by Gayle Buck
Miss Mays murmured something inarticulate. She looked around with huge eyes at her elegant surroundings. She had an impression of mirrors and objets d’art and a profusion of sweet-scented flowers. She stared at the number of footmen that busily attended to Lady Mays’s quiet orders. Her own baggage looked battered and somehow incongruous in their competent hands. Her pale thin face grew a little pinched, and she seemed to shrink into herself. But she was not allowed time to sort out her rising fears.
Chapter Fourteen
Lucinda and Miss Blythe drew their surprise guest along with them into the drawing room, all the while engaging in easy conversation. Miss Mays did not volunteer a single word to their exchange, but they assumed that she was merely shy at finding herself in the company of strangers.
Lucinda pulled off her gloves and untied the strings of her cape. She gave them to a footman, who bowed and also received Miss Blythe’s outer garment and gloves. He looked inquiringly at Miss Mays.
Upon realizing that the servant was waiting for her possessions, Miss Mays flushed to the roots of her hair. She shook her head quickly, clutching the lapel of her pelisse.
“Won’t you at least lay aside your bonnet. Miss Mays?” asked Lucinda.
“Not just yet, my lady, if you please,” responded Miss Mays. With a rather desperate little smile, she offered a weak explanation for her oddity. “I should not wish you to see me with my hair all ruffled and flattened from the journey.”
Lucinda and Miss Blythe exchanged wondering glances. Then Lucinda nodded to the waiting footman. “Thank you. That will be all for the moment.”
The footman bowed and left the drawing room. The butler came into the room with a tray of biscuits. He was followed by another footman who came in carrying the tea um. The butler positioned the tray of biscuits and directed the placing of the tea um. Then the servants left, the butler bowing as he closed the doors behind him.
“You must be chilled to the bone, Miss Mays. Let me serve you a cup of hot tea,” said Miss Blythe, going over to the tea um. “Do you prefer black or white? Sugar?”
“It’s of no consequence. I shall take whatever is the least trouble,” said Miss Mays, her brown eyes wide and apprehensive. She looked around the drawing room. She was dazzled and dazed by all the elegance and magnificence that she had already seen. This room was even more ostentatious. Gold gilt edged the ceiling and molding; silken embroidered tapestries hung on the walls; priceless figurines and vases covered the surfaces of stately furniture.
A deep oriental carpet covered the floor and muffled all footsteps. Its fantastic design was surely not actually meant to be trod upon. Miss Mays wished with all her heart that she could have removed her booted feet from its august surface.
Miss Mays’s agonized gaze fell upon the lady at whose invitation she had come to London. Miss Mays was certain that she had never beheld anyone so lovely and assured as her sister-in-law. Lady Mays was attired in a becoming evening gown of warm amethyst silk that left her white shoulders bare and displayed her figure to admirable advantage. Jewels glimmered in her dark upswept curls and at her bosom and on her wrists. She appeared formidable in her beauty.
Miss Mays turned scared eyes to her ladyship’s companion, Miss Blythe. This lady had spoken just as kindly as Lady Mays, but she, too, seemed the very epitome of elegance in her blue satin and pearls. She was therefore as unapproachable as Lady Mays in Miss Mays’s estimation. Never in her life had Miss Mays felt more inadequate or mousey.
Lucinda was completely unaware of her sister-in-law’s gathering weight of awe and dismay. She smiled and gestured graciously for Miss Mays to sit down on the settee closest to the warmth of the fire. “Pray be seated, Agnes. I hope that I may call you that?”
“Of course, my lady. I could have no possible objection,” said Miss Mays. She seated herself gingerly on the edge of the satin-covered settee. She drew her booted feet close under her, hoping to thus minimize her contact with the intimidating carpet. Miss Mays started nervously when Lady Mays sat down close beside her.
Miss Blythe brought over a cup of tea on a saucer. “Here you are, my dear. I have put a bit of milk and sugar in it. If you have not yet had supper it will revive you.” She urged the tea on their guest, who appeared strangely hesitant to accept it.
“Oh, I had not given a thought to supper.” Lucinda smiled at Miss Mays, an inquiring lift to her fine brows. “Have you dined yet, Agnes? If you have not, I shall ring for the cook to prepare something for you.”
Miss Mays burst into tears.
The young woman’s hands were shaking badly. Blinded by her tears, she kept trying unsuccessfully to set her cup and saucer down on the occasional table. The tea slopped dangerously. Hastily, Miss Blythe relieved her of the cup and saucer before the hot tea was spilled over all. Miss Mays did not even notice, but at once buried her face in her gloved palms. Her quiet sobbing was heartrending.
Over Miss Mays’s bowed head, Lucinda and Miss Blythe looked at one another in astonishment and dismay. Miss Blythe nodded, encouraging Lucinda to take the lead. “I shall take away this tea and mop up a bit,” she said, moving away.
Lucinda took up the role of comforter without the least notion of what she should do. “My dear Agnes, whatever is the matter?” she asked.
She could not see the young woman’s face, so she untied the strings of Miss Mays’s bonnet and gently laid the headgear aside. Taking her sister-in-law’s nearest trembling gloved hand in her own, she said encouragingly, “Come, my dear, you have nothing to fear from us. Pray unburden yourself. What has gotten you so overwrought?”
Miss Mays replied in a muffled, suspended voice. The disjointed sentences, begun so hesitantly and only after much urging from Lucinda, eventually poured out of her.
She had written to Lady Mays out of a rare boldness borne of wistful hope. Later, she had shivered over her own impudence. She had never expected a reply, let alone one that was so graciously condescending. Lady Mays was too kind, too compassionate, toward one she did not—could not—know!
Upon receiving Lady Mays’s letter she had gone at once to her aunt to share with that lady her good fortune. Her aunt had flown into a terrible fit of temper.
“She threw a clock at my head and swore at me!” sobbed Miss Mays.
The aunt declared that Miss Mays was her companion. She utterly forbade Miss Mays to accept Lady Mays’s invitation or, indeed, to respond to her ladyship’s letter.
Miss Mays had been utterly shaken and shocked. She had been thrown into flat despair. As the days slowly passed and she had obediently not set pen to paper, she grew to feel more and more burdened by guilt. The obsession took hold of her mind that she was behaving with unbearable rudeness toward kind Lady Mays.
A seed of rebellion became lodged in Miss Mays’s heart and festered. It was kept watered by her aunt’s constant remindings to her of her place. She was a nobody, a plain-faced mouse, a spinster at her last prayers. Her only object in life could only be to make herself useful to her betters.
Finally, Miss Mays had been unable to withstand the hateful haranguing, and she made a hasty retort.
“Oh, I should not have done it! I should not have! But I was unable to bear any more,” moaned Miss Mays.
The words had poured out of her as she outlined the aunt’s selfishness and mean-spiritedness. Afterward, she had stood aghast at herself. Before her eyes, her aunt had turned quite purple with fury. The old woman was rendered momentarily speechless by her awful rage.
Miss Mays had begun to tremble with fear and remorse. It had not been her intention to drive her aunt into such a fit that it was likely to kill her. Miss Mays had started to utter a shivering apology, but she had been summarily cut off.
Her aunt renounced her roundly. Miss Mays was an ingrate, a viper in her bosom, a care-for-nobody, a bumbling, fumbling fool!
“I may be foolish, but I am not those other things! Truly I am not!” said Miss Mays tearfully.
The aunt had dismissed M
iss Mays from her service on the spot and had ordered her things to be thrown out of the house into the yard. Miss Mays was put out with only her few possessions, without even being given the last quarter’s salary owed her. She had timidly pointed out this omission, but her aunt had sworn that Miss Mays could starve and with her goodwill, for not a farthing more would she have from that lady’s purse.
If it had not been for the carter who delivered the household’s supply of milk and butter each week happening upon her, Miss Mays did not know what she might have done. But fortunately, the carter had taken pity on her and allowed her to ride in the back of his cart, himself placing her baggage beside her.
“Otherwise I would have had to trudge all the five miles to the village with only what I was able to carry,” said Miss Mays.
When she arrived in the village, Miss Mays had purchased a ticket for the Mail Coach. She used some of the money that she had saved from the pittance that her aunt paid to her and which she had never been given the opportunity to spend. Then once in London, she had hired a hackney to carry her to the address on dear Lady Mays’s letter.
Miss Mays’s faculties had been utterly suspended in her misery, and she had made her way to the only place she had known to go. But then when she had seen the imposing facade of the town house, she had realized that Lady Mays could not possibly have need of her services. Lady Mays obviously could afford any number of servants to do her pleasure. She had made a terrible error in writing to Lady Mays at all.
“It was a wicked, wicked mistake, for it was born out of my own selfishness! Now I have no place to go and no position to sustain me and I am very, very sorry to be such trouble!” A fresh bout of tears ended Miss Mays’s wretched confession.
Lucinda gathered her sister-in-law into her arms for a reassuring hug. “Agnes! You must not go on so. You are not the least trouble. I am very pleased to have you here. You will be company for me and Tibby.”
“But you have no place for me,” cried Miss Mays, rearing away. “I cannot possibly be of service to you. Oh, what shall become of me?” She searched wildly in her pocket for a handkerchief.
Miss Blythe thoughtfully provided Miss Mays with her own daintily embroidered handkerchief. Miss Mays mopped her tear-swollen and reddened face. When she glanced down at the sodden twisted linen and saw what a work of beauty it had been before she had made such unthinking use of it, she actually groaned. “I have ruined it!”
“Of course you haven’t, my dear. It will wash quite nicely,” said Miss Blythe soothingly.
“I am not even fit to serve as your ladyship’s lackey!” exclaimed Miss Mays despondently.
“What a funny you are, Agnes! I did not ask you to join my-household as a servant!” said Lucinda on a soft laugh.
“You didn’t?” Miss Mays frowned at her, sniffing still. “But then why?”
“You are my sister. I wish to bring you into your proper place. Agnes, I want to introduce you into the society in which you have always belonged.”
Miss Mays stared at Lucinda, her mouth falling softly agape.
Lucinda took her sister-in-law’s hand. It lay quiescent in hers. She said gently, “Agnes, you have been shamefully cheated by your family. Tibby and I shall see to it that you are restored to your rightful place.”
Miss Mays stared at her with uncomprehending eyes. “I beg pardon? I... I do not understand.
Lucinda looked at her sister-in-law. She then glanced at Miss Blythe a bit helplessly. She did not know what else to say. She thought that she had explained the matter with perfect clarity.
Miss Blythe eased Miss Mays’s hand out of Lucinda’s light clasp. She drew the young woman gently to her feet. “Come, my dear. You are obviously exhausted. Nothing is making the least sense to you. I shall see that you are given a bowl of soup and some tea upstairs and then allow you to go to bed. Everything will be made much clearer to you in the morning.”
Miss Mays looked at Miss Blythe. Then she turned a questioning gaze on her imposing sister-in-law, Lady Mays. Even in her shocked state, she was dumbly aware of where the authority lay.
Lucinda realized that Miss Mays was actually looking to her for her permission. She nodded encouragingly. “Go with Tibby now.”
Still Miss Mays seemed to hesitate. “It is my wish,” said Lucinda gently.
“Come along with me, Miss Mays,” said Miss Blythe quietly.
Then Miss Mays docilely went away with Miss Blythe out of the drawing room.
Lucinda sat back against the cushions of the settee. A frown had gathered her brows. She stared into the fire, watching the yellow flames flicker.
The arrival of her sister-in-law was nothing as she had supposed it would be. For the life of her, she could not imagine that poor, wretched young woman as being able to take the ton by storm. She could make Miss Mays the most well-dressed and coiffed young woman in the town, but there was nothing that she could do to transform her sister-in-law’s unfortunate manner.
As cruel and heedless as Lucinda knew society to be, she wondered at the wisdom of even attempting to bring Miss Mays into fashion.
Lucinda got up from the settee to pace back and forth. “She would be eaten alive,” she said aloud, grimly.
Lucinda pinned her hopes on Miss Blythe. Surely if there were any worthwhile suggestions to be put forward, Miss Blythe would do so. Lucinda did not wish to put away her intention of doing what she could for Miss Mays.
Chapter Fifteen
It was almost an hour later when Miss Blythe returned to the drawing room. Upon that lady’s quiet entrance, Lucinda turned. “How is she?”
“She is asleep, poor child. She is burnt to the socket,” said Miss Blythe. “She will be better for a night’s rest.”
“I have never been so filled with compassion, Tibby. That young woman has been brutally browbeaten nearly all of her life and look at what it has made of her,” said Lucinda.
“Quite,” agreed Miss Blythe. For a moment she watched Lucinda’s restless pacing. “What shall you try to do for her?”
“Hopefully, just as I have said. I wish to see that she is restored to her proper place,” said Lucinda.
Lucinda was not really surprised by her companion’s suddenly thoughtful expression. Miss Blythe would naturally have thought of the same sort of reservations that she had herself.
She smiled slightly. “Why are you frowning, Tibby? Do you not agree that I should do all in my power for her?”
“Oh, most emphatically I do. However, I suspect that your object may not be so easily accomplished. As you have so correctly observed, Miss Mays has received in her life little of kindness or consideration,” said Miss Blythe.
Lucinda sighed and nodded. “It is precisely that which has me in a puzzle, Tibby. Not ever having been brought out or encouraged to think of herself, Agnes will be thrown into natural confusion by pretty compliments or a gentleman’s expression of interest. Nor will she know how best to deal with the snobbery that one is likely to meet among certain sets.”
“Of a surety, she will not know how to respond,” agreed Miss Blythe. “However, the problem runs deeper than that, Lucinda. Why, she confided to me abovestairs that she had never before set foot in this house! Her brother’s house, if you please! Can you not imagine what must have been racing through her mind when we brought her into this room?”
“My word. The poor girl must have been utterly overwhelmed when she saw all of this pompous show,” said Lucinda slowly. “And we two attired as we are! It is no wonder that she refused to give up her outer garments or that she burst into tears. She must have felt that at any moment she would be put out as being too unworthy of our company.”
“Precisely. She felt herself quite beneath our touch. I suspect that Miss Mays would have felt more comfortable coming through the back service entrance rather than through the front door,” said Miss Blythe.
She shook her head, her expression saddened. “Such a waste of that young woman’s youth. It will be difficult for he
r to be thrust suddenly from servitude to privilege.”
“Yes, I begin to understand that. Tibby, I am ashamed that I never inquired after her well-being during the time of my marriage. I knew that she was going to an elderly relation to act as a companion. I wish I had done something,” said Lucinda, frowning in her turn. “But I did not know that my late lord had carried his callousness so far as to completely deny his sister a place in his life.”
“But you did not know,” reminded Miss Blythe gently.
“I should have suspected it, at least. He disliked to have anything about him that he did not admire for its beauty or its expense. Obviously Agnes was neither in his estimation,” said Lucinda.
“You must not blame yourself, my dear. Even if you had known the extent of Miss Mays’s miserable circumstances, I suspect that there would still have been little you could have done. Would Lord Mays have allowed her into his household?” asked Miss Blythe, crossing to her usual chair and sitting down. She pulled out her embroidery from its basket.
“No, I know very well that he would not have. But I could have had her with me at Carbarry. That would have been infinitely better for her, don’t you agree?” Lucinda angrily slapped her palms together. “That aunt of hers! What a fiendish monster to use her so harshly!”
“There is no profit in growing hardhearted over such a one as that, Lucinda. That chapter of Miss Mays’s life is thankfully at an end. It would be better now to think what is best to be done,” said Miss Blythe, placing her stitches with meticulous care.
“You are right as always, Tibby,” said Lucinda, a smile edging back to her lips.
Lucinda watched her companion, knowing from long association that Miss Blythe often covered her most contemplative reflections with the activity in which she was at that moment engaged.
“Very well! What shall we do with Agnes?”
Miss Blythe paused in her handiwork and looked up at Lucinda speculatively. “Why, I had thought to take her in hand a little and take up my governessing mantle again. Should you dislike it very much, my dear?”
