Dear Lady Disdain. Paula Marshall

A quiet, ladlylike refusal to join in his games would end all.’

      His games! Was he playing with her? Perhaps so. He had returned to his duties, to fling over his shoulder at her, ‘I am late from the United States, Miss Stacy, or whatever your name is, and we have no masters and servants there, only equals working together.’

      Forgetting all her resolutions and Louisa’s wise advice, Stacy shot back at him, ‘Which country, sir, since you are no gentleman, must be an eminently suitable place for you to live. I recommend that you return there.’

      ‘And by the same token, madam, since you are no lady, you should surely accompany me. Except that in the States your haughty manners would soon earn you a reprimand from everyone unfortunate enough to meet you.’

      Behind her, Stacy heard Louisa wail her name, and how she refrained from answering him back she never knew. She knew only that her common sense, which seemed to have taken flight from the moment she had set foot in this accursed place, told her that she must consider poor, stricken Louisa, and try not to disgrace herself before her own people, who, apart from Hal, were staring open-mouthed at her. Who would have thought that their cool and haughty, if kind mistress could behave so wildly?

      Astonishingly, bending over Louisa again, Stacy found tears pricking at her eyes. No, I will not cry, she told herself. This vile bully, who, as I recall, is no better than he should be, shall not make me cry. I will see him in hell first! And what on earth was happening to her that she should think such dreadful thoughts, use such language?

      She straightened up, turned towards her tormentor, and said in a more normal voice, ‘You have said that we must sleep here tonight, sir. Are you sure that you have no rooms in this vast house sufficiently warm for us to sleep in them?’

      That’s more like it, madam, thought Matt grimly. A little due humility works wonders. He forgot that he hadn’t been humble either. But he replied more gently, ‘I arrived here only two days ago, and no one has lived in most of the Hall’s rooms for the past fifteen years, nor, I fear, have they been heated during that time. We also face a shortage of fuel, so I am afraid that we are all doomed to spend the night in the kitchen—where it is at least warm—or die of cold in one of the bedrooms. I have already moved the servants from their attic bedrooms—I wouldn’t stable beasts in them.’

      Jeb was nodding agreement, as well as old Horrocks, who, by what was being said among the servants, really was a butler. But what a butler! Physically frail and in his dotage, he was nearly as unsuitable in his way as Matt Falconer had been in his.

      That gentleman was now asking Hal to accompany him and Jeb into the linen-store, which was kept upstairs, to fetch down sheets, more blankets, pillows and pillow-cases, and air them before the fire, which he kept going by fetching logs from a store in a lean-to against the kitchen’s outer wall. It was plain that ‘m’lord’ he might be, but he was performing menial tasks to the manner born.

      It wasn’t only the logs which were almost in the open, but also the very necessaries of life. And, since the earth closet used by the servants had become frozen, Stacy was soon to discover that relief was only to be obtained by using the buckets and pails in a small storeroom with a door which didn’t shut properly and a broken window through which the keen wind whistled.

      Trying to keep her voice reasonable, a difficult task, Stacy returned indoors after she had visited it to address Matt Falconer, who was now using blankets to rig up impromptu partitions to separate the women from the men during the hours of sleep. ‘I would like to wash myself, and Louisa would probably benefit from being sponged. Where shall I do so…please?’

      To Matt’s grim amusement he saw that it almost choked the haughty bitch to be polite to him. And well might she ask. ‘The kitchen pump,’ he told her agreeably, ‘will supply you with cold water. Use the big iron cauldron which stands by the fire to heat it. Cook will help you.’ And then, seeing that Cook was already engaged in making up beds on the floor, he added, ‘No, allow me to assist you.’

      Never in her life had Stacy ever contemplated having to do any such thing as haul buckets and pails about, or to wash herself in the full view of Cook, the little maid and Polly, whose right wrist Jeb had placed in a makeshift sling. It was quite plain that anything she needed she would have to supply herself! And the beast knew that, and was waiting to see her throw a tantrum at the prospect of having to be her own servant, as it were. Well, damn him, and his ready sneer too. If Stacy Blanchard couldn’t learn how to do the simple menial tasks which so far others had performed for her, she wasn’t worth the signature she wrote on the cheques and accounts of Blanchard’s Bank.

      ‘Very well,’ she replied crisply, avoiding his satiric eye, and walked across to the cauldron, which she lifted with some difficulty before placing it beneath the pump which stood by the sink. Not only was Jeb watching her, but also her servants, their jaws dropped at the sight of madam being so meek and obliging.

      But, alas, when she came to try to lift the cauldron with water in it it was too heavy for her, and presently, as she struggled, she found a large hand pushing her own smaller one to one side, and Matt Falconer was lifting it with ease to hang it from the great hook above the fire.

      His hands, Stacy noted, were long and shapely, but the strange thing about them was that they were the hands of a workman, not a gentleman. They were brown and scarred, with calluses on them, like Clem’s, her gardener, and his nails were cut short, quite unlike those of the men who had danced attendance on her since her first season, begging her to marry them.

      Matt saw her eyes on them, smiled wryly, but said nothing. Later he ladled warm water for her into a bowl, and she retired behind one of the screens to give Louisa and herself what passed for a wash.

      ‘Oh, my dear, you shouldn’t be having to do all this,’ murmured Louisa ruefully, after Stacy had draped blankets round her and helped her outside to what they all referred to as the conveniences, although John Coachman forgot himself once by asking loudly before all the company, ‘Where are the jakes?’

      ‘Well,’ replied Stacy incontrovertibly, ‘Cook can’t do everything, the maid is useless, Polly’s wrist prevents her from assisting us, all the able-bodied men have gone outside to shovel the snow away from the fuel-store and the path to the conveniences—such as they are—so who else can help us, I should like to know?’

      Louisa patted her hand. ‘You are a brave girl, my dear. Try not to mind too much the pickle we have found ourselves in. After all, we might be freezing to death in a ditch, or killed or maimed for life in the accident. And I am beginning to feel so much better after your ministrations.’

      Which was no lie. The willow-bark had broken Louisa’s fever, and presently Stacy tucked her up for the night before going back into the main part of the kitchen to find the men all sitting round the scrubbed table drinking good ale. The other women were already in their beds behind the hanging blanket.

      Jeb waved a hand holding a pewter pot at her.

      ‘Ah, Miss Berriman, what can we do for you?’

      There was bread and cheese on the table, she saw longingly, and from somewhere Horrocks had found bottles of port as well as the ale. Matt, who was seated at the head of the table, stared coolly at her and said, ‘There’s food here if you want it.’

      Did she want it? Of course she wanted it. She had been too strung up to eat much earlier, but she had done a lot of unaccustomed physical work during the day, and hunger gnawed at her. Pride as well as etiquette said, No, it is not possible for you to sit here, the lone woman among a pack of men, all but one your social inferiors, and tope with him and Hal and the rest; it wouldn’t be proper. They had already unwillingly dragged themselves to their feet on her arrival.

      ‘Sit, sit,’ she said imperiously, meaning to tell them that no, of course she wanted nothing.

      Then he said mockingly, ‘I think that the fare here is too coarse for m’lady, perhaps.’

      Was it, indeed? And was she to starve because she was too finicking to sit down with them on the worst night of the year, and please him by starving herself?