Beastly Lords Collection

by Baily, Sydney Jane

  “Maybe they had no choice.”

  Maggie considered that in silence, then she gestured at the papers on the desk. “How are you doing? Are we in any better situation than last month?”

  Jenny looked down at the numbers before her. “Your contribution helps tremendously.” That was overstating it, but every little bit counted.

  Maggie nodded in acceptance. “As does yours, at a far higher contribution, I’m certain.”

  Jenny blushed. Yes, her accounting skills certainly had brought in a tidy sum, and she hoped that would continue, as long as no one knew it was she, a mere 20-year-old spinster looking at their ledgers. They would flip their wigs if they knew her identity, a woman with no experience in business. By sending Henry, their father’s manservant whom her mother had refused to let go upon Lord Blackwood’s death, Jenny had managed to procure the custom of quite a few clients.

  She balanced the accounts of local merchants and publicans, as well as a few nobles. Each client sent their ledgers, via Henry, to the mysterious genius who made short work of determining what was owed to the crown and what was a loyal subject’s right to keep in his own coffers. If only she’d known her father’s dire circumstances…

  With her growing clientele and frugal ways, she was keeping her mother, sisters, and their household from destitution. Even if Maggie didn’t contribute much, it was the notion of not doing it alone that greatly comforted Jenny and kept at bay the considerable burden of her family’s survival resting entirely on her shoulders.

  What’s more, though she hadn’t mentioned it to Maggie or Eleanor, they still had some money from the sale of their house in Town. With this and her mother’s blessing, Jenny was determined to give each some sort of Season in London, even if it were greatly abbreviated though anything in the way of a dowry would be impossible. Both her sisters were lovely enough, Jenny knew, if only they could be seen in a few ballrooms, they had a chance to make a favorable match.

  As for herself, Jenny found she didn’t mind the drastic change in lifestyle the way she had feared. To be a spinster in London would have been unbearable; she would have been scorned by her peers and had her social engagements severely limited as she aged. In the country, she had freedom. She already ran a household and oversaw her sisters as if she were a man. She rode when she wanted and read what she wanted, and no one had forced her to play the dreaded pianoforte or sing or do needlepoint since they’d arrived.

  In fact, Jenny hated to benefit from the misery of others, especially her mother and sisters, but her life had improved. And she hadn’t had to take up the mantle of a viscount’s wife, especially as it turned out, a wife who was not really desired. The only black cloud was the unwelcome possibility that she might never marry, never experience the mysteries of the marriage bed, nor have sweet girls and boys of her own.

  “Anyway, I cannot go back tomorrow.” Maggie’s voice penetrated her thoughts.

  Jenny stood. “What are you saying? Why ever not?”

  “Mummy has ordered me to take Eleanor into town to get a new hat, as she’s lost them all, and gloves as she has destroyed her last pair.”

  A hat and gloves! Jenny wanted to scream at the frivolousness of it.

  “You cannot simply abandon your charges for such a matter. Not when you are supposed to be at work.”

  Maggie held up her hand. “Do not say that word. I do not work. I assist the Devere children. I lend them my educational skills. I am recompensed in the manner of a lady.”

  Jenny sighed. She understood her sister’s anathema to having fallen from the higher station they’d enjoyed whilst their father lived, but a spade was a spade.

  Maggie wasn’t finished, however. “You speak as though Lady Devere places coins in my hand!”

  Instead, the payment was sent via a servant each week to the Blackwood household. No filthy lucre crossed her sister’s palm. And when Maggie went into town to the milliner’s shop the next day with Eleanor, the woman would simply write the sum on a slip of paper and send it back to Jenny to pay.

  No wonder most people did not think about numbers! Or like her father, didn’t consider what he owed until it was too late.

  “Why don’t you handle the French lessons, and I’ll take Eleanor?”

  “Because I need a day away from that place,” Maggie stated.

  “It’s only Tuesday,” Jenny pointed out. How would her sister make it to Friday?

  “No. Lord Despair gave me a fright today, and I need a day to recover. That is that!” Maggie was clearly not going to back down, and if Jenny hoped to prevail and get her sister to go back by Thursday, she’d better give in.

  “Fine. I will go to the manor in your place.”

  Maggie’s mouth dropped open. “You will? And do what?”

  Jenny considered. All she knew was that she didn’t want to give anyone at Belton a reason to withhold any payment on Saturday. She suspected it was not Lady Maude Devere who paid, in any case, but someone in charge of the earl’s coffers. Though obviously, not the earl himself, since he was apparently in no state to do anything since his return except to sit in his room. Or so the servants’ gossip indicated.

  “Perhaps I will demonstrate to the children the amazing power of algebra.”

  Maggie didn’t look impressed. “You have a passing knowledge of French and your pronunciation is quite good despite not understanding all the words. Why don’t you simply read them a story and try not to mangle it too terribly? They have some books in the small parlor where we meet, and somewhere in that manor is a library.”

  Jenny immediately felt the sting of her family’s degradation that had so bothered her sister these past few weeks. For the following day, after leaving her horse and brightly painted gig on the smoothly pebbled drive and walking the flagstone path to the imposing stone steps and up to the massive front doors framed by a carved lintel and flanked by columns, she announced to the liveried servant that she was Miss Blackwood. She was told to go around to Belton’s side door. Not exactly the servant’s entrance, but neither the one reserved for invited guests.

  Straightening her shoulders, Jenny made the long trek around the perfectly symmetrical front façade of the yellow-stone manor to the side door.

  To her amazement, the same servant appeared at her knock.

  The man shrugged. “It is the way we were told it should be, Miss.”

  “Very well. Where are the young Deveres?”

  “This way, Miss.” The tall man led her through a hallway, up some back stairs, and along another hall to a small, elegant room, decorated in robin-egg blue with crisp white chair rails and crown molding. Here, in the well-lit chamber, he asked her to wait.

  Removing her coat, Jenny placed it over a tufted wingchair along with her reticule, and took a minute to examine her surroundings. It looked as if the space had been a lady’s drawing room turned into a makeshift schoolroom with two ladderback chairs pulled up to a plain rectangular table. On it were dip pens and ink, chalk and two slates, an abacus, which Jenny immediately picked up, and a stack of thin sheets of paper.

  Fiddling with the beads of the abacus, Jenny approached the bookcase, pleased to see a variety of subjects, even novels and some exciting histories. Just then, the door behind her was flung open and in came her charges for the day. A boy and a girl, neither yet in double digits. They stopped short upon seeing her. Apparently, they hadn’t been told of the switch in tutors.

  “Who are you?” demanded the boy, not unkindly, simply without preamble.

  “I am Miss Blackwood.”

  “No, you’re not,” said the girl, obviously younger, perhaps all of four years. “Not at all.”

  “I am the other Miss Blackwood. And there is yet one more of us,” Jenny informed her, “as well as a Lady Blackwood, who is my mother. And your names are?”

  “I’m Peter,” said the boy.

  The girl took a step forward. “I’m Alice.”

  “Do you speak French?” asked Peter.

 
; Jenny nodded, deciding not to say how rusty her command of it was. Then she looked over their shoulders, but no one else was apparently coming. No adult to discuss the afternoon’s lessons. Who taught them subjects other than French?

  “Do you have other tutors besides Miss Margaret?”

  Peter nodded. “Master Cheeseface teaches me mathematics and writing.”

  “Master Cheeseface?” Jenny repeated.

  The boy smiled and nodded, and then Alice laughed, giving it away as a jest.

  “Come now. It’s not nice to make fun of people’s names.” She thought of her own sister and the many in the village who had taken up the moniker of ‘Lord Despair’ for the despondent man who even then resided somewhere in this magnificent house. Had the children heard that cruel name for their blood relation?

  “He does look like Swiss cheese,” said Peter, “but his name is Master Dolbert.”

  “I see. And when does he put in an appearance?”

  “First thing in the morning,” said the boy. “Not every day.”

  Alice only nodded solemnly.

  “You’ve had no lessons today at all?”

  Instead of answering, Peter asked, “Why are you holding our abacus?”

  Jenny looked down, only then realizing her fingers had been nimbly sliding the beads back and forth on all ten rows. Familiar, comforting, even though her own had twelve rows. Still, at least it wasn’t anything like a flowery foreign language with those dreaded, tongue-tying “r”s.

  “Would you like me to read you a story in French and see if you can tell me what the words mean?” And hopefully they could tell her what they meant as well!

  In answer, they ran to the bookshelf and pulled out a large illustrated book of Perrault’s collected fairytales.

  Jenny smiled. “Ah, my favorites.” If only they were in English.

  Eschewing the hard chairs at the table, the three of them sat side-by-side on a sofa by a bay window with enormous panes that seemed to stretch upward forever.

  In the middle of the two children, Jenny had the book on her lap and opened it. “Is there one in particular?”

  “Start from the beginning, please,” said Peter.

  Oh dear. It was quite a large collection. “We’ll read two today. Histoires ou contes du temps passé,” Jenny began slowly and added the book’s subtitle, “Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye.” Her pronunciation was not terrible, and neither child laughed.

  “Translation, please, Peter,” Jenny said.

  “Stories or Fairy Tales from Past Times with Morals, or Mother Goose Tales.”

  “Très bien,” she told him. “The first story, which I’m sure you’ve already heard a hundred times, is Cendrillon. Alice, please translate.”

  “Cinderella,” chimed the little girl.

  “Bon,” said Jenny and plunged ahead.

  Reading a paragraph at a time, she let the children take turns explaining what was happening and sometimes directly translating a line. At this rate, they passed a pleasurable hour, and then another with the next story, La Belle au Bois Dormant, or The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.

  “Oh my,” Jenny said, when she reached the end and the ogress queen had died in the tub of snakes and toads. “I’m feeling a tad parched. Je suis soif.”

  “J’ai soif,” Peter amended.

  Hmm. Corrected by a child.

  “Time for tea,” Jenny declared, sticking to English as she rose and stretched. “Where do you normally take your refreshments?”

  The children looked at each other. “Someone usually brings it in.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I would very much like to take a walk,” she told them. In any case, she couldn’t see the bell pull anywhere, certainly not an obvious needlepoint or tapestry pull. No doubt it was concealed as one of the decorative brass or bronze items in the room, but she would feel foolish trying to press and turn every one.

  “Shall we go to the dining room and pull the bell?”

  Jenny was well aware that children delighted in ringing for service. At least her sisters used to when they were young at their home in London.

  As expected, they jumped up, running ahead of her, and making enough noise to rival a herd of the queen’s best deer rather than merely two children.

  Hoping she hadn’t caused any problems with protocol, she followed them.

  *

  “What is that noise?” Simon asked aloud though he was certain he was alone. A riot outside the prison? Guards carousing? Rescue? But no, hadn’t he been rescued already? What could cause such a noise in quiet Sheffield? Were they coming to take him back?

  His heartbeat started to gallop and a cold sweat broke out down his back.

  They were coming closer or was that simply a play of echoes? He screamed. At least, he thought it was his own voice. Yes, he screamed again and it felt good to do so. He felt his own powerful resistance and screamed in a way he’d never done in the jail for fear of being instantly and permanently silenced.

  Then Simon closed his eyes and saw Toby lying at his feet and remembered how he had not said a word for a long time after his cousin’s brutal murder. How he had watched silently as they’d dragged him out by his feet and began to…

  “No,” he shouted. “No, no, no, no!”

  Simon continued until he felt exhausted. When he stopped, the noises had also stopped. All around him was quiet.

  Good.

  Chapter Two

  The hair on the back of Jenny’s neck rose and she shivered. What an atrocious racket! First the children, then the dreadful shouting. She knew instantly who it was.

  Feeling both pity and a prickle of fear, she held her arms out as Peter and Alice ran to her for safety.

  Was Lord Lindsey on the same floor? Or one above? Should they go immediately back to the parlor or—?

  “What in the name of the devil is going on here?”

  Slowly, Jenny turned toward the sound of the man’s voice, not sure what to expect. A tall man, slightly older than her father would have been, stood in the corridor, hands straight down by his sides and a distinct scowl upon his face.

  By his demeanor, a commander, but by his clothing, a servant.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his bushy eyebrows rising up into his silvered hairline.

  Before she could respond, he addressed the children.

  “You two know better than to cause such a ruckus.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alice and Peter said in unison.

  “What are you doing running in this wing?”

  Jenny decided to take responsibility. “The children and I were going to request tea. We’ve been cooped up for hours.”

  “And you are?”

  This time he waited for her reply.

  “Miss Blackwood.”

  He looked her over with a neutral glance. “Another one,” he said.

  She nodded. “My sister could not attend her charges today.”

  “I see. And one Blackwood is as good as the next,” he offered.

  She nearly took offense but realized he was making a little jest and not speaking seriously. At least she thought not.

  “There’s another one, too,” Peter informed the man.

  “How beneficial.” The man took a deep breath as if collecting himself, and Jenny began to understand that he had been truly disturbed by their noise and no doubt upset at the resulting effect on the earl.

  “I am Mr. Binkley,” he offered. “Butler of Belton, and I apologize for the staff being remiss. Tea should have been brought to you. I will send a tray at once. Please return to the blue parlor.”

  “May we go to the dining room for a change of venue?” Jenny requested, now that Mr. Binkley seemed to have calmed down.

  He looked as though he were battling an inner argument.

  “I promise there will be no more running or disturbance,” she added. “We will go over our French words for common dining items while we are there.”

  Still, he hesitated. At last, he muttered, “
Very well. Follow me.”

  Nodding to Jenny as he passed her, Mr. Binkley continued along the hallway in the direction the children had been leading her. The three of them went down the main staircase and across a large foyer. Entering a vast dining room with a long table and about two dozen chairs arranged on both sides, Jenny could only stop and stare.

  The table stretched on forever with a perfect sheen of polish and neither a speck of dust nor a single fingerprint in sight. A far cry from the Blackwood cottage’s oak table with newsprint, flowers, and occasionally crumbs strewn across it. In contrast, the Devere dining room had the distinct air of disuse and even sadness to Jenny’s way of thinking, even if it did boast two magnificent crystal chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling.

  “Please wait here and do not go anywhere else.”

  She nodded to Mr. Binkley, and he gave each of the children a stern glance before retreating.

  “Well, that nearly spoiled our outing.”

  Alice giggled at Jenny’s words, and Peter wandered around the room as if he’d never seen it. With a start, Jenny realized that perhaps the children had not. Maybe the family, Lady Devere and her children, ate in a cozy room somewhere rather than in this sterile, vaulted chamber.

  “Can you tell me anything about this room?” Jenny asked. “Do you know that man in the painting?”

  Peter had stopped to stare at a large portrait hung at one end of the room over the blue fleur de lis wallpaper.

  “I don’t know.” His voice had a strange tenor to it, and Jenny approached him.

  “He looks like my father, only much older.” Peter’s voice was tinged with curiosity.

  Jenny studied the portrait. A handsome man about twenty years past the prime of life stared down at her.

  “Oh,” she muttered, recalling gatherings at the manor when she was a child. She had never been in this room, only the great room that she knew was somewhere close by. It had held the largest Christmas tree she’d ever seen. And this man, the previous earl, had been there along with his only son, Simon, who now suffered alone upstairs.

  Perhaps present at those holiday gatherings had been Peter and Alice’s father, Sir Tobias Devere, though Jenny couldn’t remember him. No doubt, he’d been a gangly youth as was his cousin Simon.