“Never mind. Now, you look a fright. Go home and take a nice bath and get all the dust off your face and out of your hair. Why did you come here, Corrie?”
She fidgeted a moment, then whispered, “I came here to Northcliffe because I couldn’t imagine what my aunt and uncle would have done faced with Mr. Marker. But I knew you would take care of things, or your father. Thank you, James.”
Suddenly, the dowager countess of Northcliffe, a big woman with more than ample padding, who would outlive them all, appeared in the estate room door, pumped herself up, and bellowed, “James!”
“Yes, Grandmother?” It needed but this, he thought, dutifully turning to give his grandmother his full attention, hoping it would focus her eye and tongue on him. But of course it didn’t. She was still tall and straight, her white hair thinning now, her blue eyes faded, but there was nothing at all wrong with the workings of her mouth, her brain, or her diction, unfortunately.
If a voice could be said to ring, hers did. “Coriander Tybourne-Bennett, your dead parents would be appalled! Look at you-you’re a disgrace. You look like a ruffian. I must speak to your aunt and uncle, even though both of them are feckless creatures, but they must do something.”
Corrie stuck her chin in the air. “They are.”
“They are what, miss?”
“They are doing something. I’m going to London for the Little Season. They are not feckless.”
The dowager’s blue eyes glittered with anticipation. She saw fresh prey and wanted to dig in her claws and bring it down. She opened her mouth, but her grandson dared to insert himself.
“Grandmother, Corrie will be all ready to go to London. My mother will assist her aunt in seeing that she knows things and dresses appropriately.”
The dowager turned on her grandson. “Your mother? That redheaded girl your father was forced to keep when that bad boy Tony Parrish stole your father’s real bride, Melissande? No one can believe they are sisters. Why, all you have to do is look into the mirror to see the face of the glorious creature your father should have married. But no, he was tricked into remaining with your mother. May I ask, young man, just what your mother knows about anything at all? Why, it is your dear father who dresses her, who tells her how to behave, who scolds her, but not often enough, the good Lord knows, only he can’t control her cutting her gowns down to her ankles. How many times have I told him-”
“Madam, that is quite enough!” James was so angry he was shaking with it. He’d never in his life interrupted his grandmother, but he couldn’t stop himself. Corrie was forgotten as his brain sharpened itself up to go toe-to-toe with the old besom. “Madam, you are speaking about the countess of Northcliffe-my mother. She is the most beautiful lady I have ever met, she is loving and kind and makes my father very happy and-”
“Ha! Loving is right, or something far more lewd. Why, at her age, she still sneaks up on my dear Douglas and kisses his ear. It is disgraceful. Never would I have done that to your grandfather-”
“I am sure you would not, Grandmother. However, my mother and father, despite their advanced years, quite love each other. I do not wish for you to speak ill of her again.”
“I like her too,” Corrie said.
The dowager turned her cannon on Corrie. “You dare to interrupt me, missy? A grandson, the future earl, is one rudeness I must accept, but not you. Goodness, just look at you, a viscount’s daughter and you’re-” Words failed her, but only for a moment. “I don’t believe for an instant that little Willie Marker kissed you. He’s a sweet little boy. You probably tried to kiss him.”
James said more calmly now, “He’s sweet to you, madam, because he knows if he weren’t, you’d have him boiled in oil. Fact is, he’s a bully. He is the scourge of the neighborhood.”
Corrie said, “And I would rather kiss a toad than Willie Marker.”
“I don’t believe that, James. He is a precious little fellow.” She whirled on Corrie. “When he kissed you, you struck him? There, doesn’t that show that you have no breeding, no sense of who or what you’re supposed to be? You, supposedly a lady, struck him? That proves what I think-you are a pathetic ragamuffin.”
With that parting shot, she flounced out of the estate room, her petticoats flapping.
Corrie whispered, “I’m not. I’m not pathetic or a ragamuffin.”
James looked after his grandmother, shook his head. It was the very first time in his entire life he’d dished back some of her own sauce, and she appeared not to even have noticed. He felt like he’d failed. Upon brief reflection, James realized that if his grandmother were to apologize to anyone for her rudeness, such an extraordinary event would likely signal the end of the world. Still, to attack both his mother and Corrie like that. He said, “I’m sorry, Corrie, but if it makes you feel any better, she treats my mother worse.”
“But I don’t understand, James. Why would she be so nasty to your poor mother?” Why hasn’t the old bat croaked it? That was what she really wanted to say.
“She’s nasty to all her daughters-in-law,” James said. “Her own daughter, my Aunt Sinjun, as well. She’s nasty to any woman who walks into Northcliffe, except for my Aunt Melissande. If it was a matter of not wanting any competition why would she be kind to Aunt Melissande?”
“Maybe it’s because you and Jason look exactly like her. That is so very strange, isn’t it?”
James winced. “Yes. Now, is your name really Coriander?”
Corrie looked down at her scuffed and dirty boots. “So I’ve been told.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Yes.”
He sighed and lightly laid his hand on her arm. “You don’t look like a ragamuffin.” It was possible she looked worse, he thought, but she also looked flattened, and he’d known her forever, and oddly, he felt responsible for her. Why, he didn’t know. Then he saw a little girl in his mind’s eye, beaming up at him, wetter than the captured frog she held in her hand, a gift, from her to him.
Corrie blinked up at him even as she tugged on her old brown waistcoat, doubtless worn in a previous life by a stable lad. “What do I look like?”
James stalled. He wanted to go study all the farm accounts for the last decade, he wanted to calculate the price of oats and wheat for the next twenty quarters, he wanted to go count the sheep in the east pasture all by himself, anything but answer her.
She said slowly, “You don’t know what to say, do you, James?”
“You look like you, dammit. You look like Corrie, not this wretched Coriander. Were your parents drinking too much brandy when they named you?”
“I’ll ask my Aunt Maybella, although she and my mother evidently never got along very well. She’s never called me anything but Corrie. Once when I was little, I’d been playing with my dog Benjie, both of us minding our own business all right, so Benjie had gotten just the littlest bit muddy, and so he did escape me and ran into my uncle’s library. I’ll even admit that he rolled around on top of my uncle’s desk and tore up two leaves my uncle was pressing. Well, that was when Uncle Simon yelled out my full name for the first time.” She paused a moment, looking out over the west gardens. “I didn’t know who he was yelling at.”
“Corrie, forget the nastiness. I will speak to my father; he’s the only one who can do anything about my grandmother’s meanness. I heard him tell my Uncle Ryder that my grandfather had doubtless hurled himself to the hereafter, just to escape her.”
“It doesn’t matter. I will simply avoid her in the future. I must be going. Good-bye, James.” And she went out the estate room glass doors, out into the gardens. If she meandered far enough, then she’d run smack into the naked Greek statues, all of couples copulating in varied positions. He and Jason had spent many many hours staring at those statues, giggling and pointing when they were young, then looking at them through very different eyes when they’d gotten older. To the best of his knowledge, Corrie had never been in this part of the vast Northcliffe gardens. He yelled, “No, Corrie! Come back here. I want you to have some tea and cake with me.”