by Rhys Bowen
“Poor thing. It would be. Perhaps I can keep her company while I’m here.”
“Mummy wants to take her to Switzerland where there’s a good doctor, but Uncle Cedric says it would be a waste of time and cost too much money,” Katherine said. “I don’t think he likes us very much and he doesn’t really want us here.”
“I think it would be a waste of money too,” Nicholas said. “I mean, we all know she won’t walk again. The money should be spent sending me to a decent school.”
“What about me?” Katherine said. “I want to go to school too.”
“There’s no point in educating girls,” Nicholas said. “Uncle Cedric said so. They only get married and don’t do anything useful.”
“I’m as clever as you!” Katherine said. “In fact, I’m cleverer. Uncle Cedric is stupid.”
“Both of you stop talking such rubbish and hurry up,” the man said. “Or your grandmother will blame me again. And she’ll make you go without your pudding.”
They ran on ahead at this dire news. The man gave me an embarrassed grin and held out his hand. “I’m Carter, the tutor, my lady. They’ve been running wild for years before I was engaged. No sense of discipline or decorum, and hopelessly uneducated. You’ve heard the family history, I suppose. Their mother dotes on them. Their father alternately spoiled them and ignored them, and of course then deserted them. So it’s no wonder that Nick’s such a confused little boy. His uncle, the duke, isn’t exactly helping to provide a good male role model. So I’m trying to do what I can, but it’s uphill work.”
“I’m sure it is,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do to help while I’m here.”
“You’re most kind, my lady,” he said and gave me a very nice smile.
As I came into the hallway, I saw Huxstep sorting the post, which had just arrived.
“Did you have a good walk, my lady?” he asked. “A brisk morning. I hope you were not too cold without your overcoat.”
“I come from Scotland. This is considered a balmy day,” I said.
He managed a polite twitch of the mouth as he carried the tray of letters through to a study. I went upstairs and changed into a kilt and white blouse, which, while not fashionable, were at least clean and presentable. I had just finished dressing when a gong sounded. We were being summoned to luncheon. I gave my hair a final brush then set off down the hallway. As I approached the staircase, two elderly ladies were coming toward me, arm in arm, from the other direction. They looked at me in surprise.
“I say, we’ve got a visitor. How jolly,” one of them said. My mother’s phrase “mutton dressed as lamb” came to mind. The one who had spoken was wearing clothes that would have been risqué ten years ago—a flapper dress that showed too much leg, long strings of beads and far too much makeup. “Did you come down from town with Edwina?”
“Er—yes,” I said.
“You see, what did I tell you? The spirits never lie,” the other one said. She was still dressed in the fashion of the good old days, such as my grandmother would have worn—a long, black dress with a high collar, an impossibly small waist and several rows of good pearls around her neck. Her luxurious, gray hair was piled high on her head in coils and held in place with tortoiseshell combs. She was looking at me with interest. “They said a stranger was coming into our midst, didn’t they?”
“We thought that meant the boy from Australia, didn’t we?” the painted one said. “Didn’t the spirits say the stranger in our midst meant danger?”
“Oh dear, yes. The cuckoo coming into the nest. How worrying.” She peered at me. “But this young lady doesn’t look at all dangerous, does she? Quite charming, in fact. What is your name, my dear?”
“Georgiana Rannoch.”
“You see, I knew. The spirits said something about being reunited with an old friend, and I used to know her grandfather, the old duke. What a terrifying fellow he was. There was some talk of my marrying him, but then the queen snapped him up for her daughter. I was rather relieved, actually. Much happier with poor Orlovski.” She held out her hand to me. It was shrunken and wrinkled like a claw, and absolutely dripping with rings. “How do you do. I am Princess Orlovski, Edwina’s sister.”
“How do you do, Your Highness,” I said, not quite sure if I was supposed to curtsy.
“And I am the Countess Von Eisenheim, the youngest sister,” the painted one said. “By far the youngest. Actually Mummy and Daddy’s afterthought. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’ve come to visit. Life is so incredibly dull here after the society of Vienna and Paris that one was used to. Our sister’s husband became an awful stick-in-the-mud in his later years, and his son is even worse. The only people he invites down here are dreadful, common young men who are artists or writers. We haven’t had a decent ball in years, have we, Charlotte?”
“Not in years,” the princess said with a sigh.
While we talked we had been making our way slowly down the broad staircase, the sisters arm in arm and taking little, careful steps. We had just reached the bottom when Huxstep appeared in the foyer and sounded the gong again.
“The second gong, Charlotte. We mustn’t be late,” the painted one said, and they picked up the pace to a speed that made me fear for them—flying down the steps on dainty, little feet. They arrived safely, however, and I followed them into the dining room. The dowager duchess had already taken her place at the far end of an enormous table that would easily have seated fifty.
“Ah, Georgiana. Do come and sit down. Over here beside me. You’ve met my sisters, I see. Charlotte had a narrow escape from Russia when the revolution broke out. Her husband, the prince, wasn’t so lucky.”
“Hacked to pieces in front of my eyes,” the princess said. “I’ll never get that image from my mind. Never. And I was to be next, but a loyal retainer snatched me up into a carriage and galloped off with me. I left with the clothes on my back, nothing more.”
I gave her a sympathetic nod.
“And Virginia came to live with us after the war. Her late husband’s money was in German banks and of course it became worthless.” The duchess gave me a knowing look. “Until then she had been quite the merry widow, hadn’t you, Virginia?”
“I’ve had my moments, Edwina,” Virginia said. “Oh yes, I’ve certainly had my moments.”
“And I’d prefer that you didn’t recount them to my grandchildren in such detail,” Edwina said. “I was shocked to the core at what Katherine came out with the other day.”
Virginia laughed. “Oh, yes. That little incident with me and a regiment of Hussars. She was rather impressed with it, I could see.”
The duchess gave an embarrassed cough. “Speaking of my grandchildren, I see they are late again. As is their mother.”
“No we’re not, Mama. Right on the stroke of one.” A younger woman came into the room, followed by two subdued children. She was more than slim; she was gaunt, with her collarbones showing above the neck of her dress. She looked flustered and her forehead was creased in a worried frown. “Go and sit down, children,” she said.
They scrambled into their seats.
“Where is Elisabeth?” Edwina asked.
“Not feeling too well today, Mama. Nanny is having a tray sent up to her room.”
“She needs to get outside more, Irene. You can’t mollycoddle her like this. Good, fresh air every day.”
Huxstep, the butler, appeared behind the dowager duchess. “Should I have the soup brought in, Your Grace? Will His Grace and friends be joining you?”
“I have no idea, Huxstep,” she said. “My son does not consult me in his comings and goings. So yes, please do go ahead and have the soup served. If they come now, they will just have to miss the first course.”
Tureens were brought in by two footmen, and a clear consommé was ladled into the Royal Doulton bowl in front of me. I sensed Irene looking at me with inte
rest and I nodded a smile.
“How do you do,” I said. I was about to introduce myself when the dowager duchess said, “Irene, Nicholas, Katherine—you haven’t met our guest. Georgiana Rannoch—her grandmother was very kind to me when I was a young lady-in-waiting to the old queen. I’ve invited her to stay for a while.”
“We already met her outside,” Nicholas said, as if scoring a point.
“Really, Mama, you’re wasting your time, you know,” Irene said.
“What on earth do you mean?”
“If you’re thinking of her as a potential bride for Cedric, there is no chance.”
“I assure you I have no interest in becoming Duchess of Eynsford,” I said. “My taste in men is very different.”
“I agree with you, my dear,” Virginia said. “Why would one want to look twice at an unattractive man when there are so many handsome ones in the world?”
“When I was young, we married out of duty,” Edwina said. “We were told whom we should marry and we did so. “
“I married Orlovski for love,” Charlotte said.
“Nonsense. You liked the idea of being a princess.” Virginia chuckled.
“How did you meet a Russian prince, Your Highness?” I asked.
“Our father was ambassador at the court of the Hapsburgs,” Edwina answered for her. “The prince was visiting and was taken with my sister.”
“I was considered a great beauty at the time,” Charlotte said.
“The fact that Father had arranged a generous dowry for each of us didn’t hurt either,” Virginia added.
“Sit up, Nicholas, and don’t slurp your soup,” Edwina interrupted sharply. “Really, you children still eat like savages.”
“He gets nervous in your presence, Mama,” Irene said. “Most children of his age take their meals in the nursery.”
“I’ve always thought it was important for children to learn civilized manners and the art of conversation well before they are taken out in society. Since yours have apparently learned nothing before they came here, I am taking them in hand.”
“That’s really not fair, Mama.” Irene’s face had turned red. “They’ve had to suffer very upsetting things in their young lives. We’ve all had to suffer.”
“Nonsense. You should talk to Billings, the estate manager, about his son, who came home from the war so shell-shocked that he still cries like a baby every night. Or the gamekeeper’s son who lost both legs. Or that family in the village who lost all three sons on the same day. That is suffering, Irene. Not going without a new hat every season.”
She paused and looked up as Cedric came into the room.
“You’re late again, Cedric,” she said.
“Since it is I who now should set the time for meals in my own house, I might say that you are early, Mother,” he said. “But in fact I am too wound up after last night’s triumph to think of joining the bean-feast. I’ve told Mrs. Broad that we’ll have sandwiches and a bottle of bubbly in my study.” He looked around the table. “And I don’t see what those brats are doing here again. I’ve made it clear that I have no wish to see my sister’s offspring more than once a day. A nursery is the place for children.”
“They are learning manners, Cedric. A skill in which I clearly failed lamentably in your upbringing.”
Cedric snorted, went to stride from the room, then spun around again and said, “I only came in to tell you that I’ve received a telephone call from our solicitor. The ship is scheduled to dock in Southampton tomorrow. He will escort the boy up to London for a briefing and plans to bring him down here at the weekend.”
“Cedric!” Edwina said in horror. “How many times have I told you that I find that common Americanism deplorable. People of our class do not have ‘weekends,’ because we do not need to take two days off from our weekly toil. We’ll have Nicholas and Katherine using it next.”
“Since they will obviously have to work for their living, they had better get used to it,” Cedric said.
“I’m sorry. Which boy is he talking about?” Irene asked.
“I assumed you’d all heard the rumors,” Cedric said. “Our dear mother has sent out her spies and managed to dig up a possible heir for me. A young man from Australia, who is supposedly Johnnie’s legal child. Naturally, I am employing my own agents to have all of his credentials checked and double checked. But he is being brought from Australia as we speak and will be in this house by—by the end of the week.”
“And I hope you will all do your best to make him feel welcome,” Edwina said. “In spite of what Cedric says, we have to accept that this boy is indubitably Johnnie’s son, and thus the rightful heir. He comes straight from a sheep farm in the wilds of Australia and will be overawed by the grandeur of this place. It is up to us to groom him to take over the dukedom someday.”
“Someday in the distant future, we hope,” Cedric said. “I’m not intending to pop off yet, Mother. And who knows what changes may occur in the next forty years.”
With that, he made a dramatic exit from the dining room.
Chapter 7
KINGSDOWNE PLACE
“What did I tell you?” Princess Charlotte wagged a finger at Cedric’s departing figure. “The spirits never lie. A stranger who means danger. That’s what they said, and that same night I dreamed of a cuckoo. A cuckoo sitting on the top of the roof, cuckooing away like mad. And someone in the house called, ‘Somebody make it stop, for God’s sake. It’s driving me insane. I’ll pay you to get rid of it.’”
“I don’t think we take your spirit messages and dreams as gospel truth, Charlotte,” the dowager duchess said. “I remember you dreamed the Derby winner last year and we all put money on a horse that came last.”
“The spirits do not like information to be used for monetary gain,” Charlotte said.
Irene, I noticed, had turned quite white. “Then it’s true that the boy is coming here. And he’ll get all of this someday. A common Australian who knows nothing of our heritage and traditions . . . when my own children come from the purest aristocratic blood.” She broke off with a little hiccup.
“I think it’s jolly unfair,” Nicholas said loudly. “And jolly stupid too. Why can’t the children of a female inherit anything?”
“Because that is not the way things are done, Nicholas,” Edwina said. “None of us is thrilled that the heir to Kingsdowne Place will have no social graces and does not deserve to inherit, but we have to accept that it is the only solution and do our best to make him welcome.”
“Well, I don’t intend to make him welcome,” Nick mouthed to his sister when his grandmother wasn’t watching.
The soup plates had been whisked away during this interchange, and turbot in parsley sauce had been placed in front of us. I looked across at Irene and her children as I ate. Of course this stranger coming into their midst might mean everything to them—life, death and survival. If Cedric were to die and Jack Altringham became the duke, then the estate and the fortune would be his, and he could expel unwanted relatives without a penny. I thought that if Nicholas was sensible he’d make his new cousin as welcome as possible.
Steak and kidney pie followed the turbot, then a steamed ginger pudding with custard, followed by a good Stilton and biscuits. At least the food was going to make up for the complicated situation in which I found myself. During the meal, it had occurred to me why I had been asked to come here—only the dowager duchess wanted the Australian boy to be here. The rest were going to go out of their way to make life as unpleasant for him as possible.
Luncheon ended with coffee, and the family dispersed—the older members for an afternoon snooze and the younger back to the nursery and their tutor. I was left alone, unsure what to do with myself. I wanted to pay a visit to the injured girl. I felt rather sorry about the way her brother had dismissed her as if she was not worth talking about. But first I felt I should
get an idea of the layout of the main floor. These old houses can be infernally complicated. And if I was supposed to show Jack Altringham around when he arrived, I needed to be au fait with the place myself.
I peeked into the drawing room, then a charming corner morning room with windows overlooking both the front and side of the house. Then a grand library, a pretty music room with a black grand piano and a harp, and a super view across the formal gardens to the valley below. I wished my talents ran to playing an instrument.
Then I came back through the Long Gallery, now deserted, and passed through several smaller salons and rooms with no particular purpose other than to display collections of various sorts—Roman pottery, porcelain figures and enamel boxes. I presumed these were the fancies of various past dukes. One room was small, square paneled in dark wood in which the glass-topped display cases were filled with butterflies. I stood looking at them with a mixture of fascination and pity. It seemed so cruel that the bright, delicate creatures should end up with a pin through them for some gentleman’s pleasure.
I came out into a hallway that turned a corner into a new, narrow and rather dark corridor. This clearly wasn’t a main thoroughfare and I felt a little uneasy with all those closed, paneled doors. Ahead of me I could hear the faint clatter of dishes, and had no wish to stray into the servants’ domain. That would be too embarrassing. I turned around and decided to retrace my steps. Only I couldn’t remember how I had reached this corridor in the first place. I tried a door and found it to be locked. I opened another into a small room, its contents shrouded in dust sheets. I felt uneasiness growing. I began to have an absurd feeling that I was being watched, and quickened my pace.
On my left was a door set back into an alcove. That looked promising, as if it might lead through to the main hallway I had left previously. I was about to open the door when a voice behind me said, “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you. People have gone in there and never returned.”
My heart did a complete flip-flop. I spun around to see one of the young men in black was standing there. “Cedric’s secret passion—his photographic darkroom. God knows what goes on in there but he doesn’t allow anyone else in. He’d have an absolute fit if he saw you even standing at his doorway.” He gave me a conspiratorial smile. His accent still bore traces of a line north of Birmingham. “He sees himself as the next Cecil Beaton,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t think he has an artist’s eye but of course we wouldn’t dare tell him.” He looked at me with interest. “Now, you’re not one of the staff dressed like that. And your clothes are definitely too frumpy to be anything but an aristocrat, so one can only assume you’re a visiting relative. But definitely not the Australian heir, unless you’re a cross-dresser—in which case, how delicious.”