by Tamara Gill
She dried her shapely body and slipped into her dress.
~~~~~
The return of the Earl's daughters brought the expected return of the familiar atmosphere of tension to Blackwood Chase. The staff resumed their weary habit of being on the alert to respond to and, hopefully, to completely fulfil, the detailed dictates of each sudden whim of Lady Clara, Lady Harriet, and the tempestuous Lady Amelia. Though familiar, the tension was harder for the servants to get used to, after the blissful week of their ladyships' absence, and, for some reason which no one as yet could fathom, it was worse, more intense than usual.
The three daughters went about the house with tight, frowning faces, and although they seemed to be restraining their whip-like tongues, this restraint was far more threatening than the usual scathing verbal explosions, and all of the staff agreed that this bottling up of their fury would be terrible when it finally erupted. Lady Amelia was particularly fearsome, her eyes flashing with fire whenever one of the upstairs maids crossed her path, Constance in particular.
According to the footmen and other downstairs staff, relations seemed as brittle as glass at the dinner table. The daughters sat, mostly silent, while his Lordship, who had previously tended to quiz them about their activities, concentrated all of his attention upon his food and wine. What had happened? Was the Earl in bad odour with his highly judgemental offspring, or had the daughters finally overstepped the mark with their excessively indulgent father? The truth was that, at long last, the three girls had received quite sharp - for them - censure from their father as regards to their treatment of the servants.
“Father is so unfair! Why, do we really treat the servants any worse than the Simpsons do theirs? Or the Thompsons? I think that, considering how utterly useless and lazy they all are, we're far too accommodating with them, don't you think so Clara?”
The three were in Harriet's room, three days after their return from London, on the evening after the Earl had issued his collective warning that the servants must be treated with the ‘respect due to them’.
“Of course I think so, Harriet. I also think that if you, Amelia hadn't, at the garden party, given way – once again – to that foul temper of yours, father wouldn't have lined all three of us up in the library like five-year-olds and delivered his lecture.”
“Clara's right, Amelia, why do Clara and I have to suffer the consequences of your shameful tantrums?”
Amelia slammed the pin-cushion she'd been toying with down onto Clara's dressing-table.
“I like that! You two taking the servants' and that bitch Constance's side against me, against your own sister! It's despicable!”
“We are not 'taking sides' child, we're simply trying to make you understand that…”
“'Child!' I'm fifteen years old Clara, I am not a CHILD!” Amelia, sweeping the pin-cushion along with other sundry items from the dressing table onto the floor, stood up. “You think you're so grown up Clara, just because you're getting your Season! Well, I have news for you, you're NOT!”
“Don't be so tiresome Amelia, sit down.”
“And now you side with her Harriet! Be damned, both of you!”
“Quad erat demonstrandum Amelia.”
“Oh shut up Clara, you don't even know what it means!”
Amelia tore open the door and rushed out, slamming it behind her.
“Everyone is against me! Why? Being the youngest daughter is a million times worse than being the youngest son! If I were a man, I'd show them!... But I'm on my own, always on my own, now that poor Lizzie's gone. It's that bitch Constance's fault, the Scots strumpet who stole Lizzie's place.” Amelia rushed to her room, muttering as she went.
“The red-haired thief... thief, yes... why else would she be here, insinuating herself into everyone's affections? What plans does she have I wonder? She must have one. Why after all would she talk to me so brazenly at the garden party if she wasn't confident of her powers and her influence?... What is she up to? I'll watch the bitch carefully - I'll find out her plans if it kills me.”
~~~~~
Late the following evening, Constance returned to her room and threw herself onto the narrow bed, exhausted after what had been almost two days' work in one. Tired though she was, her senses detected something odd about the room, something not quite right... an odour, a faint perfume that couldn't possibly be her own. She sat up and looked around at the bare walls, the small cupboard, the drawers under the washstand - all seemed in order.
She got up off the bed and sniffed, there was something... but what? None of the maids wore perfume. She looked under the bed to see if her valise had been disturbed... no. There it was, securely locked, flush against the wall beneath the bed-head. But what was this? She reached under and pulled out a small embroidered cambric handkerchief. She held it up to the window. The perfume emanated from it. It was Lady Amelia's.
She sensed, immediately, that the kerchief was the bait of a trap – doubtless Amelia planned to accuse her of stealing it, and who would believe in a housemaid's innocence? What was her word worth against that of an Earl's daughter? It was too much, the final, perfumed straw! Splashing water onto her face and roughly wiping it with the towel, Constance opened the door and rushed down the stairs.
She must see Mrs Templeton and tell her that she was leaving immediately. Nothing could stop her this time. The money, her friends, her commitment to the Earl to stay on until he found a replacement, all were worthless against this irrational hate-filled campaign against her by Lady Amelia. As she took the last turning of the stairs before the ground floor, she ran hard into someone coming up.
“Constance! I was on my way to see you!” It was his Lordship, standing there, holding her arms to stop her from tumbling down the final stairs, a look of tentative joy on his face. “In actuality I... I wanted to offer my apologies to you for the way that I behaved the other day. I... it was highly improper behaviour for a man of my position, to... take advantage of someone in yours. I really must...”
A stinging slap from Constance knocked the remaining words out of his mouth.
“As I thought! It was just a passing fancy. ‘Oh, the girl has some intelligence, she can talk well, I'll bet she can kiss too, let me see!’ Rather than dallying with the servant girls, my Lord, I think that you should drop everything and apply yourself to solving the problem of your daughters, before your household is emptied. They'll be the ruin of you, you'll be a laughing-stock at Court and here in the Country. Here, this is Lady Amelia's handkerchief. I just this minute found it in my room. Either she dropped it in her snooping, or she intends to accuse me of its theft. I will not stand for this a moment longer. Goodbye and good luck!”
The Earl stood there, though he had released her arms, the mark of the fierce slap still on his face, apparently both aghast and aroused by this flame-haired vision with its heaving bosom, whose words were cutting his self-assurance to shreds.
The vision was no less affected by the result of her outburst, the Earl's bemused, if avid, look, the utter confusion she'd reduced him to. The memory of the kiss in the library returned to her, and there was something in his eyes, which told her that her determination to leave seemed more of an insult to him in that moment, than did the slap to his face. Heat raced through her, and a madness took her. She could not leave without tasting him again.
She rose up onto her toes, and kissed him, twice, on the reddened place where her slap had landed, and then, slipping her arms around him, kissed him hard and full on the mouth, pressing all of herself against him. It lasted but a moment, before, face flaming, she spun away.
Doubly dazed, he could do nothing but stand and watch as she ran back up the stairs. She did not look back.
Chapter Eight
The following morning, Constance sat at the uneven wooden table in her mother-in-law's cramped cottage in Woodsbridge Village. The remains of a simple breakfast of corn bread and boiled eggs lay around them, and Constance sat, leaning back, in a chair whose legs were a
s uneven as the table surface, sipping her unsugared tea and trying not to meet the eyes of the elder Mrs Leslie. Constance knew that Margaret loved her, as she would have loved her own daughter, and would understand the real reasons for her leaving such an ideal position as the one at Blackwood Chase. But Constance, exhausted and heart-sick, was loath to elucidate those reasons. Doing so would only add to Margaret's burden of worry, for she worried obsessively about Constance. Constance was confused, too, about her own real motives for her flight from Blackwood Chase.
Was it really only because of Amelia's snooping, and that still undigested insult at the garden party? Didn't the Earl, and the contradictory feelings he inspired, have just as much to do with it? How could she begin to tell Margaret of those, when she could barely bring herself to acknowledge them herself? Though she would surely understand.
Her own darling son, Constance's young husband, was the product of an illicit union between her and Lord Crofton, a local landowner. Would she understand? Yes, but even if she did, was it wise to remind her of the distressing events of her own past? No, best not.
“You look so sad, Constance dear. Were things really so awful for you at Blackwood Chase?”
“Oh, some of the staff were very nice, but, as I told you, I misjudged my own strength. I mean, as regards to the work. Rising before dawn, sometimes after no more than three or four hours’ sleep, and apart from the constant cleaning duties, being on call to the Earl's daughters every whim, I found to be utterly exhausting. I know that it seems weak of me, but I think that I just need to rest for a few days before I look for a less exacting position.”
“I understand my dear, don't fret yourself, all will be well, you'll see. And his Lordship was kind in discharging you, was he not?”
“Oh yes! Most kind, we have enough money to live on until I find myself a new position. Here, you finish your tea, I'll clear these away.”
Constance, eager to be doing something and to be by herself, gathered together the breakfast plates and cutlery and swept outside to wash them under the water pump. The day passed somehow, though still painfully slowly, despite Constance's ceaseless activity around the cottage and the garden, digging up vegetables, pruning the dwarf rose bushes which Margaret was so proud of, and which brought her such pleasure, feeding the chickens and cleaning out the chicken coop, and generally finding things to do so the devil wouldn't, as the old adage has it, find work for her idle hands.
And yet, though denied access to her industrious limbs, the devil had a field day in her thoughts. No matter what she did, or how she strove to channel her thoughts away from him, the image of the Earl's face and form rose before her like some beautiful hovering hunting bird poised to strike. Poised to strike what? Her aching and vulnerable heart. She felt very bad about the way that she had behaved – she had slapped him in the face as if he were some common village lout!
And that look on it! The utter confusion, the shock, and though perhaps anger had come later, she had left him looking like a little boy wrongly accused of some domestic crime. It was almost a look of betrayal. It was that look that had driven her to the madness – the madness that had led her to kiss him then, before she ran from his presence, as if a kiss could somehow make that betrayal better.
And then too, there was the kiss that he had given her in the library, a kiss which, despite its suddenness, had really been the very natural outcome of the understanding that had grown between them as they'd sat talking that long afternoon, and into the evening. His kiss was the seal upon the long love letter they had delivered to each other - in person, in words unspoken, yet which had echoed through every comfortable moment. And then, the next day, to be slapping him!
But how could she accept that he, an Earl, could have serious intentions towards a mere housemaid, though her provenance was not so mean and lowly as that of the generality of housemaids? How could she? No, perhaps the slap was wrong, however agitated she was after finding Lady Amelia's handkerchief in her room - it was wrong; but she was right to leave. There could be nothing whatsoever between herself and the Earl.
The very idea was absurd!
She stepped into the woodshed to get the axe. Though the weather was extremely warm and pleasant, there'd be no harm in replenishing their stock of firewood, and the evenings could still be chilly for Margaret. As she lifted the axe and ran her fingers along its almost silk smooth shaft, she knew that all arguments, however sensible, were in vain - she simply had to see him, to feel him against her, again.
Chapter Nine
While Constance vented her frustrations on the pile of ash logs behind her mother-in-law's cottage, the object of those frustrations was urging his horse over a hedge, several miles distant, on the very edge of the county. Zenobia, the horse, didn't take the hedge with her usual nimble grace, she missed her footing and almost tumbled her aristocratic rider into the piles of cow dung steaming in the sun.
The Earl regained his balance, barely, and slowed her to a trot, then caressed her neck and soothed her with endearments. He understood; he had been transmitting his agitation to the horse since they'd left the Blackwood Chase stables. In fact, he hadn't stopped muttering and cursing to himself for the entire time that he’d been riding. The poor animal had doubtless taken it into her head that he wasn't happy with her, when of course, it was he himself who was the object of his snarling and sardonic litany of internal rebukes.
Peregrine Stapleton was not one to spare himself when he found himself at fault. But, dammit! He'd taken his time finally dragging himself by the scruff of the neck before his own tribunal!
'Yes, your Lordship, you bear complete responsibility for the creatures your three beautiful daughters have become. What have you to say in your defence?'
He dismounted and led Zenobia to the stream of clear water which ran through the field, and let her drink, while he sat down on a fallen tree trunk and dealt with his guilt.
'I suppose all that I can offer in my defence is that my love for Lydia was so strong, so all-consuming, like that sun up there' – he shaded his eyes looking up – 'that I could not distinguish my three daughters – our three daughters – in its light. I mean, for me, they were embodiments of Lydia herself, just as this earth and the other planets are offshoots, children, of the sun itself. I could no more chastise them than I could Lydia.'
'Fanciful nonsense Lord Blackwood!' The voice of his internal judge was scathing.
'Perhaps the imagery is amiss but it is the truth. Clara, Harriet, and Amelia are part of Lydia, the woman I loved above all others, who I still love. And whom I have missed more than I would miss my own arm or leg, vastly more! I would have traded my life for hers!'
He rose and, Zenobia having drunk her fill, led her along the stream, trying to think more calmly. Yes, his grief for Lydia was profound and incredibly slow in lifting. In fact, it was a cloud that would never really lift, would never, he had believed, allow him to live fully again. But was that true? For the first time, he had to admit it, Lydia's image had retreated before another, before Constance's. Oh, Constance was different, far less soft and sweet than Lydia, and much more like himself, and that was a great part of her appeal. They were so alike in so many ways!
Yet different enough for him to be endlessly stimulated and surprised by her. But this apart, could he seriously use his grief for Lydia as an excuse for allowing his daughters to grow into such intemperate, spoiled, condescending, petulant young women? What would Lydia say, if she could see what he had raised them to be? What would her reaction be if she had been at the garden party and witnessed Amelia's behaviour to Constance? She would have been appalled.
'Face it, Blackwood, the blame lies squarely at your door. Your unthinking over-indulgence – however justified its source in your undying love for Lydia – has ruined the children of the very woman you still profess to love!'
His perambulations stopped by this, the first clear expression of his own failings to himself, he looked back across the fields to where Blac
kwood Chase lay.
'And what is to be done now?'
Mounting Zenobia once more, he trotted toward the gate, avoiding the hedges, and rode determinedly along the road back to Blackwood Chase.
~~~~~
“Do you deny it was your handkerchief?”
“No father I don't deny it, of course it's mine, but it doesn't prove I was in Mrs Leslie's room. What possible reason would I have to go up into that beastly smelly hole? Probably one of the servants dropped it, or it was dropped on the way to the wash by... what's her name? Millie, and was inadvertently kicked into Mrs Leslie room. How should I know? And what can it possibly matter?”
“I will not stand for any more nonsense Amelia! Tell me the truth, were you snooping in Mrs Leslie's room?”
“Oh Papa!”
“Did I tell you to sit down! Stay where you are girl! And that goes for you two also. You will not move a muscle until I say so. Is that absolutely clear!?”
The three girls stood, facing their father, who was standing behind his desk with a look, and using a tone of voice, which they could not recall ever having seen or heard before. Despite their casual manner, bemusement mixed with a growing nervousness was slowly draining them of self-assurance.
“Not one more lie, Amelia, not one more obfuscation. Did you drop this handkerchief in Constance – I mean Mrs Leslie’s – room?”
“I did father.”
“You did. And did you also heap insults upon Mrs Leslie's head when she wasn't quick enough to pour your tea at the garden party last week?”
“I... I admit I lost my temper a little. But she was so slow, I was sure that she was doing it on purpose, to aggravate me. To make a fool of me in front of my friends.”
The Earl remained silent, with the look of a contemptuously cold magistrate on his usually so amiable features. Clara stole sidelong glances at Harriet while Harriet cautiously reached out to clasp her elder sister's fingers, something she very rarely did.