detested him.
And yet… and yet, was he so very detestable?
He had kindly treated them to wine and had not turned a hair when she had said she was a tailor's apprentice. Damn Lord Arthur. Every time she thought of him, she became upset. Better to think of the baron.
Felicity, in her mind, had turned Lord Dawdy into a genial sort of fatherly man, a bluff, rough traveler who would no doubt be content to have her company during his declining years. Miss Chubb had, unwisely, done nothing to explode these dreams, thinking sadly that it was as well Felicity used her imagination to resign herself to her fate.
“Gad! Is this the place?” Lord Arthur slowed his team to a halt on a ridge and looked down in awe on Dawdy Manor.
It had started life as a single-storied Tudor dwelling. One hundred years later, a prosperous ancestor had tagged on a second story, much higher than the bottom one and with large windows ornamented with fussy stonework. It made the bottom of the building look as if it were slowly returning to the earth, an impression heightened by the vast quantity of ivy that clung to its walls.
“That's it,” said Dolph. “Drive on, there's a good chap. I'm mortal sharp-set.”
Lord Arthur began to wish he had not come. He sensed bad cooking and worse drains waiting at the end of the road. It was folly to indulge a whim, to run off to Cornwall because a certain Freddie Channing and his peculiar uncle had sparked his curiosity and imbued the whole of the duchy with an air of novelty, which he now thought it probably did not possess.
“If your uncle is as clutch-fisted as you say he is,” said Lord Arthur, “and keeps country hours, then you will not have any dinner until four in the afternoon, and it's now only twelve noon.”
It transpired that Lord Arthur was right. To Dolph's plaintive request for food, the baron replied sourly that they should have stopped for something to eat on the road. This business of luncheon was newfangled nonsense, and he would have nothing to do with it. But they would only have to wait a couple of hours to break their fast. Tea would be served at two o'clock when Miss Felicity arrived with her stepfather.
“It is as well I have arrived ahead of time,” said Dolph. “Three days early, in fact.”
“Decided I didn't need your help,” said the baron. “Anyway, you don't like me, and you're only here because you hope I'll leave you something in my will.”
“Yes,” agreed Dolph with what his friend, Lord Arthur, considered a singular lack of tact.
But the baron seemed not in the slightest put out. He fished in his pocket and pulled out a miniature. “Here,” he said, “cast your peepers on this beauty. That's my Felicity.”
“Very beautiful,” said Dolph. He glanced up at Lord Arthur to see his friend's reaction and was surprised by an odd sort of look of-could it be disappointment?-on that gentleman's face.
“Is it possible to have a tankard of something wet, baron?” asked Lord Arthur. “The roads were dusty, and I've a devilish thirst.”
“There's water outside in the pump,” said Lord St. Dawdy ungraciously. “My housekeeper will show you to your rooms, and I'll see you back here at two o'clock.”
While they waited for the housekeeper, Lord Arthur studied his host. He was a wreck of a man. One swollen leg, encased in bandages, was propped up on a footstool. He wore a grubby stock and an old-fashioned chintz coat covered with wine stains and snuff stains. He had a large round head covered in a Ramillies wig, a relic of his youth that had not been powdered or barbered for some time and had lost a great deal of its curl. Wisps of it fell about his bloated face, which was covered in angry red pustules.
The housekeeper, a thin, old, bent woman, dressed entirely in black except for an enormous starched cap, finally arrived and led them up a shallow flight of uneven stairs to their rooms.
Lord Arthur hoped the ceiling of his bedchamber would prove to be a little higher than those in the rest of the house, because he was tired of stooping, but it proved to be as low-ceilinged, sloping-floored, and dark as the rooms downstairs.
The air was stuffy and stale, and smelled of a mixture of bad drainage, damp, and woodsmoke. He walked over to the mullioned window and wrenched at the catch until he managed to open it. Warm, sweet air floated into the room on the slightest of summer breezes. He leaned his elbows on the sill and looked out.
The garden was a wilderness, but wild roses tangled and tumbled over everything in a riot of color. On a little rise to his left was a “ruin,” one of those picturesque follies built in the last century when it was fashionable for the host to ask his guests, “Would you care to promenade to my ruin?” It had originally housed a hermit, one of the locals whom the late baron had paid with a lifetime's free ale to sit in it and look wise and ancient. The hermit had died of a liver complaint and had never been replaced.
It seemed that the baron did not have menservants, for when Lord Arthur, finding no bell, shouted out into the corridor for washing water, an old chambermaid eventually appeared, bowed down under the weight of two brassbound cans. Lord Arthur relieved her of her burden and asked for towels. She looked frightened and puzzled and then said she would try to find some.
“What on earth does the baron use when he washes?” demanded Lord Arthur, half-amused, half- exasperated.
“The master only washes at Michaelmas and Martinmas,” said the maid slowly.
“But when he washes his face?”
“Well, most times, me lord, he jist uses the bed hangings.”
She came back after about half an hour with two paperthin towels and a bar of kitchen soap. Lord Arthur cursed himself for not having brought his own valet. His Gustav, an energetic Swiss, would at least have bustled about and seen to his master's comfort.
He made a leisurely toilet, changing into a blue morning coat with plaited buttons, buff skin-tight trousers, and hessian boots. His deft fingers molded a snowy cravat into the Oriental, and he brushed his thick black hair until it shone with blue lights.
He heard the sound of horses’ hooves in the distance and went back to the window and looked out.
At first he could see nothing but a moving cloud of white dust on the sunny road. Then he could make out an open carriage with two occupants driven by a coachman with a liveried footman on the backstrap. He heard Dolph clattering down the stairs, but he stayed where he was, watching the carriage as it turned in through the gates and began to bowl up the drive. The gentleman passenger appeared, as it drew closer, to be a fussily dressed man with a petulant face. The lady held a parasol, so he could not see her face.
The carriage rolled to a stop beneath his window. The footman hopped down from the back, went round, and opened the carriage door and let down a small flight of steps and assisted the lady to alight. She held up the skirts of her flounced muslin gown, exposing one delicate ankle to Lord Arthur's gaze.
She furled her parasol, then stood and looked about her.
Lord Arthur caught his breath. For this young lady was not the fashionable beauty of the baron's miniature. She was slim, dainty, and very young-definitely under twenty, he thought. She was wearing the very latest thing in “transparent” hats-that is, a wide-brimmed frivolity of stiffened gauze through which her red hair gleamed like living fire.
With a feeling of excitement, Lord Arthur turned from the window and made his way downstairs.
“He is a bad landlord, this baron,” said Felicity, stabbing the dry earth with the point of her parasol. “If he is as rich as you claim, why does he not put some money into his estates? He must be almost as clutch-fisted as you are yourself. But at least, Mr. Palfrey, it is only your tenants’ houses you let go to rack and ruin. Lord St. Dawdy treats his tenants with equal unconcern, but also, unlike you, prefers to live in a slum.”
Mr. Palfrey turned pink with outrage.
“Guard your tongue, miss. Oh, if only you had dyed your hair.”
“My dear stepfather, is it not well over time that you told me why you wanted me to dye my hair brown?”
Mr. Palfrey looked sulky. “I sent the baron Maria's miniature.”
Felicity started to laugh. “Choice,” she said. “Very choice, Mr. Palfrey. You have indeed gone and shot yourself in the foot. Let us go in and get this charade over with. I am relieved I am not what the baron expects. For I would not be married to a miser.”
