Elizabeth Mansfield (13 page)

They were both glad to be able to return to their previous, more placid routine, but Camilla soon learned that once the door to social life has been opened, it is difficult to close it again. A complete return to the quieter life was no longer possible. Lady Sturtevant, now a close friend, dropped by several times a week with at least two of her children in tow. And two gentlemen whom Camilla had met during the social whirl of the holidays became frequent callers. One was Lady Sturtevant’s bachelor brother, Sir James Cambard, a cheerful, rotund, middle-aged man with a lethargic though generous disposition; and the other was a callow youth of twenty-two, Lord Earlywine, who had been a guest at one of the balls and had tumbled top-over-tail in love with the beautiful widow after merely holding Camilla’s hand for one country dance.

It seemed to the servants that the knocker was never still. Unexpected guests were always being invited to stay to luncheon or to tea, thus throwing Mr. Hicks’s carefully planned work schedule out of kilter. For all the staff, this meant a great deal of rushing about to catch up with the work, but none of them seemed to mind the extra effort so much as Thomas. Every time one or the other of the gentlemen paid a call, Tom had to grit his teeth to keep his disgust from showing in his face. They were a pair of fools, he thought, each one self-important and encroaching, and his mistress, who was far too good for them, saw them much too often.

Her ladyship usually greeted her callers in the library in the company of Miss Townley, but sometimes, if she were working at her desk in the sitting room, she would permit them to wait upon her there, and alone. It was at those times that Thomas would find an excuse to busy himself outside the door so that he would be at hand if needed. Even if it were Daniel’s turn to assist Mr. Hicks in serving the wine or tea to the guest, Thomas would be somewhere in the vicinity. Mr. Hicks often glowered at him, but Thomas always made sure to be occupied with something useful and managed to escape a reprimand.

Thomas was the one on duty, however, the afternoon Lord Earlywine paid his third call in as many days. It was Thomas’s task to assist Mr. Hicks to set up the tea things if her ladyship should request that tea be served. Her ladyship had evidently done so today, for Mr. Hicks came down to the kitchen and asked the cook to ready a tray. Thomas, carrying the tray on one shoulder, followed Mr. Hicks up the stairs. “Don’t tell me it’s Earlywine again,” he muttered in disgust.

“It’s none of your business, Thomas,” Hicks said brusquely. “Just be sure you place the sugar tongs
in
front
of the sugar bowl, not behind the scones as you did the last time. I was afraid her ladyship’d have to use her fingers.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Tom said absently, standing aside as Mr. Hicks tapped at the sitting-room door.

“Yes, Mr. Hicks,” the butler growled as her ladyship’s voice invited them to come in.

The butler entered first. “The tea, your ladyship,” he said in his formal, company tone.

“Yes, put it on the table near the window, will you, Hicks?” she murmured and turned back to her guest with a fixed smile.

Thomas followed Mr. Hicks into the room and quickly assisted the butler to set up the table. While this was going on, Lord Earlywine, leaning his elbow on the mantlepiece as if he owned the place, prosed on and on about a horserace in which he’d been involved. Thomas, glancing at the lady’s face, could see that she was bored and irritated. She even reminded her guest gently, twice, that he’d told her the story before. But the idiotic fellow merely smiled and said, “Yes? And did I tell you that …” and went on with his story in greater detail than before.

Lady Wyckfield, seated at the writing desk where she’d been working before her caller arrived, was turned about in her seat so that she could face him. It was an attitude that bespoke a feeling of impatience to have the visit brought to an end. When the tea table had been set, she rose from her place (reluctantly, it seemed to Thomas) and went to the table to pour. “Will you take sugar?” she asked her guest as Hicks handed her the empty cup.

Thomas, stationed behind the table at rigid attention, had nothing to do until it was time to gather up the tea things and remove them. From the corner of his eye, he watched his mistress go through the motions of entertaining her guest, but it was plain to the footman that she would have liked to get rid of Earlywine, and the sooner the better. Thomas racked his brain for some way to help her, but, it was not until Lord Earlywine made his way to the tea table to help himself to a second buttered scone that Thomas got an idea. When his lordship drew close, Thomas leaned forward and whispered something into his ear. Then they both looked toward the window. Lord Earlywine nodded and put down his cup. “I think I’d better dash, ma’am,” he said with a quick bow. “I hope, next time, that you’ll agree to take a ride in my new phaeton. I promise to have a lap-robe, some hot bricks and all sorts of things for your comfort.”

“Thank you, my lord. We shall see,” Lady Wyckfield said with a polite smile, holding out her hand.

Hicks motioned for Thomas to collect the cups while he led Lord Earlywine to the door. When the butler and the guest departed, her ladyship sighed in obvious relief and went back to her writing table. Picking up her pen, she looked up at the busy footman curiously. “What did you say to his lordship, Thomas, to make him leave so abruptly?”

“Say, ma’m?” Thomas echoed innocently. “Nothing of any importance.”

“That is no answer to my question. What did you say to him?”

“Only that his horses were standing, which everyone knows they shouldn’t be doing on a cold day like this.”

“But Lord Earlywine has a groom. He’d know enough to walk them, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then why wasn’t he?”

“Oh, he
was
.” Thomas’s eyes twinkled. “But not at that moment.”

Camilla stiffened. “Are you saying that you
misled
Lord Earlywine into believing that his horses were being neglected?”

Thomas shrugged modestly. “I suppose you could say that.”

“But … how
dared
you do such a thing? What did you expect to gain by it?” Camilla demanded,
rising.

“Well, you wanted to be rid of him, didn’t you?”

“I? I wanted—?” Camilla reddened in fury. “Really, Thomas, your presumption is beyond belief! What gave you the right—”

“Are you trying to say you didn’t want to be rid of him?” Tom asked, bewildered.

Camilla’s color deepened. “That has nothing to do with it! It’s not your place to—”

“Oh, my place.” He picked up the last cup and put it on the tray. “To be honest, your ladyship, I can’t keep straight just what my place is. I thought it was my place to be of help to you.”

“Well, it’s not your place to help me unless I ask you!”

“That’s the most confusing statement I’ve yet heard from you, ma’am. I don’t wait for you to ask me to help you from the carriage or to polish the crystal. I don’t have to be asked to perform ninety percent of the tasks I do. Shall I wait to do them, in the future, until I hear from you?”

“You are being purposely dense. You know perfectly well that I needn’t give you specific orders when it comes to your routine tasks. Don’t stand there and pretend that you don’t know the difference between polishing the crystal and sending one of my guests flying out the door on a wild goose chase!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, if the young man’s precipitous departure disturbed you,” he muttered with a tinge of sarcasm as he lifted the loaded tray to his shoulder.

“Now you are being
impudent
!” she snapped. “It was not his departure but your
presumption
which disturbs me. And incidentally, in all the time you worked for that physician in Derbyshire, did he never tell you that it is improper to be lifting trays and fiddling about when your employer is speaking to you?”

“No, he never did. I’m sorry, ma’am. Shall I put the tray down?”

“Yes. And when you pick it up again, please carry it before you in both hands, with some semblance of dignity, instead of on your shoulder like a … a …”

“A seabag?” he supplied.

“Yes, exactly. I sometimes think, Thomas, that you are a complete fraud. You don’t speak or act at all like a footman.”

He tried to look crestfallen. “I know. Too bold.”

“Bold is too mild a word. Brazen would be better.”

Hicks came in just in time to hear the last few words. “Is anything wrong, Miss Camilla? Has this rogue been up to some deviltry?”

Thomas looked at her with something very like a challenge in his eyes. “Have I, your ladyship?”

She glared at him, but she was more angry with herself. Why could she not handle herself like a proper mistress with this fellow? From the first he’d had a free-and-easy attitude toward her that was completely inappropriate to their positions, yet instead of stifling him permanently and at once, she’d bandied words with him, often to her own disadvantage. By now he’d probably lost all sense of the reverence and awe which a servant should feel toward an employer. What she should do—right on the spot!—would be to dismiss him. He certainly deserved it. The fellow was rude, presumptious, ill-mannered, forward and disrespectful. And he’d undoubtedly become worse if she let this situation pass unpunished.

This was just the sort of situation which Ethelyn could have handled without a bit of hesitation. If she were here, she would sneer at Camilla’s “softness.” And she would be quite right, for Camilla was already feeling squeamish about sending him out into the streets.

Her gaze flickered before the challenge in Thomas’s eyes. The fellow was truly brazen, she knew … but had his infraction been great enough to warrant sending him packing? It had been a rather
minor indelicacy, hadn’t it? And she had to admit to herself that she was glad he’d done it. If he hadn’t, the annoying Lord Earlywine might have remained for another hour or more!

“If Thomas has been overstepping again,” Hicks was saying, “it’d please me mightily to cut him down to size.”

Camilla dropped her eyes from those of her unrepentant footman and shook her head. “It was nothing worth discussing,” she said, turning to her writing. “Just have him take up the tea things and go.”

She would have liked to take another look at the footman’s expression, but she wouldn’t permit herself to do so. The brazen fellow was undoubtedly grinning in triumph, but at least he would not have the satisfaction of throwing that smirk in her face. She kept her eyes resolutely lowered on the paper before her and waited for the two servants to leave the room. She heard one man’s footsteps recede and the door close, but the other seemed to be lingering behind. A cough sounded behind her, indicating that whichever one it was who remained was waiting for her attention. But she knew which one it was. “Yes?” she asked coldly, not looking up.

“Ma’am?” he asked in a voice unwontedly shy.

There was nothing for her to do but turn. He was standing a few paces away, carrying the loaded tray before him with both hands just as she’d instructed. And there was not a sign on his face of a smirk or grin. “Yes?” she asked again.

“I just wanted to … to say thank you.”

She felt herself flushing. How was it that this fellow—a mere servant whose personality should be unknown to her and completely beneath her notice—could always manage to disconcert her? “Oh, go along, Thomas, go along!” she said in self-disgust and turned back to her letter. “Just try to remember that you promised to make yourself invisible and inaudible.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled with what seemed to be utmost sincerity, “I’ll try. I’ll certainly try.”

The altercation with Thomas was still on Camilla’s mind the next morning when, with a sigh, she entered the empty breakfast room. Pippa had already breakfasted and had gone off with Sybil Sturtevant for an outing in the park; and Miss Townley, despite the fact that Lady Sturtevant, two other Sturtevant offspring, their governess and a nursemaid were of the party, had insisted on going along to supervise her charge. (Miss Townley liked Lady Sturtevant well enough, but the lady’s breezy, casual, unconcerned way of rearing children was not, in Miss Townley’s view, good enough for Pippa.)

Camilla felt very much alone. She was not pleased with herself this morning (being struck with pangs of humiliation whenever she remembered her cowardly, weak-kneed performance of the day before), and the absence of company at the breakfast table only deepened her discontent. To make matters worse, a letter had been placed alongside her butter knife which she instantly recognized had come from Wyckfield and which her instincts told her would not bring news to elevate her spirits.

The letter, written in Ethelyn’s firm, decisive, heavy-on-the-downstroke hand, was not very different in substance from the other missives she’d received from her troublesome sister-in-law, but it was much more frightening in tone. Ethelyn insisted that a visit to Wyckfield was past due; this time she was not requesting Camilla’s return—she was demanding it. She wrote that she found it “most peculiar” that Camilla had thus far been unable to arrange matters well enough to be able to spare her sister-in-law “at least a se’ennight’s time” in Dorset. She and Philippa had now been gone from Wyckfield for three months, Ethelyn reminded her. Had she already forgotten her promise to return for frequent visits? Was it fair, Ethelyn had written, with underlines for emphasis,
to keep our dearest Philippa away from all intercourse with her father’s family?
There was a frightening little addition to all of this.

I have been thinking of something else, Camilla,
Ethelyn had appended in a postscript,
that will make it desirable for you to plan your visit for the week after next. That is the time that our vicar’s brother will be visiting. I have met him on several occasions, since he is pastor to a flock located a few miles south of Deptford, and I have often heard him preach. He is filled with fiery conviction and has the same disdain for the comfortable latitudinarianism of some of the clergy which I hold. It seems that this gifted and respected clergyman has often taken notice of you when visiting his brother and has recently expressed an interest in offering for you. While I realize that it is just over a year since Desmond’s passing and that it will be difficult for you to think so soon of a successor to my brother, I cannot imagine a more suitable candidate for the position of husband to you and stepfather to Philippa.