Chapter Seventeen
Two days after her meeting with Kitty and Jonnie’s grandmother, Verity encountered the woman both the older Dowager and Kitty seemed to nurture such an aversion to.
As it was a Monday, Kitty was safely ensconced in the schoolroom with Miss Bligh, for whom Verity had formed an immediate liking when they’d been introduced.
Everything about the middle-aged governess shouted spinster sister of a vicar, from her austere and plain gown to her tightly constrained hair and sensible footwear.
Had Verity been asked to conjure such a person up, she would undoubtedly have chosen to describe someone of Miss Bligh’s upright appearance and briskly capable manner.
And it had been obvious straight away that however Kitty liked to complain about her governess, in fact, both of them were very fond of one another.
Miss Bligh possessed a pleasing twinkle in her gray eyes and an air of indulgence to her young charge.
So Verity had cherished no worries about abandoning her new young friend to her studies and, as the day was sunny and warm again, setting out to explore more of the rolling parkland.
She went with the avowed intent of doing her duty, unpleasant though it might turn out to be, and calling upon the woman who was now her mother-in-law.
Having already been at Luxborough long enough for it to be considered rude that she’d not yet done so, and despite an understandable reluctance, she could put it off no longer.
Jonnie’s mother deserved to meet her son’s wife, even if she held that title in name only.
She certainly wasn’t about to reveal the truth to her.
Let Kitty remain the only one she’d confided in.
And besides, she was going to enjoy an excursion into the wider area of the park, where her maid had told her, with obvious trepidation and wariness, she would find the Dower House.
Although she’d spent the last fourteen years with Papa traveling from one European city to the next, she had, of course, grown up on an estate not dissimilar to this one, although considerably smaller, and had also experienced the pleasurable vagaries of Europe’s countryside.
Enough to know that it was the countryside she preferred to the bustle of city life.
Really, Lord Dunster, in dismissing her from his presence, could have done nothing kinder than dispatching her off to his country estate.
A little part of her heart, especially as the day was so fine, would have liked to be able to thank him for the present he’d so unwittingly given her.
And if she cared to admit it, she felt quite glad she was not at this moment back in heat-drenched France with Papa, on their way to his next victim.
The stability of life at Luxborough was already creeping into her heart alongside a liking for not just Kitty and her slightly strange grandmother, but also for the house and gardens.
And now the wide expanse of the park as well.
So, with a jaunty spring in her stride, and the least ostentatious of her new gowns on, matched with a pert straw bonnet, she set out from the house as soon as Miss Bligh had swept her pupil off to the schoolroom.
Kitty’s strident complaints could be heard echoing around the house as Verity let herself out of the front door, but she ignored them.
Not that Kitty herself wanted to pay a visit to the younger Dowager, of course.
No, the naughty girl just wanted to avoid a morning spent in the schoolroom.
In front of the house lay the redundant, and immaculate, circular gravel drive which should have enabled the easy dropping off of visitors.
Not a single weed dared to mar its perfection.
Not that it was likely any visitors would have the temerity to call.
Kitty had informed her that no one had visited in over a year, the last arrival other than a Dr. Collins for her grandmother having been Jonnie himself, for a brief overnight stay.
As this meant he hadn’t been to his estate in more than a year, did it also mean she might be allowed to live her life here in peace?
For some reason Verity wasn’t quite as pleased about that as she felt she ought to be.
With determination, she pushed that thought aside and set off across the drive’s central circle of neatly mown grass.
There must be a lot of gardeners here to maintain this perfection.
A low wall encircled the drive and, at the far side, the wrought iron gates through which her carriage had entered just a few days ago stood open.
Beyond lay the rolling parkland she’d so far only glimpsed from the confines of the house and garden.
Feeling as though she was making an escape, Verity stepped into the outer extremities of Luxborough Park.
Here, the grass had been grazed rather than mown, but was nearly as short and neat as the garden lawns.
“Sheep,” Kitty had said when Verity had first asked.
“We have sheep to keep the parkland grass short. Because deer are browsers and mostly eat the trees. And although in the gardens we have lots of gardeners, at least one of whom keeps the grass everywhere trimmed, it would take hundreds of them to do the same for the acres of the park.” She laughed.
“And there’s a pony who wears slippers on his hooves who pulls any machinery they need.
When I was just a little girl, Arthur, the old head gardener, used to sit me up on the pony, whose name was Slipper, of course, because of his footwear, and lead me about the little paths in the rose garden.
” A pleasing image of a childhood not dissimilar to Verity’s own.
A childhood which for her had ended at the age of nine.
The estate’s many sheep had been busy, with the inevitable result that Verity had to watch where she was putting her feet.
However, undaunted, and glad her gown was not long enough to sweep the ground, she set off eastwards across the springy grass.
Her intent was to follow the line of the ha-ha that separated the formal gardens from the park, and take her maid’s suggested shortcut towards the lake she could see from her bedroom window.
For beyond the lake lay the road which would lead her to the Dower House.
Reflecting the clear blue of the sky in the most attractive fashion, this lake swung in a wide curve a little reminiscent of a giant comma, when viewed from the upper floor of the house.
However, from down here, it disappeared out of sight behind the house to her left, and to her right narrowed towards a long, five-arched stone bridge which was where she would have to cross the water.
Here she escaped having to dodge around what the sheep had left behind and re-joined the gravel drive.
In the middle, she halted to view the park from this new angle, as the late morning sun beat down on her back and made her glad of her bonnet to protect her face. A countess needed to take care of her complexion rather more than the daughter of a professional gambler did.
Turning a slow circle on her heel, she observed how the park stretched away in every direction into a hazy beyond.
To the north lay distant hills, while the boundaries of the other three points of the compass were forested in pleasingly mixed hues of green.
Was all of this Lord Dunster’s estate? As far as she could see?
Bessie had implied it was. “The estate goes on for miles, milady. My ma and pa’s farm is up near them hills, a goodly walk off.
My ma says if you walk to Oxford from our farm, you do it almost all on Dunster lands. ”
Surely that wasn’t true? No one should own that much unless they were a king or queen.
Which made her think of poor Marie Antoinette of France, the news of whose execution she could just remember hearing as a child in the Dower House at Somerton.
It had clawed itself a place in her head, for she’d been aware that her own parents, unknown to her as they were at that point in time, were in France, and that her mysterious, absent mother was French and possibly in danger.
Fear for them had subsumed her for days, until Grandmama had assured her no one was about to execute some jumped up tavern-keeper’s daughter.
Which had also been the first she’d heard about her mother’s less than noble origins.
Along one side of the lake waterlilies grew, their creamy cups open wide in adoration of the sunlight, their flat leaves green plates covering the water, no doubt harboring a good few frogs and such like.
Further along, drooping willows stretched long fingers down to trail in the dark, shadowy depths.
A walk around the lake would be a pleasure, perhaps with Kitty for company, but not one she could allow herself to indulge in this morning.
A lime avenue opened up before her, the trees throwing leafy shade to either side of the gravel drive.
It headed south away from the house and the road which would lead back to the imposing gatehouse, and it was down here, according to the knowledgeable Bessie, that the Dower House lay.
She’d been more than a little unwilling to offer directions, her eyes round with shock that her new mistress had shown a desire to visit “the French Dowager,” which must be what the servants called her, and perhaps the tenants too.
But Verity had wormed what she needed out of the girl.