Amanda Scott

by Madcap Marchioness

  Before she met Benstead, however, or the housekeeper, Mrs. Motley, she was presented to Lady Adelaide Corbett, a majestic, gray-haired dame of sixty, who was nearly as stately in manner as the butler, and to Lady Adelaide’s sister, the Lady Henrietta Blackburn. This lady—smaller, much thinner, and fifteen years younger than Lady Adelaide—had dancing blue eyes and soft brown hair lightly sprinkled with gray. Her unfashionably full skirts arustle, she bubbled up to greet them, smiling and chattering like a child.

  “Oh, Joshua, how pretty she is! Lady Chalford, you simply must not stand upon ceremony with us, for we are family, don’t you know, and have lived here all our lives, except for my sister’s living in Yorkshire when Corbett was alive, of course, and I just expect we are going to get on famously. Will we not, Adelaide?” The last was added with a quick look over her shoulder at the woman standing so erectly behind her.

  “Indeed,” was the gracious reply.

  “Oh, I just know we shall,” Lady Henrietta rattled on, “and you will be the greatest help to us, my dear, for there is so much to be done and so little time and so few hands to do it. Do you know, Joshua,” she added, turning quickly to confront her nephew, “that absolutely nothing has been done about storage for all the grain and potatoes, let alone for the meat? Goodness knows the free traders can always find storage spaces. You must look into the matter at once.”

  Adriana pricked up her ears at the casual mention of free traders, but Chalford said only, “Surely I may first step inside, Aunt Hetta. It is beginning to rain.”

  A flash of lightning lit the quadrangle as though to underscore his statement, and Adriana braced herself, but the thunder did not come immediately, and when it did, it came in muted, distant rolls.

  Chalford smiled down at her. “We’d best get you inside, sweetheart, before you get soaked.”

  They hurried up the steps, across the deep porch, and into the entry hall. This chamber, with its black-and-white-checkered floor and arras-draped walls, was modest compared to what Adriana had expected, its only magnificence provided by the two central columns that appeared to hold up the high, painted ceiling.

  “Come in here,” Chalford said, taking her elbow and guiding her through a pair of tall, heavily carved doors in the center of the right-hand wall. “I don’t know that it will be a great deal warmer, but there will be a fire.”

  Adriana looked about her wide-eyed, for they had entered the great hall, a huge room with a fan-vaulted ceiling rising two stories above them. There were two fireplaces, set at right angles to each other, one in the north wall, opposite the entrance, and the other in the center of the west wall. Both were large enough for her to stand upright in, had she wished to do so, and both contained huge, roaring fires; however, she quickly discovered that it was necessary to move right into the northwest corner before the heat from either could be felt. Even then she shivered, rubbing her arms through her woolen sleeves.

  “Benstead, fetch her ladyship a pot of hot tea,” Lady Adelaide ordered, settling her wide skirts as she took her place in a high-backed chair near the north fire.

  “Indeed, we should all be grateful for some refreshment. Won’t you sit on that green brocade sofa, Lady Chalford?” she added with graceful hauteur. “It is quite the most comfortable seat of the lot.”

  “Please, call me Adriana, ma’am,” Adriana said, striving to sound as sure of herself as Lady Adelaide did and convinced that she had failed miserably. Remembering suddenly that Chalford had expected her to wrest the reins of management from this woman, she felt goose bumps dancing upon her arms.

  Lady Adelaide’s only response was a regal nod, but Lady Henrietta exclaimed, “How delightful your name is, my dear. The Comedy of Errors is quite my favorite of Mr. Shakespeare’s plays. So humorous, is it not? But now, Joshua, you simply must attend to me. We shall soon have a crisis if you do not. Adelaide says the matter is not urgent, but pray tell me, if you will, just what we are to do with all that food if we have no proper place in which to store it when the time comes to do so?”

  “Let the man sit down, Hetta,” commanded Lady Adelaide sternly, signing to a footman to move the fire screen so that it shielded her somewhat from the heat of the leaping flames. Once she was satisfied as to its placement, she looked at Adriana and said, “I am persuaded you must be wondering what all the fuss is about. My sister is deeply concerned lest that Bonaparte fellow send his little ships to land upon our beaches. He won’t, of course,” she added, as though to do such a thing would be a social solecism. “The French never have done so, and I daresay they never will. A disorganized people, the lot of them.”

  “Well, I must say,” protested Lady Hetta. “And what about the Conqueror, if one might ask?”

  “I daresay one need not consider a deed that took place over seven hundred years ago,” replied Lady Adelaide placidly. “Now, pray, do not interrupt again, Hetta. Such a habit is unbecoming. As I was explaining, Adriana, there are some who believe that if the French do land here, the way to confound them is to remove all the foodstuffs from their path. The first plan was to burn everything, but of course few people would tolerate such foolish waste, so now the plan is to harvest every seed and grain stalk, kill every sheep and cow, and to store the food in secret places. Only, of course, no one thought about where those secret places might be. So they are at a standstill, which, of course, was to be expected,” she added with a basilisk eye upon her sister.

  “You may scoff, Adelaide,” said Lady Henrietta bravely, “but you cannot deny that French ships have been seen nearly every day off their coast. Dozens of them,” she added dramatically.

  “Not off our coast, however,” retorted Lady Adelaide, “and they certainly dare not land here. Where is your home, Adriana?”

  This diversionary tactic proved successful, and both ladies listened with interest as Adriana told them about Wryde and the Wiltshire countryside in which it lay. She did not mention such crass topics as gaming debts or incapacity due to port, of course, and the conversation went smoothly. Lady Adelaide acknowledged previous awareness of Lord Wryde’s title, but admitted that she did not know the Barrington family. “That you come from Wiltshire accounts for it,” she said grandly. “From some odd cause or other, I know very few persons in Wiltshire.”

  They finished their tea, and Lady Adelaide offered to show Adriana to her rooms, but Chalford shook his head, saying, “I reserve that privilege unto myself, ma’am, if you please.”

  He took Adriana’s hand as she arose from the little sofa, and led her across the entry hall, through the lavender-and-white dining room with its long, highly polished table, and into the principal stair hall. At the top of the wide, winding stairs he turned right, into a comfortably appointed drawing room, its tall, arched, leaded windows facing east to the Channel.

  “This is the marchioness’s sitting room,” he said as Adriana hurried to look out the nearest window. “Your bedchamber is through that door yonder, and your dressing room, too. There is no door to the bedchamber from the long gallery, but there is one to the dressing room, so you have access to the rest of this floor without always having to pass through the stair hall.”

  She had just realized that, thanks to the curve of the hill atop which the castle sat, she could now see over the enclosure walls. Jagged flashes of lightning lit the dark-gray sky above the Channel, and she could see that the tide was running high, that whitecaps glistened on the waves. Still, she heard every word Chalford said to her, and when he was silent, she turned.

  “Where is your bedchamber, sir?”

  He smiled. “Across the stair hall, the door opposite this one. Would you like to see it?”

  She nodded, then easily interpreting the gleam that leapt to his eyes, she repressed her own stirring desire and added firmly, “I would also like to see the rest of this place, if you please.”

  His sigh was melancholy. “Very well, but you won’t see it all today, I’m afraid. There are over a hundred rooms, including chambers and hal
ls that are little more than ancient ruins, particularly those nearest the keep.”

  “Is the keep habitable?”

  “A portion of the lower section could be, I suppose, but for the most part, it’s inhabited by owls. My sister suggested turning the whole place into quarters for guests, but we couldn’t think of what to do with Sir Francis and his friends.”

  “Sir Francis?”

  “Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lady Jersey, Lord North, Norfolk, and other such notables live there—in fact, the owls. My grandfather and grandmother named the first of them after famous and infamous Englishmen, and the tradition has continued. The latest is his highness the Prince of Wales.”

  She chuckled. “I want to see them one day.”

  “Of course, but for now, I suggest you satisfy yourself by exploring the hall block. Most of the rooms we use are here and on the ground floor. There is a central block and two flanking wings. My aunts’ chambers are on this floor in the south wing, above the state apartments. My bedchamber is in the northeast tower, and the library is in the north wing on this floor with an outside stairway. Once you get those landmarks firmly fixed in your memory, you will have no difficulty finding your way about.”

  “Where are the kitchens and the housekeeper’s rooms?”

  “Below my bedchamber and the library. Actually, the kitchen proper is in the basement, but there is an upper chamber, which includes the butler’s pantry just north of the dining room, by the stair hall.” He laughed at her look of bewilderment. “Never mind, you’ll learn. For now, let us look at the long gallery.”

  They passed out of the drawing room, back into the stair hall, and turned left, emerging through a pair of carved doors upon a gallery fully two hundred feet long, its length punctuated on the west side by a series of tall, narrow windows that overlooked the quadrangle. Adriana realized then that the long gallery was directly above the colonnade. The east wall was hung with portraits of the Blackburn and de Tonnere families dating, Chalford told her, to the thirteenth century. He pointed out portraits of his parents, but when she asked him to tell her about them, he said only that, since they had both died when he was young, he scarcely remembered them.

  When their tour was done, Adriana was more confused than ever. Out of a wealth of information, she remembered little more than that the southeast-tower room off the long gallery, which had served the ladies of the family as a morning room for many years, had recently been turned into a breakfast parlor. Chalford had laughingly explained to her that, although the change meant the servants, at great inconvenience to themselves, had to carry the breakfast dishes the full length of the hall block and up the second stair, the change provided a more convenient location for the aunts to break their fast.

  “And that, I need not tell you, is what counts with Aunt Adelaide,” he added, his eyes atwinkle.

  “But you are master here, are you not?”

  “I am.” He smiled at her. “Do you think I allow my aunt to rule to roast?”

  She was sure, having seen Aunt Adelaide, that he must, but she knew it would be impolite to say so. Instead, she said, “If the inconvenience to the servants is so great, then—”

  “The castle is not run for the convenience of the servants,” he retorted lightly. “If the food were to come cold to the table, certainly other arrangements would be necessary, but there are warming dishes on the sideboard, and one cannot deny that the southeast room is more pleasant in the morning than the dining room. Before, the dining room must have seemed a day’s march on an empty stomach for the aunts. And,” he added with another chuckle, “Aunt Adelaide complained that the scenes carved in the plaster there discouraged her matutinal appetite.”

  Adriana was able to examine the dining room and judge these scenes for herself at the supper table. The lavender walls set off the white plasterwork carvings nicely, displaying a veritable paean to Bacchus. The overmantel depicted a sacrifice to the god with fat garlands of vines tumbling over the sides of a basket supported by two snarling panthers. The same vines decorated the fireplace surround as well as the many empty rococo frames carved into the walls at points equally spaced about the room.

  “I see you are looking at the frames, Adriana,” said Lady Adelaide when she had been served from a platter of sliced beef. “I had the pictures removed after my brother’s death.”

  “Removed, ma’am?”

  “My father, the ninth marquess, had a penchant for hunting scenes and still lifes of dead game. Not suitable for a dining room, I believe. The hunting horns, foxes’ masks, and bows and arrows entwined with the vine leaves in the frames, though engagingly symmetrical, do not please me either, but Chalford has a liking for them, as he does for that dreadful eagle hovering over us. Thus, they remain. I do not choose to look upon them.”

  Unable to help herself, Adriana looked up to see that at the center of the ceiling there was indeed a great plaster eagle, its wings outspread, its long, sharp, gilded talons curling around the chain that suspended the giant chandelier above the table. Light from the many candles made the eagle’s eyes glitter and gave its golden beak a threatening prominence. She looked away, only to encounter her husband’s gaze instead. Chalford’s eyes were lit with amusement.

  “Tell us more about your family, Adriana dear,” Lady Henrietta said then. “You mentioned earlier that you have a brother and a sister—just as Chalford does—but you did not tell us very much about them. Are they both married?”

  Adriana smiled at her and willingly described her siblings, Miranda in warm tones and Alston as diplomatically as she could, adding, “Since my father is in poor health and dislikes going into company, I was married from my brother’s house. My sister and my best friend, Sarah, Lady Clifford, stood up with me.”

  The discussion passed to the wedding guests, and Adriana discovered that the Lady Henrietta had a passion for gossip, particularly gossip having to do with members of the beau monde. She wanted to hear about Emily Lamb’s recent marriage to the Earl Cowper and was willing to discuss the royal family at length.

  “With whom did you pass the night, Adriana?” asked Lady Adelaide suddenly in the midst of an exchange of information regarding the latest reports of the king’s health.

  “We stayed in Maidstone,” Chalford put in quickly, thus sparing Adriana’s blushes. Then, without taking so much as a breath, he turned to Lady Henrietta and asked her to tell him more about her recent activities on behalf of the neighborhood. “For I am persuaded you have done a great deal more than organize the potential devastation of the countryside,” he said.

  “Indeed, yes,” she assured him. “Everyone is making inventories of their possessions, there are plans to flood the marsh if necessary, and men have boomed the entrance to Thunderhill Bay. If you bring the Sea Dragon into the harbor, you must have one of the lads show you how you must go, though your captain might already know, I suppose.”

  “Goodness,” Adriana said, “how does one boom a harbor?”

  “Logs are chained across most of the entrance,” Chalford explained with a grin. “They float beneath the surface and wreak havoc with ships trying to make landfall, particularly at night.”

  “An unnecessary obstruction to shipping,” pronounced Lady Adelaide, signing for the servants to clear the first course.

  Adriana looked around, wondering who would see the signal, for there was no servant in the room. Then she noticed an arched sideboard on the north wall that had small jib doors on each side leading to the butler’s pantry. Mirrored panels on the reveals of the arch allowed the butler and footmen to survey the table even though they were outside the room, out of hearing. The niche also gave added prominence to the display of gold and silver plate massed on the sideboard in the French manner, flanking a formal pyramid of apricots, peaches, and grapes.

  Her attention was drawn back almost immediately to her companions, particularly to Lady Henrietta, who was once again defending her project to her sister. “Really, Adelaide, you must not u
nderestimate the danger. You have said yourself, any number of times, that the French are not to be trusted. We might all be murdered in our beds if proper precautions are not taken.”

  Although Chalford shot Adriana a look that sorely tried her equanimity, reminding her as it did of his prediction earlier in the day, Lady Adelaide did not so far forget her dignity as to enter into argument upon the subject. Her opinion was clear nonetheless, and Adriana had no difficulty under these circumstances in believing that Lady Henrietta exaggerated the danger. Thus it was that when she was awakened late that very same night by Lady Henrietta’s shrieks that the French had landed at last, she sat bolt upright in Chalford’s bed, stiff with terror.

  4

  THE BEDCHAMBER DOOR HAD been flung wide, and Lady Henrietta stood upon the threshold, her thin figure outlined by light from the stair-hall window behind her. The sound of her sobbing breaths carried easily to the bed, and the echo of her shrieks seemed to linger in the air.

  Chalford’s arm was around Adriana now, and her own breathing, in consequence, was calmer. At the sound of his deep voice, she felt calmer still. “What exactly leads you to believe the French have landed, Aunt Hetta?” he asked.

  “I’ve seen them, that’s what,” she gasped. She was holding herself upright by clinging to the door frame.

  Adriana slipped quickly from the shelter of Chalford’s arm and, heedless despite her thin nightdress of the damp chill in the air, hurried to Lady Hetta’s side, saying anxiously, “Come, ma’am, sit down. So much excitement cannot be good for you.”

  “We’ve no time to rest, child. The castle must be aroused. The men must take up arms.”

  Chalford was also up now, shouting for his manservant as he slipped into a pair of breeches and moved to light a candle from the banked embers in the fireplace. “Where did you see these Frenchmen?” he asked as he got to his feet again.

  “On the beach below my window, of course. Do you think it wise to show a light, Joshua?”