by Carola Dunn
“As soon as I’ve seen Miss Bertrand made comfortable.”
Outrage made Miss Thorne’s face still more hatchetlike.
“My dear,” said Lilian, “what can you be thinking of? You cannot possibly remain while we undress the poor girl!”
Feeling himself a good deal to blame for the young woman’s injuries--he should have made sure Jessup thoroughly understood his instructions--he was reluctant to abandon her now, even to Lilian’s tender care. “I have already seen most of what there is to see,” he protested.
“Then I advise you to put it out of your mind with all due celerity. Out!”
He had to admit the propriety of her command. Reluctantly turning to obey, he saw Ragamuffin sneak through the half-open door, his nose testing the air, his ears pricking as he caught his mistress’s scent.
“Out!” Malcolm ordered, pointing at the door.
Ragamuffin’s ears flattened and his tail wagged obsequiously but he didn’t budge. When Malcolm approached, he tensed and bared his teeth.
“Let him stay,” said Lilian. “I daresay his presence will be a comfort to Miss Bertrand when she wakes.”
Malcolm gave the favoured animal a rueful look, but his anxiety revived. “She has been unconscious an excessively long time. Do you think she is concussed?”
“We must hope she has merely swooned from the pain. Now, off with you and let us do what we can for her.”
He went downstairs and found Miss Emily Farrar in the morning room. A slight, demure figure in pink, brown tresses neatly tied back with a ribbon, she perched on the very edge of an elegant green satin sofa. In one hand she held an embroidery hoop, in the other a needle, unthreaded. She dropped them, jumped up and pattered to meet him, forgetting the painful shyness which had handicapped her for the past year or two.
Malcolm held out both hands to her. “Well, and how is my favourite niece?” he enquired. “Prettier and more grown up than ever, I see.”
“I am allowed to put my hair up in the evenings. But never mind me, Uncle. How is Miss Bertrand?” Her blue eyes, so like her mother’s, eagerly searched his face. “Mama would not let me help.”
“Nor me. I don’t believe she is badly hurt. Who is she, Emmie? Come and sit down and tell me all about her.”
He offered her his arm. Proud to be treated as a lady, not a child, she laid her hand on it. Solemnly escorting her to a chair, he seated her and took a chair opposite, avoiding the sofa where, he suspected, the discarded needle lurked. One ambush was sufficient to the day.
“Miss Bertrand?” he prodded.
“Is she not wonderful? I have seen her from my window galloping across the moors without a thought for rabbit-holes or bogs or what anyone will think.”
Startled, Malcolm said cautiously, “You find it irksome to have to obey the rules of propriety?”
“No, not really,” Emily admitted. “Well, sometimes a trifle tiresome. But, you see, I want to dance at Almack’s when I make my come-out and Mama says nothing so disgusts the lady patronesses as indecorous conduct. Miss Bertrand need not care for such things. She never had a come-out and now she is too old, and anyway, she would never have obtained vouchers.”
“Who is she?”
“Old Mr. Barwith’s niece. He is mad as a March...I mean,” she hurriedly corrected herself, “not quite right in the head. He never hired a governess for Miss Bertrand when her mama died, which was when she was just a child so she never learned how to behave properly.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Only think, she wears unmentionables and rides astride! Mama is sorry for her but we do not call at Bell-Tor Manor.”
Malcolm felt a pang of pity for Miss Bertrand, left without guidance and ostracized even by his amiable sister.
“She does not go to church,” Emily added primly.
Since he only attended services when staying at Ashminster with his parents, he found nothing to cavil at in this evidence of dereliction. However, Miss Bertrand had held up his carriage and stolen an item of particular interest, he reminded himself. What was her connection with Ralph Riddlesworth?
“Has she no other relatives or friends to advise her?” he asked.
“There is Sir Ralph. I suppose he is her cousin since he is Mr. Barwith’s nephew, but she cannot look to him for advice. He is much the same age as she is, and Mama says he is a shocking here-and-thereian.”
Trying to disguise his curiosity, Malcolm said casually, “You are acquainted with him?”
“Oh no, not really, only to bow to because he is such a close neighbour, and not always so much. Mama says there are situations in which it is not impolite to cut an acquaintance. We saw him in Plymouth, once, when we had been shopping and met the carriage at the Golden Hind. He was playing cards with some sailors and though Mama said they were officers by their uniforms, they did not look at all gentlemanly, so we did not acknowledge Sir Ralph.”
“Very wise.” So Riddlesworth gambled with naval officers, did he? Very interesting!
“Another time he was singing in the street,” Emily went on, “and Mama said she feared he must be a trifle foxed. That means he had drunk too much wine,” she explained in a hushed voice.
Malcolm hid a smile. “A common failing in young men, alas. He lives in Plymouth, I suppose?”
“No, at Bell-Tor Manor--it’s just on the other side of Wicken’s Down--with Mr. Barwith and Miss Bertrand. The servants say Miss Bertrand mothered Sir Ralph right from the first when he was orphaned and went to live at the Manor, although she was only a little girl. Was not that fine of her? Oh, Uncle, pray do not tell Mama I have gossiped with the servants!”
“I shan’t,” he promised, glad to find a chink in his rather priggish niece’s armour.
“I do not in general,” she assured him, “but Charles’s sister Carrie is in service at the Manor and sometimes he tells me things because he knows how I admire Miss Bertrand.”
Wondering if Lilian realized the extent of her daughter’s fascination with the ramshackle Miss Bertrand, Malcolm silently confessed that he himself could not help but admire her. Her courage and spirit were as undeniable as her folly. He had expected Riddlesworth to play the highwayman, not a green girl. Why had she done it?
Misplaced loyalty? Well, loyalty was a virtue, even when lavished on an undeserving object. In her own unconventional way, Miss Bertrand was admirable.
Riddlesworth, however, was not, and the girl was now Malcolm’s link to the young baronet.
He sprang to his feet as Lilian came in. “How is she?”
“Miss Bertrand regained her senses, I am happy to...”
“I must speak to her!”
His vehemence made her stare. “You cannot. As I was about to say, she regained her senses but she was in such pain that I gave her some laudanum. She is drowsy, in no state for conversation.”
“Not conversation. I wanted to speak to her about...the poacher.”
“Oh, I asked her if she had seen the poacher who shot her. She was a little confused but she said quite clearly she had not. I fear we shall never discover the culprit.”
Malcolm sincerely hoped not. The less anyone found out about the incident the better for all concerned.
“She asked after her horse. I told her your groom had seen to it.”
“He has,” agreed her brother a trifle grimly. He still was not sure how to get out of this mess of Jessup’s making.
“Emily,” said Lilian, turning to her daughter, “pray go and practise your music, my love. Your uncle will excuse you.”
“Yes, Mama.”
She curtsied to Malcolm, who leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “Don’t forget to retrieve your needle before someone sits on it.”
With a grateful glance for the reminder Emily went to the sofa and picked up her tambour. After a brief search and a pricked finger, she found the needle, held it up in triumph to her uncle, and left the room.
Lilian watched with indulgence. “She is a good girl, Malcolm, and still a child in so
many ways. That is what worries me. Of course I am glad you found Miss Bertrand and it was our duty to take her in, but she is not at all a suitable acquaintance for Emily, I fear.”
“That was obvious from her dress,” he said curtly with the old, familiar feeling that nothing he did would ever win wholehearted approval from his family. The distant tinkle of a Clementi sonatina drove home the difference between his niece and the would-be highwayman. “I’m sorry to have imposed her upon you, but I saw no alternative.”
“Indeed, there was none.” She wrinkled her nose at him, a youthful grimace which reminded him that she was the most sympathetic of his siblings as well as the closest in age. “I promise I do not mean to carp at you in an odious elder-sisterish way. Nor do I mean to imply that Miss Bertrand is in any way immoral or...or vicious. I should have heard if she were, for such tales circulate fast in the country. But there is no denying she has not the least notion of decorum, or even of propriety.”
“How should she when--according to Emily at least--she has had no one to teach her?”
“I don’t hold her to blame, Malcolm! In fact, I blame myself to some degree. When first I learned she had no female companion but the servants, I felt I ought to suggest to Mr. Barwith that he hire a governess. I shall always regret that I did not speak.”
“Why did you not?”
“I let Frederick persuade me that interference would be impertinent, and of course in those days we were seldom here.” She sighed. “When he died and I came to live here, first there was all the fuss with Mama and Papa over whether I should go home to Ashminster...”
“And since then you have been fully occupied in overseeing the estate and bringing up your daughter,” he said gently. “Miss Bertrand must have been too old for a governess by then in any case. You are no more to blame than she is herself.”
“Perhaps not. That is little comfort in my present predicament.”
“Surely it will not be difficult to keep her and Emily apart? Emily strikes me as a biddable young lady. Tell her not to visit Miss Bertrand’s bedside.” He had no intention of being likewise banned from the girl’s chamber. “When your patient is fit to leave her room, you may send her home.”
By then he’d have worked out how to give back the signet ring without arousing her suspicions.
“Yes.” Lilian sounded doubtful. “Only I am afraid she will be able to leave before she is fully healed and she will not get proper care at home.”
“This Barwith sounds like a curst rum touch!”
“Oh no, merely excessively absentminded. It was generous of him to give Miss Bertrand a home. Emily told you he is her uncle? She is not actually related by blood, you know.”
“She’s not?”
“No, her parents were French. The father was a comte or a vicomte, I believe. He was guillotined during the Terror.” She shuddered. “His wife escaped to London with the child and there met and married George Barwith’s brother. Both died not long thereafter, alas. Miss Bertrand was eight or nine when she was orphaned a second time and came to live...Yes, Blount?”
“The doctor has arrived, my lady.”
“Thank you. I shall take him up at once.”
Lilian hurried out, leaving Malcolm distinctly thoughtful. So Miss Bertrand’s ancestry was French? That was a new twist to the mystery!
Chapter 3
Mariette drifted in and out of consciousness. Her head ached, her bottom ached, but her chief emotion was embarrassment. If she had to be shot, why could it not have been a nice, clean bullet through the head?
Lady Lilian had been gently disapproving, even though Lord Malcolm had apparently told her some story about a poacher. Why he should lie for her Mariette could not guess. She was going to have to thank him for that, which was much worse than having to explain why she had played the highwayman.
She could see now that it had been a harebrained notion. It had worked for Arnulfo, but Arnulfo was only a character in a book, as Ralph had pointed out. Waldania had seemed more real to her than the medieval England she read about in histories. Not that she had any difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction, though Uncle George was right: if two histories disagreed, as was not uncommon, one or both must have their “facts” wrong.
As for Mr. Hume, how he could set up to be a historian when, in his philosophical essays, he denied the possibility of knowledge of matters of fact...
Distracted from her woes, Mariette succumbed to the laudanum drops, sinking into a well of darkness from which she emerged to a dazzle of pain. Her buttocks flamed. A piercing probe drove a lance of fire up her spine. Instinctively she twisted away.
“Keep still!” came Lady Lilian’s sharp voice and a grip on Mariette’s ankles tightened. Realizing her wrists were held, too, she forced her eyes to open a slit.
“Nearly done.” An incongruously cheerful voice she recognized as Dr. Barley from Plymton.
“Try to keep still, Miss Bertrand.” Lord Malcolm’s concerned face hovered above her. It was he who grasped her wrists. “The shot must be taken out for fear of infection. The worst is over now.”
Gratitude for his reassurance, mortification at his presence, shame for her own stupidity, all disappeared in a whirl of pain as another burning lance transfixed her. She welcomed the dark.
When she roused again, a streak of light from the setting sun peeped through a gap in the curtains, filling the spacious blue and white chamber with a rosy glow. It illuminated a pair of bony hands. They were knitting something long and mustard-coloured, draped across a black satin skirt which delineated equally bony knees--Lady Lilian’s companion, who disapproved of Mariette still more stringently than did her ladyship.
To postpone Miss Thorne’s attentions, Mariette lay still. She felt wishy-washy, anyway, and disinclined to move. Her head no longer ached, though it was muzzy from the laudanum, as if a couple of busy spiders had left it hung with cobwebs. Her backside throbbed unmercifully.
It was going to be a long time before she sat without wincing, or even lay on her back, and riding was impossible. She’d have to walk home, unless Lady Lilian offered to send her in a carriage.
Not in Lord Malcolm’s curricle! The thought made her hot all over. If she had felt humiliated by Lord Wareham’s contempt, it had been a thousand times worse to find herself sprawled across his lordship’s lap, her cheek pillowed on his hard-muscled thigh. Yet more shaming, she had gathered from listening to Lady Lilian and Miss Thorne that he had cleaned and bandaged her wounds, as well as assisting at Dr. Barley’s ministrations. How was she ever to face him? She wanted to crawl away and hide and never see nor hear of him again.
But she owed him an explanation. Besides, she realized in dismay, he was bound to have taken back the sphinx signet from her pocket. After her disastrous effort to avoid the unpleasant business, she had no choice but to beg him to let her redeem Ralph’s ring.
A groan escaped her.
Miss Thorne composedly set aside her knitting and approached the bed. “You are awake, Miss Bertrand? You are in some discomfort, I fear.” Her acid tone conveyed, “which is precisely what you deserve.”
An immediate impulse to contradict led Mariette to declare, “I’m more hungry than anything else, ma’am.” It was almost true. In excited anticipation of her adventure, she had skimped on breakfast this morning.
“Humph!” With a sniff, Miss Thorne reached for the bell-pull at the head of the bed. “How you are to eat and drink without sitting up, I am sure I cannot guess.”
“I’ll manage,” said Mariette, determined to consume every crumb and drop of whatever was set before her, if only to prove the harridan wrong.
The chamber door was behind her so she did not see it open. A warm, slow Devonshire voice, a woman’s, said, “You rang, ma’am?”
“Bring bread and butter and tea for Miss Bertrand, Pennick. And light the lamp before you go.”
“Yes’m.” A middle-aged, rosy-cheeked woman in a light brown woollen dress came round the bed an
d smiled at Mariette. Jenny Pennick, Lady Lilian’s abigail. She lit the lamp on the dressing table by the window. “‘Tis a good sign you’re hungry, miss,” she murmured as she passed back towards the door.
At least bread and butter should be quite easy to eat, though Mariette felt in need of something considerably more substantial. How she was to cope with tea she had no idea.
Miss Thorne returned to her chair and her knitting. She made no attempt at further communication, so Mariette laboriously raised herself and turned her head to the right to face the door. The bump on her head, on the left side, was distinctly tender. However, her neck was beginning to grow stiff from too long in the same strained position.
The door opened and Lady Lilian came in. “My maid tells me you are hungry, Miss Bertrand,” she said kindly. “You are feeling more the thing? I am so glad.”
“There was no need for Pennick to disturb you, Lilian,” grumbled Miss Thorne. “You have already done far more than anyone could expect--”
“I told Jenny to inform me when our patient roused, Cousin Tabitha. I have drunk my tea and you must be ready for yours. Do go down and join Emily and Malcolm.”
Poor Emily and Malcolm, thought Mariette. Though perhaps Cousin Tabitha approved of them.
At the door, Miss Thorne met Jenny Pennick bearing a tray. She glanced at it, sniffed loudly, and departed, closing the door behind her with a hint of a slam. As the door shut, the bed began to shake. Frightened, Mariette wondered if she was falling into a fit caused by the knock on the head. She clutched the pillow.
But Lady Lilian and Jenny were looking at the floor by the bed and smiling. Jenny giggled. A moment later Ragamuffin put his front feet on the bed and licked Mariette’s face.
Tears filled Mariette’s eyes as she hugged him with one arm. “Did the old witch drive you into hiding?” she whispered in his ear.
He licked her again, pulled his head free, and gathered his haunches for a leap.
