A Falling Star, page 5
part #3 of Wintercombe Series
William had been very dear to Silence, a sunny, open child, free of deceit or malice, easy to like and to love. She had suspected, though, that the impoverished Bab had fixed her expectations less upon his friendly smile and his yellow hair than on the fact that, after the child Alex, he had been the next heir to Wintercombe. The truth — that William had only ever wanted to be a soldier, was completely lacking in any other ambition, and was quite content to live in comparative poverty so long as he could pursue the trade he loved — had never penetrated her rather limited intelligence. He was handsome, charming, and brother to a baronet, and probably the last attribute counted for more in her mind than the other two.
Fortunately, Charles and Amy resembled their father more than their mother, who possessed the rather kittenish prettiness which looked well at eighteen, and rather less congruous on a lady in middle age. Charles was not tall, and had William’s stocky build, his corn-fair hair, and frank, open face. His eyes, though, were not William’s warm dark brown, but the paler blue of his mother. Amy, beside him in her best gown of deep blue silk, had made considerable efforts with her appearance. The abundant golden locks were neatly curled and shining, her stays had evidently, to her grandmother’s amused and observant eye, been laced several inches tighter than usual, and a filmy lace tippet rather inadequately covered her shoulders. Her eyes, brown like William’s, sparkled with excitement, and Silence knew exactly what she was thinking. There was no denying that Amy, with her tilted nose and peach-cream skin, was a delightful-looking girl, full of liveliness and chatter. But with Alex, who had never suffered fools gladly, she was undoubtedly wasting her time.
Hard on their heels came Louise, dark and somehow alien amongst these pale English people. Her French clothes and Gallic gestures and accent would always make her exotic at Wintercombe, despite the fact that her mother had been born here. With an increasing presentiment of disaster, Silence saw that she also had taken great pains with her dress. The mantua gown in striped golden-yellow silk was of a fashion so new that it had hardly yet crossed the Channel, and her hair, teased into dramatic shadowy ringlets all around her head, gave her an aura of extreme, brittle sophistication. Nor did the face below, subtly enhanced with powder and paint and two small, heart-shaped patches, dispel her grandmother’s foreboding. Beside Louise, Amy, pretty as she was, seemed like an immature schoolgirl, trying on adult attitudes for the first time. And whereas Amy, despite her looks, was still essentially innocent, Louise knew exactly what she was doing.
Silence unwarily caught her eye, and her suspicions were immediately confirmed by her granddaughter’s slow, deliberate wink.
‘Mother is coming down,’ said Amy breathlessly. She darted a glance at Louise, plainly envious of her glamorous cousin, who, quite effortlessly and without even being beautiful, had stolen her thunder.
Louise saw the look, and smiled inwardly. She had no particular grudge against Amy but an inability to endure more than an hour or so of her exclusive company. Since her cousin’s one wish at the moment was to learn French, the language of fashion and polite society, and as much about modes and manners as she could possibly extract from Louise, relations between them were at present rather strained. It was not so much that they disliked each other, but that they had no interest whatsoever in common besides Amy’s urgent desire to become more French than the French. And since her accent, even after several months of Louise’s impatient instruction, was quite execrable, her vocabulary limited and her grammar hopelessly confused, even that point of contact had almost expired.
Strangely enough, considering Louise’s love of activity, her delight in riding and outdoor pursuits, she had liked Phoebe from the start, and the feeling had been returned.
‘No one has seen Alex, I suppose?’ Silence asked gently.
Amy and Charles exchanged significant glances, the girl with anticipation, her brother looking as if she had mentioned some name of ill omen, certain to bring bad luck. ‘A man arrived just after I came home,’ Charles said, in his quiet, rather diffident voice. ‘He had some baggage with him, on a pony, that he said belonged to Alex, so I sent Abigail to find him before I went upstairs to change. He’s taken up residence in the East Chamber.’
It was obvious, of course, that he would choose the best room in the house, used in recent years for important guests. Once it had belonged to Silence, and she had regarded it as her kingdom, the place where she hoarded all the things she loved: her books and flowers, her pets and her children. Even her first husband, George, had grudgingly asked her permission before coming to her bed, puffing up the spiral stair that led only to that chamber and the two closets just off it, and she had done her duty, though always feeling his unwelcome presence to be in some way a violation.
Somehow, to think of Alex, careless and arrogant, treating that lovely room as casually as he seemed to view everything else at Wintercombe, upset her considerably. But, as she had said to Phoebe, he was master here now, and he could do as he pleased.
‘What sort of baggage, Charles?’ Louise asked, feeling the familiar bubble of mischief beginning to fizz inside her.
Her cousin shook his head. ‘I have no idea, save that it was bulky, and some of it apparently fragile. It was piled in the Hall, but it wasn’t there just now, so he must have ordered it moved.’
‘How exciting!’ Amy said, clasping her pale, soft hands together.
Phoebe fixed her with a sardonic blue eye. ‘Really? Does a gentleman’s baggage usually enthral you so much?’
‘No — no,’ Amy stammered, suddenly confused. ‘I — well — it’s exciting to have him home again from foreign parts. That’s what I meant.’
Even Charles, who was very fond of his sister, looked exasperated. He said, with some annoyance, ‘Oh, do stop rattling on, Amy. Do you want him to think you’re a ninny-head? Where is he, anyway? I would have thought it only common courtesy to have made his presence felt in person, instead of skulking in his chamber.’ Try as he would, he could not keep a rather peevish note from his voice. He had longed to take that room for himself, so much larger and grander than the chamber above the winter parlour which had been his for years.
‘I expect he was tired from the journey,’ said Silence, quietly soothing, as she had done for so long. ‘He rode straight here from Bristol, after all, as soon as his ship tied up. And I’m glad to hear his bags have arrived — he could hardly appear for supper in travel-stained garments. There is no one here who has clothes that would fit him.’
At that moment the door opened, and five pairs of eyes turned in expectation. They were, however, doomed to disappointment, for standing there, triumphant on the arm of her maid, was Bab St Barbe, making her grand entrance.
She had not left her chamber for some weeks, and Silence, even though she had visited her daily, had forgotten how very fat she had grown. Bab adored sweetmeats and cakes, and every morning the cook, Nan Stevenson, baked a special batch which would be sent up, each delicious spiced pile glistening with crumbled sugar, for Mistress St Barbe’s afternoon delectation. The results of such indulgence were plain to see in the rolled fat, the numerous chins, the obesely bulging line of her waist, and in her pink, puffed face, perspiring with the effort of unaccustomed exertion. Her maid, Beck Richeson, a sturdy and conscientious girl from Frome, seemed to be wilting somewhat as she supported her mistress’s weight.
Bab’s faded, blue-grey eyes searched in vain amongst the five faces already gathered in the dining parlour, and a look of peevish disappointment sagged her face as she realised that she had been denied the opportunity to make a dramatic entrance in front of her infamous nephew. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded. ‘He’s late!’
Both Charles and Amy, Louise saw, looked distinctly embarrassed by their mother’s appearance. Bab’s silly foibles and foolish talk were much easier to tolerate, and ignore, when in self-imposed isolation in her chamber, than aired before the entire family and the servants. It’s just as well poor Uncle William was killed so soon, thought Louise, regarding his widow with some irritation. He’d have been driven mad, or to drink, by now, if he’d lived.
‘He shouldn’t keep us waiting,’ Bab continued, as if she herself had not done just that. ‘He should be here to greet us. Has he spoken to you, Charles, dear?’
‘I haven’t so much as clapped eyes on him,’ said her son, rather more curtly than usual. ‘He will doubtless appear, in good time.’
‘And sooner rather than later, I trust,’ said Bab. ‘Help me to my chair, Beck…so inconsiderate…doesn’t he realise that I’m a sick woman? I shouldn’t leave my chamber…the effort exhausts me…my heart, you know…he really should be here.’
A movement behind her ample shoulder attracted Louise’s attention, as her aunt manoeuvred, wheezing and panting, towards her place at the table. Alex was standing in the gloom of the passage outside the door, undoubtedly able to hear every word that she said. Before Louise could glance away and pretend that she had not noticed him, he had caught her eye and smiled. It was not a particularly warm expression, and boded no good whatsoever for the immediate future. Once more, Louise felt the fizz of anticipation begin to bubble up. Between Bab and Alex, not to mention Phoebe and Charles, this was likely to prove a memorable evening.
If anyone else had seen him, they gave no sign. Charles was busy helping his mother to sit down, and her stertorous breathing was punctuated by a stream of complaints about her health, her nephew, and the dangerous paucity of candles to light the stairs. In the middle of this, Alex stepped into the room.
He had changed out of his riding clothes and was wearing a suit of blue-grey velvet, trimmed with blue and silver, whose understated elegance immediately drew Louise’s appreciative eye. His black hair lay combed and sleek on his shoulders, as long and thick as a periwig, and his blue eyes gleamed with malice and laughter. ‘Good evening, everyone.’
The hush was instant, save for the soft plumping noise as Bab, released from her son’s grip, dropped solidly down on to her chair. His gaze swept them all, lingered a while on Amy — who blushed and lowered her eyes — and returned to her mother. ‘Hullo, Aunt. I am so sorry that I have kept you waiting. It was most discourteous of me to do so, and I present my profound apologies.’
Bab, the wind stolen from her sails, could only gape at him. Alex swept them all a flourishing bow, a courtesy variously echoed, after a fractional pause, by his kin. Then, still with that untrustworthy smile, he indicated the vacant place opposite Silence. ‘This is my chair, I take it?’
Silence, who found Alex in this mood frankly terrifying, regarded him with her usual composure. ‘It is indeed. If you would all be seated, I will ring the bell for supper.’
A procession of maids, clad in the neat, plain dark blue that all Wintercombe’s servants wore, with decorous white linen cuffs and aprons, caps and collars, bore in the steaming dishes. Once, long ago, the St Barbes had employed the best cook in the West Country, justly famous for his sauces, but poor Nan Stevenson, though very competent, entirely lacked her predecessor’s flair. There was a pigeon pie, a roast fowl somewhat past its first flush of youth, a winter pottage made of leeks and beans and gobbets of salt mutton, and a rabbit hash in the French style, after a recipe which Louise had provided from memory, it being a favourite of her stepfather’s cook in France. The maids, with the same air of suppressed curiosity and excitement that had infected Amy and Louise, bustled round the table, their eyes sliding sideways to the new master of Wintercombe, who sat at the end of the table, his expression impassive. At last, all the steaming dishes had been laid before the assembled St Barbes, along with jugs and bottles of beer and wine, and Silence motioned to the servants to stand in a row by the door. ‘Sir Alexander, may I present these members of your household?’
‘By all means, Aunt,’ said Alex, in a lazy drawl that made her wonder, suddenly, how much he had imbibed in his chamber this past hour. ‘There are one or two faces that I recognise, but pray refresh my memory.’
Silence gave him a considering, warning stare. The uncomfortable sapphire eyes gazed blandly back. She decided that the servants had best be dismissed from the room as soon as possible, and waved her hand. ‘Twinney has been with us for four years — he is butler and footman both. Abigail you must surely remember.’ The senior housemaid bobbed a curtsey, her round Somerset cheeks suddenly fiery.
‘And Edith Grant — she too has been four years in service here.’
It was plain that Edith, pockmarked and possessed of a nose of truly heroic proportions, would not attract her employer’s eye.
‘Lydia Jordan will have been here two years come next month.’
Lydia, seventeen and as thin as a rail, with a sharp high colour and a barking cough that could often be heard all over the house, was not likely to tempt Alex either.
‘And this is Tamsin Pearce, who came to Wintercombe last August, I believe.’ The girl, scarcely fourteen, was normally a likable little chatterbox, her round childish body still weighted by puppy fat. Under her new master’s sardonic eye, she flushed deep crimson, and stared at the floor.
‘How tedious,’ said Alex, still in that infuriating, inebriated drawl. ‘Four maids, and variously all too old, too ugly, too young and too sickly to entice me. Was it deliberate, Aunt, or unfortunate coincidence that conspired against me?’
Louise staring round at the appalled faces of her kin felt that bubble of laughter well again in her throat. ‘By design, Cousin, of course,’ she said, the French intonation in her low rather throaty voice very pronounced. ‘All the pretty ones have been sent away to Bath — and if you ask at the sign of the Cock in Walcot, you’ll find them there.’
‘Louise!’
‘Well, Gran’mère, how else could Amy and I ensure that we were noticed?’
Silence stared at Louise in astonishment hardly knowing whether to laugh or be angry at the girl’s outrageous wit. Belatedly conscious of the proprieties, she wrenched her gaze from her granddaughter’s suddenly wicked grin, and spoke hastily to the servants. ‘You may all go, and bring in the tarts and cheese when I ring the bell.’
‘Yes, m’lady,’ said Twinney, his handsome face a wooden mask of rectitude, and he and the four maids filed from the room, doubtless eager to relay every detail to a shocked and delighted audience in the servants’ hall.
‘And what else will I find at the sign of the Cock?’ Alex enquired of Louise, who was sitting on his right.
Ignoring Charles’s horrified face, she let her lips curl up in guileless innocence. ‘Why, Cousin, what would you be expecting to find?’
‘I hardly think it’s a fit subject for this table,’ said Silence severely, resolving to give her granddaughter a blistering reprimand as soon as opportunity offered. Alex in this mood, half drunk and motivated by malice and mischief, was by himself as dangerous as a cask of gunpowder, without Louise lighting the fuse. ‘Now, I shall say our grace, and then I suggest we eat before all this delicious fare spoils.’
For a while the room was deceptively peaceful, as the seven diners obediently addressed their supper. Bab, as usual, attacked the food with dedication, eating efficiently and greedily, and every morsel, even the more gristly pieces of mutton, was swallowed with audible relish. It was so long since she had attended a family meal that Louise had forgotten how her aunt’s single-minded gluttony could disgust her, and tried not to watch or listen. At least the presence of Alex, almost at her elbow, was a distraction. She knew that in bantering oblique bawdry with him, she had indeed attracted his notice, and despite her earlier anger and her pact with Charles, part of her, the wild and wayward part that had been her stepfather’s despair, exulted in her success. There had been no mistaking the look in those very blue eyes as she had challenged him, for she had seen it before. A strange feeling settled somewhere in the pit of her stomach, compounded of excitement, danger and daring, and also an extraordinary sense of kinship. Nearly ten years, and a vast gulf of experience, separated them, but she recognised in him just such a wilful and reckless nature as she herself possessed.
But she was no green girl to be swept head over heels by a practised seducer. She had played with fire before, and been scorched, and had learned her lesson. Besides, she had no intention of allowing her chances of ensnaring a wealthy and well-born husband to be damaged by ruinous scandal.
It was, all the same, a very welcome excitement. She glanced surreptitiously at her cousin, who had wisely eschewed the mutton pottage in favour of the rabbit hash. Even slouching back in his seat, his neckcloth askew and his legs sprawled under the table so that she had to tuck her own beneath her chair to avoid touching him, there was a casual, powerful elegance about him that was disturbingly attractive. She found herself wondering idly what his qualities as a lover might be, and sternly brought her reflections to an abrupt halt. That way lay a great deal of unpleasantness, whatever delights his experience could offer her, and she would not be so foolish.
Besides, there was Charles to consider. She had already seen the bewildered, angry, hurt that he had done his best to hide, and was torn between affection and a mild, but unworthy contempt. He had never displayed anything other than a proper cousinly fondness for her, but intuition told her that his real feelings were considerably stronger. She did not need his devotion, nor any man’s, nor did she want to see his dismay every time she uttered the most mildly risqué remark. All she required from life was amusement, and the freedom to do as she pleased. Flirting with her debauched and dangerous cousin would undoubtedly provide the former. It was very unlikely that allowing Charles to declare his adoration would give her the latter.
Really, sometimes everything was altogether too complicated. She glanced again to her left, noting that Alex had been drinking steadily throughout the meal. Already, the two bottles of wine at their end of the table were all but empty, and yet both she and Charles, opposite, had taken just a glass each.
