Chapter 2
“Whyever did you contact that odious Mr. St. Didier anyway, Mabel? What do we know of him, really?” Wealtha Blackstock sorted through the petits fours, touching most of them, in a manner guaranteed to pluck the last nerve of an archangel.
Mabel Fielding was not an archangel. “I wrote to Leopold St. Didier after discussing the matter with you and Step-mama at length, Cousin. Step-mama agreed with me.” Orla had not agreed so much as she’d capitulated to the reality of dwindling means and disappearing options.
Wealtha had yet to land a husband with means—those options were few enough to begin with—and that left locating the long-lost heir, though Step-mama had taken endless convincing.
“But, Mabel dearest,” Wealtha said, “this St. Didier fellow will expect remuneration now that he’s found some impostor to play the viscount’s role, and we cannot… That is, we ought not… You know what I mean. To pay a man to find a peer will make us look desperate.”
We are desperate. Three women dwelled amid thousands of prosperous acres, populated by vast herds of thriving sheep, graced with a lovely home of nearly two hundred years’ provenance, all while being unable to buy Wealtha the new bonnets upon which her entire happiness seemed to turn.
“Shepherd’s Glen requires maintenance, Wealtha, and carries debts.
We’ve discussed this. As long as the solicitors have been managing the property on behalf of your father’s estate, the Glen has been losing money.
Unless we located your brother or proved his demise to the satisfaction of the courts, we’d eventually have had to live off whatever competences were bequeathed to us, and that would be somewhat challenging. ”
When discussing hard realities with Wealtha, euphemisms became as plentiful as they were mandatory.
Wealtha’s pretty, English-rose features took on a mulish cast. “We would have quite a bit more to manage on if you had married Mr. Detwiler. Your competence could have gone to Auntie and me. I would have inherited the Glen myself, you know, but for this fictitious brother.”
Heaven grant me patience—more patience. “If I’d married Mr. Detwiler, I would have been expected to set up housekeeping in York, and Step-mama would have had nobody to look after her.
” Then too, if Mabel absented herself from the Glen, the solicitors’ pillaging of the estate coffers, which had proceeded at a discreet, steady pace, would blossom into outright rapine.
Mabel might have married Horace Detwiler nonetheless, despite a twenty-year age difference, but her erstwhile suitor was known to gamble, philander, and overimbibe. He would not have championed the Glen or its residents, and thus Mabel had gently deterred his suit.
“I still don’t care for this notion of some stranger pretending to be the viscount.”
Mabel sipped her tea—tepid, weak, not even a drop of honey—and caught the gaze of the pantry mouser taking his ease atop of the pianoforte.
Thunder was a pantry mouser in name only, though the title allowed him house privileges, rather like a viscount who bore no relation to the original title holder coming into ownership of Shepherd’s Glen.
In contrast to the London bon vivant whom Mabel imagined Mr. Dolforth to be, Thunder was old, splendid, sweet, and spent most of his days sleeping wherever he pleased.
“Mr. Dolforth has every legal right to claim the title,” Mabel said.
“He cannot, in fact, escape the viscountcy this side of eternity, so you’d best school yourself to gracious acceptance of his presence.
” For the sake of the Glen, Mabel hoped Mr. Dolforth was at least capable of removing the solicitors’ fingers from the Glen’s coffers.
“Dolforth? He took the ducal family name?”
“He did, according to Mr. St. Didier.”
“I don’t like this at all, Mabel. He should be a Blackstock, because I am a Blackstock.
People will talk and talk and talk, and I will never inherit the Glen as I was supposed to.
I wish you’d not set this scheme in motion.
I don’t know what Auntie was thinking, but then, she is unwell.
When she recovers, we’ll remove to the dower house with her, refurbish the place from cellars to attics, and this Mr. Dunford can deal with the tenants, stewards, solicitors, and all those other bothersome fellows. ”
Dolforth, though he’d be referred to as Swidhelm in future. The dower house was in no fit state to house an invalid, a point Mabel would emphasize to the viscount when he eventually made his inspection tour. Even in fading health, Orla did insist on her comforts.
“We might be permitted to stay right where we are, Wealtha. His lordship is quite the London man and has traveled on the Continent. His ducal family bides in the Home Counties, and he may prefer to leave us in peace and visit Shepherd’s Glen infrequently.”
Wishful thinking, of course. The Glen was still magnificent. No finer, prettier property was to be found in all the realm, and any man with eyes and a soul would be pleased to call it home.
Though dislodging Wealtha would be a challenge. His lordship could figure that part out for himself.
“He’ll abandon Town in a trice,” Wealtha said, choosing—at last—a petit four with pink icing. “We have scads and multitudes of grouse. Gentlemen adore grouse hunting. The viscount will bring a lot of drunken friends along with him from London, and we’ll have no peace until winter.”
The cat uncurled himself, indulged in a luxurious stretch, and leaped from the piano to the piano bench and to the floor. A year ago, he would have removed to the rug in a single bound.
“Lord Swidhelm might also ask us to return to the Fielding house,” Mabel said. “Orla owns it now, but for the mortgage, and she and I really have no right to continue living at the Glen.”
“Why must you be so dolorous, Mabel? I vow you will give me a megrim. First, you claim we’ll all be permitted to stay here at our family home—my papa owned this place, my own dear, departed Papa Blackstock—then you imply you and Auntie might be cast upon the parish.
We cannot return to the Fielding house because you rented it out, and the tenants have a lease, and that means they live there, and we do not. ”
Orla’s marital home had been rented out at Orla’s direction, lest a lack of income result in foreclosure.
The cat strutted to the door. He would sit before it in hairy black splendor, the soul of patience, until one of his human vassals bowed him through it. Mabel rose and obliged only to find Kepler, the butler, standing in the corridor with a silver tray with a card on it.
“Miss Mabel, there you are!” Kepler gestured her into the corridor and commenced whispering.
“I did not know what to do, miss. I am sorry. He said—his lordship, rather—Lord Swidhelm, I mean, said to put him in the family parlor and not go to any bother. But he’s here, and Cook did not go to market this morning, and you and Miss Wealtha have the good tea service, and this is all…
I’m sorry, Miss Mabel. His lordship, Viscount Swidhelm, awaits you in the family parlor. ”
“Mabel?” Wealtha called. “If that’s Keppie, please tell him the tea has gone cold, and we need a fresh tray.”
Kepler closed his eyes as if praying for fortitude. He’d been a handsome specimen in his salad days, to hear the parlormaids’ recollections, though his dark suit hung loosely on him now, and his white hair was thinning over a pink pate.
“The viscount can enjoy some of Cook’s signature ginger lemonade,” Mabel said, “and a few slices of last night’s gingerbread.
The everyday service will do, provided you pluck a few tulips to brighten up the tray, and send along a dish of butter with the gingerbread.
When that’s tended to, Wealtha could use a fresh pot. ”
“Tulips, gingerbread. Yes, miss. And butter, of course. The very thing.” He shoved the tray at Mabel and tottered down the corridor. His gait had been steady until he’d taken a fall in the churchyard the previous winter.
“Mabel? Did you tell Keppie? The tea is positively frigid.”
Mabel stuck her head through the parlor doorway. “I did, and I’m off to have a word with Cook about the menu for Sunday. A fresh tray will be along in a moment.”
“Delightful. Nothing like a spring morning to make a cup of tea more enjoyable.”
Mabel closed the door, allowed herself three deep breaths, and tried on a smile. Her reflection in the pier glass confirmed that her effort was wholly unconvincing.
Well, what did Mr. Dolforth-turned-Viscount-Swidhelm expect when he popped out of the hedge all uninvited and unannounced? He was lucky Cook had made a batch of gingerbread the previous day and luckier still that Mabel was on hand to receive him.
Even a viscount-come-lately deserved a bit of warning where Wealtha was concerned.
Mabel had had a few dealings with London dandies, and she’d seen the occasional Mayfair by-blow turning down a candlelit ballroom. She was thus expecting something between a mincing fribble and a leering Corinthian.
She charged into the family parlor and abruptly revised her opinions. The new Viscount Swidhelm, she was sure, had never minced nor leered in his life.
Much less fribbled.
She put his height at just over six feet. Tall, not freakishly so. His hair was dark, his attire nearly Puritan in severity, but for a lace-edged cravat secured with a tiny sapphire pin.
Gentlemen did not commonly wear jewels during the day, but that brilliant azure gem brought out the blue in a pair of serious eyes. He beheld Mabel from across the parlor. Firm chin, defined nose, broad shoulders, gravely handsome demeanor.
“Miss Blackstock?”
“I am Miss Amabel Fielding. Miss Blackstock is in the nature of being a cousin to me.” Though not truly any sort of cousin at all. Wealtha was Abernathy Blackstock’s daughter by his second wife. Orla was the sister of Abernathy’s first wife, not that such distinctions had ever mattered.