Amaryllis Read online

  Although she had not known much happiness there, she was glad to see the tall, fantastic Tudor chimneys of Patterns rising above the trees. Sometimes she felt this country home was her only friend. Lord Warburton had bought it from an impoverished county family, lock, stock, and barrel. Being of a cheese-paring nature, he had done nothing to modernize it, and so the rooms were still filled with elegant furniture of the last century, reflecting the quiet good taste of the previous owners.

  It was a long, rambling building of rose-colored, ivy-covered brick. Mullioned windows caught the setting sun as the Warburton carriage bowled up the drive.

  Amaryllis made her way to her room, carrying her own trunk. If she had left it in the hall with the others, then one of the servants would have taken it up for her. But on some previous occasions, Cissie and Agatha had given orders that it was to be left there “until that lazy creature fetches it herself,” and so Amaryllis preferred not to give them any excuse for a display of spite.

  The servants were cautiously kind to Amaryllis. Too overt a display of sympathy would result in dismissal, as had happened in the case of Lady Warburton’s last lady’s maid, who had been found guilty of dressing Amaryllis’s hair when she ought to be attending to her mistress.

  Amaryllis was expected to clean her room herself, but busy hands had obviously been at work in her absence. The shabby furniture gleamed with polish, and someone had arranged a jug of wildflowers on the table beside the bed.

  Tugging off her bonnet and unfastening her cloak, Amaryllis sat down in a chair by the window. With luck, she would be expected to take a tray in her room instead of joining the family for dinner.

  This proved to be the case, and it began to seem that she was to be allowed the whole precious evening to herself. Solitude was a luxury after the constant presence of Cissie and Agatha which she had had to endure in London.

  Hidden at the bottom of her trunk was a new novel, purchased out of her carefully hoarded store of pin money. She would stuff a blanket along the bottom of the door so that no telltale beam of light should shine out.

  Lady Warburton did not approve of wasting candles after nine o’clock in the evening.

  Amaryllis carefully put her small stock of shabby clothes away. In her closet were a few of the gowns from her original wardrobe. One of them was a white silk ballgown with a gauze overdress embroidered with silver thread. She had worn it to a ball long ago when the Marquess was her fiancé. She remembered the way his eyes had lit up as he had looked at her as she had descended the stairs wearing just that dress. The material was already turning yellowish.

  Finally, Amaryllis sat down in front of the fire and luxuriously opened the new novel and began to slice the pages one by one. Sometimes she would cut the whole book first; at other times she would relish slitting open each page as she came to it, opening up each new section of the story.

  There came a scratching at the door. She put down the book reluctantly and called, “Come in.”

  James, the second footman, stood there, his mean little eyes flying to the book. He was one of the few servants Amaryllis disliked.

  “Yes, James?” she demanded.

  “My lady wishes to see you in the drawing room,” said James, lowering his white eyelashes in that mock-servile way he had.

  “Very good, James. I will be with her directly.”

  The footman’s eyes flickered again to the book. Amaryllis suppressed a sigh.

  He would report to Lady Warburton that Miss Amaryllis had been reading a book instead of sewing, and that the book had looked like a novel. It was not yet nine o’clock, so at least she could not get into trouble for having her candle lit.

  When James had left, Amaryllis adjusted the simple white muslin cap she habitually wore in the house on top of her severe hairstyle and tugged down the folds of her gray wool gown.

  She tucked the novel under the mattress and laid a volume of sermons, which was roughly the same size, in its place.

  Lady Warburton was alone in the drawing room, Cissie and Agatha having already retired for the night. James was bent over her as Amaryllis entered.

  “Very good, James,” said Lady Warburton. “You did very well to tell me. Go upstairs to Miss Duvane’s room and fetch the book.”

  James flashed Amaryllis an insolent look from his pale-green eyes and sidled obsequiously from the room.

  “Now, Amaryllis,” began Lady Warburton, “I have something very important to discuss with you.

  “The Marquess of Merechester was at the Dunbars, as I told you.”

  “Yes?” said Amaryllis, her heart beginning to thud against her ribs.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, my lady.” Amaryllis had been instructed to address Lady Warburton by her title at all times, unless they had guests, at which times she was to address her as “aunt.”

  “Yes, and he was uncommon taken with Cissie. ’Tis said he is now looking for a wife, having made his fortune. Mr. Chalmers was also with him. They both accepted Lord Warburton’s invitation to stay. They will be arriving next week. Now, you are to do nothing, say nothing, to show to anyone that you were once on a more intimate footing with Merechester. I have invited several other guests. I need not remind you that your situation is vastly altered since the last time you saw Merechester.

  “You are here only because of my charity. To do anything to put yourself forward in any way would displease me very much. Your livelihood depends on not displeasing me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “You will have too much work to do to mingle much with the guests. Usually when people who knew my brother come to stay, I allow you to join the company, because I am softhearted to a fault. But Cissie’s future happiness is at stake, and I will not let anything mar that happiness. I brought several fashion magazines and lengths of material from London. I see no need to spend a vast amount of money on new modes for Cissie when you are perfectly capable of making them for her. You will await me in the morning room at eleven o’clock tomorrow, when I will give you your instructions.

  “Now, you have oft said it was you who broke the engagement with Merecheeter. Come, now. Surely it was he who terminated it.”

  “No, my lady,” said Amaryllis wearily. “But it was all so long ago, and it does not matter now.”

  “See that it does not,” snapped Lady Warburton. She studied Amaryllis for several moments as if searching for vestiges of that lost and treacherous beauty. Then she smiled, as if satisfied with what she saw.

  James came in, sulkily carrying a book.

  “Now let us see how you waste your time and money,” said Lady Warburton, stretching out an imperious hand.

  She turned over to the flyleaf and read, “The Sermons of Mr. Porteous.”

  “Good heavens,” she exclaimed. “You should not be addling your brains with religion on a weekday. Sunday is the proper time for this sort of reading.” Lady Warburton privately thought God and all his angels a most uncomfortable group of individuals.

  She shut the book with a snap and handed it to Amaryllis, holding it gingerly with her fingertips.

  “Do not forget what I have told you,” she said.

  Amaryllis curtsied and left the room. Lady Warburton’s voice as she admonished the footman floated after her. “If in the future you have something to tell me about her, James, please make sure it is something of importance.”

  Her room looked the same when she entered, the wildflowers glowing in the candlelight and the fire crackling in the hearth. But it no longer seemed a refuge.

  Next week would bring the Marquess of Merechester. She had loved him once, and Amaryllis was very much afraid that she loved him still.

  Chapter Two

  “I really don’t know why you accepted this invitation,” said Mr. Joseph Chalmers crossly to his friend the Marquess of Merechester. “You don’t like the Warburton woman, and now you tell me you don’t know if the shooting is good or not. It must be one of the daughters.”
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  “Perhaps,” said the Marquess idly, negotiating his team around a sharp corner with consummate ease. “It is time I married.”

  “It’s time you had a bit of fun,” pointed out Mr. Chalmers, wrapping the bearskin rug more tightly about his legs and looking sourly across the bleak autumn fields. “All that slaving and sweating to put your land in good heart. Time to reward yourself.”

  “I did not slave or sweat,” said the Marquess mildly. “I enjoyed the battle. What is your idea of fun? Drinking daffy or Blue Ruin and then knocking in the windows of some gentleman’s residence with your whip? Attending cockfights?”

  “What about plays and balls and parties?”

  “I did attend a few in the country.”

  “The country,” said Mr. Chalmers in accents of loathing. “What’s to do in the country? Dancing on bumpy assembly-room, floors to the screeching of a local band, enduring hours of boring conversation from bucolic squires, looking out at trees and fields and birds.”

  “What’s up with trees and fields and birds?”

  “They’re not natural,” pointed out Mr. Chalmers. “Nature is so undisciplined, so un-tonnish.”

  “True,” agreed his friend good-naturedly. “I have often noticed that birds and trees and animals do not know their place.”

  “But to return to the purpose of this visit,” went on Mr. Chalmers. “There is something about that name Warburton.”

  “I was once engaged to a Miss Amaryllis Duvane,” said the Marquess dryly. “Lady Warburton is her aunt.”

  “Oh, I say, I am sorry. I had forgot. Jilted you, didn’t she?”

  “Quite.”

  “Whatever became of her? Sir James left her penniless.”

  “I neither know nor care,” said the Marquess. “Miss Duvane informed me she had every intention of finding a rich husband. I have no doubt she has done so.”

  “Did you not ask this Warburton female for news of Miss Duvane?”

  “Not I. It is all past history. She has probably got a stable of brats by now.”

  Mr. Chalmers cocked his head slightly at the Marquess’s bitter accents.

  “Obviously it still rankles, my friend. So why this visit?”

  “Because I am become mercenary,” said the Marquess coldly. “I have a mind to marry and have sons. The Warburton girls are pleasing enough and have large dowries apiece. I have no desire to see my estates return to the poverty-stricken state they were in when I inherited them. My tenants must no longer fear starvation. The price of wheat is unnaturally high at the moment. When the wars with Napoleon cease, then the price will drop, and we shall all be facing hard times.

  “Any man who does not care for his lands and tenants is beneath contempt. I do not like London life much. I do not like to see wastrels squander their lands over the gaming tables at St. James’s.”

  Mr. Chalmers stole a sidelong look at his friend, noticing the handsome face set in hard lines.

  “I faith, you are grown stern, John,” he sighed. “Time was when we both delighted in frivolities.”

  “We were young,” said the Marquess.

  Mr. Chalmers fell silent. The Marquess was driving his traveling carriage himself, both men being seated on the box.

  Mr. Chalmers was a bachelor, like the Marquess. They had not seen much of each other in recent years. Mr. Chalmers had been fighting with his regiment in Spain and had been invalided home the previous year with a ball in the leg. He still walked with a slight limp.

  He was a pleasant-looking man with indeterminate features, good shoulders, and a broad chest. His appearance was marred by a pair of skinny legs of which he was deeply ashamed. He wore false wooden calves held in place by three pairs of stockings. He found himself increasingly uncomfortable in the Marquess’s presence. John had grown exceeding stern, he reflected. He still had the same lazy, charming manner, but it was a thin veneer over solid steel.

  Everyone in society viewed marriage as a sort of business contract. It was extremely hard for a man to marry out of his class, but no member of the aristocracy looked askance at a female with a large dowry and a doubtful background. Love was something to be found outside marriage. But Mr. Chalmers could remember the Marquess when he was engaged to Miss Duvane. He remembered teasing him about Miss Duvane’s dowry and the Marquess saying with rare intensity, “If she had not a penny, I would still wed her.” Ah, well, changed days. It was disappointing, nonetheless, to see his friend’s warm nature changed to one of cold and calculating cynicism.

  Ragged gray clouds tore across the sky above. The landscape was singularly treeless. The cultivated fields gave way to long, bleak stretches of moorland, dotted with round, black pools. A few sheep grazed among the tussocks of grass, and a chill wind sang over the grim landscape.

  The road began to climb upward. The Marquess slowed his team at the top and pointed down to the left. “That must be Patterns,” he said.

  In a small valley, they could just make out the smoke rising from tall Tudor chimneys above surrounding trees.

  “Good,” said Mr. Chalmers. “I’m sharp set with all this cold, fresh air. Has it never occurred to you that Miss Duvane might be among the guests?”

  “No,” said the Marquess shortly.

  But as he said it, he knew he lied. Ever since he had seen the drab female companion with the Warburton girls in Exeter ’Change, he had been haunted by dreams of Amaryllis. By God! How he had loved her! And he had thought she held the same feelings for him.

  But he would always remember her careless rejection of him. Well, he hoped she had found a rich husband and was as truly miserable as she deserved to be.

  He would not admit to himself that the attraction of this visit was that Lady Warburton was related to her. By the time his carriage was bowling up the smooth drive to Patterns, the Marquess had convinced himself again that his sole motive in accepting the invitation was to add a rich dowry to his coffers. He enjoyed the cynicism of the thought. Women were cruel and merciless and calculating. Unfortunately, one could not start a family without one of the creatures. Therefore, it followed that a sensible man deserved to enrich himself by tying himself to one of them for life.

  The only women whose company he enjoyed were the clever members of the demimonde who did not expect marriage and who were honestly and blatantly prepared to bestow their favors in return for money.

  Usually, these cynical, bitter thoughts managed to comfort him, but somehow this time they did not. The warmth of his welcome from the Warburton family did little to dispel his gloom. His well-appointed rooms seemed like a prison, and he violently wished himself elsewhere. He had been briefly introduced to the other guests. There had been no Amaryllis Duvane, and that was a comfort, he told himself savagely.

  Knowing that modes in the country could be as rigid as those demanded by Almack’s, he asked his valet to lay out his knee breeches and evening coat. As he tied his cravat in the Irish and allowed his valet to help him into his blue silk coat, he made up his mind to cut this now unwanted visit as short as possible.

  Mr. Chalmers entered and surveyed his friend. “Very fine, John,” he commented. “You will break hearts.”

  The Marquess’s hair shone like newly minted guineas in the light of two tall candles on the toilet table. His coat matched the intense blue of his eyes. His knee breeches hugged his muscular thighs without a wrinkle, and his clocked stockings showed a pair of legs which gave Mr. Chalmers a pang of sheer envy.

  He surreptitiously stooped to make sure his wooden calves were securely fixed to the backs of his legs.

  The Marquess ferreted around in his jewel box, picked out a diamond pin, and fixed it in his cravat. He chose several rings and slipped them on his long white fingers, then put an enameled snuffbox into the pocket in the tails of his coat.

  Like the Marquess, Mr. Chalmers was gloomily planning to escape as soon as possible. It was not that he did not find his surroundings comfortable; it was more the aura of gloom that hung about his friend lik
e a great black cloud that dismayed him.

  The company was assembled in the drawing room. Apart from the Misses Warburton, no other young females were present. There were some members of the local county and a colorless female who sat with her sewing in the corner.

  Poor relation, thought the Marquess grimly. Every good family should have one.

  He was standing chatting easily to Sir Gareth Evans, a local magistrate, who was discoursing on the ramifications of the game laws, when he became aware that there seemed to be a certain suppressed and malicious excitement about the Warburton girls. Their eyes kept darting from him to the colorless female in the corner.

  The butler announced dinner. The ladies went first, two by two, in order of precedence, with the gentlemen following, Lord Warburton and the Marquess taking the lead.

  Something made the Marquess turn his head just as he was about to leave the drawing room. The drab companion or poor relation or whatever she was was obviously not expected to join the company. She was sitting, her head bent over her sewing, in a chair by the window.

  As if conscious of his gaze, she looked up and then lowered her eyes quickly.

  The Marquess went on out of the room with Lord Warburton, his mind racing. For one mad moment, he had thought that sad creature was Amaryllis. He conjured up a memory of Amaryllis in happier times, her auburn hair glowing above her beautiful face, her charm and vitality, and shook his head as if to shake away the sudden pain caused by this image.

  The house party consisted of eight guests including himself and Mr. Chalmers.

  The dining room was decorated in pastel green with some fine Adam medallions on the walls. Portraits of the previous, now dispossessed, owner’s family gazed down at the guests. The Marquess wondered if Warburton passed them off as his own.

  He was seated on Lady Warburton’s right with Lady Evans on his left. Cissie and Agatha were at the center of the table. He could not hear what they were saying, but he admired their looks. Both were exquisitely dressed, their gowns having been cut to emphasize their generous bosoms and mitigate the thickness of their waistlines.