‘I am sure you will not,’ said Clare, her disappointment at missing a walk vanishing when weighed against the importance of comforting the lanky, awkward and utterly miserable young giantess. ‘And if you do, what does it matter? It’s not as if you can ruin the rug twice, is it? And whatever you do, don’t worry about the footman. I probably shouldn’t tell you this,’ she said, going closer, and lowering her voice, ‘but I have a suspicion that he drinks. I could smell it on his breath just now. So the fact that he was a bit unsteady probably had nothing to do with you at all. Now, won’t you please sit down?’ Clare waved to the chair on which the girl had been perched when she first saw her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, subsiding morosely. ‘But…actually, I cannot stay long. Grandfather will be furious with me if I keep him waiting once he’s finished his business with your husband.’ Her forehead pleated into two anxious furrows. ‘Oh, I say, you are the Marchioness of Rawcliffe, are you not?’
‘I suppose I am,’ said Clare. ‘Though you don’t have to tell me I don’t look much like anyone’s idea of a marchioness.’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean…’ Miss Hutton blushed.
‘That’s quite all right. I don’t really feel like a marchioness, either. I am only a vicar’s daughter, by birth, you see, not a grand lady.’
‘Oh?’
‘And you don’t have to tell me all about the tyranny of elderly gentlemen, either. My own father was an absolute tartar.’
‘I thought you said he was a vicar.’
‘He was. But he was also very, very demanding. And in his last years I was the only person who could handle him.’
‘Ah,’ said Miss Hutton. ‘Yes, it’s rather like that with my grandfather. He has a tendency to lash out with his walking stick when his gout is playing him up.’
‘Is his gout playing him up today?’ If so, she wondered how he would deal with Rawcliffe, who would probably have resented receiving what sounded like a summons.
‘No, fortunately. Or I would not have been able to escape even for half an hour. Oh,’ she said, looking stricken. ‘I did not mean that he…that is, that I…’
‘You have no need to explain how it is. I know only too well how tempting it is to try to escape, if only for a few precious minutes, from the demands of an erratic and demanding elderly relative.’
‘Yes, and then, you know, Grandfather was a colonel, as well. So he has a tendency to bark orders and expect everyone to leap to attention and salute.’
Clare had a vision of this gawky girl doing so and sweeping a whole shelf full of china ornaments to the ground in the process. And couldn’t help smiling.
‘You say you have always wanted to see inside these cottages? You live locally, then?’
‘Well, off and on. We used to…my brother and I that is, we used to come and stay here when Papa was alive very often. But then when he died, we moved in with Grandfather permanently.’ Her face fell. ‘It wasn’t so bad when I was little…or comparatively little, because he just treated me like a boy and I ran wild with my brother. But when I grew up—’
And up, and up, thought Clare.
‘And Lady Buntingford said I ought to learn how to be a lady.’ Her shoulders slumped.
‘Lady Buntingford?’ There was that name again. Why did everyone keep bringing her into everything lately?
‘Yes, she is about the only other person, locally, Grandfather considers suitable company for us. Everyone else, he says, are yokels or mushrooms.’
Clare laughed. ‘No wonder he was so keen to send for my husband and talk with him. It must feel like a rare treat to have a genuine marquess come down here for his holiday.’
‘Oh, no, it isn’t like that,’ said Miss Hutton. ‘Grandfather is the magistrate, you see. And dealt with the case of that poor young man who came down here on the pretext of visiting Lady Buntingford and drowned.’
That was it! It all came flooding back to her now. Lady Buntingford was some relative of Mr Kellet’s, which was why he’d been the one to come down here and search her house for…missing jewels, wasn’t it?