‘I see,’ I said, flatly.
‘No, you don’t see, do you? You think I’m trying to curb you. But this is only while the roads are treacherous. There’s twelve inches of snow underfoot, and when all that thaws there’ll be floods everywhere and the Ouse will burst its banks. The ground is still frozen solid. The water will take weeks to drain away. So don’t take any foolish risks.’
‘Yes, I do see. I’m sorry. I shall be careful with Jamie.’
‘I want you to be careful with you too, Miss Follet.’
‘Yes, of course.’ As Jamie’s mother, I had to stay in one piece.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake, woman. Must you see everything I say in the wrong light? Could you not thaw, occasionally?’
I had no answer to that, none that I dared speak. But something in my face must have given me away just long enough for him to see beneath the ice and, before I could sidestep, his hands gripped my upper arms, pulling me to him and sliding round to my back like steel bands, bending me and knocking my breath away.
‘I could thaw you,’ he whispered. ‘I did it before and I could do it again. You’ve done your best to keep a distance between us. Don’t think I’ve not noticed. But the time will come…’
‘No, it won’t,’ I whispered back, finding it hard to breathe. ‘The time will never come, my lord. Now let me go before we’re discovered.’
His arms dropped. He seemed to struggle against some emotion that closed his eyes and tilted his head back with a noisy sigh that made me long to comfort him, to touch his lips with my own. He turned away to the table, picked up his glass and downed the contents in one gulp. Then, smacking the glass down, he threw open the door into the hall and called for his coat with quite unnecessary loudness.
I should have felt well satisfied by that but, for some reason, I felt quite the opposite, strangely upset and subdued, and wondering how much longer I would be able to stay on course.
Chapter Six
Not for my own peace of mind, nor indeed for his, could I allow him to go like that. We were not sworn enemies and, although his own behaviour had been less than gentlemanly, I must try to learn how far to push him. It was something I had not needed to do with Linas.
Caring not what Mrs Goode or Debbie might think, I quickly threw on the outdoor clothes I had just shed and went out again, half-running along Blake Street to the corner of Stonegate where I believed he would have gone. I was right. His horses were still in the courtyard, his grooms surprised to see me so soon. One of them ran to open the kitchen door for me.
He was there, hatless, in conversation with Linas’s housekeeper, the first to notice my entrance. She turned in surprise. ‘Miss Follet! Good morning, ma’am.’
He came towards me at once, his eyes anxious. ‘Is something wrong?’
I felt that my impulsiveness was getting me into as big a mess as my long-held resentments, for even now I had not rehearsed what to say to him. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I forgot something.’ It would do for a beginning.
As if he felt something of my discomfort, he escorted me up to the hall where the smell of paint, the general mess of displaced furniture and bare flooring indicated that a grand spring clean was already under way. The changeover was as good a time as any, and already the new coats of white and pale grey paint had brought a clean light to the walls.
‘In here,’ he said, holding open the door to Linas’s study. It too was in some disorder, the bookcases half emptied, the mantelshelf bare, the few chairs shrouded with holland covers. ‘Will this do?’ he said, closing the door behind us. ‘What is it? What did you forget?’
‘My manners,’ I replied. ‘I’ve come…well…to beg your pardon. It was unpardonable of me to allow you to leave my house without thanking you for your good care of us, and for the second load of supplies, and for your kindness to me and Jamie. Thank you, my lord. I am not as ungrateful as I appeared to be just now. Of course, your own manners leave much to be improved on, but I am the one who should apologise. Which I do.’
He listened attentively, though I saw his lips twitch as if a laughing protest was being held in check, though his acceptance was never in doubt. ‘Let’s face it,’ he said, ‘you’ve been under some considerable strain lately, Miss Follet, so I think an occasional bout of queer stirrups can easily be forgiven. Think no more of it. As for what you choose to call my kindness, it has given me pleasure to be where I was most needed. That’s exactly how I hoped it would be, though without the illness. My house is always open to you whenever you need it, and for any reason. Or for no reason. It can be your second home, if you wish it.’
This time, I would not allow my scepticism to spoil his generosity, so I nodded and thanked him politely and said I believed that’s what Jamie already had in mind. Which made us both smile. I felt we’d made some progress.
His hand rested upon a pile of leather-bound volumes too large for bedtime reading, his palm fondly sweeping. He saw me watching, though thankfully without being able to see into my mind. ‘History of Arts and Sciences,’ he said. ‘I shall keep these, but I don’t know about this lot.’ He patted a smaller pile of notebooks that had been well used. Linas had been an avid note-taker. ‘I don’t have time to go through them. Would you care to take them? They might be of interest, or they might not.’
I had an obligation to do what I could. ‘Yes, I’ll take them home. They’re probably household accounts, in which case they’ll be helpful.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Er…else?’
Suddenly, we’d begun to talk more like friends instead of fencers looking for an opening to make a hit. He would be spending some time here, and perhaps I ought to be making the most of that convenience instead of bemoaning it. There had to be some advantages somewhere. Perhaps, I thought, I’d been too hasty in my determination to exclude him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I mean…things.’ He cast an eye over the piled-up desk. ‘There must surely have been other gifts apart from those few you mentioned before? You should have them. If you tell me where they are…?’
I hesitated, then decided he should know how things stood. Mistresses, after all, are not on the same footing as wives. ‘The things I collected before were bought by me, my lord, not Linas. They were only here for my use when I stayed, that’s all.’
‘Oh. Not gifts?’
‘No, not gifts. Linas rarely bothered with gifts, did he?’
‘So…your black mare was not a gift?’
‘The horses and the phaeton belonged to Linas, not to me. They go with the house. I’m not complaining, my lord. That’s how he preferred it. I think he was never quite convinced that I would stay. Perhaps he was influenced by your opinion that I’m unreliable. Who knows? So thank you for the offer. I could say, this, this and this, but that would be grasping and dishonest. There is nothing here that belongs to me.’
He stood very still while I spoke, looking hard at me with eyes widening, then frowning with concern. It was clear he was both surprised and puzzled. ‘And gifts from you to Linas? Was that the same?’
Since I was being scrupulously honest, it was not. I shrugged, trying to make light of it. ‘Embroidered nightcaps, silk nightshirts made by me, silk evening shirts ditto, kid gloves, a tambour-embroidered red-wool dressing gown that I made for him, with matching slippers and cap, monogrammed handkerchiefs and satin embroidered braces, and that striped lustre waistcoat you admired. None of them will fit me, I’m afraid. The monogrammed table linen had better stay where it is. And the cushions, too. And the chair-seats and fire-screen.’
‘Good grief!’
‘Oh, don’t be concerned. That’s just the way it was. Linas knew he didn’t need to pay me in the way that mistresses are usually paid because for one thing I never asked him to. I had a house to live in and a way of earning a legitimate living, and that’s all I ever wanted, and all he needed from me was affection and attention, and for me to nurse him. And Jamie, of course. It worked both ways, didn’t it? I don’t thin
k I let him down, my lord.’
Slowly, his gaze swung away to rest lazily upon the white scene outside and on the dazzle of windows opposite. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you did either. If anything, the shoe was on the other foot, Miss Follet.’
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘it’s never much use going over old ground again and again, is it? It’s too late. Linas was very poorly and he did what he could. I only tell you this to settle once and for all what belongs to whom. Fortunately, he didn’t need to buy my clothes, or Jamie’s either. That’s one thing I could manage to pay for.’
‘You are the best-dressed woman I know. You must have saved him hundreds, over the years.’
‘Well, now that’s gone to Jamie, hasn’t it? But when I said it’s no use going over old ground, I meant our old ground too. I’ve had my say about that now, and you have listened and I believe you understand my feelings better than you did before. But we must try to put it all behind us and move on, although I would not want anyone to assume that I am now one of your mistresses simply because I was your brother’s, and because Jamie and I must visit you. That’s never going to be the case, my lord.’
‘I agree. It’s never going to be the case because I shall never ask you to be my mistress, Miss Follet. You may be assured on that.’
‘Oh, then we are agreed. What a relief. So now we can perhaps deal more comfortably together without all those strings attached. Like business partners for Jamie’s welfare and no more embarrassing references to…well…you know.’
Again, he appeared to be having difficulty in hiding a smile, though I had not thought my proposal to be so very entertaining. ‘Just put it out of our minds, eh?’ he said, touching his nose with a knuckle.
‘Completely and for ever. I am not a saint, so I cannot say that I have forgiveness in my heart, but nor do I intend to harp on the subject till the string breaks. It could become tedious.’
He turned back to the window, I think to hide his face. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘I suppose I must be devoutly thankful for a thaw, if nothing else. I was afraid the big freeze might last well into the spring.’
There was barely enough time for me to appreciate the analogy before the door opened rather abruptly to the sound of a high voice preceding its owner as if in mid-conversation. ‘Oh! And so this is the dreary study that needs…oh!’ she squeaked. ‘Miss Follet…er… I had no idea you were here. Am I interrupting something?’
‘Yes,’ said Winterson, coldly. ‘You are.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘not at all, Veronique dear. This is the dreary study that needs a lick of paint. I always used to knock before I entered.’
Credit where credit’s due, I recovered myself superbly. Faster than she did from my reply. But I could see her great baby-blue eyes greedily taking in my dishevelled appearance, my hair straying over my ears, my unbuttoned pelisse-coat and woolly scarf, hardly a walking advertisement for Follet and Sanders. She, on the other hand, wore a well-tailored crimson thing that drained her milky complexion and clashed gaudily with her yellow hair.
Picking up Linas’s notebooks, I glanced up to see Winterson’s displeasure. ‘Thank you for these,’ I said, forcing my frosty smile into his eyes. ‘I would not like them to fall into the wrong hands. He was always most fastidious about who he allowed into his study, wasn’t he? Good day to you, dear Veronique. So good to see you looking…er…well.’
Winterson found his tongue. ‘Miss Follet,’ he said, following me to the door, ‘I’ll come with you—’
‘No, thank you, my lord. You must stay and entertain your guest.’
He opened the front door for me, but I was out through the crack and down the watery steps too fast for him to protest, and I felt him watching me stalk through the slush without a backward glance like an offended black-headed gull.
To say that I had made a complete fool of myself was well short of the truth: proposing a truce, putting my gripes behind me, attempting to lift our fragile relationship on to a more level plane, thinking in my stupidity that perhaps I’d been a mite too harsh, after his faultless hospitality. What could I have been thinking about? Had I really expected things to change because I’d thought it was time they did?
I had never ‘deared’ Lady Veronique Slatterly before, but if she was going to insist on getting under my feet at every end and turn, as I had no doubt she would, then there would be no more ‘ladyshipping’ from my lips. The thought of her paddling about in Linas’s house made me sad and angry, and the thought of Winterson entertaining her there, perhaps in the same bed that Linas and I had once shared, made me angrier still. She must, I thought, have been waiting for Winterson to arrive. Timed to perfection. And why had he tried to hide his cynical smile? Why had he not simply laughed out loud at my absurdity?
Of course I had no hard and fast evidence that Veronique Slatterly was his mistress; it was an assumption I made in view of her frequent appearances at Abbots Mere and her simpering, clinging possessiveness of Winterson as if she were already the lady in residence. It was hard to know for sure, his attitude to her being not quite lover-like enough to reveal any deep affection, nor was it quite dismissive enough to keep her away for good. However abrupt he was with her—and he could be very abrupt, when he chose—it did not stop her from returning for more of those periods when he seemed content to tolerate, if not actually enjoy, her company.
She had wealth and good connections, plenty of rakes and rattles for friends and a fond father who owned a very successful racing stable near York. His jockeys were drawn from a keen circle of well-born young men who swarmed around the fair and voluptuous Veronique with a view, I supposed, to taking a share of what was on offer. Yes, I had seen the kind of favours she allowed, intimacies she didn’t bother to hide from me since she probably assumed I had done the same, at some stage. Such were the problems of being a man’s mistress rather than his wife. I dare say she thought that that kind of behaviour would make Winterson all the keener.
However, she had a title and I was still, in her eyes, a mantua-maker’s assistant with ideas beyond her station. But because I now had close ties to Winterson’s family, which she did not, she saw me as a threat to her ambition to become his wife. I would like her to have understood, once and for all, how unnecessary her fears were, but the cool civility he had always extended to me was far from the uncertain reception she often had to put up with from him and, although that seemed not to deter her, it did little to help my cause either.
From a woman’s point of view, I was not in the least afraid of her but, as a mother, I was afraid of what she might try to do to my darling innocent Jamie while he was staying with his guardian. She would continue to think what she liked about my place in the grand scheme of things, but without Linas to help me keep out of her way, I would now have to remove the gloves and reveal my claws. Fortunately, I have never been afraid of taking matters into my own hands.
After two weeks away from home I had plenty of catching up to do and so, following some soul-searching concerning my responsibilities to Jamie, the business, and myself, I put aside what had happened, determined to move on. It was not as easy as it sounds.
* * *
One of my first calls was to the shop on the other side of Blake Street where I had to leap over gushing streams of melt-water running along the gulleys. Prue never complained about my absences, but I could see she needed all the help she could get. ‘Orders?’ she said. ‘I should say so. The St Valentine’s Day ball is only one week away and we’ve got fittings every day until then, and one worker off ill. We shall have to take an apprentice if we’re to be ready on time. We need more lace too. Would there be any in those bundles Mr Follet brought?’
‘You’ve not opened them yet?’
‘No, I was waiting for you. Look, they’re over here.’ With an effort, she pushed two very large bales across the table towards me, too heavy to carry. Wrapped in waxed canvas and tied with twine, they contained separate packages of fabric, none of them of the ordin
ary sort I bought from the Manchester warehouses, but the finest sheer jaconet muslins, silks shot with gold threads, printed calicoes from India, brocades and silken ribbons, gold and silver braids, priceless bales of Alençon, black Chantilly, blonde and Valenciennes laces. Here were the finest embroidered kid gloves by the dozen, furs and fans, silk stockings and velvets, Kashmir shawls and nets like cobwebs that English women hankered after. Forbidden fruits. Exotic and rare—its value was immense.
Lifting and sorting, gasping at each new revelation, we were both dumbstruck by the quantity and quality, for this was by far the most valuable consignment Pierre had ever brought us. ‘Where on earth is he getting it all from?’ I whispered, holding up a length of tulle. ‘This is…priceless!’
Prue was a realist. ‘Not exactly priceless,’ she said, lifting to one side a heap of narrow lace edgings. ‘Lyons velvet will sell at fourteen shillings the yard, and we can get three shillings for this French merino. And look at these braids, Helene. Three and fourpence a yard for that one, four and sixpence for that.’
‘But how is he paying for all this, Prue? That’s what I need to know. The money we put aside from the last load couldn’t possibly have bought so much, not even at French prices. Look at this. We’ve never had an ikatdyed muslin like this before, have we?’
‘Nor Russian sable either. This’ll make a lovely collar and cuffs for that grey velvet pelisse of yours. And take a look at this grosgrain, and these Pekins.’ She held up an armful of silk that shone with a seductive lustre; the pale stripes on a paler background was what our younger customers could not get enough of.
‘I can’t understand it,’ I said, trying not to sound too critical. ‘He’s actually buying more goods than we’ve given him money for, Prue.’
She frowned at me. It was probably the first time we had ever discussed the whys and wherefores of our dealings with Pierre. He bought the goods, we sold them, and the money was shared between us with one share allocated for the next consignment. The profits so far had been generous, benefiting all of us although, in theory, he could only buy what the previous share would cover. ‘Does he go over to France for them?’ she said. ‘Personally, I mean.’
Marrying the Mistress Page 9
