“It is written on your face, ma pauvre. You might almost have seen a ghost.”
I peered at her narrowly, fearing myself to be a laughing-stock, but Madame's comfortable features and glittering dark eyes were innocent of intrigue.
“I had understood there to be a ghost at Scargrave,” I said, as a footman pulled out my chair, “but I am a clergyman's daughter, Madame, and the perils of the grave must be as nothing to me.”
“I rejoice to hear it,” my breakfast companion said equably, replenishing her tea, “since your room lies along the First Earl's accustomed walk. Do you endeavour to fall asleep before midnight, my dear, for once you slumber; a wraith cannot hope to disturb you.”
My reply was forestalled by the entrance of one of the housemaids, Daisy by name. She is Mrs. Hodges's granddaughter, and only sixteen, a youthfulness she appears to feel painfully in her current elevation — for in Marguerite's absence, Daisy has been placed at Isobel's disposal, and struggles daily to be worthy of her office. I surmised that her mistress had sent her in search of me, and threw down my serviette in haste.
Daisy bobbed in Madame's direction, and then in mine, the ribbons on her cap fluttering prettily. “Please, miss,” she told me in a breathless accent, “milady says as she has had a note from Sir William, begging to call at eleven o'clock. Will you join milady then, miss, in the little sitting-room?”
“Of course, Daisy. You may inform your mistress I shall be delighted.” I endeavoured to look undismayed, though I confess my thoughts were racing. It must be that Sir William had received a letter from the maid Marguerite — nothing short of urgency would bring him to the Manor so soon upon the heels of his first visit.
“I suppose the magistrate wishes to see as much of you as he may, while you remain at Scargrave, Miss Austen,” Madame Delahoussaye said. I turned to survey her face, but it was suffused with only the mildest curiosity. “The discovery of old acquaintance here has assuredly heightened his gallantry. He can have no other reason, I suppose, for forcing himself upon a house of mourning?”
“Sir William is so respectable, and his intentions so amiable, Madame,” I replied, with something of coldness in my accent, “that his presence can afford Scargrave nothing but relief. That the Countess does not hesitate to meet him must be enough to recommend him.”
At her inclining her head, and the footman serving me with fresh chocolate, I endeavoured to converse of other things, the better to speed the meal to its close. Nearly two hours must be endured before I should hear Sir William's intelligence — time enough to lament Daisy's unfettered tongue, and wish that girls of sixteen might have less of the ingenuous and more of discretion.
BY THE TIME COBBLESTONE, THE BUTLER, THREW OPEN THE sitting-room door to announce Sir William, I was moved to greet the magistrate's white-haired head with almost violent relief. For my morning was a trial in forbearance — one I have resolved to offer up to my Maker as expiation for a twelvemonth of sins.
Fitzroy Payne was closeted in his library over some letters of business, the Hearst brothers remained in their companionable bachelor cottage down the lane, while Fanny Delahoussaye kept to the upstairs sitting room with her mother and her sketching book — in horrified anticipation, one may assume, of the visits of retired barristers. Isobel I did not expect to see until eleven o'clock should strike. And so, sitting composedly by the hearth, my hands occupied with needlework and my eyes upon the clock, I was suffered to endure an hour's tête-à-tête with Lord Harold Trowbridge. From closer observation, I may declare that I have learned to despise the man's cunning manner.
Most in the Scargrave household suffer his presence with distant politeness that signals a profound dislike, and a wish that he should be gone; but it is an atmosphere to which Lord Harold appears utterly impervious. He might almost be enjoying a holiday among friends, unmarked by calamitous events, rather than hovering like a dark raven on the edge of so much that is disturbing and intimate to the family. I have managed to avoid his company, and rejoiced in my escape; but this morning he appeared to have too little to occupy his time, and seemed almost to profit from my discomfiture at being shut up with him in the sitting-room.
I was already established a quarter-hour on the settee by the fire when he threw open the door and, after a quick glance to observe that I was alone, strode purposefully into the room. I acknowledged his presence with an indifferent nod, and hoped that studied application to my needle, and a dearth of conversation, should drive him away in but a few moments. I bent, accordingly, to my work, and knew not where he went in the room, or how he intended to employ his time. My industry was rather to be reviled than rewarded, however. Setting down his book upon the sitting-room table with a bang, Lord Harold threw himself onto the settee at my side, and affected to scrutinise my effort from under his hooded eyes — as a fond lover might his dearest darling's. After some seconds, unable to bear so painful a burlesque, but wishing anything rather than to cede such a man the room, I cast aside my work and stared at him balefully. Any gentleman should have recognised his impropriety, and hastened to relieve my distress; but not Lord Harold.
“It is as I thought,” he declared, sitting back coolly and throwing his long legs across the hearth rug. “You secretly despise the insipidity of women's work, and abandon it when the first opportunity serves. Shall I shower you with contempt, Miss Austen, for failing in the accomplishment of your sisters, or admire you the more for exposing it as the tedium it truly is?”
“You may do me neither the honour nor the injustice, Lord Harold, of offending my sex and its pursuits,” I replied. “Say rather I was incommoded by the proximity of so much silent regard, and the invasion of my privacy, and I will find some means to agree with you.”
“You think it so unlikely we should see eye to eye, Miss Austen?”
“I should imagine, Lord Harold, that we two must always be looking in opposite directions — so dissimilar and incongenial are our concerns.”
“Your opinion of me is decidedly formed for so short an acquaintance!”
“Then we need not prolong it for the improvement of my views.” I gathered up my silks and needle, and exchanged the settee for a chair at some remove from Lord Harold — and thus, unfortunately, from the fire. Scargrave is a draughty place, and the expanse of sitting-room but poorly heated.
“Miss Austen! Did I not know you to be a woman of open and easy temper, I should imagine you wished me to be off.” To my dismay, he crossed the room in my wake, and hung over the back of my chair — of a purpose, I suppose, to disturb me further. There was nothing for it — I must either seek my chamber above, or use my purgatory to better purpose. Lord Harold remained at Scargrave for only one reason — to wrest Crosswinds from Isobel's shaken hands — and the rogue deserved no courtesy. A frontal assault, therefore, was in order.
“I do wonder at your being so good as to spend Christmas among the Scargrave family, Lord Harold,” I replied. “A man of your position must have so many obligations and competing claims among your acquaintance, that to devote so lengthy a period to one must be felt a singular honour.”
“That it is regarded as singular, I do not doubt,” he said, with a thin-lipped smile. “But in this we are very much of a piece, Miss Austen, for I observe you feel no more compelled to depart for home and family than do I.”
“I should have been gone already,” I replied, searching among my silks for a bit of red, the better to work a robin's breast, “but for the Countess.”