by Louise Allen
‘What does that matter?’ Hester asked herself briskly, marching across the hall to see if the opposite room was any better. It was not. ‘He is probably just an acquaintance of John’s.’ That was not much comfort. If that was so he must already regard Miss Lattimer as an abandoned hussy.
‘I must stop talking to myself,’ she chided, promptly ignoring her own advice as she made her way back to the stairs. ‘Bedrooms next.’ It would be as well to find out the worst about those before the day was much older. The agent’s description of the house as ‘partly furnished’ was proving somewhat over-optimistic.
‘And what do you care what some earl thinks about you, Hester Lattimer?’ Not much in general, her inner self answered, but that particular man…
The first bedroom yielded a decent-enough-looking bedstead with dust sheets over the mattress, which appeared dry and mercifully free of mice. Hester peeped into three other rooms, each with bedstead and mattress, thank goodness, and then opened wide the door into the room overlooking the front garden.
‘Oh! How lovely.’ This room had two generous windows, each with a window seat. Silk draperies marred with dust hung at each casement and between them stood a chaise-longue with a little table beside it. The bed was a charmingly feminine confection with slim posts festooned with embroidered silk. Hester touched one fall carefully, hastily withdrawing her hand as some of the silk shattered where it had been folded for so long. Again, enough care had been taken to protect the mattress and the room appeared habitable, if dirty and bone cold.
This chamber would be hers and Prudy and Susan could have their choice of the other rooms. Doubtless there were servants’ rooms in the attic, but they had too much to do to contemplate putting those to rights for quite a while. Susan would be much more comfortable down here.
There was another door in the corner of the room. Hester crossed to it, pausing for a moment to look at the ugly house opposite. In the summer it would be screened for the most part by a spreading elm tree; now it showed gaunt through the bare branches. Several windows were visible on the first floor, but there were no signs of life. Who lived there? Would they make congenial neighbours? She flicked over the catch on the window and after a tussle managed to push up the lower sash. Sharp, clear air flowed into the musty room and she smiled, taking a moment to enjoy it.
There was the sound of voices opposite and a gate in the high wall to the rear of the house opened. A curricle drawn by a pair of dark greys turned sharply out and headed away from the Green and out of the village. Unmistakably it was the earl who was driving and her own front wall was low enough for Hester to have an uninterrupted view of Guy Westrope’s profile.
Hester realised that she had been far too flustered to have more than a muddled impression of him from their encounter. Blue eyes, those she did recall, although at this distance they could not be discerned. She could not say what colour his hair was, but she remembered those eyes and the size of him-tall, broad-shouldered and powerful. To that she could now add the impression of a determined chin. He did not look like a man to be trifled with and the scowl with which he had greeted her, and the coolly polite tones he had used to address her, left her more than a little apprehensive over how he might react to discovering the deception she had practised on him. But when he had smiled, there was the glimpse of quite another man.
At least she now knew who her neighbour was, although congenial was hardly the word she would use to describe him. And it only added to the mystery: to find he was staying at the Bird in Hand while he conducted whatever business he had with her was one thing-but why was he staying here?
If she didn’t stop idling about and get on with making this house fit to receive visitors, she’d lower herself even further in his estimation, she scolded herself mentally, getting to her feet and pushing open the remaining door.
It opened into a dressing room and on to a scene of violence. Hester halted, appalled, on the threshold. The shield-shaped mirror that had stood on the dressing table was face down upon the floor, its glass smashed into shards that still lay where they had fallen. The doors to the clothes-presses hung open with the empty shelves pulled out and the chair before the dressing table was thrown on its side. One curtain hung from its last two rings, seemingly dragged down by some clutching hand.
A mass of filmy cloth lay at her feet. Automatically Hester stooped and picked it up, shaking it out to reveal an outrageously pretty nightgown of Indian muslin. It had been ripped from neck to hem. She moved abruptly backwards and something skittered out from beneath her foot. Under the blanketing dust the floor was strewn with pearls, enough to have made a veritable rope when strung.
What had happened in this chamber? Abduction? Rape? Murder? The calmly happy atmosphere of the house seemed to freeze here into anger and fear. Behind her the curtains flapped as the outer door opened and the door at her back slammed shut with enough force to propel her into the desecrated room.
Hester swung round, suddenly afraid, her feet scrabbling on the treacherous pearls, her grasp on the door handle hampered by the nightgown. Against her own hands it began to turn. Someone was outside.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Jethro! You gave me such a fright.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Hester, but I brought in the hampers and I couldn’t see you. I called, then I thought I’d better come and find you.’ He glanced over her shoulder and went pale under the freckles. ‘Gawd, Miss Hester, what’s happened in there?’
‘Do not blaspheme, Jethro,’ Hester said automatically, turning to let him see in. ‘I have no idea, but it does not look as if it were anything good.’ She twisted up the nightrail in her hands. Jethro was only a lad for all his size and his growing awareness of girls, and she did not want him seeing that violated, intimate garment.
‘That’s blood, Miss Hester.’ He was already into the room, his feet crunching on broken glass and leaving clear tracks through the undisturbed dust.
‘Oh, no, please, not that.’ Hester followed him more cautiously and stared at the brown splashes on the wall. ‘It is not so very much. Perhaps it is red wine, or maybe whoever broke the mirror cut himself?’
‘That’ll be it, no doubt about it, Miss Hester,’ Jethro said comfortably. He was not as innocent as his young mistress thought him and the images that came to his mind when he saw the room chimed very much with hers. ‘It’ll have been burglars, to be sure,’ he continued, walking firmly out so Hester had to give way in front of him. ‘Throwing all the doors open and knocking things around when they found the cupboards empty, I’ll be bound.’
He shut the door. ‘Will this be your room, Miss Hester?’
‘Yes…’ Hester heard the hesitation in her own voice and said firmly. Yes, it will, and Susan can have the one to the right at the top of the stairs. I expect Miss Prudhome will like one of the rooms at the back.’
The unconscious glance she cast at the dressing-room door was not lost on the boy. ‘I’ll sweep those rooms out then, shall I, after luncheon, and light the fires? Then I can bring the bags up without your things getting dusty.’ And there was a pot of whiting in the stables, he could soon mix some whitewash up and cover that stain, she’d feel better about the room with that gone and the broken things tidied away.’
‘The rooms over the stables are right and tight. Miss Hester,’ he continued, firmly leading the way downstairs. ‘There’s a pot-bellied stove, so I’ll be snug as a hug in there.’
‘That is good news, Jethro,’ Hester said briskly. Everything was perfectly all right, except for that disturbing room. Try as she might, she could not believe Jethro’s explanation of burglars. The thick carpet of dust had been even, as though it had been left undisturbed as a whole. Surely the intruders’ footprints would have shown, even through the later falls? And why would burglars tear a nightgown or break a valuable string of pearls and leave them?
‘I was going to run over to the inn to order a cask of ale, Miss Hester. Do you want me to wait until the others get here?�
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‘No, the ale is a good idea and you may as well go now. Goodness knows how long it will take them to get here from King’s Langley if Miss Prudhome’s persuaded the postilion to go slowly the entire way.’
He shot her an anxious look, but took the coins she handed him and went out. Of course it is all right being here alone, Hester told herself firmly. What are you afraid of? Ghosts?
Her stomach rumbled at that point, effectively putting paid to all thoughts of spectres or earls. What time was it? The old longcase clock in the kitchen had last been wound years ago, but her pocket watch said clearly that it was two of the clock and that breakfast at the inn at King’s Langley where they had stayed overnight was many hours away.
Jethro had thoughtfully drawn a bucket of water, which stood in the slate-lined sink. Hester dipped some out into a bowl, found an ancient scrubbing brush on the window ledge and attacked the kitchen table. It would need hours’ more work before it became white again, but at least they could eat luncheon off it without a qualm.
She spread a cloth from the top of one of the hampers, found bread, cheese, ajar of pickles and a packet of butter, then turned her attention to the contents of the kitchen cupboards.
Jethro returned after half an hour with a vast earthenware pitcher of ale, heavy enough to make him gasp with relief when he set it down on the table. ‘That’s a ploughman’s pot, that is,’ he remarked, mopping his brow. ‘Part of the ploughman’s wages is his daily ale and his lad goes to fetch it for him. Often as not he’ll empty it down, then break it on the plough handles and send the boy back for another one with a cuff on the ear for being so careless.’
Hester put down the stack of plates she had been scouring in cold water and regarded him, head on one side. ‘That is interesting, Jethro. How did you know that?’
‘Don’t remember,’ he muttered, opening the other hamper and starting to lift things out. ‘They’ll send the cask over later today, but I thought we’d need some for now.’
Hester sighed. She had found him unconscious in the gutter in Old Holborn over a year ago, starved thin as a rake and with the marks of old beatings on his back. Taken back to the house in Mount Street, he had been quiet, polite and obdurately silent on anything but his name. He attached himself with dogged devotion to Hester and obeyed her in everything but the request to tell of his past. His accent had a burr, which had largely vanished under the influence of London speech and Hester’s cultured tones, but she suspected country origins and that little story seemed to confirm it.
‘Here is some cutlery.’ She pushed it over the table, abandoning any thought of probing further. If and when he wanted to tell her he would do so. She had enough bad memories and secrets of her own not to pry into his.
Finally they sat down to eat in front of the range, which was slowly beginning to take the chill off the air. Hester put down her ale, which she was drinking out of an earthenware beaker for want of any more suitable vessel, and observed, ‘I hope the glassware arrives safely with Susan. We are having a gentleman caller tomorrow and I must offer wine.’
‘At least we’ve got some good wine,’ Jethro remarked. The disturbing memory had faded, leaving him bright eyed and interested.
‘Yes, and fortunately I put a few bottles of the Madeira and port into the baggage that is on the chaise. The rest will be coming with the carrier.’
Bless John for having left her his wine cellar. An unconventional thing to leave to a woman, but they had enjoyed a glass of wine together so often. Of course, it was only one of the numerous scandalous things that could he laid at her door, And his relatives had not hesitated to enumerate every one.
This time it was Jethro who pulled her out of painful reverie. ‘What gentleman is it, Miss Hester?’
‘No mere gentleman… an earl, no less.’ Hester pushed the card across to him. Jethro read it, eyes wide.
‘You won’t have Susan answering the door, will you, Miss Hester? Not in the afternoon?’
‘No, Jethro. A female servant in the afternoon? That would never do.’ Hester repressed a smile. ‘I shall require you to put on your best suit and be the butler.’
His wide grin was not in the slightest reduced by the intelligence that, as well as setting the bedchambers and kitchen to rights today, they must all work tomorrow to clean the hall and make one of the front reception rooms decent before their visitor arrived.
‘It will take all the furniture we can find to furnish up the one room.’ Hester bit her lip thoughtfully. ‘The carrier’s cart will not arrive tomorrow and what there is here is sparse, to put it mildly.’
‘And old-fashioned.’ Jethro’s ambitions in life caused him to be surprisingly aware of such details.
‘Good quality, though, and very feminine. Perhaps the last person to live here was an elderly single woman, or a widow.’
Further speculation was cut short by the arrival of the post chaise in the yard. Susan Wilmott-plump, good natured and just now looking delighted to have arrived-jumped down and held up her hands to assist an older woman. Miss Prudhome, Hester’s companion of two weeks’ standing, and decidedly green in the face, tottered from the vehicle and into Hester’s arms. ‘Never again, Hester dear, not if I have to walk a hundred miles! Never again in one of those yellow bounders.’
‘There, there.’ Hester patted her back while trying to ignore the postilion’s rolling eyes. ‘You made very good time considering,’ she added placatingly to the man. ‘Jethro, show the postilion where he can water his horses while we unload the chaise.’
Hester placed her companion firmly in a chair in the kitchen with a glass of water and joined her two staff to bring in the contents of the post chaise.
Susan dumped an armload on the table and looked around her with interest, ‘Nice house, Miss Hester, hut it’s awful big for just two staff. Are you going to hire in anyone else?’
‘I hope so, Susan.’ Hester lowered her end of a hamper of house wares. But I need to find out how much I must spend to get the house in order first and then I will see what we can afford. Until then we will just keep the downstairs and three bedchambers in order.’
‘Now, you find yourself some luncheon and then we will decide what to do first.’ She regarded Miss Prudhome dubiously. ‘Do you think you could manage a little luncheon, Prudy?’
A pitiful groan greeted the question. Miss Prudhome was thin, forty-eight years of age and, Jethro was unkind enough to remark, closely resembled a hen. ‘One of those worried-looking brown ones, you know, Miss Hester.’
Hester did know, and unfortunately could not get the image out of her head whenever she looked at her recently engaged companion with her pointed nose and anxious little eyes behind precarious pince-nez.
She was, in fact, a governess but, as Hester’s limited budget had ruled out all the superior companions who presented themselves in answer to her advertisement, she was the only affordable candidate. Her halting tale of being dismissed from her employment of ten years because the youngest boy had gone to school wrung Hester’s kind heart and she had accepted her application against her better judgement. She had even yielded to Miss Prudhome’s wistful request that she call her ‘Prudy’.
Jethro marched in, arms loaded with broom, mop and bucket and clanked past. ‘I’ll just get the worst of the mess sorted upstairs, Miss Hester, and light the fires.’
By seven o’clock the four of them were collapsed in a semi-circle of chairs by the range, which Jethro had managed to keep going, although with an ominously smoky chimney. ‘Full of nests, I guess,’ he observed. ‘I’d better find a sweep tomorrow and have all the fires done.’
‘Never mind,’ Hester said cheerfully. ‘We each have a comfortable bed to sleep in and a clean kitchen to cook and eat in. And tomorrow we can see to the hall and front room.’
Prudy twittered nervously, Susan sighed gustily and even Jethro looked a little daunted, presumably at the thought of all the other rooms, to say nothing of the garden, the stable yard and the o
utbuildings. But Hester felt nothing but peace and a sense of home. If she had been a cat she would have turned round several times and curled up in front of the fire with her tail over her nose; as it was she got to her feet, rolled up her sleeves and reached for a saucepan.
‘Dinner and bed for all of us. If we do not eat soon, we will be beyond it,’ she said bracingly. ‘You peel the potatoes, Jethro. Susan, shred some of that cabbage and slice the onions and I will fry up those collops of veal. Prudy, please lay the table and put some bricks in the lower oven to warm up for the beds.’
The meal was good, filling and savoury, and the eyes of her three companions were soon drooping. Hester sent Susan and Prudy to bed, each clutching a flannel-wrapped brick, assuring them she had no further need of them that night, and even Jethro was persuaded to take himself and his lantern off to his bed over the stables after faithfully checking the windows and front door.
Hester twisted the key in the back door after him, dragged the bolts across and gave the fire a final riddle before taking a chamber stick and making her way through the now-silent house.
The darkness closed in behind her softly like a velvet curtain as she climbed the stairs. There was no light from the other rooms. She hesitated on the threshold of her chamber, her eyes on the door leading to the dressing room. In the firelight it seemed to move.
The silence enclosed her, friendly no longer. ‘No,’ Hester said firmly. ‘This is my room and I am not going to be frightened by some broken glass and a stain on the wall.’
She marched over to the table by the chaise-longue and lit the candles in the three-branched stick that stood on it. Her own face reflected in the panes of glass in the unshuttered windows. It was the dark of the moon and only lights from the houses and cottages around the Green punctuated the night.
As she tried to pull the silk curtains closed they crumbled in her hands, rotten from years of neglect. On one window the shutters unfolded and closed easily enough, but on the other they would not shift, even at the cost of a broken fingernail. Hester shrugged; she would undress on the screened side of the room.