Chapter 20 #3
Talking to Edward Overton would never lead anywhere pleasant. Brand was surprised Lady Overton hadn’t ejected him years ago. Sir Digby, swarmed by happy dogs, had marched to the bottom of the dark oak stairs and was yelling, “Rosie! We’ve guests, love!”
A middle-aged woman in apron and cap came bustling out of the back of the house. For a moment Brand thought she was Lady Overton, for she looked the type, but she curtsied and said, “I’m sorry, Sir Digby, but Lady Overton’s not well. Ate something that didn’t agree with her.”
Brand twitched to alertness. Surely the New Commonwealth wouldn’t have need to poison the wife.
“She was well enough last night to venture out of doors,” said Edward Overton frostily.
“Happen what did it, sir,” the housekeeper said. “’Course, she wasn’t feeling quite the thing before or she’d have gone to Arradale, wouldn’t she? Can I serve you something, Sir Digby?”
Sir Digby blew out his breath and turned to Brand. “I’m sorry about this, my lord. I’ll be up and see her in a moment. Perhaps she’ll feel better later. But of course, there’s nothing to stop you checking out the stables. Her stable man can tell you anything you want to know.”
“Then I’d be glad to do that. And I won’t stay, since your lady is unwell.”
“No, no! None of that. It’s a long way from here to anywhere you’d want to be unless you go back to Arradale, and you didn’t seem in the mood for more of that sort of nonsense. You’ll stay here the night, my lord, just as we arranged. Now, do you want any refreshment, or should I send for Hextall?”
Brand declined refreshment and was soon strolling toward the stables with a quite young man who clearly knew his business and thought very well of his mistress. All in all, Brand was content to be on his way to interesting matters and out of the house while the family sorted out its problems.
Wenscote kept country hours, so he was summoned back for a meal in the late afternoon.
He’d spent an enjoyable time, but was hungry.
Once he’d found his room and washed, he returned to the main floor without any sight of Sir Digby’s wife.
It was a shame, because he’d enjoy her opinions.
The stud was run on the latest principles by well-chosen servants who thought the world of her.
“She’s sulking,” Sir Digby muttered with a frustrated scowl, drawing him into a paneled parlor. “Says she won’t come down while Edward’s here. Says he hit her. He says she’s making it up. What’s a man to do?”
“Trust his wife?”
“All the time?” Sir Digby asked dubiously. “They’re strange creatures, women.”
“Delightfully so. But if a man marries, he must trust. What sort of life will he live otherwise?”
Sir Digby looked flummoxed. “You’re something of a philosopher, my lord. But unmarried, I would point out.”
Brand gave him that telling point. And anyway, he would have married his mysterious lady, and that clearly would have been folly.
“If only William hadn’t died,” the older man said. “I tell you, my lord, there’s been no peace since!”
“Can the estate not be left elsewhere?”
“Nay, it goes to the children, males first, then females. Then to the collaterals in the same manner. It’s been that way for generations and no trouble before.”
“I see. But even so, you don’t need to see or speak to your nephew. It’s clear he cuts up your peace.”
“Aye, aye.” Sir Digby stumped over to a brimming punch bowl and scooped large amounts into two glasses, passing one to Brand. What had happened to abstemious living?
“I’m a family man at heart, my lord,” Sir Digby said after a deep drink. “Me and William, we were like father and son. I keep hoping …”
“I doubt Mr. Edward Overton will change.”
“Aye.” He sighed. “I look back now and think how it might have been if I’d married sooner and had children. But there was William such a likely lad, and a woman about the place is a lot of bother….”
“I think we all look back and think of might-have-beens.”
Sir Digby glanced over furtively. Brand hoped he wasn’t about to be confided in.
“Stone,” Sir Digby said.
He was.
“Stone?”
“The stone. Bladder. Gave me terrible grief all my life. Never thought to marry with that till Rosie. Got cut a few years back for her sake, and it’s been a mighty relief to me. But sometimes the operation … Well, you know…. I … er, wanted you to know, my lord, that I wasn’t lazy about my duties.”
“I never entertained the thought.”
“And William married a poor filly,” Sir Digby continued, filling his glass again.
“Five miscarriages and two stillborn. Terrible hard on a man, that sort of thing. When she died, I didn’t press him to wed again.
I still had hopes that Edward would get over this silliness.
” He drained his glass and looked around.
“For that matter, where the devil is he? Come on. Sit down, my lord. We’ll start without him.
Dinner!” he bellowed, that clearly being notice to serve in this house, for the housekeeper hurried in with a tureen of soup.
Brand took his place, hoping food would end the confidences.
“It’s Wenscote I fret for,” Sir Digby said, tucking his serviette into his stock. “When any of this matters, I’ll be past caring, and Rosie’s provided for. But it’s bitter to think of Wenscote passing into the hands of those carping gray folk.”
Brand took soup from a lushly endowed maid who looked likely to fall out of her bodice at any moment. “They’re good farmers.”
“Aye, so I gather. But a cold sort of Christian. Christ fed the five thousand,” Sir Digby said, breaking his bread and dropping pieces in the soup, “but those lot look at good food as if it’s the devil’s work.
He went to a wedding feast, didn’t He, and changed water into wine?
But they don’t celebrate their weddings and don’t drink wine.
How’s that following the Bible, I ask you? ”
Brand attended to the soup, for there was nothing to say.
“And they’ll plow up Rosie’s garden…. Ah, there you are, Edward. You’re late!”
Edward Overton slipped into his chair. “My apologies, Uncle. I was reading my Bible.”
“With blinkers on. Eat your soup, if it isn’t too wicked for you.”
Brand was startled to see Overton actually scrutinize the soup as if judging it, but at least he did take some. As it turned out, that was all he ate, though he took two bowls and a piece of bread, consuming them slowly as the other courses came and went. He drank small beer diluted with water.
Sir Digby’s color deepened, and Brand suspected it was more at the sight of his nephew’s meal than at the effects of his own, though he was eating far too much. Brand was heartily wishing that he hadn’t accepted this invitation.
“So, Uncle,” Overton said, as he dabbed his lips and carefully folded his serviette, “I trust Aunt Rosamunde is repentant.”
“Let be, Edward.”
“‘Suffer not a woman to usurp authority over a man!’” Overton quoted. “You risk your place in heaven, Uncle, if you let a woman rule your house. I will continue to visit here.”
Sir Digby scraped the last trace of pie off his plate. “Aye, well, as for that, perhaps it would be best if you didn’t come around so often for the next little while. It’s not as if you take interest in the management of the estate.”
“It will be managed according the principles of the New Commonwealth.”
Sir Digby glared at him. “There’s no purpose to your coming here other than to upset my Rosie.”
“Of course it is not my purpose—”
“But it’s what you do! Give over. I don’t know why you come. We don’t please you. The food don’t please you. The maids offend you. Go do your preaching!”
Edward Overton stood abruptly. “That young woman will be the death of you, Uncle!” Brand was startled by the word “young.” “And she’s clearly no better than she should be.”
Sir Digby pushed to his feet, a deep red by now. “Don’t you dare imply—”
“I caught her, I tell you! Sneaking into the house, stinking of sin. And where was she when I visited a few weeks back? Gallivanting in Harrogate, was it not?”
“There’s no harm in that! As it was, she didn’t like it—”
“So she says.”
“She came back early, I tell you!”
“Then where was she when George Cotter was here?”
“Spending a few days with her cousin, that’s all, and me well aware of it! I’ll not have you casting stones at Rosie, Edward. She’s the best, truest wife a man could have.”
“Sometimes, Uncle, I think you are willfully blind.”
Brand sank back in his seat and imagined a comfortable hole opening up, one he could slip into and pull a lid down on top of while the fire blasted overhead.
“With her cousin, indeed!” Edward Overton ranted on. “As if the sinful countess was any sort of companion for a decent woman.”
Brand took more interest.
“Sinful?” Sir Digby echoed. “You can’t go saying things like that!”
“I speak the truth! Her very nature sins. She does not accept the true place of woman. She apes the man. She wears breeches under her skirts and rides astride.”
“Been looking under her skirts, nevvy?”
Edward Overton braced his hands on the table and leaned toward his uncle. “God knows what she does, she and your wife, at that dower house. And I mean that literally, Uncle.” He pushed straight and raised his right hand. “God knows, and He will consign them to hell’s flames for it!”
As the outraged Cotterite stormed out of the room, Sir Digby filled his wineglass again and knocked it back in one gulp.
Brand sat stunned.
Lady Arradale and Lady Overton. The dower house. They’d been there a few weeks back when George Cotter was in the area. A well-run stud. It was all he could do to sit in his seat, not to race up to find the room where Rosie Overton skulked.
He swallowed and hoped he could speak calmly. “I gather your wife is young, Sir Digby.”
The man looked a bit awkward about it. “Aye, she’s quite a bit younger than I am.”
“Still of childbearing age?”
“Oh, aye. She’s not yet twenty-five, my Rosie.”
“Then perhaps God will be kind and send you an alternative to Edward Overton.”
And tears glimmered in the corners of Sir Digby’s bloodshot, half-drunk eyes. “We have hopes, Lord Brand,” he whispered, clearly forgetting that he’d already confided his impotency. He touched the side of his nose. “Not saying anything yet. But hopes.”
As he’d suspected. Collusion between husband and wife. And doubtless the whole of Wensleydale was in on it. Brand stood. “If you’ll excuse me, sir.”
Sir Digby nodded, doubtless assuming Brand was finding the necessary.
Without subterfuge, Brand climbed the stairs and found the most likely door.
He opened it, went through, shut it, then seized the woman he found sitting reading an all-too-familiar book.
He hauled her up and drove her back against the wall.
“A planned breeding program, perhaps, Lady Overton?”
She went a strange color—stark white with creamy blotches.
Then fainted.