Chapter Fifteen #2
Kitty nodded. “I promise faithfully that whatever you tell me shall remain between just the two of us, so help me God.” She crossed her heart with a flamboyant wave of one hand.
She certainly had a flair for the dramatic.
Verity glanced out of the window again but the peacock had gone. “Well,” she said, “it all began with a game of cards.”
After a quiet supper in the entertaining company of her new friend, Verity retired to bed early and slept until the morning, her dreams troubled only from time to time by the tall dark stranger to whom she was now married, wide lakes, and a house whose corridors stretched on forever.
She awoke to find her heavy curtains were being thrown back to fill the bedroom with bright morning light. Kitty, dressed in a flowered muslin gown that might have fitted her well two years since, bounced onto the end of the bed with disturbing enthusiasm.
Verity sat up and rubbed her eyes. Thanks to Papa’s nocturnal lifestyle, she was more used to late mornings, and the last thirty-six hours had been draining.
However, now she was awake and the bright day glimpsed beyond the window appeared to be so promising, she might as well stir herself.
At heart she was a girl who preferred the mornings, and she’d only adapted herself to suit Papa’s vagaries.
“Good morning, Verity.” Kitty bounced up and down on the bed a bit more. It was a very soft and bouncy bed, which had contributed to a mainly good night’s sleep. Verity’s dreams receded into dim shadows and vanished away.
“And a very good morning to you, Kitty.” She pushed her covers back and slid out of bed, the silk rug luxurious beneath her bare feet.
“I came to wake you up and bring you down for breakfast,” Kitty said.
“I, I mean we, take it in the breakfast room. Just me mostly. Grandmama eats in her room, as you might imagine. She hasn’t been downstairs for years.
” She threw open the wardrobe. “And after breakfast, I want to take you exploring. What are you going to wear?”
Verity eyed the opulent selection Aunt Josephine had purchased for her and let her eyes slide past it to her few faded, and beloved, old gowns.
If she was going out and about, as Kitty so obviously wanted her to, then one of them would do best. She didn’t want to risk damaging the smart gowns from the London dressmaker.
“Ring the bell for my maid, then, and I’ll get dressed. ”
An hour later, with breakfast behind them, they were free.
“It’s Saturday,” Kitty explained when asked about Miss Bligh.
“She doesn’t come on Saturdays or Sundays.
Thank goodness. She has to help her brother those days.
I keep wishing he had more parishes, because then she’d have to help him more and couldn’t be here so often.
Last time Jonnie was here, I asked him about finding them some, but he only laughed.
I don’t think he appreciates how dull it is to have to sit in a classroom all by oneself when outside the window the world is passing one by.
He went away to school, you see, and I have a suspicion that might be more fun than being taught at home.
All by myself. I should very much like to have friends.
” For a moment she sounded melancholy before she brightened.
“Although now I have you as a friend, as well as Meggie, things will undoubtedly look up.”
Well, the world had never passed Verity by, but had rather thundered along with her caught in the middle of it.
“Then let us make the most of your days of freedom,” she said, her heart lightening by the moment.
“And as it is such a beautiful day, perhaps you could show me the outside of the house, not the inside. I have never lived in a house with gardens before and have always wanted to.”
Kitty bounded with further enthusiasm, like a skittish colt just turned out in a lush meadow.
“Exactly what I think. The insides of houses are full of such boring things. You have to be careful not to knock things over and break them, you’re not allowed to slide down the bannisters—which you must allow are immensely inviting—and even opening a window is frowned upon by Mrs. Burke. ”
“Remind me who Mrs. Burke is, please.”
“The housekeeper.”
Of course. Verity vaguely remembered her introduction when she’d arrived.
They passed out of the door into the shady loggia.
“I think perhaps you’d better tell me the names of the staff again, so I don’t get things wrong.
They were introduced yesterday but the only one I can remember is Mr. Lucas, the butler.
And perhaps a little bit about them, which will help me to remember who is who. ”
Delighted, Kitty rushed into a rather indecipherable description of everyone residing and working within the house and gardens, that Verity had to struggle to make head or tail of.
As they walked around the extensive and beautiful rose garden, she finally began to put names to posts, in between her informant giving her unnecessary information about the roses.
She learned that Mrs. Burke, the aforementioned housekeeper, was a woman Kitty did her best to avoid, for fear she would be told off.
Mr. Lucas, on the other hand, was, according to Kitty, a sweetheart.
Then there were the footmen—all four of them, which seemed a bit excessive.
“All very handsome and very dull,” Kitty sighed, plucking a large pink rose with delicate finger and thumb.
She removed the thorns with neat pincer movements of her nails and set it behind her ear.
“I am quite certain Jonnie has ordered them never to speak to me on pain of death. And I’m also quite certain he would carry out that punishment without batting an eyelid.
He can be so very stern when he gets cross. ”
He could indeed. However, possibly a wise move on his part with so pretty a sister and a bevy of handsome young men working in the house.
Then there was Mrs. Lovell, the cook, for whom Kitty nurtured a deep fondness.
“If I go to the kitchens, which I’m not supposed to do, Mrs. Lovell always has cake for me.
I’m also not supposed to eat the cake, on Grandmama’s orders, but as she’s batty, I have no qualms about disobeying her.
I mean, no cake? Whatever for? And Mrs. Lovell is quite happy in aiding and abetting me. She’s a dear.”
The housemaids were called Rose, Mary, Kate, and Janet, and one of them, but Kitty wasn’t sure which, was having a love affair with one of the footmen.
She also didn’t know which footman, but had heard the girls all talking about it together one morning when they didn’t know she was up and about.
“Whoever it is, they’re going to get into dreadful trouble,” Kitty said, with a wise shake of her head but a hint of salacious enjoyment.
“My mother was a maid too, but she didn’t waste her time on a footman, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now. ”
“So she caught the eye of the Old Earl? She must have been almost as pretty as you.” Which was true, for Kitty was quite the prettiest child Verity had ever met, with her dark hair and eyes and pale, unblemished skin.
Kitty nodded. “That’s why I’m Jonnie’s half sister, you goose.
” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh. I shouldn’t have called you that.
I’m so sorry. Miss Bligh would be cross with me.
I have such a habit of speaking before I think, she always says, and I fear she’s right.
You are a countess, after all, so I shouldn’t call you a goose. ”
Verity laughed, something she hadn’t felt like doing for over a week.
For longer, in fact, as life with Papa had not often been inducive of merriment.
“That’s quite all right. I don’t feel in the least bit like a countess, and you know exactly why not.
If I am a goose, then you’re more than welcome to point it out to me.
I’ve so much going through my head that I’m getting it all muddled.
” She took Kitty’s arm. “Is there a portrait of your papa, perhaps? I would very much like to see it if there is.” What she really wanted to find out was how much Jonnie resembled his father, although she wasn’t about to admit that even to herself.
Surely that had been his picture on the wall in the house in Cavendish Square.
For some reason, Kitty’s face took on a worried frown. “Of course. I should also like to show him to you. Only, also of course, you must remember I never met him. But if I had, I know quite well that I would have loved him, even though I know Jonnie didn’t.”
If that portrait in the house in Cavendish Square was one of her father, Verity wasn’t convinced, having observed his stern expression and cruel mouth, that anyone could have loved him. And if Jonnie hadn’t…
They linked arms. “It must have been hard for you growing up without mother or father.” Verity might not have had her own parents until she was nine, but at least she’d had Grandmama before that, who had not been senile and bedroom-ridden, and Papa after that.
She barely remembered her own mother, a woman who’d shown no interest in her for the brief time they’d known one another.
The clearest memory of her she had was of the day she’d died, and how Papa had sobbed at her passing.
And how he’d pushed her away when she’d tried to comfort him.
The sensation that she was never going to be enough for Papa had begun then.