Tender the Storm (20 page)

"Look, kitten, my mother is an old woman, and accustomed to ruling the roost. So what harm is there in letting her feel useful?"

"She's not old, and don't call me that," said Zoë.

The smile on Rolfe's face gradually faded. "I had not known I had married a fractious infant," he said coldly.

Color heated Zoë's cheekbones. This was not the homecoming she had planned for her husband. She knew herself to be at fault for precipitating the present crisis. She had been too eager, too hasty in the execution of her design. But if she was at fault, the dowager was no less so. The woman was a tyrant. And it was unjust that she, Zoë, should bear the brunt of Rolfe's censure. Angry, hurt tears sprang to her eyes.

She made some excuse to leave the room, but Rolfe caught her by the wrists and laughingly repro
ved, "No, no, kitten! I can't be angry with you. But I wish you would tell me why you would rather burden yourself with household chores when you could be out riding, or walking, or amusing yourself in more pleasant diversions?"

Zoë's chin came up. "And I wish you would tell me what my role is to be."

Rolfe dropped her wrists. "Charlotte, to my knowledge, had no difficulty in finding a place for herself."

"Thank you," said Zoë, and left him.

Charlotte's role was not one that Zoë envied, nor had she the least inclination to emulate it. Her sis-
ter
-in-law was completely under the dowager's thumb. Even the management of Charlotte's two little daughters was taken out of her hands. It was to the dowager that the children's nurse made her reports.

Rolfe's nieces, no less than his mother and sister-in-law, were a sad disappointment to Zoë. Whenever Rolfe had spoken of his nieces in London, his words were always couched in the most affectionate terms. Nothing could have prepared Zoë for the reality of these undisciplined, angelic-looking hellions who were indulged beyond redemption.

She could not smile at their misdemeanors. Nor did she reproach Rolfe with her misgivings. There was no point. Whenever he was present, the children's conduct improved immeasurably. They were cunning if not shameless manipulators of the adults who had the ordering of their young lives.

Fearing that she would give in to the almost overpowering urge to box the ears of these obnoxious miscreants, Zoë took to avoiding them as far as was humanly possible. Perversely, though her husband denied her the role of wife and chatelaine, he wished her to become a second mother —or perhaps it was playmate —to his nieces. Zoë, wisely, in the interests of self-preservation, demurred.

There came a day, however, when Zoë felt impelled to enter the children's domain. Such were the shrieks which emanated from the nursery that she was sure that poor Miss Miekle had finally yielded to the very natural temptation to throttle the life out of her
nurselings
.

When she pushed through the door, it was evident that she had entered a battle zone. Dismembered dolls, far beyond the powers of resuscitation, lay about in odd corners. Picture books with the pictures torn out and the pages defaced were scattered at random. There were ink-splotches on the walls and dried stains on the carpet. To Zoë's surprise, however, it was Miss Miekle who was cowering in the corner, and the children who held her at bay with a series of earsplitting howls, each one more hysterical than the last.

Zoë slammed the door, and order was instantly restored. She regarded her nieces with a hostile eye.

Lady Emily, at five, was a year older than her sister, and the leader of the two. Her coolly assessing gaze met Zoë's without flinching.

"You daren't
thpank
uth
," lisped Lady Sara, and flashed a questioning look at her elder sister for confirmation.

"Uncle Rolfe doesn't permit anyone to spank us," advised Lady Emily with a sage little smile.

"Leave us, Miss Miekle," purred Zoë.

"Oh, but your ladyship —"

Zoë silenced her with the wave of one hand. "
Gome
back in five minutes.
I
'll look after your charges till you return."

Miss Miekle hesitated,
then
reluctantly slipped out of the room. Zoë's eyes narrowed on the diminutive forms before her. Lady Sara, as was her wont when alarmed for any reason, was sucking on her thumb as if her little life depended on it. Zoë crushed the faint stirrings of pity which this sad spectacle provoked. Her gaze fell on Lady Emily, and the incipient rush of pity instantly subsided.

There came into her mind a recollection of her own mulatto nurse, Salome, who had been her mother's nurse before that, and who had come to France as a young girl from the island of San Domingo. Salome's methods of maintaining order in the nursery had been, to say the least, highly unorthodox. She had kept her young charges, quite literally, spellbound. An unholy smile turned up Zoë's lips.

Closing her eyes, as in a trance, she raised her hands and waved them in front of her face. She began to hum.

Lady Sara edged closer to her big sister. She grasped her hand. "She's casting a
thpell
." she breathed.

Zoë's eyes flew open. In the way of a witch with an incantation she began to drone.

"Wizards and warlocks and witches with black cats,

Sorcerers and demons and magicians with blind bats,

The magic of Zoë is no empty boast,

Touch Emily and Sara and I'll call out my . .
. "

she
floundered momentarily and came up with a weak "hosts." By degrees, she came out of her trance. She smiled down at her round-eyed audience. "There now,
children, that
should do it."

"Do what?" demanded Lady Emily.

"Why! Keep you safe from . . ." Zoë's voice dropped to a whisper, "you-know-what. Now they know you're not little witches, you see."

'What's 'hosts'?" quavered Lady Sara.

"The heavenly hosts," answered Zoë. "You know — angels. Now the angels are keeping watch over you. Still, if I were you, I shouldn't want to take any chances. Behave like little witches, and even the angels may forget whose side you are on."

'You're making this up," said Lady Emily doubtfully. She was beginning to think that her new Aunt Zoë was an adversary worthy of her steel.

Zoë was spared the necessity of a reply by the entrance of Miss Miekle. "Is . . . is everything all right?" asked that breathless lady, her eyes anxiously scanning her unnaturally subdued charges.

"Everything is fine," said Zoë, and with one last pointed look at her nieces, swept from the room.

As she gently closed the door, she heard Lady Sara's childish voice piping, "Miekle, Miekle! What do you think? Aunt Zoë is an angel!"

Lady Emily snorted derisively.

Later that evening, over dinner, Charlotte ventured a shy, "Miss Miekle tells me that you paid a visit to the nursery this morning?"

"I did," answered Zoë, squirming in her chair.

"What's this?" asked Rolfe, in the act of helping himself from one of the servers a footman was tendering. He had arrived at the Abbey in time for
dinner, and was more than a little relieved to find everything very much as he had left it.

"Zoë," answered Charlotte. "Nurse says that she made a great impression on the children."

"That doesn't surprise me. Zoë has a way with children." Rolfe's smile brought a guilty heat rushing to Zoë's cheeks.

The dowager chose that moment to regale her captive audience with the merits of her new physician. Zoë, for once, was not sorry that her mother- in-law was impatient with every conversation where she did not figure prominently.

One week followed upon another. The snow melted. The first snowdrops came and went. Soon, the park around Rivard Abbey was tinted delicately as narcissi and crocuses pushed their way through the black earth.

By and large, Zoë's days were as empty as they ever were. Occasionally, the tedium was broken by a shopping expedition to Canterbury, or when neighbors made an obligatory call to pay their respects, ironically, to the new mistress of the Abbey. But Kent was very thin of company. The London season was in full swing. Only the aged and infirm seemed content to bury themselves in the country. Young people of an age with Zoë were as rare as swallows in winter. Rolfe was scarcely ever there.

But when he did tear himself away from the press of business which occupied him in town, Zoë's days took on a different color. They went riding, or took long walks. And in the evenings, after dinner, they would retire
en
famille
to the music room where Rolfe insisted that Zoë entertain them at the piano. Occasionally when his eyes
absendy
rested on her,
she would surprise a brooding quality in him. On coming to himself, he would flash
her a
grin and make some observation which invariably stifled any romantic hopes she might be entertaining.

And yet, she did entertain hopes that her husband was coming to see her as something more than a child. He enjoyed her society. Zoë was sure of it. They were never at a loss for words when they were together, though, to be sure, Rolfe's interest seemed bent on broadening her education. There were books she must read, places of interest in the neighborhood she must visit, and the music of English composers with which she must become familiar. In everything, she strove to please him, and never more so than in his wish that she should take an interest in his heritage.

Rivard Abbey. Rolfe was inordinately proud of the place. To Zoë's way of thinking, a converted Abbey left much to be desired as a habitation for humans. Its beauty, its grandeur
were
unquestionable. No less so was the forbidding aspect of its huge drafty chambers and its cold,
flagstoned
floors. She itched to be given a free hand in refurbishing the place. She knew exactly how she would achieve a warmer, more intimate atmosphere. She kept her thoughts to herself. The dowager was the indisputable mistress of the Abbey. The master of the house was there so infrequently that it was pointless to offer suggestions.

Zoë was lonely. But she made friends in an unexpected quarter. Ladies Emily and Sara became Zoë's shadows. It seemed that in that first brief encounter with their Aunt Zoë, she had fired their childish imaginations. It was more spells and incantations they craved, not the pleasure of Zoë's society.

She took to spending a good part of each day with her nieces and their nurse. Her influence on the children's conduct was salutary, if not dramatic, and was viewed by the long-suffering servants as nothing short of divine intervention. Zoë
was
an angel.

The dowager took a different view. Her younger daughter-in-law was cold and unfeeling. She was too strong-willed for comfort. Defiance was not too strong a word to describe the chit's neglect. The dowager's vituperation became more cutting.

Over dinner one evening, she regarded the carefully composed features of her son's young wife and she knew an urge to shake Zoë from her usual poise.

"I wish you would tell me," she began dulcetly, "why my son finds it necessary to spend so much time in town?"

The question was one which had troubled Zoë for some time past. She gave the dowager the answer Rolfe had proffered when she had quizzed him about the weeks he spent away from the home he professed to love. "There is so much business . . .

"Business!" scoffed the dowager. "My dear, this is the height of the Season. Don't you think it a trifle odd that a newly married man should run off and leave his bride of a few months to rusticate in the country?"