“Good morning, Marguerite!”
Marguerite looked up from closing her cottage door to find Jenneth sweeping her walkway.
“Why are you sweeping, Jenneth? Is Kitty ill?”
“The day is so perfect that I told her I would do the sweeping and if she hurried with the kitchen chores she could have a half day. I will do the village errands and she can visit her beau.”
Jenneth propped the broom against the wall and walked the few steps toward her. “How are you?”
“Very well.” Marguerite looked up at sky, and examined the trees, knowing that if she looked at Jenneth, her friend would see the lie in her eyes. “The nice weather makes everything easier, does it not? We needed the rain, but wet for a sennight is quite enough. And it rained days before that as well. It must have been a wonderful test of the new drainage system.”
“Marguerite,” Jenneth put a hand on her arm to stop the chatter, “tell me the truth.”
Marguerite shook her head. “I am fine.” She spoke with an angry edge as though she took the question as an insult. “I am sorry, Jenneth. I cannot linger. I have two projects underway and the staff needs my direction.” She hoped her smile did not look as stiff as it felt.
“Indeed.” For a moment Jenneth sounded exactly like Miss Morton had when she had caught her in a lie. The swift rush of longing for a simpler time, added one more weight to Marguerite’s already burdened heart.
“If you are in a hurry, I will walk with you.” Jenneth took her arm and they began down the track that led to the dower house.
The sweet smell of spring, the bird song, and a friend by her side were as much pleasure as Marguerite had known in the last fortnight. She looked up again, refusing foolish tears that were a luxury she only allowed at night.
A tiny dunnock flew up from under the hedge nearest them and they both looked up, trying to espy its nest.
“This morning I counted at least five different kinds of bird song.” When Marguerite looked at her, Jenneth confessed. “I had been sweeping that walk a good while. I did not want to miss you.”
With that allowance, Marguerite realized that Jenneth was truly worried about her. “I have not counted the bird songs, Jenneth. Indeed, I had not even noticed until you mentioned them, but they are everywhere, are they not? A ritual as old as spring.”
A flock of house sparrows swooped overhead as if to verify Marguerite’s observation. She squeezed Jenneth’s hand. “’Tis a shame that the ritual of man and woman cannot be as simple. If only it was as easy as trilling a song and waiting for an answer.” Marguerite put her lips together and tried to whistle. It came out tuneless and breathless. “Whistling is not a skill that I have ever been able to learn.”
“Hardly one a lady should count on to impress.”
“Oh, I can do one!” She stopped short and Jenneth did too. “That shrill whistle the boys use to call attention. The one where you put your fingers just so.”
“No, can you? Show me.”
Marguerite could not resist the dare. The shrill sound distracted more than one bird from its morning routine and they both laughed.
“If you do that again, you will have every dog in the area here within minutes.” Jenneth rubbed her ear. “Finally I see a smile. I have missed them.”
They started up again, lifting their skirts to avoid a puddle and stepping gingerly over the muddy patch around it.
“Jenneth, I am fine. I am doing my work. For a fortnight I have kept busy every minute of the day.” She paused and then told her friend the truth she most wanted to hear. “I never see him. He never asks to see me. The days go by quickly enough, the night hours much more slowly.”
She could feel the tension drain from Jenneth.
“I took what you said to heart, Jenneth. I have a useful place here and I would not risk it for something as trifling as a moment’s pleasure. ’Tis only that sometimes the world seems empty without him, without even a glimpse of his face. I worry about his headaches. Are they better or worse? I wonder if he is enjoying the dower house or only tolerating it. It is only at night that I dwell on these things. Not that I wish to, but in the dark there are no other distractions.”
She sighed and shook her head. “I sound as heartsick as your maid describing the way her beau looks in church on Sunday. And she can only see the back of his head!”
“No Marguerite, you do not sound a bit like Kitty, for she knows no discretion and will tell anyone who listens.”
Jenneth let go of her arm and bent down to pick one of the flowers that bloomed by the side of the path. She handed it to Marguerite who tucked it in her bodice. Jenneth pulled one more and tucked it behind her ear.
“Prentice has asked after you.”
“Oh dear.” Would she be the next source of gossip? How awful.
“Darling, you know that you are not very skilled at hiding your feelings. He fears you grow bored with life here.”
“Never!”
“That is what I told him. I tried to convince him that it was only the spring and melancholy for your old life.”
“As if I would ever go back to Yorkshire. Now that the Osgoods are gone there is nothing there that I miss.” She turned to Jenneth. “But I do appreciate your efforts.”
Entering the dower house garden through the back gate, they walked toward the house on the most direct path, avoiding the ones that angled to the right and left and then angled back again.
Marguerite let out a breath of a laugh. “Well, that explains why Prentice has been pressing me for ideas on ways to run the house more smoothly! He insisted that is the one great virtue of a change in the senior staff.
“He would ask and then never seem excited about my ideas. Every time I broach one he asks me to give him details on how it will be done and the cost.”
She stopped and turned to face Jenneth, with her back to the house. “Now I see. He is only trying to keep me busy.” She walked backwards for a few steps. “It is very sweet, and so like a man.”
They were near the door and Marguerite shook her skirt and began to scrape her shoes on the mat.
“We had an argument over it.”
“You lost your temper with Prentice?”
“Only a little. I told him he did not need anything more than good eyesight to see that it would make sense to move the laundry to one of the buildings closer to the dower house.”
“It hardly matters what you were discussing. You angry is enough to explain his worry.”
Someone opened a window above and the voice of a footman drifted down to them. Marguerite took Jenneth’s arm and they walked a few steps away from the house.
“Prentice need not worry, nor anyone else. I am well enough and have no plans to go anywhere but my cottage each night. With Prentice returned to work, there is no reason for me to see Lord Crandall at all. I come early to do my business here at the dower house while he is out riding and by the time he is ready for breakfast I am in the kitchen discussing recipes with the chef. It is only that none of it is as much fun as it used to be.” She shrugged. “How can I convince Prentice not to worry?”
“Try to smile more, Marguerite. It is what they all look for, how they measure your happiness. They miss it as much as I do.”
With an affectionate pat on the cheek, Jenneth hurried back down the path and her planned outing.
Smile more? You are the actress Jenneth, not I. If she had any hope that her future held more than her work, then perhaps she could. If that was not to be, she would make the most of employment that she did truly enjoy and learn to smile again. Although not today, but in time.
If every other day she had managed to avoid Lord Crandall, the moment she walked in the door Marguerite knew today would be different.
The shouting came from the dining room, arrowing down to the bottom of the stairs where she was putting her bonnet on a peg. At first she thought that the marquis and his son had come to blows. As she hurried up the narrow flight of stairs, she could hear only one person shouting and it was too young a voice to belong to the marquis.
Who could the viscount be shouting at? Surely not his father. From what Mrs. Beecher had said, they had not seen each other above once or twice since their discussion about the new location for Braemoor.
Robert hovered uncertainly outside the dining room door. She grabbed the pot of coffee from him and before he could do more than whisper, “Oh, ma’am, that room is no place....”
She pushed through the door and into the room determined to protect either the marquis or his son, whichever needed defending.
“Put that damn paper down, James, and listen to me a damn minute. I tell you, you cannot do it! I will not hear of it! Why must you insist on that spot?”
The shouting came from neither James nor the marquis. It was an unknown, though not unfamiliar face. Could this be the youngest Braedon, Lord Rhys?
She should leave. An argument between brothers hardly needed her intervention, but the longing to see him, if only for a moment, replaced common sense with impulse.
Marguerite moved down the table to where James sat and warmed his coffee, pouring another half-cup. He wore one of her favorite coats. The gray made his eyes look brighter, his face softer, if that was possible with such sharp cheekbones and so noble a chin.
He looked up from the paper when he recognized a female hand, her hand. “Are you come to rescue me?” He whispered the words, the paper an effective shield from his brother. “Or are you only curious?”
His smile took the bite from the words and Marguerite decided he was happy to see her. Nearly as happy as she was to see him. He looked rested, bother him. He looked as though he had spent the last two weeks at ease and in good humor. As though her absence had not made a whit of difference in his life.
The viscount put the paper down as she walked to the end of the table where the stranger stood at a place that had been well used. Plates crowded the cover, showing crusts of the cheese and toast that the viscount favored for breakfast.
When she went to pour the young man more coffee, he sat, silent and irritated. She poured the liquid, put the pot near his elbow and made her way to the door. There was a problem with just one glimpse. It was not enough. It only made her long for more.
“A moment, madame. Let me introduce my younger brother, Lord Rhys Braedon. Rhys, this is Braemoor’s new housekeeper, Madame Voisson.”
Rhys had enough command of his manners to rise and make a brief bow. Marguerite made him a curtsey and murmured, “My lord” and walked over to the server for a completely unnecessary examination of the trays.
Lord Rhys had the look of his brother Morgan and a little, even, of this brother. She could see it in the determined and, at the moment, angry set of his jaw. Had James looked like this as a younger man?
Most likely it was a look they both had inherited from their father. Was Lord Morgan the only one to have been spared the temper that made life so interesting and occasionally so very irritating?
“Rhys, please do not let madame’s presence inhibit you. There can be no doubt she has heard every one of the last hundred or so words you shouted at me.” He reached up and pulled at his earlobe. “On the other hand, I think I may be deaf.”
“You heard what I said.” Rhys glanced at Marguerite. She pretended to be totally engrossed in the empty muffin platter.
“Do explain it again, in a civil tone, if you please, so that madame can understand. She has come in here to protect one of us, but I do think that she is having trouble deciding which one of us needs her help or, perchance, deserves her help, is a better word.”
“I came because I feared it was the marquis who was upset.” Marguerite straightened as if an inch more would give her command of the situation. Sometimes it did.
“Yes, I know. And now that you can see it is only Rhys, you are filled with curiosity.” His tone imbued the words with such affection that she did not even feel the sting of the criticism.
“I am telling you, James, that if you do this, I will never come back.” Rhys leapt to his feet, threw his napkin into his chair and walked to the door with all the anger of a man belittled. “I will not come back for father’s funeral, or for your wedding, not for any reason. I will leave for good.”
James did not comment, nor did Lord Rhys wait for him to. He stomped from the room without the slightest show of courtesy to either James or Marguerite.
She began to clear his place, studiously avoiding the viscount’s end of the table. She had two plates in hand and was almost to the door when she completely lost the battle with her wiser self and turned back. “You should not have given him such a set down in front of a servant.”
“If he paid attention to anyone besides himself he would see that you are far more than a servant and possibly his most valuable ally. I gave him a chance.”
“A chance so veiled in insult that he would have had to be one of the magi to make sense of the compliment.”
The door opened and Robert came in. She held out the plates to him, but he was looking from her to the viscount and did not even notice her outstretched hand. She cleared her throat quietly and he took the plates with an embarrassed blush. He left without collecting anything else.
“You see, you are learning.” The viscount spoke with satisfaction.
“My lord?”
“That tiny clearing of your throat. Robert, was it not?”
“Yes.”
“A good housekeeper needs very few words. And I see that you have mastered one way to avoid them. Very nicely done. It drew Robert’s attention without embarrassing him outright.”
She walked back to the edge of the table and picked up the cup and saucer Lord Rhys had not touched. This was more than the glance she had hoped for. It was perilously close to a conversation. She would gather the covers, walk to the door and leave him to his coffee.