Ginnie Come Lately

by Carola Dunn

  One glance at his face disabused her of that hope. Obviously the viscount had somehow misinterpreted the lavish meal.

  He must have been brooding over the imagined wrongs done to his father. Jaw set, mouth thinned to a straight line, brows meeting above his smouldering eyes and flared nostrils, the viscount stared at the laden table. As soon as Reynolds and a footman had served everyone, he dismissed them with a gesture.

  Pushing back his chair, he rose to his feet and leaned on the table, glowering down at them. “As I expected.” He spoke with biting scorn. “Gluttons living on the fat of the land at my father’s expense! Banquets, new clothes, extravagant furnishings, every luxury your covetous hearts could desire. I’ll not permit it. There will be changes here, make no mistake!”

  Lydia shrank from him and Gilbert put his arm about her shoulders. “A real Hector,” he muttered.

  Distantly aware of Lydia’s bafflement at Gil’s reference to some obscure Greek or Roman, Ginnie looked up at Lord Amis and said with icy calm, “That is for the earl to decide, I believe.”

  “He shall soon understand how he has been duped, now that I am home to enlighten him.” He slumped down in his chair again and, with his elbow on the table, leaned his forehead on the heel of his hand. “Oh, God, why did he not warn me in time for me to stop this disaster?”

  “Gammon,” said Gilbert the logician. “When he and Mama were married, you had just written that you expected to leave Vienna any day. He could not contact you. Besides,” added Gilbert the adolescent, “he guessed you’d kick up a dust. He told me so.”

  Lord Amis groaned. “Even then he must have been ashamed of his weakness.”

  “You cannot have it both ways,” Ginnie pointed out. “Lord Wooburn does not need you to enlighten him if he was already ashamed of his weakness before he married Mama. But you insult your father in calling him a dupe. He is—”

  “Enough! He is an unhappy, lonely old gentleman taken advantage of by a horde of selfish, unprincipled, malicious villains!”

  “Enough, indeed.” Ginnie reached boiling point. “Come, Lydia, Gilbert. We shall not stay to be insulted by this self-righteous, ignorant, conceited prig.”

  Followed by her brother and sister, she stalked from the room with all the offended dignity at her command.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  “But I am hungry,” Lydia protested as Gilbert closed the dining-room door behind them.

  “It’s a pity to miss such a splendid meal,” he agreed, “but Ginnie’s right. We couldn’t have gone on eating as if nothing had been said. Bread and cheese will be nothing new.’’

  Her eyebrows raised, Ginnie was regarding the sheepish butler, who had been lingering suspiciously close to the door.

  “Shall I bring you something to the breakfast-room, miss?” he offered.

  “To the day nursery, if you please, Reynolds.”

  Gilbert nodded. “Jove, yes, time for a council of war.”

  “I don’t know what’s come over Master Justin.” The stout butler shook his head in dismay, almost in apology. “Always calm and collected and polite he was, miss, since he was in short coats. I’ve never seen him in such a tweak.’’

  “I dare say it is true that those who are slowest to fly into the boughs are slowest to come down again once perched there,” she said drily, already regaining her composure. “No doubt Lord Amis feels he has good reason for his outburst. You will not mention this to the servants, Reynolds.”

  “Certainly not, miss. I’ll see something to eat is brought up right away, miss.”

  They went up to the day nursery at the top of the house. The long room was shabby from use, but it had an air of cleanliness and comfort. On arriving at Wooburn, Ginnie had set the maids to scrubbing and polishing the long-neglected scarred floor and battered furniture until they gleamed. The last of the evening’s sun shone through spotless windows.

  Colin sat at the table, writing laboriously with a stub of pencil. In her nightgown, Judith was perched on the sagging sofa, a sleepy, nightshirted twin cuddled on each side as she told them a story from Aesop. In her versions of the fables, all the animals had well-developed personalities and honourable motives.

  Jack and Jimmy looked unnaturally clean and unnaturally angelic. The latter impression vanished the moment they saw Ginnie in the doorway. They sat up, instantly awake.

  “Are you running away from the ogre?” Jimmy demanded.

  “He’ll grind your bones to make his bread,” Jack suggested with ghoulish glee.

  “Hush, you will wake Nathaniel and Pris.” Sighing, Ginnie stepped into the room. “Colin, I asked you not to tell them those gruesome fairy tales at bedtime.” She sat down opposite him, and the others joined them at the table.

  He grinned. “I made sure Judith would give ’em a soothing story afterwards. What’s up? Have you finished dinner already?”

  “All we had was soup,” Lydia said mournfully.

  The twins were wide-eyed. “Is he going to starve you to death?” Jack asked.

  “He had better not try!” said Colin.

  “Of course he will not,” Gilbert admonished his brothers. “He is a gentleman, though a deuced ill-tempered one. He insulted all of us this time, called us a horde of selfish, unprincipled, malicious villains!”

  “We’ll grind his bones to make your bread,” Jimmy offered.

  Lydia looked shocked. “Oh no, you must not do such a terrible thing.”

  “They don’t mean it,” Judith assured her, patting her hand.

  “We do,” Jack contradicted her.

  “Of course you don’t,” said Ginnie firmly. The slurs Gilbert had just repeated made her blood boil anew, but she could not loose the inventive twins on their kind steppapa’s only son. “However unreasonable he may be, no one is to hurt him. Promise, Jack, Jimmy.”

  With the greatest reluctance, they promised.

  Colin frowned. “All the same, we cannot let him get away with it.”

  “No, we must stand up for ourselves,” Gilbert agreed. Suiting action to words, he rose, his thin face serious, his slight frame stiff with resolution. “I hereby declare Justin, Lord Amis, persona non grata. We shall not hurt him, but we shall make him so uncomfortable he will wish he were back in Russia.”

  “Cut the Greek and the rest sounds good,” said Colin, and the others nodded.

  “Latin. It just means—”

  “But Gilbert,” Lydia interrupted, her forehead creased in puzzled incomprehension, a not-uncommon sight, “did you not call him Hector before?”

  “No. Our stepfather always refers to him as Justin, and Reynolds... Oh!” He let out a shout of laughter. “Yes, I did call him Hector, at dinner. Hector was one of the Trojan heroes, a blustering bully of a fellow, and the word has entered the English language.”

  Lydia looked not one whit the wiser. The twins exchanged a meaningful glance. Ginnie felt she ought to enquire into its significance, to remind them that Lord Amis was not to be injured, but she was suddenly very tired. “Remember, Mama is to know nothing,” she said, and sent them to bed. Judith went to tuck them in.

  “Don’t worry, Ginnie,” Colin said, unexpectedly understanding. “I’ll keep an eye on the brats, make sure they don’t do any real harm. Ah, here comes your supper. I’m hungry again, so I’ll join you. By George, you do yourselves well down there.”

  “I expected Mama and Steppapa to dine at home,” she explained wearily, “and I ordered special treats for Lord Amis.”

  A procession of footmen and maids—Reynolds was far too bulky to attempt the stairs himself—bore in trays laden with covered dishes. In place of the bread and cheese and cold meat Ginnie had expected, the butler had sent up some of the food that had been on the table and most of the second course.

  The senior footman leaned down to murmur in Ginnie’s ear, “Mr. Reynolds said to mention that his lordship hardly touched a thing, miss.”

  “Indeed,” said Ginnie, reviving, a militant sparkl
e in her eye. “I must remember to tell Cook that Lord Amis does not care for rich food. She need not go to the trouble of making any particular effort for him when the earl dines out.”

  * * * *

  Justin took the decanter of cognac and his glass to the library. He had sat through innumerable Russian banquets, with their ceaseless toasts in vodka, brandy, and champagne, without ever letting himself become more than mellow. Tonight he had every intention of drowning his sorrows.

  He looked round the room where his father had been wont to spend the best part of his time, poring over musty volumes. Here, too, were the signs of change. Silver candelabra and cherry-wood tabletops gleamed. In place of the old brown rug, a red Turkey carpet graced the floor, and matching curtains hung at the tall windows. The deep leather chairs by the fireplace were in the same style as the old ones, but a rich chestnut brown instead of the dun he recalled. Setting the decanter on an occasional table beside one of them, he sank into it to brood.

  Miss Webster’s words had stung, he acknowledged, pouring a second glass. What was it she had called him—a conceited prig? Presumably she did not believe him a thief or a cheat, the cant meanings of the word. Therefore she considered him a dogmatic prude, convinced of his own moral superiority and all too ready to announce it.

  He had given her every reason for such an opinion, admittedly, and no reason to credit his own estimation of his superiority. Why the devil had he kissed her? Of all the bacon-brained follies, to play into her hands by lowering himself to her standards. Yet how sweet her lips had been, how silky her hair, how supple her slender body...

  With a shocking disregard for its excellence, he swigged the brandy and poured another. Gazing into the topaz depths, he turned the glass between his hands.

  Perhaps it was unfair of him to blame the girl and her siblings for the misdeeds of their mother. Miss Virginia Webster could not be expected to choose poverty, to reject the comforts of Wooburn just because her shameless parent had won them by foul means. In claiming to have promoted the match, she had no doubt been trying to shield her dastardly parent. He would at least give her credit for loyalty.

  Yes, it was the new Lady Wooburn who was responsible for his father’s misery and for exposing the Amises of Wooburn to the tattle of the ton. There must be some way to have the marriage annulled!

  Setting down the empty glass, he began to pace. Lawyers, witnesses, the vicar who had performed the ceremony... Suppose the woman had claimed widowhood when she was actually unmarried? Would that rescind the sacrament and the legal contract? Of course he’d be sorry to see her children stigmatized as bastards, but his family came first. His pride and his father’s happiness came first.

  As he reached the end of the room and turned, the library door opened. The Earl of Wooburn stood there, lean, white-haired, slightly stooped, peering short-sightedly through his gold-rimmed spectacles.

  “Father!”

  A few long strides and Justin was reaching for his hand, but the earl opened his arms to take his long-absent son in a welcoming embrace.

  “My dear boy!” he muttered. “My dear boy. I have missed you.” He stepped back with a tremulous smile, holding Justin by both arms, and squinted at him. His spectacles had misted up. “Dash it, can’t see a thing,” he said and took them off.

  Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he turned away to polish them. Justin saw him dab furtively at each corner of his eyes. Hell and the devil confound the woman who had brought the old man to tears!

  “I’ve quit the diplomatic corps, sir,” he said, pretending to have noticed nothing amiss. “My place is here at Wooburn, at your side. I mean to learn to manage the estate and to become everything you could wish for in your heir.”

  “My dear boy, you have always been that. Never have you caused me a moment’s worry. You did not think that was why I advised you to travel?” he asked anxiously.

  “Not at all, sir. You sent me to broaden my horizons.”

  “And did you? Broaden your horizons, I mean.” The impish grin that danced across the earl’s face was so unlike him that Justin dismissed it as a figment of his imagination. A momentary draught had made the candles flicker, no doubt, causing shadows to waver.

  “I hope so, sir, Russia was most interesting, as was travelling back across Europe in the tsar’s train.”

  “Ah yes, your letters from St. Petersburg and Vienna were illuminating, but I have heard nothing of your journey home. Come and sit down and tell me about it.”

  Reynolds appeared as if by magic with a glass. Justin poured the cognac and told his father a little of the tsar’s dash across Germany to lead his army in the Allied invasion of France. They chatted until the brass clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven.

  The earl glanced at it, set down his glass, still half full, and rose, his lean cheeks a little flushed. “Time for me to be off,” he said almost shyly. “Mustn’t keep a lady waiting.”

  She had him completely under her thumb. No wonder he had avoided the subject of his marriage, out of sheer embarrassment. Justin tried to infuse his voice with meaning: his father could count on his support against the machinations of his wife.

  “Good night, sir. I’m very glad to be home.”

  “Good night, my boy. It’s good to have you home. I shall present you to your new stepmama in the morning. She didn’t wish to intrude tonight.”

  Lady Wooburn undoubtedly hoped to put off their meeting as long as possible.

  Justin watched as his father left with a jaunty step. He must feel buoyed up just to have someone on his side in the conflict. What sort of harridan had he wed?

  * * * *

  Ginnie entered her bedchamber without the usual feeling of delight. The room had not changed: the curtains of faded chintz patterned with scarlet poppies and blue cornflowers, the gleam of polished wood, the well-beaten blue rug on the floor, with the bare patch hidden under the bed, were still the same.

  All her life she had longed for a room of her own, and now Lord Amis had ruined her pleasure in it.

  On arriving at Wooburn she had been shocked by the dingy drabness of the mansion.

  “It hardly seemed worth the effort to keep things redded up,” Mrs. Peaskot, the housekeeper, had said to excuse herself. “Gentlemen don’t notice, and it weren’t as though we ever had guests. Master Justin met his friends elsewhere so as not to disturb his lordship.”

  Ginnie had enjoyed supervising a thorough scrubbing and dusting and polishing, laundering and darning, washing of walls and windows, beating of carpets. The house had emerged sparkling, glowing with rich colours, redolent of beeswax and lemon oil.

  The vicar’s wife, Mrs. Desborough, the only lady who had always persisted in visiting the recluse, had congratulated Lady Wooburn on the change. Her ladyship had not hesitated to give her daughter the credit. Ginnie had been proud of the transformation until that odious man had accused her of living in luxury at the earl’s expense.

  She needed someone to confide in. The disadvantage of a room of one’s own was that she could not lie in bed telling Lydia all that was on her mind. Lydia had often fallen asleep halfway through, but that had not really mattered since she understood only half of what she was told anyway. It was her sympathy and tranquil acceptance Ginnie needed.

  She popped her head round the connecting door to Lydia’s chamber. “Need help with the buttons, love?”

  “Yes, please.” The younger girl turned her back and went on plaintively, “Ginnie, I don’t understand why Justin does not like us.”

  “You must not call him Justin, my dear.” She played for time while trying to think how to explain matters to her innocent sister.

  Lydia looked utterly bewildered. “His name is Hector, then? But why does Steppapa call him Justin?”

  “Trust Gil to throw you into a confusion! His name is Justin, but you must call him Lord Amis.”

  “But he is our brother.”

  “Stepbrother. You must call him Lord Amis because he is not a re
al relation, and he does not wish to be related to us.”

  “Why does Lord Amis not like us?”

  “Since he arrived at Wooburn already determined to despise us, I believe some scandalmonger in London must have told him horrid tales about us.”

  “Then you must explain to him.”

  “How can I, when the wretch is convinced of our wickedness and will not open his mouth except to revile us? He has given me no opportunity for explanations. Lyddie, promise you will not tell Gil or the others?”

  “I promise I will not tell them—tell them what?”

  “That Lord Amis kissed me.”

  “Oh, Ginnie, did he really?” Lydia squealed, her attempt to clap her hands complicating Ginnie’s attempt to help her take off her chemise. “He has fallen in love with you already. How wonderfully romantic.”

  “Not that sort of kiss,” said Ginnie sadly.

  Lydia’s face fell. “You mean like the sort of gentleman you warned me about, who takes advantage of young ladies? Was it perfectly horrid?”

  “Well, no,” she confessed. “That is why you must be particularly careful of that sort of gentleman, because it is all too easy to be taken in.”

  “I shall be very careful never to be alone with Lord Amis,” said Lydia with a shudder.

  Ginnie found the notion of Lord Amis stealing a kiss from her beautiful sister amazingly distasteful— but all too likely. “Yes, don’t let him catch you alone,” she said.

  “What a horrid creature he is.” Lydia sighed. “I thought I should like to have an older brother, but I can see I was quite mistaken.”

  In her nightgown of plain white cambric, she went with Ginnie back into the other chamber, helped her undress and set her ringlets in curl-papers for her. They kissed each other good-night. When she left, Ginnie sat on at the dressing-table, staring at her reflection in the mirror.

  What a fright she looked in the papers, and was that a freckle on her nose? Two! Lydia never freckled. Now that Lord Amis had seen her, she would undoubtedly be the one to suffer the indignity of his advances.