Gallant Waif (26 page)

Controlling her anxiety, Kate sent Millie out to fetch Jack while she put out simple refreshments of wine, brandy and bread and butter. She sent Florence into the drawing-room to light the fire. Florence emerged hurriedly, blushing and giggling. Kate’s lips thinned. She was being a coward, making the girls put up with that. She would have to face Jack’s visitors sometime.

Suddenly she thought of something. She flew upstairs and raced to her room. After rummaging in a large oaken chest she emerged, triumphantly brandishing a white spinster’s cap she had noticed some weeks before. She put it on, carefully tucking in every last curl and tying it firmly under her chin with the tapes provided. She looked at herself in the mirror. Perfect. The cap was dreadfully ugly and much too large for her head. It was embellished with lace, knots of ribbon and a frill which hung almost to her eyelashes. In this, she could face any soldier visitors, secure in the belief that she was unlikely to be recognised. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror and giggled—she almost didn’t recognise herself.

She hurried downstairs, ignored Millie and Florence’s looks of amazement and Martha’s gasp of horror, picked up the tray of refreshments and marched into the drawing-room, her head held high. It had to be—she could not see from under the frill otherwise.

“Brandy—this is more like it.” The tallest gentleman leaped forward from where he had been warming himself at the fire and lifted the decanter and a glass from her tray.

“Ho, you blackguard!” shouted the chubby young man. “Don’t think you are going to make off with that. Here, pour some for me!” He too snatched a glass from the tray and pursued his friend. It occurred to Kate that the two were, as her brothers used to phrase it, a trifle foxed.

The third gentleman sauntered up to her. Kate held her breath. “Allow me,” he said, taking the tray from her grasp and setting it on a nearby table. He glanced briefly at her cap as he straightened up, then followed her gaze to where the other two were carelessly filling their glasses, slopping brandy on to the surface so carefully polished by Kate only that morning.

“You are perfectly right,
ma’am
.” he said, observing her pursed lips. “I fear that we stayed a trifle too long at the excellent hostelry a short distance from here. My friends are indeed a
trifle.
. . er… exuberant.”

“So I see,” said Kate dryly.

“And you, ma’am, we have not had the pleasure.
Colonel Francis Masterton, late of the 95th Rifles, at your service.”
He bowed. “And you
are.
. .?” He paused.

”
Er.
. .Kate Farleigh,” mumbled Kate. His lightly uttered words had flustered her badly.
The 95th Rifles?
He
was
from the Peninsula. Pray God he knows nothing of me, she thought frantically. And oh, heavens! Why did I tell him my name? I should have changed it. Oh, Lord! She held out her hand automatically, then, remembering, she pulled it back awkwardly. Servants did not shake hands. “I am the housekeeper here.”

“Indeed?” he said on a long note of surprise. She glanced up at him from under the frill. Heavy-lidded grey eyes regarded her shrewdly. “You surprise me, ma’am,” he said, and stunned Kate by reaching for her hand and bowing over it politely, carrying it lightly to his lips.

She flushed and pulled her hand away. “
I.
. .I will see if Mr Carstairs is available.” Oh, Lord, what did he mean by kissing her hand? Was he mocking her? Did it mean he knew of her? He certainly thought her no servant. Did he think her Jack’s mistress?

“Mr Carstairs is indeed available,”
came
a deep voice from the doorway. Jack stood there and, by the glint in his vivid blue eyes, Kate knew he had seen the Colonel kiss her hand. She turned to leave. Jack’s hand restrained her.

“Don’t leave us yet, Miss Farleigh,” he said, frowning at her cap. “I’d like you to meet my guests, all of whom have recently returned from battling Boney’s forces on the Peninsula.”

Oh, Lord, Kate thought—
all
of them? Not just the Colonel?

He turned her to face them. Kate was pale and rigid.

Jack spoke with cold formality. “This is Sir Toby Fenwick and Mr Andrew Lennox, both late of the 14th, the Duchess of York’s Own Light Dragoons, and I gather you’ve just met Colonel Francis Masterton who has, I collect, recently sold out of the 95th Rifles.”

The two younger gentlemen stared at him, surprised.

“Dash it, Jack,” said chubby Sir Toby, “what’s all the formality?
Formal introductions to servants now, eh?”
He laughed and raised his glass to his lips. “Introduce me to that other little blonde—”

Kate, mortified, tried to pull away from Jack’s hold.

Jack ignored her and spoke with paralysing chill. “Miss Katherine Farleigh is the ward of my maternal grandmother, Lady Cahill. Miss Farleigh and her companion, Mrs Betts, called here on their way to join my grandmother in London, but they took pity on a poor bachelor and kindly offered to assist me to get this house in order. You will have no idea of the enormous debt of gratitude I owe to this lady and her companion.”

One of Colonel Masterton’s mobile brows was raised slightly, but he did not otherwise react. The other two came sheepishly forward under Jack’s flinty gaze and held out their hands.

“Sorry, ma’am,” said lanky Andrew Lennox.
“Took you for one of the servants.”

”
Er.
. .yes, dam—dashed sorry,” mumbled Sir Toby. “
Er.
. .you’ll have to excuse…er…taken rather too much… er… Delighted to meet you, ma’am.” Pink with embarrassment, he took Kate’s hand in a damp grip and shook it vigorously.

Kate’s fear inflamed her temper. Jack had no right to embarrass her or his guests with this charade, introducing his housekeeper as his grandmother’s ward. It was a deliberate ploy to force her into the role she had told him a dozen times she wanted none of. And he’d discomfited his guests on purpose, to declare her off limits.

But he was unwittingly playing with fire. If indeed any of them recognised her later, they would be furious if they thought they had been tricked into apologising to a disgraced woman. And they would blame Jack. They would not know of his ignorance—she must and would repudiate his introduction and clarify her position.

“There is no need to apologise, sir,” she said firmly, “for

Mr Carstairs exaggerates. I am, in fact, the housekeeper, placed here by Lady Cahill, whose ward I am
not.
She was godmother to my late mother, and that is the full extent of the connection.”

“Dammit, woman, don’t contradict me. You are my guest!” Jack roared, furious to hear her demean herself like that.

Mr Lennox and Sir Toby recoiled at his tone. They were well acquainted with his temper. Colonel Masterton raised an eyebrow yet again.

“I say, steady on, old chap,” began Mr Lennox, laying a tentative hand on Jack’s arm.

Jack ignored him. He shook Kate’s arm and glared at her cap. “You are
not
a servant here, dammit! You are my guest!”

His friends cast wary looks at Kate, as if expecting her to burst into tears at any moment. But Kate was made of stronger stuff. She shook herself free of his hold with an infuriated squeak, and smoothed down her skirt.

“You just bellowed and swore at me, Mr Carstairs,” she said dulcetly. “No
gentleman
would bellow or swear at a
guest
—particularly in front of other guests. Such behaviour is invariably reserved for mere servants, who are in
no
position to answer back.” She sailed victoriously out of the room, leaving a stunned and breathless audience behind her.

“In no position to answer back!” snorted Jack. “The little vixen always has the last word.” He turned to face his friends.

Colonel Masterton was convulsed with silent mirth. Mr Lennox was gazing at the closed door, his eyes filled with admiration, and Sir Toby Fenwick stood, his mouth hanging open in stupefaction. He turned to Lennox. “See what I saw, Lennox, old chap?”

Lennox grinned. “I saw a female, no bigger than your thumb, give Mad Jack Carstairs the neatest set-down he’s had in years.”

Sir Toby nodded vigorously. “That’s what I saw too. Never thought I’d see the day. What an amazin’ girl! And the chit’s the housekeeper, you say?”

“No, you fool, I told you—oh, to hell with it!” snapped Jack, annoyed. “What the devil are you doing here in the first place, Tubby?”

Sir Toby looked self-conscious. “Oh,
well.
. .heard a rumour… you’d stuck your spoon in the wall, or close to.”

“So you decided to come up and see whether I was dead or not.”

The others looked vaguely uncomfortable.

“I’m glad you did,” said Jack, surprising himself as he realised that, for the first time in months, the prospect of visitors did not fill him with repugnance. “Of course,” he added, “I must warn you, the standard of hospitality here isn’t what you’ve previously enjoyed in my company. Conditions here at Sevenoakes are quite spartan.”

He smiled wryly and looked them up and down. “In fact, I’m not certain that three such prodigiously elegant sprigs of fashion will be able to bear the lack of amenities at this establishment.”

This brought about a spate of heated denial and much good-natured chaffing.

“Hang it all, man, we’ve bivouacked with the best of them, in beastly little holes all over the Peninsula, and if you’re saying I can’t take it any more, then you can dashed well eat your words!” asserted Sir Toby. He peered boskily around the room, taking in the glowing furniture, the roaring fire, the soft, faded colours.

“And besides, this ain’t such a bad place as we were led to believe. In fact, dammit, it looks positively cosy. Much more comfortable than that damned cold barracks of a place my ancestors saw fit to build in the dim dark past.” He sank into a chair with a sigh of satisfaction and took a deep draft of his glass.

Kate retired to the kitchen, shaking. She had not intended to draw attention to herself like that. Deny her status as his grandmother’s ward—yes. But be drawn into what could only be called a spat with Jack! And in front of his friends! Oh, her wretched, wretched temper! Servants were, by and large, invisible to gentlemen like Jack’s friends. That and her cap were her only defences against discovery. But now she’d let her temper ruin everything. No true servant would answer her master back so impudently. Far from being invisible, she’d made herself a source of interest to them. Oh, what a careless fool she was!

All her earlier decisions about seeking employment with folk not of the gentry came back to her in a mocking I-told-you-so. She would never have behaved in such a way had she taken a position with people who were not of her milieu. She would never have let down her guard enough.

She had let herself become complacent, comfortable,
secure
.

She’d stopped fearing discovery with every stranger—because she met no strangers. The effects of Jack’s self-imposed isolation and the unusually severe winter had ensured that. They had existed, in the months she’d been here, as if in a cocoon, or on an island. And in that cocoon Kate had felt safe.

But now Jack had regained his strength, the spring thaw was coming and the protective isolation had been ripped away. The man whom she could hear now, laughing with his friends, bore little resemblance to the embittered recluse she’d encountered when she’d first arrived at Sevenoakes. The world could come to Jack Carstairs now and he would welcome it. She, however, was exposed to strangers’ eyes and dependent on the vagaries of their memories…

There was no use worrying—she should concentrate on preparing dinner out of what she had available. She sent Carlos to kill two more chickens, and prepared a pie from the remains of yesterday’s roast beef. It would be a plain but substantial meal. And Carlos would serve it.

After dinner the gentlemen sat over their port.

Kate sat in the adjoining room, her chair pushed as near as was decent to the connecting door. Some sewing lay in her lap, but her fingers weren’t moving. She was eavesdropping. She had been unable to endure the strain any longer— she had to know whether any of the men had recognised her. From where she was sitting she could hear every word in the next room.

“Pos’tively cosy li’l place you have here, Jack,” said Sir Toby. “Good dinner, good wine, roaring fire, good companions—all a man could want, right here. And right smack bang in the middle of some of the best damned hunting country in the world! You’re a lucky man, Jack Carstairs.”