The Hermit's Daughter Read online

  “I was never at your father’s house, but he was occasionally at mine. He handled a business matter for me some years ago.”

  “What matter was that?” she asked with sharp interest. Papa’s cases were generally in the nature of causes célèbres. She had no recollection of reading Lord Monstuart’s name in the journals.

  “The details escape me,” he answered evasively. “It was some years ago. We occasionally met afterward for a game of cards or chess.”

  “Papa was a great chess player.”

  “Do you play?”

  “Very little.”

  “The country offers so few entertainments. I wonder if you might be induced to give me a game,” he suggested. He looked toward the lovers in the corner, and the mama, and stifled a yawn behind his fingers.

  It was Monstuart’s intention to remain as long as Derwent, and Miss Hermitage had already guessed as much. She rose to get the board and assemble the pieces. Watching her glide across the room, he found her as admirable a sight from the rear as from any other angle.

  Sally began to set up the chessboard, but she had not played in several years and was unsure where to place the various pieces. Holding a carved ivory queen, she let her fingers hover above the squares, catching her lower lip between her teeth. He studied the white hands with the delicate pink nails, then the little rounded white teeth, and said not a word as she put every piece save the pawns in the wrong squares. When the job was done, he rapidly shuffled them around to the conventional positions, without a word.

  “I haven’t played in an age,” she admitted.

  “I assumed as much,” he replied, but didn’t offer to call off the game. She would have preferred conversation, during which she hoped to score him off for calling them ladybirds.

  Monstuart started off with a conventional opening; it was the only conventional move made during the game. Miss Hermitage had obviously not the least notion what she was about. Bishops were hopped like knights, knights shoved straight forward or diagonally, and even a pawn was endowed with the power of taking three or four squares at a leap. She was a wretched player, but such an entrancing one to watch that he went on for some minutes without saying a word. He watched her fluttering hands, and her face tensed in willful concentration as she tried vainly to remember the route her chosen piece should take.

  “Tell me,” he said a while later, “are we playing chess, or hopscotch?”

  “I think you are playing chess and I am playing hopscotch,” she confessed, “and it is a pity we are playing our separate games on the same board. Truth to tell, I haven’t the foggiest notion what I’m doing.”

  “In that case, you are doing it extremely well. I can’t believe the Hermit’s daughter is so dull she can’t master the moves. Shall I refresh your memory a little? The queen can go ...” He went on to explain the rudiments.

  “It’s much too confusing. Let us play piquet instead,” Sally suggested, throwing up her hands.

  “No, no! You give up too easily. It will be an excellent diversion for you, here in the country, with many a long evening to kill.” He glanced at his watch and at his nephew, but there was no sign of Derwent leaving yet, so they continued their confusing game of chess, till, at length Monstuart rose and said peremptorily to his nephew that it was getting late.

  Derwent felt his uncle was coming around, and with a squeeze of his intended’s fingers and a smile that promised future bliss, he was torn away. The three ladies sat around the fire later, asking one another what the second visit from Monstuart augured.

  “He was much more civil than he was this morning,” Mrs. Hermitage said hopefully. “He apologized for what he said earlier—on the way out, you know, he murmured something to that effect. An apology does not come easily to him.”

  “He also said he and Derwent had come to take their leave,” Sally reminded them.

  “Derwent is coming back tomorrow.” Melanie smiled.

  “If Monstuart lets him,” Sally added.

  “As to that,” Mrs. Hermitage said with a coy look at her elder daughter, “I think you handled him very wisely, Sal.”

  “I didn’t ‘handle’ him at all. He has no idea of allowing the match, but I don’t see how he can prevent it.”

  “He can’t,” Mrs. Hermitage said firmly, for Melanie’s benefit, but she was by no means convinced of it. On this hopeful note, they went to bed.

  Chapter Four

  If a second visit from Monstuart led to curiosity, a third on the next morning threw the ladies into alarm. He had come to take his leave. Why, then, had he returned? But return he did, and at no late hour either. As on the day before, the gentlemen arrived at an inconvenient ten-thirty. Melanie always made a prolonged toilette. Next to her visits from Derwent, they were the most enjoyable part of her day.

  On this occasion, Miss Hermitage was also unprepared for company, but she was ready sooner than the others, so it was her lot to go belowstairs and entertain the callers till reinforcements arrived. As she glided noiselessly toward the Rose Saloon, she heard Monstuart’s deep voice coming from within. He spoke in a lowered tone, but his words were audible. “I think you have chosen poorly,” he said. It was enough to get her hackles up. He was trying to talk Derwent out of the match and was ill-bred enough to do it under their own roof!

  Her eyes were already flashing and her color was high when she entered the room. The welcome bestowed on Monstuart was a welcome in name only. “Good morning,” she said in a voice that would freeze live coals. “How very early you are up and about these days, Derwent,” she continued more affably to the younger gentleman. “We are not accustomed to seeing you before eleven.”

  Lord Derwent was never at his best with Miss Hermitage. “It’s a jolly fine day, you know, and I hoped Mellie might come out with me for a drive.”

  “She will be delighted,” Sally replied with just a flicker of a triumphant glance to the guardian. “Have you come to take your leave of us again, Lord Monstuart?” she asked.

  “I have decided to prolong my visit.”

  It was about the worst news he could deliver. He was going to stay on, trying to talk Derwent out of the marriage by reminding him he had “chosen poorly.” A sardonic smile thinned his lips. “You conceal your joy remarkably well, ma’am. I congratulate you.”

  “I doubt you will find much to amuse you in Ashford,” she said curtly.

  “On the contrary, I find a great deal to amuse me,” he countered. There was a little something in his smile that hinted she herself was a source of amusement, as one might take amusement from a raree-show or the antics of a monkey.

  “Absolutely,” Derwent said eagerly. “Drives and rides and dinner parties and assemblies. There are any number of things to do in Ashford. I never saw such a lively spot, for a dull little country town, you know.”

  “With chess and embroidery and reading to fill any little interstices that might occur in such a crowded calendar,” Monstuart added, leaving the words to convey their own impression of tedium, for there was no sarcasm in his tone.

  “We do not hope to match the gaiety of Beauwood,” Sally said pointedly, and regarded Monstuart with a meaningful eye.

  He refused to take offense but managed to add a little to his reply. “How should you, indeed?”

  It was well that the absent Hermitage ladies appeared at that moment. Monstuart received a baleful scowl from Melanie, but Mrs. Hermitage, who still remembered her scold from him, felt he was not a person to be offended and was very civil. She offered wine and a good many expressions of worried delight at his call.

  “Will you do me the honor of driving out with me, Miss Hermitage?” Monstuart asked when Derwent and Melanie rose to leave.

  Sally was unsure in what manner the gentlemen had arrived. If it was in two open carriages, as the spring weather made possible, her inclination was to remain at home. On the other hand, if Monstuart was to make an unwelcome third in Derwent’s carriage, she felt she must go, for her sister’s sake. D
erwent solicited her company, saying in a transparently pleading way, “I came in Monty’s carriage. We will all be as merry as grigs in Uncle’s rig together.”

  Sally saw her duty, and she did it. Monstuart didn’t comment on her decision, but she knew by his mocking look that he had engineered the matter of one carriage, done it for the sole purpose of ensuring her presence.

  “Where shall we go?” Melanie asked.

  Sally thought the best place to go was some spot where they might descend from the carriage to walk, thus giving the young lovers some privacy. With this end in view, she suggested a short drive into the country, followed by a walk through town. “I promised Mama I would pick up some muslin for her this morning,” she invented, to give such a dull trip some reason.

  She feared her mother was about to reveal her lie, but she did her an injustice. Mrs. Hermitage had read Sally’s scheme and was busy to add to it. “And the fish for dinner, Sal,” she threw in. The longer Sally could detach Monstuart, the better. “And a leg of mutton from the butcher.”

  “Mama, the servants can do that!” Sally objected. They were never accustomed to carrying their own groceries home. To sink so low before Lord Monstuart was surely not a good plan.

  “As you are going to the shops, dear, it will leave the servants free to polish the silver. The silver wants polishing,” Mama insisted. Every candlestick and teapot in the house gleamed like new, but Sally had no intention of playing the undutiful daughter in front of her waiting escort, so she accepted it and even took some satisfaction from the thought of Monstuart’s carriage being cluttered with a smelly parcel of fish and a leg of mutton.

  Mrs. Hermitage went on to give instructions as to the quantity of turbot required and the degree of marbling necessary to turn the mutton tender. The quantities mentioned told Sally that there was to be more than the family for dinner, but as she had no wish for Monstuart to be one of the projected party, she said not a word about it.

  Monstuart’s waiting carriage was a handsome black one with a lozenge on the door. Other than the noble emblem, the carriage was no more handsome than the Hermitage’s own and elicited no compliments. The trip three miles into the spring countryside passed without any strong unpleasantness. Miss Hermitage occasionally pointed out a particularly fine stand of cedars or patch of wild flowers, but the younger company was not much interested in anything beyond the velvet lined carriage, and Monstuart’s concern with nature seemed hardly greater.

  “Very nice,” or “charming,” he might say, with always that bored look that proclaimed his mood more loudly than words. At length Sally had had enough of trying to introduce some conversation into the trip and said bluntly, “It is clear you take no pleasure in rural beauties, milord. I wonder you are not in London, with the Season just beginning.”

  “You forget I have been at Beauwood, ma’am. There are some rural beauties there well worth a look. I received my nephew’s message while there and am, in fact, on my way to London.”

  Sally had a pretty good idea what rural beauty at Beauwood was considered worth a look by this urban creature. “Does Lady Dennison go to London as well?” she asked.

  “I trust it is her intention.”

  There was no egging him on to either revelation, dismay, or argument, so like the rest of the group, Sally lapsed into silence till they returned to Ashford. The carriage was sent on, to return in an hour.

  Derwent took Melanie’s arm and hastened to get beyond earshot of his guardian. Monstuart turned to his companion and asked, with a black brow raised at a querying angle, “Was it worth the trip, to let them have this chance to be alone?”

  “Yes, it was worth even that. Whether it is worth having to carry a fish ...” She stopped short, for this was a confession she had not intended making.

  “There is the fishmonger’s,” he pointed out, and, taking her arm, he led her across the street.

  “It would be wiser to pick up the fish last,” she suggested.

  “You’re not thinking, Miss Hermitage. If we get it first, I shall have the distinction of carrying it about town. Perhaps that will bring you out of your sulks.”

  “I am not in the sulks.”

  He regarded her critically. “You’re right. That particular expression is called a moue, n’est-ce pas? A pout is very becoming to some young ladies.” Whether it became this particular one was not stated, as Sally was already heading down the street.

  Her nostrils pinched involuntarily when they entered the fish shop. She was unsure whether she would be able to partake of the turbot after seeing it in its unprepared state, with glazed eyes and mottled fins. There was no denying, however, that it gave her great satisfaction to place the parcel in Lord Monstuart’s fastidious hands, and still greater pleasure to soon bestow on him as well a large leg of mutton. The pleasure would have been increased had he deigned to show the least of the disgust she was sure he felt, but even when the fish wrapper became noticeably soggy, he did no more than hold it a little away from his superfine jacket and give her a quelling glance that prohibited comment.

  The Hermitages had many friends in Ashford. Several were well enough known that they stopped for a chat and an introduction to Lord Monstuart. It was some small pleasure that his lordship was unable to shake hands or remove his hat, for both hands were full of ignominious raw fish and meat.

  “I should have had the wits to stick Derwent with this stuff” was the closest he came to complaint. “It would give him a foretaste of this marriage he is bent on contracting.”

  “It will be enough to put you off from it,” Sally replied.

  “I need no putting off.”

  “A misogynist?”

  “Not in the least. Say rather misogamist. I have nothing against women but that they make abominable wives.”

  “It’s odd you should say so. I have often wished I had a wife myself, for I think it would be very comfortable to have someone to take care of one’s house and bear one’s children and be always there to blame when anything goes wrong.”

  “Your idea has the merit of novelty, at least. I shouldn’t mind having a husband to pay the bills and chew out the servants—and carry the fish.”

  “I shan’t trouble you to carry the muslin, at least. I’ll undertake that myself. I wouldn’t want it to come home smelly.”

  “You will make an admirable husband, ma’am. I envy your wife.”

  As this foolishness was going forth, a tall, smiling gentleman in his forties approached. He removed his curled beaver to reveal a long forehead whose length was caused by the recession of his hair to the rear of his scalp. “Miss Hermitage,” he said, beaming, and pulled up to talk.

  “Why, Mr. Heppleworth, what are you doing with yourself these days? I swear you have deserted us abominably,” Sally said. This was the gentleman she had some hopes might make a parti for her mama. He owned a large dairy farm and estate at the edge of town.

  “What but ill health could make me desert the Hermitage?” he asked with a look of avid curiosity in Monstuart’s direction. Sally performed the introduction but made no motion of walking on at its termination.

  “You do not look in the least unhealthy. In the pink of condition, I would say.” She smiled.

  “It’s the hot water that cured me,” Heppleworth confided. “Gout, you know. There is nothing like cutting the toenails in hot water to soothe it. Dr. Aylesworth prescribed wearing flannelette bootikins and staying indoors, but with the hot water and a dozen drops of laudanum to kill the pain, I have put off my bootikins. It was a severe attack. The gout flew from the head to the stomach and gave me a wretched two days, but it is better now. You may look for me at the Hermitage this afternoon.” He turned to Monstuart in a conspiratorial way and added, “It is my little conceit to call the ladies’ residence the Hermitage. A pun on their name, you see.”

  “Original.” Monstuart smiled. There was no trace of his former boredom but a wicked gleam of appreciation.

  Heppleworth soon reverted to his
ills and cures. “Aylesworth sent me over a quart of excellent paregoric draft. I have siphoned off a cup for your mama. She is subject to a sick stomach, poor old soul.”

  As her friend was amusing Monstuart, Sally decided not to prolong the visit. “We look forward to seeing you, Mr. Heppleworth.”

  “Yes, yes, I shall be there for a certainty. You will be home, Miss Hermitage?” he asked with a little jealous dart of the eye to her escort.

  “I believe so, but in any case Mama will be there.”

  “I can come this evening, instead, if you will not be home.”

  An evening call from Mr. Heppleworth was a thing to be avoided at any cost. About the only danger to health he indulged in was overstaying his visits to the Hermitage. He made up for it by sleeping in till noon, but the fact was his evening visit lasted well into the night and often till early morning. His peculiar insistence that she be on hand to receive him sent a question shivering through Sally. Could Mama be right that it was she, Sally, that the old fool had in his eye?

  “Oh, no! Do come this afternoon. I shall be there,” she said, and immediately took her leave.

  “You should have reminded him to bring his bootikins,” Monstuart said as they walked on to the drapery shop. His arms were becoming tired from holding the parcels at an awkward angle, and his temper was not wearing well.

  “It wasn’t necessary. He keeps a spare pair at our house.”

  “What an old quiz.”

  “He is one of our best friends,” she announced, and gave him such a glare that he said not another word of denigration.

  “We have half an hour till we meet your sister and Derwent. Is there somewhere we might sit down and get this load off my hands?” Monstuart asked.

  “I told you to buy the fish last,” she scolded.

  “True, but you didn’t tell me you intended saddling me with half a sheep as well. There is a tea shop ahead. Let us go in and sit down.”

  They entered the homey little tearoom. A delicious aroma of yeast, cinnamon, and sugar hung on the air, and at several small tables the buzz of gossip increased. Derwent and Melanie were already ensconced at a table near the rear. Sally looked at her escort with suspicion.