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The clear voice held an imperious ring that made Briggs’s eyes bulge.
“Your—horse?” he repeated faintly.
“Certainly. Did you imagine I walked here? I took a carriage as far as I could, and then, because I found I was running out of money, I rented a horse to bring me the rest of the way. I promised he would be returned tomorrow. Sir Edgar does keep a stable, I hope?”
The horse, a sorry-looking nag, stood with its reins carelessly looped over the polished railings.
“Sir Edgar…” Awful suspicions were beginning to flit through Briggs’s mind. Surely this shabby-looking young person could not be one of his master’s flirts? What was he expected to do about her?
It was with unutterable relief that Briggs suddenly caught sight of Constable Parsons sauntering up, his eyes curious under his shiny helmet. “Any trouble here, Mr. Briggs?” The girl turned her arrogant blue gaze on the florid-faced policeman.
“Certainly not. I am Rowena Dangerfield, and I am here because my mother and my stepfather insisted I must come.”
“You could have knocked me over with a feather!” Briggs reported with relish later on. “There she stood, giving orders as cool as you please, and you should have seen Parsons’s face when she said who she was! Come all the way from Tilbury, she had. And rode all the way through town on a horse—by herself!”
Adams took up the story. “My lady’s still lying in her bed with a hea
dache, and Mrs. Mellyn’s with her. Prostrated she is, poor thing, and small wonder! Fancy having her own daughter, whom she hasn’t seen in years, walk in like that, with never a word sent in advance to say she was coming! No baggage—she’d left it all on the dock. Just that shabby little bag with only a change of clothes. And she just up and walked away from those kind people that took charge of her and brought her all the way from India. I heard her say, as cool as a cucumber, that she did not like them and could not stand another moment of their company!”
“Wonder how she’ll get on here. Ooh… I expect Sir Edgar was in a fine rage! I could hear his shouting all the way to the scullery, I could.” Mary’s mouth was as round as her eyes, and Mrs. Jenks gave her a crushing look. “That’s as it may be, but the doings upstairs are none of our concern, and you’d be wise to remember that, my girl!”
Subdued, Mary relapsed into silence, although she longed to hear what Mrs. Jenks and that snooty Adams had begun to talk about in low, hushed tones.
Strangely enough, the calmest and most self-possessed person in the whole household was the subject of all the heated discussion that swirled both above- and belowstairs that afternoon.
Her dripping wet hair still wrapped in a towel, Rowena Dangerfield sat before a small fire in the room that had been given to her, a book on her lap. But she was not reading. Her narrowed eyes gazed into the orange and blue flames as her mind went over the confrontation she had had with her mother and stepfather earlier.
It had been an angry scene, with Lady Fanny weeping that she had disgraced them all, and Sir Edgar, red in the face, shouting that she had better learn at the very start that she would no longer do exactly as she pleased.
Rowena, her eyes demurely cast down to hide their expression, had listened in silence, her face unmoved.
At last, when his wife had collapsed into a chair with her handkerchief and vinaigrette held to her nose, Sir Edgar bellowed, “And what do you have to say for yourself now, miss?”
Rowena raised expressionless blue eyes to his face. “What do you wish me to say?” she replied quite equably, taking him so much aback that he could do nothing but stare at her in speechless fury for a moment. He had expected tears, remorse, a quailing before his declaration of authority. Instead, the irresponsible chit with her sun-browned face had the impudence to look him in the eye quite calmly, with one eyebrow slightly raised.
“By God!” he said at last. “Have you understood nothing of what your mother and I have been saying? Do you have no conception of the upset and turmoil your outrageous behavior has caused? I tell you, miss, that you will learn some discipline while you’re under my roof! You’ll learn some polite manners, and to act like a lady! And you’ll do exactly as you’re told, by God, or…”
“There is no need to raise your voice in order to make yourself understood, sir,” Rowena retorted in her calm, cold voice, eliciting a gasp from her mother. “Indeed, I had already realized that since I was offered no other choice but to come here to live under your guardianship, I would have to accept whatever restrictions you might insist upon until I come of age. But…” and her eyes narrowed a fraction, “I see no reason to pretend, do you, that either of us is happy with the present arrangement? I do not want to be here any more than you want me here yourselves. But I suppose we’ll have to make the best of it!”
Lady Fanny’s sobs had risen to an almost hysterical pitch, and Sir Edgar had ranted and raved even louder than before. But in the end, when Rowena had thought he came almost close to striking her, he turned and stamped out of the room, ordering his wife to have her ungrateful child sent upstairs to be made presentable.
How calmness had the power to discompose some people! Rowena shook her hair loose, still staring into the flames, and began absentmindedly to towel her hair dry as she sorted out her impressions.
She had not expected to like her mother, and had found her to be even sillier and too determinedly youthful than she had imagined. Poor Lady Fanny, with her gold hair too elaborately arranged for morning, and her pretty silk gown with rows of ribbon and lace at the neck in an attempt to hide the telltale wrinkles. Thank God I don’t look like her, Rowena thought, with a shudder of distaste. Sir Edgar, with his curly muttonchop whiskers and protuberant gray eyes had come closer to being the way she had pictured him.
Sir Edgar had left the house to take refuge in his club. And Lady Fanny, declaring she had one of her terrible migraines, now lay in her darkened room with her old nurse, Mellyn, to soothe her.
“You was always a difficult child, and a trial to my poor dear baby!” Mellyn had sniffed disapprovingly at Rowena, and had then left her to the ministrations of a disapproving lady’s maid with steely eyes, who had announced that her name was Adams. And even that poker-faced female had closed her eyes in horror when she saw the crumpled cotton gown that Rowena produced so carelessly from the bottom of her battered portmanteau.
“But miss—I mean, my lady—you cannot possibly go down to luncheon wearing that—garment!”
“Oh? But you see, it is all I have, except for the riding habit I was wearing when I arrived here. All the rest of my clothes were packed in my trunk, and that, for all I know, may still be at Tilbury!”
Cool as a cucumber, Adams thought angrily. Doesn’t care a fig for all the trouble she’s caused.
Aloud she said firmly: “If you’ll give me the gown, Lady Rowena, I shall have one of the maids press it and starch it for you. But it’s hardly the type of garment you could wear in this climate, when it turns cold at night.”
“It was eminently suited for the climate of India, and I had no time to buy other clothes before I left,” Rowena said coolly. With a shrug, she accepted the serviceable-looking wool wrapper that Adams handed her, wondering whose castoff it had been. “Perhaps I could have my luncheon brought up here? Something very light, please, I am not particularly hungry.”
