After the sun went down, they took their evening meal together and rehashed their day. Their eyes met and held many times conveying with their eyes the strong attraction they felt for each other.
One afternoon, when his mother had referred to Catherine in an aside as, “that hussy you walk with,” he had spun on his heel and left the wing where she had her apartments in great long strides. Fury burning in his veins had powered him much like coal fueled a locomotive, and he had headed straight to the stables.
Returning from an all out ride of precariously jumping hedges and clearing streams until nearly sunset, he had returned and immediately informed Cook that he chose not to dine with his mother for the duration of the week. Then he ordered every item in the larder that had been bought with her in mind be given to the tenant farmers and their families posthaste. That night, women in thatched huts moaned over fine chocolate truffles with Hedley’s Cassis Aromé Tea, while their husbands sipped imported French Sherry, and their children chewed heartedly on broken bits of almond butter brickle.
The days of winter slipped away as the earl all but ignored his mother, while he concentrated on supervising the crews that were now beginning the work of wiring the premises, and getting the manor house ready to be the first on the southern coast to have electricity. He spent his free time getting to know his new son, as well as his son’s nursemaid.
Thorne discussed elevating her to the position of governess in a year or so, when Jonathan would no longer have need of her as his food source. Having discovered how educated she was, at a level comparable, if not more advanced that even Annaliese had been, it seemed a logical move.
His thoughts of her and her future in his household were never a question. He assured her daily that he desired her to remain with them permanently. And quite frankly, if anyone had asked, he would not have cared on what basis. He wanted her around, and he would pay her whatever salary she desired for whatever work she chose to do. It was an unexpected boon that she was so smart and so willing to devote herself to Jonathan’s care.
In addition to seeing to his nourishment, bathing and clothing requirements, peek-a-boo and piggy toe games, she read to Jonathan several times a day and sang lullabies in a sweet lilting voice that soothed both a fussy Jonathan and an irritable Thorne. They were becoming a family unit, and everyday they isolated themselves a little more from the rest of the household because of it. They busied their days eating meals together, playing on the carpet in front of the fire, taking long walks either in the garden, or napping in the solarium. Once, Sadie found them all asleep, reclining on a heap of plump and colorful Turkish pillows that had been tossed where the afternoon sun heated the terracotta tiles. They all napped beneath the hanging orchids that Lady Annaliese had so carefully tended, the tassels of one pillow clutched in baby Jonathan’s tiny fist. Sadie had run to get Mrs. Cockrell, and finding her with Cook, they all sighed at the impossibly handsome man dressed in fawn breeches and loose flowing blouson shirt, laying with the slack-jawed babe flopped over his broad chest, drooling over his pristine silk jabot. Tucked under his arm was the lovely, sweet Catherine, her peaceful face resting on his sturdy shoulder. The women sighed and held their clasped hands to their chests. This was the fairytale. And though some of them had been denied these particular pleasures, it was enough to be on the outside looking in on such a wondrous love story.
Jonathan became very attached to Catherine and Thorne, and often cried when another member of the household picked him up, wanting only to be with his father, and the person he surely thought of as his mother.
The three of them continued dining, as if family, alone in the huge dining salon every evening at seven. Catherine held Jonathan in her arms behind the impressive brick wall that the earl had built expressly for her privacy, and he continued to keep his eyes focused on both his son and the mirrors. Catherine told him that she was touched by his efforts and humbled when she had learned he had built the wall almost single-handedly on the afternoon of the day his beloved Annaliese had been buried.
She was beginning to have strange pangs of intense sadness whenever the earl’s wife was mentioned. It took her a few days to equate them with jealousy and when she had, she was ashamed of herself. The poor woman had died giving her husband a son and heir, how could she harbor such ill feelings toward her?
Catherine became adept at nursing Jonathan while eating with a fork or spoon. The earl had taken to selecting and cutting her food for her, and occasionally propping the baby on his lap to give her a few moments on her own to enjoy her dinner.
They discovered they enjoyed a lot of the same foods, and that both of them had a craving for something sweet to end each meal, caramelized egg custards and crisp shortbreads being their favorites. Soon they were discussing the books the earl lent her, and he regaled her with stories of his misspent youth while she recited the litany of prayers she was forced to memorize and repeat, often to perfect strangers while living in her aunt’s home.
She spoke of Thomas and he spoke of Annaliese, of their foibles and follies, Thomas’s love of the sea, Annaliese’s love of everything growing in her gardens. Both were wistful in their sorrow, and always careful not to dishonor either of their dead spouses.
Then Catherine would leave with Jonathan and the earl would join his mother, the dowager countess, for dinner in the other dining salon at eight.
He began to make it his habit to check on her and Jonathan sometime around midnight after the household was asleep, and usually he found them both snuggled under soft blankets in their respective beds. He often admired Catherine, dreaming on her pillow, equally as long as he admired his slumbering son.
Meanwhile, after nearly two weeks of posting sentries to no avail, the vandalism around the estate stopped. No holes had been reported by any of the gardeners and the earl was able to sleep through the darkening winter nights. Mostly. Thoughts of Catherine in his wife’s bedroom, so close, so warm, so undoubtedly soft and yielding, in places he was hard and tense, woke him with striking regularity.
Chapter Twenty
Early one morning, the earl visited the creamery. He and his dairy manager were discussing the new supervisor he had hired, who was helping to arrange delivery of their various products to the neighboring towns. Thorne was seated in the cluttered office, obscured by a wall of ledgers piled high on a side table when he noticed a woman walking down the hill swinging a small silver pail. Her exaggerated swaying gait looked familiar and he found himself searching her face for clues to her identity. It wasn’t until she came alongside the building and just outside the office window that he was able to see beneath the brim of her hat and recognize her. His head swung in the direction of the dairy manager.
“What is she doing here? She was fired a few weeks past.”
“My understanding is that the dowager took her on. Sewing and pressing her ladyship’s things I ‘eard.”
“My mother hired Calista? After I ordered her let go?”
“At’s what I ‘eard, milord.”
“What is she doing here?”
By now Calista had entered the creamery and she could be seen through an interior window making her way toward a large churn in the corner.
“Comes every morning right as rain, to fetch her ladyship’s buttermilk.”
“Her ladyship’s buttermilk?” he exclaimed, puzzled, and then instantly alarmed. “My mother detests buttermilk!” He stood as if to challenge Calista’s presence in his dairy when common sense prevailed, and he moved to the side of the glass panes to watch as Calista took a large ladle from a hook on the wall, dipped it into the vat of buttermilk that had been left in the cool chamber. She filled the tiny pail she carried and cleaned the ladle in the basin of a nearby sink, replaced it on the wall, and turned to leave.
The earl sat back down and faced the manager. “She comes everyday and gets buttermilk?”
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��As I said, regular as rain.” He lifted a timepiece on a chain from his vest. “Early today, usually she comes at half past ten.”
A chill carried its way up Thorne’s spine. There was only one person he knew of who drank buttermilk regularly, and that was Catherine.
As Calista retraced her steps, Thorne stood and watched her through the window. His eyes followed her as she made her way back up the hill and around the house, presumably to the kitchen door.
“So as it’s not for ‘er ladyship . . . that’s no nevermind, eh? You allow anyone to come and have a cup or two of the milkings . . . always have. Not thinking about changin’ the policy are ya, sir?”
“No, no. Feel free to encourage as we always have, we have plenty, more than enough to spare. I don’t want anyone going hungry, especially the children.” He grabbed his riding crop from the desk and walked to the door, mumbling, “Carry on.”
He walked up the hill following the same winding path he’d just watched Calista take, slapping his crop against his thigh as he walked, trying to ponder things out. It failed to occur to him that while he’d taken his riding crop from the desk, he’d left his horse tied to a tree.
Knowing full well the commotion it would cause for him to enter the kitchen, he went in through the mudroom and found his way under the stairway, where he chanced to look up and see a smiling Calista carrying a full glass of buttermilk on a silver-serving tray. On the landing she stopped, removed a spoon from her pocket and stirred what was in the glass. At the top of the stairs, she stopped and stirred it again then slipped the spoon back into her pocket. He waited until she was out of sight, then followed.
She went down the hall leading toward his wing of the manor. He waited a few minutes inside a doorway, watching her make her way down the long corridor. He ducked inside a room as he saw her turn the corner. He waited and then heard her making her way back. As soon as she had passed the darkened room, with the tray in her hand but no glass, he stepped into the hall, quickly turned the corner, then ran for Catherine’s room.
He got there just as Sadie, walking across the room from the door opposite, spotted the glass and smiled. She picked it up and put it to her lips before Thorne could register what she was doing, when it was too late to call out and stop the inevitable. She was going to drink the milk that had been left for Catherine. Regardless, he could not let her drink it! It was obvious to him that it must be tainted, possibly even poisoned. But clearly there was no way to stop her, save . . . he ran full on, knocking both her and the glass from her hand as he launched himself into the air.
He shouted, she screamed, and Catherine appeared in the doorway all in the same second. Sadie and the earl landed in a heap on the carpet as a tall flume of buttermilk arced toward the ceiling—the glass that had flown from Sadie’s hand, finding safety in the plush carpet and losing the rest of its contents in a puddle. The wall of buttermilk had risen to a grand height then fell, swirling and coating nearly every surface in a four-foot circumference—including Sadie and Thorne.
Catherine blinked, then stared. And couldn’t help herself, she laughed. Sadie and Thorne were covered with a mess of wet, sticky goo. Their hair was plastered with it, their faces shining from it, their clothing glazed with off-white pools of it.
Thorne managed to stand, then pulled Sadie up from the floor. He glared at Catherine who was covering her mouth with her hand and trying, but not succeeding, to stop giggling.
“You wouldn’t be laughing if it had been you I’d had to force the glass from.”
“Why did you?” Sadie asked as she pried up her apron and examined her ruined skirts.
“First, why were you drinking the buttermilk meant for Catherine?”
Catherine spoke for her. “Because I cannot abide the stuff. But from the very first day here, it’s been brought above stairs and practically demanded of me that I drink it. Sadie has a fondness for it, and I’m happy to leave her to it. Is that why you felt you had to stop her from drinking it, because it was brought for me?” Her face was incredulous; a clear indication that if that were the case, she thought he was being ridiculous to the extreme.
“Of course not. I suspect it’s been tampered with. I saw Calista fetch it from the creamery, then it appeared she doctored it as she kept stopping to stir it as she brought it upstairs.”
“I thought she was gone,” Sadie muttered as she swiped her wadded up apron over a damp spot on her skirt.
“So did I,” Thorne said with undisguised defiance. “So. Did. I.” He spun on his heel and stomped off, leaving the room in a huff, buttermilk dripping down the side of his face.
He hadn’t done much more than run his fingers through his matted hair and toss aside his ruined jacket to the first footman he saw, as he made his way across the house to his mother’s suite of rooms.
He knocked, but didn’t wait for a reply. He pushed the handle down and shoved the door open, then walked through the receiving room bellowing. “Mother! A word please! This moment!”
Mrs. Whimplewhite came through the connecting door and stared at him, her eyes agog.
“I need to speak to my mother. At once.”
She took a moment to take in his appearance before deciding not to comment on it. “She is not here,” she said simply.
“Not here? Where is she then?”
Mrs. Whimplewhite paled and her eyes went wide with something he couldn’t fathom. Was it fear he saw in her eyes? When she didn’t answer him directly, he stared her down. “Well? Where is she?”
She mumbled something that sounded like hawk man.
“What?”
“The Hawker Man.”
“Do you mean my gamesman, the falconer, the man who keeps my hawks?”
“Yes.”
“What the devil is she doing with him?”
“She likes birds. Your father had carrier pigeons. She often attended his sessions and helped with the chicks.”
He took all that in, frowning. How unusual, and that he hadn’t known her penchant for birds made it even more so. “Well, I want to see her immediately upon her return.”
“Yes. I shall tell her,” she said, and stood with her hands primly clasped in front of her, staring him down as if dismissing him. Of all his mother’s servants, this one was the haughtiest. She hardly ever deferred to his rank, certainly never acknowledged that it was by his largess that she had a salary and roof over her head. She was loyal to his mother though, he had to give her that. And Lord knew, being his mother’s companion could not always be a rewarding job.
“Yes, well then, I’ll expect to hear from her upon her return to the manor.” He turned and left. Then just as he reached the door, he turned back. “What do you know of the matter involving Calista and how she came to be my mother’s hire?”
“I know everything involving the matter.”
“And . . .”
“It is not my place to disclose your mother’s business.”
He sighed his exasperation. “Then perhaps, you could tell me where Calista is?”
The woman harrumphed as if she could not be bothered with such trivial matters, then reached down and noted the time on the watch attached to her ruff. “It is customary at this time of the day for her to be with the laundress, collecting her ladyship’s laundry. After that, she meets with the steward to decide on tomorrow’s flowers for our rooms and to go over the meals with Cook. Then I assume she goes to her room until it is time to dress her ladyship for dinner.”
“And her room is?”
“Upstairs on the servant’s floor, but surely . . .” she looked aghast at the possibility that he would even consider venturing there.
“I shall send for her directly. Do not expect her return.” He turned to leave and was surprised to see his mother in the corridor, flushed from her walk back from the mews.
“Mother. I am glad you have arrived.” He took her arm and spun her in the opposite direction she had been walking and steered her back toward the upstairs receiving room.
“What has happened to your clothing, and your hair? You look like you just fell in the stream.”
“Well, yes, that is precisely the reason I have sought you out.” He sat her on a settee, went back to close the door, and then began to pace in front of her.
“It is my understanding that you hired a maid I recently dismissed, Calista.”
“Yes.”
“And why did you do this?” He stopped his pacing to pierce her with his ice blue eyes. He would know if she prevaricated. Her lowered lashes and pursed lips confirmed she knew this.
“Well . . . one of the reasons she was let go was due to me after all.”
His raised brow indicating she should go on and explain herself.
“She was providing me with information, if I recollect.”
“She was spying.”
“She was passing on a curiosity, gossiping if you will.”
“Then . . . she was discovered passed out from drink, on my bed! So I had her sacked. And you still felt it your duty to intervene on her behalf?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I felt guilty, I suppose.”
“I want the truth. That is not it. Does this have anything to do with Mr. McDonagal, my man of birds?”
A blush stole over her face in such a way that he was instantly able to see why his father had been so taken with her when they had met while dancing a reel.
He tilted his head and stared at her. An odd thought occurred to him then. Both eyebrows raised in speculation and disbelief. “Have you been having an affair?”
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