by Colleen Ladd
“Yes, my lady.” Ellie’s face screwed up in a mulish expression that was all too familiar.
“Later, Ellie.”
“Yes, my lady.” Ellie began shuttling gowns into the dressing room a few at a time, treating them with exaggerated care. The limited airing they’d received so far had already greatly reduced the smell of camphor, but Portia reflected with some amusement that she could rely on her dressing room, at least, remaining free of vermin for a while.
Most of the dresses still lay out when Mrs. McFerran tapped on the door. Her dull black eyes moved quickly over the bed and her lips compressed.
“Yes, Mrs. McFerran?”
“Dinner’s ready.”
“Thank you, I had quite lost track of the time. We’ll need to get the various bell pulls and dinner bells working again and save you the walk up the stairs.” Portia swept the housekeeper out the door ahead of her. She had the impression that the woman would as lief snatch up the dowager’s gowns and hide them away somewhere. Let her disapprove. Portia was mistress of the house now and Mrs. McFerran would just have to get used to it.
When they reached the landing, Portia made a deliberate point of looking at the portrait. Mrs. McFerran mustn’t think she’d scared Portia with her gruesome stories and pretend ghosts. And if Portia felt a vague sense of defiance as she met Giles Ashburne’s flat painted gaze, it had nothing to do with the dresses, and certainly nothing to do with the letters she’d read or how unsettled they’d left her.
It was as Portia set foot on the grand staircase running down to the great hall that she glanced up and saw a figure on the second floor landing. “What the devil?”
From two steps farther down, Mrs. McFerran eyed Portia incuriously. “My lady?”
“Who is that?”
The housekeeper turned to look where Portia pointed. “Who is who, my lady? I see no one.”
As she spoke, the man turned, a figure in black trousers and waistcoat, his linen snowy white, and vanished up the hall. Portia ran across the landing to the next set of stairs and, snatching up her skirts, took them at a most unladylike pace. She reached the upper landing only to find both it and the hallway empty. There was no way he could have reached the nearest door before she got to the top of the stairs, not without making a hellish noise. The floor was bare wood. She was certain she’d have been able to hear him run across it, even over the pounding of her heart.
There was nowhere he could hide and nowhere he could have gone.
CHAPTER NINE
Portia swept down the stairs past Mrs. McFerran without a word. She did not particularly look at the housekeeper, but was aware of the woman’s expression nonetheless. Smug. Most housekeepers would be mortified to discover the new lady of the house prone to strange starts, but Portia could distinctly feel Mrs. McFerran’s triumph. If she thought Portia could be frightened into decamping and leaving her in possession of the Hall, she was sadly mistaken.
“Is there something the matter, Lady Ashburne?”
“Nothing at all,” Portia said repressively. “There’s a hole in the roof of the east attic. Have Mr. McFerran see to it.”
With that, she went in to eat her dinner in solitary splendor. Or rather, in the moth-eaten majesty of the dining room.
The vegetables were overcooked and the meat underdone, but nothing was burnt and dinner was, while not good, at least edible. Evidence of the salutary effects of threatening to sell off the silver. It was something to remember. Mrs. McFerran was so stubborn as to be guaranteed immune to any threat to turn her off, even could Portia carry it out, but she evinced toward the Hall all the overprotective instincts of a doting nanny.
Sitting at one end of the long dining table, Portia looked around the decaying room and resolved to eat her meals in the breakfast room in the future. It was already more habitable and would certainly be less guaranteed to make Portia feel as if she were quite alone in the world. It was one of God’s petty ironies that she’d spent most of her childhood wishing to escape her brother’s near-constant presence and all her adulthood to date wishing for a little companionship.
Portia swallowed the lump in her throat and scolded herself for dwelling on her misfortunes, especially as she was doing so in a transparent attempt to not think about what had just happened.
She was as certain of what she’d seen as she was that Mrs. McFerran had looked directly at him and seen nothing. Certain he could have reached no hiding place before she caught him up. Certain he’d moved without making a sound. Certain he was no other than Viscount Giles Ashburne.
Portia set aside her fork, unable to swallow another bite. She took the three-branch candelabra by which she’d eaten and started resolutely up the staircase. She did not look at the portrait at the head of the stairs, though she was aware no matter how she tried not to be of the light of her candles ebbing slowly over and away from his dark form. As she started up the upper staircase, her skin crept with the feeling of his eyes on her back.
When she reached the upper landing, she stood for some minutes without moving, surveying her surroundings in the wavering light. The threadbare carpet extended a few feet in each direction, no doubt to keep children’s and servants’ footsteps from echoing all the way down into the great hall. It was so worn and moth-eaten, however, that even in her light slippers, Portia’s every step resounded.
Portia bent to inspect the floor more closely, bringing the light down to shine directly on the tracked-up dust where the carpet ended. The nearest door was at least ten steps farther along the hall; perhaps six for someone as tall as the man she’d seen. She and Mrs. McFerran had left their mark while inspecting the house the first day, their tracks running all the way up and down the hall. No footsteps had been added to theirs. The area just to the right of the landing was swept nearly clean of dust by the trips she and Ellie had taken in and out of the attics, but she didn’t see how he could have vanished quietly up those stairs. Not the way the door squeaked and the stairs creaked. Besides, he’d disappeared to the left—she’d stake her best dress on it. Though that wasn’t saying much.
Portia searched for anything that could explain the man’s appearance or disappearance until the candles were burnt nearly to the socket, her fingers were stiff with cold, and she was so aware of Giles Ashburne staring at her from his portrait that she nearly jumped out of her skin at every slightest noise.
She finally gave up and headed down to bed. Either there really was a ghost or she had mice in her attic in more ways than the literal. Neither thought was particularly comfortable.
*****
“Oh, my lady, you’re that cold, you are.” Ellie herded Portia over to the fire that flickered weakly in the grate and added another log. In a moment, flames leapt up in profligate delight. At least keeping warm wasn’t a problem. Portia couldn’t afford coal to heat the Hall, but there were a prodigious number of trees in the home wood. It would be years before they ran out of firewood, if ever.
“You shouldn’t have waited,” Portia scolded. Ellie pushed her into a chair and wrapped the coverlet around her. “I can get myself to bed.”
“Of course you can, my lady,” Ellie said without leaving off her fussing. “Now will you be wanting some tea or a hot posset?”
“No, Ellie, thank you. I believe I shall just read a bit.”
“Yes, my lady.” Ellie retrieved Portia’s book for her and tucked the blanket more securely about her feet.
Portia sat before the fire and attempted to read while Ellie bustled about, for all the world as if there were a hundred little chores that needed doing in the room. Her inability to make any progress could not, however, be laid at her maid’s door, but on something that had been niggling at Portia ever since her meeting with Lady Clarissa Seabrooke.
Lady Clarissa, after her gaffe about Portia’s dress, had gone on to shove her foot even more firmly in her mouth by intimating that she had a generous allowance and would be happy to pay for Portia’s assistance. She had not, much to Portia�
��s surprise, turned an even deeper shade of red and apologized for the implication that Lady Ashburne would sully her hands in Service, but instead looked her straight in the eye and said, “Ladies hire themselves out as companions and governesses every day when they’ve nowhere else to turn. Why shouldn’t you receive some recompense for making an impossible hoyden into a lady?” She’d swung astride the great gray horse with an injunction to think about it and galloped off as impetuously as she’d ridden down on Portia in the first place.
The idea had haunted Portia ever since.
Roger had left her in a pitiful state and James was hardly likely to improve the situation. He was not the rakehell his brother had been, but even a nip-farthing like James would be hard-pressed to make anything of the mare’s nest Roger left. A large infusion of money was all that would save the Ashburnes now. How unfortunate James was already wed, or he might have married money and bailed the Ashburnes out of River Tick. As it was, the Ashburne finances, and with them her widow’s jointure, were extraordinarily unlikely to improve. The modest portion settled on Portia by her grandfather was so set about with protections that even she could request only the most meager of funds at any given time—a fact which had saved the money from Roger’s hands, but made it of extremely limited use in her current situation. Once the Hall was more habitable, the money might be enough to live on, but not when there was so much that needed repair. And then there was the question of servants. A small house might be run by a maid of all work, but a grand estate like the Hall required more servants if it was not to go entirely to rack and ruin. Servants Portia simply could not afford.
She had a lot more latitude as a widow than she’d had as an unmarried chit, ripe for seduction and the ruination of her reputation, but there were still too few avenues of support open for a penniless lady. There were, as Lady Clarissa had point out, positions as companions and governesses which a lady in her reduced circumstances might have no recourse but to take, but neither offered much hope for Portia. She did not delude herself that she’d paid enough attention to her own governess as to be able to take on the education of some sprig of nobility, nor was she sufficiently self-effacing to quietly accede to the querulous demands of those ton matrons who believed themselves in need of companions. Besides, she suspected she’d be considered too fair of face to have much chance of being offered either position, not being a complete dowd. Dowagers did not like to be shown up by their companions, and ladies did not hire governesses who showed the slightest chance of being able to turn the heads of their sons, or worse, their husbands. Never mind that Portia’d been unable to keep the attention of her own husband; it was the impression that counted. All of which was moot, for though he’d go not one step out of his way to support her, James Ashburne would fly into the boughs with a vengeance if his sister-in-law set her feet on such a path.
That left only remarriage, and Portia’s experience of that state was such that she’d never willingly put herself at the mercy of another man.
Which really left her only one option. She was going to have to turn Clarissa Seabrooke into a lady.
*****
Portia couldn’t sleep.
Ellie had gone to bed some time ago, after tucking her mistress into her nightrail and then between the sheets. The Hall was dark and, for once, quiet—even the skittering of mice seemed to have stopped. She supposed she could credit their taking themselves elsewhere to the odor of camphor, which she could still smell even though the dressing room door was closed.
Her thoughts wandered in circles, returning over and over to a single subject. Even after all the events of the day, any one of which ought to be enough to keep her occupied, every time she closed her eyes she saw Giles Ashburne’s strong slanted handwriting and awkwardly passionate words.
Finally it was just too much, and Portia slipped out of bed. She couldn’t find her slippers and didn’t spend much time looking for them. She lit her candle with a spill from the fire, took her keys from the dressing table and made her way through the dressing room and into the master’s bedchamber.
It was, perhaps, the lack of a fire in the grate that made the darkness in Ashburne’s chamber seem so much deeper than in her own. Gone was the masculine warmth she’d felt by light of day. The gloom that closed in about her was stern and unbending, hard and chill with disapproval. She had invaded his room, read his letters, and felt so little shame that she was back to do it again. Portia kept her eyes on the tiny flame of her candle, certain that if she lifted them, she would see him sitting in the corner of his room. Or worse, not see him, though her prickling skin knew he was surely there, seething. The wind she’d barely heard in her own room rushed hissing outside, pushing freezing drafts across the floor, biting at her toes. She could scarcely hear her own breath, and when the wind suddenly slapped hard at the Hall, she jumped.
The candle flickered and nearly went out. Portia cupped her hand around the sputtering flame and waited for it to steady, calling herself seven kinds of fool. It was just the wind, and this was just a dark room, and there was no one watching her from the shadows.
She walked, stiff-legged, to the writing desk and pulled out the drawer that held his personal letters, her fingers unsteady, only to find it empty of everything but the smell of tobacco. Portia sank slowly into the chair and stared into the empty drawer. They were there only that afternoon, letters full of passion and pain, letters she could not for the life of her forget. Knowing it was non-sensical, and with a feeling much like desperation, Portia opened every drawer and even rifled through the neat stack of business correspondence, as if she could have somehow misplaced the letters. Finally, her mind whirling with confusion, she picked up her candle and went back through the dressing room, remembering that she hadn’t relocked the door only once she was standing by the hearth in her own room. Stiff with a strange reluctance, she went back through the dressing room, sneezing at the miasma of camphor, and locked the door to his room. Then, though it was not the least bit necessary, the door from the dressing room into her room.
Finally, she crouched before her dying fire, her nightrail tucked about her freezing feet, and stared into the glowing coals, trying hard to think. She certainly hadn’t moved the letters. Her superstitious Ellie wouldn’t have even entered his room on her own, let alone looked in the writing desk. Which left Mrs. McFerran. But why now? She’d had ten years to decide, for whatever reason, to make off with his letters.
The obvious answer sent cold fingers up Portia’s spine. Mrs. McFerran knew.
Portia huddled over the glow of the fire, its tiny flame producing a faint warmth worse than no heat at all, and shuddered herself nearly to pieces before common sense got hold of her once more. She forced herself up and into her flannel dressing gown, and climbed into her bed for warmth.
Reason was what was needed here. Mrs. McFerran couldn’t have known that Portia read the letters. Though Ellie might have seen her from the dressing room door, her presence there would have prevented the housekeeper from doing the same and Portia could not possibly have failed to notice the hall door opening while she was in the master’s bedroom. It was only her sense of guilt at having shamelessly read what was so very personal that made her think Mrs. McFerran somehow knew of it.
The housekeeper had merely taken advantage of Portia’s absence from the Hall to enter the master’s bedroom and remove those items she thought too personal for Portia’s perusal. For all her stern satisfaction at the story of Lord Ashburne’s crime and the divine punishment meted out to him, Mrs. McFerran’s love of Ashburne Hall extended to defending not only the Hall but everything in it from interlopers. What else, Portia wondered, was missing? And how would she ever know?
She blew out her candle and composed herself for sleep, though she was even less inclined toward that state than she’d been before her unrewarding incursion into Ashburne’s room. She forced herself to lie still through the slow count of ten minutes before she got up again. She should have accepted Ellie’s
offer of a hot posset.
The bellpull was broken, but even if it hadn’t been, Portia wouldn’t have roused her maid at this hour for anything short of an emergency. She relit the candle, spent another couple of minutes fruitlessly searching for her slippers, then left her room, not without trepidation. Her feet wanted to hesitate at the door. Two nights ago, there had been something moving about in the dead of night. Portia forced herself to unlock her door and step out as if there were no cause for alarm. The hall was empty, her candle the only light.
She headed downstairs, not stopping to look at the portrait of Giles Ashburne, indeed doing her best to forget it was there. She reached the kitchen without incident, neither seeing nor hearing anything untoward and managing, even, not to stub her bare toes on the uneven floor, though they were so cold, she might not know if she had. As she’d hoped, there was a banked fire in the stove. Mrs. McFerran was too savvy a housekeeper to let her kitchen fire go out and suffer through the inconvenience of getting it restarted. Portia put a small log on the fire and set the kettle on the stove to warm.
She was in the midst of looking for tea when she realized there was a light under the door of the housekeeper’s sitting room. Portia had nearly reached the door when her good sense caught up with her. Demanding the return of Lord Ashburne’s private letters was simply out of the question.
She turned back to her tea, glad she’d conducted herself quietly enough not to rouse the housekeeper, when a man’s voice uttered a profanity she would never have expected from the soft-spoken Mr. McFerran. She lingered despite herself to hear Mrs. McFerran’s set-down, for that woman would scarcely allow such language in her hearing, even or perhaps especially if it came from her husband. Instead, she heard the housekeeper say, “That’s as may be, but we will have her out, mark my words.”
Portia couldn’t make out the response, only the deep rumble of the voice.
