Chapter 6
Twelve days later, Ruby peered into the depths of her teacup.
At the bottom—beneath a layer of strangely pinkish tea—rested a single, whole walnut.
She looked up at Alice and Tamsin, arrayed around her in the Pomeroy House library. “It’s getting worse,” she said. “Do you think it’s getting worse?”
Alice gazed down into the tea tray, which held a shriveled apricot, a pot of jam, and no visible flatware. “So many jellies,” she murmured. “I’ve never seen so many jellies.”
Tamsin was not attending to the horrors of the tea Gerry had brought them.
At the moment, she was on her knees, sorting books into piles by subject and eating a chocolate biscuit she’d acquired down in St. Petroc’s.
She had changed into trousers on their second day and, when no one had turned a hair, had promptly shoved her frocks into the bottom of her trunk to molder.
“Another one on illnesses in dogs,” she murmured. “That makes eleven.”
“That’s not so many,” Alice said.
“Just on this shelf.”
Alice blinked.
The three of them had decided to tackle the rooms in the house one by one.
They’d begun with their own chambers out of necessity—Ruby’s had been the only one with bed linens—but they’d quickly progressed to the large rooms on the lowest level of the mansion.
If they were real ladies-in-waiting, Ruby had reasoned, they’d be tasked with readying the chambers that the princess was most likely to avail herself of whenever she did manage to visit.
The rooms, they’d quickly discovered, had been divided into either neat chambers used for bizarre and inexplicable purposes, or dust-ridden heaps that had been closed off entirely and abandoned to nature.
Over the last almost-fortnight, nature—and the Pomeroy House staff—had been forced to surrender to the combined efforts of Ruby, Alice, and Tamsin.
Tamsin had removed an entire collection of Ottoman Baroque chamber pots from a music room decorated in black marble and stars. Alice, it appeared, had discovered a heretofore unknown aggressive streak, judging by the way she had volunteered to beat the dust out of all the rolled-up rugs.
And Ruby—oh, it had been the greatest pleasure of her lifetime—had overseen the mansion’s redecorating.
Pomeroy House wasn’t terrible, not really.
Unconventional, perhaps, but she liked unconventional—had always valued peculiar treasures and hidden eccentricities.
She’d supervised the relocation of the immense Tudor furnishings to rooms more properly suited to their size.
She’d lavished the dining table and chairs with furniture polish and had been delighted by the pattern of black roses and thorns her efforts had revealed.
She’d carefully cleaned wall fabrics until they gleamed, and in the rooms that had grown faded with disuse, she’d found pigments and oils to retouch the once-colorful millwork.
And the staff had let them do it, with scarcely a word of protest. When she’d encountered Captain Malcolm Archer—which seemed to happen quite often, no matter where she was in the house, almost as though he were watching her—he hadn’t batted an eye, even when he’d found her painting at the top of a ladder with her skirts knotted up around her knees.
He’d smiled extravagantly. He’d asked her how he could be of service. He’d answered every question she’d asked—about his relationship with the di Sangro family, about Pomeroy House’s history—with a delightful torrent of words that, upon later reflection, did not seem to convey any real information.
The man’s extraordinarily, suspiciously attractive and pleasant demeanor, however, had not distracted her from the bizarre happenings in the rest of the house.
Ruby dropped her cup untouched back into its saucer. “I really do think it seems to be getting worse.”
Tamsin sat back on her heels. The pile of canine veterinary medicine texts wobbled precariously at her side. “How do you mean? I think we’ve done quite a lot in a short time, to be honest.”
“Not our efforts. I mean”—Ruby gestured to the tea tray at Alice’s feet—“everything else.”
Alice looked down as well. “Last week, the tea tray at least came with a spoon.”
“And a cake to deliver the jam to your mouth.”
Tamsin shuddered. “I don’t think that was cake. It tasted of celeriac. And clams.”
“It’s not just the food.” Ruby turned to take in the rest of the library. “The peculiarities of the house seem to be mounting, somehow.”
“It was odd,” Alice mused, “when our bedclothes disappeared.”
“That’s exactly what I mean! Where could they have gone? And why, for heaven’s sake?”
Tamsin chewed on her lower lip. “Overzealous laundering, perhaps?”
“Does this staff strike you as overzealous at any household task?”
“Well. No.” Tamsin inclined her head. “You have me there.”
“I think they are making it worse,” Ruby said. “I’m almost certain there are more books in this library today than there were yesterday evening when we left. And the piles we made seem to have moved around in the night.”
“If we’re listing oddities,” Alice murmured, “I can’t quite grasp how that seagull got into the music room.”
“Unless someone put it there!” Ruby exclaimed. “And where is this mythical housekeeper? I’ve never seen the woman, for all they keep saying she’s just around the corner.”
Tamsin’s brows drew together as she pondered Ruby and Alice. “You are proposing that the Pomeroy House staff is engaged in some sort of machination to . . . magnify the house’s defects?”
“I know it sounds like a flight of fancy, but—”
“No,” Tamsin said. “Well, yes, rather ludicrous but also—strangely plausible?” She gestured to the leaning tower of veterinary books at her side, which exceeded the level of her head. “There’s no way all of this happens by chance.”
“But why would they do it?” Alice asked. “To what end?”
Ruby scavenged one of Tamsin’s chocolate biscuits. “I have no idea. Surely they can’t enjoy living in squalor and surviving on clam cakes.”
“They’re not ignoring their responsibilities and gadding about the village like absentee landlords,” Tamsin said.
“Because they’re always here. I tried to make my way into one of the offices earlier, and their so-called secretary was already there, surrounded by papers and ink.
She managed to remove me from the premises with the politest misdirection I’ve ever had the pleasure of being subjected to. ”
Ruby bit down on her chocolate biscuit and considered misdirection.
Perhaps half a dozen times now, she’d stumbled upon Captain Archer deep inside the labyrinthine corridors of Pomeroy House.
She’d been looking for turpentine and lye the first instance, and then later some sort of plates or spoons for their bizarre breakfasts of courgette confit.
In each encounter, he had rapidly covered his surprise with a brilliant smile.
He’d cupped her elbow in his big callused hand and led her down corridors that she’d never seen before and had not intended to visit, and the fact that she liked the strange little rooms he showed her only made the whole thing more suspect.
He was too charming. The curled-up corners of his mouth screamed deceit and deception; every time he grinned fetchingly down at her, some black pirate flag began to wave in the back of her mind.
Was he trying to hide something from her?
Was he, for some inexplicable reason, trying to lead her in the opposite direction of a proper meal?
She picked up the teacup and gazed down at the walnut therein. “I think,” she said, “I am going to search for some food.”
Alice looked up, an expression of delight crossing her face at the prospect of spending time out-of-doors.
Before her disgrace, she had been an enrolled member of the Aurelian Society, London’s social group for entomology enthusiasts.
“Do you mean down in St. Petroc’s? For more biscuits?
I wouldn’t mind another ramble past the—”
“Not in St. Petroc’s.” Ruby brandished the cup. “In the house. Perhaps I can rescue some walnuts before they are pickled.”
Tamsin cast a dubious glance in her direction.
“I shan’t be long,” Ruby said. “Wish me luck.”
She took her leave of Tamsin and Alice and made her way in the direction of the kitchens.
If the Pomeroy House staff was not dining on clam cakes and innumerable jams—if they had some alternative and more salutary food store of their own—perhaps she could work out where they were keeping the comestibles.
As she strode down the corridor, it occurred to her that if the staff members were having their own, decidedly more palatable tea, she might be able to sneak around a corner and catch them in the act of stealth dining.
But then again—
She hesitated, chewing on her bottom lip. According to the papers—which, to be sure, had not proven especially reliable—there was meant to be a fantastically elaborate and plentiful wine cellar somewhere on the premises.
Could there be a secret store of food hidden there? And could Ruby simply pilfer some?
A direct assault on the staff was, perhaps, not a good idea. It seemed altogether too much like something the old Ruby would have done: as blunt and impolitic as she’d been back in London.
Three years ago, her sister Cassandra had debuted to general acclaim and fanfare. Cassandra was two year younger than Ruby, four inches taller, and possessed of the shy grace of a baby fawn.
Their mother had died when Cass was only five.
Their father had been devastated and rudderless; he had never, as far as Ruby knew, considered marrying again.
And so with no one else to fill the role, Ruby had stepped into the role of Cassandra’s protector.
Cass was compassionate, sweetly earnest—when she’d been presented in all her gentle beauty to the ton, Ruby had been determined to shield Cassandra from rakehells and fortune-hunters.