Lady Silence

by Blair Bancroft

  “Ah, Miss!” Jesse Wiggs spoke from just inside the drawing room door. “I was coming to find you. Clover and me are ready to move furniture about, but we need to know where you wants it.”

  Jesse, Clover, and Archer, the countess’s maid, were all the servants they had brought from Farr Park, as the owner of the house on Brock Street had taken only his butler and valet on an extended visit to London, leaving the remainder of his staff in Bath. Jesse had been momentarily struck dumb when informed he had been chosen as temporary butler for the dowager’s household in Bath.

  Katy sidled past the pianoforte that was now taking up most of the corridor and examined the drawing room. She looked back at the instrument, frowned. What an odd shape—the keyboard set at an angle to the long case holding the strings . . . and, yes, one side of the beautiful rosewood case, was completely flat . . .

  Of course! That side of the string case was meant to sit flush against the wall. How exceedingly clever. “Let us clear the wall next to the corridor,” Katy said. “If we set it against the outer wall, I fear it might disturb the residents next door.”

  In a trice three pairs of willing hands had cleared a space, while the four carters stood morosely by, giving no sign that sight of a lady moving furniture shoulder to shoulder with her servants was aught but a daily occurrence. Then Katy, eyes shining, directed the carters to the precise spot where the pianoforte should be placed. Oh, it was so beautiful!

  “Quickly, Clover, run to the Upper Rooms and ask who tunes their pianofortes. I want to sit down and play this very minute, but I know moving loosens the strings. Clover!” Katy called as her old friend rushed from the room. “I did not truly mean for you to run. With the streets as icy as they are, you will surely break your neck. Walk carefully, if you please. Somehow I shall manage to contain myself.” Clover, with the flash of a grin and a wave of her hand, resumed her errand.

  Gingerly Katy touched one key. The tone was mellow and surprisingly strong for an instrument half the size of the one at Farr Park. She struck a chord. And made a face. Behind her, Jesse Wiggs chuckled. “Sounds like you was right, miss. Off with you now. I’ll rearrange this jumble until all looks right and tight again.”

  He was smiling. Another forgiveness? Katy wondered. Did she deserve it? Her deception had been very long and very thorough. And she had experienced little guilt until it was far too late. “Thank you, Jesse,” she murmured, and hurried back down the hall to tell the countess her grand news. But of course it could not be news—the dowager must have ordered it as a surprise. A startling, wonderful surprise . . .

  Katy burst into the back parlor, profuse thanks spilling so eagerly from her tongue that she was close to stammering. Alas, Lady Serena Moretaine did not appear best pleased, an anxious frown soon replacing her initial smile of pleasure. “My lady?” Katy said. “Is there something wrong? Did you not order the piano? Is it a mistake?”

  “No, not a mistake, child, but I did not order it.”

  “Oh.” Katy thought for a moment. “Do you suppose the owner ordered it some time ago and it is just being delivered?”

  “I think not.”

  “My lady?”

  “Sit down, Katy.”

  Katy, now thoroughly alarmed by the severity of the countess’s expression, sat. Her fingers sought each other, clasping tightly together in her lap. Whatever the dowager was about to say, she was not going to like it.

  “Katy, you are aware that there is still a strong possibility my son may become the next Earl of Moretaine?” Katy, falling back on old habits, nodded. “Even as Mr. Damon Farr, it is important that he marry well. I cannot have him so infatuated with you that he does not look at suitable young ladies.”

  “O-oh!” Katy drew a long shuddering breath. Her fingernails bit into her palms. “You think Da—Colonel Farr—ordered the piano . . . and that he . . . no, no, that cannot be true. He may like to hear me play, but he is still angry with me, I assure you. He glares. He ignores me. No more than a grunt do I get for all my fetching, carrying, and writing out fair copy. Truly, you are mistaken.”

  No, she wasn’t. For her heart was singing at the thought that Damon had presented her with this magnificent gift. For surely he had. And she recalled all those times when she was certain his eyes were following her about the bookroom, even if she never caught more than a glower from beneath his dark brows.

  “No, Katy, I do not believe I am mistaken,” the dowager returned gently. “It is the primary reason I agreed to remove to Bath. No matter what I think of your conduct, I have known and cared for you too long to thrust you out into the streets, but I have determined you must give serious consideration to finding a husband here in Bath. At worst, another position . . . I fear my son will never marry as long as you are under our roof.”

  Lady Moretaine paused, pursed her lips, then plunged on. “And, truth be told, as much as I love Damon and know him to be a gentleman, I fear for your safety as well, child. I see—there is no disguising it—I see passion fly between you. When you are in a room together, even at the dinner table, I feel a tension like some great storm disturbing the air. You must leave us, Katy. By marriage or a new position . . . but you will not return to Farr Park.”

  Katy, unwilling to reveal the stark horror that must be reflected in her eyes, bowed her head over her clasped hands. She could not move, could not think.

  “And you will not marry Elijah Palmer,” the dowager continued inexorably, “even though the match is suitable. If Damon does not become earl, I cannot have you forever beneath his nose.”

  Was it possible, Katy wondered, that only moments earlier she had been as happy as she had ever been in her life? This was her comeuppance, of course. The end result of her own actions. For all that the Hardcastles were the root of her own personal evil, it was the twelve-year-old Lucinda Challenor who had disguised herself as a mute and wormed her way into the affections of the residents of Farr Park. It was she who had never uttered a word, no matter how severe the provocation. It was she who had made a fantasy hero of Damon Farr. It was she who had not hesitated to lean toward him or over him while they worked, displaying her nicely rounded bosom. She who hiked her skirts a mite too high when climbing the bookroom ladder.

  “I am not speaking of your immediate departure,” said the countess, softening her tone. “We are fixed in Bath for some time, certainly through Drucilla’s confinement in May. What happens after that, of course, will depend on who is the next Earl of Moretaine.”

  Katy scarcely heard her. Marriage, a new position . . . but she had a third choice. She had a grandmother, an uncle . . . if she could convince them she was Lucinda Challenor and not that—that imposter who was undoubtedly making sheeps’ eyes at Damon this very moment.

  Mr. Trembley. Yes, she must write to Mr. Trembley. Katy shot to her feet. “If you will excuse me, my lady?”

  The dowager’s ravaged face held Katy poised in mid-flight, as it clearly revealed the anguish the countess’s words had caused her. “I am sorry, so sorry, child,” she cried. “I fear the ways of the world are not at all fair.” A tear spilled over and fell onto Sir Walter Scott’s poetry, which she had continued to read after Katy dashed off to investigate the noise in the hallway.

  Katy’s chin went up. Her green eyes sparkled, as suspiciously moist as the countess’s own. “I will survive, my lady. I always have.” With rigid dignity she left the parlor. Her feet made no noise as she climbed the well-carpeted stairs to her room.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Colonel, how delightful!” cooed Lady Oxley, as if surprised to find him in the countess’s drawing room, even though the regularity of her appearances hard on Damon’s every arrival at Castle Moretaine seemed to indicate she employed a lookout on the road from the south. At the very least, Damon grumbled to himself, the baroness must have a spy in the Moretaine household.

  And if he had ever been tempted to admire Miss Hardcastle’s slim and stately beauty, he had only to l
ook at her mother to see what Eleanore would one day become. Lady Oxley, molded by long years of complaints, of looking down her nose at lesser mortals, and shamelessly toad-eating her betters, had become the pattern-card for a hatchet-faced shrew. As tall as her daughter, the baroness was two or three stone heavier. Her suspiciously bright chestnut hair showed not a hint of gray, and her gown of burgundy puce seemed singularly inappropriate for a call at a house of mourning. To top this distasteful image, Lady Oxley’s voice seemed even more loud and shrill each time they met.

  The colonel executed a bow as stiff as his smile before turning to the two young ladies. “Miss Hardcastle, Miss Challenor.” Each girl, seated side by side on a scroll-armed gold-and cream-striped settee, extended her gloved hand, Eleanore with cool aplomb, Lucinda with that slightly wicked smile in the back of her eyes that always intrigued him. The mysterious Miss Challenor, miraculously recovered into the bosom of her family. Damon had niggling suspicions about where the young lady had been and what she had been doing all the years she supposedly was missing. Her façade, perfectly turned out in a carriage dress of a blue only slightly darker than her eyes, said one thing; the tilt of her shoulders, the liveliness of her eyes, something else entirely.

  Yet her resemblance to Katy Snow was truly remarkable. Not in bone structure . . . never that. Now that he knew Lucinda better, he recognized they could not pass for sisters. But in build, hair color, eye color . . . a near perfect match. But of the two, Katy’s features were the finer. The height of her forehead, the small but clearly aristocratic nose, the edge to her cheekbones, the well-drawn lips. And when mischief shone from Katy’s eyes, innocence surrounded it like a halo. Miss Challenor’s eyes, when not lowered to disguise her true nature, brimmed with worldly knowledge tinged with cynicism. Colonel Damon Farr had seen too many barques of frailty not to recognize one when put before him. And if Miss Challenor had just turned nineteen, he should be able to disregard his years as a soldier and claim to be not more than two and twenty again.

  There was a puzzle here. For all that he told himself it was none of his business, Damon could not stop worrying the problem. Like a terrier with a rat, he could not let go. Somehow Katy was concerned in this. Ignore it, he could not.

  “Your dear mama is removed to Bath, I hear,” Lady Oxley boomed. After the colonel had agreed and expressed his hope that the change would help the dowager recover from her melancholy, the baroness plunged on to her true goal. “And will you be joining her there, colonel?”

  “I am much occupied at Farr Park, my lady, but I shall, of course, make frequent visits to Brock Street to see how the ladies go on.”

  “The ladies?”

  “My mother and her companion, Miss Snow.”

  Lucinda Challenor’s trilling laugh rang over the tea cups. “Ah, yes, the little mute peahen hiding in a dark corner. Surely she cannot be of much use to your mama—”

  “Indeed,” Miss Hardcastle echoed, “the poor child seemed dreadfully out of place, as if frightened into immobility by exposure to her betters.”

  “Companions are such a sorry lot,” Lady Oxley declared. “Scarce worth the cost of feeding.”

  “Miss Snow has been with my mother for years,” Damon responded stiffly, startled by the strength of his urge to defend his erstwhile secretary. “I believe the countess is quite pleased with her.”

  “Miss Snow,” Drucilla stated, replacing her delicate Worcester tea cup in its saucer with a decided clink of fine porcelain, “is a little minx who changes her appearance to suit her circumstances. She is a nothing, a nobody my mama-in-law has been foolish enough to take to her bosom. There was an incident the last time she was at Moretaine—and you needn’t look so surprised I should hear of it, brother. Mute she may be, but the girl is no better than she should be. Why dear Serena should persist in giving her house-room, I cannot imagine.”

  Lady Oxley suddenly looked thoughtful. “I believe Oxley may have mentioned her. You call her a girl. Is she a young woman then? I confess I did not notice her at all.”

  Damon, assuming his most inexpressive face, allowed the conversation to surge, unheeded, around him. Katy’s fear of the Hardcastles. Lord Oxley staring at Katy at the reception after Ashby’s funeral. The striking resemblance to Lucinda Challenor.

  Or Lucinda’s striking resemblance to Katy . . .

  It was quite possible the answer to the mystery of Katy Snow lay right here in this room. Yet he was too much the soldier not to sense danger. That day at the tea party—and again after Ashby’s funeral—Katy had not simply feared recognition. She had been terrified of the Hardcastles themselves. Of Baron and Baroness Oxley, whose noble rank should have placed them above suspicion.

  Was this, then, the home Katy had fled?

  Nonsense! If Wellington had been so fanciful, they’d all still be camped outside Lisbon. Or driven into the sea, as they’d been at Corunna. With Napoleon preening at the head of troops marching past Piccadilly Circus to Carlton House.

  Yet, despite everything, he could not betray Katy by mentioning her mysterious origins. Not his Katy. He had already considered stopping again in Bath on his way back to Farr Park, just to make certain the ladies were comfortable. Had the pianoforte arrived? Mehitabel and the groom?

  Fool that he was, he was being shamefully indulgent. His mother was like to comb his hair with a joint stool. The chit was definitely a menace. He should breathe a sigh a relief that she was out of the house and out from under his nose. So why was he so pleased over an excuse to return to Bath, to question Katy more closely about the Hardcastles?

  He knew damned well why. He was besotted. His mother’s needs had come in a close second to his desperation to be rid of Katy Snow so he could get some work done. It was nothing but lust, instigated solely by propinquity. That was all. He would recover. Undoubtedly, the blasted minx was already eyeing every gentleman in the Pump Room, looking for a new man to feather her nest.

  And what about Palmer and the doctor? There were candidates for her hand close to home as well. All he had to do was offer a modest dowry . . .

  Damned if he would!

  “I beg your pardon!” Disconcerted, Damon realized Miss Challenor had asked him a question and was now looking up at him from limpid blue eyes that still managed to remind him of his last visit to a brothel.

  Lucinda Challenor waggled a finger at him and repeated her question. Damon gathered his wandering wits, though reserving a deep well of doubt, and replied with the smoothness of a gentleman to the manner born. Beneath the surface, however, he determined to cut short his stay at Castle Moretaine. He would return to Bath as soon as possible. Unfortunately, everything from a way to avoid spring floods to fixing leaky roofs and making plans for spring planting must be dealt with before he was free to leave. Silently, the colonel indulged in a succinct oath that had no place in a countess’s drawing room.

  The third week of February was not, perhaps, the best time to go for a long walk on the precipitous streets of Bath, but it had not taken Katy long to discover she was, at heart, a country girl. Each morning she accompanied the countess to the Pump Room, dutifully fetching a glass of the sulphureous water from the hand of the liveried footman attending the fountain. Each morning she sat and attempted to look interested as the dowager chatted with friends or joined the parade of elderly men and women circling the elegant Palladian room with its tall arched windows and gracefully curved alcove with musicians’ dais and gallery above. For the first few days, Katy had found it colorful and exciting, a far cry from their quiet life at Farr Park. The seamed faces, gouty feet, quavering voices, and shaking hands had excited her sympathies, even as she had been fascinated by the colorful, if unfashionable, display of clothing that did not acknowledge the advent of the nineteenth century. But now, after nearly three weeks, there was only one word for the Pump Room and its parade of elderly and infirm. Stultifying.

  Indeed, as far as she could tell, this dire situation was true of the entire city. Except for a smatteri
ng of servants, a few clerks in the shops, and a rare glimpse of a smart dandy driving by in a curricle, she had not seen a single soul less than a quarter century her senior. Even the companions who attended the array of invalids were at least twice her age. So Katy escaped one afternoon, charging down the hill past Queen Square, past the old city wall all the way to the Avon, just downstream from Pulteney Bridge, where she leaned over the rail above the river, enjoying the river’s gentle ripple over the three cascades of the weir and the elegant Palladian lines of the bridge itself.

  But when she finally strolled onto the bridge, she was amazed to discover it was impossible to tell she was not simply walking down a street, for Pulteney Bridge was lined with shops on both sides, with not so much as a shimmer of the river to be seen. Intent on exploration, Katy passed the shops by. Perhaps on the way back . . .

  And then she was traversing fashionable Laura Place and, soon, Sydney Gardens lay before her. A pause to find a coin in her reticule, and then her feet were nearly flying down the broad gravel path. Past empty tennis courts and a bowling field . . . past the labyrinth, whose tall, shadow-filled hedges had no appeal on such a brisk day—and, besides, who wished to be lost, all alone, in a maze?

  She crossed the full width of the gardens until she came to the banks of the Kennet and Avon canal, which connected the Thames with the Severn, bringing supplies to Bath from as close as Bristol to the far-flung corners of the world. This narrow cut of water, not more than twenty feet across, high on a hill above the city, was part of a water route that led back to China, India, or the New World. She had accomplished the long walk from Brock Street only twice before, but she considered it well worth the effort. She could sit on her favorite bench beside the canal and let her imagination soar. What was under the canvas coverings on those narrow boats designed to fit into locks and pass each other on England’s intricate network of canals? Clothing fashioned in London? Silks from China? Lumber from the Canadas? Or merely a load of coal from Wales?