Читать книгу Lady of Shame - Ann Lethbridge - Страница 11

The breakfast room overlooked the lawn at the side of the house. If one stood close to the window, one could just get a glimpse of the lake, with its decorative bridge and the island in the middle. Now it was frozen and dusted with a fresh fall of snow. She would take Jane outside later to look at it. Tell her about rowing over to the island in summer. Right now the child was tucking into coddled eggs and ham and had ceased to chatter for once.

‘Don’t eat too quickly, dearest, or you will be ill again,’ she cautioned.

She glanced at a sideboard weighed down with platters of food—eggs scrambled and coddled, bacon with curly brown edges and a hint of a sear, assorted breads and pastries and a juicy steak. The footman had delivered the food under Lumsden’s eagle eye from the moment she arrived.

‘Will His Grace be coming to breakfast soon?’ she asked Lumsden as she added cream to her coffee.

‘His Grace breaks his fast in his chambers, madam.’

She stared at the array of food on the sideboard and down at her plate of ham and poached egg and the bowl which had contained deliciously stewed plums and prunes. She and Jane had scarcely made a dint in the feast. At most she might manage a piece of toast and marmalade when she was finished with this.

‘Then who else is coming for breakfast?’

Jane looked up with interest.

‘No one else, madam,’ the butler said.

Claire frowned. Such extravagance. All this food would be wasted.

Lumsden must have guessed the direction of her thoughts because a fleeting smile crossed his face. ‘The food will end up in the servants’ hall, madam. The staff had a small piece first thing this morning, bread and cheese, before the fires were alight, but they will have breakfast proper when early-morning chores are done.’

Heat travelled up her cheeks. She had forgotten how it went in a house full of servants; she had never had more than a couple of live-out maids during all of her marriage and sometimes none at all. These past months she’d been her own cook and housemaid. How would she ever fit back into this world of privilege and idleness if she kept thinking like a poverty-stricken widow?

‘Will there be anything else, madam?’ the butler asked.

Claire looked at her plate and at the piles of food on the sideboard and couldn’t eat another bite. No matter that she’d felt hungry when she first walked into the room, it was all just too much.

‘No, thank you. Jane, are you finished?’

Her daughter, who now had nothing but a few smears of egg on her plate and crumbs on the tablecloth, nodded.

‘Then that will be all, thank you, Lumsden. You may clear away.’

Lumsden frowned, looked as if he was about to speak, then pressed his lips together. No doubt he wanted to tell her the chef would not be pleased she’d eaten so little. Next the man would be bringing her another plate of food. Surely not after her unfriendly dismissal the previous evening. He wouldn’t dare to visit her room again. And a good thing too, even if she did admire his dedication to his work.

As she’d come to admire the hard-working shopkeepers, merchants and other businessmen with whom she’d come into contact while living on her own. Unlike George, who had dedicated his life to doing as little as possible, they were dedicated to the improvement of their families.

Perhaps that was what made the chef seem so attractive. He cared about his work.

Lumsden took her plate back to the sideboard and clicked his fingers, signalling the waiting footman to clear the platters.

‘I would like to see His Grace at the earliest opportunity, preferably this morning,’ Claire said, rising from her seat.

‘Indeed, madam. Smithins will collect you from the blue drawing room.’

‘Very well. Come, Jane.’ She swept from the room with Jane’s hand in hers. At least she hadn’t made a complete cake of herself, playing the duke’s daughter. As she and Jane wandered along the corridor lined with pictures of her ancestors, she regretted not finishing her breakfast. It seemed that standing up for herself had restored her appetite.

Then she remembered a thought that had occurred in the deep reaches of the night. It hadn’t woken her. No, her rest had been disturbed by a low seductive voice in her dreams and images of an arrogant chef running long tanned fingers down her arm, then moving on to the rise of her breast.

Panting and hot she’d sat up in bed, not terrified but full of longing. For passion.

She squeezed her eyes closed against the memory of the heat and the flutters low in her belly. She would not think of that. But as she had lain there in the dark regaining her composure with the ticking of the clock and the howl of the wind among the chimneys for company, she had remembered the words spoken yesterday. Another one crawling out of the woodwork claiming to be a relative.

What had the cheeky Irish footman meant by ‘another one’? It was a question she intended to ask Mrs Stratton.

Jane skipped into the drawing room with its heavy gilded and scrolled furniture adorned by, Claire blinked, half-naked females. Mermaids. She had better not linger in this room for too long or Jane would be asking her about them.

‘Can we go outside now, Mama?’ the child asked, looking around her with obvious disappointment. ‘To see the lake?’

‘Perhaps. After we see the duke.’

Jane slumped back against the chair cushions and folded her hands in her lap. Her daughter was much too obedient, Claire thought with a pang. Too still. Too careful. George’s fault. He’d had a temper in his cups. They’d both learned to walk quietly around him.

The child needed laughter and joy.

And she would find it at Castonbury if they were permitted to stay. There would be no more moving. No more running from debtors.

A scratch at the door before it swung back brought her upright. An elegantly garbed gentleman of some sixty years entered the room. He was no more than five feet tall and his person was slim. He had thick white hair carefully coifed à la brutus.

He held out both hands in a gesture that seemed almost feminine. ‘Lady Claire. How wonderful to see you home after all these years. And your daughter.’ He executed a flourishing bow.

‘Smithins,’ she said, smiling at his effusive greeting and obvious warmth. ‘It has been a long time.’

‘Seven years at least, Mrs Holte.’

‘Are you here to escort me to His Grace?’

‘Madam, I am. His Grace is quite chipper this morning.’ He beamed at her, then his smile dimmed. ‘Of a surety you will find him much changed. It is the doctor’s opinion that too much excitement is bad for him, but knowing you are here, he has made a great effort to be up and about this morning.’ He smiled triumphantly as if bestowing a gift.

The nerves in Claire’s stomach leapt around like butterflies in boots. ‘So he has agreed to see me.’

‘He looks forward to it.’ He glanced at Jane. ‘And to meeting the little lady.’ He spun around and headed out of the door.

She took Jane’s hand and followed.

‘His Grace uses the old state apartments these days,’ Smithins said as he directed her along the corridor to the central block. ‘Fewer stairs to climb. I am sure you remember the way.’

‘Smithins?’ she asked as they travelled through the antechamber towards the great double doors, ‘who else has come to claim relationship to the duke?’

Smithins stopped and pivoted a hand to his lips. ‘You have heard already?’

‘I heard a chance remark. It is not one of his … his …’

The duke had been a bit of a rake before his marriage. And after, if some of the tales were true.

‘No, no.’ The man waved an elegant hand like a lady batting away a fly. ‘It is Lord Jamie’s wife.’

‘I hadn’t heard that Lord James had married.’ She’d always watched the newspapers for news of her family. Births, deaths and the occasional mention in court reports.

‘Nor had anyone else,’ Smithins said with a sly smile. ‘Married her on the continent. She arrived just a few months ago with her son, Lord Jamie’s heir.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And very little proof, I’m told. But His Grace is happy to be convinced.’

‘She’s here at Castonbury?’ It was strange she hadn’t taken dinner with Claire or that Mrs Stratton hadn’t mentioned her.

‘She lives in the Dower House.’ He flung back the door and ushered her and Jane into a vast room where the curtains covered the windows and only one branch of candles shed any light apart from that given off by the hearth.

A smell of illness pervaded the room. Sickly smells. And the smell of elderly man. Someone should open a window and let the fresh air in. It reminded her of visits to her aged father, the previous duke.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they did, she made out a male figure sitting close to the flames in a scarlet banyan and slippers with a matching embroidered cap perched on a balding pate.

He looked like a man of eighty instead of the sixty summers she knew he owned. The gaze fixed on her seemed bright enough though. She approached his chair. ‘Your Grace.’ She dipped a curtsey. ‘It is Claire. Your sister. I am come home. This is my daughter, Jane.’ She drew the child closer.

Jane bent her knees and wobbled only a little. Claire felt very proud. Jane might carry the name Holte, but she was also a Montague through and through.

‘Claire,’ His Grace said with a vague wave of a trembling hand. ‘Welcome. Forgive me for not rising. Knees aren’t what they used to be. Pull up that stool and sit in the light where I can see you. I don’t see as well these days.’ He shook his head.

Claire did as she was bid and once seated she gazed long at her half-brother, looking for the man he had been, proud, tall, full of authority. She found only a face etched in lines of grief and a body bowed over with sorrow.

‘What brings you home, Claire?’ A shade of his old smile kicked up one corner of his mouth. ‘I thought you’d brushed off all signs of Castonbury dust. How can I be of help?’

Her angry words coming back to haunt her. It saddened her that he realised she had not simply come to visit. He must be used to receiving petitioners, people who came because of his power, not for the man himself. She regretted it could not be otherwise with her.

‘My husband is dead.’

‘I am sorry, my dear.’ The regret sounded genuine.

‘I am not. You were right. He was not a kind man. Or a good one. But I made the best of it until he left us destitute.’

Worse than that, in truth. But she would hold that information until she had a sense of his reaction.

Rothermere sat silent for a moment staring at the fire and Claire wondered if he had slipped away into his own melancholy and forgotten her. She glanced at Jane, who was staring at her uncle intently.

‘Why is he wearing his night clothes?’ the child whispered. Jane’s whispers were piercing.

‘Hush,’ Claire said, thinking she would have to leave and try another day. ‘Your uncle is not well.’

The duke raised his head and looked at her. ‘I followed, you know. I almost had you just before the border. Hit a rut and broke a wheel.’

‘You came after me?’

He nodded.

So a wheel had altered the path of her life. ‘I had no idea.’

Jane slipped off her stool and wandered across the room to look at a portrait of a man in a full Elizabethan ruff, then moved on to peer into a glass cabinet full of snuff boxes.

‘When he came later, for his money,’ Crispin said, drawing Claire’s attention back to his face which looked quite sad, ‘he said you never wanted anything to do with us, but he wanted the dowry I owed.’

Claire gasped. ‘You didn’t pay it?’

The bushy brows drew down. ‘I did. Not that he was all that grateful. I think he thought it would be more.’

She gasped. The money was gone? Her heart twisted, her mind reeled. She’d been relying on her dowry to resolve her troubles. ‘George said you refused to part with a penny.’ George had cursed the name of Montague. Blamed his failures on not receiving his proper due. This was worse than anything she could have imagined. ‘He told me you threatened to horsewhip him for his audacity.’

The gnarled hand tightened on his stick. ‘I should have.’

Jane moved on to look at a suite of armour. ‘Don’t touch it, please, darling,’ Claire said.

‘I’m glad you came home, Claire.’ Crispin’s eyes glistened. Tears? For her? ‘I made a mess of things, Claire. Cocked it up.’ He shook his head. ‘No. Wrong words in front of a female. I sold when I should have bought.’ He lowered his head as if to hide his anguish.

‘I don’t understand, Crispin,’ she said softly.

‘The funds. I sold them. Jamie would have known better. And now, finally when you come to me for help, I’m of no use to you or anyone. Not any more. Not any more.’ His lifted his head, his eyes focusing sharply. ‘I was right about Holte though. You wouldn’t listen to me. But I was right. I told you he was a dashed loosed screw.’

‘Yes.’ She swallowed. ‘You were right.’

He glanced over at Jane, who was now inspecting a statue of a Roman soldier. ‘Your daughter looks like you.’

He meant Jane was not pretty. Was not a true Montague. All the Montague women were lovely. And the men handsome as sin. It hadn’t carried through to the child of the duke’s second marriage or to her daughter. But to Claire, Jane was the most beautiful child ever born. ‘She has some of me and some of her father.’

‘Hmmph. Well, why did you come back?’ His mind seemed to dart hither and yon and there would be no point in beating about the bush if she was to get an answer.

‘Holte left debts. I thought to ask for my dowry to pay them off, but it seems he was before me.’

‘Money,’ he said gloomily. ‘You’ll need to speak to Giles about financial matters. There’s little to be had.’

She knew a refusal when she heard one. She’d humbled her pride for nothing, but in truth she was glad to know her brother didn’t hate her. Glad to know he was happy to see her again, even if he couldn’t be of assistance. ‘I am so sorry to have troubled you,’ she said. ‘You clearly have more important things on your mind. Jane and I will leave in the morning.’

‘You need a husband.’

She gasped. The beautiful face of the chef flashed into her mind, leaving her aghast at the wayward turn of her thoughts. ‘It is the last thing I need.’

He shook his head. ‘Every gel needs a husband. You are young. You are still in your child-bearing years. A duke’s sister is quite a catch, you should do very nicely on the marriage mart.’

She didn’t want another husband. She did not want to be at another man’s beck and call, subject to his temper and foibles. She’d wanted to come home to Castonbury and hide. ‘Who would want to marry me, after all the scandal I caused?’

‘There are still plenty willing to ally themselves with this family, aye and pay for the privilege. If you want my help with these debts, you will be guided by me.’

The snare pulled tighter around her. ‘Crispin, please, I have my daughter to think of.’

‘Then think of her, not yourself. There are a few good men in this county who would see marrying my sister as a step up, and who are deep in the pockets too.’

She hesitated, panicked, not sure how to answer. She had not expected this.

‘I can’t force you to marry anyone, Claire.’ He cracked a laugh and put a hand to his chest as if it hurt. ‘I learned that lesson, but perhaps you would trust my judgement this time? You would be helping the family.’

The anxiety in his voice made her nervous. ‘How?’

‘As I said, there are some who would pay handsomely to claim kinship to a duke. And for the influence they’d gain. The estate could use an infusion of money.’

Money for the dukedom. He wanted to sell her to the highest bidder in return for welcoming her back into the family. Heart pounding, her gaze sought her child, now seated on the floor with the statue, making him march along the patterned edge of the carpet. Jane needed security and safety. This would provide it.

And this time Crispin would choose. Wisely. A choice made of reason and logic. ‘Do you have someone in mind?’

He looked pleased. ‘I’ll make up a list of possibilities. Then I advise you talk to Seagrove. Get a sense of the men. He knows people’s hearts.’

‘Seagrove?’

‘Bloody parson. You remember him. Plays chess.’

So she was to consult with the vicar about a suitable husband. It seemed a little embarrassing to say the least. ‘How is Lily Seagrove? Does she still live at home?’

The duke raised his head. ‘Aye. For the nonce. She’s to marry Giles in the summer.’

Now that was a surprise. ‘I didn’t think they liked each other.’

The duke’s eyes began to glaze as if the topic wearied him. Dash it, she had one more thing to ask. ‘I was wondering if Jane and I could stay here at Castonbury.’

‘Stay? Yes, stay. What else did you think? No females here at the moment, I’m afraid. No one to act as chaperone. Phaedra is off somewhere with her aunt Wilhelmina. Ask Smithins where they went. He’ll know.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Kate married, you know.’ He leaned closer. ‘An American.’

He made it sound as if she’d married a criminal. She’d seen the notice in the papers and had dithered about sending congratulations. She wasn’t even sure Kate would remember her. And Phaedra had been so young when she left.

The lost years saddened her. ‘I’m a widow. I don’t need a chaperone, but if I am to meet these men, I will need to entertain a little.’

‘That’s the ticket. Catch yourself a husband.’ He nodded as if they hadn’t just discussed the matter in detail. ‘I’ll have that steward of mine give you some pin money. We can’t have you looking like a crow. You are a Montague.’

Tears scalded the back of her throat. ‘You really are too kind, Crispin.’

‘Should have run the bugger through. That would have been kind. I was as hotheaded as you, I suppose. I wanted you to learn your lesson.’

She bowed her head. ‘I did. You don’t know how often I regretted what I did.’

He glared at Jane, who had wandered back to stand at Claire’s side. ‘Learn from your mother, girl. Do what your family expects.’

Jane visibly wilted.

Crispin turned his head to stare into the fire. ‘We need Jamie. That’s who we need. He would have known what to do.’

Smithins appeared as silent as a wraith at Claire’s elbow. ‘Best leave now, Mrs Holte. I will issue his instructions.’ He gestured to the door.

Claire rose and took Jane’s hand.

‘Why, he has fallen asleep,’ Jane said, looking at her uncle, bending over to peer right up into his face. ‘Uncle Duke?’

Smithins smothered a giggle. ‘He’ll rest now until lunch. It’s the laudanum, you know. It keeps the pain at bay.’

‘Come, Jane,’ Claire said. ‘Let us leave your uncle Rothermere to his nap.’ She led the child outside.

The smell of illness lingered in her nostrils.

‘Why don’t we go for a walk?’ she said to Jane.

The little girl gave a skip. ‘Can we make a snowman?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ Fresh air would help her come to grips with this new development. Find a husband? She almost laughed hysterically. Seemingly she had stepped from the frying pan into the fire.

Her stomach gave a sickening lurch.