A Season of Seduction (35 page)

Chapter Nineteen

H
ard labor made Becky forget. Or at least it made her shove the pain into the background while her muscles burned with fatigue. Guided by the three servants, she washed and cleaned and even hammered when the occasion called for it.

The morning after her arrival at Seawood, she took some time to write a letter to her brother and Kate, explaining where she was and that she needed to be alone for a while. She sent Sam to the village to mail the letter, and then she went back to work.

She quickly came to understand why Mr. Jennings spoke so highly of Seawood. It wasn’t a sparkling jewel, but it had stood, stubborn and stout, on the edge of this cliff for two hundred years. A recent gale had blown out the front window and had damaged the roof, but the heart of the house remained, facing the beating of the harsh weather head-on.

Mr. Jennings had lived here his entire life—his father had served as steward before him. He loved it here, as windblown and forbidding as it was. For him, there could be nowhere in the world to surpass the beauty of this place.

The house had been a childhood home of Becky’s mother and grandparents, all of whom had died when Becky was very young. Here at Seawood, she found evidence of their humanity: old possessions, clothes, and letters. At Seawood, Becky’s mother’s family started to feel real to her for the first time in her life.

Fireplaces stood at each of the four corners of the house—a requirement for staying warm on a cold winter’s day in blustery Cornwall. The interior was divided into nine rooms on two floors: five bedrooms, a drawing room, a dining room, a kitchen with a small scullery and pantry, and a study. There were three additional rooms in the attic for the servants as well.

As soon as Becky had entered the house, she’d asked Mr. Jennings to give her a tour, then she’d selected the room she intended to use as her bedchamber. She didn’t choose to sleep in the largest bedroom or the adjoining chamber meant for the master’s wife. Instead, she chose the room Mr. Jennings said had been her mother’s.

They’d spent the remainder of the day scouring the room, removing the dust from every crevice in the carved bedposts, beating the rugs, and clearing the wardrobe of old clothes.

The room was painted a light green, and Sam had worked to remove the peeling and bubbling layer of green to reveal a yellow layer underneath, leaving the walls with a spotted effect.

Becky didn’t care. When spring came, she’d have the house repainted and refurbished. For now, all that mattered was that she had a clean place to sleep. A place to mourn her loss.

No, she wouldn’t mourn, she thought on the second morning at Seawood as she entered the grease-and-dust-laden kitchen, a dirty rag dangling from her fingers and her pistol comfortingly heavy hidden in the depths of her apron pocket. She hadn’t lost anything. By coming here, she’d gained her freedom from a man who might have caused her more misery than William had. She could only thank God that she’d discovered his treachery before they’d wed.

She’d won. Either Jack would seduce and marry some other poor rich girl, or both he and the man who’d written the letter—Wortingham, the earl had called him—would have to do without their coveted fortune.

She didn’t care either way.

The thought of Jack looking at another woman in the same way he’d looked at her, though… Oh, how it made her skin crawl. Each morning, she woke sick to her stomach and even sicker in her heart. She wished she could warn every woman in London against him. Explain how he’d lie through his teeth—offer promises of love, offer caresses that would make any woman melt… but it was all a deception.

Yet she couldn’t reveal his treachery—in doing so she would only reveal herself as a besotted, gullible fool. Cecelia had told her that she was mysterious and unpredictable, and this gave her power. Well, she’d wielded that power by disappearing into the night on the eve of her wedding. She’d make her own way now. From now on, her independence would be her power.

As Sam and Mr. Jennings cleaned the fireplaces and got them in working order, Becky helped Mrs. Jennings with the kitchen. While Mrs. Jennings steeped the silver in soap leys, Becky stared in dismay at layers of years-old grease on the steel grate.

“Here, ma’am, I’ve boiled you some emery and soap to help with that,” Mrs. Jennings said, handing her a bowl filled with a gritty paste.

Becky looked from the bowl to the rag to Mrs. Jennings. “What do I do with it?”

“Why, you’re to scrub it.” Stepping away from the silver, Mrs. Jennings rubbed her chapped hands on her apron, then took her rag and scooped up a bit of the gray paste with it. “There, you see?”

Becky nodded. “I… think so.” She was to rub the rag over the grease and the paste would help it to come off. She wondered why, with all the books she’d devoured in her life, she’d never read one about housekeeping.

Mrs. Jennings turned back to the stove, her shoulders slumped. After watching them work yesterday, Becky had realized right away that Mr. and Mrs. Jennings were too aged to accomplish much, for they were quick to tire. It was up to Becky and Sam—whom she should have already sent back to London and her brother but couldn’t bear to say good-bye to quite yet—to undertake most of the work.

Becky told Mrs. Jennings to rest her plump body at the small round table in the center of the kitchen and direct Becky on how to clean the oven. It was a dirty, nasty job, and by the time she was finished, Becky’s hair hung limply around her face and her arms were covered up to the elbows in grease, but both the stove and the adjacent oven sparkled.

Just sitting for two hours had exhausted Mrs. Jennings, however, so Becky sent her back to her own cottage for an afternoon rest. Sitting at the rough-hewn kitchen table, Becky ate some bread and cheese without really tasting either, and drank a tankard of country ale. Even though she wasn’t accustomed to the stuff, it satisfied her thirst. And it calmed her. It made her feel that she could face the rest of the day.

She’d have to hire workers eventually. But for now, she just wanted to work and work and work. She could see nothing in her future but work, and she could wish for nothing more.

God forbid she become as melancholy as she had been in Kenilworth, when she was married to William and learning that her marriage was a sham. She’d sat listlessly in the parlor for days on end, staring at the blurring pages of books, reading but not really absorbing the words, fear and desperation clawing at her chest, worsening with every hour that passed.

She would not turn into that woman again. She’d not wile away her days feeling sorry for herself. She’d be productive. She’d make this house her own. She’d learn about the family she’d never known. When those tasks were accomplished… she’d find something else. Something to do that would prove that she was a capable,
independent
woman.

This time, she would be strong. Even if that meant shoving her broken heart into the deep recesses of her soul and forgetting about it.

After she finished her luncheon, she went upstairs toexplore the master’s bedroom. This was where her grandfather, Sir Barnaby Wentworth, had slept. It was a small room, entirely masculine, decorated in dusty browns and deep reds. The bed was ornate, with lavishly carved mahogany posts and heavy velvet bed curtains. Rosewood tables flanked the bed, and matching tall cabinets stood against the opposite wall.

After a brief survey of the bed and determining that the curtains were moth-eaten and would have to be discarded, Becky went to the cabinets. She opened the doors, finding men’s clothing from a previous age—yellowed linen shirts and braces, drawers, stockings, buckskin breeches, woolen pantaloons, a few waistcoats and tailcoats.

The drawer below revealed a stack of gloves and old cravats. Buried beneath them was a packet of letters. Moving to the only chair in the room, a stiff-looking wooden piece with a tall back and a brown velvet-padded seat, she untied the string that held the bundle together and saw that they were all letters from her mother to her grandparents.

She opened the top one. It was dated November 1800, just four years before Becky was born. Becky’s mother had been eighteen when her daughter was born, so she must have been around fourteen years old when she’d written this letter.

Dear Mama and Papa,

Please let me come home. School is wretched and I hate it immensely.

Your miserable daughter,

Mary

The next letter, dated six months later, read,

Dear Mama and Papa,

I miss you so. I have not seen you in six months. Will you not allow me to come with you to Seawood this summer? Madame Latrisse says I am doing very well with my lessons and I will not fall at all behind if I were to go away for a few weeks.

The Season has been busy in London, but the weather has been horrid, and I do feel for all the girls who are looking for husbands and run hither and thither in the mud and downpours. I am very glad not to be one of them.

Your loving daughter,

Mary

Becky read on, her hands trembling as she read letters penned by her young mother. Her mother had obviously loved her parents dearly, and she’d missed them terribly, but they’d never allowed her to come home. No wonder all her mother’s belongings in her bedchamber seemed to have belonged to a very young girl. When Becky’s mother had reached a certain age, she had been sent away and never allowed to return.

Becky’s grandparents, while they’d paid for a genteel lady’s education and, later on, a Season for their daughter, had otherwise neglected and forgotten her. Yet they’d kept all her letters together. It was odd. They’d cared enough to keep her letters close, but had failed to bring her home. They’d kept aloof and distant, ignoring their daughter’s pleas for love, and yet, by the row of portraits of her mother on the mantelpiece, it was clear they never forgot her completely.

Becky’s heart lurched as she studied the sad look in her mother’s eyes in the portrait at the end of the mantel. It must have been painted when she was eleven or twelve years old. Becky had grown up thinking that her mother’s sadness was her fault, that her mother had been disappointed in her for some reason, but it was clear to her now that her mother’s melancholy had begun long before her birth.

As she grew older, her mother became more defiant, and her letters began to speak of friends and parties, of noblemen’s daughters and the eligible bachelors of the
ton
. Then the letters stopped for an entire year. There were two letters after that. The second-to-last letter was very short.

I hate you both, and I hate him. I don’t care if he is a duke. I shall be miserable forever.

Becky stared at the letter for a long while. Her father had died two years before her mother had, and she had few memories of him. But a feeling of dread always welled within her when she thought of him, and she knew Garrett possessed no fond memories of him.

Pressing the letter to her chest, she closed her eyes.Had her mother been like Jack’s Anne Turling? Married to a man she never loved just because he was a peer?

Becky looked up at the sound of footsteps in the passageway. “Mr. Jennings!”

The old man halted and leaned inside. His arms were full of linens he was taking downstairs to wash. “Yes, ma’am?”

“You knew my mother, didn’t you?”

“Why, yes, of course I did.” A smile flitted over his age-thinned lips. “You are the image of her, my lady.”

Becky nodded. She’d been told that often. As a rule, the Jameses were a tall, tawny breed, and Garrett was a James through and through. Becky was a product of their father’s second marriage, however, and hadn’t inherited the traditional strong family features.

“What was she like?”

Mr. Jennings leaned against the doorframe. The long furrows deepened across his brow as he considered for a long moment. “The last I saw her, she must’ve been ten or twelve years old. A scrap of a lass, she was, spoiled but sweet as could be, with a ready smile for everyone.”