Chapter
Eleven

Fanny watched Lady Katherine walk away, her blond hair contrasted stunningly against her black hunting costume, and she thought, not for the first time, that it simply wasn’t fair. The daughters of the house had such beautiful hair colors: Lady Katherine’s blond, Lady Grace’s warm auburn, Lady Elizabeth’s rich black. While she, like the housemaids, was stuck with mousy brown. Come to that, why were the footmen allowed to be so handsome while the female staff were all confined to being plain?

She’d been watching and listening to the exchange among Lord Clarke, his eldest daughter, and Will Harvey, but now that the first two had left and the third was about to depart the way he’d come, through the back door, she couldn’t let that last thing happen.

Fanny hadn’t had much occasion to talk to or even see Will Harvey in the past, but whatever she had seen, she’d always liked.

“Will!” she called after him as he placed his hand on the knob.

Will turned.

“I’m ever so sorry about your uncle,” she said, twisting her hands together.

“Thanks, Fanny,” he said. “You’re very kind.”

“Would you like to stay for a bit?” she offered. Then she gestured toward the long table. “Perhaps have a cup of tea with me?”

“Fanny!” Mrs. Owen admonished with a bark. “We’re working here. You’re supposed to be working here. This isn’t some sort of…teahouse!”

“Mrs. Owen,” Fanny said firmly, straightening her back. “I’ve already completed my morning’s work. I’ve even packed up the hampers for Jonathan and Daniel to take for the barn luncheon Lord Clarke and his guests will be enjoying after the hunt, so I think I might be entitled to one measly cup of tea. And one for Will, too.”

Mrs. Owen shot a quick glance at Will. “I’m sorry about Ezra, Will, sorry for your family’s loss.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Owen,” Will said.

“All right,” Mrs. Owen told Fanny, softening. “One cup of tea each.” And then she hardened again. “But just one! And try to keep out of my way.”

“Oh, thank you!” Fanny said, her shoulders inching up in pleasure at the prospect of doing something different for a change. “Why don’t you go through to the servants’ hall?” she suggested to Will. “I’ll bring the tea.”

A moment later, she did so, having found some leftover dessert from last night’s dinner to bring on the tray, too.

But Will didn’t appear to be interested in having anything sweet. Really, he didn’t even seem all that interested in the tea as he sat there looking dejected.

Empathy caused Fanny’s own expression to shift away from the pleasure she’d been feeling.

“Oh, you mustn’t mind them too much,” she said. “The earl and his daughter. Those people. They never think anything we have to say is important. Why, look at you. You try to help them, and they think you’re insane!”

As soon as she uttered that last word, her hands flew to her mouth as though she might be able to push it back. She’d seen how Will’s expression had darkened when the Clarkes had used that word. She certainly didn’t want Will to think that she thought such a thing about him, too.

“It’s fine, Fanny.” He waved a dismissive hand. “If I stop and think, I can understand why someone who hadn’t seen it with their own eyes wouldn’t believe me.”

“You didn’t see it, either, though,” Fanny said, again unable to stop herself. “Your aunt did.”

“True,” Will said. “But she did, and I believe her.”

“I don’t blame you. If it were my aunt, I’d believe her, too. Well, if I had an aunt.” Fanny paused. “I believe you, Will.”

He looked at her with gratitude. “Thank you, Fanny.”

Fanny enjoyed that for a moment, someone actually thanking her for something. Then: “Do you think it was a vampire?”

Will had finally been about to take a sip of his tea, but now he stopped. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“A vampire! You know, like in Mr. Bram Stoker’s Dracula? If a vampire bites you on the neck, you die for a bit, then you come back to life, only now you’re a vampire, too, who wants to bite people and, you know, drink their blood.”

Thankfully, Will didn’t treat her suggestion with the same scorn Mr. Wright had when she’d raised the idea the night before, but he did shake his head.

“I don’t think so,” Will said. “No one said anything about there being any bite marks on his neck, and I didn’t see any in that area myself when I…saw him.”

“Oh.” Fanny felt a bit disappointed. “Probably not vampires, then. Vampires are so obvious, it kind of makes you wonder why, once the evidence is there, anyone ever suspects anything else.”

Fanny propped her elbows on the table and cradled her face in her hands, trying to think of some alternatives. While she sat there, a cat made its way into the room, a mackerel tabby, strolling the perimeter before eventually hopping into her lap.

“Who’s this?” Will asked as Fanny petted the feline.

“This is Henry Clay,” Fanny said proudly. “He’s my mouser. You can’t have a good clean kitchen without a great mouser.”

Will reached out and gave the cat an experimental pat on the head. “Why Henry Clay?” he asked. “Seems like an odd name for a cat.”

“It’s the name,” Fanny said, “of my favorite American.”

“You have a favorite American?” Will said, laughing.

Even though it might be possible that he was laughing at her expense, Fanny was grateful to have been the cause of that laughter, given what Will had been through. Fanny knew what it was like to lose a beloved family member, knew it all too many times over. As far as family went, Fanny was alone in the world.

“What’s so surprising about that?” she asked. “I have favorites when it comes to lots of things. Henry Clay—the man, not the cat—was a great orator and lawyer and politician. They called him ‘The Great Compromiser.’ So often, people have to find ways to compromise, don’t you think? Anyway, he lived a long time ago and he had slaves, but he freed them in his will, so at least that’s something. I like to think that people can change, don’t you?”

“Well.” Will appeared to be at a loss as to what to say to all that. “At least this Henry Clay seems friendlier than those two fluff balls I see roaming around the grounds sometimes.”

“You mean Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?” Fanny guessed.

“Rosen…what?”

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.” She jutted her chin toward the ceiling as though indicating the people of Porthampton Abbey who lived upstairs. “They come up with all kinds of crazy names, not like Henry Clay. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two characters from Mr. William Shakespeare’s plays.”

“You’re not going to tell me you’ve read Shakespeare.”

“No, I haven’t.” Fanny sighed, then brightened. “But I mean to. At least I’ve looked at the names on all the cast lists.”

“How do you know all this?” Will said, clearly astounded.

“Because I read, don’t I?” Fanny said. “Every day, whenever I’m supposed to be dusting the library, I take some time to look through the books. Might as well read as dust.” She shrugged. “Besides, I don’t think anyone else here reads the things, except maybe that oldest daughter. Sometimes I even smuggle books up to my room.” She grew excited. “Say! Would you like me to smuggle some for you?”

Fanny regretted mentioning “that oldest daughter,” because almost immediately, Will got a preoccupied look on his face and she even had to repeat herself, prodding him about her offer to smuggle books for him.

“I’ll, um, I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Let me know.” She sighed. “Those people,” she said again, this time shaking her head at the foolishness of it all. “It’s just like the Titanic all over again.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“The Titanic! It was this great big ocean vessel, biggest ever built, and even though everyone thought it could never—”

“Yes, I know about all that. But what I don’t know is how that relates to any of this.”

The Titanic had bothered Fanny for years—eight years, to be exact. Even though she’d only been nine herself when it sank, it still bothered her: the idea of all those people dying, in third class, in steerage, with no chance of survival simply because they hadn’t been able to afford a better fare.

Fanny sought to explain all this, adding, “This is like that all over again. The poor, like your uncle, at risk for something, while the wealthy think they can get off scot-free because of their wealth. But even on the Titanic, even though almost all the poor died, not all the wealthy got away. Some of them died, too. Even some of the richest in the world, like that John Jacob Astor! So they were fools to think they could just go about their daily business and—”

“Where are they going on their hunt?” Will said, cutting her off with a chin jut toward the upstairs similar to the one she’d used earlier. If Will had seemed to grow preoccupied before, he appeared fully alert now, following her description of the wealthy thinking they were protected by that wealth but then dying anyway.

“How should I know?” Fanny shrugged. “But they’re not taking horses and they are having a barn luncheon in the fancy barn, so it can’t be too far from there.”

Will tossed back the contents of his teacup, now likely grown cold, as he rose to his feet and headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Fanny asked.

“They may be fools,” Will said, “but someone has to protect them.”