Carla Kelly (19 page)

There was a long silence. “Then we must,” said young Lady Bushnell finally with a sigh. “I promised poor Charlie.”

David cleared his throat. “My lady, Miss Hampton and I have come here to plead the case that she be allowed to maintain her independence at Quilling.”

The widow shook her head. “You know it cannot be, Sergeant. She is practically a national treasure, and people would say that I had neglected my duty to all Waterloo heroes and the Peninsula army, too! No, Sergeant. You were right to come and tell us. We need only make arrangements to move her to Bushnell, where she can be watched night and day.” She paused and her expression grew petulant. “Why is it that troubles always come bounding after one another like jugglers? We had so hoped for two weeks in Paris . . .” Her voice trailed off and she looked at her fiancé. “Edwin, I am provoked, but I will do my duty.”

“My lady, Miss Hampton and I are here to request that we be allowed to continue her care at Quilling,” David said. “You, of all people, know how independent she is. It would drive her downhill even faster to give up her self-reliance. Miss Hampton and I will . . .”

“Mr. Wiggins, please,” Lady Bushnell interrupted. “You know you have not time for the kind of work she will require.” Her eyes were kind as she regarded him. “I was raised in the Cotswolds myself, Sergeant, and I see in you that spring exhaustion that all bailiffs have. And landowners. I think of my own father.” She glanced at his hands. “I look at your hands, and I know that if the colonel demanded that you remove your coat and roll up your sleeves, we would see your chapped arms. You’re spending your days and nights with the sheep, and I know it. Suppose Mother really needed you. Where would you be?”

David got to his feet and walked to the window and back. “Madam, that is where Miss Hampton comes in. She has proven to be a highly reliable lady’s companion—better than we had any reason to hope for, considering her age . . .”

The colonel interrupted this time. “And there’s her problem, Sergeant, I am sure.”

“Oh, I am reliable,” Susan interrupted, speaking up for the first time.

The colonel smiled at her, but shook his head. “My dear Miss Hampton, I do not question your reliability, but your pretty face! How long before some young man snatches you away?” He paused a moment, as though wondering if to continue, but forged ahead anyway. “For all that your father is Sir Rodney Hampton, I feel certain you will not remain above another month or two in that place!”

“We’ve already heard that the vicar is interested,” Lady Bushnell interjected. “No, Miss Hampton, we need two people who would never leave the place and disrupt my mother’s continuity yet again. The bailiff is far too busy, and I fear you will not stick, no matter how earnest your good intentions.” She looked at the bailiff again. “Sergeant, we must make arrangements. Colonel March and I have already discussed this eventuality, and he is willing to offer you a place. Of course, you will not be a bailiff right away, but in time, you can work up to it.”

David said nothing, but only looked at Susan, as though he wanted her to solve his problem. I have no solution, she thought as she stared back, her mind in turmoil. We have failed. You must start over, and what will become of your Waterloo wheat?

“Miss Hampton, you need not fear unemployment,” Lady Bushnell was saying. “I was talking to Mr. Steinman only this week about hiring some more servants, and he told me of a wonderful offer for your services with a widow and two daughters.” She paused, and her tone became more discreet. “Of course, I am certain that you might wish at any time to return to the protection of your father.” She hesitated. “Such as it is.”

“Or there is always the vicar,” teased the colonel, patting the marriage license in his pocket.

In desperation, Susan leaped to her feet, too, and went to stand beside the bailiff. Precious little good this has done, she thought as she glanced at him. We have lost, and a grand old lady is to be ripped from her independence and sent to a certain, smothering death. “You do not understand my constancy,” she murmured. “I want to do this for Lady Bushnell, and I know that I can.”

“My dear, all we have are your good intentions!” said Lady Bushnell, her voice rising now. “To end this pointless discussion, I don’t scruple to add that Hamptons are not known for constancy!”

It was an ugly phrase, and it hung in the air like a bad smell. Susan took a step back under the pressure of it, but could only acknowledge the truth of what Lady Bushnell was saying. Again my father’s reputation has ruined my good efforts, she thought. Well, I will not have it anymore.

The solution came to her as she stood there beside the bailiff. She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her sooner, and she permitted herself a smile—the only one in the room just then. I will be thought three parts lunatic by everyone who knows me, she considered as she quickly and coolly weighed the advantages and disadvantages. Here I go, she thought as she put her arm through David’s suddenly. He tensed, but to her relief, did not back away from her. She took a deep breath.

“David, we have not been entirely honest with Lady Bushnell, have we?” she asked, striving for just that certain coquettish modesty she remembered as a fixture with her husband-hunting cousins.

“We haven’t?” he asked, his eyes wide for only a moment. To her infinite relief, she discovered that she had not underestimated David Wiggins. His former careers of felony, poachery, and varying degrees of larceny had fully developed his quickness of mind in chancey situations. Her toes almost curled with pleasure as he sighed and tightened his grip on her arm. “No, we have not, Lady Bushnell,” he said with a sorrowful shake of his head. He looked at her then, almost as expectant as the others, but only she could see his face, so it didn’t matter.

“No, we have not,” she declared firmly, with what she hoped was just the right touch of embarrassment. “Lady Bushnell, I think I know what will change your mind, and we have been a little shy to admit it. I will most assuredly be constant about Quilling. You see, David Wiggins proposed to me, and I have decided to accept him.”

Chapter Sixteen

Susan could not help wincing at the intake of breath from three people in the room. The bailiff staggered back a few steps, but did not relinquish his grip upon her. His face turned amazingly white, and she thought for one desperate moment that she was going to have to guide him to a chair and push his head down between his knees. She was almost afraid to look at Lady Bushnell and Colonel March and speculate what they were making of the bailiff’s reaction, but to her relief, they were staring at each other.

“I . . . I guess I was just a little shy about mentioning it,” David said after several deep breaths of his own.

His words came out in an adolescent squeak that almost made her giggle, but she recovered quickly enough when the bailiff released her hand and put his arm around her waist instead, gripping her so tightly that she feared for her ribs.

“My lady, when we’re married, we’ll be quite able to maintain our care of Lady Bushnell,” the bailiff continued, his voice in its normal register now. “I have a house there, of course, but it’s just as easy for me to move into the manor with Suzie. She’s only a few doors down from Lady Bushnell.”

Uncertain of what to make of Lady Bushnell’s silence, Susan braved another look in that direction. Colonel March was grinning from ear to ear, but the widow was as white as the bailiff. “We . . . we think it’s an admirable solution to your problem, my lady,” Susan stammered.

“I think you have lost your mind, Miss Hampton, and I don’t mind telling you!” snapped Lady Bushnell.

“Oh, see here now, Eliza!” exclaimed Colonel March. “Miss Hampton seems a sensible chit, and I can personally testify that Sergeant Wiggins is the very man I’d want at my back in good times or crises.”

“Edwin, we are talking about marriage, not war!”

“Funny, so was I, my dear,” the colonel said, unruffled by his lady love’s high-pitched agitation. “Miss Hampton appears to know her mind.”

But Lady Bushnell would not be placated. “Miss Hampton, I cannot imagine you so dead to propriety that you would even for the tiniest moment consider a marriage to a man so socially beneath you! Do you
know
his background?”

“He has told me,” Susan said quietly. “I have no doubts that despite our very different circumstances, we are quite well suited to each other. And didn’t you just say something about my ramshackle father?” she added, trying, but just not quite concealing, the edge to her words. “Perhaps I will be coming up in the world with this marriage, my lady.”

“Miss Hampton, don’t try me! I suppose you have told your father about this?” she asked, the sarcasm unmistakable in her voice. “Even Sir Rodney must have his limits.”

“I have not told him yet,” Susan murmured. “His reaction does not interest me one way or the other, my lady. I am over twenty-one and I love David Wiggins, and I think that’s about all there is to it. And I believe the issue here is continuity of care for your mother, which we are quite able to provide, especially now.”

Lady Bushnell opened her mouth for more argument, but the bookroom door banged open just then and the housekeeper burst in.

“My lady, this will not wait another minute! The invitations have arrived with an error in your name! Your secretary cannot find the invoice for the champagne, and the vintner is threatening to take it all back! The chef tells me that unless the pastry cook stops humming the same nasty little song over and over again, he will resign! And there are twelve for dinner! Twelve!” she concluded, drawing out the word and giving it the worth of three syllables.

The door opened wider to reveal the florist fanning himself more vigorously with his few sheets of remaining paper and the modiste coming at him with the tape measure looped ominously. And jumping up and down behind them all was a little man who spoke only French.

The bailiff released his grip on Susan, crossed the room with some long strides, and said a few pithy words to the mob outside before he shut the door on them. He turned to Lady Bushnell. “My lady, you have too much on your plate right now to have to worry about your mother-in-law as well,” he said firmly, in what Susan was beginning to recognize as his official sergeant major’s voice. “Suzie and I will manage fine with her, and while it may not be a marriage made in an aristocrat’s heaven, we have every intention of being most successful at it.”

Colonel March nodded and gathered his sweetheart to his bosom again, where she began to sob. “My love, she’ll be in excellent hands, and it’s one less matter to concern yourself with right now.” He winked at the bailiff. “We can depend upon these two, especially if Miss Hampton marries the bailiff. How steady can you get?”

After another moment’s melancholy and a series of deep sniffles, and a good blow into her fiancé’s handkerchief, Lady Bushnell looked at the bailiff. “For this summer only,” she said, “and then we will see!”

“We’ll begin the banns next Sunday,” David said.

“Not good enough,” Lady Bushnell said, alert again. “That will take almost a month, and suppose something happens to my mother-in-law before then while March and I are cavorting in France?”

“Really, Eliza,” the colonel protested, his face pink. “We are hardly cavorters!”

“Speak for yourself, Edwin,” she said. “I will not have busybodies in England saying I was romping about while my mother-in-law—a national treasure, I will remind you—was under the dubious care of a sergeant and a . . . a Hampton! No, you will marry at once, or this is off.”

The bailiff blinked. “I can purchase a license in our parish after we return, and . . .”

“No, not soon enough,” the woman insisted. “I want to see you two leg-shackled before another day passes!”

It was the bailiff’s turn to blush. “My lady, I cannot begin to afford a special license. We’ll return to Quilling and get a regular license. It’ll just be a matter of a week . . .”

“No,” she said, sounding remarkably like her mother-in-law.

The colonel coughed to attract her attention. “My dear, I think we could make a wedding present of a special license to these two.” He touched his pocket again. “I know all about getting these things now, and if the sergeant will come with me, I am certain we can accomplish this. Of course, as it is already nearly noon, we will have to defer the actual event until tomorrow morning. What do you say, Sergeant?” he asked, turning to the bailiff.

If you’re going to back out, now is the time, Susan thought. I know I am not. Let us see if you really meant that proposal two months ago.

“Very well, sir,” the bailiff said. “I’ll do it on the condition that we can be allowed to pay you back someday when we can afford it.”

“Agreed,” the colonel said. “Wait here while I steer my dear Lady Bushnell past the hornet’s nest outside this door.”

The door closed behind them. There was a momentary increase in the volume of misery in the hall, which was stopped by a few emphatic words from the colonel. The voices ceased, and the room was quiet again.

The bailiff remained with his back to her for a few moments. “Collecting our thoughts, are we?” Susan asked finally when the humor of the whole thing grew too piquant to resist.

He laughed then, turned around, his eyes bright, and came toward her. She thought he would kiss her, but instead, he took her by the elbow and walked her to the window, where they both stood, looking out. His arm went around her waist, and he tucked his hand familiarly into her waistband, as though afraid she would try to get away.

“You must tell me something, Susan,” he said after a longish time regarding a gardener pruning an elm across the street.

“Anything, David,” she said, putting her arm around him. “There’s nothing you can’t ask me.”

“I know, and that’s the beauty of it,” he said. “Did you do this because you want to help Lady Bushnell to an extreme degree unimaginable, or because you really mean it?”

She let go of him and stepped away, and he was forced to relinquish his grip on her waistband. Pushing against his arms, she backed him up to the wall as he grinned and let her lead him around. “You are dense, David, so dense. Lady Bushnell has only recently reminded me that I am a Hampton,” she said, her touch gentle on his arms. “I will remind
you
that Hamptons do things only to suit themselves and not to smooth the path for others.”

He considered her words. “So I take it to mean that you have every intention of marrying me for yourself and no one else?”

“I do.”

“When did you decide on this somewhat surprising course?” he asked, then put his forehead against hers. “I’ve been on battlefields all over Europe, and I swear I never came as close to fainting as I did five minutes ago!”

She laughed and cupped his face in her hands. “Oh, I wish I had a painting of your expression! How I would love to show it to our children in twenty years or so.”

His arms went around her then, and he held her as close as he could, with a sigh that made her heart flop. “I think I first admitted it to myself this morning,” she whispered into his ear, “when Mr. Steinman gave me that silly metronome.”

“Well, it made me jealous,” he grumbled. “I mean, I’d like to be able to give you things.”

“You will.” She kissed his ear. “Now tell me truthfully how long you’ve been really serious about that proposal.”

He held her off from him then, with another look of real surprise, then pulled her against him again so firmly that she knew she should be blushing. “Ever since right before I asked, Suzie, and don’t ask me how I knew I loved you. I just did.”

It would have been a much longer kiss—her brains were starting to sauté—except that Colonel March came back into the room and harrumphed a few times to get their attention.

“David, I am even now fighting a rear guard action with the housekeeper and the pastry chef, plus an irritating fellow who speaks only French,” he said. “Save that for tomorrow and accompany me to Doctors’ Commons.”

“Yes, sir,” the bailiff said, releasing his grip on her. “Can we drop Suzie off at the Steinman Employment Agency on the way?”

“Certainly, lad, but only if you’re sure she won’t accept another position while you’re gone,” the colonel joked. “I’m depending on you two to marry and put my fiancée out of her misery.”

Susan smiled weakly at him. My stars, Colonel, she thought, I can’t even get my lips to work right now. How could I manage a coherent interview? She nodded to the colonel and searched about the room for her cloak, which was draped over a chair in plain sight. And now my eyes aren’t even working, she thought as she accepted the cloak from David, who was looking much too self-satisfied for her own peace of mind.

“Doctors’ Commons, is it, sir?” the bailiff asked.

The colonel nodded. “Where you will speak up promptly and tell them what you want, so they won’t think it is I seeking another license and looking like a bigamist. We’ll stop at St. Andrews afterwards and make arrangements for tomorrow morning, so you will have time to catch the mail coach back to Quilling.”

***

They dropped her off at the Steinman Agency, where she was accosted by both Steinmans, plied with tea and Viennese pastry, and obliged to divulge all. Her narrative was interrupted by Mrs. Steinman’s “I knew it, I knew its,” and Steinman’s grin that grew wider and wider and threatened to split his face.

“See here, sir,” she said, putting down her teacup in the face of his relentless good humor, “how long am I to believe you have been plotting this?”

“Since I laid eyes on you, Miss Hampton,” he admitted promptly.

“Even if you were fully aware how socially mismatched David and I are?” she accused, amused at his enthusiasm.

He shook his head at another pastry from his mother, who dropped it on Susan’s plate instead, with the admonition, “To keep your strength up, dearie.” He picked up the metronome still on the breakfast table, and set it in slow motion. “Susan, we live in a new age, an industrial age, one where a Jew can run a company without fear of windows broken or business ruined by rumor or bigotry.” He moved the weight down, and the pendulum swung faster. “It is a modern age; consider yourself a pioneer in it, you and your good bailiff. What else is there to explain?” He looked at her, as if asking himself if he should continue. “And I do owe him.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

“Perhaps you will someday,” he replied, “when you’ve had a little more experience with your bailiff.”

She could think of nothing to add to Steinman’s artless remark, even if he had looked like he wanted to say more, which he did not. She knew she had greater explanations ahead of her. Susan nodded to Mrs. Steinman and left the room thoughtfully.

This will not be so easily explained to my father, she considered later in the solitude of her room. She took off her shoes and lay down on the bed, struck suddenly by the thought that she would not have many more days or nights of lying in bed by herself. “I hope you are ready for this, Susan Hampton,” she told the ceiling. She knew she was; making love to the bailiff, although a new experience, would not be a difficult task. The difficulty lay in the preliminaries; Sir Rodney would have to know their plans. “I am certain your father will not be ready for such glad tidings,” she said sternly, “and we aren’t even discussing Aunt Louisa!”

For a long moment, she thought about not saying anything to her father, but knew, in the deepest part of her heart, that such an action would never do. He was sure to find out, and then he would think she was too ashamed to tell him. She turned on her side and rested her cheek on her hands. How sad that I meet the man I love and want to marry and have children by, and I have to worry about what others think. The strange thing is, I do not know if I am trying to protect myself or him.

It was a sobering thought, and she took it to sleep with her, dreaming of her father searching for her long-gone pearl necklace, and settling for the pence on Lady Bushnell’s eyelids as she lay dead on top of a cotton bale in New Orleans. And there was poor Charlie, tugging at her sleeve, pleading with her not to send him into battle again.

“Suzie, wake up.”

She opened he eyes with a gasp to see the bailiff seated beside her, his hand on her arm. She stared at him, thinking for one terrible moment that he was Charles Bushnell, then she touched his arm to let him know she was awake.