Summerset Abbey: A Bloom in Winter

by Brown, T. J.

  Rowena stared at the ice covering the small fish pond. She knew how those fish felt, trapped underneath the ice and waiting for the thaw.

  “She never said anything to me. I spoke to her after you and she argued that night. Did you know that?” Sebastian looked over at her, his dark eyes questioning.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Outside. Under the trees. She’d lost her hat.” He fell silent for so long that Rowena wondered whether he was done with the conversation, but then he continued. “She was going to take a job as a companion for an acquaintance of mine. I thought—” He stopped then and looked up at the dead gray sky for a moment. “I thought I’d found a way to make her happy . . . I thought we had an understanding. Apparently, we did not.”

  Rowena sighed, wondering if he knew whether Pru was also the daughter of the former Earl of Summerset. Not that this would make a bit of difference. No one of their class would accept a marriage between an earl and the illegitimate daughter of a maid, regardless of who fathered the child. She glanced sideways at Sebastian, wondering whether she should tell him. No. She wouldn’t betray Prudence further.

  “We should be getting back,” she said gently.

  He nodded absently, and as they started back slowly toward the house, she offered that Victoria had told her that Prudence was living in London and seemed to be well and happy.

  “Well, that’s something,” he said.

  “I’m hoping she will forgive me someday,” Rowena said, with a catch in her voice.

  He squeezed her arm. “You three were like sisters. I’m sure she won’t stay angry for long.”

  They walked back into the house, where Aunt Charlotte was gathering her things. “Oh, good. You’re back. We were just about to send a maid for you.”

  “Will you be going back to the university?” Lady Summerset asked Sebastian as she wrapped her wool cape around her shoulders.

  “Actually, I’m all finished. I started a term before Colin, so I finished before he did.”

  “Oh, really?” Lady Summerset placed her hand on his shoulder and smiled up at him in appeal. “You mustn’t be a stranger. I’m sure both Elaine and Rowena would love to have you come to dinner sometime, even if Colin can’t make it. Wouldn’t you, Rowena?”

  Startled, Rowena nodded. “Of course.” She caught an arch look between her aunt and Sebastian’s mother and wondered what it meant.

  On the long journey home, Rowena puzzled over the conversation she and Sebastian had in the garden. Had he harbored feelings for Pru? Maybe. But now that Prudence had married, it didn’t really matter, did it?

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Prudence looked around their flat, wondering yet again how she was supposed to live in two and a half rooms and a single water closet. Then she berated herself. They were lucky to have the WC and even luckier to be out of the flea-ridden boardinghouse where they had been living since they had arrived in London over a month ago.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d thought they would do when they’d first stepped off the train from Summerset. She was so used to having someone else in charge that it took her a few moments to realize that her new husband, so confident around motors and animals, was completely out of his element in the teeming mass of people that made up Camden Town, London. It was up to her to collect their luggage and find a boardinghouse, up to her to find a flat near the Royal Veterinary College, and to find out what the requirements of attendance were.

  Andrew had almost quit right then. “We don’t have that much money!” he’d cried out. “That’s a bloody fortune.”

  Quietly, she let him know that she had enough money, and if they lived frugally and brought in some extra money here and there, they would be able to make it work.

  “I’d be living off my wife,” he scoffed, and Prudence couldn’t help but agree.

  “But then for the rest of our lives, you’ll be a veterinarian and I’ll be living off you,” she told him briskly, and he’d relented, seeing her logic. He didn’t much like it and Prudence knew it would rankle, but she would be careful not to make an issue of it. Besides, she thought with the new, hard practicality she was developing, they really had very little choice.

  Now Mrs. Tannin stood with her hands on her hips and sniffed. “Sir Philip wouldn’t like this at all,” she said.

  Prudence had known bringing the housekeeper here from her old home would be a mistake. This entire flat would fit in Sir Philip’s study in the Mayfair mansion, but Prudence was no longer Sir Philip’s daughter and mansions were no longer a part of her present. Or her future, for that matter.

  “Sir Philip is gone and my husband and I have to live within our means.”

  “But surely Miss Rowena and Miss Victoria wouldn’t want you living in squalor . . . ”

  “Mrs. Tannin!” Hurt, Prudence drew herself up to her full height. It wasn’t much, but she towered over Mrs. Tannin, who was as small as Victoria. “Pray remember that this is my home now, and it isn’t squalid or dirty. It’s clean and bright and very close to the Royal Veterinary College, where my husband will be attending. It’s just small is all.” She didn’t mention that it was one of four flats situated above a greengrocer. The ever-present earthy scent of potatoes told that tale.

  Mrs. Tannin subsided. Had Prudence been able to retrieve all of her things from her old home without help, she would have done so. Carl, the footman, was there to carry some of the heavier items, but she wanted Mrs. Tannin to supervise just to make it plain that Prudence hadn’t taken anything that wasn’t hers. She didn’t want the Earl of Summerset to accuse her of stealing. She had been lucky to get inside and retrieve some of her belongings before the new family took over the house and perhaps denied her access to them.

  “My apologies,” the older woman finally said. “It’s just that I don’t understand any of this. Sir Philip dies, the family moves away to the estate, and you return a scant three months later, married to a man who, excuse me, isn’t a good match for you, and living in a flat in Camden Town. It’s hard for a body to get her arms around, that’s all.”

  Prudence took a deep breath, fighting to keep down her rising temper. She reminded herself how kind this woman had been to her mother.

  “Mrs. Tannin. I believe it’s your high regard for me that makes you say such things, but remember that my mother was a governess. I have no inheritance, no title, and no blood ties to aristocracy.” Prudence’s lips tightened for a moment as she remembered that she did indeed have illegitimate ties to the family that had brought her up, but she firmly put that out of her mind. “I was taken to Summerset as a lady’s maid and was made to feel as though my presence was a contamination. I have done the very best I can considering the circumstances.”

  “Not by the girls, surely?” Mrs. Tannin cried, her hand at her heart. Mrs. Tannin looked upon the motherless Buxton girls as beyond reproach, and Prudence decided not to tell her that Rowena was responsible for a good many of her troubles.

  “Of course not,” she said tersely. “Now can you help me move this table over by the stove? It may fit if we put it cross-ways.”

  After Mrs. Tannin had gone, Prudence looked at the trunks and pieces of furniture with dismay. She’d thought she had only brought a few personal items that were given to her especially, but in her small living area, they looked incongruous, not only for their size but for their quality. She had brought a small card table to use as a dining table, but even though it looked tiny at the Mayfair home, it barely fit in the small room that served as the kitchen, dining room, and main living area of the family. The bedroom, oddly enough, was the same size as the kitchen and living area. It was located at the back of the flat, behind the kitchen, and in the front, a small half-room made up the sitting room. Because they lived in a corner flat, the kitchen/living area had two large windows along one wall, and the small sitting room had three windows with a window seat that occupied half the room. There was barely space for her small wing-backed rose-print chair.
After spreading a pink and white shawl over a trunk for a table and placing the gaudy standing lamp left by the previous tenant in the corner, almost every available square inch of the sitting room was taken.

  She picked up a tablecloth and flicked it over the card table. A piece of paper fluttered from out of the folds. Prudence’s heart caught. Victoria’s letter. She picked it up and scanned the lines again. At first, she had been undecided as to whether to answer it or not. Clearly, she couldn’t tell anyone at Summerset about her present living conditions. In spite of her bravado with Mrs. Tannin, her new home was cramped, confining, and common, and she didn’t want either Vic or Ro to know of her exact circumstances. She set the letter on the mantel behind the coal stove. Later. She would figure that out later. She had enough on her mind.

  She pushed the other trunks into the back bedroom, trying not to look at her bed as she did so. She and Mrs. Tannin had hired two men off the street to unload it and haul it up the narrow stairs for them. It was large enough for two, but the fine virginal white and blue feather quilts looked strangely out of place in this plain bedroom. Maybe because the quilts had belonged to another life, one that would be ending tonight.

  Her husband had been curiously reluctant to start their married life on the narrow bed provided at the boardinghouse. Not that Prudence disagreed with him—indeed, she was grateful for his scruples. To accommodate the crush of people coming in from the country to work in the city, tiny rooms had been further split up by sheets acting as makeshift walls, strung between beds. They were put into a room with two other married couples, one of whom had no qualms about committing the physical act of marriage with other people within spitting distance.

  Her face flamed upon remembrance of the unfamiliar noises issuing from the other side of the sheet. She understood from Andrew’s stillness next to her that he, too, had heard and interpreted the sounds. She lay beside him for several weeks, disconcertingly conscious of the way his strong form pressed next to hers and how the hair on his arm felt against her cheek as he held her. Her face flushed. She’d only felt that butter melting in the center of her middle once before and as it wasn’t with her husband, it shamed her to think of it. It also shamed her that the man in question didn’t have to touch her to make her feel that way.

  Prudence had always wondered what would come next. She and Rowena had held a few whispered conversations after a trip to a farm to buy a new horse for Sir Philip, but these had always ended in embarrassed giggles. For all Sir Philip’s liberal ideas, sex education for his daughters was not one of them.

  She pressed her hands against her heated cheeks. Tonight, she would be sharing this bed with Andrew and there would be no one to stop the inevitable. The thought left her both thrilled and anxious. How would she know what to do?

  She jumped guiltily when she heard the key in the lock. Was it that time already?

  She hurried into the main room just as Andrew stepped through the open door. He filled up the doorway and the room with his height, one of the reasons he had been selected to be a footman at Summerset Abbey. His hazel eyes crinkled into a tired smile when he saw her. They might not have consummated their marriage yet, but she had no doubts about his love for her. She only hoped that in time she would grow to feel the same way.

  He caught her with one arm around her waist and pulled her close and she gave him a shy kiss. At first, she’d been taken aback by his easy physical affection with her. She knew the Buxtons loved one another deeply, but it wasn’t in them to be that demonstrative. Somehow in that mean little farmhouse where he’d grown up, he’d learned to give and receive love more easily than the aristocrats in their Mayfair mansions. After her initial shock, she grew to rather like it. He never failed to make her feel special.

  “Where did you work today?” she asked him. Andrew had found a place that hired workers on a daily basis. He was picking up some extra work a few days a week when he wasn’t studying.

  “Down at the docks.”

  She looked in dismay at his dirty clothing. She had learned this morning that the laundry had to be done belowstairs and then hung to dry either out the back window or on a line in the cellar. She didn’t want to admit to him that she’d never done washing before and didn’t have the first idea of how to go about it. At the boardinghouse, they had just paid to have it done, as there were no facilities. He had been aghast at her insistence upon changing clothes every day, and she soon realized that she would spend all their money on washing if she continued that habit. Reluctantly, she had begun wearing her blouses and skirts for several days at a time and found that it really didn’t make much of a difference. She wondered how many other trappings of her former life she’d discover to be completely frivolous.

  His eyes swept their small apartment. “You’ve done a nice job. It looks very different.” The neutral sound of his voice stung.

  “I know it’s a bit crowded, but I just wanted to get as many of my things as I could before the new tenants moved in.” Her voice sounded apologetic to her own ears, which was silly. Why wouldn’t she want to save her own possessions?

  “I thought everything had been taken to Summerset?” He took off his jacket and handed it to her.

  She hung it up on a peg next to the door and answered him quietly. “Nothing of mine. I suppose Lord Summerset never intended for me to stay for any length of time.” She paused a moment to absorb the hurt and then continued. “I left several trunks of clothing in the attic that I supposed I wouldn’t need right away. I can send for them later.”

  “Righto. It’s not like we’ll be invited to any balls anytime soon.”

  His voice was light, but Prudence detected a bitterness underneath. “It’s just as well,” she answered, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice. “I can’t imagine trying to puzzle out how to press an evening jacket anyway. Would you like some tea?”

  “Aye.” He squeezed her arm lightly as she moved past him, and she knew he was sorry for his remark. She couldn’t help wondering, though, whether this was to be a part of their marriage from here on out, this envious contempt of her old life. Well, she wasn’t going to apologize for it.

  “I’m famished, too. Did you have a chance to bring in any groceries?”

  She put the teakettle on and flushed. “I haven’t had a moment. I was busy getting everything packed up and then moved over here and then unpacked again. I thought I could run down to the pub and pick up some cottage pie. Just for tonight,” she added quickly at the look on his face. She knew he thought she was a spendthrift, and she really was trying to be thrifty. It was just a whole different way of managing things. Plus, this would buy her one more day before she had to confess to him that she didn’t even begin to know how to cook. She cringed as she imagined the disappointment on his face when she eventually revealed her complete lack of skills as a homemaker. A few weeks into their marriage and she was already scrambling to cover up her shortcomings as a wife.

  He sat in a small, dainty satin tufted chair that had once sat in front of the fireplace in her bedroom. She had thought it perfect near the stove, but it looked ridiculous now with her husband’s long body draped over it.

  “Oh, Lord. I forgot how tall you are. I’m sorry. Let’s move the old chair out of the bedroom and put it next to the stove.”

  He glanced down at himself with a wry grin. “It is rather small,” he agreed as he carried it through the kitchen to the bedroom to exchange it for the old club chair that had been in the flat when they arrived. “This isn’t really good for much of anything but looking pretty.”

  “Kind of like your wife,” Prudence said under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” Prudence took him his tea as he made himself comfortable in the club chair.

  He handed her the money he had made that day and she stared at it blankly. “My ma always kept the money in a cracked cup in the cupboard. Maybe we should do something like that with the money that doesn’t go in the bank.”


  She nodded and stuck the coins into a white glass vase that sat on their dining room table. A fire engine went clanging past them and Andrew jumped. “Not sure if I’ll ever get used to that.”

  “You will.” She sat down at the dining room table, tea in hand, and tried hard to think of something to say to him. She’d married him because he was one of the kindest people she’d met during a time when nearly everyone treated her cruelly. She firmed her chin. This would work. Perhaps her marriage had been impetuous, but she hadn’t gone into it blindly. She’d chosen him for his thoughtfulness and because he had once fought for her publicly, damning the consequences to himself. “Tomorrow I’m going to go and get some provisions. I set up my dressing table in the corner of the bedroom by the windows. Maybe you could study there? That is, if you don’t mind studying at a white and gold desk with pink flowers on it.”

  She grinned at him and he laughed, dispelling some of the tension in the room. “I think I’ll manage. As far as I know, Euclid and Virgil don’t care a whit about where they are studied, as long as they are studied.”

  One of Prudence’s biggest surprises was how educated the farm boy turned footman actually was. He’d grown up working the land but had snuck away often to help the local animal doctor, who had mentored him and lent him books. Prudence had a wider knowledge in some things, such as politics, current events, and English literature, but in science, mathematics, and geography, he left her far behind. On Sundays, they had taken to going to a tea shop, reading the newspaper together and dissecting every article, one by one.

  Perhaps while she was out tomorrow she might find a cookbook that would rescue her, she thought while waiting for their cottage pie. The pub was just down the street from their flat, and Prudence sat in the back room next to a door discreetly marked Ladies’ Entrance. The large mirror behind the bar was cracked in several places and the red velvet stools showed tufts of white cotton through the worn spots. She had given her order to the tired-looking woman who worked the ladies’ area. Prudence looked around with interest. The male half of the bar bustled with men getting off work, while in the small back room only a few “working” women were in attendance.