Aunt Dimity and the Duke ad-2

by Nancy Atherton

  The view was lovely, at any rate. From her balcony Emma could look out over the great lawn and the castle ruins. She wasn’t quite high enough to look down into the ruins, but a few fortuitous gaps in the walls revealed the wrought-iron finial of the birdcage arbor. The dome-shaped finial was almost as elaborate as the arbor itself. It looked like a smaller birdcage set atop a much larger one, and it, too, was liberally embellished with decorative ironwork. She could see the roof of the chapel as well, pointing like the prow of a ship over the vast sweep of the Channel, where a bank of dark clouds was blowing in from the west, filling the air with the scent of rain.

  Emma leaned on the balustrade and sighed. She didn’t know what to make of Penford Hall. The chapel, the castle, the wonderful arbor, even the odd, stiff collar worn by the storklike head butler, all hailed from an earlier era. Yet every time she turned around she saw evidence that the twentieth century was alive and well at Penford Hall—Hallard’s laptop computer, Newland’s hip-slung radio, Gash’s pocket telephone. Emma felt as though she stood with a foot in two worlds, and knew that she didn’t belong in either.

  She certainly didn’t belong in such a lovely room. The rose suite was aptly named. The nightstand, the four-poster, and the writing desk, adorned with a discreet burgundy telephone and a jeweled enameled clock, were made of rosewood. The creamy walls were hung with framed botanical illustrations, hand-colored woodcuts depicting roses from bud to blossom. The quilted satin coverlet on the four-poster was embroidered with a sprinkle of crimson rosebuds, and the pair of plump chairs before the tiled fireplace were upholstered in a pattern of blowsy grandifloras.

  A dressing room and bathroom adjoined the bedroom. Emma’s skirts had been hung in the wardrobe; her sweaters placed in the cedar-lined drawers of the dresser. Her plastic comb and brush had been carefully arranged beside a silver-backed brush and a tortoiseshell comb on the skirted dressing table. Her travel bottles of shampoo and hair conditioner had been set within reach of a deep tub boxed round with mahogany.

  Closing the balcony door against the freshening breeze, Emma looked at the beautiful bedroom, and groaned. Clearly, an error—a whole string of errors—had been made. The duke had misread the Pyms’ message, misunderstood the reason for her visit, and mistaken her for someone else. If he hadn’t hurried her so, she’d have explained that she hadn’t been sent by his aunt to restore the chapel garden.

  Not that she didn’t want to. The pleasure of touring a garden couldn’t compare with the joys of creating one. It was an impossible task, of course. Even a professional gardener would need more than three months to bring the chapel garden back to life again, regardless of the high-tech gardening gadgetry the duke might see fit to supply. Still, she thought wistfully, it would have been an unforgettable three months.

  Her reflections were interrupted by a knock at the door, followed closely by the entrance of a petite blond teenager who was, unmistakably, the maid. Her starched white apron, dove-gray uniform, and white cap, with its ribbons and lace, looked as though they’d been borrowed from the BBC’s costume department, and her curtsy was equally anachronistic. Emma’s thoughts swerved from space-age gadgets to Edwardian manners, and once more she had the jangled sensation of coming slightly unstuck in time.

  “I’m Mattie, miss, Crowley’s granddaughter,” the maid announced shyly. Mattie showed Emma a luxuriant blue terry-cloth robe in the wardrobe, then went soberly about her tasks, drawing a bath, closing the drapes, and laying a fire, while Emma changed out of her soiled skirt.

  Mattie came to life only once, when Emma asked for her advice on what to wear for supper. After surveying Emma’s limited wardrobe gravely, she selected the one nice dress Emma had packed, a calf-length jersey in teal, with long sleeves and a cowl neck. As she laid it out on the bed, Mattie turned the hem up to examine the stitching.

  “Quality fabric, this,” she murmured, and Emma, hoping to put the girl at ease, asked if she was interested in clothing.

  “I love designing things,” Mattie replied. “When I found out I was coming here to work with Nanny Cole, I made this.” With quiet pride, she raised a hand to the ribbons of her extraordinary cap.

  “It’s very becoming,” Emma said diplomatically. “It must be exciting for you to have Ashers staying at Penford Hall.”

  Mattie’s face lit up. “Oh, yes, miss. Have you seen her? Isn’t she lovely?” Her pretty smile dimmed for a moment as she added confidentially, “Mind you, Granddad and the others don’t care for her. Well, she’s always going on about that old business—”

  “What old business is that?” Emma asked, walking over to warm her hands at the fire.

  Mattie’s eyes shifted to the hall door. “That awful singer and his band,” she replied shortly. “No one wants to hear about him anymore, not after all the trouble he caused.” The girl gathered up Emma’s corduroy skirt and moved to the door, where she paused, with one hand on the porcelain knob. “I don’t mind so much. Ashers isn’t like you and me, miss. She’s got what you’d call an artistic temperament. Besides, she’s promised to have a look at my sketches.” Mattie’s radiant smile returned. “Can you imagine, miss? It’s a dream come—” Mattie jumped guiltily as a knock sounded at the door.

  “Mattie? Is that you?” called a woman’s voice. “Be a dear and open up, will you? My hands are full.”

  After smoothing her apron and straightening her cap, Mattie opened the door to a dark-haired woman whose arms were wrapped awkwardly around what appeared to be a portable drafting table. A T square and a clear plastic box filled with drawing supplies were propped precariously under her chin.

  “Give us a hand, Mattie,” the raven-haired woman managed. She was in her late twenties, fine-boned and fair-skinned, wearing a hand-knit crewneck sweater over a well-cut pair of pleated wool trousers. When she and Mattie had finished setting up the table, she sent Mattie on her way, then turned to regard Emma with a pleasant, level-headed gaze. “The drafting table’s just for midnight insights,” she explained. “For the real work, you’ll have the library and whichever drawing room suits you.” She paused before adding carefully, “I do hope Mattie hasn’t been boring you about our visiting celebrity. Did I hear something about an artistic temperament?”

  “A word or two,” Emma admitted.

  “Well, Susannah does have a temperament, but I’m not sure I’d describe it as artistic. And then there’s Syd.”

  “Syd?” Emma asked.

  “Syd Bishop, Susannah’s manager. You’ll meet him at supper. He’s an American, too, from Brooklyn, and he’s ... unique. At least, one hopes he is.” Extending her hand, the woman crossed over to Emma. “Hello. I’m Kate Cole, Grayson’s housekeeper. Sorry I couldn’t come down to greet you earlier, but Mattie and I were up here, getting your room ready. Is it all right?”

  “It’s great, but ...” Emma glanced at the drafting table, then plunged ahead, eager to unburden herself. “But I’m not sure I should be in it.” She gestured toward the armchairs. “Can we talk for a minute, Kate? I’m afraid there’s been some sort of a mix-up.”

  Kate sighed. “There usually is, when Grayson gets one of his brilliant ideas.” As they settled into the overstuffed chairs, she went on sympathetically, “I imagine Grayson’s rushed you off your feet without bothering to mention silly things like salaries and contracts and—”

  “It’s not that,” Emma said hastily. “I’d work on the chapel garden for free, if I thought I could do the job, but, frankly, I don’t think I can. I’m not a landscape designer, Kate. I’m just an ordinary backyard gardener.”

  Kate’s brow furrowed. “But the Pyms sent you, didn’t they?”

  Emma explained patiently that she hardly knew the Pyms. “I only met them the day before yesterday. We spent the afternoon at Bransley Manor, gossiping about gardens.”

  “Ah,” said Kate, relaxing. “That would explain it. They’ve known for months that Grayson’s been searching for someone to work on Grandmother’s garden. As for your
qualifications ...” Tilting her head to one side, she asked, “Did you talk for a long time with Ruth and Louise? Did they ask you a lot of questions?”

  Emma pursed her lips thoughtfully. Even at the time, she’d thought her conversation with the Pyms curiously one-sided. Replaying it in her mind, she realized that it had been a fairly thorough interrogation. She raised a hand to her glasses and asked doubtfully, “Are you telling me that my conversation with the Pyms was a ... a job interview?”

  Kate grinned. “I know how odd it must sound, but it’s exactly the sort of thing they’d do: select an out-of-the-way place like Bransley—the kind of place only a certain type of gardening enthusiast would visit—where they could lie in wait for a likely candidate, then run her through her paces.”

  Emma’s sidelong glance still expressed doubt, so Kate tried another tack. “What line of work are you in?” she asked.

  “I’m a project manager at CompuTech Corporation, in Boston,” Emma replied. “I work with computers.”

  “All right, then, who’s the most brilliant computer scientist in Boston?”

  “Professor Layton, at MIT,” Emma replied without hesitation. “He taught me everything I know, at any rate.”

  Kate gave her a quizzical look. “If Professor Layton at MIT recommended someone for a job at your company, you’d hire that person, wouldn’t you?” Smiling reassuringly, she went on. “Ruth and Louise may not be professionals, like your Professor Layton, but they’ve been gardening since before you and I were born. I think we can trust their judgment.”

  Emma took a deep breath, then let it out slowly before speaking. She was accustomed to thinking in straight lines. If you needed a gardener, you looked in the phone book. You didn’t sit in the middle of a hedge maze, waiting for the right one to come along. And you certainly didn’t hire someone selected by such a random process. Did you?

  Perhaps you did, at Penford Hall, where no one seemed to think in straight lines. The gatekeeper thought he was Che Guevara, the footman thought he was Dickens, the maid thought she was the next Chanel, and the duke seemed to think he was Father Christmas, showering the villagers with new roads and flying doctors, his servants with laptops and cellular phones. Emma’s own way of thinking was beginning to bend under the influence. For a moment there in the garden, she’d thought she was Marilyn Monroe, ready to do battle with the delectable Ashers for the blue-eyed Derek of her dreams. She might as well pretend to be Gertrude Jekyll for the summer. Who would notice?

  I would, thought Emma, sheepishly. I’m no more a femme fatale than I am a long-dead gardening genius, and I can’t work in the chapel garden as an impostor. If I stay on at Penford Hall, she decided, it won’t be under false pretenses. She vowed silently to tell the duke the truth about herself at the earliest opportunity.

  “Oh, and one other thing,” Kate added, as Emma walked her to the door. “Mattie’s only been here for a few months and, unlike her grandfather, she can be a bit overdramatic about Penford Hall’s ... colorful past. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what she says about that pop singer, if I were you.”

  Emma’s understanding smile faded as soon as Kate had left the room. Great, she thought. Here I am, without a car, in a Gothic heap full of loonies, being warned off the subject of Lex Rex. What have the Pyms gotten me into?

  Thanks to Crowley, who’d knocked on her door at precisely eight-twenty, Emma arrived in the library as the case clock in the comer chimed the half hour. She was relieved to see that she was neither the first nor the last to arrive. The duke was nowhere in sight, but Susannah had Derek pinned in a bay window beside a tall and quite beautiful harp, where she was lecturing him on—God help us, thought Emma—spirituality and good nutrition.

  Derek had exchanged his worn jeans and blue pullover for an open-necked shirt and corduroys, and replaced his workboots with a pair of tired loafers. He seemed unable to tear his gaze from Susannah, who was wearing something black, strapless, and ankle-length that clung like paint to the places where most women had curves. Her makeup was flawless, her sleek blond hair pulled into a chignon at the nape of her spindly neck, and diamond studs glittered from her delicate earlobes. Neither she nor Derek seemed to notice Emma’s arrival.

  Her entrance didn’t go entirely unremarked, however. Crowley had barely ushered Emma into the room when a shout rang out. “Hey! You the gal with the green thumb we been hearin’ so much about? Syd Bishop’s the name. Suzie’s manager. What’re you drinkin’?”

  Syd Bishop was a paunchy American in his mid-sixties, with faded red hair plastered in long strands across his freckled scalp. His accent reeked of Brooklyn, and his voice was so loud that it almost drowned out the rumble of thunder as the first rush of rain spattered the windows. Syd’s tuxedo was black—Emma gave him credit for that much good sense—but the crimson trim on the wide lapels didn’t quite match the vermillion bow tie and cummerbund, or the pink-edged ruffles on the front of his white shirt.

  Syd sat next to Kate Cole on a burgundy brocade couch. Kate’s wine-colored velvet gown had a tight-fitting bodice and a flowing skirt, a high collar and long sleeves. Syd Bishop looked as out of place beside her as a plastic gnome in the Chelsea Flower Show.

  “I’ll have a sherry, thank you,” Emma replied.

  Syd snapped his fingers at the bespectacled footman, who stood to one side, near the drinks cabinet. “Hallard, my man, a sherry for the lady.”

  Emma crossed the room to sit in one of a cluster of leather armchairs facing the sofa. She tried not to gawk at Syd, but she must have failed, because, the moment she sat down, he let loose a loud guffaw.

  “I know,” he said, with a self-deprecating grin. “Hey, a big-time operator like me, I should know what’s what in fashion, right? Wrong. Me, I’m a nice boy from Brooklyn. What I know is business. So I leave the glamour to Suzie and she leaves the bottom line to me. It works. You met Kate Cole yet?” He winked at Kate. “She’s the duke’s generalissimo. Great gal. If she had six inches more leg, she coulda been a contender.”

  Midway through Syd’s speech, Hallard had come to stand beside Emma’s chair, carrying a glass of sherry on a silver tray. He remained there, staring myopically at Syd, long after Syd had fallen silent.

  “Hallard,” Kate Cole said softly.

  “Mmmm?” Hallard replied in a faraway voice.

  “I believe Miss Porter would like her drink now.”

  “Ah.” Hallard looked down at the tray, as though surprised to find it in his possession, then bent to offer the sherry to Emma. He retreated to his place at the drinks cabinet, blinking slowly and murmuring to himself, “... coulda been a contendah, coulda been a contendah ...”

  “What that guy needs is a long vacation,” Syd muttered.

  “Kate,” Emma said, “I meant to ask you earlier—Mattie mentioned that she was working with a Nanny Cole. Are you related?”

  There was a snort from across the room as Susannah glanced in Kate’s direction. Kate colored, but replied calmly, “Nanny Cole is my mother. She’s been at Penford Hall most of her life. I suppose you could say that Grayson and I grew up together.”

  Again, Susannah interrupted her monologue with Derek. “Weren’t you and your dear mother sent into exile, darling?”

  Kate’s lips tightened. “We lived in Bournemouth for a short time,” she acknowledged.

  “Ten years seems on the long side to me,” Susannah commented, and this time Kate bridled.

  Emma spoke up quickly, hoping to defuse a potential argument. “Penford Hall must have been a wonderful place to grow up in.”

  “You said a mouthful, little lady,” said Syd. “I was just tellin’ Kate, a classy joint like this’ud make a helluva set for a shoot. Whaddya think?”

  Emma let her gaze travel slowly around the dark-paneled, high-ceilinged library. A thick Persian carpet covered the floor, and a pair of Chinese vases flanked the marble fireplace, where a fire blazed. Above the mantelpiece hung a portrait of an imperious, white-haired woman in
a floor-length silver gown. Adorned with square-cut emeralds, she was seated beside a harp very like the one in the corner.

  A mahogany staircase led to a broad gallery that ran the length of one wall. Arched floor-to-ceiling windows pierced the gallery’s walls, and the glass-enclosed shelves on both levels held thousands of volumes. Here and there, a book’s title, inscribed in gold leaf on a dark leather binding, gleamed in the firelight.

  “So? Whaddya think? Am I right or am I right?”

  Before Emma could answer, the hall door flew open and the duke rushed in. “Sorry, all,” he said breezily. “Beastly rude of me to totter in so late, do forgive me. Will you listen to that downpour? Makes one glad to be indoors, what? Syd, how kind of you to dress for dinner.” The duke, Emma noted, was wearing a tasteful but decidedly informal pair of flannel trousers and a fawn-colored cashmere turtleneck. “Emma, you are a vision in blue, and your hair! Your hair is like a soft mist rolling in off the sea.” Gesturing toward the portrait over the mantelpiece, he added, “My grandmother. As you can see, her interests were musical as well as horticultural. She played the harp beautifully.”

  Syd’s voice rang out. “Those are some emeralds your grandma’s got on.”

  “Her wedding jewels,” the duke explained. “My grandfather had a great fondness for emeralds.” He turned to the bay windows. “Susannah, you look ravishing. And treating Derek to a talk about—which diet deity is it this week? Never mind, I’m sure it’s a jolly fascinating one. Dreadfully sorry to interrupt the fun, but a higher power has informed me that our presence is required in the dining room.”