A Lord Apart

by Jane Ashford

  Daniel didn’t like that idea either. “She will once she gets to know me. Us. She’s going to help me organize the family papers.”

  “Really?” Macklin raised his eyebrows.

  “We both want information about Rose Cottage.” He refused to give up his plan. “There’s nothing in Frithgerd’s records to threaten the government. Rent rolls and deeds pose no danger.”

  “No. But she may bring trouble with her.”

  “Then we must help!” Daniel interrupted, swept by a fierce, protective anger. “My father—your old friend—left her a home. He would have wanted that.”

  “Mystery upon mystery,” replied Macklin. “It’s all very odd. We must feel our way.”

  Should they need a way into the government, there was no better man than Macklin, Daniel thought. They wouldn’t, of course. Penelope Pendleton was an innocent. But once again, he was glad of Macklin’s unexpected presence in his house.

  Six

  When Penelope entered Frithgerd the following afternoon, she was buzzing with anticipation. For as long as she could remember, she’d loved putting things to rights, bringing order to unproductive chaos, and ideally learning things as she worked. She’d discovered her talents alongside her father in his estate office. Fed by his praise for her efforts, her knack for organization had grown into a true skill. She knew how to do this, and she was good at it. One of the many strains of the last year had been having nothing to do. All the tasks that had brought her satisfaction had been taken away. But now she was being called into action again. And more. At Frithgerd, at any moment, she might turn over a page and solve the puzzle of her legacy.

  The fact that Lord Whitfield would be working at her side had nothing to do with her excitement, she told herself. Well, next to nothing. Or nothing to the point. He had trusted her, as no one had done for a long time. She paused briefly to savor that fact. The look on his face when he’d assured her that she was needed had nearly made her cry.

  The footman who was escorting her looked back over his shoulder.

  Penelope started walking again. Thankfully, she’d resisted tears. What would Lord Whitfield have thought? And she expected he’d be more of a hindrance than a help in the actual task. The state of his records showed that he had no gift for organization. Yet her pulse sped up when she was admitted to the estate office and found him waiting there.

  His smile lit his blunt-featured face. He looked wholeheartedly glad to see her. When had she last received such a welcome?

  “Good day, Miss Pendleton. I’ve ordered tea and a plate of muffins to ease our labors.” He indicated a tray, set atop a stack of papers as there was no clear spot for it. “Are you fond of muffins?”

  Penelope felt her own smile spread over her face. She could sit down with him and drink tea and learn more about his history and opinions. She could laugh perhaps, or make him laugh. She could even flirt a little, as she’d done as a girl. Even though she was a girl no longer, irrespective of age. “Is there jam?”

  “Assuredly there is jam.” Whitfield glanced at the footman as the servant went out. “Leave the door open, Ned,” he added.

  The viscount was treating her as if she had a social position to lose. And with that courtesy, Penelope was reminded that she didn’t. She had no family, no true friends, no standing. And she mustn’t imagine that Lord Whitfield’s politeness and curiosity about Rose Cottage changed anything fundamental in her life. Far better to concentrate on the task at hand and find her pleasure there. “We should get started,” she said.

  “Drudgery first, muffins later?” he replied wryly.

  She wouldn’t have predicted it after their first meeting, but he had a beguiling charm—the sort you might not discover until you were waltzing with him, his dark eyes inches away, his hand warm on your back. Which she would never get to do, Penelope told herself severely. Why was she thinking of such a thing? What had become of her fabled concentration? “It’s best to take a systematic approach,” she said. “As a first step, we should be certain that all the records in the house are here.”

  Lord Whitfield looked around the cluttered office. “You want more than this?”

  “It isn’t a case of wanting.” Penelope felt a curious catch in her chest on that last word. How long had it been since she had been allowed to want? She turned to the wardrobe with its cascade of documents. “It’s so we can do a thorough job. There’s nothing worse than putting things into perfect order, and then coming upon a pile that was left out.”

  “I can think of a few worse things,” he replied, smiling again to show it was a joke.

  Ignoring the yearning of her heart, Penelope said, “From what I’ve seen, I suspect your records may have been scattered about the house.”

  “We found an old deed in the epergne on the dining room table.”

  Penelope laughed. “So you should have the house gone over and all the papers brought here.”

  “We’ll be buried in fusty old documents!” Whitfield shook his head. “And I’m not going to be popular with my housekeeper.”

  “You may be surprised. If you tell her you’re going to put it all in order and be rid of the clutter, I expect she’ll be delighted.”

  “It’s true she’s wanted to clear out some bits. I couldn’t let her throw anything away until I looked at it.”

  “You see.”

  “But you’re going to put it in order,” he said. “You promised.”

  “I thought you meant to help.” Yesterday, she’d wanted to be left alone with the job. Now the idea that he might go filled her with dismay.

  “Well, yes.” He surveyed the papers as if they had a foul odor. “We’d better use the parlor next door for the rest.”

  “A splendid idea. In fact, we should set it up as our filing space. We can divide documents into chronological piles.”

  “Chronological,” he repeated.

  “By year,” Penelope explained.

  “I know what it means.” He turned in a circle. “Boredom and dust, that’s what it means.”

  “How can it be boring when you might discover just the fact you need at any moment? Or some fantastic nugget of your family history?” Penelope turned to the small bag she’d brought. “As for dust…” She took out two lengths of cloth.

  “What are those?”

  “Sleeve stockings.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She pulled tubes of dark material over the sleeves of her dress. They reached well above the elbow and buttoned at the wrists.

  “What the deuce?” said Daniel.

  “They keep my gown clean when I work with old documents. Or other dusty things. My father’s man of business told me about them. His clerks keep ink off their coats this way.”

  “Do they indeed?” He was smiling in a way that made her lips curve up in response.

  “I know they look a bit odd, but they’re much easier to clean than my gown. And if the laundress can’t get out every speck, well, it doesn’t matter, does it?” She held up her arms for his inspection.

  She looked silly and adorable and supremely competent all at the same time, Daniel thought. It was a potent combination.

  She sat down at the desk, picked up a sheaf of papers, scanned the top one, and then leafed through the rest. “Are these your lists?”

  “Right,” said Daniel, bringing his mind back to the tedious task at hand. He only got to sit with her if he went through the wretched records. “Things to do. I check off items as soon as they’re accomplished.”

  She looked down and flipped through the pages again.

  “Date at the top, you see, all right and tight,” Daniel added. And remembered, for some reason, the Latin master at school who’d looked over his translations with sad compassion.

  “These lists go back months, and the things to be done are the same. Except that there are mo
re and more of them.” Miss Pendleton gazed at him. “They all begin with revise task list.”

  Daniel nodded. “Takes a deuced amount of time.” Often it used the whole morning, and left him so irritated that he had to get out of the house.

  “But do you actually do any of them?”

  “Loads. Those lists are gone, because they’re all checked off.”

  “I see.”

  She seemed to doubt him. Daniel started to defend himself, and then realized that his case was weak. “Sometimes I feel like that king—what was his name?—who tried to fight off the sea with his sword.”

  “Canute?” said Miss Pendleton. “I believe he was making a point about the impossibility of doing so. But my father was just the same. About papers, I mean, not the sea.”

  She gave him a look that warmed Daniel right down to his toes.

  “That’s why I started helping him,” she went on. “The accounts in particular made him frantic. And Mama—who’d been managing a great deal of them—grew too ill to do much.”

  Her face had grown softer as she spoke of her family. Daniel could imagine her as much younger, eagerly shouldering one responsibility after another.

  “I liked keeping order, and I could usually find the information that was needed or a missing key or a correspondent’s address. Papa called me a marvel.”

  Her gaze was far away. Obviously, she was remembering some of the happiest moments of her life. She’d been a different creature before her brother’s troubles engulfed her, Daniel concluded. He was moved by the picture of her basking in her father’s praise. A sharp pang of envy muddled the feeling.

  “I learned from our man of business when he visited, and the tenants. After a while, I could explain the more complicated matters to Papa.” She looked up and seemed to recall her surroundings. Her expression shifted. “So, perhaps it’s fortunate I’m here,” she said briskly.

  “It certainly is.”

  The warmth in his voice startled them both. Emotion suffused the room, like mist drifting across the surface of a secluded lake. Daniel’s chest tightened. It was not harder to breathe. He was imagining that. Miss Pendleton had been speaking of other people, other places. Nothing to do with him. She’d be shocked to know what he was feeling. This…whatever it was, would be appreciated by no one. He knew that from long experience. Ancient resentments stirred; he squashed them. “I’ll go and give the orders about gathering papers,” he said.

  “Yes.” As if she couldn’t sit still, Miss Pendleton rose and began picking up the papers that had flooded out of the wardrobe yesterday. “They should stack everything on the inner side of the parlor, away from the windows,” she said without looking up.

  “Stack,” Daniel echoed. The word implied mountains of papers and was probably hideously accurate. He moved toward the door.

  “So we can begin our files on the other side and keep everything straight.”

  “I took your meaning,” he replied. He wasn’t dim, Daniel thought. On the contrary, he was very clever about some things. Obsessive sorting wasn’t a sign of intelligence. Look at squirrels. Resentment tried to rise in him again. There seemed to be quite a large amount of it, looming, powerful. Wanting nothing to do with the sensation, he stalked out. He would take his time speaking to his housekeeper, and he wouldn’t return until he was utterly composed.

  When the door of the estate office opened sometime later, Penelope turned eagerly. “Look at this!” She held up a parchment she’d unearthed. Curlicues of antique writing adorned it. There was even a tiny illumination in one corner.

  “Something about Rose Cottage?” Lord Whitfield asked.

  “No. It’s a grant of advowson from 1634!”

  “Advowson,” he repeated.

  “The right to recommend a clergyman for a vacant post, or to appoint him. The latter, in this case.”

  “Right. I knew that. Which living is it?”

  She’d become so engrossed in the hunt that she’d forgotten the way he’d left, as if he couldn’t wait to be gone. Awkwardness flooded back when he looked at the parchment as if it was just a scrap of paper. Her fervor ebbed. “Why there was a two-hundred-year-old grant here in the desk I can’t imagine.”

  “Can’t you?”

  He had no reason to be distant. She hadn’t done anything. In fact, she was helping him. And herself, of course. How long would it take to find the information she wanted in this jumble? “You should keep current matters close at hand and store older documents elsewhere.”

  “No doubt.”

  Penelope stifled an urge to hit him. “That method is sensible, you see, because the older ones are needed less often.”

  “Yes, Miss Pendleton, I do see. Anyone would. The idea is obvious.”

  “And yet never used at Frithgerd, as far as I can see.”

  “After an hour of rooting about.” Whitfield looked stung, which was curiously satisfying.

  “Long enough to discover a complete lack of organization.”

  He started to speak. Penelope braced for a setdown. Then he shrugged and gave her a rueful smile instead. “I know. Can a horror of paper be handed down in families, do you think?”

  Penelope had to smile back. There was the charm again, flashing like a dark lantern flipped open in the night.

  “There’s probably some Greek word for it. There generally is. Papyrophobia? The oddest fears are named in Greek. Were they pigeonhearted, do you think?”

  “They won the Trojan War.”

  He stared at her. She stared back. It was like looking into a mirror of feelings, Penelope thought. He looked startled and amused and speculative. Just as she did, she was certain. They shared a silent communion. Then he nodded. Acknowledgment or dismissal?

  “Give me a task,” he added. “I’ll pitch in.”

  Work, they were here to work. “You could look through the pile around the wardrobe.”

  He groaned but went to do so. They sorted in silence for a while.

  “Oh my.” The exclamation escaped Penelope.

  “What is it?”

  “A loose page from an accounting in Latin. From 1296, if I’m reading it correctly. How far back does your family go at Frithgerd?”

  Daniel gladly abandoned his litter of papers. “The tale is that a Norman lordling came along after the Conquest and married a Saxon girl to get a chunk of the land hereabouts. He even took her name to ingratiate himself with the locals, since the Friths were so well established. He was a clever fellow or a greedy invader, depending on the side you take. There’s a bit of the Saxon stonework left in the east wing.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “Would you like to see it?” Daniel stepped closer. Viewing would entail a walk outside, which seemed like a godsend.

  “Perhaps another time.”

  “Architecture doesn’t interest you as much as documents?”

  “No,” she said absently. “Though I don’t suppose the records go back nearly that far.”

  With a sigh, Daniel returned to his designated litter of papers. “I can only hope,” he said. “Mrs. Phipps, my housekeeper, told me that there are trunks of records in the attics. I think she was keeping that from me to save my sanity.”

  Miss Pendleton laughed. It was a delightful sound, lilting and musical. If he could make her laugh, perhaps he could endure the sorting, Daniel thought. “She wondered if we wanted them down here in all their dirt,” he continued.

  “Of course we want them!”

  “Just what I told her. They’re putting the trunks in the blue parlor.”

  Miss Pendleton actually rubbed her hands together. They were dusty, Daniel noticed, and those odd sleeve covers hadn’t prevented the skirts of her gown from acquiring a streak.

  “I saw your father’s will,” she said.

  It was on top of the desk, so of course
she had. “It’s not informative about Rose Cottage, as I’m sure you noticed.”

  She nodded. “It’s so strange that there are no other documents about the place.”

  “I looked.”

  “Of course.”

  Her tone was…condescending? His family’s disorganized papers had given her a false impression of him, Daniel thought. He was capable, just not an antiquarian. As he’d be more than happy to show her. Various improbable heroic deeds filled his brain.

  “Was the cottage always part of your estate, or was it purchased at some point?” Miss Pendleton mused.

  Daniel took the question as it was meant, rhetorically.

  “There ought to be a history of the estate, with maps showing the original boundaries and any changes over the years. I compiled a volume of boundaries and deeds for Papa.” She broke off, suddenly melancholy.

  How would he feel if Frithgerd was suddenly gone? Despite Daniel’s difficulties with his parents, it would be like losing a limb. She hadn’t stood to inherit her father’s estate of course, but she’d obviously loved her home. Daniel thought her dead brother must have been either a blackguard or a complete idiot.

  * * *

  Three floors above, in the attics of Frithgerd, a great winnowing was taking place. Trunks and boxes were opened, examined, and left in place or hauled downstairs, according to their contents.

  Kitty, Betty, and Tom had come along to help, one on orders and the other two out of curiosity.

  Tom turned to discover two female rumps in the air as the girls rummaged through a trunk, skirts pooled on the dusty floor around them. They presented a striking contrast, Betty’s figure plump and well rounded, Kitty’s on the scrawny side. Tom took in an appreciative eyeful, then looked away.

  “His lordship’s taking a deal of trouble for your young lady,” Betty said. “You think he’s sweet on her?”

  “Might be,” replied Kitty, her voice somewhat muffled by the depths of the trunk. “How would I know?”

  “You see them together when he visits.”