She gave a delighted laugh and clapped her hands joyously.
With an answering grin he asked, "Why have you no little friends?"
"When we lived in London, the children next door laughed at me 'cause I'm—read-ishy, or something."
"Bookish, perhaps?"
"Yes. That. It's 'cause I wear specs, the Bo'sun says. So I throwed 'em away. But Uncle Andy found them."
"And did he beat you with that great club again? He must be a wicked man."
"No he's not! He's the bestest uncle what I ever had!" She scowled at him fiercely, saw the twinkle in his eyes and giggled, her small face becoming pink. "Oh, you're teasing. Did you know I made that up a teensy bit? He din't really beat me. But he did spank me. Not 'cause I hid my specs, though. He said he quite und'stood 'bout that, and that the other children were jealous, that's all. But"—she sighed, despondent again—"they're not really."
"But you can wear your—er, specs now that you've moved away, is that it?"
"No. I weared them there, too. I can't see to read 'thout 'em."
She seemed awfully young to be able to read. He stared down at her sad but resigned little face, intrigued by its mixture of solemnity and childishness. "How old are you?"
"Oooh! That's rude," she said, cheered by this evidence of faulting in the man she thought rather scarily splendid. "I asked the Countess Lieven how old she was once, and Mama made me beg pardon."
'The Countess Lieven.' Then her family must be of the Quality. He could well imagine the formidable countess's reaction to such a question, and his lips twitched. "Your mama was quite right. And I beg your pardon."
She beamed at him and imparted, "I'm six in December." She again tugged at his hand. "Come on."
Resisting, he said, "Now that we're friends, I must warn you. You shouldn't come to the Folly. It's a bad place."
"No it isn't! It's a nice place. And it's not folly!"
"That's what it's called, Mistress—er… I think we haven't been properly introduced, have we? May I present myself? My name is Valentine."
She swept into a rather wobbly curtsy. "How de do? That's what my Bo'sun says." She lowered her voice to a 'manly' growl, repeated, "How de do?" then laughed merrily. "Just like that."
"Is your Bo'sun a sailor?"
"Yes. Well, he was a long time ago. He sailed with my gran'papa for hund'eds of years, but now my gran'papa's moved up to heaven so the Bo'sun lives with us an' keeps asking Starry to be his missus but she won't. I'm P'scilla. I c'n say my name now, 'cause my tooth growed back. Last month I couldn't say it right, and everybody laughed when I tried. D'you want to see? It's bright and new!" She halted, holding up her face and opening her mouth wide.
He admired the small, pearly new tooth and told her that they all looked very nice. "I expect you clean them every day."
"Yes." She sighed. "But they don't grow much. I wish they were bigger. Like Wolfgang's. His are pointed. I asked my Uncle Andy to file mine into points, and he said he would, but Mama wouldn't let him. An' Starry— she lives with us—Starry said everyone would think I was a Fury. And Furies are drefful bad creatures, you know. 'Sides, Mama said I wouldn't be able to chew jam tarts if my teeth was all made into sharp points, and I saved a special place in my tummy for jam tarts. So I 'spect I better not have pointy teeth."
"I agree," said Montclair, and reserving his musician's curiosity as to the naming of Wolfgang, took up his branch once more and asked, "Where do you live, Mistress Priscilla?"
"In London."
"Do you stay with relations, then?"
"Oh yes. But we won't be here long."
"Don't you like the country?"
She considered this, then said judiciously, "I been looking it over. It's pretty, but there's a awful lot of it."
"Very true. But you shouldn't go looking it over all alone, child."
"I don't. Wolfgang was with me, else Mama wouldn't let me go out. He's my 'fierce an' 'vincible guard dog,' Uncle Andy says. Wolfgang the Terrible he calls him 'cause Wolfgang 'tacks anyone who comes near me."
"He sounds terrible indeed." Montclair glanced about, wondering with a touch of unease if Wolfgang was as antisocial as Soldier, or whether he was another figment of this extremely bright little girl's obviously fertile imagination. "Where is he?"
She glanced around, then called shrilly, "Wolf… gang… !"
Almost at once there was a rustling in the undergrowth. "Here he comes," said Priscilla fondly.
Wolfgang plunged into the clearing, then paused, scanning Montclair with ears alert and eyes unblinking. "Stand very still, Mr. Val'tine," whispered the child. "An' p'raps he won't bite you very bad!"
Montclair, who had instinctively tightened his grip on the branch, regarded 'Wolfgang the Terrible' in silence. The dog was white with liver markings. His eyes and ears were large, he was about seven inches tall at the shoulders, and he probably weighed in the neighbourhood of ten pounds. He advanced on Montclair without marked hostility although the ratty tail did not wave a greeting. Montclair saw the somewhat protruding dark eyes fixed on the stick he held. He tossed it aside, and Wolfgang took three quick leaps to the rear. Dropping to one knee, Montclair called, "Here, Wolfgang. Come, old fellow."
Wriggling, the dog inched forward. His ears flattened themselves against his head, and his tail was wagging so fast that it was almost invisible. He licked Montclair's outstretched hand, then flung himself down and presented his stomach for inspection. 'A fine guard dog you are, sir,' thought Montclair, troubled, as he caressed the small head.
Priscilla, however, who had watched this meeting with her hands tightly clasped and an anxious look on her face, gave a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness he likes you," she whispered. "He can be dreffully awful!"
"I'm sure he can." Montclair stood up, took her hand tightly in his, and led her among the decaying slabs to the very edge of the pit. "Do you see her?" he whispered.
Her eyes very wide, for she had not dared venture this close, Priscilla adjusted her spectacles, peered downward, and whispered back, "No. Who?"
"The Fury. She lives down there, only she comes out if she hears little girls. Especially little girls who sing. She likes the taste of them."
He felt the small hand tremble, and she shrank closer against his leg.
"A real—Fury?' she whispered. "Is she bad and wicked and ugly?"
"Very bad. And very ugly. She does cruel and awful things to children who come here alone."
A pause. Then she quavered, "Wolfgang wouldn't let her. He takes care of me. He's braver than anything!" She thought, then added reinforcingly, "He could bite the King, I 'spect."
"Perhaps he could. But the King is only a man. The Fury is a witch. A wicked witch with no heart and a big hairy wart on the end of her nose. So I want you to promise me you will never come here again, Priscilla. As one friend promises another."
She looked up at him, her eyes very big behind the spectacles that made her face seem even smaller. The sunbonnet slipped down to cover her left ear. She asked, still in that hushed whisper, "Isn't you 'fraid of the Fury?"
"Yes, I am. She must be asleep or she'd have heard us and pulled us both in there. That's where her cooking pot is. Down at the bottom." The child was beginning to look quite pale with fright and he thought he'd made his point, so drew her back. It was more important that she get safely to her family than that he see the Henley woman today. He sat on the blocks again and discovered that a sharp stone had worked its way into the boot sole under the ball of his foot. "I'll just get this out," he said, pulling off the boot. "Then, I'll take—"
A sudden gust of wind sent a branch tumbling into the pit. Priscilla heard the scraping rattle and jerked around, pale with fright. "She's coming!" she screeched, and was off, her frock flapping. Wolfgang the Terrible scampered after her, uttering the high-pitched howls Montclair had heard when the child was singing.
He sprang up, started to run after her, but trod on a rock and swore. Hopping, he turned back for his b
oot. "Wait! I'll take you home!" he shouted, but she had already vanished into the trees.
Undoubtedly Mistress Priscilla had known the benefits of upbringing and a rather surprising amount of education. Pulling his boot back on, he racked his brain trying to think whom the child and her mama visited, and decided her 'Uncle Andy' must be Major Anderson, whose fine big farm was located about a mile east of the Longhills boundary. He began to run in that direction, calling her. It was too far for her to walk alone, even with the protection of the fierce and invincible guard dog.
"It is quite the most wicked thing I ever heard of," declared Mrs. Edwina Starr, extracting Welcome from the blankets and slipping a hand mirror between the sheets.
Susan had just piled those sheets onto the now immaculate shelf in the linen room, and she watched her diminutive companion/cook/housekeeper uneasily. "I think he is a very young cat, Starry. He'll learn in time."
"Time is what he may not have, does he persist in forever being where he shouldn't." Mrs. Starr looked grimly at the little tabby who had walked in with them when first they arrived at Highperch Cottage and had since shown no inclination to leave. "But I was not referring to that particular creature, Mrs. Sue." She took a blanket from the chair beside her with marked suspicion in her bright hazel eyes. "No Christian landlord should permit such a creeping, oozing, smelly bog to lurk about the village where little ones play. And him the Squire and a Justice of the Peace besides! A fine justice he dispenses! This blanket needs to be patched. He should have drained that bog long ago! He must be a bad man! A very bad man!"
"He most certainly is. I think I may have seen him whilst I was at Longhills—or at least, the back of him. From what I could tell, he was berating Miss Trent because she does not wish to wed him."
"Hah! Who would, I should like to know?" Mrs. Starr shook out another blanket and sniffed it, her dainty little nostrils twitching so that she looked like a busy rabbit. "I only wish I had been here when his wicked friends or servants or whatever they were dared lay their hands on you and break dear Master Andy's head!" She paused, her brow wrinkling with renewed indignation at the very thought of such dastardly behaviour. In her mind's eye she still saw Andrew as a pale, silent eleven-year-old, crushed by the death of his father and bewildered by the impending loss of his mama. When Captain Tate had asked her to care for his daughter's orphans she had agreed eagerly, and had lavished upon them all the love she would have given the children denied her when her young husband was killed in the same great sea battle which had ended the life of Lieutenant Hartley Lyddford. Andrew had been sickly as a child, and her tendency to fuss over him had not diminished when he grew into a robust and well-built young male animal full of pride and energy.
"Only to think of it fairly makes my blood boil!" she went on. "And all that wicked violence over a house which his evil lordship obviously never sets foot in, else it would not have come to such a sorry pass! Which reminds me, Master Andy found a dreadful dark painting he thinks might be better than that one hanging in the withdrawing room. The frame is quite nice and if you don't object, it might do was it cleaned. I shall set that lazy George Dodman to it so soon as he comes home."
Susan helped her refold the apparently acceptable blanket and set it aside to be sprinkled with powdered alum before it was put into the storage chest. "The Bo'sun has been working very hard, Starry," she pointed out placatingly. "Between helping Deemer with the horses and doing most of the gardening, to say nothing of his work with the barge, the poor man scarce has time to breathe."
"Senor Angelo helps also." Mrs. Starr sniffed disparagement. "One might think the Bo'sun ninety-five and being starved into his grave to judge by his glummery!"
"If he is sometimes downhearted, I suspect one does not have to look very far to find the cause," said Susan with a teasing smile.
Her companion, who at eight and thirty was still a very pretty little lady, blushed and changed the subject hastily. "From what the woman in the grocer's shop had to say—her being a proper tattle-monger you understand—the whole estate has been let go to rack and ruin since the old lord died. Like the flood, for instance. It seems there was a bore tide two years back that caused it all, and it was months before the water was pumped out of the catacombs under the church, no matter how the Village Council begged and pleaded with his lordship's steward."
"Is that how the swamp came to be?"
"So they say. Half the hill behind Longhills itself came down on the old family chapel, only because a lot of trees on the hillside had been damaged in the great storm the year before and no one at Longhills lifted a finger to have them tended and replanted. Thirteenth century the chapel was, and one whole wall smashed in and windows broke that are irreplaceable works of art. The villagers call it justice, and do not grieve about it, you may be sure!" She pulled the mirror from between the sheets and scanned it with suspicion.
Susan said indignantly, "Well, I think it dreadful that works of art such as that should be lost because of carelessness or pennypinching. The Montclair chapel is famous, and really belongs to England more than to the family. Martha cleaned out this cupboard on Tuesday, Starry. It is quite dry, I'm sure."
"It is not the cupboard I question. Aha! Just as I thought! Mist on the mirror! See there! The sheets are damp. Natural they would be, coming down the river on that nasty boat of Master Andrew's." Mrs. Starr tugged at the neatly disposed pile. "All have to come out again and be aired, just as I thought. Every blessed one! No! Don't you touch them, dear girl. You're all over cobwebs! And you must be fairly worn out. Go downstairs and make yourself a cup of tea, do!"
Susan hesitated, but she really was rather tired, and the thought of a cup of tea was heavenly. Having won a promise that her devoted retainer would soon join her in the kitchen, she made her weary way to the stairs.
Montclair's wrath built steadily as he limped up the drivepath. Having grown up in a house where a small army of servants eliminated dirt before it dared settle, where two full-time maids did nothing more than arrange fresh flowers every day and it was the sole task of three lackeys to clean the silver, he had no comprehension of the amount of time it could take three women to set to rights a house that had stood gathering dust for several years. It appeared to him as if his beloved old cottage had been taken over by a band of gypsies. The front terrace was littered with boxes, rolled-up rugs, sad-looking articles of furniture, and a large and battered child's doll house. The Henley woman and her unpleasant clan, he thought angrily, had lost no time in desecrating the house with their rubbish. Lord only knows what it would be like inside! They likely had pigs settled into the withdrawing room!
Fuming, he hurried up the steps. The front door was open, and he marched inside. The main hall was cluttered and deserted. He swore softly, and stamped through the chaos, up the two steps and into the upper hall.
A maid halted, halfway down the stairs, and stared at him. He thought her inordinately tall; almost as tall as himself. Her apron was a disaster, her grimy mob-cap hung askew, and many wisps of dark hair had escaped it to straggle untidily about her dirty face. She clutched a dustpan and brush in one hand, and a broom in the other, and she was evidently as dim-witted as she was slovenly, because she made not the slightest attempt to address him, but stood there perfectly still, gawking at him.
Frozen with dismay, Susan saw a slim young man gazing up at her. She received a swift impression of attractively tumbled black hair, a pair of rather stormy-looking but remarkably fine dark eyes set in a pale face with a firm nose and chin, a high intelligent forehead, and a grim but shapely mouth. He was dressed with expensive good taste but without ostentation, and aside from the fact that for some peculiar reason he was carrying a sturdy branch, he was undeniably a gentleman.
Her heart gave an odd little jump. She thought despairingly, 'Oh, I am filthy! Whatever must he think?' and started to snatch off her mob-cap.
In her confusion she quite forgot that she held a full dustpan in that hand…
Stalking towards her, Montclair received the full benefit of a cascading pile of dust, cobwebs, and debris. He uttered a shocked cry and reeled back, his eyes painfully full.
"Oh, my heavens!" Aghast, Susan ran to help him. "Here, let me brush your coat!" Briskly, she began to wield the brush, which was unhappily full of cobwebs.
"Woman—desist!" roared Montclair. "By Gad! You're a full"—he gasped—"a full-fledged…" Uttering an explosive sneeze, he tripped over a croquet mallet. "Disaster!" he finished, prone.
Susan threw one hand to her cheek and moaned faintly.
Snatching out his handkerchief, Montclair sat amid the rubble and sneezed. Between sneezes he strove not very successfully to chastise the lunatic. She watched him, seemingly completely undismayed by the fact that her thick hair now hung in a straight dark curtain past her shoulders with only one comb on each side holding it back from her face. Her eyes were very wide and her lower lip hung down. He brandished his handkerchief at her and tried to speak, only to sneeze again.
"I do apologize," said Susan, recovering herself. "I didn't hear you knock."
She spoke in a cultured voice that surprised him. 'Probably the family idiot,' he decided, clambering to his feet and trying to dislodge a timber that seemed to have invaded his eye. "The front door was open," he snarled.
"So I see." Susan continued to the foot of the stairs. "I am sorry that there was no one here to receive you. Everyone is gone out. You see, a little girl is lost."
Irritated by her impertinently familiar manner, he stared at her, and, sneezing again, wondered if she referred to Priscilla.
'How cross he is,' thought Susan. He really was very good-looking and he had every right to be vexed by such a welcome. Contrite, she went on, "I suppose you must think it very dreadful. But Priscilla is astoundingly clever for her age and has a great deal of common sense in—"
So Priscilla did live here. What a pity. "A small child should not be allowed to go out alone," he interpolated sharply, "clever or no."
Priscilla had slipped away again whilst they were all so caught up in the flurry of making this funny old house fit for human occupancy. Heaven knows, she had told the child repeatedly that she was not to go out alone, but Priscilla was lonely, poor dear mite, and such a dreamer. She'd probably imagined Wolfgang into the gigantic hound she'd thought he would become, and thus decided she was not 'out alone.' The young man looked haughty and condemning, and Susan began to bristle. Who did he think he was, to force his way into her home and then lecture her about her own child?
Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 09] - Logic Of The Heart Page 7
