Love's Way (12 page)

“No!” The word was out, loud, firm, almost horrified, before I thought what I was about. “He is busy,” I said, and I am pretty sure I blushed.

His face split into a grin. “Ah good, then it should not be necessary for you to have any headaches. This has been a very informative visit. We shall call for you—just Emily and myself—at eight. All right?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, and felt perfectly asinine to hesitate so long over a minor engagement.

“Live life, Miss Barwick. You work hard and deserve to play hard too. It is the only way to live. Believe me. We shall come for you at eight. If your conscience gives you too hard a time, you can stay home. Ambledown is practically on our way, so it is no inconvenience, but I hope you will come.”

At last he left, walking back across the meadow, to return home via the fells. I should have offered to loan him a mount, or a carriage. Instead I sat wondering what to do. All the day long I continued wondering as I went about my business, contacting the fence menders and finally sending the groom over to Ritson’s place to buy Becky, asking him to bring home a bill, to be paid by some as yet unknown means. My heart was light, considering the unpleasant nature of my day. I was by no means too tired to go dancing at night. The idea was very appealing somehow, if only Wingdale Hause were not the spot chosen.

Chapter Ten

You should always stick by your conscience. You
know
when you have made the right decision. I was correct in having vowed to stay away from the assemblies at Wingdale Hause. What a price I paid for giving in to the impulse to accompany Emily and Gamble! I had not, literally, a single moment’s enjoyment from beginning to end. It was a chaperone they wanted, nothing else. Hennie, in an effort to ingratiate herself with the old earl and perhaps pick up some bauble in his will, had taken on the duty of sitting with him in the evening. My bad temper may lead me to do the woman an injustice here. It may have been her taste that steered her away from the assembly. My main displeasure in the evening, however, was not wounded vanity at being used as a chaperone.

I was put in a pucker from the start when the first person I saw there, dancing with all the local cits’ daughters and tourists, was Tom Carrick. To be sure he never told me he did
not
attend the assemblies, but I took his nodding approval of my oft-repeated opinion to mean he followed the same course. It was not his dancing that annoyed me so much as his mere presence, after I had told Gamble he was busy. You will be thinking it served me well, and so it did, but that element only exacerbated the offence.

Of course, he dashed right up to us, making such a pest of himself for an hour, despite my frostiest manner, that we provided a very amusing spectacle for the onlookers. It seemed to me all of genteel Grasmere was there, all of it between, say, eighteen and forty. How they could waste their time, coming here night after night!

And the way Wingdale had got the place rigged up was a joke. Whether it was his life on a crowded ship or economy of space that accounted for the chairs and tables being on top of each other I know not, but I know every time anyone wished to get to the dance floor he had to slither like a snake between the minute spaces left for passage. His notions of opulence and gracious living must have been picked up at Bartholomew Fair. There was a circus atmosphere about the place—everything too bright and gaudy. Any corners of the walls that had escaped gilt were draped with shimmering satin (some bright red, some bright blue). He had fresh cut flowers on every table—not a token bouquet but a crystal vase a foot high, with two more feet of blooms sticking out the top, making it impossible to see half of one’s party. Every youngster in town had been stuck into a little red jacket to play waiter, hustling wine to the tables before a bottle was half empty. I would like to have got a look at the bill for this evening’s farce. Whatever the cost, his patrons seemed to feel it was worth the price. The noise of laughing and talking did a fair job of overwhelming the music.

Jack Gamble took the ill-conceived idea of asking Tom to join our table, so that he would not have to take any part in bearing my company himself. He (Jack) danced first with Emily, then with anything in a skirt that would have him. The local milliner enjoyed a half hour of his company, as did the doctor’s wife and the parish officer’s sister. A tourist in a corner being called Lady Trevithick occupied a good part of his evening, first in wangling an introduction to her and later in paying her court.

Between dances he wiggled his way between the tight tables back to us, to laugh at Tom and me. If he said one word about headaches, I would have lifted the decanter and hit him on the head with it. After I had six times refused to stand up with Tom and be squeezed to death on the floor, he took a snit and stood up with Cora Mandrel. I shall mention in passing that she was the lady who had enjoyed his attentions before he took to annoying me with them. She is short, blonde, not outrageously ugly, and rich. Her father owns a large piece of Manchester, they say.

When Tom went from Cora to her married sister, Lisa Blackmore, Gamble took pity on me and asked me to join him for a country dance. A country dance, if you please! You would take your life in your hands to venture on that crowded floor for a well-ordered cotillion or minuet, let alone a country dance. I gave him my opinion of that idea in no uncertain terms—in the dead of summer, too, in an unaired hall. The heat was one of the more outstanding aspects of the place, and I had not thought to bring a fan either. The perspiration stood out on my brow. Gamble, hoping to prevent my suggesting we go home, took up a menu from the table, and began fanning me, causing the neighbours to smirk and whisper, before following his lead and fanning their own ladies. “I shall be your punkah wielder,” he declared.

“I expect
you
are quite comfortable in this stifling place,” I said.

“No, I am never
quite
comfortable when a lady is so high in the boughs as you are this evening. Pray, if the question is not impertinent, why did you come if your intention was only to sit on the sidelines scowling at everything and everyone?”

“How was I to know it would be a hundred degrees?” I asked querulously.

“It would be as hot at home, with nothing to divert your attention. I believe you are angry that Carrick came, after telling you he was busy, but if that is the case, sulking won’t bring him round. You must show him how little you care that he ...”

“How
dare
you suggest
...
Oh this is too much!” I said, flinging his menu aside and making as though to arise.

“Suggest? It was you who told me so.”

“Why did you ask me to come here anyway?” I demanded.

“I have just been asking myself the same question,” he said, and looked around the room, selecting his next companion. He had waited too long to join the country dance and was obliged to sit with me, making very desultory conversation—and drinking a good deal of wine.

As the next set was about to begin, he nodded to Captain Wingdale, which brought that hateful person darting to us. This nasty trick accomplished, he said, “I leave you to make your compliments to the Captain for the delightful evening he is providing us, Miss Barwick,” and left, to return to Lady Trevithick’s table. That table consisted of three ladies and one gentleman. The females would have looked more at home at Covent Garden than St. James’s, despite the borrowing of a title by one of them.

“I am happy you have deigned to come amongst us at last,” Wingdale began, with an ingratiating bow, as he lifted his coat tails and slid on to the chair beside me.

My first aim was to undeceive him as to the idea that I was enjoying any delightful evening. “How warm it is,” I said, picking up the menu to fan myself.

“An understatement,” he allowed. “It is deuced hot. Hotter than the hobs of ... Hades.”

“Odd that people choose to dance in such weather, is it not?”

“Aye, so it is, but it is very good for the sale of beverages,” the merchant informed me. “You are not drinking, Miss Barwick. Allow me to order you a glass of wine. On the house—in honour of your maiden visit.”

“No, thank you,” I said promptly. I received not only a glass but a whole bottle of champagne, delivered with great pomp and circumstance by a parade of three red-jacketed boys, so that the entire room stared in my direction. I, who had been shouting from the roof tops for months that I would never darken Wingdale’s door, was forced to sit and accept this unwanted hospitality.

The evening continued its decline from execrable to intolerable. Tom took to flirting so noticeably with Cora Mandrel (I think really he was a little tipsy) that there was no point pretending he cared a fig for me. Gamble, smiling slyly from the other side of the crystal vase, looked from Tom to me half a dozen times. When at length Captain Wingdale asked me to stand up with him, I accepted! It hardly mattered; my credibility was utterly sunk already.

I feared some heavy-handed gallantry from the man but was surprised. His aim was to talk business, in the middle of a dance. “When will your brother be home?” he asked.

Taking it for mere chit chat, I said only that he would be back soon.

“You are having a difficult time of it without him,” he said, in a sympathetic way.

“My brother has never taken much interest in the farm,” I condescended to tell him.

“No doubt that is why it is in such a shocking state.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No offence, ma’am. No offence intended. But you know I take a great interest in that stretch of country near Wingdale. I have my eye on you,” he said jokingly. Oh, but there was truth under the little sally. “Things cannot go on much longer in such a state. I’ll tell you, Miss Barwick, I am ready to talk business any time you are.”

“I am not ready to talk business at an assembly, sir!” I declared haughtily.

“We both know I don’t get many chances to talk to you. Now be sensible, do. A lady cannot run a sheep farm, and your brother don’t want to. If you’re wise, you’ll sell up while the place is still worth something. Another year of sinking deeper into debt, and a sale won’t bring enough to break even. I want the land, those acres between your house and Barwick Pike behind. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Miss Barwick.”

“Captain Wingdale, I do not wish to discuss it.”

The steps of the dance (a cotillion it was) determined that we separate. No sooner had he twirled back within ear shot than he was at it again. “Here’s the bargain, and no money changes hands at all. You give me your holding—keep the heaf if you like, it is of no use to me—turn over your house and lands, and in exchange you and your family get one of my tidy new cottages. All the extras and luxuries you could want. More than you have now.”

I accepted Mr. Gregory’s hand, with a glare over my shoulder at the merchant. When we met again I was still glaring, and he was still bargaining. “Throw in a fence around your place, an
iron
fence, and space in the back for a garden. The other cottages won’t have so fine a place. Only right the Barwicks have some extra distinction. One of the finest old families in the district.”

“No!”

“And a closed stove,” he tossed back at me, as he advanced to his next partner and to the next step of the dance.

This is how the dance proceeded till its termination. A carpet for the stairs and a years’ free subscription to the assemblies here at Wingdale Hause were thrown in before it was over. I was still saying no.

“She’s a hard bargainer,” he said to Gamble when he brought me back to our table. Then he spoke to me, in a low voice. “If you’re wise, you’ll accept my terms, Miss Barwick. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

“You’ll find Ambledown does not burn easily, Captain!” I shot back, in a voice a few notches louder than his own.

He flashed a dangerous glance at me, clamped his common lips tight, and walked away, straight-backed, fast, angry.

“Mr. Gamble, I wish to go home now,” I said, with my chin in the air, and possibly a dangerous sparkle in my own eyes. Jack gave me no argument but offered his arm to Emily, and the three of us strode out the door. Wingdale did not come to make his adieux, as I half feared. Neither did Tom, but I don’t think he saw us go.

“What happened?” Gamble asked, as we waited for the carriage to be brought round.

“Wingdale wants to buy Ambledown, to tear it down and throw up eight or ten cottages in the meadow.”

“What price did he offer?”

“He is not so fast as
you,
sir. He didn’t actually name a figure.”

“I take it you’re not willing to sell?”

“I cannot sell my brother’s estate, and would not if I could.”

“Might not be a bad thing,” the unfeeling creature said, very offhandedly. “What I mean is, it is a shame to see the place go to rack and ruin. If Edward cannot keep it up, it would be well to see it in the hands of some caring family who would do so, but I do not mean Wingdale, obviously. Its historical associations add some charm to the district.”

There was very little conversation as we went home. Emily made some yawning remarks about the assembly. Just before I was left off at the door, Jack said, “If Edward
does
sell, I would like to arrange to purchase his heaf. Wingdale won’t want it, and I need feeding acreage for the herd I am purchasing.”

“You must get together with Wingdale and help him set a torch to the place then, as he implied he meant to do.”

“You can’t mean he said that!”

“Not in so many words. It was a veiled threat, but if we have any more broken fences, killed dogs, or
particularly
any fires, I mean to bring in the authorities from outside the parish, if the local ones do not act. In fact, it seems to me it should be reported to someone that our Deputy Lieutenant is inactive, and has sold his prerogative to maintain law and order to a felon.”

“That is dangerous talk, milady.”

“The Captain is not the only one who can threaten. As he is such a great and good friend of yours, you may feel free to tell him what I have said.”