Sophie said, “I will have Tinker ride immediately back to Lower Slaughter and fetch a doctor for you, Mrs. Smithers.”
“But the house!” Mrs. Smithers wailed and looked for the world as though she would burst into tears.
Sophie patted her bent old shoulder and said gently, “It’s just a house. We’ll fix it up again. You’ll see. It’s you we’re worried about. You’ve done very well. Don’t you agree, Ryder?”
He looked at his wife. She’d certainly changed from the frightened, wary girl who’d lived in his brother’s house. He cleared his throat and said, “Everything will be put to rights. You first of all, Mrs. Smithers. I’m proud of you and I thank you.”
Two hours later, Mrs. Smithers was tucked into bed, heavily dosed with laudanum, her broken leg properly set by an aghast Dr. Pringle, who kept shaking his head. “I don’t believe she managed to survive,” he said over and over again. “That old woman wouldn’t give up.”
Once the doctor had left, Ryder and Sophie stood facing each other in the filthy entrance hall.
“I couldn’t have manufactured a more excellent nightmare,” he said. “I’m sorry, Sophie.”
To his surprise, Sophie grinned. “Let’s go to the kitchen and see if there’s anything to eat.”
There wasn’t, not a scrap. But there were rats, big ones, who had enjoyed themselves for the past three weeks.
Sophie frowned, and said to a shrieking Cory, “Do be quiet. You’re hurting the master’s ears. Now, I want you to go stay with Mrs. Smithers. Mr. Sherbrooke and I are going to Lower Slaughter and hire help, and buy food.”
“Yes,” Ryder said, staring at his wife. “Ah, Tinker, please help the coachman with the horses and the luggage.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Nothing like a challenge, is there?”
CHAPTER 18
THERE WAS NO bed.
Ryder just stood in the doorway of the great master bedchamber and stared blankly about the bare room. He’d avoided looking into the bedchamber earlier because he’d always hated this room. Damned dark and the ceilings were too low. The thick dark gold draperies still covered the long windows, draperies so ugly and shiny with age that Ryder wished Dubust had taken them as well, curse his hide.
No damned bed. It was too much. Sophie was exhausted, he was still so furious he hadn’t allowed himself to feel weariness, and Mrs. Smithers was sound asleep, snoring loudly, after consuming a feast of food. She was in the sewing room, which had been quickly converted for her. Cory would sleep in the room with her. Dubust, the discriminating bastard, hadn’t touched any of the servants’ furniture.
He turned to see Sophie standing right behind him, linens on her arms. She said as she gazed about the room, “Oh dear. I’m so sorry, Ryder.”
“According to the good doctor, Dubust simply told everyone that all furnishings were being sent to Northcliffe Hall. I still can’t believe it. Damnation, Sophie, it’s all my fault.” She shifted the linens and he quickly took them from her.
“We will have to sleep on blankets, I suppose. You’re so tired, sweetheart, I’ll stop my ranting until morning. All right?”
“I don’t particularly like this bedchamber, Ryder.”
“I don’t either, never have, for that matter. Let’s go downstairs. Mrs. Smithers said Dubust slept in here, acted as though he were the prince of the castle. Damn, how could I have been such an irresponsible idiot?”
“If I didn’t know firsthand just how awful the consequences, I’d suggest that we try to find a bottle of brandy.”
He was forced to smile down at her. “You don’t have to down an entire bottle, you know. There is a concept known as moderation.”
“Ah, the concept of moderation—as in you and the very modest number of women you have in your herd?”
Was that acrimony he heard? He grinned down at her like a fool. “Herd? Did you hear Douglas say something? No? Well, let me tell you that I have only one mare now and she appears a real goer, glossy coat, good shoulders and flanks, lots of endurance, thank God. She’ll need all the strength she can get with an idiot for a husband and an empty house. Come, Sophie, before you fall on your face, let’s build ourselves a nest. Thank God, Dubust didn’t take all the blankets and pillows.”
“No, he just wanted all the furniture. So many beautiful things, Mrs. Smithers kept telling me over and over, most of it from that damned second George, she said, not the crazy third George.”
Ryder burst into laughter. “She’s right. Let’s go find a place to stretch out our exhausted bones.”
It wasn’t long before they were lying side by side, as comfortable as three blankets could make them. “Well, at least we’ve gotten things started,” Sophie said. Without thought, she reached out her left hand and found Ryder’s. For an instant, he stilled, then brought her hand to his lips and lightly kissed her wrist and palm.
“Yes,” he said. “But it won’t be easy, sweetheart. Damnation, I should be whipped.”
“I have to admit it has in the past seemed to me to be an excellent thing to do to you, but not for this. This isn’t your fault.”
“And just whose fault is it? Mrs. Smithers’s? Dr. Pringle’s?”
“All right, so your judgment of Mr. Dubust wasn’t correct. I wish you would stop flailing yourself, Ryder.”
But he couldn’t, at least not to himself. Irresponsible fool, that’s what he was, and he knew it and despised himself for it. He’d already planned to change things, had already thought about it a good deal because he was now married and a husband, for God’s sake, but he’d been too late.
Sophie was right. Flailing himself didn’t help a thing at the moment. They’d at least gotten things started. Whilst they’d been in Lower Slaughter, they’d managed to find two women who had worked before at Chadwyck House who were perfectly willing to come back on the morrow. But for now, there was merely filth and more filth. They slept in the Blue Salon, on the floor near the floor-to-ceiling windows—“Hell,” Ryder said, “we can call this the Black Salon if we want to. The good Lord knows there isn’t a patch of blue left.”
He cursed luridly.
“So much for your first night at my wonderful house,” he said, and punched his pillow. He then pulled her closer to his side. “I’m sorry, Sophie. This is all a damned bloody mess and I’ve dropped you right in the middle of it.”
She didn’t answer. Not that he expected her to, because he was so furious, so ashamed that he’d let himself be such a lazy, worthless clod that such a thing could happen, that he wanted to rant, and so he did. “I’ll find the fellow. It shouldn’t be difficult. All the furnishings were catalogued, a fact I doubt our Mr. Dubust knew about. But Uncle Brandon was a great one for detail, indeed so much detail, I think he died finally from choking on it. In any case, we’ll track all the things down, then I’ll find Dubust and cut off his ... well, the fellow will end up in a bad way, I swear it.”
Ryder paused a moment, then realized that his bride was fast asleep. He kissed her forehead.
Life, he thought as he eased into sleep himself, was occasionally irritating and made one face up to what one was. On the other hand, life did bring some pleasant surprises, like the wonderful soft one who was nestled in the crook of his arm, her palm lying over his heart.
The next few days were beyond anything Sophie had ever experienced. She felt like a general directing her troops, that is, when she wasn’t spending her time on the front line side by side with them. She spent her days immersed in dirt, bone tired by mid-afternoon, and having more fun than she could ever remember. What she was doing meant something. She felt wonderful. She felt worthy for the first time in a very long while.
Her hair was bound up in a dirty bandanna, smudges on her face, her gown too short and as dirty as her bandanna, when Doris, a very fat good-natured woman, yelled from the front entrance hall, “Mrs. Sherbrooke! There’s a gentleman here.”
Sophie barely had time to set her broom aside when she came face to face with a very handsome man who had something of the look of the Sherbrookes. She said, her hand thrust out, “You must be Tony Parrish.”
“Guilty, ma’am. And you are my cousin’s new wife.” He turned then and called out, “Come in, love, and dredge up all your wondrous charm. Our new cousin doubtless needs it.”
When Melissande Parrish, Lady Rathmore, floated on fairy-slippered feet into the entrance hall looking like a princess stepping into a slum, Sophie could do nothing but stare at the incredible vision. She had never seen a more beautiful woman in her life.
“You’re Alex’s sister?”
“Oh yes. I’m Melissande, you know, and you must be Sophie. You’re a surprise to every Sherbrooke in England, so Tony tells me. No one ever thought that Ryder would ... that is, Ryder is so very much in demand with the ladies, but Tony believes he won’t see his other mistresses now and—”
“I believe that’s enough abuse of the topic, love,” Tony Parrish said, and leaned down and kissed his wife full on the mouth, much to Sophie’s astonishment.
Melissande blushed and said, “You shouldn’t have begun that in the carriage, my lord, and now you will—” She broke off, shook herself, and said to Sophie, “My husband is a dreadful tease, you know. Now, I see no place to sit. It is very strange. Whatever shall we do?”
Sophie was stymied. In that moment, Ryder strode into the house, looking so beautiful in black Hessians, buckskins, and white shirt open at his throat and wild and male that she wanted, in that brief instant, to hurl herself into his arms. He’d changed so very much in the past three days. Or, she thought, her brow puckering, perhaps it was she who had changed, but just a bit, a tiny little bit. No, he was Ryder and she didn’t feel a blessed thing toward him. He had a very nice smile, his teeth white, his face so very expressive, his light blue eyes crinkling at the corners with pleasure. There was something different about him. It took another moment for Sophie to figure out what it was. He was clearly in charge here. It hadn’t been that he’d lived in his brother’s shadow, no, not that, but here, at Chadwyck House, he was the master and he fitted the role very well. And I, Sophie thought, am the mistress.
The cousins shook hands, slapped each other on the back, and insulted each other’s manhood in high good humor. Sophie felt herself stiffening as she waited for Ryder to turn to the beautiful woman at Tony’s side. She was waiting for him to metaphorically fall at the fairy slippers of the gloriously beautiful Melissande.
He didn’t.
He smiled down at her, a social, quite impersonal smile, and said, “Welcome to Chadwyck House, cousin. I told Tony to keep his distance else I’d put him to work.”
“I’m not such a sluggard,” Tony said. “Behold two willing slaves to do your bidding.”
“We’re not going to London until next week,” Melissande said, looking around her and shuddering. “Until then Tony insists that we help out. However, it is much worse than I’d imagined. I’ve never been dirty before and I think that grime beneath one’s fingernails is quite disgusting.”
Artless, Sophie thought, achingly beautiful and artless. She tucked her fingers into a fist because her fingernails were black from the grate.
“You won’t do a thing,” she said to Melissande. “At least not in that gown.” Sophie looked at her husband, a question in her eyes, but Ryder was looking at Tony, who, in turn, was grinning at his wife, saying, “You’ve been sweaty, very sweaty. Ah, I do remember a time in the Northcliffe gardens—you remember, don’t you, sweetheart?—beneath that statue of Venus trying to cover her bosom with a very small hand—that you got really quite grimy and you didn’t give a good damn.”
Melissande punched him in the arm.
“Some things never change,” Ryder said, shaking his head at his cousin. “Then again, some things change so much that it leaves a poor mortal nearly speechless.”
“Ah,” said Tony, “that is a state my dear wife hasn’t yet quite achieved. But she draws ever nearer.”
Melissande said, puzzlement in her voice, “You appear pretty, Sophie, even though you are wearing that horrid thing around your head and your gown is old and ugly. But you’re not beautiful. It is all very odd, you know. I simply don’t understand it.”
Sophie blinked.
“There is simply no accounting for a man’s preferences,” Ryder said easily. “I daresay it is a lack in my man’s character. She means,” Ryder said in his wife’s ear, “that it’s incomprehensible to her that I, a manly man by all accounts, would prefer you to her.”
“I can see why she would feel that way,” Sophie said. She smiled at the vision. “You are very beautiful.”
“Yes, I know, but Tony prefers that I try to turn aside such compliments, that I treat them as if they were as insubstantial as snowflakes, that is his metaphor, you know. That is the correct term, I believe. But I have no doubt at all that your compliment is terribly sincere and, after all, you’re not a gentleman, thus it can be accepted gracefully, don’t you agree, Tony?”
Tony Parrish, Viscount Rathmore, looked perfectly serious. “Such logic is irrefutable, my love.” He said to Ryder, “All right, tell me what I can do. Incidentally, I brought six men over to help and four women.”
Sophie felt like hugging her new cousin. More help, bless his kind heart. She gave him a dazzling smile that made him cock his head at her. “I see,” he said slowly. “Yes, Ryder, perhaps I do see.”
Four days later, Chadwyck House was spotlessly clean, and completely empty save for a big bed in the salon and the furnishings in the servants’ quarters. Mrs. Smithers was cackling with pleasure, still eating like a stoat. She was delighted that the master had come home to stay and was cursing Allen Dubust for a bounder.
As for Allen Dubust, he’d been caught in a pub in Bristol, his pockets lined with the sale of all Chadwyck House furnishings, all ready to board a ship bound for America in a matter of hours. He had rent money as well from all the farming tenants. It was actually Uncle Albert Sherbrooke who saw him first and Aunt Mildred who screamed him down, offering three guineas to a group of young toughs to bring the lout down and hold him on the ground.