Читать книгу The Lady Who Broke the Rules - Marguerite Kaye - Страница 12

It was late afternoon by the time they turned into the main entrance to Castonbury Park. Virgil watched with increasing unease as Kate tooled the gig through the iron gates, waving her whip at the gatekeeper. She continued at a smart trot along a well-kept carriageway through pretty parklands where two lakes, the larger with an island in the middle, were divided by a rustic bridge, before coming to a halt in front of the main entrance of the house.

Close up, the building looked far more imposing, the central structure fronted by a colonnaded portico worthy of the Roman senate, flanked by two curved galleries sweeping out to an east and west wing. Rows of windows gazed watchfully down. As he leapt lightly onto the gravel and held out his hand to assist Kate, Virgil told himself that it was purely fancy to think that they looked disapproving.

Inside, a rather gloomy hall dominated by a number of stone pillars and four huge empty fireplaces.

‘Lumsden, I trust you received word that I was bringing a guest,’ Kate said to a superior-looking grey-haired man.

‘Indeed, Lady Kate, I have prepared the Blue Room.’

‘Excellent. Mr Jackson’s man is travelling with Polly. I don’t expect they will be too far behind us. This is Mr Jackson, Lumsden. Virgil, this is Lumsden, our butler, who has been at Castonbury longer than any of us care to remember.’

‘Pleased to meet you… .’

The butler stopped in the act of executing a bow.

‘Mr Jackson is an American,’ Kate explained.

The butler made a huge effort to pull himself together, but his protuberant eyes remained fixed on Virgil.

‘From Boston,’ Virgil corroborated, more amused than offended, for the man was looking at him as if he were about to pounce.

‘Boston,’ the butler repeated.

‘In Massachusetts. That’s New England. Though obviously I’m not originally from there,’ Virgil said helpfully.

‘Indeed, sir, I had gathered not.’

‘Oh, do stop staring,’ Kate said impatiently. ‘Mr Jackson is not going to bite you.’

‘Well, not yet, at any rate,’ Virgil said. ‘I’ve just been fed.’

Taken aback, for she had not thought him a man given to teasing, Kate suppressed a chuckle and cast Virgil a reproving look before turning back to Lumsden. ‘I take it you know about this counsel of war that Giles has called?’

‘Indeed.’ The butler looked as if he himself bore the burden of the Montagues’ woes. ‘A difficult business, my lady. Lord Giles wishes to discuss the matter in the drawing room before dinner. If I may suggest, perhaps Mr Jackson could take sherry in the library, since it is a family matter. We have the London papers there.’

‘That will suit me fine,’ Virgil said, smiling reassuringly at Kate, who was looking troubled.

‘If you’re sure? Then I shall see you in a couple of hours. Lumsden will show you to your bedchamber.’

Kate disappeared into the gloom of the vast hall, leaving Virgil alone with the old retainer, who made more stately progress in her wake. The guest rooms were in one of the wings which adjoined the main body of the house, connected by a curved corridor lined with ancestral portraits, where Lumsden slowed to a crawl, intoning: ‘the fourth earl who became the first duke’; ‘his first duchess’; ‘his second duchess’; ‘her second son’—as if he were introducing them at a party. Virgil wondered if he was expected to make his bow to each one. Their eyes followed him as he passed. He was pretty certain he could hear their affronted muttering.

Alone at last, staring out the window of the Blue Room at the lakes, he felt a wave of homesickness. This house was steeped in the kind of history he could not begin to comprehend. Though the current building was less than a hundred years old, Kate’s ancestors had lived on this land for centuries. A direct line, as Lumsden had informed him, fluffing his feathers like a proud cockerel, going back to the first earl, who had been raised from a mere baronetcy by Queen Elizabeth. The Montagues had roots so deep they were entrenched in the very soil of England. Their customs and traditions, their bloodline and heritage, hung around Castonbury like a protective cloak.

Virgil had not thought of himself as rootless until now. Gazing around the Blue Room, at the tapestry depicting a naked woman bathing surrounded by nymphs and exotic creatures, at the Chinese porcelain on the carved mantel, at the rich silks of the bed hangings and the thick oils of the paintings in their heavy gilt frames which hung on the walls, and the soft pile of the rug which covered the polished wooden boards, he felt as if all of it was conspiring to remind him that he had no place here. The antiques screamed of wealth and position, of traditions so well established as to be inviolable.

He ran his hand over the embroidered coverlet. Black skin on celestial blue silk. His being here was a violation of something entrenched. Though Kate did not think so. She had welcomed his touch. The contrast of his skin against hers seemed to fascinate her. In another world, the differences in their skin colour would not matter. Virgil stared at his image in the long mirror which stood by the nightstand. ‘Not another world, another planet,’ he muttered.

A gentle tap on the door made him snap to. He was here now, and he was damned if he would allow these blue-blooded aristocrats and their haughty servants to look down on him!

‘Ah, Katherine. So good of you to join us. Finally.’ The Honourable Mrs Landes-Fraser swept into the drawing room, the puce feathers in her turban waving majestically, the demi-train of her evening gown swishing violently, while the fringes of her shawl caught on the crook of a Dresden shepherdess perched atop a card table, causing the maiden to skitter across the polished rosewood before coming to rest just short of the edge.

Deigning to accept her customary glass of very dry sherry, a libation ideally suited to her extremely dry humour, Mrs Landes-Fraser disposed her wraith-like person upon one of the large blue damask sofas. The sofas, ornately scrolled and gilded, were adorned by a blatantly naked sea creature on each arm, a feature at which Mrs Landes-Fraser took personal affront each time she sat upon them. With a flair born of practice, she flicked her shawl expertly over the exposed bosom of a mermaid. ‘I am sure,’ she said, looking down her Roman nose at her niece and speaking in a tone which made it clear she was no such thing, ‘that your hasty visit to Staffordshire was necessary, but it was most ill-timed. Though I am aware you do not think so, I believe that your family have first claim on your time, particularly in a crisis. I cannot quite believe that you have, under the circumstances, inflicted a guest upon us. Really, Katherine, it is most thoughtless of you. You must get rid of the person as soon as possible. Giles will agree with me, I know.’

Her nephew, who was leaning his tall frame against the mantel, shrugged impatiently and sipped on his Madeira. ‘This is Kate’s home—she’s perfectly entitled to invite guests.’

‘But this man is apparently an American,’ Kate’s aunt said with a shudder. ‘Bad enough we have to put up with one outsider …’

‘If this woman’s claim proves to be true, then she is not an outsider but family,’ Giles said shortly.