Practical heart, p.1
Practical Heart, page 1
The Practical Heart
Fiona Hill
To my parents
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 1975 by Ellen Pall
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com
First Diversion Books edition November 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-472-1
More from Fiona Hill
The Autumn Rose
The Stanbroke Girls
The Trellised Lane
Sweet’s Folly
The Wedding Portrait
The Love Child
Love in a Major Key
The Country Gentleman
Chapter I
“Nonetheless,” said Miss Gillian Spencer firmly, “your advertisement was misleading at best, my Lord.”
“Misleading?” countered the Viscount. “Say, rather, tinged with the last, rosy rays of a sinking optimism; say, rather, hopeful, though mistaken in its hopefulness; say, rather, obscured somewhat by rhetoric. Do not, I beg, call it misleading!”
“But it was, my Lord,” Gillian persisted. “You offered the post of companion to two young ladies of quality, about to make their come-out—I believe that was your phrase?”
“Thereabouts,” he admitted, “but indeed that is just what it is. Only wait until you have met my daughters, I pray.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, your daughters have nothing to say to it. It is impossible, utterly impossible, to enter London society from such a house as this!”
“Oh, do not say impossible,” the Viscount pleaded earnestly. “Difficult, perhaps; challenging, even better—but impossible! Such a dismal word, so moribund, so distressing, so, as it were, final…”
“I suppose it is my own fault,” said Miss Spencer, more to herself than to Viscount Sherbourne. “I ought to have visited the address you gave before accepting the post. Still, I thought a place called The Haven, Berkeley Square—well, I thought it could not help but be quite elegant.”
“And so, indeed, it was,” the Viscount affirmed, “some forty or fifty years ago. At least, I expect it was. And so, indeed, must Catteroyes have been—once,” he ended sadly.
“Yes, that is another thing. It never occurred to me but that Catteroyes, Essex, must be a stately county seat. I suppose now it is just such another ruin as this?”
“Miss Spencer, I must ask you not to say so! Not a ruin, no; say rather…Oh dear,” he sighed at last, words failing him as they very rarely did, “I expect one would call it a ruin after all. But very stately—once.”
Gillian looked about her. That The Haven had at one time been quite a magnificent mansion was indisputable; the frayed Turkish carpets, the faded velvet hangings, the gilt peeling from the walls testified to that. Now, however, the rich furnishings told a tale of sad decay. Gillian reflected that no matter how elegant the proportions of a house, it could not for long survive with dignity the ravages of time and neglect. “And how, if you please, sir, do you intend to pay my wages?”
“Well I do have some money,” Valerian pointed out, “and though it is not, perhaps, quite as much as one would like to have, it should suffice to sustain us until—”
“Until one of your daughters makes a wealthy match, I suppose. That is your notion, is it not?”
“A wealthy…” Valerian echoed, then continued, “an advantageous connection, I should prefer to say. You see, they are so charming—”
“Your Lordship,” Gillian interrupted with a sigh, “say no more, I beg. Little though I like it, I must admit I have no choice but to oblige you with my services. You see, I too am quite without means: I spent my last shilling on the coach fare from Bath.” The Viscount eyed her curiously and she added, “My late employer was a shocking pinchpenny—thrifty, I expect you would call it. She left me, in her will, a necklace—paste and glass, sir, and quite worthless—and nothing more. Not even my wages for the remainder of the term,” she concluded.
“Scandalous!” said the Viscount.
“I rather thought so,” she agreed, with a small smile.
“And yet, it means you will be staying with us, so I suppose it is all for the best. And now that it is settled, there is one detail which, as it were, cuts up my peace: are not you rather younger than you might have been? I believe I advertised for a middle-aged lady?”
“I am twenty-seven,” said Gillian bluntly, “and it is ten years since I had my first season, and nine years since I seated myself firmly on the shelf. My family, straitened as we were, had much the same thought once as you seem to have: ‘Put her on the marriage mart and let her win a rich offer.’ Unfortunately, my Lord, I did not take, as the saying is. Since that time I have served as companion to Mrs. Peacock—the lady in Bath, you know—and you may well believe I am accustomed to a matronly role.”
“Indeed,” answered the Viscount, surveying her more closely than he had before. “Yet, I wonder you received no offers! You are quite pretty.” Gillian blushed at these words, but the Viscount was in the right of it. She was pretty—very pretty, one might say. Valerian Collins was not known to be a great enthusiast where women were concerned, contenting himself rather with his placid marriage to Miss Caroline Woofstead and the memory thereof, for Lady Caroline had died in childbirth some four years after their wedding. Still, he was a notable critic of beauty of all sorts, and Miss Gillian Spencer appealed to his aesthetics. He observed now that she had a fine figure, quite tall for a woman, with a long neck and a face composed of smooth, even planes. Her large green eyes and sculpted features, coupled with the almost startling whiteness of her skin, gave her countenance an uncommonly pleasing aspect—not unlike, his Lordship thought, a cameo.
Miss Spencer broke in upon these reflections when she said, her colour subsiding, “Nevertheless, I did not marry, and so here I am today.”
“So, in fact, you are,” he assented. “But o dear, what am I thinking of? Allow me to call the girls, so that you may meet them.”
Gillian nodded agreement and the Viscount rose and went to the door. She thought, as she watched him, that he moved almost as if he were surrounded by water: he was rather a large man, but he carried himself gracefully, gently, almost as if something extremely fragile were balanced atop his head. His countenance was ruddy, his hair even more so, and as he peered out the doorway, he did so through the pair of thick lenses that perched eternally across the bridge of his nose. His attire was something less shabby than his house, and fit extremely well; still, it was a little behind the fashion, and showed subtle signs of having been well worn. Miss Spencer had remarked before that his speech was always accompanied by gestures, gestures as expansive and yet as nice as the words they illustrated.
The Viscount returned, waved his hand nervously towards the doorway, and said, “They will be here directly, I am sure. Such a trouble, do not you think, moving en famille as it were? There is so much ado, so much to-do, so much, one might say, to do! We are hardly arrived here ourselves, you know; only since last night, and the staff—such as it is—is yet unsettled. One is obliged to do a good deal for oneself which one had rather not do, but so,” he ended, sighing, “it always is!”
Miss Spencer agreed that it took some time to organise a newly displaced household and wondered vaguely what sort of harum-scarum servants might be attending his Lordship. Her train of thought was soon interrupted by the entrance of two young ladies, both in a state of high excitement.
“Miss Spencer, permit me to introduce my elder daughter, Cordelia—she is one-and-twenty, you know—and my younger, Felicity. Seventeen,” he added, as though courtesy demanded it. The girls bobbed prettily and inspected the newcomer with ill-disguised curiosity. “Cordelia, you know,” the Viscount continued, “ought to have been out years ago, but we could not—well, let us say that our life at Catteroyes was too retired to permit of such an event. And Felicity, I know, is a bit young for it, but there you are again—the rigours of economy—that is, I thought we might as well while we were in town,” he finished a little lamely.
“Safety in numbers,” was Miss Spencer’s only reply.
“Safety,” his Lordship mused for a moment. “Ah, yes. Well, you will observe they are both excessively charming, each in her own way. I made sure of it, you know, before we came down. “Ah—!” he exclaimed, in an airy, reverberating tone, like the ringing of a little bell, “what a thing is paternity! Come, my dears, and kiss your Papa.”
His daughters obliged him promptly.
“Such angels!” he remarked, embracing them briefly and then leaving them go altogether, as if he had forgot they were still present. “Cordelia, you know, is by far the more serious of the two—Sweet Gravity, I have been wont to call her—whereas Felicity…well, in short, Felicity does justice to her name. Though it was her mother’s choice,” he digressed pensively. “I had rather have named her Ophelia, or Hermione…I am amazingly fond of Shakespeare, Miss Spencer. Are not you?”
“Indeed,” she began, “although the Sonnets—”
“Ah—!” he pealed, as if with delight, “the Sonnets, the Sonnets, the divine Sonnets! How I do enjoy them! How I do, as it were, revere them; how beautiful, how unparalleled, how, in fact, true they are! I have often thought of my dear Cordelia as the Dark Lady—though she is not, perhaps, quite so mysterious as she might be. Still, one cannot but remark that she is a deal darker than her sister.”
Gillian murmured assent, for indeed this was so. Both the girls shared the same oval face, and the same delicate mouth, but whereas Cordelia’s curls were dark and heavy, Felicity’s hung from her honeyed crown like yellow gold. Cordelia’s eyes were as dusky as her locks, and heavily lidded; Felicity’s were bright blue—like her father’s—something like almonds in shape, and set on the most intriguing little slant above her fragile cheekbones. She had leisure to observe them, for the Viscount went on at length about Shakespeare, and the joys of poesy, and the qualities of his daughters—together and severally, as the fancy struck him. At last, however, he concluded his rhapsody by saying abruptly, “But you will never get acquainted while I am here. Excuse me, I pray, and you may all have a comfortable cose.”
“Do not leave us on that account!” Gillian objected with more politeness than feeling.
“My dear Miss Spencer—for I feel you will soon become dear to us all—do you think I am unaware of my own character? I am a sad prattler, and I know it.” He shook his head soberly as if disapproving of someone whom he loved very much but could not help censuring. “Ah—! But then I know a little of everything—you will find it is so—except, perhaps, the art of parsimony.” He smiled woefully for a moment, made a little bow, and floated gently from the room.
“O my, I do love papa!” exclaimed Felicity, as that gentleman shut the doors behind him.
“Felicity,” scolded Cordelia, smiling upon and blushing for her younger sister, “is that your notion of conversation? We must try to make Miss Spencer feel comfortable!”
Having thus rendered Gillian’s comfort quite an unlikely eventuality, Cordelia sat back to watch her at her ease. Gillian felt that she was expected somehow to imitate a flower in the act of blossoming. She returned the girl’s regard in an awkward silence for a long moment, then said at last, “There is no need, really, to make proper conversation with me, Miss Cordelia. In fact, I beg you will not. We are to be together a good deal, you know.”
“In that case,” Felicity answered for her sister, “may we call you Gillian? I have always thought of you as Gillian, you know, ever since you responded to our advertisement. Besides you, there was a Mrs. Doweller, and a Mrs. Pinkley—and those I always thought of formally, as one ought to, I expect; but I have forever been speaking of you as Gillian, so should you dislike it extremely if I just went on that way?”
Gillian and Cordelia spoke together, Cordelia on a note of reproval. Gillian said firmly, however, “Not only may you, my dear, but I should appreciate it very much. And I beg you will do the same, Miss Cordelia.”
“If you think so…” said that lady dubiously. “Then I expect you should call me Cordelia.”
“And so I will. Now tell me,” said Gillian, rallying herself with difficulty to a lukewarm optimism, “I suppose your Papa has provided you with clothing for the Season?”
“No,” Cordelia answered flatly. “In fact, we neither of us have anything that is suitable at all. I think you will find,” she added, with more than a suggestion of bitterness, “that although my father is a great dear, he does not excel in practical matters.”
“I see. I am certain, however, that he has made some allowance for your wardrobes?”
Miss Collins responded to this with an eloquent shrug. “It is possible,” she conceded, “but hardly certain.”
“Papa is terribly generous, you know,” Felicity confided earnestly, “but the truth is, he hasn’t anything to be generous with, just now. However, that will all be mended when Cordelia and I begin to receive offers.”
“I find your confidence most reassuring,” Miss Spencer said.
“And, under the circumstances, a little pathetic, I think.” Cordelia sat back in her chair and regarded the empty hearth with a gloomy countenance. The three ladies sat thus in silence for a few moments; then an odd sound—something between a croak and a groan—penetrated the room.
“The doorbell!” Felicity interpreted, somewhat to Gillian’s surprise. “Shall I answer it?”
“But the butler, surely—” Gillian began.
“But we have no butler,” said Felicity simply. “Indeed, we have no servants at all! Did not Papa tell you?”
“No, indeed, he did not,” Gillian replied faintly.
“I daresay he forgot, then.”
Gillian did not agree, but she nodded assent.
“So may I answer the door?” Felicity repeated.
“No,” Miss Spencer answered, restraining her with an outstretched hand, “I think perhaps I had better do it. Are you expecting anyone?”
Cordelia and her sister consulted one another with a brief glance, then shook their heads.
“Then let us hope it is someone who has mistaken his direction,” said Gillian as she rose and quit the room.
But she was not so fortunate. She opened the door to find a very tall and slender young man, whom she judged to be about thirty years of age. He was dressed with an understated elegance, the quietness of which served to make his handsome features stand out more clearly. The most arresting of these were his eyes, which were quite alarmingly enormous, and of a colour that varied between green and brown. They gazed at Miss Spencer with an expression calculated to make her feel, somehow, that she was the most significant, the most fascinating object they had ever rested upon—an effect she found most disconcerting. These eyes were surmounted by straight, heavy brows, and complemented by a slightly hooked nose and a full, rather long mouth. The gentleman’s cheekbones were so prominent as to make his cheeks nearly hollow, and his complexion glowed with an interesting pallor against the background of his dark, curling locks. Miss Spencer stared at him for an instant, then recollected herself and smiled inquiringly.
“My card, ma’am,” said the gentleman, handing her an heavy square of paper that bore the legend, “Mr. Miles Lawrence, Esquire,” and nothing more. “I do not put my direction on it, you see, because it is unfashionable, and therefore little to my credit. Self-consequence is of the first necessity for a nobody-in-particular. Do not you agree?”
Miss Spencer looked at him blankly.
“But, my dear ma’am,” Miles went on, laughing, “how abominable I have been! I am his Lordship’s nephew—on his wife’s side, you know. You, I trust, must be—” he thought for a moment, “Cordelia, is it?”
“Oh, no sir, not at all,” replied Miss Spencer, thankful to find her tongue at last, though it yet behaved very ill. “I am Miss Spencer. His Lordship has just engaged me to chaperone his daughters. But do come in, sir. I am sure his Lordship will wish to see you.”
“I thank you,” he said, “and beg you will accept my most profound apologies for mistaking you.” He watched her closely as she hesitated in some confusion. “Is anything the matter?”
“I—no, indeed,” Gillian replied. “It is only that, just having arrived here myself, I am at a loss as to where to put you while I seek out his Lordship.” She surveyed again the numerous doors that led from the front hall, and finally chose one at random. “This, I hope, will be a suitable saloon—O dear,” she interrupted herself, as she saw its contents. “This will never do!” she cried in dismay.
Mr. Lawrence peeped in over her shoulder, which was at no great elevation to him. The room into which they looked was indeed in shocking condition, containing nothing at all but a large pianoforte with one leg off, and a very great deal of dust.
“Do not, I beseech, distress yourself on my account,” Miles begged. “I assure you, it is a great comfort to me to find that a Viscount may be obliged to live in even worse style than I do myself. I shall be very well contented to wait in the hall, if it is all the same to you.”
“Well, it is not,” said Gillian frankly, “but I do not see what else there is for it.” She smiled at him—a rare event for her, and a truly delightful one—and added, “you are most kind, sir. I am excessively sorry.”
