The Marlows Page 8

  In the hall Tansy stood with her face in her hands, dry-eyed, but taking time to regain her strength and courage, wondering how best to tell the others how and why Amelia came to be living in the house. She now had to look after not only her brother and two sisters, but Amelia as well. She gave a thought to her father. Had he always seen some inner resilience in her that she herself had never realized she possessed until recently and for that reason had chosen to give her and not one of the others full responsibility of Rushmere and its occupant? It made her feel close to him, he of the generous heart and generous mind whose worldly follies had been so numerous. Men were strange creatures. He had been infatuated with Amelia’s physical charms while loving Ruth with an abounding devotion.

  She let her hands fall to her sides, straightening her shoulders and giving her mind to immediate, practical matters. Better to let the others eat first before she broke the news. She had no idea how they would react, and if the girls gave way to tears and wailing, the good food that they needed after their long journey would be wasted. Crossing to the baize-lined door that led to the kitchen quarters she pushed it open and the warm smell of broth and roasting beef and spicy cheese and salted ham brought the saliva into her mouth, making her aware of how hollow her stomach had become. As she followed the flagged passageway toward the steps down into the kitchen itself she steeled herself to the face another difficult task, which was to inform however many members of staff might be gathered there that their duties at Rushmere were at an end.

  Unexpectedly it was Nina who took hardest the information about Amelia, all colour draining from her face, for privately she saw it as further proof that parentally her father had cared nothing for her or her well-being, allowing her to endure spates of abject poverty while his whore had wanted for nothing. Her stillness and white lips alarmed the others, but she made an effort to recover herself and by inclining her head indicated that they had nothing to worry about with her, although she did not speak again that evening except to bid them good night. Judith, used to keeping her thoughts to herself, only said after due and careful consideration that they must for Oliver’s sake try to live harmoniously with Amelia. Roger was far from silent. He gave vent to his feelings with a healthy anger, and when he eventually calmed down a little he announced his intention of looking for work early next morning, not wanting to spend another night if he could help it under the roof of Rushmere, a house he had detested at first sight.

  “Not tomorrow,” Tansy begged. “I’ll need your help about the place tomorrow, and in any case I don’t want you rushing into the first vacancy offered you. You must seek out the racing stables that can offer the best prospects.”

  He gave a heavy nod, seeing the sense of her argument. “Very well. When are we going to see Papa’s colt? Maybe we should do that in the morning?”

  She understood his keenness and by encouraging it she could divert him from his smouldering anger, which had not yet abated. “We could go in the afternoon if it proves a convenient time for Mr. Reade. I’ll dispatch a note to him in the morning. The sooner the sale of our half share can go through the better it will be.”

  “I still wish we didn’t have to sell,” Roger commented mutinously, his mood still hot and burning.

  That night Tansy lay dreading her meeting again with Dominic Reade. Every detail of that ruthless, handsome face was vivid in her mind. Restlessly she tossed on the pillow, wishing she could put him from her mind and find sleep.

  In the next room Nina was sharing a wide pinewood bed with Judith, and Roger was accommodated at the end of the corridor. He had protested that he would prefer to sleep in the stables rather than under Rushmere’s hateful roof, but Tansy, losing patience, had given his shoulder a painless punch and said he must stop making everything more difficult for all of them.

  A slight sound of someone passing her door made Tansy lift her head from the pillow. Was it Judith wandering about? Sometimes when her limbs ached in the night she found it better to get up and walk about from room to room for a little while. Throwing back the bedclothes Tansy rose from the bed and hastened to open the door. Outside, the landing and the staircase were dark, but the faint glow of a candle showed through a chink in a doorway downstairs in the hall. Thinking that Judith must have gone down to seek out the warm embers of a fire, Tansy went quickly down the flight of stairs, but when she reached the half-open door she saw it was Amelia who was in the room. She was standing on a footstool and reaching up to take a book from one of the shelves of a large, glass-fronted bookcase. Even as Tansy stepped back to return to her own room a floorboard creaked under her foot, giving her presence away. Amelia gave a cry, slammed the bookcase shut, and spun about, stumbling down from the footstool.

  “Who’s that? who’s there?”

  “It is only I,” Tansy said, taking a step into the room.

  “What do you want?” Amelia was flustered and upset, her face as pink as the peignoir she wore over her lace-trimmed nightgown. “Why are you spying on me?”

  “I’m not!” Tansy exclaimed. “I thought perhaps Judith had come downstairs. She does that sometimes.”

  “I was getting a book to read!” Amelia made a vague, nervous movement with her hands.

  “Yes, I see that. Good night again.” Tansy went back upstairs to her bedroom, thinking that Amelia had behaved as guiltily as if she’d had no right to help herself to a book from her own bookshelf. She gave her head a shake over it as she climbed back into bed. It could hardly be expected that any of them could behave quite normally in their present state of adjusting to each other’s presence in the house. She went to sleep to dream that she was climbing a mountain of books and at the top Dominic Reade stood watching her, grim and stern and silent, waiting for her to reach him.

  4

  Nina volunteered to deliver Tansy’s note to Dominic Reade. “I’ll take the wagonette and drive through the village,” she said. “I want to have a look at everything.”

  “Well, don’t dally in delivering it,” Tansy requested, “and be sure to wait for an answer. I don’t want to make a fruitless visit to his house this afternoon only to find him absent.” She turned to Judith. “Would you like to go with her?”

  Judith declined, saying she had had enough travelling about to last her for a few days, and Nina silently breathed her relief. She didn’t want company. She wanted to savour the pleasure of being a young lady of importance driving out from Rushmere to acknowledge the respectful nods of those she passed and take another look at the grand houses she had glimpsed all too briefly the evening before. How thankful she was that her father had been extravagant in buying the neat wagonette, which Roger had kept in good trim, and she felt no shame in driving it.

  As she drove out through the gates she took a deep breath of satisfaction. It was a fine morning after the previous day’s rain with that special mildness that can come when autumn tips into winter and like a last reprieve the sun holds sway for a few hours or a few days as if nature had forgotten how to deck the earth with frost and snow. Nina was bonnetless, and wore instead a ribbon snood to keep her hair neat, a flat bow adorning the top of her burnished head, and for the errand she had donned a braided mantelette instead of a cloak over her green, woollen dress. She had fully expected Judith with her new authority or Tansy to question why she was not wearing mourning clothes, but fortunately she had managed to dodge her foster sister and Tansy, recovering from the ordeal of introducing the three of them to Amelia, hadn’t seemed to notice what she was wearing when she’d taken the note from her.

  Nina thought the introductions bizarre. She had felt only contempt for Amelia, who — pathetically eager to be accepted — appeared to have put on her best manners and her best dress for the occasion, a creation of striped, gray silk with black ruffles at the throat and wrist, sober enough for mourning without being blatantly black to remind them that she considered her loss to be as great as theirs. The three of them had been excruciatingly polite to Amelia and she to them. Nina, r
emembering how her father’s glance would always flick in the direction of any good-looking woman, could see how he must have found Amelia alluring, especially when younger, but she despised the weakness she saw in the shifting, blue gaze under those pale lids that never met quite fully another’s gaze. There was greed, too, in that soft-lipped rosebud mouth, which was a full explanation for many things, not least of all the replacing over the years of the antique pieces that should have been Tansy’s, with furniture of Amelia’s own. It suggested a solid determination to keep a hold on the house in one way or another. But it was too good a morning to waste thoughts on Amelia. Nina shook back her ringlets and gave the horse a little flick with her whip to increase his pace.

  She looked about her as she bowled along, satisfied to see that she had been right in her first impression of Cudlingham as being a pleasing place in which to live. It was situated in a saucer of farmland with thick woods, such as those that Rushmere faced and which were bordering the lane she was following, and all around the Downs rose smooth and green and gentle to the eye. All the fine houses she had glimpsed in the previous evening’s dusk and rain looked even more splendid in the bright morning, and some were so deeply set in their acres of land that they could only be glimpsed between trees at the end of mile-long drives. Cottages and more commonplace residences lined the rest of the way for her into the centre of the village where the shops, most of them bow-fronted, surrounded the open market square, which was busy with traffic and people on foot. She was aware of receiving a number of male glances as she drove through, but pretended not to notice, holding her chin elegantly high. Beyond the village the lane was joined by a river that ran alongside until it swung round under a bridge, and she knew from Amelia’s directions that she was not far from Dominic Reade’s home. Within a matter of minutes she was driving along the private road that led to Ainderly Hall.

  It proved to be a grand house of exceptional size, not as ancient as Rushmere but dating from the seventeenth century, and stood four-square, built of rosy brick, with elaborate stone scrollwork ornamenting the tall, graceful windows, and a flight of steps with curved balustrades leading up to an imposing entrance.

  Nina eyed it approvingly as she alighted from the wagonette and went up the steps to pull hard on the iron handle of the bell. A servant showed her through a gracious hall with a black and white checkered floor into an anteroom to await a reply to the note she had handed over. She had plenty of time to tidy her hair in front of a gilt-framed looking glass and study everything around her before the sound of footsteps sent her whisking back to a chair as if she had never stirred from it.

  Into the room came Dominic Reade himself, the delivered note open in his hand, another young man of similar height and age in his wake, both of them dressed in riding frockcoats, breeches, and top boots.

  “Good morning, Miss Marlow.” Dominic Reade smiled at her, a smile that creased the sides of his face attractively, but she did not respond to him. She wasn’t sure why. Admittedly she had been forewarned by Tansy that he had full knowledge of their present situation, which made her wary of disclosure from his lips, but she had not been influenced by her sister’s obsessional conviction that he had been instrumental in bringing about their father’s death. The tragic accident had been the accumulation of many things, as was every event that took place in life. There was something else, familiar and momentarily intangible, which made all her nerves resist the appeal of his intense maleness. It was not in his handsome features or his vigorous height, but more in his confident, easy carriage, his look of being thoroughly experienced and worldly wise, his nonchalant and casual air that was belied by those dark, piercing eyes that missed nothing. Then it came to her why she felt about him as she did. It was as if in her nostrils she inhaled the gambling trait in him and, associating it as she did with all that had caused her distress, saw him as the enemy Tansy had already declared him to be, no matter that his amiable attitude made it appear that he held no such animosity toward any of the Marlow family.

  “I’m Nina Marlow,” she said, making a point of never being confused with Judith, who was often assumed to be kin.

  He took it as an invitation to use her Christian name. “Thank you for bringing your sister’s message to me, Miss Nina, but first of all, allow me to present my companion here, Edward Taylor. He’s a friend of mine and lives at Cudlingham Manor next to Rushmere. Edward — meet your charming new neighbour, Miss Nina Marlow.”

  Nina looked at Edward with interest and saw it was reciprocated, well spiced with an obvious appreciation of her looks. She treated him to one of her rare and beautiful smiles.

  “How do you do, Mr. Taylor.”

  “I’m honoured indeed, ma’am.” His face was slim with fine bones, his nose high bridged and aristocratic, the tilt of his head arrogant, and his thin, flexible lips were shaded by a neatly trimmed moustache that was, like his brows, a little darker than his blond hair, which grew in thick, shining ripples. “You’ve come to stay at Rushmere, have you? Deucedly good news, I must say! My sister and I are acquainted with Mrs. Marlow and naturally we knew her late husband, too. You are a cousin of the family, perhaps?”

  “Niece,” Nina stated firmly. She sensed rather than saw Dominic glance sideways at her out of the corner of his eye. “I shall be living permanently at Rushmere, not just on vacation. My sister Tansy has inherited Rushmere through some silly quirk of a will that wouldn’t let it go to Uncle Oliver’s widow.”

  Beside her Dominic stood silent and the last vestige of tension went from her. Amelia had told Tansy she was certain that he would in all honour keep to himself what he knew of their affairs and she had not been wrong. The last hurdle of danger was past. She wanted to crow with triumph, but turned a suitably serious and intent face to Edward, who was giving an understanding nod.

  “Nobody can tell me anything about wills, don’t you know. Most families have some experience of such clauses — unfortunate for your aunt, but dashed fortunate for your sister. The Manor is similarly tied up, but in favour of the eldest son, and so I had no worries on that score when it was my turn to inherit.”

  Dominic made an inviting motion with his hand to indicate they accompany him out of the anteroom. “Let us go into the library. You would like a cup of chocolate to refresh you, I’m sure, Miss Nina. Something stronger for you, Edward?”

  The library had books on four sides from floor to ceiling. On the panelling above the huge stone fireplace hung an eighteenth-century racing scene. Nina’s sharp eyes missed nothing, taking in the Persian carpet, the soft, dark leather of the studded chairs, and the shaded lamps. Over the cup of chocolate she paid attention to Edward, who sat forward on the edge of the chair facing her. Dominic stood with one foot propped against the hearth and an elbow resting on the mantel, taking no part in the talk which flowed between Edward and her but looking into the fire.

  She could tell she was making a deep impression on Edward, every smile, glance, lift of eyebrow, and flicker of lash registering with him. Entertainingly she sketched a picture of her life before coming to Rushmere, but the rest of her family would have had a hard task recognizing anything that she described. With a delicate pull at his sympathies she confessed to their impoverishment through their father’s ill luck at the tables and the course, a point at which he said quickly, “No disgrace at all. A gentleman has to honour his gaming debts before all else. Damned hard on his nearest and dearest, but that’s the way of it.”

  “It is indeed,” she sighed. “It means we are having to do without servants at Rushmere.”

  He was deeply concerned. “Such hardship! How difficult for you. You deserve better than that. Surely —”

  “Please say no more!” She tilted her chin proudly and bravely. He was instantly abashed. “Forgive me. I have offended you. It was the last thing I intended.”

  She was patiently forgiving and saw that she had him exactly where she wanted him. His error in attempting to discuss her circumstances in the kindly thou
ghtlessness of the moment should set him on a long trail of seeking to make amends. She did not care what Dominic was thinking. Let him think what he liked. At least he would not put his thoughts into words and that was all that mattered.

  She left more than half of the chocolate in the cup, knowing from her mother’s instruction that no lady drained anything to the dregs. She saw with satisfaction Edward’s obvious disappointment when she said she must be going.

  “If you will just give me a verbal reply to my sister’s note,” she said to Dominic, “I’ll take my leave.”

  “Then please tell Miss Marlow I look forward to receiving her and your brother at two-thirty, the time she suggested.”

  “Allow me to escort you back to Rushmere,” Edward said at once.

  “I’m so sorry. I have other calls to make,” she lied easily.

  “Another time perhaps.”

  Her lips curled prettily at the corners, her eyes guileless. “Perhaps.”

  The two men went with her out of the house and down the steps to the waiting wagonette. Edward assisted her up into the driving seat and unslotted the whip to hand it to her. “Thank you.” She glanced from Edward to Dominic and back again. “Good day, gentlemen.”

  Her eyes held a gleam in them as she drove back to Rushmere. At the gates of Cudlingham Manor she drew up for several minutes and studied what she could see of it in the distance. It was ten times the size of little Rushmere and much larger if not grander than Ainderly Hall. It would ruin everything if Edward turned out to be already betrothed, but she must keep her fingers crossed and hope that her luck would hold.