The Heiress Companion (3 page)

“Do you belong to the house?” he drawled.

“Do I belong there? I’m not chattel goods, sir, if that’s
what you mean.”

“Good God, no. I assumed that you were a visitor here, or
else a neighbor come to take advantage of the prospect for sketching. I was
only hoping to ask who I might find at the house.”

“Are you a friend of the Bradwells, sir?” Miss Cherwood
asked. “We are unaccustomed to seeing pedestrians appear on the grounds at
half-past four, particularly since Lady Bradwell has been ill.” She was
emphatic.

There was no reaction from the stranger at all. After a moment,
Rowena decided it was simplest to answer the man’s questions. “Lady Bradwell is
in, of course, although if you mean to call on her, I wish you will be guided
by me and leave her to rest this afternoon: She is in the midst of planning a
party for one of her sons, and has been taxing herself more than I can like.
She has only been persuaded to rest this afternoon by a combination of efforts.
Lord Bradwell I think you might find somewhere about the grounds, but I suspect
that he is off with the gamekeeper discussing stock for the pond, or some such.”

“Lady Bradwell’s giving a party, is she?” The stranger
frowned. “What, is Jack getting buckled or something of that sort?”

“No, the party is being held for her other son, who —”

“Damnation!” The stranger snorted. “Why the devil is she
taxing herself — I collect that you have not encouraged her in this
foolishness. Thank God Mamma is at least surrounded by
some
people of sense. Well, Miss —” He paused,
and a look of comprehension came into his eyes, to match the look which had
lately come into Rowena’s. “You must be Mamma’s Dragon! You will forgive me
calling you so, but I have been thinking of you that way since I got Mamma’s
last letter, for you seem to keep her in line, and I know what that must take.”
He smiled and offered his hand. “I
am
pleased to meet you. I’m Lyn Bradwell.”

Miss Cherwood, who had reached that conclusion sometime in
the middle of this last speech, regarded the hand stretched out to her with
mixed feelings, but took it all the same and favored the Prodigal with a very
halfhearted smile of welcome. That his coming had overset his mother was bad
enough, but that he should introduce himself to her in a fashion guaranteed to
put her at a disadvantage (as well as having made her spoil a very promising
watercolor) was really too bad.

“I am sorry,” he added after a moment’s uncomfortable
silence. “But I regret to admit that I cannot recall your name. I had grown so
used to thinking of you as —”

“The Dragon,” Rowena supplied sweetly. “Well, if you tire of
that form of address, Mr. Bradwell, you may call me Miss Cherwood,” she
finished coolly.

“Now you’re at outs with me.” Bradwell sighed. Rowena had
begun to rinse out her brushes and fold her painting kit away. “But you must
realize that I had been envisioning a much older woman, sort of a —”

“Dragon,” Miss Cherwood repeated succinctly, although her
sense of the ridiculous was slowly reasserting itself and her tone was less
venomous than it had been a moment before. “It’s quite all right, Mr. Bradwell.
I regret, of course, that I cannot oblige you by being the martinet of forty
you expected, but I assure you that I am older than I may appear, and quite
capable of keeping your mother from overtaxing her strength under most ordinary
circumstances. But she would have this party, thirty couples from the
neighborhood, indeed, and everything fine about it —”

“Except that you don’t think Mamma’s health is up to it.”

“It may be, sir, if she will let me have the ordering of
things and will refrain from wasting strength on unnecessaries,” she admitted,
folding up the little stool on which she had been sitting. Bradwell reached to
take it from her, but she had already placed it atop her painting box and was
setting off in the direction of the house.

“I had no idea Mamma would do anything so idiotish —” he
began.

“It’s hardly idiotish to wish to welcome home her prodigal
son, gone these six years,” Rowena began hotly, in defense of her mistress.

“Five,” Bradwell corrected mildly. “And I’m not criticizing
the thought, Miss Dragon-Cherwood, but that fact that Mamma was silly enough to
think I would expect a party of her when she is so lately out of the sickroom.”
There was nothing in that speech that Rowena could take exception to; in fact,
it was a reiteration of many of her thoughts on the subject. She found herself
a little more in charity with Bradwell, although she could not remember the
last time she had been so in and out of favor toward anyone in such a short
time.

“Can you tell me how Mamma is going on aside from taking too
much upon herself with this party, as we have both agreed?”

“The doctor says she has mended remarkably and that it is
only her eyes we must take especial care of. She hates to wear her spectacles —
blue glass, and not very becoming — and will do so only with the greatest
reluctance. And when I have tried to interest her in things that will not
strain her eyes, she throws up the most imaginative obstacles! I taught her to
knit, and she is perfectly adept to it, only says it is shabby genteel and she won’t
be seen by anyone but me while she does it. You may see that her temper is
improved. Or worsened, rather, but I think it is a good sign.”

“But her eyes? What is the danger there?”

“It is hard for me to say, exactly, when even Dr. Cribbatt
dislikes to test them too far for fear of straining them. Lady Bradwell goes
without the spectacles in the house, and can see quite clearly now, although
she is still forbidden close work and reading and writing. And on no account
must she go into the daylight without those spectacles, no matter what she
says.”

“And I wager she’s the very devil to persuade about them,
ain’t she?” Bradwell smiled. “She’s a vain puss, is Mamma. Should I tease her
about them?”

“Sir, if you’ve half the influence with her that I imagine
you have, I think she will wrap herself in blue glass if she thinks you would
like it,” Miss Cherwood advised drily.

“Coming it a bit too strong, Miss Cherwood. I apologized for
ruining your painting, didn’t I? What other crimes — other than calling you a
dragon, but I will be excused for that, won’t I, since my image of you was so
far from the reality — of what else am I accused?” He smiled again at her; it
was really a very nice smile, and lit his fine eyes. They were gray, Rowena
decided. “You think me abominably rag-mannered, don’t you? My only excuse is
that I am only just returned from seeking my fortune on the continent, and I
have forgotten the common civilities of an English drawing room.”

“And did you find your fortune, Mr. Bradwell?” Miss Cherwood
asked sweetly.

“I’m afraid that the people who arrived before me had
completely cleared the palaces of the continent of their treasures, Miss
Cherwood. I have hopes of making my way in the Foreign Office, but I will have
to acquire some more acquaintances there than the ones I made through my
soldiering days.”

Rowena sighed. “I suppose if you had tried the drawing rooms
on the continent you would have discovered more useful contacts there.
I
never had the least difficulty in recalling
what was due the English drawing room, for I found the drawing rooms of France
and Spain and Portugal and Austria to be very similar to the ones in Devon and
Sussex.”

“I suspect that was a setdown, Miss Cherwood. Have you
actually lived in any of those places?”

“All of them, Mr. Bradwell. But I promise not to contradict
you in front of your Mamma.” Rowena gave him a smile and entered the house.

o0o

“I must say, Mamma,” Mr. Bradwell commented later, when the
first flush of their reunion was over, “that that Miss Cherwood of yours —”

“Rowena? Isn’t she the greatest love in creation, Lyn? I
cannot tell you how good and how patient she has been with me, aside from taking
over all the management of the house while I was so ill, although that was by
no means expected of her.”

Lyndon Bradwell, still unsettled by his meeting with his
mother’s companion, thought that perhaps seizing the management of the
household would be the more precise term, but wisely refrained from voicing it.

“Jack, even, thinks that she is a good creature, and you
know that the last female of whom Jack said any such thing — always aside from
his mares, of course — was Jane Ambercot. Of course, Rowena is too wise to
think they would do anything but bore each other to death if he offered for
her. Although I could almost wish, for Jack’s sake, that she would take him.”

Mr. Bradwell disregarded the disquieting idea of Miss Rowena
Cherwood as his sister-in-law. “No, I don’t think a strong-minded female past
her first youth is quite the thing for Jack, Mamma.”

“What a fashion in which to describe Rowena, you monster.
Lyn, you haven’t taken her in dislike, have you? I only meant that if Jack will
not reconsider Jane — and yes, I know better than to try to raise that
engagement again, even though everyone knew they would have been terribly happy
together — where was I? O yes, well, sometimes I wish that Jack had not been
such a fool.”

“I see very little comparison between Miss Ambercot and Miss
Cherwood, Mamma.”

“Well, in looks, certainly not. Jane, fond of her as I am,
does
have the most annoying tendency to freckle,
and she is rather short, and the only dress that really suits her is riding
habit. But she and Jack would have suited so well together, I can’t mind her
appearance at all. I do regret their quarrel sometimes.”

“So does Jack, I’m sure,” Mr. Bradwell observed
thoughtfully. “There’s also rather a disparity between your Miss Cherwood and
Miss Ambercot, as I recall, in temper.”

“They’re both commonsensical creatures, Lyn, and I know
that Jane would have managed Jack to a nicety.”

“Just as your Miss Cherwood sees to you, ma’am?” He wondered
privately if this Miss Cherwood was not something of an opportunist.

“Precisely. But Lyn, you’ve been sitting here in my room for
above an hour, and have not told me how long you intend to stay.”

“In your room, Mamma?” He raised a quizzing eyebrow.

“Stupid, idiotish creature. At Broak. In England. Within an
easy distance of your poor, abandoned mother!”

“O, as for that, I am back for good. In England, at least.”

“Truly? Lyn, I’m so pleased! But what do you mean to do?”

“Do, Mamma?” he teased.

“Don’t play games with me, boy. I know, if you do not, that
you no more have the character to sit about and waste your time than your
father did. But Richard had the estate to occupy him, and Jack has that now, so
what do you mean to do?”

“Well, to tell the truth, Uncle Kelvin and I had a notion
that a job in the government might suit me —”

“Politics, darling?” Lady Bradwell frowned. “But my dear,
doesn’t that take a great deal of money? Or many connections.”

“It can take both, Mamma, and while I have a small amount of
money and two or three connections — beyond my uncle, of course — I realize
that I shall have to set myself up to find myself a niche and bide my time in
gathering both the ready and the connections to advance in the party. Uncle
Kelvin has given me some letters to submit to his friends in London, and I do
have an advantage in that I have been abroad in A’Court’s retinue and have a
good idea of what diplomacy on the continent has become since ’15.”

“Well, if it is what you want to do. All I can think of when
you say politics is poor Georgiana Devonshire selling her kisses for Fox’s sake
in the elections.”

“That was rather a while ago, ma’am, and I doubt that I
shall ever attach a woman who will dispense kisses to the hoi polloi a-purpose
to see me elected. In any case —” He rose. “I believe there is someone at the
door.”

It was Rowena Cherwood. “Good evening, ma’am.” She smiled at
her mistress with such obvious affection that Mr. Bradwell questioned his own
assumptions regarding his mother’s companion. “I was wondering if I ought to
tell Cook to set dinner back half an hour.”

“Was that the dressing bell?” Lady Bradwell asked in
surprise.

“It was.”

“Then you must send Taylor in to help me dress. Lyn, I shall
see you at dinner. If Miss Margaret Cherwood is downstairs, I wish you will
introduce yourself to her. She’s the least bit shy, but she’s a very sweet
little thing.”

“
Margaret
Cherwood?” Mr.
Bradwell’s glance returned to Rowena with suspicion.

“My cousin,” she announced defiantly. “She came asking my
help — some family matters, but your mamma was kind enough to offer her asylum.”

“A very romantical story, Lyn. If you see her, please
entertain her until we can join you. She looks very much like Rowena, as a
matter of fact.”

“Well, she looks much as I did when I was her age,” Miss
Cherwood conceded. “Now, ma’am, do you intend to dress for dinner or no?”

“See, I am bullied shamelessly in my own house,” Lady
Bradwell protested laughingly to her son. “Go along, darling. I shall see you
below directly.”

Lyndon Bradwell left the room, another point against Miss
Cherwood firmly entered in his books. Invite a strange cousin here to trespass
on his mother’s hospitality? Even if the girl herself were unexceptionable, it
betokened something of Miss Rowena’s attitude toward her position at Broak. Mr.
Bradwell did not like it.

But when he made Margaret Cherwood’s acquaintance that
evening (and she did look remarkably like her cousin, only younger, sweeter,
and with an endearing shyness which he was certain Miss Rowena had never
possessed) he was ready to rearrange his ideas once again. By the time Lady
Bradwell, Lord Bradwell, and Miss Cherwood joined them in the small saloon, Mr.
Bradwell and Miss Margaret considered themselves fast friends. Lady Bradwell,
looking from Lyn to Margaret to Lyn, and then to Rowena, invited her silently
to share in her matchmaking plot. Rowena returned the smile rather inscrutably,
and comforted herself with the thought that at least Lady Bradwell, Margaret,
and Lyndon Bradwell could be safely left to entertain each other while she
attended to the business of Broak, and to the party. Lord Bradwell, of course,
could be depended to settle himself with the grooms and keep from underfoot.