‘Miss Mardham, without wishing to appear rude, I feel I ought to tell you that I do not think that passing the buttered carrots would be beyond your powers,’ murmured the viscount, in a tone of exasperation.
‘Thank you, my lord. Vegetables are so much less tiring, are they not?’ Her reply was little more than a whisper.
‘I am amazed that you can retain a sense of humour, ma’am.’
She glanced at him then, seeing the sternness in his face.
‘I … can pretend to do so, sir, and one becomes habituated.’ She gave him her twisted smile once more. ‘Now, if you, my lord, are sufficiently strong enough to place the sauce bearnaise within my reach …’
Their eyes met, held, and then mutual embarrassment made them look away. The degree of attraction was so unexpected, so confusing, that they pulled back from it in incomprehension. Their conversation thereafter was stilted and their body language stiff, which Lady Mardham noted. She sighed. That Woman looked ever more likely to see her Jane inherit thirty thousand pounds.
When the ladies withdrew, Sir Marcus managed to knock Celia’s stick from where it hung on the back of her chair as he rose, drawing further attention to her predicament, and his eyes followed her as she left the room. His expression was one of mournful sympathy. Lord Levedale studiously avoided watching her depart, even though the sound of her halting steps was clear.
The gentlemen settled to their port, and the talk turned to the sport they were likely to enjoy. Lord Pocklington became quite animated, and a bantering discussion followed on the merits of particular fishing flies. Lord Levedale, who enjoyed fishing, nevertheless remained on the periphery of the conversation, and appeared to be studying the contents of his glass with such intensity that Lord Mardham asked whether it was not to his taste, or was he rather attempting to deduce its exact origins.
In the drawing room, the party had divided by age. The senior ladies were enjoying an exchange of gossip about their peers, whilst the young ladies were talking about the latest fashion in bonnets.
Celia played her part in this, but felt it a very superficial thing, and also realised that for Sarah, the idea of buying a hat upon whim would be unthinkable. In fact she had little doubt that her cousin would rejuvenate hats with a change of veil or ribbon. Marianne, by contrast, guilelessly described a variety of very expensive-sounding hats she had tried on in Bath when she had last visited. It was not that she played off her wealth, but rather that she took it as normal. Lavinia Darwen trumped them all by discussing hats she had seen in the windows of the finest milliners in London, though Celia noted that she only spoke of one which she had purchased.
The conversation drifted from head to toe, from hats to silk stockings, and both their price and liability to wear into holes so very easily.
It was while Marianne was speaking that the gentlemen joined them, and Levedale heard her slightly high-pitched voice as he came into the room.
‘Oh yes, and do you recall how you wore out your dancing slippers, Celia, when …’ There was a short silence and then Miss Burton continued, hesitantly. ‘I am so very sorry, Celia. You really were the best dancer in the class and … now… it is so unfair …’
‘No, now I cannot dance.’ Celia stated it flatly. In her head she added ‘nor ride, nor walk among the bluebells in the woods in spring, nor even walk from room to room without conscious effort.’ She felt guilty at the jealousy she experienced watching others do what was taken for granted. Only when one could not walk without a struggle did the simple act of placing one foot in front of the other become something about which one even gave a thought, and the things denied to her were things she did miss.
Lord Levedale caught the tension that flickered across her face for but a moment. Marianne Burton was trying to make things better, and thus made them worse.
‘Of course dancing is not everything. We do not dance every day, do we? I mean, I most certainly do not. There are so many other things to do. Papa has encouraged me to visit the needy in the hamlet by our house, and says one ought to have serious occupations for the day beyond pleasure. I have even been taking instruction upon housekeeping, for when I must take those duties in the future.’
Celia could not ‘visit the needy’ without very obvious assistance, and the chances of her running a household seemed remote.
Lady Mardham winced.
It was Lady Corfemullen who came, rather unexpectedly, to the rescue.
‘A good housekeeper is worth her weight in gold. I sometimes think they are more vital to the good running of the house than the butler, for who else sees to it that one has enough candles, and the sheets are aired and in good order and …’ She continued with a varied list of important domestic duties, which only ended when her lord made an harrumphing sound in his throat, which she rightly took as a signal that she was ‘rattling on’.
Mr Wombwell took a seat beside Miss Burton before the other young men had a chance, and feigned an interest in her tale of taking a pig’s cheek and a good round cheese to a widow with six children. Lord Pocklington and Mr Mardham were in deep discussion over a shotgun, and Lord Deben, seeing Sarah Clandon sitting very quietly as if expecting to be alone, took it upon himself to do the decent thing. That she nearly jumped out of her skin when he asked if he might be seated in the chair next to her, seemed to prove the fact.
Lord Levedale hung back, and let Sir Marcus Cotgrave engage Miss Mardham. The pull of attraction was so unexpected and strong he doubted himself. One heard, of course, of the ‘coup de foudre’ but it always sounded a bit far-fetched to him. Yet here he was, having never clapped eyes on the girl before this afternoon, having to fight the desire to look at her all the time. It was madness.
‘My dear wife loved to paint in watercolours, Miss Mardham, and even when ailing, used to sit upon the terrace and paint the flowers. She knew all the names, you know, such a retentive memory.’
‘Alas, Sir Marcus, I am one who is always forgetting where I have put things,’ murmured Celia, trying her best to be the antithesis of the late and much lamented Lady Cotgrave, ‘and my watercolours were always described by the teacher as “insipid”. I think I made everything too … watery.’
He was boring her, and she resented it because it made her feel guilty. Had he been merely avuncular she might have been a little sympathetic to him, for he was patently a lonely man who missed his wife, but he was not. This made her feel both uncomfortable and angry. On top of which she wanted to think, and do so alone.
‘… and a little regular practice will increase proficiency, I am sure.’
She blinked at him.
‘With the brush and paints, my dear Miss Mardham.’
‘Oh, yes, perhaps so, sir.’
‘Forgive me. You seem a little preoccupied. Does your,’ he paused, wondering if ‘leg’ were to indelicate a term to use, ‘limb give you discomfort at the end of the day?’
‘I cannot claim it as an excuse, Sir Marcus. One becomes used to a degree of discomfort so that it is perfectly normal, and today has not been an especially difficult day. I fear I am simply a little tired. It is you who must forgive me.’ In truth, her uninjured leg and hip ached with the additional stresses put through them, and the weight of the patten seemed to drag upon her bad leg.
He made much of forgiveness not being necessary, and she itched to be able to withdraw. After the tea tray had been brought in, she looked several times at the clock. Sarah, noticing, claimed to be weary, and begged permission to retire, although she had found Lord Deben’s gentle anecdotes most entertaining, and could have happily lingered. Celia gave her a grateful look, for it meant she did not have to be the first and look weak. Marianne would have followed, but for Mr Wombwell leaning slightly closer to her and saying something which made her cheeks take on a slightly pinker hue.
As she made her way, slowly, towards the stairs, Celia thanked her cousin.
‘It was kind of you, Sarah. I had no desire to be seen as “the weak cripple”.’
<
br /> ‘It is nothing. I understand. One is marked by generalisations, like being “the poor relation”. One becomes used to it, but need not like it.’
Celia laid her hand upon her cousin’s arm, not for support but in support.
‘Our circumstances are both very different, and yet similar, Cousin. It is good that we shall be friends, and we shall, yes?’
‘I would like that very much.’ Sarah smiled, and the two young women went upstairs arm in arm.
*
When Celia lay in her bed, willing the ache in her good leg to ease that she might sleep, she tried to make sense of the day, or rather the evening. Lord Levedale was not a Sir Marcus Cotgrave, an older man seeking a younger wife to fill a space in his life. He was – and she felt her colour rise – remarkably good looking in an unostentatious way. He did not parade himself as the saturnine Mr Wombwell did, patently expecting admiration, feeding upon it. He was tall without being gangly, his features were serious but he clearly had a sense of humour, and the look of pity she had dreaded had appeared, but only very briefly, as if he were caught unawares by it. From the other things he had said she was persuaded he was keen to let her know he did not regard her simply as ‘a poor crippled girl’, and that first glance had been admiring. She told herself that she was a fool to hope for the impossible, but she went to sleep with the hint of a smile upon her lips.
Chapter 5
Lord Levedale awoke to a dewy September morning, and the prospect of a good breakfast and a day’s fishing. He was glad of it, although more from the fact that it would keep him from the ladies than a desire to net a splendid fish. He had been sent, most reluctantly, to ‘land’ a wealthy wife, and in view of the previous evening this was now even more distasteful to him. Miss Burton could not be faulted on her looks, though he found her charms too obvious. She did not appear, on first impressions, to be the sort of girl who had tantrums, unlike the repellent and over bejewelled Miss Darwen, and she did not tease men with her beauty. On the other hand, she did not possess that certain something that had drawn him instantly to Miss Mardham, though he had no idea as to what that something might be. It was disquieting of itself, let alone in conjunction with the knowledge that his duty was to engage the affections of The Heiress. It was very tempting, he thought, to remain for as short a time as possible, send a missive to his house in Devon, and have them send an urgent letter recalling him home. It was cowardice, of course, but very tempting.
He went down early to breakfast, confident that the ladies would not put in an appearance until rather later, and found Lord Deben, the naturally early riser, partaking of gammon and eggs.
‘Morning, Levedale. I tell you what, the gammon here is something else. No idea how they cure it, or whatever they do, but it is far better than in Town.’
‘Good morning, Deben. The receipt is probably some secret passed on from generation to generation, and perhaps also in the breed of the pig. Old Spots are the local breed.’
‘They are? Well, you learn something every day of your life. Are you, um, interested in pigs?’ Deben looked a little concerned, wondering if Levedale’s interest was like his own sire’s obsession with things botanical.
‘I find them more interesting than cattle or sheep. Quite clever, are pigs, and on the Home Farm my man swears blind that a happy pig makes good pork.’
‘But how,’ enquired Deben, reasonably, ‘does one tell if a pig is happy or not? They cannot mope or dance jigs or …’
‘Certainly they do not dance jigs.’ Lord Levedale laughed. ‘But you know, you can tell if a dog is miserable, and pigs are, I am told, more intelligent than dogs.’
‘Wouldn’t fancy having a pig at my feet of an evening, though, and my younger brother Jack was bitten by a sow once. Fearsome teeth it had, and he could not sit down for a week. Now, try this,’ Deben pushed the platter of gammon towards Lord Levedale. ‘This one must have been very, very happy, in fact positively euphoric, if what you say is true.’
Lord Levedale sat down to enjoy his breakfast.
*
Marianne Burton was an inveterate letter writer, although she wrote as she thought, with little punctuation, and was liable to muddle her topics together in such a way that the recipient had to read the letter several times to comprehend it. She was very unsure about commas, and worked upon the principle ‘if in doubt – leave it out’. With Lord Mardham offering to frank her letters, she did not feel the need to cross the pages, for which her fond Papa was most grateful. He had sent her with instructions to tell him all about her stay, which in effect meant hearing about any suitors in the offing. Sir Thomas was confident that anyone invited to Meysey would be suitable for his little girl.
She wrote her first letter before going down to breakfast, so that he might be assured of her safe arrival, and that she had received a kindly reception.
Beloved Papa,
The new upholstery in the carriage meant that I arrived here not at all bumped up and down or wearied. Meysey is a nice house, but some of the furniture is rather old and has many passages and I got lost on the way up to my room to change for dinner which included a positively delicious compôte of plums. I think it is all the wooden panelling which looks just the same except for the pictures. I now know that my room is to the left after the portrait of the lady with the sweet little dog in the huge hat.
Marianne paused, read the sentence again, and applied arrows so that Papa might not think the dog was wearing the hat.
Lady Mardham is very gracious and Lord Mardham is like Uncle Joshua except that he does not sneeze snuff over one and is rather taller and more polished of manner and has darker hair and a slow smile but does not laugh. I was terribly upset to see poor Celia. Although I knew about her tragic accident it was only upon seeing her in person that I realised how much it has RUINED her life. She hobbles to a most marked degree even with her old lady’s stick and can only walk very slowly and with a strange rocking and rolling motion which make me feel quite seasick. At least I think it is how I would feel had I ever been at sea which thankfully I have not. I am quite glad that travel to The Continent is impossible because of The War. She is in other ways a most beautiful girl but her life is positively blighted, and she is dependent upon others. In order to stand about before dinner last night she wore a thick patten under one shoe and made a very odd noise as she walked.
Feeling that this might make her soft-hearted Papa dismal, Marianne added:
But she puts a very brave face upon her situation and has a healthy appetite.
The other ladies of the party are Lady Corfemullen who is of an age with Lady Mardham and has come with her lord Celia’s cousin who is very quiet and looks impoverished judging by her gowns and a young lady called Miss Darwen who has been in London all Season and knows everything except how to dress. Oh Papa, if you had seen her come down to dinner positively jangling with bracelets you would have laughed. I am so glad you employed such an experienced maid as Tackley to guide me over the finer points of dressing for Miss Darwen illustrates how one may otherwise make the most horrible mistakes. I am sure she is very nice really but she is not as open and approachable as Celia and we have not spoken much together.
This was not quite honest, and cost Marianne a pang. In fact it was quite obvious that Miss Darwen held herself to be superior to the other young ladies, and did not so much engage in conversation as deliver lectures. However, Marianne was a person of positive outlook, and hoped that over time Miss Darwen might thaw.
Mr Richard Mardham has come and brought his friends Lord Pocklington and Lord Deben with him. Lord Pocklington is very tall and likes shooting horses and fishing.
Marianne contemplated a comma, but the more she wondered the less sure she became, and so omitted it.
Lord Deben is not short but not as tall and is very kind. He talked to The Poor Relation for ages after dinner so that she might not feel ignored. I imagine he has many elderly aunts. He too liked the plum compôte.
The other gent
leman are Sir Marcus Cotgrave who is a widower and sad Lord Levedale who arrived last of all in a very pretty waistcoat and Mr Wombwell who is a very splendid London beau. He is terribly well dressed and immaculate of person and perhaps a little haughty but he sat by me after dinner last night and was very amusing. Lord Levedale does not seem impressed by him but I found him quite droll.
The gentlemen are going out fishing today for the weather is fine.
Marianne pondered what else to say.
I will bear what you told me very much in mind Papa and learn from being in company with ladies of distinction but they are in truth very little different to the Misses Hopton or Jane Mytchett other than in the range of their accomplishments. Miss Darwen plays the harp but she did not bring it with her to Meysey and says that she likes to perform songs in Italian and French.
I shall write to you often dearest Papa with all the news from my sojourn here. Lord Mardham is franking this for me.
Your loving daughter,
Marianne
Pleased with her efforts, Marianne folded the letter, made out its direction, and slipped it into her reticule so that she might pass it to Lord Mardham when she saw him.
*
Sarah Clandon knocked on Celia’s door, and called her cousin’s name. Celia responded by inviting her within, and Sarah found her at her dressing chest with her maid threading a riband through her hair.
‘Good morning, Cousin. I wondered if we might go down to breakfast together?’ Sarah smiled, a little diffidently. She did not want to be seen as pushing.
‘Why yes, as long as you do not say “and please lean upon my arm”.’ Celia gave a wry smile at the mirror, being unable to turn her head without her maid remonstrating with her. Sarah saw it as a reflection, and grinned.
‘Well, I shall not, but neither will I skip down the stairs as I have no doubt Miss Darwen would do, just to prove her agility.’
Bless Thine Inheritance Page 5
