Black Sheep's Daughter

by Carola Dunn

  He looked enquiringly at Andrew, but before Teresa could introduce them Gayo took a hand, or claw, in the proceedings. "Hello, hello, hello," he cried, swooping down from the top of the curtains where he had been quietly shredding a fringe. He landed on Lord John's shoulder, flapped wildly till he found his balance, then leaned towards his lordship's ear and said in a confidential tone, "Son of a sea snake. Blimey!"

  To Teresa's relief, though her big cousin looked startled he laughed. "Boggs did mutter something disgruntled about a bird," he said. "But he didn’t tell me it talks!"

  "Gayo appears to have fallen in love with you at first sight."

  "Just like all the girls," he boasted, but with such a engaging twinkle in his eyes that it was impossible to be offended. He turned again to Andrew and held out his hand.

  Andrew shook hands and introduced himself. "I had the honour of escorting Miss Danville and Marco from Costa Rica," he explained. "Now that they are safely in the hands of a relative, I shall be on my way."

  "I was on my way to dine with friends," said Lord John, "but dashed if I don't stay home to improve my acquaintance with my pretty new cousin. Boggs! Boggs, I say! Ha, knew you were listening at the door. We'll have something to eat in the breakfast room in half an hour. Tell Jacques a cold collation will do, but make it substantial. You'll join us, Sir Andrew?"

  The diplomat declined, standing firm against their urging. Teresa thought he looked somewhat miffed. She wished she could think that he was the least bit jealous to see her welcomed with such enthusiasm by a handsome young gentleman. But no, he was affianced to Muriel.

  Her cousin's lively volubility prevented any speech with Sir Andrew beyond the brief expression of her deepest gratitude and a promise to repay very soon the blunt he had laid out on their behalf. He departed with a curt nod of acknowledgment.

  * * * *

  A few minutes later, Teresa ventured to interrupt Lord John's amiable chatter to ask if it was possible to change her travel-stained gown before eating. The housekeeper was summoned and took her upstairs, scarcely blinking at the parrot that accompanied them.

  "You'll be Lord Edward's daughter, miss?" asked Mrs Davies. "A prime favourite he was with the staff. I was still a housemaid when he went off so sudden. There's not many left as knew him. That Boggs, now, only been here ten years, he has."

  Warned by the butler that Lord John had taken his alleged cousins under his wing and that they would likely stay the night, Mrs Davies had already ordered a suite prepared. Annie was in the dressing room, unpacking Teresa's minimal wardrobe, while a pair of maids bustled about making up the bed, lighting a fire, fetching hot water.

  "This was Lady Pamela's chamber before she married," said the housekeeper.

  "It looks very comfortable," said Teresa, trying not to appear impressed by the primrose silk-hung bed, the matching Hepplewhite chairs, the patterned Axminster carpet. The dressing room had two huge armoires with mirrored doors, a dressing table with another mirror, a chest of drawers and a marble-topped washstand. It could be used as a private sitting room also as there were a chaise longue and two comfortable looking armchairs by the fireplace.

  "I had best leave Gayo here," she went on hesitantly. "Annie will stay with him until he is settled."

  Mrs Davis, who still had a fondness for the dashing Lord Edward, willingly agreed to send up a tray for the abigail and a selection of fruit and nuts for the parrot. Teresa thought she was enjoying herself hugely, and soon found out why.

  "My cousin's always boasting about her mistress's black pageboy," she confided in a whisper as she left. "Just wait till I tell her we've a black abigail in the house, and a parrot to boot!"

  Teresa washed and changed quickly, and hurried down to the entrance hall. The footman, James, directed her to the breakfast room and she went in to find her brother and her cousin already seated with Boggs about to serve them an informal supper.

  "Thought you wouldn't mind if we didn't stand on ceremony," said Lord John jovially. "All family, after all, and young Marco and I are deuced sharp-set."

  "If by that you mean that you are excessively hungry, then I must forgive you for so am I," Teresa said with a smile, taking the chair the butler held for her. Without a second thought she ignored Lady Parr's instructions about delicate appetites and did justice to every one of the duke's French chef's delectable concoctions.

  At last even Lord John, a notable trencherman, was satisfied. He pushed his chair back from the table and called for port. Teresa knew that ladies always retired before the gentlemen started on the port, but he persuaded her to stay and take a glass of canary.

  "We're all family," he repeated, "and I rely on you, cousin, to tell me about my uncle Edward and your home and your journey, for young Marco's a silent sort of fellow. Told me just enough to whet my appetite."

  Marco grinned at his teasing tone, unoffended. He was quite accustomed to such treatment from his brothers, so it made him feel at home. He told his sister later that their cousin was a great gun and had promised to show him around London.

  Boggs provided port, canary wine, and bowls of nuts and dried fruit, then took himself off. They sat round the table, sipping the wine and nibbling at raisins and apricots and figs, while Teresa described the Hacienda del Inglés and began the tale of their journey to England.

  Lord John was commenting that the jaguar must have been a deuced flat to miss snapping up a tasty morsel like his cousin, when they heard the sound of new arrivals in the hall. "That'll be m'father," he said, jumping up. "Come on, I'll make you known to him. I'd wager a monkey he'll be pleased as Punch. Good sort of chap, m'father."

  Despite these encouraging words, Teresa and Marco followed him with some trepidation. They reached the hall just as Boggs took hat, gloves and cane from the duke and passed them to James, and Mrs Davies helped the short, plump duchess out of her damp pelisse. Both the upper servants were talking at once.

  Though Teresa could not distinguish their words she was sure that the butler was telling his master that they were impostors and the housekeeper her mistress that they were not.

  Lord John broke into the chatter. “Here's m'cousins come all the way from the Americas, sir," he announced. "Mama, let me present Cousin Teresa, and this is young Marco."

  Teresa sank in a ducal curtsy and Marco performed his best bow.

  "You've both a look of Edward!" said the duke, and swept them both into his jovial embrace. "I trust you have come to stay for a good long visit?"

  "Stafford, you cannot mean it!" wailed the duchess. "I feel quite faint. Davies, my smelling salts!"

  Chapter 9

  Teresa lay in bed the next morning, simply enjoying the knowledge that for the first time in months she was not travelling. She had wondered for a time, last night, whether she and Marco were to be allowed to stay. The duchess had collapsed onto the nearest chair, moaning weakly about fraud and deception until her dresser hurried in with a glass of hartshorn and supported her faltering steps up the stairs.

  Neither her husband nor her son had taken much notice of this performance.

  "There, there," the duke had said soothingly, then turned to ask eagerly for news of his brother.

  "M'mother's given to the vapours," Lord John had explained. "No use letting it cast you into the dismals."

  Teresa had gathered that her genial uncle was not influenced by his wife's distempers. She and Marco could stay, for the rest of their lives if they chose.

  Whether her Grace would agree to sponsor her in Society was another matter. Don Eduardo wanted her to join the Haut Ton, not merely to live as a poor relation in his brother's house. She would follow Lady Parr's directions with the greatest precision, she vowed, and prove to her aunt that she was worthy.

  The china clock on the mantelpiece, with its idealised shepherd and shepherdess, showed a little after eight. Lady Parr had said that a lady never appeared below stairs before ten in the morning. Teresa was wide awake and she wondered how to fill her time until
she could go in search of breakfast. Her room was warm—a maid must have slipped in earlier to light the fire without waking her—so she got up and went bare-footed in her cotton nightgown into the dressing room.

  "¡Buenos días!" Gayo greeted her. He was perched on the bare towel-horse, to which Annie had leashed him. Excited, he flew to meet Teresa and the wooden towel-horse went over with a crash. "Blimey, what a pity," he mourned as his flight came to an abrupt halt.

  "Estúpido," she said as she unhooked the tether and smoothed his ruffled plumage. "You know you cannot fly when you are tied."

  Annie slipped into the room, bearing a tray. "I brought your chocolate, miss. What was that great crash?" She saw the towel-horse. "Oh, Gayo, you naughty creature!"

  "It made an excellent perch, but he had best be tied to something else in future. It is such a help to me that he likes you, Annie, and equally important, that you like him. Tell me, how are the other servants treating you?"

  "Fine, miss, though some of them do stare. Mrs Davies and Mr Boggs keep them polite. Did you know an abigail sits above all the other maids? Only her Grace's dresser, Miss Howell, is higher than me, except Mrs Davies, of course. Oh miss, I'm so glad you didn't leave me on that island!"

  "So am I," Teresa assured her. In a house full of strangers, the girl was more an old friend than a servant though they had met little more than a month ago.

  Teresa went down to the breakfast room at ten. Marco and the duke were there. Lord John, as his father informed her, had gone out last night and would doubtless not be seen before noon. The duchess invariably breakfasted in her room.

  The butler poured Teresa a cup of coffee and she chose two rashers of bacon and a toasted muffin from the long list of dishes he offered her. His manner was austere and she thought he had not entirely given up his suspicion of their credentials. The duke seemed to have not the least doubt that Teresa and Marco were his brother's children, but Teresa was glad to have Don Eduardo's letter to give him. He set aside his newspaper and read it, guffawing now and then.

  "Always could make me laugh, the scapegrace," he said. "It sounds as if he's done very well for himself, after all. So it's a tutor you want, Marco. Shouldn't be any problem there. And a London Season for you, missy. That's for your aunt to see to."

  Teresa sipped her coffee, suddenly losing her appetite as she reflected on her aunt's reaction to their arrival.

  The coffee was good, but not in any way comparable with what she was used to at home. She remembered her father's commission. If she failed at being a lady, at least she would take him back a good coffee contract, she vowed.

  * * * *

  "Her Grace requests Miss Danville's presence in her dressing room directly after breakfast," Boggs told her as she left the room a short while later. Judging by the commiserating tone of his voice, Lord Edward's letter had at last convinced him of her authenticity.

  She hurried upstairs, going as fast as possible without actually running, which was forbidden by Lady Parr. In her own dressing room she anxiously studied her image in the looking glass while Annie assured her that her hair was neatness itself, her morning dress spotless, her entire appearance unexceptionable.

  Teresa suppressed the thought that her maid knew as little as she did, and proceeded at a decorous pace to the duchess's dressing room. Even her encounter with the jaguar had not been near so frightening as the prospect of meeting her aunt.

  A liveried footman stood in the hallway, waiting to run any errands for her Grace. When she stopped to ascertain that she had come to the right place, he scratched on the door for her. The dresser, Howell, admitted her. A tall, angular woman with a frosty grey eye, her intimidating expression clearly showed that she had no good opinion of poor, foreign relations come to batten on her mistress.

  Teresa, after her contretemps with the butler the night before, had no intention of letting herself be intimidated by a servant, however toplofty. She might be unused to the luxury of Stafford House but she was no peasant girl. She had dealt with servants all her life.

  She looked squarely and coldly into the woman's eyes and said, "My aunt asked for me. Kindly tell her I am here."

  Howell pursed her thin lips but dropped her eyes and curtsied. "Yes, miss. Please come this way. Her Grace is expecting you."

  Heartened by this minor victory, Teresa followed her into a pink bedchamber. The bed and window draperies were pink silk, the counterpane was pink, the carpet was beige with pink roses, the chairs covered with pink satin, the walls papered with more roses. On the hearth a huge fire blazed, and the room was suffocatingly hot. Teresa repressed a nervous giggle at the notion that she had been swallowed alive.

  The duchess, dressed in a pink wrap that matched her face very neatly, lay back against a pile of pillows. Since the pillow slips were also pink, she might have vanished entirely were it not for her white lace nightcap.

  Teresa curtsied her ducal curtsy. "Good morning..." Aunt? Ma'am? Your Grace? she wondered desperately. Lady Parr's words floated through her mind: It is always better to be too formal than too familiar. "Good morning, your Grace."

  "Come here, miss," commanded the duchess in a fading voice belied by her bright eyes and pink cheeks.

  Approaching the bed, Teresa curtsied again, not quite so low this time. The bright eyes looked her up and down, then closed, with a air of acute suffering. "Where did you come by that gown? Howell, my vinaigrette!"

  Teresa was wearing the green-sprigged muslin. Admittedly it was somewhat shabby after having been worn constantly on the journey, but it was positively modish compared to the clothes she used to wear at home. "It was given to me by a young lady I met on the voyage, ma'am."

  "Cast-offs! I believe I shall have a Spasm. A Danville in cast-offs!" She waved away the glass of hartshorn quickly presented by Howell and sat up straighter, adjusting her cap. "I suppose you are a Danville, miss?"

  "My uncle is satisfied," said Teresa with some indignation. She was growing tired of having her identity doubted. "This morning he read the letter my father wrote him."

  "Then you must have some new gowns, Miss Danville. Even a poor relation cannot be seen about the house in rags."

  "Papa wishes me to have a Season, ma'am, and I believe my uncle concurs."

  "A Season! This is aiming high indeed! You are shockingly brown, Miss Danville, and I daresay it is your natural complexion so that crushed strawberries cannot be expected to help. You are past your first youth, and I have not heard that you have a portion worth mentioning. Besides, you were brought up in the jungle and cannot possibly know how to go on in society. As the Duchess of Stafford I have standards to uphold. Your inevitable failure would be utterly mortifying."

  "I do not expect to be presented as a debutante, ma'am. I do not expect to be acclaimed as an Incomparable, nor to make a brilliant match. I am twenty-three years old and have no dowry unless there is something left in Papa's bank account when Marco's and my expenses have been paid. But I have had lessons in correct behaviour from Lady Parr and I am very willing to accept any further instruction you think necessary. Don Eduardo—Lord Edward—says I am to have a Season. I am accustomed to obeying my father, ma'am."

  "Hmm, I am glad to hear it, miss! And who is Lady Parr?"

  "She is the widow of a baronet, who travelled with us from Jamaica."

  "A baronet's relict. Shabby genteel, I make no doubt. I shall have to correct the half of what you have learned."

  Teresa smiled, her dark eyes lighting. "Then you will sponsor me, ma'am?"

  "Well, I do believe you are quite passably pretty when you smile! You may call me aunt. Howell, send for Miss Carter. This promises to be quite exhausting." Her Grace leaned back against her pillows and closed her eyes.

  Teresa was about to tiptoe from the room, but Howell put her finger to her lips and indicated a chair so she sat down. The abigail hurried out.

  Teresa studied her newly acknowledged aunt. The duchess did not look in the least as if she suffered from nervous
debility. Her round face with its rosy cheeks was the picture of health. Recalling Lord John's words, she decided that her Grace, being of unimposing stature, used the threat of imminent collapse as a weapon to uphold her dignity. Her family had learned to ignore it, but that it intimidated strangers she herself could attest.

  Howell returned. The duchess sat up with renewed vigour, swung her legs (limbs, Teresa reminded herself) out of bed and headed for the dressing room. "I shall dress," she announced. "The Little Season is beginning and we shall have a great deal to do to make Miss Danville—Teresa, is it not?—presentable. Is Stafford still in the house? Send to ask him if he will be so good as to spare me a moment. And while you are about it, send for the modiste, that Frenchwoman who is all the crack, I forget her name, and for Monsieur Henri.”

  “Monsieur Henri went back to France, your Grace.”

  “Back to France? We shall have to make do with his assistant then, that nasty little man from Birmingham. That hair must come off. Let me see your teeth, girl. Excellent, and your figure is acceptable under those frills, I believe. Now walk about while I dress so that I may see how you move."

  Teresa walked with carefully mincing steps towards the window, a false smile pinned to her lips in the hope that it was making her look "passably pretty." For a nostalgic moment she wished she was back on board the Destiny, parading before Lady Parr, Muriel and Andrew.

  Her aunt's voice brought her abruptly back to the present. "As I feared, shabby genteel. You look as if you were hobbled like a horse. Let me see how you move naturally."

  Teresa strode towards her and nearly fell flat on her face as the narrow skirt tangled round her ankles. "I am hobbled, aunt," she said, laughing.

  "Far too mannish." The duchess gazed at her speculatively. "But that laugh is superb. I'll tell you what, Teresa, if you stick with gentlemen who consider themselves amusing, you may yet do me credit. Now walk again, something between the fop and the Corinthian, if you please."