Chapter 5
Five
If you ever wish for carefree affection, consider adopting a piglet. Peony is curious, intelligent, and caring. She is far more intelligent than any dog I’ve encountered and twice as loving as any cat.
Aburst of searing humiliation brought on the tears I’d held at bay; I cried myself into a nap and woke to find Peony rooting around my bed. Thankfully, cuddling with her was excellent medicine.
Tess waited until I had bathed, and my hair had been arranged in a style more suited to a London ballroom than a hunting lodge, before she cleared her throat, regarding me with the pained expression of a personal maid in possession of disagreeable information.
I headed her off. “I have met Sophonisba Ainsworth and been informed of her position in the household.”
“You met her?” She gaped at me. “You’re so calm! You haven’t said a word!”
“I haven’t decided what to do,” I confessed.
“If we’re leaving,” Tess said briskly, “it must be at dawn. Normally the abbey is snowed in by this date.”
The idea of being unable to leave was awful—but would it be cowardice to run away? Burnsby would still be my husband, whether I hid in my room or ran back to England.
I was wrestling with that thought when Tess asked, “Did Lord Burnsby tell you that Miss Mima was born out of wedlock?”
I nodded. “She seems to have memory problems.”
“She greeted me as her sister!” my maid exclaimed.
“Miss Wellington says the lady can’t remember a thing from one day to the next.
They baked her an apple tart every day in September, and the next morning she would claim not to have eaten one in months.
And just imagine: Miss Wellington says that the lady doesn’t even like apple tarts! ”
“There are no yesterdays in Mima’s life,” I said.
“And no tomorrows, either,” Tess said.
We were silent as she laced my corset.
“Mima called Sir Godric her son and asked if he was at school, then mentioned watching him argue a legal case a decade ago,” I said, thinking of his broad shoulders. He had that air some men have, as if they could solve any problem, from a thrown carriage wheel to a marauding ghost.
If only he could solve my problems by rolling back time. The calculation I’d made on marrying Burnsby seemed woefully foolish now. Rosie would be horrified.
“This is a wicked house, Genevieve, and no mistake,” Tess said. “Did you know that the master’s valet is Crumpsall’s son? He should have warned us!”
“Burnsby likely commanded him to keep silent.”
“That’s no excuse,” Tess retorted, with some justification. “Not a soul said a word to me. Not a word!”
Burnsby’s valet knew. All the grooms, the footmen, the housekeeper knew.
Those villagers tittering at me? Their mockery wasn’t merely because they scorned me for marrying an old man.
They understood I was about to come face-to-face with my husband’s mistress.
They likely thought I got what I deserved, having married an old man for money.
I wrenched my mind away from an embittering—unhelpful—sense of betrayal. No, I wouldn’t fire all of them, because that would be unkind. Satisfying, but unkind.
“I only pressed one evening dress in case you wish to leave.” Tess held up a gown sewn from layers and layers of lilac gauze, a spill of silk lilies trailing down the front.
I groaned. “That’s fit for a reception at Kensington Palace, not a cobwebbed abbey.”
“I took a cup of tea with the Parisian bride’s maid, Fleur. Her mistress has a trunk merely for fans and gloves.”
In other words, I would dress to royal standards or shame my maid.
Earlier in the day, I’d been curious about Burnsby’s heir and his French wife. I had thought of them as family, new family. Now I realized that they weren’t. Like everyone connected to my husband, they were enemies.
Had they laughed about my coming humiliation, knowing that she lived here and that I’d be meeting her? My breath grew tight, and my stomach cramped.
No.
Godric said that Lancelot would have warned me, so my son-in-law hadn’t laughed on hearing of his father’s new marriage.
I took a deep breath. I had debuted without a dowry, curtsied before the queen in a gown first worn by my grandmother.
I had backbone—and if the evening was utterly humiliating, I would get in a carriage at dawn.
Burnsby couldn’t keep me here.
Tess gathered up the fabric to throw it over my head without disarranging my hair.
“I can accept Miss Mima, even if she was born on the wrong side of the blanket,” she said broodingly.
“After all, we are in the back of beyond, without a village for miles. I’d be sad to think of the poor confused soul confined to an asylum. But Ainsworth is another cup of tea.”
I emerged from a cloud of translucent gauze. The gown bared my shoulders, arms, and most of my bosom. It was designed to be worn with a simple chemise and short stays, giving the illusion that I was almost naked.
Which I was.
I would never have worn something so suggestive before I married, but my husband insisted on choosing the design of my gowns.
He likes to foreground my “charms,” as he calls them.
I found low bodices embarrassing, but I accepted them as part of our bargain: Rosie’s dowry in exchange for a young, desirable wife.
(In case you’re wondering, my chest doesn’t measure up to Sophonisba’s.)
I picked up a length of lace and tied it around my neck so that it flowed down my front, blending with the lilies as if designed to be worn together.
Tess pursed her lips. “I don’t suppose you’re worried about a chill.”
“I am never ill, but I intend to ward off comparisons.”
“I had an eyeful of Ainsworth when she came down to consult with Miss Wellington about the dinner menu.” Tess held my eyes long enough to make clear her opinion of Sophonisba’s temerity in taking over duties belonging to the mistress of the household.
“She has a fine pair of kettledrums, as my granddad would say, but on display during the day? Vulgar,” she said with a disdainful curl of her lip.
“They said downstairs that Lord Burnsby’s father had to drag him down the aisle the second time, all due to that woman.
He wanted to marry her, if you can credit it. What a scandal that would have been.”
“Burnsby has made up for lost time, taking another three wives in thirty years,” I pointed out.
I liked the unusual effect of the lace tied around my neck, since my arms and shoulders were bare. I began fiddling with my jewelry, wondering if Sophonisba would consider diamonds a challenge. I did not want to take a header from a parapet due to jealousy over accessories.
Tess solved the question by taking a diamond cluster from my hand and pinning it into my chignon, along with another for good measure.
“There,” she said with satisfaction. “You’ll sparkle as brightly as any Frenchwoman.
” She had piled my hair high, with silk lilies tucked here and there, and the diamonds caught sparks of light.
I resembled a paper doll, my face composed, hiding my violently beating heart.
“I believe Peony would enjoy a short walk,” I said.
I didn’t have the courage to join the others in the drawing room yet.
What if I walked in to find Sophonisba lurking?
Would she have advice other than that stemming from her dislike of Godric?
Tips and quips about how to make “sugar lips” happy on his birthday?
Hearing her name, my piggy emerged from under the bed, her nose covered in dust. Tess picked up a cloth and gave her a quick buff.
“Be sure to stay in the cloister, as Mr. Crumpsall says the woods are full of wolves. The beasts hide beneath wagons entering the gates and slink into the outer courtyard.”
I would have imagined no less. The forest looming outside the abbey walls was gloomy and dark, just as described by every respectable novelist. If fiction depicted life, we would hear eerie howling at night as ravenous animals ringed the abbey. Something to look forward to . . . because so far?
This party was not fun. A madwoman in the attic would have been more enjoyable than a mistress in the parlor.
Tess fetched my thickest mantle, adorned with squirrel fur around the sleeves and hood. “Can you imagine? The household runs around the cloister day and night, out in the freezing air in no more than a frock and apron!”
“Why don’t they wear outer garments?” I asked.
She made a face. “His lordship says cloaks detract from the footmen’s livery. ‘It’s only a matter of a few minutes in the cold,’ he says.”
My husband had never exhibited sympathy for those of lower station, but that was absurd.
“You will wear outer garments whenever you venture outside,” I ordered. “I’ll speak to Miss Wellington tomorrow morning about the household at large. We can hang woolen cloaks next to every door.”
She smiled, buttoning the mantle to my chin. “You’ll be the toast of the servants’ hall.”
“What do they think of the situation?”
“They despise it,” Tess said promptly. “If Ainsworth thinks a servant gave her the side-eye, she sacks them, and the butler backs her up without question. The other day she dismissed a footman because he had a rash on his chin. Miss Wellington said they don’t bother appealing to Crumpsall.
He’s been here longer than anyone, and the master never doubts him. ”
(Villainous domestic servant: Check!)
I sighed and made a mental note to rehire the poor footman. “Has anyone shown you the location of the library?”
“Follow the cloister to the right; the library doors are carved with vines. In case you haven’t heard, all three wives supposedly flit among the books,” Tess said, rolling her eyes. “Miss Wellington dusts the room herself, because the maids cross themselves walking by the door and refuse to enter.”
“Were I a ghost, I would congregate with my fellows,” I said.
Tess snorted. “Nonsense! Fleur and I promised Miss Wellington that we’d give the books a proper dusting, if only to prove that the English and French are braver than the Scots.”
Yet I was a coward, quailing at the idea of walking into the drawing room.
Tess saw through me. She caught up my hand and squeezed it. “The two ladies I served before you would have been in hysterics, but you look as serene as ever. No one will be able to guess your feelings.”
I managed a weak smile in response.