Chapter 18
Eighteen
Grey
Saturday morning, their enthusiastic new cook—undaunted by blocked cellars—brought out pots of tea and toast the moment Grey reached the dining room. The rickety dining table sported cracked plates and mismatched utensils, presumably provided from the meager trunk of the twins.
Furnished, indeed. That would teach him to believe bankers.
After last night’s grim discovery, Grey had little interest in food. He needed to summon the good bailiff and men with shovels. Possibly the curate.
Gravesyde wasn’t just a name.
He told the eager cook the toast was fine, he didn’t need more, but he didn’t have time to escape before Miss Leonard walked in.
She had dark circles under those all-too perceptive topaz eyes.
Keeping her uninformed had not helped. He should have known she wouldn’t believe the story about mice.
Wordlessly, she poured tea and glared at him.
Sharing meals in a private setting was too damned intimate. Grey shoved back his chair and stood. “Graves,” he informed her curtly. “Or buried treasure.” At least, the dead had utterly no relation to him, for a change.
She nodded wearily as he strode out. He didn’t know what kind of hell hole Thea had lured him into, but he regretted dragging the twins into it.
He was an experienced traveler. They were not.
They were essentially homeless, he realized, dependent on him.
And he’d dragged them into a nightmare from which there was no easy escape.
Damn. He had good reason to hate accepting responsibility for others. And now he had an entire household of obligations. Italy couldn’t come soon enough.
Rafe wasn’t any happier with him when Grey arrived at the pub while he was eating breakfast. “Jumping to conclusions,” the bailiff warned. “Sit, eat, I’ll send up to the manor for diggers. Maybe fetch the curate, just in case. But Dr. Walker has an infant, and I’m not summoning her until we know.”
Grey sat reluctantly, ordering cider rather than the inn’s bad coffee or insipid tea. He’d have to teach his new cook how to make coffee—after he found beans and a grinder.
Paul Upton, the curate, entered before Rafe returned from the manor. “I thought we’d put Gravesyde’s grim past to rest. Graves? Are you certain?”
“Half a dozen sunken hollows laid out in lines in a dirt floor, behind a blocked door. I cannot imagine thieves being so precise with buried loot.”
Upton poured the cooling tea left on the table. “Have you ever seen Roman gravesites? They were plentiful around Oxford. Farmers find them in their fields when plows dig up shards.”
“I’ve only seen curated collections in private houses,” Grey admitted.
“I am to tell my staff they are the graves of an ancient civilization?” A good idea, actually, if the twins didn’t decide to dig up the entire floor in search of artifacts.
Intellectual curiosity created difficulties, as he knew painfully well.
“If the burial sites have already sunk in, then there will be naught but bones and rotted coffins. We can’t solve deaths from decades ago.
It might even be a family cemetery, although the Priory one has been there for centuries.
” The curate sipped his tea, obviously plotting theories—with more interest than Grey.
Curiosity really could kill the cat.
“Not feeling better about storing cheese over a graveyard.” Grey finished his cider as Rafe stomped in again.
“They’re gathering picks and shovels,” the bailiff reported. “Let’s get this done. I don’t suppose some great battle took place here?”
“Another good possibility,” Upton agreed. “While you’re digging, I’ll visit my grandfather. I meant to ask him about the previous owners of Bradford House anyway.”
“Ask him about Comfrey, as well, would you? Let me send some scones for the old gent.” Rafe retreated to his kitchen.
“Granda has a widow lady waiting on him,” Upton said with a wink as he rose from the table. “But they’re not averse to sharing Rafe’s scones.”
Small towns, Grey thought gloomily as he followed the men out. Everyone knew everyone else’s business, probably back to Roman times.
Back at the house, Andrew stood outside, greeting the gravediggers with some confusion.
He brightened at Grey’s orders and cheerfully led the parade to the back of the house and the kitchen door.
There was another who believed in the positive until proven otherwise.
Maybe Grey needed to change his attitude, but he’d learned at a distressingly early age that life was one pitfall after another.
Inside, the daunting Miss Leonard led her small squad of staff in scrubbing and rearranging. Thankfully, the laundress had taken their wash, so they might expect to start fresh for Sunday service on the morrow, if the brisk breeze did not bring rain.
“Mr. Upton believes they’re Roman artifacts,” he told his assistant, to wipe her grim frown. He hadn’t realized how much he’d relied on her even temperament this past year.
He’d probably stayed at Harrowby longer than he should have because he hadn’t wanted to lose the best assistant he’d ever hired. And she was female. He ought to have a hard time with that, but oddly, it made crude sense. Women were managing sorts.
“Yes, let us call them that,” she agreed stiffly. “The staff are more likely to stay if they believe the house was built on a Roman fort.”
“And you? Would you prefer ancient graves?” Grey asked, watching emotion chase across her normally implacable features. Behind those high cheekbones, her long-lashed eyes were quite expressive when she allowed.
“I will admit, I left Edinburgh eager for new sights. Murder and graves are not precisely what I had in mind.” Remembering herself, she dipped a curtsy she’d never bothered with before—presumably for the sake of staff.
“Do you have pages ready for me to copy? Or shall I set up your library shelves as before?”
He’d locked up his finished pages in a box and hidden it in the window seat.
He didn’t want to say that in the presence of anyone listening.
“I have made little progress, but there is a letter in my writing desk.” Between river pirates and unmarked graves, he’d given up all hope of avoiding incidents.
He simply wanted the task of corresponding about the gallery out of the way.
“If you’ll copy it out half a dozen times, I’ll address and sign them.
Once I have done my duty by Thea and this nonsense is settled, then we can return to routine. ”
Because right now his mind was with how to keep gravediggers from gossiping about skeletons, if that’s what they found, and convince the staff they were Roman ruins.
He feared, without staff, he’d have to pack up all over again and leave Gravesyde.
He’d never finish the blasted book. And this time, he could blame no one but himself.
Not relishing returning to the musty cellar, one where swinging pickaxes risked life and limb, Grey was relieved to see the curate ride into the yard in a battered gig. He was less relieved to see the lady physician with him.
“Meera wants to see any skeletons laid out first rather than after they’re naught but a jumble of old bones in a box,” Upton explained.
“It’s easier to determine age and gender with a whole skeleton. They may have been plague victims. I’d rather no one touched any bones until I’ve seen for myself.” A short, round, and unassuming female, Dr. Walker still conveyed a no-nonsense authority.
Grey realized he needed to adjust his thinking about the frailer gender. “Plague, just what is needed to make this cursed house perfect. I suppose the village was actually here that long ago.” And the monks wouldn’t want plague victims in their private graveyard.
Equally curious as he was disgusted, Grey led them inside and called Andrew up to explain what had been discovered thus far.
“Some Roman coins, brass pieces that may have been on horse collars. A dagger. Fish bones shaped into needles. It is beginning to look like a medieval rubbish pit, except everything was encased in wooden caskets that have rotted.” Andrew looked uncomfortable.
“Once the workers hit wood, I don’t allow anyone to open or lift out the boards, but we can see inside.
I need to return to prevent any new finds being opened before we inspect them.
They’re all expecting pirate treasure.” He bowed and hobbled back down the stairs.
After Andrew departed, Eleanor appeared as if by magic to lead their guests into the recently cleaned and polished dining room. An embroidered linen cloth now concealed the scarred tabletop. “Tea, while you wait?”
“That would be satisfactory,” Upton declared.
Young for a curate, not overlarge, dressed casually and wearing a toolbelt, the preacher held out a battered wooden chair for Dr. Walker.
“I have a tale to tell. My grandfather knew Bradford House’s previous owners.
They were once prosperous merchants, back when the earl was alive, in the early 1700s—before Granda was born, so take any tale with a grain of salt. He’s Irish. He likes stories.”
At a signal from Miss Leonard, their new cook brought out teapots and fresh scones, while Grey’s assistant set out shabby plates. The arrival of jam and cream was nothing short of miraculous.
The trappings of civilization had Grey feeling better over their insane choice to stay in a portal to hell.
“What happened to the prosperous merchant?” Dr. Walker asked, stirring sugar into her tea.
“Old story.” Upton drank his drink unadulterated. “Bradford grew old. He had half a dozen children who bickered and fought. One was sent to the Antipodes for knifing another. The girls came and went, along with their husbands and children.”
Grey tried drinking his tea black. Not as bad as some. “One of them, at least, must have been a river pirate.”
“Very likely, although Granda didn’t mention it. He said the kitchen addition was built during the merchant Bradford’s time, when Granda was a young man. Maybe sixty years ago or so?”
“If they dug down at all for the cellar, they surely must have uncovered the. . . artifacts?” Grey wasn’t an architect, but he’d seen outbuildings built. Foundations were required.
“There is a bit of a slope there.” Upton gestured at the back of the house. “They needn’t dig too deep. Farmers are accustomed to finding bits and pieces. They’d just toss them out.”
“So we can assume they built on some ancient rubbish pit, and if we’re lucky, we’ll find a few coins to pay the diggers?” Miss Leonard was back to appearing serene.
Grey contemplated calling the whole thing off and leaving the past alone, but who buried their rubbish in caskets?
“The bank clerk, Mr. Comfrey, was in his early thirties.” Dr. Walker intruded on Grey’s relief. “Might he have been related to the Bradfords?”
Miss Leonard grimaced and set down her cup. Oddly, Grey could almost sense the direction of her overactive imagination. His own ran right along with hers. If Comfrey had known the house’s history. . . did he seek pirate treasure?
“I’ll check church records,” Upton suggested. “They are good until about 1800. If Comfrey was born here, my father would have recorded it in the church register.”
The stomping of heavy boots in the kitchen interrupted any further thought in that direction. Andrew appeared in the doorway. “I have sent everyone home. Dr. Walker, I’ll escort you down. Mr. Upton, you might want to say a few words.”
Grey wanted to say a few words, all of them obscene.