The Clergyman's Daughter (16 page)

And soon even those two feedings would no longer be necessary…. Lottie would become the exclusive responsibility of the nursery staff, and such she would remain until she was of an age to acquire a governess. Her contact with her mother would consist of short, stiff duty visits conducted under the stem gaze of a nurse, with all the protocol of a royal levee, and if Jessica dared venture into the cloistered confines of the children’s quarters on the third floor, she would be made to feel an intruder.

Jessica desperately needed to talk to someone, to be reassured that she was not truly losing her child. “Willa,” she asked, reluctant to break the silence, “do all mothers feel this way, know this—this pain as their children begin to grow away from them?”

“I wouldn’t know, Miss Jess,” Willa said tersely. There was no break in the motion of her soothing fingers, but her very composure was a reproach. “I never had a mother.”

Jessica’s eyes screwed shut, and she cursed her tactlessness, her clumsy words that dredged up tortured memories Willa must pray to forget utterly, memories of her wretched childhood and her drunken brute of a father. Jessica’s thoughts returned longingly, gratefully, to her own mother, the love they had shared when she herself was little more than an infant. Poor Willa, never to have known such love…. From the deepest recesses of her mind Jessica could conjure up a vision of bright green eyes smiling tenderly down on her cradle, a soft voice crooning a lullaby. That, of course, had been in the days before hunger and worry and too many babies in too short a time had dimmed those shining eyes and turned Jessica’s mother into a near-mindless drudge incapable of any emotion save weary indifference. Jessica stared down at her clenched fists. At least she was fortunate enough to remember her mother as she once had been. Her father’s unceasing lust had robbed her younger brothers and sisters not only of their mother’s presence, but also of her love while she yet lived. Jessica hoped their new stepmother was kind to them.

She sighed bitterly. Brooding was a futile exercise in self-indulgence, and it accomplished nothing. She recalled with surprise Raeburn’s passing reference to her family. Far more often than she had thought anyone suspected, she envisioned the home she had broken away from when she eloped so scandalously with Andrew; she could not help wondering how her brothers and sisters fared, whether any of the older girls were married now, perhaps already expecting children of their own, or if the boys had been apprenticed in some worthy trade. She blamed their estrangement on her father, and she knew she would never forgive him for the hypocritical denunciation he had made from the pulpit, admonishing her—but, significantly, never Andrew—for her so-called “surrender to the tyranny of the flesh.” She was realistic enough to admit now that wherever the fault lay, after all this time there was no point in attempting to reestablish contact with her siblings. They were strangers, utterly divorced by the life she lived in a world as alien to them as the court of the Grand Turk; if she were to borrow the crested Raeburn carriage and descend on their quiet village like Lady Bountiful, rustling with silk and lace, she would only embarrass and upset them. No, it would be far kinder if she simply stayed away.

Her bright eyes dulled, grew bleak. She was alone now, more alone than she had ever been before in her life. She had lost her husband, her family; her child was growing away from her. Now for some mysterious reason even her closest friend seemed wary of her confidence. Of all the people in the world that Jessica loved, there was only one whom she felt certain she could depend upon in time of trial—and even he owed his first loyalty to another woman….

Jessica’s troubled ruminations were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. As soon as Willa answered it Claire flounced into the room, Jessica’s portfolio in her hands. Her red curls tumbled merrily about her face as she declared with a bright smile, “Oh, good, you’re still awake! The party seemed to drag on forever; I think Daphne must have played every carol written since the Restoration! I wanted to talk to you, but I was afraid you might have gone to bed already. Inthe drawing room you seemed…tired or something. Are you unwell?”

Jessica shrugged with forced levity as she motioned to the chair beside her own. “I have a slight headache, that’s all.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Claire said sympathetically, “headaches can be the very devil, can’t they?” She hesitated, frowning at Jessica’s pallor. “You ought to be in bed, and I shouldn’t be bothering you. I only came by to bring you your sketchbook. I noticed that you had left it downstairs. I knew you would never dream of doing so, so I showed your drawings to Mister Mason—just to get his opinion, you understand. Doesn’t he strike you as rather an odd friend for Lord Crowell to have? There’s something about him, I’m not sure what, unless it’s those yellow eyes of his…. But he seems to have made a conquest of Aunt Talmadge, and he did appear most impressed with what you’d—”

When she saw Jessica staring mutely at her with wide, shocked eyes, Claire broke off, then stammered lamely, “I—I’m sorry if you didn’t want me to do that, Jess. It’s just that I thought you’d be interested in what a real artist had to say about your work.” Still Jessica did not speak, and Claire misinterpreted the reason for her silence. She said awkwardly, “Forgive me. You need to rest. We—we can talk later.” She turned as if to leave.

Jessica shook herself out of the catalepsy that had gripped her momentarily, that freezing terror of discovery. What difference did it make if Mason had seen her sketches? They revealed nothing. Those gentle portraits of her daughter and Claire bore little resemblance to Eryinys’ spiteful caricatures. She was allowing her guilt to overcome her good sense.

Jessica gazed up remorsefully at Claire. The girl had obviously been longing for a chance for a quiet coze, and how she thought that Jessica was angry with her, Jessica shook her head. “Oh, Claire, don’t run off like that. I know you meant well; it’s just that I’m a little…sensitive about my drawings. Please sit down and talk to me. A chat will do my headache far more good than bed. I beg you, stay and keep me company.” She glanced at Willa, who had resumed the mask of the well-trained servant, retreating to her corner where she picked up her sewing basket and began hemming new diapers for Lottie. “Would you care for some refreshment?”

At Jessica’s overture, Claire brightened. With a mock groan of repletion she settled into the armchair next to Jessica’s and giggled, “Lud, Jess, no more food, please! I shall become as fat as—as Lord Crowell if I continue eating the way I have these last few days. I can’t imagine what wizardry you have performed on the cook, to make her quit burning everything the way she usually does. Whenever Aunt Talmadge has tried to instruct the woman on proper methods of roasting and baking, for some reason she seems to resent the interference….”

Jessica’s fine black brows lifted as she considered Flora’s probable manner of “instruction.” If the cook had any spirit at all, she would undoubtedly feel goaded into doing exactly the opposite of whatever Flora told her…. Aloud she suggested, “I rather imagine that Cook is indeed somewhat sensitive to any challenge to her authority. It’s only natural. After all, the kitchen is her realm, her domain, just as the drawing room is yours. Anyone from the family who ventures below stairs is crossing a border into foreign territory, and they may not necessarily be…welcome.”

“But you seem welcome enough,” Claire said, a puzzled line forming between her velvety eyes.

Jessica smiled ironically. “That’s because I am one of them.” She thought of the deference with which the cook and her helpers had received her lately, a marked contrast to their thinly disguised scorn when she first came to the Chase. In the past year and a half, their attitude had reversed itself completely. Sometimes Jessica wondered if the staff accepted her now because she was Lottie’s mother—for her tiny red-haired daughter had engaged the affections of all the household—or if the change had been in herself. Had the servants decided to welcome her because she in turn had ceased to regard them with wary and defensive hostility? She shrugged mentally and added with gentle emphasis, “It’s above stairs that I am out of place….”

Claire exclaimed impatiently, “Oh, Jess, don’t say things like that! I thought you’d got over feeling that way. You’re very much a part of this family, and you’re far more of a lady than—than old Daphne, for all that her father was a duke.”

Jessica sighed. “Thanks, Claire. But you really shouldn’t speak that way, you know—”

“I don’t care!” the girl declared, shaking her bright curls defiantly. Just for a second her expression reminded Jessica irresistibly of Lottie on the verge of bawling, and she felt her heart swell with love for her daughter’s young aunt. Claire said, “Daphne Templeton is a pretentious prig, and she makes me sick when she starts talking about the
way she
is going to organize
my
debut…if I ever get to have one. You’d think she was one of the patronesses at Almack’s, the way she declaims on the ‘proper behavior for a girl of my station.’ As best I can figure out, that means it’s all right to be rude to the servants, and she talks as if Graham had snatched her up before she even came out, when everyone knows that she was on her fourth season when her father died….”

Claire paused, grumbling under her breath. “What Graham sees in her…when I asked him, he just mumbled something about Daphne being ‘suitable’….” She hesitated again; then she admitted grudgingly, “Oh, I suppose you’re right, Jess. Daphne Templeton is Graham’s choice, for whatever reason, and if she’ll make him happy, he’s welcome to her. I just hope no one devises a plan to match me up with that brother of hers!”

Jessica stared, but her instinctive gasp was suddenly drowned out by the clatter of Willa’s sewing box hitting the floor, scissors and pins scattering all about. Jessica jerked around. “Willa, what on earth are you doing?” she demanded.

The maid was already on her knees, reaching for a bobbin of thread that had rolled beneath her chair. “Forgive me, Miss Jess,” she said, not looking up. Her voice quivered.

“The basket slipped off my lap. I’ll try not to be so fumble-fingered again.”

Jessica watched Willa awkwardly gather up the strewn sewing implements, her movements distracted and clumsy, “Truly, it doesn’t matter,” she tried to reassure, but the maid did not seem to hear. When Jessica returned her green gaze to Claire, they exchanged a baffled shrug.

After a moment Jessica recalled Claire’s earlier words and asked carefully, “Just what did you mean by your remark about marrying Lord Crowell, Claire? Has—has the man been making advances to you? I cannot believe that Graham would sanction such behavior, even in his future brother-in-law.”

Claire’s face drooped. She muttered, “Oh, Jess, please don’t—don’t say anything to Graham about this. I mean, His Lordship has done nothing that…it’s just that sometimes he…looks…at me, and it makes me…afraid….”

“Afraid?” Jessica echoed. “How do you mean?”

The girl shrugged helplessly, staring down at her hands. “I don’t know. But I—I keep remembering how Graham has such an obsession about marrying ‘suitable’ people, and who could be more suited to me than a duke? I’ve heard he doesn’t have much money—but that wouldn’t matter much because Graham says I do—and he must be respectable enough if he’s the brother of the woman Graham himself is taking to wife….”

She inhaled deeply, then burst out, “But I don’t like Lord Crowell! The man’s a pig! Most of the time he seems amiable enough, but every now and then, especially after he’s been at the port, I see this—this expression in his face, and it worries me.” After another hesitation she lifted her chin proudly, and in her soft brown eyes Jessica could read a strange mixture of fear and defiance. Claire said, “I may only be seventeen, Jess, but I know what that look means. I’ve seen it before. And I tell you now that I would prefer to die than to have to let someone like Lord Crowell touch me, whatever his rank. I know what I want in a man, someone strong and slim with bright blue eyes and a way of talking that makes you feel—” She broke off abruptly.

Jessica watched with dawning suspicion. “Claire, who are you talking about?”

“Oh…no one in particular. Doesn’t every girl dream of a handsome gallant?” The girl laughed with unconvincing archness. Her light voice hardened. “It’s just that—that when the time comes for me to find a husband, if Graham tries to wed me to a man like Lord Crowell, I’ll ask…. Well, if I really have all this money, I’ll find someone who pleases me and elope to Scotland, the way you and Andy did.”

Jessica winced. “For God’s sake, Claire, what on earth are you saying? Whom do you mean?”

“Oh, no one, Jess! Honestly, I didn’t mean anyone special! It’s just that I’ve always thought it must have been so romantic, running away with the man you loved.”

Jessica groaned, covering her face with her hands as she remembered much that she had tried to forget. “Romantic?” she snorted.

Claire, watching her with dismay, misinterpreted her distress and stammered, “I’m s-sorry, Jess. I know it must—must hurt you, to think about Andy. But at least the two of you shared something that was exciting and—and beautiful.”

Jessica’s hands fell away, revealing green eyes that gleamed with bitter fire. “My God, the authors of purple romances have much to answer for!” she declared huskily. Suddenly she found herself spitting out words that she had kept locked inside her for almost two years. “I assure you, Claire, romantic was the one thing that ill-starred adventure was not! It was uncomfortable, bounding over roads that had yet to be repaired after the spring rains, and it was expensive, haggling with insolent ostlers for the privilege of hiring a carriage at twice the normal rate, because they knew quite well where Andrew and I were bound. We dreaded each second we had to stop along the way, for fear Raeburn was in hot pursuit—”

Claire interjected thoughtfully, “As I recall, Graham was so deep in his cups that he could scarce have mounted his horse, much less chased anyone….”

Jessica nodded in acknowledgement, remembering how she had been able to taste the brandy on his hard mouth when he kissed her…. She muttered, “Yes. Well, Andrew and I had no way of knowing that.” Gulping down a deep breath she said darkly, “When sheer exhaustion at last forced us to stop in our flight, the first inn we came to refused to take us in. I can still recall the way the landlord looked at me, when Andrew attempted to tell him that I was his sister….”