A Return of Devotion

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  “That’s most of the ground floor,” Daphne said with a forced smile. “I’m sure you’re tired.”

  He turned to her with eyebrows raised. “I thought you said I needed to get to know a house so that I could sleep well in it.”

  “That was before I realized how late it was. You couldn’t possibly have time to inspect the entire house this evening. Best to spend some time in your rooms so you feel fully settled.”

  His only answer was to stare at her. All the things he could be thinking about her flew through her mind. Few of them were flattering and most probably questioned her sanity or intelligence, but she couldn’t worry about that right now. Right now she needed him to accept her excuses and retire.

  Finally, he nodded. “Have water brought up first thing in the morning so I can shave.”

  She gave a small curtsy and held her breath as he left the saloon and climbed the stairs to the bedchambers above. Then she scurried down to the kitchens, where Jess was preparing for tomorrow.

  “How did you do this every day?” Daphne asked, bracing herself on the wooden table. “My heart is in my throat and about to choke me from the fear he’ll find out everything that once went on in this house. There’s no way for him to discover that, and Benedict isn’t even in the house right now so there isn’t any real danger at the moment, but I just can’t help feeling that it’s going to fall on my head.”

  Jess finished stacking the clean plates. “Oh, it’s going to come crashing down on our heads.” She pushed a tray toward Daphne so it could be placed on the rack with the others. “Your only hope is to delay it until we can shore up the defenses. Just try to stay out of his way as much as possible. If he can’t talk to you, you can’t accidentally say anything wrong.”

  Daphne took the tray with a frown. “You always did know how to comfort a girl,” she said dryly. But what Jess lacked in tact, she made up for in practicality. Daphne would stay far away from the marquis unless household duties or distraction from Benedict required she do otherwise.

  Keeping them apart was going to be a full-time job. And she still had to take care of the house. And come up with a plan that would work long term.

  This was going to be a very long few weeks.

  Chapter six

  There was irony to be found somewhere in his current predicament. Despite buying a modicum of merit in the housekeeper’s idea that touring the house would make him feel at home and let him sleep better, he found himself staring at the ceiling, sleep knocked away by the pain pounding against his skull.

  This was part of the reason he didn’t travel extensively like many of his peers. New places tended to give him a headache. New surroundings, new beds, new sounds and smells. It wasn’t unheard of for it to take him a week to completely adjust and relax. A week’s worth of mild headaches every time he went anywhere tended to keep him well rooted.

  Normally, he could focus on breathing and ignore the pain long enough for sleep to claim him and in the morning he would feel better. Not tonight. Tonight the pain was threatening to make him ill as it seemed to roll down his spine and land with a thunk in his stomach.

  He rolled over. Perhaps lying on his side would alleviate some of the agony slicing through his temples. Instead, it pulled a rough, low groan from his chest. His stomach seized at the increased pain, and he pushed himself to a sitting position, trying to breathe through the nausea, but instead inducing a wave of hacking coughs that had him gripping his head between his hands. If he squeezed hard enough, would the pain ooze out through his ears?

  The ruckus brought Morris into the room, wrapped in one of the dressing robes William had passed on to him last year. His hair was matted to one side of his head while the other remained perfectly styled. The lantern he held aloft sent a flickering glow over the bed, and William lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the light.

  “My lord?” the valet asked. “Is it your head, sir?”

  William grunted. Any more of a response was too much work.

  “Shall I summon the housekeeper, sir? Even with the barest of staff, they must keep a stillroom with some medical supplies.” The valet was much too professional and stoic to wear a sneer on his face in William’s presence, but it was clear in his voice.

  “Yes,” William said as quietly as possible so as not to disturb his head further. “Wake the housekeeper.”

  The valet left and William slid his eyes closed before attempting to gently ease himself back down to the pillow.

  Five minutes later, Morris was back in the room, but the only thing in his hands was the lantern.

  “What’s wrong?” William asked, pushing himself up.

  “I cannot find Mrs. Brightmoor.”

  “She’s not in her room?”

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t believe she has a room, my lord.”

  “What?” The pounding in his head made it hard to think, but it sounded as if his valet had just said that his housekeeper didn’t have a room in the house.

  “I’m afraid you and I are the only ones in the house, sir. The garret rooms are empty and the downstairs rooms are stacked with beds. There is no indication anyone is using them for anything other than storage.”

  William hauled himself from the bed, his first instinct to go verify the valet’s outlandish claims himself. They couldn’t possibly be true. Except Morris didn’t make jokes about such things. Morris didn’t joke at all.

  Standing upright surprisingly settled his insides, though. Even the pounding in his temples eased enough for him to be able to think. He ran a hand across his forehead. “She has to be somewhere.”

  The house was far enough from everything that it wasn’t possible she traveled here every day. The children might travel from some nearby farm, but right now he didn’t care if they slept on the drawing room couch unless they knew the location of the stillroom and whether or not it contained medicine that would help his head.

  “I believe I saw a cottage down past the garden.” He could send Morris, but if standing had helped, perhaps walking would do even more. “Get me boots, trousers, and a jacket.”

  “Right away, my lord.”

  William looked a wreck, but he didn’t care as he took the lantern and stepped out into the darkened gardens. The coolness of the night took the edge off of what remained of his pain, and a few deep breaths left his insides feeling almost normal.

  Maybe he’d just bring a pallet out onto the lawn and sleep under the stars.

  The cottage had the same air of maintained negligence that seemed to hang over the rest of the property. Cared for so that it didn’t fall into disrepair, but not kept in prime condition.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he knocked on the door of the cottage. He was going to feel incredibly foolish if this house was empty, but then again, there’d be no one to see him, so the embarrassment would be limited.

  There was no immediate answer, but the bedchambers were likely upstairs so he knocked again, a bit firmer than before.

  A great deal of scrambling and scuffling could be heard through the door before it finally eased open to reveal Mrs. Brightmoor, her brown hair pulled back into a braid that reached the middle of her back and a threadbare pink robe wrapped tightly around her. She rubbed a hand across her eyes as if she were still half asleep. “My . . . My lord?”

  “Why are you down here?”

  “I live here.” She glanced over her shoulder and then turned back to him, one hand pulling the door a bit closer to her side.

  It was so reminiscent of that afternoon on the porch of his own home that William was suddenly determined to get inside the cottage. What he’d do when he got there, he didn’t know, but his head hurt, so he wasn’t going to care about the fact that all his thoughts weren’t precisely logical.

  He wanted in the house and he wanted a headache remedy. There was no reason why he couldn’t have both. Perhaps one might even give him the other. If she lived down here, it might be where the medicine was too.

  “Whi
le I admit it sounds like a paltry reason to wake the house, I’m afraid I have an aching head. If I do nothing to make it abate, I won’t sleep and I’ll be ill for the next two days.”

  Her eyes widened and everything about her posture softened. She let go of the door, and it eased open a few inches. “That sounds dreadful. There’s several treatments in the stillroom up in the house you can try for relieving a pain in the head.” With a glance down, she pulled her wrap tighter. “Let me . . . Give me a moment and I’ll get what you need.”

  He nodded and waited for her to let him in, but she didn’t. Instead, she gripped the door as if she planned to shut him outside.

  “The night air is cool, Mrs. Brightmoor, and the grass is wet.” In truth, the night air was doing him a great deal more good than harm and his boots could more than handle the bit of dew collecting on the grass. But she didn’t need to know that.

  “Quite so.” She glanced behind her once more and then pushed the door open wider. “Would you like to step inside? I won’t be but a moment.”

  He stepped over the threshold without a word, and she scampered up the stairs that cut through the middle of the room. There was a door to the right of the stairs with a large empty area in front of it. Closer to him, a small table and chairs were pushed into the corner.

  On his left was a small sitting area. A harpsichord that looked as if it had been pulled from the rubbish heap was pushed against the back wall. A small collection of chairs created a circle in the middle, but against the wall nearest the door was a strange oval table. It appeared to have a chair attached to one of the long edges.

  William wandered over to it but paused when a noise came from the door on the other side of the room that presumably led to a small kitchen. When he heard nothing else, he continued toward the oval table that had caught his attention.

  Even if poking around didn’t teach him anything about his housekeeper, it would distract him from the throbbing behind his eyes.

  “What is he doing here?” Jess asked as Daphne returned to the room the two women shared and threw a pelisse on over her dressing robe and night rail.

  “Looking for the stillroom,” Daphne answered, scooping up her boots from beneath her bed. “He needs medicine for a sore head.” Heart in her throat at the thought of all that could go wrong with that man in the cottage where they’d done little, if anything, to hide the history of the property or the presence of the remaining children, she tried to pull on her boots and walk to the door at the same time.

  It wasn’t a very successful endeavor.

  “He thinks the stillroom is down here in the cottage?” Jess rolled her eyes and reached for her own coat.

  “No, he thinks his housekeeper is down here in the cottage.” Daphne paused long enough to finally secure her boots to her feet. “Stay here. We don’t need him knowing you and the children sleep down here, too. He might put together what we’ve been doing.”

  She turned toward the door but paused with her hand on the latch. “You might need to help Reuben pull his bed out of the kitchen after we leave. It flipped over as we shoved it in there. He’s sitting against the door right now so Lord Chemsford can’t enter.”

  Jess tilted her head and looked at Daphne. “You think he hasn’t already checked all the sleeping areas in the house and realized none of us are there?” She shook her head and waved Daphne out the door. “Never mind. I’ll help Reuben. You’re better with the nurturing and medication anyway.”

  Daphne frowned but stepped back out onto the small landing between her and Jess’s room and the room Sarah and Eugenia shared. No matter what Jess thought, Daphne knew there was a difference between speculating about something and knowing something.

  And no man was going to take kindly to learning that three women and a dozen children had been crowded into his house. It wouldn’t matter why they’d done it. At least, she didn’t think it would.

  But wouldn’t it be nice if it did?

  She could say, “Did you know for the past twelve years, Haven Manor has been a refuge for children who would otherwise likely lose their lives as their mothers were forced into poorhouses?”

  “What a fascinating use for an empty building,” he would say.

  “Yes,” she would continue, “and with the children here, their mothers were able to claim some of the future that would have been denied them. They were able to build lives, and most of them used that second chance to do great work helping other people.”

  “And here I was thinking it would simply make me a fine home. Your plan is much better. You take the house and I’ll live in the cottage.”

  She would laugh. “No need. My friend Kit is now married to Lord Wharton and they’ve been traveling around England locating farming families willing to take unwanted children in as their own. The older ones will probably still have to find work and make their own path in the world, but it’s not so bad. We’ve only three left—four, if you count Benedict.”

  Daphne nearly tripped on the last step, as even imagining talking to Lord Chemsford about Benedict was enough to frighten her out of the perfect little world in her head.

  She took a deep breath as she stepped into the room downstairs and back into a reality where telling the marquis what they’d been doing in the house even four months ago would probably get them all thrown off the property and bring an end to Nash’s ability to work as a solicitor.

  As far as Lord Chemsford knew, Nash was simply the solicitor overseeing the minimal care of an abandoned estate.

  But he was so much more than that.

  Daphne and Kit had been floundering in the charity of kind Mrs. Lancaster during Benedict’s first months. Still, they’d decided to do what they could to help Margaretta, an old friend who was on the run and in a delicate condition. But then Nash had fallen in love with Margaretta and they’d all embarked on a mission to save other women and children who had nowhere to turn.

  Noble, yes, but not what the marquis had been paying him to do.

  The marquis wasn’t watching the stairs for her return as she’d feared. Instead, he was inspecting the writing table near the door. It was one of Benedict’s creations. The chair pushed in and fit solidly into the table, creating a perfectly smooth oval. When the chair was pulled out, the top would slide open, revealing an inkwell and quill tray, and the middle portion of the tabletop would angle upward to provide an excellent surface for drawing or writing.

  “This is a fascinating piece of furniture.” He slid the chair out and back in.

  “Yes.” Daphne cleared her throat. “Your head? We’ll need to go up to the house to get what you need. There’s nothing down here.” She tried to smile brightly as she whisked through the drawing room and out into the night. Hopefully the darkness made her cheer appear more real.

  He fell into step beside her, holding his lantern steady as they crossed the lawn. “Why are you down here?”

  Her mind had churned for an answer to this question since she’d let him in the house, but she wasn’t having much luck. Dew was already settling on the grass and dampening the hem of her robe, proving that making such a commute every day was a bit ridiculous.

  Without a believable excuse, she decided to stick as close to reality as possible. She could keep it vague and let him fill in the holes as he pleased. Whatever he came up with was better than the truth. “There’s a limited number of usable servants’ rooms in the house right now. The garret rooms had fallen into neglected disrepair before I came here and have since suffered a bit of water damage as well.”

  See? Complete truth. Only the rooms belowstairs near the kitchens were in livable shape. The servants’ beds that had once lined the first-floor bedchambers for use by the children were now stacked two high across the belowstairs rooms. She didn’t volunteer the whereabouts of Jess and the others. Hopefully he would assume they were somewhere in the house or possibly even the barn while only she was making use of the cottage.

  Although, her using the cottage was awfully
presumptuous of her. It would normally have been reserved for an estate manager or other higher-level employee.

  He didn’t say any more about it, though, so she didn’t either.

  Chapter seven

  She entered the house through the door that led straight into the main kitchen. He followed and once again she found herself sweating over his presence. She’d gotten him out of the cottage, yes, but now he was in the servants’ domain, an area they’d thought safe. How much of themselves had they left evidence of? These rooms had been well used when they should have barely been touched for more than two decades.

  If she took him into the stillroom, with its shelves packed full of the myriad tonics, herbs, and remedies needed in a house full of children, he was going to have questions.

  Questions she really couldn’t answer.

  “Why don’t you sit here?” She patted a stool by the kitchen worktable and gently pried the lantern from his hand. “I’ll retrieve the quinine and ingredients for willow bark tea.”

  She kept moving through the room, hoping he would listen to her, but the footsteps that continued behind her proved otherwise.

  The only thing that was going to keep everything from falling down around her ears tonight was the fact that the stillroom door hung a bit crooked. Opening it wider than a few inches was difficult and made a horrendous scraping noise. She knew exactly where the items she needed were. It should be easy enough to slip in before him.

  But if he stuck his head in after her? Was there a possible believable explanation? She sighed. No wonder she enjoyed making up stories in her head. Misleading and lying in real life were exhausting and more than a little stressful.

  The scrape of the door against the floor was louder and more horrendous than she’d remembered, echoing through the stone passageway loud enough to make her wince, and she wasn’t nursing an aching head.

  A moan ripped from her companion as he collapsed against the wall, eyes closed, hands pressed to his head. Her heart went out to the poor man’s obvious agony, but his moment of distress was her golden opportunity.