Miss Tratt stared, her gooseberry eyes wide with disapproval. “The poor creature is all about in the head, it’s true, but why does that mean he must be sent away from his family?”
Lady Theresa would have been impressed by the spinster’s compassion had she not believed that the woman was only taking the hitherto unknown Mr. Martindale’s side—that mysterious gentleman who had just rented Meadowlark Mansion on the far edge of the village of St. Mark-on-Locke—because Mrs. Greavely had come down against him. Miss Tratt had a long-standing grievance with Mrs. Greavely and always took whatever side was opposed to her.
The three ladies, among whom at thirty-one Lady Theresa was the youngest by a couple of decades at least, sat in a parlor of the “big” house, as the villagers called Lady Theresa’s home, a lovely old mansion set in the Somersetshire countryside. No one called it Galatea’s Garden House, the awkward if picturesque name her mother had many years before tried to make stick.
“What is wrong with the child?” Lady Theresa asked, frowning down at the piece of needlework she was doing, a tapestry that would eventually be framed and raffled at the harvest festival in September. It was supposed to be a lovely little conceit on the house name, a depiction of Galatea hiding in the willows, but it was not working out. She was a competent needlewoman, but this may have been a bit ambitious for her abilities. It looked lopsided.
Mrs. Greavely leaned forward over her own needlework, a surprisingly lush silk-embroidered seascape, expertly rendered, and said, “He is demented, of course. He makes odd noises, doesn’t talk at all otherwise, and he has his own odd . . . well, for want of a better word, ‘nurseman,’ a strong-armed fellow who looks like he used to be a seaman, to keep the idiot. Who knows of what the boy is capable! We could all be murdered in our beds!”
There was a bloodthirsty gleam in the woman’s eyes. Miss Tratt looked like she wanted to ask for more details, but her enmity with the other woman prevented her.
Theresa tossed aside her work. “I think we have done enough for one day, haven’t we, ladies?” Disgusted and unsettled by the ghoulish Mrs. Greavely, she wanted to be alone for a while.
Disconcerted but obedient to the foremost lady in the village, the two women trotted off in separate directions.
It was a gorgeous June day, but Theresa restlessly roamed the house, the long dark halls and the ancient chapel, the small turret rooms and the new wing, now three hundred years old and only “new” in appellation.
What was wrong with her? She had no patience anymore and could not bear the tittle-tattle of gossip, nor the small-minded backbiting inevitable in a closed village society. In past years, she had been able to balance the spiteful venom of the few against the genuine goodness of most of the citizens of St. Mark-on-Locke.
From an upstairs window she spied her papa coming back from the horse stables and descended the stairs, accosting him in the hallway and twining her long arms around his rotund waist, leaning her head on his shoulder. He patted her arm, made uneasy, she could tell, by her outpouring of affection.
“What is it, poppet? The old biddies got you down again? I saw them leave, or I wouldn’t have come in yet.”
“It’s not them. I’m bored and restless.”
“You’re always like that when we come back from the London season, all that gaiety, balls and so forth. Takes a while to settle into the village routine, my dear.”
“It’s not just that, Papa.” A sudden daring scheme entered her head. “Would it be horribly impolite if I were to call on the new resident of Meadowlark Mansion before you do?”
“Yes, though I needn’t have answered, for you know the answer as well as I; a lady must never call first on a stranger, before her father or husband or brother, et cetera. So I must assume that was a rhetorical question and you mean to be guided by your own wishes anyway, as you usually do.”
She straightened as they walked into the great hall. Lighter of heart, she headed to the stairs leading to the family chambers in the west turret, throwing one mischievous glance over her shoulder. “How well you know me, Father. I do like to stir things up, don’t I? It is why no one wants to marry me despite my many charms.”
“Now you are talking nonsense.”
• • •
A half hour later Lady Theresa Barclay, daughter of the Earl of Leighton and the preeminent lady of St. Mark, as the village was tidily shortened to, mounted her gig with the aid of a strong groom and, placing her capacious basket on the seat beside her, clicked at the gray mare. Down the long, twisting avenue from the mansion and through the high wrought-iron gates, and then out onto the rutted country lane, she guided her rig expertly. It was past St. Barnabas Day but not quite Midsummer Day, and summer, though days away in truth, was verdant upon the countryside.
The day was sunny, perfect for a drive between the high green hedgerows. Swallows swooped and dipped in the shade. Beyond the hedgerows the heavy perfume of clover, driving the bees to distraction, hung over the grassy fields. A willow warbler trilled a warning to his brood as Theresa drove the gig past, and robins chattered uneasily.
At first she took it all in but after a while became lost in thought. In the normal course of the drive she would stop many times to gather self-heal and great burnet, or to see if the wild roses had begun to bloom yet. Coming home from London after the season was always thus, getting back in touch with nature and her home county of Somersetshire after the hustle and bustle and tumult of London. Usually she felt a little at odds for a while, for she loved London, with all of its distractions and entertainment. But she had, for only the second time, not enjoyed London this spring, and she was still puzzling out why. The previous time was because she had been jilted; the pain and humiliation had made that year a black memory to her.
But this year had just seemed flat and boring, though she met the same people and did the same things. Perhaps that was the problem. Her whole life had become predictable.
It was time to disturb the surface and see what happened.
She approached Meadowlark Mansion with some trepidation. How did one go about breaching polite behavior without alienating people?
As it happened, she really didn’t need to worry about that.
• • •
The Honourable Mr. James Martindale was mired in muck; any time he tried to move, he got sucked in deeper. How had this happened? He was raised on the land and ought to be familiar with its pitfalls, but he had never tried farming before. The third son of an impoverished viscount, he had made his fortune in the city in the trade so despised by his peers. Now, with a comfortable fortune, he had rented Meadowlark Manor with a view to buying it if it suited him and his family.
He was trying to think of a way to get out of the muck without losing his boots when he heard the high keening wail that meant trouble, and then Angelica’s screams started.
Wasting no more time, he abandoned his boots, waded out of the mud as quickly as possible—not that quick, since he was five feet from the edge of the boggy quagmire—and ran. He stumbled, his stockings sliding down from the weight of the odorous muck, and he half hopped, half ran, shedding them as he went and praying that nothing too terrible was going on.
That was the problem. The screams could mean nothing or something dire; there was never a way to tell ahead of time. But one thing was for sure, Bobby Turner was going to be sacked. This was the third time in as many weeks the screams had erupted.
He circled the stable and started up the long path to the mansion but halted abruptly, his mucky feet soggily coated with grit from the track.
Jacob, squealing like a banshee, was under the arm of a determined-looking young woman who was marching, with her wriggling burden, across the grass toward the house. Angelica, leaping and flailing her arms, screamed at the lady while she, in turn, shouted back in his daughter’s face with equal vehemence.
“What in God’s name is going on here?” he yelled, striding forward, forgetting what a sorry sight he made as he approache
d the melee. “Angelica, shut up. Jacob, it is all right, young fellow, and whomever you are,” he said to the woman, “let go of my son!”
“Oh,” she said, letting Jacob slide down to his feet. “Do you not care then that he was about to step into the stew pond fully dressed, hatted, coated, and wearing boots?”
About the Author
Donna Lea Simpson is a nationally bestselling romance and mystery novelist with over twenty titles published in the last eleven years. An early love for the novels of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie was a portent of things to come; Donna believes that a dash of mystery adds piquancy to a romantic tale, and a hint of romance adds humanity to a mystery story. Besides writing romance and mystery novels and reading the same, Donna has a long list of passions: cats and tea, cooking and vintage cookware, cross-stitching and watercolor painting among them. Karaoke offers her the chance to warble Dionne Warwick tunes, and nature is a constant source of comfort and inspiration. A long walk is her favorite exercise, and a fruity merlot is her drink of choice when the tea is all gone. Donna lives in Canada.
The best writing advice, Donna believes, comes from the letters of Jane Austen. That author wrote, in an October 26, 1813, letter to her sister, Cassandra, “I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.” So true! But Donna is usually in a good humor for writing!
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