Читать книгу Dear Lady Disdain - Paula Marshall - Страница 9

Stacy started awake as a dim early light began to steal into the kitchen. She had been dreaming that she was on a wide plain, quite alone, no friend or companion with her. There was a brilliant sun overhead, and on the far horizon there was a stand of strange trees, quite unlike anything which she had seen before.

On impulse she looked down at herself, to discover that she was most oddly dressed—or rather undressed, since she was wearing nothing but a short garment made of skin, which left her arms and her legs bare. Her hair streamed, long and unruly, down her back.

Where can I be, and whatever am I doing here? she thought rather than said, looking around for help and succour. But there was no one in sight. A strange terror seized her, which deepened when from out of the stand of trees a male lion emerged, his back rippling as he moved slowly towards her, his mask inscrutable, his golden eyes blazing.

Paralysed with fear, Stacy could neither run nor speak, but stood there, staring back at him, waiting to be eaten, she supposed.

Only…only…something weird happened. The nearer the lion drew, the more he began to change, his shape shimmering, so that when he reached her it was not a lion who stood before her but a man, dressed in skins like herself; his tawny hair, like hers, flowed down his back, his strong jaw was bearded like the lion’s, and his eyes, a golden-brown, were lion’s eyes…

The lion-man gave her a brilliant smile, revealing his splendid white teeth, his eyes flashed, and, before she could register anything, whether fear or desire, she was in his arms, his mouth was on hers, his hands about her body…And she was sitting up in bed awake, panting, sweating. An ecstatic sensation which she had never before experienced was sweeping through her body, its passing leaving her weak and shuddering, as though she had run a race.

A fever! I must have caught Louisa’s fever! she thought. But when the shudderings had subsided they left no sensations of illness behind, only those of shock. It was him she had been dreaming of, and in her sleep she had allowed him to begin to make love to her.

She must be going mad. Or had gone mad the night before, for she was wearing all her clothes except her shoes, and she had no memory of how she had reached her bed. And what a bed! Memories of the previous day came flooding back, all of them unpleasant.

The kitchen was quiet except for the occasional groan, cough or snoring of the humans who occupied it. She had a strong desire to relieve herself—all the ale she had drunk, doubtless—but she had to drive herself to visit the outhouse, only dire necessity compelling her to do so. She must try not to wake the sleepers on her way there and back.

Stacy found her shoes on the floor beside the bed—who had taken them from her feet and placed them there? Was it…him? Her memory failed her again, but as she picked her way cautiously out of the kitchen it came back. Yes, he had carried her to bed, and had stopped short of stripping her of everything, had merely removed her shoes.

It had begun to snow again, and the wind had risen during the night, so that using the inadequate convenience was even more of a pennance than she had feared, but needs must. She pulled the blanket she had thrown about her shoulders more tightly around them before making her way back. With luck she would be in her bed again before anyone was up and stirring.

But the kitchen door opened even as she put a hand out to open it, and, of course, it was he who was up and about. He would be. Matt closed the door carefully behind him before he saw that she was there, and for a heart-stopping moment they stared at one another in silence.

She was right: he had been the lion-man. He was carrying a heavy greatcoat and his perfect boots, the only dandified thing about him. Otherwise he was, all things considered, lightly dressed, wearing only his shirt, unbuttoned almost to the waist, to show a tawny pelt extending from his neck to his middle, and his black breeches, with his legs and feet in black silk socks. If anything, he looked even larger and more massive than he did when he was fully dressed. And she had been right about him looking like a prize-fighter: he was fully as muscular as she had imagined him to be.

His firm jaw showed a light, tawny stubble, and a pang shot through her. She had a dreadful, insane desire to run her fingers along the strong line, to feel his growing beard’s roughness. His eyes, the most compelling thing about him, were on her, as avidly as hers were on him. Yes, this place was driving her mad to make her think such thoughts.

Matt Falconer, for his part, saw a transformed woman. The softness of sleep was written on Stacy’s face; all the stern lines, together with the strong set of her mouth, were quite gone. She looked like a woman ready to entertain her lover. Did she know, or was she quite unconscious of what she looked like when she wasn’t playing Lady Disdain? Her black hair had come loose during the night so that it was no longer strained away from her face, sharpening it, but tumbled in soft, curling waves almost to her waist, adding to the impression of soft abandon which the rest of her gave.

The stasis which held them both paralysed passed. Stacy said in a whisper, ‘You are out and about early, sir.’

Matt shrugged, replied prosaically, ‘Someone must look after and feed the horses.’

The horses! She had quite forgotten about the horses in worrying about everyone and everything else. Matt was now sitting down on a low stool which stood by the door and was beginning to pull his boots on. He was going to feed the horses. How odd. Why not Jeb, or one of the other menservants—Hal or John Coachman, for instance, or even the postilion? She could not think of one of the many men who had passed through her life, offering for her hand—no, for the Bank—who would have gone to the trouble of caring for and feeding the horses when there was a kitchen full of menservants who could be ordered to do so.

The wind struck her keenly and she began to shiver, with cold this time. ‘I ought to help you,’ she offered.

Matt, now booted, stood up and began to pull on his heavy many-caped coat. ‘No,’ he told her curtly. ‘Not that I couldn’t do with your assistance, but you are not properly dressed for the task. If it becomes too much for me I shall fetch that tall footman of yours, the one who is so keen to defend you, to help me. He will probably be awake by then. Now go indoors before you die of cold, and if you really want to be useful make up the fire and put water on to boil for the breakfast porridge.’

His coat was on and fully buttoned, and without further ado, and certainly without any of the usual empty politenesses with which gentlemen usually favoured ladies, he was gone, struggling through the driving snow to the stables. What a strange creature he was! One moment insulting her by talking so of Hal, the next off to save Hal and the others trouble, after speaking to her as though she were a servant!

Anger flooded Stacy as she made her way to the big kitchen fire, to find Cook there, already beginning to work, but grateful to the fine lady who insisted on helping. In the daylight she could see how large the kitchen was, and also that, over the years, it had been allowed to deteriorate. The walls were black, the copper pans were dull, overgrown with verdigris, and the tables looked as though they had not been scrubbed since the Domesday Book had been written.

Which was probably due, thought Stacy disgustedly, to Matt Falconer’s easy way with servants. No wonder he orders me about as though I were a kitchen maid if he is so willing to do the menial work himself—but how can he bear to live in such a pig-sty? This was a puzzle which occupied her until the next time she crossed swords with him.

Matt Falconer, feeding the horses, throwing extra blankets over them, was occupied in trying to solve another problem—that of Miss Anna Berriman, known to her companion and servants, when they weren’t thinking of what they were saying, as Miss Stacy.

He had met many women in the United States who carried themselves with a frankness usually reserved for men, and who often, out in the fields of Virginia in the poorer plantations, did the work of men. But Miss Berriman was another thing altogether. It was plain that all her people were, if not frightened of her, ever-ready to jump to her orders. She had an unconscious arrogance, giving her orders as though it were the only thing in life she existed to do. But she was, he was coming to see, much more than your usual domineering fine lady, who took her rank as carte blanche to be as unpleasant as she could to all around her while doing nothing herself.

She organised her affairs in a wholly practical way. There was nothing frivolous about her. And she was ready to do things herself. She had helped to feed Louisa and had bound up Polly’s wrist, and although she had bridled and tossed her head at his orders she had carried them out once she saw that her assistance was necessary if they were going to get through the night without undue distress.

And Hal, the young footman, once the ale had begun to work on him the night before, had roared belligerently at Jeb, who had said something deliberately provocative about Miss Anna Berriman, calling her ‘your typical idle fine lady’, and suggesting that she was more decorative than useful. ‘You just watch your manners, sithee. Miss Stacy ain’t no useless fine lady. Why, tonight she not only took the lead in getting us all out of the pickle we were in when the coach overturned, but she walked more than a mile through the snow herself, helping the postilion so that poor Polly, who was injured, could ride pillion with John Coachman, when by rights she ought to have been sitting there with him.’

Well, now, that was a surprise. Eager to discover more about this odd young woman, who annoyed him every time they met—and partly, he acknowledged, by not conforming to any of the expectations he had of women—Matt had commented sardonically, ‘And is that her sole claim to not being a fine lady? If so, it’s little enough.’

Hal had just been about to retort hotly, Well, she runs Blanchard’s Bank as well as any man, when he had belatedly remembered Miss Stacy’s injunction that no one was to reveal who she was until they reached York.

So he had consoled himself by sulking until Matt, still pushing at him, had asked, apparently inconsequentially, ‘And what is her real name, Hal? She says she is Miss Anna, and you and the rest sometimes call her that and sometimes Miss Stacy. Which is it?’

Hal had muttered sullenly into his ale, ‘Her pa used to call her Miss Stacy, and it stuck. Something to do with her ma, I think.’

‘Oh, and who and what was her pa when he was at home?’ asked Jeb, who, like Matt, found Miss Berriman intriguing as well as annoying.

‘A gentleman.’ Hal had enough sense left to be evasive. ‘His pa left him money, they say.’

One of the nouveaux riches created by the late wars, then, thought Matt. Which might explain the hauteur as a form of defence, in a society which tolerated rather than approved of them, although the explanation seemed thin. He wanted to ask, How much money? but he thought that any more questions and Hal would be waving his fists at him again, and the last thing he wanted, with the women sleeping at the other end of the kitchen, was a brawl.

Just before they finally retired for the night Jeb came up to him and muttered, so that the others couldn’t hear what they were saying, ‘Hot for her, are you?’

Matt drew back, almost assuming the aristocrat again. He stopped abruptly. He didn’t like the effect being back in England had on him. The very air breathed social difference and unwanted deference. He was used to being a man among men, not a demi-god among men.

‘Now what should make you think that? I don’t even like the woman, as you must see.’

Jeb shrugged. ‘Liking has nothing to do with it, as well you know. Wanting to wipe that don’t-touch-me expression off her face by having her on her back was more what you were thinking of by your own expression, I should say.’

There was such a grain of truth in this that Matt turned away, saying irritably, ‘For God’s sake, Jeb, have you nothing better to do than try to talk me into bed with a noisy termagant? And now off to your own bed before I lose patience with you.’

Well, he hadn’t convinced Jeb that he didn’t want Miss Anna Berriman, if that was her name, beneath him, that was for sure, if the knowing expression on his face when he crawled into his makeshift bed was any guide.

And what did he think of her? Nothing, of course, only that she was someone chance-met and now in his house, and he wanted her out of it.

Which, he now recognised wearily, wasn’t going to be soon. If the worsening weather was any guide, they might be penned in the Hall for days. The sooner they could warm up some of the bedrooms so that they were all spared her dictatorial presence the better.

Later on in the day he found that trying to heat some of the many bedrooms was a mammoth task, and no mistake. Matt, Jeb and all the able-bodied men lent a hand, including the postilion, who, when he moaned that this was no business of his and he wasn’t paid to lug coals and logs about for free, was rapidly informed by Matt that to do so was some part of his payment for his board and lodging.

On his second trip upstairs Matt found Lady Disdain, as he was coming to think of her, toiling along the landing with a full scuttle of coal.

‘Come, madam,’ he told her roughly, ‘allow me to take this from you. Carrying coals is men’s work. What are you trying to prove?’

Stacy looked him firmly in his blazing amber eyes. Her eyebrows rose, and she evaded his reaching hand, swinging the scuttle away from him. ‘Men’s work, you say? How many maidservants have carried scuttles full of coal up and down these stairs, do you think? That poor child in the kitchen can barely lift a pan on to the fire, and Horrocks was commanding her to see that this was taken up to the master. You mean, I think, that ladies don’t carry coal. But you have already informed me that I am no lady, so have done, I pray you.’

There was no telling her anything.

Stacy saw that she had scored a hit, a palpable hit.

He shrugged. ‘As you will, but remember that the servants are trained to do this work, and you are not.’

‘Then I collect that I must learn, m’lord,’ was her smart riposte to him, and she swept by him, a slow and laboured sweep, she thought afterwards ruefully, for it was true that her whole body was beginning to protest at the back-breaking work she had been doing since she had arrived at Pontisford Hall.

The coals were for her bedroom, one of the smaller and less well-appointed ones, since its size would make it easier to warm up quickly. The fire was alight, but there was more smoke than flames rising from it, and Jeb was poking at it in an uninformed way, she saw. Doubtless he was more used to squatting half-naked in a wigwam and nursing a few sticks to life, was her acid inward commentary.

‘Allow me,’ she said briskly and, wrenching the poker from his astonished hands, she stirred the fire vigorously, producing a blazing flame which she presently fed with a few coals, before standing back to look at her room.

And what a room. No lady’s bower, this. The dust-sheets had been ripped from the bed and the furniture and were lying discarded in the corner. Grey fluff and cobwebs were everywhere. Clean linen, ready for the bed, and a great quilt had been placed on a chest under a window whose only view was of snow, and yet more snow.

‘I can’t sleep in this,’ she told Jeb. ‘The room needs a thorough cleaning before it is habitable.’

‘So it does.’ Jeb’s grin was sly and he lifted his shoulders in a massive shrug. ‘Poor Polly’s wrist is worse than ever this morning, the cook isn’t paid to clean bedrooms and the little maid has woken up with a fever. So, who’s to do it?’ He was being particularly insolent because he wanted to see how far the woman opposite him would go if provoked. A long way, it seemed.

‘If there is no one else able to clean this room, and the one which is being prepared for Miss Landen,’ Stacy told him, wondering how long she could keep up her iron determination to show him, and his impossible master, that there was nothing, but nothing this fine lady would not do to prove herself as willing as any high-nosed man, ‘then I shall clean them myself.’