“When is Papa returning?”
Swishing her paintbrush in water, Christel swiped the loose hairs from her face with her free hand. “How many weeks are in a month?” she asked, bringing in a hated arithmetic lesson. Mrs. Gables had informed Christel only last week that Anna was refusing to do her lessons, which was one of the reasons Christel had decided to come more often to Blackthorn Castle.
Awaiting a reply, Christel lifted her head and peered at Anna, who stood momentarily defiant. “Four weeks are in a month,” Anna said. “Except in February, which is shy four weeks by two days.”
Anna had her merits, to be sure. She was excellent with numbers.
“Your papa is due back the last week in March. If three weeks and five days have passed since your papa’s departure, what does that leave before his return?”
Anna rolled her eyes. “Three weeks and two days, Miss Christel.”
Christel resisted a smile. “Now tomorrow, when you are bored and ask me when your papa will be home, you will already know the answer.”
“But I shall perish of boredom before he returns.”
The child was still young and tender and full of her own self-importance, and not used to being told no. But Christel knew Anna pushed because she could, and Christel had definitely worked up a tolerance to the patter of young angst these days.
“Perhaps I should set you to the task of writing a novel,” Christel said without looking up. “You have a definite flair for large words and drama. I am impressed. Truly.”
“Papa does not force me to do anything I do not wish to do.”
“Methinks sometimes Papas spoil their daughters too much.”
“But I do not like watercolors.”
Folding her arms, Christel walked behind Anna and observed the girl’s work with a critical eye. “That is unfortunate. Especially since you are quite inventive with your lines and rather creative with your colors. I have never seen such a unique apple.”
“Grams thought it was an orange. And Grandmama said ’twas a croquet ball.”
“Hmm.” Christel managed not to laugh lest her reaction be misconstrued. “It could pass for a croquet ball, I suppose. But most definitely ’tis not an orange.”
Anna suddenly giggled. They shared a smile. Christel went back to her own canvas.
“Do all ladies have to know how to paint and sing and dance and do needlepoint?”
“Yes.”
“Were you a lady?”
“When I was your age, I wanted to be a lady more than anything in the world.”
“Why?”
“Because only a real lady could marry a prince.”
“What happened?”
Christel lowered her paintbrush and found herself remembering this ballroom in its golden glory days. She could almost hear the music. The unfinished chapter in her life had suddenly become a book that she had yet to close. “The prince married someone else, and I knew I had to find a way to take care of myself.”
“Truly? Were you sad?”
“To grow up? Who does not want to believe in fairy tales forever?” Christel turned. “I know ’tis hard, Anna, but you cannot let yourself quit every time something becomes difficult or does not go your way. How will you ever learn to believe in yourself?”
Anna picked up her paintbrush. “Miss Christel?” she asked after a long moment. “Am I bad?”
“Absolutely not. Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because Uncle Leighton has not come to see me. He was not here for the Christmastide supper. He has not been to church with us. He did not say good-bye, Miss Christel.”
Christel swished her brush in water. “He had to go away, Anna.”
“Did Papa make him go just like before?”
“Your Uncle Leighton is a grown man. Wherever he is, he is fine. In fact, he has probably written to you, but the post just has not arrived.”
The corners of Anna’s mouth turned up as she considered this. “ ’Tis only that I miss him. He plays marbles and jackstraws and takes me ice sliding with skates. He tells me the best bedtime stories. I want him to teach me how to ride my pony.”
Christel gently wiped the hair from Anna’s cheek, but she made no reply, though she was wont to do so with anger at Leighton. ’Twas a simple matter to win the affection of an eight-year-old child when all a person had to do was play games and bring presents. He had been quick enough to disappear without saying good-bye or sending a note to the girl.
“I do know that your papa loves you,” she said quietly. “He allowed you to stay here with your great-grandmamma, did he not? When he returns, ask him to read you a story. If he does not know how to play jackstraws or marbles, offer to teach him. Tell him you want to learn how to ride your pony. What did he say in his letter to you?”
From the outset, Christel had not inquired after Lord Carrick because such an inquiry would have demonstrated an unseemly interest in the master of the manse. She still managed to learn by listening to others talk, but this time she found herself wanting to ask Anna about the letter the girl had received yesterday.
“Your papa must have said a lot. The letter was quite long.”
Anna shrugged a thin shoulder. “Papa mostly wrote that I was not to give you worry wrinkles and gray hair, but that if you asked what he wrote to me in my letters that I am to tell you that he would think you are very pretty even if you did have gray hair.”
Christel felt heat crawl up her neck. Anna cracked an impish smile. “I think he likes you, or he would not have told Grandmamma to allow you to come here.” She studied Christel with earnest blue-gray eyes. “Are you my governess?”
Christel set down her paintbrush. “I am only your tutor, and only until your papa returns. I stay here when the weather or time of day does not allow me to walk home. But my home is Seastone Cottage.”
“Cousin Tianna said that she is your half sister. If that is true, why do you not live with Grams and her at Rosecliffe?”
“Seastone Cottage is my home, Anna.”
“Will you live at Seastone all by yourself forever?” Anna asked. “Why can you not live here forever and be my governess?”
“Because nothing lasts forever. What I mean . . . is that one day, you will be all grown up and have a family of your own. You will not need me anymore.” She tipped her chin at Anna’s watercolor. “Now put a stem on that apple so I can teach you something much more fun.”
Anna looked uncertain. Christel placed the watercolors back into their tins. “In the real world people learn skills to survive.”
“You mean like learning how to shoot a pistol and to fish?”
Christel laughed. “We can do that when the weather warms. How would you like to design and make a real dress for your doll?”
Making doll clothes would involve not only learning how to sketch creations from one’s own imagination but also arithmetic to properly measure and make patterns. And Christel had gotten the urge to draw again.
Anna’s blue eyes perked with interest. “Can my doll be a real fairy princess?”
“She can be whatever you want. That is the beauty of using your imagination. Your dreams become real.”
Christel’s chambers at Blackthorn Castle were on the third floor at the opposite end of the sprawling estate where she had spent her first night. The room was in the same wing but one floor up from the chambers that Lord Carrick had once shared with Saundra. The corridor joined to his floor by a garret staircase near Anna’s nursery, which the child shared with Mrs. Gables. One window at the end of the hall overlooked the cove and a crow colony that had taken nest in the old battlements.
Every day as she passed the nursery, Christel stopped at the window to look out at the cove. Tonight clouds drifted across the sky, blotting out the stars. Water and sky blended as one, and she could see nothing in the darkness. She had just left Saundra’s bedchambers, having searched drawers and cubbies, beneath the bed and in her armoire. The room was empty of most everything, so Christel
had had no high hopes that she would discover anything significant that might shed light on Saundra’s activities or troubles. She’d found no correspondence or journal.
Christel entered her chambers and closed the door. She had left a fire burning in the hearth when she had taken Anna to her rooms and put her to bed. She stopped. The dowager sat on the green damask chair in front of the hearth, looking more genial than she had before. She held Christel’s drawing tablet, which contained all the fashion plates on which she had been working these past evenings when she’d been alone in her room.
While designing the wardrobe for Anna’s favorite dolls, Christel had gotten the idea to expand the concept. After all, what were doll clothes but miniature versions of adult attire? Though wonderful for little girls to indulge in, dreams did not put food onto one’s table or pay one’s bills, and if Christel had become anything these past few years, it was realistic about her circumstances. She had once owned a successful dress shop in the heart of Loyalist Williamsburg that had catered to the former lord-governor’s wife. Someone would be lucky to have her ideas.
“These are quite acceptable,” the dowager said without looking up.
She continued to thumb through drawings depicting polonaise-style overskirts looped back and pinned behind, revealing an underskirt, or open-robed higher-waisted gown with no trained overskirt. “A bit of Parisian finesse to add a worldly flair to the styles. Not what I expected from someone just come from the colonies.”
“Thank you, my lady. Your praise warms me.”
“Hmpf. Always a cheeky one. Are any of these Anna’s ideas?”
“The dress that is made of ruffles, gauze and a bounty of glittering jewels, feathers and seashells is hers. Her doll is a fairy princess, you understand.”
The dowager’s mouth turned up slightly at the corners. “She has told me so on occasion.”
The last drawing was of Lord Carrick. But before Christel could remove the tablet from the dowager’s hand, she turned the page, and Christel had a sudden wish for the ground to swallow her.
She had drawn Camden’s hair slightly shorter than it was in reality, and she’d streamed it like a shadowy cloud behind him. His eyes were a pale reflection, like moonlight. She had sketched him wild and shameless, the way her mind had captured him on the deck of his ship with the storm clouds behind him.
“Does my grandson share your fantasy of him?”
“All art is fantasy.”
The dowager folded up the portfolio and set it on the small round table at her elbow. The candle flickered with the draft of the movement.
“ ’Tis only a drawing, my lady,” Christel said.
The dowager rose with a rustle of black bombazine and glanced at the sparsely furnished room. “You have been spending much of your time with us of late. Are you comfortable in this room?”
“Why are you here, my lady? Have I committed some crime?”
“I came to give you this,” the dowager said, offering Christel a folded length of vellum.
Confused, Christel popped the seal and leaned nearer to the candle.
The dowager walked nearer to the hearth, where she stood within the radiant warmth of the fire. “Seastone Cottage is yours,” she said. “No lien. No mortgage. No taxes due. As of today, everything is yours.”
Heat burned across Christel’s cheeks, as if she stood within reach of the flames in her hearth. She closed her eyes.
This was what she had wanted after all. Did it make a difference how the gift had come to her? Was her heart not as mercenary as any man’s? Had she not proven that over and over again throughout the war? Had a part of her not wanted the thousand pounds the dowager had offered to her to entice her grandson to stay? This was far less. Christel refolded the vellum with a calm she was far from feeling.
“My grandson pays his staff well,” the dowager said. “In a year, you will have earned enough to make your work here a trade for the taxes on your cottage, at least.”
“A year?”
The dowager faced the hearth. “My grandson hired you to be Anna’s tutor. But I wish that you be her governess. She needs you. You are very much earning your keep. I have been told that you have already taken over many of Mrs. Gable’s responsibilities.”
“Only until her gout subsides. Doctor White has tasked me to keep an eye on her.”
“Is that why you visit the kitchen daily to prepare her meals?”
“Your cook is already busy enough. Mrs. Gables requires special meals. She has no one else to do it, my lady.”
“Then you will find no problem taking on the responsibilities of Anna’s governess full time.”
Only when it was time for Lord Carrick to take a wife. But it was more, Christel realized. For as uncertain as she was about mothering another woman’s child, she was less certain about living for a year in the same household as the child’s father. Her solitude had always kept her heart safe. Nor was she drawn by a desire to be more than who she was. She was not always comfortable in her own skin, but it was her skin and she had accepted the fit.
So far, Christel had been able to resist getting too involved in this family’s life, but little by little, she had already begun to spend more of her days and nights at Blackthorn Castle, especially as it had become apparent that Mrs. Gables was having difficulty caring for an energetic eight-year-old. The nurse had admitted such to Christel, afraid that once she could no longer do her job, she would be of no use to anyone and turned out. Christel had reassured her that was not true but that she had taken on more of Anna’s care and education so Mrs. Gables could rest, though she’d had no idea why she was confident of such.
Aye, the impossible thing about emotions was that once out of the bottle, they could not be easily poured back inside and corked. Attempting to do so was like trying to catch smoke with one’s hands. In the end, it was all Christel could do not to kiss the dowager’s powdered cheek for bringing her the deed to Seastone Cottage, and out of relief or gratitude, tears welled in Christel’s eyes. “I will do my best by Lady Anna, my lady.”
“I know. You will also remember your place when it concerns my grandson’s future. When ’tis time for you to go . . . you must go.”
Christel nodded. She dabbed away the moisture from the corner of one eye. She had no delusions concerning the earl of Carrick’s responsibilities and future. Christel would never be mistress to a married man. Would she?
“You trust my judgment concerning Lady Anna?” Christel tentatively asked.
“Only as long as you understand that my granddaughter is a precious, beautiful wee gel. I will not have her spirit stomped from her.”
This was a new face from the dowager. “Nay,” Christel agreed. “I will not do any stomping. However, if she is going to be given over to my care, I will ask that you no longer indulge her every whim. In fact, you and Grams have set no boundaries for her, and I wish to rectify that beginning tonight.”
“I beg your pardon.”
Anna’s obvious loneliness reminded Christel of herself as a young girl after her own mother had died. “If you have ever been a recipient of spiders in your bed or molasses in your shoes, you would understand that she is a very bored, but creative, little girl. When she is out of the nursery, ’tis akin to giving her the keys to the castle.”
Indeed, Christel had already spoken to Smolich and later the housekeeper concerning some of Anna’s antics. “Your servants already spoil her. She is allowed to jump on beds. She rides the banister down the stairs, raids strawberry tarts from the kitchen and spends a great deal of time reorganizing her menu so as not to eat anything that might be good for her. Everyone here allows her to do what she wants.”
Evidently, by the pinched look on the dowager’s powdered face, no one had ever dared tell her that her precocious great-granddaughter had a propensity for creating havoc to keep herself occupied.
“Humbug. She is a lady, the daughter of an earl—”
“No one expects anything from her, my lady
. ’Tis not fair to her. She needs boundaries and purpose.”
Surprisingly the dowager made no other protestations. Instead, she raised her lorgnette to her eye and peered closely at Christel. “You will need a new wardrobe more fitting of your position,” she said briskly. “Shall I hire you to be your own seamstress as well?”
Christel smiled. She had not thought of asking. But truly, it was an excellent idea.
Two evenings later, the sound of soft footfalls awakened Christel. She sat up in bed. A storm was moving inland from off the sea. Wind gusts whistled through the seams in the sash. Christel eased out of bed, walked to her door and cracked it open to peer into the corridor.
Realizing at once she must have been dreaming, she returned to bed and pulled the blankets over her head. This was how rumors of ghosts began, she thought, listening as a chime banged against a stone wall somewhere in the courtyard below.
Thunk.
She lowered the blankets and stared up at the plaster ceiling. Wind gusted against the window. The sound could have come from outside. Yet at once, she rose again. She drew on a heavy wrapper, then left the room to make sure Anna was asleep.
A lamp burned on the dresser near the child’s bed. For a moment, as Christel stared down at the little girl, she realized a fierce want to protect her. She covered her more securely against the cold before drawing away.
By the time Christel returned to her room, dawn had begun to spread a thin gray line across the horizon. She washed and, throwing a black shawl over her shoulders, went below to the kitchen to secure a breakfast tray for Anna and Mrs. Gables.
“What is above the nursery?” she asked Smolich when he came down to iron that morning’s broadsheet for the dowager.
He peered over his nose. “You mean other than the roof?”
“I thought I heard something up there last night.”
He considered this. “There used to be servants’ rooms up there, but they were closed when the new part of this house was built around the old castle,” he said. “Other than cats or occasional rodents Mrs. Gables has heard on occasion, no one has lived up there in decades.”
This Perfect Kiss Page 19