Paying Guests (38 page)

‘I gasped but then he rode me over to Little Egton, one of the
villages on the Paton Estate, to show me the Agent’s house, which is a handsome one indeed, well proportioned and comfortable, being perhaps a hundred years old but with modern conveniences, Patrick said, they have their own excellent Well which never dries up in even the hottest Summer, as well as natural drainage that ensures there is no problem of Middens and such. He said I should have the House to live in as it is part of the Agent’s Entitlement as well as an income of some Hundreds of Pounds a year to live on!

‘I was amazed by this, but Patrick was quite certain and spoke in the most relaxed manner possible of this plan. He cannot arrange this until he is Duke, but he says, and I dare say he knows, that his Papa is a sick man and is well known in the County to be living on Borrowed Time. I thought that it was sad to speak so of his own Papa but he says his Papa hates him and that it is a tradition in his Family that the Son and Heir is always cordially Loathed by his father and why should they be different?

‘Also he says I must stay as his Permanent Guest, learning secretly the work of an Agent so that when the time comes, as he is sure it will inside the next Twelvemonth, to tell the man Oakburton that he must leave, I shall be ready to take up my Duties.

‘I have not spoke to Sophie yet of this, for I felt it proper I should Apprise you first of this Excellent Change in my fortunes, but I shall tell her as soon as I hear from you that you are happy for me in my choice of Career – I am sure you must be, since you have mentioned often your concern that I should choose some way to make my way in the world, and that you will see that the future is now most Sunny for me. To live in so handsome a house as Little Egton Hall with an Assured Income must make me most Eligible and able to ask Sophie to wed me, and then we shall be as happy as we may be!

‘I await eagerly, dear Mamma, your reply to my letter assuring me that you are as Happy as I am with the way my Lines Have Fallen, and rejoice in my Good Fortune, all of which I owe to my friendship with the Dearest Fellow in the world, Good old Patrick.

‘I must hurry to Post this letter, Mamma, which is villainously ill-written for which I Beg your Pardon, and sign myself Affectionately and with all Respect, your son Francis Xavier Quentin.’

And after that he had provided a sort of afterthought, his usual scrawl of ‘Duff.’

Slowly she reread the letter, and then folded the sheets with careful fingers, ensuring that she made no new creases and then hid it away in one of the smallest pigeon-holes of her desk, the one with a sliding cover to it that she could lock it with the smallest key on the bunch she wore at her waist. And then she sat down again on her chair by the fire, to try to order her thoughts.

Duff, an agent to a duke? It sounded a great opportunity indeed, but it was as full of holes as a fisherman’s net. First of all her boy was a London boy. He had been born in this very house, and had spent his youngest years no nearer to nature than the park, where he had chased sparrows and pigeons and thrown crumbs to the ducks on the Long Water but then had walked home over cobbles through the din and smell of town life. To be sure, he had learned to ride at school, and had found himself able to join a shooting party on a great estate, and now a hunting one, but did that fit him for a life in charge of a great countryside establishment? She tried to imagine it, and could not. The thought of Duff in breeches and gaiters and carrying a gun, in the manner she had seen in illustrations in
Punch
, was absurd.

And then there was the question of the duke. She found it repugnant to hear that her son’s friend had spoken so flippantly and indeed hopefully of his father’s death. Perhaps in high society of this sort it was normal to hate one’s parents and to say so, but to do so as openly as this young man seemed to do shocked her.

She tried to remember how it had been in her own father’s lifetime. She had feared him and often disliked him and, indeed, on occasion had found him hateful but she could never, surely, have spoken so cheerfully of his death with such – such – the words ‘gloating delight’ came into her head and she dismissed them. Duff had not actually said any such thing and she had never met Lord Patrick Paton so she had no reason whatsoever to think in such terms; but there had been something in Duff’s account of his conversation with his friend that had created this thought for Tilly. And she shivered at it.

She made herself think about the worst aspect of the whole letter; his desire to remain in Leicestershire to learn how to be this agent at some unknown future time, a time dependent on an old man’s death. She shivered again at the thought and shook her head. It could not be. She would write to him at once and bid him come home. He could not stay there, living in someone else’s house, however rich and commodious, for a prolonged period. It would not be proper. He would cease to be a guest, surely, and would become a sort of parasite, could even be treated as a poor relation, with all the unpleasantness such an existence made inevitable. She was not rich but she was comfortably off, with Quentin’s as successful as it was, and her son did not have to rely on living in a grand house as an object of charity. She would not countenance it! And she got to her feet quickly and hurried over to sit at her desk and kindle a lamp so that she could see better to write a strong letter to Duff.

And then she stopped, the pen in her hand. Was she going to insist he return home? How could she? He would be so desperately unhappy at the suggestion that he might baulk at it. She had seen enough of her now almost adult son since he had returned from school to know he was no longer the biddable child he had once been. This was a young man with strong views about what he would or would not do. To try to force him to do as she said as though he were still a child would avail her nothing. He might – and the thought made her chill as though she had swallowed pieces of ice – flatly refuse to obey her. And then what? Go to Paton herself and drag him away in ignominy? He would never forgive her. They would never deal happily together again. She had to find a better way of dealing with the matter. But the harder she tried to think the worse her anxiety became.

And then, at last, slowly an idea began to form. It might not work, she told herself; it smacked of the most disagreeable dishonesty; it
could
not work; and yet –

She thought hard for some time and then again picked up her pen and a sheet of her letter paper and began to write. But the letter was not addressed to Duff.

‘Dear Sophie,’ she wrote with a steady hand. ‘I trust that you are
finding your stay at Paton agreeable. I understand from Duff that he is to stay on at Paton for some time; he will himself explain to you why this should be so, I am sure.

‘I have thought a good deal about our last conversation and feel that I was perhaps too hasty –’

She swallowed. It was painful to write such weasel words, but what else could she do? she asked herself almost piteously. Somehow she must lure Duff home and if the only way to do it was to use Sophie, and bend her own head to her, well, so be it. She would do it. She was not anxious to have the two of them together under any roof, but if they had to be, it would be better here, under her own, where she could observe what was happening and perhaps protect her son from a girl she was convinced was avaricious and thoroughly dishonest, than at some far distant duke’s house.

She continued with her letter. ‘I realize now that you were not to blame for any disagreements we might have had, but that Duff misbehaved. That being so, I believe the least I can do to recompense you for my ill humour is to invite you to stay at Quentin’s as my guest in the future. Not as paying guest, you understand, but as one of the family. You are, as you say, known to me from your childhood and I will be happy to include you here as one of us. This will, I hope, release you from anxiety about money, which I suspect you have. I do recall your speaking of the need to earn your living; well, live with me and the need will evaporate and you will never again have to display yourself on the public stage in a way that you must find distasteful on occasion.’

I hope I haven’t gone too far, she thought, biting the end of her pen. I don’t for a moment think she finds it distasteful to display herself, but she does find it distasteful to be short of money. She will rise to the bait, I’m sure: come to live here free of cost and then return to dancing, just to annoy me, as she will see it, and keep all her money for herself. She will like that very much.

She bent her head and finished writing her letter. ‘I look forward most eagerly to reading your response to my invitation, dear Sophie, and do assure you that I regard myself very much as your own dear Aunt, Tilly Quentin.’

So, I can be as devious as you, Miss, she told herself in a flash of amusement as she blotted and sealed her letter. I too can pursue an unpleasant means to an end I desire, as I am sure you have many, many times. Let us see what sort of haul this bait brings ashore.

There was a sudden scratching on her door panels, an urgent anxious sound and she lifted her head and called, ‘Enter!’ and it was Eliza who stood there, her face redder than usual and her forehead creased in anxiety.

‘Oh, Mum,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Oh, Mum, do come and see. I do ‘ope as I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. You’d best come and look for yourself, for if I’m right and saw what I saw, oh dear, oh dear!’ And she actually pulled up her apron and wiped her face with it, as though she were still the little tweeny Tilly had taught not to behave in such a way. And Tilly, her pulse thumping a little as she caught Eliza’s anxiety, got to her feet and hurried out of the room after her.

ELIZA HURRIED HER along the hallway and into the dining room, where the long table was already set for dinner and looking very attractive with glossy laurel leaves as the table decoration and the faint glitter of silver and crystal (for the room was unlit, though it received a good deal of light from the hallway). The windows had been shrouded in their dark-green plush curtains, all except for one sliver on the left-hand curve where the dimness outside the windows could be seen; and it was to that point that Eliza took her.

‘Look up,’ she whispered, even though there was no possible chance that anyone outside the closed windows could hear her. ‘I was just drawing the curtains ready to light the lamps and all, and I saw – so I left ‘em like this so’s I could show you – see?’

Mystified, Tilly went to the sliver of uncurtained window and peered out. It took her a few moments to adjust her eyes and then she was able to see, for it was after all only late afternoon, and not totally dark yet.

There were the steps up to her own front door and the curve of the doorstep behind the pilasters that held up the porch. There were the railings and the pavement. That was all there was to see in the immediate foreground and beyond that there was a repeat of the same as the steps up to the front door of the empty house next door and its matching pilasters and porch echoed her own, and on and on to the end of the street in retreating perspective. The cobbles of the roadway shone a little greasily in the light thrown out by one or two windows along the street as well as from her
own drawing room on the floor above, where some of the guests were already congregating to wait for the summons to the dining room and dinner, and beyond those rectangles she could see the shadows of the houses on the other side of the road.

And that was all. There was no traffic at all, not so much as a tradesman’s donkey chaise, or a street seller; they had long ago scuttled back to the safety of their own homes, for few people liked to be abroad in the dark in Brompton, even though the village had become much more respectable and, therefore, safer in recent years. Sensible citizens tended to be warmly within their own doors on such a cold and dismal winter afternoon.

‘Well?’ Tilly said, puzzled, and turned to took at Eliza. Was she having some sort of megrim, due to her condition? Tilly herself had never suffered in that way when she had been carrying Duff all those years ago, but she could remember very vividly how easily she was startled and alarmed by unusual sights or sounds. So she said more gently, ‘There is nothing there to see, Eliza. What alarmed you?’

‘Oh, pish!’ Eliza said a little surprisingly and almost pushed past Tilly to peer out through the crack in the curtains herself. ‘I was feared she’d do that the minute I come to fetch you. Maybe she’s gone in, then.’

‘Who has gone in where?’ Tilly said, a little irritable now. Had Eliza thought she had seen some sort of man skulking about, then her fears might be justified; fear of robbers was a commonplace. But she had said ‘she’; clearly this was no more than some servant girl misbehaving and Eliza being avid for a bit of gossip. Or perhaps –

‘Is it one of our girls you saw? Is someone slipping out when she is supposed to be at work? Rosie?’ Rosie was an excellent housemaid, and very good at her work, but undoubtedly pretty and sometimes pert; if anyone had a follower she was sneaking out to meet when she should be working, it must surely be Rosie.