A Place For Repentance (The Underwood Mysteries Book 6) (11 page)

              Will appeared to be somewhat mollified by this and his frown lifted while his stiffened shoulders relaxed considerably, “Do you really think so, Mr Underwood?”

              “Indeed I do.”

              “But it is still a great risk to take. What if Martha is wrong and we do no better there than we have here? All the expense of moving and then to gain no profit. No, I cannot contemplate it. I cannot allow my lease on the shop to expire only to find that I have made a dreadful error and have left my family without an income or a roof over their heads.”

              At that moment Martha and Verity came into the dining room to urge the gentlemen to join them in the parlour. They heard the end of this conversation and Martha smiled in triumph, “William, I have the perfect solution to your dilemma. I shall travel to Hanbury and look about for suitable premises and to gather information about the town and its needs. You shall stay here and keep the shop until I return. I swear to you that I will be truthful about our prospects. If Hanbury is not going to make our fortunes, I will come back here and never speak of the matter again. I only ask that you at least allow me to look into the possibility.”

              This was the most reasonable concession the lady had made all evening and the tension in the room was palpable. They all waited for Will to make his decision. He was fully aware of all the eyes upon him and the pressure he felt to please them all was almost unbearable, for he was still unsure.

              Underwood was feeling a similar stress, but for an entirely different reason. He waited with bated breath for Verity to make the offer of their home for Mrs Jebson’s convenience, knowing that once the words were spoken by his soft-hearted wife he would not be able to gainsay her. He envisioned a miserable few weeks whilst he shared his house with this disagreeable woman.

              Thankfully, and for probably the first time in her life, Verity did not allow her heart to rule her head. She pressed her lips firmly together to prevent the fateful words from escaping. She really could not endure to have Martha Jebson as a house-guest, no matter how much she liked and admired her husband.

              Will spoke at last, “I accept that is a good plan, Martha, but what of the girls? You cannot drag them about Hanbury with you and I cannot care for them here and keep the shop running too. No, I’m sorry, it is not a viable proposition.”

              “Lucy can look after them,” said Martha promptly.

              “No, they are too much for her. You seem to forget that she is barely old enough to be working for us at all and certainly is not fit to take on so much responsibility. You know Prue and Minta require constant vigilance.”

              Lindell, who had a small personal problem to solve, immediately saw an end to his own dilemma. If there was one talent which most vicars possessed, it was the ability to find a philanthropic solution to almost every conundrum, though they usually credited ‘divine intervention’ for the inspiration; “I might perhaps be able to help with that.”

              All eyes turned to him, “I happen to know a young lady who is in desperate need of a place to stay and a little money to help her back onto her feet,” he added with a smile of satisfaction. What could be better? He had rid himself of the French girl and helped the Jebsons in the same move.

              Everyone greeted this solution with great enthusiasm and the conversation immediately turned to all that could be accomplished by Mrs Jebson in Hanbury and how the Underwoods would certainly aid her in finding a reasonably priced lodging house for her stay.

              Only Underwood noticed that Will Jebson had turned pale and fallen silent as though something was troubling him very deeply.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘Non Placet’ – It does not please

              Verity was tasked with telling Violette of her change of fortune. It did not occur to any of them that the girl might refuse the offer of employment. She was not, after all, in a position to be overly fastidious. However, the older woman was rather astonished to find that the French girl showed no real surprise that she had been invited to work for the apothecary, indeed, she looked as though the result had been a foregone conclusion. It was almost, Verity confided to her husband later, as though she had planned for just such an eventuality. Indeed it had disquieted Verity so greatly that she had felt obliged to reassure herself that Violette fully understood the task she would be taking on.

              “You do like children?” she had asked anxiously. “You know how to play with them, how to pander to their needs?”

              “Oh, yes, I have worked as a French governess before I was an actress.”

              The fact that she added nothing to this comment told Verity that she was perhaps, better not knowing exactly why the girl had left a comfortable position as a governess, presumably in a well-to-do household, for the uncertain profession of acting.

              Underwood was only too aware that his wife, for all her gentle nature, was no fool. He pondered on her report and finally asked, “Is there something about Violette that worries you, my dear? Are we making an error in recommending her to Will and his wife?”

              Verity thought carefully before she answered him, “No, I don’t think she is a bad person. Rather she is a desperate one and I am concerned that she could inadvertently cause trouble. There was something a little odd about her eagerness to accept the position with the Jebsons without even asking to meet the children first. I would have thought her previous experiences would have taught her to be more circumspect.”

              “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” said Underwood comfortingly. “As you say, she is without resources or friends who can help. She is probably just grateful for any respite from penury. Doubtless we would behave in the same way if we were penniless, hungry and without friends. And after all, it is only for a week or two whilst Mrs Jebson satisfies herself that Hanbury is the place she wants to start a new business.”

              They left the matter at that, but there lingered in Underwood’s mind a faint, but very real, apprehension about the French girl; a tiny niggle that troubled him from time to time, wondering exactly who she was and where she had really come from – for he was positive it was not Flanders.

              It is doubtful that either of the Underwoods would have been consoled had they known the reason Violette was so calm about her sudden change in fortune. She had ever been superstitious and simply felt that fate had delivered her into the hands of a man she liked and trusted. Of course he was married, but Violette was French and was accustomed to the idea that she might very well be called upon to share the man whom she had decided was her destiny. It did not occur to her that such a solution might not meet with the approval of the straight-laced English. It was all just meant to be and something would occur to facilitate her desires. What that might be, she had no idea and she had no intention of trying to make any plans, since previous experience had shown her that this was utterly pointless. No matter how carefully laid, plans rarely worked out. If there was anything that her strange and eventful life had taught Violette, it was that something always turned up; not always, perhaps, something good, but something, nevertheless.

*

              All too soon their holiday was drawing to a close. They had one last engagement and then it would be time to pack up and return to Hanbury.

              Dinner at Pershore House should have been a treat, but as Underwood was in possession of information unknown to the others, he wondered just how congenial the evening was destined to be. Rutherford had sworn that he intended to inform his sister of his determination to return to Australia and Underwood suspected that he might just use the presence of others to protect him from the worst of the backlash this was bound to cause.

              Of course the boy did precisely what Underwood had feared, though he waited until the gentlemen had finished their port and re-joined the ladies for tea in the drawing room before he sprang his surprise.

              “Cressida, Matty, I have something to tell you, but I beg you will wait until I have finished explaining before you interrupt.”

              The ladies exchanged a coy smile, so sure were they that Rutherford was about to announce his intention of asking for the hand of one of several young ladies to whom he had been introduced since his return from Australia, no longer a black sheep, but once more the heir to a very considerable estate and fortune.

              “I want you to know that I have tried so very hard to fit back into life here. You can have no conception of the daily struggle it has been, but I have to tell you that I have utterly failed. In short, my dears, I am so very unhappy here that I have decided to return to the country that made a man of me.”

              Cressida looked confused, as well she might. In her opinion it was the war in the Peninsular that had taken a boy and sent back a man. Could he possibly mean that he wanted to live on the Continent? But where and why?

              “Do you mean to go to Spain, perhaps, or Portugal? What on earth do you expect to find there to occupy you?” Even as she spoke, she was reassuring herself. This was not the end of the world. Europe was accessible, with some difficulty, it must be admitted, but visits would be possible.

              Then he exploded her illusions as surely as if he had fired a cannon in their midst.

              “No, I mean to go back to Australia.”

              The words were spoken, but it was a good few seconds before they were fully assimilated. When the truth became apparent, he could expect no quarter to be given.

              He had been relying on good manners to force Cressida and Miss Fettiplace to accept his pronouncement with equanimity, but he had entirely overlooked the fact that they both felt quite at ease in Underwood’s company after the trials and tribulations of the year before. He had seen them at their most vulnerable and distraught back then, and had been aided by them in his covert activities to catch Ormond Luckhurst and his dastardly cohorts in trying to defraud Rutherford and Cressida out of their rightful inheritance. In these circumstances it was hardly likely that they would baulk at showing their displeasure when the man they had fought so hard to redeem now appeared to throw all their love and dedication back in their faces.

              As Rutherford closed his prepared speech, Miss Fettiplace simply burst into noisy sobs, but Cressida, though pale, was icily calm, “Do you mean to tell me that after all we have been through, after all the heartache, the frantic worry, the miserable loneliness, that you intend to leave us here alone and unprotected so that you can go back to that awful country and have another silly school-boy adventure?”

              She could not comprehend his attitude. She had heard nothing all these months but of privation, starvation, cruelty and horror. Had he not told of slaving in the burning sun, prey to dreadful stinging creatures of all kinds? Of the constant peril from deadly snakes and spiders that hid in clothing or shoes and whose bite meant an agonizing death? Of food contaminated with ants, cockroaches and flies, so that to eat it meant sickness and the flux? Strange animals of all sorts, from the bounding kangaroos that could kill a man with a vicious kick, and gigantic bats, the size of domestic cats, that swooped in the night, their faces like foxes, with sharp, needle-like teeth. What of the forest fires that swept across great swathes of the country, destroying everything in its path, sparing nothing and impossible to stop?

              Had her brother taken leave of his senses, to want to return to that satanic place, when he could remain here, loved, safe and rich?

              Rutherford, for his part, immediately took offence at her reference to a ‘silly, schoolboy adventure’. The girl had no notion of the challenges he had faced and overcome. She could never understand how the very thought of returning to that life made the blood pump through his veins, making him feel alive, energized in a way that he could never feel in safe and boring Wimpleford.

              “Now, see here, Cressy, I won’t have you talk to me that way. It’s my life, after all, and if I want to spend it somewhere that I love instead of in this dead and alive hole ...”

              “Dead and alive hole!” she gasped, infuriated by his cavalier dismissal of the place she loved best in the world, “You unspeakable little toad! I wish we had left you in Australia. Ormond might have been a viper, but at least he loved Pershore. You do not deserve this place, or the devotion Matty and I have lavished upon you.”

              If Rutherford had taken exception to being called a ‘schoolboy’ it was nothing to the fury he felt at being compared to his cousin Luckhurst, whom he had always despised, but never more so than when he had learned of his perfidious attempt to get their Great Aunt Greenhowe to change her will in his favour and have Rutherford exiled to the ends of the earth for the rest of his life. It mattered not that Rutherford fully intended to now exile himself to the very same place. 

              Verity had listened to all this, horrified to be at the centre of a family dispute, but resolutely silent. It had nothing to do with her where Rutherford wanted to live, nor was it her concern that Cressida did not care for his life choices. However, when Rutherford, white-faced and furious, rose to his feet and looked set to walk out of the house, she felt she must intervene. If the stupid boy walked out now, he might never come back – and then how would his sister ever forgive herself?

              “That is quite enough, children,” she said deliberately using the voice she would have employed with her own offspring. “Can you not see how much distress you are causing poor Miss Fettiplace? And how you have discommoded Mr Underwood? This is not the way to behave before guests. I require you to cease this conduct at once.”

              Her tone reduced them at once to the schoolroom and they both subsided, ashamed to have been caught in such an unmannerly display.

              “I do apologize, Mrs Underwood,” said Rutherford. “That was unforgivable. But Cressida should take fair warning that I mean every word I say.”

              “I too am very sorry,” returned Cressida, casting a darkling glance at her brother, “but Rutherford should also take fair warning that I intend to do everything in my power to make him change his mind about this ridiculous scheme – even if it means going to law to remove his allowance from him – let us see how far you get without a penny to your name, Rutherford Petch!”

              The two glared at each other and Underwood thought this might be the moment to take their leave. He bowed over the shaking hand of poor Miss Fettiplace, but avoided doing the same to Cressida, who looked ready to kill any man who ventured too close to her.

              Verity thanked them sweetly for the evening, then added, with what Underwood considered to be a degree of levity which had no place in the current situation, “And of course, we shall see you again very soon in Hanbury, for Jeremy James Thornycroft’s birthday party.”

              It was a very subdued pair who saw them into their carriage and waved them away from the front step of Pershore House.

              Underwood sank gratefully against the squabs, glad for once to be inside a carriage, instead of dreading the journey, “Whew! I thought those two were going to come to blows.”

              “They may yet do so,” said Verity, “and I can quite see why. Rutherford is a selfish creature and I do not blame Cressida in the least for being cross with him.”

              Underwood hardly thought the word ‘cross’ adequately described the volcanic fury which Cressida had directed at her sibling, but he chose not to argue the point with his wife – there had been quite enough dissent for one evening.

              “I must say that it has been a most unexpectedly eventful time. So much for your idea that I should rest and recuperate! I may not have tracked down the ‘widow’ but we have, between us, rescued a damsel in distress, found her employment, aided our friends to consider beginning a new life and witnessed a family rift which will probably echo down the ages.”

              Verity sighed happily at his summing up of their adventures, “I would like to think that I also helped Lindell with his school and all his other endeavours.”

              “I’m very sure that you have. Well, my dear, we are bound for home tomorrow. Have you enjoyed our holiday?”

              Verity turned to him, her gloved hands clasped together in ecstasy, “Oh, my dearest Cadmus, I cannot tell you how much! Of course I have missed everyone at home, especially the girls, but it has done me so much good to have a short break from domestic cares. I only hope that you too have benefitted from it.”

              “You know, my love, I rather think I have.”

              Verity was so delighted to hear him say so that she quite forgot herself and kissed him, long and lingering, despite the fact that the Pershore coachman could, at any moment, turn and observe her unseemly, not to say hoydenish, behaviour.