Chapter 2
Miss Nancy Stillbrooke loved a good disaster.
Oh, not an apocalyptic one, of course. Not the carnage of bad weather or the horrors of war, but oh, how she loved a house that had fallen to rack and ruin or an office that had become a cluster of papers.
How she adored going into a place and finding the best way it should be organized. When she was small, one of her favorite things to do had been to go into her mother’s embroidery box and sort out all the embroidery thread.
She’d loved going to all the servants and organizing their ribbons. She loved organizing aprons and sorting out the strings that became tangled. It was her very favorite thing to do to sort out anything that had become, well, unsorted.
She seemed to have a knack for looking at a situation and seeing exactly where everything belonged. Sometimes she felt that way about people and their emotions too, but she did not attempt to organize those. That led to a great deal of trouble and accusations of too much meddling.
So she limited herself to the sorting of external and physical objects.
And oh, how delighted she was to have such a skill because, even though she was an attractive young lady, she had no dowry, no money, no house of her own because her father, who had been a good man, had not managed to get a son with her mother.
And what a disaster that had turned out to be. That disaster she had not particularly loved, but she had sorted it. At least, as best she could.
The untangling of it had been rather painful because her mother was unwell. And the person who had inherited her father’s estate had not seen fit to feel any sort of obligation to them or their general welfare.
They had been tossed out. It had been the fellow’s prerogative. Her father had not provided for her and her mother, thinking, as so many men did, that things would always work out.
And the most hilarious thing of all was that her father had actually been correct. It had worked out, just not in the way her mother and Nancy had thought it would when she was about to have her first Season.
No, she would never have a Season. She would not wear ball gowns of her own.
She would not dance the elaborate steps of the waltz and minuet that she had learned from her dancing master.
She would never speak French in a salon while discussing politics.
She would not pour out tea delicately in a beautiful drawing room whilst having conversations about who would marry whom and what was most popular this Season, flowers or birds.
No, Nancy was an independent young woman who earned her own money and took care of her mother’s ailing health. And she needed a great deal of money to do so because, quite frankly, she feared her mother was not long for this world.
It was no easy thing being ill in London, which was why she had let a cottage by the sea for her mother. Oh, how she missed her and wished she could see her every day!
It was no easy thing paying for doctors and trying to get her mother better.
But at least it was easy for her to go into house after house and organize the leftovers of people who had died, people who were overwhelmed, or people who just seemed to have wounded souls and did not know what to do with the vast majority of things they had collected over the years.
She felt compassion, kindness, and, well, a sense of triumph when she was able to set chaos to order and see the looks on people’s faces when she had done so.
And today was the greatest day of her life because she had been given a task that anyone would envy.
She clutched the little calling card in her coat pocket and took one look up at the freestanding townhome with Corinthian columns and a portico that stretched almost as long as a ballroom.
It stood at the head of a large square with another Grecian column at its center, not far from the Oxford Road.
She drew in a breath and lifted her chin.
“I am capable,” she said to herself, willing herself to feel it. “I am strong,” she said to herself, forcing herself to not shrink with fear that she was not up to this mammoth task. “And I will make friends with this house and turn it into a place of beauty.”
It was what she always said before she went into someone else’s home, except this one… Well, this one looked about five times larger than any she’d ever worked on before.
She collected her thin reticule, she collected her spirit, and up she went across the steps.
She easily took each step, for she was in very good health herself, which she was daily grateful for.
At the set of double doors, she grabbed the massive brass knocker with a lion’s head and rapped it soundly against the door.
It did not even take a moment for the heavy door to swing open and the gentleman, who was clearly the butler of the house with his elaborately curled wig and his beautiful crimson velvet livery, answered and said, “Good day. May I be of service to you?”
“Yes. I was told to present myself with this card,” she said, whipping it out. It was no easy task with her fingers in gloves that had been carefully mended.
The ivory card was thick and clearly expensive with the gold calligraphy upon it. It was an expense that most would never be able to afford.
The butler peered at it and then peered at her before he beamed. “We have been awaiting your arrival.”
Rather than any sort of look of disdain because her clothes were not quite on par with what the butler was surely accustomed to seeing on those who crossed through the front door of the house, rather than the servant’s entrance, he gave her the strangest, kindest sort of smile.
And much to her pleasure, he said, “We are desperately glad that you have arrived.”
“Oh, I’m thrilled to hear it,” she said as she crossed over the threshold and stepped onto the elaborate mosaic floor. Yes, mosaic. She gazed at it and blinked. Astonished at its beauty and oddity.
“The former duke,” the butler began, noting her awe, “had it imported from an island off the coast of Greece. He was quite obsessed with ancient Greece.”
“Was he?” she asked, feeling almost horrified to step on the beautiful stones placed to look like an ocean upon the floor. And as she studied said stones, she realized there was not one, nor two, nor three shades of blue stones, but at least five, as well as gold and silver woven in.
“It is breathtaking,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” he replied.
As she entered the foyer, she found herself rather stunned because she could not see the evidence for why she had been called upon.
“This way,” the butler instructed. “The duke insisted that I show this to you upon your immediate arrival. Before anything else. You might wish to brace yourself.”
“Oh, no,” she said, smoothing the tails of her thin coat. “No need for that. I am quite prepared. I have done my research.”
“Yes,” he said warily, leading her forward. “I’m sure you’ve been able to find a great deal of commentary about the former duke’s proclivities.”
She smiled. “Well…about his interesting habits,” she replied, wishing to make note of the situation in as positive a way as possible.
The butler cleared his throat. “Yes.”
“He was very famous, was he not?”
“Oh, indeed,” the butler agreed, striding down the mote-filled hall. The little particles danced in the sun pouring through the windows. “At one time, an elephant lived in the house.”
“An elephant?” she exclaimed.
“Yes, a friend brought it back and gave it to him.” The butler’s brow furrowed at the memory. “Terrible idea though. The climate is horrible for such an animal.”
She nodded, her bonnet bobbing. “Yes, I would not think that a pachyderm would thrive in England,” she agreed. “What happened to it?”
“Well, His Grace did realize the error of such things, and his son, the current duke, took it back to India, whereupon, with help from those who knew elephants well, he apparently released the animal to great joy into a herd. The herd was apparently imperative.”
Herds were imperative. For humans too. Her heart ached at the idea that anyone would think it a good idea to separate such an animal from its kind. And she felt a burst of affection for the late duke she had not known, and his son who was the present duke, that they had returned the elephant.
She tilted her head to the side. “He sounds like a most interesting individual, His Grace,” she said.
“Oh, he most definitely is, but you likely won’t see him. He’s never here. He doesn’t like the house.”
She smiled. “Oh, when I’m done with it, he will adore it.”
“We shall see,” the butler ventured. “His Grace only sleeps here, leaves the moment he gets up, and does not come back sometimes until well past twelve of the clock.”
She made a mental note of this. She understood it.
Most people who lived in such a house could not bear the oppressive nature of it, especially if it was not a disaster of their own creation, but someone else’s.
Well, disaster was a rather harsh word. Collection.
And sometimes those collections made no sense to the people who had not created them.
The butler opened a door to the right.
Or at least he tried to open a door. It would only go about six inches. He managed to shuffle through, which was not very decorous because the lady usually went first. But she soon understood why he had gone first when she followed him.
Stacks upon stacks of newssheets and playbills and, she realized, scripts of various kinds filled the room.
“My goodness,” she breathed, sneezing as the dust danced through the air. Said dust, unlike in the hall, was only visible because of the cracks of light that spilled through the curtains.
“Yes,” he said. “My goodness is one way to put it.”
“And the former duke did not allow you to touch any of these things,” she said, already knowing the answer.
“That is correct, Miss Stillbrooke,” he said.
She turned slowly, careful to make sure she did not overturn a precarious stack. “What a collection of works he does have,” she said, peering at the titles on the stacks she could see the top of, which were not many because most of them went over her head.
The butler nodded. “Yes, he was particularly obsessed with the plays of the Jacobean period. Of course, Shakespeare as well. And then he had a collection of the Christian plays that were so popular in the medieval period, like Everyman.”
“What a learned fellow,” she marveled. “Did he read them or have them put on?”
The butler frowned. “No, unfortunately he did not. He just collected them. He had seen several of them in his youth and became rather obsessed. Whenever he saw a copy, he had to buy it.”
She nodded. This was quite common with the sort of people that she had come to assist. It was a compulsion. They couldn’t help themselves.
“I see,” she replied simply. “And does His Grace love the theater? Will I be keeping any of these plays for him?”
The butler gnawed his lower lip. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Quite frankly, he does seem to like to go to the theater, but he doesn’t seem to want to collect anything. His room, which is quite small, is rather monastic.”
“May I see it?” she asked.
“May you see his room?” the butler asked, his eyes all but bulging.
She nodded.
He swallowed, gazing to the door, then back to her. His gloved hands, which had seemed quite sure and still, suddenly fidgeted with the gold edging at his cuffs.
“Why do you wish to see it?” he rushed.
She smiled, understanding his unease. “It will help me to deduce what I am to keep and what I am to let go. Seeing his chambers will allow me to see his sense of taste and style.”
The butler nodded, but he still appeared hesitant. Then he drew himself up. “The duke did say that you should have whatever you needed,” he informed her.
This was quite a pleasing thing to hear! Occasionally, she did have trouble with those who hired her, for it was often a struggle to wrestle with the past. Some were not prepared to let go.
Clearly, the duke was. It would make her work much easier.
The butler led her most carefully out of the room, up the wide stairs, and then to a smaller side stair which twisted up, round and round.
“Are we going up to the servants’ quarters?” she asked, half laughing, again glad she was in good health.
“Yes,” he said. “You noticed?”
The servants’ quarters. The duke lived in the servants’ quarters?
“I did indeed,” she replied.
And soon, they were all but in the rafters of the town house.
Much to her surprise, this part of the house was not crowded.
Unlike the room she’d seen, and no doubt all the other rooms down below, it was not stuffed to the brim with bric-a-brac or things that had been collected over the decades by the former duke.
Each room along the spartan hall, as they passed, was quite simple, but she noticed that most of them were not full.
“How many servants work in the house?” she asked.
“Only five,” he said.
“Only five?” she gasped. How did they run such a massive establishment?
“Well, His Grace, the former duke,” he ventured, his voice hitching, “in the last years? He did not really go out as he once did. He had simple meals, and he didn’t entertain anyone after his duchess died.
He preferred to spend his time with his objects, though sometimes he did go out to his club.
Once… Once, he was the grandest man in London. ”
“I see,” she said. “And the current duke?”
“I think he finds it all too overwhelming to hire anyone. After all, he has just returned. I do not think he knows what to do. Which, of course, is why you are here.”
“Well,” she said, “I do know what to do. So never fear. I’m happy to be here.”
And then he opened the duke’s door. She let out a gasp because it was not empty. Oh, it was empty of things…but the duke was most definitely not out.