Claiming the Ashbrooke Heir

by Mary Nichols

  Annette noticed the Major’s eyes cloud as he looked at the ornate crib, and knew he was thinking of his own son as Mrs Hurst took Timmy from her and gently put him down. He had only recently been fed and was fast asleep.

  ‘Come, let us look round the house,’ he said, pulling himself together. ‘The house is not large as country houses go,’ he told her, leading the way. ‘But it is convenient.’ The corridor led to a fine marble-tiled hall with a wide curving staircase. From it they entered the drawing room. The furniture was swathed in dustsheets and cobwebs hung from the chandeliers. ‘As you see, I have not yet occupied this room.’

  ‘It is a lovely room—so well proportioned.’

  ‘But in need of a good clean and a lick of paint. I will employ some men and more maids to help you.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘The job is no sinecure, Annette. You will be kept busy.’

  ‘I do not mind that, sir.’

  He looked down at her. ‘Do you not think you could call me Charles? After all, you might have been my sister-in-law. You are certainly my nephew’s mother, and that makes you family.’

  She hesitated. She ought to keep him at arm’s length, keep their relationship on a strictly business footing, but it was good of him to think of her as family. It gave her a warm feeling. ‘Very well, Charles. When we are alone.’

  ‘Good.’ He tucked her hand under his elbow and together they proceeded into the dining room, which was in the same state as the drawing room. Only a small parlour at the back of the building looked lived in. Upstairs was the same. There were half a dozen bedrooms. She was shown into all but the one he occupied. There was another flight of stairs leading to the attic room, which he told her would have to be made ready for servants. ‘At the moment there is only Mrs Hurst, who occupies the housekeeper’s quarters on the ground floor; the little maid, who sleeps next to the kitchen but must be given a proper room upstairs, my personal servant, Joe Binks, and the coachman, James Merrivale. I will be employing more in due course.’

  ‘What exactly do you wish me to do—apart from cleaning?’

  ‘Goodness, you will not be expected to clean. I want you to supervise the work. Mrs Hurst will look after the kitchen, the dairy and the other offices. You may use your own discretion about what needs doing in the rest of the house. Buy whatever is necessary: paint, curtains, furniture. If I am not using the carriage you may take it into Norwich to do your shopping.’

  ‘You must give me a budget.’

  ‘I have no idea what things cost. You had better draw one up yourself and we will go over it together.’

  They had returned downstairs to the library, where an untidy desk proclaimed that he had been working there earlier. On the wall in the alcove either side of the fire were two portraits: one was of Charles, and the other of a lady who could only have been his wife. She had a doll-like beauty, with masses of blonde hair, a rosy complexion and blue eyes.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘This must be painful for you, handing over the refurbishing of your home to someone else after …’

  ‘We cannot live in the past, Annette. We must move on.’ He surprised himself as he said it. Was that what he had been doing? Living in the past? He had been so overcome with grief at the loss of Bella he had been sunk in gloom, unwilling to believe he would never see her again, never hear childish laughter echoing through the house. But this woman, the mother of his brother’s baby, had made him hurt a little less.

  More than ever he admired her courage. Any other woman would have been daunted by the task he had set her, but her lovely eyes were shining as if she could not wait to start. He brought himself back to the matter in hand. ‘While you are working up here you will take your meals here. With me, if I am at home, otherwise with Mrs Hurst.’

  ‘Will you be away much?’

  ‘I have some business to attend to which will take me from home, and it depends on the outcome.’

  So he could not bear to be in the house with its painful memories, in spite of saying they must move on. She felt sorry for him—sorry that he had lost his child. She did not know what she would do if she lost Timmy. He was her whole life. But it was a life beginning to take on a new meaning—and all because of this man.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHARLES had been right. Annette threw herself enthusiastically into the refurbishment of Brookside, and little by little it began to look more like a home that was lived in. New paint and curtains, new covers for the sofas, a new carpet in the drawing room, gleaming windows—all spoke of a loving hand at work. Even the overgrown garden had begun to reveal the beauty it had once had as she directed the new gardeners in their task.

  She began to put on a little weight, and Timothy was thriving. Every day she noticed the progress he made. He already had four pearly white front teeth, which had been no trouble coming through, but which nipped her when she fed him so she was beginning to wean him. His chuckles were real ones now, and his tears were not because he was hungry or cold, which might once have been the case, but simply because he was being ignored. He liked being the centre of attention, and whenever Meg Hurst was around that was exactly what he was. If he could not get his mother to pick him up then he held out his arms to the next best thing, and Meg would scoop him up and tickle him, making him laugh.

  The Major, who was at home more than Annette had anticipated, took an interest in what she was doing, going over her budget with her and offering an idea or two of his own. It was surprising how their tastes coincided, and he often praised her for the work she was doing which left her with a warm glow of pleasure. It seemed to Annette that some of the cloud had gone from his eyes and he laughed more often.

  ‘You are good for him,’ Meg said, with a twinkle in her eye which was not lost on Annette.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I am only an employee.’

  ‘Oh, I reckon you’re more than that.’ Meg chuckled. ‘He has come out of his gloom since you have been here. Why, I have heard him laugh hearty more than once, and I never heard that before you came.’

  ‘Then I am glad, for his sake.’

  She meant it too. She blessed the day he had brought her to Brookside. She felt drawn to him in a way she had never felt to Jeremy. Jeremy had been a boy compared to the man his brother was. Charles exuded strength—not only physically, because he was very tall and muscular, but in his mind, in his way of dealing with situations, and in giving orders in a way which made his servants happy to obey him. That was the officer in him, she supposed, but he could also be witty and amusing and thoughtful. How many men would think of shopping for baby clothes or nursing a baby and laughing at his chuckles, which he often did? He was considerate and kind and, according to Meg, had loved his wife dearly. Annette, who knew this already, decided that if she could help to ease his pain in any way, then she would gladly do it.

  Charles noticed the difference in her. A few weeks’ good food had brought the bloom back to her cheeks, and he watched her moving gracefully about the house, directing the workmen and servants as if she had been born to it. Sometimes he would come upon her in the garden, kneeling beside a flowerbed, pulling up weeds, and they would talk about the plants, or discuss the rose garden or the arbour she was planning, the book she was reading or the conduct of the war, though he had no thought now of returning to it.

  Sometimes he imagined Timothy growing into a toddler and racing about the house and grounds, laughing and mischievous. It was a vision he had to thrust from him; nothing had been said by either of them about the length of her stay. When he had found her family for her, set her free from what she saw as her obligation to him, she would undoubtedly move on. But so far his enquiries had proved fruitless. He found himself wondering why it mattered so much to him, but could find no satisfactory answer. All he knew was that he would miss her when she left him.

  This was brought home to him one morning after she had been there about six weeks, when he went to speak to her about the new curtains she was having made up for the library and could not
find her. He went to the kitchen, because she always left Timmy with Mrs Hurst when she was busy about the house.

  ‘Mrs Hurst, have you seen Mrs Anstey this morning?’

  ‘No, sir. I was wondering myself what had happened to her. She can’t have gone shopping in Norwich, because she’d have left the little one with me.’

  ‘I think I’ll walk down to the gate house,’ he said.

  He hurried down the drive, wondering about her absence. She could not have taken it into her head to leave, could she? They had been getting on so well together lately, and he had begun to hope she was putting her unhappy past behind her and losing her wariness of him. In his eyes, at least, they were no longer like employer and employee—more equal colleagues and friends.

  When she answered his knock, he noticed at once that she was unusually pale. Her eyes were dark-rimmed, and behind her he could hear the fretful wail of her baby.

  ‘Annette, what is wrong?’

  She stood aside for him to enter. ‘Timmy is far from well. He is so hot, he frightens me. He has been awake all night crying. I could not bring him up to the house like that, and I could not leave him. I am sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? What have you to be sorry for, you foolish girl?’ It was his concern that made him speak sharply, and he strode over to look down at Timmy, who had been put in his cradle and was thrashing himself from side to side. His little face was flushed and swollen, and when Charles touched his cheek with a gentle finger it was raging hot. ‘We must have Dr Graves here at once.’

  He fairly flew from the cottage and up the drive, where he sent one of the stable lads on his horse to fetch the doctor. ‘Tell him it is urgent,’ he said, before sprinting back to Annette.

  She was nursing the child when he returned, rocking him in her arms as she had been doing most of the night. She reminded him of the worried, drawn girl he had first seen in Norwich, and realised what a long way they had come since then.

  ‘The doctor won’t be long,’ he said, looking down at the child. He was still crying, though perhaps not so lustily—which worried him as much as the wailing had done. ‘I’ve told the stable boy to tell him it is urgent.’

  ‘He’s never been ill before,’ she said miserably. ‘I’m so ignorant. Supposing he … he … dies simply because I didn’t know what do?’

  ‘He isn’t going to die,’ he said bracingly.

  ‘Perhaps I have neglected him …’

  ‘You haven’t done that either.’

  ‘Oh, how much longer is the doctor going to be? It breaks my heart to see him like this.’

  He could not tell her, and they sat side by side, watching and waiting. He could not leave her and she did not question why he stayed. She knew he was fond of the boy and his presence was a comfort to her.

  The doctor arrived on horseback half an hour later. He bent over the child and touched his cheek, then he put his finger into the boy’s mouth and felt round his gums. ‘He’s teething,’ he said. ‘I can feel the sharp edge of two molars on the way out. I will give you something to rub on his gums to soothe them, and a little medicine which will take the pain away and let him sleep. He should be as right as rain in a day or two.’

  She was so relieved she burst into tears.

  ‘Come now, Mrs Anstey,’ he said, handing her some ointment and a small phial. ‘It is nothing to cry about. When you’ve had two or three little ones you will soon learn to tell the signs.’

  She sniffed and thanked him, and Charles saw him out. When he returned to the sitting room she was busy administering the ointment. She looked up and gave him a watery smile. ‘I am a ninny, aren’t I?’

  ‘If you are, then so am I.’

  ‘You care, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do. We hoped to have a whole brood of children, Bella and I …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  He watched her for a moment or two, then took his leave, telling her not to return to work until Timmy was back to his happy self. Speaking of Bella and the children they’d hoped to have had saddened him, but he realised that the more time he spent with Annette, the more the cloud was lifting. She was teaching him how to live again.

  It was this idea of living again, of going into society a little, that gave him the idea of taking her out when the boy had got over his teething troubles. She deserved a treat.

  A day or two after she had returned to work, he sought her out in the library, where she was dusting the books. ‘Put that duster away,’ he said. ‘We are going shopping.’

  She came down off the steps she had been using, duster in hand. ‘Right now?’

  ‘Yes. We are going to the mantua-makers to buy you a gown.’

  ‘But I have plenty of clothes …’

  ‘Not for a ball, you do not.’

  ‘A ball?’ She laughed. ‘When am I likely to go to a ball?’

  ‘Tomorrow evening. At the Norwich Assembly House. It will be my pleasure and privilege to escort you.’

  ‘Do you always make statements like that? Taking consent for granted? Do you never think to ask?’ But she was smiling as she said it. They seemed to deal so well together that she felt able to tease him a little now and again.

  ‘If I did you would protest that I should not spend my money on you, or you would demand to know why I wanted to take you.’

  ‘Why do you?’

  ‘Because you deserve a treat after all the work you have done. Because I have nothing I would rather do tomorrow evening. Because I find your company delightful and I should like to dance with you. You do dance?’

  ‘Mama taught me, and she did take me to one or two afternoon dances where young ladies learn the steps before going to a proper dance, but that was ages ago.’

  ‘And I have not been to a ball since …’ He stopped, thinking of Bella. They had danced a lot when they were courting. He shook the memory from him. For the first time since her death he was showing an interest in another woman. And what a woman! Definitely not acceptable to his father and stepmother. Not a lady, not well bred, not wifely material at all. Her father had been an East India Company soldier and she could not even tell him who her mother was. ‘Then we shall stumble about together. So, will you come—please?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was out before she could stop herself.

  ‘Good. Now, let us go and find a gown for you.’

  He would not take no for an answer, and in no time they were in the carriage and bowling along the country roads to Norwich. At the mantua-makers he helped her choose a fine pale green gossamer over a matching silk under-dress which turned out to be a perfect fit—though he did not see her try it on because that was done in the privacy of the back room. It had little puff sleeves, and forest-green velvet ribbon spanned the high waist and was tied in a bow, its ends trailing to the hem. The bodice, also trimmed with dark green, had a square neckline—rather more revealing than she was used to. But she was assured that it was all the crack and no one would think anything of it. She wondered if the Major would.

  The ensemble had to be finished off with stockings, dancing slippers, a fan and a reticule. Only when they had everything did he take her back to Brookside, Mrs Hurst and Timmy.

  ‘He has been a little angel,’ Meg said, watching Annette pick up her baby and hug him to her, as if she had been away a month instead of a few hours. He was growing into a sturdy little boy, able to pull himself up into a sitting position and happy now those dreaded teeth were coming through.

  ‘Thank you—thank you so much.’

  ‘Did you manage all your shopping?’ It was said with a broad smile.

  ‘Yes, a ballgown. The Major insists on taking me to a ball tomorrow evening. Will you be able to look after Timmy if I go?’

  ‘If you go! Of course you will go and of course I will see to the little lad. He is no trouble.’

  Annette could hardly contain her excitement as she prepared for the evening. Timmy had been fed and put in his new cot, and Mrs Hurst had heated up cans of water and p
ulled the tin bath into the kitchen for Annette to take a bath. She lay there and soaked. Such a treat had not been hers for years. Nursery maids were not indulged in that manner; a wash standing in a basin of warm water on the floor was considered enough. She let herself daydream.

  She was a lady, pampered by maids, preparing for a come-out ball. And she was being escorted by the most handsome, the most eligible young man in the country, who was head over heels in love with her and about to make her an offer. He would take her in his arms and gaze at her with misty eyes, murmuring how much he loved her, and then he would kiss her gently and beg her to become his wife. That this handsome, eligible, entirely imaginary man bore a startling resemblance to Major Charles Ashbrooke did not escape her notice.

  She sat up suddenly in the cooling water and scrambled out to towel herself dry. What, in heaven’s name, was she thinking of?

  That was how it had started with Jeremy, when he’d first begun paying attention to her. Flattered by it, she would stand and dream when she should have been tidying the nursery cupboards. But the dream had turned to nightmare. She was a ruined woman. No gentleman would ever make her an offer of marriage and she would do well to remember it. She fell again to thinking about the Major’s motives, and began to wonder if she had been sensible accepting his invitation. But not to go would be heartbreakingly disappointing.

  She did not see why she should not enjoy an evening’s diversion, so long as she kept her head. After all, the Major had told her straight out he had no use for her body. It was conceited of her to think his intentions were other than to escort the one-time nursery maid to a ball and give her a tiny break from work and motherhood. By the time she was dry and in her underclothes, ready to do something about her hair, she had persuaded herself that no harm could come of it.

  Mrs Hurst helped her with her coiffure. ‘It is lovely hair, Annette,’ she said, brushing it with firm smooth strokes and then twisting it up in a coil on top of her head, fastening it with combs which she told Annette her husband had bought for her in Spain. ‘Now for the gown.’