In Distant Fields (7 page)

‘Who's that skating over there?' Kitty wondered, pointing to the figure of a young man
who had appeared from the boat-house on the other side of the lake and, hands held firmly behind him, was now skating expertly in ever-increasing circles.

‘That …' Partita replied, looking up and shielding her eyes against the winter sun. ‘Oh, that. That is young Mr Harry Wavell – and would it not just be?'

They watched him in silence for a minute.

‘He's a very good skater.'

‘Oh, Harry is good at most things.'

‘Will he follow Wavell into service?'

‘Harry? Good gracious, no!' Partita laughed. ‘Wavell would not want him to become a butler. Besides, Harry would be hopeless. No, Harry wants to be a poet, among many other things.'

‘Writing poetry?' Kitty enquired. ‘Do you mean poetry as in Lord Byron, and Mr Wordsworth and daffodils waving in the wind?'

‘I'm afraid so. It makes Wavell despair, apparently.' Partita smiled and, having finished lacing up her skating boots, she stood up. ‘Ready?'

At Violet's insistence, Kitty had learned all the accomplishments required of a young lady, from playing the piano to skating, a skill she had acquired at the fashionable Niagra skating rink in London.

‘Heavens!' Partita called, as she whizzed past her friend. ‘You are really more than a skater, you are an ice dancer!'

Partita was certainly no match for Kitty, whose natural grace made her a delight to watch. Partita
slowed down to idle along on the ice just so that she could watch her friend executing a perfect spin.

‘Oh, bravo!' Partita called out in genuine appreciation.

Partita began to try to skate a little more quickly, longing to join Kitty, not just because she loved her, but because she knew that skating with Kitty would enhance her own performance. As the two young women skated alongside they were passed by Harry, hands clasped behind his back, long legs pushing him to ever greater speed.

‘That's Harry cutting it too fine as always,' Partita sighed, as they were passed within inches for the third time. ‘Good morning, Harry!'

Harry wheeled round sharply, sped back to them and, braking hard, pulled up amid a cloud of ice.

‘Forgive me, Lady Partita,' he said, taking off his cap but, to Partita's amusement, not looking at her, but at Kitty. ‘I didn't mean to be rude. I was just trying out something new and my manners went a little blind. Good morning, miss?' he added, still looking at Kitty.

‘This is a friend of mine from London, Harry. Miss Rolfe. Kitty, this is Harry Wavell. How was France, Harry? I haven't really seen you since your return. Harry went to France to
write
.' Partita turned to Kitty, eyebrows raised.

‘France was excellent good, thank you, Lady Partita,' Harry replied, skating along slowly
beside them. ‘I was fortunate to find a professor after my own heart.'

‘And he is a poet too, by all accounts. Whatever next!' Partita skated on, turning round and then skating backwards in front of Harry and Kitty.

‘Oh, look!' she cried happily, pointing to something only she could now see. ‘There seems to be a drama!'

The other two turned on their skates and looked where Partita was pointing, to see a number of beaters running alongside a pony and trap that was being driven as fast as it was possible in the frozen conditions, all of them quite obviously making their way back to the house.

‘I wonder if there's been an accident?'

‘With a bit of luck, don't you mean, Lady Partita?' Harry muttered as he and Kitty skated after her, causing Kitty to turn and look at him in surprise. ‘Oh, there's nothing Lady Partita likes more than a fire, or an accident.'

‘Gracious …'

‘Oh, yes, when it comes to a fight, Lady Partita is the one you want on your side.'

Partita tore off her skates and was soon running as fast as she could, skirts held up, across the frosty lawns. She caught up with the pony and trap and the party of beaters just as the party reached the circling yard outside Nanny's door, joined only minutes later by Kitty and Harry.

‘One of the beaters has been shot!' Partita exclaimed, turning back to the other two, thrilled.
‘It's always happening nowadays, with so many foreigners coming over for the shoot!'

‘Is he hurt badly?' Kitty wondered as she watched the casualty being lifted out of the back of the trap and placed on a stretcher by his fellow beaters, surrounded now by a handful of housemaids bearing jugs of hot water and bandages, all in the charge of the Duchess, dressed in a huge and magnificent fur.

‘He's hardly hurt at all,' Partita continued, hurrying round the other side of the pony and trap to get a closer look. ‘He's apparently just got it in the beam end!'

‘Sorry about this, Your Grace,' the stricken beater groaned from his stretcher as they prepared to carry him in. “Tis only a bit of buckshot'

‘I trust you were not wounded by anyone in the house party?' the Duchess said, taking his wrist and feeling his pulse. ‘That would be too much to bear, Huggett, really it would.'

‘I'm afeard it was not a foreigner this time, Your Grace,' another beater informed her. ‘Someone in Lord Bultash's party – Mr Balfour was it?'

‘That would make perfect sense,' the Duchess replied, letting go of the wounded man's wrist. ‘Mr Balfour can be the most wayward shot. Now come along with you all,' she exhorted the stretcher party. ‘We have to get the shot out of this poor man's rump.'

‘Should someone go fetch the doctor, Your Grace?' one of the bearers enquired.

‘No, absolutely no need for Dr Jones,' the
Duchess replied. ‘Besides, I doubt that he'll be quite himself, seeing the time of year. No, no, this is something that can easily be dealt with here.'

‘Poor man,' Harry muttered to Kitty as the invalid was decanted into the house. ‘I dare say he'd much prefer to hang on to the buckshot than endure what he's about to endure.'

‘I don't quite understand.'

‘Her Grace likes to keep her hand in practising minor surgery,' Harry replied. ‘She has a small place prepared that she keeps for operating on the ground floor here. Do you feel like spectating?'

‘There was really quite a lot of blood,' Partita ran back to tell them, with some satisfaction. ‘Much more than you might imagine, given the spread of a shotgun cartridge. Now if you'll excuse me, I must go and help Mamma.'

‘The Duchess isn't really going to perform surgery on that poor man?' Kitty wondered as Partita disappeared once more inside the house. ‘I mean, surely not?'

‘Don't worry – she has a supply of chloroform. Not that she'll spare it for such minor surgery, I shouldn't have thought,' Harry returned with a straight face. ‘Probably get the poor lad to bite on an old chair leg.'

‘You're teasing me, Mr Wavell.'

‘I wish I were, Miss Rolfe.'

‘But he'll be in agony!'

‘One of my grandfathers was in the Crimea,
Father told me, He had his leg amputated without anything at all. No whisky, nothing, not even a chair leg.'

‘How purely dreadful.'

Harry and Kitty glanced at each other momentarily.

In the distance the sound of guns came towards them, carried on a winter wind. Kitty pushed aside the image of dead birds falling silently from a sky that had now lost its bravely determined sun, and seconds later she excused herself and hurried into the house, leaving Harry standing by himself, staring over the familiar parkland, which now, for some reason he could not say, suddenly appeared to him to be vaguely different from before.

Kitty scratched on Partita's door.

‘Come in, come in, do,' Partita called. ‘I am so glad you are here, I am in seventeen different minds as to how I look.'

‘You look stunning, Tita,' Kitty assured her, before noting Partita's day dress that was still lying where she had discarded it on a chaise longue. She turned away and then turned back as she saw there were bloodstains all down the skirt. She was so squeamish, the very thought of what must be the beater's blood spilling all over Partita was enough to make her feel quite faint.

‘You really will enjoy the servants' ball,' Partita continued before noticing Kitty's expression. ‘Are you all right?' She peered at Kitty. ‘Gracious, you
look white to the lips. Don't tell me, it's my dress! Don't mind it, really, it is only blood,' she reassured her, taking Kitty's hand. ‘Fellow didn't die or anything. He just had the shot taken out of his beam. Mamma did a first-rate job, as usual. She really would have made a number-one surgeon – but there you are – instead she mends and patches here whenever she can. So don't worry – if you break an ankle dancing tonight, Mamma will have you back on your feet again as soon as you can say Viennese waltz!'

With one final look at her reflection, Partita swept out of her room, pulling Kitty after her.

Kitty found that Partita was right. There was no ceremony, no protocol and no precedence at the servants' ball, other than the usual pattern of general polite behaviour that was always observed at Bauders.

The Duchess, in deference to the importance of the occasion, took care to sport her tiara, always known affectionately among her children as ‘the family fender', so everyone else followed suit and dressed in their best and finest gowns and jewellery, knowing that the servants would wish it. The family, after all, were the main attraction and they had to dress up; if they did not dress up, the servants would fear to, and half the fun of the evening would have been extinguished.

Everyone that worked at Bauders had looked forward to the ball for months. It was, after all, the one night of the year when they could all
be expected to be at their best, the women's dresses being either borrowed finery, or homemade gowns sewn by doting grandmothers, while the men wore their liveries, as appropriate.

‘Mamma always looks forward to this ball more than any other, because she really is
bohemian
,' Partita remarked as she and Kitty stood at the side, fanning themselves and taking in the scene.

Kitty was amazed, not only by the amount of people there – so vast was the castle there were people she had never set eyes on soon crowding the room – but also by the atmosphere, which was more lively than anything she had known.

The opening dance was an old-fashioned waltz, which the Duke led off with his head housekeeper, the stately Mrs Coggle. They were followed almost immediately on to the floor by the Duchess and Mr Wavell.

‘Wavell dances really quite well, wouldn't you say?' Partita asked Kitty, viewing the butler, head on one side. ‘He's so light on his feet Mamma says he should have been a dancing master, not a butler – oh Lordy, here comes Harry.'

‘Don't you like Harry Wavell?' Kitty murmured, surprised, as she saw the young man walking towards them.

‘Harry's all right,' Partita replied, a little surprised by the question since she had never considered whether she liked or disliked Harry before. ‘No, Harry's – just, well – Harry, and I do believe he's going to ask you to dance.'

Partita laughed lightly as she was at once
confronted by Taylor, one of the footmen, always known in the servants' hall as Big Footman.

‘Dance with me, Lady Tita?'

‘Oh, very well, Taylor,' Partita said, a little glint now lighting up her blue eyes. ‘Just as long as you don't try steering me into the conservatory as you did last year.'

‘I could ask you to forget about that, Lady Tita!'

Taking Partita onto the floor, he danced her off into the ever-increasing throng, executing an energetic step that owed nothing to any known dance but which Partita was nevertheless seen to cope with in really quite a skilful manner.

‘More like a large dancing bunny rabbit, wouldn't you say, Miss Rolfe?' Harry asked her as he watched them. ‘I do believe that the only time poor Tom Taylor can keep is the one told by a clock.'

‘I suppose you must know all the household,' Kitty remarked as Harry led her onto the floor.

‘Yes I do, Miss Rolfe, and a right lot they are too,' Harry stated affectionately. ‘How is your waltz?'

‘I don't think I'll let you down. At least I hope not.'

Harry danced so well that Kitty was disappointed when she was confronted by a determined footman.

‘Keep the last dance for me?' Harry called, before leaving Kitty to the slow, methodical, but not entirely unrhythmic two-step as performed by the utterly silent six-foot-tall footman.

‘Miss Rolfe?'

The next request came somewhat surprisingly from Almeric.

‘Lord Almeric. Are you not meant to be dancing with one of the maids perhaps?'

‘Find me one and I might consider it,' he replied gravely. ‘But at the moment every maid has been taken.'

Kitty looked round the ballroom. It was true. The only people sitting this dance out were the older guests and the older members of the household. She walked back onto the dance floor, and started to waltz once more.

‘You dance divinely, Miss Rolfe.'

Kitty smiled, but as they spun past the onlookers to the side of the floor she could not help catching Harry's eye. He raised his champagne glass to her in acknowledgement as they passed him for the second time, but when they finally stepped off the floor, perhaps realising that Kitty had already captured the attention of the next Duke of Eden, he had vanished from the room.

The New Year was to be seen in, as always, by a ball given by Cecil and Lady Maude Milborne. Everyone at Bauders liked Lady Maude, who was a woman of infinite charm and sweetness. Unfortunately they disliked her husband in equal measure.

‘Sometimes it would seem that one's friends cannot marry people equally pleasing, and why poor Lady Maude married Cecil Milborne we will never know, I don't suppose,' Circe confided to her maid, as she did every year when the subject of the Milborne ball was raised.