Chapter Ten #2
“Dad won’t let me work at the big house,” she said at once.
“I wouldn’t ask it of you,” April assured her, “although there is no denying the extra hands would be useful. You’ll have heard the footman Edward was injured?”
A hint of colour seeped into the girl’s pale face. “How is he?”
Interesting. From her manner, she had indeed already heard. If her father had, he had kept quiet about it.
“Not well,” Piers said. “He has never regained consciousness, and without his being able to tell us, we are having difficulty establishing what happened to him.”
“He never considers consequences,” Anne said. “I tried to warn him.”
“Then you think he was attacked in some kind of revenge?”
“It’s possible,” Anne said, more guarded.
“When did you last see Edward?” April asked. “Even from a distance?”
“Last week, I think.” She tilted her chin. “I don’t go out much. My reputation being what it is.”
“Has anyone threatened you?” Piers asked quickly.
She made a quick, dismissive gesture with her hand, not a lady’s hand, but one roughened by housework and laundry. Yet it was slender and shapely. “Of course not. You have met my father. I go to the market and to church. I am not invited elsewhere anymore.”
“That’s not fair,” April said.
“No,” Anne agreed, “but I brought it on myself.”
“Does your brother feel the injustice too?”
She smiled. “He doesn’t understand the concept. He is sorry for me when I’m sad. If you are imagining he struck Edward, you are wrong. He has never hit anyone ever.”
“Edward teased him, made fun of him.”
Anne met her gaze. “So does everyone else.”
Piers stirred. “He told us he came straight home from Temper House last night and slept until morning.”
“He did.”
“Would you have heard anyone leave the house again?”
“Yes, as it happens. I don’t sleep well, and I can assure you no one left our house in the middle of the night. Not Harold, nor my father, nor his apprentice.”
She was no fool, this girl Edward had supposedly ruined. “Who would have attacked him, Anne? Who hated him enough?”
Anne shook her head. “I don’t know. People do unexpected things in a moment of idiocy or passion. Regret can’t change what you’ve done, however quickly it comes upon you.”
April held her gaze. The girl hesitated but said no more.
“We are going next up to Edgwick Farm,” April said. “Perhaps you can direct us?”
“Go on out of the village and take the fork on the right.” Anne drew in her breath. “It might be best if you take care with your questions to Mr. Troy. He’s liable to take out any temper on his wife.”
“From something I heard,” April said, “it would not be the first time.”
“Nor the second. It already happened before she met Edward,” Anne said.
“I expect that was his attraction, to be honest. Whatever else he is, Edward is not violent.” Anne’s eyes flickered and April saw a young man enter the forge, still chewing the remains of his dinner.
He cast Anne and the strangers a quick smile and a nod.
Presumably this was the apprentice she had spoken of.
“You’ll excuse me?” Anne turned and hurried back into the house.
***
HETTY TROY, THE MISTRESS of Edgwick Farm, had just finished washing the grazed knee of her youngest, and sent him back out to play with his siblings in the yard, when she saw the dazzling sight from the window.
She straightened with a faint grunt of pain. A young lady in a smart scarlet riding habit and a very fine gentleman were walking their handsome horses into her yard. The children had stopped playing and were staring open-mouthed.
Hetty didn’t blame them. Who on earth could the strangers be?
Of course. They must be the people who’d taken Temper House while the Temperleys were in London. Hetty had harboured hopes that Sir Dominic would have taken Edward with him, thus deflecting her husband’s constant anger, but he hadn’t. Hetty had the bruise on her ribs to prove it.
Hastily, Hetty went to the back door and dropped a curtsey before catching the children to prevent their clearly intended lunge at the newcomers.
“Mrs. Troy?” the lady asked pleasantly, while the gentleman tied up the horses and showed the children how to stroke the beasts’ noses. “Forgive the intrusion, but might we have a few words? I’m Lady Petteril, and this is my husband. We are staying at Temper House with our guests.”
Hetty did not want them here, but she could hardly refuse. Her best course was to hear them out and get rid of them before her husband got wind of them.
The gentleman was polite, ushering both women before him. Hetty liked that courtesy, with a wistfulness that never quite left her.
“You’d best come through to the parlour,” Hetty said reluctantly. The kitchen was no place for the Quality.
“Oh, we’re comfortable wherever you’re prepared to put up with us,” Lady Petteril said cheerfully. “We don’t want to hold you back—you have your hands full, I can see. What a comfortable kitchen.”
Hetty shrugged and invited them to sit. They did, looking like the bright tropical birds she’d once seen in a book, among the bleak, ordinary surroundings of Hetty’s life.
“What is it I can possibly do for you?” Hetty asked, allowing all her bewilderment to show.
“It’s about Edward, the footman at Temper House,” Lord Petteril said.
Hetty grasped the edge of the table, feeling the blood drain from her face. She couldn’t faint. The Petterils would summon her husband and then...
“What about him?” she asked fiercely. She focused hard on Lord Petteril’s face. He had kind, dark brown eyes that at first glance were pleasingly vague. On second, they were clever and alarmingly perceptive.
“We’re not here to cause trouble,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if you’ve heard that someone attacked Edward last night? He has not yet recovered consciousness. We need to know what happened.”
Oh God... She glanced fearfully toward the window, then turned back to her visitors. “Last night? When?”
“About two o’clock we think.”
“Will he live?” she blurted. Better for her if he died, and yet she could not wish that, would not...
“We don’t know,” Lord Petteril replied. “May I ask when you last saw him?”
“Not for weeks. My husband doesn’t like him, so I keep out of his way.” Stupid excuse. The world knew exactly why John Troy did not like Edward...
Lady Petteril leaned forward. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Troy?”
Hetty sat, mostly because her legs seemed reluctant to hold her up. Her breath hissed at the sudden pain in her ribs.
“I’m so sorry to ask you this,” the lady said, and sounded it, oddly enough. “Please believe me that it will go no further. But did you ever meet Edward at the summer house along the path from Temper House?”
Hetty closed her eyes. What difference did it make? John already knew about the summer house. She nodded.
“That’s a long walk from here,” Lord Petteril remarked.
“I went on market days. Just for an hour, if I could. It was winter. The family didn’t use the summer house in winter. And it’s a quiet path if you go through the wood and avoid the house.”
“So you haven’t been there recently?” Lady Petteril asked.
Hetty shook her head. “We ended everything when my husband found out. But you know that too, don’t you?”
She couldn’t keep the hostility out of her voice, but her noble visitors either didn’t mind or didn’t notice.
“Your husband must be a hard-working man,” Lord Petteril said. “I suppose he was asleep all of last night.”
“Of course he was,” she said dully. “Both of us were.”
“Your children always sleep all night?” Lady Petteril asked in surprise.
If they know what’s good for them. And me... “Not every night. Last night, they did. Oh, God!”
She couldn’t stop the exclamation, for she had just heard his distinctive tread in the yard, closely followed by his voice snarling at the children to get out of his way, then, with suspicion, “Where’d these horses come from?”
By then, Hetty had jumped to her feet, grimacing in silent pain. John thrust his way through the door, filling the room with anger.
Lord Petteril rose to his feet. Her ladyship stayed where she was, smiling pleasantly.
“John,” Hetty said quickly. “I didn’t expect you at this time. Lord and Lady Petteril were just passing. They’re Sir Dominic’s tenants up at Temper House.”
“Then don’t they deserve some ale? Something to eat? We’re not paupers!”
“Oh, we already turned down your wife’s kind offer,” Lord Petteril said easily.
Some sort of conflict was clearly taking place in the yard, involving shouting children and the wailing of the youngest.
“Hetty, quiet that racket!” John said irritably.
There was nothing for Hetty to do but obey, though her heart was in her mouth as to what the Petterils would say or ask...
The quarrel in the yard seemed to be about whose turn it was to pet the horses, and James was crying because he couldn’t reach their noses.
After she’d lifted James up to stroke both beasts and dictated an order for petting, she hurried back into the kitchen in time to hear her husband say, “My silly wife is easily dazzled by colour and a pretty face. I never blamed him for accepting what was on offer.”
She was meant to hear, of course. He was sprawled by the stove, looking right at her with the contempt that had always been there, even before she had strayed.
She hadn’t been dazzled by Edward’s smart livery, or even his handsome looks.
She had been dazzled by apparent kindness, something she’d never known at her husband’s hands.
“Truth be told, I don’t blame her neither,” John drawled.
It was a lie. He blamed her for everything from a poor harvests to a morning-after head.
“Got to be patient with the little fools, eh? They don’t know no better.
I’m content enough with mine. She breeds well and keeps a decent house when she’s not distracted by the Quality. Some food on this table, Hetty.”
Lord Petteril stood. “We won’t keep you any longer. Your wife told us your delightful children obliged you by sleeping all last night and allowing you both your well-earned rest.”
“That’s right,” John said steadily, although he hadn’t staggered in until three in the morning, falling over the kitchen chair. Which had put him in a vile enough mood to account for her sore ribs today.
“Long may it last,” said his lordship. “We have all that ahead of us.”
“You are to be a mother, my lady?” Hetty said in surprise.
“In September, we think,” Lady Petteril replied, making use of her husband’s hand to rise. “Thank you both for your kindness and help. Good day, Mr. Troy. Mrs. Troy.”
Hetty was not fooled. Her ladyship knew and was trying to turn her husband’s anger into satisfaction. It might work, though it would have been better if they hadn’t come at all. As it was, humiliation and shame were like old friends.
She kept smiling as she showed them out and made the children thank them for the shiny coins they distributed. She even waved as they set off again, though she could not meet Lady Petteril’s gaze.
Then, her smile fading, she turned into the house to fetch her husband the food he didn’t really want. He must have seen them coming and bolted down to see what was going on. To be sure that she didn’t tell the truth.