Читать книгу Regency High Society Vol 3: Beloved Virago / Lord Trenchard's Choice / The Unruly Chaperon / Colonel Ancroft's Love - Elizabeth Rolls, Anne Ashley - Страница 16

Rosslair was bathed in warm afternoon sunshine when Katherine caught her first glimpse of the greystone manor house, set in the gently rolling countryside she well remembered. It was a truly handsome building, not large by some standards, but undeniably the home of a gentleman of comfortable means.

As Daniel urged the weary mount into the courtyard at the back of the house, the sound of hooves on cobblestones brought a stocky individual of average height from one of the numerous outbuildings, which lined the yard on three of its sides. His craggy features were instantly softened by a broad smile of welcome, as his clear blue gaze rested upon the man about whose waist Katherine had clung for the past few hours, and a moment later her ears were assailed by an unmistakable accent.

‘To be sure now, I were only saying to Janet this very morn she were worrying herself to no purpose, and that you’d return safe and sound in your own good time. And that happy I am to be proved—’

He checked as his gaze fell upon the delicately featured face peering at him round one broad shoulder. ‘Now what have we here, Major, sir? Not another lad to help about the place, I’m thinking.’ He peered more closely as Daniel assisted the slender figure behind him to the ground before dismounting himself. “Tis not a lad at all, I’m thinking.’

‘There’s no fooling you, Sean McGann,’ Daniel announced, before making Katherine known to the man who had served him loyally throughout the hard-fought campaign in the Peninsula.

‘O’Malley?’ Positively beaming with delight, the exsergeant grasped the slender fingers held out to him. ‘Now, there’s a fine Irish name for you!’

‘And with a fine Irish temper to match,’ Daniel assured him, much to his loyal henchman’s intense amusement. ‘Come into the house when you’ve taken care of the horse, McGann,’ he added before leading the way into his home by way of the rear entrance.

In the large farmhouse-style kitchen he discovered his elderly housekeeper, seated at the table, busily occupied in repairing a rent in a sheet. After one brief glance to see who had entered her private domain, she rose to her feet and came rushing forward, with quite amazing speed for someone of her advanced years, to clasp as much of Daniel as she could encompass in her arms.

There was clearly a bond of affection between them that put Katherine in mind of her own relationship with Bridie. It was not unusual for loyal, elderly retainers to be given far more licence, so it came as no surprise to hear the housekeeper administer a scold when Daniel lifted her quite off her feet a moment later in order to plant a smacking kiss on one lined cheek.

Katherine’s only partially suppressed chuckle instantly alerted the housekeeper to her presence. She glanced enquiringly up at her master, before subjecting the stranger to a rather prolonged stare which grew increasingly disapproving.

Daniel immediately relinquished his hold, before reaching out one hand to remove the floppy, misshapen hat, and allow those gorgeous auburn locks to fall about slender shoulders. If anything his housekeeper’s expression became even more dour and she sniffed quite pointedly.

‘You can take that disapproving look off your face, Janet Browning!’ he ordered sternly.

Her only response was to sniff again.

‘It might interest you to know that it was none other than Miss O’Malley who was responsible for my recent absence from home.’

‘Ha!’ Grey eyes subjected the figure indecently clad in masculine attire to a further reproachful glare. ‘I don’t doubt it!’

‘I do not think your position is improving, Daniel,’ Katherine remarked, sotto voce, disposed to be more amused than anything else by the servant’s quite evident misconceptions.

He was inclined to agree, although he wasn’t slow to note his housekeeper’s faintly puzzled expression at the unmistakable refinement in Katherine’s voice. ‘Yes, Janet. Miss O’Malley is unquestionably a lady of virtue. And it is for this very reason that you are to take very good care of her. I shall explain everything more fully to you presently. In the meantime, I want you to find her something suitable to wear.’

‘Well, that I don’t object to doing,’ she didn’t hesitate to assure him, ‘though why a lady should be parading round in breeches, I cannot imagine!’

‘Because, you inquisitive old besom, for her own safety she has been masquerading as my nephew for the last couple of days.’

Janet tutted. ‘It appears to me, Master Daniel, that you’ve been indulging in mischief again. You always were one for getting into scrapes.’

Katherine couldn’t help laughing softly at Daniel’s look of exasperation. It seemed that they both suffered the same problems—servants who persisted in treating them as though they were still irresponsible, mischievous children who should be kept in leading-strings.

‘Oh, that is nothing, Mrs Browning. I’ve figured as his wife and his sister,’ she enlightened her. ‘In fact, I’ve reached the point where I’ve forgotten just who I really am.’

‘But I haven’t, Katherine,’ Daniel assured her gently, and with such a wealth of tenderness in his eyes that Janet hardly recognised the being whom she had known from the day of his birth. ‘Tomorrow you must swiftly accustom yourself to yet another role—that of my cousin, Louise Durand, whom I have brought over from France, and to whom Janet shall act as chaperon.’

‘In that case, sir,’ his loyal servant announced, ‘I’ll begin my duties at once by ensuring the young lady is made comfortable in your grandmother’s old room.’

Having her hand captured in a surprisingly firm grasp, Katherine had little choice but to accompany the housekeeper up a rather handsome wooden staircase to the upper floor. If the servant still retained doubts about her respectability she certainly kept these reservations to herself, and by the time Katherine had helped to put clean sheets on the bed, and had returned to the kitchen to fill a pitcher with hot water herself, the housekeeper was positively beaming with approval and evincing every sign of being very pleased at having another female residing under the roof.

Once Katherine had returned to the bedchamber, she took stock of her surroundings, while making herself appear more respectable by donning clothes which, she suspected, had once belonged to Daniel’s mother. The furniture, elegant and well made, was undoubtedly French in design, and had more than likely belonged to the former occupant of the room. Although the primrose bed-hangings and the drapes at the window were slightly faded, as was the delicately patterned wallpaper, it was a pleasant bedchamber, tastefully decorated and comfortable, and Katherine was more than happy to make use of it for the duration of her stay.

Not that she had been given much choice in the matter, she reminded herself, as she began arranging her hair in a simple style by making use of the combs, brushes and pins which most likely had also belonged to the room’s former occupant. Daniel, in his usual highhanded fashion, had insisted that she remain in his house until such time as Sir Giles could be apprised of their return. She didn’t object in the least, but she was determined, for the duration of her stay, not to be idle. That part of her life was now well and truly over. She was resolved not to spend the years ahead living an unproductive existence where she had nothing better to do with her time than indulge in fruitless socialising with that large circle of people in Bath with whom she had very little in common.

Once satisfied with the arrangement of her hair, Katherine did not delay in returning to the large kitchen, where she discovered both Janet and McGann companionably seated at the table. She would dearly have loved to see over the whole house, but decided that that could wait until later, and that it was more important for her to become better acquainted with the two people whom she strongly suspected had come to mean far more to Daniel than mere servants.

‘No, please do not get up,’ she adjured them as they both made to rise. ‘Would you mind very much if I joined you?’

Her polite manner instantly won her a further warm look of approval from the housekeeper, though the glint easily discernible in masculine eyes stemmed, Katherine strongly suspected, from something quite different. It was no difficult matter to induce them both to talk about the master of the house who, she quickly discovered, was upstairs in his bedchamber, changing his attire.

It swiftly became apparent that both held him in the highest esteem. Janet, who had come to work in the house shortly after Daniel’s father, Edwin Ross, had purchased the property some forty years before, had been present at Daniel’s birth. She had been present too on that sad day, two years later, when his lovely mother had died after giving birth to a stillborn child, and had remained throughout those years when his grandmother, a woman of immense character, who had escaped from France with her daughter at the time of the Terror, had taken charge of the house and Daniel’s upbringing.

‘I have to say that the house has never been the same these past ten years, not since his grandmother passed away,’ Janet admitted solemnly. ‘It’s been a sad and lonely place, nothing like the happy home it once was.’

‘But surely you didn’t remain here alone whilst Major Ross was away in Spain?’ Katherine, somewhat surprised, was prompted to ask. The house might not be on the scale of even a small mansion, but it was far too large for just one servant to maintain, and one who, moreover, was definitely not in her first flush of youth. ‘Surely there are other servants here to help you?’

‘Well, there’s McGann here now, and a stable lad who does the heavy lifting. Then there’s Mr Prentiss, who’s been the land manager for many years. He always sends men over to the house to see to repairs and chop logs for the fires.’

‘But isn’t there any other female employed here to help you with the general household chores?’ Katherine persisted, and was appalled when Janet shook her head. ‘That really is too bad of Daniel! This house is too big for only one person to manage.’

‘Now, there’s a considerate soul!’ Janet beamed. ‘It would take a female to appreciate the work a woman has to do. And I cannot deny I could do with some help about the place now that Master Daniel has returned. I do have one of the village girls come up once a week to help clean the place. But when the master was away fighting in Spain, and most of the rooms in holland covers, there weren’t really any need for extra permanent help. I did intend to mention the matter at the beginning of the year, but then the master upped and spent some time in London, and was back only a few days before he went off again.’

‘Well, don’t you worry, Janet. I shall ensure the matter is brought to his attention before I leave here,’ Katherine promised. ‘It’s unthinkable that you should be expected to manage the house by yourself. I wonder that your master didn’t see to matters long before now.’

‘He’s had other things to think about in recent years,’ McGann put in, not hesitating to come to the Major’s defence. ‘I don’t think his thoughts dwelled too often on his home back here when he were out in Spain.’

‘Understandably not,’ Katherine responded, striving to be fair. ‘Have you known the Major long?’

‘Six year, or thereabouts. I were his batman and sergeant, Miss Katherine. He were a Captain when we first met. Won his majority after Badajoz. And no one deserved it more!’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Katherine agreed softly, her mind’s eye having no difficulty in conjuring up an image of those telltale scars. ‘You were no doubt involved in many battles together.’

‘That we were, Miss Katherine, and all of them hard-fought,’ McGann confirmed, needing little encouragement to reminisce. ‘The “grasshoppers” were always the ones picked to go out on skirmishes.’

‘Grasshoppers?’ Katherine echoed, bemused.

‘Ahh, bless you, miss! That’s what the Frogs called us on account of our green uniforms, but they had a grudging respect for us too, I reckon. The 95th had some of the best shots in the army. And there were none better with a Baker rifle than the Major. To be sure we’ve been in some tough spots, me and the Major. Talavera was one of the worst. I thought at one point we’d be singing with the angels before that battle was over.’

Katherine’s eyes glinted with unholy amusement. ‘Or in the Major’s case possibly crying, “Hell, it’s hot!”

‘I heard that, young woman!’

Whilst her companions dissolved into laughter, Katherine swung round in the chair to discover Daniel framed in the open doorway. ‘Oh, are you here?’ she remarked, totally unmoved by his unexpected appearance. ‘Well, you know what they say about eavesdroppers, don’t you, Daniel?’

‘I’ll give you eavesdroppers, you impertinent baggage!’ he threatened, though the unmistakable flicker of affection in his eyes didn’t go unnoticed by any one of those seated at the table.

Janet exchanged a swift glance with McGann before hurriedly rising to her feet. ‘Well, I haven’t time to sit about gossiping all day. I’ve the dinner to prepare.’

‘And I shall help,’ Katherine informed her, rising also and catching a look of distinct disapproval taking possession of Daniel’s features.

‘I cannot imagine why you’re glowering at me in that objectionable way,’ she told him, instantly proving to one and all that she wasn’t in the least in awe of the master of the house. ‘Janet cannot possibly be expected to manage everything, especially not with a guest staying here. And as I’m not completely useless in a kitchen, I see no earthly reason why I shouldn’t lend a hand. So if you’ll kindly remove yourself from under our feet, and take McGann with you, Janet and I shall make a start on dinner.’

Although muttering under his breath, Daniel departed as requested, and went into the large sitting-room, McGann, chuckling wickedly, at his heels. ‘It’s all very well for you to laugh,’ Daniel remonstrated, once he had the door firmly closed behind them, ‘but I’d sooner be asked to manage a company of raw recruits than be responsible for that unruly little madam!’

‘She’s a spirited little filly, and no mistake. But nothing you can’t handle, I’m thinking.’

Daniel refrained from comment, and merely invited his companion to take a seat before explaining precisely why Katherine was a guest in his house. ‘So you can now appreciate why I need you to make contact with Sir Giles Osborne without delay,’ he went on to say, once he had regaled his ex-sergeant with a reasonably detailed account of his recent exploits on the other side of the Channel. ‘With any luck you’ll find him at his country home in Hampshire. Unfortunately, with the very real possibility of renewed conflict with France, he might well be in the capital. In which case you must go on to London with the letter I’m about to write. You are to hand it to Sir Giles personally, McGann, and await further instructions. In no circumstances are you to leave it with a servant or a secretary.’

‘Understood, sir.’

By the time McGann was on the point of departure, Katherine had taken Janet into her confidence. Her explanation had taken somewhat longer, for she had found herself having to disclose the reason why a gently bred young woman should wish to embark on such a hazardous venture in the first place.

‘But do you not enjoy living in Bath, miss?’ Janet asked in some surprise, when Katherine had quite openly admitted that she had become increasingly dissatisfied with the life she had been leading in recent months. ‘I’ve never been there myself, but I’ve been told it’s an elegant place.’

‘It isn’t as fashionable as it once was,’ Katherine responded, raising her head in time to see Daniel’s trusted henchman riding out of the yard. ‘There’s no denying, though, that it’s a pleasant place to live, and one is never short of company.’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose though, Janet, I’m a country girl at heart. I spent the first sixteen years of my life in Ireland, living in a house not unlike this one. Then, after both my parents died, I came here to Dorsetshire to live with my grandfather, Colonel Fairchild.’

Janet only just succeeded retaining her grasp on the bowl she was holding. ‘You’re Colonel Fairchild’s granddaughter …? Then your mother must have been Miss Charlotte Fairchild.’

Fixing her short-sighted eyes on the figure busily working at the table, Janet scrutinised the delicate features. ‘Yes … yes, I can see the resemblance now. I remember your dear mother well, Miss Katherine. She were a lovely-looking young woman, with a nature to match.’

‘Yes.’ Katherine sighed. ‘I sometimes wish I were more like her in some ways. She was always so placid, so controlled, whereas I—’

‘Tend to be a little volatile on occasions, and act without thinking,’ Daniel finished for her, having entered the kitchen in time to catch the last fragments of conversation. ‘I’m pleased to see that you two are becoming better acquainted,’ he remarked, blithely ignoring the lethal darts emanating from a pair of turquoise-coloured eyes.

‘Yes, I’ve been hearing an account of your recent doings.’ Janet tutted, a clear indication that she did not wholeheartedly approve. ‘When are you going to stop all this gallivanting about, Master Daniel, and settle down? You ain’t a boy no longer. It’s high time you began to think about the future and take responsibility for this fine place of yours.’

‘I have every intention of doing precisely that,’ he assured her before turning to Katherine who was unable to judge whether he was truly in earnest. ‘Your explaining the situation to Janet has saved me the trouble of doing so. Much of what will happen next depends upon Sir Giles’s response to my letter. I’ve sent McGann off to Hampshire to apprise him of your arrival in England.’

Katherine nodded. ‘It’s highly likely that he will want me to travel to London. In the meantime, Janet,’ she added, turning to her, ‘it would seem that you will be forced to put up with my presence here.’

‘That’ll be no hardship at all, miss,’ she answered, and this time there was no doubting the sincerity of the assurance. ‘What bothers me is what I’m to call you.’

‘No need for you to trouble yourself unduly over that,’ Daniel put in, seating himself on the edge of the table, where Katherine was busily engaged in making pastry. ‘We shall put our heads together over dinner and work out some tale which will satisfy the curious. Until word gets about that I’m home, I doubt we’ll be plagued with many callers at the house. In the meantime, I would suggest you continue to call our guest Miss Katherine.’ His lips twitched very slightly. ‘But under no circumstances call her Kate. She only allows me to address her in such a fashion.’

Katherine’s look of exasperation only succeeded in making him chuckle. ‘Just because I became fagged to death requesting you not to do so, does not necessarily mean I now approve. My father always maintained that you could lead a mule to water, but you could never force it to drink.’

‘Horse,’ Daniel corrected.

‘Mule is more appropriate in this instance,’ she countered, which resulted in the kitchen resounding with the housekeeper’s appreciative chuckles.

‘Oh, I think I’m going to enjoy having you here, Miss Katherine!’ Janet declared, much to her master’s intense relief, for he knew better than most that his housekeeper did not take an immediate liking to everyone.

‘That might well be so, but I am going to deprive you of her company for the next half an hour or so by taking her on a guided tour of the house and gardens—if she would care to accompany me, that is?’

Seemingly Katherine didn’t need asking twice, and Janet, watching them leave, caught sight of them a moment later, walking side by side across the yard.

Moving across to the window, she continued to study their progress as they headed towards the gate leading to the garden in which her master’s grandmother had loved to work, and which was now sadly overgrown. But it could so easily be put to rights, she mused, a spark of hope igniting. The next few days would give her a clearer indication if her young master had been in earnest, and had made up his mind to settle down at last. Yet already she was forced to own that there had been a change in him. He seemed very relaxed and happy, something which he had not been for such a very long time. And there was that in his eyes when they rested upon that auburn-haired girl …

‘We’ll trust, Master Daniel, that word of your return doesn’t get about too quickly,’ she muttered, a worried frown dimming the hopeful glimmer in her eyes, ‘otherwise you might receive a visitor to the house I for one would certainly prefer not to see.’