“Oh, by the by, this is yours, then, if you want it.” Fumbling in the pouch that hung at his side, Captain Rowse extracted the peacock brooch. Lips tightening, head high, Caroline held out her hand for it. With a quick look at Matt, who curtly nodded permission, the captain dropped it onto her palm. Her fingers closed tightly over the jewel. Worthless or not, it was her last link to her father. A pang smote her heart as his well-loved face rose before her mind’s eye, but she refused to allow herself to acknowledge the aching. Even her grief for her father she meant to put behind her. In this new land, she would start her life afresh. She would simply refuse to allow herself to remember England and all that had happened there.
But for those few seconds her fingers tightened convulsively around the brooch. Millicent squirmed, and Caroline set her down. Then she tucked the brooch into her waistband. When she had the chance she would store the ornament in her trunks, and not look at it again.
“I’ve no love for animals in the house,” Matt said. He straightened and regarded Millicent, who was sniffing cautiously at an overturned milk pail, with suspicion.
Caroline laughed, the sound brittle as she still fought to suppress the sorrow that she would not allow herself to feel.
“What harm do you imagine my poor cat will do, pray? She’s far cleaner by nature than others who live here.”
Matt’s frown darkened as Caroline’s glance swept around the room with obvious disdain.
Captain Rowse cleared his throat, looking from one to the other uneasily.
“Well, now that all’s settled happily, I’d best be getting back to my ship,” he said.
Matt nodded. Giving Caroline a quelling look, he escorted the captain from the room. There was the murmur of their voices, and then Caroline heard the door open and shut. She wandered around the kitchen, increasingly appalled as she encountered spiderwebs and dust balls and clear evidence of mice, which Millicent sniffed with interest. For a woman who loved to cook, as she did, such an ill-kept kitchen was an abomination. What manner of people were these, who possessed so much and clearly valued it so little?
When Matt returned, Caroline was standing near the fireplace, peering disbelievingly into a pot that was half-filled with some food that had been charred to no more than a burnt offering. Without seeming to notice her disgusted expression, he crossed to a covered wooden bin in the corner. Millicent, who sat on top of it, tail twitching, put her ears back at him. With an impatient mutter he shooed her away.
“This in here is corn meal,” Matt said, lifting the lid briefly to give her a glimpse of the contents before shutting it again. “There’s meat and suet in the smokehouse around back, butter and cheese in the spring. ’Tis out behind the smokehouse. You’ll have no trouble finding it. Flour is in here”—he lifted the lid of another bin—“and we’ve apples and potatoes in the larder. Anything else you need, ask. It’s probably around somewhere.”
He paused, shoving a piece of harness out of his way with his foot without ever seeming to consider that it had no business being jumbled in a heap on the kitchen floor in the first place. “We’ll work through nuncheon, as we’ve lost so much time, but by sunset we’ll be ready to eat. There are six of us, and except for Davey we’ve big appetites. I hope you were telling the truth when you claimed you could cook.”
Then, before Caroline could say aye, nay, or maybe, he turned on his heel and started for the door, apparently meaning simply to leave her to it.
7
“Hold just a minute, if you please!” Caroline’s voice quivered with ire. “You surely do not expect me to prepare a meal in this—this pigsty!”
His back stiffened at her words, and he turned around to eye her measuringly.
“If the accommodations do not suit your ladyship,” he said with an edge to his voice, “you have my permission to clean them up.”
Caroline laughed. “It would take six women working all day every day for a fortnight to clean this mess up! I will not cook in filthy pots, nor serve a meal in a kitchen so dirty that I cannot even see out the windows! Even to make this one room minimally decent will take the rest of the day! If I am to prepare an edible meal by sunset as well, I must have help!”
“Lazy, are you? I should have expected it.”
“I am not,” Caroline said through her teeth, “lazy!”
Matt lifted an eyebrow, but before he could reply there was the sound of the outside door opening, and the solid thump of something heavy hitting the floor. Matt turned and headed into the front room, where Daniel was carrying inside the last of Caroline’s trunks.
“You told me before you left this morn that you’d quite finished building the calving shed,” Matt said abruptly.
“Aye.” Daniel straightened, eyeing his brother. “What of it?”
“Good. As there is nothing else urgent requiring your attention, you may spend the remainder of the day helping the duchess here around the house. She requires assistance cleaning, she says, because the place is such a pigsty.”
Daniel looked aghast. “Clean house? But, Matt …!”
“Look to it.”
With that Matt walked past his brother and out the door. Daniel swiveled to stare after him, then turned slowly back to look at Caroline with an expression of such dismay that, had she been in a better frame of mind, she would have been hard put not to laugh.
“I know naught of women’s work.” There was a hollow note to Daniel’s voice.
“ ’Tis obvious that all of you know naught of women’s work,” Caroline ground out.
“ ’Tis planting season.” There was an apologetic note to Daniel’s voice. “Usually the place is not so bad.”
“Oh?” Caroline raised her eyebrows. “If the floor has seen a broom anytime this past six months, I’ll count myself surprised. But there’s no point in bewailing what’s done. If you will carry my trunks in to where I am to sleep, we will get started. The kitchen first, I think, as it’s the most urgent—and the dirtiest.”
“Well, now, there’s another problem,” Daniel said. “I’ve no notion where you’re to sleep. There’s four bedchambers abovestairs, but Davey and John share one, Thomas and Robert another. I’ve the third, and Matt the fourth.”
“Then you and Matt will just have to share, won’t you?” Caroline smiled with false sweetness. “For I’ve no intention of sleeping in the stairwell!”
“But there’s only one bed in each.” Caroline could already see that Daniel was a man to whom improvisation did not come easily. “I doubt Matt would take kindly to sharing a bed with me. We’ve shared one before, and he said he’d sooner sleep with a grizzly. I would, too.”
“Bother Matt!” Caroline snapped, then sighed, knowing herself defeated. “Very well, just carry my trunks abovestairs so that they’re out of the way. We’ll sort it out when Matt returns.”
Her mockery of the way he spoke of Matt as some kind of supreme being either sailed completely over Daniel’s head or didn’t bother him. In any case, he looked relieved as he hefted the first of the trunks and started up the stairs with it.
By the time he had finished, Caroline was already busy. She had discovered a small keeping room off the kitchen that held a variety of supplies as well as a washstand. The mirror above the washstand was tiny, allowing her to see only a portion of her face at a time, but it was enough to permit her to repair the worst of the ravages wrought by her encounters with the farm’s livestock. She washed her face and hands, pinned up her hair, and—with a mental sigh of regret for the ruination of her best gown—set to mucking out the kitchen. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about further damaging her dress. With a section of hem tucked into her waistband to hide the rip, the dress was acceptable for the work she intended doing, but the jagged tear rendered the garment unsalvageable. It would undoubtedly soon find its way to the ragbag.
“What do you want me to do now?” Daniel asked dismally from the doorway. Caroline set him to building up the fire, then had him carry the cooking uten
sils to the stream, where they had to be scraped until their bottoms were reached and then scrubbed with sand. Toiling side by side with him, arms plunged deep in icy water, Caroline struggled to dismiss the sense of unreality that assailed her whenever her mind wandered from the task at hand. Was this really she, Caroline Wetherby, the toast of a hundred smoky gaming hells, who worked with cold-benumbed fingers at such a homely chore? How all the men who had clamored in vain to bed if not wed her would laugh if they could see her brought so low! Yet, strangely, she was content to have it so. Honest labor seemed suddenly far preferable to the deceit which, were she honest, she would admit had long been her stock in trade. For years she had been little more than her father’s shill, the glittering enticement he had used to lure fools for his fleecing. Marcellus Wetherby’s victims had ogled his beautiful daughter covetously while he palmed a card or produced an overlooked ace, never realizing until their purses were considerably lightened that they were not to be consoled for their losses in the way they had imagined. Though until her father’s final illness she had been subjected almost nightly to lecherous eyes and bawdy suggestions, physically he had kept her safe. He had been a rogue, but not so much a rogue as to permit the forced dishonor of his own flesh and blood. But as she had grown up and become more aware of exactly what those leering men thought of her, she had felt soiled. In this new land, she need never endure such again, and the knowledge heartened her. She would turn her hand to the most backbreaking of tasks, so long as she could hold her head high in the doing.
“Is this good enough?” Daniel asked, exhibiting a well-scoured pot. Brought abruptly back to the present, Caroline nodded approval, glad enough to focus once again on the work at hand.
Despite his initial reluctance, Daniel proved to be an able worker. When that chore was completed, Caroline set him to lugging the farm implements scattered about the house back to the barn where they belonged while she sorted clothing into piles according to its need for washing, mending, or pressing. Nearly every item required some sort of attention, and as she surveyed the size of the piles she wanted to groan. Keeping six males in decent wearing apparel was clearly going to be a never-ending task. But it was one she could do, and do well.
Like cooking and housekeeping, stitchery was a skill she had learned in the long-ago days of her childhood. With her mother, who had wearied of Marcellus’s constant traveling once the first bloom of wedded bliss had passed into the reality of raising a child, she had occupied a small cottage in the tiny village of Bishop’s Lynn. There she had lived happily until her mother died under the wheels of a runaway wagon, and her father, who had visited only rarely, came to fetch her away with him. She was nearly twelve at the time, and Marcellus, with his handsome face, fine clothes, and elegant ways, seemed a magnificent being. Willingly she had gone adventuring with him, and let him mold her into the kind of woman he wished her to be. But in the last few years she had begun to find their peripatetic existence both tiring and tawdry, and longed to settle someplace. As she grew to love her father dearly, she never expressed what she felt for fear of hurting him. Now the thought of having a home again, with meals to prepare and a house to clean and people to care for, was so appealing that she was almost afraid to allow herself to believe that it lay within her grasp. Over painful years she had learned the value of hearth and home and domesticity, and she suddenly found herself craving them as a starving man might food. Though she was tired and worn down from all that had brought her to this place, she tackled the waiting work with an energy that made Daniel groan.
Some hours later, swept, scrubbed, and dusted, the front two rooms were marginally presentable. There was still much polishing and waxing to do, and Caroline had decided that the windows as well as the wash would have to wait for another day, but the change was remarkable. Even Daniel, who was wearily chopping vegetables on the sideboard in the kitchen, was impressed with the change they had wrought.
“I suppose we’ve let things slide,” he said ruefully. “None of us is a dab hand at housework, so we’ve just done what was needed to get by. With planting season upon us, that’s hardly more than cooking an occasional meal. But I must admit, ’tis nice to be able to walk across the room without forever tripping over something.”
Caroline stood over a steaming pot of water, dropping in chunks of meat as she cut them into cubes. The fare for the evening meal would be rabbit stew with girdlecakes; she’d mixed dough for bread and set it to rise, but it would not be ready for baking until the next morn. It was simple food, but tasty and filling, and she had not had time to concoct anything more elaborate. Fortunately, the preparing of savory meals from whatever one could catch or cadge was a skill she had already learned well.
“ ’Tis understandable that the housekeeping should suffer since Elizabeth’s passing,” Caroline replied. She and Daniel, after a somewhat rocky start, were now on fairly good terms. He was an amiable man, if not forced to make decisions that might put him in conflict with his older brother, and a likable one. He even seemed willing to tolerate Millicent, who was purring contentedly from the top of the settle, which put her in the vicinity of Daniel’s left elbow. From time to time he absentmindedly scratched her head.
“Elizabeth was no housekeeper. She …” Daniel cast Caroline a swift glance and shut up.
“She what?” Caroline asked curiously, turning away from the steaming pot to look at him.
“Nothing. She just did not much like cleaning house, is all,” Daniel mumbled, chopping a carrot as if his life depended on it.
Caroline eyed him thoughtfully.
“Daniel,” she began, “if I am to be a member of this household, it would help me a great deal to know as much as I can about it. Was there some reason why Elizabeth did not clean house? Please tell me.”
Daniel frowned at the carrot he was reducing to shreds. Caroline was too anxious to hear what he might tell her to rescue the vegetable from him while it was still in a state fit for the pot.
“She was ill—really ill from the time Davey was born,” Daniel said to the carrot. “She rarely left her bed. Matt had to bunk with me, so as not to disturb her. She could never sleep when he was with her, she said.”
“So she was ill for a long time—but your brother said that she died of drowning. If she rarely left her bed, how did that come about?”
“She left it that day. She left it and went to the spring. And she drowned.” Daniel’s words were stark. “More I can’t tell you. I was away. By the time I got home, she was already buried.”
Something in his voice made Caroline frown.
“Did you not like her, Daniel?”
He glanced at her then, his eyes opaque.
“She was Matt’s wife. ’Twas not my place to like or dislike her.”
His tone told her that she would get no more from him on the subject of Elizabeth. Tossing the last of the meat into the boiling water, she went to retrieve the vegetables. The sight of the inexpertly chopped chunks made her grimace as she added them to the pot.
“Who on earth has been doing the cooking for the lot of you? Not you, ’tis obvious.”
Clearly relieved to be off the subject of Elizabeth, Daniel turned around on his stool and shrugged.
“Rob’s a fair enough cook, when he wishes to be. And sometimes Mary—that’s James’s wife, he’s our brother who lives in the town—will invite the lot of us to their house to eat. The Widow Forrester has set her cap for Matt, and she’s forever sending out bread and pies and such, much good may it do her. Patience Smith has her eye on Rob, and she makes a tasty pot of soup. Thorn has a whole gaggle of girls after him, and they vie to tempt him—and of necessity, the rest of us—with their culinary talents. For the rest, we forage fairly well for ourselves. None of us has starved.”
Caroline was mixing the buttermilk and flour for the girdlecakes. “I’m surprised that none of the ladies you mentioned thought to volunteer to take on the housekeeping. ’Tis not as sure a way to a man’s heart as through his
belly, but it is certainly a way.”
“Matt’s no use for women forever hanging about the place. He’s told them to keep away.”
Caroline looked at him in some surprise. “Quite the gentleman, your brother,” she muttered, setting the batter aside to thicken. Then, turning away from the hearth, she motioned to Daniel. “ ’Tis an hour or more yet till supper. Let’s start on the upstairs.”
Daniel groaned, but followed her as she left the room.
8
“I won’t eat what she cooks!”
Caroline could hear Davey’s piping voice from the larder where she had gone to fetch a crock of fruit preserve. From what Daniel had told her, she assumed it was an offering from one of the brothers’ female admirers, but when she tasted it with a cautious finger earlier she realized that it had been made with some sort of berry she could not identify. But whatever it was, it was both tart and sweet, and it would serve to go with the girdlecakes. In the summer, when the fruits and berries were once again ripe, she would make her own jams. Caroline frowned as she realized how much pleasure the thought gave her; perhaps, she reminded herself fiercely, she would be gone by then. It would not do to allow herself to imagine that she had found a permanent home. Davey did not like her, and none of the other Mathiesons seemed much happier about her presence. Besides, she herself might choose to go elsewhere. Certainly she did not mean to spend longer than she had to tending these impossible males. She could leave whenever the whim took her—or they could toss her out.
“Hush up, Davey! She’ll hear you!” said John. Like Davey’s, his voice was still youthfully high.
Putting a hand to the small of her back, Caroline stretched the aching muscles there. Lord, she was tired! Too tired to take umbrage with an ill-behaved child, or anyone else. Too tired almost to think. Sweat had curled the tendrils of hair at her temples and nape, and there were damp circles staining the green gown under her armpits. Her head ached, her legs hurt, and she longed for a bed.
This Side of Heaven Page 5