Georgy ate the cold chicken, fresh-baked bread and Madeira cake that Mrs. Sims had packed, but drank only sparingly from the bottle of ale. She had developed quite a taste for ale since joining Harland’s household, enjoying a mug or two at the end of the day at the kitchen table with the footmen. Today, however, she couldn’t afford a full bladder.
So far in her masquerade, she’d had no difficulty in finding privacy when she needed it. The solitary nature of her occupation and her private bedchamber at the London house gave her all the isolation she needed. Today was the first time she’d had to worry about something so basic as how she would deal with needing to urinate. And she worried about it endlessly, terrified of discovery. She was sure she could make it to Dunsmore Manor without needing to go—but what then? When would she be alone again? Would she be alone at all?
In an attempt to distract herself from the state of her bladder, she watched the passing scenery with scrupulous attention. London was a sprawling beast and it was some time after they began the journey that the bustle of the city finally started to lessen and thin, until it finally straggled away to nothing and they were at last driving deep into the countryside.
She looked out of the carriage window at the ploughed-up winter fields and the jagged shapes of the leafless trees against the cloudy sky. Staring at that cold, peaceful view, she felt her hard city edges begin to relax.
In the middle of the afternoon, a little after changing horses for the last time, she fell into a doze. When she woke, she rubbed her stiff neck and yawned, leaning forward to gaze out of the window.
They were driving up a long, sweeping drive towards a house that couldn’t have been more than a few decades old, a great Palladian villa surrounded by an enormous park on which a number of sheep and cattle picturesquely grazed. Dunsmore Manor. Her father’s childhood home.
It was huge.
She stared at the vast, classical façade of the house with its countless windows. So many rooms! She felt an odd rumble and glanced downwards to see they were going over a wooden bridge that breached a grassy ditch. This was the “ha-ha” her father had told her about! An ingenious ditch that kept the sheep and cattle away from the house without spoiling the pastoral picture they presented. She felt a little thrill of excitement, recognising this thing her father had described to her so long ago.
Lord, in a few moments her coach would be drawing up at the front door! She hastily tidied her appearance, straightening her cravat and running her fingers through her mussed hair before putting her hat on again. When the coach came to a stop, she saw that Harland had already arrived and was speaking with a man whom she assumed was the butler of the house. His dignified yet deferential air spoke of long years in service.
“Ah, Fellowes,” Harland said as Georgy leapt down. She walked over to him.
“Yes, my lord.”
“I have just been telling Mr. Jenkins here that I have a number of items I am taking on to Camberley that will require to be securely stored, but it appears that the house is quite crammed. So I’ve told him that they can go in the dressing room next to my bedchamber, provided you sleep in there. That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my lord,” Georgy agreed quickly, struggling to hide her relief. Thank god, she wouldn’t have to share a room with another servant.
Harland smiled at her, a warm, disarming smile. “There’s a good chap,” he said, then turned to Mr. Jenkins, who was eyeing the large crate strapped onto the roof of the luggage coach with dismay.
“I will arrange for a truckle bed to go in the dressing room for Mr. Fellowes,” Jenkins said, frowning. “I am afraid, though, that with the bed and the crates it is going to be very confined.”
Harland waved the objection away with one elegant hand. “That is of no consequence. The wardrobe can doubtless be moved from the dressing room to the bedchamber if need be—I shall not be inconvenienced by being more cramped than usual.”
Typical, Georgy thought wryly, for Harland to think of his own convenience, and not of the servants who would have to cart the boxes and crates up to his rooms and then move furniture, as well. No doubt they’d be roasted if the floors got so much as a scratch on them in the process. But she couldn’t bring herself to feel any real irritation with him. Thanks to his whims, she would have some much-needed privacy. She could have kissed him when he’d suggested it. Sharing such close quarters with him would be something of a challenge but she would have her own small room—it was much better than sharing a bedchamber with a strange male.
Nathan left Fellowes, as he still thought of her, with the butler and two footmen who had emerged to help with the luggage. He walked towards the front door as Dunsmore—in unrelieved black as usual—emerged with his mother. He strolled forward, smiling at them both.
“Good day to you, Dunsmore. And Lady Dunsmore.”
Lady Dunsmore was as haughty as they came. She smiled at Nathan in a wintry way and extended her hand. He’d come here once before, almost a decade ago, and he recalled her as a coldly polite and rather charmless hostess.
“We are pleased you could come, Harland,” Dunsmore said as Nathan bowed over his mother’s hand. “A few other guests have arrived and are presently taking tea in the green drawing room, if you’d care to join us.”
“That is rather a large item you have strapped to your carriage, Lord Harland,” Lady Dunsmore said before he could answer her son. “What on earth is it?”
“It is an orrery, ma’am. I bought it some months ago and have been meaning to take it to Camberley. I am going on there after I leave Dunsmore Park.”
“An orrery?” She raised one eyebrow in question.
“It is a mechanical device, ma’am. It represents the positions and motions of the planets.”
“Are you still interested in all that then, Harland?” Dunsmore asked. “I thought that was just a schoolboy fascination.”
“It is a lifelong fascination, I fear.”
“An expensive one, by the sounds of it,” Lady Dunsmore added in a faintly disapproving tone. Nathan smiled tightly.
She turned and led the way back into the house. Nathan sneaked a glance over his shoulder to see Fellowes emerging from the luggage coach carrying a precarious looking tower of three hatboxes. Reluctantly, he turned to follow his hostess into the house.
There was already a number of ladies and gentlemen in the green drawing room taking tea. Nathan was introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Hodge and their two daughters, a rather dull family who happened to be Dunsmore’s nearest neighbours. The two daughters were pretty enough girls, but one could see from the faded looks of Mrs. Hodge how they might appear in a decade or two.
Nathan escaped from the deadly dullness of the Hodges after a few minutes, crossing the room to speak to Osborne, who was deep in conversation with a lady who was not nearly as pretty as the Hodge girls but ten times more attractive with her knowing smile and sparkling eyes. Dunsmore, who had followed Nathan, introduced them.
“This is the beautiful Mrs. Marshall, Harland,” Dunsmore said with heavy gallantry.
“Mrs. Marsh,” the lady in question corrected irritably. Nathan had the distinct feeling it was not the first time Dunsmore had got her name wrong. He sent her a sympathetic smile and turned his attention to Osborne.
“Hello, old man. That waistcoat is quite extraordinary.”
Osborne grinned. “I suppose you think it too colourful.”
“On the contrary. It is exquisite.” Nathan leaned forward to admire it. The silk, of a superlative quality, was a vivid peacock blue that shimmered with jewel-like intensity. He felt a brief covetous pang then looked up again, smiling. “It is your coat that offends me.”
“You can’t mean it!” Osborne exclaimed.
“If ever a waistcoat called for black evening clothes, Osborne, it is that waistcoat,” Nathan pronounced.
Mrs. Marsh laughed. “I told you, Adam.”
“You are both blind,” Osborne said and flicked a non-existent speck fr
om the shoulder of his pale grey coat. “What do you think, Dunsmore?”
Dunsmore merely scowled, as though he suspected Osborne was laughing at him. But then Dunsmore dressed as though his mother chose his waistcoats.
“I think I like you, Lord Harland,” Mrs. Marsh told him. Her eyes were inviting. Perhaps he might have been tempted by the sly humour in her gaze, were it not for the woman who would be sleeping in his rooms tonight. The thought of Fellowes—her—moving about his rooms tugged insistently at his intention. He hadn’t had the chance to look at her much in her male garb with his new knowledge. He wanted to watch her, relishing the secret. He wanted to look for chinks in her armour.
“Would you like some tea, Lord Harland?”
He turned towards the voice; it came from Lady Dunsmore, who sat at the tea table a few feet away. A footman placed an urn of hot water before her. Nathan sighed inwardly. There would be no escape from this drawing room for a while yet.
“Thank you, ma’am. Yes, I will.” He smiled at his companions. “Please excuse me.”
“I am just making a fresh pot,” Lady Dunsmore informed him as he approached, waving her hand at the chair opposite. He sat obediently.
She opened the tea caddy which sat to her right, a very fine rosewood box, inlaid with a geometric design in ebony. It was somewhat larger than the usual sort of caddy, with four compartments instead of two. With unhurried grace, Lady Dunsmore opened one compartment and scooped out a spoonful of small black leaves, spilling them into the small crystal bowl that nestled in the middle of the caddy. From a second compartment she took two scoops, larger leaves this time, of a grey-green colour. She stirred the dry leaves lightly then spooned them into the teapot and nodded to the footman, who poured the water in from the heavy urn then replaced the teapot lid.
“Good tea is worth waiting for, don’t you think, Lord Harland?”
“All good things are, ma’am, in my experience.”
“Indeed. And you—like your father, as I recall—are plainly a man who enjoys the finer things.” She sniffed. “Your orrery, for example.”
“I am in the fortunate position of being able to indulge my admiration for beautiful novelties,” he agreed. She inclined her head but did not return his smile. She was a cold fish; it was plain where Dunsmore got his lack of humour. Nathan watched as she lifted the teapot lid and peered inside. Evidently satisfied, she replaced the lid and lifted the pot to pour.
The tea was a clear greenish brown, a beautiful colour against the pale blue-white of the porcelain teacup. Reluctantly seduced by all the pretty accoutrements of this peculiarly female ritual, Nathan lifted the teacup to his nose, sniffing appreciatively. There was a hint of smoke in it, a touch of pine on the nose. He sipped. The tea was delicate and delicious.
“Would you like sugar? Milk?”
He shook his head. “No, this tea needs no embellishments.”
“It is good, is it not? It is my own special blend.”
“A secret one?” he asked.
“Of course.” She paused, then added, “Do you like secrets, Harland?”
“Don’t all gentlemen? We are certainly good at keeping them.”
“Are you? Do you think gentlemen better at keeping secrets than ladies?”
Until last night, he’d have cheerfully replied that ladies had many admirable qualities but that the keeping of secrets was not one of them.
“I would not make such a sweeping assumption,” he said instead. “But it is true that gentlemen are excessively fond of secrets. Or at least I am. Of discovering them most especially.”
“Well, in that case, let me show you one. A harmless one.” She drew the rosewood box towards them again.
“Your tea caddy? I was admiring it earlier.”
“Thank you. It was a gift from my late brother-in-law to his mother.” She took hold of the right hand side of the caddy with one hand and reached underneath it with the other. “There is a little catch here,” she explained. “But it is difficult to find.”
A moment later, she was lifting the side of the box away from the base, revealing a secret space. The side lifted two full inches. She turned the caddy so that he could see what was revealed: a little drawer, set into the base.
Nathan grinned. “Ah, now that is charming. Very subtle.”
“Cunning, isn’t it?” Lady Dunsmore agreed. “Of course, I’ve given this particular secret away now, but happily, I do not keep anything terribly important in here.” She opened the drawer and lifted out the contents—a single sheet of paper. She handed it to him and he opened it and read it. It was a tea recipe.
“It is the blend we are drinking. My mother-in-law’s recipe.”
“So it is not a secret recipe after all?”
“Not anymore, I fear.” She put the recipe away and set the caddy aside again.
She asked after his mother and his sister, questioning him for several minutes about his nieces and nephews, an interrogation he just about stood up to until another party arrived and Lady Dunsmore had to excuse herself.
Perhaps he could slip upstairs now? But no, there was no getting away yet. Dunsmore bore him off to introduce Colonel and Mrs. Hadley, and then there were yet more arrivals. And so it went on, a tea party without end.
And all the while, he thought of his valet upstairs, moving about his bedchamber and unpacking his things. He longed to be with her.
Chapter 9
Georgy was hot and sweaty.
It had been a troublesome business, getting everything up to the rooms allocated to Harland. The coachmen had gone to the stables to deal with the horses and the two footmen assigned to help her had grown steadily more irritable as they unpacked the luggage coach, scowling over the heavy boxes and awkward crates and arguing over the need to get the big crate down from the roof.
“Why can’t it go in the stables?” one demanded.
“His lordship paid a king’s ransom for what’s in there,” Georgy replied, clambering up to the roof to loosen the straps herself in the face of their intransigence. She struggled with the stiff buckles, trying to find a fraction of give in them.
“It’ll be fine in the stables,” the other footman complained, doing nothing to help.
“You two will help Lord Harland’s valet get that crate down,” a sharp voice said, “and have it in his rooms within the next five minutes or I’ll dock both your wages.”
Georgy looked down. A tall woman with iron grey hair in a tight knot on her head and a disconcertingly youthful face was standing next to the two footmen.
“Dick,” the woman added, “you go up on the roof and unstrap that thing.”
“Yes ma’am,” he muttered, and a minute later he was up beside Georgy, brushing her fingers aside to pull the straps away. “I’ll lower it down to you, Stan,” he told the other footman while Georgy climbed down.
The woman gave Georgy a measuring look. “Mrs. Watt,” she said. “Housekeeper here.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am. George Fellowes.”
Mrs. Watt nodded. “Don’t let these two shirk, Mr. Fellowes. They’re born lazy.” And with that she took herself back to the house, her posture ramrod straight.
By the time Georgy turned back, Dick and Stan were lowering the crate to the ground. She moved forward to help and Stan sent her a withering look.
“Best leave it to us, lad,” he said.
He was being deliberately insolent, treating her like a kitchen boy instead of a high-ranking upper servant. Georgy hid her anger and assumed a supercilious expression. “Gladly,” she said. “After all, these are your duties. I have more important things to do.”
Stan scowled at her but said nothing further. She lifted a single valise and followed the two of them into the servants’ entrance and up the back stairs.
Two flights up, they emerged onto a wide corridor, the polished parquet flooring in stark contrast to the rough stone stairs they’d just come up. The footmen led her to one in a row of closed doors that stre
tched down the length of the corridor. She opened the door and strolled inside.
The chamber was large and elegantly furnished. A fire burned merrily in the grate. She walked to the window to look outside, barely aware of the footmen behind her putting down the crate then leaving the room for the next load. Outside, the rolling park stretched for miles, and a church spire and the rooftops of a tidy village could just be seen in the distance. It was exactly the view her father had described as the one he’d enjoyed from his bedchamber.
Could this room have been his? When she drew away from the window, she moved around the room, touching the furniture and examining the pictures on the wall, imagining it as her father’s. It made her feel oddly happy—unlike the image of Dunsmore and his mother standing like crows at the front door, identical sour expressions on their faces.
When the footmen brought the last load—the truckle bed—into the chamber, it became apparent that it wasn’t going to fit in the dressing room along with that huge crate of Harland’s. The furniture was going to have to be moved. Georgy asked the footmen to help her.
“Can’t,” Stan said smugly. “Another party’s arrived. You’ll have to do it yourself or wait for a few hours till all the guests have come and we’ve unloaded all the carriages.”
“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Georgy replied, trying to keep the pleading note out of her voice.
“We’ve been told to stay downstairs, where we can be called quickly,” Dick said with obvious relish. They swaggered away.
There was no question of waiting for a few hours to sort Harland’s rooms out. He would expect everything to be in order by the time he came up to dress for dinner. It was so frustrating, when all she wanted to do was explore the house.
She gritted teeth and began the task herself.
By the time Harland walked in, a couple of hours after their arrival, she was still only halfway through unpacking his luggage. His clothing sat in piles, waiting to be hung in the wardrobe or folded and placed in the armoire.
The Lady’s Secret Page 8
