CHAPTER ONE #3
Confused, she released herself as soon as she was steady on the ground, snatching tingling fingers into her own protective fist. She dared not look to see if Lord Pennington noted this peculiar reaction, and breathed more easily when she saw him striding ahead of her, and beginning to mount the steps.
He paused, turning with a frown upon his brow.
“Don’t dawdle, Miss Graydene. Follow me.”
With which he resumed his unconcerned progress, leaving Lucy to regret having allowed herself to become subject to the Earl of Pennington’s whim. There was nothing to be done now but obey, however, and she headed for the steps, albeit with a flitter of reluctance.
He was awaiting her at the top, but Lucy refused to hurry. A pair of heavy doors came gradually into sight, one of them held open by a portly individual dressed as befitted a superior servant.
“Thank you, Hawkesbury.”
Lord Pennington ushered Lucy past him and through the door.
She entered a copious hall, filled with light which fell upon pale washed walls and a chequered floor, and dominated by a great staircase leading to galleried upper regions.
Huge paintings of classical scenes were to be seen on either side, and a number of doors led off, as it seemed to Lucy’s bewildered eye, in all directions.
“Where is my sister, do you know?”
“Lady Dionisia is in the Red Saloon, I believe, my lord. Lady Sarclet has called.”
This information caused the frown to reappear between Lord Pennington’s brows. “Oh, she has, has she? I suppose she had to choose this precise moment.”
Her attention fairly caught, Lucy at once deduced that his lordship’s dissatisfaction arose from her presence. Whoever Lady Sarclet might be, it was evident Lord Pennington had foreseen none of the complications Lucy rapidly envisaged.
How in the world was she to be introduced? How explain her presence to his mother and sister without revealing her disreputable identity? Lucy’s respectability had been shattered at a stroke, making her unfit company for the legitimate descendants of her hitherto unknown parent.
The reflection filled her with such angry distress, she missed most of what Lord Pennington said to his butler.
“— and request Mrs Lovedown to make ready a chamber for Miss Graydene, if you please.”
This penetrated. Forgetting the presence of a servant, Lucy flashed out without thought. “I am not staying, Lord Pennington.”
“We will discuss that at a more convenient time, Miss Graydene,” he retorted, in a tone blending hauteur with admonishment as his eyes flickered to the butler.
Lucy flushed and looked away, dismayed to have allowed herself to be provoked into impropriety.
“Meanwhile, ma’am,” he continued smoothly, “I have arranged for a little refreshment to be brought to you in the breakfast parlour. If you will accompany me, Miss Graydene?”
He moved across the hall as he spoke, opening one of its many doors and gesturing for her to enter. Feeling she had little choice, Lucy moved to join him and passed through into a long room a degree less overwhelming than the hall, and thence to a much smaller chamber.
“You may be snug here for the time being,” said her guide.
It was not the word Lucy would have used to describe a room into which both parlour and dining room at the vicarage would have fitted comfortably.
An oval mahogany table was set close to the windows, surrounded by matching chairs with seats upholstered in a blue striped fabric that toned with the wallpaper.
A long side board and a couple of vast china vases, empty of flowers at this season and set either side of the fireplace, comprised the rest of the furnishings.
Warmth came from the hearth, where the embers of a recent fire lay smouldering.
Lord Pennington pulled out a chair facing the window and Lucy sat down, looking out upon pleasant grounds that gave at this angle no hint of the vast acres through which she had just been driven.
Nevertheless, she felt a trifle dazed and was glad of the offered respite.
Feeling she had something to make up for, Lucy turned to say so, and discovered she was alone.
A sense of ill-usage could not but creep upon her.
His lordship, having ousted her from the Boar without so much as a by-your-leave and virtually forced her to accompany him here, had delivered her to a place of his own choosing and summarily abandoned her.
Lord Pennington, Lucy decided, stood in crying need of a sharp set-down.
Having divested himself of his hat, gloves and greatcoat, Stefan mounted the great staircase at an easy lope, rapidly reviewing his options.
He’d had ample time to regret the momentary compassion which had decided him to bring the Graydene woman to this house.
It had not taken him long to realise he had been foolhardy, but he was not the man to draw back upon an impulse.
Life was to be lived, and a risk or two added spice.
He admitted an unwelcome qualm on discovering his cousin was in the house.
Paulina was bound to kick up a dust. She could never be brought to believe in her parent’s insalubrious habits.
How she could have lived for the better part of her life with Beves Ankerville and not known about the man’s peccadilloes was a mystery.
Unless Paulina chose to stick her head in the sand?
He had a fair notion how she would react should he present her with a woman claiming to be her natural half-sister.
A curst nuisance she should have chosen today to visit her erstwhile home.
Which brought to mind a further grievance: Paulina seemed not to realise she was now a visitor.
Her frequent comings and goings were an irritant, more for Dion than himself, it must be admitted, his sister being obliged to listen to the veiled criticisms that fell from the creature’s lips upon every change effected in the mansion.
And Dion who would bear the brunt, if Paulina knew about Miss Graydene.
On all counts, Stefan decided, as he crossed the gallery and approached the door to one of the larger of the upstairs reception rooms, it would be better to keep the matter under wraps until Paulina had left the house.
The Red Saloon, so called on account of the once vibrant brocade upholstery, boasted two great sofas set either side of the hearth, where a cheerful fire burned merrily.
One was occupied by Dion, most improperly reclining with her legs stretched out.
The other was mostly taken up by Paulina, who had camped her currently overlarge frame bang in its centre.
Hovering between them was his mother, her attitude decidedly uncertain.
Before Stefan could open his mouth, the Honourable Mrs Ankerville accosted him.
“What is one to do, Stefanus?” she exclaimed, without the slightest preliminary. “I say nothing of Dionisia, who seems to have no notion of correct conduct, but here is your cousin, who must have a perfectly good sofa of her own, taking up enough space for two.”
“She is two, Mama,” piped up Dion, rolling her eyes at Stefan in her usual fashion from under the blonde frizz framing her pixie face. “Not that I expect you to have noticed, but poor Paulina is increasing.”
Stefan was not surprised to see his mother turn an enquiring eye upon her niece. “What, again? Dear me. Well, if you must, you must, I suppose.”
“It is hardly my blame, Aunt Corisande,” said the visitor snappily, smoothing a restless hand over the large mound beneath her silken gown.
But Mrs Ankerville was not attending. “Stefanus, if Paulina is set upon having incessant babies, you must purchase another sofa, or I will have to refrain from coming down.”
“You hardly ever do, Mama.” Stefan strolled forward, ignoring both his sister’s stifled giggle and Paulina’s glare. “What can have brought you from your eyrie? Have you run out of ink again?”
“Paper! There is no paper in this house.”
Stefan met her as she came out from between the sofas, and dropped a careless kiss on the riot of burnished curls, as yet untouched by grey, tumbling untidily over her shoulders.
“I will find you some presently.” Putting his mother from him, he turned his most practised smile upon his cousin.
“Pay no heed to Mama, cousin. You must understand that infants, like everything else unconnected with medieval legend, are a burdensome inconvenience to one of Corisande’s artistic temperament. ”
“Now that is simply not true,” said his mother, returning to Dion’s sofa and seating herself — without the least difficulty — in the space between her daughter’s feet and its rolled end. “I doted upon the two of you.”
“For about five minutes each day,” said Dion, entirely without rancour.
Neither of them, Stefan reflected, bore Corisande the least grudge for having largely ignored her offspring.
There were benefits to be had in owning a creature so scatterbrained as to give her children their heads because her own was so firmly entrenched in the study and compilation of poetic works relating to an age of courtly knights, legendary dragons and damsels in distress.
“It is a heresy,” stated Mrs Ankerville, “and in another age, my love, you would have been —”
“— burned at the stake,” finished Stefan in unison with his sister.
“If I had a guinea for every time I have been threatened with that fate,” added Dion, “I should be dowered well enough to catch a marquis.”
“Why should you want one?” objected her mother. “Your duties would leave you not a moment to yourself. You had much better look lower.”
“Oh, yes. Sir Beauregarde de Fontaineville or some such fanciful person, I presume.”
“As far as I know, there is no such person.”
“And you would certainly know if there was,” put in Stefan, eager to promote this harmless theme until he should be alone with his sister.