Читать книгу Gifts of the Season: A Gift Most Rare / Christmas Charade / The Virtuous Widow - Lyn Stone - Страница 14

“So there you are, Miss Blake.” The cook looked past her two maids, their hands white with flour from pie-making, as Sara shepherded Clarissa through the kitchen door. “Lady Fordyce’s been asking for you all through the house, Miss. Oh, My Lord Revell, forgive me, I didn’t see you a-coming there too!”

“He’s very hard to overlook, Mrs. Green,” said Clarissa, stretching to reach the plate of sliced plum cake destined to accompany some lady guest’s tea. “He’s even bigger than Albert, you know.”

“Your flatter me, Clarissa,” said Revell easily, setting the basket of holly on the table as if he were a footman instead of a lord, and making the two young kitchen maids wide-eyed with amazement and admiration, too. “I think so, anyway. Doesn’t she, Miss Blake?”

But Sara was already unfastening her cloak, hurrying to make herself presentable for Lady Fordyce. It must be the tigers and elephants being inappropriate for Christmas: she’d already been half expecting to be called to task by her ladyship for that.

“Mrs. Green,” she said briskly, stripping off her gloves, “will you please see that one of your girls takes Clarissa upstairs to the nursery to change her wet things?”

“Lord Revell can take me,” suggested Clarissa promptly. “I can show him the way to the—”

“You must not presume on Lord Revell’s good nature, Clarissa,” said Sara, trying to ignore the waves of curiosity rising from the cook and her maids, and no wonder, either, not with Clarissa treating Revell with all the familiarity of a favorite uncle. “Go along now, upstairs with Bess.”

“And what orders for me, Miss Blake?” asked Revell with an easy, fond familiarity that made Sara blush all over again. His smile was warm and winning, his blue eyes so full of affection that she felt it as surely as if he’d kissed her again. Lightly he patted the sprig of holly in his buttonhole, reminding her of far too many things. “Where do you wish me to go?”

If he’d acted like Clarissa’s uncle, then Sara didn’t want to venture what he must seem to her in the eager eyes of the kitchen staff. No one would believe they’d only just met, and no one—no one—would believe their relationship held all the propriety of the humble governess with a noble-bred guest of the house.

“You shall do whatever you please, my lord,” she said, daring him, just remembering to curtsy to him before she left the kitchen. “That is both your prerogative, my lord, and your habit, is it not?”

Oh, that was wrong, wrong, wrong of her to say! If only they’d have ten minutes alone together—ten minutes without kissing—then this would all be sorted out between them! Furious with herself and with him, she bunched her skirts in her fist and marched up the stairs to Lady Fordyce’s rooms.

“Ah, Miss Blake, here at last,” said Lady Fordyce. She motioned to her lady’s maid, waiting with two pairs of slippers in her hands. “The red ones, Hannah, and mind you check that the stitching on the beading is still tight. I shouldn’t want them flying off while I danced. Now, Miss Blake, to your affairs.”

Sara squared her shoulders. “If you mean to speak to me further of the elephants and tigers that Clarissa is making for the ballroom, my lady, then—”

“But I don’t.” Lady Fordyce smiled brightly. “They are the height of fashion. All the ladies I have asked have said exactly that, and agreed with Lord Revell. You are to be congratulated for your originality and resourcefulness.”

“Thank you, my lady,” said Sara faintly, wishing she found this more reassuring than she did.

“Most original, yes,” said her ladyship, as pleased with herself as she was with Sara. “Which is why I have decided that you shall attend the masquerade with Clarissa, in costume like everyone else. As a treat, you see.”

“My lady!” exclaimed Sara with more dismay than gratitude. Her days for such frivolous entertainments were long past, left behind in Calcutta along with her bright clothes and jewels and plumes in her hair. “My lady, you are most kind, but—but I have no proper costume of my own, and with the ball being only two days away—”

“Ah, but I have thought of that, too.” Lady Fordyce clapped her hands together with triumph. “Off in our lumber room are trunks and trunks of old gowns and petticoats and headdresses and goodness only knows what else. Take Clary with you, and rummage about as you please. I’m sure you’ll find exactly what you need to assemble the perfect costume.”

“Thank you, my lady,” said Sara faintly, taking the plain black mask that her ladyship handed her. “You are too kind.”

“Not at all, my dear.” But her ladyship’s habitually cheerful demeanor faded, and restlessly she tapped her fingers together. “That, you see, was the more agreeable message for me to deliver. The other is…is more vexing.”

She twisted her mouth to one side, searching for the right words in a way that only made Sara more uneasy.

“You know, Miss Blake, that I have always tried to run this household in a fair and agreeable manner, for the good of everyone beneath this roof,” she finally began, “and I am perfectly aware that a rogue is a rogue, no matter what his station. But whereas I can dismiss the footman for taking freedoms with the dairymaid, it is an entirely different when a gentleman, a peer, a guest at Ladysmith, is involved.”

Sara felt her cheeks growing warm and her palms turn damp as she realized exactly where her ladyship’s conversation was heading.

“Oh, my lady, please don’t—”

“No, no, this is my responsibility, not yours,” said Lady Fordyce firmly. “You should not be put in the position of having to defend yourself against the unwanted attentions of Lord Revell. No, don’t deny that it has happened. The entire house whispers of nothing else.”

Sara gasped, mortified. Why couldn’t this have stayed between her and Revell alone, without involving everyone else at Ladysmith? Why had she once again become the miserable target of talk and gossip? How long before someone learned her real name, and the shameful truth behind her father’s death?

And oh, what would Revell say in return?

“You will not—not address Lord Revell about me, will you, Lady Fordyce?” she begged.

“I would never do such a thing, Miss Blake.” Her ladyship pressed her lips tightly together. “He is a gentleman. I could hardly scold him, could I? But I believe I have found an, ah, another solution. I cannot explain further, not yet, but I believe you shall find Lord Revell soon ceases his unwelcome attentions.”

But it wasn’t as simple as that, not by half, and Sara knew it. For what if she didn’t wish Revell to avoid her? What if, in the last two days, his attentions had come to seem not troublesome, but desirable?

Unhappily, Sara stared down at the floor, praying her confusion didn’t show on her face for her ladyship to read. She’d told herself that these two weeks until Twelfth Night would be something to endure, and now that same time with him had become something to treasure. That was the truth, if only she’d be honest with herself. She wanted to see him, and wanted to be with him, however brief that time together would be.

And it would be brief. As giddy as her heart might be, her cold reason hadn’t entirely abandoned her. Once Revell learned the truth about why she’d left Calcutta, he’d scorn her, and she in turn had no assurance that in the end he’d treat her with any more loyalty or honor than he had before. Miracles made for pretty talk, but they weren’t guarantees of anything.

Yet still Sara felt the pull of the old connection between them, as if they were once again young and blissfully in love, as if nothing in the world were more complicated than that miracle they’d both never forgotten. That was what she wanted, to feel like that again, even if it were only for a handful of days. She wanted that, and she wanted it with Revell, and unconsciously she touched her fingers to her lips, remembering his kiss. He had promised to join them in the ballroom, to help arrange the holly and the elephants. Likely he was already waiting for them—for her—now.

“I shall expect you and Clarissa downstairs to join me as soon as she can be shifted into dry clothing,” continued Lady Fordyce. “I have already called for the sleigh to take us across to Peterborough Hall.”

Sara looked up swiftly, jerked back to the present. “Peterborough, your ladyship? Clarissa and I were planning to spend the rest of the day decorating the ballroom.”

“Tomorrow will be time enough for that, Miss Blake.” Lady Fordyce’s smile was serene, satisfied that she’d solved and dispatched yet another thorny problem in her household. “Until the rest of my little plan comes to pass, I intend to remove you as completely as possible from Lord Revell’s temptation, even if that means I must take tea with that odious Lucy Peterborough whilst Clary plays with her daughter.”

“But Lady Fordyce!” cried Sara with disappointment and dismay. “With all your other guests here, with all you must do for them—this is hardly necessary, not necessary at all!”

“And I say it is.” Lady Fordyce took Sara’s hand and patted it gently. “You have always been a most virtuous young woman, Miss Blake, and I’ve no wish to see you changed.”

But Sara realized she already had.

“There, Miss Blake,” said Clarissa, stepping back to admire their work, her arms crossed over her chest. “I think that looks most fine!”

“It certainly does,” agreed Sara, gazing around the ballroom. “I cannot wait for your mother to see it.”

They had spent the entire morning working to transform the ballroom, relying on three footmen to help put holly boughs along the crowns of the tall pier glasses. More holly and glossy-green clippings from the boxwood had been arranged along the sideboards and draped from the mantelpieces of the four facing fireplaces, while red and white ribbons had been tied in bows from the polished brass chandeliers overhead and woven into the rails of the small musician’s gallery.

Revell’s paper chains were draped across the front of the pianoforte, brought up from the music room in the event any lady wished to play and spell the hired musicians. Tucked into all the greenery were the pasteboard animals that they’d made, a miniature Noah’s ark in an English forest, and once the scores of beeswax candles were lit tonight, the effect would be truly magical. She and Clarissa had every right to be proud, and so would Lady Fordyce, for such a spectacle would keep her guests—as well as everyone who hadn’t been invited—talking all through the winter.

Once again her glance wandered to the doorway, just as it had done over and over and over again all morning long, and still Revell didn’t come. He wouldn’t, either; she knew that now, after overhearing one of the footmen telling another that all the gentlemen had gone shooting soon after dawn, even that lord from India.

She sighed, and shook her head ruefully at her own foolish hopes. She missed him. That was the heart of it, wasn’t it? She missed him, and these last twenty-four hours seemed to stretch longer than the six years before. Thanks to the visit to Peterborough Hall yesterday, she hadn’t seen Revell since they’d cut the ivy together, exactly the way her ladyship intended. Surely she’d served at Ladysmith long enough to know that when Lady Fordyce determined upon an order, there’d be no countering her, and now that she’d deemed it necessary to keep Sara from Revell’s path, her ladyship would have boosted him into his saddle this morning with her own white hands.

“Can we go hunt for your costume now, Miss Blake?” asked Clarissa, hopping up and down in anticipation, the only acceptable mood on this, the day before Christmas. “You can’t come tonight in your regular old gowns. You’re not allowed to dress plain, Miss Blake, not tonight. No one is. You must look special, like the queen of hearts, or a fairy princess, or—or anyone else grand and rare!”

Sara made an exaggerated frown, wrinkling her nose at her reflection in the tall pier glass before her. “You’ll need far more than antique finery to transform me into a fairy princess, Clarissa.”

“But that is what a masquerade is for,” said Clarissa sternly. She took Sara’s hand, tugging her toward the door. “Come, Miss Blake! The lumber room is the best place in the whole house, and I—Albert, no!”

With a shriek of anguish, Clarissa raced across the ballroom to where her brother stood in the doorway, a cluster of curious guests peering around him. The men were still dressed for riding in frock coats and light-colored breeches, their boots wet with melting snow and their faces ruddy from the cold.

“No, no, no, Albert!” she wailed, jumping and flailing her arms toward his face. “You can’t come in here, not yet! You know no one can see until tonight! It’s supposed to be a surprise, Albert, a surprise!”

“Just a peek, Clary, eh?” he said, easily catching her windmilling hands as the others began entering around him. “I was telling everyone how grand the ballroom looks for Mother’s masquerade, and they wanted to see it, that’s all.”

“But now you’ve spoiled the surprise, Albert,” said Clarissa, her voice quivering with angry tears as she finally pulled free. “You’ve spoiled everything.”

Sara hurried forward, circling her arms around Clarissa’s shaking shoulders. “It’s all right, Clarissa,” she said softly, wishing she could personally throttle Albert by his thick neck. “Everything will look much better tonight when it’s dark and the candles are lit. You’ll see. They’ll still be surprised.”

A blond young woman in pink muslin pushed past them and into the center of the ballroom, and as she twirled flirtatiously on her toes Sara realized it was the same lady with the uncertain voice that she’d had to accompany in the music room: Miss Talbot.

“Why, dear Mr. Fordyce,” she cooed, making sure her skirts flicked above her ankles, “how charmingly childish this all is! Wouldn’t you agree, my lord?”

“I most assuredly would not,” said Revell, suddenly there, as well, the sprig of holly once again in his buttonhole. “There is nothing whatsoever childish about tigers and elephants, is there, Miss Clarissa?”

“No, my lord.” Vindicated, Clarissa sniffed back her tears, and narrowed her eyes at Miss Talbot. “Especially not when they eat you alive.”

Miss Talbot’s smile soured over the arc of her fan. “Goodness, Mr. Fordyce. What an ill-tempered little creature your sister is! If I were your dear mother, I should address the quality of her education directly.”

“Rather she should thank Miss Blake,” said Revell, “for giving Clarissa the best education imaginable, a model of wisdom and beauty.”

“Yes, she has,” echoed Clarissa loyally, but there was already question clouding her eyes, a suspicion that things among these grown-ups were not quite all they appeared.

She was right. Revell bowed toward Sara with his hand over his heart and a heavy lock of his hair falling forward across his brow, and making every other person in the ballroom an eager witness to exactly how violently the governess flushed at his lordship’s compliment. In return all Sara could do was remember what Lady Fordyce had said, how everyone at Ladysmith was whispering of nothing else than her and Revell, and here, alas, was all the proof anyone needed.

But as delicious as such scandal might be for the other guests, Sara could also feel a new, uncomfortable tension rippling through the room, marked with nervous coughs and titters. This time, clearly, there was a sense that Lord Revell had at last made his attention too public.

Uneasily, Albert cleared his throat. “I say, Claremont. Mind my little sister, eh?”

Revell’s smile didn’t change, but the edge in his voice was unmistakable. “What is there to mind, Fordyce? What is it that’s not fit for Clarissa to hear? Do you deny that Miss Blake is either wise, or beautiful? Or is it perhaps my own judgment you are doubting?”

“Neither, Claremont, neither at all,” blustered Albert miserably, blotting at his face with his handkerchief. “But I only ask that you, ah, that you not be quite so…quite so, ah—”

“Shall I play for us, Mr. Fordyce?” asked Sara quickly, hurrying to the pianoforte in the corner. As bad as it was to be the centerpiece of gossip, this was infinitely worse, having Revell jump to defend her honor like this. “Now that we are all gathered here in a room meant for music, on the very morning of Christmas Eve, wouldn’t a dance be a pleasant amusement?”

“A splendid idea, Miss Blake!” cried Albert with all the hearty desperation of a drowning man. He seized Clarissa’s hand, practically swinging her into the center of the ballroom. “You won’t mind playing for us, will you? Something gay and jolly, fit for the season, eh?”

“As you wish, Mr. Fordyce,” murmured Sara as she opened the lid covering the keyboard, trying to sound like the old, usual Sara instead of this new one that interceded so boldly between gentlemen. “It is my pleasure to play, Mr. Fordyce.”

“You’ll have to grant me more room than this, memsahib,” said Revell, suddenly sitting on the bench beside her so closely that his leg pressed against hers. “As Clarissa observed, I am far too large to overlook.”

Instantly, Sara scuttled away from him, more to break the contact than to grant him the room he’d asked for.

“Whatever are you doing, Rev?” she whispered urgently. “You can’t sit here, and you can’t call me memsahib! You’re supposed to be dancing with the others!”

“And I say I’m supposed to be here,” he said easily, sliding along the bench after her. The freshness of the outdoor air still clung to him, sharp and clean and reminding her again of standing among the holly bushes, and of all that holly sprig stood for. “Aren’t those my inept paper chains hanging there on the front to mark my place?”

“But, Rev, you can’t do this!” she protested in a frantic squeak. “You’ve already upset Mr. Fordyce and everyone else, and—”

“Did I upset you?” he asked gravely. “That’s all I care about.”

Oh, heaven help her, she was blushing again. “Not the same way, no,” she hedged. “But I am not such a public person as you are, and what you did is not—not proper, especially not when it’s nearly Christmas like this!”

“And I ask you, whatever happened to Christmas miracles?” Tentatively he curled his fingers over the keys, the sunlight glancing off the sapphire in his ring. “There was a piece for four hands we used to play together, a kind of jig that you’d taught me like a trained dog. I can’t promise that I won’t make a wretched muddle of it now after so long, but I am willing to try if you will.”

His smile was lopsided and surprisingly uncertain, and with a jolt she realized he was asking her for far more than to recall a simple tune. Was she willing to risk that wretched muddle to try to recapture what they’d once done together with such wonderful ease?

“Oh, Rev,” she said softly, reminding herself of all that was still so unsettled and unspoken between them, and how much more likely that muddle would be than anything else. But if he was willing to try, then how could she not? How could she refuse him, or herself, either?

“If you haven’t forgotten,” she said, choosing her words with the same care as had he, “then I haven’t, either, nor do I intend to shame myself and make a muddle.”

He grinned, and she plunged into the piece, making him swear as he hurried to catch her. Yet still they played better together than they’d any right to, the awkward notes and missteps forgiven by their enthusiasm. Over and over their arms touched and their fingers bumped into one other’s with exactly the intimacy that the long-ago composer had intended, and by the time the fast-paced jig had come to its close both she and Revell were laughing and breathless and completely unaware if anyone had danced to their music or not.

But the sound of one person applauding—only one—broke the spell. Still smiling, Sara turned, then quickly stood, just as Revell also rose to his feet.

The gentleman clapping was newly arrived, his traveling cloak still over his shoulders and his elegant dark clothes creased from his carriage, and from his world-weary, almost arrogant disdain, Sara would have known he was high-born and wealthy even if Lady Fordyce weren’t fluttering so anxiously around him, as if he were the greatest prize she’d ever captured.

And in a way he was. Sara had never seen the gentleman before, let alone met him. Yet she recognized him at once: he was older than Revell, an inch or two shorter, and his hair was lighter, but the shape of his face and smile, the ease with which he moved, were so much the same that there could be little doubt.

“Why, Revell, look at you,” said Brant, His Grace the Duke of Strachen, his voice deceptively languid as he looked not at his brother, but at Sara. “Such a…a diversion! It would seem that I’ve accepted Lady Fordyce’s invitation in the nick of time for a happy Christmas, doesn’t it? The very nick, I would venture, for us all.”