A Victorian Christmas (21 page)

“Would I?”

She glanced up, as though she’d forgotten to whom she was speaking. “Anyone would. Even crotchety old earls.”

“I’m forty-one, Mrs. Rutherford.”

“I’m just past thirty,” she said, setting his boots near the fire. “But I’m not crotchety in the least.”

“Then why are you alone here in my house whilst the rest of the staff have taken the night off to be with their families?”

“My family is only Mrs. Rutherford, my late husband’s mother, though she is more than dear to me,” she said, standing and giving him a gentle smile. “She can hardly keep her eyes open past seven, and so the cottage grows a bit quiet in the evenings. I thought I should like to keep myself busy and help out in the village if I could. Mr. Yardley gave me permission to gather up the leavings in the kitchen each night and take them down to the village to feed the hungry.”

“Leavings?”

“Scraps of potato, bits of meat, bones, bacon ends, carrots, turnips, that sort of thing.”

“I received no word that the villagers were hungry.”

“Then you are ill informed.” Turning, she began to stir the stew in the large black cauldron. “Honestly, some families are barely getting by,” she said softly. “Poor Sukey won’t be able to work again until her family is recovered from the influenza. Her husband is an ironmonger, and he’s terribly ill at the moment. She’s frightened, poor thing. Without their wages, how can they hope to feed all the children? They have five, you know, and one is just a baby. So I gather the leavings into a pot each evening and boil a big stew. Then I put on a kettle of tea, collect the lumps of leftover bread, and carry it all down the hill in the vegetable man’s wagon.”

She hung the dripping ladle on a hook beside the fire and vanished into the shadows of the pantry. Beaumontfort wriggled his toes, decided they were thawing nicely, and stifled a yawn. Rather comfortable here in the kitchen, he thought. Though he longed for time to relax, he didn’t often take time away from his business. Most evenings in London, he entertained guests at home or ventured by carriage through the grimy streets to his gentlemen’s club or to some acquaintance’s house. Life had not always been so.

“You look a hundred miles away, sir,” Mrs. Rutherford said, returning with a plate piled with thinly shaved cold meat. “Might I ask where your thoughts have taken you?”

“Here, actually. To Cumbria. When I was a boy, I roamed the Lake District entirely alone. I wasn’t earl at that time, of course, and I had few responsibilities. I was merely William. Nothing more ponderous than that. Often I vanished for days at a time, and no one bothered to look for me.”

“Goodness,” she said, sifting flour into a bowl. “I should have looked for you at once.”

He glanced up, surprise tilting the corners of his mouth. “Really, Mrs. Rutherford?”

“I wouldn’t want you to feel lonely. A child should have the freedom to explore the world a bit, but he ought to know he’s loved at home, as well.”

The earl considered her words. Unorthodox, but charming. “Have you children, madam?”

“No, sir.” She bit her lower lip as she stirred in some milk.

“Nor have I. Never married, actually. Haven’t given it much thought, though I’ve been advised I should. Heirs, you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Should I ever have children, I would permit them to explore the dales and fells,” he mused, recalling his own wanderings across valleys and hills covered in feathery green bracken. “I would give them a boat and let them row out on the tarns.”

“Did you have a boat?”

He nodded. “Two dogs, as well. One of them could go right over a stone fence in a single leap. But the other . . . I had to slide my arms under his belly and heave him over—a great mound of slobbery fur, gigantic ears, long pink tongue, cold wet nose—”

Pausing, he realized the woman was laughing. “Oh, dear, I can hardly stir the crumpets.” Chuckling, she covered the bowl with a dish towel and set the batter on the hearth to rise. “We always had corgis. Such dogs! They’re more like cats, you know, always nosing into things they shouldn’t. And terribly affectionate. We had to leave our corgi in Wales, Mrs. Rutherford and I, when we came to England. Griffith was his name, and such a wonderful dog I have never known. Although they do shed quite dreadfully.”

Beaumontfort took a sip of the tea the woman had just poured for him and felt life seep back into his bones. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat before a fire in his stocking feet. The aroma of fresh yeast rising from the crumpet batter filled the air, and the sweet milky tea warmed his stomach. The sight of the slender creature stirring a hearty stew, pouring his tea, and tending the fire transported the earl to a time and place he could hardly remember. Maybe it was one he’d never known at all.

“How have you come here, madam?” he asked her. “And why?”

“God sent me.” She pushed a tendril of hair back into her bun and settled on a stool near his chair. “You see, many years ago Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford and their two sons left Cumbria and journeyed to Wales to find profitable work. After a time, the men became partners in a coal mine, and the sons married.”

“One of them was fortunate enough to find you?”

“My husband was a good man, and all I have ever desired in life is the warmth of home and the love of family. The Rutherford men labored in the mine until an explosion took their lives.” For a moment, she twisted the end of her apron string. “After that, the coal mine began to fail. Miners were afraid to work it, you see. Mrs. Rutherford decided she must return to England, where she owns a small cottage and a bit of land. She urged her sons’ wives to return to our own villages where we might find new husbands. My sister-in-law agreed to go, but I would not. And so I came to Cumbria.”

“But you told me God sent you.”

“Indeed He did. Mrs. Rutherford had taught me about Christianity. My family had followed the old ways, a religion with little hope and even less joy. But Mrs. Rutherford explained things I had never heard—how God’s Son came into this world to suffer the death I rightly deserved, how Christ rose to life again, how His Spirit lives inside every believer. I became a Christian, but I hungered to learn more. After my husband’s death, I couldn’t bear to part with Mrs. Rutherford. She’d become more than a mother to me—the only family I really knew. Though she was quite firm in ordering me back to my own village, I begged her not to send me away. Her God had become my God, you see, and that bonded us. I told her I would follow her to England and make her people my own. And so we journeyed here together, Mrs. Rutherford and I.”

The earl sat in silence as the woman rose from her stool and began pouring batter into crumpet rings on a hot griddle. As a boy, he’d become acquainted with a village woman very much like the elder Mrs. Rutherford. Her husband had been a distant cousin of little means, but they had welcomed their landlord’s child into their cottage during his long country rambles. Reading from her Bible, the dear woman had taught William the message of salvation—and he had become a Christian. Could the woman in his half-forgotten past be the same Mrs. Rutherford who had been like a mother to this intriguing lady?

“Where is the cottage in which you live?” he asked, straightening in his chair. “Is it just beyond the village, down a dirt lane lined with lavender? Has it a thatched roof and climbing roses near the front door? Pink roses, I think. Yes, and stone walls with small windows?”

“Have you been there, sir?” She slid the steaming crumpets onto a plate and turned to him, wonder lighting her brown eyes. “I understood you never went down to the village. People say you’re always so—”

“Old and crotchety?”

“Busy,” she said with a laugh. She scooped a spoonful of strawberry jam onto his plate and set it beside the platter of cold meats on a small table near his chair. In a moment, she had ladled out a bowl of savory-smelling stew. The table’s boards fairly groaned under the feast laid upon them, and Beaumontfort anticipated the meal as though it had been prepared for a king. More than that, he looked forward to further conversation with Mrs. Rutherford of the sparkling eyes and coal black hair.

“I hope I’m not too crotchety to be joined at high tea by a woman of your fine culinary skills,” he said. “Will you sit with me, madam?”

She swallowed and gave him another of those awkward curtsies. “Thank you, sir, but I must take the leavings down to the village,” she said softly. “It has been a difficult year, and many depend upon me.”

“And then there’s Sukey with her influenza-inflicted family.”

“Yes, sir.”

He studied her, wondering at a woman who could so easily warm his feet, his stomach, and his heart—all at a go. This brown-garbed creature was nothing like the bejeweled court ladies who often accompanied the earl to the opera or the theatre. They would label her plain. Common. Simple.

Beaumontfort found her anything but. She had enchanted him, and he meant to know how she had managed it. Was it the faith in Christ that radiated from her deep, chocolate-hued eyes? Was it her devotion to her mother-in-law? Or was it simply the crumpets?

“Before you leave,” he said to the woman bending over the stewpot. “You tell me you work in the kitchens?”

“Yes, sir. Almost a year.” Drinking down a deep breath, she lifted the stewpot’s arched handle from its hook. “I’m usually in the larder. Butter, you know. I’m very good at churning.”

As she started across the room, the earl could do nothing but leap to his stockinged feet and take the heavy pot from her hands.
Fancy this,
he thought, realizing how fortunate it was that the house had been empty on this night. He carried the stew out the door into the dark night and across the wet snow, soaking his stockings and chilling his toes all over again.

“Mrs. Rutherford, you will work henceforth in the upper house,” he instructed the woman as she lifted her skirts and climbed aboard the vegetable wagon. “Mrs. Riddle will see to the transfer of position in the morning. Perhaps you could polish the silver in the parlors. Better than churning butter anyway. I shall tell my housekeeper to put you there, if you like.”

“Oh, no, sir! Please, I cannot leave the kitchen. Cook needs me in the larder, and Mrs. Riddle will be most displeased to have her staff turned topsy-turvy.” She gathered her gray wool shawl tightly about her shoulders. “What about the leavings? The villagers depend on my help. Mrs. Rutherford and I . . . well, we also eat the leavings, sir. We have hardly enough money to buy food.”

“You’ll earn higher wages on Mrs. Riddle’s staff, and I’ll instruct Cook to allow you the leavings as she has.” He picked up the horse’s reins and set them in her gloved hands. “But you, Mrs. Rutherford, and the other Mrs. Rutherford . . . I’m afraid I must address you by your Christian name, or we shall be always in a muddle.”

“Always, sir?”

“When we speak together. You and I.” He felt flustered suddenly, as though he’d said too much. But why shouldn’t he have what he wanted? He was the earl of Beaumontfort, after all, and she was merely . . . What had she called herself? Ah, yes. Gwyneth.

“You and Mrs. Rutherford will be sent a portion from my own table each day,” he said quickly. “Good evening then, Gwyneth.”

He swung around and headed for the kitchen door again, hoping no one had noticed the earl of Beaumontfort traipsing about the vegetable wagon in wet stockings.

“Good evening,” her voice sounded through the chill night air. “And thank you . . . William.”

“Again, Gwynnie?” Mrs. Rutherford trundled across the wooden floor of the single large room in her thatched-roof cottage. In her arms she carried a heavy basket covered by a white linen embroidered with a large monogrammed
B
. She set the gift on the pine table beside the fire and turned to the chair where her daughter-in-law sat paring potatoes.

“But ’tis t’ fourth evenin’ in a row t’ earl has sent us dinner,” she said in her native Lakeland lilt. “Whatever can it mean? And look at you, my dear, you’ve peeled t’ potato until there’s almost nothin’ left of t’ poor thing.”

Gwyneth studied the small white nubbin in her palm and realized that most of the potato now lay in the bowl of parings. She tossed the remainder into a pot of bubbling water on the fire and sank back into her rocking chair. “Oh, Mum, I haven’t wanted to trouble you, but everything has become difficult at the House. Terribly difficult.”

“Don’t tell me Mrs. Riddle is treatin’ you ill again.” The older woman sat down on a stool beside the chair and took Gwyneth’s hand in both of her own. “That housekeeper has no heart. I can’t imagine how she rose to such a position. Has she been spiteful to you?”

“No, ’tis not that. Mrs. Riddle is as unkind as ever, but ’tis not her at all. ’Tis—”

“Nah, for why would we have such feasts brought to us each night? Is it Mr. Yardley, then? Is he tryin’ to woo you, my dear? Heaven help us, that butler is old enough to be your grandfather and thrice a widower already.”

“No, no.” Gwyneth lifted the old woman’s hands and held them against her cheek. “’Tis nothing of the sort. ’Tis just that everything is suddenly so . . . so confusing. For one thing, I’ve been promoted into the upper house.”