by Anne Gracie
He was utterly charming in this mood, Kate thought, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. She suddenly realised that this was probably how he had been before the war.
This was the Jack that must have been betrothed to Julia, she realised with a sinking feeling—witty, handsome and vital. A man who was at home in the upper reaches of the ton. Who would have all the women eating out of his hand, from the lowest born like Millie and Florence and Martha, to the highest like Julia, whoever she was, and his grandmother.
It was clear to Kate now that he was almost well enough in body and spirit to return to the world he had renounced. A world where he would be amongst his peers and in his own element. She wondered dully if he would go back to Julia, now that he seemed to have climbed out of his pit of misery.
She should be happy for him, she told herself. And she was—for him.
Chapter Eleven
One afternoon in late February, in a period of clear weather which signalled the impending demise of winter, a smart curricle drew up at the front door of Sevenoakes. It was followed moments later by another, even smarter than the first, then an elegant travelling phaeton and several grooms leading a string of fine horses. From the sporting style of the vehicles, it was clear that they were driven by young men of substance and fashion. Three gentlemen alighted from the various vehicles and strode up the front steps, shouting merrily for "Mad Jack' and exchanging good-natured insults concerning each other's driving prowess or lack of it.
Kate opened the front door, and froze. She had not expected visitors, particularly not tonnish ones like these. She stood like a statue, barely noticing their hearty exuberance. A short, round-faced man rushed straight past her, tossing her a heavy, many-caped driving coat and a high-brimmed hat as he went. Peering up the stairs, he shouted, "Hey, Jack! Mad Jack Carstairs! Come out from wherever you're hiding, man, and give us a drink!"
A tall, lanky fellow passed her another many-caped greatcoat and a curly-brimmed beaver and, laughing, followed his friend. The last handed her a heavily frogged greatcoat of military cut and said calmly, "Sir Toby Fenwick, Mr Lennox and Colonel Masterton to see Mr Carstairs."
Colonel Masterton? A soldier? From the Peninsula? Kate tried desperately to bring the panic under control. He could not see her properly—she was almost invisible under three heavy coats. "Please wait in the drawing-room to your left, sir; I will endeavour to find Mr Carstairs."
The gentleman raised a quizzing glass to his eye. Kate huddled more firmly behind the coats. Having finished his inspection, he smiled faintly and strolled languidly into the room Kate had indicated. She backed out of the entrance hall, tossed the coats on to a chair and collapsed on top of them, her pulse racing.
She was overreacting, she told herself sternly. There was absolutely no reason to think he might recognise her. Merely because he was a colonel. No doubt hundreds of colonels had never even been to the Peninsula. And hundreds more who'd never even heard of Kate Farleigh. It was ridiculous to expect that this one might have recognised her. She certainly did not recognise him, nor any of the others.
Controlling her anxiety, Kate sent Millie out to fetch Jack while she put out simple refreshments of wine, brandy and bread and butter. She sent Florence into the drawing-room to light the fire. Florence emerged hurriedly, blushing and giggling. Kate's lips thinned. She was being a coward, making the girls put up with that. She would have to face Jack's visitors sometime.
Suddenly she thought of something. She flew upstairs and raced to her room. After rummaging in a large oaken chest she emerged, triumphantly brandishing a white spinster's cap she had noticed some weeks before. She put it on, carefully tucking in every last curl and tying it firmly under her chin with the tapes provided. She looked at herself in the mirror. Perfect. The cap was dreadfully ugly and much too large for her head. It was embellished with lace, knots of ribbon and a frill which hung almost to her eyelashes. In this, she could face any soldier visitors, secure in the belief that she was unlikely to be recognised. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror and giggled—she almost didn't recognise herself.
She hurried downstairs, ignored Millie and Florence's looks of amazement and Martha's gasp of horror, picked up the tray of refreshments and marched into the drawing-room, her head held high. It had to be—she could not see from under the frill otherwise.
"Brandy—this is more like it." The tallest gentleman leaped forward from where he had been warming himself at the fire and lifted the decanter and a glass from her tray.
"Ho, you blackguard!" shouted the chubby young man. "Don't think you are going to make off with that. Here, pour some for me!" He too snatched a glass from the tray and pursued his friend. It occurred to Kate that the two were, as her brothers used to phrase it, a trifle foxed.
The third gentleman sauntered up to her. Kate held her breath. "Allow me," he said, taking the tray from her grasp and setting it on a nearby table. He glanced briefly at her cap as he straightened up, then followed her gaze to where the other two were carelessly filling their glasses, slopping brandy on to the surface so carefully polished by Kate only that morning.
"You are perfectly right, ma'am." he said, observing her pursed lips. "I fear that we stayed a trifle too long at the excellent hostelry a short distance from here. My friends are indeed a trifle. . . er. . . exuberant.''
"So I see," said Kate dryly.
"And you, ma'am, we have not had the pleasure. Colonel Francis Masterton, late of the 95th Rifles, at your service." He bowed. "And you are. . .?" He paused.
"Er. . .Kate Farleigh," mumbled Kate. His lightly uttered words had flustered her badly. The 95th Rifles? He was from the Peninsula. Pray God he knows nothing of me, she thought frantically. And oh, heavens! Why did I tell him my name? I should have changed it. Oh, Lord! She held out her hand automatically, then, remembering, she pulled it back awkwardly. Servants did not shake hands. "I am the housekeeper here."
“Indeed?'' he said on a long note of surprise. She glanced up at him from under the frill. Heavy-lidded grey eyes regarded her shrewdly. "You surprise me, ma'am," he said, and stunned Kate by reaching for her hand and bowing over it politely, carrying it lightly to his lips.
She flushed and pulled her hand away. "I. . .I will see if Mr Carstairs is available." Oh, Lord, what did he mean by kissing her hand? Was he mocking her? Did it mean he knew of her? He certainly thought her no servant. Did he think her Jack's mistress?
"Mr Carstairs is indeed available," came a deep voice from the doorway. Jack stood there and, by the glint in his vivid blue eyes, Kate knew he had seen the Colonel kiss her hand. She turned to leave. Jack's hand restrained her.
"Don't leave us yet, Miss Farleigh," he said, frowning at her cap. "I'd like you to meet my guests, all of whom have recently returned from battling Boney's forces on the Peninsula."
Oh, Lord, Kate thought—all of them? Not just the Colonel?
He turned her to face them. Kate was pale and rigid.
Jack spoke with cold formality. “This is Sir Toby Fenwick and Mr Andrew Lennox, both late of the 14th, the Duchess of York's Own Light Dragoons, and I gather you've just met Colonel Francis Masterton who has, I collect, recently sold out of the 95th Rifles."
The two younger gentlemen stared at him, surprised.
"Dash it, Jack," said chubby Sir Toby, "what's all the formality? Formal introductions to servants now, eh?" He laughed and raised his glass to his lips. “Introduce me to that other little blonde—"
Kate, mortified, tried to pull away from Jack's hold.
Jack ignored her and spoke with paralysing chill. "Miss Katherine Farleigh is the ward of my maternal grandmother, Lady Cahill. Miss Farleigh and her companion, Mrs Betts, called here on their way to join my grandmother in London, but they took pity on a poor bachelor and kindly offered to assist me to get this house in order. You will have no idea of the enormous debt of gratitude I owe to this lady and her companion."
One of Colonel Masterton's mobi
le brows was raised slightly, but he did not otherwise react. The other two came sheepishly forward under Jack's flinty gaze and held out their hands.
"Sorry, ma'am," said lanky Andrew Lennox. "Took you for one of the servants."
"Er. . .yes, dam—dashed sorry," mumbled Sir Toby. "Er. . .you'll have to excuse. . .er. . .taken rather too much. . . er. . . Delighted to meet you, ma'am." Pink with embarrassment, he took Kate's hand in a damp grip and shook it vigorously.
Kate's fear inflamed her temper. Jack had no right to embarrass her or his guests with this charade, introducing his housekeeper as his grandmother's ward. It was a deliberate ploy to force her into the role she had told him a dozen times she wanted none of. And he'd discomfited his guests on purpose, to declare her off limits.
But he was unwittingly playing with fire. If indeed any of them recognised her later, they would be furious if they thought they had been tricked into apologising to a disgraced woman. And they would blame Jack. They would not know of his ignorance—she must and would repudiate his introduction and clarify her position.
"There is no need to apologise, sir," she said firmly, "for
Mr Carstairs exaggerates. I am, in fact, the housekeeper, placed here by Lady Cahill, whose ward I am not. She was godmother to my late mother, and that is the full extent of the connection."
"Dammit, woman, don't contradict me. You are my guest!" Jack roared, furious to hear her demean herself like that.
Mr Lennox and Sir Toby recoiled at his tone. They were well acquainted with his temper. Colonel Masterton raised an eyebrow yet again.
"I say, steady on, old chap," began Mr Lennox, laying a tentative hand on Jack's arm.
Jack ignored him. He shook Kate's arm and glared at her cap. "You are not a servant here, dammit! You are my guest!"
His friends cast wary looks at Kate, as if expecting her to burst into tears at any moment. But Kate was made of stronger stuff. She shook herself free of his hold with an infuriated squeak, and smoothed down her skirt.
"You just bellowed and swore at me, Mr Carstairs," she said dulcetly. "No gentleman would bellow or swear at a guest—particularly in front of other guests. Such behaviour is invariably reserved for mere servants, who are in no position to answer back." She sailed victoriously out of the room, leaving a stunned and breathless audience behind her.
"In no position to answer back!" snorted Jack. "The little vixen always has the last word." He turned to face his friends.
Colonel Masterton was convulsed with silent mirth. Mr Lennox was gazing at the closed door, his eyes filled with admiration, and Sir Toby Fenwick stood, his mouth hanging open in stupefaction. He turned to Lennox. "See what I saw, Lennox, old chap?''
Lennox grinned. "I saw a female, no bigger than your thumb, give Mad Jack Carstairs the neatest set-down he's had in years."
Sir Toby nodded vigorously. "That's what I saw too. Never thought I'd see the day. What an amazin' girl! And the chit's the housekeeper, you say?"
"No, you fool, I told you—oh, to hell with it!" snapped Jack, annoyed. "What the devil are you doing here in the first place, Tubby?''
Sir Toby looked self-conscious. "Oh, well. . .heard a rumour. . . you'd stuck your spoon in the wall, or close to."
"So you decided to come up and see whether I was dead or not."
The others looked vaguely uncomfortable.
"I'm glad you did," said Jack, surprising himself as he realised that, for the first time in months, the prospect of visitors did not fill him with repugnance. "Of course," he added, "I must warn you, the standard of hospitality here isn't what you've previously enjoyed in my company. Conditions here at Sevenoakes are quite spartan."
He smiled wryly and looked them up and down. “In fact, I'm not certain that three such prodigiously elegant sprigs of fashion will be able to bear the lack of amenities at this establishment."
This brought about a spate of heated denial and much good-natured chaffing.
"Hang it all, man, we've bivouacked with the best of them, in beastly little holes all over the Peninsula, and if you're saying I can't take it any more, then you can dashed well eat your words!" asserted Sir Toby. He peered boskily around the room, taking in the glowing furniture, the roaring fire, the soft, faded colours.
"And besides, this ain't such a bad place as we were led to believe. In fact, dammit, it looks positively cosy. Much more comfortable than that damned cold barracks of a place my ancestors saw fit to build in the dim dark past." He sank into a chair with a sigh of satisfaction and took a deep draft of his glass.
Kate retired to the kitchen, shaking. She had not intended to draw attention to herself like that. Deny her status as his grandmother's ward—yes. But be drawn into what could only be called a spat with Jack! And in front of his friends! Oh, her wretched, wretched temper! Servants were, by and large, invisible to gentlemen like Jack's friends. That and her cap were her only defences against discovery. But now she'd let her temper ruin everything. No true servant would answer her master back so impudently. Far from being invisible, she'd made herself a source of interest to them. Oh, what a careless fool she was!
All her earlier decisions about seeking employment with folk not of the gentry came back to her in a mocking I-told-you-so. She would never have behaved in such a way had she taken a position with people who were not of her milieu. She would never have let down her guard enough.
She had let herself become complacent, comfortable, secure.
She'd stopped fearing discovery with every stranger—because she met no strangers. The effects of Jack's self-imposed isolation and the unusually severe winter had ensured that. They had existed, in the months she'd been here, as if in a cocoon, or on an island. And in that cocoon Kate had felt safe.
But now Jack had regained his strength, the spring thaw was coming and the protective isolation had been ripped away. The man whom she could hear now, laughing with his friends, bore little resemblance to the embittered recluse she'd encountered when she'd first arrived at Sevenoakes. The world could come to Jack Carstairs now and he would welcome it. She, however, was exposed to strangers' eyes and dependent on the vagaries of their memories. . .
There was no use worrying—she should concentrate on preparing dinner out of what she had available. She sent Carlos to kill two more chickens, and prepared a pie from the remains of yesterday's roast beef. It would be a plain but substantial meal. And Carlos would serve it.
After dinner the gentlemen sat over their port.
Kate sat in the adjoining room, her chair pushed as near as was decent to the connecting door. Some sewing lay in her lap, but her fingers weren't moving. She was eavesdropping. She had been unable to endure the strain any longer— she had to know whether any of the men had recognised her. From where she was sitting she could hear every word in the next room.
"Pos'tively cosy li'l place you have here, Jack," said Sir Toby. “Good dinner, good wine, roaring fire, good companions—all a man could want, right here. And right smack bang in the middle of some of the best damned hunting country in the world! You're a lucky man, Jack Carstairs."
At his words an awkward hush fell over the room.
"Oh, God, Jack, I'm a clumsy oaf! I'm sorry. I didn't mean—''
"Just shut up, Tubby!" hissed Andrew Lennox. "You've said quite enough."
"I didn't mean. . ." Sir Toby trailed off miserably. There was a short silence.
"There's no need to treat me with kid gloves, you know," said Jack. "In fact, you don't need to feel sorry for me at all."
Colonel Masterton leaned forward into the light and stared hard at his friend. "So. . ." he said on a long note of discovery.
Jack grinned."You always were as sharp as a razor, Francis." He found his hand seized and wrung in a powerful grip. The other two stared in bewilderment.
"What the devil are you two talking about?" said Andrew Lennox. "I can only think of one thing. . ." He stared hard at Jack, read the truth in his eyes, then h
e too leapt forward and seized Jack's hand, pumping it fervently.
"Will somebody please tell me what's going on?" complained Sir Toby. "Why is everybody shaking Jack's hand and what are you all being so damned mysterious about? Found an heiress, Jack, have you?''
The others laughed.
"Well, I'd planned to keep it as a surprise for tomorrow, Tubby, but I can ride again. Of course I'm not quite up to hunting yet, but I will be soon."
Sir Toby stared, dumbfounded, for a moment, then leapt from his chair, spilling his drink, and seized Jack's hand, shaking it until Jack thought it would drop off.
'"S marvellous, old man, simply marvellous!" he kept repeating. He glared round at his two friends still seated in their respective chairs. "Don't you un'erstand, you two idiots? Jack can ride! Ain't you going to congratulate him?"
The others roared with laughter. When the tumult had died down and a fresh round of drinks had been poured, Francis said to Jack, "I don't understand. The surgeons swore you'd never ride again, didn't they?"
"They did. Miss Farleigh disagreed."
"Miss Farleigh?" said Mr Lennox.
In the next room, Kate froze. Oh, no, no, she prayed silently. Do not tell them; please do not.
“Yes, her brother had been cured of a similar sort of injury by some Eastern doctor," continued Jack. "She told me her brother regained almost full strength. . . unfortunately."
"What?"
Jack explained. "Miss Farleigh lost her father and both her brothers in the war. Her brothers were in the 83rd, I believe. She is now utterly alone in the world, except for my grandmother, who has become her guardian."
Kate sagged in her seat. The 83rd. She could not have been more clearly identified. If any of them had heard anything of her, their memories would be well and truly jogged now.
