The Lady’s Companion

Chapter Ten

“You probably think I am missish in the extreme to be mournful about no tea again with Lady Bushnell this afternoon,” she told the bailiff after he handed her into the gig, climbed in after her, and settled a blanket around them.

He spoke to the horse in Welsh, and they started in the direction of Quilling. “She’s never offered me tea, and I’ve known her more than twelve years,” he observed, amusement evident in the crinkles around his eyes. “Of course, I am not a gentleman, and never expected such attention.” He stared straight ahead at the road between the horse’s ears. “It couldn’t be that you worry too much about inconsequentials, could it, Miss Hampton?” His expression was blank, his tone neutral, and she wondered suspiciously just how much experience he had around women.

She let out an unladylike protest. “Oh, worse and worse! Now I am Miss Hampton again!” She tucked her hands under the blanket. “Perhaps I do borrow Monday’s trouble from Tuesday,” she admitted grudgingly, then hesitated until he glanced at her. “I am being bold, indeed, Mr. Wiggins, but have you ever been married? You remind me of my Aunt Louisa’s husband, rest his soul, with that placating tone that could only come from the hard usage of experience,” she accused, humor high in her voice. “I know when I am being condescended to.”

He chuckled and made himself more comfortable as he overlapped into her space on the narrow seat. “I thought you would. And the answer is yes, or sort of, I suppose. I had a woman in Spain.”

He did not say anything for a considerable distance. “Oh,” Susan said finally. “I’m prying, aren’t I?” she asked when the silence stretched some more.

“Not really,” he replied. “I opened the subject, I think, in a sideways kind of fashion. Sometimes I forget that you have quite excellent powers of observation, Susan.”

“Where is she?” Susan asked.

“She died giving birth to our son during the withdrawal from Burgos. We couldn’t stop for anything. Our son died, too.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, contrite right down to her toes. “I wish I had not asked in such a flippant way.”

“No matter. It was a long time ago,” he said, his voice wistful for a moment. “Sometimes it seems to have happened to someone I hardly know anymore. But to the case in point: Jesusa didn’t speak any English, or not much, and I have discovered that women are mostly the same in any language.” The subject didn’t seem to make him sad, and she wondered at his resilience. “I learned pretty early that a bland tone in Spanish let me get away with any amount of reproof.”

“And so you reprove me about my worries?”

“A little,” he agreed, “but only a little. Are you so sure that your aunt or your father wouldn’t have exerted themselves to find you a husband, had you remained in London?”

“I have no money,” she reminded him simply. “What man would be tempted?”

He stared straight ahead again. “I cannot imagine that there was no one of your class who wouldn’t rejoice in a wife with high looks and some considerable intelligence, even if she were as poor as Job’s turkey.”

I am at least smart enough to know when I am being complimented, Susan thought, and, sir, you take my breath away. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me,” she told him frankly, also staring straight ahead.

“Well, then, tell me ‘thank you’ prettily,” he said, amused. “The problem is your father, then, that man you won’t write to,” he surmised, nudging her shoulder. “I gather he is a walking debt machine and scares off sensible suitors. I remember little lords like that in Wellington’s army.”

She nodded, too embarrassed to speak, and marveled, as the village came gradually into view, at just how many emotions she could feel in such a short drive.

“Then if you can’t find a rich man with sense, you’ll have to marry a poor man, after all,” he concluded, turning the gig into the churchyard. He gestured toward the church. “And since you won’t marry me, let me introduce you to our poor and single curate.”

“Are you so determined to find me a husband?” she whispered, blushing fiercely and surprised to find herself balanced so delicately between irritation and high good humor. “And must you bring up that proposal? I thought we agreed you were impulsive and feeling sorry for me.”

“Did we?” he asked, his face bland again. “If you say so, it must be true. I forgot.”

She let him help her from the gig. “Did Jesusa find you exasperating?” she asked.

“Of course she did,” he replied with equanimity. “She still loved me, though.”

I think I have just learned an interesting lesson, if I am to believe the bailiff, Susan told herself as she walked beside him into the vestry. The man who exasperates me even more than the bailiff is my father, but I do not feel inclined to forgive him, and I am certain I do not love him. In this, as in other matters I could tell, I suspect I am very much the bailiff’s inferior, she considered honestly. And yet Lady Bushnell, who knows David Wiggins very well, will never offer him tea because he is not a gentleman, and Aunt Louisa would lock me up for a lunatic if I brought him home to dinner. Not that I ever would, she amended hastily. It’s the idea that counts here. Perhaps it’s time I stopped being a snob, considering that I have little to be arrogant about these days.

“We’re redding up some special music for the Easter service,” he explained as he showed her to a pew at the back of the church.

“Heavens, Lent hasn’t even begun yet!”

“We need all the practice we can get,” David said. “And I am late. Susan, if we become too much of a torment to ears accustomed to better singing in London churches, wander out among the gravestones, or count daffodils. We won’t be much above an hour.”

She was content to listen, and agree with the bailiff’s assessments of the choir’s abilities. Still, she reasoned, what they lack in competence, they make up for in enthusiasm. And it was hard to overlook the magic of a Welsh bass among the underendowed English. She decided that a few more Welshmen in the lower registers would make this a choir worth listening to. I imagine the curate longs to recruit beyond these borders, she thought, but I doubt that recruitment was a subject addressed during his study for Holy Orders.

And speaking of the curate, that could only be he, leading the music. Susan watched with amusement at first, and then interest, as the curate led his little choir through a somewhat labyrinthine Bach cantata. From her viewpoint, she could only regard his shoulders, which were rather narrow, and the back of his head, which at least contained abundant hair of an auburn shade. Come to think of it, he appeared to be all narrow planes and elbows. She was forcibly reminded of a marsh bird.

But an earnest one, she had to allow as the curate sang along, with his choir, his enthusiasm wholehearted. How intently they follow him, she observed. Well, almost all, she amended, turning her attention to Cora Skerlong in the contralto section, who traded lingering glances with a tenor. Good for you, Cora, she thought. It looks as though our bailiff will be casting about for another milkmaid and girl of all work before long. She sighed. Perhaps I should volunteer. I don’t seem to be doing Lady Bushnell much good as lady’s companion, beyond affording her some amusement with my execrable piano playing.

I wonder that no one gives the bailiff looks like that, she thought idly, not that it’s a concern of mine. He isn’t beyond his early thirties, and so what if he lived a little harder during those years than most men? Heaven knows it makes him an interesting conversationalist, and after all, one cannot make love all the time. She sat up a little straighter. Susan, mind your thoughts.

She noticed a mouse scooting from the wall to the pew in front of her and hurriedly raised her feet to the prayer bench. David has all his hair—such a rich, dark color—and appears to have all his teeth, which is more than Cora’s tenor can boast, from the look of him. And while the bailiff is only a little taller than many Welshmen, he does not have that lightness of frame, she considered. He’s built to stay, and perhaps that does not appeal to some. And yet, if a young woman, or even one his age could sit with him before a fire, or watch him measure and regard his precious wheat, she might be inclined.

The mouse moved again and Susan tucked her feet under her. I had better stop worrying about tea and bailiffs and diligently apply myself to the pianoforte. A letter to Joel Steinman would be in order, too, although I have been threatening that for a week. Why didn’t I just give up and stay in London? Perhaps the bailiff is right about someone wanting me; stranger things have happened.

She turned her attention to the choir, willing the mouse away by ignoring it, and resolving to suggest that the bailiff offer the curate a kitten when they were born. One cat could do the job. It wasn’t a large church, such as she was used to in London. Sheep fold, manor, church, or inn, it is all the same in the Cotswolds, Susan decided after a thoughtful look around. The centuries sit lightly on stone. These buildings will be here long after I have stuck my spoon in the wall. She smiled, intrigued that while morbid, the thought was far from unpleasant. The bailiff could be right; maybe what I consider large issues really aren’t so important. I must remember to ask him sometime if he felt that way before Waterloo, or only after. Or it could be that I am a slow learner in the school of life.

Choir practice ended. She looked up in surprise at the silence, and then the voices blended now in idle chatter as singers hunted for cloaks, scarves, and mittens, and considered dinner and chores. Sitting in this chapel, one could become a philosopher, she thought, as the bailiff came down the aisle with the curate. She looked around for the mouse, decided it was gone, and put her feet on the stone floor again.

“Miss Hampton, this is our curate, Mr. Hepworth,” David Wiggins said.

She dipped a curtsy to the curate, discovering to her amusement that his front was all planes and angles, too. He had a kind face, though, and light eyes that held a welcome, even while his face blushed a fiery red. Only the charitable would call him handsome.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” she said, pleased to have some topic of conversation. “Mr. Hepworth, perhaps the bailiff will give you a kitten in a few weeks. Your church mice could use a challenge, I think.”

The curate blushed more vividly, then recovered himself. “I trust it will be a benevolent kitten, Mr. Wiggins,” he said, then returned his attention to Susan. “This is a sobering consideration, Miss Hampton. Here I had been thinking that the various squeals and exclamations from the congregation during my sermons were raptures over my scholarly doctrine and sophisticated wit.”

She laughed, delighted to know that somewhere far down in the church’s hierarchy there was a curate with a sense of humor. “You know them better than I, sir,” she replied, giving him the full benefit of her eyes. “But I do recommend a mouser.”

“Anything you wish, Miss Hampton,” Hepworth replied, his voice fervent. He extended his arm to her as the three of them walked toward the door.

She took it, and caught a glance from the bailiff just before he looked away for one of his oblique smiles. You are a matchmaker, sir, she thought, as she walked into the late-afternoon sun with the curate. He handed her into the gig as though she were made of cobwebs and eggshells, then took her hand again as the bailiff walked around the gig and climbed up beside her.

“Please give my regards to Lady Bushnell and tell her that I will pay her a parish call next week. It’s long overdue, more shame to me,” he said as he released her hand a finger at a time.

“I will, sir,” she said.

She could feel the bailiff chuckling beside her as they turned toward Quilling Manor. “I wonder why the sudden clerical interest in Lady Bushnell?” he mused. “Lady B won’t have anything to do with him. I think she’s irritated with God and His staff of well-wishers and do-gooders.”

Susan laughed. “That relieves my mind, sir! Here I had thought I was the only thorn in her side. If she doesn’t care much for the Almighty, either, then at least I am rubbing along in good company!” She leaned toward the bailiff. “Who does she like?”

He inclined his head her way. “Keep this under your bonnet, Susan, but I doubt that any of us measure up.”

She looked at him then up close, admiring his brown eyes and grateful that she was in no danger from the power of them, or the comfort of his presence alone. “Then it will fall to me to offer the curate tea and address some innocuous conversation his way?”

“I am certain of it, Susan.” He straightened up, assuming that bland tone that made her giggle inside. “Mr. Hepworth has a nice parsonage, with a housekeeper and a maid, I believe. He is a third son with two livings that I know of, so you could probably afford new shoes every year,” he teased.

“More than you could have offered me?” she teased back.

He smiled. “Jesusa went barefoot. It’s a good thing you already turned me down.”

They laughed together at the absurdity of it, but the bailiff offered no more suggestions as he turned off the main road to the manor and toward the stone buildings in the shelter of the low hills. “Ben Rich,” he said when she looked at him. He pulled out Joel Steinman’s glove. “You can present it to him.”

She took the glove, enjoying the buttery feel of the tanned kidskin as she removed her mitten and ran her finger across it. “My father used to spend more on gloves than I am to earn from a year with Lady Bushnell,” she said as she replaced her mitten. “I think that is one of the reasons I am so out of sorts with him.”

The bailiff whistled. “That is a lot,” he agreed, then put his head close to hers again and whispered. “Maybe you should hate him for ever and ever for that, and then some. Silly blighter. What is his excuse for living?”

“Wait, now, you’re speaking of my . ..” she began, then stopped. “You’re making fun of me,” she said firmly.

“Only a little,” he said. “Did he ever read to you, too, or brush your hair, or scold you when you needed it?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But David, he’s ruined my life!”

The bailiff only smiled and pulled to a stop in the neat half circle in front of a stone building with three sides. “Ruined your life?” he repeated. “Come now, Susan. Do Hamptons run much to high drama?”

“You don’t understand,” she began as he held out his hand to help her down.

“I’m sure I do not, Susan, if you say so,” he agreed, all complacence.

“Only an idiot would argue with you!” she said with some feeling, then put her lips firmly together. I am fast showing myself to be an idiot. I shall change the subject. “What is this place?”

“A good place to change the subject,” he replied promptly, then held up both hands to ward off her expression. “It’s the shearing floor,” he said with only a slight tremor in his voice. He led the horse and gig more within the shelter of the building and blanketed the animal. “We’ll be in there working our arses off when it’s almost summer.”

“You or the sheep?” she asked, and was rewarded with a laugh. “Both, Miss Hampton, both,” he joked. He led her toward the pens, where the sheep milled about. “Ben keeps the ewes with lamb close by, and the rams farther out, but not too far.” He raised his voice to be heard above the sheep. “We try to birth as many of the lambs here, and then release them to the far pasturage when it’s warmer.” He took her hand as the wind picked up, and she followed him to a separate stone cottage where smoke poured from the chimney. “Ben knows his weather.”

She found herself occupied with anchoring her skirt and petticoat against the sudden wind and let him lead her along. As she looked toward the cottage, the door opened and a small boy tugged her inside. He was as dark as David Wiggins, but slim of frame, with that silent watchfulness of shy children. The bailiff nodded to him and spoke in Welsh. The boy’s face lit up and he answered at length, gesturing toward the sheepfold. The bailiff returned another comment, and the boy hunched himself against the wind and ran to the fold.

The single room was cluttered, and Susan was prepared to think ill of its tenants, except that there was no dirt or bad odor. She sniffed the air, breathing in the pungent aroma of wool and lanolin. She sat on one of the two benches, admiring a pile of sheepskins in one comer that must be the communal bed, and a border collie nursing a litter of pups and keeping one eye open on the visitors.

“Is he Ben Rich’s son?” she asked when David sat beside her.

“None of that. I took him out of a Welsh workhouse when Ben reconciled himself to living a few more years without a hand. He was six then, and the workhouse governor had never bothered to give him a name, only a number.”

“Surely not!” Susan said, shocked.

The bailiff shrugged. “That’s what they do when they get little mites who don’t look strong enough to survive.” He managed a short laugh, with no humor. “And they feed ’em watered gruel to make sure they don’t live long, and bury them three or four to a plasterboard coffin.” He looked with satisfaction in the direction that the boy had gone. “Number Three July fooled them and had lived to six years when I came looking for a shepherd’s left hand. I named him Owen Thrice, and Ben Rich can testify that he’s worth his weight in gold.”

You are an amazing man, she thought as he went to the door, alert for sounds she could only strain to hear. “They didn’t recognize you when you returned?” she asked on a hunch.

He grinned at her. “You’re a hard one to surprise, Susan,” he said. “No, they didn’t. A lot of water has tumbled under this bridge.” He sighed. “The old governor was gone, damn his eyes, but they’re still just numbering the babies. Sometimes I think nothing ever changes, but once in a while...”

He opened the door then, and the shepherd came in, his hand held tight in the boy’s two hands. “Wind’s picking up, Davey,” he commented. “What’s so important that it can’t wait until snow’s gone from the air?” He nodded to Susan. “You got married at last,” he surmised, a smile creasing his face.

“No, no luck there, even though I tried,” David said cheerfully while Susan writhed inside with embarrassment. “She turned me down. This is Miss Hampton, Lady Bushnell’s newest companion.”

“You might want to reconsider, lass, so don’t burn that bridge entirely,” Ben told her, his voice mild. He held out his only hand to her. “Pleased to meet you, miss.”

She took his hand, determined not to be embarrassed if no one else was. “Your hand, sir!” she exclaimed, forgetting whatever poise she was attempting. “Oh, my! It’s so soft!”

“Comes from working with sheep, lass.” He winked at her and grinned, and she found it impossible not to do the same back.

She held out Joel Steinman’s glove to the shepherd. “Actually, sir, Mr. Steinman sent this to the bailiff and asked me to present it to you.”

The shepherd took the glove and rubbed it against his cheek. “You mean Colonel Steinman, lass,” he corrected, a smile on his face, “hero of the Fighting Fifth Foot, Regular Army.”

“Oh, no! Yes! I’m sure I do,” she amended as the bailiff trod upon her foot. “He ... he wanted to make sure that you wore it in good health,” she said as she moved away from David Wiggins and his boots.

“Well, I do,” said the shepherd, pulling on the glove with his teeth and flexing his fingers. “I don’t mind telling you that it still gives me a boost on bad days to know that I’m sharing gloves with a genuine Waterloo hero.”

“You know, of course, that you ought to be shot for telling such stretchers,” she scolded the bailiff as he helped her back into the gig an hour later, after mutton stew and coffee strong enough to choose its own path into her stomach. A fat lot of good it does me to admonish you, she thought, taking into account the mild look on his face.

“Who’s hurt by such a lie?” he asked as he reached over her to make sure the blanket was tucked in around her hip. “Joel approved when I told him what I was doing and sent me two more gloves, and it kept a good shepherd out of the boneyard.” He touched her shoulder. “Besides all that, I earned the right to use Waterloo any way I want, and that’s why I lie to Ben Rich and Lady Bushnell, too.”

“It isn’t right.”

“You weren’t there,” he shot back. “I’ve earned my lies.”

An uncomfortable silence settled between them. Amazing, isn’t it, she thought after a long silence, that two people can sit rump to rump and feel so far apart. “I’m sorry,” she said simply. “Forgive me.”

“Forgiven,” he said as he turned the gig onto the main road to Quilling Manor. “Just promise me that if I ever get caught in one of my benevolent lies, that you will have the good grace not to laugh.”

“I’ll promise no such thing,” she declared. “And I’ll not extricate you from webs of your own weaving.”

“That’s an answer worthy of Jesusa,” the bailiff said. He looked round at her. “Now I suppose I may ask if you’ve been married before!”

This conversation could become a trial, she thought, at a loss as to how to answer him. Of course he knew she had not been married before, but she wondered what he was implying, and then sighed. It would be easy to remain impervious to bailiffs, if they did not make it difficult. I do not know what to say.

She was spared the bailiff’s further scrutiny by the approach of Cora’s tenor from the direction of the manor. “Here comes Cora Skerlong’s constant lover,” David said, indicating the gig with his whip. He nodded as the man passed, and continued on slowly, even though it was nearly full dark. “He sits once a week with Cora in Mrs. Skerlong’s parlor. I do not think he has ever kissed her,” the bailiff mused.

“One mustn’t rush into these things,” Susan said.

“But he’s been courting her for five years, Susan!” the bailiff replied with a laugh. “Five years,” he repeated, his voice full of wonder. “I should have wedded, bedded, and been a father several times over in the same space that our tenor the lover has worked up to holding Cora’s hand.”

“Then why have you not, sir?” she asked, before she thought.

He shrugged and then winked at her as he reined into the barnyard. “I can’t get anyone to say yes to a proposal, Miss Hampton!” he teased. “Women are more picky in England than ever they were in Spain. Let me help you.”

If I keep my mouth shut, I may get out of this with no more embarrassment than I deserve, she told herself as she let the bailiff assist her from the gig. “Perhaps you should not persist in asking the wrong women,” she blurted, ignoring all her own good advice.

“I do not ask the wrong women,” he insisted.

“You asked me,” she pointed out It seemed perfectly logical to her, particularly since he had admitted his proposal had been impulsive. And why does he persist in referring to that silly incident? She had started to follow him into the stable, but she stopped. And why do I keep remembering such a harmless offer? She turned and started for the house. giving herself a mental shake.

“I could offer some pointers to Cora’s tenor,” the bailiff said, falling in step beside her.

Susan laughed.

“I could!” he protested, the humor high in his voice. “Jesusa used to say I could besar and coger with the best of them, and she ought to have known. Tell me what you think.”

As she thought about it later, in a lukewarm attempt at justification, Susan decided that there really wasn’t anything she could have done to prevent what happened. He didn’t exert any force, so she couldn’t blame his larger size. What he did do was adroitly maneuver her against the stable wall and kiss her with some considerable thoroughness. Even then, she couldn’t blame tactics. His were sound enough, but she didn’t have to stay there and let him put his hands on each side of her face and kiss her. And yet, once he had begun, she noticed a disturbing tendency on her part to let him do what he wanted.

It had troubled her before on awkward occasions that she never seemed to know where to put her hands, so she bowed to her own inadequacies and just put them around him. It turned out to be as good an idea as any, considering that her mind was turning into cotton wadding, and after all, she reasoned later, she needed something to hold on to when her knees started to melt a little. This must be a Hampton deficiency, she decided, brought about through too many years of inbreeding within the peerage and landed gentry. The bailiff’s knees seemed quite steady, so that piece of logic was sound enough. Even more to the point, he had a certain single-mindedness that she probably would have admired in another setting.

It took a mental leap later, but she decided that even when he pressed against her so tightly, his intentions were benevolent. Not only was he holding her up, he was certainly keeping her warm. She had to admit, however, that it was a strange kind of warmth, one that plonked rather forcefully into her loins and stubbornly stayed there throughout the duration of that kiss.

But later, in the solitude of her bedroom, no amount of mental cartwheels could dance around the realization that she had been kissing him back as thoroughly as he was kissing her. I hope he will overlook it, she thought. Oh, my goodness, did I really do all that exertion with my tongue? What could I possibly have been thinking?

At the time, it seemed so reasonable. Their lips came away from each other with a homely little smack that made him smile, even as she was beginning to wonder if her eyes would ever focus again in her life.

“That was, um, besar ,” he explained. “I think maybe Cora’s tenor hasn’t tried that yet.”

She attempted to pull her jumbled brain back together again as he released her and continued toward the house again, as though he had only stopped to admire the evening sky. “Then what is coger ?” she asked. Conversation is in order here.

He grinned bigger than any man had a right to, and shook his head. “That’s poor Spanish for what comes later when good girls say yes to proposals. Sorry, Susan. Good night, now. Sleep tight.”