The children took off for the corner of the nursery happily enough and William sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace.
“This is very cozy and domestic,” Robyn said, smiling.
William looked at her, then glanced down at the baby. “The children’s noise does not seem to disturb you today.”
Robyn laughed. “Gosh, William, this isn’t noise. You should see my parents’ house when all the grandchildren get together—” She broke off abruptly. “No, the noise doesn’t bother me,” she said.
“I am wondering... do you understand that the children will be very disappointed if you do not join in their game tomorrow?”
“I’ll be disappointed myself if there isn’t enough snow,” Robyn said. “From what I recall of my last stay in England—” She caught herself up short. Good grief, it was difficult not to make remarks that were calculated to provoke precisely the sort of questions she wasn’t willing to answer, not even to herself. She tried again. “We must hope for the best. Snow doesn’t usually last long in this part of the country, does it?”
“Not longer than a day or two,” William agreed. Zach started to cry and he looked down at the baby with a consternation that was almost comical. “What’s wrong? Have I hurt him?”
Robyn smiled. “No, I’m sure you haven’t. Unfortunately, Zach has a very simplistic view of life. He believes that if he’s awake, it must be time to eat.”
William got to his feet. “I will summon the wet nurse,” he said.
“There’s no need. I prefer to nurse him myself.”
He turned in midstride, and unaccountably, Robyn felt herself blush. “I did not realize that you were still feeding the child yourself,” he said.
“You sound almost as disapproving as Annie,” she said.
“Not disapproving. Merely—surprised. In the past, you always found the children so shattering to your nerves. You couldn’t bear to spend time with them.”
Robyn held out her hands and he gave Zach to her. “You shouldn’t be surprised,” she said quietly. “I’ve told you a dozen times that I’m not the same Lady Arabella you remember from before the accident.”
William looked at her, his gaze somber. “You have almost persuaded me of the truth of that claim, my lady. Is that not an ironic testament to the triumph of hope over reason?”
Robyn smiled grimly. “Reason, my lord, seems to have very little to do with our situation. That’s the one thing I’m absolutely sure about.”
Chapter 13
Clemmie, bundled up in a pair of her older brother’s cast-off pantaloons, pranced through the hallway singing a lusty, made-up song, the chorus of which consisted chiefly of “We winned, we winned, we winned!”
Freddie, having acquired a wooden spoon and a pewter platter on his way out of the kitchens, banged an enthusiastic accompaniment, and Robyn, hair tumbling down her back, wet skirts hitched up to her knees, gave a final jubilant wave to William and shepherded her winning team in the direction of the nursery and dry clothes.
They were all three making so much noise that they totally failed to hear the stately tread of Hackett, the majordomo, and an accompanying patter of light, feminine steps. Caught up in her triumphal song, Clemmie bumped right into the portly figure of the majordomo as she skipped around the comer of the corridor and entered the main hall. Freddie and Robyn barely managed to skid to a halt behind her.
“Oops.” Clemmie grinned happily when Hackett steadied her. “We winned,” she informed him with a beatific smile, equally unimpressed by his severe expression and his tasseled, silver-knobbed staff of office. “Mamma and Fweddie and me winned the snowball fight. George and Papa and Tom losted. We winned.”
I am delighted for you, Miss Clementina.” The servant ruffled her mop of curls. Then he caught sight of Robyn and his indulgent gaze froze into a look of sheer horror. He immediately started bowing. “My lady, I did not know... I beg your ladyship’s pardon... I would not have permitted... But Mistress Wilkes is ever a welcome visitor...”
Robyn took hold of a child in each hand, which seemed to be the easiest way to stop Freddie banging his makeshift gong and Clemmie from bursting into renewed song. “What is it, Hackett? Could you please refrain from bowing and scraping long enough to explain your problem?”
“I rather believe I am the problem,” said a pleasant female voice. A short, plump woman of about thirty-five stepped out from behind the shadow of a suit of armor. Her round face, incongruously rosy-cheeked and cheerful beneath a gray-powdered wig, was redeemed from plainness by a pair of fine gray-green eyes, fringed with long, dark lashes. Like Hackett, her smile froze into an expression of almost comical amazement when she saw Robyn, but she was clearly a woman of some self-possession and she soon recovered herself, dipping into a slight, formal curtsy.
“Forgive me, my lady, I see that I have—um—called at a most inconvenient moment, but I was driving back from a visit to my sister in Poole and wished to inquire how your ladyship was faring after your lying-in. Hackett was conducting me to the morning room when we encountered your—um—victory parade.”
“Papa and George are with Tom in the kitchen,” Freddie explained, wriggling out of Robyn’s grasp in order to execute a neat bow. “How do you do, Mistress Wilkes?” He put his hand on Clementina’s head and pushed her into a curtsy. Robyn smiled at him fondly, feeling oddly proud of his attempt at good manners.
“We already finished our hot chocolate,” Freddie said. “But the others are still drinking theirs.” He smiled warmly at Mrs. Wilkes, his confiding manner suggesting that she was a frequent and popular visitor to the Manor.
“You look as if you had a very good time,” she said. “Did you take a sleigh out in the snow?”
“No, we had a war, and my team won.” Freddie gave his pewter platter a jubilant thump. “Mamma is the most excellent snowball thrower in the whole world. She hit Papa square on the nose, can you imagine? And when he wouldn’t surrender, she ran over and tickled him until he gave up.”
“Papa laughed but George was very cross,” Clemmie announced. “‘Cos we winned and I am a girl. Mamma is a girl, too.”
“I can see that George might feel he had grounds for complaint,” Mrs. Wilkes murmured. She glanced at Robyn and her face fell into another comical expression of repressed amazement. “It is good to hear that your ladyship feels so—er—robust. I am delighted to see that the rumors of your ill health circulating in the village are greatly exaggerated.”
“Village rumors are always exaggerated,” Robyn said. “Think how dull they would be if they stuck strictly to the truth!”
“Quite so.” Mrs. Wilkes smiled, and an endearing dimple appeared at the corner of her mouth. She didn’t seem to be a naturally censorious person, but Robyn noticed that her gaze kept sliding away from the sight of Robyn’s skirt. Too late, Robyn remembered that she’d tucked her skirt into her waistband to prevent its damp folds clinging to her legs. Unfortunately, this hitched-up style revealed the scandalous fact that she was wearing not petticoats, but leather boots and a pair of man’s riding britches beneath the decorous woolen skirt, and from the tinge of color in Mrs. Wilkes’s cheeks, it seemed that she found the sight genuinely shocking. Hackett, who was studiously looking everywhere except in his mistress’s direction, was obviously equally embarrassed.
“We are just on the way upstairs to change,” Robyn said, pulling her skirt back down over the offending male garments, to the evident relief of Hackett and Mrs. Wilkes.
“I am wearing Fweddie’s pantaloons,” Clemmie announced with a child’s infallible instinct for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. “They is wet,” she said, tugging at the seat of her pants and wriggling graphically. “From the snow,” she added, trying to be helpful.
Mrs. Wilkes cleared her throat. “Yes, dear, I see you are wearing... er...” Her voice died away, unable to mention the unmentionable garment.
She curtsied again in Robyn’s direction. “I can also see that this is a m
ost inopportune time for your ladyship to entertain callers, so I will apologize for intruding and take my leave. Please accept my good wishes for the continued good health of the new baby. I will look forward to seeing him another day.” At the mention of the baby, her voice took on a faintly wistful tone.
“Oh, but you mustn’t leave without seeing my son! I would love to take you up to the nursery when he’s been fed.” Robyn couldn’t pass up the chance to display her gorgeous Zach to someone so obviously willing to coo over his many perfections. “Besides, it’s much too cold and miserable for you to drive home without having a snac—without taking some refreshments. Hackett, please show Mrs. Wilkes into the morning room and bring her something hot to drink. Coffee, tea, chocolate, whatever you would like.” She smiled in what she hoped was a friendly fashion. “It won’t take me a minute to make myself presentable. Please do wait, Mrs. Wilkes.”
Robyn hurried upstairs, refusing to take no for an answer. When she saw herself in the dressing-table mirror, she could understand why the majordomo and Mrs. Wilkes had both appeared so shocked. Quite apart from the outrage of her boots and britches, the rest of her appearance was an unmitigated disaster. Her face was wind-chapped to a bright red—her nose, Robyn thought wryly, would have ousted Rudolf from the lead position on Santa’s team of reindeers. Her hair, or perhaps she should say Lady Arabella’s hair, had no natural curl whatsoever, and it had fallen in damp, blond hanks over her shoulders, without a clip or a ribbon left to show for the neat style she had given herself early this morning. She had a brown smudge of chocolate on her cheeks where Clemmie had kissed her, and her jacket had popped two buttons where her breasts refused to stay confined within the space provided by Arabella’s skintight jacket. If Mrs. Wilkes was a stickler for the proprieties, confronted by such a spectacle she might decide never to set foot in Starke Manor again. Which would be a pity, because Robyn thought that she might prove a good potential friend. There had been a definite twinkle in those handsome gray eyes, despite the rigorous decorum of her manner.
It was obviously going to take her the best part of an hour to feed Zach and make herself presentable, Robyn decided, not the few minutes she had promised Mrs. Wilkes. Organizing quickly—she had found that although the Manor swarmed with servants, they rarely displayed even a smidgeon of initiative—she sent a message to William informing him of Mrs. Wilkes’s arrival and asking him to entertain their guest while she changed. Then she summoned Annie and asked her to bring Zach to the bedroom. Settling into the winged chair by the fireplace, she fed the baby while Mary laid out the multitudinous layers of garments that she considered de rigueur for Lady Arabella to host a simple visit from a neighbor. For once Robyn didn’t protest her maid’s inflated standards of elegance. She didn’t want to appear insulting to Mrs. Wilkes, and she would endure however many layers of silk and satin it took to restore herself to her neighbor’s good graces.
“Does Mrs. Wilkes often come to visit?” Robyn asked, stroking Zach’s head as he suckled, and watching Mary painstakingly smooth the goffered ruffles on a starched linen petticoat.
“Aye, often enough. Sometimes she just comes and spends time with the children, if you are not in the mood to receive callers. She likes children, Mistress Wilkes does, and she has none of her own.”
“What a shame. Have I known her for a long time?”
“No, m’lady.” Mary showed no surprise at the odd questions. She had given up trying to make sense of her mistress’s behavior, and clearly found her role as lady’s maid much more enjoyable now that she no longer expected her mistress to behave rationally. Working for a madwoman had definite advantages, not least the fact that Lady Arabella no longer lost her temper and ordered her maid whipped on the least provocation. Mary knew her duty, and she prayed nightly for the return of her ladyship’s scattered wits, but she secretly hoped that the Good Lord would continue to ignore her prayers. The new mad Lady Arabella was a heap less trouble to deal with than the old sane one.
“Mistress Wilkes was widowed two or three years ago and came back to live with her father, Master Richard Farleigh, over at Oakridge House.” The maid spoke through a mouthful of pins. “He do be a widower hisself, Richard Farleigh, and Mistress Wilkes keeps house for him.”
Master Richard Farleigh. The name rang a bell, but try as she might, Robyn couldn’t remember why. “Did I know Master Farleigh before I was married?” Robyn asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. From what she had learned about Lady Arabella’s past, the gentleman was quite likely to have been one of her lovers. “Has he been our neighbor for long?”
“Oh, no, my lady, a real newcomer to the district is Master Farleigh. Hasn’t been here more than a dozen years. He was a merchant in Bristol, with ships sailing all over the world, until he decided to set hisself up as a country gentleman. His brother handles the shipping business now, I did hear tell. A nice enough personage is Master Farleigh, but only a tradesman when all’s said and done.”
“You sound as if you don’t approve of tradesmen. Without trade, England would be a much poorer country and its people would lead less comfortable lives. The average citizen here is better fed than in almost any other country in the world, you know.”
“Average citizen, m’lady, what be that?” Mary shrugged, dismissing yet another of her ladyship’s queer statements. “Don’t matter none, anyway. If you say ‘tis so, m’lady, I am sure you have the right of it.”
Robyn’s attempts to heighten Mary’s social awareness never met with much success. She sighed and returned to the original topic. “Tell me more about the Farleighs.”
Mary was happy to oblige. “There’s no harm in Master Farleigh, and his daughter is as kind as can be, a lovely lady for all she’s so plain to look at. But they aren’t aristocrats, not like you and his lordship. Master Farleigh’s from common stock, nothing special about his family. Why, there isn’t a soul in these parts who remembers his grandsire. Which isn’t surprising, since folks say he was naught but a peddler, who spent most of his time over to Poole way.”
“If his grandfather was just a peddler, isn’t that all the more credit to Mr. Farleigh for working so hard to make a success of his life?”
Mary seemed to find the question disconcerting. “I dunno about that, my lady. Folks is supposed to stay in the station they was born to, not keep struggling to push theirselves above their proper station.”
“In America, people are encouraged to forget about their old position in life and to make the best of themselves. To branch out and flourish in new ways.”
“The American Colonies is in furrin parts, and they be full o’ heathens. Catholics and Puritans, and such like, not good solid Church of England, like us.” Mary clearly considered American habits entirely irrelevant to the discussion. “Be you ready to start getting dressed, m’lady?”
“Not quite. Zach seems hungry today. Tell me why the Farleighs decided to buy a house in this particular neighborhood.”
“Well, I expect Master Farleigh wanted to keep an eye on his business in Bristol, and his son-in-law has a warehouse in Poole, so Oakridge is right in the middle. When old Squire Babbitt died and left naught but a passel o’ debts, Master Farleigh saw his chance to buy Oakridge and he snapped it up. He paid Widow Babbitt a fair price, though, when all’s said and done. And Mistress Wilkes has done a fight fine job of running his household, even if she weren’t born to the task. Kept on all of Squire Babbitt’s people, she did. Didn’t turn a single one of them off, indoor servants or out. Course, Farleigh has the money to fling around, being a tradesman, like, and not proper gentry.”
Poor Mrs. Wilkes and her father were going to find it tough to get accepted into the bosom of this conservative community, Robyn realized. She found Mary’s class consciousness appalling, and yet she knew that order, rhythm, and the cycle of the seasons were important to farming communities even in contemporary, hyped-up, wired-in America. No wonder it seemed a crucial keystone of security to servants in eighteenth-century En
gland.
Despite Mary’s rambling account, Robyn still couldn’t recall where she had heard the name Farleigh. Then Mary reached into the exquisite lacquered drawer of the dressing table in search of a ribbon and suddenly Robyn remembered.
The Farleigh cabinet. That was how the Gallery had labeled the chest of drawers, set on an elaborate gilded base, that had held pride of place in the Gallery showrooms just before Robyn’s accident. The name sounded familiar because the provenance papers had contained a paragraph describing the first owner of the cabinet, and the circumstances of the original purchase.
Robyn’s mood of effervescent good cheer collapsed as quickly as a pricked bubble. This linkage of Mrs. Wilkes to an object Robyn had dealt with in her twenty-first century life was spooky. What did it signify? she wondered. Had the threads of her life and Lady Arabella’s begun to interweave even before the fateful moment when she had been shot and Lady Arabella had tumbled from her carriage?
Zach whimpered, returning Robyn to a realization of her surroundings. She was squeezing Zach so hard she had left finger marks on his skin.
“I’m sorry, babycakes,” she whispered, cradling him over her shoulder and slowly patting his back. “I wish you could talk,” she murmured. “You were part of Lady Arabella when all this happened, and then you became part of me. So you probably know better than anyone else what went on. Can’t you tell me?”
Zach delivered a milky burp, and Robyn gave a little laugh that was perilously close to tears. “I know. Dumb question. But you feel so real and solid, so much a part of me.” She paused a minute. “Everything here seems real and solid. Does that mean your mommy’s crazy, huh? What’s your considered opinion?”
Zach’s eyes crossed with the effort of concentrating on his mother’s voice. He gave a grunt and his head flopped against her chest. Robyn laughed, loving the feel of his warm soft body against her heart. She looked up and found Mary waiting patiently, Arabella’s shift held out to the fire.
Timeless (A Time Travel Romance) Page 25
