The Face of a Stranger (21 page)

The door opened and Charles stood on the threshold looking bemused and a
trifle alarmed.

"What on earth is wrong?" he demanded, at first taking their
sobs for distress. "Are you ill? What has happened?" Then he saw it
was amusement and looked even more confounded, and as neither of them stopped
or took any sensible notice of him, he became annoyed.

"Imogen! Control yourself!" he said sharply. "What is the
matter with you?"

Imogen still laughed helplessly.

"Hester!" Charles was growing pink in the face. "Hester,
stop it! Stop it at once!"

Hester looked at him and found it funnier still.

Charles sniffed, dismissed it as women's weakness and therefore
inexplicable, and left, shutting the door hard so

none of the servants should witness such a ridiculous scene.

* * * * *

Hester was perfectly accustomed to travel, and the journey from London
to Shelburne was barely worth comment compared with the fearful passage by sea
across the Bay of Biscay and through the Mediterranean to the Bosporus and up
the Black Sea to Sebastopol. Troopships replete with terrified horses,
overcrowded, and with the merest of accommodations, were things beyond the
imagination of most Englishmen, let alone women. A simple train journey
through the summer countryside was a positive pleasure, and the warm, quiet
and sweet-scented mile in the dog cart at the far end before she reached the
hall was a glory to the senses.

She arrived at the magnificent front entrance with its Doric columns and
portico. The driver had
no
time to hand her down because she had grown
unaccustomed to such courtesies and scrambled to the ground herself while he
was still tying the reins. With a frown he unloaded her box and at the same
moment a footman opened the door and held it for her to pass through. Another footman
carried in the box and disappeared somewhere upstairs with it.

Fabia Shelburne was in the withdrawing room where Hester was shown. It
was a room of considerable beauty, and at this height of the year, with the
French windows open onto the garden and the scent of roses drifting on a warm
breeze, the soft green of the rolling parkland beyond, the marble-surrounded
fireplace seemed unnecessary, and the paintings keyholes to another and
unnecessary world.

Lady Fabia did not rise, but smiled as Hester was shown in.
"Welcome to Shelburne Hall, Miss Latterly. I hope your journey was not too
fatiguing. Why my dear, you seem very blown about! I am afraid it is very windy
beyond the garden. I trust it has not distressed you. When you havecomposed
yourself and taken off your traveling clothes, perhaps you would care to join
us for afternoon tea? Cook is particularly adept at making crumpets." She
smiled, a cool, well-practiced gesture. "I expect you are hungry, and it
will be an excellent opportunity for us to become acquainted with each other.
Lady Callandra will be down, no doubt, and my daughter-in-law, Lady Shelburne.
I do not believe you have met?"

"No, Lady Fabia, but it is a pleasure I look forward to." She
had observed Fabia's deep violet gown, less somber than black but still
frequently associated with mourning. Apart from that Callandra had told her of
Joscelin Grey's death, although not in detail. "May I express my deepest
sympathy for the loss of your son. I have a little understanding of how you
feel."

Fabia's eyebrows rose. "Have you!" she said with disbelief.

Hester was stung. Did this woman imagine she was the only person who had
been bereaved? How self-absorbed grief could be.

"Yes," she replied perfectly levelly. "I lost my eldest
brother in the Crimea, and a few months ago my father and mother within three
weeks of each other."

"Oh—" For once Fabia was at a loss for words. She had supposed
Hester's sober dress merely a traveling convenience. Her own mourning consumed
her to the exclusion of anyone else's. "I am sorry."

Hester smiled; when she truly meant it it had great warmth.

"Thank you," she accepted. "Now if you permit I will
accept your excellent idea and change into something suitable before joining
you for tea. You are quite right; the very thought of crumpets makes me realize
I am very hungry."

The bedroom they had given her was in the west wing, where Callandra had
had a bedroom and sitting room of her own since she had moved out of the
nursery. She and her elder brothers had grown up at Shelburne Hall. She
had left it to marry thirty years ago, but still
visited frequently, and in her widowhood had been extended the courtesy of
retaining the accommodation and the hospitality that went with it.

Hester's room was large and a little somber, being hung with muted
tapestries on one entire wall and papered in a shade that was undecided between
green and gray. The only relief was a delightful painting of two dogs, framed
in gold leaf which caught the light. The windows faced westward, and on so fine
a day the evening sky was a glory between the great beech trees close to the
house, and beyond was a view of an immaculately set-out walled herb garden
with fruit trees carefully lined against it. On the far side the heavy boughs
of the orchard hid the parkland beyond.

There was hot water ready in a large blue-and-white china jug, and a
matching basin beside it, with fresh towels, and she wasted no time in taking
off her heavy, dusty skirts, washing her face and neck, and then putting the
basin on the floor and easing her hot, aching feet into it.

She was thus employed, indulging in the pure physical pleasure of it,
when there was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" she said in alarm. She was wearing only a camisole
and pantaloons and was at a considerable disadvantage. And since she already
had water and towels she was not expecting a maid.

"Callandra," came the reply.

"Oh—" Perhaps it was foolish to try to impress Callandra
Daviot with something she could not maintain. "Come in!"

Callandra opened the door and stood with a smile of delight in her face.

"My dear Hester! How truly pleased I am to see you. You look as if
you have not changed in the slightest—at the core at least." She closed
the door behind her and came in, sitting down on one of the upholstered bedroom
chairs. She was not and never had been a beautiful woman; she was too broad in
the hip, too long in the nose, and

her eyes were not exactly the same color. But there was humor and
intelligence in her face, and a remarkable strength of will. Hester had never
known anyone she had liked better, and the mere sight of her was enough to lift
the spirits and fill the heart with confidence.

"Perhaps not." She wriggled her toes in the now cool water.
The sensation was delicious. "But a great deal has happened: my
circumstances have altered."

"So you wrote to me. I am extremely sorry about your parents—please
know that I feel for you deeply."

Hester did not want to talk of it; the pain was still very sharp. Imogen
had written and told her of her father's death, although not a great deal of
the circumstances, except that he had been shot in what might have been an
accident with a pair of dueling pistols he kept, or that he might have
surprised an intruder, although since it had happened in the late afternoon it
was unlikely, and the police had implied but not insisted that suicide was probable.
In consideration to the family, the verdict had been left open. Suicide was not
only a crime against the law but a sin against the Church which would exclude
him from being buried in hallowed ground and be a burden of shame the family
would carry indefinitely.

Nothing appeared to have been taken, and no robber was ever apprehended.
The police did not pursue the case.

Within a week another letter had arrived, actually posted two weeks
later, to say that her mother had died also. No one had said that it was of
heartbreak, but such words were not needed.

"Thank you," Hester acknowledged with a small smile.

Callandra looked at her for a moment, then was sensitive enough to see
the hurt in her and understand that probing would only injure further,
discussion was no longer any part of the healing. Instead she changed the subject
to the practical.

"What are you considering doing now? For heaven's sake don't rush
into a marriage!"

Hester was a trifle surprised at such unorthodox advice, but she replied
with self-deprecatory frankness.

"I have no opportunity to do such a thing. I am nearly thirty, of
an uncompromising disposition, too tall, and have no money and no connections.
Any man wishing to marry me would be highly suspect as to his motives or his
judgment."

"The world is not short of men with either shortcoming,"
Callandra replied with an answering smile. "As you yourself have
frequently written me. The army at least abounds with men whose motives you
suspect and whose judgment you abhor."

Hester pulled a face. "ToucM," she conceded. "But all the
same they have enough wits where their personal interest is concerned."
Her memory flickered briefly to an army surgeon in the hospital. She saw again
his weary face, his sudden smile, and the beauty of his hands as he worked. One
dreadful morning during the siege she had accompanied him to the redan. She
could smell the gunpowder and the corpses and feel the bitter cold again as if
it were only a moment ago. The closeness had been so intense it had made up for
everything else—and then the sick feeling in her stomach when he had spoken for
the first time of his wife. She should have known—she should have thought of
it—but she had not.

"I should have to be either beautiful or unusually helpless, or
preferably both, in order to have them flocking to my door. And as you know, I
am neither.''

Callandra looked at her closely. "Do I detect a note of self-pity,
Hester?"

Hester felt the color hot up her cheeks, betraying her so no answer was
necessary.

"You will have to learn to conquer that," Callandra observed,
settling herself a little deeper in the chair. Her voice was quite gentle;
there was no criticism in it, simply a statement of fact. "Too many women
waste their lives grieving because they do not have something other people tell
them they should want. Nearly all married women will

tell you it is a blessed state, and you are to be pitied for not being
in it. That is arrant nonsense. Whether you are happy or not depends to some
degree upon outward circumstances, but mostly it depends how you choose to
look at things yourself, whether you measure what you have or what you have
not."

Hester frowned, uncertain as to how much she understood, or believed,
what Callandra was saying.

Callandra was a trifle impatient. She jerked forward, frowning. "My
dear girl, do you really imagine every woman with a smile on her face is really
happy? No person of a healthy mentality desires to be pitied, and the simplest
way to avoid it is to keep your troubles to yourself and wear a complacent
expression. Most of the world will then assume that you are as self-satisfied
as you seem. Before you pity yourself, take a great deal closer look at others,
and then decide with whom you would, or could, change places, and what
sacrifice of your nature you would be prepared to make in order to do so.
Knowing you as I do, I think precious little."

Hester absorbed this thought in silence, turning it over in her mind.
Absently she pulled her feet out of the basin at last and began to dry them on
the towel.

Callandra stood up. "You will join us in the withdrawing room for
tea? It is usually very good as I remember; there is nothing wrong with your
appetite. Then later we shall discuss what possibilities there are for you to
exercise your talents. There is so much to be done; great reforms arc long
overdue in all manner of things, and your experience and your emotion should
not go to waste."

"Thank you." Hester suddenly felt much better. Her feet were
refreshed and clean, she was extremely hungry, and although the future was a
mist with no form to it as yet, it had in half an hour grown from gray to a new
brightness. "I most certainly shall."

Callandra looked at Hester's hair. "I shall send you my maid. Her
name is Effie, and she is better than my appearance would lead you to
believe." And with that she

went cheerfully out of the door, humming to herself in a rich contralto
voice, and Hester could hear her rather firm tread along the landing.

* * * * *

Afternoon tea was taken by the ladies alone. Rosamond appeared from the
boudoir, a sitting room especially for female members of the household, where
she had been writing letters. Fabia presided, although of course there was the
parlor maid to pass the cups and the sandwiches of cucumber, hothouse grown,
and later the crumpets and cakes.

The conversation was extremely civilized to the point of being almost
meaningless for any exchange of opinion or emotion. They spoke of fashion, what
color and what line flattered whom, what might be the season's special feature,
would it be a lower waist, or perhaps a greater use of lace, or indeed more or
different buttons? Would hats be larger or smaller? Was it good taste to wear
green, and did it really become anyone; was it not inclined to make one sallow?
A good complexion was so important!