Excerpt:
The
landau jolted to a halt before a large house in the most fantastical
Gothic style. Towers and turrets, battlements and buttresses, arched
windows and oriel windows, even gargoyles leering down from the roof
parapet, nothing was missing.
Heedless of the rain, Vickie jumped down
from the carriage, not waiting for the footman to descend from his
damp perch to let down the step. "Oh!" she breathed in an
ecstasy, "isn't it heavenly? Does it not bring to mind mad monks
and persecuted maidens? I'm sure you must have a ghost, Captain, or
even two!"
Frank went off into peals of helpless
laughter. Constantia eyed him uncertainly, wondering if he were more
tired than she had supposed and growing hysterical.
With a gasp, he stopped laughing and said,
"To think I expected to retire to an unobtrusive life in a
modest country manor! Anyone residing in that must surely be destined
to figure as either an ogre or a sorcerer--or possibly a mad monk."
"Or an enchanted prince, or an
Arthurian knight," Constantia proposed. "It is certainly
neither unobtrusive nor modest. Vickie, you will be soaked to the
skin. Run to the porch at once. I cannot wait to see inside."
Vickie scampered across the potholed,
weed-grown gravel to the shelter of the porch, the open-arched ground
floor of a tower superimposed on the façade
of the central block. There she seized in both hands a massive iron
door-knocker in the form of a dragon's head. With it, she beat a
zestful tattoo.
By the time Thomas had escorted the rest of
the travellers under his black umbrella to the porch, the
iron-studded and banded door was slowly creaking open. A small,
balding man in a rusty black coat peered at them myopically.
"Us wasn't expecting so many," he
quavered in a voice full of doubt.
Frank looked as if he was about to dissolve
in laughter again, so Constantia took charge.
"I am Lady Constantia Roworth,"
she said briskly, moving forward so that the butler--if such he
claimed to be--was forced to retreat. "You must have received
the letters regarding our coming, and in any case I am sure my
brother and Miss Ingram have arrived already. They were well ahead of
us upon the highway."
"They'm come," he conceded
grudgingly.
"Are there dungeons?" Vickie
demanded.
"For heaven's sake, Vickie, the
dungeons can wait. Miss Bannister is unwell, and I for one want
nothing so much as a cup of tea."
"And tea you shall have," Fanny
promised, emerging from an archway, "if you don't mind drinking
it in the kitchen. The drawing-room is all in holland covers, and
goodness knows what is under them. Frank, are you...yes, you look
well but you ought to sit down. My dear Miss Bannister, pray come and
see if a cup of tea will not revive you. The kettle is on the hob."
Before following the others through the
archway, Constantia threw a glance around the chamber they had
entered from the porch. To her delight, it was a Tudor Great Hall,
smaller than Westwood's had been, but with all the proper
appurtenances: elaborately carved panelling, chimneypiece, and
staircase; high, vaulted ceiling; and a gallery around three sides.
On either side of the entrance tower, tall, leaded windows under
pointed arches admitted a minimum of dull daylight through their
grimy diamond panes. The woodwork was dingy, sadly in need of polish,
and cobwebs hung from the gallery and ceiling beams, but that could
be put to rights.
Frank was waiting for her by the archway
under the gallery at one end of the hall. "I'm sorry," he
said, chagrined, as they proceeded along a dusty corridor. "I'd
not have dragged you here for the world had I known what a shocking
state the place is in."
"I'd not have missed it for the world.
The Gothic façade
must be a quite recent addition since the hall is undoubtedly
sixteenth-century, and just what I particularly like."
"Is it, truly?" he asked,
gratified. "It looks deuced--dashed--grim to me. Not that I
haven't been in some odd lodgings in my time, but I daresay Westwood
and Nettledene have raised my expectations! To have to invite you to
take tea in the kitchen is mortifying, to say the least."
She touched his arm consolingly. "You
will need to hire servants, that is all. There are bound to be women
in the village who will like to earn extra money by coming in to help
put everything in order to start with."
"Mackintyre did warn us there is no
one but an elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Biddle, as caretakers. I had
not realized, though, just how much care a house needs. I'm glad you
are come, for Fanny won't have the least notion how to go about
hiring servants."
Constantia was pleased that he took it for
granted she would assist his sister, but she said doubtfully, "I
will do what I can. Our housekeeper and butler hire most of our
indoor servants. Though Mama had me attend several interviews, some
years ago, so that I would know how to go about it, the only servant
I have ever chosen myself is my abigail, Joan."
"That's more than Fanny's ever done.
Where does one start?"
"With the vicar's wife. She will know
of respectable people in need of work."
"Let's hope the vicar is married,
then. Oh Lord, I've just thought: if Mackintyre judges this place
habitable, what condition do you suppose the house at Heathcote is
in?"
At that moment they reached the kitchen.
The spotless cosiness of the large room suggested that the Biddles
spent most of their time there, but just now they seemed to have
vanished. Miss Bannister was already seated at the well-scrubbed
whitewood table, where Anita knelt on a chair with bread-and-jam in
her hand and jam on her face. Vickie wandered about exclaiming over
bright copper pans, wooden spoons, and other kitchen equipment
unfamiliar to the daughter of an earl. At the wide fireplace, Fanny
was swinging a hook bearing a steaming kettle off the fire.
The young footman, also steaming by the
fire, sprang to help her. Felix was there first, potholders in hand.
"Do you remember, Fanny," he
said, lifting the kettle, "how once in Brussels I went to the
kitchen to ask Henriette for tea and I claimed to be domesticated?
You told me I must learn to make the tea for myself. The moment has
come. What do I do next?"
Fanny laughed, plainly not in the least
dispirited by her surroundings. "The teapot is already warmed
and the tea-leaves measured into it, so all you need do is pour on
the water. Connie, Frank, do sit down. Are you hungry? I can offer
bread and jam."
"So we see," said Frank, grinning
at Anita.
"It's good jam, Uncle Frank."
Catching a drip, she licked her hand.
Soon they were all seated about the table
with cups of tea, except Thomas, who bashfully accepted a mug but
continued to stand steaming at the fire.
"Well," said Frank, regarding his
guests with a rueful air, "what can I say but welcome to Upfield
Grange? I believe I can safely promise you all an unusual visit."
They were laughing when Biddle reappeared.
He was accompanied by a little old woman, bent with rheumatism, in a
white cap and a grey gown with the wide, quilted skirts of a former
age. Peering around the company, he spotted Frank and marched up to
him, his wife in tow.
"You be Cap'n Ingram, the new master,
sir?"
"That's right."
"Us can't do it, sir, not nohow."
He made a helpless gesture at the horde invading his haven. "Us
be caretakers, sir, me and the missis, not butlers and housemaids and
cooks and such."
Mrs Biddle nodded her crooked head and a
tear trickled down her wrinkled cheek.
Frank took her hand in his. "My dear
Mrs Biddle, you shan't be expected to do anything beyond your
strength. I hope you and Biddle will consent to stay and help as you
can until I'm able to hire a proper staff, but whenever you choose to
go, you shall have a pension."
Constantia, sitting beyond Frank, saw the
light of hope enter the old woman's faded eyes. "Us'll help,
sir, to be sure." She faltered. "'Ee won't bawl at un, like
his grace do? I han't made up but two beds yet, sir."
"Fanny," Constantia exclaimed,
eyeing the twisted hand engulfed in Frank's, "surely you and
Vickie and I can make up the beds ourselves?"
Frank's look of gratitude was reward enough
for any amount of unpleasant labour.
"Oh yes!" Vickie appeared to
regard the whole situation as a splendid adventure. "You'll have
to show us how, Fanny."
"It won't take long."
"Joan should be here soon, too,"
said Constantia, "with the luggage, and your man, Felix."
"I shouldn't dare ask Trevor to make
beds," her brother declared.
Fanny wrinkled her nose at him. "No,
he is quite the most disobliging person. Mrs Biddle, have the linens
been aired?"
"Oh, aye, miss, that they have."
"Excellent. Thomas, if you are nearly
dry, pray carry--" She stopped as the kitchen's back door
opened.
The Westwoods' coachman and Felix's new
groom came in, the former with a decidedly grumpy expression. Though
he seemed a trifle abashed to find the kitchen full of gentry, he
addressed Felix in no uncertain terms. "Beggin' your pardon,
m'lord, but them stables is fit for neither man nor beast."
Felix grimaced, then gave Frank an
apologetic look. "I know," he said to the coachman, "but
you are to return to Westwood tomorrow with the landau. Dutton, have
you managed to make my pair reasonably comfortable?"
Before the groom could answer, young Thomas
stepped forward. "Please, my lord," he cried, "Don't
make me go back to Westwood. My lady!" He turned to Constantia
and begged, "Let me stay. I asked special to be let come to
serve you. I'll do anything, honest. I'll make beds or...or even
clean out the stables."
Astonished, touched, even a little
flattered, Constantia said, "Yes, you may stay, Thomas. Felix,
did not Mama say Fanny and Vickie and I must take a footman to wait
upon us?"
"She did." He grinned. "However,
I believe what she had in mind was your consequence, not my horses'
comfort."
Frank groaned. "If anything is
certain," he said, "it's that Lady Westwood would never
have let you come, Lady Constantia, if she'd had the slightest notion
of the state of things at Upfield Grange."
Constantia smiled at him. "So we can
only be grateful, Captain, that she did not know."
