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The Derbyshire Set Omnibus Edition Vol. 1 (the first three books all in one)
The Derbyshire Set Omnibus Edition Vol. 2 (the second three books all in one)
Other Books from Arietta
Saracen’s Gift
JANIS SUSAN MAY
This story Copyright Janis Susan May
Chapter One
Wentworth Hall didn’t look anything like I had expected.
When my father had been in his cups, as he was so much of the time in that horrible period after Mother’s untimely death, he would talk about his childhood home with such love and longing that it sounded like part of the halls of Heaven. I never noticed then that it was just the Hall and the estate he longed for. Only when I requested the barest of factual information was his family ever mentioned.
The reality of his ancestral home spread before me was far from the idyllic place of Father’s memories. At least it was afternoon and a watery sunshine washed over the landscape; had it been darker and raining the entire scene could have been taken directly from one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s grimmer novels. Large, rambling and stained with the grime of age and neglect, Wentworth Hall crouched on top of a gentle hill at the end of a long drive. In my grief and travel-induced fatigue, which went far beyond weariness, it resembled a dark monster waiting to gobble up those who were so unwise as to venture too close.
Perhaps that was not fancy, but prescience, if one should happen to believe in such a phenomenon. However, after weeks of travel from Charleston to the wilds of Sussex England, such exertions coming one upon another after the harrowing loss of my father and Charles Pennyworth’s rabid determination to marry my father’s money I will not attest to the stability of my emotions.
The grim interior of the Hall did little to reassure me. Entering the place had been, at least to my travel-weary fancy, much too much like being swallowed by a great beast.
“So you are Peter’s girl Clarissa,” the vision in front of me said. I was glad to hear the man speak, as heretofore I had encountered such foppish elegance only in the throes of a fever-dream. In Charleston young men dressed with attention to detail and elegance, but most still eschewed the extremes of fashion; older men were even more soberly clad, as befitted their age, status and gravitas. The vision before me had to be older than my father, but he wore enough fobs and ruffles and towering shirt points as to be a comedian in a stage play. “Clarissa.” His tone made it almost a question.
Could this be my grandfather? He was the oldest man here, but nothing about him matched the spare description my father had given of his father.
“My father was Peter Wentworth, yes,” I said, gliding with care over the surprisingly rough flagstones. An indeterminate number of the most astonishingly dressed people waited in a line - rather like a defensive barrier - across the centre of the Great Hall. Father had described the Great Hall, as he had described the entire estate, but I had arrogantly dismissed his memories as being somewhat exaggerated and grandiose. I had been wrong. Our house in Charleston had been a large one, suitable to one of Father’s status and wealth, but if one did not include the widow’s walk on the roof it could have been enclosed completely in this enormous space. “Are you my grandfather?”
An amused titter ran around the assembled company.
“Hardly,” said a haughty, sour-faced woman who announced that she was my Aunt Lucinda, the widow of Father’s elder brother Micah, and therefore my aunt-by-marriage. “Sir Mordecai is resting. He will join us at dinner tonight.”
Resting? When his heretofore unknown only grandchild had just arrived from America? Either he was very frail or very rude.
“Of course she is Peter’s child,” said a short, round dumpling of a lady, her wrinkled face almost lost in an explosion of lace and ruffles. “Just look at her golden hair and those eyes of that odd dark blue - it’s a combination seen in the Wentworths since the time of the Conquest. And to think you have come all the way from the Colonies.”
She could have said the Antipodes, or even the Moon with equal wonder.
“It is now the United States of America,” I said, perhaps a little more sharply than was totally proper. “And yes, it was a very long journey.”
“Perhaps our visitor would like to be shown to her room, and postpone the introductions until she is somewhat rested,” murmured the only person in the room remotely close to my own age, a plain and plainly dressed woman wearing a simple cap.
“That would be most welcome,” I said. “Travelling can be so wearing.”
“You must forgive us, my dear. We have been waiting so long to meet Peter’s child,” said the first man. “We shall see you at dinner.”
I didn’t want to see them at dinner; in fact, if first impressions were to be acknowledged I wished I had never left Charleston at all.
******
The wine was bad, tart and just on the cusp of being bitter. Father would never have allowed such to be served at his table, but the Wentworth family seemed to think it was something special and delectable.
Perhaps it was when compared to the patriarch - my grandfather, Sir Mordecai Wentworth, eighth Baronet Wentworth.
Seated at the head of the huge old table, with me to his right as was correct, he still considered me as he had from the moment of our introduction, as if I were some sort of strange and exotic form of life masquerading as a human. It was not lost on me that after weeks of travel - to say nothing of the time spent preparing to leave Charleston - after less than twelve hours in my ancestral home I was already planning to leave.
“And you say your father became a tradesman?”
