Lace for Milady (14 page)

“You
are welcome to use the spinney, as I told you before. I think you are foolish to learn to ride on such a spirited mount, and advise you strongly not to go out unaccompanied. I frequently take a ride in the afternoon and would be happy to go with you.”

I had not the least idea of revealing my scanty progress to him and declined the offer, so he returned to his other flirt, Slack.

“So your birthday is coming up, Miss Slack? I expect you have a large party planned.”

“No, indeed, at my age I am past all that,” she told him, smiling fondly.

“Nonsense, till you reach fifty, in five or ten years, you should celebrate every one, and at fifty, of course, you turn the calendar around and progress backward, celebrating more strenuously than ever.”

Slack was incensed when I later accused her of tittering, but a titter is what her reaction sounded like to me. Clavering had found his way back into her affections with a box of dried cherries and an insincere compliment on her juvenescence. Aquae Sulis and Londinium helped, but it was the compliment about her age that got her to run for the wine and macaroons.

“Making yourself a new gown?” he asked, after she had left. I was working on my buttonholes throughout his visit. I saw no need to assume a ladylike idleness.

“No, a riding habit.”

“May I see it?” he asked, which I considered amazingly impertinent. He appeared not to notice my displeasure but lifted it from my fingers to hold up and examine.

“Very nice. The colour will suit you,” he said, looking from the bottle green jacket to my hair, eyes, and face.

“It is not beauty but serviceability I am interested in,” I replied.

“Still, you have chosen well. And executed well, too. A very fine stitch.” I can only assume he was shortsighted. This, without Slack’s help, was the worst piece of clothing I had ever turned out. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to ride with me? I am considered a good rider.”

“I’m sure you are, but such skills must be acquired, not brushed on by one who possesses them, like a coat of paint.”

“Is the whole of the teaching profession mistaken, then, if skills cannot be taught? Who
is
teaching you? Lord Inglewood?”

“He has helped me a little.”

“He is good. You should progress quickly under his tutelage if you have any aptitude for it at all.”

I did not feel it necessary to tell him George had helped me only the once and that I had no aptitude whatsoever. He picked up Slack’s book about Bath and thumbed through it. “You take no interest at all in this?” he asked.

“I am learning, interested or not.”

“It is a fascinating study, you know. We are ideally situated here, with many of their works still visible without even digging. Would you and Miss Slack not be interested to take a drive over to Porchester Castle one day? And closer to home, I have an excellent library at Belview. I hope you and Miss Slack will feel free to use it. My librarian will be happy to help you.”

“I will be sure to tell Miss Slack. It is her hobby, not mine."

He told her himself when she returned a moment later about the library, but did not mention the visit to Porchester Castle. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I wondered whether he didn’t fear he would be stuck to take her alone, since I think I had made it clear I had but little interest in his fascinating study. Her joy reached a new peak. She couldn’t press the cherries, macaroons, and wine on him hard enough or fast enough. I think it was her insistence that caused him to leave not much later.

I arose to walk to the hall with him, from a sense of politeness merely, since he had been fairly civil this evening. “About Porchester...
he began, as soon as we were out of the saloon.

“Oh, would you like to ask Miss Slack?” I enquired in an innocent voice.

He clenched his lips and frowned. “I’m not a leper, you know,” he said.

‘‘No, indeed! She would be perfectly safe with you."

“Good night, Miss Denver.”

“Good night, Your Grace.”

I went back to the saloon, laughing under my breath.

Slack was in alt. “Very civil of him,” she enthused. “Free rein of his library at any time. And he is usually quite standoffish, you know. Lady Ing has not been to Belview above half a dozen times, in all the years she has lived here.”

“Yes he means to flatter us well, to be rid of us. That is what all his civility is about, Slack. Make no mistake about that.”

“I would have liked to ask him to my birthday party,” she said.

“But then we would have to limit the number of candles, would we not? Write him a note, if you wish to ask him. It is your party.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t like to do that. Very likely he is busy. He always wears evening clothes when he comes in the evening. If he doesn’t go out, he must have friends in. He wouldn’t dress to dine alone. He would have his plans ready by now; I’ve left it too late.”

She was wrong, for he came uninvited, and behaved so abominably I blush to write it. When I was in my bed, I realized that I had let him away with no real explanation for the men who had disappeared in his meadow. I couldn’t but wonder if they had been wounded, and he at pains to conceal it from me, for I doubt many had ever accused him to his face of selfishness and cruelty. There was still no explanation for my grate, either. Nothing had been resolved, and it was difficult to account for the strange feeling of contentment that hung about me.

Chapter Nine

The day of Slack’s party dawned fair and clear, a truly beautiful day. I made a quick trip into town without her in the morning (no easy thing in the usual way, but I imagine she suspected the nature of it) to fetch her present. The books we had ordered had not yet come in, but I had her other present to bring back. I had got her a diamond ring. It is, of course, an extravagant gift, a thing I do not possess myself; but she has been with me forever and is not likely to acquire one by any other means. Every woman ought at some time in her life to own a diamond ring. Also, Slack has particularly lovely hands, the fingers long and graceful. Prior to this most recent madness for archaeology she used to spend a good deal of her time at stitchery of one form or another, and the diamond would be well shown off on her. It was not a great gaudy thing, one carat actually, but it cost a good deal and was likely, I hoped, to give us both much pleasure. I wore a smile as I set out for home with it in my reticule.

There was a caller at Willow Hall during my absence, that is to say, he came during my absence, and was still there when I returned. It was Mr. McMaster, no favourite these days with Slack due his having brought his open carriage for the drive to Eastbourne. No dried cherries for him, but at least a glass of wine, I was relieved to see.

"What brings you out our way?” I enquired, in a spirit of friendship only, not vulgar curiosity.

“I had to make a call at Belview and, as I was so close, wanted to say hello to you and Miss Slack.”

I was eager to hear what took him to Belview, but could not like to ask. But he was a good talker and was soon telling us.

“Our kitchen girl is leaving us, getting married, and we are looking for a replacement. Young Mary Hinks would like to come to us, but her parents are separated, her father works at Belview, and I must get his approval, though she doesn’t live with him. He was happy enough to be rid of her. She will come to us shortly now. They had a spot of trouble at Belview while I was there. Billie McCormick gave his leg a hit while chopping wood, and the place was in an uproar. But the Duke is very good in an emergency. The men were running in circles and the women weeping into their aprons, but the Duke put a tourniquet on him and rushed him into town, to the doctor. The leg will be all right, thank God, and in the meanwhile, of course, His Grace will give the family every support. Financial support, I mean. He takes very good care of his own people.”

"A pity he couldn’t see his way fit to give Leo Milkin at the inn some financial support,” I said. I was happy to hear Clavering had some traces of decent feelings in his makeup.

“That character?” McMaster said, and let out a ring of laughter. “He was Clavering’s pensioner for over a year after he hurt his ankle in that mantrap. He is no more crippled than you or I, Miss Denver. He can walk as well as anyone but puts on his limp when he gets a gullible customer at the inn, and tells his sad story about feeding his family, and he not even married. It is all an act to get a sizable
pourboire.
Don’t be taken in by him.”

As I already had been, I allowed the matter to drop but was fully aware of the speaking glances flashed at me by Slack, as though to say,
“Now
you see who was right.” She could hardly wait to get McMaster out the door before she faced me with it, but when she took to puffing Clavering off as a Good Samaritan, she tried my patience too far.

“Paying Leo Milkin some paltry pension for a year after crippling him is hardly the act of a Good Samaritan. It goes some
small
way toward mitigating the evil, and the fact that Milkin himself is a scoundrel, little better than a common thief, doesn’t change anything.”

“The McCormick man, too—Mr. McMaster mentioned it quite as a matter of course that Clavering would see to his family while he can’t work. He always takes good care of his people, Mr. McMaster said.”

“It he took
good
care of them, they wouldn’t be wounding themselves in his service. The man was likely fagged to death, being overworked.”

“He wouldn’t have been fagged in the
morning.”
Slack pointed out. I saw at once that argument was useless and desisted, for I did not wish to spoil this special day with bickering.

As the diamond ring exceeded what we usually exchange in the way of a gift, the occasion became something out of the ordinary, and I was planning to dress up in my new green silk, as yet unworn. The fact of the material’s having been brought in by the smugglers enhanced the attraction of the gown in my eyes. I felt quite a renegade when I put it on, a little reckless with my naked white shoulders peeping out where I was accustomed to see decent cloth. It was, I suppose, Clavering’s remark that my green riding habit suited me that made me think of him as I turned in front of my mirror, admiring myself. I felt a little sorry he wouldn’t be seeing the outfit, though it was not the same shade of green as the riding habit he had liked,
not
“Paddy green,” as Slack described it, but a pretty, deep green, darker than the leaf of an apple tree. The green, more or less, of a butternut tree’s leaf. A sparkling stone would have set it off to great advantage, but I possessed none, and hung my pearls around my neck. I thought I looked quite elegant, and when Slack saw me, she thought so, too.

She wore her best black crape, looking every inch the mourner, but black is her colour, and there was no point chiding her for it. Lady Inglewood in purple and George in evening dress came at six o’clock. We usually dined at this hour, but for the party we were putting it off till seven, to lengthen the evening a bit, and were sitting like civilised persons having a glass of wine when the knocker sounded. No one came in, but a parcel was handed off for Slack, creating a very pleasant diversion. We knew it was not the Inglewoods’ present; they had brought a box with them, which sat coyly on a table, not yet given over, and therefore presumably invisible to us all, as we tried to keep our heads from turning in its direction. This was a larger parcel, and when the paper was torn off, it was seen to be a broken statue.

There was only one person in the neighbourhood who would consider a broken piece of statuary a suitable gift. “Clavering!” I said, and erupted into hoydenish laughter. “It serves you well for pretending to like such stuff, Slack,” I teased her.

She refused to take offence at either the gift or my words, but turned the thing around this way and that, trying to make out what it represented. It was in terra cotta (I think—a brownish red clay, in any case) and was of a young person, whether male or female there was no saying. The young person held out a hand from which suspended some very small ball on a string, at a very odd angle. The person was seated, admiring the ball. It was very odd and not well executed in my opinion, but Slack was vastly pleased with it. Or with the notion of receiving a gift from the Duke, in any case.

“What—how should Clavering know it is her birthday?” Lady Inglewood demanded at once, and very riled she was, too, that we should be on such terms of intimacy as to be getting gifts from him.

“Why, we told him last night when he called, Aunt Ethelberta,” I had the exquisite pleasure of informing her, and was soon at pains to let her know Clavering had not come empty-handed last night, either. “He brought Slack down a box of dried cherries. They are both very fond of them.”

“I hadn’t realized His Grace ran quite tame here,” Lady Ing said at once. “You mentioned nothing of this to me.”

“I have mentioned various times that he comes to see us, and you knew, of course, that he had us to Belview.”

“It is all business, you said. You didn’t tell me he was running over every night with a present.”

“Oh, the presents are not for
me;
it is only Slack he gives gifts to. If you disapprove of him as her flirt, you must speak to her.”

“Pooh! If he is haunting the place in this fashion, it is yourself he is interested in, not Slack.”

I thought it was only our making social headway with such an exalted personage as His Grace that piqued her, but soon realized she saw in him a rival for my hand, a rival for George, I mean. Her next remark, though seeming to denote the contrary, made it quite obvious. “Don’t think you have a chance in the world of landing him, Priscilla. It is no such a thing. He will never marry a local girl, certainly not a schoolteacher’s daughter, but will make some great match with an heiress in London.”

“You hear that, Slack? You must look lively,” I cautioned playfully.

My aunt gave George a look that commanded him to take a seat by my side and get busy making love to me, and till dinner was ready I had a bad time of it. She spoke to Slack about Clavering’s present, hefting the statue, turning it upside down and telling her at last that it was just some old thing he had found lying about, and it was really an insult. When I began to hear Slack speak of Aquae Sulis, I turned my full attention to George and let him woo me with talk of some new gun he had bought, or was going to buy—his speaking of a gun is really all I recall—and had uphill work making it sound like romance to his mother.