Jonet, whose rapt eyes had been drifting over the façade of the house, immediately dropped her chin and smiled sweetly at the housekeeper. “Congratulate?” she said vaguely.
Too late, Cole realized he should have seen it coming. He should have leapt forward and clapped a silencing hand over Mrs. Birtwhistle’s mouth. Instead, he froze as she blurted out the words, “Oh, congratulations indeed, ma’am! Why, we’d begun to fear that Mr. Amherst would never bring us a new mistress. And may I say we are all just beside ourselves with pleasure.”
For a split second, Jonet’s mouth hung gracelessly open. Then, as usual, her composure returned in full force. She gave a gracious laugh and leaned companionably forward, patting the old woman on the arm. “Oh, my dear Mrs. Birtwhistle!” she said lightly. “On that score, I must warn you that we are both one step ahead of Mr. Amherst.”
“A step . . . ahead?” The old woman looked disconcerted.
“Indeed, ma’am, I am quite shocked at your acuity!” Jonet cut a teasing look in Cole’s direction, then dropped her voice to an intimate whisper. “You see, I have indeed set my cap at him, but I have not yet convinced him.”
“What sort of cap, Mama?” asked Robert vaguely, lifting his head from the fat, and rather obviously pregnant cat, which he and Stuart had been petting.
“Oh, my!” said the housekeeper, her attention snapping back to Cole. “But your message said—” A little desperately, she began to pat her apron pockets. “I had it right here, and I thought it said that . . . well,that there was a lady and her children to be made at home . . . and I daresay we mistook your meaning, and thought . . .”
Cole laid his hand lightly upon Mrs. Birtwhistle’s arm. “Heaven only knows what my message may have said, ma’am,” he said soothingly. “I wrote it in such haste, I wanted only to do you the courtesy of letting you know that our arrival was imminent. And I am sure that you have prepared as best you can on such short notice.”
His remarks seemed to further distress poor Mrs. Birtwhistle. “Oh!” she remarked, one hand flying to her mouth in horror. “And I have made up the family rooms on the second floor.”
“The second floor?” interjected Jonet brightly as her coachman began to toss down luggage. “I am sure that will do nicely. I always say that two is such a lucky number, do I not, my dear?” She slid her fingers possessively beneath Cole’s elbow and shot him another spectacular smile.
The housekeeper looked as if she might say something more, but Cole simply nodded. “Mrs. Rowland is right, Mrs. Birtwhistle,” he interjected, using the name they had agreed upon. “The second floor suite will suffice.”
It was almost five by the time Cole finished reacquainting himself with his meager household staff, and nearer to six by the time he concluded his discussions with Moseby regarding the status of estate business. Overall, Moseby and his tenants had managed to patch things together during his absence, but after years of near neglect, many pressing issues demanded his personal attention. Time and again, he had cause to question the wisdom of his having stayed away so long.
Now, barns and granaries were urgently needed. Tenant houses required new roofs before another winter passed. The livestock required an infusion of new blood, and some serious decisions needed to be made regarding drainage and crops for the coming season. It seemed as if there was enough work to keep Cole at Elmwood for a full year without so much as an afternoon off. Here. Alone with his memories. It was a daunting prospect.
As the door to his father’s old study swung shut behind Moseby, Cole crossed the room to a side table by the window and poured out a measure of brandy. His gaze drifted over the scene below—the perfectly trimmed grass, the graceful symmetry of the rose arbor, the cheerful white belvedere, all of it framed in a high hedge of boxwood—and he thought faintly of Rachel. How often had he watched her, just strolling through that garden in her quiet, solitary way?
He stood at the window for a long moment, simply swirling the amber liquid in his goblet and staring down into the shadows, both real and imagined. But that simply would not do. He tried to will away the vision. Through the open glass, he allowed himself to breathe deeply of the scents of warm boxwood, fresh grass, and newly tilled earth, discovering with some surprise that they were still quite comforting. Oh, yes. He had been away too long. He had left too many things ill tended, his own heart and soul amongst them, perhaps.
Suddenly, a shriek of feminine laughter tore through the silence, and Cole’s eyes shifted to the little wooden belvedere that sat in a distant corner of the garden. Behind it, young Stuart appeared to be forcibly dragging his mother out of the shrubbery. “Found you, found you!” he chanted triumphantly. “Fair and square, Mama! Now you must seek while Robin and I hide!”
But Jonet was apparently unwilling to accept her fate with anything near ladylike grace. Still giggling, she resisted him mightily. A sprig of boxwood appeared to be protruding from her hair, which was rapidly tumbling down, and her skirts were a mess of dust and cobwebs. The hem of her black dress was caught on a dry twig, revealing a lovely ankle and a goodly portion of her well-turned calf.
Stuart jerked her free, then clapped his hands with delight, looking suddenly like the little boy he was supposed to be. Moving backward, he danced away from his mother. “Now, Mama, you must be sporting about it. Count, and go slowly now! You mayn’t cheat.”
Cole watched, entranced, as Jonet sweetly agreed, and then in a sudden flash of motion, darted across the open lawn after Stuart. She caught him easily, pulling him down into the warm, sweet grass and kissing him madly. Stuart shrieked and laughed, struggling to escape until his mother gave him one last kiss atop his head and then set him free.
“Aye, Stuart,” Cole muttered under his breath as he tossed off a goodly portion of his brandy. “That’s the way of her alright. Sweet one moment, willful the next. And before you know it, she’s got you down and having her way with you.”
But of course, Stuart could not hear him. He was off and running, his brother and their effervescent laughter trailing in his wake. Slowly, Jonet strolled up the steps into the belvedere, shut her eyes, and began to count in a loud, ominous voice. Tearing his gaze from the scene, Cole smiled, put down his drink, and went down the hall to begin to dress for dinner. It was only later—much, much later—that Cole truly understood that the sight of Jonet kissing her son in the lush summer grass had obliterated his irrational association between the memory of his late wife and the beauty of his garden.
Jonet could not stop looking at Elmwood. At its architectural core, the house was an elegant Elizabethan manor house, modernized with a brick façade and two graceful wings, the whole of it nestled like a rare jewel amongst ancient trees and simple gardens, then ringed with a moat, which had long since been permanently bridged.
Other than an hour spent romping in the gardens with the children, Jonet spent the whole of her first afternoon simply strolling through its elegantly landscaped perimeter, then drifting inside from one comfortable room to the next. The interior was rambling, and for the most part, cozy rather than ostentatious. The main hall boasted a sweep of darkly paneled walls and a fine Jacobean staircase. A dining room large enough to seat twenty, and a long, dark library completed the picture of country house elegance.
Cole had said that the house had once been the vicarage of St. Ann’s, a fine old Norman church that sat at the southern edge of the village proper, hardly a stone’s throw from Elmwood’s rear lawns. If the cerebral tomes which filled the library, and the portraits of those long dead clerics which lined the upper hall were any indication, Elmwood had remained a vicarage, practically speaking, until very recently. Jonet was left to wonder what sort of tragedy could drive a man from a home he clearly loved, and a duty he was so obviously meant to take up.
In the drawing room, she began to understand. The portrait of Cole’s late wife was set in a gilt frame, hanging high on the carved oak chimneypiece, the style of the clothing leaving little doubt as to the identity of the artist’s subject. Rachel Amherst had been a traditional English beauty, with cool blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She had been painted in a high-backed Stuart chair, one hand resting limply along the arm, and the other lying across the Bible she held open in her lap. But it was the expression—or rather a lack of it—that brought Jonet to a halt in the center of the room.
She strolled closer, bracing her hands across the back of a settee that flanked the hearth, and leaned intently forward. The late Mrs. Amherst looked . . .
detached
, almost as if she were unaware of being painted. It was not a weakness of technique on the part of the artist. Nor was it a modesty of expression in the subject. But rather, a dull, almost placid look about the eyes. A sort of shuttered appearance which seemed to close in her own thoughts while shutting out the thoughts of those about her. Jonet’s reaction was strangely visceral, as if icy fingers were touching the nape of her neck.
“Oh, she was a fair, pretty thing, was she not?” said a soft voice behind her.
Jonet screamed and whirled about.
“Oh!” chirped Mrs. Birtwhistle, setting down a huge vase of flowers and hastening toward the settee. “My dear Mrs. Rowland! I fear I rather crept up on you. Do forgive me.”
Jonet looked down at the tiny woman and felt her face flush with embarrassment. “Oh, please!” she said, one hand still pressed to her heart. “I daresay I had no business snooping through the house like this, it’s just that . . .”
Mrs. Birtwhistle nodded knowingly. “Aye, what with himself shut up in that study all the live long afternoon, like as not you’re bored to death. But ’twill soon be time for dinner, ma’am, and if I know Mr. Amherst—and bless me, I do—he’ll not be missing a meal.”
The housekeeper flitted across the room to a wide mahogany sideboard. “Now, why do you not sit down right there, Mrs. Rowland, and let me pour something to settle your nerves.”
In a moment, she returned with a measure of something that looked to be sherry, and Jonet sipped at it grate fully. Mrs. Birtwhistle, who was still looking at her expectantly, seemed disinclined to leave, and so Jonet seized the moment. “You have been here for some years, I take it?” Jonet asked pleasantly, letting her eyes drift toward the portrait. “I daresay you knew the late Mrs. Amherst well.” “Oh, yes,” agreed the housekeeper. “She came here as a bride in ’06, and stayed until she died, some four years later. Such a pity it was, too.”
“She died in childbirth, did she not?” asked Jonet, deliberately keeping her tone level.
Mrs. Birtwhistle nodded sadly. “Indeed she did, poor woman. But I cannot say as how I was entirely surprised.”
“Not surprised—?”
The elderly woman shrugged. “Well, it’s not my place to say, ma’am, but she had that look about her, if you know what I mean. That wan sort of look—like a person who’s not really a part of this earth, and just not terribly interested in it, either. Sort of like a—a fading away, before your very eyes.”
“I think I have some idea of what you mean,” said Jonet softly.
“Do you? It’s fanciful talk, I daresay. But when the babe came, I was proven right—though I took no pleasure a’tall in it. Never had a chance, poor thing.”
“Never had a chance? In what way?”
Mrs. Birtwhistle shook her head sadly. “Breech, it was. She labored for three days and simply had not the strength to deliver it. And by the time she did, well, ’twas simply too late.”
“Oh, dear,” answered Jonet hollowly. “How dreadful.”
“Well, these things do happen, and ’twas no one’s fault. Though that Mr. Moseby does say the master blamed himself when word came. But he oughtn’t think such things, for he was a fine husband. Always bending over backward for her, and she seemed scarcely to notice. And she had the best of care for her confinement, and a fine doctor, too.” Lightly, the housekeeper stroked the back of the settee, as if soothing a skittish colt. “But there now, Mrs. Rowland, let’s not talk of that any more, shall we?” Her smile brightened. “Mr. Amherst has come home at last—and one oughtn’t fret over the past.”
Sleep did not come easily that night. Cole had not expected that it would, and so he had fortified himself with an extra pillow, a pair of lamps, and a well-thumbed copy of Milton’s Latin elegies from his father’s library. As he thumped his pillows into submission, Cole tried to take comfort in the fact that although his heart—perhaps even his sanity—might be at risk, at least the children were safe.
Everyone now slept in the family rooms on the second floor. Cole had deliberately given Stuart and Robert a large bedchamber to share, and placed Moseby on a cot in their dressing room. The man was a notoriously light sleeper, and his quick response had sent more than one careless French scout on to his great reward rather sooner than expected.
Yes, the children would be safe with Moseby. And as he had told Jonet over dinner, tomorrow he would send someone to speak discreetly with Donaldson to find out what, if anything, was known about the outbreak of illness at Mercer House. Then, as soon as it could be safely done, Ellen or Nanna—even Donaldson, if she wished it—could be brought to Elmwood, to stay as his guests until they had decided what next to do.
But he had made it plain that under no circumstance would he tolerate Lord Delacourt under his roof, nor would he even accept so much as her writing to inform him of their whereabouts. Jonet had jerked back, as if he had dealt her a physical blow. Nonetheless, after a short argument, she had reluctantly acquiesced. Cole only hoped that she would keep her word, because as soon as it could be safely arranged, it was Cole’s intention to return to London alone. It was time, he had firmly decided, to have a long talk with Dr. Greaves and the magistrate about just who was behind the dreadful goings-on in Brook Street.
Through the dim light, Cole scowled at the door which led through his modest dressing room, linking his bedchamber to Jonet’s. It was the devil’s own temptation, that bloody connecting door. And there was yet another inexplicable thing—what the hell had he written to Mrs. Birtwhistle, anyway? She was old and a little flighty, but far from incompetent. Undoubtedly, he had written something that was as vague and misleading as the conflict which raged within his heart.