Venetia Read online

  ‘Let her!’ said Venetia, her eyes kindling. ‘I can assure you that she would catch cold at that! I don’t think Lady Lanyon could be prevailed upon to do it, and if she did I should be obliged to tell her that it is out of her powers to dismiss you. Until Sir Conway comes home I shall continue as mistress here; and when he does come – I give Mrs Scorrier one week before he sends her packing! Only be patient, Ribble!’

  He began to look more cheerful, and when Venetia very improperly confided to him that Conway had already sent Mrs Scorrier packing from Cambray he was wonderfully heartened, and went off chuckling to himself. He would certainly pass this titbit of news on to Mrs Gurnard, and possibly to Nurse, but as it was unlikely that any of the younger servants would be deemed worthy to be taken into the confidence of their betters Venetia was untroubled by any qualm of conscience.

  She went out into the garden, and was engaged in snipping the dead heads off a few late-flowering plants when she saw her sister-in-law come out of the house, and stand hesitating, looking about her in a timid way, as though she feared to be pounced on suddenly by some ogre. She waved to her, and, as Charlotte started towards her, strolled to meet her. Charlotte was wrapped in a shawl, and looked pale, and rather hagged. She said, with her nervous smile: ‘Oh, good-morning, Miss Lanyon! – Venetia, I mean! I thought I might take a turn in the garden, or – or perhaps just sit for awhile in the sun. I have the headache a little, and it was so hot in the kitchen, and I don’t know how to cook, or – or any recipes, so I slipped away. Mama – Mama is telling your cook the French way of making veal into a ragout.’

  ‘How very wise you were to slip away!’ said Venetia, laughing. ‘I can readily imagine the scene, and only hope the meat-axe may not be within reach!’

  ‘Mama thinks she is a very good cook!’ Charlotte said quickly. ‘She complimented her on her pastry, and – and –’

  ‘My dear, I was only funning! Have you been conducted all over the house, and are you quite exhausted?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Charlotte replied, sinking rather limply on to a rustic seat. ‘That is – it is so very large, and rambling, and I am so ignorant about managing a house! I know Mrs Gurnard despised me dreadfully – though she was very civil! Oh, Miss – Oh, Venetia, I know it is silly to be afraid of a housekeeper, but I don’t know what to say to her, because I can’t ask her questions, like Mama! I wish Mama had made me learn those things!’

  ‘Do you? Then I can tell you just what you should do!’ said Venetia, in a heartening tone. ‘What’s more, nothing would please Mrs Gurnard more! One day, when you have an hour to spare, go to Mrs Gurnard’s room, and tell her just what you have told me. She knows, of course, that you have never managed a house, and she will like you the better for owning it. Ask her if she will teach you! You will find that you are soon on the most comfortable terms with her.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Charlotte said, rather doubtfully. ‘I would like to learn, but perhaps Mama would not wish me to ask Mrs Gurnard –’

  ‘Perhaps she would not,’ agreed Venetia dryly. ‘But it is what Conway would wish you to do!’

  She left this to sink in. Charlotte sat pondering it, and presently sighed. ‘Oh, if only Conway were here!’ She turned her face away, and after a moment said in a trembling voice: ‘I never thought, you see, that I should have to come here without him! I don’t mean – of course I like to be at Undershaw – and you have been so very –’ Tears choked any further utterance.

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Venetia said, taking her hand, and patting it. ‘It was infamous of Conway to send you home in such a way! But, indeed, Charlotte, we are all very happy to have you, and we shall try to make you happy as well. And Conway will soon be with you again, won’t he?’

  ‘Oh, yes! You are so very good to me! I didn’t mean to complain!’ Charlotte said, hastily drying her eyes. ‘I beg your pardon! It was only not feeling very well, and then having to go with Mama and Mrs Gurnard – But it is all nonsense! Nurse said – Oh, Venetia, Nurse is very kind, isn’t she?’

  ‘Ah, so you’ve made Nurse’s acquaintance, have you? I am so glad – and that you like her!’

  ‘Yes, indeed, she made me feel so comfortable! She was putting a hot brick in my bed when I went up last night, and she helped me to undress, and made me drink a posset, and told me about Conway, when he was a little boy! It was she who brought up my breakfast tray, too.’

  Thankful that her thoughts had taken a more cheerful direction Venetia encouraged her to continue talking in this strain, and was presently helped by the arrival on the scene of Nurse herself, bringing a cup of hot milk to Charlotte. It was immediately made apparent to Venetia that Nurse had decided to admit Charlotte into the ranks of her charges, for she began scolding almost before she came within tongue-shot, demanding to know what was this that she had heard about her ladyship’s not fancying her nuncheon? To Charlotte’s faint excuse that she was not hungry she replied severely: ‘Never you mind whether you’re hungry, my lady! You’ve two to feed now, and you’ll just do what Nurse says, and no nonsense! Now, you drink this nice cup of milk!’ As she put it into Charlotte’s hand she looked sharply at her, and said: ‘Who’s been upsetting you, my lady? Not Miss Venetia, I know!’

  ‘Oh, no, no! I was silly – it’s nothing!’

  ‘She misses Conway,’ Venetia explained.

  ‘To be sure she does, but crying won’t bring him home any the sooner,’ said Nurse briskly. ‘There, now, my lady, drink up your milk, and you’ll be better! What you want to do is to go with Miss Venetia for a walk in the park, instead of moping here. You’ll have your Mama coming to find you before you know where you are, and you’ve had enough worriting for one day. You take her, Miss Venetia, but not too far, mind!’

  ‘I will, and gladly,’ Venetia said, getting up. ‘Would you care for it, Charlotte?’

  ‘Yes, please – only will it not be damp? Mama said –’

  ‘Now, what did I tell you, my lady?’ said Nurse. ‘There’s no need for you to cosset yourself. It’s what I don’t hold with, and never have, and so I shall tell your Mama.’

  ‘Oh, Nurse, pray – !’ gasped Charlotte imploringly.

  ‘Don’t you worry your pretty head, my lady!’ advised Nurse, with a grim little laugh. ‘There, you go along with Miss Venetia, and no more nonsense!’

  ‘I’ll fetch the dogs: they need a run,’ said Venetia, unaware that she was striking dismay into Charlotte’s heart.

  ‘You won’t do that, miss, for Master Aubrey took them with him,’ said Nurse, to Charlotte’s great relief. ‘Yes, you may well stare! Gone off riding, he has, and not a bit of heed would he pay to me, except to say that if he didn’t try whether it hurt him he wouldn’t ever know. The next thing we know we shall have him abed again, for he that hath a forward heart findeth no good, Miss Venetia, as I’ve told him often and often!’

  ‘When Nurse becomes Biblical, it is a sign that she is much moved!’ Venetia said, as she and Charlotte crossed the lawn together. ‘Aubrey had an accident a few weeks ago, and we are afraid his weak leg may not yet be fit for riding. However, I expect he won’t persist, if he finds it pains him, and in any event it doesn’t do to try to coddle him: he doesn’t like to have his lameness mentioned, you see.’

  She led Charlotte into the park, chatting of such commonplaces as she hoped might set the girl more at her ease. Charlotte had already asked her if she was very bookish, and she had gathered that the epithet stood in her mind for all that was most alarming. She could not help thinking, as she recounted an anecdote of her childhood, that Charlotte would have little reason, after this session, for believing her to be very clever.

  Charlotte seemed to enjoy her walk, but as she favoured a dawdling method of progression, and contributed nothing to the conversation but some rather trite observations on the scenery, a description of her wedding-dress, and several uninteresting stories about a
school-friend, Venetia was soon heartily bored. She was about to suggest that it was perhaps time they made their way back to the house when the sound of cantering horses made her turn to look across a stretch of turf towards the avenue. She saw that the riders were Aubrey and Damerel, and at once waved to them, saying to Charlotte: ‘Shall we walk to meet them? The man with Aubrey is Lord Damerel, our nearest neighbour. I expect Aubrey brought him to pay his respects to you.’

  Charlotte assented, but in a scared voice which Venetia set down to shyness, and thought it best to ignore. Charlotte, however, was not thinking about the stranger she was to meet: she was hoping very much that the dreadful dogs bounding behind the horses were not savage. The horses were pulled up; Damerel drew his bridle over Crusader’s head, and gave it into Aubrey’s hand; and, to poor Charlotte’s dismay, three of the dreadful dogs came racing towards her. She shrank instinctively, but was relieved to discover that so far from biting her the spaniels paid no heed to her at all, but fawned round Venetia with as much exuberant delight as if they had not seen her for weeks. Then a whistle from Aubrey made them all tear off again, and Charlotte was glad to see that he was riding on to the stables, and taking the dogs with him.

  Damerel, coming towards the ladies with his easy stride, met Venetia’s eyes for a pregnant moment before turning his own to the bride’s countenance in a swiftly appraising glance. That second’s interchange proved almost too much for Venetia’s composure; there was a very slight tremor in her voice as she greeted him. ‘Good-morning! My odious little brother, I perceive, has stolen a march upon me, and told you our exciting news. All that is left for me to do is to present you to my sister-in-law, and although that is a very agreeable task I had hoped to have astonished you! This is Lord Damerel, Charlotte – our good friend and neighbour.’

  She saw with satisfaction, as Charlotte gave her hand to Damerel, and exchanged a few conventional words with him, that she showed no more shyness than was perfectly becoming. So nervous and so tongue-tied was she when trying to converse with her brother and sister-in-law that Venetia had begun to be afraid that she would make a poor impression on the neighbouring gentry. She was herself careless of appearances and knew little of the world but she was shrewd enough to guess that the secrecy in which Conway had seen fit to shroud his marriage would provide the ton of the North Riding with rich food for gossip and conjecture, and she thought it to be of the highest importance that Charlotte should give no one cause to say that she was so extraordinarily ill-at-ease that it was plain to be seen that something discreditable must lie behind the mystery of the strange marriage. But there was no fault to be found in her company-manners; she might be shy, she might utter nothing but platitudes, but Venetia was much inclined to think that such sharp-eyed critics as Lady Denny would pronounce her to be very pretty-behaved.

  They walked back to the house with Damerel between them, and it was not long before Charlotte was prattling happily about Paris, and Cambray, of Sunday drives to Longchamps, of parties at Lord Hill’s Headquarters, of Lord Hill’s kindness, and of what he had been so very obliging as to say to her about Conway. Venetia, at first astonished by this sudden blossoming, quickly realised that it was due not to any impulse of coquetry in Charlotte but to the adroit handling of an expert. She could only marvel, admire, and be at once amused and rueful. She had tried so hard to draw Charlotte out, and with so little success! Yet Damerel had done it within five minutes of making her acquaintance, and without apparent effort. He even made her laugh, for when she was talking about the delights of shopping in Paris he said: ‘And for hats of the first style of elegance, Phanie!’ which surprised a little trill of mirth out of her. ‘Yes! How did you know?’ she asked, looking innocently up at him.

  Venetia choked, and saw a muscle quiver in the corner of Damerel’s mouth. But he said gravely: ‘I fancy I must have heard the name on the lips of some lady of my acquaintance.’

  ‘Well, her hats are quite ravishing, but shockingly expensive!’

  ‘They are indeed! – if what I have been told is true!’

  ‘Oh, yes, for my husband bought one for me there, and when I learned the price I declare I was ready to sink, and felt obliged to shake my head at him! But he bought it, for all that, and I wore it at the breakfast that was given for the Duke of Wellington, when he came to Headquarters.’

  In this artless style the conversation was maintained until they came within sight of the house. As they approached the arched gateway through which Venetia had led Charlotte into the park they were met by Aubrey, and Charlotte’s confidences were at an end. She was absurdly nervous of Aubrey, and seemed to be embarrassed by his lameness, always looking away when he moved, in a manner too marked, Venetia knew, to escape his notice. His leg was dragging more than usual, as he came towards them, so it was to be inferred that his experimental ride had been premature.

  He nodded at Charlotte, saying: ‘Puxton has just come back from York with your abigail, ma’am. No, I have that wrong: your dresser! You should have sent William Coachman in with the carriage, Venetia: she ain’t accustomed to driving in gigs with an undergroom.’

  This threw Charlotte into a flutter of apprehension; and after assuring Venetia incoherently that Mama had engaged Miss Trossell in London but would be the first to depress such pretension, she excused herself and hurried away to the house. ‘Of all the ridiculous starts!’ Venetia exclaimed. ‘What can Mrs Scorrier have imagined Charlotte would want with a dresser at Undershaw?’ She looked up at Damerel, mischief in her face. ‘As for you, sir, with your milliners, whose prices – you have heard – are so extortionate, how you could have the effrontery – !’

  ‘Or you the impropriety, ma’am, to betray your understanding of the circumstances through which I became acquainted with Mlle Phanie – !’ he retorted.

  She laughed, but said: ‘Yes, of course, I ought to have appeared unconscious – and so I would have done had it been anyone but you. How skilfully you contrived to set my sister-in-law at her ease, by the way!’

  ‘But of course!’ he murmured provocatively.

  ‘What did you think of her?’ interrupted Aubrey.

  ‘Oh, your Pope quotation hits her off! A dead bore, but without guile or malice: she won’t trouble your peace.’

  ‘No. Nor, I fancy,’ said Venetia thoughtfully, ‘was Conway obliged to marry her, though I did suspect it at the outset, when I heard she was breeding.’

  ‘Yes, so did I,’ remarked Aubrey. ‘But Nurse says she expects to be confined in May, so that don’t fit. Nothing smoky about that.’

  ‘Well, don’t sound as if you had rather there had been!’ said Damerel, a good deal amused. ‘Am I to be privileged to meet Mama, or would that be unwise?’

  ‘I should rather suppose it might be, if she knows about you,’ responded Venetia, seriously considering the matter. ‘Let us go into the library – though it may well be that she doesn’t know, because although she is not vulgar –’

  ‘She is excessively vulgar,’ interpolated Aubrey.

  ‘Oh, she has a very vulgar mind!’ agreed Venetia. ‘I meant that she is not underbred, in the style of poor Mrs Huntspill, or that strange female I met when I visited Harrogate with Aunt Hendred, and who talked all the time of duchesses, and as if they had been her dearest friends, which my aunt assured me was not at all the case. Mrs Scorrier doesn’t boast in that fashion, and though she is not sincere, and quite odiously overbearing, there is nothing in her manners to give one a disgust of her. But I don’t believe she’s a member of the ton.’

  ‘If she’s the woman I rather fancy she must be, she’s the daughter of some small country squire,’ said Damerel, following her into the library. ‘From what Aubrey tells me, I should say your sister-in-law must be Ned Scorrier’s daughter – in which event you need not blush for the marriage. The Scorriers are well enough: not tonnish, but of good stock: a Staffordshire family. Ned Scorrier was one of the younger
sons, and was at Eton in my time, though senior to me by a couple of years. I know he became a military man, and made a bad match when he was only twenty, but what happened after that I don’t think I ever heard.’

  ‘He died of fever, in the Peninsula,’ said Venetia. ‘I should think he must be the same man, for Mrs Scorrier did say something about her husband’s family living in Staffordshire. She quarrelled with them.’ Her brow wrinkled. ‘At least, so I understood, from what Charlotte said, but it does seem an idiotish thing to have done, in her circumstances! She’s not very beforehand with the world, you know: doesn’t pretend to be; so one would have supposed that she would have taken care not to quarrel with her husband’s family.’

  ‘One of the advantages of having led a sequestered life,’ said Damerel, smiling, ‘is that you’ve not until now encountered the sort of woman who can’t refrain from quarrelling with all who cross her path. She is for ever suffering slights, and is so unfortunate as to make friends only with such ill-natured persons as soon or late treat her abominably! No quarrel is ever of her seeking; she is the most amiable of created beings, and the most long-suffering. It is her confiding disposition which renders her a prey to the malevolent, who, from no cause whatsoever, invariably impose upon her, or offer her such intolerable insult that she is obliged to cut the connection. Have I hit the mark?’

  ‘Pretty well!’ said Aubrey, grinning wryly.

  ‘Add jealousy!’ Venetia said. ‘Quite irrational, too! She took me in jealous dislike the instant she laid eyes on me, and I can’t discover why she should have done so, for indeed I don’t think I gave her cause!’