How could he not know this? But then, he was a former soldier who’d apparently grown wealthy in service to the crown. Why should he know how the maids suffered?
“That is a damned silly arrangement,” Sir Jack said. “The infantry do the fighting and marching, they should be the first ones fed and provisioned.”
“You’ll move Mrs. Abernathy up under the attics?” Mrs. Abernathy enjoyed her station far too much, and for all the wrong reasons. Madeline had met her like before and learned to stay well away.
“I’d like to move Mrs. Abernathy out of my house, but needs must for now. You have a smudge…” Sir Jack rubbed the pad of his thumb along the curve of Madeline’s jaw. Unlike his brusque speech and brisk pace, his touch was gentle, unhurried, easy.
Ye gods. Madeline endured what felt like caresses, until Sir Jack had un-smudged her to his satisfaction.
“You must not be so familiar, sir.” Her stern warning came out more like a plea. “Familiarity with your staff can cause much discord below stairs. You must be seen as fair, proper, and even-handed.”
“Spending the day with soot on your cheek would mean you were seen as untidy, careless, and oblivious to decorum.”
How Madeline wished she were oblivious to him. Sir Jack stood improperly close, his expression daring her to argue with him.
“You might have told me I needed to use my handkerchief, pointed to the exact spot on your own countenance, and kept your hands to yourself.”
He was off down the corridor. “You take after your aunts. Very fierce, very principled. There’s little I admire more than courage and honor. Let’s use the servants’ stairs.” He opened a paneled door Madeline would have missed entirely, and went jogging down into a gloomy stairwell. The air here was colder even than on the floor above and the light more limited.
On the next landing, Sir Jack lifted a door latch, but the door refused to open.
“What in blazes?” he muttered, jiggling the latch. “Mrs. Abernathy will hear about this.” Louder rattling and more colorful muttering followed.
“Let me,” Madeline said, extracting a hairpin from her chignon. “Sometimes, rust or dust can wreak havoc with the mechanism, and a little coaxing is all that’s wanted.”
She wedged her hairpin into the latch and tickled and twisted, then tried the latch again. A second try was also fruitless.
“Hang this,” Sir Jack said, climbing the stairs two at a time. Madeline followed at a slower pace, for her employer’s tone was more unsettled than the situation called for. They emerged back onto the maids’ dormitory floor, where the light revealed that Sir Jack was pale and nearly panting.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“No, I am not. I do not care for dark, enclosed spaces. I loathe them, in fact. The only aggravation that bothers me worse is a lack of solitude.”
The man Madeline beheld was not afraid, but he was… unnerved. “I don’t care for crowds either,” she said, taking his arm. “I’ll ask Pahdi to oil the latch, or have it replaced if the mechanism is worn. Have you given any thought to entertainments you might host during your mother’s visit, or holiday appointments we should put up to mark her arrival?”
Teak House was spotless, beautifully appointed, and entirely lacking in holiday decorations. Twelfth Night was still a good week off, and not so much as a cloved orange suggested the holiday season was in progress. No decorations graced the public rooms, no greenery swathed the front entrance.
“The holidays must be endured, Miss Hennessey, whether we hang a wreath on the door or not.”
They took the main stairs arm in arm, which meant their pace remained decorous. “I see. You are awaiting your mother’s guidance because she has a much firmer grasp of how socializing over the winter months ought to go on, and you don’t want to offend her. Wise of you, Sir Jack.”
When they reached the bottom of the steps, Sir Jack did not release Madeline’s arm, but stood peering at her, his expression disgruntled.
“I was held prisoner in a cell so small I could neither stand up nor lie down. I’m told I was there for several months, but I had no way of knowing at the time. This was years ago, and I don’t often speak of it.”
He likely never spoke of it. The words I’m sorry begged to be spoken, but he’d hate hearing that.
“I was beaten almost daily my first year in service,” Madeline said, something she didn’t mention either. “Then the first Mrs. Belmont ascertained what was afoot and offered me a position at Candlewick.”
Sir Jack escorted Madeline to an opulently appointed parlor, a fire crackling merrily in the hearth.
“Why would anybody beat a young girl daily?”
Madeline remained silent. The reality of a life in service for an attractive, clueless girl was unattractive indeed, unless she landed in a household like Candlewick, where treating the help decently was a matter of family pride.
“Whatever the reason for your ill usage, it wasn’t justified,” Sir Jack concluded. “I won’t interrogate you. You asked for flowers to be put in Mama’s bedroom, though I see we have a bouquet in her sitting room as well. What do you think of the heartsease?”
“A cheerful flower, sir, and hardier than most.”
“You needn’t aspire to cheerfulness with me,” Sir Jack said, drawing the curtain back from the window. “Tend to Mama, smooth what ruffled feathers you can among the staff, leave me in peace, and I’ll reward you handsomely. It is goddamned snowing.”
Autumn had hung on and on, with only the occasional bitter day or frigid morning even as the official start of winter had approached. The holidays had begun mildly as well, but winter was apparently intent on making up for lost time, for snow was pouring from the sky.
“I love how snow makes everything clean and new,” Madeline said, joining Sir Jack at the window. “The first snowfall especially.”
“You will not love how snow makes Pahdi mutter and grumble, though this weather might delay Mama’s arrival.”
“What of you?” Madeline asked. “Do you enjoy the snow, resent it, long for spring?”
Her question—small talk, and about the weather of all the uninspired topics—resulted in a flicker of amusement in Sir Jack’s eyes.
“Belmont won’t be as likely to come nosing about if the snow keeps up. I hope you wrote a convincingly sanguine note to him and his lady?”
“I did, sir. Shall we move on? I’ve seen your mother’s chambers, and if she doesn’t appreciate the appointments, she’s a fool.”
“Tell her that, why don’t you? I enjoy seeing Mama at a loss for words, though the experience is ever fleeting. The rest of the guest rooms are similarly commodious. My own apartment is around the corner and down the corridor.”
He started for the door, and Madeline followed, because they still had most of the house to inspect. Sir Jack stopped short before leaving the parlor, so she nearly ran into him.
“It’s not right,” he said. “Not right that your first year away from home was hellish.”
He’d left the drapes open in his mother’s sitting room, which admitted light, true, though it also made the room colder. Madeline unlatched the door and preceded him into the corridor without closing the drapes.
“It was only a year, and I survived, and now I’d like to see your apartment.” He’d survived too, though like Madeline, he’d doubtless been changed by his experience in captivity.
“You’d like to see my apartment? I assure you that will not be necessary. Pahdi himself looks after my rooms, and his efforts are more than adequate to ensure my comfort.”
Madeline marched along, because she knew where Sir Jack’s rooms were, and knew that neither maid nor footman, nor even Mrs. Abernathy, set foot therein.
“Will you manage to keep your mother out of your rooms, Sir Jack?”
“If Mama dares to intrude upon my privacy, I’ll…”
“Yes?”
“One can’t court-martial one’s mother.”
“Nor can on
e send her packing back to London when the lane is filling up with snow.”
They came to a halt where the corridors intersected.
“Mama means well,” Sir Jack said. “But I cannot abide the notion she might barge into the one part of the house that I consider my own.”
Barging about uninvited was the singular province of older female relations. “Consider what the staff must think about only Pahdi seeing your chambers.”
“That I like my privacy and treasure my solitude?”
“That you either have an unnatural relationship with your butler, or you’re keeping lurid secrets.” Madeline suspected neither to be true.
“Unnatural—unnatural relationship? Lurid secrets? Miss Hennessey, you have a prodigious imagination. If I laid a hand on Pahdi with any prurient intent whatsoever, James would slay me where I stood.”
James was the deaf footman. “James—?”
Sir Jack examined his reflection in a gilt-framed mirror and ran his hand through his hair. “James. And Pahdi. They are fast friends, and that’s all anybody—or I—need know.”
He studied Madeline, not directly, but in the mirror. This was another test, but far be it from Madeline to criticize people for their friendships. Life, especially life in service, was a challenging proposition.
“Let’s have a look at the other guest rooms,” she said.
“You will not collude with Mama in her attempts to inspect my private chambers?”
“Have Pahdi install a lock on the door, sir, and be sure that he and you are the only people to have keys. Mrs. Abernathy will not dare confront you on such a personal matter. If she does, you will have grounds for turning her off.”
“A lock. First, a dog, now a lock. Miss Hennessey, you are a marvel of common sense. Belmont is doubtless ruing the day he allowed you to stray from his household.”
Sir Jack strode on down the corridor, leaving Madeline to puzzle out why she felt like smiling. He’d complimented her—sincerely and honestly, more than once—and he also apparently intended to heed her suggestions.
To be respected, listened to, and appreciated was…. lovely. That Sir Jack would not begrudge his staff their friendships was lovely too, and yet, Madeline’s smile faded.
In this entire house, Sir Jack considered only a few rooms his own, and he dreaded the arrival of his closest family members, suggesting that he was… lonely.
And loneliness could be a form of captivity, as cold, cramped, and miserable as any prison cell.
Chapter Four
* * *
“This wretched weather is your fault, Jeremy Fanning. But for your dithering about in London, we’d be safe at Teak House now.”
Jeremy Fanning considered himself a man of peace, the Fannings having followed the usual arrangement among the better families. When one son went for a soldier, another went for the Church, as if the celestial scales balanced on a simple nose count. One son marched to battle, another marched up the church aisle each Sunday. All very tidy, though it didn’t leave brothers with much to discuss on the rare occasion when their paths crossed.
“I do apologize, Mama.” For the fortieth time. “The whims of the bishop are beyond my control. At least the snow is pretty, and we’re safe and snug at wonderfully commodious lodgings.”
The snow had started the previous afternoon, great torrents of white whipped along by stinging wind that created drifts such as could send a coach sliding into a ditch all too easily.
Sometimes prayers were answered, though in Jeremy’s experience, the Almighty’s sense of humor was not to be trusted.
“You call this commodious?” Mama harrumphed. “I’ve seen broom closets larger than this parlor.”
Florentia Fanning had last seen a broom closet when she’d hid in one as a child, if then.
“The innkeeper has been generous with the coal and the tea tray, and for that we should be grateful,” Jeremy replied, letting the window curtain fall back into place. The innkeeper had been so generous with the coal that the parlor was beyond cozy and approaching stifling, hence Jeremy’s post by the window.
Mama excelled at the rotating complaint. She’d chided the innkeeper for his drafty parlor, and now she’d chide him for a lack of ventilation. When that volley of criticisms palled, she’d call an objectionable odor to his attention, or a draft. The tea would be too weak or too strong, the sheets too cold or over-warmed.
Mama was creative and tireless in her efforts to point out the shortcomings of her situation. Though she lacked a title, she’d married an earl’s younger son, and Papa had left her well-fixed. She thus commanded significant social consequence, and had become like that crotchety wealthy uncle nobody dared snub.
“What is that creature doing in here?” she asked, as a marmalade tabby emerged from behind the sofa. “If this parlor is plagued with mice, I’ll not pay for our lodging.”
Jack had sent Jeremy ample coin to ensure Mama’s journey up from Town was conducted with all the comfort of a royal progress.
“I’d say that cat is showing great good sense,” Jeremy replied. “He prefers our company to that available in the stables.”
The cat was a healthy specimen, and the generous dimensions of its head suggested it was a tom. The beast leaped up onto the sofa and sniffed at Mama’s sleeve.
“Presuming wretch,” Mama said, stroking a hand over the cat’s back. “You’ll shed all over the furniture. Put him out, Jeremy.”
“He’s not my cat to put in or put out, Mama. Would you really see a helpless creature tossed into the snow?”
The cat stepped into Mama’s lap, circled once, and curled down onto her skirts. Helpless, indeed.
“Why is it doing this?” She scowled at the cat, even as she scratched its cheek. “Cat, you are in sore want of manners.”
The cat yawned, then set its chin on its paws. Manners, it might lack; confidence, it did not.
“He knows a kind soul when he sees one,” Jeremy said, and this was—oddly—not pure flattery. When Mama could pry her attention from her own situation, she generally meant well. Her entertainments saw likely couples paired for the first time on the dance floor. If a young lady was gaining a reputation for unkind gossip, Mama would put the woman in her place before anybody was ruined, including the young lady herself.
Only with family was Mama so relentlessly critical.
“The cat simply favors a roaring fire. Make it stop snowing, Jeremy. You’re a parson, and one expects you to have influence with the heavenly authorities.”
“One doesn’t have influence with the heavenly authorities, Mama. You know better.”
The cat had commenced purring loudly enough to be heard across the room.
“You will never become a bishop if you don’t learn to hurl your brimstone a bit more convincingly, my boy. One wants conviction about one’s scolds. You are the henchman of the Deity himself, after all. Do you suppose this beast has a name?”
“I’ll ask the innkeeper the next time I see him. Shall I fetch you a book, Mama?” For clearly, Mama was going nowhere in the immediate future. She had a fresh tea tray, a cozy parlor more or less to herself, and an adoring familiar in her lap.
“I suppose a book will do. Knitting with this dratted feline in the room is out of the question. He’ll pounce on my yarn and destroy weeks of work.”
The cat would have to wake up to pounce. “A book, then, and if you like I’ll read to you.”
“Some Wordsworth. He’s insipid enough to put a saint to sleep, regardless of the frustrations she might face.”
Jeremy opened the parlor door and nearly ran into Miss Lucy Anne DeWitt.
“Reverend! Oh, I do beg your pardon. I was coming to check on Mrs. Fanning.”
Brave of her, but Lucy Anne was the cheerful, practical sort who knew what was afoot without having it spelled out for her.
And she was endlessly pretty in a blond, blue-eyed, smiling sort of way.
“I was about to fetch Mama her Wordsworth. If you’d li
ke to join us, I can read to you ladies.”
Lucy Anne beamed at him. In two days of sitting across from her in the traveling coach, Jeremy should have grown inured to that smile, but it was so warm and genuine that verbs like bask and wallow came to mind.
“I’d love that above all things,” Lucy Anne said, moving past him into the parlor. “And oh, look! A kitty! I adore a handsome feline, almost as much as I adore a bite of shortbread on a chilly afternoon.”
“Jeremy, for pity’s sake, close the door,” Mama snapped. “You’ll let out all the warm air, and tempt the cat to chance the elements.”
Jeremy slipped through the door and left the ladies—and the cat—to the parlor’s warmth. He collected Wordsworth from his mother’s apartment, the finest the inn had to offer, and took a minute to enjoy the solitude of his own chamber.
Lucy Anne had the knack of charming Mama, and very likely of charming everybody. Mama had spent most of the Season culling the crop of marriageable young ladies, and Lucy Anne had apparently been her choice for the honor of charming—and marrying—Sir Jack Fanning.
Jeremy took himself down the steps, pausing in a shaft of sharp winter sunlight on the landing.
In the time he’d taken to retrieve some poetry, the weather had shifted, from the storm’s last squall to relentless sunshine on a painfully brilliant white landscape. Mama would have the team in the traces at first light tomorrow, and Jack’s fate would be sealed.
Jeremy sent up a prayer for his brother—who’d had enough captivity to last a lifetime—and prepared to be scolded for how quickly or slowly he read, which selections he passed over, and which ones he chose to read for the ladies.
At least Lucy Anne provided Mama with agreeable companionship. Despite many prayers for patience and fortitude, Jeremy would have pitched Mama into the snow by now, but for the good humor Lucy Anne conveyed with her smiles.
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