Cynthia Bailey Pratt

QUEEN OF HEARTS

Cynthia Bailey Pratt

Chapter One

Danita did not at first hear the knocking at the front door, the sound lost in the tapping of her spoon against a crockery bowl. It was the inadequate whispers of her employers that drew her out from her kitchen sanctuary behind the green baize door at the end of the hall.

“Millicent, dear, are you awake?” she heard Miss Lucy Massingham say. “I heard such a strange noise. At first, I thought it just the rain but...there it is again!”

“It is only someone knocking, sister. We shall ignore it. No respectable person would call so late. Return to your bed.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Lucy said at once, used to obedience after forty-five years under a stronger nature. “I do hope, however, that noise won’t disturb the ladies. Mrs. Talbot sleeps so lightly, you know.”

“So
she
says. My private view is the Angel Gabriel couldn’t wake her on the Last Day. Go back to bed, Lucy.”

As the knocking rattled the front door again, louder than the thunder that set the windows to shaking, Danita entered the hall. Hearing what had awakened the Massingham sisters, Danita knew something must be done. Though sharing Miss Millicent’s opinion of Mrs. Talbot, having often in the last three months stood outside her door with a heavy breakfast tray and heard no reply except a blustering snore, Danita thought the noise might indeed wake some guest. And she knew who must first deal with their complaints.

“Hadn’t you better look to see who it is?” she suggested, looking on the two sisters with fondness mixed with exasperation. They still viewed life through the eyes of well-brought-up young gentlewomen, despite their years of running the select Massingham ladies’ hotel. She, though only twenty-three, had so much more experience of the ruder side of life than they. “There may be some emergency.”

“Oh,” said Lucy, “what a clever notion!” Slippered, she shuffled into the open front room of the inn and drew back the curtain beside the imposing door. Her sister followed closely, peering over Lucy’s broad shoulder.

“It’s a man,” Miss Millicent said with a sneer of distaste.

“He seems to have good manners,” Lucy put in, looking toward Danita. “He took off his hat.” Lucy was not and had never been pretty, but with the unexpected advent of a man into her spinster’s night, she suddenly gave off an air of femininity, rather like the scent of a lavender sachet, long ago laid in an unopened drawer.

Remembering her duty, Danita lit the candles on the mantelpiece. “Aren’t you going to let him in?”

“Let him in? Are you mad, Miss Wingrove? What would the ladies say? Our good name...our reputation ...” Millicent’s still lovely face became suffused with pink as she thought of the possible scandal.

“Mightn’t your good name suffer just as much if a man expires from exposure on your doorstep?”

“She’s right, Millicent. It’s a wicked night. Listen to that wind!” Lucy shivered, running her large hands up her arms, snuggling into her challis shawl.

“But a man!”

Danita said, “I know it’s just a man. Miss Massingham, but you wouldn’t even leave a dog out in that.”

The sighing of the wind was broken once more by knocking, no more an impatient tattoo but a meek rap. Danita saw the ends of Miss Millicent’s lips tighten and wished she had not spoken. “Oh, very well,” the older lady said, walking to the door. “Though ‘tis against my better judgment.”

“Sir,” she said quellingly, as a great gust of wind blew in, “are you aware that this is a ladies’ hotel?”

“Why, indeed, ma’am, so I was told in the town.” There was an indefinite flavor of Ireland in his speech, soothing to the overwrought ladies’ nerves. “It was a kindly innkeeper who gave me the hope, his rooms full and more than full, that you might accommodate a poor stranger for one night. Or what is left of the night.”

“Oh, like the Bible!”

The gentleman’s eyes crinkled as he smiled at Lucy. “Now, I wouldn’t want to say that, but I do confess a sympathy with poor old Joseph.”

Danita, straightening up from encouraging the fire to blaze, surveyed this talkative gentleman. Her first thought was for the carpet he dripped liberally upon. Her second thought was of a sword she had once seen while taking her pupils on a tour of a local great house. The weapon had been at least five foot long and vastly thick at the base. Not all seven girls had been able to lift this immensity of metal even with Danita’s help. The housekeeper had said it belonged to an ancestor of the house still known as “Giant” Dascoigne. Danita thought this man must have been a myth. No single person could have lifted such a sword let alone wield it. Now she looked at a man who might.

He was quite tall, though not vulgarly so, and broad and strong-looking in proportion. But even more than that, his whole carriage proclaimed grace and balance, and, moreover, demonstrated the necessary self-command. When he walked into the Massingham Hotel, hanging his dripping Benjamin on the coat-rack, stowing his valise beneath, and beating his hat on his heel over the mat, he seemed to become at once a part of the atmosphere. Or perhaps the atmosphere altered to accommodate him.

“Ah, a fire,” he said. “Excellent.” He strode over to the hearth and held his hands out, a ring shining on his left hand’s littlest finger. “I walked up the hill against the wind.”

Danita frowned uncertainly. Though tall herself, she came scarcely to the man’s cravat. He smiled at her, too, and for the first time, Danita felt the need to drop her eyes beneath a man’s. She recovered her poise in a moment and lifted her chin.

“Sir,” Miss Millicent Massingham began from across the room.

“Carleton,” said he, turning to face her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sir Carleton. Sir Carleton Blacklock.” Without thinking, Danita put her hand to her own cap. Indeed his damp hair seemed as inky dark as her own hidden tresses.

“Sir Carleton,” Miss Millicent began again. “As I have intimated, we cannot accept your custom. And,” she added, recollecting herself, “turn your back, sir. My sister and I are not prepared for callers.”

Sir Carleton nodded and faced the mantel once again, allowing his mobile lips to turn up when his face was safely hidden. Only Danita saw and was hard pressed to keep her own lips from answering. She felt certain his laughter would be as catching as his smile. He rubbed his hands together before the fire, now beginning to burn brightly. “Of course, I shall depart at once,” he said on a sigh.

“Oh, no,” said Lucy. “You mustn’t do that. Such a night... Millie, do you think...the medicinal brandy?”

Millicent ignored this suggestion, drawing herself upright, her huge Norwich shawl swathing her figure like a witch’s cloak. “I had not heard the town was so full as all that, Mister ... er ... Sir Carleton?”

“It must be the horse-race,” Lucy said brightly.

“Exactly, Miss Massingham. The race. It was to have been a smaller affair, but His Royal Highness decided, spur of the moment, to attend. He arrived this afternoon, and with him half the Court. Imagine it, ladies, dukes and earls, not to say noblemen and puissant princes, crammed cheek by jowl into every posting inn, public house and hotel for miles. I’m surprised not to find His Highness asleep on this comfortable chaise.”

Danita could see him measuring the chaise with his eyes, no doubt comparing it to his own generous inches. She had the oddest feeling that now this large and cheerful man was in the Massingham Hotel it was going to be nearly impossible to dislodge him. She suspected her own heart might soon soften in response to his blatant bid for sympathy. She tried to recalcify it, reminding herself that a little wetting would not hurt a grown man.

As though in answer to this thought, the wind drove rain against the casements like a boy throwing a handful of pebbles. One latch gave and the window burst inward, swinging with a crash against the white plastered wall. Sir Carleton leapt across the intervening space to catch the frame in one hand and close it before the ladies had time to do more than gasp. He stilled the billowing muslin curtains.

“Not the kind of night I’d choose to wander about in, but ...” His even smile was resigned but remained humorous. He kept his eyes decorously away from the Massingham sisters but still seemed to realize there would be no softening of the elder’s attitude. “Very well.” He reached for his hat.

“Sir Carleton,” said Miss Millicent in response to a fixed stare from her younger sister. “I am very sorry. But our position if you were to stay would be awkward to say the least. We cannot allow ...”

“He might take my room,” Danita said slowly, almost as if the words came without her willing them. “I have not been sleeping overmuch of late, anyway.”

“Oh, no, dear Miss Wingrove, it wouldn’t be right. He can have my room. I’ll go in with Millicent.”

“That you will not, Lucy. The last time you dreamt you were shipwrecked and mistook me for a floating spar. I was nearly strangled. Miss Wingrove,” she said, “your offer does you some credit. As your employer, however temporary our arrangement, I must be responsible for your good name. A proper female never surrenders her bed to a strange man out of the night.”

Danita nodded submissively, and tried to look scandalized at her own presumption. She did not succeed very well. It seemed a waste that
someone
should not use her bed, she finding so little use for it.

Sir Carleton said, “I’m very grateful to the young lady, but I see now the thing was impossible from the beginning. I should have saved myself the walk. Thank you and good evening.” His coat on, he hesitated on the doorstep before plunging once more into the night, as if hoping to hear himself recalled.

The two sisters returned to their beds. Miss Lucy obviously wishing to voice her disapproval of Millicent’s hard-heartedness, but only muttering under her breath, “might have let him stay...don’t see what harm...only one night...” like one of Danita’s ex-students in a sulky mood.

Returning to her work, Danita thought of Miss Millicent’s generosity to herself when left in dire straits. It seemed a shame that just because Sir Carleton was male he should not be permitted to see the softer side of Miss Massingham’s nature. Danita’s foot tapped the stone flags, a sign of a decision made. Her baking would bide. Pausing only to pick up her cloak and hold it above her head, Danita stepped out into the storm. “Sir, sir!” she called above the rising wind.

The tall figure, his coat glistening with rain, turned and waited for her to catch up. “Have you brought me some of that medicinal brandy?” he said with a wry chuckle.

“No, sir. If you will, come back to the house.”

“Did your mistress send you?”

“No, but I know a back way. If you can be gone by five o’clock tomorrow morning, you can stay in my room.”

Sir Carleton tried to summon up the image of the maid’s face. He remembered only large serious eyes, thickly lashed. She had not seemed a light-skirt, nor had she dipped any low flirtatious curtsies to let a man judge the weight of her bosom. “You could lose your position by this.”

“I care nothing for that. The position is temporary, at best. Whether I leave today or next week makes no difference. And it is too bitter a night to stay here talking. Will you come back, or not?”

This was neither the attitude nor the tone of a serving wench. “I throw myself upon your charity. Miss Wingrove.” The Massingham sisters had called her that, which should have alerted him from the beginning, he realized, that she could be no ordinary slavey.

Danita led him across the glazed cobbles, illuminated in patches by a late-burning candle in an occasional window. Entering the rear of the hotel, she thrust huckaback towels into his arms and bade him be quiet as she showed him to her chamber. She did not go in with him. “I say,” he whispered, poking his head out again, his hair ruffled by rubbing it dry. “Where will you sleep?”

“If I am tired, I will sleep on that chaise you so admired. That is why you must leave by five, before anyone else is awake.”

“I see. What about the other servants?”

“Never mind about them. They know better than to tell on me.” These hard words were accompanied by a strangely gentle frown glimpsed in the light of the single taper she held.

About half an hour after his arrival. Sir Carleton padded down the narrow hall at the back of the house, led on by the aroma of baking pastry. If he could not manage to wheedle a strawberry tart from the cook, then he would know that Luck had abandoned him for good and all. Entering, he was taken aback for a moment when he saw the cook was the same girl. “And if my horse is lame,” he asked, “are you the one to soak its foot?”

Danita looked up, her usually pale face flushed with the heat of the kitchen and a few curls escaping from a smooth midnight-shaded coil. She sat on a tall stool, her feet on a rung, petticoat ruffles peeking out from beneath her dampened skirt. The silver rain traced over the black window behind her. “No, we should send for Doctor Smallhurst.”

“I am relieved to hear it.”