Chapter 33 #2
She shook her head. ‘It is everything I know, Tobias. But in my time here, James showed me many of the hiding places in this house. Grant me time to search my memory and we will see if my knowledge is the same as yours. I care nothing for gold but I am motivated by the greater desire to see the children are safe and well. I will look for it and if I find it, then it is yours to do with what you will on condition the children are restored to my care.’
Tobias tugged at his beard and rose to his feet. ‘You have until dusk tomorrow night. If the gold has not been located you will leave this place and never return.’
Agnes nodded.
Taking a few steps toward the door, she said, ‘May I go to the children now?’
Tobias waved a dismissive hand. ‘Go. I am not the monster you think me, Agnes. The children have missed you and it may cheer them to see something of you.’
Relief flooded Agnes, and she found herself feeling genuinely grateful to this man.
He continued, ‘I will see you at supper. In the meantime, think hard about your situation, Agnes. You have until tomorrow.’
‘You wish me to dine with you?’
He turned to face her, his face a hard mask. ‘Of course. You are my guest, are you not? Or do you prefer to eat alone in your chamber, with my man at your door?’
***
“The children guard the secret,” James had written.
Just one secret? The bitter thought twisted like a knife in Agnes’s heart. James had harboured many secrets and hidden them well.
She walked slowly along the corridor that led to the children’s nursery, counting off the doors to the unused bed chambers.
The children occupied a large room at the end of the corridor.
She opened the door of the chamber adjacent to it and peered in.
The only furniture was a dusty bed without a mattress or hangings, a table, and a chest. She paused, squinting at the wall abutting the nursery.
Just to be certain she walked back into the corridor and into the bedroom again several times.
Her heart skipped a beat. She had never noticed that the internal dimensions of this room did not match the external. At least four feet abutting the nursery were unaccounted for. She had been right. All she had to do now was to locate the entrance within the nursery.
An unfamiliar thrill of anticipation ran down her spine.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and walked into the all-too-familiar room. which served as both bedchamber and nursery. As the children were still considered little, they shared the massive oak bed with its heavy red woollen hangings.
The children were alone with a sour-faced nursery maid, who sat by the fire darning stockings. What had Sarah called her? Hannah? Lizzie sat beside her, apparently engaged in needlework.
Hannah glanced up, a frown creasing her disagreeable face. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded without rising to her feet.
Agnes drew herself up. It was hard to be imperious when you barely touched five feet but she did her best.
‘I am Mistress Fletcher,’ she said. ‘I am aunt to these children and sister-in-law to the late Earl. I expect better manners of you, young woman.’
Hannah flushed, set down her sewing, rose to her feet, and bobbed a curtsey.
‘Sorry ma’am,’ she stuttered, a sulky caste to her mouth.
‘What is your name?’ Agnes demanded while she held the upper hand.
‘Hannah, ma’am.’
‘Leave us, Hannah,’ Agnes ordered.
Hannah shuffled her feet and looked at the toes of her shoes. ‘Mistress Turner —’ she began.
Agnes fixed the girl with a hard stare. ‘I will answer to Mistress Turner. I have the consent of the children’s guardian to spend some time alone with them. Go.’
Mumbling to herself, the nursery maid left the room, no doubt in search of Leah Turner.
At once the atmosphere lightened. Henry ran to Agnes, almost tripping over his skirts in his haste.
She took him in her arms and held him tight, pressing her face into his soft, downy head until he began to squirm.
Lizzie set her needlework down and, with more dignity than Henry, crossed the floor to Agnes’s embrace.
‘Are you staying, Aunt Agnes?’ Lizzie asked.
‘I’m just here on a very short visit,’ she said.
‘You’re not coming back to live here?’ Henry’s lower lip began to tremble.
‘Not for a little while,’ Agnes replied, conscious that her smile lacked conviction.
‘But you will come back?’ Lizzie insisted.
Agnes looked into the girl’s knowing eyes. ‘I can’t make promises, Lizzie,’ she said. ‘Believe me when I say this is not my doing.’
Lizzie pouted. ‘No, it’s Cousin Tobias. He wants Father’s title.’
‘Lizzie! You will not speak ill of Cousin Tobias. He is your legal guardian.’ She smiled. ‘I’m here now. Shall we play a game?’
‘A game? But Mistress Turner has forbidden —’ Lizzie began.
‘Mistress Turner is not here and she does not need to know.’
‘Spillikins?’ suggested Henry.
‘How about hide and go seek?’ Agnes said. ‘I will count to fifty and you two must hide somewhere in this room.’
The children grinned at her.
Agnes covered her eyes and began to count. She smiled at the sound of giggling and the children’s feet pattering on the floorboards.
‘No, Henry, you can’t hide with me,’ she heard Lizzie whisper.
‘Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty … coming, ready or not!’ Agnes said.
The entrance to the hidden cavity had to be concealed somewhere in the wall adjoining the room next door, a wall lined with heavy oak panelling of some age and covered in a large, moth-eaten tapestry of Noah’s Ark.
She wondered if Tobias in his searching had even thought of looking in the children’s nursery.
As she contemplated the length of the wall, she hoped it would not take her too long to find.
‘Are you hiding?’ she called out and was rewarded by Henry’s squeak from behind the bed hangings.
She made a show of searching out the two children, finding Lizzie hiding under the bed. They both pretended to be stumped about Henry’s whereabouts, despite the shoes peeping out from beneath the hangings and the barely stifled chuckles.
The children begged her to play again, which she was happy to do. After the third round, Lizzie looked up at her with a frown.
‘Why do you keep looking at the tapestry?’ she said. ‘I won’t hide there. That’s where the ghost lives.’
Agnes blinked. The ghost? It was the first she’d heard of a ghost — at least in this part of the house.
‘When did you see the ghost?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.
Lizzie frowned in concentration. ‘A long time ago … before Father went to London. It was summer and I was hot in the bed, so I had pulled back the curtain a little way.’
‘What did you see?’
‘A man all in black. He walked straight through that wall.’ Lizzie pointed melodramatically at the tapestry.
‘Were you scared?’ Agnes asked.
Lizzie shook her head. ‘No. He looked a bit like Father.’
Probably because he was the child’s father, Agnes thought.
She gathered the child into her arms. Henry, feeling left out, jumped at them, knocking them to the ground. They subsided into a giggling, happy pile on the floor.
‘What is this?’ The outraged voice from the doorway froze them.
Lizzie and Henry found their feet and cowered behind her skirts as Agnes rose to face Leah Turner. The maid, Hannah, lurked behind her mistress, a tight-lipped smile on her face. Leah’s already pale face seemed drained of all colour, her lips an invisible line of outrage.
She pointed a finger at the children. ‘You … and you … there will be no supper for either of you.’
‘Mistress Turner. The children are not to blame. We were playing … ’ Agnes protested.
It seemed impossible that Leah’s eyebrows could rise any higher. ‘Playing?’
‘Hide and go seek,’ Agnes said.
The colour rose in Leah’s face. ‘We do not play games in this house. As I feared, you are a vile influence, Mistress Fletcher. Leave this room at once.’
Two pairs of small hands clutched Agnes’s skirts.
‘Don’t leave us,’ Lizzie sobbed, terror rising in her voice. ‘She’ll beat us. I know she will. She beats us all the time. She has a birch stick —’
Agnes straightened. ‘I will not be dismissed like a common servant. I am aunt by blood to these children and I am here with the consent of their guardian. I am not leaving them until I am ready to do so and if I choose to lighten their lives by playing games, I will.’
Leah turned to Hannah. ‘Fetch Brown and Simpson.’
Hannah turned and scurried away and Leah took a step into the room.
‘You have cosseted these children to the point where they are ungovernable. They need discipline. They need to have the word of the Lord beaten into their spoiled little minds.’
‘Beat them? I will not permit you to touch them. I was mistress here before ever you were and their father entrusted these children to me before his death.’
Leah’s lip curled. ‘But he failed to confirm his instructions in a will, or so I am told. Tobias … Colonel Ashby is their legal guardian. We will see how much influence you hold in this house.’
Two burly soldiers appeared at the door, one of them Trooper Brown. Leah turned to face them. ‘Take her,’ she pointed at Agnes. ‘And secure her in her chamber.’
As the men entered the room, Agnes backed away with her arms around the two children. ‘How dare you,’ she said. ‘I am not to be treated this way.’
‘Don’t make trouble.’ The soldier who must be Simpson reached out to grab her arm.
Agnes batted his hand away. ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘You,’ Leah indicated Brown. ‘Take the children.’
Brown lunged at Henry, who screamed, trying to get further behind Agnes’s skirts, but the man got a purchase on him, lifting him away from her and holding him at arm’s length to protect himself from Henry’s kicking feet.
Agnes swung around to defend the child and in that instant Simpson grabbed her around the waist, knocking her feet from underneath her and pulling her away from the two children.
With the hysterical cries of the children resounding in her ears, Agnes was borne away in the iron grip of the soldier. Kicking and struggling availed her nothing and as they reached the top of the stairs she stopped resisting.
‘Put me down,’ she said, employing her most glacial tone. ‘I demand to be taken to Colonel Ashby on my own two feet, not carried like a sack of potatoes.’
The man glanced at Leah who nodded. He set her down but kept a tight grip on her arm as they descended the stairs.
Not since she was nine years old and had been caught stealing apples from the orchard had Agnes felt so humiliated. She stood before Tobias, her hands clasped penitentially before her and her gaze lowered as Leah recited her crimes.
‘Tobias … ’ Agnes began.
‘Address the Colonel properly,’ Leah cut in. Standing beside Tobias, Leah bristled with self-righteous indignation.
‘Colonel Ashby,’ Agnes shot Leah a sharp glance. ‘I know we all have the children’s best interests at heart.’
‘And their best interests are not served by unseemly romping in the nursery,’ Leah cut in. ‘The children are wild and undisciplined, Colonel.’
Tobias stroked the end of his moustache, his gaze on Agnes.
‘Leah, my dear,’ he said at last. ‘I appreciate your zeal, but Mistress Fletcher and I have an understanding. I am allowing her to spend time with the children while she is in this house. I do not believe this will be an extended visit.’
Leah cast Agnes a look that came close to firing blue sparks of pure malevolence.
‘This woman is a whore,’ Leah raged. ‘Bedding men for her convenience. The carnal act is for one reason alone, the begetting of children.’ She pointed a finger at Agnes. ‘It is God’s judgment on you that you have not been cursed with a bastard child.’
Agnes stared at the woman in stunned disbelief.
‘You bewitch men,’ Leah continued. ‘You are no better than the Whore of Babylon. Colonel, you must see that her presence here can do nothing but harm to the children.’
Tobias had turned puce and his jaw worked as he tried to formulate a response. ‘Enough of this unseemly spatting,’ he said at last. ‘I appreciate your concern, Leah, but Mistress Fletcher has my word. She is the children’s aunt and entitled to the respect that entails.’
Agnes glared at Leah. ‘I believe I am owed an apology for my rough treatment.’
Tobias sighed. ‘Yes, I think perhaps you are right. Leah?’
Leah turned hot, angry eyes on Tobias. ‘Apologise to a whore?’
‘Apologise to the aunt of my wards,’ Tobias replied in a glacial tone.
A shudder ran through Leah as she straightened. ‘Very well. Mistress Fletcher, you have my apology for the misunderstanding.’
Agnes raised her chin. ‘I need fresh air,’ she said. ‘With your consent, Cousin Tobias, I wish to go for a ride.’
‘Colonel … ’ Leah made one last bid to re-establish her position.
Tobias looked almost relieved. ‘Leah, let me be quite clear. For the next twenty-four hours, Mistress Fletcher is my guest with all that implies, and she has unfettered access to the children. After that, she will be leaving.’
Leah, her face still white with anger, inclined her head. ‘As you wish, Colonel.’
He waved a hand. ‘I do wish. Now go, both of you!’