The Lady’s Companion

Chapter Nine

Susan stared at him as his words sank in. “But... but I thought he was a hero. I mean ... everyone thinks so!”

The bailiff nodded. “It’s what I chose to tell because I couldn’t bear to break Lady Bushnell’s heart a third time.” He took her hand and pressed it against his chest, his expression bleak. She did not move her hand this time. “Think of it, Susan. I lied and stole all my life, until I was stripped naked and facing three-hundred and death. Lying, conniving, and stealing is how you survive in a workhouse, and it was how I lived in that first regiment after I fled Wales.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said softly, wondering why she had ever complained about the course of her life.

“No, you wouldn’t,” he agreed, matching her for calm. “‘No, governor, I would’na steal a bowl of gruel. It must h’been Owen there,’” he mimicked, aping his own Welsh accent. “‘Lor’ love ya, sir, it’s my turn for the blanket,’ or the extra mutton gristle, or a spot closer to the fire. That’s how I survived, Susan. Then Lord and Lady Bushnell saved my life, and in exchange I promised never to lie or steal again.”

He released her hand, but she moved it no farther than the arm of his chair as he leaned forward, chin on hands, to stare into the fire. “And now I am living the biggest lie of all, because I cannot bring myself to tell an old lady the truth.”

Susan pulled the thought around in her mind, then leaned forward, too, unable to mask the intensity in her voice. “And so you protect her from the truth in this little valley? You see to it that no one new ever comes in, on the odd chance that someone will let drop the truth? And why do I think that the lady’s companions don’t stay around mainly because of you, and not her?”

“It’s true.” He grunted at the irony of his choice of words, then turned to look at her with something like apology in his dark eyes. “Lady B rubs along for a week or so with a lady’s companion – and I tell you she’s liked some of them – and then she asks me what I think. I tell her the woman won’t do, and she’s gone like that.” He snapped his fingers and Susan jumped. “I’ll do anything to keep Lady Bushnell’s heart from breaking.” He hesitated, opening his mouth then closing it.

“If you have something more to tell, you might as well,” she said, her voice low as she spoke almost in his ear. Although why you are telling me, I cannot understand, she thought, her mind and heart in turmoil, which grew worse with her next thought: Particularly if you are planning to dismiss me soon, like the others.

“Old Lord Bushnell knew the failings of his son,” the bailiff said, leaning back again, as though the conversation was beginning to exhaust him. “When I crawled down that gorge to see what was left, after he and Lady Elizabeth tumbled off, he was still alive.”

“Poor man,” Susan said, taking the bailiff’s hand this time.

He nodded. “Elizabeth was already dead. I don’t know where he got the strength, but he pulled me almost on top of him and made me promise to stick very close to his son. ‘He’s no soldier, but his mama thinks he is. I’m depending on you,’ were his last words to me before he ordered me to shoot him.” He turned bleak eyes on her. “And so I owe everyone a lie.”

“Except me,” she said, tightening her grip when she knew she should be letting go.

“Except you,” he echoed, then flexed his fingers in her grasp. “Have a care there, lady, or you’ll squash my milking fingers.” Before she could protest, he brought her hand to his lips, kissed it, then released it. He stood up and stretched. “I only came for my package,” he said with some amazement in his voice. He stood in front of her chair then, his hands on the arm rests, leaning over her. “Do other people confide in you?”

“No,” she replied simply. “No one has ever cared enough to tell me anything beyond the commonplace.” Her face hardened. “My father has never trusted me with the truth.”

He touched her cheek, then stood away from her. “Then he is a fool.” He picked up Steinman’s glove from the chair, went to the open door, and nodded to her. “I think I’ll go check my Waterloo wheat now.”

She glanced at the clock. “It’s past midnight! Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Of course I do,” he said, amused, his voice ordinary again. “But as it is, tonight I would only dream of Waterloo, or of you, and neither topic is productive, especially since you already turned down my wonderful offer of marriage. Wise woman.” He closed the door behind him. She listened for his footsteps on the stairs, but heard nothing. He knows how to go down these stairs quietly, she thought.

“If those are your only choices, sir, then dream of me,” she said softly. She picked up Joel Steinman’s unread letter and lay down on her bed. Mrs. Skerlong would have it that my class and upbringing make me impervious to the bailiff, she thought. I am sure this is true.

She held Joel Steinman’s letter up to the lamplight. “‘Miss Hampton, I may have found a solution to your problem,’” she read out loud. ‘“I am negotiating now with a recently widowed woman with two young daughters who is searching for just the right governess. If things aren’t working out (and perhaps I made a mistake), let me know, and I will keep you abreast of this posting. Regards, etc., Joel Steinman.’”

I will write you in the morning, Mr. Steinman, she told herself. As much as David Wiggins seems to relish late-night confidentialities, I think the cold light of morning turns him into a realist again, she reminded herself. I do not think I am long for this position. And yet, something tells me that I am the first lady’s companion he has confided in.

She went to the window, restless suddenly with the size of the room, and stood there until she saw the pinpoints of light in the succession house. The wheat came again to her mind’s eye, and she thought of it growing steadily through the long winter, carefully nurtured by someone who had watched it mowed down by artillery and stomped by cavalry into red mud on the deadly slopes of Mont St. Jean. The bailiff said he would be planting this Waterloo strain in the spring, the amalgamation of seeds he had created from totally different backgrounds.

She stepped out of her dress and still stood at the window, watching the light as she was sure he watched the wheat. When she got in bed finally, she rested for a long time on her elbow, half sitting up to look at the chair the bailiff had drawn up to the fireplace. How pleasant it must be to share a room and a bed with a man, she thought, not drawing back from the topic as she would have in Aunt Louisa’s house.

How pleasant it would be to know that when she took a candle from the downstairs hall table and started up the stairs, someone would follow her, or take her hand and lead the way. I would like to share a bed with a man, she decided, and while there would be lovemaking and whatever else that might entail that Aunt Louisa never told me, I would like to relax in bed and talk with someone besides myself, someone who loves me enough to listen.

It was a cheerful notion, and for the first time in years did not end with the bitter knowledge that her father’s improvidence had made a husband so impossible. She held her hands up to the moonlight that streamed in the window, thinking of the Waterloo strain, that bit of green born of war and the worst that men could do to each other. David, am I getting some tiny glimmer of what that wheat means to you? she asked herself. That brave stand of wheat in the succession house was spring in winter; the quiet after the guns were silent; the low voices of husband and wife talking and laughing with each other when the house was still. Does it represent peace, and every good thing for someone whose life has been hard, to say the least? She sighed and wrapped her arms around her pillow, content for the first time in years. And all from silly old wheat, she told herself as her eyes closed.

The bailiff was gone in the morning, off to a cattle auction in Chipping Norton, Mrs. Skerlong said as she dished up a great bowl of porridge for Susan. “Middle of February, regular as clockwork since the Conquest, I suppose,” the housekeeper said, sitting down with Susan. She touched Susan’s hand. “I think all the cattle buyers try to cheat each other, and see who can drink and wench the most without their wives finding out,” she said. “But the lads must have their week of fun.”

Susan laughed and dipped into her breakfast. “Does anyone actually go there to buy cattle?” she asked.

The housekeeper shrugged. “Somehow it all happens. Tim the cow man got back this morning from spending the winter with his mother in Bristol, so at least we do not have to do the milking while David is gone.”

And thank goodness for that, Susan thought, sprinkling more sugar on her porridge. The only thing I have ever done with milk is drink it. I could learn, though, and make myself useful, she told herself, thinking how little Lady Bushnell wanted her presence.

“Something more, and this for you,” Mrs. Skerlong said, pulling a scrap of paper from her apron pocket.

Susan read the note, then looked at the housekeeper. “It seems I am to weed the plants in the succession house, and check for ripe strawberries while David is gone,” she said.

“You’ve proven to be a useful body to our bailiff,” Mrs. Skerlong said, amusement in her eyes.

Susan nodded, reading no more into the statement than she hoped the housekeeper intended. “Now if only Lady Bushnell would undergo a metamorphosis and discover how useful I could be to her.”

There was no metamorphosis. After a morning of more silver polish in the kitchen, spiced with Mrs. Skerlong’s pungent comments about the locals, Susan took her book to Lady Bushnell’s private sitting room for an afternoon of Emma . And each day during the bailiff’s absence, Lady Bushnell listened politely, and even went so far once or twice to smile in those places where Susan laughed out loud.

There seemed to be no unbending, no softening of Lady Bushnell’s resolve to see this lady’s companion gone like the others. Perhaps she likes me, but knows that her bailiff will only dismiss me after a suitable probation, Susan considered, after one interminable afternoon. Liking someone can be so complicated, especially if that someone will be gone with the crocuses. She told herself not to hope too much, even if the bailiff had taken her into his confidence. He could just as easily see that she left.

Despite the uncertainty, Susan did not write to Joel Steinman. She told herself each morning that she would answer his letter, but she did not. Instead, she plagued Mrs. Skerlong for housework to keep her occupied in the morning, spent a frosty afternoon reading to a silent woman, and in the evening weeded plants in the succession house. Tim the cow man—he must have a last name, but Susan could never get him to own to one—saw that the room was kept warm and well lit. His chief topic each evening before he retreated to his quarters attached to the cattle byre was to admonish her to put out the lamps when she finished. And each evening Susan patiently promised until he was satisfied. He would hand her a pail with a little milk for the cat, remind her again of the lamps, as though she had the attention span of a tulip, then stalk off, muttering to himself.

“This holding employs its share of eccentrics,” Susan told the cat as she pushed up her sleeves and weeded the Waterloo strain. The little animal, rounder each day with kittens in the making, followed her down one row and up the other, rubbing against her ankles if she happened to pause long enough for that much feline fellowship.

When she finished the wheat, she turned to the other plants, humming as she weeded, content to do as the bailiff asked. She wondered what Aunt Louisa would think if she could see her with dirt under her fingernails and strawberry stains around her mouth, but she didn’t let it occupy too much of her mind. She breathed in the wonderful fragrance of loam, fortified earth, and green things growing, and understood why the bailiff spent so much of his time where she was now. When she finished, she hitched herself onto David’s tall stool, leaned on the drafting table, rested her chin on her arms, and looked over her green domain. She dreamed that she could watch the wheat grow.

At the end of each evening, she reminded herself to write to Joel Steinman, but the intention never got much beyond the first floor landing when she returned, pleasantly tired, from the succession house. She would sit in her armchair before the fire, her stockinged feet on the fender, her dress pulled up around her knees, totally satisfied with herself and grateful to David Wiggins for the homely task he had assigned to her.

Lady Bushnell was another matter. I am determined that some afternoon you will unbend and offer me tea, she resolved every time she smiled at the old woman, opened the book, and began to read. It never happened. She would read five or six chapters— they were in volume II now—ask if there was anything else she could do, and grit her teeth at Lady Bushnell’s peremptory dismissal. She would smile her brightest smile, the one that Mama always said could coax eggs out of roosters, and leave the room.

“I have never been so determined to drink tea,” she told the housekeeper the next morning. She made a face. “You would think I had a controlling interest in the East India Company!”

“Well then, we will continue to put that extra cup and saucer on the tray for ballast,” Mrs. Skerlong assured her. “And there is this: David Wiggins returned late last night.”

“Oh, excellent!” Susan declared as she picked up her polishing cloth and yet another candlestick. “Was he sober?” she asked, her eyes merry. She began to rub the candlestick, then put down the cloth with a shake of her head. “Mrs. Skerlong, I cannot face another morning of silver paste. Could you commission me with something else to do?”

“I think the books in the library needs dusting,” Mrs. Skerlong said with a smile of understanding. “And here is some furniture polish...”

“Oh, don’t say that word,’ Susan interrupted with a sigh.

“... for the pianoforte,” Mrs. Skerlong continued. “Lady Bushnell and David are in the bookroom.”

I will polish first, and get it over with, Susan decided as she closed the door to the library and opened the draperies. She coughed from the dust off the curtains, wiped her eyes with her apron, and looked around her with some pleasure.

The mullioned windows let in only a moderate amount of sunlight, but it was enough to put a golden glow on the oak wainscoting. Again she was struck with the permanence of the manor and its graceful endurance through one more winter in several centuries of changing seasons. I love this house, she decided, as she set the polish carefully on the window ledge and raised the piano lid. She played a tentative chord, pleased with the resonance of the instrument. A person could curl up quite comfortably on that sofa over there, she thought, while someone more proficient than I played this piano.

She considered Joel Steinman’s letter, and the possible governess position, and played another chord. If I can get that job, I had better be able to verify my claim to teach piano to children, she told herself as she ruffled through a stack of music and appropriated a Bach invention that looked promising, if played at a glacier’s speed.

“I disremember this many notes,” she muttered, her eyes on the music as she poised her fingers over the keys. “Forward and easy does it, Susan. How bad can one person be?”

I could have been worse, but I’m not sure how, she admitted to herself, when she concluded with a chord that while not triumphant, was at least three parts right. Thank goodness I do not have an audience. I’m sure they would be throwing things or making rude noises. She turned the page and poised her hands over the keys again.

“Don’t even think it, Miss Hampton!”

Susan gasped and put her hands behind her back as Lady Bushnell uttered each word with emphatic precision. The bailiff laughed from the doorway as the widow, moving slowly but deliberately with the aid of a cane, bore down upon her. After one terrified look around, Susan closed her eyes and sat very still. To her horror, Lady Bushnell ordered the bailiff to pull up a chair. Susan just barely stifled a gasp when the widow thumped down her cane on a spot by the piano stool and the bailiff positioned the chair. He helped her sit down, then stood behind the chair. Susan knew that she did not have the courage to look at either of them, so she kept her eyes resolutely trained upon Bach.

Her courage fled when Lady Bushnell thumped the music with her cane. “Begin again, Miss Hampton. From the top.”

Susan turned back to the previous page, where the notes appeared to have multiplied at an alarming rate. She stared at the page, opened her mouth to beg off, then closed it. I would only babble, she told herself. I wonder if Lady Bushnell can smell fear.

Susan took a deep breath and began to play, wincing at the notes and grateful, at the same time, that Bach would never know what atrocities she was committing on his music.

She struggled to the end, and held her breath after the final chord. Out of the comer of her eye she saw the bailiff go to the window, where he stood, shoulders shaking, and stared out at the snow. She was too afraid to glance at Lady Bushnell. The widow cleared her throat and Susan winced again.

“Miss Hampton, if my pianoforte were a living thing, we would have to shoot it to put it out of its misery.”

David Wiggins exploded into laughter, which he quickly stifled when the dowager glared at him. “You, sir, are less than useful at moments like these,” Lady Bushnell pronounced. “Surely you can find something to do!”

“Without question, ma’am,” he replied promptly, his voice a trifle unsteady. “Do be kind to Miss Hampton, my lady. After all, she did weed the Waterloo strain to perfection while I was gone.”

“I suspected as much,” rejoined the widow, clearing her throat in a decisive manner that must have terrified a generation of her husband’s lieutenants. “I can still see dirt under her nails! Really, Miss Hampton!”

Susan blushed and stared at her hands as though they were someone else’s picked up by mistake. “It was late last night, my lady,” she mumbled, “and some of it must surely be silver polish.”

“Miss Hampton, you are a ragamuffin! I wonder that Hamptons ever had any pretensions to society, if you are a representative sample! Begin at the top, Miss Hampton, and take it more slowly this time. David, busy yourself!”

Two hours later, Susan was still beginning at the top. I will remember these two lines when I am old and gumming my porridge, she thought as perspiration trickled down her back in the cool room. But she was playing those two lines better, she knew she was, even if the tempo was as lugubrious as Lady Bushnell’s demeanor was glacial. She sighed and stopped at the end of the second line when the widow began the ominous tapping of her cane on the floor, the signal to pause and face the music. She looked at her employer.

You are so impeccable, she thought in grudging admiration, knowing that the pins were coming out of her own hair as she nodded in time with the music. Of course, I am doing the work here, Susan considered as she dragged her eyes to the top of the page again and poised her fingers—nicely arched now, thanks to Lady B’s admonition—over the keys.

“That will do for now. Miss Hampton,” Lady Bushnell said.

Susan winced at the “for now,” but closed the music book with relief. She glanced at the furniture polish on the windowsill and wondered why she had ever thought polishing silver in the kitchen was a chore. Her stomach growled and she blushed.

“I will release you now, Miss Hampton,” Lady Bushnell said as she began to rise from the chair.

Susan leaped to her feet to assist her, marveling at the lightness of the old woman’s bones. “You have taught me a great deal this morning, my lady,” she said as she stood with her hands at the widow’s elbow.

“It is only the beginning, Miss Hampton,” came the reply, and Susan tried not to make a face.

“Lady Bushnell, I do not mean to take up so much of your time! Surely you have oodles of things more valuable...” she began, and was silenced by an emphatic tap of the cane as the widow stopped her stately progression to the door and turned to stare at her current lady’s companion.

“Don’t babble, child! My dear Miss Hampton, it is I who should thank you!” she said, and Susan dreaded the glitter in her magnificent green eyes.

“Wh... whatever for, my lady?” Susan stammered.

“Of all that endless parade of lady’s companions, you and you alone have given me something to do!” she continued in triumph. “When you are not helping David in the succession house—although why he needs such assistance I cannot imagine. He’s managed well enough alone before—I expect you to be in here, practicing diligently.”

“Y... yes, ma’am,” Susan replied.

They continued to the door, where Lady Bushnell stopped when Susan opened it. ‘Tell Mrs. Skerlong to bring my luncheon into the breakfast room this time, instead of my room. I feel positively energized, Miss Hampton. And I expect you in my room for another four or five chapters this afternoon. Emma Woodhouse is such a flibbertigibbet, that I wonder what Jane Austen was thinking! Spare me from maiden ladies in parsonages! Modem writers are such a trial.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Susan said. She dropped a curtsy and stepped into the hall. I have been sentenced to hard labor at the piano, she thought. Joel Steinman, perhaps I will consider your latest offer.

“Oh, and Miss Hampton...”

“Yes, Lady Bushnell?”

“That rose pink becomes you better than it did my daughter.”

My goodness, Susan thought as she smiled at Lady Bushnell and escaped to the safety of the kitchen. The Skerlongs and David looked up from the table, where they were eating. She delivered Lady Bushnell’s luncheon request, and the housekeeper’s eyes widened in surprise.

“She never eats in the breakfast room anymore,” Mrs. Skerlong said, getting up to prepare Lady Bushnell’s luncheon.

Susan sank down at the table, leaning on her elbows in a way that would have sent Aunt Louisa up into the boughs. “She says I have positively energized her,” she confided in a mournful tone. “We are to practice every morning.” She remembered herself then and straightened up, smoothing her hair back into its customary lines and replacing the pins. “David, Lady Bushnell has made me her project!” she wailed.

He laughed and pushed a bowl of stew in front of her. “Whatever possessed you to start playing in the first place?” he asked, handing her a spoon.

“The silliest thing!” she admitted. “My letter from Mr. Steinman told me of a possible opening as a governess to young girls that he thought I might be suited for, if it should develop. I thought to practice to see if I had enough proficiency to teach children.” She ate a few bites then put down the spoon. “I am an idiot.”

“No, you’re not,” David disagreed, his smile replaced by a frown. “A new position, eh?”

She nodded. “He said it may come to nothing, but he wanted to see if I was interested. And I am, of course, considering how little headway I have been making with Lady Bushnell. Until now!” She sighed and began to eat again.

“You’ve written him?” David asked after Mrs. Skerlong left with the luncheon tray and Cora followed with a teapot. His tone was casual, with just enough of an edge to it to make her look at him in surprise, and then hope he hadn’t noticed.

“Actually, no, I haven’t,” she replied, surprised at herself all over again. “And I really don’t know why not. Perhaps I would miss the Waterloo strain too much, and dirt under my nails.” Impulsively, she reached out to touch his arm as it lay on the table, but stopped herself in time. “I think your succession house is the sanest place in England.”

He nodded, his eyes bright. “It is. I sit there at the drafting table and dream about covering England with the Waterloo strain, and other seed improvements of my engineering.” He looked embarrassed. “Pretty ambitious for a lying Welsh sneak thief.”

She thought of her own moments at the drafting table, watching the wheat in parallel rows in front of her. “Anything’s possible, I think, if one sits at that table long enough,” she said mildly, then frowned at him. “See here, sir, you are not a sneak thief! Those days are long over.”

“But I am a liar, eh, Susan?” he murmured.

She returned his steady gaze, and thought, unaccountably, of her father. “I wonder if anyone really ever tells the truth, sir,” she said, matching his calmness.

“I am sure I would not dare,” he said enigmatically. He stood up, then reached across the table suddenly to touch her cheek. “Come with me this afternoon to choir practice, Susan,” he said, and it didn’t sound like a mere suggestion. “We’ll deliver Joel’s glove afterward and you’ll see me in action again.” He grinned. “Joel is such a war hero in this part of the Cotswolds!”

And you, sir, what are you? she asked herself as he picked up his coat from the rack and left the kitchen. And most of all, she thought as her hand went to her cheek, why do I care what the bailiff does?