by Jo Beverley
“Two gentlemen don’t require a lot of flowers.” Susan snipped some wallflowers and stocks.
Amelia was looking up. “All those windows. It’s like being in a box, watched.”
Susan looked up, realizing that Amelia was right—and that Con could be watching.
As if picking up the thought, Amelia asked, “Where is he? I do long to see him.”
“I don’t know.”
It was true. He’d eaten breakfast but she knew no more. Mr. Rufflestowe was here again going through the curiosities. De Vere was presumably in the office. Con could be with either of them, or anywhere else. She didn’t think he’d left Crag Wyvern, though. Mr. Swann was expected.
“How long are you going to stay here?” Amelia asked. “It must be pretty boring.” But then said, “What does it mean? ‘The Dragon and His Bride’?”
Susan looked over to see her cousin studying the words carved into the rim of the fountain.
“It used to have figures. A dragon and a woman.”
Amelia turned to her. “What happened to them?”
Susan was remembering one of the problems she had with life at the manor. Everyone expected to know everything. The concept of private matters did not occur to them.
“The earl didn’t like it, so he ordered it removed.”
Amelia’s eyes lit up. “Was it very improper?”
“Highly.”
“I wish I’d seen it before it was destroyed. It really isn’t fair. I never get to experience anything exciting.”
Susan added some delicate rue to her basket. “You don’t want to, either.”
Amelia wandered back to her side. “Not if it was uncomfortable, no. But a naughty statue wouldn’t be dangerous, would it?”
Susan suppressed a wry smile. “You’d be surprised.”
Con was with Mr. Rufflestowe, unwillingly fascinated by the strange and occult items being entered into a meticulous catalogue.
“People really do use eye of newt?” he asked, looking into a glass vial of small, dry objects.
“So it would seem, my lord,” said the round and polished young man. He rose to take down a heavy, leather-bound book from the section already recorded. He flicked through the pages carefully and then pointed to a recipe.
“I can hardly read that writing, never mind translate the Latin after all these years,” Con said.
“It instructs the user to dissolve four eyes of newt in mercury and pig’s urine.”
“And what is that supposed to cure?”
Mr. Rufflestowe went pink. “Er . . . a female complaint, my lord.”
“Should certainly stop all complaints dead, I’d think.”
Con was mildly amused, and Rufflestowe was surprisingly entertaining company, but essentially he was in hiding, waiting for Swann to turn up so he could arrange his escape.
Susan was somewhere in the house, and he wasn’t going to see her, or speak to her if he could help it.
He glanced out of the window, however, and one resolution crumbled. Susan was out there. A new aspect of Susan, smiling and chatting with a plump and pretty young lady in a sunshiny yellow dress that was all the brighter beside Susan’s gray and white.
Dammit, as her employer could he order her to wear something different?
Unfair, and dangerous.
But he couldn’t stop watching the two women. There was something so comfortable and familiar between them, and he realized that it reminded him of his sisters together.
That must be one of her Kerslake cousins.
He knew he should move back, turn away, as if from a spellbinder, but he continued to watch.
Then Race stepped into view.
“Good morning, ladies!”
Susan turned to see Race de Vere sauntering out of the office doors, smiling angelically. “Speaking of naughty and dangerous . . .” she murmured.
“Oh, lovely,” Amelia murmured back, giving de Vere her best flirtatious look.
“Mrs. Kerslake, do we have a new maid?” he asked, eyes twinkling.
Susan heard a little squeak of outrage from her cousin and had to fight a smile. She’d thought she’d never smile again.
“Don’t be mischievous, Mr. de Vere,” she said. “This is my cousin, Miss Kerslake. Amelia, Mr. de Vere. Lord Wyvern’s secretary.”
“And friend,” he said, stepping closer and bowing. “It must mean something to be an earl’s friend.”
Amelia dropped a curtsy, dimples showing that she’d overcome any outrage. “Have you been the earl’s secretary long, Mr. de Vere?”
“Mere months, but it seems like an eon, Miss Kerslake. . . .”
Susan rolled her eyes and left them to their lighthearted flirtation as she looked around for suitable greenery. Amelia at least had what she’d come for here—an encounter with an interesting new gentleman. The selection in this area was limited and very familiar.
She wondered if Amelia had looked up de Vere in any books, and what she’d found. She was sure he was not a typical secretary with his way to make in the world. He was far too sure of himself for that.
As she worked her way around the garden, their voices and occasional laughter as background, she recalled Amelia’s interrupted question. How long was she going to stay?
There was nothing to keep her here now.
Nothing.
A flutter of pain and panic told her how much she didn’t want to leave. Not while Con was still here. It might be crumbs from the table, but if that was all there was she would stay for them.
And perhaps, just perhaps, he would summon her to his room again.
Wicked to even think of it, but she couldn’t help it. And she didn’t think she would be strong enough not to go.
Con felt unreasonable irritation that Race could stroll out there and flirt while he was pinned up here, a mere observer. Susan was now almost out of his sight unless he peered down from the window, and he wasn’t about to do that. That left only the laughing, flirting couple.
How strange it was, however, to see such normal interaction within Crag Wyvern. He was sure it had been years, decades even, since two normal young people had enjoyed each other’s company here.
Was it something to do with expectations? Could he and Susan get along better together if they weren’t so aware of the poisonous nature of this place?
But then, it was their past, not their location, that had twisted everything into disaster.
A new person came onstage.
Susan’s brother.
Ah, yes. Con remembered summoning him. If he was going to protect Captain Drake it might as well be an open matter between them.
For the first time, he wondered if he should warn Kerslake about Gifford’s threat to Susan. She’d told him in confidence as a friend, he knew, and yet it was a matter that needed to be dealt with.
“Susan.”
She turned to find David beside her.
“Good heavens. This is becoming a market square!” But then she said, “Trouble?”
“I don’t think so. Wyvern summoned me.”
“What?” But her sudden alarm subsided. “More poring over records with de Vere, I suppose.”
He shrugged. “I was to report to him, not de Vere. Any idea where he is?”
David was Con’s estate manager. It wasn’t peculiar that Con wanted to speak to him. But prickles of alarm were running up and down Susan’s spine.
Con couldn’t want to talk about her. Of course he couldn’t.
But men were so strange about these things.
He might want to talk about Gifford. Would he feel he had to tell David about Gifford’s threat?
Would he want to talk about the gold?
What might he say about the gold?
She hadn’t thought about how to explain the fact that she now had money for the Horde. . . .
“What’s the matter?” David asked.
She found a smile for him. “Nothing. I didn’t sleep well last night, that’s all.” That, at leas
t, was true. “De Vere might know where he is. Otherwise we’ll have to organize a search.”
“A dragon hunt,” David said lightly as they strolled over to the other couple.
Susan winced, but then she saw Maisie limping out of the great hall. “Mr. Swann’s here to see the earl, Mrs. Kerslake.”
“Market square indeed,” she said, feeling as if the weight of three outsiders here—four if she included de Vere—was shifting something elemental about Crag Wyvern.
Or perhaps the change was all in herself.
“I’d forgotten,” Susan said, going over to the others. “David, that’s doubtless why the earl wants you here. Mr. de Vere, do you know where the earl is?”
“With Rufflestowe in the Wyvern rooms, I believe, ma’am.”
How nicely formal they were all being.
“I’ll go and talk to Swann,” David said. “Someone else can dig Wyvern out of Wyvern.”
With a grin he walked briskly off toward the hall. De Vere pulled a humorous face and said, “I’ll go. I’m sure one day I’ll be grateful for this exposure to fertility charms and auras.”
“What?” asked Amelia as soon as de Vere was out of earshot.
After a moment’s hesitation, Susan told her cousin about the earl’s rooms.
Amelia was wide-eyed and laughing by the end. “Susan, I have to see that place!”
“It would be most improper.”
“Foo. It would be no more improper for me to go there than for you, even though you are playing housekeeper here.”
“I work here, Amelia. I earn my pay.” It was appallingly tempting to tell Amelia exactly why they were different.
Amelia picked the shears out of Susan’s basket and began to gather more blooms. “I’ve heard the rumors,” she said. “About women coming up here hoping to get with child and become the countess. Strange they’d think it worth it.”
“Very strange. But I talked to a couple of them and it was more a matter of getting a handsome dowry for nothing. I gather in recent years at least the earl was . . . incapable.”
“Impotent?” Amelia asked, but then she pulled a face. “He’d still have wanted to touch and such, wouldn’t he? Tom Marshwood tried to handle me in a most offensive manner at a picnic last week.”
“The swine! What did you do?”
“Told him exactly what I thought of him, of course. He won’t be so foolish again.”
Such simple solutions among essentially decent people. Susan wondered if living in Crag Wyvern drove away all sense of proportion.
She recaptured the shears from her cousin. “This small garden can’t afford such extravagance with flowers. Come to the kitchen and we’ll have tea.”
As they strolled there she chatted, but underneath her mind was fretting about the meeting between Con, David, and Swann. It should all be business, but it could turn to other things. . . .
Whatever was happening, she reminded herself, there was nothing she could do about it, and she had resolved to stop trying to force life into the channels of her choosing.
She settled to the haven of a session of light chatter and gossip with Amelia, wondering if there’d ever been a chance for her to be as straightforward as her cousin, or whether she’d been cursed from her irregular birth.
Con was glancing through a book about witchcraft when there was a rap on the door and Race walked in.
“Mr. Kerslake awaits below at your command, my lord,” Race said like a bad actor in a poor play. His manner had become stranger over the past day, and Con wondered what the hell he was up to.
“But yet another waits below!” Race declared. “To be precise, in your great hall.”
“Swann, I assume.”
“So I am told, my lord, but it could be a mere goose, and the maid mistaken.”
“A gander, at least, or the poor maid would be very much mistaken.”
Race grinned. “Touché.”
“And don’t you forget it. Back to your den of archival iniquity, and prepare for invasion.” Con realized Race’s nonsense was infectious. “Are we ready to get everything straight?”
“Can a twisted tree branch ever be straight? We’re ready to discuss matters as they are.”
“That will have to do.”
Con lingered a moment after Race had left and realized that he didn’t want to set the earldom’s affairs in order. Because then he would have no excuse not to leave.
Chapter Twenty-one
Tea and simple talk with Amelia seemed to bring some normality back into Susan’s life. Perhaps it was helped by the awareness of other people in the house, though the kitchens had always been an oasis of sanity.
She and Amelia were sitting at the big table along with the other servants. With all the “betters” engaged in business, there would be no need of them in the other side of the house.
An aromatic soup simmered on the back of the modern stove Mrs. Lane had insisted be installed five years back, and fresh spice cakes sat cooling on a rack—those that weren’t already on the table to be consumed.
She’d come to feel a sisterhood with the servants here. They were all, like her, at Crag Wyvern because in some way they didn’t fit in elsewhere.
Ada and Diddy had come to try their luck with the earl and then stayed on. Diddy, at least, had tried her luck a number of times at twenty guineas a go. She was the one who’d told Susan that the earl was impotent.
“A lot of groping and complaining,” she’d said, “but I can put up with that for a year’s pay in a month. Pity, though. It would have been grand to be my lady, wouldn’t it?”
When the earl had died, she’d said, “That’s it, then. Time to start looking for a husband. With my nice little dowry, though, I’ll be the one doing the choosing!”
Ada had spent only one month as a trial bride. Apparently the earl had been certain that a thin woman couldn’t conceive. However, when Susan had realized that Ada had only a cruel father back home who had sent her up to the Crag, she’d added her to the staff and to the books, and if the earl had noticed, he hadn’t cared.
That was four years ago, when she’d been secretary.
She’d employed Maisie and Ellen, too. Because of her twisted spine, Maisie couldn’t find good employment, and Ellen had been scared out of her wits by her first position with the Monkcroft family over near Axminster. What she’d said about that violently argumentative family had been a revelation to Susan, and when Ellen had found Crag Wyvern a happy haven it had shown that everything depended on the point from which one viewed it.
Mrs. Gorland had been cook here for nearly twenty years, and with her skills could work anywhere. She was, however, of a somewhat republican disposition, and would find it hard to deal with a lady of the house who demanded deference.
Susan knew she would miss this assortment of women as much as she would miss her family at the manor.
Though Amelia hadn’t been in Crag Wyvern’s servants’ dining room before, she was at ease with the servants, sharing tales of the local families, and absorbing stories of the old earl. Reasonably decent stories, Susan was pleased to note, though perhaps there was no need to protect Amelia. No country girl with all her wits was naive.
At fifteen, and never having kissed, she’d known enough to seduce Con.
She settled into a mellow contentment with the moment. Eventually, however, Amelia had to leave. Susan walked with her to the main entrance, feeling extraordinarily better. It was only at the door out of Crag Wyvern that she remembered Amelia’s arrival. “Didn’t you say you had an excuse for coming here?”
“Oh, yes!” Amelia dug in her pocket and produced a slightly battered letter. “This came for you. We think it might be from Lady Belle. Do you think she’s reached Australia yet?”
“I doubt it. It’s been only three months.” Susan took the letter, which had been addressed to her at the manor, but showed nothing about the sender. “Why on earth would she write to me?”
“You are her daughter.”
<
br /> “Which fact she’s ignored all my life.”
She realized that she didn’t know what her mother’s handwriting looked like. That was strange, but then, her mother had given nothing to her in any practical way. So why a letter?
It had been roughly handled before it had come into Amelia’s careless hand, and it was impossible to make out the smudged scribble that might have indicated where it had started its journey. It had come from abroad, however, and who else would write to her from abroad?
Despite a creeping reluctance, Susan snapped the seal on the thick package.
Perhaps one of her parents was dead.
There were three sheets of writing and a sealed enclosure, and at the end, the scrawled signature, Lady Belle.
Not Mother. Of course not. Did she really, after all these years, still harbor a hope that Lady Belle would turn into someone like Aunt Miriam?
Lady Belle. Not dead. And doubtless wanting something.
She returned to the first sheet. Lady Belle’s writing was not an elegant hand. It was bold, splotchy, and sloped heavily to the right with big loops. Typically she had not tried to write small to save paper and postage. Instead she’d written extravagantly, and then turned the sheet to write crosswise over the first lines.
“What does it say?” Amelia asked, leaning closer. “Ugh. What a mess!”
“That sums up Lady Belle,” Susan said dryly. “ ‘My dear daughter,’ ” she read, and couldn’t help rolling her eyes. But then she made out, “ ‘I know the word dear has no real meaning between us, but how else could I open this letter?’ ”
Susan laughed. It was so typical. Lady Belle had never made any bones about her feelings or lack of them, nor made excuses. In a way Susan admired her for that.
Even more, however, she had a sense of foreboding about the letter. “I think I need to read this alone.”
Amelia drew back from her shoulder, for once looking conscious of a need for privacy.
“I understand. How very strange it all is,” she remarked, as if the peculiarities of Susan’s parentage had never occurred to her before. “I should be going home anyway. Mother made me promise not to stay here too long. I’m not sure if she was worried what I would get up to, or that the wicked dragon would snatch me in his claws. And here I’ve not so much as set eyes on him. Remember that ball!”