The Deception (12 page)

“Good show, Adrian,” Harry said approvingly as he dismounted.

I swung my left leg over Elsa’s back, balanced on my hands while I disengaged my right foot from the stirrup, then slid to the ground. It was a long way down, but I was used to it. Both Adrian and Harry had enough sense not to try to assist me.

“Walters insisted,” Adrian said. He turned to me. “Walters is our butler. You had better come and meet him, Kate.”

I walked beside him to the bottom of the stairs. I felt very small, with Adrian looming next to me and the horde of servants towering in front of me.

Adrian said, “I should like you all to meet my wife, the new Countess of Greystone.” He didn’t seem to raise his voice, but it had to be easily audible even to those who were farthest away.

An exceedingly dignified-looking man stepped forward and spoke in measured tones. “On behalf of the staff, welcome to Greystone Abbey, my lady.” I gave him credit. His eyes did not once flicker toward my riding skirt.

“Thank you, Walters,” I said. The poor man’s nose was red. “I suggest that we all go inside out of this cold and you can introduce me to everyone.”

He looked startled. “Everyone, my lady?”

“Certainly.”

I heard a chuckle from the air above the right side of my head. “You heard her ladyship,” Adrian said. He looked at the crowded stairs in front of us and said, “The staff had better go first.”

The servants milled around for a while, but finally everyone managed to get indoors. Adrian, Harry, and I followed. I cast a quick glance around the entrance hall of my new home, and was startled to discover that I had been transported to what looked like a medieval monastery.

“Is this where you
live?”
I asked Adrian. My eyes had to be half the size of my face.

“The living quarters are on the second floor,” he said. “I’ll explain about this,” he gestured comprehensively to the vaulted stone ceilings and arched stone doors, “later.”

He did tell me about the house later, but this is probably the best place for me to explain why it was that the Earls of Greystone lived in such extraordinary surroundings.

During the Middle Ages, Greystone Abbey had actually been a convent (complete with one hundred nuns, Adrian said). When Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church, he had confiscated all Church property in England and had either sold it or used it to reward people who had done something useful for him. That is how Greystone came into the hands of Adrian’s family. Henry gave it to the first Baron Woodrow in 1539 in payment for services rendered to the crown. (Adrian said that the services rendered were of highly dubious nature, but he would never tell me what they were.)

Anyway, the first baron pulled down the church and moved in upstairs in the main convent building, leaving everything downstairs almost untouched. Later generations of Woodrows had altered and added upstairs, but they also did very little down below. The result was that the first floor of Greystone Abbey was one of the best-preserved medieval sites in all of England.

The vaulted room into which I had first stepped dated from the fourteenth century. There was also a glorious cloister, which was roofed by an exquisite fifteenth-century fan vault. The chapter room, the refectory, the little room that belonged to the nuns’ chaplain, the parlor where they talked to visitors from outside, the warming room, all of these were still as they were when the convent had been dissolved by Henry.

All of this I was to learn later. At the present moment, however, my remarkable surroundings were not as important as the people who inhabited them. I turned to Walters, who was a tall, heavyset man with a splendid beak of a nose, and gave him a friendly smile.

“Go ahead, Walters,” Adrian said in an amused voice. “Introduce her ladyship to the staff.”

We started with the housekeeper, Mrs. Pippen. She had startlingly black hair and was quite stout. Adrian’s servants looked as if they ate well. “How do you do, Mrs. Pippen,” I said. “I will come to visit you once I have settled in, and we can get acquainted.”

She bowed her head sedately. “Yes, my lady.”

We then moved to the under-butler and the under-housekeeper and from thence to the chambermaids, the housemaids, the scullery maids, the footmen, and the ushers, I smiled and said something pleasant to everyone, but there were so many of them that I knew I would never remember their names.

“But where is Remy?” Adrian asked his butler. “Did he not wish to greet her ladyship with the rest of you?”

Walters’s face turned an alarming shade of puce. “That Frenchie thinks himself above the rest of us, my lord.” Walters’s voice had dripped with contempt when he pronounced the word
Frenchie.

“The war is over, Walters,” Adrian said briefly.

“Yes, my lord,” Walters said. His mouth closed into a straight, disapproving line. “M. Remy chose not to join the rest of the staff, my lord. He said that he was an
artiste,
not a servant.”

I looked at my husband. “Is he your cook?” I guessed.

“He is. I brought him with me from Paris, and he is most assuredly an
artiste.”

I turned back to the servants and raised my voice so that everyone could hear me. “I think it was lovely of you to give me such a warm welcome. Thank you.”

The sea of faces stared back. I smiled. A few faces smiled tentatively in return.

“Let’s go upstairs, Kate,” Harry said. “We’ll show you the real part of the house.”

“Have her ladyship’s baggage brought up to her room, Walters,” Adrian said.

“Yes, my lord.”

“This way, Kate,” Harry said, and he led the way to the stone staircase that led to the second floor.

The only aristocratic home I had actually been inside of was Charlwood Court, but I was certain that few houses in England could boast the imposing splendor that greeted me on the second floor of Greystone Abbey.

“My grandfather commissioned Robert Adam to redo the place,” Adrian said as he conducted me from the hall to the antechamber to the dining room to the drawing room to the gallery. Harry told me that the Roman-style marble columns in the anteroom had actually been found in the bed of the Tiber and brought to Greystone in 1770. There were also a vast number of noble Roman statues scattered around the rooms, and many imposing Carerra marble mantelpieces. The house was certainly magnificent, but it was not the sort of place where one felt one could put up one’s feet and relax. I said as much to Adrian.

“It has never been much of a home,” he replied curtly.

I remembered Harry’s stories of their childhood, and did not pursue the subject.

The third floor of the house contained the bedrooms, and I was relieved to see that Adam had not been allowed to leave his magnificent mark on these. “My grandfather thought he had spent enough money on the second floor,” Adrian said. “Fortunately.”

I agreed. My bedroom furniture was upholstered with mauve and blue silk, not with chintz as at Lambourn, but the room, while elegant, was also pretty and welcoming. There were two other doors in the room besides the door to the corridor, both of which Adrian opened for me. One of them led to the earl’s bedroom. I glanced in hastily, got a quick impression of a depressing expanse of dark green, then retreated back into my own room. The other door led into a small dressing room, done in the same pretty fabric and colors as the countess’s bedroom. “This is lovely,” I exclaimed.

“My mother had this room done,” Adrian said.

I had noticed once before how his voice softened when he spoke of his mother. “Is your mother dead, my lord?” I asked gently.

“Yes. She died when I was seven. In childbirth.” The clipped tones of his voice did not encourage further questions. I had lost my own mother when I was ten, so I understood.

As we were talking, the door opened and two splendidly liveried footmen came in carrying my portmanteaux. They deposited them on the lovely cream-and-blue carpet and backed out.

Adrian looked at my two battered leather cases. “Is that all your baggage?”

“I have always prided myself on traveling lightly,” I said.

“Good God, Kate, I carried more baggage than that when I was in the army and on the march.”

“I am quite certain that you did not carry your own baggage, my lord,” I said austerely. “When I traveled it was just Papa and I and Paddy, and we all traveled lightly.”

His silver-blond eyebrows drew together. “I thought I gave you an allowance so that you could buy some clothes. Crawford wrote me the most heartrending letter about your threadbare wardrobe.”

I was incensed. “There was nothing wrong with my wardrobe! And I did buy some clothes. But only because Mr. Crawford told me that your tenants would think ill of you if I wasn’t dressed properly.”

“Crawford was right, but it doesn’t look to me as if you took his advice too seriously. Good God, Kate.” And he stared again at my two poor portmanteaux.

“I am an exceedingly good packer,” I said defiantly. “You would be surprised by how much is in those bags.”

“I doubt it.” His eyes swung back to me. “You were in London last year. What happened to all the clothes you had then?”

We had been standing on opposite sides of a charming powder-blue chaise longue, but now I swung away and went to look out the tall, satin-draped window. The view was of the garden; in the spring and summer it would be a lovely scene, but at the moment it looked barren and rather bleak. “I left them in London,” I said. “My uncle bought them, and I didn’t think you would want them under your roof.”

Silence. When I felt two hands grasp my shoulders, I jumped in surprise. How could so big a man move so quietly?

He turned me so that I was facing him once more. “You were right,” he said quietly.

For a moment, envisioning the endless round of dress shops that Louisa had subjected me to the previous spring, I almost wished that I had kept the damned clothes. I was also intensely and uncomfortably aware of the feel of his hands on my shoulders.

Adrian took away his hands and said, “We’ll have to get a dressmaker down from London. You can’t even go to local assemblies if you aren’t dressed properly.”

This news cheered me up immensely. “That would be wonderful, my lord,” I said thankfully. “You cannot imagine how exhausting it was last year, being dragged through every shop on Bond Street. I must have tried on
hundreds
of dresses.”

“I thought women loved new clothes.”

“Oh, I like having new clothes,” I said. “It is the purchasing that is such a bore. A dressmaker sounds just the thing. She can take my measurements once, then sew me up whatever she thinks it is that I will need.”

That amused look was back on his face. I didn’t mind it that he found me entertaining. What I did mind was that I didn’t know what I had said that was so funny. I gave him a dark look. He didn’t seem to notice.

“You will also need a lady’s maid,” he said. “Shall I have Walters find you someone?”

I opened my mouth to say yes, but then the picture of a young, bruised, tearstained face suddenly presented itself to my mind. I said instead, “There is someone in particular I would like for my maid, my lord. Would it be possible for someone to go to Charlwood to fetch her for me?” Charlwood was only ten miles from Newbury, so I did not think I was asking too much.

“Certainly,” he said.

“Her name is Rose,” I said. “She is one of the under-housemaids.”

He frowned. “I said you needed a lady’s maid, Kate, not a housemaid.”

“Oh, she was Cousin Louisa’s lady’s maid while we were at Charlwood,” I lied glibly.

His gray eyes searched my face with a shrewdness I did not like. I looked guilelessly back.

“Very well,” he said at last. “I will have one of the grooms drive over to fetch this Rose.”

I thought about this for a moment. “Do you know, my lord,” I said slowly, “I think it would be wise to ascertain whether my uncle is in residence before we send someone there to collect Rose.”

“You don’t think he would relinquish her?”

“He hates you,” I said. “I don’t think he would give you a piece of string if he thought you wanted it.”

He didn’t answer, just looked at me. He knew there was something I was not telling him, of course. I thought it would be good strategy to distract him from the question of Rose. “I would also like to send for Cousin Louisa.”

“Married women don’t need chaperones,” he said.

“The thing is, Adrian,” I was so intent upon persuading him that I didn’t even notice that I had used his name, “she is in a wretched situation. She is unmarried, you see, and she has no money, so she is forced to live with her brother, who takes advantage of her. Why, she is nothing but an unpaid housekeeper and nursery maid for his wife! And Louisa is good company, even if she is a little bit of a wet blanket.”

“Tell me,” he said. “How is she a wet blanket?”

“Well, if you must know, I had some lovely schemes for earning my own living and becoming independent, and she squashed them all. You won’t believe it, but she found something wrong with every single one of them.”

He was looking at me with utter fascination. It was lovely.

“How poor-spirited of her,” he said. “Er... if I may ask... what were these schemes?”

I told him the best one. “I was going to dress as a boy and get a position in a stable. You know how well I ride, my lord. Anyone would have hired me.”

His face was perfectly grave.
“I
should certainly have hired you.”

“See?” I said triumphantly.

“Dare I ask what Cousin Louisa said that caused you to abandon this enormously clever plan?”

“She said that I would certainly have to share a room with other men. If that was the case, of course, it would be difficult to maintain my disguise.”

His lips twitched. “True.”

I looked at him suspiciously. “Are you laughing at me?”

“I must admit that I agree with Cousin Louisa’s assessment of your scheme, but I am not laughing at you, Kate. In fact, I admire your courage.” He gave me one of those heart-shattering smiles of his, and all my suspicion withered away. It really wasn’t fair for a man to have a smile like that.