“About?”
“What is a land steward doing reading the label of my soap tin?” Beck asked slowly.
“Waiting for his turn in the bath?”
“The label is entirely in French, Sara,” Beck said gently. “Florid, silly French. He quotes Shakespeare, and his clothing is made by the finest tailors in London. How much do you know about our Mr. North?”
“Not as much as you’d like to know, apparently,” Sara replied. “I know this. Until he arrived shortly after us, the place was a shambles. Lady Warne hasn’t been here for years and years, and if you think it’s a disgrace now, you should have seen it before Gabriel put his shoulder to the wheel.”
“I don’t dispute that he works very hard.” Beck regretted bringing the subject up at all, but if North hadn’t served in the military, the explanation he’d given for his scar was somewhat suspect. “And a man’s past is his own business, unless it’s going to haunt him and those around him.”
“We’re all haunted by our pasts.” Sara shifted away from the window, as if leaving the topic itself out there on the Downs. “Luncheon approaches, and that seems more worthy of attention at the moment. I trust Gabriel, and I do not feel comfortable discussing him behind his back.”
“Not well done of me,” Beck admitted. “I’m to spend the afternoon with him going over the books. Have you started on your shopping list?”
“I have not,” Sara said, preceding him through the door. “I spent the morning cutting out a dress for Allie. Warm weather finally approaches, and the only bolt of suitable material I have is summer weight.”
“And what about some new dresses for you and Polly?” Beck asked, putting her hand on his forearm. “You are females, and human, and that means a new frock from time to time is in order.”
“We’re managing. One needn’t have an impressive wardrobe to bring Hildy her slops.”
Beside her, Beck remained silent, but he felt frustration stirring. Managing was Sarabande Adagio Hunt’s euphemism for eking out survival on a rotten, neglected estate far from meaningful society. He suspected some fear kept her here, grateful for her bleak, busy existence, but he railed against the compromise she’d made for herself and for her daughter.
Maybe she rusticated here, far from home and family, because she was afraid this was her only alternative to starvation.
Maybe she was still grieving the husband who died in Italy.
Maybe she feared the world’s influence on her talented daughter.
And maybe—claiming to have been married but bearing the same last name as her unwed sister—Sara feared her own secrets might come to light. Beck felt that thought settle in the back of his mind, knowing it wouldn’t let him rest until he’d gotten to the bottom of it.
* * *
“I believe the hallmark of the term ‘footman’ is that those answering to the description be on their feet.” Beck kept his voice down because no Haddonfield over six feet tall ever had to raise his voice to be heard. When he saw he had Timothy and Tobias’s attention, he continued in the same chillingly civil tones.
“I wanted to give you two the benefit of some doubt.” He glanced around the room. “But seeing—and smelling—the state into which you’ve allowed your own quarters to deteriorate, there’s little likelihood you’re just a pair of misguided, empty-headed fellows needing a firm hand to steer you back to the true definition of earning a wage.”
“Now see here, guv.” Tobias, the less odoriferous of the pair, managed to stand at last. “You can’t come a-bustin’ in here, tossing insults around like some… some…” He glanced at his brother, and support arrived on cue.
“Like some nabob new to his riches. Footmen wait on the family, not on the servants, and that’s a natural fact.” Tim didn’t bother to get to his feet to deliver this pearl, but from his position lounging on his cot, he grinned at his brother.
Tobias nodded smugly. “Aye, like a nabob new to his riches.”
“Because I am Lady’s Warne’s family, you ignore my words at your peril,” Beck said. “Firstly, you will wash your persons at the cistern behind the barn. You disgrace Miss Polly’s table in your present condition, not to mention the memory of a mother who no doubt raised you better than this. Secondly, you will present yourselves, in livery, to Mrs. Hunt, and notify her that henceforth, you will be filling all of the wood boxes and coal buckets twice daily. You will trim wicks, refill the oil lamps, dust the entire library weekly, then start on the windows in the library, and continue on until every window on the house is scrubbed inside and out. Lady Warne pays good money to the Crown for the privilege of her windows, the least you can do is allow us to see out of them.”
“You want us to wash?” Tobias looked utterly flummoxed. “In the cistern?”
“You aren’t fit for the laundry. Should you find my direction not to your liking, I’ll be taking the team into Portsmouth soon. You are welcome to collect two week’s wages and seek other employment there, in which case you will need to clean this sty—Hildegard would disdain your chambers in their present condition—or the cost of cleaning it will be deducted from your severance. I’ll tell Mrs. Hunt to expect you by two of the clock.”
“Severance?”
The word hung in the air as Beck softly closed the door and took a few lungfuls of clean, cold air. They had a parlor stove in their room, and apparently felt no compunction about keeping it stoked with coal. The stench had been amazing, as had Beck’s forbearance.
He couldn’t stand a cheat, and these two had been cheating his grandmother—step-grandmother, true, but an old woman nonetheless—for years. He sincerely hoped they caught their deaths scrubbing in the cistern.
“You look like you want to kill someone,” North remarked conversationally.
Beck stopped on the back porch and took another series of deep breaths.
“How did you not kill them? Even a footman has a certain kind of honor. A damned potboy can know enough to earn his wages.”
North glanced up at the sky assessingly. “In my experience, a lack of personal integrity isn’t the exclusive province of the nobility. Are you ready to see the books?”
“I’m ready to hit something.” Or to find the brandy decanter and become thoroughly familiar with its contents—which would not solve the problem at hand and would plunge Beck into a pit of self-recrimination.
“If you truly want a round of fisticuffs, I’m happy to oblige.” North began to shrug out of his coat. “I’ve always wondered what Gentleman Jackson really accomplished with his young sprigs.”
“North,” Beck’s tone eased, “you needn’t oblige violent urges you didn’t inspire. Besides, I wouldn’t want to earn Miss Polly’s everlasting ire by rearranging the features the Creator gave you.”
North shrugged back into his coat. “As long as I can eat, Miss Polly will be content.”
“I don’t think you give your animal charm and sophisticated manners enough credit. She watches you eat the way I watch some women walk away.”
North glanced at him, his expression unreadable.
“It’s spring,” he said shortly. “You’re away from the pleasures of Town and seeing the sap rise wherever you look. But if I catch you watching Polly walk away with one hint of disrespect on your ugly face, Haddonfield, I will rearrange your features.”
“I’m all atremble.” Beck resisted the urge to probe, though Miss Polly’s sentiments toward Mr. North were apparently returned on some level. “I can only hope the twins are trembling as well.”
“My feelings regarding those two are mixed.” North opened the door to the back hallway. “On the one hand, I hope they stay and become useful. Finding good domestics here in the provinces is nigh impossible. On the other hand, I will never trust them, because they’ve shown they lack honor but can be motivated by fear.”
Beck followed him into the house. “You have a way of boiling things down to essentials that puts me in mind of Lady Warne herself, and perhaps my father.”
<
br /> “Flattery will get you nowhere,” North tossed over his shoulder. “Shall we make a pot of tea to cheer us on?”
“And snitch a few of the biscuits Miss Polly baked this morning,” Beck said, lifting the lid of a large crockery jar.
“That’s only the decoy cache, you know.” North rinsed out the teapot and refilled it from the kettle on the hob.
“Of course I know.” Beck extracted a large handful of biscuits. “I also know Miss Polly would be insulted did we not raid it. Bring the honey. I refuse to face book work without something sweet in my tea, and do not think of reusing the damned leaves.”
“Oh, the Quality…” North muttered loudly enough for Beck to hear. He loaded their tea tray with cream, honey, and mugs nonetheless.
Beck took the tray from the counter. “What did your expert agrarian assessment of the sky foretell in terms of the weather?”
“The same thing it’s foretold for several weeks now.” North grabbed a tea towel, draped it over Beck’s shoulder, and followed him up the back stairs. “Spring is coming.”
“My grandmother employs genius at every turn,” Beck muttered loudly enough for North to hear.
“I might trip, you know?” North informed nobody in particular, “and bump into somebody else, who might drop our only good teapot.”
“My second-favorite teapot sits ready to serve in the pantry,” Beck tossed over his shoulder as they reached the library. “Please God, tell me you lit a damned fire in here.”
“Wood, we have,” North said, holding the door for him. “At least for another year or two, but when we catch up with the deadfall, we’ll be buying coal like everybody else.”
The room was high ceilinged, so the roaring fire in the hearth cast out only so much warmth, but the sofa facing it helped keep what there was from dissipating entirely. Beck set the tea service on the desk and poured them each a cup.
“You keep the books?” he asked, handing North his own cup to doctor.
“I do,” North said, adding both honey and cream, much to Beck’s satisfaction. “I incorporate the household expenses in the general ledger, but Sara has her own set of books, though why she bothers I do not know.”
Beck sipped and decided that with cream and honey, strong black tea was almost a substitute for a stout tot of brandy.
Almost.
“Why shouldn’t she track expenses and income?” Beck asked, moving to the sofa. North stayed by the desk, stirring his tea.
“I’ve met Lady Warne a handful of times,” he said, “so don’t come after me with fists flying when I say I’ve doubted her grasp of reality.”
“My fist is wrapped around a strong, hot cup of tea. Perfectly happy there, too. Why do you question Lady Warne’s sanity?”
“She must think a household runs on good cheer.” North sank onto the sofa near Beck. “She sends along notes updating the ladies on the latest fashion gaffes made by the strutting dandies and preening peacocks in Mayfair—as if Polly or Sara care a damn for any of that. But she neglects as often as she recalls to send the sums they need to sustain life here. I suspect they both use their salaries to augment what is intended to be the household budget.”
“As you use yours?”
“Drink your tea or it will get cold, and we’ll be forced to dust off that decanter, which goes against my grain, as the help mustn’t tipple.”
“You’re the help now? How movingly humble you’ve become, North. So show me these books and then to the brandy.”
He regretted those words. Drinking before dinner was ill-advised in the extreme. But he’d been good lately—appallingly good—and he still wanted to hit something and somebody as the enormity of the neglect all around him only became more obvious.
North had all but cheated the devil to keep any crop going on the place, and at a time when what a crop could fetch was precious little, and what it cost to farm was great.
“And it’s not going to get better for some time,” Beck said several hours later. “The general state of things, I mean. The weather for the past few years hasn’t helped, but you can’t cashier out thousands of able-bodied men who fought for damned near two decades and not see an impact. Then too, there are markets for what England produces, but it hardly pays to try to export with the taxes so high.”
“We still have the free trade on this coast,” North said. “Conditions on the Continent are far worse than what we suffer here, and there’s a market for almost anything you can sneak onto a boat.”
“I will ignore your casual observation.” Beck sat back and let North pour them each a tot of brandy. The drink was good quality, which helped a man sip it, regardless of all temptation to the contrary. “What a bloody mess.”
North enjoyed his brandy in silence, while Beck cogitated and drank.
With North’s dark gaze taking in every movement, Beck set his glass down on a corner of the table not covered with ledgers. “My father’s dying request was that I set the place to rights, because he felt the neglect here was a blot on his honor. I intend to see his wishes carried out.”
“Your father is dying?” North put the question casually, no more weight to it than, “Your horse is a bay?”
Well, hell. In for a penny…
“Bellefonte is at his last prayers.” Beck got the words out by staring at his half-empty glass. “Sent me off so I wouldn’t have to see the final indignities. Sent us all off, except for my sister Nita.”
“And this is why your brother is hunting a bride? You’re the spare, why aren’t you on the prowl with him?”
“Took my turn in that barrel, North.” Had North offered condolences, Beck would have left the room and taken the decanter with him. “Even Papa won’t ask that of me again. Started me on rather an unfortunate road, but Nick’s the better fellow, and he’ll manage. What do you recommend for Three Springs?”
North frowned—North was always frowning, so Beck tried not to ascribe significance to it.
“You ask my prescription for Three Springs,” North said. “It will take more than money, Haddonfield. In the last century, this was a gracious, respected manor, and people were happy to work here. I’ve heard enough in the village to know they take the twins as the measure of the place. The locals won’t throw in with Three Springs if they think you’re just a nine days’ wonder, down from Town to count the lambs then disappear. Somebody has to convey an abiding interest in this place. I nominate you.”
North’s grasp of the situation and logic he applied to it were unassailable.
“Nomination declined. I’ve two younger brothers who could use a property, and four sisters in need of a dowry. Let’s nominate one of them, shall we? Then too, when Nick becomes earl, he can use this as one more excuse to get away from his countess.”
“My condolences to his countess,” North said in equally level tones. “In any case, you can’t just buy Three Springs’s way back to profitability. You have to earn its way back to respectability.”
Beck leaned against the sofa’s lumpy upholstery and silently railed against these simple truths, truths he’d thought applied mostly to people and not pieces of the English countryside. “You are a cruel man, Gabriel North. I like you.”
North blinked then smiled, an expression both sardonic and sweet. “I like you too, Haddonfield. You preserve me from recruiting the fair Hildegard as my drinking companion, and smell marginally better than she.”
They returned their attention to the ledgers, which were tidy, complete, and a study in economies. Beck thought of those economies when he finished off another generous meal in pleasant company. Sara offered to light Beck up to his rooms, and because the indignity of falling asleep where he sat had no appeal, he passed her the candle.
“Your servant, Mrs. Hunt.” He bowed slightly and smiled at her, and they were soon treading the cold corridors.
“You’re quiet all of a sudden, Mr. Haddonfield, as if a candle has gone out. You were charming at dinner. Now you fall silent.”
; “Considering Polly and her swain,” Beck replied as they approached his door. “You don’t have to escort me up, you know, but I considered you might have wanted to leave them some privacy.” He opened the door for her and admired her backside as she preceded him into his sitting room.
She was quick and graceful, and she smelled of all the lovely scents of a well-kept home. He hadn’t spent dinner being charming. He’d spent dinner making infernal small talk, wishing she’d look at him and resenting the hell out of her stupid caps.
Too much wine with dinner perhaps, or not enough.
* * *
Mr. Haddonfield was in some sort of male mood. As he prowled along beside her through the dark, frigid corridor, Sara had to question her own motives. He knew where his room was now, and he was moving past the role of guest to temporary household member.
He did not need a housekeeper to tuck him in.
But Sara needed something from him. A few minutes of adult conversation that weren’t about Hildy’s slop bucket or Heifer’s amours.
A hand on her shoulder, a smile unlike the ones he tossed out so liberally in company during a dinner that had felt interminable.
“I’ll make sure Maudie turned down your covers.” She brushed by him into his bedroom, hearing his footsteps behind her.
“Sara.” Large male hands settled on her hips as Sara flipped down his covers. She straightened slowly then froze.
Had her thoughts inspired him to this? He’d touched her before, and God help her, she’d liked it. He was comfortingly large, clean, and full of a kind of bodily masculine competence that reassured. She wasn’t reassured—exactly—by this touch, and it wasn’t in the least proper. Still, she merely stood and tried to draw air into her lungs.
“You should slap me,” he murmured near her ear. “You really, really should.” He remained like that, his hands on her hips, holding her lightly but firmly from behind; then Sara felt one hand shift, and her cap was gone.
“I’m asking you to wallop me, Sara.” His voice was a low, soft rumble at her nape, and she felt his hand withdrawing pins from her hair. He kept his other hand around her middle, his fingers splayed just below her waist.
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