The Lord Who Sneered and Other Tales Read online

  “Take her to the house and set her by the fire with a cup of tea,” he instructed Ginny. “I will meet you in the sitting room as soon as may be.” Without waiting for a response, he pushed his way out the door at a run, cut his own path through the gracefully curved avenue of lime trees, skirted the mound of autumn leaves and zigzagged his way through the rose beds until he gained the entrance of the cottage he and his daughter shared.

  “Holly!” he shouted before he had even opened the door. She was there on the other side, her eyes wide with fear at the tone of his voice. He was in need of catching his breath and was still bent over double, hands on his knees, when he told her what he wanted. “The rose, the one you have been propagating from the Dowager’s cast-offs; is it in bloom?”

  “Yes, Papa, it is.” She went to the window where she had placed a single stem in a vase of water and brought it to him to inspect. It was a rose of exceptional beauty, its petals a bit smaller than the Dowager’s version, but with the same deep color and scent.

  He stared at the rose, hardly able to believe his good fortune. However, the superior quality of the Dowager’s rose was its guaranteed availability of abundant blooms in time for decking the halls. “But, will it yet bloom at Christmas?”

  “It bloomed at Christmas last year, Papa, but I can’t be sure until it will do so again. The Dowager’s rose has bloomed at Christmas for three years running. There is no way of knowing if my poor substitute will ever fare as well prior to the flower show. Surely, it is her rose that shall take the prize.”

  Baldwin said nothing in reply, only went out the back door to the little walled garden wherein his daughter grew her vegetables and a few roses of her own creation. The Christmas rose was there, awash with blooms that would be full-blown or completely spent within a few days while the flower show was still nearly a week away. Closer inspection revealed a number of new buds that might—or might not—open in time to display their beauty for the show. This was something he would have to worry about later; for now he needed to bring the Dowager hope. He snipped off the loveliest bloom and ran with it back the way he had come.

  When he reached the manse, he entered through the front door, ran through the front hall past the astounded butler who dropped his tray in his haste to be out of the gardener’s way, and on to the staircase that led to the sitting room. He stopped short when he passed the library and spied the Dowager seated by the fire. Ginny was with her, but the mood was somber in spite of the cheerful flames. The aroma of strong tea rose to meet his nostrils as he burst into the room and two pairs of eyes, full of anticipation, met his. He had always been a man of few words, but there were none that could speak as loudly as did the deep, red bloom he held aloft.

  “But, what does it mean, Baldwin?” Ginny implored. “Are we to suppose you have found the very plant, alive and well? That the original was merely displaced?”

  “No, Miss, not exactly,” he said as he studied the Dowager’s reaction. He thought her complexion turned a trifle more ashen at his words. He saw that all her hope was in him and knew that if he failed her, he would be gone. The Dowager was an exacting mistress, but he had never labored for anyone who loved growing things as much as he; the care of her beautiful gardens was his life’s work and he must see it through to the end. As such, he must convince her that Holly’s rose was a suitable substitute for the Dowager’s own.

  He bent to kneel at his mistress’s feet and placed the rose in her lifeless hand. “Your Grace, this was propagated from the same cuttings we used in the potting shed. It might differ in one minor way or t’other but it is, essentially, the same rose. P’raps you might consider entering it in the contest.”

  The Dowager’s eyes grew large with what he feared to be anger. “By this do you mean to say you have taken cuttings from my prize rose to create this?”

  “T’wasn’t for myself, Your Grace, but for my daughter; she enjoys puttering about the garden and has no family other than myself as who’s always to work. I brought them to her so as to brighten up her days. I can see now that I have done wrong,” he said, his head bowed, and his cap twisted into knots in his hands.

  “Then, it is my rose!” the Dowager demanded, oblivious to his chagrin.

  “Not just the same, but close. I believe the petals to be a bit smaller, and there is no way to know if it will bloom at Christmas two years running, though it did the once.”

  The Dowager sat up a bit straighter and held the bloom to her nose. “I fancy it smells just the same.”

  Baldwin dared to look up and was gratified to see that the rose had put a bloom in the Dowager’s cheeks. “No, not fancy; it smells just as it ought.”

  “We have done the work, you and I,” the Dowager pointed out. “We know my rose performs just as we claim. Who is to know if we entered this plant in its place?”

  “You would know, Grandaunt, and I and Baldwin, here,” Ginny interjected. “It is not your rose. Even if it were precisely the same, it was Holly who grew it.”

  Baldwin felt his heart squeeze with pain, both for the Dowager and for his daughter who had, indeed, created the rose and whose contribution would never be acknowledged. If the Dowager claimed the rose as her own she would very likely win the competition, but first he would be required to dig it from the earth at his back door and plant it in the heirloom rose garden far from Holly’s reach. Torn between love and duty, he stood in anguished silence and waited for his mistress to state her will.

  “There is one other,” the Dowager said with a moan. “That bothersome Squire Barrington! He will doubtless enter my rose as his own, mark my words if he should not!”

  “But Grandaunt, we don’t know it was he who took the rose,” Ginny insisted. “Besides which, if he had, would he dare to enter it?”

  “There is no saying what brazen act that man might commit! I believe he is addled if not downright demented.” The Dowager looked a question at Baldwin, one for which he had no answer. “Very well,” she announced as she rose to her feet, “I shall take this to my room and retire for the night. I will inform you of my wishes in the morning, Baldwin.”

  He and Ginny remained silent and frozen in place until the Dowager had taken herself upstairs, whereupon the young maid fell to worrying. “Baldwin, you must see how wrong it would be for Grandaunt to enter that rose,” she said as she wrung her hands. “And yet, it is all she has lived for these past few months since we returned from London in such defeat.”

  Baldwin wished to tell the young maid how much her presence meant to the crotchety, old woman but knew it was not his place. “There is naught to be done, now, but await her pleasure in the morning,” he said with a touch of his hand to his cap, whereupon, he took himself off and made his way home, ready to drop into bed as soon as the evening meal was done. However, he realized there was one more task to which he must attend before sleep would come that night; he must tell Holly that her rose must be sacrificed.

  As he zigzagged his way through the rose garden, a scene that only an hour hence had been the source of such satisfaction, he felt only anxiety: for himself, for the Dowager, and for his daughter. If Holly chose to keep her rose, would they not become without a home and in need of a job elsewhere? A dismissal from an establishment of such notability as that of the Dowager Duchess would not lend itself to swift re-employment. They would be required to travel far in order to outrun his failure at Dunsmere.

  When he entered the cottage, his dinner was laid out for him on the well-scrubbed table in front of a crackling fire designed to chase away the chill of the early autumn night. He waited until they had dined before broaching the subject of the rose and, like the dutiful daughter she was, she asked no questions before he had eaten every last bite and licked his fingers in appreciation. The moment the dishes had been cleared, however, she took up a chair across from him and demanded an explanation.

  “There’s naught much to tell, lovie, except that something—or someone—has taken off with Her Grace’s prize rose.”
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  “Oh, how dreadful!” Holly cried. “Her Grace must be in a taking o’er it, to be sure!”

  “That, she is, and there is only one solution to the problem.” Baldwin burned with shame even at the thought of saying the words, but say them he must. “You must turn your rose over to the Dowager to enter in the contest.”

  He saw how his daughter’s eyes filled with tears, but her reply was sure and steady. “That be my rose, Papa. It would not be right to enter it as her own.”

  Baldwin grunted his assent, a salve to her pain he undid with his reply. “You weren’t planning to enter your’n, any road. It had no hope of competing against Her Grace’s rose; you know that.”

  “But of course I hadn’t planned to enter the competition, Papa. It’s only that it wouldn’t be my rose any longer, should she take charge of it. But,” she added stiffly, “she is the Dowager Duchess of Marcross, and I am only the gardener’s daughter.” With that, she finally gave vent to her tears and fled the room for her own chamber.

  Baldwin heaved a sigh and wondered if she were best left to herself or if she needed his comfort. If so, it would most likely be of a kind for which he had no gift; the girl needed a mother at a time like this. The sound of her weeping was like a knife in his heart, so he decided it was imperative that he clean up the mess in the potting shed before he retired for bed.

  As he left the cottage, his first concern was for the rose garden, as always. It was as it should be, but his visual sweep of the property captured a view of the old, stone chapel nestled in the nearest trees of the park directly off of the carriage drive. Though his duty to the Dowager was clear, that to his daughter was not. Some time on his knees in the chapel seemed a far greater need at the moment. He made his way to the spired edifice, pulled the ring of estate keys from his pocket, and unlocked the door. Morning would be soon enough to attend to the potting shed.

  Part Two

  The Dowager Duchess of Marcross opened her eyes and measured the faint light of the sun in play with the shadows on the wall and felt it still too early to rise. She had spent a fitful night filled with fractious thoughts of her desecrated rose, the bumptious Squire Barrington and the dilemma that faced her with regard to the rose that even now wafted its perfume towards her from the night table. As weary as she was to the very marrow of her bones, she was far more weary of her bed. She sat up, saw that the fire had not yet been lit, and rang for the maid.

  It would be some time before the fire was lit and the room warmed enough for the Dowager to abandon her blankets so, with a sigh, she plumped up her pillows and turned once again to examine the rose grown by the gardener’s daughter. It was a fine specimen, every bit as beautiful, as red and headily scented as the Dowager’s own. When she thought of how she had been robbed of her opportunity to enter her own rose. . ! The chit who grew this example surely had no intention of entering it herself; the Dowager was entitled, nay, she had a duty to enter Holly’s rose in the contest.

  Satisfied that the correct decision had been taken, she felt more relaxed than she had all night and fell into a doze, only to be awoken by the maid come to light the fire. The morning was a bit chilly and the antique tester bed far more comfortable than it had been all night, so the Dowager bespoke her breakfast to be brought to her room. Surely, her reticence to breakfast below stairs had nothing to do with the frank and discerning gaze of the prim and proper Ginny Delacourt. Nevertheless, a sound argument for entering the rose under the Dowager’s own name must be arrived at, and the sooner the better.

  She refused to dress until she felt that her moral underpinnings on the subject were sound, at which time she took more than her usual care and instructed the abigail to arrange her hair as regally as any queen’s. High hair gave the petite Dowager a more impressive air, and she suspected she would need every tool of intimidation at her disposal to cow the forthright Ginny. Why the Dowager should let the opinion of such a mite of a girl have naught to say to anything, the Dowager could not fathom; it was a subject best left to itself.

  However, on one fact she was fixed; it was best to broach the subject with Baldwin devoid of the presence of others. Though the entire concept had been of the gardener’s making, she knew he would feel torn and try as he might, his emotions always showed in his eyes. It was a sight uncomfortable, to be sure, especially when she knew it was her own choices that caused his discomfort. He was only a servant, but she had never before employed a gardener who loved her roses as much as she. No, she mustn’t lose him, but, if the matter of the flower show entry could not be settled satisfactorily, she must certainly dismiss him. Even Ginny should be able to see that the Dowager was entering a rose not her own as much for the gardener as for herself.

  Confident she had done all that was reasonable in preparation for her day, she descended to the library where she spent most of her hours writing letters, sketching her roses and giving orders. Once she had settled herself and instructed the housekeeper as to the menus for luncheon, tea and dinner, the Dowager rang for the downstairs maid and sent her in search of Baldwin.

  He entered the room just as he always did; his head bowed, and his cap squeezed tightly between his hands. “How might I serve you today, Your Grace?”

  “I believe there is still a rather large mound of leaves from yesterday to be burned. Doubtless, during the night, more fell and shall need to be dealt with. Do be sure to move them to the east lawn as we discussed yesterday before you put them to the fire.”

  “Yes’m, it shall be done as you wish. Will there be anything else this morning?”

  “Why, yes, come to think of it, there is. I have made a decision with regard to my entry at the flower show,” she said with an air of celebration, one at odds with the apprehension she felt at his possible reaction. “I am persuaded your daughter will be honored that I have chosen to enter the rose she propagated from my cast-offs,” the Dowager insisted. “Her efforts honor Dunsmere, as well, and its glorious rose garden.”

  She felt that he took it better than she had expected, though he did shoot her one anxious look from his steadfast, blue eyes before looking down again at his cap.

  “Thank you, Your Grace. She is a good girl and will do as she is told. There be one matter of concern, however, if I might be so bold.”

  “What is it, Baldwin?” Icy fingers of apprehension gripped her heart at his words, but she dared not allow him to know it.

  “There is some question as to whether or not the rose will be in bloom in time for the show. Ordinarily I would take it to the greenhouse so as to time the bloom just right, but that is no longer safe. Besides which, the plant is in the ground, and I fear it will go into shock for days after it has been dug up.”

  “These are difficulties, to be sure, but I am persuaded you shall come up with solutions to all of them,” the Dowager said matter-of-factly with just a hint of menace meant to communicate her unwillingness to countenance failure in this endeavor for any reason at all whatsoever.

  “Yes’m, I’ll see to it. If there is nothing else, I must get to my work.”

  “Thank you, and Baldwin? You have been with me a long time, have you not.” It was a statement rather than a question, one designed to threaten. He nodded his head in acknowledgment, turned and quit the room.

  The Dowager, with far more confidence than she felt, picked up the rose she had taken with her from her room and drew in its delicious fragrance. It really was a perfect flower and fated to win the competition. She had done all that was in her power; Baldwin must do the rest.

  “Grandaunt Regina, may I enter?” Ginny asked from her place at the door.

  “Of course! Do be seated,” the Dowager said and indicated a chair across the desk from her own. The girl sat with a steely look in her eyes, one that had often led the Dowager to believe that Ginny, with her unfailing moral code, uncompromising character and unflinching determination, might one day be the perfect bride for the Dowager’s grandson, Sir Anthony. He was a good young man, much as his father
had been, but he had allowed his heart to be broken and spent his days in aimless idleness. Yes! Ginny would be just the ticket once she had grown into her full beauty.

  “Grandaunt, Baldwin has just told me you intend to enter his daughter’s rose in the competition. Do you think this wise in light of the Squire?”

  The Dowager was startled by the chit’s boldness. “You shall show more respect in future, Ginerva! That being said you will be glad to know I spent a sleepless night contemplating this very matter. As such, I have concluded that he should be a fool to enter my rose in the competition. In the end, I cannot credit even the Squire with such stupidity!”

  “I don’t suppose he shall,” Ginny explained, “it is only that, if it were he who took your rose, he will know that the one you have entered is a fraud and might, thereby, expose you.”

  “What if he shall? He would expose his own perfidy in so doing.”

  “Perhaps, Grandaunt, but perhaps not. Suppose he did take it. He certainly would not be expecting the rose he stole to be entered! However, when he sees the replacement, he might accuse you before he stops to think how he is pointing the finger of blame at himself, as well.”

  “Or perhaps he will merely assume I am possessed of more than one plant,” the Dowager said in dampening tones. The chit was bright, but it would never do to allow her to believe she was possessed of the superior intellect.

  “I pray you are correct, Grandaunt, but there would be no reason for the Squire to take the single bush if there had been others. It would avail him not and would hardly have been worth his efforts.”