'Are you rested?' he asked, grinning nervously at a passer-by who had yelled 'God bless you sir!', and in so doing making himself look very young indeed.
She said nothing for a moment, though the ground was soft and there was no clattering of hoofs on the unpaved road to drown out her words. 'You realise I am ruined now, twice over? As a wife, I mean.' There was an eternity of tiredness in her voice.
'What do you mean?' said Gresham, shocked. Why were girls so unpredictable?
'Who will believe I retain my virtue after having spent days at sea on a sinking ship with only men around me? Then a night with two men, in a stinking inn where men bring women for… business. You think I am blind as to where you took me last night? I am… how do you say it… ploddy goods? My fiancй will not wish to buy second hand, I think. So, guardian, the value of your package is nil.'
'Shoddy goods…' he began to murmur, then realised it sounded as if he was confirming her judgement. Gresham's first reaction was to feel deep offence at the thought that he or Mannion would ever damage a girl's reputation. Dammit, no married or single woman would ever sleep with a man if they thought he would blab on her! It was the basic rule of seduction, wasn't it? His second thought was that there was no one to tell the story, the other men on the Daisy being dead. Then, his heart sinking, he remembered Robert Leng, Drake, and all his crew, all of whom would know how Anna had reached England once they heard she was alive. He started to justify himself then.
'As far as I’m concerned,' said Gresham, 'whatever state you're in now is the same state as when I met you. I…'
His eye caught the movement of the girl's arm as it swung round incredibly fast to slap his face. The survival instinct cut in, beyond his control, and the girl let out a gasp as a steel-hard hand caught and stopped her swing.
'Do not laugh at me!' she cried at him, eyes sparkling with anger. The pride of her Spanish ancestry rose in her, and the devilment of her Irish. 'I am no whore, even if you try to make me one! How dare to imply that I had lost my virtue! It is not so! I tell you, it is not so!'
Here was a seventeen-year-old girl, who had never lived beyond the watchful eye of her loving parents and paid servants, cosseted and protected as all girls of her class were, protected because their virginity was their greatest asset. Suddenly this untutored creature found herself losing her father and then her mother too, left friendless in the company of her country's enemies, hurled by her mother into the hands of a wild young man who she probably hated and whose power over her she found humiliating. Shipwrecked, hauled across half the world with one dress and no servant, with no one to love her, her first night in a foreign country had been spent in an evil-smelling tavern with two men.
Gresham refused to let his heart be moved by her looks. But was she… brave? Gresham had never met a girl who was brave. Oh, girls were fun, and quite mysterious, but they were never brave. They never had to be, really, did they? Until it was too late, and the men had lost the battle, and the castle or the house was invaded. And then all their bravery was good for was to make them scream a little less than the others. He relaxed his grip, she fiercely resisting the overwhelming urge to rub her arm where his grip had left it white and burning with returning circulation. There was no sign of tears. He only vaguely understood and refused to listen to what his own brain told him it must be costing her simply to keep control, not to break down, not just now in this extraordinary environment but ever since her mother had died.
'Your honour is intact because we know it is so. We would both of us die before allowing anyone to impugn your honour’ he said grandly.
'And what's more,' interrupted Mannion, who Gresham did not recollect asking to speak but who had ridden up beside them, 'we'll kill anyone who says any different.'
'We'll protect you,' said Gresham. 'I have to. I gave your mother my word. That's what the dumb ox means. You're safe with us.'
She looked at Gresham, who suddenly seemed unforgivably innocent.
'I will never be safe again. Ever.' There was a terrible finality in her voice.
Gresham looked at her, matched her despair with his own at not being able to say the right thing, and spurred his horse on.
It seemed to take an age to reach The House. The facade was striking, imposing, magnificent even for London and even for the Strand. Such scurrying, such movements of people, such excitement at the return of the master! The ancient porter, seeing the young man, bowed his sleep-ridden head so low as to bang it against the cobbles. A cry of welcome sprung from the old man's throat, and then he caught sight of the man-mountain and… a girl. A very, very beautiful girl. Dressed in a vast cloak. The porter bowed to her, as deep as he had bowed to his master. Then came the hustle and bustle of a great household waking up to its duty, a neglected and forgotten household suddenly being given its purpose back. Henry Gresham, arms akimbo, stood foursquare in the courtyard, bellowing to a flocking horde of servants. *Now, hear this! I introduce to you the Lady Anna Maria Lucille Rea de Santando!'
It was the first time he had shocked her. Until now, he had not used her name. How had he learned her full name?
'The Lady is my ward, placed by the sacred word of her dying mother in my care and protection, off the Azores, after her fine vessel had been captured in fierce combat by Sir Francis Drake!'
My ward. My care, thought Anna. This was not about her. It was about him.
'She has survived sea battle, shipwreck and deep family loss! Now who will show her, a stranger on our shores, true English hospitality?'
The flutterings among the assembled servants! The talk in the servants' hall tonight!
Now this was a real challenge to The House. Young Gresham had never quite come to terms with his inheritance of one of London's most desirable mansions. Its cavernous cellars had too many memories of a childhood he would be all too happy to forget, of a person he regretted he had been. Yet The House had never lost its loyalty to him. So how could its formal hierarchy do justice to its young master, and welcome the romantic Spanish princess in a manner that would do him due credit? At this crucial moment, an elderly woman swept forward, hauling her skirt with practised ease above the muck of the courtyard. She had been chief maid to the late wife of Sir Thomas Gresham, retained in service as was the way of great houses long after the said lady had taken her sad parting into the next world, along with the two under maids. And now, the assembly of servants seemed to say with one voice, her time was come again.
'Madam,' she pronounced with kindness to this strangely foreign creature, 'will you care to follow me?' The woman had meant to be more formal, but the sight of the girl had made her realise how young she was, for all her grand name.
Silence fell over the courtyard. They were nearly all there now, albeit stunned by their early awakening and in varying states of dress. The steward, of course, and the manciple. The chief cook and the under cooks, the scullions from the kitchens, the porters, the parlour maids, the men who maintained and crewed the six boats dressed in the livery of The House, the ostlers who looked after the stable that was one of Henry Gresham's few real interests in the place, even the carpenter and the mason who from the outset Sir Thomas Walsingham had retained to carve out and care for his beautiful home. There were over fifty of them there now, the people who kept the complex organism of The House running even in the absence of its master. The truly frightening fact was that to maintain its fifty inhabitants and its huge fabric was but a pinprick in his wealth. And now these inhabitants were looking in the cold light of dawn to a girl dressed in working man's clothes on a dreadful horse. The Lady Maria Anna Lucille Rea de Santando.
It was the kindness that did it. All those defences, put up and so fiercely defended over so many months, crumbled away in the face of a few kind words. A single tear welled up, and hung poised over her extraordinarily long eyelashes. 'I thank you for your kindness,' she said, and curtseyed to them. Even the irritating bird that had sung welcome to the dawn as she had descended had decided to shut up.
One man started to clap slowly, and gradually it took off until a torrent of applause was echoing round the courtyard. Anna dropped exhausted from the horse, the old lady put an arm round her and the line of servants parted, cheering starting now over the applause.
'Isn't it about time you stopped playing the field?' Mannion asked, unexpectedly, of his master. 'That one there, she's got the body and she's got the brains. She'll keep you in order. Give you what you want, on both counts. Why not get something going that'll last for more than a few nights?'
