Chapter Seven
Mrs. Pennyweather’s cottage was a picturesque one, made of mellow stone and thatched roofed, with roses climbing around the white painted door and a riot of color in the well-tended garden.
A pump middle-aged woman in a serviceable gown of gray worsted and a striped pinafore, with a broad brimmed straw hat on her head, was digging in the garden when he arrived at the gate. She looked up in surprise when Jerome addressed her.
“Good day to you, ma’am, would you be Mrs. Pennyweather’s daughter?”
She rose awkwardly to her feet, stripping off her gardening gloves and straightening her hat. “Good heavens, sir, you startled me! Yes, I am.” She blinked her myopic blue eyes as she drew closer, and her mouth fell open. “My lord!” She dropped a curtsy.
“May I come in?” he asked with a smile. “I was wishful to speak with your mother if I could?”
“Of course, my lord,” she said, moving to lift the latch and open the gate for him. “Though Mam is blind and almost stone deaf. You’ll have to shout for her to hear you. And even if she does hear you, there’s no guarantee she’ll understand what you want. She’s old, and her mind wanders a bit.”
His heart sank at these tidings, but he had to at least try. “Well, I won’t take up too much of her time. I just have a couple of questions for her.”
“Come in, my lord. Would you like a cup of tea or some of my rosehip wine?”
“Tea would be splendid,” he said with another smile, standing aside for her to precede him into the house. It was a small house with a two-up, two-down configuration and as neat and well-kept as the garden.
The door opened straight into the stone-floored kitchen, with a large hearth and well-scrubbed table and Windsor chairs. A dresser was against the wall and an easy chair was in the corner of the room on which sat a fat, black-and-white cat, one leg stuck in the air while it cleaned a haunch.
“My husband Will works at the glass manufactory, my lord. He’ll be right disappointed to have missed your visit,” she said, bustling over to the kitchen hearth to set the kettle on.
“The village has been in such a flutter since Mr. Kelham set it about you was hiring again! My Elsie and Bob both applied, you know. Started yesterday they did. Elsie for a housemaid and Bob in the laboring team.” She beamed at him.
“You wouldn’t be needing a glazier, would you?
Will’s a good man, hard worker, and skilled. ”
“Tell him to apply to Kelham. He will know what positions are still required.”
She bobbed a curtsy, a faint flush to her cheeks, “I’ll tell him, my lord. Now you just get yourself settled, and I’ll go fetch Mam. She can’t manage the stairs no more, so we have her bed set up in the parlor.”
“I’ll come to her if it’s less trouble,” he said.
“Nay, my lord!” said Elspeth Nancarrow, scandalized.
“She likes to sit in her chair by the fire with old Percy there.” She nodded at the chair and the cat.
“I’ll fetch her. You sit.” She waved to the table and chairs and Jerome sat, his lips twitching.
He had the feeling Mrs. Nancarrow might have quite a brood, if her managing ways were any indication.
She disappeared through the curtained archway that divided the kitchen from the parlor, and he heard her saying loudly, “Mam, His Lordship is here to see you!”
“What’s that, Elsie?” The old lady’s voice was quavery.
Elspeth repeated herself louder, and the old lady said, “Lord Gareth? To see me?”
“Nay, Mam, his son, Lord Jerome himself.”
“The lad? What’s he want with the likes of me?”
“Come along, Mam, upsy-daisy. Here’s your stick, now hold my arm!”
Jerome heard the sounds of shuffling footsteps, and the curtain parted to reveal Mrs. Nancarrow with a bent, silver-haired old woman clinging to her arm and leaning heavily on a walking stick.
He rose slowly as Mrs. Nancarrow guided her mother to the chair, plucked the cat up with one arm and settled her mother deftly with the other, placing the cat on her lap.
This must have been a routine, for the cat surprisingly cooperated, settling to knead and purr on the old lady’s lap.
Her gnarled, liver-spotted hands patting the creature soothingly as she sank back into the chair.
“There now, Mam, you’ll have your tea and biscuit in a moment, but first I want to present His Lordship to you.”
Elspeth nodded to him and Jerome stepped forward and bowed, even though he knew the old woman couldn’t see him. Her faded-blue eyes were milky as she stared straight in front of her.
“Mrs. Pennyweather, I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” he said with a firm, carrying register.
The old lady stiffened at the sound of his voice. “You’re nay Lord Gareth?”
“I’m his son, ma’am, Jerome DeVere at your service.”
The old lady smiled and cackled. “Well, I never. Elsie, it’s the lad himself! How old are you now?”
“I’ll be thirty-four in June, Mrs. Pennyweather.”
“Nay! I remember you in leading strings, toddling about after your mother and that dog, the one with white-and-brown patches.”
“Ah, Cedric the spaniel.” Jerome smiled. The old lady seemed far more lucid than he had been led to expect.
Mrs. Nancarrow placed a cup of tea on the table beside her mother’s chair and, taking her hands, showed her where it was.
She offered Jerome one, too, with a stick of shortbread in the saucer.
He took it gratefully and, pulling up a chair, sat nearer to the old lady and said, “Mrs. Pennyweather, I was wondering if you recall the night my mother died?”
“Aye. I do. So sad that was.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“There was a terrible storm that night. My Tom, who was head gardener in those days, was worried about the roses being ruined by the storm. We was trying to cover them, but the wind was too fierce, and then the rain came; it was hopeless. The whole rose arbor was destroyed that night.” The old lady took a sip of her tea and stared into the past.
“Do you know what happened at the house that night?” he prompted.
“The wind was howling fit to bust, but we still heard her scream!” the old lady said, her face reflecting a remembered horror that made Jerome’s skin crawl.
“Did my mother jump, or was she pushed?” he asked, voicing the fear he’d lived with for twenty-two years.
The old lady shrugged. “Ellen Miller knew.” She turned her head to look straight at him, her blind eyes staring right through him.
“I’d swear to it. Scared stiff she was that night.
” She smiled. “I’m canny though. Never let on I knew anything.
You never asked when he passed. Thought you didn’t want to know. ”
Jerome swallowed. “I didn’t until now. Why? Do you know why he did it?”
“Mam—” The warning note in her daughter’s voice went unheeded.
Mrs. Pennyweather smiled again, and it made his blood run cold. “Did you say your name was Gareth?”
He swallowed. “I’m Jerome.”
“Ah the lad! I remember you, bright little fellow you was, always quick and charming as the day was long.”
She settled back with the tea, and he got nothing further from her but nonsense.
Shaken, he rose and set his cup of tea untasted down on the table. Mrs. Nancarrow had her arms crossed over her chest and she looked worried.
“She rambles,” she said. “It’s all nonsense.”
He looked at her and shook his head. “It’s not. I suspected—” He swallowed. “I suspected he had killed my mother, but I didn’t know for certain. That’s what she meant, isn’t it?” He nodded towards her mother.
Mrs. Nancarrow smiled sadly. “We don’t know. No one knows for certain. Only Ellen, and she’s gone.”
“But he was violent, his temper was legendary.” Jerome’s stomach clenched.
His father’s rages had terrified him as a boy.
As an adolescent, he learned to keep his distance.
To his mother’s cost and his eternal shame.
Guilt and responsibility threatened to choke him.
“How did you all know I wasn’t the same? ”
She smiled sadly. “We remember you.” She said it simply, and his eyes stung at the trust that implied. Do I deserve it? He’d left the place neglected for years, unable to face the dark secrets it harbored. Unable to face his own guilt. For not being here to protect her.
And now that you know, is it worse or better? The parallels between Mama and Charis—my God, how am I supposed to live with this?