by Anne Gracie
Time enough when the weather confined them to the house for Thomas to turn to the books and Rose to redecorating the interior of the house.
One aspect of redecoration, however, couldn’t wait: The walls of almost all the public areas of the house were adorned with the heads, horns and antlers of dead animals. With glass eyes that either followed Rose around the room or stared balefully at her. She set a couple of manservants to clearing them out, room by room.
“But what shall we do with them, m’lady?” one of the men asked.
“Whatever you like. I don’t want them in the house.” Emm had done the same at Ashendon Hall, and the effect was wonderful, Rose remembered. Much lighter and happier. She enjoyed venison, but not with a deer’s head staring reproachfully at her.
Thomas approved. He hunted, but only for food, not for sport. “George would like that about you,” she told him.
The next few weeks sped past. Each morning they rode out, and wherever they went, tenants and local villagers came out, giving them a warm welcome, greeting Thomas like one of their own returned to them by the grace of God.
At first they hung back shyly, not wanting to bother the earl, but of course, Thomas being Thomas, he saw and spoke to them all.
He’d left this place when he was sixteen, she recalled, and had gone to sea, and yet he was remembered—and with fondness. And not just because he was the earl. Rose was welcomed as their new countess, and also as Thomas’s wife. But Thomas was liked for himself, though he showed no awareness of it.
Wherever they went, people came shyly forward, pressing simple but heartfelt hospitality on them, along with small gifts of eggs, honey, cakes, biscuits, a mug of milk or mead or a tankard of home-brewed beer. And to talk to Thomas and tell him how glad they were he’d returned to them.
Thomas was stunned by the welcome. To Rose, he tried to laugh it off, to hide how deeply moved he was. “Oh, they’re just glad they don’t have to deal with Cousin Cornelius.” But she knew better.
“It’s not just because he’s the earl, is it?” Rose said to Ambrose one afternoon. “They really seem to like him for himself. Even though it’s been more than ten years since he lived here.”
Ambrose nodded. “Thomas always did have the gift of seeing people, not simply their role. He listens and he always did, even as a boy. The old earl and Gerald always had a touch of ‘high and mighty’ about them, as if they were doing people a favor by speaking to them. Thomas never did,” Ambrose told her. “People remember that, and when they speak to him now they see that inside the man, he’s still that kindhearted boy. So yes, it’s genuine, the regard these people feel for him. It’s not just for the position he holds.”
He said it with a touch of sadness, or perhaps a little envy, and it occurred to Rose that though people referred to Ambrose often enough in conversation, and did it with respect, there wasn’t that edge of fondness for him that was revealed in their attitude to Thomas.
This was what Thomas needed that Rose’s fortune could never have provided—to be needed, to have a home, and to have a role that meant something. The people here looked up to him. Ambrose was a good estate manager, but Thomas was a natural leader. Their leader.
The days were long, lazy and golden. Day by day she saw the tension in Thomas visibly lift. They rode out, revisited many of Thomas’s boyhood haunts, explored the estate and made love long into the night. And again in the morning.
And if he didn’t say the words she longed to hear, he showed her in so many ways that she was precious to him. So she tried not to mind when she told him she loved him, and he replied with a kiss, a glorious, soul-stealing wonder of a kiss. But no words.
It made her a little sad, though she told herself it shouldn’t.
He was damaged, he’d told her, outside and in. The damage to his body had healed itself, but the scars still showed. The damage to his soul, his heart? That wasn’t so clear.
She felt sure that deep down inside himself he did love her. And it was the scarring inside that prevented him from saying so.
And if she told herself that enough times she might even be able to accept it.
In the meantime, it was foolish to repine over the lack of three little words when everything else in her life was so wonderful.
“This place is the garden of Eden,” Rose declared as they rode home at the end of another happy day.
Thomas, looking ahead, slowed. “Don’t look now, but I think we’re about to meet the snake.”
Two carriages had pulled up at the entrance of Brierdon Court. Two extremely fashionable young gentlemen were supervising the unloading of a mound of baggage from the second coach. A third gentleman was draped feebly over the stone balustrade. A fourth gentleman complained in a loud, petulant voice; he was dressed entirely in delicate shades of blue.
Cousin Cornelius had arrived.
* * *
* * *
“There you are, Thomas,” Cousin Cornelius declared peevishly, as if he’d spoken to Thomas an hour earlier, not several weeks before. “We’ve been kept waiting out here in this horrid weather for eons, simply eons.”
Given the state of his horses, “eons” looked to be all of ten minutes.
“We were traveling to Perce’s country place for a house party—that’s Perce over there arguing with the coachman, a complete ruffian, I assure you!—the coachman, not Perce—but my good friend Venables took sick just past Cheltenham—that’s Venables, with the greenish pallor.” He pointed to the wan-looking fellow. “And I thought, whatever shall we do? And then I thought, Cousin Thomas will take us in, and so here we are. But your man Holden is proving quite obdurate, and insisting we wait until his lordship returns—which is ridiculous. I mean, until a few weeks ago I was his lordship!”
“But you aren’t anymore,” Thomas reminded him. He would happily have thrown Cousin Cornelius back into the street. His turning up here out of the blue was not at all convenient, and more than a tad suspicious.
“I am still your heir, however,” Cornelius pointed out waspishly.
Thomas’s eyes narrowed. Was Cornelius still hoping to fulfill that role? When Thomas had a wife who would presumably one day bear him an heir?
“Mr. Beresford demanded that this gentleman and his belongings be taken to the blue room, m’lord,” Holden interjected. “I tried to tell him that m’lady would want to make the arrangements, but he refused to listen.”
“I recall nothing about any—”
“Indeed I do, quite right, Holden.” Rose slipped gracefully from her horse and passed the reins to a waiting groom. “How do you do, Cousin Cornelius, gentlemen. Mr. Venables, you do look poorly. Mrs. Holden will have a room prepared for you directly.” She glanced at Holden, who inclined his head graciously. “In the meantime, please come in out of the . . . the sunshine.”
With the long skirt of her riding habit draped over her arm, she swept inside like a queen, the visitors following meekly like little baby ducks. She ensconced them in the only room still displaying a distressing number of animal heads and antlers. She ordered drinks and refreshments, informed them that their luggage was being transferred upstairs, their carriages removed, their horses seen to and dinner ordered. A servant would conduct them to their bedchambers when they had been prepared. Dinner, she informed them, was at seven. She swept out, leaving them to their own devices.
Thomas regarded her with awe and admiration. “I knew there was a reason I married you,” he said. “You know, if you’d been born a boy—which would have been an appalling tragedy, by the way—you would have been an admiral by now.”
She laughed. “Cal says the same thing, only with him I would have made general. But it’s what we’re trained to do—be hostesses. And I learned from the best—Emm. Mind you, she would be shocked at my cavalier treatment of guests, but we don’t want them here, do we, Thomas?”
“Not a
t all. I can’t decide whether Cornelius really is here by accident or simply wants to puff off his former consequence before his friends—the sour grapes are very evident. As for reminding everyone that he’s my heir . . .”
“Rather tactless, I thought.”
“Tactless, or very clever—assuming an innocent air.”
“Perhaps he’s simply availing himself of free accommodation. His friend’s illness does seem genuine.”
“But very convenient. The sooner we get Venables on his feet again, the quicker we’ll be rid of them. I don’t like Cornelius hanging around like a bad smell. And I’m not yet convinced he’s not behind the attacks. Nobody can be that foolish—it’s a blind.”
“You think so?”
“I don’t want you to be alone with him,” he told her.
“But surely the attack on me was a mistake? Why would he want to kill me?”
Because even now she could be carrying his heir, Thomas thought. But he didn’t say so. “Just beware of him. I don’t trust him an inch.”
* * *
* * *
Cousin Cornelius and his cronies, Perce and Monty, soon wore their welcome—grudging as it was—very thin. By day they entertained themselves, riding around the estate—Cornelius acting as if he still owned it—and hunting, though what they could hunt in the middle of the day, Thomas had no idea.
“I don’t like them wandering the countryside with guns,” Thomas said, “but if it keeps them out of our hair . . . Just make sure you’re not out when they are.”
They continued their morning rides, because Cornelius and his friends rarely arose before noon.
Their guests played cards and drank themselves into a stupor each night. Rose very correctly left the gentlemen to their port at the end of each meal, and after one glass, Thomas excused himself and joined Rose, leaving them to it.
Even so, they made themselves obnoxious, complaining that life was deadly dull in the country. They complained constantly and were endlessly demanding. Even too-sick-to-travel Venables managed to achieve offense from his sickbed.
Mrs. Holden consulted Rose about him. “Ringing that bell of his a couple of dozen times a day, he is, m’lady. The maids have been running up and down stairs all day and night, and all for the most trivial of reasons; his water glass needing refilling—and the jug not six inches away, his sheets needing to be smoothed, his pillows plumped.”
“I’ll have a word with him,” Rose promised.
Mrs. Holden hesitated, then continued in a rush. “And that’s not all. I caught Lucy coming out of his room all rumpled and flustered this morning—and she’s a good girl, Lucy, and wouldn’t encourage that sort of thing. She says he has hands like an octopus, and the other maids agree. I did try to speak to him, m’lady, but he came across all innocent and kept saying the girl made a mistake. But I could tell he was laughing up his sleeve at me.”
Rose stiffened. “I will do more than have a word with him,” she declared wrathfully. “From now on, Mrs. Holden, Mr. Venables is to be attended only by a manservant—one manservant, the biggest, meanest, ugliest one you can find. Someone who won’t put up with any nonsense. And make my apologies to Lucy and the other girls for the trouble they’ve been put to.”
She marched up to Mr. Venables’s room. “It has come to my attention, Mr. Venables, that you’ve been pestering my maids. This will stop. If you discompose any of my staff again, in any way whatsoever, you will be dumped out on the highway before you know it—and I don’t care if you’re dying!” She frowned. “Actually, if you’re pestering the maids, you’re obviously well enough to travel. I’ll speak to my husband about it.”
Ignoring the man’s babbled excuses, apologies and justifications, and his assurances that he was indeed almost at death’s door, she swept out.
She told Thomas about it later that day, and to her surprise he sent for all the servants to assemble in the hall. The atmosphere was tense and they whispered nervously among themselves as they waited for him to address them.
He also ordered Cousin Cornelius and his two friends to attend. They flounced in late and sat with their backs half turned away, as if it demeaned them to be addressed in the company of servants.
Rose sat at the front, facing the audience. Ambrose, who had also been asked to attend, sat quietly at the side, his expression quietly curious.
Thomas held up his hand for silence, then spoke. “It has come to my attention that some of our houseguests have been pestering some of you.”
Ignoring the outraged huffs from the guests and the low murmur of surprise from the servants, he continued. “I want you to know that I will not stand for this. No servant in my employ is to put up with any untoward, unfair, unwelcome or bullying behavior from anyone else under this roof, whether they are fellow servants, guests or the king himself. Is that understood?”
There were nods and murmured “Yes m’lords” all around.
Cousin Cornelius and his cronies rose. “Well, really, this is the outside of enough,” Cornelius declared. They stalked from the room, the picture of offended dignity. The servants exchanged glances, and a low murmur followed.
Thomas continued, “Anyone who feels threatened or distressed in any way is to speak to Mr. or Mrs. Holden, or if you feel uncomfortable about telling them, come directly to me or Lady Brierdon. I promise you, we will investigate the matter and act on it. Agreed?”
At the chorus of agreements and nods, he dismissed them.
They filed out, leaving Thomas, Rose and Ambrose alone. Ambrose looked stunned. “I never thought I’d hear an Earl of Brierdon speak like that on behalf of servants.”
Thomas lifted a careless shoulder. “I doubt any previous Earls of Brierdon were slaves and understood what it is like to live at other people’s mercy. Or lack of it.”
Ambrose stared at him for a long moment, his complexion ashen. “A slave, Thomas?” he repeated weakly. “Is that what you became?”
Thomas nodded. “It changes you.”
Later Rose said to Thomas, “I thought Ambrose’s reaction was a little strange, a little extreme, didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “No. Ambrose’s mother was a maidservant.”
* * *
* * *
The idyllic weather was coming to an end. The last few days had been dry but overcast, but as Thomas and Rose came in from their morning ride, a damp wind brought spatters of intermittent rain.
“Looks like this afternoon might be a good time to begin going over the books with you,” Thomas told Ambrose. Despite the weather, Cornelius and his cronies, showing a surprising resilience, had headed out after luncheon, dressed to the nines in their hunting outfits.
“Or were you going out?” he added, noticing that Ambrose was wearing a thick outdoor coat, hat and leather gloves.
Ambrose grimaced. “I was, as a matter of fact. The gamekeeper told me our friends have bribed a couple of the local lads to dig up a badger’s sett.”
“A badger’s sett?” Thomas frowned. “For baiting, you mean?”
“I’m afraid so.” He screwed up his face in a distasteful expression. “Cornelius organized a badger baiting here last year. I despise such sports, as you know, but—”
“It’s not sport, it’s carnage. Setting a pack of dogs onto an innocent animal. It’s obscene.”
Ambrose’s expression softened. “You always did like badgers, didn’t you?”
“Where is this sett?”
“I can deal with it, Thomas.”
“No, I will. It’s my responsibility.” And he doubted Cornelius would listen to Ambrose. “So where will I find this sett?”
Ambrose thought for a minute. “Remember the old hide you and Gerald used to use?”
“At the edge of the clearing near the big old oak?” Thomas said, recalling a giant tree that was several hundred years old.
Ambrose nodded. “That’s the one. The sett is just near there. In fact, you could probably see it from the hide, though heaven knows what state that’s in after all these years.” He added thoughtfully, “I should probably have it pulled down. Don’t go into it, Thomas, I’m sure it’s dangerous.”
Thomas nodded. Animal baiting sickened him and the thought that Cornelius had dared to arrange anything of the sort without a word to Thomas—and on his land, with his badger—had set his temper blazing. He grabbed his coat and hat and headed out.
He found the hide without any trouble; it had been a favorite haunt when he was a boy. It didn’t look in too bad a shape. He scouted around and found the sett. There was no evidence of digging. Good, they hadn’t caught the badger yet.
His cousin’s unlikely braving of the elements earlier was a dead giveaway; he’d be coming here this afternoon with the local boys to dig out the hapless sleeping badger.
Thomas would catch them in the act. Let Cornelius try to wriggle out of that.
He glanced at the hide. It didn’t look nearly as dangerous as Ambrose had said, but then Ambrose always had been the overly cautious type. Thomas opened the rickety door at the back and stepped inside. Dead leaves and cobwebs, mainly, and some ancient animal scat. Nothing to worry about.
The hide faced out to the clearing and gave an angled view of the location of the sett. There was even an old wooden box that would make a convenient, if grimy, seat.
He was about to settle down to wait when he decided it would be better to relieve himself first, rather than get caught short at an inconvenient moment. Cautiously, in case Cousin Cornelius was close by, he slipped from the hide, took himself to a nearby tree and began to unbutton his breeches.
CRASH!
Thomas whirled. The hide was no more; a huge branch had crashed down onto it, reducing it to a pile of splintered matchsticks.