Winter Wonderland (13 page)

A high color rose on Livy's cheeks. “What do I think of him?” she echoed timorously.

“Yes. You don't find him forbidding, do you? I've heard that some young ladies have described him so.”

“Forbidding? Oh, no! No.”

“Do you have
any
impression of him?” Honoria pressed.

The girl threw her an agonized look, like a young pupil who didn't know the location of India on the map. “I … I … think he is very kind.”

“Kind?” Honoria's face clouded. “Kind” was not a word a romantic young female was likely to use to describe a man she was dreaming of.

“And good-natured,” Livy added hastily.

“Yes?” Honoria urged, wanting more.

“And handsome,” the girl offered, lowering her eyes and twisting a golden curl round a nervous finger. “Very handsome.”

“Ah, yes.” Honoria leaned back against the cushions and smiled placidly, satisfied at last. “He
is
handsome, isn't he?”

Twelve

Not long after enduring the embarrassing questions Lady Shallcross had thrown at her, Livy Ponsonby pleaded exhaustion and retired to her room. In listless silence, she allowed her abigail to undress her. Then she excused the girl and fell weeping onto her bed. The day had been a long, horrid ordeal. To be forced to make conversation with strangers was a dreadful strain for someone as shy as she.
Dash it all, Mama
, she cried to herself,
why did you make me come
?

But she knew why. Her mother wanted her to make a good match. “You will never have a better chance,” her mother had told her repeatedly in the week before she was sent from home. “Barnaby Traherne is a catch worthy of a Ponsonby. How lucky you are to have been invited! You have your aunt Jane to thank for that. You'll have a whole fortnight in which to attach him, and there'll be no other rival on the premises, either. You'll have the field all to yourself.”

What her mother didn't say was that sending Livy off for a fortnight was also a way to separate her from the one man in the world with whom she was not shy: her Neddy. Ned Keswick loved her. Ned Keswick wanted to marry her, but her mother would not hear of such an “entanglement,” for Ned was guilty of the very worst of sins: he was in trade. “You are a fool, Livy,” her mother had declared vehemently, “if you think Ned Keswick is a suitable husband. You are a Ponsonby, remember, not an East End nobody. You can win yourself a peer of the realm, if you set your mind to it. Yes, you can, even if you don't have a clever tongue. Don't look at me that way, Livy! I know whereof I speak. Cleverness isn't important for a girl. You're a beauty—everyone says so, not only your mother. Beauty is the only important quality a girl needs, and you have it. I won't have you throwing yourself away on that … that cotton merchant!”

The memory of these harangues brought on a fresh flood of tears. Ned Keswick was a dear. Positively a dear. And when he'd kissed her in the moonlight, that night less than a month ago after the Assembly dance, she thought she'd swoon in delight. He'd declared his love for her that very night, and in answer to his demands, she'd sworn to be true to him forever!

But now she'd met Barnaby Traherne, and she found herself utterly confused. Barnaby was awesomely handsome and charming, just as Mama had said he'd be, and he'd smiled at her very kindly at the table this evening. She liked him quite well. Was her mama right? she asked herself, sitting up in bed and wiping her eyes. Was her feeling for Neddy just a girlish infatuation? If Barnaby should take her in his arms in the moonlight, would she feel like swooning in delight?

And could she really win him? She'd heard rumors that other girls had found him formidable, even frightening. But he'd been very kind to her. Capturing him would certainly be, as Mama said, a feather in her cap. Why, all her friends would be green with envy!

But if she became betrothed to Barnaby, how could she explain herself to Neddy? He would accuse her of breaking her vow. He positively would! And he would have every right to hate her for it. She could not bear to have Neddy hate her!

The tears began to flow again, and she threw herself down and buried her face in the pillows. All this was very bewildering. Making decisions had never been easy for her. This was not the first time she'd found life almost too much for her, but before when she was troubled, she'd been able to count on her mother to tell her what to do. Here, however, she had no one to guide her. It wasn't fair! Mama should never have forced her to come.
Oh, Mama
, she wept in lonely bitterness,
how could you have done this to me?

On the floor above, Miranda, too, had retired early and then found that she could not sleep. Excited by the challenge of her new post, her mind made plan after plan of ways to tutor her charges. At last, convinced that sleep was still a long way off, she rose from her bed. Shivering from the cold, she wished she had the warm dressing-gown she'd packed in her now-lost portmanteau. But, having nothing else to put over her nightdress (generously given to her by one of the maids), she covered herself with her cloak. Then she lit a candle and made her way down the hall to the schoolroom.

The room was as the boys had left it: the table littered with picture-books and drawings, the floor covered with scattered toy soldiers. Evidently, the housemaids were too busy helping with the dinner downstairs to have had time to clean the schoolroom. Miranda threw back her cloak, pushed up the sleeves of the muslin nightdress and set to work herself, piling the papers and books on one side of the table and then bending down to pick up the toy soldiers. It wasn't the first time she'd done housemaid's work, she told herself ruefully, nor would it be the last.

A number of the little soldier-figures, she noticed, were grimy from sticky fingers. She laid them on the table, found a piece of cloth, sat down and set to work cleaning them. As she worked, she took a close look at the figures. They made a motley collection; some of them were roughly carved of wood, while others were carefully sculpted and cast in brass or fashioned from metal she could not identify, but all were colorfully painted, each detail of the uniforms carefully re-created. Some, from which the paint had faded or had been partially rubbed off, she set aside. Touching them up with fresh paint would make an enjoyable pastime for the boys on a rainy day, she decided.

Suddenly something made her look up. Standing in the doorway, studying her with a puzzled expression, was Barnaby Traherne. “Oh!” she said, startled.

“Good evening,” he said, eyebrows raised questioningly.

She got to her feet, feeling awkward, like a housemaid caught trying on her mistress's jewels. “Good evening,” she muttered, blushing as she drew her cloak around her.

“You needn't get up for me,” he said, his eyes taking in her strange costume and her hair, which she'd plaited into one long braid. “You're not a housemaid, you know.”

“Close enough as makes no difference, to use one of your own expressions,” she said with a sudden smile.

He did not smile back. “I'm sure my sister-in-law does not intend for you to do the cleaning.”

“I want to do it. I couldn't sleep, and this seems as good a way of tiring myself as any.”

“I'm not sleepy, either,” he said, stepping over the threshold. “May I help?”

“I'm sure your sister-in-law does not intend—”

He put up a hand to silence her. “You seem to enjoy throwing my words back in my face. Have your new duties had no effect on your saucy tongue, ma'am?”

She made a little housemaidish curtsey. “I do beg your pardon, sir. I shall try to remember my place and curb my tongue. Do sit down, if you truly wish to engage in so lowly an occupation—and can find yourself a polishing cloth.”

“I'll take half of yours,” he said, putting down his candle beside hers and ripping the cloth in half.

They sat down and began to work. “You couldn't have come up here with the purpose of helping me with this polishing,” she said. “Was there something you wanted?”

“Well, yes,” he admitted, throwing her a quick, embarrassed glance. “I didn't see you at dinner, and I couldn't help wondering whether … that is, Delia wondered …”

“Yes?”

“If your dinner was … er … satisfactory, down in the servants' hall.”

“
Delia
wondered?”

“Yes,” he lied.

“Why would you, or she, be concerned about such a thing?”

“Well …” He fixed his eyes on the soldier in his hand and polished away vigorously. “… you are not accustomed to dining with servants, are you?”

She stared at him in some surprise. He'd somehow sensed that she'd come down in the world, and he was evidently disturbed by the fact that she was required to dine with the servants. She could not help but be touched by his sympathy. “Of the many new experiences I must grow accustomed to,” she assured him gently, “that one is the least difficult. But thank you—and Delia—for your concern. You may rest assured the servants' hall is cheerful, the staff friendly and the meals generous.”

“Good,” Barnaby said.

She peered at his bent head. “It was kind of you to ask.”

“Hmmph,” was his response.

They worked in silence for a while. “These soldiers are quite old,” he remarked at last. “I used to play with them when I was a boy, and so did my brothers.”

“Speaking of your brothers,” she said thoughtfully, “you seem to be very attached to them. And to their families. That is quite astonishing to me. I had not thought of you as the affectionate sort.”

“Hadn't you? Why not?”

She threw him a hesitant look across the table. “If I answer, you will only scold me for my saucy tongue.”

“I promise not to. Tell me.”

“Because … because you behaved so boorishly to me during our sojourn at the inn.”

He lifted his head in offense. “I take umbrage at the word boorish. I was in no way boorish.”

“Oh? What word would you use?”

He thought for a moment. “Formal. I was trying to keep a formal distance.”

“Why?” she asked bluntly. “I can see why you might feel a need to be formal here, where I am a servant and you are a guest. But why was there a need, at the inn, to be so distantly formal?”

He stared at her then, trying to formulate an answer. The question, he realized, was fortunate, because it reminded him of the
real
reason he'd kept his distance. He'd forgotten it again. She looked so lovely with the candlelight throwing a mellow glow on her cheeks and the curves of her throat, shining in her eyes and making a glinting treasure of her hair, that it was easy to forget himself. Sitting opposite her like this and speaking together with comfortable ease made her seem like an old acquaintance. If she hadn't asked the question, it would have slipped his mind completely that she was Miranda Pardew, the nemesis of his youth.

Of course, he wouldn't admit that aloud. He had to find an excuse for what she justifiably interpreted as boorishness. “We were strangers, after all,” he hedged, “thrust together by circumstances, not our own wishes. It would not have been proper to … to …”

“To relax into friendship?” she suggested. “Would that have been improper?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Then I suppose I am not as proper as you. Your standards are too exacting for me.”

“Too exacting?” He threw down his cloth and rose. “You are implying that I am a prig. If memory serves, you said that once before.”

Startled, her eyes flew up to his face. “I
never
said—! I didn't
at all
mean to—!”

“Never mind. Our standards of behavior
are
very different. You are bound to think of me as priggish, just as I am bound to think of you as … as …”

“Saucy?” she offered.

“Yes, I suppose that word will do as well as any.” He picked up his candle and went to the door. There he paused. “The reason I came up here seeking you tonight, Mrs. Velacott, was to offer my assistance if, in your new position, you should run into any difficulties. Despite my priggishness, that offer holds. Good night, ma'am.”

Before Miranda could respond, he was gone, leaving only a quickly disappearing circle of candlelight behind him. She gaped at the empty doorway, dumbfounded. She would never understand him. One moment he was sitting opposite her, charming and friendly and apparently concerned for her welfare, and the next he was withdrawn, cold and forbidding. Was it something she'd said? Had her teasing him about being too proper touched some sort of sensitive spot? He was a mystery.

With a sigh, she picked up her piece of cloth and resumed polishing. She did not wish to trouble her mind about the mystery of Barnaby Traherne. The strange Mr. Traherne was not her concern. She tried to turn her mind back to planning lessons for her three pupils, but her thoughts kept returning to the man who'd just sat opposite her. What was it about him that bothered her so much? she asked herself. And, astoundingly, the answer popped into her head with the shining clarity of true insight: what troubled her most about him was her sense that, when he looked at her, he was seeing someone else. Someone else entirely.

Thirteen

Barnaby came down to breakfast the next morning feeling out of sorts and dejected by the gloomy weather that would not go away. Though it was not snowing, the dark sky and icy wind persisted. It was a day in which no one was likely to venture out-of-doors. There would be no riding, no brisk walks, no outdoor games. There would be nothing to do all day but play billiards and cards, neither of which he particularly fancied.

He was not surprised that no one was yet at breakfast—it was a perfect day to stay late abed. Although Cummings offered to serve him his favorite shirred eggs or a bowlful of hot porridge (which, the butler said, “would sustain him mightily on such a dreadful morning”), he refused, not wishing to eat alone. Instead, he wandered off to the library. It was there he discovered someone even more unhappy than he: Livy Ponsonby, who stood at the window, crying.