Chapter 2 The Architect
“Do come inside,” Lily said. “Let us at least offer you the hospitality of Staineybank. You will want hot baths and perhaps something to eat? Or drink? Do you have servants with you?”
“No. Just the two of us,” Lady Juliet said, deflated by the discovery that they had been brought there under false pretences.
Lily waved a footman forward. “Henry will take your coats.”
They unwound scarves and removed outer garments and gloves and various other impedimenta, and Sophia was pleased to see that Mr Payne was indeed a good-looking man, symmetrical of feature and with dark eyes of unusual brilliance.
Cousin Hester appeared just then, and Lily introduced the awkward guests.
Whatever the difficulty, Cousin Hester could always deal with it unflappably.
Sophia was not quite sure what sort of cousin she was to the duke — an irregular one, she suspected — but since she was still a spinster at the age of forty-one, she made herself useful running Staineybank.
“Lady Juliet? Mr Payne? Would you care to follow me?” Cousin Hester said in her soft voice.
She made for the stairs, with Lady Juliet and Lily dutifully in her wake, but Mr Payne was still craning his neck to view the magnificent ceiling plaster-work. The ladies stopped and turned on the stairs.
“Simon?” Lady Juliet said, sounding anxious. “Do come along. You may look around the house later, I am sure.”
His face fell, and he almost pouted, like a schoolboy denied a long-anticipated treat. Sophia was tempted to laugh, for he was an oddity, that much was certain.
“Perhaps Mr Payne would like to view the principal rooms now?” she said. “I should be happy to show him around, and bring him to his room later.”
“That is very kind, dear,” Lily said. “Where are you putting Mr Payne, Hester?”
“I thought perhaps the smaller Chinese room? If you approve, your grace. Sir, if convenient, I shall order your bath for one hour from now. Would you care to step this way, my lady.”
They vanished up the stairs, and the servants and luggage had disappeared, too, leaving Sophia gazing at the stranger, while he continued to revolve slowly, taking in every detail of the hall.
“I think we were not introduced properly, Mr Payne,” Sophia said. “I am Miss Sophia Merrington. My brother Richard is heir to the duke — a second cousin.”
“How do you do?” he said, bowing formally to her. “I am Simon.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “Payne.”
Automatically, she curtsied in response. “Shall we look at another room? The White Drawing Room is through here.”
For a while, he prowled around the room, muttering excitedly under his breath at the statues in niches or the carved stone mantels that graced the twin fireplaces.
Occasionally he would stretch out a finger to place the gentlest of touches upon an object of particular interest, straightening any ornament slightly askew, his manner almost reverent.
Then he looked up and gasped in awe. Sophia rather liked the painted ceiling, too, with its swirling colours and flying cherubs.
When the ladies were yawning after dinner and watching the clock to see when they might expect the gentlemen to return and liven things up a little, Sophia would rest her head on the back of her chair and admire the ceiling.
Richard’s estate at Leahollow had some interesting plaster work, and a few good paintings hanging on the walls, but this scene, painted directly onto the ceiling, gave her a great sense of wonder.
Imagine the skill of the artist, to create such a thing in place, lying on his back, just like Michelangelo!
It made her very humble to be able to live beneath its extraordinary beauty.
“It is lovely, is it not?” she said.
“Yes!” He spun round to face her, alight with enthusiasm. “Magnificent! Incomparable! Better than Chatsworth.”
“Oh! My goodness! I had no idea. I know nothing of art in general, but I like this very well. There is another, smaller painting on the ceiling of the dining room, if you would care to see it.”
“Yes. I would. Very much.”
They ambled from room to room, and perhaps because she had expressed an interest, he stopped muttering to himself and described to her all the interesting features.
She did not understand much of it, for the vocabulary of art seemed to be largely Italian, not a language she had ever studied beyond a few simple songs, but she liked to listen to him.
He had a pleasant voice, lighter than one would expect for such a large man, and his passion for the subject infused every word.
And she could not help admitting that he was well worth looking at himself.
With his face afire with enthusiasm, and his dark eyes shining, she liked him just as well as the painted ceilings.
Eventually, her curiosity got the better of her, and she said, “I have been trying to decide how you are related to Lady Juliet, but I cannot work it out. You are related, I assume? Or… married?” The ages were odd for a married couple, since Lady Juliet was some ten years older than Mr Payne, but it was as well to know at once.
“Ha! Not married. Brother and sister. Half… different mothers.”
“And your father is…?”
“Earl of Edlesborough. Nasty, vindictive man.”
“Oh!” Sophia said, shocked.
“Sorry but quite true. I hate him. Keeps us in poverty — his own children.”
He pulled at the sleeve of his coat, and she could see now that although it was of good quality, it was shabby and frayed.
His neckcloth, too, had a slightly grey tinge, as of linen that has been laundered too many times.
Somehow, that was even more shocking, to Sophia’s mind, that the children of an earl, a man who must be supposed to have a vast income, should not spend a little to keep his son and daughter clothed in a manner suitable for their station in life.
They had gone round most of the ground floor and had reached the library, where Mr Payne was distracted by the architectural drawings of Staineybank on one wall, when Froggett came in.
“There you are, Miss Merrington. Your bath is ready, Mr Payne, if you would care to step upstairs.”
“Oh, goodness, I forgot to watch the time,” Sophia said guiltily.
“I am so sorry, Mr Payne, and half these rooms have no fires lit. You must be frozen. It is unconscionably rude of me to monopolise your attention in this way, but I was so enjoying your thoughts that everything else went out of my head.”
He smiled at her, a warm smile that made her insides melt just a little. “My pleasure. Perhaps we might continue later?”
It was hard to catch her breath. “I am not sure… it will depend. Do go and warm up, and I will see you at dinner, if not before.”
With another smile, he bowed and meekly followed the butler, while Sophia was left alone to calm her pattering heart and wonder at her own foolishness.
***
Juliet was waiting for Simon when he emerged, bathed and changed, from his dressing room.
“Oh, good, you got the message about knee breeches,” she said, looking him up and down. “The duke is most particular, it seems, and we want to keep on his good side.”
“The footman told me, and also not to be late. He sounds… difficult.”
“Possibly, possibly. What do you make of it?” she said, pacing back and forth between the bed and the window. “Is it not extraordinary?”
“Beautiful,” he said. “The brushwork on the drawing room ceiling—”
“Not the house, Simon. The letter! This letter from the supposed attorney — Mr Goodenough. I have been hearing all about it from the duchess. In June last year, Miss Rowena Hood… Hodd… no, Holt, that was it. Miss Holt received just such a letter inviting her to come to Staineybank, where she would discover something to her advantage. She was looking for a post as a governess at the time, so naturally she supposed that was what it was about. A man turned up — she was living in Oxfordshire at the time — gave her a purse of one hundred pounds, if you please, and carried her here in just such a style as we have been conveyed. Whereupon she discovered that no one from the family had ever summoned her, and the carriage, with the fraudulent Mr Goodenough, had vanished. Just as he did to us today. Is it not the most peculiar circumstance?”
Simon pondered that, frowning. “We did not get a hundred pounds.”
“That is hardly the point, Simon dear.”
“It would have been useful,” he said sadly. “A hundred from Mama and another hundred from the attorney — we could have lived very well on that for months. Years, perhaps. All the bills paid.”
“Yes, yes, but there was no money from the attorney, who is not an attorney at all. He is a rogue and a charlatan, and I do not understand the purpose of all this. There is a plan for an orangery, but this Mr Richard Merrington is to design it.”
“She married him,” Simon said, suddenly struck.
“What? Who married whom?”
“Miss Rowena Something, who got the hundred pounds. She married Mr Richard Merrington. Who is he? Oh, I remember, duke’s heir. Second cousin.”
“Is he? Did she? Simon, what does any of that matter? We have been brought here on false pretences, but we can still make something of it. We cannot leave until the snow has cleared, and that gives us an opportunity to talk to this Mr Richard Merrington about the orangery — offer him advice, draw up some plans of your own, that sort of thing. We must spin it out for as long as we can, for at least we will be housed and fed — and warm, Simon! Look at that fire! And the scuttle full of the best coal, and it will be replenished every day. Oh, the bliss!”
“Plenty of hot water, too,” he said, smiling. “I had a glass of brandy while I soaked in the bath, and now I feel very warm, inside and out.”