Chapter Four
“My reticule is not in the drawing room!” Mrs. Hubble said in a tragic tones when she entered the breakfast parlour.
Piers and Grant Fosterson rose from the table politely. April and Meg Tilney remained seated, but all regarded Mrs. Hubble with some bewilderment.
“Good morning,” Piers said cautiously. “Er...any reason why it should be there?”
“Yes! I left it in the drawing room last night.”
“You probably took it to your own chamber without thinking,” Meg suggested. “I do that all the time.”
“But it is not in my room either.”
“Bound to be under a heap of Hubb’s making,” Fosterson contributed. “Never met such an untidy fellow in my life.”
“I’ll help you look for it after breakfast,” Meg offered.
Mrs. Hubble sniffed and condescended to fill her plate from the sideboard.
Peggy the maid came in bearing a tray with fresh tea and toast in a rack. She blushed as she placed them on the table, well aware that the incorrigible Fosterson was watching her with his flirty eyes. She even cast him a quick, fugitive smile before she dashed off again.
“Unwise,” Piers murmured.
“I know,” Fosterson said, amused. “But there’s no harm in looking. It’s my motto, you know. Did we agree to ride with Hale this morning?”
“We did, though he may not recall it.”
“Keith wouldn’t come,” Fosterson recalled.
“He has an assignation with Pliny.” Besides, Piers wasn’t sure Mal could ride.
In any case, there was only one free horse, left for their use by Sir Dominic Temperley.
Piers had sent only two mounts ahead to Temper House, and April’s little mare was not up to Mal’s weight.
“Shall we give Hale an hour?” Piers suggested, rising to his feet.
Now would be an excellent time to look at the attics. He caught April’s eye, and she understood at once, although she glanced uneasily toward Mrs. Hubble, no doubt worrying about the missing reticule. In the end, attic-curiosity won. She stood demurely and left with him.
“Seriously,” he murmured as they crossed the hall to the stairs, “how many people does it take to find a reticule? Fosterson’s right. Hubb will have hidden it by accident under a mound of clothing and shoes and several sets of accounts. It only takes him a moment to cause absolute chaos.”
“But Mrs. Hubb is right, too. She didn’t have the reticule when she left the drawing room with me last night. It’s a very distinctive silk bag sewn with the tiniest glass beads. She must have left it where she was sitting. I expect Meg will find it for her...”
The servants were too busy downstairs to have begun on the bedchambers, so Piers and April walked unseen to the attic stairs where she had encountered Edward.
On the half-landing, April paused at the door and after the merest moment’s hesitation, pushed it open. She closed it again after a few seconds. “It is Mrs. Riley’s,” she said. “It’s full of recipe books and a Mrs. Riley-shaped nightgown. So this should be the maids’ side of the attic.”
Piers passed her and went on up to the top. “Is this where you saw Edward?” He pushed open the door, and was immediately confronted by two more, at right-angles to each other. He pushed the one on the left, but it didn’t budge.
“Interesting.”
April tried the one on the right, and they looked down a narrow passage. She darted down it, glancing through an open door. “Maids’ dormitory. But those must be single rooms further on.”
“So Edward could have had an assignation with one of the maids. Which could explain the bumping and moaning, you know.”
Sometimes, April seemed to have the oldest eyes he had ever seen on a young person. “I can tell the difference, you know.”
“Even when distorted by floorboards, muffling walls, and chimney echoes?”
April sniffed.
“If that is what Aunt Hortensia has taught you, I shall forbid you from seeing her,” Piers said.
“I’m sure she’ll forbid me first. Her marginal softening won’t last forever. Actually, I don’t know about the noises. Am I making a fuss about nothing?”
“Perhaps,” Piers said. “There is the oddity of the locked door.”
Consideringly, April regarded the door in question. She sighed. “The Temperleys should be able to secure what they like without us poking our noses in. We are only borrowing their house.”
“Although if Edward was in there...”
“He and the maid Peggy are flirting at the very least. But then Peggy is a born flirt. She likes you too.”
“And Fosterson,” said Piers, not remotely flattered. “Let’s leave the locked doors secure, for now. Instead, I believe I shall have a word with Ed—”
He broke off as April suddenly dragged him back through the maidservants’ door, pressing her lips to his ear. “Someone in the passage below...”
Piers heard the door to the attic stairs open and heavy breathing as someone laboured to ascend.
They were rather trapped here with no idea which rooms were occupied.
It would, of course, be merely embarrassing to be caught poking around.
There was nothing any servant could do to prevent it.
Which did not make him feel better. He wished he’d let April pick the locked door instead.
“Mrs. Riley,” April breathed. And indeed, the door on the half-landing opened. Rustling followed and then the door closed and the footsteps descended. “She came for her coat. She’ll be going to the village to recruit temporary staff.”
They gave her time. Piers didn’t mind. He was quite happy to stand in the gloom, holding April, her newly rounded stomach resting against him. But at last, they went down and sought refuge in their own room, where Piers changed into riding breeches and boots.
“Make sure you rest,” he instructed April. “Especially since your sleep was disturbed by drunken pigs and bumps in the night.”
“And moans,” she reminded him. “But I will rest, I promise. After everyone has breakfasted, I shall practice my writing and have some quiet time.”
She was conscientious about her writing and reading practice.
Since he had begun to teach her little more than a year ago, when she had been completely illiterate, she had made impressive progress by means of will and hard work.
She could write quite easily now, but she disliked the childish form of her penmanship and aimed for a more ladylike style, mostly, he knew, so that she did not let him down.
So he kissed her before he departed in search of Hale and Fosterson.
His head being still a little thick, he was actually striding toward the stables before he realized what the odd expression in her eyes had been.
A sort of waiting, mixed up with hope and patience.
He scratched his head, both metaphorically and in reality, but whatever it was he should have done eluded him.
***
APRIL WAS SO PLEASED with her morning’s efforts at handwriting that she took out her other notebook—the one she kept for puzzles and mysteries—and wrote down all the odd things that had happened since their arrival.
The lack of servants in the numbers promised, the arrogance of a mere footman, the strange noises she had heard in the night, the nocturnal encounter with the same footman, the locked doors.
When she glanced over what she had written, she was again rather pleased with herself.
The first time she had made notes on a mystery, they had been very brief words, the lettering of different sizes, sloping erratically across the page.
Now she could keep her writing straight and neat, the letters joined and tailed with just a little flourish.
After a moment’s thought, she added the disappearance of Mrs. Hubble’s reticule.
Closing the notebook, she put it in the desk drawer with the other one and stood up. It was probably time to play hostess, at least to the length of making sure everyone was comfortable.
As she left her own room, she heard sounds of activity further along the passage. On impulse she walked in that direction. Through the open door of Grant Fosterson’s room, came heavy breathing and the grunts of considerable effort, interspersed with too many sniffs.
April glanced in to see the maid Becky wrestling with bed sheets, tucking them tightly under the heavy mattress. Glad to see some work was in progress, she would have passed on, only Becky dashed the back of one hand over her plump cheek before straightening.
The girl was weeping.
April walked in. “What is the matter?”
Becky jumped. “Oh, nothing, my lady. Must have a cold.”
“Nonsense. Something has upset you.”
“Nothing, my lady,” the girl repeated. “There’s just so much to do.”
April remembered the stony silence between the two maids at breakfast. “Where is Peggy?”
“She and Edward are clearing up in the kitchen for Mrs. Riley, who’s gone into the village for more help. I hope!”
“We all do,” April assured her. She cast a quick glance around the bedchamber. “Well, you have done very well in here.”
“Thank you, my lady,” the girl mumbled, with a quick curtsey, and headed for the door.
“Becky?”
“Yes, my lady?”
“You will come to me if anyone behaves inappropriately. It won’t be tolerated. Neither will it reflect badly on you.”
“Thank you, my lady.” Without looking at April, she all but bolted out and into Meg’s room.
Not entirely satisfied, April walked back towards the main staircase. Halfway there, she paused and looked around her. Something was not right.
The doors were all closed, the floor clean. Perhaps the table in the alcove could be dusted but...
April blinked. The table was bare. There should be two tall, silver candlesticks on it.
“Becky,” she called.
The girl emerged from Meg’s room. “Yes, my lady?”
“Have the candlesticks been taken away for polishing?”
“What candles—Oh.” Becky scowled at the table as though willing the candlesticks back into their proper place. “No, my lady, they were properly cleaned and polished just before you came. Maybe someone’s taken them to their room for extra light?”