by Jane Feather
Bolts creaked, and the door opened slowly; a pair of slightly rheumy eyes were at first all that was visible in the crack. “Aye?”
Cornelia hid a smile as she felt Livia stiffen. It was a foolish person who mistook the bubbly, pretty young woman for an easily intimidated featherbrain.
“I am Lady Livia Lacey, and you, I take it, are my employee,” Livia announced. “Kindly send someone to help the coachman unload the coach and bring our luggage inside.” So saying, she swept the door wide open and stepped past the man into the fusty gloom of a large square hall.
Cornelia and Aurelia followed her, and the three of them looked around with ill-concealed dismay. It was cold and damp, the parquet beneath their feet grimy and slightly sticky, the long windows on either side of the front door so covered in grime that very little daylight leached through. A horseshoe staircase, admittedly handsome, rose from the center of the hall, its upper reaches vanishing into impenetrable gloom. A chandelier, again probably a very beautiful piece when it was cleaned, hung from the center of the high-ceilinged hall. There were a few candle stubs in its branches.
“Well, we didn’t expect nirvana,” Cornelia said bravely. “We guessed it would need work.”
“But this much?” Aurelia murmured. “If these are the public rooms, what is the rest of it like?”
“We shall find out,” Livia stated. She turned to the man who had let them in. “I don’t know your name.”
“Morecombe, ma’am,” the man said. He had clearly once been a big man, but the broad shoulders were now hunched, and his legs had a distinct bow to them. His manner, however, was less than conciliatory.
“I worked for Lady Sophia, God rest her soul. I don’t know nuthin’ about this ’ere Lady Livia,” he declared, digging out a checkered kerchief from a pocket of his calico knee britches, whose original color was a mere memory. He wiped his watery eyes with a degree of vigor.
“Did Lady Sophia’s solicitors not talk to you, Morecombe?” Cornelia asked incredulously. “Surely when the will was read some provision was made as to your future.”
He shook his head. “Not as I ’eard, ma’am. Lady Sophia told us, our Ada and our Mavis, to ’ave a care for ’er things, an’ that’s what we done. She’d ’ave a care fer us, that’s what she said.”
“And your Ada…your Mavis…are they here?”
“Aye, where else would they be?”
Obviously the finer points of employer/employee discourse were not going to apply here, Cornelia decided. “I’m sure Lady Livia would like an introduction.”
“Oh, aye, like as not,” he said with a careless nod. He walked to the rear of the hall. “Eh, Ada…our Mavis, come on out…t’ new mistress is ’ere.”
The two women who emerged through the shabby baize door were clearly twins. Hair scraped back in vigorous buns, long black gowns, angular faces with a strange greenish tinge to their pallor, crumpled aprons, and identically fierce and suspicious brown eyes.
They regarded the three younger women without expression and offered the sketchiest of curtsies.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, m’lady, but we ’ave to unload the carriage. The ’orses need their oats.” The interruption came from the coachman, who now stood, cap in hand, in the doorway.
“Oh, yes, I’m sorry.” Cornelia abandoned the scene in the hall and hurried over to him. “Ask the outriders to help you unload. I’ll…” She fumbled in her reticule.
“Not our job really, m’lady.” He twisted his cap.
Cornelia found a shilling piece and drew it out, trying not to think what it would buy the household in terms of general supplies. But clearly the resident retainers were not going to unload the postchaise and she and her companions couldn’t.
The coachman crammed his hat on his head and went outside shouting orders. Within fifteen minutes the hall was a sea of bandboxes, hampers, portmanteaux. Sophia Lacey’s three retainers stood watching the proceedings with an air of mild indifference.
Cornelia paid off the coachman and the outriders and crossed the square to the garden where the children were playing some form of hide-and-seek with Daisy while Linton watched from a bench.
“Shall we bring them in now, Linton?” she asked, aware of how tentative she sounded. But she knew Linton would be up in arms if the nursery quarters did not come up to expectations, and Cornelia was fairly confident that they wouldn’t. Linton had been her own nurse and still had the power on occasion to reduce her confidence to that of a fumbling child.
“It’s high time, Lady Nell,” the nurse declared, standing up and smoothing down her black skirts. “Lady Susannah is liable to get a chill in this damp air. London,” she muttered. “Such an unhealthy place for children.”
Thank goodness the earl hadn’t consulted Linton, Cornelia reflected. She’d have given him ample ammunition in his fight to keep them at home. They’d all have been sequestered for life among the oaks of the New Forest.
Her courage failed her a little when she and Aurelia, with nurses and children in tow, followed one of the twins, our Ada she thought it was, up the elegant sweep of the main staircase along a drafty corridor and up the narrow nursery stairs at the rear. The children were for once silenced by the gloomy shadows that Ada’s candle barely penetrated. The nursery quarters looked as if they hadn’t been occupied for several generations. Linton inhaled and did not appear to exhale until she had marched the length and breadth of the four-room suite, examining the bed linen, peering up the chimney, running a gloved finger over tables and chests and finally across the grime-encrusted windowpanes.
Cornelia and Aurelia stood just inside the door, the children clinging to their skirts. Ada stood impassively in the middle of the day nursery waiting. Finally, Linton dusted off her hands and pronounced, “No child in my charge is going to sleep in here, and that’s my last word, Lady Nell.”
“If we light a fire, air the bedding, clean up generally, it will be fine, Linton,” Cornelia said. “Ada…it is Ada, isn’t it, I’d like you and Mavis to clean up in here before you do anything else. Morecombe must bring up coals, and we’ll light fires in all the chimneys, and bring up hot water. You’ll see, Linton, in an hour we can work wonders.”
Her tone was cajoling even as she drew off her own gloves. “Lady Aurelia and I will deal with the bed linen. We’ll air it out in front of the fires as soon as they’re lit…come, Ellie.” She strode energetically into the night nursery, and Aurelia, with a slightly raised eyebrow, followed her.
“Do you think you’re going to convince her, Nell?”
“The trick with Linton is to sweep right through her,” Cornelia explained, tearing off coverlets from the four little beds. “She’ll huff and puff, but if we don’t take any notice, she’ll come round in the end.” She shook out blankets in a cloud of dust. “But sweet heaven, Ellie, this is worse than we could ever have imagined.”
“An understatement,” Aurelia said a shade grimly, pummeling pillows. “I dread to think what the rest of the house is like.”
Harry frowned down at the sheet of hieroglyphics he’d just transcribed, then he gave a little nod. A nicely devious piece of misdirection if he said so himself. When this code fell into enemy hands, as it was designed to do, it would give them hours of headache until they finally found the clue he’d embedded in the code to enable them to break it, then they’d be off running like headless chickens on a fool’s errand while the real agenda unfolded under their very noses.
He reached for the sander, reflecting on the sheer joy of an occupation that so suited his talents and his temperament. Give him a good juicy code to break, and he would forget all about food, drink, or sleep for days on end. And the same applied to encryption. Nothing was as satisfying as coming up with a code that would defeat the cleverest encrypters in the French, Russian, or Austrian secret services.
He dusted the ink on the parchment and shook the sand into the wastepaper basket, then folded the document. He was just warming the stick of red wax in the can
dle flame when someone scratched at the door.
He’d been locked in his own world of mental gymnastics for longer than he could calculate, and at first he didn’t recognize the sound. No one disturbed Viscount Bonham when he shut himself up in the attic chamber of his house on Mount Street.
“Who is it?” he called, slipping the parchment into the top drawer of the desk where he worked.
“Lester, m’lord.”
“Good God, man, come in.” Harry pushed back his chair and got to his feet, aware as he did so of the crick in his neck. “What are you doing up and about, Lester? The sawbones said another four days in bed.”
Lester made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “He’s an old woman,” he declared. “And besides, I couldn’t stand another minute of Mrs. Henderson flapping around me like a broody hen. Another mouthful of that stuff she calls a tonic would be the death of me.”
Harry laughed and shook Lester’s hand heartily before pushing him into a chair. “Well it’s good to see you. I don’t deny I’ve missed you.”
The other man nodded and gestured to the desk. “Been working, sir?”
“Aye.” Harry stretched and rolled his shoulders. “What’s the time?”
“Just afore noon, sir. Hector said you’d been up here since late yesterday afternoon.”
“Then I suppose I have,” Harry said with indifference. He went over to the narrow attic casement and peered out at a clear blue sky, the vista punctuated with the smoke-spewing chimney pots of London town.
“I brought a message for you, sir. A man came from the Ministry.”
Harry’s tired green gaze sharpened. “Don’t tell me they got anything out of that thief we apprehended?”
“Not what we’re after, sir, not as yet, but I understand he’s given ’em a few crumbs about other matters of interest. But the real message is that the new owner of the house has taken up residence…arrived yesterday afternoon, according to the blokes on watch. Quite a party, they said. Several ladies at least. Children too. The Ministry wants to know what you want them to do about it.”
“Just keep the watch going, nothing else,” Harry pronounced. “I’ll take it from here myself.” He rubbed his chin, grimacing at the stubble. “I can’t pay a social call looking like this.”
“You could do with a mutton chop inside you,” Lester observed, well aware of his master’s eating habits when he was working. “And a pint of good claret, I daresay.”
Harry considered this, taking stock of his body for the first time in a day and a half. “I believe you’re right, Lester. Tell Hector to serve me in the breakfast parlor and I’ll be down in half an hour.” He took the parchment out of the drawer…. “Oh, and have someone take this immediately to the War Office.” He dropped wax on the folded parchment, pressed his signet ring into the wax, and handed the document to Lester before leaving his office with an energetic step that belied his fatigue.
Half an hour later he was addressing a mutton chop and boiled potato and making inroads into a decanter of claret. Plain fare certainly, but Viscount Bonham had little time for the delicacies when dining alone in his own house. Food and drink merely served a purpose, and right now he was starving.
“You’re going to call on this Lady Livia Lacey then, sir?” Lester said, more of a statement than a question. “Will I be coming with you?”
“Yes, and no,” Harry said succinctly. “You’re looking positively whey-faced again, man. When I do need you, I’ll need you in full fettle, so get some rest this afternoon. I don’t need a bodyguard to pay a courtesy call on some old spinster biddy.” He wiped his mouth and threw down his napkin. “Well, I’ll be off.” He strode to the door, calling to his butler, “Hector, I’m walking round to the mews.”
“Aye, m’lord.” The butler stood ready beside the hall table, the viscount’s riding cloak over his arm, beaver hat in his hand. He handed both to his master, then passed him his riding whip.
Harry nodded his thanks and went out of the front door, held by a footman, and paused on the top step to draw a deep breath of the cold air. It felt wonderfully refreshing after his hours of stuffy incarceration, and his head cleared immediately, his fatigue dropping away from him.
He walked around to the mews and waited patiently while his horse was saddled, inhaling the sweet fragrance of the hay overlaid with the stable smells of leather, manure, and horseflesh. He recognized his sense of slightly heady euphoria as an old friend, the natural result of his long hours of work and the utterly satisfactory conclusion of that work. Later would come exhaustion and a dreamless sleep. But for the moment he was running on nervous energy.
Eric led the chestnut from the stable and held him while the viscount mounted. “I’ll fetch the cob, shall I, m’lord?”
“Yes, I’ll need you to walk Perseus while I pay a call. It’s too cold to leave him standing.” He sat the chestnut, murmuring softly to him as the animal shifted impatiently on the cobbles, threw back his head against the bridle, and showed every sign of wanting to be on the move. As soon as Eric appeared on the sturdy cob, the chestnut needed no encouragement and plunged forward towards the arched entrance to the mews. Harry checked him with a sharp word, and the animal obeyed, high-stepping onto South Audley Street.
It was early afternoon when Harry arrived outside the house in Cavendish Square. He looked up at the dilapidated facade, frowning. Why on earth wouldn’t the new owner, a country dweller with presumably no interest in town life, jump at the chance to sell her inheritance at an inflated price? It made absolutely no sense at all. Then he remembered what Masters, the lawyer, had said. Perhaps the lady’s circumstances are not what we think.
True, he knew nothing about her, and it mattered little. But where did the children come in? He was sure Lester had mentioned children. A husband could complicate matters since presumably he had charge of his wife’s affairs. But it was the lady herself who’d written to her solicitor.
He swung down and passed the reins to Eric. “Walk them; I doubt I’ll be above twenty minutes.” That was the appropriate duration of a first call even if this was more business than social.
He ran lightly up the steps to the front door and raised the tarnished lion’s head knocker. There was no response to his first politely discreet knock, so he tried again. This time the clang resounded in the quiet street. He tapped his whip impatiently against his boot. Somebody had to be in. Apart from the three retainers in the house that he already knew about, Lady Livia had brought women with her, a lady’s maid and presumably a companion of some description, or a nurse for the children.
At last he heard the creak of an unoiled bolt on the far side of the door. It opened and a woman stood on the threshold regarding him with a questioning air in her piercing blue eyes. Her hair was invisible beneath a headscarf, her figure swathed in a none-too-clean apron. A smudge of dirt adorned a straight nose.
“Yes?” she said.
The black cat twined itself around her ankles before leaping, tail erect, down the steps between Harry’s booted feet.
Harry was for a moment disconcerted by the whirlwind of fur and took a step backwards to the second step. This left him looking up at the woman in the doorway, a position that for some reason he immediately resented. He stepped up again and proffered his card, saying distantly, “Viscount Bonham presents his compliments to Lady Livia Lacey.”
Cornelia took it and read it. So this was the mysteriously eager would-be buyer. She glanced up at him. Quite attractive if one liked the lean and hungry type. A very broad, domed forehead, of the kind that usually denoted intelligence. An impression borne out by a pair of wide-apart and very deep-set green eyes. There was a cool distance in his gaze that was rather unnerving, as if he observed the world from some Olympian peak. Arrogant seemed a good description on first observation.
Harry did not care to be kept standing on a drafty doorstep in the middle of winter by anyone, let alone a mere servant who seemed to be subjecting him to an impertinent scr
utiny that unless he was much mistaken found him wanting in some respects.
“My good woman, I would be much obliged to you if you would carry my card to your mistress immediately,” he stated. “You will find that Lady Livia will recognize my name, and she will know my business. Kindly go about yours without delay.” Having issued his order, he turned his back on the woman and gazed off into the distance towards the square, still tapping his boot with his whip.
Mistress! Good woman! Cornelia opened her mouth to protest, indignation sparking in her eyes as she stared at his insolently turned back. Then a smile touched her mouth. Viscount Bonham was in for a few mortifying surprises. “Begging your pardon, my lord,” she said humbly, “but my Lady Livia is not receiving at present.”
“Ah.” He turned back to her slowly, his gaze still cold, his tone crisp. “I daresay she’s resting after her journey?” He didn’t wait for confirmation, merely continued, “Present my card with my respects and inform her that I will call again tomorrow when I trust she will have recovered her strength.” He swung away, saying over his shoulder, “My business with your mistress is urgent. Convey that, if you please.”
Cornelia stared at his retreating back, her mouth ajar at his breathtaking arrogance. What made him think Livia was so feeble she couldn’t manage a two-day journey without needing to rest? What the devil gave him the right to make any of the disparaging assumptions that had poured from his mouth in the last three or four minutes? She looked down at the card in her hand and for a second was tempted to tear it in shreds and send them flying after their owner.
But no. She could imagine a much more satisfactory revenge. She stepped back into the hall and closed the door with a slam.
Harry had only just reached the pavement when the door slammed behind him, and he started at the sound, spinning around to look behind him. Flakes of paint from the door, dislodged by the violence of its closing, fluttered onto the steps. The new servants seemed on a par with the old, he thought, shaking his head with a flicker of reluctant amusement. But at least he hadn’t been driven away by the old man’s blunderbuss. One should be thankful for small mercies. He took the reins from Eric and mounted his horse. He’d know what to expect on his return.