Sally James (21 page)

Annabelle. Some sort of cousin. Kate had difficulty in concealing her dismay. It must be the woman she'd met in the Park, who'd called her Polly and been so supercilious. The woman who was Adam's mistress. She tossed her head. He was welcome to her. And she to him.

'If you're ready, Miss, I'll tell James to show you the way,' Joan was saying, and Kate forced herself to smile brightly at the girl.

'Thank you.'

The footman was waiting outside, and looked so forbidding as he led the way along several corridors and down the wide, sweeping staircase that Kate couldn't pluck up the courage to say a single word. He was far more terrifying than the butler, Jenkins, or any other of the old Earl's servants in Grosvenor Square. His initial glance at her gown, by now looking rather crumpled, and with the wine stains still visible, had first shown astonishment, then disdain. Kate fervently hoped she would not have to encounter him too frequently.

Adam was waiting for her in the huge drawing room. James threw open the double doors and ushered her in. She half expected him to announce her, but as she took a couple of steps forward she heard the doors snap closed. She glanced across acres of polished wooden floor, and what seemed like a hundred carpets, towards Adam. He stood with a wineglass in his hand before one of the two huge fires which blazed in grates with ornate, cold-looking marble surrounds.

The warmth of the fires didn't penetrate as far as the doorway. Indeed Kate wondered whether any amount of wood burning in the two fireplaces would ease the icy chill in the room.

'Isn't there anywhere smaller and warmer where we could sit?' she demanded, beginning to trek across the room towards him.

He raised his eyebrows. 'This is where we receive guests, and there is no time to be lost in showing you how we go on,' he replied. 'I have a great deal to teach you before they arrive.'

'Such as how to greet your mistress!' Kate snapped. She didn't know whether her shivering was because of the cold, or the footman's icy formality, or Adam's disapproving glance. He could be a murderer, she reminded herself.

'So you have lost no time in gossiping with the servants, I see, if you are aware of who our guests are for Christmas. That is something I won't tolerate. Joan, I assume?'

'She was being friendly, and telling me about the house parties my grandfather used to have,' Kate protested. 'She didn't say Annabelle Wilson was your mistress. She didn't need to. I knew already.'

He waited with badly-concealed impatience for her to finish. 'She should not gossip. I will send her away tomorrow.'

'Send her away?' Kate had reached the warmth of the fire at last, and was holding out her hands towards the flames, but at his words she swung round to face him. 'Do you mean dismiss her?'

'Of course. I will not tolerate servants who gossip.'

'You'd prefer them all to be carved out of ice like that pompous footman! Adam, you can't send Joan away. It wasn't her fault. I asked her questions. It would have been uncivil of her not to have answered!'

'But they were clearly questions you had no right to ask, and if your actions lead others, especially servants, into error, you have to realise that they suffer too.'

'That's monstrous!'

'My dear, you must not address me like this. It is not the sort of behaviour I will tolerate in a wife.'

She stared at him, biting back the words of condemnation on the tip of her tongue. 'You didn't behave so austerely with Jenkins,' she managed after a while.

'But I have known Jenkins all my life. He knows and respects me. If you become too familiar with the servants, before we are married, they will be impossible to deal with afterwards. They will have no respect for you. So they must go, and I will engage new ones with whom you can make a new start.'

Kate saw that he meant it. She'd seen his implacable moods before, but then she had been the only one who might have suffered. Except possibly Darcy. She swallowed hard. This was no time to argue. She could not bear to think of the friendly Joan losing her position because of her own actions.

'Please, Adam, it wasn't Joan's fault, truly. I won't gossip again,' she said quietly. 'Let another maid wait on me, give Joan something else to do, but don't dismiss her. Please.'

He studied her briefly, then sighed. 'If only I could believe you.'

Kate just looked at him. She knew no protestations would change his mind. Finally he nodded and she let her breath go in relief. She hadn't realized she'd been holding it.

'On one condition,' he said.

She gulped. 'What?'

'That you stop fighting me and make an effort to learn what you need to know as my wife.'

At least he hadn't tried to force her into agreeing to become his wife, Kate suddenly thought. She didn't know whether she'd have sacrificed herself if he'd demanded that. Promising to be conformable now didn't inevitably mean she'd be forced into marriage. There would be time to think of other ways of escaping. And while she made her plans he might be lulled into a sense of complacency which would make her eventual escape easier.

'Very well,' she said quietly.

'Good. I am gratified to see you learning sense at last. Now we'll have the first lesson. When we are married I expect to entertain important people, so you must learn to lead the way into the dining room. You can show me, when we are summoned, how you might take the arm of the most important guest and behave as hostess.'

Chapter Seventeen

'I feel stupid,' Kate declared. 'How can I treat you as though you are the cook?' It was the following morning and they were in a small parlour, blessedly warm.

'I am the cook,' Adam replied, and Kate could not tell whether the gleam in his eyes was amusement or annoyance. 'Let's try again. You sent for me, my lady. The dinner tomorrow,' he prompted when she did not respond. 'Twenty people are coming, so it's not a large number, but some of them are important - government Ministers, Generals, a Royal Duke. You have to impress them. Now, I'll suggest some dishes. My lady, I thought a first course of asparagus soup, boned knuckle of veal, duck with onion sauce, followed by beef collops, pigeon pie, braised ham and ratafia pudding.'

Kate took a deep breath and glared at him. 'Not braised ham,' she muttered, thinking of their first meeting and the piglets. 'I think I would prefer smoked tongue.'

'That takes many days to prepare, my lady,' Adam said, and Kate could have hit him. 'And you should have reminded me that asparagus is not in season.'

'Don't smirk at me!' she said angrily. 'I never had to cook these dreadful complicated, downright finicky dishes.'

'That's why you employ people like me, my lady, to do it for your ladyship,' he replied, simpering.

'I have great sympathy for anyone who employs you!' she said through gritted teeth. 'And stop calling me your ladyship.'

'You prefer milkmaid, or goatherd?' he asked. 'You clearly did not read the books I suggested yesterday. Until you have perused them for ideas of dishes that are appropriate, and practical, we will do something else. Go and get your cloak. I will take you and introduce you to some of the tenants.'

'Some of your tenants? But, won't they think it odd?'

'Odd? To be made known to their new mistress? Some of them would be highly offended if you did not call.'

'As I am not going to be - ' she began heatedly, but he blandly interrupted, as he walked across to pull the bell.

'And just for practice, you can send down to the kitchen and order a basket of food for Mrs Crosby. She's been suffering from rheumatics, unable to get about, and always welcomes a visit. She was your mother's nurse.'

'I know that. My mother told me about her. But I don’t want - '

'And when your mother went away to school she married one of my tenant farmers,' he added before she could finish.

'I don't have any intention of playing Lady Bountiful!'

'Ah, James. Miss Byford sent for you.'

Kate struggled to face the supercilious footman, conscious of her heightened colour, and convinced he had heard her last words.

'James, yes. Thank you. Er, please will you have Cook prepare a basket for me to take to Mrs Crosby. I imagine she will know the sort of things Mrs Crosby appreciates,' she managed in a rush, and to her relief without stumbling.

'Have it put in the gig, and tell them to get that ready,' Adam added.

James gave a slight bow and backed from the room, and Kate breathed more easily.

'That was not bad for the first time,' Adam said consideringly, and Kate fought the desire to smile at the note of approval in his voice. She didn't want his approval. She wanted to deter him from this proposal. It had simply been the sheer impossibility of arguing while James looked on and sneered at her which had made her give the orders Adam expected.

'I can't go visiting in this dress,' she said desperately.

'I've ordered Joan to look out something suitable from my mother's clothes. She keeps especially warm ones here,' he added with a grin.

'I'm not surprised.' Kate’s tone was waspish.

'Tonight we can sit in the library. When we are alone I expect we'll spend the evenings there. It's much warmer than the drawing room.'

It would need to be, Kate thought as she went up to her room, or she would soon be frozen into a block of ice living in this barn of a house. Joan was waiting for her, and there was a good fire roaring in the grate.

'It'll be warmer outside,' Joan said consolingly, and Kate believed her.

Even without the warm gown and the fur-lined cloak with a close-fitting hood, the leather gloves and a pair of boots with soft lambswool linings that Joan had warming beside the fire, she thought she'd be warmer outside than in the draughty corridors and ill-heated rooms of this mausoleum.

She could never survive living here. But she had no time to think of that, since Joan was hurrying her into her borrowed clothes, chattering that the master had told her to find a suitable evening gown from amongst Mrs Rhydd's clothes for her to wear that evening.

'Just until your own baggage arrives from London,' she said consolingly.

'When will my clothes be here?' she asked as Adam steered the gig, pulled by a sturdy, shaggy pony, along the curving drive.

'I sent a message from Huntingdon to say you were with me. My mother and your aunt will be here in a few days. Now, take the ribbons.'

Without warning he handed her the reins and slipped one arm behind her back so that each of his hands covered one of hers. 'You will need to be able to drive yourself, and this is the most suitable vehicle to get around the estate in, and Pixie is as steady as a rock.'

Even through the thick material of their cloaks Kate was sure she could feel his heart beating, and the extra warmth of his body pressed close to hers. It made it difficult to concentrate on driving, but with a tremendous effort she thrust aside the fact that he was so close to her, his breath wafting across her cheek as he leaned close to give her instructions.

They passed the gates at the end of the drive, and soon turned off the road into a narrow, badly rutted lane. The jolting of the gig threw Kate against Adam more frequently than she wished. Even when she tried her utmost to sit upright, bracing her feet against the foot board, his hard, strong body was close to hers. The cottage where Mrs Crosby lived, Adam had told her, was a couple of miles along the lane, and Kate was thankful when they reached it.

'You did well, but you still need more lessons,' he said as he sprang down and tied the reins to the gatepost. Kate tried to alight by herself, but she was too hampered by the heavy cloak, and before she could find the step Adam returned and was lifting her down, both hands on her waist. As he set her down and loosened his grip his hands slid higher and brushed her breasts lightly. Even through the heavy material she felt the tingling shock, the warmth that shot through her and was nothing to do with her clothing or the exercise, and the clenching response of her stomach.

He turned aside to pick up the heavy basket, with a bowl of soup, another of beef dripping, freshly baked bread, and a napkin wrapping half of a cold chicken and some slices of ham and beef, as well as sweetmeats and some of the late russet apples.

'Come, and remember she is slightly deaf. You need to speak clearly and a little more loudly than normal.'

In a daze Kate followed him along the narrow path to the door, which opened before they reached it. A small plump woman stood there, leaning on a stick, and beaming at them both.

'I heard the pony. And I knew you'd be visiting as soon as I heard you were at the Court. Come in, do, Master Adam. And you must be Miss Caroline's daughter, you're so like her, the poor dear. Welcome back to where you belong, child.'

She hobbled along a short dark passage and into a small square room which was crammed with furniture and ornaments, but all of it spotlessly clean. What was obviously her chair was set close beside a fire which roared half way up the chimney, and as she sank into it she gestured to Kate to take one opposite.

'You'll be wondering what I need with all this stuff,' she said, chuckling. 'When my son brought home a wife and I came to live here I couldn't bear to part with any of my treasures. Most of them were what your dear mother gave me, always on birthdays and for Christmas she'd buy me something, a vase or something pretty she thought I’d like. Even after she was wed, she always remembered me.'

A tear slid down her rosy cheeks and was brushed impatiently away. Kate could think of nothing to say, but Mrs Crosby didn't wait for a reply.

'You're here, now, though,' she went on, 'and that's all that matters. You're back home.'

Kate blinked hard. 'Mama often spoke about you,' she said gruffly. Though she had been so young, she could recall how her mother's often peevish tones had softened when she spoke of her old nurse. With her stern father and timid mother, it was Nurse who had most often protected the young Caroline. 'She missed you a lot, and wished she had been able to visit.'

'Tell me about her? Was she happy? After your father died she hardly ever wrote to me. Not proper letters, that is, just to say she was sending me some little gift.'