I’ll Bring You Buttercups

ELIZABETH ELGIN

I’ll Bring You Buttercups

Dedication

To my father Herbert Wardley

whose book this is

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

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10

11

12

13

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About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

1913

Alice Hawthorn had never been so happy, and not in her seventeen years past nor surely in the seventeen to come could she be this happy again.

To London! She was going to London by railway train; rushing and thundering through six counties to a city which was to her only a far-away fairy tale. Not that she didn’t know all there was to know about that city. Miss Julia had spoken often of the parks and the genteel folk who strolled through them, and the shops – streets and streets of them – and theatres and music halls and squares of townhouses. Oh, and people everywhere and the King and Queen reigning over half the world!

She wriggled deeper into the feathers of the mattress and pulled the blankets high over her ears. She was so happy she was afraid, for sure as anything could Fate snatch back her happiness. Fate always had, ever since she could remember. That was why she had hurried to tell it to the rooks, for not until she had told it, shared it, could this happiness be safely hers to keep. It was important the rooks should know. Rooks kept confidences and held secrets safe. You told them all: of birthings and dying, of sorrow and joy and hopes and fears. You always told them.

Rooks, it’s Alice here. She had stood, eyes closed, beneath the tallest tree in the wood, leaning against the trunk as though to link herself to the black birds that nested in it and wheeled and cawed above it. You know me. I’m sewing-maid at Rowangarth and I’m to go to London with Miss Julia and I’m that excited I shall burst if I don’t tell someone …

She had almost gone on to tell them about Tom Dwerryhouse but had decided against it, though heaven only knew why. Tom and Alice. Even their names seemed to fit; sounded so right together that it sent a glow of contentment from the tip of her nose to the tips of her toes. Tom, the under-keeper with whom she was walking out – well, almost walking out. Tom who was tall and twenty-two and had fair hair and blue eyes and a smile that completely transformed a face inclined to seriousness.

She was glad he was clean-shaven, because when he kissed her – and one day very soon now he would – she didn’t want it to be spoiled. Cousin Reuben had a moustache and he’d kissed her cheek the day he visited Aunt Bella with whom she once lived. She couldn’t have been more than eight at the time, but the memory of that prickly kiss lived on through the years. Reuben wasn’t really her cousin, though she called him that out of politeness, and because he was old.

She smiled, closing her eyes. She’d been on her way to Reuben’s cottage the day she met Tom – and all because of a lovable, lolloping dog who’d caused more trouble in the few months he’d been at Rowangarth than two dogs in two lifetimes.

‘Off you go, boy,’ she had whispered, slipping his lead, smiling as he hurtled into the green deeps of the wood, and hardly had she placed a hand on Reuben’s garden gate when she heard a roar so enraged that the whole of Rowangarth must have heard it, too.

‘Drat you, dog, you great daft animal! There’ll not be a game-bird left in this wood!’ The man who strode towards her carried a shotgun over his right arm, his other hand firmly grasping the collar of a bewildered spaniel. ‘Does this creature belong to you?’

‘N-no, but he’s with me.’ Alice gazed up into eyes deep with anger. ‘He belongs to Mr Giles and he isn’t a creature. He’s called Morgan and what’s more he’s got every right to run where he pleases,’ she ended, breathlessly defiant.

This was him, it had to be: the new under-keeper whose coming not two weeks ago had sent housemaids and kitchenmaids for miles around into a tizzy of delight; the man who had been so oh’d and ah’d over at table that Mrs Shaw had been obliged to tell them to stop their foolish talk, and if he were as tall and broad and good to look at as they made out, didn’t it stand to reason he’d be married, or at the very least promised?

‘That animal runs where I say he can, and where I’ve got pheasants sitting on eggs, he isn’t welcome. There won’t be a bird to show for it come October if he frightens the hens off the nests. And Morgan? What sort of a name is that for a dog, will you tell me?’

‘It’s the name Mr Giles chose.’ Alice tilted her chin.

And this was Mr Giles’s wood, like all the woods on the estate, or his as made no matter with his elder brother away in India. ‘And what’s more, I think Morgan suits him!’

‘So it does. A daft name for a daft dog, and likely you aren’t responsible for an animal not your own. But I’ve bother enough with hawks and magpies taking chicks and eggs: I can do well without that animal adding to my troubles. Now do you understand me, miss?’

‘But I always walk him here.’ Her mouth drooped at the corners.

‘Not any more you can’t, so best keep him near the house; trees enough for him there. Or you could let him run in the big meadow – if he isn’t afraid of cows, that is.’

He threw back his head and his laugh showed white, even teeth, and made her want to laugh with him. But she refused to give him the pleasure, for even though there was no denying that all she had heard whispered about him was true – he was as handsome as the devil – she tilted her chin still higher, for the new keeper was bossy and full of his own importance. Taking the lead from her pocket she murmured, ‘Come on home, Morgan.’ They wouldn’t stay where they weren’t welcome. She would call on Reuben tomorrow and, anyway, it was almost time for tea.

Servants’ tea at Rowangarth, when the big brown pot was set beside the kitchen range to warm and Mrs Shaw presided over bread and jam and fruit cake, was a happy time; the kitchen a haven of laughter and warmth where Alice Hawthorn could forget this slight.

‘Bid you good day,’ she had murmured in her most ladylike voice, deliberately refraining from using his name, though she knew it to be Tom Dwerryhouse. Everyone had known it; even the servants over at the Place.

Now she poked her nose out of the blankets to let go a sigh of relief, grateful that her hoity-toity behaviour hadn’t frightened Tom off for good. And well it might have, she admitted, had it not been for Morgan and his disorderly ways, for to Tom a dog so undisciplined was a challenge, a creature to be taught its place. And she had to admit that no dog she’d ever known was as tiresome and unbiddable as a spaniel called Morgan – and no dog so lovable. She would miss him when she went to London.

‘London,’ she whispered into the darkness. So far away that the journey could take hours and hours and they would have to eat luncheon on the train from a picnic basket, Miss Julia said. And when they arrived at King’s Cross station it would be she, Alice, who would call a porter with a raising of her forefinger and the slightest inclination of her head and instruct him to procure a cab for them. He would place their luggage on his trolley – Miss Julia would have three cases at least, as well as a hatbox and a travelling bag – and wheel it to the cab rank. Already Alice had been well-schooled by Miss Clitherow, the tall, thin housekeeper whose back was as straight as a ramrod and who carried her head so high that when she looked at anyone it seemed she was looking down her nose at them. The housekeeper, if she consented to let a body get to know her, was a kind, lonely woman who was neither below stairs nor above and had long since learned that to keep herself to herself was by far the best solution.

Yet she had taken to Alice, right from the day the nervous girl of almost fourteen had presented herself in her ill-fitting clothes and too-big boots for the close scrutiny of Rowangarth’s housekeeper; had found the girl’s innocence and candour pleasant after some of the pert, badly spoken young women she had interviewed. Without hesitation she had given the position of under-housemaid to the brown-eyed child who came without references but with a glowing report of her docility from the aunt who had brought her up and from Reuben Pickering, head keeper at Rowangarth, related to the girl through a niece, once removed. And though she was never to know it, it had been on Miss Clitherow’s recommendation that she was accompanying her employer’s daughter to London, and the well-instructed Alice knew exactly how a lady’s maid behaved; exactly how much money she should carry in her coat pocket and how much to tip – if the service had been good, that was. Because a lady like Miss Julia never called a porter or a cab, or stooped to ask the cabman how much, Miss Clitherow stressed, let alone proffered a tip. It was why a lady never travelled without a maidservant or chaperon. It was why, Alice exulted, she was going to London in two days’ time and, even though it would part her from Tom for almost a fortnight, she wouldn’t have missed it for all the tea in China or, to be fair to Rowangarth, in India!

‘To the mews off Montpelier Place,’ she would tell the cab driver in a softly spoken, genteel way; to the Knightsbridge home of Miss Anne Lavinia Sutton, maiden aunt to Robert, Giles and Julia, elder sister of the late Sir John of Rowangarth, God rest him, who had gone to his Maker before his time and at great speed: at fifty-eight miles an hour, to be fatally exact.

Alice closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep. Tomorrow she must be up early, for there was unfinished work in the sewing-room; buttons to sew on Lady Helen’s tea gown – fifteen of them – and heaven only knew how many darts and tucks her dinner dress needed.

Poor Lady Helen. It would make her sad to wear that long, full gown in lavender slipper-satin. Alice was prepared to bet she would have gone anywhere at all in it rather than to Pendenys Place. After all the long months in mourning for her husband, must she not be dreading this first public engagement for three years, Alice brooded. Wouldn’t it have been better had she been able to accept some other, kinder ending to her years of black drapes and widow’s weeds, for Pendenys was not the friendliest of houses to visit, even at the best of times.

But the Suttons of Pendenys Place were kin to the Suttons of Rowangarth, and it was to kin that a woman turned when her mourning had run its course and she was able to step back into society again – even kin she disliked.

‘Lady Helen has lost weight,’ Miss Clitherow remarked to Alice only the week before as together they shook out and pressed the morning dresses and tea dresses and dinner dresses and ball gowns put away for the period of milady’s mourning. There would be a lot of work to be done before her sewing-maid went flitting off to London, she suggested pointedly, or where would her ladyship be, after so long in nothing but dreary black and purple? And Alice had fervently agreed and made a mental promise that Lady Helen’s clothes would all be seen to in good time, for she cared deeply for the mistress of Rowangarth, would always be grateful for the stroke of good fortune that landed her with the Rowangarth Suttons and not the Suttons of Pendenys Place. To have been in service at Pendenys, with the ill-tempered Mrs Clementina and the need always to be on the lookout for young Mr Elliot who thought all servants fair game, would have been unthinkable. She wondered why Lady Helen did not employ her own personal maid; why she preferred the aid of the housekeeper to help her dress and herself, the sewing-maid, to look after her clothes when Mrs Sutton of Pendenys had a lady’s maid from France to keep her clothes immaculate and even to style her hair.

Alice sighed, and thought instead of the lace-trimmed, blue-flowered tea gown and the pernickety sewing-on of fifteen shanked buttons in mother-of-pearl. And so fiddling a job was it that she was soundly asleep by the time she had bitten off the cotton attaching button number three.

‘I heard it whispered,’ said Mrs Shaw, who stood on a three-legged stool in the servants’ sitting-room, ‘that you and Tom Dwerryhouse are walking out.’ She had been longing to ask the question, but had refrained from asking it in public since it was obvious the lass wanted it kept a secret.

‘Not walking out exactly,’ Alice whispered from the swinging folds of Mrs Shaw’s hem. ‘But he does seem to have taken Morgan in hand: sits when he’s told, that dog does now, and comes when I call him – or most times he does. And you can’t say it isn’t an improvement, and not before time, either.’

Alice didn’t usually sew for Rowangarth staff, it being understood that when she had attended to the needs of her ladyship and Miss Julia, any spare time was spent repairing household linen. But Lady Helen was taking her afternoon rest, Miss Clitherow was away to town on Rowangarth business, and Miss Julia was out bicycling, so no one would be any the wiser if Alice spent a little time pinning up the hem of Cook’s newly acquired skirt. And it was, remarked Mrs Shaw, an ill-wind that blew nobody any good because here she was, the recipient of a quality skirt, passed on by a friend in service in Norwich as a direct result of the sinking of the SS Titanic and the late owner of the skirt having no further use for it, so to speak. And more bounty to come. A good winter coat, Mrs Shaw had been promised, and anything else the poor unfortunate lady’s executors thought fit to dispose of.

‘He’s a well set-up young fellow, yon gamekeeper,’ Mrs Shaw pressed.

‘Yes, and he likes dogs. Even sees good in Morgan.’ Alice was not to be drawn. ‘Can make him do anything. Now me – still sets me at defiance, sometimes. Fairly laughs at me – aye, and at Mr Giles, too. Turn round a little to your left …’

‘Was Mr Giles that found him – the dog, I mean. By the side of the road, wasn’t it?’

‘It was, Mrs Shaw, and in a terrible state, all battered and bleeding. Wrapped the poor thing in his jacket and carried him to the village, to the veterinary. Vet said the dog had been whipped something cruel, and neglected too, and it looked as if he’d run away or been abandoned. Best put the poor creature to sleep, he said.

‘But there were no bones broken, so Mr Giles brought him back to Rowangarth and him and Reuben got him on his feet again, between them.’

‘Aye. And a nuisance he’s been ever since, the spoiled animal,’ the cook sniffed. ‘For ever knocking things over; always in the kitchen, begging for scraps. And when I go to chase him back upstairs he looks at me with those big eyes. Well, what’s a body to do, will you tell me?’

‘Just like Mr Giles to bring him here, though. He don’t like animals suffering.’ Alice removed pins from her mouth. ‘Don’t like it when the shooting season starts. Not a one for killing, not really – well, that’s what Cousin Reuben said. A waste of two keepers Rowangarth is, though it might have been better if Mr Robert had been here. You can step down now, Mrs Shaw …’

She gave her hand to the small, plump cook, who said that now the pinning was done she could see to the sewing herself and thanks for her trouble.

‘No trouble, Mrs Shaw. And if your friend at Norwich sends you anything else, I’ll be glad to help alter them. But tell me about Mr Robert? Why didn’t he stay at Rowangarth after his father died? Why did he go back to India when her ladyship needed him here?’

‘Mr Robert? Sir Robert it is now, him having inherited. And as to why he came home from India after Sir John got himself killed and saw to everything and got all the legal side settled then took himself off again with indecent haste leaving his poor mother with the burden of running the estate …’ She inhaled deeply, not only having said too much for the likes of a cook, but had run out of breath in the saying of it, ‘… beats me,’ she finished.

‘But there’s Mr Giles here, to see to things.’ Alice liked Mr Giles. It was one of the reasons she took Morgan for a run every day.

‘Happen there is, and I’m not saying that Mr Giles isn’t good and kind and it isn’t his fault he’s got his nead in a book from morning till night.

‘It’s his brother, though, who should be here, seeing to his inheritance and not bothering with that tea plantation, or whatever it is they call it.’

‘A tea garden, Miss Clitherow says it is, and it’s tea that keeps this house on its feet,’ Alice reminded. Tea came every year from Assam; two large chests stamped Premier Sutton and the quality of it unbelievably fine.

‘Yes, and a tea garden that could well be looked after by a manager and not by the owner, my girl,’ came the pink-cheeked retort. ‘But it’s my belief –’

‘Yes, Mrs Shaw?’ Alice whispered, saucer-eyed.

‘It’s my belief there’s more to it than tea. More to it than meets the eye.’ Nodding, she tapped her nose with her forefinger.

‘A woman?’

‘A woman. Or a lady. Can’t be sure. But one he’s fond of, or why did he go back to India when his duty’s here, now that Sir John is dead and gone? Why doesn’t he marry her and bring her back here as his wife, eh?’

‘You don’t think she’s a married lady!’

‘A married woman.’ corrected Mrs Shaw from the doorway, ‘and if you ever repeat a word of what I’ve just said –’

‘Not a word. Not one word, Mrs Shaw. And I’ll be off, now, to give Morgan his run.’ And maybe see Tom, and perhaps discover where he would be working tonight, for gamekeepers worked all hours, especially when there were pheasants and partridges to see to, and poachers to look out for. ‘See you at teatime, Mrs Shaw.’

Oooh! Young Sir Robert and a married woman! And him in love with her, or so it would seem. But it was easy to fall in love, Alice acknowledged, thinking about Tom and how far they’d come since that first stormy meeting. Very easy indeed.

Reuben Pickering spooned sugar into the mug of tea then handed it to the young man who sat opposite at the fireside. He was pleased enough with the underling who had recently come to Rowangarth and who, if he behaved himself, would one day be given the position of head keeper. When he, Reuben, had presided over his last shoot, that was, and snared his last rabbit and shot his last magpie, and gone to live in one of the almshouses on the edge of the estate; in the tiny houses where all Rowangarth servants ended their days, were they of a mind to. And when that day came, young Dwerryhouse would leave the bothy where he lived and come to this very cottage with his wife, like as not – a thought that prompted him to say, ‘Kitchen talk has it that you and young Alice are walking out.’

‘Then talk has got it wrong, Reuben.’

‘So when you meet her this afternoon it’ll be by accident and not by design? Trifling with the lass, are you then?’

‘Trifling? No. But what do you know –’ He stopped, eyebrow quizzing.

‘Know that whenever she brings that dog of Mr Giles’s along the woodland path you always seem to be there, checking nests or just plain hanging about!’

‘It’s the only way I can see her,’ Tom coloured. ‘She’s like a dandelion seed, is Alice Hawthorn. You think you’ve got her, then puff, she’s away. But I didn’t know there’d been talk, for there’s nothing to tell,’ he shrugged.

‘Didn’t hear it from gossip – not exactly,’ Reuben chuckled. Hadn’t he seen the pair of them; seen them often? It hadn’t been all that difficult. A gamekeeper learns quickly to move like the shadow of a passing cloud; learns to drift in and out of sunlight dapples and to tread carefully and soft-like, so that neither beasts nor poachers know he’s there, watching or waiting or following. ‘Fond of the lass are you, Tom?’

‘That I am, though I’ve held my tongue. Wouldn’t do to tell her. I’ve a feeling she’s a lass that might be easily frightened off.’

‘So you haven’t even kissed her?’

‘That I have not!’ The head jerked up and blue eyes blazed, staring into Reuben’s paler ones, growing dim with age. Though it was more fool him, Tom silently admitted, for Alice’s mouth was made for kissing, her tiny waist for cuddling, and that pretty, pert nose made him want her all the more when she tilted it, all hoity-toity.

‘Then best you get a move on, or you’ll be beaten to it.’ By the son of Rowangarth’s head gardener for one, who was serving out his time at Pendenys Place, or by the young red-haired coachman for another. ‘Well, if you’ve got decent and gentlemanly intentions towards her, that is,’ he added solemnly, him being related to Alice in a roundabout way and therefore responsible for her because of it.

‘You think I don’t know it? But I can’t seem to make any headway. She’s a fey one.’

‘So are all lasses. They play you along like a fish on a line till they’re ready to pull you in. Unless,’ said Reuben, placing a log on the fire, ‘you show her you mean business.’

‘And how am I to do that? She tells me nothing; doesn’t even talk about her family nor where she comes from; no, nor even if she has a young man back home. Won’t give me a straight answer.’

‘Nor will she, Tom. She has no family – save for me and my niece Bella. It was Bella took on the rearing of Alice when she was nobbut a bairn – and did it with bad grace, an’ all. Many’s the time that woman nearly packed the lass off to the workhouse. Well, stood to reason, didn’t it; another mouth to feed on nothing but charity. Had her for seven years and begrudged every mouthful the bairn ate. Mean, my niece is.’

‘Poor little Alice,’ Tom said softly. ‘To lose her folk, and her so young …’

‘Younger than you think. Only a babe of two when her mam died, so her father left her with his mother and went off to be a soldier, the barmpot, and got himself killed at Ladysmith. And the old granny didn’t last long after that, neither, so Alice was farmed out again.’

‘An orphan at three,’ Tom frowned. ‘She’s never known a childhood.’ Not like his own. Not a growing-up secure in the care of parents and a brother and two sisters to fight and squabble with and stand solid against the rest of the world with. ‘Never known anything, really, but charity.’

‘Aye, and charity that’s given grudging is a cold thing, and as soon as the lass was old enough she came here, into service. The only good thing that woman did for Alice was getting me to speak for her to Miss Clitherow, or she might have ended up with the wrong Suttons; might have gone to that martinet over at Pendenys Place. And heaven help any lass that ends up there – especially one that’s bonny to look at. The Place Suttons have no breeding, see? Brass, yes; background, no. Not the right background, any road.’ Like all servants who were fortunate enough to end up with a family of quality, Reuben was a snob, and looked down on the Suttons at the Place.