Madeleine Robins

by The Heiress Companion

  “No, no, Janie, for who’s to carry you when you faint away?” At last in the spirit of things, Lord Bradwell looked down at his companion with such warmth that Rowena found it difficult to believe that some sort of understanding did not exist between them.

  “To answer your earlier question, Mr. Bradwell,” she murmured up to Lyn, “I think that he must be very nearly on the verge of it now.”

  “The verge of what?”

  “Of making your mamma a dowager in truth.”

  Prevented by the nearness of his subject from quizzing Miss Cherwood further on the topic of Jack and Jane, Mr. Bradwell wisely kept his own counsel, and decided to watch the goings on about Broak Hall more closely for a while: They threatened to become amusing.

  o0o

  Rather than the half-hour drive they had planned, the party walked for little more than twenty minutes, and thus, when they returned to Broak, Greavesey was in the process of walking his ancient mare up the drive toward the main gate and the road for the village.

  “My dear Miss Cherwood, it is of all things the most fortunate that we have met!” he enthused. “Pray, let me return with you to the house for a few minutes, for I have — heruhmah — some things to tell you from the doctor.” If Rowena was not delighted with this plan she managed to control her reaction fairly well. Greavesey fell into stride with her, and Lyn Bradwell, on her other side, watched the progress of their conversation straight-faced. Miss Cherwood, painfully civil, was obviously stifling a powerful urge to hit Mr. Greavesey. The physician’s assistant, on the other hand, was exerting himself to be as charming and suave as possible. For anyone but the two conversationalists involved, it presented an amusing spectacle. Rowena thought she sensed a smile edging the corners of Lyn Bradwell’s mouth, but was helpless to do anything but make polite, noncommittal replies to Greavesey’s inanities.

  At last, back at the house, she requested that Mr. Greavesey talk to her in the office, and led him through the house.

  “Well, sir?” She turned to him after they had seated themselves and the door had been shut to preclude interruptions. “Is there something in my cousin’s progress which should alarm me? Or something about Lady Bradwell? You might have left a message with one of the servants, you know.”

  “But I would have been denied the sight of your charming visage, my dear Miss Cherwood,” he began.

  Rowena tapped her foot on the floor, striving for patience. “Mr. Greavesey, if you wish to please me, you will refrain from that sort of remark. I don’t care for it in the least.”

  Obviously, Greavesey thought, the lady had decided to play the game of coy maiden. “Ah, you wicked thing, you seek to make me declare myself before you will admit your own passions —”

  “My what?” Miss Cherwood, plainly thunderstruck, sat straight in her chair and stared.

  “Well,” he continued heavily, unaware of her interruption. “I am perfectly happy to do so. You must know that I have been quite deeply affected by you since our first meeting some months ago. Oh, how long have I hoped, waiting to see some answering spark in your eyes. And very pretty eyes they are, too,” he added.

  “Mr. Greavesey...” Rowena stood up, gathering herself. Any man less self-absorbed would have quailed before the fire in her very pretty eyes and the tone in her ordinarily humorous, low-pitched voice.

  “In short, my dear, nay, my dearest Miss Cherwood, I have the honor — and I hope I do myself no harm in supposing that it cannot be altogether a surprise to you, nor altogether unpleasant — to ask for your hand and heart.”

  “Mr. Greavesey, I think perhaps we have misunderstood each other.” Rowena spoke as clearly as she could, as if she were speaking to a very young child. “Flattered as I am by your kind offer, I am afraid that I cannot accept it.”

  “No need to feel yourself flattered, my dear Miss Cherwood. And if it is your great sense of delicacy which forbids you to accept my proposals, I wish you will not consider it. Surely, it would be to my advantage to marry a woman of property, but where my heart is engaged I cannot quibble over wealth or the lack thereof. What a splendid doctor’s wife you will make! Can you not picture it? You know that Dr. Cribbatt has spoken to me more than once of the day when I will take over his practice, and when that day comes, dear lady —”

  “When that day comes, Mr. Greavesey, I hope you will be married to the woman you deserve,” Rowena said carefully. “But for now, I must tell you that I do not think we should suit.”

  “Miss Cherwood, you are —”

  “Being sensible, Mr. Greavesey. I do not wish to marry you — I am certain that I would make you as miserable as...” Courtesy, even now, kept her from admitting just how odious he was to her. “Well, I simply do not think we should suit.”

  “Miss Cherwood.” Greavesey’s tone turned ominous. “Do I understand that your affections are already engaged?”

  Lyndon Bradwell’s image flashed briefly into Rowena’s mind. She banished it sternly. “You may think that if you like, sir. Whatever you think, I am flattered by your proposal, and regret to give you pain, but: no.”

  “I beg you will recall your position, Miss Cherwood. Can you wish to dwindle into old age as a companion, even to so pleasant a mistress as Lady Bradwell?” His tone had become menacing, and he bent his body forward to punctuate each sentence with a thrust from his bony chin.

  “Mr. Greavesey.” The words were forced out from between tightly clenched teeth. “If you have anything to say to me on the subject of Lady Bradwell’s health or my cousin’s, I beg you will say it. But if you continue to refuse to believe my most serious replies to your — your question, I shall throw you out bodily, myself. And if I find that I am not equal to the task myself, I shall enlist the aid of the stable boy.”

  Greavesey sat back in his chair, blanching.

  “Further, sir, I would advise you, if you ever make proposals of marriage to a lady again, not to use insults and threats as your main points of persuasion. Good afternoon.”

  The words were as final as words could be. Miss Cherwood shifted her attention to some papers on the desk (they were inventories of the linen closets, and under normal circumstances would not have held a particular fascination for her), and so obviously ignored Greavesey’s further presence that he was unable, by the wildest sophistry, to persuade himself that she was being coy. Huffily he took up his cane and satchel and left the room.

  “Good God!” Rowena sighed to herself, and laid her head down on her arms in a weak, half-hysterical fit of laughter. “O, good lord!”

  o0o

  Greavesey swept out of the house in a manner more suited to a Byronic hero than a balding doctor’s assistant. He had left the horse by the front door, and was thus forced to walk clear around the house to reach the stable and his horse. Jane Ambercot, sitting on a bench in the garden, called out a civil good afternoon to him as he passed, and more from habit than anything else, he stopped to exchange a greeting with her.

  “Are Lady Bradwell and Miss Margaret Cherwood doing well, sir?”

  “Why, of course, ma’am,” he answered blankly, looking into her friendly blue eyes and seeing only Rowena’s angry brown ones.

  “Well, I did hear you tell Miss Cherwood that you had matters to discuss with her, and I assumed —”

  “O, yes, well...” Greavesey hummed uncomfortably. “And how do you do, Miss Ambercot? Hands quite mended?”

  “Very nearly so, sir,” she said matter-of-factly, and pulled at one of her mitts to show the wisp of gauze which was all the bandage she now required. “The salve you and the doctor gave us has worked miracles! I only wish I had such efficacious remedies to hand in the stables at Wilesby House.”

  Greavesey had taken the hand proffered him and, examining it, found it in a fair way to mending without a scar, but also found it warm, squarish, a little plump, and pleasing. He kept it in his own for another moment or two.

  “Well, sir,” Jane began uncomfortably, wishing that the man would release her ha
nd and leave her. “I suppose that you must be anxious to return to your work, rather than sitting and chatting with me.”

  “O, no, dear lady.” W. Greavesey’s sycophantic tone was tinged with the romantic melodrama he had enacted five minutes before. “It is a positive refreshment to the soul to stand in this beautiful garden and talk with one so charming as yourself “

  “Yes’ well, sir, I thank you for the compliment, but...” She tried to pull her hand away. Greavesey seemed to be retaining hold of it less on purpose than because his attention was fixed elsewhere. Jane, thinking to bring him back to himself, gave the hand a gentle tug. His own hand closed tighter around it. “Mr. Greavesey?”

  No answer was vouchsafed.

  “Mr. Greavesey?” She tried again.

  Again, no answer. His gaze appeared to be focused on the corner of her marble bench, and whatever he was thinking, he had tightened his grasp painfully.

  “Sir?” Jane’s voice was a little more imperative now. “Mr. Greavesey, I think I should be going into the house now.”

  “O, yes.” He agreed morosely, but made no sign of relinquishing his prize. “Everyone has other things to attend to. I have other things to attend to. O yes, well, we mustn’t mind about poor old John Greavesey; there are more important things to give our thoughts to, ain’t there?”

  His hand closed tighter still, and Jane cried out in pain. “Sir, you’re hurting me!” He didn’t seem to notice. “Mr. Greavesey! You’re obviously upset about something, perhaps a cup of tea would —”

  “Tea, dear lady? Tea? What’s that to the purpose, I ask you? No, no one has time to spare a thought for John Greavesey, I tell you.” Still the hand was clasped in his, although his grip had loosened somewhat now. Jane, still seated on the bench, stared up at him in uneasy dislike.

  “Now, nothing of the sort, sir. If you will but release my hand and follow me indoors, we shall be pleased to give you —”

  Whatever it was that Miss Ambercot was to have offered Mr. Greavesey, the words were lost as Lord Bradwell, come upon the scene, charged, rather like a bull, and with one solid left knocked the older man down.

  “Take your hands off her, you — you —” Words, as usual, did not come easily to Lord Bradwell.

  “Why, Jack!” Jane rose, her face reflecting a little surprise and much gratitude. She put out a hand, the one just relinquished by the now flattened Greavesey, only to have it quite rudely pushed away.

  “Don’t you ‘Why Jack’ me, ma’am! Sitting in the garden beguiling yourself by getting up flirtations with a half-witted sawbones, is it? When I consider how once, long ago, I let myself be made ashamed for a little dalliance, and now I come on you in the garden with this bag of bones, and obviously enticing him by —”

  “Jack Bradwell, what on earth are you talking about?” Jane appeared roused to a fury to equal his. On the ground beneath their notice, Greavesey lay and stared directly upward at this new melodrama.

  “You know very well what I’m talking about,” Lord Bradwell insisted. “And I don’t mean to make a guy of myself by attending on a woman who would sit holding hands with that — that — that —”

  But Jane, holding her hands in front of her face, did not stay to hear herself or Mr. Greavesey reviled further, and Lord Bradwell and his victim were left to stare blackly at each other.

  Chapter Eight

  By the time Miss Cherwood sufficiently recovered herself from Mr. Greavesey’s proposals to emerge from the office, Jane Ambercot had retired noisily to her room, announcing in an uncharacteristically melodramatic way that she would not see anyone. Jane’s maid, much disgruntled at being included in this ban, confided in Rowena that she thought she had heard the sound of crying from her lady’s room once the door was closed. Little as she liked the situation, Rowena could not suppose that any purpose would be served in storming Jane’s room, so she contented herself in sending up a light supper and hoping that a chance would come to talk to her friend.

  Lord Bradwell, on the other hand, was very much in evidence at dinner and afterward. He stalked about the drawing room with a distempered sneer for anyone who approached him. The effect would have been ludicrous, except that he was so much in earnest that it was impossible to laugh at him. “For all the world like Young Werther!” his unhappy mother confided in her companion. “My dearest Rowena, what could have brought my sunny Jack to such a pass?”

  “I imagine it must have to do with Jane, ma’am, but as to what the particulars are, I cannot tell you more than you know.”

  “Just when things were looking particularly promising. Well, had you managed to pull them through, I was hoping to delegate responsibility for Lyn to you as well.”

  Rowena started slightly. “I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

  “I was going to ask you to try your matchmaking on Lyndon, dear. But with this experiment gone so awry...”

  “I agree completely,” Rowena said with alacrity. “After all, ma’am, I never claimed to be better than a very amateur at this game.”

  “I know it. But you seemed to show such promise! In any case, I’m sure that these silly fools have brought themselves to whatever pass it is they’ve found, and I am minded to let them resolve it themselves,” Lady Bradwell said disgruntledly. “After all, I have waited years for Jack to come to his senses, and just when he appears to be doing so — Faugh! And look you there at Lyn, talking with Ulysses Ambercot quite as if nothing in the world were the matter! And his brother walking about like a bear!” The older woman sniffed disparagingly. “Rowena, I warn you now, in case you ever consider marriage: Men are fools. They have their good points, and all in all I cannot regret having married Bradwell —” A soft smile lit on her lips for a moment and was rigorously erased. “But by and large, they are the most contrary breed imaginable!”

  “Until you need them, ma’am?” Rowena suggested.

  “Certainly, child. Until you need them. I didn’t say they were useless altogether,” Lady Bradwell replied with dignity, and applied herself to her teacup.

  Whatever his appearance, Lyndon Bradwell was not in the least unaware of his brother’s novel behavior. His good-natured attempts at conversation had been rebuffed with a violence he would have thought impossible in his brother, and somewhat later in the evening he talked to Miss Cherwood, hoping that she, at least, might have a clue to the mystery.

  “After all, Miss Cherwood, you seem to be the confidante of most of the household; now what the devil has come over my brother?”

  “And Miss Ambercot. I wish I knew, Mr. Bradwell. I should certainly like to find out.”

  “I wish you will; having Jack stomping around the house in a cross between a brown study and the rage of a bear —”

  “A brown bear?” Rowena interjected amiably.

  “If you like,” he replied absently. “It’s distracting. I’ve never seen Jack act like this.”

  “I think it may be love. I only wish I knew for certain — at least that would set your mamma’s mind at ease.”

  “Is everyone in this household privy to everyone else’s affaires de coeur?”

  “I hope not.” Miss Cherwood cast him a look of dismay. “But I mean to find out what’s afoot, and right it if I can. I’m sure that sounds abominably nosy of me, but if I’ve the reputation for it, I may as well get some good of it as well. I dislike seeing people so miserable. As you say, it is highly — um — distracting.”

  “So far from being nosy, Miss Cherwood, I for one would regard your intervention as a kindly gesture toward the rest of us. Damme, at least your cousin and Ambercot accomplished their wooing in a sensible manner.”

  “With that license, I shall go to see what I can do, sir.” Rowena rose and made him a schoolgirl curtsey, then turned to take her leave of her mistress.

  Margaret was almost asleep when Rowena reached her room, but roused herself enough to sit up, smile drowsily, and enjoy five minutes conversation with her cousin. Formerly all her discourse had been on books, fam
ily, clothes, and schoolroom topics. Now, every other phrase seemed to begin with the words “Lully thinks...” or “Ulysses told me...” The time when she was not quoting Ulysses Ambercot’s views on everything was filled with fretting about her parents’ answer to Ulysses’ formal request for her hand. “What shall I do if Papa says no, Renna?”

  “Why on earth should he, love?” Rowena smiled at her cousin’s distracted happiness and prayed that the letters from London would come soon, before Meg worked herself into a frenzy or bored everyone in the household.

  It was asking too much to hope that perhaps Jane had confided in her fellow-invalid, and Rowena found no answers to that mystery with Margaret. At length she bid her kinswoman good rest, made a quick inspection of her wounds and, taking her leave, gathered her strength to approach Jane.

  At first she was denied entry to the room unequivocally. Upon receiving Miss Cherwood’s announcement that she would enter the room in any case, Jane rose up and let her in.

  Tears are not becoming to any but the most ravishingly pretty, and Jane Ambercot was, at her best moments, no more than rather handsome. Now, with her face flushed, her hair in entire disarray, her eyes red-rimmed and her mouth trembling, she looked quite dreadful. Add to this that she was sitting bolt upright in her chair, hands clenched and face cold and withdrawn, and Rowena was sorely tempted to turn about-face and leave Miss Ambercot and Lord Bradwell to solve their own problems. Only the loneliness and despair in Jane’s eyes persuaded her to stay. She went to her friend’s side, knelt, and put an arm about her waist.

  “Jane dear, what on earth has made you look so miserable?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? That’s the greatest plumper I ever heard! When this afternoon we were all so cheery, and you so well? Tell me to mind my own business if you like — I shan’t, of course — but don’t try to bam me with such nonsense as that. I am not so green as I’m cabbage-looking, my girl, and though I be a veritable monster of inconsideration, I shall not sit by and see my friends miserable.”