Page 73 of Not Quite a Lady
‘Now, you must not worry if you get lost,’ Miss Lovell was saying cheerfully as she led the way up the great stone staircase past several more suits of armour and a vast, almost black, oil painting.
‘All our guests do. Just tug a bell-pull or keep going down whatever stairs you come to. Sooner or later everything ends up back in the Great Hall.’
‘It is a wonderful building.’ Lily tried to catch glimpses of the rain-swept grounds outside through narrow lancet windows set deep into the walls.
‘It is,’ Caroline agreed, flipping aside a tapestry to reveal a door. ‘I had better tie this back or you will never find it again. We all adore the castle, even though it is draughty and inconvenient and far too big. And one turret fell down at the time my father inherited the title.
‘Mind you, it needs structural work all the time, never mind the turret, so goodness knows if Jack could ever manage to get round to rebuilding that on top of everything else. He says running Allerton is like standing in front of a fire throwing on five pound notes,’ she added cheerfully.
‘Oh.’ Lily followed through the door and up a winding wooden staircase with carved beasts on the finials.And if I had not blundered so tactlessly…
‘Jack is talking about doing some redecoration, though.’ Caroline opened a door at the end of the corridor. ‘I believe he got some ideas in London. He was telling us about a house with crocodiles and how it was decorated in the Egyptian style, but I think that can only be a joke.
‘Now, what do you think of this room?’
‘Lovely.’ Lily pushed the hurtful thought that Jack had been laughing about her to the back of her mind. ‘It is just like a princess’s room from a fairy tale.’
‘That is what I always feel.’ Miss Lovell seemed pleased with her response. ‘When I was little I would climb up into this window seat and watch for my handsome prince to come.’
Lily walked across the room and joined her. The window was cut deep into the thick stone walls and a seat had been formed in the embrasure, heaped with tapestry cushions and framed by brocade curtains, once white, now aged into a deep cream. The bed was draped in the same brocade and the walls had been simply plastered and whitewashed.
As she looked around Janet bustled out of a side door, her arms full of underwear, and a maid was on her hands and kneessetting a fire.
‘We have to light fires most months,’ Miss Lovell explained. ‘Thank you, Susan.’
The maid gathered up her brushes and bobbed a curtsey. Janet tactfully vanished back into what Lily assumed was a dressing room and pulled the door shut.
‘Is my brother beingverydifficult, Miss France?’
Lily stiffened, then realised she could not resist the wicked twinkle in the eyes that were so like Jack’s.
‘Very, but I’m afraid we have both been,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I am so sorry to have shocked Lady Allerton by telling her about the duel. I had assumed that everyone would know about it because of Jack’s wound.’
‘He hid it very well from everyone but me. Stubborn creature,’ his loving sister pronounced fondly.
‘Oh, isn’t he.’ Lily clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘Miss Lovell, I amsosorry. I should never have said that.’
‘Nonsense. And please, call me Caroline? Do you want to wash or rest? Because if not, do come to my room and tell me all about it.’
Lily let herself be borne off along more confusing corridors and settled on a chaise in Caroline’s room. ‘Now, tell me everything. Has Jack been absolutely impossible?’
‘It is just as much my fault I suppose, although that is difficult to remember when he is being…stubborn,’ Lily said with some feeling, trying to decide what she could safely tell her new friend.
‘I was engaged to be married to a baron. My family particularly wanted me to marry into the aristocracy. We are trade of course,’ she added baldly, just in case Caroline was in any doubt.
‘Yes, you said. Tea. Youarelucky to be able to escape all the boring ladylike things and use your brain.’
‘Only one is expected to do all the boring ladylike thingsas well, like catching an eligible husband. Anyway, I made a dreadful mistake with the one I chose. I knew he wanted my money, that went without saying, but I did not expect him to be such a… He expected me to sleep with him before we were married,’ she said baldly.
‘And you did not want to?’ Caroline did not appear unduly shocked, more curious.
‘I thought I would have to, to catch him, you know. But when it came to it I could not bring myself to, and I ran away and Ja...Lord Allerton rescued me.
‘But I didn’t know he was an earl then, and I told him about wanting to marry a titled gentleman, and he still didn’t tell me who he was. And I tried to persuade my trustees to invest in the mine, but they wouldn’t and Ja…Lord Allerton was furious and we had the most dreadful row.
‘And still he fought the men who had been insulting me. Which was dreadful.’
‘I should think it was,’ Caroline agreed warmly. ‘Bad enough that he had gained your confidence when he was deceiving you about who he was, but then to put you under an obligation when all you wanted was to be furious with him – that issucha typically male thing to do.’
