Valerie bowed to her as she left the room, practising her curtsy. The countess solemnly returned it, then smiled, and waved her away with a flutter of her white hands. She was trying her best to teach Valerie to be a lady. She would be presented next year, probably, after the mourning period for Clarence was over.
Lady Deidre passed Valerie, and Valerie held the door for her as she glanced down at the book in Valerie’s hand. “Studying hard, my dear?” she asked, with a little mocking laugh. “You have much to learn, I understand!”
Valerie’s mouth compressed against her quick anger. She watched Lady Deidre enter the countess’s drawing room, heard her mother-in-law say, “Lady Deidre, come in, my dear! We shall have a good coze this morning!”
“I have had a letter from Papa,” said Deidre, in the little-girlish tone she used with her future “Maman” as she called her. “I wanted to consult you about it, dearest!”
Valerie shut the door and went on, her heart bitter. Malcolm’s mother obviously preferred Deidre and, of course, Eustace, as the elder, was her favourite. Valerie would probably never be able to do anything right in their eyes! They had held a dinner party for Reggie, and Valerie had been conscious of them all watching her anxiously, to see what she might do wrong! It had made her so stiff and self-conscious that she had spilled her wine on the white lace tablecloth.
She went down to the library, chose a book, and set aside the etiquette book rebelliously. Mr Kenyon watched her with a slight though understanding smile and came over to her.
“Shall I go over your lesson with you, Miss Valerie?” he asked gently. “Perhaps to speak of it will be easier than just reading.”
Reluctantly she laid down the slim volume of Shakespeare’s poetry, and took up the etiquette book again. “I should not take your time, Mr Kenyon,” she began.
“Not at all. I am happy to be of service to you. You see, I have the setting of tables for the countess as well as other little duties to perform, which have made them familiar to me over the years. Now, what are you to study this morning?”
She showed him the pages, and he moved his lips silently as he looked over them. “You have read them?”
“Yes, but they are so full of whenevers and whereases and if-insteads, that I cannot endure it!”
He smiled and told her what it meant. They went over the pages together for an hour, and he nodded and said she learned amazingly rapidly. That was balm for her sore heart.
The earl came in as they finished. “What, mulling over that dry stuff?” he snorted. “Come on, Valerie, come away with me. Get your bonnet and cloak and some mitts, and we’ll be off!”
She smiled at him. “Oh, sir, where are we going?”
“Off!” he said mysteriously. “Louis, tell them we are gone about our duties today and shall return in time for tea — if circumstances do not prevent us!” And he chuckled like a boy, for all his grey hairs.
It was almost twelve. Malcolm would be angry that she ran off without telling him. However, he was off with Eustace somewhere. She gathered up her cloak and mitts, set the bonnet on her head, and fastened the ribbons under her chin. The lilac ribbons and cream straw suited her pretty complexion, so much better for the good food and sleep she had had recently.
She ran down the stairs again and met the earl in the hallway. Furtively, he guided her to the side door, where a groom and carriage awaited them on the gravelled road. He helped her in, and they were off.
She giggled like a child. “Do tell me where we go, Papa,” she said. He had asked her to call him that, and she did when they were alone. He was so sweet and kind to her, more like the father she had longed for than her own handsome, reckless parent. He patted her hands.
“We are going to see my bailiff, then off to the fields,” he said contentedly. “I like a clear blue day like this, when I can go and look at the fields, wintry though they are, and plan against the springtime.”
She agreed happily and settled back against the comfortable cushions. He talked on amiably about his plans for the summer. He would sow that field in clover, that one in wheat, the other in corn. She looked, agreed, enjoyed the wintry scene. The air was chill, and the wind whipped about, but in the carriage it was comfortable, with the rug about her lap, and her purple velvet cloak about her.
Presently, he said, apropos of nothing, “You must not mind the lessons in etiquette, my dear one. Mother means no insult to your fine mind. She is anxious only that you shall learn so much that you may move gracefully in society. When you learn to know her, you will love her as we do.”
Valerie turned her face away abruptly. “I know that, sir,” she said, in a smothered voice. “But Malcolm — and I do not wish to be presented to society! We have quarrelled over that, I — I don’t know what to do. He keeps pushing me to learn more of household management —”
The earl grumphed and hawed uneasily. “Well, well, I don’t mean to interfere,” he said finally. “Not my field, no, not at all. But we do long for Malcolm to settle down. Have you talked to him about selling out?”
She shook her head. “He would not listen to me,” she said, positively. “He — he longs for the day to return to battle. He and Reggie talk of nothing but battles, and manoeuvres, and one general and another. He is just like Clarence, longing for excitement and dangers. And he cares nothing for me,” she burst out, her bitterness leading her on.
“Oh, my dear, but he married you,” said the earl gently. “He must care deeply for you. Only he is a wild reckless fellow just now. It is up to you to lead him to domestic bliss, and once you have a child, I am sure he will give up all these extravagant adventures.”
She shook her head violently, and tears spilled over. She took out her handkerchief and wiped them away. “He will not,” she said. For, she thought, she would never have his child. He did not care for her, he thought only to school her to his way of life, then forget her.
She would not endure it. She would be off about her own adventures, she decided fiercely. She would have adventures of the mind! She would read, study, think, become a governess, maybe a learned bluestocking! A woman should be able to earn her own living in a reputable fashion, gracefully, without leaning on any man!
“Well, well, we’ll speak no more of it,” said the earl unhappily, and the carriage stopped just then before the bailiff’s pleasant stone house. “Here we are, there is Rodger to greet us. There you are, there you are,” he said in relief, as the bailiff, greyed and plump, came up to the carriage with a broad grin on his pleasant face. “We came to luncheon,” said the earl, “and your good wife is most kind to invite us.”
Rodger Parker helped Valerie down. “You honour us, sir, and Mrs Villiers. Yes, sir, we’ve been looking forward to this. You’ll not mind all the young ones about, sir? Mother has the care of them while the women are quilting.”
Mrs Parker, tall and lean as her husband was short and plump, stood in the doorway to greet them, a baby clinging to her neck. Valerie came towards her up the path, between rows of fragrant flowers and herbs. The girl drew a deep breath. “Oh, how beautiful it is here!” she cried, in genuine pleasure.
Mrs Parker smiled at her, pleased. “There now, Mrs Villiers, you like flowers? You shall have a carriage full to take home with you.”
“No, I shall not rob you of these!” declared Valerie. “But how fragrant they are — and what is this?” She stooped to touch a tall blue flower poised on its stalk.
Mrs Parker named it, then pointed out the pinks and roses, the lilies and stock, all cut back against the winter. “They will bloom in the spring, you shall come then,” she declared. “Only my herbs and the strong ones are a-blooming now. But I have flowers the year around in my Shakespeare garden.”
Valerie came on into the house, delighted with the pleasant hallway scrubbed clean, the sturdy oak chest and bench, the formal sitting room with flowered chintz covering the maple sofa and chairs. “Shakespeare garden?” she asked. “And what is that?”
“D
id you never hear of that?” asked Mrs Parker. “Well, my mother had one, and her mother before her. When I come to live here, I said to Rodger, I must have my garden, and he fixed it up against the house in the most sheltered place against the winds. All these years, I’ve had my Shakespeare garden. It’s all the flowers and herbs and such that the man mentioned in his plays. One of my sons, he writes down what each is, and where the flower is mentioned in the plays.”
The conversation lasted them comfortably through the pleasant meal that followed. Mrs Parker had felt awkward, having the earl and the new daughter-in-law in her home. But she soon found, as she said afterwards to her best friend, “They was as common as grass, and that easy to talk to. Not that the earl, he was never difficult, you see. But she has no airs about her, and she did hold the baby and dandled him like she knew how.”
The earl was quite pleased with the success of his little thought. Valerie had seemed more at ease than in his own home. And later in the carriage, as they drove to the home of one of his tenants, he said, “And how should you like to help me make a Shakespeare garden, Valerie? Eh? Wouldn’t that be a project, though? I’ve got roses, and pinks, and such, but never took it on, to try to put out all the herbs and flowers that he writes about.”
“Oh, I should like that immensely,” she said, clasping her hands eagerly. “Just think of all we could put in! Beds of little pansies, and poppies, mint and balm, rue and columbine, and cowslip — oh, let me see —”
“You could look them up in the Shakespeare books,” he said encouragingly, watching her eager face as they drove on in the wintry landscape. “Give us something to plan for this winter. We could make starts in the greenhouse, ready to transplant in the spring. We could draw plans —”
In the spring. With a start, Valerie realized she would probably not be here in the spring. She would go away, as soon as Malcolm left.
Her face shadowed. “Or would it be too much, work?” asked the earl, quick to see, and sensitive that he might be pushing too much on her.
She shook her head. “I — I would love to do it,” she said softly. “If only —” She broke off, and repeated softly,
“‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometimes of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight —’”
“Charming, charming!” declared the earl, delighted. He hated to see shadows in the great, wistful brown eyes of his new daughter. How those eyes changed, as the sun drifted across them, as the huge oak trees shadowed them, and they came out into the sunlit fields again. They showed her moods, her uncertainty. He felt that she was not happy, rumours of her quarrelling with Malcolm had come to him through his valet. Curse the boy, he did not know how to handle such a sensitive girl, thought his father. He cared little for Deidre, she was hard, he thought shrewdly. Behind her cute little ways, she had managed to get quite a sum of money from them, through her engagement to Eustace. And they had bought all her clothes this past year, plus jewellery.
And this girl, married to Malcolm, was too proud to accept hardly anything.
“Well,” he said briskly, “you shall help me in my project. Not a word to the others, it shall be our secret. You shall hunt out more sweet verses for us, and we shall enlist the gardeners. What kind of plot shall we make? A square, or a circle, and how much room?”
The discussion kept them through the afternoon, along with a visit to a tenant, a shrewd look over the fields near his cottage, and finally tea with another tenant who had some grievances about his neighbour’s cows in his pasture.
It was past five when they left the second tenant. Valerie said thoughtfully, “Did you know, Papa, that she has refused to send her children to school? She said that the schoolmaster is cruel to the children, hits them often with his ruler, and forces them to stand out in the cold air when they do not know their lessons. I do like a good master, Papa. It does not sound as if he is one. Do you know much of him?”
“He is new this year, the other moved on to a better paying post,” said the earl, scowling. “So — he is being cruel, is he? I’ll see about that! I shall have no such complaints! If he will not mend his ways, he leaves!”
They were speaking of it as they entered the great hall of Arundel, cheeks ruddy from the wintry cold, voices eager from their conversation. Malcolm came out from the drawing room, frowning. “Here you are, here you are at last,” he said, jealously. “And what has kept you all this day, Valerie?”
She put up her chin. The earl said quickly, “I enlisted her help, Malcolm. She has been riding about with me to the tenants. Good ideas, she has, which we can discuss later. Is there any tea left for us, eh?” And he rubbed his hands briskly, and gave his thick cloak to the butler, as Valerie gave hers to the footman.
Deidre was sitting cosily near the fire as they entered the drawing room, her dainty blue slippers up on a hassock. Her cold blue eyes studied them as they entered.
“I should not dream of interfering with the tenants,” she said, in her little-girlish high voice, smiling demurely at the earl. “I am sure your judgment is infallible!”
“You would be wrong,” he said bluntly, sitting down near the countess. “I am human, I can be wrong, so can anyone.” He smiled at his wife blandly. “May I have some more tea, my dear? It was a long, cold ride.”
“It was too cold for you to be out,” said Malcolm in a low angry tone to Valerie as she held out her red hands to the blaze. “And you did not tell me where you were going, nor ask my permission.”
“You were not about,” she said, her head turned from him.
“I encouraged her to come with me,” said the earl quickly. “I needed her advice. After you are married to Eustace, my dear Deidre, you will need to learn much about the estate.”
Her pretty face was a study at his open rebuke. Eustace gazed thoughtfully at his father and said nothing.
“I hope Mrs Parker is well?” said the countess gently. She smoothly turned the talk to Mrs Parker, her children and grandchildren, and the heated atmosphere cooled somewhat.
When they were alone, however, Malcolm did not hesitate to rebuke Valerie again. “You should not have gone off like that. We had guests for luncheon. They thought it very rude of you to be gone.”
She sat bolt upright in the huge bed, automatically pulled up the covers to her chin, and glared at him. “Your father asked me to go with him! I am honoured whenever he requests me to help him, it is a great compliment! And he has much work to do on the estate!”
“You think more of him than you do of me,” said Malcolm sulkily, sitting down in his nightshirt on the edge of the bed. “If I asked you to go riding in the carriage, you would have some excuse! Yet you go off with my father when he beckons —”
Her voice wavered. “He is like my own father — he is so kind, so gentle. Even more thoughtful than my father. And he — he —” To her fury and dismay she began to cry, tears dripping down her face.
Malcolm melted at once. “Oh, darling, don’t cry! I can’t endure it.” He climbed into bed and snatched her into his arms, pressing her head against his broad chest. “Don’t cry, love. I keep forgetting you have just lost all your family — don’t cry. Of course, they are all your family now, mother and father. I even provided a big brother for you, wasn’t I thoughtful?”
He coaxed and teased her until the tears ceased, and they lay together under the covers, and he began to caress her. His big hands were so clever at rousing her emotions, and his kisses nibbled gently over her chin, her cheek, down to her shoulder. He brushed aside the nightdress to kiss her soft skin, over her shoulder, down to her breasts.
He was more gentle with her tonight than he had been for a time. His fingers played with her, he whispered to her how lovely she was, how soft and silky. “A pretty
thing, my love, a pretty thing, with your hair so loose and perfumed. I love your hair, I could play all night with it,” and he kissed the soft strands, burying his face in them.
Something softened in her, she sighed, and put her arms about his body, drawing him down to her. In silence, they embraced, and she answered his kisses shyly, then more boldly. He had a way of pressing against her lips coaxingly until her mouth opened, then he would thrust his tongue inside, and tease her, until she felt on fire. Sometimes she could forget completely the abominable reason he had married her — over dice! — and relax and yield to his desires.
His hands went over and over her body, down to her thighs, moving up the nightdress so he could caress her silky limbs. A fire seemed to burn in her, and she wriggled and pressed herself to him. He muttered something, deep in his throat, and his kisses became more ardent, until he was pressed to her, and their bodies joined in a wild quest for fulfilment.
But only two days later, they were quarrelling again. She had been assigned by the countess to plan the meals for a week. She had fussed and worried over it, going over and over cookbooks, menus, changing and changing yet again, with the patient cook helping her.
“What in the world is this?” asked Deidre one evening, wrinkling her nose over the fish course.
“There’s a new sauce,” said Valerie, defensively. “I found it in a cookbook —”
“Ugh,” said Deidre. “I am sorry, my dear, but I do wish you would refrain from experimenting! I cannot eat this, take it away,” and she waved the dish from her.
Valerie looked hopefully at Malcolm, who tasted curiously. He made a face. “Too much vinegar, I think. Tastes like some peculiar thing I had in Portugal.” And he too set down his spoon.
The countess set her lips, disapprovingly. “It is not a bad effort, Valerie,” she said, with restraint. “Next time, will you consult with me before changing the sauces?”
Amethyst Love: A passionate Regency romance Page 4
