by Lisa Berne
Kitchen garden? Poultry-yard? The mistress of Surmont Hall actually dealt in such things? Fuddled, Katherine blurted, “But—it’s so cold out, Mrs. Penhallow. You didn’t mind that?”
Livia flashed a smile at her. “Oh, please won’t you call me ‘Livia’? With three Mrs. Penhallows now in the Hall, it’s bound to get confusing! As for the cold, no, I don’t mind it a bit. I’m one of those people who have to get outdoors, no matter the weather. I grew up practically living in the woods.”
Into Katherine’s mind instantly came an image of Livia as a child, feral, wearing animal skins and being raised by a family of wolves. Which, she thought wryly, might have been better than growing up in Brooke House.
They made their way along a lengthy corridor, past several ancient galleries and through a vast, old-fashioned drawing-room, until finally they came to a beautifully paneled hallway with a high arched ceiling; they walked past another wide stairway, and came at last to a handsome, intricately carved oak door. Livia opened it and ushered them inside. “Here we are. I hope you’ll be comfortable.”
Katherine paused just past the threshold and in her memory suddenly heard again Gabriel Penhallow saying, Would you take Captain and Mrs. Penhallow up to their room.
Room.
Not rooms.
Panic overtook her and unthinkingly she looked up with a kind of desperation at Hugo. He met her glance and said at once, “Liv, I wonder if—”
No, no, no, she mustn’t know about us, thought Katherine, and, quickly placing her hand on Hugo’s arm, interjected:
“Thank you, Livia. It’s a delightful room. I’m sure we’ll be very comfortable.”
“I’m so glad you like it,” answered Livia smilingly. “I think it’s the nicest of the guest bedchambers. Aren’t those old wall-hangings beautiful? Supposedly they’re a gift from Henry the Seventh, who was said to have stayed here in 1487, but Gabriel’s grandmother says the resident Penhallows would never have allowed such an upstart to stay with them. At any rate—in the morning you’ll have a spectacular view to the front. When we knew you were coming, we made sure all the work was done in plenty of time.”
“Work?” repeated Katherine.
“Oh, we’ve been fixing and renovating everywhere around the Hall! Last week, for example, part of the roof in the Elizabethan wing collapsed, and yesterday Mrs. Blake found more rats’ nests in one of the saloons downstairs.”
“More?” Katherine was starting to feel like a parrot, dazedly echoing Livia. “Did—did you find any in here?”
Livia laughed, but kindly. “No, please don’t worry about that! We did unearth an old packet of letters, written by someone named Anne. Granny says she has no idea who that is. Perhaps a guest who stayed here a long time ago and left them in a cupboard. Well, I won’t keep you any longer. The servants should be here soon with your trunks. Do ask them for anything you need, of course. And won’t you please come downstairs at five, to the Great Drawing-room? We’ll all assemble there before going in to dinner.”
“All,” Katherine repeated hollowly—and parrot-like—and realized that she was still clutching Hugo’s arm, as if he were ballast in a stormy sea. She released it, but didn’t dare glance up at him this time, afraid, now, she might see again in his eyes that harrowing look of regret.
A footman placed before Henrietta Penhallow a shallow bowl of fragrant potato-leek soup, the surface of which had been dotted, with exquisite care, with fresh green chives. She thanked him, and marveled, not for the first time, at the circumstance of sitting along the side of the burnished mahogany table, rather than at her accustomed place at the foot. Change had come, as it would, she mused, whether one embraced it or not.
She let her gaze travel around the table. A small party this evening: Gabriel and Livia occupying, and rightly so, the head and the foot. Hugo’s new wife Katherine sitting to Gabriel’s right, and herself next to Katherine. Evangeline, her longtime companion, on Gabriel’s left, and next to her Hugo. A flare of pain, remembering others who ought to have been here, her own dear Richard, and their children. Henrietta picked up her spoon with a steady hand. The pain would fade away, whenever it was ready.
She took a sip of her soup. It was delicious. She made a mental note to send a complimentary message to the kitchen. Or no: that ought, perhaps, to come from Livia now, not herself. How strange, after all these years, to let the reins of management begin to slip from her grasp. It wasn’t as difficult as one would have thought. Perhaps she had gotten a little more tired than she had realized.
Henrietta’s gaze went again, lightly and unobtrusively, to Hugo’s wife, the granddaughter of a fabulously wealthy, extremely low-born miner and an unimportant, dissipated, bankrupt Yorkshire baronet. Not at all the sort of person whom she herself would have wished to join the family; her own parents would, if such a fanciful thing were possible, be rolling in their graves at the very idea. And yet so it was. Katherine, Henrietta observed gloomily, seemed to have very little conversation, her hair was pulled back so tightly it seemed to actually stretch her countenance, and also her gown was dreadfully outré. And yet—
Katherine wore no jewels, aside from the thin, elegant gold band on her left hand. That in itself was interesting. When she did speak, she gestured in an unconsciously graceful way that seemed to illuminate her words. Additionally, one couldn’t help but notice that her large, dark eyes were brilliant and alive, alternatively dreamy and alert. The Brooke girl was a thinker, there was no doubt of that. And the world could certainly benefit from more of those in it.
Henrietta Penhallow, despite herself, was intrigued.
Livia Penhallow, as she ate her soup, hoped that everyone was having a good time. This was her first dinner-party since becoming the official mistress of Surmont Hall, and she wanted so much for it to be a success. The menu, which she had carefully planned with Granny’s assistance, was both delectable and nicely varied. And people were talking, although Katherine, so far, hadn’t said much. She would have liked to include Katherine in her conversations with Granny and Hugo, but—how annoying!—one wasn’t supposed to talk across the table. At least she had managed to overset the usual modish rule of having enormous centerpieces cluttering up everything, so that you felt visually isolated from the people who weren’t sitting right next to you. It was especially nice as she could look directly at Gabriel. How handsome he was. How distinguished in his dark evening-clothes. Her husband. Her husband. It was still sometimes hard to believe that they were really and truly married. There had been times, months ago, when that had seemed an achingly impossible prospect. Oh, she was lucky, lucky.
Livia looked again to Katherine, sitting between Gabriel and Granny. She hoped Katherine didn’t feel intimidated. When she had had her first conversation with them, she’d felt very much as if it were two against one; they had, then, seemed to take up so much space, and she herself to occupy so little.
Tomorrow, Livia vowed, she’d make sure that she would claim a seat next to Katherine.
Hugo noticed with pleasure how happy, how blooming Livia looked. It was enjoyable, too, catching up with her news since he’d last been here at the Hall, during the autumn. They’d gotten on well together since they’d first met; very easy and unaffected she was. And Miss Evangeline Cott, on his right, was just as quiet and pleasant as he remembered. Just as self-effacing too; he’d had to draw her out on the subject of her forthcoming marriage to the local parson. It turned out, in a reminder of just how small a world it could be at times, that her Arthur Markson had actually gone to school with Grandpapa at Oxford.
As their soup bowls were removed, Hugo seized the opportunity to glance at Katherine, catercorner to him. She hadn’t met his eyes once since sitting down for dinner and she seemed decidedly ill at ease. Not that he could blame her, placed as she was between Gabriel and Aunt Henrietta. They were veritable strangers to her, and that could, of course, make it difficult. That time he’d had to travel with Gabriel from school, in the aftermath of Father
’s death, he’d barely known him; and although Gabriel hadn’t been hostile, neither had he been particularly friendly. He himself, still stricken with grief, hadn’t bothered to try and drum up conversation between them, and so they had passed the journey from Eton to Surmont Hall pretty much in a silence that had grown more awkward by the mile. And Aunt Henrietta—he’d thought her rather a ghastly old dragon.
Katherine still didn’t meet his eyes. Toward him she had been, since the morning’s exchange, utterly remote, as if she were—or would have preferred to be—a million miles away from him.
A footman set before him a plate with two very thin-sliced côtelettes de poulet in a light, buttery sauce blanche, and Gabriel Penhallow nodded his thanks. He assumed that the cutlets did not have their origin in the renegade chicken which this afternoon Livia had brought into the Great Hall. No, Livia was too fond of her newly acquired brood, being, as she had only last week explained with delight and deep absorption, in the early stages of coaxing them to produce fresh eggs.
Gabriel smiled within himself. His unconventional bride. A year ago he would have been horrified at the idea that a Penhallow wife would sully her hands with such mundane matters (literally holding a chicken!), let alone take an interest in them. God, what a starchy fellow he had been. And still was, sometimes, he thought ruefully, but thanks to Livia he was trying hard to overcome it.
He looked down the table at his wife, just now talking animatedly with Hugo. She was, without doubt, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. So fiery and intelligent, and so infinitely fascinating. How lucky he was—lucky beyond words.
He could have dwelled on his miraculous good fortune for quite a while, but courtesy recalled him, and he turned again to Katherine Penhallow, wondering what additional topics he might introduce. He’d tried all the usual ones, the weather, the state of the roads, details of her journey here, the health of her family, and so on. Her responses had been short, verging on the curt, and he knew, briefly, a moment of instantly suppressed exasperation; and then he saw that her hands were trembling, just a little.
Damn it, had he done it again? How had Livia used to put it? Assumed the arrogant, aloof Penhallow mask? He said to Katherine, hearing in his voice the slightest edge of desperation:
“My wife has been trying to persuade me to take up Mrs. Brunton’s new novel, Self-Control, which, she says, is unintentionally one of the funniest books she’s ever come across. Have you by any chance read it?”
Katherine’s eyes lit up, and Gabriel was startled at the change in her. It was like watching a statue come suddenly to life. She answered:
“Oh yes, and it is funny! There’s a scene in which the heroine, having been spirited away to America, escapes the villain by lashing herself into a canoe and letting herself be carried away by the rapids.”
Amused, Gabriel replied, “A plucky young lady, I perceive.”
“Well, yes and no, and that’s why it’s so humorous. Mrs. Brunton seems to view her heroine as a kind of blank slate, on which she can scrawl whatever she likes as the plot barrels along, rather than developing her in a credible fashion.”
“An intriguing observation! And is the same true of the villain?”
Katherine laughed. “It’s hard to say. He’s a dastardly rake, you see, who offends the heroine initially with his coarse proposals, but then he spins about and offers to honorably marry her. She, however, refuses him, no matter how alluring his title and fortune, and—”
She broke off, looking abruptly and profoundly self-conscious, and Gabriel, in his heart, pitied her, and began to talk about a little tour through the Blue Gallery tomorrow which, he said, she might perhaps find of interest, as they contained some very fine works by Rembrandt, Bosch, the Brueghels, van Eyck, and the Limbourg brothers. Was Katherine familiar with Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s The Village Lawyer? An excellent example of a remarkable workshop technique called pouncing; had she heard of it? There was also a charming little sketch by Rembrandt which was believed to have been drawn while he was a young student in Leiden. Gabriel went doggedly on. He feared, he very much feared, he was rambling, but he’d talk till midnight if necessary, if only to give Katherine the time to recover her composure.
Miss Evangeline Cott, who had for many years served as the companion, confidante, and general aide-de-camp to her longtime friend Henrietta Penhallow, partook in a limited way of the next course—rare white truffles in a red wine sauce—as it would not, she knew, agree with her tomorrow. She continued to make easy, pleasant conversation with her table-partners, Gabriel Penhallow and his cousin, Captain Hugo Penhallow, even as she pondered, as she had many times before, her curious position as one who was part of the family and yet outside of it at the same time. It enabled her to trace, with an interest that was both detached and kindly, the shifting lines of connection among them.
For example, Henrietta and her grandson Gabriel had, for many years, sustained a distressingly cursory relationship. Then Livia had unexpectedly come into their lives, bringing with her the bright sunshine of her personality, and had changed everything, in the best possible way. It was due to Livia, in fact, that she and her beloved Arthur had been reunited after decades apart, and were now soon to be wed.
An intense joy filled Evangeline at the thought, although she concealed it behind the usual calm placidity of her expression. She went on asking Hugo about his various family members. It was easy to see how much he loved them all, how deeply he cared about them.
Unfortunately, mused Evangeline, she could see very little in the way of connection between Hugo and his wife Katherine. She knew of course that Hugo had married to save his family, for pragmatic reasons, but still, one would have hoped that despite these inauspicious circumstances, such an unlikely couple would become more to each other than a means to an end.
And there was so much potential in each of them . . .
She repressed a faint, but heartfelt sigh, and without missing a beat said to Hugo, “How delightful to know that your twin brothers are now established in their educations. And your sister Gwendolyn? What are the plans for her?”
Evangeline listened with genuine attention to Hugo’s reply, even as another part of her continued to observe, ponder, plan. For one thing, she had not yet mentioned to Henrietta her hope that she would soon engage another companion. Despite her new happiness here at the Hall, there was within Henrietta a deep and relentless loneliness, one which, perhaps, would never be remedied in this lifetime. But a sensitive, steadfast companion—such as she herself had been; Evangeline had no false modesty—might help, here and there, to at least partially assuage it. For another thing, she had noticed a change in Livia, a very promising one. Livia hadn’t spoken about it, but perhaps even she wasn’t aware of it. Also, Arthur had mentioned the idea of traveling to the Lake District for their honeymoon, and Evangeline wondered if it would be possible to take in the Wye Valley, as it was said to be a place of spectacular beauty. Indeed, the great poet Wordsworth had written most eloquently about it, saying, all which we behold is full of blessings. And this, Evangeline thought, is very true, though blessings are not always so easy to perceive.
For a brief and fleeting moment Katherine wished she were dead. Oh, would this wretched dinner never end? She had just embarrassed herself in the most ghastly way in front of Gabriel Penhallow. A hideous bookend to how she had started the evening by embarrassing herself in front of Henrietta Penhallow, who had sailed her way in a soft silvery-gray gown of such understated elegance that Katherine felt painfully dowdy, loathing her own dress with its lace and net and beads and bows, wishing she had removed all of them at some point along the way here, and just as quickly reminding herself that she hated sewing with a passion which had earned her more than one interval in the Reflection Room.
The old lady had said, in what seemed like a conspicuously neutral tone:
“Good evening. We meet again, I see.”
Katherine had thought two things at once.
Second, she had pictured herself answering, in an equally dramatic fashion and possibly in some kind of exotic accent, so that she’d sound like a character in a Gothic novel: Yes, we certainly do meet again, madam, much to your dismay. And she’d added in a sudden loud clap of thunder afterwards, for theatrical effect, and also brought in a butler in the background, very suave, but in actuality a scoundrel, who was scheming to . . .
And suddenly she had realized that she hadn’t said anything in reply, the old lady was looking hard at her from beneath silvery eyebrows, and she had blushed an awful beet-red.
Which she was doing again, right now. Damn, damn, damn.
Chapter 9
As if taking cruel pleasure in Katherine’s misery, time meandered its way along, loitering with almost unbearable slowness, but dinner did, eventually, end. Livia rose, and Katherine followed her, old Mrs. Penhallow, and Miss Cott to a large drawing-room furnished and decorated in the ornate, lively rococo style of the previous century. There, she paused just past the threshold, not quite knowing where she should sit.
As if sensing her uncertainty, Livia paused too, turned, gave her a warm smile. “Won’t you join me, Katherine?”
Thankfully Katherine began to follow Livia into the room, but then old Mrs. Penhallow said:
“I should enjoy a little tête-à-tête with Katherine. That is, if you do not object, Katherine?”
“By no means, ma’am.” Smile, smile. Trying to appear confident, she went to sit in a gilded, carved walnut chair upholstered in heavy embroidered silk that had her at a perpendicular angle to Mrs. Penhallow, who looked at her with silvery brows slightly knitted.
