by Mary Nichols
‘Then why not come in with us?’
‘No, their house is very tiny, there will certainly not be room for three of us. I shall leave you to it. But come to Mandeville when you have finished examining the boy and let me know what you decide. I shall be pleased to offer you tea.’ She was speaking to the Captain, but was very aware of the man standing silently beside him. The Earl might have caused him to come, but she felt every bit as involved, more so because the Biggs family had been a pet project of hers long before his lordship appeared on the scene.
The Captain bowed. ‘I shall be delighted, ma’am.’
She handed the basket to Roland. ‘Please give this to Mrs Biggs.’ And then she left them to make their way up the garden path and knock on the door of the tiny cottage.
Charlotte had left Bonny Boy at the King’s Head on the other side of the green, but she was soon in the saddle and riding swiftly back to Mandeville. Her exchange with the Earl had been minimal, but it was nonetheless disturbing. She really must learn not to let him upset her. She was not a simpering schoolgirl, not even a girl at all, but a woman of three and twenty and she ought to be able to control her feelings.
Once home, she changed into a plain silk gown and paced about her first-floor sitting room, wondering if Roland would come with his friend. She had not specifically excluded him, but neither had she included him in the invitation. She was answered two hours later when both men rode up the drive and dismounted at the door. She saw them from the window, though she was careful not to let them see her. Heaven forbid they should think she was watching for them! She went down to the drawing room and sat down with a London newspaper in her hand until a footman came to announce them. She put it down and rose to meet them, ordered tea to be brought in and invited them to be seated.
‘Mrs Biggs asked me to return this,’ Roland said, offering her the basket he had been carrying. ‘She was effusive in her gratitude.’ He had never been inside Mandeville before and was struck by the opulence, the sense that no expense had been spared in its creation. The furniture was of the very highest quality, the sofas well upholstered, the carpets thick and the curtains well hung, the pictures and ornaments priceless. But it was too perfect; there was no warmth, no feeling that the house was lived in. It was simply a showcase for wealth. But he could understand why she would look down on Amerleigh Hall, the sprawling mish-mash of styles, with its rattling windows and draughty corridors. He could not imagine children tearing about Mandeville, sliding down the banisters, playing ball in the vast hall, as he had done at Amerleigh as a child.
She put the basket on a table and sat down again and they seated themselves opposite her. ‘How did you get on with Tommy, Captain?’ she asked.
‘He is very small,’ he said.
‘Of course he is.’ She laughed. ‘He is only six years old.’
He smiled ruefully. ‘I am used to soldiers, ma’am, little children are strangers to me.’
‘Oh, dear, then you do not think you can help?’
‘I did not say that, Miss Cartwright. I am willing to try, but I shall be learning as well as the boy.’
‘But you will need to teach his parents and siblings too, so they can understand him and he them.’
‘Of course. I notice they comprehend much of what he is trying to convey already. I think the way forward is to incorporate the signs he has already developed—no sense in asking him to learn new ones for familiar things. He is not able to spell, so it is no good trying to teach him letters. That will come later, at a more advanced stage. I need to think about it carefully.’
‘Surely many of the soldiers you taught could not read and write?’
‘That is perfectly true, but the words they needed to use are very different from those of a child. It is a challenge, a very big challenge.’
‘I am sure you are equal to it, Captain,’ she said, as the tea things were brought in and she busied herself with the teapot.
Roland watched the two of them dealing together so amicably and a strange sensation of unrest came over him, as if something he had within his grasp was slipping from him. ‘You will need a schoolroom,’ he said to Miles. ‘You cannot teach in the cottage with Mrs Biggs busy about her cooking and housework. You are welcome to use the schoolroom at Amerleigh. Kit it up with whatever you need.’
‘That might do for the time being,’ Charlotte said. ‘But in the long term, my lord, you will want it yourself.’
‘I am not about to go back to school,’ he said, laughing.
‘No, but you will marry soon and have children, then you will need it for them.’ She did not know why she said that. It was impertinent and she deserved a put-down. Why did she always invite his ire? It was as if she needed to scratch an irritating itch and, having scratched, was left with a sore place.
‘That is not imminent, Miss Cartwright.’ He was being carefully polite and that goaded her to scratch again.
‘No? I have heard you were about to make an offer.’
‘Then will you please tell your informant she is mistaken,’ he said firmly.
Bemused, Captain Hartley looked from one to the other and wondered how a simple conversation about a little deaf boy had suddenly become a cat-and-mouse game. ‘I am sure the schoolroom at the Hall will do very nicely for a start,’ he said.
They both turned towards him as if suddenly remembering he was there. ‘That’s settled, then,’ Roland said. ‘If all goes well, I should like to spread the word to other deaf children and their parents, make a little school of it.’
‘Let us see how it goes with one pupil first,’ Miles said.
The moment of dissension passed and they drank their tea and ate the bread and butter and the little cakes Mrs Cater had provided and Charlotte asked the Captain about his war experiences and showed herself to be far more knowledgeable than most ladies about the political situation. She agreed with Roland that a man like Napoleon Bonaparte would not be content with a life spent quietly on a little island. When he had capitulated, he had promised his followers he would return with the violets. ‘Have the allied powers made sure he cannot?’ she asked.
‘I doubt it,’ Miles said. ‘He has been allowed to keep a regiment and a ship and that is madness.’
‘Would you go back to the army, my lord, if he did show his face again?’ she asked Roland.
He smiled, remembering their previous conversation on the subject of his leaving. ‘It depends,’ he said carefully. ‘There is a great deal keeping me in Amerleigh at the moment.’
For once she did not rise to the bait, but sipped her tea and thought of Amerleigh without him. She would miss him if he ever left, but the reason she gave to herself, that she enjoyed their battles, was not the true one. Her thoughts went to that evening when he had kissed her hand and made her feel like a woman for the first time in her life. That was what she would really miss.
After the men had taken their leave and ridden away, Charlotte wandered into the ballroom and stood there a moment, then began humming a tune and dancing all by herself. But in her imagination she was not alone; the room was crowded and Roland was there and they were dancing together, hands linked, bodies moving in unison as they had at Lady Brandon’s soirée. ‘I will do it,’ she said, coming to a standstill and speaking aloud. ‘He will learn to rue the day he called me a hoyden.’
Organising her workforce, instructing men and women in their day-to-day tasks, was child’s play to her. But organising an entertainment beyond a simple dinner party was something she had never done and the prospect daunted her. Nor had she any idea how to act the lady, to charm as a hostess. For that she needed help. There was Lady Brandon, of course, but she did not think her ladyship would serve; she had her own motives and they did not accord with Charlotte’s. She went back to the drawing room and sat at her davenport to write a letter to her great-aunt, Lady Emily Ratcliffe.
‘What an extraordinary woman,’ Miles commented, as they turned out of the gate and, disdaining the road, made th
eir way over the hill back to Amerleigh.
‘Yes.’
‘Wealthy, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Very.’
‘I suppose you grew up together?’
‘We were neighbours, of course, but I was at school and Oxford, then the army, and though I saw her about the village when I was at home, I cannot say I really knew her.’
‘She’s not a member of the gentry.’
‘No, though I believe her grandmother on her mother’s side came from a good family. Her mother died when she was born and her father brought her up. He died two years ago and left her everything.’
‘Quite a catch for someone, then,’ Miles said.
Roland looked sharply at him, wondering what was behind the remark. ‘I suppose so, but too self-willed for my taste. She would want to wear the breeches in any marriage.’
‘Depends how you go about taming her, I should think,’ Miles said thoughtfully.
‘You think you could do it?’
‘If I wanted to, I could.’
Roland laughed and spurred his horse into a gallop to end a conversation that was making him feel decidedly uncomfortable. Miles smiled to himself and followed suit.
Miles left two days later to go back to Horse Guards where he intended to obtain his release and then return. He would be on half-pay and that, together with the small stipend Roland was able to provide, was enough for his needs, he said, especially as he was to live at Amerleigh Hall for nothing. He came back a week later to prepare the schoolroom for its new pupil. It was on the second floor of the oldest part of the house and every day he took himself up there and set about learning all he could about sign language.
One day Roland found him there, sitting on an old sofa, hands in front of him, moving arms and fingers this way and that, studying a book and drawing the signs on a slate. ‘I think I should learn a little of that,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to young Thomas too.’
‘I will teach you when I know enough myself.’
‘I thought you invented it.’
‘No. It was not invented, it grew. It was developed many, many years ago by monks who had taken a vow of silence and wanted to communicate with each other. I have no doubt it is still used for that purpose. Who decided it could be used by the deaf in the general population I do not know. I was sent to a Catholic school and learned some of it from the abbot who ran it and that fired my interest.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I do not think Tommy would be interested in religious words and practices, so I must adapt it for a small boy.’
‘You must not spend all your time up here, you know. What about coming out for a ride? I will show you round my domain.’
Miles put the book away. ‘I shall enjoy that.’
Half an hour later they were riding through Amerleigh towards the hills, carpeted in red, pink and white heather, prickly yellow gorse and bright green bracken, with here and there the delicate blue of a harebell, so that the land was vibrant with colour. Familiar as he was with the sight, it always brought a lump to Roland’s throat. Together with the house, it was what he had thought of most when away from home, especially poignant when he had not been sure if he would ever see either again.
They rode round in a large circle, taking in the boundary of the estate and finishing on Browhill. Here there was noise and clatter and dust. The new adit, which Roland had seen started, disappeared into the hillside. The big wheel was turning, which suggested men were working underground and a stream had been diverted and was running through the washing shed where two youths were working, separating the lead ore from the dirt and rubble that came with it.
‘Is this part of your domain?’ Miles asked.
Roland chuckled. ‘I believe so, but Miss Cartwright has other ideas. We are in dispute over it.’
As he spoke, Charlotte herself came out of the building that served as an office. ‘Good day, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’
Roland noted that she was in a benign mood; Miles noted that she was wearing a strange outfit, he might have called mannish if it were not for the skirt. ‘Good day, Miss Cartwright,’ Roland said, giving her a slight bow from the saddle. ‘We were out for a ride…’
‘And chanced to end up here.’ She laughed. ‘What is it about this place that draws you so, my lord?’
He was not going to rise to that bait. ‘How is the new level going?’
‘Very well, my lord.’ She turned to Miles. ‘Are you back to stay, Captain?’
‘For a while, yes. I have been perfecting my signs ready to begin teaching the lad and his mother. His lordship has said he is going to learn them too.’
‘Then may I join the party? I should think a skill like that might be very useful. You know, the mill hands have their own way of making signs when the clatter of the looms makes it impossible to hear anything said. I wonder if it is the same.’
Roland looked sharply at her, but she refused to meet his eye and concentrated on Miles, who was smiling at her in a way that made Roland remember that his friend had said he could tame her. Roland did not want her tamed, certainly not by anyone but himself. The thought came as a revelation. Charlotte Cartwright, tamed. That would be as cruel as trying to tame a wild tiger and just as impossible. ‘I doubt your mill hands would appreciate your being able to understand their conversation,’ he said with a chuckle.
‘They probably have a language of their own,’ Miles put in. ‘As different from a soldier’s or a small boy’s as English is to French, but by all means join us. I plan to begin the lessons the day after tomorrow in the forenoon.’
‘Yes, do come,’ Roland said. ‘That is, if you can be spared from all your other work.’
She smiled, but it was the smile of the untamed tiger and he almost recoiled from it. ‘I shall manage it.’
As they rode away, Miles was chuckling. ‘I think I am going to enjoy my time in Amerleigh,’ he said. ‘Something worthwhile to do and some fine entertainment.’
‘Entertainment?’
‘Yes, watching you and Miss Cartwright crossing swords.’
‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘Oh, so you are the best of friends, are you? Whoever would have thought it?’
‘Captain Hartley,’ Roland said, trying not to smile, ‘you are here for a specific purpose. Do not presume upon my friendship too far.’
Miles stopped laughing. He had hit upon something that mattered to his host, and, in Roland’s eyes, it was not a cause for amusement. He hastily begged pardon and they rode on in silence. At the Biggs’s cottage they stopped to tell Mrs Biggs that Tommy could be brought to the Hall two days hence to begin his lessons, and then they called at the dower house where Miles was presented to the Countess and he explained what he hoped to do for Tommy.
‘I am sure that is a commendable thing to do,’ she said, dispensing tea in the drawing room. ‘But I wonder how long you will be able to hold his attention. He is very small and has been thoroughly spoiled by his mother and sisters. He will want to play.’
‘Then we must make the lessons seem like play,’ Miles said. ‘In any case, they will not last long, half an hour or an hour at the most. His lordship is going to be a pupil too. And Miss Cartwright.’
She laughed. ‘Miss Cartwright and Roland, sitting side by side on those little schoolroom chairs, trying to talk without speaking. Oh, the wonder of it! I must come up and see this strange phenomenon. Have you met Miss Cartwright, Captain Hartley?’
‘Yes, when I was here before and again today. We were out riding and came upon her at the mine.’
‘What did you think of her?’
Miles looked from the Countess to Roland and back again. ‘She is a very unusual lady,’ he said carefully. ‘Very forthright, though I imagine that is something she has learned; underneath she is vulnerable.’
‘Vulnerable!’ Roland exclaimed.
‘Yes. Most women are, are they not?’
‘Miss Cartwright is an exception.’
‘Oh, I agree she is exceptional.’
‘Talking of Miss Cartwright,’ her ladyship put in, ‘I heard she was going to give a ball at Mandeville.’
‘Who told you that?’ Roland asked.
‘Why, Lady Brandon. She is in the young lady’s confidence.’
‘Who would go to a ball at Mandeville? You know Miss Cartwright is not accepted in society. Why, Gilford even tried to warn me off.’
‘Goodness, why should he do that?’
‘I have no idea—possibly because he has a daughter of marriageable age?’
‘I would go and gladly, if she were to invite me,’ Miles said.
‘No doubt she will,’ Roland said.
‘And you,’ the Countess told Roland with a twinkle in her eye. ‘With you to grace it, it is bound to succeed and all those people who have always longed to see the inside of Mandeville will be glad to have a reason not to decline. If the Earl of Amerleigh goes, then it perfectly proper for everyone else.’
‘If she thinks she can use me in that fashion, then I am afraid she will be disappointed.’ Even as he spoke Roland realised that such a thought would never enter Charlotte’s head.
‘Then I shall go alone,’ Miles said, looking meaningfully at Roland.
The thought of Miles flirting with Charlotte, trying to tame her with his charm, was abhorrent to Roland. Was she vulnerable? He felt a sudden need to protect her, which was laughable. Miss Charlotte Cartwright, mine owner, mill owner, slave owner, needing protection was unthinkable. And yet the thought had passed through his mind. If it were not for those slaves and that disputed land, if he had inherited a healthy estate, if she had not been so obviously averse to him, things might have been different. Why could he not get her out of his head? Why, whenever he planned something, did he imagine her at his side advising him, encouraging him, and why did he refrain from doing other things because he thought she might disapprove? And why did the prospect of holding her hand and dancing with her again fill him with joyful anticipation? He was behaving like a besotted schoolboy. ‘Oh, well, we shall see when the invitations come,’ he said. ‘If they come.’