by Merry Farmer
The Pycroft house stood at the end of a long row in the section of town that was considered less than fashionable. The streets there were more crowded than the center of town or closer to the hills further south. No one in Brynthwaite was truly poor, not like stories Matty had heard of the slums of big cities, but there was a marked difference in income between the likes of Huntingdon Hall and the residents of Church Street. It still felt a great deal homier than the nebulous memories that kept themselves locked up in Matty’s mind.
“Matty!” Little Martha greeted her with an exuberant shout, running to give her a hug as Matty walked through the Pycroft’s front door. “Look what I found.”
The sweet young girl showed Matty a white flower with a yellow center. “Very pretty.”
“I want to have a garden someday,” she said. “Father says I can, as soon as I’m old enough.”
“He said you can if you can take care of it,” Molly corrected her.
“I can so have a garden,” Martha bickered with her.
Molly stuck out her tongue, and Martha followed suit. She should have scolded the girls, but Matty found it charming.
Mary didn’t seem as amused. In fact, she didn’t seem to notice. She cleared off the table in the dining room, her thoughts firmly elsewhere.
“What’s wrong?” Matty asked. If Lawrence was protective of her, she had developed a strong protective streak where the Pycroft girls were concerned.
Mary glanced up at her, then darted a look to the younger girls and shook her head. Wariness settled heavily in Matty’s gut.
It took several minutes and the promise of a longer walk once they went out shopping for Matty to convince the younger girls to go play in their rooms. She and Mary were halfway through making the family’s beds before she felt safe enough to speak.
“Papa had a letter from Aunt Eileen,” Mary confessed in a whisper as the girls treated their dolls to a tea party.
“What did she want?” Matty asked.
“She wants the three of us to come visit Mother’s family in London.”
A trip to London. It could have been a grand adventure, or it could have been a frightening nightmare.
“Do you get along well with your mother’s family?” Matty asked.
Mary answered with a shrug, not meeting Matty’s eyes. “Grandfather is nice, but Grandmother was very strict with us when we lived there. She didn’t like Papa. She says that he took her baby girl away from her.”
“Hmm.” It was the only reply Matty could manage.
“I don’t want to leave Papa,” Mary went on. “He needs me right now. He needs all of us.”
“It might be nice to have a change,” Matty suggested. She would miss Mary and her sisters if they went, though.
Again, Mary reacted with an uncomfortable shrug, chewing her lip. “Papa needs someone to take care of him. He’s busy with the hospital, but I think he’s sad about Mother.”
“Of course he would be,” Matty said. “Any man would be sad to have his wife die so suddenly.”
“He and Mother shouted at each other all the time,” Mary confided as they took an armful of dirty linen downstairs to the wash. Once they returned from shopping, the two of them would take all the washing out back and get it done in one go. “I used to hide my head under the pillow sometimes when they started shouting. Mother used to say she hated him.”
“Oh, Mary. I’m so sorry.”
“I hated her for saying that,” Mary went on. “And now she’s dead.” Her face lost its color and her eyes went glassy.
“It isn’t your fault that your mother was killed,” Matty told her, resting a hand on Mary’s shoulder. “It was an accident.”
“I know.” Mary swiped tears from her eyes. “I sometimes think that God heard me thinking that I wanted her to stop shouting at my Papa, and now—”
She couldn’t go on. Matty let the dirty clothes in her arms drop and moved to hug Mary. As brave and grown-up as she tried to be, Mary was still only a child. She clung to Matty and wept on her shoulder. Matty’s heart broke for her. She couldn’t imagine having a mother who—
You’ll stop your sniveling or I’ll stop it for you, young miss. You’re no better than the rest of us, and you get every bit that you deserve.
But it’s not fair, mother. You shouldn’t let him treat you like that. You shouldn’t let him treat me like that.
Hold your tongue, girl! There was a smack. Her face stung.
The last thing I need is an uppity bitch like you making things worse. A man’s voice.
You can’t do this, Mother. I won’t let you do this.
You think you’re going to stop me?
A struggle. Blows landed. The woman—her mother—sprawled on the floor in front of her.
The man’s voice. Look what you did, you nasty bitch.
Matty gasped and straightened. The memories had come down on her hard and fast, with no rhyme or reason. She couldn’t be sure they were all part of the same memory or of snips from various points in her old life fallen back on her in mismatched order. All she knew was that it was her mother lying on the floor, dead.
“Matty, are you all right?” Mary asked. She blinked away her tears to stare up at Matty, scared and confused.
“I’m fine,” Matty told her, sucking in a breath. “I’m just upset for you is all.”
Mary hugged her again, taking her at her word. Matty returned that hug because she needed it.
“Let’s take this laundry out back and get our shopping done,” she said, eager to be out of the house and away from whatever had prompted her memory.
It took longer to wrangle the little girls than it should have. They were a little too eager to be out and about, and once they were in the street, Matty and Mary each with a shopping basket over their arms, the younger girls ran this way and that. Remembering what she’d heard about the means of their mother’s death, Matty did her best to keep them as close as possible, but it was a losing cause. They drew more than a few looks of censure from passersby on the street.
“Those poor little girls,” Matty heard one set of women gossiping amongst themselves. “Motherless and fatherless too half the time with Dr. Pycroft at the hospital.”
“You watch,” another woman said. “Pycroft will wed again by the end of the summer just to have someone to keep an eye on those girls.”
“But who?” the first woman said. “Not that one.”
Matty risked glancing up to find the old biddies staring straight at her.
“No,” the second one said, still looking at Matty. “That one’s the blacksmith’s whore.”
A burst of shame caught in Matty’s throat. “Come along, girls,” she said. Molly was closest, so she grabbed hold of her hand and hurried up the street.
Mary kept her eyes on the pavement, her cheeks burning bright with embarrassment.
“Matty, what’s a blacksmith’s whore?” Martha asked, scurrying to keep up.
“That’s a naughty word,” Mary scolded her.
“It means someone who takes care of the blacksmith,” Matty rushed to add. “But your sister is right. It’s not a word that polite people use.”
They continued on for a block in silence until Martha asked, “Is Papa really going to get married again?”
“No, Martha, he’s not,” Mary snapped. “I’m here to take care of him.”
“Me too,” Molly added.
“And me,” Martha said.
Matty kept her mouth shut.
Elizabeth
Morning was Elizabeth Dyson’s favorite time of day. Particularly when morning started at half past ten. She drew in a breath and stretched, flopping to her back. Sunlight poured in through the tall windows of her spacious room. Polly must have opened them, and now the sheer white curtains billowed in the breeze. The scent of roses wafted up from the garden. Beautiful. She hummed, lifted an arm above her head, and smiled.
“Well then. Look who decided to join the waking world,” Polly scolded merri
ly from across the room where she was sorting through the wardrobe.
Elizabeth laughed, turning her head toward the sunlight from the window. “I needed my beauty rest,” she defended herself.
“I doubt it,” Polly sassed back. She glanced at Elizabeth, prone in bed, with an assessing eye, then chose an airy white gown dotted with a light green design from the wardrobe. “You need your sleep so that you can face the house party.”
All of Elizabeth’s elation flopped, and she made a decidedly unladylike grunt. “Aunt Charlotte,” she said the name as if it were a curse.
“Come now,” Polly teased, hanging the dress on the open wardrobe door and moving to the bureau where Elizabeth’s underthings were kept. “She’s family. She’s only trying to do what’s best for you.”
Elizabeth laughed and scooted to the side of the bed. She sucked in a breath and stretched again as she stood. Her thin nightgown hung loose around her shoulders. The house party was the last thing she wanted to face. She enjoyed her life just as it was—quiet, rural, and without the boorish, brutish demands of a husband to rule over her.
“If Aunt Charlotte thinks she can spend the next four weeks throwing potential husbands at my head, she has another think coming,” Elizabeth said.
Polly gave her a mischievous look as Elizabeth crossed to the washstand in the far corner of the room. “That woman hasn’t even been here for six weeks and already she’s meddling in everyone’s affairs.”
“She seems determined to land either me or Alexandra the finest husband in the county,” Elizabeth agreed. “I wish she’d save her efforts for someone who might actually want her help. Like the poor hospital. Alexandra has jumped in with both feet in the most useful way possible, why shouldn’t Aunt Charlotte?”
Polly stepped up behind her, and when Elizabeth reached for the hem of her nightgown, Polly caught it and tugged it up over her head. The rush of fabric was only half as sensuous as the gentle brush of Polly’s hands. Aunt Charlotte would die of shock if she could see into Elizabeth’s mind, but how else was a woman supposed to be clever and naughty and tickle her fancy without risking everything? It wasn’t as if anything truly bad was going on.
“You know what I think?” Polly said, taking the nightgown away as Elizabeth poured water into her porcelain wash basin to bathe. “I think that Lady Charlotte is in a flurry to saddle you or Alexandra with a husband because she would like one for herself.”
“Really?” Elizabeth straightened and blinked at the idea as she wet a washcloth in the basin and ran it over her chest and underarms. She turned to face Polly as she did. “What a thought.”
Polly treated her to exactly the curious sweep of her eyes that Elizabeth had hoped she would. “I’ve seen the way she watches men in going about their business when we’re doing errands in town,” she said. “She may be a widow, but she’s not in her grave yet.”
“True.”
Elizabeth ran her washcloth lower, watching to see if Polly was interested. That was the delightful thing about Polly. Elizabeth never knew where she stood. The girl could be as sweet as an angel, or she could be a viper. Five years and she still wasn’t certain.
She turned back to her wash basin and reached for the towel hooked over the side of the table to dry off. Polly may have been tricky, but that was precisely why Elizabeth kept her around. She saw right to the heart of things and wasn’t afraid to share what she saw when she did. Many a juicy tidbit had fallen from Polly’s lips in the past, and many more would fall in the future, all as useful as the next. There had been times when Elizabeth had considered luring her young friend into bed with her. The problem with that would, of course, be that she would have no idea what to actually do with her once she was there. The whole thing was a delicious, dangerous, and terribly wicked game.
She reached for the sponge of lemon water and lavender that Polly had prepared and laid on her wash table, dabbing it under her arms.
“If Lady Charlotte did find a husband for herself at this wretched house party,” Polly went on, “then perhaps she would marry and go away and leave you alone once and for all.”
“What a delightful idea.” Elizabeth smiled. She stepped away from the wash table to the bed, where Polly had laid out clean underthings and stockings. “I’m sure Alexandra would appreciate it too.”
Polly tilted her head to the side, studying Elizabeth as she dressed. “Does she really enjoy being a doctor or is that just a show to irritate Lady Charlotte?”
“No, she truly loves it,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve seen her at work.”
“Have you?” She crossed to fetch Elizabeth’s petticoat, then returned to hold if for her to step into.
“I visited them in Hampshire once two years ago,” Elizabeth said. “I made a few calls with her, watched her treat some of the locals. She has quite a soothing touch.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Polly said, drawing the petticoat up Elizabeth’s legs, then placing a hand on her hip to turn her so that she could fasten it. The brush of her fingertips was scintillating.
“I went down to the hospital last week,” Elizabeth went on, catching her breath. She was losing the game with Polly today. It wasn’t a good sign. She needed to be in top form for what she had in store for later. “She and Dr. Pycroft run a tight ship. The two of them are like two peas in a pod.”
“Oh?” There was more than idle curiosity in Polly’s simple question.
“Yes.” Elizabeth turned to face her. With a gentle flick of her eyebrow and a press of her lips, she told Polly to keep an eye on that development.
Polly replied with a sly grin that said the message was received.
And sometimes they played the game for the same side.
“It was such a shame about Dr. Pycroft’s wife,” Polly went on with a sigh. She retrieved Elizabeth’s corset from its shelf in the wardrobe.
“The image will be burned forever in my mind’s eye,” Elizabeth said with all due sincerity. How could she ever forget the woman’s last scream, the crunch as horses ran over her. The blood and the screaming that followed. She wished to God that she hadn’t been standing at the corner to see it. That was why her mission today was so vitally important. Something had to be done to stop the senselessness of it all.
Polly helped her fasten and tighten her corset. The game was over for the moment. Both of them stayed silent and respectful as Elizabeth finished dressing. Polly did her hair in a simple, soft knot, fixing a tortoise shell comb in place.
“There. You look beautiful,” Polly told her, stepping back to survey her handiwork.
“Thank you, Polly.” Elizabeth stood, turned toward her maid and friend, and stepped close to kiss her on the cheek very near her lips.
She stepped back. A flush had spread over Polly’s face. There. She was back in control again. Elizabeth smiled and headed for the door, Polly in tow.
The house was already far more lively than she cared for it to be by the time she and Polly reached the front hall. The entire upstairs staff was rushing about on last minute errands, and footmen were already carrying the cases of newly arrived guests to rooms.
“It’s barely eleven,” Elizabeth commented to Alexandra as they met at the top of the stairs and headed down together. “How is it that guests are arriving already?”
“You’ve never been to a house party before, have you?” Alexandra asked with a wry smirk. “The vultures can scent free food and lodging for miles and swoop early.”
Elizabeth laughed. It was so good to have her cousin with her now, even if Alexandra came with Lady Charlotte. It was almost like having a sister.
“I don’t know who half the people your mother invited are,” she confessed as they reached the bottom of the stairs.”
“Neither does anyone,” Alexandra answered. “That’s the point of a house party. You invite a pack of strangers with titles and reputations—good and bad—then you throw them all together and hope alliances are formed by the end of it all. I doubt even my mother knows
who half the guests are. She probably pulled random names out of Burke’s Peerage and sent invitations.”
“Ooh.” Elizabeth perked up. “There’s no telling what kind of scandals we could be brewing for the next few weeks.” When Alexandra confirmed her suspicions with a pointed look, Elizabeth added, “Though I would rather the scandals unfold under someone else’s roof.”
“Ah. Elizabeth, Alexandra, there you are.” Lady Charlotte spotted them from across the grand front hall and swished toward them with all the high spirits and bubbling cunning of a woman determined to make a name for herself. “You must come meet our guests. Lord Charles Richmond and his sister, Lady Arabella, have just arrived.”
Elizabeth sighed and shot a look to Alexandra. Alexandra met it for what it was, grabbed her hand as if they were set to face the gallows together, and the two of them walked across the room.
“Lord Charles, may I introduce you to my daughter and my niece?” Lady Charlotte said, rushing to put herself in place so that she could extend an arm toward Elizabeth and Alexandra as they drew near.
Elizabeth let go of Alexandra’s arm and glided, hand outstretched, the rest of the way across the hall to the young gentleman who stepped forward. He couldn’t have been forty yet, he had all of his hair, and he was well-dressed. It seemed Burke’s Peerage had done well.
“Lord Charles, it is such a pleasure to meet you,” she said, determined to outdo her aunt in every way. “Welcome to my home.”
The look that came over the young lord’s face as he stepped out to meet Elizabeth and to take her hand was everything she could have hoped for. He smiled, his eyes went bright with pleasure, and a slight flush painted his cheeks. He took her hand and bowed over it, kissing her knuckles.