The Secret Pearl (23 page)

“But you chose my mount,” she said, “and deliberately picked one that is lame in three legs. Admit it.”

Touché,” he said, laughing. “We must call truce. You have a splendid seat. You have ridden to hounds?”

“No,” she said. “I always felt too sorry for the fox or the deer. I ride only for pleasure. There is a great deal of open country about Her—” She stopped abruptly. “About the place where I used to live.”

“Isabella,” he said softly.

Her eyes flew to his face, and he wished instantly that he could recall the word. It was as if a door had closed across her face. The magic, the insane magic of the past half-hour, was gone.

“My name is Fleur,” she said.

“Hamilton? Is that questionable too?” He watched her with narrowed eyes.

“My name is Fleur,” she said.

“Since you have only a slight acquaintance with Lord Brocklehurst, then,” he said, “it is understandable that he misremembered your name.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And remarkably surprising that he would use it at all—on such slight acquaintance,” he said.

Her eyes looked haunted, as they had the night before when he had come upon her at the bridge. And he hated himself and what he was doing to her. Was it any of his business? Even if she had some mysterious past, even if she was living under an assumed name, was it any of his business? She was doing superior work as a governess and seemed to care for Pamela.

But Isabella? He did not want to think of her as anyone else but Fleur.

Their horses were walking slowly along beneath the wall, turning with it as it ran parallel to the lake a mile to the north.

“You know him very well, don’t you?” he said.

“Scarcely at all,” she said. “I did not even recognize him until he presented himself this morning.”

“Has he harassed you in the past?” he asked. “Are you afraid of him?”

“No!”

“You don’t need to be,” he said. “You are on my property and in my employ and under my protection. If he has harassed you or threatened you, tell me now, Fleur, and he will be gone before nightfall.”

“I scarcely know him,” she said.

They had reached another gate in the wall. He leaned out from the back of his horse and unclasped it. He closed it behind them again when they were back inside the park, amongst the trees that extended to the lake on its south side.

“Have you seen the follies here?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

He pointed them out to her as they rode past, a triumphal
arch leading nowhere, a sylvan grotto that had never housed either nymphs or shepherds, a ruined temple.

“All of them afford a picturesque view of the lake when you stand close to them,” he said. “Mr. William Kent had a sure eye for effect.”

As they rode slowly back to the house from the lake, he found himself telling her about Spain and about the army’s crossing over the Pyrenees into the south of France. She was asking him quiet and intelligent questions. He was not sure how the topic had been introduced.

He was more sorry than he could say that those magic moments had been so brief. He wished he could have curbed his curiosity about her identity and history, or at least put it off until another time.

For that half-hour he had felt happier and more carefree than he had felt for years. And she had looked more beautiful and more desirable than any woman he had ever known, her face glowing, her untidy red-gold hair framing her face and half-loose down her back. And her looks and her smiles had been all for him.

No, he thought as they rode into the stableyard and she hastily summoned a groom to lift her to the ground, it was as well that the morning had developed as it had. The situation had been wrong and dangerous. He was being tempted as he had been tempted even at his first sight of her outside the Drury Lane.

She was Pamela’s governess now, his servant. She was under his protection, as he had told her earlier. It was his duty to protect her from lechery, not to lead the attack himself.

“I daresay Pamela has enjoyed her brief holiday,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “We must start lessons early this afternoon.” She stood uncertainly, watching him.

“I have some matters to discuss with my head groom,” he lied. “You may return to the house, Miss Hamilton.”

“Yes, your grace.” She curtsied and turned to leave.

He watched her go, wondering if life ever offered happiness in more than very small, very brief doses.

T
HE
F
RENCH LESSON HAD
gone very well, as had the history lesson, or rather the history story. When Fleur took the large globe from its shelf for a geography lesson, Lady Pamela wanted to know where India was.

“My uncle Thomas was there,” she said, and she traced with a finger under Fleur’s guidance the long sea route that her uncle must have taken in order to come home to England.

“I don’t like my uncle Thomas,” she said candidly.

“Why not?” Fleur turned the globe so that India was facing them again. “You have met him only once, and you were tired.”

“He did not really like me,” the child said. “He was laughing at me.”

“This is probably because he is not used to little girls,” Fleur said. “Some people do not know how to talk to children. They are a little afraid of them.”

“He said I do not look like Mama,” Lady Pamela said. “He said I was all Papa. I wish I looked like Mama. Everyone loves Mama.”

“And you think everyone does not love you because you are dark like your papa?” Fleur asked. “I think you are very wrong. Dark looks can be very handsome. Your many-times-great-grandmother was very dark and very beautiful. She reminded me of you when I saw her portrait downstairs a couple of days ago.”

Dark eyes looked at her critically. “You are just saying that,” Lady Pamela said.

“Perhaps you should see for yourself, then,” Fleur said. “And perhaps you should start to become acquainted with your papa’s family. They go back for hundreds of years, long before you or Papa was ever thought of.”

Most of the ladies, including the duchess, were still in Wollaston, Fleur knew. His grace had ridden away with several of the gentlemen to view his farms, though the drizzle had started to fall again an hour before. It would surely be safe to take Lady Pamela down to the long gallery, as his grace wished her to do on occasion.

They looked first at the Van Dyck portrait of the dark lady who had once been Duchess of Ridgeway, surrounded by her family, including the duke, and by the family dogs.

“She is lovely,” Pamela said, clinging to Fleur’s hand. “Do I really look like her?”

“Yes,” Fleur said. “I think you will look very like her when you are grown up.”

“Why do the men have such funny hair?” the child asked.

They examined the hair and the beards and the clothes of her ancestors to note how very much fashions had changed over the years. Lady Pamela chuckled when Fleur explained to her that men had used to wear wigs, until quite recent years.

“And ladies too,” she said. “Your papa’s grandmama would have worn a large wig and powdered it until it was white.”

They moved along the gallery to look at a Reynolds portrait of a more recent ancestor so that she could prove her point.

It was an informal lesson without plan or any particular object, but the child was definitely interested, Fleur could see. She must bring her down whenever she knew that they would not be disturbed. She would see to it if she could that Lady Pamela would not grow up with such a poor sense of her family past as she herself had.

But the child quickly tired of examining old pictures.

“What is in those cupboards?” she asked, pointing.

“I believe your papa said that there are some old toys and games there that he and your uncle Thomas used to play with on rainy days,” she said.

“Like today,” Lady Pamela said, and stooped down to open one of the cupboard doors. She pulled out a spinning top and
two skipping ropes. She pushed the top back inside. She had one in the nursery. She picked up one of the ropes and uncoiled it from the heavy wooden handles. “What do you do with these?”

Fleur felt a little uneasy. She had been permitted to bring Lady Pamela down to see the paintings, but nothing had been expressly said about allowing her to play there. But it was time to end lessons for the day, and the weather would prevent them from going outside again.

“You skip with them,” she said. “You hold one of the handles in each hand and turn the rope over your head. You have to jump over it when it reaches the ground.”

“Show me,” Lady Pamela demanded, holding out one of the ropes.

“Please,” Fleur said automatically.

“Please, silly,” the child said.

It took Lady Pamela a while to catch the idea of turning the handles steadily instead of stopping each time she jumped successfully over the rope. But finally she could jump three times in succession before getting the rope tangled about her feet.

“How can you do it so many times?” she asked Fleur petulantly.

Fleur laughed. “Practice,” she said. “Just as with the pianoforte.” Though that was ridiculous, she thought, laughing again. She had not skipped rope for perhaps fifteen years.

“Charming,” a languid voice said from the doorway, so far distant that neither Fleur nor Lady Pamela had heard the doors open. “Two happy children, would you say, Kent? Ah, but no, one of them transforms herself into Miss Hamilton, now that I have my glass to my eye.”

Fleur could feel her face flaming. Lord Thomas Kent and Sir Philip Shaw were strolling toward them along the gallery, Sir Philip’s quizzing glass to his eye. She rolled up her own skipping rope with hasty fingers.

“I am skipping,” Lady Pamela announced.

“So I see.” Lord Thomas regarded them both with laughing eyes and winked at Fleur. “How is my favorite niece today? Can you skip the length of the gallery?”

“I don’t think so,” Lady Pamela said.

He took a coin from his pocket and stooped down in front of her. “This is yours if you can,” he said.

Lady Pamela drew a deep breath and went hurtling off along the gallery, tripping over the rope every few steps. Both gentlemen laughed as they watched her go.

“I forgot to tell her that she must do it without once coming to grief,” Lord Thomas said, and strolled, laughing, after her.

“What a charming picture you made,” Sir Philip said to Fleur. “I am sorry in my heart that I spoke as soon as I did. I have not seen such a trim pair of ankles in a long while.”

Fleur stooped down without replying and put her skipping rope back into the cupboard. She had found the gentleman decidedly flirtatious when she had danced with him on the evening of the ball. By the time she stood up, Sir Philip was standing before her, one hand against the wall, regarding her with heavy-lidded eyes.

“Where do you hide away when you are not with the child, my sweet?” he asked. “Upstairs?”

She smiled briefly and willed Lady Pamela to turn and skip back down the gallery again.

“You must be lonely up there all alone,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss the side of her neck.

“Don’t,” she said firmly.

But the hoped-for interruption came in an unhoped-for way. Two ladies had entered the open doors of the gallery, one of them the duchess.

“Ah, darling,” she said, stooping down to kiss her daughter as Sir Philip moved off to examine one of the paintings through his glass. “Making friends with Uncle Thomas, are you?”

“See, Mama?” Lady Pamela held up her coin. “I can skip. I will show you.”

“Some other time, darling,” her grace said, straightening up. “Miss Hamilton, will you please take my daughter upstairs to her nurse, then await me in my sitting room?”

“The dragon is incensed, I fear,” Sir Philip muttered without turning from the picture. “She is usually at her worst when she smiles and speaks so sweetly. My most abject apologies, my sweet. I will make it up to you some other time.”

Fleur walked half the length of the gallery, her chin up, though her eyes were lowered to the floor. She curtsied, took the skipping rope from Lady Pamela’s hands, took one of her hands in hers, and led her from the room.

“But, Mama,” the child wailed. “I want to show you.”

“Was it a forbidden romp, Sybil?” Lord Thomas’ laughing voice was saying before Fleur was beyond earshot. “How shocking.”

F
LEUR STOOD QUIETLY INSIDE
the door of the duchess’s sitting room for all of half an hour. For some five minutes of that time she could hear coughing in the adjoining dressing room. Finally the door opened and her grace came in. She crossed to a small escritoire without even glancing Fleur’s way and picked up a letter lying there. Fleur stood for another full five minutes while she read it.

The duchess set down the letter and turned to look Fleur slowly up and down. “Slut!” she said sweetly.

Fleur looked at her calmly.

“By whose authority were you in the gallery?” her grace asked.

“By his grace’s,” Fleur said.

“I beg your pardon?” The voice was soft, the face delicate and surprised.

“By his grace’s, your grace.”

“And by whose authority was my daughter playing with the toys there?”

“By mine, your grace,” Fleur said.

“I see.” The duchess picked up a book from a stool and seated herself gracefully on the daybed.

Fleur stood quietly for several more minutes while her grace turned pages.

“Is it your habit,” the duchess said, looking up at last, her voice expressing pleasant curiosity, “to allow every man you meet to fondle you?”

“No, your grace.”

“Are you not satisfied with the salary you are paid?”

“Yes, thank you, your grace,” Fleur said. “I am very satisfied.”

“I thought perhaps it was the money,” the duchess said. “I can understand that for some servants it must be tempting to augment wages in such a manner. In your case it seems to be merely that you are a slut.”

Fleur said nothing.

“I wish you no ill,” her grace said. “You are what you are, Miss Hamilton. Perhaps you are unfortunate to have a mistress who has such tender sensibilities. But it distresses me beyond bearing to think of your being close to my daughter and influencing her. I will expect Mr. Houghton to inform me early tomorrow morning that he has been handed your resignation. I regret having to make such a request. You may go.”