Should she reply? And, if she did, how in the world was she to convey the message to him for she did not trust the maid to keep a still tongue in her head; she would be bound to tell the other maids and then she would be a laughing stock in no time – if she was not already – simply for trying to soothe the wounded feelings of a teacher.
As she thought of this, there was a knock upon the door. Susan folded the letter hastily and pushed it into a drawer in her dressing table before responding.
It was the maid, who led a retinue of servants carrying the bath and several jugs of hot water. When the receptacle had been filled and the temperature of the water checked, Susan suffered the maid to remove her riding habit before dismissing her.
“Thank you. You need not wait,” she said. It was usual for a servant to assist the bather by pouring jugs of hot water over her from above, but Susan had a strong desire, not only to be alone but also to be free of the maid’s judgmental stares. She waited until the woman had left before removing her stockings and chemise and climbing into the bath. She washed vigorously, hoping, as she did so, that she was expunging some of the afternoon’s humiliations but her mind kept returning anxiously to Signor Pontielli’s letter and her uncertainty as to whether she should reply or not – and, if she did, what she would say.
She was no nearer a conclusion to this dilemma by the time she climbed out of the bath and dried herself, only sending for Meg again when it was time to do her hair.
Since at least half an hour had passed since she had parted from her mother, it was now too late to pen any sort of a reply to the music master; the matter must wait until the morrow when she would no doubt see him in the music room.
As luck would have it, she encountered him much sooner than that. As she reached the bottom of the stairs he appeared from a door on the other side. As a servant – even a superior one - he was not permitted to use the same stairs as she, but, in order to reach the music room, must nevertheless cross the hall from the backstairs. He had his hand on the door to the music room as she appeared and turned, alerted no doubt by the sound of a footstep.
On seeing who it was, he hurried forward, bowing. “Miss Porter, I am so glad to have seen you.”
“Signor Pontielli,” she returned, wondering whether he was going to mention his letter or the subject which had prompted him to write it.
She did not have to wait long, possibly because he knew that he would have only a few moments in which to speak while she crossed the hall. “Did Meg give you my letter?”
“Yes. I am sorry if there has been a misunderstanding. I was unaware that we had made any arrangement to repeat the lesson in the wood.”
“No, you are no doubt in the right of it and I was in error to think that you would go there this afternoon. It may be that, wishing to repeat the exercise, I convinced myself that we had indeed arranged something; I was not certain but went there in the hope that you might come. I did not mean to importune you.”
“Oh, you did not, you have not. But I own to feeling a little chastised by your accusing me of letting you down.”
“I am sorry. Chastising you was the last thing on my mind.”
“Indeed? You must be the only member of the household whose mind is entirely free of such a burden,” she muttered.
“Have you been in trouble?” he asked quickly, a look of sympathy softening his dark eyes.
“Yes,” she said, her voice trembling. “I did not conduct myself well this afternoon. I ate too much cake,” she added naïvely when he raised an interrogative eyebrow.
To her surprise, he burst out laughing. “Too much cake?” he repeated. “How can that be cause for chastisement?”
“Oh, easily. Ladies are not expected to eat a great deal – at least not in company and not when they are already oversized,” she replied, smiling in answer to his laughter.
“Well, I like a woman to display a proper appetite,” he declared.
Susan flushed.
“Will you, do you think, be free tomorrow afternoon for a singing lesson in the wood?” he asked, wisely abandoning the subject of female appetites.
“Yes, so far as I am aware there is nothing planned for tomorrow afternoon, but nor was there earlier today. It was, so far as I can tell, a spur of the moment decision by his lordship to ride to Sir Adrian’s this afternoon.”
“Then I shall live in hope,” Signor Pontielli said with a degree of fervour which Susan found a little unnerving.
The sound of a door closing upstairs and a footstep on the stairs made her look up nervously. Her mother had begun the descent. She stepped back, colour flooding her cheeks as though in speaking to her music master she had been doing something wrong.
He smiled in a way which made her feel she was not alone in that thought and, opening the door behind him, stepped out of sight.
The next day’s lesson was once again attended by Mrs Porter. She watched the dancing – the form of which had been altered since the previous day – and pronounced the simplified steps to be a far better approach. Monsieur Lapideau seemed delighted with her praise and bowed and scraped until Susan thought even her mother must become irritated and that he would do himself an injury with all that bending and twisting. At last he came to the end of his obeisance and left the room.
Susan sat down at the pianoforte and ran through a great number of scales before the tutor reached for the music for the sonata which she had essayed the day before.
“Very good. Now I would like you to do a little more work on this, Signorina,” he said, propping it up on the stand.
Susan did as she was bid, aware of her mother in the background and of her tutor in the foreground. He sat beside her, encouraging and correcting until she began to feel something of the essence of the piece. The way he described it, the way he illustrated his points and his occasional playing of a phrase – leaning across to reach the keys in front of her – quite suddenly began to make sense. She found herself fired with enthusiasm and tried valiantly to follow his suggestions.
“That was an excellent attempt,” he said, when they came to the end. “Am I right in thinking that you are beginning to like the piece?”
“I did not dislike it yesterday but I do feel I am becoming more familiar with it and understand, perhaps a very little, what you have been trying to tell me.”
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “You are well on the way to becoming an excellent pianist.” He smiled at her. “I think that is enough for now; we must not overdo it.”
“Thank you,” she said, rising. She thought that, if they had not overdone the practice, he had certainly overdone the praise but assumed that was his usual method of teaching: to instil a sense of self-belief in the student.
“It is a pleasure to teach an apt pupil.”
“Pray do not exaggerate,” she said, beginning to feel uncomfortable at such an excess of what she firmly believed to be misplaced – if not outright false - enthusiasm. “Such excessive praise will puff me up, but I own to feeling a deal more confident. What did you think, Mama?”
“I think you did well, my dear.”
The morning having gone so well, praise having been heaped upon her by both her tutors within her mother’s hearing, Susan and her parent were able to sit down for nuncheon in almost perfect harmony. His lordship had gone out to see to certain matters on the estate and the two women were alone.
“I daresay there will be enough couples for dancing at his lordship’s dinner party next week,” Mrs Porter said. “So that you will be able to put into practice something of what Monsieur Lapideau has taught you in a simple country setting. I am persuaded that will make it easier for you in the spring when we go to London.”
“It will certainly make his instructions clearer,” Susan agreed. “It is all very well my learning the steps but I am afraid that, when there are other people present, I shall forget what I am supposed to be doing.”
“I do not suppose that you will,” Mrs Porter observed surprisin
gly, “for you have an excellent memory.”
Susan, afraid that so much praise might go to her head, was careful to eat sparingly of the cold meats and fruit which had been laid out for their nuncheon. She remembered only too well her embarrassing gaffe the previous afternoon. Unfortunately, this laudable restraint did not meet with her mother’s approval.
“I would advise you to have another slice of ham. Your habit of eating little at nuncheon is precisely what leads you to indulge in cake to such excess later in the day.”
“Yes, Mama,” Susan said, obediently placing another slice of ham upon her plate. “But there will not be any cakes this afternoon, will there?”
“I hope not,” Mrs Porter said fervently. “Sir Adrian was in a fair way to finding you interesting – I will not go so far as to suggest he might have been in the process of forming an attachment - until you made such a cake of yourself.”
Susan did not suppose that this curiously light-hearted manner of referring to her conduct was intended to be humorous so she did not smile but replied, “I think it would be peculiar if he had found me interesting within half an hour of meeting me. Why in the world would he? We barely exchanged two words and I am well aware that I am no beauty. Indeed, I know that I have nothing but my fortune to recommend me and he may not even be aware of that.”
“If he is on the look-out for one, you may be sure he is. You might be surprised by how quickly news of that sort travels. Men in need of a fortune smell one out quite as quickly as a dog smells a fox. No, I think he admired your seat upon a horse.”
“Truly? Is that all it takes?” Susan asked, suddenly animated. She knew that she rode well and looked her best in the saddle but was sadly aware that her behaviour in the drawing room – and yesterday on the terrace - left much to be desired and that, in the spring, when she made her come-out, it was in the drawing room (and the ballroom) where she would be judged.
“Yes; he struck me as a man steeped in country mud: the type who admires a good seat upon a horse much more than a graceful demeanour in the drawing room. I should think it unlikely he has much knowledge of or would display much prowess on the dance floor. We shall see next week - if his lordship suggests dancing after dinner.”
Mrs Porter was so gratified by her daughter’s demeanour during the morning – and perhaps so bored by having been obliged to watch her faltering steps in the dances, followed almost without pause by having to listen to the almost endless scales Signor Pontielli had demanded, culminating in tediously repeated phrases of a not particularly interesting sonata – that she made no demands on her daughter’s time during the afternoon.
This left Susan free to slip out of the house to meet Signor Pontielli in the wood for what she supposed would be a repeat of his peculiar notion of a singing lesson.
Chapter 16
Lady Leland, having issued invitations to her card party and outfitted her companion in what she considered a suitable manner, set about a variety of other tasks.
These consisted not only of deciding upon what should be served as a supper but also of making certain that she had sufficient packs of cards and counters. She sent Mary on a prolonged – and ultimately fruitless – search in all the bureaux, desks and chests with which the house was liberally furnished. Two packs of somewhat moth-eaten cards were discovered together with a small ivory box containing mother of pearl counters.
“Oh dear,” her ladyship said at the end of the morning when Mary, having opened every drawer in the house so far as she could tell, had begun to cough from the dust. “How fortunate that we checked beforehand; only conceive of the embarrassment if our guests had arrived to find that we had not enough cards – or indeed counters. You had better go back to the shops to buy some more.”
“Will not two packs be sufficient – one for loo and the other for piquet?”
“No, of course they will not. What if everybody wanted to play piquet? We should need at least four packs for that alone. And what, pray, would we use for counters? There are by no means enough; we may not be intending the stakes to be high but people must be given a fair number so that they have the illusion of winning or losing thousands. You must go into Tunbridge Wells this afternoon. If you cannot find anything suitable we shall be obliged to ask Lady Armitage if we can borrow what we need: she is bound to have plenty of packs of cards and counters. And if she does not, I daresay Marklye will be able to furnish us with what we require.”
“He has not been long in residence and does not have a family of his own; I should not imagine that several packs of cards and boxes of counters would be something he would have thought necessary.”
“He has guests staying with him; what do you suppose they do of an evening?”
“I have not thought about it,” Mary replied carelessly. “There are only three of them since Mr Porter left. I daresay they read their books or one of the ladies – or perhaps both – entertains him with a little music; one could play and the other sing.”
“They cannot do that all evening, every evening; unless they are gifted musicians I am persuaded his lordship would find it tedious – if not positively painful.”
“He should have thought of that before inviting such a very small party,” Mary replied tartly.
Her ladyship laughed. “No doubt he wished to spend a few weeks with his friend and thought he would be able to endure the presence of the wife and daughter. It is unfortunate that he has been left with the women when I daresay he wanted the man. I am looking forward to meeting them. You might find the girl agreeable company.”
“I doubt it for the simple reason that she is a girl and I am not. What in the world would we find to talk about?”
“I cannot begin to guess except that you are both unmarried and the same sex. It seems to me that, ever since his lordship visited us and you pricked yourself on the roses, you have taken against him. The day you met him you waxed almost rhapsodic about him. What did he do to incur your displeasure?”
“Pray do not pretend that you did not remark how excessively condescending he was. When I first encountered him, I was of course delighted to be rescued; who would not be? He seemed nothing short of a hero. But, on closer acquaintance, I find him overbearing.”
“You have grown accustomed to living without men in your life, my dear, and the arrival of one who is a noticeably masculine example of his sex has quite thrown you. I take it you prefer Sir Adrian’s nervous approach to Marklye’s more forceful one?”
“I do not care for either,” Mary replied with some acerbity. “Next you will be exhorting me to take an interest in John Armitage.”
“That I shall not,” her ladyship replied bluntly. “He is not a person for whom I would encourage you to form an attachment; he is an example of the very worst kind of man: addicted to gaming, drink and, I would guess, females with no reputation.”
“Am I not one of them?” Mary asked a little bitterly.
“No! That is all in the past and should remain decently buried.”
“Would you have me draw the wool over a respectable man’s eyes?” Mary asked. “It strikes me that John Armitage would be the very man for me.”
“You know that is far from the truth and – if you had thought that way before you met Marklye – I doubt you would have kept me company for the past ten years.”
“You know that I did not think that ten years ago. As a matter of fact, I do not believe I was capable of thinking at all; you thought for me and I shall always be grateful to you for your kindness. There is really no need to warn me against John Armitage – that sort of man holds no attraction for me unless, of course, it should turn out that he has been unjustly maligned. I am sorry that I do not find Sir Adrian appealing but I think he deserves better than me. As for Lord Marklye, I own I did find him stimulating when I first met him but my eyes have been opened since he entered your drawing room. Now I know that we would not suit at all.”
“Indeed. How fortunate that you came to this realisation in time for,
an I mistake not, he has already formed something of an attachment to you.”
“I daresay he thinks I belong to him since he rescued me: I owe him my life and he supposes that I should give it up to him forthwith. I consider that unwarranted arrogance.”
“You are merely unnerved by him and, to my mind, that is all to the good. Now, pray cease arguing with me and be off at once to find some cards and counters so that we may observe how lightly – or seriously – he takes to games of chance. I always think the way a man plays games is an excellent indicator of his character.”
But Mary did not reach Tunbridge Wells that afternoon because the vehicle had not gone more than a very few miles before it cast a wheel. She had declined her ladyship’s suggestion that she travel in the coach in which they had visited the town on their earlier outing as she had no wish to be conveyed in what she considered excessive style – with four horses pulling an admittedly old, but nevertheless grand, vehicle with the Dowager’s coat of arms emblazoned on the body. She had chosen instead to be carried in the gig, a light vehicle drawn by only one horse, which she had used before. She considered this more suitable for a companion which, in spite of her ladyship’s change of will and instatement of her as heiress to a substantial fortune, she still considered herself to be.
Mary Or The Perils 0f Imprudence Page 14