by Henke, Shirl
No one smiled back. Derrick presented the chief housekeeper, Mistress Campbell, a tall reed-thin woman with a lantern-jawed narrow face. Her iron-gray hair was knotted so tightly that her facial muscles seemed permanently frozen. She spoke without moving her lips, making a perfunctory curtsy as she murmured, “Welcome to Lynden Hall, yourladyship.''
Her eyes reminded Beth of a copperhead snake's just before it struck—cold, dark and pitiless. Repressing a shiver, the new countess moved on to greet the butler, three maids and two footmen, wondering how she would survive once Derrick left her alone here. She was immensely grateful for Donita, who had climbed from the second coach and was supervising the unloading of the trunks in her unique mixture of Italian and English while Percy barked and wagged his tail, following the little maid about.
The interior of the Hall was even more forbidding than had been the city house. It, at least, had been filled with Annabella's tasteless clutter and felt lived in. The old manor was practically empty, stripped of rugs, paintings and many of the best pieces of furniture. Several heavy leaded-glass windows stood bare, denuded of draperies. When Derrick questioned what had become of the family's possessions, the housekeeper replied that the previous earl had them taken to London over the years. Derrick concluded that they'd been sold to pay gambling debts and the high cost of living in the city.
Dinner that evening was a miserable collation of mushy vegetables and gray stringy mutton boiled until it was fit only for slopping hogs. Beth reconsidered. No, the hogs at Blackthorne Hall are fed better than this. By comparison Annabella's dreadful chef at the city house had been a culinary master. After spending weeks arranging household matters in London to her satisfaction, Beth would have to begin an even more daunting task here in the wilderness.
Derrick could see how disheartened his wife was by the Hall. He, too, was shocked by the way it had been treated, but it was the home of his childhood and he loved the wild isolated beauty of the Cumbrian countryside. “Tis not Naples, Beth, I know, but you will come to appreciate some things,” he said, taking a sip from his glass of bitter claret. Leighton had ravished the wine cellars.
Beth shoved a lump of turnip about on her plate, ignoring his comment as her stomach lurched. “Do you suppose Mistress Campbell thinks to run us off by serving such swill?”
“She has been in service to the family all her life. I shall speak to her about the cook if you wish.”
“I will handle it myself. Tis best if I begin asserting my role as the countess.”
He studied her over the rim of his glass. “You say that as if you are an actress, playing a part that will one day end.”
Beth was not sure how to take his remark. Are you changing your mind about divorce, my love? “There are times when I feel as if everything since we arrived in England has been but a dream.”
“More like a nightmare, I’d warrant,” he murmured beneath his breath, finishing off the last swallow of the claret. It was still bitter.
* * * *
They slept in the old earl's suite. It was cold and drafty, since the chimneys had not been cleaned properly in a decade and the fire went out during the night. Beth had burrowed against Derrick in her sleep for comfort as well as warmth. She awakened alone, chilled to the bone without the heat of his body beside her. The skies outside were still dark owing either to the early hour or the weather, she could not tell which.
It was both. She learned from Mistress Campbell that his lordship had ridden out with his new estate manager at dawn and was not expected back until the dinner hour. There was no time like the present to begin the daunting task of reorganizing the household. “I would like to speak to you regarding the cook, Mistress Campbell,” she said, eyeing the breakfast sideboard, which was filled with dishes of lumpy oatmeal, vile-smelling herring and a pot of the blackest, most bitter tea she had ever tasted.
“What of her? She does her job. Never a meal late in this household,” the old woman said defensively. Beth could see the hackles rising on the housekeeper's back.
“Tis not punctuality I’m concerned with but edibility,” she replied sternly. “Please ask her to brew me a small pot of coffee and warm some fresh bread. Then I would like to discuss a new menu plan with you after I've broken my fast.”
“We've no coffee on the premises, your ladyship. There's bread already on the sideboard. Cook bakes but once a week.”
The remarks more than bordered on insolence. “Then Cook shall learn to bake daily or seek new employment. And I want coffee placed on the next market order,” Beth said peremptorily.
The housekeeper straightened her already ramrod stiff spine and replied with venomously narrowed eyes, “As you wish, your ladyship.”
This did not augur well, but the shrieks and curses that suddenly erupted from the kitchen were an omen of more immediate disaster. Beth could hear Donita's rapid Italian interspersed with someone—probably the cook—cursing in a rough country accent, followed by Percy's loud bark.
What now? She flew down the long hallway toward the kitchens following the housekeeper, whose long strides were more than a match for her own. The sight that greeted them when they opened the door required immediate action—or else Sir Percival of Inverness would lose his head. The cook stood with a huge cleaver raised in one meaty red fist, ready to deliver the killing blow.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Stop!” Beth commanded in her loudest, most authoritative voice as she pushed past the housekeeper and swept Percy up in her arms. A squab leg dangled from his mouth.
he cook, an old woman as fat as Mistress Campbell was thin, lowered her cleaver grudgingly, her round red face scrunched with fury. “’Ee stole one 'o me bleedin' birds, 'ee did! 'Anging fer over a fortnight, it were! Just gettin' good 'n ripe fer roastin!”
“Hester, you will cease such vulgar outbursts,” the housekeeper said in an icy voice that immediately changed the enraged cook's expression to fawning docility.
“That sorry I am, Mistress Campbell,” the cook replied, bowing to the housekeeper before acknowledging the countess.
As the housekeeper upbraided the cook for her cursing, Beth took Percy's prize from him and set him down, then made a swift visual inspection of the kitchen. She was appalled. Several braces of pigeons hung molting from a line stretched across the counter. She could see where the dog had jumped up and snatched one of the decomposing birds, whose noisome stench filled her nostrils. Unwashed pots and pans were stacked everywhere. The hearth was black with soot, and pools of congealed grease lay splashed across the floor.
“I want this kitchen scrubbed from the rafters to the floor by nightfall,” she said, getting both women's attention at once. She watched the cook's piggy little eyes narrow in outrage, but it was the housekeeper's silent basilisk glare that worried her as both women nodded in resentful obedience.
The maids and footmen took instruction more politely and set to cleaning cobwebs and grime from ceilings and windows. Making the manor habitable would be a far more daunting task than setting the city house to rights had been. By the time Derrick returned that evening, mud-covered and exhausted, it had become apparent to Beth that both the housekeeper and the cook had to be replaced as soon as possible. However, when she suggested this to him over a supper of fatty roasted pork and stewed rutabaga, he was not completely amenable, to say the least.
“I know the food's abominable. If you must, fire the cook—once you make certain you can hire another one, else we'll be out grazing with the sheep—but I don't want Mistress Campbell dismissed yet. She's been with the family too long and, in truth, she's had no one in residence to serve since my father died.”
Beth forbore saying that the old earl had probably died from eating the food in Lynden Hall. Then, seeing the fatigue etched in his face, she asked, “How did your inventory of the land go?”
He sighed wearily. “The crofters’ houses are falling down, the sheep scattered from here to Hadrian's Wall, the fields choked with weeds and the stabl
es as denuded of good horses as the manor is of furnishings. But Harris seems quite able. He assures me by spring he can have things up and running properly again. The tenants certainly appeared happy to see the last of Farley. They'll work for the new overseer once I'm forced to return to London.”
“I fear that's more than I can say regarding Mistress Campbell,” she could not resist adding, angry and frightened at his mention of departure.
Derrick did not leave that week. But he might as well have, Beth saw so little of him. When not out riding about the countryside, he was cloistered in the great cavernous library with Lloyd Harris. Much to Mistress Campbell's dismay, Beth found a new cook, a sweet young widow from an adjoining estate where the elderly baron had just died. Together they planned new menus, and Beth went with Martha to the village to shop for fresh produce, milk and cheese. By spring, they would have their own dairy operating once more and a garden planted.
The meals improved dramatically. Unfortunately, Derrick's company at table did not. When they entered the dining room each evening, he was so weary they did not even argue. Although they continued sleeping in the same bed, he did not make love to her. Her body had started thickening now and she began to fear that he found her physically unappealing.
But perhaps it was only the crushing workload, she tried to convince herself as she stood naked before a cheval glass mirror after climbing out of her bath. She lifted her breasts, now heavy with milk, no longer pert and erect, then slid her palms over her belly, feeling the life growing inside her. It was both her comfort and her sorrow. She dearly wanted Derrick's child, a part of him that she could declare her love to—something she would never be able to do with her husband.
Yet, if his obsessive passion for her was all that held them together, then she would soon lose him. What would happen when he left her, slow and shapeless, and returned to London,the greatest city on earth, filled with slim beautiful women—Englishwomen with bloodlines impeccable enough to match his own? Beth seized a towel and began to dry herself off, unable to think of it a moment longer.
She did not see her husband standing in the shadows, watching her. He'd just returned from a grueling day mucking about in ruined oat fields and intended to bathe. He studied the way she ran her hands over her rapidly changing body and his mouth went dry with desire.
He had never found her so beautiful as he did now while she ripened with his child in her womb. But how did Beth feel about it? He could see the small frown marring her brow as she examined the changes in her breasts, the swell of her belly. She had not wanted to carry a babe any more than she wanted to be a wife responsible for a household, he bitterly reminded himself.
Tis done now and we must make the best of it, he thought as the ache seeped through every pore in his body. An ache that went far beyond physical desire...straight to his heart.
By the end of the following week, Beth had organized the household as much as could be done for the present and had begun ordering new furnishings. Until they arrived, there was nothing to stand in the way of her painting.
“It promises to be a good clear day tomorrow,” she said that evening over dinner. “I think I shall take a drive to the firth on the morrow and see how different the sea is in the north from the Mediterranean.”
At first Derrick seemed not to hear her. He had been thinking about the solicitor's letter that had arrived that morning. He needed to return to London as quickly as possible. He was well pleased with Harris's work and felt he could trust the man to care for matters while he was absent, but he dreaded leaving his wife. Then her words sank in. “Drive to the firth?” he echoed.
“You said 'tis only a couple of miles. I shall take the small gig and that gentle mare, Bessie.”
“You shall do nothing of the kind,” he said abruptly—and immediately regretted it when he saw the warning flash in her eyes. “What I mean is—”
“You said I could paint if I did not take commissions. Is this how much your vaunted English word is worth?” she asked scathingly, throwing her napkin over the pink slice of meat still lying on her plate.
He could not tell her that he feared for her safety even here in the wilds of the north. That morning someone had taken a shot at him, narrowly missing. If Harris's mount had not shied and bumped into his, the bullet would have slammed into his back. The overseer had exclaimed angrily, saying the local gentry were avid hunters and often poached. Derrick explained the situation to Harris, instructing him to see the countess was always guarded. But the fear that Beth might somehow become injured because of him haunted his thoughts.
“Tis not safe for you to be out riding about unescorted,” he tried to hedge.
“This is not London. You promised that once I retired to the country I could dress and act as I wished—and that I could paint.”
“You can paint,” he replied, striving to leash his temper. “Paint the Hall, the servants—”
“What appropriate subjects—if I wish to terrify the babe in my womb!”
Always it turned on the fact of her pregnancy...and her unhappiness about it, he thought disconsolately. “You should think of the child's safety even if you have a reckless disregard for your own.”
“I would never endanger my child! ” She felt the bile rise in her throat. He believed her so worthless that she would risk her child's life. “How dare you accuse me of such a thing!”
“Riding could cause a miscarriage. What if the mare was spooked and the gig overturned?” he argued.
“That is beyond absurd. You act as if I was proposing to jump a racer on a foxhunt like your brother—or take a careless fall as you did in London.”
“My brother died for his foolishness and I could have broken my neck—an eventuality you might welcome, but until then I am your husband and I say it is too risky.”
“Slowly driving a sturdy vehicle such as that gig a few miles over a flat road is no risk at all,” she replied stubbornly, desperate to escape the suffocating imprisonment of Lynden Hall. “Nevertheless, I will be willing to take the calash with one of the grooms to drive. What could be safer than that?”
“You will not ride to the ocean or anywhere else. Do I make myself clear, Beth?”
“When are you returning to London?” she asked abruptly.
His cold blue eyes settled on her flushed face with chilling intensity as he smiled at her. It was not a nice smile. “On the morrow, madam, I will rid you of my odious company—but do not think that you may then disobey my expressed wishes. I will instruct Mr. Harris to see that you do not leave. Not a man in the stable will outfit a rig or allow you to touch any of the tack. That, I believe, settles that,” he finished icily, pushing his chair away from the table.
Beth sat, stunned by the enormity of his cruelty as he stormed from the room. He was leaving her alone in this big hideous dungeon, isolated from every friend and amenity. Even her art was being taken away from her. What could she do to remain sane?
They lay in the large master bed, side by side that night, each feigning sleep. Hot tears scalded her eyelids, but Beth choked them back, willing herself to hide the terror she felt at the thought of losing him. Would he ever return to Lynden Hall—even to see his heir?
Of course, if the babe was a girl, he'd need to do his duty once more. The very idea of that made her blood run cold...cold as an Englishman's heart. Were those not Liam Quinn's words? They rang true. As she lay in the silence and darkness, trying not to feel Derrick's heat or listen for the steady thrum of his heartbeat, she thought back to that last London outing when she'd encountered the Irishman. She had also met Lord Byron,who had made a very interesting suggestion...
Derrick could sleep no better than Beth. Every impulse in his body cried out for him to roll over to her and take her in his arms. They could lose themselves in the magic and the torment of their shared passion one last time. But his will overrode the demands of his body...or perhaps it was some deeper impulse he could not comprehend. He only knew that it did not seem rig
ht.
No. Such passion had proven their undoing. They held different values and viewed life in such opposite terms that there never would be an accommodation between them. After the child was born he would have to set her free. The thought of it was unbearable now. But in time he would grow used to the idea of living without her. While she pursued her art in Italy he would have a part of her with him always...her babe...
With the dawn, he slipped silently from the bed, relieved to see that she, at least, had finally succeeded in falling asleep. She needed the rest for the burden she carried. He could see purple smudges beneath her eyes and wanted to caress her face, but that might awaken her—to what end? She would remain safe here, guarded by Lloyd Harris while he went to London and untangled the dangerous web that threatened not only his own but her life as well.
He dressed hurriedly, then went downstairs to his library and composed a note for her, promising to return by Christmas. That should give him time enough to learn what Bourdin was up to and deal with him...not to mention Liam Quinn. In the meanwhile, Beth would be out of the line of fire and, if all went well, after Christmas he could spend those last bittersweet months with his wife before she left him forever.
* * * *
For several days after Derrick left Beth moped about, unable to muster enough energy to do anything. True to his word, he had instructed Lloyd Harris to see to it that she was not permitted to ride anywhere. Since she had learned how to handle tack as a girl on her parents' plantation, she considered slipping into the stables while everyone was asleep and rigging up the gig herself. But where could she go in the middle of the night? That would indeed be reckless, and she would do nothing that might endanger her child, no matter what its father believed.
There was one matter to which she could attend: She fired Mistress Campbell. The vile old crone reminded her of Fatima as she stared implacably at Beth with fathomless glowing dark eyes, saying stiffly that once his lordship returned, he'd soon enough deal with his foreign wife and restore his faithful employee to her rightful place in Lynden Hall.
