The Lady’s Companion

Chapter Seven

Susan couldn’t say anything for a moment. She stopped weeding and stared at the bailiff across the row from her. When he started weeding her row, too, she remembered what she should be doing and shook her head at him to stop. She weeded in silence for a moment, then her curiosity was bigger than her amazement.

“How can someone survive three hundred lashes? My God, Mr. Wiggins, what did you do to earn such a punishment?”

“I thieved. I was a sergeant in a Welsh border guard called up when Sir John Moore went to Portugal. You seldom saw a regiment so poorly commanded. We were all starving and I stole a box of hard tack for me and my men. The colonel wanted to make an example of me.” He stopped then, looked at her intently. “You really want to hear this?”

She nodded, unable to speak, her eyes wide.

“I think they were about halfway to three hundred. I quit counting after one hundred. All I remember was that my blood was dripping on the ground and I was grunting like a pig.”

She shuddered. “1 can’t even imagine such a thing!”

As she watched, horrified, he turned around and pulled up his shirt. His back was crisscrossed with scars from his neck to his waistband. “They go lower, but you don’t need to see those, too.” He tucked his shirt in and continued weeding as calmly as though he had shown her a hangnail that was troubling him. “It was a hard army, Susan.”

“Yes, but...” she began, then dabbed her fingers across her eyes.

“I don’t remember hearing Lady Bushnell say anything, but the next thing I knew, the flogging had stopped and she was standing between me and the punishment sergeant.” He finished the row and waited for her to catch up. “Apparently she and Lord Bushnell had been riding by the regiment. I wish I could have appreciated it, but I was a bit fine drawn by then.”

It was masterful understatement. “She just leaped off her horse and threw herself in the middle of all that?” Susan asked when she could speak.

“So Lord Bushnell told me later. She refused to move until that colonel, goddamn him, agreed to stop. I think she gave him a real tongue lashing, but it all sounded like a swarm of bees to me. I can’t remember it.” He grinned at her. “Old Lord Bushnell told me later that he learned some new words from her that morning.”

When Susan finished weeding, he walked with her to a furnace and put in more coal, then upturned a bucket for her to sit on while he perched on the edge of a table. “I don’t know how she did it, but I was moved from my regiment to the Fighting Fifth. It was regular army and a dandy outfit.”

“Why didn’t you die?”

He shrugged. “I wanted to. You know on Good Friday services when the vicar usually talks about Christ on the cross?” He shook his head. “I have some small idea ... and I can appreciate the thieves on either side.”

“Were you in hospital?” she said, almost fearful of intruding on his thoughts.

“No. It was just after Vimeiro and were on our way back to Torres Vedras. And you know, Lady Bushnell came to me that night when I couldn’t do anything but lie on my stomach and cry from the pain. She washed my back and told me that if I ever thieved again, she would be the first to flog me. I believed her.” Susan nodded, remembering her sharp words.

“In the morning I put on my clothes again and marched with the Fifth.” He looked down at his feet. “I was crying again by the afternoon, but by God, I marched.”

“You owe her your life,” Susan said finally, when the silence was too big to ignore.

“Yes. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her or the colonel,” he said simply. “He made me a regimental master sergeant a year later before Talavera, and I always kept him in sight in all our battles together.” He sighed. “But I couldn’t help him on the march across the Pyrenees, and it pains me to this day.”

“Was that when he died, he and his daughter?”

The bailiff left his perch on the table, as though only by walking back and forth could he finish the story. “It happened so fast. It was raining, pouring, more like. Lady Elizabeth’s horse slipped off the trail and down a gorge.” He snapped his fingers, and Susan jumped. “Just like that she was gone. I was on the far side of the colonel, and he beat me to the edge of the path. It was deadly slick, and he went over, too.” The bailiff shook his head as though he still could not believe it, after all that time. “We went through so many years of danger, and there we were, on the road to Paris ...” His voice trailed off and he looked into that far distance again.

“And Lady Bushnell?”

“She saw it all.” Wiggins turned his back to her, his hands on his hips, staring out at the moon on the snow. “She sent me down the gorge with a rope and two pistols. Told me to make sure they were not suffering.” He tightened his lips and looked at Susan over his shoulder.

“The horses or the people?” Susan asked quietly.

He shrugged. “I never asked her. And don’t ask me. Not now, not ever.”

Susan was silent then, her chin in her hands. The only sound was the purring of the cat at her feet as it wriggled around to find a comfortable spot. Absently, she rubbed its swollen abdomen. And I have the effrontery to think that I can be Lady Bushnell’s companion? she asked herself. A woman so strong has no need of my puny efforts. She is right, after all.

“I took the three of them home to Bushnell—it’s about twenty miles from here—then rejoined the regiment, and served with the next Lord Bushnell. And after Waterloo, I brought his body back and stayed,” Wiggins said as he extinguished the lamps. “I don’t know that it was anybody’s idea that I remain, but it happened that way.” He smiled at her. “Another story for another day.”

Susan followed him down the row. “She lost everyone to the wars.”

“Yes. The Bushnells—father and son—may have earned the gratitude of a nation, but that’s cold comfort to the widow.” He was at the draftsman’s desk again, where he looked at the ledger one more time, an expression of satisfaction on his face.

“What on earth can I do for someone like Lady Bushnell?” she asked, voicing her fear. She looked back at the long rows of Waterloo wheat, the green sprouts motionless now, as the furnaces cooled. The color was gone, too, with the light from the lamps, changed to gray. “I wish it were spring,” she murmured, more to herself than to the bailiff. And now you will think I am whining, she thought. Well, I am.

“It will be spring soon enough,” he said, his voice gentle, as though he were advising a grumpy child. “Then I will be too busy to come here so often. You ask what you can do for Lady Bushnell. Well, what would you like someone to do for you?”

Susan looked at the bailiff. He had extinguished the last lamp, and the color was gone from him, too. “You’re as trying as Joel Steinman, exchanging question for question!” she exclaimed, then remembered the employment agent’s last words to her. “And tell me how you know Mr. Steinman,” she demanded.

He laughed. “That can keep for another day. Seriously, what would you like someone to do for you?”

Susan leaned against the stool and considered his question. I would like someone to love me, she thought, but knew she could never say that out loud. “When I was a little girl, I liked someone to read to me, and brush my hair, and make sure I was tucked in at night.” That was true enough. No matter how old I get, a part of me will always long for my mother, Susan thought. It was a foolish notion. She was afraid to look at the bailiff. You must think me an idiot, she thought. “You know, those things mothers do. It can’t be far different from a lady’s companion, do you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said as he finished buttoning his coat. “My mother either died when I was bom, or just abandoned me at a workhouse. That’s where I grew up. No one read to me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. How strong you must be to have survived that, she considered as he carefully lifted the cat into a box lined with soft rags. And then the army, and war. I wonder you are not out of patience with my silly problem.

“Why be sorry? What you never have you can’t miss.” He laughed, but she couldn’t hear much humor in it. “And the matron shaved our heads, so she wouldn’t be bothered with lice. I think we had very different upbringings, Miss Hampton.”

“I suppose we did,” she agreed.

He took her by the elbow and steered her from the dark succession house. The cold made her gasp out loud. The bailiff tightened his hold on her as he walked her to the kitchen, then released her when they were inside. Susan took off Mrs. Skerlong’s coat and hung it on the coat tree, her mind full of Spain and soldiering.

“And yet reading—it’s not a bad notion,” he said, his hand on the doorknob. “You might try that. I’ve come in on her several times and seen her staring down at a book in her lap.”

“She likes to read?”

“She did once, I’m thinking. More and more now, I’ll see her with the same book in her lap, but no pages turned. Could it be that her eyes are not what they once were?”

“It is a good idea,” Susan agreed, “but what should I read to her? I feel as though I know her better, but that I am no closer to solving my problems. And would she ever let me read to her?”

He opened the door. “I suggest that you read to her whatever it is that you …”

“I know, I know!” she interrupted, exasperated with the bailiff. “Whatever I would like someone to read to me!”

The bailiff closed the door and she heard his laugh recede, as his footsteps crunched on the icy path. “You are remarkably shortsighted yourself,” she told the closed door. “Anyone can see that Lady Bushnell and I are nothing alike. How will I know what she likes?” These people are giants, she thought, sitting in Mrs. Skerlong’s chair and breathing in the fragrance of spices overhead and tomorrow’s yeast bread, a lump of covered dough on the table. I feel young and foolish and out of my sphere, and yet, I have to try, because I have been given a chance.

Mrs. Skerlong’s tom jumped into her lap, startling her. He turned about several times, as if testing her lap for solidity, then settled down to purr and groom himself. Absently, she scratched around his ears, smiling a little when he turned to oblige her fingers. “And I suppose you are the father of that forthcoming litter in the succession house?” she murmured, her fingers gentle now on his back. “I trust you’ll do right by your family.”

She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, thinking of her father. And don’t disgust your little ones, or make extravagant promises you have no way of fulfilling. If you promise them a mouse, give them a mouse. And for God’s sake, teach them how to hunt for themselves. She settled lower in the chair, unmindful of her posture for once, and propped her feet on the footstool. The cat was warm, and his purring created a pleasant vibration against her stomach.

She must have dozed off, but for how long she had no idea. She snapped her eyes open and tightened her hand on the cat, which tensed to spring. David Wiggins stood looking down at her. He shook his head. “Miss Hampton, go to bed.”

She relaxed again and regarded him out of sleepy eyes. “What are you doing still up, Mr. Wiggins?” Her accusation was blunted by a yawn that she could not stifle.

He looked down at his boots as though she had caught him at mischief. “I just wanted another look at the Waterloo wheat.” He squatted down beside her chair until he was on her eye level, his enthusiasm balancing the exhaustion in his face. “I’m going to sow an entire field of it this spring. It’s a good blend of wheat, Susan. You’ll see.”

She nodded and closed her eyes again, but opened them wide when the bailiff picked her up, cat and all. With a hiss, the tom jumped off.

“Do I have to carry you upstairs to bed?” he asked.

“No... no,” she stammered. “I’ll go.”

“When?”

“Now! Only let me down.” He did as she asked and she straightened her skirts around her. I should be so indignant, she told herself as she frowned at him. How odd that I am not.

“You won’t get anywhere staying up late to worry about things, Susan,” he said as he went to the door again. He observed the frown on her face. “But maybe you weren’t worrying about Lady Bushnell. Homesick?” he asked, his voice sympathetic.

“Not at all,” she said too quickly. “There is nothing to miss there.”

He watched her face another moment, his own expressionless. “So that’s how it is,” he said finally. “Well, life is short. Miss Hampton. Don’t hate them too long. Go to bed.”

She waited until she heard his footsteps on the path again, then took up a candle and holder on the table beside the lamp, lit it from the lamp, then extinguished the greater light. She went carefully upstairs and set the candlestick on her bedside table.

The curtains were still open, so she went to close them, and stood there instead, watching the bailiff make his progress to his own house. She inclined her head against the window frame, enjoying the simple pleasure of watching the man in motion. He had a competent stride, and she could only marvel at the miles he must have walked, and under what circumstances. No wonder both Lord Bushnells had relied on him, she thought as she stood at the window watching him and slowly unbuttoning Lady Elizabeth Bushnell’s dress. He looks enormously capable, even from a second-story window. I can sleep now.

She did sleep well, to her gratification, and woke with Jane Austen on her mind—more specifically, Emma Woodhouse, she of the sharp tongue and strong will. Susan had nearly finished Emma on the long journey from London to Quilling, but she knew she could begin it again with no loss of interest. She got up from bed and wadded her nightgown—a loan from the generously endowed Mrs. Skerlong—around her as she padded on bare feet to the dressing room for her reticule. When she picked it up, she knew it was too light to contain the book, and then she remembered stuffing it into her trunk before walking to Quilling Manor. “Drat!” she said as she plumped herself down on her bed again, and she flopped onto her back with her arms out. There was a knock on the door.

“Come,” she said, trying to keep the dismal note out of her voice. No sense in troubling Cora with her woes.

It was the bailiff; he stood there with her trunk on his shoulder, surprised at first, and then smiling as she lay there and stared at him, too startled to move.

“Miss Hampton, such a dramatic pose,” he said finally.

She scrambled under the covers. “I... I thought you were Cora,” she stammered. “I mean, when did you retrieve my trunk? Is it later than I think? How’s the weather?” She had the good sense to stop. “Am I babbling?”

He hesitated a moment, then came into the room and lowered the trunk carefully to the floor. “I woke up really early and made the trip to Quilling in no time. The road is clear now, and yes, you’re babbling.” He looked at her and winked. “Now you can probably locate a nightgown built on a less gargantuan scale.”

Her smile was sunny. No sense in being embarrassed in front of a man who had already bared his back to her. “Well, excuse my drama, please.” She crossed her legs under the covers and tucked the blanket around her. “It’s just that you are an answer to a prayer, Mr. Wiggins.”

He shook his head at her. “I never thought I would live to the day when I would be an answer to a maiden’s prayers!”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit, sir,” she said, then stopped. “See here, Mr. Wiggins. I know I am not to call you sir, on threat of being thrown into a muck heap, but Mr. Wiggins sounds endlessly formal, and you have, after all, proposed to me, and shown me your back...”

He burst out laughing before she could finish, and she blushed. “And I have called you Miss Hampton and Susan, and why don’t we both just call each other Susan and David? Is that what you are attempting to tell me? Considering the nature of our employment here, I think it would be entirely appropriate.”

“That’s one thing settled then,” she said, folding her hands in her lap and wishing her hair were not tumbled around her shoulders, but neatly in place. “I fear I do not look too much like a lady at the moment,” she apologized. “But then, I did not expect you with my trunk. For such, si... David, I thank you.”

He took his cue and went to the door, turning back for a last smile. “Susan, you would look like a lady if you were simmering in a cannibal’s iron pot in deepest Africa!” He leaned against the door, closing it with his weight. “Lady Bushnell always looked like a lady, even on our worst campaigns.” He touched his chest. “I’m neither an authority nor a gentleman, but I suspect that being a lady comes from within.”

She nodded. “My mother was that way.”

He opened the door again. “You are, too, Susan,” he said softly as he left the room without looking back.

She watched the door, pleased with herself. Mama, you would be pleased to know that a bailiff in the Cotswolds thinks I am a lady. The whole idea was so amusing that she laughed out loud, then bounded out of bed and threw herself on her knees by the trunk. The book was there on top of her underthings, just where she had left it. She leaned against the trunk and leafed through the pages, smiling over favorite passages.

“Lady B, if you are not amused by Emma , then you are a hard case indeed,” she declared as she pulled off Mrs. Skerlong’s nightgown, and dug down to a nightgown of her own. Much better, she thought as she put it on. David Wiggins could have no objection to this, and may the Lord smite me if I think of him again, when I should be concerned with weightier matters.

Although her own dresses were here now and hung in the dressing room, Susan wore Lady Elizabeth’s blue wool dress down to breakfast. I want her to see me in this, she thought as she opened the kitchen door and sniffed deep of bread baking. She needs to know that I am appreciative.

The bailiff was just taking his dishes to the sink when she sat down at the table and thanked Mrs. Skerlong for the porridge the housekeeper set in front of her. David passed her the cream as he came to the table again, and sat down beside her, straddling the chair so he could face her.

“Could you do me a favor when you finish breakfast?” he asked as she poured on the cream and sprinkled in some sugar.

Susan nodded as she took a bite. He indicated a ledger in the middle of the table. “Lady Bushnell and I go over the accounts at the beginning of each month,” he explained. “Would you check my math? Sometimes it’s a bit creative.”

She took another bite, then glanced at him, unable to resist. “What? Not enough fingers and toes, David?”

Mrs. Skerlong laughed and quickly turned her attention to something bubbling on the range.

The bailiff grinned. “Now that you mention it, I am missing a couple of toes—that’s what happens when you try to stop a cannonball with your foot.” He leaned down as if to remove his boot. “Do you want to verify my more honorable scars?”

Susan blushed and applied herself to her porridge, after a warning look at Mrs. Skerlong’s back. “I have seen enough of your army trophies, sir! But yes, I will check your math.”

The porridge done, Susan sipped her tea and looked at the columns of figures under the January 1820 heading. She worked through the entries on a piece of scrap paper, mindful of the bailiff’s proximity as he leaned over the ledger, too. The hay fragrance was more prominent than the soap this morning. “See here,” she pointed out, “you forgot to borrow here on this hemp and cording entry, so all the rest of these entries are incorrect.” She ticked them off with the pencil.

“At least it was at the end of the month, so I don’t have to redo it all,” David temporized as he took a wad of rubber from his pocket and erased the faulty entries. “There.”

Susan smiled over the ledger as she inserted the correct figures. “Am I to gather that schools on the Welsh side of the border are less than effective, or that you were a truant?” she teased.

He shrugged. “I never saw the inside of one. Learned my ciphering in the army. And how to read and write.” He closed the ledger and stood up. “Thank you. It will be nice not to have Lady Bushnell twit me about my subtraction this once.”

“I can check your figures whenever you want,” Susan said, suddenly shy when he nodded in agreement and lightly touched her shoulder as he passed.

She waited in the kitchen all morning, polishing silverware for Mrs. Skerlong, but Lady Bushnell didn’t release the bailiff until luncheon. He took a cheese and bread sandwich from Mrs. Skerlong and worked into his coat, muttering something about cows and the trouble with under bailiffs who think they are lovers. He looked back at Susan before he left the kitchen.

“I think she’s in as sweet a mood as ever,” he informed her. “And by the way, she asked me what I thought of you.”

Susan put down the polishing cloth and held her breath. “Well, sir?” she asked finally, when he just grinned at her.

“I told her you were something out of the ordinary and that her apostle spoons were entirely safe.” He laughed and caught the polishing cloth that she wadded up and threw at him, and tossed it back. “Talley ho, Susan. It’s your turn.”