A Lady in Name (9 page)

‘What in the world are you doing?’

The harsh tone spurred Lucy’s determination.

‘I am leaving.’

He barred her way. ‘In the middle of the night? Are you mad?’

Lucy clutched her bandbox more tightly.
‘I don’t care.’

She had acted on impulse.
Arriving in her bedchamber, Lucy had intended nothing more adventurous than changing into her nightgown and climbing into the bed which had been made ready for her. Even the sheets had been warmed, she had found, when she felt them, just as she had always done for Papa, checking to see if Jenny, the vicarage’s all-purpose maid, had been diligent.

Quite suddenly she had been overwhelmed with an urgent need.
Without thought, she had heaved her bandbox onto the bed, thrust everything into it and strapped it tightly. Seizing her bonnet, she had jammed it all anyhow on her head, tying the black ribbons with feverish haste. Lastly she had thrust her arms into her coat, hardly troubling to do up more than one or two buttons, and quickly left the chamber before she could change her mind. It was the most curst mischance she had run almost immediately into Lord Pennington.

He was looking at her in the dim light of his candle, searching her face.
Lucy huddled into herself, as if she would draw away from his scrutiny.

When he spoke again, his voice has softened almost to a caress.
‘Oh, Lucy. You poor, lost little soul.’

As she stared at him, bemused, an unprecedented rush of some unnamed emotion spread through her bosom.
Absurdly, she wanted to weep.

‘Don’t, Stefan,’ she uttered brokenly.
‘Pray don’t.’

‘Don’t what?
Feel sorry for you?’ His hand reached out to hers and Lucy relinquished her bandbox into his hold without knowing what she did. ‘Come.’

Before she knew it, she was being led back down the corridor and into her bedchamber.
Stefan set down her bandbox and thrust her unceremoniously to sit upon the bed. Then he leaned against one of the posts, looking down at her.

‘Lucy, I put it badly.
I should not have spoken to you as I did this afternoon.’

Still beset by discomfiting pressures in her chest, Lucy could not answer.
Was this the man who had driven her into fury? How had he changed?

As if he heard her thought, Stefan spoke again.
‘I’ve been thinking it over and I realise I had not considered your feelings in all this.’ His smile was rueful. ‘I am not in general given to examining feelings.’

He sat on the bed, a short distance away, and Lucy instinctively pushed herself back, out of his reach.
Stefan threw up a hand.

‘Don’t fear me.
’ He glanced about, seeming to realise for the first time the impropriety of his situation. ‘I should not be here, but no matter.’

Lucy found her tongue.
‘Why are you here?’

‘You can ask that?
When I find you escaping at dead of night? What possessed you, Lucy?’

She looked away, all too conscious of the stupidity of her conduct, now the feelings which had prompted it were past.

‘I don’t know. I feel alien in this place.’

‘As you would do anywhere,’ Stefan said gently.
‘Lucy, I am not ordering you. I am asking you. Please stay. At least for long enough to take stock and decide what you want to do.’

What she wanted to do?
Not what he wanted her to do. Lucy could not prevent a rise of suspicion.

‘Why are you being like this?
Is it to trick me?’

He sighed.
‘I can’t blame you for thinking so, but no. Let me help you, if I can. If, after a time, you still wish to go your own way, then so be it.’

She eyed him.
He appeared wholly sincere. If only his attitude had not been so unlike all she had known of him earlier, she might be induced to believe in a change of heart. She took refuge in prevarication.

‘I cannot stay here.
I have no clothes, for one thing. For another, I have to complete arrangements at the vicarage.’

‘What arrangements?’

‘There are some more of Papa’s things to be disposed of, and my own to be packed up and stored—somewhere.’

For a moment he said nothing, merely looking at her in a fashion suggesting he was thinking of something else.
Then he nodded with an air of decision.

‘Very well.
We shall journey to your home as soon as may be and I will help you complete your arrangements.’

Shock suspended Lucy’s mind.
Then she said the first thing that came into her head. ‘I cannot travel with you alone!’

Stefan grinned.
‘I hadn’t thought of that. We will take Dion along. She will make an adequate chaperon. Besides, I have no doubt at all she would refuse to be left behind.’

* * *

February had arrived by the time the expedition finally set off on the following Monday. For this delay, Stefan blamed both the Lord’s Day, upon which he surmised Lucy would not care to travel, and his secretary.

‘
Barnsley will not suffer me to depart without settling a number of matters requiring my attention.’

Lucy, who had recovered her composure, if not her suspicions of his lordship, could not forbear a dig at this.
‘I am surprised you allow Mr Barnsley to dictate to you, my lord.’

She was niggled by the amused gleam in his eye that was rapidly becoming familiar to her.

‘I may get my way with everyone else, Lucy, but to my secretary I am as a cypher. He commands, and I have but to obey.’

‘That I refuse to believe,’ stated Lucy.

‘My lord,’ he put in, grinning at her. ‘You must always add that in when addressing me, or I shall begin to think you accept the relationship between us—cousin.’

Lucy could not help a choke of laughter.
‘Well, I am not used to your brand of informality.’

‘Yet.
I feel sure you will become accustomed.’

Lucy rather thought he was right.
Her ruffled feathers had been thoroughly soothed by the change in his attitude towards her, so much so she was in a fair way to accepting the move to Pennington Manor as permanent—a frame of mind which she tried to avoid falling into. It was all very well in the intimacy of the family circle, but what of a wider frame of reference?

She had brought up the subject after dinner on the evening before their departure.

‘As you are in mourning,’ Stefan had pointed out, ‘you need not meet anyone outside the family circle.’

‘Quite so,’ agreed Dion, adding her mite.
‘Even when we begin to entertain, which will not be for a few weeks yet, you have the perfect excuse to absent yourself.’

But for how long?
News of her advent, if not her antecedents, was bound to leak out. Lucy had not grown up in a village without understanding the apparently endless capacity for gossip of the general populace. Well before this could occur, she was resolved on having settled her future to her own satisfaction, which did not include battening upon the Ankervilles.

The only other hitch which threatened to delay them had been the sudden intervention of the Honourable Mrs Corisande Ankerville.

‘You are going where?’

‘To take Lucy to complete her arrangements and fetch her belongings,’ Stefan said fluently.

The large gaze focused upon Lucy’s face. ‘Does that mean you are coming to live with us, Lucinda?’

‘No!’

‘Yes!’

Dion had spoken at exactly the same instant.
Mrs Ankerville looked at her daughter and blinked. ‘Which is it? Yes or no?’

Lucy thr
ew up a hand to prevent Dion from speaking again. ‘I am coming only upon a visit, Mrs Ankerville.’

‘How long for?’

Stefan intervened. ‘That is to be determined.’

In the ensuing silence, Lucy found herself suddenly praying the lady of the house would not repudiate her.
Just why she should be so anxious when she had begun by refusing to remain at all, she could not understand. And then Mrs Ankerville directed another of her open stares at Lucy.

‘It is a very good thing.
You may provide Dionisia with a companion, which may steady her, and it will oblige Stefanus to behave with civility.’

The outcry from both parties thus stigmatised prevented Lucy from making any response.
While Dion repudiated any suggestion of unsteadiness with some heat, Stefan merely called upon his mother to inform him exactly when he had been guilty of incivility.

Mrs Ankerville made herself heard once more.
‘It is of no use to protest. You both know your faults better than I, and if your papa were alive, he would corroborate my words. I have formed a very good opinion of Lucinda’s character—’

‘You can know nothing of her character,’ interpolated Stefan briskly.

‘—and I am satisfied she will be a restraining influence.’

‘As if I needed one
,’ uttered Dion rebelliously. ‘Not that I don’t want your company, Lucy, for I do. But that is the outside of enough!’

‘Well, I only hope you will be
the more satisfied, Mama, when you are obliged to make up a tale to account for Lucy’s presence here.’

Mrs Ankerville had lifted her brows in a manner reminiscent of her son.
‘My dear Stefanus, there can be no difficulty. Lucinda is an indigent relative whom I have adopted into the house for the purpose of having her assist at my work. I thought of that before you had even persuaded her to remain.’

‘How do you know I persuaded her?’

‘She would not have agreed otherwise.’

It was rapidly being borne in upon Lucy that her hostess possessed powers of observation completely unsuspected by her own family, in despite of her apparent disinterest in anything which had no strict concern with the medieval.

She confided this opinion to Dion when they were ensconced in the family coach, Stefan having elected to drive his curricle.

‘If I know anything of females, there will be far too much luggage for the three of us to travel back together.
And we may stow a trunk or two in the boot of the curricle at need.’

Lucy did not know whether to be relieved or sorry to be deprived of his lordship’s company upon the way.
But in the event, she could not but be glad of the relative warmth inside the coach, with her feet set upon a hot brick and a carriage rug of warm fur covering her legs. And there was no fear of conversation flagging with Dion in the carriage. Lucy found she was developing a rapid intimacy with her new young cousin.

Dion hugged into her thick travelling cloak, wrinkling her nose at Lucy’s suggestion of her mother’s sagacity.

‘Well, I don’t know. It is true Corisande is apt to surprise one with how much she knows, in general just when you had supposed there was all to do to explain something to her. But she is so single-minded it is difficult to imagine she takes the slightest interest in any of our concerns.’

‘I do not say she takes an interest,’ said Lucy judiciously, ‘but she clearly sees a great deal.’

‘She is astute in her work,’ allowed Dion. ‘I suppose it is not unnatural it should extend to other areas of life.’

‘Has she always been so involved?’

‘In the Middle Ages? Oh, always. When we travelled, Corisande would only come sightseeing if there was something to be gained from that period of history. Papa was our guide for the most part.’

Lucy took opportunity to satisfy her curiosity.
‘Why do you always call her Corisande?’

Dion laughed.
‘Because she is such a bluestocking, and the name particularly suits her character.’

‘Does she know?’

‘Oh, yes. She does not mind it, as long as we use Mama when we address her directly. She says it is improper to do otherwise.’

Lucy tried to imagine calling her own papa by his Christian name, and signally failed.
The Reverend Graydene had been a kind but firm parent to her, and would have delivered a severe scold had she shown him—or indeed anyone else—the slightest disrespect. The remembrance put her in mind of her mission, and she fell to fretting over how much there was left to do and how long it would take.

All very well for Stefan to assure her he was at her disposal for whatever length of time was necessary, but she could not help feeling she had no right to take up time which must be better spent upon his estate business.
He was an earl, after all.

The distance to her home was not nearly as far as she recalled from her journey on the stage.
Or perhaps it seemed less when one was travelling in a well-appointed coach with four fast horses to pull it. Nevertheless, dusk was falling by the time they drew up in the yard of the Half Moon, which hostelry she had recommended upon Stefan’s enquiry.

Dion had been asleep for the last hour, but Lucy had remained alert, beset by doubts as to the wisdom of this undertaking.
Then Stefan was at the door, a servant was letting down the steps, and there was Dion to be awakened.