The footmen lounged towards the door, but this was an impertinence too far for the butler. “You will do no such thing! Madam, I have no idea who you are but you will leave at once. Make an appointment and—”
“I have an appointment!” she cried desperately, and it was true. At least, she had written to tell the earl of their plans, which was almost the same thing. “His lordship is expecting us!” And that part was probably not true, but he ought to be expecting them. If only the wretched man had bothered to read his letters!
But the butler had made up his mind. “Throw them out,” he said to the footmen.
“No, you must listen!” Felicia cried. “Let me speak to the earl first!”
It was no good. The footmen marched purposely across the hall towards Juliana and Margarita, who promptly ran away, ducking behind pillars and dodging this way and that to evade capture. Temple raised his fists, quite prepared to defend his womenfolk, while the butler barked out instructions and even deigned to chase after Margarita himself. Then, realising the futility of trying to catch an agile child of eight, he stopped and turned towards an easier target.
The moment he grabbed Felicia’s arm, she let out a piercing shriek. He pulled, she screamed and full-scale pandemonium broke out. Into this bedlam, a loud voice echoed down from above.
“What the devil is going on?”
The butler, the footmen and even Temple, who recognised the voice of authority when he heard it, froze and bowed deeply to the figure standing at the top of the stairs. Juliana and Margarita skittered out of the door to safety. Felicia was too angry to be deferential, even though it was clear that the newcomer was none other than the earl himself.
Stepping forward, she said coldly, “Are you Lord Finlassan?”
“What if I am? Who the devil are you and what are you doing here?”
His face was thunderous, and even in the midst of her rage, she grieved for the loss of the fair nobleman of her imagination. This man was as far from her flattering image as could be. He was tall, but also thin and pale, like a sapling grown lanky in shade. His hair was dark and tousled, and he was, to her eyes, only half dressed, as if he had just that moment risen from his bed. He wore no boots, waistcoat or coat, and not even a cravat, his sole concession to modesty being his breeches and a loosely-worn shirt. He looked nearer to the wicked earl than the saintly.
This was no time to be craven. She reminded herself that she had every right to be there, so she lifted her chin and said, “I am Miss Oakes, governess to the Miss Kearneys, and I have brought them to you.” When he looked blank, she added, “Your wards.”
“Nonsense! I have no wards,” he said gruffly, although he descended a stair or two.
“Indeed you do, my lord. Mr Kearney named you in his will as their guardian.” A horrid thought assailed her. “You are aware, I take it, that Mr Kearney is dead? I am very sorry if this news distresses you.”
“Why should it, since I know no one by the name of Kearney, alive or dead?” Three more stairs.
Her mouth flapped open in bewilderment. “You did not know him? Then why did he appoint you as guardian?”
“Your question must be rhetorical, since I cannot possibly answer it. You had best be on your way, madam. Whether you have fallen into some unaccountable error, or your purpose is a darker one, you have no business here. Bagnall, escort this person to the door.”
Felicia was bewildered. It could not be a mistake, it could not! It was in the will, she had the papers to prove it! “You are Fabian Warborough, the Fifth Earl of Finlassan?”
His scowl darkened, as if he would have liked to deny it, but he nodded curtly.
“Then you are named in the will of Mr Philip Kearney of Liverpool as guardian to his two daughters. I can show you all the documents.”
“Why the devil would any man undertake such an unfathomable act? To my knowledge, I have never met this Kearney fellow in my life, let alone been on such terms with him that he would entrust his daughters to me. Daughters! What am I supposed to do with them? It is quite impossible for me to undertake such a burden. Whatever was their father thinking? It is the foulest kind of cruelty to inflict them upon me. Such an imposition! ”
“It is a greater cruelty to two orphans to refuse them shelter. Are you expecting sympathy, my lord? Forgive me but I reserve my sympathy for Juliana and Margarita who are left without… without… My lord?”
He had gone so white that she wondered if he were about to swoon. His appearance was already delicate, but now he looked positively ill.
Rushing down the last few stairs, he said hoarsely, “Juliana? Margarita? What was their mother’s name?”
“She was a Juliana, too.”
He uttered a low growl deep in his throat. “And this Kearney fellow? Was he an architect?”
“He was! So you do know him?”
“Never knew his name. Never wanted to. My father always called him ‘that architect fellow’ and the epithet stuck. Oh God! Then she is dead! When? When did she die?”
“Their mother? Four years ago.”
He let out a long, slow breath like a sigh. “Where are they?”
Striding to the door, the footmen sprang forwards to pull the doors open for him, and out he went in his shirt and bare feet, leaping unheeding down the steps. “Juliana! Margarita!” he cried and they turned towards him. “Come here!”
Watching the little group from the top of the steps, Felicia held her breath. She heard the disappointment in his voice as he said, “I suppose you must take after your father. You — which one are you? Juliana… you have your mother’s eyes, and her chin, perhaps, but that is all.”
“You knew our mother?” Juliana said.
He gave a laugh then, but it was not a pleasant sound, more a bark of anger. “Knew her? Oh yes, most certainly I knew her. I almost married her… would have married her, but for one minor detail. She jilted me three days before the wedding to run away with your father.”
3: Hawkewood Hall
Fin dressed mechanically, hurling clothes on with careless haste, while Matthews wrung his hands and made little mewing noises of distress. One would think the valet would be used to his starts by now.
Juliana’s daughters! It was extraordinary! And now she was dead, and that last tiny spark of hope that would never consent to be extinguished was gone for ever. She was dead and he would never see her again.
The woman was already in the sitting room when he arrived, gazing at the pictures on the walls. Woman… girl… she could not be much more than twenty or so. Without the old-fashioned cloak, she looked respectable, if nothing more. The gown was plain — not dowdy, but serviceable rather than fashionable. Appropriate for a governess. What was her name? Oats? Oakes, that was it. Miss Oakes, governess, destined for a life of dull servitude spiralling into poverty and ill health.
“Tell me about her,” he said, as he came into the room. “Was she happy with that architect fellow?”
She raised an eyebrow, but answered composedly, “Mrs Kearney? The servants said so, but I never knew her myself. She died before I went as governess to the girls.”
“Mrs Kearney? Did she marry him, then?”
“No, he had a wife in Liverpool, but she always called herself that, seemingly. No one knew her right name.”
“Dulnain,” he said softly. “She was the Lady Juliana Margarita Dulnain.”
Both eyebrows shot up. “Lady Juliana? From a nobleman’s family, then?”
“The youngest daughter of the Fifth Earl of Cottersmere.”
“Well! Agnes will be excited to hear that.” She gestured towards the wall. “I recognise Mrs Kearney’s hand in some of these paintings. Her style was quite distinctive, and her work was all over the cottage. Every wall was covered with them. You only have a few of hers… these two and that one over there. Whose are the rest?”
“Mine.”
“Oh, you are a painter too?”
“I am. Have you brought her paintings with you?”
“Her sketchbooks, and a few small portraits of the girls which were small enough to be packed in the travel boxes. The rest are in the care of Mr Kearney’s solicitor in Southampton.”
“Southampton! Why the devil did the fellow have a solicitor in Southampton? Oh — was that where she lived? This cottage was in Southampton, was it? How odd. You have had quite a journey of it, then.”
“Oh, yes!” she said, and her face lit up with sudden mischief. “Five days on the road, and although we travelled in some comfort, coaching inns are not the most restful places in the world. I do not understand why the mail coach must come through at such an unholy hour, and make such a racket about it. I shall be glad for a couple of nights of peaceful sleep before I set off for home again.”
“Home again? What do you mean? You are the governess, are you not?”
“Indeed I am, but it was only ever intended to be a temporary situation, just until the girls were old enough to go to school. But that will be for you to decide now, and if you choose to keep them here with you, no doubt you will want a proper governess, who is fluent in several languages, can play the harp and sing at the same time, and is capable of setting three stitches in a straight line, which is more than I can do. Straight lines are the bane of my existence, my lord.”
“Why were you chosen, then, if you are so woefully inadequate in the ways of governessing?” he said, bemused by a woman who admitted defeat on the matter of straight lines.
“Because I have some modest skill in art, my lord, and Mr Kearney wished the girls to have the opportunity to practise, so that they might discover if they have inherited their mother’s talent. And also because I am a bastard, too, just like Juliana and Margarita.”
She smiled at him disarmingly, but he was so disconcerted that he found himself with nothing at all to say.
~~~~~
Drusilla and Giles arrived the next morning before breakfast. Even though he had not sent for them, he had known they would come. It was astonishing how quickly news flew the two miles to the village.
“Juliana’s daughters! Is it really possible, Fin?” Drusilla said.
“Why should it be so strange?” Giles said. “It is a not unexpected consequence of the arrangement into which she had entered.”
“Certainly, but to appoint Fin as their guardian, of all people! It is too eccentric for words.”
“The architect could hardly expect his wife to take care of them, could he?” Giles said.
“No, but he must have relations or friends or anyone closer than Fin.”
“I daresay they would not have them. He knew Fin would never reject Juliana’s offspring.”
“How could he possibly know that?” Drusilla said.
Fin let them rattle on without interruption, for it was too much trouble to attempt to discuss any matter rationally with them. They would have it their own way, and nothing he said made a difference. Drusilla was his only sister, and a more managing female would be hard to imagine. It was no surprise that no man had ever succeeded in taming her. She had driven Fin to distraction when she was at home, so as soon as she had attained her majority, he had made her a generous allowance and banished her from Hawkewood. She had settled nearby, and spent her days assisting Uncle Giles at the rectory and he was very welcome to her. He seemed not to mind her ways, for he was cut from the same sort of cloth himself.
While they talked together, Fin pondered the best way to bring Juliana’s paintings home from Southampton. A devilish long way, and who could he trust to do the work and ensure they travelled safely? And how many were there? The woman had said they were on every wall of the cottage, but then it might be a very small cottage. Or a large one. He would have to go himself, he supposed.
“Shall we see them?” Drusilla said, rousing Fin from his abstraction.
“See them?”
“These girls. Your wards. They are in the nursery, I take it. It will be a good opportunity to interview this governess to make sure she is suitable.”
“Suitable?”
“Must you repeat everything I say, Fin? Of course we must ensure she is suitable — check her references, and so forth. These matters must be done properly, you know.”
By ‘we must…’ he knew she meant ‘I must…’. Well, let her interview the woman, if she wanted. It was a matter of no interest to Fin. “She says she will not stay,” he said.
“Nonsense! Of course she will stay, for where else will she go? No governess likes to look for a new position, and we cannot give her a reference yet, since we know nothing of her. I shall talk to her, if you are not minded for it. Come along, Fin.”
Meekly, he went. He had not been into the day nursery since he had gone to Eton at the age of twelve, but as soon as he opened the door the familiar smells of chalk dust and musty books took him straight back to childhood. Two footmen were scurrying about with small desks and chairs, piles of books and boxes of wooden toys. A pair of housemaids were folding away Holland covers. The air was thick with dust. One of the girls was riding the rocking horse, while an anxious Bagnall hovered, hands outspread to forestall disaster. Where was the other child? There she was beside the governess, gazing out of the window, and to Fin’s amusement they were holding pencils to judge perspective. He went straight to them.
“What are you planning to draw?” he said to the girl.
She pointed out of the window. “The temple on the hill.”
“Ah. Interesting. Why that particular view?”
“Because it is mysterious.”
“You may not think so once you have examined it more closely,” Fin said gravely.
“Miss Oakes said we may not visit it until we have drawn it. We will draw what we can see from the window, then we will draw what we think it is like up close. We are to use our imaginations, for Miss Oakes says half of all art is imagination. Then we may go there and draw it again, but closer. Miss Oakes says that there is a fine prospect from every window and we must draw them all.”
“Miss Oakes likes landscapes, does she?”
“We do still life as well. I like that better, but Miss Oakes says we will never improve our landscapes and portraits if we do not practise. We do silhouettes, too, but those are hard! Miss Oakes is very good at taking likenesses of people. She drew Temple, and Mrs Markham said it was more lifelike than the real Temple.” She frowned, and added, “I think she must have been joking, for no painting could be more lifelike than the original, could it?”
“Not more lifelike, no, but a portrait may capture some aspect of the person that is hard to see in reality. Art is vision as well as seeing.”
She frowned even more, but the older child — Juliana! — who had descended from the rocking horse, said, “That is true, for you must remember Miss Oakes’ picture of Mrs Markham, Margarita. Mrs Temple wept when she saw it and said it captured all the tragedy of her life.”
For the first time, Fin felt a twinge of interest in Miss Oakes, whose portraits could capture the tragedy of a woman’s life. He was aware abruptly of the silence in the room. Drusilla and the portrait-painting Miss Oakes had vanished, presumably for the one to be interrogated by the other as to suitability, but Giles and the servants were staring at him with undisguised curiosity.
He grunted, not at all pleased to be caught out in a lengthy conversation with mere children. Turning on his heel, he said to Giles, “I shall be in my sitting room.”
It seemed a long time before Drusilla and Giles joined him there, whispering together as they entered the room, then turning to him with false smiles on their faces. At least, Drusilla’s was false. Giles looked amused. That was not a good omen, for it meant Drusilla was about to harangue him. There was nothing Giles enjoyed more than Drusilla haranguing her hapless brother.
“She will not do,” were Drusilla’s opening words. “She has no qualifications at all, so far as I can see. No references, either. I cannot imagine why anyone considered her suitable as a governess. She was only the art teacher
, you know. No languages, apart from a little French. She can add and subtract, but not much more than that. Her knowledge of history—”
Giles burst out laughing. “Take no notice of her, Fin. The real reason why she dislikes Miss Oakes has nothing to do with her competence or otherwise in arithmetic. She is too pretty, that is the long and the short of it.”
“Too pretty?” Fin said. “What the devil does that mean? Too pretty for what?”
“To be under your roof,” Giles chortled. “Drusilla thinks the chit might end up as a countess.”
“Good God! That is downright insulting,” Fin protested. “After Juliana, am I likely to fall for some dab of a governess, pretty or otherwise?”
“Oh, never tell me you had not noticed how pretty she is,” Drusilla said.
“Well, I had not,” Fin said. “I cannot say that I noticed her at all. She shouted at me a great deal, that is all I remember of her. Lord, Drusilla, you must think me a great idiot if you imagine me susceptible to such a girl.”
“All men are idiots where women are concerned,” Drusilla retorted. “But that is not all my objection to her, Giles, and you know it. She is not even respectable.”
“Good Lord, Drusilla, will you speak straight?” Fin said in exasperation. “She looked respectable enough to me. What the devil is the matter with her?”
“She is a bastard,” Giles said, still chuckling. “A bastard to teach the bastards. Now do not bridle up at me, Fin, because it is true enough. Those girls may be your wards, but they are not legitimate, there is no getting away from it.”
“That is neither here nor there,” Drusilla protested. “Fin’s protection will allow the children to take their place in society at some level, but the governess is in far worse case, for she does not even know who her parents may be. She is entirely unsuitable to be in the household of an earl, Fin. You must give some consideration to your position, my dear.”
“What the devil does it matter?” Fin said irritably, with an indifferent lift of one shoulder. “She told me herself she was a bastard, and obviously the children are, but I cannot see what difference it makes. Still, if you feel her to be improper in some way, then let her go. She wants to go, in any event.”
The Painter Page 4
