Carola Dunn (24 page)

“In Nerissa’s chamber. Sophie and I went to look at the gown Nerissa intends to wear for the tenants’ party and...”

“Oh no!”

“Be quiet, Sophie.”

“So this event occurred during the hours when the household was up and about?”

“Yes. Well, er...”

“I never saw anything!” Sophie burst out.

The lawyer nodded to her kindly and turned his stern, contemptuous regard on Effie. “Mrs Chidwell, I should be remiss in my duty to the late Sir Barnabas’s wishes were I to accept the unsupported word of one who hopes to gain from the disgrace of his putative heirs. I must advise you not to repeat this improbable tale to anyone else. Should you do so, I shall advise Miss Wingate and Mr Courtenay to enter a suit for slander. Good day to you, ma’am.”

He stalked out, every dignified inch of his short, round figure aquiver with righteous indignation.

“I have never been so insulted in my life!” Effie gasped. “Sophie, my smelling salts!”

“You do not possess any,” her sister said reproachfully. “I could fetch Jane’s, but you have always decried the use of a vinaigrette as a milksop’s remedy and you made me throw mine away.”

Sir Barnabas nearly laughed his immaterial head off. Who was the looby now? A proper cake she had made of herself, and in the process she had once more proved him right, as always.

In time, he’d be proved right about Miles and Nerissa, too, but time was rapidly passing. Three months gone already. Once the six months he had specified were up, the pair could thumb their noses at him and fornicate to their hearts’ content.

He dared neither rest on his laurels nor leave it to Euphemia to contrive a better plan. He would proceed with one more haunting of the bedroom passage before resorting to sterner measures.

Chapter 16

Nerissa’s giggle turned into a hiccup.

“Too much cider,” said Miles severely, hunting on the doorstep for the key he had just dropped. “Hush, we don’t want to wake anyone.”

“They must be sound asleep by now. How feather-
hic
-brained of them all to leave early! It was a wonderful party, was it not? Quite as much fun as the Por-
hic
-chester assembly. I’m not bosky, it’s the bubbles.”

“Here it is.” As he turned the key in the lock, Sir Barnabas hastily removed his ear from the keyhole. “Come on, quietly now.”

Entering the hall, Nerissa tossed back her hood and untied the ribbon of her cloak. “
Hic
.”

“Take a deep breath and hold it as long as you can.” Miles tore his gaze from her expanding chest with a visible effort, Sir Barnabas noted. “I must say, Old Amos’s one-legged hornpipe was worth a fortune to behold,” he said in a carefully casual tone, lighting their waiting night-candles at the lamp on the hall table.

“Your demonstration of the waltz with Mrs Bragg was worth seeing, too. I do think you might have let me dance it as no gentry were there to disapprove.”

“Word gets about. If you have finished
hic
cing, let’s go up.”

“Oh yes, I cannot wait to get into bed.” She clung to his arm as they ascended the stairs.

An invisible gleam in his invisible eye, Sir Barnabas slid up the banisters. This was the night. All he had to do was make them feel safe from the spy in the alcove--that ninny Jane tonight, reluctantly, on Effie’s insistence--in case they guessed they were still watched.

They reached the junction of the passages. In a single swirl of frigid breath, Sir Barnabas blew out the night-lamp and both their candles.

“What a draught!” Nerissa exclaimed. “Did you close the front door?”

“I did, and locked and bolted it. Shall I find a tinder-box, or can you manage without a light?”

“I can manage. Since I told Maud I should not need her, I put on a gown that is easy to take off.”

“Good.” There was a laugh in Miles’s voice.

Footsteps. A door clicked shut.

At last Sir Barnabas’s ghostly night vision adjusted to the sudden darkness. He saw the alcove curtains stir. Jane emerged and fumbled and stumbled her way along the passage. Aha, so the implication of the extinguished lights was so obvious even she was able to draw the correct inference! He followed her to her own chamber.

“Neville, wake up! They blew out their candles.”

“Huh?” Neville emerged from the blankets, his striped nightcap askew.

“They blew out their candles. Miles and Nerissa. And the lamp on the table.”

“Huh?”

“Oh do wake up. They did not want me to see that they both went into the same bedchamber!”

Neville was suddenly very much awake. “Quick, go and rouse the others. We’ll want as many witnesses as possible. But quietly, mind. We don’t want to warn ‘em.” He jumped out of bed and felt around for his dressing-gown.

“I have no light!”

“Wake Aubrey first.”

Sir Barnabas remembered his nephew kept a candle lit at his bedside, who could guess whether for fear of the dark or for admiring himself in his hand-glass if he woke in the night.

In no time the hall was filled with dressing-gown-clad people, Aubrey’s scarlet brocade standing out against the practical blue and brown woollens of the others. Each held a candle lighted at Aubrey’s. In a body they moved towards the side-passage, only Sophie trailing unwillingly in the rear.

Floor-boards creaked under the mass of slippered feet. Perhaps that was what alerted their prey, or perhaps Euphemia’s commanding and far from hushed “Hush!” was to blame. In all events, as they turned the corner, Miles stepped out of his chamber.

The war-party shuffled to a halt.

Miles pulled the door to behind him and lounged against the doorjamb. “How kind of you all to come and make sure that we are safe returned from our rustic romp,” he said sardonically.

Euphemia marched forward. Brushing past him she burst into his room. The rest took heart and streamed after her.

Miss Sophie stopped beside Miles. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, tears trickling down her lined cheeks.

He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her, grinning. After that, Sir Barnabas was resigned to finding the rest of the family, candles held high, staring down in baffled spleen at the empty bed.

Sir Neville half-heartedly opened the clothes press and peered inside. Raymond Reece checked under the bed. Jane tried the connecting door, rattling the latch irritably.

“She escaped through this door! I know she came in here.”

They all jumped as Miles remarked in a caustic voice, “I’m sure Mrs Chidwell will be happy to confirm that the key to that door is in Mr Harwood’s safekeeping.”

Looking anything but happy, Effie nodded. Disgruntled and sheepish, they filed out, eyes lowered to avoid the sight of Miles’s derisive smile. Sir Barnabas followed the embarrassed retreat, more than happy to be invisible.

As they fled around the corner, he turned the other way. Nerissa’s door was ajar, just a crack. No wonder neither he nor Jane had heard it close. She must have pushed it shut behind her, too sleepy to check that the latch caught. He slithered uncomfortably through the narrow gap. Her gown lay in a crumpled heap on the floor by the bed. Her nightgown was still spread across the foot of the bed, where her abigail had laid it out before leaving for the party. Nerissa had not bothered to change out of her chemise.

She lay lost in childlike slumber, a slight smile curving her lips.

Sir Barnabas felt a most peculiar tightness in his chest. Damn that rascally mountebank for running off with Anthea and robbing him of innocent grandchildren he might have loved!

But it was the mountebank’s butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth daughter he was looking down upon. Born and bred to the dissolute world of the theatre, he reminded himself. Actress or wardrobe mistress, she played the rôle of virtuous maiden to admiration. Somehow he had to trip her up, make her bungle her lines and forget her part.

Thus far, for all Sir Barnabas’s efforts, Miles had only held her in his arms once, and that at a moment when she was angry with him for laughing at her efforts to mount the mare. The way matters were between them now, if they found themselves embracing the job was as good as done.

Somehow he had to trip her--that was it! He had failed to trick her into Miles’s arms, so now he’d try to trip her.

* * * *

Though Nerissa’s unfortunate weakness had prevented her taking her place upon the stage, her parents had raised her in the expectation that she would follow in their footsteps. She had never been more glad of their training.

The rôle of Miles’s friend and little sister, natural before the Christmas assembly, now had to be acted with every ounce of skill she possessed. For another three months they must live in the same house. She could not embarrass him--and herself--by letting him learn, from a word or a glance, how much she loved him.

So she laughed and teased him, won giant rocs’ eggs and lost palaces of onyx and jasper at cards, willed herself not to blush at the casual touch of his hand. It was all easier than she expected. Mama and Papa had taught her well.

After Twelfth Night, the January weather turned foul, throwing them together indoors even more than usual. Nerissa decided to give a dinner for the neighbours once the lanes were passable again. She had enjoyed organizing the Twelfth Night party, and the necessary consultations with Cook, Mrs Hibbert, Snodgrass, Miss Sophie, and even Aunt Jane took her out of Miles’s way.

She had truly been too busy to spend much time with him. Nonetheless, one evening about the middle of the month he finished reading aloud to her his expurgated version of the Arabian Nights stories.

“What shall we read next?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Would you mind if I invited Miss Sophie to join us?”

“For the next book? Not at all,” he said, adding wickedly, “though we had best choose something a little more suitable for maiden ears.”

Nerissa laughed, but she knew she failed to suppress a blush. Still, in the circumstances any young lady might be forgiven for pink cheeks, even if no truly proper young lady would have landed herself in a similar situation.

“Mr Harwood might like to read with us, too. Let us go and see what we can find,” she proposed. “We can choose several and see which they prefer.”

Miss Sophie and the lawyer had already retired to bed, as had Aunt Jane and Matilda, so she’d have to ask them on the morrow. Uncle Neville, Aubrey, Raymond, and Cousin Euphemia were absorbed in their cards and did not so much as glance up as Nerissa and Miles left the drawing room. They had all been oddly subdued recently.

In the library, Nerissa recollected a book on one of the upper shelves which she thought might be suitable. Miles moved the library steps into position for her and gave her his hand to mount them. At the top, some two feet and a half above the floor, she took hold of a shelf to steady herself, hoping he had not felt her hand tremble in his. A moment passed before she was able to focus on the titles before her nose.

Miles took a book from the shelf beside him. “Here, this might do.” Turning towards her, he opened it at the title page and read, “
Personal Travels and Vicissitudes of four years and a half in America, being the Struggles of a Man in pursuit of Independence and a Settlement
. By John Davis, Esquire.”

“Yes, that sounds interesting.”

She had found the volume she was looking for, a
Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, and Present State of the Gipsies
. As she started down the steps, Miles moved away, book in hand.

“I noticed the memoirs of Frederick the Great’s sister the other day, somewhere along here,” he said.

Nerissa’s foot caught in her skirt. The book flew from her hand as she twisted and grabbed at the shelves, trying to save herself.

“Miles!” she cried, landing crookedly on one foot. An agonizing pain shot up her leg. She crumpled. Her head met something solid and merciful blackness descended.

* * * *

“But Nerissa dear, Doctor Firston said you are on no account to put any weight on your ankle for at least a week,” said Miss Sophie dubiously.

“I know, but I simply cannot bear to spend another day in bed, even with the novels Caroline and Mrs Firston so kindly brought me. Surely between them Miles and the footmen can carry me down to the morning room without any desperate affront to propriety.”

“There is a sort of chair with poles your grandfather used when his gout was troublesome. It always seemed to me a shockingly precarious contrivance.”

“If Grandfather entrusted himself to it, so shall I,” Nerissa declared.

So an hour later she was ensconced on the sofa in the morning room. Clucking, Mrs Hibbert tucked third pillow behind her and despatched Maud after another shawl. Snodgrass directed the placement of a small table at her side, set a handbell and her book upon it, and even deigned to poke up the fire with his own august hand. Cook sent in enough hot plum turnovers to feed an army, to “keep up her strength.” And Tredgarth, the gardener, had picked and brought up to the house enough yellow aconites and dainty snowdrops to fill half a dozen small vases.

“Pampered is the only word for it,” Miles exclaimed, helping himself to a turnover as the last of the servants left the room.

“They are all very fond of Nerissa,” said Miss Sophie, “and I am sure you deserve it, dear.”

“I don’t know what you deserve for being such a peagoose as not to fall ten seconds earlier, when I was close enough to catch you!” He shook his head, smiling. “You gave me the fright of my life.”

“I assure you such was not my intention,” Nerissa said indignantly. “The hem of my skirt just wrapped itself around my feet.”

“Dangerous things, long skirts.” Miles gave a reminiscent sigh. “I always did prefer the shorter hems of a few years ago. Ah well, I must be off. I told Bragg I’d meet him in the office at eleven. Shall we read this afternoon? Not the book that brought about your downfall--I have taken it in dislike.”

Nerissa agreed and he went off whistling “My Heart was so Free” from the
Beggars’ Opera
, slightly out of tune as usual. She was glad to see him cheerful. Miss Sophie had told her how devastated he had been when she fell. He had roused the entire household and sent a groom through darkness and sleet to fetch the doctor with orders to bring him back come hell or high water. Then, forbidden her chamber while she was confined to her bed, he had moped about the house, refusing to go out despite suddenly fine weather lest she should have a relapse during his absence.