The Heiress Companion (17 page)

“Of course I shall be delighted to have Dearest Margaret for
my sister,” Eliza gushed. “Lully is simply ears over heels in love with her.”

“Such an affecting sight,” Mrs. Cherwood agreed
sentimentally. “And your sister and Lord Bradwell make a — a striking couple,
do not they?”

“O yes, although I have never much cared for Janie’s sort of
looks. But Lord Bradwell does well enough, particularly in evening dress. What
a shame he can talk of nothing but shooting and horses!”

“But what of you, my dear?” Mrs. Cherwood asked archly. “Haven’t
you a young suitor hidden about?” She made a show of looking around the room,
to be rewarded only by the sight of Margaret and Jane deep in conversation, and
Mrs. Ambercot nodding slightly over her writing case. She rapped Eliza’s
knuckles coyly, painfully, with her fan. “Ah, you young things! I’ll wager
there are a half-dozen beaux quite mad for you!”

Eliza blushed, looked gratified. “Well, one or two, ma’am,”
she managed to say modestly. “But they’re all such
boys
. And since I’ve returned from Tunbridge I
find I simply have no patience with boys.” She assumed a tone becoming a
forty-year-old matron in its weary sophistication. Mrs. Cherwood seemed to find
nothing amiss in being so addressed by a chit of eighteen, however.

“How true. Ah, my dear Miss Eliza, is there no one?” On an
inspiration she turned to regard the door through which the gentlemen had
vanished some fifteen minutes before. “Perhaps a neighbor? Soon to be related
by marriage, perhaps?” Mrs. Cherwood was rewarded for this piece of guessing by
a conscious blush from Eliza. “Well, then, my dear, surely that man is lost!
Such a pretty thing as you are —” With Margaret settled, there was no reason
not to be generous, Dorothea Cherwood reasoned. “So I see that this house party
really is complete! Three couples, three marriages. Why, I declare it is like
something on the stage.”

“But Miss Cherwood, that is, Miss Rowena Cherwood, doesn’t
have — I mean...” Eliza faltered, afraid to say too much to someone who was,
after all, Rowena’s aunt.

“O, Rowena,” Mrs. Cherwood scoffed. “She’s past her prayers,
that one. Completely her fault, too, since I had lined up the most advantageous
match for her! What must she do but go and hire herself out as a servant. Not
that the Bradwells are not everything that is genteel and agreeable, of course.”
Her tone made Rowena’s degradation entirely her own fault.

“Of course.” Eliza smiled, sensing a comrade.

“Sorry as I feel for Rowena, I have very little patience
with her. She wanted to go into service, and that is the life she has made for
herself. After all, what sort of man will want her now? And she is no longer
young, although I will admit that she has kept her looks for a remarkably long
time.”

Eliza had an inspiration so breathtaking she was almost
afraid to voice it. Could she enlist Mrs. Cherwood — Margaret’s mother, Rowena’s
aunt, what could be more appropriate! — in her plans for Lyndon Bradwell’s
attachment? It required, first of all, that Rowena Cherwood be settled
elsewhere, and short of taking the veil, marriage was the most permanent
disposition for a young woman of which Miss Ambercot knew. “There is one man...”
she murmured at last.

Mrs. Cherwood looked into her companion’s face. “A man, for
Rowena?” Her tone was mingled displeasure and curiosity. After all, it would
not necessarily be a bad thing to marry the girl off suitably. On the other
hand, it rankled her to think of the girl marrying well after turning off Sir
Jason Slyppe — Lord Slyppe, as he was now.

“Well, I do know one man who is very — very interested in
Miss Rowena Cherwood. However, he has very meager funds at his command, and is
not really what the world would term a great match, so that he has hesitated to
speak to her.” Eliza lied happily, certain that she had said something of
interest. She was reasonably certain from Dorothea Cherwood’s tone that helping
Rowena to a marriage with a man like Greavesey would find approval from Mrs.
Cherwood, and she watched the older woman’s face for signs that her intuition
was correct.

“Ah, well my dear,” Mrs. Cherwood said at last, a sharkish
smile hovering about her lips. “When a woman is no longer young or beautiful
and has cast her better chances to the wind, she cannot hope for much choice. I
do not believe that, after having been in service for nearly a year, Rowena
would not prefer marriage — any marriage — to life as a companion, even to Lady
Bradwell. Who is this man? I must certainly meet him.”

“His name is Greavesey, ma’am. John Greavesey, I believe. He
is the assistant to our doctor, Mr. Cribbatt.”

A quick, delicious vision of Rowena huddled in a crowded
cottage, brats hanging from her skirts, tired, worn with poverty and probably
black-and-blue from a deserved beating by her husband, flashed through Mrs.
Cherwood’s mind. Then it was dispelled by her common sense. After all, Rowena
had quite a good fortune. It was the reason why Sir Jason had been so eager to
marry her, despite the fact that she towered over him by a good five inches. Perhaps
this man, this Greavesey, was poor enough that he would press Rowena into
marriage and then do something dreadful and lowbred. Abandon her? Well, perhaps
not. Again, Mrs. Cherwood relinquished an agreeable vision in which Rowena (and
at least one very grubby infant) appealed to her aunt’s charity, to be admitted
as a dependent confined to the backstairs and nursery.

“I should very much like to meet this Mr. Greavesey.” Mrs.
Cherwood smiled again. Then, realizing that Meg and Jane, although still in
conversation, had been casting looks in their direction: “As for you, my dear,
persevere with your young man. You know these silly creatures. They never know
what they want until a woman shows it to them. Margaret my love, you look
altogether fagged. I think you had best retire. After all, we don’t wish Dear
Ulysses to think his bride-to-be is losing her looks, do we?”

Under her basilisk stare Margaret reluctantly rose and made
her good nights to Mrs. Ambercot and her daughters. The party, or its remnants,
abandoned the drawing room for the evening and retired to their respective
rooms, with the exception of Mrs. Cherwood, who happily followed after her
daughter to offer her a little advice, and to scold her again, most lovingly,
for having run away to Broak and her cousin in the first place.

Despite her early retirement from the drawing room, it was
observable the next morning that Miss Margaret was not in her best looks; her
mother, on the other hand, looked as if she had slept like a top, and when Lyn
Bradwell descended to breakfast well past his customary hour of nine, he found
her following after Drummey, helpfully offering corrections to his technique
with the polishing rag and suggesting a compound of lampblack and beeswax for
silver tarnish. Sympathizing bleakly with the butler, Lyn withdrew to the
breakfast room before Mrs. Cherwood could spot, and thus begin to make
improvements on him, too.

The excitements of the day before had proved a little beyond
Lady Bradwell’s strength. In the teeth of strong opposition she protested that
she was fit enough to descend to the saloon to sit up there. Only the combined
arguments of Rowena, Margaret, and Mrs. Ambercot, together with a solemn vow
that the latter would stand in Lady Bradwell’s stead in the face of Mrs.
Cherwood’s invasion, persuaded the older woman to rest. Rowena, although she
feared that it might be Greavesey who responded rather than Dr. Cribbatt, sent
a footman to the village to summon the doctor just in case.

Had Mrs. Cherwood planned it, things could not have fallen
out more agreeably.

Although neither Eliza Ambercot nor Dorothea Cherwood
partook of breakfast, they found each other late that morning and settled
comfortably in the garden room to chat and poke idly at their embroideries.
Mrs. Cherwood lost very little time in reintroducing the subject of John
Greavesey, and Eliza was happy to practice a little judicious misdirection by
assuring Margaret’s mother that Greavesey had long and silently pined for
Rowena, and that Rowena might be persuaded to return his affection. Mrs.
Cherwood was not much concerned with whether the feelings of either party were
truly engaged; she was far too busy savoring the thought of her high and mighty
niece, married to a doctor’s assistant. The two ladies, under the sentimental
guise of matchmaking, plotted happily over lemonade and biscuits on how to
bring Greavesey to Broak for Mrs. Cherwood’s inspection.

Before they could arrive at a suitable solution Eliza heard
the voice of the man himself outside the door, and started up.

“Ma’am, I quite believe it is he!” Opening the door
slightly, Eliza peered into the hallway, to be rewarded by the sight of Mr.
Greavesey scuttling up the stairs like a cadaverous beetle.

“By all means then, child, desire one of the footmen to
inform this Mr. Greavesey that I should like a word with him before he leaves,”
Mrs. Cherwood replied evenly. “And find me out where my niece is.” Eliza,
forgetting the dignity of eighteen in the delight of making mischief, set off as
quickly as possible to reconnoiter.

Rowena was located in the herb garden, taking advantage of
the fair weather to cut thyme and savory to dry in the kitchen. She wondered
for a moment what Eliza Ambercot could be doing to make her trot about in such
a fashion; her behavior was refreshingly unlike her normally affected prance.
Rowena permitted herself the hope that perhaps Eliza was losing her
affectations at last, and continued with her work.

There was something beneficial, after all, in cutting herbs;
while it left a great deal of time for reflection, for replaying the last,
horrible scene with Lyn over and over and over, still it allowed her some
physical release. At some times the neat rows of parsley became Lyn, and she
beheaded each one with relish. She was even able, for a time, to distract
herself from the pressing urge to cry; she would come to it sooner or later,
she assumed, but preferred to be in command of herself so long as Mrs. Cherwood
remained in the house.

Ulysses Ambercot came upon her as she was finishing her
chore, dusting off her hands and taking up the shears and basket.

“I say, Renna, that Greavesey is here again. Shall I send
him about his business?”

Something like a martial light gleamed briefly in Rowena’s
eye: There, she thought, was a proper target for her wrath, not hapless
parsley!

“No, Lully, I had ought to speak with him in any case. But I
thank you for letting me know.”

“Are you certain you don’t want reinforcements? Meg would
never forgive me if I turned tail and ran, to leave you to face the enemy.”

“Lully, I beg your pardon, but I am
spoiling
for this,” Rowena said with a cool glint
in her eye. “If I vow that I shall not hit that odious man with one of the
Chinese vases, nor throw the inkpot at him, nor do anything that is truly
reprehensible, will you trust me?”

“Do I have another choice?” he asked wryly, and took the
basket of greens from her. “At least let me bring these in to Cook, eh?”

“With pleasure. And Lully?” She touched his arm briefly. “You
are a good man and a good friend. Margaret is a lucky woman.” She smiled a
smile of old friendship and disappeared into the house to wash her hands.

o0o

After examining Lady Bradwell, who made the matter rather
difficult by taking him to task for his persecution of the females of her
household, John Greavesey would have been very happy to have disappeared
entirely from the face of the earth or, more particularly, from Broak, and was
packing away his powders and jars when Drummey informed him that Mrs. Cherwood
desired his company in the garden room.

At the name Cherwood, Greavesey winced.

He would have to face the music sometime or other, but
Rowena Cherwood did not appear to be the sort of woman to readily forgive him
for importuning Jane Ambercot only because he had been thwarted elsewhere. It
was with the severest misgivings that Mr. Greavesey allowed himself to be shown
into the garden room. But the woman who waited there for him was not Rowena
Cherwood. When she rose, he noted that she was many years older, a head shorter
than Miss Cherwood, and had a face not unlike a pug dog.

“Ma’am?” he asked blankly.

“Mr. Greavesey?” The vision in purple sarcenet swept across
the room to offer her hand to him. “I am delighted, utterly delighted! Permit
me to introduce myself. I am Mrs. Cherwood. Dearest Margaret’s mamma, you know.”

Greavesey swallowed rapidly. He was unable to tell if Mrs.
Cherwood had called him there to congratulate him on Margaret’s recovery, or
chastise him for his presumption in addressing her niece. While she continued
effusively about the nobility of the medical profession he braced himself for a
possible shock and tried to puzzle out this Mrs. Dorothea Cherwood.

“Now, sir,” the lady was saying archly. “What’s this a
little bird has told me about you and that niece of mine?”

The devil
, Greavesey
thought.
Here’s for it.

But what came was not what he had expected. “I have heard
hints, Mr. Greavesey, that you are not — ahh — impervious to my niece’s charms,
and she too...” She allowed herself to trail off suggestively. Recalling his
last interview with Miss Cherwood, Greavesey found it a little difficult to
follow Mrs. Cherwood’s suggestion. “I wished you to know, Mr. Greavesey, that
Rowena’s uncle and I would not be averse to seeing her established with a good
and honest man.” That much Mrs. Cherwood could certainly say, for whatever her
husband might say to the matter, she was sure he would not dislike to see his
niece married. Whether he would like to see her married to this Greavesey was a
different matter. For the rest, she thought, it would be as well that he
was
good, honest, virtuous, even conversable, for
heaven knew that he was not likely to inspire passion in a maidenly breast on the
basis of his looks. On consideration, Mrs. Cherwood began to like the match
better and better.