Baroness in Buckskin

by Sheri Cobb South

  He lifted her hand to his lips in a gesture that held all the exaggerated gallantry of his bow to his bride, and yet where that earlier performance had been stiffly formal, his obeisance to his cousin Jane held a great deal of charm. After he had said goodnight and left her in sole possession of the drawing room, Jane sighed and pressed her hand to her cheek. If he would show this side of himself to his chosen bride, she felt certain Miss Susannah Ramsay would tumble head over ears.

  Granted, at first glance it would be difficult to imagine a less likely bride for Lord Ramsay, who certainly knew what was due his position and his name. And yet, where he had seen only a female with unruly ginger hair and odd, poorly fitted clothing made of buckskin and homespun, Jane’s keener eye (sizing up a rival in spite of her best efforts not to view her cousin Susannah in such a light) had discerned wide, inquisitive blue eyes in a piquant heart-shaped face and, beneath the coarse garments, the promise of a trim, pleasingly rounded figure.

  No, if she were honest with herself, she did not fear her failure to transform Miss Ramsay to Richard’s liking; in fact, she feared she would succeed only too well for her own peace of mind.

  Such were her unpleasant thoughts as she climbed the stairs to her own bedchamber, to fall at last into a troubled sleep. She awakened at dawn to the feel of someone shaking her by the shoulder, and opened her eyes to find the second chambermaid, Liza, standing over her, the candle in the girl’s hand casting weird shadows over her face.

  “Beggin’ your pardon,” she said in hushed tones, “but it’s that Miss Ramsay. She’s up and done a bunk.”

  Jane sat up abruptly, all traces of sleep fled. “Miss Ramsay is gone?”

  “Aye, miss. She woke up when I came in to light the fire. I was that quiet, mind, trying not to disturb her, but Miss Ramsay said she’s used to getting up early, which I thought was kind of her to say so, whether it was true or not. So I asked her if she was ready for her bath, and she said she was, so I went down to the kitchen to heat the water. And when I brung it back up to her room, she was gone, and all her clothes, too.”

  “Oh, dear!” exclaimed Jane, flinging back the covers and all but bounding from the bed.

  “Should I tell his lordship, miss?”

  “On no account!” Jane’s voice was muffled somewhat by the folds of the muslin morning gown she had flung over her head. “I am sure there is quite a simple explanation, if only we—but we must not dawdle. Here, do up the back of my gown. I dare not wait for my abigail!”

  Since Liza had ambitions of rising to the rarified position of lady’s maid, she was nothing loth, and after fastening the back of Jane’s gown and pulling her hair back and tying it with a ribbon, the two women hurried to the room Jane had assigned to Susannah.

  It was empty, just as Liza had said, the bedclothes thrown back in disarray, and the curious garments Susannah had worn the day before nowhere in sight. But Jane, sweeping an appraising eye about the room, noticed a detail that Liza had missed.

  “She cannot have gone far, for her valise is still here.” She indicated the worn leather bag in the corner. “Is it possible that you misunderstood, and she meant to bathe after she had breakfasted?”

  “Well, miss, I didn’t think so,” Liza answered cautiously. “But I suppose it’s possible, what with Miss Ramsay being from America, and having odd foreign notions.”

  “Depend upon it, we shall discover her in the breakfast room,” predicted Jane with a confidence born of desperation. “No, you need not accompany me. Only make the bed as you normally would do, and prepare the room for Miss Ramsay’s return, which I daresay will be quite soon.”

  In spite of her reassuring words to the chambermaid, Jane could not feel entirely comfortable regarding Miss Ramsay’s absence. And so instead of returning to her own room, she went downstairs to the breakfast room to look for her cousin. As she had feared, there was no sign of Miss Ramsay; in fact, Peter was the room’s only occupant.

  “You are up early, Cousin Jane,” he noted, looking up from a plate of buttered eggs and beefsteak. Seeing distress writ large upon her usually serene countenance, he asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “Oh, no—that is, I hope not, but—tell me, Peter, has Miss Ramsay been here?”

  “Cousin Susannah? No.”

  “Oh, dear!”

  He pushed his plate away and rose from the table. “What are you thinking?”

  She shook her head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t quite know what to think. She is not in her room, although Liza says she had requested water for a bath. I thought perhaps she had changed her mind, and come to breakfast first.”

  “Perhaps that was her intention, only she got lost on her way to the breakfast room. I very nearly did so myself, you know, when I first came to live here—more than once, in fact.”

  Her brow cleared at this entirely logical explanation. “Of course! How stupid of me not to have thought of it myself! I shall go in search of her at once.”

  “I’ll help you,” he said, abandoning his half-eaten beefsteak with a pang of regret. “Shall we enlist the servants? The house is rather large, you know.”

  “I think not,” she determined after a moment’s consideration. “She is bound to be embarrassed by her error, and it would not do for her to lose face in the eyes of the staff, as she is shortly to be their mistress. If you will take this floor and the cellars, I shall search the upper floors and the attics.”

  Peter agreed to this plan, and they set out on their separate assignments. They met in the breakfast room twenty minutes later, both shaking their heads.

  “I gave the first footman a rare turn when I poked my head into his bedchamber, but I saw no sign of her anywhere,” Jane recalled. “I confess, I am growing worried. What do you suppose has happened to her?”

  “Perhaps she went to have a look about the grounds,” Peter suggested. “If you will search the gardens about the house, I will take Sheba and ride through the Home Wood.”

  “Do you really think she would go so far afield?”

  “You forget, I have almost two days’ acquaintance with our American cousin,” he reminded her with a twinkle in his eyes. “I think it is exactly the sort of thing she would do. Depend upon it, I shall find her in the stables, hobnobbing with the grooms.”

  Jane’s eyebrows arched toward her hairline. “Hobnobbing with grooms? Why, pray, should she do such a thing?”

  “Because it is her invariable practice. Sailors, scullery maids, no station is too humble for our Cousin Susannah to befriend.”

  “She sounds a very peculiar sort of girl.”

  “I thought so at first, but after two days in her company, I confess I find her rather charmingly unaffected.” He grinned. “She is likely to give Richard more than one rare turn, however. I’ve never noticed that a lack of affectation was very high on his list of qualifications for a bride.”

  Contrary to his optimistic prediction, Susannah was not at the stables; nor, according to the head groom, had she been there all morning. So certain had been Peter’s conviction that he would find her there that the wind was quite taken from his sails. Having no other alternative, he ordered Sheba saddled, and soon set out on horseback to search the farther reaches of the estate. Seeing Jane in the herb garden behind the house, he shook his head to indicate his failure, then pointed in the direction in which he intended to extend his search. Seeing her raise a hand in understanding, he nudged Sheba onward.

  It was not until he rounded the corner at the far end of the house and glimpsed the broad ornamental lake beyond the trees that he had a new and disturbing thought. Surely she was not—had not—

  He had not brought a riding crop—he had not thought to need one—but he slapped Sheba’s flank and urged the horse into a gallop. The lake was beautiful, but its banks were quite steep in places, and it was deeper than the unwary might suppose. Sure enough, as he drew nearer, he saw a dark head bobbing just above the surface of the water. Flinging himself from the saddle, he ran
the last few steps, shedding his coat and waistcoat and tossing them aside as he slid down the grassy bank.

  “Susannah, I’m coming! I’m—”

  She turned at the sound of his voice, and the words died on his lips. Far from drowning, she stood at a depth of about four feet, her head and shoulders breaking the surface of the lake. Streams of water ran from her hair, trembling in diamond-like drops from the ends of each curl, spilling over bare shoulders, and running in rivulets down the slight indentation that narrowed into the crevice between her—

  Crimson faced, Peter fixed his gaze determinedly on her face. “What the devil are you doing?” His breath came in laboured gasps that had little to do with his recent exertions.

  “I’m taking a bath,” she explained, as if bathing naked in an ornamental lake were the most natural thing in the world.

  “Are you aware that the whole household is searching for you?” he demanded with less than perfect truth. “Come out of there at once! No, wait! Don’t!” She showed no sign of obeying this behest, but Peter, taking no chances, held up a hand as if to forestall her.

  “Give me my towel,” she said.

  “What—? Where—?”

  She raised one dripping arm to point. “Right there. Behind you.”

  He turned, and saw what he had not noticed before. A thick white towel hung from the branch of a tree, as did her coarse skirt and bodice. Peter silently blessed the long-ago Lord Ramsay who had commissioned no less a personage than Capability Brown to design the lake and its surrounding grounds; the trees which the famed landscaper had instructed to be planted along this side of the water were now the only thing that kept the entire household from getting to know the next Lady Ramsay a great deal too well.

  Peter plucked the towel from its branch and edged down the bank as near to the water as he dared, then manfully turned his back and held the towel out at arm’s length behind him. A splashing sound informed him that Susannah was emerging from her bath, and he ruthlessly suppressed a mental image of Aphrodite rising naked from the sea. A moment later the towel was plucked from his hand. Without looking back, he climbed the bank, picking up his coat and waistcoat along the way, and cringing at the thought of how this perfectly innocent activity must look to any interested observer. By the time Susannah climbed the sloping ground to join him, he had donned both garments and now made himself very busy with the horse’s saddle and bridle.

  “I didn’t mean to worry anyone,” she said apologetically. “But Liza asked me if I wanted to take a bath, and I told her that I did.”

  “She meant that, if you were ready, she would bring hot water for you.” Steeling himself, he turned away from the horse to regard his errant cousin. He was relieved to find her fully (if unfashionably) dressed, the only sign of her recent infraction being the occasional drop of water that still fell from the ends of her hair. “Surely you have had a hot bath before!”

  “Well, yes, in the winter. But in the summer months, it is so much easier to go down to the river to bathe. After all, why go to the trouble of lighting a fire and heating water when—”

  “Cousin Susannah,” he interrupted ruthlessly, “let me remind you that we have servants here, servants who are well paid for ‘going to the trouble,’ as you say, of doing the work they were engaged to do!”

  “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t think—I’m not accustomed to having people do for me, you know. I won’t do it again.”

  He sighed, relenting. “I suppose there’s no harm done. Still, we’d best get you back to the house before Richard finds out.”

  He started to offer her a boost into the saddle, then had a sudden vision of Lady Godiva riding through the streets of Coventry, and thought better of it. Instead, he looped the reins over Sheba’s head and, taking Susannah by the elbow, led the horse with one hand and his cousin with the other as they made their way first to the stables and thence to the house.

  Chapter 6

  Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

  HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden

  “Thank God you found her before Richard did!” exclaimed Jane, clapping a hand to her forehead in dismay.

  Susannah had been dispatched to her own room where she might dry her hair before the fire, leaving Peter to recount to Jane in privacy the story of how he had discovered her bathing in the lake.

  “Yes, I’m sure it was very fortunate, my coming along when I did,” Peter said thoughtfully. “And yet I wonder—”

  Given Richard’s apparent indifference toward his chosen bride, it might have done him a great deal of good to have seen her as Peter had, emerging from the lake like a naiad, with water streaming from her hair and over her bare shoulders. The picture she presented might have gone a long way toward shaking Richard out of his apathy; certainly the image was one Peter would not easily forget.

  “Yes?” Jane prompted. “What do you wonder?”

  He shook his head, dismissing the thought, if not the image. “Nothing really, only—Cousin Jane, do you think—does it occur to you that perhaps Richard is making a mistake?”

  She sighed. “Yes, frequently! And never more so than last night, when he mistook his chosen bride for a serving girl. But you know what he is, Peter. He sees his duty clear, and he would not go back on his word, were she ten times more ineligible.” She smiled rather wistfully. “It is one of his more admirable qualities, even though it does make one occasionally long to box his ears.”

  “Do you think they can be happy together?”

  “I suppose it depends upon how willing they are to adjust their expectations of one another. I have reason to believe that Susannah may not be as hopeless a case as Richard seems to fear, for as I pointed out to him, she is already accustomed to running a household, albeit a very different one.”

  “Yes, and she certainly came the great lady when she believed him to be deliberately insulting her, did she not?” Peter agreed, grinning at the memory. “I confess, for that one brief moment I had no difficulty at all in seeing her as Lady Ramsay.”

  “Yes, indeed! So I think we must try to be charitable, and mark the bath incident down to ignorance. And, as the best antidote to ignorance is instruction, I shall take her over the house as soon as may be arranged, and explain to her what will be her duties as the next Lady Ramsay. I had hoped to take her to my dressmaker this afternoon, but I suppose that must wait until tomorrow.”

  Peter’s brow puckered in a thoughtful frown. “I am sure you know best, Cousin Jane, but won’t it take several days to have dresses made up?”

  “Oh, yes—days, if not weeks.”

  “In that case, would you not do better to let the dressmaking visit stand, and postpone the tour of the house until tomorrow?”

  “I suppose so,” Jane agreed somewhat reluctantly. With a hint of a smile, she added, “We shall only hope that our American cousin will stay out of the lake in the meantime.”

  With this Parthian shot, she left the room, determined to seek out Susannah before her baser self could compose a compelling argument as to why delaying Susannah’s transformation into a young lady of fashion would be the wisest course of action.

  * * *

  Susannah, for her part, remained in her room only until her hair had dried sufficiently to tie it back with a ribbon (from which, no doubt, it would soon escape) before making her way downstairs to the drawing room—this chamber being, with the exceptions of the dining room and her own bedchamber, the only room of the house with which she was acquainted.

  Having reached her destination and congratulated herself for finding it without assistance, she entered the room only to find Lord Ramsay there before her.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, startled. “I had not thought—I did not mean to interrupt, my lord.”

  He laid aside his newspaper and rose to greet her. “Nonsense! In fact, I am pleased to see you, Cousin Susannah.” He cleared his throat. “I believe I owe you an apology.”

  “No apology is necessary, Lord Ramsay,” sh
e said, inclining her head with a formality that matched his own.

  “I beg to differ. In any case, I hope you will indulge me by accepting it, and by calling me Richard or, if that seems too familiar on such short acquaintance, Cousin Richard.” He smiled fleetingly, and she was surprised to discover that his smile was surprisingly sweet. “I assure you, however formal our English ways must appear to you, we do draw the line at requiring a woman to call her husband by his title.”

  Her answering smile was somewhat tentative. “Very well—Cousin Richard.”

  “Peter tells me you are fond of riding. I hope you will allow me to show you about the property tomorrow. I would propose this afternoon for the excursion, but Jane tells me she intends to take you to her dressmaker immediately after luncheon. It would be a very odd female, I believe, who would prefer an hour in the saddle to one spent shopping for frills and furbelows.”

  “Really?” Susannah regarded him with mild curiosity. “Why?”

  “My dear cousin,” he said, exasperated, “surely you cannot expect me to explain to you the peculiar joy which members of your sex seem to find in debating the virtues of silk over satin, or finding the perfect shade of ribbon to match one’s new gown!”

  “I’m afraid someone must, for I’ve never done either of those things. Nor have I ever shopped for—what did you say?—frills or furbelows. What exactly is a furbelow, anyway?”

  He held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m afraid you are asking the wrong person, my dear. You would do better to direct your questions to Jane.”

  “There is one other thing, my lord—er, Cousin Richard. How much will all this cost? You know I am accounted a considerable heiress back home, but most of my assets are in land. I haven’t that much available as ready money.”