Chapter 12
Twelve
Grey
Thursday morning, Grey stomped through the ground floor of the grandiosely named Bradford House—it was little better than a cottage—growling to himself and anyone who dared cross his path.
He’d hired the local lawyer, a Damien Sutter, to deal with Bosworth and his deuced lease.
The banker was a bloodsucker and Grey lacked the patience to deal with insects.
“The floors are adequate.” His boots echoed hollow on the old boards, so there was a cellar below. “Four downstairs rooms are not. The service room must serve as my study.”
“Then unless you wish me to work in the parlor, I must set up my writing area on the dining table.” Miss Leonard took notes as he paced. “If we do not hire a cook, that will be adequate.”
He shot her a glare at the mockery in her tone. “I cannot have you spending the day baking bread and making soups. We need a cook.” Grey headed for the stairs in the passage between the front rooms. “The lease is for six months. The book must be done by then.”
He pounded up the stairs and glared at the sitting room at the top. “We could place a writing table for you here,” he called down, studying the narrow stairs continuing upward. “Is there sufficient space in the attic for your maid?”
“Peg will sleep on the trundle in my room.” Miss Leonard followed him up and now perched in the window seat for her perpetual note-taking.
“If you insist on a cook, she will need the service room. It cannot be your study. You will need to work on this floor or the next, unless you want the dining parlor.”
“I need to leave my papers undisturbed and cannot work in the open. That windowless closet next to my bedchamber will not serve as a study.” He started up the narrow attic stairs. “It’s meant for a valet.”
“I doubt that,” she said dryly, not following him this time. “This is little better than a farmhouse. It was most likely the nursery.”
He’d lived in worse pits. It was just arranging his quarters to suit others that was new to him. At the top, Grey studied the barely finished attic. It had enormous dormer windows overlooking the river on one side. Interesting. He wandered over to check the view.
A window seat with shelves below indicated a former owner had used it for a library or study, not servants’ quarters. He could not, in all good conscience, put Andrew with his bad foot up two flights of stairs. If only for the sake of propriety, the twins should sleep on the same floor.
The attic window was tree height, but no tree blocked his view of the water or the picturesque medieval stone bridge crossing it.
He’d been told the bridge had recently been improved.
He’d hate to see what it had been before.
It appeared to have been built for a meandering brook, not a river.
No mast would fit under the arch. Barges, perhaps. . .
He watched as a craft heading for Birmingham, piled high with crates, barely cleared the viaduct. The ancient stone arch was meant for pedestrians and had only a low wall on the sides. If one were a thief. . . a weighted rope dropped over the edge would allow the barge to be boarded.
Actually, a man could simply jump to the top of the crates. . .
The window gave sufficient view of the river to see barges approaching from either direction. Grey’s cynical mind had him rushing down the stairs.
Hearing him, Miss Leonard emerged from the bedchamber they’d already chosen for her—the one at the back of the house with the trundle.
“You needn’t follow,” he told her. “I want to explore outside. You and Andrew make note of any further inadequacies and what furnishings might be needed.”
She blinked in surprise but did not argue. He was very fortunate in his new staff. They were excessively informed in areas he was not, leaving him to take his inquiring mind where he willed.
He was an art historian, but he was not ignorant of history in general.
His own small estate had a river passing through, near enough to the coast to serve as a means of transporting smuggled goods under the cover of night.
He was fairly certain that was how his ancestors had earned some part of their wealth—then poured their funds into the coffers of kings in exchange for titles and privilege.
He despised monarchies. The Americans had the right of it.
Gravesyde was not near the coast, but the terrain was hilly enough that a river provided easy transport for the former monk’s priory, on the north side of that bridge.
In these more modern times, the increasingly prosperous center of Birmingham, a little farther north, required a steady flow of goods and provisions.
As slow as this river was, poling upstream might be easier than taking the highway, especially with the new canals.
And there, at the end of the lane, as he’d suspected, was a recently-used footpath, through the neglected hedgerow, down to the river. It could have been made by fishermen. The shell of a boat nearly hidden by enormous reeds might belong to said fishermen.
The wheel-trodden space hidden from view by wild trees and neglected hedges did not belong to any casual fisherman.
Absorbed by his discoveries, Grey didn’t see the blow coming. He only heard Miss Leonard’s cry from a distance as he fell.