The Virtuous Cyprian

by Nicola Cornick

  Accordingly she woke the next morning resolved to take a walk, and follow one of the paths she had seen marked on the map the previous day. Her only difficulty lay in negotiating the village green, which she knew was unlikely to be as empty as on the Sunday evening. That was where the bravado came in. Lucille put on her bonnet and raised her chin defiantly. Let the villagers show their disapproval!

  Cookes was set back from the road down a short drive, with a carriage sweep at the front and well-tended lawns bordering the gates. Lucille walked slowly down the drive and out on to the green. Despite her defiant thoughts of a few minutes before, she admitted to a large measure of apprehension when she realised that it was market day and the green was packed with stalls and hawkers. There was a wealth of seafood on offer: crab, eels, flounder and oysters tumbled from baskets and across trestles. Nearby were flower girls, and fruit-sellers with panniers of oranges, lemons and cherries. A pieman cheerfully shouted his wares. It was a vivid scene. It was also too late for her to retreat, for she had been noticed. Straightening her spine, she picked her way between the vendors and started to cross the green.

  The change in atmosphere was both sudden and tangible. The hostility was all too real. As Lucille passed by a sudden silence fell. Men stared and women pulled their skirts aside as if she might contaminate them. Children were abruptly hushed and summoned to their parents’ side. Lucille, who had expected to be able to cope with the animosity, was unprepared for the depth of feeling. It shook her. She actually felt unsafe. Stallholders watched in silence as she walked through the market; trade was suspended. People turned away. One man even spat on the ground at her feet. And behind her she was aware of the crescendo of sound.

  ‘We don’t want her sort here…no better than she ought to be…the hussy! She should be driven out! Nothing but a common trollop!’

  By the time she had reached the other side of the green and run the gauntlet of so many hostile faces, Lucille found the angry, unshed tears stinging her eyes and blocking her throat. She wanted to shout at them all for their stupid ignorance and intolerance, but equally she wanted to run away and hide, never to have to face them again. Even the curate had emerged from the door of the charming stone church and was watching her progress with hard, condemning eyes. She almost expected him to step forward and denounce her as a harlot before the assembled throng.

  Lucille had reached the lane which led out of the village towards the Court, and was starting to feel marginally better, when a stout woman carrying a marketing basket full of vegetables stepped out from a nearby path and blocked her way. Her high colour suggested a choleric nature and her livid gaze made Lucille’s heart sink. Behind her lounged a dark young man with a narrow, watchful face, whose bold gaze was appraising Lucille in the presumptuous way that she hated. Her heart started to beat faster.

  ‘Miss Kellaway! I am Serena Mutch, George Kellaway’s sister! I had to see with my own eyes if you could really be his daughter!’

  Lucille took a deep breath. ‘I am delighted to meet you, Aunt,’ she said, carefully. ‘It is a pleasure to meet the family I have never known—’

  Mrs Mutch snorted with disgust. ‘Pleasure! It’s a disgrace! You have brought nothing but dishonour on the name of Kellaway, and you should be ashamed to show your face here! You shameless trollop!’

  There was a grin on the young man’s face now as he leant back against the fence and enjoyed her discomfiture. Lucille itched to slap his arrogance away. If this was Mrs Mutch, the young man could only be her cousin Walter, who had been cut out of his inheritance by Susanna’s unexpected claim to Cookes.

  ‘She may be anybody’s to ride, but she looks nothing like Farmer Trudgeon’s mare!’ he said, in a rich country drawl which seemed only to accentuate the insult in the words. Mrs Mutch’s face flamed, but whether in anger or embarrassment at her son’s coarseness, it was difficult to gauge. She turned to Lucille in a sudden fury.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Get out of this village! Get out, I say!’ Her fingers closed around the large cauliflower she had in the basket, and Lucille realised with incredulity that she was about to throw it at her. The insane idea of the villagers pelting her with rotten fruit and vegetables flashed across her mind even as Mrs Mutch raised her arm. It would be messy, Lucille thought hysterically, but not as bad as stoning…

  ‘Good day, Mrs Mutch, Walter…’

  The mellow tones, utterly expressionless, cut right across them. Preoccupied in the confrontation, neither Lucille nor her relatives had heard the approaching hoofbeats and Lucille turned in amazement to see the Earl of Seagrave reining in Bucephalus and summing up the entire scene with one swift, assessing glance. He swung down from the saddle and stood next to her. Extraordinarily, there was something so reassuring about his presence that Lucille could feel herself relaxing, despite the fact that her conscious mind was telling her that Seagrave was more likely to join in the denunciation than to defend her.

  Mrs Mutch lowered the cauliflower slowly and dropped an embarrassed curtsy. Walter straightened up and threw away the piece of straw he had been chewing.

  ‘Good day, my lord!’ Mrs Mutch sounded flustered. ‘I was just…greeting my niece!’

  Seagrave’s gaze rested thoughtfully on the vegetables. ‘So I see. A charming family reunion.’ He looked at Walter for a moment, and the man’s thin face flushed slightly. ‘I am loath to interrupt,’ Seagrave continued smoothly, ‘but I feel Miss Kellaway must be fatigued in this heat. Miss Kellaway, I shall escort you back to Cookes now. Good day, Mrs Mutch.’

  His tone brooked no refusal. He looped the horse’s reins over his arm and took Lucille’s elbow in his other hand, turning back towards the green and walking between her and the avid villagers, effectively shielding her from their view. He steered her down the lane towards Cookes and did not pause or speak until a bend in the road cut them off from sight.

  ‘I did warn you how it would be, Miss Kellaway.’ There was no pity in his tone or sympathy in his gaze as he looked down at her. Lucille, shaking with anger and reaction, was so incensed that she looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘You did indeed, Lord Seagrave! I see that you have already been extremely busy putting your threat into practice! A pity you could not have warned me about it the last time we met, instead of making a pretence of civility!’

  For some reason her furious comment seemed to touch Seagrave on the raw. The black stallion, a magnificent and highly bred beast, jibbed as he jerked its rein in an involuntary movement.

  ‘It is none of my doing, Miss Kellaway.’ The mellow tones were unusually harsh.

  Lucille’s voice caught on a sob. ‘Then it seems you may spare yourself the trouble, my lord! I am already scorned as a scarlet woman and my housekeeper is refused provisions by every stallholder and shop-owner in the place! Anyone, it seems, may insult me as they please! Even I am not so brass faced as to stay in a place where I am so clearly despised!’

  To her horror, Lucille felt the scalding tears about to overflow. She turned away in anger and distress, covering her face with her hands.

  Seagrave’s hand tightened on her arm. ‘Do not let that old harridan put you out of countenance, Miss Kellaway!’ he said, urgently, in her ear. ‘Serena Mutch’s bad temper springs more from the disappointment and anger of seeing her son disinherited than her disapproval of you!’

  Lucille swallowed hard. The insults might have been intended for Susanna, not her, but they were wounding nevertheless. She had never experienced such bitter animosity in her life. ‘Whatever her reasons, Mrs Mutch said only what the whole village was thinking!’ She took a gulp of air and managed to overcome her tears with an immense effort, even summoning up a wan smile as she remembered the cauliflower.

  ‘At the least, I must thank you for your prompt rescue, sir. I believe I was about to be pilloried with my aunt’s vegetables! And on the subject of reputation, I fear that it will scarce do either of us any good for you to be seen in converse with me! You may le
ave me here, I think. I shall be quite safe!’

  ‘My reputation can stand it,’ Seagrave said, with a hint of amusement in his tone, ‘and yours, Miss Kellaway—’

  ‘Was lost long since!’ Lucille finished for him. She gave a tired shrug. ‘As you wish, sir!’

  Seagrave, again brought up short by her reluctant toleration of his company, discovered that he wished to prolong the encounter very much. He looked at her, his gaze suddenly intent. She was not beautiful, he thought judiciously, but there was a formidable appeal about her looks which probably in some part explained her success. She was not in the common style, with her oval face set with those magnificent cornflower blue eyes, the small retroussé nose, and the soft pink mouth made for smiling—or to be kissed. Then there was the unconscious challenge of that pert, determined chin and the graceful line of her neck…he could not argue with those who called her looks striking.

  Her figure was less voluptuous than he remembered from seeing her in Town, but it showed to advantage in the tight-fitting blue jacket worn over her high-waisted jonquil dress. Less obvious, less easy to explain though, was the clear intelligence in that flashing blue gaze, a very different matter from the cupidity and opportunism that he had seen and despised when he knew her before. Finally, and even more confusingly, she had an air of fragility and innocence which aroused powerful feelings of protectiveness in him. What else could have sent him to her aid when he could have turned the situation to his own benefit and completed her humiliation? Cursing himself for a susceptible fool, he deliberately tried to distance himself.

  ‘It was foolish of you to venture out in the daylight, all the same,’ he drawled. ‘I had thought you only dared to flit about the village in the dark!’

  ‘Like a bat, perhaps?’ Lucille asked sweetly, and earned herself a quizzical look.

  She tried to get a grip on herself, knowing she was in grave danger of giving away the entire masquerade. Susanna would never have spoken thus. But her feelings had swung from misery to a heady relief that she had escaped so unpleasant a scene, and the presence of the Earl of Seagrave added some indefinable element of excitement that was in danger of making her almost too reckless. At that moment she would not even have cared very much had the whole deception come tumbling about her ears, were it not for the thought of Seagrave’s inevitable disgust and disapproval. That, on top of her recent humiliation, was more than she could bear.

  They continued to walk slowly down the lane that skirted Cookes’s orchards, with the mighty Bucephalus trotting along behind in complete disgust. Lucille was finding, disconcertingly, that Seagrave’s powerful effect on her had not waned. She was almost unbearably aware of his physical presence, the brush of his sleeve against her arm, the strength of the hand that had held her arm and was now clasping Bucephalus’s reins lightly between tanned fingers…For a moment she imagined those same hands sliding over her skin and was transfixed by the image, both dismayed and confused by whatever was happening to her. She did not understand it and could not explain it away. To distract herself, she reminded herself that she was supposed to be Susanna, who would not be thrown into confusion by a staid summer stroll with a charismatic Earl.

  ‘So how do you find Cookes now that you have had time to get to know it a little?’ the Earl asked a few moments later.

  ‘Oh, it is a charming little house,’ Lucille said, attempting Susanna’s condescending drawl, ‘though no doubt your lordship would prefer that I thought otherwise!’ She looked at him through her eyelashes and saw the slight, cynical smile on his lips. Encouraged, she continued archly, ‘Be warned, sir, I may give up Dillingham but I shall not give up the lease so easily!’

  She saw that sardonic smile grow. ‘I never doubted it for a moment, Miss Kellaway,’ Seagrave said smoothly. ‘You must be feeling more the thing now, I think, for you have reverted to form! How slow I was in not realising that all I had to do to get you to leave was to offer you enough money!’

  Lucille smiled to herself. He certainly had Susanna’s measure! ‘I would consider any reasonable offer,’ she said virtuously. ‘After all, a young lady must make shift to take care of herself!’ She saw his lip curl in barely concealed distaste and tried not to laugh. She must be a more accomplished actress than she had imagined, to ape Susanna so accurately! She was almost beginning to enjoy herself! Perhaps she should have taken Lady Bellingham up on her offer after all…Half appalled, half exhilarated, Lucille wondered how she had the audacity to further the impersonation.

  ‘I will think about paying you off,’ Seagrave said coolly. ‘I am not sure how much the lease of Cookes is really worth to me!’

  Lucille cast him a coy look. ‘Ah, but it is not merely the lease, is it, my lord! I imagine you would pay a great deal to remove my presence from your estate, but I warn you, my price is high!’

  ‘So I have heard,’ Seagrave said, with a searing look sideways at her that made his meaning quite clear. Those dark eyes considered her body with insulting thoroughness, dwelling thoughtfully on the curve of her breasts before moving downwards. Lucille felt as though his gaze stripped every item of clothing from her. She willed herself not to blush. She could hardly complain, after all, if he treated her as the Cyprian she had set herself up to be! And strangely, once again his look evoked none of the squirming disgust she had felt with Sir Edwin, or the outrage provoked by Walter Mutch…

  ‘However,’ the Earl continued without interest after a moment, ‘it is not a cost I would wish to incur, though I shall offer you a fair price for the lease.’

  It was a humiliating setdown, Lucille felt. She remembered Mrs Appleton saying that the one thing Susanna could not bear was rejection. She had never been able to bear the thought that she was not irresistibly attractive, even when a small girl. Accordingly, Lucille set her lips in a mutinous line and pretended to sulk. They walked on a little way in silence. The road was skirting the edge of Cookes’s orchards and briar roses tumbled over the ancient wall. Lucille had to stop herself from pausing to breathe in their scent—Susanna had never really appreciated the beauties of nature.

  ‘I am glad that the lease of Cookes prevents you from evicting me as you threatened that first time,’ she said, emulating the spite she had sometimes seen Susanna display when crossed. ‘At least matters are not made that easy for your lordship!’

  Seagrave merely looked amused. ‘No,’ he agreed affably, ‘unfortunately I am not to be rid of you so easily, Miss Kellaway! I am afraid I lied at that first encounter! But you see, it might have worked—and spared me a lot of trouble!’

  He was not the only one who lied, Lucille thought, with a sudden and inconvenient return of her guilty conscience. She had done nothing but lie to him since they first met. And here she was parodying her sister to the extent of almost creating a caricature! The enormity of it all rendered her temporarily speechless.

  They had reached the wooden gate into Cookes. Bucephalus started to help himself to the hedge. Seagrave turned to Lucille, smiling politely. ‘I am glad that your experience in the village has not overset you, Miss Kellaway. You are feeling quite recovered, I hope?’

  Lucille managed an artistic shiver. ‘Well, I’ll own it was most unpleasant, but—simple people…what can one expect but a small-minded, illiterate intolerance!’

  ‘These simple country people often have a very well-developed sense of morality, Miss Kellaway,’ Seagrave said dryly, ‘which is something I doubt you ever had, or perhaps lost a long time ago! Where did your foster father go wrong, I wonder?’

  Lucille tried a delicate yawn, the type of reaction Susanna would most certainly have shown to such moralising. She followed it up with a pert toss of the head.

  ‘Lud, I don’t doubt Mr Markham has been spinning in his grave these nine years past! But what a prosy bore you have turned out to be, my lord! I would never have guessed it! You sound just like my foster mother, forever exhorting us to marry well and settle down! I had no taste for respectable, genteel poverty! I declare, i
f I must give myself to an old man I might as well be paid for it!’

  ‘A most practical attitude, Miss Kellaway,’ Seagrave agreed, his face expressionless. ‘And your sister, the schoolmistress—I collect she took a different approach to earning a living! How did she feel at being left at the mercy of the world, with Markham dead and Kellaway abroad?’

  With a shock, Lucille remembered that she was the schoolmistress to whom he was referring. ‘La, I do not know! I never asked her!’ That, at least was true. ‘She spends all her time immured in Miss Pym’s school teaching those tiresome little girls! I vow, it’s enough to make one run quite mad!’ And that, she thought, was quite enough of Susanna for one day. She felt empty and guilt ridden at the things she had said. It was time to make an end.

  She turned to Seagrave and held out her hand. ‘It seems we may not meet again, so I shall bid you farewell, my lord. I plan to remove from here shortly.’

  Seagrave looked down at the small hand in his own, then up again at her face. ‘Truly, Miss Kellaway? I did not realise you were in earnest when you said that earlier.’

  Lucille tried to free her hand but he was holding on to it. She dropped her gaze from his intent one. ‘La, sir, Dillingham is too slow for me!’ She gave him one last dazzling smile and tried again to free herself. He had still not let her go and the warm clasp of his fingers was sending small, exquisite sensations trembling along her nerve endings.

  ‘If it is the matter of provisions that is worrying you, I will see that you are sent all that you need,’ Seagrave said abruptly, ‘and will undertake that you do not have such problems again. And if your housekeeper needs help in running Cookes, I am sure that Josselyn can arrange something. After all, it is in my interests that the upkeep of the house and gardens is maintained.’