“I thought all old ladies treated their companions dreadfully.” Margaret said tentatively.
“Which is what comes, I collect, of reading subscription-library novels. No, Meg, she’s a very kind lady, but a little troubled. First she was so sick — her life was despaired of for a time — but she’s almost recovered now. And her eyes were left dreadfully weakened by the fever, and she will not take proper care unless she’s hounded to do so, and now she’s waiting for her scapegrace son to return from abroad, as he was supposed to do last week.”
“Will I be terribly troublesome to you — or her? Ought I to find a position as a companion, or a governess, or something such?” Her tone was not enthusiastic.
“Who would hire a chit just out from the schoolroom, with looks like yours? You’d have every papa and older brother listening to the lessons in the nursery! Trust me, Meggy my dear. You’ll probably be of great assistance to me by keeping my lady company while I am so busy. I am caught up in arranging a party we are to have on Friday evening — if Mr. Lyndon Bradwell condescends to make his appearance!”
“Who is that?” Margaret began. A knock on the door at that moment announced Drummey and the tea tray, and Rowena, giving orders for the disposition of Miss Margaret’s trunk and bandboxes, now waiting with the gatekeeper at the end of the long drive, did not answer. But when both cousins had their tea and seedcake before them, Margaret asked again, “Who is Lyndon Bradwell?”
“Lady Bradwell’s younger son. I am entirely out of temper with the man. Unreasonable, I suppose, but there it is. You see, he went off to the army six years ago, and then, when he sold out his commission — when was it? I have heard this story a thousand times from Lady Bradwell! I think it must have been two years ago — he’d an offer to become part of Sir William A’Court’s staff. So he hasn’t seen his mamma in all that time. Even last fall, when the poor lady was so dreadfully ill — yes, I’d told you that! — he could not be found, even when Lady Bradwell’s greatest wish was to see him. And now, though she is mending, she is still fragile, and easily depressed, and still he delays his arrival. I have found that ridiculous woman rereading his letter — in which, mind you, he swore to return by the twenty-first of this month — lying abed and reading that letter in the half dark! I swear I don’t know which of them I would like to shake first. And here it is, almost the end of the month, and still no sign of him. Do you wonder I am out of charity with him?”
“Perhaps he was delayed?” Margaret suggested mildly.
“I promise you I know all the reasonable answers, Meg. I just do hate to see Lady B so turned about by his absence. Now that I haven’t Mamma to fuss over, you can see that I’ve veritably adopted Lady Bradwell. And then there’s this party. Thirty couples invited, and we have no idea as to whether or not the guest of honor will be attending! All of which,” Rowena finished, “has nothing to do with your predicament. Now listen, Drummey will have moved your boxes into one of the guest rooms. If you would like to change your dress and tidy yourself a bit, I shall go and speak to Lady Bradwell.” Margaret smiled apprehensively. “Now, I promise I shall neither send you back to your mamma nor let your grandmother make a scullery girl of you. Even if Lady Bradwell cannot play the hostess for you, I have other resources, I promise you. So go along now. I’ll come to you in a while.” She placed Margaret in the hands of a housemaid.
“Rowena, You’re wonderful.” Margaret smiled mistily over her shoulder.
“Nonsense,” Miss Cherwood said firmly, and returned to the office.
o0o
Some fifteen minutes later Rowena entered Lady Bradwell’s room to find her employer propped against a mountain of pillows, piles of close-written papers littered across the bed, and her hated blue glass spectacles lying unused at the bottom of the bed. Only a few braces of candles were lit to brighten the rain-dreary room.
“Lady Bradwell, I am shocked at you,” she scolded, lighting candles until the room glowed with their light. “This room as dark as the tomb, and still you sit here, ruining your eyes by reading. What the doctor, and Lord Bradwell, your prodigal son will say! And I shall be raked over the coals for being so remiss — cast out on my ear, no doubt, and now, too, when I specifically need your help.”
Lady Bradwell cheerfully ignored this teasing. “Scold all you like, dear, but do tell me what sort of help I can give you. If you knew how wretchedly helpless I have felt these months, lying here like the stupidest creature in nature!”
In a few short, highly colored sentences, Rowena sketched her cousin’s plight. “I should hate to return her to her mother or her grandmother. Her mother — well, I’ve told you about my Aunt Dorothea, ma’am. And while Lady Lewis can be amusing in an ill-tempered, kind-hearted sort of way, she is a tyrant unless one stands up to her. And Meggy just isn’t up to her weight.”
“Well, my dear, if she is anything like you we shall be pleased to have her at Broak as long as she cares to stay.”
“You are much, much too good.” Rowena gave the older woman a careful hug.
“Not at all, child. I imagine I am as amusing and ill tempered as your Margaret’s grandmother. For instance, I shall expect to meet this paragon of a cousin at dinner tonight. And I assume she is out, and has an evening dress she can wear to our party.”
“She’s out, that I know. As for a dress, I’m sure she has one. If not, I can lend her one of mine.”
Lady Bradwell regarded her companion ironically. “Your cousin is — um, a statuesque woman, Rowena?”
Miss Cherwood permitted herself a rueful smile. “If you mean, is she a great bean pole like me, ma’am, no she isn’t. If you can picture me, at nineteen rather than seven-and-twenty, with my hair in short curls, and less seven inches of height, there you have Margaret.”
“I begin to think that I may enjoy myself with your young cousin, Rowena. Does she ever laugh at you?”
“Would she dare? I could crush her with a look, and she’s not got your presence, ma’am,” Rowena replied delightedly, cheered by her mistress’s good spirits.
“You mean my bad-temperedness,” Lady Bradwell corrected sweetly. “I shall teach her not to be in awe of you. And she and I will sit and laugh at you while you are busy with my errands.” Her voice changed to a mixture of eagerness and ill temper. “Renna, there hasn’t been any word, has there? No, I was afraid not. That abominable boy.” Lady Bradwell’s tone was carefully devoid of all but amused exasperation, but Rowena could have cheerfully strangled Lyndon Bradwell on the spot for the look she saw in his mother’s eyes. “I know you would inform me immediately had there been, yet I continue to be a plaguey old woman.”
“Absolutely impossible,” Rowena agreed solemnly.
“But you’re paid to put up with my whims, you poor child. Well, perhaps your cousin and I can amuse each other, and if Lyndon does not arrive in time for the party we shall simply enjoy it ourselves. Perhaps I will even proclaim your cousin — what was her name? — to be the guest of honor.”
“She would probably be so honored she would blush herself into extinction.”
“Likely enough,” Lady Bradwell agreed, and settled the hated spectacles on her nose, leaning back into her pillows and searching for her knitting. “Well, if you won’t take my wretched John, perhaps your cousin will. A good woman would be his making, but I don’t think I could saddle you with John in good conscience.”
“Nor saddle Lord Bradwell with me, ma’am. But I warn you that just now Margaret don’t seem too keen on the idea of marriage; nothing is so daunting to the spirit as to be badgered to wed.”
“If we were to propose the proper party to her, I imagine her delicacy would disappear very quickly. It generally does,” Lady Bradwell observed to her knitting.
“It might at that. In which case I can only suppose that no one has ever proposed the proper party to me.”
“No, only toadish baronets like that Slyppe fellow, and foolish barons like John.” Lady Bradwell sighed. “Well, go along, child,
and don’t worry about me. I shall be a paragon of invalid virtue. Word of a Bradwell, I shall not read, I shall not stir; I shall sit here and very likely bore myself to death over this shabby genteel knitting.”
“You are a wonderful woman,” Rowena assured her dryly. “I shall be up again in a little while.”
Miss Cherwood departed to give her cousin the good news, then returned to her desk in the office to face again the cards of acceptance, the lists from Cook, the bills from various merchants in the village, and the baffling intricacies of who to seat with whom at dinner.
o0o
At the evening meal Lady Bradwell and her eldest son John, Lord Bradwell, were introduced to Miss Margaret Cherwood and expressed much delight in the acquaintance. Margaret, having a hazy romantic notion that as the cousin of Lady Bradwell’s companion she should strive to appear as humble as possible, carried only a gauze shawl over her peach-colored evening dress, and shivered quietly in the chill of the dining room until Rowena arrived to send a maid after something more substantial. Lady Bradwell was charmed with the girl’s open, affectionate manner and her obvious respect and admiration for her older cousin. Lord Bradwell, on his part, swore that the two young ladies were first-raters, that he could see no difference between Miss Cherwood, in pomona-green crepe, and Miss Margaret in her peach gauze.
“Devilish hard put to say which one of you ladies is the handsomest,” he protested, this fulsome compliment rolling awkwardly enough from his usually inarticulate lips to convince all of his sincerity.
“The choice is obvious, my lord.” Rowena returned easily. “Your mamma, as always, outshines all of us.”
Lady Bradwell, demure and fragile in blue and gray, her hair hidden beneath a charmingly frivolous lace cap, stared down her nose with dignity at her companion, and denounced her for the basest sort of liar.
The company, thus, was in the best of spirits as they sat to dine.
Margaret, whose knowledge of the behavior of ladies and their companions came only from watching her mother’s friends, and from the pages of novels, was surprised by the free and easy, unaffected relationship between Lady Bradwell and her cousin. Since Lord Bradwell seemed to find nothing extraordinary in their manner toward each other, Margaret was prepared to accept things as they were. It did occur to her, however, that Lord Bradwell was not, in his own phrase, one of the downy ones, and that while his temper was sweet and his manners gentlemanly, his considered opinions on matters beyond the home farm and the stables were not to be relied upon.
Shortly after, when they had each had tea and a few biscuits, Miss Cherwood announced that it was far too late for Lady Bradwell to be downstairs. “If you wish to attend the party, ma’am, you must conserve your strength.”
“You, miss, are an abominable bully.” Lady Bradwell turned to Margaret, protesting, “You see how ill I am used in my own home, child? Well, all right, I suppose I shall never hear the last of it if I do not retire gracefully. Good night, dearest.” She offered a cheek to her son to kiss. “Good night, Miss Margaret. I shall enjoy having you here, I think.” She smiled again at the girl, then gave her arm to Rowena. “Lead on, tyrant.”
“O no, ma’am!” Meg could hear Rowena explaining patiently as she led Lady Bradwell from the room. “You have the cases mixed. You are the tyrant and I am the tyrannized. I do wish you will strive to recall...”
“Wonderful woman, your cousin.” Lord Bradwell observed to Margaret. “Keeps Mamma in line with barely a word at it. More than I could ever do, I assure you. Game of backgammon?” Margaret mutely assented, and they were finishing the third game when Rowena reappeared to suggest that perhaps they too should retire early. Lord Bradwell said all that was awkward and cordial in his good night, and retired to the library, where he was obviously much more at home. The Misses Cherwood were able to make their way to Rowena’s rooms for a comfortable coze.
“But still no sign of the plaguey, prodigal Mr. Bradwell,” she mused as they climbed the stairs.
Spanish Marriage Page 20
