Wishing she really could be a governess and stay in the nursery, away from Simon, Olivia reluctantly descended the stairs the next morning. Apparently, the staff had refused to feed Hargreaves breakfast in his room. He was sourly contemplating the buffet when she entered.
Drew and Phoebe were already at the table. Simon wasn’t to be seen or heard. Fine, that made life simpler.
“I would like to visit Letty’s Cottage this morning. Would anyone like to go with me?” Olivia asked, filling her plate and hoping no one could tell how hard her heart pounded. Her new life rested on too many variables.
She could only face them one at a time. Cottage first.
“We will go with you.” Phoebe sounded grim and included Drew without asking.
Smiling as if she hadn’t a care in the world, Olivia faced Drew, who regarded them with suspicion. “The cottage may be a place I can rent. I have decided to stay in Greybridge.”
Drew looked from her to Phoebe, snorted, and returned to his food, wisely staying out of it.
“I have written my photographer friend to ask about chemicals. She’s a Malcolm, and may be able to tell us more about poisons,” Phoebe announced, as if cottage and photographer went hand-in-hand. She glanced at the viscount.
Hargreaves gloomily sipped his tea as if the rest of the table didn’t exist.
Olivia spoke to him sharply, forcing him to look at her. “We are going to all this effort for you. We will commence poker lessons when I return from the cottage. I’ve ordered an entire box of new decks that haven’t been manipulated by swindlers. I trust you’ve come up with something you can use as a stake. I don’t mean to exhaust my own funds for your pathetic hide.”
“I know how to play poker,” he grumbled. “And all I’ve left to my name is my watch and fobs.”
“Learning from a book is not the same as knowing how to play.” Olivia held out her hand. “Give me the watch and fobs and that diamond tie pin. I’ll not have you losing them before I’m ready.”
He looked mutinous. She wasn’t a new widow frightened of his title and position any longer. She glared back. “You stole my home, my future, and apparently the funds Owen meant for his son. You owe me so much I should have articles of indenture drawn up.”
“You can’t do that,” he argued petulantly, unfastening his stick pin.
“I’ll find out,” she taunted, as if he were a recalcitrant child instead of a nobleman. “And you owe far more than the Hall is worth, so if I dig you out of this hole, you’ll still owe me.”
“You won’t be able to do it.” He finally sounded defiant. “You won’t even bring them to the table.”
He hit on a sore point, but Olivia didn’t intend to let him see her weakness, not this time, not ever again. “I’ll bring them to the table even if it’s at gunpoint. And if that won’t work, I’ll burn the Hall down before I allow them to turn my home into a den of iniquity. They need to be afraid of me and not the other way around.”
That sounded good, leastways. The rabbit still cowered in her heart, but she wasn’t afraid of Lawrence, who was more mouse than she was rabbit. She returned to eating her eggs as if she’d just asked him to pass the butter. Someone had to put the fear of God into the idiot’s soul.
Phoebe hid a snicker. Drew finished his coffee and escaped, looking a little worse for wear. Simon must have kept him up half the night. Olivia reminded herself she did not like drunks. Despite being the most honest man she’d ever met, Mr. Simon Blair was an irresponsible, drunken bigot, and she would not give him a second thought.
After breakfast, Drew insisted on driving the carriage to the cottage, following Emma’s directions. The property wasn’t far from Simon’s home, apparently part of the land he had purchased when he’d bought his house—possibly a dower house at some point. It stood just outside of the village.
Olivia viewed the location with excitement. Within easy walking distance of town and Simon’s children, it was a perfect location if she couldn’t have the Hall. She unlocked the plank front door. The weak winter sun shone through the mullioned windows into the spacious room Letitia had apparently meant for a shop.
“I only foresee the need for one table at this party.” Olivia plotted as she wandered the perimeter. “But I’d like to have lots of witnesses. Will we need chairs?”
“A buffet table,” Phoebe suggested, heading for the back of the house. “I assume there’s a kitchen.”
“What kind of witnesses?” Drew asked suspiciously.
“People I trust. I’ll ask the Napiers, Mr. Hamilton, possibly the Jamesons. I’ll ask Sir Harvey and so forth but don’t expect much help there. And I think, just for the fun, I’ll ask the sheriff or his deputies to be in attendance. I’ll tell them Hargreaves has been threatened, and we fear revolutionaries. Or I’ll have Hargreaves tell them,” Olivia said in satisfaction.
“Devious,” Phoebe cried, sailing back into the room. “The kitchen is adequate. There is a good table. Borrow Simon’s staff for the evening. You’ll need all the allies you can find. Gentlemen don’t notice servants and won’t realize that you have an army.”
Olivia headed up the stairs, just to reassure herself that she and Evie and Aloysius could make a home here if necessary.
The upstairs was shabby and mostly empty. She wouldn’t be able to stay any time soon, but it looked like a sturdy house. “There are a few chairs we can carry down for the table,” she called.
“No rats,” Phoebe reported, apparently having done a mental inventory. “A few field mice in the kitchen. This is much snugger than the Hall.”
But Olivia would have to find a way to earn an income if she wanted more than bare existence. The Hall had tenants and land to be leased. The cottage wouldn’t.
First, she wanted the human rats out of the Hall.
Simon returned from meeting with his mine manager to find Viscount Hargreaves on his front lawn with an old woman he suspected was one of Letitia’s odd relations. He almost didn’t stop, but he couldn’t resist. He climbed off Thor and watched as the stooped old woman pushed on his lordship’s thin chest and spine at the same time.
Hargreaves coughed and gasped, then spat, and coughed some more. He choked and protested but the old woman kept on pressing.
“That’s it, my lord, breathe deeply, take in the fresh air the good Lord gave you. Blow out the bad. Another breath, deeper this time.” She punched his spine a little to force him to draw in more breath.
“You’re killing me,” the viscount protested between breaths and coughs.
“Your color is better already,” the old woman said with satisfaction.
That’s when Simon remembered Olivia had said they were bringing in a healer. He’d heard physician, but obviously, he was a dull-wit who didn’t realize there might be a difference.
Annoyance tempered by amusement, he left Hargreaves to his torture.
The house was blessedly quiet when he entered. The boys weren’t home from school yet. The women had apparently found a quiet occupation. Maggie must have stashed the servants out of sight. He wasn’t used to having a houseful of servants.
He needed to become accustomed, he realized, when he found Evie sleeping in the kneehole beneath his desk, along with Enoch’s puppy. He couldn’t yell for Olivia every time children or pets escaped the nursery, not if she meant to leave him—which she did.
He refused to acknowledge the pain in his heart. He was a man who acted, not moped. If these two weans had escaped the upstairs, where were the others?
Lifting the sleeping child, puppy on his heels, he climbed up to the top floor to peer in at the schoolroom. Olivia, Phoebe, Emma, even Drew, sat around the low table looking at cards. The twins apparently had a different deck and were lining up the picture cards and putting the numbered ones in order on the floor.
He recalled walking in on a similar scene on a rainy Christmas Eve and thinking he’d stumbled across the rings of hell, but he’d been blotto at the time. In the broad light of day and completely sober—he still couldn’t work it out.
“You’ve just picked up an ace of the same suit as your king,” Olivia said, not looking at her cards but in Phoebe’s direction. But she wasn’t exactly looking at her cousin, Simon noticed. Her eyes were a strange mirrored silver that saw beyond the table.
“Drew, you have nothing, so I’ll match your bet and raise it,” Olivia blinked, and her eyes were blue once more. “What do you think? Was I right?”
Drew flung down his cards, revealing a useless mix of numbers and suits. “I believe you. I still don’t see how you’ll use Hargreaves.”
Phoebe wrinkled her nose at the cards. “The ace is interesting, but I have no idea what difference it makes. You guessed mine right too. How do you do that?”
Instead of answering, Olivia looked up and spotted Simon in the doorway, holding Evie. She leaped up to relieve him of his burden, but he shook his head and carried the child to her bed in the other room.
“Evie is growing much too large for you to keep treating her like a baby,” he said when she followed him.
Olivia stiffened but didn’t respond as she tucked in her adopted daughter. She spoke to the new nursemaid, then marched out, closing the door between the nursery and the schoolroom. She didn’t even look at him.
“So, can you help me to teach Hargreaves?” Olivia asked her partners in crime.
“Just teaching him to believe you will be a chore,” Phoebe responded doubtfully.
“If he’s listening to an old witch on the lawn, the imbecile will believe anything,” Simon said with scorn. “And you’re all aboot in your heids if you think rotten scoundrels will even sit down at the table with you.”
“They’ll sit,” Olivia said with irritating calm. “They need funds. Unless they are independently wealthy, Glengarry and Ramsay cannot convert the Hall into a paying enterprise in its current condition. I’ve talked to a few people, and they tell me there isn’t a soul in the entire county willing to work for the Hall these days. People knew the Jamesons would see them paid as best they could. But the Jamesons have gone to live with their daughter in the village.”
She didn’t even offer him a look of triumph but calmly gathered up the scattered cards, then kneeled down to admire the ones the girls had laid out.
Simon wanted to rage and stomp and shout she was to have naught to do with the scoundrels, but she drew all the wrath out of him. Maybe he should go outside and let the old woman pound his lungs too.
“The Association might fund them,” Simon suggested.
“If anyone meant to fund the villains, they would have paid off their debts by now. The Hall is so deeply in debt that I don’t think anyone but a wealthy nabob could find servants. No, the Association—and quite possibly the earl—are keeping their hands clean for the moment. They think they’ll acquire the property without paying a farthing.” Olivia gathered up the cards on the floor, kissed the twins, and sent them in for a nap.
Olivia stood and faced him. Behind her, Drew had his poker face on, but Phoebe was grinning like a simpleton. Simon could sense the challenge coming.
“I’m asking if I might use Letty’s Cottage for one evening,” Olivia said with an air of defiance. “If you don’t wish it polluted by the evils of gambling, I will understand, and find somewhere else. But it is only for one night. After that, I may have to ask to rent it so Evie, Aloysius, and I have a place to call home.”
Letty’s Cottage? Simon had to think hard before he remembered Letitia’s dream of converting that old house into a shop. It had been so long. . . The pain was duller now, but not gone by any means. Her absence was like an abscess that ached every time he brushed against it.
“The cottage was foolishness,” Simon said gruffly. A breeze chilled his bones, and he aimed for the door. “The foundation is probably falling apart, the roof needs replacing, the chimneys are likely beyond repair. . .”
“One night,” Olivia insisted. “We only need it one night. If it isn’t suitable for habitation, I’ll look elsewhere.”
“Given the current state of the Hall, you’ll need to, no matter what happens with the game,” Phoebe said cheerfully. “You can return to Edinburgh with us, Olivia. Drew, we can stay until the card game, can’t we, please?”
If Olivia walked out of his life, there would be another damned abscess to ache. At least this way, he could shield her better from villains.
“You’ll do what you please, anyway,” he said grudgingly.