by Erica Vetsch
The breakfast room was deserted, but laughter came from the kitchen. Mrs. Chapman stood at the fireplace, a griddle in her hand, while Mamie sat at the table slicing day-old bread. Penny emerged from what Sophie assumed was the larder with two glass containers in her hands.
“These are labeled strawberry preserves, but I don’t think they’re still edible. The tops have gone all furry.”
“Absolutely not. We’d all be sick before morning tea.” Mrs. Chapman made a sweeping motion with her spoon. “Put them in the washbasin. I’ll clean them out and scald the jars.”
A fair few pots and crocks sat in the washbasin already, testament to Mrs. Chapman going through the pantry herself.
Penny looked at her sisters. “What happened to your hair?” she asked Thea.
“Lady Sophie brushed it, and it didn’t even hurt. Not like when you do it. And she likes red hair.”
“You must have stood still for her then, which is more than you do for me.” Penny chucked Betsy under the chin. “Mrs. Chapman is making pikelets, and then we’re going to help her clean house. Without complaining. After we clean, we can go for a walk to the beach.”
Thea’s face grew stormy, and she crossed her arms, but before she could protest, Mrs. Chapman leveled a stare her way. “Work first, then you get the reward. We won’t tackle the entire house in a day. In fact, we won’t even get out of this room, I shouldn’t think. There’s enough to do cleaning and sorting and taking inventory to keep us busy until lunchtime, if we all pitch in.”
“A sound plan.” The captain spoke from the kitchen doorway. “Until I can hire a replacement, Mrs. Chapman, are you willing to continue to take charge of the kitchens? If so, you will be paid for your work, and you will have sole command of the victuals and the larder.”
Sophie could not stop staring. It was the first time she’d seen him dressed in anything other than his uniform. He wore a tailcoat of forest green, buff breeches, and a golden waistcoat. His linens were snowy, but he hadn’t bothered with a cravat. He looked very much an earl in his non-naval clothing.
If Cilla had seen him attired thusly, she might have described him as more than just dashing. Sophie shook her head. She had always preferred men in uniform, hadn’t she? And here she was noticing a man in civilian dress?
He still moved with military precision, however, and though he had no manservant—probably why he’d opted not to wear a cravat—his presentation was faultless. One could catch one’s reflection in the shine of his boots.
Betsy stood before him, staring up, hands clasped behind her in a miniature copy of his stance. He looked down at her, unable to come farther into the room unless she moved or he bowled her over.
The captain raised one eyebrow and looked about for assistance.
“She’ll stand there all day.” Thea dropped into a chair and inched it to the table. “If you want her to move, you have to say good morning.” She reached for a slice of bread.
“Indeed?” He bowed slightly. “Good morning, Miss Pembroke.”
“Good morning, Cap’n.” Betsy beamed and turned on one toe to return to Penny’s side.
Mrs. Chapman slid a plate of pikelets onto the table. “Good morning, sir. Breakfast is ready, such as it is.”
“Mrs. Chapman, you are on the payroll as of yesterday. Make a list of what supplies you need to keep the place going. I’ll send Grayson into town once we’ve gone over the books, and he’ll bring back provisions.” He took the seat next to Sophie. “Good morning, Lady Sophia.”
This close, she could see flecks of green in his blue eyes. They were the color of the sea, which she supposed was fitting. She helped Betsy into her chair, and Penny found her seat as well.
Betsy took Sophie’s hand and then reached across the table to Penny. Penny clasped her sister’s fingers and reached for Thea’s, and Thea took Mamie’s.
“You’re s’posed to hold hands for the blessing.” Betsy clambered to her knees so she could reach better. “You forgot last night.”
Sophie swallowed and put her hand into his. He threaded their fingers together, pressing palm to palm, and warmth seeped up her arm.
He cleared his throat. “I only know naval graces. I could say Nelson’s Grace, but it’s rather short. Perhaps …
Bless, O Lord, before we dine
Each dish of food, each glass of wine
And make us evermore aware
How much, O Lord, we’re in Thy care.
“Amen,” Betsy declared.
“We don’t have wine. We have water,” Thea pointed out. “Still, your prayer is better than the graces said at Miss Fricklin’s. Those went on forever and always talked about what sinners we had been that day.” She poured a bit of treacle on her bread. “I could never figure out what we did that was so awful. She wouldn’t let us do anything fun, just study and keep quiet all the time.”
“That must have been excruciating for you,” the earl said, his tone wry. “Perhaps her prayers were in the way of preventative medicine.”
“What does that mean?” Thea asked, licking her finger.
“Stop that and wipe your hands properly,” Penny said. “It means she was hoping to use guilt and dire warnings to keep you from being naughty. Not that it helped much. You were in trouble the moment your feet hit the floor in the morning.”
The back door opened before Thea could fire back, and the steward, Mr. Grayson, slipped in. When he saw them all eating in the kitchen, he stopped. Bobbing quickly, he snatched off his hat. “Morning, guv. Ladies. Sorry to intrude.”
“Come in. Have you brought the ledgers?”
He tapped the book under his arm. “I brought my records. The old earl wasn’t in his right mind there at the end, and he wouldn’t let me work on the books. Kept them in his sleeping quarters and scribbled in them from time to time. I can’t make out anything from the last few months, though I did my best. I kept a tally of new lambs and calves, and how many acres were planted, and the crops that went in.”
“Very well. Perhaps you’d like a cup of tea, and then we can begin. The ladies have their duty assignments, and I suppose I have mine.” The earl speared a pikelet and put it on his plate. “Have you broken your fast?”
“Aye, milord. The wife makes a good thick porridge.” He patted his lean middle. “Sticks with a man all day.”
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“Aye, getting on for twelve years now. She’s anxious, waiting to hear if we’ll be staying on.” He raised his brows in that beseeching way he’d adopted last night.
The earl lowered his knife and fork. “Perhaps you’d like to wait in the study. I’ll be along shortly.”
Grayson bobbed again and all but scuttled through the kitchen. He had to be frustrated to have his future unsettled.
“Are you thinking of not keeping him on in the position?” Sophie asked.
“I cannot say just yet. I don’t like to be rushed into decisions.” The earl cut his pikelet into even squares and ate rapidly. “Of course, in the heat of battle, you must make quick decisions, but that is where training and planning come to the fore. However, I’ve had no training or planning for managing an estate. Therefore, I will take as much time as prudent before making determinations.”
Which method she also assumed covered his decision regarding the future of the Pembroke girls. Penny looked thoughtful, Betsy unconcerned as she licked a bit of treacle off her spoon.
Thea, however, appeared more than willing to plow in where angels feared to tiptoe. “So I guess we have to wait to hear what you’re going to do with us until you have a good long think about it?”
The question landed in the middle of the table with a thud.
“That’s correct.” The captain ate the last bite of his breakfast and excused himself.
“Thea, why can’t you keep your mouth closed once in a while?” Penny scolded. “You do realize that not every single thought you have has to be uttered?”
“What? What did I do?”
“If you want the earl to like us and possibly continue to look after our welfare, perhaps you shouldn’t accuse him of neglecting you by taking time making decisions. The entire world doesn’t revolve around you.”
Sophie had wanted to intervene, but Penny was doing a fine job. No doubt she’d had plenty of practice as a stand-in mother to her younger siblings. A pity such responsibility had fallen to one so young.
“Ladies, enough talk. It’s time to work. For this morning, Mrs. Chapman is in charge, and we will follow her lead.” Sophie reached for a tea cloth on the sideboard and bent to wind it around her hair. “I would suggest you protect your hair as well. This is bound to be dusty.”
The cleaning went as well as could be hoped for considering that the crew was mostly youngsters. By the time noon arrived, the kitchen and pantry were spotless, and Mrs. Chapman had a list of provisions to keep house for the next fortnight or so.
“I know we might not be here that long, but I thought I would lay in enough for the captain for the coming days.” The housekeeper tucked her pencil into her gray-streaked hair. “I’ve added a few cleaning supplies like beeswax, lye, and vinegar. I hope the captain doesn’t mind. But what we really need are a few maids, a laundress, and a footman or two.” She pointed to the final row of jugs and baskets lining the table. “Penny and Betsy, be loves and put those in the larder, baskets on the floor and crockery on the shelf by the door.”
“Do you think it would benefit to write to Charlotte and see if any of her girls in training would want to try for a position here?” Sophie unwound her hair cloth and handed it to Thea, who was tasked with taking them outside and giving them a good shake.
“If you were going to stay, I would say yes, but I don’t know how it would eventuate unless you had a reliable housekeeper to continue their training. Not to mention, would the captain—I mean the earl—wish to hire women with, shall we say, checkered histories to staff his manor house?”
“That’s always going to be the challenge, isn’t it? Will people give those women a chance to move on from their pasts and make new lives for themselves?”
“What’s a checkered history?” Thea asked, bringing the wadded tea cloths inside.
Sophie looked to Mrs. Chapman for help.
“It means someone who has done something they wished they hadn’t.” The housekeeper took the cloths. “And now they want to change and do things differently.”
“Oh.” Thea pulled a face. “I thought it was something bad.” She sounded disappointed. “Everybody’s done something they wished they hadn’t.”
Sophie pondered that. Thea was correct. Everyone had regrets of one sort or another, and it could be hard to get past those regrets, to forgive yourself, and to receive forgiveness in order to change and move on.
Like the captain regretting his part in Rich’s death. He had said he was unable to forgive himself, and Sophie had not said aloud that she forgave him, because she wasn’t certain she had forgiven him in her heart.
She was willing to forgive the prostitutes who came to Charlotte for help, because their sins didn’t affect Sophie. What they did had cost her nothing. But when someone had come to her admitting fault in something that had cost Sophie her dearest love, Sophie had withheld words of forgiveness.
Her conscience prodded her, but she forced it to quiet down. She wasn’t ready to face such thoughts, nor to act upon them just now. When she’d had some time to think, when she had spent some time in that cottage by the sea and gotten some distance on both the grief and the captain, she would work through her feelings about forgiveness.
“Let’s see about washing ourselves up. We’ve earned some lunch, and then we’ll see about going down to the water. How does that sound?”
If Halbert Grayson had been on a ship under his command, Charles would be sorely tempted to bring the man up on charges of incompetence and dereliction of duty. These ledgers were a disaster. Great amounts of information were missing, and much of the rest was illegible.
“His lordship took the books from me about six months before he passed, and he did all the recording himself. He wouldn’t even let me look at them, just called me in sometimes to give a report. I don’t think the guv even understood me half the time.”
What about the weeks since? Surely Grayson could have made a start on cleaning up this mess once the old earl had died.
The man lacked initiative, which would not bode well for leaving him in charge when Charles went back to sea. For all his supposed experience, the steward seemed at a loss when it came to making decisions on his own.
“Without knowing what the new earl would want, and with the magistrate telling me I should wait until someone in authority arrived, I bided my time. As I said, I kept track of the lambing and calving and crops, but everything else stopped.”
“I assume you collected rents?” Charles ran his finger across the columns of the ledger, trying to decipher the headings. “How often do you do that?”
“Supposed to be twice a year, but I didn’t collect this spring because the earl hadn’t fulfilled his part of the bargain. No repair work got approved for the tenant cottages, and no firing got provided for the first half of the year. With most of the trees gone from this part of the country, his lordship had been forced to haul coal and peat. He brought in a shipload of peat last year from Ireland, but he refused to let me lay in another supply midwinter. He was out of his head, but I didn’t have leave to release the funds without his permission. I didn’t think it right to charge rent when folks were having a hard time keeping fires lit.”
Charles nodded. The man really had been hard-pressed and in a difficult position, and he supposed Grayson’s heart had been in the right place. Still, it was bothersome that the steward had so little fortitude and sense of leadership. He would probably make an excellent second-in-command as long as someone was on hand to give him orders.
“That’s enough for today. Thank you, Grayson. I’ll tour the buildings and grounds this afternoon. Tomorrow morning we’ll meet to create a plan of action.”
“Would you like me to go with you? I can meet you at the stables to ride ’round the property.”
Charles refused to admit to his steward that he’d never sat on a horse in his life. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll reconnoiter on my own first. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of questions for you tomorrow.”
“Very good, sir.” Grayson stood and began gathering the ledgers.
“Leave those. I’ll peruse them more thoroughly tonight.”
“Are you certain, sir? Now that I have your leave, I could begin to fill in the entries that are missing. At least as much as I can.” He kept his hand on the leather-bound books. “It would be no trouble, sir.”
“No, thank you. I’d like to spend more time with them as they are. And I am of a mind to begin a new ledger once we establish where things stand currently.”
The steward had begun nodding before Charles was even half finished. “An excellent idea, sir. There is a blank ledger book in there.” He indicated a cellaret, originally built to hold wine bottles but now stuffed with rolled papers and piled with stacks of books.
“Captain Earl?” Betsy’s face peered around the study door. The ribbon holding her hair had slipped backward and looked in danger of falling off, but she beamed at him, tugging at her earlobe. “Sophie asks if you are ready for your lunch. We’re going to take a walk after. Are you coming?”
Her smile and eager words spread a bit of warmth through his chest. She was an appealing child, and for some unknown reason, she seemed to want his company. And she’d called him Captain Earl. An engaging mistake.
Lunch was a hit-and-miss affair, provisions running as low as they were. The kitchen was spotless, a testament to how the ladies had spent their morning. Lady Sophia’s cheeks bore color, and her hair was a bit mussed from being wrapped in a towel. It pleased him that though she was a highborn lady, she wasn’t above pitching in and working when needed. During th
e meal, he perused Mrs. Chapman’s list.
“I’m sorry luncheon is so paltry,” the housekeeper apologized. “Most of what was in the pantry was spoiled.”
He took a bite of the poached egg on toast. “If you had seen some of the things we had to eat at sea, you would realize this is bounty.”
“What did you eat? Fish?” Thea asked.
“Upon occasion. But the worst was the ship’s biscuit. It’s a cracker baked so hard you must soak it in your tea or coffee or grog in order to be able to chew it. It had plenty of nicknames, but the one I found most accurate was ‘worm castle.’ Weevils liked to bore into the crackers, and you had to bang the biscuit on the table in the hopes of dislodging them.”
“Ew,” Thea protested. “That’s nasty.”
“The only thing worse than finding a worm in your biscuit is finding half a worm.”
The girls shuddered, and Penny pushed back her plate.
He caught Lady Sophia’s glance and remembered that he wasn’t in a wardroom.
“I beg your pardon, ladies. Being so long at sea has robbed me of my manners.”
“I like it. You talk different from anyone I ever met.” Thea propped her elbows on the table and her chin in her fists. “I bet you have some great stories.”
Penny gently pushed Thea’s elbows off the table. “Did you have lots of men on your ship?”
“The Dogged is a thirty-six gun frigate, and at full capacity carries two hundred men.” Charles crossed his knife and fork on his empty plate. “Twenty officers, two dozen Royal Marines, and the rest able or ordinary seamen.”
“That’s enough men even for you, Pen.” Thea laughed. “Surely you could find one to fall in love with you out of that crowd.”
Penny glared, leaning back with a huff and crossing her arms. “You’re impossible. Your tongue is hung in the middle, and both ends flap constantly.”
“I’d rather be known as a chatterbox than a—”
“Let’s take that walk now, shall we?” Lady Sophia interrupted. “Thank you, Mrs. Chapman. Lunch was excellent.”
Charles rose as the ladies did. “I’ll send Grayson into the village to purchase the items on your list.”