by Carla Kelly
He left the room as quickly as he had entered it. For the tiniest minute, it seemed as though he had sucked all the air out with him. She was still smiling when she heard the front door close behind him. My lord, you are the exotic, she thought, not me. She took a final sip of her tea. I think it is time I woke the sleeping darlings in this lovely little house and put them all to work.
T
She got off to a rocky start. Lady Janet had no intention of turning a hand to dust or sweep the floors after the footman removed the elegant carpets to beat out the dust. “Lysander would be aghast,” she declared. “I shan’t, and you can’t compel me.”
Lucy gasped at her sister’s rudeness. “I always do what Miss Ambrose says.”
“You’re supposed to,” her sister sniffed. “You’re still in school.” She glared at Cecilia. “I have a grievance about this, and I will speak to my uncle when he returns. I will remind him that I Have Come Out.”
“From under a rock,” David muttered. He looked at Cecilia. “I do not know why my Uncle Trevor did not let me accompany him.”
“Nor I,” replied Lady Janet with a sniff. “Then we would be rid of a nasty little brother who would try a saint. I am going to write to Lysander this instant! I know my darling will rescue me from this … this …”
“Your home?” Cecilia asked quietly. “Very well. Do write to him. Lucinda and I will dust, and then we will make beds.” She noted the triumphant look that Janet gave her younger sister. “Lady Janet, when you have posted your letter to your fiancé, your uncle specifically asked me to have you write to your family’s guests and tell them the Christmas dinner is canceled.”
“No party?” Janet shrieked, her voice reaching the upper registers.
You could use a week or two at Miss Dupree’s, Cecilia thought as she tried not to wince. “Not unless you think there is room for one hundred in the front parlor here, Lady Janet. Just give them the reason why, and offer your parents’ apologies,” she replied. “Your uncle has also gone to York, not only to see your parents and sister, but to procure workmen enough to put this place to rights again. Apparently there was considerable smoke damage, and the floor downstairs suffered.”
Lady Janet’s offended silence almost made the air hum. Cecilia touched Davy on the shoulder. “If you could help Lucinda and me, I’m certain we could ask the footman to fetch your uncle’s briefs from the manor, and you could continue alphabetizing them.”
“I can do that.” Davy looked at his older sister, who had devoted all her attention to the still life over the sideboard. He glared at her rigid back, shrugged, and gestured to his other sister. “C’mon, Lucinda. I’ll wager that I can dust the bookroom before you’re halfway through the first bedchamber!”
So it went. Lord Trevor returned after dinner, when the fragrance of roasted meat and gravy had settled in the rooms like a benevolent spirit. They had finished eating before he began. Her voice firm, Cecilia told them to wait in the sitting room and allow him to eat in peace before they pounced on him. She held her breath, but Lady Janet only gave her a withering look before flouncing into the sitting room.
When the children were seated, Cecilia excused herself and went to the breakfast room, where Lord Trevor, leaning his hand on his chin, was finishing the last of the rice pudding. He looked up and smiled when she sat down.
“Was it the mutiny on the Bounty, Captain Bligh?” he teased.
“Very nearly,” she replied. “Lady Janet wrote what I must imagine was an impassioned letter, begging for release, then condescended to write letters of apology to the guests. We tossed bread and water into the room. At least she did not have to gnaw her leg out of a trap to escape.”
Lord Trevor laughed. “God help you, Miss Ambrose! Whenever I am tempted to marry and breed, I only have to think of Janet, and temptation recedes. Was Lucinda biddable?”
“Very much so, although she remains ill-used because her sister barely acknowledges her. Davy alphabetized your 1808 cases, and I started him on 1809.”
“You are excellent,” he said. He drained his teacup and stood up. “Let me brave the sitting room now, and listen to my ill-used, much-abused relatives.”
She held out a hand to stop him. “Lord Trevor, how is your brother?”
Lord Trevor frowned. “He is better, but really can’t leave before Christmas, no matter how I pleaded and groveled!” He leaned toward her. “He wants you to continue whatever it is you’re doing, and not abandon his children to my ramshackle care.”
She opened her eyes wider at that artless declaration. “Surely neither he nor Lady Falstoke have any qualms about you.”
“They have many,” he assured her. He bowed slightly, and indicated that she precede him through the door. “Miss Ambrose, whether you realize it or not, we are an odd pair. You were found on the steps of an archive—still quite romantical, to my way of thinking—and I am the black sheep.”
He nudged her forward with a laugh. “When the little darlings in the sitting room have spilled out all their umbrage and ill-usage and flounced off to bed, I will fill you in on my dark career.” He took her by the arm in the hall. “But you have already agreed to help me, and I know you would never go back on your word and abandon this household, however sorely you are tried, eh?”
If she had thought to bring along her sketchbook, Cecilia would have had three studies in contrast in the sitting room: Janet looked like a storm was about to break over her head. Lucinda picked at a loose thread in her dress and seemed to swell with questions. Davy, on the other hand, smiled at his uncle.
When Trevor entered the room and sat himself by the fire, they all began at once, Janet springing up to proclaim her ill-usage; Lucinda worried about her parents and whether Christmas would come with them so far removed; and Davy eager to tell his uncle that 1808 was safely filed. Lord Trevor held up his hand. “One moment, my dears,” he said, and there was enough edge in his voice to encourage Janet to resume her seat. He looked at his eldest niece. “I am certain that your first concern is for your older sister and her family in York. All are much improved. I knew you wanted to know that.” He turned to his nephew, and held out his hand to him. Davy did not hesitate to sit on his lap. Trevor ruffled his hair and kissed his cheek. “That is from your mother! She misses you.”
Oh, you do have the touch, Cecilia thought as Davy relaxed against his uncle. “And I hear that you have finished my 1808 cases and started on 1809.” Trevor put his arms around his nephew. “Do you think your mama would let me take you back to the City with me and become my secretary?”
“She would miss me,” Davy said solemnly. “P’rhaps in a year or two.”
“I shall look forward to it.” Trevor smiled at Lucinda. “I hear that you have been helping all day to make this little place presentable. My thanks, Lucy.”
Lucinda blushed and smiled at Cecilia. “Miss Ambrose says I will someday be able to command an entire household.” She looked at her teacher, and her eyes were shy. “A duke’s, even.”
Janet laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Possibly when pigs fly, Lucinda,” she snapped. “Uncle, I …”
“What you should do is apologize to your sister,” Trevor said. “Your statement was somewhat graceless.”
Lucinda was on her feet then, her face even redder, her eyes filled with tears. “I … I think I will go to bed now, Uncle Trevor. It’s been a long day. Davy?” He followed her from the room. With a look at Lord Trevor, Cecilia rose quietly and joined them in the hall. She closed the door behind her, but not quick enough to escape Janet’s words.
“I hope you do not expect us to take orders from that foreign woman, Uncle. That is outside of enough, and not to be tolerated. Who on earth is she?”
Cecilia closed the door as quietly as she could, her face hot. It’s not the first insult, she reminded herself, and surely won’t be the last. She turned to the children, who looked at her with stricken expressions, and put her finger to her lips. “Let’s just go upstairs, my
dears,” she told them. “I do believe your uncle has his hands full now.”
Even through the closed door, they could hear Janet’s voice rising. Cecilia hurried up the stairs to escape the sound of it, with the children right behind. At the top of the stairs, Davy took her hand. “Miss Ambrose, I don’t feel that way,” he told her, his voice as earnest as his expression.
She hugged him. “I know you don’t, my dear. Your sister is just upset with this turn of events. I am certain she did not mean what she said.”
“You’re too kind, Miss Ambrose,” Lucinda said.
I’m nothing of the sort, Cecilia thought later after she closed the door to her pupil’s room, after helping her into a nightgown, and listening to her prayers for her older sister’s family and her parents, marooned in York with the measles.
“No, I am not kind, Lucy dear,” she said softly. “I am fearful.” She thought she had learned years ago to disregard the sidelong glances and the boorish questions, because to take offense at each one would be a fruitless venture. As much as she loved England now, after a lifetime spent in Egypt, it took little personal persuasion to keep her at Madame Dupree’s safe haven. She doubted that she ever went beyond a three-block radius in Bath. I have made myself a prisoner, she thought, and the idea startled her so much that she could only stand there and wonder at her own cowardice.
Reluctant to go downstairs again, she knocked softly on the door of the room that Davy was sharing with his uncle. Better to be in there, she thought, than to have to run into Lady Janet and her spite on the stairs. Davy lay quietly as she had left him, reading in bed, his knees propped up to hold the book. She looked closer, and smiled. He was also fast asleep. She carefully took the book from him, marked the place, and set it on the bedside table. She watched him a moment, enjoying the way his face relaxed in slumber.
I would like to have a boy like you someday, she thought, and the very idea surprised her, because she had never considered it before. I wonder why ever not, she asked herself, then knew the answer before any further reflection. Even though her foster parents had endowed her with a respectable dowry, she had no expectations, not in a country whose people did not particularly relish the exotics among them.
To keep her thoughts at bay, she went around the room quickly, folding Davy’s clothes that had been brought over from the manor and placing them in the bureau. He shared the room with his uncle, whose own clothes were jumbled on top of the bureau. Several legal-sized briefs rested precariously on his clothes, along with a pair of spectacles. She wondered if he even had a tailor, and decided that he did not, considering that his public appearances probably found him in a curled peruke and a black robe, which could easily hide a multitude of fashion sins.
She heard light feet on the stairs, and remained where she was until they receded down the short hall to Lucinda’s room. The door slammed, and Davy sighed and turned onto his side. She left the room, but it occurred to her that she did not know where to go. She had arranged to sleep on a cot in the little dressing room, but wild horses could not drag her in there now. To go downstairs would mean having to face further embarrassment from Lord Trevor. She knew he would be well meaning, but that would only add to the humiliation. Perhaps I can go below stairs, she thought, then reconsidered. All the servants’ rooms in this small dower house were probably full, too, considering that things were a mess at the manor. She also reckoned that a descent below stairs would only confirm Lady Janet’s opinion of her.
Cecilia sat on the stairs and leaned against the banister, wishing herself away from the turmoil, uncertain what to do. Probably Lord Trevor would understand now if she wanted to leave in the morning, even if she had promised she would stay. It was safe in Bath. She shook her head, uneasy with the truthfulness of it.
“Is this seat taken?”
She looked up in surprise, shy again, but amused in spite of herself. “No. There are plenty of steps. You need only choose.”
Lord Trevor climbed the stairs and sat on the step below her. He yawned, then rested his back against the banister. She didn’t want him to say anything, because she didn’t want his pity, but she was too timid to begin the conversation. When, after a lengthy silence, he did speak, he surprised her.
“Miss Ambrose, I wish you had slapped my wretched niece silly, instead of just closed the door on her. You have oceans more forbearance than I will ever possess.”
“I doubt that, sir,” she said, and chose her own words carefully, since he was doing the same. “I’ve learned that protestation is rarely effective.”
“Not the first time, eh?” he asked, his voice casual.
“And probably not the last.” She rose to go—where she did not know—but Lord Trevor took her hand and kept her where she was. “I … I do hope you were not too harsh with her.”
He released his hold on her. “Just stay put a while, Miss Ambrose, if you will,” he told her. “I was all ready to haul her over my knee and give her a smack.” He chuckled. “That probably would have earned me a chapter in the tome she is undoubtedly going to write to her precious Lysander in the morning.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, indeed. I merely employed that tactic I learned years ago from watching some of the other barristers who plead in court, and looked her up and down until her knees knocked. Then I told her I was ashamed of her.” He leaned his elbow on the tread above and looked at her. “And I am, Miss Ambrose. Believe me, I am.”
The look that he gave her was so contrite that she felt tears behind her eyelids. I had better make light of this, she thought. I’m sure he wants me to assure him that it is all right, and that I didn’t mind. She forced herself to look him in the eye. Even in the gloom of the stairwell, she could tell that nothing of the sort was on his mind. She had never seen a more honest gaze.
“I won’t deny that it hurt, Lord Trevor,” she replied, her voice quiet, “but do you know, I’ve been sitting here and thinking that it’s been pretty easy the last few holidays to hide myself in Bath. And … and I really have nothing to hide, do I?”
There. She had told a near stranger something that she could not even write to her mother, when that dear woman had written many times from India to ask her how she really did, on her own and without the protection of her distinguished missionary family.
Again he surprised her. He took her hand and held it. “Nothing to hide at all, my dear Miss Ambrose. Would it surprise you that I have been doing that very thing? I have been confining myself to the area of my rooms near Lincoln’s Inn and Old Bailey for nearly eleven years. We are more alike than my silly niece would credit.”
Her bewilderment must have shown on her face, because he stood up and pulled her up, too. “If you’re not too tired, or too irritated at the ignorance and ill-will in one little dower house, I believe I want to explain myself. Do join me in the sitting room. Miss Ambrose.”
She didn’t really have a choice, because he never released her hand. Mystified rather than embarrassed now, she followed him into the sitting room. He let go of her hand to pull another chair close to the fireplace, and indicated that she sit. She did, with a sigh. The fire was just warm enough, and the pillow he had placed behind her back just the right touch. He sat in the other chair and propped his feet on the fender.
“I told you I am the black sheep, didn’t I?”
She had to laugh. “And I am, well, a little colorful, too.” He joined in her laughter, not the least self-conscious, which warmed her heart. He surprised her by quickly leaning forward to touch her cheek. “Your skin is the most amazing shade of olive. Ah, is that the Egyptian in you? How fine! And brown eyes that are probably the envy of nations.” He chuckled. “I don’t mean to sound like a rakehell, Miss A.” He looked at the far wall. “I suppose I am used to speaking my mind.”
“I suppose that’s your privilege,” she said.
“I do say what I please. I doubt anyone in the ton thinks I am a gentleman.”
“You’re the br
other of a marquis,” she reminded him. “Surely that counts for …”
“It counts for nothing,” he interrupted, finishing her thought. “I am not playing the game I was born to play, Miss Ambrose, and some take offense.”
She sat up straight and turned to face him impulsively. “How can you say that? I have been reading of the good you have done!”
“You are too kind, my dear. When I was in York today, I spoke to the warden at the Abbey. You’re from a crusading family, yourself, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Papa and Mama lived in Egypt for nearly twenty years. I am not their only ‘extra child,’ as Papa puts it.”
“The warden was sufficiently impressed when I mentioned that a member of the Ambrose family was visiting the Marquis of Falstoke.”
Cecilia smiled. “And now they are doing good in India, and plumbing the depths of Sanskrit.” She looked up, pleased to see Lord Trevor smiling at her, for no particular reason that she could discern. At least he does not look so tired, she thought. “We came to England in 1798, when I was sixteen. I went four years to Miss Dupree’s Select Academy, and now I teach drawing and pianoforte.”
“You weren’t tempted to go to India with them?”
“No, I was not,” she said. He was still smiling at her, and she decided he was a most attractive man, even with his untidy hair and rumpled clothing. “I like it right here, even with … with its occasional difficulties. And that is all I am going to say now. It is your turn to tell me why someone of your rank and quality thinks he is a black sheep.”
“It’s a sordid tale,” he warned her.
“I doubt that. Slide the hassock over, please. Thank you.”
He made himself comfortable, too. “Miss Ambrose, the fun of being a younger son cannot be underrated. I did a double first at Oxford, contemplated taking Holy Orders, considered buying a pair of colors, and even thought I would travel to the Caribbean and invest in sugar cane and slaves.”
