episode with the wooden ruler, Thwaite's mention had brought it back.

Julian had been quite proud, both of his ability to withstand such severe punishment without complaining and of the weals his mother had inflicted upon him. Lucinda remembered how he had asked her to hold a mirror in position so he could undertake a daily inspection of his wounds, but any further thoughts on the subject were interrupted by the arrival of Thwaite, bearing a tray with a bowl of hot broth, a beautifully arranged salad, a frothy lemon dessert and what Lucinda's nose quickly told her was a glass of the finest Chablis.

‘Cook made up the tray for you,' Thwaite told her. ‘She thought you might want something light and tasty.'

‘I'll thank her tomorrow,' Lucinda said, ‘but she didn't give me the glass of wine, did she?'

‘No,' said Thwaite. ‘That was Holwick's idea. “Dutch courage”, he said.'

Lucinda reflected on this, and continued reflecting long after Thwaite had departed and she had finished her meal. Although she accepted that Holwick really was very fond of her, she wondered how well she really knew him, and was not looking forward to the interview that lay ahead.

Nevertheless, at the appointed time she duly dressed herself in a way that, she thought, would befit the occasion whilst not rubbing unduly against her injuries. She walked slowly along the landing, climbed the back stairs and went gingerly towards the room Holwick used as his private sitting room. It was a room to which very few ladies ever went, not even Thwaite. He would occasionally invite a junior member of the male household to join him up there in a drink or a pipe, but otherwise it was where he spent much of his free time alone, working on the accounts, checking that the household calendar for the coming week presented no obstacles with which he could not cope.

Lucinda knocked twice on the heavy door and heard a voice bid her enter. Holwick was standing at the window, looking out over the estate, but turned as she walked into the centre of the room.

‘Good evening, Miss Lucinda.' He greeted her formally and with no apparent coldness in his voice. ‘Would you like to take a seat?'

‘Thank you, Holwick,' she replied, ‘but I think in the circumstances I'd prefer to remain standing.'

‘Of course, miss,' he said. ‘I imagine that you may be feeling a little sore. I'm sorry it came to that. Most unfortunate.'

‘Yes,' she agreed, ‘I am very sore. And I'm sorry it came to that, too. But you will stay, won't you? I couldn't bear it if you were to leave and Thwaite had to leave as well, all because of me.'

‘I don't think that will be necessary,' Holwick told her, though with an apparent reserve in his voice. ‘I imagine we could have sorted this out between ourselves, but I'll come back to that in a moment. How are you feeling now? Have you done anything about the bruising?'

‘It hurts every time I move,' Lucinda told him, ‘but Thwaite rubbed some cream in and that took the worst sting away.'

‘Yes,' said Holwick, ‘I thought she would. Just like she used to when you were little, eh?'

‘Well, yes, I suppose so,' Lucinda agreed. ‘I didn't realise you knew anything about that.'

‘Oh yes,' Holwick disclosed, ‘I always knew. Thwaite made sure I knew, though I never quite knew why. Any time you got a tanning she'd tell me about it, what it was for and whether you made a fuss... all that sort of stuff. Funny though, she never told me about young Master Julian.'

‘He didn't get it as often as I did,' Lucinda recalled. ‘I was always the naughty one, though it was usually just a quick slap. I don't think I've had more than half a dozen real tannings in my life.'

‘No,' agreed Holwick, ‘probably not. But are you going to make sure you don't get any more, because I'm not taking the sort of language from you that you treated me to this morning? I'm sorry, miss, but you've got to understand. I might even have to take the law into my own hands.'

‘I'm not sure what you have in mind, Holwick,' Lucinda said, a trifle too indignantly. ‘I really am sorry for having spoken to you in that way and I'll take good care not to do it again, but I think I'd perhaps better be leaving now.'

‘Not quite so fast, young miss,' Holwick said, standing between Lucinda and the door. ‘As a matter of fact, I've already withdrawn my notice so you need have no worries on that score, at least not for the moment. But I don't think you're in any position to be laying down conditions, do you? After all, I've only to go to her ladyship again and it might be worse next time. It might even be the birch. And how would you like that?'

‘The birch?' Lucinda gasped. ‘Whatever are you talking about. Birches went out last century as far as I'm aware. We certainly don't use birches in this house.'

‘Oh, don't we?' Holwick scoffed. ‘Well, you think about this, miss. Your mother once birched a poacher. He was going out with one of our housemaids and he got to know the layout of the grounds, so he thought he'd set a few snares. When your mother found out she gave him the choice of being flogged or prosecuted. He said he'd take the flogging, so she had him stripped and tied to a tree and gave him thirty strokes. She even sent for the whole household to watch - said something about encouraging the others, whatever that meant. He was beaten from his shoulders to his knees, he was. Mind you, he never poached again and he even came back to thank her ladyship for not reporting him. But don't you go thinking you can't get any worse than you got this afternoon, because I've seen it happen. Why, I even cut the birch twigs myself and bound them together.'

It took all Lucinda's resolve to stop her knees from buckling when she heard this story, and she began to wonder whether Holwick might try to use it as a means of blackmailing her in some way... and his next words seemed to confirm her fears.

‘So, Miss Lucinda, you'd better show a lot more respect in future, hadn't you? And while you're about it, you'd better start thinking about being nice to me, because it seems your future is in my hands now.'

She decided that appeasement, in the mildest way possible, was the best answer at that very moment. ‘Yes, Holwick,' she said, ‘I really will try to be much nicer to you in future. But I think I really ought to be going now.'

‘There's no need to be so hoity-toity, miss,' Holwick told her. ‘I know quite a bit about you. I know you're not the innocent your mother may think you are. I know all about the things you got up to at the hunt ball with young Lord Ettersgill and some of his friends. I'm not going to ask you to do the same for me, but I am going to ask you to show a bit of respect and I think you may just as well start now.' With which words he began to fumble at his fly-buttons.

Lucinda turned and was about to dash for the door when it burst open from the outside. Thwaite stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips, her gaze directed towards her husband who was struggling desperately, and in vain, to adjust his dress in a way that would not point an accusatory finger.

‘Holwick!' she screamed at him. ‘I don't know what you're doing or even thinking of doing, but you will not so much as lay a finger on that girl or I'll have the law on you, do you hear me? Not so much as a finger!'

Torn between the conflicting desires to protest his innocence, to insist that it had only been a game, to bluster and even to suggest that the proposed treatment would have been no more than she had deserved, Holwick sat down, turned towards his wife and spoke in a peculiar sort of whine.

‘Why not?' he asked. ‘Why not? It was only a bit of fun. I wasn't going to do her any harm, and she's certainly no blushing virgin. Why shouldn't I have a bit of fun once in a while? It's a long time since I had any with you.'

‘I'll tell you exactly why you're not going to have a bit of fun with Miss Lucinda,' Thwaite spat at him. ‘Not now or at any time in the future. You're not going to have a bit of fun with Miss Lucinda,' she thrust forward her imposing bosom as she spoke to her husband, as if to add an extra dignity to the words she addressed to him, ‘because she's your daughter. That's why not.'

 

 

 

It was with some reluctance that I finally decided I had to report Adrienne to Sir Rodney, but I felt she'd left me little choice. Despite her skills as a translator and her obvious knowledge of a variety of cultures, her brusque manner towards foreign dignitaries or their staff, who rang up to seek information frequently, caused embarrassment.

Only last week, for example, I received a complaint that a gentleman from one of the Balkan countries had been told to stop wasting Adrienne's time. When I tackled her about this she conceded that she had indeed given that piece of advice and claimed, moreover, that she had been fully justified in doing so.

‘He was wasting my time,' she argued furiously. ‘All he wanted was information about flights and I'd already told him to contact the airline, but he just went on and on, asking me to find out for him.'

I pointed out to Adrienne that one of the jobs of our agency was to supply information, upon request, to foreign visitors who needed it and to smooth their paths in any way that seemed appropriate.

‘It's not appropriate for me to waste hours over some...'

‘But that's where you're wrong, Adrienne,' I remonstrated with her. ‘It's highly appropriate that you provide such information, even if you know that the gentleman in question could find it for himself. What he wants is official confirmation that this department is prepared to look after him. That's why we were set up in the first place, and a few minutes spent now in obliging a gentleman could be worth thousands of dollars or euros in a few months' time.'