by Jo Beverley
“I’ll help you if I can.” Kitty looked around. “Speaking of which, is there a portrait of Diane Dauntry here?”
“There must have been, but it was probably destroyed.”
“Thrown on a bonfire, with the dowager dancing around it, cackling?”
“Hush.”
She looked round quickly, but there was no one there. He was correct, however. She must guard her tongue.
He walked to the fireplace and rang the bell beside it. When a maid came, he sent her for Mrs. Quiller. The woman entered with a guarded expression and seemed relieved by the simple question.
“There were two portraits, milord, a miniature and a large one. They were returned to her family.”
“What was she like?” Kitty asked.
Mrs. Quiller bridled, as if insulted. “It is not my place to say, milady.”
“I simply meant in appearance.”
“Ah. Thin and blond, milady. Will that be all?”
“Yes, thank you.”
When the woman had left, Kitty slid a look at Braydon. “Perhaps she thinks I, too, will be soon gone.”
“I expect you to prove her wrong. Onward.”
“A moment.” Kitty returned to the portrait of the fifth viscount to study the miniature again. It didn’t help. The woman was definitely brown-haired and youngish, but didn’t really resemble the young dowager. It wasn’t important, but the fifth viscount’s marriage and the flight of his wife tweaked her curiosity. The answers must be here somewhere.
She left the gallery feeling more comfortable by the moment. She still didn’t know her husband in all the many ways possible, but she could enjoy his company, which was something. It was a great deal.
He showed her the drawing room, which was in the wintry-perfection style but warmed slightly by a carpet in shades of peach and a number of paintings on the walls. It was not warmed by a fire, so must have seen little use recently. It was typically a lady’s room, and the dowager had her own.
A pianoforte and a harp sat in one corner. Kitty had been taught to play a keyboard but not kept up the skill. She’d never played a harp. Was an aristocratic hostess expected to entertain her guests in that way? In that case, she’d have to apply herself to practice, which had never been her forte. She found it hard to imagine herself staging grand entertainments here. Who did she know other than the village gentry?
A house like this should host events, however, even if only local ones on high days and holidays. What was she to do about that? What was she to do about anything?
Her comfort curdled.
Beauchamp Abbey was a large and complex house, and she knew nothing of the running of such a place. It was elegant, and she was not. Everything here was luxurious and spoke of wealth, and she didn’t know how to be rich. She’d known people who had come into money and wasted it or hoarded it or made ridiculous show with it. It took familiarity to deal with wealth graciously. Braydon had that. She didn’t. How was she to learn?
“I require coffee after my exertions,” Braydon said, “and relief from rooms like this. We’ll enjoy it in my quarters.”
They returned to the staircase, and Kitty let Sillikin make her own way down, claws clicking on slippery marble. She’d have a carpet laid there, but that wouldn’t remove the sensation of entering a snow-palace stage or the presence of an invisible and hostile audience.
It was a relief to leave the hall toward the back and enter a part of the house with wooden floors and brown wainscoted walls. Not summer, but perhaps a dull autumn.
They passed the door Braydon had mentioned—the back door through which people could enter on business. People like his estate steward, she supposed, and perhaps his head groom and gardener. How many servants did he—did they—employ in total? An alarming number, she was sure.
A short corridor held three doors, and the first was open to show a young man at a desk covered with books and papers.
“My secretary, my dear. Worseley.” The man standing was surprisingly young for such a post and even blushed a little as he bowed. “Any discoveries today?” Braydon asked, then turned to Kitty. “As I said, I found the viscountcy’s minor papers in disorder. Worseley attempts order—in his idle moments.”
The young man smiled at the wry comment. “I’ve assembled and annotated the records to do with the Lincolnshire estate, sir. The one the dowager Lady Dauntry brought into the marriage. All seems in order now, and there’s reason for the lack of income.”
“That being?”
“It’s a mere remnant, sir. A house and garden.”
“Ah. Perhaps those details were obscured on purpose. What an excellent fellow you are.”
Worseley blushed with pleasure. Here was a different Braydon. He was almost playful, but there could be no doubt who was lord and master.
Of course, he’d been an officer in the army, and good officers knew how to bring out the best in their men. She tended to forget Braydon’s past because the soldiering didn’t show through the gloss. She found it impossible to imagine him muddy and tattered, even in the heat of battle.
He showed her the next room, which had glass-doored shelves packed with ledgers, folders, and document boxes. “The muniment room. Most of the important and current estate papers were properly kept. It’s only the more personal papers that are out of order. On to my inner sanctum.”
They entered, and Sillikin explored while Kitty assessed it by eye. It was a room much like his bedroom, and designed more for comfort than work. The pedestal desk, even holding neat piles of documents, seemed subordinate to a thick carpet, a large fire, and two very comfortably upholstered chairs by the fireside.
Kitty smiled. “I sense the fifth viscount overlaid by the sixth.”
“Sounds deuced odd.”
She was startled into a laugh. “I mean that your predecessor used this as his haven, not for work, and probably spent most of his time in one of the chairs. Who used the other?”
Sillikin abandoned hope of treasure and flopped down in front of the fire.
“I don’t know,” Braydon said, “but the one on the left is significantly less worn. The overlay?”
Kitty considered. “The desk gives off an aura of hard work—that’s you—and that cabinet is out of place.” She indicated the glossy black cabinet whose doors were decorated with inlaid wood and mother-of-pearl. It was about five feet high. “You had it moved in here to hold more business papers than he ever bothered with.”
“You’re very shrewd.”
She didn’t like his tone. “At least you added the D.”
“I’ve seen no sign of shrewishness.”
“That’s because you haven’t crossed me yet.”
“Perhaps I should practice taming.”
“I recommend not!”
“You, my lady, are a shrew after all.”
“A word applied to any woman who speaks her mind.”
“Only when the mind is fierce.”
“And is there anything wrong with fierceness?”
He began to speak, then clearly thought better of it. “Not always, I grant you, but may I point out that I am not the enemy?”
That was a just reprimand. She’d almost lost her temper there, over nothing.
“I apologize.”
“But you enjoyed that.”
She almost protested, but he was right. “Your turn to be shrewd? True, it’s been some time since I’ve felt able to let rip.”
“You didn’t fight with Lady Cateril?”
“How could I? She was deep in genuine grief.”
“So, perhaps, is the dowager Viscountess Dauntry.”
“Is she?”
“In one sense, yes. But it’s a grief that leads to war.”
Kitty moved toward the desk, curious about the papers there and what they would tell her about her husband, but realized i
n time that it would be nosy. She turned back. “Should I not meet her soon?”
“A delicate question. Would you wish to be presented to her for approval?”
“No.”
“Thus, not yet.”
“And Isabella?”
“Will be taking her cue from her grandmother. I could summon her.”
“To be presented to me for approval? Not the best approach.”
“No. The dowager uses Isabella as a foot soldier. A reluctance to harm foot soldiers can lose a war.”
She considered him. “Yet you are reluctant. I find that admirable.”
“Despite her attack on you?”
“It was a feeble sortie. Is she a resolute foot soldier?”
“A shot over her head usually sends her in retreat.”
“Poor girl. Can her allegiance be changed?”
“I hope you can find a way.”
She supposed that was part of her duties.
“As for warfare,” he said, “if you need a sturdy sparring partner, I’m unlikely to bleed.”
“But you could be bruised. Will you take offense?”
“No.”
They were on an edge again, in danger of losing balance. “Didn’t you mention coffee?” she asked.
“I did. I take it dark and sweet, in the Turkish style. How would you like yours?”
She could try for harmony in this. “May I try your Turkish coffee? I, too, like it strong and sweet.”
A look in his eyes suddenly gave added meaning to her words, sending a hot tingle over her. Perhaps they wouldn’t wait until the night. . . .
But he turned away to call the order to his secretary and then returned, closing the door, indicating that she should sit. Simply sit. She did so, but with an inner wail. It had been so long, and now she felt sure their consummation would be satisfactory. Highly satisfactory.
He sat in the other chair. “What was your first wedding day like?”
She hoped he didn’t mean her first wedding night. She didn’t think she could talk about that without completely losing control.
Chapter 16
“Summer,” she said, “and more of an event. A number of my friends attended, and his. We spent the night at an inn, then traveled on by easy stages to our London home.”
“And you’d known each other for some time.”
“Three months, though we hadn’t met frequently until the last weeks. I was at school at first.” She told him about sneaking out to the fair and then exchanging letters and arranging the occasional meeting. “All irresistibly exciting at seventeen.”
She realized that begged the question of whether she’d regretted it later, but thank heavens he didn’t ask.
“Who were your witnesses?”
“Half the parish, but principally Ruth and Marcus’s brother. His family was there, of course, his mother still trying to persuade us to return to live at Cateril Manor.”
“Mothers,” he said. “The queen is a difficult one, too.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Is that, perhaps, treason?”
“Probably. But everyone acknowledges that she’s cold to most of her children, and a tyrant as well. She refuses to acknowledge the Duke of Cumberland’s wife because of some old grudge.”
“It must be hard to have her husband in such a terrible state and for so long.”
“True, but that doesn’t excuse her.”
“Perhaps it’s worn her down,” Kitty said, thinking a little of herself, but there was no comparison. “She’s old and in ill health. Perhaps to be pitied.”
“You have a kind heart,” he said, but without notable approval.
“I’m not ashamed of it. What was your mother like?”
The question seemed to take him aback.
“It’s hard to say.” He rose to put more wood on the fire. “She died when I was eleven, and I doubt any child that age judges a parent clearly. I didn’t see a great deal of her, but she was beautiful and charming. She sang when there were guests. I’d slip out of my room onto the landing to listen.” He stood, dusting off his hands. Those beautiful hands, which sent her mind in improper directions. “Until I went to school, my time was mostly spent with my nurse and tutor.”
An aristocratic upbringing. Why be surprised?
Because he was beginning to feel like an equal and that could be dangerous to her sanity. She was a glorified housekeeper and governess, and his life was in London.
“Lady Sophonisbe,” she said. “She must be the daughter of an earl, marquess, or duke.”
“Duke.”
Kitty had hoped for the lowest level of aristocracy, not the highest.
“But she ran off with a commoner,” he said, with a smile that might even be fond. “Plain Sir Barnaby Ecclestall. An excellent fellow, though my mother didn’t think so.”
“She disliked her father?”
“She died when I was young, so I don’t know. But my father said once that she resented being born a commoner when her mother should by rights have married high. You asked about my father and the title, and I said he’d have liked it. My mother would have been in alt to become Lady Dauntry.”
Kitty wanted to ask more. Here was another difficult mother lingering in her husband’s memories in ways that might affect their future, but this wasn’t the moment.
She looked around the room for a safer line of talk. “What do you keep in the cabinet of curiosities?”
That term was usually applied to a place to keep an eccentric collection, but when he rose and opened the doors, she saw shelves holding orderly ranks of open-topped boxes.
“My predecessor didn’t believe in filing his personal papers, and, as I said, he had no secretary. He tossed them into the nearest receptacle—a box, a drawer, even sometimes a vase. We’ve been gathering them. The top shelves are unsorted boxes and the lower ones sorted.”
She saw neatly written labels—Plas Blaidd, Parliament, Town House. There were a number of boxes for correspondence, each with a subtitle, including Personal, Commercial, Petitions . . .
“Poor Worseley,” she said.
“I do my share when I have time.”
“Why bother?”
“The alternative would be to burn them all unread.”
Kitty rose and went to dip into an unsorted box and found a recipe of some sort in faded ink.
“Perfume?” she asked.
He looked over her shoulder. “Snuff, I’d think. Those are types of tobacco, with the addition of herbs for scent.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You use snuff?”
“No.”
Of course—that memory. And now he was so close, they were almost touching. Whatever this snuff had smelled of, Braydon had his own subtle smell, and it stirred her. She was tempted to turn to him, to put her hand on his chest, and invite a kiss.
But where might that lead?
Here? In his study.
With coffee ordered.
She moved away. “Why bother with such petty details?”
“Knowledge is power. Ignorance is vulnerability. I intend to know and understand all about my new responsibilities.”
She looked at him, alert. “You think there have been irregularities? Under the dowager’s rule?”
“Money is unaccounted for and aspects are murky. I suspect the oddities rise from sheer bloody-mindedness . . . if you don’t mind such language.”
“After so long a soldier’s wife? But you wonder if there’s been some wrongdoing.” She considered the boxes in a new light. It would almost be like a treasure hunt. “I might enjoy going through the papers.”
“Then do so, but record each item in this ledger.” He took out a large book and opened it on the desk. She saw on each line a note about a paper and where it had been put. She recognized his
handwriting in some entries, but another hand in others. That must be the secretary’s.
Letter, March 15, 1813, from Lady Pierrepoint to 5th V. NOI
“NOI?” she asked.
“No obvious importance. All those go in that box.” She saw one with simply those initials. “If there might be some importance, they are stored in boxes according to subject.” He pointed to one line, which said, Letter, September 12, 1814, from W. Hughes to 5th V PB. “That deals with a small estate in Wales, so is in the box for Plas Blaidd. In time that box will be incorporated with the one in the record room.”
This meticulous organization stole some of the appeal of a hunt through the papers, but Kitty supposed she should have expected it. This was a man who turned up at ten o’clock to the very strike.
Looking down the lines of writing, she saw many NOIs. “Why not burn the unimportant ones?”
“There’s a gap between unimportant and no obvious importance, and it could be disastrous.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You think there’s criminality here? Or even danger?”
“No, but until I’m sure, I’m on guard. If you turn up crimes and scandals, come to me before you shout them to the world.”
“Well, really! I don’t think I deserve that.”
“Of course not.” But then he added, “I don’t know you, Kitty, any more than you know me. Our encounters have been few, and form more of a patchwork than a picture. I don’t know what you might do or how you might react.”
“Nor I you,” she pointed out.
“I am as I am.”
“So am I.” What did he want—that she be only one version of herself? Presumably the composed, calm one. That had been as close to deception as she’d come. “I might have presented a motley impression,” she said, “but nothing was put on for show.”
He didn’t like that. He lifted a box out of the cabinet and put it on the desk. “Explore, if you wish.”
A test? If so, she’d pass.
She sat at the desk and took out a paper. Then she wrote in the ledger, trying to be as neat as he: Receipt for repair of ormolu clock, Stelby & March. February 3, 1810. “I assume I can put NOI?”
“Miscellaneous household receipts have their own box. Add H, and give it to me.” She passed it over and he put it into a box in the cabinet. “The inventories might indicate which house, though I suspect there are a number of ormolu clocks.”