The Peculiar Pink Toes of Lady Flora Read online

  "No sir, it's been three summers and will soon be four."

  "Do you infer that I remain here for my own pleasure, man?"

  "I suppose, with the weather being so fine and having observed your grace in such relaxed surroundings— enjoying a new bloom of health and vitality, face browned by the sun, hair and beard grown long and untended as a gypsy, your garments in casual and easy disarray, your spirit in great strength and your body well nourished by the bounty of this adopted land, made me think of all this as a restorative, recreational...excursion. On the sunny continent."

  "I'll have you know I work myself to the bone six days a week in that vineyard on the hillside!"

  "And have you found any sign of the duchess under the grapes, sir?"

  Maxim glared across the room, hand clenched around his glass.

  "You did say, sir," the solicitor added hurriedly, "that you did not want any of this, which I presume means you would like to be treated like a poor, humble, low-born fellow. In which case you would be told the truth, sir, however unflattering to your vanity and pride. You would sometimes be told no, not always yes. You would find folk who disagree with you, not only to your back, but to your face. Folk who feel free to question your motives and do not bow humbly before you." He paused, his lips struggling to restrain another pained, apologetic smile. "I suspect perhaps, the idea of being a commonplace fellow was a passing thought, your grace. And now you find it would not be quite so pleasant as you imagined to be rid of all this."

  Maxim had bitten the inside of his cheek and tasted blood.

  "Forgive me, your grace, but as your devoted servant it would be remiss of me not to point out to you how much you are needed and missed elsewhere. Indeed, during this absence, many members of the Fairfax-Savoy family have discovered new admiration for your honest, honorable qualities and your good sense. They realize now that you are the very keystone of their lives."

  "Do they indeed?" he muttered, scornful.

  "Without you as their anchor they are quite at sea, floating adrift with neither sail nor rudder— as you saw, they cannot even agree where to bury each other without your guidance. Your role in this life, even if you were born into it and feel it is unearned, is an important service, managing a great and noble estate, creating employment and livelihoods upon which many folk must rely."

  "So now I'm an anchor."

  "A most handsome one, your grace, of course."

  Was Plumm unhinged, he wondered; had the fellow's overworked, scheming brain finally blown a few springs and cogwheels? Whatever had caused the sudden burst of bravery, if Maxim was not very much mistaken, his solicitor had just given him a sturdy kick up the arse. Or a spanking of the sort delivered in a game of Hot Cockles.

  "I beg you to come home, your grace. My bowel is not one that manages travel with much dignity. I would not want to make this journey again. Once is enough."

  After twenty-five years the servant's reprimand of his master was, perhaps, overdue.

  Maxim always appreciated unhoneyed honesty and recognized it for a rare commodity. To react with anger, now, would make him a hypocrite.

  In truth he had come to like it here, where the food and wine tasted entirely different, the world seemed to turn at a slower more contented pace, and where nobody cared who or what he was. Here he walked in another man's boots, free to say and live as he pleased, away from the judging gaze of society; working with his hands every day, earning his coin, and enjoying a jug of wine at dusk with his fellow laborers. The temptation to linger in this place of anonymity had been too much to withstand.

  But his other world and all those responsibilities, as Plumm pointed out, would always be waiting.

  Now this woman — Flora Chelmsworth, as she once was—meant to invade that world in his absence. It was as if she'd picked the lock on a trunk that contained the remnants of his old life and was determined to open it, even with him sitting on the lid.

  Find a girl with whom you can fall in love. It really isn't beyond hope. Love does exist and it can be very strong, I promise you. It can do remarkable things.

  She had been in love with someone else twenty years ago, he was sure of it. Why else would she reject his marriage proposal, choosing romance over practicality and prudence? Why else would she talk of love, unless she had experience of it? Why else would she abruptly end their tentative correspondence, which she had begun?

  Or had he begun it by sending her cake, instead of letting the matter drop?

  He squinted across the room, thoughtful. What did she want with Darnley Abbey? Now that she was widowed, was this part of some contrivance to lure him home again? Plumm could be a sly old devil— that's why he was the best in the business, after all. The meek, shambling, on-his-last-legs act, the stains on the coat, the untidy grey wisps of hair protruding from his wig, the misbuttoned waistcoat— a pretense at absent-mindedness— it was all part of the masquerade. He really knew exactly what he was doing and he was fearless with it. A consummate card player.

  He also saw and knew much more than he let on, apparently.

  Yes, he was up to something with this Darnley Abbey business. Why else would he take such a long journey to see his master in person, when he was clearly not made for extensive travel and most of these matters could have been undertaken in writing?

  Well, then. He'd play along.

  Abruptly Maxim bellowed across the room. "If she's mad enough to want it. Why not? It's no use to me."

  "Beg your pardon, sir?"

  "Darnley Abbey. Lady Whatever-she-calls-herself-now. Draw up a lease and tell her she'll be thrown out on her backside if she's ever a day late with the rent. Spare her no pity, Plumm. I daresay she'll bat her lashes and flaunt her bubbies at every opportunity, so stand firm. However harsh the terms, she ought to be grateful. I shouldn't really give her the time of ruddy day." He sighed, pressing the back of his head against the chair, heel tapping restlessly, knee bouncing with fervor. "But you catch me in a mellowed mood."

  "Mellowed, sir?" Plumm, standing in the open doorway, looked doubtful and a little amused. "Perhaps it is the brandy, sir."

  "Yes. I must be drunk or I would certainly know better than to entertain such an idea. Or to let you walk out of here with both ears in their place after that impertinence." He sniffed. "They ought to be ripped off and thrust up your backside."

  "I daresay they ought, sir." Plumm seemed unusually cheerful suddenly. Perhaps it was the thought of going home to his wife.

  Ordinary folk, so Maxim had heard, often enjoyed happy marriages, doubtful as it may be to believe that any marriage could be described as such. For him— one of the peculiar folk— it was certainly not to be.

  "On my return to England, I shall inform Lady Flora Hartnell of your generous agreement to lease, your grace."

  "And you can tell her —" Maxim looked down at his sun-browned, grimy, work-roughened fingers, where they wrapped around the neck of the brandy bottle. "Tell her that we will not conduct business with a petticoat. We will only sign a contract with a fellow man. A dependable, approved, trustworthy fellow man who can vouch for her."

  With a smirk he gazed at those drifting curtains as the breeze quickened, forcefully moving the hooks along the rod. More daylight now invaded his suite. Bright marigold sunlight that refused to let a man sink into gloom. Like hope, it pushed its way in.

  He closed his eyes and saw the silhouette of a young girl running away from him, heading for bright light through a pair of glass-paneled doors. Maxim used to wonder what he would do if he gave chase and caught up with her. Now he simply wondered why he hadn't; why he'd stood there and watched her leave. If it happened today, he would not let her run away from him. Back then he was a boy and she'd taken him by surprise with her refusal. He'd needed time to patch his torn pride and get his breath back.

  "Thank you, sir, for your forbearance of this old man and your mercy toward his ears," said Plumm. "I can only excuse my behavior, again, on my great age and a softening of the
brain that comes with so many, many years of hard life. A squidginess, I suppose, one might call it."

  "Yes, well, go and be old, squidgy and decrepit elsewhere, before you leave a stain on the carpet."

  Once left in peace, Maxim set down the glass and reached into his coat pocket, this time bringing the hidden object out into shifting daylight. He clicked open the watch case to reveal the miniature portrait inside it. For twenty years he had kept it there, a secret for no eyes other than his own. Even she didn't know he had it.

  Brandy and cinnamon-colored hair and eyes that wavered, depending on her mood, between the richness of hot chocolate spiced with chili pepper, and the softer, soothing shades of a Provence lavender field at sunset. All of it bound up in a tiresomely rebellious, know-it-all-and-yet-nothing attitude. He closed his eyes and could still see her hurtling along his lawn, laughing fit to burst, pushing a wheelbarrow with some idle, irresponsible young rake falling out of it, crashing through his hedge.

  Seventeen and monstrously ill-behaved; his mother was right for once.

  His bones no longer ached, for sunlight shone through his skin and granted new strength. He could still hear her laughter, even after twenty years. Could feel her waist beneath his fingers, smell the scent of her hair.

  We could have been friends...

  But he had wanted more than that and because he was the Duke of Malgrave he thought he ought to have whatever he wanted. Whatever he expressed an interest in was always given to him. Until Flora Chelmsworth stumbled, quite literally, into his path and his hands.

  Seventeen and monstrously ill-behaved.

  Whenever he made up his mind about a person, Maxim never changed it, never wavered. But in the ledger of his memory he had left the page blank under that brief description. And he had secretly kept her portrait in his pocket for two decades.

  Almost as if he knew their story was not done yet; that he was coming back to her.

  But for what?

  A second chance?

  Today was his birthday, and suddenly it felt as if Plumm had given him a gift, after all.

  He set the brandy bottle down and got up to open the curtains.

  Chapter Ten

  Norfolk, England.

  One month later.

  "There it is, Francis! What do you think?" Impatient, she stuck her head out of the carriage window, knocking her hat off in the process. With one hand on the collar of her brother's coat, she dragged his wincing face likewise into the fresh air. "Is it not the ugliest, most desperate house you've ever seen? I am quite thoroughly in love with it."

  At her request, the carriage had rolled to a dramatic pause approximately half way along the gravel and dust lane that wound its way from a pair of broken gates to the building itself— a squat, half medieval abbey, half flint stone and brick Jacobean mansion, that slumbered in the valley. Huddled amid quilted fields with one eye open, the house's hunched posture and grimacing facade bore more than a passing resemblance to Flora's bulldog "Captain Fartleberries".

  "Yes, yes, I'm sure it's delightful," Francis muttered, tugging his collar from her fingers and retreating from the view without fully opening his eyes. "I'll look properly when we get there."

  Flora studied him for a moment and shook her head. "Late night, brother? Then what you need is a good, brisk walk. Trust me, a dose of fresh air is the best cure."

  "I'll take a stroll later." He sprawled in a corner of the carriage, his arms out, hands gripping the upholstery, like a cat resisting an overdue bath. "Now let these good horses transport us up to this house of which you are so enamored."

  But Flora, unable to wait for the stately progress of wheels, now opened the carriage door and leapt out before the step could be lowered. "What better way to see the property, than to walk up this lane toward it? Yes, then you will fully appreciate its strange, breathtaking power as I did."

  "I do not want my breath taken. I want it left precisely where it is."

  "Oh, Francis, the very point of breath is that it is meant to be spent. We cannot, in fact, remain alive without spending it. As a consequence, our life is measured in gasps and sighs. Now do come and look."

  "Why? What do you need me for?"

  "Because the owner will not conduct business, I am told, with a female. As all men know, women are weak, irrational, deceitful, disobedient, prone to corruption and generally depraved. We need men to calm our frequent bouts of hysteria, contain our passions and operate our commerce. Good God I am impatient for the future inevitable revolution of womankind. Although I doubt it shall come fast enough to save me."

  "Sister, I pray you! It is too early in the day and my night's good sleep was both too short and too shallow for my aching head to suffer one of your rambling, nonsensical tirades this morning."

  "I merely explain, brother dearest, why I am obliged to seek your approval."

  He slowly emerged from the shade of the carriage, blinking into the light, a tortoise roused too early from its hibernation, but now too curious to stay inside its shell. "You have never sought my approval in all the years of my life."

  "Well, don't let me down now that I actually need it, little brother." She waited restlessly, hands on her waist, eyes squinting against the sun's glare. "I may be older than you and a widow of no small age, but apparently you are considered worthy of signing this gentleman's contract, while I am not. I must have a man in charge of the pen and ink, merely to prevent me from causing myself and everybody else bodily harm with the pointy nib of the goose-quill."

  Finally her brother stumbled out after her, setting his hat on his head and looking extremely vexed. Even more so once he fully opened both eyes. "Really, Flora! What can you possibly want with this place?"

  "I feel an affinity with the house. We two abandoned old ladies, having put our best days behind us and suffering too many harsh winters, must stick together. I belong with her. She needs somebody to cherish her bones." With her own hat left inside the carriage and the summer sun's warmth cheering her spirits further, she grasped his arm. "But the land itself is what excites me most of all."

  "Excites you?" Digging in his heels, he eyed her in some alarm, as if this could never be good news. "What precisely do you plan to do here?"

  "Open your eyes, brother dear."

  "They are open, sister, and they smart from being dragged so early from my bed."

  "Orchards!" She pointed. "Acres of them. And, furthermore, grapevines! The monks who lived here, years ago, apparently produced their own wine. The vineyard has fallen into disrepair since then through neglect, but I mean to bring it back to life, make the fruit trees and vines—and myself— productive again. The estate solicitor tells me that the current owner has been looking for somebody to maintain the place, since he is away on the continent and there is little chance of him returning for some years. It was actually Persey Radcliffe who first saw the house, quite by chance, and thought it might do for me. So then she sought out Master Plumm to ascertain whether it was indeed vacant, as it appeared, and—"

  "But you have a home with me at Wyndham."

  "I cannot stay there forever, can I? I've thought, for a while now, of finding my own house, a project of some sort. Great Aunt Bridget's bequest has simply made it easier."

  When Master Plumm first approached her about Darnley Abbey, at the suggestion of her dear friend Persephone Radcliffe, she had been wary. Flora had never had a place of her own, had never thought far into the future. But then the solicitor pointed out how desperately the place needed tending and bringing back to order. Nobody in the Fairfax-Savoy family, he had told her with great sadness, was at all interested in the house and it was falling to rack and ruin. The next step had been for her to see it for herself and that was when she fell in love.

  "I can make wine here, Francis," she exclaimed happily. "Master Plumm thinks that would be a splendid idea. He says there could be no objection to making the place fruitful."

  "Flora, wine is made in sufficient quantity, in France, Ita
ly and Spain, surely. Is there a shortage?"

  "I hope not. There must never be! What would we do without it?" She thought of Goody Applegate's pantry shelf and the steadily diminishing line of bottles, the anxiety she'd felt to replenish the store, and the comfort those pretty labels brought to her spirit. All the work and pride that went into that wine. She wanted to know that sense of accomplishment for herself and to her, in a wild moment of optimism, it had seemed quite feasible.

  Francis groaned. "I'm quite certain our great aunt would never approve. She expected you to marry again and have children. I'm sure that bequest of jewelry was meant to —"

  "Marry again? My darling Francis, I adore your confidence in my charms, that fondness you have for me which renders you quite sweetly short-sighted when it comes to my multitude of sins, but what man, in his right mind, would take me on now? And to have children? I am not the maternal sort and this coming winter I shall be ...older. To commence birthing babies at my age would be a grievous mistake." She gripped his arm tighter, urging him forward again on foot. "Besides, children are all well and good; delightful creatures, I'm sure. I was one myself once. At least once. I have nothing against them, as long as they belong to somebody else."

  This girl, once known as Rosie Jackanapes, had decided many, many moons ago, that babies should be born of love, not duty, and to couples who actually wanted them. Whatever the child's gender. Look what had happened to the real Flora. Passed around between uncaring relatives, unloved and neglected, she had thrown herself at the first young man who showed her any attention, trading her life of upper-class privilege for rural, impoverished anonymity and casting her family into chaos. Possibly out of vengeance for the way they had always treated her.

  Hopefully she was happy now, all these years later. Her replacement liked to imagine the first Lady Flora was content to love and live simply with her groom, that she had discarded her corsets for many babies, learned to laugh, and never regretted her choice. That was the romantic version, of course, but they might never know.