Wintersbride

by Sara Seale

  "Very good, madam."

  Miranda made a face at the woman's retreating back. If it was going to be a struggle for supremacy at Wintersbride she was certainly not going to give way to Mrs. Yeo and her veiled insolence.

  The uniformity of the ground-floor rooms began to worry her, and she amused herself for the rest of the morning shifting the furniture around and altering the positions of things. The luncheon gong caught her unprepared and Fay and Miss Simms were already coming down the stairs as she dragged a small oak settle to the other side of the hall.

  "What are you doing?" asked Fay instantly. "That settee's stood under the window ever since I can remember."

  "Well, it is nice to have change, don't you think?" Miranda said, and then took the child by the hand. "Look what I have done in this room—and in this one. Do you not think it looks better—more lived in?" coaxed Miranda.

  "No," said Fay, "I don't like changes."

  Miss Simms, standing behind her in the doorway, remarked gentry, "Does Mr. Chantry approve of this?"

  "Is there any reason why he should disapprove, Miss Simms?"

  "No." The governess merely sounded thoughtful. "It's only that Fay's mother never altered anything and gentlemen are such creatures of habit, don't you think?"

  It was the most delicate hint that she had been presumptuous and Miranda felt herself flushing.

  "Habits can be bad as well as good," she said shortly, and Miss Simms raised her eyebrows at such an obvious truth.

  "Oh, quite," she said. "But I think we are keeping lunch waiting."

  Miranda ate her lunch, conscious that her hands were dirty and her frock crumpled and smeared with dust, and would not have been in the least surprised if Simmy had ordered her out of the room to tidy herself. She felt discouraged by their reception of her morning's efforts, and already she was beginning to wonder if Adam might not be annoyed with the changes in his well-ordered rooms.

  She tried to find some subject that might interest Fay, but the child seemed indifferent to the conversation and Miranda was left with the governess's polite replies to her questions. Miss Simms would always do her social duty but she was clearly used to long periods of silence at mealtimes. Adam himself, Miranda had early discovered, was not a talkative man at the table. She supposed the habit must be catching and thought again that she had never before known a house where the human voice was so seldom heard.

  "Will you take me for a walk when you have had your rest?" she asked Fay as they rose to leave the dining room.

  "Alone?" the child said on such a note of surprise that Miranda laughed.

  "Yes, alone. I shall not eat you," she replied.

  "Fay meant that she is never allowed outside the grounds without me," the governess remarked quietly.

  "Not allowed out by herself at her age!" exclaimed Miranda. "Are you afraid of her losing herself on the moor?"

  "Me lose myself? I'm moorland bred!" said Fay with deri­sion. "There's nowhere I couldn't take you on the moor, is there, Simmy, is there?"

  She seemed unnaturally excited compared with her apathy through lunch, and Miranda said with more enthusiasm than she felt for the project, "Well, take me this afternoon. We have been cooped up in the house for two days and we cannot stay in for ever because of the rain. Besides, I want to see the country."

  "May I? May I?" The child turned to her governess eagerly, her small face beautiful again in unexpected animation.

  The governess's pale eyes rested on her face for a moment, and the sallow skin seemed to tighten across her cheekbones.

  "Yes," she said quietly, "I have no objection so long as you keep to the roads. I rely on you implicitly, Mrs. Chantry, not to go onto the moor."

  The words had a slightly sinister ring as though they were intended to convey a warning, and Miranda said, "Are you afraid of escaped convicts?"

  Miss Simms smiled thinly.

  "After so much rain the moor will be very wet and there is still a little mist hanging about," she said prosaically, and Miranda felt a little foolish.

  "Yes, I see," she said. "Very well, we will keep to the roads. Come and give me a shout when you are ready to start, Fay. I will be in my room."

  When Fay knocked on her door an hour later Miranda swung round on her dressing-table stool and held out a welcoming hand.

  "Come along in, chérie," she said. "I will not be long getting ready."

  Fay watched her as she pulled open drawers, but she said nothing. Only when Miranda picked up one of the monogrammed brushes to do her hair did she ask in a voice of suppressed fury, "Why are you using that brush?"

  ' Miranda looked in the mirror at the dark, sullen reflection that appeared over her shoulder.

  "Because I want to brush my hair," she said reasonably.

  "Haven't you a brush of your own?" demanded the child.

  Miranda, accustomed by now to her sudden intensity over trivial matters, replied without surprise, "This is my brush. Look, everything matches. The brushes and mirror and the little trinket boxes. They were waiting for me when I arrived. Do you not think they-are pretty?"

  "They are none of them yours, none of them!" Fay cried. "They belonged to my mother—they've even got her initials— M.C. Mrs. Yeo says they were a wedding present from my father—you have no right to use them at all."

  She began to cry, and Miranda experienced such a sharp pang of bitterness that the pain was almost physical. She sat there fingering the raised initials on the brush.

  "What was your mother's name?" she asked slowly.

  "Melisande."

  She put down the brush with distaste, then looked up at the weeping child. "Do not cry, Fay," she said. "I will not use them again. This was your mother's room, I think. I expect someone just forgot to put her things away. Now, shall we go for our walk?"

  But Fay darted away from her.

  "I hate you… I don't want to go for a walk…" she cried, and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Miranda did not try to follow her. The child's cruelty was natural, but the cruelty of Adam's heedless omission struck deep by reason of its utter indifference. Had he so little sensibil­ity, she wondered painfully, that he saw no need to explain that his thought had not been for her, but for that other one whose room she now occupied, whose bed she slept in? Did he not care that his intimate gifts to a woman he had once loved should be used so carelessly by another?

  Her eyes came back to her own reflection and she was surprised to see tears in them.

  Why should I mind, she demanded angrily of her stricken self in the mirror. I am not romantic.

  But she did mind. It had not been entirely a matter of ex­pedience, this strange marriage of hers. She had acknowledged from the start Adam's unconscious attraction for her and she had not thought that the time might never come when he would demand something more of her.

  It was late in the afternoon when she left her room. Miranda thought she would visit the drawing room and take another look at Melisande's portrait, but when she came downstairs the key was still missing from the lock and the furniture in the other rooms had been quietly restored to the old positions. She ran to the bell rope and pulled it violently. It was Simmy who unex­pectedly came through a green baize door at the back of the hall to ask Miranda what she wanted.

  "The servants are busy getting the tea. What did you want, Mrs. Chantry?" she said.

  "The furniture…" Miranda said. "It has all been changed again. By whose orders, Miss Simms?"

  The governess stood patiently just inside the door. The un­accustomed flush had faded and she looked at Miranda now with a tolerant smile.

  "'Now you mustn't blame the servants for carrying on as they are accustomed to, Mrs. Chantry," she said in the soothing tones she used with Fay. "Mr. Chantry is expected home any moment and he would not like to see the house looking upset."

  "Then it was you—" began Miranda, but Miss Simms started to walk toward the stairs.

  "Excuse me, please, but ou
r tea will get cold. Bessie will be bringing yours in a moment," she said, and went on up the stairs with no further comment.

  Miranda stood in the center of the hall and her temper rose with the tired exasperation of a much tried child, so that when Adam unexpectedly walked in at the front door it was both a relief and an invitation to unconsidered speech.

  "Adam, it is intolerable!" she exclaimed, her hands gesticu­lating wildly. "They treat me like a child or a—an irresponsible person! Have I any part in your home or am I just a—a stray cat you rescued and fed and then forgot?"

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "Dear me!" Adam said, looking at her curiously. "What a very odd greeting. Because I have to be away from home doesn't mean I've forgotten you. You'll have to get used to my ab­sences, you know."

  She knew that his misunderstanding was deliberate but she was too angry to be warned that it was not the moment or the place for a scene.

  "That is not the trouble," she cried. " I wish to know if I have any—-any authority at all at Wintersbride."

  "Not when you behave like Fay," he retorted coolly, and as Bessie, carrying the tea tray, pushed open the green baize door, he added, "I'll just have a wash, then I'll join you for tea."

  Miranda wandered slowly into the small study and watched the girl set out the tea things. For a moment she was tempted to inquire who had been responsible for putting the rooms back to their original order, but she knew Bessie would look at her with indifference and refer her to Mrs. Yeo.

  "Are Fay and Simmy not coming down?" Adam asked as he came into the room.

  "Miss Simms asked to be excused, sir," Bessie said. "Miss Fay has had a little upset and Miss Simms thought it best to remain in the schoolroom."

  "I see," said Adam, but he gave Miranda a quick look as he sat down, and when the door had closed on the girl, he remarked a little dryly, "That makes two of you, or have you just been upsetting each other?"

  Miranda began to pour out the tea. Already her temper had cooled, and she was aware that Adam was not going to be sympathetic to domestic disturbances.

  "I upset Fay, yes," she said. "But it was really your fault."

  "Oh? How was that?"

  "You did not tell me about the brushes."

  "The brushes?" He frowned impatiently.

  "The brushes in my room—the dressing-table set. The ini­tials were mine and I did not know they had belonged to your wife."

  She spoke as if she did not claim that position for herself and his eyes rested on her with a thoughtful expression.

  "I see," he said. "Yes, that was stupid of me. Did Fay object to your using them?"

  "Yes, but that is natural, isn't it?"

  "Not very. She can't remember her mother." It suddenly struck him mat Miranda must have thought that he had bought the set for her and he frowned again.

  "It seemed sensible to leave them where they were as you had so little of your own, but if you don't care for the set you can replace it with something else," he said.

  She looked across at him and smiled.

  "It is of no consequence," she said. "The set is very hand­some and expensive-looking. I have my wooden brush to use. Will you have a sandwich, Adam?"

  He took the sandwich and regarded her uneasily as he ate.

  "I'm afraid, Miranda," he said in his driest voice, "the delicacy of the situation had never struck me. It hadn't occurred to me that sentimentality had any place in our—business arrangement."

  She gave him a wide, composed look from under the thick lashes. It was a look he was coming to know and it had begun to disturb him.

  "Of course not," she said. "Do not give it another thought. The mistake was entirely mine."

  And what the devil do you mean by that, he wanted to ask, but instead he inquired why she had seemed so upset when he had walked into the house.

  "Because here they treat me like a child," she answered.

  "So you said. A child and an irresponsible person. Are you an irresponsible person, Miranda?"

  "Certainly not. I only wanted to change around the furni­ture."

  He looked amused.

  "Well, why didn't you?"

  "I did, but when I came downstairs it had all been put back again and the key had not been returned to the drawing-room door, although I have told Mrs. Yeo, who blames Miss Simms."

  The amusement left his eyes.

  "I didn't know it was locked"," he said briefly. "But no one goes in there, except, I suppose, to clean."

  "Would you object if I used the room?" she asked him directly.

  His face was expressionless.

  "No," he said. "I have no objection."

  ' "Then would you please be good enough to give Mrs. Yeo— or Miss Simms—instructions? They pay no attention to me."

  But his interest had gone.

  "You and the staff must settle these matters between yourselves," he said. "I'm not concerned with how you rear­range the rooms so long as you leave my study alone, but if you take my advice, Miranda, you won't upset Mrs. Yeo."

  "I do not want to upset anyone," Miranda replied, feeling that she was being reproved unjustly. "But Mrs. Yeo will not try to be agreeable and Miss Simms makes difficulties over the simplest things."

  "Such as?"

  "Almost anything to do with Fay. It was a favor to be allowed to go for a walk without her, and even then we must not go on the moor."

  "I see." He sounded noncommittal, but his eyes were grave as he added, "Simmy may often sound pernickety and even unreasonable to you, Miranda, but always remember that she knows what she's doing. Will you bear that in mind in the future?"

  She would have liked to talk to him about the nursery she had discovered in the south corridor and suggest that the child's schoolroom be moved, but he had not encouraged her opinion of his arrangements the other night and seemed to have a dislike of suggestions that might alter in any way the present routine of the house. She began to think that the tragedy of Melisande's death was no greater for Adam than it was for his child and wondered why, when he was prepared to remarry, for conventional reasons, he had not chosen Grace Latham long ago. It would have been such a far more suitable arrangement. But no, she reflected shrewdly, that would not have done for Adam. Grace was pliant, and willing, Miranda was sure, to play second fiddle to the first wife, but she would expect the normal fulfillment of marriage. Was Adam then temperamentally cold, or was he one of those rare individuals who, once having given his devotion to one woman, could not contemplate again any intimate relation' ship with another?

  At last Adam got up and stretched. He said, "I must go up and have a word with Simmy now, then I have some letters to write. I'll see you at dinner."

  "Are you going to say good-night to Fay?"

  "No, I don't think so," he replied calmly. "It's not an institution we've indulged in for a good many years."

  She gave him a surprised look.

  "But all children like to be tucked in," she said.

  "Do they? Fay is probably the exception," he remarked, and went out of the room.

  Miranda sighed. She could not understand Adam's attitude toward his daughter. At times he seemed to behave as though Fay's absurd claim that he disliked her was true. Had there never, she wondered, been a closer relationship between them?

  Miranda shivered as she sat listening to the rain driving against the windows. She had a mental picture of the house as she had first seen it rising out of the mist with its blind, shuttered look…Wintersbride… She switched on all the lights, then drew the curtains, shutting out the gray sad evening that made a mockery of summer.

  The bad weather persisted. June was heralded in with weep­ing skies and the days alternated only between rain and fog. Miranda found little to do with her time. She did not again try her hand at rearranging the rooms, and although the key was returned to the drawing-room door she had not the heart to venture inside. After the first week she had abandoned her morning interviews with Mrs. Yeo, having become weary of the recur
rent phrase, "The first Mrs. Chantry always preferred—" or even, "Mrs. Chantry did not approve." It was natural, Miranda supposed, that Mrs. Yeo should resent her. She had ruled Adam's household for seven years without interference and it was not to be expected that she would take kindly to a new mistress. But the days were very empty, and Miranda's efforts to get to know Adam's child met with little success. Sometimes she would walk to the village with Fay and her governess, and when it was too wet to go out she would visit them in the schoolroom and suggest a game.

  Miranda saw little of Adam at this time. An emergency operation took him into Somerset for a couple of nights and he frequently stayed in Plymouth when his appointments were booked late in the afternoon. He had prescribed early nights for Miranda and there was little choice except to obey him and go to bed at half-past nine: One could not read all day, she thought, and there was nothing domestic with which to occupy herself.

  Sometimes Miss Simms would come down after Fay was in bed and sit with her until dinner time.

  Mrs. Latham gave her promised dinner party at the end of June, and Miranda went up to dress for it with a slight feeling of trepidation. This was the first time she was to fulfill the terms of Adam's bargain and she was anxious that his friends should approve of her. She was uncertain as to what she was expected to wear for a rather more formal evening in the country, and on hearing Adam moving about in his room, she called to him to come and help her choose.

  "What is it?" he said, sounding surprised. He had never before been into her bedroom.

  "Please come in," she called. "I am having difficulties."

  "Very well," he replied. "Open the door."

  "It isn't locked," she shouted back, and he turned the handle and came in.

  "Are you always as trusting as this?" he remarked with a little ironical twist to his mouth.

  "As trusting as what?" she asked, her head in a cupboard; then, as she emerged abruptly and looked from his raised eyebrows to the open door between their rooms, she felt herself flushing.