“Ye came too late!” she cried. “My lady’s dead.” And burst into tears again.
The iron knocker pounded again. “Let me in! I will see her.”
“No—oh, no! None are allowed in. This house is infected!”
On the verge of kicking down the door that separated him from his Margaret—alive or dead—Tony Warburton was gradually quieted by an outburst of words from the old nurse, which told him of the virulence of the disease that had quite exhausted Margaret’s frail frame. A frailty, her injured tone implied, brought on by Tony Warburton’s defection.
That Margaret had never been either frail or easily exhausted by anything never reached the level of his consciousness. He was borne down by one thing and one thing only—she was dead. His loved and lovely Meg was dead. And she had died believing the worst of him—that he had deserted her. She had died without ever knowing how much he still loved her.
In black misery Tony Warburton had ridden home to Warwood—a Warwood draped in the black cloth of mourning. In black misery he had sat himself down in the echoing reaches of the great hall and stared into the fire. It seemed to him in his darkness of the spirit that everyone he had ever loved was dead, snatched away from him. Troop movements, arms buildups, secret alliances, all seemed of a sudden trivial.
His life had ended: Margaret was gone.
Even his younger brother, Ned, with his jovial ways, could not jolt Tony Warburton out of the mire of despond into which he had sunk.
“If only he’d drink,” muttered Ned to his friends, for Ned was convinced that with liquor to warm your blood, you could surmount anything. “But he doesn’t even do that—he just sits there.”
But when little Lucy Weatherby and her parents had come by the house to invite the gentlemen of Warwood to a ball, surprisingly Tony had risen up and accepted. He had gone to the ball as in a dream—indeed he felt he had been dreaming ever since his ship had docked in England, one long nightmare. But he had been seeking balm for his lacerated heart: he had danced with his host’s daughter and had so turned the little Weatherby girl’s head that she was madly in love with him before the evening was half over.
She had maneuvered him into the moonlit garden and—as she had hoped—he kissed her there, a perfunctory kiss, meaningless. But Lucy Weatherby had flung her arms around his neck in such a surprising display of passion that he had stared down at her in wonder.
And when the ball was over and the little Weatherby girl should have been in bed, she stole out to the stables, swore the stableboys to secrecy, and mounted up and followed him home, just shadowing the two men as he and Ned talked on their way back from the Weatherbys’ ball.
She slipped into the house unnoticed, and when Captain Warburton, scorning a candle, came into the dark bedroom and moved about tossing off his clothes, needing no light to keep his shins from connecting with the familiar furniture, he noted nothing amiss.
Until he got into bed and felt a warm, naked, yielding shape beside him.
Captain Warburton recoiled with a surprised oath from whatever human creature he had touched and a small hurt voice said, “Tony, aren’t you glad to see me?”
It was little Lucy Weatherby’s voice, and although Tony Warburton knew he shouldn’t do it, the state of his mind was such that he took what the gods—and little Lucy Weatherby—offered. He joined her in the big bed, and gained a brief forgetfulness in her arms.
The next day he did the Right Thing. He escorted a blushing Lucy back to her father’s house, explained that in a gust of passion he had made off with her, offered for her, and hoped for an early crying of the banns.
Ned had told him gloomily that he was making a mistake, for to Ned’s view supplanting Margaret with Lucy Weatherby was to exchange a lioness for a mouse, but the Captain was in no mood to listen to anyone. He wanted to wall off his past and begin again. And now he was going to do it—with sparrowlike Lucy Weatherby.
He gave it a good try.
But two months later, during a lingering damp spell, when his bride caught a deep cold that turned into pneumonia and she died in his arms, Tony Warburton looked up at the ceiling, and in his mind past the ceiling and through the roof into the leaden sky. He listened to the patter of the rain on the roof slates and tried to fathom what fate had in mind for him. It was obvious that a vengeful heaven meant to allow him no one close, no one of his own to love.
That night began his true bachelorhood, for he was a confirmed loner after that.
It began something else. His nerves, which had been shocked into numbness by the triple loss of Margaret and his parents, were triggered back into pain again by the loss of his frail young bride. At last, there alone in his bedchamber, by the fire, he could put his head in his hands and feel hot tears sting his eyelids.
But it was for Margaret, his real love, that he wept....
And now his friend Clifford’s quiet question had jolted him into facing his real feelings. He had felt a sense of shame when his bride had died—shame that he had not loved her more—but not a sense of loss. That aching sense of loss was reserved for Margaret. He had doomed himself to bachelorhood on that day, for—unlike the Squire, who felt women were false and not to be trusted—Tony Warburton felt that he did not deserve a wife.
When he had first realized how much Constance attracted him, Ned had been already so far gone on her that pursuing the matter in his own behalf would have seemed unconscionable—it still did.
But the Squire had seen through him. And now he wondered if others had—Constance herself for instance. And perhaps despised him for it. Certainly that was a cold look she had given him. Impossible to read anything in those velvet eyes of hers, he lost himself in their violet depths every time he looked at her.
It seemed ironic that after all these years the ice around his heart had melted and given him a new love—one who would be forever denied him. Loyalty to Ned demanded that. His jaw set as it had the day they were probing in his leg for the bullet and having trouble finding it, and the expression in his eyes was just as hard and mirrored as much suffering as it had then—plus spreading horror and a sense of shock.
He could have done much more back there! He could have tried to win the girl for Ned after she had arrived. There were ways to kindle interest.
But he had not, he told himself with remorse. Instead he had fled the scene the moment she arrived because in his subconscious he had wanted no one to guess what up to now he had not admitted even to himself:
He desired Constance. He wanted to clasp that velvet form in the crook of his arm and bend back that slender waist and let her dark hair fall like a cloud of silk over his arm while he showered her with kisses. He wanted to sweep her up and carry her away and tear off her clothes and bring her breathless and enchanted to his bed. He wanted to hear the silken rasp of her voice—like the whisper of bedsheets—as he made love to her. He wanted her body. He wanted her soul.
Dear God in heaven, what manner of man was he that he would allow himself to feel so about a girl of whom his brother was so deeply enamored? Better had he been struck down on the battlefield than face so shameful a realization.
But having faced it at last he felt, along with a pervading sense of doom, almost a feeling of relief. The dark cloud that had been overhanging his spirit had been identified.
Its name was Love.
He was in love with beautiful Constance.
Chapter 4
With unexpected guests for dinner—and one of those guests Tom, which in itself was enough to set her young heart pounding—Pamela dashed up the massive Jacobean staircase that had been installed by her grandfather, well ahead of Constance.
“Tabby!” she called impatiently down the dark servants’ stair that wound down toward the big kitchen.
At her call there was a clatter of feet on the stair treads and a young fresh-faced girl and a big long-haired tabby cat erupted into the corridor, almost colliding with Constance, who stepped aside hastily to let them pass.
&
nbsp; “Oh, Puss, I don’t need you to help me dress! I need Tabitha!” She swept the big coppery brown cat with his dense black markings into her arms and carried him into her bedchamber. Puss, happy to be held in those arms, purred loudly. “I wonder why he always comes when I call you?”
Tabitha, swishing her brown homespun skirts in Pamela’s wake, refrained from telling her that cook called “Tabby!” when she wanted to feed Puss, since he was usually in her company.
Pamela tossed Puss lightly to the feather bed, where his weight promptly made him sink down into the coverlet until only his broad furry head with its tufted ears and round full cheeks, decorated outrageously with sooty black swirls, stood out. His green eyes adoring, the cat gave a spring from bed to floor and sidled over on his short striped legs to rub his massive furry body, brindled and smudged in black and copper, against Pamela’s velvet riding skirts.
“That cat’s leaving his long hairs on your skirt.” Tabitha eyed the slate blue velvet doubtfully.
“Oh, it’s no matter. Tabby,” laughed Pamela. “Puss just wants to show his affection.”
The little maidservant smiled. Puss, she knew, could do no wrong where Pamela was concerned. He had the run of the house.
Puss had arrived at Axeleigh as a half-grown kitten on the same day as Tabitha—a day of quick drenching spring rains and sudden sunshine. They had arrived from different directions: Tabitha walking sturdily on her worn leather shoes from Wells, where she, youngest of ten children, had quarreled with her parents and vowed she’d not endure being bound for seven years to a gray-bearded baker whose interest in her was hotter than the cakes in his ovens. Half-grown Puss had strolled in from his most recent residence, a dairy farm where a whole platoon of sturdy black and white tomcats, all of them built like barrels, had threatened his life daily if he went near the wooden milk bowl, for they saw in genial Puss a future rival for the favors of the pussycats who sidled around the barn at milking time swishing their tails seductively amid the rustling hay.
Hospitable Axeleigh had welcomed both, and Pamela had been struck that day by the similarity in coloring of these two wayfarers—for Puss’s coppery brown undercoat with its black overmarkings gave him sooty undertones near to the color of Tabitha’s soot-stained brown homespun kirtle (for the girl has been cleaning out the hearth on the occasion of her last quarrel at home and Tabitha’s coarse coppery hair exactly matched the shade of the cat’s thick undercoat.) They both had big expressive wary green eyes—Puss with permanent black furry markings etched around his, Tabitha with less permanent blackish purple markings given her by her father when she defied him.
Pamela, who’d been riding and was turning to go in through the big stone-arched front door, had caught a glimpse of Puss coming down the drive, a bit bedraggled and walking on tired paws but still with a jaunty wave to his fluffy ringed tail and with his head uplifted hopefully.
That hope sprang from the tired cat’s near encounter with a careening cartwheel. Puss had darted into a bush to avoid the wheel and found there a delightful though small repast in the form of a half-eaten chicken leg which the cart’s driver lost as he tried to keep the light cart from overturning between the stone gateposts that marked the entrance to Axeleigh’s drive.
Thus encouraged. Puss sauntered down the long driveway where Pamela, who had gone swiftly inside after sighting him, met him with a wooden bowl of milk which she set down before him. Puss gave her a questioning look from his big green eyes and warily approached the bowl. No fierce tomcats leapt forward to cut him off. Hunger overcoming caution. Puss hurried to the bowl and swallowed the milk in big laps while Pamela gently kneaded his thick fur with her fingers.
When he had finished she was still petting him and Puss had decided he liked it. He purred and fell into step with her when she picked up the bowl and said, “Let’s go to the kitchen and get cook to give us some scraps!”
Midway there, they bumped into Tabitha, who had tried to take a shortcut across a meadow, lost her way in a fringe of woods and blundered by mistake into the gardens of Axeleigh.
Pamela had stopped in surprise. “Who are you?” she asked the defiant-faced girl with the sooty skirt and two black eyes who had just stumbled out of the box hedge.
Tabitha, tottering on her feet from fatigue, had still remembered to curtsy. “My name’s Tabitha. I’m looking for work.” Her green eyes flashed their defiance, for she’d been rejected for work all along the road: too young, too small and spindly, not strong enough—all uneasy excuses, for those bruises proclaimed her a runaway most like and no one wanted to be responsible for taking her in and then having some angry master reclaim her as his bond servant. Little and thin she was, but her lifted head and determined face proclaimed that if they’d not take her in here, footsore as she was, she’d just journey on until someone did.
Pamela, who had spirit, liked spirit in others. She gave Tabitha a sympathetic look. “Would you like a hot cross bun?” she asked. “Cook just made some.” Seeing Tabitha’s green eyes light up, she motioned her graciously to a long wooden bench. Tabitha ate a whole plate of hot cross buns and downed two brimming tankards of milk while Pamela watched and the big brown tabby cat washed his paws and purred. Afterward, Tabitha told her earnestly about her problems and how no one would take her in because they guessed she was a runaway.
“Then we’ll say you’re an orphan and don’t want to be sent to an orphanage and so you seek employment. I’m sure Father will let you stay and help cook in the kitchen. Would you like that?”
At that point Tabitha’s green eyes were fixed On Pamela as adoringly as the cat’s.
They both stayed. At first Pamela wanted to call them both “Tabby” but her father insisted some distinction must be made. Why not call the cat—
“Puss!” cried Pamela.
“But the cat’s a tom,” protested her father. “Why not call him Tom?”
There was only one Tom in Pamela’s world and that was Tom Thornton. “I’m going to call him Puss,” she said stubbornly. And Puss the young tomcat became.
That was four years ago and now both tomcat and servingmaid could scarce remember having lived any other place. Tabby sang as she worked and Puss, now a full-grown, full-furred and formidable tomcat with a thick cobby body, a deep chest, long wavy whiskers and a set of handsome claws which he kept meticulously clean and razor sharp, strolled on broad paws beneath the oaks, scouted out the big stables for rats, occasionally warred with the peafowls, and sunned himself on the wide sills of the big mullioned windows.
Puss was “Mistress Pamela’s cat” according to the servants, who spoiled him just as they spoiled the Squire’s daughter, and when Constance arrived, Tabitha unofficially became maid to both girls, helping them in and out of their enveloping overdresses and wide petticoats and tight bodices with their myriad hooks. She was even learning to do coiffures—Constance, who had a knack for such things, was teaching her. But her first loyalty was—and always would be, just like Puss’s—to Pamela. For it was Pamela’s open-hearted kindness that had welcomed them to Axeleigh and given them both a home.
Now Pamela turned to Tabby. “I want to wear my best-looking gown down to dinner, Tabby.”
“Yes,” said Tabby wisely. “I saw Master Tom come in.”
Pamela gave her a chiding look. “Nothing to do with Tom Thornton,” she insisted. “I want to dress well in celebration of—of my father’s birthday.”
“Oh?” muttered Tabby, who had heard cook say the Squire’s birthday was next week. But if dainty Pamela wanted to keep up the fiction that she wasn’t interested in Tom Thornton, she. Tabby, would help her. “Your pink damask perhaps?”
“Oh, yes!” Pamela dashed over to the big cherry clothes-press that stood in one corner of the room and pulled out a stiff strawberry pink damask alight with silver threads. “That’s a wonderful suggestion!” Nudging her judgment was the interest Tom had shown in Melissa Hawley at Hawley Grange and how only last week she’d seen him gallop his horse
to catch up with Nellie Haycock’s carriage—and both girls had been wearing pink at the time, although neither of them so sumptuous a gown as this.
Her crystal blue eyes sparkled like prisms as she and Tabby searched for exactly the right petticoat—and found one, of stiffened deep rose velvet heavily worked with silver flowers. When she had donned both, the stiff material stuck out in angular lines from her young figure. Tabby gave her a doubtful look. “Can you walk down the stairs in all that?” she wondered. “Me, I’d trip!”
“So long as I keep the train behind me,” caroled Pamela, kicking aside the small train with a satin slipper. She’d have risked it even if there was no railing, for the mirror gave her back a sparkling sight of rich eye-catching material. She twirled, the better to view her magnificence. “Don’t you think I should add velvet rosettes at the elbows where the lace falls away? I don’t want to look plain, Tabby.”
Tabitha nodded and rummaged for rosettes to pin onto the already overladen gown. If lovable Mistress Pam wanted to be bedecked like a queen, she’d help her. They were still pinning on rosettes and ribands at strategic places when Constance stopped by to collect Pamela and go down to dinner.
Constance herself was garbed in a lissome gown of plum velvet, cut with dramatic simplicity. She gave Pamela’s glittering effect a slightly startled look, but chose not to comment, and together they walked down the broad Jacobean staircase into the great hall where the gentlemen stood waiting to take them in to dinner.
The dignity of Pamela’s elegant advance was somewhat marred by her sudden shout of “Puss! Oh, no, Puss!” And her sudden swoop upon the big tabby cat who had leaped onto the pile of Christmas greenery the servants had brought in and was busy sharpening his claws there. She carried him mewing down the hall and handed him to Tabitha, who took charge of him with a wide grin.
Tom, with the others, watched this little tableau tolerantly, then turned, quirking a burnished gold eyebrow at the Squire.
“Stebbins tells me Lord Peacham’s coach has been cutting up your driveway recently,” he observed.
Lovely Lying Lips Page 6