A younger man, one of the footmen, she presumed, flashed by to begin untying her substantial luggage from the rear of the coach. Behind her Jane stepped down to the ground as well. “We might have stopped for the night in East Pennard or Balesborough,” Isabel commented, reminding herself that this moment would serve as the servants’ first impression of her, “but I was very eager to reach the Hall. And I don’t mind a bit of dust.”
And as badly as she wanted to gaze up at the building, to run inside and explore and find…something that could explain the breathless excitement she felt, the reason she’d decided they would drive all night if necessary to reach Nimway Hall without another stop, she couldn’t very well behave like a flighty girl. She was the mistress of this property now.
The rather tall Mr. Driscoll continued to stand between her and the front door. She didn’t know precisely whom she’d expected, but certainly not someone as…fit as he appeared. She’d met a steward or two, and they’d been older, experienced men, selected for their ability to maintain the running of an estate while its master was elsewhere. They served as the owner’s surrogate. They didn’t have straw sticking up from their dark, disheveled hair or patches of dust on their sleeves. For heaven’s sake, he looked more like a farmer than a steward.
A handsome farmer, to be sure, black haired and green eyed with a lean hardness to his body and his face. A man who worked with his hands, from the look of his attire, and one who no doubt thought he knew everything about Nimway Hall and how best to run it. Well, she would see about that. She might not know precisely what Nimway needed – yet – but she would figure it out. Because this was where she belonged.
Isabel took a deep breath and stepped around Adam Driscoll. Tonight, she wanted to see Nimway Hall. She could sack the steward tomorrow.
3
What do you think, Jane?” Isabel asked, kneeling in front of the alabaster figure carved into the left side of the large white-marble fireplace. The formal dining room had, of course, been her first stop on her tour.
“It’s… Good heavens.”
“It’s exquisite.” She recognized her mother in every line of Marco de Rossi’s work, even though twenty years in age lay between the sculpture and the woman she’d last seen a month ago. The carving and Charlotte Harrington-de Rossi were twins, one idealized and young forever while the other had become a wife and a mother.
“You shouldn’t be looking at it, Isabel. It’s…” Jane lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s naked.”
“Only partly.” And it truly didn’t bother her. Perhaps that was because naked art and Florence couldn’t exist without each other, or perhaps it was because this was how her father had viewed her mother when the two of them were just falling in love. A magic moment, captured forever.
And that was why the dining room had been her first destination once she stepped through the front door of Nimway Hall. She studied the white marble for another ten minutes, understanding why it made her grandparents uncomfortable – though she suspected that their…dismay had had at least as much to do with the realization that Charlotte wouldn’t be living the life they’d envisioned for her as it did with seeing an idealized breast in white marble.
As for Isabel, she found the carving comforting. Her parents were here even if they remained an ocean away. The statue’s nudity didn’t bother her, because she felt it more than she saw it, felt the warmth and love and life in the hands that had made it and the way he’d seen – and still saw – the woman whose image he’d sculpted.
When Jane’s chest crossing and hand wringing became too much to ignore, Isabel stood again. “Shall we see the rest of the house, then? I want to find that orb Mama always talked about.” She said it as casually as she could, but a magic orb seemed both impossible and inevitable, and she wanted – needed – to set her eyes on it. The sooner, the better.
“Oh, thank heavens. Can you imagine perfect strangers seeing that fireplace? Or worse yet, acquaintances? Mr. Driscoll has seen it, certainly. Mortifying!”
Once more biting back her reply, Isabel nodded as she made her way down to the library. Like the rest of Nimway Hall thus far it stood elegant and tasteful and feeling not old, but…ancient. No, not ancient, either. Timeless, more like. As though it had always been there and always would be. Guardians could add to the collection or re-organize the shelves, but this was where their centuries of stories slept.
She took a deep breath. “I think I shall spend a great deal of time here.”
“I imagine there are enough books about Merlin and knights and dragons here to satisfy even you,” Jane agreed, walking over to run a finger along the shelves, then stifled a yawn. “I know you wish to see everything, but we’ve been traveling since dawn.”
That, they had been. And Jane was seventeen years her senior – certainly not old, but probably less…enchanted at finally being here than she was. Seeing the remainder of the house while she was awake enough to appreciate it. She had the rest of her life to explore, after all. This was now home. “We’ll begin again in the morning, shall we?” she said, and took Jane’s arm.
“Oh, yes, please. I’m near to falling asleep standing up.”
Jane had taken the next room down from hers, and Isabel sent her off to bed before she put on her own night rail. That done, she had one more thing she needed to do before she went to bed. Beginning with the bookshelf and working her way around the room, she shifted every book, every knick-knack, every chair, every potted plant, and every candle. After hearing so many tales about the orb, she half-expected it to fly into the room and land on the bed. Dash it all, it wasn’t here, though. Isabel took a last look about, then blew out the lamp by her bed. She had a great many more places to look, and however eager she might be, tomorrow would have to be soon enough.
Finally she sank beneath the warm sheets in the master bedchamber. She spent the night dreaming about swords emerging from lakes, a bearded man with an ornate staff and holding a young girl by the hand, and a pair of deep-green eyes.
When she opened her own eyes in the morning, it took a moment before she remembered where she was. Isabel sat up and stretched.
The Nimway Hall master bedchamber took up the entire end of the west wing, with windows overlooking the woods to the south, Myrrden Lake to the north beyond the gardens, and to the northwest a view of the ancient Tor at Glastonbury.
She’d known all that before she arrived, though. After years of pestering her mother for every ounce of information about their ancestral home, years spent devouring books about Somerset and especially Glastonbury – after all, Arthur and Guinevere were rumored to be buried at the ruined cathedral there – she doubted there could be anything she didn’t know about the layout and history of Nimway Hall.
Except for the name of the steward, of course. Isabel frowned as she untangled herself from the bedsheets and stood. That had been stupid of her. She knew his name to be Adam Driscoll, and at the last moment she’d selected one of her grandmother’s misnomers to address him. No, she didn’t need him, and she’d been attempting to illustrate that fact, but it had felt needlessly unkind.
“Never mind that now,” she muttered, pushing hair out of her eyes. Who hired such a young man to oversee as large and ancient an estate as Nimway Hall, anyway? Stewards were stooped-over old men with ink stains on their fingers. Oh, wait, perhaps she was thinking of solicitors or clerks. Anyway, they didn’t have straw in their hair or on their jackets, and they didn’t have keen and curious green eyes or tower over her as if being three inches over five feet made her a midget.
Surely her grandmother hadn’t known her solicitors were hiring such a young man for the position. At best she’d hoped for a kindly old man to introduce her about. At worst – well, she hadn’t imagined a worst, but a towering, energetic young man who thought he knew everything about Nimway Hall – that would be it.
“Oh, stop it, Isabel,” she told herself, as she walked to the southern-facing set of windows and tugged the curtai
ns open. It was done, and now for her own peace of mind she would have to demonstrate that she wasn’t some nodcock before she sent Adam Driscoll packing, even if it was purely her own pride speaking. Taking a slow breath, she lifted her eyes to the view outside the window.
Beyond a large meadow and a picturesque scattering of white sheep, the woods loomed thick and dark, visible all the way to the drop-off to the west, and curving up and around to the east. Mist hung in the tops of the trees, beginning to sparkle as the rising sun touched it. Rainbows darted here and there, appearing and immediately vanishing in the rapidly altering light. She’d never seen such colors. There couldn’t possibly be words invented to describe all the hues.
She watched the spectacle, mesmerized, until the sun inched high enough to strike the scene directly and return the display to simple mist and trees again. Did such a thing happen every sunrise? Had it been especially for her?
Perhaps only a child should ask such a question. But then she’d known since her childhood that Nimway Hall was magical. Her mother, Charlotte, had said so many times, even if she’d pretended to explain some of the occurrences away as Isabel had gotten older. Even if the same bedtime stories had gone from being true events to fairy tales. Isabel knew which version she believed.
Strict Grandmama Olivia had as much as said the house was alive, and if there was ever a more skeptical person than Olivia Harrington, Isabel had never met her. Or him.
Leaving the south-facing curtains open, she wandered to the other end of the huge room, running her fingers along chair backs and up the bedposts as she did so. They – her parents – had a lovely home in Florence, and her papa could trace some of the furniture pieces there all the way back to the Italian Renaissance. But that had been his side of the family, the one she’d always thought of as the male side. This, Nimway Hall, felt like the female side, and she didn’t think that was entirely because it passed to the eldest daughter in the female line. The house itself felt…motherly, warm, welcoming, and accepting. Or perhaps she was imagining it because she so badly wanted it t—
“Get out of there, Driscoll! You’ll be killed!”
Heavens! Isabel stepped into her coach slippers and threw on a heavy dressing robe, then flung open her door and hurried for the nearest third-floor stairs. Just beyond the small attic hallway a half dozen servants milled, several of them missing jackets and one with no shoes. A distinct humming sound filled the air as she approached. The butler, Simmons, held closed the door she thought opened into the upstairs storage room, his ear pressed hard against it.
“What is going on?” she demanded, as the muffled humming grew louder.
The butler started. “I beg your pardon, Miss Isabel. I – You—” He paled, waving his hands in front of the trio of male servants present. “Avert your eyes! Miss Isabel, you – you’re naked.”
Frowning, she glanced down at herself. A night rail, a heavy dressing gown over that, and house slippers, which were more layers than she wore when she had a proper dress on. Englishmen. “I’m not naked, for goodness’ sake. Now why were you shouting?”
He scowled. “But you—”
“Simmons, I dress as I please. Where is Mr. Driscoll?” She asked the question crisply, and the butler visibly shook himself.
“Ah. Yes. If nudity is acceptable these days, then so be it. That daft Driscoll’s gone in to smoke out the bees. The last time we tried it, half of us were nearly stung to death, but now he’s in there alone.”
“We have bees in the attic?” she asked, feeling a bit as if she’d opened a book somewhere in the middle, without knowing the characters or the plot. Her fairy tales had never featured bees. Her real life featured bees.
“Yes, ma’am. For the past three weeks. We’ve lost four rooms up here to them now.”
Surreptitiously tucking her hands up into the thick, puffy sleeves of the dressing gown and glad she’d buttoned it to her chin, Isabel padded up to the door in her house slippers. “I would like to see what’s happening, if you please.”
“But Miss Isa—”
“Crack open the door so I can see. In fact, step back. I’ll see to it. If Mr. Driscoll is injured we’ll need to figure a way to get him out of there.” She motioned the other servants to back away as a precaution. Then, leaning against the doorframe, she put her robe-covered hand over the handle and pushed down. The latch lowered, and the door opened a fraction. Buzzing sounds filled the air. Definitely honey bees. She lifted her shoulders to help protect her neck and widened the opening.
The sight inside froze her for a moment. Bees swirled through a haze of pleasant-smelling smoke, their attention on the figure standing in the middle of the room. He wore heavy work gloves, one of them holding the smoker. Mr. Driscoll also wore a very large woman’s hat, a heavy lace sewn all around the wide brim and hanging down past his shoulders. It looked as though he’d donned at least half a dozen progressively-larger jackets, and she would have been ready to swear that he also had on multiple pairs of trousers, all stuffed into an overlarge pair of stable boots.
All the windows beyond him stood open, but the bees didn’t show any sign of flying away. Rather, they swarmed around the large dresser in front of him as he flipped it sideways in the direction of the nearest window. Bees frantically flew in and out from the turned-over bottom of the piece and over the front of the veil. She realized immediately that he couldn’t use the smoker and move the dresser at the same time.
Swiftly she grabbed up the second smoker that stood just inside the doorway, turned it on herself in hopes the bees would ignore her, then moved into the room. “I’ll smoke them,” she said, pumping the top to send streams of smoke around her and suppressing a cough. “You move the dresser.”
“Miss de Rossi!” he exclaimed from beneath the heavy curtain of lace. “You cannot—”
“I am,” she interrupted, puffing smoke in his direction. “No delays, now.”
As she approached him, sliding her slippered feet along the floor to avoid stepping on any smoke-downed bees, the humming began to lower in pitch, sounding less frantic and angry. The additional smoker must have helped, because the swirling swarm slowed, closing in around their chosen piece of furniture, and thinned as the bees returned to their hive somewhere inside the heavy mahogany dresser.
The dresser Mr. Driscoll meant to heave out a third-floor window. “Wait,” she breathed, as he crouched over the dresser. “Could you wrap it in blankets?”
The lady’s hat swiveled from her to the multitude of pieces of covered furniture around them. “Keep smoking the dresser,” he instructed. He slowly and quietly stepped around to her side and removed his hat. Before she could object, he placed it over her head, carefully adjusting the hanging lace around her so it hung down around her shoulders. “I won’t have you getting stung,” he commented.
It was thoughtful, considering that he still faced the bee horde, himself. Still easing his way through the smoke and settling bees, he squinted his eyes against the thickening smoke and stripped blankets off a wardrobe, a chair, and an old chandelier.
Very cautiously, Mr. Driscoll draped the largest blanket over the dresser. That done, he tucked a second blanket along the bottom of the piece. “If I tilt it up, can you push the ends beneath it?” he asked, looking up at her.
She nodded. “Yes,” Isabel added aloud, on the chance that he couldn’t see the motion beneath the massive chapeau. Sending out two more puffs of smoke for good measure, she set aside the smoker. With her hands still tucked deep into her sleeves, she crouched beside the dresser. As soon as he tilted it the bees began humming again, and she hummed back at them as the old beekeeper in Florence used to do, trying to soothe the creatures, while she pushed the underside of the blanket as far as it would go. They switched places, and she pulled the end of the blanket out, pushing the nearer end under so they overlapped.
“Well done,” he said, setting the bundled dresser flat again and placing another blanket over it for good measure. “They won’t
stay quiet for long, though.” He walked to the door and tried to pull it open, only to have it yanked shut again from the other side. “For Christ’s sa…” he began, glancing at her then back to the door again as he trailed off. “Send in three footmen,” he ordered. “The bees are contained, but we need to get this dresser downstairs posthaste.”
“Are you certain they’re contained?” came the muffled query through the door.
The servants had closed her into the bee room right alongside her steward, Isabel realized. “The bees are contained,” she stated, thankful they couldn’t see her trying to sound authoritative in her absurd hat. They would never take her seriously if she attempted to command them while wearing that chapeau. “Come assist Mr. Driscoll at once.”
The door inched open, the opening widening as no bees swarmed to attack. A trio of black-jacketed young men stumbled in, coughing at the haze of smoke and trying not to look either at her non-nakedness or at the hat, then took positions at three of the corners of the dresser and lifted. Driscoll gathered the hanging blanket ends and knotted them together, then took a corner for himself. The men headed, crablike and supremely careful, out the storage-room door.
“Are we to toss it in the lake?” one of them asked in a hushed voice as Isabel trailed them to the servants’ stairs.
“No!” she exclaimed. Somewhere beyond her hearing she swore she heard her mother’s voice and one of her fairy tales about the entire property at Nimway Hall being…sacred. Did that include the bees? “Put the dresser in the corner of the garden. Perhaps we could begin an apiary.”
“I do like fresh honey,” another of the young men stated, stumbling then righting himself, adding a colorful curse as their bundle hummed and vibrated in response.
“Steady,” the steward said calmly, taking the backward position as they descended the stairs. Glancing up at Isabel, he smiled.
He had a good smile, she decided, and a rather attractive one that made her smile back at him – though he likely couldn’t see her face through the heavy lace curtain of the hat. In fact, seeing her in the silly chapeau was likely the reason he was amused. Even given the item’s absurdity, however, she had to acknowledge that lending it to her had been chivalrous, especially as stray bees continued to buzz about them.
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