Chapter 4
“Are you scowling for a reason or merely thinking hard?” Mabel asked, leaving the tea tray opposite the parlor door and setting off down the corridor.
Swidhelm ambled along beside her, keeping pace easily, blast him.
“Both. Would I have been presuming to ask if I might address Mrs. Fielding as Aunt Orla?”
In a hundred days of trying, Mabel would not have guessed that his attention had been fixed on forms of address.
“Ask her, but my guess is she did not want to presume by using your given name. We can be more formal here in the shires than the highest sticklers are in Town. You could also order her to use your name.”
“To no avail, quite possibly. I asked her directly about my mother several times and received a polite deflection in each case. Mrs. Fielding strikes me as a lady who is not easily swayed from her chosen course.”
Mabel took the turn into the east wing. Swidhelm had Step-mama sorted on less than an hour’s acquaintance. “You have examined the sketchbook?”
“I leafed through it. Mrs. Fielding is competent with a likeness. I gather the fellow with the genial smile was Blackstock?”
“Probably. He was known for his cordial disposition. We don’t use this wing much, especially in winter, for obvious reasons.
It was added in the days of Abernathy’s grandpapa, when the family began to prosper in earnest. An uncle inherited before Abernathy came into the property, and the uncle also made some improvements. ”
“Why does Mrs. Fielding call you Mabel? You introduced yourself to me as Amabel, which is a lovely name one doesn’t hear very often.”
He would notice that. “Amabel is old-fashioned, and most people will mishear it and come up with Annabelle, despite how the A should be pronounced. When I left the schoolroom, it was decided that the more modern Mabel would suit me better, and thus I have been Mabel ever since.”
“A as in awesome.”
He was frowning again, and yet, he’d been all good humor and gracious conversation with Orla. “What now, my lord?”
“Now I am perplexed, Miss Fielding. I just met my aunt, one of the few people on this earth who has ever expressed delight to make my acquaintance. I spent much of the conversation spinning a Banbury tale about a young man finding his feet in a suitable profession, and she…”
Mabel paused outside the gallery door. “Yes, my lord?”
“My aunt prevaricated as well, as if her own sister lived six hundred years ago among the Picts and wasn’t, in fact, raised in the same household as Orla herself.
I have no experience of how real families operate, so I am left to wonder if dodging the past, changing the subject, and hiding the truth is simply how families go on. ”
He did not sound exasperated so much as he was bewildered. “‘Real families,’ my lord?”
“Families where a lad isn’t five years old when he meets his lordly papa for the first and only time and where that papa doesn’t hand him a bag of licorice drops. The whole village knew I’d scrub pots by the hour for a few lemon drops but lost my porridge at the taste of licorice.”
“Licorice makes you ill?”
“Violently. Somebody once offered me a French version of anisette without explaining what was in my glass. One clueless sip, and I had to leave the room at an undignified sprint. I wonder if my mother suffered from the same aversion, but were I to ask Aunt Orla, I’d likely get some tale about ancient history and details lacking significance. ”
Bewildered and possibly hurt. “Anise and licorice are different plants, aren’t they?”
“So I’m told, but the scent is similar, as is the taste, and I can’t abide either. I avoid fennel for the same reason.”
What a thing to know about somebody. What a thing to puzzle over regarding your own mother or to wish you’d asked her when you’d had the chance.
Mabel pushed the door open. “If you want to know about real families, and by that, you mean one mama, one papa, and their offspring, I am hardly an expert. Orla Fielding is, in truth, my step-mama. Joseph and Orla Fielding had no natural issue together, and thus they doted on Wealtha and me.”
“Joseph was your father?”
“He was, and he is much missed.” So much missed that Mabel wished she hadn’t brought him up or her real relationship to Orla. What did it say for Mabel that she’d stopped asking questions about her own mother before she’d reached the age of seven?
She stepped into the bright, chilly expanse of the unused gallery. The furniture was draped in Holland covers, and the room badly needed airing. The rugs were rolled up against the exterior wall, and the heavy drapes had been drawn back to avoid the fading effect of light on the velvet dyes.
“The paintings are overdue for dusting,” Mabel said, refusing to feel self-conscious over the state of what should have been a grand public room. “Our maids are getting on, though, and I avoid burdening them with nonessential tasks.”
Swidhelm followed her and left the door open. “Do you recall your mother at all?”
Mabel crossed the room and attempted to open a window, but the latch likely hadn’t been oiled in five years. She eventually got the wretched, blasted latch raised, but the window itself refused to swing outward…
A fist appeared over her shoulder and gave the frame a stout thump. The window moved a few inches. Another thump had it halfway open.
“Can we not afford to retire the venerable maids and footmen and hire new?” The viscount moved away and eyed the art on the walls.
“I don’t know, my lord.” Mabel stayed by the window, breathing fresh air. “The solicitors can tell you the exact state of your finances. We have been subsisting on an allowance, which the solicitors begrudge us.”
“Solicitors excel at begrudging. Let me guess: You and Mrs. Fielding are not Blackstocks. You are, in fact, related to the disgraced first Mrs. Blackstock—first and legal, if I might indulge in petty facts—and thus you have no direct claim on the Blackstock holdings. What is their argument for pinching pennies in Wealtha’s case? ”
“She has a dowry, and the Glen has a regular remittance of funds. The solicitors knew the Glen would not come to Wealtha if you could be located. They instructed us that if the regular remittance was inadequate to keep us here, we should remove to humbler surrounds. Then, of course, we’d have had no remittance at all. ”
“What did you do?”
“I explained to the solicitors that a daughter of the house deserved to live in that house until marriage and that the only proper chaperone to be had was Orla herself. Wealtha is like a daughter to her, and Blackstock would not have wanted Wealtha uprooted. The solicitors blew retreat.”
Not until Mabel had reminded them that even a viscount-by-legal-technicalities might take a dim view of evicting his womenfolk from the family seat.
Swidhelm considered a landscape of the Glen prior to some of the modern improvements.
“The solicitors doubtless wanted to rent the place out to some unsuspecting cit, and those leases typically run five years at least. They knew the Chancery courts would likely tie up Blackstock’s estate at least that long if I was difficult to locate or dead. ”
“You were difficult to locate.” The viscount was difficult to have on hand, too, but he’d been perfectly patient with Orla, and he was prepared to deal severely with the solicitors.
Two fine qualities in any man.
“Let me introduce you to your sister’s family,” Mabel said.
“An odd sentence, I know. Abernathy’s grandpapa is above the mantel.
Erasmus Blackstock was careful about how he managed his sheep, breeding crosses with crosses and eventually proving that the same animal could produce good wool and good mutton. ”
The viscount listened to this recitation, asked a few polite questions, but clearly did not expect an exhaustive discourse.
“What preoccupies you now?” Mabel asked when they’d made the entire circuit of the gallery.
“You kept a few mares in the stable because only ladies bide here,” he said. “But you never told me if any of the riding stock is up to my weight.”
“Might I be honest?”
“Always.”
He could not possibly mean that. “When I must ride, I use one of the smaller draft mares. Lacey has been given a grasp of the basics of being ridden aside thanks to the efforts of the smaller stable hands. Her gaits are more efficient than comfortable, and she objects to anything approaching a brisk canter.”
“You have no proper riding horses?”
“Afraid not, my lord.”
“Then why would Mrs. Fielding suggest we hack out?”
Swidhelm was not only observant, he thought about the information his senses gathered. Examined, analyzed, and tested it against available facts.
A fine quality perhaps, but blasted inconvenient too.
“I don’t know what Step-mama intended, my lord.
Perhaps her illness has graduated to bouts of mental vagueness.
Orla knows we’ve sold off all but the most venerable riding stock of necessity.
The oldest specimens are kept in a pensioners’ paddock out of sight of any nosy solicitors.
She might have forgotten that, or she might have been tasking me with explaining the state of the stable to you. ”
His lordship wrenched open another window, the hinges shrieking loudly enough to startle ravens from the nearest oak tree.
“Indirection does not suit my nature,” he said. “Neither does dithering. I assume you keep country hours here?”
“We do.”
“Then please plan to join me for a morning hack tomorrow after breakfast. We will make do with a dog cart if no other option exists. Thank you for the tour of the gallery and for all you’ve done to keep my aunt and sister in comfort.
I am sure they are aware of their debt to you, as I am aware of my own. ”
To be thanked was such a rare experience in Mabel’s life that she was at a loss for a reply.