The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin Read Free Book Online

‘My friends call me Ivo.’
    Cora sensed that he was holding something back. She felt annoyed. Why was nothing in this country straightforward? She felt as if she was being forced to play a game where everybody knew the rules but her. She decided to attack.
    ‘Why do all you Englishmen have names that sound like patent medicines? Ivo and Odo and Hugo. Bromides and bath salts, every one of them.’ She waved her hand dismissively.
    The man made her a little bow. ‘I can only apologise, Miss Cash, on behalf of my compatriots. Men in my family have been called Ivo for many hundreds of years, but perhaps the moment has come to move with the times. Would you like to call me Maltravers? It hasn’t been my name for very long, but I suppose I must get used to it, and I don’t think it has any medicinal properties.’
    Cora looked at him in bewilderment. How many names did the man have?
    His voice was not the strangulated roar that she had begun to think was handed out to all upper-class Englishmen at birth. It was very low and he spoke quietly so that the listener had to lean forward to catch every word. Cora realised that this man must be important, not many men could mutter and be completely confident that every word would be listened for and understood. She felt awkward. Did this man know who she was, that she was not just any American girl? She came back at him with as much dignity as she could muster.
    ‘You are laughing at me for daring to question perfectly ridiculous things about your country that you take as quite normal. You do what you do not because it is the best way but because that is the way you have always done it. Why, in the house where I am staying, there are ten housemaids whose job it is to carry hot water up long staircases and endless corridors every morning so that a guest can take a bath in front of the fire. When I asked Lord Bridport why he didn’t have bathrooms like we do in the United States, he said they were vulgar. Vulgar! To wash. No wonder all the women here look so grey and dingy. I have seen girls, quite pretty girls, with dirty necks. At least where I come from we keep ourselves clean.’ She looked at her host defiantly. She might be confined to bed in a strange house but she would speak as she found.
    Her host did not look offended by her outburst; in fact he was smiling.
    ‘I will have to take your word for that, Miss Cash. You were not at all clean when I found you in the forest and I regret that I have never visited your country. I am afraid you will be equally disappointed with the washing arrangements here. I have no moral objections to bathrooms, quite the contrary, I only object to their cost. But I can assure you that I wash very thoroughly. Perhaps you would care to inspect my neck?’ He leant forward and proffered his neck to Cora as if to the scaffold. It was indeed clean and though the dark curls were longer than would have been acceptable in America, Maltravers did not smell, as so many Englishmen seemed to, of wet dog. No, he had another scent entirely. Cora couldn’t quite describe it. She felt an urge to push her fingers through his hair. Again she bit her lip.
    ‘Your neck is immaculate. I congratulate you.’ Cora tried to hang on to her indignation. She was definitely not going to be charmed.
    ‘But tell me, how many housemaids do you need to bring the hot water for the hip baths? How many steps do they have to climb? How long are the corridors they have to struggle down? Surely piped water would be more economical in the long run, not to mention kinder to the servants?’ She tried to sit up so that she could hear his answer clearly and in an instant he was behind her with another pillow.
    ‘Is that better? Excellent.’ He paused. ‘If we had running water, we wouldn’t need so many housemaids and that might upset them mightily, not to mention their families who rely on them to send them money.’
    ‘There are plenty of things for girls to do these days