Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Mrs. Shorer claims the ankle doesn’t hurt much.
” Alice tipped up the abacus on the windowsill, making all the beads slide to one side.
“In truth, I can’t see much bruising or swelling.
More puffiness than bruising, really, but if Eunice Shorer admits to discomfort of any sort, the situation is to be taken seriously. ”
“When did this happen?” Cam asked, more than a little alarmed.
Mrs. Shorer had been ancient in his youth, and a twisted ankle might lame her for life.
He did not return to his desk, because he was in the presence of a lady.
Also because one wanted to be on his feet when Alice was prowling about the library.
“She took a tumble this morning after divine services.” Alice bustled along, straightening books on the shelves, tidying the newspapers on the reading table.
“She and Grandpapa usually walk home from services together, doubtless airing differences they don’t want the rest of the congregation to hear.
Grandpapa had parted from her in the mares’ pasture—Mrs. Shorer does not permit him to escort her all the way to the Hall—when she lost her footing.
I gather finishing the journey to the Hall was poorly advised, but Mrs. Shorer is not one to sit about in the grass, waiting for aid. ”
“Will she be mortified if I peek in on her?”
Alice looked up from rattling newspapers. “Of course, but a small dose of mortification can work wonders on one recovering from an injury.”
Alice was so pretty, in her staid, reserved way, and capable of conveying such mischief with just a gleam in her eyes. The snood was still an affront to fashion, feminine pulchritude, and nature, but it was Alice’s snood.
Though Cam wasn’t fooled by it. He propped his hips against the desk and folded his arms.
“This turned ankle is bad news for Mrs. Shorer, Alice, but I’m sure her iron constitution will soon rally. It’s a disaster for me.”
“For you?” Alice snapped the last of the newspapers open and folded it neatly atop the stack.
“How so? The staff will continue cosseting you and Mr. St. Didier within an inch of your lives, hoping desperately to persuade you to put off your return to London. Mrs. Shorer will command her underlings from her bed, and you will hardly know she’s laid up for a bit. ”
“She needs to be resting, not commanding a performance from the wings, and after this morning’s ordeal in the churchyard, I am tempted to slip away to London under tonight’s waning moon.”
Alice became absorbed with pleating a burgundy velvet curtain hanging in perfectly symmetric folds to the left of a tall window.
“What ordeal?”
Cam eyed the open door and decided a few reporters belowstairs might be a good thing.
“Lady Josephine all but insisted that I escort Miss Halbertson to dine at the vicarage, and when Dorothea Considine just happened to overhear that salvo, she attached herself to my arm like a long-lost poor relation. Miss Dingle was bound by the rules of matrimonial combat to seize my other arm, and Hercules facing the Mares of Diomedes could not have felt a greater sense of peril.”
Alice peered at him over her shoulder. “The ladies don’t want to eat you up.”
“Yes, my dear, they do. They want to seize me, take me captive, deny me the commercial pursuits I enjoy, and fence me into the venerable institution of wedlock—emphasis on the lock—all on their dubious terms. Lady Josephine appears to abet Miss Halbertson’s chances, but she’d in truth support any one of them who could bring me up to scratch. ”
“Davina Halbertson is perfectly sweet and sensible. She’s just a trifle timid.” Alice started on the second curtain, which also hung perfectly straight.
“Miss Halbertson would be the proverbial soft clay in Lady Josephine’s hands, and I would know no peace.
London, Yorkshire, the Antipodes, no place would I be safe from my aunt’s generous guidance of my wife, and that’s why you must drop in over the next few days to ensure Mrs. Shorer is recovering as swiftly as possible. ”
A fine plan. Simple, practical, logical even.
“But, my lord, that will not be necessary. Mrs. Shorer herself knows more about injuries and illnesses than I can ever hope to learn, and all her situation wants is rest.”
Of course Alice would resist an application of irrefutable logic.
“You said yourself that Mrs. Shorer is ancient. She is also stoic, and if she says her ankle pains her, then she’s likely in agony.
One modest dose of the poppy, and as small as she is, she’ll sleep the day away, and what do you think her staff will do? ”
“Dust? Polish? Sweep?”
“The weather is beautiful, the household has recently endured months of mourning. If the martinet overseeing your labors took an extended nap, would you resist temptation?”
Alice straightened, and some shadow passed through her eyes. “The maids are not a lot of schoolgirls who can’t wait for their holiday.”
“When is the last time they had a holiday?”
“Beltane, I suppose.”
“Months ago. If Lady Josephine should stop by and see dust on the foyer windowsills, I will be besieged.”
“My lord, you will be besieged in any case. You’ve accepted an invitation to dine at the vicarage.
It’s well known that your visit to the Hall will be brief, and Lady Josephine has already seen to it that you’ve hosted your neighbors here at the Hall.
You are now honor-bound to make reciprocal calls upon your guests.
You escaped the Sunday roast at the Halbertsons only because Mrs. Halbertson hasn’t had sufficient time to order delicacies from York. ”
The situation was worse even than Cam had suspected. “I did not, as it happens, accept an invitation to dine at the vicarage.” He pushed himself away from the desk, took Alice by the wrist, and led her to the wing chairs by the empty hearth.
She came without protest, no doubt keeping her powder dry.
“Let’s sit, shall we?” Cam suggested, gesturing to a chair.
Alice perched on the edge of the cushion. “I really should be going. Grandpapa likes his Sunday meal rather early.”
“Singleton is either enjoying a pipe on the porch or snoring over an agricultural pamphlet in his study.” Cam sat, though Alice hadn’t given him explicit permission to do so. He took that as progress of a sort.
“Your grandfather,” Cam went on, “is an adult and capable of holding off starvation for twenty minutes or so here and there. Please say you’ll look in on Mrs. Shorer and have a word with Cook and the maids when you do.”
Alice looked around the room. “Mr. Beaglemore might be the better resource, my lord.”
“Beaglemore would sooner expire of mortification than tell female staff what to do. Cook doesn’t venture out of her domain, and Mrs. Shorer has no assistant.
I no longer even know most of the maids by name, Alice, and yet, somebody must keep order in the ranks for the next few days.
If Lady Josephine senses an opportunity, she will move into the baroness’s suite, and a trebuchet would be insufficient to dislodge her. ”
Ah, a hint of a smile, possibly at the image of Lady Josephine being launched over the gateposts like a load of rocks hurled from a catapult.
“Not the baroness’s suite,” Alice said. “She would never be that presuming.”
The hell she wouldn’t. “She’s an earl’s daughter. The baroness’s suite is the least she’d feel entitled to. If you won’t have a word with the staff, then have a word with me.”
Alice shifted back, and it occurred to Cam that his guest was tired. Today was the Sabbath, the ordained day of rest, and Alice looked short of sleep. Why?
“I cannot be seen to intrude here at the Hall, sir. Bad enough I served as your clerk for two days. Your aunt was wroth with me because I did not summon her to support you in your hour of need. She will take a very dim view of my usurping Mrs. Shorer’s authority. That would be putting myself forward.”
Cam knew the impulse to curse. Simple logic was a two-edged sword. “But if Josephine puts herself forward, that’s Christian charity toward a dim-witted nephew?”
Another gleam in Alice’s eyes. “According to her ladyship, your perceptions are limited to ledgers and shipping schedules. She does not call you dim-witted.”
Alice drummed her nails on the arm of the chair while Cam waited, because as surely as storms rose in the North Atlantic, Alice Singleton had more to say.
“I shall be blunt, my lord. I am a lady, according to your aunt Josephine, because my father was nominally a gentleman, and my grandfather qualifies as the same by only the most lenient definition of the term. Papa did not and Grandpapa does not labor with his hands.”
“Why do I feel there’s a but in the offing?”
“With Lady Josephine, the buts and neverthelesses and notwithstandings abound. But I have no means, I am beyond the first blush of youth, and between impending penury and my own foolishness, I am staring destitute spinsterhood in the face. Grandpapa will leave me a little something, but only a little. Lady Josephine is concerned that I safeguard the good name I enjoy and avoid a descent into the lower orders, such as, say, by becoming a housekeeper myself.”
Cam considered what Alice had said, what she’d omitted, what she’d delicately implied.
“Whom does she want you to marry?”
“Blessington Peabody, at present, though she’d accept any one of several others on my behalf. If Lady Josephine could see me married to Mr. Peabody, her fears for me would be quieted.”
An odd progression of sensations assailed Cam. Heat, queasiness, a sinking in the gut… He recognized these discomforts as the physical manifestation of a perception of injustice, of wrongness. He’d felt it before, when he’d seen a chimney sweep terrorizing a small boy unwilling to go up a hot flue.
The small boy was a few inches taller now. The sweep was no longer employed in the metropolis.