Chapter Six #2
He could have entered at once. Part of him wished to do so: the same part which had misfired in the carriage and still wanted a wall against which to spend itself. He waited until the anger had cooled into a shape he could direct.
Then he opened the door.
Three young women stood around the long worktable.
Two immediately bent over their tasks. The third, who had been speaking, remained motionless with a copper pan in her hands.
It slipped from her grasp and struck the floorboards with a flat clatter.
Her face emptied, and she caught hold of the table’s edge.
“You are Prewitt.”
“Y-yes, Your Grace.” The girl’s chin began to tremble, but she mastered it. She could not have been more than eighteen. Flour covered her left sleeve to the elbow.
“You came here at Michaelmas from the Sedgleys, with a good character.” Nathaniel did not raise his voice. He had never needed to. “You were speaking of your mistress, in her own house, and repeating words intended to wound her.”
“Your Grace, I meant no harm. I only…”
“You intended to be interesting for the length of a story.”
Her mouth remained open. Her breathing had grown shallow and audible, and colour rose in uneven patches along her throat. The hand gripping the table had gone white across the knuckles.
“Her father’s crime does not belong to her,” Nathaniel said.
“You cannot remain in this household after speaking of its mistress in such a fashion. You will go to Wexford Park and report to Mrs Dean, the housekeeper there. She requires another maid in the stillroom and maintains considerably stricter discipline than you have found here.”
The girl stared at him.
“Your wages here will be paid to the end of the quarter. Your character will state that you are willing, inexperienced and in need of steadier supervision. That is more consideration than the story you repeated would have allowed my wife.”
He turned towards the door.
“Pack your belongings today. Bassett will arrange your journey.”
The girl’s knees weakened. She caught herself against the table with both hands, and one of the other maids came round to support her by the elbow. Neither spoke. The copper pan remained where it had fallen.
At the far end of the kitchen, the mechanism of the roasting jack continued its steady turning. It was the only sound Nathaniel heard before he stepped back into the passage.
***
He continued to his study as he had intended. There he wrote brief instructions to the steward at Wexford Park concerning the maid’s transfer and remained at his desk until the anger had left his handwriting.
Only then did he ask Bassett where the duchess might be found.
Selina was still in the small parlour, examining a list the footman had brought her.
“I have made a decision concerning one of the servants,” Nathaniel said. “The matter required an immediate answer, though I recognise that I placed the household under your authority less than an hour ago.”
Selina set down the list. “What happened?”
“A kitchen maid named Prewitt was repeating the story she had heard from one of Mrs Ottley’s servants. She spoke of your father and questioned why the household should be expected to acknowledge you as duchess.”
Selina became very still.
“I have sent her to Wexford Park,” he continued. “She will serve under Mrs Dean, who is unlikely to tolerate either idleness or gossip. Her wages will be paid to the end of the quarter, and her character will not prevent her from finding another position.”
“You did not dismiss her without one.”
“She is eighteen and foolish. I saw no reason to make her destitute for it.”
Selina looked down at the list before her. “Many men would have done precisely that and called it defending my honour. I should then have been expected to feel grateful for a girl ruined in my name.”
“I did not do it for your gratitude,” Nathaniel said. “The girl required correction, not destruction.”
“That distinction is not often made for women.” Selina looked down at the list beneath her hand. “You handled the matter fairly.”
“I hope so.”
“And you told me rather than allowing me to hear of it from the servants.”
“We agreed upon no concealments.”
“Yes,” she said. “We did.”
Nathaniel noticed that her fingers remained tight upon the edge of the paper. He did not ask why. After a moment, he inclined his head and returned to his study.
Within the hour, Bassett brought Selina the household books and a ring of master keys.
The weight of the ring surprised her, and she steadied it briefly with her other hand while Bassett identified the keys in turn: the plate room, the cellar, the linen presses and the door leading to the roof, which had not been opened since the late duke’s time and whose key had turned orange with rust.
Selina fastened the ring at her waist. It pulled the left side of her gown slightly out of line and struck her thigh whenever she walked.
She did not remove it for the rest of the day.
Twice, she found reasons to pass through rooms which did not require her attention merely to hear the keys move with her.
A note from Lady Marwood arrived at noon upon paper thick enough to stand upright, written in a hand which had spent sixty years forming imperious sentences and had grown accomplished at it.
It did not request. It announced.
Lady Marwood would call upon the new Duchess of Wexford at three o’clock the day after next and trusted that she would be received. It was the phrasing of a woman who had never been denied admittance and did not propose to establish a precedent.
Nathaniel carried the note to Selina himself.
He found her seated at the small desk in the morning room, the linen accounts open before her and a pencil tucked behind one ear.
Bassett remained near the doorway, wearing the relieved expression of a man whose long responsibility for the household books had finally ended.
“Lady Marwood intends to call the day after next.” Nathaniel placed the note beside the accounts.
“She is elderly, formidable and capable of moving half the ton with an eyebrow. She knows your history because she knows everyone’s history.
Collecting it is very nearly her occupation.
” He glanced towards the window before looking back at Selina.
“We could refuse to receive her, if you wish it.”
“What would she make of a refusal?”
“That you were afraid to meet her. She would then form her judgement without giving you an opportunity to affect it.”
“Then refusing would accomplish nothing.”
“Very little.”
Selina read the note and set it beside the ledger. “She may come. If she already knows my history, we shall at least be spared the performance of her discovering it.”
“You need not receive her alone.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “Will Lady Helena’s observation extend to visiting hours?”
“Almost certainly. But I meant that I would remain.”
“You are not obliged to defend me from every formidable woman in London.”
“No. Only from the ones invited into my house.”
The corner of Selina’s mouth moved faintly. She returned the pencil to its place behind her ear.
“Very well. Let Lady Marwood come. Between the two of us, your aunt and the linen accounts, I shall have no shortage of fortifications.”
Nathaniel looked down at the open ledger. “I begin to pity Lady Marwood.”
“That would be premature, Your Grace. I have not yet found the missing Holland cloth.”
Nathaniel left her to the search.
Selina worked until the daylight began to fade.
The linen accounts were not merely disordered; their disorder possessed a method which took several hours to uncover.
Some sheets had been entered twice, while others appeared under different descriptions.
Payments to a laundress had been recorded quarterly in one hand and weekly in another.
A charge for Holland cloth purchased in 1812 had been carried forward ever since by a housekeeper who had plainly failed to understand the original entry and been too frightened to enquire.
At last, Selina found the error. She sat back and, for the space of a minute, was entirely content without noticing that she was.
Lady Helena had been standing quietly in the doorway for some time. She watched the new Duchess of Wexford correct the entry, check the column once more and begin again from the top.
Then she went upstairs without announcing that she had been there.