My Lord Winter

by Carola Dunn

  At the end of the first movement, he said grudgingly, “You play well. Miss Brooke.”

  “Well enough, but not too well. Playing the pianoforte is an essential accomplishment for a lady, and I enjoy it when I am not made to practise too often.” Encouraged by his smile, she returned his compliment. “You turn the pages well, sir.”

  That surprised a laugh out of him. “Well enough, but not too well.”

  “Very well. A desirable, if not essential, accomplishment for a gentleman. Turning a page too soon or too late plays havoc with the rhythm and often destroys a piece altogether.”

  “You speak from bitter experience?”

  “I do. In truth, it is a triumph to persuade some people to turn the music at all.” She was thinking of her brother. To avoid questions which might lead to her family, she turned the subject to his. “You appear to have triumphed over Miss Neville’s low spirits. I suppose it was what you said to her this afternoon that made your cousin so cheerful?”

  “I hope so. I merely assured her that if she prefers keeping house for her brother to dancing attendance upon my aunt, my carriage shall deliver her to her brother’s house as soon as she wishes.”

  “Splendid. I trust she is willing to wait until the fog lifts?”

  “You are very certain that she has not chosen a life of luxury and comparative leisure at the Abbey,” he said dryly.

  Jane cast a meaningful glance at the dowager countess, then attempted diplomacy. “I expect she is prodigious fond of her brother, and I daresay running a household, however small, is preferable to being a poor relation even in luxurious surroundings.”

  “I daresay.”

  “As soon as I saw her happy face, before dinner, I knew you must have been kind to her. I did not want Mr. Ramsbottom to embarrass her again, as he did yesterday at table, so I practically forced him to take me in.”

  “I doubt force was necessary. You seem to be on excellent terms with the fellow.”

  “He is not difficult to manage, if one goes about it the right way.”

  “You are able to manage anyone, are you not. Miss Brooke?”

  The icy edge was back in his tone. Jane’s heart sank. Did he think that she was “managing” him, or did he simply disapprove of her willingness to be friendly with all and sundry? He disapproved of so many things.

  Suddenly the weight of delayed fatigue crashed down upon her. She was too tired to deal with his capricious changes of mood. It was all she could do to close the pianoforte and stand up. “Forgive me if I don’t finish the piece,” she said with an effort. “I am very weary.”

  At once he was all solicitude. “Forgive me, my dear Miss Brooke. You must be burned to the socket after staying up all last night with Lady Fitzgerald. I shall order tea immediately.”

  “Thank you, my lord, but all I want is my bed.” With the sketchiest of curtsies in Lady Wintringham’s direction, she hurried out of the room.

  She was holding back tears. Drat the wretched man with his alternating warmth and coldness! Not that the urge to weep was anything to do with him, of course. It was sheer exhaustion.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jane’s ball bounced off one side of the billiard table and rolled with unhurried deliberation across the green baize to plop into the middle pocket.

  “Oh, well done.” Lavinia clapped her hands.

  “No, no,” Bob Hancock corrected her. “You’re supposed to send the other fellow’s ball into the pocket, or at least to hit it on the way. Miss Brooke has just given us three points.” He chalked them up on the slate.

  “Well, I thought it was very clever,” Lavinia insisted, “but thank you for the points, Jane.”

  “I will not say you are welcome to them,” said Jane, laughing, “or Mr. Reid will hit me with his cue.”

  Distressed, the lanky young man assured her earnestly, “I shouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. Why, everyone plays a poor stroke now and then. We are still ahead.” He glanced at his friend, who was explaining the rules to Lavinia for the fifth or sixth time, and lowered his voice. “Chiefly because Miss Chatterton cannot understand the game. You are a dashed good player for a novice, Miss Brooke.”

  “At least I know what I am aiming at, even if I cannot hit it.”

  “I’m glad you are my partner.” The Honourable Mr. Reid gazed at her with patent admiration.

  He reminded her of a vexatiously devoted puppy who had once followed her about for days, howling whenever he lost sight of her. Like the puppy, Mr. Reid must be discouraged, but she wasn’t sure how. Turning away, she saw that Lavinia was pouting and Mr. Hancock looked exasperated.

  Time for a distraction, Jane decided. “I have been wondering,” she said, “what you two gentlemen did to be rusticated from the university. Since you don’t appear utterly cast down, I suppose it was nothing too disgraceful?”

  Mr. Hancock grinned. “That was a famous jape, though I don’t suppose my father will agree. I daresay the old man will rusticate me down to Somerset posthaste instead of letting me gather a little Town bronze.”

  “Mine, too,” said Mr. Reid, “but it was worth it.”

  “Do tell us what you did,” begged Lavinia, brightening.

  Recalling some of her brother’s stories, Jane had sudden qualms. “If the tale is fit for a delicate maiden’s ears.”

  “Nothing in the least indelicate,” Mr. Reid protested, shocked. “We sneaked into the dining hall just before dinner...” Mr. Hancock paused. “Oh, hullo.”

  Fitz’s cheerful voice came from behind Jane. “Don’t let us interrupt. I wager you put salt in the sugar bowls and sugar in the salt-cellars? That’s an venerable old trick.”

  Jane looked round. Lord Wintringham towered behind his shorter friend, his broad shoulders filling the doorway. His disdainful expression bore witness to an utter lack of interest in the childish antics of undergraduates.

  Jane directed a welcoming smile impartially at both noblemen, then turned back to Mr. Hancock. “Is that what you did?” she asked, “switched salt and sugar?”

  “No, we snaffled the knives from all the tables...”

  “Not spoons and forks, only knives.” Mr. Reid elucidated.

  “And not all the knives,” Mr. Hancock continued. “Reid said it would be funnier if we left one on each table and deuced if it wasn’t.’’

  “Instead of not being able to eat at all, everyone came to cuffs over the one knife we left.”

  Picturing the scene, Jane giggled, as did Lavinia. Fitz let out a shout of laughter. “Dashed clever,” he said admiringly.

  Lord Wintringham looked bored.

  More to provoke him than for any other reason, Jane said, “Do you not think, my lord, that it was particularly ingenious to leave one knife per table? Mr. Reid has an original imagination.” She smiled at the youth, who flushed with pleasure at her compliment and tried to look modest.

  “A pity he does not apply it to a more worthy cause,” said the earl caustically.

  “Come now, Ned,” Fitz protested. “A harmless lark. Boys will be boys, don’t you know.” As his friend seemed about to contest this statement, he went on hastily, “Having a game of billiards, were you? I didn’t know you played, Lavinia.”

  “Mr. Hancock has been teaching me, but the rules are monstrous confusing. Will you explain to me, Fitz?”

  He blenched but said gamely, “Right you are,” and went over to the table to demonstrate, with Bob Hancock’s assistance, the various possible strokes.

  “And are you, too, confused by the rules, Miss Brooke?” Lord Wintringham sounded faintly mocking.

  “I had an excellent teacher in Mr. Reid, my lord.”

  “Mr. Reid is a veritable paragon.”

  “He is kind to take the trouble to explain, and kinder to allow me to play as his partner, since my grasp of the rules has not so far resulted in any degree of skill.”

  “Practice makes perfect, ma’am. Pray excuse me now, I am looked for elsewhere.” With a slight bow he str
ode off towards the front of the house.

  Jane stated after him, exasperated. She had nursed a meagre hope that he might condescend to help her improve her play, she admitted to herself. The more fool she.

  She became aware that Mr. Reid was regarding her with something approaching awe.

  “How brave you are to stand up to My Lord Winter, Miss Brooke! He makes me shiver in my shoes when he ices up like that.”

  “He was abominably rude to you. Let us forget him.”

  Lord Fitzgerald had finished his exposition of the rules of billiards, no more successful than Bob Hancock’s effort to judge by his sister-in-law’s bewildered expression. However, he challenged the young men and Jane to a game, the three of them against himself and Lavinia.

  Jane declined. She had lost interest in billiards. “I have not yet visited Lady Fitzgerald and the baby this morning,” she excused herself.

  “Daphne will be happy to see you,” Fitz assured her.

  She hurried to the entrance hall, then dawdled up the stairs, but there was no sign of Lord Wintringham. Not that she was sure what she wanted to say to him, if she had met him.

  Edmund left the billiard room in a fit of pique. Jane’s praise of Reid had annoyed him, he wasn’t sure why.

  Except that it had been excessive: the fellow was no more than an irresponsible boy, unworthy of the high regard in which she held him. Yes, a boy, too young for her and too young to be taken seriously.

  Wishing he had stayed to give her a few tips on handling her billiard cue, he repaired to his library. There he found the lawyer, Selwyn, once again peering longingly into the locked cabinet.

  “My lord, is that.. .can that possibly be Malory’s Morte d’Arthur in Caxton’s first edition of 1485?”

  “Yes. You know it?” asked Edmund, surprised and impressed.

  “I know of it. I have never seen a copy. There are no more than two or three extant, I believe.”

  “It’s the prize of my collection. Would you like to look at it?”

  He extracted the key from the secret drawer in his desk, opened the cabinet, and took out the precious volume, handling it with the utmost care. As he set it on the long table, he dismissed a momentary qualm. Any gentleman knowledgeable enough to recognize the book would know how to treat it, and Selwyn’s awed eagerness proclaimed him a confirmed bibliophile.

  Some time later Miss Gracechurch entered the library. Edmund half rose to his feet. Selwyn, with More’s Utopia—the English translation of 1551—in his hands, looked up and smiled absently.

  “Pray do not let me disturb you, gentlemen,” said Miss Gracechurch. “I have come to return this book, my lord. May I borrow another?”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  Apparently she knew just what she wanted and where to find it, for a moment later she departed without further interrupting their conversation. A sensible woman, thought Edmund.

  The lawyer spoke of his own small collection. “My most valuable acquisition is Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning,” he said.

  “The first edition? 1605, is it not? I should like to see it.”

  “I shall be more than happy to show it to you, my lord, if you will do me the honour of calling upon me in Hart Street when you are in Town. Hart Street, Bloomsbury Square.”

  “Bloomsbury Square. Let me write it down before I forget.” But even as he crossed to the desk and made a note, Edmund knew he would not forget Mr. Selwyn’s direction. The chance to talk to another book-lover was too rare.

  * * * *

  Jane went upstairs to see Lady Fitzgerald and her baby daughter, both flourishing. On her way back down, she made a detour through the long gallery where portraits of the Neville family were displayed, the earliest dating from Tudor times. Miss Neville was there before her.

  “I am just bidding my ancestors farewell, Miss Brooke,” she explained, her plump face beaming. “Like you, I shall leave the Abbey as soon as the fog lifts. Are you interested in the family history?”

  Jane was more interested in the family character, as revealed, she hoped, by their painted faces. However, she didn’t want to disappoint the little lady. “Pray tell me, ma’am,” she invited.

  “It is an ancient lineage, my dear,” she said proudly. “Much older than most of the English nobility. There was an Earl Neil of Wintringham before the Norman Conquest.”

  “Ancient indeed!” Jane’s first noble ancestor had owed his viscountcy to Charles II’s fondness for his wife, and the marquisate had been a reward for supporting George I’s claim to the British throne.

  “We have no portraits from that period, alas, but the descent can be traced. Under William the Conqueror, the title went into abeyance, the name was Frenchified to Neville, and the greater part of the lands was given to the Roman church to found an abbey.”

  “Then I wager the family fortunes revived under Henry VIII.”

  “Quite right, my dear. The Dissolution of the Monasteries returned Wintringham to the Nevilles, and King Henry restored the title. Here is the first Earl of Wintringham of modern times.”

  The painting was darkened with age, and a full beard curled down across the earl’s bejewelled chest, but Jane recognized the square, determined chin. There was nothing of icy hauteur in the Tudor nobleman’s gaze, though. He looked to be as full-blooded as his royal master.

  As they moved along the gallery, she saw hard faces and weak faces, stern, merry, and even cruel faces, yet none showed the cold disdain so characteristic of Edmund Neville, the present Lord Wintringham.

  “Here are my cousins, the late earl and his brother.” Miss Neville halted before the next to last portrait, in which two young men with powdered hair stood cradling shotguns, hunting dogs at their feet. “You may have noted a more recent painting of the late Lord Wintringham in the drawing-room?”

  The irresolute, rather vague, face was familiar. Jane studied with more interest the second young man, who must surely be Edmund’s father. Though he had the unmistakable strong Neville chin, his expression was open, cheerful, even friendly. How had he produced so aloof a son?

  “And the present Lady Wintringham.” Miss Neville’s tone was full of resentment. “We need not linger over her, she is not even a Neville by birth, of course. The daughter of a mere baronet, and a second baronet, at that.” She sniffed disparagingly.

  In her late twenties, the present Lady Wintringham had been a strikingly handsome woman, but even then her beauty was marred by her air of arrogant contempt. The children grouped about her, three girls and a boy of eight or so, were already marked with the same trait.

  Edmund Neville was no blood relation of the countess, yet she was undoubtedly responsible for the characteristics that had earned him the sobriquet “My Lord Winter.”

  Puzzled and curious, Jane followed her guide out of the gallery. She wasn’t sure what questions to ask, and she hesitated to interrupt Miss Neville’s explanation of her own relationship to the family. They reached the drawing-room, and the opportunity to learn more of Lord Wintringham was gone.

  A number of people had gathered in the long room, reading, writing letters, sewing, or conversing quietly. His lordship was not among them, nor his aunt, but Gracie was there.

  “What are you reading, ma’am?” Jane asked her. “I left my book in the library, I think.”

  “If you go to fetch it, try not to interrupt the gentlemen. They are absorbed in studying some musty old volumes.” Miss Gracechurch sounded unwontedly disgruntled but Jane scarcely noticed.

  “Lord Wintringham is there? I shall not disturb him if I can help it. We are at daggers drawn at present.”

  “Oh Jane, what did you say to him?”

  “I? Nothing! He is as changeable as a weather vane, I vow. I shall go for my book and see whether he has recovered his temper.”

  When Jane entered the library, the earl was locking the doors of the glass-fronted cabinet while Mr. Selwyn thanked him for a rare treat. The lawyer saw her and asked if she knew where Mis
s Gracechurch might be found.

  “In the drawing-room, sir. She is reading. I came to find my book.’’ Jane circled the table and went to check the stand beside the chair where she had been sitting.

  “The Life of Johnson, Miss Brooke?” enquired Lord Wintringham.

  “Yes, sir.” She was astonished that he had remembered. “I left it in here, I believe, but it is gone.”

  “No doubt it has been reshelved.”

  “Heavens, I shall never find it again!”

  He laughed. “I daresay I might lay hands upon it for you, but perhaps you would be kind enough to indulge me with a game of chess?”

  Jane accepted with alacrity. Since his discussion with Mr. Selwyn had dispelled his ill humour, she had no intention of wasting a moment of his agreeable mood. Then, as he took a chessboard from a drawer in the table, she realized that the lawyer had departed.

  Once more she was alone with the earl. Her heart began to thud within her chest and her breathing felt strange. “Sh-shall we play in the drawing-room?” she suggested, her voice strangled. She cleared her throat. “The Chinese chess set is so delightful, I should like to play with it again.”

  “As you will, ma’am.” Closing the drawer, he gave her a questioning glance, as if he was aware of her discomposure. “Let me get your book for you so that you don’t have to search for it later.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” She moved to the door while he went straight to the correct shelf and brought her the volume.

  Crossing the hall to the drawing-room, they sat down at the little chequer-board table and set out the pieces. Gracie was talking with Mr. Selwyn, and Lady Wintringham had joined Miss Neville and Mrs. Tuttle.

  “Chess is such an intellectual game, I vow,” said Mrs. Tuttle in a carrying tone. “I have always considered it most unsuitable for delicately bred females, do not you, ma’am?”

  “Indeed, only a bluestocking would care to try it,” her ladyship agreed. “No female can expect to play well enough to challenge a gentleman, but doubtless Wintringham will permit Miss Brooke to win.’’