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little gesture left her feeling more confident. Though the rest of the household confused her, Sir Philip seemed relatively uncomplicated, a true gentleman. She was sorry to see him leave, though it certainly would not have been proper for him to stay. But his going left her alone with Lady LaCorte.
     

Chapter Five
     
    Lady LaCorte’s anger was cold. Her charity was colder still. But the dress and stockings she brought were warm. She laid the things out on the bed. “There is a nightdress there as well,” she said, never looking directly at Camilla. “I’m sure you must be tired after your strenuous exertions.”
    “It wouldn’t have been so hard but for the snow.”
    “A woman must be prepared for difficulties when she sets herself a task,” Lady LaCorte said, sounding very much like Camilla’s mother.
    “I suppose you are right. Especially when the task is so urgent. It seems, though, that emergencies happen when the elements are against one. Otherwise, they’d hardly be emergencies, would they?”
    “I don’t follow you.”
    “Well,” Camilla said, wishing she’d not begun. “If the weather were ideal, someone would have come to Nanny Mallow’s aid sooner, and there wouldn’t have been an emergency. Or at least not so great a one. Tinarose said she sometimes goes to Nanny Mallow’s, when you permit it.”
    “Mrs. Mallow is an ignorant old woman. Only fools and children heed her.”
    “She was my mother’s nurse,” Camilla said. “Mother still takes her advice, and I can assure you, Lady LaCorte, she is neither a child nor a fool.”
    “Ah, yes,” she said as if reminded of something she’d meant to say. “Your family. You are not related to anyone living here in Bishop’s Halt, are you?”
    “I have little family, Lady LaCorte. A mother and a sister only.”
    “Your father is deceased?”
    Camilla nodded.
    “Who was he?”
    She didn’t like to be questioned in such a way, but she felt Lady LaCorte had the right to do so. After all, she could be anyone, a fast woman or a fallen angel, and Lady LaCorte needs must think of her daughters. Camilla only hoped Lady LaCorte would be satisfied with her answers.
    “His father was the Earl of Pentrithe, in Scotland. Under attainder, I’m afraid, after the ‘45.”
    “Rebels?” Lady LaCorte gave her a glance at that, even more scornful than her previous unwillingness to look at her.
    “Not my father. He wasn’t born until long after. But his father knew about it. Father said he’d heard his father talk about the men coming to the muster, barefooted and dirty, but the finest fighting men in the world. Of course, my grandfather was only a sixteen-year-old boy at the time.”
    “You’re Scots, then,” she said as if that explained everything.
    “I suppose one could say that. I’ve never been there. My father grew up in France.”
    “French?” Lady LaCorte seemed even more horrified by this than by the notion of rebellion, odd in light of her name.
    “Oh, he came back to England before the Revolution. It was quite safe after so long. His older brother had paid to have the title reinstated by then. It’s a pity he has no male heirs.” She remembered too late that this might be a tender subject for the highly pregnant lady before her.
    “So you are the daughter of the second son of an earl,” Lady LaCorte summed up, her tone even more barbed. “Who is your mother, then? The natural daughter of the Empress of China?”
    “No, the legitimate daughter of a general who thought that marrying my father would be one long romantic story. I don’t know how she feels about it now. It always seemed romantic to me. They traveled a great deal. My sister was born in Portsmouth, and I was born in York, which only goes to prove—”
    “What? What does it prove?”
    “That my father had wandering feet, I suppose. Until his death, we never lived two years in the same town.”
    “How peculiar.”
    “Yes, I suppose so. But I loved it. Always