Lady Silence

by Blair Bancroft

  Until this moment, Damon had refused to address his mother’s companion as anything but “Katy” or “Snow.” She was a servant, by God, and that’s the way it would be. But after the morning’s disaster, either he gave her the sack or he mended his fences. Or his mama was going to reiterate her intention of leaving Farr Park.

  There was, of course, only one acceptable course of action.

  Damon cleared his throat, pursed his lips, fidgeted. More like a schoolboy than a proper colonel. Inwardly, he winced. “Miss Snow,” he said through gritted teeth, “shall I expect you in the bookroom at the usual time in the morning?”

  Katy bobbed a curtsy so slight it was more a regal incline of her head.

  Lady Moretaine drew a gasping breath. Katy, willing herself not to tremble, stood staring over her employer’s shoulder, her chin so high she could see nothing but a Canaletto scene of Venice surrounded by its ornate gilt frame.

  With an abrupt nod, Colonel Farr thrust his hands behind his back and exited the room, adding a curt goodnight only as he passed beneath the lintel.

  Behind him, Katy sank down into the damask-upholstered armchair. Serena, Lady Moretaine, steepled her hands before her face and wondered how she could possibly have been so foolish.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Seven

  He’d wanted to kiss her! Katy, curled up on the chintz-covered window seat in her bedchamber, hugging herself as she stared blankly at the darkness outside. Damon Farr—scowling, taciturn master of Farr Park—had come within a hair’s breadth of pressing his lips to hers.

  And she’d done what Clover had taught her. And done it well.

  Death was preferable to the agony of remembrance! Well, perhaps not. But if the moment could be taken back, she’d gladly do it a thousand times over. As she’d run from the bookroom in girlish panic, she caught a glimpse of her employer’s distress. Clover had not warned her that a knee to that portion of a gentleman’s anatomy was so painful. Too late, Katy grasped the point.

  She sniffed. A tear slid down one cheek, then the other. Glum and irascible as the man was, he was still Farr Park’s hero. Her hero. Even with a face seamed by the horrors and hardships of war, she thought Damon Farr quite the most attractive man she had ever seen. Including Jesse Wiggs, the second footman, Elijah Palmer, the steward, and Mr. William Rowley, the local doctor, all of whom had shown considerable interest in her since she had blossomed from child to woman. Mr. Rowley, in fact, seized every opportunity to study what he called her affliction, although, as Clover had once remarked, the saucy bloke seemed more interested in examining Katy’s bosom than in looking down her throat.

  If she tried very hard to be objective, Katy supposed, all three men were more handsome than Damon Farr. Certainly, they were better natured, yet . . . Why, oh, why, had she not let him kiss her? It would have been a moment to treasure for the rest of her dull life.

  More likely, it would have led to utter disaster. Disgrace. Dismissal.

  But what if . . . what if the opposite were true? What if he were captivated, charmed out of his sullens? What if he fell in love, fulfilling all her fantasies? What if . . . ?

  Oo-oh! Katy winced and clenched her teeth. What if she had inflicted permanent damage? With Clover Stiles as a friend, Katy was not as ignorant as most young gentlewomen. Dire thought chased dire thought. What if he could not . . . ?

  Katy clasped her hands before her face and bowed her head. She prayed for the colonel’s good health, for wisdom beyond her years. For some way out of the coil she had fastened round herself. For the future she should have had, instead of the path, lonely and forlorn, that stretched endlessly before her.

  Unless . . .

  Katy heaved a shuddering sigh . . . and prayed harder.

  The following morning, an hour before he must of necessity make his apologies to Katy Snow, Colonel Farr sat across from the highly competent Elijah Palmer and attempted to understand what the steward was telling him. The fact of the matter was, after Palmer’s eight years at Farr Park—most of them in sole charge of everything but the running of the household—any conference the steward might have with his employer was in the nature of tutor to pupil. Damon gave the man his due. He just wished Palmer weren’t quite so . . . ah—well-made. Above medium height, blond, blue-eyed, single, and still well short of forty. Was it because of Palmer that Katy Snow had had to learn how to defend herself?

  With a wave of his hand, Damon indicated his acceptance of the steward’s report. In truth, he had not understood one word in ten. He’d have to have Katy find some books on agriculture and agrarian reform. Beyond the concept of crop rotation, he was lost.

  “Tell me about Katy Snow,” said the colonel.

  “Sir?” A slow blush spread over Elijah Palmer’s even features.

  Good God! At his age a man should have left blushes behind long since.

  “A fine young lady, colonel,” declared Mr. Palmer. “Devoted to Lady Moretaine.”

  “And attractive.”

  Mr. Palmer squirmed in his chair before evidently concluding that honesty was best. “Indeed, sir, an eyeful she is. Brightens the day for all of us, she does.”

  “And you, in particular?”

  Elijah Palmer reached out, carefully closing the account books he had laid before his employer. “Well, colonel, I’ll not deny I had thoughts in that direction. If she weren’t a foundling, I’d never get a chance at such a lady.”

  Damn the man! Palmer looked so expectant, as if the girl were about to be delivered up to him on a silver platter, tied with a bow. “My mother is inordinately fond of the chit,” Damon said as if he cared not a whit what his steward thought of his secretary. “Are there any other potential suitors I should be aware of?”

  “Rowley, colonel. The doctor. Says he’s determined to discover what caused her problem and find a way to cure her, but no one believes a word. Likes to touch her, he does. Peer down her bosom. Enough to make a man sick, watchin’ him watchin’ her!”

  It was the colonel’s turn to squirm, as he recalled the number of times he himself had peered at Katy’s fine bosom, even after she had taken to wearing those flimsy things the ladies called a fichu. After all, a man would have to be dead not to—

  “Anyone else?” Damon asked, not bothering to hide either his annoyance or his sarcasm.

  Mr. Palmer nodded. “Jesse, the second footman. I swear that boy can keep his face straight front while his eyes roam three hundred degrees. Doctor ought to study him, he should! Swivel eyes, that’s what he’s got. And focused on Katy Snow every chance he gets.”

  Only long years of strict discipline kept Colonel Farr’s temper in place. The girl was a veritable houri with a swarm of swains panting at her skirts. Disgusting!

  That he should be one of them, even more so.

  He opened his mouth to express his satisfaction that the girl would not go wanting for a husband. What came out was something else entirely. “I find her useful,” he told Elijah Palmer, “so do not expect that I will give her up any time soon.” Colonel Farr picked up the stack of estate records, handed them to his steward, effectively ending their interview.

  Damon looked up to find Katy Snow standing five feet from his mahogany desk, looking vastly pleased with herself and flashing a smile at Palmer as if he were her dearest friend.

  Blasted female. He’d choke before he apologized to the little minx for discussing her with his steward, let alone for his attempt on her person.

  Hell and damnation, he’d just been caught telling his steward he found her useful. He might as well have groveled at her feet. The chit was a menace. She’d bamboozled the men around her as handily as she had his mother. Damon just wanted to get his hands on her—although whether to wring her neck or kiss her senseless, he wasn’t quite certain.

  “Bring me the Chapman,” he snapped, without so much as a good morning. “We might as well begin where we left off.” He could not have said that! “I beg your pardon,” Damon gasped. And promptly pr
oved that Elijah Palmer was not the only grown man who could blush.

  He expected her to dash from the room, as she had the day before. Instead, Katy was holding both hands over her mouth, shoulders shaking. She was laughing?

  She was.

  In that case, perhaps they should begin where they left off. The colonel’s spirits soared.

  But Katy, ever elusive, straightened her face and marched across the room to the table on which Mapes had placed the books he had found at the foot of the ladder. But, as she stacked the Chapman translation in front of him, Damon could swear her lips were twitching. Which meant their odd relationship had not been shattered beyond repair. No matter she was the object of the affections of at least three men with seemingly honorable intentions, droit de seigneur was looking more appealing by the moment.

  “Colonel Farr?” Mapes cleared his throat, tried again when his employer did not look up from the Chapman, which Damon found genuinely fascinating, for all its seventeenth century language. “Colonel, sir? Mr. Rowley, the doctor, is here.”

  “Is someone ill?” The words were so quiet and blandly spoken that only Katy Snow, tucked up in a wingchair in a far corner of the room, caught the menace in them.

  “No, indeed, colonel. Mr. Rowley—Mr. William Rowley—is a frequent visitor. He is making what he calls a study of our Katy. He plans to tell her story in some fancy doctoring journal.”

  Hidden in the wingchair, Katy made a face that Mrs. Tyner had once described as “sure to curdle milk.”

  “Mr. Rowley is also attempting to help our Katy find her voice,” Mapes added with what sounded suspiciously like the hope and pride of a fond parent.

  “Very well, send him in.” Damon’s quick survey of the bookroom revealed not a sign of Katy Snow, but he knew quite well she was lurking somewhere about.

  Devil it! Damon had pictured a leering roué of forty-odd years, perhaps a widower. The young man before him could not be a day over twenty-five or six. As tall as himself, if a bit gangly. A confident gaze looked out from eyes that closely matched his warm brown hair, fashionably cut in one of London’s latest styles. His clothing was equally well cut. A dandy, by God.

  And peering down his Katy’s bosom!

  His Katy. Blast the girl—she was capturing him as handily as she had all the others. Far from an innocent child, she had to be an adventuress, pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, assuring her continuance in her snug little nest.

  Damon asked the doctor to be seated. After exchanging the customary greetings to be expected between a wealthy landowner and a lowly local doctor—which reminded the colonel strongly of exchanges between himself and fresh-faced officers just out from England, exuding the confidence of their ancient lineages—he said, “I understand you have an interest in Katy Snow.”

  “A unique case,” Rowley declared with considerable enthusiasm. Far too much, Damon thought sourly. “Most unique to find a mute who can hear. I have decided to write a paper about her.”

  Damon leaned back in his chair, raised his voice to be sure it carried to wherever Katy had hidden herself. “Has it ever occurred to you, Rowley, that Katy Snow might not be a mute?”

  Surprisingly, the doctor’s enthusiasm brightened still more.. “Ah, then you are aware of the power of hysteria, colonel? No doubt from your experiences on the Peninsula?”

  That was not at all what he had in mind, but the Damon would never admit it. “Hysteria, Rowley? I suppose that is a common female complaint,” he pronounced At any moment, he expected a book to come flying at him, well-aimed by Katy Snow’s allegedly hysterical hand.

  “That is exactly what I was going to propose in my paper, colonel,” declared the doctor. “There are a number of cases in which a perfectly normal child has been frightened into silence by some disastrous event.”

  Damon inclined his head. “Perhaps. But I fear that was not my meaning.” He watched Rowley intently as the young man finally comprehended the colonel’s remark.

  “Impossible! She was twelve when she came to Farr Park. She’s past eighteen now. No one could manage such a masquerade for that length of time. Nor would she. Miss Snow is a sweet, charming young lady. How frequently have I heard Lady Moretaine call her a treasure. Which she undoubtedly is,” the doctor added, regaining his customary confidence in the superiority of his judgment.

  The colonel proffered a tight smile that was more chilling than his frown. “I believe we must agree to disagree,” he murmured. “Did you wish to see the girl today, Rowley?”

  “Indeed,” replied the doctor cooly. “I am attempting to stimulate her voice by applying pressure to the muscles in her neck—”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I apply pressure here . . . and here,” said Mr. Rowley, raising his fingers to his own throat and demonstrating his technique.

  “You massage Katy’s neck?” said Colonel Farr, most ominously.

  “Ah, yes . . . I believe you might call it that.”

  “Katy!” Damon bawled. His recent condescension to addressing her as Miss Snow had completely slipped his mind.

  She appeared from behind him and stood to his right, keeping the width of the desk between herself and William Rowley. Damon did not think it was by accident.

  “Katy, Mr. Rowley wishes you to go with him for one of his treatments.”

  She planted her feet hard against the carpet, as if a tree of ancient root. She crossed her arms over her chest; her head shook a tiny but decisive No.

  “Miss Snow,” Damon said, carefully correcting his form of address, “now acts as my secretary. “I am certain that as a fellow author you can appreciate how much work is involved in that chore. I believe—no, I am sure—I cannot spare her. Your efforts on her behalf are much appreciated, Rowley, but I think such treatments must cease. If you will send a reckoning to my steward, you will receive your fee promptly.

  Masterful! Katy chortled. She could kiss every last line in the colonel’s face, particularly that small jagged scar at the corner of his mouth. When the door shut firmly behind Mr. William Rowley, Katy fell to her knees beside the colonel’s chair. She grabbed his hand and kissed it.

  “I take it,” said the colonel in strangled tones, “that the good doctor’s hands did not always stay on your throat? Oh, blast it, child, don’t cry all over me!”

  How had he known? How had he guessed that of all the men in her new life, she feared Rowley the most? But Lady Moretaine, Mapes, and Mrs. Tyner thought the world of the doctor. Who evidently strayed over the line only with herself. And unwilling to be a talebearer and upset the household, Katy had not complained. But Colonel Farr had instantly taken the doctor’s measure. He was her savior—again. Well and truly her hero.

  With his free hand, the colonel touched the mound of curls piled high on top of her head. Katy gulped, tried to gather her wandering wits. And failed.

  “I’m not a magician, child,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “Palmer gave me a hint. He has a fondness for you, I believe. Not a bad match for a girl of no background. I doubt you could do better.”

  He was twining his fingers through her hair and suggesting she wed his steward! Beast! Didn’t he realize he was supposed to be a hero? The romantic do-no-evil fantasy of her girlish heart? Ruthlessly, Katy kept her head down, eyes tight shut, hiding her fierce rush of anger.

  He’d been too long without, Damon thought, his face twisting in disgust as he took in what his fingers were doing. He’d clung too fervently to his fierce desire to be left alone. No wonder he lusted after the first pretty face . . .

  His employee.

  His mama’s companion.

  A virgin, by God . . . or maybe not.

  Hair so soft, like waves of golden grain. Struggling against frustration, Damon groped for a defensive strategy, some means of cutting through the thrall that was threatening to bind him.

  She was an encroaching baggage, Katy Snow. A child of mysterious, and surely lowly, origin. He was quite right when he had called
her an adventuress. He had to fight the insidious power of her beauty, the fascination of the mystery from which she’d sprung, the strange allure of a female who did not talk. Surely any man who had survived the Peninsular campaign and Waterloo could manage one small girl.

  “Tell me, Katy Snow,” he drawled, “are you an hysterical mute, as the esteemed Mr. Rowley argues, or are you the conniving little minx I think you are?”

  Katy shot to her feet, fists clenched, green eyes smoldering.

  Did she have the slightest idea how close to the brink she teetered? How much he wanted to scoop her up and . . .

  Ostentatiously, she lifted the pendant watch dangling about her neck, perusing it with all the fascination of one who has never seen a timepiece before. A small secret smile tugged at her lips.

  In the few weeks they had been together Damon had learned to read her quite well: The answer to his first question was: That’s for me to know and never tell. The answers to the questions he had asked himself were less visible. Did she recognize her power to attract? Did she sense how little control he had left? He greatly feared she did.

  The dastardly little chit dropped an exaggerated curtsy and stalked from the room. Time for Lady Moretaine’s portion of Katy Snow’s day.

  Hell and damnation, and the devil fly away with all women.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Eight

  “Mama,” said the colonel a few days later as they dipped their spoons into a light clear soup liberally sprinkled with fresh dill, “I have had a brief note from Drucilla, informing me that Moretaine has gone shooting in Scotland. She has sent on my post but does not know when it may reach him.”

  “Clearly, she did not accompany him.” The dowager’s tone was a condemnation.