Mists of Moorhead Manor

by Bancroft, Blair

  I stared, swallowing my words of thanks for the compliment, unable to summon an adequate response to his last remark. It’s not that I thought being a companion to an invalid would be easy. I had, in fact, wanted the position because it sounded more challenging than the other positions available. But there was something ominous about the earl’s words, something that brought back the vague threat of mists and shadows.

  Clasping my hands together so tightly my knuckles cracked, I managed a fairly credible, “It is true that I have learned to survive in an often inimical world, my lord. But I must tell you Devon seems most peaceful in comparison. Surely you are not telling me danger lurks here.”

  Once again he assessed me, his gaze shrewd though a trifle skeptical. “How old are you, Miss Ballantyne?”

  “I will be twenty-one in early December, my lord.”

  “And no gallant soldier snapped you up in all those years with the army?”

  I huffed a breath, could feel my eyes snapping fire. There were some things no one should imply, not even an earl. “When one lives surrounded by men, my lord, one quickly learns how to keep them at arm’s length,” I returned in the freezing tone I’d used on importunate young officers.

  “I beg your pardon, child, but you are far more beautiful than I anticipated. We are a predominantly a male household, and I fear to set the cat among the pigeons.”

  “My lord!”

  He shrugged. “But as you say, you are accustomed to keeping men at bay. I trust you will continue to do so.”

  I bristled.

  A bark of laughter put me in my place, the earl’s amusement turning my anger to chagrin. “Good,” he approved. “This household needs a woman of spirit. As you will see,” he added on a more kindly note, “when you meet my sister, Lady Emmaline, who came to us many years ago after her husband’s demise. A more soft-spoken, kind-hearted creature you will not find. She took over management of my household after my wife’s–ah–departure, but she knows not how to say boo to a goose, and managing my daughter is quite beyond her. I can only hope your vitality and independence do not send her into a fit of the vapors.”

  “My lord,” I chided. And realized as his lips twitched just how unusual it must be for anyone to speak to the Earl of Hycliffe in such a tone. But I had spent my life with men of all ages and ranks, even the rudest and crustiest putty in the hands of a daughter of the regiment who had learned how to charm almost before she could walk. I had, consequently, been placed on a pedestal far above the male sea, descending into the ugliness of war only when there was no way to avoid it. I had seen it all during those long years on the Peninsula. Snow, ice, biting winds, scorching heat compounded by the dust of miles-long columns of tramping feet, pounding hooves, rolling caissons, and creaking wagons. I had endured floods and mud, forded rivers and streams. I had seen the carnage of battle, heard the anguished cries of the wounded, the faint whimpers, the dying calls for mothers and wives. I had known the death of Mother, Father, my hopes for the future.

  Let Hycliffe think what he would. I had seen sights he could not even imagine.

  “Now let us speak of Lady Vanessa,” the earl said, drawing my wandering attention back to an austere face that had lost its moment of wry amusement.

  I sat up straighter and gave him my full attention. My new reality was that I was a paid employee, the earl my employer. I had been adapting to new situations all my life. This was merely one more challenge I must meet.

  “As I stated in my correspondence,” he said, “twenty months ago my daughter suffered a fall from her horse onto rocky ground that has left her an invalid. A series of doctors have failed to find a specific reason why she has not recovered, but as the months pass we are beginning to lose hope.”

  I murmured what I hoped were suitable words of sympathy.

  “My intention,” the earl continued, “was that by adding a lively young woman to the household, you would not only provide the companionship of someone Vanessa’s own age but would perhaps encourage her to become more mobile. Yes, yes, a great burden to expect so much of you,” he added hastily, holding up a hand, palm out. “But wishing to see my only daughter marry, have children, lead a normal life, I grow desperate. Unfair, I know, to expect miracles from a young woman who has not yet reached her majority, but you are not exactly a typical young miss, now are you?”

  I had to swallow before I could answer. “I am typical of young women who followed the drum,” I told him.

  “I doubt it,” he shot back, although I could see he regretted his frankness the moment the words left his mouth. “What I meant,” he qualified, “is that surely not many young women of good family follow the drum, particularly after they reach marriageable age.”

  This was true, I couldn’t deny it. A fact that had made me unique. But there had been no relatives in England to take me in. And my mother was not about to abandon my father to go live on the fringes of society, which was all we could afford. After all, I had a plethora of stalwart young officers to choose from right where I was.

  Yet although I had suffered the inevitable fleeting schoolgirl infatuations, no man had measured up to my dream of the love exemplified every day by the devotion of my parents, no matter how terrible the world around us. Foolish girl, to want a love so few people would ever have.

  “Vanessa can be difficult,” the earl was saying.

  That got my attention. Stupid, stupid, to let my mind wander when I needed this position so badly.

  “She was always a trifle autocratic. And now . . . after so long an illness, her temper has become . . . shall we say, frayed.” For a moment the earl steepled his fingers beneath his chin before slamming both hands flat on his desk, his face grim. “And if that were not enough, she has become overly attached to the young man who pushes her chair.”

  He paused, glaring at me as if I had spoken my thoughts out loud. “Easily fixed by hiring someone else? Ha! Do you not think we tried that? You have no idea the anguish of seeing a poor sick child descend into hysteria—screams and sobs that go on and on . . .” The earl heaved a sigh and shook his head. “Have I frightened you, Miss Ballantyne? I wished only to give you a hint that this position is more challenging than most, but I fear I was carried away by my frustration. Shall I arrange transportation back to London?”

  I gazed straight into those sad azure eyes and said, “My lord, after this last year of my life, I am in great need of a challenge to help me forget.”

  “Very well then.” He nodded and rang a small brass bell on his desk. “I must warn you Vanessa is not best pleased with the addition to her closed little world, which means I am far from her favorite person at the moment. I shall have Mrs. Linnell take you up.”

  Merciful heavens! Lady Vanessa didn’t want me? That didn’t bode well. I dropped a deep curtsy, keeping my head down to avoid the earl’s shrewd gaze, then turned and followed Mrs. Linnell from the room.

  A footman was lighting the candles in the wall sconces as we walked down a long corridor on the floor above the earl’s study. But the flickering light did little to dispel the gloom of rapidly descending night. Though I had twice passed this way earlier, nothing looked familiar. It was as if an inimical hand had cast a spell during those few minutes I had spoken with the earl, enveloping this part of the house in sinister shadows. I shivered, then took myself sharply in hand. Young women who followed the drum were not allowed active imaginations. Or fragile sensibilities. Else I’d have been overwhelmed long since.

  Mrs. Linnell rapped lightly on the door across the corridor from my room. It was opened by a rather burly yet hatchet-faced woman whose countenance, unaccountably, plunged my spirits straight into my half-boots. Oh dear. Perhaps my reaction was due to the look of intense dislike she was casting in my direction. Ah yes, I was invading her domain. Inwardly, I sighed and followed Mrs. Linnell into a large, well-appointed sitting room, where a roaring fire had been built up to the point of roasting the room’s occupants like pigs on a spit. The air was stifli
ng, as if the windows had not been opened in years. Yet in spite of the heat, the atmosphere was almost as cold as the mountains in Galicia.

  A wooden throne-like chair sat before the fire, its occupant glaring at me with all the animosity I imagined in a confrontation between Wellington and Napoleon. The face of the woman—little more than a girl—in the chair was beautiful, although her classic aristocratic English features were marred by lines of pain, or perhaps merely petulance. Her hair was guinea gold, her eyes more sky blue than azure. Somehow I had thought she would be older. And suddenly, in spite of her attitude, my heart broke for her. So young, so very young to be struck by tragedy. And with no mother to support her in her time of need.

  “Lady Vanessa,” Mrs. Linnell said, “may I present Miss Penelope Ballantyne, whom his lordship has employed as your companion.” I curtsied. “Miss Ballantyne, Lady Vanessa.” I received no acknowledgment in return, the invalid maintaining her cold stare.

  “May I also present,” the housekeeper continued, Miss Scruggs, my lady’s nurse.” Nothing more than a cool nod from Hatchet Face. “And this is Mr. Tremaine,” Mrs. Linnell added, and I realized I had been concentrating so closely on Lady Vanessa that I had failed to take in the young man standing directly behind Lady Vanessa’s chair. But when I did . . .

  Oh dear. No wonder Lady Vanessa was enamored. How could the earl have been so foolish as to hire such a startlingly handsome young man to attend a girl at the most impressionable age? Mr. Tremaine was a tall, sturdy young man, with black hair and snapping dark-eyes that defied me to upset the balance of his neat little world. His features were too rugged to be called aristocratic, but he was far from a peasant. Lower gentry perhaps. His nod was so stiff it was a wonder his neck didn’t snap.

  “David!” Lady Vanessa barked, and suddenly the whole chair was moving forward until it came to an abrupt stop just inches from where I was standing. A chair with wheels. Not that I’d never seen such a thing, but not one like this—the product of local carpentry, no doubt, the wheels fastened to the legs of an ordinary chair. “Is it true,” Lady Vanessa asked, “that you followed the drum on the Peninsula?”

  “Yes, my lady, and in India before that.”

  “Surely no woman can survive such experiences without being irreparably coarsened.” I stiffened as she searched my face. At that moment I was ready to take the next stagecoach back to London and to the devil with the practical business of earning my living.

  “And yet I do not see it.” Lady Vanessa’s arrogant tone grated on my nerves like chalk on a slate board. “How is that, do you suppose?”

  “My father was a ranking officer, my lady, not a trooper.”

  “And your mother not from the ragtag bobtail female followers, I take it.”

  “My lady!” Mrs. Linnell echoed my shocked gasp. Mr. Tremaine’s hand clamped down on Lady Vanessa’s shoulder.

  A roof over my head. Food on the table.

  Pride warred with common sense, and because I was who I was and because my parents had done everything they could to teach me to adapt to new situations, I finally managed to say, “My lady, please give your father’s choice the benefit of the doubt. We are close in age, and I hope I may be of service to you. As I hope living here will be of service to me. It was a very long war. I lost both my parents, and my greatest desire is to live as far from the cannon’s roar as possible. Please allow me to attempt to fulfill my duties. A few months, shall we say? And then if I do not suit, I will be on my way and leave you in peace.”

  “You will want me to open the windows, go downstairs, go outside. Attempt to walk. Papa said so.” With each word Lady Vanessa’s voice rose more shrilly toward hysteria.

  I quailed. There was no other word for it. I’d scarce begun and already I’d failed. The long road back to London stretched before me.

  And then the strangest thing happened. Mr. Tremaine’s face softened to a look of sympathy and he said, “Come back in the morning, Miss Ballantyne. “You are needed here, and I believe Lady Vanessa will soon come to realize that.”

  “’Tis true, miss,” Mrs. Linnell added, and to my astonishment Hatchet Face nodded her agreement.

  “Then I’ll bid you goodnight,” I murmured and exited hastily before my legs collapsed beneath me. Surely most companions did not begin their employment so inauspiciously.

  “Dinner is at seven, miss,” Mrs. Linnell told me as I fumbled at the latch to my room. “There you will have the opportunity to meet the rest of the household.”

  Numbly I thanked her, staggered into my room and collapsed onto my bed. Dear Lord, however was I to cope with such a situation?

  You are needed here.

  I sat quite still for a very long time, the best and worst moments of my life chasing through my head, my parents’ many admonitions to bravery finally coming to rest on top of the heap as my jumbled thoughts coalesced out of chaos into some semblance of sanity.

  For better or for worse, I was now a resident of Moorhead Manor, and I must make the best of it.

  Chapter Three

  That night, in what the footman informed me was the Green Salon, I met Lady Emmaline Blythe, Lord Hycliffe’s widowed sister, and instantly realized the truth of the earl’s assertion that she provided little support for Lady Vanessa. Thin and slight-boned, she looked as if she might blow away on the slightest breeze. Her gray-streaked hair was pulled back into an unbecoming bun, her eyes a faded gray that might once have claimed to be blue. Her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear it. Poor creature. I doubted she would have lasted half a day on the Peninsula.

  The unknown gentleman who soon joined us was introduced as Dr. Biggs, the family physician who visited Lady Vanessa at least once a week—inevitably in time for dinner, Mrs. Linnell had informed me with a twitch of her eyebrows. A gray-haired gentleman of serious demeanor, Dr. Biggs intoned, “Miss Ballantyne,” in a voice so cool and with a look so skeptical, I found myself enveloped in an aura of disapproval. I suspected he doubted my ability to deal with my charge, and frankly I could not blame him.

  As we entered the dining room to a mere four places clustered at one end of a vast table, I could not help but wonder at the earl’s remark about this being a predominantly male household. By the time we reached the fish course—a tasty fried sole so fresh I suspected it had been caught but hours earlier—I gathered enough to courage to ask.

  “Excuse me, my lord, but you said this was a predominantly male household.” I glanced at the many extra chairs around the table then back to the earl, hoping I looked suitably polite as well as enquiring.

  A smile flashed across his face, surprising me no end as the deep-etched lines faded and I caught a glimpse of a much younger man. “So I did. We are missing a veritable army of males at the moment. “Devon holds no lure for my elder son and heir, who prefers the city or, as at the moment, visiting friends in what he considers more salubrious climes. And like a pack of lemmings, his younger brother and his cousin, my sister’s son”—he inclined his head toward Lady Emmaline—“trail after him. And, like as not, on the few occasions the scamps grace us with their presence, they bring friends equally as frivolous.”

  “The house fairly quivers with their passing,” Dr. Biggs added, his jovial face belying any true criticism. Clearly, the Wetherington males could do no wrong. Unlike the newcome companion.

  I knew, of course, that gentleman of the ton immersed themselves in frivolous pursuits as if Napoleon Bonaparte had never existed, but somehow at that moment I found it a heinous crime. All the young men I’d seen dead or maimed for life while . . .

  I murmured something inane that passed for a thank-you for the information and ducked my head, concentrating fiercely on the next course. It was only much later, after I crawled into bed and pulled up the covers, that I realized the validity of the earl’s warning at our first meeting. Throwing a young woman into this mélange of males could easily escalate into a serious personal hazard. For a moment I felt an inexplicable nostalgia for an u
ncomplicated battlefield in Spain, where the lines were so clearly delineated. Friends. Enemies. Red coats, blue coats. Shoot them before they shoot you.

  I sighed and told myself I was better equipped to deal with this situation than some sheltered young miss just out of the schoolroom. But my Papa was no longer here to protect me, and I greatly feared that in any untoward incident the earl would consider me at fault. The seductress, bent on leading his precious boys astray.

  I muttered a few naughty words I had learned at the tail of the army and finally fell asleep. It had, after all, been a very long day.

  Accustomed to rising early, I made my way downstairs, only to find myself breaking my fast in solitary splendor—if one did not count the footman standing at rigid attention in the corner. Perhaps he was there to make certain I did not make off with the silver. The array of food on the sideboard confirmed what I suspected after the feast at last night’s meal: the Earl of Hycliffe lived well and employed an excellent cook. Certainly an added motivation for enduring whatever slings and arrows Lady Vanessa might send my way.

  I was tucking into a second helping of kippers and shirred eggs when Mrs. Linnell sailed through the door, inclined her head in a brief nod, and said, “Lady Vanessa is not an early riser, miss. I doubt she will see you before eleven.” A pause, a slight sniff, as if she were having second thoughts about her next words. I waited. “If you would join me in my office when you are finished here, perhaps I may give you a few hints about the household.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Linnell. And I should welcome the opportunity to compliment your cook on the fine food I have had so far.”