Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
“Now, this may sting a little,” Valerie warned with a reassuring smile, as she brought a damp cloth to the shallow scrape on Isaac’s knee.
The boy nodded and clenched his teeth, being rather brave indeed. “I don’t mind, Miss.”
“He’s had worse than that, Miss,” his compatriot in stone-throwing, David, agreed. “Skins his knees all the time at the orphanage. This is nothing.”
They were all situated in the kitchens, where the cook—Mrs. Leggat—was heating water, Kate was arranging cakes on a tray, Esther was gathering more supplies than anyone could possibly need, and Adrian was pacing as if he would rather be anywhere else.
He looked out of place in the kitchens, among its rustic charm, and he seemed to know it.
“I should ride to the healer,” he said loudly, casting a dubious glance at Valerie and her damp cloth.
“There is no need,” Valerie insisted, as she gently pressed the fabric to the wound. “You heard the boys; it is nothing. Indeed, I am very content that young Isaac here will not have to have the leg amputated, though cook has several very sharp knives should the requirement arise.”
She hoped she had struck the right note with the boys and their sense of humor. Cecil would have roared with laughter at such a jape, but perhaps these boys were not quite as invested in grisly things as he was.
A moment later, Isaac grinned. “Remind me not to try any boiled ham that I’m offered here.”
“You think you’d be offered boiled ham?” David teased, nudging his friend in the shoulder. “You’ll be lucky to get a scrap of bread. We’re not guests here, you goose, we’re criminals on trial.”
“You are not criminals,” Valerie insisted with a quiet chuckle, though she made sure to shoot a look at Adrian to make sure he said nothing to the contrary.
Isaac winced at the cloth wiping gently against his injury as he, too, glanced over to the duke. “We really didn’t mean no harm, Your Majesty.”
“Your Grace,” Adrian corrected in a low mutter. “And you did not mean any harm. If you “didn’t mean no harm” that means you did mean harm. It is a double negative. Goodness, have you been taught nothing?”
David puffed his chest a little. “We know plenty. We know how to break rocks, plant seeds at the right time, scrub a floor good and proper, and weave ropes. Lots of other things too. Depends what needs doing.”
“No education?” Adrian paused in his pacing.
Valerie dipped the cloth back in the basin she was using, wringing it out before setting it back on the wound. “His Grace is curious to know if you have attended school,” she explained. “Perhaps, you have a governess at this orphanage of yours?”
At that, both boys collapsed into giddy laughter.
Valerie blushed, glad to have made them laugh, but rather embarrassed that she had said such an ignorant thing. The orphanages of London certainly didn’t have any governesses, so why would the North be any different?
“I went to school for one week when I was eight. Didn’t like it, so I didn’t go back,” David said, and rather proudly too.
Isaac, however, looked a bit more subdued. “I never went, not even for a week. I was already in the orphanage, and they need us to do work and that.”
“How old are you, if that is not too rude a question to ask two strapping young fellows such as yourselves?” Valerie asked, recovering from her misstep.
David smiled. “Eleven, Miss.”
“And I think I’m nine,” Isaac said.
“You think?” Valerie removed the cloth and dropped it in the basin, before reaching for a wrapped bundle of bandages.
Isaac nodded. “They don’t know how old I was when I was left there, so Mrs. Atkinson guessed. Might be nine, might be ten, might be eight.”
“Mrs. Atkinson? Is she the proprietor of the orphanage?” Valerie paused at the boys’ blank looks. “I mean, is she the one who runs the orphanage?”
David’s brown eyes brightened. “That’s her, Miss! She don’t like me much. Don’t like any of us wains much, but she feeds us, she don’t treat us badly, and it’s warm enough when it ain’t winter.”
Maybe it was because the boys reminded her so much of Cecil, but Valerie wished she could just put her arms around them, keep them safe, and adopt them there and then. Of course, she couldn’t, but her melancholy heart desperately wanted to.
“And who is Hetty?” she asked, as she began to wrap the bandage around Isaac’s sore knee.
Isaac beamed at the mention of the name. “She’s like our ma. The ma of the orphanage. She’s older than us—fifteen. Means she’ll be leaving soon, to take work somewhere, so there’ll be no one to tell us all the good stories.”
“One of these stories was about the ghosts in this castle?” Valerie pressed, noting that Adrian had gone still, listening with curiosity.
David nodded. “She’s always telling us stories about this castle—about the ghosts, about the hauntings, about the wars between the Cumbrians and the Northumbrians, about the damsels and warriors and that.”
“I have not read about any of that in my history books,” Adrian said drily, while Valerie cast him a pointed look; it would have been too impolite to shush him outright.
“Go on,” she encouraged the boys.
Isaac took over the tale, wriggling in his chair.
“We was having dinner, and we was all shivering ‘cause of the storm. Mrs. Atkinson doesn’t let us have a fire very often, you see.” He paused.
“Anyway, Hetty says that it’s because of the ghosts here.
She says they’re stronger during the Christmas season, and they can play tricks with the weather.
So, me and David decided we’d come here and we’d chase them pesky ghosts away!
Then, our friends at the orphanage wouldn’t be shivering anymore. ”
“They’d still be cold, aye,” David interjected, “but just an ordinary amount. It’s worse when it’s howling a gale and we can’t even go out walking to warm ourselves, since it’s thick snow outside.”
Isaac nodded. “I love snow, but I don’t like how it’s so cold. If I could warm meself afterward, I’d love it even more, but we’re not allowed to use any of Mrs. Atkinson’s wood unless she says so.”
Thinking of her own dear siblings, Valerie’s heart broke for the two boys before her. She could not imagine Cecil and Nora staring out of the window on a winter’s morning, longing to enjoy the snow, but resisting because it would mean being frozen with no way to get warm.
“Your Grace, you must do something about this!” she blurted out, her voice tight with sorrow.
Adrian’s eyebrows rose in slight surprise. “I suppose I could donate coal to the orphanage as an anonymous donor.” He shook his head. “That does not mean the coal would reach the children, though. This ‘Mrs. Atkinson’ might keep it for herself.”
“That would be a start,” Valerie replied, “but that is not what I meant, exactly.”
Adrian folded his arms across his broad chest, the buttons of his waistcoat straining against such powerful muscles. “What did you mean?”
His flat tone suggested he did not want to hear it, but Valerie continued regardless.
“You must put an end to these rumors and stories,” she said.
“You must show the people of your dukedom that you are not what they say you are. You must put their minds at ease, or this may keep happening—people coming here, trying to rid this castle of its curse. If you show them that there is no curse, and you are a duke they can rely upon, then you will not have to worry about broken windows or being blamed for the bad weather.”
Isaac put up his hand, shyly glancing at Adrian. “Mrs. Atkinson wouldn’t use the coal for herself if you came along and told her that she had to give it to us. She wouldn’t dare.”
“You could do that when we return the children to the orphanage, once the storm has died down again,” Valerie jumped in, an idea forming in glorious, vivid detail.
“Indeed, we could go there and arrange a Christmas party for all the children! That would assuredly go some way toward fixing the reputation of you and your cursed castle.”
From the workbench on the far side of the kitchens, Valerie heard Kate murmur fondly to the cook, “It would be almost like old times again.”
“Do you remember the dancing?” the cook replied with a bittersweet sigh. “And all the fine food I helped to prepare. I doubt I could even roast so many geese, these days; I’ve forgotten how.”
Adrian, on the other hand, had not spoken. He stood as still as the handsome statue he resembled, his expression just as stony.
If Valerie had made the suggestion when they were not so surrounded, perhaps he would have dismissed it curtly and that would have been the end of it. But she had spoken amidst quite the crowd; to refuse such a gesture now would have made him seem rather cruel indeed.
Prove that you are not a beast. Prove that you are not cursed with cruelty. She willed it in earnest silence as she waited for his reply.
Everyone else had gone quiet too, the air so thick with anticipation that the cook’s cleaver could not have sliced through it.
“The boys may stay until the storm passes,” he said at last. “They will return to the orphanage once it is safe to do so. I will send them with coal and a note. Now, if you will excuse me, I must check the windows.”
Collective disappointment popped the tension in the steamy kitchen.
Kate hurried to bring the tray of cakes and sandwiches to the boys, no doubt to distract them.
The cook wandered away from the pot of water she had been boiling, muttering about geese.
Esther’s face fell, the girl turning her back so no one would see her dismay.
Meanwhile, Adrian walked out of the room; he had been diplomatic in his answer, in the vague way that wealthy gentlemen often were, but Valerie refused to accept it.
“Mrs. Mullens here will take good care of you,” she said to Isaac and David. “I shall not be long.”
With that, she rushed after Adrian.