He looked cold, his fine-textured skin reddened by his exertions in the stables as well as by a biting wind which had driven away the sleet and replaced it with snow. His hair was covered as though by a lace cap and his eyes sparkled in the candlelight.
“I hear we are to dine with the Earl and his party,” he said.
“Yes. Where have you been given a bed?” Cecilia asked, refusing to express pleasure at the thought of their dinner companions and instead focussing on practical matters. She had learned over the years what a disappointing mistress hope could be and had done her best to cast it from her.
“Indoors – thank God! I was afraid at first that I might be expected to sleep in the stables, but a place has been found for me with the waiters, on the floor it is true, but I am so glad not to be forced outside that it seems almost luxurious. There are only two beds here,” he added, looking round. “I suppose you will be obliged to take the floor too, Cissy!”
“Yes, but I am quite accustomed to it. You had best make haste to change if we are not to keep the noble party waiting.”
With a cynical smile Endymion went out, promising to be quick. “After all,” he pointed out, “it is not as though I have a vast wardrobe to choose from.”
It was less than half an hour later that he arrived in the small saloon. His mother and elder sister were assiduously mending sheets by the rather inadequate light of two candles. They sat close together on a threadbare sofa, their heads bent, partly in concentration, partly because it was difficult to see with so little illumination. Phyllis was sitting on the window seat, wrapped in the Norwich shawl, and gazing out of the window at the falling snow.
“You’ll damage your eyes if you work with so little light,” Endymion chided, adding the meagre flame of his candle to the circle of light in which his mother and sister were working.
“I hope we won’t be obliged to do this kind of thing much longer,” Mrs Moss said.
“I think you should look for a proper job when we reach Geneva,” he said. “Surely a fashion house would take you both on.”
Mrs Moss had been employed by a well-known designer of gowns for the fashionable in her youth, before she married, and was an accomplished seamstress. Cecilia had never taken paid employment, her mother considering such a career beneath a daughter who had, until the disaster, been well on the way to becoming the sort of lady who might have bought such gowns. She had had high hopes of her lovely eldest daughter and had been looking around for a suitable husband from amongst the highest ranks of the Quality, even the nobility, when catastrophe had struck and her hopes been dashed.
It was perhaps this disappointment which had fuelled the matriarch’s determination to find a gentleman – for he must at the very least be a member of the Quality – to take her youngest child off her hands. It would of course be wonderful if he married her but, in view of how deep their reverse of fortune was proving, she was prepared to settle for a liaison. The fact that Cecilia disapproved of such an ambition was a source of continuing disagreement between the two.
“I cannot expect a gentleman to wish to ally himself to a family headed by a seamstress,” she reminded her son.
“Is that why you will not seek employment?” Endymion asked, frowning.
“Yes, of course. For myself, I would be perfectly prepared to return to my girlish status, but I am convinced it would harm Phyllis’s choices. Once she is off my hands, we will all set to and find jobs.”
“I see. What did you have in mind for Cissy?”
“She can earn a living the same way; she has some talent for setting stitches and could soon be taught how to cut and so on. Or, she could probably find a position as a dresser for she is skilled at arranging hair.”
“And what for me?” he asked, directing a pitying look at his elder sister.
“I still think you should look for an heiress. You’re handsome enough. You could try for Lord Waldron’s cousin – she looked quite smitten.”
“So I could!” he exclaimed quite as though he had not thought of it for himself. “Do you not think I have not tried to attach one?”
“Well, if you have, you have not been successful and should try harder. I wish you would set your mind to it, Endymion. You could help us all if only you would give up the gaming and look to the future.”
“Are you convinced that Miss Lenham is an heiress?” he asked. “I would not like to waste my time in trying to attach her if, in point of fact, she is herself on the look-out for a fortune.”
“I’m sure I don’t know why you can’t do a bit of work yourself,” his mother exclaimed, growing quite irritated. “Do you expect me to ascertain her situation? I should have thought that was your job.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he agreed, yawning. He looked at his elder sister. “What do you think, Cissy?”
“Of course it’s your job,” she said unhesitatingly. “Mama has quite enough to do keeping an eye on Phyllis.”
“She doesn’t though, does she – keep an eye on her? At least she watches her for a completely different purpose than you and I do. Her eye roves in every direction in search of a well-shod man. But I didn’t mean that: I meant, what do you think of Miss Lenham?” Mr Moss had lowered his voice so that neither his mother nor his younger sister could hear much of what he said.
“I have not seen enough of her to make a judgement but will tell you at the end of the evening. It’s my belief she has been thrown in her wealthy cousin’s way in the hope that he may be persuaded to offer for her, but I don’t think he will – and I don’t even think she would want him to.”
“She cannot want to spend the rest of her life being dragged round Europe by her guard dog!” he said.
“No; I’m persuaded that’s unlikely – she will be taken home at some point and another suitor sought. But, if you’re thinking she might turn out to be an heiress, I would advise you to have a care. It’s far more likely that her parents want to get their hands on Waldron’s money than that they are wanting to hand hers to him.”
He smiled. “So it’s your belief that our only hope is to focus upon him? The next question is whether he is likely to prefer you or Phyllis.”
“I’m too old.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll eat my hat if she’s the sort of female he wants. I suppose, if he found her in his bed, he might not kick her out, but I cannot conceive it likely that he would invite her back, even once, and that’s no use to us. As for marriage? My lord of Waldron make our little Phylly a countess? I don’t think so, do you?”
“No. But I don’t think he’ll make me one either. He’s clearly a man of the world so that I don’t think even our best efforts are likely to hoodwink him. Give up, Dym, and let’s enjoy an evening pretending to be Quality!”
“Shall we – pretend to be Quality? The thing is, you and I can do it with ease but Mama and Phylly cannot.”
“Phylly can’t pretend to be anything,” she said quietly, “and the sort of person she is has little to do with whether she’s Quality or not. You know, I’ve come to the conclusion she’s like a sort of bellwether – the way men treat her gives as clear an indication as any of their character.”
Meanwhile Helen and her chaperone were also engaged in preparing for dinner.
They were sharing a maid for the duration of their travels in order for there not to be too many people to transport and accommodate, often at quite small hostelries. The fact that Miss Godmanton did not – had indeed never - employed a dresser herself did not prevent her from making use of Helen’s during this trip. It was one of the perks of the job and the older woman, striving to forget her own straitened circumstances, had grown accustomed to having someone to button up her dreary, ill-fitting dresses and arrange her coarse grey hair.
On this occasion it had been agreed that Hannah should see to the older lady first so that, when Helen went upstairs, she was obliged to kick her heels for another half hour before the maid became free to attend to her.
She passed the
time in fingering the silk dress which Hannah had already laid out on the bed and comparing it to others in her wardrobe which might be more flattering. It had tiny puffed sleeves so that Helen, who was already shivering in her woollen day gown, was afraid that, pretty and figure-enhancing as the silk was, it would lead to her arms being disfigured by horripilation.
She sat down beside the fire, hoping to warm herself up before she was obliged to take off the merino but soon realised that sitting practically amongst the coals would not do her complexion a great deal of good. She wished they had not come to this part of the world at this time of year for really it was exceedingly uncomfortable even if the snow-covered ravines were pretty.
By the time Hannah joined her, she had decided to wear a different dress – a blue crepe – which, she thought, went better with her Norwich shawl, without which she really could not contemplate passing the evening.
Hannah did not argue with her young mistress and obediently dressed her in the blue, wrapped the shawl around her shoulders and attended to her hair. Helen had conceived a burning dislike of her hair, considering both its colour and insubstantiality pitiful for, although there was a good deal of it – unbound, it fell below her waist – it never looked abundant when pinned up.
“There, Miss, you look lovely,” Hannah said, when she had done what she could.
“I do not,” Helen contradicted at once.
“You do, Miss! I know you don’t care for your own looks and always compare yourself unfavourably to your cousin, but you’re like a fairy creature!”
“I don’t want to be a fairy creature,” Helen contradicted. “I would prefer to look like a woman.”
“You received a lot of admiration further south,” Hannah reminded her. “I don’t think Il Marquese mistook you for a fairy!”
“No,” Helen agreed. “He mistook me for a child.”
“Oh no, Miss!”
“Oh, yes, Hannah. He infinitely prefers children to women.”
“Did he not ask for your hand in marriage?”
“Yes, he did because, although he prefers infants, even he, with all his money and influence, is not permitted to marry one. I am probably the nearest thing he could hope to find.”
“Oh, Miss! That girl in the other party, she’s not much more than a child.”
“Miss Phyllis? No, she isn’t but it’s my belief that her childishness resides in her brain more than her years; she has an infantile expression. She looks like a woman but thinks like a child. That’s her tragedy; mine is the reverse. Never mind, Hannah, you’ve done my hair very well,” she finished, seeing the maid’s bewildered expression and thinking that, although she, as a noblewoman, had been protected all her life from the more unpleasant aspects of male behaviour, she still seemed more knowledgeable about it than her maid, a young woman who had grown up on a farm. But then, she supposed, animals were much simpler in their requirements of the opposite sex – and perhaps maids were too. It took, she was beginning to suspect, a bored aristocrat to conceive peculiar – and quite unpleasant, if the truth be told – attitudes to what animals viewed in a perfectly straightforward way.
“You could always pad your bodice,” Hannah offered, betraying a rather better understanding of her mistress’s problems than she had previously demonstrated.
Helen pulled a face. “Do you think I should?”
“It wouldn’t do any harm,” Hannah said, rummaging amongst her mistress’s effects for a handful of handkerchiefs, which she proffered with a wicked smile.
“My cousin will think I have taken leave of my senses,” Helen complained, “or else suspect I am suffering from some horrid disease!”
“He may not notice,” Hannah suggested diffidently.
Helen laughed rather bitterly. “No, you are right. He does not look at that part of me, does he? But what about the old stick? She’ll notice.”
“She won’t dare say anything in front of him, though,” Hannah pointed out, “for fear that he’ll laugh at her.”
While she was speaking, Helen had begun to push the handkerchiefs into her bosom. They didn’t seem to make much difference and the increased bulge was not only uneven but more angular than curved.
Hannah proffered some stockings. “These will work better,” she said, beginning to giggle.
By the time the pair had finished improving Helen’s figure, she did present a more curvaceous appearance, although it was impossible to achieve the right sort of bulge of flesh above the low-cut bodice.
“No, I look a fool,” she exclaimed, removing all the padding. “And, in any event, who is going to notice except the old stick and what good would it do if anyone did?”
“I suppose you mean that young man?” the maid said and saw her mistress turn a fiery red.
“I’m sure he won’t; he’s so handsome he must have the pick of the most ravishing females; even with a bigger bosom, I don’t suppose he’d think much of me.”
Hannah said, “Don’t you be falling for him, Miss; he’s been helping out in the stables. They ain’t got a penny piece between ‘em, that lot.”
Helen raised her eyebrows. “Indeed? And what have the females been doing?”
“Don’t ask me!” Hannah responded, “for I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew. You’re too young to know anything about that sort of thing!”
Helen and Hannah were in fact much of an age and Hannah had already demonstrated a degree of innocence which had surprised Helen, but she did not argue for she was aware that she had already discussed things with her maid that neither she nor the girl should know and which Lady Charles, Helen’s mother, would be horrified to think her daughter knew.
She wrapped the Norwich shawl around her shoulders, dismissed Hannah and went downstairs.
She found Miss Godmanton sitting in the chair beside the fire which she seemed to have made her own. There was no sign of her cousin or of the Moss family. The older woman was dressed in another of her interchangeable rusty black dresses, this one revealing an expanse of ageing bosom which she no doubt thought proper for evening wear.
“There seems to be quite a lot of snow,” she observed as her charge approached.
“So much that we will be unable to leave in the morning, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t presume to guess how bad the roads need to be in this benighted part of the world to keep people off them,” Miss Godmanton said, “but I own I am not eager to set off in such weather.”
“Perhaps it will have stopped by tomorrow. I suppose we cannot stay here for ever.”
“Good God, I should hope not! Whatever would we find to do? Very likely it won’t stop snowing for three months or more.”
“I don’t think Horatio would have brought us up here if he’d thought that likely,” Helen said.
“It may have been your mother’s idea.”
Helen laughed. “You mean so that we’d be stuck here with him for so long that he’d feel bound to marry me in the end? I don’t think Mama can control him to that extent – and certainly not from hundreds of miles away.”
The Earl came in while she was laughing and, looking surprised to find his cousin in such an unusually light mood, enquired the reason.
“Miss Godmanton seemed to think Mama had arranged for us to be snowed in here for months.”
“Arranged with whom – or what? Did she perhaps intercede with the Almighty to send a snowstorm – and why would she seek such intervention?”
“To throw us together.”
“Ah! Well, I do not believe you have anything to worry about. It is snowing now, but it often does at night and will very likely have stopped by the morning. The coachman has brought chains for the wheels so that I don’t think we’ll be obliged to settle in here for the duration of winter. Would you like it if we did?”
“I can conceive of little I would like less.”
“Thank you,” he replied ironically. “How fortunate that the other family is here for, without them, the next three months would certain
ly drag a trifle. Ah, here they are!”
There was something of a commotion outside, the door was flung open and Ernesto ushered the Mosses in.
They were, Helen thought, an exceptionally handsome family. Mrs Moss was clad in a green resembling her name, a colour that, in the yardage required to clothe her, was a little strong on the eye, the elder daughter was in pale blue – and looked both beautiful and modest – and the younger was in cream. Young Mr Moss wore well-fitting black evening breeches set off by a deliciously pink coat, the colour of crushed raspberries. It almost made the mouth water to look at it – and him.
Chapter 6
Lord Waldron settled Mrs Moss in his own chair beside the fire, directly opposite Miss Godmanton, whose tight-lipped rictus would have made a slap in the face seem friendly. A discussion of the weather was the innocuous topic with which this ill-assorted set of persons began, but a careful observer would not have missed the many indications of character revealed even by this commonplace subject.
Lord Waldron appeared sanguine about the chances of leaving the hostelry on the morrow, insisting that a fall of snow at this time of year was neither unusual nor necessarily the harbinger of such a quantity of the stuff arriving during the night that they would be stuck there for the rest of the winter. In short, he took a pragmatic view of the situation and attempted to reassure the more anxious amongst the group that nothing untoward would befall them.
Miss Godmanton had nothing good to say about snow and refused to be soothed by the Earl’s air of gentle authority. She appeared to be indifferent to the veil of beauty which had been cast over the landscape and, having a tendency to look at everything in the worst possible light, took a sort of black delight in predicting their being stuck in this not particularly comfortable inn, almost at the edge of the world, in the company of a set of vulgar persons to whom she would not, in the normal course of events, have wished to give the time of day. She did not, of course, say as much but nevertheless had little difficulty in conveying her feelings on the matter to everyone except Phyllis, whose attitude to life and other people was almost diametrically opposed to Miss Godmanton’s.
Cecilia Or Flight From A Shadow Page 5