Читать книгу Dear Lady Disdain - Paula Marshall - Страница 9

Everything, but everything, went into a weird kind of paralysis, as though time itself had stopped. For a long moment no one moved and no one spoke.

M’lord? Thought Stacy and all her party. M’lord? She must mean the butler. She can’t mean the butler, can she? Can she?

But she did.

Stacy turned to face him. M’lord. Of course, she should have known. Everything about him radiated authority—which she had mistaken for insolence. For whatever goddamned reason—and really, her internal language was growing more impossible by the minute—the coarse brute had chosen to lie to her from the first moment that he had spoken to her.

She did something which she had never expected to do, something which no lady should ever have done—but then, she told herself grimly afterwards, I am no lady, and for sure, for all his title, he is no gentleman! She slapped him across the face with all her strength.

Her blow broke the paralysis which had afflicted them all. Hubbub ensued. Hal rose slowly to his feet, staring at this unlikely lordship. Jeb gave a whistling roar into the silence which followed Stacy’s blow, and then began to clap his hands slowly. ‘Well struck, madam,’ he called to her from his post by the wall.

For his part Matt Falconer held his flaming cheek, and slowly admitted to himself that he should never have allowed his hot temper, long reined in during his years in the United States, to take him over now that he was back in England again and incite him to taunt this headstrong shrew—however much she had deserved it. And now least said, soonest mended. He picked up a towel and began to dry his hands.

He didn’t immediately address Stacy but said, almost mildly, to the triumphant woman who was defying him, ‘I told you not to call me m’lord, and I meant it. I am Matt, Mr Matt, or Mr Falconer to you.’

Stacy, overwhelmed by her own unladylike behaviour, conscious only of poor, sick Louisa’s reproachful stare, murmured hollowly to him, ‘She called you m’lord. Was that another lie in this house of liars, which you, the biggest liar of them all, are supremely fit to head?’

Matt held on to his temper. A hard feat, since he could see that the cross-grained bitch in front of him now had the upper hand, the moral hand, and would use it to provoke him further. She had a tongue like a striking adder, and no mistake.

‘Strictly speaking, madam…’

Stacy, lost to everything, resembling, had she but known it, her father in one of his rare and formidable tempers, raged at him. ‘You can speak strictly, then? I had thought insolence was more your line. But pray continue,’ she added, poisonously sweet, as she saw him open his mouth. To explain presumably. But what explanation could mend this?

She no longer wanted her bed. She wanted to see m’lord whoever-he-was grovelling before her. Nothing less would do.

Matt decided not to bandy words with her. They had an audience, fascinated by the sight of their masters engaged in a ding-dong, knock-down quarrel in front of them, instead of it taking place decently in private. What a rare treat! And all the time in the world to enjoy it, since it was plain that they were all, except possibly the housekeeper, trapped in the kitchens for the night.

‘Strictly speaking,’ he said between his splendid teeth, his eyes still defying her whatever his tongue might say, ‘I am Matthew Falconer, Lord Radley—Earl Falconer’s heir. I prefer, however, to be known as Matt Falconer.’

‘Oh, I thought your preference was to be known as the butler,’ returned Stacy nastily, green eyes flashing, while inwardly she said to herself, Matt Falconer—now wasn’t he involved in some massive scandal when I was barely out of childhood? And no wonder, carrying on as he does.

‘Something wrong with butlers, is there?’ gritted Matt, his own eyes shooting fire as he immediately forgot the resolution which he had just made, that he would be unfailingly polite to this icy hellcat—could hellcats be icy?—and giving her what his old nurse had used to call ‘what for’ again. ‘Unconsidered serfs, are they? I had sooner be a good butler than a bad nobleman any day.’

‘And, of course, being who you are,’ Stacy shot back, all discretion, all decency gone, now completely the true descendant of the rampantly outrageous pedlar who had made the Blanchard fortune, ‘you know all about bad noblemen, I’m sure!’

Jeb, who was busy counting the score for each side as though he were the referee at a boxing-match, saw that red rage was overcoming his employer. He had experienced it rarely, but he knew the signs. And for once Mad Matt had met his match in a woman whose icy deadliness equalled his fiery temperament.

How he mastered himself Matt never knew. Each fresh insult she offered him had him wishing that he could teach her a lesson, put her across his knee…Added to his rage was his sudden shocked horror at the knowledge that, of all dreadful things, he was becoming sexually roused.

What he really wanted to do was to take her in his arms, bear her to the floor and show her who was master…

He shook his head to clear it, rebuked his misbehaving body, and ground out, ‘No useful purpose is served by our being at odds in this situation, madam. I apologise to you for my deception.’ Which, had he ended there, might have done the trick, but the sight of her small contemptuous smile had him adding, ‘Although you must admit that you did come on too strong from the beginning.’

Behind them Jeb gave a groan, and Hal, forgetting his mistress’s orders, grew angry with the arrogant swine all over again. Lord he might be, but his mistress was right. He was no gentleman.

Stacy was also ready to restart the battle. Just because he was a man, an aristocrat, was big and strong, and, it must be admitted, in an odd way handsome, that was no reason for him to think that he could speak to her as he pleased, but as she opened her mouth to deliver another broadside she was stopped by her companion.

Louisa Landen had watched the affray with growing horror, and total surprise at seeing Stacy, who was usually so cool and controlled, so completely and utterly lost to all ladylike as well as decent behaviour. At first she had felt too weak to intervene, but was now so shocked by the behaviour of both parties that she cried feebly, ‘Stacy, oh, Stacy. I feel so ill! Do leave off wrangling, my love, I need you.’

This had the effect of Stacy exclaiming remorsefully, ‘Oh, Louisa, forgive me! I had quite forgot how ill you are.’

While Matt Falconer remarked nastily, ‘Stacy? I had thought that you had informed me that your name was Anna!’

Stacy dodged this question, which proved that he was not the only liar in the kitchen, by running over to Louisa, putting a hand on her hot forehead and murmuring, ‘Oh, dear, you have a strong fever.’ She looked across at the housekeeper, who, amused by what she had provoked, was standing there mumchance, being, like the rest of the servants, content to leave her betters to their quarrel. ‘Have you no willow-bark, madam, which we may infuse to break my companion’s fever?’

A learned shrew, was Matt’s grim inward comment as he turned his attention to the cooling water in the stone sink—to have the little maid twitter at him, ‘Oh, you should not be doing that, sir. Allow me,’ and try to push him to one side.

‘Nor he should,’ drawled Jeb. ‘Even if you were the butler, Matt, you wouldn’t be washing up. Most remiss of you. Should have given you away immediately—if everyone was in their right mind, that is.’

Taking this remark as a reflection on herself, Stacy, her language deteriorating further, pronounced in her most deadly manner, calculated to bring idle clerks to heel, ‘And who the devil may you be, to speak to both me and Lord Radley so impudently?’

Before Matt could answer Jeb executed a low bow. ‘Matt’s man, ma’am, right hand and factotum. Adviser, too, as you may have gathered.’

‘Your man, m’lord!’ Stacy was all indignation. ‘And you allow him to speak to you so insolently? Did you learn your manners from him, or he from you? No matter,’ she added hastily, as Matt flung down his washcloth and began to advance on her. ‘Pray do not disturb yourself; you will never finish the washing-up at this rate!’

Only Louisa Landen, throwing a conniption fit—Jeb’s words—at this point, stopped both Matt and Stacy from prolonging their slanging-match into the night’s watches.

As Stacy, remorseful again, bent over Louisa, that good lady hissed at her, ‘For shame, Stacy, and use your common sense if it hasn’t quite flown away. You do no good bandying words with him. He has an answer for everything.’

‘And so do I, madam,’ retorted Stacy between her excellent teeth, ‘so do I.’

‘Quite so, and that is what I complain of. He is a dangerous man, and, for him, you appear to be a dangerous woman. A quiet, ladlylike refusal to join in his games would end all.’

His games! Was he playing with her? Perhaps so. He had returned to his duties, to fling over his shoulder at her, ‘I am late from the United States, Miss Stacy, or whatever your name is, and we have no masters and servants there, only equals working together.’

Forgetting all her resolutions and Louisa’s wise advice, Stacy shot back at him, ‘Which country, sir, since you are no gentleman, must be an eminently suitable place for you to live. I recommend that you return there.’

‘And by the same token, madam, since you are no lady, you should surely accompany me. Except that in the States your haughty manners would soon earn you a reprimand from everyone unfortunate enough to meet you.’

Behind her, Stacy heard Louisa wail her name, and how she refrained from answering him back she never knew. She knew only that her common sense, which seemed to have taken flight from the moment she had set foot in this accursed place, told her that she must consider poor, stricken Louisa, and try not to disgrace herself before her own people, who, apart from Hal, were staring open-mouthed at her. Who would have thought that their cool and haughty, if kind mistress could behave so wildly?

Astonishingly, bending over Louisa again, Stacy found tears pricking at her eyes. No, I will not cry, she told herself. This vile bully, who, as I recall, is no better than he should be, shall not make me cry. I will see him in hell first! And what on earth was happening to her that she should think such dreadful thoughts, use such language?

She straightened up, turned towards her tormentor, and said in a more normal voice, ‘You have said that we must sleep here tonight, sir. Are you sure that you have no rooms in this vast house sufficiently warm for us to sleep in them?’

That’s more like it, madam, thought Matt grimly. A little due humility works wonders. He forgot that he hadn’t been humble either. But he replied more gently, ‘I arrived here only two days ago, and no one has lived in most of the Hall’s rooms for the past fifteen years, nor, I fear, have they been heated during that time. We also face a shortage of fuel, so I am afraid that we are all doomed to spend the night in the kitchen—where it is at least warm—or die of cold in one of the bedrooms. I have already moved the servants from their attic bedrooms—I wouldn’t stable beasts in them.’

Jeb was nodding agreement, as well as old Horrocks, who, by what was being said among the servants, really was a butler. But what a butler! Physically frail and in his dotage, he was nearly as unsuitable in his way as Matt Falconer had been in his.

That gentleman was now asking Hal to accompany him and Jeb into the linen-store, which was kept upstairs, to fetch down sheets, more blankets, pillows and pillow-cases, and air them before the fire, which he kept going by fetching logs from a store in a lean-to against the kitchen’s outer wall. It was plain that ‘m’lord’ he might be, but he was performing menial tasks to the manner born.

It wasn’t only the logs which were almost in the open, but also the very necessaries of life. And, since the earth closet used by the servants had become frozen, Stacy was soon to discover that relief was only to be obtained by using the buckets and pails in a small storeroom with a door which didn’t shut properly and a broken window through which the keen wind whistled.

Trying to keep her voice reasonable, a difficult task, Stacy returned indoors after she had visited it to address Matt Falconer, who was now using blankets to rig up impromptu partitions to separate the women from the men during the hours of sleep. ‘I would like to wash myself, and Louisa would probably benefit from being sponged. Where shall I do so…please?’

To Matt’s grim amusement he saw that it almost choked the haughty bitch to be polite to him. And well might she ask. ‘The kitchen pump,’ he told her agreeably, ‘will supply you with cold water. Use the big iron cauldron which stands by the fire to heat it. Cook will help you.’ And then, seeing that Cook was already engaged in making up beds on the floor, he added, ‘No, allow me to assist you.’

Never in her life had Stacy ever contemplated having to do any such thing as haul buckets and pails about, or to wash herself in the full view of Cook, the little maid and Polly, whose right wrist Jeb had placed in a makeshift sling. It was quite plain that anything she needed she would have to supply herself! And the beast knew that, and was waiting to see her throw a tantrum at the prospect of having to be her own servant, as it were. Well, damn him, and his ready sneer too. If Stacy Blanchard couldn’t learn how to do the simple menial tasks which so far others had performed for her, she wasn’t worth the signature she wrote on the cheques and accounts of Blanchard’s Bank.

‘Very well,’ she replied crisply, avoiding his satiric eye, and walked across to the cauldron, which she lifted with some difficulty before placing it beneath the pump which stood by the sink. Not only was Jeb watching her, but also her servants, their jaws dropped at the sight of madam being so meek and obliging.

But, alas, when she came to try to lift the cauldron with water in it it was too heavy for her, and presently, as she struggled, she found a large hand pushing her own smaller one to one side, and Matt Falconer was lifting it with ease to hang it from the great hook above the fire.

His hands, Stacy noted, were long and shapely, but the strange thing about them was that they were the hands of a workman, not a gentleman. They were brown and scarred, with calluses on them, like Clem’s, her gardener, and his nails were cut short, quite unlike those of the men who had danced attendance on her since her first season, begging her to marry them.

Matt saw her eyes on them, smiled wryly, but said nothing. Later he ladled warm water for her into a bowl, and she retired behind one of the screens to give Louisa and herself what passed for a wash.

‘Oh, my dear, you shouldn’t be having to do all this,’ murmured Louisa ruefully, after Stacy had draped blankets round her and helped her outside to what they all referred to as the conveniences, although John Coachman forgot himself once by asking loudly before all the company, ‘Where are the jakes?’

‘Well,’ replied Stacy incontrovertibly, ‘Cook can’t do everything, the maid is useless, Polly’s wrist prevents her from assisting us, all the able-bodied men have gone outside to shovel the snow away from the fuel-store and the path to the conveniences—such as they are—so who else can help us, I should like to know?’

Louisa patted her hand. ‘You are a brave girl, my dear. Try not to mind too much the pickle we have found ourselves in. After all, we might be freezing to death in a ditch, or killed or maimed for life in the accident. And I am beginning to feel so much better after your ministrations.’

Which was no lie. The willow-bark had broken Louisa’s fever, and presently Stacy tucked her up for the night before going back into the main part of the kitchen to find the men all sitting round the scrubbed table drinking good ale. The other women were already in their beds behind the hanging blanket.

Jeb waved a hand holding a pewter pot at her.

‘Ah, Miss Berriman, what can we do for you?’

There was bread and cheese on the table, she saw longingly, and from somewhere Horrocks had found bottles of port as well as the ale. Matt, who was seated at the head of the table, stared coolly at her and said, ‘There’s food here if you want it.’

Did she want it? Of course she wanted it. She had been too strung up to eat much earlier, but she had done a lot of unaccustomed physical work during the day, and hunger gnawed at her. Pride as well as etiquette said, No, it is not possible for you to sit here, the lone woman among a pack of men, all but one your social inferiors, and tope with him and Hal and the rest; it wouldn’t be proper. They had already unwillingly dragged themselves to their feet on her arrival.

‘Sit, sit,’ she said imperiously, meaning to tell them that no, of course she wanted nothing.

Then he said mockingly, ‘I think that the fare here is too coarse for m’lady, perhaps.’

Was it, indeed? And was she to starve because she was too finicking to sit down with them on the worst night of the year, and please him by starving herself?

‘No, indeed,’ she shot back. ‘I find myself ravenous, and ale and bread and cheese, after a day spent in the snow, seem just the thing!’ She sat down by the amused Jeb and stretched out a hand for the loaf and cheese, to cut herself a good share of them and place them on one of the pewter plates which Matt had set out.

And if that broke up their damned masculine drinking-party, so much the better. They would have clearer heads in the morning, when, with luck, the storm would have abated, the coach and their possessions would be rescued from the ditch, and she could be on her way again.

A pewter pot of ale was pushed in front of her by Jeb, who, she could see, now that she was close to him, was quite a personable man despite his strange accent and even stranger clothes. She took a defiant swig from the pot and said, as though she were conversing at dinner with Lord Melbourne himself, or perhaps the Duke of Wellington, with both of whom she was on terms of friendship, ‘Pray tell me, sir, how do you find England after the United States?’

Jeb nearly choked into his ale at the sound of such ineffable condescension. He surfaced to say, ‘Cold, ma’am, damned cold. Nigh as bad as a Virginia winter, eh, Matt?’

Matt drawled, his lion’s eyes hard on her, ‘Oh, I don’t think that Miss Berriman really wishes to know about the States, Jeb. She is merely making dinner-party small talk, to put you at your ease.’

His man—or whatever he was—considered this unlikely possibility solemnly. Since Jeb was always at ease, whatever the company, high or low, the notion of a spinster lady putting him there seemed rather odd. He was about to reply, but was unable to do so, for Stacy put down her pot of ale with a defiant bang and threw loudly down the table in Matt’s direction, ‘When did you take up mind-reading, sir? Recently, I hope, if your present failure to perform it correctly is any guide. I am most intensely interested in…Jeb’s…impressions of his ancestors’ country.’

‘So there’, would have been a nice ending to that piece of defiance, but Louisa had long cured her of that trick. Now let him trump that ace, if he could!

But of course he could. He threw back his head and laughed, and damn him, why did he have to look exactly as she had imagined the dashing hero of every delightful Minerva Press novel which she had ever read, when she disliked him so? ‘Tell her why your ancestors found themselves in Virginia, Jeb, and then Miss Berriman will understand why your impressions of the old country are hardly likely to be favourable ones!’

Ever willing to oblige, and putting on his best smile, Jeb offered a trifle tentatively—for, while he was not ashamed of his ancestors’ behaviour, he was not exactly proud of it either— ‘Why, Great-granfer Priestley was transported to Virginia as a convict, ma’am, having taken part in the Monmouth Rising, when his sentence of hanging was transmuted to penal service in the colonies.’

Stacy, overcome by what she had provoked, and angry with herself as well as with Matt, said as firmly as she could, ‘Well, Mr Priestley—’ for she now knew his name ‘—a man is not to blame for what his ancestors did. I own that if I had to answer for my own great-grandfather’s actions I should be hard put to it to excuse them. And Mr Falconer should not have compelled you to answer me thus, but that doesn’t surprise me, since he obviously gave up the pretence of being a gentleman long ago.’

Matt, who was a little surprised by this generous offering to Jeb from someone whom he had thought was steeped in pride of birth, still could not prevent himself from asking, ‘And what, pray, Miss Berriman, did your ancestor do which was so scurvy? Entertain us, please.’

She had entertained them enough, Stacy thought. She had behaved like a vicious termagant in the stews or in an alehouse, and in front of her own servants too! What Louisa would have thought of her sitting at a kitchen table with a gang of men swilling drink she couldn’t imagine. At least she had avoided the port, of which Louisa always spoke in shuddering horror as the corrupter of men. But she had drunk heavily from the pot which Jeb had mischievously refilled several times, and the effects of the ale, tiredness, and the increasing warmth of the kitchen were beginning to overcome her.

‘Certainly not,’ she told him firmly. ‘I will now retire.’ And she stood up, to find the room going around her. Her face paled, and Matt Falconer, moved by an impulse he refused to recognise, swore to himself and as swiftly as he could ran round the table to catch her and prevent her from falling. Cold bitch she might be, but she had had a hell of a day, and behind the autocratic and imperious manner was a woman with a lot of guts—he had to grant her that. She had cared for the welfare of all her people before she had so much as sat down herself.

He picked her up, to find her strangely light for such a tall female, said softly, ‘Allow me, madam. I think that you are not accustomed to drinking strong ale,’ and carried her, unprotesting and already half asleep, to her bed, which was made up between those of the sleeping Polly and Louisa.

Stacy, unaware of anything but that she was in someone’s strong arms, was back in her childhood again, being carried to bed by her father. Without thinking, eyes closed, she kissed the man carrying her, on the cheek which she had earlier struck, murmuring drowsily, ‘Goodnight, Papa,’ and by the time the surprised Matt had lowered her to the bed she was soundly and sweetly asleep.