The Romany Heiress (16 page)

Cate stared blankly at Cecile. What was the woman
getting at?

Isabella broke in. “What Cecile is trying to say in a
polite way is that these are ordinary behaviors in your
new life and you are ill-equipped to deal with the most
mundane of them. If you want to change your life, you
must do so entirely. It is not enough to have a fine dress
or any of the other outer trappings of a better life. You
must change on the inside too. That means you must
learn how to get on at a ball, how to pay an afternoon
call, how to purchase your own wardrobe, how to lay
out menus and organize the staff.

“Giles tells us that he’s called for the vicar who can
vouch for the identity issue and that it will take a month
for him to arrive. That means we have only thirty days,
more or less depending on the state of the roads, to
teach you what you must know in order to get along.”

So that was what the tea was about. For a moment
Cate was stunned. She looked down at her hands, not
feeling on the defensive for the first time since entering
the room. “I don’t know what to say. I find your offer
overwhelming and truthfully, I find it too generous. Why
would you do this for me? I am a stranger at best and a
potential enemy at worst, although I don’t mean to be”

“It is simple,” Cecile said, reaching over to squeeze Cate’s hand in an old gesture of feminine affection.
“We are women of an age. Women must always band
together, especially when men conspire to know and do
what is best for us.

“Tristan and Alain and even Giles most likely only
see the issue of legitimacy in this situation. I doubt any
of them see beyond it to what happens afterward. Men
don’t have the foresight women do when it comes to
people,” Cecile said sagely, giving a light laugh. “My
dear husband has built a seaside resort in Hythe. He
had the forethought for the economic future of the middle class-one where they’d be able to afford vacations
and the time to take them, but he nearly lost me because
he, like most men, lacked intuition. Besides, I know
from experience how much a woman in a new place
needs the counsel of other women with experience. I
needed Bella when I first married Alain and now it’s my
turn to pass on that assistance to you”

Cate glanced at Isabella. “And you? Why would you
do this for me?”

Isabella laughed. “You routed Lady FoxHaughton as
if she were no more than lint on your sleeve. I despise
the woman, and I relish any opportunity to see that
pompous dragon cut down to size, especially when I can
be involved in the cutting.” Then Isabella sobered.
“While that’s the truth, I am not that petty. You thwarted
her. In the process, you’ve acquired a powerful enemy.
If you seek to move in circles where you will encounter
her, you will need armor. She will exploit any weakness
you show her no matter how small. Heaven help you if she discovers she was thwarted by a gypsy queen. If
we’re successful, she won’t suspect that you’re anything
other than a remote cousin of Giles’s.”

Cate gave a tremulous smile. “Thank you. When I first
came to tea I didn’t expect this to happen. I expected to
be ambushed. You should know I don’t mean any harm
to Giles. He’s shown me every courtesy and treated me
far better than a stranger with ill tidings deserves”

Cate found herself fixed with another of Isabella’s
stares. She lowered her teacup to meet it.

“My dear Cate, no matter what happens, you will
change his life. You already have. It is a great power to
shape another’s life. For the rest of his, he will remember you in some way. The only choice you have is how
you shape that remembrance”

Isabella poured another cup of tea for every one.
“We mean you as little harm as you mean Giles,” She
imparted meaningfully, raising her teacup for a toast.
“Here’s hoping it stays that way” The three of them
clinked their delicate cups gently and sipped.

Cate did not miss the implied meaning beneath Isabella’s toast. All in all, Cate thought the act quite civil in
comparison to the promised unsheathing of claws that
could follow should she harm Giles in any way. She suspected that whatever punishments Lady FoxHaughton
could mete out would pale against the vengeance Isabella could wreak on behalf of a maligned friend.

Since her tea with Isabella and Cecile, Cate’s days
took on a regular and yet daunting routine; mornings
were spent with the ladies studying the precedence of
the peerage, learning the intricacies of household management, and the arts of carrying off social situations
ranging from dinners enfamille to the society ball. There
were lessons in the meticulous details of each context:
seating arrangements, table settings, which fork to use at
dinner parties, instruction in popular card games such as
Cassino, Speculation, and Commerce along with the
mastery of dancing and the delicacies of small talk.
There were also lessons in the things Isabella deemed
mundane-planning one’s wardrobes for the seasons:
the Little Season, the Winter Season, summers at the estate and fall hunting parties.

Cate had always lived her life attuned to the seasons:
the fall of the leaves in autumn, the bleakness of winter,
the rebirth of spring, and the full vibrancy of summer.
To Cate, the change of the seasons had rotated on cycles of nature. Now, under Isabella’s tutelage, she was
introduced to a new rhythm-a rhythm dominated by
events instead of buds and tender new shoots.

She learned that the season might start after Easter
but wasn’t official until the royal art exhibition at the
academy, usually held in May. The season ended not
with the heat of summer that made London nearly intolerable in July but in August, August 12 to be precise,
correlating with the closure of parliament.

Cate recognized in hindsight how her lack of knowledge regarding the intricacies of Giles’s life could have
been quite damning. If she’d been left on her own, free
to find her “own level,” she would have foundered immediately. All the rituals and practices that Giles observed were quite foreign to her practical life.

From Cate’s perspective and experience, it was difficult to see why it mattered that one attend the Royal
Regatta at Brighton or be on hand at Ascot, even if one
didn’t have a horse racing. Why should one bother with
an extensive wardrobe of gowns intended to be worn no
more than twice? To a woman who had the privilege of
owning two complete outfits each year, the requirements of a true lady’s wardrobe seemed outlandish, inefficient, and highly uneconomical.

Isabella was patient and tolerant to a degree. When
Cate balked at the extensive lessons laid out before her, Isabella would straighten her shoulders and fix her protege with a piercing topaz stare and remind her that the
mark of a lady was not the cut of her gown but the
depth of her manners. A true lady knew how to carry on
in any situation and in the face of any adversity no matter how small or how major. A true lady could be relied
upon at all times to do and say just the right thing in the
just the right way.

While the lessons were tiring, they were also intriguing. Cate had always had a great fascination for how
other people of any social status lived. Part of the
charm of traveling with the caravan was a chance to see
all of England and all of its various peoples. Learning
about the ton was no less exciting than learning about
the sheep farming communities of the Cotswolds.

But there was time to learn about nature as well as
society. Isabella relinquished her claim on Cate’s time
after luncheon. If Cate could pick a time of day that
pleased her most it would be the afternoons, which
were alternately spent with Giles touring the estate or at
her leisure. For the latter afternoons, she spent her time
strolling the grounds of the estate, marveling in the autumnal beauty of Spelthorne’s gardens and forests or,
when weather did not permit such outdoor activity, in
the music room playing on the violin she’d spied the
day Isabella had invited her tea.

Those were good days, quiet days when she found a
semblance of inner peace in a world that had upended
itself. She was honest enough with herself to admit that
the carefully dressed and coiffed woman who looked back at her in the looking-glass was far from the brassy
woman who had risked all by coming to Spelthorne
three weeks ago with her bold claim.

The days she did not spend with her own pursuits,
she spent with Giles, receiving an instruction of a different sort. While Isabella and Cecile taught her the art
of manners amongst the ton, Giles taught her estate
management. He gave her free use of an excellent bay
mare in his stables, and together they would ride the
length and breadth of the estate. She was impressed by
the extent of his holdings. There was a home farm
which generated the crops that fed the manor, the tenant farmers, and the villagers. There were the village
merchants ranging from the butcher, baker, a dressmaker, and other myriad small businesses that contributed to the self-sustaining lifeblood of Spelthorne.

Not only was Giles responsible for the economic survival of Spelthorne through the successful managing of
business and agricultural needs, he also oversaw the
spiritual needs of his people. The parish vicarage was
part of his holding, and it was his job to bestow that living on a worthy individual who could provide ethical
guidance to the people of Spelthorne.

She had not guessed, could not have begun to guess,
at the profundity of his obligations. She learned that
when Giles was not riding the lands talking to cottagers
about new roofs for winter, or inquiring about the impact of taxes on local merchants, making rounds to offer the latest agricultural advice on crop rotation to
farmers, or visiting shut-in parishioners with the vicar in the afternoons, he spent the mornings in his study poring over ledgers, paying bills, writing correspondence,
and attending to issues of parliament which committees
had addressed to him during the off-season.

When Cate commented to Isabella that Giles needed
a secretary, Isabella retorted that Giles didn’t need a
secretary so much as he needed a wife. A wife would be
able to take up the visits to the tenants, establish groups
for the ladies, and keep an ear open to the news of the
village, without Giles having to be there personally.

With a wife he would be free to spend more time on
parliament issues and agriculture, leaving the spiritual
life and interpersonal workings of his holdings to his
wife’s capabilities. While he would ultimately make decisions on quarter day when the farmers and villagers
brought their issues before the earl, those decisions
would be significantly influenced by his wife’s perspective. Isabella pointed out that the wife would be the one
to know what the dowry should be for the butcher’s
daughter who was betrothed to the miller’s son.

Cate found Isabella’s not-so-subtle message daunting. If she attained her goal of acquiring Spelthorne,
she would be faced with an enormous task. It was
apparent from her afternoon rides with Giles that his
tenants adored him, trusted him to safeguard their
livelihoods. After all, it was Giles who negotiated the
market prices for their crops, who decided when new
roofs were needed and which roofs would last another
year. He decided which crops were planted and which
fields lay fallow.

Everyone respected him and because of their respect
for him, they allowed her, a stranger, to move among
them, to learn their ways. She did not doubt that the
people of Spelthorne would be less open to her if she’d
come on her own or if they’d known her true purpose
for being there. One thing was clear to her-no one saw
Giles Moncrief as less than the rightful heir. They were
proud of their earl, proud to work for a man who respected them and knew them.

She knew how they felt for she felt that way too. When
she would look back over her month at Spelthorne in the
later years of her life, she would recall first and foremost
not the lessons Isabella drilled her in, not the substantial
reconfiguration of her life as she slowly transformed
from a Rom who lived outside of society to a lady of
quality, but the man, Giles Moncrief.

If what Isabella said about Cate’s ability to influence
Giles’s life, the reverse was also true about Cate’s ability. Simply knowing him changed her in countless ways.
He taught her innumerable lessons without opening his
mouth. He taught her the true merit of a gentleman. A
gentleman dressed cleanly, immaculately, stylishly,
without putting on the foppish habits of a dandy. A gentleman didn’t need bright colors and peacockish affectations. A gentleman maintained his honor always, even
when temptation presented an easier route. A gentleman
could be judged by the behavior he exhibited not only
among his equals but the behavior he displayed in his
treatment of those beneath his social status-those who looked to him and relied on his guidance for their livelihood. Giles was all those things. Chivalrous to a fault.