The Rogue's Return (34 page)

“I've sent for Mama, but she's in Harrogate. I hope she'll arrive tomorrow.” She looked at Jancy and tried a smile. “I'm sorry. What a way to meet.”

“I'm sorry for your loss, my lady, but let me take care of you.”

“Oh, not ‘my lady,' please! Cousin Dorothy.”

Jancy winced at the mistake but didn't let it distract her. She turned to the men. “I'll look after things here.”

Simon smiled his thanks, and the men left.

“I'm so happy for you,” Lady Austrey said.

Jancy realized she was still smiling after Simon and gathered her wits and sat near the widow. Remembering how much she'd wanted to talk about Jane, and how horrible it had been not to be able to, she said, “How long have you been married, Cousin?”

Lady Austrey was clutching a black-edged handkerchief, but her eyes were dry. “Eight years. Austrey is ten years older than I, but we never expected this. He was only forty and always so healthy until last year.”

Jancy prompted her to continue to talk, hoping this was the right thing to do. It was slow to begin with, but then words spilled in a torrent, about courtship, plans, her husband's love of horses, two darling daughters, and the tragedy of a dead baby son.

A tragedy for so many, Jancy thought.

She better understood Simon's concern. The Brideswell community could never move to this chilly, formal house and thrive, but they would hate to be divided. Even a few months here could erode the health and welfare of Simon's parents. Even so, they would feel they must.

This was like a deathwatch of a different, but no less terrible, kind.

C
ousin Dorothy talked on, detailing treatments, many of them horrible as the doctors became more and more desperate. Improvements had all proved fleeting, leading to a painful, drawn-out end. Jancy would rather not have heard about it but hoped spilling all this would bring the poor woman ease.

But then Lady Austrey started. “Oh, what am I doing? And you just arrived from a long journey! Refreshments! Would you like tea? Dinner? What time is it?”

Jancy took her agitated hand. “Don't concern yourself about such things, Cousin Dorothy. I don't want to take over your home, and Marlowe is certainly much grander than anything I've had to do with, but please let me handle housekeeping matters for now.”

The sunken eyes studied her. “It seems an imposition. You are so young. But then, I suppose . . .”

. . .
this will one day be yours,
Jancy heard.

Far, far in the future, thank heavens.

For now, firmness would be merciful. “It will be no imposition,” she said. “Would
you
like tea, Cousin? When did you last eat?”

Lady Austrey stared into space. “I'm not sure.”

Perhaps the question should be, when did she last sleep?

Jancy posed the question, adding, “I have lost people very dear to me, and I know how it can be. Let me take you to your bed. You'll be more comfortable there, and can have a tray.”

She put an arm around the widow and raised her to her feet—heavens, she was down to her bones—and guided her toward the door. “Where is your bedroom?”

“Next door. But . . . Aeneas is there.”

For a moment, Jancy didn't understand. Oh, her dead husband.

“Where have you been sleeping recently?”

“On a pallet. There.”

What now? She could make the widow comfortable on a chaise, but she needed a bed. A new thought occurred. “Cousin Dorothy, where are your daughters?” Were the poor mites abandoned somewhere?

“I sent them to my sister weeks ago.”

Thank heavens for that. “Do you want them summoned to return?”

“Oh, no. Funerals are so dismal. I will join them after their father is laid to rest.” She stated it fiercely as if someone, Jancy even, might insist she stay.

“Of course,” Jancy soothed. But what to do? Then she realized that there must be a bedroom somewhere prepared for herself and Simon. Trusting Dorothy to stand on her own feet for a moment or two, she went to the bellpull. A footman appeared in seconds.

“Where are my husband and I to sleep?” she asked.

“In the guest wing, ma'am.”

There was a wing especially for guests? Hoping the widow wouldn't object to being far from her husband's corpse, she said, “Take us there.”

She supported a good deal of Dorothy's slight weight as they made their way back along the arm, through the hall and a library and into another wing. The footman opened a door into a warm, modestly sized bedroom.

“Take away our luggage,” Jancy instructed, “and find
Lady Austrey's maid. Send tea and light food here.” She thought quickly. “And tell the housekeeper I wish to see her in the library. And I'll want a tea tray there, too.”

At least she knew where that library was, and she didn't intend to return to the other wing if she could help it. Should she order refreshments to be sent to Simon and his father? She had no idea where they were, and if they wanted food, they should be up to the task of ordering it themselves.

“Very good, ma'am.” He picked up their valises and left.

Jancy sat the widow in a chair and found a blanket to tuck around her, amazed at how she was taking command. Perhaps her various trials had toughened her. His rock, Simon had said. She would be that if she could.

The brief visit to Long Chart had been a blessing in preparation for this. If she'd come here with only Brideswell for experience, she might be as staggered as the widow.

In moments the maid appeared, the one who'd been with Cousin Dorothy before. She was swollen-eyed but anxious to do anything necessary. Possibly she was protective of her place at the widow's side. Jancy could understand that, but not how the woman had failed to take care of her mistress by making her eat and sleep.

She wanted to get Cousin Dorothy to bed but thought she might not want a stranger helping her to undress. So she waited only until the tea arrived and the widow had drunk one well-sugared cup.

“Persuade your mistress to go to bed,” she instructed the maid and left.

She followed the arm back to the main house, grateful that the geography of Marlowe was simple. No rambling corridors here. Instead an arrangement of neat cubes. In the library, a somber, white-haired lady awaited her, and a tea tray sat on a small table beside a chair in front of the fire.

The housekeeper curtsied and introduced herself as Mrs. Quincey, housekeeper at Marlowe for over thirty years and employed here all her life. It sounded like a challenge.

Jancy's confidence wavered. Did it seem as if she were rushing in gleefully to take possession before one master was buried or the other even dead?

Rock, she reminded herself and sat by the tea tray. “Please sit, Mrs. Quincey, so we can discuss how to go on.”

The woman did so, but stiffly upright.

Oh, Lord, she probably shouldn't have invited her to sit, but she could hardly keep such an elderly lady standing. Impatience came to her rescue. Be it right or wrong, she had no time for games at a time like this.

“Mrs. Quincey, I look to you for advice. I am young and have no experience with a house like Marlowe, but clearly Lady Austrey must not be asked to manage here for a while, so together, we must do our best.”

Astonishingly, honesty worked.

The woman relaxed, accepted a cup of tea, and began to talk—but she, too, wanted to talk about the deceased. Apparently she'd known him from the cradle and truly grieved his death and the manner of it.

“His brother died in the war,” she said. “Crushed at some siege. It seemed so tragic a fate then, but it was mercifully quick. It's a sorry business to be so long adying.” She put down her cup. “But it's the living that needs us, isn't it, ma'am. So what do you require?”

“Everything. Explain how the house is managed, please.”

Jancy soon understood the basics, in theory, at least. Stewards, butlers, underbutlers, senior footmen, junior footmen. Mrs. Quincey had an assistant housekeeper and a maid who acted as her servant. Jancy would have been in a panic if it wasn't clear that the house almost ran on the wheels of its own routines. Here, she clearly
would not have to go to the kitchens to help prepare food for the funeral guests, even though Mrs. Quincey apologized for the lack of a chef.

“We couldn't keep one, ma'am, with no call on his skills. Mrs. Renishaw does well enough for sickrooms and servants, but . . .”

“I'm sure she will be adequate for some time.”

The woman's eyes turned anxious. “Will . . . When the time comes,” she said, “will the new earl wish to live here?”

Clearly the household understood the situation and were fearful.

Jancy fell back on honesty again. “It hasn't been discussed.”

The old woman sighed. “Very well, ma'am. You and the gentlemen will wish dinner. At five?”

Jancy agreed to that.

“There is the question of
where
dinner should be served, ma'am.”

“Why?”

“The grand dining room is in the main house, ma'am, but generally only used for large gatherings. The family dining room is in the west wing.”

In other words, near the dead body. Jancy remembered she and Simon going to the kitchen to eat because Isaiah's body was laid out in the dining room. At the end, great and small, death was much the same, but here, the kitchen was not an option.

Feeling as if she stepped onto difficult ground, Jancy asked, “Should Lord Austrey be elsewhere, perhaps? What has happened in the past?”

“It's forty-two years since the death of the earl's father, ma'am, but I believe he lay in the chapel.”

“There's a chapel?”

“Oh, yes, ma'am. Off the great hall.”

“Right. How do we do it?”

In half an hour, a procession was arranged. Simon and his father led the way and Lord Austrey's sorrowful
valet followed the bier on which the dead viscount was carried by six footmen. They made their slow way out of the west wing and into a tiny, pale marble chapel.

Jancy observed only to be sure nothing went wrong and then hurried to order the bedroom stripped and cleaned. It was more as ritual than necessity, though when the cause of the sickness was unknown, a thorough cleaning was always a wise precaution.

She certainly had no intention of sleeping in there, for a whole host of reasons. There were two other bedrooms in this wing, however, as well as the small dining room and drawing room. It was almost a little house save for kitchens and other such offices.

The guest wing apparently was almost identical, but lacking its own dining room. The other two wings, the ones at the back, though as elegant on the outside, were utilitarian. One housed the kitchens, the other the stables.

She gave orders for another guest wing room to be prepared for Simon and herself and looked in on Cousin Dorothy. She was sound asleep. After a mental check for anything left undone, she summoned a maid to help tidy her and then found Simon and his father to ask if they were ready to eat.

They were, and the light meal was perfectly adequate. They all ate hungrily while discussing plans for the funeral. In view of the earl's state, it would be a simple affair with only local mourners.

The financial administration of the estate was more complex. During the earl's long illness, Austrey had run everything. During Austrey's illness Dorothy and advisers had carried out his wishes. Now she had tossed it into the hands of Simon's father, but he didn't have authority until the earl recovered enough to authorize it. Which seemed unlikely. The family solicitor would arrive tomorrow to sort that out.

After the meal, Jancy took a moment with Simon. “I know how little you relish this kind of administration.”

He smiled. “And this time, there's no Jancy to guide me.”

“I'm sure the earldom's officers are much more capable that I.”

His eyes danced wickedly. “Only in certain dry respects.”

“Don't be naughty.”

“I wish I had time to be. Later,” he said and kissed her.

Jancy wasted a moment wishing she could take all burdens from his shoulders and then summoned Mrs. Quincey for a tour of the house.

She looked into a number of splendid chambers in the main house, passing by only one—the State Bedchamber, which opened off the main hall, where the Earl of Marlowe drifted with extreme slowness toward death, apparently attended at all times by three servants and a doctor.

She took a quick tour of complex kitchens and stables about which she knew nothing. The basement of the main house held laundries, stillrooms, storehouses and wine cellars, and accommodations for the male servants. Here, there were all the mazelike corridors anyone could wish but, as Simon had said, briskly clean.

The female servants apparently had rooms in the attics on either side of the great skylight. Jancy wondered how warm they were in winter but reminded herself it really wasn't her business.

By the time Jancy settled into bed that night, her head was aching and she wanted Simon. She hadn't seen him for hours. She lay there realizing that she'd slept in a different bed for five nights in a row and raced about in between. No wonder the earth seemed to whirl around her.

Simon came at last, clearly as worn out as she. As soon as he joined her in bed, they tucked into each other's arms. “You've been remarkable here, Jancy St.
Bride. I know how uncomfortable this place must be for you.”

“I had my moments of terror. But poor Dorothy needed help, and managing this place is not so different from Trewitt House when it comes to beds, dinner, and a cup of tea.”

“I wish the estate and finances were as simple as Isaiah's.”

He told her of his day. His experience had been much like hers. Leaving aside the legal complications, the estate was well managed and could sail along with little help.

“Can't it be left to do so?” she asked. “I can't imagine how your family is going to move here happily.”

“I know. But a great house is like a ship. Even in fine weather, someone has to be constantly in command.”

“The servants seem excellent.”

“That never serves for long. And what point in having servants with no one to serve?”

Jancy thought of the impossibility of keeping a chef here and sighed. Perhaps they sighed together.

“But doesn't the same thing apply to Brideswell?” she asked. “It shouldn't be left empty, either.”