by M C Beaton
So the problem of what to do with Patricia remained.
Miss Sinclair had to find out from Patricia herself what had happened. To her amazement, Lord Charles showed no sign of asking her advice. Feeling slightly groggy and wondering why she had slept so heavily—and with her clothes on, too!—Miss Sinclair could not enjoy Patricia’s disgrace since it had not encouraged Lord Charles to seek her, Miss Sinclair, out.
Orders came up to the schoolroom that in future Patricia was to have her meals in the nursery and was not to be allowed downstairs.
Miss Sinclair brightened. Rosy fantasies of intimate meals with Lord Charles floated through her head. She presented herself in her best brown silk in the drawing room half an hour before dinner. No Lord Charles. On hearing the dinner bell, she went through to the dining room. Lord Charles was just about to sit down at table. He looked at her with an expression of surprise, mixed with faint distaste.
“Miss Sinclair,” he said, “I thought I made it clear that Miss Patricia was to take her meals in the nursery.”
“But, my lord, I did not think you meant me as well,” Miss Sinclair blurted out.
He looked at her thoughtfully and she turned scarlet.
Then he picked up his knife and fork and began to eat.
Stammering apologies, Miss Sinclair backed out of the room. She shared a silent meal in the nursery.
Miss Simpkin felt her beloved Patricia’s disgrace keenly. She had tried to romanticize the whole thing, but Patricia had snapped at her that she did not want to think about that disgraceful evening.
Miss Sinclair was just about to retire to bed when Firkin came up to say my lord wished to see her in the drawing room. Hope sprang in her bosom again. She ran so quickly downstairs, she was pink and breathless when she at last stood before Lord Charles.
“Before I begin to discuss the problem of Patricia,” he said, “I think we had better discuss your problem.”
“My problem, my lord?”
“I was so worried that I went to your room last night. You were asleep fully clothed.”
Miss Sinclair hung her head. “I must have been very tired. I remember having a cup of tea, and then nothing afterward.”
“Do you drink to excess?”
“No! Never!”
Her shock was very real. He studied her face. She certainly showed no physical signs of hard drinking.
“Well, to Patricia. The assemblies in Barminster are organized by a committee of local ladies—a miniature Almack’s, in fact. The chief organizer is Lady Clitheroe, wife of a local squire. Now it seems that Patricia’s name was neatly embroidered on the inside of her mantle. The ruffian who owns the inn where I found Patricia visited Lady Clitheroe today, brandishing the mantle and demanding to know Patricia’s address, leering and saying that the young lady had gone to one of his rooms with a soldier and would no doubt pay well for his silence. He had earlier sworn to the authorities he did not know the name of the soldier. Lady Clitheroe, quite rightly, told him she would turn him over to the local magistrate for attempting to extract money with menaces. The landlord fled and the inn is now closed. It is by way of being a thieves’ kitchen and the landlord has been skillful in the past at absenting himself from the town at the first sign of trouble. Why the place is not closed down… Never mind.
“The fact is that although Lady Clitheroe may not gossip with low landlords, she has a busy tongue. She arrived here just as I was finishing dinner, sighing and saying poor Patricia was ruined, and hadn’t she always said such a thing would happen? It seems that before she called here, she had been gossiping about the drama to the rest of the committee. Did Patricia tell you exactly what happened?”
“Only the bare outlines. She is very defiant, I fear. She says the young man proposed to her and she saw him as a means of escape from what she describes as your tyranny. She says she did not realize how very drunk he was or she would not have encouraged him in such folly.”
“Did she tell you that when I burst into the room, the soldier was in an… er… intimate position with Patricia?”
He thought he had described it very delicately, but his description conjured up a string of erotic visions in Miss Sinclair’s mind.
“No!” she gasped.
“Oh, yes. She must be sent away until this scandal dies down. I am traveling to town again tomorrow to seek help. I shall instruct the butler and servants that no callers are to be admitted to the house in my absence. Keep the girl busy with lessons. By God, if she were a Catholic, I would put her in a convent. Now, Miss Sinclair, I expect you to be on your guard and to be watchful and vigilant. If any more of this heavy sleeping occurs, then I suggest you consult a physician.”
“I am sure it will not occur again,” said Miss Sinclair breathlessly.
“I would not leave her in your care had not the Lucases recommended you so highly. You may go.”
Miss Sinclair went out, feeling very downhearted. Why had she slept so heavily, so oddly? Lord Charles no longer looked at her with that mixture of respect and friendship in his eyes.
In the drawing room, Lord Charles heaved a weary sigh. It had been a long, exhausting day. He had as yet had no time to investigate the running of Burnham House or the estates. He heartily wished Patricia’s father had shown more sense and left the girl in the care of some family, rather than to a bachelor like himself.
Lord Charles was gone for a month. He was away over Christmas.
Christmas at Burnham House was a dismal affair. Mindful of her duties, Miss Sinclair gave Patricia her lessons, surprised that the girl seemed almost to look forward to them.
Miss Sinclair was unusual in that she had been very well educated by her scholarly father. Like a lot of people with an academic turn of mind, she was able to communicate her enthusiasm for all kinds of subjects and yet lacked down-to-earth common sense.
Patricia tried to lose herself in her studies. Between worried governess and guilt-ridden pupil a certain bond was formed. Patricia began to find the idle gossip she had shared with Nanny Evans and Miss Simpkin and so enjoyed in the past was beginning to bore her. Miss Simpkin’s brave championship made Patricia feel worse because Miss Simpkin insisted on trying to build Patricia’s captain into a hero, whereas Patricia now knew that Captain Peter Oxford had been a drunk and feckless young man who had seen a chance at securing an heiress as a bride.
She hated Lord Charles and dreaded his return. Miss Sinclair loved Lord Charles and yet she too was afraid of his return lest sending Patricia away meant the end of her employment.
And then one bitter cold day he arrived. He summoned them both to the library and told them to sit down. He looked more at ease. He looked like a man with a great weight taken off his mind.
“I have been deciding where to send you, Patricia,” he said, “until the scandal dies down. You cannot remain cooped up here. The Lucases know of a very superior family in Boston.”
“In Boston?” said Miss Sinclair. “Boston, America?”
“Yes, Boston, America. They are simple, God-fearing people with a daughter of their own. You will accompany Patricia, Miss Sinclair. She is not to return until you can write and promise me that she is become modestly behaved and fit to have a Season in London, and that there will be nothing in her manner to remind the polite world of this disgraceful episode.”
His eyes raked over Patricia’s figure, which had begun to lose some of its puppy fat. “I trust you are well in health, Patricia?”
“If you mean, am I pregnant, no!” shouted Patricia, hating him, hating him, hating him. To be sent away to the other side of the world to a country that she vaguely thought of as being full of savage Indians and Puritans who burned witches at the stake!
“There is a ship sailing from Bristol in two weeks’ time,” said Lord Charles. “Prepare to be on it. Go to your room, Patricia. Miss Sinclair, remain. We shall discuss money arrangements.”
Patricia opened her mouth to scream that she would not go. He could not do this. This w
as her home and he was turning her out of it.
But his face was hard and implacable, all the relaxed ease of manner he had had when they entered the library completely gone.
She felt small and helpless. She turned and ran from the room.
One day she would make him pay. One day she would return and be revenged on him.
Somehow, sometime, somewhere, she would bring the haughty, bullying, satanic Lord Charles Gaunt to his knees!
Four
“… This town, the capital not only of Massachusetts but of all New England, is situated on a peninsula communicating with the mainland by a narrow neck upward of a mile long, which is all paved. The town of Boston is said to be about as large as New York and just as compact and the streets as irregular; the most conspicuous public buildings are the town house, in which the general court sits, and Faneuil Hall where public meetings are held. On the west of the town is Beacon Hill, a very high eminence which commands a most delightful prospect of the harbor on the south, which is interspersed with a great number of islands, among which is that whereon the castle stands.
“Mr. and Mrs. Munroe are all that is kind, and their daughter, Margaret, is now a close friend of Patricia. Patricia has adapted to the quieter and more staid manners of this town and is appropriately subdued in her dress, since it is not all the thing to appear aristocratic for fear of waking the never very long dormant hatred against the English….”
“What a geography lesson,” said Lord Charles, putting down Miss Sinclair’s letter. “You must excuse me for reading my post in front of you, Miss Chalmers. I always fear to learn my wayward ward has created another scandal.”
“Your concern does you credit,” said Miss Mary Chalmers.
Lord Charles looked at her with approval.
Six months had passed since the departure of Patricia. He had found her estates as well managed as he had first thought. He had traveled to his own estates to put things in order, and then had gone south to London to visit various friends. It was at the home of Mr. and Mrs. George Lucas that he had first met Mary Chalmers.
Haunted as he still was by Patricia’s turbulence, he found Mary Chalmers very refreshing. He thought she was like a Byzantine madonna, with her full eyes with their heavy curved lids, her thin white face, and her small curved mouth. She had a great air of repose. She never made a flurried movement or gave way to any vulgar animation.
Her father was dead and her mother was a wealthy widow. Miss Chalmers was, Lord Charles judged, about twenty-five. He wondered why she had remained unmarried for so long and then decided she was as hard to please as he was himself.
He had been invited to call and was happily drinking tea in the Chalmers’ drawing room. The room was neat and cool and well ordered. No jumble of novels spilled over the table, no fashion magazines lay in untidy heaps, no feminine laces or frills hung out of the edges of workbaskets. The fire crackled, the clocks ticked, the highly polished furniture mirrored the painted ceiling. The silver, brass, and china candlesticks, fire irons, coal scuttle, cake plate, tea pot, and milk jug were all refreshingly functional. Here were no frippery Dresden shepherdesses or colorful masses of hothouse flowers.
Miss Chalmers wore no cosmetics on her pale face. Her gown was of a dull purple trimmed with black, for she was in half-mourning, her father having died two years before. More frivolous spirits might consider it a very long time to wear mourning, but Lord Charles thought it showed a womanly respect for the dead.
He had a sudden vision of Patricia, all blazing dark eyes, pink cheeks, flamboyant jewelry, alternating between tantrums and smiles.
He felt a queer little pang as he thought of a Patricia rendered dull and correct by the worthies of Boston, and quickly dismissed the picture as nonsense. His six sisters, now comfortably installed in households throughout England, had all been noisy and flighty, and all of them had settled down to become model wives. All Patricia needed to school her was a husband.
But he had never lost his temper with any of his sisters the way he had with Patricia, his conscience reminded him. Of course, his sisters had not been so terribly spoiled, and for all their faults they were ladies, and would never have ended up in a sleazy inn messing around with the breeches of some drunk in a scarlet coat. What had she been doing? Lord Charles thought of several very unladylike things and closed his eyes.
“I am fatiguing you, my lord,” came Miss Chalmers’ calm voice. He realized she had been speaking while he was worrying about Patricia.
“I am sorry,” he said. “You were saying…?”
“I was merely asking whether you intended to move to Brighton, Lord Charles. Mama and I have rented a house on the Steyne. London is become uncomfortably hot.”
“I have not made any plans,” he said. “Perhaps I may visit you. I feel the need of fresh air.”
Miss Chalmers gave a little smile and looked at her hands, which were folded in her lap. Mrs. Chalmers beamed at her daughter and Lord Charles. She wondered how long it would be now before his lordship proposed.
Mr. and Mrs. Munroe were a quiet, middle-aged couple who had arrived in Boston long after the aftermath of the Revolution when anti-English feeling still ran high. They had independent means and a thirst for travel. They had originally planned to stay in Boston only for two weeks before moving on to see New York. But they had fallen in love with the quiet town, and so they stayed. Margaret was their eldest, a girl of nineteen. They had four young sons, all still at school—which was a mercy, as Mrs. Munroe pointed out to her husband, considering the devastating effect that Patricia Patterson had on all the men of the town.
Mr. Munroe said placidly that the wonderful thing was that Patricia was completely unaware of her beauty or of the effect it had on any man who set eyes on her.
This was not true.
Two more years had passed since Lord Charles had sat with Mary Chalmers, thinking of Patricia. She had lost her puppy fat and had grown two inches. Her stylish clothes, all of which she made herself, were the rage of Boston.
She had a close friend in Margaret, an easy-going brunette with the same undemanding temperament as her parents. Patricia loved the whole family, and the Monroes loved her, often feeling Lord Charles was a hard guardian, for they saw nothing of the wild and wanton Patricia they had been told to expect.
Patricia had just celebrated her nineteenth birthday. Although now well beyond the age of the schoolroom, she continued to study for her own pleasure, while Miss Sinclair transferred her skills to helping the young Munroe boys who had been experiencing some difficulty with their school lessons and needed extra help.
There were many attractive men about, but Patricia cared for none. All she cared about was their reaction to her. She did not gossip or flirt, but she had an increasing feeling of power.
During her long exile, she had dreamed of nothing else but revenge on Lord Charles. To a sixteen-year-old, he had seemed ancient. To a now mature nineteen-year-old, he began to appear as a man who might be attracted by her beauty. That was why she took careful note of her effect on men. She never exercised any of her power over men, always turning them down, with kindness and grace, when their attentions grew too persistent.
Slowly, she began to wonder if she could possibly make Lord Charles fall in love with her.
That was the one way in which she, weaker physically, could bring him to his knees.
Behind her calm, smiling exterior, she often saw him begging, pleading for her love while she laughed in his face.
Mr. and Mrs. Monroe had no idea what was going on behind Patricia’s pretty face. She never discussed her guardian with them. But she had talked about him to Margaret, and Margaret never tired of hearing stories about this wicked aristocrat, her American mind imagining a painted, bejeweled lord, lashing his tenants with a horsewhip and turning women and children out into the snow.
Miss Sinclair always praised Lord Charles, but Margaret thought Miss Sinclair a poor old maid who would naturally see no wrong in an empl
oyer since it wasn’t in her interests to find any fault.
Patricia would have been very surprised if she had known how long and how often her staid governess dreamed of Lord Charles. Miss Sinclair yearned to return to England. She sent letter after letter praising Patricia’s new manner, saying she had grown in charm and grace and learning and that it was surely now time for her to return and think about her first Season.
Lord Charles’s replies were always courteous, but very short. He was grateful to Miss Sinclair for her regular bulletins. He was glad to hear of Patricia’s improvement, but she was still young. No need to consider returning yet.
And then Miss Sinclair wrote to say she sincerely hoped she and Patricia were not trespassing on the Monroe family’s hospitality too long.
At last, the letter she had been waiting and praying for arrived. Set sail as soon as possible. Patricia was to have her come-out. When they arrived at Bristol, Lord Charles wrote, the ship’s agent would see them safely quartered until he, Lord Charles, was informed of their arrival and could arrange to have them met and escorted to London where they would stay at his town house.
Tears of relief poured down Miss Sinclair’s face. She turned over every word Lord Charles had ever said to her, remembered his every expression, more sure than ever that he had been deeply attracted to her and yet had stopped himself from betraying that attraction because of worry about his ward.
Patricia’s feelings when she received the news were mixed. Now her plan of revenge could be put into operation. But there was her regret at leaving the Munroes and their comfortable house which smelled so American, a mixture of scented bayberry candles, apples, cornbread, and beeswax.
