Chapter 1
One
The village of Sifton
Ioften find myself comparing my past and present life, perhaps because I haven’t yet been married for a year.
At this hour in the morning, unmarried Lady Genevieve would likely have been strolling in Hyde Park, whereas Lady Burnsby was making her way down Sifton’s only street—wading through a sea of piglets.
I was midway across the cobblestones when a stream of small pink bodies flowed around the corner, reached me, and abruptly began folding their legs and lying down.
From the nobility to the piggery.
It had a certain je ne sais quoi, like flaunting French in a Scottish village.
Baby pigs, by the way, are not hideous. One of the few still on his feet was snuffling around my shoe (blue, heeled, embroidered with pansies). I tried to nudge him away, but he sat down and leaned against my ankle, eyes closed.
The swineherd planted his crook and gave me a toothy grin. “They’ll be awake in a minute. The last five-week-old suckling pigs of the season will fetch a pretty price at market.”
Market?
The little chap slid down my ankle and sprawled across my slipper, fast asleep. In case you don’t know, hogs and ladies do not inhabit the same universe. Pigs are like excrement or the bubonic plague: regrettable, never mentioned.
The piglet had surprisingly long, curling eyelashes and a sweet turned-up nose.
Market?
“I’ll take this one.” I bent down and scooped it into the crook of my arm, just like a baby. He snorted, but his eyes didn’t open. One ear fell against my arm like a scrap of pink velvet.
My husband emerged from the apothecary but wisely remained in the doorway. I wish I could say that he was habitually wise, but that would be a lie.
“Lady Burnsby!” he squealed, quite shocked.
The swineherd peered at me. “That’s a wee sow, yer ladyship. A female.”
“I shall name her Peony,” I said. The piglet was still sleeping peacefully, her front legs curled. “She will be a pet. My pet.”
“People may find your choice peculiar,” Burnsby remarked, having gingerly picked his way across the street, avoiding porcine nappers.
“Peculiar” is anathema to my husband, along with all the other actions and reactions that might brand a woman unladylike.
I shrugged. Shrugging is vulgar (anathema!), but I find it an enjoyable sensation.
“Come along, then,” Burnsby said, giving up and waving at our coachman.
Once the piglet was consigned to a groom and we were back on the road, he began crooning “Joy to the World.” After their only child was born on December 25, his elderly parents labeled him their Miracle, which may explain why he sings Christmas hymns year-round.
He has never claimed aloud to be the second Christ child, but his belief in his own judgment is never shaken.
As inviolable as if heaven-sent.
Ignoring the musical accompaniment, I began reading a new novel, aptly set in a haunted abbey.
As every avid reader knows, abbeys inevitably offer ghostly accoutrement, along with an ancient housekeeper with a malign countenance, subterranean passages, a will in a secret drawer, a madwoman (or two), a scowling villain, perhaps even a crafty devil.
So much to look forward to.
Except the golden-locked hero. I find men lackluster, if not deplorable, qualities unaffected by their coloring.
“Well, here we are,” Burnsby said before he launched into the fourth verse of “Joy to the World.” We hadn’t arrived; that’s one of the nonsense phrases he drops into any silence.
It’s possible that his first wife, rumored to have taken her life (if she wasn’t murdered), may have chanced the great hereafter rather than endure his daily renditions of Yuletide hymns.
I am surprised that none of his spouses resorted to homicide.
To be fair, it’s possible that one or more lost her life in an attempt to stifle a jolly rendition of his favorite hymn, “A Virgin Unspotted.”
After another week, during which the sound of carriage wheels competed with my husband’s baritone, our coach finally rumbled through colossal stone walls that seemed to anticipate a siege, but who would besiege a Benedictine abbey in a Scottish mountain range?
Craning my neck out the window, I saw that the abbey roof resembled a stone staircase, stepping to its ramparts. Wouldn’t that have encouraged invading hordes to scramble up, daggers clamped in their jaws?
Had Burnsby been a scholarly man, I might have inquired about the fortifications, stepped roof, and attacking warriors, but his invariable response to such questions is a blank stare.
In darker moments since my marriage to England’s most boring peer, I’ve come to the painful realization that if I wanted to chat with a vegetable, I should have propped up a gourd on my dressing table.
I ward off gloom by reminding myself of Rosie’s dowry and all the exquisite garments we’ll order for her debut.
(I said I was blunt, but perhaps I should add shallow. I find that Parisian shoes, for example, make up for any number of hymns.)
As I stepped down from the carriage into the courtyard, Gothic windows gazed down on us like scornful eyes with peaked eyebrows.
Despite my jaunty letter to my sister, I found myself a little unnerved.
All three of Burnsby’s previous wives died in this abbey, after all.
Just as the second carriage—carrying our personal servants, crates of tea, marmalade, marzipan, and my piglet—rattled through the gates, the building’s wooden doors creaked open and household staff poured out, the women garbed in black dresses with snowy aprons, the men in rose livery.
After the abbey’s servants lined up, a few visibly shivering in the chilly air, my husband took my arm. “Good afternoon,” he shouted, sounding more energetic than usual. “I present to you my wife, Lady Burnsby.”
I inspected his blank expression, wondering if he felt déjà vu at announcing a fourth Lady Burnsby, before I fixed a smile on my face and nodded at the crowd. “I am grateful for your well wishes, and I shall enjoy meeting all of you.”
As they dashed back into the lodge, the butler stepped forward and bowed. “Good afternoon, your lordship, your ladyship.”
“This is Crumpsall,” my husband said, stripping off his furred gloves. “Father of my valet, as it happens.”
The man’s neck was so lean and long that his throat emerged triumphant from his cravat, topped by a chin as blunt as a hammer’s head.
“Good afternoon, Crumpsall,” I said, wondering if his hammerlike head indicated I was meeting the requisite villainous domestic servant, albeit not a housekeeper.
“I trust your journey was uneventful?”
“Indeed, it was, Crumpsall,” Burnsby said, handing over his gloves. “The snow held off, as did the highwaymen. Blasted nuisance, these outlaws. I planned to toss my wife’s piglet at their greedy heads if they showed themselves.”
Unfortunately, Burnsby had not taken to Peony. Who wouldn’t love a piggy who learned her name in two days and wags her tail for pure joy when offered a biscuit or a cuddle? I hold out hope that he may still succumb to her charms.
My maid, Tess, came forward, handing me Peony’s leash, which matched my pelisse. My piglet, after greeting me with a cheerful grunt, sat down and gazed around with interest. At only six weeks old, she is very intelligent.
Crumpsall wrinkled his nose, suggesting that he did not like pigs. I put him firmly in the villain category.
“May I present the lodge’s housekeeper, Miss Wellington?” he asked, ushering forward a lady some thirty years younger. Her hair was fire-red and her skin unlined: definitely not the terrifying housekeeper of fictional fame.
Miss Wellington curtsied. “Good morning, my lady. Should a groom create a pigpen in the stables, or will your pet reside in your chamber?”
“Peony would be happy with a box on the kitchen hearth,” I said. “She has a buttermilk bath every morning, if you please. This is my personal maid, Tess Hughes.”
“Good afternoon, Hughes,” the housekeeper replied, her dimples deepening. “Might I offer a refreshing cup of tea?”
As the two of them set off, accompanied by Burnsby’s valet, an elderly woman rushed out the abbey door and across the courtyard.
“Aren’t you adorable!” she cried, dropping a curtsy before me. She had faded blue eyes, a corona of white curls, and a red-and-white-striped gown with a rear bustle, a style outdated by some twenty years.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I responded, curtsying in turn.
“Everyone addresses me as Aunt Mima, and I shall call you Genevieve, as you are now part of the family.” She grinned toothily at my husband. “Clifford.”
My husband’s name is Clifford Burnsby.
Clifford Clifton Burnsby, to be precise.
Burnsby leaned toward me and muttered, “Addled and born on the wrong side of the blanket.” He barely inclined his chin. “Good morning.”
Her birth explained why my husband hadn’t properly introduced me. Polite society insists that ladies should ignore the existence of bastards along with balls (the male kind).
I let my smile widen. “Thank you, Aunt Mima.”
“I do believe you are the most beautiful of Clifford’s wives.”
I wasn’t certain how to respond to that artless statement.
“Don’t you agree, Clifford?” Mima demanded.
“A most inappropriate observation,” he snapped.
Mima ignored that retort. “Who is this?” she asked, glancing down.
“Peony. She is six weeks old today.”
“Good afternoon, Peony,” the lady cooed, bending over for a closer look. “What a fetching leash. Are you fattening her for Christmas dinner?”
“No, she will never be anyone’s dinner,” I told her. “She is my pet.”
“A vulgar choice,” my husband remarked.
Vulgar is a potent word in polite society, a slur that can destroy a lady’s reputation. This rule comes to mind:
To carry children or dogs on a visit of ceremony is altogether vulgar. In the case of dogs, it is a thousand times better not to have them at all.
My response to his opinion? Another shrug.