The Indian Maiden (9 page)

“And since you mentioned woodsheds, if you want a country image, think of this vast room as a great hen house. For most of these creatures are very like. Society breeds the same sort of brainless, chattering, clucking things. And like their feathered counterparts, they too grow excited at the first drop of blood, and they’ll peck a hole through the heart of anything they think is weak, anything they think they’ve wounded. All of them,” he said as he took his other hand, and indicated the entire room as he included it in his sweeping bow to begin the minuet with her. “All of this honored company, all of the hens and chicks and capons and cock-of-the-walks,” he continued as his open hand stretched far and swung wide, presenting her with the assembled ladies, gentlemen, mamas, papas, and chaperones. And as he raised his hand and head, he said, “They are pretty, silly, gabbling creatures, Miss Hamilton. Beware of them.”

There was no chance for Faith to reply to him, for the figures of the dance took them apart and led them together, but always within ear shot of the other dancers. But she smiled and swayed and dipped and prayed for a suitable answer to brace him with when they were done. She’d joked, she’d acted a part as though her home were in a barn, but that did not mean she truly wished anyone to believe she had no manners or upbringing. If he knew that, as she believed he did, he might well mean his criticism for her own good. Even so, it was unpleasant to be chastened, it was uncomfortable to wonder if one had been in the wrong, and it was still undeniable that he disturbed her and so must be put in his place.

The dance continued, and the elders and chaperones and timid or choosy gentlemen and unfortunate or selective ladies could only watch as the long set pranced on. The duke, as host, had opened the dance with his duchess, but that lady glowered as she paced through the dance and for the second time in her life regretted an earlier decision. She ought to have let her husband begin the ball with Mary, she decided, as she spied the young American gentleman partnering her unwed daughter. For there, down the line from her, that American female was dancing with Lord Deal. Self-doubt was new to her, and ruinous to her equanimity. And so, although she’d never given a thought to anything outside her own narrow island’s borders for the whole of life, she now decided that the menace from the Americas far outweighed anything she’d ever heard in church about the masses of heathen in the Holy Land, and wondered if there were currently any crusade she could join against the threat of them.

When the dance ended, Faith had some idea of an excellent retort, but even as she drew breath to thank her partner, most correctly, and give him a stunning set-down most cold-bloodedly, he said, sweetly, “Thank you, Miss Hamilton. And now may I invite you to another dance?”

But even Faith knew this was not done, two dances with one gentleman being thought exceptional and two together extraordinary, so, forgetting the excellent riposte she’d labored over, she said, “Why, you know I’ve promised it to the earl, my lord, and given all the others away as well.”

“I meant,” he explained, “at my humble home. Won’t you come, and stay the weekend and dance the time away with me?”

“I may be from America,” she said furiously, now positive he was making sport of her, “and so you may have felt impelled to use barnyard images in order to communicate with me, but I assure you I have no hay in my hair. But since you like such terms, I’ll tell you, sir, you may call this sort of thing flirtation in England, but at home we’d call it—”

“My dance, my dear?” the earl asked smoothly, as Faith struggled with the word that had come to her mind but never to her tongue before. As Lord Deal watched with one lifted brow, she was led mutely off into the dance again. And knowing she was watched, Faith danced the night away. And despite Will’s signals, frowns, and whispers, and because of Lord Deal’s observant eyes upon her, she carried the company before her like a high wind from the Americas, leveling them with howling tales told with outrageous glee. If they wanted a primitive, innocent, guileless American, she thought with a mixture of anger and foreboding, why then, they should have one.

Only at last, when the last guest had left the ballroom to servants cleaning by candlelight, and the moonlight was almost fading outside her bedroom window, did Faith hear the last joke of all. For then Lady Mary, suppressing a great and contented yawn, told her happily, “Only think, Faith! Before he left, Lord Deal invited all of us to his home for the weekend, for a ball!”

SIX

Stonecrop hall was
not so far from Marchbanks as to make an overnight stay necessary for anyone who wished to see both great houses in one day, even if that suppositional person were forced to walk back and forth to both places. And if that conjectured person weren’t titled, wealthy, and in possession of the sort of Arabian horse that noble persons give stable room to, still he could conceivably take his old nag to breakfast at Marchbanks and then take tea at Lord Deal’s manor without straining himself, his mount, or anyone’s credulity too far. So of course there was no real reason why the party at Marchbanks should remove its comfortable self, with all the attendant difficulties involved in such a venture, only for the purpose of staying a weekend at Stonecrop Hall. Naturally, then, that was precisely what the entire party did.

Stonecrop Hall had not been opened to the occasional visitor for over a decade, and each person at Marchbanks, from invited guest to attendant servant, knew a certain thrill at being one of the first to be asked back. Its noble owner was not much in the way of society. He had that stirring name attached to him as well as that scandalous story, but that was old days, and as such, old hat. The fellow was older now and as eligible as he could stare, the elder ladies thought, with a tender hope for their daughters. And if a lady were fool enough to cuckold such a fellow, the youngest ladies decided, then she deserved what she got. And if she’d felt she had to do such a dreadful thing, some of the more experienced ones thought, why then, it might be at the very least, interesting, to discover why.

The gentlemen were mostly happy at having a change of scenery, and a good tale to tell when they got back to the heart of civilization, their clubs.

And Miss Faith Hamilton, as she strolled along with the other guests who were being walked around the Hall the first afternoon of their visit, could only think that had she known Lord Deal sprang from such a place when she’d first met him, she likely wouldn’t have been able to say a word to him, much less defy him.

It was not that she was unacquainted with the elegancies of living. Grandfather’s house on Pearl Street was near the Battery, and not only was it one of the finest on the street, but it was in the heart of the most fashionable district, very near Bowling Green. Her father’s home in Virginia was a great white mansion, and Grandfather even had that charming country home in the village of Greenwich, not three miles up Broadway, in the prettiest area, past the farms and through a little wood. Marchbanks was itself grand, built about the time that European eyes first widened at the size of the shoreline of America. But withall, Stonecrop Hall was like nothing she had ever seen.

It had not been planned out with just an eye to money spent and effect created, and left to amaze and inspire visitors to covet. It had obviously been built and rebuilt and revised down through more years than Faith could imagine, and each time for the comfort or convenience of the owner. It stood in a gracious park, and was built of gray stone and ringed by stone columns, but such was its charm that its glory came from its comfort equally as much as the well-designed beauty of each spacious room. It contained fully as much gilt and statuary as did its neighbor Marchbanks, but there was art rather than artifice to it. Similarly, even the paintings which hung upon the walls, as well as the decorative moldings and panels on those walls themselves, inspired the viewer to appreciation rather than estimation of their prices.

“Gosh, golly,” she whispered to Will in the thick rustic accents she affected when they joked together about their relative status here among the English gentry. “It took a nice bit of change to put up this
barn
, don’t you think? And I’ll wager a dollar to your shilling it’s so old, we’ll find King Arthur sleeping in the best guestbed.”

But Will only strolled on, seemingly oblivious to what she’d said. It was only when he allowed himself to fall behind the others as they walked out to the rose gardens that he replied, in so low a voice that she had to strain to hear him, “Don’t start now, Faith. I mean it. If you’ve decided to make a cake of yourself here, please understand that I have no wish to.”

“Will!” she said, stopping and staring hard at him. “How can you think that? I only wanted to joke a little with you. The place is so grand, I didn’t much like myself for only staring and mumbling as if I were in church. It’s ve
r
y nice, to be sure, but it’s only a man’s home, after all. I didn’t think it was sacred. And anyway, what I said was just for your ears. Of course, I’d not embarrass you, I know how you feel about Mary,” she explained in a fierce whisper.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking genuinely abashed as he patted her arm even as he took it and urged her along in the trail of the others. “I expect you think me a social climber, no, I know you do. But listen,” he said seriously as he spoke low and gazed at her with a rueful smile, “I came here to England to find myself a wife, and a socially acceptable one at that, it’s true. But I never thought I’d find everything I ever wanted immediately, and right in the house where you’d be staying. Faith, she’s wonderful.

“She’s beautiful and modest and charming. I know I sound like a lovesick boy, but when I was only a boy, newly come to your country and working at whatever I could turn my hand to in your grandfather’s shipyards, I dreamed of coming home again someday and finding just such a wife for myself. But I didn’t believe I’d actually ever find her.”

“Will, I know her very well, and everything you say of her is true, but it’s early days yet. You hardly know her, not really,” Faith said, hoping to at least momentarily cool his ardor for her hostess.

Since Will had met Lady Mary, he’d been a different fellow, not the easy-going, humorous companion she’d known. He had transformed himself instead into this serious, quiet, and very proper imitation of an unexceptional young Englishman. She wondered if she ought to tell him what she really thought—which was that the duchess would never allow the match, no matter what his bank account, since she’d think his breeding was no account, and too, if there was any hope for him, it would never be for this staid copy of a proper gentleman he’d lately become. Because Lady Mary herself was not the picture of absolute propriety Will thought her, not beneath the affect she had to put on for her mama’s sake, not from what Faith had learned in her midnight conversations with her. The Mary she knew might well prefer the old Will, the real Will, the happy-go-lucky, relaxed, and laughing Will, just as she herself did, no matter what her mama said. But then, Will did not know that Mary, just as Mary might never know that Will. Faith wondered with a sigh if she were the only one who would ever know the truth of either of them.

“I didn’t come from such a home,” Will said with a sort of despair, “but I can, and
I
shall build just such a place for myself.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Faith grinned. “It’s a mite grand for all it’s so fine. Do you really think you need a castle? Because I think they’ve already settled their differences with the Normans here.”

“But Stonecrop Hall is not a castle, Miss Hamilton,” the earl commented as he came up to the pair from behind them, “it’s a country estate. However fine the Viking’s home may be, if you’ll note there’s not a crenellation in sight, nor a decent parapet to pour boiling oil down from. No, I’m afraid even your Red Indian chaps would make easy work of it for all its splendor, not to mention what a Saracen horde could achieve in less time than it takes to tell of it. Good morning, Rossiter, Miss Hamilton.”

Will flushed as he bowed, and Faith herself wondered exactly what the earl might have overheard. There was no way to tell from his habitually calm, impassive countenance. Before Will could attempt some polite conversation, the earl, in the same flat, laconic tones, drawled, “Oh dear, I believe the good duchess has discovered a pebble in her shoe, or a stitch in her side, or has invented some other sort of fly for her ointment. But then, the interior of Stonecrop interests her far more than the gardens. I quite agree; after all, one rose is much the same as another, no matter which nobleman nurtures it.”

Looking ahead to where the Duchess of Marchbanks had seated herself on a stone bench in the rose garden, it became obvious that she had decided to wait there until the tour was over and was waving the rest of the solicitous party onward. As he stared, Will seemed to forget the conversation and the company he was with as well. Recalling himself, he murmured a few words, bowed, and then was off, obviously bent on intercepting and accompanying Lady Mary now that she was released from her mama’s escort.

“Not too wise, that,” the earl commented as he resumed walking with Faith. “He’d do better to meet with his lady in the moonlight, when her guardian dragon is safely tucked into her lair, thinking she’s sound asleep atop her treasure’s bed chamber. No, the duchess is not likely to encourage that connection. Not that there’s a thing wrong with young Rossiter, mind, his face, monies, and manners are admirable, save for the fact that ‘Mister’ is not quite the word the Duchess of Marchbanks wishes to see engraved on any invitation to
nuptials
she might issue, and ‘Mrs.’ is not the term of address she expects anyone to ever use when speaking to her daughter.”

“Yes,” Faith said quietly, “I’ve noticed that about you English.”

“Have you?” he replied with a rare, long grin stretching across his mouth. “I wonder? I haven’t. For it doesn’t apply to you in the least. It’s one of the little advantages of your sex in our country that a lady can acquire a title quite simply. Her husband, you see, drapes it over her at the moment they are united, it comes with the wedding, like the blanket on the marriage bed. It’s only the gentlemen who have to perform deeds of daring, or endow universities or lend funds to our dear Prince in order to obtain an interesting title. So never fear, we English, as you put it, are not so worried about nobility when it comes to the dear ladies.”

“You have the wrong sow by the ear,” Faith said, her eyes blazing, for once all out of patience with the usually circumspect nobleman, “for I wasn’t afraid in the first place, and I’m not a lady in the second place. I’m an American, and if we are ‘ladies,’ it is only in deportment, and if we aren’t, it simply isn’t important.”

“Well done,” the earl nodded with approval, “the fire, the spirit, and the context. But my point was only that you could be, a lady that is, in the way we mean it, and no one would object. Certainly not,” he added, his deep voice overriding any comment she could make about her disinterest again, “anyone in my train. For I’m fatherless, poor lad, and the head of my family. My mama positively dotes upon me and while she would not think any lady deserved me, from queen to beggarwoman, she would equally so not question any decision I ever made in the matter.” They were walking beneath an arched trellis hung with huge pink roses, and the atmosphere seemed to be almost suffocatingly bridal to Faith. She could see nothing in the gray eyes that observed her but a faint lurking humor, and nothing but the earl’s words had shown any wa
rm
er intent than friendship. But still she did not know what to say to this declaration, for it was more personal than any he’d ever addressed to her. So she reached out a finger to stroke a velvety petal, and said at once to end the unnerving silence, “Does your mama live with you?” And then, realizing that that might sound too much as though she were interested in the more intimate details of the gentleman’s life, she added, “Are you an only child then?”

He laughed, as though pleased that he had unsettled her, and plucking the same rose that she’d touched, he inhaled it deeply before he tucked her arm securely beneath his and paced with her down through alleyways of roses as he told her about his mama, his elder sister, and his home in the distant north.

But though he told her of Hedon Castle, and spoke of mottes and baileys and corbels and machicolations and the long stone halls that rang with the history of the Methleys, he did not speak of the dry rot and death-watch beetles and fire damage and slow but sure decay that had kept his home closed for the past years. And though he went on to sing the praises of ancestors who rode to crusades and were flattered by kings, he did not mention his grandfather, who had spent half the fortune
his
grandfather had not already lost, or his own father, who had never noticed the rest of it ebbing as he’d frittered the last of it away. And when he presented her with the head of the pink rose he’d plucked before she left him to prepare for luncheon, he saw more than a slip of a girl from across the sea in a pink frock as she left him, for he hoped he saw the salvation of his name and his home in her.

There was no money left. There was scarcely enough to keep him a step ahead of his creditors, and even that step would have to be taken in boots not yet paid for. He should, he knew, have not procrastinated, he should have taken action long before this, put it down to a family failing, he thought bitterly as he stood in the rose-scented garden deep in thought. But at least he would act now. And if by selling himself, he could preserve his inheritance, then that was a very small price to pay for such a precious legacy.

His home, every cracked flag in its courtyard, every empty hallway, each cobble in its great walls, were more to him than the bones in his own body. A man did not have to marry where he loved, he had never expected to, few noblemen did. One married where wealth was, but the conceit that kept honor intact was that it was an optional, free choice. He had not the luxury of that choice any longer, but then, he was a rational man, and didn’t feel he needed the illusion half so much as he needed the money.

Had he come to that realization sooner, he imagined he might have taken the last of his funds and invested it, as so many prudent gentlemen did. But he’d never been prudent, and hadn’t understood the
modern
way to play at being a gentleman. It was pleasant for a nobleman to pretend his money came to him unsullied by the dirty hand of trade, but now, too late, the earl knew otherwise. The Duke of Marchbanks might put it about that Miss Hamilton’s grandfather was an old friend, but the fellow had no title, he had only a vast shipping empire. Where then, did the duke believe his cronies think the friendship had sprung from? The Viking, at least, freely admitted to such investments. But that made his own sojourn here no easier. It was hard for a man with no funds to sit down at an enemy’s full table, no matter how hungry he was. Still, a starving man would be a fool to refuse nourishment for pride’s sake, and so too, he knew he had to remain here with this party of eligible young females.

It wasn’t easy to associate with these girl children and foolish youths this summer, this summer of his desperation. But he was, he conceded, fortunate in so far as he had discovered a young creature who was more than wealthy enough, intelligent, very handsome, and not an utter fool. He hadn’t thought to wed such as she, no matter how charming, but then, he thought on a shrug, a penniless gentleman, no matter how titled, had not the remotest hope of wedding where he thought he might have before he’d enjoyed that final discussion with his man of business.

No matter, the earl thought, he was amazingly resilient. To survive one had to be, that was the telling test; his line had not continued for so many generations because it could not accept change. He even found things to look forward to in the decision he’d made. She was clever and appealing. Most of the women he kept company with were females well versed in erotic skills. Though he hadn’t expected very much on that score from any young bride he took, this American girl was surprising on many counts, so there might well be entertainment as well as economic security in the match for him.