The Lonely Earl

by Vanessa Gray

  “Oh, Faustina. I mean Mr. Talbot, of course.”

  Faustina said not a word until they reached home. But her thoughts were noisy, chaotic, and, at length, troubled.

  Chapter 8

  By the next day Faustina had recovered from the jolting when she had landed.in the grassy ditch. It was easy enough to overlook strained muscles, she knew, but not quite the same thing when it came to enduring Aunt Louisa’s stifling remarks upon the subject of setting her dear daughter’s life at hazard. Julia’s protests went unheeded, and Faustina had finally sworn the girl to secrecy.

  “After all, Papa will be sorely distressed,” she said, “if he thought I was so addle-headed as to let someone else drive my pair, so if you do not wish me to sustain my father’s disapproval…”

  The argument was sufficient.

  Aunt Louisa’s attention was at last diverted by the thought of a new recipe for a small frosted cake for the ball’s refreshments.

  “I have the recipe for it from the prince regent’s chef — never mind how I got it, because I’m not going to tell you. I’ll just slip down and tell cook — what is her name… Cotter? — how to do it.”

  Faustina interposed smoothly, and after learning all the intricacies of just how to cream the butter — Aunt Louisa parroting the instructions, which she understood not at all — she set off for the kitchen.

  “I’ll take care of this for you, Aunt Louisa,” she said. “You shouldn’t be bothered with such details.” The irony slid off Lady Waverly without trace.

  Silently Faustina pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, and stopped short. The sight that met her eyes was one that she had never seen in the kitchen of Kennett Chase before.

  The big worktable in the middle of the room was covered with baking sheets of black iron. Each sheet bore a series of familiar light brown objects, and the aroma that filled the room allowed for no mistake. Mrs. Cotter was baking gingerbread men.

  At a time like this? Faustina was overcome with dismay. The entire kitchen should now be in an uproar over the cakes and the fancy dishes to be served at the ball supper, only two nights hence. Mrs. Cotter herself had complained about having too much to do: “And how I’m going to serve two dressed meats and five side dishes at every meal between now and then, I don’t know, Miss Kennett, and that’s a fact!”

  And yet here, taking up all the table room and certainly all of Mrs. Cotter’s attention, were at least three dozen gingerbread men, ready to go into the oven.

  Almost ready, Faustina amended. For, strangest sight of all, a small girl was standing on a chair at the table, intent upon her absorbing task — putting raisin eyes in the gingerbread men.

  Faustina gave a gulp of recognition. Swathed in cook’s starched white apron, and entranced by her work, stood the Lady Althea Crale.

  “All these men,” said the Lady Althea, unwittingly forestalling Faustina’s remarks, “look like my Papa. Just like him — staring!”

  Faustina’s sense of humor threatened her composure. How the earl would like to think he looked like a gingerbread man! But Althea was not finished. She put in the raisins with a firm twist of her small fingers. “But I am not afraid of these!” she said defiantly. “These baked men stare and stare, but I am not afraid.”

  One by one the staff in the kitchen became aware of their mistress standing straight and quite astonished in the doorway. The silence grew as one by one the kitchen maids, the footboy, the cook’s assistant, dropped into appalled silence. And at last Mrs. Cotter saw Faustina.

  Faustina advanced into the room and spoke gently. “How comes this? Althea, I am surprised that you came to see me and I did not know it.”

  “I didn’t,” said Althea stoutly. “I didn’t even come here to see anybody.”

  Mrs. Cotter intervened. “It’s a strange thing, Miss Faustina, how it was—”

  “I got lost. I finished the eyes, please.” She slid down from the chair, the apron bundling in starchy folds around her ears.

  “Lost?” said Faustina quietly.

  “Daphne, put these in the oven. Miss Faustina—”

  “Not really lost,” said Althea. “Not to start with. To start with,” she continued, anxious to set the record as straight as possible in such a tangled affair, “I’scaped.’Scaped from Zelle. That was first”

  She struggled with the apron, until Maria relieved her of it. Then the child came to Faustina and looked beseechingly up at her. “First I’scaped. Then I got lost.”

  The explanation seemed to satisfy the narrator, at least, for she abruptly turned away to watch Daphne as she deftly slid the baking sheets into the vast maw of the oven.

  Mrs. Cotter’s indulgent approval was clear. “The poor wee one,” she said in an undertone to Faustina. “Lost she was, and fairly. In the brambles, so young Jugg says.”

  Blankly Faustina echoed, “Young Jugg? How does he figure in this?”

  “Bless you, miss, he found her up in Miser’s Woods, crying she was, though she won’t admit it. Proper proud she is. Caught in the brambles and crying, that’s just the way young Jugg told it. And he brought her here.”

  “Did he know who she was?”

  “Aye.” Mrs. Cotter was curt. “All know that Frenchy that is supposed to take care of the lass.”

  Zelle, judging from Mrs. Cotter’s tight, disapproving lips, was not highly regarded. Betsy Kyd was not alone in her distrust of the woman. But that was another problem. Just now the child Althea must be returned to the tender care of Zelle, who must be worried about her charge.

  However, Althea, acutely following the processes of Faustina’s thoughts, remarked forcefully, “I am not going back.”

  Faustina said, “Come now, Zelle must be worried about you. Don’t you think so? Don’t shake your head at me. That is not the way a young lady does.”

  The thought struck Althea. “No? Then what does a young lady do?”

  Snatching at phrases from her own nursery days, she said, “A young lady always answers in words. ‘No, ma’am.’ Or ‘Yes, ma’am.’ No shaking of the head.”

  “All right, then,” said Althea cheerfully. “I say ‘No, ma’am’ instead.”

  “But—”

  “I say, ‘No, ma’am, I am not going back. Not to Zelle.’” She looked anxiously at Faustina. “There, I said it right, did I not? Then why are you still looking so cloudy?”

  “Because you must go home. Perhaps, if you are quiet, Mrs. Cotter will let you stay until the gingerbread men are out of the oven.”

  But even that respite was not enough. Faustina consulted with Mrs. Cotter about Aunt Louisa’s new recipe, and time passed quickly. Faustina noticed from the comer of her eye that Althea moved about the kitchen with grace, and she remembered that her mother had been, according to rumor, and among other things, a dancer. The legacy was clear.

  Came the time when the gingerbread men were out of the oven, cool enough to parcel up for Althea to take home, to add to those already filling her small stomach.

  Althea regarded the parceling with misgivings. “I distinctly said, ‘No ma’am.’ ”

  “But, Althea, you must go home. You have your” — she did not think it wise to mention father, or nurse, and cast about wildly — “your own pets. Do you have a puppy?”

  “He is a small thing,” said Althea with scorn. “I do not have him. I have the horses.”

  “Land sakes, what a child!” muttered Mrs. Cotter. “Horses!”

  Faustina coaxed. Where was Bucky, she wondered, when she needed her?

  Word had been sent to Crale Hall, Faustina had learned, so that the household there might know she was safe. “Doesn’t Mrs. Robbins let you make gingerbread men?”

  “Never has she done this.”

  At length, weary of coaxing, Faustina nearly gave up. One last thing she thought of: “A picnic. Did you ever have a picnic?”

  The child’s interest was caught. She sidled closer. “A pic… nic? What is this thing?”

  “We pack our
lunches in big hampers — that is, baskets, you know — and we take them down to the seashore. And then we spread out blankets and sit on them, and we have our lunch.”

  “What is it to eat?”

  “Oh, we have chicken, and ham, and little rolls and cakes, and lemonade…”

  “I will go.”

  “Home,” agreed Faustina with relief, rising to her feet “No, ma’am. I will go on the pic… nic.”

  At length compromise was reached. Faustina would take Althea home, and the next day there would occur a picnic on the beach.

  “And you will be my great friend,” pronounced Althea, “and we can go… can we go in the pony cart?”

  Faustina looked meaningfully at Mrs. Cotter. “I see why you did not take her home.”

  “We did not wish to send her home on our own,” said Mrs. Cotter.

  Besides, thought Faustina rightly, the child would not have gone. But Faustina still had her promise to keep to Betsy, and this seemed an appropriate time to take care of that. She could take Althea home, and the subject of Zelle would naturally arise…

  ‘I’ll just send Woods to get my bonnet,” said Faustina. “And she can go with us.”

  “Little cakes,” enumerated Althea, “and we will have the good bread, and we will go in the pony cart…”

  The childish voice trailed behind Faustina as she gave instructions to her maid. She turned to the library, where she was sure of finding her father.

  He looked up, his face creasing into a smile when he saw her. “Drat this ball,” he said. “It keeps me from seeing much of you.”

  “I regret it,” agreed Faustina cordially. “But we have to get it over with. I should tell you how we are going on.” She gave him a brief account of the arrangements that she thought he should know about. That done, he merely nodded.

  “You are a competent manager,” he conceded. “But you have one fault, my dear. That is to think you can hoax me.”

  “Hoax you? My dear sir, I would not try.”

  “You were not driving that curricle yesterday. You didn’t put yourself into a ditch.”

  He waited expectantly, and she told him the truth of it. “It was my fault, after all. I should not have let her drive. Or, at least, I should have kept a closer eye on her. As it was…” She did not think she wished to tell her father that it was her sudden outcry against the earl that had startled both horses and Julia.

  He frowned. “I don’t like you taking the blame.”

  “Julia already felt mortified enough, Papa. And in front of the visitors, too, I simply could not.”

  He nodded. “She’s a good girl. She listens to me as though she were interested. Gets me to tell tales of my youth that, by George, I’d forgotten. Gets me to talk too much.” But he smiled, his smile much like Faustina’s, crinkling at the comers in genuine amusement. “A good girl.”

  Then she told him about Althea’s advent in the kitchen. “She’scaped, she says.” Faustina laughed. “And young Jugg found her and brought her here. I had the devil’s own time trying to get her to agree to go home.”

  “She’s still here?”

  “Oh, yes. Probably eating more gingerbread.”

  He cocked his head slightly. “Then what can be the commotion in the hall?”

  The hall when they reached it was vibrating with hubbub. The immediate cause seemed to lie beyond the half-open door to the service part of the house. But the front door too stood open, and framed in it stood, with every sign of towering impatience, the Earl of Pendarvis.

  Bowing to Faustina briefly, he said to Lord Egmont, “I must apologize for the trouble my daughter seems to have caused you.”

  “No trouble at all,” said Faustina brightly.

  The earl ignored her. “I confess to being a little apprehensive of the turmoil that is coming from your kitchen. I believe I detect a familiar voice.”

  They all listened. Althea’s voice indeed was rising high, and words could be distinguished. “My kitten. I wish to have that kitten. I shall ask my good friend Faustina for it.”

  She burst into the hall. At first, seeing only Faustina, she launched herself upon her, and only then, after a frenzied plea to own the dearest little kitten, she saw her father.

  “Oh, Papa, the most wonderful thing has happened! My great friend Faustina has promised me a pic… nic. Tomorrow, we go. We eat by the shore — the shore of the sea, that is…”

  Her voice trailed away as she looked carefully at her father for the first time. Visibly, she shrank away.

  Faustina, gasping, saw the earl’s formidable frown. He said, “Miss Kennett does not have it in her power to give you a picnic.”

  “But, Papa, it is a promise. And I do want it so.”

  “It seems a reasonable diversion,” said Faustina, her voice cool and unemotional, but her father glanced warily at her.

  “That may be, Miss Kennett,” the earl said frostily, “yet the diversion is not yours to bestow. I am sure you will realize that, when you have given it thought.”

  The desolate look on Althea’s face, combined with the arrogant way in which the earl divested her of her pride, thrust Faustina forward as though with a physical shove. She was really angry now, the prey of a consuming rage the like of which she had not experienced within her memory.

  “My lord,” she said in a voice she could not keep from quivering, “pray follow me.”

  She opened the library door and entered. Somewhat to her surprise, the earl did as he was bade, and followed her. Althea and Louisa were directly on Egmont’s heels, but he turned sharply and closed the door, and leaned against the door on the inside. It was a scene that he thought it proper to attend. Something like two ammunition ships, fully loaded, drifting against each other in a gale, he thought. Beset by strong misgivings, none showed on his bland face.

  “You are without doubt the crudest man I have ever known!” cried Faustina. “Completely cruel, unfeeling — to be so thoroughly nasty to a child is outside of enough! I wonder you can keep your countenance in public.”

  “Cruel?” said the earl softly. “I merely exercised my parental rights. As you pointed out in the Green Man, I am sadly remiss…”

  He may as well not have spoken. Faustina, once having lost her temper, made a thorough job of it.

  “It is a terrible thing,” she cried, “to treat your own daughter in such a way that she is terrified of your very presence.”

  “I think you told me once before,” he said evenly, “that my daughter was afraid of me.”

  “As though you were Lucifer!” she confirmed with vigor.

  “Believe me,” he retorted, “Lucifer is a blood relative of that child. A true imp!”

  “You are criminally negligent. I have an idea that you would not like to be hailed before the judge for such a charge?”

  He looked at her in honest amazement. So far, he had held his own temper, but his control was fast slipping. He was not sure how long his iron grip could last. “Negligent? Criminally so?”

  “That excuse for a nurse you have for Althea is incompetent at the least. She spends her time at the Green Man—”

  The earl looked at her through narrowed eyelids. “You’ve spied?”

  “Everyone in Trevan tells me so,” said Faustina with reckless disregard for the truth. “The child is not supervised in the least — that episode at the Green Man was just one incident. And today — she slipped away, and if our gardener had not caught sight of her, who knows what could have happened?”

  “The child is incorrigible,” said the earl. “It is no affair of yours, but since you have kindly taken an interest in my affairs, I will tell you that much. She is totally unmanageable. Just like her mother!”

  Pendarvis was white with anger. He wished strongly he had not referred to Renée, but her name could not be taken back now.

  Faustina had the last word, slipping it in while the earl clamped his lips tightly. “You would scarcely know whether Althea is incorrigible or not, would you? You
spend so little time with her.”

  “Faustina.” It was Egmont’s quiet voice, scarcely audible. But it was sufficient.

  Pendarvis, rigid with rage, stalked to the door. “When I feel the need to mend my ways and retrieve my character, Miss Kennett, I shall come to you for instruction. Your calm discourse and gentle ways will provide a peerless example.”

  Egmont silently opened the door to let him through, and then closed it again. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps Pendarvis would have walked, unseeing, headlong into the door if it had not been opened for him.

  Faustina breathed hard, her fists clenched. Her father watched her for a few moments without comment, and then, reassured by a lessening of her breathing and a slight recession of her high color, suggested softly, “Sit down, my dear.”

  “What good is that?” she flung sharply back at him. And then, being somewhat restored to herself, she looked appealingly at her father. “My dear sir,” she said, “I am sorry. Please forgive me for such an unworthy retort.”

  “My dear, of course.” After a further short silence, Egmont ventured again. “You shouldn’t have, you know.”

  “I know, Papa. But he angers me so.” She was bewildered. “It is not my wont to become so distraught. I hope it does not mean I am sickening for something. That would be outside of enough. Imagine” — with a wan flash of humor — “how Aunt Louisa would cope with all the details of the party that she has gaily handed over to me. If it were not for Bucky, I do not know how I should go on.”

  “Forget the damned ball!” exploded Egmont. “Now, tell me about this child. What is it? I feel a bit on the fringe, you know.”

  She told him, first about the episode in the yard of the Green Man. “… and there she was up a tree, and couldn’t get down. And Zelle — that idiot nursemaid, you know — was in the inn flirting with Joe.”

  “Joe Kyd?”

  She nodded. “And Betsy fears Zelle’s influence on him, and besides… Pendarvis arrived, very superior, and when I pointed out the danger his child had been in, he said very calmly that he hired people to deal with her and I was not one of them!”

  Her sense of humor reasserted itself, and she began a chuckle, not vigorous, but sufficient to allay Egmont’s fears, at least for the moment. “Imagine how I must have looked, Papa, standing there with my jaw slack, I have no doubt, watching Lord Pendarvis drive off down the road to Exeter.”