by Carla Kelly
Again the dowager fixed her with a formidable stare that, if Onyx had only known, Lady Bagshott used to employ to great advantage on her little brother Matthew.
“And I am to be the recipient of your tawdry adventures, girl? Is this how you would repay my condescension in allowing you here in the first place?”
“Oh, cut line, Lady Bagshott,” growled a voice from within the carriage.
Onyx could almost feel the blood from her face draining into her shoes. “Oh, no, Jack!” she squeaked, horrified. “Oh, please, madam, he did not mean it.”
“Yes, I did,” Major Beresford assured her. “Alice, quit gaping like a fish in a net and lend me a hand.”
Onyx watched in stunned silence, bereft of the power of speech, as the major hauled himself from the carriage and sat down quite suddenly on the coach step. He looked up at Lady Bagshott and smiled.
“Amanda Bagshott, how are you this evening? Blooming, as usual?”
The dowager stepped back another pace. She rummaged around in her reticule and took out a man's spectacles, which she propped on her nose. The officer and the dowager stared at one another as Onyx looked from one to the other, unable to take her eyes from them.
Amanda Bagshott's gaze wavered first. A little smile came to her lips but did not linger there long. A deep-throated sputter forced its way from between her lips. In someone else, Onyx would have thought such a sound to be the reminiscence of a recently eaten meal, a sound to be followed immediately by an apology. But the sound came again, and Onyx realized it was laughter.
And then the voice trumpeted forth again. “Jack Beresford! You are every bit the scapegrace and rakehell your father was before you!”
“You should know, Lady Bagshott,” he murmured. “We'll have time for more pleasantries in the morning, I am sure. Will you kindly do as this little lady here suggests and find me a bed before I collapse at your feet?”
“I recall your father doing that once!” Amanda boomed and uttered that peculiar laugh again. She clapped her hands, and two slightly younger menservants appeared. “Find this man a bed. Tell Mrs. Dowling to bring a warming pan. Lud, the night brings strange creatures to my house. Come, girl, don't just stand there with your mouth open!”
Wordlessly Onyx watched the servants help Jack to his feet and followed the dowager into the mansion. Onyx trailed after them up the stairs and stood in the hallway as the men undressed the major and put him to bed. When they were done, she went in.
Amanda Bagshott stood by the bed, looking down at the major. “Can I get you anything, Jack?” she asked, her voice no softer but muffled a bit by the hangings that drooped around the bed and over the windows like crepe in a funeral establishment.
“Just Onyx,” he said, starting to roll up his sleeve. Without a word to either of them, Onyx removed her pelisse and sat down on the bed. She pulled the sleeve up the rest of the way to Jack's shoulder and gently pulled back the bandage. In another moment there was a servant at her elbow with a tray of medicinal supplies. She took the scissors and snipped away the bandage. As Amanda Bagshott loomed over her, Onyx dabbed at the oozing cut.
Lady Bagshott's breath was hot on her neck as Onyx touched the skin and then sighed in exasperation. She picked up a pair of tweezers from the little tray, pressed down on the skin, and slowly extracted a bone fragment.
“I knew there was something rubbing on that bandage,” was all Jack said before he closed his eyes.
Onyx wrapped his arm again after spreading on a thin layer of the ointment Mrs. Millstead's doctor had concocted for her. She felt Jack's forehead. It was warm.
“I have fever powders, Miss Hamilton,” said Lady Bagshott. In deference to the sleeping man, she spoke in a whisper, but the tones rolled across the room like reverberations from the belfry of the York Minster.
“No,” Onyx said, “he will not need them.” She straightened up and regarded her hostess. “And if I may have the room next to this one, I will look in on him during the night.”
“Such a thing, of course, is highly irregular,” began Lady Bagshott.
“Yes, it is, isn't it?” broke in Onyx before Lady Bagshott had further opportunity to unburden herself. “I have been his nurse these past few days, and I know his needs.” She was almost unaware of it, but a certain militancy had crept into her voice. The sound of it caused Jack to open his eyes.
“I suggest you listen to the sergeant here, Lady Bagshott,” said Jack. “I always used to listen to mine.”
Lady Bagshott offered her odd laugh. “Very well, girl, for tonight,” she capitulated. “But in the morning, it is off to the vicarage with you.”
“That is all I ask,” Onyx replied. The quelling tones of Lady Bagshott's voice made the gooseflesh rise and march up and down her back, but she was not about to surrender Jack to someone who had no notion of his situation. She was tired; she wanted nothing more than to find a bed of her own. She started to follow Amanda Bagshott from the room.
Jack called her back. With his good hand he gestured to her to lean closer. Her ear was practically on his lips.
“I don't care, you know,” he said.
She drew back slightly. “Care about what, Major?”
“I don't care that you are not the first stare of fashion, Miss Hamilton,” he said, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Next to your Wedgwood eyes, I must admit … to dropping a glance now and then at your unfashionable bosom. But just now and then.”
“Jack!” she gasped. “What will you say next? No … don't answer. Just go to sleep.” She left the room hurriedly, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Lady Bagshott awaited her in the hall. She gestured toward the next room. “You will find this adequate.” She sniffed. “Probably nicer than anything Sir Matthew ever thought of. He has no notion of true splendor.”
Onyx put her hand on the doorknob. All she wanted was sleep, but she turned to address the dowager. “I was so afraid,” she confessed. “You see, I did not know how you would like the idea of a wounded man in your house. “
Amanda Bagshott gave several barks of laughter; “Oh, girl, I do believe the joke is on you! Your good vicar said you were used to the sheltered life. Have you even the smallest idea who that is sleeping in my second-best bedroom?”
Onyx shook her head as that chilly feeling of exclusion began to descend on her again.
Another bark of laughter. “That is John Beresford. He's the richest man in Yorkshire.” More laughter. “His brother is Adrian, Marquess of Sherbourn. Between the two of them, I do believe they own most of the northern marches all the way to the Tees. Good night, Miss Hamilton. Pleasant dreams.”
HE BED WAS COMFORTABLE, THE LITTLE COAL fire in the grate more than she was used to, the walls thick enough to keep the world from intruding, but Onyx Hamilton was still lying wide awake in bed staring at the ceiling when the sun rose.
As far as she could tell during her hours of tossing and turning, Jack Beresford had slept peacefully through the night. As she lay there with her hands folded precisely across her middle, she wondered if she would have gone to him if he had been in need of her.
Just thinking about the night before made her eyes close in humiliation. How he must be laughing, she told herself for the hundredth time as she shifted her gaze from the ceiling and watched the wallpaper turn from muddy dots of brambles and roses as the light of morning filled the cozy room.
It was a new role for her. During the ten years of Lady Daggett's marriage to Sir Matthew, Onyx had been relegated to the back of the room, the darker corners, where no one of any consequence ever chose to look very closely. She lay in bed and wished herself back in the corner again, far away from Jack Beresford.
Even her brief acquaintance with him, strained as it was by circumstance, had shown her how much he loved a good joke. How he must be laughing now, she thought. He can tell his army cohorts and his brother how he led on a silly woman of utterly no consequence.
The thought so unnerved her that it p
ropelled her out of bed in such a rapid motion that she was standing by the window before she was aware almost of having left the warmth of the blankets. She leaned her head against window frame and looked out, refusing to cry. It was not difficult; she was too angry at herself to cry.
A servant scratched on the door. Onyx gave herself a mental shake and opened the door. It was the maid, with a can of hot water and several towels. She curtsied. “Miss Hamilton, when you're ready, Major Beresford told me to tell you to step into his room before you go down to breakfast.”
Onyx smiled and nodded and then closed the door behind the maid as she left. That's the last thing I will do, she told herself as she washed and dressed. For the first time ever, she wished that the Reverend Littletree were closer than Cambridge. He was prosy; he was boring; he was endlessly right; he was also a buffer against the man next door. As trying as the vicar could be at times, he never gave her any reason to think she was more than what she was.
She buttoned up her dress and savagely attacked her hair, brushing it until it crackled and stood out from her head. She looked in the mirror, leaning closer, the hairbrush in her hand like a weapon. “Wedgwood eyes,” she muttered. They were blue and nothing more. Still … She touched her face and sighed.
Her good gray morning dress was quite wrinkled from the ordeal of the journey, but she draped Lady Daggett's cast-off Norwich silk shawl around her shoulders to hide the more obvious lines and creases and carefully let herself out the door.
“Onyx?”
She sighed and bit her tongue, and resolutely continued down the hall.
“Onyx, please,” he said, louder, his voice with an edge of command to it. “I must talk to you.”
Her rage got the better of her. She stalked back to the door. “You're not going to bully me, Major Beresford,” she said on her side of the door. “You're in excellent hands now.”
If there was a reply, she did not hear it. Gathering her shawl about her, she ran down the hall, assuming a sedate pace only when she had descended two floors and located the breakfast parlor.
Lady Bagshott waited within, standing by the sideboard and twitching the skirt of her morning dress with the air of one who seldom is called upon to wait for anyone.
“I trust, Miss Hamilton,” she began, as if she had been rehearsing, her speech, “you are not in the habit of late mornings. It is hardly becoming in the wife of a clergyman.”
“No, madam, indeed I am not,” Onyx replied, wishing that the unruly color would leave her cheeks. She thought about making excuse, but something in Lady Bagshott's bearing stopped her. “I am sorry,” was all she said as she inclined her head toward the dowager and allowed the footman to seat her at table.
“Baa!” Lady Bagshott dismissed the man with a wave of her hand as Onyx poured herself a cup of tea and nibbled at the buttered toast.
When it appeared that she could not further intimidate Onyx, Lady Bagshott sat down. She accepted without a word the cup of tea Onyx handed to her.
There was a certain militancy in Lady Bagshott that someone of Onyx's straightforward nature could not understand. Beyond wondering about it for a brief moment, Onyx did not try. Instead, she finished her bread and butter in silence and waited.
“Aren't you even curious about the major?” the dowager asked at last, her voice full of accusation.
Onyx looked at her and smiled. “I am sure, Lady Bagshott, that he is in excellent hands now,” she said calmly, willing her heart to stop its fluttering about. “He is back among his own kind now, and surely can lack for nothing in the way of proper attention.”
“The doctor has already been to see him,” said Lady Bagshott, waiting for some reaction. “Ahem, don't you wish to know how he is?”
“If you choose to tell me, Lady Bagshott,” was the calm reply.
“Well, I do not!” snapped the other woman. When Onyx made no reply, but calmly continued eating, she shifted in her chair. “He is fine, Miss Hamilton. Dr. Meers says that he is young and healthy, and will heal rapidly.”
“Oh, such excellent news,” said Onyx. She raised her Wedgwood eyes to the dowager. “And now, madam, I do not wish to take up your valuable time, but perhaps you could acquaint me with the vicarage? The Reverend Littletree tells me I am to be responsible for seeing to its refurbishing.”
So adroitly had she dismissed the subject of Jack Beresford that for Lady Bagshott to retrieve the thread of that conversation would have been poor manners indeed.
After a moment of stunned silence, Lady Bagshott cleared her throat with a sound reminiscent of distant cannonading. “Indeed, Miss Hamilton. Your … companion has already gone ahead this morning.”
“I shall follow her then,” said Onyx. “I have not unpacked my trunk. Can you have it removed to the vicarage? I assume, of course, that the vicar has not yet taken up residence there?”
“Oh, Lud, no,” Lady Bagshott replied. “He said he was partial to lung inflammation and would wait until the residence was in better repair.”
If ever anyone had waved a clearer warning signal, Onyx had never known of it. For all she knew, the building was falling down. She smiled, knowing with a feeling of delicious naughtiness totally foreign to her nature that such a smile would irritate Lady Bagshott. It was summer now; her lungs were strong. She wouldn't remain one more minute under the same roof that sheltered Jack Beresford. Not if she could help it.
“I am certain that I can make the best of this situation, Lady Bagshott. You have only to point me in the right direction.”
The vicarage lay two miles distant across the wide expanse that was Chalcott's back lawn. The day was fine. Onyx took a deep breath of the garden fragrances, raised her skirts to keep her hem dry, and set off.
She looked around her. It would be a pleasant walk anytime of the year, except perhaps in the deep of winter. I will be married by then, she thought. She shivered, wondering if it was from her thoughts of cold or her thoughts of life with the Reverend Andrew Littletree. She gave herself a little shake and hurried faster.
The front door was open when Onyx arrived at the vicarage, a half-timbered two-story house of uncertain age and questionable lineage. Ivy in early, tentative bloom twined all over the little windows, rather like cataracts in old eyes, she thought. The pathway was overgrown with weeds poking up through the cobbled stones.
The total effect was Gothic enough to please the most case-hardened reader of Mrs. Winslow or Fanny Weatherington, but as Onyx stood on the path and watched the play of sunlight over the weathered building, she knew that she could contrive enough to make a pleasant home.
Once indoors, she was less sure. Her eyes went immediately to dark patches on the ceiling and the unsightly fingers of rainwater that had flowed down the walls, leaving the wallpaper in discolored streaks. Over all these defects was the gloom created by the profusion of ivy that allowed in only a begrudging amount of light. Rather as if Lady Bagshott were in charge of lighting, Onyx thought, and smiled slightly.
The furniture, what there was of it in the saloon off the entrance, was shrouded in holland covers, contributing to the air of general dishevelment. Onyx stood in the doorway to the parlor and marveled at how abandoned the room looked. She thought of Egyptian ruins pictured in one of Gerald's old textbooks. The remembered sarcophagus and jumble of funerary jars looked no more antique than the display spread before her. How old things appear when they are not cared for, she thought as she wrote her name in the dust of a small uncovered table.
But this was to be her home. She gave herself another shake and crossed the hallway to the other, smaller parlor. She peeked in the partly open door and gasped.
Before her was a pianoforte, a handsome, dignified instrument that not even a thick layer of dust could disguise. From the looks of the padded bench, mice had staged periodic raids for nesting material, but the piano appeared intact. Onyx came closer and pulled off the rest of the holland cover that was draped over it.
The dust rose in clouds. She cou
ghed and stepped back to the room entrance until it settled slowly again. Stepping closer, she raised the lid and played a major chord.
As she had feared, the pianoforte was badly out of tune.
Onyx could see no sign of water damage from the leaking ceiling, but the beautiful instrument had suffered several years of neglect. She patted the piano bench to make sure that all mice had long since vacated it, and sat down, resting her fingers lightly on the keys.
Onyx looked around her. The room was small, but there was a good enough fireplace, and with the encroaching ivy stripped away, she knew that the little saloon could become the heart of the house.
“I can see that you are already imagining a winter evening.”
Onyx looked around and clapped her hands. “Alice, isn't it famous? Who would have thought to find such a treasure in this old place?”
Alice had removed her hat and was swathed in a long apron. “Onyx, I knew that you would overlook every defect once you saw that piano.”
Onyx turned to her, holding out her hand. “You know how I am,” she replied simply. “It is a little enough pleasure.”
“Indeed it is!” Alice retorted. “My dear, when you see the rest of this place …” Words failed her. She sat down on the bench with Onyx.
“Surely it cannot be that bad,” said Onyx.
It was that—and more. Onyx trailed behind Alice as the older woman led her from the bedchambers upstairs, completely at the mercy of the leaking roof, to the kitchen, a gloomy dungeon with its cavernous fireplace that must have done duty during the reign of good Queen Bess.
Onyx stood upright, in the fireplace, holding her dress tight around her. “Alice,” she exclaimed in awed tones, “we could probably cook a meal for Wellington's entire army at one time in this fireplace.”
“There isn't enough firewood left in England,” was Alice's tart rejoinder. “Onyx, come out of that fireplace. Only think how dirty you will get your shoes!”