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“Ah, how do you do? Your reply to my letter was so terse that I thought my parents might be holding you prisoner. So I came to see. But when I inquired about you, I discovered that you’d escaped.”
“Is that what they said at Poldene?” Sarah tried to imagine the scene. There must have been a good deal of shouting.
The visitor threw back her head and laughed. It was a wholehearted laugh, loud and ringing and free. Sarah rather envied it. “The word is my own,” Tamara said when it ended. “Benning told me you’d gone. The former head groom, you know. He’s an old friend of mine.”
“Yes. We spoke to him about you.”
“So he said.”
Sarah wondered what report the old man had given of them. She had no doubt there had been one.
“So this is where you’ve landed,” the visitor added, surveying the house with a critical gaze.
Sarah recalled her manners. “Do come in, Mrs. Deane.”
“Please call me Tamara. We are sisters now after all.” The woman examined Sarah as if gauging the effect of this claim.
Sarah smiled to show she welcomed the idea. “And I am Sarah. Kenver rode into the village to see about…” She broke off her sentence. He’d gone to buy more chamber pots, but she hardly liked to say so. “We are still…putting things in order.”
Tamara’s smile was as beguiling as her laugh. “You must tell me all about it. But I should like to dismiss the post chaise first?”
Was she asking Sarah’s permission? Did she intend to stay with them? “Of course,” Sarah said.
Tamara turned to speak to the post boys. A portmanteau was removed from the back of the chaise and carried inside, payment was made, and the vehicle drove away.
Inside, Tamara looked about with an eagle eye.
Aware of the sparse furnishings and pile of drapery fabric, Sarah said, “We are not quite settled,” to this first visitor in her first home. She didn’t count the Terefords, who knew all about the place.
“How long have you lived here?” Tamara asked. She pulled off her bonnet and pelisse and hung them on the stair rail.
“Just three weeks.” Sarah led her into the parlor. She cleared the fabric off the sofa—there was nowhere to put it except the floor—and offered her guest a seat.
“Didn’t that blue brocade used to hang in the dining room at Poldene?” Tamara asked as she sat down.
As she didn’t know, Sarah could only shrug. “It was put away in the attic.”
“And my mother gave it to you?” The older woman sounded surprised.
“Not… We… That is… It is quite faded from the sun.” Sarah showed the paler stripes on the cloth. “I don’t think her ladyship would ever use it again.”
“And so you stole it?” Tamara asked, her hazel eyes twinkling.
“We didn’t exactly…” But they had, exactly. Unless one considered Kenver a part owner, or future owner, of everything at Poldene.
“Oh please, tell me that you did.”
“Well, yes.”
Tamara gave another of her ringing laughs. “Good for you! I ran off with only the clothes on my back and a few pieces of jewelry.”
Sarah didn’t know what to say to this.
“You’ve heard my sad story.” Tamara seemed the antithesis of sadness.
“From Benning. Kenver couldn’t really remember much.”
“Well, he was only six when I left.”
