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“Your grandfather is convinced that this is your home now,” she said in carefully neutral tones.
That was something else to discuss with Sir Mordecai. I would not miss Miss Brown’s disapproving and annoyingly prissy ways, but sending her away should have been my purview, not Sir Mordecai’s.
“That is something of which I fully intend to disabuse him,” I said in an edged tone. “Since he did not hire her, he should not have been the one to dismiss her. She was to be in my employ for at least the next two months.”
“He was careful to give her a suitable emolument. And she seemed to be happy enough to return to London.” Patience spoke with almost mechanical precision. “I do not have the skill to do a truly fashionable hairstyle.”
Since I was now clad only in my undergarments, Patience pulled down my riding-tousled hair and began to draw a brush through it, which was as painful an operation as I had feared.
“Anything is better than this. A simple chignon will do,” I said dismissively, the main portion of my mind framing the arguments I would use against Sir Mordecai. My mind resolutely refused to call him my grandfather. “And I do not care how much of a bonus he gave her - he had no right to do anything at all.”
“Perhaps, but I must warn you that he is in a rare temper,” she said as she put the final pins in a surprisingly competent chignon, then reached for the dress she had chosen, a simple column of pale lavender muslin sprigged with violets and trimmed with matching ribbons.
“So,” I said with admirable control, “am I.”
******
For all the drama of the morning it was still fairly early, early enough to find the idea of breakfast appealing even if one were in an unaccustomedly martial state of mind. As expected, breakfast at Wentworth Hall was indeed a production, and with everyone sitting at their places it was, at least to my mind, uncomfortably like entering into a theatre where one was a woefully unprepared lead actress. Well, if I were to play a part, I would do it to the best of my ability.
A long sideboard in front of the windows almost sagged beneath a weight of silver and food. While the silver was beautiful, I noticed almost spitefully it was neither as numerous nor as well polished as that which we had at home. Of course, with just the four of us we seldom had the good silver pulled out simply for a family meal. Obviously here they felt differently, whether or not this show was to honour or impress me.
After a civil but blandly general ‘good morning’ to all assembled I went directly to serve myself. Compared to the tasty delights made every day by Naomi, the New Orleans-born cook given to my mother as a wedding present when she came to Charleston as a bride, the offerings both in front of me and the night before were both pallid and dull, but in the interest of good manners I took a small bite of almost everything. Freeman pulled out my chair once I was ready and asked if I would prefer tea or coffee.
At home good coffee was almost a religion, especially among my New Orleans relations, so I was cautious where I drank it, but after the horrible tea of the night before I felt I did not have a choice and so asked for coffee.
“Well, young miss,” rumbled Sir Mordecai before even a morsel of food could pass my lips. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Not for myself, sir, but I do admit to a certain amount of disapproval that you should dismiss my employee. What gave you the right to feel you could just send Miss Brown on her way?”
A gasp, fragile as a breeze on a spring dawn, fluttered around the table. Apparently, no one had ever challenged Sir Mordecai, I thought with a carefully concealed martial fervour, and was convinced of that fact by the red rising in his face like a fire catching on a dark night.
“Unpleasant woman! No use keeping her around here eating her head off when there’s enough staff here already to do what you need done.”
“Including being my chaperone when I return home? Besides, she was my employee; I am the one who hired her.”
Great Aunt Zipporah muttered something in scandalised tones; the rest seemed frozen to very disapproving stone. Mountjoy, though, was smiling very slightly as if at a secret joke.
“In a civilised country, young ladies expect their families to look after them and decide what is best,” growled Sir Mordecai.
“It sounds very dull,” I said calmly, gingerly tasting the coffee Freeman placed at my elbow. It was quite as horrid as I had feared, and I had a dreadful premonition of being condemned to drinking nothing but indifferent wine until I left.
“Do not be impertinent, miss!”
“I am not. Simply stating a fact does not make it an impertinence.”
Sir Mordecai’s choler deepened. “Your father was not only unfilial, but in refusing to accept the duties of his position he did you a great disservice in allowing you to run wild like a savage. At the very least he should have sent you home to be properly raised!”
To grow up here, in this dark and imposing house? I barely restrained a shudder. Outside now it was beautiful, to be sure, but even I knew that there were many more days of rain and cold in this northern land than sunny ones. Suddenly I was suffused with a bone-deep longing for the warmth and sun of Charleston, the humid days, the cooling breezes from off the sea, the overarching perfume of the ever-present flowers...
I had not yet been here a full day and already I was longing to return. Coming had been a big mistake, no matter how much I had longed to do it in honour of my father.
“I was most properly raised. I went to an exclusive Anglican girls’ school and studied the social graces with the foremost finishing school in the South,” I said, working mightily to keep my tone soft. “My Aunt Seraphine, as was my mother, is a DeLaFontaine, one of the leading families of New Orleans. Her husband is Bernard Gentry, of the foremost banking family in the Carolinas.”
“Colonials.” Aunt Lucinda gave a dismissive sniff that spoke volumes. “As if there could be a finishing school of any worth in the colonies. Indeed.”
“America has not been a colony in almost forty years, aunt,” I replied in a slightly less conciliatory voice. “It is an independent country called the United States of America. My home is in the state of South Carolina.”
Sir Mordecai might be elderly and carry the look of approaching decrepitude, but there was still power in his shrinking frame. When he brought his fist down on the aged oak table, the china and silver on it danced musically.
