Page 34 of An Unusual Wager

Chapter Sixteen

That afternoon, having partaken of a light luncheon together in the only drawing room not under dust sheets, Kitty insisted on taking Verity to meet her grandmother. “Grandmama will be vexed if I don’t take you up,” she said, when Verity attempted to resist. “She might be confined to her bedroom, but on her good days she knows everything that goes on here at Luxborough, and if today is a good day, she’ll be well aware of your presence.”

“She’s aware that Lord Dunster and I are married?”

Kitty gave a trill of girlish laughter. “I do wish you would not call him Lord Dunster. Here, amongst the family, he is always Jonnie.” She paused. “I understand that you have no cause to wish to do so, at present, but Grandmama will find it strange if you keep on calling him by his title.” She leaned closer, as if afraid the walls had ears. “And of course, only you and I know the truth about your marriage.” She took Verity’s hand. “You will love Grandmama, I’m sure. Come along.”

Verity sighed, pushing aside the nagging doubt that confiding in Kitty might not have been such a good idea. Although what the old Dowager was going to think about Verity arriving on her own at Luxborough within a day of her marriage, she had no idea. But Kitty had implied the old lady was bordering on senile, so perhaps she wouldn’t realize so short a time had passed. Behind her back, she crossed her fingers.

The dowager countess had her rooms in the west wing of the house, opening off a long corridor whose windows overlooked the square inner courtyard. Verity peered out of these windows as she passed, overawed by the size of this house. Never, in all Papa’s travels and his ups and downs of finance, had she ever even seen a house as splendid as this one, still less thought to enter it. To live in it, in fact, as the chatelaine. The thought should perhaps have filled her with excitement, but instead, it sent a shiver of foreboding down her back that was impossible to shake off. She was never going to be rid of the sensation of being an intruder, as out of place as a beggar in a palace. Which was exactly how she felt.

Kitty knocked on a large, oak door, and, without waiting to be asked to enter, pushed it open. The dowager inhabited a suite of rooms opening one off the other and the room they found themselves in was furnished as a somewhat old-fashioned drawing room, with a chaise longue by the window and other comfortable but nonmatching seats scattered about. Almost as though someone had gone around the house like a magpie, snatching furniture from whatever room they chose. An unmistakeable air of the previous century hung about it, and the stuffy air was redolent with an overpowering scent of violets, heavy and cloying to Verity’s nostrils. The windows, despite the warmth of the day, were firmly closed.

She let her eyes scan the room, searching for its occupant.

She proved difficult to spot. The old lady, a tiny, shrunken figure almost camouflaged amongst all the furniture, occupied a Bath chair which stood near the empty fireplace. She turned her head as Kitty bounded into the room, ever the skittish colt. “Grandmama, it’s Kitty come to see you.”

A pair of faded-blue eyes fixed her granddaughter with a gimlet stare, sharp with intelligence and curiosity, and not at all with the confusion Verity had been expecting to encounter. “I can perfectly well see it is you, child,” she snapped. “I have not gone blind since last you were here, which I believe was only yesterday.” Her gaze slid past Kitty to rest on Verity, who bobbed a hurried and not all that elegant curtsy.

“Good afternoon, Lady Dunster.”

The dowager looked her up and down, giving Verity the uncomfortable sensation she was being assessed. After a pause that was a fraction too long, she harumphed loudly. “And I suppose you must be the chit my grandson has got himself married to?” She did not sound in the least bit friendly.

How to answer that? Politely. Verity was experiencing a strong urge to make a pert reply. Good sense won over. “You are correct in your assumption, Lady Dunster.” She was having trouble keeping from staring at the monumental gray wig the old lady was wearing. It towered above her dwarfing her frail body and looked as though the least gust of wind would send it bowling away across the floor of her parlor. Very much the fashion of the last century, and probably not the most recent decade of it.

The old lady gave a cackle of laughter that shook her tiny frame. “Come closer, child, and let me have a better look at you. I may not be blind, but my century’s not far off now, and my sight’s not of the best.”

Verity approached the Bath chair and halted six feet off, hands demurely clasped behind her back.

The old lady lifted a quizzing glass to one eye, which magnified it to the point of being startling, and further peered at her visitor.

Verity waited.

“What’s your name, child? I seem to have let that piece of information slip my mind.”

“Verity, Lady Dunster.”

The old lady nodded. “A good old-fashioned name. Truth. I like it. My grandson could have done no better than to shackle himself to a girl whose name means truth. Could do with a bit of truth around here, mark my words.”

What an odd thing to say. Verity stayed silent.

“Come,” the old lady said. “Sit down here and talk to me. Kitty can order us some tea.” She paused. “And over there, child, on the sideboard, there’s my port. I’ll have a glass of that before the tea arrives.” She dissolved into a cackle of laughter once again, her small, bird-like body shaking with a mirth Verity didn’t understand. When she finally subsided, she slapped her knee, which, by the look of the rest of her, must be very bony. “People have often asked me the recipe for my long life, young Verity. And I tell them a glass of port for breakfast, one at luncheon, one in the middle of the afternoon, one at dinner in the evening, and one before bed. That’s how I’ve reached ninety-nine years old.”

“Ninety-seven,” Kitty whispered, before heading to pull the bell rope to summon a servant, and fetch the port. She poured a generous measure of the rich red liquid into what looked like a whisky tumbler and brought it back for her grandmother.

No sipping here. Lady Dunster knocked it back in one go and smacked her wrinkled lips in relish. “Nothing like port to preserve the body beautiful.”

If she drank that much port five times in any one day then she was probably pickled.

Verity sat down on a seat near the dowager and Kitty joined her.

“Now,” the old lady said. “Tell me all about yourself. What was your name before your marriage?”

That bit was easy. It was the next bits she was fearing. Perhaps she could distract the old lady into talking about the Farrington family, at least just the bits of it that were respectable. All hope of this being an interview with someone who was not quite compos mentis had already faded.

“This is a good day,” Kitty whispered under her breath, as if she’d heard Verity’s thoughts.

“What? What’s that you say?” the dowager almost shouted. At least she appeared to be relatively deaf.