The Homecoming

by M C Beaton

  “How hard your life has been, my beauty,” he would murmur. “Be mine, and I will cherish and protect you for the rest of your life.”

  She frowned a little as a half-remembered face intruded into her dream, that of a young man. Oh, it was that nice Mr. Bond who had left the village. There was some connection there with the duke but she could not remember what it was.

  * * *

  One morning, Lady Beverley summoned Miss Trumble. “I have decided to go to Bath. I am in need of restorative waters.”

  “Do you wish that I and Lizzie should accompany you?”

  “I may send for you,” said Lady Beverley. “I am quite cast down and wish to get away. I had great hopes, great hopes after the duke’s arrival. But Lizzie spoilt everything. What she lacks in looks, she could have made up for by being modest and correct. But, no, she must run about the garden playing childish games and give the duke a disgust of her. Mannerling is lost to us forever. Whatever did I do to have such undutiful daughters? I will need a post-chaise, and Barry and the maid, Betty, must accompany me.”

  “I will tell Barry to ride over to Hedgefield and arrange the hire of a post-chaise,” said Miss Trumble.

  In Miss Trumble’s pocket was a letter from the duke which had arrived only that morning. In it, he had requested that his aunt, Lady Beverley and Lizzie join his house party. Miss Trumble had no intention of letting Lady Beverley see that letter. She could go to Bath and therefore relieve Lizzie of the awful social embarrassment of hearing her mother prose on about the Beverleys and Mannerling.

  “I shall leave on Saturday,” said Lady Beverley.

  And we are expected at Mannerling on Friday, thought Miss Trumble. A day late will not matter. But she must not find out we are going.

  “Was that not a servant from Mannerling I saw this morning?” asked Lady Beverley.

  “Yes, he brought a letter to me from my nephew.”

  “Did he mention me?”

  “No, he did not.”

  Lady Beverley sighed. It was all very awkward having Miss Trumble revealed as an aristocrat. Miss Trumble had even stopped addressing her as “my lady.” But Lady Beverley could hardly correct her for that or she herself might have to begin to address Miss Trumble as my lady.

  “Lizzie has ruined everything,” she mourned. “There is nothing left for me to do but to take my failing health to Bath. What is it, Betty?”

  “Mrs. Judd is called to see you.”

  “I will tell her you are not at home,” said Miss Trumble quickly. Mary Judd, the vicar’s daughter, had trounced Lady Beverley’s ambitions in the past by marrying a previous owner of Mannerling. But Judd had run into gambling debts and had hanged himself from the chandelier in the Great Hall, and Mary had never quite got over having to return to the vicarage and live again with her father.

  “I will see her,” said Lady Beverley.

  In truth, Lady Beverley rather enjoyed Mary’s company, for Mary toadied to her and Lady Beverley interpreted such toadying as a due respect to her rank. It would have shocked the Duke of Severnshire to know that he had that much in common with Lady Beverley.

  Mary was in the parlour, dressed as usual in black. Some gentleman two years after the death of her husband had said she looked very well in black and so Mary had worn it ever since.

  “Lady Beverley,” she said, dropping a full court curtsy. “I am indeed honoured that you can spare me some time.”

  “I have always time for you,” said Lady Beverley, advancing and giving her two fingers to shake.

  “Have you met the Duke of Severnshire?” asked Mary, although she knew very well from local gossip that the duke had called at Brookfield House.

  “Yes, we were invited to tea and he was a guest here.”

  “And unmarried!” said Mary slyly. “Has he shown any signs of being taken by Lizzie?”

  “Lizzie,” said Lady Beverley, “is a wayward child who has given him a disgust of her. If only it had been one of her other sisters—Isabella, for example—whose beauty was unsurpassed. I shall be leaving at the end of the week, Mary.”

  “To London?” Mary pronounced it the old-fashioned way—Lunnon.

  “No, to Bath. I am frail. No one understands how delicate my nerves are.”

  “You are a brave lady, and have come through many tribulations with fortitude,” said Mary. “I have long admired you. Ah, Bath. The elegant buildings, the walks, the Pump Room, how I would love to see it all one day.”

  “Then you shall,” said Lady Beverley on sudden impulse. “If your father can do without you, then you may come as my companion.”

  Her father would just need to do without her, thought Mary. “I consider it a great honour and a great privilege.”

  And Lady Beverley, who quibbled about the very price of coal for the fires in winter, was quite happy to open the purse-strings to play Lady Bountiful to this daughter of the vicarage who knew her place so well, when others did not.

  Miss Trumble told Lizzie in private about the invitation, explaining that it would be wise to keep her mother in happy ignorance.

  “I wish we did not have to go,” said Lizzie.

  “Why?”

  “Peter told me the duke had found a beau for me. Was that your idea?”

  “Yes, it was. Do not look so downcast, Lizzie. You are not expected to marry the fellow. I merely thought that someone cheerful and closer to your own age might amuse you.”

  “But there is Peter.”

  “Mr. Bond will be so taken up with his duties and gazing on his beloved that he will have no time for you.”

  “Mama will be furious when she finds out.”

  “We will see to it she does not. Do you know, she has asked that creature, Mary Judd, to accompany her to Bath?”

  “But I thought she had never forgiven Mary for marrying Judd.”

  “Well, you know how Mary toadies and Lady Beverley’s spirit is badly bruised these days. Your mother does not know quite how to go on with me and she blames your hoydenish games for disaffecting the duke when I fear it was the very sight of her and the dread of hearing more tales of the Beverleys’s days of greatness which drove him away.”

  Lizzie looked at her governess sharply. “I hope you, my sensible Miss Trumble, do not entertain any hopes of my catching the duke.”

  “You are much too young,” said Miss Trumble dismissively. “I doubt if Gervase is even aware of you as a young lady.”

  Lizzie went to her room and sat down in front of the mirror. She was wearing her hair down. A schoolgirl looked back at her. She swept up her hair on top of her head. She was not interested in the duke. Not she! But the fact that he might be totally unaware of her as a young lady rankled.

  Thanks to the generosity of her elder married sisters, she now had a wardrobe of pretty and fashionable clothes.

  She would make an effort to be as mondaine and charming as possible.

  No one, not even a duke, should be unaware of the presence of such as Lizzie Beverley!

  Chapter Three

  The young ladies entered the drawing-room in the full fervour of sisterly animosity.

  —R. S. SURTEES

  MISS TRUMBLE HAD sent a reply to the duke, saying that Lady Beverley would be in Bath, but that she and Lizzie accepted his invitation. Perhaps he would be so good as to send a carriage for them?

  “For Barry will be gone,” explained Miss Trumble to Lizzie, “and we can hardly arrive at such a grand affair driving the carriage ourselves.”

  Lady Beverley was waved goodbye, the post-chaise laden down with luggage which included a large trunk full of patent medicines. As the carriage moved off, Mary turned and gave Lizzie a triumphant little smirk which showed Mary thought she was the favoured one, with the daughter being left behind.

  There is going to be the most awful scene when Mama finds out we went to Mannerling without her, thought Lizzie.

  The two maids were busy packing her clothes. Lizzie felt a twinge of apprehension and could not und
erstand it. She had met very grand company in London, her sisters were all married to rich and important men. But she had always been the youngest, a looker-on of her sisters’ love tangles. If she did not find a man to marry, then Miss Trumble could not stay forever and so she would be left in the country with only her mother for company.

  What would this young man be like, this Gerald Parkes? Probably callow and dull and only wanting to talk about himself while he expected her to simper.

  The day they set out for Mannerling was hot and close and still. Dry little leaves rustled down from the trees beside the road, a sort of false autumn.

  Lizzie could not understand why her feelings of apprehension would not go away. She wished they had been able to arrive on the same day as the other guests. Now they would all be established and have got to know each other. As the newcomers, they would be studied and assessed. Her broad-brimmed straw hat held a whole garden of flowers, the latest fashion, sent from London by her sister Abigail. Her morning gown of Brussels lace was all the crack, sent by her sister Rachel. Miss Trumble had dressed her hair up in the latest style. If only she felt elegant inside!

  The carriage bowled smoothly up the long straight drive to the porticoed entrance of Mannerling. But there was no longer a quickening of the heart at the thought of going “home.” For the very first time, Lizzie thought of Brookfield House as home, and wished heartily she were back there, sitting in the stables, talking to Barry.

  But Barry Wort had gone to Bath with her mother. Certainly, he would be sent back as soon as the journey was completed. Although Barry often acted as footman on special occasions for the Beverleys in a second-hand suit of red plush and a glass wig, Lady Beverley was ashamed of him. Footmen should be slim, six feet tall, and haughty.

  As Lizzie had noticed before, the duke seemed to have a great many servants. As the carriage drew to a stop, two tall footmen, who would have gladdened Lady Beverley’s heart, jumped down from the back-strap to let down the steps. Other footmen began to unload their luggage. Butler and housekeeper followed them up to their rooms, and soon they were surrounded by a flurry of maids unpacking their luggage.

  Lizzie found she was in her old bedroom with its adjoining private sitting-room. She walked around examining everything. The old four-poster bed in which she used to sleep had been replaced by a modern one with a canopy from which lace bedcurtains descended. In the sitting-room, there was new furniture, gilt with striped silk upholstery in green and gold. The wallpaper was of a green-and-gold Chinese pattern. The clock over the mantel, the little gilt French clock, was the same, as was the escritoire in the corner. How awful it had been, she remembered, when Papa’s debts had been so great that they could not even remove some of their favourite pieces of furniture. Mannerling no longer reached out to her.

  It was mid-afternoon. Miss Trumble entered and said, “We are to join the company in the drawing-room for tea. Let me see to your hair.”

  Lizzie obediently went into her bedroom and sat down at the toilet-table. “This is my old room, Miss Trumble,” she said. “But some things are different. Even this mirror is different. I remember it now. It is a very old one and used to be in Papa’s dressing-room.”

  “The glass gives a good reflection,” said Miss Trumble, adjusting bone-pins amongst the curls and coils of red hair. “You will do very well, Lizzie.”

  “I am now anxious to see Peter’s beloved,” said Lizzie. “Is she here?”

  “I gather from a footman that everyone is arrived.”

  As they walked together along the corridor and down the stairs to the drawing-room, Lizzie felt her heart begin to beat hard and wondered if an actor felt like this just before he made his appearance on the stage.

  Two footmen sprang to open the double doors and they entered.

  Eyes, eyes, eyes everywhere, staring and assessing.

  The duke moved forward. “May I present Miss Lizzie Beverley and my…and Miss Trumble.”

  Both curtsied. The duke led them round the room while Lizzie tried to remember who was who. The Chumleys, Mr. and Mrs., round and comfortable-looking. The Earl and Countess of Hernshire; the earl, small and tubby, the countess, tall and stately. Daughter, Lady Verity, with a chilly smile, turning indifferently away as soon as the introductions had been made.

  Then the Charters—as silly as their silly little daughter, thought Miss Trumble.

  Squire Walters, his wife, and daughter Sarah. They came as a great disappointment to Lizzie. The squire was wizened and nasty-looking, his wife frightened, and his daughter so vague and dreamy that she did not quite seem to know where she was.

  Next was Colonel Parkes, genial and courteous, with a jolly, friendly wife.

  And son, Gerald.

  Lizzie blinked up at him in a dazed way. He was a young Adonis. Hair as gold as the sun and eyes as blue as a summer sea. His face was lightly tanned and very, very handsome.

  Lizzie smiled at him and curtsied.

  “The formalities seem to be over,” said Gerald, looking down at Lizzie. He grinned and the duke moved away, feeling obscurely that he had been banished. Tea was served. Lady Verity and Celia Charter were seated on a backless sofa on either side of the duke. Verity was trying to catch his attention, but Celia was prattling away, ogling and flirting, while her parents looked on with approval. Sarah Walters was holding a teacup half-way to her lips and gazing dreamily out of the window. Her father kept darting her vicious little looks, as if he would like to slap her back into the real world.

  Gerald and Lizzie were seated side by side on another sofa. The rest of the house party were assembled on chairs, balancing cake plate and teacup while sitting up rigidly straight. Only commoners allowed their bodies to touch the back of the chair.

  “I really did not want to come,” confided Gerald.

  “Why not?” asked Lizzie.

  “Look about you, Miss Lizzie. I am quite outshone by Severnshire. Every lady wants to become a duchess.”

  “Not I!” said Lizzie.

  “Why not? You would make a very pretty little duchess.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Like a Dresden figurine.”

  “You put me to the blush. May I remind you that Dresden figurines do not have red hair.”

  “They should have hair like yours. But now I think of it, they are too insipid-coloured. Your hair is like a flame, like a glorious autumn, like a winter sunset.”

  “I beg you to stop,” cried Lizzie. “I am not in the way of receiving compliments, and my head will be quite turned if you go on.”

  “Then we will talk of prosaic things. Did you have a long journey to get here?”

  “Not at all. I live hard by. In fact, my family once lived here.”

  “Of course. Beverley. The Beverleys of Mannerling. I have heard of your family. Your sisters all married great men. You have been lying to me, Miss Lizzie. You must want to outshine your sisters and become a duchess.”

  “Not I! Severnshire is very grim, I think, and quite old.”

  “You are too hard. We first met him at Dover. My parents had come to meet me after my return from the Grand Tour. He was all that was amiable.”

  “I should think anyone would feel amiable with your parents around,” said Lizzie, noticing the way that Colonel and Mrs. Parkes were chatting happily with Miss Trumble.

  “Who is that lady you came in with?”

  “That is Miss Trumble. She was my governess but I suppose she is now my chaperone. Mama is in Bath taking the waters.”

  “Miss Trumble looks much too grand to be anyone’s governess. Her gown is of the first stare. Lady Beverley must be a generous employer.”

  But Lizzie did not want to go on talking about Miss Trumble in case she betrayed that lady’s identity.

  * * *

  Peter hovered nervously outside the drawing-room. He had not seen Sarah since her arrival. He had been sent into Gloucester the day before when she arrived to attend to business. That had involved leaving at dawn and n
ot arriving back until everyone else was in bed.

  He longed to see her. He had a letter in his hand for the duke which had arrived that morning. It concerned a boundary dispute on the duke’s home estates. He was quite well able to deal with the matter himself, but in his longing to see Sarah again he had persuaded himself that his master would want to attend to it personally.

  At last he smoothed his hair and squared his shoulders and walked into the drawing-room. Everyone looked at him. Peter’s eyes flew straight to Sarah. She looked vaguely at him, a little frown creasing her brow, and then she retreated back into her dream in which the duke was proposing marriage to her. The fact that she had made not the slightest push to attract the duke’s attention did not strike her as ridiculous. Sarah preferred dreams to reality. In dreams people were always charming and said all the things one wanted them to say.

  The duke rose, interrupting Celia’s prattle and said, “Mr. Bond. You have something for me?”

  They walked to a corner of the drawing-room. Peter handed him the letter. The duke read it with surprise. He was about to say sharply that Mr. Bond should be able to cope with the matter himself when he noticed how nervous the young man was. “Mr. and Mrs. Walters,” said the duke, raising his voice. “Do you not recognize Mr. Bond? He is from your village.”

  “What?” The squire peered at Peter. Sarah continued to look out of the window where her wedding breakfast was taking place in marquees on the lawn. The duke in his wedding clothes was standing at her side. They were receiving the best wishes of the tenantry.

  “Oh, yes, Bond’s son,” said the squire. “Dead, ain’t he?”

  “Yes, Mr. Walters,” said Peter. “My father died just before I took up my post with His Grace.”

  “Glad you’re settled,” mumbled the squire. “Bond didn’t leave you anything.”

  “Miss Walters!” said the duke in a commanding voice.

  Sarah came back to earth and blinked at him. “Do you remember Mr. Bond?”