“I wish I knew where that Neatham pest is staying. Somewhere close to Gavenor, I’ll be bound. Twisted ankle. I am surprised such an experienced man was taken in.”
Bear hurried away from the door as Miss Pelman’s voice drew closer, and was examining a poor imitation of a Ming vase that burdened the mantlepiece when the pair entered the room.
Miss Neatham wore an oiled coat and a matching hood. The hood tied under her chin and had a collar that flared out into a cape to protect her neck and shoulders. “Let us be off, then, Mr. Gavenor. You will not wish to be making the trip back to Rose Cottage after dark.” She held up a hand and he approached her. “Although… Lawrence, we should offer Mr. Gavenor a bed for the night.” Again, that crocodile smile. “Lawrence could loan you some things, Mr. Gavenor, which would save you a wet and unpleasant trip.”
Never. Even if he had not taken on responsibility for Miss Neatham. Now that he’d met the woman and heard her plotting, he had no intention of staying under the same roof as her. He struggled to find courteous words to refuse the offer. “Thank you, Miss Pelman. That is very kind, but I will not consider it. I have left my dinner cooking and would fear to return to a smoldering heap.”
Miss Pelman was tenacious. “Lawrence could ride…”
“In this weather?” Pelman objected, glaring at his sister, then sliding his eyes sideways to Bear and rearranging his face into a smile as false as hers. “That is, if you would like to stay, Gavenor, I could send a servant.”
“Thank you, but no.” Be damned to them if they thought he owed them another reason. “Shall we set out to Mrs. Able’s, Miss Pelman? That is, unless you would prefer to give me a note and some directions to her house.” Please give me a note and let me escape.
She led the way from the room. “Yes, yes, let us go. It is not far.”
Once out of the gate, Miss Pelman turned uphill, toward the village center, and then almost immediately down a little narrow side street with four terraced houses on either side. They looked to be of the same vintage and type as the hovels at the bottom of the hill, but in much better condition, and lights flickered behind the downstairs window of each.
Miss Pelman stopped at the second house on the right and mounted the three steps that took the doorway higher than the muddy road. How many people lived here? The cacophony behind the door suggested at least a score: a baby crying, children shouting, and a couple of adult voices pitched to be heard above all the rest.
A knock brought an immediate response: a child’s voice retreating as it shouted, “Mam, Mam, someone’s to door.”
The door opened, just enough for a half-grown girl to insert her wiry body in the gap and examine first Miss Pelman and then Bear with eyes that were twenty years older than the rest of her.
“We’re here to see your mother,” Miss Pelman did not waste courtesy on the children of the poor. “Take us to her.”
The girl let the door swing open and led the way a few paces down the narrow, cluttered hall to a parlor door. Five children of various ages and sizes tumbled up and down the stairs leading to the upper floor, playing some complicated game that required frequent pauses for negotiation of the next move. In the parlor, more children draped themselves across the furniture, sat against the walls, or lay on their stomachs on the knotted rag rugs.
A lushly built woman, not old enough to be mother of all these children, let the suckling infant she held detach itself from her nipple, and reached for the wailing baby that one of the older girls held. Another girl scooped up the little sprite who had finished his or her meal, and skirted Bear to whisk out of the room.
The nursing woman watched Bear with a sardonic eye, as if daring him to comment on her exposed, full breasts. He kept his face impassive as the baby in her arms bumped blindly against her bare skin. She thrust her nipple into its wailing mouth, silencing, at least, that source of noise.
“Mam Able, it’s Miss Pelman and a gentleman,” the door opener announced, and Bear turned to see who was being addressed.
Half screened by children, another woman watched them from one of the couches. She was much older. The first woman’s mother, perhaps? They shared the same eyes, though this second woman had run to fat, with several chins, a bosom like the prow of a ship and arms like young oaks. Above her broad face, hair an unlikely shade of orange stuck out in a parody of a fashionable coiffure.
“Wha’ might Miss Pelman ’n’ a gen’leman want of Mrs. Able?” she asked, tipping her head to one side in question.
Miss Pelman drew herself up to announce, “Mrs. Able, Mr. Gavenor is a great friend of my brother’s, and he has need of your services.” She ignored the nursing mother as if she were not in the room.
Bear regretted his keen sense of smell, which detected urine-wet child, heavy sweat, and an overlay of juniper. Gin, probably.
“Lying in, laying out, wet nurse, or sick-bed nurse? Only, if you need a wet nurse, you’ll ’ave to ’ave Penny.” She gestured to the woman feeding the baby, explaining, “Me dugs have dried.” Miss Pelman glanced in the direction of the gesture and as quickly looked away.
“Sick-bed nurse,” Bear told her. “Just for the night, until the daughter can make other arrangements.”
“It is Neatham,” Miss Pelman explained. “But Mr. Gavenor is paying.”
Mrs. Able pursed her lips. “Just tonight?”
Bear nodded.
“Two shillings by the night. Extra if he soils himself.”
Highway robbery, but undoubtedly anyone with this many mouths to feed needed the money. “Half now, half in the morning.”
“And dinner from the inn and a pint of porter.”
He would pass the inn on his way back to Rose Cottage. “I will pay to have it sent. Enough for Mr. Neatham, too.”
The sick-bed nurse hoisted herself from her seat. “Penny, they’re all yours,” she announced.
Penny cast her eyes upwards, though whether in prayer or protest, Bear couldn’t say. “I’ve someone I promised to meet tomorrow, noonish,” she warned.
“I’ll be back by then, or Sal can watch them.”
Mrs. Able left the room to a chorus of “Night, Mam,” and pulled on some men’s boots in the hall while the children on the stairs stopped long enough to add their good nights.
Then she covered her head and shoulders with a blanket before leading the way back across to the Pelhams’ street and to the entrance of a steep flight of steps that led down to the hollow where the Neathams’ new abode wallowed in its pond.
Miss Pelman looked uncertainly down the hill to the waiting flood. Bear seized his chance. “Thank you for your help, Miss Pelman. I’ll just stand here, shall I? Until you are safely within your doors.”
She looked at him helplessly, but the wind blew a sudden flurry of heavy drops into the face sheltered under her rain hood. “Yes, of course. Do please call again, Mr. Gavenor. I will tell Pelman that he must invite you for dinner.”
She hurried off down the street, and he watched dutifully until her front door closed behind her, wondering how influential the Pelmans were in the local community. Could he avoid a closer association and still do business here?
“Are you coming, Mr. Gavenor?” the sick-bed nurse called from halfway down the steps. He collected himself and followed, and soon reentered the miserable house.
Chapter Five
Mr. Gavenor was gone for a very long time; so long, that Rosa began to wonder if he intended to return. Rosa managed to scoot across the floor on her bottom to fetch a book to pass the time. Getting back up on the couch seemed too much trouble, so she remained on the rug, leaning against what used to be her chair.
The book was an old favorite, but it couldn’t engage her interest, which kept hopping back to the pain in her ankle and her anxiety about her father. A little about Mr. Gavenor, too. She hoped he had not come to harm. Not that she wished to stay the night in his cottage, but he seemed a kind man, if a little gruff.
All right. A lot gruff. Oddly enough, that reassured h
er. The kind of facile charm that Pelman turned on as if with a tap hid a familiar danger, for he expected to be rewarded with liberties she had no intention of permitting. Not, at least, from Pelman, for though she was running out of other ways to protect and care for her father, he was not the only man in England. If she must sell herself to someone, it would not be to the man who had driven her to such a necessity.
Except that she had not the first idea how to find another man who might want a virgin well past her youth—and one with few feminine graces.
Once again, Rosa reviewed the litany of her marketable skills.
She could teach reading and writing, but the Pelmans had convinced the locals she was not fit to associate with children.
She could make botanical observations and illustrate them with drawings. She had thought she might be able to sell a pamphlet, or perhaps even a book, but her hopes were dashed when the printer to whom she sent samples returned an enthusiastic letter that raised her hopes then dashed them with a quote for the money she must advance. Apparently, authors must pay the costs for publication and distribution. The sum required was more than she had seen in one place in her entire lifetime.
She could sew neatly, although without enthusiasm. Sewing currently kept them alive, since those who could afford a seamstress preferred to hire someone for, at least, the long seams of their gowns. The employment paid a pittance, but even a pittance was better than nothing.
For the rest, she could translate from and to Greek and Roman, and make a reasonable fist of Hebrew. Baron Hurley had often given her such work to do; yes, and paid her, too, for all that she was woman, but Lord Hurley had been dead for years, and no one else wanted an informally trained female translator.
She could keep house, if anyone wanted a housekeeper tainted with scandal and burdened by a bedridden father who constantly mistook her for her mother or her aunt. After Thorne Hall was damaged by fire, she kept house at Rose Cottage for her father. She’d been feeding them mostly from her garden, her goats, and her hens, all of which Pelman had confiscated when he had thrown her and her father out.
She had considered complaining to the squire about Pelman trampling on her rights, but the residents of Thorne Hall and Sir Gerard’s family had been estranged for as long as she could remember, though she had never heard why. The squire was known as a fair man, if hard. He would uphold the law. If Rosa had something to prove the law was on her side, she would swallow her pride and pay him a visit.
But without evidence, she would not get a fair hearing from a man who seemed to hate her just because she was the previous Lord Hurley’s librarian’s daughter.
Unfortunately, as that horrid sneak Pelman had said, she had only her word that she owned the goats, both presents from Lord Hurley. He had gone on to point out that the garden was part of the cottage, and if she took the hens, where would she put them? Then, mightily condescending, he had given her ten shillings in compensation for four fine layers and a bantam that was sitting on eggs.
Rosa had taken the money. She needed it to keep them fed. A fortnight, her hens had bought her. Perhaps three weeks. Six of those days were now gone.
How did the hens fare in this dreadful weather? Perhaps she would be able to see them from the scullery window.
She employed the bottom-shuffling method to make her way to the hall and the umbrella stand, then pulled herself up so that she could collect the walking stick. Leaning heavily on that, hobbling to keep as much weight off her foot as possible, Rosa made her way to the kitchen, where a pot simmered on the fire, and then through to the scullery. Sheets of rain obscured her view into the back garden, each wind gust battering water against the window panes.
Between the rain and the hens’ reluctance to be out in such weather, she’d see nothing this afternoon. Now that she was up, however, she could steep some willow-bark tea. Mr. Gavenor had returned her basket to the larder, aligning it as precisely to the edge as she would have herself.
She scanned the shelves, noting gaps where her stores of food had been depleted. Pelman, no doubt, helping himself to anything that appealed. She could find no milk and none of the goat’s cheese she had been forced to leave behind. The basket she kept for fresh eggs held half a dozen. The lay from the last two days? If so, the hens were well, and she certainly didn’t grudge the eggs to Mr. Gavenor, if he was the one who collected them. Not after his kindness to her.
Mr. Gavenor’s hands had been so gentle when he examined, and later wrapped, her ankle. For all his size, his touch was delicate, and it had been generous of him to go out into the storm to assuage her worries.
What could be keeping him so long? The stew was evidence he intended to return. With one hand, she set a kettle of water to boil while balancing her weight on the walking stick, then stirred the stew. It smelt wonderful, but would taste even better with a couple of potatoes baked in the ashes. This year’s crop, she thought, would be rotting in the inhospitable ground, but she limped into the larder and reached to the bottom of the storage box to fetch two potatoes from the previous year’s harvest.
While she was at it, she cored two apples and filled the holes with a spoonful of honey and some black currant jam. She placed the filled apples in a small pot nestled among the embers. They would make a nice, sweet dish with dinner.
There. She should sit again. Her ankle throbbed so she could barely think, but, at least, Mr. Gavenor would come home to a hot meal.
Chapter Six
Bear’s mood lifted as he topped the last rise in the road and saw Rose Cottage, its tiled roof lit by the sun, which had dropped below the clouds as it set in the west. He’d been much longer than he’d expected, but, at least, the rain had stopped.
Mr. Neatham’s reaction to the nurse had been grueling. He’d objected to being washed and changed, fighting weakly and finishing in helpless tears. “Who are you?” he kept asking. “Why are you doing this?”
Mrs. Able had been firm but kind, which made Bear feel a little better. He’d sent a good meal from the inn, enough food for both nurse and patient. He’d been tempted to stop and have some himself, but he’d put a stew on that morning, to simmer by the fire, and needed to get back. Miss Neatham was on her own, and injured.
He let himself in the front door and looked into his study. No Miss Neatham. The rug he’d draped over her was there, but the woman was gone. For a moment, he heard Miss Pelman’s voice again, “I am surprised such an experienced man was taken in.”
No. She could not have faked the swelling and bruising. Still, if she had made her way up to his bed like that foolish woman at the Ruthfords’ house party, she would be very disappointed in his response.
He crossed to the formal parlor, opposite his study. No Miss Neatham. At the back of the house, the little room that had been set up as a workroom, and on the other side of the stairs, the kitchen. There, he found Miss Neatham, asleep in a chair at the kitchen table, her injured foot resting on one of the benches.
Bear stood looking down at her. He was not good at judging the ages of females, but he thought she must be of similar years to Miss Pelman. Perhaps a few years younger, or perhaps it was just that her face was pleasanter, without the sour lines that Miss Pelman’s disposition had carved into her visage as outward warnings to the unwary.
He glanced down at the ankle, which had swollen more despite the bandage. Obviously, she had been walking on it. What had she been up to? He picked up the cup at her elbow and sniffed at the bitter tea. Willow bark. He should have thought of that himself.
Next, he checked the kitchen fire, and soon found the two potatoes baking in the embers and the pot with its apples, stewed into a fragrant mush. A busy lady, his invalid.
***
Rosa jerked awake at the sound of china clinking in the scullery. By the time Mr. Gavenor appeared in the doorway, she had remembered where she was, and why, and was sitting up, rearranging her gown to hide her ankle.
“You are awake,” Mr. Gavenor said. “Good. I’m starvi
ng.” He put two plates on the table and turned back to the fire. Swiftly and efficiently, a pot mitt on his hand, he swung the stew off the fire and lifted it to the pot stand that sat ready on the table.
Rosa leaned forward. “My father? How is my father?”
He glanced at her, and then focused on the potatoes he fished from the embers with a long pair of tongs. “You didn’t tell me he was senile.”
“He’s not sen…” But he is, and increasingly so. “He gets confused, and he forgets things, but some days he is quite…”
Mr. Gavenor ignored her demurrals. “I hired someone to stay with him for the night.”
Rosa winced at the thought of her diminishing store of hen money. “I cannot afford…”
Mr. Gavenor ladled stew over the potatoes he had cut, unruffled by her protests. “My responsibility. If I had not startled you, you would not have fallen, and you would be home with him now. Here. Eat.”
He pushed a plate over in front of her and slid the other to the place he’d set for himself, then pulled out the chair so he could sit down.
Rosa folded her hands in her lap, bowed her head, and murmured a request for blessing on the food and the cook, then looked up to find Mr. Gavenor observing her, his fork in his hand, his eyes alive with interest in an expressionless face.
“Thank you,” she told him. “It is very kind of you.”
He looked down at his plate and dug his fork into the stew. “Potatoes were a good idea, but you should have kept to the couch. That ankle won’t heal if you keep putting weight on it.”
Gruff. But I have your measure, Mr. Gavenor. You are a kind man. “I meant, thank you for hiring someone. Whom did you find?”
Mr. Gavenor shrugged. “Miss Pelman recommended a Mrs. Able. A rough woman, but she seems kind enough.”
Miss Pelman. What did she say about me? Nothing pleasant, that is certain. “Mrs. Able is kind. But she drinks. A lot.”
“I noticed.” Mr. Gavenor further proved her opinion of him by expanding on that wry observation. “I stayed until your father was comfortable. Toward the end, he seemed to know her. I will check again in the morning.”
Seduction Regency Style Page 3
