Page 30 of The Lady's Companion
Susan stared at him as his words sank in. “But... but I thought he was a hero. I mean ... everyone thinks so!”
The bailiff nodded. “It’s what I chose to tell because I couldn’t bear to break Lady Bushnell’s heart a third time.” He took her hand and pressed it against his chest, his expression bleak. She did not move her hand this time. “Think of it, Susan. I lied and stole all my life, until I was stripped naked and facing three-hundred and death. Lying, conniving, and stealing is how you survive in a workhouse, and it was how I lived in that first regiment after I fled Wales.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said softly, wondering why she had ever complained about the course of her life.
“No, you wouldn’t,” he agreed, matching her for calm. “‘No, governor, I would’na steal a bowl of gruel. It must h’been Owen there,’” he mimicked, aping his own Welsh accent. “‘Lor’ love ya, sir, it’s my turn for the blanket,’ or the extra mutton gristle, or a spot closer to the fire. That’s how I survived, Susan. Then Lord and Lady Bushnell saved my life, and in exchange I promised never to lie or steal again.”
He released her hand, but she moved it no farther than the arm of his chair as he leaned forward, chin on hands, to stare into the fire. “And now I am living the biggest lie of all, because I cannot bring myself to tell an old lady the truth.”
Susan pulled the thought around in her mind, then leaned forward, too, unable to mask the intensity in her voice. “And so you protect her from the truth in this little valley? You see to it that no one new ever comes in, on the odd chance that someone will let drop the truth? And why do I think that the lady’s companions don’t stay around mainly because of you, and nother?”
“It’s true.” He grunted at the irony of his choice of words, then turned to look at her with something like apology in his dark eyes. “Lady B rubs along for a week or so with a lady’s companion – and I tell you she’s liked some of them – and then she asks me what I think. I tell her the woman won’t do, and she’s gone like that.” He snapped his fingers and Susan jumped. “I’ll do anything to keep Lady Bushnell’s heart from breaking.” He hesitated, opening his mouth then closing it.
“If you have something more to tell, you might as well,” she said, her voice low as she spoke almost in his ear. Although why you are telling me, I cannot understand, she thought, her mind and heart in turmoil, which grew worse with her next thought: Particularly if you are planning to dismiss me soon, like the others.
“Old Lord Bushnell knew the failings of his son,” the bailiff said, leaning back again, as though the conversation was beginning to exhaust him. “When I crawled down that gorge to see what was left, after he and Lady Elizabeth tumbled off, he was still alive.”
“Poor man,” Susan said, taking the bailiff’s hand this time.
He nodded. “Elizabeth was already dead. I don’t know where he got the strength, but he pulled me almost on top of him and made me promise to stick very close to his son. ‘He’s no soldier, but his mama thinks he is. I’m depending on you,’ were his last words to me before he ordered me to shoot him.” He turned bleak eyes on her. “And so I owe everyone a lie.”
“Except me,” she said, tightening her grip when she knew she should be letting go.
“Except you,” he echoed, then flexed his fingers in her grasp. “Have a care there, lady, or you’ll squash my milking fingers.” Before she could protest, he brought her hand to his lips, kissed it, then released it. He stood up and stretched. “I only came formy package,” he said with some amazement in his voice. He stood in front of her chair then, his hands on the arm rests, leaning over her. “Do other people confide in you?”
“No,” she replied simply. “No one has ever cared enough to tell me anything beyond the commonplace.” Her face hardened. “My father has never trusted me with the truth.”
He touched her cheek, then stood away from her. “Then he is a fool.” He picked up Steinman’s glove from the chair, went to the open door, and nodded to her. “I think I’ll go check my Waterloo wheat now.”
She glanced at the clock. “It’s past midnight! Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Of course I do,” he said, amused, his voice ordinary again. “But as it is, tonight I would only dream of Waterloo, or of you, and neither topic is productive, especially since you already turned down my wonderful offer of marriage. Wise woman.” He closed the door behind him. She listened for his footsteps on the stairs, but heard nothing. He knows how to go down these stairs quietly, she thought.
“If those are your only choices, sir, then dream of me,” she said softly. She picked up Joel Steinman’s unread letter and lay down on her bed. Mrs. Skerlong would have it that my class and upbringing make me impervious to the bailiff, she thought. I am sure this is true.
She held Joel Steinman’s letter up to the lamplight. “‘Miss Hampton, I may have found a solution to your problem,’” she read out loud. ‘“I am negotiating now with a recently widowed woman with two young daughters who is searching for just the right governess. If things aren’t working out (and perhaps I made a mistake), let me know, and I will keep you abreast of this posting. Regards, etc., Joel Steinman.’”
I will write you in the morning, Mr. Steinman, she told herself. As much as David Wiggins seems to relish late-nightconfidentialities, I think the cold light of morning turns him into a realist again, she reminded herself. I do not think I am long for this position. And yet, something tells me that I am the first lady’s companion he has confided in.
She went to the window, restless suddenly with the size of the room, and stood there until she saw the pinpoints of light in the succession house. The wheat came again to her mind’s eye, and she thought of it growing steadily through the long winter, carefully nurtured by someone who had watched it mowed down by artillery and stomped by cavalry into red mud on the deadly slopes of Mont St. Jean. The bailiff said he would be planting this Waterloo strain in the spring, the amalgamation of seeds he had created from totally different backgrounds.
She stepped out of her dress and still stood at the window, watching the light as she was sure he watched the wheat. When she got in bed finally, she rested for a long time on her elbow, half sitting up to look at the chair the bailiff had drawn up to the fireplace. How pleasant it must be to share a room and a bed with a man, she thought, not drawing back from the topic as she would have in Aunt Louisa’s house.
How pleasant it would be to know that when she took a candle from the downstairs hall table and started up the stairs, someone would follow her, or take her hand and lead the way. I would like to share a bed with a man, she decided, and while there would be lovemaking and whatever else that might entail that Aunt Louisa never told me, I would like to relax in bed and talk with someone besides myself, someone who loves me enough to listen.
It was a cheerful notion, and for the first time in years did not end with the bitter knowledge that her father’s improvidence had made a husband so impossible. She held her hands up to the moonlight that streamed in the window, thinking of the Waterloo strain, that bit of green born of war and the worstthat men could do to each other. David, am I getting some tiny glimmer of what that wheat means to you? she asked herself. That brave stand of wheat in the succession house was spring in winter; the quiet after the guns were silent; the low voices of husband and wife talking and laughing with each other when the house was still. Does it represent peace, and every good thing for someone whose life has been hard, to say the least? She sighed and wrapped her arms around her pillow, content for the first time in years. And all from silly old wheat, she told herself as her eyes closed.
The bailiff was gone in the morning, off to a cattle auction in Chipping Norton, Mrs. Skerlong said as she dished up a great bowl of porridge for Susan. “Middle of February, regular as clockwork since the Conquest, I suppose,” the housekeeper said, sitting down with Susan. She touched Susan’s hand. “I think all the cattle buyers try to cheat each other, and see who can drink and wench the most without their wives finding out,” she said. “But the lads must have their week of fun.”
Susan laughed and dipped into her breakfast. “Does anyone actually go there to buy cattle?” she asked.
The housekeeper shrugged. “Somehow it all happens. Tim the cow man got back this morning from spending the winter with his mother in Bristol, so at least we do not have to do the milking while David is gone.”
And thank goodness for that, Susan thought, sprinkling more sugar on her porridge. The only thing I have ever done with milk is drink it. I could learn, though, and make myself useful, she told herself, thinking how little Lady Bushnell wanted her presence.
“Something more, and this for you,” Mrs. Skerlong said, pulling a scrap of paper from her apron pocket.
Susan read the note, then looked at the housekeeper. “It seems I am to weed the plants in the succession house, and check forripe strawberries while David is gone,” she said.
