Page 33 of Misfit Maid

There could be no doubt of his meaning now. Maidie resolutely closed her lips, but her bosom rose and fell rather rapidly. The insinuation rekindled the tumult of emotion which had only just died down. So Eustace also believed she was setting her cap at Delagarde. She managed to keep her voice steady.

“You are mistaken, Eustace.”

He laughed very gently indeed. “You can’t think how relieved I would be if that were so. Or does pride prompt you to say it? He does not seem to favour you, does he?”

The headache which had been nagging at Maidie all morning now thumped painfully at her temples—which must account for the sudden lump in her throat preventing her from making any reply.

“Even if he did favour you,” Eustace went on, “you would hardly be the first to have made the attempt to turn his affection to advantage. He is said to be impregnable, didn’t you know? He has been on the town for near a dozen years, and the most resolute and beauteous of maidens has failed to catch him. He prefers, it seems, to amuse himself with a string of mistresses.”

Did he say it to dissuade her from, as he thought, an attempt to attach the Viscount? Or was his intent to destroy any glimmer of respect or liking she might have felt for Delagarde? Fortunately, since she felt neither, his words fell upon deaf ears. It was, she was persuaded, the intensity of her headache which was lowering her spirits.

“That,” she managed, with an assumption of nonchalance she was far from feeling, “is nothing to me.”

“I am relieved to hear it.” Again he smiled, and the purr was back in his voice. “You could not, I am persuaded, wish to be an object of interest to the gossips as they follow your progress—or lack of it. Nor could you wish for a husband who would make it his business to thwart your every move. Now I, on the other hand—”

“Thank you, but you have already said it.”

“And shall again. Don’t forget it, Maidie. I know what you want from life, and I am willing to give it to you. Why look further?”

She put up a hand to her aching head. “I have told you, and I will tell you no more. I wish you will give up the notion, for I mean it, Eustace.”

“Now, yes. I will wager, however, you will be glad enough to turn to me before too long.”

Maidie could tolerate no more. She turned from him and moved back to the centre of the room, addressing herself to Lady Hester. “If you will excuse me, ma’am, my headache is a good deal worse. I am going to my room.”

“My poor child! Yes, yes, go up at once, Maidie. I will entertain Lady Shurland.”

“Thank you.” She nodded at her cousin. “Good day, Adela.”

Reaching her room, Maidie rang for her maid. Then she sank on to her bed, grasping one of the posts for support. The disturbed night must be to blame, for she was a good deal upset by the encounter with Eustace. She had never before allowed herself to be distressed by anything the hateful creature said. It must be this ludicrous idea he had taken into his head—put into it, no doubt, by Adela—that she was one of these designing females who had foisted herself on to the Viscount only so she might somehow force him to wed her. Eustace must know it was nonsense, for he had himself pointed out, as had Lady Hester, that Delagarde would do anything in the world rather than take her to wife.

Such a resurgence of the ache at her temples accompanied this thought Maidie gripped the bedpost more strongly, and rested her brow against it. That was what came of thinking about Delagarde. Merely because he infuriated her so much. Almost as much as did Eustace. What had that creature meant about the gossips?

The entrance of Trixie into the room put this reflection out of her mind, for her maid, on hearing of her headache, bustled about, divesting her of everything save her shift and hustling her into bed. Hardly had Maidie got between sheets than Miss Wormley arrived, bearing a steaming concoction of herbs which she obliged Maidie to sip as she lay against a bank of pillows, a warm shawl, unearthed from the press by the maid, around her shoulders.

“Have they gone?” she asked of the Worm, who was sitting on the edge of her bed, once Trixie had departed.

“I do not know, my love, for I followed immediately upon your leaving the room, and ran down to desire the housekeeper to have this tisane made up for you.”

Maidie reached out a hand, and her duenna clutched it. “Oh, Worm, that horrid Eustace is still determined. Will nothing convince him I won’t marry him?”

The Worm clucked distressfully. “Yet he cannot but be convinced when once you are betrothed, Maidie. We must hope you will soon find yourself able to accept a respectable man.”

“Yes, but I don’t think I will, Worm. Not as long as Delagarde insists upon keeping my fortune secret. I have not attracted anyone at all.”

A hiccupping sob sent the Worm into spasms of tutting, from which she was only rescued by a knock on the door, followed by the immediate entrance of Lady Hester.

“How is your headache? I declare, I am astonished not to have one myself after entertaining that precious pair. You poor child, to have been obliged to live with such a woman.”

“Oh, Lady Hester, you can have no notion,” exclaimed the Worm before Maidie could answer. “The way she used my poor lamb when first she came to East Dean!”

“How did she use her?” asked Lady Hester with interest.

“Don’t, Worm. It is nothing to the purpose now.”

But the Worm did not heed her, and she was feeling far too unwell to expostulate. It had been a difficult time. Utterly cast down by Great-uncle Reginald’s passing, she had allowed herself, to her shame, to be bullied for several months. Indeed, she had only roused herself from her apathy at the threat of losing the Worm, when she had (in the words of Shurland) kicked up such a dust he had overborne his wife and allowed the duenna to remain. The Worm had then joined Maidie in Adela’s ill graces, and the two of them had laboured to rectify all the instances of neglect the new Countess decided was the fault of the previous incumbent: mending linen, polishing and tidying, sorting endless papers through drawer after overstuffed drawer, until the place was cleared to her satisfaction.

The worst cruelty had been the enforced dismantling of Great-uncle’s observatory, and Maidie had wept and wept as she began carefully to pack everything away. Firmin, discovering her at this task, had stopped it. He had told her, with an amiability which astonished Maidie—for he had been forceful in his condemnation of the waste of resources on this hobby—that she might reassemble it all if she chose. Only when she came of age a few weeks later had Maidie understood his reason. It also accounted for the sudden access of friendliness with which Adela had been behaving ever since.

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