A Heart Too Proud

by Laura London

  “Oh… Your Lordship, the girls here…,” began Mrs. Goodbody.

  “I’ll discuss that with you when I return next week. In the meantime you may continue as you see fit.” One of the marquis’s grooms brought up a handsome Arabian stallion and the marquis swung himself lightly into the saddle. To my surprise, he brought the mincing stallion alongside me. He reached down and carelessly flicked my cheek with one long finger.

  “Don’t look so dismayed, sweetheart,” he drawled. “I daresay something can be arranged.”

  I felt Mrs. Goodbody place a protective arm around my shoulder as we watched the visitors depart. Somehow I knew that I would dream that night of cold blue eyes.

  Chapter Two

  It may surprise you to learn that I, dependent upon charity as any pauper in the workhouse, am actually the granddaughter of a duke. But I am more fortunate than my grandfather was, for it is better to be poor and face that honestly than to be poor and grow monstrously in debt pretending to the life-style of a feudal baron. Grandfather was too encased in pride to admit that the revenues of his lands could no longer support him in the luxury that had been the lot of his family for generations. It must be from him that I inherit my ability to view the future with tranquil optimism. This characteristic gives my nature a buoyancy welcome in stressful times, but can as easily become a weakness. And so it was with Grandfather. He ignored the rapidly worsening state of his finances until his creditors lost patience and announced that he must bring his ship about or sail no more upon the River Tick. Grandfather panicked and fled the country, abandoning not only his debts but also his sixteen-year-old son, who later became my father. The moneylenders, taking revenge through the only avenue open to them, threw my father into debtor’s prison. I can only imagine what he suffered there because he discussed those days with no one. I knew only that he contracted jail fever, leaving him with the damaged heart that finally caused his death.

  It is to Admiral Barfreston that Father owed his last happy years. The admiral, the duke’s last loyal friend, convinced the duke’s creditors to drop the charges against my father. He then brought my father to Barfrestly and employed him as his secretary, a post that was never more than a polite fiction.

  My mother was a governess on the Peterby estate when she met my father. She taught French to Lord Peterby’s older sisters—Lord Lesley was only in the nursery at the time. The vicar, who prides himself on having introduced my parents, says that my mother reanimated the gentle shell my father had become. Her gifts of joy and laughter were a healing balm to my father’s broken spirit. That is the way I remember her, laughing with such delight that all the world rejoiced with her. I love to watch the twins at play, for they are so like her they bring her back to me. She was French, and had borne her own measure of grief. Though she had been sent from France before the Terror reached its peak, her own parents’ heads had been part of the gruesome feast of Madame Guillotine.

  Nevertheless, it was my own trials that beset me as I walked to the church the next morning. We’d had little enough claim on the admiral, and we had none at all on the Marquis of Lorne. News has wings and the whole parish knew every detail of Dearborne’s visit before we had even entered the churchyard. Mrs. Blakslee, the innkeeper’s wife, was the first to identify my Cinderella as Lady Catherine Doran. She was the marquis’s current mistress, as Mrs. Blakslee, who hadn’t been born yesterday, could judge from the sleeping arrangements.

  “My Fine Lady made sure that her bedchamber was right next to Lord Dearborne’s. Shameful, I call it! The very name of womanhood dragged through the dirt! And my John was the one to see that hussy sneak into His Lordship’s room, bold as a mare in season!”

  Mrs. Plumford, the sexton’s wife, gave a snort. “Possibly, but I fear we must ask ourselves if these are meet matters to discuss on the threshold of the Lord’s house, and in hearing of such tender ears as well.” That last was said with a significant glance in my direction.

  “Oh, Amelia, you and your prudish pecking. Do tell, Mrs. Goodbody, have you seen the solicitor yet?” queried Mrs. Coleman, the apothecary’s lively wife.

  “To be sure. Last evening he called at the cottage. The purse isn’t skimpy for fixing up the estate, and that house is going to get the cleaning I’ve been itching to give it all these years. Can you spare Jane to give a hand?”

  “We’d do well to have the extra shillings. But understand that when that rakish Lord Dearborne arrives I want her straight home. My Jane’s virtue is worth more than all the money in the Bank of England.” She leaned closer to Mrs. Goodbody. “Has mention been made of providing for your three dear lambs?”

  I broke gaily into the conversation: “I don’t care if he tosses me off his lands on my ear. I’ve an education, thanks to the kind offices of the vicar, and I’ll become a governess like my mother was.” This show of bravado was as much to convince myself as my listeners. I longed to chase away the apprehension that tapped at my shoulder like an unwelcome stranger.

  “I’d like to know what matron would put a gal your age in a responsible position like the care of children?” sniffed Mrs. Plumford.

  Privately, I wondered the same thing. But I said, “Oh, the mysterious ways of the adult world. They won’t hire you unless you have experience, but how will you ever get experience unless you are hired to begin with?” Mrs. Goodbody’s frown informed me that I’d been pert. I hastily begged pardon, for I don’t like to give anyone offense.

  There was a stir of interest in the assembled throng as two men alighted from a gig that had just pulled into the churchyard.

  “Who can that be with old Dr. Lindham?”

  “Why, ’tis his new assistant, a Dr. Brent, I believe.” Trust Mrs. Plumford to know all the doctor’s business. She was a small-scale hypochondriac and commanded Dr. Lindham’s services more than anyone else in the village.

  Dr. Lindham threaded his way to our circle with the new assistant in tow. Bowing, for he liked to think of himself as a lady’s man, he presented “Dr. Brent, who’s come to relieve my old bones from handling all the complaints of you charming ladies.”

  We charming ladies greeted the sally with the obligatory giggling disclaimers as Dr. Brent took the hand of each lady in turn. He was a harsh-featured man in his late thirties with an air of calm self-possession. There was a vaguely military air about him, though I’m not sure whether it came from his ramrod posture or the thin, undisfiguring scar that ran across his left cheek. His dark hair was graying slightly at the temples and I remember thinking that he looked too distinguished to be a mere country doctor.

  He bowed over my hand with practiced grace. To my surprise he did not release it immediately, keeping it prisoner in his own a moment longer than courtesy permitted.

  “Charming,” he breathed. His smile-softened eyes caressed my face with surprising intimacy. What in the Creator’s name! I almost snatched my hand away. Dr. Brent’s behavior had been as overfamiliar in its subtle way as Lord Peterby’s. Or so it appeared to me, but I have no experience with masculine attentions and perhaps refine too much on a simple compliment. I was left with a feeling of unease and could only be grateful when the sexton opened the church door and called us in to worship.

  * * *

  Unease was to be my close companion that week. Like an uninvited guest it hovered beside me, defying my efforts to banish it. I was grateful for Mrs. Goodbody’s practical comfort. She kept me busy until I dropped into bed at night, so tired that sleep came as soon as I drew the quilt to my chin. Had I been given time to mope I assuredly would have done so, for at the time I thought that this uncertainty was the most difficult thing that life could hand me.

  On Monday morning the attack began. Armed with buckets and brushes of every description, under the ruthless generalship of Mrs. Goodbody, we marched upon the manor house determined to clean or die. And our valiant little regiment had won a heroic battle by Friday afternoon. My own assignment, the admiral’s favorite sitting room, looked fresh as a spr
ing hay crop. For all that the carpet was threadbare in spots and the draperies yellowed, at least the detestable marquis could not sneer that his new house was dirty.

  I stepped back for a satisfied view of the gilded mirror that I’d just polished and suddenly noticed my face reflected back at me. I’d never seen my face in any mirror before save for a handglass that Caro had won by tossing balls through a hoop at last year’s church fair. The glass on that mirror was so badly warped that it made my nose look perched between my eyebrows, a vastly comical effect. The sitting-room mirror’s glass was flawless though, and I could see every detail of my face. How curious it is that I should look so unfamiliar to myself. I suppose that’s because I’m used to being on the inside looking out instead of on the outside looking in.

  I recalled the strange behavior of the doctor and Lord Peterby with their male assessments of me as “beautiful” and “charming.” The thought disturbed me as I studied the face of the girl in the mirror with detachment. Hair the palest blond curled riotously around an oval-shaped face. The violet eyes appeared huge above the other small features, glowing luminously against the white skin that would never tan. Ruefully I remembered Olivia’s wry catalogue of her features in Twelfth Night: “Item: two lips, indifferent red; item: two gray eyes, with lids to them.”

  I turned away, wanting no closer acquaintance with the pale young woman in the mirror. It is unnerving to think that there is part of me, unseen by myself, that is exposed to all who look at me. I heard the reassuringly normal voices of my sisters in the hallway and called them in to me, longing for their cheerful nonsense to distract me from my unsettling introspection.

  “Have you no mercy on the handiwork of poor Arachne?” I asked Caroline, gently brushing a cobweb from her hair.

  “We’ve been cleaning up the servants’ quarters for the marquis’s London servants. There were hundreds of spiders! Mrs. Blakslee says they’ll be snottier than their master.” She grinned. “The servants, not the spiders. Just think, he’s bringing a cook, a valet, and two grooms. Barfrestly will be tricked out as fine as the squire’s place.”

  “Who’s Arachne?” asked Christa impatiently. She was not one to let things go unexplained.

  “Why, she was a lady who lived in Greece long ago, who made such beautiful woven cloth that she became known all over Greece for it. But she became conceited and bragged that she could weave better than the Goddess Minerva herself.”

  “Did Minerva punish her for being proud?”

  “Indeed she did. She put her finger on Arachne’s forehead as a mark of shame. Poor Arachne went mad from the misery and hung herself and would have died if Minerva had not pitied her and turned her into a spider to spin forever.”

  “What a horrid story. Was Minerva always so cruel?” wondered Caro.

  “Ah, I can tell you stories of her that will turn the very blood in your veins to ice water.” I made my voice low and breathless as I settled myself down on the faded carpet.

  “Yes, Lizzie, do! No one can tell a tale like you.” Christa shivered in delighted anticipation and flopped down on her stomach to gaze at me with her chin nestling on her upturned palms. Caro lay on her back with her head resting on my knee, her wheat-colored curls spreading across the skirt of my apron. Thus we sat as I spun the enraptured pair a yarn of ancient gods and heroes. By the time my fancy has played with mythology the plot little resembles the original, and if my sisters ever aspire to classical scholarship I fear they will have volumes of material to unlearn.

  “… and then Cupid and Psyche lived happily ever after,” I finished. I had put my hand out to stroke away the hair fallen across Caro’s forehead when a slight movement drew my attention to the doorway.

  There stood Nicholas Dearborne. Even through my alarm I was struck by the impact of his incredible male beauty. It was as if one of the heroes from my fractured mythology had somehow overcome the boundaries of space and time to join us. Whatever he thought of our trespass was not revealed as he studied me. I think that if he had not been blocking the doorway, I would have risen and scampered through it like a frightened fox. With great relief I heard Mrs. Goodbody’s firm tread in the hall beyond.

  “Good afternoon, Your Lordship. Joe Hawkins fetched me from the dairy to tell me you was come.” She stepped into the room and quickly took in our confused embarrassment as we stumbled to our feet. “Your Lordship won’t mind the girls, I’m sure. They were just finishing up their chores and will be running along so as not to bother Your Lordship.”

  Taking hasty advantage of Mrs. Goodbody’s tactful dismissal, I gathered my cleaning rags and followed the twins out of the room without a backward glance. What had the marquis thought, coming into the library to discover my sisters and me thus? Probably, he thought we were making pretty free of his newly acquired house. Milkmaids in the parlor; what next? I wondered dejectedly if we were to be evicted from our little cottage and if poor Mrs. Goodbody would be given the unhappy task of telling us. I believed that it would be even more painful for her than for us.

  I climbed up the well-scrubbed stone steps into the cottage and took refuge in the accustomed task of preparing dinner—a boiled neck of mutton.

  The twins came in carrying a bucket of water between them just as I was testing my crusty buns for doneness.

  “Watch what you’re doing, Caro. There, now see what you’ve done, sloshed water all over my skirt. Say, what’s that smell?” Christa plunked down her end of the bucket to lift the lid of the cooking pot and sniff cautiously. “Ugh, mutton again?”

  “You should thank the Lord for what He provides, my girl,” said Mrs. Goodbody. She ducked her head slightly to pass through the low doorway and came over to give me a motherly kiss on the cheek. “You can put your mind at rest now, Elizabeth, the admiral didn’t forget you children after all. Before he died, he told his solicitor that he wanted his heir to continue to support you so that you could remain here as you always have!”

  I was too relieved even to speak and sank down limply onto a convenient three-legged stool. Caro continued to set the table with childish unconcern and asked Mrs. Goodbody casually why the solicitor hadn’t told us all this before, just after Admiral Barfreston’s death, because “then Lizzie wouldn’t have had to worry herself about it like a toad on a hot stone.”

  Mrs. Goodbody answered her before I had time to refute so unflattering a comparison.

  “Well, perhaps the solicitor didn’t feel that he could reveal that to us before he discussed the affair at length with the marquis. Not wanting to raise false hopes, you see? To tell the truth, girls, I didn’t want to query too closely, not wanting to tease His Lordship. Lord Dearborne has been more than generous. Why, he’s more than doubled the allowance the admiral made for you!”

  “I hope that means we can have something besides mutton for dinner once in a while,” said Christa, unimpressed. “Did you find out anything about the orphan—you know, the one that is the marquis’s ward?”

  “His Lordship stayed the last few days at Petersperch and rode over here on his stallion. A nasty brute that stallion is, too, so Joe Hawkins says.”

  “That’s all very interesting, Mrs. Goodbody, but what about the orphan?” pressed Christa with a lamentable absence of manners.

  “I was coming to that. The boy will arrive tomorrow in the coach from London, the one that’s bringing the marquis’s London servants.”

  “Oh, I hope the carriage is that lovely one that was here before, with the wicked woman in it,” said Caro.

  “You’re not too old to have your mouth washed out with soap, young lady, and so it will be if you’ve a mind to continue talking piggish,” admonished Mrs. Goodbody with unruffled placidity. “Oh dear. In all the bustle I forgot to check up on the room for Master Christopher.”

  “Is that the orphan’s name? I wish we had known earlier, then we could have made a sign that said Welcome, Christopher or some such thing.”

  “Never mind, Christa,” said her twin, consolingly
. “The room looks perfect as is. You don’t have to worry about a thing, Mrs. Goodbody, because Christa and I did the thoroughest job on his room. We even repainted that set of toy soldiers that’s been up in the attic all these years, and Joe Hawkins put new straw ticking into our old rocking horse. Christopher will be so surprised tomorrow!”

  Regaining my power of speech, I tried to express to Mrs. Goodbody a thought that had been floating hazily in my mind ever since she had entered the cottage.

  “Mrs. Goodbody, isn’t it… wrong for us to take money from someone we’re not related to? I mean, strictly speaking, we weren’t related to the admiral either, but that seemed different. Mrs. Plumford says…”

  “Now don’t be tellin’ me what Mrs. Plumford says because that woman never had a teapot’s worth of sense in her life, and so everyone in the village knows. The idea! A sexton’s wife telling a duke’s granddaughter what’s proper! Your blood is just as good as the Marquis of Lorne’s. Maybe you weren’t raised in a fancy house like you ought to have been, around your own kind, but true ladies you are for all that, and so I told My Fine Lordship.” It was a picture to command awe, Mrs. Goodbody telling His Fine Lordship that three country wenches in berry-stained gowns living in his back cottage were “true ladies.”

  The potatoes boiled over then, which is always a real conversation silencer, and we were eating dessert before Christa brought up the subject of our new benefactor again.

  “I wonder what a man like the marquis is doing at Barfrestly. He’s got much nicer houses to live in than this, they say. Why come here?”

  Mrs. Goodbody shook her head, frowning. “I don’t know—perhaps it’s to fix up the place before he sells it. He did mention something about men coming from London to do some work here. At any rate, it’s not for us to speculate about how the marquis spends his time—so don’t go popping your nose into his affairs, Christa. Now promise, pet—we don’t go snoopin’ into the marquis’s business, all right?”