A Lady's Guide to Passion and Property

by Kate Moore

  “My sister and I have come about a relation of ours,” he said.

  “A relation, is it?” said the girl. “Yer not the new man?”

  “No. We’ve come to see Mrs. Wellby.”

  “Avis,” said a smooth firm voice of unmistakable authority, “who have we here?”

  “Dunno, ma’am. Nobody, I think,” the girl said over her shoulder. Having dismissed them, Avis turned on her heel and disappeared through a door off the passageway. A tall woman in deep burgundy silks with a lace collar and a ring of keys at her waist appeared. From her plain calm face and clear bright eyes, Nate guessed she was good at sorting through any kind of nonsense. He began again.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Wellby?” The woman nodded. “My sister and I have come to inquire about a relation of ours. He may be in service here.”

  “A relation, you say.” She looked them over shrewdly but not unkindly.

  “This is Hartwood Manor, is it not?”

  “It is, but I suspect you’ve been misinformed about your relation. Most everyone in service here comes from the village.”

  “Our relation is quite old now. He may have left service.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Adam Pickersgill.”

  Mrs. Wellby shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know that name.” Her gaze took in Miranda’s slumping shoulders.

  “Please, ma’am,” said Miranda. “We’ve walked ever so far, and we were so sure it was Hartwood where our cousin served.”

  “You’ve not been walking our country lanes in those shoes, now have you, miss?”

  Miranda nodded. “I wanted to make a good impression when we arrived, you see, but the dust and the wind and...” Her voice trailed off.

  “Well, dust and wind we can banish. You’d best come in while we sort out any confusion.” She held the door open for them to pass, and directed Nate to leave their cases at the door.

  He hid a smile. They’d made it inside. They might still be sleeping rough, but they’d get a hearing and maybe tea. If he got the chance, he’d see to Miranda’s feet.

  Mrs. Wellby led them along the passage to a wide door. They stepped down into a grand kitchen with stone floors and high ceilings and two large black ranges where pots boiled and roasts turned. A sugar cone as tall as a man’s shin stood on the large pine table in the center of the room where three girls, including pimply Avis, worked. Nate’s stomach rumbled. He’d choose a warm kitchen, smelling of soup and sugar, over any grand hall in the kingdom.

  Mrs. Wellby directed Miranda to a table in an alcove under some high windows. “You, young man, help her with her cloak, and let’s get you some tea before you tell me about this relation of yours.”

  In a few minutes, under Mrs. Wellby’s careful eye, a light tea of biscuits and jam appeared before Nate and Miranda. Miranda sipping tea with her ladylike ways made a pretty sight. Nate broke a warm scone in two and reached for the jam spoon.

  “Now then,” Mrs. Wellby said, watching them, “can you tell me why you need to find this relation?”

  Miranda set down her teacup and turned a blushing face to their hostess. “We are orphans. My brother will explain.”

  Nate cleared his throat. “Until recently our grandfather looked after us, but now he’s died, leaving us his money, but naming two guardians over us, his cousin Adam and our uncle Bernard.” It was the story they’d worked out in hours of conversation before they ever took the stage. Nate suspected the details came straight from one of Miranda’s favorite novels.

  Miranda leaned forward as if confiding a deep secret. “Uncle Bernard is a terrible wicked man. He wants to marry me himself to control our money.”

  Nate took over again. He didn’t want their fiction to get in the way of the real job. “So my sister’s only hope of escaping a marriage she detests is to find our cousin. Our solicitor told us that Cousin Adam had once been in service at Hartwood.”

  “That’s why we’ve made this desperate journey to you, ma’am,” Miranda added. “Without Cousin Adam we are at the mercy of our wicked uncle.”

  “Oh dear. Your case does sound desperate. It sounds like something quite out of a novel.”

  “Oh, ma’am, do you read novels?” Miranda asked.

  “I do,” Mrs. Wellby admitted.

  Nate stared at his tea. That could not be good. Mrs. Wellby might be kind, but he doubted she was a fool. He held his breath. He had yet to take a bite of the biscuit and jam on his plate.

  “I just finished The Marchioness,” Miranda confided.

  “Have you?” Mrs. Wellby asked. “Do eat, Mr. Pickersgill, is it?”

  Nate nodded. He managed to swallow a bite of biscuit and jam and reached for his tea. He wanted to kick Miranda under the table.

  “Have you plans to put up at some inn in the neighborhood until you find this relation of yours? The Three Horseshoes in Sunley perhaps?”

  Miranda shot a panicked gaze his way.

  “I confess, ma’am,” he said, “we’ve made no arrangements. My sister did not like the look of the coaching inn. It’s not what she’s used to.” He did not say that the inn was far too grand for them.

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Wellby. She took up her teacup in a slow, meditative way.

  Nate swallowed another bite of biscuit. It might be his last for a while unless he could sneak some into a pocket. He hadn’t been reduced to such measures in nearly seven years.

  Mrs. Wellby lowered her cup again and smiled at Miranda. “I suppose I must help you, as one novel-reader to another. Let’s put you up for the night, and in the morning we’ll check the record book for your cousin’s name.”

  As her Season progresses, the husband hunter may wish to take stock of her prospects. Especially, if she feels she is meeting the same gentlemen repeatedly without progressing in an acquaintance with any. She might consider whether she has overlooked a worthy candidate for her hand. Is it possible that she should consider the shy gentleman who appears to fade into the woodwork of a ballroom? Or the man who does not show to advantage on horseback during excursions to the park? Or the man who perpetually amuses his dinner partners on the other side of the tall epergne? To discover a diamond in the rough, the husband hunter is advised to see whether she can’t meet these gentlemen in a new setting.

  —The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

  Chapter 10

  The household was up and stirring well before first light. By the time Nate had dressed and found his way to the kitchen, the room was warm and bright and once again filled with cooking smells—bread and sugar and coffee, not the rich dark coffee with the creamy head he’d learned to make at the old soldier’s side, but a passable drink for a cold morning.

  He joined Miranda at the table in the alcove and accepted a cup from pimply Avis. Miranda looked bursting with news.

  “How are your feet?” he asked.

  She made a little frown. “Fine. Mrs. Wellby gave me sticking plasters and these little half boots. I dare say I’ll do much better today. Do you know she’s read all of Mrs. Raby’s books?”

  “Show me,” he said. Yesterday, he’d imagined sleeping with her in the hayloft of a barn with their cloaks for blankets and his arms wrapped around her for warmth.

  She swished her skirts aside and stuck out her feet.

  “I approve,” he said. Tonight, maybe, she would lean against him in the stage as they made their way back to London.

  “You approve! Hah!” she said. “Mrs. Wellby says these little boots once belonged to the lady of the house, and a very fine lady she is.”

  He tried the coffee, found it too weak for his taste, and put the cup down. He hoped Miranda had not given them away to the housekeeper. “Listen, Miranda, you must be careful what you say to her.”

  “I know. I’m not a peahen. Mrs. W offered us a ride back to the village in the estat
e gig.”

  There was nothing suspicious in the offer that Nate could see. Probably, Mrs. Wellby just wanted them to be gone. After the first wave of kitchen activity subsided, she came for them. “Now, you two, let us examine the record book for your relation. Follow me.”

  She led them under the servants’ stair through a door into a short dark passageway. At the other end, they stepped into a great hall with a floor of wide polished oak planks and bright with morning light from windows high above them. With the closing of the servant door, they left the good kitchen smells behind. Instead the place smelled of wax and lemons and cold ashes. Mrs. Wellby strode the length of the hall while Nate and Miranda hurried to keep up. At the other end they came out into a smaller hall dominated by a dark staircase, skirted its base, and entered an oak-paneled library with a large desk and tall glass-fronted bookcases. Miranda inched closer to him, so that one side of him was warm, the other cold.

  Mrs. Wellby took a key from the ring at her waist, opened one of the cabinets, and turned to Nate. “Now which years should we examine to find your relation?”

  Nate swallowed. Miranda touched his sleeve. If anything would make Mrs. Wellby doubt their story, it would be this. “Let’s begin with ’06, ma’am.”

  Her brows lifted, but she turned back to the cabinet and pulled a large red volume from the shelf. She laid it open on the desk and flipped through the pages until she reached one with Lady Day, March 25 written across the top. Leaning over the desk, Nate could see the faint lines that divided the page into four columns. Down the center column a fine sloping hand had written the names of persons serving the household and their positions. To the right a column listed the sum each person had received on that date, the first quarter day of the year.

  Mrs. Wellby drew her finger down the page and stopped. “Why, here he is, your relation!” Her voice was full of surprise.

  Nate resisted punching a fist in the air. At least one part of their story appeared to be true.

  “He was a footman.” She kept her finger moving down the page and down the facing page as well. “No one else listed here remains in service today, but Nanny Ragley lives nearby. She might be able to tell you something of that time and your relation.”

  “May I look, ma’am?” Nate asked.

  Miranda shot him a glance for his presumption, but Mrs. Wellby stepped aside. Nate read through the other names on the Lady Day page, the Johns and Thomases and Alberts and the Annas, Sallys, and Pegs who had served the family and their two or three pounds of quarterly wages.

  He turned to the page for the next quarter day and carefully read the names again. The list of servants remained the same except shorter. There was no Adam Pickersgill. Nate checked again and found another missing footman, Geoffrey Gibbs. He closed the book. It was curious that two footmen had disappeared from the book between March and June of 1806.

  “Well, that’s good news, brother,” Miranda said. “We know our relation was here.”

  Nate looked up and found Mrs. Wellby watching him closely. “Twenty years is a long time,” she said. “You have no information about any house where Adam might have been employed since then?”

  Nate shook his head. “If we may, ma’am, we’d like to speak to Nanny Ragley.”

  “Of course. I visit her myself once a week with a basket of baked goods from the house. Would you be willing to go in my stead today? Her cottage is not far, and Matthew can take you in the gig.”

  “Oh yes, thank you, ma’am,” Miranda said.

  * * * *

  Nanny Ragley’s one-up/one-down cottage stood along a rutted single-track road next to a copse of beech trees. A low weathered white fence surrounded a small garden. The door lintel sagged under the weight of bare rose canes. A few speckled hens foraged around an oak butt for rainwater, and in the far corner of the yard Nate could see the little shed that housed the necessary screened by a large leafless bush.

  Nanny, white-haired and stooped, greeted them at her gate and accepted the basket from Miranda. A green-and-blue-plaid shawl covered her shoulders and crossed over her chest, held in place by a small gold pin.

  “She’s like the grandmother in the fairy tale,” Miranda whispered to him as they followed Nanny into the dark interior of the cottage. A fire burned in the hearth and kept the chill off inside where the sun didn’t reach. Nanny set the basket on the table and paused, leaning on her hands, to catch her breath. She waved Nate to a stool by the fire, and Miranda to an old armchair, but Miranda jumped up. “Let me help you, ma’am. I always do, did, for my...grandfather.” She cast Nate a speaking glance. He rose and took the old woman’s arm to help her to a rustic rush-bottom chair, while Miranda unpacked the basket’s contents, a jar of dark preserves, a cheese, and a cloth-wrapped bundle of biscuits.

  For a few minutes Miranda moved about the cottage putting the kettle on and setting out three chipped cups under Nanny’s direction, remarking how neat and orderly the cottage was.

  “Now then, children, you’ve come to tell me a story, I hear,” Nanny said.

  Miranda laughed. Nate had never seen her look prettier. He had been right to bring her with him.

  “We have,” she said and began.

  He let her talk, and the tale of their cruel uncle Bernard and missing cousin Adam tumbled out just as they’d invented it. Nate remembered all the times he’d heard Miranda tell gentlemen in the shop her own story of her mother’s escape from the drownings in France in spite of the silver buckles on her shoes.

  Nanny sipped her tea and ate the smallest bits of biscuit, no more than would keep a mouse alive, as Miranda talked.

  “So Adam is your cousin, you say?” Nanny asked.

  “Our grandfather’s cousin,” Miranda corrected. “Did you know him in your time at Hartwood?”

  Nanny looked at Nate. “And your grandfather made Adam one of your guardians, you say?”

  Nate nodded and set his teacup on the hearth. He recognized skepticism when he heard it.

  “I did know him. He was a handsome man with thick dark hair even at his age, and he must have been the oldest man serving at Hartwood. They never raised him higher than footman.” Her eyes had the distant look of a person seeing other times and places. “He could put a shine on anything—silver, boots, mirrors.”

  Nate watched the old woman, waiting for her gaze to return to the present. “Do you know why he left Hartwood, ma’am?”

  Nanny nodded and blinked her eyes hard. “I do. He was devoted to Lady Penelope, the old lord’s daughter. People said he was her dog. He followed her about and fetched and carried for her. He knew her bell from all the bells in that house.”

  Nanny shook her head. “The trouble started when she married that Frenchman who disappeared.”

  Miranda gasped. “A Frenchman!”

  “No word of him for months. The old lord wanted Lady Penelope to stay at home until the family could discover what had become of him, but she was mad to go to London herself to find the truth. She thought the government knew.” Nanny paused to sip her tea.

  Miranda leaned forward in her chair, and Nate gave the old woman credit for being a good storyteller herself.

  “She left in the night with Adam and another footman, a cheeky young man. I don’t remember his name. She never came back, nor did any of ’em. Never heard a word, never found her, nor the child neither.”

  “A child?” Miranda’s voice squeaked.

  “A sweet, sweet girl, all golden curls, still in leading strings. That’s when the sorrow fell on Hartwood.”

  “A child,” Miranda repeated. She looked startled by the detail.

  “Was that in ’06, ma’am?” Nate asked.

  Nanny nodded.

  “And no one ever found the coach or the coachman?”

  “Strange, isn’t it. You can imagine what wild thoughts people had. Some suspected Adam was to blame,
but the old lord wouldn’t hear a word of that. Said Adam was simple, not violent. He’d known Adam as a boy.” Nanny shook her head.

  Nate braced himself. In telling the story, Nanny Ragley had uncovered all the details that made Nate and Miranda’s guardian story less believable. The less he said now the better.

  “Odd to name so old a man to be a guardian, ain’t it? You don’t know where he is, you say?”

  Miranda prudently studied her shoes.

  Nate met the old woman’s sharp gaze. “No, ma’am.” It was harder to lie to her than he’d thought it would be. He must be out of practice. Later, if the captain solved the case, maybe they could tell her the truth about Adam.

  Nanny’s look turned thoughtful. “Don’t suppose he’s in service again. What will you do next then?”

  “Ma’am, you’ve given us some clues to guide our search. Before, we didn’t know where to start or even what Cousin Adam looked like.” It was true. Nanny Ragley had given them the beginning of the story. Nate knew the end. He knew where the coach had disappeared and where Adam Pickersgill had ended up. It was the middle of the story they must find. Nate hoped they’d discover the truth riding a Radcliffe Rocket on its night run.

  While Miranda tidied up their cups and put the provisions away in Nanny’s cupboard, Nate walked the lane to find the gig. When he returned, Nanny and Miranda stood at the gate, arm in arm, the old woman patting Miranda’s hand. Nate shook his head. He was certainly seeing another side of his haughty love. She, who wanted to be a lady, was cowed and quiet in grand spaces and full of talk and laughter in cottages and kitchens and housekeepers’ rooms.

  He helped her up into the gig and turned to thank Nanny Ragley. The old woman hooked his arm in a strong grip and leaned toward him. “Mind, young man, I don’t know what game you two are playing at, but someone’s going to see through yer stories, mark my word.”

  As the husband hunter consults her post, she naturally thrills to invitations for balls, routs, and the opera—those engagements that promise the exhilaration of seeing and being seen in a glittering crowd among whom are a number of eligible gentlemen. She holds a ball invitation in her hand, and her imagination sees eligible partners lining up to claim her for a quadrille. A word of caution is now in order. In the pile of invitations, the husband hunter must not disdain the invitation to a small dinner party. Supposing the guests are only the hostess’s maiden aunt Lady Plume, the easily scandalized Bishop Pew, a gossip or two, and three married couples without a single man among them, the wise husband hunter will make room in her calendar for such a dinner. The small dinner party is simply the best occasion for the husband hunter to dazzle her company, and the report, which her fellow guests will willingly spread of her beauty and spirit, is sure to reach the ears of those gentlemen who will seek to fill her dance card at the next ball.