Lady Thornwick #2
The new bed had been put together. The hangings were the dove blue she had chosen from fabric samples Mrs Greer had presented because she had supposed that a bed in a duke’s house was supposed to have hangings of some such colour.
The dressing table that Sarah had set out with brushes and pots stood under the window.
The carpet was the new carpet, dense and pale and unmarked by anyone’s boots.
Her mother stood in the doorway and did not come further in.
“Oh, Violet.” Her mother put her hand over her own mouth and held it there.
“Oh, Violet,” she repeated, and her eyes filled with tears.
She wiped her eyes. Violet handed her a kerchief, and her mother examined it with more tears streaming down her cheeks.
“This is beautiful too. And your room,” she looked up, “it’s the most beautiful room I have ever seen. ”
“Mama, come in. Come and sit down. Let us take tea here.”
“I do not think I should, my love. I am wearing the road on my boots.”
Violet went to her and took her by both elbows and brought her into the room. She sat her in the chair beside the fire. Her mother put her hands on her own knees and looked around the room. She was quiet for some time.
“This is your room,” she said at last.
“It is.”
“This is where my daughter sleeps.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Violet.”
“Mama.”
“I should like to ask you something. You may refuse without troubling yourself further about it.”
“What is it?”
“I should like you to find a place in your household for Primrose.”
Violet sat on the chair across from her mother. “As what, Mama? You will not have her go into service.”
“Not as a servant. As a companion. A lady’s something. There must be a position in a household of this size in which the sister of the Duchess of Iredell may be useful without disgrace.”
“There must be. But why? The trust is generous. You have enough now. Do you need more?”
“It is not the money, Violet.”
“I don’t understand.”
Her mother tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“I should like Primrose to be with you. In this house. Because I worry about you. And because an ally beneath your own roof would not, I think, do you any harm.”
Violet laughed because she did not like the fear that had been inside her since the wedding day. But she did not want her mother to worry.
“I am extremely well looked after. I am surrounded by all the servants I need day and night. There is no household in England more attended to than this one.”
“I know.”
“Then you know you ought not to worry so much about me.”
Her mother looked down at her hands before she answered.
“There are three duchesses not including the duke’s mother in the family vault at Iredell Park, Violet. I have spent every minute since the wedding asking myself whether I am being silly, and I do not think I am.”
“They were accidents, Mama. The ton has been telling unkind stories for amusement.”
“Mrs Bickle’s nephew was on the bank when they pulled the second duchess out of the lake at Iredell Park.”
Violet smoothed the creases on her lap.
“He was twelve at the time. He was the gardener’s boy who fetched things from the lake when the family wanted carp.
He was there when they brought her up. The lake had been still since first light.
There were no reeds where she had gone under.
Nothing to catch a foot or a sleeve. There was a mark across her left wrist as if she had been gripped hard or had one hand tied.
The coroner ruled it had come of catching upon a branch.
But that does not make much sense, does it? ”
Violet stood up and walked to the window. She tried to make her voice carefree. “No, it does not. However, a bruise on a wrist is no foundation for such fears.” She smoothed her skirt. “Henry has been kind to me, Mama.”
“I certainly hope I am being paranoid, darling. I would like nothing more than to be wrong in this. But I do hope you shall still consider Primrose as your companion. It would help the girl to see how a wealthy home operates.”
Violet turned. “I shall consider it.” She moved toward the chair she vacated and sat down again. “How are the rest of them? Have you bought them new clothes? Shoes? The girls must receive education, Mama. Hire a tutor, buy them books.”
Her mother reached out to hold her daughter’s hand and chuckled.
“All in due time, my dear. All of us had a fitting with Mrs Humphrey for day dresses and shoes. Primrose, of course, will have a new wardrobe in preparation for her Season. Poppy bought a new bonnet and three new dresses. I do believe she has stopped growing. Otherwise, I may need to slip bogbean in her tea.”
Violet placed a finger near her lips. “Do not let anyone hear you jest about such a thing, although I had been tempted to do so myself when we were girls.”
The two women laughed.
“How is Kit?” Violet asked after calling for the tea tray to be moved to her quarters.
Her mother’s laugh dimmed slightly. “Still angry on your behalf. I have had to talk him out of coming to London twice.”
“He is a sweet soul,” Violet said and leaned back in her chair.
“He worries about you a great deal.”
“He said that?”
“Of course not. I have learned to decipher his grunts.” The ladies giggled, imitating Kit’s various grunts.
“Have you not told him the truth about the Duke of Trowbridge never compromising me?” she asked.
“Of course I have, but the man has ruined your reputation irreparably with his falsehood. Kit is unhappy that you had not told him the truth.”
“Because I knew he would grunt even more in disapproval.”
“He would have married you himself, you know,” her mother said with a teasing look.
“So we can all starve together? Besides, marriage would have been strange between us.”
Her mother gave her a side glance. “That would have changed once you shared a marriage bed.”
“Mama! I already have a marriage bed.”
“And how is that, by the way? I believe Kit would have been a very generous husband.”
Heat rose to Violet’s face. “You are being scandalous.”
“Yes, but I would have given my blessing if—”
Violet put a palm up toward her mother and a finger to her lips.
There were voices coming from the master’s chamber through the connecting door.
A clipped male voice, and beneath it a woman’s, soft and low.
Violet knew the woman’s. She heard it every morning at her dressing table, careful and deferential over the laces of her stays.
The chamber door closed and footsteps retreated down the corridor.
“Oh dear. Do you think that was the duke? Who was that woman in his private chamber?”
“I am not sure.” Dread pooled in Violet’s stomach.
Just then the tea tray arrived. The two women drank their tea in relative silence, Violet distracted by Sarah’s presence in her husband’s chamber and fear that the duke may have heard their indelicate conversation.
Her mother stood up after dabbing the corners of her mouth daintily with her fingers.
“Now you shall show me this stillroom Mrs Bickle has told me so much about.”
“How does Mrs Bickle know about such a thing?”
Lady Thornwick stepped toward the door. “From the same person who told her about Egyptian myrrh, of course. The shopkeeper had boasted about the patronage of His Grace’s mother to several members of The Hampstead Botanical Circle.”
Violet got to her feet. “You will be disappointed, Mama.”
“I shall not.”
They went down the service stair together, Violet leading, into the corridor that ran from the kitchens. Violet opened the door of the stillroom and stood back to let her mother go in.
The baroness went in and stood in the middle of the room and turned slowly in place.
“It is a good room, Violet. The light is fair. The work bench is sturdy. The shelves are sound.”
She picked up a jar at random and put it back. “You have the makings of a useful working room in here. Mrs Bickle would be pleased with the bones of it.”
She did not look at any jar a second time.
She did not pause at any shelf. She did not ask what the late duchess had kept here.
Her mother made her circuit, came back to the door, put her hand briefly on Violet’s arm and said, “I am glad you have a place of your own in this house, my dear. Even if it is a small one.”
On the shelves behind her, the late duchess’s jars sat in their new alphabetical order and gave up nothing.