The Lady’s Companion

Chapter Six

Susan couldn’t have heard him right, but she was suddenly too shy to ask him to repeat himself. She swallowed, and stared at him. Maybe if I do not say anything, I’ll discover that I was just hearing things. He looks perfectly rational, except that he has hay on his shin. Absently, she reached out and plucked it off.

“God knows I can’t afford a special license,” he continued, “but I know a family you could stay with in Quilling until after the banns are cried. My house isn’t big, but it’s big enough.”

He stopped talking then, waiting for her to say something. Susan tried to remember everything her mother and aunt had told her about proposals, but she couldn’t think beyond the fact that this was the nicest offer anyone had ever made her. It was impossible, of course, but she was moved past words. She just patted his arm, resting so close to her shoulder on the railing.

“Mr. Wiggins, yours is the very first proposal I ever had and I do not think anyone will ever make me a kinder offer...” she began finally, unable then to look him in the eye.

“But no, thank you,” he concluded for her.

She nodded, embarrassed.

“It was a foolish notion,” he murmured, “but I thought to help you. I suppose I overstepped my bounds. I do that, sometimes.”

“Oh, no!” she said, putting her hand on his arm again. “That is not my objection! Mr. Wiggins, you don’t know anything about me! Suppose I turned out to be a ... a thief, or a wine bibber, or...”

He laughed softly and moved away from the railing, away from her hand. “You’re nothing of the sort, and I have never been safer, Miss Hampton!” He scuffed his boot in the hay and looked down at the cow, who was regarding him with mild interest as her insides heaved. “I’ve never been so impulsive.” He shook his head at his own temerity.

He chose a light tone, and she matched it. “I didn’t think you were given to sudden starts, Mr. Wiggins. Please don’t worry about me. Perhaps I could accept that loan from you. I... I think Mr. Steinman would make it good.”

“Joel will do me right,” Wiggins said, coming to the railing again.

“You know him, don’t you?” she said, forgetting her own troubles for a moment.

“Quite well. I remember that arm of his ...” He shook his head. “You don’t need to hear those stories. Yes, I know him, and he owes me a debt beyond payment. I’ll get my shillings back, if you need to borrow them, Miss Hampton.”

“I do, sir. Let us shake on it.”

They shook hands over the railing. Susan hitched the borrowed shawl higher on her shoulders and turned to leave the bailiff to his business.

“But what will you do in London?”

She looked back at Wiggins, who still regarded her over the railing. “I will have to crawl back to my aunt and my father and give up any hopes I had of a future of my own.” She spoke softly, but she knew he heard her.

“Then my offer still stands, if you ever need it, Miss Hampton. I know what it’s like to be in bondage,” he said just as quietly, then squatted on his heels again, facing the cow.

Such a day this has been, and it is not yet afternoon, Susan thought as she left the cattle byre. I’ve been turned off a job, offered marriage, then forced to swallow huge lumps of pride. I suppose I can swallow more and return to Aunt Louisa. She turned her face up to the sun and smiled. And if things get too onerous in London, I can nourish myself with the knowledge that someone in the Cotswolds will always come to my rescue, even if it’s just a bailiff. At least I’ve been asked.

She ate a quiet lunch in the kitchen with Cora and Mrs. Skerlong, accepting their condolences over the briefness of her employment with a degree of equanimity that surprised her. Perhaps I do long for the safety of Aunt Louisa’s tyranny, where everything will be done for me, if I surrender my personality, she admitted to herself as she drank the last of her tea. And according to these hardworking people, what is so terrible about a fashionable roof over my head, food cooked by a French chef, and warm surroundings? In time, I might believe them, too.

Mrs. Skerlong warned her that Lady Bushnell had taken up her usual afternoon haunt in the south-facing sitting room, so Susan did not slow her steps as she passed that room. She went thoughtfully up the stairs, ready to compose a letter to Joel Steinman that she could send to him, once she was back in London. By the time I am back in London, she reasoned, I should have so little pride left that I can throw myself on his mercy without a qualm. It is a theory I shall likely have to test, at any rate.

She went into her room and admired its compact, comforting utility, sorry that she would be leaving it so soon. She stopped and frowned at the bed. There was another dress, this one of blue so deep at first she mistook it for black. She picked it up, admiring the mother-of-pearl buttons and rows of little tucks all across the bodice, and the deep flounce from knee to ankle that spoke of another decade. She held the dress up to her, knowing that it couldn’t ever have belonged to Cora Skerlong. She laid the dress back onto the bed and picked up the shawl of Norwich silk lying next to it. A note fell out of the rich blue and yellow folds.

It was one sentence only: “In the interest of fairness, I will give you a probationary period, as I gave all the others.” Clutching the note, Susan spread out her arms and flopped back on the bed. “Yes!” she told the ceiling with fierce exultation. “Will anyone want to work so hard for thirty pounds a year as I shall?” she asked. “Surely not my father!”

She made herself comfortable on the bed, thinking of the bailiff again. He seemed to rub along well enough with Lady Bushnell. He will have to tell me something about her, Susan told herself. I will bother him until he gives me some idea of how to please her.

She knew she should devote her mind to the matter at hand, but the mutton stew and brown bread from lunch was nicely muddling up her insides and making her drowsy. She was still tired from last night’s trip through the snow, for all that the bailiff had declared that she was tougher than she looked. She undid the sash and let Cora’s big dress sprawl around her. I could turn over inside this dress, she thought, and closed her eyes. I wonder if Mr. Wiggins is still sitting on his heels beside that cow. He is a patient man. I wonder why it is that I always seem to think of him before I go to sleep? I will not think of him first when I wake up.

Susan knew she wouldn’t have thought of Mr. Wiggins first when she opened her eyes, except that she had the oddest dream of trudging behind him as they climbed up and down hills, balancing her trunk on the back of a cow. I must not eat so much luncheon, she told herself as she lay in bed, her hands pressed to her middle. The softness of the light outside told her that afternoon had already turned into evening.

She exchanged Cora’s dress for Lady’s Bushnell’s, exclaiming over the excellence of its fit as she viewed herself in the mirror. This dress looks better than I do at the moment, Susan decided, as she pulled from her hair the few remaining pins that had survived her nap. She brushed her hair and soon had it tamed into submission and wound neatly about her head again. I will do, she told herself as Cora tapped on the door to announce that dinner was ready. She was still in her stockinged feet, but the dress was long enough to cover that minor deficiency.

Susan dined in the kitchen with the Skerlongs, content to let the cat curl up at her toes as she ate oyster soup and fricassee and wondered where Mr. Wiggins was. She must have looked toward the door once too often, because Mrs. Skeriong smiled at her. “He’s with the cows, Miss Hampton,” she said.

“I was afraid he might have gone to Quilling for my trunk this evening,” Susan explained.

The housekeeper shook her head. “I did take the liberty of telling him your good news when he came in to eat before milking.” She laughed and began to gather up the dishes. “He said he’d get your trunk tomorrow, and put it on rollers, in case he had to take it back in a few days!”

“No, Mama,” Cora said decisively, shaking her head. “Miss Hampton told me that she is to be the final lady’s companion. You’re here to stay, aren’t you, Miss Hampton?”

“I do hope so,” Susan said. “I wish that you would please call me Susan.”

“We couldn’t possibly,” the housekeeper declared. “None of the other lady’s companions went so far.”

“And they’re not here, are they?” Susan countered. “Please call me Susan, and give me some good advice on Lady’s Bushnell’s likes and dislikes.”

Mrs. Skerlong went to her chair by the stove, and Susan followed, sitting on her footstool. The cat leaped onto her lap and nudged her fingers to remind her of her duty. Absently, she rubbed the animal behind the ears.

“You want to talk to David Wiggins, my dear,” said the housekeeper as she threaded her darning needle. “Cora and I only came here this last year ourselves, when the old housekeeper died. What I learned, I learned from David. The bailiff’s known her for years, from back when they soldiered together on the Peninsula.”

“Oh, surely not,” Susan said, picking up a skein of yam at Mrs. Skerlong’s indication and starting to roll it into a ball. “Ladies don’t soldier.”

“I guess they do if they want something more exciting from their husbands than letters, my dear!” said the housekeeper, smiling as Susan blushed. “Old Lord Bushnell was quite a man, from every indication. Lady B stuck to his side like a burr up hill and down dale through all of Spain and Portugal.” She shook her head. “And when the old man and their daughter died in that last trip over the mountains to France ...”

“I’m wearing her daughter’s dress?” she whispered, her eyes big.

“You are—and don’t think it doesn’t surprise me!” The housekeeper focused her attention on the sock in her lap for a moment “Lady B took the bodies home, and gave up following the drum. The new Lord Bushnell had served in another regiment. He took over the family title and the Fifth Foot.” Mrs. Skerlong rested the darning egg and sock in her lap. “He insisted that she stay in England with her daughter-in-law at the family estate about twenty miles from here, towards Bath. And there it stood. I don’t think there was a battlefield in Spain or Portugal that Lady Bushnell didn’t know.”

“I wouldn’t have imagined it,” Susan murmured, putting down the ball of yam. “She looks so refined and elegant.”

“And probably did on the back of a donkey, too,” Mrs. Skerlong said. “The aristocracy ain’t like the rest of us. Begging your pardon, Miss Hampton ...”

“Never mind,” Susan said. “I’m certainly not in Lady Bushnell’s class. But to travel like that...”

“You wouldn’t follow your husband from bivouac to bivouac?”

Susan looked around, startled. “You are much too quiet, sir,” she protested to the bailiff as he stood behind her, milk pails in hand. She regarded him, wondering if she should feel disconcerted, especially since she had turned down his amazing proposal only hours ago. There was nothing in his face of embarrassment, so obviously his impulsive offer was not a concern to him now. I will take a light tone, she decided. “How can we gossip, if you sneak up like a Mohican?”

“Quite easily, I think,” he replied, handing the pails to Emma, who apparently had been waiting for them. The girl took them to the room off the kitchen, and Susan heard the sound of milk being poured into a larger container. “I could have rolled a cannonball in here, and you wouldn’t have heard me, the two of you sitting there like conspirators!”

Mrs. Skerlong expressed her opinion cheerfully in pungent words that made Susan blink, then smiled at the bailiff, obviously used to him. “Susan wants to know about Lady Bushnell.”

“She’s keeping me on sufferance for a little while longer, and I must discover how to please her,” Susan explained. “Sir, can you help?”

The bailiff nodded. “If you don’t mind discussing this in the cattle byre.” He looked at Mrs. Skeriong and rolled his eyes. “I disremember why I told Tim the cowman he could spend the month with his old mam in Bristol. I haven’t squeezed so many tits since I left off soldiering.”

Susan coughed and looked long at the stove, held her breath and tried not to laugh out loud. Aunt Louisa, if you could hear these two, she thought, remembering her aunt harrumphing and “my wording” when Papa unleashed the occasional vulgarity.

“You’re kind to old Tim ’cause you’re such a good-hearted bastard, David Wiggins,” Mrs. Skerlong replied as she threaded her needle again.

“Only don’t let it get about,” he replied, unruffled by the housekeeper’s commentary on his parenthood. “Those your boots, Miss Hampton?”

She nodded, hoping that her eyes didn’t look as merry as she felt. “Yes, sir.”

“Kate, loan her your coat. Let’s see if her curiosity extends beyond the cattle byre and into the dread succession house. If I have to talk, she has to work, too.”

When her boots were on, he helped her into Mrs. Skerlong’s coat and took her hand as they crossed the barnyard. “Wind’s picking up,” he explained when she drew back in surprise at first. “You’d blow over in a strong gust, I’m thinking.” He stopped and put his face up to the wind, breathing deep. “It’s coming from the west; I’m also thinking the snow will be melting tomorrow.” He took a firmer hold on her hand. “Just remember to look out for east winds, Miss Hampton.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied dubiously.

“And for God’s sake quit sirring me,” he said. “Call me Mr. Wiggins if you must—although that makes me feel forty.”

“Aren’t you?” she interrupted, suddenly quite pleased with herself. I have not felt like making a joke for ever so long, she thought as he stopped again.

“Miss Hampton, do you see that mound of cow muck over there?” He pointed with her hand in his.

“Yes, s ... Wiggins.”

“Another remark like that and Wiggins will see that you’re the first lady’s companion in it! I am thirty-three. It may seem like forty to you, but let’s keep that straight.”

She laughed, then shrieked as he steered her toward the mound. “You wouldn’t!”

“Well, no,” he agreed, turning her into the cattle byre. “Mrs. Skerlong would probably make me clean your boots.” He released her hand and she followed him down the corridor between the stalls, thinking to herself what a pleasant walk he had. You look like someone who knows how to walk and walk, she thought.

“Were you infantry?” she asked, wanting confirmation.

“Yes. Do you like to walk?” He smiled. “Well, certainly you do.”

Susan nodded. “It used to irritate my cousins. They went walking in Hyde Park to see and be seen, but I liked to walk.”

“No flirting?” he asked as he took off his coat and reached for the hay fork.

“Of course! But not with some sprite whose pantaloons were too tight to move fast,” she said, sitting herself on the same bucket from yesterday. “Some men are slaves of fashion.”

“Not around here,” he said as he pulled down straw from the loft overhead and spread it around the loose box where the newest bovine arrival was lying. “Or in Spain.” He leaned on the hay fork a moment, remembering, then looked at her. “Up you get, Miss Hampton, if you will earn your thirty pounds. Take that sacking over there and wipe down this heifer. She’s a bit delicate yet, and a good rubbing will do wonders for her circulation. I didn’t have time while I was milking.”

She did as he asked, gingerly at first, and then vigorously as the fawnlike Jersey struggled to rise.

“Good girl!” Wiggins said, and Susan didn’t know if he meant her or the heifer. “Let up now, Susan.”

She sat back on the newly mounded straw and watched with satisfaction as the calf struggled to rise. Mama Cow, who still appeared to be nursing her own grievances at the irritation of birth, looked around and lowed her encouragement.

“And there we go,” the bailiff said as the calf wobbled to all fours, swayed back and forth a moment, then moved stiff-legged, to her mother’s side. “They do have an instinct, do little ones.”

He put down the hay fork and sat beside Susan, just watching mother and daughter, a slight smile on his face. “I never get tired of it.” He laughed. “Except when it’s too cold, or I’m feeling forty.”

“I promise not to tease you about that again,” Susan said. “Now tell me about Lady Bushnell.”

He hesitated. “I’ve always made it a point to respect her privacy.”

“You promised! If I can find out what she’s like, perhaps I can please her. Surely you will help me. After all, you did ask me to marry you ...,” she wheedled, well aware of the growing look of stubbornness on his face.

He got up and brushed off the straw. “I have a feeling that this is going to come before many a negotiation with you,” he told the cattle byre in general.

“Probably,” she allowed. “You did offer your help.”

“But you didn’t accept,” he pointed out, even as he looked away from her and smiled.

“True,” she agreed, her tone reasonable, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t use you.”

He laughed out loud and helped her to her feet. “Well, you’re an honest piece,” he admitted, reaching for his coat and putting it on again. “Come on, I’m not through yet.”

Neither am I, she thought as he took her hand again and they faced into the wind. I have a lot of information to pry out of you tonight.

She thought they were going back to the kitchen, but the bailiff led her instead to the long, many-windowed succession house that stood apart from the other outbuildings, away from the shade of trees. The building was dark inside, but there was sufficient light through the windows for David to light a lamp and set it by a draftsman’s desk, and then light other lamps.

Susan looked about her with interest, removing Mrs. Skerlong’s coat because the long room was warm. There along the south-facing wall were several mounds of cucumbers and cantaloupe with large, healthy leaves and blossoms indicating fruit to come.

Catching her attention were the long rows of grain in full growth on the tables down the middle of the succession house. She didn’t know what kind it was—one grain was much like the next to her, and always had been—but the renewal of coal in the furnace had set off more warm currents of air that stirred the greenery in front of her fascinated eyes. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly, and found her heart aching for spring and summer and warmth again. And all from rows of grain. She wondered why Lady Bushnell would want grain in her succession house, when she could have hothouse fruits and flowers.

“Nice,” she said to David Wiggins, who walked past her carrying a coal shuttle.

“I think so,” he agreed.

She watched the bailiff shovel coal into the small furnaces at opposite ends to the succession house, then admired the white and yellow-middled strawberry blossoms blooming in their own bed.

“Strawberries in winter.” She sighed. “How I should like some dipped in sugar and cream.” She looked down at the cat at her feet and patted the tall draftsman’s stool beside her. The cat meowed and paced back and forth, but did not leap up. “Oh, goodness, you’re a lazy creature,” she said as she picked up the cat and set it on the table.

“No, she’s just in the family way, and not given to leaping about,” the bailiff said as he joined her. “I’m sure you would feel the same.” He patted the animal’s bulging sides. “Thank goodness cats do not require the attention of cows.” He rubbed the cat under the chin, set her gently back on the floor, and pulled out a ledger. “She’s a good mouser and that’s why I keep her in here, but she does like the toms.”

Susan smiled, wondering what Aunt Louisa would make of such a conversation. She looked over his shoulder at the rows and rows of careful entries. “What do you have there?”

“Something to occupy you while you pummel me for information about a rather private lady I would just as soon not discuss.”

Wiggins took off his coat and picked up a ruler on the desk. “I’m going to call out numbers. I want you to locate the number, then look for a, b, c, or d. I’ll call out inches to you, which I want you to record next to the date. What is today?” he asked, more to himself than to her.

“January 15th, 1820,” she said promptly.

“I know the year!” He nudged her over to get the pencil out of the drawer under the drafting table. “Pencil in the date by each number group.”

“Very well. The things I must do to get information,” she grumbled as she tried to find a ladylike way to climb onto the stool.

Without a word he picked her up and set her squarely in the middle of it, then looked over her shoulder at the neat entries of dates and inches before starting down the row. As he approached the first row of grain, she noticed that it had been subdivided into smaller boxes. A, b, c, and d, she decided as she took up the pencil and carefully wrote in the date.

“Fifty-nine a,” he said, then stood the ruler next to the grain shoot. “One quarter inch.”

She recorded the measurement, then put the pencil on the b entry.

“Fifty-nine b. One quarter inch and a plus.” He looked up at her. “It’s not quite half and I don’t have a better ruler right now.”

She wrote in the inches he dictated to her as he went efficiently down the row, wanting to know what he was doing, but mindful of breaking his concentration. When he finished the row, he looked up at her.

“This is such a help to me. Usually I get Matthew Beverage— he’s my underbailiff —but he got married at Christmas and can’t get the bed off his wife’s back.”

Susan grinned over the figures, wondering what else he would say. No subject seemed too sensitive for the bailiff. “And you assured him you could do all his work, too?” she said when she knew she wouldn’t laugh.

“Why not?” he countered. “It’s winter, and Matthew’s got to keep his wife’s stomach warm. He and his bride will be back in a few weeks. She usually helps Cora with the milk and the laundry.”

He came around to the other side of the wooden tables and began to go up, calling out numbers and inches as she recorded them in the right slots. “Eighty-three d, one inch. Damn, that’s good.”

He was back at the draftsman’s desk again, looking over her shoulder at the entries, putting his arm around her to run his finger down the columns. She would have been offended, except that he seemed not mindful of her presence at all. He kept nodding, chuckling to himself, and nodding again, his eyes on the page, and then down the rows of grain in front of them. He put his arms down finally, and she felt free to breathe again. Not that such nearness to the bailiff was unpleasant; far from it. She found that she enjoyed that smell of hay always about him, and the clean honest scent of lye soap. I am a long way from ballroom pomades and gagging colognes, she thought as she sat quietly, the pen still in her hand.

He took the pen from her and then lifted her from the stool. “Now let us each take a side and pluck out any weeds. I just want the grain shoots. You can ask me about Lady Bushnell now, if you choose.” He hung two more lamps over the tables, then began to weed silently and efficiently, as he did everything.

“What is this grain?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?” She weeded slower, her eyes on the tender, fragile stalks before her, force-grown in winter.

He looked over at her. “Didn’t I say?”

“No! And I’ve been wanting to ask.”

“It’s my Waterloo wheat, Susan,” he said, his eyes unfocusing for the briefest moment and looking beyond her to a place she had never been. “A detachment from my regiment helped fortify Hougoumont and I swiped a handful of grain from a storage bin that night. I intended to eat it, but never got the time. And when the battle was over, there it was in my pocket.”

He continued his work, then he reached across his row of grain to weed hers, too, and speed her along. “It was growing on the hillside above the chateau. You can’t imagine how tall it was, before it was trampled by both armies.” He touched a sprout, and the touch was almost a caress. “I’m growing it with English grain to get a good seed. This is the third growth and so far, my best combination.”

“My goodness,” Susan said, for want of anything better. “Waterloo tall and English tough. I’ll call it Waterloo Harvest.” He returned his attention to his own row when Susan caught up with him. “Now what do you want to know about Lady Bushnell?”

“How did you meet? Mrs. Skerlong said you soldiered together in Spain, but I hardly …”

“So we did,” he agreed, his eyes unfocusing again for a moment. “And harken. I’ll only tell this once, because it’s no kind reflection on David Wiggins. She saved a thief from a three-hundred-lash flogging.”

“Who?”

“Me.”