Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Wiggle your toes,” Alice said.
Mrs. Shorer obliged. “I told you, nothing was broken. I simply wrenched it. I should be up and about tomorrow.”
Alice slipped a thick wool stocking over the small, veined foot. “What are you up to, madam? You could be bustling about now, but you continue to rest. You are no better at resting than I am.”
Alice and her patient—or sham facsimile thereof—enjoyed the cramped but absolute privacy of Mrs. Shorer’s sitting room.
The baron’s dressing closet was twice the size of the housekeeper’s parlor, but not half so full of memories and mementos.
Sketches on the wall told of nieces and nephews, as well as great-nieces and great-nephews.
One of several frames above the mantel depicted a couple no longer in the first blush of youth, their Sunday finest suggesting a humble station.
Maryanne and her Henry, the couple who’d seen through Lady Josephine’s nasty lies and eloped. Alice had made the drawing at Mrs. Shorer’s request, and a fortnight later, the couple had decamped for better prospects.
“You must promise me your discretion, Alice,” Mrs. Shorer said, taking the slipper from Alice’s hand and tucking it over her foot. “Most of all, you must not discuss my little ploy with your grandfather. He will lecture me until kingdom come, as only Thaddeus Singleton can lecture.”
Interesting. Grandpapa was not prone to lengthy discourses in Alice’s experience. He was more one to brood, expostulate, and be done with a topic.
“Your confidences are safe with me.”
“Of course they are. I ought not to have implied otherwise. Be a dear and pour us a bit more lemonade.”
An extravagance, by Mrs. Shorer’s standards, but she believed fresh fruit aided healing, and who was Alice to argue?
“We’ll not run out of ice this year,” Mrs. Shorer said, sipping her drink. “No baron on hand this summer to help us use up our stores. And toward the end… I do miss Baron Alexander, but Camden is making a good start on matters. He personally demanded that I explain the household books to him.”
Why announce that? The baron was Mrs. Shorer’s employer, and he ought to inspect his own household books. “His lordship is very comfortable with figures and ledgers.”
“He always was. The brightest of the lot, according to your grandfather, and let it be noted that for once, he and I agreed.” She peered, birdlike, at Alice over the rim of her glass.
“You mustn’t tell him that. Thaddeus delights in believing himself to be the sole diviner of Camden’s potential, despite the way Lady Josephine slandered the boy. ”
“Slandered him?”
Mrs. Shorer set her glass on the side table with a soft thump.
“There he was, years younger than his brother and his cousin, and all her ladyship could notice was that his studies were not as advanced, that he was not as nimble, not as strong, and she always spread this bile in the hearing of other adults.”
“Camden heard enough of it too,” Alice said, thinking back.
“I did as well. I recall…” The memory was vague, but not gone altogether.
“The older boys were playing chess, and Alex was losing. Cam came along and moved one of Alex’s pieces to get him unstuck.
Bernard howled, Alex gloated, and Cam was just beginning to smile when Lady Josephine remarked that only a little barbarian would interrupt a gentlemanly game in such an unmannerly fashion. ”
That long-ago day had been sunny, the hour early. Alice had accompanied Grandpapa on a call to the Hall and been consigned to tarrying on the back terrace while the adults conducted their business. What Lady Josephine had been doing among the infantry, Alice did not know.
Spreading bile.
“Her perishing ladyship is a plague on the shire,” Mrs. Shorer said.
“Tried to catch me making errors in the ledgers, tried to accuse me of a lack of thrift. That woman would not know thrift if it bit her beringed finger. She found nothing—not a sum rounded the wrong direction, not tuppence in the wrong column. You be careful, Alice. You be very careful of her.”
“I try to be, but none of this old news explains why you are malingering with a perfectly spry ankle.”
Mrs. Shorer grinned. Alice had seldom seen her without her mobcap. To behold Mrs. Shorer at her leisure, snow-white hair in a soft bun, humor lighting her eyes, was to realize that even the elderly could be full of surprises.
Eunice Shorer was pretty, as pressed flowers were pretty. More delicate than the fresh specimen, the color subdued, the foliage faded, but still very much a blossom, and all the more precious for having so long outlasted the lavish beauty of springtime.
“Dearest Alice, you might not have noticed, but I have grown old.”
Alice assumed a puzzled expression. “You have? I was not aware of this. You flit about this house like a sparrow looking to free itself from a disobliging barn. The maids trundling in your wake are invariably panting with exertion. The Hall sparkles or you know the reason why, and your linen closets are the envy of all Yorkshire. Nobody’s sachets and soaps smell as divine as yours, and the staff enjoys robust good health in part because of your expertise with the herbs.
What is this ‘I have grown old’ nonsense you refer to? ”
“You are such a sweet person, Alice Singleton. I am elderly, and Saint Peter has plans for me. Heaven is undergoing a thorough cleaning in anticipation of my arrival. You may depend upon that. Because I value my post, I must choose a successor from among the maids.”
“The baron will make the choice.”
“The baron has a good head on his handsome shoulders—the rest of him is rather splendid too. Don’t look shocked, Alice. I am not blind. He will choose the party I nominate as my successor. I don’t suppose you want that honor?”
“Lady Josephine would be horrified.” Then too, the post of baroness might be offered, a notion Alice could barely credit, much less accept.
Mrs. Shorer patted Alice’s wrist with cool fingers. “You and Camden would suit, you know. Marry our baron, and you might give that demon in Christian clothing an apoplexy.”
What cataclysms were portended when both Grandpapa and Mrs. Shorer were making a match between Alice and Camden Huxley?
“Eunice Shorer, you blaspheme.”
Mrs. Shorer took a placid sip of her tea. “I have contemplated slipping a lethal dose of belladonna into her ladyship’s cordial, my dear. Not a pleasant death.”
This disclosure was made without a scintilla of humor—or shame. “Now you sound as if your wits are wandering, and I know you are trying to distract me from my earlier question: Why pretend you turned your ankle?”
“We will get to that, but first, you may be assured that my vengeful impulses are under control for the nonce. Her ladyship was most in peril when you wrote to me about the difficulty you endured when you were parted from the baby.”
Sore breasts. Terribly sore and swollen breasts, after three months of nursing an infant multiple times daily. The problem had begun to subside even before Mrs. Shorer had penned a reply.
“Gabriella. She has a name.” And she was no longer a baby.
“You were in pain and had nobody else to advise you. Why you and the baby could not simply stay on with that vicar and his lady, I do not know.”
“The vicar and his lady wanted a child of their own. I understood that. I was glad of it. They were good to her too.” Good to Alice as well. “Mrs. Frampton wrote to me on several occasions. She sent me a lock of Gabriella’s hair. You know that.”
Mrs. Shorer had been the correspondent of record, lest Lady Josephine get wind that the clean break demanded by both common sense and kindness had not been so clean after all.
Mrs. Shorer helped herself to a candied violet from the dish on the side table. “A pity Mrs. Frampton was taken to her reward so soon.”
Alice had always found candied violets to have an underlying bitterness. “And a blessing that Mr. Frampton wasn’t willing to take Gabriella with him to Cathay.”
He had suggested the orphans’ home in Farnes Crossing, and Lady Josephine had capitulated, in part because she’d had no choice.
At that point, Mr. Frampton had been Gabriella’s only surviving parent of record.
A good, kind man who apparently saw more than he’d let on and who’d loved his wife dearly.
Three years ago, Bernard had casually imparted the news that Reverend Frampton, former shepherd of the flock in Kettleham out on the Dales, was among the missionaries who had succumbed to some tropical disease.
Alice had dropped half a row of stitches as Bernard had maundered on about some bishop’s son who was said to be in the sponging house again.
From that point forward, Alice’s life had been balanced between dread and hope. For any legal purpose, Gabriella was an orphan, and Alice had no claim on her.
While Lady Josephine was the patroness of the orphanage.
“Tell me about your ankle,” Alice said, abruptly out of patience with ancient history. “Why dissemble like this?”
Mrs. Shorer selected another violet. “Somebody must take up the reins here, Alice, and I must have time to teach that person how to deal with Lady Josephine. Her kind aren’t prone to premature death.
Their sheer bitterness sustains them, and—the Lord, He knoweth—she has the means and mentality to make life miserable for the present baron’s entire household.
Both your grandfather and Beaglemore warned me when I was new to my post, and they are not fellows to speak ill of a lady, whatever other faults they might possess in abundance. ”
“Then you are allowing the maids to choose your successor amongst themselves?” What an odd, inspired notion.
“We have a good bunch here at the Hall, Alice. Hard workers, smart without getting above themselves. Beaglemore can say the same about his lads, and I’d put our outside staff above any, including those jumped-up buffoons at Alnwick. My girls will sort themselves out.”
“How?”