by Ann Clement
She found it on the side facing the stables and other outbuildings.
As she reached for the doorknob, she was almost certain it would be locked. The old couple who worked here when she first came to Norfolk with her father probably had left already.
But then the door opened, and in the doorway stood the same woman Letitia remembered from nearly a month ago. Her broad face was kind, though the smile that widened it even more was cautious.
“Good afternoon, my lady,” she said. “Does my lady remember me? I am Mary Perkins. My husband, Sam Perkins, was once Sir George’s footman. We were allowed to stay here when my lady’s father became the owner of the house.”
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Perkins.” Letitia breathed with relief. “Of course I remember you. Will you show me the lower portion of the house? Sir Percival gave me a tour of the upstairs, but I’d like to see the rest of it.”
Mrs. Perkins opened the door wider and stepped aside to let Letitia in.
“I will be glad to, my lady. Sam and I live in the housekeeper’s rooms,” she said, leading her inside. “Sir George’s housekeeper moved with him to Bromsholme. She died about three years ago. The butler, Mr. Slater, is still there. Most upper servants were dismissed within a month, and the lower servants followed after the house was emptied. The steward lived in the dower house. But I beg my lady’s pardon, I must be boring you with the old tales.”
“Not at all. I was hoping to meet someone who could tell me more about Wycombe Oaks. Please continue, Mrs. Perkins.”
“There isn’t much more to tell,” Mrs. Perkins replied, apparently recollecting who Lady Hanbury was. She had doubtless noticed Letitia’s aversion to the house a month ago. “It is a hot day out there. May I offer my lady some cool milk?”
“Milk?” Letitia smiled. “That would be quite splendid, Mrs. Perkins.”
She followed Mrs. Perkins down the corridor to the kitchen. The pantry on the way seemed to be well supplied, and mouthwatering smells coming from the kitchen indicated its active use. Shining copper pots glistened on the wall, baskets with vegetables sat on the table, and a quarter of mutton lay on the butcher’s block. A middle-aged woman was mixing something in a pot on the stove. She quickly wiped her hands on the apron and curtsied.
Mrs. Perkins evidently felt the need to explain and did so while Letitia was drinking her milk.
“This is my sister, Judy. Mr. Petre employed her to cook for us and the men who work here. He and Sir Percival usually eat in the butler’s pantry.”
“Is my husband still here?” Letitia asked. It was well into the afternoon. She preferred to embark on her project all by herself.
“He rode out with Mr. Petre after early dinner,” Mrs. Perkins replied.
“Thank you.” Letitia handed Judy the empty glass and smiled at her. “I am sure Sir Percival is very pleased with how you keep the table.”
“Aye, that he is, my lady.” Judy curtsied again.
“Mrs. Perkins,” Letitia asked when they left the kitchen, “would you show me the cellars too?”
Mrs. Perkins hesitated, picking at the hem of her apron with shaking fingers. “My lady’s clothes will get dirty from the dust and cobwebs,” she replied. “Nothing worth seeing is left there.”
Of course, her father had certainly used up the content. Why would he leave the wine if he emptied the house?
“You didn’t store anything down there?” she asked, a little disappointed.
“We did, my lady, but all the family portraits and other paintings were taken upstairs yesterday on Sir Percival’s orders. He wants the paintings cleaned before showing them to your ladyship. He told us he would bring you here next week to show them to you.”
Family portraits? So some things she had not recognized in the drawings survived after all. And Percy wanted to show them to her. The thought accelerated her heartbeat.
“Mrs. Perkins,” she said, “I need your help, please. If you lived in this house before my father acquired it, you are exactly the person I seek. Are there any inventories of the house preceding its last sale? Has anyone—except my father—kept any record of what was removed? Please, I must know.”
Mrs. Perkins did not hesitate with her reply. “Your ladyship’s father removed almost everything,” she said quietly. “Furniture, paintings, linen and pantry were all taken away. Family portraits he gave orders to destroy, except a few small ones Sir George took with him to Bromsholme. But Sir George’s steward and my Sam hid them before they were to be burned. All those years, they were in one of the undercrofts of the old castle. Sam and I used a pile of rubble and some old broken furniture to cover the entrance. The new steward, when he found out that the wine cellar was empty, never went down there again. Everything survived for Sir Percival to take back.” Mrs. Perkins wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. “He was very happy when we told him.”
On impulse, Letitia squeezed her hands affectionately.
Mrs. Perkins nodded. “There are several old inventories of the castle. We hid them too.” Her voice was a little shaky. “The last one was made when Sir George married Lady Albinia.”
“But if Sir George sold the estate, why would you worry about keeping safe some of the things he left behind?”
Mrs. Perkins’s face turned red.
“It was a strange business, this sale, my lady,” she said at last, her gaze downcast. “Sir George wept when he told us, as if he didn’t want to leave. Your ladyship’s father, begging your pardon, sent his men to watch what was being removed from the house. All Sir George took were his and Master Percy’s clothes and a few small things, but, begging your ladyship’s pardon again, it seemed that his lordship, my lady’s father, did not want Sir George to take anything away, especially not Lady Hanbury’s possessions. There was a large portrait of her in the drawing room he had removed the first day, before we were told to burn other family paintings. So we hid them because it did not seem right to do such a thing to Sir George and the young master.”
“No, it didn’t, did it?” Letitia said half to herself. “May I see the inventories, Mrs. Perkins?”
The housekeeper took her to the butler’s pantry. The inventories—several large and heavy volumes with the Hanbury arms on the covers—were kept in one of the cabinets there.
“The old ones,” Mrs. Perkins said, “have such strange writing in them that no one can read them anymore. This one”—she picked a smaller volume in soft, green vellum, a silk ribbon holding the overlapping covers closed—“was made for Lady Albinia, God bless her soul.”
She opened it for Letitia. A list beginning with The Hall ran down the page in two neat columns.
“My Sam can read”—she proudly pointed to small crosses made in pencil at the end of almost every line—“so each night he sat down and marked what had been taken out of the house.”
Letitia sat at the long table and untied the ribbon holding her list together. Pulling two pencils from her pocket, she got to work. There was little she had missed working from the watercolors, if one discounted lesser bedrooms and household goods.
Why had her father emptied the house? And would he ever return anything to Percy?
She was afraid she knew him too well.
“Mrs. Perkins,” she asked, suddenly struck by a thought, “what did Lady Albinia look like in the painting my father took away?”
“Oh, she was so very beautiful in it.” Mary Perkins’s gaze focused on the wall as if she could see past the barrier of time. “It was done soon after she came here as Sir George’s bride. She was standing on the slope out on the western side of the castle, by that old oak tree. She was wearing a pale-blue dress with a white sash, and her hair was up, adorned with flowers. Next to her was Duke, her favorite dog, and a large one he was. Lady Albinia looked like an angel.”
Letitia knew the painting even before Mrs. Perkins finished her description.
It hung in her father’s London studio.
She rarely visited there, but the beautiful and mysterious woman in the picture, along with a huge wolfhound sitting by her side, always drew her attention. When she’d once asked her mother who the sitter was, she was told it was her father’s cousin who died in her youth.
So why, if her father was related to Lady Hanbury, did he treat Sir George with such abominable contempt?
Chapter Eighteen
Wycombe Oaks, with its strange recent history, rich past and prospect of renewal, became firmly entrenched in Letitia’s mind. Her head was so full of ideas that the work table in the orangery disappeared under an array of sketches, plans and even finished designs for some of the rooms.
She really shouldn’t be putting any effort into Wycombe Oaks’ restoration. Percy would hire an architect, approve his plans and then spend time and money waiting for the construction to be completed. But who said she couldn’t make all those sketches for her own amusement?
She laid them out on the bench in the order reminiscent of her tour of the house, room after room. Thus, finding the sketches for the chamber leading to the great hall was the work of a few seconds. That once magnificent entrance had been reduced to a hollow space, with only some of the woodwork surviving along the side walls. An idea had occurred to her just before going to bed last night, but it would require using the library, and she intended to do that now. Percy, she hoped, had left the house already. They’d had breakfast together more than an hour ago. There was nothing for him to do within. So, armed with her sketches and the sketchbook, Letitia left the orangery.
To her astonishment, she’d miscalculated Percy’s whereabouts. He’d found something to do in the library too. Bent over an array of sheets of paper he had spread on the table, the sofas and his desk, he seemed lost in his thoughts. And as on that day at Wycombe Oaks, he was dressed only in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, all of which made his athletic figure even more attractive. A reminder she certainly did not require.
When he turned and gazed at her over his shoulder, her discomfort grew to the point of grumpiness. Why couldn’t he have been called out for an emergency with some building, or perhaps Mary Vernon could have had another cow ready to calve this afternoon?
Moreover, the scowl that appeared on his face suggested he was thinking similar thoughts, probably wishing she was now at Pythe Park, gossiping with Ethel instead of interrupting him.
“What is all this?” she asked, pointing to the sheets of paper strewn over the entire room. Perhaps he would forget to ask her why she’d come in here.
“Proposals for Wycombe Oaks I solicited from several architects.” He frowned.
Letitia’s heart skipped a beat. She was correct. He had done exactly what she thought he would do.
“Have any of them caught your fancy?” she asked, trying to sound indifferent while curiosity and anxiety burned her inside.
Percy’s frown deepened. He clasped his hands behind his back.
“I’m pleased with two of them. But one is too ridiculous to contemplate. I wish to rebuild what exists, not to build something new.”
Letitia put her hands behind her back as well. Not only did it give her the aura of unconcern, but there was a slim possibility Percy had not noticed the drawings and the sketchbook she had been clutching to her chest until now.
“But they didn’t see Wycombe Oaks, did they?” she said. “You might reserve your judgment until after they do.”
“They did, though probably in an imperfect way,” Percy muttered, bending over some detail on one of the sheets. “The house was engraved by Watts for his Seats.”
Letitia knew the book he spoke of. Her father had a copy in his library, though Fratton Hall was not included in it because it had been in the midst of an ambitious expansion at that time.
“Do you have it here?” she asked.
Percy nodded and turned toward the shelves, vacating his place in front of the table.
She used the opportunity to come closer and peruse the plans and drawings he had lined up neatly in two rows.
Whoever had created them imagined something entirely different from the Wycombe Oaks she knew. The Elizabethan mansion and eighteenth-century wing were gone, replaced by new castle walls covered with turrets like an old tree with mushrooms. A moat encircling the whole in a tight hug completed the image.
“What do you think?”
Percy’s warm baritone right behind her startled Letitia from her musings. Worse, it occasioned that awkward pull deep inside her. She shifted from one foot to the other, as if that could help her ignore the annoying feeling.
“This is not Wycombe Oaks,” she said, pointing with her chin to the new walls and the moat. Perhaps the engraving in Watts was of poor quality and failed to communicate to the viewer that the buildings stood on a slope. “How does he propose to keep the moat in place, anyway?”
Percy put the book on top of the plans and leaned on the table with one hand. “I wondered about that too. However, I will not be asking him how. I do not want to demolish such a large portion of the house, and I don’t want a moat in its place.”
“Yes,” Letitia murmured, all too aware of his no-doubt-accidental closeness. “It wouldn’t be your old home anymore.”
“Indeed,” Percy agreed and reached for the book. His warm breath brushed her cheek.
Suddenly, moats, turrets and the old castle itself faded away while all her thoughts and senses floated to that one spot where his breath heated her skin. She stilled in anticipation.
But the only thing that happened in the absolute silence that fell on the library was Percy’s sharp intake of air followed by an exasperated release of pent-up breath. He was angry.
Letitia froze. Her whole being begged for more of the closeness they had shared in the great hall, but she carefully walked toward the sofa to examine the drawings Percy had spread on the seat.
As she turned, the sketchbook shifted in her hands and slipped to the floor. An attempt to grab it while it was sliding out of her grasp only loosened the grip she had on the drawings, and they followed the sketchbook.
She whirled around, but it was too late. All her ideas for the entrance to the great hall were spread in front of Percy on the carpet. Mortified, Letitia dropped to her knees. Perhaps she could collect them before he realized what they represented.
But Percy moved faster than she did. He was already down on one knee by the time she reached for the sheets at his feet. And as he reached for them too, Letitia suddenly found herself inches from Percy.
His eyes smoldered under half-closed lids, while his nostrils widened when he clamped his mouth closed. Without a doubt, he was very angry. Not only had she interrupted his solitary contemplation of Wycombe Oaks’ future, he would now also discover that she’d meddled in what was not her business.
But even with that look on his face, the heat of his body and the faint scent of him brought on a dizzying pleasure.
“What are these?” His question permeated the incoherent jumble of longing that filled her, head to toe. He was no longer focusing on her, but on the unfinished plan of the old entrance.
“Umm, just some ideas.” It was hard to sound casual when her throat had become rusty and thick, and words had to be forced past her teeth.
She reached for the drawing Percy was frowning at, but again he moved faster. They ended up tugging at it from the opposite sides.
“May I see it?” Percy asked after a moment.
No. Absolutely not.
Letitia swallowed, nodded and let go of her end of the sheet.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
He studied the image for a very long time, his brows raised in astonishment. Or perhaps it only seemed like a very long time. Before she picked up the other drawings, Percy’s gaze was on her face again.
Without a
word, he collected the papers into a neat pile, handed her the sketchbook, then extended his hand to help her up. As soon as they were both firmly on their feet, he walked away with the sheaf of her drawings in his hand and laid them out on top of the moat-and-turret proposal.
Letitia’s feet wouldn’t move, but her heart pounded madly. She knew what her father would have done in this case. But Percy… He was not like her father; this much she knew already. Yet, she might have upset him with this unsolicited intrusion into his affairs.
“These are just little playthings,” she said defensively. “You needn’t waste time on them.”
“They are…” His voice trailed off. After a moment, he grunted before adding, “They are quite wonderful. You care to tell me what this is about?”
“You…like them?” she asked dumbly, her heart beating with the pleasure his praise occasioned.
Percy only nodded.
“This chamber was the original entrance, wasn’t it?” Letitia said. “Even if it was not, it is very well suited for the task. Just consider the space. I don’t know if you remember what was there before, but the remaining woodwork is magnificent. It should be extended to cover all the walls. I’m sure there is something worth researching in Dugdale’s Monasticon to give it the Gothic appearance it must have had before.”
“Dugdale?” Percy glanced at her. “Is that why you came in here?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “You have a copy, I noticed before.”
“But what do you want with Dugdale? It’s all about old churches and abbeys.”
“Most of them the same age as your castle. One could use the interior of an old church or abbey to design the woodwork for the entrance to the great hall. And there are some elements in the great hall that would transfer well to connect both interiors even better.” She walked closer to the table and pointed to one of the drawings. “But it could be even better than that.”
Percy was still looking at her with that strange frown of his.
She rushed on. “If you want to, of course. I’m sure the architect you choose will propose something that will please you.”
