Page 12 of The Last Debutante
Five
HAD SHE TRULYleft England for this? Daria was accustomed to dining on fine china, at a set hour, in an actual dining room. She was accustomed to spending her days calling on friends and receiving callers, to servants and carriages and footmen and fine linens.
She was most certainly not accustomed to preparing food and sweeping floors and hunting in the woods for “healing plants.” She’d ruined her best shoes and the hems of her gowns, and worse, and no one had brought her trunk up from the road. It had probably been eaten by bears. Or worse.
Neither was she accustomed to being so tenderly kissed by wild, muscular men. The memory of it made her shiver. It had happened so quickly! She couldn’t stop him from pulling her down... Well, perhaps she might have stopped him if she’d tried. But his touch was so moving, and his mouth so warm, so soft. She’d felt a thousand tiny sparks of light flare in her the moment his mouth had met hers.
It was almost as surprising as finding Mamie in the state she had.What in blazes had happened to her grandmother?Daria could see no reason for her to remain in Scotland. The standard of living here was agrarian, beneath what Mamie had known all her life. There was no society, nothing to keep her—it made no sense. Daria recalled a sophisticated woman who smelled of lavender and slipped her sweetmeats and told her fantastic stories of princesses and princes. After her husband had died, the widowers in and around Hadley Green had courted Mamie, and she’d seemed happy to entertain their attentions. She’d gone on picnics, she’d dined at important tables, she’d hosted society teas. She had been, to Daria’s young eyes, quite lovely.
That woman was not in this cottage.
The woman in the kitchen moved as if she weren’t certain what she was to do next. She pulled bowls from the shelf and set them on the table, then picked them up and replaced them, only to find another size.
“What is the matter?” Daria asked.
“What is the matter?” Mamie repeated sharply, and slapped the bowl on the table before whirling about to face a surprised Daria. “I told you to leave the poor gentleman alone, that’s what! I specifically asked you not to enter that room, and look what you’ve done!”
Girlish panic raced through Daria. Did Mamie know he’d kissed her? Could she see that the kiss was still singing through her? Daria was prepared to confess he was delirious, calling her by another name.
“I didn’t do anything!” Daria protested. At least she didn’t think she had. There had been a bit of a contretemps between her and her grandmother this morning, as Daria had refused to accompany her into the forest again, on the grounds that she didnotgather berries like a farmer, and certainly not in forests full of wild animals and men who shot other men and left them to die. Mamie had seemed confused by her refusal, desperate to go out, and just as desperate not to leave Daria alone with the stranger. She had indeed forbidden Daria from entering his room while she went out to gather whatever in heaven’s name it was she gathered in the woods.
“Well, now he’s awake and I’ve nothing to ease his pain!” Mamie added, and pivoted around to the shelf. “You have vexed him with your meddling.”
“Mymeddling?” Daria exclaimed. “He awakened all on his own—” Another pointless argument. She had begged, argued, and cajoled her grandmother to summon help, but Mamie was steadfast in her refusal to seek it, and seemed quite perturbed with Daria for even asking.
But now, she was suddenly smiling as if she’d not been the least bit cross only moments before. “Be a sweetling and go out to fetch the bandages I’ve hung out to dry. We must change them.” She winked at Daria, then rose up on her tiptoes to the shelf to reach the brown vial.
“He doesn’t want a tincture,” Daria said reprovingly.
Mamie’s face darkened again. “Darling, please don’t argue—I really must change his bandages.”
The bandage argument was one Daria could not win. She sighed and picked up a roughly woven basket from the floor, stalked to the door and yanked it open, and nearly stumbled over the dog. He was lying across the stones, a large bone between his paws. He sprang to his feet and stuck his snout in the space between the door and the frame, his tail wagging madly.
Daria stepped over him and pulled the door shut. She frowned down at him and his bone. It was ahambone, and given its size and the distance she guessed he could have carried it, she presumed that he’d procured it from someone nearby. Unless Mamie had slaughtered a pig, which, after two days in this cottage with this madwoman, would not surprise Daria in the least.
The dog bounded into the garden before her, leaping over weedy plants. Daria grimaced as her shoe sank into the dark soil. By the time she reached the line where the linens were lifting lazily on the morning breeze, the dog had disappeared onto the path she had walked from the main road, leaving his bone behind.
She dropped the basket, put her hands on her hips, and surveyed the linens Mamie had washed. Her grandmother was, if nothing else, rather industrious. Daria pulled a sheet down, folded it carelessly, and tossed it in the basket. She happened to glance up and saw Mamie in the window of the man’s room. Mamie was looking at Daria, watching her, too. Mamie smiled thinly and cranked the window shut.
Daria sighed irritably. She tried to picturethisMamie in Hadley Green. She tried to picture her in their family home.
Daria’s family home wasn’t the largest house by any means, but it was very lovely. It had two stories and an attic, where Mr. Griswold had a pair of rooms on one end and old Mrs. Bromley, who did the cooking and housekeeping, had a pair on the other.
The house had six bedrooms, as well as a drawing room, dining and sitting rooms, and a small library where her parents kept their notes and books. They fancied themselves botanists, and in recent years they had taken on the complex task of grafting a new strain of orchid. Daria didn’t know all the details, and it wouldn’t matter if she did—she was not invited to their private orchid party.
They spent their time in the hothouse, their forms barely distinguishable from one another. Daria spent her time in the main house, with its ivy-covered walls that had ten large-paned windows facing the lane. Daria couldn’t picture her grandmother in that house any longer—at least not like this.
She pulled the bandages from the drying line and tossed them in the basket. Removing the largest of the bed linens next, she tucked it under her chin and was attempting to fold it when she heard a horse coming down the path.
Daria looked up to see a horse and rider ambling down from the hills to the west. Not just any rider, mind you, but a bear of a man who seemed almost as tall as his horse. His feet scarcely cleared the ground. His hair was pulled back in an old-fashioned queue. He was wearing a dark coat and buckskins.
The dog suddenly appeared, barking furiously at the intrusion, racing through the woods to the path. He stopped in the middle of the path, and with his legs braced wide apart, he barked.
“Uist!”the man shouted.“Suidh!”The dog instantly sat, his tail brushing the ground behind him in a happy wag. A moment later, he suddenly hopped up and trotted forward to sniff the horse.
The man’s gaze had locked on Daria, his expression cold and stern. A flutter of fear swept up her spine. She glanced nervously at the cottage, debating whether she should call Mamie. In the moment that took, he’d reined up beside the fence. And the dog, the worthless dog, had trotted back into the field.
“Madainn mhath.” The man’s voice was low and soft, belying the dark look in his black eyes. He didn’t move, but he seemed coiled, ready to strike.
