by Ann Barker
‘As if it were not bad enough having to miss church, I am also very unlikely to see Timothy later in the day,’ she explained.
‘Oh dear,’ said Lavinia sympathetically. ‘Does he have to go elsewhere?’
‘The curate at St Philip’s in the next village is unwell, so Timothy has promised to ride over and take the service after he has led worship here,’ she said.
‘Why can he not come straight back here after the service?’
‘Because poor Mr Blenkinsop lives alone,’ Caroline answered. ‘Timothy told me so with the utmost patience. He would not come home with a clear conscience if he did not make sure that the curate had good fires lit and something hot to eat.’
Lavinia sat in sympathetic silence before saying, ‘I was just wondering if you had any messages for Mr Ames?’
‘Bother Mr Blenkinsop,’ Caroline said crossly.
‘Shall I tell him that?’ Lavinia asked playfully.
Caroline grinned reluctantly. ‘Give him my best love, if you please, and tell him that I am looking forward to seeing him tomorrow.’
‘Would you like to come with me to Caroline’s room to entertain her this afternoon?’ Lavinia asked Isobel as they walked to church with Lord Thurlby and Miss Wheatman walking behind.
‘Good gracious, no,’ Isobel responded. ‘I have something else I need to do.’ A note had arrived from Benjamin Twizzle, asking for another interview. She had no desire to meet him, but she did not want to antagonize him by putting him off.
They arrived at church at the same time as an acquaintance of Miss Tasker who had met Lavinia in Caroline’s company. As this lady wanted to enquire about the health of the schoolmistress, Lavinia was delayed for a few moments, so she was the last of the party to enter the church.
Miss Wheatman and Isobel had already entered the earl’s pew, and Lord Thurlby was waiting politely for her to go in before him. It happened, therefore, that Lavinia found herself with Lord Thurlby on one side and Miss Wheatman on the other.
The splitting up of Lavinia and Isobel was a very desirable situation, as far as Miss Wheatman was concerned. The older lady disapproved of any kind of acknowledgement of others in the service, and Isobel was a little inclined to whisper and giggle. The girl would not do so if she, Daisy Wheatman, was her neighbour!
Miss Wheatman was so determined not to be distracted from the service that she only raised her eyes from her prayer book in order to look at Mr Ames. Lord Thurlby, on the other hand, whilst properly attentive, was also aware of his neighbour in the pew, and when the vicar referred to meadow grasses by way of an illustration to his sermon, his lordship looked down at Lavinia and smiled. I like the way his eyes crinkle up, she thought to herself as she smiled back.
They were about to stand for the final hymn when Lavinia accidentally caught the corner of her book with her hand and knocked it onto the floor. She bent to pick it up, but Thurlby was too quick for her. As he gave it to her and their hands touched, that familiar dart of feeling shot through her and she almost dropped it again. Their eyes met, and this time, his expression told her that he had had exactly the same experience.
The earl’s rank meant that their party was the first to leave the church and shake hands with Timothy Ames. Isobel lingered for a moment to tell him how very moving she had found the service. If she had listened to a single word, it would have been for the very first time, Lavinia reflected. She smiled as she overheard the clergyman telling Isobel about some of the Greek words that he had been obliged to look up in order to write his sermon.
Whilst Miss Wheatman exchanged remarks with a friend who was just coming out of church, Lord Thurlby said to Lavinia, ‘Forgive me, I did not mean to eavesdrop, but I overheard you asking Miss Macclesfield if she would like to help you entertain Miss Tasker this afternoon.’
Lavinia smiled. ‘Poor Caroline! She will be so glad to be up and about again. Mr Ames’s daily visits help to make her situation tolerable. She will miss him today.’
‘If I may make a suggestion, perhaps we might entertain her together, if you have no objection,’ said the earl. ‘I could have a look in the nursery and see if I could find some of our old games.’
‘I think that she would really like that,’ Lavinia replied.
‘But would you?’ he asked in a lower tone. At that point, Miss Wheatman approached them, so Lavinia was not able to ask him to repeat his remark. She was convinced that she must have misheard.
After dinner was over – that meal being eaten in the middle of the day on a Sunday – Lavinia went up to Caroline’s room, where Thurlby joined them after hunting in the schoolroom as he had promised, but with limited success.
‘I’ve found some packs of cards,’ he said, ‘and a set of spillikins. I’m sure there were some other things, but I don’t know where they’ve got to.’
Miss Tasker was now allowed to lie on a day bed, so they set up a table next to her elbow and she took up one of the packs of cards. ‘These appear to be marked,’ she said after shuffling them.
‘Oh dear,’ murmured the earl, flushing a little. ‘My sins have found me out.’
‘You played with marked cards?’ Lavinia exclaimed in shocked tones.
‘I wanted to win,’ he said defiantly. There was a short silence during which both ladies looked at him reproachfully.
‘Lord Thurlby, how old were you?’ Caroline asked.
‘Seven,’ he answered. ‘Don’t look at me like that! My brother was seventeen! I never won.’
‘That is no excuse,’ said Lavinia severely. ‘I trust you paid a severe penalty.’
‘My father was very shocked, and quite ready to tan my backside for it,’ he admitted. ‘Luckily for me, my brother took the responsibility. He told my father that he was showing me what some unscrupulous people might do so that I would be wary.’
‘What an excellent brother,’ remarked Caroline.
‘He was the best,’ the earl agreed.
After they had played a game or two of cards, they turned to the spillikins for further amusement. Although Lord Thurlby’s hands were large, he proved to be surprisingly deft, and far more successful than Caroline, who, in her efforts to remove one of the pile of thin wooden sticks without dislodging any of the rest, managed to destroy the whole structure when she leaned over too far, knocked the table over and nearly fell off her day bed, to the great amusement of all concerned.
Lavinia, whose life in London had always been rather subdued, even before Mrs Stancross’s illness, found herself laughing more than she remembered doing for a very long time. Lord Thurlby’s laughter, too, rang out over and over again, making him look a good deal younger and exceedingly handsome, or so it seemed to Lavinia. When they had had enough and the tea tray had been called for, Caroline declared herself to be amazed at how much time had passed. ‘I had quite thought that today would seem endless, but thanks to you both, the afternoon has flown by. What a happy time we have had.’ Both Lavinia and Lord Thurlby agreed wholeheartedly with this opinion.
Just two days later, the doctor pronounced that Miss Tasker could go home, if she promised to be very careful. ‘Make sure that you rest the ankle for some time each day for a week. Every afternoon with your foot up would do you no harm,’ he said.
‘Oh yes, and how would the children learn anything if I did that?’ Caroline asked. The doctor had come to see her at Thurlby Hall. She was up and dressed, but sitting on a day bed in one of the downstairs parlours, whence Lord Thurlby had carried her that morning.
‘That’s perfectly simple,’ put in Thurlby. ‘They will have an extra holiday, that’s all. The school can be closed until you are better.’ His lordship, together with Mr Ames and Lavinia, had gathered together to hear the doctor’s pronouncement after he had finished his examination. Isobel was upstairs writing a letter.
‘But that will never do,’ Caroline insisted. ‘The children will get out of the way of learning. They need to keep the good habits that they have acquired.’
‘I could help you,’ said Lavinia after a moment’s thought. ‘You know that I have been into the school now on a number of occasions to sew with the children, and they know me quite well.’
‘Forgive my saying so, but you are not the teacher,’ said Caroline diffidently. ‘It hardly seems fair.’
‘You would be there to refer to, my dear,’ the vicar pointed out. ‘And, of course, I could pop in as well from time to time.’
‘You could even borrow this day bed,’ suggested the earl. ‘It could be set up at the front of the school. You would still be in charge, but Lavinia could do the tasks that required moving about. Would you have any objection to that, Doctor?’
‘None at all,’ the doctor replied. ‘As long as the patient keeps off her feet as much as possible, then that is all that concerns me.’
‘I shall look like the Queen of Sheba,’ Caroline grumbled; but as it seemed that she was to be allowed to teach after all, she made no further objection.
Chapter Fourteen
Although it was midday, the corridors of Riseholm House were still hushed. The earl’s staff knew better than to disturb him, particularly when he had been from home until the early hours. His valet, Stimpson, had not put his noble master to bed very much before five that morning, and had had strict instructions not to rouse him until noon. He knew better than anyone that when his lordship stipulated noon, he did not mean one minute before. He had been the earl’s valet for twenty years, ever since Riseholm had first gone on the town aged just nineteen. Stimpson himself was only two or three years older.
The earl’s habits had never varied greatly. He rose late, frequently dined out, waited upon whichever obliging female currently enjoyed his favours and attended various entertainments until the early hours, and expected his valet to wait up for him. In return, however, Stimpson was permitted to keep roughly the same hours. As long as he was available when his master needed him, then that was all that mattered to his lordship. Today, for example, he had risen just one hour before, at eleven o’clock.
He was grateful for the earl’s consideration. He had a colleague whose master kept the same hours as Riseholm, but who slept erratically and often needed his valet to dress him for an early morning ride, when he might only have retired to bed three or four hours earlier. His manservant, therefore, was obliged to catnap when he might. Stimpson, on the other hand, seldom missed a good night’s sleep.
As instructed, he entered the earl’s chamber with his master’s chocolate, set the tray down, drew the curtains and turned towards the bed. ‘A fine morning, my lord; or rather day, as I should say.’
The earl sat up and stretched. ‘Is it? You know, Stimpson, sometimes I wonder whether it is a mistake to miss the mornings.’ Not many people saw his lordship as did Stimpson. He was considerably more dishevelled than the world was accustomed to see him, clad in a nightshirt with the neck open to reveal a few curls of chest hair, his chin shadowed with a night’s growth of beard, his hair tousled from sleep. Even those ladies who enjoyed his favours only benefited from an hour or two of his company before he retired to his own quarters.
‘That rather depends on the mornings, my lord,’ his valet replied, adjusting the pillows at his lordship’s back so that he could sit more comfortably. ‘The letters have arrived. Would you like to look at them now, or would you prefer to dress first?’
‘Is there anything of interest?’
‘That is not for me to say, my lord.’
‘Don’t talk rot, Stimpson. Who’s written to me?’
After twenty years in the earl’s service, the valet knew the handwriting of his lordship’s correspondents as well as did the earl himself. ‘There is something from Riseholm Halt, my lord. There are some invitations, a tradesman’s bill, and I believe that …’
‘Well?’
‘I think that there is one from Miss Macclesfield.’
‘Is there, by God? Hand it over then, and come back in half an hour.’
‘Very good, my lord.’
Riseholm’s eyes gleamed as he opened the letter. The little Macclesfield intrigued him. She had indulged him with an agreeable flirtation, and in general, with young women of good family, that would have been enough for him, for them, and certainly more than enough for their chaperons!
There were always a few young ladies of a faster persuasion who were inclined to pursue him, and these he avoided for the most part. He much preferred to do his own chasing. In Miss Macclesfield, however, he had sensed a charmingly subtle blend of boldness and innocence. This, coupled with her undoubted beauty, had been enough to tempt him to allow her to think that she had succeeded in her pursuit.
Their little game had come to a head at Vauxhall, where he had turned the tables on her, and obliged her to understand that she was in fact the quarry. Much to his surprise, however, when they had kissed, he had felt his senses reel in a way that they had not done since his first love. It had unsettled him to feel that a woman should have power over him in that way. He was always the one who dictated the pace; with Isobel, he had felt perilously close to being swept off his feet. He had backed off, and soon afterwards, she had gone to the country.
To his surprise, he had viewed her departure with some regret. He could never find it in him to feel very much sympathy for those who managed to embroil themselves in scandal and then grumbled about the consequences. He had been shocking the ton for a number of years now. He knew that respectable people avoided him and that consequently there were places where he was not welcome. He had decided long ago how he wanted to live his life, was prepared to pay the price, and felt that anyone else who deliberately flouted society’s rules should be ready to do the same. Surprising, then, that when he thought of Isobel, he should feel a twinge of guilt. This feeling had been increased if anything by an encounter that he had had shortly after Isobel’s departure with a man whom he knew slightly, but whose wife was a close friend of Isobel’s chaperon.
Maurice Craig had been taking a short break after an energetic fencing bout when Riseholm had wandered in through the doors of the fencing school in Piccadilly, looking for someone with whom to exchange a parry or two. The two men were evenly matched, so when Riseholm had been helped out of his coat, waistcoat and boots, he had not been displeased to discover that Craig was ready to resume his exercise.
After a bout during which Riseholm had emerged the winner by a narrow margin, having achieved two hits to Craig’s one, the two men had paused for a while, watching the others.
‘You’ve lost none of your skill,’ Craig had remarked.
‘Nor you,’ Riseholm had answered. ‘Are you staying in London for the summer?’
‘You’d better ask my wife,’ had been the rueful response. ‘I’ll tell you, Riseholm, you’re a lucky man. Cling to your bachelor state – that’s my advice.’
Riseholm grinning, had not corrected him, judging that the other man had not recalled that he was a widower. ‘I intend to,’ he had said.
‘Hope you don’t mind my saying so, but I quite thought the little Macclesfield might have snared you. Still, danger over now, eh?’
‘As you say,’ Riseholm had answered, his tone even.
‘Time for a fresh pursuit? Apparently, Wilbraham has washed her hands of the chit, and sent her out of town to rusticate. If she doesn’t snag a husband, she’ll be packed off to her grandmother in Harrogate.’
Riseholm had not responded to this comment, and had merely suggested another bout. This time, however, Craig had emerged the winner.
Now, as then, Riseholm thought about what he knew of Isobel Macclesfield’s grandmother. Known as the Wimbledon Witch before her retirement from London, she was universally loathed, and no one had been sorry to see her go. Unsurprising if Isobel would do anything rather than be banished to live with that loathsome female.
When she had, rather naively, informed him of the route of her journey into Lincolnshire, where she was to stay with her friend’s godmother, instead of dismissing this infor
mation from his mind, he had arranged for flowers to be delivered to her en route. Part of his motive had been to pander to her vanity. Ruefully he was bound to acknowledge that he also wanted to impress himself upon her memory.
Not long after her departure, she had begun to write to him, and her correspondence had intrigued him. Unlike other ladies, she did not write on sickly scented paper. She wrote fluently and amusingly, too, her letters pleasingly free of cloying sentiment, and he often found himself laughing out loud at what she had to say. Rather to his own surprise – for he was not usually much of a letter-writer – he had begun to reply to her missives, carefully not committing himself in intention or sentiment, and sending them to a Mrs Hedges, care of the inn in the village, as she had requested.
He would have a very entertaining story to tell her in his next letter. It involved the machinations of a certain little Miss Egan who had clearly thought that she was destined to be the next Lady Riseholm, and had tried to manipulate him into offering for her. He had had to be quite cunning there. Not even his boon companions had known what he was about. Still, now the danger was past, and he could tell Isobel about it and imagine her laughing at his lucky escape.
He had read little more than the opening greeting when the whole letter began to unfold in ways that he had not expected.
And so, it appears that your days of singleness are numbered, as I have been reliably informed that you and the exquisite Miss Egan are engaged to be married. I’m sure that congratulations must be due to someone. Just now, I am hedging my bets as to whom!
When is the wedding to be? I am sure you will make a charming groom as you take on the shackles of married life. Oh, did I say shackles? I meant delights, of course. It may not be too long before I follow you to the altar, my friend. I believe that I may have mentioned before that there is a most charming vicar here, of noble blood, related to Lord and Lady Smilie. His attentions have become more marked by the day, and I am in hourly expectation of a declaration from him. He is so handsome, that I really do not think that I shall be able to say no. You will have observed that I like extremes in my suitors, and if I can’t have one, then I might as well embrace t’other….
