Chapter 28
The train to Hertfordshire departed Euston Station with a gust of steam and a heave of grinding metal.
Nell sat across from Lady Belwood in their shared first-class compartment.
Miles was in the upholstered seat beside Nell, examining the railway timetable with undue attention.
She supposed it was his way of recusing himself from any prospect of conversation.
He’d taken refuge in silence ever since she’d invited Lady Belwood to join them.
He didn’t approve, that much was obvious. He thought Nell impulsive. Unwise. Perhaps even self-destructive. As for his opinion of Lady Belwood…
From the moment they’d encountered her on the platform, Miles had regarded the woman with an edge of cool disdain.
Nell was touched by his show of protectiveness. Doubtless he’d rather Nell had limited contact with her ladyship, thereby sparing herself any additional hurt.
But despite the queasiness in her stomach and the uneven flutter of her pulse, Nell couldn’t regret her suggestion that they travel together.
She told herself she was being practical.
Thinking of the shooting party. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that Lady Belwood was her mother.
That she had abandoned Nell to an orphanage eighteen years ago in exchange for a life of wealth and privilege.
“Have you no maid with you?” Lady Belwood asked when they were underway.
Her own servants had been relegated to a lower-class carriage at the back of the train.
She wasn’t diminished by the lack of them.
She sat straight and proud, the picture of elegance in her rose-pink silk-and-velvet traveling gown.
“I don’t keep a lady’s maid,” Nell replied.
Miss Corvus believed that self-sufficiency began with one’s toilette. Both Nell’s old gowns and her new ones were made with front fastenings as a consequence, allowing her to dress and undress herself. Nell would have it no other way.
“You and Mrs. Royce are singular ladies in that regard,” Lady Belwood said. Her disapproval was evident. She was a woman who took pride in her appearance.
“I expect we are,” Nell said. “We have both been used to shifting for ourselves from a young age.”
If Lady Belwood registered the significance of Nell’s statement, she didn’t show it. “I shall lend you the services of my own maid while we’re at Northwick Hall.”
Nell acknowledged the offer with an inclination of her head. “You are very generous.”
Lady Belwood gave a dismissive wave of her kid-gloved hand. “I have a reputation as a lady of fashion. My friends must necessarily be as faultless in their dress as I am.”
Outside the window of their compartment, the hectic London scenery whipped by at an ever-increasing pace. It was but thirty miles to their stop in Hertfordshire. A negligible distance by train.
“I hope we shall be friends,” Nell said. “Despite our difference in age.”
Her ladyship’s eyes hardened with swift censure. “We do not speak of age, Mrs. Quincey. It is an indelicate subject.”
Nell affected a chastened expression. “Forgive my ignorance, ma’am. I hadn’t a mother to advise me.”
Miles flashed Nell a frowning look.
Nell ignored it. She was too busy observing Lady Belwood’s reaction.
Her ladyship’s countenance had gone oddly flat. She withdrew a perfumed handkerchief from her cord-trimmed sleeve. The scent of jasmine, tuberose, and honey stirred in the air.
Nell breathed in the familiar fragrance. With it came a barrage of memory. The little country house. The two aged servants. The fine, perfumed lady who pinched her cheek with such seeming affection.
Lady Belwood raised the handkerchief to her nose. “I cannot abide railway smoke,” she complained. But she wasn’t coughing or sniffing. She was studying Nell. “Your mother…She died, I presume?”
“It was a long time ago,” Nell said vaguely.
“After which you decided to become a teacher at a charity school? With your natural endowments, you could surely have embarked on a more auspicious path.”
“You will have noticed my limp, ma’am,” Nell said.
Lady Belwood dropped a look at Nell’s skirts as though she could see the injury beneath. She gave a faint moue of distaste. “I had thought it a temporary affliction.”
“It is a permanent one,” Nell informed her. “A fall when I was a girl was the cause of it. It damaged my prospects.”
“But your face—”
“Small compensation for my broken body.”
Lady Belwood flinched. “You are too severe, Mrs. Quincey.”
“Not at all,” Nell said. “I simply prefer facing unpleasant facts. To do otherwise is to live in a fantasy world. A dangerous course, don’t you agree?”
“I don’t quite—”
“Unpleasantness doesn’t disappear merely because we don’t acknowledge it. On the contrary, I find that it has a way of rearing its head at the most inconvenient times.”
Miles thrust the railway timetable in front of Nell. “Perhaps reading would be preferable to conversation, my dear?”
Nell took the timetable from him with a cool glare. Did he think her conversation ill-advised? Cruel, perhaps?
And perchance it was.
Nell hadn’t planned it to be. None of this had been planned. It was only now that Lady Belwood was seated across from her, looking so rich and superior, with her fine clothes and aristocratic airs, that Nell realized the ugly truth of her own feelings.
She wasn’t just hurt by her mother’s abandonment of her. She was angry.
Certainly, Miles could see it, even if Lady Belwood could not. He was coming to know Nell too well.
“Not very riveting reading, you’ll agree,” Nell said as she set aside the timetable. “I should have brought a book.” She was mortified to hear a catch in her voice.
Miles gently took hold of her hand.
Nell’s throat tightened.
It seemed he did know what she was feeling. And he was making an effort not to silence her, but to reassure her. To show her that, whatever she faced, she wasn’t facing it alone.
The anger in Nell’s heart dissipated. It was no match for the affection she felt for Miles Quincey in that moment.
Her fingers curled around his in reply. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t dare. Given her unruly emotions, she feared she’d burst into tears.
She stared out the window. She’d been a fool to believe she could endure Lady Belwood’s company unaffected. Even Miles had seen it. But it was too late now to rectify the mistake. They had the remainder of the journey to endure, and the whole of the shooting party, too. Three interminable days.
Nell wondered how on earth she was going to make it through.
· · · · ·
The train rolled up to the platform halt at Moor Cross in Hertfordshire at a quarter to noon precisely. From there, a hired carriage conveyed them the remaining five miles, along an uneven muddy track, to the Fawn-Purvis family’s remote ancestral estate.
Gusts of wind buffeted the body of the coach, making it shudder and shake.
Nell didn’t envy Lady Belwood’s maid and footman, who had been obliged to ride outside.
Rain looked to start any moment. If the color of the sky didn’t tell her so, the bone-deep ache in her hip and leg certainly would.
Her shoulder, too. It had lately seemed to pain her whenever the temperature dropped.
She folded her right arm in front of her, bracing it as the wheels of the carriage struck every pothole.
Lady Belwood clutched at the strap on the door to prevent herself from being bounced out of her seat. “Dreadful road,” she muttered. “I shall speak to Lord Amstead about it when we arrive.”
Miles’s hand was firmly at Nell’s waist, holding her steady against the worst of the jostling. He looked out the window. “That must be Northwick Hall.”
Nell leaned past him to see for herself.
A large Palladian mansion loomed ahead. It was made of a pale whitish-gray stone that perfectly suited the bleakness of the landscape.
A long elm-lined gravel drive led to the massive front doors.
It was there the driver took them, bringing the carriage to a halt in the selfsame moment the doors of the house swung open and several liveried servants emerged.
One of them assisted Lady Belwood from the carriage, while the others attended to the baggage strapped to the roof. Miles descended next so that he might hand Nell down himself.
Nell held on to his arm as she surveyed the premises.
Wind whipped at her skirts and at the ribbons that trimmed her stylish straw hat.
There was as yet no sign of anyone who looked important enough to be Baron Amstead.
The closest she saw was an older gentleman with a thickening midsection and a balding brown pate who carried himself with an immense and formal dignity that immediately identified him as his lordship’s butler.
He bowed to them and, after a brief word with one of the footmen, invited them to accompany him into the house’s vast entrance hall.
A fire was burning at the end of it in a cavernous hearth, hot enough to take the chill from the air.
Portraits adorned the walls—ancient oils of an antiquity even greater than the ones Nell had observed in Lady Belwood’s house.
This was the home of a gentleman who had valued his ancestry.
Or rather, the former home of one who had.
The man who now came to greet them was not the aged Baron Amstead who had corresponded for so many years with the elderly Sir Walter Belwood. It was a comparatively younger man in a loose-fitting flannel suit. He was sandy-haired and hearty, with a conspicuous ease of manner.
“Lady Belwood,” he drawled, bowing over her hand. “I am charmed.”
“Lord Amstead,” Lady Belwood acknowledged him.