Dear Lady Disdain

Hal slid off his horse as they reached the steps leading up to the entrance of the Hall, which the moon had already revealed to be a massive and brilliant structure, built in the Palladian style. It was a smaller version of the Duke of Devonshire’s villa at Chiswick, although by now Stacy was incapable of registering such architectural niceties.

She followed Hal up the steps, leaving John still cradling poor Louisa in his arms and trying to keep her out of the wind. It seemed to take ages for the door to open, and when it did she eagerly walked forward to say to the butler who had answered it, ‘My name is Miss Anna Berriman. The chaise taking us to York has broken down and we are in need of shelter and succour for the night, and men to rescue the chaise tomorrow morning, check the damage and arrange for it to be repaired. Please inform your master of our arrival.’

All this came out in her usual coldly efficient manner, the manner which set everyone at her home and at Blanchard’s Bank scurrying about to do her bidding without argument. For a moment, however, the man before her did and said nothing. By the light of the dim candle he was holding she could merely see that he was very large, and only when the moon came from behind a cloud was she able to see him fully for the first time.

He was not wearing any sort of livery but a rough grey country coat and a pair of black breeches. His cravat was a strange loose thing, black, not white, made of silk, with a silver pin in it. The only immaculate thing about him was his boots. A butler wearing boots! His whole aspect was leonine; tawny hair and eyes, a grim, snapping mouth—she was sure it was a snapping mouth. Who in the world would allow a servant to dress like this?

He seemed about to say something, and his mouth quivered, but he simply waved a hand and enunciated—there was no other word for it—curtly, ‘Enter. We have little enough to help you with, but what we can do we will do.’

Well, on top of everything else he was certainly the most mannerless churl it had ever been her misfortune to meet! His harsh voice was as strange as the rest of him. There was an accent in it which she had never heard before. Now he was turning away, without so much as a by your leave to her, and motioning them in.

For a moment Stacy had a mind to reprimand him, but then she remembered poor Louisa. It was no time to be training servants.

‘My poor companion has a bad fever,’ she told the broad back before her, making her voice as commanding as she could—she was not used to being treated in such a cavalier fashion by anyone, let alone a servant— ‘and I think she ought to be put to bed in a warm room immediately.’

The butler turned around, to show her his leonine mask again. He really was the most extraordinary-looking creature, strangely handsome, almost. ‘That may be a little difficult, madam.’

Was it her imagination, or had there been something unpleasantly sneering in the way in which he had said the last word? Stacy, followed by her small party, who were looking about them in astonishment at the decayed state of the entrance hall, continued to walk on until she said, ‘I find it difficult to believe that your master would refuse warmth and shelter to forlorn travellers…’ She stopped, indicating that she wished to know his name, and as he turned around just as they reached a large baize-covered door he apparently read her mind for he said, head bowed, almost in parody of a servant, ‘Matt, madam. You may call me Matt.’

May I, indeed? was her inward angry thought, but, about to say something really sharp, she was stopped by Matt—could that really be his name?—checking his stride to say to John Coachman, who was carrying Louisa and was staggering with weariness, ‘You’re out on your feet, man; give me the lady,’ and he lifted poor Louisa out of John’s arms to carry her himself.

He waved at Hal to open the door. Hal was nearly as shocked as his mistress by this strange me´nage and even stranger servant—as he was later to say to the assembled staff at Bramham Castle, when Stacy finally reached there, ‘I were fairly gobsmacked by it all, and no mistake.’

At last, Stacy thought, comfort and succour. The whole party felt as though their life had been suddenly renewed—but what was this? They were in the kitchens, where, although they didn’t know it, for the first time in years the great fireplace had been properly cleaned. Jeb had retreated to its comfortable warmth when Matt had left the drawing-room.

Behind her Stacy felt her party shuffle their feet and begin to hem and haw. The butler laid Louisa gently down on a settle in the corner of the huge, high-vaulted room, and, taking a blanket from a cupboard, put it over her. She surfaced for a moment to say blindly, ‘Where are we?’ before lasping back into semi-delirium again.

‘You have brought us to the kitchens,’ announced Stacy dramatically. ‘Kindly inform your master of our arrival. I am sure he will order you to prepare somewhere more suitable for us.’

She was uncomfortably aware that not only were her feet frozen, but that her light boots were soaked as a result of her long trudge through wet snow. Approving of being shown into the kitchens or not, she found herself holding her skirts before the huge fire in an attempt to dry them. She would wait to remove her boots until she finally reached a comfortable bedroom. The rest of her party were clustering round the fire, which was large enough to heat even this most cavernous of kitchens. Steam was beginning to rise from their wet clothes.

Jeb, who was finding life in the frozen wastes of northern England even more amusing than he had anticipated, if not exactly comfortable, gave a snort of laughter on hearing Stacy’s orders. Horrocks, whose wits seemed to decline daily, began to speak, caught Matt’s stern eye, and thought better of it.

Matt Falconer offered the stone-faced termagant who was speaking to him so brusquely his hardest stare. All the pent-up anger created by this wretched visit to England, compounded by what he had found at Pontisford Hall, was making him behave in a manner totally unlike that of his usual good-humoured self.

Oh, yes, he’s Lord Radley to a T, thought Jeb gleefully, guessing what was passing through Matt’s mind as he was addressed so peremptorily, and this icy-faced bitch had better watch her step. He’s had a hard time lately, has our Matt, and someone is going to pay for it.

Matt was thinking the same thing. What a shrew! She hadn’t even the decency to enter the house before she was throwing orders about like confetti. She deserved a few lessons in good manners, if not to say due humility. Never mind if she had had to endure the storm and a wrecked coach—that was no reason for her to carry on like a mixture of the Queen of Sheba and Catherine the bloody Great rolled into one.

‘There are no warm rooms other than this one,’ he announced, his voice as cold as the snow outside. ‘We shall all have to sleep down here tonight. By tomorrow some of the bedrooms may be fit for habitation, and if so I shall arrange for them to be made ready for you. Kate,’ he told the little maid, who was helping Polly into a chair and exclaiming over her damaged wrist which Stacy had bound up with a length torn from the bottom of her petticoat, ‘go and fetch Mrs Green from her room. And Cook, the soup left over from dinner can be heated up to stop these poor folk from dying of the cold.’

He stretched out a booted foot to kick one of the logs on the fire into a more useful position. ‘And you, madam,’ he added, drawing up a tall Windsor chair, ‘may sit here—unless, that is, you care to make yourself useful. You seem to have come out of this accident more fortunately than the rest of your party. Instead of shouting the odds about what we are all to do, you would be better employed doing something yourself.’

Matt watched with a wicked delight as the shrew began to say something, then bit her tongue before the words could fly out. Stacy wanted to scream at him that she and the postilion, who was now on his knees before the fire with his frozen hands held out to it, had trudged more than a mile through the snow while the rest of the party had ridden, but her pride forbade it. She would not bandy words with servants; she would not.

If the half-conscious Louisa Landen had ever wondered how her wilful charge would fare when faced by someone with a will as strong as her own, and who did not give a damn for her name and fame, which he didn’t know in any case, she was soon to find out.

Hal walked up to her, his face worried, to say in a low voice before she sat down, ‘He should not speak to you as he does, mistress. Let me tell him who you are. That should silence his impudent tongue.’

‘No, I forbid it,’ Stacy whispered fiercely at him. ‘On no account—and you may tell John Coachman and Polly the same. We shall not be here long, I trust, and I do not bandy words with servants.’

Hal was doubtful. ‘As you wish, mistress.’

‘I do wish, and now go and sit down. You have had a hard day.’

She sat down herself, in the chair which the butler had earlier offered her, and began to pull off her ruined boots, seeing that she was not going to be offered a decent room of her own in which to do so, only to discover that her stockings were as wet as they were. Which did not improve her temper, for she could see that there was no way which she could pull them off surrounded as she was by staring underlings, some of whom seemed to be taking a delight in her discomfort. She put her boots before the fire to dry after first helping Polly to remove hers; her damaged wrist was making life difficult for her.

The little maid had set out coarse pottery soup bowls and an odd assortment of servants’ hall cutlery on the big scrubbed table, and presently the cook ladled out a thick vegetable soup for them all. Stacy’s party set to work with a will, being hungry as well as tired. Even Stacy swallowed the greasy stuff, although it nearly choked her. Matt had left the kitchen for a short time, to return with blankets and pillows which he put to warm before the fire before making up an impromptu bed for Louisa.

Jeb had accompanied him, saying with a grin as he helped to collect bedlinen, ‘Come on, Matt, put the poor bitch out of her misery and tell her who you are. She’s in an agony about having to argue with a butler.’

‘Not…likely,’ Matt had sworn. ‘She’s just the kind of useless fine lady I thought that I’d left behind for good. Full of her own importance and fit for nothing but embroidery and spiteful gossip!’

He had said this with such venom that, not for the first time since he had heard of the scandal in which his master had been involved, Jeb had been curious about the details of it.

‘You’ll have to tell her some time—and soon,’ he had argued.

‘But not yet. Let the shrew sweat.’

Jeb had shrugged, and later he was a little surprised to discover that it was the fine lady herself who fed Louisa, whom the kitchen’s warmth had restored to consciousness, sitting by her on her impromptu bed and spooning the soup gently into her unwilling mouth. ‘Come on, my love. You won’t help yourself by starving,’ she coaxed, to be rewarded by a watery smile.

After that Stacy insisted on looking after Polly’s wrist, rubbing goose-grease salve on it which the cook had grudgingly fetched from her store-cupboard. Matt watched her with a puzzled expression on his face—he had not expected so much practical compassion from such a proud piece—only for him to lose it when Stacy said curtly to him, ‘I would like to speak to your master now. At once, if you please!’

What on earth was the matter with the man? This perfectly ordinary request produced such an answering spark in his golden eyes, and such a savage twist to his lips, that it almost had Stacy stepping back in fear. She was trying to imagine what kind of master would tolerate such a…wild animal…as a butler. A dilatory one, obviously, who in his idleness let his servants do just as they pleased, for after a second’s hesitation this most unlikely butler came out with, ‘Oh, I daren’t disturb him just now, madam. More than my job’s worth, I should say.’

For some reason, after he had offered her this piece of insolence, the uncouth and strangely dressed Jeb—and what was his position in this zoo, if not to say menagerie, which apparently comprised the Hall’s staff?—saw fit to fall into a fit of the sniggers. He had previously been engaged in flattering Polly, who was simpering and grinning at him in the most unseemly fashion. Were her own servants becoming infected by this disorderly crew?

Not Hal, who said bluntly to the butler, who had turned away to begin placing the used pots on the massive board by the large stone sink preparatory to beginning to wash them, ‘Have a care how you speak to my mistress, man. What your master requires of you is one thing. What she deserves in respect from you is quite another.’

The butler turned to stare at Hal, who was belligerently squaring up to him. Big though he was, he was by no means a match in size for the butler who, now Stacy came to think of it, resembled a prize-fighter rather than an indoors servant.

‘Oh,’ he came out with, a faint smile on his face, ‘but she doesn’t pay my wages, does she?’

Which produced another snigger from Jeb, who, to stir this delightful pot even more, added, ‘I doubt whether she could afford them.’

Hal turned on Jeb, enraged by his attentions to Polly, on whom he was sweet himself. ‘Oh, and who the devil are you to tell me anything? And as for my mistress’s ability to pay this yokel…’

‘Hal!’ Stacy used her very best voice on him, not loud but stern and compelling, the voice with which she had dragooned the employees of Blanchard’s Bank into realising that here was no girlish and innocent chit to be ignored, but Louis Blanchard’s true heir in person. ‘Be quiet. I will not have any brawling here on my account.’

‘What a wise conclusion,’ the yokel—and what a splendid description of him that was—drawled amiably, beginning to wash pots with what even Stacy could see was exemplary speed and precision. ‘Hal shouldn’t begin on an enterprise which he can’t win.’

This had the desired effect on Hal, of starting him off all over again. He had begun by defending his mistress from discourtesy, but he was now defending his own prowess. He advanced on the smiling butler with his fists raised. ‘I’ll have you know I work out at Jackson’s gym. I’ve never seen you there, and that’s a fact. Put up your dukes—or shut up.’

The only things the butler raised were his wet and soapy hands, which didn’t stop Hal. ‘Any excuse to dodge a fight,’ he sneered, and threw a punch in the butler’s direction.

For a moment Stacy was frozen by the unlikely revelation that Hal was not only her loyal servant, but also saw himself as her champion. At all costs she must not allow him to fight with the butler. Desperately she threw herself between the two men to expostulate with them, to do anything which might stop the coming brawl.

All she stopped was Hal’s fist. By good fortune she was struck only a glancing blow, but it was enough for her to see stars before she sat down, ignominiously and humiliatingly, on the kitchen floor. Through her swirling senses she heard Hal’s cry of distress. ‘Oh, mistress, God forgive me.’

She also heard the butler cursing under his breath, ‘Oh, hell and damnation, what next?’ as he put his soapy hands under her armpits and hauled her to her feet again.

Oh, God, what next, indeed? Would this dreadful evening never end? All that Stacy wanted was to be in her own comfortable bed, Polly in attendance, kind Louisa well and on her feet again, somewhere near by in loving attendance.

But what she got was something else entirely. The kitchen door opposite her opened abruptly to reveal to her dazed eyes a tall woman with a thin, hard face, decently dressed in black. The housekeeper presumably.

The woman took one comprehensive look at them all. At Stacy, white-faced and trembling. At Hal, now on his knees, agonised, begging forgiveness of her for his unintended blow. At Jeb, leaning against the wall, convulsed and chortling, ‘Oh, Matt, boy, this is your finest turn ever. Better than a play.’ At the assembled servants, both the Hall’s and Stacy’s, all either shocked or amused according to their preference, and lastly at the butler, a canvas apron round his waist, his soapy hands just releasing the now furious Stacy.

‘And what,’ the woman roared, happy to have a chance at getting back at the uncouth monster who had disrupted her easy life, and knowing that now she was under notice to leave she had nothing to lose by saucing him, ‘is the meaning of this, m’lord? And why are you wearing Cook’s apron and doing the washing-up?’

Chapter Three

Everything, but everything, went into a weird kind of paralysis, as though time itself had stopped. For a long moment no one moved and no one spoke.

M’lord? Thought Stacy and all her party. M’lord? She must mean the butler. She can’t mean the butler, can she? Can she?

But she did.

Stacy turned to face him. M’lord. Of course, she should have known. Everything about him radiated authority—which she had mistaken for insolence. For whatever goddamned reason—and really, her internal language was growing more impossible by the minute—the coarse brute had chosen to lie to her from the first moment that he had spoken to her.

She did something which she had never expected to do, something which no lady should ever have done—but then, she told herself grimly afterwards, I am no lady, and for sure, for all his title, he is no gentleman! She slapped him across the face with all her strength.

Her blow broke the paralysis which had afflicted them all. Hubbub ensued. Hal rose slowly to his feet, staring at this unlikely lordship. Jeb gave a whistling roar into the silence which followed Stacy’s blow, and then began to clap his hands slowly. ‘Well struck, madam,’ he called to her from his post by the wall.

For his part Matt Falconer held his flaming cheek, and slowly admitted to himself that he should never have allowed his hot temper, long reined in during his years in the United States, to take him over now that he was back in England again and incite him to taunt this headstrong shrew—however much she had deserved it. And now least said, soonest mended. He picked up a towel and began to dry his hands.

He didn’t immediately address Stacy but said, almost mildly, to the triumphant woman who was defying him, ‘I told you not to call me m’lord, and I meant it. I am Matt, Mr Matt, or Mr Falconer to you.’

Stacy, overwhelmed by her own unladylike behaviour, conscious only of poor, sick Louisa’s reproachful stare, murmured hollowly to him, ‘She called you m’lord. Was that another lie in this house of liars, which you, the biggest liar of them all, are supremely fit to head?’

Matt held on to his temper. A hard feat, since he could see that the cross-grained bitch in front of him now had the upper hand, the moral hand, and would use it to provoke him further. She had a tongue like a striking adder, and no mistake.

‘Strictly speaking, madam…’

Stacy, lost to everything, resembling, had she but known it, her father in one of his rare and formidable tempers, raged at him. ‘You can speak strictly, then? I had thought insolence was more your line. But pray continue,’ she added, poisonously sweet, as she saw him open his mouth. To explain presumably. But what explanation could mend this?

She no longer wanted her bed. She wanted to see m’lord whoever-he-was grovelling before her. Nothing less would do.

Matt decided not to bandy words with her. They had an audience, fascinated by the sight of their masters engaged in a ding-dong, knock-down quarrel in front of them, instead of it taking place decently in private. What a rare treat! And all the time in the world to enjoy it, since it was plain that they were all, except possibly the housekeeper, trapped in the kitchens for the night.

‘Strictly speaking,’ he said between his splendid teeth, his eyes still defying her whatever his tongue might say, ‘I am Matthew Falconer, Lord Radley—Earl Falconer’s heir. I prefer, however, to be known as Matt Falconer.’

‘Oh, I thought your preference was to be known as the butler,’ returned Stacy nastily, green eyes flashing, while inwardly she said to herself, Matt Falconer—now wasn’t he involved in some massive scandal when I was barely out of childhood? And no wonder, carrying on as he does.

‘Something wrong with butlers, is there?’ gritted Matt, his own eyes shooting fire as he immediately forgot the resolution which he had just made, that he would be unfailingly polite to this icy hellcat—could hellcats be icy?—and giving her what his old nurse had used to call ‘what for’ again. ‘Unconsidered serfs, are they? I had sooner be a good butler than a bad nobleman any day.’

‘And, of course, being who you are,’ Stacy shot back, all discretion, all decency gone, now completely the true descendant of the rampantly outrageous pedlar who had made the Blanchard fortune, ‘you know all about bad noblemen, I’m sure!’

Jeb, who was busy counting the score for each side as though he were the referee at a boxing-match, saw that red rage was overcoming his employer. He had experienced it rarely, but he knew the signs. And for once Mad Matt had met his match in a woman whose icy deadliness equalled his fiery temperament.

How he mastered himself Matt never knew. Each fresh insult she offered him had him wishing that he could teach her a lesson, put her across his knee…Added to his rage was his sudden shocked horror at the knowledge that, of all dreadful things, he was becoming sexually roused.

What he really wanted to do was to take her in his arms, bear her to the floor and show her who was master…

He shook his head to clear it, rebuked his misbehaving body, and ground out, ‘No useful purpose is served by our being at odds in this situation, madam. I apologise to you for my deception.’ Which, had he ended there, might have done the trick, but the sight of her small contemptuous smile had him adding, ‘Although you must admit that you did come on too strong from the beginning.’

Behind them Jeb gave a groan, and Hal, forgetting his mistress’s orders, grew angry with the arrogant swine all over again. Lord he might be, but his mistress was right. He was no gentleman.

Stacy was also ready to restart the battle. Just because he was a man, an aristocrat, was big and strong, and, it must be admitted, in an odd way handsome, that was no reason for him to think that he could speak to her as he pleased, but as she opened her mouth to deliver another broadside she was stopped by her companion.

Louisa Landen had watched the affray with growing horror, and total surprise at seeing Stacy, who was usually so cool and controlled, so completely and utterly lost to all ladylike as well as decent behaviour. At first she had felt too weak to intervene, but was now so shocked by the behaviour of both parties that she cried feebly, ‘Stacy, oh, Stacy. I feel so ill! Do leave off wrangling, my love, I need you.’

This had the effect of Stacy exclaiming remorsefully, ‘Oh, Louisa, forgive me! I had quite forgot how ill you are.’

While Matt Falconer remarked nastily, ‘Stacy? I had thought that you had informed me that your name was Anna!’

Stacy dodged this question, which proved that he was not the only liar in the kitchen, by running over to Louisa, putting a hand on her hot forehead and murmuring, ‘Oh, dear, you have a strong fever.’ She looked across at the housekeeper, who, amused by what she had provoked, was standing there mumchance, being, like the rest of the servants, content to leave her betters to their quarrel. ‘Have you no willow-bark, madam, which we may infuse to break my companion’s fever?’

A learned shrew, was Matt’s grim inward comment as he turned his attention to the cooling water in the stone sink—to have the little maid twitter at him, ‘Oh, you should not be doing that, sir. Allow me,’ and try to push him to one side.

‘Nor he should,’ drawled Jeb. ‘Even if you were the butler, Matt, you wouldn’t be washing up. Most remiss of you. Should have given you away immediately—if everyone was in their right mind, that is.’