Once More, Miranda

by Jennifer Wilde

  I felt a curious serenity, being here with my brother. It seemed so right, so natural for us to be together, intimate already, as though all the years separating us had never been, and I could tell that Douglas felt the same way. The bond between us had been recognized immediately, immediately accepted by both of us. He turned to me now, his handsome face serious, his lovely eyes grave as he looked at me.

  “You’ve been cheated of everything, Miranda,” he told me. “I—I intend to make it up to you. I don’t know just how, but—I’ll do it. I’m going to take care of you from now on.”

  “I’ve always managed to take care of myself,” I said.

  “Maybe so, but you’ve got me now.”

  His voice was filled with resolution, his expression grim. I was touched, and I was secretly amused; too. I had told Douglas about my writing, but I hadn’t told him the extent of my success. This handsome young man who didn’t know where his next meal was coming from had no idea that his new-found sister was a very wealthy woman with the prospects of being even wealthier when the new book came out. I smiled to myself. Douglas took my hand and pulled me to my feet, blond waves flopping over his borw.

  “We’d better start back. Ned will have returned from the village—and not empty-handed, if I know Ned. He’ll prepare our meal. You’re bound to be hungry.”

  “A little,” I admitted.

  “There’ll probably be stew and coarse brown bread, maybe even a bottle of cheap wine.”

  “It sounds delicious.”

  “You’re not going back to London,” he told me as we started back toward the house. “I’m not going to let you. You belong here, with me. I’ll find some kind of work. I—I’ll sell the factory if I have to, but I’m going to take care of you.”

  “Douglas, there’s something I—”

  “No arguments,” he said sternly. “I’ve just made your decision for you. That’s what older brothers are for. We’re together now, Miranda. Things have been rough for both of us and they’re likely to be rougher still, but we’ll see them through.”

  I didn’t argue. It would have been futile. My brother intended for me to stay, and stay I would. Both of us were silent as we strolled slowly back over those bleak, curiously beautiful moors, moving toward the distant house. Douglas guided me around a gigantic boulder, past a tarry patch of bog, deeply immersed in his own thoughts. I felt a wonderful sense of kinship, and I felt a sense of purpose, too. A plan was beginning to take shape in my mind. I would write Bancroft first thing tomorrow morning.

  34

  Bancroft flatly refused to let me invest all my money in the pottery works. He journeyed down to Cornwall as soon as he received my letter and toured the factory and had several long conferences with Douglas and a blazing argument with me. I adamantly informed him that it was my own bloody money and I could do as I bloody well pleased with it, and Bancroft stoutly declared that he had worked his arse off making me a rich woman and he wasn’t about to let me make a pauper of myself in one fell swoop. Douglas sat on the sidelines, an amused smile on his lips, for he and Bancroft had already reached a decision as to how the business should be handled. The factory was, indeed, a potential money maker, particularly if my father’s plans were used for renovations, his proposals adopted and Douglas’ designs used, along with the new techniques he had learned at Vincennes, but such an undertaking would not only take every penny I had but would also deplete all the profits I stood to make from Betty’s Girls.

  “I don’t care! It’s my money. I’m going to use it.”

  “Over my dead body!”

  “Goddamn you, Dick Bancroft, that can be arranged! If I had a blunderbuss in my hand right now, I’d blow your bloody head off!”

  “Charming sister you have,” Bancroft said to Douglas.

  “I’m beginning to find that out.”

  “You said yourself the factory could be the best in England, could make a fortune for its investors! If that’s the case, I don’t see why—”

  “Investors. Plural. That’s the key word. If you’d stop shrieking like a fishwife and let me get a word in, I’d explain things to you. Your brother and I have already worked out a plan. Your money will be used to cover approximately one half the costs, and you and Douglas here will own fifty-one percent of the business. The rest of the money will be provided by individual investors, each of whom will buy so many of the remaining shares.”

  “You know I don’t understand all—all these technical details, Bancroft. We own the factory, and now you say we’re supposed to—”

  “Do you think we could gag her?” Bancroft asked.

  “Might not be a bad idea,” Douglas replied.

  “Sod both of you!”

  “I intend to buy ten percent of the remaining forty-nine shares myself,” Dick continued, ignoring my condemnation. “Actually, there’ll be more than a hundred shares—there’ll be thousands, each share costing so much—but I’m trying to keep my explanation simple so as not to confuse you. You and Douglas will have controlling interest, will—”

  “Details!”

  “Everything has been worked out. Your brother, incidentally, is a very astute businessman—that’s one of the reasons I’m willing to invest some of my own money. In short, my dear muddle-head, the factory will be reopened as planned, but only half your money will be used. The rest will be safe and secure.”

  “Do you think I might possibly have a few pounds to have this house done over and refurnished?”

  “I suppose that could be arranged.”

  “You’re bloody generous, Dick Bancroft!”

  “I intend to keep a very close watch over every single expenditure, mind you.”

  I glared at him and Bancroft grinned and Douglas did, too, and I stamped out of the room. Bancroft returned to London two days later, and the following weeks were sheer chaos as work got underway at the factory and the house was invaded by crews of cleaning people and workmen, the majority of them from the village. The rooms were cleaned, aired, the floors and woodwork polished by a team of chattering village women who couldn’t believe their good luck, and walls were painted or recovered by their husbands and sons. The roof was repaired and the broken windows replaced, ceilings replastered. The dim, decrepit old house took on a bright new sparkle inside and out, for the gardens were cleaned out as well, lawns trimmed, flower beds replanted, new trellises installed.

  Sunlight filled the dark rooms. It wasn’t easy to turn Mowrey House into a cheery place, but I made a valiant effort, using hundreds of gallons of white paint, selecting pale lemon and linen white wall coverings. Salesmen from London trooped down with samples and catalogs, and I selected draperies and rugs and ordered new furniture, most of the latter from the workshop of Thomas Chippendale, whose furniture was every bit as elegant as Mrs. Wooden had told me it was. Bancroft did indeed keep an eye on my expenditures, making occasional rude noises via the mail, but the rapidly depleting coffers were just as rapidly refilled when, two months after my arrival in Cornwall, Thomas Sheppard & Company brought out Betty’s Girls.

  While I was engaged with the house and hiring a staff of servants from the village, Douglas and a team of experts he had brought in were busily renovating the factory and installing all the new equipment. When the work was well under way and it was possible for him to leave, Douglas made a hurried trip to France where, with his charm, his promises and his pockets full of money, he persuaded three of the major craftsmen at Vincennes to defect to Cornwall, bringing them back with an air of jaunty triumph. This treacherous act was said to have put La Pompadour to bed for days with an excruciating migraine.

  Work was almost finished on the house and I had just hired a full staff of servants when, one afternoon, I had an unexpected visitor. Burly delivery men were unloading a lorry of furniture just arrived from London, bringing the elegant pieces into the hall, and I was wearing an old blue cotton dress that was the worse for wear, for I had been working in it all day. My hair was damp and atumble, a mess, a
nd my face was probably streaked. I was telling the delivery men where to place the furniture, footmen, maids and my new houskeeper bustled about and I was totally unprepared to receive a guest. Miss Morrison knocked on the open door. In the confusion no one heard her. Directing the men to carry the gorgeous new desk into my sitting room in back, telling one of the footmen to accompany them, I sighed and looked up and saw her standing there in the doorway, cool and poised and lovely indeed in a pink and gray striped frock.

  “I’m afraid I’ve come at a bad time,” she said. “I should have driven on when I saw the lorry in front.”

  “I—how do you do?” I stammered. “You must forgive me. I—things have been rather frantic today and—”

  “I understand perfectly,” she replied. Her voice was cool and lovely too, undeniably patrician. “I’ll call again at a more convenient time.”

  “You—”

  “I’m Linda Morrison. My family lives in the next county. I’ve known your brother since we were children.”

  “Don’t—don’t leave, Miss Morrison. You must at least let me give you a cup of tea after you’ve come all this way.”

  “It isn’t that far, Lady Mowrey, and I quite enjoy gadding about the countryside in my cart. There’s not all that much to do.”

  The delivery men came back up the hall, sweaty from their exertions. Only one piece of furniture remained to be brought in. I told them to take it into the library, told one of the maids to see that they had something to drink before they left and asked the housekeeper to have tea brought into the drawing room for Miss Morrison and me.

  “I really mustn’t intrude,” Miss Morrison protested. “You’re busy, and I can easily come back another time.”

  “No, no—to tell the truth I’ll welcome a cup of tea myself. Please do stay and visit for a while.”

  She hesitated, undecided, then nodded and followed me into the drawing room. I had never encountered a young woman so beautifully composed. She was extremely reserved, almost stiff, yet I could sense an innate friendliness behind that ultra well-bred facade. Her long raven hair was neatly brushed, her clear blue eyes full of intelligence. Tall and slender, with cool, lovely features, she wasn’t quite as young as I had first judged her to be. The bloom of early youth had given way to an unmistakable maturity.

  “You’ve done an incredible job with this old house,” she remarked, glancing about the newly refurbished room.

  “It hasn’t been easy.”

  “I understand the place was practically a ruin. I haven’t been inside Mowrey House for years. Your uncle was still alive then. My mother and I came to call on him.”

  “You know my brother well?” I inquired.

  “Not well. To be frank, I haven’t seen him in over ten years. He was in France, and by the time he returned I was already in Brussels, teaching English in a girls’ school there. Your brother and I knew each other casually when we were children.”

  “Please sit down, Miss Morrison.”

  Linda Morrison sat down on the sofa and folded her hands in her lap. She sat very straight, proper and demure, shoulders squared, back stiff. I sat on a chair facing her, slightly ill at ease and trying not to show it.

  “To be even franker,” she continued, “I used my tenuous acquaintanceship with your brother as a pretext to call. I’m afraid my motives were not entirely admirable. I was eager to meet the notorious Miranda James.”

  “I—I see.”

  “You’re quite the talk of the countryside, Lady Mowrey. Everyone knows the whole story by now—you can’t keep anything secret in these parts, and a few of us get the London papers, albeit late. They made a great to-do about your finding your brother after all these years.”

  Damn Thomas Sheppard, I thought, and not for the first time. He had leaked the story to the gentlemen of Fleet Street just a day or so before Betty’s Girls came out, and they had indeed made a great to-do of it, dubbing me “Lady Miranda” and exploiting it for all it was worth. A few of the more prosperous papers had sent journalists all the way to Cornwall to interview me, and I had been forced to treat them politely, answering their questions begrudgingly. I could understand Sheppard’s motives—Betty’s Girls was selling like wildfire as a result, seven printings already and the book just out a month and a half—but I felt a few things should be private.

  “So everyone knows who I am?” I said. “I suppose all the local gentry are scandalized.”

  “They’re a rather narrow-minded group, Lady Mowrey, good-natured as a whole but bigoted to the core. They’re consumed with curiosity about you, of course, but they wouldn’t dream of calling on you. They’re far too respectable to call on a woman who has openly lived with a man without the benefit of marriage, who once picked pockets for a living.”

  “And you, Miss Morrison? Why did you call?”

  My voice was much crisper than I had intended. Linda Morrison looked at me, and the faintest suggestion of a smile played on her lips. One of the maids came in with the tea tray then, setting it down on the table in front of the sofa, and my guest waited until the girl had left the room before she replied to my question.

  “Unlike most of my gossiping neighbors, I’ve actually read your novel, and I admired it very much. I thought it was a brave and beautiful book. I don’t happen to share the prejudices of my neighbors, Lady Mowrey.”

  I got up to pour the tea. Miss Morrison took hers with a polite nod of thanks. I sat down on the sofa beside her, and she turned slightly so that we were facing. That long raven hair so neatly brushed was soft and gleamed a rich blue-black, and the patrician features were beautifully molded, the cheekbones high, the nose straight, the mouth a soft, pale pink. The clear blue eyes looked at me frankly, totally without guile.

  “I’ve read your stories, too,” she said. “I think you’re a remarkable woman, Lady Mowrey. To have risen from your environment, to have achieved all that you’ve achieved, is almost incredible, particularly for a woman. We aren’t supposed to achieve. It makes men terribly uneasy.”

  “It does, indeed,” I replied.

  “I was as curious about you as everyone else, of course, but I wanted to call on you and personally thank you for writing such moving and compassionate works.”

  “I—I don’t know what to say.”

  “I also wanted to welcome you to Cornwall.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Miss Morrison.”

  “If you should ever care to get away from Mowrey House for a few hours, my father and I would be delighted to have you call on us. Morrison Place is not very grand, I’m afraid, but we have lovely gardens.”

  Her voice was cool, but I could tell that the invitation was sincere. I sensed that it had taken considerable courage for her to come here this afternoon. She might not share the prejudices of her neighbors, but Linda Morrison was clearly a very respectable young woman, and the local gentry were going to be appalled to learn that she had called on me. Seeing that self-assured demeanor, looking into those intelligent blue eyes, I doubted she would let that bother her too much. Though bound by the conventions of her class, Miss Morrison had something of the rebel about her.

  I offered her more tea, and she hesitated a moment before accepting. I suddenly realized that she had been ill at ease herself and uncertain of her welcome.

  “Please stay a while longer,” I said kindly. “You’re my first visitor, and I shall feel dreadful if you rush off too soon.”

  She looked at me as though to determine my sincerity. I smiled. Linda Morrison returned the smile with one of her own, and I glimpsed the charming young woman who hid behind that rather too prim facade. We had more tea, and I began to ask her questions about herself, hoping to draw her out. She relaxed a bit then, and I began to discover the warmth and humor that accompanied that keen intelligence.

  Her family, I learned, was one of the oldest and most respected in Cornwall, landed gentry since the days of Good Queen Bess. The land, alas, had been sadly depleted by her grandfather who had sold y
et another parcel every time his gambling debts became unmanageable. Linda’s father was left with a half-dozen poor tenant farms, the income they brought in barely enough to enable him to maintain Morrison Place and support his wife and three daughters. Linda, the eldest, had had her season in London, had been bored by the monotonous round of parties and balls and disdainful of the foppish and empty-headed young men who vied for her attention.

  “The idea, you see, was that I should snare a wealthy husband whose fortune would save the family from destitution. My mother staked everything we had on that season in town—it was terribly expensive to rent a house and a carriage, pay for my gowns, give the obligatory dance. When we came back to Cornwall I was husbandless and every penny we had was gone.”

  Miss Morrison smiled a wry smile and took another sip of tea. Her younger sisters had been crushed, knowing full well that Linda’s failure meant they would not have the same chance. It was then that she had decided to earn her own living, scandalizing everyone by taking the position at the girls’ school in Brussels. Well-bred young women from good families simply didn’t do such things—far better to subsist in genteel but respectable poverty—and Miss Morrison’s unconventional behavior was deemed a betrayal of her class.

  “I was able to send half my wages home,” she continued, “and eventually both my sisters had their seasons in London. Millicent married a vicar in Kent, and Lucinda managed to snare the son of an earl—the second son, alas. They’re currently in Bombay where he’s trying to make a fortune with the East India Company.”

  Linda’s mother had passed away six months ago, finally succumbing to the consumption that had plagued her for the past three years, and Linda had come home to nurse her through those final sad days, remaining in Cornwall to take care of her father, whose own health was rapidly deteriorating. She was also managing the remaining tenant farms, further scandalizing the gentry by going to the farms in her cart several days a week to supervise work. Someone had to do it, and her father was no longer capable. It was difficult for me to visualize this lovely, demure young woman ordering fertilizer, having barns repaired and overseeing the shearing of sheep, but as she talked my admiration for her increased by bounds.